7 Simple Changes to Make Your Website More Visible in Search Engines
Here are seven quick and easy ways to make your site more visible to search engines:
1. Optimize every page of your site with rich content.
This is by far the most complicated item on this list, but it’s fundamental. Without it, you’ll be hard-pressed to get visibility in search engines at all.
All of your pages, especially your main lineup (home, contact, etc.), need to include concisely written, descriptive content. Ideally, this content will be optimized for specific target keywords and phrases (as long as the text doesn’t seen unnatural). If you have pages without much content, prevent Google from indexing them by using the “noindex” attribute, and “nofollow” any links to those pages, as well.
2. Write unique title tags and meta descriptions for every page.
Title tags serve as the headlines of your pages in search engine results pages (SERPs), while meta descriptions serve as the descriptive text. Not only do these constructs inform Google about the content and purpose of each of your pages, they also dictate how your pages appear in search results.
In this way, they serve a dual purpose: They rank your pages higher and increase click-through rates from users on search engine results pages. You can use a web-based tool such as Siteliner or an in-depth site crawler such as Screaming Frog to get an accurate assessment of each page on your site, including title tags and meta descriptions.
3. Weed out 404 errors.
404 errors are annoying for users and may interfere with the number of pages Google can index. By themselves, they’re unlikely to hurt your rankings, but it’s still usually worth setting up a 301 redirect or restoring the page if you notice a 404 error where there shouldn’t be one.
Google Search Console has a great tool for checking this: Look under “crawl errors.” If your website is on Wordpress, you can download one of a number of plugins designed to automatically make 404 pages fun and useful, or automatically 301-redirect them to another page, such as your home page.
4. Make your content easily shareable.
This is a simple change, and if you haven’t done it already, you’ve probably missed out on some significant opportunities. On your blog page, feature social share icons so your users can actively and easily share your content socially. Social shares don’t contribute to rankings directly, but can make your pieces more visible, making it easier for them to earn more inbound links.
This benefit was recently confirmed as one of the top two ranking factors in Google’s algorithm. If your site is Wordpress-based, there are a number of plugins that can add social share buttons to your website dynamically.
5. Optimize your images.
You’re probably using images in your content marketing campaign, but are you optimizing them effectively? It doesn’t take much to get your images into optimal shape for search engines; all you have to do is title your images accurately; write an accurate, keyword-rich description; and include alt tags and a caption to categorize and describe the image’s role on your page.
If optimization is done correctly, your image will be indexed and searchable in Google Image Search -- an indirect, but valuable route for online searchers to get to your site.
6. Make your site load faster.
Site speed isn’t a crucial factor for search engine visibility, but it certainly does count. Plus, a faster site usually leads to a better user experience, which means a higher conversion rate, among other benefits.
You can improve your loading speed by: optimizing your images, using the right types of images, using a good caching plugin, deleting unnecessary meta data and using only using plugins you truly need. For more help with speeding up your website, see "10 Unique Ways to Make Your Website Load Faster."
7. Include structured markup.
Okay, to be fair, this one isn’t that simple, but it is an effective (and more or less straightforward) way to get your site more visible in search engines. At some point, you’ve performed a search and seen some stand-out answer for your query located above or to the side of the typical results; this could be a mini calendar, an encyclopedic entry or a short summary-style answer.
These are rich snippets, and if you want to get featured like this, you’ll need to include structured markup for various types of content on your site. I don’t have the space to get into the technical requirements, but Schema.org is the industry standard and it's got some great guides on the subject.
Now, don’t think these seven strategies are the full extent of SEO. In fact, they barely scratch the surface of what on-site SEO is about, and they don’t even take off-site SEO into consideration. Nor will these tactics net you a dramatic difference overnight, but they are simple to execute, and can provide a meaningful spark of growth in your website’s search visibility.
Friday 29 April 2016
Thursday 21 April 2016
Calling out for secret supply chains
Prada, Chanel, and More Big-Name Fashion Brands Called Out for Secret Supply Chains
By Hilary Beaumont
Some of the world's most popular clothing brands, including Forever 21 and Michael Kors, have been slammed by a new report for not being upfront with customers about their supply chains.
And high-end, expensive clothing companies including Prada, Fendi and Hermes are among the worst offenders, with Chanel coming in dead last, according to the report that ranks clothing brands on transparency.
The report by advocacy organizations Fashion Revolution and Ethical Consumer ranked 40 major fashion companies on how transparent they are about their supply chains, and found that 40 percent of the companies analyzed don't appear to have systems to monitor whether they are compliant with labor standards.
Nearly three years after the collapse of a factory in Bangladesh that killed more than a thousand people and injured 2,500 more, the report found it's still difficult for consumers — and even fashion companies — to answer the question, "who made my clothes?"
In the lead-up to the April 24 anniversary of the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh, the organizations are encouraging consumers to ask clothing companies about every aspect of their supply chains, from where the raw materials came from to who stitched the clothing together.
"Lack of transparency costs lives," the report states. "It is impossible for companies to make sure human rights are respected and that environmental practices are sound without knowing where their products are made, who is making them and under what conditions."
'Lack of transparency costs lives.'
The highest ranked company was Levi Strauss & Co, followed closely by Inditex, which owns Zara, and H&M, which owns Cheap Monday and & Other Stories. But while the report commended these companies for their transparency, it cautioned that a high transparency rating doesn't mean clothing isn't made in dangerous conditions.
In H&M's case, the high transparency ranking comes on the heels of another advocacy group slamming the company for "severe delays" in building repairs in 32 Bangladesh factories that supply its clothing. Several advocacy groups criticised H&M for its lack of progress in safety improvements after it endorsed the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety, a legally-binding agreement that more than 100 brands signed onto in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza collapse.
"More than two and a half years into the process of the Bangladesh Accord, every single mandated repair at H&M's suppliers should have already been completed," Scott Nova of the Worker Rights Consortium said in a statement. "However, the sad reality is that hardly any of H&M's supplier factories in Bangladesh can be called safe."
VICE News reached out to a handful of the brands ranked on the transparency index to ask them if the report was fair and whether they would tell us about their supply chains. Only H&M and Lululemon sent responses.
H&M spokesperson Ulrika Isaksson welcomed the findings of the transparency index, and said, "We believed transparency is key to advancing our sustainability and we work hard to further increase the transparency across our entire value chain."
As for the Bangladesh Accord on factory safety, Isaksson said "H&M's suppliers have now reported that all locking features as well as all collapsible, sliding or rolling shutter doors have been removed at all factories." The work is a complement to the mandatory requirements including emergency exits, emergency lights, fire alarms, fire extinguishers, evacuation plans and regular evacuation drills, they said.
Lululemon, which ranked in the low-to-middle range on the transparency index, pointed VICE News to the sustainability section of their website, which says the company is taking steps to reduce its carbon footprint, water use and the amount of waste it produces, but does not state where their products are made.
Fashion supply chains are often extremely complex, and many brands don't own the factories where their clothes are made, the report states.
"Some brands may work with thousands of factories at any given time — and that is just the facilities that cut, sew and assemble our garments, but there are also further facilities down the chain that dye, weave and finish materials and farms that grow fibres too."
'Many companies do not really know where their clothes are being made. '
"Many companies do not really know where their clothes are being made. The vast majority of today's fashion brands do not own their manufacturing facilities, making it difficult to monitor or control working conditions through the supply chain."
Fashion Revolution said it sent a questionnaire to 40 fashion companies, but only 10 filled it out. The other 30 companies received scores based on information they made public.
"For those companies that did not reply, it is impossible for our researchers to know anything beyond what they are communicating publicly online," the report stated. "Therefore these companies may have received lower scores while companies who did fill out the questionnaire had the opportunity to tell us more and thus potentially score higher."
Though the report's release was timed ahead of the anniversary of the collapse of a factory where Loblaws, a Canadian grocery giant, made its Joe Fresh clothing, neither Loblaws nor Joe Fresh were mentioned in the report. Fashion Revolution told VICE News they selected fashion brands based on annual turnover.
Fashion Revolution says it hopes to expand the number of brands surveyed to 100 next year, and invites any fashion brand or retailer with at least UK $36 million in annual turnover to opt into the transparency index for 2017.
https://news.vice.com/article/prada-chanel-and-more-big-name-fashion-brands-called-out-for-secret-supply-chains
Wednesday 20 April 2016
Facebook Messenger launches Group Calling to become your phone | TechCrunch
Facebook Messenger launches Group Calling to become your phone | TechCrunch
Facebook Messenger launches Group Calling to become your phone
Jump on the party line or hear the voices of your whole family with Facebook Messenger’s latest feature. Rolling out globally over the next 24 hours on Android and iOS for free, users can start a group VoIP audio call from any group chat.
Just tap the Phone icon, select which of the group chat members you want included and they’ll all receive a Messenger call simultaneously. If you miss the initial call but it’s still in progress, you can tap the Phone icon in the group chat to join the call. At any time you can see who’s on the call and send another ping to anyone who hasn’t joined.
Facebook tells me there’s no limit on the number of participants, so if you think you’re popular, you can try maxing it out. You’ve got more than 900 million users to hit up.
[Update: Now Facebook says it was wrong and that there’s actually a maximum number of 12 participants on a call.
Update 2: Facebook seems to be in utter disarray after F8, as now it’s apologizing and saying the participant limit is 50.]
After being late on several launches like QR codes and an internal camera, Messenger managed to release a core communication feature before Snapchat. One cool feature I hope Messenger launches is dynamic muting or quieting of background noise of people who aren’t talking.
Facebook began offering VoIP in 2013, fully rolled out one-on-one audio calls in April 2014 and, a year later, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Messenger already made up 10 percent of all mobile VoIP calls globally. A Messenger spokesperson tells me, “There are situations where typing isn’t enough and when people prefer talking to one another.”
While there’s no group video calling yet, you can expect that to come eventually. When I asked Messenger’s head of product Stan Chudnovsky last year about group video when one-on-one video calling launched, he told me, “Group video calling is definitely a use case that a lot of our people might be interested in at some point…[and] it would be a big deal if the whole [shakes hand to simulate lack of video stabilization] thing goes away.”
Messenger’s goal as of late has been to replace your phone number. Last year it started allowing all Facebook users to chat with each other even if they aren’t friends, though strangers’ pings can sometimes be hidden in the Filtered Message Requests section under Settings -> People -> Message Requests -> See Filtered Requests. (If you don’t know about Filtered Requests, it’s worth checking out — I’ve found Facebook filtering to be too aggressive and hid some messages I wanted to see.)
Unlike phone numbers where you have little control once someone knows your digits, Messenger lets you easily block people, the ability to message you can’t be sold and, thanks to Facebook’s spam detection systems, it’s tough for someone to create a new Facebook account to harass you.
Now, Messenger could serve as a better replacement for Skype, and even let you set up easy conference calls with people whose numbers you don’t have. The more use cases Messenger can encompass, the less likely you are to stray to one of its competitors or its age-old foe: SMS.
Facebook Messenger launches Group Calling to become your phone
Jump on the party line or hear the voices of your whole family with Facebook Messenger’s latest feature. Rolling out globally over the next 24 hours on Android and iOS for free, users can start a group VoIP audio call from any group chat.
Just tap the Phone icon, select which of the group chat members you want included and they’ll all receive a Messenger call simultaneously. If you miss the initial call but it’s still in progress, you can tap the Phone icon in the group chat to join the call. At any time you can see who’s on the call and send another ping to anyone who hasn’t joined.
Facebook tells me there’s no limit on the number of participants, so if you think you’re popular, you can try maxing it out. You’ve got more than 900 million users to hit up.
[Update: Now Facebook says it was wrong and that there’s actually a maximum number of 12 participants on a call.
Update 2: Facebook seems to be in utter disarray after F8, as now it’s apologizing and saying the participant limit is 50.]
After being late on several launches like QR codes and an internal camera, Messenger managed to release a core communication feature before Snapchat. One cool feature I hope Messenger launches is dynamic muting or quieting of background noise of people who aren’t talking.
Facebook began offering VoIP in 2013, fully rolled out one-on-one audio calls in April 2014 and, a year later, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Messenger already made up 10 percent of all mobile VoIP calls globally. A Messenger spokesperson tells me, “There are situations where typing isn’t enough and when people prefer talking to one another.”
While there’s no group video calling yet, you can expect that to come eventually. When I asked Messenger’s head of product Stan Chudnovsky last year about group video when one-on-one video calling launched, he told me, “Group video calling is definitely a use case that a lot of our people might be interested in at some point…[and] it would be a big deal if the whole [shakes hand to simulate lack of video stabilization] thing goes away.”
Messenger’s goal as of late has been to replace your phone number. Last year it started allowing all Facebook users to chat with each other even if they aren’t friends, though strangers’ pings can sometimes be hidden in the Filtered Message Requests section under Settings -> People -> Message Requests -> See Filtered Requests. (If you don’t know about Filtered Requests, it’s worth checking out — I’ve found Facebook filtering to be too aggressive and hid some messages I wanted to see.)
Unlike phone numbers where you have little control once someone knows your digits, Messenger lets you easily block people, the ability to message you can’t be sold and, thanks to Facebook’s spam detection systems, it’s tough for someone to create a new Facebook account to harass you.
Now, Messenger could serve as a better replacement for Skype, and even let you set up easy conference calls with people whose numbers you don’t have. The more use cases Messenger can encompass, the less likely you are to stray to one of its competitors or its age-old foe: SMS.
Content Marketing Lessons after 15 Years
12 content marketing lessons I’ve learned from 12 years of blogging:
“Be the best answer.”
1. Decide what you stand for and aspire to becoming the best resource for your community on that thing. To many companies try to be all things to all people with their blog, emphasizing a “more is better” approach. Specificity rises to the top in all things – especially in social media, search and the offline world.
2. Document your success in a specialty area and then duplicate that success in others. Expand your scope of knowledge and industry thought leadership following your own lessons learned in the process of becoming “the best answer” for your community.
3. Optimize for answers in your blog content planning. Leverage search keyword data as well as social topic trends for voice of the customer insights you can use in content optimization. You can also monitor questions being asked and answered between customers and your sales and customer service teams. Being the best answer is a continuous effort of understanding the questions your audience is asking and optimizing your answers through content in an info-taining way.
“A blog is only as interesting as the interest shown in your community.”
4. Recognize your community by featuring influencers, internal team members, customers, members of the media, your community, or prospective customers in your blog content. Make lists, co-create, do interviews, liveblog and get quotes for blog posts to shine a light on talent. Becoming influential is great. Helping others become influential is how you gain true influence. Show an interest in your community, engage and recognize. Do that, and you will never run out of relevant topics to blog about.
5. Listen to your community through social media monitoring tools, sentiment analysis of blog comments, and contact forms, using social search tools like BuzzSumo and reviewing your own web and search analytics. Understand what your blog community is interested in and give it to them through blog content.
6. Inspire others by actively engaging on social networks, at industry events and in the right places where your community can participate. Social engagement can be overwhelming for many understaffed business blogging departments. Focus on just a few minutes a day consistently and use tools like social media monitoring or social search to uncover opportunities to poll your community, recognize their interactions with your brand and to answer questions – be useful.
“Great content isn’t great until people find, consume and act on it.”
7. Use search, social and target audience data to inspire content themes, topics and keyword optimization. Topical relevance is as important as keyword relevance for blog content discovery. Far too many companies focus entirely on content creation without considering blog content promotion. Make sure the blog content is what your community is actively looking for and talking about on the social web. Being relevant in this way will fuel inbound traffic and social sharing, which will attract even more blog traffic.
8. Empathize with your readers and create relevance through context and content that is meaningful. Learn the content preferences of your audience from topics to visuals to what devices they most often use to consume your blog. Go beyond thinking about your blog as a marketing tool and consider what would be the best experience for your readers.
9. Continuously review blog content promotion efforts and traffic sources to optimize performance. Conduct SEO, Content, Social Media and Conversion audits on your blog at least quarterly. With specific goals in mind for your blog, you should be able to tie blog performance back to goals. Performance is not just contribution to marketing, but the ability of your blog to satisfy the information needs of your community.
“If you want your content to be great, ask your community to participate.”
10. Identify the distinct audiences of your blog and create ways for those specific communities to contribute. Content co-creation can inspire promotion and improve blog quality. Most blogging efforts within companies are understaffed with high expectations. The most effective way to scale quality blog content and promotion is to involve the very community you’re trying to reach in the content creation.
11. Develop a mix of specialty post and recurring posts that allow you to attract new contributors and co-creators as well as a platform for return contributors. Content is a great relationship builder between any constituent audience and your brand whether they contributors are prospective clients, members of industry media or potential business partners.
12. Recognize contributors in a meaningful way. Share quantitative performance as well as qualitative feedback. People will work for a living, but die for recognition – as long as it means something.
http://www.marketingfeast.com/12-content-marketing-lessons-learned-in-12-years-of-blogging/
LinkedIn Recruiter
LinkedIn doubles down on Recruiter, its big revenue generator, with a major update
LinkedIn — the social platform used by 400 million professionals looking to network or find work — has taken a major tumble in the markets in the last few months over weak financial guidance amid slowing growth. So this week, ahead of its next quarterly earnings on April 28, LinkedIn is shoring up in areas where it’s either already strong or banking on growing more.
Today, LinkedIn launched a vastly overhauled new version of its Recruiter platform, the interface and paid product used by those who mine the company’s database to fill jobs, which makes up a large part of Talent Solutions, LinkedIn’s biggest revenue stream. (The main product is sold on a license basis, with the average price starting at around $8,000 per user annually, the company tells me.)
The new version — first previewed in October last year — includes a new interface and other enhancements, but perhaps most notable is the fact that it will now feature smart search and suggestions of similar candidates. As part of LinkedIn’s artillery of services to woo more paying users (even as prices for those services continue to rise), Recruiter is now being offered as a free upgrade to about 80% of the 41,000 people who already subscribe to Recruiter globally (with the rest to come soon).
LinkedIn appears to have slowed down on its acquisition rush to build out its wider capabilities — it’s been a year now since the acquisition of Lynda for $1.5 billion — but it’s still trying to show investors that growth and diversification are coming. Just yesterday, the company launched its newest mobile app, LinkedIn Students, to capture more younger, university-aged users with a Tinder-like swiped interface that offers a low-pressure LinkedIn experience: some career and leadership essays, a few suggested jobs and tips on improving your profile are the highlights.
This is the company’s latest attempt to court younger users, which make up only around 22 percent of LinkedIn’s total user base, according to Pew. The Students app arrived at the same time that LinkedIn sunsetted most of its Student portal, which was initially launched in 2013 and included lowering the minimum age for using the network to 14, along with college-finding tools and job tips, but clearly wasn’t getting enough interest or traction to keep updating it.
But the new Recruiter platform is about bring new users and continuing to attract existing ones to a platform that has not been updated to any significant extent since 2013 — a very long time, considering the many startups that have sprouted up hoping to muscle in on LinkedIn’s stronghold on this market, banked on its own database of hundreds of millions of professionals.
To link up with the company’s wider push to infuse the platform with more intelligence and predictive actions, the company is adding in a new search feature to suggest different job categories, locations, and skills, to better link up what you are looking for with what is in LinkedIn’s database...
The other interesting area, resonant of a once-competing service called Connectifier that LinkedIn has now acquired, is that LinkedIn now gives you the option of looking for candidates across a wider pool by letting you find potential people who share similar profile characteristics with people who you have already rated and decided are good (possibly even existing employees).
(And in case you were wondering, LinkedIn tells me that for now it’s continuing to keep the Connectifier business as a standalone service and is not merging its functionality with that of Recruiter. I don’t expect that to be the case for the long term, though: LinkedIn acquired Connectifier earlier this year, while it started to rebuild Recruiter last year, and possibly even earlier, so may have been a case of being too late to try to turn the ship, so to speak.)
In addition to these two areas, some of the other areas that LinkedIn is also updating include new smart suggestions, which give those who are not Boolean search nerds the ability to choose pre-selected filters, made up of the most common terms, to speed up how you find things, which come up in a column on the left as buttons you can add or remove. After this you can also reorder your prospective hires base on how much they appeal.
http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/19/linkedin-releases-big-smart-update-for-recruiter-its-biggest-revenue-generator/
Friday 15 April 2016
Three Rs of Presidential Election Process
The Three Rs of the Presidential Election Process
They are:
Read the rules
Write the rules
Do the math
As we know, the election process begins with the primary elections and caucuses and moves to nominating conventions, during which political parties each select a nominee to unite behind. The nominee also announces a Vice Presidential running mate at this time. The candidates then campaign across the country to explain their views and plans to voters and participate in debates with candidates from other parties.
During the general election, Americans head to the polls to cast their vote for President. But the tally of those votes—the popular vote—does not determine the winner. Instead, Presidential elections use the Electoral College. To win the election, a candidate must receive a majority of electoral votes. In the event no candidate receives the majority, the House of Representatives chooses the President and the Senate chooses the Vice President.
The Presidential election process follows a typical cycle:
Spring of the year before an election – Candidates announce their intentions to run.
Summer of the year before an election through spring of the election year – Primary and caucus debates take place.
January to June of election year – States and parties hold primaries and caucuses.
July to early September – Parties hold nominating conventions to choose their candidates.
September and October – Candidates participate in Presidential debates.
Early November – Election Day
December – Electors cast their votes in the Electoral College.
Early January of the next calendar year – Congress counts the electoral votes.
January 20 – Inauguration Day
The U.S. Constitution requires the Presidential candidates to be:
A natural-born citizen of the United States
At least 35 years old
Have been a resident of the United States for 14 years.
Any person who meets these requirements can declare his or her candidacy for President at any time. Candidates must register with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) once they receive contributions or make expenditures in excess of $5,000. Within 15 days of reaching that $5,000 threshold, candidates must file a Statement of Candidacy with the FEC authorizing a principal campaign committee to raise and spend funds on their behalf.
Before the general election, most candidates for President go through a series of state primaries and caucuses. Though primaries and caucuses are run differently, they both serve the same purpose—to allow the states to help choose the political parties’ nominees for the general election.
What makes American presidential election process unique and US political system more robust and resilient, withstanding possible populist swaying toward either of the political spectrum extremes is the fact that state primaries are run by state and local governments, where voting occurs through secret ballot, whereas caucuses are private meetings run by political parties. In most cases, participants divide themselves into groups according to the candidate they support, with undecided voters forming into a group of their own. Each group then gives speeches supporting its candidate and tries to persuade others to join its group. At the end of the caucus, party organizers count the voters in each candidate's group and calculate how many delegates each candidate has won.
The private character of caucuses means that they are run by groups of wealthy private citizens who eventually determine which candidate deserves the majority of the electoral votes based upon the vested interests of the leadership of those private meetings. In this way the most prominent groups of citizens with vested interests in the political stability and economic equilibrium of the country prevent the society as a whole from sliding toward populism and inadvertently - or through the ill will of external enemies - electing a candidate who would abuse the advantage of popular vote to his/her or a third party’s interest to the detriment of the vested interests of the main parties.
This circumstance is reinforced by the fact that primaries and caucuses are conducted as “open,” “closed,” or some hybrid of the two. During an open primary or caucus, people can vote for a candidate of any political party. During a closed primary or caucus, participants must be registered with a political party to vote for one of its candidates. “Semi-open” and “semi-closed” primaries and caucuses are variations of the two main types. The delegates representing some states by popular vote are counterbalanced by the delegates selected during the private meetings at caucuses. This way the candidate who wins the nomination receives the majority of delegates who in relatively equal proportions represent, on one hand, the interests of the majority of citizens through popular vote and, on the other hand, the vested interests of the most powerful groups of private citizens who run the country. This is what makes America a democracy while preserving the principle of federalism. It is possible for a candidate to receive the majority of the popular vote, but not of the electoral vote, and lose the Presidential election.
From the outset, it is the electoral votes what count in the end; even if a candidate wins the popular vote but they lose the electoral vote, they lose the election. In order to preserve this system without sliding toward a democratic populism or outright dictatorship, the rules that regulate the process of awarding delegates have to be very elaborate and complex. As a result, the parties have different numbers of total delegates due to the complex rules involved in awarding them. The requirements combine national and state political party rules and practices with aspects of federal and state election laws.
In 2016, a Democratic candidate must receive 2,383 of the estimated 4,765 delegates to become the party’s nominee. Democratic candidates must win at least 15 percent of the votes earned in a primary or caucus to receive any “pledged” delegates. Candidates generally receive pledged delegates on a proportional basis.
The 2016 Republican candidate must receive 1,237 of the estimated 2,472 delegates to win the party’s nomination. Depending on the state, delegates may be awarded proportionally, on a winner-take-all basis, or using a hybrid system. The percentage of primary or caucus votes a candidate must win to receive delegates varies from state to state.
There are two main types of delegates:
Pledged, or bound, delegates, who are required to support the candidate to whom they were awarded through the primary or caucus process.
Unpledged, or unbound delegates, or superdelegates, who are free to support any Presidential candidate of their choosing.
When the primaries and caucuses are over, most political parties hold a national convention during which the winning candidate receives a nomination. The superdelegates are often considered to have more power than other delegates because of their greater freedom to vote as they wish. Therefore, it is important who exactly those delegates are in order to predict which way the national convention will sway.
In the Republican Party, as in the Democratic Party, members of the party’s national committee automatically become delegates without being pledged to any candidate. There are three RNC delegates (the national committeeman, national committeewoman, and state party chair) for each state. According to RNC communications director Sean Spicer, "there are 168 members of the RNC" Those members comprise 7 percent of the estimated 2,472 delegates who will be seated at the convention. Party leaders and observers are concerned about how the RNC-aligned delegates will determine the outcome of the convention.
This year, those uncommitted delegates could be the ones who eventually decide the outcome of the Republican Party convention in favor of the candidate who lacks just enough electoral votes to claim victory. Which means this year’s delegate who has relied heavily on popular votes, defying the so-called insiders, is doomed unless he wins enough popular votes and also finds a way to sway the superdelegates on his side. This might be very difficult for him to do. Especially so, when the superdelegates are the members of the Republican National Committee, the party's governing body. Each state comes with one committeeman and one committeewoman, in addition to all state party chairs. Party rules also allocate three to Guam, Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands.
Therefore, when you cast your vote for President, you are actually voting for a group of people known as electors. The fact that electors are often selected to recognize their service and dedication to their political party, that they may be State-elected officials, party leaders, or persons who have a personal or political affiliation with the Presidential candidate, increases the importance of the freestanding unpledged electors. They are part of the Electoral College, the process used to elect the U.S. President and Vice President. The Electoral College serves as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens. The process begins when political parties select the people who will serve as electors, The electors meet to vote for President and Vice President, and then Congress counts the electoral votes.
There are a total of 538 electors. A candidate needs the vote of more than half (270) to win the Presidential election. Each state’s number of electors is equal to the number of its U.S. Senators plus the number of its U.S. Representatives. Washington D.C. is given a number of electors equal to the number held by the smallest state.
In 48 states, when a candidate receives the majority of votes, he or she receives all of the state’s electoral votes. Maine and Nebraska are the only two states that use the congressional district method. For example: Nebraska has five electoral votes (one for each of the three congressional districts plus two for the state’s senate seats). The winner of each district is awarded one electoral vote, and the winner of the statewide vote is then awarded the state’s remaining two electoral votes.
U.S. territories are not represented in the Electoral College.
Needless to say, that if a candidate who has been considered an outsider of his party has won the majority of the popular votes but failed to win the majority of electoral votes would not become the President. Whereas, the candidate who is known as insider is more likely to win the majority of electoral votes and popular votes. Such a candidate would be less likely to be willing to change the Presidential election process to diminish the role of the Electoral College. Because the Electoral College process is part of the U.S. Constitution, it would be necessary to pass a Constitutional amendment to change this system.
Therefore, in order to win the U.S. Presidential campaign, one needs to be an insider of his/her political party with close ties to the party leadership. Such are the rules. Even if the rules change, they are well known to everybody on the inside. Because the rules are being written by people on the inside for people on the inside to win the next election cycle. That’s why it is important to be an insider rather than an outsider when you begin your Presidential campaign. The rules are supposed not only to be read; they are supposed to be written. Sometimes, in advance of the election process, according to the changing political and economic conditions in the country.
Preparations for the next Presidential campaign usually begin long before the year of campaign and they require not only to be able to read the rules but to write and change them as well. However, this information is usually not concealed from the Presidential candidates. Even from the outsiders, if they are vigilant enough. This year, the changed rules are said to have been available online since last September. If any of the candidates was upset with the results in some of the states recently, it was his own fault and the fault of his campaign team.
Repeatedly over the last few weeks, we have seen how some of the Republican Party insiders have been outmaneuvering the popular outsider. It seems that some of the insiders have demonstrated exhaustive knowledge of the delegate-selection process, a superior organization, and a political literacy that outmatched the basic political skills of the candidate who positioned themselves as outsiders and opponents of the current established politicians and their rules.
For example, Presidential Candidate Ted Cruz and his operatives had been on the ground in Colorado for almost eight months before the event, preparing for the March 1 precinct caucuses. By contrast, his major opponent Donald Trump’s team efforts in the state are said to have been too chaotic and ended up inadvertently directing votes toward Cruz delegates. Someone clearly has suffered from the disadvantage of not knowing how to read and/or write the basic rules of the current Presidential election process.
Last August, Republican Party's 24-member executive committee made the unanimous decision — six members were absent — to skip the preference poll in Colorado. The Colorado system was known to have favored anti-establishment candidates who drew a dedicated following among activists — as evidenced by Rick Santorum's victory in 2012 caucus. So the party's move was seen as intended to hurt GOP contenders such as Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Rand Paul, who would have received a boost if they won the state. The move is said to give Colorado delegates the freedom to support any candidate eligible at the Cleveland convention in July 2016. Republican National Committee officials confirmed that the change complies with party rules.
When the United States Constitution was written, the Founding Fathers intended the Electoral College to be a truly deliberative body whose members would choose a President (and Vice President, after 1800) based on their own preferences. They also left the method for selecting the electors for each state to the discretion of that state's legislature. Thus, the Constitution places no restriction on the behavior of the electors, and assumes that each is an independent agent.
Electoral College, for its complexity, is a truly unique political tool. The Electoral College never actually meets as one body. Electors chosen on Election Day meet in their respective state capitals (electors for the District of Columbia meet within the District) on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December, at which time they cast their electoral votes on separate ballots for president and vice president.
It serves its purpose but it makes things complicated. To an uninitiated, this part of American system looks like a rocket engine; and the whole body of knowledge related to American politics like rocket science. No wonder, simpler minds have always tended to simplify this process. The closest the country has ever come to abolishing the Electoral College occurred during the 91st Congress (1969-1971). The presidential election of 1968 resulted in Richard Nixon receiving 301 electoral votes (56% of electors), Hubert Humphrey 191 (35.5%) and George Wallace 46 (8.5%) with 13.5% of the popular vote. However, Nixon had only received 511,944 more popular votes than Humphrey, 43.5% to 42.9%, less than 1% of the national total.
Representative Emanuel Celler (D – New York), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, responded to public concerns over the disparity between the popular vote and electoral vote by introducing House Joint Resolution 681, a proposed Constitutional amendment which would have replaced the Electoral College with simpler plurality system based on the national popular vote. With this system, the pair of candidates who had received the highest number of votes would win the presidency and vice presidency providing they won at least 40% of the national popular vote. If no pair received 40% of the popular vote, a runoff election would be held in which the choice of President and vice president would be made from the two pairs of persons who had received the highest number of votes in the first election.
However, the Electoral College has survived to this day. Perhaps thanks to that, so has the American political system that has proved resilient and effective. Moreover, it has been evolving. Mostly, it seems to have happened thanks to those small modifications and adjustments to the rules that took place with every new Presidential election cycle. Like a rocket system, American political system always requires tuning and upgrades to address contemporary conditions and challenges. Accordingly, one has to be also good at math to do all the numbers. In American political system, like in rocket science, without at least basic skills in arithmetics, it seems, you will never be able to understand how it works. And if you intend to master the U.S. Presidential electoral process and reach those cosmic altitudes in political career, you need to have at your disposal a team of true experts - real rocket scientists - who know how to do the numbers to calculate your future political trajectory with invariable accuracy.
They are:
Read the rules
Write the rules
Do the math
As we know, the election process begins with the primary elections and caucuses and moves to nominating conventions, during which political parties each select a nominee to unite behind. The nominee also announces a Vice Presidential running mate at this time. The candidates then campaign across the country to explain their views and plans to voters and participate in debates with candidates from other parties.
During the general election, Americans head to the polls to cast their vote for President. But the tally of those votes—the popular vote—does not determine the winner. Instead, Presidential elections use the Electoral College. To win the election, a candidate must receive a majority of electoral votes. In the event no candidate receives the majority, the House of Representatives chooses the President and the Senate chooses the Vice President.
The Presidential election process follows a typical cycle:
Spring of the year before an election – Candidates announce their intentions to run.
Summer of the year before an election through spring of the election year – Primary and caucus debates take place.
January to June of election year – States and parties hold primaries and caucuses.
July to early September – Parties hold nominating conventions to choose their candidates.
September and October – Candidates participate in Presidential debates.
Early November – Election Day
December – Electors cast their votes in the Electoral College.
Early January of the next calendar year – Congress counts the electoral votes.
January 20 – Inauguration Day
The U.S. Constitution requires the Presidential candidates to be:
A natural-born citizen of the United States
At least 35 years old
Have been a resident of the United States for 14 years.
Any person who meets these requirements can declare his or her candidacy for President at any time. Candidates must register with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) once they receive contributions or make expenditures in excess of $5,000. Within 15 days of reaching that $5,000 threshold, candidates must file a Statement of Candidacy with the FEC authorizing a principal campaign committee to raise and spend funds on their behalf.
Before the general election, most candidates for President go through a series of state primaries and caucuses. Though primaries and caucuses are run differently, they both serve the same purpose—to allow the states to help choose the political parties’ nominees for the general election.
What makes American presidential election process unique and US political system more robust and resilient, withstanding possible populist swaying toward either of the political spectrum extremes is the fact that state primaries are run by state and local governments, where voting occurs through secret ballot, whereas caucuses are private meetings run by political parties. In most cases, participants divide themselves into groups according to the candidate they support, with undecided voters forming into a group of their own. Each group then gives speeches supporting its candidate and tries to persuade others to join its group. At the end of the caucus, party organizers count the voters in each candidate's group and calculate how many delegates each candidate has won.
The private character of caucuses means that they are run by groups of wealthy private citizens who eventually determine which candidate deserves the majority of the electoral votes based upon the vested interests of the leadership of those private meetings. In this way the most prominent groups of citizens with vested interests in the political stability and economic equilibrium of the country prevent the society as a whole from sliding toward populism and inadvertently - or through the ill will of external enemies - electing a candidate who would abuse the advantage of popular vote to his/her or a third party’s interest to the detriment of the vested interests of the main parties.
This circumstance is reinforced by the fact that primaries and caucuses are conducted as “open,” “closed,” or some hybrid of the two. During an open primary or caucus, people can vote for a candidate of any political party. During a closed primary or caucus, participants must be registered with a political party to vote for one of its candidates. “Semi-open” and “semi-closed” primaries and caucuses are variations of the two main types. The delegates representing some states by popular vote are counterbalanced by the delegates selected during the private meetings at caucuses. This way the candidate who wins the nomination receives the majority of delegates who in relatively equal proportions represent, on one hand, the interests of the majority of citizens through popular vote and, on the other hand, the vested interests of the most powerful groups of private citizens who run the country. This is what makes America a democracy while preserving the principle of federalism. It is possible for a candidate to receive the majority of the popular vote, but not of the electoral vote, and lose the Presidential election.
From the outset, it is the electoral votes what count in the end; even if a candidate wins the popular vote but they lose the electoral vote, they lose the election. In order to preserve this system without sliding toward a democratic populism or outright dictatorship, the rules that regulate the process of awarding delegates have to be very elaborate and complex. As a result, the parties have different numbers of total delegates due to the complex rules involved in awarding them. The requirements combine national and state political party rules and practices with aspects of federal and state election laws.
In 2016, a Democratic candidate must receive 2,383 of the estimated 4,765 delegates to become the party’s nominee. Democratic candidates must win at least 15 percent of the votes earned in a primary or caucus to receive any “pledged” delegates. Candidates generally receive pledged delegates on a proportional basis.
The 2016 Republican candidate must receive 1,237 of the estimated 2,472 delegates to win the party’s nomination. Depending on the state, delegates may be awarded proportionally, on a winner-take-all basis, or using a hybrid system. The percentage of primary or caucus votes a candidate must win to receive delegates varies from state to state.
There are two main types of delegates:
Pledged, or bound, delegates, who are required to support the candidate to whom they were awarded through the primary or caucus process.
Unpledged, or unbound delegates, or superdelegates, who are free to support any Presidential candidate of their choosing.
When the primaries and caucuses are over, most political parties hold a national convention during which the winning candidate receives a nomination. The superdelegates are often considered to have more power than other delegates because of their greater freedom to vote as they wish. Therefore, it is important who exactly those delegates are in order to predict which way the national convention will sway.
In the Republican Party, as in the Democratic Party, members of the party’s national committee automatically become delegates without being pledged to any candidate. There are three RNC delegates (the national committeeman, national committeewoman, and state party chair) for each state. According to RNC communications director Sean Spicer, "there are 168 members of the RNC" Those members comprise 7 percent of the estimated 2,472 delegates who will be seated at the convention. Party leaders and observers are concerned about how the RNC-aligned delegates will determine the outcome of the convention.
This year, those uncommitted delegates could be the ones who eventually decide the outcome of the Republican Party convention in favor of the candidate who lacks just enough electoral votes to claim victory. Which means this year’s delegate who has relied heavily on popular votes, defying the so-called insiders, is doomed unless he wins enough popular votes and also finds a way to sway the superdelegates on his side. This might be very difficult for him to do. Especially so, when the superdelegates are the members of the Republican National Committee, the party's governing body. Each state comes with one committeeman and one committeewoman, in addition to all state party chairs. Party rules also allocate three to Guam, Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands.
Therefore, when you cast your vote for President, you are actually voting for a group of people known as electors. The fact that electors are often selected to recognize their service and dedication to their political party, that they may be State-elected officials, party leaders, or persons who have a personal or political affiliation with the Presidential candidate, increases the importance of the freestanding unpledged electors. They are part of the Electoral College, the process used to elect the U.S. President and Vice President. The Electoral College serves as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens. The process begins when political parties select the people who will serve as electors, The electors meet to vote for President and Vice President, and then Congress counts the electoral votes.
There are a total of 538 electors. A candidate needs the vote of more than half (270) to win the Presidential election. Each state’s number of electors is equal to the number of its U.S. Senators plus the number of its U.S. Representatives. Washington D.C. is given a number of electors equal to the number held by the smallest state.
In 48 states, when a candidate receives the majority of votes, he or she receives all of the state’s electoral votes. Maine and Nebraska are the only two states that use the congressional district method. For example: Nebraska has five electoral votes (one for each of the three congressional districts plus two for the state’s senate seats). The winner of each district is awarded one electoral vote, and the winner of the statewide vote is then awarded the state’s remaining two electoral votes.
U.S. territories are not represented in the Electoral College.
Needless to say, that if a candidate who has been considered an outsider of his party has won the majority of the popular votes but failed to win the majority of electoral votes would not become the President. Whereas, the candidate who is known as insider is more likely to win the majority of electoral votes and popular votes. Such a candidate would be less likely to be willing to change the Presidential election process to diminish the role of the Electoral College. Because the Electoral College process is part of the U.S. Constitution, it would be necessary to pass a Constitutional amendment to change this system.
Therefore, in order to win the U.S. Presidential campaign, one needs to be an insider of his/her political party with close ties to the party leadership. Such are the rules. Even if the rules change, they are well known to everybody on the inside. Because the rules are being written by people on the inside for people on the inside to win the next election cycle. That’s why it is important to be an insider rather than an outsider when you begin your Presidential campaign. The rules are supposed not only to be read; they are supposed to be written. Sometimes, in advance of the election process, according to the changing political and economic conditions in the country.
Preparations for the next Presidential campaign usually begin long before the year of campaign and they require not only to be able to read the rules but to write and change them as well. However, this information is usually not concealed from the Presidential candidates. Even from the outsiders, if they are vigilant enough. This year, the changed rules are said to have been available online since last September. If any of the candidates was upset with the results in some of the states recently, it was his own fault and the fault of his campaign team.
Repeatedly over the last few weeks, we have seen how some of the Republican Party insiders have been outmaneuvering the popular outsider. It seems that some of the insiders have demonstrated exhaustive knowledge of the delegate-selection process, a superior organization, and a political literacy that outmatched the basic political skills of the candidate who positioned themselves as outsiders and opponents of the current established politicians and their rules.
For example, Presidential Candidate Ted Cruz and his operatives had been on the ground in Colorado for almost eight months before the event, preparing for the March 1 precinct caucuses. By contrast, his major opponent Donald Trump’s team efforts in the state are said to have been too chaotic and ended up inadvertently directing votes toward Cruz delegates. Someone clearly has suffered from the disadvantage of not knowing how to read and/or write the basic rules of the current Presidential election process.
Last August, Republican Party's 24-member executive committee made the unanimous decision — six members were absent — to skip the preference poll in Colorado. The Colorado system was known to have favored anti-establishment candidates who drew a dedicated following among activists — as evidenced by Rick Santorum's victory in 2012 caucus. So the party's move was seen as intended to hurt GOP contenders such as Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Rand Paul, who would have received a boost if they won the state. The move is said to give Colorado delegates the freedom to support any candidate eligible at the Cleveland convention in July 2016. Republican National Committee officials confirmed that the change complies with party rules.
When the United States Constitution was written, the Founding Fathers intended the Electoral College to be a truly deliberative body whose members would choose a President (and Vice President, after 1800) based on their own preferences. They also left the method for selecting the electors for each state to the discretion of that state's legislature. Thus, the Constitution places no restriction on the behavior of the electors, and assumes that each is an independent agent.
Electoral College, for its complexity, is a truly unique political tool. The Electoral College never actually meets as one body. Electors chosen on Election Day meet in their respective state capitals (electors for the District of Columbia meet within the District) on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December, at which time they cast their electoral votes on separate ballots for president and vice president.
It serves its purpose but it makes things complicated. To an uninitiated, this part of American system looks like a rocket engine; and the whole body of knowledge related to American politics like rocket science. No wonder, simpler minds have always tended to simplify this process. The closest the country has ever come to abolishing the Electoral College occurred during the 91st Congress (1969-1971). The presidential election of 1968 resulted in Richard Nixon receiving 301 electoral votes (56% of electors), Hubert Humphrey 191 (35.5%) and George Wallace 46 (8.5%) with 13.5% of the popular vote. However, Nixon had only received 511,944 more popular votes than Humphrey, 43.5% to 42.9%, less than 1% of the national total.
Representative Emanuel Celler (D – New York), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, responded to public concerns over the disparity between the popular vote and electoral vote by introducing House Joint Resolution 681, a proposed Constitutional amendment which would have replaced the Electoral College with simpler plurality system based on the national popular vote. With this system, the pair of candidates who had received the highest number of votes would win the presidency and vice presidency providing they won at least 40% of the national popular vote. If no pair received 40% of the popular vote, a runoff election would be held in which the choice of President and vice president would be made from the two pairs of persons who had received the highest number of votes in the first election.
However, the Electoral College has survived to this day. Perhaps thanks to that, so has the American political system that has proved resilient and effective. Moreover, it has been evolving. Mostly, it seems to have happened thanks to those small modifications and adjustments to the rules that took place with every new Presidential election cycle. Like a rocket system, American political system always requires tuning and upgrades to address contemporary conditions and challenges. Accordingly, one has to be also good at math to do all the numbers. In American political system, like in rocket science, without at least basic skills in arithmetics, it seems, you will never be able to understand how it works. And if you intend to master the U.S. Presidential electoral process and reach those cosmic altitudes in political career, you need to have at your disposal a team of true experts - real rocket scientists - who know how to do the numbers to calculate your future political trajectory with invariable accuracy.
Wednesday 13 April 2016
What Online Marketing Strategies Are Most Effective for SaaS Companies?
What Online Marketing Strategies Are Most Effective for SaaS Companies?
Most Effective Marketing Strategies for SaaS Companies
Content marketing, SEO, and social media form a powerful, interrelated, complementary package of marketing tactics that provide the best long-term returns in both customer acquisition and customer retention...
Most Effective Marketing Strategies for SaaS Companies
Content marketing, SEO, and social media form a powerful, interrelated, complementary package of marketing tactics that provide the best long-term returns in both customer acquisition and customer retention...
Facebook Messenger positioned as replacement for mobile web, apps & SMS
Facebook Messenger positioned as replacement for mobile web, apps & SMS
As expected, at Facebook’s F8 developer conference today, the company announced Messenger Platform for third-party developers. It also announced a related “bots for Messenger” tool set that allows creation of scalable, AI-powered interactions with companies on Messenger.
The move follows the blueprint of the 10-year-old Facebook Platform, but it could have more dramatic implications for commerce, customer service and content distribution.
Some people, including analyst Dan Miller of Opus Research in 2011, and more recently, Chris Messina, have used the term “conversational commerce” to discuss new ways that brands and consumers can interact through technology such as chat bots and messaging. Others have audaciously called messaging apps “the new browsers.” That remains to be seen and is contingent on significant consumer behavior change.
By the same token, Messenger has huge global potential. With a base of 900 million monthly active unique users and 50 million company Pages, Facebook already has both sides of a global marketplace. Facebook hopes marketers will turn to Messenger now as a primary communication and commerce channel to reach the company’s massive user base.
David Marcus, who runs Messenger, has now in some ways become the most important person at Facebook. He briefly showed of the range of things that Messenger as a platform could do during the keynote. Users could buy shoes or flowers, play games, discover and access news content and generally interact with brands and companies. Messenger is also now a search engine where consumers can discover content or companies on Messenger.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the Marcus keynote was the positioning of Messenger as an alternative to SMS, the mobile web, and even apps. Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp together process 60 billion messages per day. That’s 3x global SMS messaging volume, according to Facebook.
While Facebook and Messenger are top apps with massive reach, Facebook reminded the audience that it’s very challenging to acquire and retain app users (see retailers). And the mobile web often offers a second-rate user experience (the rationale behind Google AMP).
Facebook is more than implying that Messenger can operate as a substitute channel. In practice, it will probably complement other channels and further fragment digital and mobile audiences.
Some marketers and brands will successfully use Messenger for commerce, some will use it mainly as a customer service channel (danger, Twitter) and some will use it to simply engage or acquire users for other purposes. And there will be “sponsored messages,” cautiously implemented at first.
Along with the Messenger Platform announcement, Facebook announced an array of 33 launch partners offering the gamut of contemplated use cases from commerce to content discovery. They included Bank of America, Burger King, CNN, Expedia, Fandango, LivePerson, Salesforce, Shopify, StubHub, Thrillist and UNICEF.
30 quick and easy SEO tips for small businesses | Search Engine Watch
30 quick and easy SEO tips for small businesses | Search Engine Watch
30 quick and easy SEO tips for small businesses
By Graham Charlton
For the uninitiated, SEO can seem to be a complex and foreign landscape, but it doesn’t have to be too complicated.
Indeed, there’s a lot that small businesses (and anyone) can do without any great SEO knowledge, and without spending too much money.
With the help of some search experts, I’ve compiled a list of tips (in no particular order)…
1. Set up a Google My Business account
Set this up and get all of your business details uploaded. It’s totally free and will enable you to appear in local search results for queries specific to your area of operation.
Even broad queries with large volumes are now showing local results which is something small business owners can capitalise upon.
2. Build a fast, mobile-friendly website
Developing mobile sites can now be done easily with simple plugins for your CMS, such as WordPress, meaning that making all of your content mobile-friendly can be done quickly and cheaply.
Optimising it for fast load-speed (again through plugins where available) will help you stand out from the competition in terms of performance.
3. Conduct extensive keyword research to identify gaps in the market
Targeting the same keywords as your bigger competitors won’t see you make much ground as they are more established and have more coverage online.
Using keyword research tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner to spot gaps in the market will enable you to capitalise upon these – they may even convert at a better rate too.
4. Start using Google Search Console
It’s a free tool that gives a wealth of information about your website’s performance in Google search, as well as any errors on your site and issues you should address.
Improving your website without Search Console is like running a marathon without any shoes on. With Search Console you can find out what keywords Google thinks your website is relevant for, whether there are problems crawling your website, if your site is mobile friendly, and much more. It’s the starting point for most of your improvement efforts.
5. You need to understand your online audience through and through
Who is your typical online customer? What are they looking for? How do they spend their time online? What kind of content do they like to consume?
When you completely understand your audience, you will understand what you need to do online to grab their attention.
If your audience spends a lot of time on Facebook, you should focus effort there. If your audience reads online tutorials about topics relevant to your niche, maybe you need to produce your own tutorial content.
Without a thorough understanding of your audience’s needs and requirements, you won’t be able to make effective use of the online channels at your disposal – you’ll just be trying out different things at random, and that’s a terrible waste of your precious resources.
6. Look at how search engines are displaying results in your niche
Too often, small businesses have no idea who or what they are actually competing with in search.
For example, if you want to focus on a keyword that has a lot of huge international companies ranking on the first page, you should realise that perhaps your expectations need to be tempered.
Another example: if search engines show a lot of images or videos in their results for keywords you want to be visible for, you should consider producing that sort of content rather than just focus purely on text.
Also, often search engines will show local business results – if that’s the case, your efforts need to be adjusted to focus on achieving visibility in those types of results.
7. Get ScreamingFrog and check your site for possible onsite issues
Watch for security issues too – Sucuri site check is free and while it won’t be able to see all possible issues it can catch some of the most widespread ones.
This may seem unrelated to the topic of this article but compromised sites do lose their traffic and visibility.
8. Claim your physical address on Google Maps
If it’s a local business which a physical location and offline customers, make sure you claim your physical address on Google Maps.
9. Whatever you do, be genuine
Hiring somebody on the cheap to run your Twitter account or build links for you may seem like a tempting idea but it can – and probably will – backfire.
If you haven’t got much of a marketing budget, take one step at a time but do it yourself as nobody knows your business and your customers better than you. Connect with them personally, do not count on somebody else spamming them on your behalf resulting in any positive outcome.
Tips 7-9 by Julia Logan, Irish Wonder
10. Beware of agencies that promise the earth
Unless you’re prepared to buy PPC ads, then there is no way to guarantee a page one listing (even then it can be tricky on competitive terms).
If an agency or salesperson promises you this, ignore them. They’re lying and will likely do a lot of damage to your long-term search visibility.
Also, if you’re just getting started, you don’t necessarily need an agency to improve your SEO efforts. See what you can do yourself first.
11. If you do hire an agency, keep an eye on them
Often by dodgy link-building which may achieve some short-term results but will expose your site to the risk of penalties long-term.
12. Keep up with industry news
Things can change fairy quickly in SEO, so things that work for a while can become against Google’s rules over time.
As with the recent penalties for bloggers reviewing products, Google will rarely spell things out. It will give advice and hints, but it won’t contact you. You’ll often only know you’ve done something ‘wrong’ when you login to Google Search Console and receive a notice like this:
13. Try not to rely too much on Google
Yes, it’s well worth working to improve your rankings, and search traffic is valuable, but don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.
Google can change the way it ranks sites, the way it display results at any time, in ways which could adversely affect your search traffic.
Look to build email lists, use social media etc so that you’re attracting customers from a range of sources.
14. Launch a blog / create content
Content is what will help you rank for your target terms. This means content on product pages, homepages and everywhere around the site, but a blog can also help.
It shouldn’t be done just for SEO reasons, as blogs present an opportunity for you to talk about your product and services and the issues around them.
It means you can create the kind of content that people interested in your product or service would appreciate, and begin to build an audience.
15. If you blog, do it regularly
You don’t have to write five articles a day, but regular updates mean your visitors have something to read, and you’ll also be creating fresh content for the search engines.
16. But don’t go keyword-crazy
Yes, you want to target the terms that your customers are likely to search for, but you have to write for humans first of all, or your content will be weak.
17. Aim for evergreen content
Look to create quality content that addresses customers issues and has a longer shelf-life. This ‘evergeen content’ is more likely to achieve search rankings over a longer period of time.
18. Use a clear URL structure
People should be able to guess the topic of a page just by looking at the URL.
19. Use internal linking to optimise your site
Effective internal linking is about linking topics and themes together in a more sensible way, for readers and for search engines.
For example, if you are providing cake-decorating services, you’ll have lots of articles using that phrase. They’re not all going to rank for that, so choose the page you’d most like to rank for that term and point the links at that.
It can be very effective, as this internal linking example from the Daily Mail website shows.
20. Use your site search data to find terms to target
You can view the terms your visitors search for on site by looking into your analytics data.
You can learn a lot from this site search data, which can help in many ways.
For search, the keywords that people use on your site could be terms that you aren’t currently targeting via SEO or PPC.
If so, analysing site search data is a great way to find more relevant terms to target. They also tell the the kind of language that customers use.
21. Encourage reviews
Reviews will help to drive conversions but, from an SEO perspective, they help to drive your local SEO visibility.
22. Optimize images
In this article, SEW Editor Christopher Ratcliff explains how to optimize images for SEO, with the help of his cat.
23. Set up Google Analytics
It’s free and it’s essential for you to understand customer behaviour, traffic sources and more.
Here’s a beginner’s guide to Google Analytics.
24. Think about UX
For one thing, after mobilegeddon, your mobile ranking depends on factor related to UX.
Site speed is just one. Use tools like Google’s pagespeed insights to learn about your site and how to improve it.
25. Optimize your Google My Business profile
The basics should be there – if you have a physical store, provide opening times, directions and other useful information.
26. See who is linking to you and learn from it
You can view the links you receive through tools like Majestic and others. Are you attracting links from relevant sites? If so, which kinds of content / pages are attracting these links?
27. Write a unique title for every page
On Google, you have around 55 characters to make the topic of a page clear to searchers and search engines.
28. Don’t expect results too quickly
The tips here will produce results, but don’t expect overnight success. Good SEO can take time, so be patient and stick with the process.
29. Use a little PPC
If you have the budget, PPC can deliver traffic more quickly.
It can also inform your SEO efforts – you can see which keywords work best for conversions and can help you to improve your landing pages.
30. Write your own product page copy
If you’re selling products that other sites will also have, unique product descriptions can help your site to stand out.
They’re also better for conversions, as the manufacturer descriptions will not have been tested for effectiveness, whereas you can try variations and see what works best for your site
30 quick and easy SEO tips for small businesses
By Graham Charlton
For the uninitiated, SEO can seem to be a complex and foreign landscape, but it doesn’t have to be too complicated.
Indeed, there’s a lot that small businesses (and anyone) can do without any great SEO knowledge, and without spending too much money.
With the help of some search experts, I’ve compiled a list of tips (in no particular order)…
1. Set up a Google My Business account
Set this up and get all of your business details uploaded. It’s totally free and will enable you to appear in local search results for queries specific to your area of operation.
Even broad queries with large volumes are now showing local results which is something small business owners can capitalise upon.
2. Build a fast, mobile-friendly website
Developing mobile sites can now be done easily with simple plugins for your CMS, such as WordPress, meaning that making all of your content mobile-friendly can be done quickly and cheaply.
Optimising it for fast load-speed (again through plugins where available) will help you stand out from the competition in terms of performance.
3. Conduct extensive keyword research to identify gaps in the market
Targeting the same keywords as your bigger competitors won’t see you make much ground as they are more established and have more coverage online.
Using keyword research tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner to spot gaps in the market will enable you to capitalise upon these – they may even convert at a better rate too.
4. Start using Google Search Console
It’s a free tool that gives a wealth of information about your website’s performance in Google search, as well as any errors on your site and issues you should address.
Improving your website without Search Console is like running a marathon without any shoes on. With Search Console you can find out what keywords Google thinks your website is relevant for, whether there are problems crawling your website, if your site is mobile friendly, and much more. It’s the starting point for most of your improvement efforts.
5. You need to understand your online audience through and through
Who is your typical online customer? What are they looking for? How do they spend their time online? What kind of content do they like to consume?
When you completely understand your audience, you will understand what you need to do online to grab their attention.
If your audience spends a lot of time on Facebook, you should focus effort there. If your audience reads online tutorials about topics relevant to your niche, maybe you need to produce your own tutorial content.
Without a thorough understanding of your audience’s needs and requirements, you won’t be able to make effective use of the online channels at your disposal – you’ll just be trying out different things at random, and that’s a terrible waste of your precious resources.
6. Look at how search engines are displaying results in your niche
Too often, small businesses have no idea who or what they are actually competing with in search.
For example, if you want to focus on a keyword that has a lot of huge international companies ranking on the first page, you should realise that perhaps your expectations need to be tempered.
Another example: if search engines show a lot of images or videos in their results for keywords you want to be visible for, you should consider producing that sort of content rather than just focus purely on text.
Also, often search engines will show local business results – if that’s the case, your efforts need to be adjusted to focus on achieving visibility in those types of results.
7. Get ScreamingFrog and check your site for possible onsite issues
Watch for security issues too – Sucuri site check is free and while it won’t be able to see all possible issues it can catch some of the most widespread ones.
This may seem unrelated to the topic of this article but compromised sites do lose their traffic and visibility.
8. Claim your physical address on Google Maps
If it’s a local business which a physical location and offline customers, make sure you claim your physical address on Google Maps.
9. Whatever you do, be genuine
Hiring somebody on the cheap to run your Twitter account or build links for you may seem like a tempting idea but it can – and probably will – backfire.
If you haven’t got much of a marketing budget, take one step at a time but do it yourself as nobody knows your business and your customers better than you. Connect with them personally, do not count on somebody else spamming them on your behalf resulting in any positive outcome.
Tips 7-9 by Julia Logan, Irish Wonder
10. Beware of agencies that promise the earth
Unless you’re prepared to buy PPC ads, then there is no way to guarantee a page one listing (even then it can be tricky on competitive terms).
If an agency or salesperson promises you this, ignore them. They’re lying and will likely do a lot of damage to your long-term search visibility.
Also, if you’re just getting started, you don’t necessarily need an agency to improve your SEO efforts. See what you can do yourself first.
11. If you do hire an agency, keep an eye on them
Often by dodgy link-building which may achieve some short-term results but will expose your site to the risk of penalties long-term.
12. Keep up with industry news
Things can change fairy quickly in SEO, so things that work for a while can become against Google’s rules over time.
As with the recent penalties for bloggers reviewing products, Google will rarely spell things out. It will give advice and hints, but it won’t contact you. You’ll often only know you’ve done something ‘wrong’ when you login to Google Search Console and receive a notice like this:
13. Try not to rely too much on Google
Yes, it’s well worth working to improve your rankings, and search traffic is valuable, but don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.
Google can change the way it ranks sites, the way it display results at any time, in ways which could adversely affect your search traffic.
Look to build email lists, use social media etc so that you’re attracting customers from a range of sources.
14. Launch a blog / create content
Content is what will help you rank for your target terms. This means content on product pages, homepages and everywhere around the site, but a blog can also help.
It shouldn’t be done just for SEO reasons, as blogs present an opportunity for you to talk about your product and services and the issues around them.
It means you can create the kind of content that people interested in your product or service would appreciate, and begin to build an audience.
15. If you blog, do it regularly
You don’t have to write five articles a day, but regular updates mean your visitors have something to read, and you’ll also be creating fresh content for the search engines.
16. But don’t go keyword-crazy
Yes, you want to target the terms that your customers are likely to search for, but you have to write for humans first of all, or your content will be weak.
17. Aim for evergreen content
Look to create quality content that addresses customers issues and has a longer shelf-life. This ‘evergeen content’ is more likely to achieve search rankings over a longer period of time.
18. Use a clear URL structure
People should be able to guess the topic of a page just by looking at the URL.
19. Use internal linking to optimise your site
Effective internal linking is about linking topics and themes together in a more sensible way, for readers and for search engines.
For example, if you are providing cake-decorating services, you’ll have lots of articles using that phrase. They’re not all going to rank for that, so choose the page you’d most like to rank for that term and point the links at that.
It can be very effective, as this internal linking example from the Daily Mail website shows.
20. Use your site search data to find terms to target
You can view the terms your visitors search for on site by looking into your analytics data.
You can learn a lot from this site search data, which can help in many ways.
For search, the keywords that people use on your site could be terms that you aren’t currently targeting via SEO or PPC.
If so, analysing site search data is a great way to find more relevant terms to target. They also tell the the kind of language that customers use.
21. Encourage reviews
Reviews will help to drive conversions but, from an SEO perspective, they help to drive your local SEO visibility.
22. Optimize images
In this article, SEW Editor Christopher Ratcliff explains how to optimize images for SEO, with the help of his cat.
23. Set up Google Analytics
It’s free and it’s essential for you to understand customer behaviour, traffic sources and more.
Here’s a beginner’s guide to Google Analytics.
24. Think about UX
For one thing, after mobilegeddon, your mobile ranking depends on factor related to UX.
Site speed is just one. Use tools like Google’s pagespeed insights to learn about your site and how to improve it.
25. Optimize your Google My Business profile
The basics should be there – if you have a physical store, provide opening times, directions and other useful information.
26. See who is linking to you and learn from it
You can view the links you receive through tools like Majestic and others. Are you attracting links from relevant sites? If so, which kinds of content / pages are attracting these links?
27. Write a unique title for every page
On Google, you have around 55 characters to make the topic of a page clear to searchers and search engines.
28. Don’t expect results too quickly
The tips here will produce results, but don’t expect overnight success. Good SEO can take time, so be patient and stick with the process.
29. Use a little PPC
If you have the budget, PPC can deliver traffic more quickly.
It can also inform your SEO efforts – you can see which keywords work best for conversions and can help you to improve your landing pages.
30. Write your own product page copy
If you’re selling products that other sites will also have, unique product descriptions can help your site to stand out.
They’re also better for conversions, as the manufacturer descriptions will not have been tested for effectiveness, whereas you can try variations and see what works best for your site
Monday 11 April 2016
A Doctor’s Prescription for Sleep — Ivanka Trump
A Doctor’s Prescription for Sleep — Ivanka Trump
Sleep, like breathing and eating, is a basic human need. When we sleep, our bodies rest but our brains remain active. Most people require 7-9 hours of sleep a night to function well the next day, but many recent studies indicate that the average 30-to-60-year-old woman sleeps only six hours a night during the workweek.
Sleep studies show women are more likely than men to have difficulty falling and staying asleep. In addition, they often experience more daytime sleepiness, more problems concentrating and an increased likelihood of getting sick and gaining weight.
What can you do to establish healthier sleep habits?
1. ESTABLISH A REGULAR SLEEP AND WAKE CYCLE
On weekends or days off, try to keep your bedtime and wake time as close as possible to your workday schedule.
2. NO CAFFEINE AFTER LUNCHTIME
Some people metabolize caffeine slowly. It can linger 8-10 hours in the system.
3. IMPROVE YOUR SLEEP ENVIRONMENT
Make your bedroom dark and cool and turn off your electronic devices one hour before bed. The LED light has been proven to interfere with people’s sleep patterns.
4. WORK OUT IN THE AM
Morning exercise can help promote healthy sleep. Evening exercise can raise endorphin/serotonin levels and thereby interfere with sleep.
Sometimes women begin to have sleepless nights associated with menstruation, pregnancy or menopause, and thus establish poor sleep habits that stick around and are hard to banish. There have been many studies linking hormonal changes to poor sleep habits—let alone having young children!
So, what if you’ve made these adjustments and you still can’t sleep?
Talk to your doctor.
She might recommend an over-the-counter medication such as melatonin, Tylenol PM or Advil PM. (All “PM” formulations include Benadryl, the active ingredient which induces sleep). Herbal supplements (such as melatonin), might work for you, but they may also interfere with other medications you are taking. Be sure to discuss any supplements with your doctor. Also note, the over-the-counter medications tend tend to give people a “hangover” if they’re not taken early enough to allow for a full 7-8 hours sleep—so don’t pop a pill midway through the night.
If the OTC medications are not working, you can discuss a short course of prescription sleeping pills with your doctor. Sleeping pills are generally safe if taken as directed and used for a short course, as per your doctor. For example, I tell my patients if they go for 2-3 nights without sleeping well, they should take a sleeping pill (such as Ambien). I ask patients to try not to take the sleeping pills more than 2-3 times a week so as to prevent drug dependence.
SLEEP + SICKNESS
Studies show that people who don’t get quality sleep or enough sleep are more likely to get sick after being exposed to a virus. During sleep, your immune system releases proteins called cytokines that need to naturally increase when you have an infection. Sleep deprivation may decrease production of these protective proteins. In addition, infection-fighting antibodies are reduced during periods when you don’t get enough sleep. So your mom was right when she told you to get your rest.
Last year, Time magazine ran a great article clearly outlining the direct correlation between sleep and sickness.
In addition to keeping you safe from the common cold, getting enough sleep on a regular basis is an important way to protect the health of your heart. Poor or insufficient sleep is associated with a range of cardiovascular problems, including high blood pressure, heart attack and heart failure.
SLEEP + WEIGHT GAIN
An interesting new development in the world of sleep is the relationship between lack of sleep and gaining weight. This has a lot to do with our nightly hormones, which are produced in fat cells when we sleep. The two hormones that are key in this process are ghrelin and leptin.
Ghrelin is the hormone that tells you when to eat. When you are sleep-deprived, you have more ghrelin in your bloodstream. Leptin is the hormone that tells you to stop eating. When you are sleep deprived, you have less leptin. More ghrelin plus less leptin equals weight gain.
The National Institute of Health is conducting ongoing studies of the link between sleep deprivation and obesity.
After reviewing the current medical studies, it becomes obvious that sleep is not only helpful in maintaining our clear thought processes for work the next morning, it is also vital for our health, wellness and weight control. Sleep on that!
Sleep, like breathing and eating, is a basic human need. When we sleep, our bodies rest but our brains remain active. Most people require 7-9 hours of sleep a night to function well the next day, but many recent studies indicate that the average 30-to-60-year-old woman sleeps only six hours a night during the workweek.
Sleep studies show women are more likely than men to have difficulty falling and staying asleep. In addition, they often experience more daytime sleepiness, more problems concentrating and an increased likelihood of getting sick and gaining weight.
What can you do to establish healthier sleep habits?
1. ESTABLISH A REGULAR SLEEP AND WAKE CYCLE
On weekends or days off, try to keep your bedtime and wake time as close as possible to your workday schedule.
2. NO CAFFEINE AFTER LUNCHTIME
Some people metabolize caffeine slowly. It can linger 8-10 hours in the system.
3. IMPROVE YOUR SLEEP ENVIRONMENT
Make your bedroom dark and cool and turn off your electronic devices one hour before bed. The LED light has been proven to interfere with people’s sleep patterns.
4. WORK OUT IN THE AM
Morning exercise can help promote healthy sleep. Evening exercise can raise endorphin/serotonin levels and thereby interfere with sleep.
Sometimes women begin to have sleepless nights associated with menstruation, pregnancy or menopause, and thus establish poor sleep habits that stick around and are hard to banish. There have been many studies linking hormonal changes to poor sleep habits—let alone having young children!
So, what if you’ve made these adjustments and you still can’t sleep?
Talk to your doctor.
She might recommend an over-the-counter medication such as melatonin, Tylenol PM or Advil PM. (All “PM” formulations include Benadryl, the active ingredient which induces sleep). Herbal supplements (such as melatonin), might work for you, but they may also interfere with other medications you are taking. Be sure to discuss any supplements with your doctor. Also note, the over-the-counter medications tend tend to give people a “hangover” if they’re not taken early enough to allow for a full 7-8 hours sleep—so don’t pop a pill midway through the night.
If the OTC medications are not working, you can discuss a short course of prescription sleeping pills with your doctor. Sleeping pills are generally safe if taken as directed and used for a short course, as per your doctor. For example, I tell my patients if they go for 2-3 nights without sleeping well, they should take a sleeping pill (such as Ambien). I ask patients to try not to take the sleeping pills more than 2-3 times a week so as to prevent drug dependence.
SLEEP + SICKNESS
Studies show that people who don’t get quality sleep or enough sleep are more likely to get sick after being exposed to a virus. During sleep, your immune system releases proteins called cytokines that need to naturally increase when you have an infection. Sleep deprivation may decrease production of these protective proteins. In addition, infection-fighting antibodies are reduced during periods when you don’t get enough sleep. So your mom was right when she told you to get your rest.
Last year, Time magazine ran a great article clearly outlining the direct correlation between sleep and sickness.
In addition to keeping you safe from the common cold, getting enough sleep on a regular basis is an important way to protect the health of your heart. Poor or insufficient sleep is associated with a range of cardiovascular problems, including high blood pressure, heart attack and heart failure.
SLEEP + WEIGHT GAIN
An interesting new development in the world of sleep is the relationship between lack of sleep and gaining weight. This has a lot to do with our nightly hormones, which are produced in fat cells when we sleep. The two hormones that are key in this process are ghrelin and leptin.
Ghrelin is the hormone that tells you when to eat. When you are sleep-deprived, you have more ghrelin in your bloodstream. Leptin is the hormone that tells you to stop eating. When you are sleep deprived, you have less leptin. More ghrelin plus less leptin equals weight gain.
The National Institute of Health is conducting ongoing studies of the link between sleep deprivation and obesity.
After reviewing the current medical studies, it becomes obvious that sleep is not only helpful in maintaining our clear thought processes for work the next morning, it is also vital for our health, wellness and weight control. Sleep on that!
Sunday 10 April 2016
How to Prove Your Value as a Marketing Agency
How to Prove Your Value as a Marketing Agency
Conversions
Conversions can take many forms; for these purposes, I’ll define a conversion as an instance of a user taking meaningful action, which can then be translated to a financial benefit. This is a complicated definition, so let’s use a few examples to illustrate this:
1. A customer buys a product from your client’s eCommerce platform. Your client receives $50 in new revenue.
2. A customer watches a video asking for a donation to your client’s organization. The viewer now has a 50 percent chance of donating $10 or more, roughly translating to a value of at least $5.
3. A lead fills out an information form on your B2B client’s site. According to your client’s data, the lifetime value of a customer is $10,000 and each lead has a 10 percent chance of eventually becoming a customer. This makes the conversion worth $1,000.
...
Key Takeaways
This is a massive guide to try and boil down to a few takeaways, so I’m only going to recap the high level here:
1. Know that client retention is the only way to keep your business alive and thriving, and the way to client retention is proving you’re worth more than they’re paying.
2. Make sure your agency follows best practices when it comes to engagement, relationship building, and overall disposition—communication is key here.
3. Prove your worth using numbers, which can’t be argued with, calculating your costs and your value in terms of newly generated revenue.
4. Use competitive research and comparative values to strengthen your worth to your clients.
Include secondary benefits, even though they’re tough to measure, to complete the picture.
Conversions
Conversions can take many forms; for these purposes, I’ll define a conversion as an instance of a user taking meaningful action, which can then be translated to a financial benefit. This is a complicated definition, so let’s use a few examples to illustrate this:
1. A customer buys a product from your client’s eCommerce platform. Your client receives $50 in new revenue.
2. A customer watches a video asking for a donation to your client’s organization. The viewer now has a 50 percent chance of donating $10 or more, roughly translating to a value of at least $5.
3. A lead fills out an information form on your B2B client’s site. According to your client’s data, the lifetime value of a customer is $10,000 and each lead has a 10 percent chance of eventually becoming a customer. This makes the conversion worth $1,000.
...
Key Takeaways
This is a massive guide to try and boil down to a few takeaways, so I’m only going to recap the high level here:
1. Know that client retention is the only way to keep your business alive and thriving, and the way to client retention is proving you’re worth more than they’re paying.
2. Make sure your agency follows best practices when it comes to engagement, relationship building, and overall disposition—communication is key here.
3. Prove your worth using numbers, which can’t be argued with, calculating your costs and your value in terms of newly generated revenue.
4. Use competitive research and comparative values to strengthen your worth to your clients.
Include secondary benefits, even though they’re tough to measure, to complete the picture.
Writing Tips
13 Tips Writing for the Web
Use shorter sentences and shorter paragraphs. Website readers tend to scan. They have a lot of information in front of them, with a generally shorter attention span. A good rule of thumb is to make sure that one sentence is never longer than three lines on your computer. Paragraphs can be two to three sentences long. You’re not writing expansive pieces of fiction.
Always check your grammar and spelling. Misspelled words and grammatical mistakes can chip away at your credibility. Readers may question your expertise and be tempted to move on to the next site in the listings, if they notice a lot of writing mistakes. It may be time to hire a copy editor or proofreader to look over your work.
Think visually. Sure this means photographs and graphics, but it also means breaking your text up with subheads and lists. It makes reading your important blog post more manageable.
Hook your customers up front. Use your headline and lead paragraphs to draw your customers into your writing, and engage them in what you have to say. You can do this by demonstrating you understand their pain point, rather than simply trying to sell them your product.
Consider your word choice. Use strong verbs and write in the active voice. Avoid industry jargon whenever possible. If it’s not possible define it. If you use acronyms, make sure the acronym is spelled out on first reference.
Tell them what’s next. If a reader makes it all the way through your blog post or web content, they expect you to tell them what they can do next. A strong call to action does exactly that. Sure, it can be a sale, but it can also be to download an eBook or simply comment on a blog.
Write in your authentic voice. Picture yourself out for coffee with your customer. How would you be explaining your business? Write how you would talk in this conversation.
Use links. Did you mention a subject you’ve written about in the past? Make sure your blog posts are linked up in every way possible. Your goal is to keep people moving through your website as much as possible, without leaving. This is how.
Save your headline for last. You want people to read what you spent all that time on. So slave on the headline. The temptation is just to slop a few short words up there. But your headline is the single biggest factor in whether someone will read your post. So learn how to write great headlines. Use adjectives that will pique their interest, like: awesome, free, easy, or time-saving. These help convey a benefit.
Use contractions. The goal is to talk in a way that can engage your customers. You want you readers to see a glimmer of personality, and to genuinely convey a likeability in your writing. Contractions are a great way to make your writing a little more readable. Think about it, you’re not going to separate every word out in the course of conversation. Don’t do it in your writing either.
Consider your keywords. What do you want to rank for? You can use the Google Keyword Planner to find out things like search volume. Throw it into your headline. Sprinkle it through your story. A pro tip here: don’t forget to use the occasional pronoun (its, his, hers, etc.). Keyword bombing to pick up your position in the search engines can backfire with your readers, those people who may actually buy something from you.
A little humor can help. It’s up to you to understand when it’s appropriate, and when it might be overkill.
Build your value. While it’s true that blog posts shouldn’t be so annoyingly promotional, it’s important to convey your expertise. Show readers why they should buy from you. Show your readers how to do things on their own. Educate them on all aspects of your industry. When they need you, they’ll remember.
Read more at http://www.business2community.com/communications/13-tips-writing-web-01504594#QLovzQMJ9JApmpVH.99
Saturday 9 April 2016
The Ultimate System for Creating Viral Content
The Ultimate System for Creating Viral Content
The Ultimate System for Creating Viral Content
By Timothy Carter
The term “viral content” has become viral in its own right. With the majority of business owners and marketers today engaging in some kind of content marketing (or at least recognizing it as a powerful marketing agent), the idea of spiking past the realm of “normal” results with viral content is tantalizing.
Despite frequent claims of having the “secret” to creating viral content, few marketing authorities have ventured into the science behind virally shared content, and none have come up with a verifiable, systematic process to create new viral content; the former is elusive, and the latter is impossible.
Instead of proposing a “guaranteed formula for success” or the “secret to making content viral,” I’m going to lay out some irrefutable truths about viral content, debunk some serious misconceptions, and hopefully give you a model that can lead you to the creation of better—if not viral—content for your campaign.
Defining “Viral” Content
First, it’s helpful to define exactly what viral content is—or at least what I mean by it. The phrase has become a buzzword, often abused and manipulated to fit into different contexts. The term, of course, comes from the word “viral,” as in, spreading like a virus. Much like a single person carrying a disease can get an entire office sick, and that office can infect an entire neighborhood, a single piece of effective, “viral” content can be shared socially to exponentially increasing audience sizes.
There aren’t any strict definitions on what constitutes “viral”—a video with 15 million views, an article with 1 million shares, and an infographic with 100 links pointing to it could all be considered viral in their own contexts. For our purposes, the term “viral” will apply to any piece of content that is circulated, socially or otherwise, many times more than an average, similar piece.
The Goals
For most brands, getting more visibility is a good thing. But let’s explore the myriad benefits even a single piece of viral content can offer:
Brand visibility. Having more people share your piece of content means more people will see your brand, some of which will be getting an impression of you for the first time.
Brand authority. Having a widely cited piece makes you seem like more of an authority; circulate enough viral pieces and you’ll become known as a leading authority in your industry.
Social followers. If even a tenth of the people who encounter your content follow you on social media in the hopes of seeing more, a single piece of viral content can net you hundreds to thousands of permanent new social followers. This effect is amplified due to the fact that most viral content is shared on social media in the first place.
Increased readership. Those interested in your piece will likely return to your blog (and thus, your website) in the future to find more information. Higher regular readership means more opportunities for conversion.
Inbound links. Generally, when content is syndicated and appreciated en masse, it earns tons of inbound links, which in turn pass authority to your site and make it easier for you to rank for your target keywords. Take a look at this viral infographic on the daily routines of famous people as an example, which earned 71 independent links (and growing):
Keep in mind that “viral” content achieves these goals to a degree much higher than ordinary “good” content. If you charted out all the links and shares that all the content in the world received, it wouldn’t follow a normalized pattern, or a typical bell curve. Instead, what you see is a massive spike of shares and links for a very small minority of pieces:
Assuming it takes the same amount of effort to produce a “viral” piece of content and the next-best tier of content quality, you can expect the viral piece to perform more than 5 times better! One small step in quality leads to an enormous leap in results.
Realistic Expectations
Just because there are ways to increase your likelihood of going viral doesn’t mean it’s a sure path. There is always a degree of unpredictability, and you need to be prepared for that. You may have a piece that, scientifically, meets all the criteria to go viral fall flat, and conversely, a seeming flop could skyrocket to success—just take Flappy Bird as an example.
Moral of the story: users are weird. Take my following advice with a grain of salt, and strive for overall improvements rather than celebrity-level popularity in your landmark pieces.
General Principles of Viral Content
We know what viral content is, and what it can’t be. We know that “something” makes a piece popular or appealing enough for massive numbers of users to share it with other users, but what is that “something?” There’s no single or simple definition, so instead I’m going to explore a number of different qualities that, in combination with each other, can spark a piece of content to explode in popularity.
Valence
According to a study of 7,000 New York Times articles, valence is a significant factor in determining whether a piece will “go viral.” Specifically, positive content has a higher degree of virality than negative content. If you read headlines regularly, this may come as a surprise to you—after all, the media is frequently criticized for being too negative, and most of your friends will agree that reading the news is “depressing.” However, positively positioned pieces always outperform negative ones in terms of shareability. Keep this in mind when debating between angles like “why you’ll always be a failure” or “why you always have a shot at success.”
Emotionality
There are two dimensions of emotionality: initial stimulation, and contagiousness. In the former, the reader has an individual, independent “gut reaction” to your piece. In the latter, the reader sees a potential for other users to have this gut reaction.
Initial stimulation is important because it draws a reader in, and makes them connect to the piece. Contagiousness is important because readers have a natural tendency to try and strike up emotions in other readers, particularly friends and family members. Both require a strong emotional foundation in order to trigger a viral event.
What emotions are most effective?
Anticipation, anger, disgust, sadness, surprise, fear, trust, and joy all have hotspots in the outermost and innermost edges of this emotional chart, with anticipation, trust, and surprise (more on surprise later) having especially strong tendencies to encourage shares. People naturally want others to feel these emotions when they feel them internally—so pieces charged with these emotions naturally get more shares.
Practicality
Instigating an emotion with a positive twist isn’t enough, however. To become viral, there must be some level of practicality to a piece. It doesn’t have to be a tutorial, or some life-changing piece of information, but it does have to add value to a person’s life one way or another.
“Life hacks,” a viral idea in their own right, have become incredibly popular, even leading to the development of sites like Lifehacker and Lifehack.org. These sites revolve around dispensing practical, actionable information, and as a result, their pieces have achieved massive, lasting popularity and social syndication.
Take this, one of Lifehacker’s most popular all-time pieces, with 5 million views:
People see a title like this and can usually think of at least one time or occasion this information would have been extremely useful; they pass it on to others half to be a Good Samaritan and half to demonstrate their resourcefulness. Without digging too deep into the psychology here, know that practicality is always a good thing.
Defying Expectations
Going back to the “surprise” element I touched on in the emotional section, it’s important to know that defying user expectations is a major factor in determining the virality of a piece. If a piece conforms to expectations, no matter how useful or entertaining it is, it’s not worth sharing, in the same way that your morning commute isn’t worth remembering unless something unusual happens along the way.
Take the story of the red paper clip as an example. You may remember this story from back in 2005; an active Craigslist participant started with a red paper clip, trading various items for items of slightly higher value, until he eventually traded for an entire house. This house:
If the piece were about a similar failed attempt, or about how someone traded a paperclip for a binder clip, or anything “usual,” it never would have circulated. Instead, it took users by surprise—even to the brink of disbelief.
Attention
It’s a sad fact of the content world that it’s possible to get lots of shares without anyone actually reading your material. People form fast first impressions when they see your headline, so if you want to go viral, you need a headline, image, or other first impression that hooks readers immediately.
One good way to do this is to stir up controversy; state an opinion on a matter that is strongly debated. If you want to hedge your bets and avoid aggressively polarizing topics, you can stick to “soft” forms of controversy:
The above example is highly debatable, yet doesn’t have high stakes or consequences. As you can see, it earned 12,372 shares.
Weight
This probably goes without saying, but the rule of weightiness applies to every other qualification on this list; you have to exhibit qualities to a strong degree if you want to reap their rewards. For example, don’t be scary, be terrifying. Don’t be just somewhatdebatable. Don’t be kind of surprising. With viral content, it’s definitely a case of “go big or go home.”
Variability
The original term wasn’t invented to describe dumb trends on the Internet, but viral content truly is a good example of a meme. Memes are a cultural substitute for genes in an evolutionary environment, and like genes, they draw their power from selective pressures and variability. A small variation on an existing social more could be enough to make something go viral—like a parody video:
151 million views for this. Seriously.
That variability can also apply to your content’s ability to be changed by users. For example, take the rampant popularity of the “Ice Bucket Challenge” just a few years back:
Countless celebrities, companies, and individuals participated in this challenge, and many of them racked up millions of views and shares.
The key takeaway here is that variability is powerful; it gives users a bit of what they’re used to, and something surprising at the same time. If implemented properly, it also encourages a degree of audience participation, which is always a good thing for a brand.
Quality
I hesitate to use the word “quality” here because it’s so vague, but it’s important to recognize. Let’s say you’ve conducted some surprising, exciting, positive research and you’re presenting it in a piece of long-form content. Theoretically, your material has all the right ingredients, but your body copy is riddled with awkward phrasing and spelling errors. Do you think you’ll still attract the same amount of attention? Let’s say you have an awesome idea for a video, but the final production is grainy and the sound quality is horrible. Will it still succeed?
Your content needs to be detailed, concise, well-researched, polished, and proofread to the point of perfection. Otherwise, even great ideas will fall flat.
The Self-Perpetuation of Popularity.
One more note before I move onto the next section; popularity is a self-perpetuating mechanism. That is to say, once it reaches a certain threshold, content will start earning shares simply because it already has a lot of shares. As an anecdotal example, have you ever watched a YouTube video simply because you heard it had millions of views? Of course you have. We all have. We trust the general consensus—more than we should sometimes—but this is important to recognize in the pursuit of viral content.
To go viral, then, you don’t need to produce content worthy of 10 million shares on its own. Even getting 1 million could instantly propel you to 10. Similarly, getting 100,000 could help you get to 1 million, and so on down the line. I’ll touch on this a bit more later, in my “Igniting the Fire” section, but know that sometimes, just a few more shares is all you need to start a chain reaction, and accordingly, just a few small improvements to your content can help it cross into that new territory.
Finding the Right Format
I’ve covered the “ingredients” for a viral piece of content somewhat exhaustively, but how can you package those ingredients?
There are dozens of different mediums, formats, and niches of content, all of which could theoretically support a piece of content with high virality. Take a look at this chart of some of the top-performing content types, according to a recent study by Moz and BuzzSumo covering 1 million pieces of content:
List posts, quizzes, why posts, how-to posts, infographics, and videos are all popular formats, but how do you know which one to choose? How do you know if you’re using it correctly?
Know Your Audience
First things first: you need to know your audience inside and out. Yes, hopefully your content will become so popular even general audience members will catch wind of it, but you need a committed initial circle of supporters, and that means you have to write to a specific demographic. Market research can help you here, but it’s better if you rely on data you’ve gathered yourself; take a look at how previous content topics have performed in the past, and how users react to different changes in your overall content campaign. This should help guide you in the right direction in terms of content angles, brand voice, and multimedia integrations that your audience prefers.
With that said, I want to explore four main brackets of content that you should consider for your “viral” target.
Long-Form Content
Long-form content is content longer than 1,000 words. Generally speaking, the longer a piece of content is, the more shares and links it’s going to receive:
Of course, this doesn’t mean that longer content is always better; you still have to adhere to all the standards I outlined above, and keep your content concise enough that every word still matters. Still, this is a convincing argument that long-form content is the best “type” of content to pursue. It requires more of an upfront investment of time and money, but it’s well worth it to get an adjusted average of nearly 6,000 shares and 11 referring domain links.
The key to long-form content is making it meaningful. Don’t write 10,000 words to cover 1,000 words of information, or your piece will fall flat. Accordingly, your choice of topic will play a major role in determining how your piece ultimately performs.
Short-Form Content
This isn’t to say that short-form content is inherently less valuable. If a viral piece of short-form content only earns a tenth of the potential shares that a long-form piece receives, it may still be worth it if it only took a tenth of the effort.
Short-form viral content, then, is a balancing act between effort and reward. This isn’t to say that you should downplay your efforts, or rush through short-form content, but there are certain formats (list posts, quizzes, etc.) that are naturally less intensive to create than others (original research, extended essays, etc.).
The key to short-form content is to keep it fast and concise. Give people the ability to scan through your content and get the gist of it in mere seconds without sacrificing your emotional appeal or the strength of your work.
Images
When it comes to producing a “viral” image—simpler is often better. Take a look at one of the most popular infographics of the past year:
How many graphic elements do you notice here? It’s a can of Coca-Cola on a solid background, yet it generated an impressive number of shares because it contained ample interesting information. In fact, it’s almost closer to a short-form content piece than it is an image.
Don’t think that you need to stuff your images full of information, either; artistic images, without any written information whatsoever, can also go viral. Remember this from the 2014 Oscars?
Snapping an image like this is like capturing lightning in a bottle; it’s incredibly difficult to predict or execute, and it’s unlikely that you’ll be successful on your first try. Infographics, on the other hand, can be constructed the way a written post can. It’s in your best interest to experiment with both, though the latter is much more controllable.
Successful images need to form an immediate first impression, and since there are some viral elements they can’t carry as well as written work (such as practicality), you need to make up for it by strengthening its other elements.
Keep in mind that images don’t have to be an exclusive medium unto themselves—incorporating images into your written content is a solid strategy for increasing shares as well.
Videos
Video is a complex medium deserving of its own full-fledged guide, so I’ll strive to cover only the basics here.
Like written content, video comes in both short-form and long-form varieties. Long-form is more intensive and more useful, while short-form is faster and more reactive. Use both these types to your advantage when creating video, and always keep your quality as high as possible.
Though you can get traction by making a video on pretty much anything, the best viral videos show off the capabilities of the medium, using audio and visual elements to tell a story. If you’re simply reading off a page (like in an interview) or if you have animation with no music or audio cues, you may end up with a good video—but it’s unlikely to be a viral one.
All of the elements for virality I listed above apply to videos, but one of the most important is defying user expectations; YouTube has a billion users watching hundreds of millions of hours’ worth of content every day.
They’ve pretty much seen everything, so if you want to motivate them to share your video, you have to do the impossible—show them what they haven’t seen.
Again, as with images, you don’t have to use video as a standalone piece; you can use it as an enhancement to a written piece instead.
Igniting the Fire
As I mentioned before, there’s a critical threshold for viral content; you need to achieve a certain number of shares before you can start reaping the compounding benefits of logarithmic cascades of shares; think of it as a snowball needing to achieve a certain mass and shape before it’s capable of rolling down a hill and accumulating more mass on its own.
Accordingly, drafting a good piece of content isn’t the end of your journey. Producing viral content is like gathering wood for a fire; you may have the potential to burn bright, long into the night, but unless you provide the initial spark, you won’t achieve anything. Give your content momentum by pushing it out to your social media audience, syndicating it through social bookmarking sites, engaging users in dialogue, responding to commenters, encouraging your employees to share the piece on their own accounts, and promoting the piece through influencer relationships or even a paid advertising boost. These small steps can, cumulatively, give your piece the initial momentum it needs to start generating visibility on its own—as long as it’s good enough.
Conclusion
By this point, I’ve taught you everything there is to know about producing and marketing viral content. I wish there was an actionable “secret” that could guarantee results, but if there was, everybody would be using it, and the very phenomenon of virality would ebb away. Instead, take viral content for what it is: a practical, yet somewhat unpredictable phenomenon that you can increase your probability of achieving but never firmly reach.
Thankfully, most of the best practices for viral content—positivity, practicality, emotional appeal, etc.—will make your content inherently better in the first place, so striving for viral content will nearly guarantee you better results on some level. As you spend more time and effort investing in your viral content strategy, you’ll learn new insights about your audience, new techniques to apply to your approach, and old tactics that just aren’t working for you anymore.
As long as you don’t get too caught up in the sensationalism of virality, learning from and pursuing viral content will make you a better marketer. And after all, that’s what most of us are after in the first place.
http://www.audiencebloom.com/2016/03/the-ultimate-system-for-creating-viral-content/
The Ultimate System for Creating Viral Content
By Timothy Carter
The term “viral content” has become viral in its own right. With the majority of business owners and marketers today engaging in some kind of content marketing (or at least recognizing it as a powerful marketing agent), the idea of spiking past the realm of “normal” results with viral content is tantalizing.
Despite frequent claims of having the “secret” to creating viral content, few marketing authorities have ventured into the science behind virally shared content, and none have come up with a verifiable, systematic process to create new viral content; the former is elusive, and the latter is impossible.
Instead of proposing a “guaranteed formula for success” or the “secret to making content viral,” I’m going to lay out some irrefutable truths about viral content, debunk some serious misconceptions, and hopefully give you a model that can lead you to the creation of better—if not viral—content for your campaign.
Defining “Viral” Content
First, it’s helpful to define exactly what viral content is—or at least what I mean by it. The phrase has become a buzzword, often abused and manipulated to fit into different contexts. The term, of course, comes from the word “viral,” as in, spreading like a virus. Much like a single person carrying a disease can get an entire office sick, and that office can infect an entire neighborhood, a single piece of effective, “viral” content can be shared socially to exponentially increasing audience sizes.
There aren’t any strict definitions on what constitutes “viral”—a video with 15 million views, an article with 1 million shares, and an infographic with 100 links pointing to it could all be considered viral in their own contexts. For our purposes, the term “viral” will apply to any piece of content that is circulated, socially or otherwise, many times more than an average, similar piece.
The Goals
For most brands, getting more visibility is a good thing. But let’s explore the myriad benefits even a single piece of viral content can offer:
Brand visibility. Having more people share your piece of content means more people will see your brand, some of which will be getting an impression of you for the first time.
Brand authority. Having a widely cited piece makes you seem like more of an authority; circulate enough viral pieces and you’ll become known as a leading authority in your industry.
Social followers. If even a tenth of the people who encounter your content follow you on social media in the hopes of seeing more, a single piece of viral content can net you hundreds to thousands of permanent new social followers. This effect is amplified due to the fact that most viral content is shared on social media in the first place.
Increased readership. Those interested in your piece will likely return to your blog (and thus, your website) in the future to find more information. Higher regular readership means more opportunities for conversion.
Inbound links. Generally, when content is syndicated and appreciated en masse, it earns tons of inbound links, which in turn pass authority to your site and make it easier for you to rank for your target keywords. Take a look at this viral infographic on the daily routines of famous people as an example, which earned 71 independent links (and growing):
Keep in mind that “viral” content achieves these goals to a degree much higher than ordinary “good” content. If you charted out all the links and shares that all the content in the world received, it wouldn’t follow a normalized pattern, or a typical bell curve. Instead, what you see is a massive spike of shares and links for a very small minority of pieces:
Assuming it takes the same amount of effort to produce a “viral” piece of content and the next-best tier of content quality, you can expect the viral piece to perform more than 5 times better! One small step in quality leads to an enormous leap in results.
Realistic Expectations
Just because there are ways to increase your likelihood of going viral doesn’t mean it’s a sure path. There is always a degree of unpredictability, and you need to be prepared for that. You may have a piece that, scientifically, meets all the criteria to go viral fall flat, and conversely, a seeming flop could skyrocket to success—just take Flappy Bird as an example.
Moral of the story: users are weird. Take my following advice with a grain of salt, and strive for overall improvements rather than celebrity-level popularity in your landmark pieces.
General Principles of Viral Content
We know what viral content is, and what it can’t be. We know that “something” makes a piece popular or appealing enough for massive numbers of users to share it with other users, but what is that “something?” There’s no single or simple definition, so instead I’m going to explore a number of different qualities that, in combination with each other, can spark a piece of content to explode in popularity.
Valence
According to a study of 7,000 New York Times articles, valence is a significant factor in determining whether a piece will “go viral.” Specifically, positive content has a higher degree of virality than negative content. If you read headlines regularly, this may come as a surprise to you—after all, the media is frequently criticized for being too negative, and most of your friends will agree that reading the news is “depressing.” However, positively positioned pieces always outperform negative ones in terms of shareability. Keep this in mind when debating between angles like “why you’ll always be a failure” or “why you always have a shot at success.”
Emotionality
There are two dimensions of emotionality: initial stimulation, and contagiousness. In the former, the reader has an individual, independent “gut reaction” to your piece. In the latter, the reader sees a potential for other users to have this gut reaction.
Initial stimulation is important because it draws a reader in, and makes them connect to the piece. Contagiousness is important because readers have a natural tendency to try and strike up emotions in other readers, particularly friends and family members. Both require a strong emotional foundation in order to trigger a viral event.
What emotions are most effective?
Anticipation, anger, disgust, sadness, surprise, fear, trust, and joy all have hotspots in the outermost and innermost edges of this emotional chart, with anticipation, trust, and surprise (more on surprise later) having especially strong tendencies to encourage shares. People naturally want others to feel these emotions when they feel them internally—so pieces charged with these emotions naturally get more shares.
Practicality
Instigating an emotion with a positive twist isn’t enough, however. To become viral, there must be some level of practicality to a piece. It doesn’t have to be a tutorial, or some life-changing piece of information, but it does have to add value to a person’s life one way or another.
“Life hacks,” a viral idea in their own right, have become incredibly popular, even leading to the development of sites like Lifehacker and Lifehack.org. These sites revolve around dispensing practical, actionable information, and as a result, their pieces have achieved massive, lasting popularity and social syndication.
Take this, one of Lifehacker’s most popular all-time pieces, with 5 million views:
People see a title like this and can usually think of at least one time or occasion this information would have been extremely useful; they pass it on to others half to be a Good Samaritan and half to demonstrate their resourcefulness. Without digging too deep into the psychology here, know that practicality is always a good thing.
Defying Expectations
Going back to the “surprise” element I touched on in the emotional section, it’s important to know that defying user expectations is a major factor in determining the virality of a piece. If a piece conforms to expectations, no matter how useful or entertaining it is, it’s not worth sharing, in the same way that your morning commute isn’t worth remembering unless something unusual happens along the way.
Take the story of the red paper clip as an example. You may remember this story from back in 2005; an active Craigslist participant started with a red paper clip, trading various items for items of slightly higher value, until he eventually traded for an entire house. This house:
If the piece were about a similar failed attempt, or about how someone traded a paperclip for a binder clip, or anything “usual,” it never would have circulated. Instead, it took users by surprise—even to the brink of disbelief.
Attention
It’s a sad fact of the content world that it’s possible to get lots of shares without anyone actually reading your material. People form fast first impressions when they see your headline, so if you want to go viral, you need a headline, image, or other first impression that hooks readers immediately.
One good way to do this is to stir up controversy; state an opinion on a matter that is strongly debated. If you want to hedge your bets and avoid aggressively polarizing topics, you can stick to “soft” forms of controversy:
The above example is highly debatable, yet doesn’t have high stakes or consequences. As you can see, it earned 12,372 shares.
Weight
This probably goes without saying, but the rule of weightiness applies to every other qualification on this list; you have to exhibit qualities to a strong degree if you want to reap their rewards. For example, don’t be scary, be terrifying. Don’t be just somewhatdebatable. Don’t be kind of surprising. With viral content, it’s definitely a case of “go big or go home.”
Variability
The original term wasn’t invented to describe dumb trends on the Internet, but viral content truly is a good example of a meme. Memes are a cultural substitute for genes in an evolutionary environment, and like genes, they draw their power from selective pressures and variability. A small variation on an existing social more could be enough to make something go viral—like a parody video:
151 million views for this. Seriously.
That variability can also apply to your content’s ability to be changed by users. For example, take the rampant popularity of the “Ice Bucket Challenge” just a few years back:
Countless celebrities, companies, and individuals participated in this challenge, and many of them racked up millions of views and shares.
The key takeaway here is that variability is powerful; it gives users a bit of what they’re used to, and something surprising at the same time. If implemented properly, it also encourages a degree of audience participation, which is always a good thing for a brand.
Quality
I hesitate to use the word “quality” here because it’s so vague, but it’s important to recognize. Let’s say you’ve conducted some surprising, exciting, positive research and you’re presenting it in a piece of long-form content. Theoretically, your material has all the right ingredients, but your body copy is riddled with awkward phrasing and spelling errors. Do you think you’ll still attract the same amount of attention? Let’s say you have an awesome idea for a video, but the final production is grainy and the sound quality is horrible. Will it still succeed?
Your content needs to be detailed, concise, well-researched, polished, and proofread to the point of perfection. Otherwise, even great ideas will fall flat.
The Self-Perpetuation of Popularity.
One more note before I move onto the next section; popularity is a self-perpetuating mechanism. That is to say, once it reaches a certain threshold, content will start earning shares simply because it already has a lot of shares. As an anecdotal example, have you ever watched a YouTube video simply because you heard it had millions of views? Of course you have. We all have. We trust the general consensus—more than we should sometimes—but this is important to recognize in the pursuit of viral content.
To go viral, then, you don’t need to produce content worthy of 10 million shares on its own. Even getting 1 million could instantly propel you to 10. Similarly, getting 100,000 could help you get to 1 million, and so on down the line. I’ll touch on this a bit more later, in my “Igniting the Fire” section, but know that sometimes, just a few more shares is all you need to start a chain reaction, and accordingly, just a few small improvements to your content can help it cross into that new territory.
Finding the Right Format
I’ve covered the “ingredients” for a viral piece of content somewhat exhaustively, but how can you package those ingredients?
There are dozens of different mediums, formats, and niches of content, all of which could theoretically support a piece of content with high virality. Take a look at this chart of some of the top-performing content types, according to a recent study by Moz and BuzzSumo covering 1 million pieces of content:
List posts, quizzes, why posts, how-to posts, infographics, and videos are all popular formats, but how do you know which one to choose? How do you know if you’re using it correctly?
Know Your Audience
First things first: you need to know your audience inside and out. Yes, hopefully your content will become so popular even general audience members will catch wind of it, but you need a committed initial circle of supporters, and that means you have to write to a specific demographic. Market research can help you here, but it’s better if you rely on data you’ve gathered yourself; take a look at how previous content topics have performed in the past, and how users react to different changes in your overall content campaign. This should help guide you in the right direction in terms of content angles, brand voice, and multimedia integrations that your audience prefers.
With that said, I want to explore four main brackets of content that you should consider for your “viral” target.
Long-Form Content
Long-form content is content longer than 1,000 words. Generally speaking, the longer a piece of content is, the more shares and links it’s going to receive:
Of course, this doesn’t mean that longer content is always better; you still have to adhere to all the standards I outlined above, and keep your content concise enough that every word still matters. Still, this is a convincing argument that long-form content is the best “type” of content to pursue. It requires more of an upfront investment of time and money, but it’s well worth it to get an adjusted average of nearly 6,000 shares and 11 referring domain links.
The key to long-form content is making it meaningful. Don’t write 10,000 words to cover 1,000 words of information, or your piece will fall flat. Accordingly, your choice of topic will play a major role in determining how your piece ultimately performs.
Short-Form Content
This isn’t to say that short-form content is inherently less valuable. If a viral piece of short-form content only earns a tenth of the potential shares that a long-form piece receives, it may still be worth it if it only took a tenth of the effort.
Short-form viral content, then, is a balancing act between effort and reward. This isn’t to say that you should downplay your efforts, or rush through short-form content, but there are certain formats (list posts, quizzes, etc.) that are naturally less intensive to create than others (original research, extended essays, etc.).
The key to short-form content is to keep it fast and concise. Give people the ability to scan through your content and get the gist of it in mere seconds without sacrificing your emotional appeal or the strength of your work.
Images
When it comes to producing a “viral” image—simpler is often better. Take a look at one of the most popular infographics of the past year:
How many graphic elements do you notice here? It’s a can of Coca-Cola on a solid background, yet it generated an impressive number of shares because it contained ample interesting information. In fact, it’s almost closer to a short-form content piece than it is an image.
Don’t think that you need to stuff your images full of information, either; artistic images, without any written information whatsoever, can also go viral. Remember this from the 2014 Oscars?
Snapping an image like this is like capturing lightning in a bottle; it’s incredibly difficult to predict or execute, and it’s unlikely that you’ll be successful on your first try. Infographics, on the other hand, can be constructed the way a written post can. It’s in your best interest to experiment with both, though the latter is much more controllable.
Successful images need to form an immediate first impression, and since there are some viral elements they can’t carry as well as written work (such as practicality), you need to make up for it by strengthening its other elements.
Keep in mind that images don’t have to be an exclusive medium unto themselves—incorporating images into your written content is a solid strategy for increasing shares as well.
Videos
Video is a complex medium deserving of its own full-fledged guide, so I’ll strive to cover only the basics here.
Like written content, video comes in both short-form and long-form varieties. Long-form is more intensive and more useful, while short-form is faster and more reactive. Use both these types to your advantage when creating video, and always keep your quality as high as possible.
Though you can get traction by making a video on pretty much anything, the best viral videos show off the capabilities of the medium, using audio and visual elements to tell a story. If you’re simply reading off a page (like in an interview) or if you have animation with no music or audio cues, you may end up with a good video—but it’s unlikely to be a viral one.
All of the elements for virality I listed above apply to videos, but one of the most important is defying user expectations; YouTube has a billion users watching hundreds of millions of hours’ worth of content every day.
They’ve pretty much seen everything, so if you want to motivate them to share your video, you have to do the impossible—show them what they haven’t seen.
Again, as with images, you don’t have to use video as a standalone piece; you can use it as an enhancement to a written piece instead.
Igniting the Fire
As I mentioned before, there’s a critical threshold for viral content; you need to achieve a certain number of shares before you can start reaping the compounding benefits of logarithmic cascades of shares; think of it as a snowball needing to achieve a certain mass and shape before it’s capable of rolling down a hill and accumulating more mass on its own.
Accordingly, drafting a good piece of content isn’t the end of your journey. Producing viral content is like gathering wood for a fire; you may have the potential to burn bright, long into the night, but unless you provide the initial spark, you won’t achieve anything. Give your content momentum by pushing it out to your social media audience, syndicating it through social bookmarking sites, engaging users in dialogue, responding to commenters, encouraging your employees to share the piece on their own accounts, and promoting the piece through influencer relationships or even a paid advertising boost. These small steps can, cumulatively, give your piece the initial momentum it needs to start generating visibility on its own—as long as it’s good enough.
Conclusion
By this point, I’ve taught you everything there is to know about producing and marketing viral content. I wish there was an actionable “secret” that could guarantee results, but if there was, everybody would be using it, and the very phenomenon of virality would ebb away. Instead, take viral content for what it is: a practical, yet somewhat unpredictable phenomenon that you can increase your probability of achieving but never firmly reach.
Thankfully, most of the best practices for viral content—positivity, practicality, emotional appeal, etc.—will make your content inherently better in the first place, so striving for viral content will nearly guarantee you better results on some level. As you spend more time and effort investing in your viral content strategy, you’ll learn new insights about your audience, new techniques to apply to your approach, and old tactics that just aren’t working for you anymore.
As long as you don’t get too caught up in the sensationalism of virality, learning from and pursuing viral content will make you a better marketer. And after all, that’s what most of us are after in the first place.
http://www.audiencebloom.com/2016/03/the-ultimate-system-for-creating-viral-content/
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