Five Content Writing Habits You Need to Dispose of Right Away
In 2014, search engines, especially Google focused its algorithm updates on providing informative and useful content and they have vastly improved their semantic search capability. Also, for many years, Google as has been cracking down low quality and thin content by rolling out Panda algorithm updates every few months and content marketers are forced to find new ways to produce high quality content with real value. If you are utilizing top content marketing strategies and still not seeing the expected results, then the problem might be with your writing practices. Here are some content writing habits seen in most marketers and that are negatively affecting their content marketing campaigns.
Double Space Dilemma
For the past few years, the writing community remains divided on whether one should place one space or two at the end of a sentence. Before the arrival of computer technology, when you type, all letters have the same amount of space and for example, a wider ‘M’ and a thin ‘I’ were allotted the same space. Thus, the additional space was needed at the end of sentence to showcase the difference between the space between words and the end of a sentence. Then came the very popular word processor software packages with all of their fancy fonts and the ability to group letters together based upon width. These days, nothing says outdated like two spaces at the end of a sentence.
Not Providing Proof for Your Claim
WhatsApp and other instant mobile messaging apps are gaining more new users than social media websites. That is fascinating, but where did you get this information? Did you make that up or whether your statement backed by solid research, or you just guessed it based on circumstantial evidence? You need to show your reader they can trust the information you provide. So, when you recommend that really awesome messaging app you have loved, they will actually believe you. Linking your sources allows your audience to follow up and make sure the information you provides is accurate, which in turn earns you trust and credibility for your writing.
Forgetting to Use the Oxford Comma
Another topic that is still subject to debate in the writing community is whether to use the Oxford comma. Many content experts say that one should use the Oxford comma if he or she is really into content marketing campaigns. The main objective of content marketing is to provide the audience with useful, relevant information that helps build your online reputation. If you are not using the Oxford comma for your content writing, then you are missing the benefits. The Oxford comma helps in making your content easier to read and understand, and it helps to clarify meaning, which again, is the whole point of content marketing.
Not Reading Your Finished Material
Most professional copy editors are strict when it comes to grammar and punctuation. But for posting content online, there are those who do not stress out about the finer points of grammar. You need to ensure that you reread your writing before you post it in your website or social profile pages. When you reread it, you need to check things such as trailing off in the middle of a sentence. You need to reread your writing so that you can make sure your readers will get higher quality content.
What Kind of Writing Format to Follow
There are people who follow academic research paper format for their content writing and their writing strategy may not yield the desired results. If you want some good writing tips then you can get it from Jason Brewer in his content marketing blogs. About the writing format, Jason says that “When considering a content marketing campaign for your enterprise, first you need to think about the reasons why people choose to interact with your online.” If you are writing for SEO value, then you need to forget your college professor’s outdated writing style rules, and write in a way that positions you as informative, approachable and entertaining.
You should not forget that the fact content marketing is the cornerstone of most online marketing campaigns and if you are not careful enough in the content development, it will cost you decreasing reader base and even ROI.
Boosting Your Instagram Marketing Campaign with the Use of Four Exciting Tools
Instagram which is a photo sharing site is now getting popular among Facebook users, and according to the Global Web Index, Instagram grew 23 percent compared to its parent company Facebook which grew only 3 percent in 2013. As people are more attracted towards visual content, image sharing sites such as Instagram and Pinterest are getting more active user traffic when compared to social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Recently, Instagram rolled out new features taking its users to the next level of their social networking experience.
Even without these new features, Instagram is already an established social media platform. For instance, it has over 200 million monthly users who share sixty million photos every day. For marketers who are looking for tactics aiming at increasing customer engagement can use Instagram as images and videos attract more users than any other type of information.
According to Socialbakers, more than 85 percent of the most engaging content on Facebook is imaged in 2012 and one year later, that number increased to 93 percent. So, if you are not creating visual content for your target customers, then you are missing out the golden opportunity to connect with them. If you want to gain the benefits from the new Instagram features for your marketing needs, here are the four interesting tools that can provide the necessary boost for your campaign.
IconoSquare
Formerly known as Statigram, IconoSquare is a top-notch tool for managing and improving your Instagram account. This is achieved by offering loads of stats, including the number of followers you have acquired or lost within a week, growth history of comments or likes, best time to share images, and what your engagement was like over the last month. Other features include a viewer for easy navigation through images or video, the ability to conduct a contest, and management of conversations such as directing messages via Twitter. The most important feature of IconoSquare is that you can promote your content in other social media accounts. For your Facebook followers who are not on Instagram can view your content by installing a photo widget. To use IconoSquare, you just need to sign-in using your Instagram account details and then you are ready to use the beneficial features of this amazing tool.
Search Instagram
As you know, search is an important aspect of online marketing and for businesses, there are various kinds of search tools such as Google Alerts and Social Mention that will help them to connect with their target audience or attract new ones. When it comes to searching new trends in Instagram, you can use Search Instagram which provides you the ability to search for images related to your industry by using location or hashtag. You just need to type in the keyword and you can see different kinds of content appear based on your search query. Also, you can hover over the selected images and see how popular they are by viewing the amount of ‘likes’ it has got.
Websta
Websta is another image management tool that can will greatly help in improving your Instagram account. Also known as Webstagram, it offers useful features such as album creation, stats and web viewer. Websta also provides other unique options such as Repost This, a Follow Me button and search tools. There is a community blog section in Websta where Instagram members can interact and seek advice, a board to organize posts into groups and the ability to send direct messages to Instagram users.
Repost
Using the Repost app, you can repost your favorite photos and videos on Instagram while still giving acknowledgement to the original source. This pretty neat app is available on both Google Play Store and the iTunes Store. With the help of Repost app, you can find any image you like and repost it and it is somewhat like retweeting on Twitter. This app also gives you the ability to choose the filter of your liking, as well as where to place the attribution button.
With the roll out new features by Instagram every few months, marketers are expecting the popular image and video sharing platform to pay more attention to its users, so that marketers can get more opportunities to utilize their benefit.
Facebook facing Stiff Competition from its rivals Pinterest and Tumblr
According to the reputed market research firm Global Web Index (GWI), Tumblr and Pinterest are growing faster compared to Facebook, in terms of members or active users. As we all know, Facebook is the number one in the social media industry with over one billion users worldwide. The recent study conducted by GWI shows that ten year-old social networking site is now facing stiff competition from the two of its rivals in terms of growth. The GWI study tells that Facebook grew more slowly than all the other popular social media sites in the last six months, which is measured based on the number of active users or members.
Tumblr and Pinterest gaining Facebook
Started in 2007, the micro-blogging and social networking platform Tumblr has now gained 120 percent growth based on the number of active users. A few weeks ago, the micro-blogging site has announced that it is now hosting over 209.3 million blogs and when it comes to membership, Tumblr has gained a 45 percent growth in the past few months. The popular visual bookmarking site Pinterest is also witnessing an increased active user growth rate by 111 percent and 57 percent of the membership. This four-year-old social networking site has over 70 million users and still counting. GWI found that the grow rate of Facebook is currently well below the rest of the platforms studied that include Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube. The study points out that Facebook has 6 percent growth in terms of its registered user base and 2 percent to its active users.
Other social networks are playing a major game of catching up to Facebook and its one billion monthly active users. When it comes to Facebook’s photo sharing site Instagram fell to third in the latest results when it was named as the fastest growing network in GWI’s report six months ago.
GWI prepared its latest report based on interviews of a global sample of 40,000 people from 32 countries. The report highlights that Facebook is far from the number one social media platform. Out of five internet users, four of them say that they own a Facebook account that includes 93 percent of people Latin America and excludes China (where it is banned). And one of two actively uses the social media site at least once a month and it includes 54 percent of the total surveyed Facebook users. Also, this 54 percent active users log in multiple times a day, out of which 20 percentage points more than second-placed Twitter.
Young Users find Facebook Boring
Many other recent surveys tell that young Facebook users, especially in the US and UK are losing interest in the site. According to the GWI report, people are getting tired of it, with 50 percent of its users in the US and UK saying that they are using it less frequently than they used to, and when it comes teenage users, the number rises up to 64 percent. For this, GWI put forward some of the top reasons why people getting less interested in Facebook.
- Since the start of 2013, GWI has observed behaviors in the Facebook usage, such as sharing photos and messaging friends which has dropped by around 20 percent.
- 37 percent of Facebook users (out of which 50 percent are teenagers) find it boring and they say that it is not as cool as it used to be.
- Facebook is witnessing an active usage drop among 16-24 year age group during 2014 and although it is a very small one which is about 0.5 percent. When you take other social networks, they are showing more active usage in the same age category which is increasing year by year.
What it means for Businesses
When it comes to brand promotional campaigns, the GWI report notes that users are increasingly active across multiple social platforms, that 91 percent of internet users worldwide visited Facebook or Twitter or Google+ or YouTube in the last month and that 19 percent visited all four social media sites. For this we can conclude that users still visit their social media accounts for fresh information which needs to be interesting and engaging.
By Having a Mobile-friendly Site You Improve Your SEO Success in 2015
Nowadays, most businesses have mobile-friendly website based on responsive web design and to churn up some ROI on mobile search marketing campaigns. But there are some organizations that are still do not possess a mobile-friendly site, either due to their lack of resources or they do not see the value of having one. If your business entity falls into this category, and you need better exposure in mobile search in 2015 especially in Google, then now is the time to start building a mobile-friendly website before you fall behind in the highly competitive mobile search market. Here are the three reasons why you need to build a mobile-friendly site for getting some mobile SEO benefits in 2015.
Increasing Importance of High Mobile Search Rankings
It was in November 2014 when Google introduced “mobile-friendly” labels in its mobile search results and according to Google they see these labels as a ‘first step’ in helping mobile users to have a better mobile internet experience. In their November blog post, the internet search giant mentioned about introducing ‘mobile-friendly criteria’ as a ranking factor. For the past few months, Google has been started penalizing websites in its mobile search results to make sure that they are mobile-friendly and provide mobile users with an improved search experience. If you are not making your website compatible to smartphone and tablet devices, then in the near future, you can also expect a penalty from Google and demoting your website from the first page of its search engine results.
Expecting More Click-Through Rates for Your Site
As Google started labeling websites that are optimized for smartphone and tablet devices as “mobile-friendly” within in its SERPs, those businesses failing to have a mobile-friendly site can have a negative impact on their site’s click through rate (CTR). For example, if a mobile user conducts a search with their smartphone, and five of the top six search results are labeled as “mobile-friendly” and all else being equal, then the mobile user will give preference to the five top results that Google recognizes as being mobile compatible. Over time the effect of this will be less CTRs for your site which is not mobile-friendly, and more click-through rates for sites that are highly compatible in mobile devices. Fortunately, Google offers a tool named “Mobile-Friendly Test” for webmasters to test if their site is mobile-friendly or not. If a site passes this test, it will receive the “mobile-friendly” tag.
A New Source for Earning Revenue
If increased SEO rankings and CTRs to your site isn’t enough persuasion to be mobile compatible, hopefully you are losing opportunities for making revenue. Lack of a mobile-friendly website at a time when so many internet searchers use smartphones and tablets to find what they are looking for is essentially handing customers over to your competition.
The end result is that those businesses that do not have a mobile-friendly site is most likely to lose considerable revenue for their company. When it comes to mobile devices, consumers are becoming less and less willing to put up with poor user experiences as businesses fail to adapt to changing internet search expectations. In 2015, your potential buyers will find the path of better search experience, and that path leads straight to your competitors if they have a mobile-friendly site, and you don’t.
If You Does have a Mobile Site then its time do some SEO
After learning the importance of having a mobile-friendly website for your organization, you need to some SEO for your new mobile compatible website as just putting your mobile site on the web doesn’t mean that you get expected mobile search traffic. When you consult with mobile search experts, they will tell you strategies that will optimize your website to Google and other search engines. Some of the tested and proven strategies used by most mobile marketers include visitor tracking and analysis, keyword research, mobile sitemap, mobile style sheet, short phrases and keywords optimization, removing complex content and code, many more.
As 2015 approaches, you need to be ready to face new challenges in terms of mobile online search as most surveys have indicated that mobile will take over desktop platforms in the near future.
66 Percent Email opens more in Mobile than on PCs
According to Movable Ink which is a reputed email marketing service provider, about 66 percent of emails open in mobile devices. As we know, Android devices have a major share in the global mobile market compared to IOS devices, but when it comes to emails, over 59 percent of email openings happen in Apple mobile devices and the remaining 6 percent happen in Android mobile devices.
Mobile Becoming a Preferable Choice for Email Opens
In its quarterly “Consumer Device Preferences Report”, Movable Ink says that nearly half of all email opens happening to smartphones and the company prepared this report based on the statistics captured from across the firm’s client base. The report also says that another 17 percent of email openings happen to tablets and the remaining 34 percent are happening on the desktops, and the report also displays a chart that reflects email opens by device and time of day. As per the data given in the chart, email opens via smartphones are consistent throughout the day, while desktops are used principally in the morning and tablets are used largely in the evening hours.
When it comes to vertical breakdown by email, desktops are preferred in selected categories that include automotive, financial services, travel and hospitality services. More than 44 percent of users prefer PC in the automotive and financial services category, and smartphone is the preferred choice in retail (apparel and non apparel), media, publishing and entertainment industries. According to the report, this behavior indicates that consumers are making clear and rational choices about which devices to use for which types of activities and research. Based on this report, many online marketing experts are of view that it is now very established that emails and associated landing pages that are not mobile-friendly are largely wasted and can even negatively affect brand reputation.
Time to Focus on Mobile Optimized Email Marketing
As now people are checking their emails on mobile, businesses have to implement their email campaigns optimized for mobile devices. Typically, most emails are designed to be read on a desktop PC or laptop and it could be horrible to view these emails on a smartphone, which means your target audience might just hit “Delete” before reading your message. Here are a few tips on how to make sure the emails you send for your business, look great on smartphones and tablet devices.
- Mobile Friendly Images – When it comes to mobile-optimized emails, the main goal is “clean and simple” and you need to make sure not to over-design with too many images or embed larger image files. This is because many larger image files take more time to load on mobile that rely on dodgy WiFi connections.
- Make Use of Responsive Template – Make sure that your email service provider providing your email solutions based on responsive email templates. These are designed to automatically fit the screen on which they are being viewed, so your email will look the way it should whether on a mobile device or PC. You don’t have to worry about your email rendering incorrectly if you use a responsive template.
- Careful with Your Wordings – You need to be careful when you use “from” label, subject line and pre-header text. On the small display screen of a mobile, you have to make every word and character count. For instance, an IOS device displays only the first 30 characters of the subject line when the device is held vertically and the label “from” is actually displayed more prominently than the subject line.
- Breaking up of Text – Do not crowd too many links together at once and avoid long paragraphs as your readers are probably on the go, they might be easily distracted if you do not get to the point right way.
- Calls to Action Buttons – You need to use buttons for calls to action rather than links and it is because the buttons are easier for people to click on when using a touchscreen. To avoid a “fat finger” mishap, leave plenty of space around your buttons.
If you are running a retail business, email marketing can gain you benefits if you send emails to your target customers that contain offers, special deals, new product arrivals and many more. You consult with an online marketing company that can provide you mobile optimized email solutions at a highly competitive budget.
Apple’s iAd Mobile Advertising Network getting new Partnerships
It was in 2012 when Apple launched its mobile advertising platform called iAd, and in the last week of November 2014 the company announced their partnership with leading ad tech companies such as AdRoll, Accordant Media, Adeplphic, GET IT Mobile, Ruicon, MediaMath and Tapsense. According to Apple, this tie-up is considered as a huge step for their newly rolled out ad mobile ad network and it will become a much bigger player in the global mobile advertising industry in the near future.
Many of the ad tech firms partnered with Apple consider the tie-up highly beneficial as they will be able to automate ad purchases as well as reporting across more than 250,000 iOS apps. Since its initial launch two years ago, iAd mobile network failed to capture significant market share with a goal targeted at attracting top brands with big budgets.
The reputed market search firm EMarketer predicts that Apple’s ad network will account for just 3.3% of the US mobile advertising market this year, but currently the major chunk is held by Google Ads network (nearly 50%) followed by Facebook which holds just over 15% of the mobile ad market. Apple is now following the same path of Google and Facebook by moving to programmatic buying so that the company can earn mobile ad revenue just like its competitors.
Better Ad Targeting
Apple is implementing programmatic buying on its iAd mobile ad network as it offers scale and access to user data which is for better ad targeting. Google, Facebook and Twitter use programmatic buying thereby offering unique data sets to advertisers. As you know, Apple now possesses tons of tons user data from its iTunes and App Store. According to advertising experts, Apple knows what types of apps and in-app content users engage the most. With the help of its ad tech partners, Apple can able to harness that data and combine it with data from ad tech firms which in turn become a powerful combination for app marketers and advertisers in particular.
Utilizing Apple Pay
As you know, Apple introduced its mobile payment platform called Apple Pay last month and many advertising experts see Apple’s mobile payment network playing a significant role and closing the loop for marketers on the iAd platform. The advertising industry is looking forward to see what types of attribution and analytics, retailers that use Apple Pay will get access to as the payment evolves. Also, industry experts note the rollout of Apple Pay will bring wider customer and retail awareness about the capabilities of mobile payment and internet search giant Google is now capitalizing on this strategy by using Google Wallet. They predict mobile commerce will be at a modulation point, adding that these developments are going to benefit from the advertising industry as a whole.
Opening up its Mobile Ad Platform for Everyone
When Apple introduced iAd, the company put forward initial budget, specifications for advertisers which it now recognizes as a strategic mistake. According to experts, Apple initially should have focused on developers who were going to build out this environment and their interest in monetizing their apps, gaining and engaging target users. These kinds of tactics need direct response and programmatic buying capabilities to drive app installs at scale. The launch of programmatic buying on iAd network signifies the potential for another huge market for app developers to acquire and engage customers.
On April 2014, Apple opened up iAd network to anyone with an Apple ID. Apple’s move to partner with advertising firms instead of facilitating programmatic through its own channels reproduce a new approach for Apple as well. Many of the partnering ad tech firms consider Apple’s strategy to unlock the user data sets as direct competition with Google and Facebook. Also, these ad tech companies can bring in their own data which is combined with Apple’s consumer data sets which help advertisers to get their ad targeting goals fulfilled.
With the popularity of mobile devices, businesses and marketers alike are turning towards mobile marketing to reap the benefits. And Apple joining in the mobile adverting bandwagon, advertisers is going to see a lot more of capabilities coming in the near future.
You can Now utilize Facebook’s New Publisher Tools to Target Audiences
According to its new blog posted on December 10th, Facebook have been receiving requests from publishers around the world to better understand how Facebook can help them connect with people on its social networking platform. As a result, Facebook has created a new set of tools for media publishers, made some necessary improvements to Insights and have included more resources and communication channels for publishers. Based on the requests made by the publishers, Facebook has now introduced ways to target posts, remove those posts that are no longer relevant and identify quality links that you have not shared yet.
- Interest Targeting – For more precise targeting of posts, Facebook has now made it easier so that your Facebook Page can focus on target audiences just like how you target ads and boosted posts based on a specific audience. Also the social media site is extending that ability to organic posts.
- Post End Date – Facebook is now providing an expiry date on your posts so that you don’t have to remove posts manually. While the posts will still be live on your Facebook page. You can set a date for it to stop being displayed in people’s News Feeds. For instance, if you are posting a sale that is only for today, it wouldn’t do any benefit for people who see that post the next day. That’s when you could set an end date so your audience doesn’t end up seeing posts with dated content. According to Facebook, both the Post End Date and Interest Targeting features are now available to all its Pages that have activated the Targeting and Privacy setting. But for now, these two features are only accessible on the desktop platform at the moment.
- Improved Insights – You may have noticed that one of your article posts has witnessed a popularity surge recently and you are not sure about the reason behind it. One of the reasons may include your post being shared by an influence or a popular business entity on their Facebook page. That’s among the insights you will have access to with the improvements rolled out by the social media site. There are analytics features that are more accurate and actionable, and they consist of a way to categorize data based on time frame specifications, including hourly insights and displaying URL-level reports via new Top URLs section.
- Smart Publishing – With the Smart Publishing tool you can now eliminate the guess work out of deciding what stories on your site to share with your Facebook audience. This feature, which is now currently available to few media publishers, will automatically display your content that has got more shares, in the news feeds of people who liked your page. The social media giant indicates that they are hoping to make Smart Publishing more widely available in the near future.
With Facebook introducing publisher-friendly tools, businesses can customize and post content to target audience and can monitor their actions using Facebook’ Page Insights.
