Your Company Blog Is Still Just as (or More) Powerful Than Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook

Today, it can be easy to disregard something like blogging as un-sexy and outdated in terms of being a viable channel to market your business. Plus, with a new social media platform arising virtually every year, neglecting blogging is easier now than ever before.

Despite this, having an active, curated company blog is just as important today as it was 10 years ago (if not more important).

In this article, you will discover a handful of reasons why you should still blog even if you’re killing it on much newer, hipper social media platforms. You’ll also learn four strategies on how to maximize blog traffic and the influence of your blog.

Why You Should Still Write a Blog

1. Longer Lifespan of Content

For the most part, Instagram and Snapchat content doesn’t show up in Google’s search results. On top of that, the lifespan of a Snap is a mere 24 hours. On Instagram, posts are lucky to stay relevant longer than 13 hours.

The short life cycle of this social media content is certainly a double-edged sword: the fact platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are so real-time means they facilitate the fluid exchange of ideas and information. All this makes them timely and relevant, thus powerful tools.

On the flip side, it also makes content on the same platforms fleeting, causing it to be difficult for businesses to keep up with the “digital Joneses” when it comes to social media. It is in the best interest of these social media platforms to ask for more content. It is in the best interest of Google to ask for the best content.

By having a company blog, customers could potentially be reeled in years down the road, all with a single piece of high quality content.

2. Impact on SEO

Image Credit: VerticalResponse.com

Despite the amount of media attention given to Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and company, you shouldn’t forget that there are approximately 3.5 billion Google searches conducted every single day.

Comparatively, Facebook sees an estimated 2 billion searches per day, and Pinterest approximately 2 billion searches per month. Instagram’s total monthly user count just recently reached one-fifth of Google’s number of daily searches, and Snapchat is even further behind.

It’s clear Google is still the world’s top search engine. In order to get the most out of Google, you should be taking SEO (search engine optimization) into close consideration. When it comes to SEO, writing quality blog posts is a terrific way for your company to climb up the search rankings.

The higher your SEO, the higher your probability of landing a client who stumbles across your work through Google in the future.

3. Ownership

Time and again, history has proven that the relevance of social media networks is a hard thing to predict. Just remember, Myspace was king from 2005 to 2008, Tumblr was popular from 2007 to 2013, and Vine was hottest from 2013 to 2015.

Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and the rest are all terrific platforms to use in order to garner the attention of your audience and to grow an audience, but using them as your company’s “home base” could prove unwise.

Blogs are much different. They are yours and only yours. No one else can take them away from you…well, except GoDaddy or Google Domains, but you get the point.

Successful Blogging Strategies

Now that you know a handful of reasons why blogging is still an indispensable marketing strategy, the real work begins. To help you, here are some tips and best practices to use to make sure your blog is getting the maximum exposure it deserves.

Leverage Platforms Like the One You’re Reading on Right Now — Medium ;)

It’s no surprise that today’s online landscape is saturated, and the blogosphere is no different. That’s why fresh platforms like Medium are such a valuable asset to have to increase the traffic and influence of your company blog.

Medium provides the perfect venue to showcase your own blog because it is (more or less) a blog in itself. It is a channel designed specifically for written content.

Additionally, Medium provides users with something they can’t automatically get from a standalone blog: a built-in audience of more than 30 million monthly users. Medium gives users the scale that would otherwise take years to build and nurture with a standalone blog.

Ready to get started? Here are some pointers:

1. Read Quincy Larson’s article, which analyzes the best practices of the top 252 Medium articles in 2016.
2. Use tools like Rabbut and Upscribe to seamlessly capture your reader’s emails, preferably after offering them a freebie (ebook, video course, etc.) in exchange for their email address.
3. Use Medium to republish content from your company blog, and be sure to include a link to the original post so readers can stay in touch with you.
4. Try your very best to get published on a large, relevant publication. To do this, reach out to the respective editor (via email or Twitter) with a link to your 100% completed article. Include a quick pitch going over why your content would be a great fit for the publication.

Don’t Be Afraid to Pay

Don’t be too shy to pay to promote your blog in the form of social media advertising (via Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, and Twitter ad, etc.).

Social media moguls like Gary Vaynerchuk think Facebook advertising is single most valuable commodity in the online marketing world today, so it could definitely be worth your while to put some dollars behind the medium.

To get started, watch this short tutorial video covering how to create and manage Facebook Ads.

Use Quora

Neil Patel, digital marketing expert and founder of four multi-million dollar companies, preaches to his audience to search on Quora to discover which questions are being asked most often in your niche. You can find these questions in the Top FAQ section of the website.

After you find a question you like, write an answer to it in the form of a blog post. This will increase the likelihood others will search for and see the post, find it valuable, and come back for more.

Network

You never can go wrong with networking, and tools like Meetup.com, Facebook Groups, and LinkedIn Groups make meeting like minded people easier now than ever before. Set aside an hour to search for groups and meetups in your niche.

If you enjoyed reading this post, please recommend and share it to help others find it!

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This article was originally published on Inc.com.

https://themission.co/your-company-blog-is-still-just-as-or-more-powerful-than-snapchat-instagram-and-facebook-2caa4a60a316

What to blog about?

So on Facebook and LinkedIn today I did a post that we would be doing 15 blog post this month.

Why?

Because we know blogs are great for SEO and they give you lots more space to write than Twitter, LinkedIn. More space means more you can go deeper into what your company is all about.

Plus, we have been lagging behind because we get wrapped up with day to day stuff.

Yet, as someone who has been helping companies with social media for over 4 years, I know how tough this is going be.


So, how do you come up with 15 blog post a month?

Here are a few suggestions on some blog topics....

There is always news about the company--- for example you will be closed or open on Labor Day. You can reintroduce people to older products in new and fresh ways, share industry news, find funny or inspiration cartoons or photos (these often get lots of attention), coverage of upcoming trade show-(fall trade show season is about to start), create longer tech/informational pieces (these get lots of attention yet take more time to develop), ask questions about the state of the industry( these are tough-- the right questions to as most are pretty shy online), share employee/customer photos (always a good one), new hires, etc.

Well, this is 1 out of 15....14 to go.

Need help with blogging, we might be able to help. Contact us at 407-432-7706

The 'Social Media Phase Of The Internet' Is Over

Fred Wilson says "the social media phase of the Internet ended" in 2014.

Wilson, perhaps more than any other venture capitalist, spotted the emergence of social media early and profited from it. His firm, Union Square Ventures, invested early in Twitter, Tumblr, Zynga, Foursquare, and a few others.

In a post looking back at what happened in 2014, he says social media is pretty much dead. 

"Entrepreneurs and developers still build social applications," says Wilson. "We still use them. But there isn’t much innovation here anymore. The big platforms are mature. Their place is secure."

Messaging apps have replaced social media apps, says Wilson.

"Messaging is the new social media ... Families use WhatsApp groups instead of Facebook. Kids use Snapchat instead of Instagram. Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp in February of this year was the transaction that defined this trend."

Wilson thinks messaging and mobile moved into the enterprise in a big way in 2014. He says Slack, the fast growing group chart, is the "poster boy" for this trend. 

Here is Wilson's complete list of what happened in 2014:

1/ the social media phase of the Internet ended. this may have happened a few years ago actually but i felt it strongly this year. entrepreneurs and developers still build social applications. we still use them. but there isn’t much innovation here anymore. the big platforms are mature. their place is secure.

2/ messaging is the new social media. this may be part of what is going on in 1/. families use whatsapp groups instead of facebook. kids use snapchat instead of instagram. facebook’s acquisition of whatsapp in february of this year was the transaction that defined this trend.

3/ the “sharing economy” was outed as the “rental economy.” nobody is sharing anything. people are making money, plain and simple. technology has made renting things (even in real time) as simple as it made buying things a decade ago. Uber and Airbnb are the big winners in this category but there are and will be others.

4/ the capital markets have moved to the internet. we call it crowdfunding but what is really going on is raising money is a great application of a global platform that connects billions of people in real time. i don’t know the total amount of capital that was raised on the internet across all sectors (equity, debt, creative projects, charity, helping a person in need, real estate, energy, etc, etc) in 2014 but i am sure it is in the tens of billions.

5/ mobile OS has become a stable duopoly around the world. but android is splintering into google android and non google android and that may lead to new large players. 2014 was a big coming out party for xiaomi. if and when they come to the US, things will get interesting. they are the new (and better) samsung.

6/ mobile and messaging has started to impact the enterprise. slack is the poster boy for this trend in 2014.

7/ youtube became a monster. it always has been. but in 2014 youtube emerged as the place for entertainment consumption for anyone under 16. and these youngsters are going to grow up quickly. watching The Interview on YouTube was a fitting end to an amazing year for the king (and queen and joker too) of Internet video.

8/ we finally got rid of files. dropbox, google drive, soundcloud, spotify, netflix, hbogo, youtube, wattpad, kindle, and a host of other cloud based services finally killed off three letter filenames like mp3, mov, doc and xls. spending a week in the caribbean with young adults and bad internet was the tell on this one for me. they don’t even have mp3s on their iphones anymore!

9/ the net neutrality debate emerged as a national political issue with Obama’s endorsement of Title II regulation of the last mile of the internet. it is unclear how this issue will resolve itself but the public has spoken loudly and clearly and politicians understand that the internet needs to remain open for innovation and we can’t let the monopoly carriers and cable companies mess that up.

10/ cyberwarfare, cybercrime, cyberhacking, and cybersecurity was by far the dominant theme of 2014. if anyone had their head in the sand on this one before this year, they don’t anymore. this is our new normal. the US takedown of North Korea’s internet last week, and the state department official’s comment that “i guess accidents can happen” is a moment to remember as we head out of 2014 and into our future.

Read more: http://uk.businessinsider.com/fred-wilson-on-what-happened-in-2014-2014-12#ixzz3Nu1LQL77

Card-Linked Marketing: The New Wonder Channel?

I am an incredibly curious person. I am also, at least I like to think I am, a very well-read person, particularly when it comes to the world of marketing and advertising.

When something new comes along, especially something that has 75% of marketers singing its praises, I am immediately curious and want to learn more instamatically, as Burt Young infamously said in Rocky. You just knew I had to get a pop culture reference in, right?

The “something” that had 75% of marketers clamoring it over was something called card-linked marketing (CLM). Now perhaps you have heard of this before but I had not – not until I read the results of a survey of 300 marketers which revealed that three-quarters of them “believe this approach could replace existing types of advertising, including email offers (48 percent), coupons (48 percent), newspaper advertising (30 percent), online search advertising (29 percent), and TV advertising (24 percent).”

That line in quotes above comes directly from an article on CMO.com re: the survey and results.

Before I go any further let me state categorically that I do not believe anything, ANY channel will replace any of the above for the simple fact that in today’s world brands and marketers and advertisers need an integrated marketingapproach to reach consumers.

I am, in case you did not know, perhaps the world’s biggest proponent of integrated marketing so I surely do not think any channel will be replaced.

However, that does not mean there is not room at the integrated marketing table for another channel.

Enter CLM, which according to Kasey Byrne, SVP ofCardlytics a leader in card-linked marketing, is defined as “a new digital media channel for retailers, restaurants and other consumer facing brands which uses actual past purchase information to create targeted, relevant advertising for consumers, presented through the consumer’s mobile and online banking application.”

It is also worth noting that the aforementioned survey was conducted by Cardlytics.

But be that as it may, the survey found that 87% of marketers believe there are benefits to CLM with the top benefits being:

• Better ability to reach loyal customers – 49%
• Helps consumers save money – 47%
• Ability to target offers based on consumer purchase history – 45%
• Increased sales for retailers – 43%
• Better ability to target new customers – 41%
• Improved customer satisfaction due to more relevant ads – 33%
• Precise measurement of marketing campaign results – 27%

On top of all that, says Byrne, CLM has the unique advantage of targeting consumers based on their actual, individual, recent purchase history, not aggregated profiles or personas.

How ‘Bout A Nice B&B?

A nice vacation would be nice right now what with all the snow on the ground here on the East Coast. A quaint B&B would be just right and… Oh wait, I’m not referring to that kind of a B&B.

No, the B&B I am speaking of is bank and brand as in you need a bank, or financial institution and a brand to work when it comes to this form of marketing.

Jason Blackhurst, Senior Vice President, Payment Strategy & Emerging Commerce Executive, Bank of America on why they use card-linked marketing.

Photo of Bank of America ATM Machine by Brian Katt, Framingham Rest Stop, Massachusetts. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Card linked marketing allows us to simultaneously deepen our relationship with customers and with our wholesale merchants. It really is designed to be a win-win-win,” he said. “Merchants win because we’re driving more people or volume and they get to define how they capture that. For the customer, obviously we hope we’ve built a simplified way of receiving offers that doesn’t require searching multiple websites.”

One of those offers may come from a brand such asCalifornia Pizza Kitchen, who use card-linked marketing as a a tool to target new guests and change their dining behavior.

I was curious, from a brand’s perspective, if customers were unhappy about seeing ads in their financial statements but according to Ashley Ceraolo, VP of Marketing for California Pizza Kitchen, the response they received was all positive, adding that “guests were excited to see the special gift from us.”

In terms of their overall budget Ceraolo said card-linked marketing accounted for nearly 20% and may in fact reach 20% in 2014 and added that card-linked marketing “definitely cut into some of the print and traditional advertising (budgets).

So Where Does A Brand Go From Here?

I think if you are a B2C brand this channel of marketing is at the very least worth exploring and investigating if for no other reason it may give a given brand another opportunity to utilize a certain nine-letter word: relevance.

Byrne told CMO.com that “CLM is different because the recommendations provided to consumers are based on actual purchase history, so the ads are more relevant, increasing their likelihood of use.”

If there’s a way to increase the relevancy factor I am all for it – or at the very least the testing thereof.

Look this is no different than any other new “thing” when it comes to marketing. You need to test the waters first. No diving into the deep end, unless you’re feeling lucky, punk. Sorry, another pop culture reference. See Eastwood, Clint.

What do you think?

Do you think you card-linked marketing is at the very least something you would consider testing?

Or do you think it’s not even worth doing that?

Image source: Google GOOG -0.46% Images

http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2014/01/22/card-linked-marketing-the-new-wonder-channel/

11 Marketing Trends To Watch For In 2015

The fundamentals of marketing are always going to be the same, but with the landscape changing at the speed of technology, what matters most now is how one activates the fundamentals. Smart marketers know that they need to get ahead of the trends and anticipate the next big things, or else be devoured by their competitors. Here is what I believe could be some of the most interesting developments next year:

Transparency will become the most important tool of marketing. Consumers are going to continue to exert power and influence. The idea of radical transparency is something that few brands are taking advantage of now, and most brands fight it. Next year the best brands won’t be those with the best stories, or sort of made up fictional stories, but those that will give an accurate and real time picture of what they are doing in the interest of the consumer, at any given time.

CMOs will become Chief Simplifier Officers.Most companies create complexity, especially even as the landscape itself is turning more complex. They’ve arranged themselves in endless new vertical silos, by geography, product, or function that hamper them when it comes to working more closely and with the free flow of ideas. To optimize consumer and customer engagements, CMOs will begin to put silo busting on top of their agenda and begin to think holistically about the company’s overall value proposition, integrating messages and insights across business units, geographies, and functional groups.

We will witness the emergence of the marketing technologists. Too many companies think in terms of digital marketing. Instead, they should be thinking in terms of marketing in a digital world. The best marketer in a digital world would be the marketing technologists, people with heavy digital DNA and technology acumen. They will be integrated seamlessly with the marketing groups and will play an important role in how marketing strategies are developed and applied.

The winners will be adept at agility marketing. Social media produced a different, more elusive consumer with short-term thinking. Marketers are now chasing their daily meanderings in “likes”, “shares”, “tweets”, click-through rates, and ever more immediate but pointless metrics. The best marketers will have ever more consumer data, capable of faster adaption, shorter lead times, and always-on, real-time marketing. Instead of the next month or next quarter the focal point for the winners becomes the next hour.

Media agencies will step up and lead. Media agencies have been built to give strictly narrow media recommendations. But today creativity is the currency of an effective media placement. Media agencies will be moving from being media-facing to consumer facing. Uniquely positioned at the intersection of technology and the consumer, they will become their clients’ key strategic partner, even more so than creative agencies, as big data and technology make “Math Men” the most important asset of marketers.

Hispanic agencies will go mainstream. Hispanics are 17% of the U.S. population, and are 56% of total U.S. population growth since the last decade. U.S. Hispanic purchasing power exceeds $1 trillion and is expected to grow by 2017 80% faster than non-Hispanic. Marketers will finally pay attention next year and stop marginalizing Hispanic ad agencies. Those agencies are capable of engaging consumers well beyond this demographic. Hispanic agencies will reach the mainstream in 2015.

Marketing will shift from globalization to personalization. The world is more connected because of technology these days, but marketing is becoming more regionalized, and more localized, even more individualized, as consumers resist homogenization. Personalization is not a trend. It is a marketing tsunami, here to stay, which will transform how we think about and how we manage global brands. Companies will decentralizing their structure and increase regional and local influence.

Procurement will become more powerful. Companies will continue to maintain a cautious financial stance, and marketing procurement will continue to carry a lot of clout, driving for greater accountability and transparency. Procurement will partner more closely with the CMO, CIO, CTO and CFO to remove internal roadblock and it will become more focused on agency operations and improving efficiencies there, not just fee negotiations.

There will be a growing focus on Internal Communications.Companies will be focused on internal communications as a marketing asset. They will look at it as a key challenge and opportunity to create brand ambassadors and make sure that employees and vendors understand and live “the brand,” as well as the vision and strategy of the company.

Holding companies will start divesting assets. The legacy agencies, those that still adhere to the obsolete TV model, having become mature businesses. The ad giants have been frantically gobbling up digital agencies, but the labor intensive digital model is less lucrative than the TV-focused business model. With growing pressure on their bottom line and with fewer opportunities to grow via M&A activity there will be pressure to divest non-essential assets.

The economics of marketing in a digital world will challenge marketers. Because smart content creation should be native to the digital channel that reaches the audience, the single biggest challenge that marketers will need to solve is how to scale content in an economic way.

Avi Dan is founder of Avidan Strategies, a leading agency search and compensation consultant

http://www.forbes.com/sites/avidan/2014/11/09/11-marketing-trends-to-watch-for-in-2015/2/

6 Website Design Flaws to Avoid

6 Website Design Flaws to Avoid

BY ILYA POZIN  @ILYANEVERSLEEPS

Forget text--here's why a great website design is worth a thousand words.

1.7k SHARES

 

 

 

How long do you have to make a good impression online? According to researchers, the amount of time could be as little as 50 milliseconds. Your website design has to capture attention, and capture it fast to avoid losing out on customers and clients.

Here are the six big design flaws to avoid, so you can keep eyes on your website for more than 50 milliseconds:

Know where the eye wanders

What is your audience looking at when it first sets eyes on your page? Eye tracking studies have been performed for years, and the same pattern has been found multiple times. According to eye tracking research by the Nielsen Norman Group, people generally tend to view websites in an "F" pattern. This "F" pattern is true across articles, e-commerce sites, and even Web searches.

Therefore, the location of your most essential information is important, including links and call-to-action statements. Placing important information at the top of your website or in the upper lefthand corner means your audience is more likely to see and digest it quickly.

Choose the right images

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The images you choose will have a huge influence on how viewers see and respond to your site. Positive images evoke a similarly positive feeling for your audience, so you might want to include some smiling faces. In fact, research by Temple University found inspiration-related design elements had the biggest impact on first-impression formation on travel and tourism websites.

Sunny optimism is not only attractive but also more likely to leave a lasting impression on your target audience. According to research, positive expectations can actually positively affect user impressions. Ignoring upbeat images isn't an option. If your site paints a vividly upbeat portrait of your company, users will form a first impression built to last.

Design for everyone

There are plenty of audience segments you need to consider when designing, yet many companies and Web developers are leaving potential customers on the table. People living with disabilities are a huge audience, and you should build your site to be as inclusive as possible.

Consider using Alt tags, so a screen reader can pick up the images on your site. Create subtitles and transcripts for your videos, describe your links in greater detail, and provide larger clickable areas for those with limited mobility. Web design should be inclusive, not exclusive, because your site or company should want to make room for everyone.

Mind your color wheel

Speaking of disabilities, did you know approximately 0.5 percent of women and 8 percent of men have some form of color blindness? Unfortunately, few designers spend much time considering color blindness when putting together the color wheel on websites. Red-green color blindness is the most common form, yet most sites include red prominently as call-to-action items and error messages.

It can be hard for those living with red-green color blindness to, for example, notice an error made when filling out a form if the red color recedes into the background. Use color cues in combination with other images and graphical symbols when trying to grab the attention of users.

Use nonverbals to spur call-to-actions

As humans, we have a natural tendency to follow the gaze of others. Which is probably why a study called "Eye Gaze Cannot Be Ignored" found we tend to even follow the gaze in still images. For Web design, this is a powerful tool that some designers are missing. The nonverbal behavior in the images you select can influence the actual behavior of your site's visitors.

This means you might want the image of your company mascot to stare directly at the call-to-action item or at newsletter signup on your page. Visitors will be more likely to pay attention to what the image is looking at by following eyelines.

Know your target audience

One of the biggest design flaws is ignoring your target audience. Are you targeting investment bankers, AARP members, or tech-obsessed Millennials? The audience should dictate many of the design elements, from images to font size. Pay attention to what your competition is doing, and make sure you're on-trend instead of trailing behind the pack.

You should also know from where your target audience is coming. Smartphones and tablets have changed the game, meaning mobile optimization is more important than ever before.A study by Latitude found 61 percent of consumers feel more positive about a brand or company if they have a good mobile experience. Ignoring the new mobile reality is a huge design flaw, no matter what your target audience.

Understanding these common design flaws can help you build a better user experience and convert more visitors into loyal customers.

What do you think? What are some common website design flaws you've noticed? Share in the comments!

http://www.inc.com/ilya-pozin/6-website-design-flaws-to-avoid.html