4 Resources for Writing Incredible Copy

Want to transform your blog into a content marketing magnet? With 3.5 billion daily searches performed on Google alone, there’s a great deal of competition when it comes to capturing the attention of your ideal customer. In fact, attention scarcity is one of the greatest challenges that modern marketers face, with the average buyer attention span reduced to 8.25 seconds.

With this in mind, we’ve researched some of the best tools out there to help you grow your content marketing channels with quality content. Getting back to basics and producing content that is accurate, timely and relevant will help you meet the needs of potential buyers while reducing your paid media costs and increasing ROI.

1. Grammar Girl

When writing for the web, optimizing your copy for organic search is a given. Understanding keyword research is now a common prerequisite for a skilled online copywriter. Although you should optimise your copy for organic search, quality copy that converts customers is still reliant on the same old-fashioned writing essentials, including a firm grasp of grammar.

In a study by Global Lingo, it was found that more than half (59%) of participants would avoid doing business with a company who made obvious spelling or grammar mistakes on their website or within their marketing materials. If this statistic makes you break out in a cold sweat, don’t worry, there are plenty of useful online resources to help you improve your writing. One such resource is Grammar Girl, this quick and easy guide translates even the trickiest rules of grammar into easy to understand instructions.

Content editors and other digital copywriting roles frequently involve working to tight deadlines, in fast-paced environments, with multiple stakeholders. If this sounds like your work environment then you may need grammatical advice on the fly to keep pace with your daily demands. Cue Grammarly, an easy to install browser extension that integrates with your existing programs to check your grammar in real-time across multiple platforms.

2. Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyser

Any content marketer worth their salt will tell you that the headline is the foundation of any successful content. Using emotional triggers in your headlines can be a powerful way to pique the curiosity of future readers.

There are many psychological hacks to get people to click: using questions, surprises or negatives will spur a user to click-through to your content.

Bland headlines are unlikely to generate much traffic for you and could increase your reliance on paid media to generate the traffic and increase conversions. One of the ways to check how well your headline will resonate on an emotional level is to use the Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer, a free alternative to the popular Headline Analyzer from Co-Schedule. Here’s how it looks:

Once you submit your headline for analysis, you’ll receive feedback based on the ‘Emotional Marketing Value’ of your copy. Understanding this emotional impact is essential to the overall success of your content marketing strategy. Developing brand messaging that resonates with your audience and understanding the tone that motivates your audience to take action allows you to reduce costs while increasing conversions and revenue. Use this tool at the beginning of your writing process to make sure you’re hitting the emotional ‘mark.’

3. Content Idea Generator

Do you have trouble finding new ideas for your blog? Most copywriters do. Coming up with fresh topics and angles can be difficult. It often feels like you’re revolving through the same tired ideas over and over. That’s where Portent’s Content Idea Generator comes in. When you need inspiration for a topic or specific keyword phrase, simply type it in, and the tool will give you results. Here’s an example of what happened when we tried “freelance copywriting.”

Not too bad, right? Even if you don’t use the exact title provided by the tool (it too sometimes has trouble with grammar!), it’s a great way to get ideas for your next post.

4. Readability Test Tool

Sometimes we as writers fancy ourselves too smart for our own good. We try to prove this intelligence through our writing, but oftentimes taking this approach does us a disservice. As online copywriters, we must appeal to the largest possible audience with our prose. This often means taking a step back and examining how others will respond to our writing.

An easy way to check the readability of your writing is by using the Readability Test Tool. You can test full web pages, specific segments of web pages (by adding a code to your page) or by inputting your content directly into the tool (most helpful when writing). It looks like this:

We tested the progress of this blog and got the following results:

When you test something, the site clearly explains the different tests run on that content and what they mean, giving you a clear visual indicator of how wide an audience your content will appeal to.

Now that you have these copywriting resources at your disposal, it’s time to get started! Write for your intended audience first, and don’t forget that a little bit of help can go a long way.

Master other aspects of digital marketing by joining our course and getting a globally recognised certificate! It includes 30 hours of in-depth lectures taught by industry experts and will equip you with all the skills and knowledge you need to plan, build and measure effective social media strategies.

Source: Digital Marketing Institute

Top 4 Influencer Marketing Tools for Content Promotion

Influencers are powerful forces that can help propel your blog towards significant profitability. Should someone like Tony Robbins re-tweet you, expect a torrent of traffic and more re-tweets. When Kim Kardashian promotes a product, the suppliers of the product better be ready for huge increases in sales. Top influencers have the power to increase your online lead generation and revenue to great heights.

So how do you connect with influencers? How do you even find influencers? Fortunately, there are tools to automate influencer discovery and even influencer outreach. Let’s take a look at some of the most effective ways of finding people to promote your blog.

Ninja Outreach

Ninja Outreach (NO) is the go-to tool for finding influencers. This practical multi-functional tool helps bloggers discover highly-shared content and influencers with a large internet reach. NO makes contacting the influencers and bloggers easy through its Outreach mode. Managing multiple templates for multiple campaigns, clients, or URLs is also a breeze.

Use the Content Prospecting section to discover great content based on the topics of the article that you want to promote. NO finds and sorts content based on the supplied keywords. The software also displays the Alexa rank, the number of social shares, and SEO metrics such as Domain Authority and Page Authority.

Pick any result and click the View Sharers button. The next screen displays a list of sharers of that content along with their social media stats and the SEO metrics of their website. This information would take hours to find manually.

The tool displays email addresses associated with each website and the category of each result. Maybe you want to focus on bloggers rather than big publications such as Forbes magazine. You can either browse the category tags or filter them in the search. Save your prospects to a list to be used for quickly contacting influencers later.

The Social Prospecting tab is for searching for bloggers, influencers, executives, companies, or journalists based on your keyword terms. Let’s imagine you want to find a journalist in Boston, with at least 50,000 Twitter followers to promote your latest blog post. NO makes this an easy process. Key in your search terms and add filters.

Once you’ve found your list of high-potential influencers, save them all to a list or save individual ones to the list.

BuzzStream

BuzzStream is one of the best-known blogger outreach tools. With a clean and easy-to-use interface, it makes the business of finding influencers and reaching out to them, as simple as pointing and clicking.

Once you’ve created a new project, the app gives you three options to get started. The first option “find influencers & bloggers” is straightforward. Click the button and you’ll enter the discovery page, which displays a free-text search engine. Enter a key phrase that describes the topic or focus keyword of your blog post. In most cases, we want to find influencers to promote a new content post that we’ve created.

For example, try “podcasts for entrepreneurs”. When I ran this search, BuzzStream found 155 influencers. You can browse individual influencers and add promising ones to the project you started. The content tab displays the influencer’s latest posts on their website. Read through the titles and see if the blogger’s posts are in line with your brand and blogging topics.

You can also take a look at a complete profile of the influencer and get some pretty detailed information. Average Shares Per Post is a good indicator of someone’s ability to influence the masses.

Going back to the main discovery page, we can filter down further by selecting a minimum or a maximum number of twitter followers. You might wonder why selecting a maximum is important but remember that Twitter users with hundreds of thousands of followers are less likely to respond to outreach than bloggers with fewer followers. The higher up the food chain you go the less chance of a positive result (unless you’re already a Twitter superstar). Connecting with less ‘powerful’ bloggers might not get you the massive exposure you want but if you add the results of several lower level outreach campaigns together you can make up the numbers.

Filter by last activity if you prefer influencers that are sharing regularly. Filter by location if you are involved in local outreach or building a local SEO campaign.

Once you’ve collected a list of candidates, the next step is to go to Outreach mode and contact the bloggers directly. BuzzStream is an all-in-one outreach app. It allows bloggers and businesses to not only find influencers but to streamline the process of contacting them through sophisticated templates and processes. The software even tracks email open rates and alerts you if a blogger hasn’t replied within a set period of time.



Inkybee

Inkybee focuses on finding relevant, influential blogs for your niche. As in all of the other apps we've reviewed, use the search form to enter your keyword or keyword phrase.

For each website in the results page, Inkybee displays metrics such as visibility and engagement. Engagement is calculated on the number of shares, likes, and tweets of the content on the site. More influential bloggers will have high engagement and these are the types of people that you should target. You can sort by city level, by engagement and by visibility level. Moz ranking factors such as Mozrank and Page Authority are also included as filters.

Once you’d applied filters, select the blogs that you would like to reach out to and save them to a list.

InkyBee has an Automatic Discovery service that scours the web for new prospects based on search terms. This is a great tool for discovering blog posts with mentions of your target keywords. If, for example, you’re in the content marketing space, add the keywords “content marketing” to the discovery service and when a new blog post with that phrase is published you get notified.

SEO Quake and Hunter

The last tool is actually two free plugins combined. Hunter.io works in a similar way to Ninja Outreach’s Email Finder. But it’s an easier process. Hunter is a plugin for your web browser which pulls all of the email addresses from a website. Go to any website, click the plugin icon and you have a list of the most important contact email addresses.

SEO Quake is an excellent SEO tool that also plugs into your browser. SEO Quake adds details of domain metrics to every result in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). This invaluable information about the authority and quality of each of the domains helps filter the important domains from the rest.

This method focuses more on finding highly influential websites with proven backlinks, traffic, and social shares. From there you can extract details about the influencers who contribute to the sites.

Use the tools as follows:

Open Google.com and search using your keywords as you normally would. SEO Quake shows you the metrics of each of the domains in the search results. Using this information, select a domain that looks promising and click the SEO Quake icon in the toolbar again. An overlay box will pop up displaying information such as the number of Facebook likes, Alexa Rank, total backlinks and estimated traffic.

If the website looks like an important one click the Hunter icon in the toolbar and a list of email addresses for that website will appear. From there you can substitute the email addresses into a template for email outreach.

The Hunter + SEO Quake method is a little more time consuming and can’t really be automated, however, it’s a completely free way of finding influencers.

An effective influencer marketing strategy can significantly increase your ROI when created and implemented correctly. By utilizing the software listed above you can ensure that your next influencer marketing campaign will provide real, measurable impact.

Maximise your influencer marketing effort by knowing how to use other social media marketing tools better - how? Just join our globally recognised certificate course today - taught by the industry experts!

Source: Digital Marketing Institute

11 Social Media Tools Every Content Creator Needs

To the outside world, creating posts for social media may seem easy. Marketers and brands around the world know there’s more to social media content creation and editing than meets the eye. From choosing the perfect image to represent your point of view, to writing Twitter updates with the perfect hashtag and tone of voice, here are some tools to help you along the way.

1 Hashtagify.me

Hashtagify.me is a free tool (with paid add-on features) that allows you to search for hashtags. Once you’ve searched for a hashtag, you can determine its popularity and how it’s used. The tool is simple to use: in the upper right-hand corner, type in a hashtag you are curious about, and search to find out its performance and related hashtags. You’ll also see the top influencers for that hashtag, as well as recent tweets using that hashtag. Paid users can sign up for alerts on particular hashtags, track influencers and usage patterns, and more.

2. SlideShare & SlideSnack

If your business utilises LinkedIn to share updates, SlideShare is a must. Once a separate site, SlideShare is now owned by LinkedIn. This allows the eye-catching images and presentations added to SlideShare to be automatically synced to the platform. By integrating these two platforms, you can have the best of both worlds: informative text articles and updates from LinkedIn and the captivating images of SlideShare. Sharing presentations, eBooks, infographics and more is always a great idea, and the platform allows you to simply press a button to distribute them to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

You can also embed your SlideShare presentation on your website using IFrame or WordPress shortcodes (depending on which platform you use).

Finally, you can take things to the next level with SlideSnack. This tool allows you to add your voice overlay to your content.

The tool also allows you to upload past presentations and add voice to them, then share them on YouTube or Facebook or embed them on websites such as Weebly, Blogger, WordPress, and more.

3. Grammarly

Grammarly is an all-in-one spellcheck and grammar tool that works all of the places Microsoft Word can’t. It helps users write mistake-free copy on Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and almost anywhere else on the web. Grammarly scans your text for common and complex grammatical mistakes, including everything from subject-verb agreement to article use to modifier placement. It also goes beyond regular checking to provide users for explanations and help them improve their skills. The Grammarly plugin is free for individual users, with paid features also available.

4. Typeform

Asking questions is a great way to earn engagement on social media. But sometimes asking one question isn’t enough to get the response you want from your audience. That’s where Typeform comes in. Typeform is a user-friendly quiz builder that allows you to ask your audience questions in many different formats, including image-based, multiple choice, short answer, yes or no, and more.

Once you have your quiz in place, you can share it across multiple social media networks in the formats that work best for your audience. 100 responses per month are free, and Pro+ and Pro Plus versions with additional features are also available.

5. Anchor

Anchor is a free social media platform for audio. With the Anchor app, users can easily create videos and audio recordings that are perfect for sharing on social media

How to Create Videos with the Ancho Mobile App:

1. Once you have recorded your audio, tap on the video icon.

2. Choose the theme of your Anchor video.

3. Check and edit the transcript of your recording.

4. Download it as a square, landscape, or portrait video.

5. Share it on social media!

6. Typorama

There are many free graphics tools that allow users to easily create beautiful images for social media, but most of them aren’t available (or aren’t very intuitive) on your smartphone. Typorama is an iPhone app that makes it easy to create amazing-looking graphics directly from your smartphone. You can create graphics of various sizes such as for Instagram story, Facebook cover photo, images with quotes, and more. ( For Android users, WordSwag is a great alternative.) Typograma is free for general use, with an upgrade fee of $4.99 to remove the company’s watermark, or $5.99 to unlock everything.

How to Create a Graphic with Typorama in Four Steps:

1. Choose a background or upload an image from your phone’s camera roll.

2. Select your graphic size.

3. Add and edit the text.

4. Save your graphic, or share it on social media!

7. PowToon

Video is exploding on social media networks. The problem is, many companies rely on expensive external agencies to create these videos. The finished product can look too contrived, miss the message mark, and really drain the budget. Tools like PowToon mean you don’t have to be a video master to create engaging videos. The PowToon platform allows users to choose from several templates and customize them according to their business. You can simply plug and play your content and share across your social media networks. Free and paid versions are available at up to $59 per month.

8.Animoto

Animoto is another great video platform that allows users who aren’t experts to create captivating multimedia. Animoto allows you to turn existing video clips and images into video slideshows with little effort. It’s one of the few video tools that also offers square videos for certain social media platforms and design tastes. Animoto starts at $16 per month, $42 per month or $64 per month, based on your business's needs. Annual subscriptions offer significant discounts.

How to Create Quick Videos with Animoto:

• Use one of the many storyboards provided by Animoto to speed up your video creation process. Each comes with a song, a style, and a particular structure.

• Replace the existing template content with your own text, video clips, and photos.

After you create your video, you can download it in various formats and levels of quality and upload it directly to Facebook or Twitter.

9. Placeit

Our final video tool in this list is PlaceIt.

This image and video tool allows brands to showcase their products and digital designs in realistic web/ video environments. It can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars on externally sourced product videos and images. A one-time purchase on the platform is free, or you can choose to pay $29 per month, $99 per month, or $199 depending on your brand’s needs.

How to Create Video Mock-ups with Placeit:

• Search for your desired environment. Tip: include your preferred device (e.g. iPhone or Mac) and background (e.g. office or cafe).

• Upload your image or enter a URL to grab a screenshot. Placeit will automatically place your image in your selected environment.

Once you have your product images, you have the tools you need to promote your products on social media via organic or paid posts.

10. Canva

A social media tools list wouldn’t be complete without Canva. One of the most popular tools for creating social media graphics, Canva allows users to create high-quality images quickly using layouts, templates and design elements. The free version of the tool is extremely comprehensive, but those who want more can invest $12.95 per user per month or go with enterprise pricing if it’s the best fit for their business.

How to Create Beautiful Graphics with Canva:

• Search Canva’s amazing library of templates and choose to use them as-is or to customize them for your needs. There is a section specifically dedicated to social media graphics. You can access the library via the “Explore templates” option in your Canva dashboard or this direct link: https://www.canva.com/templates/.

• Choose your unique elements to make the graphic your own.

• Share your new visual on any social media platform!

11. Crello

Similar to Canva, Crello is a graphic design tool that makes it easy for brands to create stunning graphic without a lot of prior design knowledge. Crello’s advantage over Canva is that it offers more than 10,000 free design templates, 65 million stock images, and more than 11,000 design elements. Like Canva, a variety of different image types are offered, including templates specifically for social media. Crello is free for users, though some design elements cost $0.99.

How to Build Graphics Quickly with Crello:

• Use Crello’s “Inspiration” tab to find a free design template or templates that works for your brand.

• Simply click on a design template you love, and customize it using the Crello editor.

• Save your finished product, and/or share it across your social media sites.

Whether you're a complete beginner, business owner or marketing professional looking to upskill, this social media marketing course is perfect for you.

Now you know the tools - time to gain the knowledge: join our globally recognised certificate course today - taught by the industry experts to find out more about social media marketing! Better yet, you can take the courses online!

Source: Digital Marketing Institute

September Update: RBG, Uber Eats, KFC, and Instagram Heroes

Can you believe it? 2020 is 3/4 over! Still, the world moves on and the news cycle continues to swirl around the two Ps - Pandemic and Politics - and the many intersections between the two which affect the digital marketing world: one such being Google’s plan to block political ads right after the US Presidential election polls close. But we’re here to bring you some other stories of interest from around the universe.

The Fearless Woman

One of the biggest news stories this month was the death of US Supreme Court associate justice, and feminist icon, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. An arresting tribute to her was this image of her characteristic lace collar placed on the famous ‘Fearless Girl’ statue located near Wall Street. The image appeared in a full-page ad in The New York Times placed by State Street Global Advisors (who originally commissioned the statue). This interesting story of branding and public symbols is covered by The Drum who also look at the history of the statue and the high-risk campaign that launched it in 2017.

Wash Your Hands, Don’t Lick Your Fingers

When fast-food giant KFC had to halt their latest campaign just before its launch, they came up with a novel approach. Taking a poke at themselves and their own long-held branding, they managed to create a campaign that can be released in every market. No matter what stage of the pandemic a country is in, hygiene is an issue, and KFC is playing on that. Their age-old slogan, “it’s finger-licken’ good”, is visibly blurred out in the campaign images. In the words of creative director at KFC’s agency, Mother, Hermeti Balarin: "There's this sense of unity around the globe right now. It's the first time ever for at least two generations we've had everyone feeling the same about something. As horrible as the pandemic is, it has created a unique insight or context for everyone to actually riff off." Read more. 

The Natural World - Now on Instagram

Instagram will be 10 years old on October 6 - wonderful timing to also celebrate the most exciting event on the platform this year. David Attenborough, the 94-year old English naturalist, launched his Instagram account on September 24th saying “The world is in trouble”. People paid attention very quickly: in fact he actually broke a world record when he managed to rack up one million followers in just over 4 hours, beating the record previously held by Jennifer Aniston (by 30 minutes!). At time of writing, at 4.7 million followers, he still has a way to go to catch up with Greta Thunberg (10.5 million), but we’ll give him a week or two!  

There’s No Place Like Home

There is much discussion about the new normal of working from home and how 2020 has changed it forever. The increased interest in home decor and improvements is apparently typical of any pandemic as explained in this Forbes article. In Ireland, at least, there is a discernible interest in people taking the opportunity to move from urban to rural areas. Companies like Google are still considering models of home/office hybrids while we should all perhaps be aware of how some employers might be keeping an eye on their employees at home. And there was Jerry Seinfeld’s piece on how New York is still the greatest city in the world in which to work from home.

And here's a fascinating fact: Uber Eats is now more successful than Uber’s ride-hailing service - as people have stayed home. At the end of August, Uber Eats launched an in-app CPC-based ad platform for restaurants. And their most recent spot is a splashy commercial where two inter-galactic heroes face off in a… umm... duel over their choice of takeout. Luke Skywalker and Captain Picard? That's the level at which the restaurant and food business has changed during 2020.

Diversity in the Fashion World

Zebedee is a British model agency that focuses on opportunities for people with disabilities, and they have already seen success in the fashion world: namely. being behind one of Gucci's most-liked Instagram posts. "I hope it is a start - the start of a real change in how marketing campaigns are put together", says co-founder Zoe Proctor.

In Other News

• In other fashion news, high-end brands have been flocking to TikTok to find ways to promote their brands for this fall’s fashion week season. 

• In podasting news, Amazon (Audible) has announced plans to launch podcasts. so DMI is, naturally, on course to ensure our own brilliant podcast will be on the platform. 

• Lego have said they will start to phase out plastic bags in their packaging and use sustainably-sourced paper bags instead. Have a look at our own case study on Lego on our myDMI membership platform.

• The folks at LinkedIn have been busy: they came out with a new look and feel for the platform, and launched a Stories feature as well as video calling. Read on.

• The documentary, The Social Dilemma (Netflix) is gathering a lot of discussion about the many issues highlighted over the years about social platforms. Read more on the DigitalSpy.

• Speaking of which, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter reached a deal with big advertisers about harmful content, negotiated through the World Federation of Advertisters.  

• If you missed it: This article was written by a robot, and commented thereafter by many, many humans, on the Guardian.

Make the most of the rest of the year by joining our globally recognised certificate course today - taught by the industry experts!

Source: Digital Marketing Institute

How to Create Outstanding Video Content on a Budget

Tired of competing against bigger, stronger websites for traffic from Google search?

Since Google dominates the search engine world by such a huge amount (recent data puts its market share at 65%) it’s easy to forget that there are other search engines out there, many of which can drive just as much traffic to your website.

One of these search engines is YouTube. With upwards of three billion searches every month, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine by total volume.

If your business sells a product or service that can be explained and promoted using video, it’s also an incredible marketing platform - one that you probably aren’t using to its fullest right now.

The old saying the “content is king” is true, but there’s no reason your content needs to be 100% text. By producing video content, you can reach a large audience with a fraction as much search competition as you’d face by optimising for Google.

Many marketers shy away from creating video content for one simple reason: it has a reputation for being expensive to produce. Slick advertisements and Hollywood movies make many people assume that producing a short promotional or explainer video is a four or five-figure project.

The reality is that producing great video content can be surprisingly cheap! In fact, once you add in the cost of ranking the content and reaching an audience, creating video content can often be cheaper than producing and ranking text-based content, like an article or blog post. The benefits that video content marketing can bring is just one reason why having an up-to-date digital skill set is essential for success.

Below, we’ve broken down the process of creating and marketing outstanding video content on a modest budget. Read on to learn how you can create top-ranking YouTube videos to promote your product, service or brand at a surprisingly low cost.

Before you start, find keywords that are perfect for simple videos

Just like it costs more to promote a great blog post than it does to create it, it costs far more to promote a video for competitive keywords than it does to film and edit it in the first place.

One of the best ways to lower the cost of producing your video content is to find keywords that are perfect for short, simple videos. These are keywords that Google naturally associates with video content.

If you’ve ever searched Google for a “how to” keyword, you’ll have probably noticed videos in the search results. This is because Google associates certain search queries with video, and inserts YouTube video content into the top ranked pages.

For example, you’ll notice several videos in the search results below, for the query “how to tie a bow tie”:

For this keyword, the top three results are all videos. This is because Google understands that this query is best answered using an instructional video. Instead of ranking text content, it ranks video content at the top of the search engine results.

Google tends to prioritise video content for specific keywords. Brian Dean refers these as “Video Keywords” due to the huge number of ranking YouTube videos. Google usually prioritises videos for certain keyword types:

• Review keywords, like “Bialetti Moka Express review”

• How-To keywords, like “how to tie a bow tie”

• Film/TV quotes, like "ET phone home" or "I am Spartacus”

• Song and album titles, like “David Bowie - Let’s Dance” or “Penny Lane”

Although great video content can rank for almost any keyword, you’ll get the best bang for your buck by targeting search queries that Google has already categorised as video keywords.

This is because Google’s algorithm ranks videos higher than text content for these keywords, even if the video content isn’t as well optimised. For example, the following video, which lacks numerous on-page optimisation signals, ranks very well for “how to polish shoes”:

A great way to find these keywords is to spend an hour or two searching for every “how to” term you can think of that’s related to your product or service. You should be able to find a variety of keywords that return YouTube videos.

Once you’ve found a video keyword that’s relevant to your business, write it down. Next, we’ll go through this list of keywords to verify that they receive enough traffic to be worth targeting using video content.

Verify search volume using the AdWords Keyword Planner

Once you’ve prepared a list of 10-20 keywords, you’ll need to verify that they receive enough search to be worth targeting. To do this, just enter the keyword into the AdWords Keyword Planner and click “Get search volume.”

Our example search term - “how to tie a bow tie” - gets 135,000 searches every month, making it a great target.

The AdWords Keyword Planner only lists the volume of searches for this keyword on Google. If you plan to host your videos on YouTube, which has its own internal search engine, you can expect to receive an extra 20-100% of the Google search volume from YouTube search.

As a general rule, you’ll want to create video content for keywords that receive more than 1,000 searches per month. If a keyword is particularly lucrative -- for example, a valuable B2B search keyword -- it could be worth targeting despite having a lower search volume.

Once you’ve narrowed down your keyword list to those that receive a good search volume, it’s time to start creating content.

Look for simple, low-cost video marketing opportunities

One of the best ways to create great video content cheaply is to look for videos that you can film on a limited budget.

It costs very little to create a video about “how to tie a bow tie,” whereas a keyword like “how to paint a ceiling” will require a long day of work, expensive equipment and several hours of video editing.

If you have a limited budget, focus on the simplest, lowest-cost video marketing opportunities.

Once you’ve found these keywords, figure out the least expensive way to create video content that answers the user’s question.

For keywords that request information -- like "how to pronounce balenciaga" or "how to get a deep voice" - you can film a useful video that answers the user’s question using a point and shoot camera or your computer’s built-in webcam.

To get a more professional look, you can shoot using a DSLR camera and some simple studio lights, along with a white background. Basic DSLR cameras capable of shooting in 1080p are available from $500, while lights and a white screen background are even less expensive.

Curtis Judd has a fantastic tutorial here for shooting against a white, “Apple-style” background.

Keywords related to computer and phone tutorials are even cheaper to create. Using software like Screencast-O-Matic, you can record your screen to show users how to install software and other tech-related tasks.

Invest in a good camera and a great microphone

One of the most common video production mistakes is buying a great camera, only to spend far less (or nothing at all) on a microphone.

Being able to shoot in 4K is fantastic, but it doesn’t help you reach a wide audience. Only a tiny fraction of your viewers will watch your content in 1080p or a higher resolution. Meanwhile, all of your viewers will appreciate crisp, clear audience.

A great rule to keep in mind is to buy a good camera and a great microphone.

If you’re recording using a webcam or a DSLR camera, you can usually record audio via a USB microphone. Tech review website The Wirecutter recommends the Blue Yeti, which sells for just over $120 on Amazon.

If your camera has an auxiliary port, you can record audio using a shotgun microphone, which attaches to the top of your camera and records audio from a single direction. This is one of the easiest ways to reduce unwanted background noise in your videos.

Using a great microphone costs very little and has several benefits. You’ll avoid having to clean up your audio in post production, which costs you a lot of time. You’ll also get far clearer, better audio in your final video, making it easier for viewers to understand your content.

Keep your editing process as simple as possible

There’s no need to spend hundreds of dollars on high-end editing software. Apps like iMovie or Filmora Video Editor are more than powerful enough to produce slick, professional video for use on YouTube or a landing page.

Better yet, both are simple, straightforward applications that you can start using in minutes with no previous editing experience. Avoid software like Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro, both of which are powerful but have steep learning curves that slow down the process of producing content.

Optimise for YouTube's video ranking factors

Once you’ve shot and edited your video, it’s time to publish. Since your goal is to generate as much search traffic as possible, it’s important that you optimise your video for YouTube’s video ranking factors.

Since YouTube has access to data like views, shares and viewer retention, it doesn’t use factors like backlinks to work out which video to rank where in its search results.

This means that you can optimise your video for most keywords using other ranking factors, like a great title and excellent content.

Here’s an example of a video that’s very well optimized for the keyword “how to boil eggs”:

There are several factors that tell YouTube’s search algorithm that this is a great result for “how to boil eggs.”

The first is the title, which includes the target keyword right at the beginning. It also includes a close variation of the title - “perfect hard boiled eggs” - which expands the range of keywords for which this video is relevant.

There’s also the view count. This video is hugely popular, which tells YouTube that it’s a useful resource that people are likely to share. There’s also a good like to dislike ratio, with far more people rating the video as good than bad.

Finally, it has a very high average view duration. This is the amount of time that people spend watching this video, on average. The average viewer gets over halfway into the video, with an average view duration of three minutes and 18 seconds.

All of these factors signal to YouTube that this video is the most relevant, useful result for “how to boil eggs.” As a result, it’s the top ranked video for this keyword, as well as several keywords that have similar intent.

While some of these factors are out of your control, there are others that you have direct control over as the creator of a video:

• Create videos that solve the viewer’s problem, so they receive more likes than dislikes.

• Make sure your videos are engaging and interesting to watch, so they achieve a good average view duration.

• Use relevant titles and video descriptions that include your target keywords.

The more competitive your keywords are, the more important it becomes to optimize your video content for YouTube’s search algorithm. Just like with Google search, you’ll find it easier to rank for long tail keywords than for high-volume, competitive search queries.

How can video help your business grow?

Over the past decade, YouTube has grown from a small video sharing website into the world’s second largest search engine. With over a billion users, it’s a marketing platform that’s too big for any business to ignore.

Whether you sell a product or offer a service, there’s a motivated audience on YouTube that’s waiting to view your content. How can you use this powerful platform to expand your audience and help your business grow? A better understanding of how social media marketing works definitely helps, especially in the Hong Kong market. You can join our globally recognised certificate course today - taught by the industry experts, to acquire such knowledge!

Source: Digital Marketing Institute

5 Secrets of Super Successful Video Marketing

Is it viral yet? Is it viral yet?

While going viral should never be the objective of your video marketing campaign (never ever!), the term itself has seemed to have taken off this year, exploded even…

Marketers, we’ve been hearing lots of stats like these: 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube every single day, 1200% more shares are generated by social videos than text and images combined, videos on a landing pages increase conversions by 80% and 80% of users recall a video ad they have seen online in the past month.

Eek…Well, if that’s the case then you best get to grips with the best practices for ensuring your video marketing campaigns smash your objectives and propel your social media forward. Below we reveal some of our favourite tips to help you create compelling, inspiring and actionable online videos.

1. Center Your Video Around the Story, Not The Sale

There is a heap of sales clutter on the Internet that is actively annoying and repelling your customers. Don’t let your brand be that guy – instead, your video should be centred around the story and not the sale. Remember: the same rules that apply for written content marketing apply for video marketing – concentrate on the value you’re providing for your customers.

Make the most of the emotive power of video by appealing to your consumers’ needs and hidden desires. Scared you’ll lose leads this way? You can always place a strategic and relevant call to action alongside a tracked URL at the end of your video (just make sure it fits into your overall story).

Take Warby Parker’s ‘How Glasses are Made’ video, a great example of storytelling it focuses on the origins of the brand, their ethos, culture and people to showcase their eyewear.

2. Make your Video Feature the Best 10 Seconds Ever

One fifth of your viewers will click away from a video within 10 seconds or less. Short and to the point – that’s what the video experts are recommending. Our advice? Get right to the grit of the tale and manage expectations from the outset (within the first 5 to 10 seconds).

Try sparking your audience’s curiosity by asking questions and using teasers to hook their attention right away.

Your video should immediately convey its value and answer that “why should I watch it?” question that will be on your audience’s mind. Should they watch it because it will make them laugh, because it will inspire them to act or because it will teach them something new?

3. Use Humour in Your Video. Stop Being So Boring!

According to Tim Washer, Social Media Manager at Cisco "Often in the corporate world, people get nervous about comedy and say it doesn’t belong here. But if it might help you get a point across efficiently and economically, why wouldn’t you try it and see if you can make it work?”

So what do your audience want instead? They want to laugh, they want to feel enlightened, they want to be pulled out of their boring 9 to 5's and forget about their realities.

Done well, a brand can reap the rewards from using humour in their video content. Take Snickers as an example.

"Caption writing develops your ability “to get into what John Cleese calls the open mode, where you’re playful and having fun and relaxed and not worried,” Tim continues. "The more you can get into the open mode, the more often you’ll find yourself coming up with fresh ideas in all areas of your life.

The takeaway here is to not feel constrained by what’s gone before in your industry and don’t try to emulate your competitor’s stiff tone and yawnsome script. Stand out and take a chance on being funny.

4. Optimise Your Video for SEO – Tag it Up

There are plenty of tactics you can use to ensure your videos get found easier in search engines. The first thing you should do to derive the maximum SEO value from your video (before you upload your video to any sharing sites) is to host it on your own domain.

It’s also important to enable embedding on your video as this will help you increase the likelihood of receiving inbound marketing links. Oh and don’t forget to avail of video sitemaps – in this nifty document Google explains how to create a video sitemap with ease.

When it comes to video for SEO, descriptions are everything. Why? Well, descriptions allow Google’s search spiders to make sense of your video and understand what the content entails.

So ensure that your videos are tagged with relevant keywords and fully explained with fleshed out descriptions and unique titles. Keep this rule in mind: if it has a box, it has a purpose – Google needs you to fill it out to help you rank.

5. Educate your Customers with Video & Prove Yourself

Did you know that 65% of your audience are visual learners? One of the most powerful methods you can use for video marketing is to educate your audience. And the great thing is that education comes in many forms. For example, you can teach your customers how to use your product or service and provide useful tips on how to make the most of it. Or you can create a webinar to showcase your industry knowledge, position your brand as a thought leader, add value to your consumers’ lives and collect leads in the process.

Video can also provide social proof for your product or service. When creating video success stories focus on the story of your customer and the success he/she achieved from using your product/service. This nifty question template from Copyblogger will help you create awesome and human-focused video and written testimonials.

Take Upwork’s series of video that showcases their role in providing skilled talent to companies of all sizes on a global scale.

Want to find out more about how you can better your video marketing game? Get a globally recognised certificate! It includes 30 hours of in-depth lectures taught by industry experts and will equip you with all the skills and knowledge you need to plan, build and measure effective social media strategies.

Source: Digital Marketing Institute

Latest News in Industry: Pizza Videos, K-Pop and McDonald's

August 2020 has seen the rise of the Staycation as consumers and travel and hospitality brands have taken on the reality of vacations in a time of minimal travel. In some ways it's been a silver lining for many as we get to discover our own countries, while others have gotten into trouble or been completely overwhelmed by people, like the whole of the UK! As we head into a new academic year, alongside fluctuating virus rates and local restrictions, we've done a round-up of some of the more interesting stories in the world of marketing this month. 

Pizza Home Videos

With cinemas and theatres still closed, Domino’s Pizza came up with a bright idea to get customers active and creative. Fans were invited to submit a very short home video by early August and a choice of entries will be viewable online between 7-11 September. The grand prize? A year’s worth of free pizza. Domino’s is actually following a trend for home videos that has also seen Macy’s and American Eagle take advantage of customer-created content. Read on. 

Dynamiting the Internet

If you haven’t already heard, K-pop (South Korean pop music) continues to dominate the internet. In fact, top band BTS almost broke the internet on August 23rd, when their latest music video broke the record for the highest number of YouTube views in 24 hours - 101.1 million, to be precise. The release of their first English-language song, Dynamite, has the world fluttering its collective eyelashes thanks to the band’s razor-sharp image and desire to “share some positive energy with our fans” during the pandemic (according to their press release). For further reading, you can get up to speed on the phenomenal success of the world’s biggest boy band, catch up on how men’s makeup is having a moment beyond just K-pop, and pick up some inspiration from BTS for your own marketing efforts.

Reeling in the Likes?

Users of Instagram (like myself) have not failed to notice the well-promoted launch of Reels, the company’s new short-video feature and its answer to TikTok. Reactions to Reels have been mixed, with one particular review calling out how it fails to address the 'paradox of choice' that is solved so successfully by TikTok, which keeps its UI (user interface) so simple that it brings content to you rather than make you work to find it. In short, TikTok is still more fun than Instagram Reels. Read more, on The Verge

Marketing the Golden Arches

Even the mighty McDonald’s has lost money this year. It is now poised to spend hugely on marketing for the rest of the year, with a focus on the three Ds: delivery, drive-thru, and digital. It will also learn from new behaviors seen during the pandemic - namely, increased use of mobile and kiosk ordering. In the words of CEO Chris Kempczinski, “ the mentality for us now is we have got the business to a good position, so whether we have a recession or don’t have a recession, have a resurgence, don’t have a resurgence of the virus, all those things are going to vary. Our mindset now needs to pivot strongly to going after share because that is the opportunity we have.”

Read more at Marketing Week

In Other News

• As retail stores have been reopening over the last couple of months, the tie with online shopping has become more evident and consumer habits are changing due to our altered lifestyles. These charts from the World Economic Forum give a fascinating snapshot, and this piece on Reuters look at retail sales in the Eurozone.

• Airbnb is in the news. The business took a huge blow with the arrival of Covid-19 - losing 67% of revenue and cutting many jobs - but they are ever-hopeful its planned-for IPO will go ahead. The company also announced restrictions on house parties and occupancy rates with an aim to be more in line with local restrictions.

• A July 2020 list of the top influencers shows many familiar names. But one thing worth noting is the list of top 3 influential “influencers”: two of them danced their way out of the world of TikTok and into more mainstream social media, looking to soon dethrone the long-held top position of PewDiePie (who started as a gamer).

• Apple has become Wall Street’s first $2tn company. That’s two trillion dollars. Quite the journey since the day it went public in December 1980. Read on.

• Charities and other non-profits have been badly affected by the Covid-19 crisis. In one effort to help, Google Ads offered $200million in ad grants for those in need of an extra push with their marketing.

• A recent interview gives some insight into how Bing uses user engagement metrics for ranking in search. Watch the full video here.

• Looking to read less on screen and more on paper? Check out Neal Schafer’s list of the top 15 marketing books to read this year. See the list here.

• With November’s US presidential election coming ever closer, social media platforms are working hard to stay neutral. Twitter has revamped its Transparency Report site and Facebook is introducing a voter information hub. Meanwhile, one report casts worries on the integrity of user data in the Trump campaign’s app.

Mind Your Health

The Drum put together a super list of some of the best-and-bizarre public health campaigns over the years. Check out the Britney-Spears-style Scottish anti-smoking ad, a confusing message on VD from the 60s and, our favorite, the classic “Dumb Ways to Die” PSA from Australia. Here's the full list.

And, Finally

Tired of feeling you haven’t bothered to get fit during the last six months? (Or is that just me?) Here’s an excellent list of non-intimidating and easy exercises you can do while brushing your teeth or waiting for the kettle to boil, from The NYTimes.

And don’t forget your creative muscles need to be worked on too: best way to do it? Get a globally recognised certificate! Our courses are taught by the industry experts so you will know how to deal with the local market better!

Source: Digital Marketing Institute

7 Social Media Mistakes Your Company Is Still Making

These days, businesses both large and small are using social media to promote their brand in one way or another. Unfortunately, many of these organisations are still making basic mistakes in their social media marketing strategies. Think you’ve got it covered? Take a step back for a moment and look at your social media strategy to find out if you’re guilty of any of these 7 common social media mistakes.

Focusing on Social Media-Only Objectives

Many organisations start using social media channels without a clear strategy. They see a platform that could possibly connect them with their customers, and they jump on that channel, basing their performance on vanity metrics such as number of likes, comments, and followers. But how do you know if these metrics are having a positive impact on your business?

Unless you connect social media actions to larger business goals from the beginning, ROI can be difficult to calculate, and social media ends up being something you do “just because” offering no real value to your business. Each social media channel you use should have its own distinct strategy based on key performance indicators that tie back to your overall sales and marketing goals. Think in terms of referral traffic to your website, newsletter sign-ups, and content downloads, for example.

2. Social Media is Run by an Intern

Letting your intern(s) take control of your social media channels is asking for trouble. Many companies have been burned by interns using poor spelling/grammar, sharing personal opinions that don’t fit the brand they’re managing, and showing a lack of knowledge when speaking about the business.

Just because someone went to college and “understands” social media, doesn’t mean this person should be managing your company’s public communication channels with little to no supervision. True social media management requires a complete understanding of your services, products, overall business, editorial strategy, and more. If you want to train an intern, that’s fine. But make sure that they are properly supervised by a social media professional with several years of formal work experience.

3. Limiting Your Presence to Only Super Popular Social Media Channels

Success with social media marketing often involves having a multi-channel social media strategy. Yet many brands are only on one well-established popular channel (such as Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn), and ignore other great channels such as Snapchat, Instagram, and Pinterest, where they may also have highly engaged audiences.

The channels mentioned above are also quite popular (Pinterest, for its part over 150 million users by the end of 2016), but there may be even more niche social channels that are a perfect fit for your brand (Think Vimeo, Periscope, Reddit, etc.). If you know your business personas, do some research on where they spend their time, then invest in adding those channels to your social media strategy. But don’t think you have to be on every social platform. Choose a few that work best for your audience. Then focus on quality, not quantity, of posts.

4. Using Social Media Only for Marketing

Social media is a crucial component of a digital marketing strategy, but that's not all. For example, your HR department can use social media for recruitment by posting jobs as they become available. What better way to promote a job than to ask your followers to share with their friends? It’s an instant boost you won’t find by posting on most job sites.

Perhaps more importantly, your social media channels should be used to address customer service issues. You should monitor any time your company is mentioned and respond quickly to comments and/or complaints. Helpful replies to comments can reach new audiences, improve your brand image, and increase the likelihood that customers will purchase again. Depending on your industry, you may need your customer service department to get involved.

See the stats below for examples of the importance of quick social media response, then see an effective customer response from JetBlue.

5. Missing the ‘Social’ in Social Media

Newsflash: company social media pages shouldn’t only be about sharing branded content. After all, it’s “social” media, which means you should be reacting and engaging with your audience, not just shouting out your content whenever you get the chance. No one wants to follow a brand that makes everything all about it. It’s like having a friend who only talks about herself when what you really need is someone to listen.

A self-serving social media feed looks unprofessional and spammy to your audience. Instead, you should have a mix of retweets (if on Twitter), curated content from other reputable sources, and conversations with your audience.

6. Boring Social

Do you ever wonder why no one seems to engage with your social media posts? It probably boils down to your content; it’s just plain boring. Are you simply posting the title of an article or blog and listing the link? That’s not very engaging. Or perhaps everything you post is text-based; you’re missing images, videos, and meaningful quotes and stats. Think about the type of social media content you click on as an individual. Then take a look at your accounts from an outsider’s perspective. Would you click on your company’s social media posts? If the answer is no, look into creating new types of content using the chart below.

7. Lack of Consistency & Focus

When your PR department launches a campaign, it probably knows its target audience, much in the same way you would know who you were targeting with an ad or email campaign. But what about social media? Are you truly targeting an audience or putting your content out there for anyone and everyone to see and respond to? This “spray and pray” type of approach (advertising your business anywhere and everywhere, hoping that people will notice you and praying your hard work pays off) doesn't often lend the ROI businesses are looking for. Focus on connecting with people who matter to your business - your customers and prospects!

Once you have found your focus, it’s important to consider consistency. How often are you posting? It’s not ideal to leave your channels with no activity for days or weeks at a time. Determine a schedule that works for you and stick to it. If you have a chance, create a planning calendar so you can craft your messages for the week or month ahead of time. It takes some time, but it can save you hours in the long-run if you have a plan and strategy in place from the start.

Social media marketing is about much more than just posting your content and hoping potential customers react - there must be a more sophisticated strategy underpinning your actions to successfully align your social efforts with your overall business objectives.

Now you know what pitfalls you need to avoid, strengthen your internet marketing knowledge by joining our globally recognised certificate course today - taught by the industry experts to find out more! Better yet, you can take the courses online!

Source: Digital Marketing Institute

What Makes a High Quality Backlink?

Getting backlinks (also known as external links), to your website from other sites is still one of the most effective ways to improve search engine rankings.

But not all backlinks are valued equally.

A handful of high-quality backlinks can significantly improve your SEO progress. At the same time, dozens of low-quality links can make little difference, or even have a negative effect if they're considered spammy.

The Three Levels of Backlinks

In Google's eyes, there are three levels of backlinks: low-quality, medium-quality, and high-quality.

Strictly speaking, Google classifies low-quality backlinks as webspam. These are backlinks which have been created in a fake way to game the system, and they're against Google's guidelines.

Medium-quality links offer value and are easier to attain than high-quality links. High-quality links provide the most value but are harder to achieve because often, the editorial standards are much higher.

The Three Core Elements of High-Quality Backlinks

What makes a high-quality backlink is subjective. Nobody knows for sure how search engines measure them, but most SEOs agree on three core elements.

1: Natural

Backlinks should be natural and where the website owner chooses to link to your site because it provides value to their readers and NOT because you paid them to do so or tried to manipulate them in another way.

This natural approach is an example of ‘earning’ a backlink.

This differs from unnatural backlinks where the intent is usually to fool search engines into believing that a website has a better reputation than it really does.

If Google believes a backlink is unnatural or spammy, Google may at first ignore it, and for repeat offences, punish the site and demote them in its search engine results.

2: Reputable

In addition to being natural, backlinks should be reputable.

Modern search engines look for social proof in how credible webpages are. Google has its dedicated PageRank algorithm which measures the importance and reputation of webpages. Here's Google definition:

PageRank works by counting the number and quality of links to a page to determine a rough estimate of how important the website is. The underlying assumption is that more important websites are likely to receive more links from other websites.

So, the higher the number and, more importantly, the higher quality of backlinks a webpage gets, the higher its chance of ranking for competitive keywords.

Google used to provide a metric for PageRank, and this calculated a rough estimate of the reputation of a webpage. Google stopped this because spammers were using it as a currency to buy backlinks which is against Google's guidelines.

So, think of PageRank as an algorithm or concept and not as a metric.

The Rel Link Attribute

Now, while we talk about search engine reputation, I want to cover the ‘rel attribute’, and this can be added to an HTML link.

By default, regular HTML links don't have the rel attribute, and this means that search engines can pass PageRank, from one page to another.

However, HTML links that contain values in the rel attribute often don't pass search engine reputation, or at least not the full amount possible.

These include the ‘sponsored’ rel attribute, the ‘ugc’ (user-generated content) rel attribute, and the ‘nofollow’ rel attribute.

For a long time, only the ‘nofollow’ rel attribute existed, and to help illustrate this, let’s look at this helpful image from Moz.com:

Previously, the nofollow attribute also covered user-generated content and sponsored links.

By adding a nofollow attribute to a link, you were instructing search engines not to pass any search engine reputation, which is what supplies the ranking power to the page. Nofollowed links were also NOT used for crawling or indexing.

However, after a Google update, Google added ‘sponsored’ and ‘ugc’ rel attributes to the existing ‘nofollow’ attribute. And Google said all three may now be used as a hint for crawling, indexing and ranking.

That said, I suspect the ‘nofollow’ and ‘sponsored’ attributes (for the most part) won't help with search engine rankings, and the jury is still out on whether ‘ugc’ links, (e.g. blog or forum comments) will either.

So, how do you check if a link has a rel attribute?

In Google Chrome, you can right-click on a link and click ‘Inspect’. This will reveal the HTML and whether there is a rel attribute or not.

It's safe to say; you’re better to have backlinks without the rel attribute. And that's because they're more likely to pass search engine reputation and sometimes these types of backlinks are referred to as ’dofollow’ links.

Metrics That Mimic PageRank

Moz has a Page Authority or PA score, which is described as a prediction of how well a specific page will rank on the search engine result pages (SERPs).
You can access the PA metric when using Moz's Link Explorer tool.

Similarly, Ahrefs has a URL Rating or UR score. And it's described as a measure of the strength of a target URL's backlink profile and the likelihood that the URL will rank high in Google.

You can access the UR metric when using Ahrefs' Backlink Checker.

Both are similar metrics and mimic PageRank. They are measured on a logarithmic scale from 1 to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank.

So, backlinks with a higher PageRank score and ones without a ‘rel attribute’ will pass more reputation and increase a page's ability to rank. While Google no longer provides a PageRank metric, Moz and Ahrefs are free metrics that you can use to mimic its behavior.

3: Relevant

The third core element of what makes a high-quality backlink, is that they should be relevant.

But what does this mean?

Well, much like how a search engine pays attention to both the reputation of a domain and page of a backlink, they follow a similar process for relevancy. Search engines review the relevancy of both the page and domain of a backlink.

Now, let's imagine you run a fitness membership website called Peak Fitness 365. And your signature course is called "5K to Marathon in Six Months".

If your website was featured as a blog post on a business news website and was about marathon training, the page's relevancy of the backlink would help your page.

However, as the website is better known for business advice, it would lack domain relevancy.

Now, if your marathon course was also featured on the Runner's World website, it would score highly on both page and domain relevancy.

So, sticking with the Runner's World example, let's now look at the page that links to your site.

It links to your course with the anchor text of "5K to Marathon in Six Months".

The choice of words used in the anchor text is important because it tells the reader what the page being linked to is about, but more importantly for SEO, search engines use it as a relevancy signal when ranking the page being linked to.

So, in this case, because the anchor text is "5K to Marathon in Six Months", this provides a boost to your page, for keywords in the "5k to marathon training" topic.

The Balance Between Relevancy and Reputation

Now, if we go back to the backlink on our fictitious business news website.

We know it has low domain relevancy, and let's imagine its reputation metrics are low to average as well.

So, does this make it a bad backlink?

Well, the fact that it doesn't tick all the boxes means it's not a perfect backlink, but it's unrealistic to expect all your backlinks to be high-quality.

But does this backlink have anything going for it, and will it help?

Well, it's a natural backlink which means it won't hurt your search engine reputation and it's certainly not a bad backlink.

Even though the business news domain isn't particularly relevant, the page's content is, so it does pass some relevancy.

On top of that, while the page and domain reputation of the backlink is comparatively low in the running industry, every little helps and this will add to your backlink profile.

So, is this backlink, low, medium or high quality?

For me, this is a medium-quality backlink, and perhaps on the lower end of medium.

It isn't high-quality because the domain isn't super relevant or authoritative. It isn't low-quality because it doesn't break any of Google's webmaster guidelines.

Conclusion

So, in summary, a high-quality backlink is one that is natural, highly reputable and highly relevant. While high-quality backlinks pass the most value, you can still get good momentum through medium-quality links, and you want to avoid low-quality/spammy links at all costs.

Learn more about how to improve your SEO by joining our globally recognised certificate course today - taught by the industry experts!

Source: Digital Marketing Institute

How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy

Have you been wondering about the best ways to market your content? With so many different channels out there, it’s difficult even for the most experienced professional.

What’s the best way to get the word out there effectively? Should you stick with the same platform over time? How many platforms should you use?

These are all valid questions, but in truth, it doesn’t have to be complicated. Part of your unique strategy will really be figuring out how your audience is seeing and engaging with you. Each social platform and content type is a testing ground, and even the best marketers will have to experience some trial and error sometimes.

The key is engaging deeply instead of just “talking” about a product or service.

So where do you start? Keep reading for some tips on how to keep your content marketing strategy on track.

Why create a content strategy?

If you’ve spent any time at all in the digital sphere, you probably already know that between all the social media platforms, email lists, personal blogs, e-books, whitepapers, videos and so on, there’s a lot of content floating around online out there. And the truth is that only a small fraction of it ever gets read.

Generally, content is the marketing “stuff” that floats around at the top of the funnel and thus is more geared towards lead generation and brand awareness than actual conversions. Part of the point of creating a strategy ahead of time is to make sure that whatever you’re creating has the best chance of reaching your audience.

What type of content should you use?

Do you know what type of content you should use to get the word out? This will depend on a number of things, including what social tools you’re using, what your product is, and the general behavior of your audience. Here’s a rundown of just a few of the many types of content that you can easily produce and share.

Blog Articles

Blogs remain one of the most effective and versatile types of content, and when developed strategically they can be re-purposed over time and across different channels.

The key is that you need to publish regularly in order to have them bring in traffic -- Neil Patel recommends getting at least sixteen 1,000-or-more-word blog posts up per month for effective inbound lead generation. If you want to get a lead on blogging skills, check out Copyblogger for some great pointers to get you started.

Audio

Podcasts are great ways to get the word out for those who prefer audio, and you can always record interviews via video and then use the audio component to market separately or as a podcast.

E-Books

E-books are good for lead generation and mail-list sign-ups, especially for digital tools like SaaS and educational packages. They are more detailed than blogs and as such are great for a learning-oriented audience

Videos

Visuals like this can say a lot with a combination of visuals and story-lines and data, and they’re also super compatible across various social media channels. Just putting a bit of extra time and money into one great video can get you a lot of attention when distributed strategically.

Document / Plan / Distribute

You’ll want to take existing insights and try to determine which of the different social platforms is most effective, and then choose one or two KEY platforms to work your content. Be sure that your brand and product fits your social media channel itself as well as the demographic. For instance, you’re better off sharing yoga clothes on Instagram and Pinterest, perhaps even via an influencer marketer, then on something like LinkedIn.

You can use a scheduler like Hootsuite for automated posting however it’s important to keep tabs and update things manually as you test and share so don’t get in over your head. You also want to make sure that a social expert is on hand for engaging in real time – just “posting” several times a day without engaging will not be effective at relationship-building in the long run.

Distribution will take place in three phases: Pick your options, develop a plan, and promote your content.

Here are some questions to consider as you design a distribution strategy:

• What is the key demographic on each of your chosen channels?

• What is the purpose or value of each channel?

• What type of media format does each channel thrive on?

• What times of day do you post?

• What’s the tone and best practice?

• Who do you have that’s in charge of this channel?

• How do your calls to action fit in?

• What KPIs will support an ongoing strategy here?

Tell the Right Story

Are you just telling people about your products or are you actually giving people a reason to believe that your product could be an important part of their lives?

The purpose of telling a great story is to add meaning and/or specific value to people’s lives. You need your brand to stand out amongst your competitors, and the internet is a wild place – it’s hard! This is why you need to make an impact with your content.

But depending on your product, it doesn’t need to be “deep” – something super concise and humorous can do the trick. It all depends on your key demographics.

Here are a few tools to help you find topics:

• Buzzsumo will help you find out what’s trending after you put in search terms.

• HubSpot’s Topic Generator will help you find more specific blog topics after you punch in an idea.

• The CoSchedule Headline Generator lets you choose some ideas and see how they fare when it comes to keywords and overall title structure as you brainstorm different topics.

These are just a few of many tools that you could use to help you develop content that is trending and highly shareable.

Always bear in mind, though, that your content needs to primarily be useful to the audience as well as, ideally, providing a high ROI to you. Developing content such as video that can be re-shared across different channels is an example of something that can offer a high ROI over time.

Search Engine Optimisation

Your overall positioning will influence traffic types and patterns, and your traffic patterns will also influence your SEO standing. It’s all a two-way street, and the rules sometimes change over time. To this end, having your SEO on point can be challenging and having an SEO-friendly website can take a while to build (search engines do tend to favor more established businesses).

But SEO is key to getting found in searches, so you’ll want to keep on top of things like:

• Links

• Metadata

• Keywords tell search engines

As you’re building a content strategy that works with your brand, you’ll also have to bear in mind how well this fits with your search engine optimisation (SEO) plan. You’ll want to focus your content marketing on audience engagement, and this should be genuine. However, you’ll also want to meld this with keyword research in order to ensure that the content you are creating is really going to bring traffic to your site if that’s your key platform.

Ideally, it shouldn’t be hard to meld these two elements, since search engines like Google favour quality content. But when you’re actually looking at the way that traffic and social is functioning around certain topics and pain points, you can use this information to tailor your content even further and differentiate your brand while ensuring your website remains in decent standing.

It’s important that every piece of content has a Call-to-Action (CTA) that’s direct and brand-focused – otherwise, your content isn’t really likely to generate leads. The cool part about social marketing, however, is that you can get creative with this. Instead of just saying, “Buy this product,” for example, you can offer a free e-book or trial offer to let users have access and decide for themselves whether or not your product or service is valuable.

The idea here, again, is engagement. Make sure your CTA on ALL content is clear, specific and relevant.

Key Performance Indicators

As you build a content marketing strategy, it’s important that you pay attention to the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that fit your key goals.

For instance, if you are developing a lot of content that’s specifically meant to convert, you will want to focus on conversion rates. If your focus is lead generation, you’ll want to look at, for example, how many leads were brought in via a specific piece of content.

Some ideas:

• To measure brand awareness: visitors, page views

• To measure retention: subscribes/unsubscribes, bounce rate

• Engagement: Likes, shares, retweets, comments

The key here is really engagement and brand awareness. You can tell how valuable your content is to your audience by how well they’re engaging. So, comments, mail list signups, and social shares are examples of things that point in this direction.

You will want to measure and monitor your KPIs, then incorporate your findings back into your strategy.

Final Thoughts

There’s really no single way to create a content marketing strategy – you have to do it in such a way that aligns with your budget and business goals. However, the main thing to bear in mind that, with digital marketing, you’re looking for engagement and conversations that are a two-way street. So, you’re going to pay attention to what genuinely draws people towards your brand.

Are they noticing you? Are they choosing to engage and purchase from you? Why is that? When your customers and clients are coming to you by choice, that’s when you know you’re doing things right.

If you want to know more about internet marketing so you can create a more holistic content marketing plan, join our globally recognised certificate course today - taught by the industry experts to find out how! Better yet, you can take the courses online!

Source: Digital Marketing Institute