-
Verizon Droid: iDon't Understand Microsite Search Engine Optimization
Kris Jordan
Kris Jordan leads web programming & development at New Media Campaigns; Kris previously worked for Microsoft's Developer Division, and studied Computer Science at Brown University and UNC Chapel Hill. You should follow Kris on Twitter.
I've been waiting for Verizon to announce a competitive smart phone for a quite some time. With a barely functional, 3 year old Motorola Q you better believe the first time I saw the much talked about "iDon't" commercial running during a ballgame I to ran to grab my notebook to check out the campaign's microsite: DroidDoes.com.
Big Red is flexing its marketing muscle to hype its self-proclaimed iPhone killer on all major mediums: TV, direct mail, Google ads, you name it. "Everything iDon't Droid does." Like the TV ad, these other pieces drive users to the microsite, too. With this big of an ad spend and a first-class partnership with Google you would think the microsite would be out of this world good.
As far as microsites and marketing landing pages go, DroidDoes.com is out of this world bad. Google should be embarrassed of how their Android Experience phone is being marketed. Not only is DroidDoes.com 100% flash but the flash itself isn't being indexed by Google, the content behind the flash is embarrasingly bad (pictured below), and you can't link to features you've navigated to within the microsite.
"Don't you wish you had a sidekick robot that moved at light speed?" This is what Google (via Google cache) sees when it visits DroidDoes.com and its indexing algorithm tries to figure out what the Droid is about. Google doesn't care about the fancy flash techniques or the robovoice saying "droid". Google cares about content, not flash.
When Google has access to meagingful content it can read, i.e. plain old "semantic" HTML, Google does a lot of work on your behalf. Check out what you get when you search for 'iPhone':
Not only do you get a link to the web site, but Google provides links to the other places on the iPhone website a visitor is likely to want to go and brings them directly there. This is possible because Apple's iPhone content is properly crafted using semantic HTML. Apple also used a meangingful meta description allowing Google to succinctly describe and position the iPhone.
Contrast this with the official result on a search for 'Droid':
Because subpages don't exist, Google can't do a better job linking you to the things a Droid-seeker is looking for: how to buy, features, support, apps, etc. The DroidDoes microsite is one gigantic flash file Google can't link to. The DroidDoes.com website team should be even more embarrassed of their meta description which doesn't describe what Droid is, at all. Upon further inspection there is more to the meta description than meets the eye:
"Get to know Droid a little better. Droid Does the Network. Droid is exclusive to Verizon Wireless, the most reliable network available. Droid Does Android 2.0. Droid contains a new exclusive version of the OS. Droid Does Multitasking. Make a call, answer an email and launch multiple apps simultaneously. Droid Does 10,000+ Apps. Gain power with every app. Droid runs multiple apps simultaneously. Droid Does 5 Megapixels. With a built in flash and 5 megapixels of detail - enhancing resolution, you can capture low light, fleeting moment in detail."
What DroidDoes.com doesn't know is that Google caps meta descriptions at around 160 characters. The DroidDoes microsite's description is 550 characters. No one will ever see the meat of their description because it is too long.
Everything DroidDoes.com uShouldn't on a Microsite
Most of us don't have multi-million dollar budgets to launch and hype advertising campaigns on the scale Verizon has taken its Droid campaign. For all the money they are throwing at consumers they are losing valuable, targetted inbound traffic because of the many poor technical decisions making up DroidDoes.com. With tighter budgets the rest of us can't afford to make these microsite mistakes. Here are a few high-level lessons to take away:
- Do not build 100% flash based microsites
- Especially if the flash file is not created carefully for Google to index
- Especially if you can't link directly to locations within the Flash file
- Always have meaningful HTML content for search engines to index
- Meta description should be less than 160 characters long and descriptive
- Use language and keywords that people search for to find your microsite (i.e. not 'always wanted a pocket robot?' when you're selling a phone)
- Content for all images and flash should also be in HTML
The Droid is going to be Verizon's most compelling smart phone. It's Google's most complete Android phone and first in the Android 2.0 line. Yet the Droid's promotional microsite is underwhelming, clunky, and out-of-touch with the internet of 2009. If your marketing budget isn't that of a Fortune 500 company you can't afford to make the same inbound marketing mistakes with your microsite as the hotshots at Verizon who decided to promote an internet phone that can't play flash videos using only flash video.
- Do not build 100% flash based microsites
-
Judge an Ad Agency's Website On Content Not Creative
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
As advertising has moved further online and into social media over the past few years, it’s no surprise that clients have expected their agencies to be able to help them navigate and leverage this unfamiliar territory.
However, while virtually every agency claims to have the capabilities to help their clients in this space, few top agencies actually demonstrate that proficiency on their own site.
When judging agencies, you should judge the site on its content rather than its creativity.
Just about everyone I know wants their website to serve as a source of leads and to bring in new business. With that in mind, why would you hire a firm that has not even shown the ability to do that with their own web presence?
As a technology partner for advertising agencies, we have worked with many agencies to build their own sites. On each agency site, we place a premium on content and using the site as a lead generation tool. However, looking through top agency sites, it’s impossible not to notice that most agencies ignore the very advice that they give to clients.
This post looks at three very important content-oriented criteria on which to judge ad agency websites: blogging, optimization, and social media.
The Importance of An Ad Agency Blog
In today’s culture, no agency should have a website without a blog. It’s a proven inbound marketing and lead generation tool, an opportunity to promote work and news, and an educational resource for clients and prospects. Not to mention, they’re probably going to try and sell you one, so how can you trust them if they don’t eat their own dogfood?
Not only is it important to check that they have a link to a blog, but it’s also essential that you read the content and hold the firm to it. Is it thoughtful, helpful, and a priority? It’s important to ensure the firm is actually using their blog to engage, educate, and attract an audience rather than just somewhere that they post company news.
A great example of an ad agency blog is the DraftFCB blog. First, the firm demonstrates a rather rigorous posting schedule by adding new content nearly every day. Furthermore, it instantly caught my attention that management is responsible for much of the content. It’s not just a group of interns who had the summer job of writing posts.
My only complaint about the DraftFCB blog is that they host it on a separate domain from their main site, which is a definite no-no when setting up a blog for your business. Overall though, the top to bottom commitment and great content demonstrate that this agency really believes in blogging and its benefits for the firm and its clients.
Is the Content Optimized?
It’s true that major agencies don’t need to be focused on optimizing their site and content to an obscene level, as local targeting isn’t too important to them if they already have a national reputation. However, their site should still demonstrate the fact that they understand the basic tenets of optimization.
Perhaps the most common mistake among agency websites is that the content is totally invisible to search engines. If the site is built in Flash, then it is almost certain that its content is invisible to search engines.
If their site is readable by search engines, you should browse through the rest of the site and ensure that they have a basic understanding of SEO. Check to make sure they have clean URLs, place relevant title tags on pages, use web-safe fonts and not just images, and show an understanding of header stylings.
Again, most ad agencies aren’t going to take their SEO efforts to an extreme, and that’s completely fine. However, they should use their site to demonstrate that they understand how to make a content driven website in a way that’s easy for Google to index.
Social Media Usage
One surprisingly lacking element of top agency sites were their integration of social media into the site. Very few allowed you to easily share their news, blog posts, and other content across media such as Twitter, Facebook, Delicous, and others.
Furthermore, most agencies don’t have prominent links out to their social media presences. If they don’t make an effort to integrate social media into their site, that should be concerning to you.
However, that still shouldn’t stop you from actually making an effort to go scope out their presences on social networks. I would recommend looking for the presences of the general agency, the managing partners, and the account reps for your brand.
Look at how they use the medium. Are they engaging others and making a genuine effort to connect? Do they publish useful content? Have they been in the medium for a meaningful amount of time? These are all important things to analyze.
I’ve seen agency execs set up a Twitter account literally the day before a presentation, because they were pitching Twitter in the project. How can you trust them to advise you on using a medium if they hardly do it themselves?
Conclusion
An ad agencies site should be much more than a TV ad online – they should prove that they understand the medium and the responsibilities that come with it. If an agency is pitching you an overall online strategy, it’s essential that you take a hard look at theirs, too.
Don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions and be willing to put some time into the research. What has been your experience with agencies that talk the talk but don’t necessarily walk the walk? Are there other things to look out for on agency sites?
-
Our Favorite Internet Marketing Tools and Resources
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
On our web development blog, Joel recently compiled a great list of our favorite development tools and resources that we've created over the past year. I wanted to take this opportunity on our Internet Marketing Blog to do the same.
Search Engine Optimization
Organically ranking high in search engines is a key component to driving quality traffic to your site. These resources cover a variety of tools to better optimize your site and some basic strategy behind why SEO is important.
New Google Tool Suggests Competitive Keywords Based on Site ContentGoogle now allows Adwords users to run a report on their site that suggests keywords to target. This new tool is very valuable to many different marketers, ranging from people running their first Adwords campaign looking for good terms to experienced advertisers trying to devise new keywords to target.
Three Basics of Search Engine Optimization
SEO vs. PPC: Analyzing the Value of Each with Heat Charts
The Importance of Geotargeting Your SEO Campaign
Blogging
One of the most effective and efficient ways to market your business online is by having a company blog. The following articles explain the concept of Inbound Marketing and feature our series on blogging for business.
Preparing to Start a Business BlogThis is the start of a three part series that covers the basics of Blogging for Business, from the initial build to making sure you're getting the most out of your blog through social media promotion.
Strategy for Writing Business Blog Posts
How to Promote Your Blog Posts
Gathering Data
One of the most important goals of a site is gathering data and leveraging it in the future. From landing pages to registration splash pages to iterative data collection, the posts below provide good strategies to successfully build out your own list.
Example of a Great Landing Page Design: Netflix.comA landing page is an important component of your online marketing campaign strategy. The number one goal of a landing page is to convert a prospect by having them register information with your site. That information could be for a free whitepaper, an online newsletter, free demo, or another call to action.
Make It Easy for Visitors to Register Their Data: A Close Look at USAirways.Com
Political Splash Pages: Are They a Good Idea?
Social Media
As the web has become more and more social, we've wrote several articles exploring what exactly are social media and how to best leverage them.
4 Innovative Uses of Twitter for Social GoodOne of Twitter's strengths is content sharing both in the form of links and retweets (RTs). As the popularity of retweeting has grown and Twitter has improved its search capabilities, many people have come up with some creative and powerful ways to take advantage of the Twitmosphere to help fight for a cause.
Selling a Date: A Case Study in Facebook Advertising (very funny)
Online Advertising
A good, and sometimes essential, compliment to your online presence and marketing effort are paid ads, especially Google Adwords.
Google Adwords Tips: Improve your results in 3 stepsGoogle does a great job of providing a venue for you to reach millions of people from your computer at home. Running an effective Adwords campaign takes dedication and attention to the many details that Google provides you. I like to think of it in 3 connected but distinct phases: Create, Track, Adjust.
Optimizing Adwords Campaigns: Different Strategies for Search vs. Content Ads
Selling a Date: A Case Study in Facebook Advertising (very funny)
-
Successful Blog Posts Target Seekers not Browsers
Joel Sutherland
Joel Sutherland leads operations at NMC where he has launched over 250 sites and served as lead developer on the company's CMS which serves millions of unique visits each year. Joel has an Honors Degree in Computer Science from UNC Chapel Hill where he was a Morehead Scholar. Follow Joel on Twitter.
Writing good blog content that drives traffic requires a different style than writing content for traditional mediums. This is because of how your readers find the content. The difference is between "browsing" and "seeking".
Browsing
When a person reads a newspaper or general news website, they are typically "browsing." They are skimming headlines and looking for something that they find interesting. The headlines may vary widely in topic. Once they choose to read an article it is expected that they will receive some background information on the subject since it may be unfamiliar to them.
Think of the best content from the New York Times. It is typically longer and you come away much more knowledgable about an entire subject. So in order to present an issue, a traditional article makes sure to at least summarize the subject before addressing the new issue or development. This structure of a news article has been in place for decades and is driven by the "browsing" behavior that readers use with traditional media.
Seeking
The reader behavior that a blog targets is much different. The most successful blogs focus on a niche. Their content is found by a visitor either typing specific search terms into Google or by finding the article on a focused area of a social news site. In either case, the reader already knows what they are looking for and is ususally very familiar with the general topic.
This makes general pieces and background information much less useful. Many successful blog posts are specific and stick directly to the post's core point. A specific post is more useful to an already-educated reader. The novel information density can be much higher which results in good inbound links and more enticing headlines.
The specificity is also very helpful when trying to win keywords. While it would be next to impossible for our blog to rank well for something as general as "jQuery Development" as a whole, we do very well for specific keyworkds like jQuery Portfolio. This strategy is often referred to as inbound marketing.
Keep this in mind as you write your blog content. Specific content is easier to publicize and is more helpful to a niche than general content.
-
Why We Decided To Split Our Blog In Two
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
As readers of our blog have likely noticed, we have greatly increased our blog posting frequency over the past couple months. We hoped that this renewed dedication to blogging would help our inbound marketing efforts with better organic search rankings, increased inbound links from other blogs, more exposure across social networks, greater mind share, and a larger number of subscribers.
Thus far, our efforts have been extremely successful in almost all of those facets. We've seen our organic search traffic more than triple, reached tens of thousands of new people, had our posts linked to from dozens of other poplar blogs and publications, experienced an increase in traffic from Twitter and other social networks, achieved some recognition as a leader in jQuery techniques, and more. However, our subscriber count has stayed rather stagnant, with only a slight increase of about 15%.
At first, we wondered if perhaps our increased frequency was causing people to unsubscribe? Quickly, we recognized that many of our favorite blogs also post daily, so we doubted that frequency was a deterrent. Also, upon looking at the Feedburner statistics, we saw that the main issue was a lack of new subscribers rather than an increase in unsubscribers (at least that meant our current subscribers were enjoying what we write!).
We then took a look at our actual blog content to see if we could gleam any insights from our actual writing. It quickly became apparent that our posts varied, almost exactly 50/50, between Internet marketing topics and in depth web development techniques.
As a non-developer, I can attest to the fact that no matter how interesting I found a marketing post, if it was sandwiched between posts about smarty image resizing and jQuery calendars, that I likely would not subscribe to that overall blog and would rather just hope to stumble upon it again sometime in the future.
By not focusing our blog on a specific niche, we were losing out on building our subscriber count for people interested in only that specific topic. However, while we certainly wanted to increase that subscriber number, we couldn't sacrifice one of our niches, as both are important to our company and its continued growth.
Half of our business is with folks who look to us for programming expertise and use our CMS for designers and ad agencies. While the other half is with end-clients who come to us for our Internet Marketing and web design knowledge to build and leverage their own web presences.
That is when we came up with the solution to divide our blog into two separate blogs: an Internet Marketing Blog and a Web Development Blog. That way, all of our new organic and inbound traffic would land on the blog that most interests them, be able to browse that niche's content, and have the ability to subscribe to just that blog. Also, understanding that there are some renaissance men out there, like Joel, who are equally interested in development and marketing, we'll allow people to continue to be able to read and subscribe to the "Full Blog."
We're interested to see how this experiment evolves and it if it affects our subscriber count and perhaps even our inbound links, as people read more links when presented with a full blog of related content to digest.
Now, what you've all been waiting for: if you want to specialize your feed from us, feel free to choose from below. Thanks for your continued support! Let us know your thoughts on this strategy in the comments and if this change is likely to affect whether or not you subscribe.
Internet Marketing Blog Subscription
Web Development Blog SubscriptionFor more information on business blogging, check out our series on blogging for business.
-
Small Steps: Integrating SEO into your Press Releases
Megan Winterhalter
Megan Winterhalter is the Marketing Assistant and Copywriter for New Media Campaigns. She assists in marketing communications and launching client websites. A senior in The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC Chapel Hill, Megan is pursuing a degree in Strategic Communication. Megan interned at New Media in the summer of 2009 and has spent time working in the creative department of McKinney. Find out what she is up to by following her on Twitter.
Ten years ago, companies would send press releases to various media outlets in the hopes of a simple mention in order to gain publicity for their company. Now, with the onslaught of the Internet, social media, and company websites, companies can create their own publicity by developing and posting well-written press releases to their website.
The key to driving traffic to your site is making sure your press-releases are, in fact, well-written. Not only should your press release follow a general format that ensures specific details are included, but it should also be well-written from a search engine's point-of-view. A few well-chosen keywords partnered with coherent and intelligent writing will increase your search engine rankings and keep your visitors engaged.
In order to help you determine what keywords would be best in your press release, you have to ask yourself a few questions.
If you're writing about your company
- What key words define your company?
- What quality are you specifically writing about?
- Did you change your customer service philosophy?
- Did you add another member to your team?
If you're writing about your work
- What specifically did you do for the client?
- Did you utilize your technology with their website?
- Did you work with an agency partner?
If you are writing about your work for a specifc client
- What type of client are they?
- Are they a new start-up e-commerce?
- Are they a political candidate?
- Are they a University client?
When in doubt - establish who & what you are writing about and visit similar parts of your website to see what keywords were used.
For example, did you just launch a website for a new political candidate? Do you have a portfolio with other political candidates and their case studies? Do you have any past blog posts that discuss political websites?
A good idea is to have your company develop a list of keywords they deem important to search engine optimization and to the company. Google's AdWords Keyword tool allows you to search for similar keywords and see how many people are actually searching for that term. From there, your company can narrow the list of words to those that relate to your company and have a decent search volume.
What's important to remember is that search engines are getting smarter every day and are evaluating the content around keywords more meticulously than ever. So while filling your press releases with keywords may seem like the best way to help your SEO, it would be better to focus on developing the quality of your writing and inserting keywords where they fit coherently. Taking small steps like reassessing the way in which you write press releases can create big benefits down the road.
-
Blogging for Business Part 3: How to Promote Your Blog Posts
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
Part 1 of the Series: Preparing to Start a Business Blog
Part 2 of the Series: Writing Your Business Blog Posts
In the first two parts of this series, we've covered how to set up a business blog and the strategy behind actually writing your posts. However, one of the main purposes of your blog is to drive valuable traffic to your site; you're certainly not just writing it for your health.
While an increase in organic rankings for your blog posts will drive new traffic, there are also more proactive and immediate methods to send traffic to your blog posts. These actions can be accomplished pretty quickly and are well worth it, in order to draw attention to something that you invested serious time into.Post to Social News Sites
One of the leading sources of traffic to our site are social news sites around the web. These sites allow you to submit your recent blog posts and then the site members vote them up or down. As your post gets more "up votes," it rises through the rankings and hopefully to the front page of the site, making it visible to everyone who visits the site.
There are dozens of popular social news sites, and many of them specialize in a particular niche. It's important to make sure that the content you're posting is relevant to that audience. If you post something deemed spammy or outside of the site's target, you not only won't get any up votes or traffic to your site, but you also risk being permanently ostracized by the other members of the group.
Here's a list of some popular social news sites and the audiences to which they cater:- Reddit - One of the most popular social news sites, Reddit has dozens of subreddits (e.g., Web Design Reddit, Programming Reddit, etc.) that cater to every imaginable interest. Find the Reddit that is most applicable to your post and submit to it. We've found that it's almost guaranteed that a submission will garner at least a few dozen unique visits from subscribers to that group. If you reach the front page of a popular subreddit, you're in for a couple thousand uniques.
- Digg - (In)famously the most difficult of the social news sites to gain real traction on, Digg also has the largest audience. Unlike Reddit, where you can create your own sub-category if one doesn't already exist, Digg limits you to a preselected list of rather specific categories. Reaching the front page of Digg will get you tens of thousands of unique, but it also takes the most work and likely some coordination with other strategies - it's extremely hard for a post to organically reach the front page.
- Hacker News - This news site still has a very niche focused on programmers and entrepreneurs. It's the network with which we've had the most success getting on the front page, but all of those posts have been very technical in nature. This community is very selective, and you will be spurned for posting links unrelated to the community's core target. A front page post here will get you a solid 600-2,000 unique visitors.
- Sphinn - Dedicated to online marketing, blogging, and SEO, Sphinn has a dedicated following of online marketers. To be honest, we've used this site in the past with little success. Unless something reaches the front page, it doesn't seem to earn much traffic at all. The most popular articles here are aimed directly at online marketers and tend to be anecdotal or lists.
- Undrln - A relatively new social news site aimed at designers, CSS coders, and entrepreneurs. The site's growth appears to have slowed some, but the content here is usually high quality. A submission that makes it to the front page has a very long lifespan, however, due to it being new, don't expect more than 100-150 uniques from a successful post here.
- Dzone - This site's subtitle says it all "fresh links for developers." The content here is heavy on the technical and is a great option if you target programmers. We've had good success reaching the front page (and top spot) here, which generally translates to 200-300 uniques.
- InboundMarketing.com - This is a brand new site, but I could see it having success in the future. Go figure, but the most popular posts here are aimed at inbound marketing and online marketing. Currently, front page posts have a pretty short lifespan as they get bumped down by others, and it seems like almost no one gets more than two or three up votes. Again, the site is very new, so don't expect more than 50 visits, but given its potential, I think its worth getting acclimated to posting related content here.
- DesignFloat - The most design-oriented of all these sites, your submissions here should focus heavily on design or CSS tricks. The site has a pretty avid following and you will see good traffic for reaching the front page, however, voters are pretty picky and it's not easy to get too far in the process.
This list is just a few of the popular/up and coming social news sites. I tried to spread it out pretty evenly between design, programming, and entrepreneurship. There are dozens more out there for every imaginable niche.
No matter where you're posting, it's important to remember to only post content relevant to that specific niche. Also, avoid posting spammy content that is only meant to give you Page Rank points, as it will likely be deleted by the moderator and you risk being banned from the site. It's also in good taste to make sure that your title submitted on the site matches almost identically the actual title of your blog post.
These sites will not only generate direct traffic, but they also expand your content's reach to other bloggers who will hopefully reference your content on their blog or elsewhere.Leverage Your Social Network
Depending on the size of your digital footprint, you may be active in a number of social networks. While social news sites are akin to giving a presentation to strangers and hoping that they enjoy it, your social network is similar to sending information over to friends and counting on them to check it out/pass it along.
Post your link as your status feed in Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. These are people that have "opted in" to your stream of thoughts and recommendations. They're very likely to check out links that you recommend to them, and also chances are high that they'll pass it along to other friends (i.e., retweet, post on their blog, etc.) and your content's message will gain a life of its own.
Some quick guidelines when posting status updates about your content:- On Twitter, make sure to cap your promotion at 100-120 characters, allowing ample room for people to add a RT@_______ in front of your message to pass it along. If you force followers to copy-edit and shorten it on their own, they're less likely to quickly retweet it for you.
- Make sure, in all of your social networks, you have a good amount of actual content and interactions mixed in with the self-promotional links. If the only things you ever post as status are your own links, people are likely to screen you out as "noise," and someone who doesn't actually understand the space.
- Be sure to respond to comments and @'s regarding your status or link within the medium. If people have been kind enough to take the time to read your full article and then interact with you, it is essential that you respond to them and let them know you value their time.
- When tweeting about your article, add relevant hash tags (i.e., #). Many people have continuous filters set up to pull content that interests them into their Twitter application. By tagging your content, interested readers will easily find it. For example, we attach a #jquery to all of our blog post tutorials on jquery.
In our experience Facebook has been the most solid referrer of traffic, but we are much more active in promoting on Twitter. We save Facebook for big news, whereas we post all of our content on Twitter.
Whatever social network is ideal for you, just be sure to be genuine in interacting with others and to thank them for their commitment to reposting your content or commenting.Build a Relationship with Readers
The first two methods are very action-oriented and place the initial responsibility of promotion on you. However, by equipping your site with an RSS subscription or email registration, you have the ability to instantly push content to that audience without any extra effort on your end.
By placing a prominent RSS option on your site, readers that enjoy your content will subscribe and have it automatically pushed to their RSS reader of choice. This is the most passive promotion possible, as you're doing nothing other than publishing your post, but also instantly engaging a larger audience.
Of course, in order to earn RSS subscribers, it's essential that you publish good content and push interested readers to the site by using the methods above.
In order to set up an RSS feed on your site, I recommend using Feedburner, which is a free service that makes it extremely easy to set up a feed and allow people to subscribe.
Similar to an RSS feed is a newsletter subscription. Allow people to register for your monthly newsletter on your blog and simply push out the top posts to them at the end of every month. Again, this strategy allows you to engage readers that have prescreened themselves as interested in your content.
I recommend that in addition to republishing blog content in the newsletter, you also have some newsletter specific content, as many of the recipients will also be RSS subscribers.Conclusion
At a fraction of the time it took to write your post, you can publicize it to an audience that is potentially in the thousands. It's important that you do this for every post, as sometimes it's the most unlikely content that takes off and garners a lot of attention and traffic.
Are there other methods with which you've had success? What strategy has consistently driven the most traffic to your site?
To show that we eat our own dogfood, this post has been posted on Twitter, submitted to Reddit, scooped on undrln, and added to inboundmarketing.com. -
Blogging for Business Part 2: Writing Your Business Blog Posts
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
Part 1 of the Series: Preparing to Start a Business Blog
In part 1 of this series, we examined why a business blog is important and how to build one. After living in the space, deciding on a topic, and building your blog on your domain, it's now time to actually start writing posts and publishing them for everyone to read.How Often and How Much Should You Post?
One of the first concerns that many of our clients have about posting a blog is the "time factor." They're scared that blogging will be too much of a time commitment and they don't have sufficient resources to posting thoughtful content. This is a valid concern and I always appreciate people not wanting to get in over their heads, but blogging isn't really as much of a time commitment as many people fear.
Our general rule of thumb is that you should write at least one post every seven days. This guideline can differ based on what you're truly trying to accomplish with your blog (for example, we post daily, as this blog is one of our main marketing efforts), but we think once a week is a good baseline to start with.
A post every seven days ensures that your site is frequently updated with fresh content, and you also acclimate prospects to the idea that you're dedicated to your business and generating quality content on a regular basis.
Furthermore, your posts don't have to be the quality or length of Moby Dick - we generally recommend making sure each post is between 300 and 700 words. It's fine to occasionally have a shorter summary post or a longer thought-leading post, but people are generally coming to your blog to be informed quickly, so 300-700 words ensures you generate good content while not alienating readers with your verbosity.What Should You Post?
One way to help ease the time burden associated with the weekly posts it to repurpose content you've previously written and turn it into posts. Some good sources of content are:
- Emails to clients and colleagues. Did a client or colleague write you an intriguing email that prompted you to write a thorough and thoughtful response? Does it seem that this question comes up pretty often? Make some changes to the email to make it more generic and post it to your blog. It will then serve as a permanent reference for the question in the future, and the poser of the question will likely be flattered that you deemed their question worthy of an entire blog post.
- Previous Articles Written for Other Publications. Have you been a guest columnist or blogger for another publication? There's no reason that this content or similar content shouldn't also live on your site, especially if the original article only appeared in print form. Make some changes to the column and post it to your blog, so people can always get access to the useful information from your site.
- Summarize Important Industry News. Was their big news relevant to your industry or your clients' in the past week? Post a summary of the article (be sure to link back to the source!) and how it affects you and your clients on your blog. Clients will appreciate that you've provided them with valuable information and were perhaps helpful in decoding a confusing news event and how it affects them.
By repurposing previous content, you can be sure that you didn't write that long email in vain or write a column for a rarely read publication, and you also cut down on the weekly time necessary to maintain your business's blog.
So, while a blog is certainly an undertaking that you shouldn't take lightly, I think the overall committment is not nearly as intimidating as many people think. By posting 300-700 words every week, you have the ability to infinitely expand your footprint on the web, increase inbound traffic, and gain thought leadership with your target.
Update:
-
Blogging for Business Part 1: Preparing to Start a Business Blog
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
Business blogs are becoming a necessary element of online marketing and inbound marketing campaigns for businesses of all sizes. Our clients frequently have many questions about how to best build, write, publicize, and maximize their own blogs. So, this three part series will cover the basics of Blogging for Business, from the initial build to making sure you're getting the most out of your blog.
This first part covers what to do after you've decided that a blog would be helpful for your business. Be sure to stay tuned for the next three parts of the series.Why Blog in the First Place?
There are many reasons to start a blog for your business. The most beneficial for marketing purposes is the help that it will provide in organic search engine rankings. Each blog post is a new page on your site, meaning a new piece of content for Google to index. The more pages indexed by Google, the likelier it is that your site shows up for a variety of keywords, helping you benefit from the longtail of search results from various posts that you publish.
On top of the SEO benefits, there are many other benefits that your blog will provide to your site. First, its a dynamic element that will be frequently update and lead visitors to be more engaged and frequently return to your site. Furthermore, the blog will help establish you as a thought leader in your space and increase your firm's mindshare. Also, by blogging about your company and industry, you will be providing a free and helpful resource to your clients, of which they'll likely be very appreciative.
How Do You Know A Blog is Right for Your Business?
While a blog isn't right for everyone, it's quickly becoming a pretty standard component of online marketing campaigns. Here are some basic questions that should help you in deciding if a blog is right for your business:
- Do you have industry-specific knowledge that you're happy to share with others?
- Can you find the time to write at least one post (at least 300 words) every 10 days?
- Do most of your target customers spend significant time on the Internet, especially researching vendors?
If you answered yes to all three questions above, then a blog is likely a good investment of your time. A business blog is a free opportunity to (very) publicly broadcast your expertise, engage site visitors, raise your site's dynamism, and improve your organic search engine rankings.
Live in the Space Before Publishing to It
Now that you've decided that a blog is a good move for your business, you need to start taking the appropriate steps to bringing it online. A first step that I always stress to clients is that before you write a single word of your own, take 2-3 weeks to read other popular blogs and industry blogs.
By taking time to live in the space, you will gain a greater understanding for good standards on how to write a post, interact with commenters, and what type of content sells well on a blog. During this exploratory period, also be sure to take the time to participate in the blogosphere by commenting on posts, reaching out to other bloggers, setting up an RSS reader, and sharing good posts with friends.
This time spent researching the medium will help you become a better blogger, quicker, and it will also help you cement relationships with other bloggers in the space that will then become more likely to link out to you.How to Build Your Business Blog
After living in the space, you're now ready to actually begin the process of getting a blog set up on your site. One of the most important pieces of advice that I can offer for this stage is to make sure your blog resides on your site's domain, meaning the URL of your blog should be something like blog.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com/blog/.
This point cannot be overstated in importance - one of the key marketing benefits of your blog is the Search Engine benefits by the newly indexed pages and also the Page Rank juice generated by inbound links. If your blog is hosted on a third party domain, such as myblog.wordpress.com or myblog.blogspot.com, even though you may link to it from your main site, your actual domain will not reap any of the SEO benefits associated with the blog.
There are many ways to launch a blog on your domain. First, check out if your current Content Management System offers a blogging module, which it should (shameless self promotion: ours does). If your site isn't currently on a CMS or it doesn't have blog publishing capabilities, then I recommend checking out WordPress. They have an easy five minute installation to get a WordPress blog enabled on your domain, allowing you to easily publish your new blog to your current site domain.Update:
-
New Google Tool Suggests Competitive Keywords Based on Site Content
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
Ever wonder what Google thinks the most competitive keywords for your website are based on your content and other SEO elements? There are helpful third-party tools, such as SEO Moz's, that spider your content and make recommendations for what a page is about and what terms should be targeted. However, these are still limited in scope and still don't give you insight into what Google actually thinks.
Google Adwords has now ended much of the guesswork by allowing Adwords users to run a report on your site that tells you possible terms to target with a Pay Per Click campaign. This new tool is very valuable to many different marketers, ranging from people running their first Adwords campaign looking for good terms to experienced advertisers trying to devise new keywords to target.
In order to use the tool, login or create a new Google Account, if you don't currently have one. Once logged in, visit the Google Search Based Keyword Tool at www.google.com/sktool/, there will be an option to run a test on one of the sites associated with your account or to enter a new domain. Google will then give you a list of the most valuable terms it associates with your site, based on the terms' density in your content and their total number of monthly global searches.
For our site, the tool does a fairly good job. It lists Online Content Management, Raleigh North Carolina Web Design, Web landing page, Web Design Carolina, and Great Web Design as five of the top keywords that it would be worth us running an Adwords campaign to target. Next to each term, the tool also displays number of monthly searches, suggested CPC bid, and the main page on your site that the phrase was chosen from.
All of terms chosen by the Keyword Tool are consistent with our business, and while we aren't curretly running a Pay Per Click campaign for ourselves, we do target many of these terms through Inbound Marketing, SEO, and other techniques.
While certainly, the best longterm approach to Google is to focusing achieving high organic rankings vs. paid ads, there are definitely situations where it makes sense to buy ads online and Google has now removed some of the guesswork to building a successful campaign. If you're currently running an online ad campaign or exploring the possibility of launching one, I recommend checking out this helpful new tool.
Subscribe to RSS
Subscribe to email updates
Our development blog has moved to GetHifi.com, a website dedicated
to our new HiFi web platform.
Visit GetHifi.com »
Network with Us