30.11.16
5 Ways Your E-Commerce Business Can Recover From A Growth Setback
Facing growth setbacks is part of the risk of doing business.
While most companies may only highlight their successes to the public, it’s important to understand that every business has its own group of challenges. The key is to recognize the issues and take the necessary actions to move forward.
“You may be facing your share of woes from financial problems to employee shortages to increased competition. Just because those setbacks are occurring and you are struggling to survive, doesn’t mean you can’t turn your circumstance around,” says Inc. contributor Carolyn Brown.
Let’s explore how your team can bounce back from a growth setback.
1. Reassess Your Business Strategy
When major issues arise, reevaluating your strategy is essential to realizing what happened. Moreover, your team can pinpoint the mistakes that stunted your ecommerce business growth.
So, where do you start? Begin with the problem.
Learn why the setback occurred, when it began, where it originated, and how it flourished into a setback. Dive deep into your analytics to assess your sales and reveal any gaps in your system.
Senior management recognizes that failure isn’t caused by a singular event. Instead, it’s usually a series of activities that slowly lead up to a business disaster. So, examine your current procedures to set up safeguards.
“The way we win business has changed radically, largely thanks to the internet and social media. Companies that are not up to speed digitally won’t exist for much longer, so make sure the business is using all the technological tools it can to build momentum,” states Andrew Morris, CEO of the Academy for Chief Executives.
Nike reworked its international expansion strategy. Rather than spending an exorbitant amount of money on sponsorships to gain a global audience, the athletic apparel company initiated the NikeID co-creation platform. Allowing customers to design their own products helped the business deliver unique products that align with different cultural preferences and styles.
Upgrade your business strategy. Keep what works well and toss the rest to the side.
2. Deliver Customer Value
Research shows that “for every customer complaint there are 26 other unhappy customers who have remained silent.” In a market full of competitors, it’s easy for consumers to try another brand.
To deliver remarkable customer value, start by analyzing your consumers’ purchasing habits. Learn what they like and how specific brand interactions make them feel.
For example, if you know consumers prefer assistance via live chat rather than by phone, your team should take steps to be available online.
Collect this data by instructing your sales representatives to jot down notes during customer conversations. Or simply ask consumers to complete a short suggestion form.
Think of customer value as a cycle. You must discover the opportunities, create the offering, deliver the value, and communicate it to your audience. Then, the process starts over again after receiving the customer feedback.
Peepers, an innovative eyewear company, offers its shoppers more value by customizing the checkout experience. With personalized messages, customers trusted the brand and believed their credit card information were safe. As a result, Peepers received a 25-30% increase in its organic traffic conversion rate and 15%-20% increase in its average order value.
Offer unprecedented value that your consumers can’t receive anywhere else. They’ll be happy and your ecommerce company will reap the revenues.
3. Differentiate Your Product
Sometimes, your team must do things differently. And it might just include changing the product.
In today’s economy, consumers possess a wide variety of choices. They don’t have to settle for products that fail to solve their problems or fall short of satisfying their needs.
Product differentiation is a marketing technique to make your product more attractive than the alternatives in the marketplace. This difference could include customer value, design, price, or even quality.
“Don’t focus on features alone, then. Instead, emphasize the benefits of those features. Your advantage lies in how your product or service ties into the emotional needs of your target audience. People make decisions on the basis of either logical reasoning or emotional impulses,” writes Entrepreneur contributor Ray Beharry.
Conduct market research to learn if you should modify your product or change the way you sell your product. To find pertinent data, host a focus group or invest in heatmap tools to monitor website interactions.
Oscar Health Insurance offers customers transparency and only focuses on a small, niche network in four U.S. states. The brand separates itself from the competition by presenting health plans in common language without the jargon.
It may be time for a product change. Find out how to fulfill your customers’ desires through differentiation.
4. Hire Employees With Diverse Skill Sets
During tough times, employees are the best assets for your business. And as your company begins to change directions, you will need people invested in your brand values.
In a recovery transition, recruit talented workers with skills that complement your current workforce. Experts claim that future work environments will need people who know how to work with data, understand virtual reality, and can apply the Internet of Things to industries.
Beyond technical skills, interpersonal character traits matter, too. Focus on hiring individuals who know how to develop connections, work on multiple cultural teams, and make creative decisions. Personal finance writer Erika Rawes agrees:
“Your ability to engage in conversation, get to know someone personally, and develop meaningful relationships will provide a competitive edge over the future.”
In addition, retrain your current employees by informing them about new business strategies and expectations. It’s a chance re-engage employees and to develop people professionally.
Revitalize your workforce during growth challenges. Let your business experience new talent with different possibilities.
5. Continue to Seek Growth Opportunities
Whether your company is undergoing a setback or not, your team should always continue to seek ways to expand. A proactive plan prepares your brand to handle challenges better.
Opportunity is a subjective term. What’s great for one business may be a disaster for another.
Therefore, before making any hasty decisions, work with your team to know what your business needs to recover. Do you need more qualified traffic to your website? Or more skilled sales reps to close deals?
And refrain from relying only on your own experience. Your company may benefit from building ongoing partnerships with other brands.
“Don’t limit yourself by your own knowledge base and expertise when your back is against a wall. Find partners who can help you implement the new strategy that makes the most sense, not the one that’s easiest to execute,” writes Fast Company contributor Carson Tate.
Below is a brand partnership example from Adidas and Spotify. The companies teamed up to offer their consumers a new product called Adidas Go. The app lets customers who exercise with their iPhones listen to music through Spotify that is automatically linked to the pace of the workout.
Growth is a continuous process for companies. Uncover new opportunities to respond to infrequent difficulties.
Aim to Recover
Challenges are inevitable in business. It’s vital to understand how to handle setbacks when they occur.
Reevaluate your strategy to ensure it fits your desired outcomes. Deliver unmatched customer value that competitors can’t duplicate. And continue to seek partnership opportunities that will benefit your brand.
Push through setbacks. Grow your business.
About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.
from The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/2glhKG4
via IFTTT
‘Beacons are dead,’ says CEO of a retail analytics firm
An assortment of beacons from (starting upper left) Gimbal, Kontakt.io, Estimote, Radius Networks, GPShopper, Aruba
“Beacons are already dead.”
That’s what Euclid Analytics’ CEO Brent Franson thinks. His company provides engagement and analytics solutions to retailers and, he told me, his firm is happy to work with beacons.
If they did something customers really wanted.
Beacons offer hyper-granular marketing directed at customers standing in specific spots in stores, like in front of counter 2B. The idea has been that retailers could then direct product info or a discount coupon about the socks on counter 2B to that customer’s smartphone, standing right there.
But, Franson told me, the reality if different for retailer-focused beacons. (There are, of course, use cases for beacons outside of retailers.)
First, it’s a significant amount of effort for that scenario to take place. The beacons must be installed and maintained, and fleet maintenance is sometimes problematic, because the devices use short-range Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity. Some vendors integrate WiFi with their beacons, or have other workaround solutions, but those alternatives aren’t standard.
Then there’s the issue that, for standard beacons, the consumer needs to download a supported app. Some retailers share an app, but it’s still a download. Google offers Eddystone beacons, which broadcast a URL to a compatible browser and don’t need an app, but you need the right browser. And, at the moment, Eddystone is not widely deployed.
But the real reason Franson is bearish on beacons has to do with consumers’ current shopping habits.
[Read the full article on MarTech Today.]
from Marketing Land http://ift.tt/2gGAqR7
via IFTTT
Size matters: 5 tips for creating LEAN programmatic creative
Advertisers and publishers have no choice but to go “LEAN” — lightweight, encrypted, AdChoices-supported and non-invasive.
Why? There’s the recent founding of the Coalition for Better Ads and the updates to the IAB LEAN standards. There’s ad blocking and the fact that people don’t want to use their mobile data for advertisements. There’s Google announcing it will begin to enforce new policies, starting in January 2017, in which publishers using ad formats that interfere with the user experience, such as pop-ups and standalone interstitials, will be penalized with lower Google rankings. Plus, Google charges advertisers more for serving “heavy” ads.
Speeding up load time doesn’t just improve the ad experience for consumers — it dramatically affects ad viewability, according to new research from Thunder, a programmatic creative platform (disclosure: my company).
The data show that the lightest ads have the highest viewability, at 52 percent to 70 percent. In ads under 50KB, there is a 3 percent drop in view rates for each 10KB after the initial 10KB. That is followed by a 0.5 to 1 percent drop in view rate per extra 10KB beyond that. Average viewability bottoms out at around 25 percent in the 150–200KB range — the IAB recommended maximum.
All of this has created an emphasis on creating consumer-friendly ads with lighter file load sizes and fewer server calls. Programmatic advertising now accounts for more than two-thirds of all digital display ad spending in the US, but since it calls for multiple ad versions, creative best practices aren’t as widely known or easily executed.
Here are five tips for creating effective LEAN ads, particularly for programmatic creative executions.
[Read the full article on MarTech Today.]
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.
from Marketing Land http://ift.tt/2fRvBmS
via IFTTT
Return Path buys email deliverability specialist Email Copilot
For email service providers (ESP), getting the email delivered to an inbox is the central metric.
To help boost these capabilities, New York City-based ESP Return Path announced this week it has purchased San Diego, California-based Email Copilot. Return Path sees itself as a leader in deliverability, and offers a Deliverability Benchmark report.
The Copilot, founded in 2011, provides real-time monitoring, reporting, and analysis of deliverability info, presented as a “dynamic visualization.” Terms of the deal were not announced.
[Read the full article on MarTech Today.]
from Marketing Land http://ift.tt/2gyhLEe
via IFTTT
Flights.com: Holiday
The campaign was inspired by the millions of vacation days that go unused in America, which has proven to negatively affect health, happiness, and productivity. Flights.com created a series of videos that playfully remind Americans about the importance of taking those days off to reconnect with their favorite places and people.
from Ads of the World™ http://ift.tt/2gkX3d8
via IFTTT
Flights.com: Thanksgiving
The campaign was inspired by the millions of vacation days that go unused in America, which has proven to negatively affect health, happiness, and productivity. Flights.com created a series of videos that playfully remind Americans about the importance of taking those days off to reconnect with their favorite places and people.
from Ads of the World™ http://ift.tt/2gl2jO3
via IFTTT
Flights.com: Christmas
The campaign was inspired by the millions of vacation days that go unused in America, which has proven to negatively affect health, happiness, and productivity. Flights.com created a series of videos that playfully remind Americans about the importance of taking those days off to reconnect with their favorite places and people.
from Ads of the World™ http://ift.tt/2gl7I7I
via IFTTT
Ser Educational: Beach without borders
The MaurÃcio de Nassau University - which is part of one of the largest educational groups in Latin America, Grupo Ser Educacional - has developed the social project Praia Sem Barreiras (Beach without Barriers), enabling people with disabilities to have access to leisure on the beach and to the sea bath. The campaign was developed by Agência UM and the film tells the story of the relationship of the human being with the sea, its challenges and discoveries.
from Ads of the World™ http://ift.tt/2gkYloD
via IFTTT
Co.Exist Is Looking For An Assistant Editor
Are you tapped into the world of social entrepreneurship, social innovation, and innovation for good? Are you interested in how advances in technology and science are shaping culture and the economy? Do you have a strong understanding of the internet and its rhythms and moods? Do you know of the most interesting and impactful projects happening around the country and the world? Can you write irresistible headlines?
We’re looking for a very web-savvy editor and writer to help with the day-to-day running of the site, including editing stories, writing headlines and display copy, working with contributors, writing and reporting stories, and generally helping determine the editorial direction of the site. This is a full-time position, working out of Fast Company's New York office.
If you want to work at a place where the stories you work on give valuable attention to important ideas and can create real impact, we’re the place for you.
The ideal candidate will have:
- Experience working in a fast-paced web publishing environment.
- Experience and skill at managing quick deadlines for both writing and editing.
- Strong line-editing abilities.
- Hard reporting skills and a willingness to get on the phone with sources.
- A keen eye for what makes a story do well online.
- Social media savvy.
If that’s you, send a letter explaining why and your resume to mclendaniel [at] fastcompany [dot] com. Please include your cover letter in the body of the email and attach your resume as a PDF. Do not attach Word documents.
You must include "Co.Exist Assistant Editor: Your Name" in the subject line.
from Co.Design http://ift.tt/2fRdj4R
via IFTTT
Stop Building Traffic, and Start Converting It. Here’s How
I’ll let you in on a little marketing secret.
In the grand scheme of things, building massive amounts of traffic doesn’t really matter. What matters is converting that traffic.
Everyone talks about building traffic. That’s fine, but it’s not the end of the story. If you don’t convert your traffic, building it is pointless.
Building traffic is like building a shopping mall. You can easily get people to come through the doors, but if you have only a few lackluster stores, none of those people will turn into customers. You have to give them a reason to stay.
I’ve seen tons of sites fail miserably because they didn’t convert their traffic. A site can have the best idea in the world, but if it doesn’t focus on conversion, it’ll flop.
Funnily enough, that’s what happened to me with my first website experience.
The first site I ever built was a job board called Advice Monkey. I spent over $5,000 to create it and hired three lousy marketing firms. In the end, I learned how to market it myself, but the site still failed because it wasn’t set up to take payments.
Had I spent less time marketing and more time optimizing the site for conversions, the site would have done much better. Sure, I probably wouldn’t have made millions, but I would’ve converted more of my traffic and made more than $0.
Take a lesson from me: don’t worry much about getting people through the doors while forgetting to build the stores.
Here’s how to take all that traffic you worked so hard to build and successfully convert it.
Getting the right mindset
I firmly believe that conversion is an attitude, not just an action. It takes focus and dedication. You have to internalize your goals until they’re second nature.
I realize this sounds a little philosophical, but stay with me. You need to see conversion as more than just a bunch of numbers. Why? If you become obsessed with converting, you’ll fail.
Here’s an example. Say you’re hyper-focused on converting. You include a few popups and some social buttons, and before long, your site looks like this:
Okay, it’s probably not that bad. But you get the idea.
It’s easy to go overboard, and I get that. But as Social Triggers’s Derek Halpern points out, going too far can actually become your conversion rate’s worst enemy.
You should definitely focus on conversion, but don’t get a death grip on it. Conversion is a long-term strategy, not a short-term win.
Now that you’ve understood the conversion mindset, let’s take a look at how to convert all your traffic.
Publish the right content
If I had to pick a favorite form of marketing, it’d be content marketing.
Great content is wildly powerful. The converse is true too: horrible content is wildly destructive.
In fact, your blog can (and will) fail if you get the content wrong. If you create too much content, you’ll fail. If you create content that’s not relevant to your readers, you’ll fail.
So it’s imperative you get the content right.
First, you have to decide on the type of content you’ll provide. There are many options to choose from: blog posts, webinars, and podcasts, to name a few.
How do you know which type of content is right for you? You have to know your audience. I know my readers are looking for thorough guides, and that’s one of the many reasons I use blog posts.
On the other hand, there are people like Tim Ferriss who use podcasts as their medium of choice.
Tim knows his audience loves interviews with experts, and that’s what he gives them.
The lesson: Study your audience until you know them as well as you know your friends. Find out what type of content they respond to the most.
You also have to get the length right. I’ve found that longform content works best. You might be surprised to know that 3000+ word blog posts get more traffic than shorter posts.
Make conversion easy (but not annoying)
If you want people to convert, you need to make that process easy. If your readers love your content but can’t find an easy way to sign up for your list or buy your product, you’ll lose out.
There are a few elements you have to get right if you want to boost your conversion rate:
1. Make an irresistible offer
First things first: If your offer itself doesn’t amaze your readers, you’ll get zero conversions.
To create an irresistible offer, you have to know what your readers want. Delve into your psychographics to find out what drives your audience and why they behave the way they do.
SumoMe’s blog post called “The Definitive Guide to Content Upgrades” adds a sweet offer:
Everyone who’s reading this post wants to learn more about content upgrades, so SumoMe offers a free e-book. It’s specific, relevant, and valuable.
On the other hand, if your offer is not specific, relevant, or valuable, your readers will have no reason to take you up on it. Don’t beat around the bush with general offers like a cheat sheet on being a better marketer. Your offer should be targeted specifically to your readers.
When you’re working on creating an irresistible offer, make sure it’s specific, relevant, and valuable. Your offers build the foundation on which you’ll build your conversion.
2. CTAs (calls-to-action)
If your CTAs are boring, your conversion rate will be low.
One of the best ways to write a great CTA is to be specific. “Buy now” could refer to anything, but “download your free e-book” reminds the reader what they’re getting.
Your CTA needs copy that’s exciting. It should feel like you’re inviting the reader on an adventure. It should not feel like you’re selling something.
Optimizely uses a straightforward and effective CTA:
There’s no hard sell here. It’s an invitation to test out the software free. Plus, it’s a breeze to fill out.
Design matters too. Your CTA needs to be highly visible so people can find it and click it. It’s so simple, right? But many blogs get this wrong.
Brian Dean from Backlinko uses a yellow box for his CTAs:
The yellow box works because your eye is naturally drawn to it. For Brian, that means higher conversion rates.
Find out what your yellow box is. Don’t forget to A/B test to figure out what’s working the best (and what you should ax).
Put in the time and effort to create an eye-catching CTA that engages your readers, and you’ll be rewarded.
3. Popups
Quiz time: How are popups like Justin Beiber?
As Hunter Boyle of Aweber puts it,
You either love ‘em, or hate ‘em, but lately you see ‘em everywhere—because they still pull in big crowds.
You might find popups annoying, but they work wonders. We successfully used popups on Kissmetrics to double our conversion rate.
Popups play a vital role in converting your traffic, but you shouldn’t go overboard. By tastefully using popups, you can skyrocket your conversion rate.
First, you need to decide which type(s) of popups to use. The days of random popups are gone. Instead, opt for triggered popups.
Let’s talk about two of my favorite types of popups:
- exit intent overlays
- scroll-triggered scrollboxes.
You’re probably familiar with exit intent popups that appear when your mouse moves to close the tab. An exit intent overlay is a full-screen popup that appears when a user gets ready to leave the site.
Smartblogger uses an exit intent overlay with a cunning strategy:
This popup immediately engages the reader. Instead of being presented with just one option, you get two. And one of them has to be applicable to you. At the very least, it raised your eyebrows, right?
And here’s the best part: There are two different lead magnets for the two answers.
You don’t have to copy this popup, but I hope it gets you thinking about using exit intent popups. They perform well, but you have to put the work in.
Next up is scroll-triggered scrollboxes. These are the little boxes that pop up on the lower right-hand side of the screen. Usually, these popups appear after you’ve scrolled down the page.
For example, when you scroll to the bottom of any Crazy Egg post (like this one), you’ll see this:
These are great because they’re not intrusive. They take up a small amount of real estate, and they’re far less annoying than random popups that cover up half the screen.
The most important takeaway here is that popups should not distract from the user experience of your site visitors. Don’t cover up the content or make closing the popup difficult. Respect your readers.
Conclusion
You’re probably drawing in plenty of traffic.
Remember, however: what matters most is what you’re doing with that traffic.
Create an irresistible offer, and make it accessible to your visitors. People are willing to check out your offer, but it has to be worth their time. So, add as much value to your offer as possible.
I won’t lie. Conversion optimization isn’t a walk in the park. But it pays off.
And if you nail conversion, you’ll have a bunch of satisfied customers in no time.
What are your biggest problems with converting traffic?
from Quick Sprout http://ift.tt/2gINSRZ
via IFTTT
Snapchat shuts down Story Explorer feature in Live Stories
A year after introducing Story Explorer as a way for people to view the events documented in Live Stories from many different angles, Snapchat is narrowing its aperture.
Snapchat has removed the Story Explorer feature from its Live Stories, a Snapchat spokesperson confirmed. The discontinued feature may be as much a victim of its own tangled user experience as of Snapchat’s heightened editorial efforts around Live Stories.
When Snapchat introduced Story Explorer in November 2015, CEO Evan Spiegel described it as a way to “provide depth” to its Live Stories, which stitch together the snaps people publicly post from live events, such as music festivals and sports games, into a “like you were there” stream. If Live Stories were Snapchat’s version of a live(-ish) TV production, Story Explorer was like putting people in the control room, which was the feature’s promise and maybe its problem.
Within a few weeks of Story Explorer’s introduction, Snapchat arranged a deal with the NFL to use it in the league’s Live Stories. The NFL’s Live Stories already put fans in the stands from the comfort of their phones so that they could see how a game-winning field goal looked for someone sitting behind the end zone. But Story Explorer let them swipe up replay the moment from the perspective of someone on the other side of the stadium or standing on the sidelines or from anywhere else that people filmed the moment, uploaded it to Snapchat, tagged the corresponding Live Story and were selected for inclusion.
At least that was the promise. Sometimes Snapchat delivered on it in practice. But sometimes those supplementary snaps had nothing to do with the moment captured in the initial snap, like swiping down from the game-winning field goal to see a third-quarter extra point or the first-quarter kick-off. And sometimes Story Explorer would feature the same snap multiple times at different points in the Live Story.
Story Explorer’s primary predicament was that it was a cool concept wrapped in a complicated product, which has worked well for Snapchat at large but proved problematic for Story Explorer.
After swiping down to explore a Live Story’s moment from different perspectives, Snapchat surfaced those other perspectives in a horizontal carousel, and sometimes you could swipe down from those alternative perspectives to access even more options. It was like watching a rough cut of “Inception” through a kaleidoscope.
Lately Snapchat has been taking a stronger directorial hand with its Live Stories. Throughout 2016 its Live Story team has gone from picking out which snaps to put in a Live Story to also augmenting those snaps with text overlays and illustrations and even inserting pre-recorded videos to supplement them. For example, the Everest Live Story in June amended climbers’ photos and videos with factoids and animated maps of the ascent. And Live Stories honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January and Kobe Bryant’s final NBA game in April, respectively, featured archival footage of the civil rights leader and Lakers legend to add more weight to the streams.
A year ago Snapchat looked to a technological feature to add depth to its Live Stories — and to increase the amount of time people spend watching those streams by giving them more to watch — but over the past year Snapchat has increasingly turned to its editorial team to add that depth in a different way, producing programs that reflect less of an upstart technology platform and more of a traditional media company.
from Marketing Land http://ift.tt/2gIO57D
via IFTTT
Upland: Revive
The Results Are In: Reflecting on Adland’s Election Season
Read More
from Ads of the World™ http://ift.tt/2gxAP5m
via IFTTT
Upland: Family
5 Creative Black Friday Campaigns You Should Know
Read More
from Ads of the World™ http://ift.tt/2gxBQu4
via IFTTT
Upland: Sour Reserve
How WildAid & Grey London Created #jointheherd to Impact the World's Ivory Trade
Read More
from Ads of the World™ http://ift.tt/2gxxvr1
via IFTTT
Upland: Darken
Shelley Zalis of The Girls’ Lounge is “Not Afraid to Be Bold”
Read More
from Ads of the World™ http://ift.tt/2fDvQDB
via IFTTT
Upland: Hopsynth
5 Creative Black Friday Campaigns You Should Know
Read More
from Ads of the World™ http://ift.tt/2gJYrD1
via IFTTT
10 domain name secrets to repair your online reputation
If you’re trying to repair your personal reputation online, chances are you have already figured out that you might need one or more websites devoted to your name to help displace something negative in the search results. Beyond setting up YourName.com, what other options are there? Here are a few secrets that may help you get the search results all shiny again with less effort!
As part of good, proactive online reputation management and personal branding, I advise that everyone should own the basic “YourName.com” domain, particularly if one’s name is unique. If your name is common, like “John Smith,” it may not require as much proactive concern, but it would still be useful and recommended to set yourself up with a domain that features your proper name.
Some use this as a place to park their resumes online, and I’ve seen people simply redirect their proper name domains to their LinkedIn profiles or Facebook pages. If you ever run into a hater or a crazy person, you ought to own your name just as a defensive measure to keep it from being obtained to trash you.
It happened to me
I’m speaking about this from personal experience, unfortunately, since I once had someone register my professional name as a sort of threat to try to tarnish my name online. It was a very unusual situation. I had long operated my personal domain as “silvery.com,” which was intended to be clever and is closely similar to my nickname, Silver.
Simpler domains like “silver.com” and “silver.net” were already unavailable, of course, because they were snapped up by domainer speculators and then resold to jewelers and precious metal commodity companies. I had thought the domain was just fine for my personal branding; it didn’t occur to me that I might need other domain assets to protect myself from attacks.
Apparently, an individual who I had encountered at a company that I had previously consulted for felt threatened by my SEO knowledge and, perhaps due to professional jealousy, decided to start setting up “ChrisSilverSmith.com” to take me down a few notches. (Truly, I had never done anything to harm nor demean this individual, and I had gone out of my way to be polite to them despite some aggressive moves on their part.)
Out of the blue one day, I discovered ChrisSilverSmith.com to be ranking in Google a page or two back in the results. There was one page on the site, with an animated GIF or video on it of a humorous sequence from a popular online multiplayer game. But the Meta Description made clear it was aimed at me; it was similar or identical to the Meta Description on my personal site.
I didn’t know at first if it was intended to be a joke or if it was the first move in a hostile reputation attack campaign. The registration details were proxied, of course, to hide them. After a little digging, however, I was able to learn who was behind the registration. I considered what to do — such as legal options — but, I was initially determined not to allow the individual the satisfaction of attention, and I knew that I could use my experience and resources to keep the domain from affecting my professional work, if necessary.
How it turned out
Ultimately, I gently approached the people involved, diffused the situation and persuaded them to relinquish the domain, turning ownership over to me. No threats, no legal action. But many people in such a situation are not that lucky, and I realized how foolish I had been not to have already registered my full name as a domain name.
If you have any public persona whatsoever, you ought to proactively register your name as .COM, if it is available. I’ve known a lot of colleagues who’ve also faced brief, unwarranted attacks online, and I’ve dealt with a number of reputation clients who really should have already been operating a website paired up with a domain name optimized to be relevant for their personal name.
If you’re doing this proactively, perhaps you only need one domain name. But if you’re working to mitigate an attack on yourself, you may find setting up a small handful of domain names is more beneficial than setting up just your main one.
What to do if it happens to you
Either way, one question that often comes up is, “What should I do if MyName.com is unavailable?” Here are some of my secret tactics to help you maximize how effective your efforts will be.
The first, most basic principle is that a domain name that is an exact match for your name will be the most beneficial. Google and other search engines look at the keywords found in domain names when evaluating how relevant a website is to a user’s search query, and the closer the match, the easier it is for the site to rank higher in search results.
Google has worked to try to be sure that “official” websites for brands and individuals may rank highest for name searches, so the bar for achieving rankings is lower if you get an exact match domain. Negative materials are often just a page on another site, such as on RipoffReport.com, or perhaps Yelp, or horrific people-trashing sites like MyEx.com. Since those sites don’t have your name as a domain name, you can get an immediate advantage over them in ranking factors with your personalized domain.
I’ve run into many situations where people have used cute domain names for their personal websites, as I did for myself. Don’t make that mistake, because it won’t help in a reputation attack situation.
If your name is “John Smith,” then “JohnsHappyFunPlayhouse.com” is not going to be helpful. Yes, you can get a website with a different domain name to rank for your name searches, but it can require more effort in other areas.
Once you start searching on a domain registrar site, like GoDaddy.com, they will often suggest many top-level domain (TLD) alternatives to the “.COM” one. Some of these work better than others, depending on your situation. If you have a common name, the .COM option may be unavailable to you — so my tips for these options will be necessary for you.
By the way, people often ask if they should use their full name versus the more casual variations they use in personal life. It’s common to use your full name on your resume while asking people to use a shortened, familiar version in daily interactions. For instance, should I use “ChristopherSmith.com” or “ChrisSmith.com”?
The answer to this is: Use the variation that people will be most frequently searching upon and the name that has been used in any reputation attack online. If you go by both, you may need to be conducting reputation-strengthening campaigns for each name variation.
It is also possible to optimize a single website for both name variations by incorporating both names in the site’s text content and multiple SEO signals. But mostly, you just need to focus on the name that people are searching for.
10 online reputation domain name secrets
1. First, start with the grand-daddy standard domain of them all: .COM — The dot-com TLD is highly effective and preferable to register first as your primary website if it’s available. There are multiple reasons it’s effective: It’s one of the longest-established TLDs; it is the most-recognized top-level domain of all by both humans and machines; and it functions great from a marketing/branding standpoint, as well as from a technical standpoint.
If “YourName.com” is already taken, though, don’t despair. In some instances, slight name variations may work just as well.
For instance, dashes are allowed characters in domain names, and they can be used to delimit between first and last names, as in “Your-Name.com.” Many optimization experts avoid this out of fear that search engines may evaluate it to be a suspect domain and lower in quality and trustworthiness. But these fears may be largely unjustified, since dashed domains can function well. Admittedly, dashed domains are undesirable if you’d like to print your URL on your business cards and in other offline media.
Adding just a few letters near the end of the name can function well, too, in certain circumstances. Example: ChrisSmithCEO.com or JamesSmithBanker.com. Mostly, avoid tacking on additional words or letters, though, or you start eroding your exact-match domain advantage. Longer domains/URLs function correspondingly worse in search engines, so only adding very few letters should be considered if your options are limited.
2. .NET, .BIZ, .US, .ORG — If you search for your name with most registrars, they are likely to list these TLDs as options for you. In general, each one of these can function fairly well, closely similar to .COM.
I would say that in general, none of these confer any specialized advantages, but they can work quite well as simple, solid TLD extensions on a proper name domain. (One of my close friends has operated “John.org” since 1998, but I think he mainly maintains it just for his email address. It does indeed rank very well for a few queries, which is mildly surprising, since there’s no optimization put into it, and it’s not at all focused on his full name.)
3. Treat yourself to a .ME domain — While this is technically the TLD for the country of Montenegro, the government there decided to operate it as a Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD), because they recognized that it held a wide commercial appeal worldwide, since “Me” is the English self-referencing pronoun. Domains with the .ME extension can function very well in search results, and the extension has a decent degree of recognizability. It’s short; it makes sense; it seems to convey that it’s operated by the person bearing the name used in the domain — it’s simply elegant!
A related alternative with differing advantages is to use the About.me service to set up a profile page for yourself at About.me/Your.Name; this service has inbuilt website design/publishing capabilities and likely has some degree of ranking capabilities, fresh out of the box. I probably wouldn’t recommend having both YourName.me and About.me/Your.Name simultaneously, though — use one or the other.
4. Geographic TLDs — Examples of Geographic TLDs: YourName.NYC, YourName.Miami, YourName.Paris. In a lot of reputation management cases, an individual’s name is closely associated with their local geographic areas in search results, rather than being prominent nationwide. A common case for this is when well-known proprietors of local businesses may be searched for with higher frequency in their cities than elsewhere, and Google will present different search result rankings according to geography for this reason.
For instance, in most places in the US, if you search for “Chris Silver Smith,” my site is likely to come up at the top of search results (since I speak nationwide at conferences and work professionally nationwide). However, if you search in the Miami area, Google is more likely to present web pages about an attorney, Chris Silversmith, who lives and works there.
If you are best-known in your local area, one great option for you would be to set up a personal website using a GeoTLD that is in sync with your geography. So Chris Silversmith could leverage his location associatively by setting up a personal web page on “ChrisSilversmith.miami,” and it would likely rank quite favorably in search results. My research indicates that these GeoTLDs perform quite advantageously in local search results, and SEO strategist Bill Hartzer has had similar findings.
5. Combine a subdomain with a domain — If you can’t obtain “FirstnameLastname.com,” which is likely if it’s at all common, then there’s a possibility you could obtain “Lastname.com.” And if you do that, you can set up a customized subdomain using your First Name: http://ift.tt/2fDqVT6 — wonderfully, this can accomplish very good optimization.
To obtain full benefit, be sure to 301 redirect the .www and non-.www versions of the site domain URLs over to the first/last name subdomain combination.
6. Use keyworded gTLDs — Honestly, this is a great tactic to use for many professionals online as their overall commercial optimization. Attorneys could use .LAWYER, .ATTORNEY or .LEGAL domain names. For doctors, .CARE, .HEALTHCARE, .SURGERY may be great options. Indeed, quite a few professions are covered, such as: .ACCOUNTANT, .ACTOR, .CONTRACTORS, .DENTIST, .BANK, .REALTOR and many others.
Considering that the reputations of many small businesses are as associated with the names of their founders/owners as they are with the company brand names, this is an overall good search marketing tactic. (It’s not as hot when performing offline marketing, such as in print or radio ads, because people still don’t recognize these newer top-level domains as much as the .COM/.NET standbys. But you could still use a more recognizable domain name variation in your offline marketing which just redirects to the keyworded gTLD.) I find that the shorter gTLDs function best for optimization, in part simply because shorter URLs function better in search.
7. Add a misspelling domain — If your ideal, exact-match domain name isn’t available, you may be able to use a misspelling to obtain virtually the same level of advantage. If “JohnSmith.com” isn’t available, “JohnSmiths.com” may work just as well. Google and other search engines have worked very hard to handle plurals/singulars and stemming variations of words, often treating them nearly identically.
In addition, using slight, common variations in the spelling of names may also work. Of course, the rest of the SEO of the site needs to focus still on the proper, exact-match spelling of the name in most cases. But a closely similar domain name will be an advantage when you cannot obtain exact matches. (In fact, even performing a complete optimization campaign more fully around a misspelling may provide additional assets to rank for the target name, since Google tries to incorporate a lot of variation in search results.)
8. Add a .TEL domain — Many marketers are seemingly unaware of this unique domain; it was set up as an internet directory service, with all types of contact information stored directly within the domain name system (DNS) information about each domain. So, the information you put on your .TEL domain will be republished on many of the sites that publish domain WHOIS information.
Naturally, you could include all sorts of things — your street address, city, state, ZIP and phone number — but, you could also include a biographic description of yourself, links to Facebook, Twitter and other social media, photos and more! .TEL automatically displays your domain’s information on the domain URL, marked up in HTML and Card Microformat. (Can you say, “citations for local SEO?”)
Telnic, the organization that administers the .TEL domain names, has also set up a directory of links to help ensure that all of the many .TELs become indexed in Google and Bing. I have found that by also adding some independent links pointing into a .TEL domain, one may further help it achieve good rankings.
9. Try a top-level domain hack — If your ideal domain names were already bought up by other people, you might try registering a top-level “domain hack.” This is where you register a portion of your exact-match name sequence, leaving off a few letters at the end which will be supplied by the top-level domain.
For example, if your name was “Michael Lewis” or “John Lewis,” but someone had already nabbed the ideal URLs for those two, such as “MichaelLewis.com” or “JohnLewis.com,” then you might instead register “michaellew.is” or “johnlew.is” — using .IS, which is the TLD for the country of Iceland.
While I’ve seen domain hacks of this sort rank effectively, it should be noted that this places a delimiter in an unusual place in the name, rendering it less of an exact match than other possible options that there might be. This is probably an option of last resort.
10. .CEO is excellent, albeit often pricey — Similar to the other gTLDs, the .CEO domain can function quite well, and it lends an element of prestige to a domain name, particularly for company founders and chief executive officers. It doesn’t lend any ranking assist, unless people may frequently be searching for your name while also including “CEO” at the end.
If you have a very unusual name, and you’re not well-known as an executive, you may be able to obtain YourName.CEO for the relatively low price of $99, but I’ve seen ranges going upward from there to a few thousand dollars due to domain name speculation. For instance, I checked just now, and they offered me “ChrisSilverSmith.CEO” for $99, “ChrisSmith.CEO” for $499, and “JohnSmith.CEO” for $999.
I’d urge proceeding with a very careful cost-benefit analysis of your desired .CEO domain name at the costlier end of the range, because my other tips here establish that you can often obtain effective alternatives for much cheaper.
Here’s one more bonus option that’s so pie-in-the-sky that only a billionaire might consider doing it: Apply for and obtain the right to make your name its own, unique gTLD. Doing so would give you a number of keyword-optimized options, like: “Firstname.Lastname,” or “http://ift.tt/2gJWRRP,” or “Official.FirstnameLastname,” or even “The.FirstnameLastname.”
Talk about what could be the ultimate status symbol of the internet! But this comes with a likely price tag of tens of thousands of dollars, and the application process could require some years before you’d have anything you could use. So this is more of a theoretical, novelty concept than something that could realistically help in a reputation-repair campaign. But we can dream, can’t we?
The frequent question about personal name domains
I should take a moment before closing to speak to one of the most frequent questions that come up regarding personal name domains: “Should I purchase all the common TLD versions of my primary domain name?” Generally speaking, no, you do not need to register every single domain name variation.
If you’re unfamiliar with registering domains, you will not have been exposed to the upselling, or even fear-mongering, in other cases, whereby the registrars may urge you to buy more domains than you need out of concern that someone else might get the other TLD name variations as the one you’re seeking and registering.
In some reputation attack cases, there is a very real and valid reason to buy common variations — when you’re still under an active and aggressive online attack. Most reputation repair cases involve instances where someone posted a bad thing about you, and they’re not especially motivated to keep posting more and not aware you’re moving to make their damaging content move down and off the first page of results.
If you’re the subject of active and ongoing attacks, you may want to buy a few of the more effective domain names for your name so that someone else cannot buy them and use them against you. (If you protectively buy more than you’re planning to launch sites upon, be aware than anyone can add insulting words onto your name to come up with more ways to register beyond what you’ve bought.)
If you buy more domains than you use, be sure to 301 redirect them to your primary website(s). There is a small chance that this could help your overall optimization efforts, because many sites automatically generate information web pages about each and every domain name. For those domain info sites that have not added “rel=’nofollow’” parameters to their links out to domains, using the redirecting domains might convey some dribbles of ranking ability to your primary site.
The domain name is a valuable first step in reputation improvement campaigns
The domain name secrets I’ve outlined above may be some of the best advice you can have for fixing your online reputation issues. Google and other search engines go to a lot of effort to enable official topic websites to rank in the first position for a proper name keyword search.
One or a few official websites from the keyworded domain can also be an important asset for linking to other, secondary positive reputation materials to help them outrank the bad stuff. Keyworded domain websites will not totally solve your problems in most cases — you cannot expect to register 10 domains to take up all 10 of the listings on the first page of your name-query search results — but using a few of these will help you improve your situation. Your next step after registering your domains will be to set up websites on them in as optimized a manner as possible.
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.
from Marketing Land http://ift.tt/2gxyR4X
via IFTTT
Amazon: Alexa devices were best-selling products from any manufacturer
Amazon’s aggressive pricing and promotion of it own hardware products made them top sellers over the past holiday weekend. According to a release out from the company, Amazon had its “best-ever holiday shopping weekend for devices.”
Amazon, which doesn’t disclose precise sales figures, said that the “Echo Dot, Amazon Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote, Fire tablet, and Amazon Echo were . . . the best-selling products from any manufacturer in any category across all of Amazon.” It reported that “millions of Alexa devices” were sold.
According to a pre-holiday analysis from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), Amazon has sold roughly 5 million Echo devices in the US since the Echo’s launch in 2014. CIRP also says that Amazon has roughly 65 million US Prime members, who spend an average $1,200 per year on Amazon. A separate analysis found that 30 percent of Prime customers order from Amazon every week.
According to several studies Amazon is the top search engine for products. So the company is in a unique position to promote its own devices.
This past weekend Amazon was selling the Echo for $139 (vs. $179) and the Echo Dot for $39 (vs. $49). Google’s rival Home device was also on sale for $99 (vs. $130).
from Marketing Land http://ift.tt/2fQVGCx
via IFTTT
Exclusivity Ruins Authenticity
For all the talk around ethics in influencer marketing, it's shocking how little advocacy there is for authenticity as it relates to exclusivity. As more and more influencers land products in the social spotlight, brands are increasingly calling for brand exclusivity -- for 30, 60 or 90 days, or even six to twelve months, and sometimes longer.
On the surface, this request makes perfect sense. But requiring exclusivity is a terrible idea. Here's why.
It unfairly limits professional opportunities
First, it's unfair to require professional influencers -- people who make a living working with brands -- to turn down other paying gigs. Exclusivity reduces the number of potential employers for influencers, usually without offering them opportunities or compensation to make up the difference.
It erodes credibility
Second, and probably of greater importance to the brands, asking an influencer to only use one product, and not even mention competitors, erodes the credibility of the influencer with his or her audience. This in turn makes the program less effective, and in some cases may even damage the reputation of the brand.
This can sound counter-intuitive to some, especially if you come from a traditional media/digital ad perspective: What if a competitor's ad looks better or offers a better deal? What if competing ads confuse the consumer? An influencer who works with competitive brands will only add to the confusion, right?
Not, exactly.
Authenticity means self-control
Marketers want to work with influencers because they know influencers have a special connection to their readers, and their readers love them. Their readers listen to them, not the brand. When a brand tries to force an influencer into behaving like an ad, readers immediately sense the lack of authenticity and turn away. Requiring exclusivity makes influencers behave like ad units instead of people -- and that results in a fake, failed campaign.
Marketers should keep in mind that blog or Instagram (or Facebook or YouTube, etc.) posts are created by the influencer, not the brand. An ad is always experienced as "something the brand is directly telling you." By contrast, when an influencer shares carefully crafted sponsored content, the reader experiences the influencer's interpretation of the brand messaging -- and that's the key. The influencer has worked hard to build her audience's trust, and her audience knows this. Any brand messaging is interpreted as a peer-to-peer recommendation. Besides, in real life, people use many brands and services, including some that are competitive.
Real life isn't always brand loyal
In real life, you may love a certain brand in a certain situation, and use something completely different in another. For example, you might use brown sugar for baking chocolate chip cookies, super-fine sugar for making raspberry sorbet, and an artificial sweetener for a big pitcher of iced tea. All three of those items could be made in the same kitchen, on the same day. That's real life.
If an influencer only ever uses one brand, it looks fishy; it looks fake.
To take it a step further, influencers are able to influence their audiences because they've built an expertise, usually by trying a wide variety of products, and sharing the pros and cons of each. They're experts precisely because they've tried and evaluated many different options. This is something an ad unit cannot achieve.
A beauty blogger usually will advocate one brand of mascara and another brand of lipstick -- and probably combine multiple brands of moisturizer, primer, foundation, and eyeshadow. Outside of a branded store environment, real people use all kinds of products, from drugstore to luxury brands. Readers both understand and expect to see this kind of real experience. To curtail that natural product variety by requiring exclusivity makes the content, and the context, seem fake.
Authenticity beats exclusivity
It's important to give influencers the flexibility to do their jobs effectively. It's also important to respect the authentic relationship they have with their audiences, and trust both the influencer and reader to accurately judge what they're reading. Consumers understand that a professional can have a transparent, sponsored relationship with a brand, and still give an unbiased, real opinion.
Besides, if you believe in your brand, don't you want it to be tried, tested, and compared to the competition? Don't be scared. If your influencers also believe in your brand, you're in excellent hands.
from Advertising Age - Ad Age Homepage http://ift.tt/2gFUIde
via IFTTT
My Favorite Business Model for a Breakthrough Digital Business
It was the end of 2008. Something you might remember about that year — in October, the markets took a nasty fall and the global economy melted down.
I was the sole breadwinner for my family. The company I worked for was going through round after round of layoffs. The well-paying, secure job I’d had for five years looked likely to evaporate underneath me.
I had some savings, but not a ton. I had a mortgage and preschool for my three-year-old to pay for, as well as silly habits like buying groceries and having health insurance for my family.
I had been noodling around with business ideas, but I hadn’t gotten serious.
In the final few months of 2008, I had to get serious. Early in 2009, I took the leap. Here’s how I did it.
My year of living dangerously
In 2009, I felt a lot like a chicken trying to cross an eight-lane highway. It was theoretically possible, but there was a non-optimal level of stress involved.
The first thing I did was hang out my shingle as a freelance copywriter.
In a lot of ways, it was wonderful. I worked on fascinating projects that I cared about. I had lovely clients who actually listened to me. I was able to implement content strategy (which I learned, incidentally, mainly from Copyblogger), instead of sitting in endless meetings talking about it.
The main downside for me was the “you don’t kill, you don’t eat” freelance model, in which I was endlessly having to close new clients in order to keep my revenue going.
I know people who are masters of this. I was not one of them.
But it worked, more or less. I was supporting my family.
Growing the audience
One thing I’m so grateful for about that time: I had started growing my audience well before I needed clients. My original intent had been to find another job — I figured a blog would help me stand out with prospective employers.
As it turned out, I was functionally unemployable, but the blog was an amazing resource. It didn’t have zillions of readers or email subscribers — but it had enough.
(By the way, I launched an email list with a simple autoresponder before I even had that site up, which I recommend if you’re starting from scratch today. You want to capture every drop of attention you can.)
By the time I went out on my own, that blog had already started to pull a small audience together. It also connected me with like-minded people for projects, support, expertise, and eventually business partnerships.
The email list allowed me to put offers in front of potential customers — and discover what worked and what didn’t.
Finding stability
2009 was a year of hustle, and trying out all kinds of business models.
I tried freelancing, which sort of worked. I tried some content strategy consulting (we called it something else then), which also sort of worked. I put together a few simple information products with friends. I had some affiliate offers going.
My friend Gary, a business coach who talked me down from Mount Freakout about a thousand times that year, had been on my case to launch an online course with a membership component. I told him I’d get it done that year.
It was not pretty. Building the site was complicated, and I needed to hire someone to put together a variety of puzzle pieces that came from entirely different puzzles. It was fairly expensive to build. But I got it launched — in mid-December, since I’d promised Gary I’d do it that year. (Accountability is a useful thing.)
I called that site The Remarkable Marketing Blueprint, and it changed everything.
(There are still lovely and successful folks out there who identify themselves as “The Remarkables.” That makes me deeply happy.)
I launched the Blueprint at a pretty modest monthly fee. The checkout system was a PayPal nightmare, and I’m lucky it worked at all. The membership management tools were primitive, with lousy security. (Remind me to tell you about the week that Russian hackers kept putting porn into my member library. Fun times.)
That’s why I’m a bit emphatic about how much easier the Rainmaker Platform makes things. Trust me, the early tools were not so user-friendly.
But they got the job done. People bought the course. They benefited from the course.
After a short time, I relaunched the Blueprint (Gary was bugging me again) at a higher price. And that launch went even better.
I didn’t become a millionaire. But I had momentum and steady revenue. I was helping people with their problems, and in turn, I was making a reasonable living. I had a business that worked.
If you think that would be an amazing feeling … you’re absolutely right.
Come to the free webinar
Building an online course or membership community is a great business model — but it’s not a guaranteed home run. You can set yourself up for failure, or set yourself up for success.
Brian Clark’s original Teaching Sells was the course that taught me how to set the Blueprint up for success. How to structure it, how to make it marketable, how to position it, how to get the content created, how to launch it, and how to run it.
Teaching Sells isn’t on the market anymore, but Brian Clark still teaches folks how to build online courses — only these days, it’s a much more streamlined process.
Brian’s holding a free webinar on Wednesday, December 7, 2016 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time that will get you started.
Click the button below for easy (and free!) registration.
How to Develop an Irresistible Online Course People Will Line Up to Buy (and Then Actually Use)
I love this model for so many reasons.
- I won’t say it was easy, but it was doable.
- It supported me and my family when we really needed it.
- It provided steady, predictable revenue so I could catch my breath and actually plan something.
- It was conducive to my commitment to be a good parent and spouse as well as a capable businessperson.
- It connected me with wonderful customers, who became friends, and who went into the world and did amazing things.
- And it opened doors to other possibilities — the business stage that Brian Clark calls “Acceleration.”
It’s a model that works if you know how to do something really well. It’s also a model that works if you don’t have your own particular area of expertise, but you partner with someone who does. (You set the course up and run it; they provide the content and expert authority. These can be remarkably productive businesses.)
Even though we’ve been business partners for years now, I always make a point of listening to what Brian has to say about online courses. He always has new insights and points of clarity that I learn from.
So I’ll be there … and if you have any interest at all in this model, I recommend you check it out as well. You can just click the button to get registered.
How to Develop an Irresistible Online Course People Will Line Up to Buy (and Then Actually Use)
The post My Favorite Business Model for a Breakthrough Digital Business appeared first on Copyblogger.
from Copyblogger http://ift.tt/2gJyUdc
via IFTTT
6 Ways to Celebrate the Holiday Season in Your Social Media Marketing
“On every world, wherever people are, in the deepest part of the winter, at the exact midpoint, everybody stops, and turns, and hugs, as if to say ’Well done. Well done, everyone! We’re halfway out of the dark.’” -Doctor Who
Last night, I drove home from work in the dark. I hadn’t stayed late putting the finishing touches on another devastatingly brilliant blog post. It was just that, after the long Thanksgiving weekend, the darkness has finally caught up with the end of the work day. And there’s plenty more dark to go before the days get longer.
On the bright side, that means the holiday season is here. There are at least four major holidays and plenty of minor ones to go around.
All this festivity offers us unique chances to make a connection with potential customers. ‘Tis the season for savvy social media marketing.
You don’t have to drape your Facebook page in tinsel or string lights on your Twitter feed to catch the holiday spirit. In fact, the bigger, tackier celebrations are less likely to feel authentic, and more likely to alienate those who don’t celebrate a particular holiday.
It’s better to celebrate the holidays on social media the same way you do everything: With your audience’s needs and wants firmly in mind.
Here are a few ideas for getting your brand into the spirit.
#1: Go Behind the Scenes
Your audience always wants to see the people behind the brand. During the holidays, those who are celebrating will enjoy seeing others celebrating, too. Snap candid shots of decorated desks, bedecked halls, and your annual office party.
Collect memorable holiday stories and favorite recipes from your co-workers, too, and share them with festive holiday portraits. Ugly sweaters and santa hats are optional, but encouraged.
#2: Encourage Your Audience to Share Holiday Photos
During the holiday season, most people’s thoughts turn to happy childhood memories. We recall the warm glow of the menorah, or waking up early to see the presents under the tree–these memories are indelible. For kids born in the 70s and 80s, these precious moments were captured in pictures that look pre-Instagrammed.
Encourage your audience to share their favorite memories and photos with your brand. Create a branded hashtag you can use on Instagram to collect cool retro holiday photos and the stories that go with them.
#3: Shine Light on a Worthy Cause
One of the most powerful ways your brand can get noticed this season is to turn the spotlight away from the brand. Instead, highlight a charity that your brand can support, and offer a way for your customers to lend their support, too.
British retail chain John Lewis came up with a great way to support a good cause last year. Their annual holiday ad campaign centered on helping lonely senior citizens. On the campaign’s landing page, customers could watch a heartstring-tugging video and donate to the charity.
#4: Focus on What Your Customers Need
This time of year consumers are drowning in a flood of holiday-related advertising. Everything from $500 cell phones to $40,000 cars are positioned as perfect holiday gifts. Every retail outlet is playing some variation of Christmas music non-stop.
It seems brands desperately want to put their customers in a holiday buying mood. But that’s not what customers want. They want ways to deal with stress, or help finding the perfect gift, or a moment of silent reflection. B2B companies want help making their budget for next year, closing out 2016, making sure their customers feel appreciated.
Take some time to think about what special wants and needs your specific audience has this time of year. Better yet, ask a few of them. You could end up creating some powerful, useful content instead of more holiday dazzle. For example, last year on this blog we created an online retailer’s checklist to help our audience.
#5: Sum up the Year
Not every consumer spins a dreidel or stuffs stockings this time of year. But the vast majority do celebrate the New Year. It’s a time to look ahead and to reflect over the past year.
If Christmas carols or Kwanzaa lights don’t suit your brand voice, New Year’s is still a safe bet. Take the opportunity to tell your current and potential customers about your brand’s year. Let them know how the company grew, what you learned, and most importantly how you are planning on treating them even better in 2017.
#6: Highlight What Unites Us
This season is about more than lighting candles and giving gifts. It’s a celebration, as the quote up top reminds us, of being alive, being together, and being halfway out of the dark. Your brand can celebrate these ideals–family, togetherness, love–without committing to a single holiday in particular. Instead of singling out a specific group, you can remind everyone we’re all in the same group. Regardless of race, creed, gender, or political leaning, we can all agree Nick Offerman is a national treasure:
Click here to view the embedded video.
What is your brand doing to make the holidays special for your customers? Let me know in the comments.
Stay tuned for pictures from TopRank Marketing’s upcoming ugly sweater and cookie bake-off events. Sound like fun? We’re hiring.
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2016. | 6 Ways to Celebrate the Holiday Season in Your Social Media Marketing | http://ift.tt/faSbAI
The post 6 Ways to Celebrate the Holiday Season in Your Social Media Marketing appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.
from Online Marketing Blog – TopRank® http://ift.tt/2gwJLYy
via IFTTT