Audience Development Strategy posts focus on how to drive more website traffic through organic and paid sources, including search and social. You’ll also learn how to convert website visitors into email subscribers.
For those publishers trying their hand at mobile email and mobile site design, they need to pay close attention to two main things: device guidelines and best practices.
Device guidelines remain the same, until new products are released into the marketplace. Currently, just below 50% of mobile phone subscribers own smartphones. This number is compared to
As an editor, especially one that writes every day and several times a day, it’s a sad to see some of your best content hang out in the background, possibly never to see the light of digital eyes again. With hundreds of articles under your belt, there are surely a few gems that you’re extra
The Blockbuster SEO Post has become legendary in a short time because knowing how to create Blockbuster SEO Posts can lead to immediate traffic boosts. Sometimes this increase in traffic can account for thousands of new visitors each month.
If you are unfamiliar with the process of creating Blockbuster SEO Posts, take a look at this
Tips for getting the most from your Pinterest experience
Content creators and content consumers ran to Pinterest earlier this year, and although the growth is reportedly slowing, the social site has around 20 million users and experiences over 1.36 million visitors each day.
Some publishers were excited to get on the Pinterest bandwagon, producing pinboards that display
SEO Blogging can do wonders for online publications
Have you ever analyzed your posts that drive the most website traffic? What characteristics do they have that make them so valuable?
In some instances, it’s purely your content. Numbered lists comprised of useful information and how-to articles often sit atop the most popular articles for many digital publishers.
Extensive keyword research is a digital publisher’s best friend. It is used not only to find what audience members are searching for, but it also helps quantify competition and the cost associated with keyword campaigns.
Beyond the well-known Google Keyword Tool, there are a couple of additional free tools that will help you develop your keyword
Rodney emphasizes user-created content at SIPA Munich
More than 100 attendees from 13 countries and 24 companies have gathered yesterday through tomorrow for the SIPA Munich Conference. You can follow some of the proceedings on Twitter at #sipamuc. Craig Rodney, managing director, Cerebra Communications, South Africa, delivered a talk earlier today about mobile and social
Hunger Games marketing campaign yields vital lessons
“This book is on junior high reading lists, but kids killing kids, even though it’s handled delicately in the film, is a potential perception problem in marketing,” he said.
—from March 18 New York Times article about the marketing of the film The Hunger Games
Considerations for making email campaigns more effective
Email marketers spend a lot of time creating email marketing campaigns and informational email newsletters. They analyze past email campaign results, strategize on future campaigns, and conduct tests in hopes of finding the best email subject lines ever.
Some email trends for 2012 are fairly clear, and are dictated by
Getting users to comment on your blog posts can be difficult. Sometimes people have the desire to add substance to your blog content, but don’t want to be the first commenter.
Digital publishers know by now that comments are important. They are viewed by Google as a sign of approval and engagement, and are social signals
Do you have an idea of how many email addresses on your list are misspelled or downright fake? Taking a look at your bounce rate, you can probably attribute over 50% of those bounces to emails that never were and never will be deliverable.
The art of audience development blogging requires great service journalism wrapped around a best-selling product
While audience development blogging can take many formats, I teach my clients three basic templates to begin a new blogging program. A typical blog calendar might go for as little as four weeks to as many as 26 weeks. It might
There are two sides to audience development blogging – the practitioner’s side and the manager’s side.
Practitioners, including online editors and bloggers, want to know all the best strategies for audience development. They want to see their audience numbers grow with detailed, targeted work.
Audience development is a main focus of this live event, with dozens of tips and case studies offered
Audience development is rampant online, but which strategies are right for your brand? With all the media formats available, you need to understand your options and what would genuinely help build your audience.
Twitter and Facebook are clear choices
With a new optimization penalty looming, who stands to lose search engine traction?
Many digital magazine publishers pride themselves in the SEO work they do. Through careful research and targeting, they are able to attract new audience members globally, at all times of the day.
However, some publishers are puzzled over a recent statement from Matt Cutts,
Open Site Explorer can help build better authority for your website
Do you realize that it does matter who links to your website? Websites that link to your content can have an impact on your website’s authority. If you are linked to by a lot of popular, well-regarded websites, it can help your standing in search
Do you have high quality content to attract and convert users?
We don’t genuinely think Google will make changes to their GoogleBot that will penalize white hat SEO, even after Matt Cutts stated that overly SEO’d websites could face penalties.
My recommendation for combating this statement is to thoroughly check your SEO, make sure you aren’t participating
3 sources to turn to for email copywriting advice
Writing for email is unlike other forms of communication. First, you need to have an email subject line that screams, “Open me!” Then you need clear and concise content that has a personal tone. Then of course, you need to provide value to the reader while your
Simple tips for adding links on your YouTube channel
Your YouTube channel isn’t only for presenting video content. It is another extension of your brand and should be designed to send traffic to your website. The great thing about YouTube is that it’s formatted to allow savvy operators to drive traffic, if you are paying attention
From the beginning, Facebook has had a focus on visual components. Much of the original work on the social network was about showing pictures of individuals.
This concept has continuously grown. Users browse through the images of their friends and family members, or they search the network to put a name with a face.
While bringing your company onto Facebook, what was the biggest problem you experienced? As digital publishers, it would be hard to imagine that creating share-worthy content was the hardest part.
For many, the new level of transparency was difficult because it was a very new concept to them. They weren’t familiar with the expectation to be
How are you driving engagement on your Facebook page?
If you ask some publishers about the value of Facebook, they might focus on the retail aspect. How using Facebook to spread the word of daily or weekly deals has evaluated sales.
However, simply spreading promotional materials through Facebook is not social. It’s not something a friend would
The WordPress community has developed multiple plug-ins to combine functionality of their WordPress website with email.
WP-Email is one such plug-in, which allows users to email a post or page to any of their contacts. This plug-in has customizable options and shows email statistics.
Live events, webinars, and white papers provide email marketing insight
Live vents are a major way publishers generate revenue and build an audience. There is no higher level of interaction than speaking to your audience face to face. And attendees of live events realize that. People will attend events if they are dedicated to the subject
Advanced email marketing strategies displayed through case studies will have you driving more traffic and gaining more conversions
Email list building is a main thought for digital publishers. Email allows for direct, personalized, thorough content, which can lead to sales.
Our commitment to email stems from its habitual characteristics; the majority of adults online check their email
All industries have best practices for setting up their Facebook page
What is the focus of your company’s Facebook page? Are you using it to share content or promote weekly deals? Do you have a lot of interaction taking place on your page?
Before diving into Facebook, some publishers sat with their staff and came up with
SEOs track results so their success can be substantiated. However, before overall results can be formulated, there is the need to create an accurate and extensive keyword universe.
The Google Keyword Tool helps in this process by generating related keywords for your main keyword phrases. In addition to helping you develop your keyword clusters, the Google
For some digital publishers, social media is all about impressions
If you had to choose between Facebook and Twitter for your digital publication, which would you choose?
It’s a tough question because each social network has positive attributes. And although Facebook has a much larger audience base, Twitter’s growth is not something to scoff at.
TweetChat Yields a Screenful of Video Tips
It’s revealing no secrets to say that video has become a huge tool for engaging and selling on the Internet. How many of us start and end each day looking at various posted videos? Yet how many of us use video to help engage and market on our company’s
People relevant to your niche are who you should be following
If you were asked to find 10 people you know on Twitter, find 10 companies you admire, find 10 competitors, and find 10 new people relevant to your brand, how would you do it?
Better yet, how would you contact these people? What would you say
Watching your follower count doesn’t have to be painful.
Everyone has good days and bad days on Twitter, particularly when it comes to follower numbers. Some days the number will rise, other days it will fall, and sometimes it will stay the same.
On the days when you want the numbers fall, what do you do? Do
At the Digital Publishing Bootcamp, we will be discussing Twitter and publishers’ interactions with the social networking tool.
The workshop is designed to show how Twitter can be a phenomenal tool for driving website traffic, engaging in conversations, and establishing credibility within your market.
Following platform expectations to appease audiences
George Orwell once wrote, “Good writing is like a windowpane.”
Interpret that statement as you will, but for me, it speaks of the protection that words can create.
Have your words work for you, even when you’re not working
SEO is my favorite audience development strategy for two main reasons.
First, when you take the time to focus on your SEO strategy, and you pay close attention to the right keyword phrases, you are targeting the best possible audience members.
Email campaigns are conducted for a variety of reasons.
Some digital publishers use email campaigns to further relationships with converted audience members. Others attempt to turn subscribers into buyers by selling them products or services that align with their interests.
Working Smarter to Overcome Overload
I read a very interesting note in Sunday’s Washington Post about delegating. It said that Steven Spielberg once told an audience that as an amateur filmmaker in Arizona, he got used to doing everything himself—including scouting locations. But then as a professional, to his initial dismay, he discovered that people make
In the times of crowded inboxes, you need to stand out or audiences will slip away
Rewarding consumers for supporting your brand is a positive step in customer relations.
And with the constant bombardment of email messages, offering rewards to previous customers may help develop a deeper relationship.
With all the requirements needing to be met for outstanding email campaigns, it can be difficult for online business managers to take care of them all.
Beyond the initial need to whitelist, there are bound to be issues that arise and need to be taken care of. First off, the management of hard bounces cannot be
Lifecycle email marketing begins with clear segmentation
After reading our featured article on creating reward email campaigns, did you start thinking about developing one for your own customers? If reward email campaigns are part of your email marketing future, you need to realize that segmentation is key.
If you aren’t currently segmenting your email file, you clearly
Are you prepared to drive the most website traffic possible?
Sometimes it’s the little things that make a huge difference. That concept relates directly to search engine optimization because simple changes to the content on your website can result in more landing page visibility.
Imagine making a few changes to your website and receiving thousands of new
Mequoda Summit West 2012 provides SEO Imperatives and Insights as a Master Class
This April’s Mequoda Summit West 2012 may prove to be the best yet because of its advanced curriculum.
This spring you have the opportunity to go beyond the basics and discover techniques that advanced websites and online business professionals are using to drive more
For consumer marketers, there is perhaps no better audience development program than one anchored by a well-run audience development blog
I almost never meet a publisher who tells me their audience could not be larger. And for the most part, they are absolutely correct. Most niche media publishers never reach more than three to five percent
Traffic begets audience members, consisting of subscribers and buyers
Not everyone who visits your website will become a subscriber.
However, the more traffic your website receives, the greater the chance of building your lists.
Contextually, how would you define a well-crafted email newsletter?
Personally, I’d say it has to have catchy snippets, be skimmable, include valuable information, direct users to social networks, and present related products. These characteristics provide a content-rich email newsletter for recipients, and ways to generate revenue for publishers.
As email campaigns evolve, email marketers need to evolve as well
How you run email campaigns dictate your organizations success.
Everyday I notice emails that come to my inbox. Most of them have subject lines that do not elicit any amount of excitement. I never open these messages.
Pinterest is today’s most rapidly growing, visually-stimulating, social network and it’s build on the concept of these inspiration boards. In fact, if you had to take an inspiration board and create a digital representation, it probably wouldn’t get any better looking than the way that Pinterest is designed.
Gosh it’s hard to keep up to date with every tool and remedy for driving website traffic. You might be loading traffic back to your website, but are they the right kind of visitors? Will they buy a product? For example, is it worth the time for B2B editors to create Pinterest boards? What about
A look at ways to advance the email marketing process
I recently took a look through GetResponse’s new free report entitled “The State of Email Marketing in SMBs”.
The data was conducted throughout two weeks in November 2011, and focused on responses from 600 respondents.
Right off the bat there was some interesting finds, like these four
Are you familiar with advancements that may change your email campaigns significantly, but don’t know how to make these changes?
Email marketing can be very successful if you have a product or service that people want to buy.
Email marketing can also be very stressful if you aren’t seeing the results you believe are within reach.
Where is the future of email marketing headed?
It would seem natural that two popular mediums should integrate well.
First, let’s look at email and social media. Some companies have integrated these two; which has allowed audience members to choose their desired method for consuming content. One strategy to get audience members to use both email
