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.
Do you know your inbox placement rate (IPR)?
Email usage has remained solid for years, and its popularity will likely grow due to mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. A new report from Nielsen shares that 40% of smartphone owners and 42% of tablet owners use their device while watching TV. What are people doing on
Do you blindly send emails to your list, or is there a strategy involved with your approach?
When it comes to email newsletters, I’ve come to find that a methodical schedule helps drive more traffic and keep people engaged with your content.
It’s always necessary to keep a critical eye on your process; are your providing the
Online publishers, content marketers and email marketers need to apply the same amount of professionalize to their email campaigns as they do with every aspect of their online business
In an environment with a great deal of email competition, you have to create a repoire with your email recipients.
This is done by providing the highest quality
Before diving into a new online business project fully, it’s important to make assumptions in order to make your business model work
Revenue is one main assumption you will have to make. This of course depends on the services you offer and the audience you expect to have.
The size of your audience will be based on
Say goodbye to selfish social media marketing and say hello to its free-loving hippie cousin
When marketers hopped tracks from the outbound to inbound marketing trains, many seem to have forgotten that the only thing consumers still want to know is what’s in it for them. You can’t go around telling people what you do, how
Getting 100 or 1,000 likes on an article is pretty exciting. What’s not exciting is when people post your article on their Facebook wall, and the image that Facebook chooses to pull in is something completely unrelated. Often times, Facebook will pull in the first available image, which can end up being an ad, the
The largest publisher Twitter accounts today are the ones who didn’t wait for someone to give them the “go ahead”—they just dove into it. The New York Times boasts the biggest Twitter following of any publisher on Twitter and has been tweeting since March 2007, less than a year after Twitter launched.
6 tips for creating emails designed for mobile devices
Originally, we were telling publishers to design websites optimized for mobile devices. This was at the time when the mobile revolution was just starting.
Today, the numbers are increasing rapidly. On October 10th, 2011, comScore released Digital Omnivores: How Tablets, Smartphones and Connected Devices are Changing U.S. Digital
Seven Tips and the Sessions to Cover Them
Here are some excellent tips to keep in mind for your business—and the upcoming sessions at SIPA’s 28th Annual Marketing Conference in Miami, Dec. 7-9 that will cover those topics.
1. Find an underserved group or a lonely and under-appreciated group within the organization. If there is a highly
Make your WordPress content management system’s email process less time consuming
Plug-ins are designed to make tasks easier and more time efficient. The premium Mequoda Email Builder Plug-in does just that.
For every online publisher and online editor who has found it tedious to create a daily email newsletter, the Mequoda Email Builder is a technological blessing.
Utilize best practices developed by careful analysis
Email has an importance and relevance seldom seen by other online activities. It’s because of this that email is used habitually by 61% of adults online each day.
Even as much of the Internet landscape has changed over the years, email has remained strong. Its popularity seems to be growing
Are you wasting time with email marketing? 50% of Digital Natives might say yes
If you’ve been following the Occupy Wall Street protests, you might be shaking in your boots about the future generation of consumers—do they expect everything for free? Surely they can’t expect jobs if they want everyone to work for free, can they?
Social media is a collaboration of all the tools that the consumers of today use on a regular basis. Blogs are being written and read more often than print media, and user-generated content is being produced for free, every second of the day. People are building digital relationships with those of similar interests via giant
Eloquent Defense Saves Parliamentary Tweets
(SIPA’s Twitter Chat set for tomorrow! See instructions below.)
Wow, Twitter certainly reaches wide and far. Silicon.com reported yesterday that MPs (Members of Parliament) voted against a motion that would have banned tweeting inside the House of Commons. I must give kudos to writer Nick Heath’s lead: “To tweet or not to
What’s one way to make it perfectly effortless for the social-savvy users of the universe to comment on your blog? By making it Facebook-friendly of course! All cheesiness aside, this is just one strategy that news websites are beginning to use to jump on the social bandwagon, if it’s even considered a bandwagon anymore.
There are
It’s not every day that you can attend a one-day event and suddenly get an entire business marketing strategy fired at you from every angle.
SIPA’s First-Ever Twitter Chat Set for Wednesday
On July 6, 2011, the nation’s first White House Twitter Town Hall took place. After an introduction by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey, President Obama walked into the room like Jay Leno, shaking hands with invited guests as he made his way to the podium where a laptop computer was
Content marketers and online editors should not forget the importance of being found in search engines
The Mequoda Bootcamp now incorporates three workshops, including the SEO Targeting workshop which helps you write targeted website copy.
The SEO Targeting workshop teaches how to target keyword phrases and write the headline, subhead and body copy outline. During this 30-minute
Target and track the keywords that are core to your online business
The Google Visibility Report (GVR) is the core document behind our keyword strategy. It is used to structure all SEO activities and conveniently house them in one location, which aids in the process of keyword research, analysis and reporting.
A keyword universe, which is ultimately
Marketing managers, or whoever is in charge of your email endeavors, should monitor the metrics behind email campaigns.
For organizations that are looking for a streamlined approach to monitoring their email campaign metrics, the Mequoda Development Team created the Mequoda Email Source Report plug-in.
Online publishers should not have to worry about managing their email system, especially with all other responsibilities they have. This is why we offer services from WhatCounts, an official tier-one email service provider.
Mequoda System publishers that choose to utilize WhatCounts’ services receive customer support, training and whitelisting services. This is coupled with Mequoda’s best practices
The Mequoda Bootcamp is designed to teach publishers, managers and CEOs how to launch and run an online business through tested and proven strategies.
As email has become a trusted, habitual activity for the vast majority of Internet users, it’s necessary to address the process of email whitelisting.
Stuart Hochwert, CEO of Prime Publishing, shares a successful strategy for gaining page rank
It isn’t just speculation that user generated content helps drive ranking…we’ve seen the proof.
Stuart Hochwert, CEO of Prime Publishing and a Mequoda Gold Member, recently shared an interesting story of his success with user generated content.
Discover what your audience is searching for with the Google Keyword Tool
If you aren’t already utilizing the power of the Google Keyword Tool, you are likely missing out on a bigger audience of devout followers.
One of the featured 30 minute interactive workshops at the Mequoda Bootcamp focuses on using the Google Keyword Tool to find
By now, the savviest online publishers understand the need for a thorough keyword universe. Although it is time consuming to create such a document, the rewards are great, as it provides the ability to target keyword phrases that matches your content with what audience members are searching for.
The Keyword Benchmark Study is available to all
I was so excited to see that McAllister shared the press release template that Amazon’s product managers use when coming up with a thoughtful and inspiring press release for a new product. See if you can apply this to one of your own products:
Whitelist before you launch to avoid receiving hard bounces and ruining your reputation
Mequoda launches four to six systems each year, and in the process, I’m always impressed by our development team’s ability to juggle website details and get the sites live.
As CEO, I have the luxuries of being involved with the overall strategy and having
“A Personal Touch” isn’t cheesy marketing or something reserved for “mom and pop” gimmicks. In our world of cyber-autonomy, a personal touch can be just the thing to change a casual visitor of your blog to a customer that is willing to invest in your product.
The truth still remains that when people visit your website,
5 SEO lessons from this month’s live SEO Basics webinar
Attending a single webinar on SEO basics is never enough.
There is always so much content related to SEO. Our live 90-minute SEO Basics webinar from earlier this month contains over 30 SEO tips for optimizing your website to its fullest potential. Simply attending this webinar live
A Mequoda System is a complex system designed to point users towards rapid conversion landing pages
At this month’s Mequoda Summit East 2011, we debuted our latest version of SEO best practices during the Decoding Google session.
One of the tools we relied on heavily for this study was SEOmoz, who provides SEO software and strategies to
Google Analytics Real-Time and Google Analytics Premium are new options for online publishers
Are you using Google Analytics as your primary tool for tracking data associated with the health of your online business? Do you like the features of Google Analytics?
For many online publishers and content marketers, it’s hard to not approve of the job Google
Different Phrases for Different Places
From yesterday morning’s Marketplace on National Public Radio:
[Host] Jeremy Hobson:
I don’t have OnStar in my car, but I do have a cell phone in my pocket, and I assume that there are companies that would be more than happy or maybe are already using that data to sell to marketers.
David Lazarus
Anderson’s Email Charter Puts Onus on Sender
So I cut out this commentary on Sunday from The Washington Post by Chris Anderson, the one who is the curator of the TED Conference, not the editor of Wired (and not Chris Andersen, who has the most tattoos of any NBA player). In the paper it’s headlined, “Do
3 email copywriting guidelines for more successful email campaigns
We’ve given plenty of email copywriting tips over the years.
We’ve delivered many through out Email Copywriting Basics free report. Our SEO Copywriting Handbook also has similar, relevant content for better copywriting.
New Survey Finds Word of Mouth Stronger Than Ever
It’s no wonder that Facebook wants to add all these features so that you’ll see what your “friends” are watching, doing and, yes, even thinking. And the “circles” and “hangouts” of Google+ seem to be taking us in the same direction: “You share different things with different
Statistics show how people interact with brands after they ‘Like’ them
For online business utilizing Facebook to communicate with audience members, engagement often begins at the ‘Like’ button.
We understand that’s how business look at the social network, but how do consumers interact with businesses on Facebook?
DDB Worldwide and OpinionWay Research released a study in July 2011
Discover the secret behind Blockbuster SEO posts that generate hundreds or thousands of unique monthly page views
If you want to attract a more targeted audience, and receive hundreds or thousands of new page views each month, try following these steps.
First: Open up your Google Visibility Report (GVR). Sort the Keyword Competitive Index (KCI) of all
Google makes a change that can help the best content get found more easily
There’s always been value in Google News.
This is the case because I’ve used Google News numerous times for press releases by properly optimizing the release for keyword phrases.
4 reasons why you should have a well optimized free report marketplace
If you aren’t offering free download products yet, here’s what you are missing:
An opportunity to start key relationships with the people searching for content on the topics you cover.
The chance to get brand ambassadors to spread
The Power of Video to Draw People in
The popular D.C. Shorts Film Festival just concluded here in Washington, and watching the various films only reiterated the power of video—at any length—to draw you in. Arlin Godwin who produced “The Man in 813,” which won the outstanding local film, told us that he didn’t have the
A Little Social Marketing Etiquette Can Pay Big Dividends
In her new book, Content Is Ca$h: Leveraging Great Content and the Web for Increased Traffic, Wendy Montes de Oca—an occasional speaker at SIPA conferences—offers her 10 rules of social marketing etiquette. (I added #11.) So while you’re getting those marketing messages out there, just remember that
7 job responsibilities and strategies for online editors that help develop a larger, more targeted audience
In today’s digital landscape, online editors have a hand in developing a brand’s audience, even beyond the written content they produce.
An article from eMedia Vitals once stated the role of an online editor well. “…Increasingly we are, directly or indirectly,
Don’t forget these SEO tips for Google visibility, or your SEO efforts will be lacking
Aristotle once said, “Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.”
I bet Aristotle would be enthralled by the technology we have today, especially search engines.
I doubt he could
3 reasons why SEO is necessary for success in online journalism
Last week at the Mequoda Summit East 2011, I took part in teaching our SEO Workshop.
Norann Oleson, Mequoda’s Keyword Specialist, led the first part of the workshop, where she showed the audience how to compile a keyword universe by utilizing the Google Keyword Tool. Attendees
Are you using the best words to help your audience find your content?
It’s no surprise that words are powerful.
Without words, none of us would be able to communicate concepts, express ourselves or create relationships. Our society would not be able to function.
8 sources for audience development
Attracting interested visitors to your website is the first step in successful audience development.
Yesterday in a session at the Mequoda Summit East 2011, Kim Mateus, Chief Content Officer at Mequoda Group, presented a case study from Knitting Daily.
Verifying Email Addresses and Protecting PDFs You Send
Quality of email address generation. Direct mail – what’s working. Protection against subscribers illegally passing on pdf files. Royalties from the Copyright Clearance Center. These are the subjects from conversations on the SIPA Listserv just from last week. It really is one of the best member benefits that
Expert Copywriter Mark Everett Johnson shares email copywriting insight at the Mequoda Summit East 2011
The first day of general sessions at the Mequoda Summit East 2011 surely did not disappoint, especially for those attendees looking for help with their email copywriting endeavors.
As an editor and copywriter, I am always excited to hear expert copywriter Mark
Demographics for search engine users from Pew Internet Project
In the Mequoda Daily last week we talked about how to increase visibility on Google by properly utilizing SEO.
The article detailed eight steps that are completely necessary to understand in the SEO process. There is very little chance to compete for high search engine rankings if you
Discover how your content will fare on the web
Most successful online publishers understand that building a keyword universe is the foundation for digital success.
Another key document for digital success is an Online Market Audit. This process and resulting document alerts you to other websites in your market that are ranking well for your keywords and
