Proliferation

Apr 07
0

Is Pinterest the New Dark Horse of SEO?

By | Mobile marketing, Social Media, Utah, Utah SEO | No Comments

When considering major search engines moguls, such as Google and Yahoo immediately come to mind. However, another major search engine that’s overlooked is Pinterest — yes, that social media platform. With recent updates to the site, including a new Smart Feed algorithm that displays relevant content first, Pinterest is providing a large opportunity for businesses to gain a competitive advantage — whether they’re targeting SEO in Utah or on the East Coast. There are a couple of ways that you can use Pinterest to effectively optimize your SEO efforts. Here’s the breakdown.

Verify Your Site for Optimization

To get the most out of your SEO efforts on Pinterest, verify your website. Doing this directly affects the placement of your site in search engine results pages. Additionally, Pinterest views this favorably in terms of credibility, giving you a competitive edge in overall rankings. It doesn’t matter if your site is based on services rendered in Utah or across the country; verifying your site gives you an additional boost to rank higher in search results.

How to Optimize Your Username and Account Name

After you’ve verified your site, optimize your Pinterest username and account name. You can do this via your account settings, beneath the Profile section. Pinterest automatically creates a URL for your page based off of your account name; from here, you should edit your page’s URL to be more SEO-friendly. Separate words with dashes and carefully select a URL that correctly reflects the content of your page. In doing so, you’ll make your Pinterest page more visible to Google, and thus, more likely to appear on a search engine results page.

Next, optimize your username. Pinterest allows a max of 15 characters per username — so choose carefully. Ideally, you should use your company name or industry-related keywords. Yet in addition to this, you should strive to make your username as memorable as possible. If your company provides services or information specific to Utah, include this geo-qualifier in your username (if possible). The more straightforward and unique your username is, the better.

Mar 24
0

How Instagram’s New Algorithm Affects Mobile Marketing

By | advertising, Instagram, marketing agencies, Social Media | No Comments

If you do have an Instagram, then you already know the the Instagram traditionally posts from newest to oldest. Recently, however, Instagram has decided to change its digital marketing strategy. The new strategy involves having an image on top that Instagram thinks you will want to see the most, even if it was posted hours ago. So in relation to content marketing, the content a company advertises will now have to be an ad that an Instagram user will want to see.

So even though your friend posts another picture of her feet five minutes ago, that won’t be the first picture you’ll see which could be a good thing. Instead, Instagram will post a picture first based on the interaction you’ve had with another friend.

So What Does This Mean for Digital and Content Marketing?
Companies will definitely be put to the challenge of content marketing, making sure that the new 30 percent of photos that the viewer is seeing, is something that they’ll want on their feed. Digital marketers will need to revamp their looks and images to make them appealing at a glance. According to Instagram, people are only seeing 70 percent of their photos, and the new change will on average let them see about 30 percent, that 30 percent though is based on what the viewer wants to see.
Digital marketing companies who pay to have their ads on Instagram may likely have their post within those posts being seen by users. Users then have the option of following the business on Instagram and if they do want a follow, your company will be showing up on their feed more often. Of course the content marketing they see will be based off what the person is interested in.

Digital marketing companies, however, are seeing pros and cons to the change. Many have said that their posts may be missed due to not having much relevance to the viewer, while others feel that this new change is going to challenge them and they’ll have to bring a new strategy to the table.

Mar 23
0

Caught on Snapchat: The Newest Trend in Advertising

By | advertising, Snapchat, Social Media | No Comments

Snapchat is the fun quick way to send videos and pictures to friends without having the worry of people looking at your craziness for too long. Now many companies like McDonalds and Taco Bell, along with other successful marketing and advertising agencies, are moving some of their advertising over to the popular app.

Finding What People Are Looking For
Snapchat is easy, it’s fun, it’s quick and that’s what people are looking for. Snapchat allows marketing agencies in Utah as well as around the world to put a short fun video up, showing just how diverse their company is. The user, if they don’t want to watch the whole thing, can see the name quickly and move on to their next photo. The image may have been quick, but it was memorable.

Snapchat Discover
Snapchat recently added a new way of seeing news and other ads with Snapchat Discover. Different from regular Snapchat, Discover lets the marketing companies be front and center, instead of fighting for space — like on Facebook or Twitter. Discover allows for graphics, text overlays, animation and sound. Discover uses unique channels for different publishers. Advertisers can have their own place where they can market to those using the Discover feature.

Know Your Audience
Snapchat is a social media platform for people who want a quick idea of what their friends are doing, and Snapchat makes that possible with videos and images that last for a short time. One thing you will want to look at is how are you going to get your message across quickly and with flare. Doing ads with flare, color and humor will help make your company feel more approachable. Remember, the people who use Snapchat are in a younger generation and want something fun — not long and drawn out.

Overall, to make sure your advertising is effective, especially to the Snapchat users here in Utah, make an advertisement that can represent your company at a glance in a fun and effective way.

Mar 22
0

Facebook’s New Lift API Will Be a Welcome Help to Marketers

By | advertising, Facebook, Social Media | No Comments

In an effort to help get more marketing companies on Facebook and to help promote their companies, Facebook debuted the Lift API, a way that will help advertising agencies find out who is looking at their client’s advertisements and create studies to help boost sales and awareness.

The program was announced in January of 2015, and since then has had over 1,000 businesses using the program. Facebook is also testing new ways that will help advertising agencies understand which ads people saw or clicked on the most or least. This helps businesses know which products are going to be a better sell, and help marketing companies know which products to push.

What Does It Do?
Lift API helps companies keep track of who is looking at the companies and what demographic is interested in the product. It will let marketing companies, advertising agencies, the Facebook partners and other third party partners create their own life studies for conversion rates. Kind of a creepy way of letting people that you don’t know know what you want, but this will help companies know what you want to see.

Social Media Benefits
Other social media platforms besides Facebook have helped marketing companies and advertising agencies reach out to the consumer directly. Facebook helps focus on engagement with the consumer, by studying “likes” and views. Social media creates a loyalty to the business directly with likes and follows. Advertising agencies can also post direct content and updated content on social media, helping the consumer be up to date on what is happening within the company.

Advertising on social media is very inexpensive, and has become a popular way to share information. Facebook makes things easier for marketing companies and advertising agencies, and with Lift API, they’re making it easier to help businesses grow.

Dec 17
0

Coping With the Homogenization of Social Media

By | Social Media | No Comments

Smartphone With Social Icons

There was a time when social media was new, innovative and wildly diverse. Digital marketing companies had their pick of dozens of viable platforms that performed different services for different audiences. Consumers segmented themselves into groups depending on their interests. However, that time was long ago—at least in Internet years.

The social media landscape today is becoming increasingly homogenized. Twitter and Facebook are seemingly blurring together. It seems that if they don’t stop imitating each other, soon the only difference between the two will be the shade of blue in their logos.

This presents interesting problems for digital marketing companies. How can they continue to use social media marketing effectively as traditional platforms shift and become increasingly irrelevant? Is it still important to use different techniques across different platforms, or it is possible to use a single strategy across all platforms?

The landscape may have changed, but the fundamentals of social media marketing remain the same. In fact, the imitation game Twitter and Facebook have been playing over the past few years might actually be helpful to digital companies. It allows them to target different demographics using the same basic techniques.

Both Facebook and Twitter rely heavily on multimedia. Videos, GIFs and images yield much higher rates of engagement than simple text updates, so both platforms feature them extensively. However, despite the similarities between the platforms’ functionality, they are used by very different people.

Facebook’s population has grown dramatically older over recent years, while Twitter has become increasingly business-oriented. Young innovators—the ones who used to live on these platforms—have moved to newer platforms like Snapchat and Periscope. It’s important for marketing companies to identify their audience before worrying about how to engage with them. If anything, Facebook and Twitter are easier to use for marketing now than they ever were, simply because their populations are so conveniently segmented.

Dec 01
0

Facebook Messages Go ‘Ephemeral’

By | Social Media | No Comments

Facebook notifications

Social media is no longer a one or two horse race. Where giants like Facebook and Twitter used to dominate, new platforms are rising and gaining users. Facebook in particular has struggled as younger users have stopped using the platform while older generations are taking over the social network.

In a bid to hold the attention of marketing companies and younger consumers, Facebook has released multiple smaller apps to try to compete with other platforms. While Facebook Messenger has been successful, most of the others have failed with varying levels of disaster. Snapchat in particular has been difficult for Facebook to match.

Experts suggest that one of the reasons young people are leaving Facebook in droves is that their parents are monitoring their presence on the platform. In contrast, a primary reason that Snapchat is so popular is that its messages are ephemeral, meaning that they disappear after a short time. Teens can say whatever they want, with little fear of being caught or reprimanded.

In an attempt to match this, Facebook recently premiered an ephemeral messaging option on Messenger for French users. Just like Snapchat, messages will disappear after a set amount of time. It’s unclear whether the new feature will be released generally, or if marketing companies will catch hold of the idea, but one thing is certain: Facebook remains committed to staying relevant.   

Nov 16
0

8 of The Best Social Media Listening Devices

By | Social Media | No Comments

The online marketing world continues to diverge and expand. Today is far more complicated than yesterday and tomorrow will probably be even worse. With so much data available, content marketing companies often need help to gather, collate and interpret their statistics. Additionally, with the advent of the social media revolution, most companies need to keep track of multiple business accounts.

Fortunately, dozens of paid and free services are available to help businesses manage online data and social media accounts. These listening tools can do everything from allowing multiple administrators post on a single account to counting every mention of your business across the social media spectrum.

Fusion 360 - 8 of the Best Social Media Listening Devices (Fusion 360 Agency)

Nov 16
0

Your Business Can Dominate Instagram With These 8 Tips

By | Social Media | No Comments

Instagram isn’t just for self-absorbed millennials obsessed with the documentation of each and every minute detail of the typical day’s events. Nope, believe it or not, the booming social platform can actually be used for a great deal of good, as far as America’s biggest social media marketing agencies are concerned.

So, if you own a business and have always had an affinity for the image- and video-sharing network, consider pushing your service or good though the medium, as well. Looking for a bit more guidance? No issue. Take a moment or two to hop on down to the following infographic. We’ve already provided you with everything you’ll need to get started.

Fusion 360 - Your Business Can Dominate Instagram With These 8 Tips (Fusion 360 Agency)

Nov 11
0

3 Tips for Improving Social Media Engagement

By | Social Media | No Comments

When it comes to building a successful digital marketing strategy, it seems that social media is one thing that most companies understand they can’t do without. From major national brands to small mom-and-pop stores, it seems that almost every company at least has a presence on Facebook (and in many cases, Twitter, LinkedIn and other platforms as well).

But as many marketing agencies know quite well, there’s more to successfully utilizing social media than simply setting up an online profile. To generate a true return on investment, your social media efforts need to be generating sales leads and actual sales. And to get to that point, companies big and small need to find ways to increase overall engagement rates for their social media content.

The following are three important tips for you to make sure that marketing agencies aren’t the only ones who are able to get a good return on investment from social media.

Write Well

It may sound overly simple, but the basis of any kind of success in the social media world is writing. After all, if your posts have the grammatical coherence of a first-grader, it’s unlikely that anyone will want to pay much attention to anything you have to say (which is probably why so many companies turn to marketing agencies for help in the first place).

But there’s more to writing for social media than having a keen eye for grammar and spelling. Web users are looking for easily digestible bits of content that are informative, entertaining or both. In general, shorter social media posts are more likely to perform well than lengthy, wordy posts. Using hashtags can also connect your post to a larger digital conversation, allowing others to connect and engage with your post.

As marketing agencies nationwide could attest, visuals also play an important role in capturing the attention of an audience—and social media is no different. Moz reports that “posts with photos get, on average, 39 percent more engagement”—a significant advantage over text-only posts.

Varying the content provided via social media is another important element of keeping your audience interested and engaged. For example, maintaining a blog is another key part of content marketing, and while sharing your blog posts on Facebook and Twitter is a great way to increase traffic to your blog, that shouldn’t be the only type of content that you share—otherwise, the audience will eventually begin to lose interest, even if you are producing great blog content. Shake things up with video posts, shares of industry news, sales announcements and even memes or infographics to keep the audience interested.

Timing is Everything

Of course, you could have entertaining, insightful posts but still not get any engagement if your posting strategy is off the mark. Marketing agencies recommend different posting times for different social media platforms, but early afternoon seems to be a prime time for many platforms.

For example, Facebook posts generally garner more clicks when posted around 3 pm, while shares are more likely to occur on posts that go live around 1 pm. Posting closer to the weekend (ie. Thursday and Friday) is also likely to generate higher engagement levels than posting earlier in the week.

Of course, with these posting times being relatively common knowledge among marketing agencies, there is also a risk that your post could become lost in a sea of other posts that are going live around the same time. Thankfully, Facebook’s Insights tools allow page owners to see at what time of day more followers are online so businesses can adjust their posting strategy accordingly.

Sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter also tend to receive better engagement during business hours—apparently, social media is a popular way to slack off at work. Twitter’s highest click-through rates come at noon and 6 pm, and even Pinterest can generate good click-through rates on Friday afternoons (though Pinterest is also a popular choice for weekends and evenings—when people have time to cook, craft, etc).

Posting at the right (or wrong) time could make all the difference between your posts getting clicks, shares and other engagements or going completely unnoticed.

Take Advantage of Analytics

Some marketing agencies have the tendency to treat each social media profile the same. But the audience for the lawnmower repair shop down the street is not necessarily the same as the audience for that local underground punk rock music venue. And so while writing well and posting at the right times are key to achieving social media success, it is important to constantly analyze the results of your social media efforts to make sure they are achieving the desired results.

Facebook and Twitter both offer great analytics tools that break down the number of views, clicks, shares, etc that each post receives. And as any marketing agencies worth their salt could tell you, in order to ensure continued social media success, it is important to take full advantage of these resources.

For example, take a closer look at your most and least successful social media posts. Are there any similarities between the posts that are performing poorly? Perhaps an issue with wording or the time of day the post went live, or maybe some posts didn’t have any images? Taking a closer look at what works and what doesn’t for your unique audience will allow you to make the needed changes that ensure only the most engaging posts are created.

With these tips in place, your social media marketing efforts can engage your audience and in turn generate more leads and sales—something agencies worldwide love to accomplish.

Nov 11
0

3 Ways Social Media Should Influence Your Website Design

By | Social Media, web development | No Comments

It’s no secret that social media has radically altered the world. From the way we communicate with friends to the way businesses attempt to sell their products and services, social media has had a significant impact on the digital landscape. And while much of the world’s attention has been on social media’s societal impact, there’s no denying that social media has also had an influence on website design.

A recent article from Upstart Business Journal noted that social media’s storytelling methods have also influenced what consumers value in a website design, citing innovations such as responsive Web design and user-generated content as being directly influenced by social media practices. And while these tools have certainly had an impact, it’s certainly not every business that is looking to have user-generated content populating its site.

However, there are several other lessons from social media that can be applied to a company’s website design as well. Here are a few important ones to be aware of.

Visual Storytelling

As mentioned in the article from Upstart Business Journal, social media’s prominence has made the Web a much more visually-oriented place. One needs only take a look at popular social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat (which are completely built around images), as well as the popularity of sharing photos on Facebook to see that visual storytelling is more important than ever in the digital space.

When it comes to website design, companies are no longer well served by simply presenting visitors with page after page of thick text. While it is important for companies to still provide valuable information through text, if there aren’t engaging images to bring the company’s story to life, it is unlikely to garner much attention from consumers.

In addition to making Web content more interesting to site visitors, images can also be used to present information in a more shareable format. Infographics, in particular, can serve as a more engaging method of providing pertinent information while also contributing an interesting piece of content that is more likely to be shared on social media.

Transparency

Social media has also led customers to expect a higher degree of transparency from companies, political groups and other organizations. While you should be making an effort to be transparent in your social media efforts (such as responding to complaints and other feedback), a company website is another great place to showcase a company’s commitment to transparency.

It doesn’t take much to include background facts about your company, or even information about some of the people that work there, but these snippets of information can be quite important—especially for business-to-business companies. Many professionals wish to get a more firm understanding of the background of a company and its leaders when deciding whether or not to work with it. Including this information when planning your website design makes it easier for potential clients to make an informed decision.

Brief bios for company leaders (or even a brief overview of a company’s history) also provides a great opportunity to showcase your expertise and success. For example, if your CEO has received several industry awards, including this information in a bio page can increase customer confidence and trust, especially when it comes to making a business-to-business purchase.

New Content

It can be very tempting when creating a website to simply slap up a design that contains some basic information and a contact form, but social media has trained users to expect regular updates from friends and companies alike. After all, a social media profile that never posts might as well not exist at all.

And in some ways, this attitude has also affected modern websites. It seems that almost every new site—regardless of industry—incorporates some type of blog. And this is for good reason. Blogs have been found to be highly effective, in some cases increasing lead growth for small businesses by 126 percent when compared to companies that don’t have a blog.

And much like on social media, it’s not just any random update that will do. Taking the time and effort to craft well-researched, quality blog posts not only gives site visitors stronger incentive to continue browsing, but it also sends signals to Google and other search engines that your site is an authoritative source for industry information. As a result, a regularly updated and well-maintained blog not only improves customer relations, but it also can provide a solid SEO boost.

Conclusion

There should be little doubt that social media will continue to influence website design and other digital media best practices. Businesses large and small would do well to adopt these trends to ensure continued digital success.