Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Genetic Counselors Skeptical of New 23andMe Service
Yelp Beats Expectations With $143.6 Million In Revenue, Transactions Way Up
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
How Marketers Can Avoid the Dark Side of Content Marketing This Halloween (and beyond)
I don't know what it is but every year on Halloween the entire mood and feel of the day completely changes when the sun goes down. There is an eeriness that sets in, right? Now I realize that eeriness doesn't quite feel so, well eery as we get older but, there is still something undeniably different that happens on Halloween when the darkness takes over.
Tell me I am not the only one who thinks and feels this. Anyone? Bueller?
Ok, I digress.
Just as there is a dark side to Halloween there is irrefutably a dark side to content marketing. It's a place where goblins, spooks and creepy creatures rule the content marketing land and if you find yourself in this dreadful domain, you are more than likely committing one, or God forbid - all of the 7 1/2 deadly sins of content marketing.
Yes, 7 and a 1/2, you read that right.
Ok so how do you know if you're indeed on the dark side of content marketing? Well you first need to know what those 7 /12 deadly sins are.
To help you get started, here's the first 3:
1. Making It All About You. The focus should be always on your customer. Quite simply they do not care about you, they care about what you and your product or service, etc. can do for them.
2. Not Adhering To The N.A.S. Doctrine. AKA the Not Always Selling Doctrine. In other words resist the temptation to try and sell something via every single marketing communication you have with your customer or prospect.
3. Wrong Church, Wrong Pew. Do you know your customers and prospects? I mean really know them? Or are you basically shooting blind, hoping for the best? Those of us in the real world know that far too many brands and businesses simply do not know who their customers are and therefore cannot target them in the first place with their content marketing strategies.
Be honest, are you committing any or all of these egregiously bad deadly sins of content marketing?
It's ok if you are for help is here in the form of The 7 1/2 Deadly Sins of Content Marketing (And How To Avoid Them).
Notice the parenthetical part of the title? Not only do we identify ALL of the 7 1/2 deadly sins of content marketing, we also tell you how to avoid them. Think of us a kind of Casper the Friendly Content Marketing Ghost.
So don't just sit there. The dark side is calling you as we speak. Download The 7 1/2 Deadly Sins of Content Marketing (And How To Avoid Them) right now before it's too late.
Lessons From 2015 Bright Bulb Award Winners: Ritz-Carlton, BESLER Consulting, and Tripwire [VIDEO]
Learn from the Best: 6 Skills All Great Writers Have (and How to Learn Them)
If you want to be a successful online marketer, there’s one thing you must be able to do:
you must be able to write.
Writing is involved in almost every type of content creation there is.
Emails, blog posts, and books are all primarily written content.
But even for videos, podcasts, and courses, you need to write content as well as scripts.
I’ll be honest with you:
If you’re a terrible writer, it’s unlikely you’ll be successful.
It’s harsh, but it’s true.
The good news is that you probably aren’t a terrible writer. It’s pretty hard to be one.
But at the same time, it’s hard to become a great writer.
Even after years of writing, I still wouldn’t say I’m a great writer—maybe a good one.
The key thing that you need to know is that you can improve your writing skills.
By studying the works of great writers, you can learn what makes their writing great.
And with practice, you can improve the effectiveness of your own writing, which means more traffic, subscribers, and customers.
Although you could spend dozens of hours doing that research yourself, you could just let me show you which skills are the most important when it comes to writing.
I have studied a wide variety of top notch writers (who are also great marketers) over the years and noticed that they all have certain skills in common.
In this article, I’ll break down these skills, showing you examples of them in action and ways to develop them.
By the end of this post, you should have a concrete game plan of how to become a better writer for the benefit of your business.
1. Having a big vocabulary doesn’t make you a great writer
When most people picture great writers, they think of them crafting sentences full of obscure words such as aphesis and esculent.
But the people who use words like that are usually terrible writers.
The measure of a writer is not how big his or her vocabulary is. As long as you have a decent vocabulary and understand the fundamentals of grammar of the language you’re using, you can be a good writer.
Even if you’re just learning a language, don’t think that you can’t be a good writer just because you don’t know every word of it.
There are plenty of successful bloggers who write in their second language (e.g., Bamidele Onibalusi).
Is their writing perfect from a grammar and vocabulary perspective? No, of course not.
But even without an extensive vocabulary, they’re able to create content that people love to read.
There’s actually a way for us to quantify the complexity of writing. It’s called the Flesch-Kincaid grade level scale.
It looks at the length of words, and a few other factors, in order to determine at what grade level people could understand your content.
By copying a few sample blog posts into this readability score calculator, I was able to create this chart:
The three other writers on this list are all great writers in my opinion, or at least very good.
Notice that Brian and Ramit both write at about 4th grade level, as do I. That means the average 10-year-old could read most of our content because it’s not very complex.
Even though Michael Hyatt writes at a more sophisticated level, it’s still only at a grade 7 level.
The big question then becomes: Why?
The reason why great writers use simple words and phrases is because they write for the reader, not themselves.
They may appreciate the intricacies of the English language, but most readers don’t care about that. They want their information in the simplest and easiest to comprehend way.
Obviously, it’s much easier to read and understand short simple words than to figure out what the heck clandestine means (if you are curious, it means “done in secret”).
Oh yeah, there’s one other benefit to writing simply: you can write much faster.
Instead of searching for the “perfect” word, you use plain language—typically the first words that come to mind. These words are usually the words that your audience understands easily as well, so they’re really the perfect choice.
How can you apply this? This is a very simple skill to develop: just write. When you’re writing something, write down the first things that come to mind instead of searching for more complicated words instead.
Don’t worry if you make mistakes; you can always fix them when you edit.
2. Do you care how your readers feel?
Poor writers do a variety of things.
Some write what they themselves would want to read.
Others write to sound as intelligent as possible.
Either way, it’s not about the reader. Instead, it’s more about “look at how smart and awesome I am.”
Very few people are interesting enough to make this strategy work for them.
When writers focus on themselves, their writing is not compelling to the reader. These kinds of writers either improve over time as they recognize their mistakes, or they blame the readers for not recognizing good content.
I have to ask you a tough question now:
When you write content, do you think of the reader first or do you think about how to make yourself look the best (as the author)?
It’s not necessarily one or the other. Your answer could be somewhere in the middle (i.e., sometimes you focus on yourself).
The simple solution: If you’ve recognized an opportunity for improvement here, it’s easy to take advantage of it, at least in theory.
The answer is to develop empathy.
Empathy basically means that you can understand your readers’ perspective: their problems, interests, personality, and other relevant aspects of their lives.
It takes time to develop empathy, and I’m not sure if you can ever master it completely.
But empathy really shows in great writing.
The best writers use empathy both to understand what readers need to hear (solve their problems) and to determine the best way to teach them.
Some audiences need to be shown direct solutions; others need step-by-step directions; while others need a gentle prod in the right direction.
Examples of empathy in action: When writers truly understand their audience and then focus all their attention on writing that will help the audience as much as possible, it shows.
Take a look at this post from Seth Godin. He mentions the word “you” or its variations 10 times in about 100 words. This post is all about the reader.
The post is about being passionate about your work.
Many bloggers write on this topic. Most would have focused on how their own corporate experience led them to the epiphany that they needed to care more.
But that would have fallen on deaf ears.
Instead, Seth focuses on the reader’s life. He explains the problem using the language that the reader would use to describe the problem in detail.
And then, he offers a simple, one-line solution.
Or how about James Clear? He’s another great writer.
His posts aren’t based on the numbers in Google’s Keyword Planner. They are based on questions that he gets from his readers.
He knows that for every person who expresses frustration or identifies a problem, there are a hundred other people in his audience with the same issue.
So James uses his readers’ language so that other readers can relate to it and feel that the content was created specifically for them.
There’s no other way to do that other than by writing solely for the reader.
The hard part – How to develop empathy: Telling you to develop empathy is easy, but actually doing it isn’t so easy: it takes a lot of conscious practice.
But it’s not all or nothing either. Just because you don’t perfectly understand your audience doesn’t mean you can’t partially understand them.
And as you get better at empathizing with your audience, your writing will improve.
To practice this skill and develop empathy, I suggest the following five-step process. Perform it every time you create content:
1. What problems (and related problems) do your readers have around [topic of choice]?
2. How significant are these problems (very serious? or just minor pains?)
3. How do you think your readers would describe these problems?
Use steps #1-3 to outline your post. Create an intro and headlines that a reader would not only understand but would see and think, “I was just wondering about that!”
4. After writing the content, look at every single sentence/paragraph and ask yourself: “Does my reader actually care about this?” If not, either rephrase it, or take it out completely.
5. Study all comments you get on your content (whether it’s a blog comment, review, email, etc.). Try to understand why a reader says they do or don’t like it.
Create a simple checklist using these five steps, and follow it every time you write.
If you do, you’ll notice that your content will start to resonate with readers more and more.
Your audience will be more excited to read your posts, and they’ll be more engaged. You’ll get readers’ comments telling you their thoughts and opinions, which will be full of great ideas for more content (I get great suggestions all the time from my readers).
Ultimately, when it comes to your business, this type of resonance is very important because it tells the reader that you understand them.
If you create a product, they know that you’ve created it just for them and that it will meet all their needs and wants. Developing empathy is a skill that will have a long-term impact on your revenue.
3. Great writers aren’t born overnight
Think of the great writers in history: Shakespeare, Hemingway,…Neil Patel (maybe one day).
Whomever you think of when you think of great writers, it’s important to realize that they were not born that way.
Although writing is more abstract than mathematics or programming, it is a skill like any other and can be developed.
At one point or another, all writing greats could barely string a sentence together.
However, they all shared one thing: a drive to be a great writer.
Right now, you need to check if your motivation to become a better writer is enough to get you to the level you want.
If you really want to be the best writer you can be, you’ll have to write many hours, every single day. That’s what it takes to be the very best.
If you want to be one of the best writers who is also a marketer, that’s still hard, but not quite as difficult. You’ll still want to practice at least 10-20 hours a week.
But the most important thing you need to determine is this: do you really want to be a better writer?
Determine your goals, and then figure out what you’ll need to do to get there.
For example, if you want to be a blogger, start by taking a look at your favorite bloggers.
If you scroll down to the bottom of Quick Sprout’s blog page, you can click on the “last” button to see my oldest posts.
And if you do, you’ll see that my first post on this blog was written in 2007:
If you wanted to reach my current level of success, are you prepared to write about 2-3 posts a week for 8 years?
And then write over 300 guest posts as well?
If you are willing to put in that work, I guarantee that you will be very successful.
How to put in your dues in a systematic way: If you simply say out loud, “I’m going to write a blog post every day for the next three years,” chances are that you won’t.
You need to develop your own system that keeps you accountable.
Step 1 is to determine what you need to do to become the writer you want to be.
Create a new document that clearly states what you think you need to do.
For example:
Step 2 is to determine a schedule that you can stick to. This is formed by your personal schedule. If you have more time to spend on writing, you have more flexibility.
Here’s what it might look like:
I will write and publish a post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, no matter what.
You have the plan, but you need to make sure you follow through with it.
Step 3 is to find a way that will hold you accountable.
It’s really easy to just not write a post because you’ll barely notice the difference in the short term. But in the long term, it can make a huge difference.
So, how will you hold yourself accountable? There’s no wrong answer, but make sure that there’s a serious consequence if you don’t follow through with your plan.
For example, you could say that if you miss a post:
- you will donate $50 to a charity
- you will do something that you don’t like
- you will email a friend or family member revealing an embarrassing secret
When you’re feeling motivated, you’ll have no problem writing. But when you’re not feeling motivated, this accountability plan will keep you on track.
Now you should have a simple but solid writing plan:
You should print this out and put it somewhere where you will see it at least once a day (at least until you develop good habits).
Finally, step 4 is to forget about the result, and focus on the process.
The reason for this is that in order to get the most out of your writing, you need to focus on writing itself as much as possible.
The whole point of this writing plan is for you to not focus on the results.
You don’t need to worry, thinking: “Am I doing enough to become a successful writer?” because you’ve already determined exactly what you need to do.
If you just focus on adhering to your plan, you’ll know with nearly 100% certainty that you will become a very good and successful writer when you are done.
So, don’t worry about traffic stats and other metrics while you write; just focus on writing well—the result will come.
4. “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time”
That quote has been attributed to many great writers, but it appears to have been first said by Blaise Pascal.
Regardless of who said it, the meaning is incredibly powerful.
When we talked about using simple words in writing, I advocated writing down the first words that came to mind.
When you do this, you’ll often end up using more words than you need to.
And the reason why this is a bad thing is because it dilutes the value in your content.
Think of it this way: your content has a message that has a certain value to your readers.
I would define the intensity—or quality—of writing using a simple formula:
Intensity = Value / Length
The longer your content is (if the value is held constant), the lower the intensity.
If you really want to inspire your readers to take action, your writing needs to blow them away.
It needs to provide value at a fast enough rate so that it feels to them as if a light bulb went off in their heads. In other words, your writing needs to be of a high intensity.
The more unnecessary words you have, the lower the intensity of your writing will be, and the smaller the impact your content will make.
Again, we can look at Seth Godin for a perfect example of high intensity writing. He makes every single word count.
Despite writing very short posts, he delivers a ton of value to his readers, which results in significant emotional reactions from them:
As you’ve noticed, I take a very different approach with my posts.
They are very long, usually at least 4,000 words. Since they are so long, I need to pack them with value.
Where Seth’s content is more strategic (broad thinking), my posts are more on specific tactics and ways to implement them, which takes more time to explain.
But although my posts are between 4,000 and 6,000 words, they are usually much longer when I first write them. I edit them down and remove as much “fluff” as I can.
With blog posts, you have a lot of flexibility with length. In other forms of writing, you don’t.
In emails or landing pages, you typically only have a limited amount of space (often fewer than 100 words) to get as much value across to your readers as possible.
Notice in the above example that every sentence either describes a feature or a benefit of the product.
How do you cut out the “fluff”? Like with these other skills, it takes practice to become a good editor (you could hire one if you wanted).
To practice, go through your content, sentence by sentence, and ask yourself if there is a simpler way to get your message across.
For example, the sentence:
There are some marketing channels that are better than others, like email marketing.
could be reduced to:
Email marketing produces the best ROI of any marketing channel.
That simple change took the sentence from 13 words to 10 words, and made the meaning of the sentence clearer.
That’s a 23% decrease in length. If you originally wrote a 3,000-word article and decreased every sentence by that percentage, you’d end up with a 2,300 word article.
Although it’s shorter, it will make a bigger impact on your readers because of its increased intensity.
Here’s a brilliant article on specific edits that you can make to make your writing more powerful to get you started.
5. I’ve never seen a great writer that doesn’t have this
What do typical writers do to prepare for an article?
They do a bit of research on Google and then compile what they learn into an article.
This isn’t a bad thing, but it’s a recipe for producing content that is very similar to what’s already out there.
The best writers I’ve seen can write about any topic in their niche and put some kind of unique spin—angle—on it.
Besides being unique, that additional something is also insightful and adds to the value the reader gets.
In Breakthrough Advertising, a legendary copywriting book by Eugene Schwartz, he notes that great copywriters have a wide array of experience.
You might consider them jacks of all trades.
Great writers read and practice things in all sorts of fields. If I had to boil it down to specific traits, they all possess high levels of curiosity and an open mind.
They can write an article about social media marketing and use an example of hiking up a mountain in a way that makes the point they are making clearer to the reader.
One marketer that does this really well is Bryan Harris at Video Fruit. He often shares personal stories in the introduction of his posts. But he always finds a clever, insightful way to tie it back to the point he’s making:
Another well-known marketer, Ramit Sethi, often mentions real life stories in his blog posts and emails.
For example, in an email about “unconventional ways to win,” he mentions both baseball and government officials as examples:
The great power of connections: The reason why these unexpected connections are valuable is because they can relate your thoughts using a different language.
Some points will be difficult to explain no matter what niche you are writing for.
For example, maybe you’re trying to explain to your readers how to write in a conversational tone and why it’s more interesting to their readers.
If your readers don’t understand your explanation, reading it over and over again won’t help them.
But often, when you make a point in a different context, it becomes much clearer.
With regards to writing conversationally, for example, you could tell a story of being bored at a lecture when a lecturer simply read his slides to his students instead of talking to them. That’ll illustrate your point in a way that’s recognizable to most people.
So, how do you do it? The very nature of this skill is abstract. You’re making connections that other people don’t think of naturally, and that’s what adds a unique angle to your writing.
In order to do this, you need two things:
- Experience - The more experiences you have in life, the more connections you can make.
- Practice - At first, you won’t make these connections naturally. When you write about a complex topic, force yourself to come up with five connections you could use to explain your point. Over time, you will naturally notice good opportunities.
And when I’m talking about experience, I mean different experiences.
Always be ready to try something new:
- travel
- take a cooking class
- reconnect with old acquaintances
- take an online course in a subject you’ve never studied
Basically, now you have a very good reason to learn or try anything you’ve ever wanted.
6. Want to become (and stay) a great writer? You need to have this…
The final skill that the best writers (in a marketing context) have is adaptability.
Each content medium has its own quirks. Although your writing style will be more or less the same, the best writers know how to tailor their writing for each medium.
When I say medium, I’m talking about forms of content such as:
- blog posts
- emails
- Kindle books
- social media
I could give you many examples, but let’s look at Danny Iny, founder of Firepole Marketing.
He’s written multiple courses in the past:
But he’s also written hundreds of blog posts and guest posts.
On top of that, he actively engages with his followers and customers on social media:
And if that wasn’t enough, he just released a new book, in addition to several others:
On top of knowing how to write for different formats and audiences, great writers keep up with change.
Take me as an example. If you look at older Quick Sprout posts, you will see that many are only 500-1,000 words.
But as blogging has developed, good writing practices for the topics I cover have changed.
I noticed that longer posts performed better, and now almost all my posts are 4,000+ words long. I try to make every post the definitive post on that specific topic.
How do you develop adaptability? By definition, you need to learn how to respond positively to changing circumstances. And in the marketing world, things change fast, which makes it even more important.
The first key takeaway for you is this: adaptability comes second. First, you need to hone your initial skills.
In practical terms, this means that you should pick one main format of writing and focus as much of your attention on it as possible. That’s how you’ll learn all the ins and outs of it.
For most, blogging is a great place to start.
Once you’ve put in the time and effort to fully understand how to write great blog posts, you can move on to the next format, be it email, social media, or something else.
In the initial period, you can still write emails or other content, but most of your focus will be on the first format you’ve chosen. Then, you’ll shift that focus to the second medium.
The second key takeaway is that you always need to be looking for what’s next, whether it’s a new medium or changes happening within an old format.
When you see a new type of content becoming popular (e.g., lately video content and podcasts), give it a try because you can always learn something from it to become a better writer.
You should always be testing different ways of reaching your audience.
Conclusion
Being a great writer will be very valuable for the foreseeable future, no matter which industry you work in.
And even if you’re not an experienced writer today, you can become one with practice: all great writers had to start from some point.
If you follow the steps I laid out in this post, I guarantee that in a few years, you will be an excellent writer.
You can use those skills however you please, whether it’s to get more followers, subscribers, a better job, or take your sales to a new level.
If you have any questions about these skills or want to share a story about writing, leave me a comment below.
Get More from Social by Doing Less [PODCAST]
Facebook users react to and interact with content differently than Twitter users, and you won’t see results from your social media campaigns if you’re blanket publishing across all networks. But with all the social media platforms out there, it can be a real pain in the booty to tailor every piece of content to each specific network.
But as we learned in the latest episode of the Call to Action podcast, there’s plenty that can be done to streamline the process; Ryan Stewart, founder of WEBRIS, shared some analytics hacks to help you see better results without having to work harder.
You will learn:
- Why you should use UTM codes to keep track of the performance of your content on social media.
- How data can help you determine which social media network is right for each piece of content.
- How Ryan got a marketing post to go viral on Reddit (hint: he started by collecting tons of data).
Listen to the podcast
Listen on iTunes.
Prefer Stitcher? We got your back.
Mentioned in the podcast
- 4 Data-Driven Questions to Streamline Your Social Media Campaigns by Ryan Stewart via Unbounce.
- Theme music brought to you by the great folks at Wistia.
Read the transcript
In this episode: Dan Levy, Unbounce’s Content Strategist, interviews Ryan Stewart, founder of WEBRIS.
Stephanie Saretsky: With all of the different social media platforms out there, it can seem like a pain in the booty to tailor every piece of content to each specific network. But if you’re mass posting links and not seeing great results, then you probably subconsciously know the answer to your problem.
So, how do you figure out where’s the best place to share that awesome post on 9 Marketing Tips From Your Office Dog?
It’s all in your data, my friend. Unbounce’s Content Strategist Dan Levy spoke with Ryan Stewart, founder of WEBRIS, about the analytic hacks you can use to beef up your social presence and maximize your time.
Dan: You opened your post by saying that social media is quickly becoming one of the most time-consuming marketing channels, what do you mean by that?
Ryan: You know, I’m very big on native content and native publishing. So what I mean by that is when I publish something to my Instagram, I don’t push it to Facebook because it’s not technically native, right? I mean, the content that shows up on Instagram is significantly different than the content that shows up on Facebook. So the strategy that I’ve developed and what I’ve really seen working really well is creating content specifically for each network, specifically on Facebook. I mean, Facebook right now is on a crusade to keep traffic within Facebook. I mean, you look at what’s happening with pages over the last couple of years. You know, the “organic reach” has gone down. Some people view that as a bad thing and kind of jump ship from Facebook. But if you just play by their rules and just try and keep traffic within Facebook — though you have to ask yourself the question, “What matters, is it traffic to your site or is it people consuming your content?” So taking a different approach and actually creating content that lives within Facebook, especially like native video, native long form posts, images — I mean, this type of content just crushes it on Facebook. But it’s a different type of metric, it’s not traffic to your site. It’s content consumed, it’s views, it’s likes, it’s shares… so in that sense, as a business owner, I don’t have time to do that and it’s become a very, very time consuming process, but a very important process nonetheless.
Dan: That’s really interesting. I guess that speaks to the whole conversation about owned media versus earned media.
Ryan: Yeah. You know, it’s crazy because us as marketers, you know, one little thing changes, we get used to doing something. We finally figure out how to rig the site — that we finally figured out how to get that click the rate up — and next thing you know everything has changed, right? And it’s frustrating as a marketer, but as opposed to taking the time to take to a blog and write about it and complain about it, if you just understand that Facebook doesn’t want you to leave. You know, they don’t want you to man your page, but there’s things that they want you do, and just understanding that… I mean, like I said, video right now — Facebook is making a tremendous push to get YouTube off the planet. Facebook wants to be the video hosting platform because video is the fastest growing content on the planet. So instead of posting a YouTube link and obsessing over YouTube views and obsessing over ranking those YouTube videos, just post it to Facebook. If you upload it natively to Facebook you can get like 10, 20, 30 times the reach of a YouTube link. So again — and this is kind of stealing stuff from what I’ve heard BuzzFeed talk about over the couple of years — when they look at their metrics, they look at combined page views. They look at combined views, so they’re looking at Snapchat’s use. They’re looking at Facebook embed views. They’re looking at YouTube views. They’re not looking at traffic pages per se as part of the metric, but they understand that, you know, our attention spans are fleeting and they’re fleeting quickly. And our attention is where we want it to be: it’s on Twitter, it’s on Instagram, it’s on a blog post. So understand that you’re not gonna reach everybody with blog post and one piece of content. You have to repurpose it across channels and take advantage of what those platforms offer. And it’s a lot of work, but you look at somebody like BuzzFeed who has taken over the world with what they’re doing — it’s really the way of the future, especially for content marketing and social, really.
Dan: Yeah. So your blog post is all about how you can streamline that process. But before you can streamline, you need to make sure that you’re tracking things correctly, right? And you talk about using UTM codes.
Ryan: Yeah.
Dan: I don’t want to get too technical here, but can you explain why these codes are so important? And I’m curious to know how many marketers you think are actually using them correctly?
Ryan: That’s a great question. So a UTM code is just – you know, if you’re not familiar with analytics this is gonna kind of sound like Greek – it’s a URL parameter. And what it does is it literally just injects text into the end of a URL stream, so it tells Google Analytics where that traffic is coming from. Because if you post 100 links to Facebook, they’re all gonna show up in your analytics as Facebook unless you look at a pages report of where you sent that content. But still, it’s not effective. Because if you’re posting three links to the same page from Facebook, you’re not going to be able to tell which one of them at what time is driving traffic. What a UTM code does is it breaks down each link that you post into a separate line in your Google Analytics. So you can actually see every single link that you post across Twitter. Wherever you’re posting a link, it tracks it, including internal links on blog posts and stuff like that. So when you’re looking at stuff like, “When should I be posting? What should I be posting? Where should I be posting?” That’s how you really start digging into those answers because you can really nail down exactly which post is driving what. And in terms of how many marketers are using them, I don’t know. If you have any sort of paid search background or paid advertising background, you use them because they kind of auto append from Google Analytics. But I think if you’re in the social space, very few people use them unless you’re working for a big agency. I run a small agency, but I’ve worked with big agencies before, so I understand the difference, and big agencies understand analytics, and their team understands analytics. I would probably say more than 75 percent don’t use them for sure.
Dan: Yeah, so that’s a huge opportunity.
Ryan: A huge opportunity, yeah.
Dan: We’ve talked about on the podcast before how in many ways the world of social media marketing and content marketing are converging with the world of paid marketing and marketers who are able to bring that paid marketing experience and that data-driven outlook to the table are at a huge advantage.
Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. I’m an organic SEO, “expert by trade.” That’s how I got into this digital industry, that’s where my interests mostly lie. But just because of how dynamic organic search is in the touch points with content, the touch points with social — even understanding how offline advertising plays into organic search — branded search, and increasing the rankings through that, driving demand and stuff like that. I mean, I’ve really learned kind of the full gambit of marketing as a whole, offline and online. But what’s happening right now is really interesting because ads just don’t work anymore. Like, banner ads just don’t work like they used to for a number of reasons. I mean — banner blindness — they’re annoying, they’re obtrusive. You know, we’re at a point where value matters. That’s really why content matters, because it’s about adding value. And when you throw a paid spend in, so like what we’re doing is we’re creating really, really advanced targeting using Facebook. Facebook has just an insane amount of data. I mean, you know where people have shopped. If you think about all the websites that you log into with your Facebook account, Facebook has that data. It’s really valuable data, but like a paid search doesn’t have that type of data. So if you can take a way to combine those two, you know, taking that information from Facebook and retargeting across search — and even across banner if that’s what you want to do — it’s powerful. So what we do is we create like very specific types of content. Very good blog posts. It may be like a gated piece of content, and we take advantage of the paid promotions. I mean, it’s really cheap to promote a post on Facebook, drive a ton of traffic to a landing page and really target a specific audience of people using that Facebook data, get them to a landing page, cookie them, and then retarget across search and social. So we’re building custom audiences using content, if that makes sense, and it’s like ridiculously powerful right now.
Dan: Yeah, we actually just had one guy from an agency in Chicago who is running Facebook ads for New Balance. And they found that once they were able to optimize their ads for Facebook website conversions or landing page conversions, that they were able to get way better ROI out of that than, you know, I guess what you were talking about earlier, which is just keep people in the Facebook ecosystem. So I guess there’s a time where you want to keep people in Facebook and focus on clicks and views. And then when you’re looking at conversions in particular, you want to start looking at pinning them to a landing page, which is actually what I wanted to ask you about next. You know, social media is typically seen, I think, as more of a top-of-the-funnel channel, so are conversions really the right metric to track on social?
Ryan: I think it depends. I mean, in short, yes. I mean, number one, it depends how you’re tracking conversions, right? I mean, if you’re doing last touch attribution, first touch attribution… basically what that means is if, you know, somebody discovered your website through Facebook first and then ended up converting through organic search, or if they came through paid search first and ended up seeing a Facebook post that you didn’t convert to Facebook. So that’s the difference between first touch and last touch, so it depends how you’re tracking it. But just understanding that you can no longer ignore anything if you really want to. You know, you can have success online, or you can have success as a business by just being really good at paid or really good at organic. But if you really want to crush it — like really dominate on the web these days — you can’t ignore anything. Because it’s understanding the customer journey, it’s not just like, “Oh, let me type in, ‘Buy a pair of shoes’ right now and then buy them,” right? That’s just not the way it works anymore, right? I mean, we have so much information available to us. there’s so many different touch points and discovery points of really getting to know a brand and getting to know a product that you can’t just be like – you know, I hear it all the time from clients: “My customer isn’t on Snapchat.” Or like, “I’m not gonna waste my time on Instagram because it doesn’t drive sales.” But you can’t look at it like that. You have to take them all seriously. And I understand if you don’t have the resources to pay somebody full time to post to Snapchat. I get that and I’m not going to force that on you, but I am gonna tell you ahead of time that you can’t ignore it, especially because it’s by far the fastest growing medium on the planet, and whether or not your audience is there right now, you better believe in a couple years that they will be. That’s just the flow of social, right? You know, it’s tough to say. Does social drive an ROI? I’m gonna say yes because for me I source a lot of clients off of Twitter, off of Facebook, Google+, so I’ll say it drives an ROI for me. But again, I also know that they’re not just seeing a Facebook post and calling me up and paying me money to do stuff. That’s just not the way it works.
Dan: And I guess the bottom line is that maybe Snapchat is a top-of-the-funnel channel for people right now. Maybe at some point it will be more at the bottom-of-the-funnel channel. But when it comes down to it, social has a place at all parts of the marketing funnel. You just have to figure out which network makes sense at which stage, I suppose.
Ryan: Yeah.
Dan: So where’s the best place to start when you’re trying to identify whether your social efforts are driving conversions? Should you look at your posts overall and how they’re converting, or really figure out which network is most lucrative for your business?
Ryan: Again, what we’re talking about all lies in your data, right? I mean, I would get active on everything. Tag everything with UTM codes. Even if you don’t have a presence, do what you can and just look at your data. Understand where the value is coming from by looking at black and white data. Is it driving conversions? Is it driving traffic? And again, going back to understanding that while conversions do pay your bills and keep the lights on, they shouldn’t be the only goal. There should be sub-goals, or even separate goals. I mean, branding is kind of a buzzword. It’s’ thrown around, but I think it’s really making a resurgence because of social. I mean, you can create like a mini-BuzzFeed. That just like kind of sprung up over the last couple of years. That’s just a powerhouse right now, and it’s because of social. I mean, they do 80 percent of their traffic from social media. So again, it does lie in your data and understanding just how to dig that out — which obviously I talked about in the post — is incredibly valuable. And it really saves you a lot of time too, so you don’t have to ask these questions. You can just look at a report and you know if it does or not.
Dan: Yeah, and your post goes through lots of really useful reports, which are more interesting to look at and talk about. But I wonder if you could give us an example of how you’ve maybe taken the data that you’ve collected from one of these reports and then used it to optimize your social strategy accordingly?
Ryan: Yeah. I mean, one of the biggest things that I do is optimizing time of day that I post. As an agency owner, that started for me as a consultant and it’s growing really fast. I’m unfortunately still at the point where everything runs through me. I’m building my team, but I’m doing it at a pace that I can keep up with. So my time is absolutely by far, by none, the most valuable asset to my agency right now, because if everything has to run through me, then it’s all dependent on my time. So understanding how to get the most out of social media with the least amount of my time, and even being able to pass that on to a junior person is incredibly valuable. So I really, really, really dig into, you know, not so much conversions, but I look at more front-end data, like engagement on Twitter specifically. You know, what time is my following most active? When are my posts getting the most reach? So that way what I can do is I can just automate it with like a Buffer, or a Hootsuite — whatever suite you wanted to use — and really get the most out of my following. But also understanding that you have to consistently test because if you’re growing your social media following like you should be — you’re getting new followers and they have a different schedule than your existing following when you’ve done analysis. So it’s important to really be mindful of your data and keep a constant eye on it, but it’s really not that difficult. You know, once you understand exactly what to look for, you can get in and out of there in less than three minutes for them, and you’re just setting up one report and looking at it.
Dan: I mean, I guess platforms like Facebook and Twitter make it easier to figure that stuff out, but not all channels have that sort of built in analytics function. I read about an interesting case in your post, where you were able to drive — I think it was like more than 1,600 views or something — from Reddit by just optimizing the timing of when you posted on that channel. Can you tell that story?
Ryan: Yeah, Reddit’s tough. You know, it’s funny, if you look at the amount of times that I’ve failed miserably on Reddit versus that, you probably wouldn’t even look twice at it. But yeah, I mean, I understood the power of Reddit as a platform, in terms of how many people were in it and the traffic that it can drive. It’s all desktop too, which is rare these days. So you’re getting desktop traffic, but also just because I had never had success on it before because it’s a very, very difficult platform in its terms of the users, they’re overly honest at times.
Dan: It’s not a place where people appreciate being marketed to all the time.
Ryan: Exactly. That’s well said. But I understood the value of what it could have in terms of link generation, traffic, exposure, all that stuff. And if you get something to go viral on Reddit, I mean, you’re talking traffic in the millions. But, you know, I looked for a lot of resources on how to growth hack it, but what I found was that there really is no growth hacking Reddit. It’s just one of those things where, number one, you have to abide by the rules of Reddit, like post in the right subreddit, post with the right titles, post the right content. As boring and lame as that advice sounds, if you don’t do that you’re never going to have success. But the other big thing was looking at when people were most active. So really, all I did was I just start to research the subreddits that I wanted to post in. and then, in the subreddit, it tells you how many people are online at that time. And all I did — really lame, but I took data for like a week or two. I checked three times a day every day for like seven or ten days: how many people were online in those subreddits that I was targeting? And then I just charted it out and it was easy to see when the most people were online. And I just kind of got lucky by hitting the right subreddit at the right time with the right content. And 1,600 — actually in the grand scheme of things, it’s the best data that I have on it, but in the grand scheme of Reddit, it’s not that much, but it was very targeted traffic. It was coming from marketing business type subreddit, so the traffic actually had some value to me.
Dan: It’s funny, I guess sometimes the most effective tactics aren’t like the sexy growth hacks, but just the, like you said, the lame boring keep a spreadsheet for a week manually and then you might actually have some pretty good results out of that kind of like old fashion police work.
Ryan: Yeah. And I think people really underestimate the value of – you know, I think growth hacker is kind of buzzword for just a really good marketer, really. But the best growth hackers are the ones that really pay attention to data. I mean, they might not talk about it as much because it’s not really that sexy, but you cannot have success, you cannot have explosive success because if you’re just kind of just pulling things out left and right, you’re never going to be able to growth hack that process, because it is a process. If you want to have success in this world, you’ve got to do things the right way. There are no shortcuts. But understanding how to get there quicker is because you know how to get there, and that comes from understanding what works. And that comes from your data.
Dan: Yeah, so the results might be awesome and explosive, but the process itself is actually usually pretty geeky.
Ryan: Yeah, absolutely, not sexy.
Dan: There are sexy geeks, but I guess it’s a different story. So the last tactic for streamlining your social marketing that you share in your posts is to zero in on who else is sharing your content on social? Can you break that one down for us? What’s the opportunity here and where’s the best place to start?
Ryan: Yeah, it’s a big opportunity. And this kind of ties into the non-conversion type stuff. But, you know, I’m very very big on building communities. I don’t think it’s something that as marketers we talk about enough, or even deliver to clients. I mean, everybody does it, you know, like building a Twitter following, building a Facebook following, you know, and email this. We all do it, but it’s not talked about enough. And communities are really built from adding value. And a big way to add value is through communication. You know, especially as you grow and people recognize you for being genuine and people care if you talk back to them if they tweet you. They appreciate if you respond to their tweet. If you reply to a comment on Facebook, comments on your blogs, it makes a big difference. And there are tools out there that can help you do it. You know, Mention – I think Moz might do it now. There’s a lot of tools out there that can do it. And within analytics too, even though it’s not the best admittedly, there are ways to track mentions and it’s incredibly valuable, incredibly valuable. Again, it’s not something that you’re gonna necessarily see a dollar sign ROI from, but to me that’s how brands are built, on a micro level anyways.
Dan: Yep. And I think as we talked about, you need to make time for conversion centered tactics, but also not forget about things like community building and brand building because that stuff in the long term is just as important.
Ryan: It makes a difference.
Dan: All these reports you talk about in your posts and all these tactics sound really great, but they still kind of seem like a lot of work. So I’m wondering where the streamlining, time-saving part comes into all of this?
Ryan: Yeah, it’s a lot of work. I mean, like I said unfortunately I work 18 hours a day, seven days a week, but I’m working on that. You know, there aren’t really many shortcuts. I think if you really want to do things — this I just my opinion obviously — but there are very few shortcuts in this world to getting to where you want to be. But, you know, with that being said, like when you look at that post that I wrote, if you don’t actively access analytics or your data, then it’s daunting. You know, before I really started paying attention to data I had no interest in it. I would look at a post like that and fall asleep. And that’s why it would take so long for me to do anything because I was doing it the wrong way. A lot of people look at analytics like it’s Greek, it’s just they’re not comfortable. That’s the biggest thing I hear is, “I don’t know how to use it,” but if it you just put in some time and understand that the answers to so many of your problems are just a few clicks away. You know, answers to major business questions, you know, like, “Where should I be investing my money? Where should I be investing my time? Do I need to hire more people?” All this stuff, I mean, it really truly lays in your data. It might not be your analytics data, but it’s some form of data that you just – you need to consult. So it’s tough to growth hack that process, but you can shorten the process by just learning the tools and understanding the tools a little bit better, I guess. I mean, it’s creating dashboard. You can just click a dashboard and look at all the reports that you need to within 25 seconds and you’re good, and then just dive in deeper if there’s some issues.
Dan: Yeah, I guess when it comes down to it, if you’re doing things that are informed by data and informed by what’s worked in the past, then that’s going to help you focus on only the things that you know work, and that in itself is more efficient and is going to save you time and energy in the long run from doing the wrong things.
Ryan: Yeah, absolutely.
Dan: So what’s one step social media marketers can take right now to make their campaigns more streamlined and data-driven?
Ryan: Use the network for what they’re intended to be used for. I mean, I’ve started seeing tremendous growth – I mean, I don’t want to say tremendous growth. I don’t have like a million followers or anything, but I have seen a lot of growth. I built a Facebook community; it’s got about 3,000 people in it now. My Facebook fan page, my Twitter page, my Google+, all of this stuff really started growing when I started creating stuff of value. So creating content I think is a humongous part. And again, content doesn’t have to be a blog post. Content could be, if you’re a designer, like create cool stuff in Photoshop, I don’t know, I mean, that’s a form of content. So understanding valuable content and creating large amounts and consistently, that’s number one. And number two is using the networks for what they’re intended for. Like it drives me nuts when — I unfollow people on Twitter all the time because it’s like, “Dude, I don’t want to just get blasted with links to everywhere you’re posting. That’s not why I’m on Twitter. I don’t go through Twitter to go to your blog. That’s not why I’m there. I’m there to get short stackable whatever, and it’s really a communication tool for me.” So understanding what these platforms are used for and what they should be used for and just playing kind of by their rules, instead of being like, “God, I don’t want to use my Facebook page anymore because every time I post a link to it it goes nowhere.” Well, then maybe you should stop posting links to it. Using them what they’re really meant for, and this is like the buzzword of the year, it’s like native content. You know, create stuff for those platforms. It’s a lot of work, but if you really want to have success? I mean, you look at anyone who has success on any sort of platform, like the people who get huge on Snapchat or Instagram or Twitter, I mean, they’re not just on Twitter posting links to their blog. Like, no, they’re out there communicating with people. They’re talking to people. They’re posting interesting stuff. So again, it’s not a shortcut by any means, but if you really want to have success on social, I think, you need to be social and create that native type content for that platform.
Dan: Got to respect the platform.
Ryan: Got to.
Dan: Thanks so much Ryan for taking the time to chat, this is great stuff.
Ryan: Yeah, any time.
Stephanie That was Ryan Stewart, founder of WEBRIS.
Transcript by GMR Transcription.
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Heroin, Opioid Abuse Put Extra Strain On U.S. Foster Care System
Roughly 265,000 U.S. kids entered foster care last year — the highest number since 2008. Officials say the abuse of heroin or prescription painkillers by more parents is one reason for the increase.