“In digital marketing, if you stop learning, you die!” For all those who work, think & breathe digital, this holds true. Digital Marketing is a dynamic, ever-evolving and fast space. This space is so rapid that each day brings along a new lesson, a new idea, and a new angle. The best part is there is always scope for more learning, henceforth, improvisation. And for a digital marketer, the learning curve never ceases to be.
Here’s a compilation of a few learning sources from around the world that can help you stay up-to-date with the digital media trends -
1.Moz – Search Engine Optimization can often seem like a trailing game for marketers who don’t have the amenity of a dedicated search engine team. In a cut-throat competitive scenario, SEO techniques and great content often become the shining knights in armors and it is required for the marketers to keep themselves updated with the ins and outs of the SEO ranking. Moz blog is one such explicit resource that helps to brush up on topics that underlie many routine activities involved in the digital practice. The blog encompasses everything related to content marketing, search engine optimization, latest updates by Google, responsive design, and building communities. Whiteboard Friday blogs are something my team and I look forward to since there is plenty to take away from Rand Fishkin's juicy insights on interesting SEO & Content Marketing topics every week!
2. Convince & Convert – The name says it all! Their blog section is more like a splendid guide to digital marketing and they definitely help in improving social media and content marketing strategies because of all the abundant data which is based on audits, strategic marketing plans, guidelines for content and social media marketing. The best part about the blogs that are shared is that they are entirely focused on helping businesses grow online. Topics like "How to get heard in a noisy world" , "5 simple tweaks to optimize your form conversion" , "How to turn B2B prospects into customers" etc. explore the whole wide area of the digital space to the online marketers and help them understand what could be done better to gain conversions.
3. QuickSprout – Founded by Neil Patel, one of the top 10 online marketers in the world the blog offers all that can be instrumental in revenue growth. Neil is a web analytics and conversion expert and also the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics. The blog has a lavish range of case studies loaded with interesting web insights, all focused towards manifold increment in web traffic and conversions. Here's one for reference which we found extremely interesting -
4. Social Media Examiner – One of my all-time favorite posts from this social media focused blog forum would be the one which is titled “26 Creative Ways to Publish Social Media Updates”. The reason being that brands struggle to produce innovative content for social media and this article displays 26 different ways one can approach storytelling on social media. Social Media Examiner is an excellent content source for outstanding tactical coverage of all things social media from Mike Stelzner and his brilliant team.
5. Hubspot – The inbound marketing blog showcases anything and everything related to marketing and sales. The articles delve into precise how-to-topics and the trends that hover in the industry. When you are looking for specific marketing solutions/answers and are looking to adopt new ideas and practices, stop by hubspot! We recently came across a blog from Hubstop "How to Grow your E-mail List by Running a Contest" and tried applying the key points to one of our campaigns whose main aim was to build engagement whilst compile a brand new subscriber database and guess what? It works!
6. Content Marketing Institute – This is the dynamo of content marketing industry. The multi-author editorial team delivers informative content and tactful insights daily for the advanced content marketers around the globe.
The above featured blogs showcase how content marketing can do so much more than just getting people interested in reading your content. We believe that great content eventually leads to business generation and the kind of insights available from Content Marketing Institute helps us think through our content strategy and improvise it on a regular affair.
7. Search Engine Land – Owned by Danny Sullivan, a leading SEO expert in the online marketing space, this is the best venue to grasp in-depth information about SEO, SEM and social media. As digital marketers, we indulge in a lot of advertising online through social media channels and Google. But the key lies in constantly improving and optimizing the ads to get conversions at the best possible prices. Search Engine Land offers information in abundance that revolves around how Google works and search engine marketing. Some of the popular blogs are as follows.
8. JeffBulas.com – Jeff Bullas is a blogging prodigy and a social media marketing genius. All his blogs are about ‘everything social media’ and e-mail marketing and have straight-forward approach of sharing information that can be extremely viable in driving the businesses towards an optimum visibility online. He was titled by Linkedin as a “Top Social Media Expert You Need To Know” and he has also made it to the Forbes’ Top 40 Social Marketing List. Some of his most interesting blogs are around how visual media works best for tapping your audiences and why is it necessary to be visually appealing on digital media.
9. Simply Measured – It is pretty simple with the kind of information Simply Measured has in store for the readers. Strong information backed with data insights and powerful social analytics is what the blog provides which is required by businesses to help them grow.
The type of information and content available at Simply Measured helps us stay updated on what's new in the online space and how it could be beneficial to us. For online marketers to understand how a new discovery can be used to it's full potential to build leads and the brand, there is no other venue better than this one.
10. Audience Bloom – Audience Bloom is a hub for data and content that is productive in nature. The content has great in depth information about various social media and SEO tools that can be extremely helpful in staying up to date with the digital trends.
The reason why my team and I go gaga over the posts shared by Audience Bloom is because apart from the usual digital mantras, they also cover topics that are realistic in nature and help digital marketers as individuals in expanding their knowledge horizon. I as a social media manager, of course have some favorites like the ones mentioned below -
11. Youtube Google Business Channel – A splendid forum for knowledge sharing and google insights in the form of video blogs makes it more interesting for the viewers. The blog contains multiple videos about how Google functions and tools that can helpful in leveraging Google products.
What could be better than watching videos and accumulating knowledge? A couple of recommended videos would be "Promoting App Installs With Ad Words" and "Online Branding - Win Customers In a Moment".
12. Campaign Asia – Campaign Asia is an authoritative voice of media that showcases and highlights the emerging trends in the digital world.
Stay up to date with the giant marketing trends and do what's best to stay ahead of the race in the digital world with the help of these tidbits. We are on it! If there are other blogs that you follow please do share them with us!
In today’s digital world the key for your business to perform well online is to reach the top of the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) and for this to happen your website must deserve to be at the top (We have a slideshare on basics of SEO from an entrepreneurs’ perspective which may be of interest to you).
With Google’s smarter algorithm the need for unique content along with SEO strategies has become a necessity. So has the need for your site to deliver best user experience in the particular niche. Fortunately there are a lot of free SEO tools online that can help you assess the work done thereby helping you achieve your SEO (and business) goals.
Tools for Keyword Research
The keyword planner tool in Google Adwords forms the basis of most SEO strategies today. This free tool from Google can be used to search keywords, ad group ideas and also get an understanding of how a particular keyword might perform. You can also get help in choosing competitive bids and budget to go with your SEO campaign. While this is a free tool it requires you to setup a free account with Adwords before accessing the tool.
Keyword Eye is a free tool for keyword research and helps mostly in PPC/SEO campaigns. This tool can be effective during brainstorming of keywords.
Keywordtool.io, provides about 750+ suggestions for every keyword you enter. Thereby enables quick identification of top keywords in less time.
One of the most used free tool in the industry today, Ubersuggest provides a neat and organized list of keywords that many other tools fail to do.
This one though not a tool, goes a long way in helping identify top keywords that are being searched worldwide. When searching for a particular keyword the suggestions provided by google gives an insight as to what users are looking for in the particular field. Simple shortcut to Incognito is Ctrl + Shift + N.
Content
The site helps identify duplicate content within the site, be it in the meta-tags or content within the site. In today’s scenario where Google algorithms strictly check for duplication Siteliner is very beneficial.
A special tool to check for copied content from other sites. More often than not bloggers are seen referring content from other sites and using them without any modification which is strictly against SEO rules. Copyscape can help detect any copied content to be placed within the site.
Once you have created your meta-tags, it is important to check the optimization levels of the keywords used in them. Google has penalized several sites for over optimization and hence using Remove’em over optimization tool to check the same is highly beneficial
Technical Tools
Google and Bing have their own respective Webmaster tools that can help keep your site optimized and also help check the site’s indexing. Apart from this the tool also provides insight on website traffic patterns, reach, visibility, speed-metrics and authorship statistics.
Moz is considered to be one of the pioneers of SEO and their open site explorer sites will help you understand the various off-page SEO techniques. With Moz open site explorer ou can gauge site’s influence, view subdomain, inbound links to the site, root domain and analyze the link pages.
The tool helps analyze the performance of a webpage. Based on the speed at which the site loads you can quantify and estimate the performance on all devices.
Pingdom Website Speed Tool helps check the time your website takes to load. It provides ample details on average load time and also provides suggestions to help improve the speed.
As the name suggests, the tool helps create a robots.txt file which can be used to instruct the search engine about pages in your site that are allowed to be indexed. Apart from generating the file you can also enter pages that you want the search engine to not crawl without having to do manually.
Ahrefs is a site explorer and backlink checker and is probably one of simplest yet effective tool available. It is well known for its ability to filter backlinks and referring domains. Can be useful in analyzing online strategies to compete with your competitors.
A complete SEO service tool that shows results specifically on link building and domain-based metrics. The free services provided include Site Explorer, Backlink History tool and Keyword checker.
This site will help you create a schema based on which Google and other search engines make sense of content in your HTML. For people new into SEO creating a schema might be difficult to grasp and Schema Creator will turn out to be a huge help for them.
Useful in developing new SEO strategies. This tool shows how search listing will appear in Google and this search list can be downloaded for further analysis.
This is a spidering (crawling) software that will show broken links in your website. It validates text links, images, maps, backgrounds and frames in your website.
Wordpress has become an extremely common platform to submit content online. The Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin goes a long way in taking care of all the technical optimization and helping write better content in terms of SEO.
Tracking SEO Results
Google Analytics offered by Google, is a service that provides detailed statistics about a website’s traffic and its sources. It also keeps track on the conversions and sales. You can look into our article on Google Analytics for more insight into using the tool.
Are there any other free SEO tools you use that you feel should be on this list? Do let us know in the comments below.
India is a significant market for social media giants. We have 100m+ users on Facebook and over 33 million users on Twitter. Mobile web penetration has also been one of the main contributors in the active social media usage. Almost 84% of the 100 million users on Facebook access it through their mobile phones. Keeping all of the above mentioned facts in consideration, it is fair to conclude that the reach on social media is exponentially huge and for brands to tap on this opportunity would result in a vital growth for their businesses
Ernst & Young have released the second edition of the Social Media Marketing Trends in India. They collated data based on the insights shared by top brands in India that are social-media savvy. The previous Ernst & Young study was centered on how brands explored social media to build communities online & sustain engagement. This time, the key focus was on understanding how far have the brands come in the digital space and also the social media maturity levels with respect to the processes and policies, technology and governance across organizations in India.
Let’s have a look at what has changed since 2013!
(Image Courtesy - Ernst & Young)
The study also highlighted that brands across various industries have realized the implication of tapping on social media channels and understood its peculiar demands.
How do brands in India function digitally?
How do brands measure success on social media?
What’s the next big thing?
The study also states that Social CRM, Social Commerce & Gamification will be the future for the brands to explore and harness their growth on.
The full Ernst & Young report on Social Media Marketing Trends in India can be found here.
Voice of the Brand or Customers?
Social media marketing has brought about a quantum shift in the way marketing is done. It has moved the focus from “The Voice of the Brand” to “The Voice of the Customer”. The balance of power in the purchase funnel is now more skewed towards the customer & his peers, slowly changing the way brands market themselves. Earlier, the entire focus used to be about roping in a brand ambassador and roll out your story. Today, your story is okay but what really matters is the story that’s going on between the millions of bubbles on the social cloud. Add to that, the “bigger bubbles”- the social media influencers, and you are in for a different game altogether.
Word-of-mouth results in 200% sales in comparison to paid advertising
Yes, the above statistic is true, according to a McKinsey study. To delve deeper, they also result in 37% higher retention rate of customers1. Riding this trend of word-of-mouth/recommendation marketing, a form of marketing has gained prominence – Influencer Marketing.
What is Influencer Marketing?
The term “Influencer” in itself can be defined in 10 ways by 10 different people. And, each can be vindicated. A 2014 study by Augure2revealed the following:
As part of our in-house knowledge sessions we have created a slideshare on the basics of Search Engine Optimisation from the perspective of entrepreneurs. It include insights on creating content for users, site speed, creating good quality links as well as influencer marketing & blogger engagement.
We have also added our insights on how to track the results & ROI of your SEO & Content Marketing efforts.
You may also be interested in reading our earlier blog posts on How not to do Search Engine Optimisation & 10 Free Apps for SEO, Productivity & Social Media.
Importance of Granular Targeting in Social Media
For e-commerce companies, social media is a critical channel for driving sales. While Google and the display network is an effective medium to reach the target audience, social media networks, especially Facebook are being used to target the right consumers having relevant interests. While it’s important to engage with the audience within Facebook, we have found it to be more effective to drive traffic via Facebook Ads directly to the website or landing page and track results there.
For example, Planet Superheroes, which is into Superhero Merchandise has used FB to segment users who like specific superheroes and are online spenders in India. So superman t-shirt ads are targeted to users who like Superman and fit into the age & location demographic relevant to the brand. This level of granular targeting is possible only in social media. Moreover, organic posts are not enough anymore owing to the recent policy changes for Facebook Pages. This means advertising on Facebook and other channels becomes essential. With the advanced features of Facebook companies can even target their existing customers, friends of their customers and even audiences having similar interests and demographics to their existing customers.
Most importantly, the return on investment is measurable to the last rupee using analytics and conversion tracking tools. This also makes digital marketing more transparent in constantly improving the cost of acquisition for ecommerce brands.
Other Social Media Platforms that e-commerce companies can leverage
Social Media has been crucial to the brand building of e-commerce companies. Not just Facebook but even Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest have enabled even smaller startups find a niche in the crowded e-commerce space. The younger generation is more inclined to using Instagram and Whatsapp and brands are starting to experiment with these networks depending on their target segment. Even usage of pinterest and professional network, Linkedin have grown remarkable and depending on the audience being targetted, different ecommerce companies are using different channels. An interesting case in scenario is Cherrytin, a premium e-gifting destination which has used Instagram & youtube to showcase the premiumness and fun identify of the brand and thereby driving sales in the long run.
We see Whatsapp, Instagram and YouTube playing a pivotal role in the growth of ecommerce brands as the younger generation is adapting to these platforms even faster than they adapted Facebook.
Increased focus on Conversion Rate Optimisation
With tools like Zarget, CrazyEgg and even Google Analytics allowing data points to help improve sales, revenue and conversions, this is going to be a focus area for every ecommerce company.
Focussed not just on social media metrics, but on business results
Till 2013 social media analytics was focussed on social media metrics like reach, impressions, page likes, post likes, number of retweets. It was only in 2014, that there was a focus on measuring business results (online orders, lead generation, sign ups etc). This trend is likely to get more entrenched in 2015, with even small businesses focussing on achieving their business goals via the digital medium. With free tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Insights, brands can now track how many leads or online sales or signups they had and as to which digital medium helped them get these results.
For example, for some of our ecommerce companies close to 30% of revenue comes from Facebook and upto 5% from emailer campaigns. Moreover, we are able to identify which ads contributed to the revenue and leads. While it’s important to engage with the audience within Facebook, we have found it to be more effective to drive traffic via Facebook Ads directly to the website or landing page and track results there.
So it’s no longer going to be just about acquiring fans or engaging with the community, but about how the brand is being built and what results are achieved.
Using CRM to build a single view of the customer
Retailers, E-commerce sites and larger enterprises have started initiatives to integrate offline data with data from multiple online channels including website, emailer campaigns, Facebook, Instagram and other social media channels. Powerful CRM tools are going to enable brands to build a single view of the customer and to see what kind of targeting communication can be given to them. Around the world, tools like Marketo, Act-On & Sailthru have been doing this at an enterprise level but in 2015 such tools will become more accessible to small and medium enterprises even in India.
Focus on consumer insights to serve the right ads to the right people
Machine Learning Analytics & Automation will help brands focus on granular consumer insights and allow for right ads reach the right people. Tools like FanPlayr & Gigya already have powerful & intelligent tools to enable this and these are going to get more sophisticated over time.
For example, Planet Superheroes, which is into Superhero Merchandise has used FB to segment users who like specific superheroes and are online spenders in India. So superman t-shirt ads are targeted to users who like Superman and fit into the age & location demographic relevant to the brand. This level of granular targeting is possible only in social media.
Content creation based on analytics
Social media listening tools and content analysis is starting to happen where brands can predict what kind of content will help in engaging with their audience. Brands like Red Bull have kept content at the core of the digital strategy and that’s the approach many brands are starting to take.
The digital space has seen a lot of discoveries recently, Real-Time Covers or Live Covers for Facebook being one of them. LiveCover.com is one of the first few companies to formally provide this interesting service to the brands that are present online. They offer a brand an auto-updating live Facebook cover that is based on some trigger. It is literally like bringing your Facebook Cover to life with live content & images, automatic refresh, dynamic & customized content and have it updated as often as every 1 minute! Fascinating isn’t it?
We certainly did find this service useful & interesting and ended up using it for one of our clients’ Facebook page which reached a milestone of 1,00,000 fans on Facebook. The idea was to showcase a Superhero on the cover image which would keep getting charged on receiving new likes.
This is how it looked in the beginning –
The trigger for the Facebook cover to update on its own was set at 200 likes. So every 200 likes, there was a new cover with the Superhero charging all the way up to achieving 1 Lac likes.
The idea behind using these live covers was to do something different for the fans and it was well-received by the audiences. The likes increased at a 2x rate and within 24 hours we were able to reach the mark of 1 Lac.
Live Cover served as a fruitful discovery for garnering attention from the audiences and also engaging them. In these times where every minute, there is a new digital trend, it becomes important to stay in the race and updated with these trends to unlock new parameters for brand building & extension.
As the year 2014 draws to an end and we heartily welcome 2015, we bring to you the list of top 5 social media campaigns of the year 2014 that created a huge buzz for all the good reasons. Here goes the list:
When the #IceBucketChallenge was trending across the world, a journalist from Hyderabad, Manju Kalanidhi, had different ideas brewing in her mind. Instead of wasting water in a country where there is a scarcity of this essential life resource, why not do something that attempts to feed the millions of poor and hungry. The challenge put forth by Manju on Facebook required friends to cook or donate one bucket of rice to poor and hungry in the locality and post a picture on Facebook / Twitter doing the same with the hashtag above. Within 4-5 days, the page had more than 40,000 fans and 35000+ mentions. Even celebrities like Priyanka Chopra came out in support of this noble campaign.
When one of India’s favorite noodles brand launched a new, healthier variant – Oats Noodles, they had a tremendous task of spreading awareness about this healthy variant amidst the frenzy for its other cousins. They cashed effectively on the Selfie craze – asking fans to tweet their Selfie having breakfast with the hashtag #HealthyIsEnjoyable. Daily 10 winners were announced, each winning the monthly supply of Maggi Oats Noodles. The campaign reached 2 million+ fans and had an increase in brand engagement by more than 50%*.
Quickr, one of India’s most reputed online classifieds, leveraged content marketing to the fullest for their Diwali campaign “Buyers & Sellers ka perfect matchmakers”. Quickr encouraged customers to blog about their shopping experiences via BlogAdda resulting in immense customer engagement & boost to the traffic to the website. The campaign was extremely successful as it cashed in on the festive shopping season and customers didn’t mind blogging about their experience as they were rewarded with cashback offers and other prizes, resulting in huge buzz creation online.
22nd August, 2014 marked the 375th anniversary of Chennai, earlier known as Madras. As part of the 375thanniversary celebrations, the Murugappa group has launched the #TheMadrasSong to celebrate the occasion & give a fitting tribute to the history, tradition, and culture of this city.
The digital campaign for the song involved a multi-channel campaign, right from evocative content such as Madras Trivia, engaging contests and apps like the Madras Favorite Memory App that asked people to vote for their favorite spot in Madras. The entire campaign was a big success that allowed the video to garner 2.5 lakh+ views on YouTube. You can view the song here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAqtE4KdJL8
Procter & Gamble launched the #MyRoleModel campaign for Gillette during Father’s Day. With the target being men between ages 15-45 years, the campaign asked the father-son duos to put shaving foam and share their Selfie to win exciting prizes. The standout factor for the campaign was the 360-degree approach with even the TV Commericals sporting the hashtag. The blogger partnerships were leveraged in a big way to spread awareness about the campaign, which was endorsed by Mr. Dependable-Rahul Dravid.
Note: Other campaigns could have made to the list and missed out narrowly based on considerations of organic virality created.
In the constantly evolving digital space, social media has undoubtedly become the nuclear weapon of mass persuasion. Social media analyses huge number of people with tremendous levels of information, the places they go, the people they talk to, their connection, and activities they are interested in.
Recently, social media began to elope with the healthcare vertical, successfully abducting the elements of marketing the same - something that social media has been adept in. This act has caught the attention of a vast pool of healthcare businesses which are on a constant poach to tap its potential, trying to deploy a team internally to manage the same.
The 5 social media tips listed below will help healthcare businesses, acting as a compass to claim the treasure of maximum potential in healthcare marketing.
Don’t wait for an ambulance. Pull your super-car out of the garage!
Though many believe that social media is a temporary trend, the fact is that it has pulled the handbrakes for the next decade and beyond. The sooner your organization seat belts on a super-car and accelerates itself to an active presence in social media, the less chances it will face to summon and wait for an ambulance to rescue it.
Fill the preoperative form
Establish a social media policy that will protect your business against security and privacy breaches. Mandate the policy and educate all your staff regarding the same through training and outreach programs. This is to make sure that all your staffs are able to fully comprehend and carry out the policy.
Trial your medicine
You don’t have to prime an elaborate social media plan in the start. Remember that social media is a medicine which is potentially going to improve your business. So test the medicine by starting small and monitoring the outcomes. Based on the results, ask what your business should be doing to maximize the outcomes by leveraging social media to accomplish your key healthcare goals.
Formulate an antidote
Customers are the antidote to cleanse your business through social media. Follow them, listen to what they are talking about your products/services, and your business as a brand. Monitor your competition on social media and listen to what they are saying about themselves. This will make you alter your communication to your customers, in a more effective manner.
Deploy medication
Commission a social media team with members who have a good knowledge on social media and its tools. Pick people who are internet-savvy and are excited about the using social media in the healthcare domain, to benefit your organization. Through time, this will be the medication that will determine your existence in the digital universe.
