The easy part of this process is following the seven lessons below. It’s much harder to find a good conversation. The sad truth is, most of us are terrible at holding even a half-decent conversation. We’re in too much of a hurry. We’re too anxious to get our own points of view across, and we
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The post 7 Lessons Copywriters Can Learn from Simply Listening to a Really Good Conversation appeared first on Copyblogger.
Everyone knows that if you want to be a savvy modern marketer, you need data. Agencies tout their expertise in data-driven marketing, big brands herald a new age driven by big data trends, and it’s standard practice to have Google Analytics set up on your website. But let’s get real. You might have Google Analytics
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This week, we dug deep into getting serious as professional writers — and how sometimes, the key to doing that is turning more of your professional habits into games. One of the most common problems writers face is difficulty coming up with ideas. But on Monday, Stefanie Flaxman explored why “good ideas” don’t always produce
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Over in our Killers and Poets Facebook group, we’ve been talking about a quote from my friend Susan Garrett. Susan is a multiple worldwide champion in the sport of dog agility. She’s also a brilliant animal trainer and runs an incredibly successful business. Different versions of this quote have inspired many of her friends and
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The post Become a Writing Champion by Turning the Hard Stuff into a Game appeared first on Copyblogger.
Whether you’re a pro content writer, fictionist, screenwriter, academic, poet, stateswoman, or bard-preneur (h/t Sonia Simone), you’ve likely experienced anxiety or elation about any number of the habits we all have in common. Authors of all stripes share a deep connective tissue that compels them to congregate in coffee houses and taverns — across the
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Ahh, the elusive “good idea.” Writers spend a large amount of time thinking about them and looking for them. It’s an undeniable part of the creative process. So why would I consider them such a pervasive threat to good writing? The answer is simple. Good ideas are just part of what it takes to produce
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One of my favorite things about content marketing is the ability to create an experience. Instead of buying a single ad, you can use different kinds of content to do different work strategically. This week on Copyblogger, we shared ways content can create an experience for your audience and help you strategically move people in
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We work so hard to get attention. We craft our headlines to make them irresistible. We strive to display enticing images that make a great first impression. If we’re Copyblogger readers, we think about finding that perfect balance of meaning and fascination that will pull our audience right into our content. But what do we
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Today, I’m happy to announce the launch of our first paid tool from the Internet Marketing Ninjas tool division, Ninja Tools: The Featured Snippet Optimization Tool.
Featured snippets have been exploding over the past few years: Last year, one study showed that about 30% of searches in Google were showing featured snippets at the top of the search results page. According to the data we’ve collected over the past two months, analyzing well more than 100,000 searches for more than 100 clients and beta testers, an average of 39% of the most valuable phrases for each site are showing featured snippets in the results.
Every SEO wants to rank #1, but many are missing the biggest opportunity out there today, the featured snippet, which is often called “position zero” because it ranks higher on the page than the top organic result. We’ve built a tool that helps people do just that.
After you enter a URL into our tool, we find the most valuable phrases for which you rank in the top 15 results in Google. We then analyze up to 2,000 of these phrases at a time and show which phrases return results that have featured snippets in the search results. For each result, you can see several data points that help you see which phrases you should target. The tool also comes with an editing function that can help you modify existing content on your page or create new content to add that can help you get more featured snippets.
You can also re-run the tool after you have edited your content (we recommend waiting about a month for this), and you can then see a summary of the changes, including new featured snippets obtained and the values of these phrases.
Our tool also gathers data from Google’s “people also ask” and “searches related to” functions, which can be used to optimize for additional featured snippets based on these questions and phrases.
I know of no other tool in the world that does what this tool does. If your competitor is using this tool and you’re not, you’ll be wondering why your traffic keeps going down, even if your organic rankings don’t change. It could very well be that your competitors are taking that featured snippet spot at position zero, hurting your traffic even if you rank #1.
To learn more about featured snippets and the Featured Snippet Optimization Tool, check out our Google Featured Snippets Education Center. And if you’re a journalist or conference speaker and you’d like to try out our new tool for yourself, contact us to apply for free access so you can take it for a spin.
The post The Google Featured Snippet Optimization Tool by Ninjas. appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.
When it comes down to it, “content” is simply information. And in an age of information (and opinion) overload, your content can contain incredibly valuable information and still be easily ignored. This is the opposite of the “clickbait” problem. In that case, you have a compelling headline that leads to worthless information. The ideal scenario
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Immediately after getting an idea for a content project, many content creators become preoccupied by the existing competition: “It will be extremely difficult to stand out.” If that sounds familiar, I’m hoping you’ll change your mind by the time you finish reading this post. To start, think of the last time you heard a song
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Most sites that teach digital business and marketing have absolutist prescriptions. “You must do this.” “You must never do that.” But the web is a complicated place. And rigid, black-and-white advice will only take you so far. This week, we talked about three ways to navigate the subtleties of conducting business online. On Monday, Stefanie
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Your brand is delicate. It can be compared to rare lily, having to be coaxed carefully and softly into full bloom. What does that mean for your brand?
You have to very deliberately curate and grow it, avoiding the many pitfalls that even big brand often fall into. One single brand image problem and you could lose a chunk of your user base.
A good strategy for cultivating a strong brand from that tender little bloom is by getting the entire team on the same page.
Stop, collaborate and listen… Vanilla Ice knew what he was talking about… sort of. The best brands collaborate as one entity, working as a team to make sure they have the best final product possible. Those brands aren’t insisting that marketing remains in Marketing or sales remain in Sales. The whole team is responsible for each part because in the end it all fits together.
Think of your brand as a chain. Do you want a weak link breaking off the rest just because that link wasn’t aware of what is being done day to day to market it? Alright, so the analogy falls apart in the middle, but you see my point. Everyone should be collaborating and participating in the marketing of your brand.
What you will get as a final product is an innovative brand that is plugged into the community in the now, ready to move into the future.
So, where do you start?
Social media is where your team can really thrive and get the most direct results. Authenticity is important in driving brand popularity. Consumers want to know they can trust you and so they need to relate to you. Being a faceless entity just doesn’t cut it anymore. The modern day customer expects more.
Put together a digital packet that tells your team members about the tone and voice of your company. Discuss with them what is and isn’t appropriate to post. Then ask for their ideas. You will get a ton of fresh perspectives with unique ideas for how to market the company on social media.
Another reason this is a great idea is that it will look from the consumer side like these team members are being spontaneous, while you know that while the ideas came from them, it was tailored to fit into your social campaigns.
Featured tools and resources:
Make sure you have clear guidelines in place. You don’t want your team members to go too relaxed in their public style when talking on your behalf, plus you don’t want them to feel to limited either. There’s a fine balance there and this guide from Sprout Social will help you maintain one. It also contains some actual examples of social media posting guidelines from several brands to help you out:
Slack: Set up individual channels for different teams and purposes and that my team members can interact with one another. There’s a huge potential for automating here: For example, you can import your brand mentions into Slack to engage your team in talking to your brand promoters and let them support the positive sentiment or revert the negative one:
A big mistake many startup founders make is to hire people from outside to design their brand identity for them. Your brand is your unique, most important asset and your team is one of those integral parts of it that makes it so unique.
Your sales team, customer support team, and of course you as a founder – you all are going to be in the front line working with your customers and getting them to like and recognize your brand going forward.
Engage your team in forming your brand identity and you’ll turn them into believers right away.
Together you can come up with a new design and identity: The more people are involved, the better! All from different backgrounds, so bringing together multiple ideas and experiences in working with your future customer.
Featured tools and resources:
Canva has a powerful collaboration element as part of their PRO package allowing teams to work together to design consistent social media graphics, working on templates and brand kits together.
Create folders for different projects, let team members create mockups and more. It is all just as intuitive as using Canva as a single person and it is so user friendly that anyone can use it without much help.
Duda is a web design platform with a very powerful collaboration component, empowering agency teams and client-side teams to contribute to website builds based on each stakeholder’s individual skill specialties:
If you want to have more control over the tools your team is using, for a lighter, more scalable project pipeline, Duda may be worth checking out.
Invision App allows you to work with your team by designing logos, websites and more on this collaboration app. Create multiple prototypes and view them on any device. It is simple, clean, easy to use and provides free feedback.
Content is probably the most integrated marketing area out there. It touches every aspect of marketing, from customer satisfaction to advertising. Hence, everyone, from marketing to sales to tech, should be involved in content marketing. That doesn’t mean everyone should be writing blog posts or creating drip campaigns.
Some people can contribute to blogs, some make videos, some can simply contribute ideas and share sources.
Getting your team involved in content is one of the easiest way to engage them in digital marketing and adapt your content to cross-channel marketing. How they choose to do so makes the end result all the more unique and impactful. What matters is to set up the culture to encourage collaboration and idea sharing.
Featured tools and resources:
Trello is a great tool for sharing and organizing ideas. You can set actionable columns (with due dates and responsible people) as well as generic dashboard where everyone can just drop ideas as they come:
Coschedule is a content editorial platform that has a very powerful collaboration component. You can manage all kinds of tasks lists for every content asset in your calendar including research, brainstorming, design, and then (social media) promotion. Use color-coding, to-do lists and comments to get as many engagement as you can:
Scribblar is a fun educational tool that is usually used by teachers and students. But it is also for teams who want a more visual way of brainstorming ideas. Many find it easier to scribble a concept down then use words to describe it.
Further reading: How to Collaborate: Examples, Tips & Tools for the Ultimate Influencer-Sourced Content Asset
Do you have an idea on how to get a team collaborating on digital marketing campaigns? Let us know in the comments.
The post Cross-Team Collaboration: How to Include All Your Employees into Different Aspects of Digital Marketing appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.
When I think about social media, I start to sound a lot like somebody’s cranky grandma. Back when I was starting out in marketing, we didn’t have all this Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook. If you wanted to run an ad, you bought a classified. In the newspaper! Which people had to pay for! Did
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If you’ve spent any time in marketing discussion groups, you’ve probably heard how difficult it can be to get Facebook to approve your ads … depending on which industry you’re in. You may have thought: “Zuckerberg sure seems like a tyrant who hates marketers.” But when you look at ads from Facebook’s point of view,
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The post Writing Facebook Ads in a Sensitive Topic? Try These 4 ‘Tricks’ that Work … and Get Approved appeared first on Copyblogger.
It takes a certain amount of strength to be an audience-focused content creator. It’s not for the faint of heart. Because when you know your audience is the source of all good things for your business, you open yourself up to receive a lot of opinions. But sometimes those opinions can also weaken the energy
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Happy North American patriotism week! With Canada Day and U.S. Independence Day, as well as an abundance of summer sunshine, I think we can all agree that the first week of July is a fantastic time to take a few days off. 🙂 With all of this patriotic vacationing going on, we decided to extend
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The post How to Defeat the Tyranny of Bad Grammar and Worse Sales appeared first on Copyblogger.
July 4 is Independence Day in the United States, so today we’re honoring the holiday. Hope you’re having a great week, and we look forward to reconnecting tomorrow! Image courtesy Hugh MacLeod.
The post Taking Time Off to Honor Independence Day appeared first on Copyblogger.
I’ve been thinking about writing this one for quite a while, but I’ve just had a lot of other stuff going on. But I can’t stay silent anymore. We need to talk about a serious issue that’s impeding our ability to have the simplest of conversations. No, I’m not talking about the fraying political discourse.
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There are writers. And then there are professional writers. Over my career as a writer and editor, I’ve noticed one key factor that enables writers to perform their craft professionally. I’ve said it before, so you won’t be surprised to hear: It’s the ability to self-edit. A strong self-editor doesn’t just show up to work;
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