Tools & Technologies Archives

Marketing Technology Broken Down [INFOGRAPHIC]

March 18, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Marketing is no longer about simply our time; there are hundreds of marketing tools that can help us succeed.

Recently, we loaded an infographic with a detailed breakdown of the social media tools that we can use as marketers to improve and simplify our social media marketing. Well, this is just a small realm of marketing tools that exist to help facilitate the marketing process.

The world of technology has meant quite a bit of change from a marketing perspective. The advent of different tools has resulted in two things: first, on a superficial level, there world of technology may appear somewhat perplexing at an initial glance. After all, these are a set of tools that we have never seen before and, more importantly, there are so many of them that we may not know how to go about using them in a strategic manner. Second, these tools have added an entirely new realm to the world of marketing. And not only from a social media perspective. They have opened up the marketing world to so much more, and it is pretty clear why. The possibilities that these tools offer are virtually endless!

Below is a breakdown of nearly every piece of marketing technology that exists out there today. Take a look through the infographic and look up some of the tools you are unfamiliar with. It’s a great way to build your knowledge.

Do you use any of these tools for your marketing efforts? Which of these do you think is the best? Why? Are there any you haven’t used before that you are going to try? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Pinterest Marketing with Integrated Analytics

March 12, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Pinterest marketing was taken to the next level on Tuesday when Pinterest officially announced its newest feature (and what is undoubtedly every marketers favorite): integrated analytics.

So what does this mean with regards to Pinterest marketing? Slowly, Pinterest has been taking steps to become more business friendly, presumably in an effort to begin generating revenues internally. (After all, a business with no income can only last so long.) A few months ago, Pinterest announced the launch of business pages. Now, Pinterest marketing is taking the next leap forward with the launch of integrated analytics.

The analytics provided in the backend are fairly standard. They do not go into the complexity of some tools, like Pinfluencer, which allows you to delve deep into the insights of your followers and find your most influential pinners. But that is not for everyone, and what Pinterest does provide, completely free, is more than enough for you to gauge the success of your Pinterest marketing efforts.

Below are a few steps to help you get started with Pinterest marketing analytics, and a few tips to consider when using them.

Setting Up Your Pinterest Analytics

While your analytics may be working in the backend, you may not be able to access them right away. Luckily, it is a fairly simple process.

First thing you need to do is have your website verified by Pinterest. If you understand code, or have an easy-to-manage CMS like WordPress, then this is a very simple process of uploading a file to your backend or a line of code to your header. If you do not, then simply grab the line of code or file, send it off to your webmaster, and have them put it in there. Once that is done, and your site is verified, you will need to update to the “New Look” of Pinterest.

In your dropdown menu, the final tab gives you the option to switch to this new theme. Once you do, you will see a new tab in your menu: Analytics.

Let the Insights Begin!

Now you are all set to begin looking into your Pinterest marketing analytics. There are four tabs in your analytics backend: Site Metrics, Most Recent, Most Repinned and Most Clicked.

The latter three tabs are fairly straightforward; these three tabs break down the most recent activity (in picture form, of course) on your account with regards to shares, repins, clicks, etc. and give you some insights into who participated in said activity. Remember the small column on the left-hand side of your front page on Pinterest that showed you some of your most recent activity? Well, these three tabs are essentially far more detailed versions of that column. They allow you to monitor the progress of your Pinterest marketing on your website and see how that activity is converting on the social network.

The real metrics come into play in that first tab: Site Metrics.

This allows you to delve deep into your site’s Pinterest activity to see where you are successful, and just how successful you are. For the first time, you can measure the number of impressions on the pins from your site, and see how that translates into your reach on the social network. You can now also see the click-through rates on your pins, as opposed to relying on Google Analytics to measure the referral success of your Pinterest marketing.

At the end of it all, your Pinterest marketing analytics should look something like this:

With this new feature, we can be sure to see Pinterest moving into the realm of offering paid advertising shortly. Like promoted tweets or Facebook posts, Pinterest seems to be on the verge of offering a whole new set of business services that will likely make paid Pinterest marketing all the more attractive. Particularly now that these campaigns can be monitored.

What do you think of Pinterest’s new analytics dashboard? How do you plan on integrating it into your Pinterest marketing strategies? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media Tools [INFOGRAPHIC]

March 4, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Social media is made increasingly easier to manage with the help of numerous tools.

Managing social media activity is a time-consuming task. There is plenty that needs to be done and it is ongoing. Luckily, there are plenty of tools out there that can help us effectively and efficiently manage our social media marketing strategies.

Now, while these tools exist, they are not all designed for the same purposes. There are publishers, monitoring tools, multi-account management dashboards and much more. In this infographic, many of the top social media management tools are separated into their respective categories.

Which of these tools do you use for your social media management? Which ones are your favorite? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media Measurement [INFOGRAPHIC]

February 28, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Social media is an important tool to help grow your business, but like any business tool, you need to be able to measure it!

Unlike many other business tools, however, social media is not only measurable, but easily measurable. There are a number of analytics tools, some add-ons and others built into the networks themselves, that can be used to measure the success of a social media campaign. These analytics can help you enhance or modify your social media program in order to generate the highest returns on your investment.

Yet, even with all of these tools, people are still looking for ways to measure their social media in a more tangible way. This great infographic from MediaZo details how exactly some of the most important elements of a social media program’s returns can be measured and analyzed.

Have a look below and let us know what you think.

How are you measuring your social media programs? What do you consider ROI on social media? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

SEO Keywords with Google Analytics

February 27, 2013/by Corey Padveen

SEO is one of the most powerful tools a brand can use to get found, and Google Analytics offers some great insights to help you maximize your SEO efforts.

We never tire of pointing the wonderful world of analytics that are offered to webmasters in the backend of Google Analytics. With a simple code, site owners are offered a wealth of insights when it comes to the search engine performance of their sites. Though all this information exists, few people are well versed in all that Analytics has to offer. The result? Missed insights that can be vital to the success of your website on search engines.

While it would not be possible to cover all that Google Analytics has to offer when it comes to insights in a single blog (there are multi-part courses that offer this) we thought we could discuss some of the tools webmasters can use to see how their websites are performing when it comes to keywords and search terms. Are you optimizing for SEO in the right places? Are the keywords you’ve chosen for SEO performing as well as you had hoped? If not, what keywords are the driving factor behind your SEO success?

Below is a set of helpful steps when it comes to both finding and using these insights for your SEO efforts in Google Analytics.

Where can I find these insights?

So, perhaps the most important thing we will need to know when it comes to using these insights is knowing where to find them. On your menu on the lefthand side of Google Analytics is a Traffic Sources tab. Under there you will see Search Engine Optimization and, beneath that, Queries. (NOTE: You will need to have Google Webmasters set up on your site in order to monitor these insights.) In the Queries section is where you will find the bread and butter of SEO keyword lists.

It is here that you will be able to start delving into the world of saved search keywords and see just how you are performing for those keywords you wish to rank for, and those that you did not even realize were a means through which people were finding you.

Isn’t that a treat?

Now that we know where we can find these keywords, it is important to understand what they mean with regards to our SEO, and how we can leverage this information to increase our rankings in search engines.

Analyze and Implement

SEO is an ongoing process. There will always be evolution in our SEO strategies, and this is one area that will show us how we should be evolving our SEO strategies in order to keep up with the market.

Once we arrive at the Queries section under Search Engine Optimization, we can begin to understand how we are being found on search engines. There are three means through which we can organize our search results: Impressions, Clicks, and Average Position. Impressions has to do with the number of times our site (homepage or landing page) has appeared in search results for a given keyword or phrase in a set period of time. Clicks has to do with the number of times people have clicked through to our site as a result of a searched keyword or phrase. Lastly, Average Position ranks our keywords based on, you guessed it, the average position in which our site ranks for a specified keyword or phrase. The table looks like this:

Taking these statistics into account, we can begin to see where we are performing best. Say, for example, you run a restaurant, and you optimized for “southern cuisine” in your initial SEO run. Well, say a few months after your launch, you notice that the majority of your clicks and impressions are coming from searches for “southern barbecue” as opposed to what you had initially optimized for. This will lead you to reevaluate your SEO strategy, and begin optimizing for a new set of keywords where you are seeing your highest return. Upon your next visit, you will see that not only have your impressions and clicks risen, but your average position will have gone up as well, as a result of your re-optimization.

Have you used these insights for your SEO in the back of Google Analytics? How so? What have you found to be the most beneficial way of using them? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

YouTube Marketing Optimization

February 18, 2013/by Corey Padveen

YouTube marketing is one of the best resources we have as marketers, but how can we measure if our efforts are paying off?

YouTube is a search engine, and like any search engine, a marketer’s goal is to rank highly for specified keywords and drive traffic and business from our YouTube marketing efforts. But, like any social media program, we need to be able to measure our campaigns and the success of our YouTube marketing efforts. Behind the channel there is an entire set of statistics and measurable data that we can use to see exactly where our YouTube marketing efforts are paying off, and where we need to improve them.

Below is a set of tips that you can use when it comes to YouTube marketing to measure exactly how effective your strategies are. You might be surprised to find just how much information you can pull directly from the backend of your YouTube channel.

Look Into Your Analytics

First of all, where can we find all of this stored information about our videos? In the top search bar of a YouTube account, there is a small dropdown menu where you can select your analytics.

It is in this analytics section where you can begin evaluating the success of your YouTube marketing. The YouTube analytics dashboard allows users to both measure basic information, such as viewer demographics and traffic sources, as well as engagement statistics, which allow you to measure how your videos are performing with your audience. These data are very helpful when it comes to modifying your YouTube marketing campaigns, as they indicate where your work needs improvement and where you are finding the most success with your video marketing. Paying attention to these figures will help you optimize your YouTube marketing to ensure that you are not losing anything (from time to audience engagement) with each of your videos.

Your Most Important Data

There is plenty of information to look through in the backend of your YouTube channel. It can become almost overwhelming. What is important? What should you focus on? These are not the easiest questions to answer when you have so much to sift through.

Perhaps the two most important areas of focus in your Reports section are your Traffic Sources and your Audience Retention. (In the menu on the right.) Let’s have a look at those a little more closely.

Your Traffic Sources are going to be one of the most important elements to look at when evaluating your YouTube marketing efforts. These tell you exactly where your viewers are coming from. This will help you structure future campaigns outside of YouTube to drive the most traffic from your most popular sources. Are your email campaigns driving the most viewers to your videos? Maybe it is your social media efforts on other networks, like Facebook or Twitter, that are bringing in the most views. This is where you can find out.

Knowing where your traffic is coming from will allow you to cut out the time you spend marketing on networks that are not driving any traffic to your YouTube channel and focus entirely on areas where you are seeing success. This increases the efficiency of your YouTube marketing and helps maximize your return on investment (time, in this case).

Audience Retention is another crucial focal point of these statistics. Say, for example, you put together a video campaign with a call to action at the end of a video. Then you put together another one with a call to action at the beginning. Which one is driving conversions? You can see this with your Audience Retention tool. Note in the image below that there is a drop off at a certain point in your videos. People have an inherently short attention span when it comes to YouTube, and the longer your video, the less likely it is that people will stay to the very end. We have found that the optimal length of a YouTube video is somewhere in the ballpark of two minutes. After that, audiences tend to move on to something else. So, when it comes to YouTube, a video search engine with billions of options to choose from, the shorter the better. And all of this is available in the Audience Retention report of your YouTube analytics dashboard.

How Are You Engaging?

Engagement is a cornerstone of any successful social media marketing campaign. And contrary to what a conventional understanding of the term ‘engagement’ might suggest, engagement on social media is more about your brand and your audience. It is not solely about how you are engaging with your audience, but also about how your audience is engaging with you. The engagement reports in YouTube focus on your audience’s engagement with your brand on YouTube.

This section is wonderful for tailoring your YouTube marketing to the preferences of your audience. You can find out what videos people like best, where they are commenting most and when your engagement is taking place. Again, this is an area that will help you maximize the efficiency of a campaign and your return on investment.

These are just a few of the great analytics tools available in the backend of YouTube. Of course, like anything, the best way to learn is by doing. So have a look at the analytics dashboard of your YouTube channel and find out where your efforts are paying off. Then tell us how you use the YouTube analytics dashboard in the comments below or on Twitter!

Best Mobile Tools for Social Media Marketing

February 12, 2013/by Corey Padveen

When you’re on the go, what are the best mobile tools you can use to manage your social media marketing?

Social media marketing is no 9-5 gig; far from it. When we’re on the go, we need to have access to our dashboards and accounts, because social media is all about real-time engagement. If we miss an opportunity to engage, we might be missing an opportunity to acquire and possibly convert a new customer.

With that in mind, what are some of the best tools we can use when it comes to mobile social media marketing? The app store is filled with some great (and almost all free) business apps that can help us efficiently run our social media programs when we’re out of the office. Have a look below for a list of some of the social media marketing apps we think are the best.

Facebook Pages

The Facebook Pages app is an excellent tool for monitoring your company or fan pages on the go. The app allows for nearly all the same insights and features as your admin when using your Facebook pages on a desktop. You can view insights, receive notifications, and even monitor the success of campaigns as they are executed. This is a particularly great tool for marketers managing client pages. This allows you to be away from the computer and still engaging with your clients’ customers and fans in real time.

HootSuite Mobile

HootSuite is a favorite among marketers when it comes to social media marketing management. It is an easy-to-use, efficient dashboard that incorporates the majority of the most popular social networks. Considering the vast number of users, it is no wonder that they have developed an excellent mobile app. The HootSuite mobile app allows users to manage a number of profiles from their phone. Granted, there are not as many options available on the mobile version as there are on the desktop dashboard (it is effectively just Facebook and Twitter at the moment) but it does give you some of the same capabilities as the desktop version.

iDashboard

Google Analytics is a vital tool. And while we may not necessarily need to constantly access it in real time on-the-go, it is still nice to have the option. And the option of using iDashboard is a nice one. The Google Analytics app (paid version) has a ton of great features. Not only can you access all of your Analytics accounts, you can also look into specific data regarding traffic, referral data, social monitoring, and much more! So when you need a quick bit of information when you’re on the road, the iDashboard has it for you.

Foursquare for Business

The Foursquare for Business app allows owners of a business (or businesses) and marketers to claim locations, and create and monitor campaigns as the move. As they expand their business frontier, Foursquare is looking to make it as easy as possible for marketers to access the social network for business purposes wherever they are. It is for that reason that they developed the app. So whether you’re monitoring your own location or a client’s, you can do it from anywhere with the Foursquare for Business app.

These are just a few of the great apps available for running your social media marketing on the fly. There is no shortage of other apps, including stand alone apps for Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn and more. What are some of your favorite social media marketing apps? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Mobile Marketing Tips: Capture Your Mobile Audience

February 12, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Mobile marketing is quickly becoming one of the biggest trends when it comes to engaging with your audience.

Numbers don’t lie. In the past year, we have seen the use of mobile devices when accessing the web and social media rise sharply. According to a recent report, consumers increased their use of social apps on mobile devices by 76% in 2012 compared to 2011. For some users, most of the time they spend on social networking sites now takes place on a mobile device. And the number of users of the mobile web nearly doubled in 2012 compared to the previous year. Taking these figures into account, it would be foolish for any marketer to ignore the power of mobile marketing.

With that in mind, we thought we would share a few helpful tips when it comes to optimizing your mobile marketing strategy. Have a look below to find out what you can be doing (and in some cases, for much less than what you might expect).

1. Mobile Site

Whether you are an e-commerce store or a restaurant, having a mobile website is going to be a crucial part of your mobile marketing. Simply having access to your website on the go can help users engage with your brand wherever they are and whenever they need to. Furthermore, this is not as complicated as it might seem. Today, there exists a number of services that help transform your site into a mobile-friendly one without much configuration. Nearly anyone can do it! Tools like Mobify or MobilePress (for WordPress sites) can help you transform your website. Furthermore, there exist numerous options in some of the more popular CMS platforms that automatically render your site for mobile devices. So when building your site, keep your mobile marketing strategy in mind, and be sure you are constructing a mobile-friendly one.

2. QR Codes

QR (Quick Response) Codes are a great way to engage with potential customers visually, and drive them to your mobile site or mobile landing page with an offer. Essentially, a QR Code is a pseudo call to action that leads people to find out more by scanning it. What a QR Code does is it sends data to your device and loads that information immediately on screen. This is growing in popularity in the real estate world, and is catching on elsewhere as well. The benefits of a QR Code lie in its mystery. People want to know more about enticing offers, and a QR Code allows them to do that right away. Furthermore, they are not all that expensive to incorporate into your mobile marketing strategy! There are even free services like Quikqr that you can use.

3. Geo-Targeted Mobile Marketing

This is where mobile marketing really pays off. Geo-targeting and location-based marketing are the real bread and butter of a mobile marketing strategy. These strategies give you the ability to directly target potential clients in your area and offer specials or promotions to users who visit your store, restaurant or location. Optimizing your social networks like Foursquare and creating deals therein are where you stand to reap the highest benefits.

A tool used by a popular shoe store in Europe to attract nearby patrons begins a countdown when a potential customer enters a competitor’s store. The countdown starts at 100 and works down to 0. Users who see this countdown must make it out of the competitor’s store and into the other shoe store as quickly as possible. As soon as they enter, the timer stops and the number on which it lands is the discount the customer can receive. This strategy is literally dragging clients out of a competitor’s store and having them run to yours!

4. Mobile Applications

This is where you can get very fancy – but for a price. Customized mobile apps might be the most expensive form of mobile marketing, but they certainly have the highest payoff. As we noted above, mobile app use has skyrocketed in the last year, and those numbers show no sign of slowing. Users like the idea of a customized mobile application that they can use to interact with your brand. Whether it is an app for an airline to book your seats, or an app like the TV series (The Walking Dead has created where users can “zombify” themselves) people like to have fun with their mobile devices. So, if you have the budget, consider spicing up your mobile marketing strategy with an app tailored to your brand.

What are your mobile marketing strategies? Tell us about them in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media Tools: Tips for Using Them Efficiently

February 4, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Social media tools can be very beneficial to your campaigns, but in order for them to work, you need to be using them efficiently.

We are all aware of the vast buffet of social media management and marketing tools at our disposal. And if you have ever taken part in a social media webinar, you will have undoubtedly heard questions asking what the best tools are, or which tools an individual should be using to maximize returns on a program. Frankly, answers to questions like these are useless if you do not understand both the benefits of a given tool, and which social media tools compliment others and serve to create a fully functional, highly versatile set that can be used to execute successul social media programs.

Below are a few tips that can help you narrow your search when looking for the right tools for a program, and a few things to keep in mind when using these tools or dashboards to maximize the efficiency of your campaigns.

Do Your Research

Perhaps the most detrimental mistake marketers make when choosing a platform on which to run social media programs is forgetting to do their research. We all know about social media management and CRM dashboards like HootSuite, Argyle and Jugnoo, but we may forget to take the time to research them. Each of these tools has its own benefits and drawbacks. And while they may all be similar in terms of what they offer, each one touts a different USP (unique selling proposition). So, without a set of defined goals for a given program, you can never be certain about which dashboard is right for you. And, more importantly, without understanding how these tools differ, you might be choosing the wrong one.

So take the time and do your research to ensure that when choosing a tool, you know exactly what it offers, and what it does not. What it’s missing is going to be extremely important to helping you with the next tip.

Make Sure Your Tools Are Complimentary

As marketers, we know that time is an invaluable asset (despite all of our best efforts to assign a value to it). As such, wasting time is one of the worst things we can do. So how do we avoid wasting time when it comes to social media management? We make sure that everything we do is well thought out, well researched and covers all the bases without any redundancies.

This comes back to the last point made above: find out what each tool is missing. You might find that HootSuite is your top choice for a social media CRM dashboard. Great! But you might also find that you need access to a Pinterest management platform, an add-on that is not yet available to HootSuite users. Instead of going out and finding another dashboard with all of the same functionality as HootSuite that includes Pinterest, either make the switch entirely to the new CRM tool, or find another stand alone product for Pinterest.

Your tools should not be creating redundancies. For marketers – and agencies in particular – managing multiple accounts is difficult enough as it is. You do not need to add another degree of confusion by overlapping your work. In doing so, you run the risk of being half as productive and taking twice as much time. Ask anyone – economist or otherwise – if that makes sense from a business perspective. The answer will always be no.

Have a Strategy in Place Before You Start

Each of these tips builds off the last. Here, we are coming back to an old favorite of ours: strategy. When it comes to social media management, strategy is the key to success. This applies on the macro level when looking at the program as a whole, and the micro level when looking at something like, say, the tools you are using.

We noted above how one of the keys to success is going to be research. The second key to success is alignment. There should be configured linearity to your program, and your social media tools should fit in with that. While you might find something new that you just need to have, figure out how it works in with your strategy first. If it is a reporting tool, like SocialBro, look at the strategies you have in place and see if this can organically work itself in. If not, do not wate your time. If it does, then go for it! The key to success with social media marketing is knowing exactly in which direction you are heading, and taking calculated steps to get there. Playing it by ear, so to speak, will cost you time, efficiency and ultimately money. So plan ahead for best results.

What are your favorite tools to use for social media marketing? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Optimizing Tags for Maximum SEO Results

January 7, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Where can you be optimizing your title and description to get the most out of your SEO efforts?

SEO has long been one of the primary tools when it comes to getting found. The landscape of SEO, however, has changed drastically over the last decade (and even more so in the last few years with the advent of social media). Keywords are no longer the most relevant aspect of your SEO efforts, but that does not mean that you should be ignoring them entirely. In an earlier blog post about social signals and their impact on SEO, we noted that shares and links are the most crucial aspect of your SEO efforts. But if you are using your keywords properly, then your SEO will be all the more successful. Below are a few pointers to help you maximize your SEO when it comes to your meta descriptions.

1. Use the Space You’re Given

There are character limits to SEO. Your Page Title can have 70 characters, Meta Descriptions are limited to 160 characters and there can be no more than 10 Meta Keyword phrases. If you think a short, keyword-heavy description is all you need, think again. Use as many of the allotted characters as possible. These titles and descriptions are the first thing visitors will see when searching for your site, and you don’t want it to be irrelevant to their search. While you might have great content on your page, it may not be clear from the lackluster title and description you have provided. So be sure to get the most out of the characters you have so potential visitors aren’t left looking for something else.

2. Organic Results are Derived from Organic Descriptions

Keywords are important for SEO. That is no secret. But what some people seem to forget when writing their titles and descriptions is that Google’s algorithm takes into account the quality of your writing. Content farms that are full of keywords with no real substance are relegated to the bottom of search results. This includes descriptions with no real substance, as well. If your title and description are simply full of your keywords in the hopes that Google will register your page under that category, you might be disappointed. The Google algorithm is designed to produce quality results, not simply keyword-heavy pages. So when drafting your titles and descriptions, be sure that your keywords are included organically. This will produce the best results when it comes to your SEO.

3. Include a Call to Action in Your Description

Posts with calls to action statistically have exceptionally higher results than posts that do not have any. This holds true in a number of fields, and that includes page titles and meta descriptions. Search rankings are increased with organic traffic in addition to quality. And considering the great results observed with calls to action, it is extremely beneficial to have one in your meta description to increase your organic traffic.

These are just a few tips that can help you get the most out of your titles and meta descriptions. By employing these methods, you can expect to see a big jump in your search rankings and, subsequently, your traffic.

Can you think of any other tactics that would help your search results? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

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