There are a few questions you need to ask yourself if you are trying to answer the question, “Do I need a new website?”
Every so often, we sit down in front of our computers, open our homepages and ask ourselves this: Do I need a new website? It is a tough question to answer. On the one hand, we tend to have a particular affinity for our website. We designed it and, in the case of small and medium-size business owners, hand picked all of the elements that went into it. To say that it is no longer useful or requires a major overhaul is hard to admit.
These are a few questions that we need to ask ourselves, as objective marketers, to determine whether or not we need to take that leap and completely redo (or update) our existing website.
Is your website responsive?
Today, it is significantly less expensive to develop a completely responsive website than it used to be. That said, it can still cost a pretty penny.
People want a seamless and optimized experience on every device that they are using. So, if your website is not responsive and is completely warped on non-desktop (i.e. mobile) devices, you’ll leave a bad taste in the mouths of visitors to your site on those devices.
If your site, like so many others, is built with WordPress, finding a responsive template can be an easy fix. That said, if you’re looking to add some serious customization, it can start to take some time and the costs will definitely shoot up.
To check if your site is responsive (or, rather, how responsive your site is) you can take a look at a tool called Responsive Design Checker.
Do you feature a clear call-to-action above the fold?
CALL TODAY! DON’T MISS OUT! FIND OUT MORE! DOWNLOAD OUR WHITE PAPER!
These are all examples of very clear calls-to-action, and you need to review your site to see if it features at least one on every page, preferably above the fold.
Granted, not every site needs to have a call-to-action that bold right in the face of visitors. Sometimes a soft call-to-action can do wonders for conversion, leading to people taking action without even realizing it. That said, if you want to see conversion, you’ll want to ask for it.
So review your homepage and the most visited/important pages on your site. See if you’re asking people to take an action and, if not, where that call-to-action might be best suited.
Are your social profiles easily accessible?
Your social profiles should be readily accessible on every page, and it should be made very clear that they exist. Too often, websites insist on hiding social profile links in the footer of a website. They should be a much more prominent component.
Your social profiles need to be treated like the valuable assets they are. Your website visitors are more than likely going to research your brand on social media as thoroughly as they do on your website. So, you shouldn’t hide these profiles in order to maintain a level of transparency online.
And speaking of the importance of social…
Is your content easily shareable?
Today, social signals (links built through social sharing, or, social SEO) are among the most important criteria for building your brand’s online presence. If you have a blog or share important information on your website (which you more than likely do) you’ll want to be sure that this content can be shared to social media.
Whether you’re working on a CMS like WordPress, Drupal, Hubspot or you’ve built something customized, you’ll want to ensure that social sharing is fully integrated.
When you have valuable content on your website, you should be encouraging your audience to share it with these kinds of soft calls-to-action. Without social sharing capabilities, it will be that much more difficult to get your content out there and making the rounds in the socialsphere.
Do you have a mobile version/app of your site?
There is a difference between a responsive site (see the first question) and a mobile website. While you certainly want to have a responsive construct, you may also want to take it a step further and feature a mobile app for your mobile visitors to enjoy.
This can either be a native app or a web-based mobile app of your site. The difference here is really in the experience. You want people to easily navigate your content whether they are on a desktop or on their mobile device. The best way to do this is to have something that is easily navigable and features a whole bunch of mobile-specific elements.
While a purely responsive website that adjusts to the screen of a mobile device is a great, big step in the right direction, it is not the only step that needs to be taken to fully optimize your web presence.
So, do you need a website?
If you went through these questions and answered “No” to the majority, it might be time to start considering a website redesign.
The world of the web moves at lightning speed, and it can be hard to keep up. What works today might be obsolete tomorrow, but these are a few staples that need to be incorporated into any optimized website.
If you would like to discuss the development of a new website, or would like to know more about building a new website, feel free to contact t2 today!
Leveraging Employee Advocates [INFOGRAPHIC]
/by Corey PadveenBrands rarely take advantage of one of their most valuable assets: employee advocates.
Employees are among the most valuable resources a brand has at its disposal. There is an entire network and secondary network of users working for a brand, and by leveraging employee advocates, a brand’s message can very quickly surpass benchmarks for reach and engagement.
This great infographic from GaggleAMP shows exactly why employee advocates are so important, and makes a great case showing how brands should be leveraging this asset at every turn.
4 Ways to Identify Growth Opportunities on Google Analytics
/by Corey PadveenGoogle Analytics is a hugely valuable resource when it comes to measuring the performance of your website, and the majority of marketers tend to use Google Analytics for these superficial measurement criteria.
Digging a little deeper into our reports, we can begin to identify a lot of opportunities that can lead to significant growth and increased conversion rates on our website.
These four tactics are just a few of the great ways in which marketers can begin to leverage opportunities on Google Analytics for a lot more than simply measuring web traffic.
Behavior Flow – Conversion Traffic
Under your Behavior menu on the left hand side, the second option down the submenu reads ‘Behavior Flow’. Flow charts exist in several places on Google Analytics, and they can provide some deep understanding of how your content resonates with your audience. The benefit of the Behavior Flow is that is can be a crucial component in ramping up your content marketing efforts.
Screenshot taken 7/14/2014 on https://www.google.com/analytics
When looking at the Behavior Flowcharts, we can see a number of columns that outline exactly what actions were taken by visitors. Ultimately, we would like to see visitors convert. Whether a conversion is registered through an ebook download, a newsletter signup, or an actual purchase is up to you. But in using this chart we can see exactly what course of action led users to the most conversions. With this information, we can begin strategically directing visitors to specific landing pages that, historically, lead to higher action rates.
User Flow – Minimizing Drop Offs
Just as we can use the Behavior Flowcharts in order to identify opportunities for conversion, we can use the information provided in your User Flowcharts to increase average session durations, decrease bounce rate and increase pageviews per session. When we look at the chart, we can see dropoff rates expressed by red bars.
Screenshot taken 7/14/2014 on https://www.google.com/analytics
In keeping with the content marketing motif noted above, we would want to share only that content that leads to higher flow through rates and smaller dropoff rates. (HINT: The landing page with the almost certainly highest dropoff rate will be your homepage. Don’t direct visitors to a homepage; send them to a page with useful content.)
Trackbacks
Identifying and cultivating brand advocates is every marketers dream. After all, the longevity of a business rests in its ability to generate loyalty with its customers. You may be wondering, at this point, what that has to do with Google Analytics.
Screenshot taken 7/14/2014 on https://www.google.com/analytics
Under the ‘Social’ submenu of your ‘Acquisition’ tab, you’ll find your Trackbacks report. Trackbacks – which many of us might know as pings, pingbacks or, simply, backlinks – are social shares of your content (which, by the way, rank quite highly in terms of SEO). When you review your trackbacks report, you can see exactly what content was shared by visitors on social media (including blogs) and, from there, identify potential brand advocates based on the rate at which they share your content.
In-Page Analytics
A/B testing landing pages is an extremely important site optimization technique. After all, we need to know what aspects of our website are working and where we need to make improvements. Using the In-Page Analytics report under your Behavior tab, you can begin to do just that.
Screenshot taken 7/14/2014 on https://www.google.com/analytics
In this report, you can see where users are most engaged on your page. Whether you’re analyzing two versions of a landing page or looking at commonalities across your site (for example, seeing if there is a particularly higher ratio of clicks when a call-to-action is placed in a certain location on the page) this report can do quite a bit when it comes to optimizing the performance of your pages.
Conclusion
While it might seem, on the surface, that Google Analytics is all about measuring traffic, there are plenty of reporting functionalities that can help us improve the performance of our website in a number of categories. Take some time to sift through the various reports and see how you can benefit from Google Analytics.
Predictive Analytics for Data Beginners: An Introduction
/by Corey PadveenPredictive analytics are on the rise in terms of popularity and importance, and for data beginners, they can be quite intimidating.
Imagine a world where you could predict what would happen before it ever took place and be able to plan accordingly. It might sound like something H.G. Wells would write about, but in fact, this is the world we’re living in; this is the world of predictive analytics.
Although some people see predictive analytics as a subset of the world of big data, it can easily be studied as an entirely separate phenomenon. That’s because predictive analytics can be leveraged in a number of different ways, and in each of these unique use cases, one needs to take an entirely different approach.
Here, we’ll be looking at the concept at a rather high level so that we can begin to understand exactly what the school of predictive analytics is, and how we can begin viewing data with this new perspective.
There are two ways in which predictive analytics can be defined, and those definitions are determined by your approach from either the sales side or the marketing side. To start understanding the world of predictive analytics, we need to first be able to understand the concept’s applications, so here we’ll really focus on definitions. Let’s start simply with a look at predictive data from the marketing side.
Predictive Analytics in Marketing
When it comes to marketing, predictive analytics are rooted in two main criteria: trends and correlations. Effectively, we want to be monitoring trends and velocity of conversation to determine if there is a topic gaining momentum and exponentially increasing in mentions.
When this is seen, we can begin identifying opportunities for conversation topics that are far more likely to resonate with a target audience based on the fact that there is clearly an uptick in popularity around the subject.
With regards to correlations, we want to pay attention to any outliers or high-value influence points that might indicate an industry or conversational shift. Again, watching these influence points actually change the rate at which a conversation is growing can help marketers understand where they should be positioning their brand in order to have the greatest impact and decrease the conversion time.
On the sales side, predictive analytics are somewhat different.
Predictive Analytics in Sales
The main point of contrast when it comes to these kinds of data in the sales world has to do with your pipeline. Predictive analytics for sales are much more about identifying opportunities both within your sales pipeline and in adjacent markets (which we’ll get to shortly).
There is no shortage of tools on the market that can provide insights into activity within your pipeline (e.g. Predixion, SiSense, C9, Lattice, etc.) and these insights will tell you where potential exists to close a deal, and what that potential deal might be worth.
These insights range anywhere from lead scores based on the speed with which a prospect is moving through the funnel to opportunities based on rhetoric and activity on multiple networks (including research being done on your own website, separate from a sales rep). All of these insights are gathered and analyzed to provide you with an understanding of where your greatest chances for success might exist, and where you should be focusing your sales efforts for the easiest close.
Where the Two Meet
So where exactly do these two worlds – the sales and marketing worlds – collide? This has to do with an analysis of trends and topic conversation velocity in different markets and among different demographics and providing you with those insights so that you can begun prospecting in a new market ripe for opportunity.
Using both of these concepts together can mean a better understanding of your target consumer, a more efficient use of your resources and, perhaps most importantly, a chance to capitalize on opportunities before your competitors.
Conclusion
There is a lot involved in the world of predictive analytics, and it is a fast growing and very exciting space. A basic understanding of what the term means and how the industry works (on a very simplistic level) is a good start to taking advantage of all that these insights can offer your brand.
Have you worked with predictive analytics at all? What kinds of successes or difficulties have you seen? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
“Do I Need a New Website?”
/by Corey PadveenThere are a few questions you need to ask yourself if you are trying to answer the question, “Do I need a new website?”
Every so often, we sit down in front of our computers, open our homepages and ask ourselves this: Do I need a new website? It is a tough question to answer. On the one hand, we tend to have a particular affinity for our website. We designed it and, in the case of small and medium-size business owners, hand picked all of the elements that went into it. To say that it is no longer useful or requires a major overhaul is hard to admit.
These are a few questions that we need to ask ourselves, as objective marketers, to determine whether or not we need to take that leap and completely redo (or update) our existing website.
Is your website responsive?
Today, it is significantly less expensive to develop a completely responsive website than it used to be. That said, it can still cost a pretty penny.
People want a seamless and optimized experience on every device that they are using. So, if your website is not responsive and is completely warped on non-desktop (i.e. mobile) devices, you’ll leave a bad taste in the mouths of visitors to your site on those devices.
If your site, like so many others, is built with WordPress, finding a responsive template can be an easy fix. That said, if you’re looking to add some serious customization, it can start to take some time and the costs will definitely shoot up.
To check if your site is responsive (or, rather, how responsive your site is) you can take a look at a tool called Responsive Design Checker.
Do you feature a clear call-to-action above the fold?
CALL TODAY! DON’T MISS OUT! FIND OUT MORE! DOWNLOAD OUR WHITE PAPER!
These are all examples of very clear calls-to-action, and you need to review your site to see if it features at least one on every page, preferably above the fold.
Granted, not every site needs to have a call-to-action that bold right in the face of visitors. Sometimes a soft call-to-action can do wonders for conversion, leading to people taking action without even realizing it. That said, if you want to see conversion, you’ll want to ask for it.
So review your homepage and the most visited/important pages on your site. See if you’re asking people to take an action and, if not, where that call-to-action might be best suited.
Are your social profiles easily accessible?
Your social profiles should be readily accessible on every page, and it should be made very clear that they exist. Too often, websites insist on hiding social profile links in the footer of a website. They should be a much more prominent component.
Your social profiles need to be treated like the valuable assets they are. Your website visitors are more than likely going to research your brand on social media as thoroughly as they do on your website. So, you shouldn’t hide these profiles in order to maintain a level of transparency online.
And speaking of the importance of social…
Is your content easily shareable?
Today, social signals (links built through social sharing, or, social SEO) are among the most important criteria for building your brand’s online presence. If you have a blog or share important information on your website (which you more than likely do) you’ll want to be sure that this content can be shared to social media.
Whether you’re working on a CMS like WordPress, Drupal, Hubspot or you’ve built something customized, you’ll want to ensure that social sharing is fully integrated.
When you have valuable content on your website, you should be encouraging your audience to share it with these kinds of soft calls-to-action. Without social sharing capabilities, it will be that much more difficult to get your content out there and making the rounds in the socialsphere.
Do you have a mobile version/app of your site?
There is a difference between a responsive site (see the first question) and a mobile website. While you certainly want to have a responsive construct, you may also want to take it a step further and feature a mobile app for your mobile visitors to enjoy.
This can either be a native app or a web-based mobile app of your site. The difference here is really in the experience. You want people to easily navigate your content whether they are on a desktop or on their mobile device. The best way to do this is to have something that is easily navigable and features a whole bunch of mobile-specific elements.
While a purely responsive website that adjusts to the screen of a mobile device is a great, big step in the right direction, it is not the only step that needs to be taken to fully optimize your web presence.
So, do you need a website?
If you went through these questions and answered “No” to the majority, it might be time to start considering a website redesign.
The world of the web moves at lightning speed, and it can be hard to keep up. What works today might be obsolete tomorrow, but these are a few staples that need to be incorporated into any optimized website.
If you would like to discuss the development of a new website, or would like to know more about building a new website, feel free to contact t2 today!
20 Social Media Fun Facts
/by Corey PadveenEverybody loves social media fun facts that showcase just how impressive the industry really is. Here are a few new ones!
Every year, the world of social media grows dramatically. With that growth comes some great social media fun facts that, on occasion, are hard to believe. These are a few new social media fun facts that will blow plenty of people away.
Sources:
Socialnomics
Cisco
9 markets
Citrix
Search Engine Journal
eConsultancy
Forbes
Gartner
business2community
Social Media Today
CeBit
How many of these did you already know about? Share other great social media fun facts in the comments below or on Twitter!
4 Great Ways to Break the Ice on Social Media
/by Corey PadveenIt can be a little awkward to break the ice on social media, but these tips should help make it easier.
There is no shortage of awkwardness when you are trying to break the ice on social media. You might spot a prospect and want to spark up a conversation, or see a potential lead and want to begin building a relationship, but you might find it very difficult to break the ice on social media without seeming contrived.
There are a few nice segues that make it much easier to get that conversation started or begin building that relationship. These are a few ways you can try breaking the ice on social media next time you want to start a relationship with a prospective client.
Personalize Your Connection
Telling someone that you would like to ‘add them to your professional network on LinkedIn’ has become so overused that a lot of people (particularly those that focus significantly on social) tend to ignore these connection requests.
One great way to get a conversation going is by personalizing your connection request on LinkedIn. These are messages that are sent directly to the user, and a personal message certainly gets noticed. Considering the fact that almost all connection requests use the standard invite rhetoric, venturing out of the box and being creative (or simply personal) makes an impact. From there, it will be much easier to dive into a conversation and this new connection will be prepared for it.
Engage with a Tweet
It doesn’t matter who you are – if you’re active on Twitter, you love the attention your tweets get. People are sharing these microblogs because they want to be heard. When you show someone that you’re listening, they’ll notice.
Something as simple as a favorite or a retweet can go a very long way. (Much further than we tend to think.) People take notice when someone engages with their content, and when you subsequently reach out, they’ll be much more responsive to that. So next time you identify a prospect on Twitter, try engaging with some of their content before making a full introduction. It’ll certainly help.
And speaking of introductions…
Get Introduced
If you and your target prospect are both active on social media and work in the same (or a tangential) industry, you’ll almost certainly have connections in common on LinkedIn. You should be taking advantage of that!
Not enough people take advantage of the introductions that can be made on the network. In fact, a study by LinkedIn in 2013 found that people are 50% more likely to respond to you when you reference someone they know. That number is even higher when a common connection introduces you.
Respond to Questions
Sometimes the best way to break the ice is to take part in a conversation that is already taking place. See if your prospect has asked any questions or needs expert advice, and chime in if you have an answer. (Not a sales pitch – an answer.)
One of the beauties of social media is that conversations that are not private are open to everyone. Unlike face-to-face communication, people are much more responsive to someone jumping into a conversation on social media than they would be at a bar. If you see your prospect asking for advice or help, share something valuable with them. This does not have to be (and shouldn’t be, in most cases) a way for you to aggressively pitch your product or service. This is a way for you to share your knowledge and expertise in the industry and open up those lines of communication for the future.
Conclusion
Social media makes it a lot of easier to identify a prospect and begin building a relationship with that person. That said, it is not always easy to get that relationship off the ground. Following these steps will make it that much easier (and more natural) next time the opportunity arises.
How do you tend to break the ice on social media? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Link Building Tips to Keep Your Brand Above Board
/by Corey PadveenGoogle just updated Penguin for the first time in a while, and these link building tips will help keep your brand from being hit by any potential penalties.
When it comes to boosting your rankings on Google, link building is among the most viable strategies – assuming, of course, that it’s being done properly. With Google’s latest update to Penguin 3.0, these are a few link building tips to keep in mind in order to avoid any unwanted penalties to your SERPs.
Avoid the Manipulation of Shares
Social signals have long been touted as among the strongest ways to improve your discoverability on Google. The idea of ‘viral’ is on every marketers mind. But with virality comes an organic component.
Manipulating shares through purchases or sponsorships is not the best way to boost your search rankings. One of the major changes that Google has been slowly implementing and expanding upon is the rewarding of, for lack of a better term, naturally occurring content. If a website is known for sharing sponsored articles and links for payment, Google will find out about it and your effort to build links through paid shares won’t go quite as far.
Transparency is the Best Policy
Hiding embedded links and coercing visitors to share your links is another practice you’ll want to avoid when it comes to improving your search rankings.
If people are going to be sharing your content or images, it should be clear that they will be sharing a specific link. Don’t secretly embed backlinks to your website on someone else’s infographics on Pinterest, for example. People should be willingly sharing links to your site.
Don’t Get Too Meta
Self-referencing is fine here and there, especially if you have a relevant article that might provide additional benefit to your readers. But filling your posts and your guest posts with links to your own website is a practice that should be engaged in with moderation.
Of course, when you can share links in anchor text to your website in an article you’re writing, you’ll want to do that. But filling an article with links to any and all bits of content purely for the purpose of building links isn’t going to help anyone. And Google won’t take too kindly to that either.
Conclusion
It remains to be seen what the latest update to Penguin might mean for some websites, but when it comes to link building, these are a few practices you’ll want to keep in mind. Link building is a valuable asset to any website, but only if it is done correctly. After all, these updates are put in place to ensure of just that.
What has been your most successful link building strategy? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
The Importance of Images Online [INFOGRAPHIC]
/by Corey PadveenThe importance of images when it comes to building your online presence cannot be understated.
We have all been told about the importance of images. We hear about it all the time from experts and social media users alike. Generally, however, we simply follow this bit of information blindly without ever really understanding why images are so important when it comes to building our online brand.
This infographic from MDG Advertising does an excellent job of putting numbers to support this advice. Have a look at these fun facts and figures in order to better understand exactly why images are so important when it comes to your online presence.
4 Methods to Build Your Influence on Social Media
/by Corey PadveenWhen it comes to growing your social business, one thing you’re going to want to leverage is your influence on social media.
Influence on social media can be valuable to helping build your brand online. But attaining a level of influence on social media that makes an impact with your target audience can be a tough thing to accomplish.
Though there are several ways to go about building your influence on social media, these are a few techniques that can help you get there much sooner rather than later.
Write What You Know Best
It has been proven time and time again that blogging can be a hugely valuable online asset. One way to build your credibility online is to write avidly on a topic you know a whole lot about.
While some studies have shown that writing multiple blogs per day can have exceptional SEO value, it is not a necessity for every brand. What you really want to do is write periodically when you know you have a great bit of content that will resonate with the audience you’re trying to reach.
What’s more, you’ll want to ensure that when you write, you’re as detailed as possible. The best rule to follow is a 70-30 split; share 70% of your knowledge and leave your audience wanting that extra 30%. This is an excellent technique for building influence, credibility and driving new business all with one technique.
Answer Questions
On sites like Quora, Blurtit and Yahoo!, people are asking questions hoping, in some cases, that an expert will provide them with an answer. Spend some time on these sites and share your insights. It will certainly be noticed.
Sites like these are ideally designed to let you showcase your expertise. People are asking questions to which you might be able to provide a detailed answer. The key in a case like this is being as detailed as possible.
Unlike a tweet or even a Facebook post, people are posting to these sites because they want a detailed answer. So take some time and really provide your audience with as much of your insights as possible. They will be more than happy to take the time to read it.
Produce and Share Instructional Videos
If you’ve ever visited our YouTube channel, then you might have seen our Q&A with t2 video segment. There, we answer questions that have come in on networks like Twitter or LinkedIn from our audience.
These have proven to be excellent resources for building credibility. Again, this is an area that is ideal for sharing expertise. Look at any content direction recommendations, and you will almost always see a recommendation that suggests the use of videos. Your audience like to see, not always read.
Videos are an excellent way of getting valuable information to your audience, humanizing your brand with the face of an employee, and, of course, building your influence and authority.
Interview Experts
Expert interviews carry a lot of weight. That is particularly true when it comes to building credibility and establishing your own level of expertise.
When an audience sees that you have the clout to command an interview with an industry expert, the impression left is one that reflects on your own expertise. There is an understanding that if you can carry a conversation with an established expert, you must be an expert yourself.
Whenever you get a chance, conduct interviews – either on your blog, on YouTube or in a podcast format – and your audience will see it as a reflection on your own industry influence.
Conclusion
There are several ways to build your credibility online and establish your brand as an industry or thought leader, and as the examples above indicate, a key part of that is dedication.
It takes time and involvement to grow influence on social media. But when you take that time and partake in these activities, your influence on social media will grow at a much faster rate.
How do you build influence on social media? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
5 of Your Marketing Questions Answered
/by Corey PadveenThese are a few of your marketing questions that we answered in our Q&A with t2 video segments!
We regularly review your marketing questions – either sent in over LinkedIn, Twitter, other networks or asked at a conference where we are present – and put together Q&A with t2 segments where we answer them. These videos have gained some traction, so we want to share with you some of our favorites and hope you’ll check out the rest right here.
What exactly is a Social Client Persona?
How should you structure your bidding for Twitter ads?
What are some criteria to help determine influence on social media?
How can you create an effective call-to-action on Facebook?
How can you build a content strategy using Google Analytics?
These are just a few of the videos that we’ve shared answering your marketing questions! Feel free to send in your questions on any one of our active social networks and it might be featured in one of our videos!
To see more great Q&A with t2 videos, visit our YouTube channel!