Carbon Marketing Services

03/12/2020

Yesterday, I missed my post because I was pulled into analyzing the social conversation of the coronavirus. Specifically how people are feeling about testing, the available information, and how school districts are reacting. There are some fascinating conversations happening! But enough about that, let’s continue on our SEO journey and take a look at on-the-page success factors, today we journey into the land of content!

As mentioned in my last post, on-the-page search ranking factors are those that are almost all within your control. For example, what type of content you publish, the HTML clues that assist search engines in indexing and determining relevancy or the structure of your website.
Content is king. You will hear that phrase over and over again when it comes to SEO success. Content is the very first factor that if, created and maintained, will establish a solid foundation for all of your SEO efforts.

1. Content quality. Quality of volume, more than anything else you need to produce quality content. If you are selling something, do you publish content that goes beyond a simple brochure, which is most likely the same information that is found on hundreds of other sites?

The content you publish needs to offer real value and be unique, providing the visitor with a substance that is different and useful. Something that they can’t find anywhere else, or is explained in such a way that they find valuable. Do a content assessment with a new lens, are you providing quality content?

Content is NOT an element to skimp, remember it is the cornerstone on which nearly all other SEO factors are built.

2. Layer keywords into your content. Did you do your keyword research? What?! You haven’t?! Ok, maybe you did. Have you used those keywords in your content? Oh, you already wrote your content, so now is a great time to refresh and update your content with some quality keywords.

Do you get where I’m going yet? Regardless of where you are at in your content creation, it’s never too late to use keywords in your copy. Keep in mind, if you want your pages to be found for particular words, it’s a good idea to use those words in your content. SEO Quake (https://www.seoquake.com/guide/index.html) has a wonderful tool to help with organic research data, including a Keyword Density report.

3. Content freshness. We all love it when we get something new, right? Well, search engines are the same way. They love new content. That’s what I mean by “freshness,” new or updated content. Publishing new or updated content every day isn’t going to make the search engines consider your pages “fresh,” nor will publishing a new page constantly. There has to be search activity around that topic, and then the search engines will look for “fresh” content on that topic.

Keep on top of relevant activities within your industry, and take advantage of seasonal topics, news, or information. Content freshness, when aligned with seasonal topics, news, or information, can provide a boost for your relevant content that matches the real-time pulse.

Content development is a highly-weighted factor in SEO with a few more elements to think about. For the purpose of this post, I have chosen to focus on the low-hanging fruit that may produce the most significant return on effort.

Reach out if you have questions, clarify anything, or if you would like a resource beyond my favorite plug-in mentioned here.

Image courtesy of Photo by Polina Zimmerman from Pexels

03/10/2020

SEO... Business owners off all sizes hear this word frequently. But what is it? How do you do it? Is it really important? These are all excellent questions, and over the next few days, I'm going to take you on an SEO journey!

All major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo have two types of search results. The top or primary search results are web pages, and other contents such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers to be most relevant to users. Payment is not involved in achieving these rankings. These rankings are driven by several factors, including SEO implantation.

SEO is an acronym for search engine optimization, which is the process in which a website gets free, organic, natural search traffic from search engine results.

To achieve SEO success, there are three major groups of factors that have a variety of associated elements. SEO may seem time-consuming and intimidating, but there is a science to it. Here are some important factors that can lead to success:

On-The-Page SEO
- Content
- Architecture
- HTML

Off-The-Page SEO
- Trust and Reputation
- Links
- Personal
- Social

Violations
- Content
- Architecture
- HTML
- Trust and Reputation
- Links

No single SEO factor mentioned above will guarantee first-page search engine rankings. Also, SEO is not a quick and easy process. It is a journey that is implemented and optimized over time, seeing the fruits of your labor could take up to 6-months or more. So as the old saying goes, "patience is a virtue" could not be more true for this journey.

Tomorrow we'll pick apart the on-the-page ranking factors which are entirely within your control! These are the foundation factors that you can influence, such as what type of content you publish, proper HTML clues for search engines (and visitors), and the websites' architecture.

Image courtesy from: Photo by PhotoMIX Ltd. from Pexels

03/06/2020

Alright, alright... I'll jump in on the Coronavirus conversation but, from the angle of the utility of social media in times of crisis and global concern? Let's jump back a few years to 2015 when there was an outbreak of Zika virus in Brazil that spread throughout the Americas. There was fear, misleading information among the useful informative and evidence-based resources.

Due to its frequent usage by young women, social media helped in disseminating recent evidence-based information on Zika infection and updated pregnancy and travel-related press releases and recommendations by the healthcare authorities to prevent further spread. Social media also played an essential role in circulating such information during the summer Olympics Rio Grande, Brazil, in 2016. The use of social media may have helped to educate the public on the importance of barrier contraception. For example, the use of mosquito repellents and nets, wearing protective clothing, and avoiding travel to affected areas, as knowledge of the Zika virus significantly lacked in women of childbearing age and pregnant women.

But did it work?

Yes, social media was an important and useful tool, as it is today with the Coronavirus. Back in 2015, the outbreak of Zika virus had been a great source of global alarm, which had led to rapid production and circulation of information to educate users and followers of social media. The top four most utilized social media sources include Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. Each platform demonstrated strengths and weaknesses, but overall there is evidence that social media helped to address barriers in preventative knowledge through education and communication.

However, it does not replace the role of Physicians and their level of knowledge and preventative methods for patients and ensures that patients receive correct information regarding any virus outbreak. The role of social media in promoting health information and communication during disease outbreaks should continue to be investigated.

What do you think?

03/04/2020

I spend a lot of time talking to people of measuring their marketing and communication tactics to optimize strategically. Why does this all matter?

Well, if you don't what's working or more importantly, what's not working? How in the world are you supposed to fix it and make it better? So, when you are creating an asset or resource, think about what the goal of that asset/resource is. How will that asset or resource benefit the audience and support the goal of the business?

When you can, do a gut check on pre-existing assets or resources that you want to measure. What I mean by this is we may know that our email newsletter open rate average is 6.2%, that we have 550,000 Facebook fans and 200,000 Twitter followers and our website have 1.2 million page views a month. Great. But what does that all mean, what does that prove?

A measurement plan which aligns to assets and resources gives you the ability to optimize the strategy and tactics.

- Which messages resonate best over Twitter, Facebook or Instagram?

- Which content campaign brought the best return last month, last quarter or last year?

- Which website features drive the most engagement? Should we share those out on social media or through our partners?

03/03/2020

My last few posts have been about measuring. Measuring a website, a social media platform, a campaign - you get the point. But what happens if you don't have an audience (sort of like me right now.)

Well, here are some tips that I'm using as I build my FB presence for Carbon Marketing.

1. Create personas. So this can be tricky. But at the end of the day, you probably have a good idea of who your target audience is. Define this audience as narrowly as possibly. What do they like? Where do they live online? What do they think about this topic, or product?

2. Create content and release on a regular schedule to set a date with your audience and building anticipation.

3. Follow the "Five Why's." Ask 'why your audience needs this information' five times until you get to the real stakeholders.

4. Pick one or two platforms to start, deliver consistently, and have patience. Remember strategy, not volume, will help you achieve your goals.

Do you know someone who might enjoy or benefit from reading these posts? Share this page, and invite them to join this conversation!
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03/03/2020

Hey non-profit folks, small business owners, and entrepreneurs! Do you feel overwhelmed by the thought of creating a measurement plan? Maybe you're not sure if you even need one. It doesn't matter how big, or small your website, social media presence or share of voice is, I am certain you can benefit from a measurement plan.

Even if you have only two hours a week, you can start the process. One of the first tasks is take stock of all the resource and assets you already have available and what you need to create. I like to bucket my assets:

- Offline Tactics include: Print, TV, Radio, Direct Marketing, Public Relations

- Analytics and Key performance Indicators, audience focus groups and surveys

- Community are the online conversations on social networking, message boards. Anything that are web-based conversations. (people)

- Promotion: Traffic Generation Search marketing, Social media, Email marketing, Online Advertising, thought leadership

-Infrastructure: Website, Microsite, Landing page, Blog, Social media, Multimedia Assets

Once you've recreated your list of assets and resources, add an extra column next to your assets and resources, and list your metrics that you are interested in capturing. Use this quick list of commonly monitored metrics to ensure that you are capturing the most important metrics and KPIs. Your roadmap will be complete so you can write up your communication plan in a snap.

Basic metrics
These are the immediately obvious ones and are typically easy to measure. Depending on your business – or your mood – you might file some of these under ‘vanity metrics’. They’re not throwaway by any means, but I think there are more interesting things to look at but not what you would optimize on alone.

Engagement metrics:
You are probably sick of hearing the word ‘engagement’, but it actually means something… it isn’t just a lousy buzzword. These metrics can provide you with valuable audience insights. From where I’m sitting, premium shares and comments are a much better indicator of content quality than page impressions.

Positioning metrics
What terms do you want to rank for on the search engines? How would you like your audience to describe and perceive your brand? Does your content stack up against the competition? All of these things can help you to finesse your content strategy, to better align it to your objectives.

KPIs
These are the real deal. KPIs are the killer metrics that keep the CEO awake at night, and you should definitely try to figure out how content moves the needle in this area, and how it compares against other channels. Your content marketing strategy needs to support your overall business goals.

Would you like to work on a measurement plan together? Or do you have a question or two? Give me a shout, I'll be happy to help you.

02/28/2020

Get the right tools for the job. For example, you wouldn't use a ruler to determine the air temperature – RIGHT?

Different tools are useful for different jobs. We all know that if you don't have the correct tools or systems in place, it'll be challenging to do what you need to do. Or, in this case, gain access to the data that you need to help make strategic decisions and tactical optimizations.

Almost all social media platforms offer their own analytics platform. You can use these platforms free of charge and view metrics such as impressions, share, likes, followers, and some demographic information. However, relying solely on these native analytics does pose disadvantages.

Each platform calculates metrics such as reach and impressions differently, which can confuse you when you are trying to understand a campaign across multiple platforms. Years ago, I had a client who was running a video campaign. The main video was on YouTube but promoted on Facebook. We wanted to drive views of the video across each platform. The logical metric to measure success was the total number of views. However, this metric alone is misleading, especially when trying to understand campaign activity across multiple platforms. Quickly we noticed that Facebook users were viewing the video 10x the amount of Youtube users. However, that was not actually true.

After diving into the insights farther we learned, that Facebook counts a view after users watched a video for three seconds and YouTube counts views after they watch the video for 30 seconds. The team optimized the measurement of the campaign to track total minutes viewed and average watch time. We felt confident that these two KPIs would be accurate even when pulled from different analytics sources.

We also decided to start using Google Analytics to get a better handle on our campaigns’ KPIs. Analytics fills a critical information gap by capturing visitor data, allowing you to glean invaluable insight into what visitors do on your website. These website analytics enables you to accurately assess what is or isn’t working and whether the communication efforts are reaching your target audience, meeting their needs, or achieving business goals.

02/27/2020

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok... Oh my!

So many platforms – but which work, which don’t and which are evolving. Do you need to be on all of them, some of them or only one of them? How do you know?

An April 2019 Pew Research report shows the share of U.S. adults using social media, including Facebook, has mostly stayed the same since 2018!

- Facebook remains one of the most widely used social media sites among adults (70%)
- YouTube is the ONLY online platform that matches FB's reach (73%)
- Instagram, Snapchat remains especially popular among those ages 18 to 24
- Facebook is popular among all demographic groups, though some adults are more likely to use it than others.
- Majority of Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram users visit these sites daily
- Lower-income teens are more likely than higher-income teens to use Facebook.

Who's your target audience? Where do they live online?
Let's create a persona together!

Image drawn by Matthew Partridge for The ErrantScience blog
https://errantscience.com/blog/2017/06/07/should-all-researchers-should-be-on-social-media/

02/26/2020

What is Social Intelligence?

Social intelligence uses data from credentialed social media accounts and layer data derived from a topic and keyword analysis to inform strategies, content development, and engagement behavior. We can help you identify the most appropriate communication channels, develop messages that resonate, and measure the effectiveness of communication activities and campaigns through our industry-leading social intelligence platforms.

Recently, I was invited to Miami to present at NACo's Large County Caucus on how Social Intelligence could help State and Local leaders achieve a "Complete Count" for the Census. Using industry-leading social intelligence tools, I built a query focus on keywords for the Census and filtered out irrelevant keywords and authors. Although the data was very high level, there was a clear picture that emerged. The data showed, that the conversations related to government interference, privacy, and upcoming elections. The overall sentiment of the conversations was negative and with emotions of disgust, sadness, and anger.

What was interesting to me was where these conversations were happening. The geographic map available through the tool highlights the cities with a high concentration of post volume per capita (per million) pertaining to “Census” & “Privacy” Conversations over the last 10 years. The chart to the left of the map displays an aggregated view of the top five states/regions from the U.S. Census Bureau. Although the Census and privacy conversation is happening throughout the United States, over the last ten years, the majority of the conversation is happening in states with the highest foreign-born populations.

What could you learn from social intelligence?

02/25/2020

Beware of Vanity Metrics

One of my favorite examples ever of vanity metrics can be found in the book (and later, movie) Moneyball. For more than a century, Major League Baseball teams had measured a player’s value by batting average. But as Jonah Hill helps Brad Pitt to understand, batting average is a vanity metric. The best KPI for a baseball player is on-base percentage. A player can get to base either by hitting the ball or by taking a walk when the pitcher delivers four balls (pitches that aren’t strikes.). Batting average accounts for only one of those factors, but on-base percentage looks at both. Because of differences in batting strategy, two players with similar batting averages might have very different on-base percentages. But you can only score if you first get on base. So on-base percentage is a much better predictor of whether a player will score, and is therefore much better aligned with the team’s top priority: winning.

Likewise, in business there are always a few top strategic priorities. So, what metrics would make good KPIs for you? If you’re trying to increase traffic from social media to the Website, an obvious choice would be the number of pageviews that are driven from social media.

If you aren’t careful though, that number can really throw you off. What if pageview increase but the visitor never returns, or if the visitor only visits that one page and doesn’t go on to visit pages beyond the landing page? By driving pageviews to the website by visitors who are do not go deeper into the website is worse than if social media drove fewer pageviews. In this scenario, it turns out that the choice of a simply pageview count is a vanity metric and not a KPI – it looks good and sounds good, but in reality its doing more harm than good.

A better KPI for this business case might be “pages / session” that were generated by visitors coming from Social Media. This number is a lot better aligned with the strategic priority of increasing traffic from social media to the Website.

Don’t get fooled into optimizing numbers that are easy to measure, easy to make go up and easy to share but are not actually well-aligned with the objective of your communication strategy.

12/29/2019

Social media analytics can be confusing and time-consuming. One look at the long list of metrics available is enough to overwhelm any seasoned social media manager. Combine that with the massive number of tools available to process the metrics faster and more efficiently may leave you unfocused, resulting in low engagement, low trust, and an ineffective social media account. Followers and social media passersby create actions that leave a trail of breadcrumbs. Used correctly, social media data can be a window into your target audience, allowing you to create your ideal social media strategy.

Check out my recent webcast I did for KTER! Drop me a comment, let me know what you think!

In this webcast sponsored by the Center on Knowledge Translation for Disability and Rehabiliation Research, hear Michelle Stergio discuss Planning and Evalua...