News

You can’t succeed in digital marketing without creating compelling, value-adding content. And yet, just because you’ve amassed a load of content, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re getting any traction from it. Content creation is merely step one. From there, it’s important to distribute that content—ensuring that the members of your target audience have a chance to consume your content, engage with it, and share it.

There are several different means of distributing your content assets, and some are pretty obvious—sharing your company blog posts to Facebook, for example. In this post, we’ll run down four methods that you might be overlooking.

Compile Blog Posts into an e-Book

Blog posts can seem a little ephemeral, even when the content is evergreen—but a downloadable offer, such as an e-book, can seem a little more concrete. Our recommendations:

• Assemble a few blog posts that are thematically tied—a series of posts on a similar topic.
• Go through them and edit out any redundancies—for example, calls to action at the end of each post.
• Write a brief intro and a brief conclusion; your conclusion is a good place for some branding and a strong call to action.
• Create a landing page where users can download your e-Book—and make sure you include some strong SEO keywords.

Generate Infographic Content

Not everyone’s going to have the time to read your blog post, even if it’s a relatively brief one—but infographics are quick and compelling. So, if you have a blog post that can be broken down into some bite-sized nuggets of information, consider going the infographic route.

Once you have a good infographic, there are plenty of things you can do with it—including sharing it via social media and email.

Turn Written Content into Videos

YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world, so video SEO should be on your radar anyway. And video creation can be surprisingly easy; take some of your best blog posts, cut and paste them into video “slides,” add some music and narration, and you’re off!

There are some great tools that can enable you to develop this kind of video content, with no technical expertise required. Some recommendations include Content Samurai and Lumen5.

Don’t Forget Your Email List

It’s amazing how often marketers build strong content, but then neglect to distribute it through their email list. But if you’ve spent time putting a robust email subscription list together—and we hope that you have!—then that should really be a no-brainer.

There are different options here, too:

• Write a brief intro paragraph (100 words or so), then include links to three to five posts that are thematically connected somehow.
• Take a good post and edit it down to a brief 100-300 words—using bullet points whenever possible—and use that as the body content of your email.

Get the Most Out of Your Online Content

Great content is the cornerstone of any digital marketing campaign—but again: Content alone won’t help you. You’ve got to deploy that content effectively—and hopefully, the creative solutions we’ve offered here can help.

Driven2020 has the expertise to guide you through all stages of your digital marketing campaign—from the initial planning to content creation to distribution, even tracking and analytics. We can help you develop a content strategy that resonates with your target audience, ultimately leading to traffic and conversions.

It all starts with a consultation with our marketing pros. Reach out to Driven2020 and schedule your marketing consultation right away!

 

News

This may come as a surprise, but did you know that YouTube is currently the second biggest search engine in the world? What that means is that, while Google is still the primary destination for uncovering online information, YouTube isn’t far behind it—and as more and more consumers come to prefer their content in video form, YouTube’s prevalence as a search engine is only going to increase.

The implications for your business are obvious: In addition to doing search engine optimization for Google, you also need to optimize your videos for YouTube rankings. In this post, we’ll offer a few guidelines for making that happen.

How to Optimize Your YouTube Videos

Make sure you include keywords (in the right place)

You probably know that it’s important to include targeted keywords in the title of your video—but did you know that where you place those keywords can have a big impact on rankings? YouTube is more favorable to keywords that come at the beginning of your title. So, rather than titling a video Discover These YouTube SEO Tips, consider something like YouTube SEO Tips: Discover How to Make Videos Rank!

Write a strong video description

Video descriptions provide YouTube with information about how they can classify and categorize your content. Here, it’s good to be fairly thorough in the information you provide—going as high as 200 words, if possible. The trick is to include a basic outline of what your video is about without giving everything away; be substantive, not too specific. And, again, judicious keyword use is recommended.

Include tags

Tags are another opportunity to tell YouTube what your video content is about—but here, less is usually more. Consider this: If you provide 30 or 40 different tags, that doesn’t necessarily help YouTube’s algorithms determine how to categorize your video. It makes your topic feel muddled or overly complicated. It’s better to include a couple of highly specific tags, a few more general ones, and perhaps some alternates. For example, for a video about effective blog writing, your specific tag might be blog writing; general categories might be content marketing and digital marketing; and alternates might include blogging and writing a blog.

Include a call to action

We recommend ending each video with a specific call to action. The reason is simply this: Engagement is a key signal for your YouTube SEO—meaning the more likes, shares, subscriptions and especially comments you get, the better rankings you’ll achieve. The key here is a specific call to action. Saying leave a comment below is fine; saying leave a comment to let us know your favorite blogging platform is better.

Make your videos longer

A final note about YouTube SEO: The algorithms favor videos that keep people watching longer. (And that makes sense, when you think about it; YouTube’s goal is to get people to spend more time on YouTube.) The implication here is that, whenever possible, it’s good to make your videos a little longer—between eight and 15 minutes is the ideal.

Make YouTube the Crown Jewel of Your Marketing Strategy

YouTube’s importance can’t be diminished—so marketers might as well start using it for all it’s worth. We can help. Driven2020 helps its clients develop holistic marketing plans that drive website traffic and increase conversions—and YouTube can be a big part of that.

It all starts with a marketing consultation. We invite you to contact us today and learn more about how YouTube can become a major marketing asset for your company. Contact Driven2020 now!

News

Online reviews are integral to the customer’s journey—now more than ever. The majority of consumers use Google or Bing to do online research before making any major purchasing decision—and the online reviews they encounter can often determine whether they buy your product, or the product of your competitor.

The bottom line is that your business needs to get reviews, and it needs those reviews to be positive. That’s probably not going to happen by accident; rather, a proactive approach is necessary if you want to ensure a sterling online reputation for your business.

Where Should You Seek Online Reviews?

To start with, it’s important to know where you should be seeking those online reviews. There are countless online review platforms out there, but generally speaking, only a handful of them are truly central to your online reputation. These are the ones we recommend:

• Google My Business (if you haven’t already signed up for a free account, do so now!)
• Yelp
• Facebook
• Any online review sites that are specific to your industry or niche

Make sure that you have accounts set up at each of these platforms, and that you optimize those accounts with up-to-date contact information, business hours, photos, keywords, a link to your home page, etc.

How Should You Seek Reviews?

Once you have your review platforms set up, the next step is to start encouraging your customers and clients to deliver their feedback. Some strategies we recommend include:

• Make sure you have links to some of your review sites on your company website; for example, you might include a link to your Google My Business account, encouraging customers to submit their comments. Always make it easy for people to leave reviews!
• There are other places you might add links to your review sites, including in your email signature line and at the bottom of online invoices and receipts.
• If you have a brick and mortar store, consider signage encouraging people to look you up and leave reviews on Yelp, Google, etc.
• Also think about sending a message to your email list—or maybe just to a select group of your best/most loyal customers—and simply ask them to do you a favor and leave some feedback.
• Some businesses even encourage the review process, letting their email list know that there’s a $5 gift card in it for them if they take a minute to leave a review.

What Else Should You Know About Online Reviews?

Once you have the review sites set up, make a point to monitor them regularly; always be aware of what people are saying about your business.

When positive reviews come in, take a minute to say thank you, letting your customers know that you hear them and appreciate them.

Negative reviews, meanwhile, can be difficult to read without getting upset—so always take some time to cool down, then patiently ask how you can make the situation right. Take the opportunity to show some customer service, which can help undo much of the damage done by that bad review.

Get Help Managing Your Online Image

A final note: Managing online reviews is ultimately just one part of your broader marketing strategy. That’s where we come in. Driven2020 has proven strategies to help businesses enhance their image and establish credibility in the minds of consumers—helping generate foot traffic and bring in conversions.

We’d love to talk with you about the digital marketing opportunities in front of you. To start the dialogue, reach out to Driven2020 today!

News

User Experience (UX) is one of the capstones of good website design; in short, it’s what provides user satisfaction with your site, making people glad they checked you out on the Web—and more likely to do so again. UX entails a number of facets, but what it boils down to is providing maximum usability, efficiency, and accessibility to visitors who seek certain information.

This isn’t anything to relegate to second-tier status: Good UX is closely linked with conversion rates, and it can also help you improve SEO rankings. How can you proactively boost your website’s UX value, though? Here are five strategies our team recommends.

How to Improve Your Website UX

Start with a Strong Homepage

Most of your website visitors will come in through the home page, and as such, it should set the tone. Your home page should encapsulate the main messages of your website, though not all of them: Basically, you want to give visitors a reason to stick around without making the home page too busy or cluttered.

Some specific tips:

• Keep your home page relatively succinct, focused on truly essential information
• Make it clear how users can find additional information—i.e. how to navigate to other pages of the site
• Focus on the benefits you offer your customers and clients—what’s in it for them?
• Put the most important information above the fold—i.e. placed high enough that it can be seen without scrolling.

Make Sure Your Site Loads Quickly

Your website loading speed is a key Google ranking factor, and it also impacts user satisfaction. Even a delay of two or three seconds can significantly increase the risk of users fleeing your website.

Run some speed tests, ideally on different devices and with different browsers. If your site is slow to load, consider ways to speed things along—specifically by removing slow-loading content such as graphics, complex scripts, videos, etc.

Focus on Readability

It’s vitally important that your website visitors be able to find the information they seek—quickly and without any hassle. This means it should be quite easy for someone to skim through your site and zero in on the content they’re looking for.

Some strategies:

• Keep sentences and paragraphs short.
• Allow plenty of white space on your site.
• Use bullet points, numbered lists, and section sub-headings wherever possible.
• Avoid long, unbroken blocks of text.

Fix Broken Links

There’s nothing more frustrating than clicking a link and being taken to a 404 page. One of the healthiest habits you can form, from a UX perspective, is simply staying on top of broken links.

Audit your site on a regular basis, and make sure the links are all working as intended—and that includes both internal and external links. And if you spot any busted ones, repair or redirect the URL.

Provide Clear Calls to Action

The call to action is generally regarded as a conversion tool—and it is. Believe it or not, though, it can also help enhance the user experience. Remember that one of the keys to good UX is providing a clear path through your website—and a clear call to action helps show your visitors how best to proceed, and what steps they should take after digesting your information.

Does Your Site Offer Strong UX?

If you’re worried your website doesn’t offer an appealing user experience, we invite you to have your site audited—and potentially revamped. Driven2020 offers expertise here: We design websites that drive traffic, offer the user a hassle-free experience, and help generate strong rankings and consistent conversions for your business. Don’t delay. Contact Driven2020 today and request a website audit!