October was rich in global online marketing events so we will review some of them. In today’s post we will take a look at Search Marketing and Expo 2013 which was held on October 1st, 2013 in Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York.
During the event participants have seen over 50 presentations which talked about all the aspects of internet marketing and internet marketing ideas. The conference program was of interest for specialists of different levels – from those working at Fortune 500 company to small local businesses.
Let’s review the most important issues which have been brought up during the conference and think how they can be applied in today’s reality which recently has been changing very quickly and puts new obstacles for internet marketers.
During the first day a session called “Life Beyond Google: Diversifying Your Digital Marketing” was held. The sessions moderator was Matt McGee, Editor In Chief at Search Engine Land & Marketing Land. The session covered questions as to the internet connections building strategies, which would help attract organic traffic and triggered website promotion in the search results. Participants of the discussion were Matt Ballek, Director of Strategic Distribution Services at Magnet Media, Brandon Hassler , Senior Account Manager from 97th Floor, and Ted Ives, Coconut Headphones’s Principal.
Ted Ives “Build the best marketing model in the world”
Ted Ives told how he sees the interaction with target audience in B2B segment. He uncovered quite an original concept of White Papers usage. In Ted’s opinion. before you start to develop web source marketing strategy, it is helpful to ask yourself: “What channels can potentially bring me the traffic?” System approach in this case is very essential: it is important to understand who we are going to work with and who would like to work with us. The key point is to think over the way we will implement the communication. Thus, all the questions refer to the marketing strategy of content distribution, searching for channels and the audience.
The next step is to fix all the decisions on paper, so that not to break the strategy in the future. Having done this you can begin to generate content which complies with niche special features. However, before getting started you should:
decide what type of content we are going to create and with what purpose;
define the audience and social media;
make sure the content creation process is continious;
provide constant control of this process by professionals;
for the companies working in B2B sector, focus on creation of reference information for corporate customers, presentations, podcasts, trial versions – all this information could be later used for source promotion;
B2C companies may publish different research results, articles, organize online presentations, offer discounts and coupons, run promo-events.
The next part of his speech Ted Ives focused on business to business internet marketing strategy development and how he used White Papers to promote the source and get additional organic traffic. According to his words, if to think smartly, such documentation can be used in lots of ways, however, marketers usually overlook this opportunity. For example if by placing a proper documentation on the website you can show that your company is a solid player on the market. Though, it is important to remember to paraphrase such documentation for corporate clients. In other case, your website risks to be penalized for duplicated content.
Published on the website documents can be similar in volume (6-8 pages), contain tables with calculation and have no more than 2 diagrams. Ted noted that from one document only it is possible to create up to 50 different variations of publication and place it on the website.
Then Ted mentioned simple rules which should guide such content creation. So the reference documentation should be:
understandable for the audience;
convenient to be used by third party in presentations, to be shared with colleagues and partners;
attractive for the clients and reflect the niche and market special features;
In conclusion Ted reviewed other useful tactics of audience attraction to the website which offers services or products in B2B sphere. So they are:
publication negation (guest blogging with unique and interesting posts, which contain product reviews; email newsletter campaigns; informing partners through different channels);
promotion in the paid search with focusing special attention on keyword selection;
interview and QA sessions with leading field experts;
apart from that it is important to become an expert yourself in a niche which gives content covering interests of your partners and customers.
Matt Ballek “Finding and Measuring Success on YouTube”
The next speaker was Matt Ballek and he told the audience about how much useful video hosting on You Tube could be from internet marketing point and website promotion perspective. Especially now, when video hosting has learnt to perform a function of video search engine. No wonder that among field professionals You Tube is being fairly called second the biggest and the most famous search engine after Google and second the most well known social network after Facebook.
This means that if the promotion strategy is developed correctly, the content could be seen by milliards of people from all over the world. However, lots of efforts are required to push the video, and, probably, even innovative strategies are needed.
Matt states, that two the most important factors which influence content promotion efficiency on You Tube are video optimization and organization of its promotion. As a matter of fact, the life circle of the video uploaded on hosting is not so long.
From everything mentioned above we can make the conclusion that the main accent in getting more views on YouTube should be made on users’ engagement. This could be achieved through interesting and “hot” comments to the video. And it is not vital at all whether users had positive or negative impression after viewing your videocontent – the most important thing here is to create as much buzz around it as possible. The key goal for the video is to earn the maximum number of views, because then it will be ranked well in the search engine.
The next factor according to the importance after number of daily views is number of subscribers. As a rule, people who have viewed the video, go through several stages: video viewers, fans and superfans. The later are the most engaged part of audience, which is involved in active interaction with the content and initiate the “move” around this content. In fact, these people exactly will actively share the content in social media and generate traffic to your source.
In the end of his presentation Matt Ballek gave the audience several simple, yet valuable tips as to the marketing on YouTube. First of all, he recommended to create video content of different types, which will target different audience. For one group it is good to create light, entertaining video, for other – educational or containing useful advice, third type of group will be excited to watch videos about the latest news and changes which take place in the industry. You should not neglect statistics services as today video hosting on You Tube offers plethora of effective instruments for audience detailed analysis.
So to distribute the content among your audience it is important to use different channels and target your messages at different groups of audience and internet users.
Brandon Hassler on how to use SlideShare for your source marketing
The last presenter in the Life Beyond Google block was Brandon Hassler, Senior Account Manager at 97th Floor. He told about promotion possibilities which social media give us today. Specifically he talked about how to attract the audience to the website through infographics and slides published on SlideShare.
In the beginning of his speech Brandon suggested that after Google has increased the not provided share of keywords almost to 100%, it can’t remain the key point of business marketing online because it will not provide full information about the users. So he joked that in the nearest 30 years the priorities may change.
Very effective in some cases and alternative way of content promotion and driving additional organic traffic to the website Hassler sees graphic content publishing. For example slides with information. Commenting on his statement Brandon said that this is a powerful marketing instrument.
So the first variant of useful publications is infographics. It can be added to the slides directly – this way you will be able to post a large amount of data and each slide will show a certain chunk of content. As we know, Google doesn’t like very much to index presentations and slides. However, SlideShare is a very popular source among users and is being ranked wellm which means the more pages will be in this service, the more chances you will have for rise in the search results and attracting additional traffic coming from presentation pages to the website.
Apart from that, inhouse study conducted by 97th Floor have shown that users clicking through from SlideShare spent much more time on the website, than those who came from Facebook or other social networks.
However, to make this traffic flow possible, make sure to mention in your SlideShare account links to websites and social media accounts. Only this way users will be able to share your content in the most popular social networks and come to the website.
Pinterest is equally great for infographics placement as well as other visual content. Pinterest popularity is actively growing among the users. But there is a certain special feature of such content creation. For example, people who visit this service usually come to get inspiration, see something interesting and really beautiful. Besides, social network is largely used by people as pastime. This means that it is unlikely that somebody will look at the boring and full of figures infographics. Very frequently, Pinterest users have some hobby, because initially the network was created to give people an opportunity to share visual information about their hobbies.
The conclusion is that for this social network not abstract infographics should be created, but informational graphic content which describes in detail the process of creation of something or it functioning. For instance, you can tell the housewives in a beautiful way about how to bake apple pie- such content will be popular among certain audience, people will actively share it and place on their boards. Heading is also of a big importance: it should be readable, clear and interesting.
As to the slide and image size, the optimal variant is 500 pixels in width and 2500 pixels in length. The size is usually governed by screen size of the device.
The most optimal time to publish the content on Pinterest is early in the morning or closer to the evening. During the work hours people usually don’t visit this service. Most probably, they will check updates on Pinterest early in the morning or when they finish their work day.
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