Kobe Bryant, a former MVP of the National Basketball Association and a five-time NBA champion, is dead at 41, after his helicopter crashed in Calabasas, California. Five people died in the crash, including one of his four daughters. Bryant spent his entire 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers, who drafted him out of high…
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a news show for marketers who want to stay on the leading edge of social media. On this week’s Social Media Marketing Talk Show, we explore an update of TikTok’s self-serve ad platform, how businesses are developing content on TikTok, and much more […]
At AWeber, our mission is to help small businesses succeed with powerfully-simple marketing tools and the support you need to use them.
That’s why we regularly host free summits and webinars about marketing. It’s why we write a blog focused on email marketing, and we send our weekly newsletter FWD: Thinking. And it’s also why we offer 24/7 customer solutions.
Now, I’m proud to introduce our latest free marketing education for small businesses — the FWD: Thinking Show. The FWD: Thinking Show is a free, monthly live show where you’ll get marketing and business strategy from the smartest marketers in the world.
Get-rich-quick marketing schemes don’t work. Top-secret formulas that cost thousands don’t guarantee results. Outdated marketing tactics don’t produce revenue anymore.
Marketing that delivers real business growth takes effort, a bit of risk, and planning. This is the kind of marketing strategy you’ll get from the FWD: Thinking Show.
The show is like a webinar, podcast, and keynote speech combined! Each episode of the FWD: Thinking Show will follow this agenda:
1. Quickfire Q&A
Liz Willits, the host of the FWD: Thinking Show, will ask the guest questions about their career, their best marketing and business advice, and more.
2. Innovative ideas
The guest speaker will share one innovative business or marketing strategy to accelerate your growth.
3. Audience Q&A
This is your chance to ask the smartest marketers in the world anything and get tailored advice.
Who is the first show guest?
Lee Odden is a lightly bearded B2B marketing strategist, author, international speaker and CEO of the fine team at TopRank Marketing. His work integrating search, social, content, and influencer marketing for B2B brands has been recognized by numerous publications including the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Forbes.
Who is the host?
Yours truly. I’m a professional speaker and marketing expert. I help run content strategy at AWeber. And I’ve taught hundreds of thousands of small business owners and entrepreneurs how to successfully grow their businesses online.
Get your ticket to the FWD: Thinking Show!
It’s free! You can get your ticket here, and access the show on Wednesday, June 22 at 2:00 p.m. ET.
For the best experience, I recommend attending the live show. But if you can’t clear your schedule, claim your ticket to get an on-demand video of the live episode. I’ll email
the on-demand video within 24 hours of the live show.
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a news show for marketers who want to stay on the leading edge of social media. On this week’s Social Media Marketing Talk Show, we explore an update of TikTok’s self-serve ad platform, how businesses are developing content on TikTok, and much more […]
Pinterest is such a key part of the buying journey for its users that over 90 percent of weekly active Pinners use Pinterest to make purchasing decisions.
Talk about buying power!
Not only are Pinterest users making purchase decisions on the platform, 83 percent say they are making purchases specifically based on the content they’ve seen from brands on Pinterest.
Pinterest is no longer simply a place to save ideas and build dream boards. Instead, Pinterest has turned into the world’s largest visual discovery platform.
And there are a lot of opportunities for brands.
We had a chance to chat with the team over at Pinterest about some of their best practices for brands looking to increase sales. We’re excited to share those lessons with you!
Here’s what we learned…
How people are using Pinterest
According to one survey, “47 percent of social media users saw Pinterest as the platform for discovering and shopping for products—more than three times higher than those who cited Facebook or Instagram.”
Pinterest might not immediately come to mind as a platform to invest in for many brands, but it should.
Pinterest lives in a unique space on the internet where users are discovering content related to themselves and their aspirations rather than focusing on others, and this has turned it into a powerful platform for users to make purchasing decisions and discover new brands and products.
Clearly, Pinterest is not one to be ignored when it comes to your marketing strategy. Here’s how you can use the platform to drive sales.
How to leverage Pinterest for sales: 5 tips from the Pinterest team
There are some really simple ways that you can start leveraging Pinterest to reach new audiences and optimize your pins and profile for sales. Some of these tips might be easy to implement immediately while others might play into later strategies, let’s dive in!
1. Brand your pins
A whopping 97 percent of top searches on Pinterest are unbranded, according to the Pinterest team. For brands, this presents an opportunity to stand out and gain brand recognition through the platform.
Pinterest recommends adding a small logo in one of the four corners of your pin, this can be done really easily in a tool like Canva. You can play around with the design, of course, and add your logo wherever it feels best. In this example from Quip, they went with top centered to fit with the rest of the text on their image.
2. Create mobile-first content
As with most sites, mobile is extremely important on Pinterest. Eighty-five percent of Pinners are using the mobile app, so it’s important that your content appeals to them while they’re on their phones and appears properly in their feeds. If you’re linking back to your own content, it’s also important that the page that you’re sending users to is mobile friendly as well.
A tip from Pinterest here is to tailor your font size to phone rendering to make sure your fonts are legible on small screens and to design for a vertical aspect ratio. The ideal dimensions are 600 pixels x 900 pixels.
3. Create a similar look and feel
Have you ever clicked on a beautiful image on Pinterest only to be taken to a website that looks nothing like the pin? I have, and it left me really confused.
According to Pinterest, the best practice is to make sure your pins and your website have a similar look and feel, and that doing this pays off. In an analysis from Pinterest, they found that “Pins that went to landing pages with similar imagery had a 13 percent higher online sales lift.”
This example from Ettitude is really great. The pin they are sharing fits seamlessly in a lot of home decor and design tags on Pinterest.
And although their website uses different photos, it still has a similar feel to the pin.
4. Time your campaigns
A big element to social media marketing and campaigns is timing. When are people online and when are people talking about the things you want to talk about?
Luckily in the case of Pinterest, they release annual ‘Seasonal Insights,’ which helps take away some of the guesswork. A report that contains more than a dozen specific moments that take place throughout the year.
For example, their 2019 report shared that users start sharing holiday content in June all the way through December and that content related to the Summer starts getting pinned at the beginning of February. They also have monthly trends reports. Here’s their latest for December 2019 trends on Pinterest, it shares specific trends like the search term ‘peach green tea’ is up 320 percent YoY!
These are great free resources that you can leverage to start timing seasonal campaigns around when people are starting to make specific seasonal purchasing decisions. I would never have thought that people start looking at holiday content in June but that’s super-specific information that can go a long way to help with timely campaigns.
5. Set up your shop
One of the main ways for Pinterest to help generate sales is for the products you are selling to be easily available through Pinterest. Luckily, the platform makes this really easy for brands to set up and feature prominently on their profiles.
The shop tab is just what it sounds like, a place where users can go to see all of the products your brand is selling. On the flip side, brands can leverage that tab to share pins that link directly to their sales pages for the specific product.
Pinterest makes this whole process quite easy, they even have a method for importing new products through Pinterest Catalogs. All you have to do is have your data source approved and then as you add new products to your website, they get automagically added to Pinterest as well.
We hope this guide helps you get started with or double down on your efforts with Pinterest. Let us know about your experience with Pinterest in the comments!
If you want even more Pinterest resources, the Pinterest team has created a free Pinterest Academy with tons of lessons in there.
In 2010, Google made 516 algorithm changes. That number increased to 1,653 in 2016 and to 3,234 in 2018. We don’t have data for the last couple of years, but still, you can bet that the number is continually going up.
With over 9 algorithm changes a day, it’s safe to say that it is no longer easy to manipulate or game Google.
So, is SEO dead?
Well, let’s look at the data and from there I’ll show you
what you should do.
Is SEO dead?
Do you know how many searches take place on Google each day?
There are so many blogs that you can find an excessive amount of content on most topics out there.
For example, if you look at the long-tail phrase, “what is digital marketing”, there are only 11,300 global searches a month but a whopping 665,000 pieces of content trying to answer that question.
In other words, the supply is much greater than the demand.
You’ll see even more of this for head terms. Just look at
the phrase “banana”:
640,300 global searches seem like a high number but there are 880,000,000 million results. Sure, some of those results may not be on the food, banana, but still, that’s a lot of content compared to the search volume.
You can still find search phrases where there is more search volume than content but the trend is continually increasing in which content production is exceeding search demand.
On top of that, Google is turning into an answer engine in which they are answering people’s questions without them having to go to a website.
According to Dejan SEO,
they saw CTRs drastically decrease once Google started answering questions.
Just look at this weather search query:
Their clicks from weather-related queries went from 46% all the way down to 7%.
This trend has become so common that the percentage of traffic that Google drives to organic listings (SEO results) has been decreasing over time.
So, does this mean SEO is dead?
It’s actually the opposite.
SEO is not dead
With all of the data, how can that be the case?
First off, all marketing channels become statured over time. It’s just a question of when.
You can say the same thing about Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter, and even email marketing.
Heck, just look at the image below. It was the first banner ad on the Internet.
Can you guess what company created that banner ad? It was
ATT.
Of the people who saw it, 44% of them clicked on it. Now banner ads generate an average click-through rate of 0.5%.
The numbers are on the rise because companies are generating
an ROI.
So, how is SEO still not dead?
As I explained above, just because the metrics aren’t going in your favor doesn’t mean that a channel is dead.
Just look at my search traffic on NeilPatel.com.
Not only do I have to deal with Google’s algorithm like you, but my competition includes other marketers who know what I know… yet I am still able to grow my search traffic even with Google’s decreasing CTRs.
Olay sells products related to skincare. One of their products happens to reduce darkness under your eyes.
So, they used to push heavily on ads that sold their
products directly.
But the moment they changed their ads to focus on education by teaching people how to reduce dark circles under their eyes instead of forcing people to buy their products, their ROI went through the roof.
By sending people to educational-based content first (and then selling through the content), they were able to increase click-throughs by 87%, decrease their cost per click by 30%, and increase conversions by 100%.
This is a prime example of how more people are using Google as a discovery engine first instead of a commerce engine.
SEO isn’t dying it is just changing
Now that you know that Google is shifting to a discovery
engine (for both paid and organic listings), there are a few other things you
need to know if you want to dominate the organic listings.
1: Google wants to rank sites you want to see
Their algorithm core focus isn’t backlinks or keyword density, or a specific SEO metric… the focus is on the user experience.
If a site has millions of backlinks but users hate it, the site won’t rank well in the long run.
Even if you hate the social web, you need to use it more. Not only can it help with your site’s indexing but it can also help with brand building, which indirectly will help boost your rankings as well.
Here are some articles to follow to help boost your social
media presence:
As your brand grows, you’ll find that your rankings will climb as well.
You saw my search traffic stats earlier in the post, but
here’s a breakdown of how many people found my site by searching for my name in
the last 7 days.
And that number doesn’t even include the misspellings. You would be shocked at how many people spell my name as “niel” instead of “neil.”
Google loves brands. Heck, when you type in “men’s running shoes,” they even have Nike, Adidas, and Asics there.
Branded search volume is more correlated with rankings than links or domain authority.
If you want to build a brand, focus on the social media
articles I linked to above and follow the brand building articles below:
If you want to do well in today’s world of SEO, focus on one niche. Google prefers topic-specific sites because that’s what you and everyone else loves.
Just think of it this way… would you rather read medical advice from About.com or WebMD?
WebMD of course.
5. Future is personalization
Have you noticed that when you search on Google the results you see are different than the results of your friends?
It’s because Google is trying to personalize the results to
you.
Not just on Google search but anywhere you use a Google device… from a smartphone to Google Home to even their autonomous cars.
With all of the data they are gathering, they are better
suited to understand your preferences and then modify the results to that.
Just think of it this way: Every time you visit a place and you are carrying your mobile phone (especially if it is an Android device), Google may be able to potentially use that information to tailor results to you.
With your website, don’t try and show everyone the same message. If you personalize your experience to each and every user, you will be able to rank better in the long run as it will improve your user metrics.
A good example of this is on my blog.
Right when you land there, I let you pick the type of content you want to see and then the page adapts to your interest.
It’s actually the most clicked area on the blog, believe it
or not.
Conclusion
SEO is not dead, it’s just changing.
Sure, click-through rates are going down and Google keeps adjusting its algorithm but that’s to be expected.
Google has made it so you can easily target your ideal customer through SEO or paid ads.
It used to be much more difficult before they came along. That’s why they are able to generate over 100 billion dollars a year in advertising revenue.
Don’t worry about things that aren’t in your control. Instead, start adapting or your traffic and business will be dead.
What do you think about the changing SEO landscape?
In 2010, Google made 516 algorithm changes. That number increased to 1,653 in 2016 and to 3,234 in 2018. We don’t have data for the last couple of years, but still, you can bet that the number is continually going up.
With over 9 algorithm changes a day, it’s safe to say that it is no longer easy to manipulate or game Google.
So, is SEO dead?
Well, let’s look at the data and from there I’ll show you
what you should do.
Is SEO dead?
Do you know how many searches take place on Google each day?
There are so many blogs that you can find an excessive amount of content on most topics out there.
For example, if you look at the long-tail phrase, “what is digital marketing”, there are only 11,300 global searches a month but a whopping 665,000 pieces of content trying to answer that question.
In other words, the supply is much greater than the demand.
You’ll see even more of this for head terms. Just look at
the phrase “banana”:
640,300 global searches seem like a high number but there are 880,000,000 million results. Sure, some of those results may not be on the food, banana, but still, that’s a lot of content compared to the search volume.
You can still find search phrases where there is more search volume than content but the trend is continually increasing in which content production is exceeding search demand.
On top of that, Google is turning into an answer engine in which they are answering people’s questions without them having to go to a website.
According to Dejan SEO,
they saw CTRs drastically decrease once Google started answering questions.
Just look at this weather search query:
Their clicks from weather-related queries went from 46% all the way down to 7%.
This trend has become so common that the percentage of traffic that Google drives to organic listings (SEO results) has been decreasing over time.
So, does this mean SEO is dead?
It’s actually the opposite.
SEO is not dead
With all of the data, how can that be the case?
First off, all marketing channels become statured over time. It’s just a question of when.
You can say the same thing about Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter, and even email marketing.
Heck, just look at the image below. It was the first banner ad on the Internet.
Can you guess what company created that banner ad? It was
ATT.
Of the people who saw it, 44% of them clicked on it. Now banner ads generate an average click-through rate of 0.5%.
The numbers are on the rise because companies are generating
an ROI.
So, how is SEO still not dead?
As I explained above, just because the metrics aren’t going in your favor doesn’t mean that a channel is dead.
Just look at my search traffic on NeilPatel.com.
Not only do I have to deal with Google’s algorithm like you, but my competition includes other marketers who know what I know… yet I am still able to grow my search traffic even with Google’s decreasing CTRs.
Olay sells products related to skincare. One of their products happens to reduce darkness under your eyes.
So, they used to push heavily on ads that sold their
products directly.
But the moment they changed their ads to focus on education by teaching people how to reduce dark circles under their eyes instead of forcing people to buy their products, their ROI went through the roof.
By sending people to educational-based content first (and then selling through the content), they were able to increase click-throughs by 87%, decrease their cost per click by 30%, and increase conversions by 100%.
This is a prime example of how more people are using Google as a discovery engine first instead of a commerce engine.
SEO isn’t dying it is just changing
Now that you know that Google is shifting to a discovery
engine (for both paid and organic listings), there are a few other things you
need to know if you want to dominate the organic listings.
1: Google wants to rank sites you want to see
Their algorithm core focus isn’t backlinks or keyword density, or a specific SEO metric… the focus is on the user experience.
If a site has millions of backlinks but users hate it, the site won’t rank well in the long run.
Even if you hate the social web, you need to use it more. Not only can it help with your site’s indexing but it can also help with brand building, which indirectly will help boost your rankings as well.
Here are some articles to follow to help boost your social
media presence:
As your brand grows, you’ll find that your rankings will climb as well.
You saw my search traffic stats earlier in the post, but
here’s a breakdown of how many people found my site by searching for my name in
the last 7 days.
And that number doesn’t even include the misspellings. You would be shocked at how many people spell my name as “niel” instead of “neil.”
Google loves brands. Heck, when you type in “men’s running shoes,” they even have Nike, Adidas, and Asics there.
Branded search volume is more correlated with rankings than links or domain authority.
If you want to build a brand, focus on the social media
articles I linked to above and follow the brand building articles below:
If you want to do well in today’s world of SEO, focus on one niche. Google prefers topic-specific sites because that’s what you and everyone else loves.
Just think of it this way… would you rather read medical advice from About.com or WebMD?
WebMD of course.
5. Future is personalization
Have you noticed that when you search on Google the results you see are different than the results of your friends?
It’s because Google is trying to personalize the results to
you.
Not just on Google search but anywhere you use a Google device… from a smartphone to Google Home to even their autonomous cars.
With all of the data they are gathering, they are better
suited to understand your preferences and then modify the results to that.
Just think of it this way: Every time you visit a place and you are carrying your mobile phone (especially if it is an Android device), Google may be able to potentially use that information to tailor results to you.
With your website, don’t try and show everyone the same message. If you personalize your experience to each and every user, you will be able to rank better in the long run as it will improve your user metrics.
A good example of this is on my blog.
Right when you land there, I let you pick the type of content you want to see and then the page adapts to your interest.
It’s actually the most clicked area on the blog, believe it
or not.
Conclusion
SEO is not dead, it’s just changing.
Sure, click-through rates are going down and Google keeps adjusting its algorithm but that’s to be expected.
Google has made it so you can easily target your ideal customer through SEO or paid ads.
It used to be much more difficult before they came along. That’s why they are able to generate over 100 billion dollars a year in advertising revenue.
Don’t worry about things that aren’t in your control. Instead, start adapting or your traffic and business will be dead.
What do you think about the changing SEO landscape?
dIn high school, one of my friends was determined to find the perfect time to post her Instagram photos to maximize the amount of likes she got. She was surprisingly scientific about it, posting at different times of the day and jotting down each of her posts’ “likes per minute.”
After weeks of testing, she figured out which post time raked in the most likes, and, from then on, she could easily get 200 likes on all her Instagram posts.
My friend’s rather scientific method to maximize her Instagram likes still makes me chuckle to this day. But since I’m a marketer now, her desire to build a strong Instagram presence also resonates with me.
To build a sizable Instagram following, you need to create compelling content that your audience actually craves. But if you don’t post your content at the right time, most of them will never see it.
So how do you figure out the optimal post time for your specific audience?
The best way to find an ideal posting time is by testing the timing of your posts to see which post time generates the most audience engagement.
But if you don’t have enough resources or time to conduct your own tests, Sprout Social, a social media management platform with over 24,000 customers, has you covered. Last year, they analyzed their customer data to see what time and day their social media posts generated the most engagement. They also segmented the data by social network and industry.
Looking at their aggregate customer data for Instagram, you can see that the following days and times — in Central Daylight Time (CDT) — are ideal for generating the most engagement on the social network:
As stated above, although 2 – 3 PM is considered the best time of day to post on Instagram, the day of the week on which you post can change how much engagement you actually get at 2 – 3 PM.
Why? Think about the little differences in your daily mood and routine — the ones you might not realize you have — and how they affect your behavior. The same goes for everyone following your Instagram account. Here are some additional insights about optimal post timing from data by Sprout Social to show you what I mean:
Posting at 5:00 AM CDT from Tuesday to Friday generates some of the highest engagement — people usually check their phones right when they wake up.
Posting from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM CDT during the weekdays also generates a lot of engagement — people usually check their phones during lunch or when they start to run out of mental energy toward the end of the work day.
If you want to post on the weekends, post on Saturday around 11:00 AM CDT when people eat brunch or hang out with their friends.
So, when Instagramming, don’t go by this time range alone. Consider both the day of the week and the industry you’re in (we’ll talk about the latter in just a minute).
On average, here are the best times to Instagram during the week within each time zone globally:
* = particularly high levels of engagement
Want some easy marching orders based on this data? Post to Instagram between 9 AM and 6 PM from Tuesday to Friday. You’ll get the most consistent engagement that way.
Need a visual to strategize around? Check out this Sprout Social chart which shows Global Instagram Engagement hotspots.
The general data above about optimal post timing is a great starting point for growing an engaged Instagram audience. But if you want to get more granular, here are the best times to post on Instagram if your organization is in the technology, B2C, education, healthcare, and non-profit industries, according to Sprout Social’s research.
Best Times to Post on Instagram for Technology Companies
Best Time: Wednesday at 10:00 AM CDT
Most Consistent Engagement: Wednesday to Friday from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM CDT
Best Day: Thursday
Worst Day: Sunday
Best Times to Post on Instagram for B2C Companies
Best Time: Friday at 11:00 AM & 1:00 PM CDT
Most Consistent Engagement: Everyday from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM CDT
Best Day: Wednesday
Worst Day: Sunday
Best Times to Post on Instagram for Educational Organizations
Best Time: Monday at 8:00 PM CDT
Most Consistent Engagement: Weekdays from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM CDT
Best Day: Monday
Worst Day: Sunday
Best Times to Post on Instagram for Healthcare Companies
Best Time: Tuesday at 1:00 PM CDT
Most Consistent Engagement: Tuesday to Friday from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM CDT
Best Day: Tuesday
Worst Day: Saturday & Sunday
Best Times to Post on Instagram for Non-Profit Organizations
Best Times: Tuesday at 3:00 PM & 9:00 PM, Wednesday at 3:00 PM & 4:00 PM, Thursday at 2:00 PM & 3:00 PM, and Friday at 10:00 AM & 2:00 PM,
Most Consistent Engagement: Weekdays from 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Best Day: Tuesday
Worst Day: Saturday
Every brand’s audience is different. To build a sizable, engaged Instagram audience, you need to know who your followers are. And one of the best ways to get to know your audience and capture their attention is by knowing exactly when they like to surf the app.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in February 2018, but was updated for comprehensiveness and freshness January 24, 2019
