As the year comes to a close, it’s time to share our favourite picks of content from around the world that has induced a range of emotions. We had the team pick and vote their favourite content and these are the ones that we want to be on our list in 2020 too. The most interesting newsletter(s) whlw What Happened Last Week is an amazing email magazine circulated by Sham Jaff every Monday. There are over 5000 people who subscribe to this ‘human-curated’ magazine. The magazine does not give news but adds perspective to each facet of the story. From how the current situation in South Sudan is affecting the world to what Christine Lagarde – Forbes No. 2 most powerful woman – is planning, you’ll read different stories in a new light. The magazine works on donation from patrons. Subscribe here https://www.whathappenedlastweek.com/ TMAI Being a digital and content writing agency, The Marketing and Analytics Intersect circulated by Avinash Kaushik holds a special place in our heart. Most of his newsletters hold an interesting nugget of wisdom on the one piece of a campaign that many marketers want to cover up in fluff – real ROI. It always brings the focus back on data and analysis and the overall purpose on why you started with content marketing in the first place. The Best ads of 2019 Ballerinas, footballers, an astronaut, a hummingbird, a tiger, fairy lights and a cloud of smoke – we can’t imagine what the brief for this ad would have been! Clearly, it looks like Indian viewers found the combination along with the animation an interesting way to introduce a new car. The Kia Seltos ad bagged 232 million views on YouTube, making it the most-watched ad of 2019. Not too far behind, with 205 million views, is the Samsung Good Vibes ad. With the perfect mix of product innovation (an app for the deaf and blind) and feel good factor, this 2:59 minutes long ad can stir up teary emotions in its viewers. Have a look if you haven’t seen it yet. Great UGC campaigns Cisco’s #WeAreCisco It’s hard to push out UGC content in the B2B space but Cisco seems to be doing this just right. They invited 20 super ambassador employees from all over the world to connect with the Gen Z population of new graduates and university students. Named ‘Kitten Rainbow Unicorns’ (to reflect everything that is awesome about the internet), the group was responsible for posting daily snapchat stories of the awesome work-life at Cisco. What we really liked is that they got the pulse of the audience right. GenZ is looking for authenticity and validation from their online experience. And having employees of their peer group post positive content does both. Innovations India is home to 40% of the world’s blind population but the masses are hardly sensitized about it. Savlon decided to change this. On World Sight Day, they did the first mass media Braille campaign where two daily newspapers – Dainik Savera and Vijayvanni, worked to publish fully Braille newspapers. The campaign reached 549mn people and improved Salvon’s trust scores from 51 to 64. Most viral videos of 2019 We all have videos that we’ve watched and shared instantly with friends. Whether it was Ruby the dog who patted a tiny kitten or a porcupine frustrating a leopard with its spikes, or Chad Kempel sharing hacks on feeding his quintuplets, here is a quick recap of the most viral videos from 2019. Best digital strategy The ad that took home the Emvie this year comes from Brooke Bond Red Label, continuing on its Swad Apnepan Ka theme. The theme focuses on inclusion. While last time the ad showed a Hindu couple having tea at a Muslim house, this ad addresses the vegetarian / non-vegetarian divide and leaves you with a smile. HUL used TV as the main medium and also used digital, outdoor and print to improve its reach. Buzzing Community Building a brand community is a difficult task but some just know how to do it right. Our pick this year for a buzzing community goes to Spotify. There are music chats, playlist exchanges, idea sharing, issue tracking and the best of all, their brand advocate program called Rock Stars. Simple and clean design, good UX, clear communication and lots of buzz from its users makes this platform a great go-to place for the 71,94,451 people connected with Spotify. You can also check out Spotify’s newsroom for their top stories of 2019. Best of radio The ‘Knock Knock.. Who’s There?… Its RJ ALEXA!!’ campaign took home awards for its witty presentation on radio. Amazon Echo’s Alexa has been answering both straight and quirky questions. Alexa now supports over 350 radio stations which include live broadcast of 17 All India Radio stations in 14 languages. The best of tongue-in-cheek content We have three contenders – Netflix, Swiggy and Zomato here that you should definitely follow on Twitter. The internet broke out laughing when Netflix and Swiggy got on the Parle-G memes for Sacred Games! Netfilx even ended up ordering ‘Kaali Chai’ from Swiggy! Season 1: 0 mentions of Parle-G. 0 hit songs written by Bunty. Season 2: 1 mention of Parle-G. Bunty becomes a world-famous producer, casino owner and lyricist. Coincidence? We think not. https://t.co/VJKyOBu8Bt — Netflix India (@NetflixIndia) August 21, 2019 Take the recent spat on Paneer and Radhika Apte where Netflix ended up having the last laugh. Well, she is everywhere. pic.twitter.com/XcEw0OjtHf — Netflix India (@NetflixIndia) August 29, 2018 These brands show that wit and brand tone together can make you stand out on social media. Visual presentation of content When was the last time you gave a miss to the same old company newsletter? Though content is interesting, presenting it in a visually attractive format is necessary for that content to draw attention. Boston Consulting Group (BCG) was having trouble grabbing its employees’ attention on internal communication. The communication was then revamped to meet
Month: December 2019
8 Proven Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Blog in 2020
Currently, there are close to 250 million blogs in the internet-verse. Many of them are vying for your target audience’s attention. However, there are only a few blogs that enjoy a constant flow of traffic and engagement. If you want to make your blog among those select few, read on. Blog marketing needs skills, persistence and patience. Of the strategies mentioned below, some will get you high traffic quickly while others will put your traffic on a slow increase. You’ll have to use a mix of both these methods to start reaping benefits from your blog. 1. Check the UI/UX of your blog If you started a while back, chances are that your blog wasn’t fully mobile responsive. With mobile being the medium of choice for 70% of the audience in most markets, it is important to have a clean responsive design. In addition to this, readable fonts, large alluring imagery, content chunking, lead capture mechanisms are some of the basics that need to be in place. Don’t forget to check the page speed of your blog to remove any unwanted code and manage the size of the images you upload. Having these hygiene checks in place seems to be the most obvious thing to do but still many bloggers don’t pay as much attention to it due to paucity of time. 2. Get your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices in order SEO is the slow burn way to increase traffic to your blog. The optimization you do today is likely to drive traffic in the next few years. SEO best practices suggest that each page on a site should be optimized for one particular keyword. Blogs come in handy when you have a lateral keyword strategy. They help in introducing your product, telling a story, drawing a happy picture with testimonials and reeling in a prospect. To ensure the blog continues to draw traffic, build quality links to all the inner pages. 3. Build a marketing plan for every single blog post This one is a difficult strategy even for seasoned bloggers. At times, most bloggers are caught between writing a new blog every week while also marketing the new one or the one before that. In most cases, the mandatory posting to social happens once, maybe twice, and then the article disappears into an obscure corner of your website. To get out of this rut, the best way is to have a plan for each blog. Here are a few ideas on building a plan Target each blog to a different niche of your base: If you blog about parenting, you can break down topics into categories like health and nutrition, academics, extracurricular activities and emotional wellbeing. A blog under each of these topics can be marketed by tying up with leading websites in the category to push traffic to your blog. Eventually, you’ll have a rich link history built to your websites. Put the basics in place for every blog: Have a scheduler in place to ensure each blog is visible by different audiences across social channels. Maintain a re-marketing sheet: Once a blog has run its course of initial visibility, add it to a re-marketing sheet. Use topics that are over 4 months old to occasionally re-post on social. Update your seasonal posts: If you’ve created a blog on the top Diwali sweets, do some general rewriting and post it as fresh content. This helps you to recycle old content with minimal fuss. Also Read: 10 Incredible Blogging Stats to Inspire You to Blog in 2020 4) Publish posts regularly A little bit of procrastination and a whole lot of ‘I don’t have time’ generally leads to blogs being published with delay. Having a schedule is an interesting way to get your reader base habituated to expecting blogs from you at fixed intervals. The best way to do this is to go all out and start a weekly or bi-monthly newsletter which includes the blogs you have published. With deadlines looming close, you will force yourself for faster closures and publishing cycles. Start with a simple schedule like publishing a blog every Friday and sending out an email to your subscriber base on a Saturday. This gives you the entire week to be productive and close a blog post on time. 5) Connect with other bloggers While one blogger can add value, a group of bloggers of the same niche can be an invaluable resource when it comes to brand collaborations. Grow your subscriber base so that you can hold your own when you interact with other bloggers. Through offline events or with thoughtful comments online, you can slowly and steadily build your blogger connect to network. Eventually, cross-linking to resources can be a valuable way to drive incremental traffic. You can also take this a notch up by guest posting on others’ blogs or allowing guest posting on yours. 6) Create rich content for your blogs A story can have different narratives depending on the channel used for the narration. From text to video, to images to cinemagraphs to infographics, every piece of content can give a different cut to a specific user base. Aim to imagine the formats of the story before making it completely. That way, you will be able to make some changes on the go. Also Read: Move over blogs, articles. Here are new content formats to consider 7) Promote on social Though this one is obvious, we don’t see a lot of people doing this right. If you are writing for an international audience, you can use buffer or Hootsuite to schedule posting at times that can work well for other time zones. Tagging your relevant target base on social is a great way to get them to repost/retweet your blog. You can also run contests that have answers hidden in your blog. You can run a Q&A session with an expert or ask your target audience for feedback and comments. The plan is to know which one you want to try for which post
Wondering How to Shape Your Marketing Strategy? Use Google Analytics
We’re almost on the verge of embracing 2020, and most digital marketers still struggle with proving the efficacy of digital marketing. In fact, 42% of them said that their biggest challenge is “proving the ROI of our marketing activities”. At Justwords, we have understood over the years that digital marketing cannot be driven by instinct alone. Marketing instincts are important, of course, and they really help in coming up with intuitive ideas that just take off. However, it’s just as important to understand the numbers behind different marketing activities to make better-informed strategy decisions. And that’s where analytics comes in. In this article, we’ll talk about one of the simplest and most fundamental analytics tools — Google Analytics — and how you can use it to figure out how to align your marketing tactics. First things first— Get Google Analytics on your website Obviously, if you haven’t done this already, getting Google Analytics should be your first step. Here’s the simple way to do it: Go the website – analytics.google.com Click on ADMIN Click on “Tracking Code” and insert the code on your website If you use Squarespace, you can read further instructions here. If you have a WordPress website, this is the place to go. 4 Powerful Google Analytics Tools to Help Decide Your Marketing Strategy Google Analytics helps you understand some fundamental things about your website — where you get your traffic from, who your audience is, who is the most interested in buying your products, and so on. These insights, when put together, can give you a much clearer picture on your marketing strategy going forward. 1. Analyzing traffic channels The very first thing to do on Google Analytics is to understand where your website traffic is coming from. Here’s how you do it: Go to the Acquisition tab Click the “All Traffic” dropdown Select “Channels” button Set the time period you want to see the traffic sources for. This can be done at the top of the viewing pane Google Analytics usually divides traffic into the following sources: Direct: This refers to people who came directly to your site Organic Search: This represents the strength of your SEO and content strategy Paid Search: This means that Google Ads is working well for you Referral: Things like traffic from guest blogs show up here Social media: This shows you all the various social media channels and tells you which channel directs how much traffic Email: This helps you figure out the success of email marketing campaigns Keeping an eye on this part of Google Analytics is the best way to figure out which strategies are working. Let’s say you are getting a lot of traffic from referral, and very little from social media. Start experimenting with your social media strategy and see if your efforts are showing results. If the Google Analytics stats don’t reflect your effort, you’re probably better off sticking to the channels that show results. This will automatically help you prioritize your marketing correctly. 2. Understanding your audience Once you’ve understood your traffic sources, it’s time to start understanding your audience. Here’s how you can check your audience on Google Analytics: Go to the Audience tab Go to the sub-sections of Demographics and Geo The two most important things you can find out about your audience through this feature are their age and gender. This allows you to align your website copy, user experience, and even your content towards your target audience. For instance, if more than 80% of your users are in the age group of 18-30, you will probably use a language that caters to Gen Z and millennials. If, on the other hand, your users are largely 40+, chances are you won’t use phrases like “FOMO” or “YOLO”. Gender is another important number — if your numbers are overwhelmingly dominated by one gender, your language, design, content tone, and even color scheme can cater to that. Geography is another key to understanding your audience. If you know where your current audience is coming from, you can effectively use Google Adwords and Facebook Ads to leverage audiences in the locations that are already coming to your site organically. 3. Checking user behavior to zero in on website strategy You need to see which pages your users prefer over others— where they come most often, and stay the longest. To do this: Go to the Behavior tab Go to All Content Go to Content Drilldown Content Drilldown gives you an overview of which websites are viewed the most — whether that’s your blog, your services page, or your home page. You can also look at the “Landing Page” view which is in the same section as the Content Drilldown. The Landing Pages view shows which of your webpages people are landing on, which is a good indicator of how effective your social media and other marketing strategies are. This will clearly help you decide which marketing tactics you need to focus on and which you can let go of. 4. Using buying intent as a metric You can also track when visitors are going to particular pages on your site— specifically the pages which demonstrate an intent to buy. This includes pages like Contact Us, Discovery Call, Product Page, Pricing Page, and so on. To track these pages: Go to ADMIN (the gear icon on the bottom left) Find goals on the right side. Click on it and go to goal set-up Incorporate all the pages which demonstrate buyer’s intent in your set-up. Wait for some time after which you can review your goals. If you go to Goals, then Overview, and then Source/Medium, you will be able to figure out how the “high buying intent” visitors are finding your website. You will understand whether it’s happening through organic search, referral, social media, or other. This analysis goes deeper and tells you which of your marketing tactics are bringing users who are actually interested
Don’t Lose the Plot, Here’s How Your Brand Can Tell a Consistent Visual Story
Here’s what happens when you visit any outlet of a brand like Dominos across India. Barring the size of the outlet, you’ll find that all of them deliver pizzas of the exact same taste and have the same visual collateral. The menus, the tent cards and the value meals all look the same. This level of service excellence isn’t a coincidence. It comes with mandates at a brand level that cascades down to the base level employee who serves you with a smile. When it comes to digital and social content, can brands promise that they follow the same level of consistency? With tactical campaigns and some ad hoc ones (we all have the last moment planning to blame), it isn’t easy to maintain the same language with every post across channels. There are some brands that lead the way. When you see a post, you eventually start relating it with the brand because of its consistency in quality and presentation. It comes with the clarity of understanding for the brand’s visual guidelines – and as marketers we know that this is not an easy nut to crack. Here are a few things using which brands maintain a consistent language on digital channels: Color Photography Video Typography Colors Colors play a huge part in creating the visual identity of the brand. It is something that people come to associate with you easily. A play with these colors is every marketer’s delight. The brand hues and tone is used to evoke the emotion needed. Take McDonalds India’s Instagram account for example. The unmistakable yellow and red is consistent on the page throughout. Each image fits perfectly into the Instagram grid, encouraging seamless scrolling. The story visual is consistent, whether the post talks of an offer or the taste. View this post on Instagram There’s nothing McAloo Tikki and Fries can’t solve for ?❤️ #WeAreNotTheSame or are we? A post shared by McDonald’s India (@mcdonalds_india) on Nov 28, 2019 at 5:49am PST Yellow is associated with happiness and optimism. Red is associated with excitement. Even when you are quickly scrolling through your feed for the day, the colors invariably stand out and scream attention to the brand. Over time, you automatically start associating all their posts with the brand. There isn’t a chance of things getting dull here, as there are enough ideas that can be executed with these two colors as heroes. Photography It’s a no-brainer for digital marketers to veer towards good brand imagery as the world now consumes more visual content than ever. Even without knowing the language or having the time to read the post content, the visuals themselves can communicate all you need to say. So, how does a brand maintain visual consistency via photographs when there is a lot to say? View this post on Instagram After a day of exploring the canyons and mesas of Colorado Monument National Park, give your feet a rest in Superhost Corey’s vintage RV. This riverside retreat may be secluded, but you’ll hardly be alone—don’t be surprised if a friendly alpaca or two stops by to check you out. If you feel like company of the two-legged variety, head into town for live local music at Palisade Brewing Company. Photo: @victoriamorse A post shared by Airbnb (@airbnb) on Nov 3, 2019 at 2:22pm PST Let’s take AirBnB for example. A look through their Instagram feed shows they depict both the stays and the people enjoying there. If one could sum it up in a word, it is all about experiences. For a few seconds, you’ll ponder what it will be like to wake up in a castle in the middle of a lake or walk into a tree house via a rope bridge. You’ll look at the group of friends and family and replace it with an image of your own. Even if they are using models, you’ll notice that the faces are more natural than made up, adding the element of believability to the photographs. They don’t have a dearth of content and make sure that only the crème gets featured on the posts. It is difficult for all brands to follow this guideline. The place to start is coin three words at the maximum that you want to represent as a brand. Explore two to three words at the most that you want to represent as a brand. In the case of AirBnB, we can think of these as “stunning stays” and “unique experiences”. Video Videos, especially crisp snackable ones, are one of the best ways to keep your audience hooked and deliver a message. With the advent of bumper ads, brands can even share one key message in just 6 seconds. DIY, educational, informational, promotional or just entertaining, brands can explore a variety of ways to bring in the customer’s attention and drive the CTA in the end slate. Hebbar’s Kitchen is one of the path-breakers in its category that has viewers hooked to its innovative format of presenting recipes, many times, within a minute. So much so that people no longer want to watch the meandering format of the earlier style of recipe presentation where the chef spends the first one minute just giving a preamble and asking users to ‘click on the subscribe button and bell icon’! The good part is that Hebbar’s Kitchen’s recipes are not difficult to follow even in their trim format because of sub-titles and high-quality editing. There are enough and more comments validating the quality of the recipes. Being one of the first to adopt this format of videos, the brand is reaping benefits across multiple social channels. Typography As all brands know, how you say is as important as what you say. Having a consistent font and type of presentation, tone and language can build familiarity with your regular followers. It eventually drives recall and helps the brand establish a tone of voice
10 Incredible Blogging Stats to Inspire You to Blog in 2020
Have you recently started a blog or are planning to start one — but still skeptical about whether it’s worth your time and resources? You’re not alone — with the number of blogs out there, most new bloggers are thinking about whether blogging is worth it or not. Yet, blogging continues to be one of the most effective ways of putting content out there and finding the right audience for it. It’s also one of the most sustainable and effective ways to make passive income online, as long as you get it right. At Justwords, time and again, we’ve seen blogs become the most successful content marketing channel for our clients. So in 2020, we decided to share some fascinating blogging statistics with you, in the hope that it inspires you to go all guns blazing into your blogging journey. 3 Million+ blog posts are written every day This is the one statistic that is often used to scare prospective bloggers, so we’ll get it out of the way first. While it’s true that there are far too many blogs written on a daily basis, there are also 3.5 billion Google searches happening every day as well. This means, more and more users are looking for information online. What’s more, while there are a ton of blog posts written on a daily basis, most blogs are neither consistent nor uniquely informative. So when you think about high-quality, consistent blogs, the number comes down considerably. Also Read: https://justwords.in/blogcorporate-blogging-eight-things-remember/ 77% of internet users regularly read blog posts If this statistic doesn’t inspire you to become a prolific blogger, we are not sure what will. 77% means that most internet users are regular readers of blog posts, so if you’re looking to build a target audience, a well-planned blog is the best way forward. 72% of online marketers say that content creation is their most effective SEO strategy As far as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is concerned, creating effective content is the best way to go. Good content lies at the heart of every single SEO tactic — whether that’s building backlinks, creating credibility, or optimizing for long-tail keywords. 47% of buyers viewed 3–5 pieces of content before taking a step towards product purchase This is a great statistic for those who are wondering about the efficacy of content marketing. Today, most users will buy your product if they look at you as an expert authority in your field. This means that your content has to be both compelling as well as highly informative, if you want it to convert leads for you. Only 20% of bloggers create posts that are over 1500 words This statistic simply means that there isn’t enough long-form content out there. But this is also important because the average word count of top-ranked content in Google searches is between 1140-1285 words. Plus, long-form content generates 9 times more leads than short-form blog posts. This means that instead of churning about 3-4 posts of 400-500 words every week, it’s a much better idea to publish fewer pieces of content but make sure that they are in-depth, unique, and informative. 70% of consumers would rather get to know a company via an article than an ad There was a time when ads were all-powerful — they were really the only way consumers came to know a brand. But today, it’s all about content. As of 2015, a whopping 200 million people had ad blockers installed on their devices. So, having content that actually understands the target audience, solves key problems, and adds value to them is the best way to build a loyal customer base. Also Read: https://justwords.in/blog/do-this-dont-do-that-while-executing-your-content-marketing-plan/ Content marketing is 62% cheaper than traditional marketing If you need one more reason to invest in content marketing, what can be more compelling than cost-effectiveness? Traditional marketing in the form of pay-per-click advertising will only give you returns until you’re actually investing money. With blogs, on the other hand, you will keep getting organic traffic long after you’ve invested the time and effort to create and publish the blog. Almost 50% of marketers say that if they had the chance to redo their content marketing strategy, they would focus more on blogging This is perhaps the most telling statistic out there. These days, there’s a lot of focus on social media and even on newer content formats like videos. Yet, consistent and high-quality blogs have paid off for brands across the board. It’s a very good idea to make sure blogs are an integral part of your content marketing from Day 1. The median time spent reading an article is 37 seconds If users are only spending 37 seconds on your article, is there even a point to creating those long-form posts? Yes, there is. The only thing to keep in mind here is that you need to make your posts skimmable. This means lists, sub-headings, simple sentences. Basically, do what it takes to make your posts readable. Blog posts with images get 94% more views than posts without images This statistic is inspiring because it makes your work as a blogger that much simpler. Instead of sticking to a wall of text only, use graphics and images that help you make your point more effectively. At the end of the day, blogs continue to be one of the most effective marketing techniques in the digital landscape. Not just from an SEO perspective, but also to establish you as a credible authority and get users interested in your products and services. If you’re still on the fence about whether blogging is going to be your thing in 2020, stop over-thinking it and get started as soon as you can. If there are any other amazing blogging stats that we missed out on, let us know in the comments below. Watch: How does content marketing work to get your business traffic?