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
Author: Payel Mukherjee
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?
The Most Common SEO Mistakes that Online Ad Publishers Need to Fix Today
SEO is no longer an esoteric science that only a few companies excel at. In fact, every business today has to invest in SEO — whether it’s a local bakery or an international SaaS company. It might be noted though that there’s one industry that can especially benefit from investing in SEO. Surprisingly enough, that’s the online ad publishing industry. This industry, which comprises a network of domains that allow brands to deliver their message to billions of users, can definitely benefit from investing some time and effort in their SEO practices. Many publishers don’t actually focus on their SEO because they feel overwhelmed by the amount of work that needs to get done. However, the technical issues that most ad publishers grapple with are actually fairly simple, and fixable. What’s more, just fixing these simple SEO issues can help them realize 79% more revenue. So here are the top SEO mistakes that publishers need to be aware of: 403 and 404 Errors This usually means that there is an issue on the client-side because of which the user, or the search engine bot, as the case may be, cannot access the webpage. A 403 Forbidden error usually happens when people are able to access the link for a webpage for which you have restricted access in your settings. A 404 Not Found error, on the other hand, comes when the page that the user is trying to access either doesn’t exist any longer or didn’t exist ever. You may also have internal broken links — where the user is directed to a non-existent webpage from within your own site. Have certain HTTPs pages Expiry of a certificate may result in particular webpages reverting to the not-secure HTTP protocol. This is seen by Google as a major compromise of the website security and rankings start taking a nosedive very quickly. Similar Titles This is a very basic SEO error, and fairly easy to fix. Your page title is how both users and search engine bots are able to figure out what your page is all about. If you have more than one page with the same title, both users and bots will get confused. This, in turn, affects your search engine ranking, which then means loss of revenue. Generic Meta Description This is another common mistake which is fairly simple to fix. The meta description is the unique description for your webpage that appears under the Google search result. Although the search engine crawlers don’t directly use this meta description to determine the ranking, users do use the meta description to decide whether they want to click on a link or not. This means that a good meta description results in a higher organic CTR (Click Through Rate) which does impact the search engine algorithm and improve rankings. Internal Links and Anchor Text It can be very tempting to use CTA (Call to Action) buttons within the body of a webpage to link other pages of your website. “Check out this post”, “Click Here” and other such generic text will not really help you from an SEO perspective. It’s much better to identify anchor text within your web copy that contains important keywords, and then link your webpages to this text. Even if you think you absolutely need to have a Call To Action, make sure it’s something that includes relevant keywords. For instance, “Click to Know More about our Ecommerce Services” is much better than “Click Here”. Uncrawlable Pages This is another rookie mistake that happens more often than we think. In this case, the search engine bot is unable to crawl all or some of the webpage and index the content. What this means is that there is no chance that your webpage will get a decent ranking. While there are a number of reasons for this, you must make sure that all your pages can be crawled by a search engine. Duplicate Content This is another very avoidable mistake that you can also rectify fairly quickly. Duplicate content means that different webpages across your website have blocks of content that are exactly the same or very similar. This can happen for one of two reasons. First, you decided to copy-paste blocks of text across different webpages, where the message you wanted to convey was similar. While this is tempting and saves some time and effort in the long run, it is a huge no-no from an SEO perspective. So make sure you craft unique content for every single webpage, no matter how similar the context and messaging. The second, more common reason is that there is some issue during the technical implementation and you end up with several webpages with the same content. This can be fixed fairly easily with a quick audit. Backlinks: Quantity over Quality It’s tempting to get a large volume of links to your website. However, that isn’t so great from an SEO point of view. It’s much better to get fewer, high-quality links than a large volume of low-quality links. High-quality links from credible websites help to build your repute in the eyes of the search engine, resulting in higher rankings faster. Also try to make sure that the links you get are relevant to your industry and product and do not have too many outgoing links. Slow Loading Speed via GIPHY Today, users are accustomed to websites that load in a flash. That’s why having a website with even fractionally slower loading speed can become a major stumbling block. It will end up affecting your CTR (Click Through Rate) as well as your search engine ranking. So keep working on your website until loading speed is no longer an issue. We hope this article helped shed some light on a somewhat-neglected application of SEO. If this helped you fix your SEO basics, do let us know in the comments below. If
Discover the Top 5 Secrets to Successful Content Creation
They sometimes say that great ideas are a dime-a-dozen. And there’s probably some truth to this. Having a brilliant idea isn’t very hard! It’s the journey from idea to execution that’s challenging. It requires a framework, craftsmanship, discipline, and persistence. In today’s world, where content is being thrown at us from every direction (as an example, a whopping 2 million blog posts are published every day), creating successful content becomes all the more tricky. In the past decade, we’ve seen many clients struggle with content creation services — there are those who face such inertia that they never get a content plan in place while others create a few brilliant pieces and then just stop. But the good news for all is that, here are some of the best-kept content creation secrets that we’ve discovered over the years: Build the right content creation model As a brand, you have to figure out the content creation model that will work best for you in the long run. If you have the bandwidth and the resources, you can hire an in-house content creation team. This is the best option if you need to produce a high volume of content or create content for multiple platforms. If your subject matter is highly technical and requires you to educate your audience, consider hiring subject matter experts. If you don’t have the resources for a full-fledged in-house time, hiring specialist freelance writers or content agencies is a great, cost-effective option. If you have a B2B product with a strong community, you can even consider guest posts from contributors as a viable engine for great content. Whichever model you opt for, it’s important that you find what works for you before you start executing a full-fledged content plan. Read Also: Here are 25 of the most amazing content creation tools ever Build your audience persona and work with it This is the most important rule when it comes to creating effective content. You need to understand your target audience and build effective buyer personas. This means you have to define everything you know about your ideal audience member — how educated they are, where they live, how old they are, what kind of work they do, which gender do they belong to, what their interests are, and so on. Sometimes, if your audience is a bit diverse, one persona won’t be enough. So, you might have to create a set of personas. Fleshing out these details about audience members will help you understand exactly who you’re addressing, and your content will be much more relatable as a result. Zero in on a content niche Do you know what they say about stand-up comedy? You’re more likely to become successful in the long run if a small group of people consider you to be hysterically funny, rather than if a large group of people think you’re mildly hilarious. The same is true for content. When you’re starting out, you don’t want to invest all your energy and resources across multiple channels and different content formats. Zero in on a viable content niche where you can become the master of the domain and build your following from there. Identify your unique content prowess by asking yourself some important questions. These include: Is your audience longing for this kind of Content and not getting it anywhere else? Can you become an authority in your industry within this niche? Do you have the time and resources to create valuable content within this niche and in the right content format? Create shareable content It’s not enough to just create brilliant content. It’s important that this content is focused on topics that will help you generate shares and backlinks. For this, you need to research keywords to make sure you’re choosing the right topic. To start with, get on Google and search for keywords in your niche. Remember to use informational keywords rather than product-based keywords. For instance, you should use keywords like “how to make good coffee at home” rather than “mocha pot” or “coffee maker”. You can then enter the details of the websites of the top results into a backlink checker like Ahrefs.com or Open Site Explorer. This will give you a list of the top-performing content. Now what you need to do is build a piece of content around the same topic, but one that’s much richer and more valuable than the existing content on the subject. Remember, the pieces that rank high have been around longer than what you will produce, so you need to make sure your content is far superior, or you’ll find it harder to rank higher. You can do this by making sure that the content is more relevant to your audience, that it has better design, is more current, or has more details. Use long-form, evergreen content for sustained traffic There are two rules of thumb that every content creator should keep in mind. The first is that long-form content works better in the long run. If you look at Google’s search engine rankings, the top 10 results are usually of 1000 words or more. So, while consistency is the key to better SEO, 400-600 word blog posts writing simply aren’t enough. Try to create more in-depth content (anywhere between 1000-3000 words) to eke out a position as an authority in your niche. Another great trick is to use evergreen content. This refers to content which doesn’t change significantly with time. Writing high-quality, in-depth beginner’s guides or how-to articles are great examples of evergreen content as they don’t really come with an expiry date. Having great evergreen content also helps you to attract traffic to your blog in the long run. The last word These are some of the secrets to effective content creation that we’ve discovered along the way. They should work as a great framework for you. If you have any more questions, or if you think there are some
Google BERT — The Algorithm Update Everyone is Talking about and How it Will Affect Your SEO
On 25th October, Google released what it calls the most important update to its search algorithm in years — BERT. Naturally, everyone from business owners to digital marketers has been in a tizzy since then. While some people saw a dramatic fluctuation in their rankings, others saw barely any change and started questioning whether BERT really is an issue in the first place. So, to manage some of the hysteria currently surrounding this update, we decided to break down BERT for you. We’ll talk about what this update is all about, how it’s going to affect search engine rankings, and how you can respond to it in the best possible way. What is BERT really about? BERT is short for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. While this may sound intimidating, its implications are actually fairly straightforward. It simply means that the Google search algorithm can now understand the context of words in a search string. Does that sound a bit confusing? Let’s break it down even further. With the BERT update, Google now uses NLP (Natural Language Processing) to understand the importance of transformer words (like “to” and “for”) within the search term that a user inputs. Previously, the search engine would focus only on the keywords, without giving much thought to these transformer words and how they actually affect the meaning of the search query. We can take a look at one of Google’s own “before and after” examples to see how BERT really works. Let’s take a search for “2019 brazil traveller to USA need a visa.” If the importance of the word “to” in this search is not understood, then Google wouldn’t have been able to figure out whether the query is about a Brazilian travelling to the USA or vice-versa. Before BERT, this search term therefore also returned results about US citizens travelling to Brazil. Now, with BERT, the search engine is able to understand that the word “to” is actually very important in this context and changes the meaning of the search query completely. Here’s what the before and after search results look like: Why BERT could have affected your rankings adversely If you’re one of those people who saw a dramatic fall in their rankings right after BERT was released, here are some possible reasons. They may not all apply to you, but one or more definitely will. Your ‘informational search’ game isn’t strong Informational searches are those types of searches where users are seeking specific information about something. A Penn State research study shows that 80% of Google searches are currently informational searches. These searches are the most likely to be affected by BERT because they usually use more transformer words. If you don’t have the kind of content that would rank high for an informational search, you may have lost out on your rankings in a big way. You were ranking high for irrelevant searches Let’s take the example above. Say your website provides information for US citizens travelling to Brazil. Earlier, a query like “2019 brazil traveler to USA need a visa” might have shown your result page in the rankings, but not anymore. This is probably not such a bad thing as you don’t need to rank higher for search queries that aren’t relevant to your content. Local SEO is winning now Local SEO tends to rely very heavily on transformer words like “for”, “at”, and “in” so there’s a chance that these searches are now throwing up more local results, pushing your website down. Keyword stuffing has become even more obsolete For years, SEO experts have been saying that Google is looking more at quality content, than mere stuffing of keywords. This particular update is another step in the same direction. So if you still have content that’s designed more for search engines rather than for end-users, it’s probably time to rethink your strategy. What you can do about BERT today If you have been affected by BERT in a big way, try some of these tips to get back into the game. Even if your rankings haven’t been affected in particular, it might still be a good idea to implement these suggestions anyway because things will keep shifting in the next few months as websites keep evolving to adapt to BERT. Stop pretending it’s 2009 and get rid of keyword stuffing This is probably the most important advice to keep in mind. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, many businesses started churning out poor quality articles that made little sense for readers but were stuffed with keywords and designed to satisfy the search engine algorithm only. In the last few years, most of the Google search engine updates have focused on preventing this from happening, and BERT is no exception. Since BERT uses NLP, it emphasizes more on natural-sounding content that is valuable to end-users, rather than content that is stuffed with keywords in an unnatural, inorganic way. So in case you haven’t done this already, it’s high time you revamp your content in a way that makes it more amenable to readers vis-a-vis search engines. Take another look at how you’re capturing informational searches If your rankings have gone down dramatically after BERT, start by examining which keywords and search terms are no longer performing as well. Search for those keywords and look at the kind of content that is now making it to those high ranks. Find ways to incorporate what’s working for this content into your existing content or create new content which is more geared towards informational search. At the end of the day, BERT is not some crazy, out-there update. It simply builds on Google’s underlying goal — which is to make Search more useful and relevant for users. If you’ve already been building content geared towards end-users, chances are BERT won’t affect you in a big way in the long run. If you’re still in the “create content for
7 Ways to Deal with Internet Trolls: The Underbelly of Reputation Management
Pooja, a social media manager with a hospitality brand, had to excuse herself from a friend’s party at 11 PM. Her company’s social channel had erupted with 60 negative tweets from a disgruntled guest who was not ready to stop until the company was taking heed of his demands. The guest was now in the process of instigating and tagging others to fan the spark of dissatisfaction into a forest fire. It was classic online reputation management (ORM) nightmare situation. The main job was to stop this from escalating into a PR nightmare. Now, most of us have faced a similar situation as social media managers. So, taking a stance and dealing with such experiences is a must. It is common knowledge that positivity hardly comes actively on social media. People have to be prodded and probed to extrapolate a positive. Negative, on the other hand, comes with the explosion potential of a ticking time bomb. Some part of it is potent with malice because the attackers are hiding behind an online identity and have a false belief that they can’t and won’t be tracked. While every situation will have to be dealt with differently, here are some best practices to follow: Create a solid policy and fall back on it often As a brand, you have the right to maintain the decorum of your social handles. Don’t give control to the bullying few. Create a social media policy document and share it with all admins of the page. Admins should have the right to remove/hide/delete harassing, anonymous or spam comments. Put up the policies on your own website and use the link as a reference point to anyone crossing the line. Don’t delete posts easily as it only irks the person and may also encourage others to write things they don’t mean. They are likely to come back with worse in the future. Have a standard offline approach for customer care Trolls thrive on the attention they receive over a sustained period of time. Cut off the potential for this by redirecting them to an email id that can have a quick turnaround time (TAT). Let them know that you have heard them and registered their grievance. But keep redirecting them to email or even direct messaging. If you are dealing with an irate customer who won’t wait for an email response, have an escalation process and have a customer care executive call them on a priority basis. Being heard and responded to will destroy the troll’s steam to hurl abuses online or rally others to join them. If you can’t resolve the issue immediately, request a 24 – 48-hour timeline and be sure to keep the deadline. Once you have this, share your response online so that others following the update know that you have responded. Create a specific customer care handle If your brand handle is getting clouded with trolls, create a redirect mechanism with a separate customer care handle which is purely for handling queries. If someone approaches on your brand handle, redirect them to the customer care handle to keep the conversation going without hampering the brand image. Pick your battles via GIPHY There are times when you are right and times when you will have to apologize and move on for a genuine problem at your end. If you know that you are right then be willing to take on the troll on your own terms. People think that they can get discounts or refunds if they escalate the problem to the CEO of the company, leaving the minions scurrying. Don’t be perturbed and follow the standard response procedure if you are right. Respond with facts and proof documents if need be. There are times when one of your staff/processes could have gone wrong. This is especially true for the service industry. If there is clear proof in the pudding, it is best to take the higher road, apologize, and swallow the bitter medicine. At other times, you may hear a simple statement complaint like the food tasting bad or the service not being up to the mark. Reply with a sense of humour and the tension may get diffused. Block that noise via GIPHY It is not an easy thing to do but one has to do it when running out of options. Some trolls can go on tangent and decide they won’t stop until their ransom demands are met. So, it is important to take a stand and eventually block them from engaging in a conversation on your page. This is done in an extreme case when you label the person as a ‘detractor’. Keep maintaining and updating this list so that you can build a case history if required. Identify the difference between a troll and an irate customer. A customer may be making noise to set a wrong right. A troll is making noise to get attention and often do scathing personal attacks. Be stern with trolls and patient with customers. Use analytics to bring the internal culprits to court Errant member-facing staff is also a problem that the ORM team has to deal with. Whether it is someone in the sales team who has gone astray or someone in the customer service team who has in a moment of weakness lost patience, it is important to track and maintain records. The weekly/ monthly report for the particular department is eventually likely to catch fire and attention and bring more discipline in dealing with customers. Amplify your positives to drown the noise What you see is what you believe. If you see 100 positive reviews to one negative, it is easier to believe that the overall experience with the brand is positive. Encourage, and if need be, incentivize positive behaviour by requesting customers to share their positive experience without fail. The more you amplify the positive noise, the less likely you are to be
Afraid of Competition from the Bigwigs? Here are 5 Ways You Can Compete with Industry Giants
Having worked with small businesses across India on SEO and content marketing for over a decade, there are some questions we hear very often. The one that probably tops the list is – “Is there even a point in investing money in SEO? Especially, when there are huge MNCs who are investing so much more money than me?” Luckily, the answer to this question is a resounding yes. Of course, there will always be businesses in your competitive sphere who will have more resources to devote to SEO, and who might have been in the SEO game a lot longer than you. However, SEO is no longer about money or muscle — it’s really about what webpage is most relevant for the searcher. So even as a small business, you can still rank high on the search results, as long as you’re smart and focused when it comes to your SEO strategy. Here are 5 amazing SEO hacks that can help you stay competitive, even amidst industry giants who have tons of resources. Find a niche This is probably the golden rule for any small business that’s serious about playing the SEO game. You have to pick a specialization and stick to it. Let’s say you’re a content writer running a small freelancing business. You might be able to write all kinds of content but ranking for all categories would be incredibly hard. You’d end up having to compete with almost every content marketing agency out there, and many of them will have better resources. So instead, figure out which areas interest you, what you can write comfortably about, and where there’s a demand. Then pick a niche accordingly. Ranking high for a specific niche — whether it’s to do with SaaS content or healthcare writing— is much easier than being a generalist. Don’t scrimp on the website Google rewards websites that are polished, professional and filled with relevant content. Not only that; users too prefer websites that are clean, easy-to-use, and professional-looking. Ideally, you should get your website set up by a professional. If you already have an amateurish website, focus on making it look and feel more elegant and meaningful, by preferably hiring someone experienced to do it for you. As a next step, make sure you conduct a website audit before you even begin any kind of SEO work. This review would include basic things like keyword density, broken links, metadata, alt text for images, loading speeds, and so on. The goal is to make sure your website is as good as the best websites in your industry, or almost as good for now. Long-tail keywords all the way Similar to finding a niche, using long-tail keywords is a great way for smaller businesses to crack SEO. There are two kinds of keywords that users search with — short-tail and long-tail keywords. Short-tail keywords are search terms that usually have 2-3 words and are more generic. Because of this, there tends to be more competition for these keywords, with many companies spending big money trying to rank for these keywords. In contrast, long-tail keywords are much longer (usually 5-10 words) and tend to be more specific. For instance, “fluffy eggs” is a short-tail keyword, while “how to make your eggs fluffy” is a long-tail keyword. This means that while there are fewer people searching for these terms, there’s also less competition from an SEO point of view. So the chance of ranking higher for these long-tail keywords is much more. As a small business, a small but solid stream of customers should be more than enough. That is why using long-tail keywords is a much better strategy in the long run. You can use Google’s Webmaster tools to do research on long-tail keywords that will work for you. Become a recognized expert If you are selling a product that requires you to educate your customers, try to create content that positions you as an authority in your field. For instance, if you’re a small IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) firm, your blog should provide insights for readers in a way that few other blogs can. Since you’ve already figured out a niche and are catering to a focused clientele, you’ll be able to deliver unique content that’s targeted specifically to their problems. Once you’re recognized among your target audience as a go-to entity for valuable expertise, chances are they’ll turn to you when they need professional help. Leverage local search This is another great tool you have at your disposal that big companies usually don’t, so make the most of it. As a small business, chances are that most of your customers belong to a small geographic area around your location. This means you can use local search to great effect. Today, 46% of all Google searches are looking for local information, so ranking high on local searches can lead to immediate business outcomes. Plus, most big businesses will be servicing a much larger area, so they won’t be able to optimize for local search in the same way as you will. To get started, try getting some local reviews and spending time on filling out your Google My Business profile. Another great idea is to have local offline events and use them for online coverage, thereby building your local search ranking. Finally, you can actually create hyper-local content, using neighbourhood-specific keywords. This will help Google pinpoint your locality and give you a head-start on local searches. We understand that SEO can be quite intimidating, especially if you don’t have ample resources to invest in it. At the same time, SEO is no longer just for the big players. As long as you buckle down and find your niche, and use your status as a small business to build a sleeker and defined SEO strategy, you will definitely get the results you need. Watch: 6 SEO Myths that you need to trash today
6 Powerful Ways Marketers Can Use Psychology to Improve Content
Being a marketer is not easy. You need to wear several hats to create that perfect selling proposition – you need to have the understanding of the product manager, the content team, your sales guys, and even the data people to add that new perspective in positioning, pricing and placement. A good marketer is always on the lookout for a spark of insight about their target audience that can help them create the right messaging for the product. This insight comes from a deep understanding of their psyche – knowing which statement is most likely to tug their heartstrings and push them off an indecisive fence and become a customer. While you may already be applying a lot of psychology lessons to connect with your target audience, here are a few that we found comes in handy: 1. Emotional marketing Has an ad left you feeling so emotional that it has affected the way you perceive the brand? Sometimes these emotions are powerful enough to make a consumer spur the buying decision before the rational brain kicks in to understand the product features or price. If such an emotional buy is then ratified with a good product, it results in winning over a loyal customer. A great example is the Nike Dream Crazier women ad. That and several in the genre that tugs on an emotion. The ad never once tries to sell Nike or explain the product features or mention the price. The intent of the ad is to appeal to the emotions of women athletes. The brand demonstrates that it ‘knows’ you. It ‘feels’ you. And it is one standing by as a silent supporter in your struggles. Of course, women will try out the shoes and buy them for the quality they offer. Not that rival brands may be any less in quality. That’s where the emotional marketing works and creates a differentiator pull of brand affinity. 2. Provide social proof Social selling is new-age marketing. From using influencers to sell your wares to providing the opportunity for reviews, testimonials and other user-generated content, the awareness and selling proposition brought out via social proof is more powerful than a brand peddling its value proposition. The case from social proof comes from the fact that we want to emulate the behaviours of the people we trust and follow. View this post on Instagram my daily essentials. what are yours? #madedifferently @smartwaterind A post shared by Radhika (@radhikaofficial) on Oct 10, 2019 at 1:06am PDT Although many industries have adopted social selling, it works really well for travel and fashion. Having an influencer or customer wear your label and tag you often becomes a more powerful reason to buy than other factors. Seeing beautiful destinations visited by someone in your peer group gives better validation to your own choices. Check out the top 10 travel influencers of India in this piece, their brand marketing tie-ups and how they have benefited the advertisers. 3. Grounded Cognition Before we continue, take a minute to watch this Nescafe Gold video. We have to admit it left us with goosebumps. Would I buy the coffee because of this ad? Probably not. When the decision making happens on the supermarket shelf, we will look at blend and aroma than the emotional appeal. Then why did Nescafe decide to create this ad? That’s because this ad takes the storytelling approach that almost makes you feel standing in place of the man in the stadium. You’ll feel the anxiety of the protagonist almost imagining who in your friends and loved ones will be left standing if you were to ask these questions. This coupled with the product cut ads did the trick for the brand. 4. Paradox of Choice The common experiment quoted to demonstrate this marketing psychology is the one conducted by Sheena Iyengar, a professor of business at the University of Colombia and the author of ‘The art of choosing’. In a California gourmet market, the professor and her assistants set up a booth of jams and switched from a selection of 24 to 6 jams every hour. Here’s the math: No. of people who sampled the larger assortment: 60% No. of people who bought after sampling the larger assortment: 3% No. of people who sampled the smaller assortment: 40% No. of people who bought after sampling the smaller assortment: 30% The other appending factor is the lack of information in the choices. If one variety of jam gave out information on being from an organic source or having more nutrient value for children, it could easily tip the scales of choice. Choices can also be used to tip the scale to your advantage. Check out the choices offered below for a women’s magazine: 1 year subscription: INR 399 1 year subscription with a monthly mystery box of make-up from leading brands: INR 1499 The difference in the values are too high to make the decision easy. What if you now introduced something that could tip the scales in the favour of one choice? 1 year subscription: INR 399 1 year subscription and a bi-monthly mystery box of makeup from leading brands: INR 1299 1 year subscription with a monthly mystery box of make-up from leading brands: INR 1499 You’ll notice that the 2nd choice is a dummy one introduced by marketers to simplify the choice. No one will go for it when the difference between the two is just INR 200 and you get an additional 6 mystery boxes for it. That’s how you can use the paradox of choice to your advantage. 5. Loss Aversion Theory FOMO or Fear of missing out is real. It is one of the most common psychology theories put out by marketers. Other people are thinner, more beautiful, have happier families, travel to exotic destinations, have instagrammable food and in general live a better life because of the brands they choose. The fear of
How to Write Content That is Future-Proofed for Google Algorithm Updates
Did you know that Google made 3234 algorithm updates in 2018? That’s an average of 9 updates a day! Savvy SEO executives who keep a watch on their keywords’ ranking every day notice the subtle changes. A website that was lost in the depths of page 5 suddenly starts ranking on page 1. Another great link suddenly disappears from page 1 causing a flutter. What we don’t get an immediate answer is to the ‘why’ as we don’t know what’s changing in the algorithm.Even then, Google shares visibility to the bigger updates – also called core updates, like Penguin and Panda. The last confirmed update happened in June 2019 which revolved around quality and site diversity. With so many changes happening every day, SEO specialists need to future-proof their site to possible updates that can have a big impact. Although this sounds difficult, we have some insights on predicting the future based on our past experiences with Google updates. After all, there is no point in looking at Google’s update with trepidation. It’ll be great to instead be prepared with content that can only rank higher with every update. When Google algorithm updates can work better for you than some of your competitors Google wants to constantly improve its search experience. Most people want to take the shortcut to rankings and end up creating bot-pleasing content piles that may get them going in the short run. If you have competitors who follow this strategy, it is likely that they may outrank you in the short run but with every Google update they are going to find it harder to sustain their rankings until they switch to white hat practice. Google is looking for ‘useful’ content. As long as you can access the utility of your content from a user perspective on an ongoing basis, your rankings should change only marginally How to access your content’s utility With hundreds, sometimes thousands of pages in a website, many of them being dynamic, it can be a daunting task for anyone to evaluate content periodically. Content cannot be the SEO manager or Content manager’s sole responsibility. In fact, everyone in the organisation should be vested in ensuring that the content is accurate and updated. Create a Content responsibility Google sheet Let us assume that your website has 20 products and related pages, a blog and standard pages about the organization. In addition to this, there are some technical functionalities built within the site. The site may also have campaign banners and content from the HR team promoting company initiatives. Each page identified within a function should be assigned to the functional head to ratify its content. If there are hundreds of products, the ratification group will have to be expanded. While the marketing team would be in charge of the blog pages, the HR in the company will be responsible for showcasing the latest updates from the organization. The performance content marketing services team will be the best to evaluate which campaign banners will show. Democratizing the responsibility of the content now gives both SEO content and Content mangers better ways to handle constantly evolving content. Make yourself unique Most marketers do a keyword evaluation, pick the relevant keywords with high search volumes and begin to write a blog. Often such keywords are also competitive and there is existing content available. Do a detailed analysis of content that is currently ranking high for the keyword. Think of ways how your content cannot be incrementally better but exponentially useful for readers. a. Here are a few things that can make your content unique Data or case studies from campaigns you’ve run: A campaign will generally give you access to a treasure trove of data and learnings that is unique. You can leverage some open information from such campaigns to build a unique case for your brand Your own research/surveys: While a survey and its result is generally good fodder for creating original content, you can cut various slices of this content to make it snackable or even build infographics and image visuals A quote from the relevant people in the company: A company quote and a PR angle is a great way to ensure your content is original Create new forms of content: Content need not be limited to text. From ads to blogs to gifs to social stories to infographics, modifying the type of content can give it a unique twist in perspective. b. Make it meaty The crux of the content and the summary should be interesting enough to drive high click-through rates. If you are talking about the one secret strategy to getting your keywords right, the secret strategy should be something that is really worth the readers 7 minutes of reading time. c. Build trust by showcasing expertise Think of all the industry blogs that you go to check often when you need detailed information on a topic. If the topic you are researching is on improving click-through rates on organic rankings, you know that you are likely to find answers on backlinko.com or Neilpatel.com or Moz.com All of these sites present convincing data from self experiments, in depth analysis and detailed screenshots on how-tos to help you solve your problem. They automatically qualify as the industry expert on the related topics over a period of time. It is not easy to gain expertise and showcase it with content. But the hard work definitely pays off. d. Let the devil lie in the details Content with typos and grammatical errors is simply unacceptable. It brings down the credibility of the website as a whole. It is simple to use tools like Grammarly to get your content house in order. Make sure that anything that is published is of optimum quality. The exception here only lies for UGC. User-generated content is generally full of short forms and sometimes riddled with mistakes. But that goes to show its authenticity that it is not written by a professional but a
The yay and nay of Influencer Marketing and should you do it
Keeping up with the latest trend, there would hardly be a marketer who may have not considered Influencer Marketing in their mix. Given the paucity of visibility in organic marketing and noise in paid marketing, Influencer Marketing seemed like idea that was clutter-breaking. Like all media, it comes with its pros and cons. The ROI from using this channel has been under severe scrutiny and skeptics think this is all hoo-ha and no moolah. The 2018 Mediakix survey predicted that Influencer marketing will become a $5-10B industry by 2020. Let’s share a quick background on this medium of outreach and how you can check for the pros and cons for your brand and industry. Influencer Marketing From celebrities to micro-influencers, influencer marketing is a way for brands to communicate via a third-party influencer whose opinion resonates with the brand’s audience. The medium, as such, isn’t new but the emergence of social media has distributed the power and given everyone an opportunity to become an influencer if they garner a good following. It’s one thing to see Bournvita talk about being the best health drink for a child. It becomes more personal and believable when “mothers like me” says how the chocolate-filled sugary powder with some nutrient content has helped her child. It instantly induces trust, becomes personal at some level and makes the brand believable. It would make another mother eventually add Bournvita in her list of consideration when buying a health drink for her child. There is no direct way for Bournvita to attribute their influencer campaign to the final purchase (unless they do a digitally traceable campaign via a series of coupon codes, contests or hashtags). But the final impact on the revenue is undeniable. Choosing mothers as their micro-influencers works well for Bournvita. But other industries don’t have it so straight. Let’s continue with our pros and cons debate Pros 1. Reach the right audience If you can identify your target audience well and the influencer who can sway the opinion of your audience and if the influencer has a sizeable following, the reach for an influencer marketing campaign can hit the bullseye. As you will see, there are a lot of ‘ifs’ in the sentence which makes the medium experiment-worthy. Let’s say that you want to promote your hill-station hotel during a low-occupancy period. Right before the period begins, your influencer campaign encompassing of travel bloggers and writers can start seeding in content that gives away titbits about your destination. Once they do this, contests and hashtags can be used as a more direct way to generate interest. Here, we put our trust in the influencer blogger’s relationship with his audience and how much they’ll believe what he says on the destination and the hotel. Will it drive people to come? That one you’ll have to wait it out. 2. Build credibility Building trust in a brand can take years. Taking the influencer route consistently is like receiving positive word-of-mouth with built-in amplification. It sounds like a dream come true for any brand. Influencers here have done all the heavy-lifting of creating content over time that people follow and like. Even with a single post that doesn’t overly advertise but sounds more like a first-hand review can do the trick. 3. Expand your audience Organic communication cannot control who you reach. Paid advertising can allow you a certain degree of control, especially with targeting and lookalike audiences. But influencer marketing takes your reach to a different level. Zoe ‘Zoella’ who tops Forebes’ Influencer list along with Michelle Phan and Huda Kattan has a multimillion fan following and a bank balance that is in the millions too. She reviews a $3 moisturiser from the local store or a $30 brand from a beauty store with equal ease. View this post on Instagram I didn’t know what to caption this, so @poppydeyes said “SPLISH SPLASH I WAS TAKING A BATH” so there you go ? What are you currently loving in your bath routine? This @herbivorebotanicals scrub is INSANE! A post shared by Zoë Sugg (@zoesugg) on Aug 1, 2019 at 11:58am PDT It makes her believable and trustworthy. Women from 18 to 50 follow her everyday to see if the product she is reviewing matches their tastes and wallets. Reaching such a diverse audience with a single or series of posts makes it well worth it to try steering your brand communication via an influencer and get to say things that you wouldn’t say directly. 4. It isn’t as expensive and saves time While celebrity influencers do tend to cost a lost, going with micro-influencers can be more cost-effective than other channels. Some influencers can work for barter when you give your product away. Others can work on a mix of barter and a small fee. This post by Shane Barker helps you see what the market looks like for the cost of a sponsored post. Also, an influencer is then given the responsibility to create quality content. Be it a blog, a vlog, a post or a video, the content quality is responsible for the eventual reach and engagement. 5. The statistics tell a story The 2017 influencer marketing report by LINQIA said a lot of marketers think it worked for them. 77% of marketers use influencer collaborations to drive engagement. 89% of marketers use it to create authentic content about their brand. 56% of marketers use it to drive traffic to their websites. 43% of marketers use it to reach younger audiences who detest traditional ads. Now that we’ve built a case on why you should be trying it out, here are a few cautionary points. 1. Measurable ROI? Marketers often like to live in a world which is surrounded by words like creating brand pull, increasing positive sentiment, increase visibility, reach, engagement and creating brand recall. Talk about sales numbers and all these words tend to