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Y como las aves fénix las Gaybies están de vuelta de su hiatus, hablamos de qué pasó en esa fiesta QUUUÉ, el regreso triunfal de Rihanna en el medio tiempo del SuperBowl y todo lo que nos perdimos en estos dos meses.
You might briefly remember Daniel and Ciaran discussing a content sharing tool last year that was so powerful, they were reluctant to tell you about it. Well, that tool is QUUU Promote and on this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, co-founders Matt and Daniel talk to Ciaran about social signals, the tool and how it helped supercharge our reach for the podcast. After 8 years of helping promote blogs for social media, Matt and Daniel also advise on what makes content more sharable and really understanding your audience, what they are actually looking for and what problem you are trying to solve. We hope you love the show! If you have any feedback, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Content marketing is all about content. That's obvious. What isn't obvious to many local business owners is that they don't need to be the ones to create every piece of content they share. The term for using content created by someone else for marketing purposes is called “content curation.” The word ‘curation' is a clue to what it involves. It's not about throwing up any old piece of content on your Instagram or Facebook feed and hoping for the best. Instead, it's your job to sort through content online, choose the things that are most likely to appeal to your target audience, and then put your own spin on them – providing real value to your followers while building your authority. It might sound complicated, but there are tools and resources that can help. Pocket Pocket is an app and a great organizational tool for content marketing. If you're like me, you might have a ton of favorites bookmarked on your browser with the idea that you'll come back to them later. I'm willing to bet that many of them are now outdated – and you've never used them. Pocket can change that. It keeps track of articles, images and videos you want to use in one convenient place. It also integrates with more than 500 other apps, so you can use it in a way that suits your needs. Twitter Lists Tweets come and go quickly and even if you check your Twitter feed throughout the day, it can be easy to miss worthwhile content. The solution? Twitter Lists. Twitter Lists allows you to organize the people and companies you follow into categories. Then, you can easily access their Tweets and links using the app. It also integrates perfectly with Pocket! Scoop.it Scoop.it is a paid tool that costs $67 per month, but it's worth the price if you do a lot of content creation and need some help doing it. The tool scours the internet and grabs content related to the topics you choose, presenting it in one easy place for you to select what you want to post and put your spin on it. What I like about Scoop.it is that it sorts articles and links by relevance. It will also suggest other Scoop.it users for you to follow, all of which makes the job of content curation very easy. Sniply Sniply is also a paid tool. It won't help you find content to curate, but it will help you automatically add a call to action to any curated content you choose to share with your followers. If you know anything at all about online marketing, you know that including a call to action is a must. It's what tells your followers (and potential customers) what they need to do next. The right call to action will make a huge difference in your conversion rate and ROI – and that makes the low price of this tool one that's worth paying. Quuu Quuu is another free tool that I recommend because it will pull suggested curated content based on the parameters you set. You can then browse through the recommendations and choose the content you want to share with your followers. It gets better. In addition to finding and recommending content to you, Quuu also integrates with most social media scheduling tools. That means that after you find content using Quuu, you can also use this tool to schedule your Tweets and Facebook updates. Facebook Pages Feed I'd be remiss if I didn't mention something that's built into Facebook and can be used, free, with any Facebook business page. To find it, simply: 1. Click on “Pages Feed” on the menu on the right-hand side of your Facebook page 2. Type in the name of a page, publication or business you want to follow 3. Click the follow button Going forward, posts from the pages you follow will appear when you click the Pages Feed. From there, it's easy to share posts and add your own commentary and call to action. The one thing I don't like about the Pages Feed is that you can't schedule posts from it, you can only share them. However, if you open the link in a new tab and copy the URL, you can schedule it at your convenience. Fe...
Peter and Kathleen talk about the apps and tools we use to improve our productivity and save time. Calendly, Quuu, Social Chief, Slack, Streak, Vidyard, BombBomb, Podscribe, Surveyanyplace and more. The Yakking podcast is brought to you by Peter Wright & Kathleen Beauvais contact us to be a guest on our show. https://peterwrightsblog.com peter@peterwrightsblog.com https://karytechsolutions.com kathleen@karytechsolutions.com
In this episode we speak with Sujan Patel - co-founder of the US arm of Web Profits, and founder of SaaS companies like Mailshake, Voila Norbert, Right Inbox, Narrow, Link Texting, Pick and Quuu. The Growth Manifesto Podcast is brought to you by Web Profits. The aim is to interview business leaders and marketing experts to get their insights on the current situation and how they're approaching business and marketing through this global pandemic.
Today, I'm talking with Sujan Patel, the Co-founder of Ramp Ventures, the team behind Mailshake, RightInbox, LinkTexting.com, VoilaNorbert, Quuu, Narrow.io, and Pick.co. I've been fortunate to get to know Sujan since my first interview with him a couple of years ago, and he has made a huge impact on how I approach business. Whether it's help with introductions, getting into the nitty gritty details of an acquisition, or just leading by example, Sujan has been a great teacher to me. Now he is back on the podcast to share some of these teachings with you. In our chat, we dive into what it's like managing and growing a portfolio of SaaS companies, everything from management to prioritization to metrics, and how these lessons can help make you a better founder. Sujan has a way to focus on what matters most and execute on that relentless, which has been a big part of his success. Even if you never plan on running multiple businesses, seeing how he does it, and does it very, very well, will be sure to help improve how you run your own operation.
Sujan Patel is one of the biggest names in the growth and content marketing world. For the past 13 years, he has led digital strategy for clients such as Salesforce, Mint, Zillow, LinkedIn, and several Fortune 500 companies. Plus, he's also an entrepreneur himself — founding WebProfits, ContentMarketer.io, Narrow, Quuu, and Mailshake. By working with a variety of clients over the years, Sujan has a variety of growth strategies that can take a company from startup so scaleup. In this episode, we’ll deep dive with him on brand, user experience, and customer obsession. We’ll cover pivoting a company, buying businesses, and his decision to run a SaaS billboard in the middle of Iowa. Plus, during this episode, we host a recurring feature, Which Test Won? 0:01 — Introduction 5:24 — Sujan chimes in on trends in growth; “it’s harder than ever to stand out” 7:00 — Buying remnant billboards 7:55 — How to build a brand to stand out 9:15 — Which Test Won? 17:32 — The story of MailShake’s growth 18:22 — Failing to hit PMF and the rebrand 19:26 — What worked really, really well in the early days 21:15 — Marketing before you have a product 22:10 — Buying and acquiring tools as a growth channel 23:55 — The Salty Six This is an actionable episode — we hope you enjoy! Get ready to #ScaleOrDie... We're excited to have you along for Season 1 of #ScaleOrDie. Before you leave, be sure to leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, post a comment, or share with your friends! Tune into more episodes at useproof.com/scaleordie and read more stories at blog.useproof.com. Follow Dave & Proof on Twitter — @DaveRogemoser and @UseProof. We publish episodes every week so be sure to check back often for more interviews with the internet’s best minds in growth!
In the seventh episode of Conversations with Quuu, we're switching up the usual format to celebrate the release of our shiny new app update! Quuu's co-founders, Daniel Kempe and Matthew Spurr, join Lucia to discuss what went wrong for Quuu in 2018 and how we're bouncing back in 2019. Quuu's blog: https://blog.quuu.co Lucia's Medium: https://medium.com/@luciafontaina Dan's Twitter: https://twitter.com/danielkempe Matt's Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewSpurr
Welcome back to the Conversations with Quuu podcast! To kick off season two, host Lucia Fontaina-Powell had a fascinating chat with entrepreneur and content marketer, Nat Eliason. Have a listen to find out: - How Nat got into the martech space - Why he was able to grow his content marketing agency Growth Machine to $100K in MRR in a year - The one thing he says sets apart startups that succeed from those that fail - His honest opinions on the state of social media and content marketing in 2019 - Why Nat and Lucia both hate ‘struggle porn’ Here are a couple of Nat's blog posts that we discuss: https://www.nateliason.com/blog/delete-facebook https://www.nateliason.com/blog/struggle-porn And here's where you can follow Nat's work: Twitter: @nateliason Blog: https://www.nateliason.com Podcast: https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com Growth Machine: https://www.yourgrowthmachine.com Cup and Leaf: https://www.cupandleaf.com
In the season finale of Conversations with Quuu, Lucia talks to Aaron Orendorff, Editor in Chief at Shopify Plus, about their content strategy, why he quit his freelance business for his dream job, his top social media hacks, and more. Aaron’s website: http://iconicontent.com Aaron’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/AaronOrendorff Aaron’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aaron.orendorff Aaron’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronorendorff/
In the penultimate episode of the first season of Conversations with Quuu, Lucia chats to Buffer alumni, online course architect and digital nomad, Paul Thomson. If you enjoy nerding out about marketing, entrepreneurship, remote work and travel, you're gonna love this episode! Paul’s website: http://www.thepaulthomson.com Paul’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepaulthomson/ Paul’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThomsonAUS
For the eighth episode of Conversations with Quuu, Lucia talks to leading SaaS consultant Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré. As well as explaining how customer success, community and content play vital roles in the journey of a successful startup, Nichole shares some eye-opening insights about diversity in the tech industry - and why we shouldn’t be afraid to stand by our beliefs in our professional lives. Nichole’s website: https://nicholeelizabethdemere.com Nichole’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/NikkiElizDemere
For the seventh episode of Conversations with Quuu, Lucia finds the answer to the question on every SaaS marketer's lips: how does Buffer do it?! Special guest Brian G Peters, Buffer's Strategic Partnerships Manager, was kind enough to share all sorts of invaluable insights, ideas and advice on social media and content marketing. He also talks about his career path, why not everyone needs to be an entrepreneur, and how he worked out his own definition of success. Brian’s website: http://www.briangreggpeters.com Brian’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/Brian_G_Peters Brian’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/briangpeters/
In the sixth episode of Conversations with Quuu, Lucia talks to Branding and Marketing Consultant, Gabriela Cardoza, about starting a social network aged 19, why she never stops educating herself, and what 'branding' truly means. Gabriela’s website: https://www.cardozagab.com Gabriela’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/CardozaGab Gabriela’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cardozagab/ Gabriela’s email: pa@cardozagab.com
For the fifth episode of Conversations with Quuu, Lucia talks to digital marketing powerhouse, Shane Barker, about his 20-year career, why he chose to hire a global team, influencer marketing, and more. Shane's website: www.shanebarker.com Shane's Twitter: https://twitter.com/shane_barker Shane's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shanebarker/ Shane's email: shane@shanebarker.com
For the fourth episode of Conversations with Quuu, Lucia talks to self-described 'Content Unicorn', Brittany Berger, about injecting personality into B2B brands, successfully incorporating pop culture into your marketing, the importance of self-care as a solopreneur, and more. Brittany's Twitter: https://twitter.com/thatbberg Brittany's business website: https://www.brittanyberger.com Work Brighter website: http://workbrighter.co Quuu’s website: www.quuu.co Quuu’s Twitter: twitter.com/quuu_co Lucia’s Twitter: twitter.com/luciafontaina
In the second episode of Conversations with Quuu, Lucia chats to Asia Matos, CEO & Founder of SaaS consultancy DemandMaven. Find out how Asia helps tech companies get to their first 100K in MRR, her tips for establishing a healthy work/life balance as a solopreneur, why user research is the unsung hero of early stage startup growth, and more. Asia's website: http://www.demandmaven.io Asia's Twitter: https://twitter.com/AsiaMatos Quuu’s website: www.quuu.co Quuu’s Twitter: twitter.com/quuu_co Lucia’s Twitter: twitter.com/luciafontaina
For the third episode of Conversations with Quuu, Lucia talks to serial entrepreneur and leading digital marketer (and partner at Quuu!), Sujan Patel, about his journey from college dropout to one of the world's top growth marketers, his unstoppable work ethic, getting business advice from Richard Branson, and more. Sujan's website: https://sujanpatel.com Sujan's Twitter: https://twitter.com/sujanpatel Quuu’s website: www.quuu.co Quuu’s Twitter: twitter.com/quuu_co Lucia’s Twitter: twitter.com/luciafontaina
For the first episode of Conversations with Quuu, we thought it was only fitting to hear the story behind Quuu itself! Lucia sits down with the company's co-founders, Daniel Kempe & Matthew Spurr, to find out about their respective careers, what they've learned about building a SaaS startup, their take on the hottest marketing trends right now, and more. Quuu’s website: https://www.quuu.co Quuu’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/quuu_co Matthew’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matthewspurr/ Matthew’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewSpurr Daniel’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daniel.kempe/ Daniel’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/danielkempe Lucia’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/luciafontaina Lucia’s Medium: https://medium.com/@luciafontaina
For this fourth episode, I talked to Sujan Patel of Mailshake, Pick, ContentMarketer, Narrow, Linktexting, Quuu, Ramp Ventures, Web Profits, … does this list even end? Sujan is a serial, but even more so a parallel entrepreneur, who likes to keep pushing his own limits to the extreme. He knows all about building startups and is a great guy to have a coffee with. Read the transcript here: https://blog.salesflare.com/sujan-patel-of-mailshake-d0facff292e3
In this episode, we uncover the Quuu story. Co-Founders Daniel Kempe and Matthew Spurr talk through going from launching Quuu as a side project in just one weekend, to growing all the way up to more than $31,000 in monthly recurring revenue from their customers who pay to have content shared through connected social media accounts. We hear about how they built the platform, how they're acquiring users, and much more...
Have you ever wondered how a few brands crush it with their content marketing, while the vast majority of blogs fall flat? Are you interested in being able to track your blogging efforts? Do you want to know whether you should you be writing your content for shares or SEO? And how much is a realistic minimum investment (in both time and money) to make content marketing successful for you? In this episode, Nat Eliason, former head of Growth at Sumo and the founder of Growth Machine, answers those questions, and more. Join us as Nat talks about what’s working in content creation, how to create a strategy, and whether you should even do it at all. He also drops the truth about the 80/20 strategy related to content creation vs. promotion -- and what he says just might surprise you. Episode Highlights: 8:08 Who should be doing content marketing and what kind of content is successful? 9:20 What’s the minimum investment for quality content marketing? 13:00 The WIKI Strategy and how to use it to plan your content. 19:46 How to approach content marketing if you are a product (not service based). 25:04 Nat’s strategy for paid content -- what he does (and doesn’t do) will surprise you. 27:22 You’ve created the content, here’s when you can expect to see results. 30:00 Setting the record straight on the 80/20 rule of content marketing. 31:10 What Nat does his first two weeks with a new client to set them up for success (and you can do them too). 32:30 The #1 thing most blogs fail to do: Actionability. 37:11 Are you answering people’s questions or are you trying to entertain? Nat talks about what your priority should be. 45:44 What’s in Nat’s daily toolbox that makes his life better. Links and Resources: Google Docs Trello.com Slack.com Zapier.com Edgar.com Quuu.co Wordable.io Ahrefs.com Nat Eliason Twitter.com/NatEliason YourGrowthMachine.com Nat’s Wiki Strategy
Want to know how to get more followers on social media? I've got you covered. This posts is the third in a series on Why Your Audience Isn't Growing. You should also read Why Your Social Media Isn't Growing to see mistakes you might be making! One of the biggest questions that people have about social media is how to get followers. No matter how many you currently have, we all seem to want to get MORE followers. And more. We can never have enough!! I especially know what it feels like to be just starting out where you have under 1000 followers. I remember my first year on Twitter with something like 300 followers, feeling like I would never grow. Getting followers feels like an impossible task. You need more followers so that you have some kind of social proof, so that more people will follow you, but no one will follow you without more followers. And I have found it to be true that once you pass a certain benchmark of at least a thousand people, it gets easier to grow. Getting followers is kind of like a chicken and egg problem. So let's talk about how you get more followers on social media, especially when you are just starting out OR when you are stuck. Note: This post contains affiliate links! That means at no extra cost to you, I will receive a commission if you purchase something through some of the links I share. Listen to How to Get More Followers on Social Media You can listen right here or on iTunes, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app. Or keep reading below! HOW TO GET MORE FOLLOWERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA Before we even get into the specifics of how, I want to talk about the WHY. Specifically YOUR why. If you are not super clear on your why, you are going to struggle to grow your social media presence, your blog, and your audience. Your WHY is your purpose. My background is in writing, so I like to think of it as your theme. A theme isn't the beginning-middle-end of a story, but the ideas that run throughout, tying the story together. For an example, my WHY is that I want to help writers and bloggers build an online platform without being smarmy. I love helping people connect with their perfect audience online, using all the tools and strategies that smart marketers use, but without the icky salesy tactics. Knowing my WHY means that if I have a post idea that doesn't fit into that overarching purpose, I don't write it. Or I write it in a guest post somewhere else. Or on my other blog. If you aren't clear on your why or the audience you serve, you are going to really struggle! Take some time to write out a clear statement of purpose. This should include who you serve, how you serve them, and what is unique to you. HOW TO GET FOLLOWERS THROUGH CONTENT Once you have your why in place, you can both create and curate content that fits under the umbrella of your why. In the second post of this series I talked about curating content, which is essentially the way that you share other people's content on social media. I want to go even deeper on this idea of sharing relevant content. Consider your perfect audience (see my series on how to find your perfect audience) when you are coming up with content ideas to create. In the same way, think about your target audience when you are choosing Tweets to Retweet or pins to share on Pinterest. Ask yourself: Does this serve my perfect audience? When you share awesome content (your own and others), a really cool thing happens. People start to see you as an authority. You become their go-to for news, trends, and resources. You save them the time so they don't have to research all the latest trends or news. Sharing quality content will help you get more followers that are truly interested in you. That's why it's really important to share relevant content. PRO TIP: On Facebook in particular, you need to not only consider the topic, but the kind of content. If you keep sharing viral videos because they get great reach, but you don't CREATE video, this may hurt you in the long run. When you share your blog posts as links, your page is used to doing well with video, so the reach may diminish for link posts. An active page doesn't help you if it's active for video, but you are trying to drive traffic to a blog. Examples of People Sharing Consistent Quality Content Here are a few of my favorite creator/curators in different niches: The Sell More Books Show - Each week Bryan Cohen and Jim Kukral share five big newsworthy items and three tips related to book writing and marketing, especially in the indie space. I want to know what's going on, so I follow their podcast, follow them on Twitter, and like their Facebook page so hopefully I won't miss anything. Jenn's Trends - Jenn Herman has a blog focused on social media, specifically Instagram. Even though I've temporarily told Instagram, "it's not me, it's you," I can count on her to share big news I need to know about social media. I joined her Facebook group to keep up with what she's sharing about social media. Social Media Examiner - While this seems like a no-brainer because this is a hugely established site, I love Michael Stelzner's curiosity and passion for social media. (You can hear this particularly through his podcast, where he seems genuinely excited and interested in the guests.) HOW TO GET FOLLOWERS THROUGH CONTENT-SHARING TOOLS Sharing consistent quality content is HARD. Especially when you are also creating content too. I really rock at creating content. I love it. Give me content creation all. day. long. And while I shared in my post on why your blog isn't growing that it's not just about promotion, YOU HAVE TO PROMOTE your awesome content. If you are trying to curate good content from other people as well (which you should do), then you have even more posts to share and schedule. Promotion is a lot of work, so you'll want some tools to help with that. Note: Don't forget that you can't JUST promote. You have to engage with people as well! Read the previous post in this series for ideas. So what tools can help you get followers on social media through content sharing? My favorite tools to share quality content- Quuu - (Facebook & Twitter) This app will generate and autopost relevant content to your Twitter or Facebook feeds for you. Like most apps, you can use some features with the free version and then upgrade. I honestly don't LOVE pushing out content that I haven't seen first. But they have a great vetting process for the posts that they take, so you will get great content! Quuu Promote - This is a paid part of Quuu where you can submit posts to go in the Quuu feed. I've seen really great results from putting my posts in here. This means that when other people sign up for Quuu and autopost links, YOUR links go in the pool to be shared on a particular topic. This has resulted in a good amount of traffic and also shown me what content is working well. Check out these two posts, both about email marketing. (For reference, another promoted post I did had 17 clicks from only 80 shares, as compared to the 300-something shares for only 8 clicks.) They don't accept posts automatically, but look through each. Promo Republic - I love this social sharing tool because it comes with templates and stock photos that you can edit (think: Canva), but you don't have to LEAVE the platform to share them. Instead, you create them right there, write your text for a post, then choose to share on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram (reminder, not autoschedule, since Insta doesn't allow that). They share trends that may help you come up with post ideas and you can create a queue of content that will post at optimal times. Get this on AppSumo for a limited time with my referral code (that gives me credit at no extra cost to you) HERE. Tailwind - I love this app for Pinterest! (It also does Instagram, but I don't use it for that.) It has one of the easiest scheduling dashboards I've used. You can click a button to shuffle them all, choose the best time slots you want per day, how many shares per day, and even join tribes of other Pinterest users to promote each other's content. If you use my affiliate link, you'll get a free month to try it out! Learn how to use tribes and where to find them Hootsuite - I have been using Hootsuite maybe longer than any other social tool! It's very similar to Buffer, which a lot of people like, but because I have never seen a reason to switch! Choose which one works for you. You can manage up to three accounts with Hootsuite's free plan, including Facebook (page, group, or profile), LinkedIn, and Twitter. I create Twitter lists within Hootsuite and then can easily go in and schedule content on a weekly basis. (Though I've been HORRIBLE about this lately.) It clears the clutter when you just want to pop in and see what's going on over on Twitter. This makes it easier to get in, engage and schedule, then get out without getting lost. How to Use Twitter in 15 Minutes a Day Iconosquare - Iconosquare is NOT a social scheduling platform and is strictly for Instagram. But it's a really helpful tool to manage your followers and to see what content people engage with so that you can create more of the same. You can even track details like which hashtags performed well for you. As with most tools, you can get more when you pay. Social Jukebox - This is a great tool to create a content library (or "jukebox") of evergreen content that get shared again and again over time. RecurPost - Similar to Social Jukebox, this tool will let you schedule posts to share again and again. If you don't want to pay for Edgar or SmarterQueue, you can use these two together to get the max number of posts without paying. PRO TIP: Remember to share your own posts with as much gusto and passion as you share other people's posts. This tip comes by way of Paula Rollo of Beauty Through Imperfection and her Facebook Group, Actionable Blogging Tips. HOW TO GET MORE FOLLOWERS THROUGH FOLLOW FOR FOLLOW I know that in the past year, the idea of getting followers by following people brings out the eye rolls. Especially on Instagram, people talk about getting 300 new followers in a day, then losing 294 two days later. (True story.) That's a LOT of people doing it wrong. The BEST way to follow people to get followers on Instagram and Twitter is to follow people you are actually interested in, interact with them in a way that isn't smarmy (ex: DON'T follow, then tweet at them telling them you followed and asking them to follow back), and then in a few weeks or month, unfollow the people who aren't following you back UNLESS they are stellar content creators and you want to keep following. Give this practice a little more of a personal touch and a little more time to see it actually work for you. A Note on Facebook I have not mentioned much about growing a Facebook page here. There are a few reasons for this. First, this can be one of the harder platforms to grow. Because of the way the Facebook algorithm works, people often won't see your content. Even huge pages have very little reach on posts. I'll talk more about this in a separate post, because it's a HUGE topic. HOW TO GET MORE FOLLOWERS...SPARINGLY Facebook groups - Many blogger Facebook groups have threads on a weekly or daily basis where you can link to your social profiles and then follow everyone and have them follow you. You really want TARGETED followers, so these don't always work well. But depending on your goals or while you're trying to get past that social proof number, this may really help. Giveaways - You can definitely grow quickly and with big results using giveaways. But you are more than likely going to end up with people who don't care about you or your content. Particularly if you are giving away money or a gift card to a store. Try to be more targeted to your audience and give a great prize, but one that is specific to writers or moms or your audience. Ads - You can run Facebook ads to get likes for your page, but this is something I would do sparingly. Facebook seems to drop your reach right after you pay for things to make you think you NEED to pay for things. So, realize this is an option in the ads manager, but don't rely on this. Remember the Context When You Are Trying to Get Followers! If you are trying to get more followers on social media, don't forget your overall purpose. Think of the kinds of followers you really want and the long-term goals. Consider all these tips in conjunction with the reasons your social media isn't growing, particularly thinking about the idea that you need to be SOCIAL. What are YOUR tips for getting more followers on social media? Share in the comments!
3 Tools to Automate Your Twitter Account Are you struggling to use Twitter because you can't imagine posting all day long? Are you running out of good content to share? Using Twitter can seem like a daunting task because of the fast-paced feed and posting more than once a day. Lucky for you, you don't need to sit around posting all day (although logging in once or several times a day will make it easier to engage and interact with people). Here are 3 tools to help you automate your Twitter account so you will have more time to spend on your business. Hiplay https://app.hiplayapp.com/ Buffer https://buffer.com/ Quuu https://www.quuu.co/ Twitter Optimization Checklist socialmediamarketingtipscanada.com/twitter-optimization-checklist Thanks for listening. Let's connect! Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TheSocialLaunch/?fref=ts | Twitter https://twitter.com/lesliemcdermid | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thesociallaunch/ Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/socialmediatips/| The Social Launch Podcast http://www.socialmediamarketingtipscanada.com/podcast/
Everyone Hates Marketers | No-Fluff, Actionable Marketing Podcast
My guest this episode is Sujan Patel, a brilliant marketer with many years of internet marketing experience who has strategized for Fortune 500 companies such as Salesforce, Mint, Intuit and more. He is also an entrepreneur with his own marketing agency, Web Profits, and multiple Saas businesses such as Mailshake, Quuu and Pick. Listen in to our discussion about content promotion, why it is the biggest point of failure for marketers today, and how you can do it better. *** Tap on this link to access show notes+transcripts, join our private community of mavericks, or sign up to the newsletter: EveryoneHatesMarketers.com/links
Increase Your Reach and Donations: Learn About How to Get $10K in Free Adwords [caption id="attachment_1523" align="alignleft" width="150"] Pip Patton[/caption] Pip Patton and John Zentmeyer will share secrets about how to get $10K in free Google AdWords monthly and how to drive more traffic to your website for more engagement and more publicity. Their company, Search Intelligence LLC, based in Tampa Florida, is a digital marketing agency. 'We believe that marketing in today's digital age should not be confusing to utilize and benefit from.' We help you accomplish this by offering digital marketing services that are easy to understand and implement. Our services start with SEO and include optimized website design, social media management, video marketing and traffic analysis so you can make informed decisions about your marketing strategy. We also work with non-profits by helping them apply for and obtain a Google Grant. A Google Grant is a grant of $10,000 in AdWords advertising each month for your non-profit. You can use the grant to promote your non-profit and gain more exposure online; increase awareness, recruit volunteers, promote special events, etc. Notes from the Interview Why do we care if people come to our websites? Need for visibility brings more of people you want to see, online is where people are looking. Not ranking on Google is like being 100 miles off the highway with no lights turned on. No one can find you! You can't get the word out on your work if no one can find you. How do you figure out who to attract to your website? Extensive interview with client, create keywords and Adwords to drive traffic, find out what people are searching for through online research, very few people aware of what prospects are searching for and tax status is not a factor. Online is where more search for info takes place! 1. What is a Google Grant and How Do I Apply? Google's way to give back to the community; $10,000 month available to 501(c)3; keyword bids restricted to $2 or less; must find enough keywords to use all of the funds. Qualifications - verify status as charity; apply online; campaign (Adwords) must be ready to go when launching 2. What is SEO and why do I need it for my charity or church? Paid v. Organic Search priority given to paid; Ranking based on most relevant to search according to Google who cater to their own customers; can use best keywords when they are paid for; Google rates the information you provide, you have to build authority; organic search provides 5 times amount of results as paid search; you have to build credibility through your results; good information adds to your authority! Facebook uses pixels attached to your website to build a “smart dat profile.†Google does not do this for you. LinkedIn relation to Google - optimized profiles are critical to building authority, it helps develop authority Organic Reach - Basics Clarity around what you do needs to be clear to Google tech; links back to high authority sites on subject helps (on page SEO) must be relevant and valuable; Google grades authority based on links from other sites, social media, or blog posts that are shared or other shared information. This all takes time using SEO. Only 18% to 20% of traffic comes from paid search. The rest is organic! The top 3 get the lion’s share! Analytics tell you what people type in to find you. Free tutorials available from Google. One-third of searches on monthly basis are different from anything they’ve ever seen before! QUUU.com Buffer and QUUU work together How do people learn how to do SEO in a way that helps them? Creating a presence on the main social media sites use tools like Buffer (link posts to other sites); Quuu - (Aggregator of articles and information for curation); make sure you include some original content that increases engagement Basic Visibility Enhancers - get more than one account (the Big 5; Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and Instagram); have accurate info on all sites; hire  someone who has expertise because everything changes frequently Algorithms for mobile and desktop differ, mobile friendly search is more important all the time; by 2018 it will dominate rankings; far more searches on mobile than desktop! Closing Thoughts - (John) Go through strategy form to provide the types of information they need to provide good service; stay in your wheelhouse and focus on what you know, let your SEO experts to help you get where you need to be; search terms most relevant to you Closing thoughts - (Pipp) - Take time to analyze your site and other information; video is a great tool for conversion, less than 2 minutes is best when it is engaging, speak like you are having a conversation with a single person; video drives up conversion considerably. Contact Information Search Intelligence, LLC 1520 W Cleveland St Tampa, FL 33606 (813) 321-3390 http://www.si-5.com The Interview Transcript NPC Interview with Pipp Patton & John Zentmeyer Hugh Ballou: Welcome, everyone. We are talking nonprofit language. Our guests tonight are two distinguished-looking gentlemen, Pipp Patton and John Zentmeyer. They are in Florida on the Gulf Coast and in central Florida. They have a very defined expertise. I met Pipp on a couple trips in Orlando doing some interaction with CEOs. You must be a CEO if you are in that group. This company you have, tell me what the name of it is, what inspired you to launch this company, and a little bit about your history and expertise that you bring to this very specialized space. Pipp Patton: Thank you for having us on. My background: Over 20 years ago, I was actually in the yellow pages business. I used to work with small businesses, helping them promote themselves and growing through the vehicle of yellow pages back when the yellow page directory was the search engine of choice. Then that changed about 10 years ago. At that time, I was transitioning out of yellow pages. I enjoyed working with business owners, and the technology and the digital arena was of great interest to me. I studied it and tried to learn it. I have been now working about seven years or so in that arena with an agency model, where I help businesses be found in Google search primarily. Hugh: I used to buy yellow page ads when I had a camera shop. It was the go-to place to find out who to hire and who to solve your problems. That was a unique spot. You transitioned from that space? Was that a direct transition to the digital marketing that you do? Pipp: Yeah, pretty much. At that particular time, I left yellow pages because the company I worked for got bought out by someone else, and they didn't treat their new acquisition people real well. So it was a good opportunity for me to leave there. At that time, my mom needed some attention and care, so I decided to stay home and take care of her. Shortly thereafter, I had been studying digital marketing and had a couple of people that I met that really needed help in that arena. I helped them, and the business evolved from there. Hugh: Awesome. To fall into that. John, you are part of this team. Talk about that. What brought you to this place? John Zentmeyer: Directly, Pipp brought me to the place. Pipp and I have done business together off and on, many different ventures, always been good buddies, and always enjoyed bouncing business ideas off each other for over 30 years now. Last year, I was making a transition, and I have owned several businesses. At the time, I was working with a group that I thought I would be at for the rest of my career, but that doesn't always happen. But Pipp and I had always talked a lot about what he was doing and what was happening in the SEO world. All my career, I have looked for ways to bring large ROIs to companies or to my clients. SEO is a great way to do that. I have always been in the technology world, mostly automation, but this has been a lot of fun, and we have enjoyed working closer together. Hugh: Russell Dennis has been stalking you, so Russell, what did you find out about them online? Russell Dennis: John said wonderful things about Pipp online. It's a glowing testimony. There are a number of things. There is this track record of years where you have been getting premium results. Coming from the yellow page world, I saw yellow page ads in my sophomore year of college. I made a truckload of money that summer. This was back in 1995 of course. Pipp: That was a good time to be in yellow pages. John: It probably wouldn't work as well this summer. Russell: Probably not. I would probably go hungry over the summer. You see things like Yelp, but everything is a known directory. The only real power in that stuff is in the testimonials and getting credibility. Hugh: Awesome. That is back when a truckload really meant something. A truckload of money was worth something. Russell: That was before the exchange rates went to pot. Hugh: Oh gosh, yeah. Guys, we sent out an email today and one just a few minutes ago to tell people they could get $10,000 of free AdWords. We are going to talk about that. These are people who are in what we call social benefit work. They are running a membership organization. It has a tax-exempt status. They are running a church or synagogue, a community foundation, a cause-based charity. There are lots of people who are in education or government organizations, like down the road from me, we have an agency on aging, my peer group. We have a lot of people doing really good work. Why should we care that people come to our website? We want to direct traffic, but let's talk about why people come. Who do we want to attract? Let's take it sequentially. Why do we care, and then who do we want to bring to our website? Pipp: Whether it's a nonprofit or a regular for-profit business, you need more customers, more exposure, more people to know who you are and what you do. Whether they have an interest in perhaps volunteering or donating or being involved in special events that you have, taking advantage of what you may teach, all of those things are there, so having a higher profile online will bring more of those eyeballs and ears to you. If people want information about anything, they are online. John: Take it one step further. Having a website online and not being ranked in Google anywhere is like having your nonprofit or for-profit business ministry, whatever you're doing, out in the middle of a very dark desert with no lights. So you cannot be found. If you are providing a service for somebody in a nonprofit arena, then the idea is you want people who are looking for that service to be able to find you. That is the biggest reason that you want to expose yourself on that side. Doesn't matter what you're doing. If you're doing for-profit, you want people to be able to find you. Hugh: There are lots of really good organizations doing really fine work that nobody is aware of. It would occur to me that PR is one good reason. I know people will support the cause they believe in. If they can go to somebody's website and see the impact of the work of the charity—who are we serving, what problem are we solving—how do we figure out which people to attract to the website? That matters a lot, doesn't it? Pipp: It definitely does. In our world, what John and I do, generally when we work with an organization, they are telling us what people are searching for to find them, or at least the basic concept. We will build campaigns around that. If we are doing SEO, then we are going to work to make their site visible for certain keywords, as an example. In the AdWords arena, it's the same thing. You are bidding on keywords to become visible in a search. If somebody is new to an area and is looking for a specific type of denomination, they may go online to see what's around them. If you're not visible, you just missed out on a new member perhaps. Hugh: There are a lot of choices in life today, aren't there? Pipp: There sure are. Most businesses, or organizations if you will, today I find aren't really aware of how many searches there actually are online for their service or product. It's the single largest pool that exists of prospective new customers, clients. Those are interchangeable words, even in the nonprofit world. It equates to the same thing. If you have a business or an organization, and you are working in a certain arena, there is more search for that information about that online than there is anywhere else. Hugh: Awesome. John: Hugh, you can relate to this. What happened when you got a yellow page ad? Hugh: People would call me up and say, “I see you have this.” John: They found you. Hugh: That was the go-to place. We actually went to the yellow pages last week to look for some resources for moving. We put out a line that people get $10,000 in AdWords. Talk about that program. I have one of these grants, and I don't know how in the world I got it. Somebody helped me get it. I am still learning how to work it, but I am spending $10,000 a month. Talk about that program. How do people acquire that grant? Pipp: It's a terrific program by Google. This is their way of giving back to the community at large here in the United States .it may be available overseas, too; I'm not sure of that. It's a grant that they offer to any 501(c)3 for $10,000 a month to use any way the organization sees fit. The determination of the success of any advertising campaign is totally up to you. Google is providing that. The only restriction they put on it is that you can't bid on a keyword that is more than $2. Now depending on the area you live in, larger areas, certain keywords that might fit your organization might be highly competitive, and they would be well in excess of $2. But just as you found, Hugh, if you work with somebody who understands how to dig out the keywords that still fit the proper niche that you are going after, you can find enough keywords to bid on to utilize those dollars. Hugh: I think I have 24,000 keywords in all of the things that are related to us, and we have an average position of 2.5 on a search. Pipp: That is terrific. That is very good. And you are working on a national level, correct? Hugh: I'm working with anybody who speaks English. We got Philippines, Australia, New Zealand. Pipp: There are many organizations who would be able to take the same approach. If it was a local church or synagogue, an organization like that, they might be more defined by a geographic area. But still, the exposure that they can gain from that is just fabulous, and it is a really terrific program that Google has put out there and made available to all the 501(c)3s. Hugh: How do you get it? How do you qualify for it? Pipp: It's an application process. They just have to verify you are truly a legitimate 501(c)3. Doesn't matter what you are promoting or what you're about. We actually offer that service to nonprofits where we will do the application process for them. We don't charge for that. We are pretty successful. We haven't had anything not approved so far. Along with that application process, you have to have a campaign that is ready to go. Google sees there is a campaign in place that you are ready to turn on the minute they say yes. John: An AdWords campaign. Pipp: Yes, an AdWords campaign Hugh: You can register for that for free. If you do it on your own, you pay per click. Russell, they just slipped something in there. Did you hear what I hear? He said they do it for free. Pipp: Maybe we shouldn't have said that, John. What do you think? John: It's a little too late now, Pipp. You can't put that one back in the bag. Pipp: I will say this. We don't manage campaigns for free. I found a lot of people- The application process can be confusing to them. You can't even begin until you get approved. We have at least been able to figure that out and are willing to do that for anybody. They can manage their own campaigns. When you get into the nitty-gritty of it, as you found, Hugh, you need somebody to help you because it would be difficult for you on your own to find 24,000 keywords. Hugh: Oh my word. And to put them in the right ads in the right places to direct them to the right page to do what we call conversions. Pipp: You have to have landing pages and ad groups and campaigns and this stuff that needs to be done to optimize it. One of the reasons you have 24,000 keywords is you want to utilize all that money and are limited to $2 a click. You have to find a keyword that might only get five searches a month, but you want to make sure you are found when those five people are searching. Hugh: It's the misspelling of the words, too. People who spell leader wrong just as a typo. Laeder. John, you were going to say something? John: I just said the maximum is $2. It's not that they are all $2. Hugh: I adjust them down, and sometimes I get the mileage. There is also a quality score. I have some that are 7's and 8's, which I understand is pretty hard to do. They rate you on the quality of the word as to where you are driving it. There are some sophisticated tools out there to watch what you're doing. It's just amazing. Where do people contact you to let you help them do that and start that conversation? Pipp: They can call me. Our phone number is 813-321-3390. That is our main line here in Tampa. They can go to our website. On the website you can get contact information. The phone number is there of course, and there is an email link to send us an email if you want. They can reach me via email if they like at pipp@si-5.com. Hugh: Si-5.com is the website. That is a very generous offer. It's not a lot of work. I want to talk about the juxtaposition of SEO and the ads. Those two need to have some synergy. John, you were talking about that if you did the SEO, it would get you more mileage for less money with the AdWords. I'm surprised they didn't cancel me. I had the grant. It had five or six campaigns going. Now I have several thousand campaigns or ad groups going. Four campaigns. But I found that no matter what I tried, I could not spend more than $300 a month. That is the maximum you spend a day, $332 or $333. I spend that every day now. But I couldn't figure that out. So I had to get somebody to help me. That is a for-hire thing you can do. I got frustrated because I shouldn't have been doing this in the first place. I do leadership and culture and strategy really well. I suck at that. Suck is halfway to success. Talk about why you need this if you do SEO. Pipp: It's the difference between paid search and organic search. Whenever you do a Google search, you bring up a search result page. At the very top, the first three or four listings are going to be the paid ads. The next ten listings below that are what they call the organic or non-paid listings. Each of these listings, paid or unpaid, are the listings that Google believes are the most relevant to the search you have done. John: They are catering to their own customer. I as a Google searcher am a Google customer. They want to try to provide me the most relevant and best options possible so I am happy. Pipp: You are happy and continue to use Google. John: That's right. Pipp: Why don't you go ahead and talk about the percentages of where the clicks go, John? John: That is important. if I launch a campaign today, I can bid on an AdWord today, and I can get that AdWord and I can be found for that word today. Organic is a little bit different. That takes a little bit more time, authority, optimization. Google is not going to make that change quickly because again they want to make sure you actually do have good information to provide their customer when they search for a given keyword. That is why it takes time to build that authority for the organic search. What is very interesting is that the difference between the paid search and the organic search is there is about five times more volume for the organic search. That is a big deal. If you are buying AdWords and you are getting traffic, that is great because I can do it today. That is a way to get to the organic search. You can start to get traffic today but realize that over time you will have a lot more to choose from if you are getting the organic search. It just takes time. Hugh: Does Google learn, or does the effectiveness grow over time? I have listened to people talk about how they do Facebook ads. Over the weeks and months, the Facebook ads build a knowledge base and becomes more effective over time. That may or may not be the accurate description, but is there something like that with AdWords? John: The parallel would be- I guess it would be the authority that you gain by having good information and making it available so Google can read it, understand it. Your page is optimized. The information you are providing is relevant. Google will look at all of that. If I have a new page and someone finds me but my information is not very relevant, Google's customer, the searcher, will leave. Google doesn't like that. Pipp: I understand your question also relates to Facebook. Facebook has what they call a pixel. They want you to put that pixel on your website. Facebook learns. Facebook's algorithm learns who clicks on your ads and who your ideal customer is, and they get smarter and smarter at putting your ad in front of people that fit a profile that is more likely to click. AdWords, I don't believe does that. To be honest with you, my business partner is more knowledgeable than I am on the running of the AdWords campaigns. John: You should clarify that as your other business partner. Pipp: Yes, sorry. My other business partner, who is on vacation with her children right now and her husband. But I don't believe that the AdWords does that. It's pretty much up to us as the buyer of AdWords to optimize the campaigns and figure out what is working best. Hugh: My colleague Russell is very active on LinkedIn. I have heard you guys other times talk about authority. Russ does a lot of good stuff on LinkedIn. He has articles, and his description of who he is is very valuable. How does that play into the picture with the Google SEO and the AdWords and the whole package? Pipp: Having an optimized profile on LinkedIn, as well as other social media properties, is all important. Every one of those provides a description of you and your business, a link back to your website from a site that Google sees as high authority. When you can get a link back from a high authority site, some of that authority transfers back, and it helps you build the authority of your website. Those are all part of the mix. They don't really have much of an effect on your AdWords, but from an SEO standpoint, those are very important elements. Hugh: Russ, did that bring up any questions or comments on your side? Russell: Keywords are important. This program for grants is something I have seen because who couldn't use $10,000. When I read the language, there is a certain amount of traffic you have to drive. If you don't do that, they pass it on to people who can use it. The idea of them looking at keeping their own credibility high by giving their users what they need makes perfect sense. Unless somebody has a lot of expertise in that, and I don't think you have that on your typical nonprofit staff, is it's a wonderful opportunity, but you have to be able to drive the traffic to keep it going. Pipp: That is correct. Google AdWords is much more complicated to optimize, and it takes some time to optimize a campaign. Usually when you are working with AdWords, you will figure the first three or four months is what you will put in to tweak and figure it out. We are managing a campaign for a chiropractor client. It's not a big campaign or a huge amount of money, but we took it over because the people who were handling it for them were unhappy with the results they were getting. We have taken it over. We have had it about two months, and it will be another month or two before we get it fine-tuned. I was in my office just now building landing pages because they were sending all this paid traffic to their homepage. In their particular case, if you were looking for a chiropractic solution for back pain, the homepage mentions it, but it doesn't really talk about it in depth. So it's less likely to create a conversion or getting a phone call for an appointment than if they were landing on a page that spoke to that particular problem directly. I am in the process of building them landing pages that will help their conversion, and the better conversion you get helps your quality score. Hugh is obviously doing that well if he has some 7's and 8's in quality scores. Hugh: I'm not getting the conversions I want, but it has gone up dramatically in the past two months. I am starting to fine-tune it. I had some AdWords that weren't relevant, which were bringing in some people who weren't the right people. I wanted to come back to that piece. We want to bring the people that can find words, and we can trick them into coming, but if it's not what they want, they will leave within a second or two. So we just wasted the money. Pipp: Then Google dings you and realizes that ad is not working. Regardless of what you are bidding, they drop you down in position. With AdWords, even if there are three or four ads at the top of the page, even if they are all bidding the same thing, if they all have the same quality score, Google rotates those around. As time goes by and one or two gain more traction because they have a higher quality score—they are getting a better click rate, even though it's the same price or a little lower price—Google will show them ahead of the other ads. They want people to have a good experience so they keep using them. Like John said, the person doing the searching is the customer that Google is trying to please. Hugh: That's a really important area to understand. I'm a pretty smart guy, but it's taken me a while to wrap my head around this. I am learning it so I can bring on somebody and have them manage it. There are lots of charities doing social media, and they don't do themselves any favors. There are lots of charities who put up pretty websites. Propeller Head makes them something nice. They say you have all these hits. I think I shared this with you, but it's said that hits are how idiots attract success. It really doesn't matter who comes. Hits is every time you download an image or a page or something, so you can have a lot of hits with nothing. It's really coming back to this what do people do, the conversions, that matters. Let's go into some of the things you know people need to learn. When you put up a webpage or site, Google looks at everything. How does this organic SEO work? John: That's where it starts. The very first thing is that Google is a computer. It needs to make sense to Google. You can't infer things. It has to be written and optimized such that Google can read it and understand exactly what you do, what you're promoting, what information you're providing. We want to make sure you have optimized it so Google can understand it. Then you want to start to look for ways to continue to build that authority. We mentioned having links back from high authority sites so Google realizes, “Oh, okay. This site thinks that they are providing the right information about this given subject.” But the big thing is it does start on the page. We call it on-page SEO. It needs to have the right information in the right format and make sense for Google. Hugh: Go back to this authority site thing. Talk a little bit more about that. Pipp: The sites that you see in organic search on the results page—those are the sites that Google feels are the most relevant, which to them means they feel they have the highest authority on that subject. Authority is predominantly gained in a number of ways, but one of the biggest is links from other sites. It might be social media sites you have. It might be other people linking to your information. Maybe you wrote an article or a blog post, and other people pick up that blog post and repost it on their Facebook page or their own blog. Through that, there is a link back to your site from another site that has relevant information. It takes time. That is why John was talking about how SEO takes time. You can buy a paid ad and be at the top of the search for a given keyword tomorrow. But with SEO, it takes time to build that authority, and it takes time for Google to trust your site. A brand new site comes up, and no matter how good your information is, it can take months for those links to build and for Google to gain the confidence and trust that you are the right one to show for search results for that given keyword. Hugh: How do these two work together, the organic SEO and the AdWords? Is there a negative dynamic we can create that cancels each other out? Pipp: No, there is nothing negative about it. The numbers are interesting. Paid search gets about 18-20% of clicks on a page. Organic gets the rest. Hugh: Whoa. 18% is paid search? Pipp: 18-20. It can be different in different niches, but that is the average. Of all the ads out there, somebody searches for a new plumber. They say “My toilet is leaking and I need a plumber,” so they search for that. There will be ads at the top of the page. Those ads will get 18 out of 100 clicks. The organic listings will get the rest with the top three getting the lion's share. That is what SEO is. Our job is to build that authority and get an organization's site ranked into those top three to five positions. The reason I say three to five is in many niches, there are directory-type sites that will get into that top five, and they are not direct links. Customers will avoid those and go directly to a business because they want a solution to their problem. Hugh: Yeah. People are looking for things. You can go to Analytics and other tools like that to figure out what people are putting in, can't you? Pipp: Analytics will tell you what someone typed in in order to find you. That is certainly a great tool. Anyone who has a website should sign up and get Google Analytics. It's a free service from Google. They offer great tutorials on learning how to digest the data. Hugh: That would be a good way to research what people are looking for, is that true? Pipp: It would be, except you don't really have access. Google has a Keyword tool built into AdWords where you can type in a keyword and they will give you a range of how much search there is for those. Or they might come back and show no search even if there is some. It may be low, but there is some. I have a friend who often says, “It's great how much money I've made from search terms that Google shows there is no search for.” Anyway. But there are new searches all the time. Google says a third of the searches they see every month are searches done in a particular manner that they have never seen before. That is constantly changing. Hugh: Give me that statistic again. Pipp: A third of all the searches that Google sees every month are done a little differently than they have ever seen before. Hugh: I thought that's what you said. That's remarkable. Pipp: It is. I know. John: We can't use another term like that. I don't think Hugh can stand it. We can't bring him a new statistic that is blowing his mind. Hugh: That's amazing. Russell: At this rate, his hair will start turning gray. John: It will light on fire. Russell: You have to ease up on him. Hugh: At least I got hair. Ha! Russell: This is the secret to not having any gray. You cut it all off. Hugh: Last week, we had an interview with Les Brown, and Les talks about using the mascara on his gray. He said his gray hair doesn't last very long. He keeps looking fresh with that look. Guys, this is fascinating stuff. People put up websites, and they wonder why nobody comes. They really do stupid things on social media. It's really social. How do people learn about this? I think we should create an academy and have a membership for people who are in charitable work to learn how to do these things. Like Russ said, they have a small staff and not a lot of money. If they started getting traffic and people found them and they raised the donor base- and actually if donors know what you're doing, the impact you're having, they will continue to be donors and spread the word. There is no negative aspect to tooting your horn and letting people know about it. Come back to some of my crazy ideas here. Pipp: That's right. What you and I have talked about before is how do you create more of a presence in social media? You have the main social media sites, like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, maybe Pinterest, Google+. How do you put out information on a regular basis? There are a couple of tools that make it easier for you to do that. One is Buffer. Buffer has the ability to post and link articles to the various social media accounts you have. There is another company called Quuu. They are an aggregator of online articles. You will probably find articles in almost any niche or subject you can think of. You can get an account for free for both of these. On the free account, you are limited to how many posts you can do and how many social media accounts you can link to, but you can link Buffer with Quuu and pick like four or five different subjects and link two articles a day to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Every single day. Those are what they call curated content. Somebody else wrote it, it's in your niche, and you post it as interesting information for people who are interested in your niche and what you do. But I also recommend to people they need to be doing some original content of their own. If you have these other services, you don't have to write something every day or two to three times a week. You can do something original a couple times a month, but there is still a flow of information coming out. That creates engagement. You will build Twitter Followers, Facebook likes, and additional connections on LinkedIn all from having information that flows. John: You asked one other question, Hugh. Pipp and I spend a lot of time figuring this out. This is way full-time. There are some basic things that can be done to give your site more visibility, just some real basic things. The biggest thing Pipp said is make sure that you have a LinkedIn account, a Facebook business account or an account that is to your ministry or 501(c)3, a Twitter account, and an Instagram account, and have those connected to your website. That will sure help. You want to make sure that you have accurate information on all those places. You don't want to confuse Google because that's not good. You want to make sure information is accurate across platforms. Then when you want to get really serious on one of these areas, it's probably a good idea to hire somebody who spends a lot of time trying to figure it out. It changes all the time. We use the phrase that Google has all the gold and they make all the rules. We just have to live with those. Hugh: The golden rule. John: To have an academy would be a great thing. It wouldn't be a free academy, and it wouldn't be part-time. Hugh: No. I was throwing out an idea. If anybody is listening and interested, we could play with it. John: It's a great idea. Hugh: We could do the same thing with a group of people and make it a more level playing field and impact more people and have greater results. Talk about how Google changes things. They are sneaky about it. A logarithm, is that what it is? Pipp: Their algorithm, yeah. They have made a lot of changes just in the past couple of years. They have two search algorithms. One is for desktop search, and one is for mobile search. They are separate. They announced about a year and a half ago, or maybe two years ago, that they were going to put more priority on mobile search algorithm, meaning that if you were ranking on page one but your site wasn't mobile-friendly, because it wasn't, the mobile-friendly aspect was going to become much more important to the mobile-search algorithm, and you could lose ranking on a mobile search even if you are ranked highly on a desktop search. That was a couple years ago. Then a few months back, they announced that the mobile search algorithm in 2018 was going to be the predominant factor to ranking in the search engines period. John: And the reason for that? Pipp: Well more than half of all search is mobile. That is mostly Smartphones, but that also includes tablets. Hugh: Amazing. Russ, you have been taking this in. I think we should come up with a hard question for these guys. Let's stump our guests. Russell: How do you stop these guys from making all of these changes? John: No, it's a great question. But it goes back to that you have to look at it from their standpoint. They are trying to provide the best product for you and I, the guy who is searching. They are going to work really hard to get into our brains and to put that into their brain to give us the searcher the best result. What we have to be doing as SEO experts is understanding Google and where they are going and then making sure that our clients are providing relevant information for those search terms. It has to be. Otherwise, we are going to mistakenly send somebody to a client's site, and the Google customer is not going to be happy, which is going to drop them in ranking. Russell: This is how they made Yahoo and other people disappear in the first place. John: They worked really hard at it to provide the best quality product for their client. Pipp: And they make changes all the time. They make changes to their algorithm all the time. The nice part of it is we are actually members of a very large SEO mastermind group that is worldwide in scope. Some of our peers are really smart, and they- actually before Google makes changes, they file patents. They get copies of the new patents that are filed and waiting to be approved and read it. We generally have a pretty good idea of where things are headed. Google does their best to obfuscate that, but they have to have the information in there so the guys in the patent office can say okay. We have some smart colleagues that read that stuff, figure that out, and give us a good idea of where Google is going six months or a year from now. Hugh: Part of this change is necessary. People used to pack in the keywords. Then people used to go out and do these fictitious sites with all these backlinks. There were thousands of them, and Google got smart to that. Pipp: No matter what the rules that Google comes up with, there will always be somebody who figures out a way around it. Once they figure that out, Google will figure out that they did that, and they will change the rules again. But there are some basic things. We ourselves in our company follow industry-best practice. We don't do any blackhat. In the SEO world, blackhat is things you know you shouldn't do, but you do them anyway hoping for a good result and hoping not to get caught. That was standard practice, even five years ago. But the things that a lot of people did and we were doing five years ago, if we did them today, they would get us penalized. Still one of the biggest things I see for people who try to do SEO on their own is they over-optimize their websites in terms of keywords. Let's say they have 600 words of content on their homepage. They will put a keyword in there like 40 times. Google needs it there once or twice and they know what you're about. When you start putting it in 20-40 times, you get over-optimized. You may see yourself move up in the ranking. You may even get to the bottom or middle of page two, but you won't get further. Hugh: Wow. Pipp: it's almost like they give you hope. I'm movin' up, I'm movin' up, I'm movin' up, and boom, you hit the ceiling. You're on page two where nobody can find you. Hugh: When you get penalized, do you stay there, or is there any way to get out of that? Pipp: You can change it. I have had a client this last year who after I had done some SEO work and were moving up nicely, he went in on his own and decided to rewrite one of the pages he wanted to rank for, and he put the keyword in there like 42 times. Then we started dropping back. I was trying to figure out why, and he happened to mention to me that he went in and changed that page. I went in and copied all the information and highlighted all the places he had done that, saying, “This needs to get fixed.” I fixed it. And we shot right back up to page one. It took a little while. When I say “shot right up,” that might have taken two or three months, but that is something that still a lot of people do. I find particularly those who try to do SEO on their own, they are looking at old information and don't really have the resources to stay abreast of what is working today and what current best practices are. Hugh: Russ, did you have more to that question? Russell: It gets back to that notion of working within your wheelhouse and not trying to do things that you're not good at. I definitely don't know a lot about SEO, but I do write. What I have started doing is looking at the principles of copywriting and studying that because that is what I can do on my own. I definitely need to hire someone- I have a guy working on my website who knows a lot more of this stuff than I do. He is reoptimizing the site, but in order to help myself, I have started looking at copywriting. I put together a series on donors that talks about the information you have to have. You have to know your audience in order to get some traction. That is important. What your content contains is where the keywords are probably going to be found. Hugh: Absolutely. Good points. We are on the downside of our interview. We try to keep these under an hour because that's a lot of time and people want to get some good content. Think about some stuff we haven't talked about, guys. What is a thought or challenge or tip you want to leave with people? Let's go back to the electronic media. If all of this stuff, Russ and I work with organizations to build out their strategy. We are trying to hunt and peck in the dark rather than having a synergistic plan. I wouldn't dare get in front of an orchestra or a choir and try to direct without having a piece of music because people are all over the place. We have to have some glue to hold us together, and then people can become engaged. With that, we are very clear on what it is we offer, who it is we offer it to, the value of our service, and the impact. That gives you guys something to work around and to use your magic to bring that constituency to the site and actually do something. If I have heard you correctly, part of it is identifying the trends, finding what it is people are looking for, but also attracting the right people. On the other side, you slipped right by this, you are creating a landing page, and the landing page has to convert. It has something interesting so people don't leave in .2 seconds, so they engage with you and learn something and want to be part of your tribe, donate, or be a part of your volunteer pool. There is a whole synergy in this thing. Let me throw it to you. Like the last time we talked, my brain is firing on many cylinders that I'm not doing right. I can't handle much more of this, but I have a list of things to do. You will be getting a call from me about my new site. Let me throw it to John and then Pipp. As a departing thought and comment, sum up the things you wish people would do, and remind them of where they can go to find out. You have a survey or something on the site, so talk about that, too. John: We have a form that they can go through. What is the name of that form, Pipp? Pipp: Strategy form. John: We have a strategy form they can go through on the site. It leads them to give us information so we can get back to them with some knowledge of what they are trying to do. I am going to step back and go back to what Russell said. Stand in your wheelhouse. Companies that come to us, we are going to have to make the assumption that they are good at what they do. Pipp and I have a really wide range of backgrounds. Pipp has owned several businesses; I have owned several businesses. Sometimes we get more involved than we should in the whole process. But what we look to do is be the SEO expert. What we look for is our clients to bring to us “This is what I do, this is who searches for us, and this is how they search for us. Put me on page one for these three key search terms.” That is what we do. We go after those search terms. Sometimes we get deeper into the weeds than that. That is what we primarily do. Pipp: Once they have filled out our strategy form, we then produce an eight-minute video analysis where we look at their website, we look at the competition, the strength of the competition, and then tell them the opportunity that is there. If you rank for this, this is how many searches there are, this is a conservative estimate you could expect as far as visitors, and based upon a conservative conversion rate, how much that traffic would be worth to you. We like to show them how big the opportunity they are missing out on is. The other thing I was going to say in closing is something you and I have talked about before, Hugh. We touched a little bit on conversions, and we haven't talked about video on this call. Video can be a good way to help conversions on your site, on your landing pages. If you can do a short video that deals with your business, that topic of the landing page, usually less than two minutes on your page can be a tremendous help. People like to know who they are potentially going to get involved with. You do a video that is engaging, you look at the person who is watching, you talk to them directly. You want to talk to that single person. You can do that. As I told you once before, I have an attorney client that we had ranked, and he was getting clicks to this website but not getting the conversion. We put a short video on his site, and overnight, that video tripled or quadrupled his phone calls in a week for his business. It was unbelievable how much of a difference it made. Hugh: You guys aren't a one-trick pony. You have a whole lot of different programs and knowledge base and wisdom. That is quite remarkable. Pipp: I think that's one of our strengths. We have gray hair, too. At least I do. I'm not sure John does. We have done a lot of things. We generally have the ability to understand what they're doing fairly quickly and obviously work within our expertise, which is SEO and digital media. Oftentimes, we can make suggestions to other things you could be doing that could be helpful. Hugh: Thank you for jumping in at the last minute and being so gracious to share all of this information (we had a cancellation tonight). You do a lot of upfront service to people. That is a gift. Russell, thank you for being here again and asking really good questions. Russell has made some notes of the profound statements that came out of your mouth. Russell: There is one thing I'd like to sneak in before we leave. The service these guys provide is superior, premium. The thing I like about what I see in their website is when they go in there, they define some parameters. If your business or organization is at a certain point, we can help you. If you're not at that place, then we don't want to offer you something that will not benefit you. That is integrity on steroids, and I love it. Hugh: Russ listens and observes and comes up with some profound statements. John Zentmeyer and Pipp Patten, thank you for sharing your wisdom with our audience tonight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Let's talk about my favorite new content promotion tool called "Quuu Promote"
Welcome to episode 164, following on from last week’s theme of ‘cleaning up your homepage’ it struck me that you also need to make sure that you are not a victim of someone else cleaning up their homepage! So this week I want to focus on the best ways to ensure that you remain visible on your followers homepage. But first….. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week LinkedIn snaps up Redwood City sales tech startup. Another sign that the key focus for LinkedIn these days is Sales Navigator. I suspect these features will only be added to their corporate ‘Team’ solution version of Sales Navigator which again reflects LinkedIn’s interest in enterprise clients. Heighten technology apparently provides three core areas of functionality: sales process tracking, hyper-efficient pipeline reporting and an intelligent notepad. Unfortunately they seemed to have deleted any trace of information about the product before announcing the news of the takeover. It is suggested that Microsoft ‘could redesign LinkedIn for desktop and mobile’ in this article…..please NO!!! Firstly it’s just been redesigned and secondly who wants something designed by Microsoft?!! Why Japanese Don't Use LinkedIn. Interesting article from someone who understands the culture. I may have to re-evaluate my international expansion plans! I saw this bizarre Sales Navigator glitch this week. It would seem that you can save yourself as a lead!! On the subject of mistakes, it seems I made a mistake recently by suggesting that you could track post shares by adding your own unique hashtag. Listener Darrel Griffin tried it out and it didn’t work! This got me thinking and on reflection, it makes sense because when you share a post the text is never shown in the share…that is why you will see a shared image that makes no sense because the comments by the the person sharing it are referring to the text they saw with the original post. The more I think about this, the more I realise just how messed up this is! LinkedIn seem to have a blindspot of shares for some reason. Here’s what they need to do; Notify you when someone shares your post When a post is shared, make sure the text they have written is included in the share Come on LinkedIn…how hard can it be?! Increase Your Visibility With Shared Content Sharing content has two main benefits; It is likely to keep you on your followers homepage and ‘front of mind’ It sends a clear and positive message to the algorithm - this member is ‘interesting’ It is also important to produce your own content and I have covered that extensively before but you are unlikely to have enough hours in the week to produce enough content of your own and in any case, you want to be seen as a helpful resource to your followers and not just someone who is always ‘pushing their own stuff’ Quantity My advice is that you should post 1-3 times a day and 7 days a week, if that sounds a lot then one a day is perfectly OK and relatively easy to do. Weekdays are definitely better than weekends but I have found that I do get activity and engagement at weekends. Quality This is really important and in my experience, the ‘make or break’ of visibility. It is critical to understand that you must not, under any circumstances share crap! Never Ever….. This means that the content you share must; Be useful and interesting to relevant followers Have been read by you (scan read) Not be promoting any product or service. Source There are plenty (almost too many) places to find great content on the internet. Here are some ideas; LinkedIn Articles (post searching and following channels and influencers) RSS feed services such as Feedly & Pocket Other services such as Nuzzel, Quuu and my latest favourite Anders Pink are also worth checking out. Google alerts Scheduling You can’t really have an effective sharing process without using a scheduling tool. Many scheduling tools also allow you to collate content as well, here are some options; Buffer - This is what use for curation and scheduling - very simple to use which is why I’m a big fan! Content curation available on the paid plan (not expensive) Hootsuite. A favourite with many people. Has the ability to show you ‘streams’ from your LinkedIn homepage alongside Twitter and other content as well as a scheduling facility (limited on free plan). Drumup. Content curation, sharing and scheduling. Not one I have used but I have heard good things about it. LinkedBack:Tags/notes for LinkedIn profiles I came across this free (to a point) tagging tool this week and I think you should check it out. Whilst LinkedIn discourage the use of Chrome extensions, I think they can really enhance the LinkedIn experience. I’m very wary (although not totally against) of automation tools but this one is not an automation tool, it simply replaces the tagging and notes feature that free users lost recently. In addition you can download your tagged profiles onto a .csv spreadsheet and the information in the download is actually very good. including their Name, headline, location, industry (not visible on the profile), number of followers, contact info inc email & birthday(1st tier only), full summary, profile url, profile image url, current position, education, level of connection to you plus the tag and any notes you have entered. The free version allows you to add notes/tags to up to 30 LinkedIn profiles (Basic and Sales Navigator). Subscribe to Premium at just $10/month for unlimited usage. This week we have another voicemail. This question is from Alan Harper and it’s about profile updates. Great question. I don’t have a Recruiter account but I am told there isn’t a ‘profile last updated’ filter and there definitely isn’t on any other level of account so the answer is no….but most recruiters would simply check recent activity which is very clearly shown in the profile on any level of account. So being active is very important. In addition there is a feature in LinkedIn Recruiter called ‘Update Me’ which will notify Recruiters when you update your profile. This is only applicable if they have already found you and asked to be notified but it’s worth baring in mind. LinkedIn Recruiter Tip: Use Update Me to Know When to Reach Out to Prospects
As you grow and scale your business, you’ll find, if you haven’t already, that you simply can’t be everywhere you want and need to be at the same time. You likely have many different social media channels, groups, email lists, and so on, and it’s impossible for one person to handle everything that needs to be done. Automation might be the answer to this prevalent issue. Today Sujan and Aaron are going to be talking about the different tools they use to make automation simpler, tactics for using automation and, just as important, tips on when and how not to use automation. Some of the highlights of today’s show include: ● 1:40: Sujan explains how Quuu.co can help you automate the things you share. ● 3:10: Aaron and Sujan discuss IFTTT and Zapier and how they can help with automation, content curation, syndication and promotion. ● 6:40: Aaron talks about one of his go-tools, Buffer, to link his social media platforms and to publish according to the most effective schedules. ● 8:15: Sujan recommends Drip for email drip campaigns and explains how he uses it for a content marketing boot camp email course. He also talks about Revue to help with creating the content. ● 10:15: Aaron discusses the virtues of Infusionsoft when it comes to onboarding, email marketing, and other tasks you must do on a regular basis. ● 11:30: Sujan and Aaron talk about tactics that can kick off your marketing automation. For example, send out a welcome email and keep track of what your competition is doing using tools like Brand24, BuzzSumo and Mention. Also, link your tools together when possible. ● 16:00: Important tips on when and when not to use automation.
In this episode I was glad to be joined by my mates from across the pond to talk about their start-up Quuu.co, a site for curated content to patch into your Social Media feeds like Buffer and Twitter.Notes from the show:Matthew started a poker PR firm that was very successful and then he met Dan Kempe, who was his go to freelance designer and from their they came up with the idea for Quuu based on a pain point in Buffer's suggestionsThey developed quickly with the help of MubsGet started in a just a few minutesFree account you can choose 5 sections of content to automatically curate into your Twitter streamBe selective, choose the right pieces of content for your audienceThey hand code the content with hashtags and @ tags on Twitter - Love this!2 For the Road:Matthew:Slack - For project management and team collaborationIntercom - Customer and team communicationDan:Intercom as wellWebflow