Internet Marketing Magazine August 2013

august 2013

SPEC IAL 25 TH ISSUE

>TIPS FROM BLOGGING EXPERTS PAGE 12

> STAYING AHEAD OF THE RETAIL REVOLUTION PAGE 19

> TIPS FOR BETTER CONTENT PAGE 22

> 9 PPC TOOLS PAGE 24

> MEASURE SOCIAL MEDIA RESULTS PAGE 28

> GOOGLE BRANDS PAGE 31

THE ULTIMATE BUSINESS MODEL

ANDREW & DARYL GRANT >> THE ORIGINAL AND BEST INTERNET MARKETING MAGAZINE DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE IPAD, KINDLE FIRE, ANDROID AND THE WEB

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INTERNET UPDATE

STATE OF THE INTERNET In this section of Internet Marketing Magazine our editor Greg Cassar cover’s the facts and provides expert commentary on what are the big plays that have recently happened online and how they affect you.

Android Now the Dominant Player in Mobile

operating system and this will feed App Store and iTunes sales. Only time will tell if they evolve or not. It feels like history is repeating itself again but this time its Android vs IOS not Windows vs Mac. Hopefully Apple will learn second time round.

Google Gmail Changes Marketing Gmail is the top email service provider worldwide now at 425 million monthly users, with Hotmail and Yahoo Mail a close second and third.

Global smartphone shipments grew 47% to hit 230 million devices in Q2 of 2013, according to a new report from research firm Strategy Analytics. Android captured a new record market share of 80 percent.

Apple iOS reached only 14 percent global smartphone share in the quarter, its lowest level since Q2 2010. Microsoft seems to be on the rise in 3rd position with a 4% market share.

When Google made wholesale changes to the way it sorted and presented the new inbox format it sent email marketers into ‘doom and gloom’ mode over the last month.

The reason why there was so much angst from the international marketing community was because email marketing promotions will now automatically be sorted by Google and added to a new tab called ‘Promotions’.

Here at Internet Marketing Magazine we’ve road tested all the different mobile operating systems and still like the Apple IOS the best as far as a pure Example of new Gmail Tabs view with Promotions Tab clean device and OS user experience. It’s a shame to see Apple slipping down in the rankings now that Email intelligence firm Return Path has released a Steve Jobs is gone and innovation seems almost new report looking at the early effects Gmail’s new non-existent. tabbed experience has had on marketers.

It seems that Apple needs to modify its marketing strategy and evolve with the times by pricing its iPhones and iPads at roughly a quarter of their current prices so as to get a higher adoption rate.

Our thinking behind this is that once people use IOS they won’t want to change to any other mobile

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They reported that users who are “routinely engaged” with marketing email are reading a slightly higher percentage of their marketing email now – an increase of 2.11%.

Read rates have dropped to around 10% for Gmail

users who have had a “medium engagement” level with marketing email (which makes up 88% of all Gmail users, according to the firm).

Those with the lowest engagement level read far fewer marketing messages dropping from 2% to 0.4%.

The new interface was rolled out on July 22nd, and the data was collected a week later so it’s too early to say the exact impact on email open rates as there could also be a curiosity factor affecting results as Gmail users want to see which emails have been categorised as ‘Promotions’.

Yahoo Begins Recycling Old Email Addresses Still on email, big news from Yahoo this month as they announced they will begin recycling usernames on accounts that have been inactive for more than a year.

It makes us wonder how this is feasible due to logins and password recovery linked to e-mail addresses, so it certainly raises some security concerns.

button and then be able to send the business owner a text.

We tested it in several businesses in many industry verticals over the last month. All in all we were able to declare the functionality an outstanding success as all businesses we tested it on received more leads than the previous month.

Over the month of July we experienced on average an amazing 11.5% of site visitors to one of the mobile sites that we built with ‘Click to Text’ used this functionality. This comAn example of a mobile site with ‘Click pares to 10% of moto Text’ feature bile site visitors using the ‘Click to Call’ functionality and 5.5% of mobile site visitors in the sample set used the ‘Click to Map’ feature.

So by adding ‘Click to Text’ we were able to nearly Yahoo are planning on unsubscribing recycled ac- double the number of leads generated from the counts from any subscriptions that they are cur- mobile sites for the businesses we implemented it rently on and will also introduce additional checks on. In the month of August we will roll it out across when password recovery processes are kicked off our full client base. If you want a mobile site with to see if it’s a recycled email address.

‘Click to Text’ functionality for your business you can check it out here (you will also see there the I see what Yahoo is trying to do here with making new video where I talk you through the scenarios more good user names available if people are no where we’ve found mobile sites to work effectively longer using old email accounts but what it does and when you don’t need a dedicated mobile site). do is create an issue of trust - I know I for certain wouldn’t use a Yahoo email account after this, and many others will be the same I believe.

Weekends and Personalisation Help Email Open Rates ‘Click to Text’ is a Winner on Mobile Sites!

Last month in this section we spoke about that we were in early days of testing ‘Click to Text’ functionality on dedicated mobile sites. This functionality enables the mobile site visitor to click one

Marketing Automation firm Eloqua (which is now owned by Oracle) recently featured a report titled ‘40 Must-See Charts for Modern Marketers’.

Eloqua studied 1.5 Billion Email Clicks and the Volume of emails by Day of the week. What they found internet marketing magazine august 2013

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was that to achieve the best clickthrough rate marketers should send emails on weekends.

did better than no personalisation, and custom personalisation such as location did significantly better again.

Another interesting finding based on over 200m emails was that personalised subject lines were key to best performing email open rates. Subject lines that were personalised with the recipients name

Interestingly adding the recipients company name or an exclamation mark had a negative effect on email open rates.

From the Desk of the Editor This is a milestone issue for Internet Marketing Magazine as it is now our 25th issue. A big thanks go out to all our loyal readers and contributors.

and you can spare 1 minute of your time to click this link to give us a quick honest review that would be greatly appreciated (click ‘view in iTunes’ then scroll down and click ‘write a review’, thanks :).

If you haven’t got access to the member’s area please feel free to do at http://internetmarketing- We hope you get great value from Internet Marketing mag.net/become-member (it’s free). This month’s Magazine. Wishing you the best of success online, complete audio interview with Andrew and Daryl Grant has now been added. It has lots of sections in Regards, it that were not included in the magazine, so be sure to check it out.

A special thanks to those who have left reviews in the apple platforms as it really helps us out. If you are getting good value from Internet Marketing Magazine

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GregCassar Greg Cassar

Internet Marketing Strategist & Editor Internet Marketing Magazine

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EXPERT INTERVIEW

ANDREW & DARYL GRANT THE ULTIMATE BUSINESS MODEL

An Interview by Internet Marketing Strategist Greg Cassar Andrew and Daryl Grant are Internet marketers and educators with a long history of success online. Coming from a business consulting background, Andrew and Daryl turned to the Internet and were able to create a passive income stream to leave their consulting business behind after making $250,000 in sales in their first 12 months online.

This has now grown to be a multi-million dollar business, and has positioned them to enjoy two to three months’ international travel a year with their family.

From coaching so many students, what are the traits that you’ve seen consistently in your students who are successful online?

Daryl/Andrew: That’s really interesting, and it happens time and again. We can give exactly the same message to two different people and they get completely different results.

right, or spending months and months building the perfect product, forgetting about the fact that that’s only a tiny part of the job. The key to success is actually getting out there and marketing it.

The next success factor is avoiding the ‘BSOs’.

Bright Shiny Objects are plentiful online. Internet marketers are particularly good at selling Bright A lot of it comes down to mindset, and we’ll cover Shiny Objects too. It’s about applying the 80/20 more of that in a moment. In terms of what the principle, knowing that 20% of what you do will get successful people do, for me it comes down to just you 80% of the results. a few things.

Also being able to recognize what is a Bright Shiny First up, they follow a proven system. They don’t Object and what is something that is going to make try and reinvent the wheel, they don’t try and take you successful. Bright Shiny Objects tend to be the something and go, “Oh, I can make it cleverer.” next cool marketing strategy that’s come along that They just follow the bouncing ball. someone’s trying to flog you.

The other problem that people sometimes come up with is they learn from a number of different mentors, and they try and cobble together a few different things. They end up creating what we call a Frankenstein business, which is a little bit of everything and none of it works. Whoever’s system you’re following, make sure you follow it through.

That’s probably the biggest factor in creating success.

The second one is where the focus is. The most successful people focus 90% on their marketing, 10% on their product. Most people don’t have the courage to do that, they actually spend a lot more time fiddling around, trying to get the product absolutely

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When I first started doing this I used to think mindset was an important part of it. As I’ve become more successful in what we’re doing, and as I talk to other successful people both online and offline, I’m more and more of the belief that mindset is about 80 to 90% of the game, it really is.

I don’t underestimate strategies and tactics or the actual doing of the stuff, but unless you bring the right mindset to your efforts - you can have the best efforts in the world, but the mindset is like the magic sauce that makes it all happen.

You teach a concept which is ‘fail like a champion’. Why do you believe it’s important that entrepreneurs fail sometimes along the way?

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You can have the best efforts in the world, but the mindset is like the magic sauce that makes it all happen.

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If you spend all your time just chasing the next promotion, then you’re never really going to create a stable business. A stable business is built on a solid ‘want’ that people are passionate about, that they’re prepared to pay money for, and where you have a unique solution.

The reason that, I’d rather fail a few times and get the right one than not fail at all is because when I fail a few times I work out where it’s working. It gives me more understanding of the marketplace, what they don’t like, as well as what they do like.

If you just hit it right the first time, it’s very hard to replicate your success, because you don’t really get an understanding of what they don’t like. Then next time they’re coming you’re just taking a stab in the dark again when you do things.

Greg: We’ve worked with entrepreneurs like that, who smacked it out of the park on the first time and then maybe sold the business or whatever, and then went into another market, and at a subconscious level they just assumed they were going to smack it out of the park again, and it’s not always the case.

Andrew/Daryl: The ‘fail like a champion’ is that you have to understand that in whatever it is that you’re doing, particularly online, that you will do stuff which will not work. You will try a marketing campaign, you’ll try some ads, you’ll do an opt-in We’ve got this concept we call ‘The Internet page or whatever it might be, headline, and it will Ducks’ that all need to line up. Whether it’s the not work. right market want, price point, product, strategy, timing etc. If they’re not all there, then it’s harder You won’t get it right 100% of the time. In fact, to smack it out of the park. you’ll probably get it wrong more than you get it right. Now if you have the mindset that ‘champions We teach people to ‘run your winners long and cut get it right all the time, and therefore if I’m not your losers short’. One thing I learned from the getting it right I must be a loser or there is some- ‘Lean Start-up’ book is get things to the market thing wrong with me’ then what happens is that quickly, and if it’s not working, be ready to pivot. you quickly fail and you quickly give up. You don’t continue on.

As a team, you have generated a massive inWhat champions understand is that failure is a part come over time from what you term ‘The Ultiof success. It’s actually not only a part of success, mate Business Model’. Many people may not have it’s a critical part of success, where you have to fail heard that term before. Could you please dea number of times before you can actually identify scribe what is the Ultimate Business Model, and what actually works. how it came about?

We call it ‘testing and measuring’ in our system.

Failure has to happen for you to be able to be successful and understand and know what you’ve done that’s successful.

Daryl: We call it the Ultimate Business Model because in 15 years as management consultants, we have never see anything that creates so much

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money so quickly and so easily. We’ve looked at thousands of businesses, literally.

The Ultimate Business Model is a system that we almost came across by accident. These days, we have it all systemized and we teach it as a system to colleagues and clients, but it’s a way to make a six to seven figure income in three to six months.

I think the least amount of money we’ve ever made with it is about $49,000 in six months. The record at the moment stands at about $3.5 million in six months. It’s a pretty powerful system, and pretty exciting.

In terms of where it came from, we were running an event. Andrew came to me and he said, “I think at this event we’re running we should try and sell something. I think we should try and sell a high level coaching program for $10,000.”

I went off my head with “Who would ever pay us $10,000 to coach them? You’ve got to be kidding me. We’re going to be laughed off the stage.”

Andrew said, “Look, let’s just give it a go”. I’m thinking, ‘Oh, well maybe we’ll make three or four sales and maybe $30 or $40,000. We’ll cover the cost of running the event.’

We ended up making 52 sales at $10,000 each. We’d suddenly gone to half a million dollars in a weekend.

Now, you want your comfort zone stretched? Try making half a million dollars in a weekend. It just completely blew us away. Anyone whose business has grown rapidly, you’ll know the pluses and the minuses that that can actually generate. It was really being thrown in the deep end.

But it was fantastic. We got into gear, put our systems in place, and made that happen.

Three months later we did it again, and this time we’d put the price up to $17,000, more of a structure and a system based on what we’d learned over the three months and from doing it the first time.

We did $2.4 million and at that point we knew it wasn’t a fluke, and that we could actually roll it out across a whole bunch of different industries, which we have.

These days, it’s where we tend to put most of our efforts. We do a lot of these by joint venture, so we’ll find someone who potentially has a high levelcoaching program that they could be offering, and we just wrap our system around that and help them to be successful with it.

It’s got multiple components to it, so for people who don’t know exactly what we’re talking about, at a high level, what’s the different parts of this recipe to make it work?

Daryl: The core of it, and where you make the biggest chunk of money, is when you sell a high level coaching program. Obviously you don’t sell that in a vacuum.

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What we do is we start by building a free list, and then offer to them a small continuity product. Typically a membership site at $49 a month.

What that does is it pulls the people out of the free list who have demonstrated that they’re interested in and willing to pay money for the particular subject.

Once we’ve identified them, what we’ll do is we’ll offer to them tickets to an event. It’s not your typical multi-speaker type event. It’s three days of really good, solid content with you as the expert on stage.

On the morning of day three, we make an offer for a high level coaching program. We’ve done everything from $10,000 to $50,000 with the high level coaching. We find that the results are pretty similar. Using our system, we have typically a 20 to 30% conversion rate of people putting their hand up and saying ‘yes, I’d like to be part of that coaching program’.

For members of the Internet marketing magazine community, if they want to find you online, where’s the best way to go to grab some more information about you and what you teach?

Andrew/Daryl: Our business is OurInternetSecrets.com, and you can just go there. We’ve got there a beginner’s guide, so a quick start guide to making money online. It talks about how to sell little one off information products using our system.

If people are interested in the Ultimate Business Model though, which is where I think the excitement is these days, then go to OurInternetSecrets.com/UltimateBusinessModel

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BLOGGING

16 TOP TIPS FROM BLOGGING EXPERTS FOR BEGINNERS

By Belle Beth Cooper

I’ve heard blogging referred to a couple of times recently as a mixture between an art and a science. If this is true (and I think it is), there’s no ‘right way’ to approach blogging if you want to be successful. There are plenty of people who’ve done a great job of it though, and I thought it would be useful to learn from them.

These 16 bloggers shared one important tip each for blogging beginners. No doubt, even if you’re not a beginner these tips will probably prove to be useful.

Tweets. In one example, here on FastCompany a lot of people requested a post that features more women entrepreneurs: Now, a few weeks later adding such an article where just women contributed and built great businesses was a big hit:

on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn with an engaging quote. If people respond well to it, than this is probably a great topic to write about. An example for this comes from Andrew Chen who famously “tests” his blogpost ideas on Twitter first.

And so does Joel here at Buffer.

Take this example from a recent Twitter post of his, where he simply tweeted one quote to see how well people liked a topic before he blogged about it:

1. Get ideas from your au- 2. Understand your audience dience “Understand “Create blog your audiposts that anence betswer the most ter than they interesting u n d e r s t a n d 3. Write for yourself first questions from themselves.

“Write for yourpeople you enIt takes a lot self first & foregage with on social media.” -Dave of upfront remost. Ignore the Larson, founder of @tweetsmart- search, and often means being a fact that anyone er member of the very tribe you’re else will read trying to lead – but it pays off.” what you write; -Brian Clark, founder and CEO, just focus on Copyblogger your thoughts, ideas, opinions and figure out how Understanding your audience bet- to put those into words. Write it ter means you’ll have a better and they will come.” -Adii Pienidea of what blog content will aar, founder of PublicBeta This can be a great way to gather resonate with them, which is a ideas of what topics people would good start when you get to writ- Adii’s experience in writing for most like to read about, which ing blog posts. himself firstly has made a differwill help your blog grow! One of ence to his blog in ways he didn’t the best ways I’ve seen this in ac- A great technique for doing this expect: “Yes, since I’ve been writtion is through blog comments or is to simply ask your readers first ing for myself, I’ve found that I

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write more and I publish more often. I think though that the main reason for that is that I don’t decide whether to publishing something based on the traction / reception that the post will receive within my audience; instead if I want to publish something, I do so. For myself.”

4. Build your email list “Start building your email list from day one. Even if you don’t plan on selling anything, having an email list allows you to promote your new content to your audience directly without worrying about search rankings, Facebook EdgeRank, or other online roadblocks in communications.” - Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger When you’re asking readers to sign up for your email list, you might want to try experimenting with different language. Willy Franzen found that his subscription rate jumped 254% higher when he changed his call-to-action from “subscribe by email” to “get jobs by email”:

time each day showing your current readers that you value them too and you’ll find that they will help you grow your blog.” -Darren Rowse, founder of ProBlogger Focusing on your readers is a great way to get to know them better (see tip #2). I love the way Daniel Burstein describes blog readers’ expectations of you as a blogger: “A blog is really two things. One, simply a piece of technology, a platform. But, two, it is a promise in the minds of most readers, who expect that the blog should have actual content with some elements of value that is hyper-targeted to their needs. Much like with a newspaper. Readers don’t just look at a newspaper as newsprint that is delivered on their driveway every morning. They look at it as valuable information about their city, where they live, and the things that they do.”

6. Focus on building an amazing call-to-action “I screwed up for years. I’d blog and blog. Some of my posts were doing very well on places like Hacker News, but I had such hard time getting return visitors. And very few people bothered to follow me on Twitter.

Don’t rely on people to do the work to find your Twitter account. Don’t rely on them to do the work to find your details in a sidebar.

People are blind to sidebars. Thanks banner ads!

Finish your blog post with some kind of call to action to signup for an email list or follow you on Twitter.

When I started doing this, I immediately increased my Twitter followers by 335% in the first 7 days.”

-Nate Kontny, founder of Draft

Using this phrase more clearly tells Willy’s readers what they’re signing up for, which clearly worked well!

Nate uses a simple call-to-action on his blog now, that looks like this:

5. Love your existing readers “Love the readers you already have. A lot of bloggers get quite obsessed with finding new readers – to the point that they ignore the ones they already have. Yes – do try to find new readers but spend internet marketing magazine august 2013

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This particular technique we’ve also tested here on the Buffer blog and found it to work amazingly well to bring attention to other blog posts we’ve written, like this:

or to Buffer product features, like this:

9. Give away your knowledge “Don’t be afraid to showcase what you know. Too many bloggers hold back the good 7. Give stuff away stuff out of fear of giving away “Give away free content that adds the “secret sauce.” There is no sevalue to people’s lives ‘until it hurts’ cret sauce in a world where everyand they will love you and become one has high speed Internet access loyal fans.” -Jeff Bullas, blogger and at all times. Today, you want to author of Blogging the Smart Way give away information snacks to sell knowledge meals.” -Jay Baer, A great example of this is the re- author of Youtility search done by Incentivibe, who found that adding a giveaway contest pop-up to the bottom-right of Jay’s advice is to share the knowledge you have, their website led to 125% more email subscribers. rather than keeping it tucked away for a rainy day.

Chris Guillebeau follows this advice by offering two free, downloadable PDFs to his readers. Chris also does what Jay calls giving away “information snacks to sell knowledge meals.” On both of the free PDF download pages, Chris markets his book on the righthand side.

8. Be consistent “Consistency is one of the most important things that bloggers tend to forget. It’s much easier to lose your traffic than it is to build it up, so make sure you consistently blog.” - 10. Be true to your voice Neil Patel, founder of KISSmetrics “Stay true to yourself and your voice. People don’t care to folA study by Hubspot showed that consistent blogging low sites so much as they care actually leads to higher subscriber growth rates: to follow people.” -Chris Pirillo, founder and CEO, LockerGnome “Over a two-month span, businesses that published blog entries on a regular basis (more than once a Another blogger who advocates week) added subscribers over twice as fast as those the importance of the writer’s companies that added content once a month.” voice is Jeff Goins. He says that your voice is the

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12. Give your email list priority “If you’re blogging to create a busi“Writing isn’t about picking the right topic; it’s ness, a movement, or to support about finding the right voice. What matters, what a cause, then you need to build readers really resonate with, isn’t so much what you an email list. It’s not an option. I say, but how.” don’t even consider my blog to be my community, my email list is my 11. Give it time – This is why community. Caring about these “Plan to invest in blogging for people, writing for them, and dea long time before you see a livering value to them should be return. The web is a big, noisy your number one goal.” -James Clear, entrepreneur, place and unless you’re willing weightlifter and travel photographer to invest more over a greater period of time than others, you’ll When the New York Public Library focused on growfind success nearly impossible. If ing email subscription rates, this simple home page you’re seeking short-term ROI, design with information about what readers could or a quick path to recognition, blogging is the wrong expect to receive boosted numbers by 52.8% over path. But if you can stick it out for years without a more complicated version with less information results and constantly learn, iterate, and improve, about the actual newsletter: you can achieve something remarkable.” -Rand Fishkin, CEO of Moz most important, yet over-looked part of blogging:

Rand shared these great images with us from his wife’s travel blog, Everywhereist, which shows just how long it can take to see a return on your efforts:

13. Write catchy headlines “No matter how great your content is, it won’t matter unless you have an amazing headline.

People have a split second to decide if they should click on your post, and your headline will make them decide. The headline is also essential in making it easy and desirable for people to share your post. Keep your headlines SPUB: simple, powerful, useful and bold.” -Dave Kerpen, author and CEO of Likeable Local Something we do at Buffer is to test several different headlines for each of our blog posts to determine which ones works best.

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Here’s an example of what that might look like:

15. Keep it short

“Biggest lesson I learned in my past year of blogging. Keep it in the 1–2 minutes read-time length.” -Derek Sivers, founder of Wood Egg

Working out the best length for your blog posts can be tricky.

You generally need about 300 words minimum to get indexed by search engines, but otherwise the length of your post is up to what you think feels best.

Derek Sivers noticed recently that his shorter posts were much better received by readers and seemed to be shared more, unlike his longer posts: You can read more about this particular approach in more depth here: A scientific guide to writing great headlines on Twitter, Facebook and your Blog 14. Be Yourself

“There isn’t one specific set of rules to be successful in blogging. When I started blogging, I had the opportunity to learn from experienced and successful bloggers in the industry.

One of the best lessons I’ve learned from them is to simply be me. I didn’t have to be too “professional” or use “big words” to impress others. I had to simply be me.

“When I’ve written articles that were too long or had too many ideas, they didn’t get much of a reaction.

When I read books, I often feel bad for the brilliant idea buried on page 217. Who will hear it?

Stop the orchestra. Solo that motif. Repeat it. Let the other instruments build upon it.

The web is such a great way to do this.

Present a single idea, one at a time, and let others build upon it.”

According to this Chartbeat graph below, many visitors to your site won’t bother scrolling, and most visitors won’t read more than about 60% of what By being me, I enjoyed writing and the process you’ve written. Keeping it short and sharp then, more. It had me writing more than I usually would could be worthwhile. too. If you look at the the most successful writers like Seth Godin and Chris Brogan you’ll notice that they are different and unique in their own ways.”

-Aaron Lee, social media manager, entrepreneur and blogger Moz CEO Rand Fishkin agrees that telling your company’s story is important, as opposed to following a formula for successful blogging: “Emotion and storytelling have been part of how we communicate with each other and inspire action for thousands of years.”

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If you’re looking for a general guide to blog post length, Joe Pulizzi’s blog post, “A blog post is like a miniskirt” might be useful: “ A blog post is like a miniskirt.

It has to be short enough to be interesting, but long enough to cover the subject.”

16. Make it worth referencing – here is how: “One thing I always try to keep in mind before publishing a post is would anyone want to “cite” this for any reason? Just like interesting research is great because it leaves you with a fascinating finding or an idea, I like for my posts to be the same. That doesn’t mean relying on research, but simply making sure each post has an original lesson or actionable item, making it ‘citable’ on the web.” -Gregory Ciotti, marketing strategist at Help Scout Our very own Buffer co-founder Leo has written about a similar thing before: “When writing a post, I get into a mindset to answer just this 1 question with a Yes: “Would anyone email this article to a friend?”

It’s an extremely simple proposition. Yet, it has changed my writing completely. If I put myself into a reader’s head going through a post and seeing whether someone will say “Oh, this is interesting, John will really like this”, then I go ahead and publish it. It’s almost like an invisible threshold to pass. I need to improve the post until this level is reached. I will iterate, find more research, get more examples, until I can truly imagine this happening.”

I’m sure there are lots more great tips out there about building a blog. What’s your favorite?

Image credits: David G. Larson, Copyblogger, The WordPress Podcast, Party Biz Connect, Darren Rowse, Nate Kontny, Jeff Bullas, FounderTips, Social Media Examiner, Chris Pirillo, LinkJuice, James Clear, Dave Kerpen, Joshua Titsworth, Derek Sivers, Unbounce

Belle Beth Cooper

is the Content Crafter at Buffer, a new and smarter way to share what you want to share on Social Media. She is also part of Hello Code, where she’s working on a quantified self project called Exist.

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RETAIL

STAYING AHEAD OF THE RETAIL REVOLUTION Christopher Morley Australia recently held a version of Cyber Monday called Click Frenzy; whilst the organizer’s site, and many big retailer’s sites, crashed under the pressure – it highlighted that con- sumers have a comfort and a desire to shop online.

The key going forward will be by being transparent in as many channels as possible – popping up wherever the consumer is in a meaningful way. I believe there are 5 key areas to ensuring today’s retailers survive the revolution and avoid the guillotine.

1: Customer Service – We all know the key to ongoing sales is service – the better this is performed the more likely a customer is to return. Figures show that even if a consumer is disappointed with product but happy with the service they are more likely to return to your store than if they were happy with the product but disappointed with the service.

Like all revolutions, new efficiencies, concepts, practices and attitudes take over the old guard – most revolutions see some of the old guard fall behind and not make it through to the other side – the Guillotine was pretty handy putting an end to many. In store shopping will never disappear, but it will change – like the way we shop – they way we are marketed to and our expectations. Older thinking retailers have seen online as the enemy or the competition; trying to maintain their status quo on traditional ways of thinking, not understanding the groundswell of change around them – not dissimilar to Marie Antoinette. It is important that these retailers stop worrying about potential ‘cannabilisation’ of sales and embrace the new way of shopping.

Online can serve a customer better than in store – the resources required to do so and the efficiencies of the service can ensure a customer’s questions and needs are answered more quickly and in a meaningful way. Live chat will be a minimum for this – but better integration between on and off line offerings will help ensure survival. Pureplay online sellers know the advantages of having in store pick up as well as in store returns – and is why global eCommerce giant Amazon is looking at having physical store presences. Combining the service offerings from online to in store and vice versa will help cater to the consumers growing needs. In a time poor society, an ability to initiate a return for item online rather than going back into the store will be beneficial as well as an expectation.

2: Engagement – We are all creatures who need social interaction; yet we are still surprised when someone else mentions us on twitter, replies to our Facebook queries and even sends an email and it is this level of multi faceted engagement that will be appreciated by consumers. The online model offers new and innovative ways to connect with the consumers and bring them back in store -create that excitement and interest; retailers have a chance to be closer to their consumers than ever before – so utilise it. internet marketing magazine august 2013

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The engagement needs to help connect online to in store experience and offerings – little things like hashtags in change rooms and encouraging showrooming – it’s going to happen anyway – so own it and try and win them over. An ability to upload an in store wish list to a mobile device, an ability to use data on a mobile device such as measurements and past purchases for increased in store experience using coupons, customer data, geo location and future offers.

ing more time; and retailers need to move with this too – because if a consumer is online – they can purchase. Retailers also need to approach mobile marketing differently – the advertising they undertake needs to be device and web specific, we are also seeing video making a comeback into popularity with brands, a renaissance if you will.

User generated content is only just starting to poke its head out – and this will increase; this plays well for another retail saying – when people talk, people buy. Retailers who give consumers a voice will be well rewarded.

3: Connectivity – Many call it multi-channel – tomorrow it will just be Retail – that being an in store presence, on line, mobile and tablet. These different platforms all have varying demands and different presentation capabilities; currently too many businesses are not what I would call responsive – they rely on developers and coders to constantly resize and adjust for the different formats and abilities. The retailers of tomorrow will need to have responsive sites that can automatically adjust, present and engage with the consumer ensuring the offer and the quality experience is the same no matter what the platform. Mobile and tablet growth of late has been astronomical – and it is not a sound use of resources to have developers constantly resizing site content – the model needs to be reversed.

Closely connected to engagement and customer service will be retailers ability to geo target and change its look and feel based on location. It might be raining in Melbourne and sunny in Sydney – so why should the website look the same for users in different locations – present jackets in Melbourne and shorts in Sydney – the more personalized and location specific presentation, the more likely to convert; and the more people who shop on their mobiles, the more geo location presentation will flourish.

The personalization levels of advertising are currently only just beginning to be taken advantage of, concepts such as re-targeting, specific emails for cart abandonment, enticements to return, encouraging to share are all going to be mandatory in the future.

With the ability to access more and more data through multiple shopping portals retailers will know more about certain consumers than even their spouses and use the information to specifically target and personalize advertisements. Target in the USA are so good at this – they knew when a teenage girl was pregnant before the girl’s father did – sparking an interesting discussion between Dad – Target and then Dad – Daughter.

5: Supply and Distribution – Online shopping has opened the ability to buy numerous brands and ranges that were never before possible to millions of people worldwide. And retailers will be keen to 4: Dynamic Advertising – Next year in Australia it is keep this trend going – a decentralized approach expected that the money spent on online advertis- to warehousing and distribution will be needed and ing will surpass television advertising – a sign that offer benefits to the retailer. marketers understand where consumers are spend-

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A decentralized approach can lead to more personalization opportunities, it is more efficient in the long run, it helps to cross the numerous multiple channels of purchase and helps give ownership of the consumer to local stores – this is of particular benefit to Australian retailers where the franchise model is prevalent.

Supply chains that are closer to the end destination offer increased service ability and help spread the risk whilst being scalable for future expansion.

Many retail adages will remain true – such as service; but we will likely see smaller retail spaces, the use of in store online shopping, increased use of data by retailers, greater use of technology and retailers beginning to understand that digital is the fabric through which the consumer experience is woven. In our digital age being right is temporary – leadership in the digital age is likely to be short – it

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is important retailers look for new ideas and challenges in order to keep inline with the revolution and avoid the guillotine.

Christopher Morley

Chris Morley has been helping Australian businesses improve their online strategies, revenue and process for nearly 10 years; working with retailers and brands of all sizes to increase their online footprint and market share in a meaningful and manageable way. Chris has worked with Australia Post, Deals Direct, OO.com. au, Cadbury and others on various online projects; always bringing his passion and enthusiasm for eCommerce and digital marketing to each and every role.

Chris holds the position of General Manager with Online Market Experts and also acts as senior consultant for the blueprint for success document that the business provides for numerous businesses.

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CONTENT CREATION

9 ACTIONABLE TIPS FOR BETTER CONTENT

By Julian True Flynn

1) Expressive text Use a lot of expressive text (bold, italic, underline, strikethrough).

2) Grab quotes from figures in the niche Have your VA do the same thing to interviews (written or video) with popular figures in your niche. You should also put these into a similar styled spreadsheet that you can look back to when writing content or you can tell your writers to use 1 per post.

3) Make sure everyone can see your content Not really a user experience tip and more for linkbuilding, but creating a branded slideshow template that you can then take all your informational site videos and change them into PDF’s.

Repurposing content is very easy low hanging fruit for getting more content on your PDF sharing profiles to make them more valuable as well as increasing the exposure of your content for users as some don’t like to watch videos and rather read.

4) Free stock like photos Use sites like Foter or Photopin for free photos on blog posts.

There’s some sites where I just use clip art too and it works fine, more for older people/adult consumers. I highly recommend adding unique images to the table too so when people steal them you can shake them down for a

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backlink (another easy way to get links). Hopefully the images you’re getting from these free sites you’re editing them in a way so they’re at least unique to Google as well.

5) Gather pre-made headlines Collect headline outlines from places like Copyblogger to use when creating your blog posts.

This makes your title tags more clickable in search results and more likely to be clicked when shared socially.

6) Make your content easier to read If you ask me no site should have anything less than size 14 font and 16 line height for the content you want users to read.

7) Link to other websites and let them know End your content by linking out

to other reliable and non-competing websites and then email them letting them know you mentioned them and they should share it.

8) Who doesn’t love statistics?

Have your VA browse through search terms like, “*your niche* statistics” and have them collect any catchy numbers and put into a spreadsheet with the quote and the link to where they found it so you can reference it in your content. I do this for each silo on my website and create a sheet in the spreadsheet for each one.

I personally use a Zoho doc or a Google Drive so writers can easily reference it.

9) Lists are skim-friendly Add a list whenever possible.

Julian True Flynn

has three years experience with online marketing, and doing it professionally for a year. Seeing the progression of the popular search engine Google, Julian saw that linkbuilding was falling behind and quality content was becoming the new ‘it‘ for ranking websites.

Now he focuses heavily on creating an awesome user experience on small business’s blogs, optimizing them for search engines, and then integrating that with social media to get the most amount of traffic possible.

Make Your Website Easy to Read & Effective on all Mobile Phones

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PPC TOOLS

9 PPC TOOLS THAT WILL GIVE YOU A LEG UP ON THE COMPETITION

By Adam Kreitman

And Optimizely is a fantastic tool to help you easily split test landing pages… with no programming necessary!

The way it works is you enter the URL of your landing page and Optimizely will upload the page into their system.

In the cutthroat world of PPC advertising, you need every advantage you can get to stay ahead of the competition.

Below are 9 tools that will help give you an edge in the setup, management and optimization of PPC campaigns… either by saving you time, making your job easier and/or providing revealing data most of your competition don’t have access to.

clear winner and loser? Well, you can either do the math or you can make things easy on yourself by using the free tool at splittester. com.

It’s a very simple tool to use. All you do is enter how many clicks each ad has received, along with its clickthough rate. Then you click the “Calculate” button and you instantly get results that tells you, in percentage terms, how confident you should be that the Splittester.com ads will have different response Split testing is one of the most rates over the long haul. important actions involved in optimizing anAdWords campaign. It Optimizely basically involves taking two ads It’s great to send highly qualified and having them battle it out to traffic from your PPC campaigns see which one performs the best to your website. However, success over time. ultimately comes down to your website and how efficient it is at When you have a clear winner, converting that traffic into leads you delete the losing ad, replace and sales. it with new ad variation and start a new split test.

So as important as it is to split test ads, it’s also extremely important But how do you know when a test to split test your landing pages. has run its course and you have a

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Then you can edit text (even on call-to-action buttons), resize/rearrange/remove page elements, change colors, etc. And it’s all done in a WYSIWYG editor.

Once you make changes to your page, you put a single line of code on your landing page and Optimizely runs a split test of your landing page for you to see whether the changes improved conversions or not.

I’ve not come across an easier way to split test landing pages than this.

Google Keyword Planner This is a relatively new tool offered (free) by Google. This tool (which can be accessed from within your AdWords account) essentially combines Google’s Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator into one.

There are a few ways to use it to build your AdWords campaign.

First, you can type “seed” keyword ideas or a website URL and the Planner will give you a bunch of ideas for related keywords. It

even creates sample ad groups you could add to your campaign. This is particularly useful for brainstorming keyword and ad group ideas.

When you find ad group/keyword ideas you like, you can add them to your “Plan” and, based on your bid range, the tool will give you estimates of what the clicks, costs, etc., will be if you added those keywords/ad groups to your campaign.

I use AdWords Editor more than any of the other tools mentioned in this article. If you spend any amount of time working in AdWords, using AdWords Editor is a must!

AdWords Wrapper Let’s say you have a long list of keywords you want to add to your campaign. And you want to add them as both Exact Match and Modified Broad Match keywords. It could take a while to do this manually.

But with this handy AdWords Wrapper tool, it’ll take seconds. All you do is paste a list of keywords and then select what Match Type variations you want the list converted into. You can instantly build lists that include Exact, Phrase, Broad and/or Modified Broad Match keywords.

Another great feature of the Planner is you can get traffic estimates for specific cities, metro areas, etc. (In the Google Keyword Tool, you could only get traffic estimates for the entire U.S. or worldwide.)

This screenshot from Mike’s Marketing Tools, gives you an idea of how it works:

This could be a very nice enhancement for those of you running local campaigns (though I have not tested it out enough to say how accurate the data is).

Already have a list of keywords? Great… simply upload them to the Planner and get estimates of how those keywords would perform BEFORE you add them to the campaign (understanding that estimates are just that, estimates, and should be taken with a big grain of salt).

AdWords Editor AdWords Editor is a free desktop software application that allows you to build and edit campaigns offline. This tool will easily save you hours if you manage large and/or a lot of AdWords campaigns (Microsoft has an equivalent application called Bing Ad Editor).

Things that would take hours to do in the online AdWords interface can take you minutes in AdWords Editor because you can quickly copy/paste/drag keywords, ads, ad groups, campaigns, etc. You can also import and export data so you can massage it in Excel and/or share it with others who are helping to manage the accounts.

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I’ve used other “wrapper” tools before, but this is the first one I’ve come across that makes creating the Modified Broad Match keywords a snap.

Microsoft Excel Yes, Excel! There’s no shortage of ways to use Excel to help with AdWords… from planning and organizing your campaigns to quickly creating/editing large numbers of ads and keywords to calculating key metrics, like Profit Per Impression, that you can’t get directly from AdWords or Analytics.

But my favorite use of Excel is using pivot tables to analyze data. Some of the ways to use pivot tables include…

• Compare how specific ad copy (headlines, description lines, etc.) are performing across an entire campaign • See how different match types are performing • Check the Quality Score of keywords • Analyze the performance of specific placements on the Display network • And much more!

attention when it comes to Quality Score.

When using the Report Analyzer, you end up with a color-coded spreadsheet that highlights profitable/ unprofitable ad copy, search queries, landing pages, placements, etc.

Both tools allow you to quickly focus on the areas of your campaign that need the most attention and will give you the biggest bang for your buck when it comes to optimization. iSpionage iSpionage is a “spy” tool that lets you keep track of what your competitors are doing when it comes to PPC (both in Google and Bing/Yahoo) as well as SEO.

The beauty of pivot tables is how they allow you to easily organize and manipulate large amounts of data from AdWords and quickly see meaningful data you can use to optimize campaigns.

Certified Knowledge Certified Knowledge was created by Brad Geddes, generally considered the most knowledgeable and influential PPC pro around.

The paid membership area of the site includes an incredibly detailed education area with just about everything you need to know to become a PPC expert, a message board where Brad hangs out and answers questions, and some great PPC tools.

The tools include a Keyword Mixer, Mass Ad Copy Creator, and Geographic Keyword Finder. But the two that are my favorite are the Quality Score Analyzer and Report Analyzer.

For both of these reports, you simply upload a report (ie. Search Term Report, Ad Report) from your AdWords account and the tools do the rest.

In the Quality Score Analyzer, you end up with a list of ad groups (sorted by priority) that need the most

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Here are a few ways I use iSpionage to help with campaigns…

• Keyword research You can enter competitors’ websites and iSpionage will give you an idea of what keywords they’re bidding on/ranking for. This list is often helpful in finding long tail keywords and filling in the gaps from some of the other keyword research tools.

• Keep tabs on competitors Want to know what changes your competitors are making in their accounts? You can monitor them in iSpionage and see things like what new ads they’re running and what new keywords they’re bidding on.

• Keep tabs on specific keywords If there are certain keywords that are very important to your business, you can track them within iSpionage. This will let you see things like where you rank vs. your competition, Impression Share for both your ads and your competition’s ads and see how these things change over time.

AdGooRoo AdGooRoo claims to have the world’s largest search AdGooRoo is a bit on the pricey side but is well intelligence database that looks at over 900,000 worth it for agencies and larger advertisers.

PPC advertisers across 14 search engines. For PPC campaigns, its SEM Insight™ is the most helpful tool that puts all AdGooRoo’s data to work for you.

This article is originally published on CrazyEgg.com Here are some of the ways AdGooRoo can help manage campaigns: • Analyzing competitor’s campaigns/data to see what strategies they’re using that are work- Adam Kreitman coaches business owners on how to make ing for them • Identifying keywords in your campaign that their websites more compelling to their prospects.. and to Google. He owns Words have a low impression share That Click, a firm specializing in Conversion • A campaign alerts function that scans your Optimization and managing Google AdWords campaigns for small businesses. account daily for common problems, and • A “Top Ad Copy” report that shows the top Follow him on Google+ ads in a market and much more.

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SOCIAL MEDIA

3 SIMPLE WAYS TO MEASURE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA RESULTS

By Rick Mulready Are you looking for better ways to measure your social media activities?

Do you know if your social media efforts are worthwhile?

Social media measurement is one of the most frustrating challenges business face.

In this article I’ll show you three simple measurement strategies that fit into one of can your future campaigns.

Why Measure?

In order to measure the effectiveness of your social campaigns, it’s critical that youknow your objective.

Ask yourself why you are considering including social media in your overall marketing campaign in the first place. How will your efforts impact your revenue and grow your business?

#1: Quantify Your Social Media Listening “What you’re doing [on social media] needs to have impact. It needs to actually have revenue. And often times we try to make it fuzzy about that.” – Frank Eliason, Citi’s Director, Global Social Media (@FrankEliason)

Listening is one of the most often overlooked uses of social media, yet it’s probably the most important. If you’re not listening to your customers, You’ll want to put a measurable outcome in place you’re missing the point of social media. along with a timeframe in which to achieve the But how do you measure listening and how does it goal. impact your revenue?

Now you can determine which social In this example, we’re going to look at using Twitter media platform aligns to answer that question. with your objectives.

• In Twitter’s search field, enter your business name.

For example, if you’re

trying to reach a female audience and your business lends well to pictures and images, you might want to consider Pinterest.

If you’re a business-to-business brand marketing an upcoming conference, you’ll want to consider LinkedIn.

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• You can then select whether you want to view Twitter’s “top” tweets about your business, “all” tweets containing your business name or tweets that contain your business name from only those people you follow.

• As you filter the tweets, look through them and decide whom you’d like to follow. These are likely either potential customers or your current customers.

• Monitor their tweets on a daily basis. Engage with them, answering their questions, adding value and helping them whenever possible.

Twitter’s Advanced Search is powerful too, especially if you’re a local business. You can use it to search specific terms related to your business that people who are near your location are talking about.

Twitter is an amazing tool for providing real-time customer service. You can learn things like: • Exactly how many people you’re helping • If you’re growing that number of people • The issues customers are experiencing with your business • What’s broken in your business

the second update by sharing the post and commenting on it.

Likes show support and comments indicate a deeper interest but shares are most valuable because they move the update beyond your page.

At the beginning of the campaign, translate your objective to a numeric goal. Then,use a tiered point system to weight different types of engagement according to which is most valuable to you.

Here’s an example of a tiered point system for Facebook: • Likes: 1 point each • Comments: 5 points each • Shares: 10 points each During the campaign, a quick sum of values will help you determine if your efforts on Facebook are moving you closer towards your goal or not.

At the end of the measurement period, prioritize the problems you identify and use that intelligence to implement fixes and improvements within your business. You can measure the direct impact on your business by looking at the additional revenue or cost savings that these new fixes give you. #2: Create a Rating System for Your Social Engagement “Put a [tiered point system] in place rather than looking at how many likes you have.” – Scott Monty, Ford’s global head of social media (@scottmonty) This is a simple yet effective strategy to use when you’re trying to generate awareness and buzz. It’s a smart way to measure the response to your efforts on Facebook, Twitter or any other social channel you’re using.

Here’s how it works.

Say you’re launching a product or service and want to build buzz about it on Facebook. You post an update to your Page about your launch and you get a bunch of likes on it. The next day, you post a different type of update. You get some likes on it, but you also see that people are engaging more with

You can create similar point systems on any of the social channels you use. For example, on Twitter, 5 points for a reply and 10 points for a retweet.

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#3: Add Tons of Value, Then Sell and Measure “Jab, jab, jab, right hook.” – Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) This strategy is the concept behind Gary V.’s upcoming book and it’s based on providing great content that adds tons of value for your customers before asking for the sale.

For example, say your restaurant is rolling out a new healthy menu. Your goal is to get 300 customers into your restaurant to try the new menu over an upcoming weekend.

Since your food is visually appealing, you develop a Facebook or Instagram strategy. You post pictures of your food, create content around the importance of healthy eating and curate information on your Facebook Page about farmers’ markets in your area.

The Corcoran Group, a NYC real estate firm, adds value via their social media outlets.

Offer this valuable content to build trust with people.

Then offer a coupon for your restaurant on your Facebook Page. The number of people who claim and redeem your coupon is a result you can quantify.

Here’s how to measure your efforts when using this strategy: • Use the tiered point system described in strategy #2 to determine if your content is moving you closer to your goal.

• Use coupons that are specific to your social media campaign, thus making the return on your investment easy to track and measure.

• Create unique landing pages for each of your campaigns where your customers can download or purchase what you are promoting.

Since the landing page is used for one specific campaign, this will allow you to clearly see how successful your campaign is.

I hope this article gives you some ideas for how you can simply measure your social campaigns and shows you that you don’t need expensive measurement tools.

Rick Mulready

Rick is a social media-marketing consultant who teaches smallto-medium sized companies big brand social media strategies for small business budgets. He’s also the creator of the weekly Inside Social Media Podcast.

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GOOGLE BRANDS

GOOGLE BRANDS:

4 REASONS YOUR BRAND SHOULD BE ON IT

By Sam Milbrath dations (+1) to your followers and people you care about and trust. From there, connect over shared interests and discover content that you may have overlooked otherwise.

4 Reasons your Brand Should Be on Google Plus

Google is everywhere. From Google Search to Google Maps, Google Earth to Google Docs, Gmail, GCal, GChat, all the way over to YouTube, Android, Google Play and Chrome web browser. Chances are that you’ve likely used a Google product. Interestingly enough, many people still believe thatGoogle Plus (G+) is a ghost town.

Fact: over 500 million people are currently on Google+ and approximately 343 million of them are actively sharing, +1’ing, “recommending” and taking action every month. Earlier this year, Google+ was named the second largest active social network in the world, after Facebook (and beating out Twitter and YouTube). As the network gains popularity, it’s important to understand the value it can provide your business when approached correctly.

In this two part article, discover 4 reasons your brand should be present on Google+ and (in part 2) how best to showcase your brand, drive followers and engage with your community.

Did you know that HootSuite’s integrated with Google+?

Google+?

The purpose of Google+ is to make all of your Google experiences better and more connected.

Think of it as a central profile that points all of your Google activity back to you or your business.

Add your true identity, your relationships (social graph of connect), share and provide recommen-

#1: Better Brand Discovery Google Search’s results page has completely transformed brands’ presence and visibility online. On top of the usual business information, maps, brand images and website and social media details, people can follow and view your brand on Google+ right from a google search results. The Google Search page is prime real estate to introduce your brand.

In this search field, potential followers can see: • Recent Google+ post activity • Number of followers, profile image • Brand information • Whether your business is verified • If someone they trust has +1’d you (recommended).

If the “searcher” is already following your brand in G+, your brand’s content will appear higher in the Google search results page. #Bonus

Screenshot of Google Search results for “HootSuite.” Notice besides the regular search results, HootSuite’s G+ account is displayed in the top right

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along with an image, follower count and a verified check. Because I personally follow HootSuite in G+, their latest content is shown right in this page. #2: Deeper Brand Engagement Google+ Hangouts and Communities help your brand engage on a more personal level.

G+ Hangouts In Hangouts, brands can video chat with people anywhere in the world, host virtual meetings (screenshare is useful here) or broadcast live concerts, shows, talks, conferences etc. Many brands have gotten creative with their interactive Hangouts by hosting interviews, sharing inside scoops, launching exclusive products and hosting live Q&A’s or AMAs.

their paid search ads there is a 5-10% uplift in click thru traffic rate (CTR) back to their site.

For example, during a search for “Chevy Truck,” Chevrolet’s paid ad appears along with one line that says “1.5 million people +1’d or follow Chevrolet” in G+. Those trusted recommendations are driving increased ad performance. Image from Google+

#4: Measurable Impact Use Hangouts to develop your reputation as an in- How many conversions were as a result of social? dustry leader by sharing your opinion, connecting Between Google Analytics, G+ Ripples, Insights andwith other specialists in the field, staying on top of HootSuite Analytics, the impact that each social ininews, teaching what you know and offering help. tiative has on your business’ bottom line is easily Why not host a weekly Hangout where you share tracked and measured. some of the above (or do the same in a Community)?

For example, Topshop transformed one of their fashion shows using Google Hangouts by giving the everyday girl an inside scoop on what it was like to be at (and in) the fashion show, interviews and backstage events. Topshop had 7500 live views of red carpet hangout and over 300k new Google+ followers in two weeks.

G+ Communities In Communities, people come together to have rich conversations and discuss content over shared interests like food, shopping, art, music, etc. Brands can either drive, participate or moderate these communities. This is a great chance for brands to listen.

For example, National Geographic created “Exploration,” an international community of people who share a “sense of adventure, a passion for exploration and discovery, a love of learning, and a desire to make a difference” – National Geographic G+ #3: Increased Marketing Performance Ads are getting more relevant and performing better than ever before. If you use Google AdWords to promote your business, turning on social extensions is essential. When brands add social annotations to

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G+ Ripples shows how a post was shared across Google+; who had the most reach and whose opinion was the most influential that shared the original post (size of circle matters). Tap into brand or key advocates that spreads the word for your business across the platform.

With Google and HootSuite’s Analytic reports, your business can tie real dollar amounts to your social marketing and follow the full path to conversion with multi-channel funnels.

This article is originally published on Hootsuite. com Sam Milbrath

is Hootsuite’s Content Producer. Keeping her finger on the pulse, she writes Trends of the Week, HootSource content and killer interviews.

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