Writing Articles

Midweek Content Roundup #78

9/30/2015

This is the seventy-eighth post in an ongoing series of useful and interesting content that goes up each Wednesday.

Here you can find links to different SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, self-publishing, and other various articles from the past week that I think you might like.

This week there are 17 articles…enjoy!

Post removed 10/24/15

Content Marketing

Social Media Marketing

Self-Publishing

This book really is what you need if you’re just dipping your toe into these crazy waters we call marketing today. It’s available on Amazon and iTunes and I know you’ll find it helpful.

Free Fiction Friday #81: Breaking Rank

9/25/2015

Note: This is the eighty-first post in Free Fiction Fridays.

These are short stories put up each Friday that you can read for free. By the next Friday the post will be taken down and a new one will go up.

Things were not going well in the fall of 2015, and this was noticed off-world.

“What the hell are we gonna do, Barnes?”

United Planetary Front Commander Eddy Barnes looked up from his bunk and frowned. There was Hanson, and he was asking the question that Barnes had been waiting days to hear. Hanson saw this and came forward into the small recessed area, sat down next to the dying philodendron.

“What the hell are we gonna do, Barnes?” he asked again. “Earth’s a mess financially, none more so than the US right now. On the Moon they don’t know if they can keep up their appropriations, what with all the government shutdowns that’ve been happening lately. On Mercury the mining’s gone to shit. Mars has been off-limits since the duster with the natives, and–”

“And here we sit, four months now, and not a damn thing to show for it but a situation worse than we found.”

Hanson nodded, not at all angry that he’d been cutoff. It was nice to see some life in the Commander again, very nice indeed.

“What do you think we should do, sir?”

Barnes chewed his lip. Hanson was looking at him all eager-like, ready and willing to go right then and there. And why not, why the hell not? For the past four months they’d been stuck out here on the edge of Eris’ orbit, watching…waiting.

It was enough to drive a man mad sitting on the Kuiper Belt that long, especially when he had a team to look after, discipline to maintain. So far everything had gone smoothly, but Barnes knew that wouldn’t last much longer.

What Hanson had failed to mention, or perhaps what he was saving for last before Barnes cut him off, was that their own lifeline was about at an end. “Earth’s a mess financially,” Hanson had said, and that really did say it all – out here in the far quadrant, they didn’t matter much. More than 7 billion people on Earth and yet only a few thousand knew they were out there, knew any of them were out there. It was frustrating, to say the least.

Barnes looked up, saw Hanson still sitting there. He let out a sigh. What the hell.

“How are the engines, captain?”

Hanson’s face brightened, some of the sag of the past few months vanished in a flash. “They’re good, sir – real good. Better than good, ready.”

“And the boys?”

“Like the engines, sir – revved up and ready to go.”

Barnes nodded, looked out the window. Out there was the last of the known, the last they’d explored. Here they were, at the farthest point out, the last defense, the first to know.

The joke of course was that as far as Earth went, it was the exact opposite. More and more, Commander Barnes and the Ebony were the last to know and the first and only defense. Appropriations weren’t what they used to be, and neither was the fleet. He sighed. What the hell.

The thought kept running through his mind, and as he stared out into deep space he knew that if his exile were ever to end, he’d have to be the one to end it. He turned back to look at Hanson.

“Well, what the hell are you waiting for? Fire this bird up and tell the boys – we’re headin’ back to base.”

“Yes, sir,” Hanson said before racing off.

Barnes just looked back out the window. This sure as shit better work.

~~~

The UPF Command Center was abuzz with activity, but then it always was. You couldn’t monitor 72 different alien species, 14 separate bulk carries, 2 fluton-class starships, and a royal barge with anything less. The Center had been staffed continuously to see to it all, its power running and its stations manned since operations had commenced on December 8, 1982.

Lars Steen remembered that day well, remembered when the large monitors had had their tarps taken off, their IBM screens lit up for the first time. Of course, they’d gone through about a hundred new sets since then, each better than the last, but the Center’s commander still looked back on that first set fondly.

“Sir.”

Lars looked over, saw VanDyke there. “What is it?” he asked.

“Sir, Ebony has moved.”

“Moved, what do you mean, moved?”

“It appears that Commander Barnes has powered it up and turned it back towards base, sir.”

Lars frowned. “Now why the hell would he do something like that, do you think?”

VanDyke shrugged. “Because he’s finally ready to start that war we always thought he would?”

Lars looked over at VanDyke. Two demotions for insolence and he still said whatever the hell he liked. Lars liked him, liked him a lot.

“Well, what do you suggest we do then, lieutenant?”

VanDyke scoffed. “With a commander like Barnes? Why, send the whole fleet at him, what else?”

Lars smiled. “Precisely, lieutenant, precisely. Order it done.”

THE END

Did you like this story?

I'll have a collection of sci-fi short stories out the first week of October.

Get on my email list to hear first. Thanks!

5 Tips for Writing Local SEO Content that Converts

9/24/2015

Is your site getting the local traffic that it deserves?

It should be.

It’s easy to get it too. All you need to do is figure out your local area, what people are searching for, and how you can key into this.

When you do that you can get your products and services out to the people that are in your local community, or surrounding areas. That increases your influence and can produce more leads, more business, and more income.

So how do you go about getting your site and your content in front of those local eyes?

In this post I’d like to point out 5 aspects of local SEO and local content marketing that will give you ideas for your own site. We’ll use facts, stats, and examples from local SEO campaigns that have worked.

Your site is about to get the local traffic that it deserves!

#1 Mobile is Driving the Local SEO Revolution

People are using their phones more than ever.

We know that “18% of local mobile searches lead to a sale within one day” and “local searches lead 50% of mobile visitors” to your e-commerce store “within one day.”

That was all in a cool Search Engine Land post by Jayson DeMers in August.

Back in May it was reported that mobile traffic had overtaken desktop traffic as well. Mobile search queries were making up 29% of all search, by far the most of any platform.

This represents tablets and smartphones, and that’s what people are searching on most when it comes to finding local products, services, restaurants, places to go, and things to do on the weekend.

Mobile is how local users find out about events, read the news, and catch up on the sports scores. We don’t read newspapers anymore, and few are even watching TV…at least the local networks.

Yes, mobile is really the way to think globally while acting, and searching, locally.

#2 Geo Targeting Produces Leads and Campaign Ideas

I’ve been talking quite a bit about Geo targeting lately and you might have read my post Analyzing Your Geo Anaylitcs to Boost Traffic and Create Sales.

What’s so great about using Google Analytics’ Geo feature is that you can pinpoint small geographic areas.

I used Montana as my example, and it was clear which major cities were giving me traffic. I also learned the smaller locales that were giving me traffic.

Now, Montana is a huge state, the fourth largest in the country. It’s only got 1 million people, however.

What if you’re in California? You’re going to have to narrow it down a lot more, and that’s why cities or metropolitan areas might not be enough.

Think about Los Angeles. That’s just too big and really, most of the smaller cities surrounding it are crammed into that one area. This can cause local SEO efforts to overlap, something that makes analysis tricky.

I found this post called Complete Guide To Multilingual And Multiregional SEO to be very interesting. It’s about using different languages and such to get your site seen by more people. It was written by Amit Kothiyal and appeared on TIS India on March 2.

Something else that’s good to consider is multilingual and multiregional SEO and how it can help get you even more traffic.

“Once, you have understood where you are targeting for performing multilingual and multiregional SEO,” Kothiyal says, “the next step is to select the URL structure strategy and domain.” You can do that with geo targeting.

Intrigued? The post is worth a look, especially for multilingual areas like Los Angeles.

#3 Use Google Maps to Target Local Search Areas

One of my favorite aspects of writing local SEO content are the small geographic areas.

The best way to find those spots is with Google Maps. I say this because most of the time you’ll be writing about areas you haven’t a clue about.

For instance, what do you know about West Michigan?

I don’t know a single thing, myself, but one day I got a content writing job for a real estate company that was based there.

They needed four pages of content – sales, management, handyman, and an about us page. They had bare bones content when I first saw the site and their goal was to have 200 to 250 words.

Right away I knew that wasn’t going to cut it, not in the competitive real estate market of Michigan.

Now, I know nothing of Michigan other than it’s cold in the winter and they make cars there. With Google Maps, however, I can zoom in on key areas.

Thankfully for this site I knew that Grand Rapids was the city, so I typed that into Google Maps’ search bar and got this:

Grand Rapids will serve as our key local SEO area

Looks like a pretty big area, huh? Is there anything that might help me narrow my search down?

In this case, yes. On the current about us page it mentions properties in Eastlake as well…whatever that is.

No problem, let me find directions to Eastlake from Grand Rapids by using the dialogue box in the upper left-hand corner of Google Maps.

This is what I get:

Lots of people live around Grand Rapids, and we want to pull them in from search as well

Dang! Far from narrowing my search arrow, it’s actually expanded it.

Well, is there anything I can do, and is it really that bad?

Let’s zoom in and see if we can’t find the main suburb areas that are between these two metro areas. Perhaps there are some local SEO opportunities here.

Figure out your primary (red), secondary (blue), and out of the way (black) areas so that you know what locations your current local SEO campaign should focus on

Alright, so what I’ve done is circled various small towns, cities, or suburbs that are between these two locations.

Here’s the color breakdown:

Red: These are the primary areas that I’ll want to target. They’re closest to both Grand Rapids and Eastlake and they’re also on the water, which is likely a more populated area. That means more people will be searching from those areas and for those areas.

Blue: These are what I consider secondary areas. They’re a little further away and perhaps not as reliant on those two larger metro hubs that I’ve selected as my base. They are likely keying into search criteria based on both Grand Rapids and Eastlake, however, and I’m going to work off that.

Black: These are out-of-the-way areas that I probably won’t focus on too much…for now. If this was my own site or if I was a full-time employee for this company, I’d want this. It’ll tell me where I can direct my efforts months from now when much of the current geographic area is exhausted for me.

So at this point I’m going to write down all of those towns/cities/suburbs into a list. That will go right onto my content page so potential customers can see that we service a wide geographic area here in Western Michigan.

When you do a lot of handyman or cleaning services content, this stuff helps. People are in outlying areas and if you can include those areas on your page, Google will notice. That means your site gets clicked on more.

#4 Businesses with Reviews Soar Ahead on Local Searches

Businesses that have reviews are going to do a lot better than those that don’t, at least when it comes to Google search.

We know from an August Jayson DeMers post that “88% Of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.”

Sites that have reviews shoot up the SERP like no other. When it comes to local listings, this is doubly so.

Local listings are just the type of the iceberg. “We have a rich, blended page of results with multiple forms of paid adverts, organic results, news, images, local listings, and so on,” Marcus Miller told us in a September 4 Search Engine Land post called Local SEO Is Not An Island (Or At Least It Shouldn’t Be!).

The point is, you have a lot of ways to pull in your local SEO traffic. Reviews, however, are the best way.

There’s a lot more sections as Miller mentions in that post, and these include:

Sponsored results;
Reviews;
The map feature.

Many of those are now given to us in the “snack pack” size, which is also sometimes called the “local stack.” Here’s what that looks like:

Sites with the most reviews will get to the top of the Local SERP

I’m getting most of the local search features with this search for “Missoula restaurants,” though there’s no map.

As you can see, reviews are critical, and the restaurant with the best shows up first.

Something else that’s interesting is that the sponsored results on the right just point to restaurant guides and not an actual place to eat. So much for sponsored results, at least in this market!

Clearly, reviews are critical for local SEO. Businesses that want to succeed need to find ways to encourage their customers to leave reviews. If they can do that they’ll soar past competitors who can’t or won’t.

#5 Images Continue to Do Well in Local Search

I don’t read enough about how images can get you traffic and that’s a shame.

One way that gets my site tons of traffic is having images with good captions, good file names, and that are just plain useful.

One of the best posts I’ve seen for optimizing your images for title tags, alt text, and keyword variation was in April on SLR Lounge. It’s well worth a look.

The posts discusses a photography website and mentions that images can give your site a “significant boost.” The reason for this is that image results “use a different algorithm than organic search.” Because of this “you can potentially rank well in image searches for your keywords, even if you’re not doing so well in the organic results.”

That’s a pretty good tip, and it’s why I always have lots of images on this site. I go with a lot of Montana history on Big Sky Words and I have images that few others have.

Many of these I had to get from files at places like the library or the historical society. And you know what? When people click over to the “image” section of search, they find me.

Images are a great way to reach local searchers that are interested in seeing what they’ve been hearing about.

Sites specializing in events, history, activities, and especially the outdoors will benefit from this. Really, though, it’s so easy to take a picture and put it on the computer. It’s even easier to find an image elsewhere – or better yet, several images – and make a composite post with them.

It comes up in search, and Google notices this. That drives your site up in the rankings for those keywords and categories.

Don’t discount images – too many other sites do and it costs them local traffic and traffic from the larger surrounding areas.

**Conclusion: For Small Businesses, All SEO is Local**

Why Local SEO Is About to Become Even More Important was a June 25 post on Entrepreneur by Jayson Demers. He talks about how local SEO has grown a lot since the late-July 2014 Pigeon algorithm update.

Demers makes it a point to mention that “Google loves small businesses,” and may give them an edge in the rankings. I think this is great, for them and me.

Small businesses need agile and effective websites with content that draws in likely prospects.

You can do this through local SEO content that focuses on your unique niche, allowing you to move up in the rankings.

For some businesses, getting from page 3 to page 1 in the SERP could mean huge revenue boosts, and possibly the hiring of additional workers.

It all comes about because so many are looking on their phones for information, and Google keys in on their geo location and shows them business results closest to them.

That’s how we can get rid of our outsourcing problem with jobs and money going out of state, out of country.

That’s the power of the internet, and that’s what can be delivered when you harness the power of local SEO.

Is your site getting the local traffic that it deserves?

It will now, don’t you think?

Midweek Content Roundup #77

9/23/2015

This is the seventy-seventh post in an ongoing series of useful and interesting content that goes up each Wednesday.

Here you can find links to different SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, self-publishing, and other various articles from the past week that I think you might like.

This week there are 19 articles…enjoy!

Post removed 09/30/15

What Moz readers like

Content Marketing

Social Media Marketing

Self-Publishing

Is some of the advice in this article just a bit too much for you?

Don’t worry – I hear that a lot. That’s why Write to the Top is such a good book for you. It has the basics of website design and content marketing.

Yeah, we’re talking all your pages and what goes on them. Home page, your blog, the About Us page, and a whole lot more.

This book really is what you need if you’re just dipping your toe into these crazy waters we call marketing today. It’s available on Amazon and iTunes and I know you’ll find it helpful.

When Will You be Paid Your Createspace Royalties?

9/22/2015

Tired of waiting until a week before you’re paid to know what you’ll be paid?

Yeah, I hate that, usually because I’m way off.

Yep, I’m expecting $100 or so and it turns out to be $50.

That’s a real bummer. So…what can you do about it?

You should already know what Amazon will pay you in advance, as we’ve discussed this before.

That post has been quite popular recently so I decided to go ahead and look at Createspace and how much you get paid.

I went ahead and contacted Createspace and asked them what exactly I needed to do to figure out my payment.

I made sure to tell them I wanted to know how I could figure these payments in advance, like 60 days in advance. You can do that with Amazon.

This is what I learned.

First of all, it’s important to remember how the Createspace royalty schedule works.

You’ll always be paid at the end of this month for the sales you got last month.

So for this month what you’re being paid at the end of September is for the sales you got in August.

Here’s what you need to do to find your royalty payment information on Createspace.

Click “View Reports” under “My Account” on the left-side of your Member Dashboard.

Start here to figure out your Createspace royalties

Under “Reports” there are multiple tabs. In this case select “Royalty By Product.”

"royalty by product" is how you can figure out what Createspace will pay you

That brings up this screen here, which will have the information you need in order to figure out this month’s payment.

Remember, you’re often going to have your Amazon Createspace sales and your expanded distribution sales, which are from other retailers.

To get an accurate idea of what you’ll be paid from Createspace, you’ll need to add those numbers together. That final number will then be your deposit.

This is how you can figure out what you'll be paid from Createspace for book royalties

So, how do you figure out what you’ll be paid from Createspace next month?

When you want to go ahead and figure out what your payment next month will be you’ll just run the current month:

You’ll get the sales numbers based on your current sales that month.

This is handy for gauging what your payment will be next month. It also helps with budgeting.

If I got no more sales this month, then these amounts are what I'd be paid next month

I really think this is useful if you’re an author that’s not making a whole lot of money.

Rent, bills, food…all that stuff adds up, and not as quickly as your sales. When you can budget ahead you really know what money will be leftover for marketing, new covers, or perhaps a celebration bottle of wine for that new release.

I hope this post helps you plan ahead. Remember, I wrote a post that lets you figure your Amazon KDP payment in advance too.

When you know that and Createspace, wow, you’ll really be on top of your self-publishing game.

Good luck, and happy selling!

Amazon, Why are You Giving the Ending of My Book Away?

9/21/2015

Amazon is giving the ending of my book away.

Go, see for yourself.

It’s Colter’s Winter, the print version.

If you click on the ‘Look Inside’ and scroll all the way to the end you’ll see the very last page, the end of the story, and those big shiny words, “THE END.”

Amazon is giving the ending of my book away, and has been for 5 months

Why is Amazon doing this?

I wondered that when I came across this in June, and I emailed them. Little did I know at the time how unresponsive and downright unhelpful Amazon would be in this. I sure didn’t expect them to lie to me, but that’s what they did.

I’d like to take you through these past three months of emails between myself and Amazon representatives.

I say three months because they do not like to respond to this. They don’t like this issue brought up. I think that’s clear from the emails.

So, without wasting more time, let’s get started.

I don’t have the original email that I sent Amazon because I sent it on Createspace and used their on-site form.

I pretty much pointed out that the print version of the book had the ending showing, I didn’t like that, and I’d like it changed.

Here’s the response I got:

I was actually surprised to get this email as I’d sent in my original message weeks before. This is how I replied:

What are you referring to? If it's my book Colter's Winter that I wrote you about quite some time ago, I see no changes.

After that I got the following response:

That message was sent to me on June 24. The “resolution within 2 to 3 business days” came on August 21. Here’s what that looked like:

I promptly sent the following reply:

It's not acceptable, and the reason for this is that I can read the ending of the print book.

Please fix this, and do so in a timely manner this time.

I received the following reply:

I’m not sure what I said to that, but I did get the following email that same day:

I’m sorry, but I find it hard to believe that mega-retailing giant Amazon can’t do anything because “pages are automatically selected at random.”

After that I’m told my book will now show “the least amount of the book possible” and that this change is live on the site.

I went and checked, and the ending was still viewable.

This is the reply I sent:

I can't believe giving away the end of my thriller novel doesn't bother you. What is wrong with your company?

I got the same “we’ll get back to you in 2-3 business day” email.

Thanks, Amazon!

That 2-3 business day response finally came on September 21 and looked like this:

These things really come out of the blue. I could not believe I was getting the same run-around, especially when I looked at the book again and the ending was still there.

This is the response I sent:

Wow, I don't know why you're telling me that "it not showing the last pages of your book" when it's clear from this screenshot that readers can read the very last pages.

I'm not going to go back and forth with you on this anymore, Sarah.

What I will do is write up an enticing and interesting blog post about the hassles you've put me through, the run-around you've given me, and the sales you've likely cost me.

After I publish that I'll do my darndest to share it on social media in places where it will be seen by movers and shakers.

I know that doesn't matter to you, but it matters to me.

There's a lot of talk about how uncompromising and unresponsive Amazon is right now to authors. I'm going to go ahead and add fuel to that fire.

If you don't like that, well, I'm sorry. I don't like you lying to me like you've done just now.

Good day to you.

As usual, I got the “2-3 business day” response.

Well folks, I don’t know what to tell you – Amazon sucks.

I love making money from them, I love that they sell my books, but when something goes wrong, they can be quite slow.

Thankfully this isn’t a huge problem, but gosh, it is annoying.

So I’ll ask one more time…Amazon, why are you giving the ending of my book away?

Free Fiction Friday #80: The Shemitta Crash

9/18/2015

Frankfurt

Free Fiction Friday #80

Note: This is the eightieth post in Free Fiction Fridays.

These are short stories put up each Friday that you can read for free. By the next Friday the post will be taken down and a new one will go up.

Post removed 09/30/15

Website Conversion Goals: Using Social Media Metrics to Increase Your Website’s Impact

9/18/2015

Are you tired of your awesome content not giving you the results you want?

Hey, I know how that goes.

Half the time I write an awesome post or throw up something really cool on social media, and guess what? Nothing happens.

Do you know what I think the problem is?

I had no conversion goal in mind.

Conversion goals really come down to what you’re expecting from your webpage, blog post, or social media post/campaign.

Are you expecting more clicks to your website?

Is your goal to increase followers by as much as possible?

Are you trying to drive up ad revenue?

Is increasing brand awareness and loyalty what you’re going for?

Could there be a third-party website that you’re trying to direct people to?

These are all conversion goals that you want to think about when you’re crafting your content.

I could go into SEO aspects, such as the code for your page or http markup or something. The thing is – I don’t know that stuff.

No, what I do is write, so I need to make sure my written content is so good that I’m getting exactly what I want out of it.

So what do I want?

Honestly, I’m not always sure. Many times I fire off a post so quickly that not a whole lot of thought went into it.

I sure might have the passion, but perhaps I don’t have the direction.

That’s what conversion goals are for – to give your posts that direction. And oftentimes, just like keywords, you can take those quickly-written passion posts and change a few things around to meet your conversion goals.

Even better, you can use a wide-range of social media tools to measure the effectiveness of those posts on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other networks.

Are you tired of your awesome content not giving you the results you want?

Don’t worry – that’s about to change.

3 Stages of Your Website’s Conversion Process

Consider the varying aspects along the conversion process:

Event: The smallest unit of measurement is an event. Maybe the person got to your page or clicked over to your sign-up form. Lots of times you can’t measure these, although analytics at its barest often reflects these events.

Soft Conversion: This is kind of like getting to third base. You’ve enticed your potential customer, and they’re ready to buy. Often they don’t, and sometimes you can’t track this activity. I like to call these head nods – they liked your post or services page but aren’t ready yet.

Hard Conversion: The final sell is the hard conversion. This is your ultimate goal. Perhaps the customer came back to your site. The post you had up was floating around their head and they decided to give that services page a try. Now you’ve got a new buy, a new email sign-up, or whatever it is that you were setting out to do.

I got most of those ideas from a February post on Social Media Explorer. It was written by Morgan Lucas and has lots of good ideas for creating conversion goals and measuring them.

For me, the three steps in that sales funnel revolve around my website.

Well, I like to think they do.

If I’m selling services then yes, I want to impress someone enough that they’ll contact me for writing work.

When it comes to fiction or history, I want to impress them enough that they head over to Amazon to buy one of my books (or 30 of them).

When it comes to politics, I want to slowly build up trust and respect so that thoughts, opinions and beliefs begin to change.

I use my website as the main funnel for all that activity, with the primary drivers being the two blogs and the now closed 2014 political blog (it still gets a bit of traffic).

On my ESL website it’s just the blog that does the selling. For both sites, however, I have strong social media presences that allow me to get my word out far and wide.

Or at least…I think I do.

Do I really? I don’t know unless I can measure that. Let’s explore.

Measuring Metrics with Google

Alright, so a potential customer went through the various stages of the conversion process on your site and either bought something or didn’t.

How do you know?

Well, if you have a sale, you know they went through. What’s trickier is determining those that went through the initial stages – the micro conversion process, or events if you will – but didn’t get to the full conversion.

What happened?

This is where measuring your site’s metrics comes into play. When you can look at your metrics and analytics you can figure out why people are buying…or not.

Google Analytics is probably the best way to get started with conversion goals.

I know, I know…it’s analytics and numbers and graphs and spreadsheets and…shit – who wants to do that?

Well, successful people, that’s who.

Search Engine Journal has a great guide on getting started with Google Analytics conversions. It came out in 2012 but it’s still relevant. If you’re not using Google Analytics, check it out.

When it comes to measuring conversions via social media, you have lots of options:

Facebook: Ads manager is your default analytics source for this social network. It’s not as good as it could be, however. Page Insights is another measure, again, one that’s lacking.

Twitter: When it comes to this social network, groups and hashtags are really the way to expand your reach. But how do you measure it? Twitter unveiled their analytics measuring feature earlier this year, and it’s helpful. For more thorough insight use tools like Twitalyzer and Hashtagify.

Google+: This network is a little trickier to measure. Google Analytics makes the most sense when you’re starting out, as it’s already keyed to the network. For more insight check out Google+ Dashboard – Social Media Examiner will fill you in.

Is that all?

Nope. Simply Measured is a good tool that will allow you to track metrics and conversions on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and more.

Micro and Macro Conversions

Even the best social measurement tools aren’t going to help you if you’re site’s sales pitch is off.

Many times this comes about because of outdated content or a tired selling proposition.

Is your site telling visitors the exact opposite of what your marketing or social campaign is?

This happens a lot, and the reason is because we don’t change our web pages enough.

Crazy Egg had a great post in February that talked about websites’ missions not matching their conversion goals. It discusses About Us pages and landing pages and home pages most of all.

Yes, there’s a lot of info in that long post, but what stood out for me were the micro and macro conversions.

Micro conversions are the small steps that users have to go through in order to get to that final conversion, the macro conversion.

The article uses Amazon as an example.

Say you’re buying a book – you’re going to look at the cover, the reviews, and maybe you’ll even read the first few pages.

At that point you’ll have a pretty good idea if you want to buy or not.

So all those steps are the micro conversions – things your potential buyer needs to do so they’ll feel comfortable with your product.

Many times the buyer will stop after all the micro conversions have been done. In the case of the Amazon book, they might close out the browser and not buy. That doesn’t mean they won’t buy, however.

Thinking is a vital stage in the conversion process, and one we as marketers don’t consider enough.

People love to think about potential purchases, tossing them around in their mind for a bit. No problem!

If you’re doing everything in your micro conversion process right, that person will likely come back and buy that product. I’m sure you’ve gone back to Amazon to buy a book you were looking at before – we all have!

The trick is getting your page – whether it’s on Amazon or your site – the best it can possibly be.

It’s your ultimate selling machine, one that never sleeps. Oil it often.

Conclusion

Your social media presence is key for getting those conversions up, in my mind.

I’ve looked at my analytics and it’s clear that Facebook groups really give me a lot of action.

I like to think this is what causes the sales of my writing advice books, but I could be wrong. Maybe it’s people wandering in from Google. Having good content marketing SEO for all the blog posts going back 2 years really helps with this.

The point is, your website is a selling machine, and when you pair it with effective social media marketing, you can go up against the Big Boys in your niche or industry.

Conversion goals help with that, and measuring them is key. Don’t get frustrated if it takes awhile – keep at it, adjust your approach, and always measure results.

If you do that enough you’ll see your conversion rate go up. Isn’t it time to get started?

Midweek Content Roundup #76

9/16/2015

This is the seventy-sixth post in an ongoing series of useful and interesting content that goes up each Wednesday.

Here you can find links to different SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, self-publishing, and other various articles from the past week that I think you might like.

This week there are 16 articles…enjoy!

Post removed 09/30/15

Content Marketing

Social Media Marketing

Self-Publishing

Nothing you try is working. Still you do the same things, expecting different results. Wow, what a fucking waste of time!

Instead of puttering about and hoping things get better, take action. Get this book and blow past all the assholes that think you’re nothing. Show them who you are.

Get a whole lot more exciting content in my book Stand Out: Your 2015 SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing Guidebook. It’s on Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and many other places. Get the book, get ahead.

Free Fiction Friday #79: Soul Catcher

9/11/2015

Note: This is the seventy-ninth post in Free Fiction Fridays.

These are short stories put up each Friday that you can read for free. By the next Friday the post will be taken down and a new one will go up.

Post removed 09/30/15

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