Writing Articles

These 3 Content Marketing Ideas Got Old a Long Time Ago

11/9/2015

I’m so sick of the same bullshit passing for advice.

Well, it was advice – 2 years ago.

I’m talking about the silly posts that tell you how to get more traffic, more conversions, more followers and all the rest of it.

What a load of hooey.

Let’s take a look at some of this bad advice, or at least advice whose time has come.

A Free Gift

Jesus, not another one.

How many fucking pop-ups do you have to assault me with?

And haven’t you realized by now that I’m never going to open any of those stupid emails that you send? Not a fucking one.

Instead I’ll opt-out of that email the first email I get. That’ll make your day, won’t it?

I’m not interested in your free shit, pal.

Chances are good that this is the first time I’ve visited this site too, probably because I clicked a link in a social post.

Now you want to bombard me with offers? I don’t even know who the fuck you are!

Honestly though, why should I give a damn about you to begin with?

I’ve got every yahoo on all the big sites giving me a free guide or manual or start-up kit…what the hell do I need your shit for?

Free gifts do not work.

Sure, you can get a ton of useless sign-ups, but is that what you want?

A better bet might be going down to the corner and getting a $20 hooker – it’ll boost your ego just as much, and maybe a bit more.

Stop giving it away, damn it!

A Social Side Bar

Wow, you have a floating sidebar.

Maybe it’s even one of those Hello bar doo-hickeys.

Congratulations – now why the fuck should I care?

Oh, was it so I could share that mundane, pointless, obsolete advice you wrote, advice I might add that I probably already ran across two dozen times on sites better than yours?

Pal, give me a break.

I go to 16 sites each day for content and I do that all over my morning bowl of extra-dry oatmeal.

Do you think I have time for one more?

Well, sometimes I do. And you know what I do? I go right to my Google+ Communities to see what those guys are doing.

Yeah, I know them, even their spam.

I don’t know who the hell you are.

I will admit that I might share a bit of that content, however. I can just as easily do that with the social buttons above or below your post, however.

So if you think that fancy floating sidebar of social icons is going to do something for you, I’ve got news – it’s not.

Your Follower Count

Holy fuck, Eddie – get a load of this guy! He’s got 28 million followers!

Must be bought, Frank.

Hm…let me check his account…yep, Eddie– you nailed it! Fucker’s engagement level is shit!

I think that conversation between two knuckle-heads pretty much illustrates how important your follower count is to me.

Smart marketers will always check out your profile, and by that I mean scroll down to see how many people are liking or sharing your content.

The sheer amount of dumbasses buying likes and followers is mind-numbing. It’s mind-numbing because we know that Facebook and other networks will ding you for this.

Why?

Because just like Eddie said, the engagement level is shit. If you have lots of followers but not a single one can be bothered to engage with you, what use are they?

More, what message are you sending to me with that shit?

If you didn’t buy your followers and your engagement levels are still terrible, consider using some programs to cull your useless social media followers.

Far from them benefiting you, the just make you look silly.

Conclusion

So I just drummed the hell out of you. Do I have any tips?

Yes, right here:

Write good content;
Write content that people laugh to and nod to;
Write content that pisses people off;
Attack people that are being stupid or wrong;
Don’t apologize for your words;
Challenge authority;
Never back down in a fight.

If you can do that your content might be good. I was going to just stick with “write good content,” but let’s face it, you wanted more.

So there it is.

Write like I do. Write to relieve stress or anger or just brow-beat someone for their stupidity.

That’s how people learn. They don’t learn with the “great post” or tons of social shares.

They remember when they got the answer wrong, looked stupid, or made a mistake.

I hope this post made you learn something.

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5 Content Marketing Lessons from Roy Orbison’s Music

11/5/2015

2 Comments

How do you stand out from everyone else writing on the internet?

I think a lot of what we need to know is in the lyrics to this Roy Orbison song, “You Got It.”

Every time I look into your loving eyes

I see a love that money just can’t buy

It’s got that great timpani drum at the end to accentuate the point.

What we’re getting at here is that you’ll need someone that’s passionate about what they write. Can money buy that?

Yes, but it’s rare.

It’s rare to find those true experts in a field. Oftentimes they already have their own platform so buying their services isn’t an option.

Besides, they’re own voice is so firmly entrenched that you just can’t replicate it.

The same goes for style and tone. It’s why we like them – they’re different, and sound that way too.

Roy Obrison was different.

He grew up in Texas, born in 1936.

In the early 1950s Orbison and his high school buddies got paid $400 for playing at the dance. He knew he could make some money doing what he loved.

Johnny Cash came through Odessa in 1955 and Roy Orbison met him. Cash told him to head on over to Memphis to talk with Sam Phillips at Sun Records.

People believed in him.

Why?

They heard something they liked.

Well...not all did.

Even though Johnny Cash liked Roy Orbison, Sam Philips wasn’t interested in recording him.

Things didn’t work out too well after that and by 1958 Orbison had quit performing. His prized Cadillac was repossessed as well.

By the 1970s Orbison was nearly forgotten and he “began to doubt his talents,” according to biographer Ellis Amburn.

Orbison got his real break when others began to use his work. It was the 1980s and films needed songs. One such was Blue Velvet.

Orbison had refused when David Lynch asked to use the song but the director used it anyways. It brought the singer a whole new level of notoriety.

A short time later Orbison joined a “super group”, one of the first of its kind.

That led to a great Roy Orbison song, “Handle With Care.”

Both Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty co-wrote the song, performed backing vocals on it, and also did some of the instrumentals.

Both were members of the Traveling Wilburys along with Orbison.

The band also contained George Harrison and Bob Dylan. They’d formed in 1988 and put together “Handle with Care” in May. It was released in October and helped the debut album reach #3.

This is a really desperate song.

…battered around.

…I’m being shot down.

…situation’s tolerable.

Wow, why be motivated by this depressive?

Shit, I’ve got enough problems today – why the hell do I need yours?

Alas, if you say something like that you get a response like this:

I’m so tired of being lonely.

I still have some love to give

Won’t you show me that you really care.

Damn, that’s pathetic. Let's begin our lessons.

#1 Everybody’s got somebody to lean on

If you’re putting out whiny and “my life sucks” posts, don’t expect anyone to give a damn about you.

Your blog is not the place for that, nor is it the place to go a month without a post just because things are “not going well for you.”

Do you think anyone cares?

Sure, maybe if you’re a big-name blogger with thousands of Twitter followers and millions of likes on Facebook.

But you’re not that guy. He’s a somebody and you’re a nobody.

So please find someone to lean that’s offline or in an online group or something. Don’t expect your visitors to have sympathy for you. They care about themselves and have tons of their own problems.

Guess what – tons of people are catering to them and trying to solve their problems. If you’re just bitching about yours, prepare for little engagement and hardly any interest in what you’re doing.

“End of the Line” is another good song:

You can sit around and wait for the phone to ring

Waiting for someone to tell you everything

Sit around and wait around for what tomorrow brings

This song has a few points as well, and brings us to our final point.

#2 It’s alright if you live the life you please

It’s alright to do what you want, just don’t expect anyone to give a shit.

Take my Montana blog.

I love reading about Montana politics and Montana history. Guess what? Hardly anyone else does.

If I put up a new post it’ll take about 2 to 3 days to get up to 200 views.

If I put out a post like this, one on marketing or some such, it’ll get that in a day or sometimes in a few hours if I’m lucky.

I think you need to realize this, both for that “passion” area of yours and that business area of yours.

What’s more, it’s alright if your ideas and your points and your corresponding headings and headlines are similar to what’s been said before.

Again, don’t expect anyone to give a damn.

We’ve seen that before – you need to woo us.

Roy Orbison wooed us in '89 when he was out on his own. It's a good song...and then there it is, about 1:15 into it:

I live, my life, to be, with you

No one can do the things you do

That timpani drum comes back in as if to accentuate the point.

The song has 3 points, really. Let’s go over them.

#3 Anything you want, you got it

This tells your users that whatever they think is relevant, you’ll report on.

When someone says some point that you have no idea about, nod your head and make a notation – that’s what you should be working on next.

Have you heard about this new thing that’s not that new but which just heard about? Wow, it can…

People like to read that stuff because guess what – they had no idea what it was either!

Just because Chatty-Chet in the comments has to be a know-it all doesn’t mean you can’t benefit. Most of the times he’s too busy chatting to write a blog himself, or doesn’t want to use his real name.

His loss is your gain. Take that information and use it to get ahead.

#4 Anything you need, you got it

This tells your user that whatever information they’re looking for, you have it already.

The key is content curation.

If you’re going about each week and collecting the pertinent articles, pasting the links, and then categorizing them so they make sense, then gosh darn, you’ll sound smarter than everyone else.

It doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be smarter (you have to read them and digest the information, after all), but it does mean you can sound good in conversations.

Using Ctrl+F helps a lot.

If you have a helpful guidebook that allows you to search, wow, you can pull up all kinds of stuff.

Take Instagram.

Let’s say you’re arguing over the best hashtags to use on Instagram. If you can pull up past articles to bolster your point you’ll fluster the other person and sound better.

Wow, your authority is going up (and maybe your asshole-quotient as well).

#5 Anything at all, you got it

This tells your user that any fucking question they have, you have the answer for it.

Maybe you don’t know. So what – they don’t know that.

Go to Google or Buzz Sumo or your curation guidebook and pull up that answer. Then write some opinions in there of your own and tell it to ‘em.

Make sure you agree when they call you a dumbass as well.

Yep, you’ve got a point. At the same time, check out this article that bolsters my point (makes you look like a prick) while also pointing out something helpful we both missed (and which will get me that sale instead of you).

Doing things like that is beneficial.

Conclusion

“You Got It” came out in January 1989.

Orbison played it live once, in Belgium on December 4 of that year.

Two days later he died of a heart attack. He was 52 years old.

The film Pretty Woman came out in March 1990 and rejuvenated interest in Roy Orbison.

Sadly, he’d already been dead for more than a year by that point.

The song from the film found new life. Orbison was awarded a Grammy for it in 1991, posthumously of course.

The titular song had been released in 1964 and reached #1 for three weeks. It was the high point of his career.

For the next 25 years he kept at it, however, high points and low…mostly low.

Blogging is much the same. It often feels like nothing’s happening then suddenly you find success…typically when others catch up with what you were doing.

Yeah, you’re already writing some good stuff. Keep at it – it won’t be long

2 Comments

Big Sites Can’t Control Comments. What Can They Control?

10/27/2015

7 Comments

Wow, big sites are powerless in the face of spam commenters.

Take a look at these commenting sections from today’s Social Media Examiner and Content Marketing Institute posts:

On those first two we see Social Media Examiner. They don’t even bother to come in and clean that stuff out – it’ll be there months from now.

Content Marketing Institute has a bit more respect for itself.

They at least took the offending comment down, as you can see:

So that site knows they have a problem and maybe they’re working on it.

Honestly, I don’t think so, however. Joe Pulizzi would much rather blame his problems on Disqus than look to his own choices.

I don’t use Disqus so I don’t have this issue. What’s more, Weebly sends me an email each time a comment is posted on my site.

Since I’m not 21st-century challenged, I can click on the link to the post from that email and go ahead and delete that spam comment.

Why can’t big name sites do this?

I’ve spoken a lot about spam comments and blog comments in the past. You might remember my post Why are My Blog Comments Going to Your Spam Folder?

That was back in January 2014 when Copyblogger was having issues.

We all remember how they just ditched their commenting section. I ditched them, haven’t looked back either.

God, how silly you look when you can’t control spam comments.

This argument that you don’t have the staff to monitor comments is silly at best and lying to me at worst.

Those comments I show above appear on this post, this post, and this post.

Each of those posts has about 5 comments or less. You’re telling me you can’t monitor that?

A fucking intern that’s still drunk from the night before can monitor that!

Hell’s bells, what a mess.

You go to these sites each day expecting them to give you authoritative advice. Sadly, they can’t even get their own house in order.

It’s like going to a security store to buy a home security system. Alas, the police are there because someone broke into the place the night before.

There’s a huge loss of trust and respect for sites when they allow this problem to happen. Worse, when they do nothing they breed resentment.

I expect more from these sites, a lot more.

Will I get it?

No, instead I’ll get another spam comment tomorrow.

P.S. – Please take note that our three posts today have 1,400 Twitter shares, 924 Twitter shares, and 322 Twitter shares respectively.

They have lots of social shares but no one comments.

Why is that?

Think about that, think about it a lot.

7 Comments

7 Ways to Write Stronger Conclusions that Encourage Discussions

10/25/2015

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Back in May Neil Patel told you 9 simple ways to write stronger introductions.

Last month he hired me to write a follow-up to that.

Yes, Neil Patel hires writers to write under his name. He's said as much here and here.

The reason you’re reading the post here and not on one of his sites is because he decided to stop email communication with me, or at least his staff did.

After two weeks of that I sent an invoice, hoping to get paid for the work I’d done. I was paid, though not a single email came with that.

Yep, I’m not worth shit to Neil Patel or his staff.

So you can read the post he commissioned here. After all, he never paid for this one or communicated with me after I sent the draft.

His loss is your gain.

It’s been 5 months now since you saw “Patel’s advice,” and if you followed that advice you’ve noticed the results.

What might get you more results is writing stronger conclusions. More than that, however, you’ll write conclusions that immediately spark discussion.

The benefits of this are many:

Comments appear on your posts quickly, and not just the “great post” variety.

Readers become engaged, not only commenting but sharing the post on social media so their friends can read and comment too.

Because of this social engagement, your posts float higher on the networks’ radar and you get a whole new level of engagement.

All of this drives up your traffic for that post, and your site in general. On top of it you’re exposing a whole new audience to your brand and message.

Those are all things that will happen when you write strong conclusions that encourage discussions.

So how can you go about doing that right now, with the post that you’re currently working on?

I’ve put together these 7 ways you can get those conclusions working better, and this is what they are.

#1 Keep your final sentence short

I love short sentences. They’re easily understood. They get the point across. They make the sale.

Sadly, too many writers can’t cut down their words. Long, garbled sentences crop up. Readers become distracted. They click away or close the window entirely.

The thing is – readers don’t want to work. They want you to tell them what the answer is. Your conclusion should do that.

#2 Say something off-the-wall

Introductions are all about creating hooks and pulling readers in. Why can’t your conclusion do that too?

Conclusions can do that, and if yours are you’ll get more comments. The trick is saying something unusual, throwing people for a curve.

Now, remember – you’re not making something up or coming from left field here. Your article should have already laid the groundwork for what your conclusion will be.

It’s time to reassemble all the pieces, all the talking points, and put them together so they make sense.

#3 Don’t Rehash

Your conclusion is a great place to remind readers of what you just talked about. Please, though - don’t tell it all to me again.

Too many times we see conclusions that are nothing more than the post we just read...just a lot shorter. I can’t help but think this was the original outline, one the author decided to just copy/paste because they were tired of writing.

Does that mean you shouldn’t rehash at all? No, I think you need to do some, and 3 bullet points is often enough.

Remember, today many people just scan articles and don’t read. Another thing they do is jump right down to the conclusion - if it’s clearly titled - and read that.

I do this a lot when I see an article I know I won’t analyze but will share on social media. The conclusion usually makes it clear if there’s anything useful there or not.

Consider that when you’re on at the rehash stage.

#4 Do a short recap

Don’t rehash, recap.

We know that today’s articles should be longer so that they do better in the rankings.

That’s great as far as Google is concerned, but how about readers? Most like it, but to be completely honest, sometimes I forget everything I read in those monster articles.

That’s why conclusions are a great way to recap what you just spent 1,000 or 1,500 or more words talking about.

People tend to forget…if they read all that to begin with. Many will just scan the title and subheadings before landing on the conclusion.

These readers are expecting a recap of those 1,000 or more words, and you’d better have it for them.

Don’t worry – a paragraph is more than enough. Actually just a sentence for each point is good, if even that.

One of the easiest ways is to simply copy/paste your headings down to the conclusion, make one sentence of each, and then form them into relevant paragraphs.

Doing something like that is a great way to work your conclusion around your post. It also could cause you to realize the strong point you want to make, which you can then do.

The last sentence of the conclusion is really where to give your reader that sentence, so do it strongly and in a way that tells them to comment.

#5 Keep it Short

When people see a title saying “conclusion” they get excited.

Yes, the end of the article is finally here!

Actually, if that’s what many of your articles are like, it’s probably not good. Readers should feel sorry to see the ending come up, or at least surprised. You want to keep them reading.

Your conclusion is therefore the one spot you have when they start licking their lips, thinking “alright, this is the good part.”

And it is. It’s where you put forth your strongest argument. You’re trying to make the best point possible, the one that says without a doubt that you know what you’re talking about and everyone else that’s spoken on this subject better stop and listen.

Your conclusion needs to have impact. You can put an exclamation mark at the end of it, but that doesn’t mean it has impact. To truly give your conclusion impact you have to put some feeling into it.

Put some heart into it, put some soul! Really put yourself and your ideas out there strongly so people know you’re passionate, informed, and mean what you say.

That’s what respect is built upon, people with passion and conviction and the willingness to express it. When you’re able to pull that off, people will listen, and they’ll start talking.

#6 Use the word “you”

It’s so important to talk directly to your reader.

The reader is there, sitting right beside you. They’ll nod when you get a good point in, and smile at the right moments. Your words are encouraging, close to home, and speak to their wants and needs.

Using the word “you” really tells your reader that you are talking to them and them alone. You want to keep them thinking that, so don’t start bringing in “they” or “we” so much.

“You” is a strong word and conveys trust and friendship. Those are feelings you’ll need to impart in your conclusion. Doing so will give reader the confidence they need to put their name on a comment, and their thoughts and feelings as well.

#7 Repeat the problem

One of the main reasons you read articles on the internet is to solve your problems.

Oftentimes you’ll click onto a cool article, start reading, nod your head a bit, and then forget what you came for.

This happens a lot when longer articles delve into various issues, or God forbid, uses sub-points (I’m talking to you, Neil).

Go ahead and repeat the main problem that your introduction laid out. The recap will have explained how this problem could be solved. Now’s the time to remind your reader that the problem existed, but you just took care of it for them.

Doing this right before the last, strong sentence of your conclusion builds up that trust again. Before your reader came to you, they had a big problem. Now you solved that.

It’s time to let them know how, why, or what else you’ll do for them. Conclusions like that encourage discussion.

Conclusion

If you’re not writing your conclusion well you’re denying yourself potential customers, subscribers, leads, and sales.

That’s right – your conclusion is the moment when people decide if they’ll buy or not, comment or not, or whatever it is that you’re going for with this particular post.

Readers of your blog aren’t thinking about conversions, but you are.

When you can write a strong conclusion you’re making it so much easier for that person to hit the “buy” button.

Isn’t it time to make that happen more often?

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Serving Up the 3 “Cons” of Content Marketing

10/22/2015

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I worked in a lot of restaurants in my time.

Mainly this was when I was going to college.

Also, quite a bit when I was kicking around between college and deadbeat-dom.

Yeah, restaurants suck and they lead you nowhere…unless you’re lucky and wake up and head back to school.

That’s what I did and now here I am, enlightening you each and every day.

Don’t think I didn’t learn some lessons while working in those restaurants, however.

Yeah, I can cook a bit and I’m a damn fine dishwasher, but there are other lessons as well. These pertain to life and money, success and achievement.

They also pertain to content, like the kind you throw up on your site each day.

Let’s take a look at some content marketing lessons that come from my restaurant experience. I call them the 3 "cons", and I think you’re already acquainted with ‘em.

Consistency

Back in 2004 I was working as a dishwasher in a restaurant in Helena called the Silver Star Steak House. It was a fancy place, owned by a millionaire-developer.

One Sunday afternoon we had a staff meeting. The manager, a guy named Mike that’d managed some fancy places in Chicago, really laid into the cooks.

“Last week I saw an old friend of mine come in,” Mike said, “he ordered a steak and I asked him how it was.”

“The best steak I’ve ever had,” the man replied.

“Well, Mike said, continuing the story, “that same old friend came in this week and I asked him how his steak was.”

“Probably the worst I’ve ever had,” the man said.

Mike let that hang out there for a moment, let the air fill with it.

What the hell? The cooks must have thought, for surely they couldn’t understand why this guy would like the steak one week and not the next.

“We have a problem with consistency,” Mike said, looking at the lead cooks. “Some nights we cook this way, some nights we cook that way.” He frowned, crossed his arms. “Why the hell are we not doing it the same way all the time?”

No one had an answer to that, but I don’t think we had anymore problems with old friends complaining about steaks.

Lesson #1

The lesson here is that you need to be consistent with your content, whether it’s delivered steaming hot on a plate or fresh on the blog roll that morning.

People come to you for a reason – they know what to expect. There’s habit there, comfort, and trust.

Don’t fuck that up by getting all saucy, changing things up, or altering your routine.

And for God’s sake – if you’ve got more than one guy on the content line, make sure they know the policies and procedures so that everything coming off that line is the same.

Consistency: people expect it.

Continuity

Back in 2002 I was working at a place called HuHot here in Missoula.

It’s one of those Asian grills where they cook the food right out in front of you. Pretty good, pretty healthy, and very popular.

One day I was working in the back, doing the prep work. One task was to cook rice and we always had three large pans of rice going at anytime.

Well, that day I forgot to do them for some reason. Around 11 AM one of the servers walks back into the kitchen.

“Greg, where’s the rice?”

I gave her a strange look, said nothing, and walked over to the rice cooker. I popped the lid, expecting to feel the assault of steam that happened whenever it was opened.

There was nothing, just a stainless steel machine’s empty innards staring back at me.

“Uh…” I likely said, though I can’t remember – I’m sure I’ve blocked most of this painful memory away.

“Oh God, don’t tell me you didn’t cook any!” the server said.

“I’ll have it done in 20 minutes!” I shouted as she stormed back to the main area of the restaurant.

Another server came back a short time later and put it well.

“HuHot running out of rice is like McDonald’s running out of fries.”

Don’t let your website run out of fries or rice, like I did that day. I got the stuff done and most of the day went fine. But how do you think those first 20 to 30 people felt, the ones that didn’t get any rice?

They’d wanted rice, they’d been expecting it. After all, it’s an Asian restaurant!

Well, that day there was no rice. Their sense of wellbeing was surely shaken, their faith in the restaurants ability to get the job done.

Lesson #2

Continuity is vitally important for your site. One definition of it is “the unbroken and consistent existence or operation of something over a period of time.”

What would happen if you came to this site on a Wednesday and there was no Midweek Content Marketing post up?

I’m sure you have, maybe before 9…sometimes 10 if I’m running real slow.

But what if it was 6 PM or approaching midnight, no post – then what?

You’d feel robbed, wouldn’t you? And then to have no explanation? That server that day could tell those customers what I’d done wrong, and she could even blame me.

What will your users do when they come to your site and things are not as they should be? Who do you think they’ll blame? How long before they’ll come back?

When you lose continuity you lose trust. Don’t let that happen.

Confidence

In 2003 I was working at a small Mexican restaurant in downtown Missoula called El Cazador.

It’s a popular place, one run by some native Mexicans. I knew someone that worked there and got a job.

I quickly wished I hadn’t, and I wasn’t the only one.

Right away when I got in there I was shocked by how small the kitchen area was. I was also shocked by how little information the people working there gave me on what to do.

They kind of expected that I’d know my way around a restaurant kitchen, but the thing is, I had no ideas about a Mexican restaurant kitchen.

I lost confidence in my own abilities and getting heckled by the owner on my ability to cut an onion didn’t help any.

That first Friday on the line I couldn’t seem to do anything right. At one point the more experienced cook had to jump in and take over, and I was just doing the small stuff.

After that it was obvious that I wasn’t going to make it. A few days later I wasn’t even on the schedule.

There was no firing, I just wasn’t assigned to work. A week later I came back in and got my paycheck and that was that.

Lesson #3

If you’re not confident then others can see it, feel it, and maybe even taste it. It rubs off on everything you do.

Maybe it’s that you’re confident but no one else is confident in your abilities,or at least your abilities at the moment.

Two routes there: get better or quit.

Maybe you won’t have the option to get better, like I didn’t have one at the Mexican restaurant. That’s not true though – I could have spoken up and said, “damn it, I can do this so let’s stop fucking around and get this job done!”

But I didn’t. Instead I hung my head low and walked out.

It was an option I had and I took it. Is it one you have, and do you want to do the same? Should you do the same?

I don’t know, but if you’re asking that question you’re normal. Not giving into it means you’re not normal. It means you’re strong.

Conclusion

Yes, I’ve worked in some restaurants. I’ve also taken my knocks and learned from them.

I’m sure you’ve taken some knocks as well, whether in content marketing, some dead-end job years ago, or maybe even in your personal life.

Figure out what you learned from those experiences and how those lessons can help you with internet marketing, SEO, social media sharing, or anything else that you’re doing on a daily basis.

Consistency, continuity and confidence – master them.

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Shopping Cart Abandonment: What We Know, What’s Still a Mystery, and What You Can Do About It

10/11/2015

0 Comments

You’re sick of it.

You’re sick of people spending all that time on your site, filling up their shopping cart with your awesome products, and then just skipping out on you.

You’re sick of it.

You’ve searched online, looked at all the posts on why online shopping carts are abandoned, but still it happens.

Are you to just confine yourself to a 20% or 40% conversion rate?

Will you always lose 60% to 80% of your customers at that final handshake?

Is closing the deal something that will always be fleeting, never a reality?

Stop thinking like this!

Baymard Institute took a look at shopping cart abandonment rates in a post last year. It lists some big companies having issues with this and it goes back to 2006.

For instance, IBM has had a 68% shopping cart abandonment rate so far this year. In 2014 the rate was 67%.

Clearly if a big company like IBM is having problems then it’s a problem we need to address.

The good news is that websites large and small are overcoming shopping cart abandonment and they’re doing so in a variety of ways each and everyday.

Let’s discuss some of the ways they do this, point out some of the success stories, and show you how you can overcome this hurdle.

You’re sick of your shopping cart situation.

Don’t worry, it’s about to get a whole lot better.

#1 People Abandon Carts Because They’re Comparison Shopping

According to the BI Intelligence Systems report, 57% of people abandoning shopping carts do so because they’re not ready to buy. Web Strategies reported shopping cart abandonment at 59% in May.

We’ve all done this – you see an item you like, take it through to the last point in the checkout process, and then close that window out on your browser.

Why do we do this?

Simple – we wanted to get an idea of the total cost so we could compare that to other retailers.

People love to comparison shop online. We got a good sense of that in June when Shopzilla’s parent company acquired PriceGrabber.

Not sure what those sites are?

PriceGrabber was getting 1.35 million unique visitors in May and Shopzilla was getting 774,000.

The largest comparison shopping site “in terms of traffic,” Don Davis, editor of Internet Retailer tells us, is NexTag, which had 1.53 million unique visitors that month.

Perhaps visitors see your site. They check out what you’re selling, look at the final cost with shipping, and then close out to go to a bit site like that.

According to Khalid Saleh over on Marketing Profs, “37% of shopping cart abandoners were just browsing anyway.”

If they don’t come back chances are good they found a better deal. Now your task is to figure out how you can have the best deal so you get that shopper back.

After all, if they realize you have the best price, you’ll get that sale.

How can you do that? Focus on that question a lot this quarter – how can you get that customer back when the go comparison shopping elsewhere?

Honestly, though – many people are just looking. And to be even more honest, is shopping cart abandonment a problem or just part of your sales funnel?

I’ve got new, folks – shopping cart abandonment is part of your sales funnel. It’s a way for people to determine what the actual price is going to be.

Still, this doesn’t make it any easier when they abandon you. How can you get that sales funnel working so that actual price doesn’t scare the customer away, but brings them back to your site in the end?

Khalid Saleh offers quite a few tips to get over this, though most are about the same as what everyone else says.

Being transparent about pricing and fees, making your shopping cart easy to access, and showing off return policies…these are all things that could help you.

#2 Your Online Check Out Process is a Drag

No one likes standing in line, whether it’s at the supermarket or on the computer at home.

But when you force a customer to go through multiple screens during the online checkout process, your chances of getting that final sale go down significantly.

Why is this?

It’s a great question, but hard to answer. One way to do it is by studying analytics so you know where in your sales funnel people lost interest. One group that loses interest a lot are young people, or millenials.

According to a July post by Hi Conversion, Millennials are one of the worst for shopping cart abandonment. In the post these are the reasons for that:

Shipping costs;
Pricing;
Lack of product information;
Insufficient funds.

Despite this, we know that Millennials do more online shopping than just about anyone. What’s more, they do that on mobile.

While 40% of shoppers use their mobile device to shop online, 60% of Millennials do.

The only answer that Hi Conversion has is to buy their analytics software so you can better study what happened.

To their mind, most shopping cart abandonment occurs somewhere in your sales funnel. There’s a leak somewhere, and the customers are flowing right out of it. Can you identify that and fix it?

It’s worth a look, and analytics software to study your sales funnel is a good idea.

#3 Your Shipping Options Suck

Wow, I was just about to use your site to get that awesome thing I needed, especially since it’s only $9.99!

Now that I’m on the shipping page of your checkout, however, I see that it’ll be $17.98.

No thanks, I’ll find someone else.

There’s a reason so many people leave your shopping cart when they get to the shipping section – it’s too expensive!

In 2014 BI Intelligence Systems, through UPS, put out a report that gave us some hard numbers on shopping cart abandonment.

In that report, 58% of respondents say that shipping costs drove up their purchase price so much that they abandoned the sale altogether.

Maybe it’s best to blame Amazon. After all, the online retail giant offers free shipping on orders over $35 and free shipping to anyone in their Kindle Prime program.

How can you compete with that?

You do that with your products, and you had that sale. The problem is that a third-party is costing you that sale.

What can be done about this?

Again, look at your sales funnel. Right now you have the price that person wanted, but your shipping is killing you. Obviously that’s a concern.

Is it the only concern? I hear this “shipping prices suck” thing a lot. If it’s so bad, however, why are others buying the products?

If you have zero sales for that particular product then you might very well have a shipping problem.

If, however, sales are just slow or sluggish – but they do exist – then perhaps the issue is not the shopping cart at all but the sales funnel again.

Why are some people buying while others are not? Here is where your email list can come into play. Why not send out a short survey – please 1 to 2 pages with big text and lots of white space – to gauge what customers think?

How about offering some kind of discount if people fill out that questionnaire?

These are options, but they only get to the people that already bought the product.

Maybe looking at the competition will help. I personally look at a lot of reviews on Amazon, both for products I might buy and for products that are competing with mine.

You can learn a lot from customer reviews, both in why they bought something and why they didn’t buy the other guy. What’s so great about Amazon is that the “other guy” is listed right there on the page in the “Also Bought” section.

It’s true that your shopping cart abandonment could be caused by high shipping costs – it’s likely that some customers are going because of that, and you probably can’t get them back.

But what about the others? Start figuring that out – I bet you’ll be surprised at what you can do to change this, and in a way that doesn’t have you groveling to the shipping companies.

#4 Your Site Doesn’t Feel Secure

Do customers feel like they’re in a back alley when they visit your checkout area?

Nothing is going to kill a sale faster than a lack of trust. More and more, that lack of trust is coming about because of security issues.

Forbes reported in January that lists numerous companies and the data breaches they experienced in 2014.

Some of the highlights, if you want to call them that, include:

Michaels: 2.6 million customer accounts hacked
Target: 40 million customer accounts hacked
Home Depot: 56 million customer accounts hacked
JP Morgan Chase: 83 million customer accounts hacked

Wow, those are some big numbers, but guess what? They were all brick and mortar stores that saw those thefts.

And do you know what? It doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter if these credit card thefts happen in a physical setting or online. People are wary, and if your site seems at all sketchy they will abandon that cart.

We’re living in hyper-vigilant times where security is a top concern. Even something as simple as adding a PayPal logo to your site can assure customers, helping them get to that shopping cart.

Most online shoppers have seen a PayPal transaction screen by now, so that option is a good one. It’s not the only one, however, and here are some other ideas that may help.

According to the BI Intelligence Systems just 28% of people will abandon a shopping cart if their preferred payment method isn’t offered.

Can you offer more payment options? Even a Visa/Mastercard option – or more – could increase sales.

Some great tips on what to do about shopping cart abandonment can be found on Business 2 Community. According to them, “only 8% of retailers proactively offered a click-to-chat box on their site.”

I’m not a big fan of those, but when you’re going through a bit hassle in the sales process, maybe it’s good to have.

I’m not sure it’d help those businesses anyways. B2C always tells us that 73% of businesses “failed to contact the customer in any way after the cart was abandoned.”

Is it any wonder that just 3% of online shoppers make it through the checkout process to buy something?

The tips that the site offers are after you experience shopping cart abandonment are:

Send a Follow-Up Email;
Reach Out and Tweet Someone;
This Above All Else: Be Proactive.

It’s all about showing your customer that you too are human. Being standoffish isn’t going to do that, so reach out to customers, ask them what’s up, and see if you can get that sale back on track.

Conclusion

Shopping carts are going to be abandoned, it’s just a part of doing business online.

If other people are still buying that product, however, is it really the shopping cart’s fault entirely?

Could it be you have issues with your sales funnel? Look at the competition and see how they overcome their shopping cart abandonment issues to rank higher than you, sell more than you.

Are competing sites getting the jump on you with shipping options? And is this really an issue for serious shoppers?

Is your site leaving people feeling a bit sketchy and insecure? Security is on people’s minds these days, and even the slightest question could hurt you.

Shopping carts aren’t abandoned in those 3 to 4 pages of your checkout process – they’re abandoned when people begin to question you.

Are you the best for them? Can you give them the best price? Are you good enough or should they go with one of the Big Boys?

Think about these things so that you can overcome shopping cart abandonment. You’re sick of your shopping cart situation. Take these ideas and change it.

0 Comments

Analyzing 18 Different Social Media, SEO, and Marketing Sites for Content

10/6/2015

3 Comments

Are the best sites really the best?

Over the past several days I’ve been looking at the tops sites in social media marketing, SEO, and content marketing.

The reason is I want to see which ones have the freshest content.

Why does this matter?

I like to know which sites I should visit on the weekend. Those are my favorite – the weekend sites.

I’m not a big fan of the 9-to-5, and sites that stick to that schedule start to bore me.

I like a guy, or gal, that can put some time in on a Sunday to get a killer post out…or at least use some tools to make it look like they did.

Yep, you can automate that shit.

So why do big sites like Search Engine Land have no content on the weekend?

Huh, weird.

We’ll get to some more observations like that in this post. I won’t pull any punches, I’ll tell you what I think.

When it’s all said and done I think you’ll have a few new sites on your bookmark bar.

#1 Moz

One of the best sites for SEO advice is Moz. It was SEO Moz when I first started an account back in April 2013, but little has changed since then.

Yep, you still get very complicated articles that give you advice you’re not quite sure what to do with.

On top of this, the comments are very high-brow. What I mean by this is that you’re so intimidated by the earliest commentors that you don’t bother leaving a comment.

Those that do leave comments are very professional and have great advice. The others are often third-world types that are doing the “great post” stuff.

Those third-world type comments aren’t the worst, however. No, for the worst comments you need look no further than Gianluca Fiorelli.

Commenting whore would be a bit light, I find, as this guy feels putting a blog-post-for-a-comment is acceptable. Worse, his long diatribes actually scare would-be commentors away.

If you’d like to avoid the extremely popular part of the site, go to YouMoz. This area of Moz is totally underrated. They have great content and it gets few shares and fewer comments.

I’ve done a guest post on YouMoz and I’m very thankful for that. I think you can do one too, if you have a good idea and are willing to make a few edits.

Lastly, Rand Fishkin is on this site and he does a great job on Whiteboard Friday. I know all of our hearts drop on the days he has a sub.

Aside from that, he has his own blog linked to on the site, though I haven’t read a post there in more than a year.

Speaking of Rand, the guy’s quite lazy.

One post a week?

Folks, there are many, many people working their asses off and putting out content that’s 10 times better than when Fishkin manages each week.

Stop allowing him to keep coasting by on his name and past accomplishments, please!

All in all, great tips and several studies each year. Oh yeah, quality high-end advice from Dr. Pete too, though it’s sometimes hard to understand.

Did I mention you get some of the best updates here? I’d say Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land is the only one that gets the beat on them most times.

Wow, I talked up the rating on this site.

Comments: Yes
Stars: 4/5

#2 Boost Blog Traffic

This is a kick-ass site…when it feels the need to put up a new post.

Long-time readers will remember how I took this site off my bookmark bar in the summer of 2013 in frustration. They’d gone about 2 months with no post!

They’re a lot better now, going about 2 to 3 weeks, on average.

Does the content make up for that slacking off? After all, there are plenty of writers willing to write for that site?

I don’t think it does make up for it, to be completely honest.

I do like that you can say that in the comments, and I’ve put my thoughts there. I don’t like how many of the comments are rather kiss-ass, sucking-up, or generally brown-nosing in character.

Oh well, that’s nothing new.

What is new is the slant you’ll get on this site. The owner, Jon Morrow, is disabled and in a wheelchair. So he has a different perspective. It’s worth checking out, but I don’t know how long you’ll put up with their lack of fresh content.

Comments: Yes
Stars: 3/5

#3 Quick Sprout

Neil Patel runs this site, and it’s a good one. I say that for a couple reasons.

First, the content is super long. I like that, but I’ll admit right now that the content can be too long. Sometimes even I’m turned off by how long they can be.

Next, the content is link-heavy. What I mean by this is you get lots of links. What’s great about this is you learn about new sites, and you get facts. Yeah, Patel is an expert on anchor text and knows how to couple long-tail keywords with relevant and timely facts. It’s effective.

Finally, it was one of the first sites I began reading quite some time ago, maybe 2014 when I started to get serious. Why? Because it had good tips I didn’t know.

The SEO aspects turn me off a bit, but boy, I’ve gotten some good tips on writing posts better and making my headlines and headings work more. Not that I’ve used them, mind you, but I know them.

You should know them too. Check this one out!

Comments: Yes
Stars: 4/5

#4 Social Media Examiner

It’s hard to beat Social Media Examiner. Sometimes I get a little ticked at this site. They’re content can be thin, and it’s often generic.

They have a big audience, though, and that excuse works well because it’s true.

The site is the king of the number list posts right now, in my opinion. They also have one of the most well-placed Twitter share buttons around.

The tips are nothing to write home about. When I do my annual SEO book they typically appear in the beginner sections, if I can’t put them in a small subset.

What saves the site are the detailed images. They must do really well on Pinterest. Well, judging by the share buttons on the sidebar, no, they don’t.

Anyways, those images are damn good…when you can see ‘em.

Another thing I like is how the images are so numerous and so close together that I don’t notice how sparse the content is.

If I wasn’t afraid to overwhelm my word processor by pasting the image-heavy and video-laden post I might get an idea at an actual count. I’ll put a guess at 500 words.

Hey, that’s fine, you can do that, 500 words – yea.

I’m not going to go after any one writer here – they all do it – and I think that’s because the site doesn’t really challenge us.

Hey, that’s fine. Like I said, the beginner section.

Comments: Yes
Stars: 4/5

#5 Search Engine Journal

This site has good information, good writers, and a terrible work ethic.

They don’t put anything up on the weekends and then on Friday they give you a podcast.

I hate Friday podcast. It’s telling me that your pay and benefits package are so cushy that you don’t even need to do any real work on Friday. Worse, you foist that shit off on me and call it work.

It’s not, it’s cutting corners. Brent Csutoras had the podcast up this past Friday, and they had some good tips. I wish he’d do a better job moderating his Google+ group however – it’s spam pit.

That same attention to detail that Csutoras gives his group is what that you’ll get on this site.

This is a commercial site that’s designed to give you disposable advice while driving up its revenue.

Alright, many sites do that, but they at least give you more than the kiddie-plate variety news commentary. They also deliver it on something other than those crappy paper plates.

I’m talking about quality. Even Barry Schwartz’s stellar updates are circumcised. I mean, can we get any fucking shorter here, guys?

This site could be good, but it chooses not to be.

Comments: Yes
Stars: 2/5

#6 Search Engine Land

Search Engine Land is decked out for mobile and it lets you know it. Visitors are assaulted with a smorgasbord of strange, off-putting, and in-no-way-associated images.

Does it have meaning? It does, it’s just that you need to take the time to discern that meaning.

The site has the most recent article up front, though they’re not that recent. I counted six when I visited today and the last was from October 1.

What you will find if you scroll down are more articles. The bar at the top also has more.

Alas, the site takes the weekends off. I’m not sure why this is, but they do it. Maybe it’s a religious thing.

There are lots of great writers, but they’re hamstrung by either their own laziness or the site’s insistence on keeping articles to starvation levels.

I’m talking about word count, and it’s abysmal. This is Roman content – so small in word count it requires no zero.

They could do better but they choose not to. Weekends off in an automation world and content that’s skimpier than a tutu? My oh my indeed.

Comments: No
Stars: 2/5

#7 Search Engine Watch

I like Search Engine Watch. It’s a fun site that has an easy interface and you know what’s going on. There are several categories to choose from for content, such as “SEO” “PPC” and “Analytics.” No drop-down menus here, and some of the pages have posts that are a bit old.

Besides that you get content each day here. I like how they have solid screenshots and good headings. They do bullets well.

It’s classic blog style – what we know and effective.

It beats a lot of this mobile stuff, in my opinion. Alas, the bigger sites get what I refer to as “acceptance shares.” These are nothing more than people sharing the content because they’ve been sharing that site’s content for months. Many times they don’t even read it.

Try reading the stuff here. There’s good insight and they’re working hard.

Stars: 4/5

#8 Marketing Land

This is a tricky little site, but one you can figure out fairly easily. How it works is you get some big images at first, and those are your most recent articles. You’ll get tricked if you’re a casual visitor because the same images will appear for awhile.

Move on up to that horizontal bar at the top, with tabs like “CMO” “Social” and “Search.” Under those you’ll find a drop-down box that has more articles to choose from.

Lots of different writers here, but the main problem with this site is that it suffers from the “Land Disorder.” That’s a malady that has sites thinking 2 to 3 paragraphs is just fine.

While I’m sure you can get the info across in 238 words, do you want to? What are you saying that you’re not saying?

How about, “damn, I feel so big about myself that I’m going to feed you the spaghetti strand that I threw on the wall. Hey, it stuck!”

Pal, I came to the site for a meal, not a strand.

Comments: No
Stars: 3/5

#9 Content Marketing Institute

This is another site that has a revolving string of writers. I like the posts because they alternate between longer and shorter.

I also like this site because it focuses more on writing and less on the SEO stuff that bores me.

Another plus for this site is that they put content up on the weekend.

It’s not much, maybe a post a day, but it’s something. It’s a reason to visit, damn it, and as we’ve seen, quite a few sites don’t give you that.

Comments: Yes
Stars: 4/5

#10 Forbes

You’ll get some good advice on Forbes, if you get through the multiple pages, the annoying advertisement they bombard you with first thing, and, and then the overall shortness of articles.

I like the design on this site. I’m a fan of the 4-5 article interface right there on the front page, above the fold, where I can see it. I never use those navigation bars, sorry to say.

The best articles on this site are one page, I find. They have lots of stats. Lots of ads too, but they don’t really get in the way. Oh, and they give you stuff on the weekend too.

I like the different perspectives here. I like reading a good Jayson DeMers post…though maybe he does more on Entrepreneur too – I get confused.

All in all, good tips that are relevant and often do well with sharing.

Comments: Yes
Stars: 3/5

#11 Entrepreneur

To me, Entrepreneur is a Forbes knock-off. The site is about exactly the same, has the same types of topics, even the same writers sometimes.

There’s not a whole lot else to say. I do like that they don’t bombard you with advertising as much. The content is fresh and comes on the weekend.

The main drawback is the shortness of the articles. I like that the format is nearly always the same – that comforting number set-up.

Nothing surprising here, and maybe that’s one of the problems.

Comments: Yes
Stars: 3/5

#12 Business 2 Community

I don’t like this site as much as I used to. It seems to me that a year or so ago they were more focused on business. Now it seems like cultural (read click-bait) topics get a lot of play.

They still have some good insight. They also have tons of different writers, many with un-pronounceable names, and sometimes even no profile image.

Yeah, fly-by-night shit here.

Like I said, this site used to be good, but it’s gone downhill a lot since then. I still visit from time to time, though I’ve taken it off my bookmark bar in frustration before and probably will again.

I don’t think the site cares.

Comments: No
Stars: 2/5

#13 Social Media Today

This is one of my recent favorites. This site does a very good job putting several articles up each day. They’re all there on the homepage, easy to see.

Content is of middling length. I mean it’s not to long, not too short. Many articles are on the short side, however.

Sometimes a good text article is what I want, and this site has those frequently.

Not a lot of bells and whistles here, but some good ideas presented in a good way.

Comments: Yes
Stars: 4/5

#14 Buffer Social

I like this site. They have longer content, good screenshots, and relevant stats. They don’t post on the weekend, and you know how I feel about that.

Kevan Lee’s posts stand out to me. They’re longer than most posts. Most posts on this site have images and are good that way, but man, the written content leaves you wanting most days.

Still, something about this site’s tips stand out. They just put a bit more into the content, a bit more expertise.

I think you get a little more expertise on this site. Usually it will be one name on a site that does most of the work, or at least has most of the home runs.

I’d say Kevan Lee is the real power here, and I’d check out what he’s up to.

Comments: Yes
Stars: 4/5

#15 HubSpot Blogs

This is a good site for tons of information. Many call them HubSpot and I do the same. The thing is…you’re getting three different blogs on this site.

They’re Marketing, Sales and Agency. Each one is on the homepage and you get about 5 to 6 articles for each.

They update quite a bit through the week, so you’ll have numerous new things to look at each day. On the weekend it slows down.

Why is this? We see lots of big sites do this, the same sites that bombard us with their Goddamn tools posts all the time.

Shit, you’re telling me you can profile social media and SEO tools until the cows come home but you can’t even get some basic site automation going?

Remember, many of the “expert” sites are called that solely because they call themselves that.

It’s kind of like someone doing gender reassignment surgery – all of a sudden one day they want you to call them something else.

Yep, Basement Bob is now a marketer. You might remember him with the nacho-stained T-shirt and 3-day-beard, but now he wants you to call him an expert.

Folks, experts’ actions speak for themselves. If an expert doesn’t want to post on the weekend, that’s fine. Should you still call them an expert?

I dunno, but sites like HubSpot could do better here. Aside from that they have good content and it’s worth checking out.

Comments: Yes
Stars: 3/5

#16 Hot in Social Media

Reginald Chan does a great job on this up-and-coming site. No new content on the weekend here, but you do get good stuff through the week.

I like the design with all the articles presented in an easy manner. Mobile-heavy sites could take note from this – people like the desktop look…don’t fuck with it!

They will, though, they always will. It’s because many people have to fill 8 hours each day with work even though there’s only 4 hours worth of stuff to do.

Yes, the office. People in offices like to do make-work so the boss doesn’t get on their ass. That’s why we have site redesigns so much.

Not of that dribble here. You’ll get actionable tips, the kind that have the Big Boys glancing over their shoulders saying, “shit, I better not be so lazy this week.”

Comments: Yes
Stars: 4/5

#17 Kissmetrics

Kissmetrics is another Neil Patel-run site. I’m not sure who writes the content, but I’ve seen some different responders in the comments.

The articles here are a bit shorter, though they delve a bit more into SEO-type of stuff more than Quick Sprout does.

Good screenshots, actionable tips, relevant material – that’s what you get here. Simple and effective.

Comments: Yes
Stars: 3/5

#18 Crazy Egg

I like this site a lot more than Kissmetrics. I like that it has new names writing and I like that the posts here are short.

Yeah, I spend the whole post complaining about short posts and then I tell you here that I like ‘em.

I dunno, on some sites they work. When you’re giving me 5 tips for instance, maybe it doesn’t need to be that long.

Comments: Yes
Stars: 4/5

Conclusion

Well, that’s all, folks. What do you think?

I’m sure some of you don’t like it.

When I say some of you, I mean the people I name-dropped.

So do a better job, damn it!

I live in poverty in a fucking basement and most months I don’t now how I’m going to pay the rent.

I can still run circles around many of these big names with my content. I write more words a month than they do. I read more. I’m more socially active. I respond to comments and emails.

A lot of these experts don’t. Maybe that’s why they’re experts.

For you, the lowly marketer that’s trying to beat them at their own game, take heart. Take heart knowing that for many of these experts, writing a sizeable blog post is difficult.

They don’t do that kind of stuff much anymore, nor are they expected to.

That creates a huge opening for you, a huge opportunity to show them up.

You can do that.

Never forget that many of the names you read at the beginning of the year are gone by the end. Those are mid-level experts, and they are fleeting.

You can reach that stage, and if you keep at it, don’t get lazy like many of these sites do, and keep staying hungry, you can beat them.

I want you to, I want you to beat them, I want you to beat them bad.

Go do that for me – go write some awesome shit.

3 Comments

Reworking the Bookmarks Bar: Tips on Increasing Your Content Marketing Efficiency

10/4/2015

0 Comments

I’ve done it again – I’ve cleaned out my bookmarks bar.

In case you don’t know, bookmarks – or bookmarked sites – are sites that you visit a lot, like once a day or several times a day.

These are the sites that have quality content, your favorite too. It’s niche stuff, but it’s your niche.

Sometimes, however, things get cluttered. Other times your focus changes.

That’s what happened with me recently – my focus changed.

I decided that I wanted to focus more on business topics and less on political BS.

There are many reasons for this, but the fact that I’ve got two marketing books coming out at the end of the year is a big factor.

Regardless, it was time to reorient myself. The best way to do that was to change-up the things I see each day. Those are my bookmarked sites.

I’ve written about this before, in a

Taking Back Your Internet Bookmarks (December 2013)

Showing No Mercy When Organizing Your Internet Bookmarks Bar (June 2014)

Pruning the Internet Bookmark Bar (April 2015)

In each of those posts I talked about sites that had lost value for me. I also pointed out new sites that were giving me value.

That’s what bookmarks are about – value. If those old sites that you once liked aren’t giving it to you anymore, don’t feel bad, just take them off your bookmark bar.

I did that recently and I’d like to point out what that looks like.

What I really did was to shorten many of the titles on those bookmarks. Often I went with two-letter acronyms. I think at this point we’re fine with just the icons.

That freed up a lot of space and allowed me to have more options. One thing I did was move Google AdSense onto that bar, as I access this site a lot.

Hey, I’ve made more than $400 from my website advertising this year, compared to $0 last year.

All of my eBook retailer sites have also been moved up, not just Amazon. I check these often. What has moved away are local news sources, though I still have the national papers up.

Conclusion

Is your bookmark bar working?

Maybe it was at some point, but chances are good you haven’t updated it in months or maybe a year or more.

Is it time?
Are the current sites you visit starting to bore you?
Are some of them making you angry, either because the advice is rubbish or because you’ve moved past it?

I added about 15 new marketing sites to my bookmark bar. My daily outlook has changed as a result.

Are you ready for something similar? Take these ideas and use them to make your life better, and more efficient.

So as you can see, I’ve got two types of bookmarks – the top, horizontal bookmark bar and the left-hand drop-down bookmark bar.

Far and away, the prime real estate is the bookmark bar at the top. These are your main sites.

I went ahead and reduced the title size on those by rewriting and using acronyms on many.

The Old Bookmarks Bar: Is it Working?

Old bar

When I think of my bookmark bar I think of the long, diagonal bar that pops out on my Google Chrome browser.

You can see my old bar to the right. Some of the sites I had on there were barely visited. Others were just doing their job.

The Book Designer: This is a site for authors, but more and more the tips don’t apply to me. It’s for beginning authors, and that was great in 2013, but today it’s irrelevant.

MT Cowgirl: I got rid of this site for two reasons. First, it makes me angry. Second, if I’m interested in something new there it’ll be on Twitter.

Google Books: I never access this anymore from my bookmark bar. Instead I just type the topic into Google followed by a comma and “google books.” Works every time and cuts out a needless step.

Smashwords: I have two books on this site, both free. I access it maybe once a quarter. Yep, it can go.

Podomatic: I don’t do political podcasts anymore so this can go.

LinkedIn: I just don’t use this network.

WikiArt: Boy, I liked the idea of expanding my mind with a daily dose of art, but it turned into a monthy dose, at best.

Now, let’s not forget the prime bookmark bar real estate, the horizontal bar that’s always present under your search query text box. Here’s what mine looked like:

Another thing I did as you can see from the image at the side, was to take out many of the old sites that I wasn’t interested in anymore.

The result was this bar at your right. Here’s what I did:

Marketing: As you can see, I really moved a lot of new marketing and social media sites onto the bookmark bar. There are now 14 new sites, for a total of 17, whereas before there were just 3 sites.

Moved Up: Things have moved up. Before Moz started 11-down on the bookmark bar and now it starts 6-down. Clearly I’m placing more importance on these subjects.

Moved Down: Local news and Montana politics have moved way down on the bookmark bar.

Besides that, I really reworked my horizontal bookmark bar, that prime real estate we talked about. Here it is:

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5 Thoughts on Current Content Marketing Trends

10/2/2015

3 Comments

It’s late Friday evening and I thought I’d lay out some thoughts.

First of all, my website editor is extremely jumpy right now.

Yep, Weebly is now 100% mobile.

Weebly Switches to Mobile View

Weebly just made a big transition to mobile, at least that’s what it looks like from the new views. Yep, everything is more “close-up” and has that mobile-y feel to it.

I don’t use mobile and many of you know that. I’m desktop through and through – when you write thousands of words a day you have to be.

That can be frustrating. We know that back in April mobile surpassed desktop for search queries.

We also know that ads are getting 20% more views on mobile than desktop.

I guess I’ll be left behind, huh?

Work with Neil Patel

One post that caught my eye today was put out on Quick Sprout.

It’s called Who Wants to Become Business Partners with Neil Patel? In it he mentions a book he’s writing and some new business ventures he’s embarking upon.

That means he needs help. There’s an application for copywriters and you can email if you’re interested in helping on the book.

Pretty cool opportunity, huh?

Transitioning Away from Google+

A post that I was nodding along to earlier today was on Search Engine Journal in an edition of #MarketingNerds.

Brent Csutoras has been thinking a lot about using Pinterest more than Google+. He mentions the frustrations that Google+ users have, especially when the network removes popular things like hangouts.

All in all, it got my ass in gear. Yep, I went over to Pinterest and pinned a bunch of images from obscure Montana blog posts.

These are things like maps of fur trapping forts in the 1820s.

Yeah, pretty damn niche.

I figure people will search for that, and I know from Google’s image search that I’m already ranking well for that.

Will Pinterest help me more? I think so. Global Web Index had a great graph in May that showed Pinterest has experienced a 97% growth from 2014.

Tumblr is another I should keep my eye on – they grew by 94%. Kind of makes the transition away from Google+ a little easier, right?

Friday Podcasts

Lots of content marketing sites and social media marketing sites do podcasts on Friday.

What do you think of that?

I think they do it to slack off a bit, to be completely honest. It’s kind of like – hey, no writing day!

Well, maybe not. I dunno – I just don’t listen to marketing podcasts. I did a couple times on Copyblogger when they were getting that going, but it just didn’t do it for me.

I like the written word. I can skim the hell out of that. Podcasts, eh…not so much.

So keep writing…please!

Is Online Advertising Effective

A scary post appeared on Marketing Land today. It quoted Nielson ratings as saying just 48% of people trust online ads.

Now, that was only polling 30,000 people across 60 countries so…what?

Well, I’m not that sure, but I just wanted to point this post out to you because it has some awesome graphs and charts on advertising to generations and which types of social ads are the most effective.

Not too bad, huh?

Conclusion

Stay up to date on things, if you can.

I find it’s a lot easier to do that if I have my bookmark bar organized and up to date.

I’ll be talking about that soon on this site, and I’ll be discussing a bit more too.

Topics like Facebook ads and shopping cart abandonment will also be discussed.

Check back often – I know you’ll get some tips.

3 Comments

5 Tips for Writing Local SEO Content that Converts

9/24/2015

1 Comment

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?

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These 3 Content Marketing Ideas Got Old a Long Time Ago

A Free Gift

A Social Side Bar

Your Follower Count

Conclusion

5 Content Marketing Lessons from Roy Orbison’s Music

Conclusion

Big Sites Can’t Control Comments. What Can They Control?

7 Ways to Write Stronger Conclusions that Encourage Discussions

Conclusion

Serving Up the 3 “Cons” of Content Marketing

Consistency

Continuity

Confidence

Conclusion

Shopping Cart Abandonment: What We Know, What’s Still a Mystery, and What You Can Do About It

#1 People Abandon Carts Because They’re Comparison Shopping

#2 Your Online Check Out Process is a Drag

#3 Your Shipping Options Suck

#4 Your Site Doesn’t Feel Secure

Analyzing 18 Different Social Media, SEO, and Marketing Sites for Content

Conclusion

Reworking the Bookmarks Bar: Tips on Increasing Your Content Marketing Efficiency

Conclusion

The Old Bookmarks Bar: Is it Working?

5 Thoughts on Current Content Marketing Trends

5 Tips for Writing Local SEO Content that Converts

#1 Mobile is Driving the Local SEO Revolution

#2 Geo Targeting Produces Leads and Campaign Ideas

#3 Use Google Maps to Target Local Search Areas

#4 Businesses with Reviews Soar Ahead on Local Searches

#5 Images Continue to Do Well in Local Search

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

Writing Blog
by Greg Strandberg

Top Ten

Categories

My Books
(By Publication Date, New to Old)

Archives

A Free Gift

A Social Side Bar

Your Follower Count

Conclusion

Conclusion

Conclusion

​Consistency

Continuity

​Confidence

Conclusion

​#1 People Abandon Carts Because They’re Comparison Shopping

#2 Your Online Check Out Process is a Drag

#3 Your Shipping Options Suck

#4 Your Site Doesn’t Feel Secure

Conclusion

Conclusion

​The Old Bookmarks Bar: Is it Working?

#1 Mobile is Driving the Local SEO Revolution

#2 Geo Targeting Produces Leads and Campaign Ideas

#3 Use Google Maps to Target Local Search Areas

#4 Businesses with Reviews Soar Ahead on Local Searches

#5 Images Continue to Do Well in Local Search

Conclusion: For Small Businesses, All SEO is Local

Writing Blogby Greg Strandberg

Top Ten

Categories

My Books(By Publication Date, New to Old)

Archives

Consistency

Confidence

#1 People Abandon Carts Because They’re Comparison Shopping

The Old Bookmarks Bar: Is it Working?

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

Writing Blog
by Greg Strandberg

My Books
(By Publication Date, New to Old)