WEBSITES • EMAIL MARKETING • SEO • SOCIAL MEDIA

The Content Connection

13 May 2016
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Crossing The Lines with Social Media Marketing

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We’ve all heard the term “silo” used before. In this case, we’re talking about the a long-standing corporate buzzword used to describe a business environment that doesn’t really play well with others. Social media marketing is not a silo. Actually, it can’t be. Social media marketing is all about opening up a brand and cultivating communities who love it. It’s about connecting all the dots, and yes, crossing all the lines. As social media marketing managers, it’s our job to make sure our brand’s social media activities play well with others.

 

EMAIL INTENTIONS

While your email team writes body copy and subject lines dialed in to your brand’s identity, they and your social team also need to work together to create content that connects those emails with the rest of the world. Emails can help direct customers to various social media venues. Similarly, social media can be used to remind customers to check their inbox for special features shared only with those who have signed up to receive “insider information”.

When social media marketing and emails volley back and forth to help direct customers to more and better information, both the customers and the brand wins.

 

BIENVENUE

Social media venues serve different purposes for both customers and brands. To determine how and why you use different venues, you might want to look closely at the demographics of each of them. Of course, demographics alone won’t be enough to determine every detail of your interaction, but it will certainly help direct your efforts more appropriately.

Let’s consider Facebook for example. Facebook stats are hard to ignore—no matter how you feel about it personally. It’s been around for a while and it’s fairly easy to use. It’s sort of a catch-all venue that offers a fairly intuitive, user-friendly arena in which to share a wide variety of experiences. Photos, words, videos, memes, check-ins, and links to everything imaginable can be published on timelines in an instant. What’s not to “Like”? Maybe Facebook is your go-to for meeting people and introducing them to your brand. That’s where conversations can happen and people can share their experiences and interact with other customers.

And let’s not forget about all the referral traffic! Every time someone “Likes” or comments on a brand’s page, that information is published on their feed for all their friends to see. While that can be a bit of an annoyance to those of us who don’t really want the whole world to know what we Like, referred information is part of what’s so attractive to advertisers. It’s a constant source of new customers. Whether or not you’re promoting or sponsoring (i.e., paying for) your Facebook posts, people are seeing them via their friends’ activity on your Page. So, post carefully. Plan conversations. Focus on converting visitors into customers with savvy, relevant content.

PRO TIP: Don’t just “do” Facebook. Find brands who are doing it right, and develop ways to adapt their practices to fit your brand’s goals.

Similarly, maybe Twitter is where your customers can ask customer service-related questions. The statistics indicating that about 30% of top brands have handles dedicated to customer service are fairly consistent. Is your brand one of them? Again, find brands that are doing it right and find ways to implement more successful methods into your customer care practices.

Is Pinterest your bag? Think about directing people to your brand’s Pinterest boards as a resource for ideas and inspiration. Do you have products that show well? Give Snapchat a spin! Sometimes a short-lived video is worth a thousand words – and can sell a lot more effectively than an ad. If you want something with a little more staying power, Periscope is another great option for brands who like to show and tell. The point is, it’s important to use your social media venues to the best of their unique abilities. Do a little discovery to determine what they are and make them work for you.

 

SIGN ME UP

They say mailing lists are critical, and they’re right. People only sign up for mailing lists because they’re interested in doing so. Unlike our social media venues, we “own” our mailing lists. They’re not subject to ad-driven algorithmical updates and new ranking methodologies unless we create them ourselves. Getting people to sign up for your emails is much easier when several forms of invitation are used, and social media is one of the best forms of invitation there is.

 

SAY IT AIN’T SEO

Your social media teams and SEO peeps also need to know each other’s numbers by heart. Well- researched keywords are worth their weight in gold, but only if they’re used wisely and repeated effectively.

 

CONTENT-LY YOURS

Similarly, while your content crew is on the cutting edge of marketing conversations, your social savants need to cue up those convos for your social media circles. They need to use the same messaging—tweaked for virtual delivery. The same information is more relevant when delivered in different ways to multiple audiences. One of the best examples is the use of #hashtags. Don’t make the mistake of creating a killer hashtag campaign that only your creative team is aware of. Shout it from the mountaintops on all fronts. Use it again and again in social media—and don’t forget to develop and repeatedly share the story that explains the significance of the hashtag!

If you’re going to hashtag your message, make sure the copywriters are building it into both physical and virtual collateral on a regular basis. In order to be effective, hashtags need to be posted, emailed, shared, tweeted, snapped, and pinned across the board. The same goes for social media in general. It’s not just something to “do” and check off your list. Social media can’t just be there… It has to be growing and evolving, shaking hands and kissing babies, always making new friends while continuing to love the old. And it can only do that if it crosses all the lines.

 

Does your brand play well with others? If you’re looking for ways to make sure your brand is one of the most popular kids on the social media marketing playground, call us! We’ve got all kinds of ideas to share!

11 May 2016
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Social Media and SEO: What You Need to Know

Sticky Post By On May 11, 2016 With 1 Comment

SEO became important for website success long before social media showed up on the playground. But once the significance and value of social media was fully appreciated, websites saw that they needed to put a focus on social media, too. To save money some bigger companies rolled the two concepts of social media and SEO together, others created entirely new branches, and do-it-yourselfers tried to be everything all by themselves.

Of course things have evolved since those early days (which really weren’t so long ago!) and will continue to change. One thing we know for sure is that social media is influencing the field of SEO and incorporating itself into SEO best practices. This by no means implies that if you are doing one you no longer need to do the other; social media and SEO should be a symbiotic relationship. Social is, however, a stronger influence on every aspect of marketing than previously believed, so having your finger on the pulse of social media is essential.  

Let’s take a look at how SEO has changed due to social media and how you can use these changes to your—and your website’s—advantage.  

 

Keywords

In the beginning keywords were single words, but when social media came onto the scene keywords evolved into keyphrases and long tail keywords. Why? Because key phrases lend themselves very nicely to the searcher’s intent. You can narrow down the search pretty significantly by adding extra keywords and making it a phrase. The search engines want this sort of specificity so when searchers enter a search term they get exactly what you want. You want this so you can focus your efforts on your real market and potential loyal followers.

 

Community Involvement

In the past your company’s involvement in the community didn’t have any impact on your social media and SEO campaigns. Today you can cleverly weave those things together and get a lot of credit. Not only should you be all over social media with pictures and updates and all sorts of great information about your involvement in community activities, but you also need to tie yourself to local powerhouse companies who are also involved. Remember, links from reputable websites mean a lot (not necessarily links from their social sites) and if you can work your way in by sharing images, being quoted together in an article etc. then you can start winning through their success.

 

Build Your Brand

Increasing brand awareness is always important. Social media is clearly a great way to do that: it keeps you up-to-date on current trends and gives you a way to be front and center. But how does this work with SEO? A strong brand presence means people are more likely to search your brand name, message and key terms. Pairing your content (which is content optimized—right?) with your social campaigns can mean big wins with search queries.  

 

Cross Marketing

We touched on it above but it’s important that your social efforts reflect your website/company. These two elements need to be closely tied to one another to get the most benefits. If you put up kitten videos on social media you may get a lot of likes and followers, but what does that have to do with your website? If you sell cat toys, then yes, put kitten videos on your website and link that page of your website to social media. Your goal should always be connected content across all platforms.

 

Think of your social media and SEO as a cocktail party. You want to show up and introduce yourself to as many people as possible and create a great impression. Some of those people will really appeal to your niche so you’ll invite them to come check out your website. An even more elite group will fit perfectly into your marketing plan so you’ll develop a relationship, sharing content together and working toward mutual, socially based, success and growth.

 

Want your website to stand out from the crowd? Filament can help.

09 May 2016
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What Content Is Your Audience Hungry for?

Sticky Post By On May 9, 2016 With 1 Comment

As we move toward an integrated marketing approach, it’s important to know what content types resonate with our customers. In this blog post, we’ll offer some helpful tips toward nailing down the kinds of content your audience wants so that you can get better results from your content marketing and reach your business objectives.

There are lots of different content types you can create:

  • Blogs
  • eNewsletters
  • Case studies
  • Videos
  • Guest posts
  • Articles posted on your website
  • White papers
  • Online presentations/SlideShares
  • Webinars/webcasts
  • Research reports
  • Microsites
  • Infographics
  • Branded content tools
  • Mobile apps
  • Mobile content
  • eBooks
  • Podcasts
  • Digital magazines
  • Annual reports
  • Games

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to choose?

 

Look at the data

In order to find out what content types your customer wants, look at what they’ve responded to in the past. Do they love podcasts? Are they all over your webinars? Do they open your email newsletters and click through to your website consistently? Are they devouring apps the minute you release them? Check out your analytics to find out.

Website

Use Google Analytics to better understand which content resonates strongly with your audience. Monitor the following:

  • Which pages/posts are getting the most traffic? (Per month? Per quarter? Per year?)
  • How long are people spending on key pages?
  • Which pages/posts have the highest conversions?

Track social data for every post to see which content types are shared on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Email

It’s important to go beyond Google Analytics to review multiple data points across all of your digital channels. Be sure you’re tracking the following metrics:

  • Which emails have the highest opens?
  • Which email sections get the most clicks?
  • Which emails have the highest conversions?

You can also create an email survey to find out directly from the folks on your list what they want to receive from you. You can simply ask, “What content types are you interested in?” with select-all-that-apply checkboxes for each type of content. (You don’t have to include all 20 content types above in your survey. Instead, pick 8–10 content types that make the most sense for the story you want to tell and the resources at your disposal.)

You might also collect demographic information at the same time in order to break down the data into relevant audience segments. If certain segments of your audience are more interested in white papers vs. webinars, it will be helpful to know that as you’re strategizing segmentation in the future.

Social Media

Track anywhere you have a presence online to see what your audience is eating up.

  • Which posts get the most engagement?
  • Number of webinar attendees
  • Attendance and reach for Twitter chats
  • Views and downloads of online presentations

 

Talk to people

One of the best ways to find out what content types your audience wants is to ask them directly in person. That means you get to leave your cubicle behind, head out, meet your audience and have conversations with them. Lucky you!

You can go on ride alongs with your sales team or attend a live event your organization is putting on. Ask folks directly what kinds of content they want. Then, listen. Really listen. While one person’s thoughts aren’t enough to drive your strategy, you want to look at the trends cropping up as a result of numerous conversations.

When it comes time to create content, you’ll want to further hone your content types depending on your business goals, the segment you want to reach, the message you want to convey, and the resources you have available. Different goals, different messages, etc. require different types of content.

When you’ve identified the right content types for your audience, you’re ready to move on to step 4 as outlined in our post “Content DIY: Build an Integrated Digital Campaign in 8 Steps.” Check back in a couple of weeks to get the deets on putting together a plan that encompasses everything you’ve learned about your audience, the right channels and the content types they want.

 

Get in touch with Filament to start creating strategic content today.

06 May 2016
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Social Media Objectives: What’s It All For?

Sticky Post By On May 6, 2016 With No Comments

Social media is something that we hear and think about every single day. It’s important for a variety of reasons, but it’s a moving target so it’s difficult to know how valuable our efforts are. That’s why we need to have social media objectives.

Objectives are they key to effective online brand management, but many brands don’t really know what their objectives are.

So, let’s talk about why your brand is online.

Is your brand online simply to sell? Are your social media platforms meant as forums for your customers to interact? Does your brand interact with customers to build friendships? Or, is it just there as an information resource?

In its infancy, social media was something we all scrambled to add to our marketing play books. Since then, the rules have arguably changed many times over. So, where are we now?

Social media is indirect selling at its finest. We’re online to “soft sell” our brand to the public, and ultimately, that is our main objective.

Through posts, pics and pins, we let people know what we’re doing and how they can engage with us. But if we’re really smart about it, we spend more time building rapport than pitching our latest deals.

Just like people get to know people and become friends over time, customers get to know brands and become “fans” over time. The more people learn about your brand—what makes it tick, why it exists, what it stands for, and how it relates to their own ideologies—the more they’ll engage with your brand, and the more successful your online presence will be.

As a social media manager, you get to determine how people engage with your brand. And that leads directly back to your main objective.

Determining what you want out of your social media presence drives what you do and how your customers use your social media venues.

If you’re selling products online, then your social media accounts must actively drive people to your virtual selling sites. That means every post is an “ad” in itself, and must include clear calls to action that guide people to fill their virtual shopping carts and head straight to your virtual check-outs.

If the goal of your social media venues is to drive people to your brick-and-mortar stores, that’s where “making friends” online is more effective. It’s likely that customers will pass several of your competitors on their way to your physical location. The relationship you build with them online is what helps them choose your brand over others IRL (or “in real life,” as they say).

If your social media sites are resources for your customers, i.e. educational and informational resources, then your roll is more moderator than facilitator. In this scenario, your job is to provide the information customers come to expect from your sites.

Maybe your brand accomplishes all three of these scenarios individually on separate social media channels. If that’s the case, it’s best to have separate teams and separate sets of objectives so the different goals can be met effectively.

Notice that none of these examples include just randomly posting things to create “noise” on your channels that may, or may not, illicit random interactions from followers. Notice also that these scenarios don’t suggest a set, mechanical posting schedule that doesn’t relate to anything happening in real time or interact with followers. The latter is what we call “billboard” media—it’s not social, it’s just displaying.

Every social media account is different for every brand. The main things social media activities and objectives have in common is the fact that they must be interactive and, when needed, reactive. Social media objectives must drive communications and interactions online to accomplish the goals intended for your bottom line.

 

Need help defining your social media objectives? Get in touch with Filament to get strategic with your social media today.

04 May 2016
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Defining a Comprehensive Brand Identity

Sticky Post By On May 4, 2016 With 2 Comments

Continuing on our journey toward an integrated email campaign, we come to the issue of brand identity. We’ve learned about our audience through conversations with them, listening to them, and looking at the data. We know which channels are the right channels, the types of content they want, and the topics that are most important to them. We’re ready to create content, but before we begin, we need to concept an identity that will reinforce our brand, conveying who we are and what we care about, and creating consistency so people can easily identify emails as coming from us.

Consistency is the name of the game if we want to present a unified identity visually and verbally. A consistent look and feel lets our audience know what to expect when they interact with us. Read on to find out how to create a well-defined and well-used identity for your brand.

 

Values

Brand values are the desired set of experiences or associations a business wants customers to make with its products, services, or identity. Before you start defining your voice and visual identity, take some time to define your values by documenting the following:

  • What is your purpose?
  • What do you stand for?
  • What are your values?
  • What do you talk about?
  • What makes you stand out?

You want a clear picture of what your brand stands for and how you want it perceived by your customers. Once your brand values are well documented, make them your inspiration for your identity.

 

Voice

A large part of what we say is how we say it. To create a consistent brand voice, you need to come up with a definition.

With everything you say, you want to communicate your company’s style, the passion and expertise of your team, and how your customers can benefit from your uniqueness. Write down three to five words that you would use to define your company, then focus your communication style around those words. Hip, conversational, playful, educational, sophisticated, fun, irreverent, inspirational, helpful—the options are endless.

Your customers have a major role in shaping your brand voice (and your brand identity). Look back at how your audience describes their world. Make sure you’re speaking their language.

 

Design

In order to pull together a cohesive look, establish all the elements that make up your basic look and feel, your graphic identity. It’s the little things that build a branding system. That identity should include the following:

  • Logo
  • Library of logo lockups
  • Key colors
  • Additional color options
  • Typefaces
  • Standard typographic treatments
  • Consistent style for images
  • Library of graphic elements, e.g. background texture, line style treatments, use of white space, color blocks

A well-defined, comprehensive graphic identity creates the foundation for a solid brand identity. Once that visual identity is defined, put it to use in your emails—and all your channels. When your subscribers click on a link in your email, be sure they’re going to a landing page that’s optimized for them and has the same consistent look and feel as your email.

 

User Experience

User experience affects brand identity, too. Your emails need to look great on every device your audience uses to look at them, be that a mobile phone, tablet, laptop or desktop. Use responsive design so your emails adapt to be optimized for whatever screen they’re opened on. And be sure wherever you link to—your website—is optimized across devices too. A positive user experience has a direct correlation to positive brand perception.

 

In closing, remember that every email you create should help reinforce your business’s brand identity—that identity, unique to your business, that includes what your brand says, what its values are, how you communicate its concepts, and which emotions you want your customers to feel when they interact with your business. Your brand identity is continually evolving and requires continued attention and adjustments as your business grows or changes.

Check back later this month for the next step in our series on how to build an integrated email campaign: teamwork.

Learn more about how Filament can help shine a light on your brand today.

28 Apr 2016
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SEO and Content Marketing: Focus on Keywords

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Content marketing and SEO need to work together to get the best results for your website. And getting the best results is the driving force behind content integration, right? We know, We know.  Content integration sounds so complicated. Conversations begin with definitions and explanations and suddenly everyone is lost and the point never really hits home. So let’s start from a different angle — let’s start with the point.

 

It’s All About Keywords

Bottom line? Your web content needs to include your pre-defined keywords.

That’s basically what content integration is all about. Of course there is more work involved and you can dive deeper into different elements of SEO and how to gain more links, enhance your backend, optimize robots.txt etc. BUT to get the most out of your content and your marketing efforts there needs to be an SEO element and keywords in every aspect of your website and digital marketing efforts.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way SEO got separated from the actual words on a webpage and the focus shifted from its very elemental beginnings. The result? Websites suffered. But not to worry. Getting more hits, better response from visitors, and that all-important conversion may be as simple as revising your content integration and putting more thought into the words that make up your web content.

 

Forget Keyword Stuffing

If you’re stuck in the days of throwing a handful of keywords into a webpage just to grab viewers, then you’re doing it wrong. Many of us remember those horrible days when completely unrelated words were strung together just to get people to visit websites. Those days are gone (thank goodness!), but we have moved into an era of poorly crafted content. Keywords awkwardly pop up here and there and then over there and again here so that the content does not feel reliable or valid. This is the opposite of your desired goal. While it may signal the search engines, it is doing nothing for your audience and it certainly isn’t earning you accolades in the form of link backs from coveted powerhouses.

What does accomplish these things is carefully crafted content that evolves out of a strategy focused on the big picture. At the heart of it, the mantra of “Content is king” is still true and it always will be true. People come to your website to view your content, they come back and develop brand loyalty when your content satisfies their needs. At the very core of content and SEO are keywords.

Ideally, a great content writer will do some research into the keywords for your industry to come up with a game plan that captures the most eyes. Then those keywords are woven into the content to signify to the search engines what your page is about and, at the same time, clearly speak to the audience.

 

The important takeaway here is that content is extremely important to the search engines, to your audience, and to your website. SEO and strategically crafted keywords need to be a primary concern when writing marketing content. The best way to do this is to hire professional web writers who understand how to create compelling content with SEO seamlessly woven in for effective content integration. This needs to occur not just on your webpages, but on every digital marketing piece your company creates to get the best results.

Feeling unsure about exactly how to make that happen? Let Filament light the way.

22 Apr 2016
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Social Strategy: Thinking Ahead—But Not Too Far

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Planning is a key element of social strategy. We all know it. We’ve all heard it before. We realize that we need to do more of it, and that we have to plan creatively to make sure our social media planning efforts are successful.

In terms of thinking ahead for your brand’s social media presence, there’s a very thin line between under- and over-achieving with your fans and followers.

The line isn’t so thin when it comes to over-promoting your brand. Too much “sell” without enough “self” is not going to cut it with your communities. If all they see is your logo, your promotions, and your all-about-us messaging every time they visit your page, they’re going to stop interacting. That means they’ll stop seeing your posts and ads altogether. If followers don’t interact with pages, those pages will show up less and less on their feeds. It’s that simple.

As much as we dislike the concept of our posts being managed so strictly by the social media deities that run the platforms on which they appear, it is, as they say, what it is.

So what can we do to think ahead and plan successful social media campaigns?

First of all, stop using the word “campaigns.” It’s all a campaign… One big, on-going, campaign. From the moment you create a social media profile, the campaign is on. Everything after that—if done the way it should be—is an ongoing conversation.

Next, drop all forms of the word “strategy” from your vocabulary. In fact, don’t fill your social media calendar with buzz-words at all. Fill it with real, actionable, meaningful things instead.

Things like comments on the weather today. It may sound cliché, but if you’re committed to your social media purpose, you’ll be able to make the weather perfectly relevant to your communities.

  • Suggest how your products can help people when it’s raining outside.
  • Offer rainy day activity suggestions that are—and aren’t—related to your brand.
  • Cross-promote another brand/product/service that comes in helpful when it’s raining.
  • Get people talking about the rain.
  • Find ways to make the rain a positive thing.
  • Help people look forward to tomorrow—when it’s not raining.

Whoa, see what we did there? Yeah, that’s called “going with the flow” and then “thinking ahead—but not too far ahead.” Responding to today, and tying it into tomorrow. That works for two reasons.

One: Because “today” is relatable. Everybody gets what’s happening today.

Two: Because “tomorrow” is also relatable. And it’s happening soon enough that it’s on all of our minds.

As all of these crazy-simple, basic little thought processes spill across the virtual paper here, there’s one point that we’re trying to make:

If you strategically manage your social media campaigns and schedule posts days, weeks, or even months out, you’re missing the point.

If you’re focused solely on a set of objectives spelled out in the boardroom months ago, how is that relevant to today?

If you’ve checked “Post May promotions” off of April’s pre-determined plan, but haven’t followed up on those posts by responding to notifications from followers, was it worth it?

If you’re not even watching today’s headlines because you’re focused on next season’s ads, how is that helpful to your customers who look to your brand for solutions every day?

Now here’s something else to think about. Your social media team has to have one, consistently recognizable voice. They need to know the brand and how it feels/looks/sounds/smells/tastes—virtually—like it’s the back of their hand.

They need to take what all the brand’s departments want to say and distill it so it comes out in a way that customers want to hear. That’s the only way social media messaging will the beneficial to both the brand and the people the brand is there to serve.

Deciding what to say via social media does take a fair amount of thinking ahead. It’s like putting together a puzzle. Yes, you need to keep an eye on the future because off-the-cuff marketing isn’t [always] the answer.

Yes, you need to be mindful of the bottom line. Yes, you need to work with the research that’s being conducted to discover what customers’ needs du jour are. But don’t be so tied up in the aforementioned to connect… today.

No matter how many members your team has, they need to make sure the brand’s messaging feels/looks/sounds/smells/tastes like one, personable voice to your customers. And personable is the operative term here. Scheduled posts, trite comments (“How cool is this?”), and little or no interaction or relatability may appeal to robots, but not to people.

So plan accordingly. Think ahead with your social media planning—but not too far ahead. Keep the company in mind, of course, and also keep in mind the company’s five-year plan when you’re building your content portfolio.

And, this more than anything: If you’re going to market via social media, be social. Today. Tomorrow. Always.

20 Apr 2016
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Building an Integrated Email Marketing Strategy

Sticky Post By On April 20, 2016 With 1 Comment

Once you know who you’ll be talking to with your emails, you’re ready to put together a strategy for integrating your email marketing with your other digital marketing channels. The information you gathered from talking with your audience and scouring your data will be crucial to identifying channels and key types of content to put in play with your email marketing strategy.

 

Channels

Which channels does your target audience use? Which channels help you reach your business objectives? Which channels convert? Which channels bring the most engagement? Answer these questions in order to identify the most important channels for reaching your target audience.

 

Content

What kinds of content does your target audience resonate with most? Which kinds of content help you reach your business objectives? Which kinds of content convert? Which kinds of content get higher engagement for your target audience? Have a list of content types ready as you move into planning.

 

Plan

With your audience’s prime channels and key types of content in mind, create an email marketing strategy that includes content creation, repurposing, amplification and distribution. Each element should be set up to drive traffic toward your primary objective, be that purchases or email sign-ups on your website or engagement on a social network.

Things to include in your integrated email marketing strategy:

As you’re planning tactics for integration, consider starting with what HubSpot has dubbed “The Big 3”: social media, search engines and mobile. Here are a few tips for each to help you get started.

Social Media

  • Add social sharing buttons to email
  • Put email sign-up call-to-actions on social networks
  • Segment emails based on social media insights

Search Engines

  • Create HTML versions of your emails & host them on the web
  • Optimize your HTML emails for search engines, e.g. use the best keywords and anchor text, ensure all images have alt tags, include social media sharing buttons
  • Use Google’s pay-per-click Adwords to direct search traffic to an email sign-up landing page

Mobile

  • Make sure buttons and links are easy to tap
  • Create plain text and HTML versions of your emails
  • Use descriptive alt text with all images
  • Test your emails on different devices
  • Optimize the landing pages to which your emails link
  • Let new subscribers opt in via text message
  • Develop an app that collect emails

(Check out more mobile email tips in our post “Mobile Friendly Email Marketing Basics.”)

Whatever your strategy looks like, be sure to write it down. A documented email marketing strategy with timelines and who owns what will keep your team on task and provide a resource anyone can return to for reference.

Email is more powerful when it’s integrated with the rest of your digital channels. Check back in two weeks for the next step in integrating your email marketing: identity.

Ready to get started? Contact Filament.

19 Apr 2016
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Identifying Prime Channels for Your Audience

Sticky Post By On April 19, 2016 With 1 Comment

Continuing our series of posts on the steps to integrated digital marketing, today we’re discussing step two: identify prime channels. We’ll offer some way to help you pick out the right channels for your target audience.

If you’ve completed step one, you know who your target audience is. That’s key toward evaluating channel performance and channel interaction, two crucial components for pinpointing prime channels for your business.

 

Channel Performance

On the most basic level, the right channels are where your audience is. Where do you customers hang out online? Are they addicted to apps? Glued to social media? Are they email junkies? All these questions are important, but if you’re only looking at where you audience spends their time, you’re not getting the complete picture of which channels drives business impact. Instead, you’ll want to dig deeper with what we call The Four R’s of Channel Performance:

  • Relevance: Is the channel relevant to your audience and the types of content they’re interested in?
  • Reach: How many potential customers can you reach via the channel?
  • Resources: What’s the cost in human and capital resources for using it?
  • Return: What return can you expect from the channel?

Evaluate each of these factors based on meaningful data from previous marketing efforts in order to determine which channels perform.

 

Channel Interaction

A recent Think with Google piece analyzed millions of customer interactions using Google Analytics to illustrate at which points in the customer journey specific channels play key roles. (It also shows the importance of marketing integration since different channels are more or less effective at different places in the customer journey.) You can analyze your customers’ interactions using your analytics to find out the same thing.

What drives your visitors and when? Is it organic search? Paid search? Social? Email? How does a given channel influence your customers to make a purchase? Or, more specifically, at what stage in the decision-making process will that channel have its greatest impact? Understand channel interaction across the customer journey and adapt your channel mix accordingly.

 

Conclusion

Channel performance and channel interaction are key determinants for identifying which channels can help us reach our business objectives and where, when, and how different channels impact each other. As you move forward in the process of integrating your digital marketing, you’ll learn more about channel performance and channel interaction for your target audience, allowing you to further optimize your strategy.

Feeling unsure about your next step? Let Filament light the way.

12 Apr 2016
Sticky Post By Posted in CONTENT MARKETING, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION With No Comments Permalink

SEO Bones: What Your Website Really Must Have

Sticky Post By On April 12, 2016 With No Comments

The bare bones of SEO is actually one of our favorite topics in the SEO realm of Filament because it’s vital to website success and it stays relatively constant. The world of search engine optimization has shape shifter qualities and is continually evolving and morphing into something different, but the bones stay the same. If you optimize the following five areas of your website you’ll boost your organic search potential.

 

Keywords

The first step in this entire process is the “hardest”. It’s not that it’s necessarily difficult but it may take a little time and some research if you haven’t already done the work. Yes, it’s time to once again talk about keywords and key phrases. If it seems like we constantly harp on this, we do. It’s the backbone of all SEO bones. We really cannot stress strongly enough how important it is that you know what keywords and key phrases your target audience uses to search for your website offering. Then, go beyond that and find out what your future target audience uses as a search term that your website results would fulfill.

To explain this further let’s use an example. Say your company is called SkiX and you create adaptive skis for people with physical disabilities. Let’s further imagine that you are the top brand and well known in the industry so you know people use your name, SkiX, as a keyword. But there are also many people out there who haven’t heard of you who may be finding your company when they use a search query such as “adaptive skis” or “skis for people with handicaps” etc.

Establishing not only the keywords your website visitor base uses but the keywords your potential loyal followers and customers use is where the real SEO bones work begins. Once you have a handful of wonderfully descriptive, accurate and popular keywords/key phrases, you’re ready to roll!

 

Title Tags

Your title tag is your prime real estate in the digital world. This is where you get noticed and attract the most “digital foot traffic”. It also shouts out to the search bots and lets them know what your company is about. Every page of your website should be optimized to let the world know who you are, what you’re about and what is on that particular page. The challenge is to do that in 50-60 characters. You can create a title tag that is longer than that, but that’s all that is viewable from a search engine perspective.

 

Content

What you say to your audience is not only designed to inform, entertain and convert them into customers; it also needs to be thoughtfully keyword rich so it keeps the search bots on topic as well. Optimize your website content and watch your website traffic soar.

 

Headings

Headings call out to the audience and the bots, in one glance, what data will follow. Put thought into your headings and optimize them with your keywords. One huge heading that companies often neglect is the contact page heading. “Contact” has no SEO value to you whatsoever. But “Contact SkiX” is instantly transformed into a better SEO option.

 

Alt Attributes

Alt attributes are really just image tags. They’re captions that describe what the image is but they rest behind the image and are really only seen when you hold your cursor over the image or if you have a computer that reads this data. This is a vital tool for people with visual impairments. This is also important for the search engines as it lets them know you have images and video that enhances and relates to your content.

 

Not only is it important to have these website SEO bones in place, but you should review them regularly to make sure they’re still appropriate to your content, purpose and your audience.

 

Need help refocusing the SEO for your website? Contact Filament today.

 

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