Blog - FILAMENT CONTENT

08 Apr 2016

Sticky Post By Filament Social Media Marketing Specialist Posted in SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING With No Comments Permalink

Make Sure Your Social Media Matters

Sticky Post By Filament Social Media Marketing Specialist On April 8, 2016 With No Comments

If you’re one of the bajillions of people to whom social media matters for any reason, you probably reacted when you heard about the latest Instagram changes.

Maybe you just rolled your eyes in that here-we-go-again manner that you do so well. Maybe you added your @handle to the petition in defiance of the Insta-audacity of it all. Maybe you #hashtagged your feelings to the world everywhere but Instagram. Maybe you just exited your IG account and put your phone down and refused to look at it again for, like, an hour or something.

You probably didn’t like the changes that were being ‘grammed and tweeted and posted. Maybe you’ve come to appreciate the continuity of seeing things from the accounts you choose to follow. And, maybe you like seeing things as they’re posted rather than hours or days later, if at all. And maybe you want to keep seeing those things whether or not you choose to interact with every single post.

The point is, you probably came to expect certain things from Instagram that you can’t get elsewhere.

Now what do you do?

Well, you could take what you’re learning from this looming Insta-fiasco and make sure it doesn’t happen with your brand.

Instagram, like its parent, Facebook, are businesses. As such, they have to do certain things in order to run the businesses successfully. Sometimes those things aren’t very popular with their “customers.”

Sound familiar?

The Catch 22 of successful business is that everything has to benefit the bottom line. But, you also need to provide benefits for the people who are buying whatever you’re selling.

Instagram certainly knows this…

And so should you.

We’ve talked about achieving marketing synergy in the past. And a big part of synergy is making sure we connect organically.

We can’t just broadcast messages… We also have to receive. In fact, much like Instagram appears to be doing in the tweet above, we need to make sure our customers know we’re receiving.

We have to get personal with social media. Really personal.

When our customers speak, we have to listen. Whether they have good things to say or not, we need to let them know we hear them. And somebody, somewhere in your organization has to be keeping track of what’s being said and what’s being done about it.

If you want to make sure your social media matters, you have to encourage interaction. In fact, you have to lead interaction. Respond. Like. Offer a thumbs up or another emoticon (if you must… words are still best).

And when people begin to expect a certain kind of interaction from your brand, your brand will get a lot more interaction in return. Social media matters. And to make sure your customers know that it matters to your brand, you have to be out there shouting your brand’s voice from the mountain tops.

Whether you’re into Instagram or not, we hope the importance of authenticity comes through. From this experience, we expect to hear a lot more about how Instagram is listening to its “customers”. And not just the ones who are buying ads!

If you’re struggling with how to make sure your social media matters, call us. We’ll help you make sure it does!

07 Apr 2016

Sticky Post By Filament SEO Specialist Posted in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION With No Comments Permalink

Brand Identity & SEO

Sticky Post By Filament SEO Specialist On April 7, 2016 With No Comments

It’s very easy to get lost in SEO. You get caught up in the metrics and analysis, pulling in an audience, and coming in first on Google. Even if you do all of those things successfully, you can actually lose business if you lose sight of your brand identity. Imagine the excited freshman starting college. There are so many different things to learn but if they cast that net too far they will learn a lot but never establish themselves as an expert in one field. It’s your job to be an expert in your field, not to be all things to everybody. This concept is vital and it’s where brand identity and SEO meet in the most successful way.

We’re going to dive a little deeper into brand identity and SEO and explain how and why it truly does matter. Everybody knows that keywords are vital to web success as they actually serve as the short and simple definitions of what your website does or offers. In other words, they tell the search engines what buckets a website belongs in. But what happens once you’re in that bucket? How do you distinguish yourself from the rest? That’s what we’re going to look at today: the importance of your brand identity and SEO.

There are two key aspects to brand identity that are actually very important parts of SEO, but they often get left behind: Authority and Engagement.

Authority

A huge part of your brand identity is your level of authority. Again, if you’re that college student and you’ve taken a lot of different classes you don’t have much authority—although you’re probably pretty good at trivia. But if you’ve focused on one area of study and become a shining star in that arena you have some authority even before you graduate. As you progress through your career you’re going to build on that authority. A new website is that freshman and it’s all about letting the industry you’re in (the experts, competition, and consumers) know that this is your niche. As you progress to the senior level you’ll gain authority along the way by focusing on your area of study, making the right connections, communicating with valid responses and being associated in this field.

Search engines DO care about authority. They have been incredibly open about their desire to push the most authoritative and valid responses to queries to the top. Which you as a searcher yourself value. What they have not been very open about is how they rank authority. One can only assume it’s through engagement, links and back links, reviews and visitor responses and the age of the website and activity level on it. The overarching thought here, from an SEO perspective, is to simply be the best you can be in your field. There are no real shortcuts to establishing authority and there shouldn’t be.

Engagement

Now, while there are no shortcuts to establishing authority, there are ways to make sure you’re seen and recognized. Let’s go back to our college student. Sitting in the back of the class and being a passive learner will give you the same education but not the same experiences. Be the student that volunteers for assignments, that goes on field trips, that meets people working in the field and that contributes. There’s a reason some students are real stand outs. Business works the same way. Company A may have the same products as Company B but Company B is out there talking to people and engaging and creating relationships. It’s this level of engagement that earns them a place of trust with their audience that Company A will never achieve.

Once again, this is an area that search engines pay attention to and it’s one that we can see much more clearly. Imagine the social media campaign of Company B and how people are sharing information and ideas back and forth, pictures and videos are bouncing all around, comments and likes and reviews are cropping up everywhere; while Company A languishes in the back of the classroom.

Your website’s authority and engagement are vital parts of a good brand identity and SEO strategy but they often get overlooked because they’re harder to quantify. You can easily figure out how many times a vital keyword appears on a page and get you some statistics based on that. It’s more difficult to determine a website’s level of authority on a particular topic. Where are the metrics? The lack of clear cut mathematical data does not diminish the importance of these elements, in fact, it should actually reinforce the level of focus and effort that’s needed to establish authority and actively engage with your customers to create a brand identity that succeeds.

06 Apr 2016

Sticky Post By Filament Content Specialist Posted in EMAIL MARKETING With 4 Comments Permalink

Hello, My Name Is Your Email Audience

Sticky Post By Filament Content Specialist On April 6, 2016 With 4 Comments

Knowing your email audience is the first step toward creating a successful integrated marketing campaign that includes email. You’ll want to clearly identify who your audience is with demographics (e.g. age, gender, income, etc.) and psychographics (e.g. attitudes, interests, behaviors) in order to determine strategic priorities for your content, to craft relevant messages, and to establish the best channels to reach them.

As you’re getting to know your email audience, you’ll be answering questions like these: Who are my target customers? What are their motivations? How do they like being communicated to? Which newspapers or magazines do they read, and which sites do they visit regularly? Which channels are they using? If they’re using social media, what are they talking about? All these questions need to be answered before developing your integrated marketing strategy, and in order to answer them, we suggest a two-pronged approach: 1) real-time conversations and 2) data.

Conversations

First, you need to have meaningful, real-time conversations with your audience. As we suggested in Monday’s post, there are lots of ways to do this. You can make calls with your sales reps, go on ride alongs with your sales team, or take customer service calls. You can chat with them online and ask them to give you feedback via surveys in your emails, but if possible get out there and meet your audience face to face and listen to their frustrations, their joys, and the way they describe their world. Some of them will be subscribers; some of the won’t, in which case you just might find out why they haven’t signed up yet.

The most important part of connecting with your email audience in real time is listening. During your discussions, listen to what you customers have to say in order to learn about who they are, what they care about, and what they need. Use that information as you move forward with your integrated email campaign.

You can also use social media to have conversations with your customers. Social listening is a key tool toward getting to know your target audience better because it offers valuable insights into what they care about. In order to use social listening most effectively, find out which social networks your audience checks most frequently. You can figure this out from real-time conversations, email surveys and data (more on that next).

Data

The second part of our approach is looking at your email analytics to learn about your subscribers and what they want from you. If you’ve been tracking your emails, you already have a good deal of useful data that can tell you what your subscribers are interested in. (If you haven’t, check out our article on email campaign tracking for beginners.) You’ll want to look at everything from what sorts of subject lines inspire them to open your email to the color of the button CTAs they seem to prefer.

So, unless you haven’t been tracking anything, you’re not starting from scratch. Even open rates can tell you a lot about who your audience is and what they want from you. However, you can learn even more by digging in deeper. For example, you might figure out the click-to-view ratio for every article and every promo in your email. And be sure to watch negative metrics, too. For example, if unsubscribe rates are spiking, you’ll want to take a closer look and find out why.

You can use integrated analytics to see where your subscribers are going after they click out of your email. What types of content inspires them to act? Do they like videos? Webinars? Podcasts? Are they addicted to apps? Which promotions inspire them to convert? The goal here is to find out what resonates most (and least) with your subscribers. Your analytics can also tell you what devices they use to view your emails.

In addition to your email analytics, you can ask questions on your sign-up form or include brief surveys in the body of your email. Gather as much information about your email audience as you can, including their location, demographics, and their interests specifically as it relates to your brand, i.e. product info, special offers, loyalty coupons, general updates, etc.

Lastly, you can supplement your email analytics with social media analytics to gather more info about your audience. Later, when you’re creating your strategy and content, you can bring those insights to your emails.

With this two-part tactic, you’ll have a better understanding of who your email audience is and as a result, you’ll be better prepared to create an integrated campaign that’s effective and relevant. Get in touch with Filament to get started today.

04 Apr 2016

Sticky Post By Filament Content Specialist Posted in CONTENT MARKETING With 6 Comments Permalink

Getting to Know All About Your Target Audience

Sticky Post By Filament Content Specialist On April 4, 2016 With 6 Comments

The first step in building an integrated digital marketing campaign is getting to know your target audience. You need to know who your audience is and what their most urgent needs are. When you know that, it becomes easier to communicate effectively with them.

The number one way to know your audience is to LISTEN. The suggestions that follow all revolve around this key activity.

Connect in Real Time

First of all, you need to connect with your target audience in real time. Make calls with your sales reps. Go on ride alongs with your sales team. Take customer service calls. Meet one-on-one with customers and have meaningful, real-time discussions. Listen to their frustrations and their joys. Soak up the way they describe their world.

You can also ask your customers how you’re doing via email, online chat, outbound calls, and targeted campaigns via email and social. You can conduct surveys, focus groups, or even phone interviews, but you really want to connect with them in their home environments.

Social Listening

Second, start social listening. Monitor social media to see what’s resonating and what’s being discussed. Find out who’s talking about your brand, in what capacity, and where. It’s your job to pay attention.

You can also use SEO and keywords analysis to broaden your social listening. Start with the keywords people use to search for solutions. Look for the questions they’re asking, the content they’re sharing, the sites they’re using as sources for info, and the influencers they pay attention to. As you’re listening, keep track of all your insights and share them with everyone in your company.

Go Deep with Data

Dig into your data to find out what your target audience wants from you and determine strategic priorities for your content. For example, if we’re talking email marketing, don’t just look at open rates. Instead, figure out the click-to-view ratio for every article and every promotion in your email. And be sure to watch negative metrics, too. For example, if unsubscribe rates are spiking, you’ll want to take a closer look and find out why.

Monitor your analytics to find out what content gets the most shares, the most visits, and the most subscribers. Analytics tells us how your audience finds your site, what they read, and what most inspires them to convert. Use this data to dictate what content you’ll be producing more of.

It’s a smart idea to conduct a regular survey with your audience to assess the most common issues that keep popping up. You can also split-test different options on your website and in your emails to see what your audience prefers.

Craft Buyer Personas

With the insights you’ve captured in the previous three activities, you can create accurate buyer personas. While they’re not the end-all be-all of knowing your target audience, they’re great for getting everyone on the same page as to whom you’re serving. But in order for buyer personas to work, you need to put in the research to create them.

Buyer personas need to be based on real data, such as website data, buying history, staff insights, customer interviews, and surveys, which you then analyze and translate into meaningful insights you can apply to your business.

And once you’ve created them, be sure to use your buyer personas. You can use them to help identify the right channels, key content types, and devise your strategy. They can also provide inspiration for your creative team as they’re designing landing pages, social campaigns, and copy.

Just be mindful that you don’t come to rely solely on your buyer personas. After all, the very meaning of “persona”— ‘mask’—points to the folly in that practice. Buyer personas are a snapshot of your customers. While it’s helpful tool, it can also be a limiting tool if we lean on them to heavily. Buyer personas should not take the place of connecting with your target audience and learning about the real-life situations in which they find themselves and for which they need solutions.

The key to getting to know your target audience is listening. An integral part of that listening is documenting what you learn. Once you have a regular practice of meeting with your audience where they are at—whether that’s face-to-face or virtually—and intimately understanding what they need, you can use that information toward creating a customer-focused integrated marketing campaign. The better you know your target audience, the more effectively you can create, distribute, and promote content that resonates.

Feeling in the dark about integrated marketing? Get in touch with Filament.

23 Mar 2016

Sticky Post By Filament Content Specialist Posted in EMAIL MARKETING With No Comments Permalink

How to Integrate Your Email Marketing

Sticky Post By Filament Content Specialist On March 23, 2016 With No Comments

To keep your email marketing on point, you’ll want to integrate your email campaigns with your other inbound marketing channels. On Monday, we posted the eight steps to build an integrated campaign. This post will offer email-specific suggestions (with examples) within that framework.

Audience

In order to allow integration to work its magic, you need to know your audience in and out. You’ll want to get the answers to questions like: What resonates most with our subscribers? What devices do they use to view our emails? What websites do they frequent? What social media sites do our subscribers hang out on most? Do they like videos? Webinars? Podcasts? Or do the prefer a simple text email?

Luckily, thanks to your email analytics (more on that below), you have data you can use, data that tells you things about your subscribers’ interests and behaviors. For example, open rates and click through data can tell you what kinds of content your subscribers like best. You can also survey your subscribers and ask them directly. However, the most effective way to find out your subscribers’ needs and wants is to look at their behavior.

Strategy

Once you know your audience thoroughly, you’ll know what channels to integrate your email marketing with and what kinds of content will engage your subscribers. You can use that information to devise an integrated strategy.

For example, you might integrate email and social media by adding social sharing buttons to you emails, like this example from Apartment Therapy. We like how they have their social-sharing buttons at the top of the email versus the bottom like most brands do.

Subject Line: Need to Find Some Extra Money this Month? 8 Things You Can Stop Buying Today

You can also build your email list using social media by putting a “sign up” call-to-action right on your Facebook page, like HubSpot in the example below. This is a great way to turn social media followers into subscribers.

You can send and segment emails based on social media insights. For example, using your analytics, you can see a list of email subscribers and leads who have mentioned your company on Twitter. You can then follow up with an email that features targeted information.

Last but not least, if your subscribers use mobile devices, make sure your integrated marketing strategy is mobile. Why? According to Litmus, 69% of mobile users delete emails that aren’t optimized for mobile devices. Here are a few tips for making your emails mobile:

Make sure your buttons and links are easy to tap.
Offer plain text and HTML versions of your emails.
Include descriptive alt text for your images in case they don’t display.
Test your emails to see how they look on different mobile devices.
Optimize the landing pages and forms your emails link to, ensuring they’re easy to view and fill out on the mobile devices your subscribers are using.

For example, if one were to click on HubSpot’s CTA in the example above while using an iPad, we’d be driven to a landing page that allows us plenty of room to complete the form.

Identity

From email to social media to your blog, make sure you’re presenting a unified identity visually and through your brand voice. 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. Check out the landing page for the Apartment Therapy email from earlier in this post. You’ll see that it has the same look and feel as the email, with the same logo, main image, fonts and link colors. And the article’s title is identical to the email’s subject line.

Create clear, compelling and consistent content that your audience wants and make it repurposeable for different channels. For example, let’s say your audience loves how-to info. You can create a how-to video that you introduce in an email and that lives on your website. You can also feature that video in a blog post and in a social media post. You could also covert your video into an animated gif for email and twitter. Use the same keywords and phrases across channels throughout your campaign.

Teamwork

If you have many different teams working on your digital marketing, be sure to bring them together on a regular basis to keep everyone on the same page about your brand identity and your ultimate purpose. When teams come together, share their talents, and communicate well to maintain consistency, it tends to build enthusiasm and confidence for your campaigns.

Tracking

If your marketing is integrated, your analytics need to be integrated as well. Otherwise, you won’t be getting the full picture of how your subscribers are navigating their experience with you. Omni-channel analytics lets you grab deeper insights into what your target audience wants from your business and allows for better segmentation. Software companies like HubSpot and Beckon build integrated marketing right into their services.

Check back with us in a couple weeks as we delve deeper into some of these topics, helping you move toward implementing data-driven & customer-oriented integrated email marketing.

Need some help developing an integrated marketing plan for your business? Let Filament light the way.

21 Mar 2016

Sticky Post By Filament Content Specialist Posted in CONTENT MARKETING With 4 Comments Permalink

Content DIY: Build an Integrated Digital Campaign in 8 Steps

Sticky Post By Filament Content Specialist On March 21, 2016 With 4 Comments

Integration helps you create smarter content that works harder. It also builds trust with your target audience, fights fragmentation, saves you time and money, and unifies your team. Here are the 8 steps you’ll need to take to make it happen for your next digital campaign.

1. Know your audience.

In order to build an integrated digital marketing campaign, you need to identify your target audience. Once you’ve identified them, get to know their demographic their interests, and behaviors. How do they like being communicated to? What sites do they visit regularly? What are they talking about on social media? Which networks are they active on? You can look at past behavior, and you can ask them directly. Translate the data you collect into a documented, usable format.

2. Identify prime channels.

Which channels do 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.

3. Identify key content types.

Similar to #2 above, this step involves looking at your analytics, your customers’ behaviors, and answering several questions: 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?

4. Devise an integrated strategy.

Once you’ve nailed down your target audience, prime channels, and key kinds of content, you’ll want to put together a plan that includes the creation, repurposing, amplification, and distribution of content that will work across all your digital channels, including organic search, search engine marketing, social media, your blog, website, webinars, podcasts, and email marketing. Each element should be set up to drive traffic toward your primary objective, be that purchases or email signups on your website or engagement on a social network.

5. Establish a unified identity.

Consistency is the name of the game. In order to create consistency, you need to create a visual identity with a logo, colors, photography and graphic style. At the same time, be sure to institute a strong and unique brand voice. It could be conversational and clever, cheeky and fun, or professional and smart.

6. Create content that can be repurposed.

With the information you collected in the first three steps, a plan in place and an established brand identity, you’re ready to create flexible content that can be used in as many places as possible. Whatever kind of content you create, make sure it follows three guidelines: 1) clear, 2) compelling, and 3) consistent. Use the same keywords and phrases throughout your campaigns.

7. Align your marketing teams.

Whether you need to restructure your team or create a weekly meeting, get everyone on the same page to ensure they’re branding all digital campaigns with your consistent look, feel and voice. If you’re using an outside agency to create content, have a dedicated person in place to monitor that content to be sure it fits with your brand identity.

8. Track & optimize.

As you roll out content, measure its performance across channels. You want to understand how your content is achieving conversions, however you define that, so you can tweak your campaigns in the future and stay in the know about your audience.

Integrated marketing is both an art and a science. Residing happily at the intersection of data, technology, creative, and strategy, it takes time and perseverance, but it’s well worth the effort. Check back with us over the next several weeks as we go deeper into each step above.

Need some help developing an integrated marketing plan for your business? Let Filament light the way.

18 Mar 2016

Sticky Post By Filament Social Media Marketing Specialist Posted in SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING With 1 Comment Permalink

5 Ways to Achieve Marketing Synergy with Social Media

Sticky Post By Filament Social Media Marketing Specialist On March 18, 2016 With 1 Comment

We all know that social media is an imperative part of marketing our brands, right?

And we also know we have to keep our social media venues active in order to be productive… right?

Simply having social media sites and generating some posts now and then isn’t enough. Much like SEO, social media doesn’t do well on its own. You can’t simply create social media accounts and then sit back and wait for people to find you. Well, you can if wait-and-see is your strategy, but that tactic is probably not going to favorably impact your bottom line anytime soon.

Like any other “living” thing, social media must be fed and nurtured in order to grow. Social media has the power to amplify your messaging immeasurably—if it’s done correctly.

Thinking about how one social media site works versus another, and determining how to get them to work together is key. In order to actually achieve marketing synergy, figuring out how to get them to work together is best done ahead of time—thoughtfully and with a vision in mind.

There’s power in thoughtful repetition. Anything worth doing is worth doing more than once. In fact, repetition is almost a requirement of success—just ask any Olympic athlete.

So what constitutes social media “done correctly?” And in a world where everyone is looking for the newest news, how does repetition fit in? Does marketing synergy really exist?

Yes. But, it’s not immediate. And, while no one strategy works indefinitely, there are ways to continuously fuel the relationship between social media and the rest of your marketing machines.

Focus On What Matters

So many marketers get caught up in finding tools that will help them do more, faster. The problem with that is that quantity does not always equate with quality. Publishing for the sake of publishing should not be your goal. Neither should faster be, versus better.

Connect. Authentically, genuinely, and—as much as possible—in real time. Your #1 job in social media marketing is to be the voice of your brand. So, be the voice!

Think Ahead—But Not Too Far Ahead

However cliché the term may be in your mind, forward thinking is key in ensuring marketing synergy with social media.

Planning too broadly isn’t very beneficial because we often forget to give enough weight to “current events” due to the fact that we’re forecasting into the future. Sidestepping today doesn’t guarantee tomorrow.

Planning ahead for major holidays and seasonal events is critical for many brands, but responding to the here and now is, too. Always look down the road so you know what’s coming, but not so far down that you stumble on what’s already here.

Have An Objective

Know what you’re out there to do! Know what conversions you expect from your social media activity, and work toward those conversions. Determine the metrics that you’re going to use, and measure them often. Leave some room for random maneuvers, but always have that master plan in mind.

Cross All The Lines

Remember when we talked about nurturing and thoughtful repetition? Good practices include sharing your social media activities outside of their zones—often! Just like you always make sure to appropriately brand your email blasts, those blasts should also include links and CTAs for your social media venues.

Placement is key—don’t just drop a few microscopic dots on the very top of the page or at the bottom of the screen beneath the Unsubscribe link. Give your social media icons some prime real estate. Maybe even a few placements. Everyone scans emails differently. Don’t miss business opportunities because of “invisible” messages.

Make sure to guide your customers—don’t expect them to read your mind. Go beyond “Click Now!” Suggest that they join you on Facebook for the latest spring specials (where they can use the coupons they just received in their emails)! Give people reasons to follow you, and let them know what they can expect in doing so.

The more customers see your social media icons, and the more they hear about your social media activities via your traditional marketing messages, the more you’ll expand your traffic.

Step Outside

Make sure all of your teams are aware of what’s going on. Cross-communicating your social media goals to your sales and print advertising teams is essential so everyone knows what’s going on. So many business opportunities are missed due to lack of communication. Don’t let your brand suffer the consequences.

Speaking of consequences, in addition to making sure marketing receives company-wide engagement, get some help. As brilliant as your teams are, they can’t see everything from the inside. Partnering with outside marketing teams is just smart business. They can help balance all the ever-changing technicalities of social media while your internal teams drive the experience-based initiatives.

Looking to step up your marketing model’s synergy? Filament can help!

15 Mar 2016

Sticky Post By Filament SEO Specialist Posted in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION With 2 Comments Permalink

5 Steps to Integrated SEO

Sticky Post By Filament SEO Specialist On March 15, 2016 With 2 Comments

For many, SEO is the mystical creature of the digital marketing era. It offers so much and yet is so often misunderstood. To get the most out of search engine optimization it needs to be integrated throughout your entire website. In our last SEO post, we provided an overview of integrated SEO. In this post we will take a deeper dive, providing some specific steps on how to achieve search marketing integration (SMI).

Before creating an integrated SEO plan it’s vital that the concept is understood and demystified. Let go of any old preconceptions that remain, pushing the thought of keyword stuffing and link farming out of your head entirely. Instead, simply think of a good SEO plan as a way to reach your target audience more effectively and in greater numbers. SEO can also offer a way to review your results and effectiveness.

Once you’re ready to embrace what integrated SEO can do for your website, take a look at these five steps to SEO integration.

Establish Your Identity

Branding is often a little nebulous, even to established companies. But overall, it’s what your website stands for and the impression it creates. Your company brand is what sets you apart from the competition. If, through your SEO research, you discover that your key audience has a certain set of beliefs, attitudes, values etc. then you can incorporate this data into your brand and be the company or the website that they actually want you to be.

The key to successful branding, much like integrated SEO, is to keep this identity top of mind in everything you do.

SEO Bones

Like a great home, the key lies in the bones or the structure. Establishing your website bones and then integrating them across the site gives you that structure.

This process includes discovering the keywords and key phrases that best define what you offer and what your target audience searches. This will prove vital throughout the integration process, so spend some time really creating the right reach. Once this data has been created it’s time to integrate it into the front and back end of your website:

Create meta data
Write meta descriptions
Incorporate H1 and title tags
Add alt attribute tags

Content Integration

Once you have laid your foundation, it’s time to start building. This is where integrated SEO really begins.

The key is to remember to speak to your audience while using your keywords and key phrases rather than stuffing them in nonsensically. This is an area that Filament has always strongly emphasized as a great way to reach and engage your target audience. The keywords your audience uses need to be woven throughout the content in a clever, effective, conversational and informative manner. The primary objective is to speak to the audience and build your rapport and authority. The other objective is to signal the web crawling spiders and let them know what your website is all about.

Social Media

Content integration goes beyond just the content on your site. Ignoring the social media influence can be deadly to a website. On the flip side, creating a great rapport that is shared on social media can reap untold rewards.

There is no recipe for a viral social reach but content (including images, video and quality copy) that the target group reacts and relates to should be the goal of everything you do. Think enhanced experience.

In addition to establishing a relationship with your social marketing, you should also be weaving in SEO and making sure there is a tie back to your company, products, website etc.

Measure Results/Analytics

The feedback that is gathered in the form of analytics can often be confusing, mainly because there’s just so much of it. But if you pull out the data that is essential to your marketing efforts you will quickly see how vital this SEO integration can be. Marketing is a good place to integrate SEO because the results are quantifiable through analytics. You can track how successful one campaign is in terms of pulling in visitors and then compare that to another campaign to constantly fine tune your approach.

SEO is not the “end all” of website success, but it is a valuable tool in reaching across many channels and building an integrated strategy. The overarching message that shines through all integrated SEO efforts is to understand your audience. The real goal of search engine optimization is to reach that coveted target group. You do this by creating a plan of attack that not only reaches that group but also understands and engages, delivering a valuable experience that, in turn, creates loyalty. With the deeper understanding and the results-based data, SEO integration gives you that vital connection that will boost your web appeal.

Search Marketing Integration doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s well worth the effort. Check back over the next several weeks as we go deeper into each step, providing examples of what works and what doesn’t.

Need some help developing an SEO plan for your business? Let Filament show you the way.

10 Mar 2016

Sticky Post By Filament Content Specialist Posted in EMAIL MARKETING With 1 Comment Permalink

Integrated Marketing & Email: Making Magic

Sticky Post By Filament Content Specialist On March 10, 2016 With 1 Comment

Email is a crucial part of any marketing mix, but that doesn’t mean it works well in isolation. As with any digital channel, it’s best to take a holistic approach, namely, an integrated marketing approach. If we agree that integrated marketing is important (and we do), what does this mean for email marketing? What does an integrated email marketing approach look like? Read on for answers to these question and more.

Build Your List

Integrated marketing can help you build your email list, especially when social media marketing is brought to the mix. If you use email sign-ups on your social media pages and your website, you’ll have a fresh crop of subscribers to counteract your list’s natural attrition. You might also consider using Facebook link and lead ads.

Outsmart the Competition

Inbox competition is high. If your customers see you presenting the same identity across your other digital channels, they’ll be more likely to recognize your brand when it hits their inbox and won’t automatically tap that delete button. Plus, they’ll get that little rush of recognition, that feeling of being in the know, and they’ll want to connect with you to keep it coming.

Content that Connects

Here’s where your content marketing comes in. With any marketing plan, you need to be creating great content that solves your potential customers’ problems. When you have an integrated marketing plan, you already have a clear, focused message. Your email messages will be more successful because you’re reinforcing them with content across all channels. Add a strong call to action that makes it clear what you want subscribers to do, and you’ll be consistently bringing value to people’s inboxes.

Unite & Conquer

An integrated marketing approach lets you use the strengths of each channel to expand your reach, build lasting relationships, and sell more. For example, integrating social media with your email marketing helps with brand awareness, lead generation, amplifying content, and, as we said above, building your email list. Integrated SEO allows businesses to expand their reach exponentially. Email, on the other hand, is pure magic for strengthening your relationships with people who first got to know your brand via social media or search marketing.

Better ROI

Email already garners a great return on investment per dollar spent. Strategic marketing that includes integration boosts that even more because the more often you show your target audience a consistent message across a variety of channels, the more likely they will be to convert.

Integrated email marketing is one of the most effective ways to maintain loyal and productive relationships with your customers. Plus, it could considerably increase your revenue. Check back in a couple weeks to learn how to integrate your email marketing with your overall digital marketing strategy step by step.

Have a great story to share about your integrated marketing success? Tell us all about it in the comment section below.

Your email marketing needs to be integrated into the rest of your digital marketing strategies. Learn more when you get in touch with Filament.

08 Mar 2016

Sticky Post By Filament Content Specialist Posted in CONTENT MARKETING With No Comments Permalink

Why Marketing Integration Means Big Wins

Sticky Post By Filament Content Specialist On March 8, 2016 With No Comments

When we considered the top content marketing tips for 2016, marketing integration was at the top of our list. So we thought we’d explore this trend in more detail, starting with looking at why marketing integration is so important.

Before we get into the benefits of marketing integration, let’s briefly define integrated marketing. Simply put, integrated marketing is the application of consistent brand messaging across traditional (e.g. direct mail, newspapers, TV) and non-traditional (e.g. mobile apps, social media) marketing channels and beyond to sales, customer service and even human resources. It creates a unified and unifying marketing strategy that gets incorporated into every aspect of your organization. Integrated marketing is guided by the importance of creating a consistent, seamless multidimensional brand experience that your customers can relate to in any format.

With integrated marketing, each branding effort reinforces the brand’s identity. It’s more than just plastering your marketing with the same tagline, color palette or even the same message—a message that works well for social media may not translate to email. Instead, it means you communicate a consistent identity across messages and mediums and then you deliver consistently on that identity.

Now let’s look at the numerous benefits of integrating marketing and why it’s important to start implementing it today.

1. Builds trust

Customers come to expect a certain you and when you deliver on that, it builds trust. If you use an integrated marketing approach, every time they come in contact with your brand, they’ll have the same experience and get the same feeling. They’ll come to know what to expect, and you’ll consistently deliver on those expectations. That consistency builds trust, and trust leads to brand love.

2. Fights fragmentation

With ever-growing competition, audiences and attention spans are growing increasingly fragmented, which reduces the chance of your message getting through. Integration is a powerful way to overcome that trend. With a unifying strategy and a compelling voice for your brand, you can pull your campaigns together into a cohesive whole that keeps objectives clear and messages simple, which in turn will cut through the clutter and the confusion.

3. More effective

Gartner Research recently found that lead management campaigns integrating four or more digital channels will outperform single or dual-channel campaigns by 300%. When you communicate a consistent identity across all channels, you’re consistently reinforcing your message, which amplifies it even further. Plus, it raises brand awareness and trust.

4. More efficient

Without a doubt, marketing integration helps streamline your process, saving you time and money. Instead of needing to create resources for different channels, you can repurpose your content. Another benefit? Marketing integration helps cut down on planning and meetings. No complaints here.

5. Boosts morale

When your team works together toward a unified vision, it tends to build enthusiasm and confidence. They have to come together, share their talents and communicate well to maintain consistency. The end result? A unified strategy and a unified team.

Beyond these five benefits, your customers may want integration, too. A whopping 72% of customers want an integrated marketing approach, according to the E-tailing group’s 4^th annual consumer insights survey.

Everything you do to attract, convert, and engage your customers should be integrated. Integrate your content marketing with all the other elements of your marketing, sales, and branding processes, and in the end your content will have a stronger impact, more visibility, and better ROI. It takes time and perseverance, but the payoff is well worth it.

Have you seen an integrating marketing approach bring big wins to your business? Share your experience in the comments section below. Check back with us in a couple weeks to learn about how to build an integrated digital campaign.

Ready to set up an integrated marketing campaign? Get in touch with Filament.

The Content Connection