Weekend Favs July Thirty

Weekend Favs July Thirty written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don't go into depth about the finds, but encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from online source or one that I took out there on the road.

GrowthBot – Chatbot designed specifically for marketing and sales professionals – connects to a variety of marketing systems (like HubSpot, Google Analytics, etc.) and gives you quick access to information and services.

ZenoLive – Creates a unique phone number for your podcast so your audience can dial the number, select the episode they want to listen to and can even control the recording by pausing, fast-forwarding, etc.

Meetingbird – A project-based meeting platform that makes teams more productive by having all of your organization's meetings notes, agendas, and decisions live in a single, searchable place. 

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DEAD DEER REMOVAL MORRIS COUNTY NJ

78 Marketing Tasks You Should Outsource Immediately

If you're like me, you stay busy.

Running a business is a tall order in and of itself. When you throw marketing into the mix, things can quickly become overwhelming.

If you haven't felt this way yet, you're going to feel it soon: There just aren't enough hours in the day!

Here is one thing I learned early on in my business: outsourcing will save your life.

I speak from personal experience. There's no way I could have done what I've done without strategically and carefully outsourcing a lot of the day-to-day marketing tasks that took up my time and kept me from focusing on other goals. 

Why I'm a fan of outsourcing

Outsourcing has tons of benefits.

Most businesses rely on outsourcing because they want to “focus on the core.” That's another way of saying “we want to do what we do best.”

For you, the reasons may be different. You might have 29 things you have to do for a client, but you only have time to do 18 of them. You can outsource the rest.

I'm a major proponent of outsourcing a lot of the day-to-day tasks that are laborious and only hold me back from focusing on more pressing matters.

I'm probably different from other business owners, though. While some people have a top-down or hands-off approach to running their companies, I prefer to be in the thick of it.

You'll see me personally interacting on Facebook, jumping into blog comments, and working on blog articles.

I like to be involved in these aspects of my business because I feel like they are one of my important business tasks-connecting with and learning from other marketers.

That's one of the great things about outsourcing. You can be as involved as you want or as hands-off as you want. It's up to you.

A lot of people I talk with are concerned about the cost of outsourcing. “But doesn't it cost a lot to outsource these tasks?” they ask.

The answer is yes and no.

Yes, you have to pay for quality work.

But no, it doesn't cost a lot because of the time you're saving. If your time is worth, say, $50/hr, doesn't it make sense to pay someone $35/hr to post to Facebook, create a video, proofread an article, or respond to blog comments?

If you can be doing your $50/hr work while your outsourcer is doing their $35/hr work, it's a win-win-win. You win. They win. Your client wins.

And it's not just time you're saving. You're also creating efficiency and increasing your quality. So maybe it's a win-win-win-win-win.

Are there risks to outsourcing?

Sure, there are risks to anything.

I'll admit that outsourcing has its fair share of risks. You can risk hiring the wrong person. You risk an outsourcer going AWOL. You run the risk of poor work standards. You even risk your brand being tarnished when an outsourced worker gets shoddy with their work.

There's a flip side to this.

Most entrepreneurs and marketers are concerned they'll get low quality work if they outsource.

What I've discovered is that you can actually improve the quality of work if you outsource.

Let's say you need to create an explainer video for a new product. You can do it yourself with your iPhone and feeble editing skills.

Or you can outsource it to an explainer video professional.

If you outsource it, the quality will be a million times better than the quality you'd get if you'd tried to do it yourself.

See what I mean?

Besides, you don't always need perfection when it comes to marketing. Although I tend to be a perfectionist, I've realized that done is better than perfect.

But I believe the rewards are greater than the risks. Besides, part of being a good marketer is being a good manager to other marketers.

The great thing is that there is a wide array of virtual assistants and marketing professionals available who will ensure that your campaign runs like a well-oiled machine without you having to hold their hand every step of the way.

Here are some specific tasks you should outsource right away.

Blogging

I always strive to maintain high quality standards on both NeilPatel.com and Quick Sprout. I've found I'm consistently able to do so without it devouring my time by outsourcing.

And I'm not alone. In fact, 64% of B2B marketers outsource their writing in some capacity.

Here are some of the ways you can improve your blog quality through outsourcing:

1. Moderating blog comments and filtering spam


2. Responding to the comments your readers leave


3. Performing research for upcoming blog posts


4. Generating new ideas and pitches for blog posts


5. Scheduling blog posts


6. Finding images and videos for blog posts


7. Adding meta descriptions, tags, and images to blog posts


8. Finding statistics to incorporate into posts


9. Proofreading for spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and awkward phrasing


10. Making adjustments to older blog posts as new data is unveiled


11. Creating internal links to existing posts


12. Keeping an inventory of posts and the keywords used


13. Corresponding with your team of freelance writers


14. Hunting down guest blog opportunities


15. Coming up with pitches for guest posts


16. Reaching out to influencers in your industry

Social Media

In my opinion, social media may be pound-for-pound the easiest area of marketing to outsource.

One of the biggest challenges of social media is curating the content you plan to share. It can take an enormous amount of time simply to find good, relevant articles that your audience will benefit from. Outsourcing this task is an instant way to free up several hours a week!

Think about the importance of visuals in your social media content too. Adding images to individual posts is a massive time drain…unless you outsource it!

A lot of tasks don't require an immense amount of experience. Most virtual assistants are fully capable of handling them with minimal supervision:

17. Managing and approving friend or follow requests


18. Inviting followers to attend events


19. Sending out personalized birthday greetings to key contacts


20. Sharing your blog content across social networks


21. Finding and editing images to use in posts


22. Curating quality content from relevant sources


23. Scheduling posts across all social platforms


24. Keeping track of brand mentions


25. Uploading new videos to YouTube


26. Creating questionnaires and surveys


27. Engaging with friends and followers


28. Ensuring all profiles are updated on a consistent basis


29. Sending out thank-yous to new followers


30. Commenting, retweeting, and interacting with interesting content


31. Designing and occasionally redesigning profiles

SEO

While you don't want just anyone handling the more complex aspects of SEO, there are several elements of SEO that virtual assistants are fully capable of looking after. Many freelancers have the skill to perform keyword research, create a 301 map, or generate a thorough sitemap.

If you're looking for someone to deal with the nuts and bolts of SEO, you'll want to go with a highly qualified SEO firm who has a track record of success.

This post from Kissmetrics discusses what to look for in an SEO firm and how to tell if they're helping or hurting you.

These are some of the SEO tasks that can be outsourced:

33. Performing keyword research


34. Creating catchy headlines


35. Setting up a sitemap


36. Building and editing landing pages


37. Performing off-site optimization such as commenting on other blogs


38. Analyzing the SEO campaigns of competitors


39. Tracking the position of your content in search engines


40. Researching cutting edge SEO trends


41. Submitting content to directories


42. Handling social bookmarking


43. Monitoring site speed


44. Performing an occasional SEO audit


45. Keeping up with Google algorithm updates

Content marketing

Did you know that 72% of large organizations and 33% of small companies outsource their content creation?

Content marketing is my jam. I love it. I do it. And I've experienced incredible success with it.

As experienced as I am, I feel completely comfortable outsourcing numerous aspects of content marketing.

Let's face it: content marketing takes serious time. As content marketing grows, you'll discover there are more and more tasks you need to-but don't have time to-do.

You're left with a single choice: outsource or drown.

Here is what you can outsource:

46. Creating offsite content that links back to your website and blog


47. Interviewing sources


48. Finding statistics to add


49. Repurposing content, using a variety of mediums such as infographics, videos, slideshows and webinars


50. Creating and managing your editorial calendar


51. Establishing deadlines for content


52. Building spreadsheets for your editorial calendar


53. Backing up content in the Cloud


54. Finding and editing photos


55. Converting files


56. Working on increasing post engagement


57. Keeping track of your content marketing budget


58. Ensuring all content is mobile-friendly

You can learn more about the process of outsourcing content marketing on one of my previous posts. In it, I discuss some important questions to ask to ensure you get the most bang for your buck.

Analytics

Every good marketer makes decisions based on analytics.

But analytics can be tricky. You have to set up your analytics, configure the analytics, generate reports from your analytics, monitor these analytics, analyze the analytics, determine takeaways from the analytics, and then make strategic marketing decisions in light of these analytics.

Thankfully, there are parts of the analytics maze you can outsource:

59. Monitoring trends with traffic, acquisition, conversions, etc.


60. Spotting long-term patterns


61. Generating daily, weekly, and monthly reports


62. Analyzing engagement


63. Determining how cost-effective your marketing techniques are

Reputation Management

Knowing what the public perception of your business is at all times has never been more important than it is today. In fact, 97% of consumers say they read reviews about local businesses.

Due to the fact that reputation management can be inherently time-consuming, I've found outsourcing it to be a smart move:

64. Handling social listening across the web


65. Monitoring reviews on sites such as Yelp and Angie's List


66. Getting consumer feedback


67. Paying attention to negative press


68. Responding to negative comments


69. Managing trolls

Email marketing

Email marketing matters more today than ever before.

As old-school as it sounds, email marketing is one of the best methods of attracting and retaining high-value leads for your B2B or B2C.

But, as with any area of marketing, things can get tricky here too. Why? Because it takes a lot of time to set up email, integrate it, create updates, format newsletters, and take care of the nitty-gritty of mailing lists and scheduling.

It's one of the first things you should consider outsourcing:

70. Creating newsletters


71. Proofreading and editing emails


72. Sending out bulk emails


73. Responding to questions

WordPress

WordPress could be considered the universal blogging and publishing platform.

In fact, 26% of all websites on the planet use WordPress. If you run your site on it, you can make your life a lot simpler by outsourcing a few key tasks:

74. Monitoring and managing plugins


75. Installing new plugins


76. Providing WP support


77. Tweaking templates


78. Handling coding

Conclusion

We're living in a globalized, digitized world with a surplus of professionals who can handle nearly every aspect of your marketing campaigns.

As a result, outsourcing many marketing tasks makes complete sense and has never been easier to do.

I've had a lot of success with outsourcing, and I know I'm not alone. Many of my industry colleagues and clients have told me the same thing. If it weren't for outsourcing, they wouldn't be in business!

Once you start outsourcing, amazing things will happen to your business.

You suddenly find yourself with more time to focus on high-level strategy. Instantly, you encounter new opportunities for growth and expansion. Your vision becomes clearer. You open up new channels of engagement. Things simply improve.

Outsourcing is a small move that starts the cascade of great benefits.

If you haven't been taking advantage of outsourcing, I would recommend first identifying which tasks are hurting your efficiency and then hiring others to handle them.

Here's my challenge: This week, outsource just one marketing task. That's it!

Use Fiverr, Upwork, or Craigslist. Find someone who's skilled. Give them a task. See what happens.

Have you outsourced any other areas of your marketing efforts that I didn't cover?

3 Tips to Improve Marketing Accountability

Marketing accountability can be a challenging endeavor – and conquest-for organizations. While it can be incredibly exciting for an organization to make the decision to introduce technology platforms to assist in the improvement of marketing accountability, it's critical to understand the management and measurement implications that will support success. 

Even when an organization has processes in place to leverage technologies, refinement and optimization strategies must continually evolve in tandem with marketing goals. 

Whether you're a marketing leader or a boots-on-the-ground pro managing marketing technology daily, here are some key considerations to enhance your marketing accountability:

1. Position your marketing for programmatic success. To employ a necessary cliché, it has to be said that programmatic marketing and advertising is the wave of the future. According to eMarketer, programmatic digital display ad spending is projected to reach $26.78 billion by 2017. That's up from only $10.32 billion in 2014. This means that marketing professionals and hiring managers should consider programmatic knowledge a core skillset. That requires an organizational commitment to the development of programmatic thought leadership and marketing application.  

You don't want to miss out on the opportunity to monetize core inventory. The entire programmatic category is seeing increased spending across the board due to its predictive yield and ROI for marketers and publishers alike, not to mention easy insertion processes and lower barriers to entry for most advertisers. 

2. Develop data “Dos” and “Don'ts” that support meaningful marketing. You need to encourage your customers and the modern marketing community to “Think beyond the transaction.” In other words, consider the treasure trove of data available to you that can be leveraged to create rich, meaningful buyer profiles that help you better target, as well as understand the attributes of your ideal customer. Invest your time and team resources into a strategic blueprint of data “Dos” and “Don't's” relevant to your business goals, and consider the benefits of implementing a data management platform (DMP) to support your strategic goals.

Organizations previously focused on their known marketing channels-for example email data stored in a familiar place: CRM systems. But now the focus has shifted to anonymous channels. Offline and online data-or known and unknown-is important. 

Presenting valuable and compelling offers hinges on the ability to develop creative and content that aligns with audience browsing habits and patterns. All of this insight needs to be matched with channel insight to ensure relevance and maximize the interaction, and the DMP helps marketers achieve that. 

3. Test your tech stack accordingly. To ensure that you're maximizing your budgets and resources from an investment perspective, consider which tools will help you achieve your goals and position your measurement strategy for success, as well as the technologies that will support your existing technology infrastructure. The DMP can collect rich behavior data and attributes such as website actions, product engagements, or demographic information. From there, it can pass that data into a cross-channel marketing solution to build a more comprehensive, actionable customer profile to inform that holy-grail customer experience previously discussed.

Ready to seize the opportunity to reinvent your marketing function as a core part of your company's revenue engine? For more insights on how to maximize your data and accountability strategies, Download The Guide to Advertising Accountability.

Online Marketing News: Critical Personalization, Social Strategy Research & Marketers on Reddit

Why Creating a Personal Online Experience for Your Visitors Is Critical [Infographic]
Did you know that 87% of companies that have implemented web personalization have seen an increased return in key metrics? There is certainly a strong case to create a personal experience for visitors to your website or blog. This handy infographic explains why one size doesn't always fit all. MarketingProfs



What 51 Million Pieces of Content Say About Your Social Media Marketing Strategy [NEW RESEARCH]
TrackMaven analyses "the social media content from over 40,000 companies across 130 major industries on four major social networks -Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn - to provide businesses with relevant benchmarks for social media audience size, posting frequency, and engagement at an industry-specific level" in this new report. TrackMaven

Reddit Intros New Ad Offering, 'Grows Up' and Says It Can Be as Big as Facebook
Reddit announced that they're allowing marketers to sponsor user posts on the popular social platform. AdAge reports "On August 4, Reddit will debut a new ad offering called Promoted User Posts, which will give marketers the ability to sponsor user generated posts on Reddit's platform." While the benefits to the users are unclear, this could make huge headway for influencer marketers and consumer brands trying to reach a tough-to-reach audience. AdAge

Google launches imported call conversions
Google is now allowing advertisers using their AdWords platform to import call data, so they can better attribute leads and revenue driven by their ads and connect that to their return on ad spend. This has been available in a rudimentary form previously, but this new ability will step up visibility into ROI and user behavior. ClickZ

Spotify Is Now Letting Brands Target Listeners Worldwide via Their Playlists
Last week, Spotify announced that the music streaming service will be offering programmatic advertising to its user base for marketers, with targeting based on demographics like age, gender, location and listening habits like playlist and genres. AdWeek



Google rolls out expanded text ads, device bid adjustments & responsive ads for native in AdWords
According to Search Engine Land, "Google has officially launched expanded text ads. The extra-long ads with double headlines began rolling out across devices Tuesday morning." Google is also now allowing advertisers to start setting base bid adjustments by device, and announced the upcoming responsive display ads that will be served across the GDN. Search Engine Land

Facebook Reports Seeing 2 Billion Searches Daily
MediaPost reports that on Wwednesday, Mark Zuckerberg said that on Facebook, "people are doing more than 2 billion searches a day between looking up people, businesses, and other things that they care about ... One of the big growing use cases that we're investing a lot in is looking up the content in the ecosystem, and that is an area that we're very excited about, which helps people find more content." MediaPost

ACSI report: Customer satisfaction increases for e-business despite dips in social media
The American Customer Satisfaction Index has released their findings on how social media, search engines and news websites have impacted consumer perceptions of e-businesses. While satisfaction with e-businesses is continuing to improve, satisfaction on social media -- attributed in part to the rise of social customer service -- has dropped. Marketing Land

Financial Times: People find mobile ads 'intrusive' and 'distracting'
Financial Times released findings from a study of 1,300 readers, of which Digiday reports: "Half of respondents to a survey the FT conducted with Quantcast said mobile ads are more intrusive than desktop, although 37 percent of them said they'd be more influenced if the mobile ads they saw were more creative." Digiday

What were your top online marketing news stories this week?

I'll be back in two weeks with more digital marketing news! The lovely and talented Ashley Zeckman will be filling my spot on camera and on the blog next week with the latest and greatest in the world of digital marketing.

The post Online Marketing News: Critical Personalization, Social Strategy Research & Marketers on Reddit appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Google revenues climb 21 percent to $21.5 billion, powered by mobile

Growth is coming from three areas: mobile search, video and programmatic, but primarily mobile search.



Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

Europeans Using Solar Power To Transform Urine Into Beer

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For the second year in a row, a team of researchers at Belgium's Ghent University is collecting urine at one of Europe's largest festivals, Roskilde. The researchers are hoping that by the time next year's festival rolls around, one of the country's breweries should have plenty of recycled urine beer to pour out for adventurous drinkers. The first time around, researchers say the goal was to extract nutrients that could be used as fertilizer. According to an article last summer, more than 25,000 liters of urine were collected and the fertilizer that was produced from it provided nourishment to a barley crop. This year, the researchers were after another critical beer ingredient: water.

 

Apple sells 1,000,000,000th iPhone but Samsung gains market share

As the iPhone nears its 10th anniversary rivals are producing high-quality and often lower-cost alternatives.



Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

Why You Must Act Now to Become the #1Rated Provider in Your Area

Why You Must Act Now to Become the #1Rated Provider in Your Area written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing

photo credit Pixabay

It's no secret that getting positive ratings and reviews about your business on third-party websites is an important part of marketing these days. Study after study has confirmed that a majority of consumers trust online reviews of local businesses and use those reviews when making buying decisions.  However, despite all the press about the importance of reviews, many local businesses still haven't gotten the message and are not doing anything to encourage their customers to leave a review for them-and that's great news for you.

You see, the fact that many businesses are not giving this aspect of marketing the attention it deserves means that it may not be too late for you to become the #1-rated provider of your products or services in your local area.  If you act quickly to claim this title, it could have a profound and lasting impact on your business.

The Psychology of Being #1

Before I get into how you can go about becoming the top-rated provider in your area, allow me to explain why doing so is well worth your time.  You're probably familiar with the psychological concept of social proof, which says that people tend to reference the behavior of others when making decisions.  What you may not be aware of is how powerful this phenomenon is.

In many studies covering a wide variety of industries, the best predictor of the popularity of something was how popular it was already.  That has been proven to be true for everything from the number of downloads a song will get to which answer people will choose on a multiple choice test.

It has also been proven that a small increase in popularity early on will lead to a much larger increase in popularity down the road.  There is no denying that people simply trust the judgement of the crowd.

What this phenomenon means for your business is that if none of your local competitors has any online ratings or reviews-which is still the case in many industries in many local markets-by simply getting a small handful of great reviews on one or two key sites, you can not only become the top-rated provider in your area, but you will likely ensure that you will always be the top-rated provider in your area.

You see, once you get a few great reviews on third-party websites, at least some people will choose to do business with you simply because of that fact.  This will, in turn, make it more likely that you will get more good reviews on more third-party websites…which will make it more likely that people will choose you simply because of your good reviews…and so on.

The good news for you is that if you take action on this quickly, by the time your competitors realize what you're doing you'll probably be so far ahead that they'll never catch up.  The bad news is that if your competitors take action first, you will have your work cut out for you if you ever want to unseat them as the top-rated company in your area.

Deciding what category you will be top-rated in

Now that you understand the importance of acting quickly to become the top-rated provider in your area, let's talk about how exactly to go about doing that.

The first step is to decide what product or service you are going to be the top-rated provider of.  At first this might seem obvious, but it's actually important to put a little thought into this for a few reasons.

First, you should do a little bit of keyword research to find out what products or services your potential customers are searching for, and what keywords they are using to describe those products.  This is important because you'll want your business's listings on third-party review sites to show up in search results for popular search terms, which means you'll need to use those terms in the description of your business that you put on those sites.

For example, a handyman might determine that many people in his area are looking for plumbers online, but not many people are searching using the term “handyman”.  He would want to make sure to include terms related to plumbing on his business listings so that when he collects reviews he can brand himself as the top-rated plumber in the area.  Being the top-rated provider of a service nobody is searching for defeats the purpose of creating social proof, and won't do you any good.

Another reason that you should put some thought into what category you will target for top-rated status is that one of your competitors may have beaten you to the punch in one category, but be lagging behind in another.

For example, a cleaning company that offers residential and commercial cleaning might have a competitor who only offers residential cleaning and has 20 five-star reviews on Google.  It might make more sense for that company to try and get reviews from their commercial cleaning customers and brand themselves as the top-rated commercial cleaning company in the area, instead of trying to catch up with their competitor in the residential cleaning category.

Of course, you can certainly become the top-rated company in your area in multiple categories, but you should first target categories that will get you the best results the fastest, and then move on to more specific categories.

How to get reviews

Once you've determined what category you want to become top-rated in and have set up listings for your business on third-party review sites using keywords related to that category, it's time to start getting some reviews on those sites.

There's really only one way to do this, and that means asking for them…and asking a lot.  As more and more companies catch on to how important reviews are, your customers will begin to get bombarded with requests for reviews.  Here's a few tips about how to make it more likely that they will respond to your requests:

• Have a specific point in your customer service cycle where you ask for a review in order to make it less likely that you'll forget to do it.


• Train yourself and your employees to always ask for a review whenever they get a compliment from a customer. Be specific about where you want the customer to leave a review, and give them the information they need to do it (such as a direct link to the site where you want the review sent in an email).


• Especially target customers you have a long history and close relationship with. They'll not only be more likely to leave you a review, but their review will probably be more descriptive.


• In addition to your customers, ask strategic partners to leave you a review. This is 100% legitimate as long as they make it clear in the review that they are speaking not as a customer but from someone who has knowledge of your business from the perspective of a strategic partner.


• Consider using an automated reputation marketing tool to help you collect reviews (Us and GetFiveStars.com are two examples of these).

Where to get reviews

The answer to where to get your customers to leave reviews for your business depends to a certain extent on your industry, your competitors, and where you are located, but for most businesses, the following guidelines are a good starting point.

• Start by getting six 5-star reviews on your Google My Business page. This will make the average star rating show up on the page instead of just the number of reviews.  It will also make your Google listing more likely to show up as one of the three businesses displayed in the maps section of the local search results.  This will help kick-start your “top-rated” claim.


• Next, get 5-10 reviews on your business Facebook page. This page often turns up just after or even before your website in search results when people search for your business by name.


• After Google and Facebook, do some local searches for the keywords you are targeting and also some branded searches for your business, and see what directories if any turn up in search results. Get some reviews on these directories next and get 5-10 reviews on each.


• Last but not least, get some reviews on high-traffic industry-specific review sites such as Homeadvisor.com, Zillow.com, Healthgrades.com, or Cars.com.

Once you've done all of the above, then pick one or two sites to get the majority of your reviews on going forward.  It will be easier to brand yourself as the “top-rated” provider if you can point to a large number of reviews on one site vs having to average ratings and reviews across many sites (although this is still a valid strategy).

What to do if you've already been beaten

In some competitive industries or large metropolitan areas, if you are just now starting to gather ratings and reviews, you may be too late to the party to become the top-rated provider.  In that case, with a little bit of creativity you can still use social proof to help you get new customers:

• Narrow your geographic focus: If someone else has nailed down the top-rated status for your industry in the closest major city, try targeting your suburb or even your neighborhood (if your business is located in a neighborhood that has a widely used name but is not formally recognized as a municipality).


• Target a narrower category: If there is a service you provide that your highly-rated competitor doesn't, get some reviews reflecting that and brand yourself as the #1-rated provider of that service.


• Get reviews from a specific category of customer: Instead of branding yourself as the #1 rated provider of your service overall, you could brand yourself as the #1 choice of a specific type of customer after collecting reviews from that type of customer. For example, a cake bakery could get reviews from owners of bridal salons in the area and brand themselves as the “top-rated bakery for wedding cakes among local bridal salons”.

By following the tips listed above, within relatively short order you should be able to claim the title of “#1-rated” in at least one category.  Don't wait too long to take action, though-for all you know, your closest local competitor could be reading this same blog post and planning their own top-rated marketing campaign!

Kevin Jordan is a member of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network and the owner of Redpoint Marketing Consultants, the #1-rated marketing agency in Christiansburg, VA.  He's also co-author of the award-winning book The Small Business Owner's Guide to Local Lead Generation and the host of the top-rated video podcast The Small Business Marketing Minute Show. You can connect with Kevin on Twitter @RMCVirginia.

What Does 'Mobile-Friendly Content' Really Mean?

If you're a 90's kid, you likely have fond memories of Saved by the Bell and its star, precocious Ferris Bueller type Zack Morris.

You could tell Zack was unique among the students at Bayside High. For one thing, he could stop time and address the camera directly. But more importantly, he had a cellular phone. Sure, it was the size (and probably weight) of a brick. But it wasn't connected to a landline! That big rubberized antenna didn't connect with a corded receiver nearby-it pulled connectivity out of thin air. Magical.

Fast forward to today, and kids who were born after Saved by the Bell went off the air are now entering the workforce. If they met Zack Morris, they would probably make fun of his hair, his clothes, and his giant phone.

Image via YouTube

Mobile phones aren't reserved for cool kids with time-stopping powers anymore. Whether we're old, young, or middle-aged and trapped in a nostalgia loop, smartphones are our constant companions.

It's high time for marketers to catch up with this reality. Over a year ago-an eternity in Internet time-Google announced that more searches take place on mobile devices than on computers. That fact has led Google to include mobile friendliness as part of its ranking algorithm. They know more people are on mobile than ever before. And they are invested in providing a better experience for mobile users.

Being on Google's good side isn't the only advantage to being mobile friendly, though. The only reason Google prioritizes mobile friendliness is that it's what users want. That is, it's what your audience wants.

So, how is your mobile experience? Sure, you already have responsive design, but is your content actually optimized for people to consume it on a mobile device? Or is reading your site more like trying to catch Pokémon on Zack Morris' phone?

Here's how to make different types of content more mobile-friendly.

Optimize Video Content

Video is the rising star of mobile content. Thirty-five percent of viewers watched more video last year than they did the previous year. And 36% said they watched videos that last five minutes or longer every day.

If you want your audience to spend their precious data allotment on your video, it's important to make sure the experience is a pleasant one:

• Use a service that automatically optimizes the tech stuff. Don't fiddle with bitrates and compression on your own. Go third-party with YouTube or Vimeo for a seamless user experience. If you want to host your own video, use Apple's HTTP Live Streaming. It can adjust the video quality on the fly to match bandwidth capability, just like Netflix does.


• Make sure text is readable. Mobile screens are small. Even the big ones are small. Don't make your viewer squint to see the fine print.


• Make it make sense without audio. Eighty-five percent of video on Facebook is played without sound. And even if your viewer has their headphones in, odds are they're in an environment that makes listening difficult. Try watching the video on mute to make sure it still gets your points across.

Optimize Images

Load times are a major factor in someone engaging with your content or bouncing back to the search results. So it's important that your content gets in front of them fast. At the same time, though, visual interest is another major factor in staying versus bouncing. So you have to have both a responsive site and one with visual appeal. To do that, make sure your images will load fast and look great:

• Create images in a pre-optimized format. Use a tool like Canva to create images the right size and resolution for social media and email.


• Use smart compression. You can compress .jpg files a bit without compromising their appearance. But too much compression leads to ugliness. Tinyjpg is a neat tool that compresses by reducing the color depth in ways invisible to the human eye. It's downright spooky.


• Use a tool for responsive resizing. If you have web development wizards on your side, they can help with responsive resizing from the server side. If you have to go it alone, a service like ly Display can do the heavy lifting.

Optimize Text Content

Yes, Virginia, people do still read text on mobile. It's not all videos and images and virtual-reality roller coasters. But they're reading for shorter periods of time and with much greater potential for distraction. So a wall of text will be even less effective than it is on a laptop screen. Here's how to guide a reader through your text content without losing them:

• Serve content in snack-friendly chunks. Think short sentences and short paragraphs, broken up by visual assets, video, embedded content from Vine, Instagram, or Snapchat, or at least white space.


• Use headers for navigation. Make sure readers can skim the post and get a good idea of what you're talking about. Think of the headers as the “trailer” to entice people to take in the whole post.


• Include the main points in your conclusion. If your article starts to look like a time commitment, mobile readers might just swipe to the bottom and see how it wraps up. Make sure the relevant points and call to action are waiting for them.

Mobile Friendly is People Friendly

Regardless of where they encounter your content, you want your audience to have a positive experience reading or watching it. So make sure your brand is putting its best face forward for the 50% who will encounter you first on mobile. Give them responsive video content that makes sense even if their headphones are off. Make sure your images look great, display properly, and load quickly. And make sure your text is snackable, navigable, and skimmable.

What are your top tips for creating mobile-friendly content? What did I miss? Let me know in the comments.

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9 Ways For Marketers To Do Amazing Technical Things Without Knowing Code

As a marketer, you are always looking to do more with less. You may get the sense that technology can help you do better and you're right. Follow along as I explain exactly how you can harness this force without writing a single line of code.

1. Do A/B Split Tests and Personalization You've probably heard of all the merits of A/B split testing and of being data-driven, but how can you implement these different tests on each of your pages without consulting the tech team?

It's easy enough with solutions like Visual Website Optimizer and Optimizely that allow you to drag and drop your changes across the website by simply copy and pasting a snippet of code across your website (or getting somebody technical to help you do that). Both tools allow you to customize your website for different types of visitors, and they'll allow you to run controlled experiments to see which variations of your web pages perform best.

Optimizely allows you to drag and drop different variations of your web page without any code.

2. Build Landing Pages

Maybe you don't want to optimize your website – you want to build some new pages. Maybe it's a new campaign announcing a new product launch, or maybe you're running an event you want to collect an email waiting list for. Whatever it is, you'll need a web page that describes what you're doing, a landing page. Thankfully, you don't have to build anything in HTML or CSS. You can use drag and drop editors in Unbounce or, if you're really looking to maximize conversion, marketing-based solutions like Leadpages.

3. Build Entire Websites

Don't want to stop at just building a web page? Maybe you want to look to build an entire website for a new product. Thankfully, you don't have to call a web agency to do everything for you at a high price! You can use solutions like Squarespace or Wix to build everything in your website without a line of code. And if you want to get even more customized, grab a theme from Themeforest and learn the basics of WordPress! You'll soon be building beautiful websites with layers of personalized complexity–without a line of code.

4. Scrape Links, Content and More with Python (but use with caution!)

By downloading Anaconda and using the iPython Notebook contained within, you can use Python scripts and copy + paste the outputs.

The easiest and most powerful use of this is to take links and data from other websites. Be careful though, a lot of websites will have terms of use that prohibit the use of their content. Nevertheless, it might be a good tool to use to get raw data, or to get useful links that point to certain resources. You might, for example, want to get all of the links of your competitors profiled in a certain blog post, or you might want to get all of the links of different services in a directory.

This script above will take all the links from a sample page (in this case the Wikipedia page for the Python language)

Here's the raw script you can copy + paste in Python 3.5 mode:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

import requests

r = requests.get(“https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language)”)

soup = BeautifulSoup(r.text,”lxml”)

for link in soup.find_all('a'):

print(link.get('href'))

5. Send Newsletters and Automate Emails

Email is one of the most effective marketing channels out there, and the best for return on investment. If you can get people coming back by filling their inbox with valuable information, you've reached marketing nirvana.

Instead of doing all the messy work coding up HTML-rich emails, you can use the drag & drop and email list capabilities of MailChimp. If you want to automate emails a layer beyond, and take people through an in-depth series of automated emails, you could use a solution like Drip.

6. Get Data

Ever needed to take a quick look at certain data, like the demographic traits of a certain country? Need to source the latest financial data? Look no further than Quandl. You'll be able to find all sorts of data, from the average age of first marriage for women to life expectancy at birth. Best of all, you can export that data directly in Excel, stepping away from all of the code if you needed.

7. Filter Through Data

Most people think of Google Apps as a great way to collaborate with others, but they don't know about the full power of this suite of tools. Google built a way for you to add layers of functionality on top of their powerful software, allowing you to do so much more with different types of data. Best of all, you can copy + paste pre-made scripts and benefit from the effects without being technical!

Check to see if your website is online or save all tweets that match a certain hashtag to a spreadsheet. You can do that or a variety of other tasks through scripts that will save you time and money.

Use these scripts for good, not evil.

8. Building Popups and Other Interactive Elements on a Website

Sometimes, you want to add an additional layer of interactivity to a website, whether it's a popup to highlight a brand new feature, or a walkthrough that will help guide users. Thankfully, with tools like Engage and HelloBar you can add different modals or elements to your website that can help you collect emails, direct traffic elsewhere, or dictate what users should look at in a web page.

9. Dig Deeper into Websites, and See How Your Website Looks in mobile

Most people don't know about the handy Google Chrome Inspector or its equivalent Firebug on Firefox. While most of the time it is used by developers to spot errors or mock up certain changes in the code, you can use the Inspector to check into the exact URLs of images, and how your website displays on different screen sizes, from iPhones to tablets.

The responsive design tool in these inspector tools will allow you to simulate what your website looks like from device-to-device, a crucial need to see if your website is mobile-friendly. This is a factor that's critically important for websites with mobile traffic, and one that Google uses to rank webpages.

Conclusion

By harnessing technology, you'll be at the cutting-edge of digital marketing. You won't even need to learn how to code to get an awesome array of new powers. Save yourself time and money, and make sure you use your new capabilities for good!

About the Author: Roger is a digital marketer who self-taught himself to code but recognizes when code is useful and when it isn't. He manages Growth for edtech company Springboard, and will often write about new technologies at his own personal blog code(love). You can find him on Twitter.