3 valiosas razones para perderle el miedo al video marketing

Se estima que ingresos generados por las campañas basadas en estrategias de video en línea alcanzarán los 18 mil 949 millones de dólares a nivel mundial, según proyecciones de Statista. El video marketing se convierte en un impulsor de ventas en internet, pues es un gran apoyo para el comercio en el medio.

La estrategias de video marketing en internet se vuelven necesarias al considerar que estudios de We Are Social estiman que existen tres mil millones de personas que cuentan con acceso a la web, además de que es un medio que sobresale por su veracidad informativa.

En relación el tiempo invertido en ver videos en internet se vuelve relevante, ya que el tiempo promedio que los internautas le dedicaron a consumir videos en la web ascendió un 23.3 por ciento durante 2015 con lo cual se espera que al término de este año se alcance un crecimiento del 19.8 por ciento.

Pese a esto, no todas las marcas apuestan por implementar estrategias de video marketing, en sus redes sociales, blogs y sitios web. Hacerlo puede ocasionar mayor reconocimiento a la compañía. Al considerarlo, información de IAB Spain y ADman Media señala cuáles son las razones por las que se debe perder el miedo a esta táctica.

1. Viralización

El 35.4 por ciento de las compañías encuestadas señala que la estrategia les ayuda a que sus campaña incrementen su alcance, que lleguen a una mayor cantidad de consumidores en el menor tiempo posible.

2. Engagement

Por su parte, el 27.1 por ciento señala que estas incrementan su cantidad de interacciones en internet, principalmente en redes sociales. Asimismo, esto forma parte de la retroalimentación que el consumidor le da a la campaña-

3. Branding

Con las estrategias de video marketing, una compañía genera conocimiento, da paso a un concepto de lo que es la propia marca, su camino, productos, imagen, misión y visión. La opción cuenta con el 22.9 por ciento de menciones.

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How to optimise your videos for better ranking on YouTube

With more than a billion users, and billions of daily video views, gaining user attention on YouTube may seem a daunting prospect. 

However, the sheer size of the audience (a third of all web users) means that the rewards are there if you get it right.

In this post, I’ll look at some of the factors which determine YouTube video rankings, some tips to help improve visibility, and some of the factors behind how Google chooses to show videos in its search results pages.

On-site YouTube ranking factors

I’ve split this into visible and invisible factors, i.e. those that can be seen by general users and those used for internal purposes.

Thanks to PI Datametrics for their help in compiling these ranking factors.

Invisible ranking signals

• Video file name. This is used when attempting to categorise the content, so be sure to label it using target keywords.
• View density. We can all see how many views videos attract over time but view density matters to YouTube. If your video receives a lot of views in a short space of time, it’s more likely to be pushed up the rankings. This can be visible, but most brands don’t show this. John Lewis does, and here are the stats for the last Christmas ad.
• Meta tags. YouTube’s spiders rely on tags to interpret a video’s content. This is thought to be a big factor in determining the positions a video is able to achieve in YouTube. When you upload a video to YouTube you can tag it with your keywords. 6-8 tags are thought to be the ideal amount. Look at the most popular/top tags on YouTube for your topics, and learn from them.

• Watch time. YouTube used to use view counts and comment volumes as factors, but changed this to watch time in 2012 as the previous factors could be gamed relatively easily.
• Flags / reports. These are negative factors which could harm your video’s visibility.

Visible ranking signals

• Title. The maximum character limit is 100 characters. Use them well, place keywords towards the front of the title. As with a writing a good headline, titles need to be descriptive and compelling. The video should also deliver on the headline. If you over-promise, people won’t spend time with the video, share it etc.
• Description. There are 5,000 characters to play with here, but only the first (roughly) 150 will be visible to people when they land on your page, so these have to work well. This is also an opportunity to add a link back to your site or target landing page.
• YouTube subtitles, closed captions and transcripts. These make the videos accessible to a wider audience.
• HD videos. HD quality videos are preferred to lower picture quality ones, though this does not mean that lower quality homemade videos don’t work at all.
• In-video annotations/YouTube cards: Annotations allow you to add linkable text to a video; including notes, calls to action, and links to related video assets. This serves to build greater authority and encourages CTR, views and shares. YouTube developed ‘annotations’ in 2015 to include ‘Cards‘ which are better looking version of annotations. The big difference is they work better across screens, and especially on mobile.

• Thumbnails. Not a ranking factor, but a well-chosen thumbnail should help to improve click through rates and increase views. The ideal size = 640 x 360 pixels minimum, 16:9 aspect ratio.
• Likes and dislikes. These provide an indication of the engagement around a video.
• Comments. These provide a way for YouTube to gauge the authority and relevance of videos. Not as significant a factor as before, perhaps because the comments on many YouTube videos are likely to test your faith in humanity.
• View counts. Again, not as influential a factor as in the past, but still an important indication of popularity.

YouTube channel factors

A distinct YouTube channel can help give brands (or anyone) a longer term and more effective YouTube presence. There are some useful tips on this from YouTube.

• Focus on content. Content needs to match the brand and give customers a clear indication of what to expect from your channel.
• Keep it simple. Branding should communicate the message behind your channels, so make sure videos, channel trailers etc align with this.
• Make it discoverable. Your branding should help people to find your videos and channel. This means consistent titles, tagging, descriptions and themes.
• Channel views. As with video views, the channel stats will contribute towards your rankings.
• Vanity URLs. Not a ranking factor, but something that should help improve other ranking signals by making your channel more easily discoverable.For example, Sainsbury’s has https://www.youtube.com/user/Sainsburys. This helps to give the brand nice and neat results in Google:
• Subscribes. If people have subscribed to your channel after watching your video, this indicates to YouTube as well as to Google that your video is authoritative.
• Bookmarks. Another factor is the number of people who add your video to their ‘watch later” list.

• Social shares. This is another factor which indicates the quality and engagement around your video.
• Backlinks. Links back to your channel or embeds of your video carry weight, and are a further ranking factor.

Branding example: Sainsbury’s

Though John Lewis is better known for its Christmas ads, rival retailer Sainsbury’s manages to out-perform it in terms of YouTube visibility.

This detailed post from PI Datametrics explains in more detail, but Sainsbury’s is more consistent with branding, produces more content, and seems to work harder to optimise it.

Tips for improving YouTube performance

Learning from the ranking factors listed above will do a lot, but here’s a few more tips:

• Promote videos through your own channels. Using your YouTube videos in emails, promoting on social sites, and embedding on your own website will all help to build momentum around your video content.eSpares is a great example of this. It creates videos around fixing DIY problems, posts them to its YouTube channel and uses them onsite by embedding them. This way it gets full value from its video content.
• Create video content which addresses user needs. Think about the questions customers will have around your product and service. Do some keyword research to find out the relative popularity of these terms.This is what eSpares and others do, this helps them attract views from target audiences, and a side bonus is that videos will often appear in the SERPs.
• Encourage comments. As comments contribute to your ranking, it’s a good idea to do as much as you can to encourage a discussion underneath your videos. This could be by creating content which is likely to attract comments, or simply by asking people to comment.
• Use YouTube analytics. Data is your friend, so use it to see how your videos are performing, which are performing better than others, which attract most comments / likes etc.

All this data can help you to learn from what does and doesn’t work, and to improve the effectiveness of your video content.

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Video marketing, ¿con o sin influencers?

Incrementar el alcance de la marca es uno de los objetivos que tiene el video marketing, así como aumentar el engament de la marca, revelan estudios de IAB Spain y ADman Media. Una tendencia en el tema es el uso de influencers que le den presencia a la firma comercial.

Los influecers son bien recibidos por el público, pues información de College of Business Administration señala que al 70 por ciento le gusta ver a personas ofreciendo datos de un producto. En el tema figuran distintas personalidades, desde actores de cine, deportistas y personas de la realeza.

Sin embargo, implementarlos o no es un cuestionamiento de las firmas comerciales, en donde el 67.7 por ciento de los anunciantes encuestados por IAB Spain y ADman Media revelan que los implementan dentro de redes sociales como Facebook y Twitter, ya que impulsan la notoriedad del mensaje.

Por su parte, el 36.5 por ciento señala que prefiere implementar influencers en blogs o en su página de internet, así como un 21.9 por ciento de anunciantes que no tienen contemplado implementarlos, vale destacar que datos de eMarketer revelan que el 35 por ciento de las agencias de marketing y las marcas reconocen que los están usando.

Estos personajes son un aliado muy importante para una marca, en especial si hablamos del mundo de las redes sociales debido a que incrementa las posibilidades de éxito. Asimismo, es necesario optar por el influencer que más se apegue a las características de una marca, sus valores y misión.

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Convierten a Suicide Squad en stickers de Facebook Messenger

‘Suicide Squad’ es una de las apuestas más fuertes de DC Entertainment y Warner Bros. para este año, debido a la expectación que existe en el público que espera ver a algunos de los personajes más carismáticos del DC Universe como the Jocker y Harley Quinn.

Warner Bros. Production lo sabe, por eso emprendió desde hace meses una interesante campaña de marketing para promocionar la cinta. Y a poco más de una semana de que llegue a las salas de cine sigue reforzando las acciones de mercadotecnia.

Ahora, en una nueva alianza con Facebook Messenger la productora lanzó una serie de stickers animados con los personajes de Suicide Squad; the Joker, Harley Quinn, Deadshot, El Diablo, Katana, Killer Croc y Enchantress.

La estrategia digital de Warner Bros. y DC sigue el camino que le funcionó muy bien a 21h Century Fox y Marvel con Deadpool que, con su campaña de marketing con su humor ácido e irreverencia catapultó a la película a ser una de las más exitosas en lo que va de 2016, recaudó más de 754 millones de dólares en todo el mundo, según cifras de Box Office.

El héroe de la capucha roja recurrió al lenguaje emoji para crear carteleras así como para una gran cantidad de material para redes sociales y sitios de internet. Por su parte, Disney también sacó una línea de 400 emojis con los personajes más emblemáticos de sus películas y series animadas.

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Should you use a hamburger icon on your mobile menu?

The three-line ‘hamburger’ menu icon receives a lot of vitriol. It is variously described as “controversial”, “notorious” etc. but it is rapidly becoming the de facto symbol to open a navigational menu on a mobile website.

So perhaps it is time to learn to live with it and make it better.

The hamburger was created in 1980 by Norm Cox, for the Xerox “Star” personal workstation, the world’s first graphical user interface.

Norm Cox, principal of interaction/experience design consultancy, Cox&Hall, tells ClickZ:

“Since someone “discovered”, a few years ago, that I had designed the hamburger menu, I’ve had countless questions, speaking invitations, interviews and inquiries… and read numerous articles and blogs regarding the (somewhat fabricated) controversy over its use.

In a way, I find it amusing that a simple widget like this has gotten so much attention, generated so much discussion, and gotten so many “experts” bloviating about the reasoning for its good/bad or right/wrong attributes.

I will simply say this about the hamburger widget. It is merely another widget in a designer’s arsenal of tools that s/he can use… well… or poorly. It has no inherent goodness/badness, or rightness/wrongness, except in the context of how it’s applied by the designer.”

This column will look at mobile menu best practice, including:

• How to make the hamburger icon more recognizable, e.g. by adding or substituting the word MENU.
• Supplementing, or replacing the hamburger menu, with visible navigational tabs and buttons.
• Research that suggests what works better.
• Importance of doing your own user testing and A/B testing.

The subsequent column will look more closely at the design and user experience (UX) aspects, including:

• Making the menu and navigational buttons standout. Type, size, color and placement of buttons.
• Navigational discipline; taking a logical approach to size, number and names of menu items.
• Different types of mobile menu, such as off-canvas and overlay.

The image below shows the mobile sites for top six search results for “hamburger icon” on the world’s most popular search engine. Five out of six of these headlines appear on sites that use a site-wide hamburger icon.

Three stories are negative. Two of negative stories: the BBC’s “Three lines mystify most people” and TechCrunch’s “Kill the hamburger button” sit, somewhat embarrassingly, below a hamburger.

Not only have the TechCrunch/AOL developers ignored the recommendations of its writers on the “devil” hamburger on mobile web (and app) they have also introduced a second unlabeled icon – a rocket – to denote a hidden menu of ‘most popular’ stories.

Menu/hamburger on mobile web, iOS apps and Android apps is different.

Critics of the hamburger icon report (and re-report) a number of internal studies by companies that noticed a deterioration in use of the menu when they switched the menu style used by their apps or website to a hamburger icon and vice versa when switching away.

Only one of these studies is mobile web:

• James Foster (2014) discovered through A/B testing on found that 20% more mobile visitors to Caffeineinformer.com  would click the “MENU”, over “hamburger icon”.
• However, on closer inspection, the menu click-through rates on Caffeineinformer seem unusually low (see Moovweb stats below for benchmarks). The click-through rates of 1.2% for “MENU” and 1% for the “hamburger icon”. This suggests that the test should be hidden menu v visible navigational links, e.g. search database, rather than the nomenclature of the menu button itself.
• Today, Caffeineinformer.com doesn’t use MENU or Hamburger on the homepage, just search and the call to action: Explore Caffeine Database. On all other pages it uses MENU and a search icon.

The other studies commonly cited are for native apps (maybe just iOS): Zeebox (2014); Polar (2015), and Redbooth (2015). These studies suggested that menus hidden behind a hamburger icon received less engagement than visible navigational tabs.

Notably, Redbooth was an iOS app study; Zeebox and Polar may also have been, but neither app exists anymore.

So while these native app studies appear to be compelling, it does not follow that the behavior of iOS app users is applicable to mobile web. Nor does it follow that it applies to Android apps either.

As Redbooth notes: “Apple discourages [the hamburger’s] use”, and Zeebox notes: “The side menu has become fashionable on Android but not yet taken off on iPhone”.

The importance of doing your own tests

However compelling other people’s findings about their own sites/apps appear, they should not dictate how you design/redesign you website.

As demonstrated below in the Moovweb research, engagement levels of the hamburger/menu vary massively by industry.

The key lesson to learn is not that the hamburger is good or bad, or that hidden menus are good or bad, but that it is important to run your own tests.

• Conduct user tests: onsite and remote.
• Use A/B testing – show two different groups of web visitors different versions of your menu e.g. hamburger v MENU. (The beauty of web over apps, is that you don’t need anyone’s permission to test and modify).
• Use heatmaps – to study how people interact with menus and navigation.

Learn more about mobile user testing.

The truth about Facebook and the hamburger icon.

Critics of the hamburger also like to cite Facebook’s 2013 decision to drop the hamburger icon in favor of a bottom tab bar as vindication.

Reality:

• This change only happened on the iOS app.
• The hamburger is still present on the iOS app on the bottom tab bar, albeit embellished with a MORE label.
• Three years later the m.facebook.com and the Facebook Android app still proudly sport the unlabeled hamburger icon.
• What does that tell you? a) Native iOS is different to mobile web and native Android; or b) The results of the changes on iOS didn’t encourage Facebook to follow up with either mobile web or Android.

Proper research 

Despite the immense importance of navigation on the mobile/responsive web, lack of conformity and the bitter debate that the hamburger encourages among design/UX professionals, it is amazing that there haven’t been more studies of menu use across multiple sites.

While not massive, there are two studies that are essential reading:

• Moovweb (April 2015) – studied interaction with the hamburger-based menu.
• Nielsen Norman Group/WhatUsersDo (June 2016) – studied user the different interaction rates between part-visible and hidden menus on web and mobile web.

Good burger/bad burger  

Moovweb studied 50 sites that used its mobile/responsive commerce platform and made two interesting findings:

1. 20% of mobile site users interact with the hamburger menu, making it the fourth most tapped button on site, behind select product (30%); homepage navigational menu (30%); and search (27%).
2. Hamburger menu engagement varied massively by vertical: apparel and accessories (26%); jewelry (21%); home & garden (21%); auto & construction (7%); content (2%).

Then working with one unnamed mobile travel site, Moovweb ran a test to compare engagement rate with an unlabeled hamburger icon and one that was labeled.

The results were striking. The engagement rate for the unlabeled menu icon was 10.8%; while labeled one received 17.3%; which is a 61% improvement.

Hamburger + MENU or MENU – hamburger?

While adding a MENU is the most common label to enhance the hamburger, there are variations, as seen above the BBC uses a SECTIONS label, while Facebook (only on the iOS app) uses MORE.

The question is: if you are going to add MENU to your hamburger icon, then why bother with the hamburger at all?

Jason Grigsby, co-founder, of Portland, Oregon-based mobile web development agency, Cloud Four, tells ClickZ.

“When people criticize the hamburger, e.g.Luke Wroblewski, they’re referring to the fact that the icon itself doesn’t convey enough meaning. People get confused by it.

So the argument is to avoid using the hamburger icon and instead use the word ‘menu’ or similar so people know what the hell you’re going on about.”

The new design of the Cloud Four site uses a MENU button, with a menu that slides down from the top.

The navigation menu, as Grigsby points out, is a whole different matter… and one we will be dealing with in detail in the next column.

Hidden menus: nice clean design or “out of sight, out of mind”?

To hamburger or not to hamburger… is only part of the question.

The other side of this debate concerns the whole nature of the menu, the fact that all the options are invisible unless the user taps the hamburger icon/menu button.

The clever thing that Luke Wroblewski pointed out is “out of sight, out of mind. This has become a rallying cry again the hidden menu and the poor old hamburger icon that has come to symbolize the hidden menu.

To date evidence to prove this theory is largely anecdotal, and based on apps such as Zeebox, Redbooth and Polar, (Wroblewski being one of these developers).

That’s what makes the recent Nielsen Norman Group/WhatUsersDo research so welcome: it’s web based, spread over six sites, with real users (179 of them), and its real research conducted by expert UX testers.

The research asked people to complete a task on the various responsive sites on desktop and mobile and studied whether people engaged better with/found it easy with:

• Hidden navigation – where they had to tap a hamburger or equivalent)
• Combo navigation – combination of hidden menu a visible navigational buttons, when required to.
• Visible navigation – only desktop sites; no mobile sites with visible navigation (only) were tested, which is a shame.

The key findings for mobile users were:

• People used menus considerably more on mobile than desktops
• People were 1.5 times more likely to use combo navigation (86%) than hidden (57%).
• More found it easier to discover content that interested them with combo (85%) than hidden (64%)
• Task took longer with hidden (70 seconds), than combo (61 seconds).

Nielsen Norman makes the following recommendations for mobile sites:

• If your site has four or fewer top-level navigation links, display them as visible links.
• If your site has more than four top-level navigation links, the only reasonable solution is to hide some of these [behind a menu button].
• Support the hamburger with methods such as in-page links to important information on your site.

Combo approach

Returning to the image above of the top six top ranking sites for “hamburger icon”. Three out of five that use a hamburger, use the unlabeled icon alone for navigation and one (TechCrunch) even uses an additional unlabeled rocket.

The BBC is the only one that adopts a combo approach to navigation. It has visible tabs for NEWS, SPORT and MORE (which is a menu) in addition to the Hamburger/Sections button.

Interestingly on older/smaller smartphone these three options are reduced to one MENU button.

A great example of the combo is Summit Metro Parks, which uses a labelled hamburger menu and four labelled buttons for key activities.

Mike D’Agruma, lead front-end developer, Evolve Creative Group, a web design agency in Akron, OH, USA, explains why he likes the Summit Metro Parks site.

“The hamburger/menu icon is at the top of the home screen. It has clear visual separation via color, size and treatment from surrounding content. Not only does it use of iconography, but includes a text descriptions. There is no assumption about that the user will recognize and know how to use the icon.

There are additional types of navigation competing for attention on the page. As well as the hamburger/MENU, there is a rotator/carousel with a clear call-to-action on each slide to help funnel users where the site wants them to go. Then there is a second-tier page navigation of highly visible and labelled buttons.”

The science of navigation

A really useful way to think about menus and navigation is to stop worrying about them and start thinking about what users actually want to do and make it really easy for people to do it.

If people are on a certain page there is a strong probability that they will want to do a finite number of things next. If these are not on the page, put them on visible call-to-action buttons, image links, text links etc.

Things that people might want to do, but are lower down the hierarchy of probable tasks can be placed in the menu.

The expert on this is Steven Hoober, president of 4ourth Mobile, who is recognized for his work on mobile touch-screen interfaces. He explains:

“The important thing is to stop thinking about navigation and site structure and think about what the user wants to do. They have priorities, which I call primary, secondary and tertiary actions:

• The primary actions should be addressed by the content in the center section of the page.
• The secondary actions are the thing that the user is most likely to want to do next. These should be addressed by visible and easily reached call-to-action buttons on the periphery of the page on the top navigation or adjacent to the primary content.
• The tertiary actions are the other things that users might want, but are less likely to be priorities. This is where your hamburger menu comes in.”

Hoober’s article on Why it’s totally okay to use a hamburger icon  is essential reading.

The hamburger and the hamburger debate is here to stay.

Some people will continue to hate it. This from Nick Babich, editor of UX planet: https://uxplanet.org/

“To my mind, Hamburger is a bad option both for mobile and for desktop.”

And some will defend it. Phil Reay, head of insights, SessionCam, a tool for monitoring web customer behavior:

“Until a better solution to the hamburger menu is designed, our experience suggests that this catch all approach provides the best user experience for customers.”

The next column will look more closely at the design and user experience (UX) aspects of menus and navigation.

Read the report here: DNA of a Great M-Commerce Site Part 1: Planning

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6 Essential Parts for the Perfect Blog Post

Are you ready to start writing content? Or maybe you want to instruct someone on how to write perfect piece of content? Either way, you’re going to need to know how to write a great blog post.

Not just a great blog, though – the perfect blog. The more perfect blogs posts you have on your website, the more likely you are to receive the following benefits:

• Visibility
• Sharability
• Brand Trust
• Credibility
• SEO
• Website Traffic
• Influencer & Leadership status

These are just a few of the benefits of what a great blog posts can do for you, not to mention business growth and more clients and sales overtime. The more you produce, the more benefits you’ll receive.

In this post, we’ve got all the components covered for you to start creating your arsenal of perfect blogs. Take the advice, hone your craft and watch the traffic come rolling in.

Part One – Making the Perfect Headline

Think about the last blog post you clicked on – this one. Why did you decide to click on this blog and not another one? What about it made you want to click it and keep reading?

It was likely the title. First of all, it has a very strong purpose and point. “How to make a blog post that’s perfect”; that’s something that most people in the business world would want to know more about.

On the surface, it’s pretty easy to tell why this headline is good, but there are a few secret tricks being put to work within its simplicity.

• First, readers pay a lot of attention to the first three words and the last three words in any blog title. In this example “6 Essential Parts” and “Perfect Blog Post” both amp up the purpose and simply explain it.
• Second, there are a couple of very strong descriptors at work. “Essential” describes how much you truly need to read this content. “Perfect” helps describe “Blog Post,” and that’s something that’s highly coveted – the perfect blog.

Small tips like this can help draw people into reading what you have to say, making it part of building the perfect post.

Another tip is to apply this formula to your blog titles: Number + Adjective + Target Keyword + Rationale + Promise. This might seem a little complicated, but here’s how you put it into action: “6 Exciting Ways to Help Find Your Target Audience for Better Marketing Strategies.”

If you think that’s a mouthful, you’re right. A good title is 50-60 characters and keeps the message succinct. Try out “6 Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Business Owners” instead. It follows the formula but keeps to the promise of quick, easy and eye-catching.

Part Two – Your Opening

For the opening of your blog, you have two options. First is to tell a story that draws someone in to read the rest of your content.

This kind of technique is used a lot in fiction writing. If you’ve ever taken a creative writing class, you’ll know that the first sentence of a book is the most important. Compare the sentences:

• The dog sat upon the stoop, staring tiredly.
• She had died before, but there was something different about this incident.

Which one is better? The first is a little boring, and it doesn’t give you a reason to continue reading the story. The second, however, remarks about something unusual, something intriguing. You can easily put this kind of thought into your blog posts.

Blog writing is essentially an art of building up information. When you start off a blog title with the statement “This is the Only App You’ll Ever Need for Business,” you don’t want to leave your audience hanging. They don’t want to read 300 words still scratching their heads. What app? They need to know!

However, no one wants to click on a blog and see the question answered bluntly and that’s it. If you wanted to stick to brevity, you’d only need to write one word – but what’s the point of that? Instead of simply stating the app, you need to build it up a little, then announce the app, then explain why they need that app so much.

Look at this sample opener for a blog about this made up app you need so badly:

“I recently found a solution to a common problem most entrepreneurs face: I don’t have one single app to organize all my files for sharing and creation. Google Drive works for sharing content, but I have to have separate apps to create it all, so it clutters up my phone. I found a great article about FileYes, but here’s the thing. I still wasn’t convinced it was something that was going to work for me.”

The ending shows there’s still uncertainty and leaves room for more explanation. This is how you open a blog in a way that gets someone to keep reading, even though you’ve technically already given them the information they need and want.

Part Three – The Bulk of the Post

Now that you’ve opened up your blog, you have to figure out how to get people to read the rest of what you wrote. Here’s a secret – no matter what you do, they likely won’t. Most people will have already closed this post by now because die to a short attention span, and that long copy blogs like this are difficult for most to digest, but work well to keep readers coming back when they want to learn.

The reality of blog writing is that most readers skip the bulk text, read the headings and some text they think might interest them, then they leave. If you’ve made it to this point in the blog, you’re one of the rare ones.

The way you try and fix this problem is through dynamic text formation. Content writing is 50% about quality content, and then 50% about how to make it attractive to the audience so they actually read what you have to say.

Here are a few quick ways to break up your text to make it more dynamic. Dynamic text is any form of text that breaks the mold of being in a paragraph form:

• Lists
• Charts
• Bullet points
• Subheadings
• Quotes
• Visuals
• Broken up text

This information keeps your brain active, and is also easier to process. No one wants to read a wall of text in their spare time if they don’t have to. Dynamic text is how you fool someone into reading 1500 words by using visual tricks to make the job seem easier to their mind.

For more detailed advice on each of these dynamic forms, simply look below:

• Lists are great for getting lots of traffic. The Internet is in L-O-V-E with lists. There’s something easily digestible about a list and it’s perfect for giving information in a simple way that makes sense.
• Charts should be a go-to for more technical articles, but you may run into the problem that there isn’t a chart that shows off the information you want. It can also be hard to make them if you don’t have the right tools. Use one if you can, but look for other forms of dynamic text if you can’t find what you’re looking for.
• Bullet points work wonders – you’re reading a bullet list right now, aren’t you? These highlight the most important points you want to make in your writing, or they can easily list off information you want to emphasize.
• Subheadings give the reader a bite-sized version of your article. One habit content readers fall into is reading the title of a blog, then reading the subheadings to get the gist of the content. This is especially true of list articles. If you want to make your blog perfect, make your subheadings pop.
• Quotes are how you build credibility. You don’t have to include a quote, but it is great to showcase that someone is agreeing with you. Find a related article and pull some quotes. Credit the source and you’re good to go.
• Visuals are important for building a visually appealing article, but you’ll read more about that in the next section.
• Broken up text is how you make your overall article more digestible to readers. Instead of huge paragraphs of information, make your paragraphs smaller and easier to read so you keep your reader’s attention.

Use all of these dynamic forms of text to make your article more attractive. By doing so, you’ll definitely have keep your readership rate as high as possible.

Part Four – Visuals

Speaking of dynamic, visuals make for very dynamic text. Pictures, infographics, graphs and charts give your text a lot of edge – and this is what makes someone pay attention to your writing. It might be ironic that pictures are what get people to read, but that’s the reality of content writing.

There are definitely statistics that back up how much more sharable and dynamic content becomes when you add images, but you can’t add just any images. Here are some quick tips for adding images to your content:

• Choose images that are relevant. Non-relevant, sensational images are akin to clickbait, and that doesn’t make you credible.
• Always use HQ images which have a decent resolution but too heavy to weigh down your website and page load time.
• You can spend money on good stock photos, but free HQ photo sites exist. Pixabay is a great one.
• Before you write your blog, do a Google search for similar blogs. See what pictures they’re using. If you happen to use a picture that recent, relevant blogs do, find another one.

Pictures are also great for backlinking. Backlinking is great for SEO. If you want better SEO rankings, use images – and use quite a few. The more you link out to other websites the more people will link back to you.

An introductory image is great, and that’s the bare minimum. Perfect blog articles, though, use images throughout the piece. The rule of thumb for image inclusion is to use one per every 350 words, though this can be excessive for longer pieces. Try and sprinkle in relevant images that work for you where you see fit to start with. This article is 2500 words and has 3 images.

Part Five – Your Call to Action

To close your article, you need to give someone a reason to engage. While it’s great that someone reads your content just to stay informed, you want more than that. You want conversation, you want acknowledgement, you want comments, you want conversion. Unless you write something incorrect or inflammatory, you may have to prod your audience to get them to engage.

You can do that by adding a call to action, or CTA. If you aren’t familiar with this term, it’s used to describe what gets someone to provoke an immediate response, usually using an imperative verb such as “call now”, “find out more” or “visit a store today” It’s not enough that someone retweets an ad; they also need to engage with the ad in some way. They do that through a CTA, like signing up for an email subscription newsletter.

Blog CTAs usually go at the bottom of the blog, and you’ll see one at the tail end of this post as well. Sometimes the message can be as crystal clear as a direct question, like “so what do you guys think about this new information?” or “how do you feel about the latest Google update?” Other times it can be more subtle, like a sly link included in the last paragraph that leads you to click-through.

Your call to action should have a very direct purpose, no matter what method you use. Ask yourself how you want to engage with your audience. Through a discussion? A signup? A share? Once you figure that out, it’s much easier to get a CTA going.

Part Six – The Extras

A perfect blog post is something you can create by using the above information, but what you still need to add the finishing touches.

1. Links

Throughout this blog, you’ll notice that there are links scattered throughout. These link to sources or related blogs on content writing and blog posting. Why are they there? For a few reasons.

One is that these links add to our credibility. We don’t want to just toss you some info without having to back it up, so there is a link included to show where the information originated from.

Another reason is that including links to blog content increases their SEO value. Include about two to three links per 500 words. You can add more if necessary, especially if you have a lot of information you need to cite and source.

2. Tone

The tone of your blog post is something that can vary wildly depending on the audience you’re trying to reach as well as the purpose of your blog. Imagine that you’re a YouTube celebrity with a personal blog. Your blog’s tone is likely more friendly, familiar and humorous. You may talk about off-color or sensitive subjects you feel comfortable enough to share with your followers.

Now imagine you’re a business blog that’s targeting bankers in their 40s and 50s. You likely won’t be linking memes and talking about what you did last weekend if you’re trying to create a credible business blog. The tone will be more formal and straightforward with a business message to give.

Look at your audience in order to figure out what your tone is. Based on your audience, you may want to rewrite some of your content to better suit them.

3. Editing

It’s always important to edit your work after it’s done. Look for misspellings and grammatical inconsistencies. If possible, get someone else to look it over. There’s nothing more embarrassing than posting a supposedly-professional blog with a horrible typo right smack in the middle of it.

If you’re going to edit your own work, take a simple editing test online. How well did you fare? Do you need to sharpen up your editing skills? You can also use tools like Grammarly to help you write better copy.

Now that you have everything it takes to make a perfect blog post, the only task left is to go forth and write. I hope you learned something new that can make your current blog posts better. If you’re a new writer, why not show off a blog post you make using this advice? Remember that these are all the tools you need to put a great blog post together, but a good writer is really what puts the their blog posts on top.

Feel free to connect with me here if you have any questions or feel like you want some help with your current blog or Social Media. I look forward to chatting with you.

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Websites en tiempos de social media

En estos tiempos cuando ya sabemos el efecto positivo de las redes sociales para nuestros negocios y cuando la mayoría de nosotros recomendamos que las marcas estén en ellas, también nos surge una interrogante importante: ¿deberíamos tener, mantener y continuar con nuestros websites oficiales? La respuesta es sí “deberíamos”, aunque claramente “podríamos” no tenerlos.

Mientras las redes sociales son una herramienta valiosa para hacer marketing en línea, debemos entender que es sólo una parte de la estrategia completa de marketing.

Aquí les dejo varias razones por las que creo que debemos continuar con el website de la empresa, y no solo eso, ¡debemos mantenerlo al día y atractivo!

Credibilidad

Para cualquier empresa es indispensable proyectar confianza y nuestros leads o posibles clientes necesitan saber quiénes somos, si estamos establecidos, cuáles son nuestros clientes, cuáles son sus servicios.

El website sigue siendo ejemplo de referencia, permite encontrarnos en una dirección única. Podemos reflejarnos como un negocio sólido y verificable, creando/manteniendo el website como repositorio único de toda nuestra información de perfil de empresa.

Control

Cuando estás en redes sociales finalmente usas un espacio que no es propio y sobre el cual no tienes pleno control. Ni de políticas de uso/privacidad ni de manejo de tipo de contenido, según el caso que sea. En Facebook solo puedes solicitar cierta cantidad de amigos para recibir respuesta, Twitter y LinkedIn también tienen sus límites, estás bajo sus reglas.

En el website de tu empresa eres LIBRE y tienes el control de todo tu marketing online en él. Con una estrategia de Inbound Marketing bien definida, puedes lograr que cuando los extraños lleguen a tu sitio, llevarlos de la mano hasta lograr lo que desees. Es tu campo.

Eje de comunicación y acción

Nuestro website sirve de eje base para que todas las demás acciones de marketing online giren alrededor y colocarlo como el centro de acción y comunicación. Desde él podemos recopilar de manera centralizada información de todos nuestros leads y realizar campañas de email marketing. Tenemos una gran cantidad de herramientas de análisis para website que podemos sacarle provecho, checar quienes nos visitan, clasificarlos, comunicarnos.

Algunos consejos finales

Según estudios, la credibilidad tu website depende en gran medida de estas variables:

1.- Riqueza informativa, utilidad de la información, su verosimilitud, su claridad, su tono y la ausencia de prejuicios.

2. Aspecto visual del website.

3. Diseño de la información, la estructura de los contenidos, su legibilidad y la funcionalidad y comportamiento del sitio.

4. Información sobre quién está detrás del sitio, sus afiliaciones, su reconocimiento y reputación, y qué le anima.

Consejo: Evalúa tu sitio actual y piensa en la necesidad de cambiarlo o transformarlo para la nueva era en conjunto con el Social Media. Muchos de los sitios de marcas actuales fueron hechos hace tiempo atrás (incluso años). ¿Cómo sabes si realmente son útiles hoy día? ¿A quién está dirigido tu website? ¿Qué puede encontrar tus posibles leads en él? ¿Qué puede ver o realizar el usuario cuando te visita? ¿Llama a la acción o simplemente da información básica? ¿Está preparado para verse en diferentes plataformas para móvil?

Finalmente el website es parte integral de tu estrategia de marketing digital y como tal debes dedicarle tiempo, hacerlo atractivo y confiable, aprovechándolo como plataforma integral.

Gracias por leerme.

¿Conectamos?

Twitter: @chris_suta

LinkedIn: Christine Suta

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El marketing político digital en México explicado con Facebook

Facebook se ha convertido en una herramienta fundamental para las tareas de marketing desde distintos sectores en la que es aplicada.

Su implementación en México ha recurrido al uso de videos virales que han causado un impacto realmente sorprendente, al lograr viralizar mensajes que rompen con la norma de los contenidos que alcanzan a difundirse a través de estas plataformas.

Ejemplo de lo anterior son los videos de Margarita Zavala, quien alcanzó más de dos millones 791 mil vistas en uno de ellos donde reflexiona sobre su propuesta de lanzarse como candidata a la presidencia de México.

Otro ejemplo lo ofreció la gobernadora de Sonora, Claudia Pavlovich, quien logró la impresionante cantidad de más de cuatro millones 350 mil vistas en YouTube, en un mensaje donde se dirige a una de las instituciones del gobierno federal (PGR).

Así mismo, otras personalidades que han alcanzado la viralidad cuentan al líder nacional del PAN, Ricardo Anaya, quien en su mensaje tras haber ganado en un alto porcentaje de estados, alcanzó más de un millón 739 mil vistas en su video publicado en la red social.

Las redes sociales tienen una característica y es la posibilidad de comunicarse directamente con una audiencia o mercado consumidor. Esta relación directa es la que ha permitido que los mensajes que ofrecen las personalidades se conviertan en verdaderas estrategias estacionales, que llaman la atención por la respuesta en millones de vistas que alcanzan.

Un segundo hecho que comprueba esta marcada necesidad de los políticos por mantener presencia en redes sociales la reportó cifras trascendidas por Animal Político, donde se señala que Facebook dio a conocer al INE que la inversión realizada para llevar a cabo la publicación de mensajes políticos durante la pasada campaña electoral fue de un millón 331 mil dólares.

La presencia de las estrategias de marketing político digital han encontrado en las redes sociales un aliado clave y las marcas no solo han tomado conciencia de esta relación innegable, ahora los políticos están determinados a llegar al electorado a través de redes sociales y su estrategia está funcionando.

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Alejandro Jodorowsky enfurece a las redes sociales por hacer apología del abuso sexual infantil

Este lunes el escritor chileno Alejandro Jodorowsky es tendencia en las redes sociales donde ha desatado la furia de miles luego de publicó varios tweets en los que hace apología de los abusos sexuales. Esta polémica celebridad tiene millones de fans quienes gustan de compartir sus frases en Facebook. Te contamos los detalles.

Alejandro Jodorowsky es un escritor y director de cine nacido en Chile y radicado en Francia que tiene cierta notoriedad en América Latina por su filosofía espiritual que él llama psicomagia.

Este lunes Jodorowsky es tendencia en las redes sociales luego de la publicación de varios tweets y mensajes en Facebook en los que hace apología de la violencia sexual y el abuso sexual de menores. Todo comenzó con la respuesta a una mujer que dijo ser víctima de una agresión.

 

Cuando comenzaron las críticas, Alejandro Jodorowsky borró el tweet pero trató de justificar su perspectiva sobre los abusos sexuales.

No borré el tweet porque me arrepiento sino porque muchos parecen no querer o no poder entenderlo.

— Alejandro Jodorowsky (@alejodorowsky) July 25, 2016

.Es imbécil confundir un acto de violencia sexual con un acto de psicomagia donde teatralmente se revive el trauma para hacerle frente.

— Alejandro Jodorowsky (@alejodorowsky) July 25, 2016

!.- Un abuso sexual puede ser feroz o puede ser seductor si es un incesto. El abuso incestuoso puede no ser violento y despertar un Edipo

— Alejandro Jodorowsky (@alejodorowsky) July 25, 2016

 

En años recientes, Jodorowsky se ha convertido en una personalidad de las redes sociales. En Twitter tiene un millón 200 mil seguidores, pero tiene más fuerza en Facebook, con más de dos millones de likes en su página donde cada día miles dan Share a sus frases.

En Twitter son miles las cuentas que han criticado al escritor y es tendencia en algunos países de América Latina.

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¿Cuáles son las apps que buscan los mexicanos?

Esperan un 25% más de usuarios de redes en 6 años

Los 10 mejores trailers presentados en la Comic-Con

El trailer es una de las mejores herramientas de marketing de las compañías de entretenimiento y la Comic-Con de San Diego es un evento en el que ya es una tradición que muestren avances de las películas y series que se estrenarán pronto. Te mostramos los diez mejores trailers de la Comic-Con 2016.

En esta edición de la Comic-Con de San Diego Warner Bros. y Marvel presentaron varios avances sobre los productos de entretenimiento que estrenarán este año y el que sigue. Aquí están los mejores trailers.

WARNER BROS.

The Lego Batman Movie

 

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

 

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

 

Justice League

 

Wonder Woman

 

Kong: Skull Island

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DC presentó el primer trailer de Wonder Woman en la Comic-Con

Estrategias de engagement para fidelizar al turista a través de internet

Internet se ha convertido en una fuente de oportunidades para interactuar con los consumidores y cuando se trata de viajar, los puntos de contacto son múltiples, pues los usuarios, de forma creciente “idean, planifican, reservan, contratan, disfrutan y sobre todo se comparten” todo aquello que esté relacionado con esta actividad, en la red. Aunque no siempre es aprovechado por gran parte de las empresas del sector.

Internet puede brindar enormes posibilidades para “interactuar, empatizar, captar y fidelizar a los turistas y viajeros, en definitiva, para generar un vínculo duradero entre la empresa y el viajero.”

Gracias a la tecnología digital se puede aportar valor a la experiencia del cliente, así como segmentar, personalizar experiencias y lograr que los procesos sean más eficientes durante todo el ciclo. Actividades con las que se pretende lograr “mayores ventas, mejores márgenes comerciales y sobre todo conseguir la recurrencia, fidelidad y compromiso de los clientes que puede conllevar la recomendación de los productos o servicios.”

Guía para optimizar la experiencia del viajero

En este sentido, Vector ITC Group ha elaborado esta breve guía para ayudar a las marcas y empresas a definir casos de uso a lo largo de todo el ciclo de vida del viajero para generar un compromiso y en última instancia, la fidelización; y cuyos aspectos meas importantes son:

• Preparación en origen: los viajeros en la búsqueda de su destino y en la selección de los proveedores de servicios del viaje son atraídos por información útil, atractiva y personalizada. La captación de su atención obliga a disponer de portales comerciales que ofrezcan los servicios, multicanales, atractivos, con contenidos audiovisuales y entornos virtuales con todo tipo de información actualizada, simuladores, juegos, noticias u otros. También es necesario el conocimiento de los modelos de segmentación de clientes, además de unas nociones en marketing digital y social business personalizado de cada servicio, para captar al público objetivo.

 

• Compra: en este punto, la clave está en hacer fácil la conversión reduciendo los puntos de fricción o conflicto para los clientes, trabajando en la usabilidad de los sistemas y servicios, la personalización de la oferta y la optimización del ingreso. Esto se puede conseguir a través de plataformas B2C/B2B diseñadas para la conversión, bien con soluciones para micropersonalizar el producto (habitaciones + facilities + amenities) y ofertas cruzadas con estrategias de promoción en múltiples canales, o bien a través del Yield Management, es decir, la optimización de los puntos anteriores maximizando la ocupación y el ingreso.

• Desplazamiento: durante el desplazamiento existen soluciones que permiten aportar valor en el tiempo previo a la llegada y mejorar la eficiencia del acceso a los servicios en el momento de la llegada, como una zona privada multicanal para los clientes que han adquirido el servicio con información útil y contextualizada al momento de disfrute del viaje. También es importante contar con una actualización de tarifas, eventos, atracciones o promociones de venta cruzada para las fechas de la estancia. O disponer de un servicio de atención al viajero multicanal integrado que permita mantener la visión única de cliente.

• Estancia en destino: el momento de disfrute del servicio es crucial para lograr la excelencia de la experiencia de los turistas, en este punto las soluciones de movilidad y la integración de los mundos físicos y online abre camino un gran número de posibilidades para completar y personalizar la oferta de servicios en el destino, así como para optimizar los costes que redunden en una oferta más competitiva en el mercado. Para ello se ve necesario apostar por la movilidad e innovación, para adaptar todos los dispositivos integrando el mundo off y online, en las instalaciones del hotel, las webs y apps, así como la información turística de la zona. También son importantes en este campo los sistemas móviles, IoT, realidad aumentada y wearables facilitadores de procesos y de actividades lúdicas. Algunos ya han optado por modelos e integración de partnership con terceros de la zona.

• Recuerdo: el viaje y experiencia no termina en el momento del regreso, el viaje tiene grandes momentos a la hora de compartir las experiencias disfrutadas. El mundo virtual y las redes sociales permiten hacer virales estas sensaciones tanto positivas como negativas a través de todos los contactos. Se puede hacer mediante marketing reputacional, es decir, monitorizando y gestionando la reputación en las redes sociales y sistemas de valoración de viajes. A través de campañas de fidelización específicas. Con analítica avanzada (descriptiva, predictiva y prescriptiva) tanto de las compras que cada cliente ha realizado o podría realizar, como de la producción de los servicios buscando su optimización. O bien a través de ePR, gestión de grandes formadores de opinión.

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¿Estás al tanto de las innovaciones sobre la protección de datos?

Las estrategias de digital marketing se abren paso ante un mundo globalizado que impulsa a las marcas a emprender acciones efectivas en un amplio panorama. El uso de mercadotecnia digital hace que una marca esté actualizada, al tanto de las innovaciones digitales y nuevas prácticas.

Vale destacar que el digital marketing es un campo amplio que engloba diferentes tácticas y herramientas por lo que es necesario conocer las bases y saber cuáles son las herramientas que mejores resultados le proveen a las compañías que las implementan.

Con el fin de enriquecer el conocimiento y lograr mejores resultados en el tema, la Escuela de Mercadotecnia (EDEM) emprende el Diplomado en Digital Marketing que mejora el impacto que tiene una firma dentro del mercado con base en innovaciones que la acercan más con sus propios objetivos.

El Diplomado en Digital Marketing capacita al alumno sobre los aspectos clave para la creación y gestión de empresas digitales, al igual brinda las bases para proporcionar un mejor entendimiento del entorno digital: repercusiones, retos y oportunidades desde la perspectiva digital y conocer herramientas ayudan a medir los resultados de cada una de las estrategias.

El programa se compone de cinco módulos, de los cuales cuatro se imparten en la Ciudad de México (Reforma). Al termino del diplomado se otorgará la certificación internacional con valor curricular. Mantenerte vigente dentro del mercado laboral por medio de temas como:

• Herramientas del marketing digital
• ¿Cómo se integra el mobile y los nuevos medios en el entorno del marketing digital?
• Publicidad y promoción
• Medición de campañas
• Optimización, importancia y alcances basados en el presupuesto
• Medición de resultados
• Protección de datos
• Nuevas tecnologías mundialesHerramientas de social media
• Parámetros de medición

Diplomado Digital Marketing

• Inicio de clases: 23 de septiembre 2016
• Informes e inscripciones al 5516.2346 ext. 140
• Lada sin costo al 01800 715 7444
• cursosdirectivos@escuelademercadotecnia.org

Si quieres conocer más sobre el diplomado pulsa aquí.
Si quieres saber más sobre EDEM pulsa aquí.

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Images: three optimisation tips to help speed up your site

People like fast websites and so does Google.

In fact, your website’s speed is a ranking factor in Google search engine results.

If your site loads quickly, it’s more likely to appear when people search for your brand. This along with the knowledge that a fast site provides a better user experience (UX), means that a faster website can lead to higher conversions.

If your website isn’t loading as quickly as you’d like, it’s very likely that your images are to blame.

Here are a few common mistakes people make regarding optimising images for their website.

Images are too big

Many marketers and publishers like to use big, high-resolution images on their site, believing that these images will provide a better user experience.

The problem is that high-res images often have a very large file size, and take a long time to load, especially when there are multiple images on the same web page.

We’ve seen many publishers uploading images in the range of 2Mb to 5Mb in their blog or content posts. This image size is way too large for the web, and is one of the most common mistakes that slows down websites.

If your image is larger than 500kb, something might be wrong, and the image could be compressed.

Before you upload new images to your web page or blog post, remember these tips:

• Before you upload any image, double-check the file size (right click the image, and choose properties)
• Keep image files sizes below 500kb (and below 100kb if possible)
• There are many online tools that can help you compress your images to get a smaller file size, such as io, CompressJPG, and TinyPNG.
• If you use Photoshop to prepare your images, keep an eye on the dimensions and make sure the DPI is set to 72dpi (Image/Image Size) and remember to ‘Save for Web’ in order to control the final outputted file size.
• Convert your images to the proper file types. In most cases, you’ll want to use JPG. However, if your image uses transparency (such as an image with a “see through” background) you’ll need to use PNG. There are some rare cases when GIF is best, but, when in doubt, always use JPG.

A specific example: An exclusive online designer footwear brand uses a lot of large banners and products images on its fashion site that dragged the Google PageSpeed score down to just 20/100.

We created a daily cron job (automated task that runs daily) to automatically resize big images down to smaller web standards, while maintaining a good quality.

In the screenshot below, we reduced the file size of an image from 1.3MB to only 142KB.

Simply by reducing image file size, we increased the Google PageSpeed score from 20/100 to 58/100.

Auto-scaling images

Another common mistake with images, is auto-scaling large images so they display smaller than they really are.

Doing this is often more convenient for the developer and content creators, but can really slow down a website.

For example, a big photo banner in a post might also be used as a small thumbnail elsewhere on the site.

The developer, rather than creating multiple versions of the image (e.g. 1000×425 for the banner and 64×64 for a side column), uses code to auto-scale the same big image to display as a small thumbnail. So a big image is being loaded unnecessarily. This shortens development time, but the page speed pays the price.

Not to mention, auto-scaled images can end up looking distorted because they’ve been stretched with code. For example, the thumbnail below is auto-scaled from 1000×425 pixels down to 64×64 pixels, and becomes distorted.

Keep an eye out for times when the same image is used many times on your site. If your site requires 12 different size variations used in 12 locations (something like 25×25, 40×40, 200×200, 658×258, 56×56, 64×64, 92×92, 150×156, 110×110, 160×160, and 180×180) that’s probably too many, and you might want to limit that down to less than four.

Then create a separate image for each different size, and load the correctly-sized image version rather than auto-scaling large images to look smaller than they really are.

Lack of image caching

Even if you use proper image compression, and serve properly-scaled images, a page that’s very image-heavy can still take a long time to load. Since images are static content, a great way to speed up the load time is to use CDN caching.

Caching (pronounced “cashing”) is the process of storing data in a temporary storage area called a cache. For example, you’ve probably noticed that a website you’ve visited in the past will load more quickly than a site you’ve never been to. This is because the visited website is cached by your computer.

A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a network of servers that delivers cached content (such as images) from websites to users, based on the geographic location of the user.

For example, if you’re in New York, and you’re looking at a website from India, you can load the images from a server that’s actually in New York, rather than loading images from halfway around the world.

A site using CDN caching can deliver images and other static content much faster, especially in peak traffic time, because images are not loaded directly from the web server, but from a cached server with much faster speed.

On top of this, a CDN also helps you serve more visitors at the same time. If your site experiences a sudden or unexpected spike in traffic, a CDN can keep your site functioning effectively.

Some of our favorite CDN providers are CloudFare, Akamai CDN, Amazon CloudFront, MaxCDN, and CDN77.

Mike Le is the Co-Founder and COO of CB/I Digital, a digital agency based in New York and a contributor to SEW. You can connect with Mike on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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How The Telegraph’s SEO strategy led to a Brexit traffic boost

The EU referendum has delivered a nice traffic boost for the UK’s newspaper websites, according to ABC figures released this week.

Interest in the referendum was massive in June, and spiked on June 24th, the day after the referendum. Yes, that’s the same day that searches for ‘what is the EU?’ and ‘what does brexit mean?’ spiked.

This delivered a massive boost for newspaper sites in general, but especially The Telegraph and Guardian.

The Telegraph’s growth was bigger (up 20% month to month) than the rest, and I’m betting this was down (at least in part) to some smart SEO work from The Telegraph’s team.

Here’s the growth figures:

UK unique users, June vs May: 

• Telegraph up 20% MOM
• Guardian up 14%
• Mail Online, no change.  
• Sun up 5%
• Mirror up 2.9%

Global uniques, June vs May: 

• Telegraph up 21%
• Guardian up 9%
• Mail Online up 5%
• Sun up 12%
• Mirror up 5%.

The Guardian and Telegraph are two of the more ‘serious’ newspaper sites (The Times’ paywall means it doesn’t figure here), which in part explains how they benefitted most from a news-event related spike.

By contrast, The Sun (not a serious source of news) was one of the few sites that didn’t experience a post-Brexit lift. The spike you can see comes after the 24th, and is from the Dream Team football app, rather than anything news related.

Perhaps, given that The Sun was very pro-Brexit, to the extent of not reporting any possible negatives, web users didn’t trust it as a reliable source of information.

Indeed, when the Sun did talk about the negatives post-Brexit, readers suddenly wondered why they hadn’t been told this before.

Sun’s ABC. Post brexit was lowest PVs for 2 weeks. Spike in PVs on 26th is nearly all from Dream Team app, not site. http://pic.twitter.com/egGsGApN6L

— Malcolm Coles (@malcolmcoles) July 21, 2016

The Guardian’s growth

The Guardian reported its strongest month ever with more than 1 billion pages views for the first time in a calendar month, and a record 167 million monthly uniques.

In addition, thanks to content such as its live Brexit blog, itself the most popular article on the site ever, with 10m+ uniques, The Guardian enjoyed its highest day’s traffic ever.

It attracted more than 17m uniques and 77m pageviews on June 24, the day the referendum results were announced.

The Guardian does a lot of things well in terms of SEO, and there’s no doubt this contributed to these figures.

The Telegraph’s growth

The Guardian figures were impressive, but The Telegraph outstripped them in terms of month on month growth.

In charts tweeted by The Telegraph’s Director of Digital Media Malcolm Coles, we can see the Brexit effect:

And so did we http://pic.twitter.com/dhTVcsc12l

— Malcolm Coles (@malcolmcoles) 21 July 2016

I suspect than a strong SEO strategy has much to do with The Telegraph’s impressive performance. This strategy put it in a strong position to benefit from extra traffic around such a big news event.

It regularly has a prominent feature in Google News results, while it ranks well for key topics thanks to a well-executed strategy which includes effective internal linking and landing/hub pages for key topics.

For example, this is from a post on Mail Online’s strategy, showing how effectively the Telegraph used linking. It shows the performance of its ‘David Cameron’ page:

This page performs consistently as The Telegraph links the rest of its Cameron content back to this page, which indicates to the search engines that this is the page to show for that phrase.

This means that, instead of having several articles on the them competing against each other leading to fluctuation in search rankings, it has one dedicated hub page.

The Telegraph appears to have repeated this approach for the EU referendum, with a hub page for the issue. As I search this morning, it’s the highest-ranked newspaper site for the term.

Thanks to this ground work and consistent linking, when the traffic spiked on June 24, The Telegraph was in a strong position to attract search traffic.

In addition, The Telegraph has been very smart in picking up traffic for informational searches around events like the referendum, or Euro 2016 – where the events are, the start times, where you can watch them, and so on.

For example, this page comes up for searches around the Tour de France today, providing information on stage start times, TV coverage etc.

This content provides useful information for searchers which directly answers some informational queries, but also helps to showcase the rest of the site’s cycling coverage to help it attract extra users.

It seems that this strategy has been applied across a range of news and sporting events, and is a great tactic to take advantage of ‘who, what, where’ searches.

I don’t have detailed data on where The Telegraph’s month on month growth came from, but I’m betting a smart SEO strategy enabled it to take full advantage of the extra interest in news around the Brexit vote.

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¿Cuál es el mejor mes para lanzar campañas de coches en internet?

La determinación del momento ideal para el lanzamiento de una campaña, no siempre es tarea fácil (y mucho menos una ciencia exacta), aunque ahora se cuenta con mucha más información y formas de procesarla, para dar forma a este estudio en el que se ha precisado, según los datos de la publicidad programática, cuales son los mejores momentos para dar a conocer una campaña de coches en internet.

Rocket Fuel, proveedor de una plataforma de marketing programático, ha determinado en una investigación, que el mejor mes para realizar campañas en el sector automotriz es septiembre, aunque hasta ahora se pensaba que por tratarse de la época en la que se regresa de las vacaciones de verano, no era el momento adecuado.

En este estudio, la empresa analizó los datos de varios sectores comerciales con el objetivo de determinar cuáles son los períodos donde se logra una mayor eficacia de las campañas. Una investigación que realizó tomando en cuenta los tiempos de mayor consumo de contenido por parte de los usuarios, los tiempos de programación en los que se anuncian las marcas y los momentos en los que se producen meas conversiones.

Durante los resultados, se ha podido observar que si bien es cierta la creencia sobre la ideneidad de lanzar campañas durante los meses previos a Semana Santa y los de verano, el mes de septiembre supera ampliamente a estas temporadas en efectividad.

Según los datos obtenidos, entre marzo y junio, se consume un 22,2 por ciento más de contenido que la media anual, mientras que el mes de septiembre, esta cifra se eleva hasta el 53,3 por ciento. y en cuanto a las conversiones (logro de objetivo que puede ir desde obtención de datos a compra del vehículo), durante septiembre, éstas se incrementan en un 51,4 por ciento frente a la media anual, mientras que en los meses previos al verano lo hacen en un 20,7 por ciento.

 

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¿Qué es B2S y en qué factores se enfoca?

Ante un mundo globalizado, las marcas deben apostar por estrategias dirigidas a mayores segmentos, esto de la mano de internet y las redes sociales, donde se estima que una de cada siete personas en el mundo se da cita, revelan estimaciones de eMarketer. En consecuencia las compañías deben estar enfocadas en un entorno social.

Una forma de estar al tanto de las tendencias a nivel mundial y el comportamiento del consumidor en el mismo plano es a través de internet, social media y redes sociales, ya que brindan una percepción del entorno en distintos puntos. Por tal motivo surge el término B2S que significa business to social.

El tema resalta, en especial, dentro de las estrategias de marketing digital, las cuales son “progreso permanente, desarrollo tecnológico y social”, asegura Pablo Adán Mico a través del libro Business to social, marketing digital para las empresas y personas. Al mismo tiempo asegura que “vivir al margen de él es perderse muchas posibilidades de proyección como empresas y como personas”.

Business to social responda a la necesidad de comunicación en diferentes direcciones donde el producto no sólo esté presente en el país en donde se comercializa, sino que evolucione a otros sitios a través de estrategias de digital marketing, el cual registró una inversión en el año 2015 de 165,159 millones de dólares, factor que representa un aumento de 21,592 millones en relación con el año antepasado, revela información proyectada por Statista.

Las estrategias de digital marketing delimitan los movimientos de una empresa y enfocan mejor los movimientos a grandes logros.

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Trump Yourself, la nueva campaña digital de Clinton que se convirtió en tendencia

Algo están haciendo bien en Estados Unidos y son las estrategias de social media marketing que están llevando a cabo los candidatos a la presidencia de ese país.

La estrategia más reciente que comprueba lo anterior fue publicada por la aspirante demócrata Hillary Clinton llamada Trump Yourself.

Introducing #TrumpYourself: Discover what @realDonaldTrump thinks about people like you. https://t.co/cSY7ozT4tr http://pic.twitter.com/KvVt2tGwFd

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) 21 de julio de 2016

hashtags data by hashtagify.me

Esta campaña lanzada por la aspirante demócrata utiliza declaraciones hechas por el candidato republicano, que son usadas en filtros aplicadas a la imagen de perfil de Facebook del usuario, mediante una herramienta de esta plataforma.

Cada una de las citas está referida al evento donde el candidato las pronunció como parte de sus polémicos discursos que le han atraído la atención de medios y críticas en el mayor de los casos.

Datos publicados por eMarketer apuntan que al término de 2016 existan en el mundo 2.22 mil millones de usuarios de redes sociales, dato que se antoja determinante para el desarrollo de estrategias de marketing que se ejecutan a través de esta plataforma, para hacer que los usuarios de estas redes participen de los contenidos generados por los candidatos a través del llamado a la acción con herramientas de social media.

En Estados Unidos otras campañas políticas han involucrado el uso de herramientas digitales en una región (Norteamérica) con un nivel de penetración de las redes sociales de 59 por ciento, según cifras de We Are Social, Tencent, Facebook, Vkontakte, Wikipedia e IAB Singapore.

Durante la campaña de reelección del presidente Barack Obama, se desarrolló una herramienta en Facebook que permitía a la campaña Obama for America, dejar que los usuarios de esta red social recordaran votar a sus amigos dentro de la plataforma.

La necesidad que cada vez más tienen los candidatos y políticos de tener presencia en redes sociales, dejó de ser una pretensión para convertirse en una obligación con la que se puede conectar con un usuario en cualquier momento del día y hacerlo interactuar mediante llamados a la acción que aprovechan sus perfiles en redes sociales; por lo que el trabajo del equipo de campaña está en realizar un contenido que empate con el momento social que se quiere aprovechar, para que la estrategia funcione a favor del candidato y no en su contra.

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