'Net Features : content

3 Ways to Kick-Start Conversions

Administrator — Thu, 16 May 2013 17:15:00 GMT

:: By Amie Marse, Content Equals Money ::

Conversions are one of the top priorities of companies engaging in online business. Without a strong rate of conversions, companies are simply sinking money into a profitless division. With the right strategy, however, a company’s online presence can trigger substantial growth.

Mobile optimization is the key to getting conversions in 2013. Everywhere you look, someone is checking their smartphone for recommendations about which product to buy or which restaurant to try. Developing a strategy that targets mobile consumers allows your company to draw in a whole new demographic. Mobile-first businesses generally place an emphasis on acquiring new customers, a focus that many mainstream organizations lack, according to David Needle.

If you are unsure of how to improve your online marketing tactics, try integrating at least one of the following three strategies. In 2013, optimizing your mobile landing pages, updating your email marketing, and mastering the balance between short- and long-form content are three of the surest ways to gain conversions.

Creating an Optimized Landing Page

A landing page is the online form of a first impression. Your landing page needs to give viewers an immediate idea of what to expect from your products or services. Furthermore, an optimized landing page will engage consumers in a way that encourages conversions. Without careful optimization, your landing page may drive consumers away, especially in regard to mobile.

The top priority of a landing page optimized for mobile is accessibility. Every aspect of the landing page must be easily navigable by fingers on a touch screen, or the visitor will quickly return to the search engine to choose a different result. Avoid the use of elements that include flash or plug-ins, since they slow down mobile users.

Mastering the art of engaging headlines is a persuasive way to interest consumers and bring in conversions. Strong, informative headlines decrease the need for wordy descriptions underneath, which is beneficial for the necessity of speed. Mobile users want to visit pages that load immediately and present brief, to-the-point information.

In order to increase conversions, more and more businesses are utilizing variable sites that can rearrange themselves to target the viewer’s needs. Based on the visitor’s search criteria, your optimized landing page should present relevant information that makes it easy for the consumer to convert.

Innovative Email Marketing

Although many marketers seems to believe that email marketing has run its course and lost its relevance in the age of mobile, there is a strong contingency of experts that still encourage the use of email marketing. In fact, email marketing can be improved for mobile by incorporating many of the same strategies that apply to landing pages.

Mobile users usually check their email even more frequently than those using a computer, so be sure to send out emails that are optimized for mobile views. Like mobile landing pages, email marketing should be simple, accessible, and relevant. Remove graphics and images so that the text is prominent. Pare the content down to the most important information and include formatting techniques like bullet points and bolding to make your message easy to scan.

When developing the content for your email marketing, drop the sales pitch. We’ve all seen an endless stream of sales pitch emails piled into our inboxes. If consumers feel like you have nothing to offer besides a sales pitch, they will take their business to a more engaged company. Instead of a sales pitch, use your email to offer valuable content that sparks interest and encourages interaction. One way to optimize your content is to make use of targeted marketing.

In order to turn your emails into conversions, don’t forget to include plenty of clear links. Once you have claimed the reader’s attention, show them a way to respond through visiting your website or social media profile. Since you are avoiding an obvious sales pitch in your email, you have to find a creative way to build conversions. Giving the reader incentive to follow a link is the most dependable way to get him or her to a page that will present a sales pitch.

The Strengths of Short- and Long-Form Content

The most obvious reason for the popularity of short-form content is the growth of Twitter. As modern individuals try to condense every thought into 140 characters, long-form content has declined. Even blog posts have generally become shorter and more succinct to accommodate the desire for quick sources of information.

Long-form content hasn’t become irrelevant, however. Experts like Ev Williams are predicting a return to long-form content as we react to the overdose of short-form content. Long-form content provides a space for more meaningful and insightful commentary that develops and share ideas in a way that can’t be achieved in short-form content.

So how should your company use short- and long-form content to get conversions in 2013? The most effective strategy is to use both forms to complement each other. Use short-form content to create initial contact with consumers, whether through tweets, blogs, or Facebook posts. Once that contact is established, present long-form content that deepens the connection between your company and the consumer by instigating conversation that will generate conversions. A combination of short- and long-form content strategies will produce a more comprehensive marketing campaign that permeates your customers’ online lives.

About the Author

Amie Marse, is the founder and managing partner of Content Equals Money, a content writing service for agencies and Web-based clients.

Echo Helps Publishers Wrestling with Real-Time Content Moderation

Michael Garrity — Thu, 09 May 2013 15:00:00 GMT

Conversations are constantly taking place all over the Web, from websites to applications to mobile devices that are always on the go. And although this presents brands with more opportunities to spread their messages and create awareness, it also makes it far more difficult to monitor everything that is being said about them online.

But moderating those conversations just got easier thanks to the real-time Web platform provider Echo, which recently just announced the availability of DiscussIt Moderator, a new application designed for high-volume environments that allows publishers to moderate real-time conversations about their brands across multiple applications and websites.

As part of the Echo App Ecosystem, DiscussIt Moderator works as a centralized moderation tool that will augment the Echo StreamServer’s built-in standard moderation features, which include “bad word” filtering, spam detection and community flagging. However, DiscussIt Moderator will also let publisher teams co-moderate content from any Echo Enabled application, such as Comments, Media Galleries, Forums, Social Chattter or Lifestreams, and all from within a single, centralized interface.

Using configurable rules, DiscussIt Moderator is able to automatically flag any questionable content for review, and then insert said content into a live message stream that can be split into various sub-streams that allow individual moderators to collaborate on different sections simultaneously. This means they can approve, deny, edit or directly respond to items through the user interface and remove any inappropriate material.

The tool also features the ability to moderate multiple websites/domains, advanced real-time search functionality, the ability to “deputize” standout community members as moderators and in-depth usage analytics. Plus, it’s made to be quick and easy to configure and launch.

One of the biggest brands already on board with DiscussIt Moderator is the global professional wrestling corporation WWE, a company that has openly embraced social media as part of its recent marketing efforts.

“WWE fans are passionate and generate thousands of comments during each live event, both on social networks, as well as directly on WWE.com,” said the company’s EVP of Digital Media, Perkins Miller. “DiscussIt Moderator enables our team to easily co-moderate real-time content across all of our properties, which makes it easier for our fans to feel connected to our content and our WWE Superstars.”

5 Reasons Your Search Traffic is Declining

Michael Garrity — Tue, 07 May 2013 18:27:00 GMT

Maybe it’s been happening over the past few weeks, or even months. Slowly, but surely, you’ve been watching your traffic numbers decline, despite not having changed much of anything about the way you publish content or optimize your website for the search engines.

Naturally, you’ll want to know exactly what’s going on and what’s causing this continual dip in traffic. For some problems, you may be able to look at your analytics platform to determine what content is seeing its traffic numbers decrease, which could help you clearly identify where you’re struggling.

However, in most cases, you’ll have to perform some kind of search result audit for your various keywords that will show you where you’re currently ranking on Google and its competitors for your most important keywords. Ultimately, this could reveal one (or more) issues that are holding you down in the SERPs and, thus, negatively affecting your traffic numbers.

But before you begin investigating, it might be helpful to know what you should be on the lookout for. So, here are the five most likely reasons that you’ve been seeing your website traffic decrease:

New Competition
(Too) many website owners and SEO professionals tend to a take an “it’s all about me” approach to their work, and when they start to have an issue like declining traffic, their initial instinct is to wonder what it is THEY are doing wrong and what THEY have to do to fix it. However, few immediately consider the possibility of a new website (or sites) that have moved into their niche and are luring away some of their traffic by offering comparable products or content. This is one of the reasons why conducting regular industry assessments and search audits is imperative.

Content is Out of Date
Every good content creator strives to make something evergreen that will last forever, so that visitors will consistently come to his or her website to read it. However, over time, the majority of content will become dated, and its value will begin to depreciate at a regular pace. One way to tell if your content isn’t as enticing to searchers as it used to be is to monitor that page’s analytics, and if something that used to get a consistently high influx of visitors now gets less and less, it’s likely that the content on the page is decreasing in value to most readers. A method for correcting this issue could be to produce a new, updated version of that content, and then to link to the new page on the old one.

Shifts in Algorithm Values
This is another instance where your decreasing traffic isn’t actually your fault. Occasionally, Google and the other search engines will alter their algorithms to give more weight to certain types of content for specific search terms. When that happens, images, videos, wiki pages or other content that is slightly different from standard Web pages may be given prominence over your site, which can have an effect on how much traffic you get from that search engine. If you notice that Google seems to favor certain types of content for one of your keywords or targeted search terms, maybe that means you should consider making a video or infographic the next time you consider writing a blog post about a that topic.

Caught Red Handed Being a Black Hat
And other times, SEOs are knowingly or unknowingly participating in nefarious “black hat” SEO tactics in order to move their sites higher up in the SERPs. Once Google and the others bust you – and they almost always will – they’ll penalize your site and send you way down in the rankings, and that will obviously affect your traffic. If you genuinely weren’t intending to be shady and just made a mistake, it’s important that you find out what your exact offense was and correct it as soon as possible, so that you can start trying to garner some good will with the search engines and make your way back up in the rankings.

They’re Just Not That into Your Content
However, the unfortunate truth is that much of the time, consumers just aren’t going to be that interested in the content that you’re publishing, meaning it’s not engaging or valuable enough to hold their attention and keep them coming back for more. And without engaging content, your traffic numbers are going to suffer. To rectify this problem, you should be aware of the top sites and blogs in your niche or industry, and take note of what they’re regularly publishing content about (in order to understand emerging trends) and what their readers are saying in comments sections and on social media sites to see what they’re asking for, so that you have a better idea of what content will be engaging and valuable to the visitors you want to attract.

Is Your Blog an Information Powerhouse?

Administrator — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 18:45:00 GMT

By Amie Marse, Content Equals Money

If there’s one thing your customers want to see in your blog, I can almost guarantee you it’s this: valuable information. We’re not talking about Wikipedia-style information. We’re talking exclusive, you won’t find this in Google’s 1.2 million search results kind of information.

I’ve been writing for the Web since 2005, and over the last 8 years I’ve learned a few things about creating content that matters. If you want to give your blog an edge over your competition, grab these five strategies by the horns, and put them to work for you.

Showcase Your Personal Knowledge

Here’s the thing about valuable content: In order to have something valuable to say, you don’t have to be the very best at what you do. You don’t have to have the most experience, the biggest clientele or the most expensive website design. Simply by being a part of your industry, you have a unique perspective that outsiders don’t have. Share your unique perspective, your personal experiences and your hard-earned knowledge on your company’s blog.

One of my favorite blogging tips of all time comes from The Sales Lion, Marcus Sheridan who recommends that bloggers, who are at a complete loss with what to write about next, should take out a sheet of paper and write down every question they’ve ever been asked about their business. Then, take those questions, and turn them into blog posts.

You might think you have nothing new to share, but I guarantee you that when you sit down to write out these questions, you’ll find that you have several topics that nobody could cover but you.

Stop Regurgitating Content

When you showcase your personal knowledge, you shouldn’t have this problem (the regurgitation issue). Unfortunately, most blogs read like old TV re-runs, sharing the same old things we’ve all seen before. On the surface, this is a creativity issue, but at base, I believe it really has to do with laziness and organization.

If you set aside time at the beginning of each month to create an editorial calendar, I can almost guarantee you that you’ll largely sidestep the regurgitation issue. Most bloggers slip into the trap of regurgitation when they feel pressured to throw a post up on their site. If you know in advance when you’re posting and what you’re posting about, you can take the time to create a post that uniquely showcases your personal knowledge.

For help with developing your own editorial calendar, I highly recommend this post from Copyblogger.

Use a Bounty of Resources & Links

As smart as you are, it’s still important to incorporate a variety of resources into your blog posts. On the one hand, resources give your readers easy access to extra information. On the other hand, they make you look more credible. Resources are a way of demonstrating that you do, in fact, keep up on your industry and market trends.

Types of resources you should include? That’s a long list, but a few of my favorites include peer bloggers, news articles pertaining to your industry, other writers’ how-to guides, and your earlier blog posts and resource pages. Find out why Ellie Mirman of HubSpot believes you should link to your competitors (a smart strategy for building thought leadership).

Create a Mission Statement (For Yourself)

The point of this post is to make your blog an information powerhouse. However, that doesn’t mean that all information – even good information – should appear on your blog. You might know a lot about SEO and a lot about banana plantations, but you wouldn’t make a blog that highlights both subjects. Your readers like to know what they can expect from your blog.

In order to avoid topical derailing, create a mission statement for your blog. This doesn’t have to be on the header of every page; just write it down for yourself. Keep it simple. For example, “The purpose of my blog is to help small businesses with no SEO knowledge or skills rank their websites on the first page of Google.” If a blog post doesn’t line up with that mission statement, toss it! (If you use an editorial calendar and a mission statement, you won’t even have to write a misfit blog post in the first place.)

Segmented Leads & Clear CTAs

While your blog needs an overarching mission statement, each post should have its own “mini-mission statement.” Of course, I’m talking about your call-to-action. Your reader should never get to the end of a blog post, and ask, What now? Each one of your posts should have a clear CTA that directs the reader to do something specific. Not only is this reassuring to the reader, but it also builds your blog’s reputation as a source of valuable information.

Think about all of your different leads (and what stage of your sales cycle they’re in), and create blog posts with CTAs that target each one. It could take a week or a month of blogging to create posts that target each lead, but when you use an editorial calendar, the process becomes much less intimidating!

So, remember…showcase your knowledge (without regurgitating) and use an editorial calendar and plenty of resources. Write according to a mission statement, and create content for all of your different leads with clear CTAs. Easy? Hardly. Doable? Absolutely! My challenge to you is to dedicate yourself to this style of blogging for one month, and then note the differences in traffic and engagement. I’d love to hear how it works out for you!

About the Author

Amie Marse, is the founder and managing partner of Content Equals Money, a content writing service for agencies and Web-based clients.

Extreme Makeover: SEO Edition

Michael Garrity — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 20:30:00 GMT

The winter weather is finally starting to subside, which means that spring is right around the corner and it’s a time for new beginnings. For business owners, webmasters and online marketers, this means doing a little spring cleaning the form of an SEO makeover for their websites.

Regularly performing a checkup on your website and giving it a bit of a facelift when and where it’s necessary are kind of essential to maintaining a solid SEO strategy. However, it can be easy to overlook at times and before you know it, a few weeks (or even months) have gone by since you last fixed things up, and by this time, you’re site may need a more extensive overhaul.

If your site is in dire need of a makeover and you’re wondering where to begin, look no further, because below we’ve listed a handful of nips, tucks and alterations that can help you totally reimagine your website for SEO.

Dust Off the Old Keyword Research Tool
Keyword research is the backbone of any SEO strategy, but it is also one of the easiest things to forget to revisit when turning up your site. That’s why the first step in an SEO makeover should be visiting the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to find the keywords in your niche that are not only most popular, but are also most suitable to your particular Web business. If this new report returns information about new keywords that you’re not currently using, make sure to find a way to work them into your site’s title tags and meta descriptions.

Clean Up URLs
One of the easiest and yet most effective ways to improve your website’s search rankings is by beautifying your URLs to make them easier for search engines to read, which means getting rid of long query strings. Clean, easy-to-understand URLs should include a hypertext transfer protocol, the website’s domain name, the subdirectory of the file or page (if applicable) and the file name of the requested resource, all of which are separated by backslashes. Moreover, different terms within directory or file names should be separated by dashes (-), rather than underscores (_); the URL should not include auto-generated IDs and/or numbers; and they should remain as short as possible. Luckily, there is a tool that helps users rewrite requested URLs on the fly called mod_rewrite.

Refine the Site Architecture
This is the big one, as refining your site’s architecture not only makes it easier for search engines to crawl your content, but it also makes the site more user friendly and increases load times, so it’s a great idea all around. For starters, you should make sure the site follows the basic rule of thumb that it takes no more than three clicks to reach your deepest content. Other handy little tweaks you can make include making it possible to access your homepage in one click from any other page on your site (which could include placing a link your logo image), cross-linking related pages to open the navigation flow (for both users and search engines) and by utilizing text-based links for your menu and page navigation buttons, since that’s the only thing that search engine crawlers can read, which is particularly important for the more crucial aspects of your website.

Purge Your Link Collection
If you like back to all of the websites that link to you, that tells Google that all of your inbound links are not earned, as sites with real authority don’t have to practice link sharing. You may also have a list of outbound or internal links on your site that go to broken pages, downed websites or other places that you may not want them going to various reasons. An SEO makeover is the perfect opportunity to perform a full-scale link checkup on your website to make sure that your site provides only the best and most necessary links for visitors and search engines. Remember, the number of outbound links you have doesn’t matter, as long as you’re linking to authoritative (and working) sites.

Weed Out Irrelevant Content
Finally, you should also do a site-wide examination of all of your content to ensure relevance and quality and help you move up the search rankings, as better content means more visitors and links and, thus, more attention from Google and Bing. Review your blog posts, Web pages and other copy to suss out anything irrelevant or outdated and make changes as necessary. This includes (but is not limited to) updating titles and headlines to include keywords and adding links to trending topics, which can help you get more relevant content and increase your search engine placement.

Flash-in-the-Pan: Capturing 15 Minutes of Digital Fame

Administrator — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 19:45:00 GMT

Despite how hard everyone seems to try, it can be difficult to get noticed on the Internet; after all, there are a lot of people out there competing to get their voices heard, and it’s easy to get overlooked with all of that digital noise.

For those Web professionals that are trying hard to build up some long-term authority in their industries, this climb to relevance is even more arduous and painstaking, as it takes time (and lots of it), as well as great content, tons of networking and measurable success, to really become an authority.

But we all have to start somewhere, and sometimes for the up-and-coming Web worker, the best thing they can do right now is just get any recognition. So, if you’re only interested in establishing your name and getting 15 minutes of virtual fame (for the time being), here are five steps that you can take to do just that. As they say, any publicity is good publicity.

Step #1: Create Something

In order to gain digital popularity, you must first produce some type of content that will grab an audience's attention. One way to do this is by creating something that answers a commonly asked question within your niche. For example, an apparel retailer could create a guide for “Choosing Your Best Color” in a blog post, while a fitness expert could create an infographic about the “Dangers of Fast Food.”

It is also important to note, however, that although most content forms have the potential to go viral, visual content like videos, images and infographics, tend to resonate better with audiences and are more “shareable” in the social world. That being said, it is important to include branding within content, as well as hashtags when possible, so that consumers will be able to identify where the content came from. This will not only provide free marketing for your brand, but it also has the potential to drive traffic to your website.

Step #2: Post It

Once you’ve created your intriguing content, it’s time to put it out there for others to see, react to and share accordingly. How you go about doing this will depend greatly on the type of content you produce, but regardless of what it is, you should start by making sure it’s on your website and/or blog, so that when people find it, they can also find you.

However, you shouldn’t stop there. You should also post your content in those places on the Internet where it is most likely to be found. For example, if you created a video, upload it to YouTube (which has 800 million-plus unique montly users), Vimeo, DailyMotion or any of the other dozens of video hosting services on the ‘Net. Same goes with posting photos to Flickr, Imgur or a similar service. Just anywhere that users are going to go to look specifically for that type of content.

Step #3: Share It

After the content is prepped and posted, it is time to share it with the world. While it is important to share content through email and on large social sites like Facebook and Twitter, you should also take time to share it on news-discovery sites like Reddit and Digg, so that it will have the ability to reach additional audiences.

Moreover, it is also important to share your content with the audience that will appreciate it the most, which are typically the people within your niche. To do this, you can target specific people on Twitter, post the content within relevant LinkedIn groups or spread the word within smaller and more targeted social networks.

Step #4: Talk About It

Word-of-mouth still remains one of the most effective ways to make your content go viral and soak in those 15 minutes of fame. Thankfully, the Internet has made word-of-mouth marketing exponentially easier; in fact, it’s so easy that basically anyone can do it.

Forums, blogs and the various comment sections that can be found on most content-based websites are all great places to go to spread the word about your cool new video, image, blog post or whatever it is you’ve created. Generally, getting into these discussions is as easy as signing up for an account on the website (which usually only requires a working email address), and then you can start talking about your new content and sharing links to it with potentially interested parties. All you need to do is make sure that the forum or blogs you’re commenting on are attached to websites that cater to your target audience, so that you won’t be talking to disinterested users. Also, try not to spam these boards with links to your content, but rather just mention it in a conversation (or as a conversation starter) to generate some organic interest among the users. Allowing the attention to grow on its own and not annoying everyone is going to be your best chance at helping your content go viral.

Step #5: Capitalize On It

While everyone can appreciate 15 minutes of fame, the most successful people find a way to capitalize on it. After all, it would be silly to let a surge in website traffic go to waste.

This is why it is important to identify the goal of your viral content. For example, is the goal to drive people to your site, so they can see your new merchandise or big sale? Or is the goal to acquire more subscribers on your email list? Regardless of what the goal is, it is vital to identify what the expected outcome of your viral campaign is and prepare for it; that way, you can get the most out of the traffic that your captivating content is sure to send to your site.

Allison Howen is an Associate Editor at Website Magazine, writing primarily about e-commerce and social media.

Michael Garrity is an Associate Editor at Website Magazine, focusing primarily on search, design and development and affiliate marketing.

Rank Enterprise Content with Inboundwriter

Allison Howen — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 14:15:00 GMT

Producing quality content is easier said than done. This is why content optimization platform Inboundwriter has launched a new enterprise software tier that is designed specifically for assisting medium and large-sized organizations.

“When we first launched InboundWriter in 2011, the core functionality was aimed at individual writers; however, we soon discovered that enterprise users large and small were seeking us out and using InboundWriter with more advanced workflows,” said Alexander Balva, VP of engineering. “We recognized that we have a large opportunity to broaden our product footprint and significantly enhance our value proposition.”

The Inboundwriter platform provides writers with search and social Web insights so that they can better understand what topics their readers find most interesting. Additionally, the platform provides writers with keyword and topic information, so they can maximize their content’s value. In fact, every article written within Inboundwriter receives a score, based on aspects such as topic focus, title, images and most frequently mentioned terms. According to Inboundwriter CEO Skip Besthoff, this helps enterprises discover which departments or writers are doing well with content creation, as well as assists them in identifying the departments and writers that can improve upon their content.

The company's new enterprise offering includes API integration, live end-user support, a more precise recommendation engine and RankAbove analytics. The company also partnered with blogging tool Zemanta, in order to help writers find complementary images, which don't infringe on copyright laws, for their articles. Furthermore, although InboundWriter was initially a single-user tool geared toward bloggers and individual writers, the enterprise launch introduces multiuser functionality, which enables administrators, such as a Web editor or content manager, to review all of the writers' articles and scores.

By optimizing content, businesses can dramatically increase traffic and engagement rates. For example, a recent Inboundwriter study revealed that writers who leveraged the content optimization platform found a 17 percent increase in conversions, a 153 percent increase in time-on-page metrics and a 29-33 percent increase in search traffic.

“InboundWriter has displayed remarkable innovation, having pioneered a scalable, automated platform that empowers writers to optimize content as part of their natural workflow,” said Besthoff. “I’m thrilled with the advancements in our product and the results we drive for customers.”

Create Content for Marathon Site Visits

Michael Garrity — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 20:00:00 GMT

One of the more telling metrics in the wild world of Web analytics is time-on-site, which indicates how long your website visitors stuck around. But, what it really tells you is just how engaging visitors find your website content to be.

Of course, what makes “good” or engaging content varies based on the type of website you run, your objectives and the whims of the people visiting your site. At the end of the day, the biggest factor determining how long your visitors will hang out is you, and how well you’re able to provide them with the content that will keep them coming back for more (or ideally, just sticking around for a marathon session).

Capture Attention

There’s a lot of stuff out there on the Web. If you want to create content that inspires marathon site visits, everything you publish should capture the attention of the (highly sought after) ‘Net users, both before and after they come to your site.

First things first – you need to come up with a great title or headline. Like it or not, the Web has made the art of headline writing the most important aspect of content creation, as users are likely to completely ignore content that doesn’t have a compelling enough title. Some ideas to keep in mind when coming up with headlines include referencing keywords or hot trends, using exciting descriptive adjectives or superlatives, summarizing the content or asking a question (the more provocative, the better).

As far as the content itself goes, there are a couple of proven methods that always seem to interest people. Lists are always popular, as is content that is broken up into different subsections. These allow visitors to easily skim to determine how much time they want to spend with the material. Content that has a call to action can also be very useful and engaging, especially if you have specific conversion goals; just make sure that the action is simple, easy to perform and clearly outlined. And last, but certainly not least, actionable content that provides an answer is always a winner. Start by presenting a question or problem (to get them hooked), and then use your expert authority to offer a solution.

Basically, the most effective content grabs someone’s attention, is easy to digest and, ultimately, provides useful information. And while these principles can be easily attributed to traditional text-based content like blog posts or articles, they also work just as well with images and video.

Slideshows & Photo Galleries

Right now, images are the reigning King of Content on the Web (look not further than the success of Pinterest, if you need proof). Using pictures on your site is a great way to enhance the user experience, as they’re easy for visitors to interact with. Images on your site allow you to replace whole paragraphs or sections of text and produce the same impact. Plus, they’re easier for visitors to share on social networks and blogs, and they will help your SEO efforts, as you’ll appear in more image search results.

One way to incorporate pictures onto your site, that will also help increase engagement and time-on-site, is by adding a slideshow or photo gallery. These allow users to scroll through and view an entire collection of photographs, drastically increasing the amount of time they spend engaged with them and helping you quickly and efficiently provide them with information about your brand, website, products and more. You can add image galleries to your website using publishing tools like SlideShowPro, SmoothGallery, Minishowcase or Zenphoto.

Videos

A recent Invodo study revealed that consumers watch videos 60 percent of the time, and these videos help 66 percent of consumers understand how products work. However, the biggest obstacle you may find in adding video to your site is coming up with the type of content you want to publish, which can include tutorials, product reviews or animations.

There are many tools for site owners looking to take the tutorial route. For example, you could create a screencast with a platform like Screenr to demonstrate how a new feature on your site works. Or, businesses who want help with the creative process could leverage a platform like Demoflick, which works with clients to develop concepts and build videos that can incorporate both music and sound.

Another great way to engage your site visitors is with product reviews; however, user-generated video product reviews are even more appealing. In fact, a Google study revealed that 4 in 10 shoppers visit a store online or in-person as a direct result of watching a video online, and many of those videos were consumer reviews on YouTube. You can add user-generated videos to your site by leveraging the services from companies like Bravo, Authntk or EXPO TV.

It might sound a little silly, but animation is a great way to attract attention. One way site owners can work this strategy into their website is with whiteboard animation from providers like Ydraw. This company helps businesses create unique whiteboard animation videos for everything from Internet marketing to tutorials.

Don’t Wait to Get Engaged

There are plenty of creative ways for you to publish content on your site that will entice visitors and keep them engaged for a long time. In addition to crafting your blog posts and other text content to attract more visitors, you can also leverage one of the many solutions that allow you to include multimedia content on your site, such as images or video. That being said, the most important thing is to keep up with your website analytics to determine which content (and content types) your users gravitate toward.

YouTube Now Offering Mobile Ads

Michael Garrity — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 18:30:00 GMT

A lot of people access YouTube and watch videos on their smartphones and tablet devices, and that number increases everyday.

In fact, according to the Google-owned video streaming site, 20 percent of all of its global traffic comes from mobile devices, a number that has tripled since 2011. However, content creators have never been able to make any money off of that traffic, which can quickly add up to mean huge missed revenue opportunities.

Today, the site announced (via Twitter, believe it or not) that it was finally going to start offering ads in videos that are viewed from mobile devices. Advertisements will be viewed as TrueView ads, which means that viewers can skip them after five seconds; these ad types are very successful on YouTube’s main website.

This move indicates that YouTube has been able to fix problems with its mobile API, and it now presents the opportunity for content creators to considerably increase the revenue they can receive from their videos.

ROCKZi Curation Platform Helps Content be Social

Michael Garrity — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 13:30:00 GMT

Content is the hottest commodity one can have online, and these days, its appeal goes beyond just SEO. Thanks to the massive expansion of social media, content now has far greater virality, and much of its value now comes from its ability to be shared on one of the Internet’s many social networks.

Noting the importance of content and the opportunities presented by the social Web, the “spam free” search engine company blekko is promoting ROCKZi, a visual platform for content curation that brings together a community of people to discuss and comment on timely, relevant news.

ROCKZi is one of the first major attempts to truly combine social and search, starting with the social side of things by establishing an independent, low-touch environment that utilizes search assets and lets users engage with the content they’re most interested in.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the social signals generated by ROCKZi users will translate into search signals that will help blekko identify the highest quality content for the curation of search results and fighting spam.

The platform features various “news boards” that feature popular topic categories, such as sports, politics, recipes, technology, and more. Each news board will provide up-to-date content from popular, quality sources in “an easily digestible format.”

Users are given the option of giving stories an “up” vote, sharing articles and comments with their friends, and collecting their own favorite content. They’re also able to contribute relevant content from anywhere on the Web using a browser bookmark. All of this adds a very distinct social element to the whole platform.

At launch time, the site featured 33 different news boards, but the plan is to continue adding more until there are thousands of them by the end of the year. Eventually, ROCKZi will also incorporate functionality that makes it possible for users to create their own customized news boards to share with their Facebook network, as well as the ROCKZi community.

6 Tips for Creating Moneymaking Content

Michael Garrity — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 20:00:00 GMT

At the end of the day, content drives the Internet. It’s an important aspect of any Web presence, but especially for affiliate marketers, who depend on their content to interest visitors, attract advertisers, and make money.

When an affiliate is just getting started with blogging, it can seem like they’re wandering aimlessly trying to find the best ways to create compelling content that will help them successfully lure in merchants and consumers alike. However, in the mad rush to just get anything out there, many affiliates are willingly sacrificing quality for quantity.

Fortunately, as the best and brightest affiliates out there will tell you, that doesn’t have to be the case. It’s entirely possible to publish engaging, insightful, and lasting content that will also help fatten your wallet.

Just keep these six simple tips in mind every time you sit down to start blogging:

Get to the Point

One of the biggest turn-offs for many Web users is clicking on a link only to be met with a giant wall of text. Unless they’re super interested in what you have to say, chances are they’re only going to skim your article, at best, or just leave the page immediately (in other words, “tl;dr”). It’s not that what you have to say isn’t worthwhile, but most Web readers prefer their content in bite-sized, easy to manage doses so they can just read it and be on their way. Say what you have to say and get out of there.

It’s also important to consider your headline, since most users won’t read any more than that. If you want to get eyes on your site, you have to write good, informative titles that will encourage users to click-through and see what it’s all about.

Relevance is Essential

This should go without saying, but readers (especially those looking for very niche-specific information) absolutely want you to publish content that is relevant to their needs and interests. Your posts should be actionable and deal with both common and more esoteric topics about whatever industry it is that you choose to cover. Give the people something that won’t be a waste of time.

Make it Timeless

Evergreen content, information that is always useful and never goes out of date, is a great way to keep users coming to your blog. Anything that will always be relevant to your industry makes for an excellent topic, as it can ensure consistent traffic for an extended period of time, both from first time visitors looking for the information and regulars using it as a refresher. Not all of your content needs to be as timeless as the theme song from Titanic, but the more you have on your site, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

Don’t Forget Your Ads

Since the goal of your blog is to make money, you’re going to need ads. And if you want to utilize those advertisements for profit, you have to make sure that what you’re writing about compliments what merchants are trying to sell on your site. Remember, at the end of the day, your job is to help convince your readers that these advertisers offer the solutions to their problems.

Be Creative with “Content”

Too often, bloggers fall into the trap of thinking of content in a bubble – a horribly boring text bubble. Don’t get me wrong; text content can be great, and offers a solid foundation upon which to establish your blog, but you shouldn’t stop there. Believe it or not, not everyone likes to read or has time to read or can spend all of their time at work reading your content instead of actually working. Thankfully, the solution is simple; just produce and publish other types of content that supplement your regular blog posts. Popular and practical choices could include videos or podcasts.

Outsource

Sometimes, you may be too busy to consistently sit down and churn out a high volume of good content. And sometimes, you may just have writer’s block (it happens – trust me). In these cases, it’s good to have contacts that allow you to find guests to write posts and produce content for your blog. The best part is, you literally have to do no work.

Connect Across All Digital Channels with Ektron

Michael Garrity — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 20:00:00 GMT

Web success in 2012 means far more than just having a good (or even great) website. With so many different avenues for consumers to connect with brands online, companies are all but required to optimize every one of their various Web properties.

Ektron, a provider of enterprise Web content management systems, has unveiled some major updates to the Ektron Web Content and Digital Experience Management Platform that adds a plethora of features to help businesses deliver their customers a relevant experience across all of their digital channels. It also launched two brand new supplementary products, the Ektron Digital Experience Hub and Ektron Cloud Manager.

The upgrade, Ektron 8.6, adds to the company’s flagship content and management platform and aims to improve the content creation and management experience for authors, developers, and designers.

Among the biggest enhancements to the platform are simplified content authored with support for an advanced HTML5-based editor, more support for mobile devices that includes an adaptive image resizing feature, intelligent content synchronization, greater support for URL redirects, and increased flexibility and performance with search thanks to integration with Microsoft’s Search Server and FAST products.

But, as previously noted, that’s not the only news out of the Ektron camp this week. The company also announced the immediate availability of the Digital Experience Hub (DXH), which provides comprehensive, personalized experiences for users across websites, mobile devices, and social networks by integrating customer relationship management (CRM), marketing automation, and analytics solutions with the traditional Ektron platform.

This product will help users increase business efficiencies with pre-built integrations into enterprise systems, automate form publishing, and unify customer experience management with marketing campaign optimization. It also offers support with Microsoft SharePoint to integrate existing content, workflow, and management capabilities.

Last, but not least, is the new Ektron Cloud Manager, which lets Ektron’s customers launch websites and marketing campaigns in the cloud. This product includes Wizard-based cloud provisioning that enables the authoring of site content with an on-premises environment for deployment into the cloud, hybrid deployment, the ability to deliver sites at an unlimited scale, and support for both Microsoft’s Windows Azure and Amazon Web Service’s EC2 cloud platforms.

All of these new offerings are meant to help companies provide a relevant content experience and meet the needs of potential customers regardless of where they come from. And when used in conjunction with one another, as they’re built to do, they become all the more beneficial.

DIRECT Delivery from Digital Content Platform

Michael Garrity — Fri, 25 May 2012 01:30:00 GMT

Content delivery solution developer Solid State Networks has made available its DIRECT 3 digital delivery application platform.

DIRECT 3 is a technology designed for app developers, content publishers and e-commerce providers to deliver digital products and services online. It was created with rapid development top-of-mind, and features a native client to incorporate the necessary functionality for most delivery applications. It also offers support for extensive customization using standard Web technologies such as JavaScript, HTML and CSS.

The platform supports various use cases for digital distribution to both consumers and enterprise users, and it has already been employed by some major names in digital content. Video game development company BioWare is already using DIRECT 3 for game deliver and updates, while Adobe has used the platform to deliver its Flash Player and Reader software programs. Other notable users include Hasbro and DigitalRiver.

DIRECT 3 includes native clients for Windows and Mac operating systems, publishing workflow tools and a reporting system. Additional capabilities required by digital delivery applications include versioning, differencing, updating, advanced proxy support, real-time delivery logistics, dynamic payload assembly and secure integration with a publisher’s back-end system or third-party service.

New services for DIRECT 3, as well as support for other operating systems, will be announced later this year.

Deliver Dynamic Content with Amazon CloudFront

Michael Garrity — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is helping businesses get more interactive by launching dynamic content support for Amazon CloudFront, giving customers a simple and cost-effective way to improve the performance, reliability and global reach of their sites and delivery of their content, including dynamic content that changes for every end-user.

AWS customers can accelerate all of the content on their websites, both dynamic and static, for a single price and no up-front fees.

The ability to deliver personalized, dynamic content through CloudFront saves businesses a lot of time and effort that used to go into improving the performance and reliability of the more dynamic aspects of their websites. Typically, this used to require custom codes that had to be written, and even then the solutions offered would be hard to configure and manage.

Now users can run all kinds of Web applications and accelerate their entire sites quickly through the AWS Management Console with no additional cost or architecture complexity. The experience even improves when dynamic content is delivered with origin servers running in EC2, as Amazon will monitor and streamline the network paths from each CloudFront edge location to the various AWS Regions, improving latency and reliability in the process.

Calling All Content Marketers: Curb the Sales Pitch

Michael Garrity — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

At the end of the day, no marketing effort in the world can make up for the need to provide good content that is meaningful and relevant to the users you are trying to attract to your brand. This sentiment is just as true for business-to-business marketers as it is for B2C promoters.

Recently, DemandGen Report conducted a survey with business executives tasked with finding and purchasing content solutions to determine their specific needs and preferences in an effort to give B2B organizations more detailed information to improve their content marketing strategies.

The survey, titled The Content Preferences Survey, found that 75 percent of respondents would like solution providers to create content that will curb sales messaging, meaning that these marketers should re-imagine their content strategies so that prospective buyers have a better understanding of their solution’s value. Over half of them agreed that these messages should focus on the actual objective-based value of a solution and less on product specs.

Although email is the most popular way to share content, 53 percent of executives also use LinkedIn for sharing purposes. The vast majority (88 percent) also said that they prefer white papers as the top choice for content-based research, with visual formats such as video (44 percent), infographics (38 percent) and webinars (72 percent) emerging as accepted alternatives.

And, of course, there’s the mobile trend. Forty percent of respondents said they now access content on mobile phones, with 23 percent using a tablet more frequently. This should signify to B2B marketers the importance of also providing mobile-optimized content whenever they can.

“Solution providers, now more than ever, need to demonstrate a clear understanding of their prospects’ challenges, market trends and objectives,” says DemandGen Report managing editor Amanda Batista.