Archive for the ‘Content Marketing’ Category
Reasons Why Link Building is Important for SEO
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
In the pre-Google days of the internet, search engines like Yahoo and Alta Vista were dominant players and their search results were 100% based on the content on a webpage.
Then came Google.
Google’s now-famous algorithm changed the game. Google looked at how many people linked to that page instead of simply analyzing the content of the page.
Almost 20 years later, links remain the best way to establish the quality of a webpage. Therefore, backlinks remain Google’s go-to ranking indicator.
Because of updates like Google Penguin, Google now focuses on link quality (not just link quantity).
If the page linking to you is a PageRank powerhouse, that link will have a BIG effect on your rankings.
That’s because links from authoritative pages pass more authority (also known as PageRank) to your site.
Now, let’s continue with the reasons why link building is important for SEO.
What is the importance of backlinks?
Link building is the system of building one-way hyperlinks (also called backlinks) to a website with the purpose of improving search engine visibility. Some common link-building strategies include content marketing, email outreach, building useful tools, broken link building, and public relations.
Content marketing played a substantial role in the development of backlink building. Webmasters started creating high-quality content that naturally drew links from other websites, instead of only focusing on acquiring backlinks.
Website owners could increase their chances of earning organic backlinks by producing informative, valuable, and shareable content.
This shift in strategy supported Google’s emphasis on user experience and the importance of providing important content to online audiences.
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
1. What is backlink building; Why it’s important for building authority
The process of getting links from other websites to your own is backlink building.
These links act as a vote of confidence, demonstrating to search engines that your website is authoritative and trustworthy.
Backlink building is essential for building authority. It drives organic traffic and helps improve your website’s visibility in search engine results.
2. How has backlink building evolved?
Backlink building is now more focused on quality rather than quantity. As search engines have become smarter at detecting spammy and low-quality links, it’s essential to focus on acquiring high-quality backlinks from reputable websites. And, the importance of relevance and context has increased, with search engines giving more weight to backlinks that come from websites in the same industry or niche.
3. What are some effective strategies for backlink building?
Important strategies for backlink building include influencer outreach, guest blogging, and creating valuable content that naturally invites backlinks. Guest blogging involves writing high-quality articles for other websites in exchange for a backlink to your site. Influencer outreach involves building relationships with influential people or brands in your industry and getting them to mention your website or link to it. Creating valuable content that naturally attracts backlinks involves producing engaging, informative, and shareable content that other websites will desire to link to.
4. Are there risks or pitfalls to avoid?
When building backlinks, there are risks and pitfalls to avoid. One common one to avoid is engaging in black hat SEO techniques, like buying or exchanging links. This can lead to penalties from search engines. It’s very important to avoid spammy link building practices, such as bulk directory submissions or comment spamming. You should focus on building natural and high-quality backlinks that add value to both your website and those websites linking to you.
5. How can I assess the quality of a potential backlink?
You can consider several factors to assess the quality of a backlink. You can first check the website’s domain authority and page authority using tools like Moz’s Domain Authority or Ahrefs’ Domain Rating. Look for websites with a higher domain authority as they are more likely to pass on effective link juice. And, consider the relevance of the website to your niche and the setting in which the link will be placed. A backlink from a highly reputable and relevant website will have a greater effect on your authority.
6. Is it better to have a few quality backlinks or lots of low-quality backlinks?
Now, it’s better to have a few high-quality backlinks than many low-quality backlinks. Search engines have become more high-tech in evaluating the quality of backlinks, and they prioritize authority and relevance. A few high-quality backlinks from reputable websites in your industry will have a more significant impact on your authority and search engine rankings than many low-quality backlinks.
7. Does it take long to see the results of backlink building?
The time can vary for seeing the results of backlink building. It depends on factors like the competitiveness of your industry, the quality of the backlinks you acquire, and the frequency of search engine crawls. Generally, it can take several weeks to months before you start seeing the impact of your backlink-building efforts. Patience and consistency are key when it comes to building authority through backlinks.
8. Can I remove or disavow bad backlinks?
You can remove or disavow bad backlinks. If you have acquired low-quality or spammy backlinks that could harm your website’s authority, it’s recommended to try removing them by contacting the website owners and requesting removal. If that fails, you can use the Google Disavow Tool to tell search engines to ignore those backlinks when evaluating your website’s authority. However, it’s important to exercise caution and only disavow links that are actually harmful.
9. Are there alternatives to backlink building for authority?
Although backlink building is a highly effective strategy for building authority, there are other methods you can consider. You can focus on creating high-quality content that attracts organic traffic and engagement. If you consistently produce valuable content and optimize it for search engines, you can build authority over time. Another way is to leverage social media platforms and engage with your audience to establish yourself as an authority in your industry.
10. Should you hire a professional for backlink building?
It can be beneficial to hire a professional for backlink building, especially if you are short on time, expertise, or resources to execute an effective backlink-building strategy. Professionals can help you identify high-quality backlink opportunities, navigate the complexities, and develop outreach strategies. However, you must choose a reputable and experienced professional or agency to ensure ethical and effective practices are followed.
Building backlinks is an ongoing process that requires a well-thought-out strategy, time, and effort.
Some important effective strategies for link building are:
1. Creating High-Quality Content
Creating high-quality content is the foundation of a successful backlink building strategy. You should focus on creating well-researched unique and valuable content that provides value to your target audience. When you do this, other websites are more likely to link to it.
2. Reaching out to influencers and industry experts
Ask influencers and industry experts in your niche to share your content or to collaborate on a project. When they link to your website, it can substantially boost your credibility and authority.
Building relationships and using personalized outreach emails with influencers can go a long way in acquiring valuable backlinks.
3. Guest Posting
Guest posting entails writing articles for other websites in your industry or niche. This lets you showcase your expertise and offer value to a new audience. Then, you can include a link back to your website within the guest post. Focus on high domain authority and relevance to your industry when choosing websites for guest posting.
Always remember that building backlinks takes patience and time. Focus on quality as opposed to quantity and always prioritize creating valuable content that people want to link to. Here, we’ve covered some of the reasons why link building is important for SEO.
7 of the Most Common Types of Content Marketing and Some Future Trends
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
With the surge of AI where everybody can publish generic blog posts, remember the foundation of high-quality content is sharing authentic, first-hand experiences.
In its latest search engine updates, Google says content should be helpful and come from human experience.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is the publishing of written and visual material online to attract more leads to your business. These materials can include e-books, infographics, blog posts, videos, web pages, and more.
It isn’t just publishing a shallow piece of content that offers little value. The focus is on making valuable content that your audience can discover themselves while browsing.
Content marketing is the planning, creating, distribution, sharing, and publishing of content through channels like social media, blogs, websites, podcasts, press releases, apps, print publications, and more. The goal of content marketing is to reach your target audience and increase brand awareness, engagement, sales, and loyalty.
Some of the most common types of content marketing are:
1. Online Content Marketing
Online content marketing is any material you publish online, but specifically, it applies to your web pages.
With a strong online content marketing strategy you’ll be able to rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs) and get in front of the right people at the right time and immediately engage visitors with specific content about your products or services.
2. Social Media Content Marketing
There are billions of social media users worldwide so it’s easy to see why many businesses invest in social media marketing.
There are several platforms to work with including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and Snapchat. Each one offers various ways to create and share content, like photos, pre-recorded videos, pre-recorded videos, live videos, and stories.
3. Infographic Content Marketing
Infographics display content, information, and data in an easy-to-understand graphic format that includes a mix of simple wording, short statements, and clear images. These are a great way to effectively communicate your content. They work well if you’re trying to simplify an educational or a complex topic so all audience members can understand it.
4. Blog Content Marketing
A blog is a great source of inbound content that allows you to be creative in your choice of topic and writing. You can use your blog to promote related content using links and social share buttons as well as incorporate product information.
5. Video Content Marketing
According to research, 91% of businesses video as a marketing tool.
You can use video marketing to help build a strong bond with your audience, boost conversions, and improve ROI. You can also choose to share your video content on landing pages, social media platforms, or on a co-marketer’s website.
6. Podcast Content Marketing
Experts predict that in the future over 71 million people will listen to podcasts. That’s 10 million more than the current listeners across the Spotify and Apple Podcast platforms. This is the reason many businesses and media outlets create and share their own podcasts.
Since podcasts can be about any topic, you have plenty of room for a lot of creativity.
You decide the pace of episodes, guests, where you advertise the podcast, and the length of each episode.
7. Paid Ad Content Marketing
You can reach a broad audience with paid ads and position yourself in all the places you want to be seen. Pairing paid ads and inbound marketing is especially beneficial.
Paid ads can be shared on landing pages, social media, banners, and in sponsored content.
What are some content marketing trends?
Google says content should be helpful and come from human experience. This is one of numerous ways to increase your traffic.
Here are some ways content marketing is moving forward and how to use them to your advantage.
1. Use of AI
The role of AI is to scale and improve, not to come up with the original insight that hasn’t been shared before.
AI writing tools base output on information already somewhere on the internet – other blogs.
For your content to work for you, it has to stand out. The best way to make that happen is by sharing expert insights. AI can’t give you unique, experience-based ideas.
Producing content requires much more than just pumping out text. For it to be valuable for readers, it needs a proper strategy, in-depth research, first-hand knowledge of the industry, and a person to put it all together in a way that’s relatable to readers.
It’s best to use AI to generate top-level outlines, like a skeleton to set a flexible foundation that can be modified later. Then using your expertise, you can elaborate on the details and add insights and depth that only a human can present.
2. First-Hand Experience
Prioritize sharing first-hand experience. The public loves other people’s stories. If you don’t have expertise in a particular area, you can interview people who do and base your article on their insights.
3. Source Content
One of the top-ranking factors for content marketing is backlinks, so publish “Be the Source” content to get more traffic, links, and shares from your content marketing.
4. Authority
Participate in establishing authority in your area of expertise.
Google prefers content created by knowledgeable and reputable people. Setting up yourself as an authority in your area of expertise improves the credibility of your content.
This is really important now when there’s a lot of AI-generated content on the internet.
You want your content to have a face and a story. This will boost your content’s relevance and trustworthiness in the eyes of users and in search engines. Search engines like Google must decide between high- and low-quality content.
5. Leverage
Use community contributions to boost the credibility and depth of your content by tapping into the collective expertise and experiences of a diverse group.
You can do this by:
a) Collaborating with industry experts in your field to create content and inviting them to share insights.
b) Organizing Q&A sessions with experts or influential people in your industry through live streams, webinars, or interviews.
c) Develop collaborative projects where several contributors can add their expertise. This could be a blog post, a webinar, a research paper, or an industry-related guide.
d) Leverage UGC (User-Generated Content). Urge your audience to contribute their ideas or experiences. This can be through comments, social media interactions, or guest posts.
Promote their work on your platforms as part of the collaboration.
Be sure to give proper credit when you use other people’s content, whether it’s from experts or UGC.
6. User-Generated Content
A bit more about UGC.
Users or customers create and share content about your brand or product which may include images, reviews, social media posts, or videos, which you can then use in your marketing endeavors.
Instead of using traditional search engines like Google for information, many young people turn to platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Especially when they’re looking for how-to guides or local restaurant recommendations.
There are two main benefits of using UGC:
They prioritize content that comes from other customers, such as unboxing, reviews, and lifestyle videos featuring your product and now that users are creating content for you, you get to:
1. Accelerate the content generation process
2. And you get authentic content that your audience can relate to
7. Repurpose Content
A great way to scale up your content marketing, without starting over each time you want to create a post for a new format, is repurposing your content on different platforms. Content repurposing is now a hot content marketing trend.
But, over the last few years, people’s standards for content have risen a lot. You can no longer just copy and paste a section a section from your blog post and publish it on social media nor can you just read an article into a microphone and call it quits.
But you can match the content to each format.
For example, repurposing a blog post for a YouTube video requires you to add elements at the beginning like a relatable story, use strategies that work well for the video, and rewrite portions to make sense in the new format.
Another example is reusing steps and tips, as you don’t have to repurpose a total piece of content. As an alternative, take the best sections from a current piece of content and reuse them elsewhere. Using this approach allows you to highlight specific, valuable parts of your content on platforms or in different formats.
8. Emerging Topics
Another way for your content to stand out is jumping on developing trends BEFORE they take off.
Use Google Trends to confirm that a keyword is growing or shrinking. And check out the “Related queries” section for your chosen topic.
First, check out a keyword you think might be trending up.
Then, go to the bottom of the page and check out the “Related queries” list.
Although Google-related queries are helpful, a check for exploding topics is better.
9. Improve Content Design
Improve your content design and user experience to suit Google’s algorithms for site speed, navigation ease, and user interaction when ranking websites. When your site loads fast, answers users’ queries, and is easy to navigate, people will stay on your site and interact with it, and they’re more likely to visit other pages of your site.
To improve UX (user experience), you need to:
a) Improving site speed
b) Being thoughtful about pop-up use
c) Design an easy-to-navigate page layout
d) Make call-to-actions and monetization contextually relevant
e) Link only to genuinely helpful content
f) Answer user intent early in your content and not hide important information at the bottom
10. Explainer Visuals
Custom explainer visuals like videos and graphics like screenshots and custom diagrams, are essential in explaining complex concepts.
Focus on creating content that is informative, engaging, and visually appealing.
Design graphics that visually represent data or explain steps needed to do something complex. Establish a YouTube presence. It’s a great place to distribute your content, and Google features YouTube videos on the first page of SERP.
Embedding YouTube videos in your article makes it more engaging and it’s an even greater way to distribute your YouTube videos. If you have a blog and a YouTube channel, embed your videos in your articles to help readers understand the topic even deeper and to increase your video views.
11. Distribute Your Content via Email
Continue distributing content by “personalized” email which involves providing value, encouraging interactions, and building trust. Email is still an important marketing trend.
12. Streamline Content Operations
Streamlined content operations refer to the structured and efficient management of content creation and distribution processes that include:
Setting clear content objectives
Having clear roles and responsibilities
Mapping your content creation process
Organizing tasks and projects
Incorporating effective tools for content planning, writing, and SEO optimization
Continuing to optimize and repurpose your content
Here you have 7 of the most common types of content marketing and future trends. Now you can put a strategy together and work on creating content that will offer real value to your audience and significantly increase your website traffic.
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Review: Beginner Blogger Mistakes (Part 2)
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
The last post was a review of Beginner Blogger Mistakes (Part 1). This covers the remaining mistakes to avoid which include tying specific posts to the larger picture, writing style, relying on the conceptual, plagiarism, etc.
You can read it here:
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Beginner Blogger Mistakes
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
When people actually try to blog, they find out that it’s not so easy. There are those who think bloggers just sit at home all day on the internet writing.
There are some common mistakes most beginners make that can be avoided.
Read More Here
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Artificial Intelligence for Your Small Business
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
Although AI (artificial intelligence) has been around since the 1950s, it has taken time to achieve significant progress. You may not be aware of it, but these days you interact with it daily. It has a wide range of uses. Different types of AI work in different ways. Please keep this in mind before you decide to benefit from AI.
What is AI?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a sector of computer science that involves creating smart machines that perform tasks using human intelligence. Advances in machine learning have made it possible for AI systems to affect almost every aspect of the tech industry.
AI enables a rational use of time resources. Computer systems can analyze information effectively. For example, AI software can proofread a document in less than a minute. AI helps people and businesses achieve strategic goals, gain actionable insights, make critical decisions, and develop innovative products and services. Every tech company can invest in AI-oriented technology, from autonomous vehicles to robotic border control robots.
How is AI used?
AI is used in many ways which include:
Bots for marketing purposes
Stock trading advising
Smart assistants like Siri and Alexa
Entertainment recommendations from top platforms such as Spotify and Netflix
Spam filters on email and other social media chats
Monitoring of social media resources
Forecast reports and disease mapping
Medical recommendations adjusted to personal needs and preferences
Joined-up manufacturing and distribution
More trends in AI will appear in the future. Advances in robotics and AI have made it possible to create delivery drones and driverless cars.
There are different devices that can recognize a human voice and a human language with almost 95% accuracy. Robotic transcribers can change spoken language into written words.
China has promoted the use of facial recognition and there is a great opportunity for artificial intelligence to be used in, accurately, recognizing personal emotions.
The healthcare industry has implemented artificial intelligence for various purposes. It’s being used to spot genetic sequences and identifying molecules. Medical facilities are using AI for virtual health assistants and chatbots to provide medical information, understand the billing routine, make appointments, and to complete other administrative tasks.
As a time saver, you can use artificial intelligence for your small business in the following ways:
1. Content and social media posts
ChatGPT
Writing content is one of the most time-consuming tasks there is. You can use ChatGPT to explain scientific concepts, draft emails, answer questions, translate languages, and write copy. The output quality is determined by your query’s quality and specificity. You MUST fact-check anything you have AI write, as it can be rather inventive.
Grammarly
Another free tool that uses AI is Grammarly to improve your writing. With it, you have a choice of plans and the free one offers vocabulary enhancement, and checks spelling, style, grammar, and plagiarism.
Notion AI
Notion AI is a mixture of ChatGPT and Grammarly in one place. You just start a new page, type a sentence, and then scan over it with your mouse. You’ll get an option to “ask AI” and clicking it will enhance your copy or respond to your requests.
2. Interactive customer service
Chatbots have been around since the 1960s and really became popular in the 1990s and are getting smarter each day. Customers can ask complicated questions regarding their accounts and get specifics; all due to artificial intelligence, which pulls data from previous conversations. Now, you don’t have to be limited to a certain number of phone lines to keep your business operating 24/7. You can have a chatbot answer questions using business VoIP services.
3. Banking
Chatbots are used, for customer service with banks, to answer inquiries regarding money transfers, credit score monitoring, loan applications, password resets, fraud prevention, and insurance claims at any time of day.
4. Generating invoices
You may not have employees yet or you’re a solopreneur or just starting a business. You can use programs like Quickbooks and Xero to automate and autocorrect invoices.
5. Human resource management
Small-business owners don’t have large budgets, so hiring someone for everything you don’t know how to do is not feasible. If you have employees, You can use HR management software like Zoho and Gusto which use AI to prep payroll, track time off, schedule shifts, and create workflows among other things.
6. Website builders
You can use AI to build website templates in moments. Based on your prompt, they can also apply themes to your site and include features like security, content writing, and live chat.
Although AI can be a wonderful tool, there are risks. It is not perfect. Artificial intelligence gets data from millions of sources and you should ALWAYS check the information. That data can be discredited research, include bias, and just might be fake.
Artificial intelligence systems are more vulnerable to hacking than other software and this can lead to a host of problems.
Before you decide to benefit from AI technology, remember different types work in different ways. Artificial intelligence technology can be strengthened by continuous machine learning.
Companies are continuously exploring ways to get the maximum benefits from AI. It has redefined how business processes are carried out in the fields of marketing, financial services, healthcare, etc.
These tips on artificial intelligence for your small business will help you get started in your business.
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Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
Many businesses, large and small, use social media as a vital component of their market mix. Globally, there are 4.9 billion people using social media platforms. So, having a presence on social is a good way to connect with both current and potential customers no matter your industry. Social media is a good way to reach your target audience, establish a loyal customer base, strengthen your brand, and increase your revenue.
This article details what you need to know about social media marketing including what it is, how it works, the best strategies, and how to implement it.
What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is a form of digital marketing that uses social media platforms to promote your offerings and brand to your ideal customers. It involves considerably more than random posts on your business accounts. A successful social media marketing campaign requires good strategy and planning.
After you create your business profiles, you have to maintain and optimize them. Then, develop a content calendar that shows what you’ll post and when and where you’ll post. These posts will probably include a combination of text, images, stories, and videos that position your brand in a positive light and capture a relevant audience.
These posts will be unique and regular and additionally, you’ll respond to likes and shares and comments to monitor your standing and hopefully create a community.
Your social media marketing strategy may also include paid ads to allow your brand to appear in front of certain groups of people at specific times.
What are the benefits of social media marketing?
Social media is a powerful tool for marketing your business, due to its versatility and popularity. Unlike traditional marketing like billboards, radio spots, and print ads, it’s very measurable.
Following are some of the most important benefits of a social media marketing strategy:
1. Adds a Human Touch to Your Business
2. Drives Traffic
3. Generates Leads
4. Increases Brand Awareness
5. Builds Relationships
Here is a brief description of the top 7 social media marketing platforms for business.
There are several social media marketing platforms you may want to use when developing your social media marketing strategy. As you consider your options, you’ll find that some platforms are better suited for your brand and target audience than others.
1. Facebook
This is the most popular social media platform. When using Facebook, you can boost brand awareness, generate leads and increase sales, and gain followers. You can also display highly customizable, targeted ads. Keep in mind that Facebook comes with a lot of competition.
2. Instagram
Over time Instagram evolved from a basic platform to share images into a place where brands can engage their audience with beautiful photos and videos. It also offers reels, stories, live streams, and shops that can take your marketing efforts to the next level. This is one platform you want to use if your business relies on visuals to sell products/services.
3. Twitter
On Twitter, you use very short posts called “tweets” with text, animated GIFs, videos, and links to connect with your audience using short but valuable messages. A tweet can usually be up to 280 characters. You might be able to, build brand awareness and look for topics and information relevant to your industry and target audience.
4. YouTube
If you want to include videos in your social media marketing strategy, YouTube is the way to go. It’s a streaming social media platform as well as the second-largest search engine next to Google. If you have the desire and ability to produce meaningful video content, YouTube should definitely be one of the choices for your social media marketing strategy. Using YouTube, you promote the unique features of your offerings, explain complex topics, showcase interesting processes, and much more.
5. Pinterest
This “visual discovery engine” inspires users who regularly search Pinterest for ideas that help them renovate their homes, plan weddings, take dream vacations, and fulfill other desires in their lives. If you provide products or services that can allow users to discover their dreams and achieve them, Pinterest is the way to go.
6. LinkedIn
If you are a B2B business, LinkedIn is a business networking platform that will be particularly useful. LinkedIn is geared toward professionals and allows you the opportunity to share your industry expertise. You can also use it to promote job openings within your company, connect to your employees and even generate leads through paid ads.
7. TikTok
TikTok, which revolves around short-form videos, is a newer social media platform that tends to target younger females. It may make sense if you’re trying to reach that particular demographic. As a business on TikTok, you can use hashtags that relate to your posts, brand, and offerings. When consumers search for these hashtags, they may come across your content.
What are the key components of a social media strategy?
A social media strategy is a plan that lays out your goals, the ways you’ll use to achieve them, and the metrics you’ll track to measure performance.
You might be tempted to post on a few social media platforms sporadically, but this is not recommended.
To really make the most of social media marketing strategy and increase your chances of success, you need a solid strategy.
The key components of an effective social media strategy include:
1. Audience Research
You should have a strong understanding of your target audience before posting anything. You can answer questions regarding what platforms they use, who else they follow, and what kind of content they prefer.
2. Brand Identity
Decide how you’d like to position your brand when you post on social media and interact with your followers. Think about the messages you hope to communicate.
3. Content Strategy
Content strategy relates to how you’ll use content to attract your audience and grow your brand on social media platforms. To be successful your plan needs to be specific.
4. Analytics
In order to measure performance and determine how to improve your strategy, you’ll use a process known as social media analytics where you collect and analyze data from your social media platforms. This allows you to determine whether or not what you’re doing is working.
5. Ongoing Activity
As with most types of marketing, social media marketing is not something you do one time and forget it. You’ll need to post on it regularly, be engaged with your followers, and optimize your profiles on a consistent basis.
Remember that in addition to your social media marketing strategy, you will also need a professional business website so that those who discover your business through social media can check out your website to learn more about what you offer.
If you don’t already have a website, consider this.
If you’re just starting a business you can use this information for setting up your social media marketing strategy. If you’re already well on your way, it can serve as a reminder to use social media marketing in addition to your other resources.
How to Write Great Blog Articles People Want to Read
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
If you publish a blog post or article and no one reads it, it’s still a post. Anyone can write one, although not everyone knows how to write great blog posts/articles people want to read.
Obviously, you first have to choose a topic.
How do you choose a topic?
If you’re familiar with a particular niche, you probably already have plenty of ideas you want to use. If not, then write about things people are searching for. If there are lots of searches, month after month on certain topics, that’s probably what people want to read about.
Here are some free tools for keyword research and SEO content optimization:
Moz.com
Google Keyword Planner
AHREFS
Semrush
Once you’ve chosen a topic, you need an angle or a viewpoint for your post or a direction. Choose an objective for your post/article.
That may be:
Sharing a solution to a tough problem
Refining an overwhelming topic into something understandable
Telling a suspenseful and emotional story that teaches a lesson
Identifying key trends on a topic, and using them to predict the future
Contributing original information about a field through your research and investigation
Now that you have a topic, select your format. Will it be a listicle or a how-to article?
1. A listicle format, also known as a list-post, are articles structured around lists. For example:
15 Blogging Tips For Beginners
10 Best Online Marketing Tools
10 Quick SEO Tips To Increase Organic Traffic
25 Tips For Content Marketing
50 Best Travel Tips: Advice From A Professional Traveler
2. A how-to article is self-explanatory, in that it shows how to perform a certain task. For example:
How To Start A Blog
How To Promote Your Business
How To Grow Your Business
How To Use Social Media To Grow Your Business
How To Write Great Blog Articles
Now that you have a topic and format, how do you write an article or a post that will rank on Google?
To write an article or a blog post that will rank on Google, you need to know about SEO (search engine optimization), the process of optimizing your site and content for search engines such as Google.
If your article or post is well optimized for a search engine, the higher you’ll rank on Google and it will have more visibility within the search results.
If SEO is well done, the ROI on your time and the money you’ve spent can be exceptionally high. When you’ve achieved a high rank for keywords that are directing traffic and sales to your site, you’re essentially getting “free” leads.
Of course, these organic leads are not totally free, since you’ve invested time and probably some money into your SEO efforts. But, unlike paid ads, organic traffic is a free source that keeps on giving.
Of the couple hundred plus Google ranking factors, there are three key areas you’ll need to familiarize yourself with:
On-page ranking factors—which relate to the content on your pages like keywords, title tags, and images that give Google a good understanding of your page.
Off-page ranking factors—that relate to indicators outside of your site like backlinks and social signals.
Technical ranking factors—which relate to your site’s performance such as accessibility, mobile compatibility, load speed, and more.
Now it’s time to write, but it’s really difficult to sit down and write from scratch – staring at a blank sheet of paper or a blank screen on your computer is daunting.
Since you’ve done research for keywords and decided on a topic, create an outline. With an outline, you just fill in the gaps. You don’t have to write an outline from scratch either. Use a template or make your own.
You’ll need to include:
1. The key takeaways for your readers
2. A smart headline
3. Arrange the major themes and section of the blog article outline
4. Insert relevant sources and any additional data and studies
5. Trim and clean up the outline
6. Write your article
Write a first draft using Google Docs or whatever program you prefer. Put down everything you think you’ll use pertaining to the article subject.
Now pick out a few key points as topics to discuss and use those for headings. Know that people like to skim before committing to reading an entire article. This gets you into formatting. Use each major key point as a heading for the different sections in the article. Be sure these headings are clear for easy skimming.
Break up the paragraphs into short paragraphs of no more than four sentences. You should vary the sentence length to make for easier reading.
Use bolding for emphasis, bullets, and numbered lists.
For complex points (or just for fun) you can add images, tables, charts, and infographics.
Be sure your article shows up well on mobile. Otherwise, your content – no matter how incredible – will not rank.
When you start writing you’ll need to come up with a great headline and introduction. So, state the problem you’ll write about, go into the details of solving it, then offer a solution.
Use the following points as a guideline.
1. Make your introduction catchy but authoritative.
2. The length of the article should be about 1,000 words minimum, depending on the subject matter. Content length varies by industry.
3. Sprinkle target keywords and similar ones throughout the article without going overboard and include important keywords early and frequently, of course, without overdoing them.
4. Use appropriate verbiage so as not to alienate your audience. Write in the first person and conversationally.
Links are very important because they keep viewers on your site and they build trust in Google’s eyes.
Some important ones are:
External links to amazing resources such as marketing tools
Internal links on your site – each blog article should include at least 2-3 links to other pages on your blog or main site
Make sure your anchor text actually links to something relevant. Don’t link the phrase “how to build a list” to an article about affiliate marketing.
In summary choosing your topic, angle, and format and putting effort into your content is a recipe for organic success.
Using this information on how to write great blog articles people want to read will enable you to get started writing great blog posts that people want to read.
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Artificial Intelligence in Digital Marketing
By Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
Going forward, marketers may face unique challenges that will change how we approach digital marketing.
The top content marketing strategies are still personalized marketing, extended use of multimedia, and exploring new digital channels.
What is AI?
We all basically know what AI is, as we see and use it daily. However, this is the definition from Wikipedia:
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by humans or by other animals. Example tasks in which this is done include speech recognition, computer vision, translation between (natural) languages, as well as other mappings of inputs.
We must reconsider the use of MI (marketing intelligence) and AI (artificial intelligence). MI typically focuses on interpreting worldwide consumer trends while market research focuses on customer preferences for a specific company.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are changing the way businesses operate and revolutionizing the approach to digital marketing.
By controlling these technologies, businesses can operate more efficiently. They can give their customers personalized experiences and automate tasks, thus freeing up time to focus on more strategic endeavors.
AI has the potential to help with lead qualification, customer engagement, and product demonstrations for sales. The use of AI-generated salespeople can help companies provide high-level customer service and save time and resources. However, it’s important to strike a balance between AI and human interaction, as there are still consumers who prefer the personal touch of a real human.
Smartphones now have privacy controls to prevent too much sharing of certain data on sites like Google and Facebook, so marketers now have less data to use for understanding customers and personalizing marketing efforts. We’re also moving toward a cookie-less future, as Google will phase out cookies by the end of 2024.
Do not ignore the use of artificial intelligence in digital marketing.
What can we do to stay relevant?
HERE ARE FOUR STRATEGIES TO EXCEL AT MARKETING
1. First-Party Data
As third-party data continues to be phased out, first-party data will probably be the most valuable source of information. Rely on your own resources to get customer data instead of purchasing information from outside companies. Respecting customers’ privacy will benefit you.
You can source first-party data from:
Social media interactions
Website visitor tracking
Digital forms and surveys
Customer service interactions
Marketing email and text message responses
2. Run Pay-Per-Click Ads
Run pay-per-click ads with first-party data. If customers visit your website and look at a particular item and leave, you can retarget ads on other sites to entice them back. This is, however, becoming harder to do since Apple’s privacy updates are making that more difficult, and cookie-less browsing is taking its toll.
Many marketers are turning to Facebook’s Custom Audiences or services like Google’s Customer Match. These use a custom audience list that businesses create with first-party data, then match the list to users on the ad platform. Now, an ad funnel can be created to deliver personalized ads to customers based on first-party data.
3. Email And Text Message Marketing
Focus on email and text message marketing. Two of the most valuable first-party data sources are email and text message marketing. You can target specific customers and segments through these marketing channels. You can divide your email list by location and send out location-specific promotions to customers. Consumers like personalized emails based on behaviors like purchasing history.
This gives you a way to track which customers open emails and text messages and how they respond to the content. Using this data, you can customize your marketing to current customers based on how they respond to certain promotions.
4. BRAND AMBASSADORS
Work with brand ambassadors and influencers. They promote businesses more personally than a pop-up ad on someone’s social media feed. Brand ambassadors are familiar and friendly faces offering product recommendations, and that boosts your brand’s authenticity.
Don’t put all your marketing budget into one or two strategies, which will put your business at risk. Instead, use a diversified approach. Your ads are still relevant. So, keep running them, even without cookies. But, also, invest in email marketing and text message marketing. To reach the most customers, use the most effective content marketing strategies together to fill the gaps where some strategies are weak or where you’re not reaching customers. By using diverse strategies in tandem, you reach the most customers and aren’t significantly impacted by changes.
This information on artificial intelligence in digital marketing will help with your marketing.
Affiliate Marketing Is More Than Just Posting Links
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
Affiliate marketing is a marketing strategy with partners promoting and selling other companies’ products for commissions. When customers click on an affiliate link they are taken directly to a brand’s product or service website. Ideally, this leads to a sale, signup, or just clicks. The partner earns a commission according to how many users are redirected to the brand via that affiliate link.
But, affiliate marketing is more than just posting links and it involves much more than just joining an affiliate marketing program, promoting a link, and hoping people buy what you’re advertising….
Read
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12 Steps to Starting a Successful Blog
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
You like most people, can spend months or years creating a blog that has no chance of succeeding, then you start another one that fails or a third and fourth.
You’re not dumb or lazy. You’re just choosing the wrong topic.
1. Choose the Right Topic
First, make a list of topics that interest you. They can be your hobbies, topics you think are highly profitable, or something random you saw in a magazine.
Now ask yourself these five questions:
1. Do any current blogs on this topic have a Facebook page with more than 10k fans?
2. Are there any blogs on this topic that have more than 50k followers on Twitter?
3. Are there any books on Amazon with more than 30 reviews on this topic?
4. When you look for words and phrases connected to this topic, are there any Google ads?
5. Do any words or phrases related to this topic have more than 100k searches in Google’s Keyword Planner tool?
By answering these questions, you’ll know if there’s an existing audience for your topic.
Don’t try to be too unique or clever by hunting for an audience that no one else is serving.
It’s counterintuitive, but the more competition you have in a blogging space, the easier it is for a new blogger to find success there.
2. Choose the Right Platform
Choose the right blogging platform
There are several free blogging platforms like Tumblr, Blogspot, Wix, or Squarespace. These are fine to test your ideas and content to be sure they’re workable before creating a full-fledged blog.
But when you’re ready to build an audience and make money online, a self-hosted WordPress blog is the way to go.
WordPress is open source and technically free, but you have to buy a hosting plan to install WordPress on your own web host and purchase a domain name.
If you’re serious about blogging, you need to set up your blog on a firm foundation.
3. Choose a Domain Name
When choosing a custom domain name for your blog, consider using these three strategies:
Name the audience. The simplest way is tocall out the audience in the domain name. (Examples: SmartShopper.com, FashionDesign.com, AFineParent.com)
Name the topic. (MakingJewelry.com, EasyCasseroles.com, PaleoHacks.com)
Name the benefit. (BeABetterWriter.com, BeABetterPainter.com, Woodworking.com)
Use these strategies to make a list of 10-20 domain names. Use a blog name generator tool like NameStation to get many ideas at once.
Once you’ve decided on a name, use Namecheap’s Beast Mode to check availability.
Give yourself a few days to a week to make a decision.
4. Get Web Hosting
You pay a small fee to keep your website online, handle all your visitors, provide customer support, back up your website, manage the security of your website, etc.
Although website hosting costs money, a good bit comes along with it.
It’s possible to get blog hosting and a registered domain from the same place, but it’s not recommended because if you ever decide to switch to a different web hosting company, the process can be complicated. You can save yourself future headaches by keeping your domain registrar and blog host separate.
You can do a Google search to compare and determine the best web hosting for your needs.
Once you have your web hosting set up, you need to use a registrar like NameCheap to register your domain.
5. Install WordPress
Now that your domain and web host are connected, it’s time to install WordPress. It’s not complicated.
These days most hosting providers offer one-click WordPress installation.
To log into your WordPress dashboard use your favorite browser and go to WordPress login URL by appending /wp-admin (or /admin or /login or /wp-login) to the end of your domain name.
Examples:
yourdomain.com/wp-admin
www.yourdomain.com/admin
yourdomain.com/login
www.yourdomain.com/wp-login
You’ll be taken to your WordPress login page.
Enter the username and password you created earlier.
Click Log In.
6. Choose a WordPress Theme to Design Your Blog
Don’t get bogged in details. Focus on making your site functional. You can always make changes later.
Content is the important thing to focus on.
Enter the username and password you created earlier.
Click Log In.
Your theme is the design of your website and dictates how your blog looks to the world.
If you want a free WordPress theme, choose Astra (https://wpastra.com/?bsf=2922&campaign=how-to-start-a-blog).
If you want a premium blog theme, choose Astra Pro which has an advanced page builder that lets you customize your design.
Choose the theme that best fits your needs and situation and download and install it.
First way: To install a free theme from WordPress.org:
Enter a theme name or a chosen feature (Example: “minimalist”) in the Search themes… field
Click the Install button
Second way: If you want to install a WordPress theme you downloaded from a third party, click the Upload Theme button and:
Click the Choose File button
Find the third-party theme you downloaded to your computer (Example: premium-theme.zip) and select it
Click the Install Now button
To activate a WordPress Theme
Immediately after installing your WordPress theme, you’ll be given the option to “Activate” or “Preview” it.
If you want to publish the theme immediately to your website, click the Activate button. If not
1. In the left-hand navigation pane, go to Appearance
2. Choose Themes
Then you’ll see every theme you’ve installed and the default “themes” that are automatically installed by WordPress. Find the theme you want to use and click the Activate button.
You’re done.
Now your new blog design is visible to the world but not yet ready.
You need to adjust its functionality by installing a few WordPress plugins.
7. Install WordPress Plugins
WordPress is filled with features, and plugins offer even more.
There are thousands of free and third-party plugins—virtually a plugin for everything. There are specific types or categories you need, but there’s no such thing as an essential plugin.
There are six types of plugins you need to install.
1. Performance Plugins
2. Security Plugins
3. Backup Plugins
4. SEO Plugins
5. Social Sharing Plugins
6. Email List Building Plugins
You need a good performance optimization plugin to “cache” your content so it loads faster. If your blog is slow, your readers will bounce and Google will rank you lower in search engine results.
For a performance plugin, WP Super Cache is simple, maintained by the company behind WordPress, Automattic, and it’s free.
You can easily protect your site with the security plugin iThemes Security which has a one-click setup wizard. The cost is free, and there’s also a pro version with extra features.
UpdraftPlus strikes a good balance between features, flexibility, and ease of use. It has a 4.8 out of 5.0 rating on the WordPress plugin repository, and it’s actively updated by its developers.
There’s a free and a $70 pro version.
For SEO Yoast SEO is the gold standard of WordPress SEO plugins. It has both free and premium versions. The free version offers everything you need.
Social Warfare doesn’t slow down your website and offers unique features like “Click to Tweet” boxes and Pinterest-specific images and infographics.
The free version has all the basics you’ll need, and the pro version is only $29 annually.
Use Convert Pro to turn blog traffic into leads so you can continue to engage with them.
You can get it for free or pay $99 annually or $399 for a lifetime license.
To activate a WordPress plugin you can click the Activate button that appears immediately after you install it or:
1. In the left-hand navigation pane, go to Plugins
2. Choose Installed Plugins
3. Find your plugin and click Activate
8. Blog Set up and SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
If you want to start a blog that brings in traffic or if you want to drive your content to page one of Google, you have to learn SEO.
To guarantee search engines like Google and Bing can find your blog, make sure the following are unchecked:
1. In the left-hand navigation pane of your WordPress dashboard, hover over Settings
2. Click Reading
3. Confirm “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is unchecked
Create an XML Sitemap (and Submit Your Sitemap to Search Engines)
“A sitemap is a file where you provide information about the pages, videos, and other files on your site, and the relationships between them. Search engines like Google read this file to crawl your site more efficiently. A sitemap tells search engines which pages and files you think are important in your site, and also provides valuable information about these files. For example, when the page was last updated and any alternate language versions of the page.”
A sitemap helps confirm Google can discover the new content you create, when your blog is new and has few external links pointing to it.
To create an XML Sitemap using the Yoast SEO plugin recommended earlier:
1. In the left-hand navigation pane of your WordPress dashboard, hover over SEO
2. Click General
3. Click the Features tab
4. Scroll down to the XML sitemaps option and make sure the switch is toggled to On
Now you have an XML sitemap for your blog. Next give it to Google, Bing, and other search engines.
Before leaving the Yoast SEO plugin, copy the URL of your sitemap:
1. Click the question mark icon next to XML sitemaps
2. Click the See the XML sitemap link
Your sitemap will open in a new tab in your browser.
Copy the URL in the address bar and save it.
The steps for submitting your sitemap are different from search engine to search engine.
Here are the most popular ones:
To submit your sitemap to Google Search Console
1. Go to Google Search Console and sign in using your Google account
2. In the left-hand pane, select your website
If you haven’t added your website to Google Search Console, you’ll need to click “Add property” and follow the steps provided before continuing below.
3. Under Index, click the Sitemaps option
4. In the Add a new sitemap section, enter the URL you saved earlier and click Submit
Bing Webmaster Tools
1. Log into Bing Webmaster Tools. Create an account if you haven’t done so.
2. Under the My Sites section, click your website
If you haven’t added your website to Bing Webmaster Tools, enter your blog’s URL in the Add a Site section and click the ADD button.
That’s it.
You’ve submitted your sitemap successfully to Google and Bing.
Permalinks structure
WordPress sets the links on your blog to the following format by default:
yourdomain.com/?p=123
No one knows why, but you need to update this link structure before you publish ANY content.
Here’s how:
1. In the left-hand navigation pane, hover over Settings
2. Click Permalinks
3. Under Common Settings, set the option to Post name
Install an SSL Certificate so Your URL Begins with https Instead of http. Here’s why:
Readers will know your website is safe
Your website will be safe thanks to the encryption of readers’ sensitive data and personal info
Google sees it as a ranking signal, which means not having an SSL certificate will hurt your content’s rankings in search results.
How to Install an SSL Certificate
Log into your account
Click the Go to cPanel button
In the Security section, click Let’s Encrypt
Select your domain name, choose the Let’s Encrypt SSL option, and click the Install button
A few moments later, your SSL certificate will be up and running!
9. Your First Blog Post
To start your blog post in WordPress
1. In the left-hand pane of your WordPress dashboard, hover over Posts
2. Click Add New
You’ll be able to add a post title— aka headline, write your post, choose your category, tweak HTML and CSS, add free stock photos, etc.
The steps are alike for adding a new blog page in WordPress, an About page, a Contact page, etc.:
1. In the left-hand pane of your dashboard, go to Pages
2. Click Add New
For detailed instructions on how to navigate the classic content editor, WordPress offers a detailed support article.
10. Boost Traffic, Promote Blog, and Master Social Media
You should spend as much time promoting your posts as you do writing them. Preferably, you’ll spend more time promoting than writing them.
Here are 4 Tips for promoting your posts
1. Focus on one Social Platform, as There are too Many out There.
For now, pick only one. As there are only so many hours in a day.
2. Avoid These Traffic Mistakes That are a Waste for Beginners.
a. Commenting on Popular Blogs
b. Submitting Your Site to Directories
c. Trying to go Viral on Redditt, Hacker News, etc.
d. Paying for a Unique Design
3. Reach out to Influencers to Make Powerful Friends.
4. Pay for Facebook Ads
Wait until you have a solid foundation in place like reaching 1,000 email subscribers and you have traffic rolling in. Then consider supercharging your efforts by learning the ins and outs of Facebook’s ad network.
11. Build Your List
Get started now with building your email list. Start building it on day one!
Whether you’re just starting out or you’re an email marketing pro, there are numerous email marketing services available to meet your needs. You can go to Google and check and compare services and pricing.
12. Make Money
When you’re just starting out, whatever you do, DO NOT cover your blog in Google Adsense, because:
1. Blog ads pay peanuts
2. They distract your readers
3. They make your blog look sleazy and cheap
The best monetization method for bloggers is to build an audience that trusts them and then offer high-quality products or services that will genuinely help that audience.
Affiliate Marketing helps with this process by:
letting you introduce your readers to a product or service from a trusted source
Your readers looking at the product/or service, deciding if it will help them, and purchasing it
You earning a commission on the sales
With affiliate marketing you win in multiple ways. You help your audience, you earn money, and — most importantly — you learn what types of products and services your audience buys.
This article covers a lot but it’s only a beginning. Besides these twelve steps to starting a successful blog, there’s so much more you’ll learn as you go along.