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The Big Switch: Transferring to a New Department at Search Influence

Transferring to a different department at a job is not uncommon and, for many, it is seen as an excellent career opportunity. Making a choice to work on another team provides an employee with new training, skill sets, responsibilities, and can help give a broader understanding of a company as a whole. In fact, research has shown that this type of career development can help employers retain their most productive employees given their broad knowledge and understanding of the company.

Influencers Expanding Their Horizons in the Workplace

Here at Search Influence, several employees—including myself—have made the switch when the opportunity arose. Check out these employees’ department moves to see what it’s been like for them to get used to a new team, environment, and job responsibilities.

Jared Jones

Former Position: Senior Internet Marketing Associate (Technical) – 1 year-7 months

Job Responsibilities: My job responsibilities weren’t necessarily confined to a rigid container but instead a malleable collection of duties in relation to helping to improve a client’s search visibility from managing their directory presence, implementing blogs, writing image optimizations, completing competitive research, completing comprehensive site audits, scheduling social media posts, and much more.

Current Position: Web Developer – 4 months

Job Responsibilities: Implementation and styling of various types of content directly on a client’s site.

What do you like about your current department?

Though the description sounds more focused, there is actually still a very wide variety of work due to the difference in CMSs, client-requested content, and the increased technical aspects required to perform day to day job duties. There’s also a nice feeling of instant gratification when you see some nice changes go live (correctly) on your first try.

What has been a new challenge of the department switch?

The most challenging thing about being a web developer is that there is a lot less rigidity in the daily work flow. There are some tasks that may seem relatively straightforward, but there can always be multiple solutions based on a wide array of existing (and even non-existing) conditions of client’s site.

Rosie Nolan

Former Position: Editorial Internet Marketing Associate – 6 months

Job Responsibilities: Writing, editing, and optimizing web content for clients ranging from social media posts to press releases, ad copy, and blogs.

Current Position: Digital Advertising Coordinator – 4 months

Job Responsibilities: Writing and implementing ad copy for Google paid search clients, monitoring and adjusting paid search client budgets, performing ad campaign research to deliver ads to achieve qualified leads, and promoting Facebook advertising.

What do you like about your current department?

I enjoy that this position allows for a lot of client-facing tasks, which really helps me to see the product of my work in a tangible way.

What has been a new challenge of the department switch?

There are a lot more numbers involved here, which was a little difficult to get used to at first!

Ariel Kizer

Former Position: Editorial Internet Marketing Associate – 5 months

Job Responsibilities: Writing and editing content for clients including blogs, articles, social media post, website content, BuzzFeed articles, press releases, and ad copy.

Current Position: Sales Executive – 4 months

Job Responsibilities: Reaching out to a variety of inbound and outbound leads to promote and sell Search Influence’s services through phone calls, presentations, and proposals.

What do you like about your current department?

The sales department is very supportive of one another and is always willing to give constructive feedback, tips, and kudos.

What has been a new challenge of the department switch?

Switching from a non-client facing position to a client facing position has been a new challenge. Learning how to discuss digital marketing without using internal jargon has given me a deeper understanding of our services as well as how we can help potential clients grow their business.

Cory Agular

Former Position: Editorial Internet Marketing Associate – 6 months

Job Responsibilities: Responsible for editing and writing website content, social media posts, press releases, blog posts, business descriptions, amongst other things.

Current Position: Technical Internet Marketing Associate – 1 year-11 months

Job Responsibilities: Managing, editing, optimizing Google My Business, overseeing AWR, and managing Sendible. Schedule blog posts and social media posts. Also, performing SEO audits on client’s site as well as a plethora of backlink analysis, acquisition, and clean up.

What do you like about your current department?

It has given me the opportunity to learn more technical aspects of site design and how all of the processes we do interact with search engines. I’ve also learned a lot about social media management and strategies that are effective for our clients.

What has been a new challenge of the department switch?

Getting up to speed with all the new work processes was basically like starting all over, and although it felt like it took awhile, it was definitely the right move for me.

Making a Long-Term Impact

It’s evident that making a career move such as a department change can be both challenging and rewarding. Employees making this switch can guarantee that they’ll be able to add new skills to their professional toolbox. Transferring to a different job within a company is seen as a motivator for development and makes a lasting impression on a company.

Interested in joining the Search Influence team? We’re always looking for driven professionals! Check out our careers page.

August 3, 2017
Success Story: ALCC American Language
Learn how we helped ALCC American Language new inquiries while delivering higher site traffic and more frequent engagement on social media.

The Situation

The client is a language school located in New York City whose mission is to help international and local students learn English in a supportive atmosphere. The client’s goal was to increase the number of enrolled students and increase their number of fans on Facebook.

The Approach

Our strategy included a mix of campaigns that would ultimately increase the volume of leads via forms, calls, and social media engagement by making the client more visible and accessible online.

We did this using the following campaigns:
- Demographically and behaviorally targeted Facebook Advertising
- Google Paid Search advertising
- Search engine optimization including website improvements and authority building
The Outcome

Paid Search:

When analyzing their paid ads campaign, even 2 years after initial launch, ALCC American Language saw continued growth in new student inquiries and conversion rate. During 2016, they averaged 279 new inquiries per month (179 calls and 100 website contact form submissions). Testing and tuning the campaign resulted in a conversion rate of 6.69%, which is an increase from the start of their campaign in 2013 at 2%. Additionally, in 2016 the paid ads averaged 55,250 impressions and 4,160 clicks per month.

Facebook:

Looking year over year from 2015 to 2016, the client saw a significant rise in Facebook engagement. Their fans increased from 10,000 to 18,000 fans and the engagement, which includes reactions, comments, and shares, increased from 34,000 to 42,000.

Search Engine Optimization:

Through methods such as monthly blogging, press releases, user experience improvements, authority building, and helpful website content, the client gained increased Google rankings for top key search terms and overall website traffic. At the start of ALCC American Language’s campaign, they weren’t ranking for industry relevant keywords and common search terms. As of this year, they are ranking in the top 5 positions of Google for the majority of their important keywords. Additionally, they saw a 57% increase in their goal conversion rate from their total website traffic and a 38% increase in web page visits per session from their organic website traffic when comparing 2015-2015 to 2016-2017.

By using a comprehensive, custom strategy, we were able to help ALCC American Language bring in more prospective students so that they can continue to do what they do best—help those striving to learn English. Interested in learning how we can help improve your online presence? Reach out to us at any time.
August 2, 2017
Join Us in Welcoming Our Newest Team Member!

SI is happy to have new team member Shelby Emens in the office, adding a bright new face to our endless summer of Influencers.

Shelby Emens (Junior Web Developer)

Recently relocated from rural Michigan, Shelby completed her Bachelor of Science in Technical Writing from Grand Valley State University. She is excited to join the Search Influence team and is looking forward to not dealing with snow during the winter! Outside of work, Shelby enjoys spending her free time reading, playing video games, and spending time with friends.

Welcome to the team, Shelby!

July 31, 2017
Google Attribution Allows Clear, Seamless Campaign Analysis for Marketers

How do you know which of your interactions with a customer mattered the most? How do you measure an organic search that someone performed for a product on one device compared to an ad clicked right before the point of purchase on another? Well, Google set out to solve some of these and other problems that marketers face daily with their newest rollout from their Marketing Next event—Google Attribution. Now, marketers can finally begin to answer the age-old question that is typically at the forefront of their minds—is my marketing working?

How Google Attribution Streamlines Data

Google Attribution uses machine learning and data to help marketers measure the impact of each of their marketing touch points, across multiple channels, and across multiple devices. It uses data that’s already there from Adwords and Google Analytics; it just takes that data and shows you how each customer moved through their buyer’s journey and attributes those conversions respectively. It provides a single view of the path to purchase to help marketers learn what is actually working compared to what seems to be working.

“The aim of Google Attribution is to simplify the complex problem of multichannel, multi-device attribution by leveraging data advertisers already have in Google Analytics, AdWords, or DoubleClick Search,” said Kishore Kanakamedela, director of product management at Google.

To give an example of how a richer lens of an entire campaign was able to better benefit a business, Virgin Holidays utilized store sales measurement to look at store sales after users clicked on a search ad:

“Virgin Holidays discovered that when it factors in store sales, its search campaigns generate double the profit compared to looking at online KPIs alone. A customer purchasing in-store after clicking on a search ad is also three times more profitable than an online conversion.”

Google already rolled out a store visits measurement in 2014. They’ll be rolling out store sales measurements as yet another touch point that marketers can analyze through Google Attribution.

And possibly the best part? Attribution is free for anyone to use. It’s in its beta version right now and will be more readily available this fall.

A Shift Away From Last Click

Until now, many marketers were left to use last-click attribution to measure the value of their efforts. With last click, the reward for the conversion often went to the last touch point that the user made, often with a sale after a click on an ad. This could lead to false impressions about the effectiveness of an ad campaign versus display ads, organic search, social, email affiliates, and many other interactions that a customer made with a business along the buyer’s journey. Maybe organic search is actually more important display ads or vice versa.

With Attribution, users can see how effective each step of a campaign is instead of just pointing to the last click of an ad before purchase. There are so many micro-moments that happen on the path to purchase. Now, marketers can have a more accurate view of business, and in turn, can then update bids or move budgets between channels based on such results.

This move to a more holistic view of a campaign makes sense. Video ads, banner ads, carousel ads, emails, social campaigns, and all other types of digital materials work together to drive solid leads to become conversions, so why would it make sense for only the final ad to get all of the credit and influence a business’ campaign and budgeting decisions?

There is already a slew of companies that have seen the benefit of implementing the data-driven results of Attribution. Check out the success stories that Google has touted so far.

Eliminating Waste and Annoyance With Unique Reach

Most people use multiple devices to access their multimedia channels, whether that be a phone, a tablet, a smart TV, or a computer. For example, let’s say you’re shopping for a new laptop. You may first see a search ad when searching on your phone and then find a display ad while on your tablet. Then, you’ll come across a shopping ad by the time you decide to purchase the laptop on your current computer that needs replacing. According to Bill Kee, Google’s Group Product Manager for Attribution presenting at Marketing Next, “30% of people use 5 or more devices today. If you reach each of those devices three times, you’ll reach that person 15 times.” It’s safe to say that’s a bit of an overkill.

With Unique Reach reporting in AdWords and DoubleClick, marketers will be able to measure how many people were shown display and video ads. It will show unique users and their average impressions. This helps marketers better understand how many people they reached in their target audience and how many times they reached them. This will allow businesses to find any wasted budget in over-saturated placements and, more importantly, better please their potential customers by not wasting their time with endless ads.

People are expecting a simple, frictionless user experience on their path to purchase. Unique Reach is, well, unique in that it puts the customer right at the heart of the journey. Unique Reach is available in AdWords now and will be available in DoubleClick in the coming months.

The Customer Is the New Channel

Instead of the mindset of measuring your reports within online or offline channels, Google has highlighted the importance of recognizing the customer or user as the new channel. The line between being online and offline has disappeared.

Consumer expectations are higher than ever. So, the best way to meet those expectations is to try our best to understand consumers’ intent. Google also shared their Surveys 360 product connected to AdWords and Google Optimize. It helps marketers deliver more relevant ads with targeted surveys that seek to understand a customer’s intent along with their buyer’s journey.

Marketers are already working hard to develop a strategy that brings conversions for their potential and current clients; Google Attribution helps them work smarter with data. By using their machine learning to put context into the consumer journeys, this new tool should help marketers create a simple, more streamlined campaign that their users will love and respond to. To quote Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President of Ads and Commerce at Google and opening speaker at the Marketing Next event: “To really assist people, we need to become smart in how we use data to assist them.”

Interested in learning how we can better market your business? Reach out to us at any time.

Image Sources:

Google Marketing Next

Woman Checking Her Phone At Sunset

July 28, 2017
Facebook Ads vs. Boosted Posts: Here are 4 Reasons to Always Choose Facebook Ads

The world is filled with many ways to advertise a product or service. Simply hoping that your message makes its way to the perfect target audience is never the best practice to ensure your advertising efforts are successful and profitable for your business. With the increase of paid digital advertising on many online platforms, it is becoming more difficult than ever to reach potential customers the old fashioned organic way. As more content continues to flood these platforms, knowing how to utilize their advertising tools is more important than ever before. Facebook is continuing to reinvent the way the world does advertising. With the platform being a rich and unique source of users’ personal interests and behaviors, combined with the ability to present advertising information in compelling and creative ways, using Facebook to advertise your business is becoming a no brainer for both newbies and advertising professionals alike.

With that being said, busy business owners might ask themselves, “Why should I spend the time to create Facebook ads with Facebook Ads Manager when there are simple tools like Boosted Posts that do the same exact thing?” The ease and simplicity of boosting an already posted Facebook post cannot be denied. With the click of a button and for as low as $5, your post can reach more people, potentially resulting in more engagement, increased traffic, and even better sales. Sounds great, doesn’t it? The major problem that many business owners come across with boosting posts is simply wasting money due to a lack of strategy tied to a specific business goal. Using Facebook ads can come with a bit of a learning curve. It is not as quick and simple and can’t be done directly for your page. Facebook ads can, however, bring some distinct advantages to the table that you can’t get with boosted posts. These advantages can help you grow your business by not only helping you to narrow in on your ideal customer, but also by presenting your business in a way that truly personalizes the experience and connects with these individuals.

Here are 4 reasons to always choose Facebook ads over boosted posts for your advertising efforts:

1. Facebook ads provide in-depth targeting options that go beyond just interest-based targeting used by boosting a post.

Unlike Facebook ads, boosted posts are extremely limited in who you can actually target. There are only three targeting options: people who have already liked your page, friends of people who have liked your page, and people who you choose through a few basic targeting options. Though the first two options can provide some value to your business, just because someone likes your page doesn’t necessarily mean they are your ideal customer. Likewise, though there are a few targeting options with boosted posts, you cannot target behaviors or utilize detailed targeting, which means, for example, you can’t target someone who is a college grad AND an active credit card user. Instead, you can target users by their location, age and gender, and interests.

Example of detailed targeting.

Though Facebook Ads Manager can be daunting at times, it is certainly one of the best tools on the market to get in front of the perfect audience for your business. If you have a good understanding of your customers, what they are interested in, and how they behave, Facebook has the big data analytic capabilities to back your knowledge. Understanding how to use these targeting capabilities to your advantage can provide long-lasting value to your business.

2. Facebook Ads Manager allows you to schedule ads during times that matter most to your business.

When using boosted posts, the advertiser has very little control, if any, over how and when a post is delivered. A boosted post can only run between one to seven days, limiting your ability to show ads during the time your ideal customer is on Facebook as well as during hours of the day that might be most important to you and your business, i.e. when your store is open or for the duration of a special event. Using Facebook ads allows you to pinpoint exactly when you want your ad to run. This can help to save your advertising dollars for when you need them most!

Example of ad scheduling.

3. Take advantage of unique call to action buttons that tell your users exactly what action to take!

Boosted posts are optimized for engagement, or likes and shares. If you are trying to entice a potential customer to click on your post’s call to action, this is not going to be the best way to do that. With Facebook ads, businesses have more of an opportunity to increase sales and traffic to their websites by using call to action buttons. These buttons help your audience understand the action you want them to take after seeing your ad. Including these in your ads urges users to move away from the ad and onto your site, giving them more of a chance to shop, sign up for an account or email list, or learn more about your product or service.

Example ad using the ‘Book Now’ call to action button.

4. Unique creative and placement options.

Boosted posts come with only a few creative and placement options within Facebook. These ads can typically be spotted within your target audience’s News Feed. With Facebook ads, on the other hand, ads can be seen using Instagram and on the right-hand side of the Facebook platform. Facebook ads also come equipped with a number of creative possibilities, including multiple image ads, video ads, and slideshow ads. These can be used to entice and excite your target audience, making for a more enjoyable experience when discovering information about your business.

Ultimately, Facebook Ads Manager is the perfect tool for all advertisers to get in front of their ideal customer using in-depth targeting and advanced delivery options alongside unique creatives. Though boosting posts might always be a simple and easy tool for advertisers with less experience, using Facebook ads is certainly the way to go to grow your customer reach in a creative and personalized way.

Need help using Facebook Ads to impact your business? Search Influence is equipped with the expertise and experience needed to help you grow! Contact us today.

July 26, 2017
Why Do Digital Agencies Have Setup Fees for Online Ads?

We often get the question from prospective clients of why we have setup costs for our online advertising programs. They ask this question because some of the companies that they speak with either don’t seem to have setup costs or don’t communicate a setup cost as such. Even those who say they don’t have setup fees have some costs associated with building campaigns, but the extent to which they are or are not thinking strategically on behalf of their customers is a big factor in whether or not they will indeed charge for it.

How Can a Media Company Not Charge a Setup Fee?

Often, media companies choose not to charge setup costs. Sometimes this is because they use a third party that automates the process for them, eliminating some of the complexity and control of digital media buying.

In other cases, a media company (TV, Radio, Newspaper or Cable outlet) may choose not to charge a setup cost because the difference between what they’re spending on advertising and what you’re paying is sufficient—they know they will make up whatever their actual costs are in a very short period. In other words, they may be keeping excessively high margins for what is, in essence, a commodity.

The challenges of these perspectives are not very different

In short, the advertiser—the merchant, the customer, the office—who is buying advertising services or other digital offerings doesn’t realize that in order to have those setup costs, the actual money spent on advertising has to, by definition, be lower. And, if the amount spent on advertising is lower, unless there are significant efficiencies in automation—which there seldom are—one will have a less effective advertising program.

So, there really is no such thing as a “free lunch”

When deciding how to advertise online, the most important thing to consider is whether or not your ads are going to be seen by your targeted prospects. With less money to spend on advertising, you have a choice of either targeting less precisely or displaying fewer ad impressions over time. With those two options, it’s easy to see how your campaign is less effective when a greater amount of the dollars are going to fat margins rather than the management of the campaign.

Automation can be good

In fact, we use automation to assure we don’t overspend and to do some interesting things like changing ads in the case of weather changes and special circumstances. But, there’s a dark side as well. For all the good automation does, it can also lead to irrelevant traffic, i.e. people who will never become customers but are still targeted by the automated ad buys. And, if not managed well, automation can lead to overspending the budget.

To allow automation to work efficiently, the companies that use automated platforms for management of online advertising must, in the main, set and forget the campaigns. They are hopeful they will be able to deliver results through automation, not through active management.

How Is Search Influence Different?

We typically don’t think of ourselves as competition to traditional media companies who’ve decided to launch a digital agency arm. When we think of competitors, it’s typically the traditional agencies— traditional marketing agencies and pure-play digital marketing agencies. The reason that we identify these as the potential competitors is that within their advertising programs, there’s typically a focus placed on strategy.

Strategy requires people. Digital and traditional agencies have grown over time based on the expertise of their team members. They are therefore able to deliver strategic plans rather than just automated processes. We have the people in place to deliver. Every one of our online advertising team members goes through a rigorous training process and must be certified in multiple areas of expertise before they get to own campaigns.

As traditional media companies have come to realize that people are buying much less television, radio, newspaper, and Yellow Pages advertising, they need a replacement product. They have seen the value of digital advertising as an item of sale. As an item of sale, it’s not something in which they have invested significant strategic knowledge and development. The agencies with whom Search Influence competes have invested in at least some strategic development in their teams, whether it be through continuing education, certification, or years of experience.

We are always looking for ways to optimize the potential of our clients and our team members, and that’s why we review automation systems with some frequency. We have yet to find one that delivers the results we can achieve with our human intervention. Of those we’ve tested, they may hit target budgets and costs per click (CPC), but they don’t deliver the same results. Again, what we’re after is not just traffic, not just customers, but the right traffic and the right customers. That said, we’ll always keep looking and exploring.

As such, while we often find ourselves selling against traditional media “agencies,” we do not think that, when it comes to digital, they represent real competition or the value we know we can deliver.

How Search Influence Helps Digital Advertising Clients

Our core purpose at Search Influence is to Optimize Potential.

So before anything, we engage in a thorough review of your existing assets, both digital and traditional analog media. We also engage in an equally comprehensive business review to assure we understand your goals for your possible future campaigns. This way, we can strategically map all of the relevant information to an effective digital campaign to deliver the best results.

When thinking about what goes into the business decisions around advertising, we know that it’s much more than clicks or even calls. It’s about the right click and the right call at the right time. The goal is to deliver that refined prospect to your business with the expectation that they will move from prospect to customer. Before we spend one dollar on Google or Facebook, we will have investigated all of the facets of your needs and how they might impact our execution of your campaign.

Why You Should Care How About How We Get It Done

You may think to yourself, “It doesn’t really matter how it gets done, as long as I get more traffic to my website, more calls, and more inquiries coming through.” The unfortunate truth is this: the wrong kind of contacts can cost you time and money.

As the Pareto Principle implies, 20% of the prospects who might get in touch with you are going to be responsible for 80% of the business you will ultimately do.

If you could tailor your marketing and advertising so that you only spoke to the 20% of customers who were going to drive the greatest value to your business, wouldn’t you have a much more successful business? Wouldn’t your team be more engaged if they knew that each client engagement, or patient interaction, was putting them with the right customers?

We know it’s a lot of work to get this right, and only when you work with a strategic partner can you have an expectation that you will get what you need as early in the process as possible. When we work with clients, whether they’re spending $1,000 or $100,000, we work strategically to assure them we’re delivering the greatest value possible for their advertising dollars.

Wouldn’t you rather spend your money on the most valuable customers? We think you should, and that’s why we believe that we are not competing with the mass-market automated systems that don’t deliver the kind of value you need. With a fundamental understanding of technology-enabled marketing and the expertise and know-how to back it up, we can be true partners to our clients regardless of their budget.

If you’d like to learn more about the why and the how, we’d love to hear from you. Please fill out our contact form or give us a call. We’ll be glad to review your current situation and come up with some strategic recommendations.

July 21, 2017
#FreelanceFriday: How to Remove Unnecessary Filler and Fluff From Your Writing

In digital marketing, it used to be good enough just to write content—about anything and everything. But now, and rightfully so, it is not enough for you to just have a well-written website. It needs to be one filled with original and high-quality content. What you write is important, but how you write it is equally critical.

So, with the ever-increasing demand for top quality content creation, how do you make your writing even better? How do you make your content stand out in the crowd of competitors?

One of the best (and easiest) ways to make your content more valuable is to remove any and all unnecessary filler and fluff from your writing. In general, filler is part of a sentence, whereas fluff refers to whole sentences in a piece of content that exist just to pad the word count, which ultimately dilutes the nutritional value of the overall content.

By focusing more on substance, your content becomes richer and more beneficial to the reader. Don’t pad your content with the superfluous; it just isn’t necessary. Visitors to your site come for information about your business, don’t allow them to get lost or bogged down sifting through content that is redundant or pointless.

Here are 6 ways to make your blogs better by removing unnecessary fluff and filler:

1. Create a Plan and Outline First

Your writing should always be clear and concise. When it comes to fluff, rambling is often one of the major culprits. Organization and planning (which can include creating an outline), will help you stay focused and avoid fluff even before it happens. It can also help to strategize any necessary research before writing.

2. Avoid Redundancy

Redundancy makes your writing dull and laborious to read. It can also reveal gaps in your knowledge of the subject. Required high word counts unnecessarily force many writers to say the same things over and over again instead of expanding on the topic. More content is worthless if it is redundant.

3. Nix the Common Knowledge

Removing fluff is not just about having a succinct and smooth writing style, it’s also about creating content that adds real value. Trying to make all content accessible to everyone is not only nearly impossible, but it also increases the risk of fluff. You cannot explain everything to everyone. Know your target audience going in and gear the writing toward them.

4. Remove the Unnecessary

You might be surprised by how many words you can easily cut from your writing. Focus on word economy over exceedingly descriptive or unnecessary exposition–which includes excessive adjectives, most adverbs, and qualifiers that can weaken your writing. Unnecessary words and phrases are easy to find and remove because they don’t change the meaning of the sentence when deleted.

5. Eliminate Complexity and Density

Unless you are writing content for a highly technical client or industry, overly complicated sentences with jargon should be avoided. If a reader has to reread a sentence to understand it, then it needs to be rewritten.

The same goes for overtly flowery language—it may seem well written, but it will make it harder to comprehend the meaning. The goal of your content should be to make it easy-to-read so that you can get through to the reader. Don’t bury your point in decorative language.

6. Don’t Be Afraid to Edit Yourself

When editing, it is essential to detach yourself—and be merciless even. When giving your first draft a close second read, you will almost certainly find words and phrases that are completely unnecessary or misleading. Write, edit, repeat until your final draft reveals itself. Getting your point across should be your primary concern, while style remains secondary.

Improving your writing this way takes practice. First, you have to learn how to identify fluff and filler, and then you have to force yourself to remove it. The better you get at recognizing the unnecessary from the start, they less you will have to edit later, thus making you a better and more efficient writer.

Images:

Fluffy Unicorn

Holmes

Alan

July 14, 2017
6 Best Practices on LinkedIn for Your Company Page

Did you know that only 17% of businesses have a company page on LinkedIn? With over 520 million users, LinkedIn has the right to refer to itself as the world’s largest business network. Connecting users with current and potential colleagues and even to future relationships with consumers, distributors, and manufacturers, LinkedIn is chock-full of opportunities to find whomever you need to grow your business.

Whether your company is new to LinkedIn or has existed on the platform for years, make sure you’re staying active on LinkedIn in the right ways. Here are 6 best practices when it comes to your business’s LinkedIn page.

1. Keep It Professional

Every social media platform has its own tone and personality. The language you use to represent your business on LinkedIn needs to be more professional and polished than what would typically be used on Facebook and Twitter. Don’t make the rookie mistake of writing your LinkedIn posts the same way you would write your Facebook posts.

2. Have a Company Logo and Implement a Cover Photo

A company logo adds credibility to your page. According to LinkedIn, company pages with logo images get six times more traffic to their pages. It will also appear whenever a user searches for your company on LinkedIn as well as on employee profiles.

3. Optimize Your Page for Google Search

Did you know that company pages on LinkedIn are SEO friendly? Google can preview the first 156 characters of your description in search results, so maximize that space with strong keywords and concise information. This helps readers who stumble onto your page on their own know exactly what it is you do, too.

4. Create Slamming Status Updates

If you create your company page but then never post anything, you’re missing out on possibly infinite opportunities for micro connections that can grow into real business opportunities. But posting sporadically, or posting things nobody wants to read, won’t help either. Share articles from leaders in your industry, post your thoughts on industry or company news, and promote your blog posts (you are writing a blog, aren’t you?). Focusing on the needs of your demographic will help guide your updates. What do they want to learn, and when are they online? Our social media guide can help you out with that.

In addition to focusing on what to write about, keep an eye on how you’re crafting it. Shorter updates perform better than longer ones, and ones with links, large and pretty images, and videos all catch people’s attention and get them to share and comment on your updates.

5. Sponsor Your Content

It’s true across the board—sponsored and organic content need to work together to create an effective marketing strategy. By sponsoring some of the posts you publish on your Company Page, you can make sure all the right people see it, not just people who are already following you. LinkedIn has very advanced targeting capabilities (company size, seniority level, and even job title targeting is available), and it is easy to track conversions for each sponsored post. This means you can run A/B testing to see what your target audience really wants to see.

6. Establish Yourself as a Thought Leader

This is a bit of an extension on point four. You want to consistently publish content that shows you know what you’re talking about and are at the cutting edge of industry innovation. Weigh in on industry news, share your own rich knowledge by promoting blog posts and whitepapers, and even get a bit controversial by taking a stand on an important industry issue. At the end of the day, people don’t buy from you because of your products, they buy from you because of who you are. Show everyone who your company is and how they can present solutions to problems through your LinkedIn updates, and your expertise might just spread.

LinkedIn is such a powerful tool for engaging with B2B customers. While it might take some work at first to figure out your strategy, following these tips for creating a strong LinkedIn presence will end up really paying off in the end.

Check out how Search Influence can help with your social media.

July 14, 2017
AI and How It’s Affecting, and Enhancing, Voice Search
If 2016 was the year of the Internet of Things, 2017 has become the year of AI, and, in particular, voice search. The way people search on their phone, tablet, or computer is changing thanks to devices like Amazon Echo, Siri, Cortana, and Google Home—as of May 2016, 20% of mobile queries are through voice. You can now search for a business, order pizza, turn on your home’s lights, ask for movie reviews, and more just by asking a question or stating an instruction. According to the 2016 Internet Trends Report, by 2020, at least 50% of searches are going to be through images or voice, whereas in 2015, only 1 in 10 search queries came through voice. Understanding how your content is optimized for voice search can help your business succeed in the near future.

AI, RankBrain, Machine Learning, Deep Learning…What’s the Difference?

With all of the talk about AI these days, it’s best to separate different terms that get tossed around, like RankBrain, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning. The easiest way to understand their relationship is to think of them as smaller parts of a larger whole. AI has been around since Alan Turing first started trying to decode the Nazi’s Enigma in WWII. In the 1980s, we started to see more advancement with machine learning, which provided computers with the ability to learn predictions and statistics without being explicitly programmed. In the current decade, we have begun to see large advancements in deep learning.

Deep Learning

Also known as deep structured learning or hierarchical learning, deep learning uses neural networks with many hidden layers of processing and information. It mirrors the way the human brain works, learning from mistakes to come up with the best, new solution to an input, not one that it was given with code. For instance, Marie Dollé from SocialMediaToday explains how it recognizes your face in a Facebook photo.

“For a face, it will first correlate pixels on a photo, then group them and conceptualize its features (eyes, nose, mouth). Finally, it’ll group all these concepts to recognize the unique collection of features as a single face.”

It’s also how the world’s best Go player, Lee Sedol, got beat by Google’s DeepMind AI dubbed AlphaGo. Go is an ancient game of immense complexity—there are more possible positions on the game board than there are atoms in the universe. This is precisely why we never thought a machine could master a human in this game; it’s more about intuition and instinct. Wired Magazine said that the pivotal play in the game was also the moment that “machines and humanity finally began to evolve together. While the move that set up the machine to win was puzzling to humans, it opened Lee Sedol’s eyes to strategies he hadn’t considered before.” We’ve come a long way since the first game mastered by AI in 1952—Tic Tac Toe.

What About RankBrain?

It’s best to think of RankBrain as a facilitator for deep learning. Unveiled by Google in 2015, RankBrain converts words and phrases into mathematical vectors that can then be used by deep learning. One of the more interesting things about RankBrain is that it searches for phrases that have never been used before on Google and then attempts to find similar words or phrases that may relate, i.e. your rich content that may not match up perfectly with a user’s search but is close. To put it simply, Greg Corrado, a senior research scientist at Google involved with RankBrain states, “If RankBrain sees a word or phrase it isn’t familiar with, the machine can make a guess as to what words or phrases might have a similar meaning and filter the result accordingly, making it more effective at handling never-before-seen search queries.”

So, why are we getting these never-before-seen queries? Well, in some way or another, this will always happen. New products will be released, and people will want to find them. However, the introduction and evolution of voice search as a viable tool has transformed the way we talk to search engines.

The Importance of Semantic Content Marketing in the Age of Voice Search

Gone are the days of planning your content marketing strategy based on one or two keywords. Sherry Bonelli from SearchEngineLand posits, “Now keywords are no longer just keywords. Keywords in the voice search world are long-tail+. The ‘plus’ refers to the conversational phrases that you need to add when optimizing for conversational voice search.” Because people speak things differently than typing, we have to start adjusting marketing strategies accordingly. In comes long-tail+ keywords and semantic SEO.

Long-tail+ keywords should mimic the way people actually talk. Think about what types of questions people ask when they call your business, and then think about any follow-up Q&A you have with them. Also, in addition to thinking about what people might be asking or searching, it’s time to start thinking about all of the synonymous and relative topics to that search. The age of the “best digital camera” keyword could likely fall away. Instead, consider the question, “Google, where can I find a digital camera that is waterproof and can also sync w/ and stream Facebook Live?” Look at everything that’s in that question. It mentions streaming and Facebook Live capabilities, it specifies waterproof, and the whole thing is rooted in a local question: the “where.”

So, if you were to then take a hard look at your content, does it mention syncing devices with live streaming, have you written a blog about waterproof devices that you offer, are all of your physical location pages up to date, and have you claimed your Google My Business listing? Or, have you made the mistake of optimizing for “best digital camera” and called it a day? We’re starting to get to the point wherein Google’s AI technology is becoming as quick thinking, on-the-fly, and complex as us. So, we need to optimize accordingly.

Optimizing for Voice and Conversational Searches

Using long+tail keywords is a good first step to optimizing your content for voice search. Try to understand and predict the user’s next intent or action after finding the answer to their first query. For alternate words or keywords, instead of trying to go for the “be all end all” keyword, think, “tell me how to get to the store,” alongside, “directions to the store.” Experiment with different versions of the same idea.

Local is going to continue to be a big part of success for a business. Research what interests customers in a targeted area and optimize all of your physical location pages by making sure they’re marked up with schema. Structured data markup from schema.org is crucial because it makes it easier for search engines to parse your site and understand your content within context. Here’s a helpful list of additional best practices that can help with showing up in voice search:
- Claim Your Google My Business Listing: A large part of voice search is based around local. By claiming your Google My Business Listing, you provide Google with more rich information about your business, giving its AI more tools to serve your potential customers with rich, accurate answers to their questions.
- Use Conversational Keywords: This goes without saying, but if people are searching more naturally, then you should be writing more naturally in your content.
- Make Sure Your Content Is Trustworthy: Just as AI can evolve to find us the best possible answers to our queries, it also has the ability to learn from and reject black hat SEO practices. Steer clear of link spamming, keyword stuffing, and untrue statements in your content.
- Set Up a FAQ Page: This may seem like a minor addition to a website, but it’s a simple way to get a lot of good answers to questions, providing content for a vast amount of subjects about your business that could then make it easier for Google to find you.
Because RankBrain plays a big part of voice search, finding never-before-used phrases and pairing them with trustworthy, on-topic content, it’s worth remembering some advice from a former Influencer: “If your content is written in accord with Panda and Hummingbird, meaning it is rich text, educational, and really on topic, RankBrain should not be a problem for you.”

How Google’s Cloud Video Intelligence Is Changing Video Search

Ever wish you could search for a video online or in your cloud library just by asking certain words? Like, “Hey, Google, show me videos with fun cartoon animals,” and getting a result of Zootopia from your library. With Google’s Video Analysis, we’re getting to do just that. This can have a large impact on more than just personal queries. Pretend you’re a Realtor in your local area. By using this tool, you can make your videos more discoverable for potential clients. It’s just another way AI is changing the way we search.

The Future of Google AdWords

Google recently held their Google Marketing Next event. One of the features that they mentioned talks about Life Event Targeting. In the past, Google’s AI had been able to run basic “if, then” scenarios for target buyers. Now, they’re able to parse through multiple languages to predict a similar response for the same event. For instance, they gave the example of those recently engaged. They were able to recognize the different but similar terms and phrases that cultures use when people are in a wedding life stage and then provide them with solutions to queries.

Also, Google is learning to adjust ads and tailor them to each user’s preference. Instead of three people doing the same search getting the same ad display, there will be advertising that suits each person’s preferences for style, graphics, tone, or display. They may have alternate text that is highlighted, one focusing on price and another on the value of a product or service.

Where Have We Seen This Before?

Whenever I used to think about artificial intelligence, I would typically conjure images of a Terminator landscape, or a young Haley Joel Osment sentient robot in A.I., or the philosophical complexities that Harrison Ford faces as a replicant (or not?!) in Blade Runner. There have always been predictions about future technology that we can find in pop culture, from space invaders to complete AI domination. However, I think one that best represents where we’re currently exploring and where we may end up being is seen in Spike Jonze’s film, Her.

There’s no dominating technology that overtakes our lives, no artificial intelligence that turns evil. Instead, it’s a future in which technology is doing what we’re trying to teach it to do now. An operating system’s AI is learning from conversations and adapting and adjusting accordingly. The OS can also see people and judge their facial reactions, something we can already do with facial recognition. Mark Zuckerberg even implemented it in his home.

To quote the film’s production designer, K.K. Barrett, “This is not a future of harshness, but of bespoke details.”

What Does the Future Hold for Search and SEO in Its Relation to AI?

Voice should continue to rise in use; there’s nothing to suggest otherwise. And while this is a bit of a“Wild Wild West” time of development, there’s one nice thing that should placate marketers’ worries—the relationship between the marketer and the client isn’t going to change in some cosmic or complicated way. In fact, it’s the opposite. It gets more personal. Ideally, we’re headed for a future in which our old anxieties about technology are gone—a future in which we no longer worry about technology ruling or destroying us.

Instead, it may be like what we’ve seen in the movie Her. It’s getting more intuitive. More seamless. More subtle. More adaptive. More inseparable from who we are. It may not be too much longer before voice commands aren’t even necessary—Deep Learning may evolve to where simply walking into a room turns on the lights, and those lights then adjust to a brightness or dimness reflecting your facial features and mood…maybe.

Instead of a future of wild advancements of technology, of jetpacks and holograms (well, kind of not those), it’s more a future of subtlety. One where we’ll hopefully be able to teach a program to learn from us so well and so naturally that it doesn’t even feel like teaching. To quote a reaction from those watching Google’s AlphaGo win its matches of Go over Lee Sedol, “The machine did a very human thing even better than a human. But in the process, it made those humans better at what they do.” So, instead of tech moving to the forefront of our lives, in front of our faces on the ride home from work, disrupting family dinners with scrolls and feeds, it could dissolve to be part of the background, one that not only knows when to talk to us but also when we can be left alone to be better at what we do.

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Math

Brain

Ok, Google

Google AdWords

Her
July 11, 2017
Three New Team Members Join Search Influence

This June, we’re happy to have added three new members to our growing team. Meet them below!

Tracy Stoller (Junior Online Advertising Associate)

Returning from what she likes to call an “extended maternity leave,” Tracy is rejoining the Search Influence team as a Jr. Online Advertising Associate. Tracy originally joined Search Influence in 2012 as an Internet Marketing Associate and spent close to 3 years on the Content Team, eventually becoming Content Team Lead. Most recently, Tracy took a brief detour from marketing and became a preschool teacher before realizing that she would much rather work with adults. In her spare time….actually, she has two children under the age of 3 and has no spare time. But she does enjoy spending time with her family and drinking red wine.

John Zeringue (Junior Quality Assurance Analyst)

As a native New Orleanian, John has spent most of his adult life not too far from home. For college, he attended the University of Louisiana Lafayette, where he studied communications. After college, he spent time working for the library system of Jefferson Parish. In his spare time, John enjoys staying active, enjoying the outdoors, or learning new songs on his guitar.

Ashley deRoche (Sales Executive)

Ashley is a Midwest native, having split most of her life mainly between Indiana and Michigan. She has degrees in French and communications. Ashley joins the team with over 15 years of customer service experience and 4 years of sales experience. She is married to the love of her life and has two beautiful and talented step-daughters, a son who is the pride of her life, and her sweet and spicy cajun baby girl (the only one of her children who has spent less than two weeks of her life in Michigan). She loves reading, watching movies marathon-style, cooking fabulous meals for her huge, hungry family, and enjoying ice-cold drinks on hotter-than-hades days. Traveling is her life’s biggest pleasure, and she is also an amateur gardener.

Welcome to the team, Ashley, John, and Tracy!

July 7, 2017