Author: NextJSjointviews

20 Reasons Why No One is Reading Your Website Content

Posted on by NextJSjointviews

Nobody wants to accept that their content is weak and not deserving to be read. After all, why would anyone write something that is utterly useless? However, there’s still a lot of content on the web that does not attract the target audience.

Read this article to know and understand why some of your website content is not being read and why is it that your audience is not being able to relate to you:

1. Repetition

A lot of websites just repeat the content that is already available in Google searches. If a consumer can find the same topic and the same angle on a blog post through Google search, why would the audience need to visit your website?

Most content on the web is just information that’s reformatted with keyword stuffing, unnecessary links, and ads and that’s where the interest is lost. We are not recommending you to invent something new but refrain from using the same top 10 tips that everyone has already been talking about.

2. Excessive Use of Product Name

Some website owners tend to write their product name over and over in an attempt to register it in the minds of the consumer. However, more mentions of the product in a small piece of content weaken the overall readability of the piece. Consumers tend to view it as forced promotion and you lose their interest.

3. More Focus on We

Content today is over-emphasizing on the brand and company itself. Statements that position the brand before the customer appears as excessive bragging leading to a frustrated reader. Try and eliminate the ‘I’ and ‘We’ from your marketing material.

4. Need to Upgrade

Website content may seem outstanding at the time of development. However, with changing market dynamics, innovations in technology, and new research, it is important that you update the obsolete information. Content must regularly be made fresh and relevant.

5. Eliminate the Obvious

Writing something that is obvious and the target audience is already aware of is an act that makes your content weak. Nobody will spend time reading your content if you say exercising regularly is important to lose weight or cutting down on your expenses can help to save money. Get rid of such obvious facts and bring in content that is advantageous for the readers.

6. Long Introductions

Some blogs start with an introduction to the topic that lasts around two paragraphs before the actual answer begins. This is more like the filler and can be avoided. If you skip these paragraphs and get to the most important information, it will help to keep the reader glued to your webpage.

7. Engage

Your topic may not be interesting but the way you write the content must be. It must have emotion, enthusiasm, a story, or a voice that adds a humanistic appeal to your content. Readers will only convert if they get excited after reading your content.

8. Monotonous

Long-form content is suitable for research papers and dissertations. Your website content must have a combination of video, text, images, music, and other elements that can break the monotony and keep the target audience interested.

9. Every Article is a Listicle

You must have come across articles like ’10 ways to lose weight’, ‘5 tips to grow your hair long’ etc. While these were a trend as finding information through a listicle was easier, avoid getting obsessed with it. Every article that you post must not be in the form of a listicle.

You need to provide the reader with a mix of educational, concise, precise, and appropriate information that helps them enhance their knowledge.

10. Misleading Content

Some webpages do not deliver the content that it promises in the title. If that is the case, your reader would just be deflected from your website and would not want to come back for any kind of further information.

11. False Information

There isn’t anything worse than providing wrong information. Google allows every reader to cross-check what has been mentioned by you and if you have written something incorrectly, it will completely kill your content and your website.

12. Lack of Appropriate Sources

An important aspect that most marketers ignore is to cite appropriate references and sources. Data used from trusted sources instead of editorializing helps to establish credibility. Credibility then leads to trust and it results in loyal customers.

13. Track the Length

Several discussions and forums have been created on the appropriate length of a webpage. There have been conclusions in favor of a 500-word post as well as a 1500-word post stating that they both can keep the reader interested as long as the content fulfills its purpose.

Content must value the time a reader is spending on the blog and therefore provide information that is worthwhile.

14. Relevancy

Every word on your website must be relevant to your brand, its products, and services. Bad content is irrelevant and customers are just not interested in reading it. If your content does not answer the real question and does not entertain, it will just fail.

15. Negativity

While stating the neutral facts related to your industry is good, putting your competitors in a negative light is not suggested. If you try to pull your competition down, they will try to do the same.

The outcome then would not be loyal customers but a battle between you and your competition resulting in continuous judgment by your target audience.

16. Fluff

Sometimes website owners add extra words to their content just to match with the design of the webpage and satisfy Google. However, these extra words can be noticed as fluff by the reader and tend to give a bad audience experience.

17. Selection of Words

Words used on the website must be compelling enough. Flowery words don’t always do the task and therefore, words selected must complement the goal of the content and must clearly convey the objective to the target audience.

18. Too Long, Too Boring

Most readers tend to exit the page if it has around 5000 words written on it. This is because they don’t have the time to read through the entire thing even if it provides the most factual, accurate, and relevant information.

It is therefore important to wisely break down the information into something that can be read easily and quickly. The same goes for large volumes of images and long videos.

19. Routine SEO

Sometimes content is just written to tick off the requirement in the SEO plan. Such a piece can easily be recognized and will fail at attracting organic traffic.

20. Not Mobile Friendly

The use of smartphones to access websites has increased tremendously. This means that your content must be mobile-friendly. The font and alignment must be such that readers can easily view it without having to zoom in or scroll left and right.

Takeaway

With the website content mistakes mentioned above, you may have realized what you need to fix. So, get going and make your content perfect so that viewers actually read what you want to say and then transform into customers.

How to Collaborate with the Right Link Building Agency

Posted on by NextJSjointviews

Link building is an important part of SEO or Search Engine Optimization. A single backlink from the right page has the power to get thousands of new visitors to your site.

Take the example of Moosa Hemani, SEO and inbound marketing specialist who recorded a 203% increase in his traffic after his guest post on Moz.com.

Backlinks from authority sites can in fact do magic for your website ranking. This is because Google counts backlinks from reputed sites as votes for your page.

Other pages pointing to your site tells Google that your content is worth quoting and referring to and hence valuable.

However, building links proactively takes time and effort. There is a whole process of researching the right sites and reaching out to them for backlinks.

You also need to add value to your partners to gain their trust and links. This could be re-purposing their content in the form of infographic, writing a guest post or promoting their page on your social media.

Link building campaigns need expertise, time and resources. This is why outsourcing link building to an external agency is a good idea.

The right agency can boost your SEO efforts with link-building strategy. Here are the evaluation criteria while choosing the right link building agency for your business.

• Experience

Past work of the agency is good indication of their quality of work. Have they successfully delivered increased traffic before? Ask them for references of their clients if required. This way you can enter the contract with confidence.

Also, it is important to check the industries and size of companies they have worked in. A campaign that was successful for a big MNC may not be the best strategy for a start-up. Your agency must have the creativity to develop a tailor-made strategy for you.

Generally speaking, an agency who has worked within your industry with similar client profile is preferable. However, do not rule out an agency new to your industry without asking for detailed strategy proposal for your business.

Another detail to consider is the experience of the person who will be handling your campaign. Stellar experience of the agency is of no use to you if your account will be taken care by a fresher single- handedly.

• Ethical Strategies

You may come across agencies that will promise you 500% increase within no time. Practices employed by such agencies are often unethical, penalized by search engines and may cause Google to ban your site. Make sure your agency is not using black hat SEO tactics that will only hurt your business in the long run. Here are some black hat practices for your awareness:

  • Paying for backlinks is not allowed and is considered a serious offense by Google
  • Inserting links in others site without their permission or through hacking into their site
  • Irrelevant posting of links to your site in the comments section. There are even tools available for mass posting in websites that are unrelated to your topic.
  • Excessive link exchanging is a practice where links are exchanged between sites just to show backlinks to search engines and with no real benefit to site visitors. Such a practice of linking excessively to unrelated site is a violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines.

You website will be the one penalized by Google even if you are unaware of such practices being used by your agency. This is why it is important that your agency shares all plans and actions with you honestly. This brings us to the next point.

• Transparency

Since you are entrusting a third party with your business site, it is important that you share a relation of trust and honesty. Your agency must share campaign details with your regularly. Setbacks and delays are understandable and should be shared with you clearly.

Unexplained delays in implementation and poor communication could be a sign of your agency hiding something.

• Business Philosophy

Very few blogs will talk about this, however, difference in business philosophy is often the underlying cause of problems. Imagine an agency that values perfection but is serving a client who values speed instead. The slow pace of delivery may frustrate the client whose priority is to move fast in the market.

When you choose an agency to work with, do check for alignment with their values and vision. There is no right or wrong in this. Some agencies will work best for you because their way of doing business fits perfectly with yours.

• Holistic Approach

Everything works together in digital marketing. This means that your link building efforts must be supported by good content, inbound sales process, social media and other channels. Building links around poor content will only lead to wastage of your resources.

Ideally, your SEO, link-building and content marketing should be done by the same agency. If not, they should at least work closely with the content and digital marketing team. Choose an agency that has an overview of your digital marketing and holistic approach to link-building.

Takeaway

These are the five ways to make sure that you choose and collaborate with the right agency. Remember to be patient as returns from link- building may take some months to show. Link-building is a long term exercise and therefore it is even more important for you to choose the right partner.

What Impact AI could bring in Storytelling

Posted on by NextJSjointviews

An AI based robot is creating sensations by flaunting humanistic expressions, picking her favorite bollywood star and giving her opinions on women empowerment, businesses such as banking, insurance etc.

Yes that’s Sophia for you, world’s most advanced robot created by Dr. David Hanson of Hanson robotics.

The concept of artificial intelligence is age old, but has been in vogue, since the past decade as smart technology started ruling humans.

But how will these machines know what we want?

Will they get better than us with creativity over time and eliminate the need of humans like it happened due to mechanization during the industrial revolution?

Let us sit back and analyze if AI is capable of changing the game to the extent of driving human storytellers to the edge of extinction.

Man Vs Machine

The one important thing that distinguishes humans from cyborgs is that we feel and we respond with emotions. And more than that we can convey those emotions to others with equal intensity and make them feel the same way. That is the power of storytelling that we possess.

Human mental network is complex with a lot of patterns left unexplained. So there is a long way for us to go before we think about incorporating these emotions in machines.

But as vehement as this argument gets, the fact that artificial intelligence has been evolving cannot be denied. Several experiments carried by techies of the most renowned institutes have given clearance to the fact that machines are successful in empirically reading human reflexes and understanding the emotional arcs.

Machines calculate the Visual valence induced in audience by a certain scene or piece of content. It is evident from this fact that they will evolve and eventually aid in storytelling business.

In attempts of fine tuning AI systems the scientists have grabbed inputs from human responses to motion graphics and what specific elements have triggered a positive or negative response and their emotions.

AI could work alongside humans in the process of storytelling. If humans write a video script, AI could adorn the script with its own inputs of background score and visuals.

It would be like a generator to charge the human storytelling mode.

The system is known to continuously learn from its experiences.

Pitching in AI in the scripting process will hugely influence how content is discovered, created, conveyed and consumed.

Identifying potential concepts

The way content is moulded changes each day. Stories are generated as a result of observations. These observations emerge from triggers and trend patterns. Computers and software are capable of detecting minor deviations from normal patterns and are quick and efficient. It also gets rid of subjectivity.

The human brain tends to get biased towards stories that seem acceptable to the observer. Machines on the other hand rules out subjectivity and brings up a valid and an all round significant content.

The information doing rounds of any topic invokes perceptions in human brain to identify and comprehend. Machines do not get sidetracked and lack other reviewing obstacles which have led them to transcend humans.

What would take humans ages to analyze ,interpret and organize, machines can do it with the blink of an eye. We can only imagine how lives of many professionals working with large amounts of data will be simplified with AI coming into use. With the data sorting being automated, humans can focus and invest more in storytelling

Generate stories

A writer’s biggest fear today is that AI taking over the human race with its ability of content generation.
Big publications are already using algorithms for generating narratives and news.

Researching topics and keywords, apt media and references, formatting are steps in creating interesting articles.
Platforms such as Wordsmith are being used by The Associated Press to generate financial reports with data input.

Quill is a natural language generation software which replicates the input to meaningful statements by analyzing the objectives of the story.

Heliograf is the in-house scripting software used by the Washington Post to publish articles.
NLG platforms have been used for generating short reports on sports, election alerts in the U.S. and tweets.
A machine’s neural system is confined to what its creator has fed it while human creativity is limitless.

According to the MIT’s Associate professor Iyad Rahwan “Human authors have nothing to fear at the moment, but if we can build machines that understand the very essence of human experience, we would have bigger problems than simply losing jobs in creative writing,”.
But that is still a long shot owing to the unbeknownst mysteries of the neural functioning.

Pan it across the media

We live in a world where the word “viral” no longer instigates panic. It only incites curiosity. The media does not control how content flows anymore. It is the giants of social media who do.

Facebook,Twitter, Instagram own classified algorithms which determine which content occupies their user feeds. Search engines decide what content should be retrieved for the user based on the patterns of his search.

Rather than stressing over the fact that AI might outshine the human race in the story telling business why not contemplate and incorporate machine learning in the content discovery.

Automation would bring about exceptional transformation in storytelling right from tracing target audience for a story to reverse mapping the audience psychographics to find out what story would intrigue them.

Given the fact that, the one size fits all theory does not work with the audience today, the giants of the digital world have started using data driven approaches to target audience.

News organizations have adopted the idea of headline testing which involves generating multiple title versions for a piece of content or article. The testing is carried out with an A/B testing tool which splits the traffic reaching the website and finds an optimize title based on performance metrics.

Extrapolating this idea, machine learning can be deployed to determine article or title length, expanse and position of the visuals etc based on the device on which the content will be retrieved the most.

Scientists will stop at nothing to make AI the ubiquitous element of technology in near future.
So it is wise for us to give up on the narcissism and embrace the apparent future-the progressive idea of content creation which is the humans and humanoids mulling things together.

Let’s Wrap It Up

The human nuance and data powered intuition are capable of creating path-breaking stories if used the right way. Just imagine a sci-fi story created with point blank tech details and aesthetic emotional arcs as a result of the man-machine alliance.

The human subtlety and mechanical calculations are quintessential to each. And maybe far in future machines will surpass the creator.

There is no reason to look at emergence of AI as a peril to human storytellers. The advent of AI will only revolutionize the concept of storytelling.

How to Boost Your Influence and Authority as a Marketer

Posted on by NextJSjointviews

Traditional push marketing does not work anymore as customer is in charge of what they consume. Television has been replaced by on-demand video and ad blockers have reduced the window to get your message across.

Marketers have to deliver their message in a way that audience wants it and through people they want to listen to.

This is why influencer marketing has emerged as one of the major trends in marketing. Brands such as Adidas, Motorola and American Express have embraced influencer marketing with success.

In fact businesses are earning $6.5 for every $1 they spend on influencer marketing. Influencer reach is clearly the future of marketing.

Who is an Influencer

An Influencer is any person who has a substantial following in a niche segment on the internet. The area of influence could be anything from business to pet-care.

They are actively engaged with their followers over social media or mails. They can monetize their following by product endorsements or selling their own services.

Marketers work with influencers for product endorsements to use this powerful channel. Another way to work this channel is for marketers themselves to become an influence.

For example, one of the top marketers in the world Neil Patel, is also the most influential celebrity in the area of business startups and digital marketing.

Being an influencer naturally boosts your marketing and sales. This is why most of the influencers are starting their own business. A following is very easy to monetize compared to strangers on the internet.

Why Influencers are so effective at Selling

We all know the influence of celebrities like Dr.Oz (in health sector) and Oprah Winfrey have on populations. It has been estimated that Oprah’s support for Barack Obama swayed around 1 million votes in his favour.

Today, the internet is filled with smaller stars who are celebrities to their respective audiences nonetheless.

Youtube star like Wayne Goss (3 million subscribers) and Lily Singh(13 million subscribers)  are sought by brands to promote their products.

But what is it about influencer marketing that makes marketing so successful?

Influencers have a trust and connection with their audiences that an unknown marketer can never match.

Influencers give their followers tons of value in education, entertainment or inspiration. Therefore the followers trust them as an authority in their field of work and are more open to messages to them.

Secondly influencers endorsing a product act a social proof to their audiences. As kids we all wanted to do what the cool kids in the class were doing. Influencer marketing is not very different from that.

It is the mix of authority, social proof and trust that makes influencer marketing so effective.

How to Become an Influencer

Influencers are going to rule the web in coming years. According to TapInfluence, 73% of marketers have allocated budget for influence marketing.

If you don’t have huge budgets to hire top influencers it makes sense to become one yourself.

Here are some ways to increase your influence as a marketer or business founder:

  • Share Knowledge

Are you into clothing? Share fashion tips with the world.

Maybe you are in B2B SaaS services. Share knowledge on how to evaluate and implement SaaS products.

Whatever your industry is there is always information that people want to know. Developing your expertise in the topic and sharing it with the world is the first step to becoming an influencer.

The deeper your knowledge the better you content will be. So make sure you exactly know what you are going to talk about.

Use various formats like blogs, video, webinars , podcasts etc. to see what works.

Tip:  Videos are doing much better than any other format currently

  • Networking

You have to be social if you want to be an influencer. Find out other influencers in your niche and start building relationship with them. You could start off with social media and move to personal channels such as mail and meeting at events and conference.

Interacting with your followers and comments on your posts is equally important. You will have to build virtual as well as real relations to become an influencer.

  • Build Authority

People must view you as authority on subject before they trust you. Certifications, memberships in professional associations and affiliations help in this regard. Testimonials from known personalities are also helpful.

Another way to build you authority is to be quoted in well-known publications. Use HARO to register and get in touch with journalists who are looking for quotes in your industry. You can also find contacts for popular publications and contact the journalist.

  • Events & Industry Meets

 Do not underestimate the importance of live events and meets in influence marketing. Giving live updates from events and being with the right people will boost your following tremendously.

Takeaway

Influence has been taught in marketing and sales since a long time. These are some of ways in which you can increase your influence in the online space.

Because marketers are always looking for maximum conversion, becoming an influencer is a natural progression for a marketer. Once you are an influence, a tweet could get you more sales than Google Adsense.

How to Implement a Successful Personalized Marketing Strategy

Posted on by NextJSjointviews

If you have purchased products from Amazon or Flipkart, you will be able to see the amazing effects of personalized experience.

You will be able to see a list of suggestions based on your search history. Also, most probably you will receive a follow up email which contains similar collection of books based on your recent purchase.

We will not be surprised to see if you return to purchase more; it is because they are based upon your likes and interests.

This is why most of the marketers believe that personalized marketing campaigns are crucial for the success for their business.

If you wish that your customers want to come back for more purchases, you need to provide them with personalized experience that matches their wants and needs.

This means that more visits equal to more leads and more leads equal to more happy customers. Let’s take a look at how to implement a personalized marketing strategy:

1. Review your strategy

Before you execute your marketing strategy, think about the following questions to perceive how your organization can handle the strategy implementation:

  • What brand value I would like to offer my customers?
  • What kind of customer trends should I enable for e.g., repeated customer visits, increased trust, lot of purchases etc.?
  • What are the marketing resources that we have/can create which may change one strategy over another?
  • How much time does the plan need – whether short term/long term requirement?
  • Do I actually have enough resources such as people, tools, time etc. to achieve success?

2. Research and Analyze your audience

When you are done with planning your strategy, it’s time to gather some information about your audience and you will be able to use that for your marketing program. These are the ways you can research about your audience:

  • Surveys
  • Questionnaires
  • Discussion groups
  • Feedback via website or email
  • Social media platforms

Try to collect maximum amount of information from your potential prospects or customers. One or two queries might be enough rather than a drawn-out survey.

3. Choose right marketing tactics

Choosing the right marketing tactics is very crucial in the process of personalizing marketing strategy. Here are some of the marketing strategies to choose from:

  • Send emails from humans, don’t sound like a brand

Email is one among the simplest ways to create a personalized experience for your prospects. Rather than having the sender name as company’s name, create it from the name of an actual agent working on your promoting or marketing team.

Also, think about adding that agent’s photograph and his/her’s email signature to the body of the email to indicate that actually that agent took their time and energy to craft the message and can get some responses.

Even if you employ email templates, guarantee that they don’t appear as if they have been designed by a promoting/marketing machine. It is because you want to sound credible in your emails.

  • Use recipient’s name for emails

Writing “Dear Customer,” “Hi Customer,” “To [First Name]” etc. are all not at all preferred for your email communication with your prospects.

A lead’s real name is one among the best items of lead intelligence to assemble. If a prospect has filled out a form at any point of time, you can easily get their first name and email address.

If not, most likely you should not be emailing them. Most of the email service providers give you the opportunity to customize the email messages with recipient’s forename; so what’s more to think? Take advantage of it!

  • Make use of marketing automation tools

Based on content interest, automation tools will be able to trigger lead nurturing campaigns. While you will address completely different business problems and topics inside your content, that does not mean that each one of the prospects have an interest in all told topics.

If a prospect downloads an e-book targeted on specific topic, for instance, program your automation tools to automatically enter them into a lead nurturing campaign which will deliver content relevant to the initial topic and personalizes email messages based on supported data of that original content which was downloaded.

  • Segment email database by marketing persona

There are number of ways to segment email database; but the most effective and easiest way is by marketing persona. For example, if you have classified three separate marketing personas that combine your ideal customers, segment your email list into three different blocks.

Then, personalize the messaging used in independent emails sent to each blocks using the language that individual persona always uses and responds to.

  • Focus on creating persona driven content

Persona driven content is a key factor to consider when you begin with the process of personalization. Produce new content or modify the existing one to handle the exact needs and problems of your varied marketing personas.

Contemplate the very fact that one persona might have issues that the other persona doesn’t have. When you prepare a non personalized campaign, your one-size-fits-all content policy won’t fit with the particular problem of persona, which will be a drawback.

However, with a personalized approach that is targeted at a selected group of prospects, you will be able to address that drawback and make more customized and valuable content for those potential prospects.

  • Respond personally to customers on social media

Nowadays customers depend upon social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google + to research about the products and to make buying decisions.

It may appear to be an easy task to assign a real person to respond to customer queries on social media; however, several companies choose to automate it.

You need to check your social media activity on a daily basis and respond to them in a personal manner which provides suitable and rightful content that can address each persona’s needs.

  • Generate targeted landing pages

If you lack the bandwith to create content targeted for each of your personas, you have an option to create targeted landing pages for your different offers.

Make sure to customize the messaging and language on your targeted landing pages to handle the precise needs of particular segment, and do that for every phase.

  • Build targeted company’s product page variations on LinkedIn

LinkedIn company pages provides amazing targeting tool that permits you to personalize the products or services that a visitor sees on your product page in LinkedIn.

You will be able to target based on demographic info such as trade, job function and geographic area.

  • Use Google + topic circles to target content

Google + topic circles is another way of using social media platforms to supply a lot of personalized content distribution. By using Google + Circles, you will be able to create many totally different topic circles depending upon the different interests of your targeted page followers.

The next step is to poll your followers, raise that Circles they would wish to be side to, and simply distribute only targeted content to those Circles. This offers an individuality and personalization.

  • Lead intelligence to help in personalizing sales follow up

Lead intelligence or knowledge you gather concerning your leads/prospects consists of demographic data, customer behaviour on your website etc. which can be very useful as you outline segments of your business’ client personas.

However, it may also function as a robust lever to assist your sales team to personalize their sales pitches and perceive the wants of a lead before they even pick up the phone to dial the prospect. A well prepared sales agent can close the deal in no time.

4. Regularly update and refine personalization process

Like all other methods, personalized marketing process needs constants review and improvement to make sure of 100% effectiveness. The best way is that let the campaigns run for some weeks and then evaluate the results.

By this way, your team will be able to get a correct impression of exact progress over time, instead of getting a quick picture of how your personalization process is advancing.

It is also crucial to re-check all of your technological integrations to make sure that you have got access to holistic image of information.

During the refinement phase, marketers may take a step back and judge certain strategies or aspects of their personalized marketing campaign.

Let’s see how incorporating personalized marketing campaigns can be beneficial for your business:

1.A large compilation of client data: Personalization methods track the habits and activities of potential prospects; which in turn provides marketers with valuable knowledge that may not be available with conventional marketing campaigns.

If you are passing your leads to sales team, they will get a better clarity of whom they are merchandising and how the products/services matches with the client’s needs.

2.Loyal brand followers: Once customers feel that their needs are fulfilled and a company actually takes care of them, it is doubtless that they will definitely come back to the company in future to shop additional services or products.

3.Valuable business insights: Data gained from trailing customers will assist you in confirming what works and what doesn’t work in regard to marketing tactics and messages.

Takeaway

It is evident that customers prefer to buy more from retailers who can personalize their shopping experience across various channels.

Don’t be too late if you haven’t started implementing personalization strategies listed above. Companies who can successfully implement personalized marketing experiences will be able to witness an increase in sales and customer loyalty.

11 Examples of Successful Content Marketing by Travel Companies

Posted on by NextJSjointviews

Travel & Tourism is one of the most exciting industries to work for. With a gross booking of $1.6 trillion in 2017, global travel industry is one of fastest growing sectors. Increased connectivity and technology are only going to make it easier for travellers to explore the world.

Today, travellers make their own booking after extensive research on the internet. 97% of millennials share their travel experience on social media. Hence, there is tremendous scope for digital marketers in the travel space.

Right from dreaming of a destination to booking accommodation, travellers search for information in all stages of their planning. Because of this, online marketing success for travel companies is largely dependent on providing the right content at the right time.

These 11 companies used content strategy to inform and help travellers in various stages of their search and saw phenomenal success in booking revenue.

Contact Jointviews

#1 TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor is a giant in travel industry with more than 300 million unique visitors every month. TripAdvisor originally hired content curators to develop content for the website but soon saw that user generated reviews were attracting more traffic.

The site encouraged user content and has been known for helpful posts by real travellers ever since. In fact user generated content is the main contributor in the site’s rise to number on travel accommodation site.

TripAdvisor has proved that user generated content can be a solid content strategy. It is not only a credible form of content but also self-sustaining requiring minimum work from TripAdvisor.

#2 Mr. and Mrs Smith

Mr. and Mrs. Smith operate in luxury segment for couples. This is an example of business that had its target niche carved out right from the beginning.

This is also the reason for inspirational content on their website. From content on northern lights to feature on stylish boutique hotels, their site is enough to make you pack your bags right now!

They have also used content to position their brand as a mix of luxurious and quirky. Speaking on their brand, founder James Tamara said “We wanted something playful and a little bit mischievous, because a sense of humor is an important part of who we are.” The brand has reached enviable position since its inception in 2003.

#3 AirBnB Guidebooks

AirBnB is the star child of both travel and tech industry. They rely heavily on content by local guides and hosts to provide value to users.

The app and websites gives travelers an inside scoop on local experience and events.
AirBnB has also used helpful guidebooks to share information with travelers looking for in-depth information.

Every local host could post a guide meaning that there is tons of information available on AirBnB app or website.

#4 SNCF Europe

SNCF, France’s state owned railway company, combined experiential marketing with video content. They placed doorways in the middle of busy cities that opened into LED screens displaying live feed from other cities. Here is a video of the campaign that went viral.

The video got millions in views and the campaign titled ‘Europe: It’s just next door’ saw massive publicity for the brand.

#5 Four Seasons

The fiercely competitive travel industry keeps all players on their toes. The Canadian hospitality giant Four Seasons is known for its successful content marketing strategy in travel space.

The hotel chain has taken on a role of travel content media house by producing upto 3400 content per week across 400 distribution channels.

They have a comprehensive content strategy and leverage real stories, attractive visuals and quality content to engage with customers.

The phenomenal success of their content marketing has led to more than 2 million weekly impressions across all channels.

#6 Bonvoy Adventure

Bonvoy Adventure implemented their SEO and link-building strategy to draw traffic to their website. They did this by inviting guest posts which earned them credible referral links.

With a deeper understanding of their target audience they were able to provide better content and leverage it for their existing email marketing channel. They also did a page by page audit to improve their SEO signals and rank higher results.

The result was a 148% increase in website traffic and 200% increase in onsite transactions.

#7 Kimkim

Kimkim helps travellers to plan itineraries. A well thought content strategy is how they were able to grow their organic search by 300% !

Content Marketing by Travel Companies

Their strategy was to partner with local travel specialist to come up with their exciting profile snapshot and blog content. This way they could also focus on long-tail keywords that travellers were searching for.

Targeted content along with link building and PR grew Kimkim’s traffic massively within 4 months.

#8 Tenon Tours

Tenon Tours has successfully implemented the inbound marketing funnel to increase their conversions. They concentrated on converting visitors to leads and leads to customer by applying sound principles of inbound marketing.

Of course the foundation of any inbound marketing is great content. For this, Tenon re-purposed their best performing content in the form of guidebook and used it as a lead magnet to build a list. They were able to increase their conversion rate by 34% after nurturing leads through email channel.

#9 Shorefield

This is a great example of how targeting can help your company to go to the next level. Shorefield had luxurious properties across UK as well as fair amount of traffic to their site.

However, operating in the luxury market, it was important that they had the right kind of visitors on their site.
Plagued with irrelevant traffic, the company decided to invest in SEO. With focus on buyer personas and long tail keywords the site increased its organic conversion rate by 86%.

#10 Intrepid

Intrepid is an Australian travel company with strong brand values. As the name suggests they target travellers who are adventure loving, fearless and looking for new experiences.

Having figured out their target market, implementing on content strategy was much easier for them. They started with their content website –  The Journal which focuses on responsible travelling and off beat experiences.

With a targeted content, the company has successfully built a following of travellers who are aligned with the brand’s value. They have more than 496 K followers on Facebook, 86,000 followers on Twitter and are steadily growing their YouTube channel too.

#11 Trivago

Here is another example of a company who has invested in a long form regular content in the travel industry. Trivago has a digital magazine called ChekIn.

An interesting point to note in CheckIn is that Trivago is extremely cautious about promoting itself in unrelated articles. The magazine is genuinely helpful mix of articles and videos that are meant to inspire and inform travellers.

Takeaway

There are a lot of content opportunities in travel marketing to play around with. The rising popularity of visual content is good news for travel industry that uses videos and images extensively.

Today’s independent traveller is starving for information and sound advice on new destinations. The examples in this blog prove that knowing your target audience and providing them with required content can take your brand to a whole new level.

How SEO Companies Can Take Advantage of Bitcoin Marketing

Posted on by NextJSjointviews

The Bitcoin revolution showcases the increasing relevance and power of digital money and cryptocurrencies. It’s the current industry buzzword. Just take a look at below Google trends chart to see search for Bitcoin related keywords has surged in 2017.

Bitcoin Marketing

Arguably cryptocurrency has been the most significant development since money was invented. Combine that level of impact with the vast reach of the internet and you get a glimpse of what’s on everyone’s mind. To understand the potential of Bitcoin as a keyword we need to dive deep into the sea of questions fed through search engines. This allows us to find and pick the right keywords and conclude on a clearer picture of the buyer’s intent.

These keywords, especially the ones surrounding “bitcoin” opens a door to opportunities that can be immediately leveraged by SEO companies.

But, let’s get our facts and figures straight. This will help us better understand the impact of the Bitcoin revolution. From Dec 2017 till Feb 2018, the total market cap of the crypto market moved from $258 billion to over $437 billion.

Bitcoin Marketing

As you can see the crypto market is growing by leaps and bounds.
Now let’s compare the value of bitcoin from mid 2016 to Feb 2018. It has taken off from $1000 to $10,211.80. That’s a tenfold increase! The returns on investment in the crypto markets are impressive and unlike anything that has come before it.

You can visit sites like CoinMarketCap to monitor going rates for every cryptocurrency. You can view the market trends for each coin in the past day, week or year. You can also see the top currencies in the crypto world as well.

So, despite the dubious reputation, Bitcoin is a popular and growing trend. Now, how is that useful to SEO companies? How can bitcoin traffic be of benefit to SEO companies?
Here’s what can be done to cash in bitcoin traffic.

1. SEO consultancy in Bitcoin Market

One of the obvious opportunities for SEO companies is to collaborate with bitcoin agencies and companies. This way SEO companies can jump in on the profit making market. An SEO company specialized in Bitcoin marketing will attract many current players in the cryptocurrency market.

The demand and sheer interest for bitcoins, generates a great deal of online traffic towards cryptocurrency exchanges. These exchanges conduct all transactions related to the buying and selling of bitcoins and cryptocurrencies through their website.

“Coinbase” is one such example of a crypto trading platform that is reputable and trustworthy. There are roughly 70 such exchanges in existence.

This is why it’s critical for them to rank high in search listings. The goal here is to drive traffic to the website. Anyone who wants to buy or sell bitcoins should get directed to client’s platform. It’s clear that having an SEO strategy for Bitcoin players is a must.

SEO companies can use the increasing search interest for Bitcoin related keywords. Given below are a list of a few Bitcoin buyer keywords to focus on:

buy Bitcoin
buy Bitcoins
buy Bitcoin using credit card
bitcoin buy
where to buy bitcoins
buy bitcoins instantly
buy bitcoin online

Remember that these users usually consist of bitcoin owners or prospects who want to trade in cryptocurrencies. This is traffic of risk loving affluent investors which is immensely valuable in digital marketing.

Bitcoin prices leaps up and plunges down within a short span of time. This means that the traffic is also repetitive and engaged online for trading.

For example, there instances where you buy bitcoin for 100$ and within a couple of months, it can grow by 400% or vice versa.

Of course the benefits and risks of crypto trading are up for argument and is still a hot topic of discussion. However, this only makes it an even better keyword for SEO purpose. Also, Bitcoin owners monitor their investments regularly.

Cryptocurrency exchanges are infamously unpredictable but this leads to hidden opportunities as well. This is when investors decide to comb the web for alternatives, quickly searching Google to know the latest Bitcoin prices. This is a good opportunity for SEO companies to focus on other cryptocurrency keywords such as Ripple and Etherum.

The Investors goal here is to buy bitcoins from exchanges which offer the lowest valuation and quickly resell it at exchanges that display a higher valuation. Hence, there is a goldmine of opportunity for bitcoin keyword variations with changing buyer intent

Niche Opportunities

Since Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have become somewhat competitive to focus, SEO companies can look at longtail keywords within the space. An example of one such opportunity would be all keyword variations of the search entry “What is bitcoin?”. The traffic for such a search will be people who most likely have disposable income at hand.

They are naturally drawn by the growth opportunity and flexibility offered by cryptocurrency. But they are still hesitant to invest or trade in them.

The bitcoin revolution has encouraged many people who normally don’t trade in stocks or make investments to try their hand at trading. For many, this might turn out to be an expensive learning curve. The chances of failure are high, especially when you are not aware of any basic trading principles.

Let’s not forget that folks who invest in these ventures have already decided to gamble. They are ready to try their luck with money which they can afford to lose. This means that if you do your SEO homework well, you will end up building a potent list of leads.

You can easily build a list of ‘would be’ investors with disposable income who are willing to gamble on uncertainty. This is a valuable audience which most probably wishes to be informed on traditional investment options and the latest stock market trends as well.

2. Develop a Bitcoin Blog

Another way to cash in on the Bitcoin craze for SEO companies is to start their own website or blog in the space. This will not be your main business as an SEO company but it can be an innovative way to build your traffic and subscriber list. By nurturing these leads, you can even find customers for your Bitcoin marketing services.

Some Ideas to rank higher in Bitcoin Market

You can build your niche over a wide range of topics in the cryptomarket. It depends on your interest and experience over the subject matter you are involved with. You can target Bitcoin newbies who have just started learning bitcoin basics.

By educating this market you can have a niche website. You can start blogging about leanings of Bitcoin investors and even invite guest blogs. Posting relevant examples and educating the bitcoin audience in your niche will give you a steadily growing audience.

As you progress, you can move on from educating beginners, to providing valuable market insights. While it’s not mandatory, it’s always better to have someone on board with experience in cryptocurrencies. Tying up with cryptocurrency agencies is also a great idea.

You can start educating everyone who visits your websites by reviewing the various currencies that exist in the crypto world. Follow major players in the industry, keep your audience updated and any SEO company can soon have an audience of their own.

Understanding the Bitcoin traffic and search intent is key here. The ability to retain and convert your leads depends on your marketing funnel and services offered.

Make sure that a good SEO strategy gets followed up with solid content that loaded with value. If you don’t give value, people generally don’t stay. So make sure your blogs and content benefits your audience.

Earning through referral programs and affiliate marketing are also an option in case you want to monetize your blog.

Let’s Wrap it Up

Until it gains complete global acceptance, the path for cryptocurrencies are fraught with risks. However, we know that Bitcoins will continue to be the sizzling keyword in search engines.

SEO companies can take advantage of this by offering services to Bitcoin agencies and companies or building their own blogs focusing on niche content in Bitcoin space. These are some of the ways to cash in on the keyword that has taken the financial world by storm.

A Checklist to Succeed at International SEO Strategy

Posted on by NextJSjointviews

Back in the days, deciding to go international was a huge step in a company’s history. Businesses would enter another country only after 10 to 15 years of success in home country.

This is not the case now. Technology has shrunk the world and accelerated growth stages of a company. Today, companies are going international within a year of their business. In fact, start-ups are being launched with vision of a global presence.

Read on if you are spreading your digital presence online and want to know how your SEO efforts should change country to country.

Launching your site in a different country is more than just translating. In fact language is only one part of your site transformation. Sometimes, your site will have to change according to the region even in two English speaking regions. For example, Amazon has different sites for each country. (This is called country targeting).

A Checklist to Succeed at International SEO Strategy

Follow this checklist to launch your website successfully.

Domain Name viability

There is something that comes even before you figure out your regional hosting, target market and translation. It is your business name feasibility in other countries.

Launching popular Dublin whiskey brand “Irish Mist” was an embarrassing mistake in Germany because ‘Mist’ means manure in German!

It’s important to test your product name, brand name and domain name in another country before you think of implementing SEO strategy. P&G had to change its brand “Mr. Clean” to Flash in Ireland as the name was already taken.

In case of such legal complications and cultural misfit you may want to consider buying a different domain name altogether.

Competitor Market Research

One reason why international SEO strategies fail is because they do not adapt to the different competitive landscape of the new market.

New regions will have new players who could be more competitive or more aggressive in their ad spends.

Besides, Google is not the primary search engine in some countries. China has ‘Baidu’ and Russia has ‘Yandex’ as the most popular search engines.

You will have to find how search results are ranked here and tweak your SEO strategy if you want to launch in these countries.

Looking at the country’s top competitors will give you good idea of what SEO strategy is working. Use tools such as SEMRush and Google Trends to find keywords others are using for successful SEO strategy.

Keyword Research

Keywords are crucial to your SEO strategy. Search terms and context change from country to country depending on products and services.

A search for flights will be more or less similar throughout the world. However, search terms for clothing may be completely different. Soft sport shoes are called ‘sneakers’ in the U.S. and ‘trainers’ in U.K.

This is why going into a new market may mean doing your keyword research all over again.
Never assume the same keyword will work in another country. You will also have to re-purpose your content keeping the new keywords in mind.

Localize Content

The next step after deciding on your keywords is to localize your content of your website.
This includes translation to language, change in currency, metric systems etc.

Translation is a major part of it although you may need to re-position your content in some cases. Remember that different audiences interpret words, messaging, and colors differently. It is advisable to involve local digital marketing firm or consultants to be sure that your brand message is coming across correctly.

Website Structuring

There are various ways to structure your international website. Here is a video of terms you must be familiar with before you consider your options:

Here are some additional terms to know for international SEO:

  • Country code top level domain (ccTLD) – these are country specific such as ‘.fr’ for France in ‘www.example.fr’
  • Sub-Directory- It is simply a folder on the site. ‘fr’ in ‘www.example.com/fr’
  • Sub Domain – A unique subset of the domain name. It appears just before the domain name. ‘www’ in ‘www.example.com’

As of 2018 the international SEO consultants recommend that you use Sub-directories to differentiate country specific sites. This is because Google does not treat this as a separate site and uses your root domain name authority to rank page.

Localization Signals

Google also provides webmasters with various tools to help it rank the right localized page for the intended audience. Here are some tools and signals that your web developer / web master must optimize targeting:

1. Hreflangs – This is an attribute (‘just a part of site code’) which tells Google how different versions of your site are related and which page is meant to be shown in a country / language search.

2. Geo-targeting Settings– You can also set your target country in the country targeting tool in Google Search Console. Select this for site versions that you want to restrict to one country only. Do not set this if you want to target multiple countries with the same site.

3. Backlinks – It would benefit your Germany targeted website if most of its backlinks came from German sites. Backlinks from all over the world could confuse the geo-targeting signals.

4. Server Locations– A server closer to your audience is a signal for targeting the region. This means using a server located in Germany will help to target a Germany target site.

Final Thoughts

We are lucky to live in an era where the whole world is open to businesses old and new. Launching your websites across the globe requires some thought and planning. Checking everything off this list will take your international SEO strategy closer to success.

How AI and Machine Learning Will Shape the Future of SEO

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Since the inception of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), it has been going through various transformations. It is evident that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning is going to change SEO soon.

AI is a system which is constantly evolving and changing. Nowadays, SEO prioritizes more on content, links and user experiences.

Machine learning

It is a form of artificial intelligence. Machine learning gives the opportunity to computers to learn without being programmed.

That means software programs will be able to change and grow accordingly when exposed to new data. This will make computers more adaptable to new data.

Machine learning is not a new concept. Even in 1990s, basic machine learning algorithms existed but with minimal usage of applying it.

From recently only, Google started making use of it in its searches and we started seeing rapid changes whenever there are new major updates.

RankBrain

RankBrain is Google’s new game changing algorithm introduced in conjunction with Hummingbird. It was introduced to help in identifying and interpreting the intent of the content and showing result pages which don’t include the words users searched for; but contains information related to the category or idea of the query.

RankBrain is designed in such a way to continuously determine and integrate new features on its own. Even though, you may not have noticed any major changes in searching; RankBrain is definitely doing an outstanding job.

On the billions of searches Google process everyday, 15% of those enquiries had never been processed before. From 2016, Google uses RankBrain to process each of them; where its resources are used to learn how to investigate all kind of queries including the rare ones.

To analyze how AI and machine learning will shape the future of SEO, we need to study about the history and current scenarios of SEO. Let’s take a look at those:

How SEO evolved?

When SEO started, it was very easy to rank top in a search engine as the results were based on keywords used. If you wanted a top position in search results, all you needed to do was use the phrase suitable for your title and the content and you are done! You were guaranteed one of the top most positions in search results.

The basic idea was that the number of times the keyword used was more on your page; your ranking will be higher.

But this also paved ways for some unethical search engine optimisation practices by various companies such as hiding keywords in the background of websites or putting keywords off screen.

Different types of tactics were developed for ranking high on search engine which led Google to change the algorithms used.

As Google had enough with the unethical SEO practices, Penguin 1.0 was introduced by Google on April 2012. It was developed to block various web spam tacticssuch as duplicate contents, stuffing of keywords, link schemes and also unwanted redirects.

Based on Google’s quality guidelines, Penguin decreased those sites’ ranking where it felt has violated the guidelines.

Current scenario of SEO

Various algorithms used by Google have helped a lot in kicking out spam filled sites. Also this scenario forced marketers to create high quality contents to get into search results.

In the past, if the SEO techniques were based on keywords; at present, it’s based on technical SEO, link building and speed of the page.

In the past, technical SEO only makes sure whether you use suitable keyword, but now it also focuses more on creating greater user experiences.

Now it includes various factors such as user behaviour, page speed and responsiveness of mobile pages.

Now Google focuses more on quality content rather than keyword stuffed contents. Engaging on high quality content will always decrease the ranking of low quality content even if it has high keyword density.

Future of SEO

The future of SEO will mostly rely on artificial intelligence rather than relying on a formula to create organic search result listing.

AI will be relying on machine learning, big data and user experience. Using AI and machine learning, search engines can learn from user behaviours and will be able to provide a list of contents users will most likely search for.

The following are the trends that are more likely to shape the future of SEO:

In 2015, Google has introduced RankBrain into its search algorithm. As said before, it has made keyword phrases irrelevant.

RankBrain is the third most important ranking factor in their search algorithms.

  • Understanding user intent

It will play an important part in ranking as major part of search results are based on artificial intelligence. Now, when marketers are thinking of creating content for their website, they need to think more than just keywords to hit the ranking on the search engine results page.

They also need to think what users will hope to find on your web page when they click from the results on search engines.

Marketers should be vigilant to get clues from search intent from their queries. There are four types of queries based on the user intent:

  • Navigational: A user looking for a specific information on a specific website
  • Informational: A user trying to get some information to read
  • Transactional: User trying to pay a bill, creating a new account or even trying to subscribe newsletters
  • Commercial: A user wishes to purchase or trying to get information to purchase later
  • Schema Markups

It is code or semantic vocabulary that you create on your webpage which helps the search engines to have a better understanding of your content.

This in turn enables search engines to give informative and accurate results for the users. It looks like Google will be making use of new schema markup supports for carousels, data feeds, job listings etc.

Impact of AI and machine learning in the future of SEO

Emergence of machine learning and artificial intelligence will definitely bright up the future of search engine optimization. In favour of SEO, AI not only delivers useful content to users but also makes sure of what fits to user’s need.

Rather than sending users to a page that has more likely content, machine learning AI system will send users to the page that not only answer their initial queries but also can answer follow up queries.

It is very evident that AI and machine learning are definitely going to revolutionize SEO in delivering a greater user experience.

So don’t even think of compromising the quality of content on your website because no one wants to get listed last on the search engine ranking.

If you are not sure in creating content that will hit the top rankings in SEO, you can definitely outsource them. Our team is happy to help you with. Learn more about our products and services.

How to Run a High Performing Growth Team

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Growth Manager is relatively a new role that was created by the start ups of Silicon Valley around year 2006-07. Although the official role of growth manager and growth team is new, the concept of growth itself is not new to companies.

Every company obviously wants growth and takes decision to grow their business every day. Growth team just removes the hurdles and discovers new ways to grow faster every day.

Companies such as Facebook, Uber and AirBnB have been using growth team to keep up their fast pace of growth. Check out the growth graph of Facebook below.

The company introduced growth team in 2008 and has been keeping a steady growth pace since then. This is also because growth and experimentation is a core value at Facebook.

Run a High Performing Growth Team

What is a Growth Team?

Traditionally, growing a company’s customer base has been the responsibility of marketing and sales. As new age start-ups found out, working in silos is not a good way to make breakthrough changes that accelerate a company’s growth.

Growth team is a cross-functional team of members who are charged with the responsibility of growth discovery and business innovation.

This is based on the realization that growth of a company is not just a function of marketing but also product innovation, better customer experience and so many other factors.

For this reason a growth team is typically made of growth manager, product manager, marketing expert, designer, engineer and data analyst.

This structure may change according to industry and stage of each company. The important thing is to have different perspectives in the team.

Working closely with other roles gives birth to game changing ideas that would never be possible with separated business functions.

What does Growth Team Do?

So what does a growth team do on a day to day basis?

The larger goal at any company will be to drive growth in business through innovation in product, delivery and marketing. The specific goals will depend from company. However, many companies prefer not having specific goals that limit creativity and out of box thinking.

The whole point of a growth team is to have unexpected results from the free flow of ideas between different functions.

As far as day- to- day activities are concerned, growth team is busy in brainstorming for new ideas, experimenting, A/B testing, data analysis, tweaking of products etc. Weekly meetings to analyze test results and implement what is working are also a part of the work.

How to build and Run a Growth Team?

According to Sean Ellis, founder of GrowthHackers.com, success of growth team depends on two things:

1. Team
2. Process

Let’s look at both of them closely to understand how to run a high performing growth team.

1. Team

As mentioned above growth team is made up of experts form marketing, product development, product design, customer support and data analyst.

The growth team could be one growth manager with other resources borrowed temporarily when required or a ten person team with full time dedication to growth team.

A good way to start is to have a growth manager and important roles such as marketing and product manager in the team. Designers, engineers and data analyst can be borrowed as and when required.

You can always hire full time resources in case the external resources are being used very frequently.

Bigger companies with elaborate hierarchy will require a more defined team structure with role authority and responsibilities specified.

The growth teams in bigger companies will also need full support of senior management. For example, growth team must be given the authority to use data from any team, run tests in any department and recommend changes as per results.

A start up with a small team will automatically have everyone working together and hence a better environment for a growth team.

In the end success of growth teams also depends on the company culture. Rapid learning and data driven testing must be a part of company DNA for growth teams to thrive.

2. Process

Even the best of teams need an effective process to deliver. Here is a process that Sean Ellis recommends and is also being followed by most of the successful companies in Silicon Valley.

Run a High Performing Growth Team

The process starts with coming up with ideas to test and looking at re-arranging things in your business that could impact growth. For example, the marketing manager may want to try targeting a completely different market segment.

After brainstorming on ideas the next step is to select the tests to run. Tests should be selected based on the ICE parameters.

Impact Potential – there is no use running a test that will increase traffic by 1% only
Ease of testing – Some tests are easy to set up whereas others take weeks. Choose tests that are worth the effort.

The next step is to launch your test, collect results and make sense of it. Learning from these results must be captured and shared with everyone. Changes that show positive result must be immediately implemented and measured for success.

Final Thoughts

Successful companies run three to ten experiments every week. Facebook ‘people you may know’ feature and Amazon’s product listings are all result of tests run by growth teams.

In today’s high paced world companies cannot afford to fall behind changes in the market. Growth teams allow you to learn about your product and market rapidly and continuously.