locally.co.uk

Tag: Blogging

  • Adaptive Content – the buzzword for 2015?

    We’ve looked at brandscaping – the process of partnering with a non-competitor to your business, but one that you can form a professional bond with; you both pool your resources, financial and otherwise, and head up a joint marketing campaign. You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.

    And then we came across this new phrase – adaptive content. You’ll either love it or think it’s a cop out, so let’s take a meander through the concept…

    The idea of behind adaptive content

    At this early stage, Copyblogger thinks that adaptive content doesn’t have definition as such, more of a rolling spectrum of what it can be. However, that is pretty useless for you (and us) and so here is Locally’s definition of adaptive content…

    You create a piece of content, such as a blog but, instead of just leaving it where you put it, on your website, you publish it everywhere, by adapting it so its fits all these other places.

    Great, you think, we do that… yes but, we bet you write a new blog every time. Right?

    With this concept you create a blog, publish it everywhere, pulling in readership from across social media and anywhere else where you can grab eye ball time.

    But, instead of then writing a fresh one, you reduce, reuse and recycle current content and keep spreading this marvellous content.

    Think about the amount of time you spend in a given working day creating content; from updating webpages to writing new blogs. For some people, words trip off the typewriter and yet, for many of us, they are laboured over; changed and edited a hundred times before we press the publish button. Why waste all this effort?

    For example, the recent blog we created on how to counteract negative online reviews would look quite good sitting in an infographic… and then, we may look at some of the information, chop some of it, add to some of it, give more detail and authorities links and then create a presentation posting it on Slideshare… and, each and every time, ‘selling’ each piece across every online platform that we choose to frequent.

    It’s about getting more for your dollar, more from your posts by hitting the eyeballs of a wider audience with the same content that looks and feels different because not all of your audience will find your website; they need to help to discover it. To do that, you need to tell as many people as possible, in different places that your content exists.

    Simple, then?!

    Mmmm yes sort of, but things never are that simple are they because it isn’t just about rewriting an old blog and giving it a new title.

    Analytics – what worked?

    And this is where analytics comes in; you know – the stuff that creates data that we all love and understand.

    Which blogs did you readers and consumers like? Which tweet pulled them to your blog or website? What kind if statuses grabbed eyeball time?

    There is no point rehashing the same thing in a different format if it wasn’t the blog or article topic that grabbed attention.

    We’ve also said that as consumers, we are an impatient lot and technology has done marvellous things for us. One thing it has done is heightened our expectations. We expect to able to do everything from out PC, mobile and tablet. Including buying the things we want, when we want and how we want.

    Being more adaptive

    This type of adaptive content goes places; just lobbing a blog post at your website and hoping for the best won’t work. It is a drop in the ocean but, before you all shrink from the challenge you need to know one thing: this is not because the quality is bad.

    In fact, really brilliant content can sink without a trace; it is the fact that it is not used enough across all the platforms that are available to it. Some brands are starting to realise the impact of adaptive content and there are 5 elements that need to be included to make the best use of content:

    Reusable – content is used across a range of platforms and in different formats
    Structured – small bite-sized content works well across different devices
    Simple – the format should be sophisticated and simple, not overly difficult to read or use
    Metadata – the secret, techy bit that describes what the content is about and it needs to be accurate
    A content management system (CMS) – that allows you to do all of the above!

    Hence, we end back at the reduce, reuse and recycle system of adapting your content to fit across all the platforms you use with your business

    Adaptive content is about re-using the content you have, but adding a spark of something extra to it.

    Thus adaptive content is a two pronged attack –

    • Not reinventing the wheel every time but reusing, recycling and recycling or recharging content
    • Linking content which the behaviour of your clients or customers (they came via Facebook, so why can’t they create an account with your via Facebook?)

    Where does a small, online and local business start with this adaptive content process?

    Take a look over your content and, if your have the data, identify what people liked or commented on and, using a different approach, re-use this material. And then publish it again across all your platforms and see what happens…

    When you use your content to its FULL POTENTIAL, it is truly adaptive content; how do you adapt your content?

  • Harnessing the power behind each and every blog post

    How knowing when your audience accesses blogs and social media is paramount in ensuring that your blog posts have the maximum reach and impact. Do you know the best time to post?

    An effective company blog

    For many years now, companies from small and medium sized enterprises, local companies to massive global concerns have been blogging. Posting a variety of interesting, fun and informative articles on their website on a frequent and consistent basis can see a website crawl from the bottom slot to the top spot. With the right content, it can maintain this position.

    However, to maintain an effective company blog is THE most time-intensive activity you can do. Which is why there is a thriving ‘sub’ sector ghost writers, bloggers and creators of content that post articles on websites of companies across the world.

    The first part of the equation

    If you ARE blogging, this is great news! Studies by the Content Marketing Institute show that 72% of business to customers (B2C) business are blogging, as are 76% of business who sell to other businesses (B2B). These studies also show that established and start-up business are using increasingly sophisticated websites and social media  to reach people, from webinars to podcasts, video to guest posting on other websites.

    Research has shown, time and time again that customers love an informative blog post…

    IF they can FIND it.

    The Challenge

    But, there seems to be other challenges that lurk in the shadows… which of these can you relate to?

    • Lack of time for creating and posting blogs or articles
    • Producing the right kind of content that engages customers and your audience
    • Producing and posting enough content
    • Finding the right person to create the content

    And so, it is easy to see that from the starting point of any blog – the idea – to putting pen to paper, proof reading it and posting it, is a huge investment of time, effort, energy and in some cases, money.

    But, there is one part of this equation that is missing – maximising the reach of your blog post.

    Generating ideas, writing the posts, posting them etc. all takes valuable time and, as a result, many companies are honest enough to say that the quality quite often drops in the face of so many adverse conditions.

    And when you have expended huge amounts of time and energy (and maybe a decent slice of your marketing budget too), you need these blog posts to work as hard as they possibly can for you. Simply creating a link and tweeting it, updating your status, pinning it etc. is not enough.

    Get the statistics

    www.trackmaven.com collect, analyse and number crunch all kinds of data that is useful for ‘digital marketers’. Before you think this is a separate section of society, they are basically referring to YOU! Any company, established or start up, large, small, micro or medium sized who posts content online for others to access, to inform them and to amuse them is a ‘digital marketer’.

    So you have invested up-front.

    The blogs are written.

    They are posted on your website.

    WHEN do you use social media to advertise them? WHEN is the optimum time to post them so that they work their socks off for your business? WHEN is the time that your customers or audience will engage with them?

    Track Mavern generated some fabulous analysis that holds valuable lessons for us all.

    Many business owners work odd, unsocial hours and our customers may not necessarily buy online from a company during the hours of 9 to 5. The internet may be slowly changing this but, overall, we still run our physical lives – the school run, the shopping, everything else in fact – on a 9 to 5 basis.

    It is a routine, a habit that is ingrained in the majority of us from a very early age, from days that were pre-Internet and when there were 4 channels on mainstream TV, all of which stopped broadcasting on a daily basis at 10pm, that the majority of tasks needing to be accomplished in any given day happens between 9 and 5.

    What their research found was that during the week, Monday to Friday, give or take a few exceptions in blogging and posting frequency, the majority of posts were made between the hours of 9 and 5… and yet, customers – that is, social media users – were accessing websites, social media platforms etc. in the evening.

    In other words, what is happening is that businesses are posting articles and blogs at times that suit them, but they are ‘missing’ their audience as they are not searching online or ‘surfin’ the web’ until later in the evening.

    5 minutes in Internet Land is a long time, just like they say a week is a long time in politics. Your delicious posts may be simply missing your key or intended audience as once it is published, by the time they log on 2 hours later, the online landscape is awash with posts and articles.

    Social shares

    The whole point of this articles is about showing you how – or at least, making you aware of how – social shares of your blog posts can be maximised.

    We have talked in previous posts about social signals; there are conflicting views about how effective, if at all, these social signals are to a website but, if they are not that important, why does every company, from the smallest local, microbrewery to the largest global conglomerate covet these social shares, likes etc.?

    If nothing else they are psychologically important; someone is liking your work. Like an artist who needs praise and critiquing of their work, your blog posts are your shop window on the web. And when people like your work, you radiate a soft, but radiant glow of success.

    And so, in a nutshell, what are the findings…?

    Avoid the highly competitive online sharing and posting times of mid-week and during the week day, 9 to 5 posting slot. Instead, look to post…

    • At the weekend – Saturday was the optimum day for shares across social media of all kinds of blog posts
    • Leisure time – in Greenwich Mean Time, it was found that social shares of posts increased steadily between 6pm and midnight
    • European time – it was also found that shares increased between 4 and 6am GMT, as is the time European businesses tend to be awake and functioning, clearly an important statistic if your company is looking for a global or European reach.

    What the research did show was the Internet landscape is rarely quiet; even the early hours shows significant likes and shares across a range of platforms. Using an online scheduling app can also help hit these high spots for maximum reach and www.bufferapp.com have also published a range of statistics and data on when is the best time to post on Facebook and across Twitter.

    (*SPOILER ALERT: according to their research, the optimum day to post on Facebook is Thursday – early afternoon, just after lunch if you really want to pin point the best time – followed by Sunday and then Friday…)

    When is the best time for you to post your articles?

  • Creating trust with a blog

    What does your blog really say about you?

    Wherever you turn on the wonderful world of the web, you will be told/encouraged/advised/bamboozled (*delete as appropriate) into including a blog on your website.

    In terms of content generation, creating that all-important authority on the web, this is a great idea. Providing that you regularly create and publish high quality, relevant content with some delicious links to authoritative, relevant websites, you are on to a sure-fire winner (slap thigh, whistle a tune and sit back, basking in the delight of knowing you HAVE done something right…).

    You can feel it coming, can’t you? The word that throws everything is to disarray, the word that dashes a thousand dreams and renders your blogs useless (that’s an over exaggeration for dramatic affect)…

    BUT…

    Does your blog build trust in your company?

    Every blog should be written in a way that shows the customer that you can be trusted as a seller, an online retailer and that what you say is ‘right’.

    NB This confirms something we have been talking about for years… and that is the fact that your blogs, for all the content marketing speak out there, MUST BE WRITTEN FOR YOUR CUSTOMER and not a search engine.

    To help you out with your blogs, we have created a list of 10 words or phrases you could use to enhance your blogs, and make them a more trusted source. Blogs need to have

    • an authoritative tone
    • be consistent in the number of times blogs are published (if you haven’t blogged since November 2009, you may be in a spot of bother)
    • high quality
    • with social signals
    • and also have a good reputation.

    A bit like the blog here at Locally… (blows own trumpet).

    Are they worth it?

    It seems the whole world is blogging and this should tell you something. Content experts often talk about how wonderful content needs to be and, as part of this argument, blogs add credibility to you, your website and business.

    In fact, don’t just take our word for it. Jeff Bullas, a blogging master conducted a survey around what customers thought about blogs that they came across and how they informed their decision to buy, or not.

    To the question “do blogs add credibility to a website?” an astounding 68% of respondents said yes, they did. That’s a BIG proportion of people who use the signals given off by a blog as a positive endorsement of the company, their products and services. It seems if you are not blogging regularly, keeping your online, local business website ‘alive’, then customers may be navigating away.

    When Jeff Bullas looked in to this a little deeper, he found that the factors that added this all-important credibility to a blog were quality content, followed by regularly published content. There were other factor too, from a good social media presence to good design. So you see, blogs are important after all…

    Good blogging words

    If you are writing a blog that is part of your online marketing and selling strategy, then your blogs must have some delightful words sprinkled through them that sub-consciously send signals to your potential consumer…

    Here is Locally’ 10 ‘sprinkle them through your blog’ words or phrases:

    1. Fair

    Ah yes, being fair. We like that. We like to think that by being or playing fair, we have the moral high ground. We love it and your consumers love it. From sayings such as ‘one thing you can say about so-and-so, she is fair’ to ‘fair pricing policy’, by using this word and applying it to your online, local business, you are showing people just how lovely and fair your business is.

    1. Fair treatment

    This is listed as a separate phrase as, according to research, ‘fair treatment’ is very ‘user-centred’. This has an important psychological impact. If people think that you will treat them fairly as consumers, they are more likely to gravitate to your business.

    1. Care/caring

    Yup, an online purchase still needs to have the ability to show consumers you care about them and their purchase. And so, weaving this word into a blog can go a long way in showing the human face to your business. All too often, when things go wrong with a purchase, we find that the company we are trying to contact has an outsourced helpline to foreign climes and it is impossible to make any form of meaningful contact. Dispel these fears with a blog that tells people how much you care… anything from their purchase to the environment is perfectly acceptable.

    1. Trust

    A bit obvious? You would have thought so but apparently being told that they can trust you as an online retailer WILL create the feeling of trust, so use it! Little word, big impact.

    1. Quality

    A great buzzword but one that works. We all like to think that the product we are buying is the highest quality but this is about creating the feeling of quality with a blog, not just saying the word. For example, is it error-free? Does it say what it needs to, clearly? Is it enjoyable? Does the design of the website also ooze quality…? (If not, call us… everything we do is QUALITY driven).

    1. Competent/competency

    A longer word but one that spells out just how much your business can be trusted as you know what you are doing and you do it well, all the time.

    1. Change/changing

    Now, on one hand you would think that this would set alarm bells ringing but, according to various studies, when a company tells its customers it is changing (for the better) – and why – people like it. It shows that you care and want their custom, as well as their experience of buying from you, to be the best that it possibly can be.

    1. Always

    Ah yes, another great word that shows you are committed as a company to do the best for your customers, from always offering the best price to always producing great blogs.

    1. Never

    We would always counsel caution when it comes to using negative words and ‘never’ is one of those words BUT, you can turn this word around to give it a positive connotation. Why not try ‘never being beaten on price’ or ‘never compromising on quality’?

    1. Privacy/private

    People’s information is sensitive. They like to know that their data is kept safe, guarded and private. Sometimes, telling people this is a good way forward.

    And so…

    The next time you blog, think about what it is your blog is ‘saying’ in both an obvious and sub-conscious way. Is it oozing trust? Is it inviting customers to trust you, your business and the content they are reading…?

    When was the last time you blogged?

  • Shall we blog?

    Eddi_the_Jack_Russell_Terrier_puppyLike an over-excited puppy, you created a blog on your website because that is what brings traffic in (all the research said so…) and you started with gusto, creating blogs that you faithfully published every week and then…

    (whistles, looks at watch)

    (carries on whistling, admires hair in mirror)

    …nothing.

    (Disappointed sigh)

    Why as a local, online business, you should be blogging

    It’s all about content. It’s all about thriving and surviving in a competitive market place and even though you think that your local customers are just fab, you all need to sharing your eggs around your basket. Relying on one market for business, local or otherwise, is the ‘putting your eggs in one basket’ thing, hence where there are fluctuations in the market place they hit you hard, their impact magnified. Being in business is all about looking for the next thing, improving, creating and selling whether that is a local butchers with award winning sausages or a local foot clinic.

    Your customers’ tastes change as they influenced by marketing, opinion shifts and budget constraints; they are busy people too so booking online for a foot treatment is great – unless they don’t find your website. We live in a 24 hour world, where we spend the majority of our time in front of different screens, from our smartphone to our tablet, then mooching around on the laptop for the next big thing.

    But, people search the web differently too. They may think they have an ingrowing toe nail but how do you know? They hop on the web and do some research and guess what? Google (or any search engine) will note their location and you, wrote a blog or two on the perils on ingrowing toe nails. Google likes the look of your blog, as people have been reading it and liking it or sharing and guess what? Your website bobs up in front of their very eyes and, better still, they can book online and you have a new customers booked in for a consultation on Wednesday afternoon at 4.30pm.

    Imagined if that happened once or twice a week; that’s 8 customers a month that you may not have had before…

    “So I’m blogging for survival then?”

    Sounds a bit melodramatic but yes and, well… er, no.

    There are, the last time someone counted 164 million blogs – but that number has probably fluctuated up and down several zillion times since the man in the back room started his tally chart.

    The vast majority of these blogs will have less than a 1,000 visitors a month and represent a disaster zone. Why?

    You blog for months and months, seemingly for little reward and it is human nature that if you slog your guts out for months and months on something you find stressful and difficult, another tiny little thing to add to your already busy day, you will stop doing it. Fact.

    How to avoiding failing at blogging…

    Creating content it is GREAT! But do you market it?

    If you don’t, you are not promoting yourself or your business hence you will not extend your readership passed you mum and your sister. Their ‘liking’ or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook is great, but you need more likes and shares and comments and readers…. So promote it!

    And don’t forget it is not just promoting new blogs; promote older ones too. If there is an article in the news on the importance of cutting your toenails properly and you wrote a piece on it a few months, promote your blog with some well-placed hashtags.

    You have permission to jump on the bandwagon.

    You will then find, possibly, that people will read some of your other podiatry diatribes on the ingrowing toenails, bunions and athlete’s foot and learn something; people like being informed, hence your blog starts to gain authority with an increased following.

    The next step is to start linking your blog with other authoritative sites; the ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours approach’. Again, this is all about building a reader base so why not try your hand submitting a ‘guest post’ to another site, with a lovely link to your own blog? And then, ask someone to do the same for you – they write a post for your site, and your share links and readers back and forth.

    Avoid: plagiarism and replicas

    What does not go down well is nicking stuff from other people or simply writing a blog that says the same as everyone else’s. This can be a bit stuff as there is only so many ways and times you can take about a subject and, if it is current and in the news headlines then a blog on it simply adds you voice to many others.

    Nicking someone’s stuff that they have possibly spent hours crafting is not only morally slightly-dodgy, but can earn you a penalty point from Google and other search engines. Before you know, your blog and website has disappeared without a trace and it is very hard to get it back in Google’s good books again.

    The lesson is thus…

    • Creating content and posting it regular is great – once a week is fab
    • Promoting it via your social media platforms is also great
    • Keep promoting older blogs too
    • Advanced bloggers also look to guests posts and links with like-minded blogs and websites
    • Keep doing it!

  • Storm in a tea cup or something you need to take note of?

    Web Design GoogleThe “Google Authorship is Over!” headline and what it means for your website

    Here at Locally, we like to keep all our online, local businesses up to date with the goings on of search engines and how they will, or will not, select your website for in their rankings. And one announcement that seems to have thrown the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons – in other words, it caught the tech world off-guard – is Google’s announcement that Google Authorship is over.

    Whilst those ‘in the know’ all sucked in their breath, tweeting and emailing their surprise to one another, us lesser mortals have been wondering if this has any implication for us, for our constant, yet brave struggle to outrank the big bodies when it comes to search engine ranking and whether we need to really do anything…

    Scratching our heads, we take to the Internet and research the whole thing, only to end up more confused. Some may say that is has no implications but others may be more cautious… in this post, we attempt to explain the whole episode and what, if anything, it means for your online business.

    Let’s start at the beginning: what is Google Authorship exactly?

    Acronym alert! SERPs means search engine results pages: the further up the SERPs you are, the increase in website traffic you should get (as you are more visible)

    You will have noticed across a whole range of websites the G+ button, the Google plus account that some people and businesses have. If you have a G+ account, you will have a profile and circles of people, from family to friends and circles for acquaintances/colleagues/business associates… in fact, you can create your own circles as you wish.

    When you find something you want to share, you can share it on this platform and send it around everyone, or a selected few; in other words, G+ is a sharing platform.

    As part of this platform, you could also tell Google you were an authoritative writer, blogger or sharer of information… in other words, you ‘owned’ an ‘authorship’ (however, as we will see, this was not quite all that it was cracked up to be…)

    Hence, whenever you search on Google for ‘search engine optimisation’, at one time the top few results in SERPs would be authors you would eventually become familiar with as they are seen as an authority on the subject. What would spring up is their photo and some of the blogs they had written on the issue.

    Now, clearly, it is Google’s ‘baby’ and so some of us opted for a G+ account; you can customise your profile, add a delightful thumbnail photo that shows your best side (but there were rules on this – the photo had to be good quality, not a cartoon or any other kind of graphic; this was all about authority, don’t forget).

    And it is these photos and additional information that has, it seems, been creeping up the ranking in previous years. But many of us were simply unaware that there were additional steps to getting the very best out of this account; this has all changed now…

    … BUT, it only worked if the person verified their accounts (told Google they owned it) and only 12% of people using G+ are thought to have done this. On researching the topic of Google Authorship, we looked into how authors verified ownership of their G+ accounts and it seems it was not easy…

    In a nutshell, Google authorship was a nod to the reliable, trustworthy information, blog etc. that searchers would find useful.

    And…?

    Well, Google has stopped placing weight behind these authorship accounts and have effectively removed them as signal to its algorithm. The effects seem to have been immediate, whereas you would have seen results with photos or graphics, you will now not see these.

    BUT, it seems that companies/business/people with G+ accounts are still figuring in these rankings. Which seems a bit odd but look on it as a minor tweak which could affect some people, but for others it may not make too much of a difference.

    Why is Google getting rid of ‘authorship’?

    Well it seems, according to Google that it was not giving its users what they wanted; it was distracting; and they’ve done their research too. By not having the results high in SERPs (some people say that authorship was removed in October 2013…), it did not reduce traffic to sites nor reduce the number of clicks on ads.

    In other words, no one really noticed. Google have since said it was an ‘experiment’ that last three years and they have been tweaking it along the way.

    As a result, Google have released results from 3 years of data collection that show it was not working how they envisaged it would because…

    • Those that did set up Authorship did not do so properly – in other words, profiles were completed
    • Users did not find any value in it

    Right, what do you need to do?

    Well, it seems that this announcement has caught people off guard and wondering if it is all a ploy by Google to get people on to G+ as they are using these results in SERPs; some people see it as an aggressive tactic to get people to use G+ as most people doubly-serious about their rankings will do anything to get the edge.

    What not to do – panic!

    This is not a massive change to search engine optimisation for some people but, it may be worth looking at Google+ as another platform to add to your website as a means of being able to share your content, offers, business, ideas etc., especially if you do not have an account yet. SEO experts are currently leaning towards this idea simply because one thing that has been noted is that blog posts by G+ authors are coming out near the top of the rankings.

    If you have a G+ profile, you may need to make sure you are using it but, Google are currently telling us that the results are not much different when it comes to SERPs it is always worth keeping an eye on any changes that this search engine creates – after all, it is used billions of times every day across the globe.

    The basics have not changed: quality content, regularly updated on your website and plenty of social signals via your chosen social media platforms – it is still a marathon, not a sprint.

    Coming up next: top tips on how to not be punished by Google and then we are off to the Cloud…

  • WordPress Blogging tips – issues with layout & format

    As part of the support we provide our clients we get a vast array of questions relating to WordPress, but there is one that keep cropping up which if you don’t know how to resolve can be very frustrating, so we thought we’d write a few words explaining how to fix it.

    If you find that the bullet points are out of alignment you can’t get any breaks in between your paragraphs & that you cut and pasted from a word document (which most do)  this is more than likely your problem.

    It’s simple to fix; > delete the blog post content > cut and paste again from word with one difference > Click on the ‘w’  paste into the box and insert.

    Doing this will strip out all the unnecessary word press code which will mangle your blog post.

    WordPress Blog format problem

    Pasting into WordPress from Word