USA Today reported today that Yahoo! has purchased Tumblr for $1.1 billion. The funny thing is they promise “not to screw it up.”
People who have followed Yahoo! around for the past decade understand that comment. They have a bad habit of buying up properties only to close them down or do nothing with them. It’s a running joke in Internet marketing circles.
Joke aside, however, is it possible that Yahoo! could renege on its promise? It’s possible, but I don’t think it’s likely to happen because there’s a new CEO at the helm. Marissa Mayer, a former Googler, understands the value of high profile acquisitions. By virtue of her place at Google for so many years, she knows a good thing when she sees it. Now is her time to prove it.
Something caught my eye in the USA Today article, though.
Tumblr is also ahead of Yahoo in chasing after customers who use smartphones to access their sites, Mayer said. More than half of Tumblr’s users are using the mobile app and conduct an average of seven sessions per day, Mayer said.
This could be an opportunity for Yahoo! to capture the smartphone market. If so many Tumblr users are tuned into their smartphones, then it could be the place where Yahoo! shines in terms of future revenue and market share. Yahoo!’s advertising model is way less expensive than Google’s. The question is, how will they capitalize in their differences in the coming decade?
Twitter and Google got their very public divorce in 2011 after a brief flirtation period with realtime search. Since then, Google has deployed Google+ to mostly positive results. Twitter has been dating and looking for a replacement. Now, they’re in deep with Yahoo!
This is an interesting partnership for several reasons.
First and foremost, Yahoo! is not a search giant. They enjoy only 5% of the search market. Still, that’s a big market when you think about it. Yahoo! is still one of the most trafficked websites on the Web.
This deal looks to be better for Yahoo! than Twitter on the surface of things. I mean, what’s to be gained from this relationship for Twitter other than having additional capital to use for other things? Yahoo! is getting a big asset to beef up its SERPs.
The announcement indicates that Yahoo! is planning to beef up its content with tweets in the following areas: “sports, entertainment, music, and more.” It’s unclear how it will benefit regular search marketers.
Nevertheless, I expect that there will be ways for the run-of-the-mill search engine marketer to capitalize on this relationship – particularly if you are in one of the above-mentioned niches.
What do you think? Is this a good deal for Yahoo!? How about Twitter?
Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, posted a video on YouTube recently telling us what algorithm changes Google is planning to take this summer. There are 10 specific issues Google is planning to address. I’m going to take a stab at it and say the most important of these are:
The “major” Penguin update
“Going upstream” to address link spam
Authority boost
Soften impact of Panda on sites in the “gray area”
It’s hard to say whether the “more sophisticated link analysis” is going to be a big deal until it happens, but Matt Cutts seems excited about it. I don’t think it will be as big a deal as the authority-boosting algorithm change if Google does what the SEO community has suspected it will do.
Many of the changes being planned are attempts to get ahead of the link spam and SERP spam problem that has plagued Google since its first days of existence.
The rest of the changes will affect most of us but mostly for the positive.
Without further ado, I’ll let you watch the video and judge for yourself the value of these changes. Which ones look the most promising to you?
It doesn’t matter what kind of content you have, if it isn’t strong content, then your visitors will leave. Your content must do three things really well.
First, it’s got to keep your site visitors informed about key information related to your niche.
Secondly, it’s got to present you as a subject matter expert without making a sales pitch.
And thirdly, it’s got to interest your audience in wanting to learn more about your business.
Content that does these three things is really strong content.
Before I went out and started producing all kinds of content that nobody is going to care about, I’d start with coming up with some content goals. Your goals should state what you want your content to accomplish. You should also discuss the types of content you want to produce and how much of each kind of content you want to produce. Finally, your content strategy should discuss specific accomplishments you want to occur by a deadline date.
Strong content is made stronger with a strong Web strategy. You have to set goals for your business and follow through. Failing to do this almost ensures that your content will be spotty and lack quality.
Before you can provide quality services for your clients, you have to attract those clients. The way you do that in the 21st century is with powerful content.
Small business owners often have difficulty understanding who they’re competing against online. It’s much easier off line. If you run a local restaurant, then your competition are other local restaurants trying to attract the same demographic of customers. Online, it’s a bit more tricky than that.
For instance, let’s say you sell widgets. Is every widget maker in the world your competitor? Probably not. If there is a widget maker across the street from you in your home town, they’re likely not your competition online. If they don’t have a website, then you aren’t competing with them. If they do have a website, you could be targeting different key phrases.
There’s the key. Your competition online is everyone who is targeting the same search queries that you’re targeting. Even if those businesses aren’t in the same niche as you.
If you sell books, Amazon is your competition. If you sell computer peripherals, Amazon is your competition. And so is eBay. So is Wal-Mart. It is likely that those three top businesses are targeting some of the same product keyword phrases that you are targeting. If they rank higher than you in the search engines, then you have some work to do.
Online competition is all about rankings. There’s a good chance that you have competitors you’ve never heard of. Do your research. Find out who’s targeting the same key phrases you are. How do they rank? It’s your job to beat them.
Online marketing has increasingly grown since its inception in the early 1990s. For a long time, it was mainly constrained to search engines. Since 2005, however, social media has taken on a much greater importance. Instrumental in that growth have been such sites as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest.
YouTube is the most popular video hosting and sharing website. The other three have been main purveyors of powerful images.
Twitter is mostly for text, but savvy tweeters have found ways to make their images shine through the service. Facebook, however, has largely become a place where people share their images through their smartphones, giving rise to a whole new way of connecting with people. Pinterest is itself a phenomenon. Built entirely for sharing images, marketers have used it to embrace the challenge of sharing product images and driving traffic to their websites. It’s working.
People like to see what they are buying before they buy it. That’s why the J.C. Penney and Sears catalogs were so popular a few years back. Now, shopping catalogs appear online, and people are flocking to them.
Images are great marketing. They allow your customers to see what you have to offer, to get a view of what they are about to purchase. If people can see it, they can determine its value more clearly in their minds. And that’s why images are such powerful marketing tools.
The reason you decided to outsource your online marketing is because you don’t have the expertise to make it successful. Or, it could be that you don’t have to the time. Either way, you still need to be involved in the process.
Your Internet marketing consulting firm is going to rely on you for certain information. And they may rely on you to implement certain key aspects of your online strategy. You shouldn’t let them down.
Here are 5 specific ways some companies sabotage their own online marketing efforts.
They aren’t involved in the process – Don’t just hire an Internet marketing firm and never communicate with them. Instead, be a part of the process. Create an ongoing dialogue with your company and learn how the process works. The more you know about what they’re doing, the less likely you are to get into trouble that could cost you more in the long run.
They aren’t fully committed – Are you committed to the SEO, social media, or other marketing program your firm recommended? If not, let them know. Nothing can kill a campaign faster than the client not being fully committed.
They don’t review their keyword lists – If you don’t review your keyword lists, you’ll end up targeting keywords that won’t help your business. You’ll get the wrong kind of traffic and see fewer conversions. That will cost your business money and lower your ROI.
They don’t do what they say they’re going to do – If you promise your online marketing consultant that you’ll do something, follow through. They could be waiting on you before moving to the next stage. You’d expect the same from them, right?
They are slow to respond to requests – If your Internet marketing consultant requests something from your staff, there’s a reason for it. Don’t blow them off. Your input is a valuable part of the overall process.
Internet marketing is not a “set and forget” process. You have to be involved in every stage of the program. That doesn’t mean you have to spend all of your time looking over your consultant’s shoulder, but the more input you provide the more likely you’ll see positive results.
Content marketing is more than just creating content and spraying on the wall of the Internet in hopes that something will stick. You have to have a plan. But which plan is the best plan?
The best content marketing plan is the plan that works for you, but one plan to consider is what I call the “Hub and Spoke” content model.
With this plan, what you do is establish your home base – your hub. That should be your website with a blog. You want a blog because it’s the easiest and most effective way to keep your website up-to-date with fresh and unique content. But if you stop at the hub, then you’ll miss out on opportunities to connect with your audience and drive them back to your home base.
That’s why you need the spokes.
The spokes are your outlying bases. These are the posts you set up in social media circles, other blogs, forums, and where ever your target audience can be found. Don’t spread yourself too thin, but pick as many spokes as you can manage effectively. That could be three or four or it could be a dozen. It depends on your strengths, your budget in money and time, and what’s available in your niche.
You should plan to post something to each of your spokes at least once a day. Ideally, you’d stick around and interact with your audience in those outlying bases. Build your audience, engage with your audience, then send your audience back to your hub where you’ll take your relationship deeper.
Which is these three is most important: Authority, Branding, or Social Media?
I’m going to answer that question for you today, but before I do let’s discuss what each of these does for you.
Social Media
We’ll start with social media because, in my opinion, it doesn’t matter until you’ve established the other two.
Social media is a tool. It’s a means to an end, not an end to itself. If you have nothing to promote, then being on social media is just a presence. You can’t generate leads for a product that doesn’t exist. You can be an expert at building relationships through social media, but if you have no place to take those relationships once you’ve established them, then you’re doing all your work in vain.
Social media is an important marketing tool, but it follows from branding and authority. It doesn’t establish them.
Branding
Branding is the act of defining yourself, your company, or your product. Obviously, you have to have a product or business entity before you can brand it.
While branding is important for establishing your identity in the marketplace, there’s still got to be an element that precedes it. That element is what I’ll discuss next.
Authority
Authority is the voice behind your identity. In some ways, authority establishes your identity. In other ways, however, it communicates it.
You can use social media to present your authority, but your authority is the raw material of your company’s brand. Your identity in your niche derives from your authority. Before you can do anything else, you have to establish your authority. That is done by creating useful, valuable content that is consistent and earns respect among your peers.
Social media, branding, and authority are all important for online marketing, but the first two follow on the heels of your authority. Put first things first.
It doesn’t matter if you operate a local business trying to market yourself online or if your audience is global, online surveys can be a resourceful way to get feedback on your products and services, help you improve your delivery, and grow your business.
The first, and natural, benefit you get from online surveys is realtime reporting. You can see results as soon as they are available. Realtime metrics makes this possible, and if you need data fast to make a quick decision, then an online survey can be your rescue team.
A second benefit is you can often mine great data from your customers. Provide a couple of open-ended questions on your survey and see what people come up with.
If you want to roll out a new product or service and have several options to choose from, ask your customers or website visitors. There’s nothing worse than rolling out a new product that no one is interested in because you didn’t ask for their feedback before putting out the cost. Instead, present a survey and ask which product or service respondents are most interested in. Ask the right questions and you can get invaluable feedback before you spend the money.
Don’t forget to thank your survey respondents. The best “thank you” is a valuable freebie or discount. If you offer an incentive for taking your survey, you are more likely to get the feedback you desire.
