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  • The Seven Things You Must Do to Win at SEO

    Most non-developers are completely ignorant of, if not intimidated by SEO. Even some software developers won’t go near it. SEO has been called “black magic,” “dark art”and “pseudoscience,” most likely because if you happen to get it right, you win all the Googles! And everybody wants to win at being on the first page of the Google search engine results page (SERP).
    Well, when you’re done reading this post, you won’t be quite as frightened at the mention of “SEO” as you used to be, and you might even have the confidence to say, “I can do this!” because you actually can. Here are the seven things you have to do to win at SEO and get your website to the first page of the Google search engine results page.
    1. Get an exact match domain name.
    You might want to quit right here! But don’t. Google absolutely looks at your domain name in its ranking algorithm. If your domain name is di4jel7.net, Google has no idea what you do, nor how to rank you for any search for what you actually might do. Even if your tagline is perfectly descriptive, your domain name will count. I chose AtlantaTechBlogs.com because (a) it was available and (b) it describes exactly what we’re all about.
    Admittedly, it’s a bit long when you consider Buffer has declared the optimal length of a domain name to be 8 characters plus “.com” (also a ranking factor), but Google looks less at the length than the substance of your domain name. Note: The opposite is also true that if you get an exact match domain name like “googleseoguide.com” and it has nothing to do with SEO, Google will ding you pretty hard.
    2. Use Google Webmaster Tools.
    Google created tools to help you use Google. Yes, it’s like Cosmo Kramer being at the intersection of 1st and 1st, the nexus of the universe, but Google wants to index your content, so they show you how. GWT is very easy and gives you fantastic information about your site and how Google sees your site. You must use GWT for your website.
    3. Give Google a sitemap.
    If you use WordPress or any other content management service (CMS) software, there will be an option to produce a sitemap (usually sitemap.xml) just for Google. Do this, and submit it to Google from within Google Webmaster Tools. It’s very, very easy, and doing so is like inviting Google into your home (your website) and giving them the floor plans, blueprints, and furniture arrangements. That’s what Google likes.
    4. Make sure you’re mobile friendly.
    You’ve heard the term “mobilegeddon,” and once again, it’s Google stating that they will put a lot of weight on whether or not your website is mobile friendly. Fortunately, Google also provides a very simple tool to tell you in very short order if your site is mobile friendly or not. Go here, and use this tool. If your website is not mobile-friendly, you should fix that immediately.
    5. Use HTTPS / SSL certificate.
    Google has also recently announced that secure web browsing will be a high priority in its search engine rankings. Google has stated very clearly that this ranking signal will start slow and pick up speed as they do more and more research into web security. If your website is anything other than a blog, you should get an SSL certificate and implement https, period.
    6. Create new content every day.
    The highest ranking signal in Google’s algorithm is “quality content,” and there simply is no substitute. What does that content look like? The clearest type of content is your blog, but there’s also video, audio, images, and user-created content like forums, comments on blog posts, and curated content (via RSS or social widgets). Content is king with Google, and there’s no end to the types of content you can create, curate, and publish. But remember the other word that goes along with content, quality. Google knows high-quality content from junk, and they will rank accordingly.
    7. Be patient.
    You got this far, so don’t give up! The hardest part of ranking high in SEO is the time it takes for your website’s reputation within the Google algorithm to catch up to your amazing expectations (and hard work!). It took AtlantaTechBlogs.com more than 7 months to reach the first page when you search for “tech blogs,” but now it’s there. In the grand scheme of things, seven months is not very long to wait work. And, you won’t be waiting because you’ll be creating fantastic new content every day and the time will pass very quickly.
    Also, SearchEngineLand.com has a great illustration of their interpretation of Google’s ranking algorithm that they put into a form that we all remember from high school chemistry: the periodic table. It’s actually a great way to see just exactly how much weight is put on content.
    Learn more about SEO and other key topics in digital marketing.

  • Three Digital Bootcamps This Saturday at General Assembly

    I’ll be leading the second coming of the Digital Marketing Bootcamp this Saturday at General Assembly at Ponce City Market, while Vince Baskerville, head of UX at CallRail leads the UX Bootcamp and Chidi Afulezi, Co-Founder at aKoma, leads the Product Management Bootcamp.

    The Product Management class is 10-12 noon, while the DGM and UX bootcamps start at 10am and last until 4pm, and include a great lunch. The folks at GA always take care of their students (and instructors!).

    Here’s a few learning points that you’ll get in the DGM Bootcamp.

    • Everything starts with your brand. Digital marketing is still marketing, and the first place you start in marketing is your brand. Where do you start with a new brand? How do you re-start your brand if you’re going to re-start marketing? We’ll dig deep into those types of questions.
    • What does success look like? In order to know if you won, you have to keep score, and we do that by measuring everything, because if you don’t measure it, you cannot manage it. More importantly, you can’t change the result if you don’t know the result.
    • The purpose of marketing is to reach as many of the right people as possible, and bring the highest percentage of them down through your marketing funnel to make them customers, and preferrably repeat customers. How do you do that? That’s the magic of the marketing funnel.
    • In real estate, everything is about location, location, location. In digital, it’s all about content, content, content. We can make it, buy it, or earn it. Or we can do all three. How much budget do you have?
    • Nothing hurts like a date, so we’ll get you started using your very own marketing calendar. Your marketing calendar will be your best friend and your most hated enemy, because nothing hurts like a date.

    Are you ready? Join us this Saturday for a full day of fantastic fun and learning. We will laugh, learn, and love digital marketing. I look forward to leading this great class, and thanks to the folks at GA for the opportunity. Will you join me?

  • Advanced Social Media Strategy @ GA Saturday 1-4PM

    This Saturday, I’ll be teaching a half-day class at General Assembly at Ponce City Market. This class is Advanced Social Media Strategies, which I’ve taught a few times before, and it’s always a fun class to teach. The class will be from 1-4PM, and here’s a high level look at what we’ll be covering.

    • UNDERSTANDING of what exactly social media marketing is. Hint: it’s content marketing.
    • STRATEGY always begins with your brand, and then your audience. Everything else is window dressing.
    • CHANNELS or which social media networks (e.g., Facebook, Pinterest, etc.) you utilize are governed by one thing, and one thing only. Hint: it’s not the channel that you are most comfortable with. There are best practices for every channel, but everything is still so new that experiments are highly recommended.
    • ENGAGEMENT is more than what you think, and you can have full on engagement without ever making a single post.
    • CALENDAR is your best friend and worst enemy, because nothing hurts like a date, but everyone loves a plan once it’s in place.
    • MEASUREMENT is your only means of seeing if you were right in any or all of your experiments.

    If you’re using social media to market your business, and you need to take your game to the next level, this is the class for you.

    And, yes, this is a complete and total shameless plug for the class I’m teaching. Also, it’s going to be dreadfully hot on Saturday afternoon, so take advantage of a beautiful morning in Atlanta, and then spend the afternoon in air conditioned comfort, learning how you can make a big difference on Monday.

  • Digital Marketing 101

    A great shout out to the New York headquarters of General Assembly and their content marketing team. They host a great blog with tons of great content and contributors who really know their stuff. As one of the Digital Marketing instructors for GA Atlanta, I was asked to create a series of posts that sum up the 10-week DGM course (which we’ll be offering again in late summer / early fall), which we have called “Digital Marketing 101.”

    I really enjoyed creating this series, and it ultimately became the basis for the curriculum for the DGM Bootcamp that we conducted here in Atlanta on May 2. What a great class that was! We’ll be running that same all day bootcamp again on Saturday June 20.

    Below is a link to each post and a brief summary, so you can pick and choose which ones you want to dig into.

    • Developing your brand strategy – Everything starts with your brand. Your brand is everything you do. If you are not intentional about defining your brand, the market will define it for you. What are your core values? What is the problem you are solving? Who is your audience? What is your message, voice, and tone? All of these brand items and more must be addressed before the first tweet.
    • Measuring your Digital Marketing efforts – If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Simple as that. So setup to measure everything, then set your 3-5 KPIs, and revisit them on a monthly basis, because they will change. Use Google Analytics, Twitter Analytics, Facebook Insights, and your email provider’s analytics tools, all of which are free and powerful to show you what works, what doesn’t, and who you’re reaching.
    • Owned content marketing – Every piece of content you have or create – blog posts, social posts, email newsletters, email signatures, video, audio, images, photos…everything – is your owned content. And all of it should reflect your brand, because your brand is everything you do. Social media marketing (unpaid) is included here, because a social post is a piece of content that you created, and is a reflection of your brand.
    • Social and search paid advertising – Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, Linkedin Ads, and (soon) Instagram promoted posts are all very affordable, very easy to engage in, and very powerful and hyper-targeted. Learn how to use each with precision and within your budget.
    • Understanding the Digital Marketing funnel – Starting with your total reach, we walk you down through your click through rate (CTR), conversion rate, sales cycle, items per purchase, price, average order amount, and revenue. You should setup and measure the entire funnel for every campaign and your aggregate efforts. Measure your ROI based on the results of the marketing funnel.
    • Creating your digital marketing calendar – Nothing hurts like a date, so using something as simple as a Google Spreadsheet, put a name, date, and status on every tactical effort: blog posts, social posts, videos, podcasts, etc. Knowing what you’re going to be publishing in 23 days eliminates the dreaded “what are we gonna post today!” syndrome, and frees you up to make plans to win like Arby’s and Oreo.
    • And a bonus: Digital Marketing Glossary – a simple, straightforward, easy to understand glossary of 40 digital marketing terms you need to know.

    So dig in, and learn digital marketing from scratch. It’s not that difficult when you have boundaries and a construct in which to begin. Thanks again to GA for letting me create these posts and the DGM Bootcamp. I hope to see you on June 20!

  • Teaching Twice at GA {Adult} Summer Camp

    General Assembly Atlanta is kicking off their {Adult} Summer Camp this week, and I’m honored and excited to be leading two classes during this fun week of digital learning.
    Wednesday evening from 7-9PM, I’ll be leading Pitch Camp. I just recently wrote about what we’ve learned from nearly 2 years and over 500 pitches at Pitch Practice every Friday, so this Wednesday evening we’ll be digging deep into each of these lessons. There are so many different aspects of pitching for your brand – corporate or personal – and we will spend a good amount of time working through various types and lengths of pitches. Everything from this 2 hour seminar is something you can immediately apply to your business, whatever stage you may be in.
    Thursday afternoon from 1-4PM is “How to Measure Social Media ROI“, which is the basis for this blog post. This seminar is a great class for those who are working in social media and need to gain a solid understanding of the costs of social media and how to attribute revenue to social media activities. With the advent and continuous improvement and focus on social selling, it’s very important to understand how social media plays in the marketing funnel, and that’s where we will be spending most of our time.
    I hope to see many of you on Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon for Pitch Camp and How to Measure Social Media ROI, along with some of the other classes that GA Atlanta has going on this week at Summer Camp.

  • Become a Digital Marketing Warrior Using the OODA Loop

    Cross-posted from the General Assembly blog.

    The OODA loop was created as part of a military strategy developed by USAF Colonel John Boyd. Col. Boyd proposed that agility in any military situation involving humans would defeat raw power if the fighters continually used the OODA loop. We can do the same in our digital marketing efforts.

    The OODA loop applies to digital marketing because we are able to constantly experiment and get quick, accurate results using the digital analytics tools that we all have at our disposal. Here’s a simple walk-through of how one can create and implement the OODA loop into digital marketing efforts.
    1. Observe: what are your current assets in content, channels, reach; where are your customers; what types of content are they consuming; how are they acquiring products/services?
    2. Orient: how do your assets and abilities match up to the needs and location of your prospect/customer base?
    3. Decide: create an experiment with a definition of success and a clear measurement.
    4. Act: Conduct the experiment for a short time interval.
    Then you go back to the start. The OODA loop is a never-ending cycle of experimentation and optimization.
    Here’s a simplified example of how we use the OODA loop to learn.
    1. Observe: You have a video of your CMO delivering a presentation at an industry conference.
    2. Orient: She knocked the speech out of the park, but there were only 175 attendees at the conference, and your market audience is tens of thousands of C-Suite executives.
    3. Decide: You could easily share this video on YouTube, and promote the video in your next blog post and email newsletter.
    4. Act: You post the video on YouTube, and write a short blog post, which will also be used as text in the next newsletter.
    Now you begin again.
    1. Observe: Your audience loves the video, and the video gets more than 1000 views on Youtube; however, many people comment that there are some sections of the video that are not clear and that the audio was not perfect in a couple of spots.
    2. Orient: It’s about $1 per minute to get audio and video transcribed using a service like Speechpad, so getting the transcript of your CMO’s speech would be less than $20.
    3. Decide: Get the video transcribed, and turn the text into a series of blog posts.
    4. Act: Create a campaign based on your CMO’s speech, featuring the video supported by the corresponding blog posts.
    Remember, the OODA loop is a loop, meaning it never stops, and is repeated often. The beauty of digital marketing is the speed at which we can conduct experiments until we discover tactics that work really well and tactics that we should avoid. Having a construct like the OODA loop helps you work through those experiments in rapid succession.

  • Three Marketing Analytics Tools You Should Already Be Using

    Cross-posted from the General Assembly Blog
    If you’re reading this post, you are most likely in or preparing to get into digital marketing. In the world of digital marketing, it’s all about the numbers. We conduct experiments, and measure them against our goals using the metrics and analytics tools that are provided for us to use to learn and get better at our craft.
    There are many tools out there, some free and some paid, but the easiest tools to access, use, and learn from are completely free. These are analytics tools that you should be using today.

    Google Analytics
    Google Analytics is a free service available from Google, because Google wants us to know what’s happening on our web and mobile properties so we can see the impact of great marketing, and more importantly to them, great advertising buys. It’s relatively simple to begin using Google Analytics, especially if you are using the most popular blogging platforms. We’ve provided simple tutorials for how to setup your Google Analytics account, and how to connect Google Analytics to WordPress, Blogger, and Tumblr. Google Analytics is supported very well, and you can learn just about any task you need to complete on the Google Analytics Youtube channel.

    The very simplest data you will get from Google Analytics is an overview of who visited your web site, where they came from (both geographically and from what link), how long they spent on your site, and what pages they visited. It only gets better, deeper, and more thorough from there. If you are operating a web property, Google Analytics is the very first tool you should activate, learn, and use on a daily basis.

    Facebook Insights
    Facebook has 1.4 billion users, and while marketing a business on Facebook is constantly changing, there is no debating the power of reaching any fraction of 1.4 billion people globally. Once you setup your organization’s page and get to just 30 likes, you’ll have access to Facebook Insights, which is their analytics tool. If you’re marketing anywhere, you want to see the data to measure your effectiveness, and when you’re marketing on Facebook, they provide a great free tool for you to do just that.

    Insights lets you easily see your page’s overall performance (likes), learn which posts have the most engagement (clicks, likes, comments, and shares), and also see data about when your audience is on Facebook. From just these insights, you’ll instantly be more knowledgeable about how and when to post to get the most engagement on your page. In addition, you’ll be able to see, for each individual post, what the “reach” of that post is. Facebook’s organic reach – the number of people who naturally see your post in their timeline – has been the subject of much discussion lately, but you’ll be able to see for yourself exactly how many people saw and engaged with each of your posts.

    Twitter Analytics
    Twitter offers a similar, and just as free, tool for all users, which they call Twitter Analytics. There is no bar to reach in order to get access to Twitter Analytics. Any active user can instantly get access to all of Twitter’s analytics data.

    When you start using Twitter analytics, you’ll quickly realize that some tweets get lots of attention, and others just don’t. That’s why we digital marketers conduct lots of experiments, so that we will get to know what our audience tends to engage with and what our audience doesn’t care about.

    Twitter analytics gives you a full view into each and every tweet, as well as your overall performance, biggest follower, top tweet, top mention, and top media tweet. For your aggregate performance, you’ll see your total engagement rate, meaning what percentage of your followers and your followers’ followers saw your tweet and engaged by favoriting, retweeting, replying, or clicking on your link or your embedded media.

    Each of these analytics tools is crucial to your daily knowledge of how your tactical marketing efforts are performing. Attempting to engage in digital marketing without these tools and other analytics and measurements is like flying a really fast airplane with no instruments. You can guess where you are and how you’re doing, but you’ll never know for sure without the numbers.

  • How to Measure Social Media ROI

    Cross-posted from the General Assembly blog.
    Using social media to market your business is something every business should do; however, despite what some may think, social media is not free. There’s at least a minimum investment that you have to make, even if it’s just your time, existing knowledge, and ability. When there’s an investment in the business, it becomes necessary to measure the return you’re getting on that investment, your ROI.
    But how do you measure the ROI of social media? Well, the math is the same as any other ROI calculation:
    ROI = (RETURN – INVESTMENT) / INVESTMENT
    The math, the calculation, is easy. Defining “return” and “investment” are the hard parts. Here are 7 variables to consider when measuring, proving, and defending the ROI on your social media investment.
    1. CONTENT IS KING
    What content will you be sharing via your social media channels? Kabbage, the largest online small business lender, recommends, “First and foremost, you should have a blog on your site where you create compelling content.” Buffer, the social media sharing software tool maker,
    Buffer, the social media sharing software tool maker, backed up Kabbage’s statement with this: “Ninety percent of our social media updates are based on content we’ve written on the blog.” OK, so you’ll need a blog, which will cost something – usually someone’s time – to set up, and then someone must create regular compelling content for that blog, either an employee, freelance writer, or an agency. Content is an investment.
    2. CHANNEL YOUR FOCUS
    What social media channels will you use to share this content? You may have to do some research to determine where your target audience is, and they may be on more than one social channel. The research to learn this fact will take someone’s time. There’s another investment.
    3. START WITH A GOAL
    Every organization has goals, and the goals for social media should flow from within the organization’s goals and brand. If you have goals, that means you’re doing this particular exercise for a reason, and that reason is not just “so we’ll be present on social media.” Your goals for social media should support the organization’s business goals, which are usually focused on revenue, costs, brand, and product. If you don’t have goals, then you really need to ask yourself why you are being paid to handle social media for your company. You are an investment.
    4. TRACK YOUR CAMPAIGNS
    If you don’t track it, you can’t measure it. If you don’t measure it, you cannot manage or change it, which is to say you cannot improve it. To track social media, by which I mean track how your social media followers are interacting with your content, you should use Google URL Builder and some form of URL shortener (goo.gl, bit.ly, ow.ly, etc., or a custom URL shortener). Google URL Builder enables you to use UTM parameters to perfectly and clearly identify exactly where the link was and why it was there when your audience clicked it and where your audience landed when they clicked on your URL. You’ll need to store these URLs in a simple spreadsheet or in your CRM for each campaign.
    5. MEASURE YOUR EFFORTS
    Each campaign should have its own ROI. Measuring involves tracking each campaign from conception to completion, from blog content to social media post to click through to lead generation to customer conversion to revenue. Each campaign should be tracked all the way through the marketing funnel or the AARRR process. Google Analytics is free, but it will take time to learn and master, and it will cost you something – time, favors, or money – to get your website properly setup to track and measure every engagement in every campaign within Google Analytics. Tools likeBuffer enable you to automatically add campaign tracking to every post.
    6. ASSIGN VALUE
    Over time, you will be able to establish and assign a value to each social media interaction, such as a follower on Twitter. For example, if you have 1,000 followers, and you send out a tweet with a clear call to action (CTA), you will earn a certain amount of impressions organically for that tweet. Some percentage of your audience will click on your CTA. Some percentage who clicked on the CTA will become leads, and some leads will convert into sales. The math (from this example) is easy: the value of a follower is derived by dividing the revenue from a specific campaign by the number of followers. This is a simple example, but it works for establishing a basic value of one follower. In other words, that value is the most you should be willing to pay to earn one follower if you invest in a paid ad on Twitter to boost followers.
    7. DRIVE REVENUE
    Measure the revenue that can be attributed to leads generated by this specific campaign, which you tracked via your long UTM parameter URL that you built with the Google URL builder, which were then captured by your CRM, from which you can run a simple report that shows total conversions and revenue. This is your return and you should measure it for each individual campaign.
    8. UNDERSTAND YOUR COSTS
    Or “investment” since we’re talking “ROI”. You must know your costs, which include everything above (except revenue), and including “value” if you invested in any social media ads to boost fans and follower numbers. Be transparent in your organization about which costs you are including in your calculation, and make sure you get complete buy-in, so you’re not sandbagging but also not being too conservative in your numbers.
    Do you have all these things? Good! Now you’re ready to do that simple math:
    ROI = (RETURN – INVESTMENT) / INVESTMENT
    Warning: you should only calculate your ROI on social media investment if you want to get a larger budget for next year, because when done right, social media driven by compelling content will win.

  • More Speaking & Teaching In May

    We had so much fun last Saturday offering the Digital Marketing Bootcamp at General Assembly that we’re going to do it again in June! It really was a great class, thanks to the 14 future digital marketers who attended and shared their visions for what they want to do in digital. We’ll be offering that same Saturday class again on Saturday June 20 from 10-4pm.

    But before we get to that, here’s what’s coming up in the next two weeks:

    • Advanced Social Media Strategy – Wednesday May 13th from 1-4pm – Social media marketing is an extension of content marketing. In this half day class, we’ll walk you through practical best practices for each social marketing channel, what not to do on each channel, and how to really engage your customers using simple techniques that anyone can practice on a daily basis.
    • Blogging Bootcamp – Need to blog? Silly question. Everyone needs to blog, especially startups and small businesses. But not everyone has a WordPress developer at their disposal. The good news is, you don’t need one. In this Saturday bootcamp, you’ll start with nothing, and leave with your own domain, a fully functioning WordPress blog with all the necessary plugins, a content strategy just for you, and your first three blog posts ready to go.
    • FailCon – You read that right: FAIL con. A conference about failure, because we all fail, have failed, are failing, or will fail at something. If you’re not failing, you’re not growing. I’ve failed a lot, so this one’s going to be just a little more personal than a bootcamp. If you’re up for some heartbreak, some joy, and some fun, please attend FailCon Atlanta on May 21st.
    I hope to see you at one or more of these events. They’re all going to be lots of fun. Thanks to GA for hosting all these great events.

  • The [DGM] Breakfast Club

    No, this was not us this morning, but I did spend an entire Saturday with 14 future digital marketers at General Assembly.

    The genesis of this offering was the 10-week Digital Marketing class that I led from Jan – Mar of this year. In the final session before Demo Night, we did a complete review of the entire course in a little less than three hours. That went so well that we decided to create a one-day “DGM bootcamp”, and that’s what we delivered today.

    First, thanks to everyone who attended and participated. It was a great group, with lots of unique marketing challenges, opportunities, and questions, and I thoroughly enjoyed leading this unique offering.

    We broke down the 10-week DGM class into 6 parts, walking through the nuts and bolts of each section, as listed below.

    1. Brand creation – starts with your core values; brand is everything you do; we used Atlanta Tech Village as an example of intentional branding & culture, and showed the Simon Sinek TED Talk on “Start with Why”.
    2. Measuring & metrics – measure everything, focus on 2-3 KPIs, analytics tools; we introduced the Google URL Builder as a very simple way to track each click in each campaign to have understanding vs. having only knowledge.
    3. The marketing funnel – reach –> CTR –> landing page –> conversion –> revenue –> loyalty loop; we watched the short Dave McClure (500Startups) video on “AARRR!“
    4. Owned content marketing – everything we produce is content; social marketing is content; we looked at Salesloft’s success in content marketing to build their company from nothing to $6M+ ARR in 2 years.
    5. Paid content marketing – Adwords and ads on social media channels are inexpensive, highly targeted, and powerful; we investigated how simple it is to advertise on Google Adwords, Twitter, and Facebook to conduct fast, cheap experiments to determine where your audience is and the best use of your digital marketing ad dollar.
    6. Marketing calendar – nothing hurts like a date and nothing helps like a plan; a plan implemented with a marketing & content calendar like the Insightpool freebie gives you freedom to win like Arby’s and Oreo and countless others.

    GA served up Chipotle for lunch, and we had a couple of minutes left for Q&A discussion. I think this offering is a great way for new marketers to get a solid overview of the digital realm, for those considering a career in digital marketing to see what they’re getting into, and for managers and leaders to understand the basic ideas and functionality behind digital strategy.

    I look forward to leading this class again on Saturday June 20.