Internet Marketing Lecture 3

1. Internet MarketingLecture 3 Building an engaged audience

2. I’ve written some posts… now what? Grow your audience…!

3. Getting your message further afield… Facebook Linked In Twitter

4. Getting the message further afield… • Use instant messenger tools to interact with your audience in real time: have conversations, ask them for their opinions, ideas and feedback… • Connect your blog to Twitter – use a plug-in or Twitterfeed or tweet it from the blog. Use hashtags. • Have a YouTube account if you are uploading video content. • Facebook – create a blog page and paste in links or use your personal feed. Use instant messenger. • Other social media accounts relating to country, topic, pictures, etc. • Use Google+ to spread the word…

5. Understand your audience • Use Google Analytics to look at page views, visitor engagement, where visitors came from, how traffic is growing… Search traffic = natural and paid search (Google Adwords) Referral traffic = traffic from other sites with direct links to your site Direct traffic = using bookmarks, non-tracked referrals from social media, type-ins Other = affiliates, display ads, email campaigns.

6. Let the search engines find you! • SEO (search engine optimisation) is the process of explaining to search engines that your site is relevant to specific queries which are defined by the keywords people use. (White & Biggs, 2012) • Google Adwords Keyword Planner helps you to understand the best search terms. • Aims to get the highest ranking in the natural listings of the search engine. • Use links from other sites that are indexed to help the ‘bots’ find you. • Paid search marketing – PPC (pay per click)

7. Task SEO Task • You provide a ‘professional service’ in a country of your choice and would like to promote this using SEO. • Go to Google Adwords Keyword Planner tool and set a geographical target and work out the most effective search terms to market your particular service.

8. On-page Optimisation • If a search term is popular and it is covered by many websites, it may be hard to find your content. • Facilitate spiders’ crawling through your content. • For off-page optimisation, Google treats websites more favourably that have lots of links to them. This post is about RETAIL, BRANDING, STARBUCKS and CUSTOMER VALUE if you’re interested?

9. Online PR • Leverage the networking effect! • Identify companies and individuals with a strong online following. • Online reputation management. • Press releases and influencing media owners. • Brand engagement activities: polls, user-generated content, audience research. • Buzz-building: campaigns/events, share content, viral marketing, etc

10. Task Online PR Disaster • Daisy Smith, Senior Stylist at Future Lengths has asked for your advice on how to deal with this online PR issue. The owner of the salon was particularly abusive towards a customer who complained online. • http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2599680/Kindly-f-PRIZE-Go-psych-manager-SLAG-Astonishing-foul-mouthed-rant-hairdresser-customer-posted-negative-review-Facebook-botched-extensions.html

11. The Internet Marketing Strategy • Segmentation-Targeting-Positioning – who are we targeting? How are we positioning ourselves against the competition and what’s our value-add (online value proposition)? • What do our potential customers want? Have we found this out? • How will they use and move through our site? • What kinds of different customers do we have? • How will I get them to stay on my site and come back for more?

12. Define social media communications strategy • Plan – management of social media marketing, reputation management and defining the content strategy • Reach – how to increase reach of content • Act – encouraging interaction and participation within own blogs, sites and social media • Convert – transition from customer brand engagement with social media to generating more leads / sales • Engage – ongoing communications with consumers. Source: Chaffey & Smith, 2013

13. Key Principles for Content Marketing • Content must have intrinsic value • Understand what content customers do value • Content marketing strategy may completely or partially replace traditional advertising and marketing • Get your customers to participate • Make it easy to buy! Source: Pulizzi & Barrett, 2010

14. Leibtag’s Valuable Content Checklist • 5 benchmarks for designing valuable content: • Findable • Readable • Understandable • Actionable • Shareable • http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2011/04/valuable-content-checklist/

15. Content Campfires?! Source: Content Rules, Anne Handley 2010

16. Major Content Formats • Video – animated, how to guides… • E-books / guides – PDFs, white papers… • Podcast • Webinars – recorded / streamed • Infographics / images – explain a concept or statistics • Q&As / FAQs • News updates • Opinion pieces • Longer expert guidance pieces • Surveys and polls Adapted from Chaffey & Smith, 2013

17. Content Marketing Strategy • Outline your strategy (STP, OVP, etc) and plan for the content on your blog, considering the type of content, the amount of each element and the subject matter.

18. How is online content read? • Skimming & scanning • F pattern of reading text online • Web users spend 80% of time above the fold • 69% read the left but only 30% the right • Won’t read more than 20% during average visit • High literacy = scanning • Low literacy = ploughing Source: http://nichcy.org/dissemination/tools/webwriting/reading

19. Grabbing attention • Get to the point… • Most important information first… • Capture your audience’s attention and fulfil their needs! • Keep headers to the left margin • Don’t centre text! • Make text easy to scan • Use bold headings • Use bullets (especially unusual ones)

20. Who are you writing for? • Your Target Audience • The Subject Matter • Your Objectives • The Context & Style • The Literacy Level • The Level of Expertise