In News

A Reality Check For Twitter

November 18, 2019 No Comments

Summary

Twitter posted accelerating user growth in Q3 2019.
Some advertising headwinds caused the company to miss on revenue this quarter and lower guidance for Q4 2019.
I remain neutral on Twitter, but am following closely.

Twitter (TWTR) reported a significant miss on Thursday for Q3 2019 that sent shares tumbling 20% in one day. While the user metrics were strong with accelerating monetizable Daily Active users, the company missed on revenue that flowed through to a big miss on the bottom line. The company’s management lowered guidance as well for the rest of the year, after some product issues that weighed on advertising revenue.

Q3 2019 Earnings

Twitter had been having a solid 2019, posting numbers in the first half of the year that encouraged investors to buy the stock all the way up to $45 per share in early September. In my last article on the company, I wrote about how the company was performing well, but I wanted to see greater revenue growth combined with improving margins before starting a position. Q2 2019 saw Twitter post a 9% operating margin, down from 11% in Q2 2018 on revenue growth of 18%. Now in Q3 the company posted an operating margin of 5%, down from 12% in Q3 2018 on revenue growth of just 9% year over year.

Source: Sproutsocial Blog

Simply put, with revenue growth this small, it will take a long time before the company gets anywhere close to margins like Facebook (FB), which reports Q3 2019 numbers next week. That, combined with Facebook’s consistent 25% or greater revenue growth and lower valuation, caused me to state in my previous article on Twitter that Facebook was a better stock to own for growth investors, an opinion I continue to hold today.

Twitter’s revenue this quarter was impacted by some bugs that affected the company’s ability to target ads and share data, as well as greater than expected ad seasonality in July and August. September was strong, however. Management seemed to remain positive on the Q3 conference call but stated that these problems with advertising products would continue to impact revenue going into Q4 2019. Specifically, the problems were related to Twitter continuing to use data from users that had declined to give Twitter permission. The company lowered Q4 guidance, as a result, to revenue between $940M and $1.01B (compared to $1.06B consensus), with operating margin expected to come in between $130M and $170M.

Source: Form 8-K

Conclusion

While I’m bullish on Twitter’s business model, the company evidently still has some problems to work through. The low margins relative to peers leave little room for error, as seen this quarter. The stock remains risky going into Q4, but it also leaves room for a surprise to the upside. Q4 is seasonally the strongest quarter for Twitter and online advertising companies.

Twitter is now cheaper on a price to forward sales basis after the 20% drop compared to Facebook and Snap (SNAP), but also continues to see the lowest revenue growth. The company did, however, post higher user growth than Snap in Q3 2019.

Twitter remains a stock I’m watching closely going into 2020. This is possibly a better time to buy it than a few months ago, but it still isn’t turning the user growth into revenue growth that I need to see to justify buying this stock. In time, I’m expecting revenue growth to increase solid double-digit percentages if it can keep posting user growth like this, but the company isn’t there yet.

With companies like Facebook and even Pinterest (PINS) growing revenue much faster, I continue to prefer those stocks over Twitter. Ultimately, I remain neutral on Twitter and will be watching revenue growth rates, operating margins, and user growth through Q4 and into 2020.

By Lukas Wolgram

Sourced from Seeking Alpha

In News

Personal Branding Trends That Should Be on Your Radar in 2020

November 18, 2019 No Comments

By John Hall.

Every entrepreneur knows that personal branding is a necessity, but many fail to do it right.

Many startups today are founded by a technologist or an engineer. Every idea that sparks a new company seems to come from deep knowledge of how to create a new product or process — or improve upon something already in existence. While these types of founders build good products and solve real customer problems, they often discount the importance of brand.

Personal branding is now your résumé. It’s how you define yourself if you’re looking to build a reputation as an expert, get a side gig or even find a new job. It’s what you leverage if you’re looking to start something on your own, whether it’s a social media following or a career as a speaker.

Recently, there’s been talk about how “showing your work” has become an expert’s calling card. For example, a lot of colleges and universities now use Instructure’s tool Portfolium to help students track their accomplishments and create a real-time digital portfolio of their best work and core skills. This is built into Canvas, a learning management platform that many schools use as their online learning system.

That’s absolutely a form of personal branding. For most of us, it hasn’t been that organized. It’s great to see, and it will put Gen Z in the best possible position to succeed. And the fact that educators now see that as vital means we entrepreneurs should as well.

The founders of the future are going to be that much more prepared. Right now, they might be learning a skill to get a job — but soon, some will be using that skill to create a company. And branding is important for both startups and founders.

Branding for a Startup

In a sea of competition, a strong brand helps a startup get noticed. Most sales decisions are made prior to ever talking with a salesperson. What your website says and how it looks, the compelling points of view you’re sharing in your thought leadership, your engagement with your audience via social channels, your reputation with your customer base — these are all brand elements that make the difference between success and failure.

Startups have a lot of audiences: customers, investors, competitors, influencers. A well-built brand speaks to all of them and gathers momentum. In the early phase, being seen as weak by any of those audiences can impact your future growth trajectory.

For a lot of startups, technology is table stakes. Other digital interactions have led customers to expect their experiences to be outstanding. It’s the brand side of the house that ends up determining why one startup is chosen over another.

“One mistake I often hear from technical founders is that brand is all fluff. Brand is your point of view within your industry. Brand is how you engage with your audience, both online and off,” said Kyle York, CEO and managing partner of York IE. “Brand is not fluff. Your brand is your fingerprint. You leave it behind on everything you touch, and you don’t exist without it.”

York helped build a successful company, Dyn, which was acquired by Oracle for $600 million. After three years at Oracle, he and other Dyn alums decided to go back to using their go-to-market experience to help the entrepreneurs and startups they invest in build stronger brands. They were recently featured in TechCrunch discussing a new model for how early-stage companies get funded — and branding is a key component of that strategy. The stronger the brand, the more options a startup creates for itself.

Branding for a Founder

A founder is three things:

1. The first salesperson: Having a strong brand makes it easier to get meetings with prospects.

2. The head recruiter: If you have a strong brand and reputation, the best people will want to work with you. Hiring the best will help your company scale.

3. The fundraiser: So much of funding is based on your network. How can you tap into a network if you don’t have one?

If you try to build your personal brand the day you launch your startup, it’s too late. You need to invest in building your brand for years before you ever get the entrepreneurial itch. It’s a conscious decision in preparation, just as much as R&D or market research might be. And even if you decide not to start a business, a strong personal brand will still help you in your current career. Consider Elon Musk, who’s well known for his innovative mind beyond Tesla and SpaceX — his brand outpaces that of even his companies.

“One of my core values is playing the long game. Think of every tweet, blog or LinkedIn profile update as an investment in your future,” said York. “You won’t have a blue checkmark tomorrow, if ever. But you will be projecting how much you care and the type of person and worker you are. That reputation is priceless, and it transcends whatever current role you’re in.”

Think about what you want to be known as the go-to person for — that’s likely where your expertise lies and where you’re most likely to want to build something later. Build your social media around your thoughts in that area (and your philosophy of business in general). Launch a blog to share your insights. Write a guest column here and there. Speak to groups, whether it’s on a local or national stage. Investing in yourself will pay dividends.

Make an Effort to Share Knowledge

Sharing knowledge can be a great way to slowly gain a reputation for being the best. I recently appeared on The Business Method and had several people reach out to say the information I shared helped them with a current problem. This is just one of the many podcasts or platforms you can utilize to share your expertise and build trust with the people you help (or hope to).

Some people worry that sharing their knowledge is equivalent to giving away the “secret sauce” or rendering themselves obsolete. But knowledge hoarding doesn’t boost your profile — it reinforces the idea that you’re only willing to share your expertise if it benefits you. That’s a quick way to ensure nobody invests in you the way you’ve invested in yourself.

Being able to give and also promote expertise is a great way to continuously elevate your brand. We gravitate toward what we believe based on our perceptions. Take a look at how the world sees you, and consider how you can make the world see more.

Feature Image Credit: Businesspeople working on their branding. Getty Images

By John Hall

Sourced from Inc.

In News

Twitter promises ad product improvements as ‘seasonality’ and IT bugs hamper Q3 revenues

November 15, 2019 No Comments

By Katie Deighton

Twitter execs have outlined how they plan to bolster its ad business after missing Q3 revenue targets. It blamed the weak growth on bugs affecting its mobile product, which further hindered ad sales already weakened by the “seasonality” of a slow summer.

Revenues for Q3 were up 9% year-on-year to $824m. The US reported a rise of 10% to $465m, while international growth was slower at 7%, totalling $358m.

Sales fell short of the expected $874m. Growth slowed substantially since Q3 2018, when sales grew 32% year-on-year.

The results, which sent shared in the tech firm tumbling 20%, were explained by advertising “headwinds” driven predominantly by bugs in the company’s targeting system. In a letter to shareholders, Twitter explained the issue had affected its ability to target ads and share data with its measurement and ad partners.

The bugs reduced year-over-year revenue growth by at least 3% in Q3, Twitter wrote in a letter to shareholders.

Ned Segal, Twitter’s chief financial officer, explained the glitches in the legacy mobile application promotion (MAP) product meant information regarding users’ device settings was shared with Twitter for targeting purposes, even if they had asked it not to be.

“When we discovered that … we turned off the setting,” he said on an earnings call this morning (24 October). “That has a negative impact on revenue because it’s one less input you’ve got when you’re figuring out what ads to show people.”

Additionally, a bug meant Twitter was passing on data to measurement companies from users who explicitly asked not to be monitored in such a fashion.

“We stopped doing that, and although we are working on remediation, there isn’t remediation yet in place,” said Segal. “So, the effects of that will continue into Q4.”

Twitter recently faced criticism after it reported some users’ private email addresses and phone numbers had been exposed to its advertisers in a breach of its targeting system.

Aside from the technical issues, organic advertiser interest in Twitter dropped in the quarter, too. “Greater-than-expected” seasonality issues began in July and continued into August, due to what the company dubbed a “relatively lighter slate of big events” taking place when compared to the same period in 2018.

The sales slowdown occurred as Twitter continued to push its offer to advertisers on its global ‘#StartWithThem’ roadshow. The platform has a goal to double its ad business by 2020 and become advertisers’ most recommended partner.

Today, Segal outlined the company’s immediate and long term plans to bring more advertiser dollars into the business and appease Wall Street qualms.

He first stated the company will continue to actively market its platform to big advertisers. By way of example, he observed that while 38 of this year’s Super Bowl advertisers were on the social network at the same time as the game, there were eight “to whom we still need to make the case”.

“[We’re also] continuing to improve relevance, to continue to come out with better ad formats and improve versions of our existing ad formats,” he said.

He added Twitter could do a better job in monetizing smaller advertisers – an area it has not “prioritized” in the past.

“We’ve got to do the engineering work and make the case to them better than we are today, and right now we’re chosen to prioritize other things first,” he said.

Finally, he noted the Twitter ads experience could also be improved through better educating clients and working more closely with advertisers on their paid-for content.

“There’s also opportunity without selling one more ad to put better copy in the ads that exist today,” he said. “And we still have half of our video ads being served at longer than 15 seconds. As you can imagine on a service like Twitter, the completion rates for video ads that are six seconds are much better.

“That, along with continuing to improve relevance, better formats and moving down the funnel in terms of the types of advertising that’s available … are all things that ought to help us.”

Feature Image Credit: Twitter launched a consumer campaign in recent months / Jonathan Hokklo

By Katie Deighton

Sourced from The Drum

In News

Take These 15 Practical Steps To Start Building A Positive Personal Brand Online

November 15, 2019 No Comments

Sourced from Forbes

Whether you’re applying for jobs or seeking new business opportunities, building a positive personal online brand is key. Potential employers and clients may be researching your social media to get a sense of who you are, so it’s just good practice to present yourself in the best possible light.

The members of Forbes Coaches Council know the importance of developing your personal brand on the internet, and how to use that brand to stand out to your target audience. Below, this group of experts shared 15 steps you can take to build a personal brand that’s both positive and consistent.

1. Audit Your Existing Digital Presence

Conducting a social media audit is a key step in social branding. You should be auditing past posts to ensure that there are no questionable posts. Sites like BrandYourself.com can support this. You should also Google yourself and keywords associated with your brand and/or business to ensure that you come up in searches and the sites you want to highlight (LinkedIn, personal website) appear first. – Jasmine Briggs, Creatively Inspired Coaching

2. Bring Your Personality To It

Building your personal brand means showing who you are, not just what you know. Getting known for something that’s in your area of expertise that can transfer across channels is a strong start. But don’t forget to bring your personality to it. Consider your passions outside of work and the blend of skills and talents that make you stand out and integrate that into your feed. – Sheila Goldgrab, Goldgrab Leadership Coaching

3. Aim To Contribute

Social media just amplifies the brand of “you” that anyone who meets you in person would also experience. My advice is to aim to be a contributor. Ask, “What can I contribute today that will lift a spirit, let someone laugh, give hope to someone feeling hopeless or provide a practical tool that can benefit someone right away?” Authenticity comes through in social media as it does in person. – April Armstrong, AHA Insight

4. Know Your Strengths

When we know our strengths and come from that purview, we show up more authentically. We cannot be all things to all people or situations, and showing up from our genuine selves is unbeatable. This can be seen in our narratives, articles that we choose to highlight and people and companies we follow. – Sandy Lewis, Positive Shift Coaching

5. Go Where Your Prospects Are

To build a positive online brand, you have to be out there on the social media platforms your prospects and clients are using. Establish both personal and company profiles and pages, following best practices, and be sure they reflect your brand and feel engaging and authentic. Then post relevant content you think is interesting. Avoid being sales-y or over-focusing on your products and/or services. Deliver value. – Jennifer Wilson, ConvergenceCoaching, LLC

6. Use A Purposeful Filter

Everything you do on social media contributes to your personal online brand. With that in mind, be very deliberate and purposeful about every tweet, like, post, snap and blog. Ask yourself before you hit enter: Will this contribute in a positive way to my brand? Does this add or detract from the legacy I am creating? Would I want someone to read this about me 12 months from now? – Paul N Larsen, Find Your VOICE as a Leader ™

7. Identify And Communicate The Problem You Solve

A crucial part of personal branding is getting clear about the problem you can solve. If you don’t know, invest the time to figure it out. Don’t use generic fluff words to describe your strengths. Instead, get clear about one or two things you are dominant in and communicate that with consistency throughout your brand. Own your expertise and realize that it is what’s valuable to the market. – Jean Ali Muhlbauer, People at Work

8. Learn How To Engage In Difficult Online Conversations

When you become “internet active,” your opinions might trigger other people. No social media is free from haters. It is easy to lose composure and reply in a way that doesn’t promote your brand. Engage in strong discussions carefully. Try to label their emotions using inoffensive phrases like “It looks like you might…,” “It sounds like you would like to…,” and just kill them with your kindness. – Inga Bielińska, Inga Bielinska Coaching Consulting Mentoring

9. Request Quality References And Referrals

Have others toot your horn. Most of my business is based on referrals from current or previous clients. In my contracts, we require a video and written reference and quality referrals. We often repurpose the video testimonials when we want to promote a particular program. We have our clients post the reference on LinkedIn and speak directly to their experience and why others should work with us. – A. Margot Brisky, ELDA4U, LLC

10. Tell Stories That Help Other People

The world needs more people who openly talk about their ups, downs, successes, lessons learned and funny stories from their business and life. Don’t post to brag and to look impressive on social media. Don’t spread any gossip and negativity. Be human and create content to help other people. Make it about them. Remember: One post can change a person’s life. This should make you show up daily. – Dr. Natalia Wiechowski, Think Natalia

11. Find A Mentor

One practical step is to find a role model that demonstrates a positive personal online brand. Look through your contacts and see who is doing this well. Reach out to that person and ask them to advise you while you develop your social media presence and brand. Recently I’ve been working with a group of colleagues where we help each other evaluate our brand messages and how these show up online. – Cindy Stack, Whole-Life Leader

12. Run Your Posts Through The ‘Job Interview’ Test

If you’re in a job interview or phone screening call, would you feel free to communicate the content of your social media to the job interviewer? Typically what I post on social media I would have no problem communicating in a job interview. If you have to edit your word choices for the purpose of the job interview, then you may need to reconsider your word choices for social media. – Vince Morales, CPC, MCC, Zoe Transformation Coaching & Consulting

13. Know Your Narrative

What are the topics or themes you want to be known for? What kind of ideas or work really represent you —especially the “you” you’re striving to become? Human beings crave clarity, and to help others see you as you want to be seen, you need to know your own narrative, or story line, first. Then, only post, share and comment on items that are consistent with your narrative—resist the rest. – Darcy Eikenberg, PCC, Red Cape Revolution

14. Think About The Emotions You Want Your Audience To Feel

When branding oneself, particularly to be attractive to employers, consider the feeling you want them to experience when they see you on social. Not all emotions are created equal and that’s a good thing. Do you want them to have felt a sense that you are confident, warm, quick-witted, organized or any one of hundreds of other feelings? Start there and back into what you present and post! – Michele Davenport, MOSAIC COACHING SOLUTIONS

15. Create A Real Brand With A Tagline, Mission And Look

Think of yourself as a company. What is your mission (what you are up to)? What is your tagline (how you want to be remembered)? What does your brand look like (graphic representation)? Have your personal business card, social media headers, resume and email signature all match this message and look. – Christy Geiger MCC, CPCC, Synergy Strategies Coaching & Training

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Connecting the Dots Between Product and Branding

November 15, 2019 No Comments

By Douglas Montague

How rethinking brand expression influenced Microsoft products and vice versa

Imagine a sheet of paper with a couple dozen tiny dots spread out on it. Their placement doesn’t seem random. You can sort of make out a shape, but there’s no obvious way they go together.

Now imagine a sheet with identical tiny dots, only each one is numbered. The dots may still look like a jumble, but the numbers indicate how they link together. You draw a line from one to two, two to three, and so on. Oh look, you’ve drawn a seal balancing a beach ball on its nose! Gold star.

Working for a big company sometimes feels like staring at thousands of dots and having little idea how to connect them. I’ve been with Microsoft since 1995, but I don’t think I understood how these dots could work together until 2015.

That’s when we changed our marketing strategy. Before, the product design team would build and design the experiences, and the marketing team layered a brand identity on top to sell it. With the 2015 change, branding was no longer a “layer” of marketing disconnected from the product experience. Instead, branding became directly tied to and influenced by the product. And maybe, just maybe, the brand could influence the product in return.

In the heavily siloed world of giant corporations, that was practically crazy talk.

One dot at a time

Simplicity became our mission. We first needed to build brand principles and the brand story (in other words, why we exist in the world). Then, we’d figure out how the principles and story inform the product experience. We theorized that connecting experience and expression among product, brand identity, and marketing, and extrapolating those principles into meaningful guidance across the company, would create a better experience for customers.

Numbers started to appear next to those scattered dots staring me in the face. The trick was getting other people to see them, too.

To show people the value of brand creative teams in marketing, we needed to have a lot more conversations with product design. First, we needed to understand what they were building and where they were headed. Second, we needed to create a visual identity closely tied to the product’s visual language, which a worldwide marketing organization could later implement.

Easy enough, right?

Thankfully, our senior leadership encourages us to work together for the greater good of the company, pushing away our own egos as much as possible to bring success to all. We call this One Microsoft. Particularly in our area, acting as One Microsoft is a necessity: we have a tiny creative team and can’t succeed without the assistance of other great creatives, so we need to understand each other’s business and create together. When it works, it’s magical.

Case study: transforming Microsoft Office

Rebranding Office was one such magical example. For the first time, we looked to product teams for cues to lift the brand identity and create simple, scalable guidance. We worked directly with product design, an approach that we’d take later with Azure and HoloLens 2.

Our approach had five steps:

Create the brand story working across brand strategy, engineering, and marketing, including a deep dive into product design principles and future principles.
Conduct an end-to-end visual audit of the entire customer journey.
Identify visual patterns and cues from the product, and from the parent Microsoft brand, to create a visual identity for the brand expression.
Build creative principles and theories around color, illustration, typography, and photography, then stress test across all communication touchpoints in the marketing funnel.
Create a simple design system that designers could scale worldwide without much creative oversight.

Three large black boards with print outs of the current Office branding. — Boards from one of the many visual audits done in 2016 for Microsoft Office.

Our audit concluded that Office needed a more sophisticated yet simplified visual identity connecting our product experience and marketing communications. The marketing teams were doing their best; they followed the Microsoft brand guide for reference, but the broadness of the guide and visual system made it difficult to implement. We pared down the brand system in the name of simplicity.

Office brand guideline examples including personality, colors, and font.

Pages from the Microsoft Office Brand Guidelines.

Our collaboration effectively linked the pre-purchase marketing communications to the post-purchase ones. For example, we used our marketing expertise at engaging users to improve the first-usage experience (for example, the “how to” videos that introduced users to Office online). In that space, the product team focused more on UX, not the kind of branded moments within the product where you can tell a story.

The fifth step in that process was perhaps the toughest, simply because of scale. Several hundred marketers worked on Office, each with their own budget, each choosing their own creative. Because of that, and their concern that we’d just scold them for doing things wrong, none of their work went through a creative review process. We not only had to change how people worked, but we also had to assure them we had their best interests in mind.

In time, people from other teams understood that we weren’t focused solely on creative, that we wanted to help them meet their business objectives and performance metrics. Again, it comes back to that One Microsoft principle of trusting each other and helping each other succeed. Product teams started seeking out our involvement, and marketing trusted us to make more things on their behalf.

Keeping a good thing going

We emulated this turning point elsewhere. We worked directly with principal designers Paul Cooper and Lance Garcia to build creative principles (for everyone keeping track, that’s step 4) that ended up changing the patterns and UX of azure.com. Functionality informed brand choices, which reflected back on the site itself.

The front page of the Azure.com website. — Azure.com

The same goes for HoloLens 2, which was perhaps our most daunting task. The product team had worked on it for two years by the time we stepped in to begin branding, so we had catching up to do. (Yes, not ideal.)

HoloLens 2 works in mixed reality, a new medium for most users. Because of that, people need more than product photography or UI to understand how it works. So, I partnered closely John Nguyen and David Wolf from the product design team to come up with a solution. We were inspired by prismatic light in holograms and by the way the product sensors understand the world and generate a 3D map. We believed that this prism and map would tie the marketing and the product experience together in a beautiful way. The product experience largely informed the elegant brand we created for HoloLens 2 and subsequent marketing materials.

Four expressions of the HoloLens branding. — HoloLens 2 Prismatic Color Blend used in illustration, full-bleed backgrounds, and HoleLens 2 wordmark logo.

These marketing materials turned out well — so well that they influenced the product. Romiro Torres, the creative director for HoloLens 2 UX, was working out the visual expression and experience of how the device maps a room. He integrated the same visualization into the product experience, so users see the same visualization we created for marketing when HoloLens 2 maps the room they’re standing in.

HoloLens 2 Room Mapping from the launch announcement in Barcelona

Chances are that doesn’t sound like a big deal to you, but it felt huge — that “maybe, just maybe” moment I mentioned earlier. If you listen closely, you can hear silo walls cracking.

Those are the kinds of moments we strive to create every day. They become a lot more likely when teams spend the time to truly understand each other. Branding makes that easier. It provides that layer of customer clarity, connecting the dots so that marketing and product can take a step back, look at the lines, and say, “Wow, a seal balancing a beach ball!”

By Douglas Montague

Microsoft Brand Creative Director. I don’t believe creative that has commercial success tags it with an odious suggestion that is stinks. Views are my own.

Sourced from Medium

In News

Infographic: How to Use FOMO Marketing to Drive Sales

November 14, 2019 No Comments

By Matthew Zdun.

FOMO, or fear of missing out, is probably one of the most common psychological phenomena around. If you’ve ever spent a couple of hours on Instagram seeing what your friends were up to, and wished you were there, you’ve gotten a big dose of FOMO.

Everyone has experienced this universal fear of missing out, though young people tend to experience it more strongly than other age groups due to their high exposure to social media. Eventbrite estimates that 69% of millennials have experienced FOMO, and 33% have purposely tried to make others feel FOMO.

This feeling of missing out on something goes back to the beginning of time when the earliest people had to fend for scarce resources to survive. And FOMO is likely not going anywhere.

Your business should look at the ways it can use this envy and jealously that your customers are feeling to drive traffic to your website and ultimately boost sales. Chances are, when customers feel they are missing out on something, they spend more!

You can use FOMO Marketing when you’re hosting events — by limiting the number of people that can attend and by live-streaming prize giveaways. You can also use it in your social media plan and when building your website if you let your content expire, experiment with influencers, or even show products’ stock levels to create a sense of urgency.

Check out this infographic created by Fundera for the best ways to capitalize on customers’ FOMO in your business.

Please include attribution to fundera.com with this graphic.

By Matthew Zdun

Sourced from PromotionWorld

In News

Brand storytelling – not just important, but the only way forward

November 14, 2019 No Comments

By Ryan Reynolds.

Engaging in brand storytelling isn’t just an important modern marketing strategy, it’s vital, writes Uber Eats’ Ryan Reynolds. As audiences evolve and expand across global landscapes, the benefits of capturing their attention through stories and emotion shouldn’t be underestimated.

Stories that work to provoke emotions are a universal language that can be used across platforms, hitting consumers from all walks of life, ages and backgrounds. With audiences inundated with media through every possible platform, using storytelling as a way to stand out is the best way to cut through the noise and target the heart of your demographic.

The core of social media remains as a way to engage in social connection. People don’t log into their Instagram or Facebook accounts to see billboard-like advertising. They use these apps as a way to remain in-touch and social in a digital era. In order to engage large audiences in such a social way, brands need to create stories, adapting to this social style of marketing.

An engaging and emotional connection is often what draws in and captivates an audience. People are inherently more interested in reading or following a story, as opposed to simply reading statistics and facts. This is the case particularly in today’s age, where consumers are actively avoiding advertising as much as they can. When was the last time banner advertising caught your attention?

We’re in an age where programs such as Adblock are constantly in use to hide or minimise the number of traditional advertising audiences are exposed to. Audiences may be more self-aware when it comes to ignoring traditional advertising, but they’re as engaged as ever with social media, making emotive storytelling the ideal platform to target the modern consumer. Transactional advertising is quickly becoming a thing of the past, and to survive, brands need to adapt.

If you think back on your own experience with advertising, you’ll agree that campaigns using stories or case studies stick out clearer in your mind. An example of memorable advertising is Toms and its use of a unique company story which entices people to join a cause. The story of Toms could ultimately see it chosen over a competitor, because of this emotive and engaging content that inspires change – showing consumers the benefits of their purchases and urging them to become involved.

If you’re unaware of the story behind this revolutionary footwear brand, Toms introduced a groundbreaking ‘one for one’ concept model – with every purchase of Toms shoes, the company donates a pair to a child in need around the world. This model and level of engagement gives its consumers the power of purchasing with purpose. This feeds into the social element, with Toms’ customers having a simple purchase of shoes reminding them that they’re a part of something much bigger. Toms marketing goes further than just selling shoes – its selling a movement, and people love to be involved.

Brand storytelling is a way to build a genuine and loyal connection with consumers. In my current role as global social and content marketing lead for Uber Eats, I’ve seen that marketing nowadays goes beyond the classic kind, where a company used to share a story about a product with the hopes to engage interest by simply presenting something to buy. Instead, it has now shifted to sharing stories of the people behind the product.

An example of this strategy is a campaign Uber Eats did where we shared stories about the restaurants on our platform, or the drivers who delivered the food. The focus of this campaign was to share emotive stories that don’t get the limelight that they deserve. Once consumers hear of these stories and case studies, they begin to understand the impact that has been made by supporting a brand, giving them a sense of importance by being involved, while understanding the larger picture of their involvement at the same time.

In this day and age, people are constantly bombarded with content. If you want to cut through the noise, it is becoming increasingly important for brands to forget the obvious elements and go deeper. During my time in Australia, I saw a great example of a big brand creating an accessible and engaging story, which was Nike.

The little initiatives it implements on the ground gives consumers a chance to be a part of Nike’s story – this is particularly evident in its Nike Run Club. Using ambassadors in every major – and even smaller – cities around the country creates a club mentality, allowing its audience to forget about the big corporate America Nike. The Nike they know and love becomes something much smaller, and something that they are involved with at a ground level. This kind of proactive and targeted brand storytelling emphasises a personal connection between consumer and brand. In this example, we see that the more invested these runners feel in Nike, the more inherently loyal they become.

It has been proven that messages delivered as stories are 22 times more memorable than any other type of marketing. Having a message that will stay on your consumer’s mind is naturally going to improve the efficiency of communication channels to your audience. One major way brands fail when implementing a storytelling strategy is not keeping it authentic. Audiences are smart enough to see through content created purely for content’s sake – so keeping authenticity in everything you do as the number one rule when creating a close relationship with your consumers.

By Ryan Reynolds

Ryan Reynolds is global social and content marketing lead for Uber Eats

Sourced from Marketing

In News

It’s not about length: SEO content trends to stay ahead of in 2020

November 14, 2019 No Comments

By Paul Melis

Hard as it may be to believe, it’s that time of year again – and no, I’m not talking about making Christmas lists, planning how best to avoid the in-laws over the festive season, and having mild panic attacks about how you’re going to afford all the presents and festivities that the coming months have in store. No, it’s the end of another year, which means it’s time to speculate about content trends for the coming 12 months.

Here are four trends that I think will have a significant impact on SEO content in 2020:

It’s not about length – it’s what you do with it that counts

As digital marketers, we sometimes get a little obsessed with hard and fast rules. It’s inevitable. We work in an industry based on understanding and algorithms, on following best practices, using fool-proof formulae, getting the inputs just right to achieve a precise result. A lot of the time, I think that’s what makes what we do rewarding. But I think one of the mistakes we make is to look for a right answer when there isn’t one.

The question of how long a piece of content should be is divisive because there really is no right answer. Actually, it’s worse than that. There are a lot of right answers. People have short attention spans, so writing concise, 500-word blogs is the way to go, right? But if you look at the top result for just about any search, you’ll find the word count rarely dips below a thousand. So longer must be better, then. Well, you can’t argue with the fact that most readers only get about halfway through a piece of content, and that many don’t even scroll to begin with. The reality is that there’s no ideal length for content, because length in itself doesn’t mean anything. What does matter is how well you’re answering the question, or addressing the needs of your reader.

In my experience, it’s safer to lean towards the longer side. There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing a great-sounding blog title, and opening the link to find 200 words of half-baked, keyword-stuffed content that doesn’t really say anything at all. It’s equally painful, though, when you start reading a long-form article and realise the writer is trying to draw out a 300 word idea into 3,000. Ultimately, longer content is good, but there are certainly diminishing returns.

Voice search will make you question everything

‘Always read your writing aloud.’ That might be the single best piece of advice I’ve ever heard as a writer. And, since voice search is expected to account for as much as half of all online search traffic by 2020, it takes on a new meaning: if you aren’t reading your own writing out loud, Google’s going to do it for you, and you’d better make sure the results are good enough to drive interaction or conversion.

The key thing to realise here is that voice search is fundamentally different from text search. The average text search phrase, for example, is around one to three words, while the average voice search phrase hovers more around three to six words. Voice searches are also far more likely to be phrased as questions. People talk to their voice assistants like they’re talking to a real person, so it follows that content should respond in kind if it hopes to meet the needs of the searcher.

For content to soak up the lion’s share of voice searches, it needs to be written more conversationally than you might be used to, and it needs to hone in on answering the questions that the user is asking. Content that answers questions head-on, shows a clear understanding of search intent and sheds as much of the unnecessary detail as possible is bound to perform better for voice search traffic, so expect this trend to become increasingly prevalent in the coming months and years.

Zero is greater than one

Another consequence of voice assistants becoming the go-to search channel is the importance of Position Zero: whenever a user inputs a voice search query, their assistant will read out the position zero result before delivering the rest. So, even if you’re dominating the search results for the entire first page, a competitor with the zero spot is going to soak up 100% of the voice search traffic and leave your hard-fought position one content starved for clicks.

Gartner estimates that around a third of searches will be done without a screen at all in 2020, which means that anything beyond the position zero result might as well not exist for voice search purposes. Expect blogging content and other written forms to include an increasing amount of structured data, rich data snippets, and content specifically designed to rank above position 1. This will be particularly important for content with a local element (since a large part of voice search queries centre around local search) and bottom-of-the-funnel searches.

This time, it’s personal

There’s no doubt that personalised marketing messaging works. We live in the age of the individual consumer: people are accustomed to their social media feeds, email inboxes and mobile experiences being tailored to their preferences and interests. So, it follows that expectations are the same for any content they engage with while searching or browsing.

For advertising the remedy is rather simple: serve ads that are targeted at specific factors and show an awareness of the individual customer’s context, preferences and their position in the sales funnel. But for ‘raw’ SEO content – that is, blogs, website copy, landing pages, etc. – it’s a little less straightforward. Depending on how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go, you could include forms, quizzes and surveys to understand exactly who you’re talking to before serving them tailored content, or you could go the simpler route and profile your user base into different personas who are likely to respond to different messaging.

Expect increasingly tailored, topic-focused content to come to the fore even more so than it already has in recent years. Again, customers are increasingly engaging with content that makes real conversation with them and demonstrates an understanding of their context, preferences and what they’re looking for. The more granular you can get when it comes to understanding those factors, the better you’ll resonate with your readers.

By Paul Melis

Sourced from The Drum

In News

7 Ways To Increase The Credibility Of Your Blog Content

November 13, 2019 No Comments

By Susan Guillory

Would you believe I’ve written thousands of articles over the past decade? Each time I write a new article, I have to find a way to make the subject fresh again. I want to ensure that my readers find what I write useful and informative, so I use the following strategies to build credibility with my content. Feel free to use these tips for your own content and see if you attract more blog visitors!

1. Find statistics to back your content

I wanted to find a statistic about using statistics in your content marketing, but couldn’t find one! Until proven otherwise, your content is conjecture. It’s your opinion. That’s why adding statistics and research to your blog articles can help you validate your point of view.

Let’s say I’m writing an article arguing that content marketing can be more effective than any other type of marketing or advertising. That’s just my opinion at this point, but my reader wants proof:

Think content marketing is too big a headache to bother with? Think again, at least if you want to attract new business: content marketing gets 3x the leads per dollar spent than paid search does. Why are you still wasting money on the wrong marketing tactics?

Instantly, I’ve got backup for my argument that content marketing rocks.

Always link to the original source of the statistic. If you found it on a roundup of other statistics, click to the original data. I try to keep the stats I use within a year old so they’re not too crusty to be useful.

2. Source experts to share their perspective

Another way to make your blog content more credible is to ask industry experts to weigh in on a topic. There are actually two benefits to this approach: you get their wisdom and then you most likely get their support in sharing your article once it’s published, so your content reaches more people.

I like to have a few questions that I send to select people. If I’m writing an article about content marketing, I might ask:

Why is content marketing more effective than, say, digital advertising?
What types of content have you seen phenomenal results with?
How can businesses drive leads from a blog article?

I’ll send a friendly email to people I already know or who I’m connected with through social media and ask them to answer the questions. I’ll give a deadline so they feel a sense of urgency. The result is a nice, long post with different points of view on my topic.

3. Read what’s out there before you write

Even if you know your subject matter inside and out, you should still know what else has been written on this subject before you dive in. I simply Google my topic and read the top results. I’ll usually get ideas for my content and may wander further down the rabbit hole, searching for more specifics I want to include in my article.

Your goal here isn’t to rehash what’s already been written. It’s to find gaps in the existing content on this topic and find a way to write from a different perspective or present a new angle to the story. You can only do that if you know what’s been published.

4. Bold the good stuff

If you’re like 43% of people, you skim blog posts. (There’s your statistic!) People don’t always have time to sit down and read a 3,000-word post—a trend I’m not a fan of. Say it succinctly. They’ll scroll down the page and try to glean what’s most important in the post.

Rather than fight the nature of human beings, make it easier for them. Bold sentences that contain key facts so they can find them easily.

Beyond that, you should be using headers (typically H2 in the dropdown bar in WordPress) to divide the content into sections to make reading easy.

WordPress screenshot showing how to make subheads into H2 tags — Use the dropdown menu in WordPress to make your subheads into H2 tags.

Susan Guillory

5. Use images to illustrate a point

If your article is technical or explains a process, take screenshots to show your readers exactly how to do something. I did just that in the last section to show you where to find the H2 option.

If you’ve got a ton of research in your posts, consider creating custom charts, graphs, or infographics to make the data more digestible.

If your content doesn’t lend itself to screenshots or charts, use stock photos to make your posts visually interesting.

6. Talk to your audience directly

There’s a careful balance to strike between not talking over your readers’ heads while also not treating them like children. You first have to start by knowing who your audience is. If it’s rocket scientists, you better be as smart as a rocket scientist so you can speak intelligently to that audience. If it’s a mixed bag, write to about a seventh-grade audience.

Where did that number come from? There’s something called the Flesch-Kincaid readability score, which analyzes your content to determine what grade level could understand it and how readable it is. If you’re not sure your content is hitting the mark with your audience, use this readability test to see how it fares.

7. Back up your content with examples

If you’re talking about something you think your audience should do, include examples that prove your point. It could be from your experience working with clients or case studies you find online.

For my article on content marketing, I could talk about the work I’ve done for a mobile marketing company, helping them effectively establish themselves as a leader in their space. That might compel readers to want to work with me.

I hope these tips help you enhance your content and build credibility with your blog. Remember: it’s brands that put effort into the content they create that attract more blog visitors and customers.

By Susan Guillory

I am president of Egg Marketing & Communications, a marketing firm specializing in content writing for small businesses and tech companies. I’m also the author of three business books: DIY Press Releases: Your Guide to Becoming Your Own PR Consultant, 101 Entrepreneur Tips and Internet Marketing Strategies for Entrepreneurs. I frequently blog about small business and marketing on sites including The Marketing Eggspert Blog, AllBusiness, CorpNet, Small Business Trends, Chamber of Commerce, ScheduleBase, and Tweak Your Biz. Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. I frequently blog about small business and marketing on sites including The Marketing Eggspert Blog, AllBusiness, and Cision. Connect with me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

No evidence disclosure hurts Influencers: Instagram

November 13, 2019 No Comments

By Emma Koehn

A senior Instagram executive says there is little evidence that sponsored posts don’t perform as well as regular posts and transparency on partnership content is key to building trust.

Instagram fashion and beauty partnerships manager Kristie Dash has said influencers should not be afraid to label as ‘sponsored’ as more attention comes on the disclosures made by users when partnering with brands.

“Nobody wants their feeds to feel like one big ad and so, I get why there is a hesitancy [about being transparent with posts]. At the end of the day, if you’re not being transparent with your followers, you’ll lose trust over time,” Ms Dash said.

Instagram is launching its biggest marketing campaign in Australia this week.Credit:Bloomberg

Ms Dash, who is based in New York and manages the Instagram team working with beauty brands and influencers, was in Australia last week for social media workshops with local small businesses.

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald asked Ms Dash whether Instagram needed to do more to ensure adequate disclosure of business partnerships given recent news that influencers have been under scrutiny by regulators in Australia over the level of disclosure they have given to consumers when promoting cosmetic dental products like Invisalign.

She said the platform had clear tools and guidelines to guide creators on what information to give their followers about sponsored deals.

“It is our job to educate the industry on how to use those tools,” she said.

Ms Dash acknowledged that influencers may have concerns about appearing authentic when creating sponsored content. She argued that if an influencer felt concerns about being authentic and was reluctant to be clear in partnership posts, they should rethink their agreements with brands.

“That kind of speaks more to the brands that creators are choosing to partner with. And if there’s that kind of concern… if it’s a brand that doesn’t feel authentic to you, then maybe it’s not the best decision to partner with [them],” she said.

“We have no data to prove that sponsored posts don’t perform as well as regular posts and we really, really encourage creators to be transparent about labelling when content is sponsored or a partnership.”

Instagram been focusing marketing efforts in Australia in recent months, launching a multi-million campaign in the local market last month.

Ms Dash said local brands were creating compelling content on the platform, with companies like Frank Body and Go-To skin care creating strong voices and “visual signatures”.

“They have very specific or easy to identify voices that when you’re going through your feed, you can kind of quickly tell it’s a post from that brand.”

By Emma Koehn

Emma is the small business reporter for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald based in Melbourne. Follow MySmallBusiness on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.