editor, Author at Mediastreet

In News

Knowing Your Data: What Businesses Should Expect From Their Marketing Partners

July 23, 2019 No Comments

By Korena Keys

I am lucky to talk to key executives from hundreds of companies each year. Inevitably, the conversation typically rolls around to the effectiveness of digital marketing. The one common link in each of the conversations is understanding if their marketing is effective and interpreting what it means. In some cases, the organization has never received a report. In others, they get numbers but don’t know what they mean or how to decipher them.

If you are paying someone (an individual or an agency) to execute a digital marketing initiative, then you should expect to receive regular updates, reports on progress and interpretations of what the data is telling you and what should — or should not — be done about it. If you are missing this information, there are two possible solutions: Meet with your provider and ask for reporting data and recommendations to be delivered consistently, or find a new provider.

Understanding your campaign performance is critical in order to make decisions, allocate budgets and understand your customers and their needs. Let me explain in greater detail.

1. Search Engine Marketing: Paid and organic efforts relating to search marketing are able to provide key insights that can boost your page visibility within your specific sector, improving your page rankings while creating a better experience for your customers. As it relates to your paid search marketing (SEM or PPC), you will want to know what terms your customers are using, as well as which of your keywords has the strongest click-through and conversion metrics. Additionally, ask for reporting on ad group and ad copy performance, site links and call extensions. This will help you better understand your customers and what they want from you while providing insights that can be applied to other areas of your marketing. You should review this information monthly with your contracted provider.

2. Website Optimization: With an SEO contract, you can expect to see regular reports on your website performance in relation to your search engine rankings — how and where you are showing up on Google, Yahoo or Bing search results pages. The actual report may vary by contract, but at a minimum should include a review of your website speed on mobile devices, your current ranking and any change in your ranking for 5-8 keywords, identified technical errors and a summary of what work has been completed to improve in these areas.

3. Video (pre-roll, streaming, promoted): Video marketing has a little different report and KPI structure. With this type of advertising, the goal is typically to increase awareness or evoke some type of emotion. That is difficult to measure in clicks. When you are looking at performance metrics as it relates to video, ask for the video completion rate (VCR) and total time played in addition to any attributed clicks or conversions. This video data will let you know how effective your message is as well as if you are targeting the right audience within your ad buy.

4. Online Display Ads: While many professionals within our industry provide reporting on display ad impressions served and click-through rates (CTR), they really do not tell us the whole story. Request reporting data on ad performance by message and size, conversion metrics and website analytics data that will indicate the quality of the click. In today’s marketplace, it is easy to buy clicks and flood a website with cheap traffic. You will want to ensure that you are paying for quality web traffic, not just quantity.

5. Email Marketing: Reporting on this activity is more straightforward than other digital aspects, mostly because it is more of a standardized service. Ask for a summary for each email sent. It should include the date and time it was deployed, total sends, total opens and reads, number of clicks (and on what links), as well as any results from A/B testing of subject lines and content.

6. Social Media Marketing: Depending on the scope of services of your social media contract, your contractor should be providing a monthly summary of their activity and the results. If the intent is to boost your page engagement, the report should include posts made, activity for each post, change in page engagement over the previous month and data on paid activity. If you are trying to promote an event or sell a product, the report should also include hard numbers on the registrations, sales or leads attributed to the campaign efforts.

7. Website Insights/Usability: The goal of a paid online campaign is to grow your business. Looking beyond impressions and clicks will tell you how well your campaign is working for you. Look for key indicators, such as time on site, pages per visit and new visitors. These data points will let you know how good the quality of traffic is (how many pages they are looking at and for how long). They will also provide insights as to what pages of your website need attention through better/more content or flow.

The data collected from your marketing campaigns provides valuable knowledge. Accessing this information, understanding its meaning and applying the insights will propel your organization further, faster and with lower acquisition costs.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Korena Keys

Korena, the Founder & CEO of KeyMedia Solutions, applies 25+ years marketing experience to drive a strategy first approach.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

How to Master YouTube Ads to Grow Your Startup

July 22, 2019 No Comments

By John Boitnott

You need to know your audience, formats, and competition to really get people to visit your site and buy your product.

As the second-largest search engine in the world, YouTube can be an effective way to generate interest in your startup as well as to drive traffic to your website. It doesn’t matter whether your company is B2B or B2C: YouTube Ads provide an engaging way to reach your target customers, and give you an opportunity to work with a channel that consumers trust.

Here’s how I and others got started and made the most out of YouTube ads, as well as how you can use the social media platform overall to help grow your company.

Familiarize yourself with various YouTube targeting options.

To maximize the return on your YouTube ads, you’ll need to know how to target your specific audience. You can understand your audience better as well as how to target potential customers by learning and using these options:

1. Remarketing

Remarketing, often called retargeting, offers a way to go after those non-converting visitors by sending an ad to other places they visit.

I used to work for a startup that used this strategy quite a lot. I and other members of the marketing team noticed that visitors would leave before buying our services. We worked with a company specializing in this form of marketing (top options include Outbrain, Adroll and ReTargeter) to incentivize people to return to our site, even months later–and it worked.

2. In-Market and Affinity Audiences

These are traditional audience targets. These audiences align with Google’s pre-defined segmentation model, based on previous knowledge Google has gathered. Affinity audiences are those that have a strong interest in a specific topic, while in-market audiences are those currently researching a certain product and are ready to buy.

3. Life Events

Google created this target specifically for YouTube. It focuses on reaching a target audience based on upcoming life events like graduation, moving, and marriage.

Get to Know YouTube ad formats.

Making the most out of YouTube ads also means developing a format that catches peoples’ attention. Here are the main types of ads.

TrueView In-Stream ads play before a video. They offer a way for audiences to reach your website. Audiences can choose whether or not to skip them. They’re often effective during remarketing campaigns and can help bring more subscribers to your YouTube channel.

TrueView Video Discovery ads appear on the right-hand side of the video view page, search results pages, and as thumbnails on an individual’s YouTube homepage. This format works well for traditional search campaign ads, as well as for prospecting and remarketing campaigns.

Finally, there are bumper ads. They’re under six seconds long and appear prior to a video. Impressions drive the cost of these ads, which also often work well for remarketing campaigns.

Know the competition and your other marketing efforts.

Before designing and producing your ad on YouTube, make sure you know what your competition is up to. You don’t want to end up looking just like them and blend in too much with the crowd.

Your YouTube ad campaign should align with your other marketing efforts. This promotes brand consistency, which in turn can build brand awareness. To get started on framing your campaign, make sure you first have a Google AdWords account. This is where you will start your YouTube ad campaign.

Create a visually compelling ad around one value-add point.

Keep the video ads simple by focusing on one way you can add value rather than trying to cram all your benefits into one ad. Select the most relevant value-add point to catch the audience’s attention and focus on explaining that benefit in a visually compelling manner.

Develop content and SEO opportunities.

Be sure to include relevant written content like the ad title and description by using keywords. This is where YouTube’s search engine capability can provide a significant advantage. Plug in your own search terms to see what appears, and use those results to help shape keyword usage and content to improve ranking for your video ad.

Don’t forget to include a “call to action” in that description. Be sure to include links to your site so potential customers can find your website, improving conversion rates.

Build out your YouTube channel.

Before visiting your website, those target audience members may want to see what other video content you have available on YouTube. To get the most out of your ads, make sure you have first developed a channel that offers relevant video content.

By engaging with your audience in multiple ways beyond a single YouTube ad, you can deliver more value, enhance your credibility and drive higher returns on your YouTube ad investments. This may also inspire your target audience to visit your site and make purchases.

Review and assess your YouTube ad results.

Continue refining your campaign efforts, leveraging Google AdWords. You can use this analytics tool to assess response rates to your YouTube ad, providing valuable information for your company. While these tips help you master YouTube ads, you’ll still be able to learn as you go, improving along the way.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By John Boitnott

Sourced from Inc.

In News

How to Assess Your Content Performance: 5 Tools You Haven’t Tried

July 22, 2019 No Comments

By Ann Smarty

Content analysis is a marketing task that’s never really complete.

You need to come back to your old content again and again to see what should be updated, which new visibility opportunities can be pursued and how to better optimize it for more conversions.

With that in mind, there’s no set list of tools you should be using again and again. New tools bring new analysis methods and, hence, new ideas. Here are 5 tools to use for content assessment:

1. Which Keywords Have I Missed?

Any time I am assessing my existing content performance, I start with identifying which keywords I have missed.

Content gap analysis answers one of the most important content marketing questions: which topics have I failed to cover, and which questions have I failed to answer when creating that content?

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It’s usually a multi-step process where you need to:

Identify competing URLs
Run organic analysis of current positions
Compare rankings with yours and identify which keywords your URL fails to rank in top 50

Serpstat is the SERP analysis platform that minimizes the whole process to only one step: simply enter your URL into their Missing Keywords tool, and it will generate a handy content analysis report including:

Search queries competing pages generate traffic from while your URL fails to rank in top 50
Search volume and “Competition Strength” for each query (“Competition Strength” is Serpstat’s own metric they calculate based on average authority of pages ranking in top 10 for the given query)
Other URLs from your domain that rank for any of those queries (For you to avoid internal organic competition, i.e. keyword cannibalization (the term I am not a big fan of by the way). This latter report section is pretty awesome: I’ve never seen this done by anyone else and for established blogs (that tend to have a lot of content on similar topics) it’s a time saver!

You can also filter the report by search volume, competition strength, any keyword in the query.

This is one of those reports that have too much going on: I always end up working on all “Other URLs”, as well to try and push them higher in SERPs.

2. Who Will Find My Page Content Satisfying?

Another fundamental question to answer is: is my page meeting the users’ expectations? In other words, have I done enough to optimize for search intent?

Not only is search intent playing a decisive role in engaging your visitors, but search intent optimization also is able to boost your rankings. That’s because Google has learned how to identify whether your page is meeting users’ needs when deciding how high it should rank.

Text Optimizer is a semantic analysis tool that identifies the type of audience your page caters to.

If you see that your text seems to be targeting the wrong type of audience, use Text Optimizer to better optimize your content for search intent for any given query.

Simply enter your query and provide your page URL: the tool will run Google search for your query and identify which related concepts should be covered in your content for it to better meet Google’s (and its users’) expectations. Include 20-25 of these concepts in your copy to better optimize it for search intent.

3. Does My Page Pass the 5-Second Test?

What’s the very first impression your page makes when users land on it? Is it instantly clear what the page is about? Are CTAs clearly visible on the page? Is the goal clear?

Studies have shown that most people need just a couple of seconds to decide whether they want to stay or leave a web page. In today’s fast-paced digital environment where most people browse the web on the go, from their mobile or smart assistant devices, this time frame is likely to become even shorter.

It takes most people about 5 seconds to decide whether they want to stay or leave a web page. #UX Click To Tweet

This makes your actual content quality almost secondary: most people won’t even see it unless they are instantly compelled to stay. This is where the 5-second test comes along: let strangers look at your page for five seconds, and then ask one simple question: “Was is this page about” or “What are you supposed to do on the page?”

If you recruit your own testers, this test is free to run. I usually use Usability Hub to quickly set up the tests. You can also recruit testers through the site which costs $30 (free for the first-time users).

4. What Distracts Users from Following the Conversion Funnel?

Besides understanding the instant impression your users get when landing on your page, it is helpful to know what exactly distracts them. The easiest way to collect this data is through running a one-day heatmap test.

A heatmap is the visual representation of user behavior on the page, including scrolling, clicking, mouse movements, etc.

If you need to identify what gets your users’ attention, set up a move map that tracks cursor movements on your page. In most cases, it is safe to assume that people look where their cursor moves, so move maps can give you a good idea where people look when landing on your page.

There are multiple platforms that you to run heatmap testing, as well as several WordPress plugins that integrate heatmaps into your A/B testing routine. In many cases, unless you have really heavy traffic, you can run simple move map testing for free.

5. What Is Interrupting Your Conversion Funnel Flow?

You probably have a few CTAs within your content, each leading your visitor down the conversion funnell, from clicking to opting-in to finally buying. Which of those steps is reducing your conversions?

Finteza is a free web analytics tool that allows you to monitor multiple events on a page and how they interact with one another.

It’s pretty obvious that an extra click reduces conversions, so eliminating the extra step is likely to boost conversions.

Finteza is pretty easy to set up. Adding events for tracking is very straightforward too. If you are not technical enough, you can simply add a new link attribute data-fz-event=”Event+Name” (Put your event name instead of “Event+Name”), and the new event will be automatically populated and monitored.

Monitor all kinds of conversion-focused links on within your content including clicks to lead magnets,

Putting It All Together

There’s an overwhelming amount of both traffic acquisition and conversion optimization tactics. With so much testing and analyzing, how do you put everything together in a most actionable way? In other words, how do you move from analyzing onto implementing?

When working on old content, I treat it as a new marketing campaign. As soon as I come across an existing article or landing page that needs some work, I put it down as a new content project in my calendar inside ContentCal.

ContentCal is a collaboration editorial tool that is every content manager’s dream. I don’t have time for creating tickets or distributing tasks, so ContentCal is ideal. It takes two seconds to schedule a content campaign and put together a content brief, including all the numbers and test results I was able to collect.

My team will be notified of an approaching campaign through the shared calendar and will be able to quickly share the tasks and implement the suggestions.

Having a centralized dashboard that consolidates all my plans keeps me very organized and productive.

Hopefully these new tools will breathe fresh air into your content assessment process and inspire you to look for new tactics and trends to boost your content marketing performance.

By Ann Smarty

Sourced from CONVINCE&CONVERT

In News

Six Best Ways to Expand Your Business

July 22, 2019 No Comments

By Lui Tong

Here are the best ways to expand your business and ensure sustainable growth. It is thinking local but acting global!

Trust
While we actually try to learn about what is happening in the market, it helps to understand the consumers. What they’re looking for is not just the next best product or the price but also which website is trustworthy. Trust converts into sales and sustainability, especially in the online format.

Being in Tandem with Customers
The market needs outlook, we are the current generation and our children, the next generation. If we look at shoppers today, they are different, they’re looking for fun and a high quality lifestyle. Categorized and personalised products are definitely required. Promotion and better shopping experience are also very important.

A Steady Stream of Loyal Customers
If we talk about loyalty, you can gain a customer today, but the question is will the customer stay with you? What do you do to entice them to stay. With the opening of cross-border trade, you can get goods locally and the same goods across the border. What we see here is the power of social commerce.

Why Selling is Not Enough
Selling is not enough. After you sell what you do to make sure that you have delivered a fulfilling experience is critical. Customer journey is the key online solution provider and it is getting more and more sophisticated for you to optimise and personalise experience. Financial services is also allowing you to have hassle-free payments.

Think Big
While doing business, we must think big. We have gone through waves and waves of disruption and have reinvented ourselves, but it is starting to pay back these days.

Power of Social Commerce
If you have a network of 200 friends who can buy together with you, then the growth is exponential. So is the power of social commerce.

Feature Image Credit: Pixabay

By Lui Tong

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

Lego marketing chief says the challenge with online advertising is that so much content is ‘damaging’ to kids

July 19, 2019 No Comments

By Megan Graham

Lego faces a conundrum when it comes to online advertising, according to Chief Marketing Officer Julia Goldin. That’s because the toymaker’s target audience is children, and the big internet companies aren’t doing enough to protect them from unsafe content, she says.

“Platforms need to have more transparency and take more responsibility,” Goldin said on Thursday in an onstage interview at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. “We also need to take more responsibility for how we work with platforms, both individually as brands but collectively as an industry.”

Speaking at a session hosted by The Economist and featuring marketing leaders from Procter & Gamble and Taco Bell, Goldin addressed the increasing concern surrounding the safety of online content and the regulatory issues facing tech giants. Questions about how marketing executives are pressuring Facebook and Google to change their practices came up repeatedly at Cannes, the ad industry’s most important annual awards event.

Goldin is focused on the safety of kids.

“Right now, they are on platforms where they are exposed to content that is actually damaging to them and their privacy is not protected,” Goldin said. “I don’t think we should accept that.”

Goldin added that Lego doesn’t advertise on the major sites when the company doesn’t “feel that it’s safe.” When asked if the company promotes its products on YouTube, she said, Lego is “really focused on adults” on that site and is “very careful about where we actually will put advertising that’s targeted to children.”

YouTube did not provide CNBC with a response to Goldin’s comments.

YouTube says viewers have to be at least 13 to sign up. The company has a service called YouTube Kids, which filters videos for underage children and includes a limited number of ads, all indicating that the spots are family friendly and in compliance with YouTube’s policies.

However, there are plenty of ways for kids to watch regular YouTube videos, including by using the accounts of their parents. A Bloomberg report this week said that popular kids’ channel Cocomelon, which is part of the main service, has more than 50 million subscribers, double the weekly audience for all of YouTube Kids.

Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission is investigating YouTube for allegedly violating a law that forbids the tracking and targeting of users younger than age 13, according to The Washington Post.

Higher standards

Marisa Thalberg, Taco Bell’s global chief brand officer, said during the session that the restaurant company is so big it has to work with the major platforms but added that it has at times “hit the pause button, literally and figuratively” to say “there has to be accountability.”

For Lego, there’s another path to reaching users in a safe way that doesn’t rely on Google and Facebook. In 2017, the company launched Lego Life as an online community for children to upload photos of their own Lego creations. As of April 2018, it had 6 million members.

Goldin describes Lego Life as a “super safe digital platform” and said the company monitors all content using machine learning and human review. Kids use avatars instead of personal pictures, everything is done with parental consent and the site doesn’t collect private data, she said.

“Those are the kinds of standards we need to continue abiding by,” she said.

“Right now, they are on platforms where they are exposed to content that is actually damaging to them and their privacy is not protected,” Goldin said. “I don’t think we should accept that.”

Goldin added that Lego doesn’t advertise on the major sites when the company doesn’t “feel that it’s safe.” When asked if the company promotes its products on YouTube, she said, Lego is “really focused on adults” on that site and is “very careful about where we actually will put advertising that’s targeted to children.”

YouTube did not provide CNBC with a response to Goldin’s comments.

YouTube says viewers have to be at least 13 to sign up. The company has a service called YouTube Kids, which filters videos for underage children and includes a limited number of ads, all indicating that the spots are family friendly and in compliance with YouTube’s policies.

However, there are plenty of ways for kids to watch regular YouTube videos, including by using the accounts of their parents. A Bloomberg report this week said that popular kids’ channel Cocomelon, which is part of the main service, has more than 50 million subscribers, double the weekly audience for all of YouTube Kids.

Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission is investigating YouTube for allegedly violating a law that forbids the tracking and targeting of users younger than age 13, according to The Washington Post.

Higher standards

Marisa Thalberg, Taco Bell’s global chief brand officer, said during the session that the restaurant company is so big it has to work with the major platforms but added that it has at times “hit the pause button, literally and figuratively” to say “there has to be accountability.”

For Lego, there’s another path to reaching users in a safe way that doesn’t rely on Google and Facebook. In 2017, the company launched Lego Life as an online community for children to upload photos of their own Lego creations. As of April 2018, it had 6 million members.

Goldin describes Lego Life as a “super safe digital platform” and said the company monitors all content using machine learning and human review. Kids use avatars instead of personal pictures, everything is done with parental consent and the site doesn’t collect private data, she said.

“Those are the kinds of standards we need to continue abiding by,” she said.

By Megan Graham

Sourced from CNBC

In News

In Sunny Cannes, Marketers Fret Over Dark Content Online

July 19, 2019 No Comments

By Alexandra Bruell and Nat Ives

Attendees at the marketing industry’s biggest gathering worried about brand safety and data privacy

The Cannes Lions ad festival is a sunny fixture for many in marketing, an annual ritual of schmoozing on the French Riviera, drinking ever-present rosé and sounding off on panels about the industry and creativity.

But amid the self-congratulation and parties, there was plenty of handwringing among attendees this year who worried aloud and often about brand safety and data privacy online.

“The first time your brand is damaged, it’s not easily fixed,” said Bob Rupczynski, corporate vice president of global media and customer relationship management at McDonald’s Corp. , during a panel titled “The Internet: Don’t Ruin a Good Thing.” He said brand safety is a top priority of the fast-food chain.

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Marketers have been frustrated by repeated outbreaks of unwelcome content on platforms owned by Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

McDonald’s, Clorox Co. , Nestlé SA, “Fortnite” publisher Epic Games Inc. and AT&T Inc. paused ads on Google’s YouTube in February, for example, following reports that viewers were making inappropriate comments on videos of young girls.

Cannes was its usual self in many ways. Media and tech companies threw lavish parties flush with themed cocktails and exotic canapés to help pry open the wallets of advertisers.

“Saturday Night Live” creator Lorne Michaels attended a Snap Inc. dinner at the tony Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc, while news veteran Katie Couric mingled with marketers at an event hosted by Vice Media LLC and Pttow LLC, a membership club for executives and “icons.”

Musical acts included Mumford & Sons, which played a party hosted by iHeartMedia Inc. and MediaLink, part of Cannes Lions organizer Ascential PLC.

But amid the festivities, pressure on digital media became a recurring theme.

Facebook has created a “new universe,” said Pedro Earp, chief marketing officer at Anheuser-Busch InBev and head of ZX Ventures. “In a new world you have things that shouldn’t be there, we have bad people, we have a bunch of stuff,” he said. “They are kind of trying to be the police of this new world, but it’s very uncharted territory.”

The tech giants have been working to clean up their platforms, deploying new technologies and increasing human review. Despite the efforts, unwanted content remains a point of tension in the companies’ relationship with advertisers.

Early in the week, major marketers such as Unilever PLC formed a coalition with Google, Facebook and Twitter Inc. intended to fight hate speech, bullying and divisive fake content online.

“We’re in different businesses but we have similar objectives,” said Carolyn Everson, vice president of global marketing solutions at Facebook, in an interview. “We want to create an ecosystem for advertisers that is healthy, that consumers feel really positive about—that they feel safe and secure on the platforms, and feel good about the brands that support them.”

In a panel to roll out the coalition, Ms. Everson also stressed the difficulty ahead. “I want to be realistic that this is not a fully solvable problem,” she said. “I can’t ensure the safety of everybody at this beach when we walk down the Croisette.”

That sentiment received mixed reactions from conference goers.

Facebook has hired thousands of people in an effort to make its platforms safer but can’t say it is working hard to fix its issues while absolving itself of responsibility, said Tim Andree, chief executive at Dentsu Aegis Network, a unit of Japanese ad giant Dentsu Inc.

“It’s about the end result making us believe they remain vigilant and that they’re pushing for a completely secure and safe platform,” he said.

Facebook declined to comment. Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Some Cannes attendees also called for federal regulation on privacy, partly to protect consumers and partly to preempt a potential patchwork of state legislation, an anticipated a bumpy road ahead for marketers.

The California Consumer Privacy Act taking effect next year could hurt brands’ access to data about consumers online, warned Tanya Forsheit, a partner and chair of the privacy and data security group at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz.

When the new law goes into effect, every website is likely to have a link that says, “Do not sell my personal information,” Ms. Forsheit said during a panel hosted by The Wall Street Journal.

Ms. Forsheit said consumers may think if they don’t click, “their Social Security number will get sold.”

Feature Image Credit: Flags fly above the annual Cannes Lions ad festival in France. Photo: Getty Images for Cannes Lions

By Alexandra Bruell and Nat Ives

Write to Alexandra Bruell at [email protected] and Nat Ives at [email protected]

Sourced from The Wall Street Journal

In News

YouTube confirms a test where the comments are hidden by default

July 19, 2019 No Comments

By Sarah Perez

YouTube’s comments section has a bad reputation. It’s even been called “the worst on the internet,” and a reflection of YouTube’s overall toxic culture, where creators are rewarded for outrageous behavior — whether that’s tormenting and exploiting their children, filming footage of a suicide victim, promoting dangerous “miracle cures” or sharing conspiracies, to name a few high-profile examples. Now, the company is considering a design change that hides the comments by default.

The website XDA Developers first spotted the test on Android devices in India.

Today, YouTube’s comments don’t have a prominent position on its mobile app. On both iOS and Android devices, the YouTube video itself appears at the top of the screen, followed by engagement buttons for sharing, liking, disliking, downloading and saving the video. Below that are recommendations from YouTube’s algorithm in a section titled “Up Next.” If you actually want to visit the comments, you have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page.

In the test, the comments have been removed from this bottom section of the page entirely.

Instead, they’ve been relocated to a new section that users can only view after clicking a button.

The new Comments button is found between the Thumbs Down and Share buttons, right below the video.

It’s unclear if this change will reduce or increase user engagement with comments, or if engagement will remain flat — something that YouTube likely wants to find out, too.

On the one hand, comments are hidden unless the user manually taps on the button to reveal them — users won’t happen upon them by scrolling down. On the other hand, putting the comments button behind a click at the top of the page instead of forcing users to scroll could make them easier to access.

As XDA Developers reports, when you’ve loaded up this new Comments section, you can pull to refresh the page to see the newly added comments appear. To exit, you tap the “X” button at the top of the window to close the section.

While it reported the test was underway in Android devices in India, we’ve confirmed it’s also appearing on iOS and is not limited to a particular region. That means it’s something YouTube wants to test on a broader scale, rather than a feature it’s considering for a localized version of its app for Indian users.

The change comes at a time when YouTube’s comments section has been discovered to be more than just the home to bullying, abuse, arguments and other unhelpful content, but also a tool that was exploited by pedophiles. A ring of pedophiles had communicated through the comments to share videos and timestamps with one another.

YouTube reacted then by disabling comments on videos with kids. More recently, it’s been considering moving kids content to a separate app. (Unfortunately, it will never consider the appropriateness of having built a platform where young children can be put on public display for the whole world to see.)

A YouTube spokesperson confirmed the Comments test, in a statement, but downplayed its importance by referring to it as one of many small experiments the company is running.

“We’re always experimenting with ways to help people more easily find, watch, share and interact with the videos that matter most to them,” the spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We are testing a few different options on how to display comments on the watch page. This is one of many small experiments we run all the time on YouTube, and we’ll consider rolling features out more broadly based on feedback on these experiments.”

Feature Image Credit: TechCrunch

By Sarah Perez

Sourced from TechCrunch

In News

10 Essential Technical SEO Tools for Agencies

July 19, 2019 No Comments

By Ritu Sharma

SEO agencies need a variety of tools for different monitoring and analytical purposes. Luckily there are a number of tools that suit the different needs. But what if you just want to have the essentials? Well, this is a list of 10 essentials as recommended by top SEO agencies. These are the tools they cannot do without.

Google Analytics

When talking organic search, Google is the leading search engine and so it is only appropriate that its analytical tool is top of an SEO tool list. This is a free tool but offers expansive analytical reports about SEO and general performance of a site. You can provide a client with monthly reports that are generated automatically. Many agencies say if there is one tool they cannot do without, this is it.

Google Mobile-Friendly

Tool Mobile devices are everywhere and a lot of focus is being put on getting a site optimized for mobile. This tool will enable an agency test on how well the website works on mobile devices. You can get direct information telling you if the site is mobile friendly or not.

Screaming Frog

This tool gives you a diagnosis of the health of a website. It can provide reports on basic issues as well as complex ones. When it comes to checking links, this is a top tool for that. Screaming Frog will crawl and find broken links, duplicate URLs, server errors and more. Some of the advanced issues it can help with include: international SEO implementation issues, pagination problems and problems with a website structure. It can also help identify missing page titles, meta keyword issues, and images that may be too big.

WebPage Test

One of the most common reasons people will leave a website is its page speed. So many agencies are focusing on ensuring they help their clients have sites with faster speeds. With WebPage Test, it is a lot easier to achieve that. You can identify what is slowing the web page, measure how fast it is, as well as check on competitors’ website speed as well so that you are either better or at least on a par with the competition. With this tool, you can check a combination of features that lead to the final efficiency of a page.

Siteliner

Another issue you need to keep track of is content duplication. You do not want to have a lot of pages with duplicate content. Use this tool to find duplicate content on any of the pages on the site and then you can remove the duplicate. Duplicate content is considered a black hat technique by Google and websites that have it will be penalized. This tool can also be used to monitor your links internally and externally, you can also use it to spy on the competition to find out how fast their pages take to load.

Google Search Console

This tool has undergone an upgrade to make it even more efficient. Agencies can best use this tool for reporting. It has a really good reporting feature that can help you provide a client as much information they need about the SEO campaign. You can even compile reports for months and ensure that nothing is lost so when you need to show the client any data, you can find it easily in one place. Agencies can also use this data to evaluate their performance and figure out what they need to improve or put more effort into. Google Search Console is a tool you cannot do without.

Linkody

It is next to impossible to successfully carry out SEO without building links, so there has to be a link tool you can depend on. Linkody gives you analysis on backlinks that you create. You can find out if other sites are creating links back to you and what is causing loss of links. The tool sends periodic email reports on your backlinks. As you create backlinks you also need to keep an eye on the competition, this tool will give you information about your competitors ranking and any new links they may have created. This insight puts you in a favorable position to compete.

Web Developer Toolbar

Use Web Developer Toolbar to solve code problems with JavaScript and CSS. A site can be slowed down by code problems and it can affect the entire user experience. You need to be able to identify these problems and solve them. With JavaScript and CSS turned off, it becomes easier to pinpoint what issues are affecting the browser. There are also other issues that can be identified in this audit like broken images, alt text as well as meta tags. You can get a comprehensive audit report with this tool.

WordStream

Keywords play a pivotal role in SEO success and you need to be able to know which keywords are performing well and which are a waste of time. WordStream is a refined tool that could be compared to Google AdWords. With this, you can find high volume keywords that have low competition. There is really a great amount of information about keywords that you can get from this tool. It keeps track of keyword usage online and shares that date with you and effect you can choose the best keywords to reach the right audience.

Excel

Yes, this is the common Excel that you know and it is an essential tool for agencies. Think of the amount of data you deal with, where would you place that data and manage it best? Excel is the best option. Excel provides a number of tricks, for example, you can compare data from different tools. There is a lot you can learn about using excel for SEO analysis.

These are essential tools that agencies can use to perform their work better. They are not the only tools though, there are probably hundreds of other tools but these 10 have come highly recommended and they are used more often. If there are a few you have not been using, you should start now.

By Ritu Sharma

Ritu Sharma is an SEO specialist & Online Marketing Strategist with over 9 years of professional experience. She is currently working with India’s leading SEO company PageTraffic. She has spearheaded many successful SEO campaigns for PageTraffic. You can follow her at twitter @realritusharma or Google+.… View full profile ›

Sourced from Business 2 Community

In News

Digital Marketing News: B2B Video & Social Usage Studies, LinkedIn’s Brand Refresh & Photo Tagging, Growing Digital Ad Sales

July 18, 2019 No Comments

By Lane Ellis

Social Media Usage Statistics for 2019 Reveal Surprising Shifts
A look at the latest Edison Research and Triton Digital Social Habit study shows largely unchanged social media usage over the past four years, growth for Instagram among young Americans, a drop in Facebook’s popularity, and several other statistics of interest to digital marketers. Convince and Convert

Silence is golden: preparing for the sound-off mobile ad ecosystem
A look at optimizing video ad creative for silence, the impact of HAVOC (Human, Audible, Viewable On Completion), and measuring viewability in an age when some 85-90% of branded videos are viewed with audio muted. The Drum

2 Years in the Making, LinkedIn’s Brand Refresh Aims to Make the Platform More Inviting
Adweek takes a look at some of the new branding elements from LinkedIn (client) rolling out incrementally, including updated visuals, greater emphasis on sharing and photos, as well as a new custom typeface. Adweek

Global ad sales growth continues to cool in 2019, Magna says
Digital ad sales are expected to grow by 14 percent in 2019, according to new forecast data, a bright spot in predictions showing a slowdown in the overall rate of growth for ad sales, down from 2018’s 8 percent to 5 percent. AdAge

Forrester: Over-reliance on big data, siloed teams impede customer insights
29 percent of consumers rely completely on big data when making decisions according to newly-released report data surveying marketers and CMOs, which also examines the importance of avoiding data silos in the customer experience journey. Marketing Land

Survey finds 89% of marketers seeing increased sales using location data
89 percent of marketers utilize location data in campaigns, an increase from last year’s 87 percent, and Marketing Land takes a look at how marketers are using location-based advertising. Marketing Land

Facebook launches new market research app after pulling similar app in January
Facebook has released a new phone usage data app called “Study from Facebook,” incentivized by including a compensation element, all aimed at improving ad targeting for marketers, the social giant announced recently. Marketing Land

Spotify now lets advertisers target podcast listeners
Spotify has begun allowing marketers to target podcast listeners, adding new audio ad formats and other features as the firm looks to capitalize on its recent podcasting-related acquisitions, and The Drum takes a look at some of these efforts. The Drum

LinkedIn Members Can Now Tag Fellow Members in Photos They Post
LinkedIn has added the ability to tag people in photos, post video in private messages, and has made it easier to use Powerpoint and PDF files on the platform, along with making LinkedIn Groups more prominent, the firm announced recently. Adweek

B2B Video Length Drops, but Engagement Increases.
The average length of B2B video has decreased by 33 percent to just over four minutes, while the number of viewers watching the entirety of videos has climbed to 52 percent, up from 2017’s 46 percent, several of the statistics of interest to digital marketing contained in a newly-released B2B video study from Vidyard. Chief Marketer

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE:

A lighthearted look at Cannes and the marketing echo chamber by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist

Nike, Coca-Cola and Amazon feature in YouTube’s Cannes Lions 2019 ads leaderboard — The Drum

Dad Breaks 1,024 Day-Long Social Media Silence by Posting “Outback Steakhouse Near Me” — The Hard Times

By Lane Ellis

Lane R. Ellis (@lanerellis), TopRank Marketing Social Media and Content Marketing Manager, has over 35 years’ experience working with and writing about the Internet. Lane spent more than a decade as Lead Editor for prestigious conference firm Pubcon. When he’s not writing, Lane enjoys distance running (11 marathons including two ultras so far), genealogical research, cross-country skate skiing, vegetarian cooking, and spending time with his wonderful wife Julie Ahasay and their three cats in beautiful Duluth, Minnesota.

Sourced from TopRank Marketing

In News

Data Analytics Versus Business Intelligence – And The Race To Replace Decision Making With Software

July 18, 2019 No Comments

By Christian Ofori-Boateng

Business intelligence is only as intelligent as the data that goes into it … a nd only as smart as the people using the data.

As companies big and small take up the arms race that is big data, what’s getting lost in translation is the process — and difference — between gathering business intelligence and using data analytics to make real business decisions that have an impact.

If you are scrambling for a “BI” solution with hopes of solving your biggest problems with software alone, let me save you from wasting thousands of dollars sending your organization down the rabbit hole that is business intelligence.

Before you even think of what data analytics software you need, or what data you want, you need to understand the problem you want to solve.

Data Analytics And Business Intelligence Are Not The Same

If you are wondering what the difference between data analytics and business intelligence is, you are probably not alone.

Both terms are used interchangeably, with business intelligence being the generalized term that encompasses analytics, but there are distinctions.

The major difference between business intelligence and data analytics is that analytics is geared more toward future predictions and trends, while BI helps people make decisions based on past data.

The Uncommon Truth About Business Intelligence

You will never get the right answer without asking the right question.

No one would argue with that.

Unfortunately, with the rise of software tools touting business intelligence and automation, the new norm is thinking that having these tools will make or break your business.

Where most companies go wrong is attempting to adopt new technologies too fast across their entire organization without having a plan in place for how they’ll actually use the tools to solve a clearly defined problem.

Here’s why: We create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data daily, and that rate will only continue to accelerate. Incredibly, we generated 90% of the data in the world just within the past two years alone. The sheer volume of data being generated means that large organizations that are taking the first step toward adopting BI must first understand the problems they want to solve and create hypotheses on how BI will solve these problems.

It is the process — or lack of — that either builds or kills the value found in data analytics and business intelligence tools.

Why Data Analytics Is Not Enough

You cannot make smart decisions without the right information to act on. The right tool will help you illustrate data in a meaningful way, and then distribute this information to the right people at the right time — this is what business intelligence is all about.

In order to get the most out of adopting data analytics and business intelligence software into your organization, the first thing you need is a clearly defined problem that can be solved with BI.

The smartest organizations focus on scaling business intelligence targeting one problem at a time. It’s much more efficient to rally your board, C-suite and IT department around a single problem that has a meaningful impact if solved.

You Need A Road Map

Whether you are starting from nothing, moving from spreadsheets or looking to uplevel the way your organization uses data, you need a plan of action.

Here is how to implement business intelligence into your business:

1. Decide on what problem(s) you want to solve. Start with a clearly defined problem with goals that are smart, measurable, actionable, realistic and timely.

2. Understand what stakeholders will be involved. Proper planning prevents poor performance. What information do they need? How they will use it? What data will provide this information?

3. Figure out what data you need and how you will get it. One hundred percent pure quality data is a bit unrealistic, but you need to have a data management practice in place to make this work. Good data in means good analytics out.

4. Decide how success is measured using KPIs. What gets measured gets managed. You need an objective way to gauge the effectiveness and success of your rollout. Establish key performance indicators with your team that everyone will rally behind.

5. Set up systems and processes that turn data into action. Automate reporting. Create systems and processes that automate the delivery of information to the right people at the right time, and set deadlines for acting on information.

Software comes last. Business intelligence is not solved with a software solution alone. You need organizational buy-in. You need clearly defined problems and a process for solving them. All the intelligence in the world will go nowhere if your organization isn’t structured to take action on the information you uncover.

Solve the people and culture challenge first, and business intelligence opens up a completely new way to streamline business processes, accelerate growth and uncover new opportunities.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Christian Ofori-Boateng

Co-Founder & Chief Executive at ChristianSteven Software

Sourced from Forbes