“Our Team of Consultants and vendors are the best of the best in the dynamic world of business and digital consulting. I have always surrounded myself with the best possible talent. I truly enjoy sharing this talent and working directly with companies who are looking for results based solutions”
-Jon Flatt

“Our Team of Consultants and vendors are the best of the best in the dynamic world of business and digital consulting. I have always surrounded myself with the best possible talent. I truly enjoy sharing this talent and working directly with companies who are looking for results based solutions”
-Jon Flatt

“Our Team of Consultants and vendors are the best of the best in the dynamic world of business and digital consulting. I have always surrounded myself with the best possible talent. I truly enjoy sharing this talent and working directly with companies who are looking for results based solutions”
-Jon Flatt

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Items to Remember When Starting a YouTube Channel

Creating your own YouTube channel is easy and believe it or not – it only takes a couple of minutes (yes, this quick!). No matter if you’ve already started using YouTube for content promotion or don’t know where to begin – let me show you step by step how to create a YouTube channel, and share a few simple tips and tricks that will help you build a larger audience.

How to sign up for a YouTube channel

All you have to do to create a YouTube channel is sign up for a Google account. If you already have one, you can just log in.

The good news is that you can use one Google Account for multiple channels. In the long run, this solution proves to be perfectly convenient – if you need to manage different brands or projects, you can do so under the same Google Account, quickly switching from channel to channel, using the Channel Switcher link.

Now that you’ve signed into your Google Account, you have to create your new channel. To do that, just go to YouTube and click on your account thumbnail image (available at the top right corner of the screen) to open a drop down menu.

 

YouTube Channel Creator Studio and Settings

Drop down menu available after clicking the account thumbnail image in the Google Account

 

From there you can either click the “Creator Studio” or the gear icon to access the YouTube settings. In both cases you’ll end up on another page, where you’ll find the link allowing you to create a channel.

 

YouTube Channel Creator Studio

The view after you click on the Creator Studio tab

 

YouTube Account Settings

YouTube settings view you get after clicking the settings gear icon

 

After hitting Create a Channel you’ll see a dialog box where you can choose who’ll be using the new channel.

If you want to use it for your own purposes, just type in your name.

If you prefer to use it as a business or someone else, just click the option available at the bottom.

 

Use YouTube as a business or other name

Selecting to use YouTube as a business or other name

 

This will take you to another page where you’ll be able to name the channel and choose an appropriate category for it.

The channel name is especially important as it’s often the very first thing your users see. It has to be clear and easy to remember. If your content is great, viewers will be recommending your channel to others, often through word of mouth, so you don’t want the name to be too difficult.

 

Choosing a name and category for the YouTube channel

Choosing YouTube channel name and category

Once you’re done picking your name and selecting the category, check the terms box, and click done.

And there you have it!

 

Making your channel

You’ve now officially created your YouTube channel. Now all you have to do is make it look amazing to attract a big audience. Not sure how to do it? As promised at the beginning of the article, here are my tips that will help you make the most of your video content marketing efforts with YouTube.

 

Select an eye-catching profile image

When a user enters your channel, the first thing they see should be a properly prepared profile image that will entice them to stay (or scare them away, but we don’t wish you that). Your goal is to wow the visitor within the first seconds they spend on your channel.

 

cover-car

Channel profile image example from Mercedes

 

cover-apple

Channel profile image example from Apple

 

cover-yt

Channel profile image example from Nike

 

Make sure you don’t use just any image you came across when browsing your files and thought was awesome enough to publish. Check the image size and proportions first, and make your profile image fit perfectly.

As you can see, making a tiny strip of image may not be enough, as every image is automatically adjusted to desktop, tablet, and smartphone screen dimensions (responsive design, baby!).

Luckily, the file below should help you adjust the profile image so that it looks perfect on any device. The format (.psd) requires using Adobe Photoshop to open it – feel free to download the file here.

 

size-matters

Choosing the best size for your channel profile image

To add a profile image, you have to log into your newly created channel. You can do so by following this link.

Once you’re there, just click on the pen tool which appears as you hover over the profile image area, or click the Add channel art button.

 

Adding the profile image to your YouTube channel

Adding the profile image to your YouTube channel

As mentioned in the previously shown image, the recommended dimensions for your profile image are:

 

  • TV – 2560 × 1440 pixels
  • Desktop – max 2560 × 423 pixels
  • Tablet – 1855 × 423 pixels
  • Desktop – minimum and mobile 1546 × 423 pixels
  • Text and logo safe area – 1546 × 423 pixels

 

Choose an attention-grabbing channel name

Another essential step to creating a professional-looking YouTube channel is getting a unique URL address. In a nutshell, it’s a sort of a channel name to replace the automatically generated channel’s URL. Editing the URL is easy as ABC – just visit the YouTube account settings page and click “Create unique URL”.

Your channel will probably look better in search results with a legible and catchy name, such as “AwesomeMarketingVideos” instead of „sjsuenvmwkdhvnvxcbadwkeyvnd”. Remember that once set, you can’t edit the channel’s unique URL again. Give it some time and thought to create a proper, memorable, out-of-the-box name.

If you can’t see the option to change the URL, that may mean you’re not eligible for one (just yet!). Below you’ll see some of the Google’s requirements for custom URL:

 

  • Have 100 or more subscribers
  • Be at least 30 days old
  • Have an uploaded photo as channel icon
  • Have uploaded channel art

You can also qualify for a custom URL that aligns with your web domain by linking and verifying your official webpage with your connected Google+ page.

 

Automation means more free time for you… and your family

There’s one great hint to managing all YouTube accounts effectively: don’t waste your time on manually sharing the video content on Google+ or Facebook. You can easily automate this activity within your YouTube account and give yourself more time for other content ideas… or some jogging in the park to get a bit of inspiration.

Integrating your YouTube channel with Facebook and Twitter profiles is all it takes to share your new content on social media (Google+ shares it automatically – yay!). To enable this option, visit the account sharing settings page.

 

Connecting Social Media Accounts to YouTube Channel

Connecting social media accounts to the channel

 

Let others find you

Have you ever thought about the way you look for information on the Internet? You may realize it or not, but most of the times you use keywords to search for the information you need.

They key to success is the ability to think the way your potential viewer thinks and mark your channel with the keywords that will make it easier for viewers to find your content amongst the competition.

 

YouTube Channel Advanced Settings and Keywords

YouTube Channel Advanced Settings and Keywords

 

You can add new keywords using the advanced setttings page. Select them carefully and help your potential viewers find themselves watching your videos! Just please don’t use such cheap tricks as adding “free videos”, “discount coupons”, or similar to your keywords list if you don’t offer any of these.

Advanced settings is also a place where you can change your avatar, which serves as a profile image for your Google+ account.

 

Size matters

After signing up for your own YouTube channel, you should pay close attention to verifying your account as soon as possible. Once you do this, the search engines won’t treat you like a bot that starts fake accounts, but like a real human actually using the service. To go through the verification process successfully, take a look at the Verify page.

The service will ask you to type your phone number and will send you a text message or make an automatic call to this number. Once your account is verified, you’ll get an instant functionality upgrade to your account. From now on, you’ll be able to upload videos that are longer than 15 minutes – sounds exciting, doesn’t it?

 

Under 15 Minutes

 

Final touches

There’s one important element of your profile you can’t forget about – describing your channel in a few sentences and adding social media links or other contact information so that anyone can reach out to you easily.

Your channel description does not only provide useful information about the content you post, but also has a strong influence on the search results. Make sure your description includes adequate and true information, but sprinkle these with a few keywords as well. You can edit this information in the My Channel view.

 

YouTube Channel Description Settings

YouTube Channel Description Settings

 

Just don’t over do it – it’s just like adding too much salt to your favorite soup.

After all these tricks, your channel is ready – go and attract new subscribers, upload dozens of videos, and build your own engaged community.

All in all, your creations deserve to be watched by hundreds (or thousands!) of viewers, right?

And if you’re eager to learn more, check out these two articles on how to use YouTube Captions and Video Content Marketing Guide for SMBs.

The post Things to Remember When Starting a YouTube Channel appeared first on GetResponse Blog – Online Marketing Tips.

A Simple Formula For Writing A Great Blog Post

Blogging is at the core of today’s online businesses, and you too should be producing high quality content which educates your audience and also helps them resolve the issues they might face. It’s necessary for your company to have a blog and publish articles on a regular basis.

 

However, apart from knowing what to write about, you should also learn what the correct content structure for maximizing your blog performance is. Without the right approach and plan, it’s likely you’ll be stuck with a great concept, without knowing how to express it.

Today you’re going to find out how you can use a helpful formula to create the perfect article that will allow you to convey your content in the most compelling way. Let’s dive in!

 

Data-driven content ideas

First of all you need to come up with content ideas for the next three months. Once you have your list of strategically chosen topics, create a schedule or a calendar calendar. This will organize your workflow and let you focus on writing timely content.

The process of generating ideas for blog posts should be based on:

  • your keywords list
  • competitor analysis
  • market trends
  • and your buyers’ expectations

All these factors are equally important upon implementing your strategy. Make sure you don’t skip anything mentioned above. It’s best to aim for evergreen content ideas because they will never go out of style and will continually drive organic traffic. Once you know what to write about, you can wrap it around the right structure to create the perfect blog post.

 

The one and only – headline

What gets read more than anything else on your site is the headline. Hence, you ought to become a master in headline writing because this is the most powerful component of your article which is indeed a make or break factor.

According to Copyblogger, the 80/20 rule works best when writing headlines:

“On average, 8 out of 10 people will read the headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. This is the secret to the power of your title, and why it so highly determines the effectiveness of the entire piece.”

Search results, social media, publishing platforms – they’re all overcrowded with high quality, compelling content; and the competition is tough. You should learn how to make your blog posts stand out and craft killer headlines that will convince people to click-through. The better your title, the more attention it will grab.

Take a chance and learn a few techniques of headline writing:

 

 

 

The main takeaways are:

  • Your headline should appeal to emotions and desires. This means that it needs to raise the right questions – typically the ones your buyers frequently ask you – and in order to provoke the expected reaction, it should be formulated using words that your prospects commonly use.

It’s scientifically proven that headlines affecting strong emotions drive the most attention. However, “positive headlines tend to perform better than negative sentiment.” However, we don’t recommend click baiting.

  • Include a keyword within your title. According to Ahrefs’ research, keyword placement on your page correlates with your rankings, and the use of an exact-match keyword within your headline is one of the most important locations to optimize in order to improve your search rankings.

Moreover, they stated that placing your target keyword at the beginning of your title also makes a positive difference.

  • Your headline should accurately and neatly summarize your whole article. Let people understand what they should expect to read before they click on your link. This way, you’ll avoid disappointment whilst lowering your bounce rate.
  • Keep your headline to maximum 55 characters. According to Coschedule: “Headlines of about 55 characters long tend to earn the highest number of click-throughs.” 

Besides, Google search results are limited by length; so, longer headlines can get cut off and won’t be fully displayed. This is why it’s best to stick to this rule.

  • Anytime you want to check if your title is good enough, use Coschedule Headline Analyzer. Coschedule Headline Analyzer is a free and user friendly tool that will score your headlines and give you various suggestions to help you craft a real diamond out of them.

In addition: use numbers, make lists and how-to guides, use trigger words, make promises, and most importantly, keep on executing superior work.

 

The introduction must be captivating

The introduction is very important for your writing because it defines the flow and progress of your piece. It’s mission is to attract your readers to continue reading.

a) The perfect introduction, according to Neil Patel, is one that shares the main idea of the article. You should start with describing the current situation on the market, justifying the importance of the particular problem and explaining how it affects people – your users. Then you should emphasize on the value that your readers will get as a result of reading your article. This will glue your audience to your article.

b) Another successful tactic for the introduction is to start with telling a story. The Groove HQ team tested what the the best way to start an article is, and they found that storytelling is key. According to their study, posts with storytelling drove 300% more readers than posts without storytelling.

Pro-tip: It’s best if you give a personal story or anecdote of an influencer for example. This will make your story authentic. No matter what tactic you decide on, remember to keep your introduction concise – about 6 sentences – and simple. Plus, use easy language, and keep your sentences short for better readability.

 

Divide your blog post into concise paragraphs

Paragraphs make your content structure clear, organized and easy to scan. They improve the readability of your post and its overall aesthetic. Furthermore, a transparent outline is necessary for organizing your content because the majority of visitors just scan your article instead of reading it. They look for something that may be appealing and try to estimate how much there’s to read. Help them with that and go for short paragraphs.

Each of these paragraphs should begin with a subheading – H2 or H3 to define the title for each following paragraph.

 

plan

 

What’s best? Subheadings like H1, H2 or H3 will help you optimize your page for a target keyword. They’re number of on-page SEO locations where you may want to place your keyword. Make sure you add them to your next post!

There’re other methods for organizing your content and making it more reader-friendly. When possible, use bullet points, quotes, bold a fragment, and italicize some keywords. Plus, don’t forget about visual representations such as charts, infographics, illustrations, and screens.

Pro tip: It’s a good idea to number your content. It’s both helpful to your readers and easier for you to write.

 

Content writing itself

The most essential part of all the elements that cohesively create a perfect blog post is, of course, the writing itself. Devote some time to diligently research and find the best resources for your post. You can use tools like BuzzSumo.

BuzzSumo provides you with articles that gained the most shares over a chosen period of time. You can also use Buzzsumo to see influencers in your field and then check if they have any content covering your topics. This could be a very helpful tool when looking for topics or curating content.

Next, don’t forget to check the search results for a given subject and see what’s on the first page. In the top 10 results – in incognito mode – you’ll find competing articles. So read them all and treat them as your guidelines.

 

Visuals that add value

Apart from a well written copy, incorporate fine quality and relevant visuals that add value to your writing. Blog Pros analyzed about 100 high ranking articles and came to the conclusion that the best performing posts had an average of 3.2 images. Moreover, blog posts with images have been proven to attract more backlinks, and backlinks have an essential impact on your search results.

Pro-tip: Don’t forget to credit the borrowed images. For legal purposes, they need to be linked to the source.

 

The perfect length

SerpIQ studied the average content length of the top 10 results and it’s visible that content exceeding 2,000 words tends to perform best. The higher word count correlates with better search traffic.

 

seo

 

Optimize for on-page SEO

As mentioned at the beginning, content writing should be based on SEO.

Add a call-to-action

Yeah, content marketing should focus on educating and helping readers with their real life issues, but also inspire them to take action. This is why a subtle call-to-action will make your perfect blog post complete.

Enclose a subtle offer or bonus material like a downloadable eBook in exchange for an email address. The requested action shouldn’t be demanding: don’t ask for too much.

Place your CTA in the header, sidebar, or footer of the post. Test their locations and change them if necessary to maximize results.

 

Small additions that make a big difference

 

Mobile Optimization

Check how your blog posts display on mobile devices. Are you ready for the era of the mobile device? Nowadays, people effortlessly switch between devices, so it’s a must to make their mobile experience flawless. This mobile-friendly test by Google will analyze a given URL and report if the page has a mobile-friendly design. Use it and verify your website.

 

Social Sharing

Always incorporate a social sharing feature on your blog. Since social sharing has the potential to improve the reach of your post, it makes sense to include social buttons on your page. Also, it’s a good idea to have one or two ready “Click to tweet” boxes on your page that cover a quote with a mention for the lazy ones.

 

Back to you

Perhaps you have your own pattern? Or some additional ideas that I forgot to add? If so, don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments below.

The post A Simple Formula For Writing The Perfect Blog Post appeared first on GetResponse Blog – Online Marketing Tips.

Affiliate Marketing Automation:Goals,Needs&Wants

Affiliate marketing and automation go hand-in-hand. However, while many eCommerce sites – often following Amazon’s footsteps – are taking automation very seriously for their B2C operations, their affiliate programs are very far from a functional, result-oriented automation.

 

In this three-parts overview, we’ll see together how to set goals, assess the current situation, implement, benchmark and improve your affiliate program with automation.

 

What automation is here for

A very important disclaimer. Automation is not here to substitute your affiliate manager, nor to replace the relationship management that make or break an affiliate program. Automation is here to take care of the repetitive tasks, so your affiliate marketing team can focus on adding value where the human component does make the difference.

 

What are your affiliate program goals?

While each and every business would love to grow their sales exponentially overnight through affiliate marketing, there’re several variables that influence your realistic affiliate goals. They include your business type (B2C, B2B, C2C, etc.), your target markets, and the maturity stage of your vertical and Company.

If you’re a well-known brand, which has already invested millions in awareness and engaging customers, you’ll need automation to segment, inform and motivate the scores of affiliates who’ll become part of your affiliate program. In this case, your goals with affiliate marketing and automation are likely to be focused on providing timely updates to your top, professional affiliates about promos etc. And to educate your long-tail affiliates about effective and efficient way to use SEO, SEM, Social Media, etc to bring commissionable sales.

If you’re a new entrant, offering new solutions to a clear market’s need, then automation will be mainly about providing customizable content to affiliates, so they can use it to educate the market. To share with your affiliates your successes and milestones, in line with their promotional methods. That can be a special coupon to celebrate your first 1million users, a limited edition for a tangible product, etc.

 

What are your affiliate program needs?

Affiliates want reliable, real-time, clear measurements of what’s working for them, and what’s not. Let’s imagine I offer you to promote my services. You’re not exclusive to me, nor I’m exclusive to you. Anyone else can accept my offer, meaning there’re no barriers to entry. On top, you do all the work upfront, without any compensation in advance. In the best case scenario, I’ll pay your dues the month after you delivered me sales.

Under these circumstances, you’d at least expect me to give you accurate updates about how many eye balls are turning into leads, how many leads are turning into buyers, and how much buyers are spending. So, you can scale-up on the segments who work well, and cut-back on (or redesign the campaigns for) the segments which aren’t converting into sales.

This is the easy part of automation for affiliate marketing. There’s a wide variety of SaaS and installable affiliate tracking solutions, plus affiliate networks you can join. A tracking solution just offers KPIs like clicks, leads, sales and commission amount. Then you have to find your own affiliates. Where an affiliate network comes to play, plus its own affiliates, that you can invite to promote your program. It makes affiliate recruitment easier.

 

automation

 

What are your affiliate program wants?

This is the area where there’s plenty of room to grow, and to gain an edge on your competitors. By making automation the rule, and not the exception, you can streamline your affiliate marketing efforts, and focus your affiliate mangers time on what matters, instead of taking care of repetitive tasks.

Aspects of an affiliate program that you can improve with automation include:

1) Sending relevant updates to your affiliates, based on their promotional methods

2) Sharing coupons and deals

3) Implementing funnels to activate, retain and grow your affiliates, based on what do and don’t do (first login, first sale, first substantial commissions, last login, last sale, etc.)

 

What do you want to know?

This is your opportunity to speak-up and be heard. My next articles will keep in consideration the main areas of interest that you have when it comes to affiliate marketing and automation. Are you just starting your affiliate program, and trying to understand if you should go for an in-house affiliate program manager or an affiliate outsourced program management (OPM). Are you already a maverick of affiliate marketing, and you want to bring your program to the next level with automation?

 

Back to you

Thanks for being part of this conversation!

Post your questions, dilemmas, strategies, successes and challenges.

The post Affiliate Marketing Automation: Goals, Needs And Wants appeared first on GetResponse Blog – Online Marketing Tips.

Trump & Hillary Bankrupt Leaders & it’s our fault

[avatar user=”Jon Flatt” size=”thumbnail” align=”left” link=”www.jonflatt.com/about” target=”_blank” /]

This election cycle has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that this country, the Great US of A is bankrupt of true leadership. Because I have learned from such great leaders such as Red McCombs and many others, and now that I teach and mentor leaders myself, this election has been incredibly difficult to watch. When you analyze these two candidates it’s really not hard to see how and why they became the nominees for the next president. I Say “We the People” are to blame.

Many people may read this article and say well “that’s just how it is” that’s how politicians are” that’s just the world we live in today” it’s just reality. Well, don’t we spend the majority of our life changing our reality, and striving for something better. In our heart of hearts as misguided as some people’s intentions are, most are striving for a change. And in order to change you must believe that you can.

So how did we get to this place? How did we get to a place where millions of people will support candidates that are proven liars that have made terrible decisions and have destroyed innocent people’s lives for the sake of power. It seems daily we see a news clip or some form of media that completely contradicts something that the candidate said or did days or weeks before. The sheer abundance of caca is unprecedented!

[si-contact-form form=’3′]

There Is a very strong argument to be made that both of these candidates Clinton and Trump are terrible leaders. Keep in mind a great manipulator is not a great leader. A great salesperson is not necessarily great leader. A great negotiator is not necessarily a great leader.

shutterstock_477765550

Trump struggles to communicate effectively. His divisive language alienates groups of people and leaves even supporters scratching their heads. His latest debacle of locker room banter on the bus of the media outlet furthers the argument that he is a misogynist who cares nothing or has no respect for women. While this may be untrue and while he may not be a prejudice maniacal misogynist bigot, his words leave you questioning his judgment. Great leaders communicate effectively. Trump has also continuously lied about his own words, about previous statements and in my personal opinion manipulated the religious community into thinking he is something he is not. Trump will engage in petty arguments and will lose focus on W.I.N. (What’s Important Now) Great leaders focus on priorities and do get distracted with emotional pettiness.

Hillary Clinton has a long track record of scandal, lies and corporate interests. The decision to set up a private email server supposedly for convenience would leave anybody in the technology world baffled. She clearly lied on several occasions and the true intention of the private server is still unknown. This should be disturbing to any intellectually honest American who cares about their country. Self-Accountability is a key principle of any great leader. She has gotten away with so much that she is the poster child of what is wrong with our government and how there is little to no accountability for persons in great positions of power.

Clinton’s treatment of the women who accused her husband of either an affair and in some cases sexual assault was truly contradictory of her so-called feminist position. Great leaders do not destroy the character of innocent people in order to further their gains. Great leaders hold onto their values and convictions.

We are all to blame as we have allowed ourselves to become divided by skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, income and political party affiliation. It seems the media, no matter what category you fall into, will always portray that it’s you against them. We live in a time of verses. Black vs white. Cops vs black lives. Homosexuals vs religion. Rich vs Poor. Democrats vs Republicans. We have all heard the phrase divide and conquer. Great manipulators use this to distract from their own flaws as they portray themselves as great leaders.

In our envious obsession with money, fame, materialism and pop culture, we have been distracted from the true principles that make life fulfilling. Love, Integrity, honor, conviction, passion, spirituality, hard work, family, friendship, creativity, charity, empathy and TRUTH.

Great leaders preach these principals and bring people together for the betterment of all. Unfortunately, these types of leaders in politics seem to be a thing of the past. If there’s a Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan out there, I certainly hope they come to the forefront of the political leadership in the United States of America.

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Beginners List of Internet Advertising Terms

Above the Fold: A term derived from the print advertising industry. It describes the area of a web page that’s visible before the website visitor scrolls down the page. Note: There is no set pixel size for the fold; it will vary depending on the visitor’s screen size and resolution.

Account-based Advertising: One tactic in an account-based marketing (ABM) strategy. It’s the practice of serving display advertising only to specified titles at the target accounts you designate. For example, if you’re marketing a new type of food packaging to General Mills, you might target multiple levels of responsibility, such as Senior Product Manager, Senior Product Marketer, VP of Product Marketing. Only people who work at General Mills and have these titles would be shown your ads.

Ad Audience: The total number of people that have been exposed to or could possibly be exposed to an ad during any specific time period.

Ad Banner: The most common form of digital advertising. These ad units, which include static graphics, videos and/or interactive rich media, are displayed on a web page or in an application.

Ad Exchange: A technology-facilitated marketplace that allows Internet publishers and advertisers to buy and sell advertising inventory in real-time auctions.

Ad exchanges are a departure from the historical method of buying ad inventory, where advertisers and publishers would enter price negotiations in order to show ads on a particular website. With an ad exchange, an auction is conducted in real-time, providing instantaneous bidding for ad space that’s available across the Internet.

Ad Impressions: The number of times an ad has been served, regardless of whether the user has actually seen or interacted with the ad in any way. (Also see: Ad Serving)

Ad Inventory: Website publishers serve ads to visitors when they visit a web page. The number of potential ads that can be served is considered their ad inventory. For example, if The Gotham Times averages 1,000 visits to their home page in any given week, and they have space for two display ads on their home page, then their potential ad inventory is 2,000 impressions per week.

Ad Network: A vendor that connects advertisers to publishers. Ad networks act as a single point of contact between publishers and advertisers, helping negotiate supply and demand.

Ad Serving: The delivery of an ad from a web server to the end user’s device, where the ads are displayed on a browser or an application.

Ad Unit: A size-and-format specification for an ad. The Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade association promoting digital ad standard and practices, has a set of guidelines for sizes.

Affiliate Marketing: Publishers have websites that get traffic and advertisers want to promote their products to the people who visit those websites. Affiliate marketing is an agreement between a publisher and an advertiser where the publisher receives compensation for every click delivered and/or every sale made of the advertiser’s product or service.

Analytics: Data and statistics about the users of a website and how they interact with the website. Analytics can be used to uncover information about how many people browse a website, how much time they spend on the website and the specific actions they take on the website.

This information is then used to target audiences, understand consumer behavior, improve user experience and optimize advertising campaigns.

Attribution: The goal of attribution is to identify which touch, of the many possible, is most (or partially) responsible for a conversion, so ROI can be calculated. First touch, last touch, and multi-touch are common attribution models. For example, a sale might begin with an ad, lead to an email campaign, and end with a phone call from a sales person. With first-touch attribution, the ad would get the entire credit for the sale. With last-touch, the phone call gets all the credit. With multi-touch, the ad, the email and the phone call each get partial credit.

Behavioral Targeting: Targeting an ad audience based on their previous online behavior, including but not limited to websites visited, online searches, and purchases.

For example, if you visit a product page on the Act-On website that might indicate that you’re interested in marketing automation. Given your apparent interest in Act-On, behavioral targeting could be used to show Act-On ads on other websites while you’re visiting them. It’s a way to ensure the advertiser is running relevant ads targeting people who have a seeming interest in their products or services.

Bounce Rate: A “bounce” is a website visit in which the visitor looked only at the single page they landed on, did not interact with it, and then left the site. The “bounce rate” expresses such visits as a percentage of the total visitor sessions, within a specific time frame.

For example, suppose a website has 100 sessions in one day. (Note that this is different from 100 visitors. Any visitor could visit multiple times, and each time would count as a session.) If 75% of the visits are bounces, then the bounce rate will be 75%. A high bounce rate is often indicative of a poorly designed landing page. It can also indicate that a page completely fulfilled what the visitor was looking for, so the visitor did not need to keep clicking to find out more. (But more often it means the page failed, underscoring how important it is to design landing pages for visitor engagement.)

Brand Awareness: The extent or level to which a potential consumer can recall and identify a particular product or service. Increased brand awareness is one of the two customary important goals for a digital advertising campaign (the other being a conversion of some kind).

Browser: A software program with a graphical interface that people use to navigate all the information available on the World Wide Web. Examples include Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer.

Call to Action (CTA): A phrase included within an ad, or a graphic element such as a button, which invites the audience to take a certain action.

Channel: A distribution method; In advertising, it’s an outlet used by advertisers to reach audiences, such as direct mail or radio. Digital advertising includes channels such as display advertising, social media advertising, and mobile in-app advertising.

Clickthrough Rate (CTR): Expressed as a percentage of total impressions, this statistic shows how often people who are served an ad end up clicking on it.

An ad’s CTR is calculated by dividing the number of clicks an ad received by the number of times it’s been served, then converting that into a percentage. For example, if an ad received 5 clicks and was shown 1000 times, the CTR is 0.5%. The higher the CTR on an ad, the better it’s performing.

Contextual Targeting: Selecting audiences based on the type of content being displayed on a particular webpage.

An example of contextual advertising is placing ads for hair care products on the Vogue website.

Conversion: When launching a campaign, advertisers select a specific action or set of actions they want audiences to take. Each time a member of the audience takes this action, it is counted as a conversion. Conversions include actions such as signing up for a newsletter, or making a purchase on a website.

Conversion Pixel: A 1×1 image pixel placed on a web page (such as a thank-you page) which is triggered whenever a conversion occurs. Usually transparent.

Conversion Rate: Expressed as a percentage, a conversion rate can be calculated in two ways:

The first is by the taking the number of users who completed the conversion and dividing it by the total number of impressions served.
The second, more common way, is by taking the number of users who completed the conversion and dividing it by the total number of users who clicked on the ad.
Conversion Tracking: Monitoring how many conversions have occurred during any specific time period, and analyzing which ads led to the conversions.

Cookie: Information stored on a website visitor’s browser. A cookie tracks the visitor’s movement on the website and is used to remember the visitor’s behavior and preferences. These do not transfer across browsers.

Copy: Text in an ad, or text written to be delivered audibly.

Cost per Acquisition: The cost of acquiring one customer. Typically calculated by dividing the total amount spent on an advertising campaign by the number of customers acquired through that campaign.

Cost per Click (CPC): How much an advertiser pays, on average, for each ad click. CPC is calculated by dividing the total amount spent on a campaign by the number of clicks generated.

Cost per Lead (CPL): How much an advertiser pays, on average, for each ad click that results in a lead conversion. CPL is calculated by dividing the total amount spent on a campaign by the number of leads generated.

Cost per Thousand (CPM): Metric that shows how much it costs to serve 1,000 ad impressions. Also used as a standard measure for buying display ads, as inventory is generally sold on a CPM basis.

Cross-Device Targeting: Serving the same buyer targeted ads across multiple devices.

Cross-device targeting allows advertisers to reach their audiences in a sequential, repetitive manner regardless of the device they’re on, whether it’s a tablet, desktop or smartphone. This has a similar effect to the old-school tactics of gaining reach and frequency through using a range of channels such as radio + newspaper + billboards + direct mail.

Demand-Side Platform (DSP): A system that allows advertisers to bid for and purchase inventory from multiple ad exchanges, through one single interface.

Direct Response: A campaign or ad specifically created to encourage audiences to take immediate action.

Display Advertising: A digital advertising format where graphic ads are shown on a web page. The term originated in newspapers, and the principles still apply.

Display ads can be graphics, videos, interactive images (a quiz or a game), and expandable (Also see: Expandable Banner).

Banner: 728 x 90
Rectangle: 336 x 280
Skyscraper: 160 x 600
Square: 250 x 250

Email Advertising: Clickable banner ads and links that appear within emails and e-newsletters.

Expandable Banner: Banners that increase in size when a user hovers over them.

Frequency: The number of times an ad is served to the same consumer during a specific time period.

Since multiple users can often access the Internet from the same device, frequency is calculated based on the number of times an ad is delivered to a particular device’s browser.

Frequency Capping: Setting a limit on the amount of times an ad should be shown to a consumer within a specific time period.

Geographic Targeting: Selecting an audience for a campaign based on zip codes, designated marketing area (DMA), cities, states and countries.

Impression: See: Ad Impression

In-Stream Video Ads: Video ads played before, during or after the video content the publisher is delivering to the consumer.

Interstitial Ads: Ads that appear between two different content pages, served when a website visitor navigates from one page on a website to another. A best practice in mobile marketing is to avoid using an interstitial as a popup that blocks initial access. For example, when the user tries to access the Gotham Times on their mobile, they are interrupted by an interstitial ad (offering the Gotham Times app) that they have to either accept or close before they can proceed to the site.

Keyword: A specific word or phrase chosen by advertisers to trigger and include their ad within search engine results. The advertiser doing contextual advertising also chooses keywords, so that their ad will show up within pages that are returned for that keyword.

In search advertising, the position of the ad within the results is determined by bidding. The highest bidder on a keyword usually gets the top position.

Landing Page: The web page users are directed to after they click on a display or paid search ad.

Lead: A potential customer. In digital advertising a lead is someone who has given you their contact information, often by signing up for a newsletter or filling out a form to download an eBook or other gated content.

Lookalike Audience: If you’re like most businesses, you know who your customers are from a demographic and even psychographic point of view. A Lookalike Audience targets people who are similar to your existing customers which helps improve your conversion rates. You can use Lookalike Audiences when you’re running online display, Facebook, mobile display or just about any other kind of digital marketing campaign.

Mobile Search: Any Internet search conducted via a mobile device.

Native Advertising: Any paid advertising that is indistinguishable in form from the channel being used to present it.

Native advertising in The Atlantics’ online magazine. It’s got a headline and a byline, and it looks like a story. The yellow “sponsored by” banner is the only clue that this is advertisig (but it is an obvious one)
Native advertising in The Atlantic’s online magazine. It’s got a headline and a byline, and it looks like a story. The yellow “sponsored by” banner is the only clue that this is advertising (but it is an obvious one)
Examples of native advertising include sponsored content on news websites and Facebook timeline ads.

Overlay: Advertising that floats over webpage content, graphics or videos. Overlays cannot be blocked by ad-blocking software. One kind of overlay is called a “lightbox.” These ads begin as a standard, scalable ad unit. If a user engages by hovering over the ad for some set amount of time (often two seconds), the ad expands (to as much as near full-page), while the page behind it dims, increasing emphasis on the ad. Advertisers pay for the number of times the ad is expanded.

Local Video Advertising Secrets Revealed

Great SEO Tips in Under 4 Minutes

4 Obscure Social Media Sites for Biz that work

1.Ryze.

Started in 2001, Ryze is a social networking site for professionals – particularly entrepreneurs.

It’s free to join and there are paid memberships are available. There are currently over 500,000

members worldwide.

More than 1000 organizations host networks on Ryze. According to their website, networks on

Ryze let existing organizations and communities plus new ones use Ryze’s technology to

connect their members with each other.

As of this posting, Ryze is not accepting new members. How intriguing!

2. Talkbiznow

Talkbiznow is a web-based business community that provides business services for small

businesses and professionals. In addition to the basic functionality of creating a profile and

connecting with others, users can manage a calendar, store files (up to 50MG of free space!),

host webinars, manage all other social media sites with Social One and lots more.

The company’s mission is to simplify the essential business services and seamlessly integrate

and deliver them through the internet for Free. Making it possible for businesses of all sizes to

network, collaborate and essentially expand their services in avenues they might not have

explored before.

Talkbiznow could be a great site to help get the social media newby moving in the right

direction. Sign up is easy, and the profile build and management is user-friendly. I especially like

the free collaboration and desktop services: file sharing, web conferencing and voice

conferencing.

3. Affluence

This is a social media site for the (you guessed it) affluent. In fact, you you must prove your

worth before you can even join, so I can’t tell you much about it, other than it’s intriguing.

Affluence is a private social network where accomplished individuals connect, share

information, and engage in meaningful conversations. Members also enjoy exclusive, high-

quality content and feature advice from industry experts on subjects such as art, technology and

travel.

So, if you fall in the income range of a “verifiable minimum household net worth of $1 million

(US) or annual household income of $200,000,” then this most certainly could be the spot for

you!

4.  Quora.

Now that LinkedIn has disabled their popular Answers feature, Quora is a great place for small

business owners to be. For details, visit this recent post.

So, there you have it. My top 10 list of best social media sites for small businesses. Want more?

Check out a complete list of social media sites  on Wikipedia: click here.

Wondering how to make social media marketing work for your small business? Sign up for my

new self-paced, hybrid social media marketing course geared to help your small business

Every Great Entrepreneur Has This In Common

Passion Drives Success. You must burn your ships and understand that you are going to lose many battles before you win the War.

5 Techniques Startups Can Use to Retain Customers

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As part of a startup business, you’ll know that there is no greater desire to win your first customer or your tenth customer. You’ll do whatever it takes to call a customer your own. That quest will become so all-consuming, you’ll practically fantasize about it.

I’ve heard some entrepreneurs compare that feeling to owning their first pet.

It’s a neat analogy:

Like customers, pets get stolen, escape, or get lost. Even if they don’t, you just have to accept that a pet has a lifespan—sooner or later, they will be gone. You will grieve, and you will question what more you could have done. But eventually, you accept it and think, “that’s life.” So, the cycle continues.

As a founder of a startup myself (we’re six years old now, in fact), I know those feelings all too well.

When you’re starting up, worrying about customer retention seems a million miles away. There’s just too much to do, on top of winning those first few customers. Who has time to worry about stopping customers leaving, when you’ve only just started winning them?

That’s understandable. But eventually, when you’ve won your 500th customer and you still have yet to fully focus on retention, you’ll be missing a big trick.

I’ve just spent the last 18 months focusing on customer retention (as opposed to winning new customers) and I started thinking how cool it would be if customers could somehow live forever.

See Also: How Should You Handle Unhappy Customers?
Don’t accept that customer churn is inevitable

Customer Thermometer, the SaaS provider I founded six years ago, has been steadily growing and our loyalty rate has always been high. But I knew it could be higher.

Sales and marketing spend, no matter how targeted, is always going to be more expensive than hanging on to the customers you’ve got.

Despite what anyone tells you, you can always do more to drive down customer churn. It doesn’t have to be as inevitable as many accept it to be. What’s more, you can achieve high retention, very sustainably, through the right approach.

Being a SaaS provider that helps our customers retain their own customers, we knew we had to get this right!

We proved it when we decided to make customer retention our only goal for an entire 365 days, and grew annual revenues 130 percent as a direct result.

Why?

Not only did customers stay and spend more, they were happier, more engaged, and helped us grow a better business.

We also benefited from the greatest unintended consequence of focusing solely on existing customers: gaining lots of new customers. After this successful experiment, we put together our customer retention guide to share it with the small business community; feel free to take a look at it.

Based on our experience, here are five techniques you should be focusing on to improve customer retention in your business and enjoy the same benefits we’ve seen.

See Also: 6 Simple Tricks to Avoid Late-Paying Customers
1. Maximize the bad customer feedback you receive

Reducing the amount of complaints you receive doesn’t mean you’re making customers happier—it means you’ve got fewer opportunities to understand customer perspectives and improve your service accordingly. So, as counterintuitive as this sounds, you should be working hard to encourage customers to point out deficiencies and problems with your product or service.

Give them a simple process to do this. Don’t make it onerous. Don’t send them a 20 question survey when they’ve had a one-minute interaction with your business. Sounds crazy to say it, but plenty of people do!

By encouraging feedback and making an open and blameless place to talk about it within the business, you will improve the culture and environment of your company. It’s about using complaints to train and develop, instead of to blame.

If you share mistakes openly, you can stop them happening again. It’s vitally important to encourage everyone on the team to learn from each other’s mistakes and not just their own.

If you don’t, then they won’t improve.

2. Ensure company founders do customer support

Businesses increasingly rely on autoresponders and other carefully orchestrated sequences of email communications to support onboarding and winning customers.

Create more opportunities for your founders and top execs to disrupt these automated processes by manually intervening to communicate greater sincerity and authenticity—and not just with the customers who spend the most!

As founders of Customer Thermometer, Mark Copeman and I now invest more of our time in finding out about new customers and getting in touch with them, asking questions such as “Can we help?” or “Have you thought of this?”

The objective is to help them feel confident that we will personally help them if they need us to, not purely to elicit the maximum response. We also personally work on our chat channel at least twice a week.

These initiatives have enabled us to discover a real-time intimacy with customers that we didn’t have before. We understand their perspectives better and can give the highest possible level of service.

The investment in time is not inconsiderable, but very worthwhile.

See Also: 8 Ways to Create Real Customer Loyalty
3. Publish your one-off content to the widest possible audience

When you’re focused on helping a particular customer, quite often, you produce content just for them. It may be a slide deck to help them justify your product internally, or a positioning paper providing insight to support their wider strategic needs.

This content is of immense potential value to lots of other existing customers, or even potential new ones. It’s so often just filed away and never repurposed, shared, or seen again.

It might be because you originally wrote it for a niche reason and haven’t considered expanding it out. You may also think that the content is “too valuable” to put in the public domain.

When you test these boundaries, you’ll find that they don’t exist.

Many of the pieces of content I consider niche have been our most successful.

As far as “withholding” really good content is concerned, if it makes you question whether you’re giving away too much, then surely that’s a good sign people will want to consume it? After all, that’s the whole point!

4. Be more customer-driven with changes to pricing and billing

Be very careful about making changes to billing and pricing until you’ve explored every angle of how it will impact your customers.

I learned this the hard way and now think about how much easier life would have been for us and our customers if we had avoided the “heart transplant” of changing our day-one system to a much more customer-orientated billing system.

In the early days, our old dunning (payment chasing) processes followed a built-in assumption that any customer whose credit card expires deserved constant, noisy harassment to the point of distraction. That’s now been replaced with a calmer, friendlier system that’s more inclined to leave our customers alone when it naturally takes a short period for a replacement credit card to activate after an expiry.

Our pricing structure was similarly overhauled when we realized we were forcing customers to cancel their monthly subscription just because they wanted to take a break. An “At the Beach” option now provides that pause button at a negligible cost, which has not only stopped churn, but put it into reverse gear, all while reducing customer hassle!

See Also: 15 Tips for Dealing with a Client Who Won’t Pay
5. Don’t just respond faster—change faster

Defining minimum response times amongst customer support teams invites complacency and the misguided belief that you are delighting customers. As we’ve found through a lot of experience, it’s far better to focus on delivering real answers and support as quickly and effectively as possible.

We don’t have any traditional metrics in our customer support team. Instead, we’ve focused on the human aspects.

We have called it our “Ministry of Magic” and—strange as it seems—this encapsulation of a customer support vision has brought untold benefits. Our customer support “magicians” are immensely motivated to live up to the standard, and customers have reacted proactively to remark on their dedication.

At a product level, we have moved our static, twice-yearly software release cycle to an ongoing development roadmap where new features are released every few weeks. Just last month, a key customer had a specific request and we put it in the product within 10 days. They used to have to wait six to eight months to see their new feature rolled up with hundreds of other new, unfamiliar ones in the next major release. Development is now far more evolutionary.

Customer retention needs to be woven into your business

Becoming a customer-focused business can mean rejecting conventional wisdom like minimizing complaints and founders sitting in ivory towers, and it means being ready to change entire product development and payment processes to please even just one more customer.

The simple truth is that metrics alone can be dehumanizing, which can lead to the ultimate disaster—no longer viewing customers as people. If you do genuinely need metrics, be truly customer-centric in the ones you choose to follow.

As for treating customers like cherished pets—if you feed and water them regularly and look after them well, they will live for a very long time.

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