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"We're not going anywhere"

Featured

"We're not going anywhere"

Yesterday, President Obama traveled to Arkansas to tour the areas ravaged by last week's tornadoes and severe storms. While there, he talked with families who lost loved ones as a result of the tornadoes, as well as the first responders, recovery workers, and members of the National Guard.

"Part of the message I'm here to send also," said the President, "is that the federal government ... will be here for the long haul. And we'll just keep on at it until things are rebuilt."

How to Set Up and Use Twitter Lead Generation Cards in Your Tweets for Free!

Posted: 07 May 2014 03:00 PM PDT

Posted by danatanseo

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

Working as an in-house SEO Strategist for a small business forces me to get "scrappy" every day with tools and techniques. I'm constantly on the lookout for an opportunity that can help my company market to broader audiences for less money. In the past I've written on how you can add video overlays to your YouTube videos using Google AdWords and generate traffic back to your site without spending a dime. (P.S. This is still working, so if you haven't done it, read this post then get on over to AdWords and get your video overlays rockin').

Learn how to add Lead Generation Cards or LGCs to your Tweets!

What is a LGC? LGC = Lead Generation Card (specifically in Twitter)

A LGC in Twitter is a form that can be attached to your Tweet that allows your followers to directly send you their contact information with the click of a single button in Twitter. Here is an example of what a LGC looks like:

Here is a Tweet containing the LGC:

Here is what appears when an end user clicks "View details:"

Notice how the box is pre-populated with your recipient's email address, enabling them to click the Call to Action button and beam their contact information to you in a single click. Ooohh, Aaahhh...Très Nifty!

"But wait!" you say, "I don't have any budget to pay for Promoted Tweets!"

Great! Neither do I! We have that in common!

The beauty of Twitter LGCs is that you can add a LGC to a regular non-promoted Tweet and it doesn't cost you a single solitary penny.

It's Free…that's right….I said the F-word.

Caveat – You can't compose and publish the Tweet from your regular Twitter admin home page. You have to compose and send the Tweet from inside Twitter Ads. Here's how you do it:

Log in to Twitter
Click the Setting Icon and select "Twitter Ads" from the drop down menu [Screenshot below]

3. Click on the "Creatives" Tab in the top Nav Menu in Twitter Ads and Select "Cards"

4. Click "Create your first Lead Generation Cards" – Bonus: You Can have an unlimited number of cards!

Here's what the form looks like:

You'll need to make sure you have the link to your Website's privacy policy handy. Plus you'll need to have an alternative URL where end-users can visit a page to find out more about you and/or your offer. Other than that, all the dimensions you need or right there on the page. Very easy.

5. Once your card is set up, click the "Tweets" tab, just to the left of the "Cards" tab. [Screenshot below] You can also get there by selecting "Tweets" in the "Creatives" drop down menu in the Top Nav.

6. Click the blue "Compose Tweet" button located in the upper right corner.

7. Leave the default delivery setting set to Standard. Compose your tweet & Click the last icon on the right just below your "Tweet" box (when you scroll over it, it says "Attach a Card to This Tweet")

8. Select the card you would like to attach to your Tweet.

9. Send your Tweet!

That's it. Now you can grab your favorite beverage, sit back in your chair and just watch the cash roll in. Okay, maybe not, but you did just manage to attach a lead generation mechanism to your Tweet without spending one red cent!

Now, once you have cards set up in your Twitter Ads account, the steps are even easier. All you will have to do in that case is log in to Twitter. Click "Twitter Ads" from your settings menu. Click "Tweets" under the "Creatives" drop down in the top Nav. Click the blue "Compose Tweet" button. Write your Tweet, select the card and voila!

But wait, there's more!

So, you might be thinking, "Great! But how do I get notified that someone filled out a Twitter LGC? What do I do with that info?"

Along with getting free LGCs, you also get access to some pretty nice analytic data for Tweets sent from your Twitter Ads account. So, here's how you track and download your leads:

Navigate back to the "Card" Tab under "Creatives."
Next to the card corresponding to the leads you want to access, mouse over the white area right below the card's URL [Screenshot]

Notice how when you are just looking at the page, it appears that there's nothing there? [See my big blue question mark?]

Hopefully Twitter will address this problem with their UX, but there really is something there. Scroll over that "seemingly blank" area, and "boom!" there is a set of four icons – select the right-most one :

This will create a .csv export of all of the leads generated by that card, together with the date they were collected, the user's Twitter ID, Name, Twitter handle and, most magical of all, their email address. (Insert harp music and glitter here).

3. Upload these into your favorite email program (we love Mailchimp!) or CRM and have at it!

For those of you who are visual learners, I've created a step by step video that walks you through the whole process:

There you have it. You've just successfully set up your Twitter Lead Generation Card and are ready to start raking in free leads from Twitter! Now I want to hear what your creative ideas are for implementing this and using it for your business. How do you think using Twitter Lead Generation cards along with your Tweets can augment your marketing program? I'd love to see them in the comments!

P.S. After this was written I received some excellent questions in the comments regarding two important points that need to be included in this post. The first one is that you have to sign up for a Twitter Advertising account in order for the "Twitter Ads" selection to appear in the drop down menu of your account settings. You can do that via this link: https://business.twitter.com/start-advertising The second one is that this is only currently available to people who live in the United States, Canada, the UK and Ireland. Thanks to travelcarma and Daniel_in_la for bringing this up in the comments!

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The Great Content Cull: The What, Why and How?

Posted: 08 May 2014 12:30 AM PDT

Over the past 15 years, content published on the web has drastically changed. From content creation, right through to the way that we consume pieces of content, and the devices that we consume them on. Content is changing, and quickly!

This drastic change means that we constantly need to be reviewing, editing, and deleting the content that we once thought was up to scratch. Over the past few months, I have been conducting a number of content reviews and wanted to let you in on what I have been doing.

Before we get started on that, I guess the question you are already asking is why? Why do I need to review my content? There are many ways to answer this question, and from many different angles. One reason is to ensure that you provide the very best information to your users, and those that come across the website. If you provide out of date information, or a post that is statistically incorrect then you are going to lose the trust of the user, and they may not return in the future.

From a search perspective, you want to ensure that your content targets keyword topics based on user intent. You also want to ensure that any content that you have produced in the past will not be deemed as useless, and more importantly spammy by the search engines. As I am sure you are aware with the well publicised algorithm updates by Google, they are now looking even more at the content that is provided as a ranking factor, and if you don’t comply then you are likely to be either given a penalty or fall considerable behind your competition.

Now you know, the next step is to understand what you have.

What does your content landscape look like?

Many of us don’t know what content we have on our websites, let alone what different types, and that is where the trouble begins.

If you are not aware what content you have on your website, then how do you know what is working, what needs to be improved, and what is no longer required?

If you are aware of what content you have then you are in better shape than most. If you are not, then this is the first place to start.

Understanding the content you have

The first step to understanding what content has been published on your website is to create a content inventory. This can be as simple or as detailed as you like, but there are certain elements that it must include:

URL
Page Title
Media Type (list multiple if required – PDF, Video, Slideshow, etc)
Content category (product, blog post, category page, etc)

These basic elements provide you with the initial structure of what content is currently available on you site. A large part of gathering this information can be automated using crawlers. In a previous post I talked about finding all the URLs to your website, so this may help.

Before you get started, if you are not sure what a content inventory should look like or include, go and have a read of Andrew Kaufman’s post Discovery: Content Audits, Inventories and Interviews Oh My! This will provide you with a good background to content inventories.

Gathering the data

Now that you have the basics of the content published on your website, you need to start gathering the data that will help you make decisions.

The metrics that you need will be determined by the type of website that you are reviewing, but they are likely to include the following:

Visits (include Uniques) – Min of 12months.
Conversion Data – Min of 12months.
Bounce Rate – Min of 12months.
Social Interactions (Use SocialCrawlytics)
Reviews
Comments
Content Length
Linking Root Domains

As I said, there are many more that you are likely to need, but these are some of the main ones.

If you think there are others that should be included in this list then let me know in the comments below.

Now, your spreadsheet should be starting to fill out nicely with data, but there is still a very important step missing!

Brains over algorithms every day!

So, you now have all the data required to make a decision on what content looks like it is working, and what isn’t, but we still need to conduct a manual check. Data gives us some great insight, but it is no substitute for a human looking at each page.

This task is likely to take a considerable amount of time, so you may want to break it down into smaller, more manageable chunks.

For the manual check, you will need to go through each and every URL individually, asking yourself a number of questions that could include:

What is the objective of the page?
Does the page provide me with the information that I require?
Has this page been created for a user or for a search engine?
Is the information supplied still valid or does it require updating?
Are the comments/reviews useful?
Would this page make me buy the product/service?
Would I share this page to my social community?

Whilst asking yourself these questions, you need to be taking notes and entering them into the spreadsheet. I see this as one of the most important stages of the content review. Data gives you a lot of information, but it won’t answer all the questions that a user is looking for.

Take your time! Getting this right is essential, as you will be making some big decisions based on these comments.

The decision!

Whilst you are making your way through the content inventory, you will also need to be thinking about what you feel is the best possible outcome for the page.

If it was your content, would you keep it, edit it, or completely remove it? This is an important step, and the data you've gathered should help determine your decision.

For me, I look at a range of metrics depending on the page type, but the most important aspect is the content itself.

If the content doesn’t answer the questions that I have mentioned above, or others that come out of reviewing the content, then it is going to require some work no matter what the data tells me. First and foremost, the content should always be about providing the best information to the user.

Below are a couple of examples that require a different analysis.

Product Pages

What I am looking for from a product page is persuasion. How will the product change/improve my life? This may sound dramatic, but if the copy is written in a way that I can see it improving my life then I am more likely to purchase it. See the example below.

“The oven's innovative MoisturePlus feature will inject a fine burst of steam into the oven cavity during cooking to prevent food from drying out, with delicious results. Rapid heat-up times mean there's no hanging around waiting for it to heat up, while even temperature distribution throughout the interior helps you achieve professional-level cooking in your own home.”

I am much more likely to purchase the above compared to:

“The freestanding Zanussi ZCV661MXC Electric Cooker has been equipped with a double oven, four highly responsive ceramic hobs and an easy-clean interior.”

Combining that insight with how many people converted on the page, reviewed the product, and shared it with their social community will allow you to determine the required action.

Blog Post

If it’s a blog post, you will be looking at different types of analysis compared to the product pages above.

You very quickly need to understand whether the post is giving the user value, and whether it is up-to-date and relevant. As blogging has changed over the years, there are still many pages that have been used for micro-blogging – pages that provide a paragraph of information, but nothing in-depth. These are pages that may have provided relevance in the past but with the new world of content creation and those pesky Pandas, this is the type of content that is likely to require an update.

Other content that is covered on a regular basis, especially when products or tools are updated, may require redirecting to the latest versions. A perfect example for our industry would be blog posts on “Tips to pass the GA Exam”. As the exam gets updated on a regular basis, so will these posts. They will either require rewriting or redirecting, the choice will be yours.

I could go on and on here, but I hope that you will now be able to go and make a decision based on the data that you have gathered and the manual analysis that you have conducted. It will always be a scary decision to make, but you need to trust your instincts and make an educated decision.

So there you have it, some of the steps I take to reviewing content. How do you go about reviewing your content? How often to do you conduct an inventory of your website? I would love to hear your comments below or on twitter @danielbianchini.

Flickr Image – https://www.flickr.com/photos/derricksphotos/194446108/sizes/o/

The post The Great Content Cull: The What, Why and How? appeared first on White.net.

Seth's Blog : Good at the beginning

Good at the beginning

...is another word for lucky. Someone needs to get lucky, and it might even be you, but luck is not a strategy.

Becoming good in the long run, that's the result of effort and tenacity and smart practice.

Not just the individual, the kid who doesn't learn to walk the first day, or the violinist who doesn't win a competition at the age of eight, but organizations and their projects as well.

The people who are good in the long run fail a lot, especially at the beginning. So, when you fail early, it might be worth realizing that this is part of the deal, the price you pay for being good in the long run.

Every rejection is a gift. A chance to learn and to do it better next time. An opportunity to figure out how to bounce, not break. Don't waste them.

Sometimes, getting lucky at the start means that you fail to learn resilience and tenacity, and you lack the tools to get better. The long run is a lot longer than the start is.