2015 - The Best & Worst of Simply Friday

So - how did the newsletter perform?

• 45 newsletters sent this year which was a little behind last year’s 47 but ahead of 2012 and 2013’s 44.
• Grew the opening rate from last year’s 58% to 62%
• Changed the opening title to shorten it by removing the “It’s Friday” Text
• A lot of churn - the list size stayed the same but many more new subscribes and unsubscribes than previous years.

On the whole I think I’m happy with that - driving the opening rate above 60% is encouraging and considering how the first half of the year was - I think I have a soft target for 2016!

The Best of 2015

What’s Going On In Your Business
Opening rate of 72.34%
July 2nd.

What's Going On In Your Business?

An impassioned plea to not only start measuring your performance but to actually do something with the data.  Just compiling the figures isn’t enough - you need to be changing behaviors as a result of data trends.

The Worst of 2015

Marketing Advice From Helmuth Von Moltke The Elder
Opening rate of 50.94%
October 29th

Marketing Advice from Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

You’d think after last year’s worst performer I’d have learned that random headlines that make sense to me but give you no indication as to what’s inside don’t work.  I wish I’d got this one across better as it is a critical point:

Digital marketing is the wild west and it’s different for everybody and every business.  Yes you need a plan and a general objective but you won’t find out what works for your business until you dive in.  The message that “No plan survives contact with the enemy” is so true when it comes to digital marketing - particularly in the social world.

Finally...

I don’t know about you but I’m exhausted - it has been a draining year.

I’m going to take the rest of month and get my energy back - do some reading and catch up on a million things I’ve been putting aside.

Have a happy holiday season and a fabulous new year.

See you on January 7th.

Written while listening to:  C major Theme - Lisbon Development

Image Credit: Metric Spaces by stuartpilbrow on Flickr
Image Credit: Bismarck, Roon, Moltke - Wikipedia

For All Businesses

Remember the Science post?  Well I’ve got some more good stuff for you.

Social Proof

It’s the current buzz word and will be for a while until something new takes over.

What is it?  It’s the presentation of what people are saying about your business on your website.

Cut and Paste Reviews Then…

Well yes - that’s a start and what we’ve done in the past but there are ways you can make those reviews stand out. 

With the arrival of the semantic web you can wrap your reviews in code that tells the search engines what they are and can result in them being pulled into your search results.

This is good.

Do People Review Your Business? 

Yes.  Yes they do.  And while some of them might use Yelp, G+ or Tripadvisor, the vast majority of reviews come in the form of word of mouth or thank you emails.

The micro-formatting doesn’t care where a review comes from - it’s just as easy to wrap a thank you email as it is a Google+ review.  Sure you’ll need to get their permission to publish and at the same time you might want to ask them if they would rate you on a scale of 1 to 5, but so long as it’s real - the search engines don’t care.

What Next

I recently wrote that generating reviews is a must for any local business.  I’d amend that and say generating reviews is a must for any business.

Shout me if you need help with this.

Written while listening to: Introduction to music2work2

Image Credit: 4.5 Stars.SVG on Wikipimedia.org

How To Find Your Audience For $9 A Month

If you are posting to social media at least once a day Narrow.io is a great tool to help you find your audience.

Here’s How It Works

Enter your business’ keyword phrases into Narrow.io, it will then “like” tweets containing those words as well as follow the person who tweeted.  If that person doesn’t follow you back within a couple of days, the tool will unfollow them.

The killer data here is that Narrow.io shows you how many followers you generate from each keyword phrase.

What This Does

Unlike buying 5,000 followers for $5, Narrow.io delivers people who are already talking about your business’ areas of interest. 

When runningon music2work2 during October I grew 330 new Twitter followers but more importantly, visitors to music2work2.com from Twitter jumped to 172 (up from 46 last year) and those visitors stayed on the site for over 5 minutes.

But Here’s The Really Good Bit

After a few weeks of running 20 or so different keyword phrases you begin to identify what words resonate with your real audience - real being defined by people who follow you back.

Not only can you start expanding on those phrases, you can start incorporating those words into your new content, especially in the titles and you can use the words as hashtags when you publish. 

Not Just About Twitter

Narrow.io only runs on Twitter but the information you gain can be applied across your digital strategy.  When you know the words that people are interested in you can be laser focused on what content to write and how to market it.

Not bad for $9 a month.  Let me know if you need a hand setting it up.

Written while listening to: New Release: Breathe 61 Bpm by music2work2

Image Credit: Narrow.io

For Local Businesses

If you have a physical location then you need to be aware of how local search works.  While it initially seems fairly opaque with terms like Local Pack, Three Pack, NAP, Citations etc - it’s actually pretty straightforward

Steps To Take

On-Site

There are a few things to check on your existing site.  If I built it with you the only thing we need to look at is correct schema setup in the footer for NAP, schema for on-site reviews and maybe the amount of content and internal linking on some of the major pages.

Off-site

This is about NAP consistency and the amount of citations you have in local directories.  This is something you can do yourself - which takes time - or you can have a third party do it.  You’ll be looking at a few months at around $225 a month to get everything set up.

Behavioral

Generating reviews on Yelp and Google+ is now a must for any local business.  If you’re speaking to customers on a daily business how hard is it to bring up the topic of online reviews?

If you change your mindset to accept that a review will increase your local visibility in search - why would you not talk about this with your customers?

What Next

Every business is different and will have different priorities.  If you’d like to talk about your business and work out a plan of action, drop me an email and book a session.

Written while listening to: Andy The Barman 1105 by music2work2

Image Credit: Map by Amber Case on Flickr

Marketing Advice from Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

As Chief of staff of the Prussian army and architect of Germany’s wars of reunification in the 1860’s, Helmuth was clearly an experienced and successful dude.

One of his most paraphrased quotes is

“No plan survives contact with the enemy”

He could have been talking about digital marketing!

It’s The Humans...

Digital marketing is not static, it’s not traditional push marketing like a billboard or an ad.  Great marketing gets human recipients to interact with and amplify the message.

As Helmuth knew, you can’t control how human beings are going to behave. 

The skill in digital marketing is less about the planning and more about how you respond to its execution.

You & Your Humans Are Different

There are so many ways to slice up the digital marketing pie - from video to articles, from photos to info-graphics, from daily tweets to monthly emails.  Just because something works for a competitor does not mean it’s going to work for you and your business.

It is the combination of your personal skills, your business’ attributes and how you react to and interact with your marketing outreach that will define success.

Plan to Move Quickly

Sure start with a plan, an initial outline of what you are going to do and how you’re going to do it, but plan to change everything as soon as you see how the market reacts.

Written while listening to: Breathe New Tone & Image by music2work2

Image Credit: Bismarck, Roon, Moltke - Wikipedia

Nap Time

As far as your business is concerned, NAP stands for

• Name

• Address

• Phone Number

You would be shocked at how many variations there are of your business’ NAP “out there!”

Local Directories For Local Businesses

If you’re a local business, i.e. you depend on people finding you in a certain physical location, your presence in local directories is a must.

When you can’t compete against the heavy SEO and Adword budgets of the national chains, local search is your best chance to become visible

NAP Consistency Is Important

The more listings you have in local directories the more visible you are in local search, however - you must ensure that the NAP used across your local is the same.

This means making sure you use the right telephone number format, ensuring that if you use the +4 digits on your zip code in a few listings you use it in all your listings. The general thinking is that it doesn’t matter if you use Blvd. or Boulevard so long as you consistently use one.

What Do You Look Like?

Want to see what your business looks like in Local Search and how effective your current approach is?

https://moz.com/local/overview

If you’d like help working through the results, give me a shout.

Written while listening to: 191 BPM Session 1 by music2work2

Image Credit: Please take one by uncoolbob on Flickr