The New Zealand Commerce Commission is investigating online retailers who they claim have manipulated customer reviews and testimonials in
“…conduct that was liable to mislead consumers by creating artificially positive impressions…”
NZ Commerce Commission website
What actions constitute “misleading consumers”?
Read moreIn 2014, Matt Cutts, former head of the Web Spam team at Google, wrote the following:
“Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop.”
Ever since the state of guest blogging has been debated heatedly. Indeed, guest blogs with low-quality content have truly been dead for decades.
On the other hand, high-quality blogging is an effective strategy to create backlinks, and drive traffic to your website. Even Cutts eventually published a correction, and said: “There are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community, etc.)”
So, the question is, how can we create quality guest blogs every time?
Here, we have outlined three easy and effective strategies to create guest posts that are sure to attract links, and bring in traffic:
The Robin Hood technique, as suggested by SEO Gold Coast, is a quick and effective way to write guest posts with good quality content. This technique involves recreating great content from popular blogs and offering them to platforms with a low ranking, and less credibility and traffic.
Keep in mind, however, that this does not mean plagiarizing the content – instead, you must only take inspiration from the blog to recreate ideas for your own post.
The following steps can be undertaken for this technique:
Ahref’s Content Explorer Tool contains one billion pages and can be used to find blogs you can write a guest post for
Source: ahrefs
Note the importance of Domain Rating (DR) that showcases the popularity level of a backlink, based on a scale of 1-100.
While it is tempting to only work with high DR blogs, low DR blogs are also worth investing your time and energy in, as they usually have a niche following and are bound to grow.
What’s more, low DR blogs usually receive fewer pitches and have less strict editorial standards – thereby making it easier to get featured or published.
Finally, you can move on to step 4:
4. Read the content of your chosen blog piece, and recreate it by adding a unique spin to it – conclude by pitching it to low or high DR blogs through email outreach
Another effective way of guest posting is by splintering or breaking existing blogs into shorter, but authoritative posts.
The point of splintering content is to dive deep into a topic that you have already researched before, as it is easier to recreate, revise, or rewrite.
After writing detailed individual posts, you can then pitch the pieces to online magazines and platforms that would publish it as guest posts, whilst still re-directing the reader to your original blog post – thereby creating quality backlinks.
A small change in perspective can lead to a completely new, and unique piece of writing.
The trick here is to use a previously written blog post and turn it into multiple guest posts by simply tweaking your overall perspective.
For instance, if your previous blog post was on the “The Future of Link Building” – you can now write on a variety of topics by changing your viewpoint, such as:
The techniques outlined here are a good way to get you started. Keep in mind, however, that once you start pitching your guest posts, you may be faced with some problems.
For instance, editors and bloggers may routinely reject your pitch, negotiations may take months, or the link to your article may be taken down suddenly and without prior notice.
To address this concern here is what you can do:
In short, by following the techniques outlined above, you can defy Matt Cutt’s claim that guest posts are dead. Indeed, guest posts are thriving and can be used to generate traffic and brand awareness for your business in the long run.
Digital marketing is very finicky. You are not just contending with customers; you have impartial algorithms to contest with, the attention market, your competitors, technological glitches, and so much more. Knowing how to successfully market your website means more than simply knowing the basics. Yes, email newsletters help. Yes, social media marketing is an option. Knowing how to successfully implement these tactics is the real challenge, and to help you overcome the common hurdles of these marketing hurdles we have put together a great beginner’s list to guide you:
Improve the Quality of Your Website
The first step to successfully marketing your website is to improve your website. All marketing efforts will be wasted if you do not improve it. Consider this – if you have a treasure map, and went through the effort of following it, how would you feel if you turned up to an empty field or a busted down house? Your customers follow a similar path to your website. Sometimes it is direct, other times it takes several attempts to get them to your site, but if your site is not worthwhile, they will leave immediately.
Example: A Slow Website
If your website is slow, then all the marketing efforts in the world will be a waste of money. That is why one of the first steps you should take is to switch to Krystal, which offers 300% faster speeds than most other competitors.
Improve Your Social Media Approach
To improve your social media approach, you need to understand how each platform works. Optimizing a post is standard practice, but you will want to go beyond and see how your competitors have succeeded or failed. Once you have that information, work on creating an account that provides users with the experience they are looking for in a company such as yours.
Example: A Technical Social Media Account
Take a company that offers technical service, like computer repairs. How can you possibly market such a company on a social media site like Instagram? What if you were an accountant?
The answer is to provide information. Create simple yet well-designed text posts. Be unique with your photography – a computer repair company has plenty of interesting textures you could photograph, for example. Try to be a source of information so that people follow you to get tips and tricks daily. Collaboration and PR is one of the best ways to market your company, as it gets your name out there and brings in high-quality inbound links.
Example: Collaborating With Another Business
To collaborate with another business, you will want to first see if there are any opportunities in your business model. If you sell high-quality phone cases, for example, partner with local artists that have a healthy, dedicated, and real community of their own. They create phone case designs for you, you give them a healthy chunk of the profits (after costs), and in turn, their fans know about you, buy from you, and then go on and advertise your product to their friends and family.
There are so many ways you can improve your marketing efforts, and hopefully, with these examples, you have a more concrete idea of how you can grow your community and reach.
Little surprises that reward your customers are a really nice way of helping them to feel special.
Today I got a marketing easter egg from Seth Godin.
The message was short, barely formatted and it’s one I have waited a year to receive. Hidden in the fourth line was a surprise.
Don’t forget to look for the purple circle on the website to get the best price.
Seth Godin, The Marketing Seminar
…. and so I took a look.
It looked like a pretty piece of graphic art. But one of the circles had an embedded link. NICE….
Sometimes I get frustrated when we make an offer and few people take it up. I think “That’s an AWESOME deal – why isn’t everyone paying attention and buying?” But I realise that I’m looking at it the wrong way around; I should be delighted that only the most savvy, the most loyal and most deserving customers are the ones who take up the offer.
I think of these as my “ultra-loyal” customers. They care enough to read. They don’t skip my messages and so I can give them a reward that others don’t take up.
Can you use an Easter Egg Marketing Strategy for your best customers?
Get insights into Seth’s thinking with his latest book This is Marketing – the course above is based on it.
I care deeply about the Creative Commons movement – this blog has been licensed for share-alike attribution since it started in 2006.
The Christchurch massacre on Friday has highlighted one of the challenges of modern media. How to stop bad stuff being shared; and the converse, how to preserve good stuff for future use.
The New Zealand ISPs are working hard to take down far right websites and the much-shared live stream video the gunman made.
In contrast, Mike Dickison is working to preserve the positive images from the event for posterity. Read his 7 part twitter thread explaining why this matters.
Images are requested.
If you’re a cartoonist or a press photographer or a media outlet or just someone who has a good eye, we need your images uploaded to @WikiCommons under an open licence, ideally CC BY SA. My goal is to create a gallery that anyone can easily draw from and reuse for free. Images are important. They’ll define these attacks to people around the world, to our descendants, to the history books. Too often the only images repeated after a tragedy are ones of anger and fear and hatred. We need to make sure all the story is told.
Mike Dickison on twitter @adzebill
A website’s success is often dependent on its design flow, cohesiveness and content. This is the reason as to why a lot of User Experience experts (UX) are also adept in graphic design. One of the best ways to create a good user experience is by having a clear grasp of design principles.
Here’s some key website creation tips you can learn just by attending a graphic design course.
Value The Fundamentals
The key to developing a higher understanding of any topic is by understanding its fundamental principles. Nowadays, creating a cool looking graphic is as easy as tapping a couple of buttons on your smartphone. While that may sound simple, these design tools are only part of the process. The more significant piece is understanding what’s visually appealing and what distracts people from your message.
Here’s a list of basic design principles you should know about:
Leverage The Fold
The term “above the fold” was initially used in graphic design and later on used on web design as well. Above the fold pertains to the topmost area of your webpage that users see without scrolling. There’s still a debate whether this area is still relevant nowadays, but whatever the case is the fact remains the same — 80% of users spend their time above the fold. You need to maximize the use of this space and hook your visitors. Here are some ways on how you can do that:
The way you design this area will contribute to how well you communicate your value proposition to your target audience.
Create Your Own Graphics and Images
About 65% of the population are visual learners which means that a lot of people rely on visual cues to help them understand better. When you apply this kind of mindset into website creation, you can expect more people to find your website worthwhile.
Take, for example, infographics. People pay attention when you show them data and statistics backed by research. However, not everyone can digest a 20-page research paper. Through the use of infographics, complex information can be communicated easier. A graphic design course can teach you how to create your graphics, select thought-provoking images, and repurpose old content.
Put Importance On Branding
If you’re wondering why a lot of websites spend time and money on branding, it’s because a properly thought out brand shows a unified business. Graphic design courses should teach you the importance of creating a brand guideline and how to properly implement it not just on your website but in your overall business as well. Here are some of the reason why consistent branding is essential:
Conclusion
Take time to increase your skills by enrolling in a graphic design course. The lessons you learn from these courses will help you create a website that’s not only user-friendly but also appealing. You don’t need a lot of money to learn how to design. You just need an infinite amount of resources and the inspiration to push you forward.
Getting digital marketing sponsorship right is a challenge. Activations using digital channels depend on robust messaging strategies and careful persona creation. In this presentation we have a case study from Air New Zealand and Akzo Nobel Volvo Ocean Race which you can adapt to your needs.
Rebecca was speaking on the topic of digital channels for sponsorship at the Conferenz Sponsorship Summit and NZ Marketing Summit joint event. Here are the slides and a video of my keynote.
Thanks to Lana Mihelcic who kindly shot the video for me. Connect with her if you want a dynamic sports event manager or have contacts in sailing and The Americas Cup.
Ford on Facebook with matching cover photo and profile image.
A matching Facebook cover photo and profile picture looks professional and exciting. Look at the Ford one here – see the large image becomes the background behind the smaller logo picture? Cute!
You can do so many things with it such as making your Facebook followers laugh or just to make your profile look professional. But how do you line up the two images and make it work? Read on.
1. Screenshot your Facebook profile page: The first step is to take a screenshot of your profile page for size reference. Paste this screenshot into PowerPoint or a similar programme where you can CROP the screenshot. We’ll be using our client, Rowperfect, as an example:
Screenshot of the Rowperfect Facebook page
2. Crop your chosen picture into two images: now that you have your profile screenshot and have pasted it into PowerPoint you can begin cropping your desired image. Detailed instructions follow this image…follow steps 1-4 frame by frame below.
3. Place them on your Facebook profile page: now you have your two images you can place the PROFILE PICTURE image on your Facebook profile picture and use the COVER PHOTO image as your Facebook profile cover. If all is done correctly your Facebook profile cover photo and profile picture will now line up together and look flash, just like the Rowperfect Facebook page!
Here are a few ideas we found that might spark some inspiration for you… speech bubbles, a cartoon bird house, multiple images overlaid or a camera icon. Be creative.
Facebook profile picture ideas and improvements
Migrating to digital marketing from traditional marketing is a question I get asked frequently. Giving a talk to the Te Atatu Business Association, I was able to showcase both business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) examples of ways to work out these things
The resources on the last slide are worthwhile saving / bookmarking. They relate to directory listings and tips for local marketing.