65 Metrics To Track Blog Success

 

How To Measure Your Blog’s Effectiveness

To measure your blog’s success, start by setting your blog’s goals and determining which metrics are most effective to track your progress against these objectives. This holds whether your blog is B2C, B2B, not-for-profit (NFP),  or solorpreneur.
Blog metrics are all about attracting the right audience and getting them to take appropriate action as a result of reading your posts.
Further, before you jump in and start tracking blog results, assess the difficulty and cost of your related analytics. While there’s a wide range of options available, Google Analytics, which I use, provides basic tracking of blog visitors. It’s free and easy to use.

65 Blog metrics to track blog effectiveness

Most blog goals fall into one of nine major categories outlined below. To help you get your blog metrics on course, here are 65 options organized by goal to get your blog’s tracking going.
Blog Goal 1 – Attract new prospects.

1. How many visitors do you have?
2. How many unique visitors do you have? This shows the number of individuals who visit your blog.
3. Where are your readers physically located? This matters if you’re selling advertising and/or product that requires shipping and other operational logistics.
4. What type of devices do readers use to consume your blog content?
5. Do readers sign up for your RSS feed? (You can use Google’s tool for this.)
6. Do readers register for your emailings?
7. Do readers request other business or purchase information?
8. Do readers call your business? This assumes that you’ve included a page about your business with a unique phone number. This information is useful to incorporate into your About page as well as for local search purposes.

Blog Goal 2 – Increase branding. Branding is a critical aspect of a blog. (Here’s a full list of social media branding questions.) Unlike other metrics, brand metrics often require a survey to track results. You must determine if the measurement is worth the investment.

1. Do visitors recognize your brand when they see your blog?
2. Does the blog improve brand recall?
3. Does the blog enhance brand favorability?
4. Does the blog increase intent to purchase?
5. Does your blog get mentions on other blogs? (This is aided by having a program of guest blogging on other people’s blogs.)

Blog Goal 3 – Expand reach.

1. Does the blog drive earned media impressions in terms of social media shares? The most popular options are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest.
2. Do your readers share your posts via email? This is particularly easy for readers who receive your blog’s emailings.
3. Do other sources share your content such as round up emailings, like SmartBrief for Social Media and Who’s Blogging What?
4. Do you cross promote your blog content on owned media to increase readership?
5. Do your blog posts get published on other third party media venues?

Blog Goal 4 – Increase customer engagement.

1. How much time do visitors spend on your blog? Does this vary based on the day of the week and time of the year?
2. What proportion of your readership is returning visitors?
3. How many pages do visitors read on average?
4. Do readers spend more time on specific articles or topics? Are these the areas that you are looking to promote?
5. Do readers share your blog posts via social sharing?
6. Do readers leave comments on your blog or other social sites where you share your content? Most readers will lurk, reading posts but not taking any further action.
7. Do readers submit guest blog posts?

Blog Goal 5 – Improve search optimization.

1. What is your blog’s load time? Speed is an important factor for search rankings.
2. What keywords do readers use to find your blog? Has your ranking improved for these keywords? (Here’s more information regarding blogs and search optimization.)
3. Do your post URLs use meaningful words rather post IDs? (Here are other SEO tips.)
4. Do you use other media formats like video, audio, e-book or other content in your blog posts? If so, do readers view or download these other content formats? If not, are there other reasons, such as a broken link?
5. Do your images (and other non-text content) use descriptive words in their filenames, have title tags and alt tags to improve optimization?
6. How many sites link (in-bound links) into your blog? How influential are these sites?
7. How many outbound links does your blog have? Has this helped get attention of experts in your field? Are you sharing the love with other blogs and providing value to your readers?
8. Do you have links to other relevant areas (intra-blog or company links) of your site? Do readers click on links in your posts? Do they click on links to related posts?

Blog Goal 6 – Build thought leadership. Both business people and solopreneurs use blogs as a hub for developing their reputation.

1. Is your blog gaining traction? How many pageviews does your blog get in a day and a month? How does the performance compare to the prior month and the same month last year?
2. Which types of articles do people read such as opinion, how-tos, etc.? Do specific categories resonate with readers or certain types of articles? Are you creating additional content around the topics you’re readers are interested in?  Are you using an editorial calendar to guide your decisions?
3. Does your blog rank within your category? For example, this blog, HeidiCohen.com has been shortlisted for top content marketing blog and top social media blog.
4. Do other thought leaders link to your blog posts?
5. Do other thought leaders engage with you in the comment section of your posts?
6. Do you get media requests for your insights?
7. Do you get requests to write guest blog posts?
8. Do you get requests to speak at industry events?
9. Do you get work requests that you can attribute to your blog? For example, they come through your blog’s email or mention your blog.

Blog Goal 7 – Increase lead generation and sales. Don’t forget to include a call-to-action to get readers to take the next step. (Note: While these points show how your blog supports your lead generation and sales, they’re not all easy to track.)

1. Can you track sales to your blog? For example do you have special links to product pages on your website.
2. Does your blog support product sales with how-to and specific product information? Among the elements to track are product page print outs, targeted promotion codes used and click-throughs to purchase or place in cart.
3. Which specific pages do people visit? Do readers visit your most popular pages?
4. Where do readers go when they leave your blog? Do you send them to product-related pages on your company site?
5. Does the blog’s content reduce time to purchase decisions? Do you link to it from your emailings and other websites?
6. Are you generating business leads based on the authority built by your blog?
7. Do you use your blog to distribute tailored promotions? Use a targeted call-to-action and a unique promotional code to track results.
8. Do you carry blog advertising including banners, Google Adsense and sponsorships?
9. Does your blog have affiliate marketing?
10. Does your blog provide post-purchase support? Does your blog help buyers with instructions and other information for using your products?

Blog Goal 8 – Increase customer loyalty.

1. Do your customers read your blog?
2. Do your customers share your blog posts?
3. Do your customers comment on your blog posts?
4. Do your customers share photos or images using your product?
5. Do your customers participate in interviews for your blog?

Blog Goal 9 – Reduce costs.

1. Has your blog resulted in associated reduction in customer service inquiries?
2. Has your blog caused a decrease in search optimization expense?
3. Has your blog reduced other aspects of your marketing budget, such as content marketing?
4. What’s your blog’s content creation cost? This is the expense for blog content. If you’re doing this yourself, how many hours do you spend blogging and what is your hourly fee? The same holds for your staff members. Make sure that it’s fully loaded.
5. What is the cost for additional editorial support? Does someone edit and proof the individual posts?
6. What is the cost for technical support? This includes uploading posts, adding in links, image resizing and placement and on-going site maintenance.
7. What is the cost for the URL and hosting? Are there times when you need additional support?
8. What are your blog’s design costs? Are these one time or on-going?

With blog metrics, it’s important to measure the appropriate results to ensure that you blog is helping to achieve your core blog goals.

How to Track Facebook Success Or Failure with Real-Time Stats

There’s been lots of gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands and pounding of keyboards about Facebook’s Edgrerank lately. “How dare they!” pontificate the social pure bloods. “We put forth the effort to get fans to ‘like’ our page, and now we have to PAY Facebook to reach them? It’s an outrage!”
It’s not.
Facebook is a publicly traded company. They are interested in their own success, period. If that happens to overlap with your success, it’s gravy. Nowhere and never did Facebook say that they would deliver every kitten photo or other inanity you post to 100% of the people that ‘liked’ your page. And to expect them to do so for free, forever, shows just how little business acumen many social practitioners really have. Would you expect ExactTarget (client) to send emails to all of your newsletter subscribers for free? Would you expect Google to give you limitless free clicks on an Adwords campaign? Does CNN give you free TV time because you “put forth the effort” initially?
You may not like it, but social is a business now. And one of the core tenets of modern business is that you have to be faster than your competition. (in fact, I co-wrote a book about it)
A couple weeks ago, I published on this blog a little chart that provided a simple formula for figuring out when to pay Facebook to promote a post - which shows your post to more of your fans. (Note, the existence of this voluntary option, and Facebook’s refusal to show your kittens to everyone without paying their toll is what is wadding panties)

Facebook Stats Live as They Happen

But now, I’ve got a far better solution to show you. My friends at PageLever (a company in which I’m a proud investor) have just rolled our their new Pagelever Now Facebook stats tracker which gives you reach, comments, and likes data for every Facebook post live, as they occur. 
Starting at $99/month, PageLever Now lets you see stats in real-time, publish posts, and see and reply to comments in a simple dashboard. Most importantly, the live stats show you the perfect time to pay to promote a post, and help you avoid cannibalizing your own attention by publishing/promoting too close together.
I love the easy, five star system they’re using to nudge you to promote a post. Based on your rolling, 30-day average engagement, PageLever shows you how the post in question stacks up. The more stars, the better the post is performing, and the more you should consider promoting it (a key principle of post promotion is that the rich get richer. if your initial subset of fans like a post more than usual, pay to show it to a larger segment)
In this example from one of our clients, the nationally syndicated TV show and video website Right This Minute, you can see that the first post has one star, but the second post (iPad Giveaway!) has five stars, and probably should be promoted.

A Bloomberg Terminal for Marketers

The system also includes post scheduling, and an alerts ticker that tells you whenever something important has happened on your page. Jeff Widman, co-founder of PageLever, says the new Now service is like the “Bloomberg terminals that enable stock traders to make instant decision, but this one is for marketers.”
Peering into this data can yield insights that are contrary to conventional wisdom about Facebook fan page, too. Says Widman:

One of the surprises we discovered with real-time analytics was how short the average post lifetime is. Most posts seem to die within three to five hours, meaning you can safely post to your Facebook page at least four times a day.

This annotated screen shot from Widman shows the overlapping waves of activity of multiple posts, and how ideally they should be spaced out evenly across the day and week.

PageLever Now is set up nicely for agencies, too, as you can toggle between all of the fan pages you manage in a single interface. It would be ideal if this system would allow you to Promote a post from within the dashboard, and if you want historical and deeper post and page data you need to look at the traditional PageLever interface (sold separately). But those are minor points.
There are of course many other ways to get Facebook stats, but I’m pretty certain this is the only source for truly real-time data. For $99, if you’re serious about Facebook marketing optimization, this software is a steal, and can make a real difference in your effectiveness.

47 Social Media Facts (& What They Mean For Your Marketing)

Social Media Help For Your 2013 Budget

Social media continues to evolve and mature. As it does, so does the ways marketers use social media and how they integrate it into their marketing plans.
To maximize the effectiveness of your social media efforts, make sure that your goals are aligned with your business objectives and that you understand your target audience in terms of marketing persona and social media persona.
Here are 47 social media facts and what they mean for your marketing and your 2013 marketing plans.
Social media in general. Of course, it’s critical to understand why your prospects and customers are on social media platforms and what they’re looking for from your organization.  (Check out these five social media trends with charts.)

1. 9 out of 10 businesses use social media. (Source: eMarketer) What this means: Most businesses are on social media in some form and will continue to improve their use of this platform. Therefore to be competitive, you need to be there as well. 
2. Marketers use social media to achieve a variety of marketing goals. (Source: SEOmoz) What this means: Marketers use a mix of social media for several related objectives, specifically, content marketing, search optimization and branding. 
3. Blogs are the most important social media venue. (Source: Hubspot’s State of Inbound Marketing) Blogs support social media, content marketing, and search optimization. What this means: Blogs are useful as social media platforms to encourage engagement as well as an on-going source of content to feed social media. 
4. Roughly 90% of B2B marketers use social media to distribute their content marketing. (Source: Research by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs.) On average these marketers use five social media sites to spread their content marketing more broadly through social sharing. What this means: Format your content marketing appropriately for each social media venue to broaden your reach.  (Here’s the link to the related Actionable Marketing chart.)
5. Social media drives sales. (Source: comScore) By providing platforms where customers discover information they need to make purchase decisions, social media supports the buying cycle. ) What this means: It’s important to be present on social media sites where your target audience congregates and seeks information. This is particularly true for LinkedIn and Pinterest.
   
6. Social media ISN’T free. The reality is that establishing a presence on one or more social media platforms requires both human and financial resources! The difference is that social media requires roughly 60% less than outbound forms of marketing according to Hubspot. (Here’s how to make the case for using social media.)  What this means: You must allocate budget to social media in terms of headcount and related marketing expense. 
7. Senior executives don’t participate on social media platforms. (Source: 2012 Fortune 500 Social CEO Index) This hurts customer trust. What this means: Figure out ways that your c-suite can engage on social media that’s not a time suck but provides real accessibility for your taget audience. (Here’s the full story on why senior executives don’t get social media.

Facebook. Social media’s 800 pound gorilla (but where’s the revenue?)

1. Facebook has 955M monthly active users, of which 58% are active daily. (Facebook, June 2012.) Over half of Facebook members use the social media platform regularly.
2. Average Facebook user has 130 friends and is connected to 80 pages. (Social Media Examiner)
3. Less than 60% of Fortune 500 have Facebook page. (Grow)
4. 95% of Facebook wall posts not answered by brands. (All Facebook)
5. Facebook has 2.7 billion Like actions per day. (Source: TechCrunch)
6. Facebook is photography’s 800 pound gorilla with 300 million photos shared per day. (Source: TechCrunch)

YouTube. It’s the second largest social media site and the second largest search engine.  Consider how you’ll add video to your social media content offering.

1. Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month. (Source: YouTube)
2. Over 4 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube. Further, 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. (Source: YouTube)
3. 70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US. (Source: YouTube)
4. YouTube is localized in 43 countries and across 60 languages. (Source: YouTube)
5. More than 20% of global YouTube views come from mobile devices. (Source: YouTube)

Twitter. It’s social media’s 24/7 conversation. (To help you, here are The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Twitterati.)

1. Twitter skews female: Women account for 53% of Twitter users.  (Source: Beehoove) What this means: Twitter has started to mature.
2. The average age of Twitter users has decreased. Over 70% of users are between 15 and 25 (Source: Beevolve). The data is based on participant bios and information in tweets. Since less than a half of a percent discloses their age, Beevolve notes that younger users are more likely to disclose their age than older users resulting in a bias towards younger users. This consistent with recent Pew Internet research that showed Twitter indexed high for US users between 18 and 29.
3. Twitter isn’t a social media community for most users. (Source: Beevolve) About three out four users have 50 or less followers on Twitter. The average user follows 109 people and one in ten people on Twitter doesn’t follow anyone. What this means: As a marketer, you must build your Twitter following to ensure that your message gets through.
   
4. Twitter isn’t a conversation. (Source: Dan Zarrella of Hubspot) Twitter  is a media platform that helps amplify your voice. What this means: You need to build your base on Twitter to leverage its power.
   
5. Create novel Twitter bait related to your topic to attract attention. (Source: Findings of Yi-Chia Yang of Carnegie Mellon) You need a laser focus to build your Twitter following.
6. Maximize retweets by tweeting later in the business day. (Source: Dan Zarrella of Hubspot) 

LinkedIn. Where business socializes. Further, it’s grown beyond being a job seeker’s ghetto.

1. Approximately 2 new professionals join LinkedIn per second. (Source: LinkedIn 2Q2012) LinkedIn continues to grow. What this means: LinkedIn matters for your business.
2. 175+ million members in over 200 countries (Source: LinkedIn August 2, 2012) LinkedIn is where the world connects for business. What this means: You and your business need to be present on LinkedIn.
3. 38% of LinkedIn members are located in U.S. (Source: LinkedIn August 2, 2012) LinkedIn has diversified beyond its American origins. What this means: LinkedIn reflects an international business community.
4. 2+ million companies have LinkedIn Company Pages. (Source: LinkedIn August 2, 2012) What this means: Your firm, regardless of focus, should have a presence on LinkedIn to be competitive.
5. 1+ million unique publishers actively use LinkedIn Share button on their sites. (Source: LinkedIn August 2, 2012) Visitors share content across a range of social media sites. What this means: If the information on your website and/or blog are business related, add a LinkedIn share button.
6. 1+ million LinkedIn Groups where members share insights and knowledge. (Source: LinkedIn August 2, 2012) LinkedIn Groups are a way to find out more about your industry and other business trends. What this means: At a minimum, participate in those groups related to your business and where appropriate start a group.

Google+. As a part of Google, it’s important to stake your turf on this social media platform since it can influence your search rankings.

1. Two thirds of the Interbrand Top 100 have a Google+ brand page, a number that’s been relatively stable since the option was introduced in November 2011. (Source: Simply Measured) Of these, 43% of brands update their Google+ page at least three times a week. What this means: To be consistent and competitive, update your Google+ pages at least three times a week as part of your social media marketing calendar. 
2. The gap on Google+ between brands with the most circlers and other brands has widened while total brand circlers have increased steadily.  (Source: Simply Measured) What this means: It’s getting difficult to catch up with the top brands on Google+. Therefore, you must be on Google+ actively building your base for the future. 
3. Google+ gets mobile. Its app is preinstalled in the 900,000 Android devices activated every day.  (Source: Tweet by Google’s Andy Rubin on June 10, 2012.) Further Google’s Vic Gundotra confirmed that more users sign into Google+ with the mobile app than visit its desktop site.  What this means: Google+ is device indifferent.

Pinterest. As the image driven darling of 2012, Pinterest is poised to make significant changes to enhance its position and revenue generation

1. About 70% of US pinners have household income of $25,000-$74,999 (Source: comScore).
2. About 25% of Pinterest users have college degree or higher degree (Source: comScore).
3. About 60% of pinners are in their mid-20s to mid-40s. (Source: Experian Hitwise for 12 week rolling average ending December 17, 2011).
4. Establish your Pinterest presence.  (Source: Pinsights) Established retailers have between 30,000 and 35,000 account followers. What this means: The longer you wait to get established, the more likely your competitors will pull ahead. 
5. Micro-focus your Pinterest activity by using different boards.  (Source: Pinsights) On average, brands pinned to an average of twenty-five boards in the sixty day period. What this means: Think of your offering in terms of mini-niches and create a special board for each.
6. Leverage Pinterest’s strength based on topic. (Source: Compete) Think visual approach, specifically food, home, and crafts. What this means: Create visually appealing content around topics viewers actively seek. This reduces the work you have to attract prospects. 
7. Pinterest encourages viral activity as shown by the number of repins. (Source:  RJ Metrics) Specifically, over 80% of pins are repins. This makes sense since repinning is significantly easier than searching for new content, checking whether it can be pinned and writing a description.  What this means: To encourage pinning activity, minimize effort participants need to take by providing full description.
8. Pinterest’s high growth has eroded new user quality.  (Source:  RJ Metrics) Newer members now pin less in the first month. This makes sense since the base is broader in composition with less avid supporters. 
9. Pinterest is the best new source of traffic. (Source: Shareaholic) This has value for marketers using social media to drive lead generation.  What this means. Put your product into visually alluring images and post them on your Pin boards. 

Blogs. As a form of owned media that is also social media, blogs are an invaluable element of your social media strategy. (Here’s how to set up yours whether you’re a B2C, B2B, NFP or solopreneur.)

1. Blog two to three times per week for your blog to yield 75% of customer acquisition value. (Source: Hubspot)  
2. Blogs require fifty or more posts before traffic starts to grow. (Source: Hubspot) 

Miscellaneous options. Here are insights on the smaller social media sites and their target audiences.

1. Use Tumblr to reach younger demographics since their sweet spot is 18 to 24. (Chart: comScore) Tumblr has an engaged and loyal following. What this means. If you’re marketing to the teen-twenty-something market, add Tumblr to you mix.
2. Instagram makes everyone a photographer. (Source: Pew Internet Report) 12% of the adult Internet population use Instagram. 27% of this app-driven, social media image site’s users are 18 to 29.  What this means. Consider adding Instagram to your social media if your product is photogenic. (Note: Even GE’s B2B industrial products leverage the power of instagram.) 
3. Slideshare is B2B gold with 60 million visitors per month and 120 million pageviews per month. Skip this B2B site that’s owned by LinkedIn at your own risk! What this means. Incorporate Slideshare into your 2012 marketing plans to expand your reach and attract leads.

3 Twitter Tools to Enhance Your Marketing

Are you looking for tools to help better manage your Twitter presence?
Managing your Twitter presence along with your other online networks can be difficult if you have limited resources.
In this article, you’ll discover 3 tools to make your basic Twitter marketing tasks easier.

#1: Manage and Analyze Your Community with SocialBro

Every business needs at least one management tool to manage its Twitter presence, and there are many excellent Twitter management tools to choose from.
SocialBro is one of my favorites, thanks to the excellent features it offers.

SocialBro offers many features to manage your Twitter account.

SocialBro allows you to not only manage your Twitter account, but it also provides you with useful information you can use for your social media strategy.
Here are some examples of how to use this cool Twitter tool.
Target your business niche
When you start to build a community, you’ll want to make sure you follow the right people. SocialBro helps you find your target audience through a function called Discover Twitter Users.
This feature works with filters and search options to give you the data you need to find your relevant audience.

SocialBro's filters allow you to find your relevant target demographic.

You can filter your search based on time zone, language, verified/non-verified users, public/private profiles, profiles with or without URL and profiles with or without customized avatar.
After that, you can arrange the searches by doing a second filter based on influencer score, followers, number of followers, following, lists they are in, followers/friends ratio and more.
This helps narrow your search results to find relevant Twitter users to follow. And this is beneficial as you can often create a more dynamic community when you use more specific targeting.
You’ll want to use these results to create lists to keep track of the people you’re interested in. For example, you can create Twitter lists for clients, influencers, industry thought leaders and competitors to follow their conversations easily.
Another way to find relevant followers is to use the Monitor a Hashtag feature. It’s a great way to keep tabs on people relevant to your business and follow their conversations on Twitter.
Here’s an example of a search on #blogchat, a Twitter community that actively discusses topics on blogging every week.

When you monitor hashtags, you can find relevant Twitter users who use them.

With the Monitor a Hashtag feature, you’re able to see who has used the hashtag, users who have followed you, users who have not followed you and users whom you’re following and aren’t following you back.
You can choose to engage with the people who aren’t following you. And when you get to know them, they’re more likely to follow you back. This is a great way to build your Twitter community with people who share similar interests.
Twitter is all about social commentary, so listen to conversations to define the community your business needs on Twitter.
Analyze your competitors
SocialBro allows you to analyze any account you’re interested in. This function is ideal to:

• Keep an eye on a competitor’s Twitter account and compare it with yours.
• Analyze its evolution to see who they recently followed, common followers, who you have not followed and more.
• Keep up with their social media strategy and it may highlight areas where you could modify your strategy.

Results of competitors' analysis.

Your business most likely targets the same audience as your competitors. With SocialBro, you’re able to use the filters mentioned above to zoom into your competitors’ followers, quickly analyze their followers and determine whether they’re relevant to your community.
You can decide to follow your competitors’ followers or simply create a Twitter list of their followers and engage with them in the future.
Find your best time to tweet
It’s important to maximize your time on Twitter. SocialBro has a feature that lets you know when your followers are online and find the optimal times to engage with them.

Best time to tweet based on SocialBro's analysis.

SocialBro is a great tool to help you engage with your community. It gives you the ability to search both within your community and throughout the entire Twitter platform using a variety of search criteria.
Another benefit of using SocialBro is that it can be integrated with Buffer, the next tool I discuss.
Other alternatives to SocialBro for Twitter management are SocialEngage, Sprout Social, HootSuite and TweetDeck.

#2: Make it Easy to Schedule With Buffer

In addition to a Twitter management tool, every business needs a scheduling tool. Although many Twitter management tools come with scheduling features, none of them can compare with one of the simplest Twitter scheduling tools available, Buffer.
Buffer makes it easy to schedule your tweets. All you have to do is pre-set the date and time of your posting schedule ONCE and you’re done. You’re able to space out your tweets to avoid spamming your followers.

Schedule the times you'd like to tweet in your Buffer dashboard.

Need to figure out the best time to schedule your tweets on Buffer? I recommend you use Tweriod or SocialBro for this. Once you’ve set your timing, the hard work is done.
To add a post or a tweet to your account is simple—you can either use their Google Chrome extension, their iPhone app or even the Buffer share button installed on many sites.

When a website has a Buffer button, just click it and you've buffered a post.

Here’s how to Buffer an article
After you find an article to share and click on the Buffer button, a pop-up like the one below appears.

You can either use the same text or change the text you want to tweet and click the green Add to Buffer button and you're done.

All you have to do is select the account you want to use, change the text if you want to and click Add to Buffer.
You’re done! Your Buffer is now set to tweet based on the times you set earlier.
Buffer also offers analytics to find out if you’re getting the best out of your tweets.

Analytics from Buffer showing you how your tweet performs.

You can get statistics based on the number of clicks, retweets, mentions and favorites all from their website or on their iPhone app.
Tip: It increases your visibility to thank people for their retweets. Even if you have little time to do this, try to thank those with a large number of followers. It’s easy to do this from Buffer’s website.
With Buffer’s free account, you can have one Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn account and schedule a maximum of 10 posts per day.
If your business has an active community, you may need to upgrade to the paid pro plan to schedule more than 10 posts per day.
Buffer is a great tool for small business owners who want to optimize their tweets and save time.
And Buffer has partnered with many other tools such as SocialBro to improve your social media marketing experience.

#3: Manage Your Twitter Account With Tweepi

Tweepi is a great additional tool for small businesses. You can use Tweepi to manage and grow your Twitter followers.
Tweepi is quite straightforward. It allows you to unfollow inactive users, add new followers and easily follow back the people following you on Twitter.
You can sort Twitter users based on followers, tweets, last tweet and Klout score. This information is presented in an easy-to-read format.
It’s easy to identify inactive followers and unfollow them. This is important to keep your Twitter community relevant to your goals.

Tweepi helps you manage your followers.

One of the features that I like to use is the Follow Followers function. As the name suggests, you can easily follow the followers of any account you choose. For example, this means you can follow the people who are following your competitors on Twitter.
How to use the Follow Followers function on Tweepi
All you have to do is insert the Twitter account you wish to follow. You can choose the Twitter account for any of your competitors, influential users or highly active accounts. Then simply click Start Following.

The Follow Followers feature allows you to follow users who are following any Twitter account.

Next, Tweepi gives you a list of 20 users who recently followed the account and you can choose from there.

This list shows the most recent followers.

I like to sort the results on this list by Last Tweet and follow those who have a real photo of a person in their profile. You’ll want to be careful to avoid following businesses that use Twitter for the sole purpose of promoting their products.
Once you’ve selected the people you want to follow, simply click Follow and you’re done.
Tip: Follow a small number of people. I suggest you follow fewer than 100 per hour and never more than 500 in a day.
Tweepi applies Twitter’s rules of only considering a certain number of follows at a time as legitimate. If the number of people you follow is too high, you’ll be considered a spammer. So you’ll want to use this tool wisely and with moderation to get the most out of building the community you want on Twitter.
Another alternative to manage your Twitter community is ManageFlitter.
Choose Your Twitter Tools
There are many useful Twitter tools, but these three are a great place to start your Twitter marketing. As you move forward, choose additional tools that best fit your social media goals.

The No Hype Guide To Video Marketing on YouTube...Awesome Info!

Let’s get one thing straight, if you want to use video as a way to market your business, you’re going to have to learn about production.
This whole idea behind “all you need is a webcam” is pretty much garbage. Don’t believe me, when was the last time you watched someone’s webcam video for extended periods of time? To be fair, it’s sometimes true that a webcam is all you need, but only if you have an engaging video personality. And let’s face it, being good on video is not a skill that most people are born with.
I’d love to tell you otherwise, but one look at the YouTube Trends blog would suggest otherwise.
Big businesses are savvy now and they’re throwing more money into production. If you want to be competitive, you’ve got to have some skills. 

What Skills Do I Need?

In order to create videos that are going to be worth your audience’s time, you (or a team) are going to need to have a solid handle on at least these 5 areas:

• Storytelling/Writing
• Editing
• Composition
• Networking
• A Basic Understanding of SEO

These basic components are in the DNA of nearly every video that spreads online.

Storytelling/Writing

This is the foundation. Without a basic understanding of how to tell a story, there is no way you’re going to make a video that’s worth watching.
Being a good writer is not as essential to being a good storyteller, which is why some unscripted talking to the webcam videos can work, but it is certainly essential if your story isn’t compelling enough on it’s own.
Consider these two people talking about food:

(I dare you to watch for longer than a minute and a half)
and the now popular Dayum Drops:

In the Five Guys Review, even though the host is talking to the camera the entire time, his personality, and his ability to move through the story from start to finish keeps you watching the entire time.
In real life, you or I might just cram food into our faces without much thought for story (even if it’s tasty). His expression, however, makes you vicariously experience this moment of bliss when he bites into the burger. His ability to vividly tell the story of eating a Five Guys cheeseburger makes you want that experience, which is a ringing endorsement for the Five Guys brand.
Dayum Drops has such an engaging personality, he can take a mundane event and turn it into an experience with no script at all. On the other hand, the show “Tales of Mere Existence” tells the story of mundane events, but with clever writing and a dry voice over (if only to emphasize the mundaneness of it all):

At the end of the day, good storytelling is the foundational element that separates the competent videos from everything else. It is also often the missing element in most online videos. Without a good story, there is nothing to build on, so the video is destined to fail.
A few key resources on storytelling and writing:
Terrible Mind’s 25 Things You Should Know About Story Structure
Lew Hunter’s ScreenWriting 434
Stephen King’s On Writing

Editing

One thing I can say with the utmost sincerity is good video is more about what’s taken out than what’s left in.
If you want to make good videos, you’re going to cut the script. You’re going to move your story structure around. You’re going to shoot things that will never see the light of day.
Editing is the most frustrating, most time consuming, most rewarding experience.
It happens in two phases:
Pre-Production: This is where you’re plan your video. You write your script, figure out your locations, and plan your camera angles.
After you’ve planned your story and written the first draft of your script, it’s important to cut out all of the parts that are superfluous. Then, once you’ve written your script (even if it’s as something simple as a burger review) you need to read it aloud so you can rewrite and cut all all parts that do not move the story forward.
If you’re shooting “on location” it may become necessary to edit the script again. More often than not, you’ll find certain things don’t work as well in real life as they did when it was just you and your computer.
Your script may need to be edited frequently throughout the entire process. So long as your edits are ultimately serving the story, frequent editing is okay.
Post-production: After all of your footage is shot, it’s time to put it all together. This is the part where most people just aren’t willing to put in the time, probably because editing a video is very hard work.
It has been said that in the average 90 minute move there are over 5000 cuts. Editing is what makes the video. It controls the pace of the story.

“The choice and length of shots shape our response to everything we see on the screen… It’s the reason we like movies, because in the end, wouldn’t we like to edit our own lives?”
- The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing

See what James Cameron has to say about this build up in Terminator 2:
A major Hollywood production shoots nearly 200 hours of film, the editor may work for months, even years, turning those 200 hours into a 90 minute movie. Professional video bloggers do it too, just much quicker.
Try watching only the first 14 seconds of this video. You’ll see what I’m getting at:

Did you watch all 3 minutes? Me too.

Composition

You may have heard him mention the “Rule Of Thirds” at the 0:27 second mark in the video above.
This is what he was talking about:

The Rule of Thirds is the basic building block for video composition and is an even older component in that visual language we were talking about earlier.
If your video involves complex movement and editing, you need to storyboard to organize your thoughts. Yes, it takes more time, but it’s a lot less complicated than getting to your set and trying to figure everything out on the spot. One of the major signs of a rookie video maker is someone who is not able to visually communicate the story. Be sure to have an idea of how your story will flow before you start filming, otherwise you risk losing your audience.
Here’s a whole series of videos about storyboarding on Vimeo.

Networking

If nobody sees your videos, do they really exist?
The truth is, there are volumes upon volumes of content about how to effectively social network. Heck, I even made a video about it myself:
But in my experience, I’ve found that the best networking for showing off your videos happens in person.
If the thought of showing your videos to people in person freaks you out, there’s a simple solution: Make better videos.

A Basic Understanding of SEO

Basic SEO deals with the findability of your content, but I put this component last because assumptions are too often made that if your video is findable, then it’s going to convert.
This couldn’t be any further than the truth. If your video is good, it’s going to convert. If it’s findable, that’s just icing on the cake.
So what do we do to make it more findable?

• Keyword Research
• Title Tag Optimization
• Description Optimization
• Video Transcript

Keyword Research
Simply put, what phrases are people typing in if they wanted to find your video?
You probably already thought about these keywords while making your video, but what you probably didn’t realize is that in addition to using the Google Keyword tool,  you should also be looking at the YouTube Keyword Tool.
Don’t make the assumption that because 10,000 people are searching for a particular keyphrase through Google, that they’re going to be searching for it in YouTube as well. Remember, most people are going to YouTube for entertainment or very specific types of tutorials, whereas Google can be used to search for anything under the sun.
For example, Google’s keyword tool returns 49,500 global monthly searches for the phrase “landing pages”, while YouTube’s states “Not Enough Data”. The term “make money online”, however, returns 368,000 and 20,000 respectively. Therefore, look at both places and try to find the middle ground between them.
Title Tag Optimization
It’s important to use your Keyword phrase in the title, but be careful not to make it look spammy.
Here are the first 4 examples for for the phrase “KettleBell Workout”:

Notice how each one gives you a very specific idea of what the video is about. Each one offers something a little different, but gives the searcher the freedom to choose what is going to be best for them. For reference YouTube’s keyword tool shows 21,600 searches for the phrase, while Google says 49,500; that’s a perfect sweet spot for keyword optimization.
Description Optimization
Notice how the words “KettleBell” and “Workout” are bolded in the description area of the videos? That’s because the video producer remembered to add them throughout the description.
Include your Keywords, but don’t overdo it. Google loves going slaphappy on spammy content.
Also, don’t forget to include a link to your desired call to action as high up in the description. If you want people to share the video, use a service called ClicktoTweet.com. If you want people to opt into a mailing list, insert a link to the landing page you want them to go to. It’s as simple as that.
Video Transcript
This is a big one that many creators often skip, because it can be a bit of a tedious process.
If you were smart in your planning, you created a script of your dialog ahead of time. Open up that script in Notepad, remove everything except the dialog, and save as a .txt file.
Then, add your transcript to YouTube:
Aside from making your hearing-impaired and international viewers happy, this also gives additional content for the GoogleBot to index when they’re trying to determine which videos to rank into the searches.
See, GoogleBot can’t watch videos (poor guy) so he looks for as much relevant information on the page as possible in order to determine what he should put into Google’s main search.
This isn’t a fool-proof tactic by any means, but it certainly doesn’t hurt your chances.
Notice the top two video results in the Google Search for “KettleBell Workout”:
They’re the first and third results from the search we did on YouTube above. The #1 video result here does not have a transcript, but the #2 result does.
So again, it’s not an exact science, but even if you don’t end up ranking in Google, many of your viewers will still appreciate it because having text that coincides with your video often helps people retain the information better.

A Few More Notes

Play to Your Strengths
If you’re not funny, don’t try to ham it up. If you are don’t get too concerned about doing it right.
Even Hubspot has their own in-house SEO rapper:
Encourage Video Responses
On YouTube the hierarchy of social currency looks something like this:

1. View count (least important)
2. Like (slightly more important)
3. Comment (pretty important)
4. Video Response (most important)

These factors all play into how your videos rank for any given keyword on YouTube. Of these, the video response is the most important because it requires the most investment from your viewer.
“But how to I encourage video responses?” you ask.
Chances are, your customers are going to be pretty camera shy, which means you’re going to have to think outside of the box.
The most obvious thing you can do is network with fellow YouTubers since you already know they’re comfortable on camera. Because video comments and responses are so important, you may consider responding to one of their videos first before asking for the return favor.
Inbound Links
Just like other web content, links and embeds on relevant, high quality websites signal to YouTube and Google that your video is one of the good ones.
If you need places to scout for links, plug in a major competitor’s channel URL into opensiteexplorer.org:

If you’re not a paid member, you’ll only get 10 results, but this provides you with a starting place to give you an idea of where else you should look.
It may seem counterintuitive to encourage inbound links that point anywhere other than your website, but remember that YouTube and your website are two entirely different properties. Having different people link to each place means you have more chances of dominating the search rankings with your content on a given keyword.

Conclusion

Like I said in the beginning, if you want to use video marketing for your business your first concern should be creating high quality videos.
If your video isn’t funny, or shocking, or scary, or extremely informative and full of personality, the effort of marketing and promotion will be fruitless. Focus on marketing only after you’ve created something worth marketing, otherwise it’s just a ton of wasted effort.
Have you noticed the “recommended videos” that show up on the right sidebar when you’re watching a video on YouTube? Those are the videos that have the highest retention rates, so if people aren’t watching your videos all the way through, you’re not showing up as recommended. If you’re not showing up, you’re missing out on more potential viewers.

How we Use Connected Devices...(FYI)

Now that I'm fully immersed in building multichannel executions through responsive design, I pay particular attention to how customers use the web, mobile, social, tablets, and iTV, including noting my own habits.
Nielsen just published a new study on connected devices. Interesting to note:

• Social Media — 44% of 18-24 year old and close to 50% of 25-34 year old are visiting social networking sites on their smartphones during both commercials and programs while watching TV.

• Seeking Information — 36% of people 35-54 and 44% of people 55-64 use their tablets to dive deeper into the TV program they are currently watching.

Discovery and engagement remain high on the lists of both age groups. They just get it done differently.

10 Easy Steps to Put the Person Back in Content Marketing Personas

OK. A quick show of hands. Who uses the word “persona” regularly during conversations or presentations?
You can’t see it from where you’re sitting, but my hand is up. And I’m wincing a little.
Leave it to us word mashers on the marketing mountaintop to take out all of the innate humanness of people by labeling them as personas, and then gang-tackling those personas with a litany of adjectives, adverbs, and reported job duties — all to illustrate that we really understand our customers’ true needs.
Fret not. We’re going to put the “person” back in persona by walking through some really practical ways to understand exactly what your customer wants to consume. 
I offer you a method we use at Left Brain that’s been very successful: listening posts.

Getting started with listening posts 

First, pull your company’s past purchaser data to compile initial assumptions about the titles and the topics you believe will be of interest in a given campaign. Keep in mind, you’ll be tracking online conversations for each of these topics, so try to limit your list to about five key topics you want to follow — or you’ll quickly feel overwhelmed by the task.
Now let’s go about the painstaking process of proving or disproving your theories by setting up “listening posts” and testing what you learn.

Capture

Step 1. Give your research its own email address. To begin every discovery process, you need a system for collecting and reviewing data. I try to use a single inbox for key roles, topics, or relevant discussions to keep them out of my existing work flow. Doing this also gives me a place to consume when ready. I’d suggest using Gmail to create a segregated inbox because it will be easier to integrate into the other steps. Something like <topic>@gmail.com to sign up for e-news and LinkedIn alerts will keep you focused. 
Step 2. Use an online news reader to automate the news-gathering process. A multitude of free and not-so-free news readers is available, but I’ll call out Google Reader here. After logging into Google using your new email address, you are automatically logged into Google Reader. Here you can pre-select existing topics, create your own using simple or advanced search logic, import RSS feeds, or bring in any Google Alerts as newsfeeds — all on a single online dashboard. Trust me, this will become your knowledge hub, if it isn’t already.
Step 3. Set up a Readability account to quickly push information you discover in your online news reader that appears relevant into the “read-later” bin. You can also send the most relevant e-newsletter content directly to Readability when you’re done gathering.

Filter 

Step 4. Set up Google Alerts that align with topics and audiences. This step will be less of an email deluge if you create alerts as RSS newsfeeds. Check this out:

Create news alerts and deliver them to Google Reader.

Subscribe to a topic of interest to track.

Create a news dashboard with key topics.

Step 5. Look for LinkedIn Groups that include discussions about your topic. Where appropriate, I have participated in discussions. If it’s likely to be intrusive, I’ve watched discussions unfold, gleaning key insights about participants and what is working — or what’s frustrating the heck out of them. This is an example of hanging out with humans online to bring the sexy back to your supposition. If you’re a member of a topical LinkedIn Group, be sure to sign up for its email alerts —and always forward them to your topic-specific Gmail account. 

Listen 

Step 6. Monitor social traffic on the topics of interest. If you’re lucky, you have Radian6 and a team of social media users who alert you to key conversations and places to engage on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook and other communities. If you’re like the rest of us, however, you “MacGyver” everything together with tools like TweetDeck, HootSuite, your news reader, and your topic-specific email account for anything else you’ve missed. Sounds messy, but with a process in place you’ll find it’s very doable. 
Step 7. Engage with people online in the social streams or communities relevant to the subject matter. Pay close attention to influential bloggers in the area you are researching. Mine the comments sections to see who is seeking additional insights or offering their own. As you begin to understand the subject matter, this can also be a venue to ask questions or share knowledge. If you do decide to share, speak as a curious being with a level of interest or expertise — not a brand megaphone. 

Assess 

Step 8. Set a time to review information collected — and stick to it. For example, you may decide to start your day with a 30-minute scan of any information gathered overnight — flagging seemingly relevant news using your Readability app. Do a similar sweep at the end of the day to flag new items online and in your topic-specific inbox. Use Readability to narrow the best of the bunch to review in depth after the research phase ends.
Step 9. Look for patterns, odd ducks and hot data points or quotes. After amassing this content and combing through it, you’ll start to see similarities emerge — as well as a few eyebrow-raisers or quotes that set the tone for your work. I often bring these forward to my team to breathe a little life into my findings.
Step 10. Confirm your insights or assumptions with people in your desired audience. Again, these are people. Treat them that way. At my company, this is where we validate our secondary research and theories, or adjust them based on one-to-one interviews with the people we know or want to know in our ideal prospect segments. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how willing people are to spend five minutes on the phone, a Skype call, a GoogleHangout, or a brief email swap to add some flesh and bone to my analysis or take shots at my initial findings. I’ve also been shocked at how many people want to clear up misconceptions so they don’t receive the same tired, cliché-ridden communications claiming to know how they feel and what they need.
Using these steps, you can set up a system that delivers the right information to you in real time rather than spending countless hours chasing down hunches. Spend more time publishing great content, and less time batting at the ever-elusive piñata.