How You Write Content Matters

It is no shocker that when I tell people I am a content writer, the first thing they say is, “Wow you must be a great writer.” While most people think this is true, I actually do not consider myself an amazing writer.  In college, I took many English writing classes and while I did enjoy them, I also got a lot of B’s and numerous side comments from professors on ways to word things better. It was a constant struggle until one of my teachers mentioned that my writing just needs to flow and not sound so formal.

I took these words into consideration. I have never been good at telling stories, which my two year old can attest to, but most of my content writing was informational and sadly robotic.  How you write content matters in the same way how you speak to people matters. Many business owners and individuals do not take the proper time to create great content because they just don’t think about it. And in the world of the internet, content is all we see.

We are building human connections with the words we type. Creative, human-like content writing is providing a big impact on how we as humans feel about certain things, people, and even products. There are many reason why startups, app developers, tech companies, and retailers hire content writers for their business. More importantly, content needs to come from writers who write more like a human than a robot. If this is a struggle for you, Tandem Interactive has some ways to help you write like the human that you are.

• Read your content out loud. Embrace your language and pay attention to what your consumers are saying. Ask yourself simple questions like:
                               
                                 -Does this sound like something a human would say?
                                 -Is this clear?
                                 -How would someone feel if I said this out loud?

• Throw out all the complicated MBA language you learned in college, along with all the unnecessary industry standard terminology that the average human needs a glossary to understand.

• Think about how your consumers speak, and how your family and friends talk to each other; do your best to write like how people speak to each other in real life.

So, does content writing really matter? It does to those who are searching for an answer; after all, you want to ensure that your answer is the one that attracts the consumers.

Increasing your Email Newsletter Subscriptions Like a Pro!

Have you ever gone to a website where they ask you to sign up for a newsletter or email promotion, but there’s no incentive? You probably just do like the rest of us and exit out of that website, and immediately find another that does not require your email to deliver what you want – right? So, how can you increase your newsletter subscriptions? OFFER INCENTIVE!

If someone commits to allowing you to basically spam their inbox and send them all of your promotions, they should be rewarded – and they want to be!

The number one way to increase newsletter subscriptions is to offer an incentive to sign up!

Top performing newsletter subscriptions are ones that offer vouchers like $10 off a $75 purchase, or percent discount like 20% off your first order.

For new brands and sites that sell apparel that is not well-known, or for energy drink or supplement companies, offer a free t-shirt.

Educational sites where consumers are coming in to acquire additional knowledge, offer a free eBook version of one of your high-demand pieces. You can also offer something relevant to your audience when asking them to sign their life away with your newsletter subscription.

Own a vacation website, travel site, or cruise line? Offer the chance to enter into a raffle to “Win a Trip!”

NEXT…

Tell them exactly what they will get when they sign up for your brand’s newsletter subscription. Let them know what they can expect to get out of it, and they will be more inclined to sign up. The more perks and benefits there are opposed to NOT signing up will entice them to do so.

As a business and a brand, you should 100% know your top performing products and show them as visuals when offering incentives for people to sign up for your newsletter.

Online marketingagencies in Fort Lauderdale, Florida recommend that you also position your newsletter signup form based on visitor behavior. Pop-up signups are typical for retail sites, but if your newsletter and brand are more informational, your consumer is going to test it out on your site first since they don’t know what to expect.

• Once they see that you are reputable and serve their purpose, position your newsletter signup prompt lower in the layout hierarchy.
• Place more important calls to action higher on the page, such as Recommended Articles.

Creating segments is another way to allow your readers to choose what they would like to receive information on.

• If they read an article, prompt them to sign up to receive more pieces on the subject.
• During the newsletter signup process, allow them to select certain categories they would like to receive email notifications on, etc.

Bragging Rights. Show your users how popular your newsletter is and specify the number of people who have signed up so far. Something along the lines of “Join over 100,000 Marketing Professionals,” or share the amount that people have saved, like “Subscribers have saved $1,000,000 in discounts.”

It’s all about the DETAILS. Using bright details, graphics, and animations are attention-grabbing and they have a psychological effect on your consumers to sign up. By giving them an experience, they will be more likely to want to see more.

No Form Required. Top online marketing agencies in Fort Lauderdale say that by NOT making your consumer have to fill out a form or type in their email address, you can save them time and headache. Let’s face it – consumers are pretty lazy these days. Upworthy adopted a newsletter signup concept that used to be popular in the 90s, where a simple click on “one-click subscription” opens their email app and has an email already generated, and prompts consumers to simply hit “send” and be done! Bada-bing, bada-boom!

Now, you should never have to ask “how can I increase my newsletter subscriptions?” ever again :)

March Social Media Updates You Need Know About

This coming March is going to be filled with plenty of new developments in the social media world for internet marketers.

Some have been in the works for months, and some have seemingly come out of the blue; regardless, these are the March social media updates you need to know about. 

Facebook introduces WordPress plugin for Instant Articles.

Combine the powers of the leading social media network and the reach of a blog platform giant, and you have the WordPress plugin for Instant Articles on Facebook.

This upcoming April 12^th, Instant Articles will be available to all publishers via a WordPress plugin. The plugin has already been tested with “a small group of publishers” on WordPress, and will allow publishers using standard WordPress templates to activate the plugin off the shelf. Consequently, users who prefer further customization will be able to extend the plugin to support any other element they want.

Pinterest Ads Manager opens up businesses of all sizes.

Pinterest Ads Manager is now available to all small and medium sized businesses, allowing all to schedule Promoted Pins.

This announcement made such big waves due to the fact that Nipoon Malhotra, an ads product lead, shared that companies who have already used Pinterest Ads Manager have seen a 20 percent increase in clicks, all within a month of starting their campaigns. Pair Pinterest Ads Manager with interest, keyword, and customer database targeting, and you have a game-changing social media update on your hands.

Facebook’s Atlas adds video-ad serving and two new measurement tools.

Video-ad serving and two new measurement tools are being added to Facebook’s Atlas, their new ad serving and measurement platform.

According to Dave Jakubowski, Facebook’s head of advertising technology, video ad serving via the Atlas platform will be “broadly available” by the end of the month. With this, advertisers will be able to understand if their online ads are influencing offline purchases through two new measurement tools. The first measurement tool from Atlas, offline actions, will tie offline sales to online ad spend. Path to conversion, the second measurement tool, will provide insight into the multiple devices that users see ads on before pulling the trigger on a purchase. 

SEO Myths Busted

 

When it comes to SEO, it seems everyone in the digital marketing space has an opinion. And with hundreds of ranking factors affecting Google’s algorithm, it isn’t hard to see why. While we can all agree on the basics (i.e. quality content, good; spammy backlinks, bad), there are several ideas that can cause a good-natured SEO argument. 

For instance, was Mobilegeddon really much ado about nothing? Do search engines always listen to a site’s Robots.txt? What happens when backlinks are removed? Let’s take a dive into some hotly debated SEO tactics and myths.

Mobilegeddon

Ahhhhhh, Mobilegeddon: last year’s Y2K for SEOs. There was chatter, then panic, and then…no real consequence, right? Well, according to the latest research, Mobilegeddon was, in fact, pretty profound. 

 

Google released its mobile update last April, which was supposed to favor mobile-friendly sites in the search results. Initially, there wasn’t much movement in traffic, and webmasters let out a collective sigh of relief. But according to Stone Temple, non-mobile-friendly sites began to suffer lower rankings as time went on. Google likely rolled out the update slowly, so the full impact of the update wasn’t felt until later. 

The lesson learned here? Wake up, and make sure your site is mobile-friendly! 

The effect of outbound links

It’s a widely held belief in the SEO community that linking to other sites dilutes a website’s PageRank and authority. After you finally get a user to your site, why tempt them to leave, right? Not so fast.

Google’s main mission is to provide users with the information they’re seeking. So if your website helps Google achieve its goal, they’re pretty happy. Providing users with relevant, high-value links to other sites makes sense, and it can also help your rankings.

To prove this point, our friends across the pond at RebootOnline (←see what I did there) conducted an experiment. They created 10 websites with similar domain names, site architecture, and an article optimized for a word they made up that returned no results in Google’s SERPS. They placed three follow outbound links to other highly authoritative sites to half of their experiment sites. And what happened? You guessed it. Those sites ranked higher for their made up word than the sites without outbound links. 

The takeaway? Incorporate outbound links that are authoritative and useful to your readers!

Robots.txt and noindex meta tags

A well-configured robots.txt is on every SEO checklist. But just because you created one and submitted it to search engines doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to listen. It’s more of a suggestion.

That’s also true for the “noindex” meta tag. While a robots.txt is supposed to stop a page from being index and crawled, a noindex meta tag is only supposed to stop a page from being indexed. But this doesn’t always happen.

 

What’s the point? Don’t rely too heavily on spiders listening to your directions in a robots.txt or noindex meta tag.

Link echoes

Backlinks have a huge impact on SEO and organic rankings. That’s why SEOs spend so much time acquiring quality links, disavowing spammy ones, and developing top-notch link strategies. But have you ever wondered (or noticed) what happens to a site’s rankings after a particularly good or bad link is removed? Do all of its positive or negative effects get erased too? 

 

It’s been theorized that Google tracks links even after they’re removed. Sound crazy? Maybe. But a Moz team took this idea and ran with it. They pointed links to websites, watched their positions increase, and then removed the very links that increased the websites’ rankings. The sites’ positions didn’t change much at all, and they stayed static for several months after the links were removed. Moz ran several tests to eliminate any tricky variables, and the results remained the same.

So what does this mean? Links are incredibly influential and their impact is not easily removed. So take your time when link building, because your strategy will affect your site well into the future.

Organic search is always changing, and as SEOs, it’s our job to stay on top of developing trends, tactics and updates. While there is almost always room for debate, we hope Tandem Interactive answered a few questions and settled a few friendly SEO arguments.

Moz Local’s New My Business Console Tool

Behold, My Business Console, a new feature created by the engineers at Moz that will make importing locations from Google My Business to Moz Local even easier!

Why the Added Feature?

If you’re like our Local SEO experts here at digital marketing agency, Tandem Interactive, you’re familiar with uploading Google My Business locations to Moz Local via the CSV upload process. For bulk submissions, you would simply export the CSV file from your Google My Business dashboard and upload to your Moz Local account. However, this process was extremely hands-on and therefore prone to errors.

How it Works

Starting this week, users can import bulk listings from Google My Business by selecting “Import Listings” via the “Add Listings” button. This feature will link your Google My Business account and Moz Local account, making it easy to add or remove managers in bulk or by individual location.

Using My Business Console

Start your free user experience by heading to the My Business Console homepage and selecting “Connect with Google”. After you enter your Google My Business login credentials, you will be able to view each location you are owner or manager of. For every location you own, you’ll have the ability to manage who is able to edit location information and remove anyone you no longer want to have manger access.

Furthermore, you’ll also be able to add a manger to two or more Google My Business locations by simply selecting the desired locations and clicking the “Add” button.

To add or remove a manager on all of your business locations, head to your “Business Accounts” within My Business Console and add or remove a person there. This will keep you from having to go into each location and grant or take away manager access individually.

At our online marketing agency, Tandem Interactive, we agree this feature will come in handy especially when a person joins or leaves an organization. 

How to Remove “Permanently Closed” from a Business Listing on Google

Are you having trouble with your business listing being marked “permanently closed” on Google? This is actually a fairly common problem, especially for local businesses that have relocated.

So, what is a business owner to do when its customers are faced with an ugly, red sign on Google that reads “permanently closed”? Our South Florida digital marketing agency, Tandem Interactive, has put together a set of tips on how to remove “permanently closed” from a business listing on Google.

Tip #1: Update your business name, address and phone number in your Google My Business dashboard to reflect current contact information.

Tip #2: Search for and claim duplicate listings. This tip is often overlooked by clients who don’t understand why their business is showing as “permanently closed” on Google when they’ve already updated their verified Google My Business page. It usually means there’s ANOTHER listing that Google is pulling search results from. So, claim all duplicate listings of your business and update with the current address.

Tip #3: Contact Google My Business and ask their support team to mark an old location as “moved”, which is a new feature that is available. Local SEO experts suggest reaching out to them via Twitter for a faster, more effective response. By doing this, an old listing will eventually disappear from Google Search and Maps; and Google will implement a 302 HTTP status code that will redirect customers to a new location.

For more information on managing your local business listing on Google and how you can optimize your business’ opportunity in Google Local Search, contact trendy online marketing agency, Tandem Interactive, today.     

Customizing Your Local SEO Strategy to your Business Model

If you are not utilizing a local SEO strategy to get your business visible in the online world, then you are missing a major opportunity to be seen when a prospective customer uses a desktop or mobile device to perform a search related to your company’s offerings.

Local SEO is not a complicated practice, it is more of a series of cumulative steps that are utilized to increase the presence of your company through search engines. Tandem Interactive is a team of SEO specialists that can help tailor your business’s SEO efforts to your business model through the following steps:

1.      Determine Your Business Model.

·         Single Location Brick & Mortar

·         Multi-Location Brick & Mortar

·         Single Location Service Area Business

·         Multi-Location Service Area Business

·         Multi-Office Campus or Multi-Practitioner Business

·         Home-Based Business

2.      Match Your Business Model to Google Guidelines.

•     Single Location Brick & Mortar ->

·         One GMB listing with a visible listing.

·         No P.O. boxes or virtual offices.

•     Multi-Location Brick & Mortar ->

·         One GMB listing per location with a visible address.

·         Each location has a unique phone number.

·         No P.O. boxes or virtual offices.

•     Single Location Service Area Business ->

·         One GMB listing.

·         Use an appropriate box to indicate if there is no address, or if you serve customers at your location as well as theirs.

·         No P.O. boxes or virtual offices.

•     Multi-Location Service Area Business ->

·         One GMB per location with unique phone numbers.

·         Use an appropriate box to indicate if there is no address, or if you serve customers at your location as well as theirs.

·         No P.O. boxes or virtual offices.

•     Multi-Office Campus or Multi-Practitioner Business ->

·         One GMB listing per office or practitioner.

·         Each has a unique phone number.

·         Practitioners must format their GMB business titles properly.

·         No P.O. boxes or virtual offices.

•     Home-Based Business ->

·         One GMB listing, hide the address if you do not want it made public.

·         No P.O. boxes or virtual offices.

3.      Develop Your Website’s Content Strategy.

• Single Location Brick & Mortar ->

·         Unique, high quality page that showcases each product or service your business offers.

• Multi-Location Brick & Mortar ->

·         Unique, high quality page that showcases each product or service your business offers.

·         An original and high quality webpage for each physical location with a complete NAP at the top of the page.

•          Single Location Service Area Business ->

·         Unique, high quality page that showcases each product or service your business offers.

·         An original and high quality webpage for all of the important cities you serve.

•          Multi-Location Service Area Business ->

·         Unique, high quality page that showcases each product or service your business offers.

·         An original and high quality webpage for each physical location with a complete NAP at the top of the page.

·         An original and high quality webpage for all of the important cities you serve beyond the physical locations

•          Multi-Office Campus or Multi-Practitioner Business ->

·         Unique, high quality page that showcases each product or service your business offers.

·         An original and high quality page for every office, campus, or partner in the practice with a complete and unique NAP at the top of the page.

•   Home-Based Business ->

·         Unique, high quality page that showcases each product or service your business offers.

·         Create a unique and high quality page for every city that you offer your services.

While these are business model specific local SEO strategies, Tandem Interactive wants you to be aware that there also are local SEO techniques for all business types. If you are interested in developing an SEO strategy for your company, contact the SEO specialists in Fort Lauderdale today!

4 Tips on Developing a Social Media Strategy and Avoiding PR Disaster

Maybe you can recall the infamous Chrysler Tweet in 2011, where an employee used R-rated language to tweet about Detroit drivers through the Chrysler’s Auto Twitter page?  Yes, he did get fired. But, it was the firm’s PR department that suffered the most. Mainly due to Chrysler not renewing its contract, but, if the firm’s social media strategy had been developed to avoid disasters like this, then things would have been a lot different.

A social media strategy from Tandem Interactive is not only outlined for you, but it is also managed and held to a higher standard. We understand that one misguided tweet or post can greatly impact the reputation of even the strongest brand.  These 4 tips on implementing an efficient social media strategy, will help reduce the probability of a PR disaster.

1. Develop the Basics of your Strategy

By developing the basics of your strategy, you are setting the tone and formulating rules that need to be clear and specific. Think about all the ways your strategy will respond to key industry changes and how to reinforce it.  Ask the following questions:
   
     • What are the goals of your activity on social media?
     • Which platforms will you use to accomplish them?
     • What will your activity be like – what kinds of content will be shared?
     • Who is your target audience

2. Establish a Crisis Strategy

Make sure that your strategy provides a clear definition of social media crisis. A crisis can mean different things to different brands. By suggesting what kind of posts can be considered crisis and providing the fundaments of reaction to them in the effort to alleviate negative impact is a priority.
Many social media campaigns use brand development by using hashtags and later it backfires and damages the overall plan.

3. Choose the Right Speakers

You wouldn’t want someone who works at Mac Cosmetics to speak on behalf of Sephora. No, that would be a disaster. So, choosing the right speaker who will have access to your social media accounts and will be authorized to post for the brand is standard for an awesome social media strategy. Making sure they know the rules and limitations for that business will help reduce a PR disaster.

4. Build Response Scenarios

Tandem Interactive knows that providing your team with a selection of ready-made scenarios for dealing with different exchanges, helps with strategizing social media efforts. Being aware that every situation is different and needs to be treated differently is the nature of social media. A well-defined strategy will be to your advantage as it will give you time to decide which approach is best instead of developing one for every new scenario.  Responding to negative reviews and monitoring online conversations will help address situations before the internet does it for you.

Our boutique SEO agency in Ft. Lauderdale, FL has developed a great social media strategy that ensures your social media interactions bring many benefits and greatly reduces the chances of a serious PR crisis.