10 Proven Tactics To Grow Instagram Followers and Engagement

It’s an exciting time to get to know Instagram. The popular photo-sharing app is fun, simple and growing—Instagram has more than 300 million users and sky-high user engagement levels.

And for marketers, it’s an especially interesting time. The company just announced that it will open its feed to all advertisers and begin testing a “Shop now” button that allows users to click on a link to buy a product advertised.

With such brand-friendly features on the way, it seems like marketers might be more keen than ever to get acquainted with Instagram for their business. I know we are at Buffer!

Lately we’ve been sharing, liking and commenting more on Buffer’s Instagram account, and it’s been so much fun. Since Instagram is still relatively new to us, we thought it would be fun to research some ways to grow a following there.

Read on to find out the 10 best tactics (with tools and examples!) we uncovered that could help you grow a bigger, relevant audience on Instagram.

Top 10 Instagram Growth Tactics

 1. Post consistently (at least once a day)

Social media analytics tool Quintly analyzed over 5000 profiles in early 2015 to learn that the average Instagram account posts once per day.

More intriguing: Accounts with the highest number of fans tend to post a bit more than that–up to 2 or 3 photos per day on average. This data might allow us to say that “more successful” accounts tend to post with a higher frequency.

Instagram is one of the last social media networks with no algorithm that chooses what you see, which means there’s no drop-off in engagement for posting more—provided you can keep up the quality of your posts. So post consistently, as much as you can with high quality!

2. Study and load up on quality hashtags

We’ve explored hashtags a lot on the blog, but it seems that nowhere on social media are they quite as important as on Instagram. The right hashtags can expose your image to a large and targeted audience, and Instagram users don’t seem to get hashtag fatigue in the same way they might on other networks.

In other words, hashtags could be your best bet for growing a fast following on Instagram.

Instagram allows for a maximum of 30 hashtags per post, and many power users max out this ability.

Check out how many hashtags our recent Bufferchat guest Jeff Sieh used on a post of his:

I was lucky enough to sit down with @suebzimmerman on a recent episode of the Manly Pinterest Tips Show and talk with her about the power of leveraging @Instagram for business. Some topics discussed… •  Personal vs Business content •  Hashtag Strategies •  Cross-Promotion •  Connecting with Influencers •  And much more! Sue is always high energy, entertaining, and educational.  I always enjoy learning from her.  I think you will too! Click on the link in bio to watch/listen! ▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃ #Pinterest #marketing #socialmedia#business #entrepreneuer, #socialmediamarketing #podcasts #ManlyPinterestTips #pinterest #socialmedia #marketing #smm #interview #SocialMediaMarketing #bestpractices #business #socialmediatips  #Pinterestformen #tipsonPinterest #Pinteresttips #pinterestforbusiness #instagood #podcasting #podcast #marketing #business #smallbusiness #socialmediatools #smmtools #instacool #contentmarketing #new #instagramtips

A photo posted by Jeff Sieh (@jeffsieh) on Jun 8, 2015 at 11:28am PDT

A TrackMaven study discovered that interactions are highest on Instagram posts with 11+ hashtags.  

Which hashtags to use? Check out the top 100 hashtags from Websta here. (You can also use Websta to search relevant keywords and find popular accounts.)

One method I use a lot is to adda couple of relevant and obvious hashtags to my photo before posting it. Then I’ll click through to search those hashtags and scroll through other, similar photos that share my hashtag to see what other tags those users have added that I might add, too. Then I go back to my photo and edit it to add all the additional relevant hashtags I’ve found. 

You can do this process in a more formalized way by searching and recording hashtags relevant to your brand, in a similar way you might do keyword research for a blog post.

3. Follow and like similar accounts

In addition to adding hashtags to your post, use the ability to search hashtags to find likeminded friends.

One intriguing tactic to grow an Instagram following starts here and goes even further. It’s called the “follow like like like,”  as described in Austin Allred’s The Hacker’s Guide to User Acquisition.

In this process, you search a specific, relevant hashtag and choose a few of the top pictures you find. Follow those accounts, then go to each of their photo feeds and like three of their recent photos.

“This shows the user that not only did someone who is kind of like them follow them, but they also dug a little bit and really liked what they found.”

Here are the results Austin saw with this tactic:

“When we did this, the follow-back percentage approached 25%. Meaning for every four people we followed, one would follow us back…By the end of the week we had 10,000 followers. In one week. Each photo was getting over 100 likes, and other people were being tagged in each of the photos by their friends.”

Need some extra help here? Apps like Pixifly, Banjo and Instaround allow you to see what Instagram users in your area are posting so you can follow and engage with your local or broader community.

4. Ask users to “tag a friend”

I recently got a great Instagram tip from some new local friends who helped me out with marketing a non-profit food tasting event. They shared a food photo from a past event and asked their 11,000 followers to comment and tag a friend they wanted to attend with.

The response was awesome, and exposed our event to a lot of people who wouldn’t have heard about it otherwise: I’ve seen this tactic work well for lots more than events, too.

5. Use the right filters

All those filters Instagram gives you to use aren’t just fun—choosing the right ones can actually lead to more views and engagement.

Researchers from Georgia Tech and Yahoo Labs analyzed millions of photos and corresponding data on how frequently they were viewed and commented upon to determine that filtered photos are 21% more likely to be viewed and 45% more likely to be commented on than unfiltered ones.

What kind of filter works best? After examining five different types, researchers found that the top filters to increase chances of views and comments are those that create:

• higher exposure
• warm temperatures
• higher contrast

Higher exposure was the most tied to more views, and warmth had the biggest correlation with comments. 

Two types of filters had negative correlations: Saturation correlated to slightly lower views, and age effects led to lower comments.

Curalate has a great infographic with even more specific pointers on optimizing the look of your image for greater engagement:

6. Host a photo contest

Instagram hashtags make it easy for to collect photos from followers around a theme, and many brands have had success and fun using this capability to host photo contests.

Here’s an example of Instagram itself hosting a photo contest, asking users to recreate an iconic image and share it with the hashtag #recreatedclassic.  Instagram has a great blog post with some tips for getting your photo contest off on the best foot, and Social Media Examiner has an awesome primer on all kinds of Instagram contests.

7. Add some emojis

Emoji are becoming a universal method of expression—Instagram reports that nearly 50 percent of all captions and comments on Instagram now have an emoji or two. I know I’m drawn to them in posts and I’ve noticed some folks are even adding to their user names for a bit of extra pop.

Anthony Thompson explains over at PostPlanner how he earned 3x Instagram growth by calling on emojis to ignite engagement in both posts and comments—smart.

He uses this adorable example from Sue Zimmerman to prove his point:

8. Cross-promote

Make sure your existing fans know you’re on Instagram through cross-promotion. Instagram makes it simple to share your images to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and Foursquare, which could be a great tactic to get some extra exposure.

You can also try embedding Instagram photos in your blog posts (see the bottom of this post for an example) or adding an Instagram feed to your Facebook page for some additional discovery. Here’s a look atBuffer’s Facebook page with an added Instagram feed:  

9. Try video, too

Instagram allows users to upload videos of up to 15 seconds, and not too many of us art taking advantage of this just yet. An April 2015 study from Locowise found that only about 10% of all posts on Instagram are videos right now, but they’re getting 18% of all comments. There’s still plenty of room for you to focus on video and be one of the first!

10. Share the love

In our quest to grow our followers, it’s always helpful to remember what really matters in all of this: The friends we’ll talk to, the relationships we’ll create and the fun we’ll have.

An easy way to keep this principle central is to spend a bit of time each day just hanging out and enjoying Instagram. You might respond to comments, like photos, follow some new friends, and comment on awesome posts. If the “follow like like like” strategy above tells us anything, it’s that time spent showing and sharing the love can pay off in new followers. It also creates a better social media experience for everyone.

One last tactic: How to add a link?

One of the challenges of marketing on Instagram (and possibly a part of its joy for users) is that you can’t quite add links for your viewers to click.

If you want to send your followers to a specific link, though, it seems that it’s becoming common practice to change the link in your Instagram profile and add the comment “link in bio” to a corresponding photo.

You can also try an easy-to-remember shortened URL, or use this tip from Buffer follower belovednewo: She adds the link to the “location” area in order to keep from having to change out her bio link. Neat hack!

Wrapping it up: Anatomy of a perfect post

We’ve gone over quite a lot of tactics to remember and try! The kind folks at Made Freshly combined lots of these tips for growing a following into this fun infographic:

  

How will you measure all your new growth? Check out our post Know What’s Working on Social Media: 19 Free Social Media Analytics Tools to learn about Iconosquare, Collecto and other Instagram analytics tool to help you measure your performance.

What are your Instagram experiences?

We’d love to keep the conversation going—both in the comments here and on Instagram, of course! Lots of awesome friends shared their top tips for marketing on the photo social network, and we’d love to hear yours, too! Add your thoughts below!

  We’re working on a blog post about Instagram tactics and we’d love your help! What are your top tips for getting more followers and engagement? We’re excited to learn from you! #instagram #marketing #socialmedia #socialmediamarketing   A photo posted by Buffer (@buffer) on Jun 5, 2015 at 10:23am PDT

The post 10 Proven Tactics To Grow Instagram Followers and Engagement appeared first on Social.

The Quick-and-Simple Guide to Getting Started With Video Content

If you find yourself intimidated by the concept of creating video content, you’re not alone.

Every minute of the day, YouTube users alone upload 72 hours of new video content, not to mention uploads to Facebook, Vimeo, Daily Motion or Wistia.

With all that noise, making your video stand out, increasing engagement and finding ways to add value is a mammoth task; which makes doing it right even sweeter.

Fortunately, there are tons of great blueprints for creating valuable, meaningful video content.

I’ve taken a closer look at some of these strategies and have condensed the advice here, in a “delightfully short” guide to adding value with your video content. I’ve included the latest research on video content, the best expert tips, and some great examples of video content done right. If you’ve got any more tips or examples of great brand videos, I’d love to hear them in the comments.

The Stats Behind Valuable Video Content

At first glance, taking on the challenge of adding video to your content marketing mix might seem enormous to say the least.

So why would you want to take on such a mammoth task?

1. Video generates 3x as many monthly visitors to a website as other content
2. Visitors spend 88% more time on a website that includes video
3. Organic traffic from search engines increases by 157%
4. Consumers are 46% more likely to seek information about a product or service after seeing in an online video
5. Consumers are 85% more likely to buy after watching a product video
6. 52% more confidence in their online purchase

Online video presents a huge opportunity for you to add tremendous value to your brand, whether you overall goal is increasing conversions, improving brand confidence or simply to show you care.

With the advent of social streaming platforms such as Meerkat and Periscope, and in a world where the majority of marketers already have some way of recording HD video and access to easy-to-use editing software, it’s clear that no matter your budget or ability, you can create valuable video content.

The 5-Step Process to Creating Video Content

I’ve gone through some of the best user guides to making engaging video, and I’ve highlighted a few of the key steps that experts are suggesting you consider when creating video content.

Here is a quick rundown of my five steps toward more valuable video:

1. Listen and understand your audience
2. Align with your brand goals
3. Create the content and make it resonate
4. Share. Share. Share again!
5. Measure. Analyse. Understand.

1. Listen and understand your audience

First things first, before brainstorming video ideas or choosing the right video tools or thinking about which cameras to buy, you’ll need to find out:

What does your audience want to see?

Making the effort to understand what your audience wants can add a huge amount of value to your video.

Before settling on an idea for your video, spend some time getting to know your audience, looking at what they want to know about your brand and what they are talking about in the industry.

Earlier in the year, Kevan’s post covered some really useful tools that can help you understand and get to know your audience. With that list in mind, here are a few ideas of where to begin with listening:

1. Social media conversations, questions, and replies
2. Surveys sent to your users, subscribers or followers
3. Frequently asked questions from your support inbox
4. A Twitter hashtag search of something meaningful to your brand
5. Popular question headlines in a BuzzSumo search of your brand’s keywords

2. Align with your brand goals

Once you’ve identified a topic for video content that you think your audience would enjoy, the next consideration is you and your brand.

Does your video idea fit with your brand’s goals? 

After you’ve taken time to understand your audience, Katherine Hipwell of Red Bee Media suggests looking toward your brand goals and seeing how these align with the needs of the audience.

What is a brand’s objective? What is the audience interested in? And how can this be done in real time?

Here’s a neat Venn diagram that touches on the intersection of these three key questions. Aim for video content that can answer “Yes” to all three questions.

If it becomes a struggle to align brand objectives with audience wants and needs, consider shelving the idea for the time being.

It is a tough thing to do, but will help you focus on the most valuable ideas for both the brand and audience.

3. Create the content, and make it resonate

Once you’ve figured out what your audience wants and how that fits with your brand’s goals, you can move ahead on creating the video content. The Buffer blog has covered some ways to easily get started here.

I’d love to focus on the end result of your video:

What change in thinking, motivation or behaviour do you want your video to affect?

To make your video more interesting and shareable, there is some really intriguing advice in terms of the psychology and emotions behind video content.

One of my favorite stories on the topic was shared by Christina Desmarais at Inc. Christina wrote about the strategies at Unruly, a marketing company that specializes in viral video.

Unruly determined 18 psychological responses that your video should aim for.

1. Happiness
2. Exhilaration
3. Amazement
4. Inspiration
5. Hilarity
6. Contempt
7. Disgust
8. Sadness
9. Warmth
10. Pride
11. Nostalgia
12. Surprise
13. Knowledge
14. Shock
15. Confusion
16. Arousal
17. Fear
18. Anger

Among these, the positive emotions are the ones that are most effective at driving social shares. Emotions like happiness, exhilaration, and amazement (the first five listed above, in particular) are great indicators of a successful video on social media.

Christina’s post goes on to share 10 main reasons why people share videos with others, a list drawn from Unruly’s experience in viral video. Among the 10 reasons, here are two that stood out to me:

• The sharer believes the product or service could be useful to friends.
• It demonstrates the sharer’s knowledge or authority on a subject.

So when creating a video, keep in mind the emotions you’re creating with your video and the reasons why someone might share it. And in case these ideas seem a bit vague (I know I can sometimes struggle in this area!), here are some helpful resources from Wistia on the topic of emotions and video.

1. How to Balance Logic and Emotion in Your Videos
2. When Is It Best to Use an Emotional Video?
3. How to Choose the Right Music for Your Video

tl;dr – Write a script that captures the emotional voice and tone of your brand, choose music that elicits the right emotion. 

4. Share. Share. Share again!

Once you’ve made your awesome and engaging video, you’ll be set to upload and share it, ready to watch the views roll in.

To get the most effective results, approach sharing your video in the same way as any other content and spread your social posts out over a long period of time.

You could be sharing your video and adding value consistently for days!

Think about how often you should post to different networks, and if you’re on the forever free plan at Buffer, you can connect a profile from each network (one from Facebook, one from Twitter, etc.) and schedule ahead 10 posts for each network.

5. Measure and attribute success

One of the most frustrating and confusing parts of making video content is knowing what success is and how to measure ROI.

After you’ve spent hours successfully creating this amazing content that is tailored toward your audience while aligned with your brand objectives, how do you even know if it worked? You might already know you need to set some KPIs, but which metrics even matter?

Carla Marshall of ReelSEO suggests focusing on three key areas:

1. Audience
2. Expression
3. Participation

Audience: Look at the # of views from your target demographic or a video’s % of views from that demographic.

Expression: Look at how much watch time the video has accumulated, both the total amount and the average time each viewer is watching. Look at the # of subscribers your videos are earning, or the % of new subscribers you’re picking up compared to the number of views your videos are getting. You can also measure how many clicks you’re getting through to your website.

Participation: # of shares or the % of shares to views

When it comes to metrics, it’s always seemed that there was a lot of pressure to get ‘views’. In fact experts are now considering ‘view count’ as a secondary metric, with the majority suggesting shares and view time to be more important than views themselves.

My favorite tip for measuring the value and success of your video comes from TheMediaOctopus (from their really interesting infographic):

Key tip: Contrary to popular belief, you should focus on how many times the video has been shared, NOT viewed. The action of sharing is the gold standard in social, a metric in itself which offers a big opportunity to influence brand metrics and performance.

3 Great Examples of Memorable Video Content

There are some excellent examples of brand videos scattered across landing pages, blogs and social channels. You don’t have to look far on YouTube or Facebook to find something valuable and engaging that ticks all the right boxes.

I’ve handpicked three of my favorites. Each one provides great value for their audience and illustrates different ways you might use video, add value and connect with your audience.

The 3 E’s of Valuable Video Content

1. Educate

Video hosting platform Wistia offer an incredible series of videos that aims to educate their audience and inspire them to make better video content.

The brand goal is simple; highlight Wistia’s expertise while educating existing and potential customers, helping improve the video content their audience produce.

2. Entertain

Although uploaded in 2012, so in no way new to the video content market, Dollar Shave Club’s viral commercial continues to set a high standard for entertaining and amusing content.

With tongue planted firmly in cheek, the goal of the video was to drive awareness of the Dollar Shave Club brand, highlighting the key benefits to their audience, in a fun and entertaining way.

3. Engage

In her recent Emoji post Courtney highlighted the great use of video content from PETA, using Emojis to communicate their powerful message and engage a very specific audience.

With their sights firmly set, PETA took a brave and unconventional approach, engaging the target audience in relatable terms yet still delivering the brand’s disturbing message in a simple yet effective manner.

The three examples are a tiny drop in the ocean of incredible brand video content. Each video indicates that by simply understanding the audience they are targeting, brands can create a more rich, valuable and meaningful content.

If you’ve experienced some engaging and valuable video content, let me know in the comments.

Summary

Hopefully this helps show that creating valuable, engaging and meaningful video is well within your grasp. And by taking a step back and aligning your business goals with your audience wants and needs, you can add tremendous value to your brand.

What questions do you have about including video on your content marketing strategy? How do you measure the value of your videos? Have you experienced some great brand videos? I’d love to hear what you think in the comments.

Image sources: UnSplash, Pablo, IconFinder

The post The Quick-and-Simple Guide to Getting Started With Video Content appeared first on Social.

60+ Fantastic Email Newsletters to Read and Share

It seems like there’s more great stuff to read today than ever before.

And still, finding the good stuff that’s just right for you or your brand can take a lot of time, according to this survey by Vertical Response:

When you’re sifting through the whole internet, it can help to have a guide. What if could open your inbox every day to find new, relevant, curated articles that you’d be thrilled to share to social media?

We’ve written before about the rise of high-quality niche newsletters, a format that’s flourished over the past few years.

As our choices get more plentiful, diverse experts and fans across a wide spectrum of topics are sharing the best content they discover. This includes our friends at Read This Thing, who curate one fantastic piece of journalism a day.

The Read This Thing team shared with us their giant list of 60+ must-know newsletters in areas including news, tech, arts & entertainment, self-improvement and general interestingness (my personal favorite category).

Read on to discover your next great content curation source!

General news newsletters

1. The Skimm

“theSkimm is the daily e-mail newsletter that gives you everything you need to start your day. We do the reading for you — across subject lines and party lines — and break it down with fresh editorial content.”

2. Politico Playbook

“Veteran journalist Mike Allen combs the Internet, TV and newspapers to cook up a hearty dish of whats happening in politics.”

3. The Daily Beast

All the news you could want.

4. ReadThisThing

One fantastic piece of journalism each weekday. (They’re the ones who made this list)

5. The Daily Water Cooler

“A free, quick, and splendid email newsletter chock-full of news + humor delivered every weekday morning to make sure you’re never left behind in a conversation.”

6. NY Times: What We’re Reading

Get recommendations from New York Times reporters and editors, highlighting great stories from around the web. Twice per week.

7. NextDraft

A quick, entertaining look at the day’s best stories, from the top of the news, to the very bottom.

8. Muck Rack Daily

“A digest of journalism on Twitter, written by journalists, delivered to your inbox daily”

Tech newsletters

9. Mattermark

“A hand-curated newsletter compiled daily to bring you first-person accounts of entrepreneurship, investment and other insightful reflections from the startup ecosystem.”

10. SaaS Weekly

“A weekly email of useful links for people interested in SaaS businesses.”

11. HackerNewsletter

12. Netted

A daily newsletter from the Webbies team introducing you to the best sites, apps and connected products.

13. Real Future

“Every weekday, Fusion’s Alexis Madrigal delivers five tidbits from the past and future. Wearable computers, drones, biohacking, geoengineering, rockets, digital mapping, coercive feedback loops, autonomous everything, representing the Internet in art, synthetic biology, machine logic, weapons, artificial life, the future of work, corporate surveillance, and more.”

14. StartupDigest

“The personalized insider newsletter for all things startup around the world.”

15. Product Hunt

“Get a summary of the best new products, every day.”

16. Ask Leo

“Each week I publish The Ask Leo! Newsletter where you can find more answers tips and tricks to make your technology “just work”!”

17. Charged

“The top tech news, insights, long reads and the best of the internet, delivered to your inbox every weekend.”

Marketing newsletters

18. Buffer

“Actionable social media advice. Delivered daily.”

19. Community.is

“A weekly newsletter by Loyal designed to define, educate & inspire anyone who puts people at the center of their work.”

20. Campaign Monitor

An awesome monthly newsletter with tips and tricks for email.

21. Seth Godin

Interesting thoughts from a famous entrepreneur.

Design newsletters

22. Sidebar

“Sidebar is a list of the 5 best design links of the day. But unlike a regular linkblog, it’s collaborative and manually curated by a couple great editors.”

23. UX Design Weekly

“A hand picked list of the best user experience design links every week. Curated by Kenny Chen and published every Friday.”

24. Smashing Magazine

“We love useful stuff, and we love quality writing, that’s why we send out an editorial email newsletter twice a month with useful tips, tricks and resources for designers and developers — thoroughly collected, written and edited by us exclusively for our readers.”

25. The Pastry Box Project

“Sugar For The Mind:” One thought every day, from people shaping the web.

Photography newsletters

26. Unsplash

Get 10 free, hi-res photos delivered to your inbox every 10 days.

27. Death to the Stock Photo

A fresh pack of creative photos in your inbox each month, with awesome stories to match.

28. Exposure Weekly Selects

Incredible photo essays delivered weekly.

 Sports newsletters

29. The Slurve

“We send the best baseball writing, all the essential news for each team, and a few original insights directly to your inbox each day during the season and frequently in the offseason.”

30. Casual Spectator

“Casual Spectator is a super-simple newsletter about sports. We make following sports easy and help you have better conversations with co-workers, family and friends.”

Food, beverage and events newsletters

31. Good Beer Hunting

A newsletter featuring all the best beer.

32. The Fetch

“We curate the best events, news, cool jobs and must-reads in one place.”
Mostly focused on these cities: New York — San Francisco — Los Angeles — London — Berlin — Melbourne — Sydney — Brisbane — Auckland

33. NoshOn.It

The best recipes and cooking tips delivered to your inbox.

34. Garagiste

Garagiste is a wine store that only sells wine via email newsletter. It’s weird and awesome.

35. Tasting Table

The latest trends in the categories of dining, wine, cocktails, cooking and food travel.

General interesting-ness newsletters

36. Brain Pickings

 

“The week’s most unmissable articles across creativity, psychology, art, science, design, philosophy, and other facets of our search for meaning.”

37. Lefsetz Letter

Lefsetz addresses the issues that are at the core of the music business: downloading, copy protection, pricing and the music itself.

38. Improbable Research

“Research that makes people laugh and then think.”

39. Ann Friedman Weekly

“My weekly newsletter is full of great things to read (some but not all of which were written by me) and GIFs and the occasional product endorsement. It arrives in your inbox on Fridays, just when you’ve run out of internet for the week.”

40. Wait But Why

It’s pretty hard to describe Wait But Why, but it’s awesome. Here’s how Fast Company describes it: “sometimes humorous, almost always profound, long-form explainer site”

41. This Is True

“This is True is a weekly e-mail newsletter which reports on bizarre-but-true news items from legitimate news outlets from around the world.”

42. Austin Kleon newsletter

“Every week I send out new art, writing, and interesting links. It’s free. No spam. Unsubscribe whenever you want.”

43. Today in Tabs

“Your daily digest of the worst (and occasionally best) in tabs.” This newsletter has been called as been called “the high school cafeteria of New York media”

44. The Li.st

Rachel Sklar and Glynnis MacNicol send this email a few times each week, spreading the word about awesome things being done and made by women.

45. Now I Know

Dan Lewis’s daily email with one really interesting fact per day.

46. MediaREDEF

Jason Hirschhorn’s MediaREDEF is a curated interest mix of media+tech+pop content via free daily newsletter.

47. Hardly Working

“It’s in my head. I’m sharing it with you. Read, Eat, Covet, Meet. Just one of each; randomness guaranteed.”

48. Very Short List

“VSL is a delightful e-mail that shares cultural gems from a different curator every day.”

49. Milkshake

“A free email dedicated to finding the good in everything — companies, causes, people, places and products giving back and making a difference.”

50. Brain Food

More from the popular blog Farnam Street:“Each Sunday I send out my weekly digest about new posts, books I’m reading, and interesting things I find across the web on subjects like art, history, science, philosophy, psychology, and human misjudgment. It’s basically brain food.”

51. The Ed’s Up

A weekly newsletter of writing and links from science writer Ed Yong, whose blog Not Exactly Rocket Science is hosted by National Geographic.

52. Links I would gchat you if we were friends

A daily newsletter by The Washington Post‘s Caitlin Dewey that rounds up the day’s Internet chatter (often about social media, digital and internet culture, and other fun stuff)

53. Sunday New York Times Digest

A weekly roundup of the most interesting links and quotes from the Sunday New York Times.

Self-improvement newsletters

54. Greatist

Top health tips, workout ideas, delicious recipes, and more.

55. SealFit

Get super intense life tips from a super intense Navy Seal.

56. Further

“Further is a once-a-week email newsletter that helps you maximize your purpose, performance, and potential. You’ll get the best hand-picked tips, trends, stories, and science that enhance your health, wealth, and wisdom — without the noise and fluff.”

57. Remotive

“A weekly newsletter on Remote Tips & Jobs sent to 7,000+ Remote Workers”

58. Heretic

“A daily newsletter about entrepreneurship, the art of the start and doing the work by Pascal Finette. It’s raw, unfiltered and opinionated.”

59. Think Clearly

A handwritten newsletter! “Think Clearly is a practice for hatching your visions and making them come true. It all begins with a blank page. And coffee.”

60. The Art of Non-Conformity

Chris Guillebeau has visited every country in the world. Now he shares unconventional strategies and stories on life, work, and travel.

61. Life Edited

“Design your life to include more money, health and happiness with less stuff, space and energy.”

Share your favorite newsletter!

Thanks to Read This Thing for putting Buffer on their list, and for allowing us to syndicate this handy list!

 What newsletters are missing from this resource? We’d love to hear your favorite and find even more great stuff to read and share!

The post 60+ Fantastic Email Newsletters to Read and Share appeared first on Social.

The $0 Marketing Stack: Free Options to Popular Paid Services and Tools

What tools do you use to get your online marketing work done?

Can you do all the same work of a digital marketer, and do it for free?

The list of tools you use—often referred to as a marketing stack—probably covers a variety of different uses and needs, everything from social media marketing to content to email and lots more.

Is it possible to have all these great tools without paying a cent?

It was a fun challenge to come up with a way to build a $0 marketing stack, to find free alternatives to popular paid tools and services. I’m grateful for all the amazing companies out there that offer such value for so little. Here’s the list I came up with for free alternatives to paid tools. I’d love to know what you think!

What’s in the stack?

The $0 Marketing Stack: Free Alternatives to Paid Tools

For a quick overview, here are the tools I found that seemed to be great, free options for some popular paid services.

1. Buffer
2. Canva
3. Google Analytics
4. Hotjar
5. Simply Measured
6. Open Site Explorer
7. Charlie
8. Sidekick
9. WordPress
10. Crowdfire
11. Medium
12. Wistia
13. SumoMe
14. Segment
15. Peek

1. Social Media Scheduling: Buffer

Great, paid options if you can swing it: Sprout Social, MeetEdgar

Perhaps our best time-saving tip for social media marketing is scheduling posts ahead of time for your social profiles. You can batch the social media marketing process: Do all your curating and composing all in one go, then spread those updates out across the next day or week.

How we use Buffer: The forever free plan at Buffer lets you connect a profile from each network (one from Facebook, one from Twitter, etc.) and to schedule ahead 10 posts for each network. If you share three posts per day, that means you can stay three days ahead all the time.

We’ve found a lot of value in the hand-picked content suggestions (thanks to Courtney who finds all that great content!), which are easy to read then add.

Also free:

• Hootsuite (free for your first 3 social profiles)

2. Design: Canva

Great, paid options if you can swing it: Photoshop, InDesign

Over 2 million people trust Canva to help with creating images for social media, blog posts, and practically any other use you can imagine.

How we use Canva: The optimized sizes and built-in templates make it fast and easy to create tall pictures for Pinterest, rectangular ones for Twitter, square for Facebook or Instagram, and any size in between. We find Pablo (another free alternative) to be great for Twitter-sized images of 1,024 pixels by 512 pixels, and Canva to work really well for all else.

Also free:

• Pablo
• Gimp
• Pic Monkey

3. Real-time Analytics: Google Analytics

Great, paid option if you can swing it: Chartbeat

Google Analytics does pretty much everything in terms of tracking the traffic to your website. It’s a huge, monstrous amount of info, generously given away for free.

How we use Google Analytics: As a social media marketing team, we appreciate the ease with which we can see traffic from the different networks (Acquisition > Social > Network Referrals). We can check the engaged reading time by looking at Time on Page. And for the real-time stats of who’s on our site right now, we can simply click on Real-Time > Overview.

Also free:

• Go Squared (free for the first 100 visitors and 1,000 data points)
• MixPanel (free for 25,000 events per month)

4. Website optimization: Hotjar

Great, paid options if you can swing it: KISSmetrics, Crazy Egg

Let’s say you’re curious how your visitors are actually using your website—where they click, how far they scroll, etc. Tools like Hotjar can show you exactly what your visitors are doing, via heatmaps, clickmaps, scrollmaps, and visitor recordings. Hotjar also has options to analyze your funnel and to insert messages and surveys to your visitors.

How we use Hotjar: User research can be incredibly powerful stuff. I find great value in seeing how someone interacts with blog posts. How much of the post do they read? Where do they pause? What do they click? Seeing all this information helps me design my posts in a clearer way.

Also free:

• Inspectlet (free for 100 recorded sessions)
• SumoMe Content Analytics

5. Reports: Simply Measured

Great, paid option if you can swing it: SumAll Reports

Simply Measured offers enterprise-level analytics and management for big brands and their social efforts. It has a wide array of free tools for the rest of us, too.

Among Simply Measured’s reports are these:

1. Twitter Follower Report
2. Twitter Customer Service Analysis
3. Facebook Fan Page Report
4. Facebook Content Analysis
5. Facebook Competitive Analysis
6. Facebook Insights Report
7. Instagram User Report
8. Social Traffic Report
9. Traffic Source Report
10. Google+ Page Report
11. Vine Analysis

Phew! That’s a lot of reports!

How to use Simply Measured: Each of these reports costs no money, although Simply Measured will ask for a Twitter follow or a Facebook mention in exchange for the free report. You can save loads of time in pulling reports from this one location as you seek to gain insight on where your social media efforts have been going lately. They’ve got all six major social networks covered: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Also free:

• Followerwonk
• SumAll’s free version

6. SEO: Open Site Explorer

Great, paid option if you can swing it: Moz Pro

is a great free tool for checking your domain and page authority and also for checking how many links you are getting and from which source. You can also check your competition. But the free version only gives you 3 reports per day. Signing up offers unlimited reporting on all your links, keywords and competitors.

How to use Open Site Explorer: Plug your blog’s URL into Open Site Explorer to see the high-level stats like page authority and incoming links. You can also click over to the Just-Discovered tab to see recent links and Top Pages to see which pages on your site get the most links.

Also free:

• SEO Book
• Screaming Frog SEO Spider
• Keyword Tool

7. CRM: Charlie

Great, paid option if you can swing it: SalesForce

A lot of the best CRM tools (Customer Relationship Management) help you stay abreast of your current and future customers. Think of a futuristic address book. The best ones are loaded with features and information. Charlie is a bit of a quick-and-easy hack to get to know a person really well.

How to use Charlie: Intended as a tool to help you prep for meeting new people, Charlie gives you a full run-down of a person—social media profiles, biography, interests, big news, etc.—by looking at your upcoming calendar or running an email address. If you’re wanting info on a single person ad-hoc, simply enter their email address into Charlie, and they’ll tell you everything.

Also free:

• Norbert

8. Email inbox insights: Sidekick

Great, paid option if you can swing it: Cirrus

Sidekick can track your outgoing email to tell you when the recipient has read your email. It’s a very, very advanced read-receipt. Plus a lot more.

How to use Sidekick: You can gain a lot from the Sidekick notifications about your email, and there’s also a lot of value that Sidekick adds to your inbox itself, with a sidebar of information on everyone who sends you a message. The sidebar includes links to all the person’s social profiles, plus a stream of recent tweets.

Also free:

• Banana tag
• Signals

9. Landing Pages: WordPress

Great, paid options if you can swing it: Unbounce, LeadPages

For those who are running their website or blog via WordPress, perhaps the fastest and easiest way to set up a landing page is simply to create a new page. If you blog with WordPress, the blog content you create falls into Posts. The static content for landing pages—“Download our ebook,” “Sign up for our webinar,” etc.—can be made quite easily via Pages.

How to use WordPress: Build a new landing page in WordPress, and use this as the focal point of your social media ad campaign or your social media updates. Certain plugins like WooDojo even let you hide the content in your sidebar for particular pages, which could be a great option for minimizing the look of your page.

Also free:

• Unbounce free plan (includes Unbounce branding)

10. Twitter management: Crowdfire

Great, paid option if you can swing it: Crowdfire premium

Twitter has been so generous to open up its app to developers to make some really great tools. Sure, you can manage your Twitter profile directly via Twitter (an always free option), or you can try out tools like Just Unfollow, which allows for bulk sorting and filtering of your followers, along with insights into the demographics of the people in your audience.

How to use Just Unfollow: One way that many experts recommend to keep your Twitter following count in line with your Twitter follower count is to routinely check to see which accounts are following you back and to remove the ones that aren’t. With Just Unfollow, you can do this quickly and easily all from one page—and even whitelist the unfollowers whom you’d like to keep following.

Also free:

• Tweepi
• Manage Flitter

11. Blogging: Medium

Great, paid options if you can swing it: Ghost

It feels a bit funny to list Medium as a tool (it’s really more of a network or social media site), but when it comes to starting a new blog as cheaply and quickly as possible, Medium can’t be beat.

How to use Medium: Many young startups kick off their blog at Medium, where they enjoy a built-in audience from the start and have networking tools to help their content spread. Plus, one of Medium’s newest features is an email newsletter where you can automatically get in touch with people who follow you by sharing your latest articles.

Also free:

• WordPress.com
• Blogger

12. Video: Wistia

Great, paid option if you can swing it: Wistia Pro, Vimeo Pro

Once you’ve created an amazing video to share on social media or your website, where will you put it? The default seems to be YouTube, which is quick and easy but comes with less control and potentially some unrelated ads or suggestions. Wistia is made for marketers’ videos because the player keeps people on your page—or sends them precisely where you want them to go next.

How to use Wistia: After you’ve uploaded your video, you can hop into the settings and add things like call-to-action buttons or email capture formsat the end of the video. Wistia also makes it easy to view heatmaps and viewing trends of your videos, like how far most people get through your video, when they pause or click, etc.

Also free:

• YouTube
• Vimeo

13. Share buttons: SumoMe Share

Great, paid options if you can swing it: Easy Social Share Buttons

The ubiquitous share buttons you see along the side of blog posts, many of them come from SumoMe. The any-website buttons (you don’t have to run a WordPress blog to use them) are part of the SumoMe suite of website products. If you’re okay with some SumoMe branding, you can add the buttons for free to any page and customize the networks that appear by default.

How to use SumoMe Share: SumoMe gives you a lot of control over the appearance of the share buttons, both in which buttons are displayed and where on the page they’ll sit. One of the great features also is that they look good on mobile devices, so you maintain a great way to encourage sharing no matter where your audience is reading.

Also free:

• Digg Digg (what we use on the Buffer blog)
• Flare

14. Analytics: Segment

Great, paid options if you can swing it: Usability Tools

I’ve heard Segment described as the one and only interface you’ll ever need for all your third-party apps. And I sure do see it recommended a lot. From what I can gather, Segment connects a wide variety of services, including your e-commerce or user database info, and sends you the analytics and reports that you ask for. It integrates with an incredible number of analytics, marketing, sales, developer, and user testing tools.

How to use Segment: Rob Sobers put together a really handy guide to how he’s set up Segment for his SaaS business.

15. Testing: Peek

Great, paid options if you can swing it: Optimizely, User Testing

When it comes to understanding how people are using your website—A/B testing, user testing, that sort of thing—there are some really fantastic paid options that can give you lots of insights. There’s also Peek, a free tool from User Testing that lets you see and hear a five-minute video of a real person using your website.

How to use Peek: For first-time insights, you may wish to have a person go  through your website or blog from the home page. Later on, you might ask for someone to test out a certain flow through your website by starting someone on a landing page. The tests take about 2-3 days to complete, and you can run three Peek tests every month.

Also free:

• Optimizely free plan

Over to you

Which of your favorite tools would you add to this list?

Did you notice any new ones that might be worth trying?

I’d love to hear from you about the free tools you’ve found most helpful and how you’ve put them to good use. Feel free to add any thoughts at all in the comments below. I’m looking forward to chatting!

Image sources: Pablo, IconFinder, Death to the Stock Photo

The post The $0 Marketing Stack: Free Options to Popular Paid Services and Tools appeared first on Social.

Misuses of 4 Google Analytics Metrics Debunked

Posted by Tom.Capper

In this post I'll pull apart four of the most commonly used metrics in Google Analytics, how they are collected, and why they are so easily misinterpreted.

Average Time on Page

Average time on page should be a really useful metric, particularly if you're interested in engagement with content that's all on a single page. Unfortunately, this is actually its worst use case. To understand why, you need to understand how time on page is calculated in Google Analytics:

Time on Page: Total across all pageviews of time from pageview to last engagement hit on that page (where an engagement hit is any of: next pageview, interactive event, e-commerce transaction, e-commerce item hit, or social plugin). (Source)

If there is no subsequent engagement hit, or if there is a gap between the last engagement hit on a site and leaving the site, the assumption is that no further time was spent on the site. Below are some scenarios with an intuitive time on page of 20 seconds, and their Google Analytics time on page:

Scenario	Intuitive time on page	GA time on page
0s: Pageview 10s: Social plugin 20s: Click through to next page	20s	20s
0s: Pageview 10s: Social plugin 20s: Leave site	20s	10s
0s: Pageview 20s: Leave site	20s	0s

Google doesn't want exits to influence the average time on page, because of scenarios like the third example above, where they have a time on page of 0 seconds (source). To avoid this, they use the following formula (remember that Time on Page is a total):

Average Time on Page: (Time on Page) / (Pageviews - Exits)

However, as the second example above shows, this assumption doesn't always hold. The second example feeds into the top half of the average time on page faction, but not the bottom half:

Example 2 Average Time on Page: (20s+10s+0s) / (3-2) = 30s

There are two issues here:

1. Overestimation
   Excluding exits from the second half of the average time on page equation doesn't have the desired effect when their time on page wasn't 0 seconds—note that 30s is longer than any of the individual visits. This is why average time on page can often be longer than average visit duration. Nonetheless, 30 seconds doesn't seem too far out in the above scenario (the intuitive average is 20s), but in the real world many pages have much higher exit rates than the 67% in this example, and/or much less engagement with events on page.
   
   
2. Ignored visits
   Considering only visitors who exit without an engagement hit, whether these visitors stayed for 2 seconds, 10 minutes or anything inbetween, it doesn't influence average time on page in the slightest. On many sites, a 10 minute view of a single page without interaction (e.g. a blog post) would be considered a success, but it wouldn't influence this metric.
   

Solution: Unfortunately, there isn't an easy solution to this issue. If you want to use average time on page, you just need to keep in mind how it's calculated. You could also consider setting up more engagement events on page (like a scroll event without the "nonInteraction" parameter)—this solves issue #2 above, but potentially worsens issue #1.

Site Speed

If you've used the Site Speed reports in Google Analytics in the past, you've probably noticed that the numbers can sometimes be pretty difficult to believe. This is because the way that Site Speed is tracked is extremely vulnerable to outliers—it starts with a 1% sample of your users and then takes a simple average for each metric. This means that a few extreme values (for example, the occasional user with a malware-infested computer or a questionable wifi connection) can create a very large swing in your data.

The use of an average as a metric is not in itself bad, but in an area so prone to outliers and working with such a small sample, it can lead to questionable results.

Fortunately, you can increase the sampling rate right up to 100% (or the cap of 10,000 hits per day). Depending on the size of your site, this may still only be useful for top-level data. For example, if your site gets 1,000,000 hits per day and you're interested in the performance of a new page that's receiving 100 hits per day, Google Analytics will throttle your sampling back to the 10,000 hits per day cap—1%. As such, you'll only be looking at a sample of 1 hit per day for that page.

Solution: Turn up the sampling rate. If you receive more than 10,000 hits per day, keep the sampling rate in mind when digging into less visited pages. You could also consider external tools and testing, such as Pingdom or WebPagetest.

Conversion Rate (by channel)

Obviously, conversion rate is not in itself a bad metric, but it can be rather misleading in certain reports if you don't realise that, by default, conversions are attributed using a last non-direct click attribution model.

From Google Analytics Help:

"...if a person clicks over your site from google.com, then returns as "direct" traffic to convert, Google Analytics will report 1 conversion for "google.com / organic" in All Traffic."

This means that when you're looking at conversion numbers in your acquisition reports, it's quite possible that every single number is different to what you'd expect under last click—every channel other than direct has a total that includes some conversions that occurred during direct sessions, and direct itself has conversion numbers that don't include some conversions that occurred during direct sessions.

Solution: This is just something to be aware of. If you do want to know your last-click numbers, there's always the Multi-Channel Funnels and Attribution reports to help you out.

Exit Rate

Unlike some of the other metrics I've discussed here, the calculation behind exit rate is very intuitive—"for all pageviews to the page, Exit Rate is the percentage that were the last in the session." The problem with exit rate is that it's so often used as a negative metric: "Which pages had the highest exit rate? They're the problem with our site!" Sometimes this might be true: Perhaps, for example, if those pages are in the middle of a checkout funnel.

Often, however, a user will exit a site when they've found what they want. This doesn't just mean that a high exit rate is ok on informational pages like blog posts or about pages—it could also be true of product pages and other pages with a highly conversion-focused intent. Even on ecommerce sites, not every visitor has the intention of converting. They might be researching towards a later online purchase, or even planning to visit your physical store. This is particularly true if your site ranks well for long tail queries or is referenced elsewhere. In this case, an exit could be a sign that they found the information they wanted and are ready to purchase once they have the money, the need, the right device at hand or next time they're passing by your shop.

Solution: When judging a page by its exit rate, think about the various possible user intents. It could be useful to take a segment of visitors who exited on a certain page (in the Advanced tab of the new segment menu), and investigate their journey in User Flow reports, or their landing page and acquisition data.

Discussion

If you know of any other similarly misunderstood metrics, you have any questions or you have something to add to my analysis, tweet me at @THCapper or leave a comment below.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Is Brand a Google Ranking Factor? - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

A frequently asked question in the SEO world is whether or not branding plays a part in Google's ranking algorithm. There's a short answer with a big asterisk, and in today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains what you need to know.

For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard. Click on it to open a high resolution image in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I'm going to try and answer a question that plagues a lot of marketers, a lot of SEOs and that we ask very frequently. That is: Is brand or branding a ranking factor in Google search engine?

Look, I think, to be fair, to be honest, that the technical answer to this question is no. However, I think when people say brand is powerful for SEO, that is a true statement. We're going to try and reconcile these two things. How can brand not be a ranking factor and yet be a powerful influencer of higher rankings in SEO? What's going to go on there?

What is a ranking factor, anyway?

Well, I'll tell you. So when folks say ranking factor, they're referring to something very technical, very specific, and that is an algorithmic input that Google measures directly and uses to determine rank position in their algorithm.

Okay, guess what? Brand almost certainly is not this.

Google doesn't try and go out and say, "How well known is Coca-Cola versus Pepsi versus 7 Up versus Sprite versus Jones Cola? Hey, let's rank Coca-Cola a little higher because they seem to have greater brand awareness, brand affinity than Pepsi." That is not something that Google will try and do. That's not something that's in their algorithm.

However, a big however, many things that are in Google's ranking algorithm correlate very well with brands.

Those things are probably used by Google in both direct and indirect ways.

So when you see sites that have done a great job of branding and also have good SEO best practices on them, you'll notice kind of a correlation, like boy, it sure does seem like the brands have been performing better and better in Google's rankings over the last four, five, or six years. I think this is due to two trends. One of those trends is that Google's algorithmic inputs have started favoring things that brands are better at and that what I'd call generic sites or non-branded sites, or businesses that have not invested in brand affinity have not done well.

Those things are things like links, where Google is rewarding better links rather than just more links. They're things around user and usage data, which Google previously didn't use a whole lot of signals around that. Same story with user experience. Same story with things like pogo sticking, which is probably one of the ways that they're measuring some of that stuff.

If we were to scatter plot it, we'd probably see something like this, where the better your brand performs as a brand, the higher and better it tends to perform in the rankings of Google search engine.

How does brand correlate to ranking signals?

Now, how is it that these brand signals that I'm talking about correlate more directly to ranking signals? Like why does this impact and influence? I think if we understand that, we can understand why we need to invest in brand and branding and where to invest in it as it relates to the web marketing kinds of things that we do for SEO.

One very clearly and very frankly is links. So when we talk about the links that Google wants to measure, wants to count today, those are organic, editorially earned links. They're not manipulative. They weren't bought. They tend not to be cajoled, they're earned.

Because of that, one of the best ways that folks have been earning links is to get people to come to their website and then have some fraction, some percentage of those folks naturally link to them without having to do any extra effort. It's basically like, “Hey, you made this great piece of content or this great product or great service or great data. Therefore, I'm going to reference it." Granted, that's a small percentage of people. There's still only maybe two or three out of a hundred folks who might visit your website on the Internet who actually have the power or ability to link to you because they control content on the web as opposed to just social sharing.

But when that happens, in a lot of cases folks go and they say, "Hmm, yeah, this content's good, but I've never heard of this brand before. I'm not sure if I should recommend it. It looks good, but I don't know them." Versus, "Oh, I love these folks. This is like one of my favorite companies or brands or products or experiences, and this content is great. I am totally going to link to it." Because that happens, even if that difference is small, even if the percent goes from 1% to 2%, well now, guess what? For every hundred visits, you're earning twice the links of your non-branded competitor.

Social signals

These are pretty much exactly the same thing. Folks who visit content, who have experiences with a company, with a product, or with a service, if they're familiar and comfortable with the brand, if they want to evangelize that brand, then guess what? You're going to get more social sharing per visit, per exposure than you would ordinarily, and that's going to lead to a cycle of more social sharing which leads to visits which probably leads to links.

User and usage data

It's also true that brand is going to impact user and usage data. So one of the most interesting patents, which we'll probably be talking about in a future Whiteboard Friday, was brought up recently by Bill Slowsky and looked at user and usage data. It was just granted to Google in the last month. It talked about how Google would look at the patterns of where web visitors would go and what their search experiences would be like. It would potentially say, "Hey, Google would like to reward sites that are getting organic traffic, not just from search, but traffic of all kinds on a particular topic."

So if it turns out that lots of people who are researching a vacation to Costa Rica end up going to Oyster.com, well, Google might say, "Hey, you know what? We've seen this pattern over and over again. Let's boost Oyster.com's rankings because it seems like people who look for this kind of content end up on this site. Not necessarily directly through us, through Google. They might end up on it through social media, through organic web links, through direct visits, through e-mail marketing, whatever it is."

When you're unbranded, one of the few ways that you can get traffic is through unbranded search. Search is one of those few channels that does drive traffic, or historically anyway did drive traffic to a lot of non-branded, less branded sites. Brands tend to earn traffic from a wide variety of sources. If you can start earning traffic from lots of sources and have the retention and the experience to drive people back again and again, well, probably you're going to benefit from some of these potential algorithmic shifts and future looking directions that Google's got.

Click-through rates

Same story a little bit when it comes to click-through rate. Now, we know from experience and testing that click-through rate is or appears to have a very direct impact on rankings. If lots of people are performing a search and they click on your website in position number four or five, and they're not clicking on position one, two, or three, you can bet that you're going to be moving up those rankings very, very quickly.

Granted there is some manipulative services out there that try and automate this. Some of them work for a little while. Most of them get shut down pretty quick. I wouldn't recommend investing in those. But I do recommend investing in brand, because when you have a recognizable brand, searchers are going to come here and they're going to go, "Oh, that one, maybe I haven't heard of it. That one, I've heard of it. That one, I haven't heard of it."

Guess what they're clicking on? The one they're already familiar with. The one they have a positive association with already. This is the power of brand advertising, and I think it's one of the big reasons why you've seen case studies from folks like Seer Interactive, talking about how a radio ad campaign or a billboard ad campaign seemed to have a positive lift in their SEO work as well. This phenomenon is going to mean that you're benefiting from every searcher who looks for something, even if you rank further down, if you're the better known brand.

So is brand a ranking factor? No, it's not. Is brand something that positively impacts SEO? Almost certainly in every niche, yes, it is.

All right. Looking forward to some great comments. I'll try and jump in there and answer any questions that I can. If you have experiences you want to share, we'd love to hear from you. Hopefully, we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Your Daily SEO Fix: Week 2

Posted by Trevor-Klein

Last week, we began posting short (< 2-minute) video tutorials that help you all get the most out of Moz's tools. Each tutorial is designed to solve a use case that we regularly hear about from Moz community members—a need or problem for which you all could use a solution.

Today, we've got a brand-new roundup of the most recent videos:

• How to Examine and Analyze SERPs Using New MozBar Features
• How to Boost Your Rankings through On-Page Optimization
• How to Check Your Anchor Text Using Open Site Explorer
• How to Do Keyword Research with OSE and the Keyword Difficulty Tool
• How to Discover Keyword Opportunities in Moz Analytics

Let's get right down to business!

Fix 1: How to Examine and Analyze SERPs Using New MozBar Features

The MozBar is a handy tool that helps you access important SEO metrics while you surf the web. In this Daily SEO Fix, Abe shows you how to use this toolbar to examine and analyze SERPs and access keyword difficulty scores for a given page—in a single click.

---

Fix 2: How to Boost Your Rankings through On-Page Optimization

There are several on-page factors that influence your search engine rankings. In this Daily SEO Fix, Holly shows you how to use Moz's On-Page Optimization tool to identify pages on your website that could use some love and what you can do to improve them.

---

Fix 3: How to Check Your Anchor Text Using Open Site Explorer

Dive into OSE with Tori in this Daily SEO Fix to check out the anchor text opportunities for Moz.com. By highlighting all your anchor text you can discover other potential keyword ranking opportunities you might not have thought of before.

---

Fix 4: How to Do Keyword Research with OSE and the Keyword Difficulty Tool

Studying your competitors can help identify keyword opportunities for your own site. In this Daily SEO Fix, Jacki walks through how to use OSE to research the anchor text for competitors websites and how to use the Keyword Difficulty Tool to identify potential expansion opportunities for your site.

---

Fix 5: How to Discover Keyword Opportunities in Moz Analytics

Digesting organic traffic that is coming to your site is an easy way to surface potential keyword opportunities. In this Daily SEO Fix, Chiaryn walks through the keyword opportunity tab in Moz Analytics and highlights a quick tip for leveraging that tool.

---

Looking for more?

We've got more videos in last week's round-up! Check it out here.

---

Don't have a Pro subscription? No problem. Everything we cover in these Daily SEO Fix videos is available with a free 30-day trial.

Sounds good. Sign me up!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!