#SocialSkim: Facebook's Huge Investment, YouTube at VidCon: 11 Stories This Week

Facebook to spend millions on original shows, hits major user milestone; YouTube's VidCon announcements and its experimental app open to all; Instagram tires to make you share more; Reddit's big video effort; why you can't just focus on paid social; more! Read the full article at MarketingProfs

from
https://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2017/32370/socialskim-facebook-original-shows-youtube-at-vidcon-11-stories-this-week

This Is What Works in Facebook Headlines: The 20 Most Effective Phrases

Which phrases in headlines are most effective in encouraging people to engage with articles on Facebook? To find out, Buzzsumo examined the performance of 100 million article headlines published this year. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

from
https://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2017/32344/the-20-most-effective-headline-phrases-on-facebook

How Marketers Find Social Media Influencers

Most marketers find social media influencers for campaigns by reaching out to them directly rather than by using influencer platforms or talent agencies, according to recent research from Bloglovin'. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

from
https://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2017/32333/how-marketers-find-social-media-influencers

3 Steps to Dramatically Improving the Quality of Your Internet Leads and Sales Pipeline Right now

Would you prefer to have a richer sales pipeline full of qualified leads? Use these 3 steps to start improving your pipeline and reach prospects who are...

The post 3 Steps to Dramatically Improving the Quality of Your Internet Leads and Sales Pipeline Right now appeared first on The Sales Lion.

from
https://www.thesaleslion.com/dramatically-improve-quality-internet-leads-sales/

How to Build a Micro-Influencer Marketing Program in the Months Before Black Friday

Black Friday might seem like it's a long time away, but some of the most worthwhile holiday marketing activities require months of planning. If you want to build out a micro-influencer program for the holiday season, this 5-month plan will get you started. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

from
https://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2017/32332/how-to-build-a-micro-influencer-marketing-program-in-the-months-before-black-friday

#SocialSkim: Google Aggregates Job Listings, Snapchat's Location-Sharing: 10 Stories This Week

Google becomes the biggest job-search platform; Snapchat maps help users meet up; LinkedIn makes comments expressive; Music.ly's original programming with big partners; Instagram Stories user base soars; GIF's 30th anniversary... Read the full article at MarketingProfs

from
https://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2017/32329/socialskim-google-aggregates-job-listings-snapchats-location-sharing-10-stories-this-week

The 10 Most Talked About Television Shows on Social Media

The Walking Dead was the most talked about television show on social media during the 2016-2017 season, according to recent research from Nielsen. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

from
https://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2017/32304/the-10-most-talked-about-television-shows-on-social-media

10 Things You Need to Do After You Publish Your Blog Post

Can I ask you a question?

What do you do after you hit the “Publish” button?

If your blog isn’t getting any traction, you probably aren’t doing the right things.

Let’s be real. You can’t just post to social media a few times and move on to the next post. That’s not going to cut it.

You can’t spend all your time writing new posts and then neglect those posts once they’re published.

In fact, you should spend only 20% of your time writing, and 80% getting people to read what you wrote.

But how, you ask?

This post will tell you 10 things you need to do after publishing your post.

It contains an after-publish task list you can use to take your blog from barren wasteland to popular tourist attraction. Follow these recommendations, and you’ll stand to 10X your results from every blog post you publish!

Ready?

Great, then let’s start.

#1. Jumpstart Traffic with a Teaser Email

---

Your first order of business is to get some immediate traffic to the blog post. The most obvious way to do that is by promoting the post to your own email list.

Now, many people like to include the entire blog post in their emails, but you shouldn’t do that.

Why?

Because that doesn’t get you any traffic! When your subscribers get your full post in their inbox, they don’t need to visit your blog to get the content. Plus, it also makes them less likely to share, comment or read other posts on your blog.

Instead, use a brief “teaser email” that entices your subscribers to click through to your blog and share the post with their friends. This gets the ball rolling so that even people outside of your email list can find your post.

Here’s an example:

Without giving away too much, I linked to the blog post using an enticing call-to-action. I’ve also included a P.S. that invites subscribers to share on social media, including an easy link to share the post on Twitter.

Bonus tip: I used ClickToTweet to create the link.

#2. Deploy a Never-Ending Social Media Campaign

---

Average bloggers share their posts on social media. Smart bloggers create “evergreen” social media campaigns.

An evergreen campaign is a series of social media updates that constantly recycle themselves. So instead of just sharing your post a few times and calling it a day, your post gets promoted over and over again, on autopilot.

You can set this up by using a tool called MeetEdgar. This tool allows you to create a library of social media updates and a queue that automatically fills itself using the updates in your library.

Here are some ideas for social media updates to add to your evergreen campaign:

• Share the headline, or a variation of the headline for your post
• Share a quote or excerpt from your post
• Share an infographic or image from your post
• Tag an influencer who you featured in the post

If you can’t afford the $79/month for MeetEdgar, then MissingLettr is a similar product (albeit with more limited features) for only $15/month.

#3. Persuade Influencers to Spread the Word

---

Reaching out to influencers is a great activity to focus on after publishing. One influencer sharing your post on social media can make the difference between a couple views versus several hundred, or even thousands!

So how do you find these influencers?

One way to find them is by using BuzzSumo. Just go to the Influencers tab, and search for the topic of your blog post. It will show you a list of the top influencers who share content related to that topic.

To see if they are a good influencer to approach, click on the “View Links Shared” button to the right of their name and description. This will show you a list of recent links they shared. Look at the URLs of the links to see whether they commonly share other people’s content.

I should note that Buzzsumo does cost $99/month. If you’re not already using it and that’s not something you can afford, use their 14-day free trial to search for several niche-related keywords and find as many influencers as you can. (Categorize them by topic so you know for which posts you should reach out to them.)

When your trial runs out, you can google your topic and find high-ranking blogs. Then, find the people behind them on social media and check whether they are good influencers to approach. It may take more time to find good influencers, but it gets the job done.

Once you’ve collected a solid list of influencers, let them know that you have a blog post that they might be interested to share with their audience. (You can either reach out to them via social media, or send them a cold email.)

To learn how to actually persuade influencers to share your post, check out Brian Dean’s guide on how to get influencers to promote your content for free.

#4. Go Hunting for Juicy Backlinks

---

If you want to get as many eyeballs on your content as you can, you have to help it rise in Google’s ranks.

But you have to provide some hard evidence to show Google your post is worthy of their elusive page one — specifically, you’ll need to get backlinks from high-quality sources in your niche. This shows search engines that your post is also high-quality by association.

To find other blog owners who might want to link to you, do a series of Google searches on your topic. You are especially looking for list posts and resource posts that have lots of links to other blog posts like yours.

Google phrases like:

• “[your topic] tips”
• “[your topic] ways”
• “[your topic] resources”
• “[your topic] links”

Make a list of blogs that you want to reach out to and then find the contact info of the people in charge. Send them an email explaining that you enjoyed reading their post and that you wrote one on a related topic. Tell them you’d love to know what they think. Then, if you get a positive response, ask whether they’d consider adding the line to their post, if they think their audience would be interested.

Not everyone will say yes, but you should shoot for a 10% success rate or higher (i.e. you should get one backlink for every ten bloggers you ask.)

Bonus tip: Check out Dan Ray’s process for getting 50+ high-quality backlinks per month.

#5. Perform a 10-Minute Internal Link Audit

---

Speaking of links, that’s something you should take care off on your own blog as well.

Interlinking your blog posts with each other makes them easier for Google to index, helps you rank in search engines, and it keeps readers browsing your blog!

So set 10 minutes aside to do an internal link audit. Take a look at other posts you’ve written and see if you can add any links to them that point to your newly published post.

Make a game of it, and see how many internal links you can add in just 10 minutes!

#6. Answer the Burning Questions on Quora

---

Another great way to promote your blog post is by answering questions on Quora.

Just search for your topic, and see what questions come up.

Then, compose a thoughtful answer (like this one by Ryan Robinson), and link to your related blog post.

The key with Quora is to make your answers as helpful and informative as possible. Don’t just drop your link and run … it won’t work.

Quora uses a voting process to display the best answers at the top. Make sure that you are providing value first, and that your answer is worthy of being featured as the top answer!

#7. Repurpose Your Post

---

Don’t forget that content can take on many different forms other than written blog posts. Repurposing your posts by leveraging different types of content is a very smart (and efficient) way to attract new audiences!

For example, you could record yourself reading your blog post, and turn the recording into a podcast episode. User Experience designer Paul Boag does this for each of his blog posts (and he also embeds the recording at the top of the blog post itself, for visitors who would rather listen than read).

But that’s just one idea. You could also …

• Turn your post into a slide presentation and offer it as a webinar.
• Turn it into a video.
• Create a downloadable PDF version.
• Take multiple related posts and turn them into an ebook.

You have many options, so use them.

#8. Turn Your Post into a Facebook Ad

---

Did you know that top blogs will actually turn their posts into Facebook ads to drive more traffic to them?

Well, Facebook ads aren’t just for large blogs with huge advertising budgets … you don’t need to spend more than a few bucks per day.

In fact, I used Facebook ads to grow my email list by 532 subscribers in just 43 days, and for the price of a cup of coffee!

The beauty of Facebook ads is that you can target specific groups of people with them. For instance, you could show your ad to people who like other Facebook pages in your niche. Or you could target people who have an interest in specific topics.

The opportunity that Facebook presents to advertise your blog would be foolish to ignore. The fact is, there are over 1.9 billion monthly users on Facebook. So chances are, your target audience is there! Why not send them to your best content?

#9. Dig Deep Into the Data

---

This activity is one of the most overlooked, but also one of the most important. If you don’t analyze your post’s performance, how will you ever know what’s working and what’s not?

Set up a Google Analytics account to see whether your promotion strategies are working.

Look at the data a week after your post to see how well it did immediately after publication.

Did it get as much traffic to your post as you were expecting?

How long did visitors stick around to read your post, and did they convert to subscribers?

How much of your existing traffic is from social vs. referrals (people linking to your post) vs. direct channels (your teaser email)?

For example, if you have lots of direct but no social traffic, that could mean that you’re doing a great job with your teaser email, but it underperformed in the social arena.

Then, make sure you check the post’s data periodically to see how it’s doing traffic-wise. (More on that in a second.)

To learn more about how to use Google Analytics, check out this crash course.

#10. Remind Yourself to Refresh Regularly

---

Did you know that “freshness” is an important factor that Google takes into account when deciding whether or not to display your post in the search results?

You should update your best-performing blog posts with new information on a regular basis. Your posts will continue to provide the best content for your readers, and you boost your chances of keeping your rank in the search engines.

The problem is, this is a task that is easily neglected.

So after you click publish, set a reminder for yourself to go check on your post in a year and see whether it warrants refreshment. (I recommend creating a single event for a number of posts, so you don’t drive your future self crazy with weekly reminders.)

Make sure you set the event to repeat every year and set the notification to “email.”

Then, when you get a reminder, first check how your post is performing. If it barely gets traffic, it’s not worth your time to refresh. (Though, if you think the post is worth giving a second chance, you could try targeting a new keyword and/or republishing it under a new headline.)

If it is performing well, see if you can refresh your post by:

• Adding new tips, examples or insights you’ve gained since publication
• Checking the comments for questions you could address in the post
• Revising outdated information
• Checking whether all the links still work
• Checking whether the resources or tools you recommend are still the best
• Removing or replacing methods you no longer support
• Adding or updating images, screenshots, graphs, etc.

Once you’ve made the improvements to your post, mark it as updated. You can either add (Updated) to the end of your headline, or add a message at the top of your post.

Give Every Post the Best Chance You Can

If you think your work is over as soon as you click “publish,” it’s time to think again.

Because what you do once your post is live is even more important than what you do before. Taking your foot off the gas can mean that all the effort you spent writing your post goes to waste.

So instead of writing post after post, spend some time getting people to read the ones you’ve already written. Try some of the above tasks on your older posts, and keep them in mind for your next ones.

Stop neglecting your posts after you publish them and get them the attention they deserve.

And before you know it, you’ll see your traffic soar.

About the Author: Mary Fernandez the founder of Persuasion Nation and the co-founder of AwesomeGuests: a tool that connects you with the top blogs and podcasts seeking guests just like you. Click here to access our fully-vetted database of guest blogging and podcast interview opportunities (plus SmartBlogger-only deals and bonuses)!

from
https://smartblogger.com/after-publish-blog-post/

Owned, Paid, and Earned: The Social Media Trifecta [Infographic]

Owned, earned, and paid social media are often thought of as separate tactics of a brand's social strategy. But ensuring all three work together can give you the biggest and best results. See how to make that happen. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

from
https://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2017/32283/owned-paid-and-earned-the-social-media-trifecta-infographic

How to Build a Micro-Influencer Marketing Program in the Months Before Black Friday

Black Friday might seem like it's a long time away, but some of the most worthwhile holiday marketing activities require months of planning. If you want to build out a micro-influencer program for the holiday season, this 5-month plan will get you started. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

from
https://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2017/32332/how-to-build-a-micro-influencer-marketing-program-in-the-months-before-black-friday

#SocialSkim: Google Aggregates Job Listings, Snapchat's Location-Sharing: 10 Stories This Week

Google becomes the biggest job-search platform; Snapchat maps help users meet up; LinkedIn makes comments expressive; Music.ly's original programming with big partners; Instagram Stories user base soars; GIF's 30th anniversary... Read the full article at MarketingProfs

from
https://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2017/32329/socialskim-google-aggregates-job-listings-snapchats-location-sharing-10-stories-this-week

The 10 Most Talked About Television Shows on Social Media

The Walking Dead was the most talked about television show on social media during the 2016-2017 season, according to recent research from Nielsen. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

from
https://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2017/32304/the-10-most-talked-about-television-shows-on-social-media

Hubcast 143: The Problem With Churn & Blog Subscriptions, Shakr, BeastGrip, & More

In this episode of the Hubcast, we talk about the very real problem of blog subscriptions, a new Shakr/HubSpot integration, and George's obsession with...

The post Hubcast 143: The Problem With Churn & Blog Subscriptions, Shakr, BeastGrip, & More appeared first on The Sales Lion.

from
https://www.thesaleslion.com/hubcast-143-blog-subscriptions-shakr-beastgrip/

10 Things You Need to Do After You Publish Your Blog Post

Can I ask you a question?

What do you do after you hit the “Publish” button?

If your blog isn’t getting any traction, you probably aren’t doing the right things.

Let’s be real. You can’t just post to social media a few times and move on to the next post. That’s not going to cut it.

You can’t spend all your time writing new posts and then neglect those posts once they’re published.

In fact, you should spend only 20% of your time writing, and 80% getting people to read what you wrote.

But how, you ask?

This post will tell you 10 things you need to do after publishing your post.

It contains an after-publish task list you can use to take your blog from barren wasteland to popular tourist attraction. Follow these recommendations, and you’ll stand to 10X your results from every blog post you publish!

Ready?

Great, then let’s start.

#1. Jumpstart Traffic with a Teaser Email

---

Your first order of business is to get some immediate traffic to the blog post. The most obvious way to do that is by promoting the post to your own email list.

Now, many people like to include the entire blog post in their emails, but you shouldn’t do that.

Why?

Because that doesn’t get you any traffic! When your subscribers get your full post in their inbox, they don’t need to visit your blog to get the content. Plus, it also makes them less likely to share, comment or read other posts on your blog.

Instead, use a brief “teaser email” that entices your subscribers to click through to your blog and share the post with their friends. This gets the ball rolling so that even people outside of your email list can find your post.

Here’s an example:

Without giving away too much, I linked to the blog post using an enticing call-to-action. I’ve also included a P.S. that invites subscribers to share on social media, including an easy link to share the post on Twitter.

Bonus tip: I used ClickToTweet to create the link.

#2. Deploy a Never-Ending Social Media Campaign

---

Average bloggers share their posts on social media. Smart bloggers create “evergreen” social media campaigns.

An evergreen campaign is a series of social media updates that constantly recycle themselves. So instead of just sharing your post a few times and calling it a day, your post gets promoted over and over again, on autopilot.

You can set this up by using a tool called MeetEdgar. This tool allows you to create a library of social media updates and a queue that automatically fills itself using the updates in your library.

Here are some ideas for social media updates to add to your evergreen campaign:

• Share the headline, or a variation of the headline for your post
• Share a quote or excerpt from your post
• Share an infographic or image from your post
• Tag an influencer who you featured in the post

If you can’t afford the $79/month for MeetEdgar, then MissingLettr is a similar product (albeit with more limited features) for only $15/month.

#3. Persuade Influencers to Spread the Word

---

Reaching out to influencers is a great activity to focus on after publishing. One influencer sharing your post on social media can make the difference between a couple views versus several hundred, or even thousands!

So how do you find these influencers?

One way to find them is by using BuzzSumo. Just go to the Influencers tab, and search for the topic of your blog post. It will show you a list of the top influencers who share content related to that topic.

To see if they are a good influencer to approach, click on the “View Links Shared” button to the right of their name and description. This will show you a list of recent links they shared. Look at the URLs of the links to see whether they commonly share other people’s content.

I should note that Buzzsumo does cost $99/month. If you’re not already using it and that’s not something you can afford, use their 14-day free trial to search for several niche-related keywords and find as many influencers as you can. (Categorize them by topic so you know for which posts you should reach out to them.)

When your trial runs out, you can google your topic and find high-ranking blogs. Then, find the people behind them on social media and check whether they are good influencers to approach. It may take more time to find good influencers, but it gets the job done.

Once you’ve collected a solid list of influencers, let them know that you have a blog post that they might be interested to share with their audience. (You can either reach out to them via social media, or send them a cold email.)

To learn how to actually persuade influencers to share your post, check out Brian Dean’s guide on how to get influencers to promote your content for free.

#4. Go Hunting for Juicy Backlinks

---

If you want to get as many eyeballs on your content as you can, you have to help it rise in Google’s ranks.

But you have to provide some hard evidence to show Google your post is worthy of their elusive page one — specifically, you’ll need to get backlinks from high-quality sources in your niche. This shows search engines that your post is also high-quality by association.

To find other blog owners who might want to link to you, do a series of Google searches on your topic. You are especially looking for list posts and resource posts that have lots of links to other blog posts like yours.

Google phrases like:

• “[your topic] tips”
• “[your topic] ways”
• “[your topic] resources”
• “[your topic] links”

Make a list of blogs that you want to reach out to and then find the contact info of the people in charge. Send them an email explaining that you enjoyed reading their post and that you wrote one on a related topic. Tell them you’d love to know what they think. Then, if you get a positive response, ask whether they’d consider adding the line to their post, if they think their audience would be interested.

Not everyone will say yes, but you should shoot for a 10% success rate or higher (i.e. you should get one backlink for every ten bloggers you ask.)

Bonus tip: Check out Dan Ray’s process for getting 50+ high-quality backlinks per month.

#5. Perform a 10-Minute Internal Link Audit

---

Speaking of links, that’s something you should take care off on your own blog as well.

Interlinking your blog posts with each other makes them easier for Google to index, helps you rank in search engines, and it keeps readers browsing your blog!

So set 10 minutes aside to do an internal link audit. Take a look at other posts you’ve written and see if you can add any links to them that point to your newly published post.

Make a game of it, and see how many internal links you can add in just 10 minutes!

#6. Answer the Burning Questions on Quora

---

Another great way to promote your blog post is by answering questions on Quora.

Just search for your topic, and see what questions come up.

Then, compose a thoughtful answer (like this one by Ryan Robinson), and link to your related blog post.

The key with Quora is to make your answers as helpful and informative as possible. Don’t just drop your link and run … it won’t work.

Quora uses a voting process to display the best answers at the top. Make sure that you are providing value first, and that your answer is worthy of being featured as the top answer!

#7. Repurpose Your Post

---

Don’t forget that content can take on many different forms other than written blog posts. Repurposing your posts by leveraging different types of content is a very smart (and efficient) way to attract new audiences!

For example, you could record yourself reading your blog post, and turn the recording into a podcast episode. User Experience designer Paul Boag does this for each of his blog posts (and he also embeds the recording at the top of the blog post itself, for visitors who would rather listen than read).

But that’s just one idea. You could also …

• Turn your post into a slide presentation and offer it as a webinar.
• Turn it into a video.
• Create a downloadable PDF version.
• Take multiple related posts and turn them into an ebook.

You have many options, so use them.

#8. Turn Your Post into a Facebook Ad

---

Did you know that top blogs will actually turn their posts into Facebook ads to drive more traffic to them?

Well, Facebook ads aren’t just for large blogs with huge advertising budgets … you don’t need to spend more than a few bucks per day.

In fact, I used Facebook ads to grow my email list by 532 subscribers in just 43 days, and for the price of a cup of coffee!

The beauty of Facebook ads is that you can target specific groups of people with them. For instance, you could show your ad to people who like other Facebook pages in your niche. Or you could target people who have an interest in specific topics.

The opportunity that Facebook presents to advertise your blog would be foolish to ignore. The fact is, there are over 1.9 billion monthly users on Facebook. So chances are, your target audience is there! Why not send them to your best content?

#9. Dig Deep Into the Data

---

This activity is one of the most overlooked, but also one of the most important. If you don’t analyze your post’s performance, how will you ever know what’s working and what’s not?

Set up a Google Analytics account to see whether your promotion strategies are working.

Look at the data a week after your post to see how well it did immediately after publication.

Did it get as much traffic to your post as you were expecting?

How long did visitors stick around to read your post, and did they convert to subscribers?

How much of your existing traffic is from social vs. referrals (people linking to your post) vs. direct channels (your teaser email)?

For example, if you have lots of direct but no social traffic, that could mean that you’re doing a great job with your teaser email, but it underperformed in the social arena.

Then, make sure you check the post’s data periodically to see how it’s doing traffic-wise. (More on that in a second.)

To learn more about how to use Google Analytics, check out this crash course.

#10. Remind Yourself to Refresh Regularly

---

Did you know that “freshness” is an important factor that Google takes into account when deciding whether or not to display your post in the search results?

You should update your best-performing blog posts with new information on a regular basis. Your posts will continue to provide the best content for your readers, and you boost your chances of keeping your rank in the search engines.

The problem is, this is a task that is easily neglected.

So after you click publish, set a reminder for yourself to go check on your post in a year and see whether it warrants refreshment. (I recommend creating a single event for a number of posts, so you don’t drive your future self crazy with weekly reminders.)

Make sure you set the event to repeat every year and set the notification to “email.”

Then, when you get a reminder, first check how your post is performing. If it barely gets traffic, it’s not worth your time to refresh. (Though, if you think the post is worth giving a second chance, you could try targeting a new keyword and/or republishing it under a new headline.)

If it is performing well, see if you can refresh your post by:

• Adding new tips, examples or insights you’ve gained since publication
• Checking the comments for questions you could address in the post
• Revising outdated information
• Checking whether all the links still work
• Checking whether the resources or tools you recommend are still the best
• Removing or replacing methods you no longer support
• Adding or updating images, screenshots, graphs, etc.

Once you’ve made the improvements to your post, mark it as updated. You can either add (Updated) to the end of your headline, or add a message at the top of your post.

Give Every Post the Best Chance You Can

If you think your work is over as soon as you click “publish,” it’s time to think again.

Because what you do once your post is live is even more important than what you do before. Taking your foot off the gas can mean that all the effort you spent writing your post goes to waste.

So instead of writing post after post, spend some time getting people to read the ones you’ve already written. Try some of the above tasks on your older posts, and keep them in mind for your next ones.

Stop neglecting your posts after you publish them and get them the attention they deserve.

And before you know it, you’ll see your traffic soar.

About the Author: Mary Fernandez the founder of Persuasion Nation and the co-founder of AwesomeGuests: a tool that connects you with the top blogs and podcasts seeking guests just like you. Click here to access our fully-vetted database of guest blogging and podcast interview opportunities (plus SmartBlogger-only deals and bonuses)!

from
https://smartblogger.com/after-publish-blog-post/

#SocialSkim: Apple's Business Chat, Twitter's Major Redesign: 11 Stories This Week

Apple's Business Chat vs. Messenger; Twitter's big redesign; why Yahoo's grand social media Tumblr plan failed; Facebook's paid news subscriptions, profile cover videos; Instagram's archive feature and sponsored-content labels; Snapchat's self-serve ads... Read the full article at MarketingProfs

from
https://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2017/32285/socialskim-apples-business-chat-twitters-major-redesign-11-stories-this-week

How To Build the Best Video Content Plan: 3 Essential Strategies

Is "going viral" your entire video content plan? Instead, use these 3 essential strategies that not only improve your video effectiveness but also...

The post How To Build the Best Video Content Plan: 3 Essential Strategies appeared first on The Sales Lion.

from
https://www.thesaleslion.com/how-to-build-best-video-content-essential-marketing-strategy/

Why Social Media Is the Best Thing to Happen to Marketing Automation [Infographic]

Are you using your marketing automation platform to its fullest capabilities? If you're not including data from social media channels, you could be missing out. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

from
https://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2017/32199/why-social-media-is-the-best-thing-to-happen-to-marketing-automation-infographic

Hubcast 142: Hyper Segment, Dynamic Pages, Social Tools & Scotland

In this episode of the Hubcast, Marcus and George finally made it to the speaker page. Also, some in-depth HubSpot updates, and feature another INBOUND17...

The post Hubcast 142: Hyper Segment, Dynamic Pages, Social Tools & Scotland appeared first on The Sales Lion.

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https://www.thesaleslion.com/hubcast-142-hyper-segment-dynamic-pages-social-tools-scotland/

Using Stock Footage in Marketing Videos: Pros and Cons

When you're putting marketing videos together, when is it appropriate to use stock footage? There are times when it could add to your story but these are...

The post Using Stock Footage in Marketing Videos: Pros and Cons appeared first on The Sales Lion.

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#SocialSkim: Facebook Plans New Messaging App, Instagram Hooks Small Biz: 11 Stories This Week

Facebook gives parents control with teen messaging app; Instagram vs. Snapchat for small business; Facebook, WhatsApp revamp photo features; the only social listening tool for Reddit; Facebook's mid-roll ads underwhelm; social media B2B trends... Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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13 WordPress Plugins That’ll Save You a Ton of Time

Running a blog requires an insane amount of time.

In fact, there’s not enough time in your day to do everything (especially if you have a full-time job, too).

From learning new ways to get traffic and scheduling social media posts to building your email list and managing comments, you feel stretched to your limit.

And the more you learn and grow, the more you have to keep up with — it’s exhausting.

So what if I told you that you can add a squad of tools to your toolbox that will eliminate a ton of time spent on the more tedious aspects of blogging?

These 13 WordPress plugins are like having a full-time employee that shaves hours off of your blogging work week, so you can get back to doing the important things: writing and connecting with your audience.

Plugin #1: Beacon

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If you’re committed to building your email list, content upgrades can increase your subscribers substantially.

My sitewide opt-in offer converts at a rate of around 10% while my content upgrades convert at closer to 25%-30%.

That means that for every 100 visitors to my blog, I can collect 15-20 more emails.

Impressive, right?

But adding content upgrades to every article you publish seems like a daunting task, right?

Not if you use Beacon.

Beacon allows you to create ebooks from your existing articles automatically, right on your WordPress dashboard:

If you have several blog posts that could go together in one cohesive ebook, or if you have a long piece of content that could do the same, Beacon can do that for you …

Without having to fiddle around with designing it yourself.

I made an ebook with Beacon for my guide on Instagram marketing in five minutes flat, and it converted at over 20% of visitors.

Massive results in a quarter of the time.

Plugin #2: Pretty Link

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With Pretty Link, you can create shorter, more memorable links to any page you refer to a lot. This keeps you from having to hunt down their URLs all the time.

For example, affiliate links can be quite complicated and contain random sequences of numbers that are hard to remember. So if you refer to the same affiliate product a lot, you can create a simpler link like “http://yourdomain.com/productname.”

And you can do the same for any post or page to which you refer often. You can bring each URL down to a memorable keyword and won’t have to spend any time hunting down links.

Just compare:

You can see how the second URL would be easier to remember, can’t you?

And that’s not all. Pretty Link also saves time whenever you have to replace a link you’ve used a lot.

Say you were to change your username on Twitter. You’d have to hunt down every link to your Twitter account and replace them …

Unless you created a Pretty Link that says “http://yourdomain.com/twitter.” You can just go into your dashboard, edit the target URL, and you’re done.

Plugin #3: SEO Smart Links

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When you publish a new article on your blog, do you visit all your previous articles and link them to the new one?

It’s good for SEO and will boost your page views by helping more readers find your content.

But it’s way too time-consuming, right?

Enter SEO Smart Links, which is a plugin that automatically links keywords or phrases in your articles based on rules you set.

For example, I have an article about one of my coaching clients who built a $10,000/month business through one method I teach of finding clients. I set it up so every time phrases like “freelancing clients” or “find freelancing clients”  come up on my blog, they’re automatically linked to this article.

This makes it so I’ll never have to dig through my older posts to create internal links.

Note: This also comes in handy with affiliate links. You can make sure you never miss an opportunity to earn affiliate income by setting an SEO Smart Link.

Plugin #4: Yoast SEO

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Let me guess …

When somebody says “SEO,” you want to run for the hills.

For new and even experienced bloggers, search engine optimization is like Mount Everest for beginner climbers. It’s the “holy grail” of traffic generation strategies, yet it’s daunting to execute.

So you could spend the next several months learning about SEO.

Or, you could save yourself hundreds of hours reading case study after case study, researching best SEO practices, and trying to decipher Google-ese by installing Yoast SEO.

Yoast SEO is a WordPress plugin that guides you through optimizing each of your posts through a handy checklist to “grade” how well you’ve optimized your post:

You should know the basics of SEO (so you don’t piss Google off), but with Yoast SEO, you don’t need to spend hours studying.

Plugin #5: MonsterInsights

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Checking stats is as addictive as Candy Crush and just as unproductive too. When you break your focus from what you’re working on (i.e., important things like writing articles), you sacrifice about 20 minutes of productivity — even if you were only distracted for two minutes.

This is called “task switching” and it’s a huge time suck.

Cutting back on obsessive stat-checking is difficult once you’re hooked, but you can reduce the time you waste with MonsterInsights.

It’s a Google Analytics plugin for WordPress that shows you the most important stats right on your dashboard.

You’ll no longer have to leave your site to check analytics (and get drowned in the ocean of distracting figures). You can stay inside WordPress, get your quick fix, and move on to writing your post.

Plugin #6: WP Performance Profiler

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The speed of your website directly impacts your search engine results.

Meaning that if your blog is slow, Google will penalize you. And often, when your blog is slow, it’s one or more of your plugins that causes the issue.

This is a huge pain to fix.

First, you have to pull up Google’s PageSpeed tester. Then you have to begin disabling your plugins one-by-one. And after every plugin you disable, you have to test the speed again to see if you found the culprit.

That is, unless you let WP Performance Profiler do all the heavy lifting for you.

This nifty plugin costs less than ten bucks and saves you having to dig for problem plugins by reporting the activated plugins that are making your blog lag the most.

It even tells you the impact your plugins have on your site’s front end, which affects how speedy it seems for your readers:

This saves you the time of having to test your site to try and find the offending plugins.

So activate WP Performance Profiler on your blog, deactivate those problem plugins, and get back to doing the important work of a blogger.

Plugin #7: UpdraftPlus

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If your blog has never gone down, it probably will at some point, whether it’s because of hosting issues or a broken plugin or theme.

These issues can often be fixed quite quickly, but sometimes it’s not that simple and it wipes some of your blog’s history clean. Worst case scenario: You lose a ton of content.

Unless you install UpdraftPlus, a WordPress plugin that backs up your blog and stores your backup files in DropBox, Google Drive, or whatever remote storage solution you use.

This essential plugin will save you time in two ways:

1. You won’t have to spend hours on the phone or in online chat with your web host trying to restore the last backup of your site.
2. You won’t have to backup your blog manually. UpdraftPlus will run automated backups on a schedule, so you don’t have to remember to do so yourself.

Trust me, when your website does inevitably break, you’ll be glad you had the foresight to install this plugin.

Plugin #8: Akismet

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Have you ever logged onto your blog’s WordPress dashboard and seen comments like this?:

Thanks for the compliment, “Petite Clothing.”

These are spam comments that are a huge time waste.

There’s nothing quite as mind-numbing as sorting through comments to identify what’s real and what’s left by robots.

Which is why all bloggers must use Akismet – WordPress’s most popular anti-spam plugin which filters out all spam comments with remarkable accuracy:

Plugin #9: WP Broken Link Status Checker

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Broken links hurt your SEO and your reader’s experience of your site.

So you need to make sure your links are all in good order, right?

Except that would take hours upon hours. You’d have to go through your posts periodically to check for broken links, testing each one as if you were a reader.

Ain’t nobody got time for that!

Instead, use WP Broken Link Status Checker.

This plugin runs scans which will check all of the links on your website on autopilot based on your own parameters. You can check for internal links, or make sure that your reader won’t bottom out when they click on a link you placed to another blogger.

Plugin #10: ManageWP

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When you have more than one blog, you can get even more overwhelmed keeping track of everything.

You have a million tabs open on Google Chrome, you waste a ton of time each day flitting between each tab (often to bring up the wrong one), and you can hardly keep up.

Well, look no further, because ManageWP will make your life a whole lot easier.

ManageWP is a WordPress management system that connects your blogs to a single dashboard.

I have three blogs, and this plugin saves me a ton of time going from one to the other. It provides me easy access to each one with a single click, and also provides an easy overview of the security, performance, and analytics of each one.

ManageWP is a must-have for anyone who manages multiple blogs.

Plugin #11: Enable Media Replace

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About a year ago, I hired a web designer to overhaul my blog, Unsettle.

When the design was finally done and pushed out to the world, I began to notice little problems:

I needed to replace my old logo on all of the pages it still showed up on. My headshots were out of date on my old content and pages, and a lot of the blog images I had created were no longer relevant.

I had some work to do.

First, I had to upload the new logo, headshots, and blog images to WordPress.

Then, I had to comb through the pages of my blog to update these images, eating up hours of time (and a lot of patience, too).

But then I stumbled across Enable Media Replace: a WordPress plugin that lets you replace the piece of media (in my case, the images) rather than uploading new ones and hunting them down.

Plugin #12: Appointments+

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You’ve been there.

You’re trying to book a coaching call, or a time to meet with a potential freelancing client, or maybe just trying to set up a call with a reader, but you can’t find a time that works for you both.

So you spend what feels like hours in your email inbox proposing, rejecting, and rescheduling.

If this sounds familiar, this plugin will give you huge relief. Appointments+ is a plugin that allows you and your clients or readers to book appointments right on your WordPress website …

Allowing you to get out of your email inbox and save time, frustration, and back and forth.

Note: This plugin is only available as part of a larger package which costs $49/month. On the other hand, you won’t need this plugin until you have enough clients to afford it. (And the package includes other useful plugins as well!)

Plugin #13: CoSchedule

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You know the feeling …

You have a million ideas for blog posts (or maybe, like me, you have a million half-written drafts), and you’re overwhelmed. It’s hard to keep everything organized and keep yourself focused.

Sound familiar?

Then try CoSchedule. It will help you manage your editorial calendar and your social media promotions all in one spot, saving you the time of having to flit between different apps.

Plus, you can post to your Facebook Group right from your WordPress dashboard, and it shows how well your social media posts did, saving you from having to find your analytics in a different app.

CoSchedule is another paid plugin, but it’s a huge time-saver that will leave you feeling far more organized and put together.

Get Off the Blogging Hamster Wheel

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Sometimes, blogging feels like you’re on a hamster wheel.

You’re busy all the time, but you’re not getting anywhere fast.

My guess is that’s because you’re spending time on some tasks that, while crucial, won’t propel you forward.

So get off the blogging hamster wheel. Automate the boring stuff with these 13 WordPress plugins so you can get back to the meaningful work: the work you thought you were getting into when you started your blog.

And watch your productivity soar.

Sarah Peterson writes insanely useful guides on marketing and entrepreneurship at Unsettle.org. Get her report, 10 Free Tools That Reveal the Product Your Audience Is Begging For to finally start making money from your blog … the right way.

 

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