Digital Archives - Page 6 of 10

How to Overcome Common Content Strategy Problems

Today’s widely fragmented and competitive market means that companies are increasingly having to find creative ways to convey their brand. Whether that’s something as simple as sharing compelling images to social media or writing a series of blog pieces, businesses in all industries are seeking fresh ways to engage with their desired target audience through content marketing.

When executed well, you can quickly experience traffic growth in comparison to any competitors who may be yet to adopt content into their overall marketing strategy. In fact, according to research carried out by SEO expert Neil Patel, content marketing leaders experience 7.8x more site traffic than non-leaders. For your content marketing to really pay off, you need to develop a concise content strategy based on what you audience want to see and invest your time into continually refining and improving it. Developing a content marketing strategy that works can be difficult, so we have broken down three common problems that may arise and how to overcome them:

PROBLEM ONE: GETTING FOUND

Ultimately, search engines are created to answers questions. SEO software specialists Moz perfectly describes its purpose as being there to find, understand and organise all the content on the internet in order to offer the most relevant results to the questions that a user is asking. So, if you’re not creating content to best answer the questions that you audience is asking, don’t expect to be found for it.

There are many things that search engines take into consideration when crawling your website. This is everything from your robots.txt file, to your URL’s, page structure (we could go on), but arguably most importantly, your content and keyword selection.

Using appropriate long-tail and semantic keywords is key to helping your content get found. They are the cornerstone of planning effective content strategies and giving your users what they want, when they want it, ultimately driving more customers and retaining their loyalty because you are truly offering them value.

Ensure that your website gets found through systematic keyword search, hitting users at the right stage in their journey. Avoid guesswork and random brainstorming in searching for relevant keywords and use real data to guide your content.

PROBLEM TWO: CREATIVE BLOCK

To make any content marketing strategy successful, your content needs to be well-timed, relevant, interesting and useful to your audience. The pressure of formulating a plan based on this coupled with your own business objectives can often lead to problems finding inspiration when it comes to developing your content.

Inspiration can come from anywhere. The more you are exposed to through thorough research, the more you will understand exactly what kind of information your target audience are looking for. Sign up for podcasts, blogs, alerts, read more, and get creative!

Although you may get inspiration from other sources, it’s vital that you avoid copying other company’s content marketing strategies. It is your originality combined with a targeted approach which will make your brand survive. Embodying your company’s perspective and creating bespoke content to accompany it should always be at the forefront of your strategy, rather than simply repeating what other people are already saying.

PROBLEM 3: FINDING TIME

Creating fresh content is a time-consuming process. In fact, 42% of writers take up to 2 hours to write just 500 words. For many marketers, the cost of time affects their strategy as internal pressure can often force them to minimise the amount of content they are able to push out.

Make the most out of your current assets and find new and exciting ways to update it and ensure that it is keeping with the current climate. Good content is often evergreen, so by revising and updating, you can drive new traffic without having to reinvent the wheel.

Try experimenting with other types of content such as videos or podcasts which are both great for improving your SEO. Grab your audience’s attention with something that is easy for them to engage with, and once have their attention, push them to other forms of content you have already created.

Repurposing content reduces pressure to produce, creates new forms of content easily and efficiently and allows you to target wider audiences. Don’t forget – content doesn’t just refer to writing. Social media posts, photographs and videos are all important aspects of content you should embody into your strategy.

As an integrated marketing agency, our content team use intricate methods and strong strategy to create content that is unique and optimised for search. Whether it’s video marketing, blog writing or infographic designing, our team of graphic designers, content writers and video specialists can work together to create and execute a holistic marketing strategy that works. If you are considering outsourcing your marketing and would like to invest into your content strategy, please contact us on 0121 355 8092 or email info@edge-creative.com.

Request a free consultation today.

SOURCES:

https://neilpatel.com/blog/38-content-marketing-stats-that-every-marketer-needs-to-know/

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/blogging-time-benchmark

https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/how-search-engines-operate

Why Overlooking Social Media Strategy Could Mean the End of Your Business

The rise of social media has revolutionised the way the marketing industry works. Now, there are many different channels of social network, the most market-dominant of which include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn to name a few. These platforms have escalated in popularity across the globe and reaching any type of demographic has never been easier.

According to ‘Socialmediatoday’, 50% of small businesses have increased time spent on social media compared to last year and have reported gaining new customers and better business. This illustrates that you can’t set up a social media account and leave it – you need to develop a concise social media strategy and invest time into your processes.

The fact is, if you’re not developing a thorough approach to your social channels, you are missing out on a great marketing opportunity. Here’s why:

YOU’LL MISS OUT ON RELATIONSHIPS

When you incorporate customer service into your social media strategy, you are likely to increase customer satisfaction. Social media can be a powerful tool of communication between you and your audience. It allows you to respond quickly to customers, resolve various issues and receive feedback.

On your social channels, respond to any forms of customer feedback you receive. Whether this is a review, a customer query or a complaint. The interaction you have on social media is an opportunity for you to engage with your customers, enrich your brand, develop customer rapport and illustrate customer appreciation.

By responding efficiently and effectively to customers, you not only engage with your existing audience, you also open doors to new leads. A recent study by ‘Bright Local’ found that 30% of consumers take note of local businesses’ interactions with reviewers and use it as a metric when deciding whether to use the company.

Potential customers appreciate the relationship you have with your existing network and are more likely to try your business as a result.

YOU’LL GATHER LESS CUSTOMER INSIGHTS

Your social media strategy should incorporate interaction with your customer base. By reading through your audience’s channels, you gain insights into what their daily lives and behaviours consist of.

You can find information about what products they are buying, what hobbies they have and what kind of posts they share. With this information, you can refine your customer personas and shape your marketing accordingly.

When you understand your customers, you can write better content and more compelling posts, which leads to more traffic to your website. The benefits can also exceed your marketing strategy, as it helps you identify customer pain points and refine your product strategy.

YOU’LL GAIN LESS BRAND AWARENESS

‘SEOexpertbrad’ found that following a brand on Twitter is extremely meaningful to users. 72% of people who follow brands on Twitter are likely to purchase items or services from them. It is therefore vital that you make use of your social channels to increase brand awareness.

Creating content that inspires interaction is vital within your social media strategy. When your existing audience share your content, it will benefit your social exposure and allow your content to reach many more users than just your followers.

Ensuring that your content is unique and of value will encourage more social media users to read your posts, like your page and visit your website.

YOU WON’T TARGET YOUR AUDIENCE

Incorporating advertisements within your social media strategy is hugely beneficial to your business. Social platforms such as Facebook offer highly specialised ads which can target customers on several factors such as age, location, education level, industry and even user behaviour.

Using targeted ads within your strategy allows you to gain visibility among your target audience and is an inexpensive way to help you reach the right people and generate genuine leads.

Doing this will allow you to grow your customer following and grow your business accordingly.

When you start using social media as a method to connect with your customers, it can transform your brand. With this increased exposure comes serious ROI.

As an integrated marketing agency, we deliver and tailor our services to meet your individual needs. Our social media and content team use intricate methods and strong strategy in order to get the best out of social media.

If you are considering outsourcing your marketing and would like to invest into your social strategy, please contact us on 0121 355 8092 or email info@edge-creative.com.

SOURCES:

Element 26: What is Video SEO and Why is It Important?

Video SEO is changing the way businesses use video online to increase both the visibility and the value of their brand. In this exclusive guest blog, our partner Element 26 explains the importance of video SEO.

GUEST BLOG BY ELEMENT 26

As we covered in our blog ‘online video is no longer nice to have’, with video becoming increasingly important to the way businesses communicate online, the question of how to optimise your video content is no longer something that can be easily ignored.

Search engine optimisation is the process of making the content on your website more discoverable and the goal is usually to improve both the quantity and the quality of inbound traffic.

Effective video SEO will utilise the data contained within your videos to provide search engines with dense clusters of information about your content.

Why is this important? Because the internet has become profoundly visual and users are watching more video content than ever before. Also, because video is considered harder to produce than most other pieces of content, Google gives preferential treatment to those sites which contain video over those containing less rich data.

According to Animoto, 4 times as many customers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it.

Effective SEO should always prioritise the human experience. Google knows this as evidenced in all the recent algorithmic updates, which to date have all been about supporting users with more relevant search results (SERPs).

There are two components to effective video SEO. First of all, your content needs to be marked up properly to let search engines know what the content is about. Frankly, without this optimisation, search engines are blind to what your video content contains.

Then your videos need to be made relevant to your customer’s needs. This means there should be a strategic rationale behind why you’re making each video so that it can address any particular pain points your prospects might be experiencing.

Often referred to as metadata (the data about data), this additional information will not only help search engines get a read on what your videos are about, but it will also do the same thing for users.

Some quick wins for improving your video SEO include:

Giving your video files a descriptive name (eg _companyname_videosubject_date_)
Adding a description to your videos complete with relevant keywords
Uploading a separate thumbnail with a descriptive title
Providing a subtitle file to support your uploaded videos.

The subtitle file is sadly often overlooked when it really shouldn’t be. Referred to as a SubRip Subtitle file (or an SRT for short). The subtitle track is incredibly powerful as it is literally a written transcript of what is said within the video.

Power Tip: when going on camera, get your keywords loaded into the dialogue as this will impact the effectiveness of your videos once it is transcribed into a subtitle file.

Whilst you can rely on free or low-cost services such as YouTube or Vimeo to host your videos, these aren’t always the best place for business videos.

YouTube for example has an ad monetisation strategy at its core. This means that it has a vested interest in keeping users on YouTube for as long as possible so it can serve them with more ads.

In our experience, when our clients have opted to host their video content on YouTube, whilst it does indeed rank highly in search, the user is then directed towards YouTube itself rather than to our client’s website.

Clearly this isn’t the preferred outcome because once your prospect is on YouTube, they’re likely to be served other videos from your competitors.

Imagine this scenario: you run an emerging clothing brand based in Solihull making sports clothing for cyclists (very specific I know). You make a video and host it on YouTube. You then embed this video on your website using the YouTube embed code.

A prospect in Maypole decides she wants a new pair of cycling shorts and visits Google to perform a search. As Google is very smart and knows where the prospect is located, your video appears towards the top of the search results, directly below all the paid advertising. Happy days… or so it would seem.

The prospect then clicks the link and travels to YouTube to watch your video. She likes the video and watches it all the way to the end. So far so good, except for the fact YouTube has autoplay on by default and no sooner has the video finished, then another video begins to play. This is not such good news because the next video is from another sports clothing manufacturer based in Coventry.

Whilst on the flip side, your business is at least in this prospect’s consideration set, a preferable journey would look more like this:

The prospect searches for her cycling shorts. Your website ranks highly because the video on the site has significantly influenced the on-page value of the site. The prospect then clicks through to your website where you have optimised the user experience around the video content.

The prospect becomes a customer by making the purchase directly on your site without ever having had any dealings with the competitor brand at all.

A day or so later, the customer receives an email from your business containing a video thanking them for doing business with you. Perhaps the email also contains a discount code on her next purchase.

In order to utilise video in this way and to capitalise on all the benefits of video SEO, it is usually a good idea to use an online video platform such as Wistia or TwentyThree.

Online video platforms like these allow you to incorporate video into your site so you can leverage things like the description and the subtitle track.

EDGE CREATIVE

At EDGE Creative, we have over 14 years’ worth of experience in delivering excellent search engine optimised campaigns to a variety of clients across a broad spectrum of industries. With our solid and established SEO team, we have been able to develop and refine all the finer details in our process. In order to find out more about how EDGE Creative and our partner Element 26 can help you revolutionise your marketing, get in touch by calling 0121 355 8092.

This blog is a guest blog supplied by Nathan Haines of Element 26.

3 Ways to Increase Blog Traffic

Blogging has become one of the most popular ways of communicating, sharing information and developing your brand. In fact, according to WordPress, over 409 million people are reading more than 23.7 billion pages every month. With such a large potential audience, it is not surprising that 53% of marketers say blogging is their top priority when it comes to content marketing.

Creating a consistent blog is a beneficial way of increasing traffic, leads and sales for your business. By providing potential customers with knowledgeable and relevant content, you position your brand as an industry leader, building trust with your audience. As well as this, a blog can be valuable in engaging with current contacts and can be beneficial in reviving relationships with lapsed customers.

Once your blog is set up, it will not gather any traction unless you nurture it with consistent articles. Here are three ideal ways to increase traffic to your blog and increase engagement:

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

75% of internet searchers on Google never scroll past the first search results page. Therefore, if you want to attract new readers to your blog, it’s important that it appears on that first page. SEO is the essential component of digital marketing that can achieve this.

SEO uses intricate techniques and strategies to obtain high-ranking placements in the search results page of a search engine (SERP). It works to increase the authority and relevancy of your website in order to increase visibility.

SEO is constantly evolving as search engines often adjust their algorithms to improve search results for users. To increase traffic and extend your reach, it’s vital that you implement SEO processes to amplify your blog content out to new readers.

Search engines use high-tech programs, or bots, to scan your blog and website for information such as:

Keyword selection
Link building
On-page optimisation
Off-page optimisation
Building natural links

That blog post will then be indexed based on several algorithmic factors, which affects your search engine ranking. Search engines like a constant supply of fresh, relevant and engaging content. Therefore, the more often you update your blog, the more frequently your website will be found.

SOCIAL MEDIA

There are currently over 3.3 billion active social media users, and each one of those individuals have formed their own connections, followers and friends. To tap into this expansive network, you should develop a concise social media strategy that incorporates your blog.

As a company, share your latest blogposts from your company page and reach out to your followers to keep them up to date with your latest content. This ensures that you maintain engagement with your existing network, providing them with information that may be beneficial to them.

When someone engages with your blogpost on social media, your posts will then appear on the timelines of your engaged audience’s connections.

You can increase outreach by asking your employees to share the company blog from their personal profiles too. As well as this, you can interact with influencers, top pages and relevant groups.

Some of the key benefits of using blogs within your social media strategy is that you can develop your entire marketing plan, amplify brand awareness and generate conversation around your company and content. For example, if someone responds to your blogpost, other people may then respond to them too. Then, as more people get involved, your brand and post has sparked conversation, engaged with a wider audience and increased awareness of you, your company and your website.

EMAIL MARKETING

According to DMA Insight, 99% of us check our emails every day. For some, that’s as many as 20 times a day.

On your website, you can set up an email list which allows individuals to ‘opt in’ and sign up to receive your latest blogs. Then, you can separate your database via their interests. You can then use this segregated audience as a tool to push your content to an engaged audience. These individuals may then forward on your email to other colleagues, friends or their own customers if they think your content would be interesting or relevant to them.

Email marketing allows you to push out your content to a vast number of individuals and increase visibility quickly and efficiently. There is usually a low cost, and you are reaching out to an already engaged audience who know you and your company, meaning they are likely to engage with your content.

By emailing your blog content out, you make it easy to engage and re-engage your audience. Your company network is likely to be busy and may not often have the time to check your website for your latest content. By emailing it out to them, they may see something that is relevant to them, and so they will click through to your blog.

If you post content out more than once a week, you can compile those posts combined with some old, niche content into an email newsletter, which increases exposure. If you’re sending an email to someone which contains four or five blog titles, you are four or five times more likely to engage with them.

EDGE CREATIVE

We are an integrated marketing agency who understand the importance of content; we create relevant and informative content for our clients in order to attract, engage and retain their audience. Alongside this, our graphic design team can supply imagery, infographics and animations to your content so you can really get the most out of your marketing.

If you are interested in finding out how EDGE Creative can help increase your blog readership, whether this is through social media, search engine optimisation or email marketing, get in touch by calling 0121 355 8092.

REFERENCES:

https://fitsmallbusiness.com/business-blogging-statistics/

https://wordpress.com/activity/

https://dma.org.uk/uploads/misc/5a1583ff3301a-consumer-email-tracking-report-2017-(2)_5a1583ff32f65.pdf

https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics

Increase Engagement on Your Website Through Animated Content

A great way to deliver a dynamic and impactful message on your website is to incorporate animated videos. Animated videos have the potential to work with you to create a visually appealing website that will engage with your audience on multiple devices. For example, we created an animated GIF for our client, Midlands LTA and their Spooktacular campaign. The GIF utilised motion and visual effects suited for the theme and target audience, and was posted across social media and helping our client reach users across desktop and mobile.

According to research conducted by Small Business Trends, companies using video enjoy 41% more web traffic from search than non-users. This, as well as an ever-increasing focus on video content within marketing in recent years, is why you should be paying attention to what animated videos can do for your business via digital channels. This focus on video and animation is important because you will be able to quickly grasp your audience’s attention and enable them to share your content across multiple devices and platforms.

WHERE DO I BEGIN?

You’ve received visitors to your website, but how do you keep them there? There is no question that movement attracts attention. So to take advantage of this, you can incorporate animation via videos, GIFs, and illustrations across your website to explain, inform and act as calls to action for your audience. You can also incorporate sound effects, music and voice-overs to add extra information and excitement.

We created an animated GIF for The Holistic Boot Camp to raise brand awareness and showcase their forthcoming holistic retreat, revealing the beautiful beach location, fitness activities and beauty treatments. The GIF was posted across social media to help our client reach users across devices and encourage shares and engagement.

WHY SHOULD I USE ANIMATED CONTENT?

Animated content such as GIFs, vlogs and explainer videos is a great way to create an emotional connection with your visitors, explaining ideas and conveying messages easily and in a fun and friendly way. This is backed up by market research, for example, HubSpot, Video Brewery and Switch Video collected the 50 best explainer videos, and out of these, 86% were animated.

Animated content can help to give clarity to complex information, making it more comprehensible to those who may speak a different language, younger audiences or people who may be new to the topic at hand, for example. Another benefit of animated content is that it can help you convey information quickly, as you may only have a few seconds to grab your visitor’s attention. Therefore, they have mass appeal that can allow you to connect with audiences across the world and capture their attention from the first click. For example, Dropbox added an animated explainer video to their homepage and saw a massive 10 million new customers and a £35 million increase in revenue.

WHAT SHOULD I KEEP IN MIND?

As always, it’s important to begin with the core message you want to convey and the impression you’d like to leave on your audience, and then build your content from there.

It is important to understand that animated content must serve a purpose. It should firstly have a practical function for your target audience and secondly reflect the brand personality of your website, but remember, don’t overdo it – a website cluttered with animation that has no meaning may lose you visitors – it needs long-term relevancy!

HOW CAN EDGE HELP?

EDGE Creative have worked with several clients to produce high-quality and engaging animated content that incorporates movement, visual effects and brand identity to promote businesses and events in a variety of industries. We can produce animated GIFs, videos, vlogs, explainer videos and much more to explain, inform and promote across multiple devices and platforms.

Web animation is a design trend that EDGE Creative will be giving even more attention to this year. Our animation expert, John, has had a very busy 2018 so far, working on multiple animation projects as well as the redesign of our website, with an improved user journey and additional animated content!

Why not add an EDGE to your website? Call us on 0121 355 8092 or email us at info@edge-creative.com to talk about animated content and how it can work for your brand.

5 UK Essentials for a Search Engine Optimised Website

The term user experience (UX) is about ensuring users find value in what you are providing to them. Giving users a comprehensive and simple journey through your site, being able to navigate your website well without unnecessary steps to get to their end goal.

To put this into context, all users visiting a website are looking for information or a solution to a problem. They want to find the information or product quickly and simply; if this is not achieved, they will leave without converting.

Websites are the multifaceted shop window of your business. They serve to build lasting relationships and sell your products or services, but many miss the mark.

SEO works to draw prospective clients to your website via search engines as you climb the rankings. UX helps users to locate the information they need once on your website and is the catalyst for building and maintaining a relationship with prospective clients.

Both are often seen as separate ways to solve separate problems, but that is not the case. Without SEO, your UX is redundant and vice versa. Here are the 5 UX best practices for developing your SEO:

RESPONSIVE AND MOBILE-OPTIMISATION

In a world that is becoming increasingly mobile-centred, it’s more important than ever to ensure that your website functions as well on mobile devices as it does on desktops. To put this into perspective, using the data from the Cisco Visual Networking Index, “global mobile devices and connections in 2016 grew to 8.0 billion, up from 7.6 billion in 2015.” With an increase in mobile traffic of 63% in 2016.

If your website doesn’t have mobile users in mind, they are likely to leave and return to their search query. If you’re not sure your website is optimised, you can test it at Nibbler or GTmetrix to give you a starting point.

IMPROVED WEBSITE PERFORMANCE

It’s no secret that Google considers page speed in the ranking of websites, as algorithms punish slow websites. Page speed is a key factor in all aspects of UX.

According to a report conducted by Google Tools:

“Mobile sites that load in five seconds earn up to two times more mobile ad revenue than sites that load in 19 seconds”

Improving your page speed yields dividends when it comes to user experience and search rankings. To access your web page speed, you can obtain data from Google Analytics within the Behaviour tab and using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.

CONTENT IS KING

Whilst SEO boosts website visibility, the on-page content engages and informs the audience in a way that supports the user experience. Google’s Panda algorithm oversees punishing sites that do not add value to the user experience, specifically content-thin sites or sites with low-quality content. To ensure your content follows Panda’s algorithm, putting an information architecture in place is a good starting point. The information architecture is the science of organising and structuring the content of a website in a logical order, which is owned as a Symantec structure. The current trend is to centre design around the user.

If you’re not sure whether your website is hitting the mark, ask your customers or clients. For example, send them an email asking them how long it takes them to find a snippet of information or a specific product. See what the results are; it might surprise you.

USER-FRIENDLY NAVIGATION

Webmasters and businesses often overcomplicate the navigation of their website, which not only confuses those arriving at their website but also search engines as well.

Users can navigate through your website quickly and efficiently, which encourages conversions and supports the overall user experience. Test your website’s navigation by comparing it to the user-friendly best practices from Thought Co.

USE IMAGES TO SUPPORT CONTENT

Imagery and graphics are certainly important from an aesthetic and branding point of view, but they have functional properties in that they contribute to the UX and SEO as well.

Without imagery, content can lack engagement and necessary visuals to inform the user further. This is detrimental to the UX as well as SEO in that you can be found in search engines for your images if they are optimised for this with alt-text.

To test the readability of your site, you can use apps such as Readable and WebPageFX.

CONCLUSION

SEO leads to increased traffic to your site and helps it attain a higher position on SERPs; however, it’s UX that will determine whether the traffic can be sustained and converted into customers.

SEO and UX work together to direct qualified traffic to your website and convert it. Webmasters wanting to improve website performance in all aspects should focus on the two and adhere to the above best practices.

If you need help with your website or are looking for help to design and build your website, look no further than our development team. Give us a call on 0121 355 8092 or email us at info@edge-creative.com.

Don’t Leave Copywriting Behind!

You might have heard that in the online world of 2017, visual is everything! With 87% of online marketers using video-driven content, it is taking hold of social media and digital content more than ever. However, all this focus on imagery doesn’t mean the power of written content should just be pushed aside.

At EDGE Creative, we’re big on written content that draws the reader in and depicts your brand to audiences that matter to you. Excellently crafted and well-suited copywriting is required for a multitude of media messages such as emails, blogs, websites, sales tools, brochures, press releases, advertising campaigns and much, much more.

Here are some important guidelines we adhere to when communicating a written message for a company like yours.

START WITH A BANG!

Snappy headlines and impactful opening sentences are fundamental to hooking in your readers’ interest and encouraging them to read on to the end of the piece. The beginning is the most important part of any piece, especially if it’s for sales-driven content. Therefore, we give lots of time and attention to the written word.

We work our magic to start your storytelling in an inspiring way, whether it’s for online content such as a website or email marketing piece or an offline campaign such as a magazine advert, corporate brochure or an explosive sales-driven piece.

MAKE IT MEANINGFUL

When it comes to quality, there’s no use in filling up space with words. To get your message across with clarity, it must mean something! We focus on concise, structured content that is authentic, unique and packed with business potential in every sentence.

CHECK IT, CHECK IT, AND CHECK IT AGAIN

It pays to proofread work thoroughly to ensure sentences are strung correctly, words are spelt accurately and dreaded minor typos are nowhere to be seen.

Correct grammar will also help to maintain your business’s credibility and reputation as a professional and trustworthy organisation. We understand the importance of this, so we always make sure content is read by multiple members of the team to ensure spelling and grammar are in tip-top shape.

FIND YOUR STYLE AND VOICE

It’s best practice to create a distinctive tone of voice for your writing style. This is so you can accurately talk to your readers to convey your brand’s personality. The correct tone of voice will give a consistent “feel” and “voice” to the content across your marketing collateral.

You will need to incorporate this into your brand guidelines to communicate your message constantly throughout all your marketing.

Are you looking to write a blog, interview, Q&A, or a collection of stories? Do you want to develop your brand voice? Does your content need to be factual or opinion-based? These are all important questions that you will need to explore and answer to get started.

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

When writing content to grab attention, traditional may not always be the best approach. Think about what’s different about your brand and ask why your potential clients should listen.

At EDGE Creative, this has been our forte for some time now. Our experienced team build imaginative, innovative and thought-provoking brand stories to make an impact on content that sets itself apart from the rest.

COMBINE STRATEGY WITH CREATIVITY

Fantastic ideas are just one piece of the puzzle. To create engaging content that helps the right people notice your brand, we ensure our blogs, email marketing, website, and printed material follow a set structure that’s bespoke to the brand values it communicates and considers the use of calls to action if required.

A good strategy involves envisioning the objectives and the purpose of the content you wish to create from the get-go.

WHAT NEXT?

We’re an integrated creative agency that produces and creates everything in-house, from design to web. If you’d like to get in touch to find out more about how we can help with content writing, call us on 0121 355 8092, or drop us a line at: info@edge-creative.com.

What Are the Future Digital Trends?

First in the line-up is Chloe, our Digital Account Executive. Giving you a full round-up of digital trends and what’s on the horizon for the next 6 months, here are her thoughts on what could be coming up.

The digital landscape has changed dramatically over the past 6 months, and it’s not showing any signs of slowing down anytime soon. The digital revolution is well underway, as consumers’ daily lives now centre around all things digital more than ever before.

1. VOICE SEARCH

Digital assistants are becoming more integrated into our lives with the help of Apple’s Siri, Google Personal Assistant and Microsoft’s Cortana. The integration has gone further into our homes, with the introduction of products like Google Home and Amazon Echo.

It might not seem like this would have a massive impact on digital marketing. However, there has been a change to the way we search for things. For example, if you were searching via text for the CEO of Microsoft, you’d probably search “Microsoft CEO” using a short phrase to find your answer. When you use voice search,h you’re more likely to search “who is the CEO of Microsoft?” There is a subtle change in the use of language here. Of course, we have an impact on the keywords we use as Digital Marketers, and considerations we will consider when planning a campaign. There is potential for this to have a big impact on the way consumers find information and the type of marketing we use to reach them.

2. AUGMENTED REALITY & VIRTUAL REALITY

With the launch of the iPhone X, there is a push on augmented reality, fusing the physical and digital world. Within the coming month, social media channels will potentially incorporate it into their offerings. Looking at an example, the Pokémon Go phenomenon, the popularity of this was initially nostalgia-driven. It also grew in popularity due to the newness of the technology and widespread availability globally. The total immersion of the game and interactivity among users were one of key benefits of the game. More apps, social media and games will centre around augmented reality.

The same for virtual reality, this is becoming more accessible and affordable. There is plenty of scope for how VR can be incorporated into a marketing strategy. For example, it could be used for a Hotel to promote their venue for weddings, by showcasing actual weddings at the venue, rather than a tour of the space. Immersing potential clients in the experience of the venue.

3. INSTANT EVERYTHING

When consumers grow up surrounded by social media and technology, the expectations of instant communication and entertainment become inevitable. Generation Z consumers gravitate to instantaneous social channels such as Snapchat, Facebook Live, and Musical.ly. The obvious downside to this is that there is an expectation for instant responses and activity. This expectation is set to increase, with marketers having to be very adaptable to change content within a few moments. Also, innovation will need to happen rapidly and to a high standard.

From a business perspective, there are some exciting opportunities ahead, with some of these emerging technologies. In terms of using voice search, digital marketing professionals can adapt their keyword strategies to expand the reach of campaigns. With augmented reality and virtual reality, there is scope for brands to be able to immerse their customers to fully experience their offering. Instantly, everything will quicken the pace of how strategies are implemented and brands’ adaptability to digital changes.

These are the key trends that I think are set to make the biggest impact on digital marketing within the next year. Let us know if you agree or share your views with us on Twitter: @EDGE_Creative.

Changes to Google SERP Rankings

WHAT’S CHANGING?

Pop-ups and Overlays

This could involve websites that show large, obtrusive interstitials, which pop up and obscure the main content of the page. This could be when the user is looking through the website, or immediately after it is accessed. The changes don’t affect pop-ups about cookies, age warnings or pop-up ads that take up a smaller, reasonable amount of space on the page. These new guidelines aim to help improve the mobile search experience, as pop-up ads can be especially obtrusive on a smaller screen, meaning that users are unable to easily access the information they are looking for.

HTTP vs HTTPS

These changes are also going to affect websites that are using HTTP instead of the more secure HTTPS. HTTPS is often used to provide a secure, end-to-end encryption between the user and the website, to make sure that no one can intercept data like passwords, card details and details submitted in forms. Web pages that use HTTP instead of HTTPS are more likely to be ranked lower, as Google is now planning to use this as a ranking signal, and is planning to strengthen this over time.

This doesn’t just affect the search ranking, however, as Google have announced that they are going to start displaying a warning symbol alongside websites that don’t use HTTPS, alerting users that the page is “not secure” if they collect details from a user’s cards or passwords. This is part of a long-term plan to mark these pages as “not secure”, eventually moving to a red warning, which Google believe will have more of an effect on the user.

Mobile-friendly Search Results

In addition to these changes, Google has announced that it will no longer be displaying the “mobile-friendly” tag in mobile search to keep search results uncluttered. This is because most results when searching on mobile will already meet these criteria. This won’t affect the decrease in ranking for websites that are not mobile-friendly, however.

HOW CAN WE HELP?

At EDGE, we understand how important it is to make sure that your website reaches its full potential. Why not get in touch with us to discuss your website today?

Introducing Instagram Stories

SO… WHAT’S THE STORY?

This new feature gives you access to a range of editing tools to customise your story as you see fit, so you can show off the highlights of your day, but only for 24 hours. Unlike regular profile posts, there are no public likes or comments. Instead, you’ll get a private message from anyone who comments.

You can access Stories by tapping the plus icon on the home tab or simply swiping from left to right. You’ll see stories from the people you follow at the top of the home screen, surrounded by colourful rings to stand out.

What Can You Do?

1. Capture your day with photos or videos

2. Edit your content with printed text and pens

3. Playback things you may have missed

4. Post sections of your story as a profile post.

Who Can See Your Stories?

1. If your account is private, only your followers will see it.

2. You can hide stories from specific people.

3. Choose a feature of your story to post publicly to your profile.

However, despite the glitz and glamour, the majority of people are comparing the new feature to Snapchat, and rightly so.

Snapchat launched in the App Store in 2011 and quickly gathered pace, as just over a year later, users had shared 1 billion snaps.

To date, Snapchat has around 100 million users and is known for being the app that shares highlights for a brief period.

So What Are the Similarities Between the Platforms?

1. Both allow clips up to 10 seconds in length that are removed after 24 hours

2. Both allow you to watch your friends’ stories in sequence

3. Both allow you to reply to stories with direct messages

4. Both allow you to add custom text to your images and video

5. Both let you draw with markers

6. Both include the option to save the media directly to your camera roll

7. Both display who views your story.

So you can see why people are bemused at Instagram’s latest move, which has sparked hundreds of hilarious memes.

These similarities are enough for people to say that Instagram has blatantly copied Snapchat right down to the foundations, and it certainly doesn’t help that Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom nearly admitted that.

In a recent interview with TechCrunch, Systrom said, “They [Snapchat] deserve all the credit” when questioned about the similarities.

However, he later went on to say: “This is about a format, and how you take it to a network and put your spin on it.”

However, the general opinion is that Instagram stories will be more popular.

The main argument focuses on the fact that Instagram has more than double the number of users: 500 million. Not only is the potential reach for stories higher, but you don’t have to start your following from scratch.

What Do We Think?

“They’ve copied Snapchat”; This is the main argument against the recent update. Some EDGE team members think the blatant look-alike features are distasteful.

“It’s all in one platform”; The rest of the team is all for it, pointing out that you don’t need to leave the platform to get all the content you could want. You don’t need to learn a completely new interface or try to encourage your already existing followers to migrate over.

One thing’s for sure: we’re looking forward to seeing how this will all play out for Instagram and how Snapchat will be impacted from this point on.

Could Geo-Targeting Be Your Next Marketing Tool?

WHY IS GEO-TARGETING USEFUL?

Nearly 83% of all internet usage is from mobile phones, and the number of people accessing the internet from their phone is creating big opportunities for marketers to target us on a hyper-local level. Not only this, but marketers can now dynamically target our behaviour and personalise our experience by matching campaigns to our physical location.

To show you just how effective geo-targeting can be, in some cases, the ability for marketers to target consumers with real-time ads has driven a 50% increase in footfall and a 25% increase in purchases. This can be directly associated with how relevant the advertising is concerning what someone is doing and where they are when they receive it.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

15.2 million UK users are using a location-based service either to search for a local business or check into a location such as cafés, clubs and shopping centres.

Geo-targeting, or location-based marketing, works by delivering content to a user based on their geographic location. Currently, businesses can do this in several ways:

Social media apps with check-in features, such as Facebook and Foursquare, enable customers to receive promotional offers from shops and businesses close to their location at the time they check in.

Companies such as Groupon and Amazon have pushed forward a mobile couponing model where a marketer can target their campaign to appear on the device of a customer browsing the internet within a given distance of their business. All a consumer needs to do is click on a mobile banner and redeem a coupon in-store.

Businesses can use classified advertising on platforms such as Google+. This is being used more frequently by smaller service-based businesses as there is less wastage when compared to other forms of advertising.

WHAT ARE THE EFFECTS OF GEO-TARGETING?

The Mobile Location Leadership Forum predicted that location-based ads will eventually make up 40% of ad spend, and the number of location-aware applications will triple by 2019.

Bruce Rogers, chief insights officer and head of the chief marketing practice at Forbes Media, reported that 90% of sales still occur at in-store locations, but while shopping, consumers are still heavily connected to their devices, which means marketers have a direct line to in-store consumers.

Every brand and retailer is interested in creating an experience in which purchasing an item is as easy as ordering an Uber taxi. Location may be the key to creating a relevant and convenient experience.

TIPS ON GEO-TARGETING FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Find a venue where you will reach your target audience. Stadiums, airports, universities and shopping centres are examples of specific venues that can be targeted in order to reach audiences. Use these consumer characteristics to time and target your marketing. For example, airports on weekdays are a great source of business travellers looking for high-end restaurants

Define a radius by distance or by time around your store/area of interest. Geo-fencing allows marketers to set a perimeter around a physical location in which ads can be delivered. For geo-fencing ads, they may include creative messages acknowledging the user’s location or may include location-based features such as a store locator. Another way to define a perimeter is not by distance, but by time. A company named iGeolise developed a platform they call TravelTime, an API that allows mobile apps and sites to search by time rather than distance.

Use location-specific keywords when browsing in a search engine. For example, ‘city centre restaurants” provide location intent that you can target. Include location terms such as area code, postcodes, neighbourhood, community name, nearby landmarks, and popular venues.

Predict your geographical audience. Geography can also be used to predict desirable demographics and information about users in that area. Neighbourhoods can often be delineated by residents’ income bracket, age, ethnicity, education, and many other demographics or interests.
Knowing your business’s target audience and matching it up with where they live or work helps you find those who might be most interested in your product or service.

Analyse consumer behaviour and preference by their past search visits. Location history of a consumer provides a lot of information specific to that person: where they like to shop, what they like to buy, how often they make the trip, and even how they get there. Obtaining this information gives great insight to marketers that enhances the ability to target consumers and deliver relevant, responsive location-specific ads and information, even if the consumer is not currently in that area.

HOW HAVE OTHERS USED GEO-TARGETING?

IKEA attempted to increase in-store traffic through geo-targeting. They created a test campaign on Facebook using targeted advertising. The campaign was conducted over two weeks, matching Facebook usage and EE data to measure the uplift in visits to the Ikea store in Cardiff from those who had seen targeted Ikea adverts on Facebook. The results showed an 11% average increase in store visits among more than 172,000 people who were served adverts, compared with an otherwise identical same-size group that had not seen the adverts.

Location has always been important within marketing, even in more traditional forms such as newspapers. When a business is advertising in a newspaper, they will pick the publication based on its target audience’s location and interests. With access to geo-targeting, location is set to take on an even bigger and more up-to-the-second role in marketing, which can now be measured rather more reliably.