Angel's Blog

Create Content with Honesty

Content marketing is an important tactic to attract readers and engage potential customers. You can start by creating a blog to use content marketing. Blogging can help your brand to educate audiences, provide an SEO boost for your website, and helping searchers know your brand more easily. Another effective channel for content marketing is email. Through sending emails to potential buyers, you can deliver some positive information about your brand. Other channels such as podcasts, Youtube, and Pinterest are also a great way to use content marketing.

Although we all want to provide the most interesting content to attract readers, we have to remember that we can only provide honest content. It is really important not to lie to your readers. Credibility is a significant but fragile thing. If we let our readers down by lying to them, it will be extremely difficult to win their trust back.

Search Engine Optimization

After we are confident about our content, the next step is to focus on search engines. The result showed that many people start their first step in buying from search engines such as Google. Therefore, it is essential to take the right step to improve your brand’s SEO. You should try to let your brand rank higher on the search engine results page (SERP) to increase visibility in your target market. 

Listen to what people are saying about your brand.

When managing your online brand, it is necessary to listen to others’ opinions. Staying in the comfort zone and pretend like your reputation is as good as you thought will not help your brand grow. Instead, you should do some research to learn about what people are saying about your brand. The research will help you get to know your brand’s reputation and help you find out ways to improve it. Remember, the research should happen repeatedly to make sure your brand’s current direction is correct.

Respond to Negative Reviews Professionally.

Responding reviews are an important part of managing the online brand. You will not only find out positive reviews but also some negative reviews. Do not be angry and refuse the content of negative reviews. Sometimes, these negative reviews will help you improve your brand. You should respond to negative reviews properly and professionally. First of all, let your customers know that you hear their complains, and your brand cares about their opinions. Secondly, try to find out ways to improve what you did wrong. Finally, show your customers that you really improved on what they said. In this way, complaining consumers will be satisfied with your treatment, and potential consumers will also improve the brand ’s favorability. Don’t be afraid of negative reviews, that might be the perfect time to manage your brand better!

Reference:

Martinez, C. (2019). 5 Dynamic Tips to Manage & Improve Your Online Brand Reputation | Bowen Media. Retrieved 8 December 2019, from https://www.bowenmedia.com/thoughts/5-tips-to-manage-and-improve-your-online-brand-reputation
How Digital Marketing Works: Here’s Everything You Need To Know. (2019). Retrieved 8 December 2019, from https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/how-digital-marketing-works/
Image: Building a meaningful brand online. (2019). Retrieved 8 December 2019, from https://images.app.goo.gl/y5wHRANC686SdauV8

Which certification did you complete?

I completed the “Social Media Certification”. I choose to complete this certification because I am a social media addict. I usually spend many hours refreshing Instagram, Facebook, and watching Youtube every day. Furthermore, I even set up a public Instagram account sharing my dining brief, travel experience, and study abroad diary. I believe that my interest and the knowledge I learn from this certification will help me improve my skills in running social media marketing.

How long did it take to complete?

I took about 6 hours to complete this certification. Four and a half hours for me to watch all the videos and take quizzes. The rest of the hours I focused on finishing the exam.

What did you like best/least?

I like the part that most of the knowledge I have already learned from our textbook, so this certification is not too difficult for me to understand and complete. Actually, there is no part that I don’t like because the subject of this certification is exactly my interest!

Were there any disappointments or frustrations?

Not at all. The content of all the lessons are useful and reach the new update of all the social media. I think the whole certification is interesting!

What did you learn?

I know more about the social media world, and how to use social media as a tool to leverage marketing in this digital world. In the exam, I answered wrong some of the questions, and this made me get to know deeper about some knowledge that I thought I have already known.

Do you believe this certification program is useful for other marketers?

Yes, I do. I think this certification program is useful for every marketer who wants to put more effort into using social media to advertise. After completing this certification program, I believe that everyone will learn more about creating content on social media and engage potential consumers.

On a scale of 1-5, how likely are you to recommend this certification program to a friend? Why?

On a scale of 1-5, I will recommend this certification program to a friend as high as 5. I think that every marketer should learn this certification program because it is useful for digital marketing. Moreover, 5 hours is not a long time for completing a certification program. I believe that I definitely will use the knowledge in the future.

Reference:

Image: 5 ways to monetize your social media followings – Marketing Land. (2019). Retrieved 7 December 2019, from https://images.app.goo.gl/2bh7MKwYU6rw6pNWA

What is a persona?

Persona is a fictional, generalized description of your ideal customers. Instead of choosing a real person as the target customer, you need to imagine a person that doesn’t exist. Personas can also make customers or users tangible and concrete. More and more marketers are using personas as a method to understand more about the customers they want to conceive, design, and develop. Moreover, the company can use the personas method to make its product or service more attractive and usable.

How to create a persona?

First of all, you need to do the data collection by the following methods:

• Market research
• Statistical analysis
• Conducting surveys
• User interviews
• Collect information
• Generate and test hypotheses

Secondly, remember not to conclude too many characteristics in personas. Personas should give you a quick overview, but not confuse you. Here are some characteristics you can consider to put in the personas.

• Name
• Age
• Profession
• Marital status/living situation
• Place of residence
• Interests/hobbies
• Values/beliefs
• Technical ability/software skills
• Media consumption
• Purchasing behavior/habits
• Preferred brands

Lastly, use a clear persona template to organize the information. Here is a sample of the persona template.

Personas for email marketing.

After knowing brief information about personas, now we need to focus more on specific personas for email marketing. Personas for email marketing can be slightly different from the general buyer personas. You may want to especially focus on people who have already subscribed to your email list. Accordingly, you may start by considering a few things:

• Is this person a prospect or a former customer?
• How did they sign up for your list?
• What resources have they downloaded?
• What web pages have they and have they not visited?

Now, it’s time to gather the data you will need to segment your email list appropriately.

Know subscribers’s demographics and preferences.

It is useful to ask your subscribers about their demographics and preferences. You can include an email in the welcome series that asks subscribers to update their preferences and let them know they will only receive emails close to their interests. This action will definitely help your subscribers stay in the subscriber lists and raise the CTA clicks rate.

Track behavior both inside and outside the inbox.

Focus on what actions your subscribers take is really important. You can start by learning their open and engagement history of every mail you send, and their browsing history on your website may be helpful at the same time. The history of your subscribers’ movement is a valuable treasure that allows you to take action in the future.

Deliver targeted content.

After understanding your subscribers, you need to come up with some relevant, useful, and personalized content. You can segment your subscribers first, and then personalized the following things.

• Content of the email (e.g., targeted offers, specialized tutorials)
• The subject line and messaging
• Design and imagery
• Send times
• Call to action

Last but not least,
Don’t forget “relevant” is the most important element!

Reference:

Ross, L. (2019). How to utilize personas for more effective email marketing. Retrieved 29 November 2019, from https://www.invespcro.com/blog/how-to-utilize-personas-for-more-effective-email-marketing/
Meyer, S. (2019). Complete guide: How to create personas based on data | Testing Time. Retrieved 29 November 2019, from https://www.testingtime.com/en/blog/complete-guide-how-to-create-personas-based-on-data/
Image: How to utilize personas for more effective email marketing. (2019). Retrieved 29 November 2019, from https://images.app.goo.gl/G33bpQf7zrmqfe9p7
Image: Buyer Persona Template | Persona marketing, Persona, Personas design. (2019). Retrieved 29 November 2019, from https://images.app.goo.gl/xHBLhjMwZVJgky2v9

This is a horrible but true story. Last week, my boyfriend was thinking of buying a new Samsonite luggage and using his laptop to search for the information. He also asked me for my opinions about which one he should buy. That night, a scary thing happened. When I was using Facebook on my phone, a Samsonite luggage ad pops up! I was terrified by the situation. My boyfriend and I are not using the same account or electronic devices. The only thing we did is “talking” about the Samsonite luggage. Why did his search on the laptop cause my mobile phone to receive the ad?

One of my friends told me that if we have allowed the microphone of the devices, the system may collect the information we verbally talk about. At the same time, some of my friends were guessing that the algorithm is to send ads to all devices of the same IP. If someone searches for a brand at this IP address, then the same IP device will receive the ad at the same time. No matter which one is the real explanation of the situation, I am still worried about our privacy under the Internet.

How dangerous is the current online marketing?

Do you have such experience? When you register for a website or app, you will need to click on a button to ensure you have read through and agree with the terms & conditions.

Many people are not aware that it is dangerous to ignore the terms& conditions. We may give personal information such as our age, gender, interests, preferences, etc. to some marketers for free. Some people may think that this kind of information is not that important. However, what if this kind of privacy is used as a scam and cause serious problems?

On a scale of 1-5, I believe the danger of online advertising for society is as high as 5. In many cases, we don’t even know that we are leaking our privacy. The worse thing is that we don’t know who is using and how they are using our private information! Therefore, it is important to create a code of ethics for digital marketers. Here are some points I suggest that all the marketers need to know.

8 codes of ethics for digital marketers

Carefully Balance. Striking a balance between maintaining the privacy of your target audience and gathering enough information to use digital advertising effectively can be difficult, but it is something that you must address carefully. You should try to only collect the information you need without infringing others’ privacy.

Be transparent. People like to read the contents which are easy to read. Do not pretend you are knowledgeable and confuse your readers. This may have a bad effect.

Ensure the quality of content. Ensure the information that you post online is well researched and reliable. You should not post to mislead readers before confirming that the information is correct. The content and layout of the article should be useful and interesting so that readers will be willing to accept the information provided by your company in the future.

Consider the implications. When advertising your products or services on the Internet, you may reach people around the world. It is important to know that you have a big impact. You need to be careful about unethical things, especially about copyrights or laws.

Be frankly. Advertising is not a scam. You need to trust the products or services you are advertising and believe that you can attract people by speaking the truth.

Don’t be biased. When you are advertising online, you need to stay away from your biases and provide the information impartially. This will help you build your credibility and more easily to have a good result in marketing.

Remember your social responsibility. You are not just a digital marketer. At the same time, you are also a part of society. You should give meaningful feedback to the community and provide useful information and help to people. In this way, good feedback will also be reflected in your business results.

Protect privacy. Using people’s information is only for works. After that, you shouldn’t let the secret out from you. Make sure that you are protecting people’s privacy well and pretend that it is your own privacy.

Reference:

Ethical Issues in Digital Marketing | Jumpsix Marketing. (2019). Retrieved 8 November 2019, from https://jumpsixmarketing.com/ethical-digital-marketing-part-1-issues/
Are There Still Ethical Internet Marketers Out There?. (2019). Retrieved 8 November 2019, from https://www.tempeop.com/are-there-still-ethical-internet-marketers-out-there/
Image: 5 Techniques on How to Protect Your Online Privacy | Security … (2019). Retrieved 8 November 2019, from https://images.app.goo.gl/resuE8juku44G2A58
Image: 5 Things to Look For Before Accepting Terms & Conditions – Wall … (2019). Retrieved 8 November 2019, from https://images.app.goo.gl/93enXn3SrEEB3Sv47

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Do you have a poor performing webpage? Are you struggling with improving the search ranking of your webpage? Here are some things you need to know and recommendations that may help you to solve your problem!

What is SEO?

SEO means search engine optimization and is a way of internet marketing. SEO is to improve the keyword ranking of the website by adjusting and optimizing the webpage. The best case is to have our webpage appear in the search engine results page (SERP) and even be the top result. If our website appears in front of the search results after entering the keyword, then there is a higher chance of being noticed by consumers.

Measure Your Rankings

In order to improve your webpage ranking, the first step you need to do is to understand your baseline keyword performance. It is important to know the real situation to find out how much still needs to be done to achieve your goal. You can export keyword data from Google Search Console and landing page traffic from Google Analytics.

After analyzing the data, you can start thinking about:

• What your most valuable keywords and landing pages are.
• Where the most immediate opportunities for improvement are.
• What keywords and landing pages are underperforming.

Target the Right Keywords

First of all, you need to learn more about your target readers to find out the best keywords.

• Who are your target readers?
• What do they need?
• What kinds of keywords they will search?
• Why do they search these kinds of keywords?

Secondly, doing a SERP analysis may be helpful. The currently ranking in the top search result will inspire you somehow. You can look at:

• Related searches
• People also ask
• Google autocomplete suggestions
• Other advanced search features

Consequently, an in-depth study can help you find better keywords and improve your webpage rankings.

Increase Webpage Load Speed

Last but not least, don’t forget to speed up your webpage load speed! Many people didn’t know if the page load speed is too slow, Google will recognize, and it will harm the ranking. Due to the research online, 40% of visitors may leave the website if they have to spend more than 3 seconds to wait for it load. After all, perfecting the webpage function is the creator’s obligation. When your keywords have successfully attracted readers to click, isn’t it a pity that the readers leave without taking any actions just because of the loading speed?

Reference:

Vaughn, K. (2019). How to Improve Your Keyword Rankings in Google. Retrieved 25 October 2019, from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-improve-your-keyword-rankings-in-google/317623/#close
Moyle, D. (2019). Retrieved 25 October 2019, from https://www.business2community.com/seo/10-tips-to-improve-your-websites-seo-ranking-02225994
Image: SEO is Not Hard — A step-by-step SEO Tutorial for beginners that … (2019). Retrieved 25 October 2019, from https://images.app.goo.gl/kGPmcp9RZhTFnJUr5
Image: Caring for your SEO ⋆ Media Venue, Traditional & Digital … (2019). Retrieved 25 October 2019, from https://images.app.goo.gl/dcsabFjkj64i2RVd6
Image: The ultimate guide to choosing keywords for ROI – Search Engine … (2019). Retrieved 25 October 2019, from https://images.app.goo.gl/jaQvoX1vbvbcqQK76
Google Image Result for https://www.aspirationhosting.com/content/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/wordpress-website-loads-slow-810×340.png. (2019). Retrieved 25 October 2019, from https://images.app.goo.gl/ZkixdvHbTMZnV5RS8

Do you have such experience? When you are browsing a website, a pop-up ad attracts your attention. However, after you click the ad, the landing page sometimes is not that interesting than you thought. Isn’t it disappointing?

Successful online marketing shouldn’t stop at the pop-up ads, and the landing page is also important. Therefore, let’s look at some tips to increase your landing page conversions!

Attention Rate 1:1

Attention rate means that the ratio of the number of things you can do on a page to the number of things you should be doing. Sometimes, we want to put many ideas on a page, when we are designing our landing page. Yet, a lot of information on a page usually distract reader’s attention. As the attention rate goes down, the conversion rate goes up. A successful marketing campaign should only contain one goal. If we focus more on the most important goal, it’s easier to grab the reader’s attention.

Pre-click Promises

When readers are attracted by our ads, the landing page that come into view needs to meet their expectations. Different inbound channels should show different pre-click promises on their landing page context. For example, visual relevant ads’ context needs to include design and message match. A great landing page shouldn’t make readers distrust the ads, but should expand the reader’s interest in the context.

Polish the CTA Button

After knowing the only and the most important thing that the reader should be doing, make sure your call-to-action (CTA) button is special enough. The design and the text of the CTA button are both essential. You need to use the design to attract attention, and use the text to evoke a more emotional response. The most important thing is that your CTA button has to excite you before it excites other visitors.

Optimize for Mobile

These days, more and more buyers click the ads through their mobile. Focusing on the landing page for desktop is not enough, the mobile experience is important too. Especially that young people usually use mobile to browsing the internet instead of the desktop. Hotjar can help us track how many readers are viewing the landing page on desktop and mobile. After using this tool, you may realize the importance of how your landing page shows on the mobile.

Ask Outsiders

Sometimes, you may be satisfied with the landing page you spend a lot of time to make, while other people may not like it at all. Therefore, asking outsiders’ opinions is important before using the landing page. Here are some resources you can use:

• People who fit your buyers’ personas
• Website testing tools (e.g. crazyegg)
• Other well-designed landing pages

Reference:

Gardner, O. (2019). The 7 Principles of Conversion Centered Design – Stukent. Retrieved 11 October 2019, from https://www.stukent.com/expert-sessions/the-7-principles-of-conversion-centered-design/
Klongerbo, S. (2019). 7 Proven, Creative Strategies to Boost Landing Page Conversions. Retrieved 11 October 2019, from https://9clouds.com/blog/what-makes-a-great-landing-page-7-strategies-to-increase-your-conversions/
Hari, B. (2019). Landing Page Not Converting: 17 Ideas That Work Best For Us. Retrieved 11 October 2019, from https://klientboost.com/cro/landing-page-not-converting/
Image: Digital Marketing. (2019). Retrieved 11 October 2019, from https://images.app.goo.gl/Hw8GKCAYzVcwoVze7

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