♨ negative SEO;
♨ sitewide links;
♨ once indexed, stays indexed?
♨ now Facebook is just bragging...
♨ FB Reactions coming soon;
♨ LinkedIn hacks;
♨ Periscope goes GoPro;
♨ new Snapchat share option;
♨ Firefox push notifications;
♨ how to manage Twitter;
♨ ...and much more.
The post Weekly Marketing Skinny • January 30, 2016 appeared first on TrafficGenerationCafe.com.
Video is the modern web browser’s medium of choice. And not just while they’re scrolling through Facebook or spending hours on YouTube; studies have shown that even at work, people prefer to watch video than read text. And that means you! And more importantly (no offence), your customers.
So give the people what they want! If you want to build a customer base that’s learning, growing, getting the most out of your product or service, and loving you while they do it, video is the way to go! If not … well, you might want to see someone for that.
Let’s take a look at eight ways to use video to support your customer relationships:
Script it, record it, ship it. And then ship it over and over and over. The beautiful thing about onboarding videos is that you can record them once and use them multiple times. And sure, the same thing goes for text-based onboarding, but since video is so much more captivating and keeps viewers engaged for longer, why not start your customer’s journey off right?
15 Experts Spill Their Greatest B2B Video Production Advice
Get the GuideThe better you can make the first few weeks of your customer’s journey and the faster you can get them up and running, the more likely they will be to use your product or service effectively and see positive results. And that means there’s a greater likelihood that you’ll retain them long-term. In other words, the lifetime value of a well onboarded customer skyrockets far beyond the opposite.
The well-renowned Uber created an onboarding video for their drivers to learn how to use the app and how to become a well-reviewed driver. Check it out:
If you want to make the process a little more personal, you can always shoot an additional 10-30 second clip to add to the beginning of each onboarding video that addresses the unique customer.
Your knowledge base is a hub of documentation around frequently asked questions, instructions for completing common tasks, or options for troubleshooting issues. It’s sole purpose is to help customers self-serve. Video should be a part of this.
But don’t get too trigger happy with video, because it really is best as a supplementary component to your knowledge base. Some people may not be able to listen to audio at the moment when they’re self-serving or they may be looking for one specific step of the process and scanning text is easier for this. An easy way to get around this is to include a video at the start of the article and add the transcript of the video below, like Unbounce does.
These types of videos are often comprised of on-screen text and screenshares. Consider adding a more human element every-so-often and show the face of that lovely voiceover! … like our Ji, our Manager of Customer Experience, did in this recent video!
Ji bought a teleprompter that works with his tablet (the R810.1 Universal Android Teleprompter) for this shoot. This allowed him to script his lines beforehand but avoid spending hours memorizing them the night before the shoot!
People like to work with people. That’s why people-skills are so important in Customer Success roles, duh. For many companies, the customer team has long term relationships with their customers — but it’s so often limited to a purely phone-based relationship. Open the doors and allow your customers to get to know a little bit more about who they’re working with. Check out the video that DoubleDutch, a mobile app for events and conferences, put together called “Meet the DoubleDutch Customer Success Team”:
As an alternative, you can showcase your team from different angle and do a higher production film that shows the ‘real’ side of your customer team or your whole company while having a little fun! At Vidyard, we put together a few videos like this every year. Most recently, customers met the Vidyard Family through our version of the Adams Family Theme Song!
It’s a lot easier to build a relationship when visual cues are involved. Imagine dating someone for a year, but for this year you only ever spoke to them on the phone. You never got to know what they looked like, or evaluate whether they were really into you by their body language. It’d be hard to grow that relationship! And just think, what would you picture when you were day-dreaming about them?
Not that your customers are going to be day-dreaming about you, but the ability to see you on calls can still help to build a strong bridge between your support team and your customers.
Sometimes, another email update about what’s going on at your company is not what your customers are looking for. Whoops! Did I actually write that on the web? There are just so. Many. Emails!
So why not think outside the box and host an update for your customers on a live stream? That way they can get a real, unedited view into who your team is, where you work, and what’s new. Jeff Saunders, an Account Manager at Vidyard, recently hosted one of these. He invited his accounts to join him live for a coffee and quick discussion with Ji, Manager of Customer Experience, Jeff, Director of Product Marketing, and myself.
Who said customer stories are only for prospects? No one, that’s who. Sharing the stories of customers having success with your product or service with other customers is beneficial for three reasons:
So spread the love. Get started by checking out these 7 tips on creating believable video testimonials and keep in mind that if you’re creating stories for customers, you’ll want to dive deeper than the value prop of your product; your customers already know this!
Generally speaking, your customers will have a different level of knowledge in your area of expertise than higher funnel prospects. So invite them to their own webinar where you can dive deeper into a niche topic and even talk specifically about how to use certain product features. Getting on a webinar and sharing best-practices, demonstrating how to do a task, and opening the floor to questions in real time is the perfect way to help your customers get the most out of your product, feel supported, and build connections with your team.
After you’re done your webinar, consider chopping it up into shorter segments and posting the webinar recordings in a customer hub or help center!
Your name is your identity. And the same goes for your customers and their names. So imagine you could send your customers specialized marketing messages that really connected with them by bringing them right into the story and adding their names within personalized videos.
Since they’re already your customers, you have a detailed profile already built out in your marketing automation and CRM platform. Put these into play for video campaigns promoting your latest learning session, webinar, or knowledge article and take your story to a whole new level with personalization within your videos.
Are you using video for customer education, success, and advocacy? Tell us how in the comments!
The post 8 Ways to Use Video for Customer Success, Education, and Advocacy appeared first on Vidyard.
Picture this…
In many ways, Twitter is not unlike projectile vomiting – a forceful and uncontrollable firehose that it is.
And managing Twitter… well, it could feel like trying to take a sip from that firehose.
Many of you dread Twitter for this reason alone, and I don’t blame you.
So, whatever shall a marketer do?
Ditch ...
The post How to Manage Twitter Like a Pro [Your Daily Twitter Routine] appeared first on TrafficGenerationCafe.com.
Are you lagging behind your competitors when it comes to your search rank with Google? Search algorithms are constantly evolving, and keeping up with them can be difficult. In fact, search engine optimization can pose a challenge for any company, necessitating knowledge of keywords, tags, content creation, and backlinks.
One of the best things you can do to boost your search ranking is to build backlinks to your site. In this article, we will explore how to shortcut the process by stealing backlinks from your competitors.
Why Backlinks Matter
Backlinks are one of the key metrics that Google and other search engines use to rank web pages. Google’s search algorithms are proprietary, but they do make certain information available to the public. One of the things that has a big impact on a site’s search rank is its authority – a measurement of how much value the page contains. When a reputable website links back to your page, it works like an endorsement. Google assumes your page has credibility when you have high-quality backlinks.
According to SEO authority Moz, the best kinds of links are those that happen organically. Editorial links – the kind that happen when an authority website or publication discovers your content and links back to it without being asked – carry a lot of weight with Google. However, links that you ask for can be almost as effective if you handle them in the right way.
Method #1: Analyzing Your Competitors’ Backlinks
A good way to build up quality backlinks in a hurry is to steal them from your competitors. That might sound nefarious, but it’s actually not. The word “stealing” does not refer to any wrongdoing. Rather, it is a description of a way to find opportunities for backlinks by analyzing what your competitors are doing and capitalizing on the data you find.
The first step to analyzing backlinks is to do a simple Google search for an important keyword. For the purposes of this exercise, you should start by writing down the URLs of the top ten websites that appear in response to your search.
Analyzing backlinks is relatively easy. One of the best free tools available is Mondovo. It allows you to plug in the URL of your competitor and view their top backlinks, anchor texts and broken links. It also gives you the option to filter by countries, IPs, C-class Ips etc.
Once you have a list of sites, you can check them out manually and consider asking those sites for a link. It can be helpful to visit the site and see what kinds of things they are linking to so you can suggest a page of your own.
Method #2: Evaluating Broken Links
One alternative is to take your analysis of the backlinks to the next level, and look for broken links. You can accomplish that by using the same backlink report that you generated previously. Just select all the displayed URLs and at the bottom of the screen, there’s a green button titled ‘Check Link Status’. Click on that and wait for the report to get generated.
Once the report is generated, go to the same backlinks tab and click on ‘Filters’. Then under ‘Filter By’, enter ‘Link Status’ under Select the Field, ‘=’ (without quotes) under Type of Search and ‘Not Found’ under Criteria and then click on ‘Add Criteria’. Lastly, click on ‘Filter’.
Upon clicking on Filter, you will see the list of pages that have broken links.
Broken links to your competitors’ sites represent a golden opportunity for you. Once you have a list of broken links, you need to figure out what content used to be on those pages so you can replace it with new content of your own. To do that, you need to use a tool like the WayBack Machine – a website that stores archives of web pages.
Links can break for many different reasons. If a competitor changed their URL or moved their content, the link might be broken. They might also have removed the content, thus rendering the link unusable. Whatever the reason, the broken link is something you can use to your advantage.
For each broken link, follow these steps:
1. Look up the link in the Wayback Machine and read the content.
2. Decide whether the content is relevant to your website. Not every article you find is going to be something that you would want to have on your website. Remember, SEO is not just about keywords anymore. The quality of your content has a huge impact in your Google rank, so don’t take this step lightly.
3. If the content is relevant, decide whether it is something you can improve upon. It’s not enough simply to rewrite your competitor’s content. Your goal should always be to improve upon the original content. That means adding something new and unique. Examples might include:
a. Updating outdated content
b. Adding your unique perspective
c. Approaching the topic from a new angle
4. If the content is both relevant and something you feel you can make better, then go ahead and rewrite it and put it up on your website. It is very important to do this step first, before you reach out to the site that linked to your competitor’s page.
5. Email the webmaster of the page with the broken link and propose your new material as a replacement for the broken link. Include a link to your new content – this is why you need to write the new content first – and politely request a link to your page.
6. You may sometimes find that more than one backlink leads to your competitors’ defunct page. If that is the case, then it’s a good idea to email all of the sites with a request for a backlink. You can expect to get a decent success rate with this tactic, probably between 10% and 20%.
Method #3: Google Alerts
The third method you can use to replicate backlinks is to use Google Alerts to monitor mentions of your competitors online.
To set up an alert, go to Google Alerts. At the top of the page, you will see a search box. You can enter anything you want, including:
-The name of your competitor
-A chosen keyword
-A product name
Whichever option you choose, Google will sweep the internet and send you an email whenever the search term you have entered is mentioned. You can then visit the site where the mention was posted and determine whether it poses an opportunity for you to obtain a new backlink.
Not every backlink needs to be to an article or a piece of content. Using these methods may also help you find opportunities to be listed in industry directories and publications. Any link from an authoritative website in your industry can help improve your search rank.
Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!
WordPress was started as a simple blogging platform, but now it is one of the most powerful and popular Content management System to create different type of websites. You need a simple blog or your client need a custom website, WordPress can help you to build 30+ types of website.
Front end is most important part of any website, when a visitor visit your website, first thing will notice the design of your website and content readability. On desktops design really matters because there is a lot of space your design should be simple, elegant and attractive. When someone visit your website on small screen devices, your website must be accessible and content should be easily readable.
WordPress allows you to change design of your blog/website with themes. Installing and activating new WordPress theme is really simple and easy. You can choose from thousands of free and premium themes available online. There are so many marketplaces where you can buy premium themes or download free themes.
Even though it is easy to change design of WordPress based website with themes but there are many things to remember before installing a new WordPress theme. In this article i am going to discuss some most important things to remember when choosing a new WordPress theme.
Whenever you decide to install a new free or premium theme on your WordPress website, make sure your theme offers:
1. A clean and simple design and good color scheme
2. An easy and fully responsive Navigation
3. Easy to Customize
4. SEO Friendly
5. Social Media links
6. Must be mobile friendly and fully responsive
7. Text is easy to read on all type of devices
8. It must be light weigh
9. Visually appealing content : images and videos
10. Up to date and from trusted developers
1. A clean and simple design and good color scheme
Always choose a theme with simple and elegant design. As a developer, designer or blogger your basic goal should be the creation of design that can attract the maximum number of the visitors, who spend enough time on the website to browse around. With good design it is easy to attract and engage the visitors. You don’t need a WordPress theme with full of color and super fancy design.
Always try to find out a WordPress theme with simple yet professional design, suitable for your business or blog. By choosing a WordPress theme with nice design, you can be sure you will have people coming back to you (but you should not forget about the content as well of course).
2. An easy and fully responsive Navigation
You should never ignore usability. You have to make sure that your website will be easy to navigate and pretty simple. Always choose a theme with fully responsive and accessible navigation menus. Make sure that the website navigation is straight forward and it has SEO friendly information architecture.
3. SEO Friendly
Search Engine Optimization really matters and you can not ignore it, Check if your theme is using SEO friendly markup. HTML5 offers so many elements which helps developers to create Search Engine friendly web pages. If your theme is SEO friendly, good but if it isn’t you can install and use any WordPress SEO plugin. Yaost SEO is one of the most popular plugin to optimize WordPress websites for search engines.
Recommended reading: 4 Tips to Improve WordPress Blog for SEO and the User Experience
4. Social Media links
It is impossible to ignore Social media now a days, Twitter, FaceBook, Instagram and many other social networking websites are very popular and billions of users are using them. If your theme supports Social Media menus, great. For example TwentFifteen theme allows you to create social media menu. you just need to add your social media links and your theme will display social media icons.
Recommended reading: Optimize Content Sharing On Social Media With WordPress Plugins
5. Must be mobile friendly and fully responsive
The use of mobile devices to surf the web is growing at an astronomical pace, but unfortunately much of the web isn’t optimized for those mobile devices. Mobile devices are often constrained by display size and require a different approach to how content is laid out on screen.
After installing a theme make your website look great on mobile devices. you can always run a Mobile Friendly Test. A don’t forget that Responsive design is Google’s recommended design pattern.
Most of the new free and premium themes are fully responsive and mobile friendly. You should read Is Responsive Design A Ranking Factor? at searchengine land to learn more why Responsive design matters.
7. Right font & Readable text on all type of devices
This one is really important and you can not ignore it. Make sure that the content on your website or blog is easily readable. If you are a theme developer use a reasonable font size or if installing a new theme make sure font size reasonable and people can easily read content on small screen devices. I have seen website where it is impossible or really difficult to read content on small screen devices.
Font size should not be too small nor should it be too big. Also, make sure that the color of the font stands out from the background. Never ever use similar colors for the background and the font. Use appropriate font size for headlines, sub-titles and bullets as much as possible, because it makes it easier for the visitor to comprehend the content in a glance.
Web fonts are very popular now a days and most premium themes allows you to choose your desired font, so make sure your font is easy to read.
8. It must be light weight: Loading speed matters
This is a key aspect of any website. The loading speed of the web pages must be very fast. Remember Google hates slow websites and loves fast websites. People will leave your website if it is too slow. Most of the people leave the website within a few seconds of visiting it, if, the page does not loads quickly.
It can severely affect your bounce rate. Therefore, make sure that your website infrastructure is such that the pages load at optimal speed. There are so many free plugins available that helps you to optimize your WordPress websites for optimal speed but your theme must be fast as well. You don’t need a theme with hundred on extra images, use CSS3 properties if needed.
9. Visually appealing content : images and videos
Including visual (images and videos) content is yet another effective way of attracting the visitors. People prefer watching interesting images and interactive videos rather than reading long text paragraphs. When choosing a WordPress theme for your personal or customer website, make sure it displays images and videos nicely.
10. Theme must be up to date and from trusted developers
Never use out dated WordPress themes. Check when theme was last updates and if it is not up to date and does not supports latest version of WordPress, ignore it. Always download and buy WordPress themes from trusted sources and market places. Official WordPress Themes directory is best place to download free themes.
What are your most favorite WordPress themes and why do you like to use them. Do your prefer free themes or premium themes. Share your thoughts in comments.
About Author: Tahir Taous is front end developer and blogger and founder of JustLearnWP.com, a WordPress and Blogging training and tutorials website. Join his FREE NEWSLETTER and Download Free eBook increase Blog Traffic, Subscribers and Earning and receive more articles about WordPress, theme development and blogging directly in your inbox.
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How to Make Money Selling Physical Products – with Steve Chou
Who: Steve Chou
Blog: My Wife Quit Her Job
Online Store: Bumblebee Linens
Steve, the creator of My Wife Quit Her Job, found himself in an interesting predicament.
After a period of complacency when he was first married, his wife became pregnant.
The thing is, she had always said that she wanted to quit her job and stay at home when they started having kids.
Well, that time came and they hadn’t accomplished anything business-wise. He worked as a microprocessor designer and she had a “good job” in the finance department of a fortune 500 company.
When she became pregnant, it was time to wake up.
Well, that’s exactly what they did. They decided to start a company selling wedding handkerchiefs (an idea they got from their own wedding) and the rest is history.
Within one year of starting the business, their online store, Bumblebee Linens, was able to replace his wife’s salary of $100k.
In a world where everything seems to be going digital, they decided to go the physical products route.
How did they do it? That’s what he shares in this interview.
If you’re going to spend the time and energy to get physical products made and sell them online, you want to do the right kind of research to minimize your chances of failure.
Start With An Idea
When they thought about starting a business, they had multiple ideas. The one that they decided to go with was based on an experience that happened in planning for their wedding.
His wife knew that she was going to cry at the altar. So she looked for nice wedding handkerchiefs and couldn’t find any.
They eventually found some in China, ordered 300, but only ended up using six. In an attempt to liquidate the rest, they posted it on eBay and they sold quickly. They took that idea and ran with it. The result is their six-figure business, Bumblebee Linens.
Do Research
In a world where so many people buy things on Amazon and Ebay, it’s relatively easy to find out exactly how much money sellers are making in various niches.
Once you have an idea, you can use tools like Jungle Scout and Terapeak to see exactly how much money sellers are making on specific products within that niche.
Your ultimate goal is to be able to sell your products in your own eCommerce store.
Steve recommends using tools like Long Tail Pro (paid) or the Google Keyword Planner (free) to see the search demand and determine how easy it would be to rank in the search engines (i.e. Google).
Once you have done the research, it’s time to get the product made. Ultimately, you are looking for a product that you can put your own branding on. Here’s the process Steve recommends:
Look for vendors
There are many options for finding vendors. You can find U.S. based wholesalers or you can find overseas vendors. Overseas will be the most cost-effective options.
To find overseas vendors, use sites like Alibaba and Global Sources.
The best option is to go to trade shows in China. However, this won’t be feasible for most people.
Buy a few samples
In order to inspect the quality of the product, you should buy a few samples. You will want to look for any flaws and try to see if you can put your own spin on the product.
Document exactly how you want the product to be produced by the manufacturer and be as specific as possible.
If you aren’t very detailed during this process, you can end up with a subpar product due to the manufacturer trying to cut corners.
Also, by being very detailed in this stage of the process, you will be creating a quality checklist that can be used by inspectors for them to make sure that you are getting exactly what you want.
It’s time to see if people will buy your product. The best way to know if they will buy is to actually sell it. Here are the steps:
Try to sell on Amazon
Before going big, you want to start by placing a small test order of approximately 100 – 200 units.
Once you have your test order, list your product on Amazon. The goal is for them to sell out. If they do, that’s great. You can move on to the next step. If they don’t, it’s time to liquidate. You can do that by listing them on eBay.
Place a bulk order
If all goes well in the previous step, you will have sold all of your merchandise. Now you will want to place a larger order of over 500 units.
One of the ways to boost the sales of your products is by getting reviews. When customers go to Amazon to shop, they look at reviews to help them make a decision.
You can use paid services like Snagshout and Review Kit to provide review units for amazon reviewers.
At this point, there’s not much left to do. This is where you wait and see how well your product sells.
Create your own eCommerce Store
If your product starts selling well and you start making around $1,000 per month, you will want to transition to building your own eCommerce store.
The platform Steve recommends is Open Cart. This is an open source eCommerce platform, analogous to what WordPress is for blogging. It’s a bit more technical, but allows you a lot of flexibility.
If you aren’t technical, you can use fully-hosted solutions like Shopify or BigCommerce.
If you listen to this interview and are ready to take action, here’s what Steve recommends for you to do:
Start brainstorming. What ideas do you have for products that you’d like to sell?
Try out tools like Jungle Scout and Terapeak
What about you? Have you sold physical products? Is this something you see yourself doing in the future? Let me know in the comments section below.
Learning with Leslie: | Download MP3 | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud | Raw RSS | More |
The post 247 How to Make Money Selling Physical Products – Steve Chou appeared first on Become A Blogger by Leslie Samuel.
As the idiom goes, a picture is worth a thousand words! If you are not currently using images on your site or blog, you are missing out. Apart from enriching your content and making your site more visually appealing to visitors, images can actually boost your search traffic, many people go on Google looking for images, and Google redirects that traffic to the respective websites that published the images.
With such benefits in play, why many bloggers and webmasters simply don’t bother using images? Probably because they don’t have an easy and affordable way to get the images themselves.
Simply going to Google, searching for an image and using it on your site doesn’t work. Those images have copyright, meaning that you could get introuble if you use them without permission from the copyright owner.
The best solution is to find royalty-free images, because you can use those without having to worry about legal issues. There are many royalty-free image sites around, but one that I used in the past and recommend is called Dreamstime.
I discovered them by chance when I was looking for an image that contained Brazilian Reais (the Brazilian currency). I couldn’t find it on rival sites, but managed to do it on Dreamstime, so I became a client after that.
In fact they have close to 40 million royalty-free images on their database. Some are available free of charge as you can see here. Others are available for purchase, starting at $0.2 per download, which is quite affordable if you compare with the competition.
If you are a WordPress user, life is going to be even easier. You can install the Dreamstime plugin and add images to your posts directly from the WordPress dashboard.
Check it out!
Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!
I’m currently airborne – somewhere above the mid-west. I’m the most reflective at 35,000 feet, sitting in seat 12C surrounded by strangers – a space I’ve become increasingly accustomed to over the past 4 years as co-founder and CEO of Vidyard.
I feel excited. Tomorrow (today) we’re announcing a milestone – our $35 million Series C financing led by Michael Brown, Sanjiv Kalevar and Roland Anderson at Battery Ventures.
I’m thinking back to nearly 5 years ago – once again at 35,000 feet – on my voyage to participate in Y Combinator’s summer class of 2011. A time when I could only dream of the growth, learning and experience I’ve had since that absolutely instrumental journey in my professional career.
That said, rocket ships don’t have rear view mirrors. And while the fall of nearly–every-single-year since YC has been marked with a milestone in the shape of a larger financing – I can’t help but think about how far we’ve yet to go.
At the end of the day, I’m grateful and excited. The way I see it, there are three groups to thank, inform and speak candidly to at this inflection point. I’ll do so now in no particular order:
Thank you for your support. Without your consistent utilization and feedback on software that we’ve designed and built for you – we would not be able to announce this milestone today.
With this infusion of capital and experience from Battery Ventures, we’ll be increasing our investment into our “Customer Experience” team by orders of magnitude. This is inline with our commitment to “Helping you drive revenue through the use of online video” and your success is, without a doubt, our success long term. To this point, our only corporate value is to “win with experience” and if we don’t succeed in this accord, let me know. The CE team is currently staffing up and is dedicated to helping you drive more value out of both your investment with Vidyard and video.
Furthermore, we believe that you’re our best product managers. While we can’t address every piece of feedback we receive day-to-day, it’s our responsibility to react to your wants and pair them with a long-term vision for business video in order to deliver what you absolutely need.
To this point, it’s clear to us that video is eating the world. Cable-cutting, Facebook, Snapchat, and Youtube are leading the charge with consumer video and this, without a doubt, means that current and especially future demographics expect to sell and be sold to with video. If the delivery of a video is “the next best thing to being there in person” and we deliver detailed analytics with respect to the viewer’s attention span (digital body language) I’m sure you can only imagine the impact we can have on your sales organization; from first day to first close and beyond.
We want to help you make every second count. We’re going to enable your entire organization with video.
Once again – thank you for your business and support. We Vidyardians get out of bed every day because of you!
To the brave and honorable Vidyardians and your families – I am grateful and proud of everything you’ve accomplished from the day you first walked into our home. Whether you’ve been with us since the beginning of time, have just joined or are walking through the doors of our new space 6 months from now – welcome to the rocket ship (notice the lack of rear-view-mirrors?).
You’ve likely read our cultural document and understand that with fast-growth often comes high-stress. That said – I assure you (from experience) that being a part of this team should be one of the best and most fulfilling working experiences/opportunities you’ll have.
This job is what you make of it and our culture is your responsibility. Speak your mind, be reasonable and most importantly understand that we/you don’t know what we/you don’t know.
Together, we’re going to enable the entire world with video.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to work with such an experienced group of operators, the best of the best in SaaS with a penchant for taking companies to IPO and beyond.
We’re at a very nascent stage with a long way to go. I’m honored to be a part of your journey and I know we’re going to have fun along the way.
Welcome to the BOD, Michael Brown (and crew)!
Together, we’re going to build an incredible company.
For those interested in further details on the financing and what it means for the market, here’s a short list of some of the related resources and coverage in the media:
Thanks,
Michael Litt
The post 35 Million Reasons To Say Thanks appeared first on Vidyard.
Series C financing led by Battery Ventures will help Vidyard further innovate in video analytics and customer insights across all facets of a business.
KITCHENER, Ontario – January 26, 2016 – Vidyard, the video platform that helps businesses turn viewers into customers, today announced it has closed a $35 million (USD) Series C financing led by Battery Ventures with participation from existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures, OMERS Ventures, iNovia Capital and SoftTech VC. The company will use the funds to develop new products to help businesses expand their use of video for customer engagement and tap into the digital body language of online audiences.
Video is one of the hottest trends in digital marketing, now accounting for 64 percent of all Internet traffic. Cisco predicts that number to rise to 80 percent by 2019. In April, Facebook shared that more than 4 billion videos were played each day on its platform alone, and by September that number had doubled to 8 billion. In B2B markets, over 90 percent of businesses say video is becoming more important, 69 percent are increasing investments in video this year, and 80 percent are now dedicating in-house resources to video production. Vidyard – whose video platform helps marketing and sales teams boost engagement in their video content, track individual viewing activities, and report on video ROI – saw exponential growth in market demand and utilization of its platform in 2015.
“Video is revolutionizing marketing, and Vidyard is clearly innovating in this space,” said Michael Brown, general partner at Battery Ventures. “We’re convinced that video will not only grow as a strategic platform for marketing and sales, but also as a critical solution for other business functions across every industry. Vidyard can help businesses realize the full potential of video, not just as a content medium, but as an incredible source of business analytics and customer insight.”
Brown will join Vidyard’s board of directors.
Customer Success Fuels Growth of Video Platform Market
In 2015, for the second year in a row, Vidyard’s revenue tripled and its number of employees doubled. Participation in its annual Space Camp video marketing summit tripled year-over-year, and its growing base of customers now includes:
“Video represents a massive opportunity for businesses to drive greater engagement with their message and to use second-by-second viewing data to understand the digital body language of potential buyers,” said Michael Litt, CEO and co-founder of Vidyard. “We’re excited to help our customers expand their use of video content and analytics across every facet of their businesses, and we’re thrilled by the results they’re seeing every day in the field.”
Vidyard customers have now used video content and viewer engagement data to:
“Real power in modern marketing comes from understanding digital buying signals and using them to connect with the right message at the right time,” said Meagen Eisenberg, CMO at MongoDB, a Vidyard customer. “With the ability to track, right down to the second, how long a buyer engages in a message, we can gain immediate insight into what they’re interested in and where they are in the buying journey. Using actual engagement data to detect buying signals is a very powerful concept, and one that sets the bar for where marketing is heading.”
Product Innovation Drives Video ROI
The financing comes just one year after Vidyard raised an $18 million Series B financing led by Bessemer Venture Partners. To date, Vidyard has raised more than $60 million. In addition to record growth, 2015 saw Vidyard’s acquisition of Switch Merge and expanded product offerings including:
Vidyard joins other marketing-technology companies that Battery has funded, such as ExactTarget, Bluekai, FreeWheel, Marketo, Neolane and Omniture.*
To learn more about Vidyard, please visit www.vidyard.com.
*For a full list of all Battery investments and exits, please click here.
About Vidyard
Vidyard (Twitter: @Vidyard) is the industry’s leading video platform for business that helps marketing and sales teams generate more pipeline and ROI with online video content. With Vidyard, businesses can leverage video as an integrated part of marketing and sales programs, and video analytics for customer insights and video ROI reporting. Vidyard powers video marketing and video selling programs for 24 of the top 100 software companies in the world.
About Battery Ventures
Battery strives to invest in cutting-edge, category-defining businesses in markets including software and services, Web infrastructure, e-commerce, digital media and industrial technologies. Founded in 1983, the firm backs companies at stages ranging from seed to private equity and invests globally from offices in Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area and Israel. Follow the firm on Twitter @BatteryVentures, visit our website at www.battery.com and find a full list of Battery’s portfolio companies here.
Media Contact:
Brad Hem
Phone: (281) 543-0669
press@vidyard.com
The post Vidyard Raises $35 Million to Expand Power of Video Analytics and Digital Body Language appeared first on Vidyard.
Content marketing is hard — and, arguably, the explosion of software solutions that are designed to make content marketing easier for B2B organizations isn’t exactly helping.
With so many solutions available, it’s difficult for marketers to navigate the marketing technology landscape and battle the paradox of choice. In order to discover the software gaps you need to fill (and how to fill them), it’s a good idea to take a step back and define the content marketing process in order to better understand your content marketing software needs.
One way to do this is to understand the the content marketing process as a framework consisting of four pillars (developed by Uberflip’s co-founder and CEO, Yoav Schwartz): Creation, Experience, Distribution, and Insights.
Let’s take a closer look at what each pillar entails.
At its core, content creation consists of the ideation, drafting, editing, and optimization of content assets. As such, it usually involves a large time investment, and is the part of your strategy that arguably requires the most productivity and creativity.
Maximizing productivity and creativity is key to any content strategy. The struggle with creating content at scale, however, is that creativity (and often productivity) can be limited resources, which is why tactics like content atomization have become so effective. It’s in the B2B marketer’s best interest to create a number of different content formats (blog posts, video, infographics, etc.) so their message can meet their target audience in the most desired format.
Establishing a process and using the right tools to create great, valuable content is critical because this content is the foundation upon which experience, distribution, and insights rely.
The content experience is the way in which content is consumed, the destination of what content is being distributed, and where lead generation takes place.
Building a well-optimized content experience involves:
You could have the greatest content in the world, but it won’t achieve its optimal performance if it’s not living in a world-class experience.
Distribution is the process of getting your content in circulation by sharing it with your target audience. Much of the success of your distribution efforts will come from the value of your content, the optimization of the experience in which it lives, and the consistency of your distribution tactics.
Content distribution involves:
…which brings us to the final pillar: Insights!
The final pillar in the content marketing framework, Insights, is the destination of understanding what content marketing tactics are actually working, and why.
To generate accurate insights, your organization needs to:
Gathering insights can have a massive impact on content creation, experience, and distribution, which shows how interdependent the practice of content marketing really is. If even one pillar is neglected, then your whole strategy could crumble — and this is why we seek software solutions to help us develop, improve, and scale our content marketing efforts.
These four pillars are probably nothing new to the seasoned content marketer. However, it’s crucial for marketers (regardless of experience) to have a firm understanding of the process of content marketing in order to build a more effective strategy and, just as importantly, choose the right software to facilitate your strategy.
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Learn more about the 4 pillars of content marketing and the technology and tools your organization needs to support them. Register for Uberflip’s webinar: The 2016 Framework for Evaluating Content Marketing Software.
The post Understanding the 4 Pillars of Content Marketing appeared first on Vidyard.
♨ Google Panda is in the core of ranking algo;
♨ newly redesigned Google Webmasters website;
♨ long-form content and SEO;
♨ Facebook might be increasing your page reach!
♨ new photo upload options for FB Pages;
♨ alternatives to Twitter share counts;
♨ see what’s being pinned from your site;
♨ auto loop YouTube videos natively;
♨ the new social media network - Peach;
♨ new organization features in Google Drive;
♨ surprise!... Word of the Year 2015 is...
♨ ...and much more.
The post Weekly Marketing Skinny • January 23, 2016 appeared first on TrafficGenerationCafe.com.
Affiliate marketing is a channel that poses low risks and high rewards for both merchants and marketers.
When done right, affiliate marketing, also known as outsourced marketing, provides merchants a host of benefits: low-cost advertising, fixed commission-based fees, and brand visibility.
For affiliate marketers, affiliate marketing means the freedom to choose the products to advertise, when and where to work, and a passive income source.
Best practices for affiliate marketers
Affiliate marketers face a substantial amount of competition today.
There are, however, a number of things you can do to effectively use affiliate marketing and paint the products and services of the businesses you promote in the right light.
Maintain a great first impression
First impressions are as important when someone visits your site as when you meet someone in person.
When a visitor comes to your site, how is their experience?
Look at your site from the eyes of a new site user:
-How long does it take for your page to load?
-Ensure your site is easy to understand and users navigate to the different areas of the site just as easily.
-Stay away from overly complex site design. Simpler is generally much better.
This doesn’t mean that the site can’t look great. Aesthetics is good, but the usability of the site needs to be the top priority.
Different tools can be used to test and improve website usability:
Five Second Test
ClickHeat
GTmetrix
Create great, descriptive content
The old saying “content is king” has never been truer. High-quality content is essential for affiliates who want to increase their, among other things, SEO page ranking.
To achieve this:
-Your content must be reader-friendly. Keywords are fine, but if you stuff too many or inject awkward phrases here and there, your content becomes a liability instead of an asset.
-The content must be engaging and informative. Create descriptive narratives of the products and services you offer so readers understand what they’re getting.
-Exude honesty in every post, or readers will lose confidence in your site.
In addition to written content, consider branching out into video. Videos have a number of benefits, but foremost of them is:
Sites with video keep visitors around longer than sites that only have text.
Create video content that:
-Introduces a product or service
-Reviews a product or service in detail
-Shows how a product works
-Compares one product or service to another
With videos, you have just as many options as with written content.
However:
Creating video content is more time and labor-intensive than written content. You may not have time for daily videos, but having several videos can boost the effectiveness of your affiliate marketing.
For the best possible results, remember to only create quality videos. Once done, post the videos on your site, social media, video sharing sites, and other places for better visibility and a wider reach.
Use analytics
How are visitors engaging with your site?
Analytics tools allow you to easily track what visitors are doing on your website:
-Determine which types of content resonate the most with them
-Understand whether banners work better than in-text links
-Track sales
All in all, analytics software provides actionable insights into how to improve your site and make it even more effective.
Some of the top analytics tools available include:
Google Analytics
Clicky
Mint
Kissmetrics
ClickTale
Only work with products you trust
Many affiliate marketers choose the products and services they promote by looking at the bottom line. It’s hard to blame them since they’re running a business and want to make money.
This leads to marketers promoting and writing about products they have never used or would not normally choose.
Doing so causes a number of problems, the most notable being:
You can’t create high-quality content based on items you have no experience using or you don’t actually like.
Marketers should only choose products they would recommend to a friend or family member.
As an affiliate marketer, keeping your visitors’ trust is paramount, as dishonesty has its way of shining through, causing you to lose visitors and your brand reputation in the long run.
Limit the number of products you promote
One cardinal sin many affiliate marketers commit is promoting a host of different products. Not surprising, as many products can equate to increased income.
However:
Bear in mind that you need to stay within your niche so you can keep and grow your audience.
You also don’t want too many competing products on your site. This diminishes the trustworthiness of your content. By limiting the number of competing products you promote, you afford each the full attention it deserves.
In general, never have more than two of the same type of product on your page from competing companies.
Create a resource page
Another great tip to make the most out of affiliate marketing is to create a resource page.
This page can include links to sites, services, tools, and products your audience will find useful. Because you’d rather only promote products or services you use yourself, the resource page can contain your affiliate links.
Final word
Affiliate marketing as an income source takes time and effort, but the results are well worth it. Use the tips enumerated above to improve your effectiveness as an affiliate marketer. When properly implemented, they can make a huge difference in how well you do.
About the Author: Red Akrim is the CMO of Cloudswave and is fervent about helping others use the power of Cloudswave.
Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!
Or how about “Nike. Just Do It Already!” or even “You Should Do It.” They just don’t work as well as the slogan Nike is actually named for, right? Why is that?
It’s because Nike’s “Just do it” reflects their brand. It says who they are, what they believe in, and provides that emotional, motivational connection to their customers. Just do it isn’t a question that leaves room for you to say no, or to waver in your dedication. It isn’t bossy, demanding you to get your butt up off the couch and do something already. It doesn’t feel like it’s pushing an agenda, by telling you you should do something.
“Just Do It” implies that lacing up, playing sports, feeling fit and healthy isn’t complicated. It’s simple. You just do it, and you love it. It has that seize-the-day, you-will-triumph sort of feel to it. And it’s fair to suggest that Nike wouldn’t be the empire it is now without it. That’s what branding does, it helps your audience connect with you on a deeper level than just shoes, just equipment, or whatever product it is that a company is trying to sell.
Marketers know all this. That’s why branding exists. It’s powerful. That is, if it’s done right. And it needs to be done right in your videos, because they should feel as much a part of your brand as any other content you’ll produce.
Brand isn’t just a tagline. It’s not something you can just add onto the last frame of your video and call it a branded experience. So how do you really nail your brand through video? Here are three things to keep in mind when you make a video. Scratch that. When you make EVERY video. Because branding has to be a consistent experience to work!
Your brand’s voice is the representation of your personality. Are you intelligent? Are you creative? Are you funny? Your tone is how you use that voice in different situations to different audiences. For example, Maybe your humour is clever and witty, or maybe it’s slapstick and goofy.
Ever heard of the Squatty Potty? If you haven’t, I apologize, because I’m pretty sure you will never. Ever. Forget. This. Commerical.
Now, I’m not sure if you’ve given much thought into how you…well, #2. But it may not be a huge priority that you need to address. And Squatty Potty may have known that if they threw some facts at you and got a doctor in a lab coat talking at you, you may not have cared. Instead, they let their big personality shine through, and created an ad that boosted sales 600%. It was a bold move by the CEO, who was told the ad was too far out there. Look who has the last laugh. The CEO proved that you should define and stay true to who you are: your brand.
The Squatty Potty commercial’s tone is indeed wacky, and it indeed aligns with the brand’s overall voice. Check out their website, for example. There aren’t unicorns dancing across the screen, but even the user comments at the top are pretty light and humorous. Even the wording, which is a major aspect of voice and tone, is perfectly tuned to give you a certain feel and experience. The page perfect combination of getting the information and scientific knowledge across, while still managing to keep you interested with casual, colloquial language. Case and point: if you’re really into getting others hooked on the company, you can become a “potty mouth”!
Of course, as you move your audience through the funnel, you may want to dial back on any fluff that’s purely for entertainment, but no need to get all serious, either. Squatty Potty helps show that you can be informative and interesting. (On a similar topic, Poo Pourri, created by the same agency, managed the same thing. And that product is quite poo-pular.)
Your brand is the “look and feel”, the whole, complete experience of your company. This of course includes music. Remember the twinkling, light-hearted and touching music at the end of Forrest Gump, as the feather is floating away from Tom Hanks? Imagine if it were replaced by the simple, skin-crawling and dramatic duh-DUH music of Jaws. Or visa versa.
You may not be making a blockbuster, but you’re trying to build an experience. What best suits your brand? When the viewers see and hear the video, will they relate it to you and your company? Will they know that it’s you?
Take one of Apple’s older iPod commercials. They produced a series of these ads, and you didn’t have to guess who was behind it. It was energetic, creative, and showed how the product enhanced your life, which is exactly how Apple wants you to think of their products and company. They give you an experience.
The right music is a statement. So is not having music. Take Skittles, for example. We’re talking about candy, here, so they can’t take themselves too seriously, like they’re curing cancer or something. They would have trouble positioning Skittles as a life-changing experience, or something that will help you do your job faster or drive more safely. So a deep, heart-ripping cello solo? Or the soothing tones of an Ian McKellan-style voiceover? Not gonna fly. It’s a candy. Candy is fun. Skittles are fun and brightly colored and are meant to bring a little joy or entertainment to your day. Their commercials represent that brand personality through their audio. Imagine a company like Ferrari making a commercial like this for their car? Preposterous. But it’s perfect for Skittles.
Setting is a big part of representing your brand. Now, don’t think that you have to have all of your videos take place in your CEO’s office just because you’re a corporation and your office setting looks like a cube farm. If your brand personality is innovative, shooting all of your videos might feel exactly the opposite: stagnant, dull, and well, not worth watching. Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean you can never shoot in an office. Just keep in mind the experience of the setting. Is there clutter laying around? Does the office look hectic? Are the lights too dim? Are there pictures of family members in the shot? Consider everything around you.
Also, you can go too far on the other side of the scale of trying to look a certain way through your setting. If your business builds server cooling systems, for example, shooting a video with a couple sitting on a beach probably won’t make a whole lot of sense, and won’t help your audience connect the video to your brand. Even if the video is done well, if it doesn’t align with your brand, you might accidentally cause your viewers to falsely remember the video and attribute it to another company.
Think about this: what do you stand for? What does your company believe in? As I mentioned before, Apple is all about convincing you that their products enhance your life. They aren’t selling you a phone or a watch, they’re selling you an experience of your life—how it can be better, more exciting, more creative, if you had the right gadgets to help you do what you want to do. And the settings in their videos imply that. They aren’t stuck in offices, the videos show the beauty of the world. Perfectly in line with their brand.
There you have it. Brand is a powerful thing, and it can give your videos so much more power than if you ignore it or don’t know how to apply it well. Just ask yourself, what is the experience you want to create? And then write it down as the basis of your brand guidelines for video, and do it again and again and again, because brand is nothing if it isn’t consistent. With that in mind, you’ll surely create something memorable.
Now who wants some ice cream?!
The post Brand Guidelines for Video: Unicorn Ice Cream, Man-Cats, and a Powerful Experience appeared first on Vidyard.
As I was scrolling through my newsfeed recently, I came across a video posted by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines in 2014 titled “KLM Lost & Found service”. I’d seen it before, probably a few times, actually. Despite this, it reeled me in again.
I mean, this thing has sticking power. Take a look.
Before you ask, no, that cute little, fuzzy-faced beagle is not a real KLM employee. But he is a phenomenal metaphor for going above and beyond to give KLM passengers the optimal experience. Not to mention a great brand tool. This video now sits at over 21 million views and continues to be shared and talked about across the web one and a half years later.
So I wondered, other than the happiest, floppiest, four-legged creature you’ve ever seen, why is this video so successful and how can marketers learn from it? Given the distribution of company sizes and budgets across the world, it’s probable that you don’t have the same kind of marketing budget as a large, international airline. But there are definitely still parallels to be drawn and applied to your own video content.
If this video were a literal representation of the message KLM was trying to convey, it would not have been as effective. For one, there wouldn’t have been a cute puppy involved. But actually, imagine we followed the journey of the airline retrieving lost items after a flight. Cool, we could see a grumpy passenger, the cluttered bagging area, and then a happy customer. But whoop-dee-doo. We like to believe in magic. Give us a little something more and consider sharing your stories in a metaphorical, rather than literal manner.
A lot of people wondered if lost item dog rescue was an actual service that KLM Royal Dutch Airlines provided. I mean, it’s possible. And that dog really does really look like he loves his job.
By stretching just enough outside of the true nature of the lost item processes at KLM, they made people wonder and sparked significant conversation around their video. Viewers just need to know: will they meet this pooch on their next flight?! Even though this video was posted a year and a half ago, people are still commenting on their YouTube video to this day asking if it’s real!
Be careful with this tactic, though. As KLM did receive some flack for ‘misleading’ viewers. Sometimes it’s a good idea to show a little bit of absurdity, just so your viewers can start to catch on and realize you’re just joking with them. I, personally caught on when the good ol’ beagle was being trained around traveling mannequins – but apparently this didn’t trigger the falsity for everyone.
Then you also get people like this latching on to your story and taking advantage of those gullible viewers.
We thank DuffusTheTroll for the heads up.
The airline has done an exemplary job of infusing their video with subtle branding throughout by adding it into the background scenes. The dog is wearing branded paniers, he trains in front of numerous branded planes, and the flight attendants and the “Lost and Found Team” are decked out in company attire. Consider using your own branding in a natural way, like KLM, instead of slapping the logo all over the place in post-production. It ensures your viewers know who the video is about, but still seems natural.
Let’s just go back for a moment to 0:23 when we were introduced to all the paws and floppiness of the Lost and Found beagle.
That entry music made this scene. Without it, that little four-legged cutie would just have been a beagle running through an airport. But the epic music (and slow motion!) show you that this is someone big, with a big mission. Just from his intro, you can tell that this pup is an important character, a hero, even. Pay attention to not only which music you’re selecting for your own videos, but the key elements of the music and how they can work together with the story to build up important points, draw out emotions, or even increase suspense.
People are tired of being sold to. I mean so tired that you’re even tired of hearing that people are tired.
Imagine that this video was a pitch from KLM’s CEO or even from a front-line representative in front of a green screen or in the airport. I’d bet you probably wouldn’t have cared – nor would the 21 million other people who watched this video. The reality style of this shoot, which was captured with some rougher footage, natural actors, and even audio guys ‘making their way’ into the shot. It makes you feel like certain shots were captured in real time as the Lost and Found dog was saving the day, makes the messaging more trustworthy, which is ironic given that this was a ‘fake’ story. Shoot your own reality video – either contrived reality or real reality. Wow, we’ve actually come to a point where we have to specify when reality is real! This is happening.
Undoubtedly, this video was meant to convey how hard KLM works for their passengers and how much they value their belongings. They could have spoken to 15 core principles that make up this value (I don’t actually know if it’s 15, per se), but that would seriously dilute their message and likely leave their viewers confused and unsure of the core takeaway. Instead, the airline focused solely on “we return your lost baggage” and really delivered the whole story to hit this message.
They even hammered it home by laying out the moral of the story right on screen for you near the end of the video.
Picture this for a second: KLM ends the video on the text above and then their logo. Bam. End.
You’re left with a corporate message to move on to the rest of your day. That’s like getting a crappy package of peanuts as the final snack on an otherwise awesome flight. What is it that you remember about that flight? Due to the recency effect, those crappy peanuts will phenomenally taint your impression of the flight. Funny, isn’t it? The same goes for video. Think long and hard about what you want to leave your viewers with.
It might not be your logo.
That’s not to say that we’re all so anti-logo that we’d flip the table and toss our laptops. But KLM’s approach reminds us of the cute beagle we fell in love with at the 26 second mark and closes out the story with us watching him causally roll by on the people-mover, thinking much more warm and fuzzy thoughts. Which, happen to be subconsciously linked to their brand.
Who knew there were so many lessons to be learned from a lost iPhone, an airport, and a puppy? I sure didn’t. But I’m happy that great content continues to soar across my newsfeed, because I’ll never get tired of great content – even when it’s over a year old.
The post What a Lost iPhone, an Airport, and a Puppy can Teach you About Video that Sticks appeared first on Vidyard.
So you started your blog. You’re plugging away, having a swell time, and so far you’ve been doing okay.
Way to go, you.
But running a blog is hard work and at some point you’re not going to be able to juggle at the balls in the air. You could use some help.
One option is to hire a bunch of people to work for you. The best part about this is that you can make them call you “Boss” or “Your Majesty”.
The worst part is, it can get expensive to hire people.
This is where plugins come in handy. The best WordPress plugins out there will make change your life FOREVER!
A plugin is software that can plug in (AHA…see what they did there?) to an existing computer program and do a job that the existing program doesn’t already do.
Plugins are awesome tools that can save you massive time and money, and probably more than a few headaches.
Keep in mind, though, that too many cooks in the kitchen will make your blog miserable. AN overabundance of plugins will slow your site down and make the user experience pretty frustrating.
Stick to ten plugins, absolutely maximum, and you’ll be good to go.
“But hang on,” (you may be thinking), “There are literally hundreds of plugins out there. I know this…I just Googled it. How do I know which ones are worth using?!”
Excellent question, and one I am more than happy to help you with! I’ve played around with a ton of different WordPress plugins, and I’ve narrowed my list of must-haves down to four.
These are my four top WordPress plugins and are great at what they do. They will save you time, money, and stress and make your whole job easier.
One helps you out with SEO, one gives you spam protection, one helps you create pop-ups and builds your email list, and one keeps your publishing schedule and social media organized.
And the best part? They’re all super affordable. (And by affordable I mean practically, or actually, free. What’s. Up.)
Ya ready to hear about them? Great.
Best WordPress Plugins #1: Yoast SEO
Helps with: SEO optimization
Price: Free for the basic version (premium starts at $69/year)
Yoast SEO is one of the most well-known SEO plugins out there, and with good reason (this is my favorite on the list of the best WordPress plugins). It’s awesome. Yoast is a great tool for automating all that technical white hat SEO things so you don’t have to worry about it. Talk about a load off your plate.
When you download the plugin, it will show up on the existing sidebar of your WordPress navigation page as “SEO”.
The free version (which is really all you need right now) comes with some awesome features, like these:
Best WordPress Plugins #2: Akismet
Helps with: Spam protection
Price: Name your own price (which can be free)
Nobody, least of all you, has time for stupid spammy comments on your posts. No, thank you. Akismet is the ultimate in spam protection for your blog. It automatically catches spam and makes it disappear before you even see it.
Awesome.
There are a few different plans to choose from, but my favorite (and the one that will do just fine for your blog) is the basic plan, which allows you to set your own monthly price. You can download it for free, but why not donate a dollar or two to help them out? After the basic plan, the premium plans start at $5, and go up to $50.
Best WordPress Plugins #3: SumoMe
Helps with: Growing your site’s traffic
Price: Free (for the basic version)
SumoMe is one of my all time favorite plugins. Mostly because they have really amusing marketing emails. But also because the plugin is awesome.
Once you install the plugin, you can download apps like the List Builder (lets your create a fancy lightbox pop-up to capture email addresses), Scroll Box (an email collection box that pops up whenever you tell it to), Heat Maps (helps you see where people are clicking on your site), and Smart Bar (among plenty others).
Personally, I love the Scroll Box app. It’s a polite way to ask for a reader’s email address once they’ve popped around your site for a bit. You can choose at what point on the page you want the box to appear, how often you want it to pop up, and what you want it to say.
The only downside to the free version is that it is plastered with the SumoMe logo. The only way to get rid of that is to upgrade to the Starter version (which is $10/mo, or you can get the Pro version for $100/mo). I don’t think it’s a deal breaker, but it is something you’ll have to deal with if you use the plugin.
Best WordPress Plugins #4: CoSchedule
Helps with: Content marketing and social media
Price: $15/mo
CoSchedule connects your WordPress blog to your social media sites with a freaking cool drag-and-drop editorial calendar that makes scheduling your posts (across all your platforms) a breeze.
CoSchedule allows you to plan ahead and publish your awesome content, consistently. It gets rid of the headache of remembering when to publish, and also remembering to update all your social media platforms.
Never again will you have to spend hours posting the same information to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and your blog.
Literally so annoying.
You can easily move blog posts around and plan/edit your posting schedule. Then it automatically adjusts the rest of your social media to those changes. Freaking legit.
Go Forth and Use These Top WordPress Plugins to Improve Your Blog
So there you go. These plugins are four of the best WordPress plugins out there, and I’m pumped to share them with you! They will absolutely make your life easier and help your blog be the best it can be.
I’d love to hear about what plugins have worked for you, whether or not they are on this list. Really, I want to hear all about your blog in general!
Shoot me at email at john@blogsheriff.com to talk about plugins, or anything else. Can’t wait to connect with you.
Best,
John and the BlogSheriff team
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