Top 5 Free Online Courses to Learn Web Design

The Internet is rich in data. Today, it’s not a problem to find an answer to any question that may come to your mind. There are plenty of resources providing effective recommendations on how to make your life easier, how to work productively, be healthier and wealthier, etc. Moreover, the Internet can educate. This is a place where you can attain new knowledge and skills in the way and time that are convenient to you the most. There are a number of online courses that you can pass for free. For this article, we have selected the most popular and effective online courses for web designers and developers.

In addition to being absolutely free for the public access, all courses are intended for web design beginners who are eager to get new knowledge on how to build sites, personalize their layouts, expand functionality with extensions, choose a CMS on their own, and so on and so forth.

Certification Center from TemplateMonster

This is a free education project that the company launched for everyone who is eager to discover more details about the process of a website creation. Certification Center targets both web design beginners and pros. In order not to mislead the students, the world-known themes provider has divided all courses into two big groups. The first one targets those users who have little to no knowledge about web design and development. The second one is intended for more advanced users. Let’s speak about each of them in details.

The “Beginners” section is made up of a series of free educational courses that will introduce you to the web design basics. This is where you can learn how such popular CMSs as WordPress and Joomla are organized. You can also take a look under the hood of the most trending eCommerce platforms like OpenCart. Being a popular developer of ready-made website themes, TemplateMonster also shows how to handle website templates, tweak them, and expand functionality with plugins and extensions. The courses include both theoretical and practical parts. After you learn a certain block of information, you will be asked to complete a few tasks in order to check your knowledge and revise the data your have passed.

Speaking about the section for experts, TemplateMonster Certification Center welcomes all freelancers and web design studios that know how to launch sites on the basis of pre-designed themes. There is a 20-question quiz, which the participants are asked to pass. Upon a successful completion, every web design agency and freelancer will be granted with TemplateMonster Certificate as a proof of their high level of expertise in the field.

Moreover, they will become the company’s partners listed on a Web Design Studios Catalogue page. The latter is a unique opportunity to boost the public recognition and find new clients. Everyone who purchases themes from TemplateMonster has access to this chart. This is where they can look through the CMSs a web design studio works with, the number of projects those have launched, filter all web design studios by their location, etc. The integrated functionality also welcomes clients to send a website creation request via profiles pages of each freelancer/web design studio.

In such a way, with TemplateMonster Certification Center you can kill two birds with one stone – attain precious knowledge for free and boost client base while passing a quiz.

Learn CSS Layout

The LearnLayout.com site teaches CSS fundamentals that beginners need to be aware of in order to get started. Unlike the previously discussed free resource, this one targets those users who already know certain web design fundamentals and simply look for the ways to deepen and systematize their knowledge.

It is built around teaching CSS and HTML. Assuming that you are now an absolute beginner, you will be interested in looking through different information-rich slides. Get new knowledge and skills and apply those in your own works.

Alison’s Web Development

The site contains courses that cover the basics and move up to a more advanced level on different topics. Web design is one of them. The lectures are organized in a clear, easy-to-follow manner. The lecturer speaks a common language, introducing beginners to the web design fundamentals. The course is made up of 9 parts. The topics that it covers include HTML, CSS, and Adobe Dreamweaver.

Udemy

Udemy is a large online learning marketplace. It includes both free and paid courses. This is a place where you can manage the lectures on your own, decide on your own schedule and the device that you use for learning. All courses from the collection can be filtered by the skill level of a student, features they include, popularity or the “newest” status.

DevelopPHP

This online training center is intended to help you learn the basic web development languages for free. They offer a series of free video lessons on the key principles of HTML, CSS, PHP, and SQL. Programming languages are not the only topics that the site provides. Those of you who are interested in learning about graphics and Flash can also find lots of useful tutorials.

Each tutorial is divided into topics and subtopics, with all of them being complemented by a YouTube video. The most trending free online courses in web design are related to the topics of building sites on the basis of WordPress, working in Photoshop, a series of WordPress guides for beginners, etc.

Wrapping up

Free online courses can be a great start to reaching new heights and mastering a new profession. Of course, a certificate from a free online course will not bring you a dream job. However, it will give you a rock-solid foundation to move further, discover more, and develop your own skills. In case you do not plan to become a web designer in the future, free online courses will be enough to get started with your first blog or site, customize its layout or run any other task. Thus, you attain a complete freedom in your actions. Do whatever you want based on your knowledge and, who knows, maybe one day the report about your web design project will be spread all over the world.

Original post: Top 5 Free Online Courses to Learn Web Design

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Mystery Solved: What Goes Into an Award-Winning Content Marketing Campaign that Sales Loves

As a modern marketing team we’re always looking for new ways to inspire our customers and educate our online audiences. But we also make sure not to forget one of our key ‘customers’ when planning out new programs: our own internal Sales team. As active practitioners of sales and marketing alignment, we know the most impactful campaigns are those that deliver real value to our prospects and customers, but are also designed to help Sales quickly identify potential buyers and accelerate pipeline development.

So it was particularly exciting when we heard we had won the 2017 Killer Content Award for Sales Enablement for one of our top-performing campaigns of the past year.

So what was the secret to delivering an award-winning campaign that had Sales giving Marketing a standing ovation? Nothing more than some amazing content, an interactive survey, and an integrated launch plan that put our sales team front and center.

The Campaign: Video Marketing Maturity Assessment

The idea for the campaign originated from discussions with our own sales team and our channel partner, Demand Spring. Both were hearing from prospects that they were unsure how to benchmark their video programs against others in the industry, and that they didn’t know if, or where, they needed help to become best-in-class video marketers. Without the ability to easily compare themselves to industry benchmarks, it was to create the business case to invest further in video and Vidyard. So we teamed up with Demand Spring to develop the Video Marketing Maturity Assessment that would enable prospects to benchmark their video programs against industry norms, and to clearly understand what they could do next to take their programs to the next level of maturity.

Take the Assessment

Measure Your Own Video Marketing Maturity!

Take the Assessment

The campaign included a few fundamental content assets. The primary Video Marketing Maturity Assessment tool was built as an interactive survey powered by SnapApp. Users answer a series of dynamic questions related to how they are using video today, what types of technologies they have in place, and so on. We also included a complementary eBook that outlined the various stages of video marketing maturity and the characteristics of each. But the secret sauce was kept for the end. Once completing the assessment, each prospect would receive a custom follow-up from a sales rep with additional content tailored just for them. Depending on what level of maturity they found themselves at, the sales rep would follow up with exclusive content assets to help them clearly understand how we can help at their current stage and what they can do to reach the next level of maturity (and beyond!).

Building Around the Needs of the Sales Team

The mechanics of the program were rooted in the idea that we wanted to find the quickest path to turn a campaign response into a sales opportunity while providing meaningful insights and value to the customer. The assessment itself intentionally asked questions which allowed us to assess the relative maturity of the prospect when compared to video marketing best practices. We also accounted for many of the key questions that our own sales team would ask during a typical discovery call. So once a user had completed the online assessment, the sales team had much of the information they would need to have a relevant, personalized follow-up conversation. Lots of the qualification work already done!

To further help increase response rates to the follow-up email, we provided our sales team with a unique value-add to enable a give-to-get approach by way of in-depth, exclusive follow-up guides tailored for each stage of maturity on how to move to the next stage of maturity. Are you at maturity level #1 (very little use of video at all)? Sales will follow-up with a guide on how to get started with video content. At maturity level #3 (fairly advanced usage of video in marketing)? Sales will congratulate you and then share a custom guide on how to expand your video programs into sales and customer service. And the most important thing of all is that everything was 100% prescriptive for the sales team. They knew exactly what to follow up with based on where the user scored in the maturity assessment. Personalized, value-add sales outreach, powered by your friends in marketing. Talk about sales acceleration!

It’s also worth noting that our sales team is now using this campaign as part of their outbound activities as well. Once they’ve piqued the interest of a prospective customer, they will often point them to the assessment tool because it provides real value to the prospect but also helps to answer some key qualifying questions quickly and with a high degree of accuracy.

Take-Aways and Lessons Learned

We found lots of great takeaways from the success of this program, here are just a few highlights that you may want to consider when embarking on something similar:

• Involve the sales team early on in your campaign planning. Test your ideas with different sales reps to see if think they program will truly help to accelerate deal velocity.
• Learn how your sales team really qualifies buyers and consider how to build those qualifying questions into your campaigns. The more they know up-front, the more efficient and effective they can be in turning a lead into a customer.
• Maturity assessments can be a great idea! Everyone likes to compare themselves to their peers and industry benchmarks. Just make sure the questions and the content have a high degree of integrity and are truly aligned with industry best practices. Value first, lead velocity second.
• Great interactive content experiences can go a long way. By partnering with SnapApp and Demand Spring, we were able to deliver something very engaging that looked professional and worked seamlessly. It was quick, inexpensive, and helped us deliver a strong ROI.

Finally, don’t forget about promotion! The content was great, but it was only successful because we promoted it via email, video marketing, our blog, social media, digital ads, our partner community, and more! With more than 1,000 completed assessments and hundreds of thousands of dollars in qualified pipeline, this was much more than just a content campaign, it was an integrated program that showcased how modern marketing can really move the needle for a business.

The post Mystery Solved: What Goes Into an Award-Winning Content Marketing Campaign that Sales Loves appeared first on Vidyard.

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What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Become a Blogger

What are the realities of building a business with a blog? What does it really take to get started?

There are a lot of misconceptions out there when it comes to blogging as a business.

Blogging is something that has changed my life, and it’s something that I’m extremely passionate about. But when someone comes to me and wants to know more about blogging, I want to make sure that I give them the real picture and don’t mislead them.

So this week’s live episode is all about what to expect when you’re expecting to become a blogger.

1. Expect Hard Work

Expect Hard Work

This is the first thing you should know. You’re gonna work hard.

When I first started my blogging business, I got so into it that I was like the Energizer Bunny: going…and going…and going…

There’s no way around it. It’s going to be hard work.

In some ways, what I do today is harder than the work I was doing when I had my job. Why? Because there are so many more things to think about than when you’re working for somebody else.

2. Don’t Expect to Make Money Quickly

This might be something you don’t want to hear. So many people will sell you on a program that will make you thousands of dollars in just six weeks!

Don’t Expect to Make Money Quickly

But for most people, that’s not reality. A few might get lucky, but for most of us, that’s not how it works. I didn’t make money right away, either.

You’ve got to build your audience. As you grow your audience, it’ll get easier and easier in many ways to make the kind of money you want to make.

I started blogging in 2008, and I left my job in 2014. That’s six years of building my business while I was still working full time. And when I left my job, it wasn’t because my blog was doing so amazing that I didn’t need to worry about money anymore.

It was a tough road. Three years later, I have no complaints. But you have to be prepared to pinch those pennies for a while.

3. Expect to Create Content Consistently

Let me tell you about my friend Mitch, who has a sports betting blog. We started blogging around the same time.

Create consistent content

At the start, Mitch was 100% focused on the content. He was putting out new content every day, and he built up a following really quickly.

At the time, a few of his blogging friends tried to encourage him to monetize, to take advantage of all the traffic he was getting. But Mitch hesitated. He didn’t want to monetize right away because he wanted to focus on the content.

And guess what? Today, Mitch has one of the most popular blogs on the internet, and he’s making a significant amount of money. That’s a big deal.

He put in the time to create content consistently. And now he has a team of people who create content consistently.

As a blogger, you’re a content creator. That’s what we do. That’s what you’re signing up for.

4. Expect to Become a Marketer

Expect-to-become-a-marketer

I know, I know! “Marketing” can seem like a dirty word…

But if you have a product or a service that you’re providing, and it can really help people, you’re cheating people if you’re not putting it out there.

If I find something that I absolutely love, I want people around me to know about it! You’ve gotta put your great content in front of the people it could help.

5. Expect to Learn About Business

A blog doesn’t make money. A business makes money.

Learn About Business

If you don’t build a business around your blog, you won’t make any money. End of story.

It’s not just about creating content. You have to start learning about affiliate marketing, advertising, product creation, sponsorships, and other things that will make you money. You’ll also have to learn about taxes and insurance and expenses…

Building a business takes work. Building a blog takes work. But there’s an upside: if I’m going to spend all that time building something, I’m going to choose a niche that I absolutely love.

So when you start building your blog, and building your business, build yourself something that you’ll love to wake up to every day.

Infographic

What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Become a Blogger

The post What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Become a Blogger appeared first on Become A Blogger by Leslie Samuel.

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Meet the Vidyard Team, Video Style: Ellen Stafford

Meet the Team is our monthly chance to introduce you to the fabulous, quirky, talented people who work at Vidyard, using our favorite medium — video! For this episode, we caught up with Ellen Stafford, the Business Development Manager here at Vidyard. Discover what videos make her smile, and what she wanted to be when she grew up in this video:

What Didn’t Make the Cut

Ellen shared a lot more than her dog’s reaction to guests, so here are a few more of her answers:

What brought you to Vidyard?

I used to work for a technology company very close in Toronto and I had heard about Vidyard through that organization — the buzz was happening! I really wanted to move to this area, and move to a smaller company where I could really make an impact. So I did!

What do you do in your free time?

I spend a lot of my free time with my dog. We go hiking quite a bit, but it’s winter now so not as much at the moment. I also moved recently, so I spend a lot of time at home improvement stores and on Pinterest figuring out what i want to do with my new space.

Now show me one of those bed-stealing cat videos…

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Tips for Creating Killer Website Content

There was a time when website developers were happy to post illiterate content on a website. As long as the content was packed full of relevant keywords, it didn’t matter whether anyone wanted to read it. This strategy was called keyword stuffing and was a popular way of ‘gaming the system’.

Unfortunately, this technique no longer works. Google’s Panda update killed off thousands of websites with poor content. The minimum you can have is decent search engine optimization and engaging website content that your visitors will love. Of course, website content isn’t the only factor, but it is pretty important, so you would be wise to listen to your SEO advisor. So, what makes great website content? Let’s find out.

Original

It should go without saying that all website content needs to be original. If you write your own content, this shouldn’t be an issue, but if you outsource your content writing to a freelancer, always use a plagiarism checker before you upload it to your site. Plagiarised content hurts your site and you really don’t want to be the subject of a DMCA takedown notice.

A Strong Title

A title is the first thing readers see. A great title is the hook that draws your reader in, choose this wisely. However, be careful not to compose a title that bears little resemblance to the content of the post, or readers will feel cheated when the click on the post. This is known as ‘click-bait’, and whilst it works, social networks are cracking down on the strategy.

Engaging

Write for readers not search engines. Content should always be engaging and interesting. Be helpful, answer questions, or start a conversation. You can even be controversial if you like, but whatever you do, try to avoid being boring. Write in a conversational fashion. Nobody wants to read a page of technical jargon or monotonous drivel.

Video and Images

Break up the text with video and images. Video in particular is very popular these days and video content tends to get shared on social media more than any other type of content. Try to avoid using generic images for your web content and blog posts. Generic images are repetitive and most readers have seen them before. Instead, commission your own images and create a more personal feel on your website. It’s the small things that set your website apart from your competitor’s sites.

Fresh

Website content needs to be fresh as well as original. It’s a good idea to refresh content regularly. Update information and add new pages and blog posts. This encourages readers to come back. It also keeps the search engines happy.

Actionable

Include a call to action on every page. Encourage your readers to share your content on social media. The better your content is, the more likely it is to be shared.
Creating great content needn’t be a mystery if you follow the tips above.

Original post: Tips for Creating Killer Website Content

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Go Where Your Customers Are – Wise Words from Sweta Patel

Many brands start using social media to build awareness for their brand, but few realize that social is just the beginning. And now that every brand starts with a social presence on day one, Sweta Patel believes companies that ignore other traditional channels do so at their own peril. “Social selling may be where you reach your audience, but email marketing, webinars, and events are all channels that you can engage your audiences and build your pipeline,” Patel told us over Google Hangout.

Patel, a Demand Generation Consultant and Customer Acquisition Specialist, has worked with brands like Kyocera, WD-40, and Full Circle Insights to build social communities, drive more leads, and ultimately close more deals. To understand the importance of traditional marketing channels alongside a savvy social media strategy, we dove into demand generation, marketing awareness, and more in this interview:

How can marketers stand out amid the noise?

It’s a bit nebulous. Everyone always wants to jump on the bandwagon of a new network or a new channel, but it should be more about focusing on where your audience is and focusing on the conversion rate of your audience.

So I think it’s shifting the mindset from a quantity point of view to a quality point of view. Sure having Facebook, Twitter, and all these social networks is great. But in order to pinpoint the audience that you’re going after to really close the deals, it’s important that you focus on things that aren’t as common. For example our company was too focused on big channels like social media, going to Dreamforce, etc., and I realized that these places have so many people that we’re just this small person there that doesn’t exist. But, if we were to hold more events ourselves with people where they were tailored towards our target audience and make them feel exclusive, that would make us come off as a thought leader in this space.

What types of programs resonate best with B2B audiences?

Lately, I’ve seen that short form content resonates really well on paid channels. Especially on social media. People want instantaneous, short form content like checklists or cheat sheets. Anything where they don’t have to spend a lot of their time reading.

Video is another great high-converting asset that has worked really well for us, especially on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn ads. These resonate better than something like longer webinars because we’ve seen that webinars are great for nurturing later in the funnel but they’re not so great for net-new leads. People don’t want to set aside a set amount of their day to watch  a webinar when there is so much information out there. Why would I want to sit down for 60 minutes and watch something when I just received 10 emails on the same topic?

What is one demand gen strategy that businesses miss out on?

I see this with review channels a lot. I feel like a lot of companies think that reviews are more of a B2C play, but if we really look at the purchase path and the intent of a buyer, B2C or B2B, we are seeing that they are making decisions based on what they find and read online.

Buyers are wanting information. People go to movies based on reviews. So building that reputation strategy and protecting that reputation is heavily important, especially for B2B brands that are focused on lead generation. Lead generation starts with reviews. People who know what you are, and what you do, but they want to know who is talking about you.

What resources do you frequent to get better at your job?

As a B2B marketer, SiriusDecisions is a publication that I focus on. Also Funnelholic is another great one.

As a demand gen person it’s important to have great advertising understanding and know how to create effective ads, and Bizable just has tons of stuff you can go through. Sales is something I’m also closely aligned with so I follow SalesHacker, HubSpot, and the Marketo blog when I’m creating campaigns.

Enjoyed reading Sweta Patel’s insights on demand generation? Check out Stephanie Totty’s Wise Words interview to discover why including clients in your content marketing helps validate and humanize your brand!

The post Go Where Your Customers Are – Wise Words from Sweta Patel appeared first on Vidyard.

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Forrester Research Predicts Account-Based Everything in 2017

According to Forrester Research, a revolution is coming for account-based marketing. While many companies claim to be experts in ABM, Forrester has found that a lack of connectivity between marketing and sales, combined with a deluge of tools with similar feature sets are holding back real ABM success.

2017 will be the year that all of this changes, as ABM finally moves into the mainstream and companies begin to align their team towards account-based marketing, sales, and customer success. Forrester predicts that marketers will find themselves taking a much bigger role in both account selection and customer success, with post-sale onboarding transforming into an opportunity to build customer advocates. Technology stacks will also begin to evolve this year, as vendors consolidate and transform their solutions to enable marketing and sales teams to work from one platform rather than assembling a patchwork system of products.

This shift towards account-based business will not only change the way companies structure their teams, but will influence hiring as well. Customer-facing skills will become a must-have for any marketer, and new organizational models will see sales, marketing and support become blended business units rather than silos operating against their own goals.

Discover why Forrester is predicting skyrocketing usage of account-based marketing in 2017 in their new report Predictions 2017: ABM Boosts B2B Marketing’s Customer Obsession IQ!

The post Forrester Research Predicts Account-Based Everything in 2017 appeared first on Vidyard.

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How to Get Your Sales Team Using — And Loving — Video

With the average business email account receiving over 100 emails per day, anything that gets more responses is a welcome change. And adding video to your prospecting emails can increase response rates by up to 8x! Not only that, but 75% of late-stage prospects that received a personalized video became closed deals. Sounds awesome, right? But this post isn’t about convincing you that video is the best tool for your sales team to close more deals. That’s what this post is for!

So with that in mind, how do you get the video ball rolling for your sales team? And most importantly, how do you keep them doing it long enough to see real results? I sat down with our sales team leaders to get their take on how to motivate salespeople to start using video, and how to measure and reward them for video selling success!

Land and Expand

Ellen, the manager of our BDR team suggested starting small when it comes to video and working your way up. Pick a pilot group, and help them find success to show your broader team how easy it is. Whether they’re sending webcam selfie videos as a first-touch, or going more in-depth on the prospect’s website to show off how your solution could benefit them directly, showing a few key sales people the ropes is probably easier than trying to get 100 of them going at once.

Ellen also added that a big part of this is practicing what you preach. Even if you’re starting with a super small group, it’s time for you – or your team manager – to join the ranks and start doing some cold outreach yourselves. This provides two big motivators:

 

1. Your team sees that you are learning this new tactic alongside them, so they’re even more motivated to get better at it.
2. You get to experience any pain points your team is having in real-time and start coming up with solutions and new strategies right away. That’s win-win for you and your team!

 

If you’re not in a position to get down into the trenches with your team, there is still a way you can motivate them with your own video experience.

At Vidyard our executives send out company updates via video using the same technology our sales team uses to reach out to prospects. It cuts through the noise in everyone’s inbox, and our executive team can see metrics on whether or not their videos were really engaging. They aren’t high-budget productions either – here’s a screenshot of one our CEO, Michael Litt filmed in one of our meeting rooms:

Is there a meeting or weekly update that you can replace with video?

Tracking Progress & Rewarding Success

The cornerstone of any successful sales program is keeping the team motivated. While I won’t go into suggestions for spiffs — the team at LevelEleven does a fantastic job of that — it is sometimes hard to come up with a way of challenging employees to use a new technology or strategy. Katie, the manager of our business development team, told me she rewards employees based on a few criteria to get them excited and energized about using video.

First is looking at engagement on videos from the people her BDRs are targeting. Early on, she focused on rewarding members of her team based on the total number of seconds watched across all videos. This is a great starting metric as it focuses on getting as many videos out the door as possible, but it falls short as your team gets more comfortable with video, and starts sending out shorter content.

Now our BDRs are rewarded based on the average percentage viewed across all of their videos – so if a BDR sends out two videos, and one is watched until the 50% mark and one is watched until the 100% mark, their average score would be 75%. Building challenges like this gives your team an incentive to put quality over quantity, as it puts the onus on the sales person to make watchable content. This, in turn bubbles up in quantity as sales people get more comfortable with producing their own videos.

Dan Wardle, who manages our SMB team added that his team uses more of a show-and-tell process for their most successful videos. Everyone submits their best video and they discuss as a team what made the video successful. Spiffs are awarded by vote from the team, and the videos are stored in a separate hub for team members to refer back to. The big added bonus to this technique is that you slowly build a library of successful video content that can serve as an internal resource for new hires.

Giving Your Team the Right Tools

Getting started with video doesn’t have to be difficult for salespeople. Whether it’s their first day on the job, or they have been a quota-carrying sales leader for decades, video has never been easier to create, share and track. Our team uses ViewedIt to record selfie-style cold call emails, create micro demos, and measure the response of their video content. The recent Enterprise expansion to ViewedIt plugs this data into our Salesforce instance, allowing our team leads like Ellen, Katie, and Dan to measure the results of their team. The spiffs I mentioned above depend on it!

When it comes to educating your sales team on how to find success with video, we’ve got that covered for you! Check out the Video Selling Success Kit for resources on personalizing your content, and a cheat-sheet with 7 practical ways to use video to close more deals!

The post How to Get Your Sales Team Using — And Loving — Video appeared first on Vidyard.

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Choosing a Video Platform: What to Evaluate for Marketing and Sales

As video is becoming more and more essential to how businesses communicate with their audiences—whether potential customers, current customers, or employees—a video platform (VP) has become a necessary and useful tool for many business teams so they can manage, optimize, and measure content, and learn about their audiences.

Since teams have different goals and needs, what should marketing and sales teams (who are both focused on pipeline and closing deals) look for when choosing the right video platform for them? For marketers, for example, the tool would need to not only help you manage your growing library of video content, but also enable you to measure that video content’s effectiveness, generate more and better qualified leads, and allow video to fit seamlessly with the rest of your digital activities. When you’re on the hunt for a VP, consider a full list of options that you should be looking for.

Outline Your Needs First

There are 12 major categories on which to evaluate VPs. Of course, you may place more value on some categories than another company based on your unique business needs. And that’s exactly why identifying these needs first is imperative. For marketers, a few features may be key, while another team may need their own unique features. Try utilizing a list like the one illustrated below, which shows a snapshot that some marketers might favor, to compare platforms along similar criteria:

A layout like this could help you assign weights (percentages, numbers, or even letter grades) to each category according to its importance in the VP solution you’re looking for. For the example above, if a VP had extraordinary optimization features but lacked in some of the other categories, it would likely be eliminated from the decision set as the importance of optimization was only 5%.

12 Key Evaluation Criteria

These are the attributes you’re going to want to evaluate your VP short list on:

1. Content Management: look for things like the ease with which you can upload and manage new video content. Do you have to involve IT every time? Can you upload directly from your YouTube channel? As your library grows in size and complexity of topics for different audiences, is it searchable and taggable?
2. Optimization: You’re always looking for ways to improve your video content so how will this VP help you do that? Identify if it has built in optimization features such as A/B split testing, CTR reporting, and insights on actual audience engagement that will help you understand what’s driving conversions or where viewers are dropping off.
3. Content Distribution: is it a simple task to share your videos to multiple channels from within your VP? And even more importantly: if changes are made to your video in the VP, are they automatically updated in all locations where the video has previously been shared? Does your VP offer a branded home like a video hub where you can keep viewers on your site and engaged with your content?
4. Lead Capture: are there opportunities to generate leads from within your videos and are they easy to set up? Look for things like email gates and contact forms (that can be customized to your needs) built into the video. Then ask: where are these leads sent to? It’s no fun if you have to manage another database, but if the information can be sent directly to your marketing automation or CRM platform, you’re golden.
5. Lead Scoring & Qualification: Does the VP at hand allow video viewing behavior to impact your lead qualification? It should, because a lead that’s spent 30 minutes watching your product videos is more valuable than one that’s watched only 30 seconds of your latest video blog.
6. Reporting, Analytics & ROI: VPs should be more than a place to keep all of your videos. Investigate the detailed metrics offered by a VP. More than video views, look for a platform that will provide you insight on detailed viewing behavior for each video – what videos are known viewers watching? What portions are they re-watching? What are they skipping? How is this viewer engagement information gathered? Is it through behind-the-scenes data collection, like cookies, that doesn’t interfere with the user’s experience, or are you forced to add email gates and forms to every single video? And as a whole, how is video contributing to new business? Can you track an individual video’s influence all the way to a closed deal?
7. Cross-Functional Opportunities: Sure you may be looking for a marketing and/or sales solution right now, but could this platform also work for internal communications or customer support as well as your whole organization becomes more video-focused? It’s always better to have fewer technologies to manage, so this is key. Does it have associated products and features to enable different teams to achieve their own unique goals, as well as easily align on shared goals? Is it easy to use and provide opportunities to limit or grant access to different teams?
8. Integrations: Integrations are critical – they streamline information transfer between your current systems and your VP. Discover what integrations exist (and how easy they are to set up and use) for a given VP like your marketing automation and CRM (including Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot, Hubspot, Act-On, and Salesforce); your Enterprise Collaboration system such as Sharepoint or Chatter; and Web Analytics such as Adobe or Google Analytics.
9. Sales Enablement: The ability to privately send videos and track whether a prospect viewed it, how much they consumed, and when they did so can make a big impact on the next sales call with that lead, so look into whether or not your shortlisted VPs can do that. As well, can your sales team take advantage of your marketing video content? The easier it is for them to access and send it (like directly from their email!) the easier it will be for your sales team to engage prospects with accurate and creative content, and close more deals.
10. Security: Does the VP have a robust security model to support internal and private video use-cases in addition to outbound marketing and sales communications?
11. A Personalized Experience: Does the VP give you the ability to personalize a marketing video for each lead at scale? A personalized video can lead to a 500% lift in email conversion, and a 16x increase in conversion ratios for campaign landing pages. With impressive results, consider if you’re willing to miss out on an opportunity to engage with audiences on a 1:1 level. Does the VP also allow sales teams to create their own individual personalized videos to send to prospects?
12. Product Innovation: Does the VP indicate strong, continuous innovation that represents the future of video? How often are new products/features launched? Do these new products and features help you advance your own strategy? Is the VP platform leading the charge, or following competitors?

Conclusion

Don’t forget to define success for the adoption of this new technology. If you’re embarking on this investment, you’ll want to make sure you’ve defined KPIs beforehand so you can evaluate its success for your business even after you’ve made your selection.

The post Choosing a Video Platform: What to Evaluate for Marketing and Sales appeared first on Vidyard.

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Watch this Video: Volvo’s Live Fully Now

Every so often we come across a really amazing example of video marketing and we just need to share it with you. Volvo’s latest video is one of those.

Video Transcript:

Hey guys! We just discovered this awesome video from Volvo and we really wanted to share it with you. Take a look, and I’ll catch you on the other side.

My goodness, don’t you remember when you went first to school. You went to kindergarten and kindergarten, the idea was to push along so you could get into first grade. And then push along so you could get into second grade, third grade, and so on going up and up. And then you went to high school and this was a great transition in life and now the pressure is being put on. You must get ahead, you must go up the grades and finally be good enough to get to college. And then when you get to college, you’re still going step-by-step, step-by-step, up to the great moment in which you’re ready to go out into the world. And then when you go out into this famous world comes the struggle for success and profession of business. And then, suddenly when you’re about 40 or 45 years old in the middle of life, you wake up one day and say “huh? I’ve arrived.” And while it is of tremendous use for us to be able to look ahead and to plan, there is no use planning for a future which, when you get to it and it becomes the present, you won’t be there. You’ll be living in some other future which hasn’t yet arrived. And so, in this way, one is never able actually to inherit and enjoy the fruits of one’s actions.

You can’t live at all unless you can live fully now.

Wasn’t that video amazing? One of the reasons I love this video so much is that it uses original audio from the philosopher Alan Watts’ talk in 1959 called “Live Fully Now”. This video teaches us that brand videos don’t have to be a ramble of features or a laundry list of benefits. They can, and often should, dig deeper. Volve did an incredible job of digging deeper and letting the story speak for itself. So now I want to know, what do you guys love about this video? Tell me in the comments below!

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5 Tips for Writing About Complex Topics

Some subjects are harder to write for than others. It may be due to a lack of audience familiarity, the presence of technical terms and concepts, or the sheer depth of the subject matter, but in any case, it’s difficult to write about these subjects without scaring users away or alienating them entirely.

For example, writing about legal topics like bankruptcy depends on explaining complex legal systems to an (often) uninformed reader, so your style and content structure needs to take that in mind. Similarly, writing about computer programming subjects like Ruby on Rails can be intimidating to anyone unfamiliar with the nature of the language, so shape your content and choice of words to mitigate this challenge.

As a writer, your job is to overcome these hurdles—and you can, with a bit of forethought.

Goals in Navigating Complexity

Speaking generally, you’ll have three main goals in writing about a complex topic:

Cultivate approachability. First, you’ll need to make sure your audience isn’t intimidated or scared off by the topic. When people read hard-to-understand sentences, they get the urge to bail, so work to keep them around for as long as possible.

Simplify the complex. Next, you’ll need to take big, complicated, nasty concepts and transform them into smaller, more digestible ones. This is where your imagination and expressive abilities will come in handy.

Improve reader understanding. Finally, you’ll need to organize and create your article in a way that maximizes reader takeaways. Make your content understandable!

Strategies for Better Execution

These tips will help you achieve your goals:

1. Rely on illustrations and diagrams. There’s a reason visual content has exploded in popularity over the past few years; people find it easier to absorb information through visual demonstrations than with written language. Accordingly, try to include more visuals in your work. These don’t have to be glamorous or labor intensive; even a stick-figure drawing or brief sketch can make the difference in making a complex subject easier for people to understand.

2. Use metaphors and storytelling devices. Similarly, you can use metaphors and storytelling devices to improve understanding and simplify your material at the same time. As an added bonus, people will be more entertained, which will draw them deeper into your content even if it’s naturally hard to approach. For example, instead of describing how gravity represents a warping of space-time with math equations and theoretical proofs, you could describe it like a magnifying glass distorting the images it runs over.

3. Try a question-and-answer format. You may also consider opting a question-and-answer format for your post, or at least having a small Q&A segment at the end of your original post. This will help you address readers’ concerns, thoughts, and feelings directly. If you do a good job at capturing your average reader’s mindset, you’ll easily lock them in for future content opportunities. Plus, you’ll have the chance to explain your topic bit by bit, rather than in an extended paragraph-based form.

4. Start with an introductory post. “Keep it simple, stupid,” KISS, is the acronym to keep in mind here. You don’t need to dive into the full complexities of your chosen topic—at least not right away. Instead, work to create something high level and approachable for anyone, even if they’re completely new to the subject. Describe the general concept of the subject, such as stating that aerodynamics is the study of how to make things move more efficiently, rather than digging into the details. You can always expand later—for now, focus on warmly introducing your readers to the topic at hand.

5. Avoid technical language (until necessary). In what may be an obvious step, reduce your reliance on technical language whenever possible. When it comes time to introduce technical terms, do so gradually by carefully defining them and incorporating them slowly into your content. For example, instead of writing about “entangled photons,” you could say “particles of light that are fundamentally linked together.” If you get stuck, use illustrative language to bail you out.

Knowing Your Audience

In addition to these general tips, it’s also important that you know and understand your audience intimately, as your methods of execution and specific considerations will vary based on those factors.

For example, if the reading level of your audience is fairly low, you’ll need to use approachable, low-level vocabulary and sentence structures to explain your points. But if your audience is already somewhat familiar with your subject matter, you’ll need to bridge the gap between high-level material and technically complex explanations.

No matter how experienced you are in a complex topic, it can be hard to present that topic to others. Fortunately, these tips can spare you from more than one headache. Put them into practice and become familiar with them. In time, you’ll be able to make better, more approachable content from even the most complex subjects.

Original post: 5 Tips for Writing About Complex Topics

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Fear and Success: Are They Related?

Do you ever deal with fear when it comes to building your business?

One of the major points where I really felt that kind of fear was about four years ago. This was when my wife and I decided that I was going to leave my job.

After making this decision, there was one day when I started freaking out. I actually enjoyed what I was doing. There was security in it. I thought, “What in the world am I doing?!”

I was hit with fear like I had never experienced before.

Eventually I got past that fear, and I’ve been blogging full-time for almost three years. I can’t complain. The business is doing great.

But I realized that I was feeling another kind of fear.

It was the fear of success.

That was a much sneakier kind of fear. And the result of that fear was that I didn’t do some of the things that I knew I needed to do to build my business.

If something like that is mentally holding you back, it can really block your success.

Ten Steps to Conquer Your Fear

Here are some of the things that I did in order to get past my fear.

1. Accept the fact that fear is a normal part of life

Accept that FEAR is a part of Life

That’s just the way it is. You’re gonna experience fear.

When you think about the most successful people out there, I guarantee you they have all experienced fear. It’s about being outside of your comfort zone.

But guess what? The magic happens outside your comfort zone.

If something really freaks you out, that’s an indication that you’re pushing yourself beyond what you’re comfortable with. And that is a great thing.

2. Answer the following question: What’s the worst that could happen?

Sit down. Think about it. Write it down.

What specific things are you afraid of? When I was leaving my job, it was about not having money to pay my bills or buy diapers or food.

3. Then answer this one: If the worst thing were to happen, what could you do to fix or rectify the situation?

Ask yourself questions

So let’s say that I couldn’t pay my bills or couldn’t buy food. What could I do?

Well I could get another job. I could work nights at McDonald’s. I could even get another teaching job.

Write does those things down, too.

4. What’s the BEST that could happen?

Just like you did with the worst case scenario, write it out. What’s the best case scenario?

Make a list of all the amazing things that could happen. Be just as diligent in answering this question as you were with the worst case list.

As you start to make this list, I think you’re going to get really excited imagining how great things could be.

5. Compare the two. Do the pros outweigh the cons?

If you can answer YES to that question, then move on to step 6.

6. Create an ACTIONABLE plan

In other words, what are you gonna do about it?

How do you make it so that the best happens? How do you move in the direction of the best case scenario?

If you don’t know how to make that plan, take some classes or read a book or talk to someone who’s done it before.

Take the First Step!

A goal without a plan is just a wish. Make a plan.

7. Take the first step

Go to your plan, and do the first thing!

8. Take the next step

Repeat as necessary. Keep on moving.

If you’re standing still, you’re actually moving backward. Keep going. Take a step, and then the next step, and the next step.

9. Surround yourself with great people and talk to them

Surround Yourself with People Who Support you

No one is an island. We need people around us.

But if we have the wrong people around us, that can influence us in the wrong direction.

You need to find people who are thinking big and doing great things. That motivation will be so essential to finding your success.

I could not do what I do without seeing people ahead of me and seeing their success.

10. Have faith

All things are possible through Him who gives me strength. If God wants me to do something, it will happen. I just have to get out of His way.

At a certain point, it becomes bigger than you.

Have faith in yourself. Have faith in God.

(It’s okay if you don’t believe in God. But at least have faith in yourself.)

Infographic

Ten Steps to Conquer Your Fear

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How Marketing Can Enable Sales To Use Video

With so many conflicting priorities, is it realistic to align your sales and marketing teams in 2017? Although it may be easy to claim that these parts of your business work together like ‘peanut butter and jelly’, is there any truth to it? For the majority of businesses I would argue this is in fact a falsehood.

As a Product Marketing Specialist at Vidyard I know the struggle of sales and marketing alignment first-hand. First, let’s talk about why this struggle exists. And then I’ll talk about the good stuff—why you don’t need to fear, because there is technology to help bridge the inevitable gap that will, or already does exist in your organization.

Why is alignment so tricky?

An endless wishlist

No matter what assets the marketing team creates, the sales organization will never be satisfied (and rightly so). There is an endless list of blogs that COULD be written, proposal decks that SHOULD be built, and videos that MIGHT be effective in helping push a few deals across the line. The question is not what should be created, it is why! From the marketer’s perspective, they are not likely measured on marketing qualified leads (MQLs) but rather on the ‘quality’ of the work, or how well it aligns with brand. Right from the get-go there are two groups of people being measured on very different criteria. Different criteria coupled with an endless wishlist leads to dysfunction within the organization.

Get the Report

Forrester Report: B2B Buyers Mandate a New Charter for Marketing and Sales

Get the Report

Focus on creation, not on distribution

Equipping a sales team with the best content is very likely on every marketer’s list, though maybe not at the top—let’s call it a ‘nice to have’. Perhaps some of you reading this post have wondered at one point why your sales teams can’t seem to bother locating and sending collateral out to prospects. That being said, how often has your marketing team sat down and discussed a distribution strategy for all external-facing documents? That could ease the process for a sales team that should be focused on what they do best—closing deals! I know it may be hard to hear, but uploading every piece of content you have created into Google Drive is not the long-term solution.

Efficiency over everything

It’s vital to put content where the sales team lives to minimize the time spent retrieving assets. Since every minute of every day can be used towards closing the next deal, they cannot (and should not) have to spend hours of the day sourcing out the right content to use in their cadences. At Vidyard, our team had purchased a piece of technology ease this process; however, it didn’t fully integrate into the team’s daily habits and as a result it never got used. Hard lesson to learn, but a worthwhile one nonetheless. If you are a decision-maker looking to bridge the gap between your sales and marketing teams, avoid adding separate workflows as the sales team will, without a doubt, choose the path of least resistance.

What can you do to strengthen your ‘smarketing’?

To start the healing process, and begin to bring these teams together, try the following steps:

1. Sit down with individuals throughout your sales organization to understand their preferred workflows, and the current gaps that they are experiencing with respect to marketing content.
2. Since focusing on the distribution strategy for content is paramount, try creating a marketing content directory based not only on the type of content, but on when it should be used throughout a sales cadence.
3. Evaluate your current sales and marketing technology stack on how well it fits into your sales team’s daily habits, and back away from the solutions that simply do not. Begin to source out alternative products that solve for the gaps that have now been revealed for specific content distribution methods.
4. As a sales and marketing group, determine the most effective content types that will help sales close more business moving forward, and allocate internal resources accordingly.

 

We’ve discovered, at Vidyard and among our customers and prospects, that video has been the winning content type, resulting in many organizations investing in software that empowers sales teams to create, send, and track video right from their inbox. As your marketing team begins or continues to create awesome pieces of content, your sales team will inevitably have a few questions. Where can I access these videos? What videos can I use while prospecting? Am I allowed to send out videos of myself to prospects?

With ViewedIt Enterprise, your marketing teams will be able to extend the reach of the videos they are tirelessly creating by equipping sales with an approved content library that they can quickly choose from right within their preferred email client. This will help marketers benefit from more MQLs, increased budget for the next set of videos they create, and the pure joy of hearing how their incredible pieces of content helped close more deals each day. On the sales side, they can finally deliver information to their prospects in the form they wish to consume it (video, of course) and can get real-time analytics based on each prospect’s viewing behavior. Nothing like a win-win, and a great start to helping sales and marketing teams work together to kick off a strong 2017!

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Nine Pages You Should Optimize on Your Blog and How

Episode: 293

Are the most important pages on your blog optimized?

Are those pages accomplishing the goals you’ve set?

In this post, I will walk you through how to optimize nine important pages on your blog.

Why this Post

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been redesigning my blog. I’ve also been talking a lot about optimizing your blog.

In the process, it has become clear to me that many bloggers don’t optimize the key pages on our blogs (myself included).

So, without further ado, let’s get into the nine pages you should optimize and how to do so.

Optimize Your Blog’s Homepage

The homepage is most likely one of the top visited pages on your blog. It’s the second most visited page for both this blog and my biology blog.

But most people don’t take full advantage of that traffic.

Because of the nature of WordPress blogs, most bloggers I see have their homepage set to simply display their most recent posts.

If this is all you’re doing, there’s a lot you can do to improve. Your most recent posts may, or may not be an accurate reflection of the value you have to offer.

When someone visits your blog for the first time, what do you want them to know, and do?

Are there specific resources they need to know about to take full advantage of what you have to offer?

Is your goal to get them on your email list? (Hint: the answer to this is always yes)

Feature Most of the Important Stuff on your Blog in your Home Page

Feature those things on your home page. You may also choose to include your most recent posts.

However, make sure the important stuff is taken care of. Some hints:

1. Make it easy for your visitors to know what your blog is about.
2. Show a summary of the value you provide.
3. Let it be clear how to get more value by hopping onto your list.

Optimize your About Page

What do you do when you visit a blog/website and are curious to know what the blog is about?

Well, you go to the about page of course.

Unfortunately, many bloggers squander the “About Page Opportunity”.

These visitors are curious about your blog. They REALLY want to know what value you have to offer.

That’s why it’s important to capture their attention immediately.

But here’s a secret – your about page isn’t really about you. It’s about them.

Yes, they will get your story, but they are really checking to see if THEY resonate with your story.

Make sure that your audience resonates with your story.

Here are a few tips to help your about page stand out from the crowd.

• Include your personality. Here’s the truth. The information on your blog is available on many other blogs. You know what’s not gonna be on any of them? Your PERSONALITY. Make your about page unique by being uniquely YOU!
• Point to the pain. I know – it sounds gruesome. Unfortunately, pain gets us to take action. In other words, what problem is your blog solving? Make that clear.
• Provide a solution. How does your blog help to solve the problem? Make that clear.
• Include social proof. Why should they listen to you? How are others benefiting from your content? Or, is there data that you can use to show that the problem you are dealing with is really a problem.
• Give them the opportunity for more. Make sure to point back to your free resource that they can only get by opting in. It should be the next logical step.

Optimize your Getting Started/Summary Page

The unfortunate fact about blogs is that the typical blog structure doesn’t provide much guidance by default.

There’s the reverse chronological arrangement of content. By default, all pages appear in the navigation menu.

But this can be confusing for blog visitors. That is why I highly recommend that you create a getting started/summary page.

Goal: Provide specific guidance to your audience.

The goal of this page is simple – to provide very specific guidance to your visitors and help them to get the maximum benefit from your blog.

By creating a Getting Started or Summary page, you are being a good navigator for your audience.

If your blog is one that teaches how to do something (i.e. how to blog), it’s good to have a getting started page.

If your blog is just about teaching concepts (i.e. biological concepts), it’s good to have a summary page (or even multiple).

Here’s how you optimize:

• First, decide on whether you want to have a getting started or summary page.
• For either, decide on the logical sequence that you want to take your visitor through.
• Link to any relevant resources (posts, products, service, etc).
• Give visitors the ability to get more value by opting in.

Optimize your Squeeze/Opt-in Page(s)

A squeeze page is a page you set up for the purpose of “squeezing” your visitors’ email addresses away from them.

That’s the way I remember it, but I promise – it’s not as violent as it sounds.

It’s basically a landing page that should be optimized for collecting email addresses.

The biggest problem I see with these pages is simple – there are too many options. Yes, you can opt in, but you can also browse to all the links in the main navigation and footer, as well as click on banners in the sidebars, etc.

Here’s what you need to remember. Your squeeze page only has one goal – to collect email addresses.

Remove ALL other options from the page except the one and you can increase your opt ins significantly.

Some theme (like those from Thrive Themes) make this very easy. You just select one of their opt-in templates and you’re good to go.

Thrive themes provide templates that makes creating opt in pages easier.

It’s a little more complicated with other themes in that many don’t come with opt-in templates. However, at a bare minimum, remove all of the options that are easily removeable

You can also use a service like LeadPages, which works great. However, there’s a monthly subscription cost to using the service.

Optimize your Confirmation Page(s)

Once someone has opted in to your email list, they are usually redirected to a confirmation page.

This is a page that lets the visitor know that they need to confirm their email address.

I’ve joined many email lists where they simply use the default template provided by their email marketing service. However, those pages . . . hmm . . . how should I put this? . . . Ok, they suck!

I’m a HUGE believer in taking full control of the user experience, even down to the confirmation page.

At a bare minimum, have a simple page on your blog with instructions on how to confirm their email address.

To optimize it, add some flair to it. Include a little bit of your personality.

Add some flair and personality to your confirmation page.

On my new confirmation page, there will be a short video of me asking them to go check their email and confirm.

I will include a little bit of my personality in the video, and probably even make a corny joke (I love those, lol).

The key is this – there should be ONE focus – getting them to confirm. NOTHING ELSE!

Optimize your Thank-you/Download Page

So they confirmed their email address. Where do you send them? To the thank you/download page.

Some people skip this completely. They simply attach the resource to the email. Opportunity missed!

Instead, create a thank you page that does the following:

• Deliver on your promise. Give them whatever resource they signed up to get access to. Yes, you will also link to it in your welcome email. But make it easy. They click confirm and they get the resource!
• Give them the opportunity to share the awesome resource they just received. Yes, you can have them help you grow your email list. The key here is that they shouldn’t be sharing the download page. Instead, they should share your squeeze page. You can use the Share Link Generator to create custom share links. Or if you use a landing page generator, it should have that feature built in.

Share Link Generator allows you to create custom share links.

• Give them the next logical step. If your download page ends with the download, you are missing another opportunity. Instead, give them something to do that makes sense. Some options are a special offer on your product/service, a post that makes sense to follow up with, or even the option to follow you on social media.

Optimize your Resource Page

Your resource page is where you share resources that are relevant to your audience. This may be products and services you recommend or even your own products and services.

Keep in mind that there’s one primary goal for this page – to make sales (affiliate or your own).

Focus on products and services that your audience will find tremendously valuable for helping them accomplish their goals or overcome specific struggles.

Share resources that are relevant to your audience on this page.

Make it clear what the products and services are for and how they will benefit your audience.

There can also be a secondary goal of getting email subscribers. If that’s the case, include an opt-in opportunity in a way that makes sense.

Optimize your Sales Page(s)

Your sales page has one purpose – to make a sale. I know – that should be pretty obvious.

However, I run into so many sales pages that are optimize to convert visitors into buyers. It usually has to do with how much we believe in our product/service.

We believe in it so much that we start off by telling people about how awesome our product is.

This is flawed salesmanship.

The best concept I’ve seen to date on optimizing your sales copy is the P.A.S.T.O.R. formula by my friend Ray Edwards.

Here’s Ray’s explanation of the best sequence to take your visitors through on your sales page.

“P” is for PROBLEM
“A” is for AMPLIFY
“S” is for STORY and SOLUTION
“T” is for TRANSFORMATION and TESTIMONY
“O” is for OFFER
“R” is for RESPONSE

I highly recommend checking out Ray’s explanation for more details.

Optimize Your Top Posts

This is something that I’ve experimented with over the last year and the results have been interesting.

I took a look at Google Analytics to determine what my most popular posts were. I then decided to optimize those posts in specific ways.

For example – I noticed that two of my top posts were related to technology, in which I mentioned a number of products that could help my audience with creating video and podcasting.

However, I wasn’t promoting those products as an affiliate. So, I decided to add Amazon affiliate links to each of the products and focused on keeping the product lists updated.

The result was over $18K in affiliate sales in 2016.

Here’s the key – look at your top posts and decide what goal you can optimize them for. Some of your goals can be:

• Growing your email list.
• Making affiliate sales
• Promoting your product/service

They’re already getting traffic. Maximize your success by optimizing those posts.

Tools for Optimizing

Tools for Optimizing your Blog Pages

I thought I’d end this off by providing you with a list of tools for optimizing pages on your blog. Some of these will be ones I already covered. Others will be new. Here goes.

• Google Analytics: This is the industry standard for analyzing your traffic. Use it to see what’s working and get ideas on what to improve.
• Thrive Themes: Of all the WordPress themes I’ve checked out, these seem to be the best optimized for driving conversions. I love their landing page templates and the fact that you pay once, and are good to go.
• LeadPages: This is another great service for generating landing pages. There’s a monthly fee, but it’s the EASIEST way I’ve found for creating your pages without having to be a tech guru.
• Visual Website Optimizer: This is a service that makes split testing relatively easy. You’re able to create different versions of your pages using their visual editor, and test the versions against each other to find the best version for high conversions.

My Question for You

As usual, whenever I write one of these posts, my ultimate goal is for you to take action. So my question for you is simple – Which one of these pages will you optimize first? Let me know in the comments below.

Resources Mentioned

• Interactive Biology – my biology blog
• Tools that will help set up your blog’s opt-in or sequeeze pages:
  • Thrive Theme – a WordPress theme that allows easy set up of opt-in or sequeeze pages
  • LeadPages – helps generate landing pages
• Share Link Generator – allows you to create custom share links
• P.A.S.T.O.R. formula by Ray Edwards- best formula (so far) for optimizing your sales copy
  • you may check this link for more details: Ray’s explanation
• Google Analytics: This is the industry standard for analyzing your traffic. Use it to see what’s working and get ideas on what to improve.
• Visual Website Optimizer: This is a service allows you to create different versions of your pages using their visual editor, and test the versions against each other to find the best version for high conversions.

Infographic

Nine Pages You Should Optimize on Your Blog and How

The post Nine Pages You Should Optimize on Your Blog and How appeared first on Become A Blogger by Leslie Samuel.

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Sales and Marketing Must Join Forces or Get Left Behind

How often does your marketing team sit in on sales calls? Or vice-versa, how much feedback does your sales team pass over to marketing about lead quality? The sad fact is, most of the time marketing and sales don’t talk as much as they should.

But why? Recent research from Forrester found that 80% of marketers report their relationship with sales is “good” and 60% of sales people said the same. So where’s the disconnect? Only a third of marketers said that their metrics align closely with sales. And worse, only 40% of marketers indicated that they participate in pipeline reviews. So sales and marketing are friends — but not friends with benefits.

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B2B Buyers Mandate a New Charter for Marketing and Sales

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According to Forrester, companies that don’t fix this issue are going to be left behind. And thankfully, they have built a framework to help you bring your sales and marketing teams closer together, get on the same page with goals, and execute powerful campaigns that drive more revenue.

Sales and Marketing Sitting in a Tree

So how do you connect your teams and close the gap between sales and marketing? It starts with participation. A good smarketing team (see what we did there?) has marketing actively participating in account selection and planning as part of an account-based marketing strategy, and sales leaning on marketing for the right content and social selling opportunities. The result is a buyer-centric approach to sales and marketing that puts customers first.

Companies that are leading this charge have put emphasis on buyer-centric strategies like:

• A data strategy that both marketing and sales can get behind
• Remote sales teams that report to marketing
• Social selling programs that engage buyers where they are
• Account-based marketing frameworks that involve both teams

Want to get the full story on how to turn your sales and marketing teams into a smarketing powerhouse? Get the Forrester report B2B Buyers Mandate A New Charter For Marketing And Sales.

The post Sales and Marketing Must Join Forces or Get Left Behind appeared first on Vidyard.

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