Montag, 13. Mai 2013

Go crazy making money...

Go crazy making money...

This is a sure way to earn a lot of money...

Create wealth without risk...

try our way and make a lot of money...

To learn more Click Here

You are about to get active making money...

You are about to get active making money...

Better to have your own business than to work as a slave...

We believe we're the best chance for you to become rich...

You can do this...

To learn more Click Here

Just take a good look at us...

Just take a good look at us...

Learn all you can about handling money...

Make money with money...

This is ONLY about money...

To learn more Click Here

Make money while you sleep...

Make money while you sleep...

Get ready to make crazy money...

Retire super early...

People are getting tired of "working for the man."...

To learn more Click Here

Sonntag, 12. Mai 2013

Positioning Your Business for the Future of SEO - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by RonGarrett
Keeping up with the rapidly changing pace of SEO best-practices can sometimes be as difficult as juggling flaming batons while reciting the alphabet backwards. As an agency or business owner, you need a checklist to help make sure you're staying competitive, focusing on the right tactics, and building your business in the right direction. 

In today's Whiteboard Friday, Ron Garett discusses how to position your business for whatever the future of SEO may bring. Leave your thoughts and questions in the comments below!

Positioning Your Business for the Future of SEO - Whiteboard Friday


wistiaEmbed = Wistia.embed("omkxpuilhm", {
version: "v1",
videoWidth: 600,
videoHeight: 338,
volumeControl: true,
playerColor: "2299db"
});



For your viewing pleasure, here's an image of the whiteboard used in today's video:



 

Video Transcription


"Howdy SEOmoz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Ron Garrett, and I work with Distilled out of their New York office. I'm just down here this week in Seattle, and Rand invited me over to tape an edition of Whiteboard Friday. Either which way, I hope you like it.

Today I'm going to primarily be talking to agencies, business owners, freelancers, and consultants. The topic is positioning your business for the future of SEO. Now we all know that SEO is rapidly changing. The skills that you need to be successful in SEO, whether it's technical, being good with analytics and big data sets, UX design, content creation, all of these different facets, we need to constantly innovate and make sure that we're at the top of our game.

What I've done today is put together a checklist of things that you, as an agency or a business owner, can go through your business and review to make sure that you're staying competitive, to make sure that you're focusing on the things that you should be focusing on, and really trying to figure out where you should be building your business.

Let's go ahead and start off. Use the resources within your organization. Let's go ahead and start over here.

First, start talking to your salespeople. They're oftentimes the first defense to clients. So oftentimes when clients reach out, they're going to be the first to talk to the clients and get a sense of what they're looking for, get a sense of how they think about SEO, get a sense of how they're spending for SEO and how their teams are working, their digital, their content, all those different teams are working together to be able to bring SEO and integrate it. Try to figure out what they doing, how they're doing it, and how you can take that information and integrate it back into how you sell, how you talk to clients, those types of things.

Also talk to your consultants. They spend a great deal of time working with each of the clients that you have to have a deep understanding of their needs, what their business goals are, what the biggest opportunities are, and where the biggest flaws or weaknesses or challenges are within the organization. Talk to them and try to get a sense of where the common threads are across most of your clients.

Also, once you have a relationship with a client and your interests are aligned, reach out to them. Take them out to lunch and see how they're doing. Get a sense of what's going on in their organization, how they talk about SEO internally, how they spend on SEO internally. Is SEO at the table when everybody is discussing content strategy, technical and all these different things?

Also reach out to other companies in your industry. I think one of the things that I love most about the SEO community is the fact that it is just that. It's such a great community of people. Even if you have a competitor that you may compete against for business, they still may be a great resource for you to go out and chat and see what's worked well for them and what hasn't worked well for them and see what the commonalities are there.

Also make sure that you're following what's going on in the industry. Making sure that you are either putting on events or attending events is a great way to see what are some common topics that are coming up quite frequently. Take a look at the trends and the commonalities there.

Also take a look at the talent and the people that are coming up within the industry and the things that they're talking about, the things that they're passionate about, and the things working for them. That's a great way to keep a pulse on the industry.

Also take a look at emerging technology. There are some pretty impressive startups and impressive technology companies, like SEOmoz, Conductor, and all these different companies who are creating technology that allows SEO agencies and businesses to scale and be efficient within their organization. Take a look at those emerging technologies and see how you can utilize those as a business to take your business to the next level.

One big thing that we talk a lot about at Distilled is how we can continue to tinker and test ideas. This is really important because sometimes you won't have enough knowledge. You don't know what you don't know. We encourage and recommend all of our consultants to continuously test and continuously tinker with things and figure out some interesting things that are working and not working. Oftentimes there is no way that we can plan for those types of knowledge gaps that we get there.

I also want to discuss really quickly what's worked well for us here at Distilled is our value are set up as "Discover, Implement and Learn." That's really given us a nice framework to be able to make sure that we're constantly testing things, we're constantly putting things out there, we're constantly figuring out what works and what doesn't work, and we're integrating that back into the solutions that we're providing our clients. That's been quite nice.

Next, you as an organization figure out whether or not you want to specialize or whether or not you want to be a comprehensive business, whether or not you want to provide a specific solution, such as integrating SEO with PR, or whether or not you want to be a full-fledged agency where you're providing digital solutions from a technology standpoint, to content creation, to outreach, to digital PR. Really figure out what your niche is going to be. Even if you do choose to specialize, don't think that you can't take on other types of work. It just helps customers understand what your value proposition is and what they can expect when they come to you. You can always show them other things that you're capable of providing, but I think having that starting point can be really beneficial.

Here is a checklist that I put together of when you're looking to assess your business and figure out, "All right, where are my strengths? Where are my weaknesses? Where can I make improvements?" Start to look at if you were to make certain decisions within your business, what are the different risks and rewards that you would get out of making certain decisions and try to forecast a little bit. Try to take a look at some of the data that you've accumulated over time and think, "If I were to make this decision for my business today, what are some of the things that I can anticipate?"

Also, it's important to take a look at your current strategy to see what's working and what's not working and continue to improvise upon that. Reevaluate that strategy and figure out what's working and what's not working.

Also, I think it's important to have a good balance between aspirational and pragmatic. Take a look at the things that you as a business can accomplish in the short term, given the resources that you guys have, and how you need to think about achieving some of your long-term goals and being realistic. Figure out ways you can get that kind of minimal viable product out there. Figure out what's working and what's not working and continue to innovate on top of that. That can be really beneficial as well.

Also evaluate your company mission, vision, and values. I know a lot of companies are taking a look at the values and making a lot of their decisions based on their values. So making sure that with where your company is at and where your business is at that those things still apply. Those things can be really powerful drivers for why somebody would want to come work for you, why somebody would continue to stay working for you, and the purpose they get out of the job they have. Just make sure that you're constantly looking at and evaluate that.

I also think it's important to take a look at the client mix. Take a look at the percentage of clients that are currently on a project basis versus a retain basis. These types of things can influence cash position and cash flow within your organization, and looking for ways to either drive up the amount of retained clients that you have or figuring out just really beneficial projects that you can take on that are either going to drive the knowledge gap forward or drive the cash flow position forward. Just make sure that the types of projects that you are bringing on are helping you achieve your goals.

Take a look at your company and your employees, and take a look at their strengths and weaknesses. I think being pragmatic about that as well can be very beneficial, especially when you start to reach critical mass at your company. You go from 10 employees to 50 employees, 50 employees to 100 employees, and the dynamic of your company starts to shift, and you get a very eclectic group of people that end up coming in that all have different strengths and talents, and they get very passionate about different things. Understanding the dynamics that those play and what works well with one another can be really important for you to understand when making these types of business decisions.

It's also important to understand as a company your tolerance for risk. You can have all the aspirations in the world, but if your company hesitates to make certain types of decisions and you don't feel like it's a decision that you can fully make and commit to, it may be good to reevaluate whether or not that decision is something that you should look to make further down the line or what type of infrastructure or what things you would need to be able to make that decision sooner. Just being realistic about the tolerance levels that you have at your organization.

Take a look at how you currently make money. At different companies we love the places we work, and ultimately we have to be able to figure out ways to be able to make money. Taking a look at where your big drivers for cash are and how those are marking your company money can be really beneficial.

Future aspirations. We all want to have goals. We all want to work toward something that's going to create purpose for us, that's going to help us get to where we want to be, and we want to make sure they're big enough to where it's not easy for us to attain in the short term, but it's something that we can all believe in and work towards as a company. I think figuring out what your future aspirations are, both at a company level and at an employee level, can be very, very powerful.

Last, but not least, if you're looking to make investments in your organization, understanding the types of investments that you can and cannot make now based on your current cash flow position or whether or not you have access to capital and just understanding the dynamics between that can help determine how quickly you can make certain decisions or what types of clients you're going to have to bring on before you can make those types of decisions.

I know I've provided you with a lot of information today, but ultimately I wanted to help give you a framework and a checklist for you, the business owner or the agency, to take a step back and to evaluate your company, to evaluate your employees, to evaluate all the things that make you great, and to evaluate the areas where you need to make improvements and get to where you want to be. I think once you have a deeper understanding of all this, it will help you make business decisions, it will help you communicate those decisions to the employees there, and it can help empower people at your organization to do some pretty incredible things.

So get out there, keep building."


Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

marketing news Traffic viral google

?Defiance? continues to roll: New DLC is outlined for the game even as the TV show has been renewed for another season

Defiance's executive producer has annoucned that every expansion for 'Defiance' will include free content, paid content, and new items for the in-game store. The first DLC, tentatively titled 'Enter the Castithan,' arrives this monthbloging trends marketing news Traffic

Twitter?s latest acquisition means it?s about to get a whole lot faster

Twitter scooped up scalable computing startup Ubalo, which we suspect will be used to speed up search and improve keyword ad targeting.google bloging trends marketing news

Namco Bandai reports five-year high profits

The top sellers in the content division, including 'Tekken Tag Tournament 2,' ' Soulcalibur V,' and the western release of 'Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm,' helped push Namco Bandai far into the black this fiscal year.Traffic viral google bloging trends

Samstag, 11. Mai 2013

My Reading List: A Review On Marketing Fundamentals

Posted by stephcoles
Hello, Moz fans, I’m excited to be writing my very first post on the Moz blog. My name is Stephanie, and I manage client development for Distilled in Seattle. I have had the opportunity to talk to lots of different people about their concerns over their website, their goals for the future, how they can get more links, and how they can rank higher.

As marketers, it can be easy to get caught up in the day-to-day grind, or focus on the latest buzz words, or the newest industry change. It’s nice to take a step back and revisit some marketing basics that are really the building blocks of what we do every day. Revisiting the basics of marketing is the best way to refresh your marketing skills to help your clients succeed. 

I’ve asked for recommendations from my team here at Distilled about the best books that really get at the core of what marketing is about. I spent some weeks reading through these and have reviewed my favorites below for you. Let's dive in!


UnMarketing by Scott Stratten

In the introduction, Stratten says:

“Marketing is not a task.
Marketing is not a department.
Marketing is not a job.
Marketing happens every time you engage…”

Right out of the box, Stratten gets to the point and says, "Hey, if taking the time to be genuine and build relationships is too much work for you, don’t waste your time reading this book." It’s so true. A loyal customer base isn’t made by spamming people’s inboxes, cold calling, or responding negatively to customer feedback. How do you like it when companies do that to you? I’ll tell you. You hate it.

Stratten really covers the “basics” of good customer service, which people often forget by focusing purely on the numbers. You might think, “500 people is more valuable than 10, but I can’t talk to 500 people a day, so I must blanket email 500 people today!” Don’t think like that. Spend the time to have a couple of actual conversations that will turn into relationships.

Stratten takes the reader through a narrative of stories of successful companies that got it, and the unfortunate companies that didn’t. The stories help to give life to his message and provided context to his theories to make his ideas stick with you.

One example in particular was my favorite. Stratten got an email from a social marketing executive at Ogilvy named Duri promoting a new Kraft product. Kraft was launching an at home coffee brewing system (called Tassimo) and Duri was in charge of figuring out how to effectively promote the product. Duri could have taken the easy route and spent money on ads or a bit of time on sending mass emails. But he wanted bigger, measurable results.



Instead, Duri decided to spend his time compiling then contacting a list of influential social media users to give away a free coffee maker. The hope was these people would love the product and then talk about it. This would spread the word about the new product by actual consumers - much more effective than paying tons of money on a forgettable advertisement.

Duri personally took the time to write an email to each recipient, and Stratten was one of the lucky recipients. Stratten was reassured he wasn’t being scammed because Duri did a bit of research before writing his email. He mentioned to Stratten that they lived in the same town and should meet to discuss social media. Stratten appreciated the authenticity of the message and that he was able to actually connect with Duri, and on top of that, he ended up loving the product. Win for Tassimo!

The results were fantastic, and Tassimo was increasingly talked about online and sales increased. Two months into Duri’s campaign, Tassimo was “mentioned almost 5,000 times online versus around 50 times before the campaign.” It's true that this marketing effort took more time than just buying commercial space, but it worked and was measurable. I love this because we think about marketing in the same way at Distilled. Our outreach team spends their days discovering who to contact, then making these actual connections. It takes longer, but it is so much more effective than if they were to automate the process.

All in all, a great read and something I highly recommend as a refresher on how to build your company through real relationships.

(P.S. Make sure you read the notes, they are hilarious.)

Influence by Robert Cialdini

This piece isn’t a marketing book in the traditional sense, but it discusses what every good marketer should understand: what makes people do what they do. Cialdini covers how to recognize and understand these tendencies to persuade people to say "yes."

The book is broken down into six main themes that neatly break into chapters: reciprocation, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity. Cialdini examines each theme’s “ability to produce a distinct kind of automatic, mindless compliance from people.” Every trait (or chapter) described in the book is supported by several case studies, some Cialdini saw in the news, and some from research he (or other psychologists) completed. Let’s discuss a few chapters in more depth.

Liking: Raise your hand if you have been to a Tupperware party. You poor souls; Tupperware parties are the worst. I’ve been coerced into attending a few times, and I always leave with something I never wanted in the first place. “They made me buy it, I couldn’t say no!” I say to myself.  But how? No one actually tied me down, took my money, and forced an overpriced plastic container into my hands. True, but it was a friend who hosted the party. She will make commission off of the total amount purchased, plus she graciously invited me to her house and served me dinner and drinks. I like my friend, and therefore I feel obligated to buy. I never thought about it this way until it was described in this book, and I bet a lot of other people haven’t either.



Social Proof: I found this chapter chalk-full of intriguing examples as to why people are so easily swayed to follow the crowd.

First thing discussed: laugh tracks. I cringe when I notice them, yet I know it has caused me to occasionally laugh as if on command when something wasn’t particularly funny. Hearing the sound prompts the response to reciprocate the laughter as we are “so accustomed to taking the reactions of others as evidence of what deserves laughter.” The reaction is automatic. It is slightly unsettling to think we so easily fall victim to auto pilot that we react without thinking. 

Cialdini goes on to discuss how social proof is useful as it allows us to see what type of behavior is appropriate in a situation in which we are unfamiliar or uncomfortable. I compared this example to the first time I ever had sushi. I had no idea what to order or how to eat it, so I watched my friends and mimicked their every move. It worked; I made it through the meal without a major faux pas (except when trying to keep up with my friends, I tried a large amount of wasabi and about cried). 

The evidence presented by Cialdini describing human nature proves useful to review as both a consumer and a sales person. As a consumer, you want to be free to make independent decisions without influences from others. As a marketer, you want to persuade people to want your product. Seeing case studies from both perspectives gives us a solid understanding of when it’s appropriate to apply these principles to get our way, and when to guard against them.

These situations and warnings are peppered throughout the book. Remember the Tupperware example? I was weak, and they profited. But in the future, I will understand where my guilty feeling is coming from and make a more informed decision.

I highly recommend this book and, although it doesn’t directly talk about how to market your business, it does talk about how people react to things and how they engage. And what did we learn from Stratten? People and their engagement make or break your business. 

Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath



The pages of Made to Stick are spent exploring why some ideas stay with us and others don’t. Early on in the book, the Heath brothers follow their own model and break their book down into something easily remembered. They summarize it as, “There are two steps in making your ideas stick. Step one is to find the core, and step two is to translate the core using the SUCCESs checklist. That’s it.” 

So, what is SUCCESs?

Simplicity: Get to the heart of an idea. Once you understand this, everything else will fall into place around it. Here's a quick example: Southwest Airlines is the Low-fare airline. Every decision is based on whether or not it will help them to uphold that motto.

Unexpectedness: How to get and keep people’s attention. Engage their curiosity, and show them something unexpected. I bonded well with the Nordstrom example used in the book. The Nordstrom brand is known for quality customer service. They established that reputation by teaching every employee that customer service comes before everything else. As a former employee, I saw my coworkers go above and beyond in their relationship with our customers. I saw seasoned employees hug their customers. I watched our lead sales person take care of her customer’s children while the woman ran and got a coffee. As a new employee, I was taken aback, thinking, “Shouldn’t she be selling?” 

How did that employee know watching those children was the right choice? Because customer service is the most important thing. She could have made a sale during that time, or spent a few minutes checking in on other clients. True, but the customer was happily surprised with the level of service and she will be back to shop at Nordstrom. Was investing ten minutes into building a relationship worth it? Absolutely. 

Concreteness: Speak in plain language everyone will understand. Have you ever been in a meeting or read an article and were just dying for an example? You just needed some way to tie down these abstract statements to something you were familiar with. In our industry, it’s easy to use our buzzwords, but that doesn’t facilitate communication. “Updating the architecture will improve the UX across the site with the aim of increasing conversions”… no. A CEO who isn’t familiar with SEO will not understand how this will help his business. Instead, try something like, “We want to make your website easier for your customers to use to help increase sales.” This the CEO will get.

Credibility: Establish a trusted source. Numbers are impersonal and easy to question. People trust people, and numbers enhance. Here's a quick example: seeing a commercial against smoking hosted by a women dying of lung cancer is much more powerful than seeing stats from the health department on how many people die from lung cancer each year. Although the commercial host isn’t a doctor, it’s clear she knows from experience the consequences of smoking and we believe her message. 

Emotions: Associate your idea with something people care about. Do you remember those dog adoption commercials with Sarah McLachlan singing in the background? You’d probably already heard the song and felt sad from it. Combining that sound with the images of sad dogs (which are already emotional triggers for a lot of people) makes it difficult not to call the shelter and rescue a dog.

The most basic way to make people care is to form an association between something they don’t yet care about and something they do care about. Let’s take the example I used in the “concrete” section above about talking to a CEO. They aren’t going to care about updating the architecture of the site unless you can connect it to something they do care about, like increasing sales. 

Stories: Get people to act. Stories help to inspire us into action. A good example is Jared and his Subway diet. Jared, an overweight college student, ate Subway sandwiches daily and lost considerable weight. Remember his commercials? It’s a simple message I can relate to and remember. “He lost how much?” As a customer, I think to myself, "If he can do it, so can I."

We use this idea of storytelling in everyday business. It’s the principal reason behind using case studies; they paint a clear picture about what happened and why in a way that is easy to digest and remember. Using this checklist to help frame the story is especially effective as it will ensure people don’t just hear the message, but act on it.

This checklist helps us communicate in a more effective way. We can be the smartest person in the room with the best ideas, but if we can’t communicate them well, we won’t be effective. I found this extremely helpful in refining my communication skills to maintain a successful work life and my own sanity. This book is a must-read for everyone.


UnMarketing, Influence, and Made to Stick aren’t about internet marketing in particular – or even specifically about marketing, for that matter – but they all teach us how to be more effective communicators. Preparing for this post, I created a book list and read several of the following books, but I have more to go. I've listed them below and I encourage you to check them out, as well.


The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki

Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson

Brandwashed by Martin Lindstrom

Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy

Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout

Good to Great by Jim Collins

Switch: How to Change When Things are Hard by Chip and Dan Heath


I would love to hear other recommendations of books to add to this list in the comments below. Happy reading!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

bloging trends marketing news Traffic

My Reading List: A Review On Marketing Fundamentals

Posted by stephcoles
Hello, Moz fans, I’m excited to be writing my very first post on the Moz blog. My name is Stephanie, and I manage client development for Distilled in Seattle. I have had the opportunity to talk to lots of different people about their concerns over their website, their goals for the future, how they can get more links, and how they can rank higher.

As marketers, it can be easy to get caught up in the day-to-day grind, or focus on the latest buzz words, or the newest industry change. It’s nice to take a step back and revisit some marketing basics that are really the building blocks of what we do every day. Revisiting the basics of marketing is the best way to refresh your marketing skills to help your clients succeed. 

I’ve asked for recommendations from my team here at Distilled about the best books that really get at the core of what marketing is about. I spent some weeks reading through these and have reviewed my favorites below for you. Let's dive in!


UnMarketing by Scott Stratten

In the introduction, Stratten says:

“Marketing is not a task.
Marketing is not a department.
Marketing is not a job.
Marketing happens every time you engage…”

Right out of the box, Stratten gets to the point and says, "Hey, if taking the time to be genuine and build relationships is too much work for you, don’t waste your time reading this book." It’s so true. A loyal customer base isn’t made by spamming people’s inboxes, cold calling, or responding negatively to customer feedback. How do you like it when companies do that to you? I’ll tell you. You hate it.

Stratten really covers the “basics” of good customer service, which people often forget by focusing purely on the numbers. You might think, “500 people is more valuable than 10, but I can’t talk to 500 people a day, so I must blanket email 500 people today!” Don’t think like that. Spend the time to have a couple of actual conversations that will turn into relationships.

Stratten takes the reader through a narrative of stories of successful companies that got it, and the unfortunate companies that didn’t. The stories help to give life to his message and provided context to his theories to make his ideas stick with you.

One example in particular was my favorite. Stratten got an email from a social marketing executive at Ogilvy named Duri promoting a new Kraft product. Kraft was launching an at home coffee brewing system (called Tassimo) and Duri was in charge of figuring out how to effectively promote the product. Duri could have taken the easy route and spent money on ads or a bit of time on sending mass emails. But he wanted bigger, measurable results.



Instead, Duri decided to spend his time compiling then contacting a list of influential social media users to give away a free coffee maker. The hope was these people would love the product and then talk about it. This would spread the word about the new product by actual consumers - much more effective than paying tons of money on a forgettable advertisement.

Duri personally took the time to write an email to each recipient, and Stratten was one of the lucky recipients. Stratten was reassured he wasn’t being scammed because Duri did a bit of research before writing his email. He mentioned to Stratten that they lived in the same town and should meet to discuss social media. Stratten appreciated the authenticity of the message and that he was able to actually connect with Duri, and on top of that, he ended up loving the product. Win for Tassimo!

The results were fantastic, and Tassimo was increasingly talked about online and sales increased. Two months into Duri’s campaign, Tassimo was “mentioned almost 5,000 times online versus around 50 times before the campaign.” It's true that this marketing effort took more time than just buying commercial space, but it worked and was measurable. I love this because we think about marketing in the same way at Distilled. Our outreach team spends their days discovering who to contact, then making these actual connections. It takes longer, but it is so much more effective than if they were to automate the process.

All in all, a great read and something I highly recommend as a refresher on how to build your company through real relationships.

(P.S. Make sure you read the notes, they are hilarious.)

Influence by Robert Cialdini

This piece isn’t a marketing book in the traditional sense, but it discusses what every good marketer should understand: what makes people do what they do. Cialdini covers how to recognize and understand these tendencies to persuade people to say "yes."

The book is broken down into six main themes that neatly break into chapters: reciprocation, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity. Cialdini examines each theme’s “ability to produce a distinct kind of automatic, mindless compliance from people.” Every trait (or chapter) described in the book is supported by several case studies, some Cialdini saw in the news, and some from research he (or other psychologists) completed. Let’s discuss a few chapters in more depth.

Liking: Raise your hand if you have been to a Tupperware party. You poor souls; Tupperware parties are the worst. I’ve been coerced into attending a few times, and I always leave with something I never wanted in the first place. “They made me buy it, I couldn’t say no!” I say to myself.  But how? No one actually tied me down, took my money, and forced an overpriced plastic container into my hands. True, but it was a friend who hosted the party. She will make commission off of the total amount purchased, plus she graciously invited me to her house and served me dinner and drinks. I like my friend, and therefore I feel obligated to buy. I never thought about it this way until it was described in this book, and I bet a lot of other people haven’t either.



Social Proof: I found this chapter chalk-full of intriguing examples as to why people are so easily swayed to follow the crowd.

First thing discussed: laugh tracks. I cringe when I notice them, yet I know it has caused me to occasionally laugh as if on command when something wasn’t particularly funny. Hearing the sound prompts the response to reciprocate the laughter as we are “so accustomed to taking the reactions of others as evidence of what deserves laughter.” The reaction is automatic. It is slightly unsettling to think we so easily fall victim to auto pilot that we react without thinking. 

Cialdini goes on to discuss how social proof is useful as it allows us to see what type of behavior is appropriate in a situation in which we are unfamiliar or uncomfortable. I compared this example to the first time I ever had sushi. I had no idea what to order or how to eat it, so I watched my friends and mimicked their every move. It worked; I made it through the meal without a major faux pas (except when trying to keep up with my friends, I tried a large amount of wasabi and about cried). 

The evidence presented by Cialdini describing human nature proves useful to review as both a consumer and a sales person. As a consumer, you want to be free to make independent decisions without influences from others. As a marketer, you want to persuade people to want your product. Seeing case studies from both perspectives gives us a solid understanding of when it’s appropriate to apply these principles to get our way, and when to guard against them.

These situations and warnings are peppered throughout the book. Remember the Tupperware example? I was weak, and they profited. But in the future, I will understand where my guilty feeling is coming from and make a more informed decision.

I highly recommend this book and, although it doesn’t directly talk about how to market your business, it does talk about how people react to things and how they engage. And what did we learn from Stratten? People and their engagement make or break your business. 

Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath



The pages of Made to Stick are spent exploring why some ideas stay with us and others don’t. Early on in the book, the Heath brothers follow their own model and break their book down into something easily remembered. They summarize it as, “There are two steps in making your ideas stick. Step one is to find the core, and step two is to translate the core using the SUCCESs checklist. That’s it.” 

So, what is SUCCESs?

Simplicity: Get to the heart of an idea. Once you understand this, everything else will fall into place around it. Here's a quick example: Southwest Airlines is the Low-fare airline. Every decision is based on whether or not it will help them to uphold that motto.

Unexpectedness: How to get and keep people’s attention. Engage their curiosity, and show them something unexpected. I bonded well with the Nordstrom example used in the book. The Nordstrom brand is known for quality customer service. They established that reputation by teaching every employee that customer service comes before everything else. As a former employee, I saw my coworkers go above and beyond in their relationship with our customers. I saw seasoned employees hug their customers. I watched our lead sales person take care of her customer’s children while the woman ran and got a coffee. As a new employee, I was taken aback, thinking, “Shouldn’t she be selling?” 

How did that employee know watching those children was the right choice? Because customer service is the most important thing. She could have made a sale during that time, or spent a few minutes checking in on other clients. True, but the customer was happily surprised with the level of service and she will be back to shop at Nordstrom. Was investing ten minutes into building a relationship worth it? Absolutely. 

Concreteness: Speak in plain language everyone will understand. Have you ever been in a meeting or read an article and were just dying for an example? You just needed some way to tie down these abstract statements to something you were familiar with. In our industry, it’s easy to use our buzzwords, but that doesn’t facilitate communication. “Updating the architecture will improve the UX across the site with the aim of increasing conversions”… no. A CEO who isn’t familiar with SEO will not understand how this will help his business. Instead, try something like, “We want to make your website easier for your customers to use to help increase sales.” This the CEO will get.

Credibility: Establish a trusted source. Numbers are impersonal and easy to question. People trust people, and numbers enhance. Here's a quick example: seeing a commercial against smoking hosted by a women dying of lung cancer is much more powerful than seeing stats from the health department on how many people die from lung cancer each year. Although the commercial host isn’t a doctor, it’s clear she knows from experience the consequences of smoking and we believe her message. 

Emotions: Associate your idea with something people care about. Do you remember those dog adoption commercials with Sarah McLachlan singing in the background? You’d probably already heard the song and felt sad from it. Combining that sound with the images of sad dogs (which are already emotional triggers for a lot of people) makes it difficult not to call the shelter and rescue a dog.

The most basic way to make people care is to form an association between something they don’t yet care about and something they do care about. Let’s take the example I used in the “concrete” section above about talking to a CEO. They aren’t going to care about updating the architecture of the site unless you can connect it to something they do care about, like increasing sales. 

Stories: Get people to act. Stories help to inspire us into action. A good example is Jared and his Subway diet. Jared, an overweight college student, ate Subway sandwiches daily and lost considerable weight. Remember his commercials? It’s a simple message I can relate to and remember. “He lost how much?” As a customer, I think to myself, "If he can do it, so can I."

We use this idea of storytelling in everyday business. It’s the principal reason behind using case studies; they paint a clear picture about what happened and why in a way that is easy to digest and remember. Using this checklist to help frame the story is especially effective as it will ensure people don’t just hear the message, but act on it.

This checklist helps us communicate in a more effective way. We can be the smartest person in the room with the best ideas, but if we can’t communicate them well, we won’t be effective. I found this extremely helpful in refining my communication skills to maintain a successful work life and my own sanity. This book is a must-read for everyone.


UnMarketing, Influence, and Made to Stick aren’t about internet marketing in particular – or even specifically about marketing, for that matter – but they all teach us how to be more effective communicators. Preparing for this post, I created a book list and read several of the following books, but I have more to go. I've listed them below and I encourage you to check them out, as well.


The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki

Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson

Brandwashed by Martin Lindstrom

Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy

Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout

Good to Great by Jim Collins

Switch: How to Change When Things are Hard by Chip and Dan Heath


I would love to hear other recommendations of books to add to this list in the comments below. Happy reading!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

news Traffic viral google bloging

abc17news.com/news/movie-t...

abc17news.com/news/movie-t...
 Publicity stunts, you're doing it wrong, as one triggers officers to respond to active shooter situation -

Borderlands 2?s most psychotic villain is playable as the delightfully badass Krieg

Gearbox Software's latest downloadable character for Borderlands 2, the psycho Krieg, is fun to play with his new gameplay wrinkles and focus on stats-based micromanagement. There is, however, the danger of burnout for those who have played the game multiple times.trends marketing news Traffic viral

The next big thing in medicine? Live-tweeting and Vining surgeries

In the UK's first live Vine-recorded surgery, Spire Bushey Hospital live-tweeted a hip dysplasia surgery step-by-step without sparing important details.google bloging trends marketing news

Top 5 Ways to Make a Woman Irresistibly Attracted to You

Top 5 Ways to Make a Woman Irresistibly Attracted to You


If you want to attract women, you have to think like a salesman. Know what your clients want, and tune your product--that's you--to fit the clients' needs.
In order to do that, you have to do the same thing all marketers do to capture people's interest with their products: develop killer PACKAGING. Hey, let's face it: women judge men based on looks. And who can blame them? Before they can get to know you, they only have visual things to judge you on: your clothes, your height, your body language, your status. We men are just like any other product: in order to sell well, we need great packaging!
It all comes down to women's evolutionary instincts: find the best mate for them and their unborn children. How do they do this? By seeing which men are strong, which ones are successful, and which ones have high status.
While times have changed, still these instincts remain. One evolutionary scientist, Dr. David Buss, did a study of over 10,000 people in 37 countries, on six continents, and found that women value men based on three big things: ambition, status, and financial resources. Similarly, relationship expert, Andrea P. Roberts, suggests that women determine a man's worthiness based on 3 "T's", or "takais," a Japanese word that represents good qualities: education level, physical height, and salary level. Quite a bit deeper than having a nice ass and big
breasts, isn't it?
Okay, some of you may be thinking: Well, I'm not tall, and I'm not rich. Now what?!?
The good news is, height and wealth aren't the be-all and end-all of attraction; they're just aids to success. It's similar to saying you want a really expensive car...but that doesn't mean you'd never drive a Honda. In fact, for a lot of people (including women!), when you learn that Hondas have better mileage than Hummers, they can be more attractive! As Roberts writes, "even an ordinary man doesn't have to be exceptionally rich or powerful to make women want him. It's all a matter of the women's perspective if he ends up taller, smarter or wealthier than them."
Got that? It's all about perspective: how you market yourself successfully to a woman. Hey, lots of people know that Creative MP3 Players are better quality than I-Pods, but that doesn't seem to stop Apple from selling I-Pods like hotcakes, does it? So if you're short, or of average income, but present your positive traits in the right way, it won't matter: you'll become the I-Pods of men! As Roberts writes, "Think of Napoleon, Mickey Rooney or Groucho; they are humorous, artistic or politically powerful men who wooed women into their beds and, horizontally, the height issue wasn't a factor. Polite and persuasive persistence is the best trait."
So what we have are five areas that we must market effectively if we want to spark an initial attraction from women. After that, it's up to you to show what a great guy you are: let her know you're special, unique, one of a kind. That's what makes you...a best-seller!
1. Ambition
From an evolutionary stand-point, this one makes complete sense. Think cavemen and cave women in the Stone Age, with some of the weaker cavemen seeking a higher station in the tribe. Who do you think the cave women went for? The men who hobbled along meekly in the bottom of the order...or the men who strived for more and sought a higher place in the pack? Much of a woman's desire to be with a man who is ambitious and seeks success, is based simply on survival: The more powerful the man, the more likely she'll survive and live well. Logically, going for a guy who has no ambition means she's likely to live in poverty and struggle. Not very appealing, is it?
So you have to present yourself as a guy who's not satisfied with his station in life. This is good for both you and her. If you're making $6 an hour at McDonald's and are content to stay there, not many women are going to be attracted to you. But if you're making $6 an hour and working your ass off to own your own franchise, taking business classes at night so you can learn how to run a business: well, suddenly you're not so bad-looking! Believe me, women will give men a chance, they want to give men a chance--as long as they see potential. Know that quote, "Behind every great man is an even greater woman"? Show you've got potential and direction, and you'll get that great woman.
2. Status
Again, evolutionary instincts of survival make women naturally attracted to men of high status. High status=good living for herself and her children. Fortunately, projecting high status does not have to be difficult; according to Roberts, "Wearing the right clothes, especially nice shoes, can go a long way toward portraying wealth. Taking on the unshaken or unworried attitude of wealthy men can project affluence. Hesitant, irresolute, bland men come across as having lower incomes and being less reliable." Got that? You don't have to be a powerful, articulate man yourself-you just have to project similar qualities.
Some of these qualities include:
* Not putting yourself down. Without being a braggart, talk positively about your accomplishments, job position, and possessions-even if they're not much. If you treat things as a big deal, other people will, too. Conversely, if you downplay your accomplishments and character, women will, too. Your attitude is contagious, so make sure it's an enthusiastic, enlivening one that people enjoy.
* Act like you deserve good women. Don't let women assume a higher status than you. Show them that YOU are the one with higher status. You can do this in a number of ways, including not acting impressed by a woman's beauty or career (say, she's a model); teasing her about her clothes or makeup; and asking her to buy you a drink. Chances are she won't, but just by acting like you deserve it, you raise your status! She's not such an untouchable goddess in the end.
Remember, as well, that women want to EARN a man; they relish the challenge of luring in a winning catch. So play hard to get: talk to other girls, say you've got to be leaving just when things are going well, don't immediately ask for her phone number. If you act like a man who can have his pick of women, then chances are, you will!
* Knowing people of high status. This is a great one. Get to know the people of power: the club owners, bartenders, maitres'd. Position yourself as a sociable person who's in the know. When a woman sees you getting special treatment and chatting with high-status people, she'll see right away that you're someone of importance. It will also reduce the importance of the other factors, such as height, money, and ambition; immediately you've proven yourself valuable.
* Social proof/Female acquaintances. Hey, nothing says, "This guy's attractive" than having females around him. Of course, the hotter they are, the hotter you look, but even just having average-looking female company can only help: it shows women that other women are interested in you. Do your best to get your female friends and family (sisters, cousins) to come out with you. It's social proof, and it works!
* Wearing nice clothes. "When a man is well dressed," writes communications expert, Leil Lowndes, "it signifies his ability to provide for her offspring." You don't have to be rich and powerful to wear nice clothes. You just have to show that you're a man of quality, a man headed towards somewhere who pays attention to dress (something women cna never get enough of). Formal clothes, such as a suit, convey that you are serious about success; you desire good things. So just by wearing a nice sports jacket, dress shirt, and slacks, you let a woman know you're a man with status. You're a man who could provide for her and her children.
The colors you wear are vital: Studies show that red, burgundy, and black clothes convey high status. So get yourself some slick black suits or formal wear, a red shirt, and one of my favorites (and girls'!), a sleek burgundy button-down shirt. They all convey regality and strength.
In the case of red, you have the added bonus of sexuality, power, and dominance: definitely good qualities to portray! Go and purchase a nice red polo shirt, or red tie for your suit.
If you enjoy white clothes-the color of purity and cleanliness-then make sure you work on your TAN. White clothes against a dark backdrop make you look exotic, sexy, and well-travelled. You don't have to be an jet-setting playboy, to look like one!
* Winning body language. Women judge men by the way they move and position themselves; it's part of their superior communication skills to know what a man is thinking or feeling based on his body language. So, position yourself in the right way: don't slouch, sit upright, gaze at her knowingly, lean into her to initiate intimacy. I've got a great column on body language that will teach you the right ways-and the wrong ways-to project high status.
3. Financial Resources
According to Matthew Fitzgerald, "Studies with college coeds show that when shown photographs of men dressed in high-status uniforms, ties, expensive watches, etc.) and low-status uniforms, these women would be significantly more willing to enter into relationships with the more expensively-attired males regardless of the man's physical appearance. To a woman, attraction is simple: green is very good-looking."
Okay, so not every guy has money for expensive suits and watches, and materialism may not be part of your game. However, if you want to impress women, one of the fastest ways is by wearing snazzy clothes, sporting nice shoes (girls LOVE shoes!), and driving an expensive car. Especially when it comes to designer brands, women are VERY keen at spotting high-quality products. It's just part of their nature; with expensive possessions come high status and ambition, and a more comfortable lifestyle. Again, this all comes from their instinctual drive for survival and prosperity for themselves and their children. By owning the best, you become the best. At least on the surface.
Ultimately, if you want true love it's up to you to find women who share the same goals and values. If money and status aren't the most important things in life for you, don't chase the girls who do prioritize those things. Don't go for the shallow, bitchy types who only judge a man by how much he can spend on her.
4. Educational Level
Knowledge really is power, and on top of that, it's an aphrodisiac! Gone are the days when being smart was acquainted with being a nerd; now, knowledge and intelligence are your friends. It's the easiest way to money, and the easiest way to success. So show it off a little. Let her know your TALENTS, your interests, your areas of special knowledge. As Roberts writes, "Women are drawn to experts like the Crocodile Hunter, Bill Gates and Chris Rock because they're experts in their industries." None of those guys is particularly good-looking, but they're good at what they do, and parlay their knowledge into success, which drives women wild.
A guy who's an expert is one who is clearly successful and of higher status. At the very least, having a special knowledge means you have the TOOLS for success, and can provide intellectual stimulation for a girl (which, unless she's a bimbo with an IQ of 70, is quite important for women).
Additionally, just being in school is a great way to show off your knowledge: "If you're in school, not only are there more women available, but you've already demonstrated to them that you're getting educated. Otherwise, it's up to you to come across as reliable and credible without making her feel dumb."
5. Physical Aptitude
Physical height alone is an easy way to catch a woman's attention, but it's not the only thing. Again, evolutionary mechanics come into play here. A man who is tall, strong, and athletic is more likely to fend off threats to the woman and her children. He is also more likely to have a strong immune system, which will further aid their chances of survival. So, you can't blame women too much for valuing these things: in the world of female attraction, it really is a survival of the fittest. Those who show women they are in shape and healthy are much more likely to survive the dating game! Ergo, athletes, bouncers, firemen get the girls.
As for height, it's all a matter of perspective. We've all seen short guys with tall beautiful women. Neil Strauss himself, the best of the best pickup artists, is just 5'6" yet gets more beautiful women than we can imagine. How? By believing in himself. By positioning himself as a man of high status. By not bowing down to women of greater height or beauty. And by being a guy women know is fun and energetic to be around. In short, he's got INNER GAME, and when you have that down, nothing can stop you. You may even find yourself dating women who are taller than you!
But remember, presenting a man who's healthy and strong, willing to stand up for himself and the girl in a fight: that's the kind of guy who women will go for, regardless of height. Did you know that men with strong immune systems give off pheromone scents that women are instinctively attracted to? If you pay attention to what you eat and go to the gym on a regular basis, you're going to build your immune system up, and attract women without even trying! So do it, and watch the number of dates you get, soar.
In the end, men are like books: women judge them by their covers. But inside is an even great story. So make your cover captivating, and you'll become a "best-seller" in no time!
000Relationships' "How to Be Irresistible to Women" delves into the secrets of attraction and seduction. Since 2000, it has helped thousands of men around the world build confidence and get the women they deserve. To get your free six-part mini-course, go to:

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/302802

My Reading List: A Review On Marketing Fundamentals

Posted by stephcoles
Hello, Moz fans, I’m excited to be writing my very first post on the Moz blog. My name is Stephanie, and I manage client development for Distilled in Seattle. I have had the opportunity to talk to lots of different people about their concerns over their website, their goals for the future, how they can get more links, and how they can rank higher.

As marketers, it can be easy to get caught up in the day-to-day grind, or focus on the latest buzz words, or the newest industry change. It’s nice to take a step back and revisit some marketing basics that are really the building blocks of what we do every day. Revisiting the basics of marketing is the best way to refresh your marketing skills to help your clients succeed. 

I’ve asked for recommendations from my team here at Distilled about the best books that really get at the core of what marketing is about. I spent some weeks reading through these and have reviewed my favorites below for you. Let's dive in!


UnMarketing by Scott Stratten

In the introduction, Stratten says:

“Marketing is not a task.
Marketing is not a department.
Marketing is not a job.
Marketing happens every time you engage…”

Right out of the box, Stratten gets to the point and says, "Hey, if taking the time to be genuine and build relationships is too much work for you, don’t waste your time reading this book." It’s so true. A loyal customer base isn’t made by spamming people’s inboxes, cold calling, or responding negatively to customer feedback. How do you like it when companies do that to you? I’ll tell you. You hate it.

Stratten really covers the “basics” of good customer service, which people often forget by focusing purely on the numbers. You might think, “500 people is more valuable than 10, but I can’t talk to 500 people a day, so I must blanket email 500 people today!” Don’t think like that. Spend the time to have a couple of actual conversations that will turn into relationships.

Stratten takes the reader through a narrative of stories of successful companies that got it, and the unfortunate companies that didn’t. The stories help to give life to his message and provided context to his theories to make his ideas stick with you.

One example in particular was my favorite. Stratten got an email from a social marketing executive at Ogilvy named Duri promoting a new Kraft product. Kraft was launching an at home coffee brewing system (called Tassimo) and Duri was in charge of figuring out how to effectively promote the product. Duri could have taken the easy route and spent money on ads or a bit of time on sending mass emails. But he wanted bigger, measurable results.



Instead, Duri decided to spend his time compiling then contacting a list of influential social media users to give away a free coffee maker. The hope was these people would love the product and then talk about it. This would spread the word about the new product by actual consumers - much more effective than paying tons of money on a forgettable advertisement.

Duri personally took the time to write an email to each recipient, and Stratten was one of the lucky recipients. Stratten was reassured he wasn’t being scammed because Duri did a bit of research before writing his email. He mentioned to Stratten that they lived in the same town and should meet to discuss social media. Stratten appreciated the authenticity of the message and that he was able to actually connect with Duri, and on top of that, he ended up loving the product. Win for Tassimo!

The results were fantastic, and Tassimo was increasingly talked about online and sales increased. Two months into Duri’s campaign, Tassimo was “mentioned almost 5,000 times online versus around 50 times before the campaign.” It's true that this marketing effort took more time than just buying commercial space, but it worked and was measurable. I love this because we think about marketing in the same way at Distilled. Our outreach team spends their days discovering who to contact, then making these actual connections. It takes longer, but it is so much more effective than if they were to automate the process.

All in all, a great read and something I highly recommend as a refresher on how to build your company through real relationships.

(P.S. Make sure you read the notes, they are hilarious.)

Influence by Robert Cialdini

This piece isn’t a marketing book in the traditional sense, but it discusses what every good marketer should understand: what makes people do what they do. Cialdini covers how to recognize and understand these tendencies to persuade people to say "yes."

The book is broken down into six main themes that neatly break into chapters: reciprocation, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity. Cialdini examines each theme’s “ability to produce a distinct kind of automatic, mindless compliance from people.” Every trait (or chapter) described in the book is supported by several case studies, some Cialdini saw in the news, and some from research he (or other psychologists) completed. Let’s discuss a few chapters in more depth.

Liking: Raise your hand if you have been to a Tupperware party. You poor souls; Tupperware parties are the worst. I’ve been coerced into attending a few times, and I always leave with something I never wanted in the first place. “They made me buy it, I couldn’t say no!” I say to myself.  But how? No one actually tied me down, took my money, and forced an overpriced plastic container into my hands. True, but it was a friend who hosted the party. She will make commission off of the total amount purchased, plus she graciously invited me to her house and served me dinner and drinks. I like my friend, and therefore I feel obligated to buy. I never thought about it this way until it was described in this book, and I bet a lot of other people haven’t either.



Social Proof: I found this chapter chalk-full of intriguing examples as to why people are so easily swayed to follow the crowd.

First thing discussed: laugh tracks. I cringe when I notice them, yet I know it has caused me to occasionally laugh as if on command when something wasn’t particularly funny. Hearing the sound prompts the response to reciprocate the laughter as we are “so accustomed to taking the reactions of others as evidence of what deserves laughter.” The reaction is automatic. It is slightly unsettling to think we so easily fall victim to auto pilot that we react without thinking. 

Cialdini goes on to discuss how social proof is useful as it allows us to see what type of behavior is appropriate in a situation in which we are unfamiliar or uncomfortable. I compared this example to the first time I ever had sushi. I had no idea what to order or how to eat it, so I watched my friends and mimicked their every move. It worked; I made it through the meal without a major faux pas (except when trying to keep up with my friends, I tried a large amount of wasabi and about cried). 

The evidence presented by Cialdini describing human nature proves useful to review as both a consumer and a sales person. As a consumer, you want to be free to make independent decisions without influences from others. As a marketer, you want to persuade people to want your product. Seeing case studies from both perspectives gives us a solid understanding of when it’s appropriate to apply these principles to get our way, and when to guard against them.

These situations and warnings are peppered throughout the book. Remember the Tupperware example? I was weak, and they profited. But in the future, I will understand where my guilty feeling is coming from and make a more informed decision.

I highly recommend this book and, although it doesn’t directly talk about how to market your business, it does talk about how people react to things and how they engage. And what did we learn from Stratten? People and their engagement make or break your business. 

Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath



The pages of Made to Stick are spent exploring why some ideas stay with us and others don’t. Early on in the book, the Heath brothers follow their own model and break their book down into something easily remembered. They summarize it as, “There are two steps in making your ideas stick. Step one is to find the core, and step two is to translate the core using the SUCCESs checklist. That’s it.” 

So, what is SUCCESs?

Simplicity: Get to the heart of an idea. Once you understand this, everything else will fall into place around it. Here's a quick example: Southwest Airlines is the Low-fare airline. Every decision is based on whether or not it will help them to uphold that motto.

Unexpectedness: How to get and keep people’s attention. Engage their curiosity, and show them something unexpected. I bonded well with the Nordstrom example used in the book. The Nordstrom brand is known for quality customer service. They established that reputation by teaching every employee that customer service comes before everything else. As a former employee, I saw my coworkers go above and beyond in their relationship with our customers. I saw seasoned employees hug their customers. I watched our lead sales person take care of her customer’s children while the woman ran and got a coffee. As a new employee, I was taken aback, thinking, “Shouldn’t she be selling?” 

How did that employee know watching those children was the right choice? Because customer service is the most important thing. She could have made a sale during that time, or spent a few minutes checking in on other clients. True, but the customer was happily surprised with the level of service and she will be back to shop at Nordstrom. Was investing ten minutes into building a relationship worth it? Absolutely. 

Concreteness: Speak in plain language everyone will understand. Have you ever been in a meeting or read an article and were just dying for an example? You just needed some way to tie down these abstract statements to something you were familiar with. In our industry, it’s easy to use our buzzwords, but that doesn’t facilitate communication. “Updating the architecture will improve the UX across the site with the aim of increasing conversions”… no. A CEO who isn’t familiar with SEO will not understand how this will help his business. Instead, try something like, “We want to make your website easier for your customers to use to help increase sales.” This the CEO will get.

Credibility: Establish a trusted source. Numbers are impersonal and easy to question. People trust people, and numbers enhance. Here's a quick example: seeing a commercial against smoking hosted by a women dying of lung cancer is much more powerful than seeing stats from the health department on how many people die from lung cancer each year. Although the commercial host isn’t a doctor, it’s clear she knows from experience the consequences of smoking and we believe her message. 

Emotions: Associate your idea with something people care about. Do you remember those dog adoption commercials with Sarah McLachlan singing in the background? You’d probably already heard the song and felt sad from it. Combining that sound with the images of sad dogs (which are already emotional triggers for a lot of people) makes it difficult not to call the shelter and rescue a dog.

The most basic way to make people care is to form an association between something they don’t yet care about and something they do care about. Let’s take the example I used in the “concrete” section above about talking to a CEO. They aren’t going to care about updating the architecture of the site unless you can connect it to something they do care about, like increasing sales. 

Stories: Get people to act. Stories help to inspire us into action. A good example is Jared and his Subway diet. Jared, an overweight college student, ate Subway sandwiches daily and lost considerable weight. Remember his commercials? It’s a simple message I can relate to and remember. “He lost how much?” As a customer, I think to myself, "If he can do it, so can I."

We use this idea of storytelling in everyday business. It’s the principal reason behind using case studies; they paint a clear picture about what happened and why in a way that is easy to digest and remember. Using this checklist to help frame the story is especially effective as it will ensure people don’t just hear the message, but act on it.

This checklist helps us communicate in a more effective way. We can be the smartest person in the room with the best ideas, but if we can’t communicate them well, we won’t be effective. I found this extremely helpful in refining my communication skills to maintain a successful work life and my own sanity. This book is a must-read for everyone.


UnMarketing, Influence, and Made to Stick aren’t about internet marketing in particular – or even specifically about marketing, for that matter – but they all teach us how to be more effective communicators. Preparing for this post, I created a book list and read several of the following books, but I have more to go. I've listed them below and I encourage you to check them out, as well.


The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki

Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson

Brandwashed by Martin Lindstrom

Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy

Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout

Good to Great by Jim Collins

Switch: How to Change When Things are Hard by Chip and Dan Heath


I would love to hear other recommendations of books to add to this list in the comments below. Happy reading!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

marketing news Traffic viral google

Relive racing glory with the Bentley Continental and Mulsanne Le Mans Limited Editions

The Le Mans Limited Edition models acknowledge Bentley's six victories at the storied French endurance race.viral google bloging trends marketing

Google Wallet kills plan to release physical credit card

Sources close to the Google Wallet project revealed that the company's plans to release a physical credit card have been shelved. CEO Larry Page's skepticism, plus a glitchy test run, are said to be the main reasons behind the decision.bloging trends marketing news Traffic

Positioning Your Business for the Future of SEO - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by RonGarrett
Keeping up with the rapidly changing pace of SEO best-practices can sometimes be as difficult as juggling flaming batons while reciting the alphabet backwards. As an agency or business owner, you need a checklist to help make sure you're staying competitive, focusing on the right tactics, and building your business in the right direction. 

In today's Whiteboard Friday, Ron Garett discusses how to position your business for whatever the future of SEO may bring. Leave your thoughts and questions in the comments below!

Positioning Your Business for the Future of SEO - Whiteboard Friday


wistiaEmbed = Wistia.embed("omkxpuilhm", {
version: "v1",
videoWidth: 600,
videoHeight: 338,
volumeControl: true,
playerColor: "2299db"
});



For your viewing pleasure, here's an image of the whiteboard used in today's video:



 

Video Transcription


"Howdy SEOmoz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Ron Garrett, and I work with Distilled out of their New York office. I'm just down here this week in Seattle, and Rand invited me over to tape an edition of Whiteboard Friday. Either which way, I hope you like it.

Today I'm going to primarily be talking to agencies, business owners, freelancers, and consultants. The topic is positioning your business for the future of SEO. Now we all know that SEO is rapidly changing. The skills that you need to be successful in SEO, whether it's technical, being good with analytics and big data sets, UX design, content creation, all of these different facets, we need to constantly innovate and make sure that we're at the top of our game.

What I've done today is put together a checklist of things that you, as an agency or a business owner, can go through your business and review to make sure that you're staying competitive, to make sure that you're focusing on the things that you should be focusing on, and really trying to figure out where you should be building your business.

Let's go ahead and start off. Use the resources within your organization. Let's go ahead and start over here.

First, start talking to your salespeople. They're oftentimes the first defense to clients. So oftentimes when clients reach out, they're going to be the first to talk to the clients and get a sense of what they're looking for, get a sense of how they think about SEO, get a sense of how they're spending for SEO and how their teams are working, their digital, their content, all those different teams are working together to be able to bring SEO and integrate it. Try to figure out what they doing, how they're doing it, and how you can take that information and integrate it back into how you sell, how you talk to clients, those types of things.

Also talk to your consultants. They spend a great deal of time working with each of the clients that you have to have a deep understanding of their needs, what their business goals are, what the biggest opportunities are, and where the biggest flaws or weaknesses or challenges are within the organization. Talk to them and try to get a sense of where the common threads are across most of your clients.

Also, once you have a relationship with a client and your interests are aligned, reach out to them. Take them out to lunch and see how they're doing. Get a sense of what's going on in their organization, how they talk about SEO internally, how they spend on SEO internally. Is SEO at the table when everybody is discussing content strategy, technical and all these different things?

Also reach out to other companies in your industry. I think one of the things that I love most about the SEO community is the fact that it is just that. It's such a great community of people. Even if you have a competitor that you may compete against for business, they still may be a great resource for you to go out and chat and see what's worked well for them and what hasn't worked well for them and see what the commonalities are there.

Also make sure that you're following what's going on in the industry. Making sure that you are either putting on events or attending events is a great way to see what are some common topics that are coming up quite frequently. Take a look at the trends and the commonalities there.

Also take a look at the talent and the people that are coming up within the industry and the things that they're talking about, the things that they're passionate about, and the things working for them. That's a great way to keep a pulse on the industry.

Also take a look at emerging technology. There are some pretty impressive startups and impressive technology companies, like SEOmoz, Conductor, and all these different companies who are creating technology that allows SEO agencies and businesses to scale and be efficient within their organization. Take a look at those emerging technologies and see how you can utilize those as a business to take your business to the next level.

One big thing that we talk a lot about at Distilled is how we can continue to tinker and test ideas. This is really important because sometimes you won't have enough knowledge. You don't know what you don't know. We encourage and recommend all of our consultants to continuously test and continuously tinker with things and figure out some interesting things that are working and not working. Oftentimes there is no way that we can plan for those types of knowledge gaps that we get there.

I also want to discuss really quickly what's worked well for us here at Distilled is our value are set up as "Discover, Implement and Learn." That's really given us a nice framework to be able to make sure that we're constantly testing things, we're constantly putting things out there, we're constantly figuring out what works and what doesn't work, and we're integrating that back into the solutions that we're providing our clients. That's been quite nice.

Next, you as an organization figure out whether or not you want to specialize or whether or not you want to be a comprehensive business, whether or not you want to provide a specific solution, such as integrating SEO with PR, or whether or not you want to be a full-fledged agency where you're providing digital solutions from a technology standpoint, to content creation, to outreach, to digital PR. Really figure out what your niche is going to be. Even if you do choose to specialize, don't think that you can't take on other types of work. It just helps customers understand what your value proposition is and what they can expect when they come to you. You can always show them other things that you're capable of providing, but I think having that starting point can be really beneficial.

Here is a checklist that I put together of when you're looking to assess your business and figure out, "All right, where are my strengths? Where are my weaknesses? Where can I make improvements?" Start to look at if you were to make certain decisions within your business, what are the different risks and rewards that you would get out of making certain decisions and try to forecast a little bit. Try to take a look at some of the data that you've accumulated over time and think, "If I were to make this decision for my business today, what are some of the things that I can anticipate?"

Also, it's important to take a look at your current strategy to see what's working and what's not working and continue to improvise upon that. Reevaluate that strategy and figure out what's working and what's not working.

Also, I think it's important to have a good balance between aspirational and pragmatic. Take a look at the things that you as a business can accomplish in the short term, given the resources that you guys have, and how you need to think about achieving some of your long-term goals and being realistic. Figure out ways you can get that kind of minimal viable product out there. Figure out what's working and what's not working and continue to innovate on top of that. That can be really beneficial as well.

Also evaluate your company mission, vision, and values. I know a lot of companies are taking a look at the values and making a lot of their decisions based on their values. So making sure that with where your company is at and where your business is at that those things still apply. Those things can be really powerful drivers for why somebody would want to come work for you, why somebody would continue to stay working for you, and the purpose they get out of the job they have. Just make sure that you're constantly looking at and evaluate that.

I also think it's important to take a look at the client mix. Take a look at the percentage of clients that are currently on a project basis versus a retain basis. These types of things can influence cash position and cash flow within your organization, and looking for ways to either drive up the amount of retained clients that you have or figuring out just really beneficial projects that you can take on that are either going to drive the knowledge gap forward or drive the cash flow position forward. Just make sure that the types of projects that you are bringing on are helping you achieve your goals.

Take a look at your company and your employees, and take a look at their strengths and weaknesses. I think being pragmatic about that as well can be very beneficial, especially when you start to reach critical mass at your company. You go from 10 employees to 50 employees, 50 employees to 100 employees, and the dynamic of your company starts to shift, and you get a very eclectic group of people that end up coming in that all have different strengths and talents, and they get very passionate about different things. Understanding the dynamics that those play and what works well with one another can be really important for you to understand when making these types of business decisions.

It's also important to understand as a company your tolerance for risk. You can have all the aspirations in the world, but if your company hesitates to make certain types of decisions and you don't feel like it's a decision that you can fully make and commit to, it may be good to reevaluate whether or not that decision is something that you should look to make further down the line or what type of infrastructure or what things you would need to be able to make that decision sooner. Just being realistic about the tolerance levels that you have at your organization.

Take a look at how you currently make money. At different companies we love the places we work, and ultimately we have to be able to figure out ways to be able to make money. Taking a look at where your big drivers for cash are and how those are marking your company money can be really beneficial.

Future aspirations. We all want to have goals. We all want to work toward something that's going to create purpose for us, that's going to help us get to where we want to be, and we want to make sure they're big enough to where it's not easy for us to attain in the short term, but it's something that we can all believe in and work towards as a company. I think figuring out what your future aspirations are, both at a company level and at an employee level, can be very, very powerful.

Last, but not least, if you're looking to make investments in your organization, understanding the types of investments that you can and cannot make now based on your current cash flow position or whether or not you have access to capital and just understanding the dynamics between that can help determine how quickly you can make certain decisions or what types of clients you're going to have to bring on before you can make those types of decisions.

I know I've provided you with a lot of information today, but ultimately I wanted to help give you a framework and a checklist for you, the business owner or the agency, to take a step back and to evaluate your company, to evaluate your employees, to evaluate all the things that make you great, and to evaluate the areas where you need to make improvements and get to where you want to be. I think once you have a deeper understanding of all this, it will help you make business decisions, it will help you communicate those decisions to the employees there, and it can help empower people at your organization to do some pretty incredible things.

So get out there, keep building."


Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

viral google bloging trends marketing

Freitag, 10. Mai 2013

Namco Bandai reports five-year high profits

The top sellers in the content division, including 'Tekken Tag Tournament 2,' ' Soulcalibur V,' and the western release of 'Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm,' helped push Namco Bandai far into the black this fiscal year.google bloging trends marketing news

DT Deals: Burn, convert, backup media with Nero 11

Managing media can get overwhelming when you have a crapload of files. Today's DT Deals is huge savings on the Windows software Nero 11 to help you backup and burn your files with ease.news Traffic viral google bloging

The Secret Recipe for Viral Content Marketing Success

Posted by KelseyLibertThis post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
Let's assume you know the basics: content marketing is one of the best ways to engage with audiences and potential customers online. It is useful for improving search rankings, increasing brand engagement and loyalty, increasing brand visibility, and encouraging social sharing and interaction. If you are a consumer-facing company in this day and age, you simply cannot keep up with the competition if you are not actively building your content marketing skill set. 

Easier said than done though, right? You’ve probably dabbled in content marketing before, or maybe even hired a “top agency.” Maybe you have even seen some results; a few links here, a few hundred shares there, but then what? Certainly no fireworks, no massive ranking improvements, and no lead or sale increases. Maybe it wasn’t the panacea you’d hoped it might be. Short on time and money, you probably gave up and reinvested your money into tried and true marketing practices that could at least drive a few conversions. You chalked content marketing up to something too expensive or too difficult to find any real success with.

If any of this resonates with you, you are most definitely not alone. Doing content marketing properly is no easy task, and to beginners it can seem to be next to impossible to create anything that will stand out and get noticed. Add to that the explosion of agencies who claim to be gurus and deliver tragically poor results, and the whole “content marketing” arena can start to feel like a convoluted mess that can’t deliver on its promises.

So, what do you do? Other tactics are losing efficacy, your site is losing rankings, you can’t get social engagement for the life of you, and your frustration level is at an all-time high.



You go back to the beginning, and you relearn the truth about what it takes to come up with content that works: content that shows what content marketing can really do for your business. Content marketing that can transform a company overnight.



When content goes viral: The example above shows a near 10 fold increase in our client's organic search traffic (from Google alone) after a single successful viral campaign. The big spike in the beginning of December marks the launch of the campaign.

Step 1: Understanding the truth about your competition

You may assume when you first begin that your only competition are your business competitors, the companies online that fight for the same search phrases, or sell the same products or services. When it comes to content marketing, these businesses are only the beginning. What you must remember is that when creating content, you are fighting for attention against EVERYONE; all content creators, not just businesses. Your content must stand its ground against those who are creating content for entirely non-commercial reasons. This means that when coming up with your campaigns, you must not only do better than your competitors, but you must do better than almost everyone talking about your subject area.

Step 2: Engagement is good, but viral is better

In content marketing, going the incremental route can be an effective way to go. Loyal audiences can be built by creating a great deal of relevant, useful, but not particularly viral content. Through persistence and often grueling content creation schedule it is possible to find a positive ROI over the long term. If you have the capacity to pump out 5-7 thoughtful and moderately useful pieces of content weekly, eventually you will likely see good results. However, as Rand Fishkin said, you have to "be willing to fail for a long time.” 



In fact, for companies that can afford it, this can be an essential piece of the content marketing pie, and it is often something we recommend to our clients who have longer timelines. But this style of content marketing will not change your business in the short term. It can take years of consistent effort to see substantial improvements in rankings and in audience growth.

What if you don’t have years; don’t have the time, energy, or budgets to create compelling content on a regular basis; or simply need to build an audience fast? The answer is this: you must create something viral; content that can spread in a way that creates massive attention. Content that will boost you above the writhing masses, and make others take notice.

Below, you can see our viral content marketing campaign results, which impacted our client’s 271% organic traffic increase. It's important to note that these results were generated by a single outreach placement on Buzzfeed.com, with a nofollow link.



Step 3: Understanding what it means to “go viral"

If you have done any reading on viral marketing, you have probably come across attempts at formulas for describing virality, but none that have made it very concrete beyond the understanding that to go viral means to have a high level of visibility. The truth is that virality and the act of going viral isn’t really all that complex. Having something “go viral” relies on having specific values for three important variables. These variables include:

Viral coefficient: the total number of new viewers generated by one existing viewer. As content creators this is the number you should be most concerned with, it is basically a “score” of how shareable your content truly is.

 

Viral cycle time: the amount of time it takes before all these new users have been generated by a single initial viewer. In content marketing, the viral cycle Time can be thought of as the amount of time it would take for a viewer who had a piece of content shared with them to view the content and then decide whether or not to share it themselves. The viral cycle time for sharing content is usually no longer than 1-2 days, though in some special circumstances, it can be longer. For the purposes of our discussion here, we will define the viral cycle time as one day. 

 

Total available market: the number of people online who might be interested in sharing your content. For broad-appeal type pieces, this number could be in the hundreds of millions. For niche content, this could be as low as several hundred or several thousand people. 

 

I’ve adapted a spreadsheet that looks at how these factors actually influence the anatomy and eventual success or failure of a piece of content. The bones of this spreadsheet were originally created by Mark Devisser. Feel free to make a copy of this document and play around with the three variables mentioned above. As a note, you will likely notice some key aspects of virality just from playing with this including:


True virality along with the telltale “hockey stick” graph can not be created without a viral coefficient of greater than "1." The higher the coefficient, the faster the spread of the content and also the sooner and more abrupt the hockey stick you will see on the graph.

The size of the initial seed is important for the length of time from the initial publishing it takes for virality (hockey stick) to happen. The larger the initial seed, the sooner you will see a potential viral effect, assuming the coefficient is still greater than 1.

Extending the cycle time will extend the length of time it takes to see a viral effect (hockey stick) Fortunately, with web based content, the cycle time happens extremely quickly thanks to social channels and the nature of digital content. If you were measuring the virality of say a snail mail chain letter, the cycle time would be on the order of weeks, and creating virality would take much longer assuming a viral coefficient greater than 1.

The size of the Total Available Market has an enormous bearing on the total number of cumulative views. This makes it extremely important to think about your target audience during idea development. If you want a viral smash, you must have content that appeals to the masses (more on this later).


Step 4: Creating content with a viral coefficient above 1

So, understanding what virality is great, and understanding the levers for virality is even better, but how does this translate specifically to content? How do you take the ideas we just learned and make them work for you in your content marketing efforts?



To begin, the first, most important, and most difficult step is to create a piece of content that you think will likely have a viral coefficient greater than 1. When it ultimately comes down to it, there is no perfect way to gauge whether or not a particular piece of content will have a viral coefficient above 1. Ultimately, you won’t know until your content gets out onto the Internet. However, by exploring the top-level qualities that exist within most viral content with a coefficient above 1, it is possible to give yourself a much higher probability of viral success.

Strong emotional drivers

Put simply, emotions drive almost all behavior. When an emotion is triggered in your brain, your nervous system responds by creating a subjective experience (feelings). A great deal of your decisions are informed by your emotional responses because that is what emotions are designed to do: to appraise and summarize an experience and inform your actions. The stronger the feeling, the more likely to spur a responsive action.

When it comes to sharing online, the potential actions related to emotional activation are relatively simple. Essentially there are four options for your typical content consumer when approaching a new piece of content.


Engage or disengage

Share or don’t share


In order for a content consumer to share, they must engage first with the content, and then make the decision to share that content. These actions are mediated entirely by emotions. Many brain researchers and scientists agree that emotion of interest is continually present in the normal mind under normal conditions, and it is the central motivation for engagement in creative and constructive endeavors and for the sense of well-being. Interest and its interaction with other emotions account for selective attention, which in turn influences all other mental processes. Thus, in order to get someone to engage with your content, it must first and foremost pique interest. It is for this reason that titles are so massively important. Without a title that piques interest beyond an undefined threshold, there will be no engagement.

Assuming you’ve piqued your readers interest with an interesting title and have passed the first stage, your content must now convince the reader to share. The decision making process for this, as defined by prominent psychologist Richard Lazarus is as follows:


Cognitive appraisal: The individual assesses the event cognitively, which cues the emotion.

Physiological changes: The cognitive reaction starts biological changes such as increased heart rate or pituitary adrenal response.

Action: The individual feels the emotion and chooses how to react (or not).


If the cognitive appraisal spurs a strong enough emotion, and resultantly large physiological change, the probability of action is increased. In the case of sharing content, if the cognitive appraisal cues a strong enough emotion and resultant physiological response to overcome factors that antagonize sharing the reader will share the content.

So, how do we create strong emotional drivers in our content?

In the fast paced online environment, you will only ever have a short amount of time to get the attention of a viewer. Your goal should be to capture the attention of a viewer, and then engage them emotionally as quickly as possible. The faster and more deeply you are able to engage their emotions, the more likely the viewer is to invest themselves enough in the content to share it. Let’s by addressing speed:

The speed of emotional activation

If you are not able to convey the emotionally impactful aspects of your content quickly, you are probably dead in the water. Highly viral content will communicate its strong emotional impact within the first few seconds of viewing. It is for this reason that visual, easy-to-understand, and easy-to-consume content is generally the most viral. Take one look at viral kingmakers like Reddit.com and you will notice that 90% of the frontpage content are static images. This is also the reason behind the success of infographics (as well as image macros/memes, animated gifs and several other mediums). Visual, simplistic, easy-to-consume, infographics can make excellent viral content, but only if they can extend the benefit of their medium and illicit a strong emotional reaction as well. 

 

Which emotions should we engage?

Conceivably, almost any emotion, given that it is strong enough is possible as behaving as the primary driver of sharing. In practice, though, not all emotions are as effective in driving sharing behavior as others. Unfortunately, there have been very few studies on the types of emotions lead to sharing. Jonah Berger, a professor at Wharton, has done some preliminary research in this area by looking at the email sharing rates of New York Times articles. His findings are summarized as follows:

 

“The results indicate that positive content is more viral than negative content, but the relationship between emotion and social transmission is more complex than valence alone. Virality is partially driven by physiological arousal. Content that evokes high-arousal positive ( such as awe) or negative (anger or anxiety) emotions is more viral. Content that evokes low-arousal, or deactivating, emotions (e.g., sadness) is less viral. these results hold even when the authors control for how surprising, interesting, or practically useful content is (all of which are positively linked to virality), as well as external drivers of attention (e.g., how prominently content was featured). Experimental results further demonstrate the causal impact of specific emotion on transmission and illustrate that it is driven by the level of activation induced. taken together, these findings shed light on why people share content and how to design more effective viral marketing campaigns.”

 

While this is a great start in understanding the emotional drivers of sharing, it is a very incomplete understanding. In an effort to further detail the real emotional drivers, I sought to understand the emotional impact of content that better fit the criteria of most viral content (i.e. visual, easy-to-understand, and easy-to-consume content).

Exclusive Fractl research project: viral emotions 

*It is important to begin by noting here that the following experiment is not scientific or widely comprehensive. Despite this, there is a good deal of preliminary information that speaks to some of the most apparent aspects of the emotional drivers of viral content, and the takeaways found are likely quite valuable. Research of greater depth will likely bear out additional information and more granular insights.* (Raw Data)

I began by selecting a group of content that fit what I believed would be representative of the “best of the best” in viral content. To make sure I was comparing apples to apples, I decided only to use static images instead of written or multimedia content. Memes and inside jokes were also excluded as the factors that lead to them becoming viral can be non-emotional and more difficult to analyze or ascertain.

The source of the content I used came from the top 50 image posts of all time on reddit.com/r/pics, a community of 3.4 million plus content voters. I selected 25 images that I felt could stand alone, ones that required no previous knowledge to understand (Reddit tends to boost inside joke type content on occasion, so post that fit that profile were excluded).

I then had each image coded by 50 volunteers for the emotions that were elicited by each image as well as the strength of each emotion. The possible choices for the emotions included: 

Possible emotion choices



 

 





What we learned

The results from this informal survey on some of the web’s most viral visual content was actually quite amazing. Much of what we found mirrored the results found by Jonah Berger, but we also found some interesting additional takeaways. What we found was as follows:


Positive emotions were much more common than negative emotions (14 negative and 184 positive).

Certain specific emotions were extremely common, while others were extremely uncommon.

The strength of the emotional impact was a great indicator for the popularity of the content on Reddit. The top four most popular posts on Reddit also had the top four highest aggregate emotionality scores (sum of emotional strength score totals).




Interest, surprise, and amusement seemed to behave as emotional multipliers for positive emotions, and empathy seemed to act as an emotional multiplier for negative emotions. 12 of the 25 images had Amusement, Interest, and Surprise as 3 of their top emotions and all images had at least 1 of the 3 emotions (either Amusement, Interest, or Surprise).

Contrasting emotions seemed to be helpful in increasing emotional impact. In the cases where negative emotions were present, they seemed to directly contrast positive emotions, likely enhancing the emotionality of the image through this contrast. Additionally, empathy seems to be a common emotion found alongside popular content that evokes strong negative emotions.


Enhancing emotionality for higher virality

It’s clear that emotionally evocative content is essential in creating wide-reaching viral content, and that there are even some emotions that seem to work better than others toward this goal, but are there other ways to expand on emotionality for virality? In other words, how can emotionality be enhanced? 

Increasing emotional identification with the content

Make your content visual

On a whole, visual content is better at conveying emotionality and being understood quickly and easily. Therefore, images and video have a leg up against written form content. It is for this reason that image and video sharing dominates online. It is the reason the images and video dominate Reddit’s front page each day and the reason 40 of the top 50 posts of all time on Reddit are either images or videos. It is the reason we have all seen infographics, animated gifs, and image macros have become ubiquitous. As a general rule, visual content is simply more engaging.

 



Make your content interactive

Interactive content engages the viewer’s senses and attention in a more active way than simple static content. By creating an experience that your viewers must participate in, you necessarily enhance the impact. If there is an emotional angle to your interactive campaign, it can increase the emotional impact substantially. One excellent way we are seeing this happen recently is through the use of parallax treatments like these.

Make your content personalized

Customized or personalized content is, by its very nature, better at engaging viewers emotionally than non-personalized content. Emotions are more easily evoked when the user can actually SEE themselves in the content, instead of relying on empathy to put themselves in someone else’s shoes. Some standout emotionally compelling, personalized, content like this, illustrates just how incredibly viral emotionally driven, personalized, visual content can be. Have you ever created something with 12 million + Facebook likes? Try emotionally-driven, visual, personalized, interactive content, and you might just be able to.

Emotional stacking with lists

If you haven’t been paying attention to Buzzfeed.com lately, you should probably start. They have mastered the art of what I like to call “Emotional Stacking.” 

Definition: Lists of disparate visual content, linked thematically, into a list that is purposefully structured to build up a specific emotional response. 

 



 

This example, for instance illustrates the technique perfectly. A list based image post of the 45 “Most Powerful Images” of 2011. With each image adding to the emotional reaction of the user, by the time you get to the end, you have been worked up into such an emotional state that the desire to share feels almost visceral. 

 

Growing the viral coefficient - Beyond the emotions

While emotions generally play the largest role in determining the viral coefficient of a piece of content, there are other aspects that can contribute significantly to whether or not a that content is ultimately shared. Additional motivating factors can play a key role, specifically factors that convey some kind of social benefit or ego benefit.

The social benefits of sharing:

Social incentive/reward to share 


"Ingroup vs. Outgroup"


Content that makes the viewer feel exclusive, or in-the-know, or otherwise included can often work very well as a motivator for sharing. This ingroup vs. outgroup effect is one of the driving forces for the popularity of memes, by sharing the “inside joke” the sharer demonstrates that they are part of the ingroup.

 




"Altruistic"


Content that allows the sharer to feel that they are doing tangible good can often incentivize sharing and substantially increase the viral coefficient. This is especially true for content that has a strong emotional hook that creates strong feelings of empathy. This is just one excellent example of an altruism enhanced, emotionally-driven viral effect. 

 



 


"Self-identity/image bolstering"


When users share content on peer-facing communities like Facebook, they often make sharing decisions based on how the content will represent them to their peers. What is it that sharing that specific piece of content will convey about the sharer to their peers? Content that, when shared, would affirm the identity of the sharer will be more likely to be shared than content that won’t. This is one of the reasons why emotionally driven content that relates to hot-button social issues can often be extremely viral. 

 



 

We saw this exploited (in the best sense of the word) extensively by companies like OREO, with their pro LGBT rights campaigns over the last year. Sharing was incentivized because so many people felt compelled to position themselves on one side of the issue or the other, bolstering their own identity to themselves and their peers using the emotionally evocative image as a vehicle. 

 

Step 5: Decreasing viral cycle time

As I mentioned earlier, viral cycle time can be thought of as the period of time it takes for a viewer to share from the time they view the content. While a viral coefficient above 1 is needed for exponential viral growth, the timeline of this growth can be fast or it can be exceedingly slow. It is the viral cycle time that determines how quickly exponential growth will occur in content that has a viral coefficient above 1. It is in the best interest of the content creator to do everything they can to decrease the viral cycle time, to help achieve exponential viral growth in the shortest amount of time possible. So, what can be done to manipulate viral cycle time? To be precise, pretty much anything that can spur the sharer to consume the content faster and share the content faster. This includes, but is not limited to the following:

1. Decreasing consumption time

Conciseness of content is extremely important. The faster content can make its impact, the faster the potential cycle time. This is another reason why images tend to be so viral. They can be understood and shared at lightning speed. For instance a viral image may take only seconds to consume, whereas a long-form article, or long video may take many minutes or more to consume. The slower the consumption of the content, the slower the viral cycle time, and potentially the longer it would take for the content to go viral (assuming it has a viral coefficient above 1). The takeaway here is to do everything you can to make your content as concise as possible, so long as you are not sacrificing the impact of the content. Don’t make the mistake of sacrificing a 1+ viral coefficient for a faster cycle time, because without it, you won’t have any virality at all. 

 

2. Increasing ease and speed of sharing

Making your content simple and fast to share is absolutely essential for helping to increase viral cycle time. You should do everything you can to include sharing tools for the most popular social sharing sites (Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, Email, and Reddit) at the very least. You should also make sure that sharing is set up properly to share a compelling default title and text. 

 

Step 6: The limitations of virality and the importance of audience. 

I’ve discussed generalities about the importance of emotional activation in viral content, but creating successful viral content can often be a bit more nuanced than simply creating something that will strongly engage viewers’ emotions. It is also incredibly important to do your best to make sure that your content is well suited for the audience you hope to target.

Now, if you are simply trying to create something massively viral, and you don’t really care about any connection or tie-in to your company or brand, your opportunities for topic ideas are nearly limitless. In practice, though, this isn't often the case. The goal is usually to create viral content that in some way ties in with the offering of the company creating the content. In this case, it is essential to carefully define a target audience for your prospective content, even before coming up with ideas. The reception of the content you create within this segmented target audience is what will determine whether or not your content will become viral.

The considerations that you may want to make are multiple, and a future blog post will cover this topic in more depth, but in general, it is important to consider the following aspects of your audience in order to determine the potential reception of any viral concept you are considering creating.


What types of content does your target audience like to consume?

What specific topics tend to be discussed within this community, and specifically, what topics are held as important by this community?

What topics are controversial? What gets this community riled up?

What is the general Zeitgeist of the community you are targeting? What are their commonly held opinions on social and political topics?

Who are their heroes and villains?

Who are their niche celebrities?

What is their unique history? Their legends and fables?

What sorts of emotions typically are expressed by your target audience?


Failing to understand your audience can spell failure. If you are unable to understand them enough to know how to push their emotional buttons, and which ones to push, you will have a high likelihood of turning them off from sharing.

Step 7: Considerations for fractal virality

A fractal is the mathematical term use for a system of self-similar repeating patterns at different scales. In the context of viral marketing, it can be thought of as an apt descriptor for so called “viral expansion loops” which are created when content has functionality built into it that provides for users or viewers to extend or create new viral content based on or as a part of the original content. Generally, fractal content is user generated, either actively (the user actually does something) or passively (the user’s data is used, but they do nothing). Some examples of fractal content include:


Elfyourself.com

Fatbooth, Oldbooth, and other mobile apps

UGC photo or video contests like: crashthesuperbowl.com

Altruistic DIY concepts like Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” campaign


By giving users an opportunity to utilize their own creativity through personalization and user generated content, it is possible to create fractal sharing and massive exposure. Keep in mind that all of the emotional drivers discussed with viral content apply here as well, we’ve simply added an additional layer or step to expand virality. Some important aspects to consider when attempting to create fractal content include considering:


How can this idea be adapted, personalized, or altered while retaining the primary message?

How have you enabled creativity? Is the functionality conducive to ease of creation and creativity? 

How have you encouraged users to create compelling emotional content?

How do you plan on curating or controlling the content? Is there a potential for a negative reaction?


Conclusions

Viral and fractal content has the potential to reach and influence massive audiences, but in practice can be exceedingly difficult to create. By understanding your audience and the emotional drivers that motivate them, it is possible to increase your odds of success substantially. Through careful investigation of the elements of virality, in the future it will be possible to continue to improve the odds of success substantially. Here at Fractl, we aim to do just that. Keep an eye out for several new case studies that will help illustrate the points made here through real-life examples of emotionally driven viral and fractal content.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

marketing news Traffic viral google