Ensuring Client Collaboration Through Agile Marketing

Ensuring Client Collaboration Through Agile Marketing
http://bit.ly/RPM9or

Posted by Mackenzie Fogelson

I’m probably a little late for the agile marketing train. It’s only in the past few weeks that I’ve been reading everything I can about the concept, and I've been working to integrate some of the ideas I’ve discovered into our existing daily practices at my company, Mack Web Solutions; I can already see that it is going to be a very powerful approach for us. Agile has been such a huge part of my last few weeks that I'd like to share my newfound appreciation and takeaways, and hopefully you'll fall just as hard as I did for this wonderful practice. 

Agile marketing is not rocket science

Maybe I’m missing some hidden depths, but I think the simplicity of agile is the point. It’s meant to be extremely practical, easy to grasp, and begging for you to take it for a spin. Who doesn’t want a company that can adapt quickly to change, provide amazing experiences for their team and their clients, measure the results of their efforts with actual data, and efficiently create remarkable products?

When I first started reading about the concept, I realized that Mack Web was a natural fit for agile marketing. At our current size of four, we are inherently collaborative and can be extremely flexible with how we work. I can certainly see how it will play a significant role in shaping our company in the years and team members to come.

What the heck is it?â?¨

Simply put, agile marketing centers around the customer. It’s a small shift in focus and perspective, but it really does mean big changes for how you work with your team and your customers.

10 Principles of Agile Marketing

Based off the methods of agile software development, agile marketing pulls together a variety of different elements to create a sleek, flexible, data-driven approach to any project. There are a lot of technical aspects to it: shorter production cycles, continual testing, lots of analysis and feedback. But the underlying philosophy of the thing is, in a word: people.

Agile marketing forces you to break down the barriers that normally come with departments, systems, and processes. Instead of letting your processes drive (as I have now realized we are guilty of doing), the agile process is people-oriented, both internally and externally. It is the interaction among these people that contributes to success (which makes a lot more sense than asking that of a systematized process).

 

Agility in marketing centers on the understanding that clients and employees are people with different skill sets, different outlooks, and different limitations. Agile encourages groups to find a way to make differences work in a complementary (as opposed to adversarial) way, and then ground the process in the indisputable facts of solid data. All you’re left with is pure win.

Encouraging the individuals on your team to collaborate fosters creativity and communication, allowing them to deliver exceptional products, services, and valuable results each day. That collaboration, along with the transparency that true teamwork requires, is what makes agile successful.

See...Agility. Teamwork. They go together (except that there's no Denzel).

Being agile is using what you've gotâ?¨

The beauty of agile marketing is that it is, by definition, very adaptable. The entire intent is to enable you to run things smoothly and efficiently with the pieces you have in place.

That means that even adopting agile as a new method can be done with agility. Our company has long been process-driven because we got both results and peace of mind that way. But as we’ve grown more self-aware, we’ve realized that part of the reason our processes work is that we were subconsciously enacting some agile principles almost by default.

Now that we’ve come to this realization, we’re slowly transitioning our conscious process to match. This approach is working because, honestly, throwing all of our current systems out the window at once was very much a baby-bathwater situation. It’s also a great way to make sure that business tanks, that our clients feel insecure and unsatisfied, and that our office descends into chaos. Not good.

And definitely not agile.

So, slowly but surely, we’re using the principles of agile marketing as a filter for our internal processes: does this method actually work for all clients? For the individuals on our team? Does it allow us to easily change course mid-stream or does it put us between a rock and a hard place?

So far, so good.

Agile and your 'team'

With agile marketing, even the concept of your ‘team’ takes on a new meaning. For example, instead of maintaining the walls of separate departments like SEO, design, link building, social media, and content generation, everyone works together as a unified whole. And, not just your team, but with your client’s team as well. For us, this was extremely important.

My discovery of agile marketing came at a perfect time. As we transition our clients away from their traditional understanding of SEO, we’ve also started looking for new clients who understand that the work we do is demanding and goes beyond just keyword research and link building. To actually deliver real company stuff, help them build relationships in their online community, and work towards their business objectives, we rely on their involvement in the process.

Internally, we’ve established a highly collaborative environment; we thrive as a team. Our ideal clients embrace the spirit of participation and are willing to engage with us, to be active and responsive, and to grasp the magnitude of what it will take to succeed.

What we have found (and there’s no surprise here) is that in order to achieve results, the client has to be on board. We truly integrate ourselves into the client’s world. We learn everything there is to know about their company. We become familiar with their customers’ pain points and challenges. We solve issues that save them time and money. We can’t do this without complete participation from the client. For us, client collaboration is imperative for customer satisfaction and success. It’s also a fundamental principle of agile marketing.

How agile is helping to solve client collaboration challenges

â?¨Agile has helped us to solve a common problem that we were having when it came to things like ongoing implementation of our content and social media marketing efforts. At th

The Ultimate Guide to Content Planning

The Ultimate Guide to Content Planning
http://bit.ly/Nc0VJp

Posted by simonpenson

This 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.

A transition is in effect. The web is maturing and like any form of media that has gone before it that can mean only one thing: That content is now at the epicentre of audience creation once again.

The introduction of Penguin, as we know, is forcing every online business to re-examine how it ‘does’ online marketing and begin looking for ways to grow reputation, reach and visibility via content rather than the link building practices of old.

As Google turns up the algo to promote great content and social gives us all access to the social graph and the network effect it offers there has never been a better time to get your content game in shape and pull together a killer strategy for your brand.

I recently wrote a piece for another digital marketing site that goes into a little more detail around why content is coming to the fore and so for extra context it is certainly worth a read.

In addition to the above theory one thing we do know is that all forms of media before the web have followed the same basic evolution. It starts with obsession about the technology and the iteration of it to a place where the platform has mass media reach. The end game, and the thing that gives the platform longevity, is the content shared on it. Think print, TV and radio and this is true of all of them. We don't get excited about where a paper is printed any more. Instead its about the content that's printed on it.

The web is next and in this post I want to delve a little deeper into how to structure your own content planning to take advantage of this change and maximise the reach and impact of this change.

How to Plan

Stage one of any great content strategy is the plan. Without it you will fail. Without a clear roadmap of the kinds of content you need to produce, when and for whom you’ll quickly become an also-ran.

The question is how do you first understand what you should be creating and how can you structure your plan to cater for the various personas visiting your site?

Firstly you need to understand exactly WHO your audience is. Many people, especially when they start to become more comfortable with content strategies, often overlook this; and it's key to the whole process.

The point is all men and women are not the same. Obvious, right? Well we can all be guilty of treating our audience as the same person with the same ideals, needs and beliefs. Clearly this isn't the case and so it is important to segment your audience in a way that create two, three or four 'types' - all of which get to your product or service in different ways.

To explain this, and the planning process as a whole, I organised a round table catch up (an evening of beers) with some former colleagues of mine from the world of consumer magazines to pick their brains again on the best way to structure and execute your content plan

Their view, and mine, is always to ‘keep your reader as close to you as possible in every decision you make.’

That process must follow the same basic steps:

  1. Understand your Brand

You cannot begin to talk about personas or content ideas before you truly have your brand values down on paper. Many businesses skip this part but you MUST know exactly what you stand for, your tone of voice, political and social allegiances etc.

To do this you must first map the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. A simple SWOT analysis works well here as it lets you see easily where you might be able to steal a march and differentiate.

You can then align these strengths and opportunities to your brand values and begin to build a map of what you may want to ‘own’ from a content strategy perspective.

There are lots of tools out there to make this process easier too. SWOT analysis templates are available across the web while Moz's own TAGFEE core values can really help you structure your own mission statement and brand strategy. For those really interested in this area I can whole heartedly recommend spending time reading Michael Porter's work and strategies. His books make for great reading.

With this in place you can then move onto stage two…

  1. Understand your Audience

The plan to understand your reader is twofold; the first part is to create the ‘Typical Reader’. Here you should be specific and a great example may be:


Steve is 24 and drives a 2006 plate Range Rover Sport and he sees this as being the second most important thing in his life, after his fiancée!

He spends his time and money socialising, discussing sport, music and cars. He drinks Budweiser and occasionally a decent whiskey (as he thinks this is cool). He wears Ralph Lauren shirts but can’t afford to stretch his brand tastes further and so goes with generic jeans and shoes. To him brand is as important as the product, and it influences his buying behaviour.


The process of getting to this point is a post in its own right but the key point is to do your research well. Split it down into two specific parts:

1. Quantitative > Surveys via email and social work well for this. Ask general questions about your product or service so you can get a picture of where it sits in their lives and in their buying cycle. This can lead you to stage two, which is...

2. Qualitative > Customer focus groups, either in a pub or working with research companies and utilising controlled environments helps you to add 'colour' to the picture, enabling you to understand tone and emotive pointers etc.

From this you will usually be able to model your 'typical' client or customer, as above. You'll also be able to understand how to break the audience down into personas, each of which have more specific characteristics and ways of getting to, or interacting with what it is you are selling. For a step-by-step of using data to create them I recommend Mike King's excellent Keyword Level Demographics post.

The next step is then to nail your editorial proposition and to do this you must record your key USPs (things like ‘jargon free advice’ and ‘well written by people who understand the culture and fashions of the market’).

This is a relatively straightforward process and should get you to a point where you can easily sum up your editorial/content persona in the form of a famous person.

This is a really useful way of working as by agreeing that as a brand you are ‘John Wayne’, for instance, it becomes much easier to share tone of voice and attitude across a team, either in house or externally.

While this process is really useful to capture your core values we all know that in reality you have many different types of ‘reader’ and so the process of persona mapping is key to really ensuring your content appeals to your chosen audience.

The process of creating personas is a subject all of its own and this post cannot cover the entire process but several pieces here recently including this one and this one can help you segment your audience in a way that will help you when it comes to pulling together your content strategy.

Let’s assume then that you have followed those tips and have three or four tidy personas in place.

At this point you now have a really clear picture of who you are, your tone and editorial stance. You may even have drawn up an editorial guidelines document to steer the entire team in the same direction.

In short you are more prepared than a cub scout but structure is nothing without great ideas….

  1. Brainstorm Ideas

Ideas are

How To Get More Comments On Your Articles

How To Get More Comments On Your Articles
http://bit.ly/NakBNX

Posted by Jacob Klein

If you've spent any amount of time reading up on content creation, you've most likely seen a post or two with a similar title to this one. In my experience, these articles are typically littered with buzz-phrases such as "have a call to action" or "write compelling content" and consist of 30+ overlapping ways to do either of those things. While asking your readers to comment and creating comment-worthy content are certainly important concepts to understand, I'm going to assume you're already on-board and looking for something a bit more actionable.

Why are comments important?

The benefits of user generated content are obvious to most. Not only are you generating additional unique, (hopefully) on-topic content for your pages, comments may even contribute to your article's freshness score. While it's debatable whether the number of comments on a page is directly correlated with higher rankings, we all understand the value of having more fresh, relevant content on a page to say nothing of user engagement and community building.

No matter how in-depth your keyword research is, you'll never be able to naturally incorporate every iteration of a key phrase onto your landing page - and you wouldn't want to anyhow. With user generated comments, you're able to get some of those alternate queries (long-tail or otherwise) without having to shoehorn them into your on-page copy. Let me give you an example of this in action:

The highlighted text isn't actual copy from the page itself. It's from one of the comments towards the bottom of the page. Google has determined that this page is relevant to the query in part because of a comment that includes text that the webmaster hadn't even thought to include on the page. Would the page have ranked without the comment? Possibly. But to me, an example like this shows that Google clearly uses comments to help determine page relevance. In a competitive space where most competing pages look startlingly similar, you're going to need any edge you can get.

I'm sure you've all had the experience of landing on an article after searching for something only to "ctrl + F" your way to the comments section to find your answer. Content from users can provide real value, and this article will arm you with tips to help increase your user comments.

Actionables

Okay, so maybe you didn't need much convincing as to the importance of user generated content. You're here because you want to read something you haven't read before about getting users to comment on your posts. Over the last 10 years, I've founded several fan community pages covering such nerd-tastic staples as Magic the Gathering, Nintendo, and Game of Thrones (yes, ladies, I am that cool). While building these communities, I've picked up a few tricks for attracting article comments that I thought I'd share with the Moz community.

1. Make it as easy as possible to leave a comment

Does "website" really need to be a required field? Are your CAPTCHA images harder to solve than a Rubik's cube? Sometimes the effort it would take to comment on your blog outweighs the potential user benefits. Take a look at each field and ask yourself "is this a hoop I'd be willing to jump through to leave a comment on a blog I've never visited before?" Most users are wary about giving out an email address, so assure them that their data won't be used for anything other than unique identification or just let them login using Twitter of Facebook (more on that below). In the end, you should be mostly concerned with their username, email address (to distinguish their comments from others, gravatars etc), and the comment itself. Anything else is a barrier to entry that should be scrutinized and broken down wherever possible.

2. Comment placement

So many widgets, so little real estate. If I didn't know any better, I'd think that the end of a blog post is the hottest piece of property on the net these days. After you've pumped your full author bio, social buttons, "other articles you might like," opinion disclaimer, and multiple ad units, the comment section often ends up an entire page screen below the actual content. I know, I know, it's tough to demote any of these widgets because of course ad placement is important; of course, "related content" and extra pageviews are important, but if you're truly serious about getting the conversation going on your article, then you should consider giving the comment section a more prominent position on the page.

At the very least, give users an anchor jump at the end of the article that reads "Leave a Comment" or "Join the Conversation" and bumps them down to the appropriate level.

3. Social logins

If for whatever reason you simply must require users register for commenting (a rather large barrier to entry) consider allowing them to log in using the social media accounts they're already using. If you're running Wordpress, this can be done by installing one or two plugins of your choice. Simple Facebook Connect will get the job done and the Twitter version will do the same. If you're looking for a more comprehensive solution (all social networks), try Social Login. Social logins on custom CMS' obviously vary and can be achieved using OAuth and following the developer instructions from Facebook and Twitter. There's also the all inclusive Disqus comment system that you've probably already seen in use on many blogs.

Not only does this offer users a 1-click login option for commenting and other community activities around your site; this option also gives your users an automatic avatar and social identity. Comments coming from a person with a traceable identity are almost surely of higher quality than those coming from completely anonymous users. And hey, once they're logged in with Twitter or Facebook, it stands to reason that the chances of someone sharing your page on one of those networks increases considerably.

4. Profiles, Awards, and Rankings

You've probably used (or been used by) a piece of ego bait in a link building campaign and the same principles of human nature apply to community building. In-depth profiles, award systems, and commenter rankings are great ways to encourage your contributors to keep coming back for more. A simple database comment count for each individual is all that is required for deployment. Attach fun titles such as "Youngling," "Aspirant," or "Padawan" to these values and you'll not only please current commenters, but you'll also give readers a way to gauge that person's standing within the community.

Grab the Top Contributors plugin for Wordpress and show your top commenters some love. You could also display "X-Year Club" awards on user profiles or a "She's Over 9000aaaand!" badge for your most ambitious contributors. Anything you can do to give your loyal commenters a feeling of community and importance will encourage more comments.

5. Join

Tips for Filming Whiteboard Presentations

Tips for Filming Whiteboard Presentations
http://bit.ly/OHBuxl

Posted by Nick Sayers

Whiteboard presentations are a great way to easily communicate advanced ideas and engage your audience. Sure kid, but what isn’t so great is lighting for whiteboard presentations. No bulls-eyeing womp rats here. In fact, sometimes filming a presentation on a whiteboard can be like listening to a self-entitled princess micromanaging your ship. Needless to say, we get a lot of people writing in and asking about our WBF gear, so here it is!

(One caveat: I cannot take credit for the current WBF setup. The lighting was already professionally set up before I joined the Moz team.) Let's dive right in!

Lights

Lighting is the most important aspect of our setup. The mission of our lighting setup is threefold:

  1. Light the presenter
  2. Light the whiteboard
  3. Eiminate shadows

Sounds easy enough, right? Whoa! Don’t get ahead of yourself, kid. Too much light directly on the Whiteboard will create glare; too little light and the actor will cast a distracting shadow over their content. The best way to get even light is by using lights with softboxes.

whiteboard side lighting    Whiteboard friday lighting set up

Most people ask Rand what camera we use for WBF, but they really should be asking about our lighting setup. We use four lights with soft boxes. The camera is important, but you should spend most of your time on lighting. Just remember hokey cameras and ancient microphones are no match for a good lighting kit at your side, kid.

You can see what Moz's lighting setup looks like from my advanced and very technical schematics:

Whiteboard lighting presentation

We have two lights mounted about 3 feet above and 6-7 feet away from the whiteboard. Mounting the lights above and back will light your presenter as well as cast less shadows on the whiteboard. We have another two lights on the left and right side of the whiteboard to provide an even, fill light across the board, which should elimitate any left over shadows. You will have to test how far to stage your lights from the whiteboard based on any reflections or glares. I recently found that you get an even look if you place your lights in the bottom corner and the top corner on opposite sides. This can also reduce glare. Again, all of this takes some fine-tuning, so you will need to experiment until you find the perfect placement. But don’t get cocky, kid. 

Camera

I would suggest any prosumer camcorder (price ranges vary), but if you use your lights well, then you can go skimpy on the camera. At Moz, we have a pretty spendy Panasonic camera. If your latest smuggling runs aren’t producing enough to keep the Hutts off your back and you’re afraid to shoot first, then you can go for something a bit cheaper. 

whiteboard friday camera set up

The features you should look for in cameras include:

  1. Iris control
  2. A manual focus ring
  3. Zebra lines

Iris control will allow you to manually open or close the lens to regulate the brightness and darkness of the scene. A manual focus ring will let you set focus either to the whiteboard or the presenter. This is important because automatic focus functions get confused with expansive white spaces and can ruin your shots. The zebra lines will help you see what is overexposed or blown out. This is a great way to see if your iris is at the perfect spot. Always remember to practice with your camera because filming isn’t like dusting crops or moister farming.

Sound

Sound is fairly important for whiteboard presentations. I would say your sound quality is more significant than your video quality as people are more likely to turn off a video because of bad audio over subpar cinematography. For our sound recording, we use Sennheiser lavs, which are a bit pricey, but the price is well worth it for great audio.

You want sound that will isolate your presenter’s voice and eliminate background interference. Isolated sound is also a must if you have bantering protocol droid roaming around the office. Again, if you’re low on credits, just go cheaper with other brands likes Azden or Audio-Techina. Make sure your lavs have at least 2 frequencies to avoid interference from your hyperdrive (you wouldn’t want to warp into a sun or a supernova). If you want to get the lower-end lavs or microphones, you should look into some audio/video editing programs that let you clean up hums, noise, and interference. Use Audacity to accomplish some crisp audio, but don’t get any delusions of grandeur. There are some other great editing programs out there. 

Editing

We were using iMovie for WBF, but we recently switched to Adobe Premiere. The reason for the switch was to take advantage of the amazing color correction tools. This is essential in keeping the WB balanced and white instead of reddish, yellowish, or bluish. Use any robust editing program if you are having trouble with color temperature and you can’t seem to fix with lighting or camera settings. With practice, you can make that whiteboard look almost as sleek as the Millennium Falcon. 

whiteboard presentation color correction

Studio

If you want to regularly publish whiteboard content, then you should look into creating a studio. Make sure the room is at least 20’x20’ so you have enough room to experiment with different lighting schemes. Remember what I said about sound, kid? Well, you should probably put some sound deadening panels on the walls. Wait, won’t that make my converted studio ugly? Not so fast—there is such a thing as sound deadening wall art! Bet you didn’t see that one coming.

Host

Looking for an amazing host? Look no further, because Wistia has you covered. Wistia offers excellent compression options, comprehensive analytics, world-class customer service, and a blog that is more addictive than Coruscant death-sticks. Oh, and they also let you add your videos directly to a sitemap for excellent indexing opportunities. If that isn’t enough to get you signed up for Wistia, then maybe this will: if you are a PRO member, you get an awesome discount!

Transcriptions

Any Whiteboard Friday fan knows we have nifty transcriptions below each video. Not only are these great for the hard of hearing, they are also great for SEO. We use Speechpad because they have an easy upload process and their turnaround is amazingly fast. Don’t get any ideas; they’ve got nothing on the Falcon, but they can blow any Star Destroyer out of the sector.

Wolfram Alpha Shows You A Whole Lot Of Personalized Facebook Data

Wolfram Alpha Shows You A Whole Lot Of Personalized Facebook Data
http://bit.ly/SZAIhY

Wolfram Alpha announced the launch of a pretty cool new personal Facebook analytics tool. All you have to do is type “facebook report” into Wolfram Alpha. Just click the button that says “Analyze my Facebook data,” allow it to access your data, and bam. Tons of personalized data about your Facebook universe.

At least that’s how it’s supposed to work. For me, it’s just timing out. Perhaps too many people are trying to do it at the moment.

From there, Wolfram will give you your birthday, age (to the day), and your next birthday (how many months and days you have to go until your next one), your friends hometowns broken down by geography, your friends’ age distribution, the weather at your birth, zodiac signs, and all kinds of stuff.

“When you type “’facebook report’, Wolfram|Alpha generates a pretty seriously long report—almost a small book about you, with more than a dozen major chapters, broken into more than 60 sections, with all sorts of drill-downs, alternate views, etc.,” says Wolfram Alpha creator Stephen Wolfram.

Wolfram Facebook Analytics

It shows you your numbers for posted links, uploaded photos, status, uploadd videos, the weekly distribution of all of these updates, when your most active days and times are, your most liked post, a word cloud made from your posts, various analysis of check-ins, photos, responses to posts, gender distribution among your friends, distribution of your friends’ relationship statuses, how common specific names are among your friends, etc. Really, just a ridiculous amount of data.

“Of course most people haven’t been doing the kind of data collecting that I’ve been doing for the past couple of decades,” says Wolfram. “But these days a lot of people do have a rich source of data about themselves: their Facebook histories.”

This, perhaps even more than Facebook’s Timeline itself, really illustrates just how true that is.

WebProNews » Social Media

Following The Trend: Mozscape Gets Faster and Cleaner

Following The Trend: Mozscape Gets Faster and Cleaner
http://bit.ly/OCqlQ9

Posted by AndrewDumont

There's a trend emerging with Mozscape, and it's a good one. Updates are getting more regular and indexes are increasing in size (with exception to a few bumps in the road). Today, we're happy to announce a few more awesome features to add to that list!

A few weeks back, Rand announced the Mozscape API beta, and the Moz community came by the dozens to try it out. Thanks to that passionate group of beta testers, we nailed down some bugs and battle-tested the new API.

Now, it's ready for primetime.

Starting today, Mozscape just got a whole lot faster. It now supports 200 requests per second for everyone on paid levels -- that's a 20x increase from the current paid levels! This rate limit increase will allow users to pull Mozscape data as they please, with a lot less wait time in between requests. Even better, you don't need to change a thing on your end to utilize latest update as a paid Mozscape user - just keep calling. No new keys, no new code.

Free Mozscape users, we didn't forget about you! We've got a small rate limit increase coming your way in the coming weeks.

We're also rolling out a fresh update to the Mozscape API documentation. We've heard time and time again that the old documentation caused headaches for folks who have tried to integrate Mozscape data. That's a bummer, so we completely refreshed the structure of our API documentation to remove some of the pain that came with navigating through the docs. This update is also live as of today.

All of these updates tie directly back to the theme of progression with Mozscape. We've got some of our best people on the job, and some 18 million resources behind improving our data (if you know what I mean). Much more to come!

PS. If you've built something awesome with Mozscape, drop me a line or let us know in the comments. We may be sending some love your way soon.


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Playing Virgin Bingo

Playing Virgin Bingo
http://bit.ly/S1O7s5

Whilst live bingo has really been around for countless years, largely played by older people, on-line bingo is a brand-new sensation, having been offered since the mid 90's. Online bingo in the UK has actually come to be the most prominent kind in the last couple of years, as lots of individuals in the UK now have Net hookups and downtime which they can effortlessly take advantage of to play.

Existing estimations program that over 50,000 people play on-line bingo every year, and this number is raising every year. Online bingo has come to be so preferred that it is the top-rated fun activity in the UK for females under 25 years of age.

Virgin Bingo is of these on-line bingo websites that provides every thing to obtain individuals hooked into playing their bingo games online, instead of making the effort to go to the bingo halls.

Due to the attraction of online bingo with more vibrant females, if you check out a range of on-line bingo website you will likely locate the website aimed especially at this group, with pink backgrounds, adverts for horoscope services, and loads of images of women on display. A lot of the users are career women playing in their downtime, or mother's playing after their kids have gone to bed for the night.

Different researches have really disclosed that the more youthful generations are getting more and more involved in playing bingo, with between 75 % and 90 % of members of on-line bingo in the UK between 21 and 50 years old. Online bingo in the UK has actually come to be such a popular hobby, that people can average over #600 a year invested on buying bingo cards.

A few of the UK (and the globe's) biggest companies have cottoned-on to this fact, and have launched their very own online bingo games. Examples of this consist of Virgin, AOL and Yahoo!, who are all attempting to benefit from this prominent market. In overall, there are numerous hundred on-line bingo internet site that people in the UK can easily sign up with.

One of the vital explanations for online bingo's constant destination is its relatively economical costs. As you can easily play from the comfort of your very own room, you do not need to pay for transport anywhere, you can reduced meals and eat prices, and do not need to hire a baby sitter. You don't even need to get dressed up prior to you can effortlessly start playing! The greatest technique is to set yourself a day-to-day or regular rule, which will certainly aid you financial resources better, also check out online bingo reviews to find a site to suit you. If you think this can be an issue for you, a great deal of online bingo web sites will certainly actually do it for you, so you can easily not invest more than you prepare to in a solitary session.

An important thing to bear in mind if you play on-line bingo in the UK is that it is not something that you should certainly hide from your family members and pals. There is every opportunity that a couple of these individuals additionally play on-line bingo. If this holds true, then you can easily additionally synchronize an on-line bingo party evening, where you all get in the same games and dip into the exact same time. You can easily also established your very own private chat room so you can easily speak as you are playing. This is a wonderful method to correspond with your friends, have some fun together, and not invest extreme money.

Restructuring Your Website and How to Minimize Traffic Loss

Restructuring Your Website and How to Minimize Traffic Loss
http://bit.ly/Ozoz2j

Posted by Steven Macdonald

This 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.

In February 2011, a client I was working with ran global usability test in cooperation with Spotless Interactive in London, Hamburg and Oslo. One year later and the feedback from the usability tests are being implemented, which includes improvements to the booking engine, navigation menu, a url rewrite and a new home page.

With a total of 21 websites in 15 languages, launching a new global web structure without losing a significant portion of traffic was always going to be a difficult task. Especially as more than 50% of total visits are from search engines. This blog post will show you two examples of how to launch a new website:

  • Website 1 launches and loses 35% of organic traffic
  • Website 2 launches and loses 4% organic traffic

By following the process described below, you can feel confident in knowing your new website launch will be smooth.

Minimizing risk and measures we took

With the support of Norwegian inbound marketer Sverre Bech-Sjøthun, we were able to create a step-by-step plan to implement before, during and after the launch.

Before the launch

We started by setting up a project in Basecamp with the web developers and to ensure all stakeholders were aligned.

Having just recently upgraded to the newest version available of the CMS, we found that the steps taken to minimize the traffic loss during the website launch would also be a good time to address to increased crawl errors reported since the upgrade.

By upgrading the CMS for more than twenty websites, the number of crawl increased tenfold to more than 4,500 errors globally.

Example of errors reported for one of the sites

Crawl errors in webmaster tools

404 page visits increased during the same period

404 page errors

The first step was to approach each site separately and by using Xenu Link Sleuth we are able to reduce the number of broken links. We repeated this process for each of the sites. Across the entire web structure, fixing broken links was a lot of work and requires a dedicated person. Understanding the importance of addressing these issues is the only way it can be prioritized above everyday tasks.

We then started working on the URL mapping:

  • Using Open Site Explorer we ran a report for the top 500 linked to pages
  • Using Google Webmaster Tools we ran a report for the top 10 Links to Your Site
  • Using Microsoft Excel, we mapped out the site and new URL structure

301 redirects

Managing the top 500 linked to pages in a time consuming process but highly important when launching a new website. The process took half a day per website and was the most demanding of all steps taken.

Once the URLs were mapped, we then created an XML sitemap based on the live version of the website.

The step-by-step process for launching the new website included:

  • Map URLs and redirects
  • Submit XML sitemap
  • Fix crawl errors in Webmaster Tools
  • Monitor web traffic in Google Analytics

During the Launch

Once the new site went live, the 301 redirects were implemented and the XML sitemap submitted to Google Webmaster Tools. Traffic was monitored in Google Analytics and errors monitored in SEOmoz.

How to launch a new website redesign

The following illustrates how one team gave SEO a high priority and how another team didn’t. Here are the results.

Website 1

You will always run into problems that you did not see when launching a new website. The process plan was created and all stakeholders were aligned. However, as a team we did not execute the plan when launching this website and implementing correct redirects and on-site SEO were not prioritized.

The day we went live with website 1 (14th June, 2012):

  • No XML sitemap was added to webmaster tools
  • Not all 301 redirects were implemented (more than 50% missing)
  • 302s pages were sending traffic to a soft 404 page (not a 404 HTTP status)
  • Missing meta tags including page titles and meta descriptions causing duplicate content

One issue was that 50% of the redirects were not implemented. The issue being we did not know which 50%. Using SEO automatic bulk URL checker we manually checked each URL and HTTP status code. A second issue was that Google was indexing the test server resulting in duplicate content - more than 276 pages were indexed.

By not implementing the process plan, we lost a lot of organic traffic. In fact, organic brand traffic decreased by 45% compared with the previous week and year on year organic traffic was down by 49%.

Organic traffic is now down -34% comparing the previous month (easy to identify the launch date)

Organic traffic site 1

Impressions down -18% comparing the previous month

Impressions site 1

Website 1 is the client’s most visited website within the global web structure. The above charts from Google Analytics have been seen by senior management and addressing these issues has now been prioritized. It’s not too late, but there is no doubt that by losing 34% of organic traffic a considerable amount of sales have also been lost.

We are now in the process of updating XML sitemaps, implementing any outstanding redirects and fixing crawl errors on site.

Website 2

For website 2, we had a lot more control and I was allowed to be hands on with the process.

The day we went live with website 2 (26th June, 2012):

  • Uploaded the XML sitemap immediately after launch
  • Mapped out all URLs of the site, which included a URL rewrite with user-friendly URLs
  • 301 redirects were implemented and tested
  • Monitored the web traffic for both referrals and organic traffic

Once live, I blogged about the new launch, tweeted the launch to more than 2,000 followers, informed all stakeholders internally and had the news published on the company intranet. The day following the launch, we sent out a newsletter to 1,600 subscribers that included a tip to "check out the newly launched website!". The tip can also be found in my email signature.

Organic traffic is now down -4% comparing the previous month (barely visible)

Organic traffic site 2

Impression share trend continues as before

Impressions site 2

Here is a list of actions taken for the website 2 launch.

Actions summary:

  • Create report of top 500 linked to pages from Open Site Explorer
  • Map URLs from old site to new site with redirects
  • When launching new site, implement redirects
  • Submit XML sitemap to webmaster tools
  • Test new top 20 linked to pages for correct 301 implementation
  • Attract new site links through blogging and social media shares
  • Send out newsletter and inform customer base
  • Promote launch in company email signature
  • Monitor traffic in google analytics
  • Monitor and fix crawl errors in webmaster tools
  • Submit new XML sitemap (two weeks post launch)

Concluding summary

With the website 1, we only followed the 50% of t

Google Is Getting A Lot Bigger In Brazil

Google Is Getting A Lot Bigger In Brazil
http://bit.ly/SNvQhf

It wasn’t that long ago that Google ruled social media in Brazil with Orkut. Recently, Facebook overtook Orkut in the country, and dominated the landscape there like it does in most places.

Don’t count Google out just yet, however. New data from Experian Marketing Services shows some pretty impressive growth for Google+ in Brazil. According to the firm, Google+ saw a 5,750% increase in market share of visits (to all sites) between July 2011 and July 2012. In the UK, Google+ saw 476% increase.

Instagram and Pinterest are he major stars of the firm’s new report. In North America, Pinterest grew 5,124% and Instagram grew 17,319% between July 2011 and July 2012.

Take a look at this chart showing growth of the two networks in key countries:

Instagram and Pinterest growth

Bill Tancer, Head of Global Research at Experian, commented: “The growth of both Instagram and Pinterest over the past year has been phenomenal. The reason for their success is that they haven’t tried to be ‘another Facebook’ to reach consumers. Both networks are image based which people love – we all relate better to pictures than just words.”

“For brands that are retailers for example, a site like Pinterest presents a fantastic opportunity to promote products in a compelling and organized way to a wide group of people across the world,” added Tancer. “Over the next 12 months, we expect to see a proliferation of niche social networks. Offering deeper functionality combined with a lower technical barrier to entry will mean new leaders in social media being created in a matter of days versus weeks and months.”

Here are the other highlights of Experian’s research:

Experian Highlights

As far as Pinterest is concerned, we can probably expect to see a great deal more growth as the service is now available to users without an invitation, it now has mobile apps, and it is expanding into more languages.

WebProNews » Social Media

Growing Your Audience with Random Affinities

Growing Your Audience with Random Affinities
http://bit.ly/QsmeI5

Posted by wrttnwrd

Most of us don’t get to choose what we write about. Your new client makes pollen-resistant underwear? Congratulations. You’re now an author specializing in allergen-repelling undergarments.

This setup sounds pretty funny until you have to write 15 blog posts per month for PollenProof™’s new marketing campaign. The idea well runs dry pretty quick. How do you keep your interest peaked and idea generator fresh? Random affinities to the rescue!

Random affinities

This term is 100% made up by me with a lot of help from some colleagues. I’m not so worried about protecting it – just beware that if you decide to use it and get laughed out of the room, your only reference is a sweaty, pale marketing guy who spends his spare time training his cats to play fetch.

Two topics have ‘random affinity’ if they are connected only by a common audience. For example: the fact that I like cycling may mean I’m four times more likely to watch "Adventure Time." There’s no subject connection between cycling and "Adventure Time" - Jake and Finn never ride a bicycle. The only connection is the fact that an unusual number of people are interested in both.

indirect affinities

A few other (potential) examples:

  • Cyclists are more likely to own tablet computers.
  • Cyclists worry more about skin cancer and skin protection.
  • People who belong to a PTA or PTO are more likely to be aquarium or zoo members.
  • People who attend boat shows are more likely to watch extreme sports on TV.

Don’t overthink it. Two ideas + no obvious connection except audience = random affinity.

So what?

This is the part where you say: So what, Ian? You writing a new book or something? Why are you wasting my time with all this fake academic marketing crapola?

The answer is this: random affinities are another way to attract and keep your long tail audience. I don’t buy a bicycle every month (not for lack of trying). I buy one every few years. You can try to catch my attention at just the right time for a bike purchase. But you’ve got a better chance of selling to me if you catch and hold my attention throughout my bicycle buying dry spell. You can do that by speaking to the random affinity topics I like. I’m over 30, plus I sunburn under full spectrum lighting, so skin protection is pretty important to me when I ride. I own a tablet computer, as well. And, if you occasionally talk about "Adventure Time," there’s no question that I will remember your company when I head for the local bike shop for my next toy.

Use ‘em right, and random affinities can increase your likelihood of:

  • Building rapport with potential customers
  • Helping folks remember you
  • Giving you something to write about besides pollen-proof skivvies

Company and sanity savers. They’re dang handy.

Finding random affinities

Way back before the Internet, when I lived in a rolled-up newspaper and got paid in fish heads, we found random affinities by a) guessing, or b) interviewing random people and hoping they weren’t screwing with us. Times were tough.

With the Internet, tools are abound. You can’t click a link without knocking one over. Here are a few of my favorites for finding random affinities:

First, use your brain. This is marketing. After conducting all the math and pretending we can computerize it all, it’s still about looking at the product, looking at the audience, and seeing the connections. Don’t treat these tools as automatic marketing machines. If you come crying to me because you got fired after you tried to sell granola bars with articles about camel spiders, I’ll just laugh. And probably write about you.

Facebook Ads are my #1 source. Sign into Facebook, then select Create An Ad. It doesn’t matter what your first ad is about; you’re just using it as a tester. Then, scroll down to ‘Precise Interests.’ Start typing, and pick the interest that makes the most sense. You’ll see a list of suggested likes and interests:

facebook precise interests

Explore to your heart’s content. Keep in mind that Facebook might not always help your exploration, so be sure to keep it creative. I once searched for "yurts" and found nothing. That’s OK, keep searching! Moving on to the next tool...

Amazon.com is a freaking gold mine. Go search for the top books on your topic. Then scroll down to "Customers who bought this item also bought." It saved me when I was yurt-hunting. Apparently a lot of yurt shoppers also care about composting, ergonomic furniture, getaways, and my favorite, alpacas:

amazon

There are some loose semantic connections here, but if you’re yurt-impaired like I was, these are great new topics. I’m not sure many people would make the connection between yurts and ergo furniture. And while I might picture alpacas frolicking about my yurt, I wouldn’t have considered them potential topics.

Google suggest can sometimes help you connect unexpected subjects that are linked by audience questions. I could write a lot of articles about this one:

google suggest

Though I have to admit, the question alone pushes yurts down on the list of Future Places Ian Might Live. **Shudder.**

Reddit is fantastic. Take a look at the subreddits for any topic:

reddit

I never would’ve thought of Burning Man. Or Occupy Wall Street, for that matter. These aren’t really random affinities, but the search sure helped me come up with more material. And, I can now search Burning Man random affinities to find even more to write about. Evaporative air conditioners, anyone?

If your site, or any other relevant site, or any of the sites dealing with any of the random affinities you found get a decent amount of traffic, the DoubleClick Ad Planner can help you find even more. I searched the Burning Man web site in the Ad Planner and found some pretty useful stuff. First, and article or three about photo sharing and photography might be worth testing:

Ad planner

It’s possible yurt fans look for concerts more than the average person, too:

Ad planner

I’ll see what I can dig up about musical interests for my audience and test a few articles about best soundtracks for life in a yurt.

If you’re not saying what the hell, you’re not doing it right

Alpacas? Concerts? Desert events where visitors sunburn their unmentionables? It all seems… random. Right? Exactly. Truth is that the yurts example is a little bit on the fringes of the mainstream consumer audience. Try bigger B2B and B2C topics and you’ll get even better, harder-to-find random affinities.

Is it working? Getting buy-in from the boss

Your boss doesn’t care about your creative genius. She’ll just want to see the money. Or the stuff that’ll turn into money. So make sure you look at the data. I wrote a piece about Dungeons and Dragons and marketing, way back when. Affinities don’t get much more random. When it comes to short-term traffic, it sure worked:

imgimgimgimgimgGoogle Analytics traffic, daily view