What’s Now (TM) in Digital Marketing for Monday, December 2, 2019 – Issue 2

Why My Friend Became a Grocery Store on Instagram 🌐

Instagram has helped blur the lines between personal branding and personal life — such as by encouraging people to turn their profiles into businesses. Instagram began testing hiding public like counts globally on November 14th 2019, after experimenting with the design tweak in several individual markets abroad. People who upload photos and videos will still know how many people liked them — that information just won’t be seen by other users. The experiment is part of a wider shift at social media companies, so far mostly a rhetorical one, away from the metrics it once told people had immense value. Like Instagram head Adam Mosseri, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has spoken out about the toxic consequences of overemphasizing statistics like follower and like counts. Twitter also released a beta version of its app earlier this year that puts less prominence on likes and retweets.

  Share to Facebook  |  Source:  Wired Magazine  🌐   |   Back:  To Top  ⇧
Tags:    instagram, like counts, business accounts, demetrication, insights

10 Free Keyword Research Tools (That Aren’t Google Keyword Planner) 🌐

Looking to find winning keywords to target but don’t have the budget for paid tools? One solution is to use a tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer that shows actual search volumes and tons of other SEO metrics. But what if you’re starting out and can’t justify paying for any SEO tools? Here is a breakdown of 10 free keyword tools to help kickstart your SEO with zero investment.

  Share to Facebook  |  Source:  ahrefs Blog  🌐   |   Back:  To Top  ⇧
Tags:    google keyword planner, keyword research, seo, tools, solutions, reports, insights

How to Use Images to Increase Search Visibility and Get More Clicks 🌐

Is your content ready for the increasingly visual results on search? As Google shifts emphasis to mobile search, visibility is crucial. More and more, search results feature an image along with the meta description. How can you use images to build organic visibility? Here is what you need to know.

  Share to Facebook  |  Source:  Content Marketing Institute  🌐   |   Back:  To Top  ⇧
Tags:    images, search, organic, visibility, seo, featured snippets, insights

Want to Buy Instagram Followers? Here’s What Happens When You Do 🌐

Everyone buys Instagram followers, it seems like. In August 2019, the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance ran a long list of famous people through an Instagram audit, and it turns out that everyone from Ellen to Taylor to Ariana has an outrageous percentage of fake Instagram followers — 49% fake, 46%, and 46%, respectively. The idea that you must have a certain number of followers to be taken seriously — especially as you get your brand up and running — has been floating around for years. Vanity metrics are all about appearances, after all. And we know how much work it takes to get real Instagram followers. Shortcuts can be tempting. But we wanted to test this particular shortcut out for ourselves.

  Share to Facebook  |  Source:  Hootsuite Blog  🌐   |   Back:  To Top  ⇧
Tags:    instagram, followers, insights

Driving Traffic but No Sales? Here’s How to Diagnose and Improve Your Store 🌐

In an online store’s early days, it’s not uncommon to draw hundreds, even thousands of visitors, but for some reason… no sales. Assuming you’re driving the right traffic, figuring out exactly what is stopping these potential customers from making a purchase can feel like solving a mystery with few clues. There are a number of factors that play a part in a customer’s decision to make a purchase, from details as small as the color of your “Buy Now” button to choices as big as the way you weave your brand story.

  Share to Facebook  |  Source:  Shopify Blog  🌐   |   Back:  To Top  ⇧
Tags:    ecommerce, online store, visitors, traffic, sales, shopping, experience, diagnosis

A 7-Point Plan for More Shareable Content 🌐

Content marketing is a beautiful thing — a great way to build an audience and grow your business. That’s if your content is actually getting found by the folks who might buy your product or service. Most of us would love to have more people reading, listening to, and watching our content. And one of the smartest things you can do for your content is to make it easier and more fun to share. Even better, as long as you’re starting with high-quality work, you can do it without spending a lot of time or money.

  Share to Facebook  |  Source:  CopyBlogger  🌐   |   Back:  To Top  ⇧
Tags:    content marketing, content marketing strategy, social media marketing, sharing

Creating Images that Accurately Represent Disabilities 🌐

In most stock marketplaces, Shutterstock included, images of people with disabilities are often inaccurately represented. It can be difficult for customers to source images that show an authentic approach to photographing people with disabilities. Images of people with disabilities in everyday situations can be difficult to come by. In most of what we see, images of people with disabilities are depicted in an “overcoming” sense of accomplishment, like people are in a constant battle to defeat the odds. With those images, people with disabilities are featured in superhero poses, and a “We can do it” attitude with no other emotions present. In the United States alone, 61 million adults are living with a disability. That’s 26% of the population. We need our marketplace to visually represent authentic lifestyle moments featuring people with disabilities. And together, we need to work with our photographers, videographers, and illustrators around the world to create and share more representative imagery.

  Share to Facebook  |  Source:  Shutterstock Blog  🌐   |   Back:  To Top  ⇧
Tags:    stock photography, disability, imagery, representation, insights

It’s Content and It’s Links – Are We Making SEO Too Complicated? 🌐

Content and links — to successfully leverage search as a marketing channel you need useful content and relevant links. Many experienced SEOs have run numerous tests and experiments to correlate backlinks with higher rankings, and Google has espoused the importance of “great content” for as long as I can remember. In fact, a Google employee straight up told us that content and links are two of the three (the other being RankBrain) most important ranking factors in its search algorithm. So why do we seem to overcomplicate SEO by chasing new trends and tactics, overreacting to fluctuations in rankings, and obsessing over the length of our title tags? SEO is simple — it’s content and it’s links.

  Share to Facebook  |  Source:  Moz Blog  🌐   |   Back:  To Top  ⇧
Tags:    seo, google, rankbrain, content, backlinks, insights