What We’re Reading: June 2016 Online Marketing Roundup
We talk a lot about how Internet marketing is a constantly evolving industry. New insights, tools and updates are always happening. Staying up-to-date is key for both JB Media agency teams serving clients and institute teams teaching students. We often share articles internally and discuss what we see happening across SEO, social media, content marketing, email, AdWords and online PR. Here are five things we’ve been following so you too can stay up-to-date on what’s happening in the world of online marketing:
Social Media
F8 Update: 10 New Facebook Features Every Marketer Should Know
Brian Peters of Buffer Social recently provided a great recap of Facebook’s annual conference and laid out the top ten announcements from the social media giant – specifically for marketers. Remember, you business owners who handle your own company promotion are marketers too! Brian’s article is chock-full of links to learn more about Facebook announcements including their 10 year plan:
In his Keynote, Mark Zuckerberg took us through Facebook’s 10 Year Plan with an emphasis on “developing a family of apps to share anything they want with anyone.” And although many of Facebook’s goals sounded highly ambitious, the company has already laid a solid foundation to successfully execute their plan. At the heart of it all, Zuckerberg’s message revolved around the connectivity of the planet and bringing people together one by one.
While there are a lot of other social platforms out there and new ones launching all the time, Facebook continues to be the main player for a lot of businesses and organizations, so staying aware of their announcements and plans is key for us.
5 Instagram Changes: What Marketers Need to Know
In March, the image-focused social platform announced a major change to their algorithm (following Facebook’s lead to help relevant content float to the top for users) that got a lot of attention. From a marketing perspective there were other changes to also be aware of. The Social Media Examiner summarizes five key updates. Instagram is placing more emphasis on video. Instagram now allows longer videos and offers options to include calls to action. This change indicates that Instagram clearly wants to serve professional and business users better.
Also, Instagram will eventually become like Facebook. If you want to reach your target audience, you may ultimately want to turn to Instagram ads, which you can easily create through the standard Facebook Ads Manager.
Coming Soon: Express Even More in 140 Characters
Twitter wants to see more imagery on its platform (Are you sensing a trend?). Recently on their blog they announced platform changes that will encourage users to post more pictures, GIFs and video.
So, you can already do a lot in a Tweet, but we want you to be able to do even more. In the coming months we’ll make changes to simplify Tweets including what counts toward your 140 characters, so for instance, @names in replies and media attachments (like photos, GIFs, videos, and polls) will no longer “use up” valuable characters.
While the changes are rolling out over time, it’s great to know in advance about these shifts when planning Internet marketing campaigns. We’re already planning more graphics for client Twitter campaigns this summer. Posts with imagery get more engagement on social media and Twitter is following suit by making it easier.
Noticing that all of these platforms make changes in response to one another? Yup, that’s the nature of the social beast and why staying up on all of them is important. A change on one platform likely means a change on another before too long.
SEO
Linking Internally and Externally from Your Site – Dangers, Opportunities, Risk and Reward – Whiteboard Friday
Moz’s Whiteboard Friday is a favorite among the JB Media team. Wizard of Moz Rand Fishkin and crew regularly deliver stellar information in a useful and entertaining way, and this edition is no exception. Linking building is something of a hot topic in SEO these days, in part because it’s hard, and in part because some of the old strategies that worked for years are now a one way ticket to a Google penalty. Rand breaks down the do’s and don’t’s of link building summing it up with this:
General rule of thumb: If you can’t find any way to justify how something that you’re doing for SEO also benefits a visitor, maybe you should reconsider it, with a few exceptions. XML sitemaps might be a reasonable one.
This one is a must watch (or read if you prefer, Moz always includes a transcript which has SEO benefits as well) for anyone who manages a website or writes content for websites.
Content Marketing
Great Content ≠ Long-Form Content
We’re not only big fans of Moz, but of Rand Fishkin as well who was kind enough to sit down with us for an interview last year to discuss choosing the right marketing channels for your business. In this short article on the Moz blog, he tackles the big question – how long should content be? Recently there has been a lot of talk in the content marketing world that longer is better. Well, Rand takes that idea head on and emphasizes exactly what we tell our students and clients — it’s not about how long the content is:
The right content:
- Serves visitors’ intent by answering their questions and helping them complete their goals
- Delivers an easy, pleasurable, accessible experience on every device and every browser
- Gets the right information and experience to visitors FAST
- Does all of the above better than any of the competitors in the space
This list doesn’t include everything we’re reading, following and discussing – we spend a lot of time thinking and learning about what we do and teach – but it does give you a taste of what we’re following in Internet marketing right now.
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