Author: Team Position Squared

Meta Data Optimization For Online Visibility
Content may be King, and it is a primary factor for successful SEO. And it’s what marketers all round the world push to boost online visibility. But its only one part of the story.

Content comes in many forms – web pages, blogs, articles, rich-media assets like PDF, PPT or infographics. Its real power is released in optimization, then syndication.

Use meta data to optimize content for search engines. Search engine crawlers look at meta information to understand what the page is actually about, affecting your search result ranking.

Here are the different kinds of meta data optimization:
1. Web pages
2. Blog posts
3. OGP (Open Graph protocols)
4. Rich-media assets
Web-page properties which can be optimized include:
- Title
- Description
- Keywords
- URL
- Image Attributes
Optimize blog posts much like web-pages. If the blog is on a popular CMS like WordPress then optimization becomes relatively easy with plugins like Yoast.

OGP (Open Graph Protocols) include optimizing the HTML in the <head> section of the page:
- og:title
- og:type
- og:description
- og:image
- og:url
Optimize rich media assets like PDF’s by adding document properties such as title, author, subject and keywords.

Sites can be optimized using structured meta data and mobile metadata. The viewport tag found in the head section lets search engines know about mobile sites. Google Developers lists information about viewport tags and mobile optimization techniques.

Effective optimization requires technical expertise and close co-ordination between digital marketers and developers. On-page optimization as well as all of the factors listed above are key to successful SEO and need to be considered when optimizing a site.

Share your thoughts in the comments section.
September 2, 2015

Best of the Week | Drupal 8 Is A Boon For Digital Marketing, and much more…

This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.

Drupal 8 Is A Boon For Digital Marketing | Position2 Blog

From the Position² Blog This Week:

Drupal 8 Is A Boon For Digital Marketing | Position² Blog
48% of people cited “website design” as the number one factor in deciding business credibility. But, when a visitor taps on a button that doesn’t respond, the frustrated users’ buyer journey ends on your digital doorstep. Drupal 8 is looking to solve that problem. Read on and find out how to leverage Drupal 8.

Modern Marketing Insights: Jesse Noyes Discusses How to Measure Your Content Marketing

Best of the Week Video
How can marketers measure their content marketing efforts and the effectiveness of that content? Watch this 2 minute video where Jesse Noyes, VP of Product Marketing, Content and Communications at Kapost, offers the three top things marketers should be measuring.

Persona Based Lead Scoring: The Mystery and the Method

Download this White Paper and learn:

Classify leads based on behavior and demographic details
Develop a consistent methodology to proffer quality leads to sales
Employ data integrity and tracking
Deploy marketing automation to improve efficiency and cut costs.?

Download the complimentary persona Based Lead Scoring White Paper now

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August 31, 2015

LinkedIn Makes A Move | Introducing The New Campaign Manager Tool

Compared to other social media channels, marketing on LinkedIn has never been easy. While running campaigns or even reporting data Facebook and Twitter have provided a greater degree of flexibility and granularity. LinkedIn marketers have been looking for more options to efficiently reach targets on the platform. Remarketing would help. So would custom lists, conversion tracking, goal based pricing, and a better interface. Enter the new Campaign Manager tool. LinkedIn still has some issues to work out, but marketers can heave a sigh of relief. Here’s what caught our attention in the new launch:

Improved Account Overview

LinkedIn has overhauled the entire interface structure. Marketers can now view accounts in one location. Reports also follow suit. One click on each account yields a view of all the basic metrics for that particular account.

Name Your Ads

To name ads, the old interface defaulted with the headline. With the new tool users have the option to name their ads, a big plus when you’re running different ads with the same headline.

Campaign Search

The previous LinkedIn interface showed page after page of campaign names, making it confusing and difficult to locate that one campaign. The new Campaign Manager introduces a search tool where all your campaigns are contained in an ongoing list that’s fast and easy to navigate. This feature comes with a handy toggle allowing users to view performance metrics like impressions, clicks, CTR, Engagements, CPC, CPM, etc. at the campaign level, all while doing away with the annoying ‘loading’ symbol. It’s both faster and hassle free.

Campaign Dashboard

LinkedIn has really improved the old dashboard by better organizing the tabs and reducing the page load time. The dashboard now looks concise with the much needed toggle option between Performance, Ads, Audience and Bids & Budgets tabs.

The Audience tab is a major improvement. Users can now select the Targeting criteria and then select Categories to add deeper layers to their targeting. On the weak side, the ‘Estimated Targeting Audience’ head shows only a range of the targeted audience rather than the exact number of people.

Ad Scheduling

The Ad Scheduling feature in the new Campaign Manager, accessed through the main dashboard, is easily navigable. Simply go to the Bids & Budget tab in the Campaign Dashboard and select the start date (Start Immediately or Schedule Start option).

Audience Insights

Audience Insights is a remarkable feature in the new Campaign Manager tool. You’ll be able to view the Demographic Categories of the LinkedIn members interacting with your ads. The data is available at the Account, Campaign and Creative level, making it more insightful and actionable.

Improved Ad Testing

Set up accounts for Ad rotation. With this feature you can run multiple versions of the same ad and measure performance.

Exporting Data To CSV

This new version will allow you to export data in CSV format which will lead to greater flexibility and more insightful reporting.

Is the new campaign manager tool better? Use the ‘Comments’ section below and share your opinion.

August 29, 2015
Drupal 8 Is A Boon For Digital Marketing | Position² Blog
The way the average mobile user is tied to a device of choice, marketers can pretty much reach target customers anyplace, at any time. But when a visitor taps on a button that doesn’t respond, the frustrated users’ buyer’s journey ends on your digital doorstep. Drupal 8 is looking to solve that problem.

A large group of developers, keeping true to the community’s open source roots, is working on Drupal’s Mobile Initiative. The goal is to make the Drupal 8 CMS mobile platform the best there is in today’s increasingly mobile world.

The Drupal Mobile Initiative aims to address several key functionalities:
- Responsive themes
- Enhanced front-end usability
- Use of administrative forms on mobile
- Native app integration
- Ability to use the marketing software you already know
- Build campaigns with mobile in mind
- Add, remove or revise content with ease
- Easily deliver content segmented by audience, language and device type
Solving these issues will give users a much more satisfying experience on their mobile devices. Websites will be quick to load, with easy to use responsive design. And marketers will be able to adjust their websites on the go.

Mobile Accessibility

If your website content isn’t easily accessible on mobile, you have a problem. The increasing use of mobile devices for access to instant information makes this imperative. The Drupal Mobile Initiative will help that access happen. Themes and modules have been developed for easy integration with JQuery Mobile, a framework that allows for cross-platform development of high-speed, easy-to-use mobile sites.

Drupal 8 means faster access to customers, as well as a decreased chance of drop offs due to site speed frustration– two things that need to be on any marketer’s radar.

Making Mobile Editing A Reality

Marketers can be mobile, just like their customers

Drupal 8 is not only friendly for visitors, it’s editor-friendly, too. The Drupal Initiative aims to include full admin toolbar and capabilities when logged-in to a Drupal 8 site on a mobile device. Drupal 8’s responsive capabilities and mobile-friendly administrative features ensure your content looks great on any screen.

A Powerful Tool in the Digital Marketer’s Toolkit

The ability to provide on the go new and relevant content to your website will meet Google’s love of hyper-fresh results and lead to higher rankings. This makes Drupal 8’s Mobile Initiative a powerful marketing tool. Drupal 7’s powerful and flexible platform has already made it a great CMS for marketers. The mobile advantages being built into Drupal 8 give marketers the chance to take their game even higher.

Integrate Your Best Of Breed Marketing Software

Integrate your mix of CRM, Email, Marketing Automation and other software, using Drupal as the backbone.

Reach Global Audiences

Easily translate anything on your site with built-in user interfaces. The Drupal community produces automatic software translation updates.

Ease Of Use

With the new user interface in Drupal 8, your web staff can accomplish in minutes what used to take hours.

Marketing With Drupal Doesn’t Need To Be An Uphill Climb

Drupal is a great platform for marketers. With the right modules installed its flexibility and versatility simplify marketing tasks. For example, the metadata module tells Google what your content is about. Content with no metadata is far less likely to rank than the same content with well-optimized meta information.

Is your enterprise website built with Drupal? Are you facing any maintenance or enhancement problems? We want to hear what you have to say – Voice your opinion about Drupal.
August 26, 2015
GIFs For Pages On Facebook

You have been seeing animated GIFs in Facebook personal profiles since spring, but not in Facebook Pages. Until now. Sticking its toe in the water, the Social Media Giant announced today that it has relaxed its NO-GIF policy. The experiment begins with a few selected brand pages to evaluate the use of GIFs and the users’ experience. Wendy’s and Coca-Cola’s Brazilian brand Kuat posted GIFs today.

The Original Post

And The GIF

You’ll see these new GIFs in “Boosted” Page posts — which make up most of the ads you see in your feed — not in those tiny sidebar ads. Facebook is phasing those puppies out.

“GIFs can be a fun and compelling way to communicate,” a company spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’ve started testing GIF support in posts and boosted posts for a small percentage of Facebook Pages… and will evaluate whether it drives a great experience for people before rolling it out to more Pages.”

Based on the performance of the advertisements, GIFs will be rolled out to all brand pages. But Facebook is cautious. The water temperature needs to be just right. It does not want to disrupt its users’ experience with annoying animations.

August 25, 2015
Live Streaming: Next Big Thing In Social Media?
Still posting quirky photos on Facebook? Tweeting yet more wordplay? Wake me when it’s over because right now it’s all about Live Streaming. You hear that buzz? That’s thanks to apps like Periscope and Meerkat.

Four months after its launch Periscope can already boast 10 million customers. The user engagement and adoption for this form of Social Networking is totally for real, with Meerkat kick starting the concept and Periscope (which has clearly taken over) jumping on in.

Read full report here

The big question, of course: How important is all this to Marketers? Well, let’s look at the numbers. According to OOYALA’s Global Video Index, time spent watching video on mobile devices increased 160% year-over-year in Q4 2013. By 2019 more video viewers will watch an average of 21 hours per month on their devices, up from 12.7 hours in 2013.

Instagram and Vine let people record short videos and post them for later viewing. Periscope lets you look at the world through others’ eyes, right now. It’s like a news feed of real time videos where you can see what your friends – or strangers — are experiencing at that very moment anywhere in the world. Twitter was quick to spot this disruption and bought Periscope in February 2015, before it was launched.

Periscope celebrated their exponential growth on August 2, 2015—when they reached 10 million active users— with this Medium post in which Kayvon Beykpour’s (CEO, Periscope) claims 40 years of live stream watch time daily. That’s sure to become a new metric: live stream watch time (LSWT).

Some brands have been early adopters, learning as they go. Some recent examples:
1. Red Bull: A brand known for its unique and forward looking marketing initiatives, Red Bull didn’t miss out on Periscope. At Miami Music Week, Red Bull live streamed a handful of their Red Bull “Guest House” events, while also increasing their engagements using Twitter and Snapchat.
2. Spotify: The popular music app used Periscope to post a ‘behind-the-scenes-video’ with Conor O’Brien of the Villagers. Spotify received hundreds live viewers and the video was replayed hundreds of times more.
3. Mountain Dew: The brand used Live Streaming as a way to engage and reward their Twitter followers. The live video showcased Mountain Dew swag hats and T-Shirts, and a chosen few who commented on and liked the video got some Mountain Dew gear as a surprise.
4. Adidas: The brand came up with a unique Periscope stream: giving fans a chance to watch James Rodrigues sign his contract extension with Adidas, in real time.
5. Turkish Airlines: Turkish Airlines created a first of its kind live streaming of a flight from Istanbul to New York on Periscope. The live broadcast gave their social media fans an exclusive ‘behind the scene’ sneak peek, including a rare glimpse inside the cockpit. The ‘Periscope’ flight racked up 5K+ followers and 200,000 likes by the end of the broadcast.
6. Forever 21: How to attract a millennial audience? Try using bright shiny things with many, many moving parts. Forever 21 and Breakfast teamed up to bring Instagram pictures to life using a giant, digitally synced adjustable billboard, a contraption that includes some 200,000 parts. The machine renders versions of Instagram photos hashtagged ‘#F21ThreadScreen’ and cameras stream the process live at
Spend an afternoon browsing Periscope and Meerkat feeds and it’s obvious that 1. This disrupter is in its infancy and 2. It is eminently exploitable. The trick will be – as it is in any up to date approach to digital content marketing – making the live broadcasts relevant, interesting, exciting, worth looking at. Serve up the equivalent of cheesy TV ads and your brand will fall into a black hole. But provide something of value – there’s no telling where this can go.
August 22, 2015

Best of the Week | How Marketing Automation Can Transform Your Business, and much more…

This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.

From the Position² Blog This Week:

How Marketing Automation Can Transform Your Business
91% of users believe that marketing automation is “very important” to the success of their marketing. The question for marketers isn’t so much ‘will marketing automation technology have an impact on your business’ as ‘it is which trend is the best fit’? Read this blog for the latest and greatest marketing automation trends.

A Universal SEO Strategy Audit in 5 Steps - Whiteboard Friday

Best of the Week Video
Empowered buyers demand a new level of customer obsession in this age of the customer. Check out this on-demand session featuring Laura Ramos, VP Forrester Research and Sanjay Dholakia, CMO, Marketo. You’ll discover how to deliver optimal customer experiences and drive revenue in the process!

White Paper: Increase Visibility for Your Content by 4x

Today’s traditional SEO is inadequate: Ignite your search results by accelerating visibility in more places than ever before.Download this White Paper and learn:

SEO, why the way we know it is not enough
Introducing and implementing Enterprise Visibility Accelerator (EVA)
Using multi-channel tracking tools for effective monitoring
How EVA benefits businesses.

Download the complimentary EVA White Paper now

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August 21, 2015

Creative Guidelines For Marketing
You know your target audience. You know the response you want to stimulate. And you know the kinds of metrics you hope to see as a result. These best practices will help you get there:

Copy
- Keep the message simple and strong. Use an active voice.
- Keep your target market in mind while writing the copy
- Use short and punchy headlines
- Don’t overuse exclamation marks, uppercase, bold letters and emoticons. Have a specific reason for using them
- Make your message scanable. Don’t overwhelm readers with long paragraphs and lots of copy
- Body font should be 12 point or higher (and if you’re using a Sans Serif font, increase leading)
- Use a punchy call to action
Graphics

Images and visuals are a critical part of marketing your product or service.
- Always use shots of people using the product/service instead of product shots alone. It makes an emotional connection with the target audience
- The larger the illustration, the better. They get more “sight time”
- Warm colors (yellow, red, orange, pink) pull more views than cool colors (green, blue, gray, beige)
- Use colors with care. Subtlety is your friend
Layout

Layout is critical. It can make or break direct marketing content.
- For magazine ads and postcard type mailings, the eye goes from right upper, to left middle, and ends at right lower. Design your piece with this flow in mind.
- It is best to follow a Picture, Headline, Body Text format (67% comprehension) over placing the Headline and/or Picture under or alongside the Body Copy (34% comprehension)
- For letters the eye starts upper left and zigzags to end at lower left. This is why a P.S. in a letter is so important
The devil is in the details. But details lead to marketing success.

Share your comments and experiences in the box below!
August 20, 2015
How Marketing Automation Can Transform Your Business
If you haven’t looked at marketing automation technology recently, you may not recognize the place. There are now over 215 marketing automation solutions on the market and the rate of marketing automation solution and innovation adoption shows no sign of slackening. The question for marketers isn’t so much will marketing automation technology have an impact on your business as it is which trend is the best fit?

Consider these statistics:
- 91% of users believe that marketing automation is “very important” to the overall success of their marketing across channels. Marketo
- 41% of marketers say that marketing automation is “Very effective/effective” at creating a cohesive customer journey. Salesforce
- 85% of B2B marketers felt they were not using their marketing automation software to their full potential last year. SiriusDecisions
- Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than those who were not nurtured. HubSpot
- Companies using marketing automation generate twice as many leads as those using just email software. AutoPilot
Not all solutions are the same. Learn the basics of marketing automation, then choose your route.

Predictive Analytics

In “The Hype Cycle for Business Intelligence and Analytics, 2013” Gartner reported that predictive analytics was poised to reach mainstream adoption in 0-2 years, or about right now. Here in 2015 we believe that insight-oriented diagnostic analytics and foresight-oriented predictive analytics will ensure marketer success.

Robust, predictive models help marketers eliminate guess work based on trends they identified using data. Eliminate guess work by answering questions like these:
- What is the optimum frequency of sending emails in a lead nurturing sequence?
- Which content (blogs, infographic, whitepapers, videos, etc.) should you send to a certain lead persona?
- Do you need to revisit your personas? Lead scoring?
- How should you score a lead from a particular marketing channel?
Data driven decisions help marketers launch and execute winning campaigns.

Let us know the best practices you follow when using data driven decisions.

Multi-channel Marketing

Multi-channel Marketing is the ability to interact and engage potential consumers across platforms in real-time — website, Facebook, etc. Marketing automation tools make it possible to personalize this interaction, the ultimate expression of “reach out and touch someone”.

Here’s an example. A company sells laptop computers for home and office use and Karen, a prospect, visits their website, adds a mainstream laptop with a high end graphics card to her cart, gets as far as billing and shipping details, but does not complete the order.

In a situation like this multi-channel marketing could:
1. Send Karen a personalized email urging her to complete her order. The email would show the details of Karen’s cart, her shipping and billing details and a link she can click to complete her order
2. Leverage Facebook so Karen sees an ad — “Karen, are you looking for a new laptop?” — when she logs on. This comes from an integration of the marketing automation platform with Facebook for retargeting.
3. Send, after a day of Karen not responding, a personalized email from Sales Support Executive Brian asking if he can help with any questions Karen may have?
4. Automatically activate after a few days a separate email nurture or Facebook retargeting campaign
This sequence of events can be customized based on the persona “Karen” is associated with in the marketing automation platform.

While highly effective, multi – channel nurturing is woefully underutilized. Here are some of the challenges marketers face when it comes to developing and executing these campaigns.

Multichannel marketing makes it virtually impossible to lose a customer due to their distraction or a technical glitch just before a purchase. This is a powerful concept that helps marketers target the right personas with personalized content at every step of their buyer’s journey.

Do you think this trend will help you improve conversions and target your prospects better?

Marketing Qualified Leads

Lead Quality. It’s typically where sales and marketing have their falling out.
- What is the rate of acceptance of your Marketing Qualified Leads into Sales Accepted Leads?
- Are sales and marketing on the same page when it comes to defining a “Qualified Lead”?
When implemented correctly marketing automation platforms change the ways sales and marketing teams perceive each other. Well-structured, well-documented lead scoring for various personas, channels, etc. help bring marketing and sales to the same conversation.

A constructive dialogue between the teams ensures “qualified” leads are converted, there is no leakage and leads that are not “sales ready” go back for a tailor made nurture andr future qualification.

Are you plagued with disconnect between your sales and marketing teams when it comes to lead qualification?

All our data points in one direction – marketing automation is becoming smarter, more personalized, and more accessible. It’s going way beyond the basic batch-and-blast email tool of yore.

Use the comment box below and let us know your thoughts on how marketing automation can transform business.
August 18, 2015
6 Website Design Pitfalls To Avoid
“Design is the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that’s why it is so complicated.”

Paul Rand

Last year’s ‘hip and cool’ website features look dowdy today. You have to stay ahead of the curve, and the curve isn’t sitting still. A well designed website – in terms of features, functionality, user experience, navigation and content — is an absolute must have.
- 48% of people queried cited website design as the number one factor in deciding business credibility
- 95% of those queried agree with the statement: “good user experience just makes sense” (Econsultancy)
- 6% of mobile users report having difficulty interacting with a web page, and 44% complain that navigation was difficult (Source: Keynote)
- When a page takes 4 seconds or more to load, the change in a website bounce rate spikes 100%. At 8 seconds or more to load it jumps to 150%. (Source: Mobile Joomla)
These 6 design trends are way obsolete:

1. Ancient Relics

The Big No-No’s: Page hit counters, animated gifs, flashing banners, scrolling marquees, flash intros, auto-play videos, background music, images opening in new windows, multiple font faces, styles and colors.

2. Lack of Whitespace

When the trend is minimalistic design with crisp content, you have to use whitespace correctly. If you don’t, your content will appear to be cluttered and unorganized. Whitespace strikes a balance between positive (or non-white) and negative space, which is key to aesthetic composition. Beware of inexpert use of white space. It can make a page look incomplete.

3. Overflowing Text Content

Think snackable content. Bite size is best. Break up any long text content into relevant photos and graphics, titles, bullets and paragraphs consisting of no more than 3 or 4 well-written sentences.

4. VIBGYOR Color Scheme

If your website is using more than 2 primary colors it is time for a redesign. A simple color scheme that’s pleasing to the eye is the new norm. Color increases web recognition by 80%. Sites with dark color schemes increase growth by 2%; sites with lighter color schemes experience 1.3% growth.

5. Non – Responsive Websites

User devices range from hand-held smartphones and tablets to large widescreen PC or laptop displays. A responsive website is an essential part of a seamless user experience across all devices. Fixing your website page width at 600px, 800px, 960px , etc. will kill any user interest.

6. Bad Stock Photos

While using visuals in your marketing materials attracts and engages your viewers, unrealistic, cheesy and obviously fake stock photos will cause more harm than good. Avoid using stock images that are a clear disconnect from the values of the website and do nothing more than occupy space.

If your website isn’t designed for the future, it’s not designed for today. It may be past time to reconsider the look of your digital calling card.

Use the comment box below to share your thoughts on modern, hip and uber-cool website design trends and best practices.
August 14, 2015