Deeper vs Broader: Exposure vs Engagement

One of the most salient points of Seth Godin's Tribes book is that in the long run it is much more profitable for most businesses to create a deeper community with stronger and more passionate connections than it is to create a broader one that has strong reach but no message.

Without Relevancy, Nobody Cares

Do you remember the hype around the launch of John Reese's BlogRush about a year or so back? It was a blog focused ad network promoted through a MLM / pyramid scheme. The viral nature of blogs and the pyramid scheme helped it spread far and wide, but in spite of great growth it failed:

While the service is still going strong (serving a few million impressions a day) I just don’t see things improving for our users. The click-rates across the network are dreadfully low (and getting worse) as so many Internet users now ‘tune out’ links and other ads on sites.

Because of this, and many other issues, I’ve made the tough decision to shutdown the service.

John couldn't even get people to click the links because

  • everyone in the program was a webmaster
  • most of them were writing blogs targeted to webmasters
  • webmasters rarely click on ads
  • the links looked like ads
  • there was no relevancy in the ads (other than many being part of the webmaster blog demographic)

There are a wide array of ad network based start ups - with virtually all of them destined to fail, largely because they can't compete with Google on relevancy. If a person learned only one thing from search it should be that relevancy is a key to engagement.

Content Becomes Advertising

But even beyond advertising...what happens if we think this process through to content strategy? If the web keeps getting more saturated, more relevant, more biased, with more niche competitors, and people are willing to give away content to help do their marketing, then eventually the user engagement with your content becomes far more important than what you advertise. Content is advertising.

The plain truth is, great content is the most effective way to advertise online, because to be considered great content, it can’t look anything like what we consider advertising. But great content does need to naturally demonstrate that you’re knowledgeable about your field of expertise, and that’s why it works so well.

Think about it… the advertising we actually enjoy is often witty and entertaining, but it doesn’t persuade us to do anything. Even a dry article about tax savings tips has more promotional value than most hip television commercials.

Selling Ads to Yourself

One of the biggest flaws that new bloggers make is putting too many ads on a blog before they gain enough market momentum to build a strong revenue stream, thus segmenting themselves into the perceived group of "spammy" blogs by other webmasters who could offer powerful links.

If BlogRush makes so little per pageview that John Reese can't justify running it (even with the benefit of being able to give himself a large percentage of the ad impressions for free) then how could there be any ROI for an end user/publisher? Wouldn't that publisher make more money by featuring some of their own best content in the sidebar to build a deeper relationship with their readers?

Increasing User Engagement

Traffic is nowhere near as important as engagement and conversion are:

One other thing you can do is get hooked on the traffic, focus on building your top line number. Keep working on sensational controversies or clever images, robust controversies or other link bait that keeps the silly traffic coming back

I think it’s more productive to worry about two other things instead.
1. Engage your existing users far more deeply. Increase their participation, their devotion, their interconnection and their value.
2. Turn those existing users into ambassadors, charged with the idea of bring you traffic that is focused, traffic with intent.

A big part of why I changed my business model (from serving 13,000 + customers at $79 each to serving hundreds of customers at $100/month each) is because it became obvious that as the web expands and search becomes more relevant, what you can offer packaged loses perceived value (unless it is quite unique and/or you are good at doing hype driven launches), while the value of depth of interaction keeps increasing.

Review of Seth Godin's Tribes

Seth recently wrote a book named Tribes, discussing the fusion of leadership, creating movements, and marketing based on word of mouth. Over the last year I have not read as many books as I would like to, but I am glad Seth wrote this one and am glad I took time out to read it. It is affordable and easy to read...I recommend you buy a copy today. :)

Here are my notes and quotes from the book

  • a Tribe needs a shared interest and a way to communicate
  • the marketplace embraces and rewards heretics "It's clearly more fun to make the rules than to follow them, and for the first time, it's also profitable, powerful, and productive to do just that."
  • growth for most new businesses comes from those who want to support change, rather than from competing businesses
  • creating a tighter tribe and/or "transforming the shared interest into a passionate goal and desire for change" usually leads to much more impact than trying to make a tribe bigger. beyond public relations and awareness related benefits, measuring the breadth of spread of an idea is not as important as looking at the depth of commitment and interaction of true fans, who end up being the people who recruit most new members
  • a movement consists of a story, a connection between the tribe and the leader, and something that needs to be done
  • "Life's too short to fight the forces of change. Life's too short to hate what you do all day. Life's way too short to make mediocre stuff. And almost everything that is standard is now viewed as mediocre." - killer quote for motivating people to embrace change
  • "Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead. This scarcity makes leadership valuable."
  • "Ultimately, people are most easily led where they wanted to go all along." - a nice way of explaining the importance of bias in publishing
  • "When you fall in love with the system you lose the ability to grow."
  • "At first, the new thing is rarely as good as the old thing was. If you need the alternative to be better than the status quo from the very start, you'll never begin."
  • "Being charismatic doesn't make you a leader. Being a leader makes you charismatic."

And to appreciate how strong of a marketer Seth is, I somehow ended up with 3 copies of this book by launch date. I am not sure how that happened, but I think I got1 from Seth, 1 from Amazon.com, and 1 from speaking at a conference Seth spoke at. When I was first getting started on the web I read his book Purple Cow, and then bought a bunch of them in exchange for a one day training at his office. I was so stoked when I saw some of his marketing examples on the table matching things I took pictures of thinking they were good marketing...it was an early sign that I might have had a chance of doing ok on the Internet. :) Thanks for the great books Seth!

I also felt very privledged to be speaking at a conference that guys like Seth and Jakob Nielson were speaking at. When I was speaking I looked out into the audience and saw Jakob Nielson and felt a bit weird about being the guy at the podium...I also remembered reading Jakob's Designing Web Usability when I first got started on the web...and that was only about 5 years ago.

This Internet thing can send a lot of good luck your way if you stick with it for a few years. :)

Earning Trust One Click At A Time

When we talk about "trust" in terms of websites, we often refer to elements such as adding details such as you address and contact details, a privacy policy, and a guarantee. But trust is also a process.Trust is something earned with every interaction.

For example, once a music artist has built up a fan base, their new album is bound to sell more units than a new artist. The fans place a higher level of trust in someone with whom they have positive, prior experience. It's not just about the intrinsic quality of the music, it's also about the conditions that lead to a valued relationship. The same goes for websites.

Thinking of trust as a process can help build momentum, build your name, and build your reputation. In order to get users to engage with your site, they need to first place a level of trust in your site. Thankfully, the bar is reasonably low. You don't have to convince them to hand over their life savings, you only need to convince them that engaging with your site will provide them with value and not waste their time. And in order to keep them over the long term, you must maintain that trust.

Let's look at a few broad principles about trust as a process.

Ease Of Interaction

Make it easy for people to interact with the site. Learn the self-evident lessons of usability. Go beyond usability. Offer easy ways for people to interact. Why is interaction important? The most important trends in the web space in recent times have been about community and shared space. Think Facebook, blogging, Wikipedia, feed readers, and cloud computing. They're all about interaction, as opposed to the mid 90's web, which was mostly about top-down publishing.

Interaction will become an increasingly important factor over the coming few years, especially as the global recession bites deeper. Here's an exert from Jason Calacanis' latest email letter:

"The good news in all of this is that folks are going to be spending a lot of time online, playing video games and consuming things that are not expensive. They're going to be looking for "experiences over expenses. ...Why will there be a boom in traffic, engagement and participation?

Well, people will have time on their hands and the desire to socialize. Group behavior makes people feel better. One of the best cures for the blues is sharing a meal with friends.

Blogging became a phenomenon not because of some technological advance, but because between 2002 and 2005 there were a lot of unemployed--and underemployed--individuals with a lot to say and a lot of freetime. Bloggers like Peter Rojas, Michael Arrington, Nick Denton, Rafat Ali, Xeni Jardin and Om Malik broke out in the down market--not the upmarket."

Awards

People like to feel important. Offer them an award or an elevated status level. You see this technique used in forums. Members are given classifications, from Newbie through to Moderator. Bestowing moderator status not only assigns an administrative role in itself a form of hierarchy - but it also elevates their status within the community. Similarly, the granting of stars, boosting posts to sticky status, or boosting posts to the front page has a similar effect.

So long as an award process is transparent and consistent, people will come to trust in it, which, in turn, leads to greater levels of engagement.

Voting

People like to feel their opinion matters. Give people an opportunity to vote. Voting helps make people feel included, and that they are influencing outcomes. An obvious example of such a system is Digg. Digg is a community built around voting and a forum for expressing personal opinion. It could be argued that the downside of Digg is that some people's votes appear to matter more than those of others. The lack of transparency is, to my mind, Diggs biggest flaw. If people feel that voting is skewed, they are less inclined to trust the system.

Meet Expectations

Deliver what your users expect.

Google had a problem. They wanted to index subscription-only material, but clearly publishers did not want to give this material away. This led to a situation where Google users would click on a result, but not get the article they expected, based on their previous experience of using Google i.e. clicking on a result leads directly to the indexed content. This situation leads to a decrease in trust. So Google came with First Click Free. First Click Free allows users to skip over the subscription page on their first visit.

The lesson is to try and maintain consistency. If users get something other than they've come to expect, they'll leave.

A Sense Of Belonging

People like to feel they belong. Cultivate a sense of belonging, and look to include people, wherever possible. Be accessible. Talk in terms of the group, rather than the individual. Examine the language you use. Does your language speak of a sense of community, involvement, and shared values? Of course, this won't apply to every type of site, but if you've got a strategy based around user interaction, then look for ways to make people feel as if they belong. It might be something as simple as responding to people's comments in timely fashion, or providing a personalized welcome message, or using inclusive language.

Social Proof Of Value

People like to go where other people are. Think about ways in which you can demonstrate that other people use, and place a high value upon, your site.

Methods include visitor counters, positive mentions you've received in the popular press, recent comments on your site, feed reader subscription stats (like those offered by FeedBurner), third party traffic stats (from sites like Alexa and Compete.com) and quotes from known influencers. Make sure that people who are new to your site see these social proofs as soon as possible. Don't bury them deep - put them up front, loud and proud. Don't be afraid to blow your own horn.

Social proof is an increasingly important aspect of internet marketing. Some things gain currency for no other reason than everyone else likes it. No one wants to eat at an empty restaurant, even if the food is just as good as the heaving restaurant next door. People like to be where other people hang out.

To get there, you need to establish momentum. But how on earth do you build that momentum from scratch? The answer isn't pretty - it's hard - but there three concepts you are helpful.

Have a read of this article, Filthy Linking Rich & Getting Richer by Mike Grehan, if you haven't read it already:

"The great twentieth century sociologist Robert Merton dubbed it the "Mathew effect" as a reference to a passage in the Bible, in which Mathew observes, "For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." The Mathew effect, when applied to networks, basically equates to well connected nodes being more likely to attract new links, while poorly connected nodes are disproportionately likely to remain poor.....It has been proposed that "the rich get richer" effect drives the evolution of real networks. If one node has twice as many links as another node, then it is precisely twice as likely to receive a new link."

This is also known as cumulative advantage.

Also take a look at this article in the New York Times, entitled "Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?". To summarize, the article talks about how social influence plays a large a role in determining the market share of successful songs as differences in quality.

"The long-run success of a song depends so sensitively on the decisions of a few early-arriving individuals, whose choices are subsequently amplified and eventually locked in by the cumulative-advantage process, and because the particular individuals who play this important role are chosen randomly and may make different decisions from one moment to the next, the resulting unpredictability is inherent to the nature of the market.....If one object happens to be slightly more popular than another at just the right point, it will tend to become more popular still. As a result, even tiny, random fluctuations can blow up, generating potentially enormous long-run differences among even indistinguishable competitors. "

So, popularity is an impossible process to replicate and systematize. Popularity is due to a combination of factors, which could include take-up by a few influencers, being in the right place at the right time, gaining the momentum affect as others get on board, and a large dose of luck.

However, there are, I think, three main lessons here.

One is the role of influencers. Influencers is a fairly broad term, which can include people who hold sway over large communities, to those who are merely inclined to pass on a good find to another person. You need to make it easy for those people to engage with your site. To trust you. It's old fashioned word-of-mouth, and it's still the most powerful marketing method there is.

In practical terms, try linking out to the inflencers and saying good things about them. Or bait them. Give them things. Make it easy for them to talk about you.

Secondly, identify the hubs with a sphere of influence. All communities have a few, central authorities around which the entire community orbits. Try to get seen on those sites, whether it's by buying advertising, posting articles, or participating in discussion.

Thirdly, leverage off a trust process.

SEO is an example of leveraging off a trust process. The user trusts Google to find the best results. The searcher searches on a phrase, and chooses a result from the left hand side of the page. The user will often choose one of the top three listings.

The key to achieving these things is tenacity. And to build and maintain trust.

Why Are Young Liberals 'Destroying the Internet'?

In the following interview of Jon Stewart, Bill O'Reilly mentioned that Jon's audience was younger and left leaning.

Recent research from a survey of 3,036 Americans confirms that people who contribute content to the web are skewed toward being young, left-leaning, and more passionate about the sites they contribute content on.


In Online Communities and Their Impact on Business [PDF] Rubicon Consulting highlights the following:

Most frequent contributors are different from the average web user. They're more ethnically diverse; more technically skilled; more likely to be single; more likely to work in technology, entertainment, or communications companies; and more likely to be Democrats. But most of all, they are younger than typical web users. Half of the web's most frequent contributors are under age 22.


The common stereotype for the Digg crowd also applies across many other sites and industries.

That's not to say you should try to appeal to the Digg audience, but if a disproportionate amount of content is created by young liberals then there is business sense in appealing to that demographic. Appealing to the 10% of people who create content makes you look better to the other 90% of people who use the web.

If you look at a traditional user adoption curve the people to the far left are the people who have blogs and the people who leave feedback on other websites. The interaction with the loud users is what helps potential customers build confidence. These loud stakeholders are influencers.

A site which has more user generated content on it has the following benefits

  • a broader range of unique textual content to rank against (which helps it build a larger organic audience)
  • built in social proof of value/cumulative advantage (people think it is popular, and perhaps more authoritative, because others contribute to the site)
  • built in loyalty (people who contribute to your site have a vested interest in spreading the word about your site, and seeing to the success of your site)
  • more editorial reviews that turn searchers into shoppers into buyers (reviews increase consumer confidence and make them more likely to purchase)
  • more inbound links (people are more likely to link at a page full of editorial reviews, and the people who review products are more likely to own websites)
  • faster and cheaper market feedback
  • a broader reach with new releases (particularly if you build an audience by offering an email newsletter or a regularly updated blog)
  • lower traffic acquisition costs, lower marketing cost, and higher value per visitor (due to many of the above points)

The Rubicon research also states that young people are more likely to be influenced by online reviews, and are more likely to search online for support issues...so having a search accessible FAQ section can drastically lower customer support costs.

The Art of Pitching - What's Wrong With Link Building Email Requests?

We've all, at some point, received the "request-for-a-link" email.

Such emails are useless, on a number of levels, the main reason being that the offer is lousy. However, such emails also tend to get the pitch wrong, so further limit the chances of getting the link. Getting the pitch right - the way the offer is described - is a bit of an art.

I've been looking back through the emails I've received and there are common characteristics displayed in those I ignored, and those I responded to.

There are two aspects common to all such emails, the offer and the pitch.

The Offer

The offer must be compelling. No matter how good the pitch, if the offer doesn't advantage the recipient in some way, then the sender is unlikely to receive a response.

Take, for example, the PR offer.

I receive a lot of these. They don't get read. Why? There's no advantage for me in doing so. There is advantage for the company that wants free coverage, of course, but not me. Unless the information is ground-breaking, and hasn't been circulated widely in the public domain, then the typical PR email "offer" is very poor. The offer is essentially this: "give us your time and effort for nothing so we can advance our cause"

Well, no. No I won't :)

But lets say the offer is to my advantage. Either I'm receiving some genuinely useful information, a good opportunity, or a good incentive. It can still be let down by the quality of the pitch.

The Pitch

Here is an email Aaron received recently:

Subject: About an Advertisement on Your Blog

Hellow.
I've recently created a software for automated social bookmarking.

Just wanted to ask, if it is possible to order a post about our tool on your blog, written by you ?
You don't even need to install and actually test the software if you don't want to, just mention that there is something out there that is worth using for seo purposes.
Here is a website: (removed)

Thanks.

There are a few obvious problems in terms of both the offer and the pitch.

  • "Hellow". The very first word is misspelled. This is unprofessional.
  • Does not include the recipients name. It's not personal.
  • Asks about advertising, then demands coverage, with no transition. What's in it for me? Where's the incentive?
  • Asks us to post about the software without trying it. Again, why would we do that? Our credibility would be at stake, for starters.
  • Domain misspelled. You'll have to take my word on that one, but it was :)
  • Does not have the senders name in the email. Again, unprofessional.
  • Their domain is a scrolling sales letter with no other content. Why would we recommend our readers, who tend to be very web-savvy, to such a site? We'd lose credibility.

Not only is the offer a poor one, but we can't take the pitch seriously either. It could have worked if they'd thought a little bit more about the offer, and pitched correctly.

How To Pitch An Email

1. Make It Personal

Imagine a telephone call where the caller launched straight into their message, but with time spent on social niceties. Even telemarketers make some effort to establish rapport.

The same goes with email. You need to know who you're writing to and address that person by name. Read their About Us page, read their site, Google them, get to know them. It can be a good idea to make contact with them, and build a rapport, some time before making your request for a favor. Try to pay it forward. Give them something first.

It's also a good idea to clearly outline a connection you have with the recipient, if such a fact isn't already established. For example, "I read your article "SEOmoz's Linkscape: Why the Backlash is Overblown" and wanted to ask you a question...." or "I was talking to a friend of yours, Aaron Wall, and he suggested I....."

2. Keep It Professional

Hi Arren,

I waas wanting too no if you would link to my site?

Spelling and grammar matter. No one expects William Shakespeare, but poor spelling and grammar screams "unprofessional". An obvious exception is when you know someone well. The better you know someone, the less the technical aspects of communication tend to matter.

3. Tone

If you don't know someone well, it is best to use a professional tone. Too conversational can come over as "not serious", especially in email correspondence. Remember, it's not like dealing face-to-face, where nuance, inflection, expression and gestures become important signifiers of meaning.

So keep it clean, clear, precise and professional. Be particularly careful with humor. What sounds like a joke to you may get lost in translation, especially if the person you're emailing is from a different country.

If in doubt, play it straight.

4. Message Title

So much depends on the title.

Put yourself in the recipients shoes. Like you, they're probably busy. They're focused on their own stuff. They might have an inbox that is full to bursting, and they're feeling a little guilty about not clearing it out. One more message is just one more problem they must deal with.

Then your message arrives.

In this context, how do you make sure your message desirable?

The trick with email is to make the title personal. Relate it directly to the recipient in some way. Arouse curiosity, praise people, describe a benefit, or pose a direct question. But put a personal spin on it.

A lot of email marketing strategy gets this wrong, particularly in relation to benefits. Titles loaded with benefits, such as ""Do You Hate Your Job? Discover Seven Secrets..." will be viewed as spam. Titles like that may work if you are in the spam business, but they are highly unlikely to work anywhere else. If you do use benefit statements, then try to personalize them.

5. What's In It For The Recipient

This is possibly the most important aspect in getting the recipient to act.

Outline the benefit to the recipient, and do so before they switch off.

Be concise.

Too lengthy, and it's unlikely the recipient will read to the end. A big block of text can be very off-putting. The first contact should be brief. You can go into detail latter. Think of the first email contact as a covering letter.

Try to offer them something of value. A discount code, a free trial, a free product. It should be something of real value.

Ok, so let's try and rewrite the email, using the guidelines. Note: the intent of the original email was a little ambiguous. It sounded as if the person who wrote it wanted a pay-per-post deal. However, SEOBook doesn't do those types of deals, so I've refocused on how it should be pitched, if the writer had bothered to first research SEOBook.com's editorial policy :)

New SEO Software Your Readers Might Like

Hi Aaron,

I'm a loyal reader of SEOBook.com, and I've written a piece of software that you and your readers might be interested in.

The software automates social bookmarking.

You can use the software to help build links and increase traffic to your site. If you'd like to try it out, here is a link to a free copy. I've included a recent case study showing how we took a site from 1,000 visitors to 4,000 visitors in less than a week.

I'd be very interested in hearing any feedback you may have.

Kind regards,

Joe Emailer

acme.com

Not perfect, but it only took one minute to write. I'm sure we can all agree that it is an improvement on the first one.

Aaron might even have answered it....

Website Checklist: Getting To The Close

Sales people talk a lot about about "closing the deal", the final stage in the sales process needed to get people to sign on the dotted line.

Typically, the stages leading up to the "close" are affordability, no perceived need, no hurry, or no trust. Sales people are trained on how to spot and deal with this issues, and ways in which to overcome a customers objections. Sales training is partly systematic, and part art. After all, everyone is different.

It's the same on the web, however unlike the salesperson, you can't engage a person, one-on-one. But there are things you can do to increase the chances of making the sale.

Checklist

I thought I'd put together a simple checklist for beginners on ways in which you can get a visitor to take a desired action. I've included links to some great resources for those who want to dig deeper and see practical examples.

But what if you don't sell things?

Really, every web site "sells" something, be it a good, a service, or an opinion. This checklist can be used, and adapted for any site. Sometimes, a simple change or two is all that is required to go from good to great.

For example, Amazon, a company that builds conversion techniques into their powerful sales platform, made one simple change that made them millions of dollars in extra revenue. Rather than phrase match search results, they displayed products most people purchased after searching on any given query. By doing this, they increased relevance. The result? A revenue increase of 3%, which amounted to millions of dollars in extra sales each year.

You can read more about what Amazon did in this free report "Controlled Experiments On The Web: Survey And Practical Guide"

1. Never Make It Difficult For People To Pay You

Once someone has said "yes" to an idea, you need to get them to sign on the dotted line as quickly as possible. Leave too much time, and people may reflect, have second thoughts, get distracted, or otherwise lose momentum. Think about bricks 'n mortar stores. It's always immediately obvious where, and how, to make payment. If the store is smart, they don't make you wait to pay.

One exception to this rule is if you have a good chance of upselling. However, overplay this strategy, and you might lose the customer altogether. A certain, large domain name registrar springs to mind.....

Further Reading:

2. Be Relevant

Learn the lesson of Amazon. What do you your visitors really want from you?

If you're not what the visitor wants, then all the SEO, testing and tweaks in the world won't help. Monitor what people do on your site after they arrive. Do you know how many visitors click the back button after arriving? If too many visitors click the back button, you've clearly got a relevancy problem.

Obvious, right? What's not so obvious is what to do about it. Which brings me on to point 3....

3. Measure & Iterate

Good analytics are important. What's even more important is acting on the data.

Look at your website as a constant work in progress. It should be always "under construction". Watch what your visitors do, and what they don't do. Make changes, measure the results, then make further changes in response to those results. Repeat.

Converting visitors to action is part science, part art. There is no one way of doing it. What works for you may not work for others.

Further Reading:

4. Reassure People

The web is often nebulous. Unlike a physical store, or face-to-face dealings, it can be hard for the visitor to gauge credibility. Therefore, you need to go the extra mile to reassue people your site is legitimate. You need to include as many credibility markers as possible.

Examples of credibility markers include your contact details, testimonials, money-back guarantees where appropriate, a physical address and phone number, credit-card security measures, and privacy and data collecting policies. Tell people what to do when/if the process goes wrong.

Further Reading:

5. Make Your Call To Action Crystal Clear

A call to action is a description of the activity you want your visitor to take.

Do you know where your visitors look and click? Using tools such as CrazyEgg, amongst others, you can approximate eye patterns, and see where visitors click most often. This is where your call to action should be located, if practical.

Eye paths are are also important. What visual or textual elements grab people's attention the most? Try changing the size of the headline. Try changing the separation between the headline and other page elements. Place the headline next to a picture.

Take a look at this before and after:

Before:

http://meclabs.com/resources/hyp1.jpg

After:

http://meclabs.com/resources/hyp2.jpg

The "after" page, with enhanced credibility markers and clearer eye paths and call to action, increased the conversion rate by 40.7%

Further Reading:

6. Provide Clear Signposts

Because the web is non-linear, it can be difficult for people to determine where in the process they are, and what happens next. Try to make this explicit by using signposts.

For example, you could outline in the first step of a sales process that the process will take five steps. Then, at each step, clearly show what step people are at. Signposts can be both visual and text.

7. Encourage People

Sometimes, the visitor might be unsure if they are following the process correctly. Encourage people at each step, reinforcing that what they are doing is correct. Create thank you pages and send responder emails. Tell the visitor who to contact if they have any concerns.

8. Give Visitors A Reason To Return

Most visitors aren't ready to buy or commit to action. They're tyre-kicking, they're researching, they're browsing. Try and "capture" these people, and hopefully they'll convert to desired action next time they visit.

Encourage them to do something painless, like bookmarking the site. Offer them a something free in return for their email address. Think about what you can give people in order to make them feel indebted to you. Clearly outline the benefits they'll get if they do return. What's in it for them?

9. Create A Sense Of Urgency

As a seller, you might have a sense of urgency, but the buyer may not. One way to help close the deal is to create a sense of urgency in the buyers mind. Methods such as the time sensitive offer work well i.e. if a visitor orders today, the visitor receives a special discount.

Further Reading:

10. Personalize Your Communication

The very existence of a blog or newsletter on your site reinforces the idea that there is a real person behind the site. If appropriate, sharing your views and experiences is a powerful way to engage visitors on a personal level. Careful, though. Over-familiarity can also be annoying. It may also be inappropriate in some environments i.e. old-school corporate.

Amazon features authors statements, reviews, and personal feedback. You really get the feeling the website is a place, in which real people reside and communicate with one another.

Further Reading:

Seven Ways To Be More Persuasive

We spend a lot of time thinking about how to get visitors to our sites, but how much time do we spend thinking about better ways to persuade people once they've arrived?

Such topics are often talked about in terms of conversion and split/run testing. However, I'm like to talk talking about something a little more subtle.

The gentle art of persuasion.

Is Your Web Site Persuasive?

Every site "sells" something. It might be a product, a service, an opinion, or an increased level of engagement. You might wish to sign up members. You might want someone to bookmark your site, and return at a later date. You might want someone comment on your blog post. How can we best achieve these aims?

In "Yes, 50 Secrets From The Science of Persuasion", there is a great example of how to inconvenience your customers in order to make a sale. Colleen Szot, a leading infomercial writer, changed three words in an infomercial line which resulted in a significant increase in the number of people who purchased her product. What is remarkable is she seemingly made ordering more of a hassle.

What were those three words?

Instead of saying "Operators are waiting, please call now", she said "If operators are busy, please call back".

It seems odd that informing the customers they might have to wait would work, After all, the revised line implies the customer might have to redial a few times. However, the change worked because it used the principle of social proof. i.e. if people are uncertain about looking to perform a social action, then they'll look beyond their own judgment for a guide on what action to take.

"Operators are waiting to take your call" conjures up a mental image of rows of bored operators waiting for the phone to ring. Nobody is buying. However, by suggesting the operators might be busy, we imagine that many people are buying the product. If other people are buying it, it must be good. Of course, this isn't logical, but it is how people act. They perceive there to be safety in numbers.

We can take these ideas and apply them to websites, too. Here are seven. These ideas are all documented in "Yes, 50 Secrets From The Science of Persuasion".

I'm not getting any kickbacks for mentioning it. I just really enjoyed the book :)

1. Establish Social Proof

Look at ways in which you can demonstrate other people have taken this course of action.

Typical examples on the web include personal recommendations and endorsements. More subtle indicators include a running total of the number of comments made, indicators as to the size of the community, and the number of people who have visited the site. RSS counters. Social network plug-ins, such as MyBlogLog . All indicators that other people congregate here.

Think of the web as a place.

This is another reason the brochure web site is dying a death compared to interactive sites. There are few social markers on brochure sites, and there is seldom a sense of place. People want to be where are other people are.

No one wants to eat in an empty restaurant.

2. Don't Give People Too Many Options.

In a study of over 800,000 workers, behavioral scientist Sheena Lyengar studied company sponsored retirement programs. The study found that the more choices that were offered, the less likely employees were to enroll in the program. Giving people too many options forces people to differentiate. This can lead to confusion and disengagement from the task at hand.

When you consider that an exit on the web is only one click away, it becomes vitally important that people do not become disengaged. Decide on a limited number of desired actions you want visitors to take, and focus people's attention on those few options.

3. The Middle Option

I've covered this tactic before in Predictable Irrational Marketing Strategies, but it's such a great persuasive technique, it can't hurt to revisit it :)

If you want to people to take a desired action, frame it alongside two less desirable options.

For example, let's say you're offering TVs for sale. If you offer a cheap TV and an expensive TV, you're forcing people to make a choice based on price. People will tend to pick the lowest price option if forced into a decision based solely on price. However, if you offer a third option the decision becomes less focused on price. It becomes a compromise choice based on both price and features.

Given this option, people tend to pick the middle option. Consider that the middle option was the expensive option in the first either/or offer :)

4. Scare 'Em

A persuasive technique favored by politicians. "Terrorists!". "Your Savings Will Be Wiped Out!". "Your Jobs Will Go Offshore!".

These threat messages work because humans are conditioned to look out for threats. It's a survival mechanism. You can incorporate this persuasive technique in a more subtle way, however.

People experience fear on a number of different levels, i.e. they may simply fear that by not having your product, service or blog in their feed reader, they may be missing out. Describe the threats your product or service can alleviate, and provide a clear, concise course of action the visitor must take.

This technique must be used carefully however, as fear can also lead to inaction. Hence the phrase "paralyzed by fear", which can also occur if you offer too many options. People are afraid they'll pick the wrong one.

5. Give Forward

Reciprocity is a strong human driver. We want to give back to those people who give to us as we feel obligated. Curiously, studies show that we don't even have to like the person to feel indebted.

One of the most ridiculous pitches in web marketing is the link swap email. Someone asks you for a link, and once that link is in place, they'll link back to you. Typically they want a prominent link from your site, in return for a link on a page buried deep in their site, alongside thousands of other links.

Not much of an offer, really.

Some people try and twist the idea by giving a link first, but will retract it if you don't reciprocate. Once again, this isn't really giving anything away.

A much better approach is to simply link out to the target site. Webmasters tend to follow links back to see who is linking to them. Your link becomes a subtle form of advertising. If you then praise that website, and offer great content, you're significantly raising your chances of getting a link back.

Ask not the question "who can help me", but "whom can I help?".

6. The Post It Note

Research shows that a post-it note attached to a document tends to increase response rates. Why? Partly it has to do with the bright post-it note acts as a highlighter, and partly it has to do with the fact someone has added a personal touch

You can see the post-it note technique creeping into web design. People use a post-it note graphics, like this one on CopyBlogger. There's also a design trend to add "hand writing" as a form of personalization. Check out a few examples on Smashing Magazine.

The more personalized a request, the more likely people are to agree to it.

7. Labeling

When Luke persuaded Darth Vader to turn against the dark side, he said "I know there is still good in you! There's good in you. I can sense it". This is known as labeling. BTW: That link has little to do with this point, but it is funny :)

I digress...

The technique is to assign a trait, attitude or belief to another person and then make a request of that person consistent with that label.

For example, if you were selling accounting books, you could suggest that people who buy accounting books are also big consumers of your finance titles. Then offer them a finance title. This also works in terms of social proof.

Your Turn

What are your favorite persuasion techniques?

Web Publishing: Strategies To Help You Stand Out From The Crowd

Web publishing has a low barrier to entry. This is great, because it enables anyone to be a publisher, and to reach a world wide audience.

The downside is that because there is a low barrier to entry, the web is saturated with content!

So, how do you choose topics to write about that stand out from the crowd? How do you stay ahead of everyone else? How do you stay ahead of those who have more time/money/energy to publish than you do? One way, of course, is to work smarter.

In this article, we'll look at strategies and tools that will help you do just that. But before we do, let's take a look at the state of the web..

The Evolution Of Personal Publishing

Personal publishing is in a constant state of evolution.

Take blogs, for example.

At one time, is was good enough simply to link to topics. The first blog, Robot Wisdom, took this approach. However, with the rise of social media, like Digg & Twitter, this approach - apart from a few, long-established exceptions aside - is a dead duck.

Next came the "rewriting news stories" approach. This approach still works, but in crowded niches, every blog ends up publishing the same thing. If you're a late follower in a niche, it's unlikely you'll make much headway using this technique, because it doesn't offer anything people can't get - and aren't already getting - elsewhere.

Next came providing opinion, analysis and context to news stories. This works well if the opinions on offer are new, insightful, and unique. This is the current state of the blogshere, and chances are the top blogs you read take this approach. They address a need in the market - i.e. a need for depth and analysis . I suspect you're already reading less and less of the blogs that either just point to sources or rewrite news stories.

It's not quite as linear as I'm making out, but the point is wish to make is that as content more plentiful, the bar gets raised on the quality level of content you need to produce in order to stand out.

Plenty of new opportunities lie in synergising information to provide readers with the new angles and editorial depth they crave. If you aggregate from different sources, and can spot trends before others do, you stand a good chance of standing out from the crowd.

But how do you do this?

Tools & Strategies

1. RSS Reader

Chances are you already use one. But if you don't, an RSS reader is possibly the single most important tool for article and information discovery. An RSS reader brings information to you. It brings the information to you soon after it is published. It's like having your own personal newspaper which auto-updates every few minutes.

The main advantage of an RSS reader is that you can scan a huge number of sources in very little time. Aim to monitor a lot of sources, across related industry verticals.

There are plenty of RSS readers to choose from. Here are a few to get you started: Google Reader, Bloglines, and NewsFox.

2. Have A Point Of View About Future Direction

Try to form opinions about the way your market or niche is heading, rather than where it is now, then analyse information through this filter. If asked, could you say where internet marketing is now, and where it will be in five years time? What will it look like? What are the stages it will move through to get there?

If you use such a mental filter, you should be able to spot the nuances in sources more easily. The aim is to weed out the tired, repetitive and redundant. Specifically, try to look for the points where people's behaviors start to deviate from an established norm.

Services like Compete and Google Trends are great for spotting these types of changes. There are a variety of sources data can be pulled from, including government, industry bodies, and free secondary research.

Here's a graphical comparison of various Google services. I'm sure there's an article topic in there somewhere ;)

Of course, you need to watch out for bias. One famous example of the problems of biased data was the 1948 election:

On Election night, the Chicago Tribune printed the headline DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN, which turned out to be mistaken. In the morning the grinning President-Elect, Harry S. Truman, was photographed holding a newspaper bearing this headline. The reason the Tribune was mistaken is that their editor trusted the results of a phone survey. Survey research was then in its infancy, and few academics realized that a sample of telephone users was not representative of the general population. Telephones were not yet widespread, and those who had them tended to be prosperous and have stable addresses

This is why cross-checking is often a good idea. One example, in the field of SEO, is keyword data. Some keyword research tools pull data from small, third party search engines, whilst Adwords data might be a more reliable indicator of the numbers of searches on Google for a specified keyword term, if that's what you're aiming to measure.

TrendWatching.com offers a good definition of trends:

A (new trend) is a manifestation of something that has unlocked or newly serviced an existing (and hardly ever changing) consumer need,* desire, want, or value.

"At the core of this statement is the assumption that human beings, and thus consumers, don't change that much. Their deep needs remain the same, yet can be unlocked or newly serviced. The 'unlockers' can be anything from changes in societal norms and values, to a breakthrough in technology, to a rise in prosperity."

Can you spot anything people have recently started doing differently?

One example was PPC advertising. Before PPC advertising came about, SEOs wouldn't dream of paying for clicks. Why would they when they could get them for free?

So, the established norm was a group of marketers who operated on the principle of getting clicks for free.

PPC emerged because there were a group of advertsiers that were prepared to pay per click, rather than spend time, money and effort in the hit and miss field of SEO. PPC addressed a deep need. PPC, of course, quickly grew into a multi-billion dollar industry.

3. Monitor Cross-Industry

Monitor not just your own vertical, but also look across related industries. What's hot and emerging in one market may not have hit your market yet. See if there is a natural synergy between the two. If there is, and no one is writing about it yet - great - you've just discovered a ground breaking content idea.

4. Aggregators

There are a wide range of aggregators available, with new options popping up all the time. Aggregators are particularly good for finding new sources. Try Techmeme, FriendFeed, StumbleUpon, Popurls, Topix, and, of course, the recently updated Google Blog Search.

5. Set Up A tips@ Email Address

Your readers might be a rich source of ideas. Some may also have some insider information that they might not feel comfortable publishing yourself.

Set up a tips@ email address, and encourage people to email you with information. Make it easy for them to do so.

BTW, if anyone does have some insider information they want to share, or answers you need, or article suggestions, please email us at seobook@gmail.com. :)

6. Cultivate News Stories Using Social Media

Start a Digg-style news community for your niche. Try to create communities of people who enjoy mining for information on a given topic. One search-oriented example of such a community is Sphinn.com.

If you don't have the inclination to set-up a community yourself, find existing communities and monitor them.

Check out:

Pligg.com
Sphinn.com
Mixx.com

7. RSS Remixing

RSS remixing is agrregating different RSS feeds into one feed. You can remix each industry vertical, rather than have multiple feeds, which can make it easier to scan.

Add each feed to your reader, aggregate them into the one big feed, the same folder or view, and viola - you have your own niche news mining engine.
Also check out remixers such as FeedRinse, FeedDigest, and BlastFeed.

8. URL Monitoring On Digg

In the Digg search option, choose "URL only" and "upcoming stories". Type in the domain name of any site you want to watch. You should see an orange RSS button in the right hand corner. Click on it and save the results as an Rss feed.

9. Google Alerts

Why search for news when Google can do it for you? For those who don't know, Google Alerts is an email service that monitors Google result sets for the keyword of your choice.

For example, you can monitor when people talk about you or your site, you can keep track of your competitors or industry, and stay on top of breaking news.

Also check out Track Engine. Similar to Google Alerts, Track Engine can be used to identify when websites update, without you having to visit them. You can also set tracking perameters so customise the information you receive.

10. Google Insights

Insights For Search is a hugely useful tool.

You can use it in a number of ways. For example, you can track seasonal trends. This chart shows when interest is highest in basketball. The pattern of interest is a consistent, shape year after year. You could use this information to dictate the timing of your stories on certain topics.

11. Random Stumbling & Association

Sometimes stumbling about in unknown territory can be a great way to get the creative juices flowing.

Another fun option are Oblique Strategies cards.

Try famous quotes. Quotes contain universal truths, which you might be able to apply to your area of interest, in order to view things in a different way.

Image collections are another. Search on various themes, and see what image comes back. Does the image prompt a fresh way of thinking?

Hold multiple, disconnected ideas in your head and see if you can discover a synergy. For example, a famous example is:

  • A Red Traffic Light
  • A cigarette

This led to the little red mark on cigarettes encouraging smokers to stop smoking when the cigarette burned down to that point, and thereby they could control their habit. More likely, it was a ruse to get smokers to go through a pack faster.

Got any strategies on how to generate story ideas? Add 'em to the comments below.

Further Reading

How Important is Branding to Search Engine Marketing?

Do you have a brand? If not, your site is part of a "cesspool." In AdAge Google's CEO Eric Schmidt explains the AdWords quality score and organic ranking algorithms in laymans terms:

The internet is fast becoming a "cesspool" where false information thrives, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said yesterday. Speaking with an audience of magazine executives visiting the Google campus here as part of their annual industry conference, he said their brands were increasingly important signals that content can be trusted.

"Brands are the solution, not the problem," Mr. Schmidt said. "Brands are how you sort out the cesspool."

"Brand affinity is clearly hard wired," he said. "It is so fundamental to human existence that it's not going away. It must have a genetic component."

The key to understanding the above is to appreciate that not only do the large brands have more money and more exposure, but they are less likely to be policed if they do the same thing that a smaller webmaster does. It is why a billion dollar company's affiliate program passes PageRank and my affiliate links do not.

Simply put, big brands should spam. Smart people like you, who read the algorithms as a profession, already knew this, but a large segment of publishers think search is mostly trickery and voodoo.

Build a brand and buy links. If your brand is big enough you most likely will not get policed out of the search results. It has been that way for years. If only the AdWords support team or Matt Cutts spoke with Mr. Schmidt's level of clarity!

Why Bloggers Need To Think About Marketing Strategy

I started a blog on search engines in 2002.

In those days, the idea of blogging about anything other than politics, or blogging, or what your cat had for breakfast, was new. In fact, the idea of blogs was new. Most people's reaction to the word blog was "huh"?

I quickly built up an audience, and links, mostly because I had first mover advantage, and I threw in a few social media basics. It certainly wasn't rocket science. But, at the time, I was doing something unique and "remarkable", in the Seth Godin sense of the word.

Fast forward to today, and the landscape is very different.

There are thousands - perhaps tens of thousands - of blogs on search, and most of those go unread. A blog on search is no longer remarkable.

Unless you have first-class insider information, and can produce it on a regular basis, I wouldn't advise anyone start a generalist search engine blog these days. The low hanging fruit is gone, but there are still easy pickings in other areas, it's simply a matter of finding them, identifying your strengths, and exploiting them.

How Many Blogs Are Out There?

This years "State Of The Blogsphere" report indicates there are around 133 million blogs, and they are only the blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002.

Even if we assume that half of those are spam blogs, or cobweb blogs, that's still a lot of "personal journals". Are there 133 million readers?

ComScore MediaMetrix (August 2008)
Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US
Facebook: 41.0 million | MySpace 75.1 million
Total internet audience 188.9 million
eMarketer (May 2008)
94.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of Internet users)
22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12%)
Universal McCann (March 2008)
184 million WW have started a blog | 26.4 US
346 million WW read blogs | 60.3 US
77% of active Internet users read blogs

Would a generalist blog do well in such a market? It could, but it's highly unlikely. Such deep markets tend to favor a niche approach.

So, instead of a blog on search, one strategy might be simply to go deep on one aspect of that market. How about a blog on the mathematics of search engine algorithms? Or search marketing for a specific region? Or search marketing in one industry vertical, such as travel?

How To Find And Test A Niche

First up, read these posts:

Once you've decided on a niche, you can further test the validity of your idea, and your approach, by asking questions.

One formalized way of doing this is called a SWOT analysis. It's a high-brow marketing term, but the idea is simple in practice. Swot stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

Make a list:

  • Strengths - why do I do well?
  • Weaknesses - What do I do poorly?
  • Opportunities - What upcoming trends fit with my strengths? What am I doing now that could be leveraged?
  • Threats - What internal problems do I face? What external problems do I face?

You then detail how you can use each strength, how you can improve each weakness, how you exploit each opportunity, and how you mitigate each risk.

Simply going through such exercises can open a world of possibilities. It is important to write it down. I find the simple act of writing something down seems to make an idea less abstract and more concrete.

One of the big threats in the blog world is the low barrier to entry. Anyone can start a blog within minutes.

Ask yourself how will you stay ahead of the person who starts in the next hour? The ten people who have started by tomorrow? The hundreds of people who have started by next week, not to mention the big, established names who already have a dedicated share of an audience that isn't really growing.

Tough call. There are no easy answers to such a question, as it really depends on your individual strengths and weaknesses, which is why asking questions like these can provide valuable insight.

Philip Kotler, a renowned marketing guru, suggests asking the following questions of any new business plan or idea:

  • Does this strategy contain exciting new opportunities?
  • Is the plan clear at defining a target market?
  • Will the customer in each target market see our offering as superior?
  • Do the strategies see, coherent? Are the right tools being used?
  • What is the probability that the plan will achieve its stated objectives?
  • What would you eliminate from the plan if you only had 80% of your budget?
  • What would you add to the plan if you only had 120% of your budget?

Those last two might seem a little odd in this context, but they certainly are applicable. What would you do if you had more of a budget to promote your blog? Would you spend it on advertising? If so, where, specifically, would you spend it?

Asking these questions can suggest all manner of options. By pretending you have more of a budget, you might identify great advertising partners, but because, in reality, you might not have this budget, you could instead suggest you write guest articles for them, and thus achieve much the same result.

SEO For Blogs

The latest shift in SEO, as Aaron details in Social Interaction & Advertising Are The Modern Day Search Engine Submission & Link Building, is towards relationship marketing, which is why SEOs are increasingly adopting marketing and PR strategies in order to operate more effectively.

Let's face it - SEO for blogs is a cakewalk. Blog software, such as Wordpress, is already search friendly, right out of the box. If you want to tweak it further, there are a wealth of available tools and instruction. Anyone can do it, and that's a problem.

But it's not really about the tools. It's how you use them. The key part to success in doing SEO on blogs is the way you interact.

Specific Strategies To Consider

Quote And Link To Popular Bloggers

Apart from the obvious potential that a blogger will follow inbound links back to their source (you!), meme aggregators, such as Techmeme and Google Blog News, are becoming more prevalent.

These sites aggregate similar conversations together. Simply by talking about what others are talking about, and adding to the conversation, you might get a link and/or attention.

Leave Valuable Useful Comments On Popular Related Blogs

Go where the crowd already is.

For example, I follow most comments in these blog posts back to the authors, and if they have left a site name, I check it out.

Most are then added to my RSS feed reader.

Write Articles For Other Popular Blogs

Think of this as advertising. Advertising costs, and in this case, that cost is your time. The benefits of contributing editorial can be fantastic, however, as you can reach a large, established market quickly.

Create Community Based Ideas, Ask For Feedback Before Launching

This is cheap and cheerful market research. You also give your audience an opportunity for buy-in on the outcome. If the audience feels they are part of the process, they are more likely to accept it, and even promote it.

Add Value To Ideas So People Reference You When Talking About Them

Besides the obvious link benefit involved, it is also great for your brand. Your name becomes your brand, and the more people mention your name, the further your brand spreads. Seth Godin is a master at this, and if you aren't reading his blog already, you should be.

See! It just happened. Twice, in this post, in fact.

Actively Solicit Comments And Reply To Them

One over-looked value of comments is that people are providing crawlable, unique content. Usually I find the more contentious the post, the more comments you receive. So don't be afraid to stir the hornets nest every one in a while ;)

Encouraging Contribution From Others And Highlighting Their Contribution Builds Community

The best situation is win-win. Are you giving your readers and community members a chance to do so?

This is one of the reasons I think black hole SEO is short-sighted, especially for community sites and blogs. It doesn't allow others to win, too.

Network Offline At Industry Trade Shows

I once worked with a guy who had been a very successful investment banker on Wall Street. He says he ignores the University qualifications and information in the public domain, as the real business world works on inside information and who you know. There's no doubt that the best place to get insider search information, and great contacts, is in the bars between conferences.

Every community has an epicenter - a group of people who most others take a lead from - and that epicenter might be as small as three or four highly influential people. Those are the people you need to talk to.

Don’t Be Afraid Of Controversy

If you gain mindshare and authority, some people will hate you for it.

This is related to my "stir-the-hornets-nest" point above. Once you start getting attention, you also become a target. You have little choice but to go with the flow, and keep in mind you cannot please all the people, all the time. Sometimes, it even pays not to please them. People are more likely to engage if they feel passionate, and especially if they passionately believe you are wrong!

Reminds me of a great quote by Oscar Wilde: "The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about!"

Further Reading

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