How to Apply Storytelling Techniques

Storytelling is one of the marketing world’s new forces. Storytelling is considered one of the most powerful business skills for the next decade.

So how can storytelling be practical?

Storytelling is the oldest way to deliver a message. Even the Bible uses storytelling.

Everybody automatically uses storytelling in in the common discourse of his life, however it’s never late to improve your skills. So look through the following 7 techniques that can help you to explain your business better.

It can seem to be in over his head, but it is really one of the simplest ways to promote anything you need.

Here are 7 storytelling techniques:

1. A Hero and an Enemy

Every intriguing story must have an enemy and a hero. The enemy can be represented by a thing or “the system”. The storyline refers to how the hero overpowers the enemy.

2. Focus on the Conflict

Conflict is the inherent incompatibility of enemy and hero. Conflict also describes the obstacles you encountered on your way to success, whether they were problems with your bank or with a tornado.

3. Omit any Unnecessary Detail

Omit all the unnecessary details that don’t develop the characters. Keeping the readers’ attention is a strongly important thing, so if they don’t need to know about your green T-shirt to catch your storyline, just don’t tell them about it.

4. Informal storytelling format

Formal-format ruins stories. Talk like you would usually talk. If you sound a little too corporate to pass as an average person, hire a storyteller.

5. Make It Visual

Use images in your blog stories. Images bring a story to life. Use images of the real people in the story, not stock photo models.

6. Add Surprise

A regular story with no unexpected turns is quite boring. This is an essential to a story as conflict.

The stronger you make the story, the more effective your reach will be for your audience.

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How to Make Your Boring Trade Blog Interesting

One of the most actual questions of bloggers from all around the world is how to make their blog posts interesting. Here are several tips that can help you to make your blog post attractive.

1. Firstly, use your best writer.

In order to make an interesting blog post, you should initially have a piece of high quality original content. Readers are always expecting for readable and fresh content. So find your company’s best writer or become him. A talented writer should:

• Be fond of writing

• Be able to research anything online

• Be ready to spend as much time as it requires creating a quality content.

2. Be informed.

You should be always aware of what is happening in your industry. The more you know about what’s going on, the more invaluable experience you get. A regular blog reader is familiar with buzzwords, jargon and industry best practices. In order to produce something of top-quality, you have to be the best information holder of industry knowledge.

No matter you are a beginner or a professional company writer, you should know both the industry and the target audience. Primarily, you must be informed about:

• The daily routine of your audience 

• The strongest needs of your audience

• The greatest challenges in your industry

• The latest updates of your main competitors 

• The latest industry trends. 

3. Write from the first person. 

Personalization possesses a great hidden power. 

Part of the power of the first person voice is that it’s personal. The real interaction is always more attractive than just a regular third-person narrative.  Don’t forget that you are aimed at writing for an audience of other people, not businesses.

4. Take advantage of concrete facts, real surveys and numbers.

If I see that someone has shared a survey conducted in his industry, I’m already intensely interested in it. Try to make the same thing when you write. Attract readers with concrete data and real numbers. People are fond of inside info, stats and graphs. 

5. Do not promote your stuff daily.

A blog is not a channel to force people to buy your stuff. Such blogs don’t work! When you are constantly promoting your products, company updates and improvements, readers become bored. Yes, a blog must have some promotional posts, but not all of them have to be promotional. 

6. Be clear.

If you are clear, you are automatically interesting and consequently attractive. Make clear all the difficult points for your readers. When it comes to jargon, every industry has its acronyms, terms, and insider expressions. You can use them in your writing, just be sure to explain yourself if there’s a risk that your readers might not understand an acronym.

7. Share real-life examples.

Try to include real-дау examples in your every post. These mini stories will hold the readers’ attention through the post. 

And finally, don’t be afraid to try new things. You don’t know if they work until you try. 

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Improve Your PR Strategy with Big Data

There are approximately 1.8 million Google searches made per minute. A huge amount of content is produced every day. 

Big data allows entrepreneurs to sort through the noise and make sense of what is being said, what is being unsaid, and how this information can tell a compelling narrative.

Variety, velocity and volume are the fundamental forces of big data. Moreover, social media is setting an example by offering variations of numbers for big data to crunch. Therefore, there is no wonder that a 2013 survey conducted by NewVantage Partners found out that 90% of executives have a big-data initiative in progress or at least planned.

For those entrepreneurs who are eager to turn big data into big stories, there are 3 sorts of data to seek for:

1. Curated data. This data is picked out the pre-existing reports and studies existing in the Internet. These studies can be produced by various government agencies, academic institutions or organizations.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of these sources by combining the information from them and turning it into a useful and attractive story. Working with curated data, try to look at the regular information from a different creative angle.

2. Proprietary data. This info comes from technology, in-house numbers, internal user base or surveys. This data is much more unique than curated data. The success lies in finding an interesting story within the data.

3. Commissioned data. This data is formed due to partnerships with 3rd parties, including market-research companies, customer surveys and polls. Here the success lies in asking the right questions to drive the story.  

Using information for narrative generation is wonderful, however there are other effective methods for entrepreneurs to use big data in PR efforts:

1. Learn everything about your destination market. Today making a research, you can find a lot of information about a consumer and his behavior. Much more than ever before. 

An old-hand entrepreneur will take into consideration the found information in order to understand your target audience. 

2. Crisis prediction. Using huge amounts of available data, entrepreneurs can analyze if the users and customers are fully satisfied or not. This can help avoid potential pain points before they appear. 

3. Follow market trends. Using info crunched by big data, entrepreneurs have a good opportunity to follow all the trends. The results can be reached by a mix of old-style creativity and inspiration and the innovative information approach offered by big-data computing.

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Content Marketing vs. Technical SEO

Time management is the online marketer's fundamental dilemma.

There are so many things you could do, but so few things you actually have time to do. The two broadest categories of an online marketer's task are technical SEO, also known as conventional SEO, and content marketing. But what should you invest most of your time in? With a limited amount of time, where do you spend it?

To put the question more starkly, which one has a better ROI?

There’s no question about it — SEO and content marketing are both valuable. If your business depends on web traffic for any part of its continuation, technical SEO and content marketing are both critical.

The Value of Technical SEO

Search engine optimization sets your site up for search engine success. As you optimize various components of your site, you are positioning the site to not be penalized by the search engines.

A few years back, if you had a technically optimized site, that was pretty much all you needed. With some solid pages, good structure, keyword-stuffed page titles, and heavy keyword saturation on your main navigational pages, you were set for SEO success.

But that doesn’t work anymore. What “works” in SEO has changed dramatically. The pitfalls are noted, and the way to technical SEO perfection is clearly laid out. Now, it’s relatively easy to have a site that is perfectly optimized. Most competent companies know to create a website that has all the important SEO elements and features firmly in place.

So the fact is, you can’t win top spots in the SERPs by just having your technical SEO in place. If nearly every competitor has technically optimized SEO, then what kind of advantage do you have? None. The base standard for SEO has been set.

And you need to comply with those standards. That’s the value of technical SEO. It’s not traffic building. It’s road-paving. You must have a road built before it can sustain traffic. No, technical SEO won’t usher in the traffic, but it will ensure that the site can adequately deal with this traffic.

I’m going to state it negatively. Technical SEO doesn’t win traffic anymore. It merely sets your site up for success. Technical SEO — implementing a sitemap.xml, optimizing your robots.txt, and ensuring each page title is less than 65 characters — will not reward you with a torrent of high-value linkbacks, viral sharing, massive social spread, and insane levels of clickthroughs.

If you’re doing that technical stuff, then great. Your site needs it to sustain traffic. Your site needs to comply with SEO best practices and web standards.

I don’t want to dissuade you from doing the necessary work of reaching technical SEO perfection. But I’m making a point. I’ve seen sites with coding mistakes, broken links, unoptimized titles, and shoddy metadata. And I’ve watched those sites explode with targeted traffic, experience meteoric rise in the SERPs, and squash their competition’s conversions and CTRs.
How?! Why?!
Two words: content marketing.

The Value of Content Marketing

That brings me to this point — the real source of traffic. It’s content marketing.
Since nearly everyone is following the technical SEO rules, you have to do something different in order to differentiate yourself and gain traffic.

And that’s content marketing. The proven way to gain targeted traffic and achieve massive brand exposure is through the consistent output of awesome content. The chance of your site erupting with traffic apart from content is about one in three trillion.

But here’s the kicker. Just about everyone is doing content marketing. Take small B2Bs, for example, which constitutes a large percentage of my audience. Do they have a clear content marketing strategy?
A lot of them do. And a lot of them are doing it well.

B2BMarketingInsider.com reports that 90% of all organizations are doing content marketing, even if they lack a documented process, as indicated in the pie graph above. Budget increases for content marketing are increasing, too. As it stands today, more than a quarter of a marketer’s budget is spent on content marketing.
This can be discouraging news. As with technical SEO, everyone is doing content marketing.

But here’s the difference:

• You can’t attract more traffic by technical SEO. There’s a standard level of achievement that you can arrive at. It’s not possible to have a 301 redirect that is just so much better than the competition. Sure, you can have a redirect strategy, but a 301 is a 301. You don’t cause ripples in your niche by having a killer 301. The same goes for, say, a keyword strategy. Once you know your target keywords, you’re set. I’m not saying you can’t gradually improve. I’m just saying that you can’t become insanely successful through technical SEO alone.

• But you can do content marketing better. Even though everyone is doing it, everyone is not doing it the same, or with the same level of excellence. Since content marketing is the path to greater success, then if you get better at it than the competition, you win.

Content marketing is still where success lies. Unless some new game-changing search element arrives, this is what we have to deal with.

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5 Basics Every Entrepreneur Have to Focus on

 

To succeed today, a modern entrepreneur should have a many-sided approach. Here are the qualities that successful future entrepreneur should possess:

1. A diligent research ability. Today customers buy things much more carefully. He takes into consideration recommendations, brand interactions and advertisements that help him make a choice. Earning and attracting customers to your product involves knowing your competitors and the history of your industry well and keeping up with all the latest insights and updates.

2. A strong social media presence.  Instagram can help to showcase designer’s portfolios. Twitter breaks news. Business owners use Facebook to adjust their product offerings. Pinterest uncovers customer buying habits and Tumblr shows trends. Find the channels best met your industry needs.

3. An actively updated website blog.  If you are doing any business, even selling hand-made lemonade, you need a website. Websites encourage conversions and blogs drive search traffic. If you aren’t an active Internet user and you are not properly updating your channels and website blog, you are losing to someone who really is.

4. A professional look always matters. Every modern entrepreneur have to work on perfecting his personal style. There is a certain charm in a good-designed business card or uniform. Clean, minimalistic and appropriate design drives the professional world.

5. A knack for storytelling. Every business has a story worth telling. The world is filled with truly special individuals and great stories just waiting to be told. Recognize where your products or services come into that story and align yourself with it.

Nowadays, it is not so easy to stand out from the crowd, especially in the business field. The challenge is that you must say something relevant and meaningful. If you still want to succeed, find your ideal balance and be ready to work hard.

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Meeting Your Customers' Online Marketing Expectations

Brand new tools and methods of engagement are changing the business landscape, and modern brands are thriving because they recognize it. Whether it’s the channels, platforms, strategies or method of operation, modern brands are connecting with customers in new ways and consumers are taking notes.

According to researches, 72% of consumers prefer a multi-channel marketing approach and only 39% are actually receiving it. When there is a big difference between consumer expectations and business offerings, something’s up. Businesses providing a multi-channel approach understand that conventional brands are evolving.

One channel at a time. Users are busy and inundated with content. The Internet acts as a tool to enable engagement, but no specific channel enables all forms of digital interaction. For this reason, every interaction with the modern brand is fragmented to individual channels. A YouTube channel can provide tutorials, demos or product previews of feature content. Meanwhile, a Google Plus page with relevant business information provides directions, at-a-glance facts and customer reviews.

One platform at a time.  90% of American adults carry a cell phone, and 60% of them are smartphones. Every user you target wants to reach your company and interact with your brand on their own terms. 

Fortunately, the modern brand is adaptable to customer needs. It can quickly adapt to present information, forms and media in a format that’s best suited for the platform performing the query. Your business should act in a similar manner. Websites should be mobile ready, media should be mobile optimized, and apps should work on both tablets and phones across all available brands.

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Three Tips for Spying on Your Competitors Online

Do you want to run ahead your competitors? You can easily do it by spying on them. Of course, you don’t have to hire a personal investigator, you just should set aside some time for the analysis of online resources.

1. Be attentive and discover what generates their site traffic.

One of the easiest ways to discover how your competitors are driving traffic to their sites is using such online resources as SEMrush.com . Check out paid ads, keywords, organic search, etc.  

If your competitor has spent an awaful lot of money and time on paid advertising, it is probably worth investing. Noone is going to waste $1 million if he is going to get just $10."

2. Take ideas from their blog posts.
Look through the competitor’s blog: what type of posts they are writing, which of them are most popular (comments and social shares), analyse the way they are performed. This can give you ideas for the topics you should be writing about and the best way of performing them.

Try innovation of an existing method and push it. It will give you the general idea of what is working in your area and what is not working.

3. Keep your eyes on their design.
If your competitor has redesigned his website, you should be the first person to get know about it.

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Evolve Your Content Marketing Strategy

Developing a content marketing strategy or keeping a good blog, the first thing to take care of is what your readers actually expect from you.  You can conduct some surveys, or monitor website analytics in order to find out your readers’ preferences. Today this information is ready available. Simply keeping your eyes open can give you all the information you need.

Here is a list of some of the most useful content marketing tips on how to implement them into your strategy.

1. Write longer posts. We have heard a lot of different versions talking about the perfect blog post length. Some say that the article should have 300 words, others say it have to include 800 words.

According to serpIQ, the perfect blog post length is 2,000 words and more. serpIQ discovered that the top 2 results have an average length of 2,500 words. Longer posts can also be instrumental from a social-media point of view. Therefore, writing longer posts will help you gain traffic through both search engines and social media. Ensure your long blog post has quality from the beginning to end, complete with subheads, bold text, visuals, no repetition, etc

2. Use more visuals. According to the 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, 60% of marketers use content in the form of original visual assets (memes, infographics, etc.) in their marketing. The rise of social media websites such as Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest also contribute to the importance of including visuals in your content marketing strategy.

Report says that each month Americans spend about 1h 40min on Tumblr and 1h 15min on Pinterest. The time spent on these 2 visual websites is more than the time spent on MySpace, Twitter, Linkedin and Google+ combined.

According to the Social Science Research Network, 65% people are visual learners and according to the Zabisco, 90% of the information that the brain receives is visual. This makes it extremely important to include visuals in your content-marketing strategy.

3. Create infographics. It is reported that search volume for infographics on Google has increased by 800%, and that today’s infographic production is rising by 1% daily. Infographics is a great way to meet your visual learners’ needs. Ensure that you create quality infographics with illustrations, graphs, numbers and text that appeal to your visual learners.

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Grow Your Business by Using Push Notifications Effectively

According to a survey by Responsys, 76% of 18-34 year olds have enabled push notifications on their phone. So consumers find push notifications very valuable. Today with coming iOS 8 for mass adoption, Apple is aimed to redefine notifications on its platform. The notifications become interactive. Now, as a business, you can build engagement through your client’s lock screen.

Apple tries to make notifications more powerful, including the option that will allow users respond without having to quit whatever they are doing on the phone.

Up to now notifications was given little attention. However, times are chaning. Here are some points to help you understand notifications better and use them purposely to increase conversions and engagement.

1. Make them relevant. Focus on notifications messages like you would on writing a blog post on social-media channels for user engagement. The important point is relevancy. Notifications should be relevant to each of your customers.

2. Do not overload them.  Don’t push content daily unless there is a good reason. Communicate at appropriate intervals and at opportune times to get better conversions.

3. Integrate with analytics. Content relevancy increases when you send content to specific segments of your potential clients. This means you should understand whar are your customers’ needs and wants.

4. Think differently. You can push not only offers or deals. Think how also you can engage you customers. For example, Facebook and Twitter send push notifications with events.

5. Give your customesfreedom to choose. This task is quite difficult to succeed in. Let your potential clients decide whch type of notifications they want to receive and which they don’t. It may help to break up your notifications into categories so you can empower your customers with this decision.

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Google has already hidden as many as 100,000 search results in Europe

Google reported that it has removed over 100,000 links since the ECJ (European Court of Justice) "right to be forgotten" ruling came into effect in May.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the figure that comes a day after Google, along with Yahoo and Microsoft, met with European data regulators in order to discuss the search engines' handling of the ruling. Consequently, Google removed such number of requests that went beyond the 100,000 mark.

Moreover, during meeting in Brussels, Google informed that it has rejected more than 30% of the received requests. Requests so far have reportedly come from 91,000 individuals and cover over 328,000 URLs. Of these requests, 16,500 came from Germany, 12,000 from the UK, 17,500 from France, 8,000 from Spain, 5,000 from the Netherlands and 7,500 from Italy.

It was reported that Google has removed mover 50% of links, so it will likely ease regulators' concerns, it probably will go down well with free-speech advocates.

Bob Satchwell, executive director of the UK Society of Editors was not pleased. He told the WSJ that if they let this go without protest, then it will creep. "This passion for privacy will creep into law across Europe and erode the freedom of speech", he said.

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5 Most Important Takeaways from the Link Building Survey 2014

According to the survey conducted by James Agate of Skyrocket SEO, 5 takeaways are determined:

1.      Link building is getting more complicated, shortcuts don’t work.

2.      Links still matter.

3.      When you are working on your online visibility, links have to be a consideration.

4.      Link strategies change over time, meaning implementing diverse strategies is essential.

5.      Link building works best with other online marketing activities.

Link Building is Getting Harder. Shortcuts Won't Work

A few years ago link building was low-quality and full of robot spammy activities. Today, the only method to build the links is making human connections and an ability to speak convincingly of your own value. So the only links worth pursuing are those from real sites managed by real people. The shortcuts of the past are fading away, leaving the reality of current link building clear.

Links Still Matter

The heart of Google's algorithm is still links. SEO professionals, business owners, marketers and consultants realize the relevant importance of links within search and continue to invest. If online visibility is necessary for your brand, company and business, take care about the links.

Link Strategies Change. Diversity is Essential.

There is one constant thing about SEO, it is change. SEO is a quickly adapting field, so the need for diverse tactics is quite apparent. Diverse tactics provides strong business strategy. 

Online Visibility Efforts Should Consider Links

There is a variety of different methods to build visibility online, including social media, retargeting, PPC, e-mail marketing, content marketing, webinars, partnerships and so on. However, don’t forget that links have to be a part of any online marketing activity to succeed. Actually, it does not really matter what method you choose to improve your online visibility, links need to be a consideration anyway.

Link Building Works Best With Other Online Marketing Activities

Real links are the result of positive recognition. There are a lot of ways you can earn that recognition, including useful resources, targeted outreach, establishing a community, best in class content, building relationships and so on. However, you will never obtain the links you need without earning positive recognition.

The Link Building Survey 2014 shows that SEO industry continues to improve, and that despite general confusion within it links continue to matter.

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How Your Brand Can Follow to Build an Online Community

Digital innovations make incredibly easy for brands to communicate directly with end customer. In order to establish the two-way communication, most companies approach to social media.

However, if your company wants to make its communication strategy more effective, consider building a virtual community. Here are 5 strategy examples for building a quality branded community from successful digital communities.

1. Reddit. Reddit is considered one of the most efficient social networking services, particularly because it greatly empowers its users. It offers an excellent opportunity to build your community by utilizing trusted users. Those who stimulate activity on the website and follow the guidelines can easily grow their influence in the community. Moreover, they can even get moderator capabilities, having the right to dictate the brand’s voice.

2. Doug. It should come as no surprise that most people expect to be recognized for their effort and time invested. Consequently, Doug rewards users for engaging with the brand and participating. Users are awarded points for commenting, sharing and submitting content. There is a leader board, where all the users are ranked based on the sum of participation points they have.

3. Fark. When building an online community, the most important and at the same time most difficult is always to keep the message topical. If you don’t stay in line with the brand’s voice, your message are going to be lost.

4. Buzzfeed. Buzzfeed has created an incubator community, which is based on user generated content. Allowing a platform for users to add unique content to the brand minimizes the money and time Buzzfeed has to spend on generating content internally. Even with no mass following, your company brand can still utilize user generated content to minimize the internal work that goes into creating content. Allow community members to submit unique content in order to build and scale your brand.

5. ChaCha. Successful communities are based on two-way interactions. Therefore, you should be talking with your community, but not at it. One of the good proved methods to do it is to organize forum, or a question-and-answer theme. Thus, you provide the great opportunity for questions-and-answers to build company/brand credibility. Such websites as ChaCha have even built an entire brand around this effective concept.

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