Content, as we say in the social media biz, is king. Well, that and cats. So cat content is king. But the rest of content is a very close second. It’s what drives the social media machine, garnering likes, gathering retweets, and being spread virally through shares. It’s articles, listicles, photographs, infographics, videos, and so much more. Content is the key to engagement.

No matter the format, be it Facebook or Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram, you’re going to want to share content that occupies that magical space where your own interests and your customers’ interests overlap. Of course, how you share that content is largely determined by which social media platform you’re using. The Vine app, for instance, only posts user-made videos. Instagram started off as a photo-only app, though it now offers video sharing, as well.

Be Concise

When it comes to Twitter, sharing content can be a tricky endeavor. The popular social media site’s 140-character limit per tweet doesn’t allow you to dive into a deep analysis of whatever it is that you’re sharing, like a Facebook or LinkedIn does. Instead, you want to deliver content with a concise but engaging headline with two goals in mind: Users clicking on your content and users retweeting your content.

Be Visual

One of the biggest things that can help is including an image with your Tweet. This used to be more of a hassle but Twitter has recently incorporated images directly into users’ Twitter feed. If you are tweeting a link to someone else’s article, find the author’s Twitter handle and include that in your subject line. This greatly increases the likelihood that you’ll be retweeted.

Be Relevant

You’re going to want your content to be relevant to your message, trustworthy, timely, topical, useful, informative, and personal. And take the time to see what your followers respond to. If you notice that one type of tweet is consistently retweeted more than other types of tweets, thoughtful analysis may reveal what your specific audience is interested in.

Marketing is easy, right? Well, it doesn’t really have to be difficult, but it does require some forethought and planning. More importantly, it means understanding the entire point of marketing: explaining to potential customers what your product can do for them. Unfortunately, a lot of marketing out there fails at even that…

1. Customers Can’t Tell What You Do

Sometimes people think they need to use big phrases and keywords in their marketing and they forget to speak to who is important: people. If someone visits your website, or walks past your store, or sees your ad or your Facebook page, they should immediately be able to tell what it is you do. The best marketing sums this up in a short phrase that can often be used as a tagline.

2. Customers Can’t Understand How You can Help

Marketing too often is caught up in features.  Our product does X, Y & Z.  That’s great.  How does the fact that it does X help me? While it may be clear to you that a pressure washer that has a 1200 PSI is a good buy, how does a potential customer know why that’s a good (or not so good) number. What applications is 1200 PSI pressure washer good for?  When should they consider more, when should they consider less? If you think in terms of benefits to the customer or how you can solve specific problems, your marketing will be much more effective.

3. Customers Can’t Tell You Apart From Your Competitors

MBA-types like to talk a lot about competitive advantage — what sets you apart from your competitors.  While this is a lofty, intellectual concept, it really is important.  Not only from a business strategy, but also in marketing.  To boil it down: why should someone choose you over your competitors? This should be obvious from all of your marketing efforts.

4. Customers Don’t Look to You to Solve Problems

Customers buy things because they have a need.  Sometimes that need is just for those trendy new shoes, but often times they’re looking for something to solve a specific problem.  This is especially true of services and business-to-business products. Do you know what types of problems can be solved for your product or service? Do you specifically address those problems and how you can help in your marketing? There is great content ideas here for blogging and social media….

What other ways does marketing fail?

Advertising on Twitter can be effective for increasing the size of your audience and also for sending traffic to your website. Besides knowing what your goal is, these tips will help you advertise better on Twitter…

1. Goal Impacts Type of Campaign

Deciding on your goal for your Twitter advertising will help you choose the right type of campaign. The promoted account campaign (followers campaign) is best for increasing your followers and building audience for the long term. If your goal is to boost traffic to your website (or to particular pages on your website), then take a look at the promoted tweets campaign. And if you’re trying to get people to install or engage with your mobile app, there’s a campaign for that too.

2. Targeting Usernames vs Interest Categories

For smaller organizations that are looking for niche audiences, use username targeting to find followers similar to the ones you enter. Interest category targeting works better for larger organizations or broader audiences.

3. Good Messaging

Just like any other good messaging, Twitter ads should have use plain and understandable text and have a clear call to action. Adding pictures can also increase clicks on your ads. Try adding 3-5 different tweets to test your message and images.

4. Competitive Budget

Advertising on Twitter can be cost effective, but make sure your bids are within the suggested range or you may see a drastic decrease in the impressions of your ads.

5. Test to Optimize

Just like any advertising, testing will help you optimize the ads to get the best results for your budget and goals. Test different messages, images and calls to action. Test for a certain length of time, and then copy your campaign to make changes and save past tests and data.

Twitter advertising can be a very cost-effective way to increase the reach of your social media marketing.

Why & How to Use Data Visualization

Divided into four sections, The Visual Organization is a pleasant and interesting read straight-through, but also allows more experienced individuals to skip to the most important sections. You will get an understanding of what data visualization (d.v.) is, why you should care, why some level of d.v. is vital for every organization and how higher levels of d.v. can improve your business strategy by better informing key decisions. One size does not fit every organization, especially for tools. Phil discusses a variety of data visualization tools from large enterprise vendors, open source tools and design firms.

What is a Visual Organization?

Key to becoming a visual organization is understanding what one actually looks like, beyond just concepts and tools to making d.v. an integral part of how the company operates. Phil uses real organizations in his case studies, which include large companies, small companies, non-profits  and show many different ways to leverage d.v. to improve how the organizations operate.

Become a Visual Organization

Becoming a visual organization goes beyond just purchasing some d.v. tools, and Phil discusses steps, strategies, tips and insights to help you put d.v. into practice with a 4 level framework. Understanding what a visual organization would do when making business decisions is key to properly implement data visualization and Phil will help you navigate mistakes, myths and challenges in a real world execution.

Data Visualization Tools

As more data visualization tools come to market, the ability to analyze the wealth of information organizations collect will not only become easier, it will be vital to staying competitive. The easier it becomes to get good information from so much data, the more companies will start to leverage data visualization.  Get ahead of the curve by reading Phil’s book to understand the how, what, and why of using data visualization for your organization.

Buy Now: 

(links to the book on Amazon are affiliate links — feel free to use them, or not)

There are a lot of philosophies and opinions on lead generation. To help you cut through the noise, we spoke to four leading marketing experts and got some of their best insights. Here’s what they had to say about the dos and don’ts of effective lead generation. — Dos and Don’ts of Effective Lead Generation

Some of my thoughts:

Leveraging your network to drive lead generation can be a very tempting way to try to get referrals. While it certainly makes sense to use this resource, it’s vital to respect your network.

Spamming with marketing and sales offers is the surest way to lose valuable human connections, and increase the deafness to your message when you really need it. Stick to an 80/20 rule for any marketing you do online, but especially to your networks. Eighty percent of your content should be of value to the audience, and only 20% (or less!) should be direct marketing or advertising.

Providing regular, valuable content to your network will increase their awareness of your services and improve your reputation as an expert.

Read more —Dos and Don’ts of Effective Lead Generation

As you may be aware, Facebook is making it more difficult for companies and organizations to engage directly with their intended audiences.  To counter this (and to make revenue), Facebook offers the ability to boost an individual post so that it shows up in the news feed of your intended audience.  These boosted posts can be fairly low-cost, with a minimum boost of $5 per day.  So how well do these boosted posts perform and what sort of metrics does Facebook provide? To find out, I boosted a post on Lady Paragon’s Facebook page (a site I run with my sister for Women in STEM careers).

Facebook Post Pre-Boost

Here’s what the post looked like before I boosted it:

The metrics we see are:

• 1 person liked it (red circle)
• There was 1 share (green rectangle)
• 976 people saw the post (blue rectangle)

I boosted this post for 1 day at a budget of $5 and targeted fans & friends of fans of Lady Paragon’s Facebook page.

Facebook Boosted Post Metrics

Here are the metrics after the boost:

The metrics provided are:

• 4 people liked it (red circle) — 1 was from before, which Facebook properly reports in the red circle in the How people engaged with your post section.
• 1 share (green rectangle) — this was from before the boost
• 3102 saw the post (blue rectangle) — Facebook reports that 2079 were from the boost in the Paid Reach box.  You can also see the percentage of paid to organic in the box with the 3102 — blue was organic, green was paid
• 4 link clicks (purple circle)
• Engagement of 7 — this is the number of link clicks added to the number of post likes

Facebook Post Insights

When you look at the post in the page Insights, you see the following metrics (more recent data):

The orange bar shows the number of people who viewed the post, divided into lighter orange for organic, darker for paid.  3.1K is pretty close to the 3102 mentioned above.  218 is the number of post clicks and 116 is the number of likes, comments and shares. This is very interesting. Either the boosted metrics didn’t include some of the stats, boosting the post helped increase the organic reach and engagement, or the post received an unusually high number of engaged traffic from some of the people who saw it (remember that when someone likes a post, their network sees that they liked it, at least for a short time period).

Hypothesis: Boosting a Post Improves It’s Organic Reach & Engagement Too

I boosted another post on the same page (same budget $5) and got the following results:

• 1331 Paid Reach
• 5 Engagements – 3 link clicks, 2 post likes

According to the post insights, the post  got 15 post clicks and 4 likes, comments and shares.  Not nearly as high, so there probably is a difference in the influence of the people who engaged with each post.

If we look at the Google Analytics traffic to the actual post on the website (April 2-April 22), the April 2nd post (Jessica Kirkpatrick) had 338 pageviews (20 from Facebook), while the April 9th post (Kate Synder), had 93 pageviews (77 from Facebook).

Conclusion: Unclear, More Results Needed

The results do tend to show that a boosted post receives more organic engagement, especially if there are people with good influence that do engage with the post.  Using good targeting to reach the right audience to improve engagement on a boosted post may provide the most beneficial of results.  More testing is needed — I’ll continue to monitor my efforts.

What have you found with Facebook boosted posts?

• “53% of people on twitter recommend products in their tweets”
• “93% of shoppers’ buying decisions are influenced by social media”
• “90% of consumers trust peer recommendations only 14% trust advertisements”

Whether or not your company is using social networks, your customers are — in order to inform their purchase decisions and opinions about your brand.  Being active on social media gives companies an opportunity to listen, connect and contribute to the opinions consumers form of their products. Or as Erik states “Goodbye 4Ps – hello 4 C’s of digital: creating, curating, connecting culture”.

What do you think?

With so much data, it’s so easy to get caught up in all the numbers. Looking at the wrong numbers will result in faulty analysis and recommendations — you may fix things that aren’t broken, or not fix things that are. Or you may think you have the right solution to a problem, but not even be looking in the right place. While it may seem obvious, taking a step back to understand what you want to know first will help you choose the right measurements.

Step 1: State What You Want To Know

The first step is to state what it is you want to know — without using any measurements or metrics at all. For example, if a website has several links to its Careers page on the homepage, ‘We want to know what place on the homepage is sending the most traffic to our Careers page’. This is quite different from ‘We want to know where the most traffic is coming from that enters the site on our Careers page’. One is about the design of the homepage and the marketing there — the other is about external marketing efforts to the Careers page. We’re going to stick with the first for our example…

Step 2: Refine Your Data Needs

Now that we understand what we want to know, we can further refine our data needs to see if we have the right measurement in place. When we look at the homepage, we can see that there are actually 4 places that someone could click through to the Careers page: 1) Menu at the top of the page 2) Linked text in the middle of the page 3) Ad box in the sidebar 4) Menu in the footer of the page. Ok, so now we know there are 4 possible links a visitor could click, so in order to answer our ‘what we want to know’ question, we have to be able to tell the difference between each of these 4 links.

Step 3: Know Your Technologies

Unfortunately, the next step is fairly technical. In order to know if you can distinguish between the 4 links, you need to know 1) how your analytics package collects data and 2) how the links have been coded. In the case of Google Analytics, it treats all data that goes from one page to another as the same, if the links are the same (with a caveat explained in a second). This means that to Google Analytics, it can’t distinguish between the 4 links on the homepage in terms of how much traffic each sent to the Careers page. But there is hope… Google analytics allows you to add tags to links that can help you distinguish where traffic is coming from to the same web page. Which means that if the links were coded with these tags, the data will already be available. And if not, it can be if they are added. Other analytics tools may collect data differently and your content management system (CMS) can also impact how this works.

Step 4: Zero In on the Right Information

So now that we know what we’re trying to measure, what data refinements we need, and how our web technologies work, we can zero in on the right information in our analytics tool. In Google analytics, we’d look for traffic to the Careers page from each of the 4 tags on the homepage to provide information about what place on the homepage is sending the most traffic.

Good Measurement is In the Details

While this may seem complex, the first step — knowing what you want to know — is really vital for communicating your measurement needs to those that may help provide you with the metrics. Without this refinement, you may get back the wrong metrics, or your technologies may not be setup properly to provide them in the first place.

In this instant-on world, where we can get access to just about any constant with a google search or an ipad app, we sometimes forget that not everything is instant. Good internet marketing is about providing the right message to the right people at the right time. Researching and figuring out what tactics and channels to use to find the right people takes time, and sometimes experimentation. Even with tactics in place, it takes time to build reputation, audience, and reach, all which may be in vain if the timing isn’t right. While internet marketing can provide results faster than many other channels, it still requires patience in execution.

Research Required

One of the benefits of internet marketing is the access to information that previously was either difficult or costly to attain. This valuable information can provide insights into where your audience is online, what they care about, and what they need.  Taking time to do research will help you tailor your messaging, tactics and even products to align more closely with what your potential customers want and need.

Experiment & Collect Data

Because the Internet moves so quickly, there is an opportunity to constantly experiment and collect data. Most marketing is a best guess based on research and previous experience. Internet marketing tactics allow marketers to test their theories relatively quickly and cheaply and collect data to improve results.

Analyze & Improve

The downside of so much information and data is that you can easily become overwhelmed with what to focus on. Analyze the data that provides direct information about how well your marketing is working — these should be your primary and secondary key performance indicators. Ask the ‘so what?’ question about each metric to move from a number to a recommendation on what to improve.

Patience Takes Dedication

One of the biggest mistakes companies make is to give up on marketing efforts before they have a chance to provide results. By being dedicated to patience and controlling expectations, internet marketing tactics can have the opportunity to show what they can do. Constant measuring and analysis along the way will help provide data that tactics are moving in the right direction.

Businesses that sell to other businesses (B2B) typically have much longer sales cycles than companies that sell to consumers (B2C). The products and services that are sold are usually much higher in cost, which requires more hand-holding during the sales process.  Salespeople are invaluable to B2B companies because they nurture relationships throughout the sales process. B2B companies, even when they do use social media, tend to overlook it as a relationship builder and a lead generation channel.

B2B Relationships Online Matter Too

If you’re building relationships with a customer in-person, and they’re online, that’s another opportunity to listen to their concerns, learn about their needs and provide value to the relationship. If you’re also online and your customers are connected to you and you’re not listening and responding, that can impact in-person relationships as well. In lead generation, referrals are often the best source, and social networking provides an opportunity to build relationships with those in your customers’ networks.

Your Customer’s Customers Are Your Customers

In B2B relationships, your customer also has customers. Social networking provides an opportunity to connect directly to your customer’s customers. This will help you understand your customer’s needs and wants and can help you provide them with valuable information for their own marketing and sales. Needs often will trickle up the sales channel, and social networking can give you advanced notice of benefits and features you need to build into your own products. In some sales channels, knowing when your customer’s customers are looking for a product can generate a lead for you that a customer may need a product or service from you.

Building B2B Brand Preference

Because B2B is built on relationships and trust, brand preference can be a strong driver of sales. Using social networking can help you build your brand’s reputation by helping your customers with questions and problems, as well as their customers. Increasing your reputation will help generate referrals.

Provide B2B Lead Generation Opportunities

One of the most difficult aspects of lead generation is knowing when a customer or potential customer is interested in your products. It’s obvious when they call or use a contact form, but there often is interest well before those touchpoints. Providing lead generation opportunities online and with social networking can help you tap into those who are earlier in the sales cycle, allowing you to provide valuable information to move them closer to a sale.  The easiest way to provide these opportunities is to build content that is valuable (hint: lose the marketing speak and opt for benefits and value instead) for those considering a sale and providing it through social channels, not only by posting on your online profiles, but by offering it directly to those who seem to have a question.

Closing the Sale

Just like in-person sales and marketing in B2B, social networking for B2B lead generation requires time and patience.  It means listening and responding to customers in a timely manner. If social networking is treated as an extension of in-person networking, it can be an extremely valuable lead generation tool for B2B companies.

How do you use social networking for B2B lead generation?

Facebook ads can be a relatively cost effective way to increase awareness and even to generate sales.  Social Media Examiner has an article — 4 Ways to Improve Your Facebook Ads — that serves as a good starting point.  The article mentions 4 ways to improve your Facebook ads: 1) Meaning of Colors, 2) Language that Reflects Brand, 3) Impact with Images & 4) Effective Targeting. I think two of the most important ways to improve ads (of any kind) are missing: 1) Providing Value 2) Catchy Wording.

State Value & Benefits in Ads

I think it’s important to remember in any marketing communications or advertising that customers want to know what’s in it for them. Instead of a list of features, they want a list of benefits. While Facebook ads have a set limit of words and images, these should be used to inform the audience of the value you are offering them. It’s important that messaging reflect your brand, in terms of voice and image, but without communicating value, you are relying on what the customer knows of your brand (which may be nothing at all).

Ads Have Only an Instant to Impress

Images and color certainly have an impact on how we feel and whether something catches our eye.  Once that attention is caught, even if only for a split second, it’s vital to do your best to communicate in a way that keeps the attention.  Obviously putting your value/benefit out there front and center is key, but also to word your call to action and entire message in a way that’s both easy to read and catchy.  The example ads for #3 in 4 Ways to Improve Your Facebook ads are great examples of having catchy messaging.

What ways have you improved your Facebook ads?

Numbers, Numbers everywhere! With every social network we sign up for, and every online service we subscribe to, we’re given numbers measuring everything from followers to likes to page views.  It’s so easy to get caught up in all these numbers and to start to try to make them bigger and better.  Bigger is better, right? While internet marketing does provide fairly easy measurement tactics, it’s vital to focus on the numbers that are important to your business and its goals.

Tie Measurements to Goals

Numbers that aren’t directly tied to goals are nice, but may obscure focus from what’s really important.  Look for measurements that will allow you to directly understand how you’re doing on your way to your goals.  Secondary measurements that help you understand what tactics are working, and how are also important.  These measurements, primary and secondary key performance indicators, are what you should focus on improving.

Measure with Value

Measurements need to help you understand how your business is doing.  Look for measurements tied to your goals that provide value in understanding how you’re doing — how each tactic is working and how it can be improved. Valuable measurements tend to also be easy to understand, but there are measurement tactics that do need more analysis to be valuable. The key is to do whatever number crunching or analysis needs to be done to make a measurement valuable — otherwise it’s just a number.

Measure to Drive Action

Measurement without action is useless. Measurements need to be analyzed to provide insights that can be acted upon. A good metrics will help you understand how your tactics are doing and what you should improve. It may take analysis to get to the point of actionable insights, but if a number doesn’t provide any insights, it’s not the right number.

Continuous Measurement for Improvement

Just like marketing and sales, measurement is something that has to be done constantly to be valuable to the business.  If you just look at some numbers every quarter, it’s hard to know if what you’re doing is helping you achieve your goals.  While it’s not necessary for most companies to measure daily, regularly measure and analyze to provide recommended actions for your business to take to improve performance.

How do you measure success for your internet marketing?

While many internet marketing tactics are fairly obvious — SEO (search engine optimization), SEM (search engine marketing), content marketing, social media, etc. — they are not necessarily right for your business or organization. What tactics to use should be decided by understanding the audience you are trying to reach and where they are online. An internet marketing strategy creates a plan of action based on your business objectives and audience to make the most effective use of  your budget and resources.

Move in the Same Direction

Using different marketing tactics without an overall strategy can create chaos and interference. Many online tactics can actually benefit from each other (or hurt each other).  For example, search engine marketing is influenced by search engine optimization which can be affected by content and social media marketing.  Having an overall strategy ensures that all your marketing tactics are working together to move your business in the same direction.

Knowing What to Measure

Part of any good internet marketing strategy is measurement, which should be based mainly on your business objectives and the key performance indicators directly tied to those objectives. Understanding what you are trying to achieve with each marketing tactic will help you understand which metrics to use. Key performance indicators are those metrics which tie your tactics directly to your business objectives.  Secondary metrics will help you understand how each tactic is performing.

Understanding What to Improve

Marketing tactics can always be improved. An internet marketing strategy sets up the plan for what tactics you’re going to use and how you’ll use them. Since you know what you’re trying  to accomplish and how, it’s much easier to understand what to measure. When you know what to measure, you’ll be able to see how your tactics are doing and analyze the metrics to figure out how to improve your tactics.

Save Time & Effort

Having an internet marketing strategy first means that you’ll be able to understand your audience and your business objectives and how to use various marketing tactics to achieve those objectives. This ends up saving a lot of time and effort in the long run because you wont’ be running in circles trying various tactics and not knowing what’s working.

Wishy-washy marketers may try to tell you that Social Media ROI doesn’t matter, or that it’s about the conversation, or some quirky statement asking how you measure a phone call.  But ROI of any marketing does matter, especially to decision makers (whether your boss or your client).  People want and need to know how well any particular marketing tactic is working, so they can make decisions about what to improve and on what to spend money. Nichole Kelly has a great article over on Social Media Explorer about how to apply ROI to social media:

So how do we fix it?  We’re going to have to accept our reality that we need to be able to tie social media to an impact on customer acquisition. Sure you can tout customer service savings and other types of cost based results, but you’re going to have to bring a huge volume of conversations for that savings to really mean something to the leadership team. But the minute you start generating leads and adding new customers with a reasonable volume at at a reasonable cost, ears start to perk up.  — Social Media ROI is Nothing But A Numbers Game by Nichole Kelly

Throughout the years, the Big G (that’s what I like to call our Google overlords) has been implementing a ton of updates for its search engine’s algorithm. All these changes have been mostly understandable because in the end, Google wants to provide the best possible search results to its users.

It didn’t help that a lot of unscrupulous “SEO experts” in the past have been looking for ways to game the system, so a lot of link building tactics we used to implement are now worthless as Google has become a lot stricter with what it considers spammy and exploitative techniques.

For 2014, I’ve put together my 10 surefire link building strategies that I believe Google will continue to respect and reward for the rest of the year.

1. Ask the People You Know

Starting your link building efforts doesn’t have to be incredibly complicated. The first thing you can do is to simply ask your friends, your family, your colleagues, your business partners or your mentors that have their own websites for a link to your own.

The Internet is all about making connections, and you can do well by leveraging the connections you’ve already made in the real world to build up your online presence. All you have to do is ask these people who you believe you have real relationships with so that they’d have no problem having their sites associated with yours.

Of course, their sites should be relevant to what your site is about. Having a friend’s animal care website to your tech blog won’t do either of you any good because of how different the audiences are for each site. It’ll also look spammy!

2. Submit to Web 2.0 Sites

This will be one of the two methods that might have readers doing a double take before clicking the back button, but hear me out!

Submitting articles to sites like Ezine Articles and Squidoo is seen as a spammy technique that has long been rejected by legitimate link builders and SEO experts. That is true for the most part, as most articles sent to these domains are poor excuses for posts tackling topics spun over and over with little to no variation.

Yet a lot of these directories still get a ton of traffic because people still end up reading the articles posted there.

I’m not saying you should start writing dozens of posts and sending them en masse to all these different sites. Like any other valuable piece of content, put in the work to make it really good and unique before submitting. They’re good stepping stones for those who’ve yet to gain the reputation required by the real authority sites for guest blogging.

And speaking of that other thing that might get weird looks…

3. Continue Guest Blogging

Guest blogging has been one of the most reliable and effective way of building links for its positive effects for personal branding and growing a business, but the practice has just recently come under a lot of heat from Google. Matt Cutts, Google’s chosen one for leading the fight against spam, had this to say about guest blogging in his latest blog post on January 20:

So stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done; it’s just gotten too spammy. In general I wouldn’t recommend accepting a guest blog post unless you are willing to vouch for someone personally or know them well. Likewise, I wouldn’t recommend relying on guest posting, guest blogging sites, or guest blogging SEO as a linkbuilding strategy.

So in the face of these hard words by the top Google rep for webspam, why in the world would I continue pursuing guest blogging as a link building strategy?

For those of you who swore off Cutts and the rest of Google for strangling the Internet with their supposedly draconian policies and didn’t bother checking back, Cutts added this to the post in light of the strong reactions from the SEO community:

Added: It seems like most people are getting the spirit of what I was trying to say, but I’ll add a bit more context. I’m not trying to throw the baby out with the bath water. There are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community, etc.). Those reasons existed way before Google and they’ll continue into the future. And there are absolutely some fantastic, high-quality guest bloggers out there. I changed the title of this post to make it more clear that I’m talking about guest blogging for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. (Emphasis mine)

I will still be guest blogging because of those reasons I bolded and underlined, and that’s why you should, too.

4. Comment on Relevant Articles

While we’re still on the topic of blogging, posting comments on a blog post (or any content with a comments section, basically) with a link back to your site is another viable link building technique.

Like the guest blogging problem, there have been plenty of ignorant/malicious spammers who just post irrelevant comments with a link just to get that precious link juice passed down to their sites.

This has led to a lot of savvy site owners to moderate any outbound links in their comments sections. Some keep the number of outbound links to a minimum. Others make it so those links are nofollowed to protect their link profile. Then there are the sites that strictly don’t allow any outbound links.

There’s nothing that can be done for that last set, but the nofollow sites can still be commented on even for just spreading the brand to drive traffic to your site and build your credibility.

Just make your comments actually thoughtful, showing that you read the entire post and that you have something important to say. The link should also be relevant with the subject of the post, offering additional insight so that people have a reason to click on it. A good tactic is to provide a piece of that insight in the comment itself, and then saying that you go into more detail in the page you’ve linked to.

Whatever you do, don’t use exact keywords for your name linking to your homepage. That’s obviously spammy.

5. Interview the Experts (and Accept Interviews)

If there is one thing people on the Internet love doing, it’s voicing their opinions (and I’m no exception!). Of course, there are certain individuals who other people will actually pay attention to, and these are usually the experts.

There are those who know how much their knowledge is worth, and jump on the opportunity to spread their ideas. Others are flattered by the offer, and will jump on the opportunities to further build their brands.

In return, your site gets awesome content assets that will drive even more traffic from the people who already follow the expert. You’ll also probably get a link from that expert’s own website, improving your link profile thanks to the high authority domain.

If you conduct a great interview, the opportunity of you getting asked for your opinions opens up as well!

6. Create Infographics

We humans rely so much on visuals to understand the world around us that everything is easier to process when we see images closely representing the things we want to comprehend. Thanks to the Internet, we’ve gotten even more information to deal with, making our attention spans shorter.

So the things that primarily grab our limited attention are visual content – one of them being the infographic.

People are just drawn to their slick designs that simplify complex concepts and organize huge amounts of data, making them valuable content assets that other sites would love to link back to. Just remember to do the necessary outreach through social media and emails to get people to actually know about the infographic instead of waiting for them to stumble upon it!

7. Create Videos

The same principle of the importance of visual content obviously applies to videos as well. What a video has over an infographic is that it can be much more compelling because of all the other elements involved, such as sound and dynamics, giving it more potential for virality if it really connects with people.

Hosting the video directly on your site maximizes whatever link juice you’ll get if other sites do link to it instead of having it hosted on YouTube. The tradeoff is the traffic, as there’s a greater chance of the video itself being seen on YouTube than on your site. What backlinks that will get if hosted on YouTube also don’t seem to matter much with how it’ll rank highly on search engines, as detailed by Philip Zeplin.

Just remember to optimize the video through targeted keywords placed in the title, description and tags. A transcript and a video sitemap also help in indexing the video. Keep it short, and make the embed code easily available to increase its chances of getting shared all over the web, netting you more and more backlinks.

8. Share on Google+

The guys at Moz have done extensive research on the possible factors that affect a site’s search ranking, and it revealed that Google +1s are only second to Page Authority as a positive factor!

Google+ posts are better optimized for Google’s search engine because they get crawled and indexed immediately, each one gets its own URL, the first 45-50 characters in the post show up in the title tag, and resharing (or more +1s) accumulates internal links because each one is “followed”.

Share these posts publicly to get as many people seeing your content. It also helps that the +1s from publicly shared posts pass on more link juice than privately shared ones.

9. Outreach to .edu and .gov Links

Search engines hold links from said domains in high regard, and it’s easy to see why. Only official institutions get these domains, and with institutions come an implicit sense of trust because of their age and authority.
Actually getting a backlink from a university or a government-run website requires a lot of research and good outreach though. Posting comments on blogs on those domains works, as well as praising the actual bloggers through your own blog post so that they take notice of you. The issue is that there aren’t a lot of those blogs, and that also requires keen insight on the issues the posts are talking about.

You can try looking for resource pages within the domains to see what sites they link to, and then providing either another good option or an even better one to replace outdated information. If your site happens to be for a business located within the general area of a school or a government office, you can offer your site to be listed as a local business resource.

10. Reverse Engineer Competitor’s Backlinks

If your competitors are beating you in the search rankings, one big reason is that they probably have better link profiles. Of course, you believe that your site offers the superior content. All you need is a chance to show that content to those high-authority sites that your competitors have links from.

If you already know who your competitors are, you can use Ahrefs Site Explorer tool (note: you’ll have to pay to get access to all the features) to see their backlinks and even the anchor phrases used by those referring sites to link to your competitors’ sites. If you find that their anchor phrases look natural, then they’re conducting good link building, making their backlinks good sites to target for your link building efforts.

If  you don’t have an idea of who your competitors are, then you’ll have to do some work Googling with your target keywords to find out who else is using those and ranking for them.

I’ve covered a lot of ground through these link building strategies, but that’s because I want your link building efforts to last all year and into the future. I also wanted to show you that it’s still worth trying out the tried-and-true methods that ultimately boil down to creating and sharing quality content.
And that’s the one thing that will push a website high up the rankings and stay there no matter what algorithm updates Google throws at it.

Now that I’ve told you my link building strategies for 2014, let me know yours in the comments!

About the Author

Sebastian Klessinger is a freelance writer and Internet Marketer, specializing in SEO and Affiliate Marketing. He is also a marketing consultant for Xight Interactive. He loves to travel the world and takes every opportunity to experience something new.

Blogging has been a topic for over 10 years.  Now that we have social media and other digital marketing tactics, does it still make sense for your company to blog? What should consider to make the decision?  Lee Odden has a great article with things to consider:

Blogs that are supported by a solid, customer-focused strategy and that are integrated with social media efforts still have every opportunity to help a brand become and stay “the best answer” for topics that matter most to their customers. Of course competition continues to grow and customer preferences for information discovery, consumption and action will change. But that’s why companies keep their fingers on the pulse of the industry and their customers, continually optimizing the quality and performance of their communications. — Does It Still Make Sense For Companies to Blog? by Lee Odden

Content is vital in the execution of any digital strategy — it’s how potential customers learn about what you do and come to trust that you can do what you say. Trust is the key to conversions and referrals.  Good content, that builds trust and reputation, requires a systematic and strategic approach so that you can make sure that you’re creating value for your audience. Duct Tape Marketing has a great article on how to go about creating content to meet your digital strategies:

Today, the common thread in almost every element of delivering on strategy is content. Content is how you move people from know to like to trust. Content is how you give your marketing strategy a voice and, because of that, you must take a strategic and systematic approach to how your content is developed. — How to Make Content the Voice of Strategy by John Jontsch

Companies are always looking for competitive advantages — what can make them stand out against their competitors.  Using data and analytics to drive customer experience improvements can be a long-haul competitive advantage — increasing conversions and repeat business. While some data analysis can be complex, there are a number of metrics that a business can look at to see basics like where website traffic is coming from and where people get stuck during the conversion/sales process.  Econsultancy has a great roundup of why data-driven customer experience is important and what to look for:

Great customer experience is one of the hardest things for your competitors to copy.

A strategy of continuous improvement can offer clear differentiation from competitors.

However, it’s only when we measure what customers are actually seeing and doing when they are interacting with our digital channels, that we can understand where they might have issues or unmet needs.

Rather than theorise about potential problems or rely on closely monitoring small samples of test users, we need to let the data lead us to areas of concern. — Data-driven customer experience is tough to copy by Geoff Galat

The viability of consumer eCommerce is a no-brainer.  What’s often forgotten is B2B (business to business) eCommerce, but sites like Amazon.com are starting to fill the gaps left by others. While B2B purchases tend to be much larger than consumer purchases, and the sales cycle is longer, customers still want the convenience of going to a website to make the final sale, purchase supplemental parts/pieces, or be involved in the purchase cycle. eCommerce sites don’t have to disrupt the B2B purchase cycle which is based on relationships and trust — they can be used to automate processes and increase customer satisfaction. W.W. Grainger, which is a supplier of industrial parts and equipment, is an excellent example of B2B eCommerce.

For more on the opportunities of B2B eCommerce, Practical eCommerce has this article:

Many B-to-B companies have long believed that ecommerce would create channel conflicts between sales personnel, suppliers, and other channels. But in reality, B-to-B sales channels are already disrupted by ecommerce. Manufacturers are selling directly to consumers. Manufacturers and distributors are selling products on AmazonSupply.com, Alibaba.com, and other portals to other businesses. Wholesalers are consolidating rapidly because they are caught in the channel chaos. — B-to-B Ecommerce: Big Opportunity, with Obstacles by Dale Traxler