As we gain experience in the entire content marketing cycle- from strategy & planning to content creation to content distribution- we continue to learn interesting lessons in the do’s and don’ts of this marketing strategy.

Recently, we carried out a fairly successful content marketing campaign for a start-up entrepreneur in the health & wellness sector in India. Being very new in the market, the primary objective of the campaign was to create as much visibility for the entrepreneur as possible in relevant channels, while at the same time, maximise opportunities for getting organic search engine (SEO) traffic.

While the results from the campaign more than fulfilled the objectives we set out to achieve, there were quite a few takeaways from the hassles and challenges we faced during the entire process. We list below some of these takeaways for the benefit of anyone who is considering a PR/ guest blogging outreach campaign.

Define and agree on the process to be followed

This may seem obvious but better to state it than not: it is good to define the process to be followed for the campaign with the different stakeholders. Whether you first create pieces of content and then find the right channel to get it published on, or you approach a few publishing platforms first and then create custom content for them— these are decisions that you can agree on upfront. Both of these approaches work and we’ve realised that there are advantages and disadvantages, efficiencies and inefficiencies.

If I were to stick my neck out and indicate a personal preference, it is for the latter approach: identify potential publishing platforms, engage with them and then create something useful and valuable specifically for that platform.

Remember that a PR/guest blogging outreach campaign is fairly labour intensive. While you can create a standard process to follow, it really works optimally in the pre-reachout stage. Beyond that, you will often have to alter approaches on the fly and take actions depending on the responses that you receive. Build in some degree of flexibility into the process.

Another aspect you should define and agree early in the process is related to communication with the target publishers. This is particularly true when you are doing such a content distribution/ outreach campaign for an ‘external’ client. Some clients can be unnecessarily fastidious about every tiny detail.

The client I mentioned above was one such ‘control freak’, which we thought significantly slowed down the process and success rate without adding any additional value. In hindsight, we would have done better to set in stone the entire process, communication details and the boundaries of ‘interference’ before we commenced the campaign.

Get a realistic assessment of the content creation capabilities
After we embarked on this content marketing initiative, we were soon faced with a different problem. The response rate was better than anticipated, so it meant that the number of publishers who were willing to accept contributions from our client was higher than the volume of content that we could expect our client to generate within the stipulated time frame.

This is not a bad problem to have, but it meant one of two things: either scale up content generation capabilities or slow down and delay some of the pieces that were to be submitted. Scaling up the volume becomes a serious problem when the subject matter is very niche and it does require a specialist to offer knowledgeable insights. In the case we are discussing, it did require the specialist who had some strong views to create the content, and so we had to drop off a few publishers who had agreed to publish our content.

The lesson we took away from this experience is that we needed to have a better sense of how much content could be created in what time frame, and the need to better regulate the outreach effort.

Agree on the websites you are going to target for outreach

Set up some broad criteria on the type and “nature” of websites you want to approach for potential content contribution and publication opportunities. The holy grail is, obviously, channels that have a high volume of relevant audience reach/ traffic and also willing to link to you. However, these are also not easy-wins, so make sure that you have alternatives too. For example, you might find sites that aren’t top-draw, but are reasonably relevant and there is an easier opportunity to get a link. In terms of effort-to-return, this tier 2 site could yield a better return in the short term.

In the selection of the site, evaluate whether the content is good in general. Will it be appropriate for the author/ expert to have his/her name there? Review some of the other articles covered by the media to determine the overall quality of the site.

Some of the yardsticks or factors we have used to identify potential websites for outreach are given below.

Get complete clarity from the content platform on what you will get
Once you start approaching the websites/blogs for publication of your content, it is very important to get full visibility on what you can expect from contributing your original content to that channel. The sooner you have clarity, the easier it is for you to bail out in case you feel that the benefit you will get is not commensurate with the effort you have to put in.

Some of the aspects to get clarity on are:

Ensure you get due credit for your content

There is nothing worse in content marketing than seeing somebody else take full credit for a piece of work that you have crafted assiduously. Mind you — we are not talking about some obscure blogger or web publisher aggregating content from multiple sources without permission. We were surprised to find that websites operated by some well-known media houses did this!

For example, a couple of large publishers used almost everything almost verbatim, bar one or two edits, from a piece that was written by our client. The by-line for the article was given to some writer from the publication, and they converted a couple of sentences in the article inot quotes from our client- a recognised expert in that field- thus trying to give the impression that the entire piece was researched and written by the staff writer. Worse, in attempting to make the minor edits to give that perception, the rather incompetent editorial team left behind a trail of spelling and grammatical errors!

We realised that not getting a confirmation from the publication that the article would be published with a by-line for our client was a mistake.

To conclude, some of the specifics of each content marketing or guest blog outreach campaign could vary, but we feel many of the bigger lessons we learnt here could be applied to all campaigns.

- By Manoj Aravindakshan
Manoj Aravindakshan is a search marketing consultant and content strategist. He is the founder of Singapore SEO agency & digital media company, On Target Media.

This article was originally published on the On Target Media website.

In the 11-minute video (embedded below), Ohye provides companies looking for external SEO consultants some useful do’s and don’ts and the process to follow in identifying the right individual or firm to work with.

As a SEO service provider, operating primarily in markets like Singapore and Mumbai where this practice has often been treated as a commoditized service, the video resonated with me on several counts.

I’ll list some of the key takeaways from the video, many of which we reiterate to our prospective clients during the pitch stage. Some of the points below are taken verbatim from the video while some others are edited or elaborated with my views.

• No magic bullet: If you aspire for long-term SEO success, there are no magic tricks that any SEO professional or company can provide. Typically, “SEOs need 4 months to a year to help a business first implement improvements and then see potential benefit”.

  
  

  The duration for seeing favorable results may vary from business to business, website to website, but when companies claim that they can “guarantee” 1^st page rankings on Google within a month, alarm bells must ring very loud.

• Quality matters: “A SEO’s potential is only as good as the quality of your business or website.”
  

  

  Though I don’t agree with the above statement in its entirety, it holds true in the long term.  I’ve seen several instances where very large and successful businesses don’t do nearly as well in search results. On the other hand, we ourselves have helped several SMEs outrank some well-known brands, without resorting to any black-hat SEO tactics or taking risky short-cuts. 

  So while a good SEO consultant won’t be able to take a poor quality business anywhere for too long, he can certainly work with a business that has a decent level of quality and help it compete and succeed.

• Ability to look beyond search rankings: “A good SEO does not focus only on search engine ranking but how they can help the business. It is difficult to do good SEO without knowing a business’ goals, customers and other existing marketing efforts. SEO should complete your existing work.” I couldn’t agree with Maile Ohye more here. It is of course expected that the consultant will recommend best practices for search-friendly websites. However, for too long, both SEO consultants as well as the companies hiring them- especially in the SME segment- have been obsessed over the technicalities of the medium aka the search engine (Google, in most cases).
  

  
  

  As search and search marketing has evolved, I think it is critical for SEO consultants to have a strong marketing mindset. They have to be able to look beyond meta data, java scripts, CSS and server response codes (these are important, of course), and be able to understand and appreciate the nuances of great content and usability and user experience. The ability and instincts to “connect different sets of dots” from across the business and leveraging those to catalyze SEO efforts, are other essential attributes.

  It is important to understand and more importantly, be aligned with, the outcome for the business: be it just traffic, leads or online sales. This focus and alignment on desired outcome can happen only if the consultant has asked for and obtained complete clarity on the stated business goals, its unique value propositions, profile of their target audience and business/revenue model, other marketing methods and channels used (including offline marketing) and competitors.

• User experience & SEO are linked closely: “In a majority of cases, doing what is good for SEO is also good for your users online customers”. Bingo!For a long time, too many people viewed SEO as a silo that was completely detached from the rest of the user experience. It was almost like these were two mutually exclusively phenomena, and the only way one could succeed in the “SEO game” was by throwing usability and user experience out of the window.This disconnect between SEO & usability manifested itself in several forms: lots of keyword-stuffed copy in the lower part of the pages (even top sites like eBay seemed to have resorted to these tactics in the past); text in tiny fonts on the side bar, and so on.

  
  

  Now it is increasingly acknowledged that the user experience matters considerably. There have been several hypotheses that bounce rate and the time spent on a site have a bearing on search rankings (though I don’t think this correlation has been definitively proved). Also, common sense dictates that if the user experience upon landing on a web page isn’t great or trustworthy, the user will abandon the page and defeat the very purpose for which he was brought there.

  So, the key message is: don’t disregard user experience while doing SEO, and don’t treat the latter as something very different from how the user engages with your website. The two can and should go hand-in-hand!

• Active participation in strategy execution is necessary: “One of the biggest holdups is the unwillingness of the organisation to implement the SEO recommendations.” We’ve encountered this scenario several times. We formulate a SEO strategy and provide a list of recommendations for implementation. And then, things come to a standstill. With SMEs it is a case of resource constraints or issues with third-party vendors that we have to deal with, while with some larger organisations, it is the bureaucracy.For example, we did some consulting work for a European subsidiary company of a global industrial giant. Twenty four months after we presented our strategy and execution plan, we managed to get about seven out of the 30+ recommendations we had made.At every stage, there were several reasons why something couldn’t get done sooner:: IT department couldn’t move forward without approvals from the marketing department who couldn’t do much without approvals from their corporate headquarters and so on.Though financially rewarding, the above project was quite frustrating because the strategy we defined never even came close to getting executed.
  

  
  

  If you are a marketer that is hiring a SEO agency, beware of such a scenario playing out and putting the entire initiative at risk. 

  Make sure you have the buy-in of all stakeholders and you will commit the time and resources to actively participate in the process with the SEO consultant. Only then will you have a fair shot succeeding with the SEO campaign.

- Manoj Aravindakshan

Manoj Aravindakshan, a well-known Singapore SEO consultant & content strategist, is the founder of Navi Mumbai digital marketing agency, On Target Marketing that provides SEO, SEM & Social Media Marketing services.

If you are looking to formulate and execute a SEO & inbound marketing strategy for your business, contact us now!

Originally published on On Target Marketing Solutions : SEO lessons from Google: Essentials for contemporary SEO

Images courtesy: Pick the Brain | LaneTerraLever | Website Designs |

One of the objections we keep hearing is that advertising on the content network (or ‘contextual’ network as many prefer to call it) may be fine for a ‘brand awareness’ campaign, but not so much for a “tangible, results-oriented campaign”.

Our experience belies this, as we have found that not only can a contextual campaign deliver measurable results but it can also outperform regular keyword-driven search campaigns by several multiples.

To cite an example, we have been managing a SEM based lead generation campaign for an online education provider. The difference in results from the search campaign vis-à-vis the contextual campaign is staggering: the cost per lead generated via search has averaged at least 3 times the typical cost per lead from the contextual network; similarly, the lead-to-click conversion rate was at least double from the latter.

3 reasons to advertise on the Google AdWords content network

The stark contrasts in results described above obviously merits a deeper dive into the “why” and we can think of 3 important benefits that should make advertising on the content network of AdWords attractive for the skeptics.

1. Enormous reach:

The content network expands an advertiser’s potential reach manifold.  A typical Google search result on a desktop/laptop shows a maximum of 7 ad positions (4 at the top and 3 at the bottom). On the other hand, search results on mobile show about 3 ads. We also know that the volume of search on mobile devices is now higher than volume of searches on desktop.  Put all these together and one can infer that the total advertising inventory available in ‘Search’ has probably come down.

On the other hand, the number of websites and web pages that could potentially display one of your ads continues to grow, with the exponential growth of both new websites and fresh content.

In addition, the content network also increases the scope for remarketing/ retargeting, which are proving to be quite effective avenues in boosting conversions.

Therefore, not using the huge reach offered by the AdWords content network is a huge opportunity lost.

2. Flexibility with multiple ad formats

While text advertising has its own benefits, being able to deliver a marketing message in multiple formats is something that every marketer wishes for. The content network offers scope for delivering image ads/ rich media ads/ video ads, which the search network doesn’t

3. Cheaper (generally)

It probably boils down to a simple demand-supply equation, but we’ve found that in most cases advertising in the content network is significantly cheaper on a cost-per-click basis.

We’ve also noticed in several cases that the rates offered by some publishers for their advertising inventory when approached directly for a media buy are higher than getting similar inventory through the content network. Why publishers would adopt such a pricing strategy is open to debate, but from an advertiser’s perspective it is a great incentive to target those publications through the Google content network (placement targeting / managed placements).

Legacy concerns with content network advertising

A lot of the skepticism with advertising on the Google content network, I believe, is due to legacy issues. For one, it is not “intent-driven” unlike advertising on Google search. Hence, some advertisers believe that this is no different from any form of passive advertising, where the advertising is relying on some form of interruption, impulse, or mere serendipity to get the desired outcome from the advertiser.

That may be true to quite an extent but the results indicate that there are benefits of such “passive advertising”. The visitors or leads one attracts through such campaigns may have to be ‘nurtured’ differently as they could be at a different stage along the buying funnel, but it may be a folly to just ignore the opportunity to reach such an audience.

Another reason for the reluctance to invest marketing rupees in the content network could be historical results. Chances are that one has tried the network, generated clicks but not gotten sufficient leads/ conversions at acceptable cost levels.  However, as Google has come down heavily on dubious sites in its search results in the past few years, the quality of sites that drive clicks can generally be deemed to be much better and relevant than they may have been previously. (this is not to say that poor quality sites, made predominantly with the purpose of displaying ads from Google don’t show up in search results now, they still do! The frequency with which one spots such sites has gone down quite a bit.).

Be open to the contextual network

As an advertiser with a limited search marketing budget, it is understandable that the default thinking is to target the search network only.

However, I encourage marketers to change that default thinking and be open to the idea of using both content and search, or even just the content network, depending on the specific objectives of a particular campaign. We’ve seen some of our clients benefit from this change of mindset, and you could too!

- By Manoj Aravindakshan

Manoj Aravindakshan is Managing Director of On Target Marketing Solutions, a Navi Mumbai digital marketing agency, specializing in search engine marketing and social media marketing. On Target helps clients across different industries/verticals plan, execute and manage Google AdWords pay-per-click advertising campaigns.

Less waiting time for SEOs to see effect of clean-up job
Firstly, Penguin is now integrated with the core search algorithm and will run in real time. Previously, Penguin cast its net periodically, catching ‘non-compliant’ websites for their bad linking practices and low quality of inbound links and penalising them.

Websites that got caught in this net not only had to “clean up” by removing suspicious or low quality inbound links to their website but more importantly also had to wait until the algorithm ran again. This was a frustrating wait for affected websites and SEO practitioners managing these websites as often the results of their efforts were not to be seen or felt.

Now however, webmasters should theoretically be able to see the impact of actions they take to clean up their link profile a lot more quickly. This could mean just days instead of months and years.

Page-level granularity means affected websites have hope
One of the key aspects of this release is that Penguin is likely to be applied at a page level rather than the entire domain. So, if an entire domain was previously affected because of a few low-quality or spammy links to some pages of the site, there is a high chance that those websites could see greater visibility on Google search results because other pages on the site aren’t affected the same way.

For large websites with thousands or hundreds of thousands of pages, this is a boon as it helps them prioritise their clean-up job and work on removing or disavowing bad links to their more important pages first, which will help them cover some lost ground quickly.

Lesser risk of “negative SEO” tactics
A major talking point and frustration for many SEOs after Penguin first wrecked havoc was that of “negative SEO” i.e. anyone could potentially get a competing website penalised by Google by building a bunch of spammy links  pointing to the competing website.  The fact that such websites could get a site-wide penalty and not be able to bounce back quickly may served as a big ‘incentive’ for practitioners of negative SEO. Not anymore.

Monitor ‘entrance visit’ pages closely
The flip side of this update is that we may be seeing a lot more ongoing volatility in search results. Webmasters should not only monitor their Google traffic closely but also check the traffic to their key landing pages more closely and frequently. Even if overall search traffic doesn’t show significant drops, any major drop in traffic to important landing pages should result in a thorough review of the link profile of those pages.

-      By Manoj Aravindakshan

Manoj Aravindakshan is the Managing Director of Mumbai-based SEO and online marketing company On Target Marketing Solutions. He has been in the field of online publishing and digital marketing for about 15 years.

Originally published on On Target Marketing Solutions : Penguin 4.0: Implications for SEO professionals

In addition to these algorithm updates, which Google has become somewhat better at in terms of announcing publicly or giving advance notice of in recent times, there are statements, pronouncements and advice given by Google spokespersons (to be fair, these are often in response to questions asked by eager SEO pros). It used to be Matt Cutts previously, whose word was almost taken as the Gospel; now, there are folks like John Mueller and Gary Illyeswho have become the public face of Google at least in relation to queries and issues related to Google search results. Each statement or piece of advice from them often leads to more questions, discussion, debate and many a time, a lot of confusion among SEO practitioners. A case in point is a recent statement related to how Google treats redirects. It was interpreted that Google now treats both 301 (permanent redirect) and 302 redirect (temporary redirect) the same way and so it is up to webmasters to decide which way to go should they need to redirect some pages. Is it really true? Do we know for sure that is the case? The perils of listening to Google blindly In our quest to get whatever competitive advantage we can manage by being ‘first movers’, we SEO practitioners tend to respond to news of any change (rumoured change would be more accurate) almost immediately and with gusto. Yet, things can change rather quickly. ‘Authorship’ is one such example. If we were to look back at statements from Google from about three years ago, it seemed that Google Authorship was likely to be a key ranking factor for SEO going forward. This got a lot of us recommending and pushing for the implementation of authorship tags on our client websites. In less than two years since, Google had killed ‘Authorship’. In late 2015, the suggestion was to leave Google Authorship markup on the pages in case Google decides to use that in some way in the future. By the middle of 2016 though, Authorship was completely dead

The perils of NOT listening to Google On the other end of the spectrum, there are instances when ignoring forewarnings from Google can prove to be quite damaging. One of the best examples of this is related to the preference for mobile friendly sites in mobile search results. For the first time, to the best of my knowledge, Google gave advance information of an impending algorithm change.  When the algorithm change did happen– termed “Mobilegeddon” by the SEO community ever eager to come up with interesting names- there was quite a huge shake up. All of a sudden thousands of websites that didn’t get their websites mobile friendly lost huge chunks of their search engine traffic. Google has similarly made announcements related to giving additional weightage for secure sites (those using “https”) over non-secure sites in a bid to make the web more secure. Close to two years since that announcement, the number of sites that have migrated to “https” seems to be small compared to sites that haven’t. What would happen if Google decides to “switch on” a  “secure sites filter” is anyone’s guess! Damned if we do, damned if we don’t! How then should we respond? Fair question, but this is exactly where I think we marketers earn our keep. As with a lot of aspects related to SEO, the response doesn’t have to be in binary terms. Deferring action is very much an option. My suggestion is to start by asking a few basic questions

• Does it affect us?  Now?
• How will it affect us in future, if at all?
• Are there any opportunities for us from the change that is being mentioned? How can we maximise potential benefits?
• What is the cost of not doing any change?

Answers will vary depending on a host of factors such as the industry you are in, or the type of business/website you have, the size of your business and the resources at your disposal to take all actions required to respond to the changes, to name just a few. Ideally, we all should be able to carry out extensive research and experiments to test out the benefits or impact of doing/ not doing something. However, not every business will have the luxury of doing that. So let’s go to the next best alternative: look at what some experts and agencies are reporting based on tests they have conducted. Again, look carefully whether the tests and the results are applicable to your specific case– that kind of contextualisation is critically important. In a nutshell, my advice and approach would be to not ignore announcements by Google, but at the same time, don’t treat every statement from Google as the Gospel blindly. A healthy dose of scepticism will stand you in good stead. P.S: Check out this article on Moz  where Rand Fishkin talks about when to listen to Google and when not to. Also, see some of the comments on this report –      By Manoj Aravindakshan Manoj Aravindakshan is the Managing Director of Mumbai-based SEO and online marketing company On Target Marketing Solutions. He has been in the field of online publishing and digital marketing for about 15 years. Originally published on On Target Marketing Solutions : How SEO professionals should respond to Google updates & announcements.

Mobile Internet users use WhatsApp instant messaging application more frequently than any other social networking app.  WhatsApp is an instant messaging platform which allows users to send images, video and audio media messages as well as location using integrated mapping features. As of 2015, worldwide mobile phone internet users were 52.7 percent. In 2017, figures suggest that more than 63.4 percent of mobile phone users will access online content through mobile devices. Recently, WhatsApp shared their milestone of crossing one billion users. As of February 2016, nearly one in seven people in the world use WhatsApp each month. Currently, WhatsApp is the number one social networking tool. Almost anything and everything can be shared on WhatsApp. Hence, most website builders have started adding the share option on the website to not only boost website traffic but also improve content engagement. The button allows visitors to quickly send or share an article with their friends in real-time while they are reading the article.

Buzzfeed were the first to integrate the WhatsApp share button on their mobile site. After the addition, they observed that there was a shift from public sharing, such as via Twitter – and, to a lesser extent, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. to more private or “ephemeral” media which got them more clicks than the share-to-Twitter button.

How to add WhatsApp icon in your website?

addtoany
AddToAny is a social share button plugin. It has now added WhatsApp button into their sharing services. Works great for almost all types of websites. However, by default it just shares the title of the post and the URL. not the text. So you might need to tinker the code a bit to share text.

Pros:

1. Shows up only on smartphones
2. Looks good
3. No coding needed
4. Gels well with your other social share buttons

Cons:

1. Shares only Title and URL. Does not share text or excerpt.

whatsapp-sharing
This is the best one so far. This is a WhatsApp specific sharing button. Works great and is free. Best part is you can actually select what text needs to be shared. Also, it shows up only on smartphones.
You need to download the sourcecode and upload it on your website. So, you might not be able to use this button on sites where you don’t have a hosting.

Pros:

1. Can share text/excerpt and customized content
2. Shows up only on smartphones
3. Looks good

Cons:

1. You would need to host some sourcefiles on your server. A little more techie.

JetPackaddon for WordPress
If you are using JetPack sharing for your WordPress blog, you can now add WhatsApp share button along with other sharing services. For this, you have to install a separate plugin WhatsApp Sharing Button for Jetpack. Activate it and you will have a new WhatsApp share button on your JetPack share dashboard.

This again shares the title and url and not the text or excerpt.

Pros:

1. Shows up only on smartphones
2. Looks good
3. No coding needed

Cons:

1. Shares only Title and URL
2. Does not share text or excerpt.

Manual WhatsApp Share button
If you want more customisation or you want to share actual text and/or excerpt from your blog, you can easily create your own WhatsApp share button/link. It is as simple as adding a hyperlink. No script.

To add a WhatsApp share link use the following code.
<a href=”whatsapp://send?text=YOUR TEXT HERE“>Share via WhatsApp</a>
Just change the text in ‘Italics’ to your requirement.
To use a button simply replace the hyperlink using a button image.
However do note that this link/button will show up on desktop as well.

Pros:

1. Can share text/excerpt and customized content
2. Fully customisable

Cons:

1. Shows up everywhere – even in desktop. You can use script to hide it on desktop.
2. A basic coding needed
3. Needs to be added manually every time

References:

Statistics and facts on mobile internet usage
Why You Need to Add a WhatsApp Share Button
Will it be possible to integrate WhatsApp’s share button on a website and share different content to my WhatsApp contacts using WhatsApp Web from a desktop?

What makes slideshare popular?

Figures talk for themselves for the popularity of slideshare

• Slideshare is one of the top 150 sites on the web and is ahead of many popular sites like Reddit and MediaFire.
• 50 million unique visitors a month and a low bounce rate proves the uniqueness and relevance of the content
• 1140 slides – that is the number of slides that visitors view at any given moment!
• LinkedIn being the parent company of slideshare, this platform offers the best of both the sites and social media connectivity. The hard to beat LinkedIn/slideshare combo will give the users a powerful arsenal in the social media platform.
• Users can sign up for slideshare Pro for free and apart from uploading slides, this site will let the users to upload videos or upload content for a selected audience.
• Slideshare by engaging the users will ensure consistent lead generation for marketers who may be baffled by the low impact their website content is having on the bottom line of users. Let’s admit it! Content marketing has little value in generating leads without the back up of social media channels. Slideshare tools allow the users to add email list, demo requests or other relevant information at any point in their business presentation.
• Another big plus is that its presentation iframe is embeddable in websites and blogs, which will go a long way in generating leads. The embedded presentation link can be shared over twitter or Facebook and the users who open these will find the embedded presentation in your slideshare page.
• Marketers can make their blogs neat and trim with its handy multiple calls-to-action tools like an email sign-up box and links related content without adding up the pages.

Why use slideshare?

Slideshare will give the advantage for marketers to share videos, presentations and slides with more of your followers and prospects. Here are some of the advantages that not many social media platforms can ensure.

Simplicity: Slideshare presentations are simple to create and does not involve much time or staff resources. Anyone who is familiar with the popular software programs like Microsoft’s PowerPoint or Apple’s Keynote can get started right away.
Easy updation: Slideshare lets you update your presentation any time
Visibility: Slideshare presentations are search engine optimized that will attract viewers on their own. You have the added advantage of embedding your presentations in emails or blogs.
Monitor views: Slideshare will keep a tab on the views and downloads of each presentations and will let you measure the popularity of the topic over a period of time. In addition, there are lead generation forms that will allow your users to contact you.

How to ensure effective content marketing with slideshare

• Segment the content and lead forms by the type of audience for better lead generation and response. The lead capture forms of slideshare will simplify content management for businesses catering to a diverse audience by creating different segments and categories to connect with the target audience.

• Appropriate placing of your form: The position where the lead form will appear in your presentations plays an important role in lead generation. Place your form strategically to draw the best views and to get your audience engaged with the content, place the form at the end of the presentation.

• Get the add-ons: If you need tools that are sophisticated that an email to keep track of the leads that you make, you can employ slideshare’s lead capture feature plugs into Marketo, Eloqua, and Salesforce

References:

Use slideshare to Turn Your Marketing Channels into Lead Gen Tools

4 Ways to Use slideshare for Lead Generation

The cause of content fatigue
The cause for “fatigue” is fairly obvious: too much information and only a finite amount of time in a day to absorb it. Consider some of the numbers out there:
• Over 2 million blog posts published a day
• Over 10 billion pieces of content shared on Facebook in a day, on average
• More than 500 million tweets a day

Mind you, these are just some of the avenues through which content is being distributed. Why is this a bad thing, especially for content marketing? It is really the amount and volume of “noise” that is generated. With so much material , it takes something spectacular or ‘remarkable’ as marketing guru, Seth Godin puts it, to stand out from the crowd. As more content is created and delivered everyday, this is obviously going to become even more extreme. In the best case scenario, they stick to their favorite sources and ignore everything else; worst case – they just don’t look for new content.

Building consumer engagement to overcome content fatigue
“Consumer engagement” the name of the game and getting them to notice you is your opening move. Remember that the more options they have, the more selective your audience is about what they choose to consume.

Know your audience
First things first: know who you’re targeting and why they want this content. Know who they are, their demographic, their likes and dislikes, and their online behavior. If you’re not aiming for the right market, your content fails before it even gets out.

Create quality content that matters
Your content may be relevant and worth sharing, but unless it’s something that connects with your consumers’ lives and thought patterns, no one is going to notice or share your content. Are you answering their questions? Offering them solutions? Meeting a need? If not, you can almost be certain that the content will be drowned in the huge pile getting produced. Research, strategize, introspect and then create well-written, quality content – make these your foundations and you raise your chances of being noticed and remembered.

Engage your audience with different formats
Bearing in mind the different places and times during which your audience is consuming your content, engage with your audience by providing them with different formats for your content – blogs, videos, animations. Explore your options in content format and material…but stay relevant to your brand and message.

Let your expertise and authority shine through
There’s a lot of competition out there so you need to be the expert in your chosen area. Your audience subscribes to a few trusted, informed sources for their content, so you need to display the kind of expertise that makes you their go-to. You may be small, but be effective!

Bottom line: content fatigue exists, but that doesn’t make content any less relevant. The trick is to make your content stand out from all the noise. And above all, remember you’re writing for people, not search engines!

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Curated by the NetMarketer editorial team

Some useful sources and references related to content fatigue
• CyberAlert
• Clickrain
• Silvertech
• Ceros
• Kissmetrics
• InternetLiveStats

What impact has the frequent “flux” with organic search traffic (SEO traffic) had on your traffic? How do you keep your website immune to the vagaries of Google algorithm updates?

Plancess website is quoted often by several third-party vendors and affiliates due to the authentic and genuine information it provides. In fact, Plancess was the eLearning website listed by the top career portals on the day of JEE Main 2015 for providing answer keys, text/video solutions and paper analysis.

How important is mobile traffic to you now (and going forward)?
[VT]: Nearly 45% of our website traffic is via mobile and tablet devices- thats close to 10000 visitors on a daily basis! We expect mobile traffic to go further up as we recognize this global trend. So, we have made PlancessJEE.com mobile-compatible / responsive- easy to read and interact on any screen-size and interface.

To enhance the user experience to the fullest, not only have we optimized our website for mobile devices, we also look into the browser and technology being used. Based on a deep understanding of our users and their usage patterns including operating systems, screen resolutions and several other variables, we have identified the exact pain points of users when using our website. We use this understanding to prioritize fixes and enhancements that can help users get the most from the website.

Please describe in more detail how you analyse user behaviour.
[VT]: We do this with A/B testing or multi-variate testing (MVT) using various tools. We look at heat map analysis and in-page analytics to give a leading indicator of what changes would work best. We implement the “challenger-champion” approach. Any new development is first introduced as a challenger to a certain section of the audience- and if the value addition to business as well as user experience via the challenger is more than our champion, only then we make the necessary changes through out. This way, the bulk of our traffic is always having the best experience out there.

Looking ahead, what is your mobile strategy going forward?
[VT]: Going forward, we’re building more products with a mobile-first mindset such that the product itself is designed in a way that can be engaging for mobile users. This is in-line with the overall strategy at Plancess to keep useful content front and centre of our offering. We aim to provide
the best intellectual experience, rather than having a mobile app without top-notch content.

In this regard, we’re building a module based eLearning approach via an Android/iOS application, and an assessment platform to complement the user learning. Further, we’ve identified some really amazing indicators of tracking user behaviour on this mobile app – which is not only customized for the right technology, but will also serve as a personal dashboard. It will provide a completely unique experience for every individual using the app and help them derive genuine value out of the product. We’re going to launch these within the next few months.

What advice would you give to start-ups in relation to quickly scaling up traffic acquisition?
[VT]: Digital marketing is not as easy as it seems to be- and it is not because of the tools that it is based on, but because of whom the marketing is subjected to. At Plancess, we believe that our users are not only intelligent and motivated, but also extremely dynamic. They can judge right from wrong- and are increasingly connected. Best quality content and user experience are critical. A happy customer is worth a lot more in today’s world. I would suggest the following do’s and don’ts for marketers trying to scale up traffic acquisition.

Do
a. Build content – original and authentic information
b. Offer great user experience – customer-centric as opposed to product-centric
c. Provide pre-sales and post-sales service- small gestures go a long way
d. Look for and develop referral/social traffic

Don’t
a. Engage in Black-hat marketing – be it with SEO or making false-claims, etc.
b. Focus on short term gain at the cost of long-term relationship with users – they’ll know (as will Google!)
c. Lead with a sales-driven approach instead of user value addition (counsellor approach)

What are the major challenges you face currently in relation to your online marketing efforts?
[VT]: – Finding new channels that can perform as well as our existing channels
– Going on a commission per sale as against to commission per lead with our affiliate partners
– Reaching newer audiences/ geographies: bulk of our website traffic is from tier 1/tier 2 cities but we really need to penetrate the interiors of the country to become a household name for students preparing for JEE.
– Online merchandising – many of our users still don’t have access to online banking and hence depend on parents. Hence a lot of sales have to be closed offline (COD) as against completing the transaction online.

How do you see online marketing evolve in the next couple of years?
[VT]: With growing Internet penetration, online marketing will undoubtedly provide the vital interface for firms to their target customers. Also, the growth in mobile phone usage enables easier reach to users. From a user perspective, access to information will become much easier and convenient. Users will be more informed, mobile and self-aware.

From a marketing perspective, it is the time for customer centricity overshadowing product centricity. In the eLearning realm, with most academic resources being available online, education is going to become a hot space with companies fighting for large ‘traffic-share’ instead of just having a strong ‘market-share’.

Recognising this, we are betting on providing the best content rather than the best technology – because in the long run, the value that users derive from our product will be the key differentiator critical to our success.

In the first of a two-part article featuring edited excerpts from the interview, Vaibhav attributes their success to a strong content-driven strategy. He also feels that search marketing is still a need-to-have avenue, when compared with social or display advertising that seem to be more of ‘good-to-have’ avenues. Vaibhav also has a slightly contrarian view on the growth/ effectiveness of online display advertising.

What have been the most effective strategies you have employed to grow the traffic to your website? Why do you think they have been effective?
[Vaibhav Tamrakar]: Plancess has always been a content driven company- and we strongly believe in the notion that content is king! We believe we have the best quality content in our preparation material, carefully crafted by our team of in-house experts and Top 100 IITians, whom we call our “Gurus”.

As part of our content strategy, we launched JEE Mag- a blog generated in-house- that serves as a one-stop portal for all news related to JEE, preparation techniques, tips-n-hacks from our Gurus and any other query that a student might have. We continuously strive to put the best resources on our website that have helped thousands of students realize their dreams.

Our sustained efforts at translating students’ dreams to reality have also helped us achieve our own goals. Today, hundreds of thousands of JEE aspirants flock to our website. We hope to keep them engaged with the quality of our content and the latest information pertaining to engineering.

What’s your take on the relative effectiveness of search marketing (both organic and paid-for) when compared social media marketing, other display advertising and offline marketing?
[VT]: Social media marketing: I believe Social is a ‘good-to-have’ platform, from a customer engagement perspective, and to give a potential touch point in case the user has some product related query, or is looking for some information. From a brand recognition perspective, it makes sense to be present where our users spend a lot of their time so that the brand gives an impression that we’re there when you need us.

At the same time, it is not a mission critical platform– i.e. if the social media page is not very active, it doesn’t mean the brand is not doing well. It might well be doing wonders with the product, and yet not really be up-to-date on social.

Search, on the other hand, is a vital ‘need-to-have’ platform. The user is becoming increasingly Internet-savvy. They cannot be coerced to view only one brand- and more often than not, are comparing various offerings via the Internet. Being strategically present there as a brand becomes really important.

Display advertising: A few years ago, display advertising was a really good mechanism to bring to the user product-centric marketing by displaying the best product offering from a company. Users did not actively check out brands on the Internet- and mostly used it as an information portal.

However, as the Internet has blended in with users’ lives, coupled with screen size getting smaller and smaller (read mobile/wearable devices), display advertising is losing its charm. Moreover, as the websites are themselves trying to provide the best UX to users, a lot of advertising gets unnoticed (‘banner blindness’).

On the other hand, search is not just ‘static SEO’ anymore due to personalisation of search results and a host of other factors. As a result, the ads/search experience is heavily customised to what the user wants. Consequently, these targeted search ads tend to yield much better conversion rates compared to display advertising.

Offline marketing: With increased Internet penetration and the proliferation of portable Internet devices- users tend to be always online. The amount of attention to billboards, banners/posters (outdoor advertising) gets has been reduced to minimal.

In fact, the millennials and the generation Z have pretty much taken over from the baby boomers and generation X. This generation likes the flavour of open space, free information and being connected to each other. Hence static marketing like print media/ TV commercials largely go unnoticed when compared to referral, social and online behaviour. Only brands that have a universal appeal – catering to a very diverse range of markets – across cultures, language, ages barrier – look towards these channels owing to their non-targeted approach. And of course, it is quite difficult to monitor ROI from these channels.

- See part 2: Customer-centric marketing, great user experience are key

See more news, views and tips on Search Engine Marketing, Display Advertising and Social Media Marketing, with an Indian context.