Bluepost Digital

It was announced yesterday at Facebook’s fMC conference in New York, that the Timeline feature which has been available for all personal profiles since 15th December is now available for brand pages. By 30th March 2012, Facebook will require all brand pages to switch over to the new design and start using Timeline. Brand page admins have 30 days to curate their Timeline, get used to the new features and prepare for the switch over…

BUT… DON’T SWITCH JUST YET!

The new Timeline redesign for brand pages isn’t just a visual redesign with the opportunity to have bigger photos on your page; it’s a total game-changer for how your brand is perceived on Facebook and how your fans and customers engage with you. Switching to Timeline and relying on your previous content just won’t cut it, and here’s why:

• Timeline doesn’t allow for landing tabs – whereas before you could use a landing tab to convert visitors to fans and fan-gate content, Timeline is the landing page and the content you display there is restricted from the obvious conversion tactics from the old-style pages

• Timeline requires beautiful and powerful visuals – images and video are now at the fore of a brand page with Timeline. Not only do you have a logo, but you have the opportunity to add a cover photo (a wide banner at the top of your Timeline) to tell the brand story and personality. Images and videos will be bigger and more prominent on the Timeline than they were on the traditional page wall, and you’ll need to use visuals to attract your fans – because plain text just isn’t going to engage them with Timeline

• Timeline allows you to curate your content – brands now have a lot more control about what appears on the Timeline. You can remove previous content which is out of date, negative or you’re not so proud of, and highlight awesome content which you and your fans have created. It’s an opportunity to celebrate what’s good about your company. You can also educate your fans about the history of your company or organisation and share information in a digestible way which the previous design didn’t facilitate… share the Timeline of your company

• Timeline allows for better page management – the admin panel in the new Timeline for pages allows you to manage all interactions, messages and insights in one place. Fans can message your page directly and you can respond quickly and easily from the panel. You can check out which content is really grabbing your fan’s attention in the insights area and then go and pin that to the top of your page for all to see, for up to 7 days. Page management is going to become a more intuitive process whereby you test and refine on a more regular basis and learn what content is getting a great response and giving you the opportunity to get more of that up the top of your page

These are just some of the changes which the new Facebook Timeline for pages will bring. If you’ve got a fan page on Facebook and want to ensure you switch over with a bang, start thinking about how you can utilise the new features and represent what’s at the core of your brand and its personality. Check out some of the other companies who’ve implemented the new Timeline design – what are they doing that’s awesome? What are they doing that you think could work better?

And if you’ve got any questions about Timeline that you want to discuss with us, we’re ready and waiting to chat. Check us out on Twitter, drop us an email or pick up the phone…

Most travel marketing that we see has a very similar format. An email is sent to all registered customers, containing beautiful photography overlaid with some discounted offers for a broad range of destinations, hoping to appeal to the widest possible audience. Let’s not forget the ‘book now to avoid disappointment’ early reservation discounts. What’s the aim of these brochures and emails? To persuade customers to make a booking.

But let’s think about that in a bit more depth- Are all customers who are interested in booking a cruise in the same boat? Are we really going to get maximum return on our marketing spend by sending the same communication to your best customers? I believe it might be worth considering lessons that we have learned from retail marketing.

Let’s start by establishing some broad assumptions around the different segments of customers that a travel business will have. Every agent will have an expectation that their broad brush marketing activities will influence these segments in different ways. I suppose you could say that we are hoping to take customers from a ‘unique A’ to a ‘different B’:

1: Maiden Voyage: Are travel agencies like retailers? Do they collect large databases of customers who have never transacted? What would be the influence on your business if these registered users actually spent with you? The goal here, is simply, to persuade them to book once.

2. Toe-dippers: I wonder how many customers have only ever bought a small ticket item from your agency once, and that was over 6 months ago? I bet it’s significant, but not for anything you’ve done; it’s normal. We have to use our powers of persuasion (and shallow marketing bribes) to tempt them back again.

3.One night stand: Here’s another group of toe-dippers, but at least we’ve seen them recently. Therefore, there is a chance they will buy again, so we don’t have to invest so much in persuading them to rebook. Like the toe-dippers, the focus is on a second booking.

4. Hitchhikers: Do you have regular customers who spend considerably less than your targets? Are they booking their own flights and just asking you to book their hotels? The purpose of any communication has to be to educate these customers about the benefits of leaving everything to you.

5. Lost at sea: These are customers who booked a couple of high value holidays, but they haven’t spent anything for ages. Where are they? What would you give to get another booking from them? They have already shown how valuable they can be, so we can afford to be a bit more generous with a reactivation offer.

6. First Class Return: These customers have booked high value holidays, but we believe they could be taking further trips, such as, weekends away and business travel.

7. Port Out: You’ve got some loyal customers. Hopefully quite a few. They are booking their annual summer holiday with you and perhaps a few mini-breaks in-between. Marketing to this segment is about gently reassuring them that they are booking with the right company and making sure they don’t switch to the competition. Why are you better than your competition?

8. The Private Flight: Many businesses are fortunate to enjoy a very small percentage of customers whose spending is off the scale. This might be anywhere between 1% and 5% of your customer base. If you look at these customers and then think about the stuff you’re sending them, you might wonder whether it’s really relevant to them? If you launched a loyalty programme, they would earn VIP status within no time, and then what? The relationship with these highly-valued customers must be protected and that’s the goal from your marketing activities here- to keep them for life.

This infographic explains what we want to achieve more clearly:

So I suggest it might we worth considering a different newsletter or email campaign for each segment. The images, copy and overall ‘look and feel’ could be entirely focused on each specific goal. We know that when we have analysed customer data for retailers, created the different communication segments, and sent individually designed campaigns, it has paid off, achieving better results than simply broadcasting the regular weekly newsletter. Worth a try?

Johnny Morris, Strand Marketing Group

Working in SEO we often find ourselves researching different places online where we can create or upload content.  However, it’s also inevitable that during these research sessions someone will ask if the site in question was on the Google blacklist. The blacklist, or list of banned websites, appeared as part of the Farmer update in January 2011 when Google did its best to eradicate what they referred to as content farms. Sure, there were some websites on the list that were so spam-driven that people expected them to be penalised, but there were also sites whose appearance on the list came as a surprise to most SEO professionals. These sites included Ezinearticles, Hubpages, and even Squidoo, formerly owned by SEO and online marketing guru, Seth Godin.

Bearing in mind that the algorithm change occurred on February 23^rd 2011, is it still right to be avoiding these websites nearly 12 months on?  The answer would be that it depends entirely on the website in question. While some websites used the opportunity to get their acts together, some vanished completely into oblivion. Taking three websites we look at where they are now and the impact that the algorithm update has had on them.

WiseGeek

This US-based content site was the most affected by the Farmer update, seeing a 77% decrease in the amount of keywords that it was ranking for. Duplicate content was cited as the main reason that this site was blacklisted with SEO professionals finding several articles on the site elsewhere on the web. WiseGeek never addressed the algorithm change and ten months on it appears that they have done little to eradicate it.  Each article on their website contains up to ten follow-links and the average page shows thirty Google AdSense ads. Too many adverts on a page is not only annoying to visitors, but search engines like Google see them as spammy and will often penalise a website if it appears to be getting too many links from ad-driven websites.

Ezine Articles

Ezine got proactive when it was penalised, using their blog to address the issues and let their authors know what was happening. They became far stricter with their submission policies – reducing the number of articles they accepted by 10%. Articles that were considered not unique enough were no longer accepted; the minimum word count for an article was put up from 250 words to 400 words; and articles were no longer given the option of being submitted through a WordPress plugin. There was even talk of making the links nofollow, but this was vetoed after several complaints from copywriters. Later on in the year, Ezine stepped up again putting measures in place to ensure that both the resource box and links were relevant to the article

Hubpages

In August, HubPages admitted that it struggled after the update. Frustratingly the CEO, Paul Edmonson, told WebProNews that he’d tried everything but to no avail. Finally someone on the team suggested moving each author profile over to a subdomain. Paul believes that the reason that this paid off is because Google could then treat each subdomain separately. It seems like this worked as at the beginning of October Google published its latest iteration to the Panda update and shortly afterwards SearchMetrics published an updated winners and losers list. Not only were Ezine Articles, eHow and Suite101 notably absent from the losers’ list, but Hubpages was included as one of the top ten sites on the winners’ list – it seems like you really can turn yourself around!

Photo credit: Flickr user Affiliate

Online marketers and SEO analysts are forever trying to find new and innovative ways of link building. One method that seems to be cropping up recently is the use of Q&A sites. After examining a selection of these sites, we try to find out the best ones and how they can help link building.

What is a Q&A site?

Traditional types of Q&A sites involved the creators of the site using the images of pop culture icons to answer questions asked by users. Now users can ask questions to be answered by other users and they are an ideal way to integrate social and SEO. From an SEO point of view, interacting with users and researching various topics will be a lot of fun!

Social sites such as Quora and Facebook Answers are my personal favourites, as they involve interaction with other users, whereas standard or non-social sites (Yahoo! Answers) focus entirely on getting specific answers to questions. Q&A search engines such as Ask.com can be pretty useful, as well as How-to guides (WikiHow) although they can be time-consuming.

via Flickr

Why use them?

Because of the number of people who are typing questions into Google rather than specific words or phrases, the popularity of Q&A sites is increasing.  For example, people may write something like “Where are the best hotels in London?” rather than simply “London hotels”. This means that relevant answers on Q&A sites will appear higher in the search rankings – great news!

Search rankings and link building for keywords

As many of the top Q&A sites are continuously updated by users, they can often rank high in Google search results. Content is frequently updated on these sites as users love sharing their knowledge and expertise on a subject – who doesn’t like to show off every now and again? Google is more likely to prioritise these in the search rankings rather than dead content on other sites. If you’re link building for key words, Q&A sites can also help as they will generate natural links.

Findings

The number of questions available to answer is the main difference between a good Q&A site and a not-so-good one. Some had a lot on a variety of topics and others very little. Social sites such as Quora and AOL Answers allow users to build an online community making it lots of fun and are a great place to start. Sites that allow follow links enable you not only to link back to a relevant site, but also Google will take more notice of it. No-follow links are also useful though as they help build up a natural-looking link profile.

Q&A sites are a great way of learning new things but are also a valuable tool in link building. Other methods of generating links should not be ignored, but integrating the use of Q&A sites into your link building strategy is worth investigating. New methods of link building are sure to arise in the near future but for now Q&A sites seem to be becoming increasingly popular.