Thursday, 31 October 2019

Hackers used WhatsApp to spy on senior government officials in at least 20 countries

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg onstage at F8 conference in May 2018 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center
NSO Group spyware on WhatsApp was allegedly used to track government officials from at least 20 countries on 5 continents around the world.Read More

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Why website security affects SEO rankings (and what you can do about it)

A few years ago I started a website and to my delight, the SEO efforts I was making to grow it were yielding results. However, one day I checked my rankings, and got the shock of my life. It had fallen, and badly.

I was doing my SEO right and I felt that was enough, but I didn’t know there was more. I hadn’t paid attention to my website security, and I didn’t even know that it mattered when it comes to Google and its ranking factors. Also, there were other security concerns I wasn’t paying attention to. As far as I was concerned back then, it didn’t matter since I had good content.

Obviously I was wrong, and I now know that if you really want to rank higher and increasing your site’s search traffic, then you need to understand that there is more to it than just building links and churning out more content. Understanding Google’s algorithm and it’s ranking factors are crucial.

Currently, Google has over 200 ranking factors they consider when they want to determine where to rank a site. And as expected, one of them is about how protected your site is. According to them, website security is a top priority, and they make a lot of investments all geared towards enduring that all their services, including Gmail and Google Drive, use top-notch security and other privacy tools by default all in a bid to make the internet a safer place generally. 

Unfortunately, I was uninformed about these factors until my rankings started dropping. Below are four things you can do to protect your site.

Four steps to get started on website security

1. Get security plug-ins installed

On average, a typical small business website gets attacked 44 times each day, and software “bots” attack these sites more than 150 million times every week. And this is for both WordPress sites and even for non-WordPress websites. 

Malware security breaches can lead to hackers stealing your data, data loss, or it could even make you lose access to your website. And in some cases, it can deface your website and that will not just spoil your brand reputation, it will also affect your SEO rankings.

To prevent that from happening, enhance your website security with WordPress plugins. These plugins will not just block off the brute force and malware attacks, they will harden WordPress security for your site, thus addressing the security vulnerabilities for each platform and countering all other hack attempts that could pose a threat to your website.

2. Use very strong passwords

As much as it is very tempting to use a password you can easily remember, don’t. Surprisingly, the most common password for most people is still 123456. You can’t afford to take such risks. 

Make the effort to generate a secure password. The rule is to mix up letters, numbers, and special characters, and to make it long. And this is not just for you. Ensure that all those who have access to your website are held to the same high standard that you hold yourself.

3. Ensure your website is constantly updated

As much as using a content management system (CMS) comes with a lot of benefits, it also has attendant risks attached. According to this Sucuri report, the presence of vulnerabilities in CMS’s extensible components is the highest cause of website infections. This is because the codes used in these tools are easily accessible owing to the fact that they are usually created as open-source software programs. That means hackers can access them too.

To protect your website, make sure your plugins, CMS, and apps are all updated regularly. 

4. Install an SSL certificate

installing an SSL certificate for website security SEO rankings

Image source

If you pay attention, you will notice that some URLs begin with “https://” while others start with “http://”. You may have likely noticed that when you needed to make an online payment. The big question is what does the “s” mean and where did it come from?

To explain it in very simple terms, that extra “s” is a way of showing that the connection you have with that website is encrypted and secure. That means that any data you input on that website is safe. That little “s” represents a technology known as SSL.

But why is website security important for SEO ranking?

Following Google’s Chrome update in 2017, sites that have “FORMS” but have no SSL certificate are marked as insecure. The SSL certificate, “Secure Sockets Layer” is the technology that encrypts the link between a browser and a web server, protects the site from hackers, and also makes sure that all the data that gets passed between a browser and a web server remains private.

why is website security important for SEO rankings, example with http vs https

Image source

A normal website comes with a locked key in the URL bar, but sites without SSL certificates, on the other hand, have the tag “Not Secure”. This applies to any website that has any form.

According to research carried out by Hubspot, 82% of those that responded to a consumer survey stated that they would leave a website that is not secure. And since Google chrome already holds about 67% out of the whole market share, that is a lot of traffic to lose.

research, how many users would consider browsing on a website that is not secure

Image source

Technically, the major benefit of having Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) instead of Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is that it gives users a more secure connection that they can use to share personal data with you. This adds an additional layer of security which becomes important especially if you are accepting any form of payment on your site.

To move from HTTP to HTTPS you have to get an SSL certificate (Secure Socket Layer certificate) installed on your website.

why does an SSL certificate work for website securityImage source 

Once you get your SSL certificate installed successfully on a web server and configured, Google Chrome will show a green light. It will then act as a padlock by providing a secure connection between the browser and the webserver. For you, what this means is that even if a hacker is able to intercept your data, it will be impossible for them to decrypt it.

Security may have a minor direct effect on your website ranking, but it affects your website in so many indirect ways. It may mean paying a little price, but in the end, the effort is worth it.

Segun Onibalusi is the Founder and CEO at SEO POW, an organic link building agency. He can be found on Twitter @iamsegun_oni.

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8 Public Speaking Tips and Tricks to Crush Your Next Presentation

So you’ve spent the last few weeks whiteboarding, workshopping and brainstorming your next presentation. Maybe you’re sharing findings from a specific analysis to your client(s). Maybe you’re reporting last quarter’s performance to your leadership team. Or maybe you’re running a planning meeting with your team to align on goals and strategic planning for the next fiscal year.…

The post 8 Public Speaking Tips and Tricks to Crush Your Next Presentation appeared first on Seer Interactive.



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Managing access to Yoast SEO with SEO roles

It may be one of Yoast SEO’s lesser-known features: SEO roles. A site admin can determine in the backend of WordPress who gets access to the various settings and features of Yoast SEO. This makes for a more fluid and flexible access protocol for different kinds of users on a site. It is no longer a one-size-fits-all solution, but a more tailored one. SEO roles make Yoast SEO even more powerful for every type of user. Here, we’ll explain why these roles are so awesome.

Managing user roles in Yoast SEO

It used to be quite the challenge to use Yoast SEO in a larger site environment. As an admin, you’d have to choose between offering users full access to the plugin or just access to the SEO post editor part. That means a regular user couldn’t use the redirect manager, for instance, and had to ask an admin for help every time he or she wanted to add, change or delete redirects. We’ve seen it happing here at Yoast as well. Of course, there’s a whole range of possible permissions in between. Yoast SEO provides the option for two roles that make this a lot easier to manage: the SEO manager and SEO editor, in addition to the admin who determines who gets to see what.

Roles and capabilities

Roles in Yoast SEO consist of one or more capabilities, like:

  • managing options (this gives you full access),
  • managing redirects,
  • editing advanced metadata,
  • access to the bulk editor.

The SEO editor, for instance, can now make redirects, but cannot change the settings of the plugin or access the advanced metadata editor of Yoast SEO. This way, the SEO editor has more access than a regular user, but less than the SEO manager who can manage settings as well. If you use a permission or role manager plugin for WordPress like Justin Tadlock’s excellent Members plugin, you get even more fine-grained control over the capabilities within Yoast SEO. This way, you can mix and match capabilities in any form you’d like.

In Yoast SEO Premium, we’ve also added the capability to manage redirects without having to be an administrator. By activating this, users within a specific role get full access to the redirect manager. No longer do site managers have to be swamped with redirects requests by site editors, they can manage those themselves. Personally, I like that a lot. By adding some magic code to the plugin, the redirect manager now shows up in the WordPress sidebar menu, even if your Yoast SEO menu is hidden by default. How cool is that?!

Managing your site has never been easier

The SEO roles in Yoast SEO make it incredibly easy to give more people working on your site access to the features and settings they need, without granting them full access. Does your site editor need to edit advanced metadata? No? Block it in Yoast SEO. Does he or she need to manage redirects and do large-scale SEO optimizations with the bulk editor? Great, grant him or her access to these parts of the plugin. You can do this and more – all from the admin dashboard of Yoast SEO!

Read more: Yoast SEO 5.5: Introducing SEO roles »

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Five for the Future: It’s Happening Tomorrow!

As a multitude of WordPress developers, designers, users, owners, and fans currently descend upon St. Louis, Missouri for WordCamp US 2019 (WCUS) this weekend, those WebDevStudios (WDS) team members who are staying behind will be using their workday tomorrow, Friday, November 1, 2019, to join their WCUS-attending teammates in spirit by contributing to Five for the Future, a WordPress initiative designed to motivate WordPress companies to donate 5% of their time to giving back to the core and community. Whether we’re organizing or speaking at WordCamps, presenting a talk at a WordPress meetup, or participating in Five for the Future (#5ftf), WDS is always giving back.

Jessica Lujan, Project Manager

“I think it’s awesome that WDS allows its employees an entire day to give back,” says Jessica Lujan, WDS Project Manager, who recently experienced her very first #5ftf Day on October 4th. “It really goes to show that they’re invested in WordPress and want to see it continue to succeed.”

Like many WordPress site owners or users, Jessica doesn’t code. However, she doesn’t let that stop her from participating in this pay-it-forward event. When given the opportunity to join in, she was hesitant, but then she heard that she could help out the WordPress community by captioning a video.

“I have so much appreciation for the folks that create the captioning content. It was cool to learn the tools and systems in order to create that, and I feel like I learned a lot!” exclaims Jessica. She also adds, “I will be honest; it was a little harder than I thought it would be. You have to be really focused on it, otherwise you’ll realize you missed an entire sentence or two and have to rewind. The tools they suggest to use are super easy to use, so that was a relief. It was definitely rewarding to watch it back and see all the content I helped contribute.” [Editor’s note: it was my own WordCamp talk that Jessica captioned, so I can’t help but be biased. See Jessica’s captioning work here.]

Jessica’s enthusiasm and effort just goes to prove that you don’t have to code to contribute. Are you interested in learning about other ways you can participate in #5ftf alongside with us? Read this blog post.

Below, take a look at a sample of WDS’ contributions from our last Five for the Future. From tweets to likes to shout-outs, we get lots of support from the community. We can’t thank you enough for noticing our motivation and work. As always, keep up with our #5ftf efforts by following the hashtag on Twitter.

 

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Pre-made calendar with over 300 holidays to help plan editorial content

A carefully planned content marketing strategy contains several key ingredients including an understanding of who you’re creating content for (e.g., your persona or personas), how your content will help them, and some key performance indicators to measure success.

However, even the most thoughtful and well-planned content strategy can run into roadblocks without a detailed editorial plan. The editorial plan should include what categories and topics you plan to write about, how you intend to amplify your content (e.g., social media, email, etc.) and—the most important bit of all—a list of relevant, highly engaging ideas that incorporates a balance of evergreen and time-sensitive content.

Event-specific content can be challenging to create with any consistency, but with some planning and foresight, it is possible to plan out your editorial calendar in advance. One way to do this is to align some of your topics with seasonal holidays, observance days, and themes. 

holiday planner social media

[Image source]

A holiday for every week, month and season 

At CommonMind, we’ve compiled a holiday planner specifically aimed at social media content planning. It contains more than 300 holidays bucketed in three categories as follows:

  • 2019/2020 U.S. National Holidays: This calendar contains all the top favorites like Christmas, New Year’s Day and Tax Day (that last one is somebody’s favorite, I’m sure).
  • Educational Calendar/Events: This includes key dates such as Global Family Day and National Science Fiction Day which are observed globally. 
  • A Food-themed Calendar: Technically, these aren’t holidays, but they’re fun to observe and perfect for helping fill your editorial calendar, particularly if you are in the food and beverage industry (though this isn’t a requirement).

Since a long list of every conceivable holiday can seem a bit daunting to wrap your brain around, we’ve also created an embedded Google calendar that can be viewed in weekly or monthly increments or printed. 

holiday planner for social media example calendar

November 2019 Holiday Calendar – Source: CommonMind

Holiday planning isn’t just for retailers

When people think of the holiday season, it tends to mean the period of time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s (although it’s been creeping up in the calendar to incorporate Halloween as well). But holiday content planning isn’t just for retailers or companies whose business ebbs and flows depending on the season. Here are a few examples of how some lesser-known holidays and observed days can inspire great content.

World Vegan Day (November 2, 2019): This is relevant to a variety of businesses in the health and wellness industry. Here are a few examples:

  • A nutritionist could write a piece about how to create a nutrient-rich vegan diet.
  • A healthcare provider could create a list of physical signs for vegans to be aware of that indicate they’re not getting enough of a specific vitamin or mineral.
  • A fitness expert (or gym) could write about how to ensure vegans have enough energy for various types of workouts.

World Kindness Day (November 13, 2019)

  • A marketing agency could write about an ad campaign or case study which features kindness as the main theme.
  • A veterinary clinic could write about how kindness helps both pets and their owners live happy, more fulfilling lives.
  • Any  number of businesses can write about kindness as their approach to doing business such as through employee wellness and medical programs, community service and involvement, or promoting an internal culture of kindness.

National Hot Cocoa Day (December 13, 2019)

  • This is a cocoa-manufacturer’s dream holiday and the perfect day to promote their cocoa products with a blog post as well as via social media.
  • Food-related organizations (coffee shops, restaurants, caterers, grocery stores, etc.) could create an event around this day (e.g., drop in for a free cup of cocoa!) and promote it via their blog and social media accounts.
  • Retailers can cash in on the height of shopping season by offering free cocoa in stores, coupons that fall on this day, and stories that humanize the company which can be featured on the blog (e.g., feature an employee cocoa-related story).

As you can see, becoming familiar with nonstandard holidays as well as observance days can help spur creative ideas for content that’s relevant to a variety of businesses and industries (you don’t have to sell cocoa to take advantage of National Hot Cocoa Day).

Our Google Holiday Calendar is a great way to familiarize yourself with upcoming holidays and can be imported into your own calendar for easy reference. Since this may be overwhelming, you can also peruse the long list of holidays to begin brainstorming and filling out your editorial calendar for the rest of 2019 and into 2020.

Happy content planning!

Jacqueline Dooley is Director of Digital Strategy for CommonMind.

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Ecommerce Product Releases: October 31, 2019

Here is a list of product releases and updates for late-October from companies that offer services to online merchants. There are updates on voice-commerce, expense management, payments, small business loans, shipping, and returns.

The post Ecommerce Product Releases: October 31, 2019 appeared first on Practical Ecommerce.



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5 Writing Tricks to Treat Your Audiences

Do you view numbers as something akin to Frankenstein’s monster? To get over the fear, you need an “exercism” – this five-step workout will train your writing muscles to wrest all benefits from numbers. Continue reading →

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October 2019 Top 10: Our Most Popular Posts

Since 2005 we've published articles, seminars, and podcasts to help ecommerce merchants. What follows are the 10 most popular articles that we published in October 2019. Articles published earlier in the month are more likely to make the list than later ones.

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5 Thank You Pages That Take Post-Conversion to the Next Level

If you’re like me, you say “please” and “thank you” automatically. 

You’ve been saying these magic words since you were a kid. Because you were strongly motivated. Forget your manners, and you’d be humiliated in front of your family or strangers. Refuse altogether, and you’d be denied the obscure object of desire. 

“What do we say?” “Pweese.” Boom—the chunky monkey is yours! 

For today’s marketers, the problem with habitual politeness is that the delivery of a thank you message should never be a reflex. If a “thank you” rings hollow, the response from your customers will be equally rote.

“Thank You.” “You’re Welcome.” End of conversation.

See the problem here?

A thank you page is not the end of the transaction. It’s the next step in keeping people engaged with your brand or product, generating continued goodwill, further qualifying your leads—or even increasing order values or making more sales.

When it comes to your digital campaigns, how you say thank you should be an essential cornerstone of your post-conversion strategy. So let’s talk about a few ways you can approach creating better thank you pages. Along the way, we’ll explore some very effective thank you page examples created by Unbounce customers.

5 Tips from 5 Thank You Pages

Thank You Tip #1: Invite ‘Em for a Specific, Strategic Call

The example below from Australia’s Axis Social applies every best practice out there (and then some) to maximize its post-conversion potential:

An Axis Social thank you page
Image courtesy of Axis Social. Click it to see the whole thing.

This isn’t a landing page, though it might look a lot like one at first glance. It’s a thank you page (as opposed to a confirmation box or popup). And that’s why it’s so powerful. It does a lot of what a traditional lead-gen page might do, but it does it after the initial conversion goal has been met.

At this point in the interaction, the team at Axis has already captured the visitor’s email address in exchange for a downloadable Buyer’s Guide. Instead of letting the interaction end there, Axis goes the extra mile to communicate their value as an agency.  According to Managing Director Matthew Asimus, this page helped them bridge the gap between a marketing qualified (MQL) and sales qualified (SQL) lead:

We hypothesized that a number of users who engaged with, and converted on, our first MQL landing page would develop an additional level of trust and thus a propensity to ascend from an MQL into an SQL. In essence, we were hoping to move users through a ‘yes cascade’ or ‘yes ladder’ to improve conversion rates.

Our initial results from this MQL ascension approach are incredibly exciting.  Despite the campaigns using cold paid traffic from social and requesting 7 form fields, our landing page conversion rates are nearly 30%. What’s more, our lead qualification rates align with our other sales qualified lead generation approaches.

Note just how much persuasive material they’ve included here:

  • Social proof in the form of both brand logos (visible above the fold, naturally) and extensive testimonials from individual clients.
  • A walkthrough of the social strategy call that highlights compelling benefits (“explosive lead growth for your business” sounds good to me) and gives the call a definitive structure and purpose. 
  • The enticing promise of another resource, a custom Facebook Ads Blueprint, that’ll prove equally valuable to Axis Social’s targeted customers.

The beauty of this approach is that it also scales to suit visitors without adding more pressure to the experience. If a visitor hits this page but doesn’t want to connect with Axis Social at the moment, there’s nothing here preventing them from clicking away. 

But when visitors arrive with questions—or, say, balanced on the fine line between consideration and conversion—this thank you page gives them the extra nudge they need.

Thank You Tip 2: Reveal Next Steps

Speaking of next steps, if you’ve ever taken an action online—like submitting a form or making a purchase—without receiving any response, you know the existential dread that follows: 

Did it… work? What happens next? Should I do it again?

What… am… I… supposed… to… do… now!? 

Maybe I’m exaggerating a touch, but it’s always important to let the visitor know about the next steps—especially if clicking your call-to-action isn’t the end of things. Doing so will reduce friction, frustration, and uncertainty. Even if the next step will be yours to take, let people know what you’re doing and when they can expect to hear from you. 

For example, notice how Zendrive does it here with a couple of lines:

Thank You page from Zendrive
Image courtesy of Zendrive.

It’s all clearly communicated. In the headline, they let their B2B prospects know that they’ve successfully completed the “first step.” Then the page sets expectations about what comes next (and when): “You will receive a message shortly with your invite to an executive briefing.” 

Finally, it’s also worth taking note of how Zendrive suggests further reading from the site by linking to a piece of content from their blog. Providing a link to a single, valuable piece of content (as opposed to their blog as a whole) helps build trust before the briefing ever begins.

Bonus Tip: Offer Downloadable Downloadables on Your Thank You Pages

OK, full disclosure: I’m slipping this lil’ bonus tip in here just because it’s a pet peeve of mine. 

Have you ever signed up for an ebook, report, or white paper that never seems to find its way to the inbox? It sucks. When this happens, you leave visitors feeling frustrated or even a little ripped off, since they’ve just exchanged your email address for nothing at all. 

(I can’t click “unsubscribe” fast enough when this happens.)

What makes it so painful, though, is that there’s a dead-simple way of getting around this issue on your thank you pages:

Download now button

Unless you’ve got a very special reason you need to deliver a file only via email, provide a download link on the thank you page itself. That way, visitors who’re anxious to start reading (like me) are satisfied. You can still start a drip campaign, of course. But you also eliminate the possibility that your downloadable never makes it to them.

Thank You Tip 3: Reinforce Brand Personality

This post features a few thank you pages that will feel a little “aspirational” for small marketing teams (or teams of one) who are short on time and resources. So it’s worth looking at how much gets done in this straightforward example from the fine people at Launchpeer:

Image courtesy of Launchpeer.

It’s personable, playful, and a little quirky. Most importantly, though, it’s thoughtful. As in, it demonstrates thought.

Even if you’ve seen this meme a million times before, this page lets you know that Launchpeer is a brand who, y’know, gets it. (And gets you.) Plus, when you click away, you leave with a pleasant association with the brand.

Tom Hanks is a good choice here too: he’s so darned affable and unlikely to be outed as a serial killer any time soon. I’m speculating, but this quick “t.hanks” from Launchpeer probably didn’t take a heck of a lot of time to create.

You can create your own fun images and animations, but the takeaway here should be that even a small effort leaves a much stronger impression than a generic thank you message. It shows how a humorous gif, playful animation, or unexpected message can generate tons of delight and goodwill.

(Of course, they also promote their podcast in this thank you page. And, again, offer that next step now that their visitor is on a roll engaging with their brand. So a little goes a long way…)

Thank You Tip 4: Win Them Over First, Then Make A Second Ask

Usually, when a visitor takes a small action, they become more likely to take another, bigger one. That’s why the most effective thank you pages often follow-up with a bigger ask, and why multi-staged forms are usually recommended by CRO specialists and agencies. 

Sometimes it helps if the initial action is immediately appealing to your prospects. Take, for example, this contest created for Veeam by Gameplan Marketing:  

A thank you page by Veeam and Netapp
Image courtesy of Veeam and Gameplan Marketing. Click it to see the whole thing.

Leads are captured by offering prizes to IT professionals (like a fitness tracker, a hotel gift card, or Apple AirPods) in exchange for taking a short survey about their current data centers and cloud storage solutions. Like the example from Zendrive above, the thank you page then reminds visitors what they can expect next.

But afterward, this thank you page also makes a second ask. Visitors who’re are (gently) encouraged to sign up to access a free, gated content hub. Since they’ve already provided their info to enter the contest, they’re now more predisposed to do so. Gameplan also includes a sweet explainer video (it appears on the contest page and the thank you page) that briefly outlines the benefits of their cloud-based data-management product.

Thank You Tip 5: Keep ‘Em Engaged With Your Site

One thing that most of these examples have in common is that they lead visitors back to the website or prompt another piece of content. You can take this even further, though.

For the launch of Unbounce’s Ultimate Ecommerce Landing Page Lookbook, for instance, the team created a landing page where visitors can grab it.

Here’s what the landing page for this guide looks like:

Click the image to visit the complete page. (Opens in a new tab.)

Eye-catching, right? And if it helps convince visitors that this lookbook is worth the download, then call it a success. It’s an awesome resource for any marketer looking for inspiration, so it’s not a tough sell.

However, we’ve also got plenty more content and resources to offer our ecomm visitors, including material further down the funnel. And we’d love to keep visitors coming back for it.

That’s why the thank you page is so crucial here. We want to keep the conversation going, so we use a thank you page to ask visitors another quick question on the way out. Depending on what visitors choose, they’ll be directed to additional resources.

I’ve included a screenshot of this choose-your-own-adventure flow below:

A thank you page by Veeam and Netapp
Click it to see the whole thing.

The answer that readers provide to this general question (i.e., “What’s the biggest challenge you face as a marketer?”) does three things:

  1. The answer allows us to offer up additional, curated content and resources at the moment of conversion. This is the material we think visitors will find particularly useful. We include content from across the funnel, including editorial, educational, and promotional sources.
  2. It lets us get to know our audience and their concerns a little better. The optional follow-up question on the thank you page helps us further qualify interest from visitors via progressive profiling and learn more about customers and non-customers alike. 
  3. It provides insight into our audience’s information needs. From a content planning and strategy perspective, this is invaluable as we fill content gaps, decide on what pieces need to be updated, and prioritize the creation of new resources.

So a single thank you page can become a source of marketing insight, an engagement driver, and a lead qualifier. All this happens by asking a single additional question at the right moment.

Curious about the Unbounce ecommerce lookbook? Take a look at the whole flow here. (Yes, we’ll need your email. Tell ‘em Colin sent ya.) While you’re at it, download it for your landing page swipe file.

Thanks for Reading (About Thank You Pages)

I find a real-world analogy enlightening here: imagine if brick-and-mortar retailers were to escort you to the exit and lock the door each time you make a purchase.

That’d be crazy, right? 

So why do it on your landing pages?

Unfortunately, smart uses of thank you pages like these ones from our customers are the exception, not the rule. Frankly, a lot of examples out there look more like this bland form confirmation box, typo and all:

Typos are extremely common on thank you pages
Pages like this one just don’t put as much care into saying thank you as they do their “pleases.” (That’s not great, Bob.)

A thank you page shouldn’t be a hard stop, and if that’s the habit you’ve gotten into, consider breaking it.

Thank you pages are super versatile. You can use them with subscriptions, downloads, webinar registrations, shopping carts, quote requests, demo signups, and contact forms. They can be used for upselling (or cross-selling), for offering discounts, for encouraging referrals, for soliciting feedback and testimonials, or for generating social shares. Holy moly.

Whether you’re selling something or generating leads, saying “thank you” in an unexpected and meaningful way is an opportunity to make a lasting impression. And, when incorporated into a thoughtful post-conversion strategy, it can boost your revenue too.

To close, here are three big points worth remembering if you’re trying to make a case for spending more time on your thank you pages:

  • A healthy open rate for emails in your nurture campaign is between 15-25%. How many of those new leads will see your thank you page? Close to 100%, I’d wager. Start nurturing right away!
  • According to research done by Bain & Company, “loyal online customers, just like offline ones, spend more, refer more people, and are more willing to expand their purchasing into new categories.” Well-considered thank you pages represent an incredible opportunity to create loyalty and build brand affinity.
  • If you get enough traffic and have a clear secondary conversion goal, remember that thank you pages can be A/B tested and optimized just like your landing pages. Post-conversion remains an important touchpoint for your conversion rate optimization planning.

So if you’re already designing landing pages, make saying “thank you” as much a part of the process as your headline, form, and call to action.

And, hey, thanks for reading.



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Wednesday, 30 October 2019

Twitter will ban political ads starting November 22

A 3D-printed logo for Twitter is seen in this picture illustration made in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Twitter will ban political advertising on November 22, a move that won praise from Democrats and scorn from Donald Trump's presidential campaign.Read More

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The Top Holiday Email Marketing Tips of 2019

Top Holiday Email Marketing Tips for 2019

Black Friday is less than a month away. Are your promotional emails ready?

Implementing an effective holiday email marketing strategy can help drive ecommerce and online sales, increase charity donations, or get your subscribers directly to your store.

But don’t wait until the last second to get started on your emails: Winter holidays are the top consumer spending events of the year, according to the National Retail Federation, and some businesses are already sending holiday emails.

That’s why I’m hosting a Facebook Live on November 5, 2019 at 1 p.m. ET on AWeber’s customer community page. Tune in to learn how to:

  • Create a revenue-driving email marketing plan for the holiday season.
  • Execute exciting holiday promotion ideas.
  • Write must-open holiday subject lines. 
  • Add holiday cheer to your email design.

And more!

Watch on November 5th. Even if you can’t stream it in real time, you can always catch it later. The video will stay up on AWeber's Facebook customer community page.

Not an AWeber customer yet? To catch more Live videos from our email experts, sign up for a free trial of AWeber and join our private Facebook community. (Only AWeber customers can join!)

The post The Top Holiday Email Marketing Tips of 2019 appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.



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Facebook beats Q3 2019 revenue and profit estimates despite regulator scrutiny

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at Facebook Inc's annual F8 developers conference
Facebook reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue and profit rose as growth in expenses slowed from a year earlier.Read More

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Beaver Builder Review: The Best Content Builder Around? Truth or Hype?

Beaver Builder has been a member of the original big three of the page builder space ever since the very beginning. It’s about time we do it justice in this Beaver Builder review! We’ll be looking into the things that make Beaver Builder a viable solution, its pros and cons, pricing, ease of use, the... View Article

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German Commission Recommends Tighter Regulation of AI Development

Few technologies have sparked as much debate, held more promise or terrified more people than artificial intelligence (AI). Depending on who is talking, AI promises to usher in a new technological era or precipitate the demise of humanity.

Notable individuals such as Mark Zuckerberg, Ray Kurzweil and Sam Altman have been strong proponents of AI development, even going so far as to believe the potential benefits create a moral imperative to pursue AI research. Others, such as Elon Musk, Clive Sinclair and the late Stephen Hawking, believe true AI may represent the greatest existential danger to the human race.

With so much controversy, governments are getting drug into the middle of the debate, trying to navigate what role they should play in regulating AI, with Germany the latest to wade in on the topic. In 2018, the German government formed the Data Ethics Commission to “develop ethical benchmarks and guidelines as well as specific recommendations for action, aiming at protecting the individual, preserving social cohesion, and safeguarding and promoting prosperity in the information age.”

Last week the commission released an opinion on AI development, recommending more regulation and government involvement.

“The Data Ethics Commission holds the view that regulation is necessary, and cannot be replaced by ethical principles. This is particularly true for issues with heightened implications for fundamental rights that require the central decisions to be made by the democratically elected legislator. Regulation is also an essential basis for building a system where citizens, companies and institutions can trust that the transformation of society will be guided by ethical principles.”

AI proponents and tech experts are already speaking about against the commission’s findings, voicing concern that the focus on regulation will stifle innovation.

“Europe wants to be more competitive in the digital economy,” wrote Eline Chivot, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Data Innovation in Brussels. “But it cannot substitute regulation for innovation. Rather than trying to achieve competitiveness in AI through policies designed to disadvantage foreign providers and promote European digital sovereignty, European policymakers should instead focus on developing an AI strategy that invests in people, data, and digital infrastructure, and creates a more innovation-friendly regulatory environment, so that European firms can better compete with China and the United States.”

One thing is certain: The debate about AI, its future and the best way to safely develop the technology is far from over.

The post German Commission Recommends Tighter Regulation of AI Development appeared first on WebProNews.



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What You Need to Know About BERT

Google rolled out another algorithm update that is expected to impact 10% of all search queries. This is the biggest change to Google’s algorithm in ~5 years (RankBrain). The purpose of this algorithm update is to better understand natural language in search, intended to deliver better search results.…

The post What You Need to Know About BERT appeared first on Seer Interactive.



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18 Marketing Tactics You Need in 2020

The changes in 2020 will create just enough anxiety in digital marketers to keep the coffee and libations industries booming. AI will continue to grow and impact how we interact with our audiences and understand our own content. 

As usual, old trends will slowly fade away and get replaced with new, shiny trends. Yet, the list below isn’t all new trends. In fact, most are things you’ve heard of and may be doing. 

In 2020, a lot of familiar best practices will get a facelift, and underutilized tactics and software will become more vital for data-driven decision making.

Here are the marketing tactics you need to consider as you plan your 2020 marketing.

Find ways to get links other than guest posts

Obviously, SEO is important, but it’s getting harder and harder every year. Google has a potentially big algorithm change coming in March of 2020 that will reduce the value of guest posts in consideration for search rankings. So, if your SEO strategy is 100% based on guest posting, diversifying will be important to maintain your ranking. 

Invest in original research

With the value of guest post links potentially waning, content creators will look for other ways to build great inbound links.

One of the best ways to get inbound links is to do original research that is of value to your industry. Original research gives your brand something to share with the industry that is new and exciting. It creates motivation to link because it is based on actual data and will be a talking point in the industry. As a result, original research gets a lot of earned media and social coverage, which helps boost your search rankings.

Many organizations currently rely on original research for their domain’s overall authority and inbound links, but in 2020, more and more will join the fold, especially with online research becoming easier with services like Google’s Marketing Platform.

Focus on medium-tail keywords

The days of long-tail keywords are nearly obsolete. Google has revised its algorithm to understand that a lot of similar long-term keywords are actually talking about similar things. The result? Longer form content that speaks at length about a subject gets ranked higher than pithy posts that are focused on extremely specific keyword phrases.

marketing tactic: short, medium and long-tail keywords

Truly understand where local and national SEO start and stop

SEO used to be a one-trick pony, with only a single algorithm to figure out. Since Google local began back in 2004, the tides have been shifting. Many industries are seeing this shift, as content that used to rank well nationally is now being overrun by local results, pushing older content down in search rankings. 

For example, areas such as franchise SEO now require a blended method of national and local search for their search strategies — things that used to be handled by entirely separate teams at one point. 

Understand where your organization should be optimizing for local search vs. national search to avoid losing existing SEO traction and gaining ground on competitors who are not keeping up with this trend.

Use chatbots to drive lead generation

67% of consumers worldwide used a chatbot for customer support in the past year. Though working with a real human in preferred by most people, the availability and quick answers chatbots provide have made them invaluable in customer support and even lead generation.

67% of consumers worldwide used a chatbot for customer support in the past year.
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Chatbots can help prospects understand more about your solutions by answering prospects’ direct questions quickly. Getting these quick responses without feeling the pressure of having to talk to sales right away will help drive more “maybe” prospects into solid leads.

Create long form, educational videos to rise in YouTube rankings

It used to be standard practice that short videos were the way to go. But this was mostly because people didn’t want to spend over 90 seconds watching a video that’s just a disguised ad for your organization.

Now, people don’t want to spend ANY time looking at a video that’s an ad for your organization. So, what’s the key to success on YouTube then? Creating content that people actually need and want to watch – GASP!

How do you do create something that your audience needs and wants to watch? These videos need to be educational AND entertaining to have sticking power. Videos with low audience retention get booted pretty quickly from YouTube rankings, while those with high retention are moved up. So, follow YouTube’s lead and favor longer, educational videos (10+ minutes) in your marketing strategy, and you’ll see the results when it comes to search and recommendations.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Wait, did he just say 10 or more minutes? Everything out there says the top videos on YouTube are 2-3 minutes!” Correct, they are. Because most of the top videos on YouTube are music videos. But, if you look at the most successful YouTube channels out there, they average between 13 and 14 minutes per video. Your goal is to create a great channel, right? So, go for amazing, longer-form videos that really address your audience’s pain points.

Follow through with remarketing

One of the most often underutilized benefits of online display advertising by the majority of companies is a great remarketing campaign. Getting people to your site once is the hard part. Once you get them there, you now have the ability to target them with inexpensive, effective messaging wherever they are online. 

It’s relatively low-cost given you only pay for the ad clicks you get, and it is not incredibly hard to do. I see so many companies that have Google Ads set up for PPC search, but don’t have remarketing set up. Also, most marketing automation systems now allow you to remarket to your existing leads based off of what they do on your site. So, if that person who downloaded a white paper 6 months ago momentarily came to your site today, you could have your email system send them a special offer since you’re top of mind for them. If you take these extra steps, you’ll be ahead of the pack in 2020.

Make Google Analytics a foundational part of your marketing toolkit

It’s robust. It provides value beyond what most people can possibly imagine. And it’s free. Google Analytics is a real gift to the digital marketing universe that is really not used enough. 

The main reason it’s not used enough is that it comes across as overly complex. And admittingly, it is. But learning the basics of Google Analytics can help you better understand how people truly use your site and where you have opportunities to make your website more intuitive and useful.

Use attribution modeling to invest your marketing dollars wisely

The adage, “I waste 50% of my marketing budget, but I don’t know which 50%” is no longer an excuse.

Understanding the channels and campaigns that truly drive success should be core to a digital marketing strategy. Unfortunately, many organizations don’t pay attention to which campaigns and channels bring traffic in and which get them to actually convert. This inevitably leads to marketing organizations putting dollars and resources into ineffective endeavors.

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Attribution modeling helps you understand which channels and campaigns should truly get credit for the conversions that happen on your site. If you’re not familiar with this process, start by checking out the different types of attribution modeling. Once you understand the different types of attribution, you can identify which ones fit best with your business.

Go full funnel on your content marketing

For most content marketers, a win happens once a prospect has found content, engaged with it, and converted to a sale or a lead. But what happens next?

Content marketing brings the most value when it supports the entire buyer’s journey, from the top of the funnel, through conversion, through the sale, into supporting that client’s success as a customer, and into elevating them into a cheerleader for your brand. Look at different areas where content can multiply a client’s experience throughout the journey with you. Find them, and make their day.

Optimize SEO click through rates

Google RankBrain is putting more emphasis on click-through rates in search results. 

That’s right, it’s not just about creating great content and getting solid backlinks anymore. Now we must get people’s attention on search engine results pages (SERPs) and drive them to click our content instead of the other results. Don’t let this change worry you! We already created a post on increasing search rankings using Google Search Console to help.

Weigh the importance of mobile and desktop optimization equally

The world accesses your marketing from their phone regardless of the business you are in. You are probably already working on making your mobile experience as good as it can be, but what about your desktop experience?

Personally, I’d love to get rid of the term “mobile first” when it comes to design. Mobile and desktop are completely separate user experiences. What works for one will most-likely not work for another. To put the best marketing out there, focus on making an experience that is great on mobile AND on desktop. 

For example, it’s easy to scroll on mobile devices, but loading new pages is a huge pain. So don’t shy away from long pages on mobile – just make sure you’re not using huge imagery that takes forever to load. 

And on desktop, if you’re using hamburger navigation that’s the same as the mobile site, you’re creating unnecessary customer friction. Don’t make desktop users click to see an abbreviated menu. It can’t be a secret anymore, that’s just bad UX.

Make your audience the hero

If your content talks all about you, you’re going to lose your audience. There’s an unspoken rule in marketing — no one gives a $#!^ about your brand. All they care about is themselves. 

When creating content, don’t focus on what YOU can do. Focus on what your customer can do BECAUSE of you. For example, stating that your microphone you sell is “best in class” and “industry leading” isn’t as effective as saying someone who buys the microphone will be able to record incredibly crisp, professional audio without having to shell out big bucks.

Identify true pain points for content

How many times have you started to read an article about a topic, only to find out it didn’t answer your actual pain point? Start paying attention, because it probably happens more than you can count. 

Our natural reaction is to bounce from the page and back to the search results to find another post on the subject. 

It’s not enough to just write content about a specific topic to save your audience from this experience. You need to know what the audience’s actual pain points are that the content needs to address. Below is how to do this.

Increase the effectiveness of your content with content intelligence

Using data-driven insights from a content intelligence platform enables you to quickly identify topics your audience truly cares about, their true pain points, the topics they will engage with in the future, and which topics convert to deliver on business goals. 

Content intelligence platforms also identify how you stack up against your competition on a topic-by-topic basis, including where you may have existing content gaps that competitors are already exploiting.

As a final cherry on top, these platforms make sure that you can measure your success as you go. This real-time information allows you to course correct and adjust your strategy in a way that will get you to your end goals.

Pillar, Cornerstone and Brick content

When creating content, it’s important to know not only what you’re creating and what the audience’s pain points are, but also how important the content is to your own site.

Online content can be easily categorized into three buckets:

  • Pillars
  • Cornerstones
  • Bricks

Pillars are main sections of your site. They are usually part of the main navigation and are essential to the success of your business.

Cornerstones are huge pieces of content that you create to impact your industry. Major research reports, ultimate guides, etc. are all cornerstones. These content pieces represent an A-to-Z journey of how to do or make sense of something and can be thousands of words long.

Bricks are regular-style blog posts and normal videos that are produced on a regular basis. Usually consisting of 600-1,000 words.

Find out if your Brand could benefit from live video

Not every brand is cut out for doing live video, but it’s featured prominence on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube make it a great way to stand out from the crowd. Just make sure your brand is right for live video. 

Watching live videos from a B2B brands can sometimes be a bit cringeworthy, especially when they are simply live commercials or videos of someone walking through a conference with shaky iPhone video. These videos aren’t overly helpful or entertaining. They’re just cringeworthy. Don’t be cringeworthy.

Nurture the right social influencer network

Engaging with social influencers of all sizes is essential in 2020. 

It’s not just about numbers, it’s about hitting the right audiences with the right messages. Sometimes that means engaging with influencers who have very small numbers of followers, but whose followers are highly engaged and see that influencer as a great authority. 

Sometimes called “microinfluencers”, these small, yet mighty influencers may have a bigger impact on bottom-line success than the biggest celebrity you could afford.

What do you think?

Just keeping up with a couple of these trends should significantly help your 2020 efforts. 

The post 18 Marketing Tactics You Need in 2020 appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.



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