One of the most unique factors of Pinterest is the fact that its user demographic is made up mostly of women. This key factor has forced many male-oriented brands to rethink their marketing strategy if they want to leverage this social network.

When I received my invite last summer, male-focused categories were bare. This has been changing quickly over the past few months. For example, the Cars & Motorcyle category is an obvious haven for male users among the sea of hair tutorials and wedding dresses:

So, how can you leverage a network dominated by women? Below I will review some male-focused brands trying to do just that, how to find men on Pinterest, and which types of content appeal to both genders.

How To Coexist With The Female Community

As marketers, one of the first things we ask before starting a project is, “who is our target audience?” This information is a huge factor when putting together your strategy and how you will shape your content.

So, shouldn’t you do the same thing when trying to interact with a new social community? Even if your brand or content is focused around men, you will still need the help of current users (women) to spread that content.

Something I have learned from being on the site, is the ability to coexist with the female demographic, while still posting content I find interesting. I’m not saying you should be posting pictures of dresses, and trendy hair styles but you should be finding common ground content that male and female users will both find interesting.

Below, I have listed some content I have found success with on Pinterest with both sexes.

• Food. Who doesn’t love food? Some of my highest shared content is based around food recipes. With content  ranging from triple decker burgers to eggs in avocados, I have been able to start building a following of both sexes just based on my food boards.

• Drinks. Another type of content that can easily be targeted to women and men are drinks. I’ve seen a lot of drink boards with pins about coffee, craft beer, and cocktails followed and shared by both sexes.

• Health. Who doesn’t want to be healthy? Both sexes tend to pin guides to healthy recipes, workout routines, and organic lifestyles.

• Green/Environment. My wife, actually turned me on this type of content. She makes her own green cleaning products. Recently she started to share all these recipes and resources for having a green home.  She quickly picked up a mix of male and female followers to those boards.

• Cars.  This one kind of surprised me, since most of the car sites I belong to are dominated by men. I noticed technical articles I posted didn’t getting much traction but photos of gorgeous cars attracted a larger amount of followers. Men still outnumber the women in terms of followers, but I have seen a growth in female interaction with my car pins.

• Geek. No matter if you’re male or female, you can be a geek, too. With a massive growth in geek culture, this type of content will do well on the Internet, regardless of gender.

• Luxury. I’ve noticed luxury related content does really well. Whether it’s a $30 million home or a yacht that comes with car built to match. Both sexes will share the content.

Most importantly, remember to learn about your audience. A huge factor in your content sharing strategy should be based around your actual followers. When someone follows you, click through to their page and see what kind of content they are sharing.

How To Target The Male Demographic

Now it’s time to find all the guys on Pinterest and get them to follow you. So, where are they hiding and how do I make them follow me?

One method is to craft pinboards that focus on the male demographic. As I mentioned above, you should also be learning about your followers and crafting content they will enjoy.

For the average writer, marketer or content producer, AuthorRank presents a great opportunity for personal branding, but also makes us individually responsible for the quality of work we produce. Evaluating the quality of content is Google’s job, and moving into the future it’s clear Google seeks to evaluate the substantive quality of authors. By understanding AuthorRank now, authors can establish themselves and their aggregated body of work as worthy of being ranked.

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With enough preparation, you can develop a relationship with your audience well before the season, nurture that relationship during the holiday, and maintain contact with your audience long after the relationship is over.

While the 9 tips below focus on Valentine’s Day as an example, all of these ideas can be used for for attracting visitors during any holiday or seasonal promotion.

1. Get to know your audience

You need to know your target audience’s demographics and psychographics. In other words, not only do you need to know who you will be targeting but you need to understand their motivations. Demographics such as the age, gender, and income play a role in your plan. Psychographics such as interests, opinions, attitudes and values also play a very large role in seasonal planning.

A person searching for candles in June likely has different motivations than someone searching for candles in February. Understanding this distinction will help you during your keyword research later in this guide.

2. Identify your courtship window

Seasonal marketing includes knowing the target window for your audience. This is not always easy to determine. For example in the travel space, people will plan for vacations months in advance so the ideal target window is counter-intuitive. Summer plans are made during the winter and SEO preparation needs to be planned accordingly.

For example, the target window for Valentine’s Day is January 15 – February 14, but preparation needs to begin well before that.

3. Know their needs and wants

Listening to your audience’s wants is easy since you already have some of this information…

Analyzing your previous year’s analytics will give you insights on pages that did well and keywords that brought traffic into your website during your courtship window.

Using the sites analytics, you can scale content creation around the best performing content and queries using the optimal keywords.

Below is a screen shot of the organic keywords from Google Analytics that brought in traffic to a small flower shop during the window of January 14th – February 15th, 2011:

And here is a screen shot of the paid keywords during this same time period:

Below are the top landing pages during the same time period as last year. You can analyze this section to see what content worked and which pages didn’t. You can also analyze the pages with high bounce rates to see if those pages can be reworked for better conversion. You may also find you have a page that converts well but received little traffic. How valuable would it be to drive traffic to those pages this year?

Another technique is to check Google Trends for hot topics. You can use keywords from the analytics above, keywords from previous research, or if you are lucky, you will have a related trending topic among the hot searches. These searches are updated by Google on a daily basis.

In the screen cap below we have “chocolate covered strawberries” as one of the Hot Searches of the day. If you owned a flower shop, this would be a great product to feature on the homepage bundled with flowers or sold separately.

Researching further, you’ll see the sudden influx of searches for “chocolate covered strawberries” began in January.

You should also check for this keyword during the same time period last year to see when the uptick started and how long it lasted. This is vital information for your planning purposes.

Tip: You can increase your PPC for this keyword during this time period to maximize traffic to your website.

You can dig even deeper into your research by using Google Insights, which allows you to compare search volume across regions, categories and time frames. This tool is perfect for seeing seasonality.

Doing a Google Insights search for “chocolate covered strawberries” in the United States for 2011 shows that January to February is the main period of the year where the interest is the highest. Insights can also display News headlines from the same time frame; a great tool for finding content ideas around seasonal times.

4. Make yourself presentable

Optimizing your site for conversion includes placing relevant, seasonal content on the homepage.  Running tools like ClickTale or CrazyEgg can help you understand a user’s path so that “call-to-action” areas can be placed where the majority of users land and click through. Making yourself presentable in this sense will optimize your homepage to reap as much benefit as possible from your efforts.

Below we have a screen capture of the 1-800-Flowers site  in November. They optimized their site by placing relevant, seasonal content on the homepage with a matching holiday color scheme.

Below is the same site in January. Again, they put their most relevant, seasonal content on the front page. They updated the color scheme and navigation. There is an optimized landing page specific for Valentine’s Day that’s been added to the website’s header.

Additional SEO updates:

Update titles and descriptions with seasonal keywords. Optimize your meta tags to emphasize your current promotion.

Add some rich snippets. Rich snippets are pieces of microdata about the content on your website that  help Google pull useful information about your site into the search results. These can be reviews, address information, ratings, etc.  Below is an example provided by Google

Find out more about rich snippets by visiting Google explanation page. You can also use  this tool to test the rich snippets on your website.

5. Be social

With social signals becoming an increasing significant part of ranking, a seasonal SEO plan would not be complete without a social component.

Adding in social planning has two benefits. The first being that seasonal content can potentially increase the chances of that content appearing in the search results during seasonal times with the freshness update. With this signal, new content can temporarily be at the top of the search engine if it is relevant to the user’s QDF query.

No one knows the exact algorithm, but Google determines QDF by major spikes in Google searches for the phrase, how many times the phrase is mentioned on blogs and in the news. Also, because of Google’s  “Caffeine” search index update they are able to crawl and index new content much faster than before. Google’s goal here is to serve the most relevant and freshest content, which is prime territory for seasonal content and promotions.

The second benefit from social is sending targeted traffic to your website. Fans, Friends, and Followers on your social networks have already shown an interest in you so it pays off to engage them during the holidays. Cross promotion to your other profiles is also best done while you already have their attention.

For example, here’s a tweet promoting a Giveaway taking place on Facebook:

#giveaway Four Seasons Facebook Giveaway Celebrating Valentine’s Day: Come One, Come All bit.ly/yf46Ur bit.ly/fl9Hl0

— Giveaway Connection (@giveawayconnect) February 10, 2012

Offer discounts through Google+, Facebook and Twitter. With Facebook, creating new posts and running promotions that garner engagement and sharing are one of the key components of leveraging Edgerank. Also, as the amount of circles for Google + that you’re in grow bigger, your promotions, incentives and seasonal discounts can have more reach in the personalized search results. For more seasonal ideas for social profiles, check out our huge list from the Christmas season… many of these ideas can be used for any holiday.

It also helps to have a large and engaged social following who shares the new content that you are producing. Include seasonal terms in Twitter tweets, articles and Facebook posts to help take advantage of QDF.

Tip: Don’t offer the same incentives to all your social networks- each audience is different. Have one offer on one network and cross promote a different offer on the other. Using custom bit.ly links and custom tailoring messages on each individual network can allow you to track clicks and see which copy version is gaining the most interest leading up to the holiday so you can optimize for next year.

6. Don’t forget your exes

In other words, leverage past customers & existing relationships through email marketing.

Right before a major holiday is a great time to reach out to customers that you’ve done business with in the past. The email should be relevant and provide an incentive or offer value. These emails should contain links to all social profiles and should link to the homepage, as well as the seasonal target pages. This can help increase traffic and awareness to the site from customers that are already interested in your business- which can increase shareability and reach to friends and family.

Optimized signatures should include written out urls to your homepage and social profiles.

Text example:

Thierry Duthil
Internet Marketing Analyst | BlueGlass Interactive, Inc.
555-555-5555 | xxxxxx@blueglass.com | http://www.blueglass.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/tduthil | LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/tduthil

Graphical example:

The body of your email should contain links to the relevant content sections of your website that apply to the current season. Driving traffic to these pages can encourage users to link to internal pages which can help strengthen your site structure as a whole.

7. Spruce things up

If you have a 2009 Guide to Romantic Dating that gained a good amount of backlinks and engagement during seasonal times, it’s prime content to be updated and shared for the current year.

Making significant changes to this existing content can help Google view it as an updated page. Creating fairly significant updates within a page are one of Google’s Fresh Factors, so updating the content and promotional strategy to gain new backlinks and engagement to this page can breathe life into ‘outdated’ content.

Updates to make:

• Be sure to update the title so it’s relevant to the content changes, yet still keyword/topic focused.
• Make significant updates to the content- not just a few sentences- but keep to the core topic.
• Be sure any links within the content are still functional and don’t lead to 404 error pages, which can happen in older pieces of content that aren’t updated regularly.

8. Work on your issues

Before your big season starts is the best test to find and work on your site issues. Hopefully, you already have Google Webmaster Tools connected to your website. This is a great resource in finding out what issues are holding back your website, which should be addressed before any seasonal or holiday promotions occur for peak performance. This should be monitored on an ongoing basis, regardless.

Top Priority Issues to Find & Fix:

• Broken links
• Crawl errors
• Missing titles & descriptions
• Duplicate titles & descriptions

One other issue to work on is site speed. Slow sites cause frustration and high bounce rates, which can be detrimental to your site. It’s important to test and optimize your site speed often.

Tools for testing site speed:

• GTMetrix (includes a bookmarklet to add to your browser)
• Page Speed

9. Relationship Building

You’ve taken the time to get to know your audience. You know the keywords to use and you have new and existing pages that you need to promote. Now it’s time for relationship building. We will do this by link building.

Seasonal SEO is time sensitive so you need to begin this portion of the plan early enough to allow new pages to get indexed and for promotions to gain traction. It’s also about getting the most out of your efforts in a specified time period.

Here are the recommended link building tactics for holiday SEO:

• Blogger outreach – Ask a prominent blogger in your space to review your content, product or service and link back to your site
• Guest posting – Offer to contribute to relevant websites and have a promotion specifically for that audience. Be sure to have a link in your byline
• Press Releases – Optimized press releases can contain links to content on your site, embedded video, and links to your social profiles
• Internal linking – Link from your high ranking pages to the relevant seasonal pages for a PR boost. This includes pages from your homepage and links from relevant internal pages.

Conclusion

While this guide was tailored for Valentine’s Day, the principles can be applied to any holiday season for any website with seasonality. Some of the sections reference product websites, but the same concepts can be applied to content sites. The idea is to identify the needs of your audience early, nurture the relationship, and satisfy the visitor with relevant content, products, or services when they do visit. Keep in touch afterwards, because around the same time next year, they will come looking for you again.

How are you using seasonal marketing to attract visitors?

Text ads out of control, color combinations that hurt to look at, no social sharing links (or TOO many!) and images that barely have any connection to the text.

These mistakes can make a visitor run for the proverbial hills. A visitor to your blog is making a decision about your worth within a few seconds, sometimes nanoseconds.

Find out whether you’re making simple but crucial mistakes that turn readers away…

1. Text Isn’t Reader-Friendly

This one gets me every time: endless lines of text.

Use the four line rule for paragraphs instead of sentence after uninterrupted sentence with no break in sight. Our eyes reach the end of the sentence line and have to jump back to the left to start the next and this gets harder with the addition of more lines in a paragraph.

Don’t let paragraphs get bloated; shorten your text into easily-digested chunks. Pull quotes are another good way to extract some information from the text and make it more prominent and eye catching to the reader. Since most readers usually scan, it’s important to provide them with some focus to the more important parts of the article.

Remember how users read on the web… they don’t!  

Even the most complex content can become reader-friendly with the addition of white space as in Paragraph B

This all goes for blog post headlines, too. The Goldilocks rule: Not too short, not too long, but just the right size. If you want readers to share and retweet your posts, don’t use long headlines that might as well be opening paragraphs. Short and sweet.

2. Overuse of Pop-Up Ads

Some advertising in a blog may be necessary, and I don’t mind people selling things, but being obtrusive about it can get on your nerves. Don’t make pop-up ads interrupt the flow of reading the content on your blog.

Some pop- up advertising can be too aggressive and cause readers to click away.

3. Distracting Color Combinations

Don’t make the color of the font clash with the background color. Whenever I encounter a site with white text on a black background it gives me this optical distortion. It makes me question whether or not I should continue on reading at all.

There's a reason why most sites use dark text on a light background, it's a lot easier on the eyes when you're staring straight into a light source.

Think of books and magazines: the majority is black text on a white background which is considered the best color combination’s to use for readability, ease of use, and reduced eye strain.

Legibility depends on high contrast between foreground and background, so black-and-white is the safest bet. I am constantly reminding myself of the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

4. Too Many Social Share Buttons

Use the specific social sharing buttons that your user demographics are active on. Don’t use the all-encompassing “Share/Save” button where users have to hover over and click on what sites they want to share.

You will see more response from your visitors if you give them more focused options.

Instead, download the official share buttons (i.e. Twitter, Linkedin, Google +, Facebook, etc) from the site itself. Make it as easy as possible for users to share your content in the least clicks possible. Placing social share buttons front and center on the top and bottom of every post is ideal.

5. Cheesy Stock Photography

This photo has lost its original representation of “business” and now conjures up “overused stock photo cliche”.

Most stock photos are very bland and generic.  This is their nature – the more generic, the broader the audience. It’s too easy to use bad stock photography…instead, be original.

Whenever possible, I suggest a quick photo shoot over pre-used stock photography, but this isn’t always the most feasible solution with budgets and timelines.

In that case, I will do my best to use stock photography in a fashion that doesn’t make it look so “stocked”. However, if you own a restaurant and you’re using stock photos of gourmet hamburgers and saying they are your own you are doing a disservice to your potential customers.

When your product or service is very specific, you may need to do a photo shoot.

Don’t use the “hottest” or “most popular” search category features to choose a photo. I’ve seen (you probably have, too) the same business photo on so many sites and blogs that it’s lost the original representation of “business” and now conjures up “overused stock photo cliche”.

Try to work the image into the site or article by manipulating or changing it in some way, a simple crop can go a long way.

6. Forgetting About Rich Media

People like visuals. We go to museums and galleries, watch movies and take photos a lot. Rich media can compliment your text and  improve the overall reader experience.

Video and interactive media are very effective ways to spark an emotion and gain stickiness to your blog.

Both blogs feature inspirational speakers. The blog on the right uses video and photography. The blog on the left has links that take you to the videos.

Rich media (anything that has motion, audio, interaction, and is activated either by a user’s action, referrer, browser information, or time), can be fun and effective — making it something the user will want to see and share.  It can attract and hold the attention of a higher percentage of users for a longer period of time.

Just be sure that accessibility is not an issue, various formats require special plugins or abilities that many users don’t often have installed.

7. Updating Too Little (Or Too Much)

Again, The Goldilocks Zone is where you should reside (so far it’s been good enough for our planet). You need to be on a consistent publishing schedule.

If there are long gaps between posts your readers may take your blog too lightly if they check on a regular basis looking for new interesting posts. Conversely, if you update too much with content that is sub-par and just filler, your readers will question the worthiness of your blog and it will come off more like spam.

8. Wrong Date in the Footer

Is your blog stuck in 2009?

Not updating the year in the footer of your post signals to visitors that no one’s maintaining the site.  This is an easy mistake many bloggers overlook; you probably remembered to change this the first year you had your site, but may have forgotten to update it in quite a while (it may even have been years ago…).

Add this code into your footer’s copyright statement where you want the year to appear, and it will automatically update the year every January 1:

<?php echo date(“Y”); ?>

9. Using the “Uncategorized” Category

At some point, everyone forgets to choose a category before hitting “publish.”  This not only makes the blogger (and in turn, the blog) look careless, but also hurts your site structure.

Instead, change the “Uncategorized” category to something else, such as “Other” or “General” (and don’t forget to change the slug, too). This will keep your blog looking legit and it will CYA when you do slip up and forget to choose a category.

10. Ignoring Layout

Layout and composition are the fundamentals for aesthetics. If it doesn’t look or feel pleasing to the reader from a design or user experience perspective, they may find the material isn’t worthy and leave. Don’t bombard the users senses and put everything you can design into the layout, instead embrace white or empty space in your composition.

White space allows the eye “breathing” room; it establishes a flow and hierarchy for information to follow. Since you only have a few seconds to impress new readers, it’s critical to make your layout welcoming and professional.

Take some time looking at inspirational design sites like Abduzeedo and Dribble. See how design fundamentals are being used to create a beter user experience through visual hierarchy.

11. Not Responding to Reader Comments

Responding to a comment a human made on your blog shows that you value the community and respect the readers time and input. Conversations build relationships, it’s human nature.

Be open and encourage divergent opinions, just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t always mean that one side is wrong or right. It just means you have different opinions. Not every difference of opinion is a blog troll.

Conclusion

You only have a few seconds to capture a blog visitor’s attention and there are so many factors that make a new reader decide whether or not to stick around. No matter how strong your message is, the above mistakes can get in the way of a good reader experience.

By eliminating distractions, making your posts visually appealing and easy to read, and paying attention to the small details that can hurt your blog’s reputation, you can ensure your readers view your blog as credible and they’ll continue coming back.

What do you think? Tell us, what mistakes can a blog lose credibility?

Businesses of all sizes are beginning to realize how integral a solid content strategy should be to their marketing plans.   Even major corporations like Coca-Cola are betting everything on an integrated content strategy.   In order to illustrate this growth in content marketing, our team created an infographic called “The Content Marketing Explosion.”

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But still, a lot of your company’s LinkedIn success depends on how your employees use it. Fortunately, there are simple changes employees can make to their profiles that can immediately improve your company profile. Encouraging employee activity in certain areas of LinkedIn can also help grow your brand on this network.

With a well-informed, active employee base, LinkedIn can be one of the easiest social networks for a company to manage and build a strong presence. Before we walk through the 8 ways employees can enhance your company on LinkedIn, let’s review how employee profiles are aggregated into a company profile…

How Employees Affect Your Company Profile

If someone has listed your company as their current employer, their information is pulled into your company profile. This information can show up in 2 different places throughout your company profile: (a) your company statistics page or (b) in the activity feed on your company profile (this activity also shows up in the main feed of anyone who is following your company).

I’ll use our company profile as an example since we’ve had some recent additions to the team and title changes, so we’re a good  example of the employee activity that shows up here.

Company Statistics

Company statistics can be accessed from your main company profile. Anyone can view these statistics, which include your employees’ education, years of experience, job function, and skill set. If only one person in your company has filled this information out, that one person will be the sole representative of your company make up. In other words, the more employees who fill out their profiles completely, the more accurate reflection of your company.

For example, this is how your employees’ years of experience is displayed (blue= your employees, green= employees at similar companies):

When someone changes their title or leaves the company, this is shown at the bottom of the company statistics page:

And this is how your employees’ skills are displayed:

Activity Feed

The main page of your company profile includes an activity feed that shows your most recent status updates, new employees, title changes, and departures.

For example, when someone joins your company, they appear in the company activity feed at the bottom of your company profile (this also appears in the newsfeed of anyone following your company):

Step-By-Step Guide for Employees on LinkedIn

Below are ways your employees can change their profiles or participate on LinkedIn that can help make your company shine on this network. The best part? You can just forward your team this post and let them do all the work

1. Stop Treating LinkedIn Like a Resume

LinkedIn is a professional social network, but that’s no reason to have a boring profile that is nothing more than a copied and pasted résumé . Personal profiles can be personalized using applications and the summary section can  be more lighthearted than, say, a cover letter.

While listing accomplishments and past job duties show someone’s breadth of experience, a good profile summary isn’t trapped in the past. This is where employees can focus on now, and update their summary continuously to reflect what they’re working on, like current projects, speaking engagements, upcoming events, etc.

What would a potential customer want to know about your employees? Employees should also use their summary to explain how their role at your company benefits the customer experience.

2. Use the Correct Company Name

This needs to be an exact match of your company profile name. For example, on LinkedIn we are “BlueGlass Interactive, Inc.” Anyone who just puts “BlueGlass” is not counted as an employee.

When editing a job description, a dropdown menu will appear with a list of possible company matches. Make sure your employees know which of these they should select.

3. Fill Out the Important Stuff

The most important sections your employees should fill out are the parts that are pulled into your company statistics, which are:

• Job Functions are lumped into four broad categories: research & development,  sales & marketing, general & administrative, and executive leadership. This is determined by a user’s job title, so it’s important these are accurate and not misspelled.
• Education is reflected in the company statistics based on degrees obtained and universities attended.
• Years of experience are the total number of years of all of the jobs listed on an employee’s profile.
• Skills are hyperlinks that can be added to profiles (more detail below).

4. Add Skills & Expertise

A newer feature to LinkedIn is called Skills & Expertise. A user’s chosen skills will appear as hyperlinks in their profile and also get pulled into the company statistics. Clicking on the skills in someone’s profile pulls up a list of influencers with that skill, along with related skills and companies.

To add skills, you can search for a skill, then click Add Skill. Keep in mind your employees’ skills show up not just in your company statistics, but if enough of your employees have a certain skill, your company will show up in the related companies under that skill.

Once skills have been added to a profile, more can be added and removed by  going to Profile > Edit Profile, scrolling to the skills section and then choosing to add a skill or edit to remove a skill.

5. Include Customized Links

Up to 3 links can be added to a profile, but it’s not widely known that the titles of these links can be customized. For example, instead of using the default “My Company Website” to link to your site, employees can actually put your company name. The ability to customize this text is a  plus not just for the sake of appearance, but also for SEO.

These links appear in the top section of a profile:

Links can be customized by going to Profile>Edit Profile, then scroll down to Websites and click Edit.

Select Other from the Websites dropdown menu and you can then add in custom text and the accompanying links.

6. Share Your Content

LinkedIn Today is a news aggregator that features the most popular links being shared on LinkedIn.  When someone signs into LinkedIn, they see the most-shared articles from other people in their profession. Users can also create a highly customized LinkedIn social news aggregator, which will show top headlines from any industries or sources the user follows.

For example, here are marketing headlines that appear on my home page:

In a nutshell, by sharing your content on LinkedIn your employees can help increase your number of shares and potentially catapult your articles to the top headlines. How content ends up in the top headlines is best explained in this guide about the algorithm used on LinkedIn Today.

7. Update Your Company Status

Company updates show up not only in a company’s activity feed, but also in the newsfeed of anyone following the company, right alongside updates from individuals.

Updating a company status isn’t limited to the profile admin, you can handpick any employees to be admins and have access to posting updates. You can even allow anyone with a company email address to post updates to your company profile (I do wonder if any company allows this).

Whether you don’t have the resources for one person to man your LinkedIn company profile or you want several voices representing the brand, making this a collaborative effort among a few employees can  increase the frequency and diversity of your company updates. For example, letting team members from several different departments post updates can help give a better overall picture of your company.

You can add other employees for company updates by going to Admin Tools > Edit. After selecting Designated users only, type in the names of anyone you want to be allowed to update the page under Manage Admins.

8. Participate on LinkedIn Answers

LinkedIn Answers is a place for users to ask questions and receive assistance from industry professionals. Different industry categories are given their own Answers pages which include the questions, experts, and related categories.

For example, here’s the Graphic Design Answers page:

As you’ll notice, there are Graphic Design “Experts” listed on the page. So, how does one become an expert?

Whoever asks a question can later select the “best answer” to their question. By acquiring a lot of “best answers,” a user can be featured as a subject matter expert. The 5 top experts for a given topic are featured on that category’s main page.

Encouraging your employees to become active on LinkedIn Answers is a no-brainer: if you’re trying to gain visibility in an industry, it would certainly look good to have your employees appearing as experts in the answers sections of all your industry’s topics. Additionally, users can display their expert categories in their profile.

Instead of constantly revisiting an Answers page, it’s easy to keep track of new questions by subscribing to the RSS feed for a given topic (located in the bottom right of the topic page).

Conclusion

Since a company profile is directly impacted by how employees are represented and act on LinkedIn, it’s crucial to educate employees on how to make the most out of LinkedIn if you plan on growing a strong presence on this network. The good news is, most employee activity can actually benefit your company and brand. The trick is getting your team to dust off their profiles and start particpating more. Using the 8 tips above, employees can make a huge difference in how your business is perceived on LinkedIn.

How do your employees participate on LinkedIn? Have you seen success with any of the above tips? 

P.S. Follow us on LinkedIn  for our company news and LinkedIn Today to keep up with our blog!

Reddit is a powerhouse, and has managed to maintain and build on its identity even with such massive growth.   For many reasons it represents a new evolution we’ve yet to see in other online communities. What follows is an overview of just what makes this site so remarkable.

Consider, as you read on,  the potential of Reddit and sites similar to it that aggregate and organize the content of the Internet to become more than just places to be entertained or to learn. The reality is that Reddit is beginning to shape and influence the world in ways that are only now becoming apparent, bringing a higher order of organization to content online, and allowing for an evolution in the potential of collaboration.

So, without further ado, here are our top 19 reasons why Reddit is so unbelievably awesome.

1. Being on Reddit is like sitting in a group discussion of thousands of moderately intelligent people, interested in the topic at hand.

The users with the best input have the loudest voices and take turns while not speaking over each other. This is the result of the voting based comment system that floats the most voted for comments to the top of the thread. Many front page submissions regularly have more than 1,000 comments with some submissions reaching over 9,000 comments (yes, really). Like this submission which asked, “What stupid question have you always been too embarrassed to ask, but would like answered?”

Questions range from the silly, (What is on the other side of a belly button?) to fascinating, (Is there anything resembling rhyming in American Sign Language?) to incredibly puzzling (What do you see when you look through a one-way mirror directly towards a regular mirror in a naturally lit room made of mirrors?).

2. Reddit is a magnifying glass of the Internet.

Reddit is arguably the largest social news aggregator.  Without Reddit,  countless great sites, blogs, articles, journals, videos, images and other pieces of online content would go unnoticed and unshared, lost in obscurity and never given the ability to be seen by tens of thousands.  Reddit enables the individual, and gives literally anyone who has something interesting enough to say the ability to reach millions.

While the same could be said for news aggregators like Digg, Mixx, and countless other clones, what sets Reddit apart is its size.  With millions of active users who submit thousands of pieces of new content each day, there is no place like Reddit for finding the newest and most interesting stuff online.  The title of Reddit’s home page is “the front page of the Internet,” a title many would argue it has decisively earned.

3. Reddit allows for intense and evolving communities of special interests.

Reddit has amongst its ranks some of the most active niche communities available online. The size of some subReddits rivals or exceeds the size of the largest mainstream forums and groups about the same topic, making these subReddits the largest gathering places on the Internet for many topics.

Many of the following are among the most active places online for their given topic:

1. (Atheism Topics) Atheism – 453,000+ members
2. (Marijuana Topics) Trees – 180,000+ members
3. (Fitness Topics) Fitness – 120,000+ members
4. (Female Centric Topics) TwoXchromosomes - 71,000+ members
5. (Mens Fashion Topics) MaleFashionAdvice - 67,000+ members
6. (Dubstep Music Topics) Dubstep 40,000+ members
7. (LGBT Issues Topics) LGBT 36,000+ members
8. (OWS Topics) occupywallstreet – 30,000+ members
9. (My Little Pony Cartoon Topics) mylittlepony 19,000+ members

4. Reddit is highly collaborative and easily spawns or expands collaborative efforts.

Group projects, concepts, and ideas can grow and be possible through the cooperation of like-minded people.

One example of how Reddit does this exceptionally well is RedditGifts.com – an initiative spawned on Reddit that has become the largest ever gift exchange program. This last year more than 39,000 Redditors exchanged gifts with each other. In total,  $1,073,939.88 in gifts were exchanged with an average gift price of $25.68.

Another great example was when the Reddit community collaborated to influence an online poll being used by Greenpeace to name a whale that was part of its Great Whale Trail Expedition, an initiative to raise awareness about whales threatened by the Japanese Fisheries Agency. The whale’s name was to be chosen in an online poll with the name with the highest number of votes being chosen. The selection of names were a mix of meaningful unique words like Anahi and Kaimana, with an extra silly name put into the mix as an afterthought. The name: Mister Splashy Pants.

The poll was made known to the Reddit community, and from there Reddit took charge. They easily influenced the poll, and Mister Splashy Pants won by a solid margin.

5. Reddit Helps Determine The News Cycle.

It is quite clear that reporters, journalists, and editors in local, regional, national, and even international regularly read Reddit. It is no coincidence that that stellar story seen on Reddit this morning was featured on Rachel Maddow that same evening.

Some examples of how journalists use and recommend Reddit:

1. Reddit a Fire Hose of Internet Ideas
2. Use Reddit to Find Story Ideas
3. How Reddit Controls the Internet News Cycle

6. Reddit is the ultimate investigator.

The term “Human Flesh Search” is the term used when a large group of individuals collaborate on digging up information on one specific topic or person.  Through the power of a common goal and crowd-sourced effort, some absolutely incredible feats of detective work can happen. Reddit has proven itself to be among the most powerful “human flesh search” engines that has ever existed.

Just a few examples include:

1. Reddit users tracking down the birth family of an adopted Redditor
2. Reddit uncovers a long lost childhood mystery
3. Reddit helps find incredibly obscure video
4. Redditors find individual responsible for Wikileaks DDOS

7. Reddit is a meme maker and trend setter.

A meme is defined as:

“An element of a culture or behavior that may be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.”

On Reddit, original content that resonates and lends itself to imitation is created all the time,  in large quantities. Because of this, Reddit has become the birthplace to many new memes, some of which have gone on to reach near mainstream recognition.

Examples of memes started by Reddit:

1. Troll Quotes
2. Cuil Theory
3. If you watch x backwards, it’s about y
4. Birthday Dog
5. Anti-Zombie Fortress
6. I’m with Coco
7. Zach Anner
8. Waffles? Don’t you mean Carrots?
9. Bearsharktopus
10. Keanu Reeves
11. Inglip

8. Reddit is a life saver (literally).

One of the most impressive sub-Reddits is the community at r/suicidewatch. These selfless people are there to talk to those who feel they have nothing left to live for. The community is certainly responsible for saving lives, though it is uncertain how many.

With nearly 9,000 subscribers, this community is arguably one of the largest groups in the world dedicated to suicide prevention. It is most certainly the largest 100% unfunded, 100% volunteer suicide prevention group in existence.

Here is the story of one Redditor, who planned to die and was saved by r/suicidewatch in the most dire moment.

9. Reddit is an idea engine, giving birth to new ideas constantly.

Reddit is a naming machine, and its users know it.  Although the Reddit community is often astutely aware when they’re being used for crowd-sourcing, nobody seems to mind helping people come up with names for things.  Reddit has helped people name everything from pets, to bands, to even kebab shops.   Reddit is especially good at quips and puns, as evidenced by a thread about Naming a Bar.

Another good example of Reddit’s penchant for creating and sorting ideas, you’ll find it in their treatment of inventions.  If you’ve ever had an idea for the next “great invention,” you’re not alone.  Redditors have waxed eloquent a number of times about their invention ideas that would change the world.  To be fair, Redditors are also pretty honest about the practicality of their ideas as well.  As evidenced by this thread discussing the phenomenon of invention ideas that seemed great at first glance, but quickly fell apart under scrutiny.

10. Reddit includes experts from nearly all fields, vocations, talents, and specialties. Many of whom share their inside knowledge freely.

Though the exact number hasn’t been released, there are undoubtedly several million active Reddit users contributing to the more than roughly 20 million daily page views. Among these users are a sizable number of very noteworthy Redditors. Some are highly-trained experts, well respected intellectuals, actors, celebrities, sports stars and many more.

Just a few of the known Reddit celebrity accounts can be found below:

1. Louis CK
2. Wil Wheaton
3. Ken Jennings
4. Felicia Day
5. Zach Braff
6. Neil deGrasse Tyson
7. Don Lemon
8. Joe Rogan
9. Jimmy Kimmel
10. Steve Vai
11. Stephen Colbert
12. Scientists and engineers at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory

11. Reddit allows for in-depth discussion over topics that otherwise would never ever be talked about in a group way.

In many ways Reddit can be like hanging out with a bunch of friends. While this often leads to long threads on the pointless and inane, sometimes it yields really interesting discussions over topics that many have contemplated, but never discussed in a public forum.

Here are a few examples enabled by Reddit:

1. Cuil Theory
2. The Merits of Sitting or Standing

If you’ve never experienced the joy of a “group joke” where everyone contributes to an ever-increasingly absurd list of pun’s, you’re missing out.   Reddit is famous for pun threads, and they tend to emerge in the most unexpected places.  One great example of this happening can be found here.

12. Reddit provides an unparalleled opportunity for research into sociology, groupthink, hivemind, memology, and self-selected groups.

Because of the ability of Reddit to form large groups of like-minded individuals in subReddits, an opportunity for studying these groups has been created.  For regular readers, it becomes obvious that the “personality” of different subReddits is not the same across the board. Some subReddits become known for certain types of behaviors or attitudes. Although there haven’t been any academic studies of these communities, members often take the time to set up surveys to quantify themselves, often with very interesting results.

One example was a demographic survey done in r/fittit, the most popular fitness based subReddit.   One interesting takeaway from the survey is that 50% of the community is single.

Another, more specific example can be found in the subReddit for transgender people r/asktransgender. Members of this community set up a survey themselves to document their demographic and psychographic profiles. The result of which were then compiled into an infographic report based on a on a large sample of transgender individual that provides very interesting insights into this niche community.  One interesting takeaway is that of those surveyed, 14% consider themselves “heterosexual” meaning they are attracted exclusively to the gender opposite to the one they identify with.

13. Reddit is a virtual confessional. It prompts people to tell their secrets.

On Reddit, you can be 100% anonymous if you desire. At the same time, if you have an interesting story to tell, you can get a great deal of exposure. This has led to Reddit being used as a sort of confessional: a place where deep secrets can be told to a larger audience.  The r/ama subReddit has been home to many confessions including the following stunners:

1. 9,000+ people telling their darkest secret desires
2. Several admitted psychopaths
3. A military whistleblower
4. Redditors who have killed somebody

14. Reddit is like always having the wittiest, funniest people in the room.

Collective intelligence determines the best comments and they rise to the top of all threads.  Because of the way Reddit is set up, comments can become content that is voted on and recognized on its own merit. In many instances, user comments have become some of the most talked about and engaging pieces of content on Reddit.

A great example of this is a response that was posted in response to the askReddit question:  “Could I destroy the entire Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus if I traveled back in time with a modern U.S. Marine infantry battalion or MEU?”   User Prufrock451 posted a response in the form of a short story.  The community liked the story so much, it resulted in Prufrock (real name James Erwin) continuing with the story and beginning a subReddit dedicated to the expansion of the idea. The subReddit currently has more than 8,800 people subscribed. Even more spectacular, management at Warner Brothers took notice of the short story (likely because someone internal is a Redditor) and the massive interest it garnered on Reddit and bought the rights to make it into a film.

15. Reddit can celebrate individual victory or achievement in a BIG way.

When someone accomplishes something great, getting accolades or getting noticed beyond your friends can be hard. On Reddit, when someone does something spectacular, it is often recognized in a big way.

One great example can be found in a post on a man who built a scanning electron microscope from scratch.  Reddit’s reaction can be seen here.  Another example is a great demonstration of how kind-hearted the Reddit community can be (if their love for dogs and kitties didn’t already make this clear).  Redditors are some of the first to applaud those who are kind to others.

16. Reddit can be a source of power and revolution for the people.

17. Reddit encourages interaction in a completely unique way

One of the unique aspects of the Reddit community is the idea of “karma.”  Karma is a system of points that are given or taken away from users based on how much the community likes or dislikes the content they submit or the comments they make. Although “karma” is worthless in a monetary sense, it has a social value for Redditors. The more karma a user has, the higher regard or esteem they are generally shown within the community. Gaining high levels of karma has become important to many Redditors and is an incentive for participation.

Karma is a really interesting case study in “social currency” and has clearly demonstrated that non-monetary incentives can indeed spur real community growth.

In addition to encouraging participation, karma also influences the behavior of Redditors. By having something to gain or lose through their interaction, Redditors monitor and modify their behavior in ways similar to how they might in real life. Instead of dealing with social ramifications for bad behavior, on Reddit, they deal with consequences of karma.

This system of social accountability is somewhat unique online, and Reddit is certainly a great example of how this sort of system can help sculpt the behavior of an online community.

18. Reddit is perhaps the best existing example of an entirely Internet based culture.

Large enough to have created an ethos that transcends single topic areas, this is different than forums or other communities because the constituents of the group aren’t bound by anything extremely specific.

As mentioned, there are individual subcultures that exist in subReddits, but Reddit users have a specific ethos that is more or less true of the large majority of Redditors. There is such consistency between users opinions on topics that Reddit can generally be characterized as having taken on specific positions on controversial issues.

Briefly, on a whole, Redditors are generally:

1. Anti Religion, many Atheists
2. Pro LGBT rights
3. Pro Marijuana Legalization
4. Supports Occupy Wallstreet
5. Supports Wikileaks
6. Loves Technology/Gadgets
7. Pro Education Reform
8. Pro Church/State Separation
9. Anti SOPA & Protect IP, Anti RIAA
10. Pro Geek Culture

The Reddit zeitgiest can be so consistent and homogenous that it has become the subject of some amount of lampooning. EncyclopediaDramatica has done a particularly scathing and funny (though often times true) review of Redditors.

19. Reddit is kind and generous.

Reddit has done literally hundreds of good deeds. Some of them small, some of them very large. Here are links to some  “good deeds” big and small:

1. One Redditor Finds Another’s Long-Lost Art
2. Reddit Community Saves Small Business
3. Reddit Buys Young Woman A Hearing Aid
4. Reddit Helps Make Dream Come True for Dying Man
5. Reddit Correctly Diagnoses Fellow Redditor’s Cause of Severe Depression, Saves Her Life
6. Reddit Brings Family Music Heirloom to Life
7. Reddit Helps Pay For Member’s Mother’s Funeral Costs
8. Redditors Give Girl with Huntington’s Disease Given Shopping Spree
9. Reddit Community Donates Over $185,000 to Haiti Relief

Conclusion

While the future of Reddit remains unknown, its example has clearly shown the benefits of crowdsourced content curation. The Internet has a tremendous amount to offer in terms of sheer content, but the value of that offering is multiplied exponentially when that content is organized and rendered by a motivated and thoughtful crowd. In the future, we will likely see many permutations of the system pioneered by Reddit, likely with great benefit to us all.

For the reasons outlined above, and undoubtedly countless more, we would argue that Reddit is indeed the most influential site online.  What do you think?

BlueGlass LA & Raven Tools

One thing I’ve learned about event sponsorship is that companies tend to plan out their marketing budgets far in advance — which really did not sync with our conference planning of old. So when I talked to the good folks at Raven Tools last fall and presented an experiential conference sponsorship to them, the stars aligned and a partnership was born. Note: At BlueGlass we use Raven internally and absolutely love the way that data, tools and reporting are all under the same hood.

Raven Tools has signed on to be the premier sponsor of BlueGlass LA 2012 and will be representing in full force at the show with amazing demos and previews, conference signage, bar and party sponsorships, and a mid-afternoon surprise for all attendees. Raven has been a long supporter of our conference series and they are a company we feel that we have always paralleled in the pursuit of giving excellent service and ongoing innovation to their client base.

Synergy in Marketing Visions

If you have noticed, our conferences are not heavy in one discipline of online marketing. At BlueGlass we endorse the sustainable convergence of SEO, social media and content marketing. And this lineup for BlueGlass LA mirrors our ideology. Raven Tools is also not limiting itself to just an SEO or Social Media tool — it’s a toolset of multiple options, perfect for today’s climate.

At BlueGlass conferences, we cherish the involvement and participation of our audience as much as we do our presenters (and we’re pretty picky about sponsors and have turned some down) — but bringing on Raven Tools in this sponsorship role will help us make that experience all the better for our participants; helping with the open bar and making sure each and every small detail is covered to make this the best experience imaginable for every one involved.

I’d like to take the time to thank Brannan, Jon and the team at Raven Tools! If your company is interested in sponsoring BlueGlass LA (we only have one spot left!) please feel free to drop me a line at lbaker@blueglass.com and if you haven’t registered; do it today!

Your visitors have a silent voice but luckily you can tap the power of analytics to uncover that voice. Knowing what and where to look gives you the opportunity to follow your visitors as they navigate your site. By taking the journey with them, you can actually find the main issues plaguing your site. Your visitors are telling you what is wrong; all you have to do is listen.

Using engagement metrics, you’ll be able to answer the following:

• Does your website convey a reputation of trust?
• Do you have visitors that find your content appealing and shareable ?
• Do people spend time on your site, or do they visit a single page and leave?

In this post I’ll explain some basic engagement metrics and then show examples of these metrics on two different sites (one good, one not-so-good).

There are so many factors that go into a site’s engagement that it’s impossible for anyone to give a standard set of engagement metrics for which all sites should strive to reach. Every niche is different. Every website is different. Every transaction requires a different set of steps towards conversion. Trying to reach an arbitrary standard metric would be of no benefit to your site.

With that said, there are some very simple metrics that you can define within your own business, that can help you determine if your website is engaging to the user, and to uncover any issues your visitors are having with your site.

1.  Frequency of New and Returning Visitors

One metric nearly all sites have in common is whether your new visitors are becoming returning visitors. We want visitors to be loyal to our sites. The frequency in which people return, however, is not standard across all sites.

For a site that sells brake pads, that site would not need to see a high number of returning visitors in a short period of time. Let’s assume that brake pads last 30,000 to 70,000 miles. Positive engagement factors for number of visits by a returning customer for this site could be 4 or 5 visits per thirty days. In fact, this site might see 4 to 5 visits per year per visitor as a positive engagement factor.

On a celebrity news site that updates multiple times a day, that site would want to see a higher number of visits from returning customers within a very short period of time. Positive frequency metrics would be a large amount of returning traffic one to two days. Within a month’s time, this site would want to see visitors returning to the site 30- 100+ times. This would indicate that the visitor is well engaged with the site and its content.

A sign that a site of this type is not engaging its visitors would be a high percentage of return visits in the 2- 10 time range within a month’s time.

Define your Target Frequency Metrics by identifying the following:

• How long is the buying cycle?
• How often is the site updated?

How to Measure Returning Visitors

We start with the “Frequency and Recency” feature in Google analytics. This feature allows us to take a look into how often a user visits the site and when they last visited.

Count of Visits

The tab that has the most benefit within this feature is “Count of Visits.”  This tab gives us insight into the number of times a visitor returns to the site.

Site #1

The first column gives us the number of visits that a visitor has made to the site within the timeframe selected.  In the above example, 75% of the visitors to the site returned back to the site 9 – 200+ times.

The site in this example has a very high engagement with its audience. The visitors to this site are so engaged with the content, that they can’t visit just one page. They are interested in the site as a whole.

Site #2

The next screenshot paints a different picture. This is from a site that was hit hard by Panda:

The difference in the number of returning visits is amazing. The second website tells us that visitors are not finding the site useful. In fact, users are not even trying to find the information they are looking for on the 2nd site. We will analyze that as we get deeper into the analytics of the two sites.

This site has serious issues and we need to find the key issues plaguing the site and develop a strategy to fix them. This metric alone can’t tell us the problem, so we’ll need to go deeper.

2. Time a Visitor Stays on the Site

The amount of time a visitor spends on the site is another key engagement metric that can tell you a lot about the health of your website from a visitor’s perspective. With no set standard for how long a visitor should stay on a website, it ‘s important for you to define the appropriate amount of time a visitor spends on the site.

Visitors to a blog in the investment niche would spend more time on the site than visitors to a yellow page directory. For the yellow page directory, a visit duration of 30-60 seconds could be a positive engagement factor, where the investment blog would want visitors to read and digest its in-depth analysis of the industry. A low visitor duration would be an indication that visitors were simply not engaged with the content supplied by the blog.

Define your Target Visit Duration by:

• Amount of content on the site
• Length of content on the site
• Complexity of the niche
• # of steps in the conversion process, especially for ecommerce

To further complicate this metric, if the visit duration is too high, this could be a bad sign. It could be a sign that visitors are having a hard time finding what they are looking for. This is especially true of ecommerce sites.

If your site has a high visit duration and you are concerned about it, look at the number of page views associated with the high duration ranges. If there seems to be a large percentage of page views in relation to a high visit duration, you might need to look into the architecture of your site. Again, this is a site-by-site issue. Some sites SHOULD have a high page view percentage with the higher visit durations.

How to Measure Visit Duration

The “Engagement” metric will give us insight into how much time people are spending on the site and how many pages they are viewing.

Visit Duration

This tab gives us valuable insight into how much time visitors stay on the site:

This metric is of particular interest to me and I like to go a little deeper into these stats. Using Advance Segments, I select New Users, Returning Users and Search Traffic.

With these three options checked, I can segment the visitors to get a better feel for how different user types interact with the site.

Site #1

From this screenshot, I can see that all three segments of searchers spend a good deal of time on the site. The majority of visitors to the site spend one minute to over thirty minutes on the site.

Site #2

Again, let’s compare this to the site that was hit by Panda:

The vast majority of users to the second site spend less than thirty seconds on the site. There is really no comparison between the engagement metrics between the two sites. So far, the site hit by Panda has serious engagement issues.

We now know that users to the first site enjoy the content so much that they come back multiple times, and they spend a lot of time on the site devouring the content. As for the second site, not only do people not revisit the site, they do not spend any time on the site.

We still need to find the problem with the second site. We have some useful metrics, but they haven’t led us to the direct cause of the problem. So, we need to continue on our path to finding the problem with this site.

3.  Page Depth

The number of pages a visitor is visiting per session is also an engagement factor worth considering. How many pages are your visitors viewing when they come to your site? Are they coming to your site to read one piece of content, then exit the site? Are you running a forum and people are coming to the site once a day, viewing the unread posts for that day?

This is by far the most difficult metric to define because there are too many variables that go into deciding what an engaging page depth looks like.  If you are running an affiliate site, you do not want visitors viewing too many pages. Your goal is to get the visitor to click the link to the offer. If you run an information site, you want people to view multiple pages to gain their trust and give them a reason to become a loyal visitor to the site.

Define your Target Page Depth by:

• Amount of steps in the conversion process
• Type of website (ecommerce, information portal, blog, news, etc.)
• Type of desired visitor action (click an advertisement, buy a product, sign up for a newsletter, etc.)
• Attention span of demographic
• Size of website

Understanding the target engagement factors you desire for your site will allow you to create goals and benchmarks to measure success or failure in create engaging content. Once the targets are identified, the next step is creating timeframe buckets for proper measurement.

Look at your engagement factors for one-month, three-month, six-month and twelve-month intervals. Only looking at one time period will skew your results.

How to Measure Page Depth

The next tab worth exploring under Engagement is “Page Depth.” This tab will tell us how many pages visitors to our site are viewing.

Site #1

These stats do not look as good as the other stats for this site, so far. That is because this metric is spread out over 20 pages. As an example, 26.80% of new users visited one page on the site. That looks like a high percentage, and it looks like most people only look at one page. However, that is not the case. In fact, it tells us that 73% of the users view two or more pages on the site.

Here is the screenshot of 20 pages viewed:

10% of search traffic and 10% of new visitors visit 20+ pages on the site. That accounts for 32-43% of the total pageviews for those two segments. Even though we are using this site as a reference, I still think it is important to look into the lower number of returning customers viewing 20+ pages.

Site #2

Let’s take a look at our Panda site and see how many pages people visit on that site:

Whereas the first site had 13%-24% of the visitors only viewing one page on the site, the second site has 65%-72% of its visitors viewing one page. The first site doesn’t look so bad now, does it?

Around 90% of the second site’s traffic visits three pages or less. This gets us closer to finding the issue with the site. With 70% of the visitors only visiting one page, we can assess that the problem is with the landing page itself, not the site as a whole. We need to find out what page is causing the problem with this site so we can address that page.

Since we used human behavior to get us to this point, we should continue to be consistent and let the visitor tell us what the problem is. They have been telling us something through this journey, and we are now ready to listen.

4. Visitor Flow

We continue our investigation into a feature of analytics called the “Visitor Flow.” If the previous engagement metrics lead to the discovery of an issue, as with the one site in our study, looking into the visualization of the visitor flow should be the next step. Usually, this is where I am able to tie all the engagement factors together and find the issue.

The first thing I do is get a top level view by limiting the Country to the United States.

Once that is done, I get a nice overview of the pages in which people enter my site, along with where they go after they land on my site. I also get an overview of how many people dropped off the site and did not continue deeper into the site.

Site #1

Using the first site as a base for a good visitor flow, we see the following:

From the visitor flow, I can see that people entered the site via 503 pages. I can then see their flow through the site. If you remember from the earlier data we gathered, visitors to this site visit multiple pages. This can be seen here in the visitor flow.

The site started out with 22.7K visitors, and by the 3rd interaction the site still had 13.5K visitors. So, around 60% of this site’s visitors continued on after the 3rd interaction.

The red boxes in the corner of the grey page blocks give us insight into how many people dropped off from that page.

We know that 86.5% of all traffic to the main entrance page continues through to another page on the site.

Site #2

Let’s compare this to our problem site and see what this metric tells us:

First thing that stands out is the main landing page for the second site. It gets a large percent of the search traffic. The next thing to notice is how many people continue on to the 3rd interaction. Only 8% of the visitors make it to three interactions with the site. Our first site had 60% continuing through to the third interaction.

What interests me is the 1st and 2nd interactions. First, only 48% of the visitors make it to the 1st interaction. Second, there is one main page that gets a large portion of the visits from the 2nd interaction.

This is what stands out to me, which you can’t see because I had to blur the page names.

The top starting page and top 1st interaction page are the same page. People are either landing on that page, or navigating to that page after landing on the site.

Look at the number of drop offs on these two pages:

This page has a 91.4% drop off rate as a starting page, and a 76.9% drop off rate as a 1st interaction page. The visitors to the site have just told me where my problem lies.

I now know that I have one main problem on this site. The issue with the site is this one single page. Visitors are getting to the site, but they are not able to navigate to the pages with the information they need, so they drop off, and they drop off quick.

Remember, the majority of visitors to this site spend less than thirty seconds on the site. So, they do not even try to find what they are looking for.

As a site owner, I now know that my site is hurting because my visitors are having trouble with my main landing page. I can now develop a strategy to fix the issue.

Conclusion

Engaging users with content is important for SEO, but more importantly, the way visitors interact with the site can alert you to issues within your site. Using these metrics, let your visitors give you insight into how they really feel about your site.

Find out where your site fails the visitor, then create a strategy to address their issues. Continue to watch the engagement metrics every thirty days after you address the issues. You will find that as you fix the problems, visitors will go deeper and stay on the site longer. As they go deeper and/or spend more time on the site, you will then uncover other engagement issues.

Don’t forget: every time you successfully address and fix a problem that is causing your site to lose visitors, you are creating a  more optimal climate for your visitors to engage with your content.

I’ve known the owners of Voltier Digital for over 4  years, and have worked with them on a large variety of projects.   Since they began in 2007, I’ve been impressed by their knack for staying on top of trends – especially trends in viral and content marketing.  We became friends through our shared passion for social media and its power to help good, unique content spread, attract links and ultimately increase a company’s bottom-line.

We’re also driven by a common goal; to provide services of value that demonstrate real, clear results.   I believe it is this shared vision that makes this acquisition such a good fit.

It was important for me to make sure that the rest of BlueGlass felt the same way. We have had a lengthy courtship with Voltier that involved lots of trips to Tampa, tons of meetings with all of the teams and even the founders attending our holiday party in December (now we can finally post some of the pictures that they were in!). I wanted to make sure that they didn’t just fit in on a strategic level but also on a personal level. I needed buy-in from everyone and we got it.

The team at Voltier Digital demonstrates not only a deep understanding of how great content can be utilized as part of an integrated marketing strategy, but also a wealth of innovative new ideas and resources that can help to strengthen the BlueGlass team and our offering.   BlueGlass has had a strong content marketing offering, delivering consistent results for clients, but we need to be exceptional. We believe that the integration of the Voltier team, their IP  and their processes make us exceptional.

Check out a few Infographic examples below.  You can find more here

BlueGlass can now look forward to executing new content marketing strategies that are on the absolute bleeding edge.   Our offering focuses on bringing additional value to the popular infographic medium, as well as new executions that take advantage of the capabilities of modern browsers.   Motion Graphics, Kinetic Typography, Interactive Infographics, and variety of experimental content types that take advantage of HTML5 and CSS3 and other burgeoning web technologies will help to insure BlueGlass remains a leader in the space.

Over the years, Voltier Digital has created content for dozens of clients including eBay, CEO.com, Fanhattan, WellHome, COLOURlovers.com, Greatist.com, and more.  This content has been featured on a huge variety of the web’s top publishing destinations,  as well as some of the most popular blogs.  Websites like Mashable, TheNextWeb, TreeHugger, GigaOm, SocialTimes, ReadWriteWeb, and SingularityHub, among others, are frequent publishers of the content  Voltier Digital creates, generating exposure for clients that is hard to achieve elsewhere.   Voltier’s unique and highly viral infographics have also been featured in countless popular niche blogs and websites that drive traffic, generate links, and encourage social mentions and interaction for clients.

Now more than ever, it’s become clear that high quality content is absolutely essential to launching an effective and truly viral marketing campaign.  Companies that can create content with substance stand to gain a great deal.  Companies who can further innovate and create not only great content but also explore new content mediums will win the day.  The acquisition of Voltier Digital signifies our faith in the importance of highly original content as a fuel for delivering results. So, on behalf of the rest of the BlueGlass team, I’d like to extend a warm welcome to Voltier Digital.  Stay tuned, there’s much more to come….

Learn more about what this means here or check out some of their work here. Want to find out what we can do for you? Let us know here.