What’s the first thing that appeals to you about a website? Or, maybe a better question would be what puts you off? It’s when a site’s hard to use and the information you need is hard to find, right?

That’s what user experience is all about! Improving the experience of the visitors to your site means making your them happy — and having a user-friendly interface largely contributes to that. However, that alone.

Think about it: you conduct online searches because you want to know or find something, and would only be satisfied if you’re able to find the information for which you are looking.

That’s where keywords come into play.

Enter Keywords

If you publish content, you need to have keywords! On the world wide web keywords play two very important roles:

1. Keywords are very helpful in search engine optimization (SEO), and
2. Keywords can be used to organize the information on your site.

Like it or not, if a visitor cannot easily find the information for which they are looking even the most user-friendly website cannot hope to have their visitors stay for longer than a couple of minutes max.

You need to help your visitors find what they need quickly and one of the best ways to do so is to use your site’s keywords to organize your content.

In a nutshell, keywords enhance a user’s experience and having them on your website allows searchers to quickly find what they need.

Let’s take a closer look at how this works.

The Role of Keywords in User (aka Visitor) Experience

The image below illustrates a very interesting concept that Peter Morville’s article on user experience design discusses, “The User Experience Honeycomb”:

Morville’s User Experience Honeycomb

If you take a closer look at the facets outlined in the model, you’ll understand how keywords can help enhance the experience of your website’s visitors:

Useful

People will only stay on a website if it contains whatever it is for which they’re looking. If a searcher follows a link and then cannot find what they need, then that site is not useful to them.

For example, if a visitor lands on a website looking only for ‘iPhone 4s reviews’ and finds only listings of cell phone stores on the website, she may not find the site very useful and their satisfaction will be very low.

Key takeaway: don’t make promises on which you don’t deliver.

Usable

The best way to understand this is to ask yourself what kind of a website would you rate high in usability? Probably something that’s easily navigable, right? Plus it shouldn’t waste your time making you look for the information you need. Lastly, you would probably hit the back button if the site takes more than 30 seconds to load. So would your visitors!

Making your site usable through both design and organization is one key to achieving positive visitor satisfaction.

Usability even contributes to search engine ranking! There are many simple yet effective strategies you can use to maintain the user-friendliness of a website.

Key takeaway: organizing your site using relevant keywords (i.e. using navigation tabs named with keywords) should make it easier for people to find what they need and explore the contents of your site.

Desirable

The desirability of a website goes beyond the visual appeal. Its measure is directly proportional to the overall visitor experience which in turn is dependent on the ‘findable’ and ‘accessible’ facets below.

Findable

Adding the keywords frequently used by searchers makes it easier for search engines to find your site and show it in their results pages.

After all, what’s the point of creating a user-friendly interface and creating excellent content if it can’t be easily found, right?

Key takeaway: your site can not be desired if your target customers don’t know it’s there! Use keywords to make your site findable.

Accessible

Your site needs to be accessible to the widest audience possible including search engine crawlers and, most especially, to visitors.

Going back to Peter Morville’s article, he extends the measure of accessibility to people with disabilities. For example, he’s right in saying that it’s ethical to make your site compatible with the technology that allows the blind to “read” the contents of your website by having it read to them.

Key takeaway: Enabling your site to serve all visitors increases the size of the audience who will find it desirable.

Credible

Which would you find more credible: a flashy website with no information or a classic website with accurate information presented in a simple manner?

At the end of the day, it’s not the ‘coolness’ of your website that matters but the quality of information it shares and the way it’s organized and presented.

Take a look at government and academic sites, for example. They may rank among the most boring sites visually however, people continue to flock to them because they know they can get the accurate information they need in, hopefully, a short amount of time.

Key takeaway: your site can be fun visually, but don’t sacrifice organization-by-keyword and ease-of-use for design.

Valuable

Lastly, Morville pointed out that the value of a website, which is measured by how well it can deliver its message and compel visitors into action, is also an important facet for user experience.

If people feel that your site is merely baiting them without giving out anything valuable in return for their visit or if finding what they need takes too long, then that’s a very low score on the scale for user experience and they will not take the actions you would like them to take.

Key takeaway: your visitors will value your website (e.g. return again and again) or your business (e.g. sales, leads, e-mail sign-ups) if you value them first by using keywords to make it easy to find the information for which they are looking.

User Experience: It Takes Two to Tango

To be honest, your website visitors themselves also have a responsibility — albeit a smaller portion — in ensuring their own satisfaction when surfing the Web.

Searchers should also know how to communicate with search engines. There are those who complain that search engine results don’t provide them with what they need. The question is: did they clearly state what it was that they wanted to get in the first place?

Though we may wish with all our hearts that we could, we can’t possibly tell our visitors what keywords or search queries to use to find exactly the information for which they are looking!

This brings us back to the importance of keyword research with regards to improving user experience. Let’s say you’ve already worked on your website’s layout and navigational interface. Now all you have to do is make sure users find your site.

This is where SEO practitioners come in: conducting keyword research to find out what words or phrases are frequently used in search engine inquiries. After that, you know the rest of the drill: keywords are included in website content and optimization campaigns.

Now when people are directed to your well-planned site wherein you’ve considered all seven facets in the honeycomb diagram, their visit to your site will likely be much more pleasant and satisfying.

In turn, you will also get the business results you want in terms of the actions satisfied visitors take while on your site (e.g. sales, leads, e-mail sign-ups).

And that’s where the use of keywords really pays off.

Emma-Julie Foxworks as a writer for Pitstop Media Inc, a Vancouver based company that provides SEO services to businesses across North America. To invite the author to write a guest post for your website or blog please visit www.pitstopmedia.com

If you’ve ever wanted to know more about the cloud, or you’ve tried to learn and got a bit frustrated, then sit back and read awhile ’cause this is the post for you.

Weekly Link Roundup

Each time I write a post, I collect the 10 best reads from around the web and share them with you here.

These posts focus on web-based solutions, online resources and up-to-date news for small businesses.

Enjoy!

14 Social Media Tools Used by Marketing Pros: A handy roundup of the latest social media tools for tracking, scheduling, curating and more. Gonna’ check these out myself!

Making connections: how Kimberly-Clark embraced social media marketing: Love these real-world case studies!

Hashtags on Facebook Do Nothing To Help Additional Exposure: The first study on this I’ve seen since Facebook hashtags went live. Interesting findings…

Can You Run a B2B Marketing Campaign Without Google?: Insightful look at B2B inbound marketing beyond Google.

20 Ways To Drive More Traffic To Your Blog: Advice you use today to increase your blog’s traffic.

Optimize Your Website Content with Calls to Action: Tips for Small Businesses: Website traffic means nothing if it’s not driven to conversions. Here’s some tips on how to create calls-to-action that drive conversion.

Adjust How You Think About Content (It Could Actually Lessen Your Workload): Some useful tips on efficiently using content marketing.

3 Ways to Use Online Video in Small Business Marketing: 3 ideas for increasing the value of your online videos.

5 Reasons Why You Need an Email Newsletter: If you’re asking, “Why Should I Use E-Mail Marketing?”, this post will answer the question.

9 Examples of Brands Engaging in Social Media Banter: Slinging social media updates over brand fences is catching on as a new attention-grabbing tactic.

About a month ago, I got to experience one of life’s joys – a hernia operation.

The sad thing is that this was my third time – once in my 20’s, once in my 30’s and now once in my 40’s. You’d think I’d have learned not to lift heavy things by now…

The upside of all this is the fact that I had about a two week period during which I could not sit comfortably at my desk. It was a good opportunity to take a step back and reflect on my business as a whole.

Stressed at Work

A few weeks before the operation, I walked through an eye-opening exercise with business coach, Nicole Fende.

Nicole is a master at getting to the heart of things and the subject that day was, “Matt’s feeling stressed by his workload so let’s take a look at where he spends his time”.

The exercise had two steps:

1. Add all of my work-related activities to a list.
2. Use the list to decide which activities can be dropped, or at least done less often, to free up time more for the activities that truly contribute to my overall business goal: “Earn a sustainable level of income using a scalable model while having fun doing it”

Succinct as always, Nicole put it like this: “Which of these activities leads to money?”

In other words, which of my activities contribute, either now (e.g. online courses) or in the future (e.g. writing my book), to the overall goal of earning a sustainable level of income in a scalable way while having fun?

After adding each of my work-related activities to a separate row in a spreadsheet, Nicole and I stepped though the list row-by-row and used a red fill to highlight any activity that did not directly contribute to my stated goal.

One example is the blogging I do on this site and over at my content marketing blog. Blogging is important and supports my goal by building awareness online, but I never planned for it to lead directly to money in-and-of itself. I could blog all day every day but without something to sell to the traffic it brings,  I’d never make a cent.

I’ll cut to the chase – by the time we finished, the spreadsheet was a field of red.

The conclusion – I was spending a lot of time on activities that did not contribute to my overall business goal.

My Business Had a Hernia

As I recovered from my hernia operation I came to the conclusion that, just like me, my business had been suffering from a hernia.

My business needed an operation and Nicole’s exercise fit the bill perfectly by helping me realize that I was trying to do too much in too many directions – a fact that lead to my failure to manage stress at work. I felt overwhelmed.

Worst of all, I had been doing some activities for so long that they’d become routine. The thought of stopping them, and the perceived value that they brought, was painful; a deep-gut pain just like my hernia.

The fact was that most of the stress, almost all of the pressure, came from within. That’s right – the person telling me I “had” to do all this was me. I was my own worst enemy.

The exercise I did with Nicole helped me determine which activities added real value by contributing to my goal.

The rest of the activities, while important, could be downgraded or even put on the back burner for a bit. I need to focus on the main goal and get to the things that lead to money.

After all, I need work on things that help me achieve my goals if I want to stay in business.

The result? My business has never been so focused and my stress has faded away. I’m re-energized and no longer feel overwhelmed or stuck.

Working like this is a true joy.

Has your business ever suffered from a hernia by trying to do too much at once? Does it have one now?

Share your story in the comments section below.

If you’ve mastered the art of blogging, it’s time to add a new tool to your content marketing arsenal.

You may not have considered press releases as part of that strategy — after all, that falls more under PR, doesn’t it? But David Meerman Scott says that the lines between PR, marketing, and social media have blurred to the point of there being little distinction among the three. I digress.

Press releases are fantastic for several reasons:

1. They’re little injections of SEO;
2. They make you look important; and
3. They give journalists what they need to write about you.

Ignore Matt Cutts: Press Releases Boost Your Search Results

I was surprised to find that Matt Cutts, Search Quality evangelist at Google, said people shouldn’t expect press releases to benefit rankings on a Google forum. After all, I’ve been saying for years that press releases do help with SEO.

But then people proved him wrong. I did my own experiment too, and managed to move from position 11 to position 6 for the term “how to create a press release” when I put out a press release. It’s not an earth-shattering shift, but it did get me on Page 1. I digress again. Funny how easy that is to do.

My point here is: if you use keywords in your press release that you want people to find you for, it probably will help you rank higher for those keywords.

Why? There are dozens of sites that pick up a given release distributed through a service like PRWeb, all of which use those keywords, and all of which have a link back to your site.

And those backlinks are also key to your SEO boost. Google likes to see more links to your site in order to decide that it’s important enough to move up search engine results. It wants those sites to be relevant, with other content relating to what’s on your site.

When you use reputable press release distribution sites like PRWeb, the sites that your release is sent to tend to be on Google’s OK list.

Time to Toot Your Own Horn

There’s nothing wrong with making your business look important. After all, the more buzz there is, the more people feel you’re moving and shaking.

I tell clients to issue at least one press release a month. That way, they’re creating a steady flow of news that they can distribute online, publish to their News page, and post to their blog. Whether it’s a journalist or customer visiting the site or searching for the company, he should see plenty going on for your business.

Help a Journalist Out

Let me make one thing clear: while, yes, some people who pitch national journalists get media coverage, it’s like shooting for the moon for many small businesses. Imagine the sheer number of media pitches a Wall Street Journal writer gets in a given day.

How do you stand out from the noise?

I advise you to start locally if you’re clamoring to get in print (or digital print, as it were). Pitch your local newspaper and get coverage there.

Then move to the state level. Once you’ve gotten enough buzz to turn the heads of a major journalist, you’re ready.

A press release can give a journalist more meat to write about. It can tell her what your company does (in the About section) and provide details about your news.

When you pitch a journalist, just include the high level points of your news. I like to send three bullet points, then link to the online press release.  You also have to sell the journalist on why her readers care about your news.

As you can see, press releases serve multiple purposes, all tying back to your goal with content marketing, which should be to drive traffic to your site and establish you as an expert in your field.

Susan Payton is the President of Egg Marketing & Communications, an Internet marketing firm specializing in marketing communications, copywriting and blog posts. She’s also the founder of How to Create a Press Release, a free resource for business owners.

Susan has written three books: DIY Press Releases: Your Guide to Becoming Your Own PR Consultant, 101 Entrepreneur Tips and Internet Marketing Strategies for Entrepreneurs, and has blogged for several sites, including The Marketing Eggspert Blog, as well as CorpNet, Small Business Trends, and BizLaunch. Follow her on Twitter @eggmarketing.

While the term, “website conversion rate” may not seem sexy, it’s the most important online statistic to track.

You see, website conversions happen when visitors follow your call to action, whether that’s a sale, a contact, a newsletter sign-up or something else.

One of the primary goals of your website is to drive that action through content and offers – in other words: marketing.

However, when folks land on your site, they’re not thinking about your calls-to-action. They’re there because they want something be it information or the product/services you offer.

That’s right: people are basically self-centered.

What’s In It For Me (WIFM)

It’s natural for folks to think about their own needs, wants and desires.  They view the world, and any opportunities, through the lens of ME.

Are you thinking, “well yeah except for me of course… I’m altruistic, caring and only strive to help others”?  So you’re Ghandi, Mother Theresa, and Alfred Nobel all rolled into one.

You get a gold star.

Feel better?  Good, because that just proved my point.  We were talking about people in general, and suddenly it was all about you.

That’s normal.  It doesn’t make you a selfish b$^&#&#.  It simply means you’re human.

Unfortunately that normal human trait of WIFM is one of the biggest barriers to selling your products and services.

Consider the following usual marketing statements:

• Have an award winning website designer build your small business site.
• Our best product, the widget washer, is on sale – save 30%
• Masseuse with elite training by ______ in the advanced techniques of deep tissue massage

On the surface they look good.  And yes I’ll agree they’re not horrible, but they aren’t statements that are going to compel prospects to pull out their wallets.

Let’s take a look at what’s wrong and how to fix them.

Increase Your Website Conversion Rate Using WIFM

The hardest part of this exercise is putting on the WIFMC (What’s In It For My Clients) glasses.  That perspective is contrary to our nature.

My two methods for keeping a WIFMC focus are to write a single sentence WIFM at the top of every page or to use a post it note on the edge of my screen. Both of these tactics help keep WIFM top-of-mind while I create content.

Now, let’s take a look at those marketing statements:

Marketing Statement #1:

Here’s the usual marketing statement:

Have an award winning website designer
build your small business site.

What’s wrong with this statement?

• The beginning of the statement focuses on you, not the client.  Sure it’s cool you’ve won some awards, but what about ME.
• When you do get to me all I know is that I’m getting a website.  I may already have a website.  Even more important – people building websites are a dime a dozen.
• There’s no specific financial benefit.  This is business.  I’m concerned with more profit through increased sales, decreased expenses, improved efficiency, etc.

Revamped Marketing Statement #1:

Using the points above, here’s the new, WIFM-focused marketing statement:

Increase your conversion by 10% with a website design by an award winning professional.

Marketing Statement #2:

Here’s the usual marketing statement:

Our best product, the widget washer, is on sale – save 30%.

What’s wrong with this statement?

• The beginning of the statement focuses on your product.  So what if it’s your best product, why is that compelling to ME?
• Let’s assume I know what a widget washer is, and I need one.  What if your product performs at only 80% efficiency versus your top competitor?
• Being on sale is nice, but what if your prices are normally high anyway?   What is my net financial gain if I purchase your widget right now, on sale?

Revamped Marketing Statement #2:

Using the points above, here’s the new, WIFM-focused marketing statement:

Get the widget washer that outperforms the competition by 20% today and save an additional 30% off our already low prices.

Marketing Statement #3:

Here’s the usual marketing statement:

Masseuse with elite training by ______ in
the advanced techniques of deep tissue massage

What’s wrong with this statement?

• Personally I love getting a deep tissue massage, but I couldn’t tell if the elite training by whomever is BS or a legitimate credential.  In other words, if your detailed credentials or qualifications aren’t known to your target market, then don’t waste time discussing them.
• Why would someone want deep tissue massage?  Customers new to the concept need to be told.  Customers new to you need to be reassured that they’ll get what they expect.
• People often view a massage as an indulgence.  Given tight budgets and economic conditions this can be a real battle.  Rather than focus on saving 10% (because they’ll just opt not to buy at all), reframe the service into a necessity

Revamped Marketing Statement #3:

Using the points above, here’s the new, WIFM-focused marketing statement:

Get rid of tight shoulders, tension knots, and constant low grade discomfort with a deep tissue massage performed by a highly trained masseuse – being pain free isn’t an indulgence.

Final Thoughts

Could the revamped statements be even better?  Yes.   Feel free to share your ideas in the comment section below.

However one word of caution, when is good enough good enough?  The law of diminishing returns comes into play here.  Taking time to fix major issues?  Totally worth it.  Taking time to tweak a word here, a comma there?  I’d rather be out promoting my business or servicing my clients.

Nicole Fende is The Numbers Whisperer® and President of Small Business Finance Forum.

As an author, speaker, accomplished air guitar player, and tamer of finance fears, Nicole enjoys helping small business owners reach multi-platinum profits.

Nicole co-hosts a weekly online TV show, Call a Biz Hero, and has authored the book, “How to be a Finance Rock Star”. Her secret weapon? The most infectious laugh you’ll ever hear.

You can create as much content as you want, and use the best search engine optimization methods you can get, but if people don’t really care what you have to say, you’re not going to get far.

That’s why I wanted to give you some tips that I use when I’m creating content like blog posts, videos and more.

These tips can help capture your audience and make sure your message resonates with them.

I’m gonna’ call this “The 4 R’s of Ridiculously Great Content” and to get started creating content that will keep your audience riveted, watch the video below (note – a transcript can be found beneath the video):

Video Transcript

I’m super excited to be here today guest blogging for Matt.

Because Matt focuses a lot on content and creating great content, and getting it out there to your audience, I decided I wanted to do something talking a little bit about how to make people interested in what you have to say.

Really, you could create as much content as you want and have the best search engine optimization methods you can get but if people don’t really care what you have to say, you know you’re not getting that far.

So I want to give you some tips that I use when I’m either writing blogs, or I’m doing like what I’m doing here today for you and doing videos, that can help capture your audience and make sure your message resonates with them.

We’re gonna’ call this the 4 R’s, really simple for you to remember and it’s “The 4 R’s of Ridiculously Great Content”.

The 4 R’s of Ridiculously Great Content

Be Relatable

The first R is going to be, “Be Relatable”.

If you read any of my blogs or watch any of my videos, you’ll see that I often tell really funny stories about myself. Or, I talk about things that I suck at or mistakes I’ve made or situations that I’ve gotten in that were just like kind of ridiculous or maybe embarrassing (a lot of the times probably embarrassing).

I do that ’cause of two main reasons:

1. People love a story – they like to follow along with a story and it helps them learn because they can relate it to the real world.
2. People want to talk to someone and to read what someone has to say that’s relatable – they want you to be a real person, not just a drone throwing out advice at them. For the same reason that if you call a customer service center and you get one of those automated robot voices, it drives you nuts. Whereas if you call a customer service center and get a real person, it’s kind of like a sigh of relief.

So always makes sure that your content is relatable, whether that means bringing it on back to you, tell stories about yourself, people you know or whatnot.

Make sure it works correctly for your brand, but don’t be afraid to let your vulnerable side show because that really helps people connect with you.

Be Relevant

Number 2 is, “Be Relevant”.

If there’s an opportunity to take a current event going on in the news and really apply it to your topic in a way that people can learn from, that’s fantastic!

It also can be a really good way to boost your visibility and get your post out there since that topic is going to be trendy.

Now, one very careful warning about this: be sensitive to everything that goes on. Don’t take some sort of natural disaster or mass killing spree and try to make it work to you to sell your product.

What you want to do is only use current events if you can, especially if they are tragic, use them in a way that can teach your audience something important.

In the end, yes you want to get your content out there, but please be sensitive about these events and what goes on and realize that we’re all human and have emotion and so use common sense and basic decency when making those decisions.

But being relevant is always a great idea. People are thinking about a topic, they’re probably already processing through their head and if you are able to help further that processing through things you say in your blog or the content that you put out there, then all the better.

Be Ridiculous

The third R of Ridiculously Interesting Content is, “Be Ridiculous”.

Again, you’ll read my blogs or watch videos that I’ve done and I try to just make them sometimes over the top. I talk about really kind of strange topics that no one would ever think had anything to do with marketing and communications.

I would say in the last couple of months, I’ve written posts about Darth Vader, about toads, about the best mustaches in history. I mean, you name it, I have written about it.

So don’t be afraid to stretch outside of the box of what people normally think about your topic. Grab something that’s unpredictable, that’s not in the norm and that’s going to grab people’s attention and give them a different perspective about what you have to say.

Remember that there’s a lot of people out there creating great content and most likely, anything that you’re writing about has been written about in one way or another. So if you try to bring in some sort of oddball element to what you’re saying to get your point across, it really helps you stand out. It helps accentuate your brand and who you are as an individual.

Be Romantic

And the fourth, and final, R of great content is, “Be Romantic”.

Now, I’m not necessarily saying that you want to shower your audience with roses or chocolates or take them out to a romantic dinner, but you do want to let them know that you care about them.

Make sure that your audience realizes that it’s important to you that they’re there, that they’re reading, listening, being part of the conversation that you’re having with your content.

You can do that through asking questions at the end, or doing Q&A that you accept their questions and you respond with whole blog posts that are responses to thing that they really want to know. Make sure that if anyone leaves comments on your articles that you respond and you give them an actually thought out and good response.

People want to know they matter. They want to know you care about them and you’ll develop a much more loyal audience that will come back again and again spread the word about you if you do let them know that you care.

And after all, if you’re in a business that these are your market, you probably should care. If you don’t, you might want to look for a different business.

Laura Petrolino is Founder and Managing Director of Flying Pig Consulting, a communications and business consulting firm which focuses on the needs of startups, small business and non-profits. She is also co-host of Call a Biz Hero, a web-based, Superhero led business talk show.

As business owners learn more about the rules of SEO, how to rank well in Google and the importance of content in their marketing strategy, it’s almost like a light bulb goes off in their head at some point. The thought goes something like this:

“You mean, if I use my keyword 50 times in a 400-word piece of content, Google will rank me higher?”

The answer: maybe, but not likely.

You may see some short-term benefit in your rankings, and a correlation of a bit more traffic from a strategy like this. The benefits may not be worth the risk involved, however.

Spammy, Keyword Stuffed Content Is A Thing Of The Past

Google is catching on to spammy, salesy content, and that added traffic is not going to pay your bills. You don’t get money by generating website visits. You get money by generating sales. There’s a difference.

Your audience is smarter than you’re giving them credit for at this point. People aren’t interested in plumbers selling plumbing services to people looking for plumbers in the Chicago area.

This type of writing is what happens when businesses act on the above impulse, and it may raise your traffic, but it can also lower your conversion rate. Remember, it’s the guy at the computer reaching for his wallet that pays your bills. If your message isn’t aimed at him, he may never reach for that wallet

No commercials

Another tendency of businesses new to producing content is to create a commercial.

When it comes to television, viewers are there because they’re waiting for their favorite show to come back. No one sits down at the computer wanting to read or watch a commercial. They want value and entertainment.

When it’s your customer seeking you out, you’ll have to provide them with what they are looking for.

How do you get the attention of a perspective customer?

Well, if he’s looking for plumbing services, there’s probably a reason for it. Maybe his pipes are leaking. Maybe he wants a new bathtub fixture. There could be a number of reasons.

If it’s your blog post, or your “how to” report that they find when they do a Google search for their issue, you’ll have their attention. Valuable information builds trust.

That’s why providing consistently awesome content is so important. It’s crucial for a plumber to offer great industry information in a way that stands out from his competition. This way, your content strategy helps distinguish your business from the other search results.

If they find your post, and they’re still looking for someone to take care of the job for them, you’re the guy who knows what he’s talking about, and that’s a pretty good place to be in a world driven by content.

The Case For Humanized Content

The bottom line of all this: one of the most important rules of SEO for blogs is to humanize your content.

Even if you’re using SEO tactics to increase your blog’s ranking, you’re better off writing for humans instead of search engines.

Unless you’re lucky enough to count Google, Yahoo or Bing as a client, the search engines aren’t paying your bills, your customers are. That’s where your marketing efforts should stay aimed.

Instead of focusing on writing keyword-rich content for search engines, write for the humans who will become your customers. Believe it or not, even the search engines will reward you for doing so.

What are you doing to humanize your content? Has it worked?

Matt Brennan is a marketing writer helping companies increase their audience by telling better stories. He regularly provides content marketing strategies and blogging tips for businesses.

It’s all so familiar. I sit down at the computer. I devote a little morning time to reading the latest industry posts. Time well spent. Except when it’s not. Some of the blog posts are awesome. They’re helpful, entertaining and useful.

I’ll be honest. Some of the blog posts suck, and I don’t return to that blog. They suck for various reasons.

One of the primary goals of writing blog posts is to keep people coming back to read more and that’s no easy task. In this day and age with everyone’s short attention span, you have to work for every subscription, share and comment.

Here are five secrets to writing blog posts that will keep people coming back to read more:

People Love Peppy

It’s true. Upbeat, punchy and positive rule the day. Here are a couple of tips:

• Your blog readers have a problem. Position yourself as the likeable solution.

  Deliberate on your word choice. Strong verbs are like gold tokens in this world.

• Keep the larger picture in mind through the tone of your piece. Your blog readers have a problem. When you position yourself as the likeable solution to that problem, both sides win.

Don’t Be an Industry Typist

If you’ve spent any time at all reading your industry blogs, chances are you’ve come across the same nuggets of advice multiple times. That’s not permission to copy them verbatim. Instead:

• Put forward your own ideas when you can. Set the agenda.

  Tell us why you agree with them, why you disagree with them, or include an anecdote.

• Do something with it to make it your own. Or even better yet, put forward your own ideas when you can. Set the agenda.

Write for Short Attention Spans

That’s right, folks reading online can have the attention span of a gnat and readers will drop your blog post mid sentence if you don’t work to keep them engaged. Make sure you:

• Don’t use words your audience will need to leave and look up. They may not come back.

  Use short sentences and paragraphs.

• Don’t use words your audience will need to leave and look up. They may not come back.
• Add subheads and lists, both of which are great ways to break things down a bit further and keep people feeling engaged from point A to point B.

Get a Little Personal

If your readers found you through search, chances are you came in a pile of thousands of search results.

If they found you in social, chances are you did something right to stand out in a fast-moving newsfeed for Twitter stream.

The key is to look alive. Look like a real person instead of a faceless business. This means revealing a little about yourself, connecting new ideas and letting your readers know who you are.

Spell it Right

Yes, I know this tip makes its way on to every list post on how to blog. It’s that important, though.

When you consistently let grammar and spelling errors into your work, it erodes your readers’ trust. The question in their minds goes like this:

“How much do they really know about _______ if they can’t even use the right
form of the word ‘They’re?'”

A basic-level understanding of the English language is really important to this whole blogging thing.

The Payoff

When you can move people from start to finish in your posts, really cool things begin to happen. You may start seeing comments. People talk with you about your blog. Your readers begin to look at you as a valuable industry resource.

All of these things build your platform, increase your audience and improve your business.

Matt Brennan is a marketing writer helping companies increase their audience by telling better stories. He regularly provides content marketing strategies and blogging tips for businesses. 

Only months after Pinterest opened itself to business accounts, the fourth largest social media platform just announced its latest release: the Pinterest analytics tool.

Matt breaking in here: to learn more about Pinterest in general, check out my post, “Why Pinterest is Your Business’ New Best Friend“.

With this social media analytics tool, tracking social media marketing results for your small business just got easier.

Companies now have access to more in depth knowledge about the splash they make on Pinterest.  That’s right, you no longer have to rely on Google Analytics or on any other social media tracking and analytics solutions – you can now see many more details with the new Pinterest tool.

Another bonus: the new tool is completely free – the only requirement is for your company to verify its website on Pinterest.

Not sure how this new tool will help your social media marketing efforts? Here are three ways that Pinterest Analytics will help boost your efforts on this popular social network:

3 Surefire Ways to Use Pinterest Analytics To Boost Your Social Media Marketing

1. Get a better understanding about what content best resonates with Pinners

Marketers constantly find themselves testing what works and removing what doesn’t.

Although there was some knowledge of what people were doing with your company’s pins on Pinterest, it was not very detailed and was somewhat time consuming to really analyze.

With the new Pinterest analytics tool, you can quickly see what content resonates with your audience, and what content falls flat.

Just like any other form of online marketing, this allows you to enhance the content you distribute on Pinterest in the areas that work, and stop wasting valuable resources on promoting content that may not be as compelling as you originally thought.

2. See the results of your Pinterest marketing efforts first-hand

Pinterest analytics goes into detail about what happens to each piece of your content.

Here’s a taste of just some of the most useful metrics you can view after verifying your website and gaining access to the Pinterests new social media analytics tool:

• Daily averages of pins and pinners from your website – get daily updates on how people engage with your content directly on your website.
• Daily averages of repins and number of people repinning your content – see the reach of your pins and how people engage with your visual content on Pinterest.
• Daily averages of how often your content appeared in the main board – find out how many times your visual content appeared to people browsing through the latest and most popular pins.
• Daily averages of how many impressions your content received – find out how many people see your images and get deeper insight into what images have caused people to click further.
• Daily averages of how many people clicked to your site from Pinterest – see the leads that your Pinterest marketing efforts generate to help you land the sale.

With this much information, you get a much clearer view of what works in your social media marketing.

With the hard data in hand, it becomes easier to make the case for social media marketing and to show first-hand what your efforts on Pinterest have brought to the business as a whole.

3. Become more timely with your content

Seasons come and seasons go. Marketers always want to be in with what’s hot at the moment.

Pinterest’s new social media tracking tool allows you to increase visibility by posting the content that people are most hungry for right now.

With Pinterest analytics, you can easily reference new trends. If one pin starts picking up in popularity, it may be time to amp up the content production for that specific topic.

For example, if a bakery suddenly gets sees more wedding cake pins, they may want to increase their wedding marketing to attract hotter leads. This allows them to boost their presence and be more effective with their marketing efforts.

How About You?

By adding one of the most anticipated social media analytics tools to Pinterest, businesses are able to provide more value in their social media marketing.

Has your small business started using Pinterest? And if so, how are you using the analytics feature to increase your visibility?

Please share your experiences in the comments section below.

Kimberly Crossland is a digital marketer helping small businesses excel through content marketing, SEO services and social media strategy. She frequently writes about the latest developments in online marketing and how small businesses can benefit.

This post may start off like a bit of a rant (and it is), but reading to the end will help you understand the business risks of depending on LinkedIn groups from here on out.

Let me start by saying that I am a huge fan of LinkedIn groups.

I’ve been an active member of about 50 groups for over three years now and have found that it’s a great social network for connecting with businesses folks.

Until now.

Here’s What Happened

About one-and-a-half months ago, I found that every time I posted a discussion to a LinkedIn group, I was informed that my post had been submitted for review. This was also happening when I commented on a discussion, even if I had started it.

So, I contacted support to find out what was going on.

Here’s what I got back from LinkedIn support:

Inconvenience? They had no idea.

LinkedIn groups is a major source of traffic and leads for my business. Not being able to participate in discussions without approval is more than inconvenient – it can have a dramatic effect on my business.

And, by the way, I was not aware that I had been blocked or removed from any of my groups. I’ve never received even one notification either from LinkedIn or a group manager.

Here’s What I Did

Following support’s suggestion, I contacted the management team of each one of my groups.

All 50.

Yes, that took a lot of time.

Here’s what I sent:

NOTE: If your group makes all discussions and comments go to review automatically then you can ignore this message.

Hey there,

My discussions and comments in your group are being submitted for review automatically (as opposed to being posted immediately).

LinkedIn support told me that my settings were changed for all groups because they were changed in one group.

If you did not manually change my settings so that my discussions and comments go straight to review, then please change my settings back for your group.

If you did manually change the settings for me, sorry if I offended in any way!

Thanks in advance!

-Matt Mansfield

The result of all that hard work?

• I heard back from only two people, each of whom removed my name from their groups “automatic review” list (thanks guys!).

Two. Out of fifty. Ugh.

The Start of LinkedIn Group’s Decline as a Social Network

The bottom-line in all of this is that LinkedIn groups has failed to scale as a social networking platform.

Why do I say that? Because even though they like to boast about their numbers, the amount of people in LinkedIn groups has simply become unwieldy.

How do I know that? Because the person-to-person engagement that drives social networks has begun to fall apart:

• They have automated their social network – by implementing code that adds someone to the automatic review list in all groups if they are added to the automatic review list in one, people are removed from the social networking process and without people, there is no social aspect.
  • Here’s quote from the “LinkedIn Groups Product Forum” group on this (BTW – from that group I found out that this LinkedIn groups “feature” is called “Site-Wide Auto-Moderation” or “SWAM” and that there was no general announcement when it went live):
    

    We need to get people to understand just how potentially destructive this trigger is – someone making a small error could trigger World War I.

    Once the group owners start “protecting” themselves by nuking first and asking question later, the entire social good created by LinkedIn disappears.

• Group managers are disengaged from the social network –  the management teams from 48 groups did not respond to me. I would understand it if it was only one or two groups that did not respond, but such a large-scale failure tells me one of two things:
  • The folks who run the groups are disengaged from their groups – I can understand this – life gets busy. Typically, when the management team of a group backs off, I leave the group. However, I know that this is not the case among most of the 48 groups that did not respond to me.
    • I did find one group manager who is very engaged and even mentioned this issue to his groups. He runs multiple groups and mentioned this issue in each. He’s also a passionate advocate for group members within the “LinkedIn Groups Product Forum” group. Mark is my hero.
  • The folks who run the groups are overwhelmed by the amount of work it takes to run the groups –  this is a far more likely scenario and is a sign that the platform does not have enough tools to help someone run a group once it grows large. This is a problem of scale.

What This All Means to Me

This all may sound like sour grapes however, the fact is that I believe I have good reason to be upset.

You see, I’ve always had a really good track record on the LinkedIn groups network:

• I share relevant content as discussions within specific groups.
• My discussions are often commented upon and shared, both within and outside of LinkedIn.
• I have respected every request I have ever received from a group manager which, over the course of three years has been a grand total of 1.

In addition to that, and the fact that I pay every month to be a premium member, I have:

• Been an active member of LinkedIn since January 20, 2005
• Over 600 professional connections,
• Over 30 recommendations from clients and co-workers,
• 120 endorsements for my skills, and
• Received, just this past February, a congratulatory e-mail telling me, “You have one of the top 5% most viewed LinkedIn profiles for 2012.”

The truth is that I’m feeling pretty betrayed by a social network in which I have invested so much time, effort and value over the years.

I don’t know why I was added to the automatic review list within that first group and I probably never will – it really doesn’t matter – but now my use of the groups network has been totally crippled:

• Many of my discussion submissions are never approved – more proof that group managers are disengaged or overwhelmed.
  • I have heard from folks in my groups asking me why I don’t post anymore. I feel shame every time I have to explain what happened – I am not, and have never been, a spammer.
• Many of my discussion comment submissions are never approved – this is even worse in a way because it makes it seem as if I am ignoring folks who have commented on my discussions or asked me a question. Ignoring people is so unlike me so I HATE this!

I know that LinkedIn implemented this approach to help fight the onslaught of SPAM that pervades their groups, but isn’t this a little too heavy-handed? Isn’t there a way to keep humans in the picture?

What This All Means to You

If you’re a LinkedIn groups user, you’d better watch out.

This whole automatic review thing came out of left field. I don’t know why this happened to me and neither will you.

You may be added to the automatic review list in a group because you have broken the rules.

You may be added to the automatic review list in a group because the manager of the group is one of your competitors and they want to control your message.

Whatever the reason, the power to add someone to the automatic review list is arbitrary and open to abuse. Being added in the past had a small and controlled impact on your use of LinkedIn’s groups. Now, it will cripple your ability to network on LinkedIn.

Think I’m exaggerating? Here are a couple of additional postings from the “LinkedIn Groups Product Forum” group:

If you were blocked and deleted from some other group, triggering a SWAM action (haven’t fully figured out yet what SWAM means.. Site Wide ??? Moderation?), it’s not necessarily because you did anything wrong and you may or may not ever know what the reason was.

I was kicked out of a medical device group because the group was so overwhelmed with spam that I respectfully, but repeatedly, asked the owner to please do something about it, and offered to help. He ignored most of my requests but ultimately kicked me out of the group and sent me a message telling me he had done that. Had he not sent me that message I’m not sure I ever would have known what happened. After a restrained but cordial exchange, he reinstated me, but the damage was done and I ended up in moderation in all 53 of my other groups. I still haven’t fully recovered, and probably never will, because some of my groups have absentee or uninterested owners who don’t seem to ever visit their groups anymore.

In your case it could have been something as simple as a group owner blocking you by mistake and then, realizing his mistake, unblocking you, but the damage is done.

The others are people who have, for one reason or another, justified or not, have come into conflict with a group manager or owner and they were removed from the group and now have to contend with trying to contact 49 other group owners / managers, many of whom are absentee owners / managers.

Here is one that caught my eye:

“I am very active on LinkedIn. I recently joined the Urban Planning Group (within the past two weeks). I posted a request for references to create a citation resource and posted a report by a friend from the World Bank on urban planning. All of a sudden, in all of my groups, my comments and shared postings are being sent for approval except for the groups in which I am a manager. I checked my group list and I was kicked out of the Urban Planning Group! I did NOT do anything rude or inappropriate. I am prohibited from even rejoining the group (Message from LinkedIn)! This behavior by the group manager is unprofessional and has adversely affected the rest of my professional interactions. Completely unacceptable; especially when I am a doctoral student and have been unemployed for the past year and a half. My presence on LinkedIn has enabled me to make important connections in search of employment. This situation needs to be corrected!

I sent out an email to ALL of the 18 Group Managers. One manager has responded back saying that he checked the submission cue and there were over 40 members flagged and in a holding pattern!! This is horrible…”

I wouldn’t call her a spammer by any stretch of the imagination.

– Dave Mason

I wish I had some advice, but I thought I was doing everything right and look what happened.

I hope you don’t have to join me out in the cold.

A Message to LinkedIn

I love LinkedIn groups. I always have.

Nothing would delight me more than having you roll this change back because I truly believe that your groups are at the start of a very slippery slope downwards.

If you have been SWAMmed:

There is a support group over at LinkedIn called, “SWAM (Site Wide Auto Moderation) Support”. There, you can discuss options and vent your frustration.

To find the group and join, use the search box (set the drop-down to “Groups”) on the top-right of LinkedIn.

Added 5/6/2013