It’s easy to get overwhelmed as a content creator. Unless we stay away from our computers & phone then every day we are inundated with content from all sides.
Logically we assume, if there is so much content out there, then how is my content going to get seen. By applying a little bit of pre-planning, you will greatly increase your odds. The benefit of having so much content produced is that we also have a lot of data available about what works and what doesn’t. Content creators which use case study’s, research & data tools to their advantage will win in today’s content marketing world. Check through this list and see how many of these content types you create on your blog. 1. Quiz Results Sharing a result like “I am 65% left brain and 35% right brain”, is a piece of information you will be proud about and which connects you with your friends & family. It opens up a conversation & will very likely get them to try the quiz too. There are tons of quiz building tools out there. www.tryinteract.com/ is a tool I tried for several months, they have tons of templates and it's very easy to use. 2. Secret information Placing “Don’t share this” at the beginning of your content usually has the opposite effect. This is why secret bars & restaurants become so popular so fast. Credit thrillist.com for image 
And the reason many platforms start on an invite-only basis.
The idea that you have information or access that someone else doesn't, is powerful and it is very difficult not to share that. 3. Book Reviews & Summaries I’d like us to start creating content on this. Not only will it encourage me to read more, but it is very useful for our audience to access summaries of books they don’t have time to read. It’s a win, win, you get more knowledge, your audience gets content they love to share. Tai Lopez built a lot of his audience on this premise, as have many other successful entrepreneurs. 4. Research & Original Data Carrying out small surveys and sharing the data makes high-value content. Neville from Kopy Course does this really well. He creates mini-experiments on a topic and then shares the results. Check out his latest: Do Tattoos Affect How People View You In The Workplace. 5. How to’s As human beings, we are obsessed with learning about the quickest way to get the result we want. Searching “How to XXXX” is a route many of us take before carrying out any task. How to lists make great evergreen content which can be updated over time. Just make sure that you don’t change the URL when you update the post and insert a small piece of text at the top saying “post updated XXX” to alert Google to the freshness of your content. 6. Infographics No doubt you are probably rolling your eyes at this one. Sure, they have been around for a long, long time. I've included infographics because well thought out and high-quality infographics still work. 
Infographics are really easy to consumer & share. Just make sure that your infographic focuses on data visualization or telling a story in a unique way (like above). It is more than grouping a bunch of icons in one space.
7. Big Lists Lists, like this make fantastic pillar posts - posts which over time can gather many social shares and links. If put together well, with solid advice, pictures and resource links then you’ll find them to be a very popular type of content to create. Research your topic and find out the size of list your competitors have created - then double it. You can even reach out to the people who have linked to those previous links with your updated & improved version to see if they will link to yours instead. 8. Life Updates Everyone has a different stance on how much of their personal life they like to share. But one thing is clear, audiences like life updates. Announcing your wedding, a new baby, a move to a new country etc is a way to connect with your audience on a human level. Most people have experienced these types of life events and so you have the opportunity to engage & connect with a huge chunk of your audience. 9. Long Form Content In my opinion, this type of content is getting kind of ridiculous now. It started off that 1,500 - 2000 words were long form. Several years later with so many people competing, some blogs are writing posts the size of mini e-books. My advice with this form of content is don’t go overboard. Cover your topic comprehensively, but be careful about going over 5000 words. You are still writing for your audience so make sure you are delivering the information in the best way. 10. Statistics People like to share statistics that back up their own beliefs. If there is new research released in your industry, create a visual post highlighting the statistics from the study in image format. Share this post on social media with the images embedded and watch your share count rise. 11. Quotes Everyone enjoys reading an inspirational quote. Well, we think so, which is why we have our quote of the month featured on the footer of Ginger Marketing website & email signature. 
We also share a lot of quotes on our Instagram too. Grouping together some inspirational quotes on a given topic can make a great post.
This post, for example, takes the topic of stoicism (which I’m also a big fan of) and applies it to sales using a quote format. 12. Trending Content A great way to get shares is to capitalize on already trending topics. Check twitter for trending hashtags, or check Facebook trends for what’s hot at the moment. Find a way to add value to the conversation and QUICKLY create a post on it. Speed is the key here! You need to get your post up & published stat to enjoy the rewards of this type of content. Check here for more info on how to find trending topics on social media. 13. Image Quotes Posts grouping quotes as images do really well and are easily share through social media channels. Make sure they are on brand and sized correctly for Instagram & share them there too. You could post one image per day with a call to action to click on the link in the bio to see the rest of the quotes. 14. Lifestyle Photos & Videos If you are a digital nomad working from exotic locations take advantage of that. Producing original content about the life you have created for yourself inspires others to do the same & is very shareable. Videos like this can pick up millions of views and thousands of shares. (note, make sure sharing content like this aligns with your own values first & is a true representation - in my opinion some of these videos about traveling & growing a business can be overly optimistic & make other people feel as if they have not “made it” or are not successful. This is from personal experience being a digital nomad & growing a remote business. So, be careful on this one that you are sharing with integrity. If you have created your dream life, you owe it to other people to explain exactly how you got there because they will likely tred a similar path) 15. Coupons & Money Off Deals Everyone likes to save money and many people like to pass on those savings. You will find that coupons and money off deals get shared if you put a simple call to action & make it easy for your audience to do so. 16. Content which makes them go AWWW It’s pretty much impossible not to share videos of cute fluffy cats, especially if your friend loves cute fluffy cats. 
The idea that you have information or access that someone else doesnt is powerful and it is very difficult not to share that.
17. Content which makes them go WTF
On the flip side, people like to share content which shocks them or is totally unbelievable. When sharing this type of content the person sharing has the upper hand. They have seen something really amazing that the other person hasn’t seen. When you have a dynamic of power like this, sharing is on the cards. 18. Emotionally Charged Images This is a sensitive form of content creation and so should only be used for certain types of institutions. I.e. charities of government bodies who need to deliver a serious message. Images like these (careful, these are upsetting) can travel around the entire world and cause real positive change. They cut straight through to us and cause severe emotional reactions which put us into action. We are likely to share these images with those closest to us because we want someone else to speak to about what has happened. 19. Content with more Images The more images you place in your content, the more likely it will be shared (in general). Ideally, place an image every 250 - 300 words. A helpful tip, the space underneath the image is prime estate, something I learned from Ogilvy - one of the largest advertising agencies in the world. Readers naturally look below the image, use this space to write a caption or to pass over some important information about the topic (don't use the space underneath to give credit). 20. Content with a tweet this button embedded Making it easier to share your content means that people inevitably will. Tweet this buttons are super easy to embed now, make use of them & watch your share count increase. Free traffic - yay! 21. Content shared via an influencer Influencers have an engaged audience who like to consume the content they share. If you have friends in the blogging space, make sure you share your content with them! A tweet, email or Facebook share from them could create a huge boost in free traffic. We hope this list has been helpful and sparked some ideas! Have some more content types to add? Let us know in the comments below.
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 This post is brought to you by Paul Ajao a digital marketer who helps businesses get better results online. IT Support company First Line IT kindly helped in the research of this article. Let's begin! Stop the madness! Too many small business entrepreneurs are hustling to build their business, but failing to achieve the goals they’ve set. Instead they just end up burnt out and disappointed. And there is a reason for this: trying to do every job in the business with no help. The fact is you can’t be good at social media, bookkeeping, office cleaning as well as building the long term strategic plan. Even if you think you can do all these tasks, you don’t have the time to do them all effectively.  Credit to The Gazette Business gurus like Tim Ferris and Michael Gerber have been telling us for years that there’s a better way to run your business…and it doesn’t involve you doing everything. But how do you get started down this road with outsourcing without spending too much or losing control? Here are seven ideas to get you started. They will help free up your time from mundane tasks so you can concentrate on higher level executive tasks.
Many business people will be surprised at how little it costs to outsource the headache of dealing with receipts, cashflow, profit and loss etc. You just need to invest in an online accountancy system such as Xero or Quickbooks and then contact a bookkeeper that is familiar with using them.  One of the benefits of using an online system is the bookkeeper doesn’t need to live near you. You can even photograph receipts with your mobile phone and save them, so you’re not carrying around scraps of paper. The best bit is you’ll know exactly how your business is doing month to month. No nasty shocks at year end! 2. IT Support I’m sure you’ve experienced it at some time or other; email is not working, printer suddenly decides to stop talking to your PC or the dreaded ‘blue screen of death’. It always seems to happen at the worst possible time, just as you want to finish a report or prepare a meeting presentation. Once you’ve tried the classic ‘turn it off and turn it on again’, what should you do? You’re a business building entrepreneur so spending hours trying to diagnose the problem is not a good use of your time. This is where you need an IT Support team. Whether you have one computer or dozens, you can find local companies that will provide you with an IT support contract. Any problems and you just give them a call to fix it. Many of these companies have special software so that they can log in to your computer remotely and diagnose the problem. This is quick, safe and cost effective. 3. Social Media Do you use Facebook, Twitter or Instagram? They can all help in getting the word out about your business. But you’ll also know that they can be an enormous time suck. This can be an ideal task to outsource because it is clearly defined and there are lots of people with the required skills – people that may be even more talented than you at getting the most from social media.  A great place to start looking to outsource is on one of the freelancer websites such as Upwork.com or PeoplePerHour.com. The freelancer doesn’t need to live in your country; the main thing is that they have the required skills and experience to work on your project. It is important that you set out some guidelines for this type of role. You may want to write these down for your new team member. These can include: how many times to post per day, what tone of voice to use, when to escalate negative comments to you, how to maintain security and avoid potential legal risks. 4. Website Content I’ve seen many business owners be excited by the prospect of a new website. But their enthusiasm turns to dismay when they realise how much new content needs to be written. This is another task that is ideal to outsource. If facing a blank piece of paper is your idea of torture, you’ll be glad to know there are people out there that love to write. A good place to start searching for them is at a content writing marketplace like Textbroker. With this service you can chose the quality of writer that you want and pay a fixed fee for the writing assignment to be completed. It’s a great service for getting blog articles written and can also be used for in-depth professional research reports. This service works best where you can provide clear instructions on the style of writing that you require. Do you want a casual or authoritative tone of voice? If there are examples of writing that you like, that is an even better way to communicate with your outsourced writer. 5. Graphic Design Getting your graphics right is much harder than it looks. There is a reason that graphic designers spend 3 years at colleague perfecting their skills. If you’re still struggling with Photoshop trying to get your branding right, why not outsource to a professional?  There are numerous options depending on your budget. At the top of the market is working one-on-one with a professional designer. But over the last few years there has been an increase in the popularity of contest driven graphic design. The most popular contest site is 99designs.com but there are also other smaller sites such as DesignContest.com With these contest designs sites, you detail the work you want completing such as a logo design or website design. Numerous graphic designers then starting working on designs and you get to choose your favourite. This gives you the advantage of getting creative ideas from a number of different designers and you know that you are working to a fixed price. 6. General Admin Inbox overflowing, appointments double-booked, projects behind schedule…sound familiar? A little known area that can be outsourced are these general administration tasks. It’s not just executives at Fortune 500 companies that have Personal Assistants, it's now affordable for everyone. With the growing popularity of Virtual Assistants, it’s now possible to have somebody manage tasks for you remotely. They may even be on the other side of the world but with digital tasks such as email management, this does not matter. A popular and well established agency for finding qualified staff based in the Philippines is Virtual Staff Finder. Prices vary, but you could expect to pay $500-800 a month for a full-time VA through this service. Alternatively you could Google for somebody closer to home. It’s sometimes surprising the number of highly qualified people that now prefer to work from home due to having children or wanting a less stressful life.  7. Online Marketing
If there’s one industry where change is guaranteed, it has to online marketing. What worked last month, is ineffective today. If you don’t want to waste hours keeping up with the latest developments, you’re best off outsourcing the task to somebody that does this full-time. Your alternatives include working with a local digital marketing agency or finding a freelancer on UpWork or PeoplePerHour. Rather than expecting your partner to instantly take over all of your online marketing, a better approach would be to give them a discrete tasks. You can then see how they perform and give them more work if everything is to your satisfaction. Examples of discrete tasks could be:
Summary Having read this article, do you feel that you’re spinning your wheels because you’re trying to do too much? Now maybe the time to seriously consider outsourcing some tasks that will give you the time to make more profits. Let us know what you think in the comments below? Do you currently outsource? Is there an area you'd consider outsourcing? 
I’ve been looking at websites for over 8 years, and have developed quite a keen sense of what constitutes a real or a fake blog.
One thing I’ve noticed is, it is getting harder to tell the difference because it is very easy to fake things like social proof, by simply buying cheap fans and engagement. And, it is easier to set up a good looking site or blog as well because there are just so many great free templates and great, free website builders. What is a fake blog? A fake blog is one that has been set up along with around 200 more fake blogs for the purpose of pumping out low quality content and profiting from it. One webmaster and several hundred blogs does not lead to high quality editorial standards and fully researched and accurate information. Fake blogs are not the types of places you want to go to in order to research what is the best holistic health diet to follow, or what herbal medicine is available for your toddler. There is no integrity on these blogs. The owners don’t care if you get the right information, just that you click a link and buy something. Or, if you are a company that you pay to be featured on the site for SEO purposes. Why should you avoid working with fake blogs? Its obvious why you wouldn’t want to take health advice from these blogs, but what about guest posting? With the recent announcement of Rank Brain, a system which Google can use to look at the quality metrics of websites - including time on page. It has become even more important for webmasters not to be associated with these kinds of low quality sites. If Google takes a look at your backlink profile and can tell that you’ve been associating with these types of blogs then it is a definite indicator that you have been link building against Google’s guidelines. If you are not penalised then at best these links will be discounted and with it your hard earned rankings will drop and no-one wants that.. not even this lady. 
So, do not work with fake blogs. They don’t provide any additional benefit further than a link and purely guest posting for links is a risky, risky business.
To help you build up you fakedar let’s go through the subtle signs of a fake blog now. 5 Subtle Signs Of A Spammy Or Fake Blog
If you land on a blog and the template is one that you’ve seen literally everywhere then it is very likely to be a fake blog. Webmasters that create these blogs need to create a lot of them cheaply and quickly. They won’t put very much effort into the look of the website but instead just buy a free template and upload a ton of low quality content to make it seem like this is a blog that has been around for a while. Often, the design is one that has a lot of categories set up, so it seems like there is a wide variety of content which makes it feel more aged. But, on closer inspection you’ll notice that one post will be in multiple different categories. You might also notice that the last post was uploaded several months, or even years ago. Be wary of blogs which use generic templates! 2. Too much social proof everywhere Have you ever been to a networking event or a party and there’s that one guy that can’t stop going on about how amazing he is and all of the great stuff he has been up to? He’ll be name dropping and talking about all of his latest achievements, you just can’t get a word in. How do you feel listening to that? 
It doesn’t feel natural does it. It feels forced, like he’s trying to prove something. It’s the same on a blog. We’ve all heard that social proof is a good way to show you are an expert, and it is. Having social media numbers and shares visible on your blog is a good way to make visitors feel like they are not alone in coming to you for advice.
However, be wary of the unknown blogger who has been featured in every single top publication, who has several thousand homepage shares and displays all of their social media follower counts (which by the way are all huge). 3. Social media icons which redirect to the homepage Another subtle sign of a fake blog is if the social media profile buttons don’t link anywhere. Very often the site appears on face value to be legit but when you click on the social media icons they redirect back to the homepage. This shows that the webmaster has set up a generic template, imported content and not even bothered to make sure the links work properly. Make sure you click through and check that the blog does in fact have some kind of a social media presence. 4. No visibility of the owner I’m pretty proud of Ginger Marketing, and I’m proud to put my name to this company and this blog. Of course, I’m not yet at the level that I want to be, there is always room for improvement and growth and I try to improve with every single client, placement, blog post & interaction. But, what I produce is to the best of my ability in this moment. That should be the case of the types of people you want to associate with for Digital Marketing purposes. There are many, many nameless blogs out there with owners who are not proud of the work they are doing and so don’t want to be associated with it. If you land on a blog which does not have any description of who runs it then be wary! This could be a fake blog. 5. Traffic but no engagement It’s gotten quite easy now to fake traffic. Yep, that’s right, it is possible to actually fake traffic now! With sites like Traffic Junkie and others bloggers can game the system and just drive traffic to their site. Looking at pure traffic metrics is no longer an indication of a high quality blog or website. This is the reason I talk so much about engagement metrics and how important they are. It is vitally important that you work with blogs and websites who have a real audience. Even if this audience is small, it is still an audience and that is what counts. Growing traffic takes time, especially with so much competition. So, be wary of any site that has managed to build high traffic in a short period of time - especially if no-one engages with their content. We hope you've enjoyed this post! As usual let us know in the comments below.  Rankbrain helps Google solve a very important problem. How to interpret and understand the intent behind the person making a Google Search. This is a very important distinction to make. The internet is not a collection of words, it’s a collection of questions and answers. In order to provide the correct answer, it is important to fully understand the question. This is what Rankbrain helps Google to do. It does this by using Machine learning in order to process huge amounts of qualitative data (words) into quantitative data (numbers) so that the machine can understand what is being written. Rankbrain Symplified:
Rankbrain is just one part of Google’s Algorithm Rankbrain isn’t a new algorithm, it is a new section of the algorithm which is helping Google’s results become more accurate and useful for the user. The human body is made up of lots of parts which work together, right? Imagine Hummingbird, which is the latest Google Algorithm is the body whilst it is made up of lots of different parts which the make the whole work. Rankbrain is one of those parts. Rankbrain and Quality Metrics The bit I am most excited about when it comes to Rankbrain is its link with Quality metrics. Google has always stated that there goal is to improve the quality of the results we get. They are not in the control of the quality of the content on the websites that they rank. BUT they are in control of what they rank and what they don’t. If quality is key to Google, then it makes sense that they would reward content that is higher quality and more useful for the user. This is one of the areas Rankbrain helps in. How does Rankbrain decide what is quality content and what isn’t? Click through rate is a big factor here.  Google has stated; 'Searching users are often the best judges of relevance, so that if they select a particular search result, it is likely to be relevant, or at least more relevant than the presented alternatives.' This is the reason click through optimisation is so important. As Larry King speaks about in this article, which by the way is well worth a read. It is incredibly difficult to optimise the click through rates for organic search results. The main reason - there just isn’t enough data for us to go on at a keyword level these days. Google has done a really good job of taking away a lot of our data. Optimising without data can lead to a lot of going round in circles. What can we optimise for easily? There is one thing you can do very, very easily. That is LOOK at the search results BEFORE you start optimising for a keyword. You may have an assumption that a keyword has one intent behind it, only to discover Google (and therefore most people online), have an entirely different opinion. So, the first thing to do when you discover a longtail keyword that has a good amount of search volume and is relevant to the topic you want to cover - type it into Google! It’s such a small step, but one that can very easily be missed. And if missed can result in a lot of hard work going down the drain. Dwell time could be another big factor This is the amount of time a user spends on your page after clicking through, another great indicator of quality. There is still a lot of controversy around this, some SEO’s think it matters, some don’t. My view is, its an important metric to look at either way. It immediately places our focus on to quality which is where Google wants us to be. So, whether this is the specific metric they are looking at or not it doesn’t matter. Take the long term view, optimise your content for quality and you safeguard your site now, and in the future.  To give you an idea about what dwell time could mean. A little bit tongue and cheek but this graphic from Hrefs backs up my point. The only risk for optimising for dwell time is overdoing it. I do see a strong trend in the online community whereby everyone is just trying to outdo each other on length of content. It’s getting kind of ridiculous. I love how Digital Marketers love to jump on trains. One person notices how one metric - in this case, semantic keywords and covering a topic full and then dwell time as well impacts ranks. Then there are some studies, experts look at the theory, decide yes this looks like there is a correlation. Then they come up with a simple tactic. Let’s make the content longer. And then, it becomes THE THING. So now, blog posts are like manuals. Beware of following any tactic blindly. Do what is right for your audience and what is right for the topic you are covering. If the content is good quality then your dwell time is going to be high anyway. Readers will be engaged, reading through what you’ve written, maybe going back, double checking another point. The thing we want to avoid is extremely low engagement metrics. If your pages have an average dwell time of 1 minute or less then very likely readers are just skimming your content, realising it’s not relevant or of high quality and leaving. This is a signal that
Conclusion Hopefully you have an understanding now on what this additional to the Google Algorithm does. And even more, have come away with some solid ways you can optimise for it. Here is a quick run down of the types of things your content strategy needs to focus on. The winners will focus on these things >> Powerful titles Conversion optimisation User intent Track time on page Use LSI Keywords to cover a topic fully Make sure you use Google related search Write more in depth content (but don’t go crazy if its not needed!) We hope you enjoyed this post! As usual let us know your thoughts in the comments below.  As the end of the year draws closer you (like me), might find yourself taking stock of your business. Not necessarily slowing down, but stepping back. Stepping back and looking at what has and hasn’t been working and thinking about new ways to improve for next year. If you aren’t stepping back yet, then I really encourage you to do that. Whether you are an Agency owner, consultant or you run your own blog - reflection is really important. As I step back in my business, one area I’d really love to improve on next year at Ginger Marketing is our customer experience. How do we bring on clients, work with them and continue to delight them and grow the relationship. And the same for the micro influencers we work with. How do we engage them, communicate with them and continue to grow that relationship. To get some inspiration going I visited one of my local nail salons. A place I’ve always found to be run very professionally, with a friendly, laid back (but not too much) atmosphere. As soon as I walk in the door I feel at ease. That’s exactly the kind of feeling I’d like everyone to have who deals with Ginger Marketing. It's important to identify; how do you want your customers / readers to feel when dealing with your brand? What is this Nail Salon's secret sauce? What creates that sense of ease from the beginning of the experience to the end? And what keeps me going back? Let’s break it down + see what lessons we can learn about customer experience from a living, breathing and successful local business. First stop, visit the nail salon. Phft, can’t a girl work, learn and get her nails done too?  This is a picture from the outside of the nail salon. What can we say about the outside. Well, one thing is for certain, it looks like a nail salon. As soon as you look at the outside you know exactly what it is. But why - what specifically indicates this is a nail salon? It seems very obvious to you, but there are some specific elements that have been brought together to ensure that you know exactly what it is that they do. Let’s break them down now. 1. The Sign Big bold letters 'Nail' its very clear what they do! 'Dance In Finger', a little less obvious, but its still clear this is pointing at a nail salon. 2. The Branding Colour Pink & gold, girly and also stands out on the highstreet against the other white, grey and brown buildings. Curtains They not only add a cosy feel from the outside but also make it cosy on the inside as no-one can look in the window. Fairy Lights Again, friendly, and makes the shop front stand out. 3. The Price List They have the whole price list pasted on the door making it really easy to understand what services they offer and the general cost. With all of these elements in place I am able to make a clear decision about whether
I can get all of this information by the impression that I’ve formed from the front of their shop. This immediately puts me at ease before I’ve even stepped in their front door because I’m unlikely to find any surprises on the other side. What happens at the enquiry stage? Once I’ve stepped through the front door, the first thing I see are attentive and smiley people. I don’t have to go and find someone, or ring a bell, or stand in a queue. Every time I’ve gone there, it’s just immediately a nice friendly person asking you if they can help. It also feels like the natural next step once you get in. It’s not pink & friendly on the outside and then once you step through the door it’s all black and white marble. The branding is consistent. Mostly white interior with pink flowers on the walls, quotes saying “love” and fairy lights. A girly, flowery vibe, consistent with the outside and what I expected before I walked through the door. There are lots of visual cues that this is indeed a nail salon. There are nail varnishes lined up on the wall in a huge range of colours. There are chairs and a table with manicure equipment laid out on the table and behind. It’s neat and tidy and clean. There are also visual cues telling you immediately what you have to do next. Partly this is down to the fact that I’ve been to nail salons before. And this is an important note. Have your clients used a similar service to yours or read a similar blog before?  If it is a popular service there may already be an established routine and system that they are used too. We may sometimes wrongly assume that innovation is best. When sometimes, it’s a lot easier for someone to just follow a process they have already been using, but with you instead. If, for example the nail salon asked me to pay upfront, this would be a step out of my usual routine and I might second guess whether to stay & get the service. This nail salon follow the same routine, smiley, friendly people, chair at a table with lots of manicure tools on it to sit at. I already know where to go before they tell me. How can you guide your website visitor or reader? How can you make sure they already know where to go next without you even needing to utter a word? I ask for a manicure and take a seat The chair is comfortable but practical. Everything about the service is also practical. The right tool for the right job. And this also places the customer immediately at ease. Everything is taken care of, there is a clear formula, process and path - and there is a tool for each section. There are a lot of tools. And this also is a reason for me to come back. I’m sitting there having my nails done thinking, wow, I could never do this at home. I could never have so many tools and be able to complete this at the same speed with the same quality - and this is only costing me 13 euros. I’m definitely coming back. This is important. Customers need to feel as if they are getting value for money + that they can not easily replicate the same level of service by themselves, or repeat business will never be won.  Having a new tool for each stage makes it feel like I’m getting really great value for money. It also improves the quality of the finished result. One other element I’d like to mention is the personalisation. The manicure only offers x 3 variations, other than those variations the system is the same for every customer. You are able to choose whether to have your nails cut or not, whether they are filed rounded or straight & the colour. This makes it feel like the service is personal, in the elements that are most important - the visual appearance I as a customer want. But, the other elements are fixed. Conclusion It’s amazing how much we can learn from the businesses all around us! We don’t always need to be looking at online businesses, and sometimes it’s actually easier to see the elements working together in an offline business. That easeful feeling that this nail salon creates is down to the consistency. From the beginning to the end as a customer you know what to expect & without fail that is delivered. This is accomplished with a mix of > Visual branding Visual Cues Clear Signage Clear & Consistent Process The Correct Tools Small Amount of Personalisation (too much and its overwhelming) Hope you like this post! As usual let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Have I inspired you to go to a local business & see what you can learn? 
An increasing number of brands are recognising the benefit of tapping into organic social networks by partnering with social media personalities & bloggers.
However, one of the most effective approaches for generating high-quality leads has been the use of micro-influencers – people with relatively small but highly targeted followers. As such, many marketing agencies and consultancies have begun emphasising the importance of engagement metrics versus sheer volume when assessing the value of an influencer. In fact, marketing research suggests that pushing promotional efforts through finely select influencers is one of the most reliable ways to quickly bring brand awareness to a viral level. More specifically, here are ten influencer marketing stats that shed light on the benefits and recent growth of micro influencer marketing: 1. Higher Customer Quality Reported by More than Half of Early Implementers According to an influencer marketing study released by the Tomoson platform, roughly 51% of surveyed marketers reported obtaining better customers that engage and convert at a higher rate. This indicates that influencers have an unmatched ability to facilitate rapid and effective social engineering. 2. Micro Influencers Encourage Purchases and Actions Frequently Part of the reason smaller, more targeted networks are more efficient marketing channels is because micro-influencers are almost expected to recommend products and ideas to their followers and viewers. More specifically, roughly 75% of micro-influencers regularly encourage their followers to take action. Such promotional efforts from larger stars seem to be less efficient at producing high engagement levels. 3. About 70% of Brands Engage with Influencers to Promote Content According to a 2015 report from Schlesinger Associates and Agure, approximately 67% of marketers and brand communicators are using influencer marketing on some level. 
Analysts estimate the figure has risen closer to 75% now. However, many of those brands have yet to discover the power of using micro-influencers.
4. Micro-Influencers Don't Have to Pay to Promote Posts and They're Less Expensive to Work With More than 50% of micro-influencers have never had to pay to promote their content a single time. Platforms and blogs tend to welcome them with open arms because of the high-quality visibility they provide. This makes smaller influencers easier and more affordable to work with, despite the fact that they bring in better leads when results are extrapolated on a larger scale. 5. Micro-Influencers with a Following Base of 1000-4000 Users Have a High Engagement Rate A following of a few thousand seems to be the sweet spot, with micro-influencers in this range receiving more than 4.5% engagement from their followers and subscribers. 6. YouTube Micro-Influencers Have the Heaviest Influence on Younger Demographics A study from Google and Ipsos Connect indicates that YouTube stars are becoming even more influential than conventional celebrities, especially with the younger generation. Approximately 70% of teens said that they can more closely relate to their favourite YouTube channels than their favourite celebrity. (Pictured below, Youtube Star & Comedian Miranda Sings) 
7. Influencer Marketing Searches Tripled in the Past Two Years
During the past year alone, the number of Google searches for the term “influencer marketing” have tripled, going from about 4,000 annual searches in 2015 to more than 21,000 in 2017. 8. Supply and Demand for Micro-Influencers Increasing Exponentially Perhaps even more interesting than the search volume is the number of agencies and platforms that have sprung up to accommodate the need to link brands with influencers, rising from only about 200 agencies in 2015 to more than 420 in 2017. 9. More than 80% of Consumer are Highly Likely to Consider Recommendations Made by their Favourite Micro-Influencer Roughly 82% of consumers are very likely to consider and follow through with a suggestion made by a micro-influencer because they view them as being more “genuine” when compared to endorsements made by celebrities and larger influencers. 10. Almost 10% of UK Marketers Will be Spending More Than £100,000 A survey of 600 marketing and PR firms in the UK revealed that approximately one tenth of respondents will be spending a total of more than £100K on influencer marketing during the next year, and almost 40% will be spending up to £10,000. Such spending habits indicate that these brands have been achieving desirable returns on their investments. 
Influencer Marketing Reaching Mainstream Heights
At this point it would be silly for any online business to ignore the power of influencer marketing and the social leverage that micro-influencers provide. With the demand tripling and the supply doubling in the span of just two years, it's likely that influencer marketing will have a significant impact on internet economics and will probably become as popular as traditional marketing methods within the next 5 years. As usual, let us know your thoughts in the comments below! Are you surprised by any of these stats? Do you have one of your own to add and share with our readers?  I’ll be honest, when my colleague sent me an email saying that the coschedule title analyser had given my title a low score and I should improve it, I was not impressed. How can a computer know more than a writer about what is and isn't going to persuade someone to click on a title? I was proud of the title, I liked it. Her email went onto tell me that I should analyse all of my titles with this machine and improve them for better readability. I dismissed the advice. I think I spent about 30 minutes checking out the tool and decided what can it know and moved on. Six months later, AI technology is popping up more and more in content creation. It’s starting to get my attention and I’ll be honest, does make me slightly concerned. If a machine can write my content, what am I here for? I still rely on content writing as a form of income. I imagine a lot of other writers and copywriters are having similar questions and fears. How long will it be before a robot is doing our job. Research a little bit online and your fears will not be squashed! By the looks of it in the media we are all going to be out of a job next week.  But, how much of that is realistic, or just hype? It’s in the best interest of the AI technology companies & their investors to create a lot of buzz and “positive sentiment” as an AI robot might say. They want companies to feel like if they don’t jump on this technology straight away they will be left behind in the dust - their competitors speeding ahead as they adopt AI into their strategies. So, I did some research of my own. Going into the research adamant that a robot was going to take away my job, and worse my only true passion. A writer writes because that’s what they are on this planet to do. Take away the reason to write, what has a writer got left? However, after completing this research I feel better - and I hope after reading this you might too. This isn’t going to be a scientific study I’m afraid. I’m a writer, not a scientist. I’m also obviously bias because I don’t want robots to take away my job, or my passion. But, I don’t think those things mean I shouldn’t have a voice on this matter. If anything we need more voices on the other end, For this unscientific study of AI technology & copywriting I focused on a tool, Atomic AI, which is pitched as a tool to help marketers write better. It does this by telling you if you are writing for the right level of audience and scores you accordingly. I wanted to look at its scoring system, relative to how many shares a piece of content got. The premise being, if a piece of content scores higher, then it should be shared more. That’s what the tool is helping writers with. To write for their audience better, make a deeper connection in order for them to share or engage with the post, which is what every marketer wants as a result from their content. For this study, I’m going to look at the same website. Because, as we know the size of an audience has a direct impact on how many shares an article will get. Yes, so does a million other factors. This is not scientific, remember. I’m also going to use the blog content of a website I admire and respect for their copywriting. Kopywritingkourse.com As with every single blog out there, some content does better than others. Some content gets a higher level of engagement from the audience. This is what we are always trying to improve on. To identify what it is that makes our content great + try to replicate that greatness for future posts. So, let’s see if content that got a lower level of engagement on Kopwritingkourse.com, gets a lower score on Atomicreach.com The Pages I Chose From The Homepage Of The Blog > 1. https://kopywritingkourse.com/airbnb-listing-description/ - 73 shares 2. https://kopywritingkourse.com/create-advertising-that-sells-david-ogilvy/ - 223 shares 3. https://kopywritingkourse.com/billboard-advertising/ - 116 shares Now Let’s see what each one gets as score from Atomic.   3. https://kopywritingkourse.com/billboard-advertising/ - 116 shares  Let me explain what these screenshots from Atomic mean.
So, for each piece of content you have to select a readability level. After playing around with it all afternoon I’ve realised that more of the online content, even on the larger blogs try to write for a reliability level “knowledgable”. Hot Tip: This is actually in itself an important takeaway. Initially I assumed that all of the top blogs in my industry were focusing on writing for an academic audience. It turns out, knowledgeable is the level they are all going for. In a sec I’ll explain what this means! There are 5 levels in Atomic.
The basis of this tool is that it will tell you if you are writing at a level your audience can understand. So, I select knowledgable for these three pieces of content. Then, the tool will score the piece based on the setting. The way it calculates it is basically how advanced are the words you are using. For example, Original: Located in north Austin, this bulletin targets traffic heading north towards Pflugerville, Round Rock & Georgetown, avoiding traffic on I-35. "avoiding”, is set as knowledge level specialist, one level above where we are aiming. So I can click the word and choose one more suitable for my audience. Changing these words will increase the scoring of the piece overall. When I click "avoiding" I am told it can be switched to shunning, shirking or squashing. Improved: Located in north Austin, this bulletin targets traffic heading north towards Pflugerville, Round Rock & Georgetown, shunning traffic on I-35. Clearly this word doesn’t improve the sentence, it just doesn’t feel right. It feels way too dramatic. I SHUN THE TRAFFIC - who shuns traffic?? Anyway, that gives you an idea about what the readability level does and how it applies to the text. I don’t think the tool is particularly great at coming up with accurate synonyms. HOWEVER, it is useful to know at what level you are writing at. We are always trying to write in an approachable way. To cut the jargon and get straight to the point. But how do you actually know that this is how you are writing? I believe this is one way to find out, so just for this reason I suggest you log on for free and check it out. Further than that though, I fail to see how this tool is useful long term. Good for competitor research, and for checking your writing style, but is this robot going to take my job. NO. At least right now I'm safe. The second thing this tool does is gauge emotion. Emotion looks at the language used and gives a score from calm to exciting. The premise being that more emotional language gets shared more often. To be honest, I don’t know how it works this score out. Previously, tools would categorise the types of words used and then assign either positive or negative to those words and create the score from there. But that caused issues, because sometimes a seemingly negative word can actually be used in a positive way. For example the sentence: The skateboarder executed a toe grab 360 and it was sick. The words ‘executed’ and ‘sick’ are usually used in a negative way, but in this sentence the statement is positive. The tools would not be able to accurately know this. With Atomic AI this sentence is scored as ‘exciting’. Exciting can be either negative or positive. That's all I really have to say on it at the moment. I don't really understand how this is particularly usful aside from the fact that I'll know if my writing is sending my audience to sleep or not. Let’s move onto the scores that Atomic gave these three posts and see if the score is reflective in the number of shares it received. Post 1 > Shares 73 > Atomic Score 74 Post 2 > Shares 223 > Atomic Score 74 Post 3 > Shares 116 > Atomic Score 76 The scoring is pretty similar across all three posts. Post 2 was the post about David Ogilvy, which if you read it, is actually a word for word copy of one of their copywriting adverts. Shouldn’t this be the benchmark for copy, being that it was written by the most famous advertising agency of all time, and a living legend? In fact, Post 3 got the highest score. What I’m unclear about on this tool though is why. What happened to those two points, does that really matter? Or is this tool more useful for writers who have a lot of learning to do? Maybe I put in text that was too high quality. In summary, after doing this research I am not worried about my writing job (just yet anyway). There is so much hype about these tools. This is just one, there are more on the market. I don’t want to completely discount all of them. Some might be useful. But what I do want to highlight is the need to go on a try them for yourself before getting so concerned and worried. So far I’ve been disappointed by what these tools can do, which makes me feel a whole lot better. Hopefully you are too. I'd love to know your thoughts in the comments. Have you tried any of the new AI tools out? What are your thoughts? 
The primary goal of a good SEO Copywriter should be to captivate and influence a targeted human audience and attract search engine rankings with content that informs and answers common queries in a unique and engaging manner.
In other words, the content has to do more than just read well – it has to be tailored around specific topics and phrases to rank highly for popular search terms and keywords. Therefore, excellent copy consists of content that is both written well and developed with search engine optimisation (SEO) in mind. Let's look at seven actionable copywriting techniques you can use to push your content to the top of the search engine result pages (SERPs) 1. Start with a Show-Stealing Title When you're initially coming up with the topic and outline of the content, the very first step will be formulating an eye-catching, click-provoking title. Fortunately, if the title is good enough to persuade people to click on it, Google's algorithms will recognise this positive organic traffic trend as an indicator that your page is a useful resource deserving of higher rankings. Here's a step-by-step example illustrating the typical SEO-oriented title creation process: 1. Think of a basic way to describe your topic. For example: Methods for Improving a Blog Post Title Check point 6 and make sure you include your longtail keyword research at this stage. Look for keywords which have less competition but describe the topic you want to cover in detail. 
2. The above “title” is actually more of an extremely bland and vague description, so the next step is to spice it up using buzzwords/keywords, adjectives, lists, mystery/curiosity, benefits/advantages, and other persuasive tactics.
Except in this step you'll come up with a couple of variations like: 5 Title Tweaking Techniques that Promote Higher CTR Multi-Tiered Guide on Creating Blog Titles Like a Pro 3. Now list your prospective titles using a headline analyser (CoSchedule's is the most popular) and refine from there. These tools are very straightforward and highly insightful ways to make a good title great. Virtually all successful SEO Copywriters use a similar process to the three steps mentioned above. 2. Keep it Simple, But Not Short and Sweet To develop content that can accommodate the average attention span and patience of an online reader, you'll want to stick to certain formatting guidelines. Sentences and paragraphs should be straightforward and uncomplicated. However, the content itself should be full of useful, entertaining, and engaging information. Furthermore, the outline should be as comprehensive as possible. By keeping the attention of readers with succinct and effective messages, yet delivering a piece that covers every aspect of a topic, you'll position the page as a go-to resource that will attract inbound links and high rankings. Knowing that, here are a few steps you can take to make sure you're implementing this technique: 1. Pretend like you're having a conversation and use a relaxed vocabulary. There's no need to be extra fancy – just convey your point without adding extra fluff. 2. Once you're ready to write in a conversational tone, next you'll want to create an all-inclusive outline that covers every possible facet of the main topic. This is sometimes referred to as the skyscraper technique – outdoing the most comprehensive pre-existing resource. Many brands have begun simplifying their content while aiming to provide more informative value within fewer words. Writing in this style makes your content easier to scan and digest. 
3. Using Google's Autocomplete Suggestions to Fill a Demand
One of the best ways to propel a page straight to a #1 ranking is to find a common search query that hasn't yet been answered definitively by an authoritative source. Questions and how to phrases are the best kinds of phrases to look for because there are a lot of them that have only been discussed on forums or user-maintained question/answer sites like Quora. Luckily, it's easy to find these terms just by typing an incomplete phrase into Google and waiting for the Autocomplete suggestions to pop up. Here's how: 1. Visit the home page of Google.com. Start typing a query related to your niche and pay attention to the suggestions that appear as you type each letter. If the suggestions feature isn't enabled, see Google's page on activating auto complete. 2. Another option is to use a Google suggest keyword scraper tool like the one at keywordtool.io in order to build large lists of suggested search terms. The best part about this technique is that many marketers neglect to use it to their advantage, so it's a largely untapped source of SEO topics. 4. Compile Massive Lists to Become a Popular Resource If you've ever seen the top 30 or top 100 lists on blogs, you know that they rank particularly well on Google. This is because the most exhaustive resources tend to be linked to within blog posts and on social media based solely on their usefulness. Here are a few steps you can take to build better lists than the competition: 1. Use a content map or brainstorming session to write down a predefined number of topics or tips. 2. Once you have your list, search for similar lists online and double check to make sure you're covering everything that they include as well. 3. Once you have a solid list, try to condense the most important facts and sound advice on each point while keeping each one short and easy to read. For example, we put together a list of the top places to find guest posts and included in our guide; How Do I Find Blogs Which Accept Guest Posts 5. Use Longtail Keywords Tapping into a new set of keywords that haven't been targeted by other marketers puts your brand in a unique position to thrive in its own lane, with less competition. Here are some steps you can take to achieve this:
Many brands have boosted their popularity by inventing new buzzwords that didn't previously exist, so that's another idea worth considering. 
6. Utilise Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
If your brand isn't yet taking advantage of LSI, it's time to get started as doing so will help you rank for obscure terms that you might be completely overlooking. 1. Study this guide on LSI. 2. Implement, rinse, and repeat. LSI is now common practice among leading SEO agencies after becoming a hot topic following the Panda and Penguin updates that placed an emphasis on content quality. We hope you've picked up some new techniques! Let us know in the comments below. Do you have something to add? Bloggers; Don't Approach Companies Or PRs Like This If You Want To Do High Quality Paid Work11/29/2017 
We get approached on the regular by bloggers interested in working on paid opportunities with companies. Considering that’s what we do it’s not really a huge surprise! And, I am more than happy to get these emails and approaches.
I love meeting new bloggers, especially bloggers who really put their heart and soul into what they do. And I am always looking to make new connections. However, I have noticed that many bloggers don’t really know the best way to present themselves and their talents in these emails. It’s probably quite confusing to know how to present yourself, there isn’t really much advice out there for this kind of approach. And, it’s difficult to the get into the mind of a Marketing Manager or a PR person or an SEO manager etc etc. Bloggers need to get their name out there and pitch to a wide number of different people so, how to know the right approach for the right person? Well, I’m going to make it super simple for you. Because, you might think that you need to present yourself entirely differently for each group of people, but actually that is not the case and not the most important factor in your outreach email. The most important factor is how you position yourself in your outreach email. Do you come across as hard working, passionate & reliable? OR Do you come across as someone who just wants to make a quick buck. 
To highlight exactly what I’m talking about, this is the type of outreach email you should avoid!
START Hello (name) I am (name) and I run (name of blog) I have (x number of traffic) and high DA of (DA) and I write about (one top level topic). I’m reaching out because I’d love to work with you on any sponsored content opportunities you have coming up. Look forward to connecting with you! Kind Regards (name) END Unfortunately, the majority of the bloggers who have approached me place themselves into category 2 and send the above kind of outreach email. So, if you are a blogger reading this and your outreach email does look like this, don't worry you are not alone on this. Around 95% of the emails I get are like this. I’m not saying that those bloggers do just want to make a quick buck but that’s what I feel from this kind of approach. In a second I will give you a view of my thoughts as I read the above email to help you understand what a marketing person or PR agent might think whilst reading this email. But before that, I just want to ask for your support - lets go heart to heart, because I want you to understand why I'm writing this post & why I am so passionate about working with up and coming bloggers. This is important, because I don't want you to feel as if I am writing this to tell you off, or looking down on you in anyway. Reasons why I choose to work with up and coming bloggers Number 1: Running a blog & gathering a loyal audience is not easy, making a business out of it is even harder. I personally know that, being someone who has failed at it many, many times !! I have a lot of respect for a single individual who has managed to form any kind of community because it takes hard work, dedication and a lot of soul journeying. I also love writing. There is something very powerful about written words. It gives more opportunity for the reader to reflect, unlike video or podcasting which tends to be more passive, words connect in a way that sound can't. Number one, I just respect and admire what you do. Number 2: As a Marketer I've always seen HUGE merit in working with grass roots communities. Small but loyal audiences are very powerful. I've always believed that, and I have always chosen to support those bloggers. Planetd is one example, now one of the most popular travel blogs of all time. I was the first person to work with them on a campaign, to continue to support them on their travels. What's more, they remembered that, they thanked me for believing in them at that time, that really touched me. Because really, it was the other way around. I was shocked by their gratitude. Because, the audience they already had at that time was so much more valuable than they could have imagined. We tend to lean towards bigger is better. But actually, no, that's not true. It's about quality and connection. That's what is lacking online. Number two, small communities still have this connection and therefore huge value. So, here is the truth Everytime you send an outreach email which doesn't fully represent your true passion and goals, your ambition and your tenacity, you undercut yourself and all of the other bloggers out there trying to make it happen as well. Up until now companies have not seen the true value of what small bloggers offer, but that is starting to change. It would change a lot more quickly if bloggers communicated in a way which truly represented their value. I can see why you might send an email like the one above, there are so many people to connect with, you just want to monetize your blog and make a bit of money out of something you've worked so hard for. But, as with all businesses, short term thinking rarely gets very far. So, if you have ambition to become a full time blogger then please hear these words. Take a moment to reflect on them and look at how you communicate your talents. Let’s break it down line by line and I will tell you what I am thinking when I read this, hopefully this will give you an idea into the psychology of a Marketing person reading this kind of outreach email. START Hello (name) - no comments, can’t go wrong with this! I am (name) and I run (name of blog) My comment - okay, but this doesn’t tell me much. I’m wondering, why do you run this blog, what started it, what is your why? I have (x number of traffic) and high DA of (DA) and I write about (one top level topic). My comment - thanks for including your traffic figures that’s helpful but what about your engagement? What about your audience? Who actually reads your blog? Because I’m trying to think of the right opportunities but I have no idea, if I don’t know whether your readers are high net worth professional men with families who like golf & tennis or millennial women in their late 20’s who like yoga, meditation, health + fitness. I also don't know what traffic means. Does it mean pageviews or unique visits? And, the fact you haven't given me any detail here also also makes me think you don't know you audience which means that you are unlikely to have a highly engaged one. Thanks for telling me your DA it does give me a rough indication of where you blog sits but what about previous campaigns or content you’ve done before? Has it gone well? Are you new to this kind of engagement or are you a blogger who has worked with hundreds of other companies? Thanks for including your top level topic, yes that helps me to define roughly what niche your blog sits in but what about breaking it down. So you are a beauty blogger, does that mean you like natural products or cheap products or you mostly focus on promoting skin products or maybe make-up. I need to know specifically what you write about so I can tie in the right companies. I’m reaching out because I’d love to work with you on any sponsored content opportunities you have coming up. My comment - Maybe I’m wrong but as soon as I read this I just assume all you care about is the money. This just makes me think that you don’t actually care about which products or services you promote to your audience which makes me think that you probably don’t have a particularly high engagement or a loyal following because readers just see straight through that. I want to know WHO you want to work with and WHO you enjoy promoting so I can find the RIGHT opportunities for your audience. I feel like honesty is the best policy here. There are a lot of complaints about SEO companies, PR Agents not treating bloggers correctly and currently the relationships are tense. It would be really, really helpful if bloggers stopped outreaching in the above way. In a second I’ll give some tips about how you can approach in the right why but first; why is this so important? 
The reason a blogger should not approach a Marketing Manager, PR person, SEO manager in this way...
1. The Marketing Manager will come away from reading the outreach email thinking this blogger only cares about making some money now and is not interested in a long term relationship which in the end would be more fruitful for both parties. 2. The Marketing Manager can't send over the right opportunities either, because there is limited information. 3. The Marketing Manager is inclined to think this blogger doesn't know their audience very well, and doesn't have a clear purpose, so assumes the blog is low quality. Those are the truth bombs. Let’s move on to some tips about how you can approach companies in the future. Who do you prefer to work with long term? The person who emails you and immediately asks for something. Or the person who just reaches out to say hello and establishes a connection? So, that’s the first thing to tackle. Remove any mention of paid + sponsored opportunities from your email. If you feel you need to, state that you are open to paid collaborations. But, there is no need to ask "do you have any campaigns for me" right in this instance. Think of this email as an introduction. You are just reaching out to someone to say hello, get on their radar and make sure they know exactly what it is you write about so if future opportunities come up they can get in touch. What to include in your outreach email? Here is a breakdown of items to include in your outreach email:
We are always looking for new bloggers to connect with. So, if you are an up and coming blogger then please get in touch with us via our Enquire form. Use it as practice for your new type of outreach email if you like, please include the details from the list above! You can also sign up to our platform; Guest Bloggers Wanted for free and apply for new opportunities there. I’d love to know if you have experience introducing yourself to other companies. What has worked and not worked for you? Tell us in the comments and let’s grow together!  You want to deliver a micro influencer campaign for your client because you know it’s going to spark real conversations which will turn into traffic and sales. But you have know idea how to go about finding, identifying and building a relationship with a micro influencer. Before we get into the detail of how you can find micro influencers let’s identify what exactly we mean by micro influencer. Because, this is a relatively new term. A few years ago marketeers talked about influencers and bloggers. Influencers were those people who had amassed a celebrity like following of millions of fans. They could be a youtube star, Instagrammer or blogger. Usually they’d have a presence across multiple platforms. Working with an influencer is likely to cost anywhere from $50,000 and up for a campaign. But for that, if you work with the right one your brand is likely to take off. Gary Vee for example just did a collaboration with K-Swiss. They sold out in a matter of days. And created a lot of exposure for the brand. Then marketeers talked about bloggers. Of course split down into different levels, but mostly split by the domain authority of their website. Influencers were about brand awareness and driving direct traffic and sales. Bloggers were about building links and organic traffic. That has shifted.  Because now Marketers are recognising the huge opportunity that some small blogs represent. And that is small but very engaged and loyal following of readers. So, there are now two categories we talk about. Bloggers And Micro Influencers What Is A Micro Influencer? A micro influencer is someone who has a highly engaged audience. They are everyday people with an authentic following of 3000 people or more. What To Look For In A Micro Influencer When looking to engage a micro influencer there are two main areas you must focus on.
Just because one person writes about beauty doesn’t make them a great fit for your brand. For instance, say you are promoting a natural skincare product like Bull Dog. You don’t want to work with an influencer who doesn’t care about using natural / organic products. So, it is very important to really look into who you want to work with and why. Make sure you understand what they are about further than a top level scan of their site. 2. Engagement It is also vital to understand how engaged their audience is. They cannot be categorized as a micro influencer if they don’t have anyone listening to what they have to say. Remember, we are talking micro here, so it doesn’t need to be a landslide of engagement. But a blog which doesn’t have any comments or social shares should raise alarm bells.  The best micro influencers also engage with their audience in the comments. They take the time to offer additional value and get to know their audience. This is where the real value comes from working with a micro influencer. How To Find Micro Influencers To Spark Real Life Conversation So, now that you are all clued up on what a micro influencer is, how do you find them! Since there are different ways you can work with them to promote your clients products or services its going to change depending on your campaign. Some influencers have a bigger presence on one platform over another. Let’s go through some different techniques now! How To Find Micro Influencers On Instagram Instagram is a great place to go and it is very easy to tell who has engagement and who doesn’t on this platform. Search for influencers by using hashtags relating to your product or service. Make sure you build your list on engagement levels instead of just pure follower count. Or, use a marketplace like Starngage which connects brands with influencers. Use an outreach or a relationship management tool Another way you can find micro influencers is through an outreach or relationship management tool. There are a few different ways you can do this. And these work best if your campaign revolves around producing guest post content on the influencers website. Let’s go through a couple of those tools now.  1. Buzzsumo
This is every content marketers central tool! Enter a keyword and discover the most popular content on that topic. For the basic tool Buzzsumo is $79 per month which gets you an unlimited number of searches. The paid plan is needed if you are looking for micro influencers because rarely will they appear on the first few results you get when you trial the tool for free. 2. Pitchbox I used Pitchbox for several months and found it a fantastic tool for outreach. The great things about Pitchbox is it can integrate your email management which can get to be a bit of a nightmare when trying to connect with hundreds of influencers. What I didn’t like so much was their prospecting, I found that I was doing a lot of manual work and creating lists which the platform told me it could do. So, I moved on. 3. Ninja Outreach I moved on to Ninja Outreach. This is a tool which is focused more on the prospecting than it is on the emailing. This tool will help you discover micro influencers and build lists of potential contacts to reach out to an engage with. You can also conduct your communication through the platform as well. 4. Tribe For a different way to go about prospecting Marketplaces like tribe are really intuitive and easy to use. You don’t have to mine a ton of data. The influencers are already inside the platform and willing to work with you! Pricing is already set and everyone is clear on expectations. I find it a lot easier to go about prospecting in this way. 5. Guest Bloggers Wanted This platform is one that we at Ginger Marketing built! It helps companies hook up with micro influencers from the UK specifically for the purpose of creating epic blog content. It is still a small community but that is actually beneficial in many respects as there is not a ton of contacts to go through and sort through. I love using Guest Bloggers Wanted for our our content marketing campaigns at Ginger Marketing. A marketplace is definitely the type of tool I personally like to work with. As usual let us know your thoughts in the comments below! |
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“Either you’re going to tell stories that spread, or you will become irrelevant.” - Seth Godin