SEO Copywriting – Why Content is King (and what you can do about it)

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

Devious Webmasters, would-be marketers and sloppy content writers are blighting the World Wide Web with spammy content, underhand tactics and dubious links…

There was a time when the world of website content was a wild frontier, plagued with mean tricks that would get your site up the rankings quickly and easily, and while it might seem that online copy is leading a clean-cut existence nowadays, the dreaded Black Hatters and lazy content writers (think Darth Vader and Boba Fett) are still at it. So just how do you stay clear of the penalties handed out by the likes of algorithm update, Google Panda, and keep your site ranking well?

The web is made up of content – that’s what it is; a behemoth Smörgåsbord of files and folders full of documents, images, videos and so much more. So it stands to reason that in order to have a well-ranking website your content should be wholesome, good and honest (think Princess Leia and R2D2).

Google (and those other search engines we occasionally hear about) is becoming increasingly more attuned to the way in which content is written and, more importantly, how it is understood by the most technically advanced element of the internet, the humans. Content is still very much king (or, er, emperor?) and with the recent release of Google’s Hummingbird update ushering in the dawn of semantic search, that mantra isn’t looking like it will go away anytime soon. In fact it’s going to get increasingly harder for the bad guys to ‘outsmart’ the search engines as they dynamically learn the values and trademarks of well-written content.

Definitely Black Hat

A clean-living White Hatter

Images courtesy of LucasFilm and The Walt Disney Company

The Top 10 Steps to Better Content

Making significant gains in Google’s organic search listings needn’t be cloak and light-sabre (‘black hat’).  Follow these 10 steps to becoming a Content Jedi:

1. Write for people first and worry about ‘bots’ later.
2. Choose your keywords carefully and use them wisely.
3. Don’t get SPAM-tastic – No-one likes a thorough keyword stuffing and Google seriously hates it!
4. Mark up your page with a relevant structure (headings, sub-headings, bold text etc.)
5. Better Meta – Help search engines to understand what’s going on with good meta data.
6. Keep it interesting – Include some dynamic content such as images, videos, polls etc.
7. Keep it relevant – Writing about red widgets? Then don’t try and sell me casinos and ladies of the night.
8. Build some trust – Create links to and from relevant, genuine, trustworthy sites.
9. Share it – Don’t wait around for people to accidentally trip over your shiny new content, tell the world.
10. Tell Google – That’s right, you can let the boffins know too! Google Webmaster Tools is a great place to start.

For more tips or help with content writing, web design and online marketing please visit Outsrc Web Design and drop me a line.

Remember, the force is with you, mostly.

Working as the marketing executive at digital marketing agency Fast Web Media means I’m surrounded by industry experts banging on about search, tech and social. My role is very varied; on any given day I’ll be posting on our social media accounts, writing blogs, drafting copy for our websites, running email campaigns, dealing with clients, or organising the odd trade show! I find I’m no expert in any given field but know bits and pieces of the areas that apply to me.

One topic that has caught my attention recently is the growth of Google Now. I actually own an Android operated phone but didn’t quite catch on to Google Now until I started reading about it in blogs. I then noticed that my phone seemed to know what I needed to search for before I even told it what I wanted… spooky!

For those that haven’t heard about or used Google Now, let me take it back a step:

Google Now’s tagline is “The right information at just the right time” and that’s exactly what it is. Google Now is voice activated information services with a personal organiser. But it’s much more than that, as it’s personalised to the nth degree and the system learns more about you as you use it, being able to connect to your lifestyle and show you the kind of information you’re likely to need at the right time. The video below explains this:

It can sound confusing, so let me elaborate. At around 5.30pm Google Now knows that I’m likely to start making my way home, so will automatically show me up to date traffic information from the office to my home.

Not impressive enough? Ok, if you’re out and about in Manchester and you’re looking for restaurants, Google Now will give you information and directions about restaurants in close proximity to where you are. Based on your location, it will also have weather reports ready, latest scores from your favourite sports team or up to date stock information.

It can gather information straight from your Gmail and display flight information if you’ve recently booked a flight, and take it one step further by showing you the best route to get to the airport on the day of your scheduled flight, using the type of transportation it thinks you’re likely to be using. If you’re near the airport (and flying with American Airlines), it will find your boarding pass in Gmail and bring up a check-in QR code without being asked and gives you the weather report for your destination. Once you get to your destination, it will find local events, attractions, and restaurants. It can also give you the time back home, currency conversion, translations and more. Impressive enough yet?

It then organises all this information in a logical fashion using ‘cards’, automatically displaying them when you’re more likely to need them. As Google Now gets to know more about you, these cards are customised and will appear on the search bar of the Google Now screen.

I haven’t been using Google Now very long so my screen isn’t filled with ‘cards’ yet but Google already knows where I live, where I work, and that I drive there; so shows me up to date traffic and weather information. It also knows what football team I support; so shows me latest scores. Here’s an overview of what my page looks like:

In future, I expect to see flight information, package tracking information, restaurant information in my area, events linked to my recent searches, hotel bookings, news, stock information… the list goes on and on!

I’ve heard of Siri, is this the same thing?

Siri was really the pioneer when it comes to voice activated search, but Google Now takes this a step further. Much like Siri, it can answer questions and search the web, but apart from just assisting, it can anticipate your requirements using your calendar, Gmail, historic search and your current location. In this article, Marcio Cyrillo argues this exact point, and his conclusions point to the fact that Google Now takes it an evolutionary step further.

As a marketer, why do I need to know this?

Whether you’re an online marketer or not, there’s no denying this is an incredible advancement. But it’s undoubtable that those working in the world of online marketing will be asking themselves what this means for SEO and how they can stay one step ahead of their competitors.

The trend for marketers to analyse big data and determine what their customers want, what they need, and when they need it is only growing and Google Now is adding fuel to the fire with its predictive search capabilities. Search is evolving and becoming more relevant, and although there is still no talk of “Google Now Rankings”, it’s clear that local SEO will play a major role in making sure your business is featured in the right place at the right time.

In the same article referenced above, Cyrillo argues that Google Now could also be the stepping stone to completely changing the “number of links” mentality. The culture of SEO being all about linkbuilding in bulk is dying out and this is just taking us one step closer to those practices becoming obsolete.

For those businesses that still haven’t developed their Google+ local pages and garnered Google reviews, now is the time to wake up! In this regard, any business will gain a clear advantage in outranking their competitor in a local search.

Fascinating… or a step too far?

Google Now can only learn more about you if it has access to as much information about you as possible- this means Gmail, Calendar, search history etc. It could be a major step in making our lives easier… but is it perhaps a step too far? What about privacy issues? How much information is too much information?

As with everything, there’s a positive and a negative side to change, it’s more a question of personal preference. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find this change not only fascinating but mind blowing- how amazing is it that your phone knows exactly what you need?

But what about you? Are you looking forward to seeing where Google Now will take us or are you concerned that Google will have access to too much information about you? Share your thoughts in the comments below or connect with me on Twitter or Google+!

As a Marketer working at Magma Digital Ltd, a PHP Web Development agency building bespoke business critical systems, the power a Community has, is becoming increasingly apparent . One of the greatest aspects surrounding the programming language, PHP, is the Community that it has created – across the world there are many user groups organised to support PHP Developers.

Magma Digital play a key role in the organisation of the annual PHP Conference in Manchester, PHP North West (PHPNW). The Conference is run by developers, for developers, the aim of the Conference is to improve the web industry through new innovations and the improvement of developers skills. PHPNW is one of the largest PHP Conferences in the UK alongside PHPUK in London and PHPNE in Newcastle.

We gain a large amount of kudos through the recognition of our efforts for the PHP Community. This enables Magma Digital to further reach our audiences through our various social media channels. Many of you may wonder how reaching out to more Developers may benefit us? Well, Magma Digital have recently embarked on a significant growth plan, where we have been on the lookout for talented PHP Web Developers to join our team. Many of our followers on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ have shared our jobs with their followers which has enabled us to reach our target audience by doing nothing more than putting the time into creating the social messages.

As one of the least ‘geeky’ people within Magma, I often find myself getting excited by the results of our social media communications to the point that many of the Developers in the office have labelled me as ‘Data Nerd’. To ensure you really see the return you’re getting from your social communication, track anything and everything possible. At Magma, we use the URL shortener bit.ly to shorten our links (less characters, yay!) but this also enables us to track the amount of shares and clicks for any particular link.

When we first embarked on our growth plan, we needed more developers and created the ‘Magma Hiring’ bit.ly link. The first broadcast of this link over social media saw a return of over 200 clicks in the first two days. Over the last two years we have used this link for all our job advertisements and have seen over 2,000 clicks. There are a number of ways to check the statistics of a specific link, the first which I find the most simple is to add a + sign to the end of your bit.ly link. So in this example it would be http://bit.ly/magma_hiring+.

Since we began to use the bit.ly hiring link in December 2011, we have recruited nine new developers most of which have come from our social media. In addition to the recruitment success, we have seen several recommendations to adopt projects that have come from other developers within the PHP Community.

We believe that supporting the communities we are involved in by giving a helping hand, has enabled us to make Community count! Our communities have seen the effort we put into making the web a better place and consequently they want to do their bit to help us out.

When you’re engaging on social media don’t forget that if you help people, they are more inclined to want to return the favour when you need it!

ABOUT Heather Taylor

Heather is Marketing Executive at Magma Digital Ltd specialising in business critical systems to help improve business processes and efficiency. Some examples of systems include payroll systems, pharmacy systems and legal trade systems.

Follow @heathermilly

When you’re responsible for digital marketing for a large company, it can be hard to try out new ideas, which is why you should have a personal blog site to use as a tester.

That way, you can use it to experiment without needing to get things signed-off by senior managers or provide definite ROI, and without waiting for internal IT or external agencies to implement your suggestions.

Having your own personal blog site gives you the change to be at the cutting edge of digital marketing, even if it’s harder to get there in your day job.

This is even more important if you are looking for work and don’t have a company site to work on.

You need to prove your skills are up to date and providing results, so where else but on a site of your own?

So , while I’ve been on the Search And Social Media Marketing course, instead of trying out the new things I’ve learned on my company’s website (which is in the process of being redeveloped anyway), I’ve been testing them on my own blog site.

If you don’t already have your own site, here’s some top tips:

1. Think carefully about what you want to write about
   If you are genuinely passionate about something, it’s a lot easier to motivate yourself to keep the blog updated and the content you write will be more engaging. If you’re writing content that people want to read and you have the enthusiasm about it to work hard promoting it, you’re more likely to succeed. If you can find a niche area, even better.
2. Get it set up properly
   If you’re serious about running the blog as a tester site, you need to set it up as a hosted site, rather than going for the free option. So if you’re using WordPress, it’s from WordPress.org, not WordPress.com. You should aim to use a hosting company based in the UK rather than the US, to help boost your site’s speed, but obviously check reviews to find out about reliability. If you’re using WordPress, installing plugins like Yoast’s WordPress SEO is basically essential, as is getting Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools set up.



3. Write good, engaging, original content
   Before starting to write, it’s best to try and do some keyword research – using Google Keyword Planner, for example – beforehand to work out who your audience might be, what they might want to get from the article and what keywords and phrases you should include. Before Halloween, I wrote content aimed at people who were trying to decide what horror movies to watch, so I published reviews and features around that theme, fitting in phrases that people would search for, while obviously keeping the content fun and informative to read.
4. Promote it (with money)!
   There’s two routes to go down.  One is to pay for advertising via Facebook or Google, etc, but given that this is a personal blog, you’ll be spending your own money and aren’t likely to make it back. But it’s still worth having a play with it. You’ll need to set up an AdWords account to use Keyword Planner anyway, and for about £30 you can run a campaign that will bring people to your site and give you an idea of best practice for if you run ‘real’ campaigns at work. I did this on Google Ads and Facebook Ads for my Halloween content, with ads based around helping people decide what to watch, and saw a big upturn in traffic.
5. Promote it (for free)!
   Social media is your friend here. It’s easy to find your audience on Facebook or Twitter or Google+ or Pinterest with just a bit of research, and then you can use those platforms to build up traffic to your site. Google+ might not seem an obvious one to go for, but it’s becoming increasingly important in SEO terms (setting up Authorship is a must) and there may well be a Community on there that would welcome your content with open arms and clicking fingers.
6. Link build
   This used to mean lots of grey hat activities, like buying links or signing up to link farms and directories, but these are potentially disastrous nowadays. You need to earn good, authoritative links through promoting your site in the ways mentioned above. Tactics like guest posts can still work, though you might well end up with a ‘no follow’ link, thus denying you link juice, you’ll still get traffic through it. I’ve done contributions to sites like the Huffington Post and BuzzFeed and have had decent levels of traffic coming through both. Using tools like Moz’s OpenSite Explorer will let you know what kind of quality links you’ve got coming through, while Webmaster Tools can help you identify any problems.

Most of all, if you’re doing this for yourself, you need to have fun and not be afraid to experiment. If you learn from your mistakes, it’ll stand you in good stead to get things right the first time when it really counts.

ABOUT JAMES ELLABY

James is Digital Marketing Manager for Manchester Solutions, having previously worked as an online football journalist and charity Communications Officer. He also runs film, TV and music blog New Adventures In Hi-Fi. You can get in touch with him through Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+

As digital marketers, a large portion of our time is spent creating content for the websites that we look after. This content is most often used to help drive more traffic from Google organic search, increase click-through-rate (CTR) add value for new and existing customers. Ultimately, we want our content to make more money for our business.

In a dream world, all content that goes on the web would be useful and unique and provide the right information to our target customers. Sometimes this is not the case, so before creating any new content, it’s a good idea to look at any existing content you might have and see if there are any quick wins to be had.

Increasing traffic from organic search using Google rich snippet data

Of course, there are a number of things you can do to re-purpose your old content such as adding images, graphs and extra information  but here were are going to look at adding Google rich snippet markup to your content in order to try and drive more organic traffic from Google and ultimately make more money out of your existing content for your business.

You might have seen something like this in the Google search engine results:

This is a recipe for Oreo CupCakes which is a really good example of a brand or company using rich snippet data to drive organic traffic from google to a certain webpage.

As you can see in the image above, the brand has implemented reviews, rating, cooking time, calorie count and video rich snippet data on their page

Different types of Rich Snippet MicroData and the code to implement them

Rich Snippet MicroData lives within the HTML of your webpage. The Google Structured Data Markup Helper is a really useful tool for anyone wanting to tag their webpages with Rich Snippet Micro Data.

Step 2

Visit the Structured Data Mark-Up Helper, select ‘article’, and copy and paste your HTML (you can find this by viewing the source code on your webpage).

Step 3

Start Tagging – click the blue button to start adding your Rich Snippet Tags into your HTML.

Step 4

You can now select elements on your page – such as images, titles, authors and the article body to add the Rich Snippet Tags to your HTML document.

In the example below we are adding a date rich snippet – this will show up in your search engine result listing like this:

Example Result:

As you can see – there is now a date stamp on this listing – this affirms to google that this article is fresh content, and deserves to have a high ranking in it’s index.

Step 5:

There are other Rich Snippet Tags you can add (if your article contains those elements) its really easy to add them in – just click each element you want to add.

Nearly done….

All you need to do now is download your new HTML file with your tags, and give it to your developer to upload to your site.

Rich Snippets are just one way of adding value to your existing content – you never know – this might be just the edge you need to elbow out that annoying competitor!

We are all aware that social media plays a key role in marketing and business communications. Through growing up in a generation where everything was discussed online, whether it be homework, love interests or music, it was evident that online social networking had provided the general public with an opportunity to reinvent themselves entirely from behind a computer screen. The new quick and easy method of converting through an instant messenger, uploading photos and finding out information, without having to visit the local library, was revolutionary. Everything became easier. People could communicate with each other from anywhere in the world – and from this, millions of potential customers became accessible.

In the field of events, this created a huge opportunity. The old marketing techniques of sending out press releases and contacting local media was no longer the key to boost your attendants. People were relying on social sites to gain feedback from others in order to consider attending an event. Therefore, once your target audience had been identified, all you had to do is go to the sites where they would typically visit for information – and promote.

Social media had provided the public with a platform to create potential connections before, during and after an event had taken place. It had given potential attendants the opportunity to network, share topics and join discussions, giving the event organizer the chance to monitor these interests and create relevant content in order to involve their audience.

Why did I choose to talk about events marketing?  Because I had seen living proof of the importance of social media after I managed an event myself.

Before I took the Search and Social Media Marketing Professional course, I had graduated from my Music Journalism degree at The University of Huddersfield this year. During my time studying, I had gained experience in various roles outside of university i.e. I had volunteered at an LGBT radio station and worked on a programme of my own, I had written countless music articles and reviews for websites and I had worked as a volunteer Press Officer for an independent record label for almost a year. Sitting in a cold, stone-walled office writing press releases in a leaky old building covered in graffiti near Great Ancoats once a week, dealing with stroppy musicians with no direction, and sorting out drunken old rockers who refuse to pay the entry fee on gig nights, I can honestly say – it was fun while it lasted.

However, during my time working for the label, to mark their two year anniversary I managed and organized an event in the Huddersfield area with a fellow peer from university. During the marketing stage of the event, I managed the Facebook and Twitter accounts to give potential attendants the opportunity to invite others and network with each other, while I would continuously post content and updates relevant to the event. Through this, we were acknowledged by students who blogged about it, and published it in the student newspaper. Then word reached the Huddersfield Examiner who wrote an article about the event. During this time, we also had the musicians and record label promoting the event through other websites and social platforms; therefore, through all of the promotion we generated online, we managed to fill the venue to the brim with attendants. Although the venue was facing the university and fairly popular, the staff informed us that they had never seen it so busy in their time of being open. In the end, it had worked wonders for our sales and we had made a fantastic profit – accomplished entirely through the use of social media and online marketing.

I began working for Salford Professional Development as a Marketing Officer in August. Since I began working for SPD, I focused my attention to the social media platforms immediately and brought up the Likes, Connections and Followers noticeably in a short period of time.

I was also managing the social media for the Salford Media Festival, and through continuously posting and tweeting updates and news, we were generating more interest, supporters and even some ticket sales through Twitter and LinkedIn. I took advice from a social media expert and ran a campaign to give away two free tickets to the festival in exchange for Follows and Retweets on Twitter, in just two weeks we gained up to 200 more Followers and, as predicted, people were Retweeting like no tomorrow. An important rule in marketing – people love free stuff! In conjunction with this, we paid for a temporary Facebook advert, which almost doubled our current Likes in just 3 weeks of being live – this gave us a good head start to build Likes. Through continuously posting news and updates on social media, we began to see the traffic coming through to our websites on Google Analytics. Approximately 6% of our click rate traffic for the Salford Media Festival website was referred from social media, namely Facebook and LinkedIn. It doesn’t seem much, but it makes a visible difference. Interestingly, although the most visible activity and interaction we receive is through Twitter, there wasn’t any noticeable traffic coming from this platform, as followers preferred to Retweet, rather than explore links. I would advise to keep Twitter for interacting with your audience in simple ways – by using Retweets and hashtags – as Twitter users like to keep things straightforward, but ensure your content on Facebook and LinkedIn is appealing and engaging enough to generate clicks to your website links.

In Events Marketing, it is vital to share, post and tweet continuously and consistently. Generating excitement and anticipation towards the lead up to an event is important. Link building and contacting relevant websites to help with the promotion is also a good way of branching out and reaching a wider audience, as it generates more interest and response. We offered various media-based websites discount codes off ticket prices to promote to their members for Salford Media Festival, which proved successful for our revenue.

I chose to attend the Search and Social Media Professional course so that I could develop in the area of online marketing and social media enough for the company to see a real difference from the marketing generated by myself. I didn’t have experience in Search Engine Optimization, therefore the SSMM course seemed like the perfect opportunity to progress and put some new skills into practice.

I took the course simply because, although I entered my teenage years during the explosion of online interaction, SEO and social media marketing are completely different notions. They involve technical strategies and consumer awareness, rather than just socializing and sharing. In order to reach business success, there’s more that needs to be considered when marketing in the virtual world.

Overall, the course has taught me how to build links effectively, how to engage your audience through social media content and create effective campaigns, how to make use of keywords, how to use Webmaster Tools to keep up to date on your click through rates and what interests your audience, and to make use of all social media platforms to create brand awareness. I intend to integrate all of these tactics into my work.

In today’s digital world of sharing and networking, marketing your services online can take The Water-Cooler Effect [or Word of Mouth Marketing], to a powerful new level. Campaigns can go viral overnight. The key is to think outside the box, identify with your audience and research their needs, and never underestimate human emotion. The recent Christmas ad campaigns by John Lewis and Sainsburys will tell you that.

I already have many plans and ideas for SPD, through taking the course, in order to create brand awareness and generate more sales, and I hope to continue my progression in the field of Online Marketing, using the experience and knowledge I have gained –hopefully accomplishing some noticeable results.

SEO & Social Media Marketing Essentials

Wednesday 24th July – Book Now

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Social Media Optimisation (SMO) are no longer an optional choice for many organisations competing for the increasingly internet savvy consumers. Do you have a digital strategy and a social media policy? Do you know that if you don’t manage your social media presence chances are your customers will manage it for you and not always in a most favourable way.

As part of the University of Salford’s commitment to delivering the best digital training available, Salford Professional Development have developed a one day ‘SEO & Social Media Marketing Essentials‘ course. This course is aimed at busy executives who want to have theoretic understanding as well as some basic hands on practical exercises which will highlight the essentials in SEO and Social Media Marketing. This knowledge will enable you to develop a better understanding of your customers behaviour online and help you to develop long term plan and implement basic techniques for management of day to day social media engagement. Working from your business objectives you will be able to draft some key performance indicators for your online presence, identify key social networks for your organisational use as well as conduct some basic Social Media Optimisation. The main focus on this course is to offer you a broad overview of search and social media marketing and help you to start working on your long term digital marketing strategy as well as plan for use of techniques.

Tutor:

Aleksej Heinze – http://businessculture.org

The course will be taught by Dr Aleksej Heinze, Aleksej is a co-director for the Centre for Digital Business which is part of The University of Salford’s Business School. He currently works on an international projects Passport to Trade 2.0 which helps businesses to understand International Business Culture and develop new business opportunities in Europe using social media networks.

Guest Speaker:

The course will also feature Martin Cozens who is the Managing Director for Banc Media. Based in Old Trafford, Manchester, Banc Media are a Search Engine Marketing company providing Pay Per Click & Search Engine Optimisation. They specialise in a measured & transparent approach, focussing on ROI for our clients through researched search engine marketing.

Martin Cozens: “We develop close relationships with our clients, proving to become an integral part of their business, smashing targets set by them and showing real return on investment in the products we supply and the search results they gain. Developing these relationships is what makes our business stronger and helps our team grow further to providing the very best service.”

Their clients include:

• Lufthansa’s business rewards air miles scheme SACP
• Cruise1st – a leading cruise holiday provider operating in the UK, Ireland & Australia
• FADS.co.uk – the nationally known online furniture retailer that was on the high street in over 800 stores
• Breens Solicitors – a renowned law firm operating out of Merseyside for both private and business clients.

Venue

SEO & Social Media Marketing Essentials is based and delivered at the state of the art teaching and training facilities in the heart of the UK’s Media hub at MediaCityUK, University of Salford. This cutting edge facility is on close proximity of the BBC, ITV and many other top digital and media agencies.

Price

This course costs £299 + VAT.

Want to know more?

If you wish to enquire about this course, simply get in touch with Robert Goodison at Salford Professional Development on 0161 295 5407 or email R.Goodison@salford.ac.uk.

Have you ever wondered why certain online digital marketing campaigns go viral? As part of our MSc Marketing course at Salford Business School we created a video and tested how Jonathan Berger’s STEPS concept works in real life projects.

We were introduced to Jonathan Berger’s idea of STEPS during our Search and Social Media Marketing module guest speaker’s Denise Brooks presentation.  Berger suggested that going viral is not just luck, its science based on psychology of talk.

Jonathan Berger’s STEPS concept

The key 6 STEPS in creating a viral video using Jonathan Berger’s idea of STEPS are:

1. Social currency
2. Trigger
3. Emotion
4. Public
5. Practical value
6. Story

Here is bit more background on the concept from Jonathan Berger himself:

I feel Good – viral video campaign concept

Our task was to create a viral campaign to promote Salford Business School to future applicants. The question we faced was – “How to make a video viral?”. We decided to take an interactive and lively approach to the campaign and link it to the online community of those following the ‘I feel good’ song by James Brown as a base for the viral video. Using keyword research we identified that “I feel good” is a popular search term, which taps into an existing community of interest online.

Through this song we emphasised that Salford Business School has great facilities and it is an enjoyable place where students feel good when they are better placed. People from different backgrounds have sung the verse showing the cultural variety that could be found in Salford Business School. This video linked to current campaign of the University of Salford – ‘Be better Placed’ and anyone interested to study business management courses at Salford Business School. At the end of the video we used a call to action message: You feel good when you’re better placed. Salford Business School… Be better placed. What makes you #IFeelGood? The idea here was to get people to share their own stories and get the video “viral” so that students would create their own footage and post it using this already existing hash tag on twitter  – #IFeelGood.

Jonathan Berger’s STEPS Framework application and results

The video contains 4 key Jonathan Berger ideas: It has social currency as the video uses humour which makes people feel good and encourages people to share. This is because of well-known trigger, the song, which becomes associated with the positive emotions that could be achieved studying at Salford Business School. It kindles the fire to share as ‘feel good’ emotions are embedded in the song. The video has a public message as it shows how Salford Business School community is beneficial for studying business in an interactive environment.

“I feel Good” campaign results

The “I feel good” campaign ran for one week during which time we were competing with five other student teams. By integrating this video with social networks sharing and organic search optimisation we achieved over 500 views in just over a week! This was associated with an incredible number of re-tweets, shares on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+, comments and various social media platforms.

Our campaign integrated Social Media Optimisation (SMO) with YouTube video optimisation. YouTube optimisation was done using a keyword rich video title, video description and keywords in video tags so that we have had a good stream of organic traffic coming from different searches.

This practical project as part of our Search and Social Media Marketing module proved that a viral campaign could be easily managed through a controlled message and a plan without a budget!

What do you think about Berger’s STEPS framework? Is it a science that makes it contagious or just luck? Please share and comment below.

Diana is on LinkedIn: Diana

@dianatolockaite

Are you new to digital marketing and interested in launching a viral campaign? Then you could learn something from our experience in running a viral campaign as part of our Search and Social Media Marketing module. This module is shared by MSc Marketing and Salford MBA postgraduate students at Salford Business School.

Launching a viral campaign is a great cost-effective way to connect with a wide and otherwise unreachable audience. The only real barrier to entry in this context is being able to construct an engaging idea.

How to create a viral video?

Our challenge was to create a viral video, but how can we do it? Our client for our campaign was the University of Salford Business School, and we chose to target our campaign at EU/home students looking to study for undergraduate business management degrees. We were given the overall aim of building awareness of the clients brand and generating leads to the course application webpage. To achieve this, we had to combine certain ‘brand consistencies’ given by the client, as well as the ‘creative’ elements that we thought would have characteristics of being viral.

Viral Video Content Research and Development

We began our work by looking at competitors online strategies, researching online trends, reading journals and blogs on viral marketing strategies and analysing past viral marketing successes. After gathering enough research we were set with the most difficult task of a viral campaign, creating original and engaging content that our target audience would be willing to share with their friends.

Our attempt at going viral was a video to be posted on YouTube and shared through international social media networks Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Reddit. The storyline is about a frustrated student looking for the right place to study business, who finally finds the website with the help of his Lego figures. While it may sound very unusual and irrelevant to use Lego in a university business school campaign, our rationale was that the stop-motion animation that we created would grab the attention of our target audience because of its relative originality. This was also backed up by the fact that online videos which include Lego stop-motion animations are particularly popular on YouTube with our target audience which made it more likely to go viral.

Halfway through the development of the video, feedback received from our client pointed out the absence of a clear call to action in our campaign, which we addressed by adding an extra scene where the Lego characters construct our new core message ‘Build your future’. We also added a pun into the title of the video to give a better description of the content.

Viral Campaign Launch

The revised version of our video got positive feedback from the client so therefore we decided to launch our campaign. The video was posted through the clients and our personal Facebook and Twitter accounts as well as through Instagram and Reddit personal accounts. In 6 days the video gained 700 views, 30 ‘Likes’, as well as positive comments, however, that is far from our aim of going viral.

What we have learned about how to create a viral video?

To conclude, we have learned that the process of making a video go viral is a challenging task, part of which is beyond our control. Due to the nature of the client demands and because of the nature of the content itself (i.e. business education) it is challenging to combine the aspects of a ‘viral’ video with a client that demands a certain level of neutrality and messages open to a universal audience. It is evidently difficult to attempt to produce a video of viral nature which also has the broad objective of promoting the business school, which seems to contradict the inherent nature of viral videos themselves.

If you have any questions or experiences you would like to share, feel free to comment!

As we all want a piece of that Google pie on the run up to Christmas time, I have put together a short guide to help you design and build an optimised ecommerce website design, just in time for Christmas.

On the First day of optimised ecommerce website build, my web master said to me, decide what you want your site to be:

The single biggest decision when starting out in ecommerce website design is deciding exactly what you want your site to achieve, your route to market and the specific products you wish to sell. These decisions will form the basis and will define the complete structure of your ecommerce website.

On the Second day of optimised ecommerce website build, my web master said to me, define a keyword list:

Once you decide on the subject matter of your ecommerce website you can then start to look at relevant keywords relating directly to your products or services.  Make a comprehensive list via a brainstorming session. Then expand your list using keyword tools such as Google AdWords keyword suggestion tool or Wordtracker to help you expand your list and establish a comprehensive database of keywords that can later be refined for use in relations to your website.

On the Third day of optimised ecommerce website build, my web master said to me, refine and categorise:

You will now want to look at refining your keyword list. Use scoring attributes like

• Relevance,
• Specificity and
• Popularity

for each keyword, categorising and re-listing the keywords in a sensible and structured manor. For example sort keywords with the highest scores appearing high in the list for easier referencing. This optimised keyword list can then play a large part in creating your optimised category taxonomy for your ecommerce site. When building a web tree of your website, it helps to build a visual representation of your site hierarchy from home page down to sub categories. It’s best to try to keep to a “three to four click rule” of website navigation to get to your individual product descriptions.

On the Fourth day of optimised ecommerce website build, my web master said to me, purchase a domain name:

Domain names can be purchased from registrars such as 1, 2, 3-Reg, Go-Daddy, Fast host and such like. When purchasing a domain you ideally want to target a domain name with either your company name or keywords as this is a big contributory element in SEO and being able to rank for those terms. Do a little trial and error to find the best domain available to suit your website.

On the Fifth day of optimised ecommerce website build, my web master said to me, Choose your ecommerce software:

Ok, so you now have a good idea what you’re doing and where you want to go. You now need to find suitable software to take you there. There are many ecommerce website platforms to choose from with varying levels of functionality. If you’re a beginner i would suggest using an online platform with price plan. By using a predefined format you get lots of functionality with a decent Content Management System (CMS) and additional support on hand, should you need it.

On the Sixth day of optimised ecommerce website build, my web master said to me, secure your website:

If not supplied as a part of your software package, you will need to purchase and install a SSL certificate to ensure your site is secure when processing payments. This certificate is installed on your web server.

On the Seventh day of optimised ecommerce website build, my web master said to me, Design your ecommerce website:

This is where we start to put the meat on the bones. You need to create the taxonomy you outlined earlier within the CMS and build the structure and raw ecommerce website design, including the shopping cart. Most software packages will have built in templates for pages and products you can edit to make a unique site.

On the Eighth day of optimised ecommerce website build, my web master said to me, Build your content pages:

You now need to create the text based content of your site including terms and conditions, privacy statements, the about us pages, news and any other text based pages you wish to include. Remember to utilise your keyword list featuring your keywords high on the page and within “h” tags to optimise your pages.

On the Ninth day of optimised ecommerce website build, my web master said to me, it’s time to add products:

As our site is taking shape, we want to start to add all the products on, that you wish to sell, this can be a timely job but is worth getting right first time. A couple of things to avoid are copy and pasting manufacturer’s descriptions and keyword stuffing, this will work against you in terms of optimisation.

On the Tenth day of optimised ecommerce website build, my web master said to me, it’s time to test your site:

Before going live with any ecommerce website, you should test all the features and functionality thoroughly including the shopping cart, before publication. The last you thing you want to do is tarnish your reputation before you have even begun.

On the Eleventh day of optimised ecommerce website build, my web master said to me, publish and be patient:

It’s time to go live, publish your site to your domain name and start writing keyword rich articles and start pursuing back links to your website. For quick results using a PPC campaign could be prudent at this stage, this will also help with further refining your keywords highlighting popular search terms you can include in your text pages.

On the Twelfth day of optimised ecommerce website build, my web master said to me, the ecommerce website’s built and now for some more SEO please.

You will need to manage and maintain your site whilst performing SEO techniques to rise up the organic rankings on search engines. This can take time and will require hours of research to perfect your keywords search terms and back link database, but its worth it in the end when you start to appear in the top places in Google and see your traffic multiply.

Oh and please remember, a website is not just for Christmas!

Happy Ecommerce! from ThinkbetterUK  – Nootropics UK

For further information on SEO techniques and Optimising websites please contact me at Jamie5624@gmail.com or follow me on Twitter or Facebook