Author: James

Every website owner has to be able to precisely analyze their content’s performance, regardless of its type. In that case, there’s mostly just one solution: Google Analytics (GA).

You’d be amazed how many aspects it can track! And does it for free. You don’t need to pay anything – except attention to the following lines.

Learning the ins and outs of GA is a must for all website owners. Not just because marketers say so, but because it’s a good way to grow your business.

Here are the top tips on using Google Analytics and getting as much as possible from the data (and how to precisely read the data).

Set Up Your Goals

Are you running an eCommerce business?

Are you selling certain services?

Have you developed a SaaS and people are downloading it?

Regardless of what the answer might be, you should always clearly define your goals in Google Analytics so you can track and analyze it better.

Downloads, form completions, add to cart, successful sales – everything can be defined and tracked through GA. You should do this right at the start because your decisions should be based on the goals and conversions you focus on.

To define these goals, head to your Google Analytics and click on the Admin wheel. Then, click on Goals from the right column and on the red button NEW GOAL. The tool provides you a user-friendly wizard which guides you through the entire process.

Track Your Events

Part of setting up your goals is Event Tracking.

By using just a bit of extra code, you can start collecting data on countless extra activities that can’t be tracked with the regular GA code. These are actions you can’t track because they don’t lead to a Thank You page or follow up page.

Events include aspects and actions like:

Setting up events is just like setting up goals, except you’ll have to add a specific code.

If your site is using Universal Analytics, you’ll need to use this code:

ga(‘send’,’event’,’category’,’action’,’opt_label’, opt_value)

There are a few variables that will change with each different event you track:

If you want your visitors to download something without taking them next to a Thank You page, you’ll want to input the following:

• Category: Downloads
• Action: Click
• Label: Whitepaper/Plugin
• Value: 0

Thus, the code you should implement on your page looks like this:

ga(‘send’, ’event’, ’download’, ’click’, ’plugin’, 0);

Sync Your Google Analytics with Google Webmaster Tools

For the uninitiated, Webmaster Tools (now officially rebranded as Google Search Console) is another free application which lets you check the indexing status and optimize the visibility of your website.

By connecting your Search Console property (website) with your GA account, you gain full access to Google’s new Search Engine Optimization reports.

These come in three forms:

• Queries,
• Landing Pages,
• and Geographical Summary.

In addition to helping you discover your top performing search queries and landing pages, the data can also be used to identify:

• Keywords that have a low click through rate, but high average position. Once you know what these are, you can change the meta title and description of your page to improve their CTR.

• Landing pages that have a good click through rate, but low average position. These pages can then be put through an on-page optimization process to improve their rankings.

•  The countries your organic visitors are browsing from.

Filter Out Your Traffic

Do you and your colleagues have your website set as their home page, or do you visit to test and update content? Of course, you do.

Accessing your website over and over again can actually alter your analytics data.

To prevent this, and to exclude yourself and your co-workers from your Analytics data, you will need to set up a filter under the Admin panel.

If you have a static IP address, go to All Filters, click on Add New Filter and set a Predefined Filter to exclude traffic from your given IP address.

If you don’t know your IP address, just google ‘what’s my IP.’ Be aware, though, this will ONLY work if you have a static IP (most business broadband packages come with a static IP these days).

Conclusion

Every website owner needs to use Google Analytics, regardless of the stage of their business.

This fantastic free tool can answer so many questions, be them simple or complex. Without it, you can’t possibly know the answer to essential questions, such as:

• How many people visit my website on a daily basis?
• Where do these visitors access my website from?
• Are they using mobile devices to browse my site?
• Which pages on my site are the most popular?
• How many visitors are converted into customers?

And the list can go on and on.

If you have additional questions about Google Analytics, please post a comment below.

If you found this article helpful, you can share it with your audience on social media.

I’ve already spoken to you about Successful startups. From dream to reality!. I told you how easy it can be to make your dream come true, by putting some few tips about content marketing, SEO, influencers, investments, etc. to good use.

Now, we all blink in ecstasy when we hear the great name of the glamorized success: SILICON VALLEY. What people love is the all encompassing, on the spot, wild success. When it comes to the “been there, done that” successful startups’ list, I guess Dave Kerpner has a point in saying: “Building a sustainable business takes more than a good idea.” (Read more…)

3 successful startups. Lesson taught. Lesson learned

I want to go into 3 of his examples and provide you a detailed lesson of success. I want to show you how you can catch the gold fish of startups.

• Kaltura. It is an open-source video platform. It enables its clients to host, manage, publish, monetize, analyze and distribute video content. It offers a wide range of video products across several areas, such as publishing, education and enterprise. It has also launched a new Media Go product, which allows clients to create their own Netflix-like video portal across multiple devices. Lesson taught: Target and cater for several niches: enterprise, education and media. Kaltura has built specific features and taken care of the needs of each of these fields. As they say on their site: “Over 300,000 websites are already using Kaltura’s flexible platform”, including Groupon, Bank of America, Harvard and HBO. They have recently raised $25 million.  Lesson learned: Don’t try to catch all the fish in the water, set in bait for only a few species.
  

   

• Voxy. It is definitely one of the most successful startups. It is a mobile app that helps Spanish speakers learn English through bite-size, daily lessons based on real-life experiences. They wish to address the needs of each learner, as they know that no two people are the same. So, they personalize each of their courses to suit the needs of their clients. They update the courses on a daily basis and they offer pragmatic and realistic learning, by providing users with videos of people going along their daily tasks, audio recordings of real-life situations, and karaoke-like music lessons. They also provide up-to-date news stories, so as the learners can perfect a contemporary use of English. Lesson taught: Stick to your principles. Voxy could have expanded their service to other languages, but they decided to stay focused on teaching English, particularly to Spanish speakers. “By keeping this focus, Voxy has established great presence on the market and has over 3 million users and $15 million in funding.” Lesson learned: When you catch the gold fish, don’t trade it for any other.
  

   

• Pandora. It is a personalized music-recommendation service, but it’s only available in the United States, Australia and New Zealand. It plays musical selections based on the user’s artists selection. When it has to select future songs, it does so by making use of the feedback provided by the user, be it positive or negative. Over 400 different musical attributes are considered when selecting the next songs, which are combined into larger groups called focus traits. In total, there are 2000 focus traits, such as rhythm syncopation, key tonality, vocal harmonies, and displayed instrumental proficiency. Lesson taught: Offer personalization. You benefit from a personalized listening experience, music selected just for you, so you enjoy a unique experience. Pandora is expected to raise $231 million in the sale of 10 million shares. Lesson learned: Design your gold fish’s water bowl.

What all of Dave Kerpner’s 10 Wildly Successful Startups teach us is that you don’t have to come from Silicon Valley to be great and successful. It takes something else. What do you think this is?

What is crawling? Avoid it by using robots.txt.

When users surf the web, content is made available for them by search engines through 2 main ways: crawling and indexing.

The former takes place when search engine crawlers access publicly available webpages. So, it basically involves looking at the webpages and following the links on those pages.

Indexing, on the other hand, means gathering information about a page, so that it is made available through search engine results.

The problem with crawling is that sometimes you might not want to allow crawlers to access areas of your website. Such is the case with accessing pages that use limited server resources. That’s why you might want to use the robots.txt file.

What is the robots.txt file and why is it so important?

It is a text file which allows you to specify how you’d like your site to be crawled. Crawlers generally go through the robots.txt file from your website, before they crawl it. The robots.txt file is so great because you can specify which parts can and cannot be crawled.

It’s so important because it allows you to control access to the files and directories on your server. It’s like an electronic NO TRESPASSING sign. It tells the Googlebot and other crawlers which files and directories on your server should not be crawled (nor displayed in search engine results).

What is the file’s location?

In order for it to be valid, it must be located on the root of the website host.

For example, in order to control crawling on all URLs below http://www.yoursite.com/, the robots.txt file must be located at: http://www.yoursite.com/robots.txt.

A robots.txt file can be placed on subdomains: http://website.yoursite.com/robots.txt) or on non-standard ports: http://yoursite.com:8181/robots.txt, but it cannot be placed in a subdirectory: http://yoursite.com/pages/robots.txt.

 Add a robots.txt file to your webiste

It’s really easy to do it and I have a great source for you. Click here to learn how to create the file: http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html . You’ll find all the needed information.

If you want to re-check it, click here: http://www.frobee.com/robots-txt-check

And we’re done! Hope your robots.txt file will prevent your site for gathering unneeded annoying crawling!

How can WordPress become even better for your business? How can you attract more readers and more leads?

With their humongous user counts, main social media networks seem like traffic gold mines.

But, the promise of thousands of users or followers comes with a downside – how are they supposed to get to all the content you’re publishing, appreciate it and maybe – hopefully! – eventually, convert?

The key concept I’m going to give you is this: “social media SEO”.

That’s right, SEO optimization is not just for the “overt” search engines like Google and Bing. Social networks also employ their own search algorithms, so the whole «great social presence will automatically gain me lots of brand awareness» rhetoric will only bring you disappointment.

Throw great, hard-worked content out there in the social tangle just like that and you’re practically asking your target audience to look for a needle in the haystack. Which, of course, they don’t have the time and the willingness to do.

So, before putting your AdWords or remarketing campaign in place, there is another step to be completed: taking into account the most basic elements of your shared content.

Like links, for instance. Or meta description. Or author display.

Simple tweaks like these could be decisive in getting a social traffic boost. So, it’s time I disclose the social media SEO trick you need to employ, in order to drive more people to click on your shared content.

It’s called the Open Graph Protocol and it grants you control over the look of your content on social platforms.

Making sure you have this Social Media SEO element within the overall SEO strategy is one step further towards driving the traffic you need from social networks.

Understanding Social Objects

Just like a smart shopfront which compels passers-by without them realizing it, a neat social profile makes it easy for readers to notice your posts.

And by ‘neat’ I actually mean ‘flawless’. No weird-looking links, no inaccurate thumbnails, no issues within the social graph structure.

Social Graph is basically another name for Social Network. In other words, a map encompassing all its user interactions on social media, a medium which displays “social objects” like:

1. media items
2. properties (e.g. websites)
3. links

For these objects to be ‘share’-able across websites and social networks, there needs to be a data structure enabling the whole process.

The connection between this structure and other websites is the Open Graph protocol.

What it essentially does is it takes object-related details and passes them to the graph. These details called Open Graph tags are necessary for an ‘object’ to be added to the social graph.

I know, it seems a tad too abstract. So let’s take a basic example.

You have your most recent blog post. The elements you’ll need Open Graph tags for are:

They will need to be integrated within social networks’ native environment. Otherwise, your shared link would look somehow like a nagging banner ad – something no one likes, right?

You’d want something like this:

The Open Graph Protocol

“The Open Graph protocol enables any website to become a rich object in a social graph. For instance, this is used on Facebook to allow any web page to have the same functionality as any other object on Facebook.” – Opg.me

A rich object is an element (your website) which presents the same attributes as any object which is proprietary of Facebook. It allows for seamlessly integrating your webpage into the News Feed, so that you get a better representation of your content.

The second you paste a URL in your status box, Facebook starts searching for that page. It finds the page and it reads it.

It reads the meta tag which provides the image, title and a short snippet which gets shown in the post you’re sharing. Meta tags provide information relevant to search engines.

There are 5 attributes:

They help Facebook find attributes of the content meta-tag to help it read the article properly.

Without the use of Open Graph, the Facebook crawler takes just the basics of your content to share and doesn’t get you the proper distribution or insights gathering.

Tags, Properties, and Other Attributes

Open Graph Meta tags were introduced by Facebook in 2010. What they do is they allow other websites to become rich “graph” objects and to function as other Facebook objects.

So, you can control how information travels from a website to Facebook when you share a page, like it etc. The information is sent via Open Graph Meta tags in the <head> part of the website’s code.

Squirrly SEO will grab the data from your Page/Post content and will build the Open Graph, so that each social share will represent your article type.

In case you notice your URLs are not displayed as rich objects, you can check them in the Facebook for Developers section to check whether you have the right parameters set up.

The 8 Tags to Rule Social Media SEO

8 tags, one condition. The condition is you need to put them in the header of your page.

og:title – Pretty self-explanatory. You put your article title here.

og:site_name – Your website’s name.

og:description – A short description about the linked content. Think of it as a google snippet.

og:url – The pages URL. Note that this acts like an identifier for Facebook’s crawler, so having the canonical URL allows you to track your links progress with analytics tools.

og:image – The image associated with your article. It’s obligatory your image is .JPEG and has a size of at least 200×200. For the best results, your image should have a ratio of 1.91:1, otherwise Facebook will crop it or even worse revert to a less visible link preview.

fb:app_id – The unique ID which lets Facebook know the identity of your site. This is crucial for Facebook Insights to work properly. Here’s a link to their documentation in case you want to learn more.

og:type – Specifies the type of media you’re linking. In our case, it’s an article.

article: author – Links to the author of the article. It can link to either his Facebook Profile or Facebook Page. This allows for ‘expanding the current follower base of the author’.

These are the basics which will offer you a welcome social media boost.

If you want to go even further with Open-Graph, Opg.me has a list of all the currently available meta tags supported by Facebook.

One Setting, No Social Shares Trouble

As marketers, control is what we could very well use in our lives.

It all starts with the attention we’re paying to details – and social media SEO is one of them. Checking that you have the Open Graph Protocol all set is pretty much the foundation of your social media marketing edifice.

Weave your posts in the social fabric and don’t allow any loose ends. A simple SEO setting will do the job and will make sure no reader is dissuaded from clicking on those links you worked so hard for.

In Squirrly SEO Plugin, here’s how you can take charge of your social-driven traffic, with a simple setting:

Control your brand to the smallest of details! 

In fact, at Squirrly, this is what we’re constantly working towards: helping everyone become #BetterMarketers with swift integrations and handy features.

Not long ago did we launch the latest, Quick Squirrly SEO, which also helps with your Open Graph integration. If you don’t already have it installed, you might want to click here and give it a try. It has never been easier for you to manage on-page SEO right from the WordPress editor.

Any discussion about marketing tools should start with three questions.

Do you know how many websites are there? The truth is, it’s pretty hard to tell the exact number because of the constant fluctuation, but there are more than one billion.

Do you know how many websites Google shows on the first page for any search? 9 or 10.

How can your site beat the other one billion websites to the first page?

Simple – with excellent SEO.

The problem is that getting the hang of how a search engine works is not precisely a cakewalk. There are a lot of variables and factors. Understanding all of them takes a lot of time, time that you don’t have. Luckily, there are better options now: you can use specialized marketing tools that can help in the process.

A big mistake many companies make when it comes to SEO is forgetting about the human element.

Search engines want to show people the most relevant results for their queries. That means search engines want you to create good content for the people, not for the bots.

Your primary SEO focus should be on creating quality content.

For this article, we’ve selected 5 tools that can help you achieve SEO Nirvana.

1. SEMrush – One of the Mightiest Marketing Tools

Before you start optimizing your website, you have to choose what to optimize it for. That means a lot of research on keywords and domains.

The goal is to find the most common search queries your target audience makes and learn who your competitors are, and what their strategy is. Once you know the lay of the land, it will be easier for you to start gaining organic traffic.

The problem is that understanding traffic isn’t as easy as it may seem at first. You’ve got to factor in ads, pay-per-click, social media shares and loads of other things.

And you’ll need powerful marketing tools to measure all that. Well, that’s something SEMrush can help you with. They create reports with all the little details you didn’t even know you needed.

Let’s go over these details:

• Organic reach – Before you do anything, you need to identify some good keywords. If you sell furniture, some relevant keywords could be “custom cupboards” or “folding chairs.” If you operate in New York, add that into the mix as well. New Yorkers who are looking for furniture items are more likely to search for “folding chairs new york” than for “furniture”.

• Analytics – insights into the advertising strategies of your competitors.

• Domain comparison – the Domain vs. Domain feature gathers ‘competitive intelligence’ data regarding up to five competing domains performance. You’ll see what keywords fare the best or worst. Then you can select low-competition keywords that you can use.

2. SEO PowerSuite

When optimizing a website, you don’t get to take shortcuts. It takes time and patience to achieve desired results.

By knowing that, you could be quite reluctant when a marketing tool promises to get “all the job done.”

Well, SEO PowerSuite integrates 4 SEO tools as an across-the-board mega pack that gets all the SEO job done.

So what are these four features for SEO excellence?

• Rank Tracker – as the name says, you get rank tracking for your site, as well as for your competitors’. Plus keyword research with 17 tools.

• Seo SpyGlass – enables you to check your backlink profile, keep up with Google’s algorithm changes and discover the most effective link building patterns.

• WebSite Auditor – broken links reports, on-site optimization and crawl statistics for better site indexing.

• Link Assistant – manages all backlink data and digs for relevant link opportunities.

Sounds too good to be true?

SEO PowerSuite is indeed a complete solution for a swift SEO performance.

What makes it so appealing to users is its easy-to-use and straightforward interface.

3. Screaming Frog

If you heard about Search Engine Optimization, you’ve sure bumped into terms like ‘bots’ and ‘crawlers.’ These are the small scanners that crawl your website and deliver data reports to a search engine. This is how Google indexes websites and decides how high a page will be ranked.

That being said, it would be great if you owned a tool that made things easier, right? This is where Screaming Frog’s free SEO Spider Tool comes in. It helps to fetch the following:

• Server/link errors
• Status of internal and external links
• Link security status
• Redirects
• Blocked URLs
• Page title issues
• Meta-data
• Page response time

And these are just a few. The spider harvests all information necessary to create an XML Sitemap. This is a file that hierarchically outlines all links on your website so as to help bots crawl it more efficiently. That will reflect on your SEO metrics as well.

Once your page is made more accessible to crawlers, they will prioritize it and thus place it higher on the rankings.

4. Open Site Explorer

Open Site Explorer is the tool you need if you want to find out everything about links on your website or link building opportunities, both of which are important for SEO.

Just type in the URL of your website (or any other website for that matter), click on the “search” button, and, in a matter of seconds, you’ll discover plenty of insights about the website.

Here are the tool’s main sections:

• Inbound links
• Just-Discovered
• Top Pages
• Linking Domains
• Anchor Text
• Compare Link Metrics
• Link Opportunities
• Advanced Reports

5. MozBar

Kristina Kledzik, the SEO Manager at Rover.com, says that MozBar has been a critical part of her link building strategies and competition analysis for the last 5 years.

You know that you can’t have SEO without link building.

This nifty extension (as they call it) for Chrome and Firefox will show you the page authority and domain authority of every page you’re on. With the PRO version, you’re able to see the DA and PA for every website in Google search results.

Here’s the full list of features:

• Custom Searches
• Metrics That Matter
• Social Metrics
• Data Export
• Page Overlay
• On-Page Highlighter

Do You Fancy a Scenario Where SEO Is Done Seamlessly?

We’re sure you do. But for that to happen, you need to find the right tools. The five we outlined in this article are all free to try, until you figure out which ones are the most rank-boosting for your platform.

And remember! It takes a whole lot of patience to find the winning formula for SEO greatness.

Actually, you can start by trying out our own Squirrly SEO Plugin.

Feel free to leave us your questions in the comment section or share this article if you found it to be useful.

Most of the time, when I find the website of a new company, I want to see whether they have a blog or not. I don’t know if this is a new habit now that I’m interested in content marketing (more than others maybe), but it’s like a reflex. For me, a blog is an important part of establishing a relationship with your clients/customers. So why not invest in buying articles?

Is Buying Articles a Good Idea?

Yes, it is, and I will tell you why. Let’s say that you started a startup, and, as a CEO, you don’t have that much time on your side to run a blog for your business as well. At the same time, you still want to provide value to your potential customers, and show them that you care about them, and that you are willing to teach them something new every day. If you decide to buy articles, you will save time, and you will also have the certainty that someone passionate will do an amazing job at creating valuable content for your blog.

Photo Credits: Paul L Dineen‘s Flickr

On the other hand, if you’ve been running a business for a while now, and you’ve never thought about buying articles, then this can be the special ingredient that can differentiate your business from all the similar ones out there.

Buying content is the best thing you can do to maximize the engagement between you and your customers, bringing them value, making them worth their while, and establishing a long term relationship.

Content has the potential of converting a visitor into a customer

As I was saying, if I see that a company has a blog on which it publishes content constantly, I will definitely browse through their articles, and see whether they can provide me any value, or if I there’s something I can learn from them. They can still have a blog on which they publish regularly, but the content doesn’t necessarily have to be good. Either way, I can tell almost immediately if the company is worth my time or not. And you can, too.

Think about this for a moment. If the content is engaging, people will obviously spend more time on your company’s website. And if they do that, there will be higher chances that they’ll be interested in your products/services. And that’s what you ultimately want, right? To turn your visitors into customers.

Another important aspect about content is that it makes you an expert in your field. Even if you don’t have time to write your own content, there are still plenty of writers or agencies out there, happy to provide their content writing services.

Standing out with a blog that provides quality content

Providing content for your potential customers can be a decisive factor between you and the competition. Because today, time is passing so fast that we forget to just be, buying articles is the best thing you can do for your business, time-wise and money-wise.

Now tell us, what are your experiences with content writing services (if you have had any)? Would you be interested in them?

Today, it’s a silly thing not to have at least one social media account for your brand. Billions of users use social media every single day.

If you clicked on this article, then I’m going to assume that your business is on social media. Since I’m also a mind-reader, I know that you’re here because you want to find out more about social media giveaways.

Did you know that the top reason why people choose to follow brands on social media is for promotions and discounts?

Yes, I know, such a shocker! But don’t get this all wrong. People still want to find out the latest information about your product and services or contact you for customer service on social media.

Bearing that in mind, I want to go back in time a little bit.

I created my Facebook account in 2010. Back then, only a handful of big brands were on Facebook (I’m only talking about their presence on the Romanian market, not worldwide). What they did to acquire thousands of likes is they organized different contests and giveaways.

I participated in a couple of contests and even won some stuff (go me!). I almost never participate in social media contests, because they’re usually the ones where you have to like/share/comment. I’m not a fan of those. Those contests, however, were kind of interesting and creative. Even though they didn’t rely on the like and share method, they were still quite successful.

Now back to our days. 

Social media giveaways are used quite often as a strategy. Almost every big, medium and small company out there has organized one until one.

Let’s take a quick look to see why companies host giveaways on their social media profiles and what are their benefits.

Why Companies Organize Social Media Giveaways

• Exposure. Businesses that are just starting out or those that want to increase their following will do a giveaway so that more people will find out about them. It’s really easy to increase your exposure this way because people love free stuff, especially if it’s your products or services. They will act as a very attractive incentive in exchange for them following you on social media.

• Engagement. One problem with social media today is that people follow so many brands today that it’s hard to keep up with them and react to what they post. I actually find myself guilty of this. I scroll on my Facebook feed; I read certain posts, but then, even if I liked a post or thought it was funny, I only react in my mind. Sounds weird, but many of you are probably doing the same thing. A giveaway can entice people to engage again with a certain brand. After all, the point of being on social media is opening a dialogue and not a monolog.

• Understanding the audience. By asking a simple question for the giveaway, you can find out so many things about the people that follow your company on social media. It can be anything from their habits when it comes to your products, or what type of services they use most often from the ones you provide. The possibilities are endless here. It’s just a matter of figuring out what kind of information would be useful to you.

• Free content. I’ve seen many creative giveaways out there, many of which were harnessing the power of user-generated content. Here’s how this works. If you sell cereal, you can ask your followers to submit a picture with their breakfast for a chance to win a yearly supply of your products. The guideline or the theme for the pictures can be to contain cereal. Just like that, you’ll have plenty of images for your upcoming posts that you can use (with the users’ approval, of course).

• Grow your email list. Your weekly or monthly newsletter may be fascinating, but it doesn’t matter if no one is reading it. Email marketing is still, until this day, the most successful communication channel. To get the most out of it, you need a big email list. By running a giveaway and asking the participants to enter by simply entering their name and email address, you got this problem solved. However, don’t use this opportunity to spam them.

• Promote a new product/service. This is one of the best ways to promote a new product or service. It is, of course, if it’s also the prize for the giveaway. Considering it is, people will be excited to be the first to try out your new stuff, and it will also create a lot of buzz.

These are the main reasons why companies do social media giveaways and also why you should too.

Next, we’ll discuss every step you need to consider when organizing a giveaway on social media.

Implementing a social media giveaway 101

1. Why are you doing it? 

Do you want to gain more followers, do you want more engagement, or to obtain email addresses? Whatever the case may be, you need to address this question before you start planning anything.

Why? Because the answer to this question will determine the way, you create the strategy behind the giveaway.

2. Determine the type of giveaway

There are two types you can do:

• A contest. The winner will be chosen based on criteria that were established beforehand. If you want to organize a contest, then you’ll have to figure out if you want to have a jury or if it’s going to be you the one to select the winner. Either way, the person or the group of individuals that get to make this call have to be experts in the particular industry.

• A sweepstake. This is where the winners will be randomly selected with a tool like random.org. No one can interfere with the results. It’s just pure luck.

3. Where you’ll run it? 

Even though you’ll promote the giveaway basically on all your channels, you still have to decide what is the main channel for running it. It can be Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. These are the most popular social media channels for giveaways.

The choice for the platform will be connected to the objectives you set in the first place. For example, if your goal is to increase your Instagram followers, then that is where you will run the giveaway.

4. What’s the prize?

Whatever you do, please don’t give away an iPad or an iPhone, unless you’re Apple. Assuming the social media team from Apple is not reading this post, I will give you some tips when it comes to choosing the prize(s) for the giveaway.

First of all, the prize has to be relatable to the profile of your company and your audience. Let’s say that you’re a skincare company. Depending on what is your objective, you can give away:

• The new products you’re launching
• A goodie bag that contains products worth $1,000
• A facial treatment at a luxury SPA
• Product supplies for an entire year

And the list can go on and on. If you have a bigger budget, you can, of course, have a more impressive prize, such as a trip to a dreamy destination.

5. Make it simple to enter

That being said, make sure that you explain very clearly for everyone how they can enter and what they need to do. For example, if they have to submit a photo, list every step they need to complete.

If it’s the case, create an entry form that will require for the participants to enter as little information as possible. Don’t ask for unnecessary information, like address or occupation, unless you need it for the giveaway.

Remember: even if the prize is extremely attractive, people may not be as eager to enter if the entering process looks like too much trouble.

6. Decide how long it will last

When you’re going to announce your giveaway, specify very clearly how long it will last.

If it’s a big giveaway, it’s usually recommended to run it for approximately four weeks. If it’s longer than that, then people will forget about it. You can make it shorter as well. However, try to run it for at least two weeks.

7. The concept

For the giveaway to make sense to your audience and other people as well, it’s critical to link it to a future event. For example, it can be a back to school themed one, a giveaway for Thanksgiving, Halloween, or Christmas.

The idea has to be very clear and concise, and the content you’ll create around it have to make the connection to the event you’ll link it to.

8. Rules

No one likes rules, but we have to respect them.

Every social media platform has its set of rules, so after you’ve decided where to run the giveaway, make sure to read and apply them.

Also, when you announce it, you’ll have to display the rules on social media. Even though not many people will read them, it’s necessary for legal purposes. If you have the possibility, I would recommend asking an attorney to help you with this.

If you want to find out more about this topic, here’s an excellent article that was written by Sara Hawkins from SocialMedia Examiner.

9. Promotion

This is the most important step for your giveaway. You now what they say: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it actually make a sound?

That’s how it is with social media giveaways. Don’t keep it a secret. After all, you want as many people as possible to participate in it, right?

The first step is to use all of your communication channels to get the word out. This means email lists, all of your social media channels, website (pop-ups, blog), plus others that would greatly depend on the type of business you’re running.

It can be anything from in-app notifications to messages on mobile phones. Make a list with every channel you use, so that you don’t forget anything. Then, the next step is to create content for all of them. Articles, posts, videos, infographics, images – the wider the variety, the better.

It’s not enough to post the message announcing the giveaway only once. Remind people about it every single day, but don’t be spammy about it. Only one message per day will do the trick and even once every couple of days.

Promoting the giveaway on your communication channels is not enough, however.

You need to use influencers, partners, and sponsors for this. The chances are that if people see your giveaway being shared by someone else, they will be more likely to enter. Brand advocates are also a great fit for your promotion activities.

The last idea for promoting your giveaway is to submit it to giveaway sites. Here are the best ones:

• SweepStakes Lover

• Infinite Sweeps (for Canada and US giveaways)

• Hypersweep

• Win Prizes Online

• I Love Giveaways

• Contest Giveaways

• InTouch

• Contests by About.com

These websites have hundreds of thousands of visitors every single day, so the visibility for your giveaway will be maximum.

10. Track and analyze

Don’t wait until the giveaway is over to track and analyze what has happened during that period.

Make a habit of tracking the results every five days or so. That way, if you don’t have that many entries or if people don’t seem that interested in your giveaway, you will be able to analyze what’s wrong and adjust it.

At the end of the giveaway, you’ll also need to assess the results to see whether organizing it was worth it or not.

11. Don’t forget about the participants that didn’t win 

If you want to make your giveaway extra special, you can surprise all of your participants with something they wouldn’t expect. After the contest is over and the winner has been announced, you can contact the other participants, thank them for entering and offering them a discount for your products/services.

If you don’t want this to be a surprise, you can announce it for the giveaway. That way, every participant will now that even if they don’t win the big prize, they still get something.

Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away Now

(For some reason, Red Hot Chilli Peppers’s song Give It Away has popped into my mind.)

I’m pretty sure that if I scroll for a few minutes on my Facebook feed, I will find at least one post about a giveaway that’s happening right now.

Now multiply this by the number of social media channels that exist nowadays. You’ll see that social media giveaways have become hugely popular because they actually bring results.

You can see results as well if you decide to implement a giveaway. I do hope that the steps I presented above will help you get most of it.

If you have further questions on this topic, feel free to post them in the comment section below. And if you decide indeed to run a giveaway on social media, I look forward to hearing from you about the results you’ve got.

Consumers are constantly connected to technology through different channels. They open emails in the morning, browse through Facebook in their spare time or use their desktop to find a new t-shirt.

This all-day, anywhere access to the online world has shaped the way consumers shop online. Someone can find an interesting store on social media and then go to make a purchase after opening a sale email.

The cross-device, cross-channel shopping trend is pushing eCommerce businesses to have a ubiquitous presence online; however, many businesses are failing to do one of the most important things: integration.

By properly combining all online presence, businesses can get a more cohesive message and overall brand image that can strengthen their appeal to the public.

Often overlooked as a combination, social media and email marketing play a key role in overall marketing integration. Together, these channels can help you target and nurture potential customers throughout their buying journey.

In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of combining social media and email marketing to strengthen your eCommerce marketing.

Use Your Email List to Nurture Potential Customers on Social Media

To get the most of this strategy, it’s necessary to think about the customer journey. You probably have a decent list of emails in your database, but all of those emails are not at the same stage in their customer journey.

Some of them may be recurring customers, others might have signed up for a newsletter but have never bought any products, or maybe other contacts haven’t purchased in a while.

Knowing what stage your contacts are in will allow you to segment your list and tailor your message accordingly. The idea is to target these segmented lists on social media with specific ads according to the stage that they are in.

For example, let’s say that John hasn’t made a purchase in a couple of months. We can encourage him to come back to make a purchase by showing him an ad on Facebook that says something like: “Haven’t heard from you in a while—come back and get 15% off”! At the same time, we can send him an email that has a different copy but the same idea.

This very targeted social media and email combination creates a seamless and powerful marketing strategy. You get to reach the same customer multiple times, through different platforms, which increases your chances of conversion. To execute this tactic, you need to go to Facebook and create a Custom Audience. Start at your ads manager and click on “Audiences”:

Then, click on Create Audience> Custom Audience

Select Customer File and upload your contacts or import them from MailChimp.

Do the same thing for each of your segments and name the audience accordingly. In addition, experiment with Lookalike Audiences to increase your reach. You can implement a similar process for Twitter. Once your campaigns are set up, integrate all your efforts with Springbot, a marketing platform used to easily measure all your efforts in one place.

Capture Your Followers’ Emails

At this point, you should have a better idea of why social media and email can power up your marketing efforts, but let’s dive a little further. As we’ve mentioned earlier, it’s easy to grab an email list of contacts and retarget them on social media, but what about the other way around?

Unfortunately, no major social media channel offers a way to download followers’ information, so you’ll have to get it in a conventional manner. Getting your followers’ emails will allow you to increase your email database to send promotional and informational emails to increase conversions or keep your current customers engaged.

One of the things you can do capture your followers’ emails is to add a signup tab on your Facebook page. This is a designated area to encourage your Facebook followers to sign up for your newsletter.

Many newsletter platforms such as MailChimp offer an easy-to-use integration so you can get your signup tab done quickly. The tab looks like the one below:

Preferably, add an incentive to encourage your followers to sign up to your newsletter. Discounts or special promotions work really well. Whatever incentive you use, make sure you have an automated email set up to welcome new subscribers.

Get Your Email Contacts to Engage with Your Brand on Social Media

Taking a list of email contacts and uploading it to social media is easy, but it’s not always effective. Not all your email subscribers will use the same email they subscribed to your newsletter to log in for social media.

Therefore, it’s always a good idea to cross-promote your social media in all your emails to make sure your subscribers are also following you on social media.

This cross-promotion can be done in multiple ways. The easiest one is to add social media links to all your emails. These links shouldn’t be buried at the bottom of your email; they should be prominent at the top of all your newsletters.

Another way to encourage your subscribers to follow your brand on social media is to provide an incentive for following. For example, offer a 15% off discount to all email subscribers that also follow you on social media.

As technology advances, we can only expect customer behaviors to change as well. Shopping is becoming faster and simpler, which is setting a standard in the eCommerce industry.

As smart business owners, we have to stay on the lookout for new trends in our industry and be flexible enough to make enhancements in our processes as necessary. Always remember to keep a cohesive and seamless shopping experience by integrating all of your marketing efforts properly.

Let us know in the comment section below how you connect the email and social media presence of your brand.