Archives for August 2015
How to Measure the Success of Your Mobile App
Mobile applications are becoming the dominant source for digital interaction. App usage comprises 52 percent of digital media engagement, and four out of five minutes spent on a smartphone are spent using apps.
With the rapid growth of mobile apps, you need to be able to evaluate how well your app stands out among competitors. Quantifying success can help both with internal project planning and attracting advertisers and investors.
Below are a few metrics to measure your mobile app success.
Downloads
The number of downloads lets you know a user chose to download your app over another because it addressed a need and because it looked appealing. While a high number of downloads indicates popularity, it can be a misleading metric, which is why it is important to evaluate other factors.
Active users
If thousands of users download your app, but rarely use it, it’s not successful. Active users visit your app regularly and engage with it while there. Metrics that evaluate active users include:
• Number of regular users: These users not only open the app regularly, they also engage with its features. For example, uploading content and commenting on content.
• Number of items engaged with: Active and engaged users navigate to multiple features or pieces of individual content within an app. The level of consumption can indicate success, depending on the nature of the app.
• Average time spent in the app: Even if there isn’t much for users to explore within the app, the amount of time spent there can indicate engagement. Again this depends on the specific app, as some may meet the user’s need very quickly, like a calendar.
Premium content purchases
If your app offers in-app purchases, metrics on dollars spent, number of users spending, and number purchases made. Some highly addictive games encourage users to make in-app purchases to help them advance levels. If people are willing to continue giving you money for your app, that’s a strong indicator of a popular product.
Retention
Some users may be so inactive they eventually delete your app – or worse, hated it immediately. Reasons may vary depending on the type of app, but users do expect consistent updates, both to fix any technical problems and to keep content new and interesting.
Create goals for your app tailored to meet these metrics, and continually evaluate. X number of downloads in x amount of time. Keep these metrics in mind as you continue building your app. How do you imagine users engaging with your app? What does success look like?
Copyright 2015 Viral Solutions LLC
by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer
We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves – so business can be fun again.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner, an Infusionsoft Certified Consultant, a Google Partner – Certified in AdWords and a Mobit Certified Partner.
The Latest Trends in Search Engine Optimization
Search engines are always updating their algorithms, requiring companies to continually revise their online content for optimal discovery. Keep these new standards in mind when evaluating your digital content marketing.
1) Social engagement optimization
Social media is gaining increasing weight in searches, with social media accounts and posts now populating the top results. Search engine optimization is evolving into social engagement optimization, with marketers applying SEO principles to social media to encourage engagement with and mentions by followers. Google favors unique content and natural discovery, giving social media the power to determine what’s relevant based on user mentions.
2) Mobile-friendly web design
Google made a splash in 2014 when they announced they would prioritize websites with mobile sites in their search results. By that time web browsing had reached a mobile tipping point: more people now use their smartphones and tablets for web browsing than tablets. Google rewards sites that will help users find what they need; a site that doesn’t work on mobile is no longer useful. Your website should feature responsive web design, which allows the site to adapt to multiple screen sizes, to improve user experience.
3) Implied links and brand mentions
In the past, Google prioritized websites that were linked to from pages outside the website. The idea was that if a website has many websites linking to it, it must be important. Spammers quickly
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took advantage of the algorithm and created pages simply to post links and build traffic.
To combat this, Google is placing more weight on implied links, which mention a brand or website without actually linking to the page. Implied links rely on a user seeing your brand mention and then searching for your site. Social media can encourage this by increasing brand mentions through posts and interactions. Express links are still valuable, but companies should be strategic about how and where they plug their site.
4) Semantic search
Search engines have improved to understand more than the literal search terms by attempting to understand user intent and context. Semantic search considers similar words, phrases and questions as well as user location and other contextual information. Long tail keywords – three to four word phrases – can help you with semantic search by establishing context. These very specific tags tell the search engine how to rank your site when compared to similar keywords.
Ultimately, search engines want the best results for the user to appear organically, so digital content marketers need to understand how to make their site more easily discoverable by creating high quality and unique content. SEO is becoming increasingly nuanced and strategic, rewarding digital content with a human element.
Copyright 2015 Viral Solutions LLC
by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer
We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves – so business can be fun again.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner, an Infusionsoft Certified Consultant, a Google Partner – Certified in AdWords and a Mobit Certified Partner.
What Makes Visual Content So Important in Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing bombards web users daily, requiring them to constantly evaluate which messages they want to hear. One way to make your company stand out is by adding visual content to your messaging. Visual content allows you to spread your message quickly and creatively, making it more likely to capture a potential customer’s attention.
Visual content captures attention
Adding visual content to messaging makes it more likely to capture the user’s attention. This is especially key in social media, where users view numerous messages each session. Users are much more likely to click on Facebook, Twitter and blog posts that feature an appealing image. Graphics are also key for encouraging users to post links to your site via Pinterest.
Visual content’s success is tied to how the brain processes visuals. While written content conveys the message and can creatively engage readers, the brain processes visual information
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exponentially faster. A popular solution is the info-graphic, which allows the user to comprehend a large amount of information quickly in a visually pleasing format.
Attention leads to higher engagement
Because users are able to grasp information more quickly, they will be more inclined to continue engaging with your site. A wall of text detailing why someone wants to buy your product is much less appealing – and thus less likely to be processed – than a sharp info-graphic detailing why the potential customer needs your product.
Visual content can also boost your rankings in search results. Sometimes search results are listed with an image, making them 60% more likely to be clicked. Including keywords aimed towards SEO in an image’s alt text helps to make them more discoverable. Additionally, search engines typically favor websites that features many different types of content.
Sometimes visual content is as simple as a picture of the product you’re selling. A high-quality image allows the user to gain a better understanding of the product and feel confident about purchasing it. Customers are more likely to purchase items with a picture than without, especially for higher priced items. A great picture of the product posted on other platforms may drive viewers to your site looking for the item.
Visual content helps tell a story and engage users much faster than text. Incorporate visual content into your marketing plan to build a strong multimedia digital campaign.
Copyright 2015 Viral Solutions LLC
by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer
We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves – so business can be fun again.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner, an Infusionsoft Certified Consultant, a Google Partner – Certified in AdWords and a Mobit Certified Partner.
Google and Twitter are Now Partners. What Does This Mean for Marketers?
In February, Google and Twitter reached an agreement that would give Google complete access to Twitter’s stream of posts. While the details were not ever officially released about how Google planned to use Twitter’s content, most people were able to connect the dots pretty easily. The idea seems to be that Google will include tweets in search engine result pages to provide real-time search results, but we can’t be certain yet.
So what can marketers do to prepare for this huge partnership between two of the biggest platforms, Google and Twitter, for digital marketing when we aren’t even sure what that partnership entails yet?
Here are a few tips:
Our small business experts can consult or coach on a wide variety of important business topics, including sales optimization and management, sales training, automated relationship marketing, eMarketing, strategic planning and much more. Our thought process is very simple. First we seek to understand, before we seek to be understood. When the team at Viral Solutions brings their minds to your business, you are getting all of our collective experiences. We will not sugar coat the reasons behind our input. We will not withhold our best solutions. We will not limit our implementation strategies. We will tell you exactly how we see it. The results you experience will be the sum of your strategy, your defined target audience, your commitment to serve your customer and our process of delivery. That means we are an integral part of your team!
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• Develop a thorough understanding of social search. Social media and search engines are slowly merging. Social media platforms have already built some pretty detailed search engines into them. Facebook search, for example, can produce extremely focused results with its advanced search form. Twitter search even allows you to focus results by whether the tweets contained positive or negative emotions. Google search returns posts from Google+. Understanding how search works will help brands to improve the visibility of their social media posts and profiles.
• Learn how to use hashtags more effectively. At some point, it’s very likely hashtags will play a major role in driving search queries and even be used in Google searches, simply because of how popular they are on social media networks. Therefore, it’s important for your bland to employ an effective hashtag strategy, whether it’s creating your own hashtags or using other popular trending tags.
• Post about trending topics. With Google and Twitter partnering up, it’s likely that trending topics will play a role in Google searches. Google already gives a boost to newsworthy content, but Twitter’s trending topics could essentially act as super-charged keywords in searches.
• Follow the news. Stay up to date with the news about how Google and Twitter are joining forces, and as the details of the deal become clearer, be prepared to read and adapt.
In the end, this deal has a lot of potential benefits for digital marketers. Keep placing an emphasis on learning the best ways to leverage both social and search engine marketing, and you’ll be prepared for what’s to come.
Copyright 2015 Viral Solutions LLC
by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer
We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves – so business can be fun again.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner, an Infusionsoft Certified Consultant, a Google Partner – Certified in AdWords and a Mobit Certified Partner.
The Importance of Online Reviews for Local Businesses
When you search for your small business online, which websites are listed in the results? Your website is probably listed first, but what other sites appear? Odds are its social media sites and online review sites, and all are hosting conversations about your business in the form of online reviews.
Understanding online reviews can allow you to monitor the conversation about your local business and engage with customers outside of your store.
Navigating the online review landscape
Google allows businesses to create Google+ pages featuring basic information, like address and website. Users are able to provide ratings and feedback that appear prominently in search results, even when searching Maps.
Yelp strives for honest reviews and discourages fake posts and soliciting reviews or edits. With 83 million unique mobile users, Yelp targets customers in their 20s-30s.
There may be other specialized review sites depending on your industry. For example, TripAdvisor is focused on leisure activities. Angie’s List is a paid subscription site featuring user reviews of local services, like plumbing and health care.
Just because you never set up these pages doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Most review sites provide a link for businesses to claim their page.
Interacting with reviewers
Hopefully your great service and products have already earned you rave reviews online. If you’re confident in your business’s customer service, it’s appropriate to ask customers to post a review online. Yelp discourages this, especially if the user will receive a reward, but a polite request posted in your store could help build your online reviews.
Review sites allow you to interact with customers like you would on social media, and building that community through reviews is just as important. Whether good or bad, these reviewers took the time to offer feedback on your business, and you can continue building that relationship by thanking them for their input.
If you see a negative review, address it. Respond as if the customer were in your store. Don’t be defensive or hostile, and don’t bribe them to edit the review. Acknowledge the experience with understanding, thank them for their feedback, and invite them back to see how you can improve.
Online reviews are increasingly becoming the first impression your business has on potential customers. Remain engaged in the conversation about your business across multiple sites to build a loyal community.
Copyright 2015 Viral Solutions LLC