Finally! I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while about how to brand yourself online as it’s a constant thought that occurs for me.

How Do You Begin Branding Yourself Online?

It’s been a pretty big issue for me over the last few months since starting up this blog/website. At first, I kept asking myself “Am I doing this right?”, “Am I making the right decisions?”, “Am I making an impression?”.

That last question is probably the biggest and most crucial point of my challenges of personal branding. What I mean is; for any unknown, but ambitious, person in any industry (but internet marketing especially), we all just want to be noticed and acknowledged. That’s what it all boils down to right? Continue reading “Personal Branding Tips featuring Jon Cooper” »

Infographics. Cool and interesting information displayed in a funky graphical way, that when done well are an awesome addition to a content campaign.

You might argue that they’re becoming too saturated and overused. Personally I think they’re awesome, but that might be because I’m from the UK and don’t get as much (or as quickly) as you guys so across the ocean. Maybe there’s too many released in the Internet Marketing community, that’s possible.

So what next?

I’ve never done this before, but I’m coining a term. (How exciting!)

“Intergraphics”

Intergraphics: An interactive graphical representation of information of data / Interactive Infographics

I want you to think about the benefits of an infographic for your site visitors:

• A nice and simple way to display information
• Increased user retention of information
• Engaging content
• Highly Share-able and Link-able

That’s just a few key benefits. But we can definitely move on from that.

Taking What You’ve Got And Making It Better

By making an Infographic more interactive, you take something already pretty awesome and make it more awesome. Isn’t that what we’re trying to do every day?

Why is it more awesome? Well firstly, take a look at some of these examples I’ve put below.

The Use Of Water by Good.is

TheFutureOfCarSharing.com

The World at 7 Billion by BBC

Now, to be totally honest I’m not interested at all in those subjects (maybe the 7 billion thing but anyway) but those Intergraphics kept me interested in that page. I’ve now linked to those when I normally wouldn’t have because they’re different and more interesting than a static image and I even learnt the information that was within them during the process.

So from a topic I totally wasn’t interested in, because it was funky, moving and awesome in a different way, they actually hooked me and kept me on the page… something they wouldn’t have done with an infographic.

Conclusion

Infographics : Getting saturated, static images, limited amount of creativity (because it is just a static image).

Intergraphics : Interactive, increases average time on page, increases page interest, higher levels of social engagement and linking, unlimited creativity.

I’ll be keeping an eye out for more of these, but if anyone is interested in a study of Infographics vs Intergraphics then get in touch with me, I’d love to try that out and I’m sure there’s some awesome data to back me up.

What do you all think? Will you be trying out an Intergraphic in your next content push? Do you think it’s just a fad that will never surpass Infographics? Leave a comment or tweet me and let me know your thoughts!

I was sifting through a client’s analytics a few days ago and saw an usually large bump of traffic finding their site via Google Search. It was segmented as a referral source rather than an Organic search and I knew that meant it could only have been from image traffic.

A little click or two more confirmed that indeed this lovely hump of traffic was from Google Image Search. Look at the image below, see? Lovely.

Almost all of those huge peaks are attributable to image search. Compared to heavy duty website’s it’s not, but for a 2 month old blog with 4 subscribers that’s a big number!

So why did this happen and how did they find me?

The post that drove all of this traffic was a post about doors and entrances (cooler than it sounds I promise!). There was an attached few images and most importantly, an image of “The Tardis” (if you don’t know what this is, please watch Dr. Who more often).

Right now, I’m going to hold my hands up – when I saved this image, I had my blogging and organisational hat on, rather than my SEO hat on – so I saved the image as “Dr. Who’s Tardis”. So the file name was relevant to both “Dr. Who” and “(The) Tardis”.

I type away, writing my awesome piece about Doors (by the way, I could now moonlight as a Doors salesman. Get involved with the client’s products! A post for another day…) and imported the file to make my text piece look pretty. Went through the standard WordPress based image options and added the Alt Tag as “The Tardis”.

A Little Extra

So that’s all fairly standard practice when uploading an image right? Like since 2002. Name the image on theme and write the Alt Tag on theme. Cool. So why the sudden sharp rise and fall?

Social Links. Last week, Phillip Petrescu wrote this post on SEOmoz about the impact of Authoritative Links, Mentions and Shares on Rankings (a great post which you should read after this one). He talks about Social Links from authorities giving you a rise and fall in rankings in a reasonably short term.

So, that’s what has happened with this image too. This was re-pinned on Pinterest in the 20′s of times (a couple by some bigger profiles), the post was shared and retweeted by some industry leaders, a few other social links and was used on a few Dr. Who fan forums. What magician shares the ultimate secrets right?

Conclusion

Whilst Social Links do have a significant rise and fall effect on post/page rankings, they seem to have a similar effect on images and image search. There were a short burst of social links, shares, bookmarks etc. which after a short delay encourage a huge spike in traffic, disappearing again a few days later. The exact pattern you’d see if your blog post went through the same social promotions.

I will follow this up with more conclusive data on social image link building, but for now, this looks a cool way to reach new traffic.

If you’ve had a similar situation with image optimisation and linking – please leave me a comment or share it with me below!

Yes, your business is very serious and is the difference between having a nice meal with your family or not eating that night.

Yes, that means you need to sell that extra 10% of your product on your website.

Yes, to achieve that 10%, you signed a £20,000 contract to “Blue Chip Landing Page Solutions Conversions Experts Corporation”

No, that doesn’t mean you need to be absolutely dead serious about absolutely everything on your site, marketing channels and all of your tweets.

Okay, this might not apply to every industry, it might not even apply to most industries, but I really like companies that can say something funny or awesome or not make me feel like I have to buy from them whilst wearing a £600 suit.

Comfort

Make me feel comfortable on your site and I’m much more likely to convert, as are a lot of other people. If I feel like I’m in my comfort zone, the website makes me smile, feel good about myself, look awesome or make me open my mouth like a cartoon then I’m likely to feel more positive about your brand and buying products from your site.

Most of this can be achieved with the right language when trying to push users towards a conversion (**Usability**), with the right language people will feel more relaxed and buy into the ethos of your business more. If they agree with/like your business then they’ve got much more chance of liking your products and continuing to like them in the long term. So you win.

Want some inspiration? Some of my favourite businesses that do this are page.ly, SEOMoz and WP Engine. Check out some of their language they use. Cool.

If you’re having trouble with your conversion rate or returning customers, try it out. Track your audience, see what kind of language they use and what the common age demographic is. If it’s a young or modern audience try and relax on your site content.

Anyone who does this, please share the results with me because I’d love to see your results and share your success using this method.

So, I’ve put together my first industry survey on Survey Monkey! The study is based on new business and sales within a digital marketing agency.

My theory is:

“ The Digital Agencies with the highest success rate, will have a specific sales team in place and the creative/executive/consultancy team will have only have a small input on new business”

If you could all take 2 minutes to fill out the below survey, I will post the results at the end of June. Thanks for all your help!