But the new LinkedIn Portfolio feature gives individuals a way to let their messages linger on the site — and attach those messages to their own identities.

That opens up all kinds of creative business possibilities, especially for smart content marketers.

What changed

For a while now, any LinkedIn individual member could share a link to an item directly to the LinkedIn Activity stream. For example, I use IFTTT to publish all new Raven blog posts written by me to the LinkedIn Activity stream.

You can always share a link to the Activity stream manually, at any time, like this – even posting to an associated Twitter account at the same time:

But those Activity stream posts — regardless of source — disappear quickly. Companies could post “sticky” content, but if you were a solo entrepreneur or consultant or freelancer without a company LinkedIn profile, you were out of luck at getting your message to stick around. Plus, individual Activity stream posts rarely have much engagement unless you are a major influencer in your industry or among your peers. A few likes here and there. Maybe a comment, if you’re lucky.

There was an option to upload what LinkedIn called “Work Samples” directly to your profile, but the method was clunky. More to the point, no one used it.

So LinkedIn made some changes, rebranded Work Samples and released LinkedIn Portfolio. (I’m not sure when this became “official.” I got an email about it today.)

Basically, LinkedIn has created a way for individuals to post certain types of content to their profiles — permanently and near instantly.

How it works

It’s as simple as adding a link or uploading a file. Already created a portfolio on popular sites such as SlideShare and Behance? No problem. Just add a link from any of the long list of supported websites to your LinkedIn profile.

You can add links or upload files to your Background summary section at the top of your profile.

You can also add links or upload files to individual jobs.

It looks something like this.

In this case, I added three links (2 SlideShare presentations, 1 Vimeo video) and uploaded two PDFs. Want to rearrange the order of the content? No problem. Just drag and drop the boxes where you want them, once they’re posted.

Accidentally associated a piece of content with the wrong job? No problem. Just click the pencil icon (a.k.a. the edit button) and use the drop-down menu to move it to the right job.

Bingo. Your content, associated with your name, indefinitely.

Why this is great for content marketers

If you’re thinking this is only useful for people trying to enhance their LinkedIn resumes or (gah!) personal brands, consider this:

1. Portfolio items can be good lead generation tools. Let’s say that you’re a home inspector. Let’s say that you offer photos and PDFs to clients as a finished product. Upload an example to your LinkedIn profile Summary, and folks who find you there can see your work right away. Make sure you include your contact information in your example — which a potential customer might download — as well as your LinkedIn profile.
   
   
2. Portfolio items can be a new type of content to clients. Let’s say that a home inspector doesn’t have, want or need a blog. And his website is optimized and needs minimal upkeep. You could pitch LinkedIn portfolio friendly content to him. Think infographics, photo slideshows of his work, etc. The more visual, the better.
3. Portfolio items could be a better place for conversation than the Activity stream. Click on any portfolio item to view it. If you have used Google+ for images lately, this view will look familiar. To the left is the content. To the right is a place to chat about it. Start talking, and people may get used to engaging with you there. You can clarify points from a PowerPoint presentation, for example.
   
   

4. Portfolio items are editable. As in, you can highlight content that’s performing well, delete unpopular content and add your latest work. This means that you can keep your content fresh. Compelling. Optimized for performance. You can even test headlines and see if that makes a difference.

Those are four examples. What else?

What’s missing

Of all the types of content that LinkedIn now supports for individual profiles, written blog content isn’t one of them. Here’s what LinkedIn says about that:

Sure would be nice to have a list of links from recent articles I have written next to the job I’m writing them for. And then to be able to make certain article links permanent.

Until that happens, there’s IFFTT. And Google Authorship.

The post New LinkedIn Portfolios Make Content Marketing Part of Your Job appeared first on Raven Internet Marketing Tools.

The answer, for the most part, is: yes!

Raven pulls in data from tons of different data partners. Some support a certain set of countries and languages such as AdWords. Some partners, such as Scribe only focus on English. Other data partners, such as MajesticSEO don’t have country silos, but rather crawl as much of the web as they can.

So ultimately you’d want to sign up a trial account if you’re not already using us and see if our platform has the primary features you need. Only you’ll know if it’s a good overall fit.

Here are the two places I’d start, though:

1. Site > Settings

Go here to set your preferred language and country options. Tools such as Research > Central > AdWords will pull data based on your selection. You can select your preferences per website here. Also, you can select your preferred time zone and default font preferences here.

2. Reports > Wizard

In the Report Wizard, there is not a way to get rid of all the English text. For instance, English descriptive text will appear in many reporting modules. However, you can include your own text in any reporting module. Just click the summary link and get to it.

Additionally, if you have a report that will include non-English characters (say you’re doing some link building in Hebrew or Korean), then scroll to the bottom of your report and set the font to alternative. This will make sure Raven uses a broader character base to build the data in any tables in the report.

These are the places to explore first to see the versatility of Raven when it comes to non-English data.

We’re always looking for ways to improve Raven, so let us know what you’d like to see next!

The post Did You Know: Does Raven Support My Country? appeared first on Raven Internet Marketing Tools.

When I worked with really small businesses, high rankings almost always resulted in increased revenue for them.

But as I started working with larger businesses, I found that even when I did my job really well, some clients still didn’t see increased revenue.

Someone will blame you at some point

Some businesses hire great consultants and agencies, and they get great traffic and conversions – but they don’t get an increase sales.

Sometimes failure is a good thing, because it provides you with data that you can use in the future. I know others agree with this concept as well.

However, a reputable consultant or agency wants people to trust the services they provide, and they don’t want a complaint online (or elsewhere). So when you are blamed, then what?

None of us are perfect, but I have found some common issues at play when clients blame us for lack of sales. Let’s look at two examples of what SEO couldn’t fix – and the key to keeping your reputation intact when clients place the blame on you.

Client A

For Client A, a local attorney: Increased traffic by 87%, page 1 rankings for 8 practice areas, #1 in local and 50-60 contact forms filled out monthly.

After six months of seeing no increase in business, the attorney started putting pressure on us. When we inquired about the contact forms, we got no response from the client. He said we should just keep working.

Meanwhile, I and a co-worker had recommended this attorney to different friends. These friends called multiple times, and no one answered the phone or called them back. One used the content form three times and got no response. Hmmmm.

In the end, we discovered the office contacted the leads from the contact forms when they “had time.” #FAIL

Client B

Client B, who sells an expensive product: New website, increased traffic by 250%, rankings were sick, #1 in local, 30 lead forms monthly, 600-700 monthly calls on tracked number and 600 views monthly for “contact and directions.”

But sales were very low, and we were questioned about our skills.

Client B’s salespeople were trained to use a CRM for walk-ins, emails, phone calls, leads, etc. However, it was only being used about 100 times monthly when the receptionist reported she checked in an average of 500 people monthly.

Reviews from Google Local, Yelp and a few others showed people complaining about a lack of service, rude behavior or no returned calls.

It wasn’t that we weren’t doing our jobs – the salespeople weren’t doing theirs. The data from the phone tracking, CRM and reviews backed us up.

Measuring is more important for you than your client

In both examples, measurement saved our butts. 

Sometimes your clients need to look internally when they are not converting. With the right data to back you up, you can sit down with a client and delicately discuss the possibility that the lack of sales is perhaps an internal problem.

Now, this isn’t always a fun conversation to have, and there are times when no matter what a business hears or sees, it’s easier to blame a consultant or agency. But your data can back you when it comes to an in-person meeting, negative reviews or (God forbid) a possible lawsuit.

Before you start marketing in any way for your clients, you should have various ways to measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategies. When planning strategies, always plan forms of measurement too.

If you have the right data in hand, it’s proof that you have done your job.

Ranking isn’t everything

I put a lot of effort into helping clients understand how to market effectively – and that includes a conversation about rankings.

Ranking can bring people in, but it doesn’t sell for a business. You have to have the right website, content and information in place for the website visitor to increase the odds that they buy on-site, use a contact/lead form or pick up the phone.

When you, as a marketing service provider, work for more than just rankings, you are essentially backing up the quality of your work.

It’s good to explain to clients that ranking isn’t everything from the beginning. Fill them in on marketing strategies that really work, like targeting audiences and doing competitive research, and make sure they support them in-house.

Conversions aren’t just sales

There are many types of conversions, and they each can offer a different kind of measurement for you and the client.

Sometimes it’s enough to bring a visitor in from a certain location, or to get them to move on to a sales page, use a content form or pick up the phone.

In regards to social, we can’t always measure a direct conversion, but the data provides us with enough information to show influence. Tracking URLs from social is a great way to show that social is converting in one way or another.

Measurement is your best friend

For consultants and agencies, measurement is the best friend you can have. It will stand by you, back you up and it will prove that you have done your job.

Invest in the tools you need to measure your work, and make sure you put into place everything you will need to prove that your strategies did their job.

Photo Credit: !anaughty! via Compfight cc

The post When SEO Takes the Blame appeared first on Raven Internet Marketing Tools.

It can be a delicate balancing act keeping clients informed (but not overwhelmed) while making sure they set realistic expectations, learn enough about SEO to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing – and leave you enough time to get the results they’re looking for.

Not to mention proving your worth: your clients or boss pay you for services rendered, but we all know how hard that can be to quantify.

With Raven’s Site Performance tool, you can answer all these questions in a matter of seconds – and focus your time on doing great work, not reporting it.

Site Performance automatically collects and stores more than 30 key data points for any site – everything from SEO metrics like backlinks to social media performance indicators like shares and tweets to whether or not a site is listed on Yelp or Foursquare.

It’s easy to see your progress over time or compare your brand against a competitor or two.

Using Site Performance can be helpful in two major ways:

1) For clients: Generate a monthly status report for a boss or client to highlight the big wins of the reporting period.

2) For you: Get a quick view of how you’re performing on any given campaign. Sort by negative percentages, and get to work on those things that need improvement.

For clients: Status update report

Give clients just the information they need – no fuss, no muss.

Since Site Performance updates on its own, you can set up a monthly report to automatically send to a client and never touch it again.

Or you can generate a PDF report right from the tool with just positive or negative change over time. What client or boss wouldn’t like to see a report with green arrows all over it?

Raven’s customization menu makes it simple to focus on just the metrics a client wants to see – you can disable any metric that’s not relevant to them in the Settings section.

Even in the case of red arrows for KPIs that need improvement, Site Performance offers you an easy way to help a client understand the actions you plan to take and why.

For example, if you need to improve the number of backlinks for a site you’re working on, print out a Site Performance report and show it to them side-by-side with a competitor’s Backlink Explorer report, going over the most promising backlinks and your plan to get them. Site Performance pairs with all the other management tools within Raven for seamless strategizing.

Bottom line: Clients want to see progress, and Site Performance displays it in just a few clicks. Let Raven do all of the heavy lifting for you so you can keep doing what you do best.

For you: Internal benchmarking

Once you’ve gotten clients informed, it’s time to buckle down and get to work.

Luckily, Site Performance is a literal one-stop shop for your benchmarking needs. Check out all of the data points you can get in a single view:

• Backlinks count
• Citation Flow
• Trust Flow
• Domain Authority
• MozRank
• MozTrust
• Load time
• Page speed
• Malware check
• Domain registration
• Social integration
• Tweets
• Likes
• Shares
• Comments
• +1s
• Klout score
• Google listing
• Yelp listing
• Foursquare listing
• SuperPages listing
• YellowPages listing

At a glance, you can see if your external links and authority signals are up or down, whether your social shares could use a boost or even if your Klout score is rising or falling.

You can also add up to two competitors and do a side-by-side view here, and Site Performance will highlight who’s “winning” in each category.

If you see something that needs improving, Site Performance offers quick tips and suggestions, along with links to Raven’s related tools that can help.

For example, have some on-site errors that could use a quick fix? Site Auditor can help you dig even deeper and root them out.

Instant performance feedback AND workflow tool.

We hope Site Performance has what you need to keep clients happy and be more productive in your marketing campaigns. How are you using this tool? Let us know in the comments!

The post Smarter Client Communication with Site Performance appeared first on Raven Internet Marketing Tools.

In Raven, we use templates to make reporting easy in the Report Wizard.

But did you know that you can also create template messages in Raven’s CRM to assist in your outreach efforts, work more closely with clients and more?

Here’s how to create and send template messages in Raven.

How to create a message template

1. Click the CRM icon.

2. From the drop-down menu, select Contacts.

3. Click the Message Templates icon.

4. From the Message Template page, click the Add Message Template. Raven will display a modal window where you can start creating your new message template.

Name: Name your template in such a way that it will help you identify its content later. For instance, if you are inquiring about guest blogging opportunities, you could name your template Guest Blogging.

Subject: This will populate the subject section of the email. Following the example above, you could call it something like Guest Blogging Opportunities.

Message Template: This section will become the body of your email.

Insert menu: In both the Subject and the Message section, you’ll see a drop-down menu. Here, you have the option of telling Raven to display your recipient’s full name, first name, last name, company name or a combination of those. Whatever you choose will be auto-populated with the contact to whom you are addressing your message.

For instance, this is the message saved on the template where {first_name} was selected.

5. Before you save your template, select its scope:

Global: The template will be available across the account. All users will be able to access it, view it and/or use it.

Profile: The template will be available only for the sites under the Profile in which it was created. All users who have access to that Profile will be able to access it.

Private: The template will be available only to you.

6. Click the Save button. Your template will be saved and listed on the Message Templates page.

To edit or delete your template, simply click the gear icon next to it.

How to send a template message

From your Contact list, select the contact to whom you want to send a message and click the New Message button. You can only select one contact at a time, and you’ll need to choose a contact for whom you’ve entered an email address.

You can also choose to open the Messages tab. If you have sent any previous messages to that particular contact, you will see them listed here.

When you click the New Message button, a window will pop up. From the Message Template drop-down menu, select the template you would like to use. This will auto-populate the Subject and Message sections you added in the template process above. The email field will auto-populate as well. If you’ve listed multiple email addresses for your contact, you’ll be able to select the one you want.

Once everything is to your liking you can either save your message as a draft for later editing or send it by clicking the Send Message button.

When you click the Send Message button, your default email program will open and you’ll be able to send the message through it. Raven does not send the email for you , so make sure you have a default email client set up on your computer.

To show how this works, I sent the message to myself with my default client set to Gmail. When I open my Gmail account, the message is there sitting in my inbox.

Any messages you send are saved and can be viewed in the Message tab of each contact.

Are you using template messages? If not, you should give it a try!

The post Did you Know? Create and Send Template Messages in Raven appeared first on Raven Internet Marketing Tools.

Graph Search, which is rolling out slowly now, introduces a powerful search element to Facebook by allowing users to search (not just their friends) based on interests, location, employer, education, relationship status – basically any public information people they’ve given Facebook.

Here’s how Facebook explains it:

For example, you can search for friends of your friends in a new city you’ve moved to, look up photos by classmates from a specific time period, or see photos friends and others have shared with you from famous landmarks.

When you pair up phrases like, Photos of and friends or coworkers and your current city, interests, or likes you can discover things friends have in common that you never realized before, find new activity partners, discover great music similar to bands you already listen to, make your own travel guide, and more.

No matter what industry you’re in or what role you play in your company, Graph Search likely has implications for you. For example, in my workplace at The Tennessean, Nashville’s daily newspaper, everyone from reporters to marketers to salespeople could be affected.

Here are some of the possibilities I see for my industry.

For journalists

Journalists have already taken to social media in a big way for finding story sources, and Graph Search has the potential to dramatically improve how reporters can use Facebook to find sources.

For example, if we wanted to find singer-songwriters in Nashville who like beer, we can. (Not that we couldn’t already.)

If we wanted to find people under 30 who work at Vanderbilt University and like Mitt Romney, we can do that too.

For event marketers

The ability to see the overlap in affinity for The Tennessean and other brands gives us a lot of new potential when it comes to partnerships for promotions and events planning. For example, we can see all the landmarks that women who like The Tennessean commonly visit:

For sales reps

Being able to see the overlap in engagement with our brand and our advertisers’ brands (and potential advertisers’ brands!) opens up a much more meaningful discussion when we go on sales calls. For example, we have more than 1,000 Tennessean fans who also like Target. That’s valuable information.

We might also use overlapping brand affinity to target subscription offers and push activations. For example, let’s say we want to offer a friends-and-family deal to a company whose employees have shown an interest in us on Facebook. Graph Search can help us see what companies might be a good target for that. Here’s the overlap of Tennessean and Vanderbilt, for example.

Those are some of the possibilities I see for the news world. What about for other industries?

For PR practitioners

Much like journalists can use Graph Search to find sources, PR practitioners have some big possibilities when it comes to using Graph Search to find targeted publications and contacts for clients.

You might also use Graph Search to extend your Rolodex and find out friends you have in common with sources you’d like to get to know and build a relationship with. In all of these scenarios, you can expand the search to see these people’s friends. That makes it a huge, wide open search.

For social media managers

If you manage your brand’s day-to-day social media accounts, Graph Search gives you a leg up when it comes to creating the kinds of content your fans will like best.

Search for their favorite movies, TV shows, music, food and more. If your fans love Arrested Development or can’t get enough of Game of Thrones, you now know what pop culture allusions they’ll connect best to. Maybe there are content opportunities for you.

For small business owners

If you’ve got a bricks-and-mortar location, it’s important to know that Graph Search will also allow users to search by check-ins and photos at your location.

For example, I could do a search for “Italian restaurants my friends have been to” and see results that include both “likes” and check-ins or even search “photos of Italian restaurants my friends have been to.”

Encourage fans to like your page, check in and share photos in order to help along the kind of brand advocates who can spread the word about you.

For employees anywhere

Anyone else in Facebook land can do exactly what I’ve done in the screenshots above. They can find out, for example, everything from the political affiliations to musical tastes of a brand’s employees.

It’s important that anyone representing your brand keeps that in mind when “liking” things on Facebook.

What possibilities have you uncovered for Facebook Graph Search? How is your brand preparing for Facebook’s changes? Let me know in the comments.

The post Is your business ready for Facebook Graph Search? appeared first on Raven Internet Marketing Tools.

In the recording below, you’ll see that panelists Jon Henshaw, AJ Kohn, Demian Farnworth, David Harry, Steven Shattuck, Max Minzer, Annie Cushing and I had a lively discussion about SEO metrics, Google algorithm changes, and  their favorite pet metrics for a marketing edge.

Some moments to look out for:

At 1:30, hear all about Penguin 2.0 and Google algorithm changes
At 10:00, the panel discusses where Google is headed
At 11:20 and 19:30, hear David Harry swear
At 25:23, find out what makes AJ Kohn want to tell clients to shut up
At 26:00, hear our panel discuss search queries data
At 37:20, hear Demian Farnworth talk about the content metrics that Copyblogger measures
At 41:40, learn about Annie Cushing’s data-focused SEO approach
At 58:20, learn a (not provided) workaround
At 1:01:30, hear the panel’s thoughts about Authorship and personas

If you only want to hear the audio from the hangout (you’ll be missing out on David Harry’s awesome business casual look), we uploaded it for you to Soundcloud.

Even more metrics that matter

• Read our guide to 28 SEO Metrics That You Can Sell And Report To Clients
• Download our resource 30 Social Media Metrics That Prove Real Value
• Read Raven CMO Jon Henshaw’s guide to the metrics that matter for SEO and social media
• Check out our two part blog post on SEO metrics featuring 16 real-world SEO practitioners

Oh, and make sure you add Raven to your Circles so you’ll be in the know when he host our next get-together.

The post SEO metrics that matter: A Raven Tools Hangout recap appeared first on Raven Internet Marketing Tools.

So it surprised me when I had a bad day, shared this photo on Raven’s Facebook page—captioned “When marketers lose patience…”—and watched it spread quickly.

Sometimes, it seems, people just need to say what they’re thinking.

With that in mind, I shared these recent marketing rants in May’s edition of the Ravenous Marketer newsletter. (Actually, I shared all of this, pretty near word-for-word. Repurposing content, folks. Repurposing.)

Whether you agree or disagree, (and Raven doesn’t endorse any points of view below except our own, and even then we argue with each other) you might be moved to action. That’s the point of any good rant, right? Maybe you’ll even write a rant for Raven’s new Squawk, an Internet marketing news and commentary website.

SEO rants!

1. Why SEOs Should Get Sites Banned

No matter what the penalty or update is, there will always be an SEO there to brag about how they’ve never had a site penalized — as if that’s something to be proud of. —Ben Cook, who’s always up for a rant

2. Why I Hate SEO Tools

I hate SEO tools, and yes that’s a double entendre. It seems harsh, but I do. Tools make many SEOs lazy. Tools make many SEOs look better than they are. Tools, are just that. Tools. —Mike Wilton, the last person I thought would write this

3. Why Inbound Marketing is Incomplete Marketing

I’ve resisted using the term since it was first introduced. … Perhaps I’ll change my mind and start using it if that’s what the industry as a whole starts to use. I mean, I still want to make money—principles be damned! —by Jon Henshaw, the Raven co-founder who has been burning to write this for so long he created Squawk

4. Content Marketing Is the “Escort” of Online Marketing

Let’s just be honest here for a minute. 94% of the website owners rushing to grab a seat on the content marketing bandwagon are doing so with one primary objective — to get links. —Rae Hoffman, who has a way with a metaphor

Social media rants!

1. Dear Social Media Managers, It’s Time To Grow Up

Stop reporting likes. Stop reporting followers, circlers, or whatever other locker-room metrics you’re using. Just stop. — Kristy Bolsinger, whose rant makes me glad I already wrote 30 Social Media Metrics That Prove Value

2. LinkedIn Endorsements and How to Turn That **** Off

First, I’m going to talk about why LinkedIn Endorsements are about as meaningful as having Paris Hilton teach etiquette classes to pre-teen girls. Once I’m done spouting off, I’m going to teach you how to turn them off. —Erika Napoletano, who would be disappointed about those asterisks

Your-writing-is-unoriginal rants!

1. You Can’t Content-Market Your Way Through Life

Instead of writing 5 or 10 crappy blog posts, do some research for yourself, write some code. Try something new, and then write a real good blog post. In fact, I’d rather read about 10 of your failings then about that one “success”. —Yoast, a.k.a. Joost de Valk (or vice versa)

2. Your Content Is Boring & Wasting My Time

Don’t present yourself as a Thought Leader without any unique thoughts. —Janae DeRusso, who knows of what she speaks

3. Do You Have Original Content? Take the Quiz.

It’s possible that you are terrible at your job, but it’s also possible that you don’t know what you’re doing is overkill. Consider this a head’s up. —Arienne Holland, who I can count on for at least one mini-rant a day

4. What 67 Unlikely Sources Can Teach You About Marketing

I’m not here to hate—at least one of these links is mine—just to tell you that these sources that can teach you something about marketing are officially taken. —Yours truly, Courtney Seiter, who disguised this rant as a list

Children who rant better than adults!

Why do all the girls have to buy princesses? Some girls like superheroes. Some girls like princesses. —Riley on YouTube, with astute observations in the toy aisle

Photo credits, from top: Psycholabs; Tambaco the Jaguar; f1uffster; and AnthonyGurr via Flickr Creative Commons

The post In praise of the marketing rant appeared first on Raven Internet Marketing Tools.

Some of its difficulty has also been self-inflicted. Too many SEOs made too many promises to clients, but had absolutely no idea what they were doing. The only thing they did well was take clients’ money and leave a bad taste in their mouths. We commonly refer to these people as snake oil salesman.

To make matters worse, SEO made ranking results the main KPI. Most, if not all, of their services were based on maintaining positions for coveted terms. It took years to educate clients that SEO was worth the money, and by the time they started buying, the thing they thought was important was where they ranked for a handful of pet terms.

The metrics that SEOs typically report today no longer matter.

SEO isn’t alone. Social also suffers from the same problems. Social media management services were a hard sell for quite some time. Clients didn’t get it, and most of them saw it as something you did for fun, not for business. And much like SEO, there were many social gurus, ninjas and general rock stars who didn’t help in dispensing with that perception.

As social has matured and social media managers have grown up, businesses have come to realize they need – actually require – a social media manager to handle their social outreach and public relations. However, there’s a problem. Social media managers are currently reporting on the number of followers and who liked what as KPIs.

Just like ranking results, those kind of standalone KPIs, like followers and likes, are useless.

Focus and report on KPIs that show insights and profitability

The metrics that matter are the ones that can either provide you tactical insights or report on how your campaign helped your client make more money. The best way to do that is to use Google Analytics goals and events. Without them, you are basically flying blind.

With the exception of client websites that solely make a living on page impressions (advertising), most clients are trying to sell services and/or products. Goals and events allow you to track certain actions and conversions, and apply a value to them when applicable.

When you combine goals and events with your other site analytics, you can determine the ROI of your services with relevant KPIs. You can also find out what is and isn’t working, and make intelligent changes to your campaigns.

Get everyone on the same page

It’s easy for a team to get quickly get out of control when they start using goals and events. This is especially true for events.

The best way to set up goals and events is to decide as a group the nomenclature you’re going to use. For example, you may decide to call the Event Category for all calls-to-action, CTA. And for the Event Action, you may want to use the term click for anyone who clicks on a CTA. If your team doesn’t get on the same page, then campaign reporting may become a nightmare.

Analyze content with goals

When you use goals, you can quickly find out which content converts and which content doesn’t. Many people are surprised when they learn that some of their most popular content doesn’t convert. For example, we have an article on how to backup your Mac that gets a significant amount of traffic, but it doesn’t convert well. In the case of this article, it makes sense, because it’s not related to the service we’re offering.

Unrelated doesn’t always mean irrelevant. Similar to the backup article, we have a popular article on creating modal dialogues that appears to be unrelated to our services. However, the goal conversions for that article tell a different story. Knowing that the article converts, we can then ponder how it might be relevant to our target audience and build off those insights.

Some of the best and easiest insights come from highly relevant and high converting content. A good example is our article on the ultimate list of PPC tools. This article converts well for a few reasons:

1. People like lists, period.
2. PPC is relevant to Raven, because we provide research, management, monitoring and reporting tools for Google AdWords.
3. Most people who are searching for lists and PPC tools are looking to buy.

So even though the list includes competitors, it’s still the perfect chance to have them try our own PPC tools. Understanding that insight, we can now replicate that content approach with our other services.

Use GWT Search Queries

When you compare it with goal or event results and related destination pages, the search query data available in Google Webmaster Tools is very valuable.

There are many different ways you can analyze the search queries data. One of my favorite things to do is to sort the top searches by clicks. Then I determine the destination pages being displayed in the SERPs and view which of those pages converts the best. Using that insight, I can then plan out new content strategies that should result in good search engine visibility and conversions.

Find sharing that converts

Goals and events can be very insightful for social media campaigns, too. The number of followers or likes does not equal success. What matters is whether or not your social activity results in making money.

There’s a simple formula to determine the value that social networks provide:

Landing Pages + Goals + Advanced Segments (Social Source) = Value

When you view your landing pages combined with goal conversions, and filter the results to only display landing pages that were viewed from social network referrals, you can then determine your social ROI. You can also get insights into what content works best on different social networks and apply that to your content marketing strategy.

Social advanced segments also work well with events. For example, you can create an event that tracks how many leads you capture. Then you can apply the advanced segment to determine how many leads were created from your social media marketing efforts. You can also see which landing pages (and the lead capture forms on those pages) performed the best.

Leverage your referrals

The only thing better than knowing which sites are sending you traffic is discovering which ones are also giving you money.

Referrals + Goals = Opportunity

When you discover referrals that convert, use them as outreach opportunities, because these are the sites that are now proven to send you targeted traffic. Research the pages that are sending traffic and conversions, and then think about how you could increase your exposure on that site. For example, you may want to request to guest blog or consider advertising on the site.

Build links smarter

Smart link building could mean a lot of things, but within the context of this post, I mean building links that convert. Historically, many SEOs would build links to influence ranking, but they wouldn’t give much thought to whether or not those links drove relevant traffic.

With the onset of social sharing and quickly changing search algorithms, it’s very important to focus on building links that are relevant – relevant to the content and relevant to the audience reading the content.

Smart link building can also make you look good to clients. For example, if you use Raven’s Link Manager, you can run our Link Referral report to automatically report the links you built that converted.

Just like in the previous section, these are referrals you can leverage.

Take it further

We’ve put together two guides to the SEO and social metrics that matter and how to measure them.

• 28 SEO Metrics That You Can Sell And Report To Clients
• 30 Social Media Metrics That Prove Real Value

Download them to take your measurement even further.

The post The metrics that matter for SEO and social media appeared first on Raven Internet Marketing Tools.

Sometimes you just wanna do anything but write that blog post.

And when these two universal truths combine, we get the content marketer’s standby: the ol’ compare-two-things blog post.

They usually have a headline like “X things Y can teach you about Z,” and they either:

• capitalize on a pop culture moment or figure
• provide specific instruction from a universally understood source or
• just let the writer write about something he or she really, really likes.

Sometimes they teach you things. Sometimes they don’t.

As an experiment, I gathered up as many of these unlikely sources as I could find. I’m not here to hate — at least one of these links is mine — just to tell you that these sources that can teach you something about marketing are officially taken.

Update: OK, it’s far more than 67 sources now because I forgot some awesome posts. I don’t feel like doing the math again though. Just go with it.

40 unlikely things that can teach you about SEO

1. A 67-year-old grandma



2. Porn –>
3. Freud
4. A gold mine
5. Christmas
6. Wikipedia
7. Alterac Valley
8. Your girlfriend
9. The Super Bowl
10. Super Bowl commercials
11. Bill Belichick
12. The World Cup
13. The Premier League
14. Fishing
15. Baseball and poultry
16. Table tennis
17. Professional blackjack players
18. George Costanza
19. “Jersey Shore”



20. Vinny Chase of “Entourage”
21. “Prison Break”
22. Famous TV catchphrases
23. Bob Villa
24. Bob Dylan –>
25. Deep Purple
26. Hip-hop moguls
27. Queen Latifah
28. Die Hard
29. James Bond
30. The Godfather
31. An old man and a fish bowl
32. My Little Pony
33. Jimmy Carr’s tax avoidance apology
34. Fatherhood
35. Steve Jobs
36. Matthew McConaughey’s abs
37. Selling knives
38. World of Warcraft
39. The Hunger Games
40. Your mechanic

18 unlikely things that can teach you about social media

1. Social drinking



2. Food trucks
3. A local burger joint
4. Farmers –>
5. Chefs
6. Rhinestone pumps
7. Moneyball
8. “Gangnam Style”
9. Lady Gaga
10. David Bowie/Ziggy Stardust
11. Your local radio station
12. Golf
13. Tennis
14. Kobe Bryant
15. “American Idol”
16. Conan O’Brien
17. Proctology exams
18. Masturbation

7 unlikely things that can teach you about content/writing

1. A baby
2. Toddlers –>
3. Dr. Seuss
4. Bacon
5. The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show
6. The Choose Your Own Adventure books
7. “Mythbusters”

8 unlikely things that can teach you about email marketing

1. “Lost”
2. “Sesame Street”
3. Santa
4. Your toddler (yes, again)
5. Slankets
6. LOLcats
7. Flash mobs
8. Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer

8 unlikely things that can teach you about marketing

1. A triceratops
2. Michael Phelps’ 19th Olympic medal
3. The royal wedding
4. A blind squirrel –>
5. A half marathon
6. Toddlers (why so much with the toddlers, parent marketers?)
7. Tyler Durden
8. Eminem’s Chrysler commercial

And finally, a shout-out to our PPC friends, for whom I could only find one example of this phenomenon: What J.K. Rowling Can Teach PPC Marketers About Reaching Ideal Prospects. Where ya at, PPC-ers?

Photo credits (from top): TheBusyBrain ; the_toe_stubber; oetting ; ibz_omar ; Bev Goodwin ; Tomi Tapio via Compfight cc

The post The 82 unlikeliest sources to help you learn online marketing appeared first on Raven Internet Marketing Tools.