WordPress 5.2 beta 1 was released this evening with an exciting lineup of new user-facing features that are ready for testing. The upcoming release introduces new blocks for RSS, Search, Calendar, Tag Cloud, and Amazon Kindle embed.
The proliferation of block collection plugins as a block distribution mechanism has caused some WordPress installations to become bloated with too many unused blocks. Version 5.2 includes new block management capabilities that will make it easy to turn blocks on or off and tidy up the block inserter tool for greater efficiency.
This release also introduces fatal error protection that catches errors before they produce a white screen, so that users can still log into the admin to attempt to resolve the issue. This feature was previously targeted for 5.1 but needed a few security issues ironed out before it was ready for core.
If you’re just getting started with testing WordPress, the 5.2 beta is a very approachable release with features that anyone can put through the paces. The easiest way is to install the WordPress Beta Testing plugin and select “bleeding edge nightlies.” Try out the new blocks, experiment with turning blocks and and off. Do the new features seem like they work as advertised? Are there any bumps in the road when trying to use them? You can report any issues to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums or log a ticket on trac.
Developers have a few big items to test as well. Plugin authors can now specify a minimum PHP version that the plugin will support. WordPress is also adding the sodium_compat library, a libsodium-compatible cryptography API for PHP 7.2+.
According to the notes from today’s core developer chat, there are currently 116 open tickets that contributors plan to address in three betas. The goal is to slash that number down to 66 before beta 2. WordPress 5.2 is targeted for April 30, 2019.
Adobe has announced the next generation of its Adobe Exchange app marketplace. This new generation aims to enhance Adobe partners' ability to integrate their applications with Adobe's portfolio of solutions. A key element of the update includes access to the Adobe Experience Platform: an open platform with real-time data pipeline, storage, reporting, and more.
rtCamp, a 60+ person agency and WordPress.com VIP service partner, has released three new GitHub Actions that handle automated code review, WordPress deployment, and Slack notifications.
“Our action is a wrapper around the original vip-go-ci project,” rtCamp CEO Rahul Bansal said. “VIP’s project uses Teamcity which is expensive and very hard to get up and running. We built a wrapper around it to get it working with Github. Still huge props to them for sharing what we consider to be the USP of the VIP platform to the public at large.”
“Our action supports secrets fetching via HashiCorp Vault project,” Bansal said. “For small teams or indies using Vault might be overkill. But at scale, such as our hosting dept, where they are responsible for more than 100+ servers, Vault streamlines WordPress Deploys. It’s partly because of Vault, devs can simply change the hostname on the fly and everything still works.”
rtCamp has also released a GitHub action called Slack Notify that sends a message to a Slack channel. It can be customized to notify a channel about deployment status. The Site and SSH Host details are available if the action is run following the Deploy WordPress GitHub action. All three of the new Actions are designed to work seamlessly together.
rtCamp plans to add more Actions to its GitHub Actions Library in the future. Bansal said they are currently working on build actions to cover Sass, Webpack, and Grunt, as well as Testing actions for phpunit and QUnit. Further down the road they are planning to build an action that will automatically update their theme and plugin products in their EDD store when there is a GitHub release.
Google Analytics (GA) is a digital marketer’s best friend. I use it all the time to check metrics, spot trends, and see what type of content my audience appreciates the most.
Of course, there are other tools you could use to analyze your metrics, but they’re not as valuable as GA for two reasons.
First, Google Analytics is free. The price can’t be beat.
Second, Google Analytics is a tool designed by the company that also gave us the most popular search engine in the world. That means it can (and does) provide you with information about the browsing and search history of the people who visit your site.
Beyond that, Google Analytics offers a wealth of information you can use to improve your reach. GA makes it easy to check conversion rates, view your visitors’ demographics, discover the way people follow the links within your site, and analyze your e-commerce funnel.
If you’re a digital marketer, you need to know a thing or two about Google Analytics.
That’s why I wrote this article.
I want to give you three simple, straightforward, and actionable tips that will allow you to create better content.
Here’s the thing about analytics: all those numbers and metrics serve a purpose. They tell a story. They give you instructions.
They tell you how to become a better marketer.
The purpose of analytics is to show you what’s going on with your marketing and what needs to change.
Marketing isn’t a guessing game. You shouldn’t have to wonder: Is this working? You should know. And you should know because of data.
So, do you want to know what’s working and what’s not working with your content marketing?
The three numbers I’m about to show you do just that. They give you an accurate read of user behavior and tell you what you should do next.
1. Average time on page
It’s this simple: if you’ve got great content, people will read it.
And reading takes time.
Speed readers can buzz through an article like this in about two minutes.
That’s insanely fast.
For most—mere mortals—this article will take 10-15 minutes to read.
If you want to find out how fast you read, take a test at myReadSpeed.com.
Google Analytics gives you some insight into how your audience is reading. No, it’s not going to test their reading speed.
However, it is going to give you information regarding their time and behavior on the page.
This information comes from Average Time on Page in GA. It provides an insight into your audience’s interest level, reading speed, and overall engagement with a page.
As the name implies, it tells you how long the average user hangs around on a specific page.
If you’re producing content that’s 2,000 words in length and you find that people are leaving after just 30 seconds, then either you’ve got an audience consisting entirely of people who’ve participated in the Evelyn Woods Reading Dynamics course or they’re just not taking the time to read all your content.
Spoiler alert: it’s probably the latter.
It’s time to look at the Average Time on Page metric.
You can find it on the Behavior Overview report of GA.
Click on Behavior in the left-hand sidebar.
Select Overview from the menu that appears below.
You’ll see the metric among the stats that appear below the graph:
Unfortunately, though, that number gives you an across-the-board average of all your pages. You need a report that shows you how much time your visitors are spending on individual pages.
You can create a custom report to show you that information.
It will show how much time your visitors are spending on each page.
You can use this report to determine which type of content is “sticky”—that is, which blog posts tend to keep people hanging around the longest.
Once you know that, you can produce more of that type of content.
Here is the big idea behind the Average Time on Page metric.
Knowing how long users spend on a given page tells you how interested they are in the page.
Remember, it’s just an average. A reader who spends 20 minutes on the page will be balanced out by the reader who spends only two seconds on the page.
Taken as an average, however, time on page shows you how interesting and engaging your content is.
If your average time on page is really low, it may suggest that your content isn’t all that great.
Find the pages or articles that have the longest average time on page, determine what’s different about those pages, and use these principles when you create more content.
2. Referrals
One of the best ways to tell whether your content is resonating with people is to see whether other webmasters are linking to it from their sites.
That’s why you need to pay attention to the Referrals metric.
To view referrals:
Click on Acquisition on the left-hand sidebar of Google Analytics.
Select All Traffic.
Click Channels.
In the table that appears on the main screen, you’ll see that the first column is labeled “Default Channel Grouping.” It lists the various channels that include Social, Direct, Organic Search, and Referral.
It’s that Referral metric that’s important here. Click on that link to view your referrals.
The table that appears shows you exactly where your inbound traffic is coming from. That’s great information to have, but it’s still not a complete story.
Why? Because it’s an aggregate number. In other words, it shows you how much all of your traffic comes from specific sites and doesn’t show which specific pages they’re linking to.
Fortunately, you can fix that by adding a new column to the table.
As I said, I love Google Analytics.
At the top of the table, you’ll see a dropdown menu labeled “Secondary Dimension.” Click on that:
On the menu that appears, click on “Behavior.” Then, select “Destination Page” from the list of options that appear:
Boom. Now you have a referral report that not only shows which sites are linking to your site but also which specific pages they’re linking to.
Even better: the default sorting is by the number of sessions in descending order. So you can immediately see which type of content gets the most backlinks.
What do you do with that information?
Easy: create more content like the articles that have the most referrals. If your content is good, people link to it. It’s that simple.
Ultra-linkable content is good content. The more links you’re earning, the better you’re doing.
3. Interests
Marketing is all about reaching people.
This is especially true with content marketing.
If you want to connect effectively with your visitors, you have to communicate with them on their level. That’s why it’s a great idea to find out what their interests are.
Fortunately, Google Analytics has a report for that.
Click on “Audience” on the left-hand sidebar of GA.
Select “Interests” from the dropdown menu that appears below.
Click on “Overview.”
Now, you’re looking at a few bar graphs that show you the interests of your audience. The graph below is from a tech website.
The first graph shows the “Affinity Category.” That tells you about the general hobbies and interests of people who’ve been visiting your site. Here’s how Google defines Affinity Categories:
Affinity Categories identifies users in terms of lifestyle; for example, Technophiles, Sports Fans, and Cooking Enthusiasts. These categories are defined to be similar to TV audiences.
The “In-Market Segment” graph shows you what your visitors are interested in purchasing. Here’s a definition of an in-market audience from Search Engine Watch:
An In-Market Audience is composed of folks who are actively searching and comparing your product/service. Individuals in this audience have indicated that they are actively in-market for a specific category such as “Autos & Vehicles” or “Real Estate” or “Travel” or any of the other audiences currently available from Google.
The “Other” graph gives you broad categories of your visitors’ interests. Google explains it this way:
Other Categories provides the most specific, focused view of your users. For example, while Affinity Categories includes the category Foodies, Other Categories includes the category Recipes/Cuisines/East Asian.
How does any of that help you produce better content? It gives you the ability to tailor-fit your blog posts to your readers’ interests while simultaneously boosting your brand.
For example, let’s say you run a men’s fashion e-commerce site. This week, you’re at a loss about what type of article you should write for your blog.
So, you fire up Google Analytics and view the interests of your visitors.
And then you have an “Aha!” moment.
You see on the “In-Market Segment” graph that 10% of your visitors are interested in “Employment.” They’re looking for a job.
You close GA, log in to your WordPress CMS, and type up an article titled “Here’s How to Dress for Success at Your Next Job Interview.”
Boom. The article gets shared more than most others on your site; it gets backlinks from various “life hacker” sites; and you even receive an honorable mention in GQ.
That wouldn’t have happened had you not checked the interests of your visitors.
You can dive deeper into each of these interest categories. For example, click “In-Market Segments” in the sidebar menu underneath “Interests.”
This will display a breakdown of the traffic trends associated with the in-market segment.
You can see how each category of visitor is interacting with the site—their sessions, bounce rate, session duration, and goal completion (if you have Goals activated).
What’s next?
The impact of your content marketing efforts shouldn’t be a mystery.
Check Google Analytics regularly to see which types of articles your visitors appreciate the most. Then, produce that type of content on a regular basis.
You can replicate this model for any and every number in Google Analytics.
Simply ask yourself these questions:
What does this number/metric say about my audience?
How should my content change as a result?
Bounce rate, session duration, percentage of new sessions, number of returning visitors, service providers, operating system, screen resolution, browser, language settings, mobile traffic, acquisition date, user retention, pages per session—all of this information has to do with your users, your readers, your audience.
All you have to do is understand what the numbers mean and then make relevant changes to your website.
Conclusion
Now, hold on a second.
I just told you to “make relevant changes to your website,” but I need to offer a final disclaimer. That’s what this conclusion is for.
It’s tempting to go crazy and start changing your website left and right. “Ooh! A number! Change the strategy! Revamp the content! Switch up the headline!”
Let me caution you against doing that. Why? Because if you start changing everything, you’ll defeat the entire purpose of analytics, which is to understand exactly what’s working and what’s not.
To truly understand what’s effective, what’s not so effective, and how to make the right kind of changes, you need to do one more thing.
Split testing.
This article isn’t the place to explainsplittesting—I’ve explained some of those principles elsewhere.
Instead, this is the place to encourage you not to change things willy-nilly but to make strategic changes in a split-testing environment.
The advantage of A/B-testing individual changes is this: Your analytics—all those numbers I talked about up there—will become far more reliable, effective, and actionable.
Google Analytics paired with accurate split testing is a surefire way to make better content.
The better you get at reading and acting upon your analytics, the better content you’ll create.
So many web projects use npm to pull in their dependencies, for both the front end and back. npm install and away it goes, pulling thousands of files into a node_modules folder in our projects to import/require anything. It's an important cog in the great machine of web development.
While I don't believe the npm registry has ever been meaningfully challenged, the technology around it regularly faces competition. Yarn certainly took off for a while there. Yarn had lockfiles which helped us ensure our fellow developers and environments had the exact same versions of things, which was tremendously beneficial. It also did some behind-the-scenes magic that made it very fast. Since then, npm now also has lockfiles and word on the street is it's just as fast, if not faster.
I don't know enough to advise you one way or the other, but I do find it fascinating that there is another next generation of npm puller-downer-thingies that is coming to a simmer.
pnpm is focused on speed and efficiency when running multiple projects: "One version of a package is saved only ever once on a disk."
Turbo is designed for running directly in the browser.
Pika's aim is that, once you've downloaded all the dependencies, you shouldn't be forced to use a bundler, and should be able to use ES6 imports if you want. UNPKG is sometimes used in this way as well, in how it gives you URLs to packages directly pulled from npm, and has an experimental ?module feature for using ES6 imports directly.
Even npm is in on it! tink is their take on this, eliminating even Node.js from the equation and being able to both import and require dependencies without even having a node_modules directory.
Many of us have a love/hate relationship with appointment reminders. The last thing anyone wants is another email, or worse — a phone call from an agent, either live or automated. Perhaps the least annoying notification is a text message, and it's also the easiest, leading many companies to use this approach as part of their customer service strategy and more!
Apple this week updated all of its core operating systems with critical security patches. The company repaired vulnerabilities in iOS, macOS, tvOS, iCloud, iTunes, and Safari for iPhones, iPads, Macs, consoles, and Windows machines. Developers and consumers should update as soon as possible.
Copywriting may be the most important and foundational skill in all of marketing.
Every ad campaign requires it and it’s used across every single marketing channel.
As a marketer, I’m so thankful that I spend some of my early years improving my own copywriting skills. That time continues to pay massive dividends in my career and across my businesses.
When folks ask me what areas to focus on in order to become a great marketer, my answer is always copywriting.
On Quick Sprout, we’ve put together the best practices and resources to learn copywriting. There’s no need to dig through arhiac tombs of copywriting legend, we’ve found the best tips and tricks for you.
In copywriting, one item matters more than everything else put together.
Headlines.
That’s right, get the headline perfect and your job is basically done. A common rule is to spend 50% of your time on just the headline and the other 50% on all the other copy that you need for your campaign. I used to think that rule was hyperbolic in order to prove a point, now I believe it’s not aggressive enough. I’d rather spend 70 or 80% of my time getting the right headline.
Many of the biggest wins of my career have been from finding a better headline that instantly increased lead flow by 30%. I’ve run hundreds of A/B tests, no other element carries as much weight as a headline.
After you’ve got the basics of copywriting down, spend the bulk of your time learning how to write better headlines:
Once you have a got handle on how to write headlines, it’s time to learn the tricks and hacks of copywriting. There are quite a few out there. All these little tricks will add up and give you a huge edge in persuasion.
When learning how to be a better copywriter, it’s tough to know how much copy to write. Does short copy or long copy convert better? Some expert copywriter’s will answer this question with: “The copy should be as long as it needs to be and no longer.” They may be right but that answer is unsatisfying. We break down a better answer in Long vs. Short Copy – Which is Better?
People also love to argue over what matters more: design or copywriting. Designers love design. Copywriters love copy. I believe that it matters how design and copy blend together, we go into detail in How to Combine Copy and Design for Optimum Results.
While I love tricks and best practices, all of my major wins have come from deep research and nonstop testing of ideas. During my A/B testing programs, I’d only see 20% of my tests become winners even when I was completely convinced that each test was a brilliant idea. These days, I start by doing deep copywriting research to understand my market as much as possible, then I jump into back-to-back copywriting testing until I find the option that works the best. Then whenever I’m stuck, I go back to the research, brainstorm some more tests, and keep cycling through. Sooner or later, I find the next big winner.
Finally, it’s time to close the sale and convert your prospect into a customer. Lots of folks hesitate here, it can feel sleazy to ask for the sale. There are lots of ways on how to go for the sale in an authentic, genuine way that also works. Check out How to Close the Deal with Your Copy to see how.
Andy Bell wrote up his thoughts about the whole web versus native app debate which I think is super interesting. It was hard to make it through the post because I was nodding so aggressively as I read:
The whole idea of competing with native apps seems pretty daft to me, too. The web gives us so much for free that app developers could only dream of, like URLs and the ability to publish to the entire world for free, immediately.
[...] I believe in the web and will continue to believe that building Progressive Web Apps that embrace the web platform will be far superior to the non-inclusive walled garden that is native apps and their app stores. I just wish that others thought like that, too.
If the goal of the web is just to compete with native, then we’ve set the bar way too low.
I entirely agree with both Andy and Jeremy. The web should not compete with native apps that are locked within a store. The web should be better in every way — it can be faster and more beautiful, have better interactions, and smoother animations. We just need to get to work.
Quick question: How much time do you spend on admin tasks such as scheduling appointments, invoicing, email marketing, client follow-up and so on? I bet you don’t have the slightest idea, so let me help you. According to a study conducted by West Monroe Partners, 36% of businesses spend between 3 and 4 hours per […]
Web accessibility is often said to be a 'must' for the World Wide Web today. The term "web accessibility" defines a set of guidelines developers need to follow to make the interaction of people with disabilities and web apps more convenient. Any website should be accessible in terms of its content, UI/UX design, and layout. In this article, the Logicify team gives HTML/CSS developers a few practical tips to make web layouts more accessible — both for people and assistive devices.
Keep the Markup Clean
Whatever markup you are using, structure it correctly and neatly, avoid skipping levels. Always favor native elements (if there are ones) over faking them. For instance, use the <button> elements instead of <span> or <div> in HTML. Use <nav> for navigation, <button> for page actions.
Our podcast engineer, Chris Enns, chats with Marie about what's changed in podcasting over the last year, how CodePen evaluates the success of their podcast, and offer up some podcast suggestions for listeners.
Jetpack brings a wealth of features to your self-hosted WordPress site as one of the best no-brainer plugins for WordPress there is. One feature I just recently used for the first time was the video hosting and video player. I had a video clip that I just wanted to drag and drop into a blog post like I would an image, but it was a little too big. Fortunately I just uploaded it through WordPress.com, it was magically available in the Media dialog on my self-hosted site, and it worked perfectly.
The web is teeming with websites where videos, CSS dynamic effects and WebGL-powered animations are running the show, but what about the email newsletters? In the majority of cases they are created with HTML and CSS looking almost like a mini …
Your website is your business card in the online environment. As a representative element for your business image, your website needs to look and behave impeccably in the online environment. This is a must if you want your site to bring you results, drive traffic, and ultimately increase conversion rates.
In a world where the number of websites is growing from day to day, only the most advanced and well-developed websites will manage to bring your business to another level. Sites that contain very few mistakes, if any at all.
In today’s article, we’re going to reveal 5 mistakes that you are simply not allowed to make in making your website – especially if you want it to bring you the desired results.
Not mobile friendly
If anyone were to compile a massive list of mistakes to avoid in regards to building a website in 2019, this would definitely be at the top. Everyone preaches this. A website that isn’t friendly to mobile users is 100% wasted potential.
Currently, over 7 out of 10 people are searching on Google with their mobile devices. In addition, Google made it clear a while ago that mobile adaptive sites will have advantages in terms of positioning in SERP. In other words, the adaptability of your website is becoming an extremely important SEO factor.
More and more people are making the switch to mobile browsing, so we can only expect mobile search percentages to go up from here. If you do not have a mobile and tablet-compatible website in 2019, it’s like opening a business and consciously closing the door in your nose for your clients in 7 out of 10 cases.
Unoptimized SEO content
This is the second fatal mistake in 2019, and again, something that most people know by now. SEO content will always make the top of everyone’s list because the Google algorithm is always changing. It’s no small task to optimize your SEO content, but it’s a vital one.
Writing SEO optimized content means you adopt the text to Google’s requirements. For the most part, that’s pretty straight forward. However, the tricky part comes into play when you have to keep it SEO optimized and appeal to real people. You’re not just creating content to make a robot happy, you have to keep the users happy, too. SEO in 2019 greatly relies on relevance – the content of your website should be 100% relevant to your target audience.
You have to find the balance. Find your brand voice and keep the Google robots in mind. If you don’t, this might be the first and last mistake you make on your website.
Slow loading time
This mistake is every bit as unforgiving as the first 2. People come to your website to get what they need and get out. If you hinder their convenience in any way, you might find yourself minus a customer.
There are a lot of factors that come into play regarding loading speeds. Most of them have to do with your content. Think of it this way: longer content = longer loading times. That’s why it’s so important to say what you need to say, and leave it at that.
Lots of people mistake detail with long-form content. While it’s true that Google favors longer content, it doesn’t always mean your users will. Again, the key here is to keep it short and sweet for the sake of the real people but to keep those keywords in mind for Google.
Bad CTA elements
A website that does not present the information in an attractive way, influencing the sales by Call-to-Action elements, will be a website that is not successful in the online environment. If the essential information and the call to action are not VISIBLE on the site, in a way that will invite the visitor to act, the site will not help you accomplish anything. So basically, it’s useless.
It is recommended that each page uses buttons, icons, and links that will lead to the contact forms or the offer request pages. Each page of the website must push the user one step closer to the final stage: the sale.
Nowadays, everything happens at the speed of lightning. No one has time to read hot air on your website. The world searches for fast, easy-to-understand and understandable information. Take that away, you take your customers away, too.
Lack of updates
In 2019 everyone expects your website to be “up to date” with all the trends and information. If you provide outdated information (even information about your products), you’ve lost the race with competing sites.
Your site needs to be updated and provide real-time information about you, about your products and about your business in general. Also, functionality is very important.
Sites with dead links or pages leading to errors – lack of content or missing pages are among the most common errors that turn users away from your website. Keep your site up-to-date. All pages should follow this rule and all information needs to be up to date.
Your website will always be a work-in-progress
Don’t let this header discourage you. A proper website, no matter the content or who owns it, will always need improvements and updates. There will always be something new to do, optimize, or add.
These are the 5 biggest mistakes people make when creating a new website in 2019, and they most likely always be mistakes that developers struggle with. The biggest takeaway from all these mistakes? Learn and adapt. If you see a mistake, fix it, and always be on the lookout for ways to improve.
One of the biggest complaints I hear about Groovy is that it is a dynamically compiled language — not that any dynamic language or platform could ever become popular or useful (Python, JS/node, Ruby, and more). However, Groovy isn't just a dynamic language; it's an optionally typed language. This means you can mix and match the power of a dynamic language with that of a statically compiled language.
Another complaint I often hear once people realize that Groovy can be statically compiled using an annotation at the class or method level is that it feels bolted on. To address the second concern, I recently released a Gradle plugin called Enterprise Groovy, which can be found on my GitHub page.
Modern-day enterprises are largely dependent on software applications to facilitate numerous business requirements. In most enterprises, a software application offers hundreds of functionalities — all piled into one single monolithic application. For instance, ERP and CRM platforms have monolithic architecture and serve hundreds of functionalities efficiently. But, with multiple dependencies overlapping and creating a cluster, the tasks of troubleshooting, scaling, and upgrading them become a nightmare. At times, enterprises try tweaking such monolith applications for their convenience to the point that they cease to serve any real purpose. This is when enterprises start to look for ways of modernizing applications and adopting an architecture that offers flexibility.
The Rise of Microservices
There is a growing demand for microservices architectures amongst enterprises to make the transition to modern delivery. In this architecture, functionalities are designed as independent microservices that are loosely coupled to create one application that can multitask. This method facilitates building applications at scale, where making changes at the component level becomes easy without disturbing other parts of the application.
You already know that content marketing can be a very successful form of marketing.
You also know that producing great content takes a lot of time or money, sometimes both.
But there’s something that you might not know, at least not for sure.
Just because a piece of content gets thousands of views or hundreds of social shares doesn’t mean that it produced a positive return on investment (ROI).
You could spend $100,000 on the most spectacular piece of content on how to pet a cat. It’s very unlikely that it would ever make you anywhere close to that amount back.
Content marketing is only effective if it’s profitable.
From what I see and hear, only a small fraction of marketers actually achieve a significantly positive ROI with their content.
That’s a HUGE problem.
While there’s a lot of factors that contribute to your ROI, I’m going to assume you have the basics of content marketing down.
That allows me to show you 7 different ways to maximize your content’s ROI.
If you apply even a few of these tactics, you can take your content from a break-even or slightly negative ROI to a healthy, positive ROI.
Achieving this will allow you to ramp up your content production in a sustainable way.
1. Pick 1-2 channels and design around them
A common mistake I see is people creating a piece of content and then trying to promote it everywhere.
I’m talking Facebook, Twitter, forums, Reddit, and any number of other marketing channels.
The reason why this is a mistake is that audiences on different channels and platforms within those channels typically behave very differently from each other.
Content that may be very popular on one channel isn’t necessarily going to do well on another channel.
That makes a shotgun approach for promotion a waste of your time, and it’s going to kill your ROI.
The solution? Get specific: You need to find 1-3 channels where your content does best.
For Quick Sprout, I use mainly Facebook and Twitter, along with my email list.
Ideally, you want to identify these channels before you even create your content. Then, you can tailor everything, including the topic, angle, and title just for those specific audiences.
Here’s your practical takeaway: Stop promoting your content on every place you can think of—you’re wasting your time. Focus on the sites that send you the most visitors for your time, effort, and money.
How do you pick a channel to focus on? Analyze your past content, and determine the number of visitors or subscribers you got from each channel. Create a simple table, like this one, for each piece of content to measure your results:
Time spent – how much time you need to spend to promote content on this channel
Cost of time – your time has value, input a $/hour value here
Other costs – put in any money you spent (e.g., advertising)
Total cost – add your time and other costs together
Sales/subscribers/visitors – pick a metric, and record the results
Then, divide the sales (or subscribers, or metric of your choice) by the time it cost you to get a return per hour metric.
You will see that certain channels vastly outperform others.
2. Never stop updating
As you may know, there are 2 types of content…
Evergreen content, which stays relevant for years (possibly for the foreseeable future) and non-evergreen content, which will go out of date in the near future.
You’ll probably end up creating both types of content.
The main downside of non-evergreen content is that once you get the initial value out of it, it fades into irrelevance and won’t help your business much.
However, you can essentially erase this negative effect by continuously updating your content.
It’s something that Brian Dean does very well; you should follow his example.
Why is updating so important? Updates are all about the reader. They make the content much more valuable.
SEO tools come and go all the time.
If you look at other lists of SEO tools that are a few years old, you’ll see that most of the tools listed there are either ineffective these days or no longer available. Plus, they are missing some great tools that were recently released.
While Brian isn’t ranking #1 for “SEO tools” in Google, he ranks very highly, and I expect his rankings will continue to rise (it’s a tough keyword):
Google is going to see that users find his guide the most useful, and it will be promoted.
Updating has a few other side benefits.
First, it allows you to keep promoting your content. Usually, you publish something and then you go all out on promoting it for a week or two.
After that, you probably have a bit of anxiety doing more promotion because you feel like your content already isn’t that “fresh.”
If you update your content, it allows you to send a quick Tweet or email to people who have enjoyed it before, letting them know you’ve added a few cool tidbits (like new tools for Brian). That’ll get you extra shares and links.
Finally, a lot of things influence what your readers will share with their friends and communities.
Mainly, they want to share things that make them look good. That’s why they rarely share old content, which is probably not applicable anymore. But if you keep updating your content on a regular basis, visitors will have no problem sharing it far past your first publish date.
3. Never stop promoting
I’ll let you in on a little secret:
Most of your ROI is going to come from your content promotion.
While great content is a good start, it’s nothing without a substantial amount of promotion.
But here’s the problem: Even if you do a great promotional push for a week or two, your traffic will spike but then quickly die down.
I guarantee that you haven’t reached even a fraction of the people that could benefit from your content during that time frame.
There’s no rule that says that you can promote only new content.
If you want to maximize your ROI, you likely need to spend more time promoting your old content as well.
For starters, you can simply repost your content on social media and forums every once in awhile.
Additionally, you can set up Google Alerts to let you know when anyone is talking about the topic you wrote about. You can then pop in and suggest they visit your guide.
On top of those, most promotional tactics are still viable. Very few don’t work simply because your content was published a month or two ago.
4. There are diminishing returns between quality and ROI
This is where creating great content gets really tricky.
Sometimes, making your content better will leave you with a worse ROI.
The reason behind this is pretty simple. To design custom images and layouts, it takes a lot of time and/or money.
Even the table of contents for my advance guides (in the sidebar) cost a ton to make:
At some point, you may have a piece of content that’s really good. If you spend another $100 on a custom image, will that bring you more than $100 later on?
That’s the question, and it’s a tough one.
When do you stop improving content? It’s going to vary in every case, but I’ll get as specific as possible.
Let’s start with a fundamental principle: your content should be better than that of all your competitors.
If it isn’t, you’ll be lucky to achieve any positive ROI at all.
The better your content is, the more it stands out from the rest:
But you reach a limit.
Once your content is significantly better than all the other content on that subject, readers can’t tell when it gets even better.
Readers determine the quality of your content in large part by comparing it to others. So, even if you improve your already-better content, in the eyes of most readers, it’s still just “better” than the rest.
If there’s no significant difference in perception, there won’t be a significant difference in your return. And since you spent more to improve your content, that means your ROI declined.
Your practical takeaway: Make your content significantly better than your competition’s, and then stop. Any further improvements will be costly and your ROI will likely decrease.
Of course, you should test this yourself, but that’s a good rule of thumb to follow.
The one exception to the rule: I mentioned my ultimate guides before. These obviously broke the rule because I went way above and beyond what was already out there.
I did this for one main reason: So that no one could come in later and create something significantly better.
These guides have driven hundreds of thousands of visits to my site since being published. Even though they are years old, no one has comprehensively been able to create content that “beats” them.
They allow my site to retain its position as the leader in each of those areas and deliver constant traffic even now.
If you know that a piece of content has the potential to deliver a large volume of traffic (usually through SEO) for years, and that others will try to create better content than yours, you can take this route.
Alternatively, you could just upgrade your content as others catch up and hope that none of them create a guide like this that you can’t really beat.
5. Advertising is not the enemy of inbound marketing
I told you earlier that Facebook is an important channel for Quick Sprout.
But if you’ve used Facebook for your business, you know that the organic reach percentage—the number of your fans who see your posts—is dismal:
If you rely only on organic traffic on most social channels, you’re missing out on a lot of reach.
But a lot of marketers, especially newer ones, hate advertising. If you’re a strict inbound marketer, you might not want to tap into outbound marketing options.
But outbound (“interruption” in the picture) marketing and inbound marketing do not need to be exclusive.
You can use both of them at the same time to promote a piece of content. And when you find the right combination, you can see big gains to your ROI.
6. The biggest mistake you can make is not optimizing your funnel
It’s the first word in ROI: return.
If you have no way to make money, no content will have a positive ROI.
It’s absolutely essential that you have some sort of sales funnel in place, ending with some sort of product (or alternative monetization method) for visitors and subscribers to buy.
Most of what I’ve written in this post focuses on your content and promotion, but just as important is what happens after.
Have you optimized your email marketing? Do you have a clear path to generating revenue from visitors?
If you don’t, you need to.
Doubling the conversion rate at any point near the bottom of your sales funnel is an easy way to double the ROI of all your content.
If you’ve tried (and failed) at blogging, don’t feel bad.
You’re not alone. Creating content, especially good content, is hard work. It takes a long time. Most of the time, you don’t see instant rewards.
So, how do some people write three, five, or even ten articles every week?
You might think that they work 80-hour weeks, are blessed with some genius gene, or have an army of assistants at their beck and call.
The reality is prolific writers are normal people. The difference lies in their habits—habits that have allowed them to repeat a pattern of success every day.
Take a look at this data from Hubspot. Their research revealed that businesses who blogged 11 or more times per month had the largest amount of inbound traffic.
The path to content marketing success is persistent, repeated content generation.
And in order to achieve persistent, repeated content generation, you’ve got to learn to write more.
That brings me to the point of this article. I want to show you some of the methods I’ve used to produce thousands of blog articles over the years.
Consider this your personal cheat sheet. By using one, two, or all these tips, you’ll be able to produce vastly more content than you are right now.
And here’s the best part: you won’t burn out.
Burnout is a huge cause of failure. Remember, content marketing is a long term commitment. Fizzling out after a few weeks of red-hot intensity isn’t going to give you the results you need.
So, let’s dive into the tactics. Here is how you can write five or more insanely good articles every week and keep at it for the long term.
Create a goal, and make time for it
Let’s start with the obvious. You’ve got to set a goal for yourself.
Maybe you won’t aim for five posts a week. Maybe you’ll shoot for three at first. That’s fine.
The important thing is to set a goal.
According to goal experts, we should first establish a vision of what we want to achieve. In this case, the vision is five articles a week.
Second, we clarify that goal in our minds.
Third, we determine what we need to do in order to accomplish that goal.
Break your five-article goal into manageable chunks—perhaps 1 hour of writing every day. Put that writing hour into your schedule. By 3 p.m. every day, you should have written, say, 500 words.
Easy enough, right?
Deadlines aren’t tyrannical methods of cruel and unusual punishment. They are a tool to help us achieve our goals.
Shut down all distractions while you write
Distraction-free writing is the way to produce content quickly.
A single distraction can cost you anywhere from 27 seconds to 25 minutes!
Write down thoughts and inspirations as soon as you get them
A lot of writing time is wasted trying to come up with ideas.
Instead of burning precious writing time thinking of ideas, create a list of ideas beforehand. Then, when it’s time to write, you’ll know exactly what you’re supposed to do.
Many writers get into the habit of carrying around a notebook to write down ideas as they come to them. Try to do the same. You may be surprised at all the good ideas you come up with when you’re not even trying.
Write only about topics that interest you
If you’re trying to write about boring topics, you’ll have trouble getting very far.
You’ll be banging your head against a wall if you try to produce content you’re not passionate about.
It might be time to change your focus or to select topics that do interest you.
Take some time to find out when you’re at your sharpest mentally. Use that time for writing. You will be able to write better content, and you’ll do so with energy to spare.
You’ll hit your goals, and you won’t burn out doing it.
The hunger hormone, known as ghrelin, can activate the brain’s hypothalamus and hippocampus, allowing you to research better, faster, and more effectively.
While you should certainly eat enough to maintain your energy, you may want to delay that big meal until after you’ve had your writing session.
Make up a writing ritual
Writing greats from history have used writing rituals or routines to prime their brains for writing success.
Habit researcher Charles Duhigg has determined that positive routines can help us develop constructive habits—even the habit of writing.
Why not invent your own writing ritual? It doesn’t need to be anything complicated or serious. Maybe it involves coffee, a shower, a playlist, or something else.
Doing the same thing in the same way at the same time, as you’ll remember from above, can prime the brain for repeated success.
Suddenly, you have a deadline, someone who’s counting on you, and a new audience with whom you get to share your story.
Instead of simply waiting for this inspiration to come your way, actively seek it out.
Find a music playlist that gets you going
Music can improve your productivity like few other things can.
When it’s writing time, grab your headphones, cue your writing playlist, and get going. Some educators have discovered that the right kind of music can “trigger creativity, awareness, motivation, and poetry.”
Try creating your outline ahead of time, and see if it helps you write faster. When you have an outline in place, your brain is already familiar with the way you should structure ideas.
When it comes time to write the content, all you have to do is add verbal substance to the outline.
It’s simple and fast, and it keeps you from burning out.
Check your typing speed, and set a goal to improve it by 5 wpm each week
The net effect? Greater productivity and a higher quality of work.
If you’re into cat videos, don’t feel bad about it. Instead, watch these cuddly critters, and then write some great content.
Here’s a cute cat playlist to get you started.
Conclusion
You can write better. You can write faster. You can write five articles a day.
And when you get there, you might not be able to stop!
When I first started blogging, I was really slow. Writing was painful.
Today, writing is like second nature. I’ve done it so much that I can’t help but do it every day. This article, which is more than 2,300 words, took me a little over an hour to write.
There is something energizing and fulfilling in producing content that helps people to improve. Plus, the benefits to your business will convince you that daily writing is the way to go.
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