Posted on

6 Digital Marketing Mistakes To Avoid In 2020

It can often be tough to determine what direction the digital marketing world is going, considering how it is evolving in a time where technology is continually changing and evolving. However, many analysts and experts that can agree that there are methods that simply arent effective or might not be the smart strategy currently.

There is nothing wrong with digital marketing that eschews a traditional approach. Many companies have succeeded because of innovative digital marketing campaigns that have changed the way that we think about advertising in general. However, here are some digital marketing mistakes that you should work to avoid at all costs.

Not Testing Enough

One of the greatest aspects of technology is that it allows companies to understand what kind of content strategy works, whether it involves copywriting, promotions, or design/layout. Your business should continuously be understanding which e-mail promotion works the best through A/B testing.

A/B testing can help you do more than figuring out what marketing method works - they can provide insight with respect to demographics and price points, as well. Companies should also be testing as your marketing strategy evolves, to figure out what works and what doesnt. Of course, you should also listen to consumer/customer feedback in general, in addition to A/B testing.

Never Rewarding The Loyal Consumer/Customer

There is no question that every business needs to continually profit in order to survive. However, are you continually taking from the consumer rather than offering meaningful to them? You should understand that loyal consumers often receive all sorts of offers - whether its a discount code or a free shipping offer in their inbox.

Every company should work to reward loyal consumers - and this certainly isnt a strategy that is limited to digital marketing. Starbucks, one of the worlds largest coffee chains, has been particularly successful in creating revenue through loyalty programs. You may find that rewarding a consumer - whether its because they made a large purchase or signed up for your newsletter - is usually a smart decision.

Downplaying Social Media

There are many different social media platforms out there, but the truth is that Facebook alone boasts over two billion monthly users. This is a significant portion of the Earths population, and it would be ridiculous for a company of any kind to disregard the impact of a powerful social media strategy. There are also over 200 billion tweets per year, for an idea of how useful Twitter can be when it comes to marketing/advertising.

There are many businesses that have been able to find a particular voice on a social media platform that has translated to real profits. You also might find that social media can help amplify your other marketing campaigns, as commercials often go viral and can lead to meme creation. Regardless, every business should understand that a social media presence can help with customer loyalty and overall revenue. Companies have succeeded on social media through a minimal investment for some social media promotion, as well.

Its also important to remember WHY you are on social media, to help with brand messaging. You shouldnt create a Twitter account just for the sake of it - you should have concrete goals associated with your social media strategy.

Tracking Why You Succeed

There might be moments where you understand exactly why a marketing campaign worked and why. However, the truth is that you should always be using analytics to figure out more about why some methods are working. If you arent tracking the success of your marketing methods, then how will you improve?

You may find that some of your marketing strategies take more time/money than you thought, but that were well-worth it in the long-term. An organization might also find that a minimal investment in a particular marketing tactic brought more revenue than expected, and executives may decide that more attention should be considered to this strategy. At the end of the day, you cant improve what you arent actively tracking.

Content With No Value

You might think that producing content is of the utmost importance, but that the kind of content doesnt really matter. There are plenty of businesses with websites that offer hundreds of blog articles, for example. There is nothing wrong with blog articles, but often times, organizations stuff keywords in these articles hoping to rank higher on search engines.

The concept of search-engine optimization (SEO) is something that every organization should consider. However, if you are intent on continually producing content without caring about the quality of the content - you might find that you may eventually be giving up market share to a competitor that is offering real value, whether its in the form of actionable advice or a well-designed and informative landing page.

Lack Of Engagement

One of the reasons that businesses are successful with digital marketing is because they go out of their way to interact with the customer and make sure that they are satisfied. If you create social media platforms but arent too concerned with actually responding to anyone, it can appear like your company isnt really authentic in their social media presence.

You dont have to respond to every tweet, or post - but you should make it clear that you are there to not only promote your business but also to address any questions or concerns about your business. Some of the largest corporations in the world go out of their way to respond to their customers - and its because there is real value in engagement.

Conclusion

There are plenty of digital marketing strategies that have come in and out of style, and there will undoubtedly be more social media platforms that rise to prominence. Companies are now figuring out how to target the teenager demographic of Tiktok, for example.

However, there are clear situations where organizations should understand that they might be doing more harm than good. These digital marketing tactics should be avoided as much as possible, especially given the fact that we are entering a new decade.

Posted on

how can improve ecommerce website ranking?

Hello evryone currenlty i have wordpress site with woo commerce plugin. I run online shopping site i don't know how can i improve traffic more. now i have small amount of traffic how can increase high traffic. suggest me good information.

Posted on

Hashtag In Marketing: Does Its Power Still Work?

Digital marketing is changing as the technology progresses, it adapts to new trends which means your advertising strategy needs to be reviewed from time to time in order to follow the pace of online trends. Content marketing, emails, SEO, and cross-platform marketing are still the dominant aspects of any marketing strategy. Through the years, hashtags [...]

The post Hashtag In Marketing: Does Its Power Still Work? appeared first on WPArena.

Posted on

3 Major Steps To Drive Social Media Traffic To Your Site

When it comes to driving traffic to your site, one of the easiest, and cheapest ways to do this is through social media. If you company is not on social media, I hate to break it to you, but you are behind. Marketing is all about chasing the consumer’s attention, and with 3.4 billion social media users around the world, it’s not hard to tell where to focus is.

While it may seem easy that users who follow you on Facebook or Instagram will eventually land on your site, there has to be a quicker way to get them there right? That’s right! By utilizing the right steps, you can use your social media profiles to increase traffic to your site for new user acquisition and increased conversions.

Step 1: Optimizing Your Social Media Pages

The first step in driving more traffic using your social media is to make sure that your social accounts are fully optimized for driving traffic. There are many factors to look at here and the first thing you want to look at is your voice.

Voice

When it comes to social media, people are looking to communicate with people and businesses on the same level as them, in a relatable sense if you will. For this to work in your favor, you need to determine what kind of voice you want your brand to have on social media.

For those with a self-centered business such as an inspiration speaker or athlete, you are going to want to make sure that you are remaining personable and marketing yourself so that others get a personable connection to you.

For those with a brand or using social media as a company, you can use the same approach, but you will want to ensure your brand standards are kept. For example, if you are marketing to millennials, you will want someone with a younger, more hip dialog rather than an older marketer who does not speak the same slang as your target market.

Display

Presentation is everything, especially when it comes to first impressions with your brand or company. Since social media is one of the first places that people discover a brand, it is important that you are making a professional appearance right off the bat.

To optimize your page for a good first impression, you are going to want to include a fully built out profile with photos that represent your business, and about us section, and all of the contact details that one would need to get ahold of you.

One of the most important things to remember is a link to your site. While the link in your profile page isn’t going to be the main focus of traffic driving, it is nice to have it in case anyone is searching for your site on your page.

It is highly important to keep up with the trends on social media posting. Users are using social media profiles to be entertained and find out news updates from their friends and family. By posting ad-like updates, chances are, you are not going to get any interaction from your audience. Finding a way to interact with your audience is going to be key to keeping people interacting with your brand, ultimately helping to drive traffic to your site.

Step 2: Optimize Your Site & Content For Your Consumers

Just like social media, the first impression of your site can make or break a customers decision to stay on your site. Content is king in the internet world and with many of Google’s algorithms look at content and user experience as a ranking factor, it is important to make sure your content is what the customer is wanting.

When creating landing pages for your social media consumers to land on, you will want to make sure that each page is relevant to what they are wanting to see by clicking your link. If you have them land on a product page when they were wanting to get more information on a service you provide, chances are they are going to simply go back to browsing social media rather than trying to navigate your site to find the right service.

To make the most of your landing page, make sure that you are including everything that a consumer may need to see. If you are selling a product, include reviews, install instructions, and all of the product information to push people through the sales funnel and keep them from visiting other sites to get that information.

Step 3: Getting People From Your Social Media To Your Site

Now the fun part - getting people to from your social media profiles to your site. There are many different ways to do this, but following these steps can help ensure that you are maximizing your social media traffic to your site.

Make Sure You Post Often

People are constantly checking social media for the latest news and updates. This is why it is highly important to update often to show up in news feeds more often. While you do not want to flood your fan's timelines, posting 1-2 times a day can help to increase visibility and interactions on your posts. It is also an easy way to show potential consumers that you are active on social media, which is always a plus when someone is researching your company. Include links to your site for more information on your posts.

Switch Up Your Content

Posting simply text status updates is so 2010. In order to take up more real estate on timelines and increase user engagement (not to mention favor algorithms) it is important to use video and photo status updates. With apps like Pinterest and Instagram, more and more people are becoming accustomed to visual stimulation. Videos and photos can evoke a more personal feel about a brand or company as they can show off more than you can type. By seeing the types of photos and videos you share, a person can feel more connected to you and your brand.

Share Content Of Others

One easy way to make a post update when you are having trouble coming up with content is by sharing other company's posts. This helps to give you extra content to post and introduces your brand to another company or individual. If you are lucky, they will return the favor and share one of your posts thus introducing your brand to their network. When doing this, make sure that their content matches your brand's ultimate goal to keep uniformity of your content.

Repost Your Own Posts

Another easy way to come up with content ideas is to share old content that got good engagement in the past. You will see many companies doing this as it is quick, easy, and has been proven to work. A simple click of a button can save you time and energy coming up with a new post, and it is most likely going to do just as good as it did the first time around.

Find Unique Ways To Drive Engagement

Engagement on your posts can help others feel more comfortable about your brand, allow you to connect with your fans, and can even help get your post seen by others thanks to social media algorithms. While telling people to specifically LIKE or COMMENT can trigger some algorithms to mark your post as spammy, there are many ways to get people commenting without telling them what to do. You can ask a question, post a question as a photo, or have people tell their own personal stories that relate to your content.

Keep Up With Interactions

Now that you have people interacting with your content, it is time to go back in and reply to these comments or mentions to interact back with your fans. This goes a long way with most people as it shows the business cares about their fans. This can be done in a quick thank you, answering questions, or providing more information to those who need it. Either way you do it, showing that you are actively interacting with your consumers is a great way to build trust.

Posted on

Why Analytics Are More Important Than Ever

At the dawn of the computer age, there were many individuals that truly believed that while the Internet might be valuable, that it would not have a lasting impact on human civilization. Paul Krugman famously wrote in 1998 that the effect of the Internet on the world economy would be “no greater than the fax machine’sâ€. When one considers that Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist, you start to realize that not everyone truly understood the digital transformation that was actually about to take place. Of course, now we completely understand that every business that takes itself seriously has to have some sort of an online presence, and that the Internet has forever transformed the way that human beings connect, consume, and interact.

The days of discovering the right keywords and optimizing them are not over by any means, but the truth is that we now have more data than ever to truly understand what consumers are looking for, and take advantage of it. While there are many businesses out there that certainly are luring in new customers thanks to SEO-focused content, blog posts, and linking out to authority sites - the truth is that digital marketing requires actual analytics more than ever. This is a bit of a “crisis†that the entire sector is facing, as digital marketers are increasingly struggling to improve ROI for businesses and brands, and corporations are shelling out more money than ever to try to figure out how to digitally market their products and services.

Digital marketers require a much more comprehensive view of what is happening with consumers than traffic and conversion. That’s why actual analytics are more essential to digital marketers than before, which is only natural considering that digital marketing has been utilizing some of the same tactics now for years. This is examining what device that your consumers are on, how much time they spend on which web pages, and interactions per visit. Is the consumer actually interested in your company’s services, or do they just find your blog posts valuable? You thought that your landing page was incredible, and laid out your price points quite eloquently - but why are consumers not spending more time on that page? What is your ratio of new traffic to returning traffic, and what are the reasons that it might be fluctuating? These are the kind of new questions that digital marketers have to constantly ask themselves in order to improve ROI for their clients.

The Past Is The Past

This also just simply isn’t about a website anymore. We all know that there are more ways than ever to communicate with the customer. It might be through Instagram lives, influencers, Facebook messages, apps that companies create, newsletters that corporations send, and more. There has to be much more to learn about than simply traffic, because there is more consumer data out there than ever, and more ways for consumers to engage with organizations of all sizes. This begs the question: what should digital marketers be thinking about? While it’s always great to know more about how much web traffic you are getting, what more can be done to make sure that more potential customers know about you, and are interested in what you have to offer?

In the past, digital marketers simply believed that the more content that was put out there, the more would be consumed. That’s why techniques such as “keyword stuffing†rose in popularity, because digital marketers knew that if they mentioned certain words, web rankings would improve, and that would mean profit for their clients. Of course, this simply isn’t nowhere near as effective as it used to be. These days, digital marketers are more interested in knowing WHAT KIND of marketing strategies work more than others.

Comparing Your Various Marketing Strategies

Let’s say that your company is a startup that is in an extremely competitive sector. As a digital marketer, both you and your client understand that gaining market share might take some time. You start strategizing about how to provide some value, and create a Youtube channel for potential clients to learn more about what you do. You might even hire an influencer to make sure that the videos reach a certain amount of people, as well. In addition, you also reach out to industry experts and ask if they might be interested in appearing on a podcast. Your organization has made it clear that they want as meaningful content as possible, and you are making sure that this is the case. Months might pass by, without any real metrics changing. After this time, all of a sudden, the startup is receiving more traffic than ever, and being discussed on social media.

You might check the Youtube videos only to find that no real progress has been made, despite the fact that the influencer is actively posting about your client. You switch over to find that the podcast has more listens than ever, because of a specific guest that is has been in the headlines because his company just got acquired by a major corporation. As a result, there are thousands of people listening in to the advice that he gave on the recent podcast. Now, your startup is receiving more traffic, and your client is actually gaining business.

A digital marketer has to be conscious of these immediate changes. While this story is obviously an anecdotal one, the truth is that digital marketers have to find out new ways to create content that fit with industry trends. It’s no secret that podcasting is a budding industry, as evidenced by the fact that one of the most powerful and influential tech companies in the world, Apple, is actively investing in the space. The Joe Rogan Podcast has grown tremendously over the past decade, and now regularly features presidential candidates attempting to spread their message. This is all just a testament to the way that content trends are changing. If digital marketers want to truly help their clients, they have to be aware of these trends and take advantage of them, because it could mean very real profit for them.

Focusing On The Consumer Journey

It’s no secret that companies and organizations have always wanted to know more about their customer, to figure out how to keep them happy. While customer retention has always been a focus, the truth is that digital marketers will have to zero in on the consumer journey more than ever. We all have taken a survey where a company asks us “How did you hear about us?â€, but that simply isn’t going to cut it in the future.

Digital marketers will have to know more and more about where these consumers are coming from. Are they visiting your client’s website because of a recent news article? Was it a positive news article, and why? Are potential customers visiting your website because of a press release that was recently circulated? Is it because it was discussed on social media by an influencer, or because your client’s app is rising up the stores? This kind of information will help to shape your content marketing strategy going forward.

Looking To The Future

The truth is that while digital marketers have been creating content in many different channels for some time now, their analytics will have to expand, as well. It’s no longer just about web traffic or customer retention. It’s about whether customers are visiting your website and mobile. Are they staying long enough? If so, what are they looking at? If they aren’t staying and your bounce rate is high, is it because of your load time? There is nothing more frustrating than waiting for a website to load, and if that’s the reason your customers are leaving - that’s important information, because it doesn’t really have to do with your product or customer service. If a digital marketer is truly on top of their client’s analytics, it can be an invaluable tool to creating new streams of revenue and saving massive amounts of money elsewhere, as well.

You can learn more about which social media platform ad campaigns are working, and why. Is it because of the copywriter that was hired? Is it because of the graphics or overall message that was conveyed? Why are many people adding products to a cart but the cart abandonment rate so high? Does this mean that your client is missing out on money by insisting on a price point? Would an effective sales promotion or newsletter change that situation and help your client make more profit than ever? Is one micro-influencer providing much more value for your client than the more expensive high-profile influencer that you previously hired, and why? In a world of ever-changing analytics, digital marketers have to understand that tracking all sorts of metrics might lead to insight that wasn’t previously available. While this doesn’t mean that ALL information is essential, it does require much more analysis on the part of digital marketers. As the saying goes, “knowledge is powerâ€, and certainly, when it comes to the digital marketing sector, “analytics are powerâ€, as well.

Posted on

How The Evolution Of Online Advertising Helped DaniWeb Itself To Evolve

Dani Horowitz remains as passionate about our online community today as she was back in February 2002 when, while pursuing a computer science degree on Long Island, NY, she founded DaniWeb. Fast forward to now, and an amazing half a billion visitors later, DaniWeb has become a vibrant community of members learning, sharing knowledge, and engaging with other developers, IT pros, technophiles and computer hobbyists. I've been talking to Dani about DaniWeb in the context of a dynamic and evolving online advertising market...

HG: Tell me a little about how DaniWeb itself has adapted to a changing online advertising market?

Dani: DaniWeb was founded in 2002 and by 2003 had become one of the first online 'publications' to independently track and monetize user behavior. Skip ten years and, in 2013, I developed and launched an algorithm to match question askers with likely answerers based on tracking user behavior across DaniWeb. This was a necessary change as by 2013 we were dying a slow death thanks to there being no more demand for Q&A-based tech sites. Between the likes of Stack Overflow, Quora and Reddit they are successfully able to handle Q&As more efficiently than we ever could, and there's no use in competing with them.

HG: So was that a Google thing then?

Dani: It's not that Google is anti-DaniWeb as such, but rather that Google would love us more if we were able to figure out a way to hit their sweet spot like Stack Overflow has done. The problem is that Stack Overflow already has that perfect combination of features and functionality to hit the sweet spot for Google and for the end-user. So you have to design something that is not just great for Google, and not just great for your end-user, but fills a gap in the market as well and solves a need. As a result, I have been focussed on slowly morphing DaniWeb into a social network for techies. The process began back in 2012 when DaniWeb LLC filed the trademark of "Technology Publication meets Social Media". In 2015, when Dazah was launched as a business networking web app integrated into DaniWeb, we took it to the next level. The 2018 rebranding of Dazah as DaniWeb Connect is the next evolutionary step.

HG: So can we look at the role of the online advertising market in all this?

Dani: Twenty years ago, like most forum sites, we made money from banner ads. Today, most of our money comes from members who ask questions paying to be matched and message potential answers, and advertisers paying to message people who fit their target demographic. Our advertising model has changed from banner ads to instant messaging ads. Like the owner of any business, my job is to ensure I can make money and keep that business viable. Thinking of this in terms of an online newspaper helps explain how this works in practise:

One could say that the job of the newspaper business is to increase the number of subscribers and increase the amount of readers. Increasing the number of subscribers directly makes more money, because advertisers pay based on how many readers there are. It is therefore always the case that the amount of money that can be made from advertisers is limited by the amount of inventory available. Rates are set by the market (tech publications always earn X per set of eyeballs; travel sites earn Y and health and fitness sites earn Z) so the limiting factor is always how much traffic there currently is. Perhaps putting more of their best content behind a paywall will increase the number of subscribers. Perhaps working to improve the UI will make the site appear more trustworthy and increase the number of subscribers. Perhaps ads that give readers a sense of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) will increase their interest in subscribing for fear of not having access to everything and therefore increase the number of subscribers.

To increase the number of readers who visit daily, SEO techniques can be used to gain more traffic from Google. Data mining existing users and providing machine learning to present existing readers with articles they are more likely to be interested in based on their tastes will make the website more "sticky", meaning people will spend longer on it and return more often. Just a 5% increase in return visitors can go a super duper long way to increase the daily readership.

Now let's talk about DaniWeb. Just like every other ad-based publication out there, my business is in selling advertising. The amount of inventory that I have available to sell is limited by how much traffic the website gets. For nearly all of the past 20 years we have had an average of about 5-10 ad campaigns each quarter. The amount of work and effort that it takes to go live with an ad campaign is typically consistent. The variable to how much money can be made is how much inventory we have available. If we don't have a lot of inventory available to sell, each of those 5 ad campaigns can be for $500 each. If we have a lot of traffic, we have a lot of eyeballs to sell, and each campaign can be for $50,000 each. How can I generate that inventory? Well I do that by trying to create a platform that is designed to attract and retain as many eyeballs as possible that meet a certain criteria: the demographic that my advertisers are wanting to pay to get in front of.

HG: So what does improving the platform, and so increasing inventory, actually look like for DaniWeb?

Dani: It involves designing a system that is designed to get users to spend as much time on it as possible, and give them a positive, enjoyable experience so that they will keep coming back. That could be by using a reputation or rewards system to give a warm, fuzzy feeling to answerers. Or to use techniques that bring more instant gratification to askers. Let's take a look at Twitter, for example, Twitter's platform is just a very simple feed of 160 characters or less. As a business, twitter designed a platform to be so addictive that they gained a LOT of traffic (aka inventory) to sell. Tweeters are not customers of Twitter, because they aren't the ones buying anything from Twitter. The same with Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, and every other social platform out there. When you conduct a Google search, you aren't Google's customer. When you buy something from Google, that's when you are a customer.

HG: And when did the online advertising market start to transform, what was the catalyst for you to do the same with DaniWeb?

Dani: That would be in the mid-2000s when Google came out with a completely automated platform to sell ads. It let media buyers buy ads not just from Google, but from every publisher that is in their AdSense network. This completely turned the advertising industry on its head! By making the entire process a self-service platform for media buyers to use it eliminated all of the back and forth overhead between the media buyer and the publication. Campaigns went from taking weeks of back and forth communication to set up, to taking only moments. Not only that, but with all the manual legwork now automated, the process was a lot more efficient and took a lot less manpower. It also brought instant gratification to the world of advertising for the first time ever. Campaigns could now be set up and monitored in realtime. THIS WAS HUGE! Advertisers could now promote products and services that were time sensitive.

HG: Can you explain what you mean by that?

Dani: Let's say eBay knows that you were recently shoe shopping for red sneakers. Previously, the best they could do is show you a targeted ad that might take you to a search page of whatever shoe auctions they currently have going on. However, because campaigns could take weeks to set up, it's possible that by the time you saw the ad there were no active auctions for red sneakers any more. However, with Google AdWords they could now show you targeted ads for current shoe auctions where the ads themselves say "Auction ends in 15 minutes! Hurry and bid now!" And it would take you directly to the auction for that product.

By allowing smaller publications to band together also changed things. When a publication doesn't have a lot of inventory available, advertisers don't want to work with them, because it takes a LOT of manual effort to set up a campaign. Advertisers would rather do the paperwork ONCE and reach all 5 million visitors through one insertion order, than have 500 campaigns going at once totaling the same overall budget, because that's 500 times the work. By working with Google AdWords, an advertiser can advertise across all 500 publications that are in the AdSense network but with one insertion order.

HG: Sounds like a win-win so far!

Dani: Well, obviously this brought a lot of benefits but it brought a lot of problems for publishers as well. It was absolutely great for smaller publishers who previously didn't have enough inventory to land any campaigns on their own, because the most they could sell was a few thousand bucks, and this wasn't worth an ad agency's time, but with Google, they could now enjoy a piece of the pie, and this was great for 99.9% of publications on the web. However, for the 0.1% of publications out there that had enough traffic and were already doing custom deals with ad agencies, this was the worst thing that could happen. DaniWeb was one of those publications.

Google turned ad inventory into a commodity. Before AdWords, setting up campaigns was a long process, and the publisher provided a custom tailored service to media buyers. Reps wined and dined the media buyers. Media buyers bought campaigns based on which publications treated them the best, just like any service-oriented business, it was all about customer service. But then agencies caught on to how they only had to use one platform - Google - and the process was entirely automated, and they could buy their entire marketing budget all at once. This was easier and far less costly!! Publications now had no way of standing out, no way of offering superior customer service, and no way of charging more for better service. Not only that, but because agencies were now JUST buying from Google, even the largest publications were now just grouped together with the smallest guys. Banner advertising became nothing more than a commodity, and with that, the average cost per pair of eyeballs went down 100-fold.

HG: So how did DaniWeb react to this change?

Dani: As a business we had to find alternative ways of making money, because banner advertising wasn't cutting it anymore. We lost a lot of our traffic to Q&A sites like Stack Overflow, so our quantity of inventory went down and the value of the inventory we did have became commoditized. We did what every other big publication started doing, which was explore sponsored emails and then sponsored member subscriptions. The benefit to paid member subscriptions is that you're turning your readers into your customers. Which brings me back to the main points of what lead us to where we are today, why I'm pursuing the path I am with DaniWeb. I can create a MUCH better product and platform if the people using the platform are my customers. This way, I don't have to split focus between appealing to my customers and appealing to my visitors. I'm doing this by charging askers to be matched with potential answerers, which we've been doing with some success now over the past 4-5 years. But I'm breaking out from being a Q&A site and DaniWeb has been moving towards more of a social network model for nearly 10 years now. Which brings me to figuring out additional revenue models.

HG: And they are?

Dani: What can I sell to advertisers who want to get in front of eyeballs if banner advertising is commoditized and isn't going to cut it anymore? I took a page out of LinkedIn's book and decided that selling instant messages would fit the bill. Over the past few years, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook all began using an automated self-serve platform just like Google's. That's pretty much de facto nowadays. It's my goal to turn DaniWeb into a peer-to-peer chat system in effect. I think that we've been successful in that nearly everyone who becomes one of our answerers or one of our more senior members did so because they initially found DaniWeb because they needed help and began by asking a question once upon a time, and they got the answer to their question, and then over time, as they learned more, they wanted to give back. I've spent 20 years as a platform creator, so what I credit myself on is the ability to create a platform that people choose to use over any other platform out there. Right now, askers don't come back on their own. They come back only when they currently have a problem they're unable to solve on their own and Google sends them here. If we could turn this into all members coming to socialize with their peers, we would not be as reliant on Google anymore.

HG: What makes you sure this will work?

Dani: Ever since about 2006, DaniWeb has held monthly meet ups in our office. Techies and programmers often came with a single question they needed help with, but always ended up staying through the night. We went from meeting once a month, from 6-8 pm, to meeting twice a month, from 6 pm to midnight or later. They always came because they were a fresh comp sci graduate who wanted help figuring out what field to go into, or they were building an app and were stuck on figuring out a database problem and thought maybe someone could help, or some other reason, and they ended up making their best friends from the meetup. I can't tell you how many people ended up being a best man at a wedding, or went on to start dating, or went into business together, as a result of our meet ups over the years.

I'm trying to replicate this model in the online world, because, at least for me, I see a huge need. I want to meet people who are fellow tech entrepreneurs and the new platform allows me to do that, and build friendships by finding other tech entrepreneurs who live just a few miles from me who also work from home. I don't know any other platforms that are designed for that. Couple that with this being a new revenue model for us, and I see it as our salvation. We break from Google, get a new revenue model, and make new friends, all at once. I’ve successfully patented the Dazah algorithm, currently the only algorithm patented in the United States that matches people in a social platform based on their chat behavior.

Posted on

The Role of AI In Digital Marketing

When it comes to digital marketing trends, there are so many areas to keep up with that it can often be overwhelming for an entrepreneur of any kind. It doesn’t matter what kind of industry you are in - the truth is that every business is focused on their online presence (or at least should be). In addition, many are quick to position themselves to take advantage of the latest digital marketing trends.

This can often be expensive and exhausting. It might involve spending a significant amount of money on new software, programs, products, and also hiring agencies to create content for you. It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about video marketing, SEO writing, or automation, everyone is trying to find ways to make sure that they grab as much attention from the consumer as possible, in hopes of conversion. However, one trend isn’t going anywhere - and that is the fact that artificial intelligence is one of the most important technological trends in the world, and will continue to be. It will also change the face of digital marketing forever.

How AI Will Change “The Searchâ€

We all understand that artificial intelligence is considered to be revolutionary for the retail sector because it can tell us more information about the consumer than before. While there are some that might be concerned about overall privacy, the truth is that most of us understand that the modern world involves trading some privacy for convenience. That’s why social media networks such as Facebook, which have information on a significant segment of the world population, still boasts BILLIONS of monthly active users. This is even more interesting when one takes into account the fact that Facebook was globally criticized for its role in sharing data that affected the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

We all understand that algorithms are a huge part of search engines, but digital marketers have to understand that artificial intelligence will certainly change the way that we search. While we used to worry about keyword density and top rankings; artificial intelligence will evolve in a more complex manner, taking into account patterns that human beings might not be able to recognize, and user behavior that marketers might not be able to parse through.

The point is that artificial intelligence will constantly be “fluidâ€, while digital marketers who focus on static rankings and results might get left behind. This is especially true when one considers that more people are searching the web in a more conversational tone. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that individuals can now search the web using smart home products, including the Google Home and Amazon Alexa.

Google is also making significant progress when it comes to utilizing machine learning with its search queries. In fact, Google admitted years ago that a “large fraction†of queries were now handled by Rankbrain. It’s hard to downplay the incredible capability of Rankbrain and what it means for the future. Specifically, Greg Corrado, a Google senior research scientist, offered this statement in 2015 regarding how intuitive Rankbrain can be:

“RankBrain uses artificial intelligence to embed vast amounts of written language into mathematical entities — called vectors — that the computer can understand. If RankBrain sees a word or phrase it isn’t familiar with, the machine can make a guess as to what words or phrases might have a similar meaning and filter the result accordingly, making it more effective at handling never-before-seen search queries.â€

How AI Will Change Personalization And UX

We all know that there is more data than ever, which is to be expected when there are billions of individuals that have access to the Internet. Human beings are creating data at an alarming pace, and that also means that artificial intelligence will help to know and track more about us than ever. This will radically change the way that websites and companies personalize the experience to certain individuals.

There’s an iconic company that has recently made a move that truly shows how important artificial intelligence will be to the way that we consume information, products, and services. In fact, several months ago, McDonald’s, one of the most popular fast-food chains in the world, purchased Dynamic Yield. While there was no exact amount announced regarding the purchase; it is believed that McDonald’s paid in the “hundreds of millions†for the company. This is the biggest acquisition that McDonald’s has made in decades, and it has to do with artificial intelligence.

Specifically, McDonald’s is interested in using the technology from Dynamic Yield to suggest menu items to their global network of consumers, that might result in a tremendous amount of additional revenue. Dynamic Yield will be able to take into account the traffic and weather in certain locations and use machine-learning algorithms to boost revenue. The idea is that the technology will also be able to immediately suggest new menu items based on the ones that you have chosen, as well. Steven Easterbrook, the CEO of McDonald’s, is not shy about how he believes artificial intelligence will change personalized retail experiences. He states:

With this acquisition, we’re expanding both our ability to increase the role technology and data will play in our future and the speed with which we’ll be able to implement our vision of creating more personalised experiences for our customers.â€

When one considers that McDonald’s is one of the most recognized companies in the world, it’s only right to assume that many other companies will follow its lead.

Of course, personalization can apply to every possible sector, not just fast food. Artificial intelligence is already widely used by internet marketers to determine what to show to what kind of consumer. Machine learning helps companies understand their consumer in a new way, and create a “profile†for them and engage with them in the most meaningful way. This will not only lead to more profits for the company, but ideally - would lead to a more pleasant user experience (UX) for the consumer, as well.

Chatbots

In this modern day and age, we all want to be able to communicate with a company at any time. It doesn’t matter where the company is located, or what their “hours†are, there are countless companies that have understood that the more they are able to engage with the consumer, the better. Of course, human beings are not machines, and they require free time for the other areas of their life.

This is why AI chatbots have become such an integral part of customer service. After all, if you have a question or concern about a product or service, it can be extremely refreshing to know that a chatbot might have an answer for you, at 3 AM, when you are working hard to meet a deadline. While there are certainly some chatbots that might be lacking in terms of overall service, artificial intelligence will allow for chatbots to answer more complex and open questions, which can end up revolutionizing customer service as we know it.

We already see this with brands that no longer speak about “phone hoursâ€, but offer contact information through social messaging apps such as Whatsapp and Slack so that customers can contact them 24/7. This is a huge improvement from having to wait on the phone for hours to get a response, which can affect customer retention and brand reputation.

Chatbots can handle multiple requests at all times of the day, and they can also retain all the data involved. It doesn’t matter how patient a human being is - everyone has their limits. Chatbots are always patient and respectful, no matter what, which is extremely advantageous to an organization of any kind. The chatbot can also be tweaked to make product suggestions, or even provide advice about certain products and/or services, as well. In this way, a chatbot can simultaneously help to personalize the experience, while providing customer experience, and enhancing the overall user experience, all at the same time. It is natural to see how this can help an organization save costs on sales representatives while attending more to customer needs than ever.

Summary

We all know that artificial intelligence is coming, and we have all sorts of different ideas about what that will look like. There is no way to completely tell how artificial intelligence will evolve. Even some of the most well-respected figures on the subject, including Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, have expressed concern about how artificial intelligence will affect human civilization.

However, one thing is for sure - it will certainly change digital marketing forever. This is not to say that it human beings will be replaced, but that organizations will be able to know more about the consumer, and how to take advantage of what they do know, thanks to artificial intelligence. There will be more specific suggestions made, more tailored searches that respond to your tone of voice, and more personalized experiences than ever. There will be some consumers that are uncomfortable with this shift, and others will embrace the newfound convenience. Either way, the digital marketer should understand that if their organization is to evolve with the future, it should work on evolving the same way that artificial intelligence does - constantly and completely.

Posted on

How to build an audience on social media?

I have a memes website and I want to drive traffic from social media. I have a Facebook page with 20,000+ fans but when I post I hardly get any traffic.
I also tried Pinterest but most users just bounce off the website, although it can drive a good amount of traffic.
I haven't tried Twitter and Instagram and that is because I am mainly focusing on desktop traffic.

What social network should I condition or recondition to drive traffic? I want to work with one?