If you’re like many of the people out there who have heard of search engine optimisation (SEO) and would love to implement the strategy for your company, but don’t have the foggiest idea where to start, you are at the right place.
What is SEO?
So, in order to browse the internet for the data we are after the easiest format is to use a search engine, most of us will be using Google or something similar to carry out this function. 93% of internet traffic is controlled by a search engine. ( Egri,2014) , the search engines will gather related data on the subject you searched for and place it in the search engine list according to how relevant and useful it thinks those websites will be for your search.(Yalcin,2010) Its been established that most people wont look past the first 5 search result pages , therefore its really important to understand how to place your website on the first page in the search engines results to gain a competitive advantage (Egri,2014), this is where search engine optimisation comes in.
SEO is a way of optimising your website in order to gain higher and better related rankings in a search engine. It will in turn hopefully provide your website with an increase in precisely targeted traffic.(Mavridis,2015)
If your still feeling slightly clueless on what SEO is , i recommend watching the below video, it explains the strategy in a fun and simple way to understand.
How to use SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation can be used for your business website down to your sisters blog, its just a way of thinking what are your target audience searching for and how to help them find it on your website!?
The above is a proposed SEO process , it may look confusing now but once you’ve cracked the basics your on your way!
Here are some beginning starting points to get the ball rolling:
Carefully select accurate keywords – Try and get into the mind of your viewer and think what would be the words they are most likely to search for. Don’t put random keywords you think could help, as that will attract people who could be looking for something completely different , and if people are being brought to your sight for the wrong reason, it will dis-encourage trust within your site and increase your websites bounce rate. A good way to start assessing what are the best keyword to use in your content is to use Google Adwords Keyword Tool.
Improve navigation through your site – Create strong internal linking and easy navigation through your website so viewers can easily find the content their looking for and dont surpass your website without giving it a chance. Google suggests planning out what route the viewer would take from the homepage and making sure you have enough linking pages dedicated to the content they will be searching for.
Provide unique quality content – create compelling content, if a viewer thinks its interesting they will more likely share it with their friends, either on social networking sites such as Facebook/Twitter or through blogs. This is a good way of increasing your search rankings as well, as the more shares and interest an article or website has to it the more Google will acknowledge it as something people will want to read.
Get linking – if possible try and reach out to influential bloggers etc and get them to provide good commentary about your website and provide a link for people to use, by obtaining inbound links it will promote your place in the rankings as Google will be able to tell that you are a reliable and resourceful site. Reciprocal links are a way of benefiting your website as well as someone else’s, it involves both providing links to one anthers sites on your page.
So once you’ve implemented your SEO strategy , your gunna want to check to see if youve increased traffic to your website and kept your viewers on your website for longer!
I hope you’re now feeling more confident towards search engine optimisation , i would give you some examples of companies doing it well , but to be honest just look at the top of every search results , you will immediately see all the big names right at the top , quite frankly we should be looking at who isn’t using SEO now!!??
References
Egri,G. (2014). The Role of Search Engine Optimization on Keeping the User on the Site. Computer science. 36 (2), 335-342
Mavridis,T. (2015). Identifying valid search engine ranking factors in a Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 context for building efficient SEO mechanisms.Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence. 41 (1), 75-91.
Yalcin,N. (2010). What is search engine optimization: SEO?. Social and Behavioural sciences. 9 (4), 487-493
In the year of 2015, if your business doesn’t have a website where have you been? The internet has altered the way we gather information , it has changed the way we shop and the way we communicate with our friends. Having an online presence is extremely important for businesses, however doing a half-hearted job at creating your website is not going to help.
Here’s a look at why having a professionally aesthetic website can build your brand , and what steps to take to achieve this.
Why web design is important
Your website homepage should act as your store front window display, it will have significant impact on attracting and retaining consumers. Companies who implement innovative website designs gain a competitive advantage by ensuring their customers have a user-friendly experience on their website. (Visinescu,2014)
If your website design seems unprofessional it will immediately put viewers off and encourage them to bounce. Research indicates that trust is an increasing concern with consumers, if the quality of the website doesn’t seem legit this will thus affect their judgement towards trusting the site. (Seckler,2015)
The design of your website should project what type of business you are and imply what tasks users can do.(Zhang,2000) Many people face challenges when identifying factors that attract users to the website. Design factors that should be developed when trying to improve a website:
1) Increase usability to avoid frustration – this can be applied by making navigation from each website page easily acknowledgeable.
2) Help maintain users interest in the website – this can be done by making it more stimulating and visually exciting.(Zhang,2000)
Your website should therefore create an environment which minimizes user dissatisfaction and increases user satisfaction, it is important to create a website which reflects this in order to allow users to achieve the task (Seckler,2015) once they are aware that your site can enable them to smoothly and coherently perform the task needed it will encourage users to return, once you have a brand advocate it will encourage more consumers to visit your website.
Tips for creating a website
Below are some tips to help with the development of a website that is visually pleasing, navigate-able and full of creative content that is accessible. (Cyr,2013)
Create a clear layout.- A lot of websites have so much content on them jumping out at you in every angle. Pop up after pop up, banner after banner bombarding you, forcing you to leave the website within seconds as you can’t clearly see how to navigate through the website.
Make use of a colour scheme which implements two colours , this will make sure readers are focusing on your content and not getting distracted by vivid colours. Therefore use white space on your page, keep it looking sharp and minimalistic, that way readers will be able to see all the most important information without having to search for ages , getting more frustrated by the minute.
A technique to make use of is visual hierarchy, research reveals that viewers eye sight line travels from top – bottom of a website , then left to right. By creating a design which utilises visual hierarchy it will allow for important content to be optimised.
Apple’s website is an example of how simplicity works. The navigation is clear along the top of the website and the call to action is neatly placed above artistic shot of their latest release.
If you can get past the slightly cringey guy presenting , the above is a great video at demonstrating how keeping things simple can look more enticing.
Implement a responsive web design – a responsive web design allows for your website to smoothly adapt to each platform , i.e tablet, mobile etc. If you haven’t noticed yourself, mobile as a platform for searching the internet is becoming far more popular, from people searching on their mobile phone on the train on the way home from work, too people streaming movies on their ipad.
By providing your viewers with a mobile-friendly experience on your website it will keep them coming back for more and not drive them to your competitors website.
Incorporate social media – Being on social media is a great way for your business to connect with consumers and encourage brand loyalty. Incorporate your social media links onto your website , ideally at the top and/or bottom of the page, this will make your pages easily accessible and therefore increasing chance of your audience sharing your content.
Make your content easily readable – your content is the key part of your website and its the element that you want you audience to spend the most time looking and and embracing.
Make your information easily readable by using a maximum of two fonts throughout the website, make sure your font is readable and not in a tiny font, think of you age demographic especially when sustaining the above , as a teenage audience may vibe a completely different style font than a 60 year old.
Tools and resources to use when designing a website
There are lots of websites which give you a selection of web design templates to use and are fab tools to make a once difficult skilled task simple. Say goodbye to the days of coding.
Below are two i have had personal experience with and would recommend for people designing their first website.
Above is an informative demonstration on how to make a website with the first designing tool.
Freepik is a great website which you can use to find imagery to go on your website, its free but you must insert a code onto your website giving attribution to the website & designer.
I hope this blog has helped you gain an understanding of why innovative website design is a factor that should be crucially important to your company in today’s technological era. I hope you found the tips , examples and sources useful in aiding your website design.
References
Cyr,D. (2013). Website design, trust and culture: An eight country investigation. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications. 12 (4), 373-385.
Seckler,M. (2015). Trust and distrust on the web: User experiences and website characteristics. Computers in human behaviour. 45 (2), 39-50.
Visinescu,L. (2014). The influence of website dimensionality on customer experiences, perceptions and behavioral intentions: An exploration of 2D vs. 3D web design. Information and Management Journal . 52 (1), 1-7.
Zhang,P. (2000). Satisfiers and dissatisfiers: A two factor model for website design and evaluation . journal of the american society for information science. 51 (14), 1245-67.
Beauty blogging in the past few years has become the rage! As an avid makeup lover myself – I spend hours trolling the internet, hunched over my laptop in search of the latest beauty trends! Thanks to all the beauty bloggers out there it has now become a lot easier to find out what great products to use and how the hell to use them!
Blogging
Before delving into looking at some of the biggest and best beauty bloggers out there, here’s a background perspective on blogging in general.
So what is a blog? A blog can be described as an online frequently updated webpage with a series of chronological collections of personal commentary and links.(Educause,2005,Nardi et al 2004)
How exactly does it work? The basic format of a blog consists of bloggers entering posts into the blogging platform of their choice, adding formatting or hyperlinks, and publishing the post ready for the world to view.(Educause,2005)Blogs are primarily text-based, however they will most likely also include images, links and other multimedia content. (Blood,2002) Many blogs now are completely created in a video format; these are known as V-Logs and are very popular in the beauty blogging world. (Molyneaux et al., 2008)
Who can get involved in blogging? Beauty bloggers are not the only type of mediators out there, blogs can be for anyone! Any individual can start up their own blog and communicate on what topic they fancy or have personal knowledge on. (Thevenot,2007) Companies can start corporate blogs in order to communicate with consumers. And there are educational blogs (Edublogs).(Educause,2005)
From the arrival of the first blog tools, blogging has developed and evolved from originally being a format for the publication of personal diaries to an acknowledged and valued tool for discussion and promotion on specific topics, to a potentially worldwide audience. (Educause,2005. Lang,2005)
Critics state that the rapid increase in the popularity of blogging applications over the past few years can be attributed to the following factors:
Independent Expression -> Blogs allow unique self-expression , through which bloggers edit and self-present themselves in how they want the world to view them.(Herring et al,2005)
Easy Access -> There are a number of websites now which make constructing and updating your website easily done, even for those with little technological intelligence. (Liao et al,2011)
Communities -> As with all aspects of social media, the popularity and community element is appealing. Bloggers can form tight knit communities around discourse on subjects and watch their popularity rise over the internet if their content leads to success. (Chin & Chignell,2006)
Beauty Blogging
Now let’s get specific on beauty blogging. It’s pretty self-explanatory what needs to be included in your blog to become a beauty blogger- ANYTHING ON BEAUTY BABY! It can be from how to get the perfect manicure, too what products to use to get gorgeous curls in your hair.
What websites to use ?
As mentioned there are a range of website you can use to set up your own blog but these are two of the most used:
If you wish to buy your own domain name to personalise your URL, here is a host provider GoDaddy.
The next section will be looking at some examples of the most popular beauty bloggers who fuel our addiction to everything beautiful in life, and the reasons how they have made it to my top 3!
Quite frankly it has been Zoella’s year! From starting out at the age of 16 using her blog to get creative, she now dominates the beauty blogging world and even has her own book out! Zoella like many other beauty bloggers is manly a V-logger these days, in which she uses her own Youtube channel to provide her fans with all the video tutorials they could want.
What i think makes Zoella stand out from many other beauty bloggers is the charismatic qualities she adds into each video, her narrative commentary doesn’t make you wanna fall asleep mid curling your hair, no – it in fact keeps your attention on the video for longer if anything. The videos are always in a light, bright setting , with the use of a direct title to attract as many searchers as possible.
Pixiwoo is a make up artist sister act, who have become famous in the beauty world for their knowledge and experience. They have decided to share this knowledge with the world in the format of their beauty articles, interviews and videos.
Everything about the sisters seem professional and slick, just the way we like our beauty. Obviously a start up beauty blogger will not be able to have the established basis of being a recognised make-up artist, however what Pixiewoo does in their videos is create unique content. Try and create a range of content in your videos, don’t get stuck on just showing product demonstrations or reviews – think outside the box.
What to learn from these beauty bloggers:
Create a blog which catches the attention of your audience, design it with a clear readable format and embed social media links to make it easy for the reader to navigate from your different multi channel platforms. Put easily accessible links to previous blog articles.
Its all about the content of your articles to ensure your readers will subscribe and come back for more. Give your own unique opinion on products and give your readers an all clear on purchasing the product they’ve been debating about.
If you plan on vlogging, place yourself in a bright room with a background that matches the theme of your youtube channel.Listen to what your audience says to find ways to engage with them, make it something fun to watch.
Thevenot,G. (2007). Blogging as social media . Tourism and Hospitality research. 7 (3/4), 282-289.
Blood R (2002) The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing.
Nardi BA, Schiano DJ, Gumbrecht M, et al. (2004b) Why we blog. Communications of the ACM 47(12): 41–46.
Molyneaux H, Gibson K, O’Donnell S, et al. (2008) New visual media and gender: a content, visual and audience analysis of YouTube Vlogs.Proceedings of the international communication association annual conference, Montreal, QC, Canada, 22–26
Lang EM (2005) Would you, could you, should you blog? Journal of Accountancy 199(6): 36–41.
Liao HL, Liu SH and Pi SM (2011) Modelling motivations for blogging: an expectancy theory analysis. Social Behavior and Personality 39: 251–264.
Herring SC, Kouper I, Paolillo JC, et al. (2005) Conversations in the blogosphere: an analysis ‘from the bottom up’. In: Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii international conference on systems scienceS: IEEE Press
Chin A and Chignell M (2006) Finding evidence of community from blogging co-citations: a social network analytic approach. In: Proceedings of the IADIS international conference on web based communities New York: ACM, pp. 191–200.
Chin A and Chignell M (2006) A social hypertext model for finding community in blogs. Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on hypertext and hypermedia: Tools for supporting social structures, Odense, pp. 11–22. New York: ACM Press
“Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence.“(Wilson,2012)
Viral marketing is not a new term, it was established in 1996 by Knight who referred to the term as the encompass of messages or content being spread via social media like a raging virus.(Botha, Reyneke.2013) When initially created marketing managers were not aware of how this phenomenon would take over their future marketing activities.
With the decline of traditional advertising techniques, marketeers are now trying to captivate a some what fragmented audience that has risen with the proliferation of digital communication channels (Chen,2014) The medium used for viral campaigns is the internet often on social media sites, this therefore allows for brands not to be bound by geographic location and have the potential to reach a global amount of consumers in a short time period. (Botha,Reyneke. 2013)
It is also stated that viral marketing has benefits over traditional methods such as; cost effectiveness and ability to integrate with niche audience segments (Dobele et al, 2005)
Viral campaigns are therefore an invaluable tool for brands to reach and find new ways of engaging with existing and non-existing consumers.
Sharing content online is now an integral aspect of modern day life (Berger, Milkman. 2012), whether it be a funny Youtube video to your mate or a discount code for a meal to your partner. It is safe to say viral marketing is a strategy that is here to stay and which can only evolve with technology. However , even though this strategy has been adopted for some time, current academic literature still lacks in what contributes to the success of a viral campaign.
A brief analysis of the current literature will now be undertaken to help you suss out if your campaign has the viral factor!
Its Getting Emotional!
A clear factor that is prominent in all research carried out is that a consumers emotional connection with the campaign will have a determining effect towards whether or not they will share it. (Botha,Reyneke. 2013) Campaigns that arouse positive, upbeat emotions such as joy and being inspired tend to be popular for sharing purposes. Berger & Milkman (2012) suggested that this could be that consumers share content for self-presentation purposes, thus more positive content reflects more positively on the sender. On the other hand – campaigns that inflict negative emotions such as anger and disappointment are also popular for sharing.
This suggests that when trying to make a campaign go viral try to emotionally connect to your target audience, social media is about sharing how you feel. Once one member of your target audience shares it is likely that their friends/followers will be responsive to the same emotions, as Lee et al (2009) discovered in their study that the degree of similarity between consumers on social networks was a determinant of viral diffusion.
The above diagram is a decision tree by Botha & Reyneke (2013) showing the engagement between content and the resulting emotions that would therefore affect sharing or not.
Always (2014) released the #LikeAGirl campaign which was a great success and virally trended! It played upon feminism and gender equality to emotionally empower woman, Always recognised its targets audiences emotions including young women and their mums. Its touching and emotional and a great way of getting people talking about a topic which most people like to keep quiet about!
Stay Relevant
Sometimes crazy, creative videos go viral even if they have nothing to do with the brand or product available. However, this tends to lead to consumers only remembering the video and completely forgetting and quite frankly ignoring who made it. Berger and Milkman (2012) discussed that the practicality of the campaign and the relevance to the consumers need of gaining information is an important quality for a viral campaign to have.
Old Spice (2010) advert went viral due to the fact that it was relevant, directly addressing women consumers to buy the product for their man, who turned out made more than half of their men’s body wash customer base (Borowska,2014). The advert communicated in a charismatic manner to its consumers why they need to buy this product.
Evian (2013) released this great ad which went viral for its unique and extremely creative methods. Originally i thought why the use of babies? But of course, the Evian slogan is “Live Young”, therefore making great connotation with the use of the baby reflections. It is also not the first campaign Evian used babies for, their have been two prior released campaigns, one in 1998 and 2009.
Another great success story with the #DancePonyDance campaign from Three (2013), for me this is an advert which went viral for the right reasons, its extremely creative, amusing and makes good use of a catchy song. However, personally i dont think it has any relevance to do with the mobile phone company Three or what its trying to sell. When trying to recall who the hell made this campaign i couldn’t get past a phone company?? Proving that the advert may be remember-able but who created it will become irrelevant.
So to finish, it can be shown that connecting with your consumers emotions its a great way to ensure that consumers will engage with your campaign, engagement over social media is all you need for your target market to get sharing for you then to reach a much broader demographic! Trying to keep it relevant for the consumers and easily understandable on what is trying to be sold will help, however get creative and place a catchy soundtrack and that will definitely help!
References
Berger, J. and Milkman, K. (2012). What makes online content viral?. Journal of Marketing Research, 49(2), pp.192–205.
Botha,E. Reyneke,M. (2013). To share or not to share: the role of content and emotion in viral marketing. Journal of public affairs. 13 (2), 160-171
Chen,T. (2014). Why do we share?. Journal of advertising research. 10 (4), 292-304.
Dobele, A.,Toleman,D, and Beverland,M. (2005) Controlled Infection! Spreading the Brand Message through Viral Marketing. Business Horizons, 48 (3) 143-149.
Lee, J. Lee,H and Lee,D. (2009) Impacts of Tie Characteristics on Online Viral Diffusion.Communications of the Association for Information Systems 24 (7) 545-556.
