If you want to make cold outreach work for you, it’s vital to follow best practices. With these do’s and don’ts of cold outreach, you’re likely to have a much higher chance of success.

Email Templates

Email is often the preferred method of conducting cold outreach, although options like using social media or even calls could be possibilities. With email, you can quickly target the right audience without being too intrusive.

Here are the top things to do and not do when crafting email templates.

Don’t

Use AI

There are times when AI can be a handy tool, but it’s not the best option for your cold outreach email templates. You want the design and the copy to come from you, and you want it to be high-quality.

Copy Others

Be original when setting up email templates. You can take inspiration from those who have had success with cold outreach emails but don’t just copy their template entirely.

Use Spammy Keywords

Certain words can trigger email spam filters, ensuring your email automatically ends up in the bin. These words can be easier to get caught using than you might think, including things like “free” and “order now”. Look at lists of spammy keywords to try and avoid them.

Overuse the Same Template

Switching up your email template occasionally isn’t just good for keeping people interested. It also stops your email from being seen as spam. Spam filters can filter out repeated body text, so your recipient might never see your email. Avoid using the same email for too long.

Use Too Many Emojis

There’s evidence that emojis in email headlines can make it more likely people will open them. But it’s important that you don’t go overboard. Use emojis sparingly and ensure they’re relevant.

Do

Always Greet the Recipient By Name

Personalise your emails by greeting the recipient using their name. Find out who you’re talking to if you don’t already know.

Include a Picture/Signature

You know who they are, but will they know you? A picture of you and/or a personalised signature will quickly tell recipients about you. Include your role or what you do so they can see at a quick glance.

Use a Personalised Subject Line

Add even more personalisation with a subject line tailored to the recipient. Mention their business or how you think you can help them, for example. It could get them to pay attention and open your email.

Be Upfront

Be open and honest, and make sure you don’t bury the lede. Get to the point and tell the recipient what you can do for them.

Automation Software

Using automation software is a really useful way to speed up the process of cold outreach. However, there are some precautions you should take if you want to avoid spamming people and create genuine engagement with your prospects.

Don’t

Automate the Whole Process

Automation tools are helpful, but you still need to be involved. You might use automation to help with things like sending follow-up emails, but avoid automating the entire process.

Send Emails in Bulk

Avoid coming across as spammy by sending individual emails, instead of sending in bulk. Google recommends no more than 60 per day.

Do

Read Every Single Email Before Sending

The last thing you want is to read your email after you’ve sent it and realise that there’s a huge mistake. Even if it’s just a typo, it won’t make you look very professional. Check it over before sending it.

Schedule Emails to Be Sent at the Right Time

Scheduling is really important to get your emails opened. Send yours during a normal workday to make it more likely the recipients will take interest.

Audience

You need to know your audience if you’re going to engage in cold outreach. It will allow you to properly target the right people and tailor your messaging.

Don’t

Use a Shotgun Approach

Don’t just “spray and pray”, i.e. send emails to just anyone and hope it will work out. Select your recipients carefully.

Do

Use Tools and Platforms

Make use of tools to research and get to know your audience, as well as measure their responses. The right tools can help you segment your audience and target the right people.

Utilising Other Platforms

Aside from email, there are other platforms you might use for cold outreach, such as LinkedIn. They can be useful too, but there are still some rules you should follow to get it right.

Don’t

Mass Follow or Message

Expanding your network is a good idea, but don’t just follow people without good reason. Before you follow someone or message them, think about why and whether they’ll appreciate hearing from you.

Spam in Replies or Comments

Engaging in the community is smart too, but you need to ensure what you have to say contributes to the conversation. Don’t spam and make it all about you.

Do

Build Social Profiles First

It’s a good idea to build your social profiles before you start emailing or messaging anyone. Optimise your profile on LinkedIn or other platforms so that when people want to find out more about who you are, they can see everything you want them to know.

Use Social Media DMs to Follow Up

Direct messaging on social media can be a good way to follow up on an email. It means you can avoid emailing someone twice while connecting with them again. Instead of a potentially annoying “double email”, you can send a message as a gentle nudge or follow-up to keep the person engaged.

You can make cold outreach work for you, but be careful about your approach. You need to avoid coming across as spam and make an effort to really engage with prospects.

The post Cold Outreach Do’s and Don’ts appeared first on BLOGGERBROKER.COM.

While the potential earnings from the Reddit creator program aren’t enough to provide a full-time income, the move has been lauded by users. After all, it’s rare that large tech platforms are willing to share the wealth with the users that make the site popular in the first place.

This move, as with all major changes to leading websites, has caught the attention of marketers, who are naturally interested in whether this shift may present new marketing opportunities on Reddit. In this post, we’ll take a closer look at Reddit’s creator rewards program, as well as run through how marketers may potentially use it to their advantage. 

What Is the Reddit Creator Program?

If you’re a Reddit user, then you’ll be familiar with the website’s old virtual rewards system, which allowed users to gift gold, silver, or bronze to posts they thought were deserving of recognition. 

It was a symbolic gesture — the user would have the satisfaction of knowing that they’d created a valuable post, but there was no real value. The new Reddit creator program aims to change that. Rather than receiving the equivalent of a ‘well-done sticker,’ the user can receive monetary value for their posts. Other users can send a golden upvote, which is valued at £1.50, to the user, who then gets around 50% of the cash. 

What it Looks Like in Practice

The idea that someone could make a Reddit account, post a few memes, and slowly but surely build their travel fund sounds appealing, but in practice actually getting any meaningful amount of money will be challenging. 

The creator program isn’t available to everyone. First of all, you’ll need to be over the age of eighteen and live in one of the countries that supports the program. You’ll also need to have a reputable account that meets the minimum karma level (essentially, you’ll need to have plenty of posts with plenty of upvotes).

How much the user receives will depend on the reputation of their account, with higher-calibre accounts earning more. Users will be able to cash out their earnings once they’ve received at least ten golden upvotes. 

It’s still early days for the program, and there’s every chance that some changes will be made once users have provided feedback. For now, there’s gentle optimism that this method of compensating users, which is essentially unheard of in the social media world, will help to recognise the immense contribution that these users make to such websites.

What Might This Mean For Marketers?

Now that we’ve seen how users might benefit from Reddit’s new system, let’s think about what it might mean for marketers. Reddit’s large user base and high levels of engagement have made it an appealing proposition for marketers. 

While this policy shift doesn’t offer any direct benefit to marketers, there are some ways that they may be able to benefit from the new system. Let’s take a look at some potential methods. 

Inspiration for Content

Marketers may take a look at users who earn the most from the new system as a way to gain inspiration for their own content. As all marketers know, coming up with a list of content ideas can be easy; coming up with content ideas that users want to see can be challenging. By analysing the types of posts that receive the most golden upvotes, marketers may find ways to incorporate these post types into their own strategies. After all, what’s successful on Reddit is usually successful on other parts of the web. 

Commenting on Valuable Posts

Part of what makes Reddit so engaging is that it’s not just the post itself that people pay attention to, but the comments. The comment section can be lively, and often just as engaging as the original post. Marketers may find ways to comment on the most valuable posts, which typically have higher views than others. This is a tricky one since all comments have to be relevant, but if one comes along that’s relevant to the company’s industry, then it might present a golden opportunity to get their name out there.

Reaching Out to Top Contributors

As we said earlier, while it’s good that Reddit is offering users the chance to earn money from their posts, the amount they can earn from such posts is pretty limited. Many will still be looking for other ways to generate income from their Reddit skills. Brands may partner with top contributors who are routinely earning golden upvotes, and ask them to come up with posts that showcase or promote the brand. This will require significant research since most contributors operate within a specific niche. However, if it works, then it could turn out to be a valuable collaboration. 

Buying High-Value Accounts

It may also be possible that high-value account holders are willing to sell their accounts to brands. This has happened before, when brands have purchased a contributor’s account and then subtly promote their brands. This approach, while it can be effective, does come with its own set of rules, since Reddit users are usually able to spot shill accounts. Still, in some cases, such as buying top contributors for related subreddits, it’s possible to find a balance between promotion and authenticity. 

Marketers Need to Keep Up to Date With Reddit’s Evolution

Reddit should be of consistent interest to marketers. While it’s more difficult to find marketing success on Reddit than it is on, say, Facebook or Instagram, the payoff for marketers who are able to crack the nut can be huge. Reddit is currently undergoing significant changes, and it’s likely that the website will become more friendly towards marketers moving forward. In addition to finding ways to capitalise on Reddit’s creator program, marketers should more broadly stay up to date with Reddit’s evolution — and respond accordingly. 

The post Reddit Is Now Paying People to Post – Could This Be a New Tool for Marketers? appeared first on BLOGGERBROKER.COM.

Looking for a job that’s creative, challenging, strategic, and offers plenty of variety on a day-to-day basis? Then becoming a brand manager might just be the career-selection you’ve been searching for. In an age when brand perception is more important than ever, brand managers play a vital role in helping businesses establish and maintain a positive image in the eyes of existing and potential customers.

Brand management scores highly on job satisfaction surveys, and the pay can be decent, too, with the average salary being a respectable £43,500 ($55,000) in the UK. Competition for brand management roles can be fierce, however, so it’s unlikely that you’ll just walk into the role. A strategic approach is necessary. In this post, we’ll run through everything you need to know about how to become a brand manager, including outlining some brand management courses that can help make you a stand-out candidate. 

Understanding Brand Manager Responsibilities

Brand management is a broad, wide-ranging role that touches upon many different aspects of a company’s marketing operations. Day-to-day responsibilities can include:

• Conducting in-depth market research.
• Creating short, mid, and long-term marketing strategies.
• Ensuring internal and external brand coherence across all departments.
• Reviewing marketing work of more junior members of staff.

It’s a role that requires both hard and soft skills. A creative, adaptable mindset, robust analytical skills, and excellent collaboration capabilities are all essential for success in this field. 

How to Become a Brand Manager in 2024:

First of all, it’ll help if you have an undergraduate degree in a marketing-related field. If you have an undergraduate degree in a different field, then you’ll need extensive experience and will almost certainly need to complete a brand management course (note: they’re also recommended if you do have a marketing-related degree). In any case, except for in exceptional circumstances, you’ll probably need a degree to land a brand manager role.

Let’s take a look at how to become a brand manager in more detail. 

Perform a Skills Review

Reviewing your existing skills can help to identify whether you’re ready for a brand manager role. Some of the primary skills brand managers must possess include:

• Communication
• Research and analytics
• Market understanding
• Technical competency
• Data understanding
• Budget management

How do your skills stack up against these requirements? While brand manager roles can vary significantly from company to company, the above skills will form a foundational part of each. If there are one or two skills you’re not as hot on, then work on bringing them up to speed. 

Work on Getting Experience 

You’ll need to have plenty of marketing experience before you land a brand manager role. Virtually all brand managers have a background that encompasses a variety of marketing tasks and responsibilities. It’s best to work on acquiring three years of experience, which is what most employers will ask for when hiring a brand manager. 

Marketing experience that involves market research, strategy development, and branding is particularly advantageous. If you work in a marketing role that doesn’t currently touch upon those marketing elements, then speak to your employer and see if you can work on those types of projects — it’ll be a great help further down the line. 

Complete an Online Brand Management Course 

Hiring brands will look for evidence that you will succeed in a brand manager position. If it’s your first brand manager role, then it’ll be your experience and qualifications that provide that evidence. Even if you have a marketing degree, it’s recommended to complete one of the many brand management courses that are available online. Many of these take only a few months to complete, yet will give you a significant advantage when you apply for your first brand management role.

Let’s take a look at some of the best brand management courses:

Brand Management: Aligning Business, Brand and Behaviour

This course, offered by the University of London on Coursera, offers an entry-level introduction to brand management. It takes around 17 hours to complete, and you can learn at your own pace. Once you’ve finished the course, you’ll have an in-depth understanding of branding, brand management, and brand design.

Mark Ritson’s Mini MBA in Brand Management

This course from brand management expert Professor Mark Ritson is more expensive than other options, but you get what you pay for. You’ll learn the ins and outs of brand management from a professional who has been there, done that. Some of the key areas the course touches upon include:

• Brand management.
• Brand positioning.
• Tactical execution.

In addition to learning about brand management, you’ll also get a year’s access to the Mini MBA Alumni Network, which can be an invaluable tool for finding brand manager roles. 

Brand Management: Build Successful Long-Lasting Brands

This course, provided by Udemy, provides students with the skills they need to create, grow, and manage brands. Highly affordable, the course is provided in the shape of videos and lectures, as well as self-study. It’s recommended for relative newcomers, as the first phase runs through the basics before taking a deeper dive. 

Utilise LinkedIn

It’s no secret that LinkedIn is one of the best job-seeking assets on the web. It’s recommended to put together a professional, branding-focused profile before you begin searching for brand manager roles. You’ll include your LinkedIn profile in your applications, but it can also just be a great resource for virtually networking and trying to find a brand manager role the organic way. Don’t be shy to reach out to recruiters!

Identify Start-Ups and Agencies

Becoming a brand manager at an internationally recognised brand may be your dream, but in the early days, it’ll be best to look at start-ups and agencies, both of which are in need of brand managers. You may be paid less at a start-up, but you’ll get plenty of hands-on experience. Agencies usually require brand managers to help juggle their various clients, which can help provide exposure to a greater range of businesses. And plus — it’s just easier to get a job with a start-up or an agency!

Final Thoughts on Becoming a Brand Manager

Competition for brand manager roles is tough, but virtually all brands need a brand manager, so landing a position is very much achievable. Take our tips above, and you’ll be giving yourself an excellent chance to get a role that takes your career to the next level. 

The post How To Become a Brand Manager in 2024 appeared first on BLOGGERBROKER.COM.

The dead internet theory has been around for a few years now. If you’ve yet to hear about it, now’s your chance to understand what it is and why it could be becoming more relevant than ever. As AI begins to have a greater influence over the digital landscape and online communities, the question of what the internet is and who it’s for is one that more people are beginning to ask. While the dead internet theory might not be entirely true, it’s possible there’s more truth to it than many first thought.

What Is the Dead Internet Theory, Anyway?

The dead internet theory is a theory that emerged sometime around the end of the 2010s or early 2020s. It concerns the state of the internet, positing that the majority of the internet is merely bot activity or automatically generated content. The theory has been discussed by everyone from high-profile YouTubers to major publications such as The Atlantic.

Although the term “dead internet theory” is relatively new, people have been discussing similar ideas for longer. There have certainly been concerns about bot traffic and how easy it can be to “game the system” to get certain content seen by more people.

That Sounds a Bit Like a Conspiracy Theory…

Sure, at its most extreme, it definitely is. The idea that the entire internet is fake is definitely one that you can dismiss. After all, if you’re using it, then it’s guaranteed that there are other real people using it too. But, although it sounds ridiculous to dismiss the entire internet as fake, there could still be some kernel of truth to the theory.

With the rise of AI, it’s actually a theory that could be becoming even more relevant. Just how much of the content on the internet is currently generated by artificial intelligence? Of the content generated by AI, how much of it also benefits from a human touch? And is that going to change any time in the near future?

Is There Any Truth to the Dead Internet Theory?

Detecting fake content online can be tough. AI-generated content and scarily convincing deep fakes make it hard to tell fact from fiction, especially when you’re more likely to be scrolling (and reacting) quickly, rather than taking the time to thoroughly research everything you see.

SEO: Bowing to the All-Mighty Algorithm

Why is all of this happening? It’s hard not to argue that publishing content online has become a race to see who can be seen first and more often. It’s also hard to deny that search engines such as Google have played a role in this. To get to the first page of search results, you have to do what the search engine algorithm calls for. While Google says that they do their best to ensure content is helpful and made for humans, it’s clear that many content creators choose to put the algorithm first.

Search engine demands have always affected how online content has been produced. Previous iterations of the Google algorithm have created problems such as keyword stuffing, in which people overused irrelevant keywords in order to try and get their content seen first. Google has continued to try and improve its algorithm to make search results more relevant and helpful, and to discourage unethical behaviour. But these changes merely mean that content creators have to keep following the algorithm, whatever it requires of them.

Digital marketers have spent years building websites that cater to the all-powerful algorithm. Not only that, but they have to watch for major changes, in case a new update suddenly means their websites are no longer favoured by the search engine.

Google claims that its focus is on content that meets its E-E-A-T criteria, which is content that shows expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. In theory, this sounds great, and Google also says that they carry out rigorous testing to make sure searches deliver high-quality results. However, this requires them to have a set of rules for determining what content they should show. This means that digital marketers can follow the rules for SEO without really providing anything of great value to users, even if Google tries to base its algorithm on weeding out poor-quality content. All marketers and developers need to do is tick the right boxes to get search engines to see their websites favourably.

How Has AI Contributed to This Problem?

It’s not just search engine algorithms that make a difference to the online landscape. The rise of AI technology is also having a major impact on the origin and quality of digital content. It’s now easy to generate all kinds of content, including text, images, and even video, with the touch of a button.

Of course, Google doesn’t actively discourage all AI content. Why would they when they have their own AI tools that they want to promote? However, Google does want to discourage poor-quality AI content, saying that the aim is to reward “high-quality content, however it is produced”.

There are some damning statistics and predictions already out there about the future of the internet under AI. One 2023 study claimed that nearly 50 news websites were AI-generated while another paper suggested that over half of the sentences on the internet may have been created and translated into other languages using large language models (LLMs). Experts are even predicting that by 2026, less than two years away, 90% of online content will be AI-generated.

Some people might see these numbers and ask what the big deal is. Does it matter if content is AI-generated if AI can do the same job as a person can? Many people are already turning to AI tools for their own content generation and even for research and fact-checking. But the big question is whether AI actually can do the same job as a person. And the answer is that, at least for now, it’s nowhere near as good. AI might be capable of carrying out a range of tasks, and it’s certainly evolving, but it’s still capable of mistakes.

A study by researchers at Stanford and UC Berkeley in 2023 showed that the accuracy of ChatGPT was worsening. Despite the fact that the AI generation tool is able to produce material that is often indistinguishable from human-written text in its tone and format, there is plenty of evidence that its accuracy is lacking. A study from NYU revealed that people had a limited ability to tell the difference between medical advice written by doctors and by chatbots, while another study suggested ChatGPT was 72% accurate in clinical decision-making. While some might be impressed by this accuracy, it means that, in this specific area, the tool is inaccurate nearly 30% of the time.

So What Can We Do About It?

This all might sound a little scary—and it should, at least to a certain extent. The internet hasn’t been completely replaced with bots and fake content, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to worry about. Even if you think the idea of the dead internet theory is a bit extreme, it’s impossible to deny that the use of bots, AI content, and even the need and desire to cater to search engine algorithms means that there is a risk of much less focus on the quality of online content.

AI might not have taken over just yet, but we’re seeing it start to grow. Dead internet theory might have been a conspiracy theory when it was first created, but it could now be more real and relevant than it has ever been. So what can we do about it? How can we ensure the internet remains human and still offers a way for people to connect with each other?

Some of the steps we can take include ensuring tools are available to detect false information, deep fakes, and other problematic content created using AI. One current problem with this is that while AI is still developing, so are the tools that are able to accurately detect it. It’s easy for a tool to inaccurately identify AI content as being created by a human, especially as many people find it hard to tell the difference. Similarly, AI detection tools can produce false positives, identifying human-created content as AI. However, these tools are sure to develop over time and become more accurate.

Education is also important, especially in showing internet users how they can distinguish real, quality content from fake content. Already we can see how easily many people fall for AI-generated art, video content, or text. Some people have started using ChatGPT and similar tools as if they are search engines or reference libraries that can deliver accurate answers to their questions at all times. It’s important that people, including younger and older generations, learn how to spot fake information and AI-generated content. Additionally, there have been calls for requirements to identify AI material clearly, particularly in advertising.

As content creators, it’s also important to model what we want the future of the internet to be. AI tools can be useful, but quality content also needs the human touch.

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The marketing landscape had to shift from baby boomers to millennials, and now it’s beginning to shift from millennials to Gen Z. While baby boomers still have the most spending power, and millennials represent the largest group, marketers are increasingly interested in Gen Z, who are beginning to throw their money around. 

The question is: how do marketers reach this new and growing audience? If there’s one thing that’s becoming increasingly clear, it’s that Gen Z consumer behaviours differ moderately from millennials consumer behaviours, and significantly from boomer consumer behaviours. 

Looking to tap into the future of marketing? Then you’ll need to focus on your Gen Z audience. In this post, we’ll take a deep dive into the world of Gen Z marketing, including some handy tips on how businesses can pivot their current marketing strategies to reach this growing segment. 

Understanding the Gen Z Generation

All Generations have their own characteristics and identities. Generation Z, which refers to people born between 1995 and 2010, have been shaped, as with all other Generations, by the context in which they grew up. As the first digital natives, they grew up in a reality that was much different from the experience of Generations that came before them — and that has resulted in a much different type of consumer. 

Any marketer hoping to break through to the Gen Z audience — and that should be all marketers, given the $360 billion in spending power that this audience has — will need to frame their marketing campaigns within the context of this new consumer.

So how can we pin down this new, vastly different consumer? Experts say that it’s a search for truth that lies at the core of all Generation Z behaviour, including their consumer habits. They live to express their own truth, they connect with — and accept — others based on their truth, they’re understanding of various perspectives, and also have a sense of realism. They’re not living in fantasy land. In other words, you probably can’t pull the wool over their eyes; if you’re dishonest, they’ll know it. 

We recognise that probably doesn’t help to clear up how you should change your marketing approach to reach Gen Z. But don’t worry — we’ll get to the ins and outs of suggestions later on in the article. 

Key Gen Z Insights

It wouldn’t be fair to say that Generation Z is a different species from the older Generations. They’re not. There’s still a lot of significant overlap between all consumers. However, it’s very much the case that Gen Z has its own thing going on, and there are certainly some key characteristics that we see time and time again among Gen Z consumers. For example:

They’re Loyal

This one always comes as a surprise to marketers, who tend to believe — as most adults do – that younger people are fickle and will change direction like the wind. But that’s not supported by the evidence, which shows that Gen Z consumers are Generally loyal to brands. 

• Some 60% of Gen Zers trust brands they liked growing up.
• 45% of Gen Zers say they have a strong connection with or loyalty to their favourite brands.
• 65% will stay with a brand they like for an extended period of time.

This is another way of saying that if you can get a Gen Z consumer on your side, then they’ll stick with you, providing you stay true and continue to nurture the relationship. 

They’re Brand Ambassadors 

As we’ll see later, one way to grow your Gen Z audience is to work with influencers. But each Gen Z consumer is, in a way, their own influencer. The loyalty that Gen Zers have to their favourite brands extends to, in effect, shouting about those brands from the rooftops, especially within their own family. A study by IBM found that they also influence how their family spends its money, especially when spending on travel, restaurants, furniture, and household items. 

They Care Deeply About Social Issues

This should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to the news in recent years. There’s been a huge increase in the number of protests and demonstrations in favour of women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and anti-racist policies. So it should come as no surprise that this Generation expects the brands it supports to also live up to these ideals. 

A vast majority — some 80% — of Gen Z consumers say they would stop buying from a brand and tell others to do the same if they discovered that the company was using marketing materials they considered to be misogynistic, homophobic, or racist. 

This Generation is more issue-focused than previous Generations. Indeed, they’re willing to sacrifice some of themselves — in this case, an item they want to purchase or a musician they want to see — for the greater good.

Digital Messages

OK, so now we’ve figured out what Gen Z is broadly looking for — and perhaps just as importantly, what they’re not looking for. The question now becomes, how do you get your righteous message in front of the audience?

Crafting the message is one thing. Making sure that it’s seen is another thing entirely. There’s one place where brands hoping to reach Generation Z must be placing their marketing materials. And if you’ve been paying attention to how Gen Z spends its time — that is, glued to their phone — then it’ll come as no surprise.

Social media is the answer. One study found that 54% of Gen Zers spent more than four hours looking at social media each day. They always say that if you want to reach the people, you need to go where the people are hanging out. And for Gen Z, that’s unquestionably social media. 

Of course, it’s arguably just as important to be on the right social media sites. Instagram and TikTok? Absolutely. Facebook and LinkedIn, on the other hand, won’t be as important, since those sites are not as popular with that Generation. 

Self-Expression is Key

Self-expression is a big deal to Generation Z. They want to express their inner identities, rather than reflect a collective identity. While they care deeply about the other people around them and are less motivated to make themselves look superior to the collective, they still want to use their purchase decisions as a way to showcase who they are.

This differs from previous Generations, who would typically make purchase decisions based on the product’s ability to help them fit in with a crowd. 

So what does this mean for brands? One, that personalised offerings are effective, with some 50% of consumers willing to pay more for products that are personalised in some way. An even higher percentage of people are willing to pay more for products from brands that reflect their social values or support causes that matter most to them.

Perhaps one area where we see a more collective approach is Gender conformity. Gen Zers are much more likely to buy from brands that do not make a distinction between male and female products. 

How Gen Z Impacts Brand Marketing

We can see how Gen Z differs from millennials and early Generations. The question is, what are brands supposed to do with this shift? 

First and foremost, it’s important to keep things in perspective. Gen Z is doing their own thing, and that requires a different marketing approach — but only if the brand is actively trying to solicit the Generation. There are more people in the Millennial age group and boomers have the most money, so if your business focuses on them, then stick with what you’re doing. You don’t need to adjust your marketing campaigns overnight if Zoomers only account for a small percentage of your audience.

However, if you want to build your Gen Z audience, or you just want to align yourself with the future of marketing, then some changes will be required. Below, we’ll run through some handy tips that’ll help to make your marketing campaign more Gen Z-friendly. 

Use More User Generated Content

Looking for a quick, easy, and fun way to bring Gen Z onboard? Take a look at including user-Generated content within your marketing campaigns. Studies have shown that Gen Z consumers are much more likely to trust an advertisement — and thus the brand — if real actors are used in the promotional materials. In that scenario, 82% have a favourable view of the company, while the figure drops down to 26% if it’s a paid actor/spokesperson. 

As such, it’s recommended to encourage your customers to make photos/videos of their experience of your products/services, and then use that content in your marketing. 

Influencer Marketing

Older Generations can think the concept of influencers is stupid. But that’s certainly not the view of Generation Z, who have shown time and time again that they’re heavily influenced by these small social media stars. Indeed, it’s one of the most effective ways to reach the group — around 15% of 13 – 24-year-olds have bought something because of an influencer. And given the relatively low cost that influencers charge, it can’t hurt to give them a try.

For the best results, it’s recommended to work with nano-influencers (1k-10k followers) and micro-influencers (10k-100k followers). Those guys have a higher level of engagement than celebrity influencers, and they won’t charge you anywhere near as much. 

Social Responsibility

For the majority of marketing history, brands have shied away from taking any sort of social or political stance. Virtually every brand stayed neutral. Now, it’s the opposite. You’ll be more likely to lose customers if you have no stance. Gen Z expects brands to use their power to be on the right side of history, and that means fighting for improvements in mental health support, birth control, women’s rights, and climate change, among other critical issues.

A word of warning, however: if you’re going to take a stand, then it must be Genuine. Throwing in a few phrases of empty support will do more harm than good — Gen Z is exceptionally good at weeding out the brands that really care from the ones that just say they do. 

Truth is a Priority

Older Generations seemed to be OK with the appearance of truth. If there was a happy cow on the packaging, then that was enough. Gen Z is more concerned with Genuine truth. They want the brands they buy from to be authentic and trustworthy. 

Authentic and honest and the rest can seem like vague terms, but what it basically comes down to is: be sincere wherever you can. Upfront honesty, fair employee rights, and no manipulation of photos/videos are the way to go. 

Engaging Marketing Forms

You might win a Gen Z customer by writing a brilliant whitepaper. But in all likelihood, they’ll skip that paper in exchange for something more engaging. And what’s engaging in the world of a Gen Z consumer? Video! Short-form video content that’s easily shareable on TikTok and Instagram has shown to be an effective way to reach the Gen Z audience. 

Final Thoughts

So, what have we learned? Perhaps the overall message of this post is: Gen Z is different from other Generations, and that’s something that brands should reflect in their marketing strategies. The traditional ways of doing things are still valid for millennials and baby boomers, but they’re increasingly likely to be less impactful on Gen Z consumers.

That group is all about self-expression, social and political activism, and love for the world. Though brands need to work hard to bring them on board, once they have, they’ll have a loyal consumer base that sticks with them. And with some $360 billion up for grabs, it’s a journey that brands would be well recommended to undertake in the next couple of years.  

The post How Gen Z consumer behaviours shape the future of marketing appeared first on BLOGGERBROKER.COM.

Voice search has been around for a while, and even if you’ve never used it yourself, you’ll probably be familiar with it. The microphone button on the Google homepage and Apple’s Siri feature are two of the most well-known voice search tools. 

And if you’re a website owner, then it’s in your interest to invest in your voice search SEO. After all, you won’t want to lose visitors — and potential customers — all because you’ve focused all your SEO efforts on type searching. 

In this post, we’ll look at voice search optimisation in close detail, outlining what it is, why it’s important, and how to improve your own website’s voice SEO credentials. 

The Basics of Voice Search

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out voice search. The meaning is in the name! It’s just the act of making internet searches using your voice, rather than typing. It’s a different way to reach the same destination. Instead of using your typing fingers to make a search query, you simply say the words into your device, and then artificial intelligence takes over, showing results based on what you’ve said — or perhaps it’s better to say, based on what it thinks you said. Sometimes the automatic speech recognition system that transforms the speech into text doesn’t work exactly as it should, but these days it nearly always gets it right. 

The technology that powers voice searching sounds new, modern, and fancy, but it’s actually not all that recent. They had voice recognition back in the 1950s, after all. But it’s only in recent years — the last decade, specifically — that voice recognition has become advanced and robust enough to be usable and useful. 

What Devices Allow Voice Search?

These days, pretty much all devices allow voice search. In fact, this is one of the key reasons why voice search use has skyrocketed in recent years — the technology that enables this type of search is in practically every modern device. 

In fact, we’re pretty sure there’ll be a refrigerator out there somewhere that allows you to make searches using your voice. OK, that’s maybe pushing it, but let’s just say that voice search-enabled devices are everywhere. All modern laptops, tablets, and, most crucially of all, smartphones allow this type of search. There are also some devices, such as Amazon Alexa/Echo and Google Home, that have been specifically designed with voice searches/commands in mind. 

The leading search engines, Google and Bing, both allow users to make voice searches from all devices. If you have an iPhone, then you can activate Siri and search via voice.  

How Voice Search Differs From Type Search

People use voice search and type search for the same reason: to get internet results. But how they use each differs slightly. When a person makes a typed search, they’ll typically just throw in a few keywords that relate to what they’re looking for. No one types ‘What is the best pizza in Camden, please?’ — they type ‘best pizza Camden.’

When they make a voice search, they’ll say something closer to ‘What’s the best pizza in Camden, please?’ — just without the please (we’re talking to a robot, after all. We don’t need to be polite). It’s a conversational way of speaking. As such, content that incorporates a more conversational, or human tone, typically performs well for voice search requests. 

The type of searches that people make via voice search tends to differ from typed searches, too. 51% of voice search users look for local restaurants/cafes, with supermarkets, food delivery, clothing stores, and hotels not too far behind. All businesses/websites can benefit from improving their voice search SEO, but it’s especially important for local brick-and-mortar businesses. 

Voice Search Statistics

Need some convincing about the popularity of voice search? Check out some of these key voice search stats, which might just convince you that it’s time to invest in your website’s voice search optimisation.

• There are one billion voice search requests made each month.
• 50% of adults make daily voice search requests.
• Voice search accounts for 20% of search requests within the Google app.
• 58% of consumers use voice search to find local businesses.
• Featured snippets account for 40% of voice search results.
• The number of voice search assistants is expected to double in the next three years.

5 Tips for Voice Search Optimisation

OK, so by now we’ve figured out that voice search optimisation is important, especially for local businesses. It can already impact your website’s success, but given the increasing popularity of this search method, we can expect it to have an even bigger impact in the years to come. 

The bottom line? Your website needs to be ready to receive web users who make voice search requests. 

Thankfully, there’s a step-by-step approach you can take to bring your website up to speed with the demands of modern voice search requests. And, good news: improving your website’s voice SEO credentials won’t impact its traditional SEO credentials. Most of the steps you take to bolster your voice SEO will also have a positive impact on your overall SEO. It’s a win-win formula!

Follow the tips we outline below, and you’ll be ready to take advantage of voice search requests. 

Think Local

People are more likely to use voice search when they’re looking for local results. And this makes sense when you think about where people are making these types of search requests. A big chunk — some 45% — of voice search requests come from within the car. If you’re driving around, you probably won’t be searching for information about who won the 1964 Oscar for Best Picture (it was My Fair Lady). That can wait until you’re back home on the couch. No, when you’re driving, you’ll likely be searching for local businesses. You may need a phone repair shop, florist, or vegetarian restaurant.

You can help to drive your business up the voice search results listings page by investing in your local SEO credentials. This includes adding ‘near me’ to your anchor texts, meta descriptions, and titles, as well as dotting in references to any local landmarks. A restaurant that has ‘vegetarian restaurant near Big Ben’ on its website will perform better than one that simply says ‘vegetarian restaurant,’ for instance.

Use Human Language

The language of voice searches sounds more “natural” than typed searches. And there’s a simple reason for that: people will talk naturally when they’re speaking into their devices. It’s more conversational.

A typed search request may be something like ‘flowers near me.’ But when someone is talking, that is likely to become something more like: ‘Where can I buy cheap flowers in Liverpool?’ Voice search requests tend to be longer because people don’t mind talking, whereas they’ll try to be as quick and concise as possible when typing.

Providing conversational and — crucially — useful content on your website will help to improve your voice search results. But actually, it’ll also help with your broader SEO, too, regardless of how the search was made. If you answer users’ queries in the best way possible, then Google will reward you with a higher ranking. 

The best content is accessible, useful, and in line with the brand’s voice, which is a critical component behind engagement. For this reason, it’s best to avoid having artificial intelligence write your content. You can use it for inspiration, but have a human do the actual writing. 

Mobile Friendly Site

The majority of voice searches are made via smartphones. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, then Google isn’t going to show your site to its users. It’s as simple as that! Even if your website does show up in the search results, a user would only close the page if they clicked through and found that the website doesn’t function correctly on their smartphone.

Most websites are somewhat mobile-friendly. That is to say, they don’t offer the desktop experience when someone visits via their smartphone. But given how frequently people are using their smartphone to search online it’s important to go above and beyond to ensure that you offer an exceptional mobile experience. The vast, vast majority of voice searches are made via mobile, and, in fact, an increasing number of all searches are made this way, too. So don’t sleep on it. 

Some handy tips for optimising your site for mobile include:

• Include AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) markup
• Use excellent responsive web design.
• Compress your images for faster load times.
• Avoid using Flash.
• Avoid all pop-ups. 

Give Google What It Wants 

All of the leading names incorporate voice search in some way or another. Apple has Siri. Amazon has Alexa/Echo. But they’re unlikely to be the ones you’re trying to please. It might be nice if Siri pays attention to your website, but it’s not the big one that you’re after. You want Google to pay attention.

So if you want to move up the voice search results page, you’ll need to make Google happy with your site. There are two easy ways to do this. First, claim your ‘Google My Business’ listing. It’s free, it’s important, and it takes next to no time. It’s a no-brainer since it tells Google that you’re there and that you’re ready to be found. Second, provide as much information as possible. That means your address, phone number, email address, website, photos, and opening hours. 

This has a positive impact that stretches beyond SEO. Web users are more than twice as likely to trust a business if it has a comprehensive Google Business page. And the higher the engagement you get from web users, the more Google will promote your page. It’s a win-win situation that can have a big impact, basically. 

Focus on Common Questions

We mentioned above how people tend to be more conversational when making voice searches. They’re more likely to say an entire question, rather than just a few words. As such, one effective way to improve your voice search SEO is to simply provide the answers that they’re looking for.

Need some inspiration for the types of questions you should be answering? Go to Google and type in a question relating to your business/website. From there, look at the ‘people also ask’ box that appears around a third of the way down the results page. They’re the questions you should aim to answer.

You can include the questions directly — as in, word for word — by adding a FAQ section to your website. This won’t just help to boost your SEO in the eyes of Google, but it’ll also just be extremely useful for your visitors. You’ll be giving them exactly what they’re looking for. 

Key Tips

Too Long, Didn’t Read? Follow these key steps for improving your voice search SEO:

• Add conversational, natural-sounding content to your website.
• Answer common customer questions.
• Focus on local content.
• Set up your Google My Business page with complete information.

You’ll also find that improving your general SEO has a knock-on effect on your voice search SEO, too. The two search methods are not mutually exclusive; what’s good for one is good for the other! 

The Bottom Line on Voice Search SEO

Voice search was slow to catch on, but there’s no denying its recent rise in popularity — and that it’s here to stay. While investing in voice search SEO isn’t essential for all websites, for sites that rely on organic traffic, it’s critical. The good news is that what’s good for voice search SEO is generally the same as what’s good for general SEO, so it’s not as if you need to select between voice and type search. Both will benefit from any steps you take to improve your voice search SEO.

By making adjustments to your searcher intent and enhancing the user experience — via content, mobile readiness, and so forth — you can increase your chances of grabbing the growing audience of voice searchers.

The post What On Earth Is Voice SEO?! appeared first on BLOGGERBROKER.COM.

Why are people talking about traditional vs digital marketing? And who cares about marketing anyway? Marketing itself is the ancient practice of promoting your business. It began as early as 1500 BCE when vendors stamped their products with the world’s first logos. The seals were used to identify who was selling the product and acted as a quality control method. 

Since then, promoting your brand and business has evolved into many traditional vs digital marketing types. Company branding is splashed over print mediums and social media platforms alike. But what is the difference between digital vs traditional marketing types? Is digital marketing better? This article will explore the differences between these two marketing types and help establish which is best for your business.

What Is Traditional Marketing?

Traditional marketing is the offline marketing of a brand or product. Think billboards, magazines, and even TV. Anything that isn’t seen on the internet is traditional marketing. The Starbucks logo on your coffee cup sleeve is traditional marketing, and so is that radio jingle you hear on the way home from work.

The different types of traditional marketing are:

• Print media: Adverts in books, journals, magazines and newsletters all count as print media. So do logos or adverts printed on physical objects like coffee cups or t-shirts.
  
• TV & radio: Adverts on TV and radio also count as traditional marketing. The same advert is usually repeated to multiple audiences.
  
• Outdoor advertising: Any form of marketing you can see outside – like billboards or banners. Think about that billboard you see on your drive home; that’s outdoor marketing.
  
• Telemarketing or SMS marketing: Marketing via text messages or phone calls to potential customers.
  
• Mail advertising: Advertising in print media that is sent to a potential customer’s mailbox. Think brochures, flyers, catalogues, and letters. In mail advertising, one whole printed item is a form of marketing. The advert will only be a small part of print media’s magazine or book.
  
• Word of mouth: Word of mouth, or referral marketing, refers to marketing where one client endorses that product to a friend or relative looking for a similar service.

What Is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing refers to any form of marketing done through the internet. Digital marketers use online platforms like Google or Instagram to market their products to a digital audience. The adverts will reach potential customers on whatever digital format they used, be it a smartphone, a tablet, or a laptop. You might see the same advert when you scroll as you drink your morning coffee and turn on your work laptop in the morning.

Common types of digital marketing include:

• Content Marketing – Content marketing is sharing videos, blogs, webinars or social media posts. They may not directly market a product but are used to raise brand or company awareness.
  
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – using particular headers or keywords to help your content rank higher in the search engines. This is known as organic traffic, as you are not paying to direct users to your site.
  
• Affiliate Marketing – affiliate marketing involves collaboration with another business, e.g. by having them write a guest blog post with links to their own site. The affiliate will receive a commission when the customer clicks on the links or pages.
  
• Inbound Marketing – attracting potential customers to your website via social media posts or content marketing. 
  
• Social Media Marketing – promoting your brand or products on social media platforms to increase lead generation and conversions.
  
• Email marketing – marketing to your customers through an email campaign straight to their email inbox.
  
• Pay-per-click (PPC) – a type of paid advertising where you only have to pay if customers click on your ads online.
  
• Native advertising – an online advert that adapts to the format it appears on, e.g. a mobile app, website or tablet. It will fill the space of available advertising content on that page.
  
• Marketing automation – the use of technology to assist in your marketing campaign – e.g. a platform that helps you send out all your digital marketing from one place.

Why Choose Traditional Marketing?

Traditional marketing is primarily used for local campaigns. It can raise awareness of a particular business nearby or even nationwide campaigns for larger franchises in multiple areas. The key benefit of traditional marketing is that it has a larger reach in the physical world than digital advertising. Physical foot traffic may walk or drive past your local billboard every day. 

Unlike digital marketing campaigns, viewers cannot skip or ignore your ads with traditional marketing. They are right in front of their line of vision and, therefore, tough to avoid. Even if you crumple up a direct mail advert for your local bank, you’ve still seen the logo before you threw it away. 

Traditional marketing is also a more established marketing practice than digital marketing. You don’t have to rely on someone having an internet connection to see your advert, and you can store physical copies of the advert rather than relying on something that exists in the digital world.

Why Choose Digital Marketing?

Even physical businesses need a digital marketing strategy in today’s modern world. Digital marketing has an incredible reach worldwide, reaching anyone with a mobile device or internet connection. Just some of the benefits of digital marketing are below.

It’s More Cost-Effective

Digital marketing is affordable for multinational and fledgling businesses. Organic content marketing is free, allowing services like blog posting or video sharing to yield a potentially high conversion rate without financial backing. 

Digital marketing, like PPC, is even more cost-effective the less successful your campaign is. You can learn from your mistakes easily; if no one clicks on your ads, you’ve lost less money than the upfront costs of printing a newsletter or brochure.

It’s Traceable

It can be difficult to prove that your TV ad has directly converted to a purchase. But online metrics allow you to track everything from post reach to conversion rate, so you can directly pinpoint which platform converted into a purchase. You can easily measure your return on investment with a digital marketing campaign.

You Can Compete With Big Companies

Smaller companies can be far more agile with a digital marketing strategy than via a traditional marketing medium. A solid social media campaign, well-placed digital ads, and content marketing can significantly impact your desired audience – no matter how big the company. There are also more affordable websites where smaller companies can place ads for a minimal fee.

You Can Tailor Your Campaign

Traditional media requires you to pay the upfront costs of printing or producing an advert. Those costs will go to the producer. The advert won’t change unless more money is paid and a new circulation is delivered. With digital marketing, you don’t have to part with a fortune before you learn from your mistakes. It’s never been so easy to tailor and redeliver a campaign than with marketing technologies and social media platforms.

A Wider Reach

Your ad can go worldwide with digital marketing. Anyone can log in and see your social media posts on their phones. You have a network of potential customers at your fingertips with digital advertising. And the ultimate benefit is that you can reach more customers without additional costs.

Is Digital Marketing Better?

So in the battle of digital vs traditional marketing, is digital the winner? It has a broader variety of marketing options, a wider audience reach, and fewer upfront costs. Traditional marketing has greater success in local campaigns. However, that’s logical because you are placing physical objects like billboards in the real world. With digital marketing, you can pop a digital banner, ad or well-placed blog post in multiple places in the online realm.

The key pros and cons of both marketing types are:

Digital marketing has more pros than cons, although no one can argue that traditional marketing allows you to create a physical presence in the outside world. You cannot skip a physical billboard or newsletter. But digital marketing is the future of streamlining campaigns, tracking success, and reaching a wider audience.

Final Thoughts

So, who wins in the battle of traditional vs digital marketing? Traditional marketing is an established medium for promoting businesses and their brands. However, digital marketing is the next step in the evolution of marketing, with new tools, strategies and mediums available daily. 

Successful brands can optimise their successes from both traditional and digital marketing methods. However, digital marketing creates more chances for smaller businesses to thrive. Even physical businesses like food outlets or coffee shops can generate traffic from a successful digital marketing campaign.

The post Digital Vs Traditional Marketing: What’s The Difference? appeared first on BLOGGERBROKER.COM.

Technology and open AI are fascinating topics and they are always emerging and developing in a variety of ways. You never know what’s going to come next and what the developers are up to! While the AI-powered ChatGPT is still in its infancy, there are many ways in which it’s being put to work today. Some are skeptical while others have seen and know just how powerful and useful of a tool it can be in the real-world.

As a marketer, you’re likely always looking for ways to do your job faster and smarter. There’s a fine line here whether or not ChatGPT is an overrated tool or a marketing breakthrough. Many would likely agree that only time will tell. Here we’ll dive a bit deeper into this question and try to determine if the benefits outweigh the downsides or hesitations.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an AI-powered chatbot that has the potential to completely change and shake up certain industries and job roles. It can influence and even improve certain tasks such as performing searches online as well as influencing and impacting how customer service is handled. 

It was released in November 2022 and is a free chatbot that the AI research company OpenAI launched. You may be thinking of them in terms of chatbots that assist with customer service matters or virtual assistants such as Alexa. What sets it apart is that it’s able to produce natural language and know when it’s making mistakes. It is able to, in most cases, to effectively engage in conversation and dialogue with humans. It can be especially useful in marketing and writing or journalism too. This is where it becomes important to figure out if it is an overrated tool or a marketing breakthrough. 

ChatGPT for Marketers

One option is ChatGPT for marketers in particular and while it can be a useful tool, it likely isn’t going to take over or replace marketers or writers entirely. There are a wide variety of options and ways to use it such as with automating responses, when creating content, or even for directing clients through the purchasing process. It’s the perfect opportunity to get customer questions answered and to provide customer support and customer care 24/7. It’s also beneficial for customer engagement on social media platforms and other types of platforms. 

Ideally, it should be used as a tool to assist marketers instead of replacing them altogether. Instead, it can help generate ideas and assist in providing creative content. Another huge time saver is when ChatGPT assists in analyzing data and reports and can gather and produce valuable insights for business owners and marketers. 

Blogging/Copywriting

One question that is at the top of many people’s minds is if we’re at the end of hiring and involving human writers to complete tasks such as blogging and copywriting, for example. It’s not a job everyone can do or has the skill to perform. One option if you’re finding it difficult to put your words down on paper or type them out is ChatGPT. It does have the potential to write and produce solid copy on a variety of topics but sometimes it may not come off as polished or as human-sounding as people would like. 

How it works is that the ChatGPT has powerful algorithms that can generate impressive content and sometimes that’s better than what a professional writer can do. Some may fear that it will replace writers altogether, while others believe this will never happen. It’s quite easy to get set up and logged in and then get started with ChatGPT, so anyone can essentially use it. 

Benefits of ChatGPT for Blogging/Copywriting

There are quite a few benefits that come with using ChatGPT for writing and blogging. Writing and coming up with new and unique content and text daily can be challenging for many, even writers who are experienced. Therefore, it seems like it would be a natural solution for helping to generate content.

It contains an automated copywriting process so it’s not a lot of back and forth and wasting time editing the copy line by line. Within minutes, you can receive high-quality and relevant content that you can put to use. This way you can produce more pieces and keep your business blog and other outlets updated for your customers. The risk of error is always greatly reduced given its capabilities. You can feel confident that the NLP algorithms will do their job and do it well.

A Tool to Improve Your Writing Skills

Another upside is that it has the potential to even possibly be used as a tool to improve your writing skills. You get instant feedback about your writing and what you’re producing so you can boost your skills on the spot. You’ll learn a lot about proper grammar and how to best turn ideas into coherent sentences that draw in and engage your readers. Think along the lines of better clarity and improving the structure of your writing piece overall. 

Given all this, you may be wondering if ChatGPT will replace writers in the future and altogether. It can be especially worrisome and on the top of your mind if you are a writer yourself and it’s your job to create unique content. The short answer here is, no, it will not replace writers but that it can instead supplement work that’s completed by a professional writer. You can use it to produce high-quality writing in a shorter period of time, which all writers would agree is a great upside. The reality is that a professional writer brings both a level of creativity to the table as well as an individual and unique touch to each written piece.

ChatBots

Marketers can use chatbots for many different purposes to help them in their roles. An AI chatbot can help improve the customer journey and work for the sales team, for instance. A chatbot is useful in that it can improve the customer journey and not only collect qualified leads but also encourage sales. Chatbots can be programmed and requested to respond a certain way and are able to have a full-on and coherent conversation with the person on the receiving end. It’s great to have a chatbot integrated into your website and as part of the customer journey. 

The truth is that these days customers would rather send a message out to get a response than call customer service directly. There are many uses for chatbots in business and marketing such as resolving a complaint, making a reservation, or paying a bill. The benefits to you and your business are that you’ll save time and money, can generate leads and revenue, and guide users to the right and better outcomes. Most importantly, it’s an opportunity for you to provide after-hours and 24/7 support to your customers. 

Getting Started Using Chatbots

If you’re going to be successful at using chatbots for business then you must go about it the right way. For example, you should sit down and clearly define your goals, as well as determine where and on which platforms you’ll be using a chatbot. Figure out a game plan and approach it carefully so that you can get the most out of your chatbots and not have them create more confusion or chaos. 

It’s important that you carefully craft and create your chatbot’s voice and personality in advance and that it matches your brand’s voice and image. Then, write a compelling and engaging opening message so that your customers are motivated to use it. Not only that but then you must also find and program the ideal responses so that users interact with and continue to use your chatbot and you don’t lose them.

SEO & ChatGPT

Why does SEO matter and why is it so important in marketing and business in the first place? It’s because it allows your products or services to be found online by the right people at the right time. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to even be online or have a strong presence unless you’re going to easily get found and attract qualified leads who can turn into sales. 

SEO experts are currently and will likely continue to use ChatGPT to their advantage in the future. So, how are these SEO professionals using it now, and which tasks are they using it for? 

Below are some of these ways and options you may want to consider applying as a marketing professional:

• Check grammar and spelling
• Find and provide relevant keywords
• Create original and high-quality content and for content creation
• Launch AI-powered customer service
• Develop and manage analytic reports
• Make effective and click-worthy SEO titles
• Keyword analysis

What it does is that it can make SEO more efficient and faster and all signs point to that it’s only going to improve at doing this over time. Marketers have a long to-do list on any given day such as finding the right keywords and producing timely and engaging content for their audiences. 

If a chatbot is handling sales inquiries and other questions and ChatGPT is speeding up SEO-related tasks then this is going to give marketers a lot of time back in their days. As a business or marketer, you aren’t going to be able to survive or increase sales over time if you don’t have an effective SEO strategy in place. Create a winning strategy and then think of ways for how you can integrate the abilities of ChatGPT into what you’re doing. 

Benefits of ChatGPT

It’s also important to understand the wide range of benefits that ChatGPT offers. Therefore, you may begin to see it as a marketing breakthrough opportunity instead of just an overrated tool that isn’t going to end up going anywhere. ChatGPT is more intelligent, fluid, and sophisticated than other models or previous options. It stands out among the other competitors or rivals because it can understand details and context and even go as far as to recognize when it has made a mistake. 

As far as the advantages it poses for marketers, it can provide around-the-clock customer support as well as even make product suggestions. The best part is that it can save time and headaches analyzing insights and large sets of data. As a marketer, you can also use it to help you generate ideas and content or assist you in coming up with customer surveys. 

Downsides of ChatGPT

Although there are many benefits of ChatGPT, there are also some downsides or disadvantages to being mindful of. As it exists today, there are some limitations to it that you must know and take into account. It can at times make assumptions that aren’t true or produce incoherent sentences or thoughts that would then need to be rewritten or double-checked by a human. Some students have been using it for essays and papers which lead many to be concerned over the possibility that this would be considered cheating. 

The other downsides include that ChatGPT may make phishing and malware attacks easier to do and also make them more sophisticated. It leaves a lot of options open to hackers and what they can ultimately do. Overall, it may produce or create misleading material that then can be spread quickly to large numbers of people and believed even though it may not be true. 

Looking to the Future

So, what does the future of ChatGPT look like and what can we expect going forward? It’s an easy way for people to use and access technology and the feeling is that it’s only going to become more prominent and widely used. Just about anyone can access and use it and it has potential in a variety of industries and job roles. However, is it being overhyped and nearing its peak already is the main question? This remains up in the air. What is known is that it’s helpful with certain tasks but that it also has many disadvantages that come into play and shouldn’t be taken lightly. 

Some experts are going as far as to say that they’re already over it and bored with ChatGPT. They simply don’t see how it can overcome its disadvantages and shortcomings and emerge as a tool that’s going to flourish and meet or even exceed all of its expectations. 

It’s considered by many as young technology that still requires a lot of work and fixing. While it was originally assumed that AI and ChatGPT would be the answer to all our problems, on the flip side maybe it’s creating even more problems and not being able to fulfill the dream of taking the place of humans and the act of being creative. 

Then there is even the factor of gpt-4 which goes above and beyond text to being able to comment on and analyze graphics and images. What this means is that it can be a powerful tool for areas and industries such as education and creating content in marketing. It’s quite accurate and less likely to make errors or produce misinformation.  

Overhyped or Holy Grail for Marketers?

Given all this, you can now effectively formulate your own opinion about if ChatGPT is overhyped or the Holy Grail for marketers. In many ways, it has helped and continues to assist marketers to do their jobs and in completing tasks. What you need to do as a business owner or marketer is figure out in what ways ChatGPT can be of assistance to you and allow you to save time and headaches. 

What you don’t want to do is put it off or ignore it because it’s important that you not only learn about it but use it to your advantage. It’s in your best interest to keep up with the latest technology developments and AI so that you are in the loop and can stay ahead of or at least in line with your competitors. 

Only time will tell..

There are a plethora of ways that ChatGPT can be used such as across industries and how it can benefit marketers in many ways, specifically. For example, it has the ability to produce code, enhance SEO functionality, and automate processes, among a host of other tasks and jobs. You should always be aware and in tune that it can also potentially be harmful as it can help hackers do what they do best and can quickly get a hold of and spread misinformation across the Internet.

You should now have a better idea and opinion on if ChatGPT is an overrated tool to be wary of or if it is a marketing breakthrough that has the potential to do more good than harm. Either way, as a marketer or a business owner it’s in your best interest to learn more about it in greater detail and get a better idea of how it can help you work faster and smarter. At the minimum, you’ll be able to engage in conversation on the matter with other professionals and offer an opinion about what you think. It’s a matter that’s not going away any time soon so you may as well get on board and determine your personal take on ChatGPT sooner rather than later. 

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What are bounce rates?

Bounce rates measure the percentage of single-page visits on a website. In simple terms, it’s a measurement of the number of visitors who enter a website, but don’t stay to view any other pages. A high bounce rate usually means that the website isn’t fulfilling the needs or expectations of its visitors, while a low bounce rate suggests that visitors are interacting with the site successfully and finding the information they’re searching for. 

High bounce rate = Unhappy visitors

Low bounce rate = Happy visitors

Bounce rates aren’t something to be overlooked as a blogger. It is an essential tool for providing insight into the overall user experience and effectiveness of your blog. If a website has a high bounce rate, it may indicate problems with the design, content, or functionality of the website, and may require changes to enhance the user experience and engagement.

Bloggers would want to avoid high bounce rates for their blog for several reasons:

User Experience: A high bounce rate implies that the blog is not meeting the expectations of its visitors, leading to a poor user experience and negative perception of the blog.

Engagement: A high bounce rate suggests that visitors are quickly leaving the site, meaning they’re not engaging with the blog’s content. This can result in lower levels of engagement, such as fewer comments, shares, and repeat visits.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Bounce rate is a factor considered by search engines when ranking websites, and a high bounce rate can harm a blog’s search engine rankings.

Ad Revenue: If a blog earns revenue from advertising, a high bounce rate can result in lower earnings, as fewer page views mean fewer chances for ads to be displayed and clicked.

Traffic: A high bounce rate may indicate that the blog is not attracting the right audience, leading to lower levels of traffic and fewer opportunities for growth and engagement.

How to check your bounce rate

To check your website’s bounce rate, you’ll first need to log in to your Google Analytics account. If you don’t have an account yet, you will need to create one first.

Once you’re logged in, choose the website you want to check from your account dashboard, then look for the “Audience” tab on the left-hand side of the page and click on it.

Next, click on “Overview” to see your website’s traffic statistics, and your website’s overall bounce rate which can be found in the “Bounce Rate” column.

You can even dig deeper and check the bounce rate for individual pages on your site, go to the “Behavior” tab in the left-hand sidebar and click on “Site Content”. Then, select “All Pages” to see a list of every page on your website and their respective bounce rates.

From there, you can click on any page to see more detailed information about its bounce rate, including the percentage of users who left the page after viewing it for a certain amount of time.

What causes high bounce rates?

High bounce rates can happen for a number of reasons. Most commonly, it involves an overall poor experience for the user which causes them to leave the page without engaging with your blog or website. Usually, this is something that can be figured out by vetting your website or asking someone else for their opinion, if you struggle to see exactly what needs improving.

Here are 10 things that can cause a high bounce rate for bloggers:

1. Slow Load Time: Websites that take too long to load can cause users to lose interest and leave the site, resulting in a high bounce rate.

2. Poor User Experience: Websites that are difficult to navigate or have a cluttered or confusing layout can cause users to become frustrated and leave the site, resulting in a high bounce rate.

3. Inconsistent or Outdated Content: Blogs that contain inconsistent or outdated content can cause users to lose confidence in the site, resulting in a high bounce rate.

4. Lack of Relevant Information: Websites that lack the information that users are looking for can cause them to quickly leave the site, resulting in a high bounce rate.

5. Unappealing Design: Websites with an unappealing design can make blogs look ‘spammy’. This includes things like outdated graphics, cluttered layouts, lots of pop-ups or ads. These things can cause users to quickly lose interest and leave the site, resulting in a high bounce rate.

6. Poor Mobile Experience: Websites that are not optimised for mobile devices can result in a poor user experience. For mobile users, this is going to result in users leaving your blog altogether.

7. Pop-Ups and Distractions: This especially causes high bounce rates for bloggers, whose users are likely to quickly get annoyed by lots of pop-ups.. even if they aren’t ads. There is a fine line between a pop-up to prompt a sign up to a newsletter and pop-ups on every. single. page. There are even pop-ups that are designed to ask users to stay when they click out of the tab. Websites with too many pop-ups or distractions can cause users to quickly leave the site.

8. Technical Errors: Websites that contain technical errors, such as expired SSL certificates, exposed code, broken links or missing images can cause users to quickly leave the site, resulting in a high bounce rate.

9. Lack of Engagement: Websites that lack engaging content or calls-to-action can result in a lack of user engagement, causing users to quickly leave the site and resulting in a high bounce rate. This isn’t to be overdone though, as too many CTA’s in the form of pop-ups especially can have the opposite effect.

10. Targeting the Wrong Audience: Blogs that mislead their audience or are in fact not targeted towards the right audience can result in a high bounce rate, as users may not find the information they are looking for and quickly leave the site. An example of this might be a blogger who writes about luxury travel, but is targeting an audience of budget-conscious travellers. The blogger’s content might include recommendations for expensive hotels, high-end restaurants, and exclusive experiences that are out of reach for the average budget traveller.

Now.. let’s take a look at how to actually reduce the bounce rate of your blog.

How to improve your bounce rate

Okay. Time to talk about improving your bounce rate.. The end goal is to make user experience better and keep users engaged on your website for longer. Once you have figured out where you might be going wrong, you can hone in on fixing those issues. To start with, you can look at doing the following:

• Make your website visually appealing and easy to navigate. An easy fix, but it can make a huge difference. Use clear, modern fonts and engaging multimedia to draw readers in and make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for. Ditch those old social media logos and 90’s website design.

• Speed up your website’s load times by optimising images and code. You would be surprised how quickly people lose patience in today’s fast paced digital world! A long loading time can increase bounce rates significantly if left unchecked. Check with your blog’s hosting provider if you notice your page load times are too long.

• Create high-quality content that meets the needs of your target audience. This means using engaging language, relevant topics, personal pictures and videos to keep readers interested.

• Reduce ads and pop-ups. This one explains itself.. No one likes a page filled with ads and annoying pop-ups. 

• Use internal linking to encourage readers to stay on your site longer. This will help them discover related content and keep them engaged with your blog. Personal and interesting stories, or trending topics can be a good place to start. 

• Make sure your website is easy to navigate with clear menus, search functionality, and links to related content. Easier navigation will help readers find what they’re looking for and stay on your site longer.

• Optimise your content for search engines by using keywords and meta descriptions. This is a good trick that will help engagement, since search engines are likely to recommend your content if it is good quality and well optimised. It will also help attract the right audience to your blog and keep them engaged with your content.

To put it briefly, a sky-high bounce rate can harm your blog’s engagement levels and damage its overall effectiveness. Nevertheless, adopting some of the game-changing approaches we’ve just gone over can transform your blog’s design, content, and user experience, helping you keep your readers interested and minimise bounce rates.

Make sure you’re keeping a close eye on your site’s metrics and making the appropriate tweaks to keep improving engagement over the long haul. And now, it’s your turn – how have you succeeded in taming your blog’s bounce rates? I’m all ears – share your tips with us in the comments section below!

The post Bounce Rates: What Are They and How Are They Negatively Affecting Your Blog? appeared first on BLOGGERBROKER.COM.

That means someone has spotted your website on a search engine and clicked on your site. They’ve not clicked on a paid or promoted ad; they’ve just spotted your website because of your hard-won natural efforts to get your company up the search engine rankings. 

Simply put: organic web traffic is a visitor to your website you haven’t had to pay to get. Organic click traffic is another similar term that refers to the number of people that click through to your site without paid advertising.

How Do I Increase Organic Traffic?

Increase visitors to my website for free? Sounds great, you say. However, it still requires some work to gain momentum and get your website at the top of Google. You’re playing a longer game with organic search traffic, but one much more affordable than paying for ads.

1. Analyse Your Customer

Getting concrete data on who your customer is is the first step – through surveys, questionnaires, and any metrics from your social media platforms. You should be able to grasp the granular details of their lives, from whether they’re stressed out by travelling to whether they eat toast for breakfast.

Start by gathering the following data:

• How old are they?
• What’s their economic background?
• What’s their job?
• Where do they live?

2. Create A Buyer Persona

You can use your customer data and build up what is known as a buyer persona. This takes your customer’s data and fleshes it out into a concrete person. Say your customer was a 30-year-old Product Manager from Manchester called Lucy. Your buyer persona should tell you that Lucy is stressed out by the concept of returning to the office full-time. They like to work remotely and enjoy reading tech-related blogs on their commute to work. 

Your buyer persona can inform what direction you take your business in, the content you create for Lucy, and even what products and services you can offer them. 

3. Decide What Content To Write

Blogging regularly is a great way to improve organic traffic. But you need to optimise your content to tailor it to your customers from your buyer persona. 

People Also Ask

A great place to start is to use the ‘People also ask’ sections of Google. These are the questions that appear directly under your search box. They come with snippets from other websites and a website link. 

As an example, take Lucy from Manchester. She wants to understand a good product marketing strategy better:

The ‘People also ask’ sections can give you ideas and a framework for your content. The more accurate the questions are to these sections, the higher your content should rank and the better your organic search traffic will be.

Search Suggestions

You can also take ideas directly from suggestions beneath the search box itself:

This is a great idea for generating blog topics around an area that your buyer persona wants to know about. For Lucy, you could share advice on how to put together a product marketing plan, examples of successful marketing campaigns, and the different types of product marketing strategies you could consider.

Research Your Competitors

Researching your competitors is easier than it sounds. Simply type in your type of business and see which competitors appear at the top of the Google search. Get some inspiration from their blogs and content. Remember not to copy exactly – no one wants to hear badly reworded content.

4. Leverage Keywords & Headers

Now you’ve got an idea of your content; it’s time to bring in the big guns – your keywords and headers. You’ll want to make your subheadings similar to your ‘People also ask’ search results and pop in some keywords your customers are searching for.

Finding Keywords

The next question is – how do you find keywords? Ahrefs is a great resource with a free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools account where you can help identify how your content ranks for keywords, or SEMrush, which has an initial free trial. SEMrush is particularly useful as it has a missing keywords section for suggestions on what to add to your website. They also offer a handy organic search traffic checklist:

Google Search

A Google search of a primary keyword is also helpful for researching other common topics. Type in a generic search, like ‘learn coding’, and you’ll get lots of other keywords to pop in related content:

Lower Ranking Search Content

One thing to consider is low-ranking search content. Low-ranking search content refers to content that is still tied to a particular topic but has fewer searches per month. These keywords also tend to be less saturated than other search terms. If you build in low-ranking content with well-structured headings, you will still be able to increase your organic traffic.

Avoid Keyword Stuffing

Remember that you want to make content valuable for your customer – stuffing in keywords just comes across as spammy. If you’ve ever read something and thought… “why does this paragraph repeat the same phrase over and over again?!” this is why. It is an old tactic that search engines now know about.

Try to write keywords into your text naturally and focus on creating content that is useful and reads well. The Google algorithm punishes people that stuff content with keywords, leaving them behind in the search engine rankings.

5. Update Old Content

As well as generating ideas for new content, you should use this as an opportunity to review what’s already on your site. Updating tired material with shiny new headers and keywords can make your whole site easier to find on Google. It will also be consistent with your new blog posts and allow you to create a coherent and well-researched website. 

Final Thoughts

How to increase organic search traffic is not an exact science. The aim is simple, though: get your content on the first page of Google to increase traffic to your site. Initial research into your customer and what they care about is the first place to start. Learning about what they care about and are searching for will give you ideas for content, headers and keywords. Refresh your whole website along with new content, and you’ll be surprised at the improvement you’ll see in your organic search traffic.

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