Forbes | How To Create A PR Program From Scratch Forbes Once the spokespeople have been identified, decide what level of media training they need. Keep in touch with your spokespeople on industry developments that they can provide analysis and unique commentary ... Identify who the players are across ... |
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How To Create A PR Program From Scratch - Forbes
Ive taken on a new role as Senior SEO Consultant, Mark explained. Part of the job will involve working on more complex technical SEO projects for our biggest clients. The other part of the role will involve setting up a Further graduate training programme from our Norwich office.
Further has ambitious growth plans in terms of building on our existing expertise, particularly for SEO, paid digital and data analysis, Mark said. But theres a skill deficit in East Anglia, and its hard to attract talent away from London.
Rather than sit back and complain about the lack of options, Further has stepped up to tackle the problem head on. The innovative scheme will invite graduates and young people looking to get into the industry into an exclusive digital marketing training programme that includes the prospect of a job offer at the end of it.
The scheme will cover the foundations of digital marketing, including pay-per-click (PPC), paid social, conversion rate optimisation (CRO), technical SEO, link-building, and content marketing.
You can learn the basics of digital marketing online for free, Mark explained. But in practice, theres a lot of conflicting information.
I can match SEO tactics to our clients successfully because I have 10 years of commercial experience behind me. People getting started today in digital marketing disciplines can follow best practice, but that will only get them so far. You have to know the difference between whats necessary and whats a nice-to-have.
Mark went on to talk about how much digital marketing has changed over the past decade. The days of getting your audience to visit your website by any means, he explained, is past: In the early days, there was a lot of reciprocal link-building and black hat SEO; tactics that have no place in modern practice.
Search engines are maturing. Theres more to search marketing than getting your site listed on loads of directories. Its essential for websites to be producing relevant, quality content, that offers value, and answers the needs of the audience.
Due to the increasing skills required by digital marketing agencies, Mark is keen for Furthers training programme to be open to graduates from a range of degrees eg data science, maths, business management, computer science, etc.
Mark began his career in art and design. He started his own graphic and web design business and quickly found himself learning SEO as the dotcom bubble started to swell.
It was the creative side of SEO that captured me. There are rules to it, but you need to be analytical and inquisitive to excel beyond mere competence. You need to question everything: why does a SERP behave the way it does? How can you use that knowledge? Thats the art of digital marketing.
The opportunity to refocus his career is welcomed by Mark with open arms. I enjoy supporting people to learn and grow, he said. I am looking forward to seeing people develop their skills, increase their confidence, and grow a passion for digital marketing.
Mark is currently working with local partners, including the University of East Anglia, to build the foundations of the training programme. The scheme will launch later this year.
Mark is taking on a responsibility that no one at Further ever has at least not formally. His job is to not only become a mentor for his students but to act as an ambassador for the digital marketing industry.
At the same time, he has the pressure of delivering a positive return on investment for Further. Its no small task, but everyone at Further agrees that Mark is the right man for the job.
If youre interested in how Mark and the rest of the Further team can deliver results for your business, please dont hesitate to get in touch.
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A conversation with Senior SEO Consultant Mark Hannant - Cambridge Network
What are the key challenges you face in the training world? How will Brexit impact the industry? Which courses and delivery types are proving most popular in 2017? How does your organisation measure up to others?
Every year, we like to take the industrys pulse, to find out how training professionals feel about the current direction of the industry. As ever, the professionals surveyed for this years report come from a wide range of backgrounds and offered some great insights into their current and planned operations, the kinds of courses and delivery types they feel most effective, and how they promote them in a world dominated by digital marketing and online transactions. All that, at a time when the advantages and disadvantages of withdrawing from the European Union, and its effect on training, remain unclear and artificial intelligence and automation continue to reign supreme.
So, what have we learnt? You can read the 2017 report right here for a full breakdown of results and analysis, but three observations really stand out to us
There were two major challenges that professionals are facing when running a successful training company: Promoting courses against an increasingly competitive landscape. Well-publicised skills shortages across the country mean that training, more than ever, is in high demand and that leads to more and more professionals setting up training companies.
Despite that, our research suggests that while many find that marketing courses is a struggle, the tools being deployed are old-school. Reputation and referrals were highlighted as the most effective ways of gaining new businesses, while digital marketing methods, such as Google Ads, email campaigns and search engine optimisation, were shunned. Despite its importance as a marketing tool, SEO ranked right at the bottom; considered the least effective way to publicise company and courses.
Its still too early to precisely tell what effects Brexit will have on the country, much less the training industry, but if the professionals we surveyed are anything to go by, the impact will be negative. 53%, in fact, believe that Brexit will be damaging to our industry. But, much like the referendum itself, the results were close. A total of 47% believed that itll either have a positive impact (5%) on the industry or that it will have no impact whatsoever (42%). Indeed, one of the most common comments we received was that its just too early to tell. One to watch, then!
We then asked what were the possible advantages and disadvantages of withdrawing from the European Union. When it came to disadvantages, it was a clear landslide: A full 74% believe the biggest problem will be a lack of support from the EU in future. On the other hand, encouraging homegrown talent was listed as the A* advantage of EU withdrawal.
Lets back-track a bit. Remember those digital marketing tools were not taking advantage of? Well, thats not the only technology were shunning. When quizzed about the systems used to managing training, there were three answers that dominated: CRM, a dedicated training management system and spreadsheets. Yes, they may be clunky, time-consuming to use and ill-equipped for the modern training company, but basic spreadsheets still being deployed by a full 37% of organisations out there.
The technology deficit is commonplace elsewhere too. For one thing, 32% of our respondents claimed that they dont offer online course booking facilities a fantastically high percentage given that we can buy everything from comics to cucumbers online. The real problem with not offering online facilities, of course, is three-fold. At a time when internet shopping has become routine, businesses who arent offering online booking methods risk reduced sales, a lack of customer insight, and perhaps most damaging reputational impact; seen as less legitimate compared to businesses who do offer online booking. That might not be fair, but when it comes to maintaining an online presence, its all about perception, as well as ensuring convenience for your delegates.
Want to find out how you and your training company compare? View the full report here.
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Training Industry Benchmark Survey Findings 2017 - TrainingZone.co.uk (blog)
Forbes | When To Name Your Company After Yourself Forbes If you have a unique name, using it as your brand name can be an easy way to win the SEO game so you come up first in Google searches. Coming up with a great business name that you're excited about can be ... Sure you may write a book called "Money ... |
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When To Name Your Company After Yourself - Forbes
Everyone wants to rank better on Google; no one wants to be on page 2 or 3 in a Google search result. Its no surprise that this is why youre reading this article; you want to rank better too. If youre anything like me, youre tired of spending a whole lot of money on methods that just dont seem to work and thats why your search has to lead you here. With limited resources, you need to know where to focus your efforts to have confidence in getting your rankings up and also stable. Its quite easy to get confused by the many articles that highlight the importance of Googles 200 ranking factors (you probably dont even know all of them yourself).
In a few moments, youre going to learn about how Google treats content and how that all plays a part in improving your rankings. And the best part is you dont need to be an expert to take advantage of the information that Im about to share with you. This information will not only help you to increase your brand awareness but also to increase customer acquisition and boost your products or services.
Where are your customers?
Ive always gotten the old school advice that if youre looking for a book then the best place to look is in the library. So if youre looking to get stable rankings, wouldnt it be best to first find out where most of your potential customers are hanging out online in order to offer them your services? There are close to 3 billion social media users worldwide, up by 22% this year. Thats approximately a 37% global penetration according to a research done by Social Media Today.
Its no wonder so many companies are investing in social media customer service strategies training for their employees. But why you might ask?
A study done by Gartner found that the dissatisfaction stemming from failure to respond via social channels can lead to up to a 15% in churn rate for existing customers, so while your goal is to gain stable ranking, social media customer service strategies are key to that overall goal. The more satisfied customers you retain then the more they talk about you on social media, the more they talk about you online then the more Google recognizes your brand.
How does Google treat Social Media content and how does this affect your ranking?
Google uses Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to effectively rank pages. SEO is the process of getting traffic from the free or organic search results on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Googles objective is to always provide the most relevant results to the users request; promoting authority pages at the top of its rankings.
The YouTube channel Google Webmasters released a video with Googles Matt Cutts in 2014. In that video, while Cutts made it very clear that Google does not use social signaling to rank your pages, he did however, state that Facebook and Twitter pages are treated like any other pages in our web index, and so if something occurs on Twitter or occurs on Facebook and were able to crawl it then we can return that in our search results.
Many SEO and internet marketing experts outline that posting links to your websites on popular social media websites can definitely boost your rankings and grow your business. The links that are posted on a social media account such can be recognized as credible backlinks and thereby influencing page ranks.
How does all of this tie in to give you better rankings? With almost 3 billion monthly active users on social media, it has become a very powerful tool to drive traffic to your website which will help you to rank well. You can drive traffic to your website via social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and others using a simple 4-step system. And the best part is were giving those steps to you for FREE!
If you follow these simple steps then you will be able to use the traffic from social media to boost your website statistics, therefore, increasing your Google rank:
By using your social media profile to post short sentences with a link to your blogs, you will start to generate traffic from your profile to your website for free (especially if your followers share content from your website). But you wont achieve this by simply posting a link to your website on your profile. You see, when you post a link on your social media, it is flagged with a nofollow tag which instructs Googles search engine bots that the link should not influence the link targets ranking. But by including keywords in your profiles bio, headlines, summaries, posts, and links, that your target audience would be likely to use which would actually display your profile in search results.
Its simple logic. The larger your following on social media is the more it helps Google to measure the authenticity of your users click through from social media to your website. After all, you wouldnt have had a community of followers visiting your website if you were only posting a bunch of sham. Also, the more your posts are shared the more search engines assume that the content is of value. You just need to ensure that those posts contain the keywords that your target audience may be searching for.
Remember that Googles main objective is to always provide the most relevant results to its users. Therefore, once persons search for those keywords they may come across your profile and the content that you post, some of which includes a link to your website. Those readers who visit your website and love the content will naturally share it on social media thus increasing the authenticity of click through which improves your website statistics that will rank you better on Google.
As your social media community and brand begins to grow, it will help to reinforce your relevance. This will lead to persons reaching out you and commenting on your posts on a daily basis and perhaps asking about your products or services. It will be very important that you learn good social media customer service strategies in order to keep your audience fully engaged and talking about your brand.
That being said, social media can definitely help you to increase your rankings by making posts that engage your users enough that they want to naturally share your content as well. Quality is key.
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How Social Media Marketing Stabilize Your Google Ranking - JOSIC - Digital Intelligence