Content Marketing Archives - Page 2 of 4

As a web designer, you have a keen eye for detail. Creating color palettes and arranging elements in a visually pleasing way is your job after all!

But when you’re gifted with these abilities, it can be easy to forget that some people struggle to see what we’re able to perceive with ease.

Over 2 billion people worldwide (more than a quarter of the world’s population!) have some form of visual impairment.

Glaucoma, cataracts, and color blindness are just a handful of the challenges they face—the same challenges you should also be taking into account when creating an accessible color palette.

If you’ve been tasked with creating an ADA-compliant website, these five easy steps will help you create a user-centric experience for everyone.

1. Understand Compliance

Understanding ADA compliance can be tricky. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as a checklist you can reference when building your site. The law only states that you must provide “reasonable accessibility” to people with disabilities, like the ability to use a screen reader and fill out forms.

Although it isn’t a legal standard, most developers and designers follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0), which include three levels of compliance: AAA, AA, and A.

Accessibility consists of so much more than color, but for the purposes of this blog, we’re going to focus on which level your site would fall into based solely on your use of color.

WCAG Levels of Accessibility

Level AAA
This is the strictest level of compliance. Level AAA is often used by government agencies, medical providers, and organizations that receive taxpayer funding.
Level AA
This is the median level of compliance. For the majority of companies, level AA provides a balance between meeting legal requirements for usability and having design flexibility.
Level A
This is the lowest level of compliance and is not recommended in terms of color. Color combinations that fall below levels AA or AAA will be considered a “fail” by color-checking tools.

How Compliance is Determined

Your design’s level of color compliance depends on two factors: the contrast ratio between the foreground (text) and the background, as well as the point size of your text.

A contrast ratio of 7 or higher is considered AAA compliant, while 4.5 through 7 will meet AA standards.

A color checker example using Tower Marketing branded colors

An example of a color contrast checker using Tower’s brand colors.

Some color combinations will be AA18 compliant, meaning they are readable at 18px (or 14px bolded) and above. If you do choose to use “borderline” complaint colors like these, however, you should take into account that text may scale down for mobile and no longer meet this size threshold.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. If your client is using a font that’s unusually tall or narrow, you may need to find a contrast ratio even higher than the AA minimum.

2. Evaluate Your Accessible Color Palette Needs

Are you confined by your client’s strict brand standards, or do you have the freedom of a blank slate? We have tips for navigating both scenarios.

Working With an Existing Color Palette

With all the attention that goes into carefully crafting a brand, the idea of having to rethink a set of carefully-chosen Pantone colors can cause brands to balk at making updates for accessibility.

Luckily, there are minor tweaks (that no one except a designer would notice!) that can make a website fully accessible. Even slight alterations to a color palette can give you more viable background and text color combinations, making for a more dynamic and engaging site.

For this Tower client, minor adjustments to their existing red and black tones gave us twice the AA and AAA-compliant background and text color combinations.

A Tower client's original and updated color palettes

The client’s original color palette (left) vs. the updated version (right).

If you’re unable to modify a brand’s existing colors, you’ll have to get creative. Find a few key color combinations that pass as accessible color palettes, and then use photography, iconography, and infographics to add more color throughout the site.

Take Apple for example. Their fully-accessible homepage is bright, dynamic, and beautiful, and it utilizes only four colors in six combinations—proving that accessibility is only a restriction if you make it one.

Building a New Accessible Color Palette

Being able to design from day one with accessibility in mind is a huge advantage—and it’s really no different from designing any other good color scheme. In fact, to make strong and accessible color palettes, you only need:

One or two base colors
A strong call-to-action color
A handful of neutral colors

Call-to-action colors are typically where designers struggle to remain compliant. If your CTA button is lighter (like yellow or light orange), try dark text instead of the more traditional white. You can also save fun, bright colors for hover states and opt for a slightly darker default tone. This can help buttons draw visual interest while still keeping them compliant.

3. Find a Color Contrast Tool That You Love

If you’re working on a new website or a website redesign, you’re going to spend a lot of time with your color contrast tool. So, take a moment and find the one that works for you. Here are a few recommendations!

Contrast Grid from EightShapes — This is our all-time favorite at Tower. It allows you to investigate not just one color, but all of your colors in context with one another. It also generates a unique link for every color palette, making it easy to share with clients, other designers, and developers.
Toolness — This is a similar tool that grays out non-accessible background and text color combinations. It can be especially helpful in visualizing and explaining compliance to those who are new to the guidelines. Since there are no non-compliant combinations shown, they won’t distract from the fully-accessible options.
Colors — We love this tool for its sheer inspiration and dozens of bright, exciting accessible color palettes. This can be a great place to start if you’re feeling overwhelmed.
Color Safe — This is another great option for creating an accessible color palette, as it also takes into consideration the specific typeface and font weight you’re using.
WhoCanUse — Finally, we recommend that you test your accessible color palettes with this tool that shows how people with color blindness, glaucoma, cataracts, and more will perceive the tones you chose (as well as what percentage of the population has these visual impairments).

The homepage of the color checker website WhoCanUse

4. Adjust and Iterate

Chances are, the first accessible color palette you try won’t be quite right. There may not be enough accessible options, and even if there are, the combinations available may not be a good fit for your client.

Context is Key

Play with your colors in the context of your design program. If you’re making minor alterations to an existing palette, check your new colors alongside old collateral. Is the difference noticeable? Is that a problem?

Consider print applications as well. Colors may look great online but horrible on paper, and vice versa.

Utilize the Right Design Tools

Having a powerful tool at your disposal is the key to working accessibility into your existing design process. At Tower, we use Sketch, a design program with a nearly endless library of plugins.

Stark is a color contrast analyzer that operates right inside your design file. It also has the unique ability to mimic different types of color blindness, from the most common to the very rare.

This is especially important when designing infographics and charts where differentiating colors is crucial to understanding the content. While colors may look completely different to you, if they are too similar in brightness or hue, they may be indistinguishable to someone with partial or full-color blindness.

The homepages of the websites for Sketch and Stark

Sketch and Stark are two tools we use at Tower and can recommend for others.

5. Remember Why It Matters

Designing through the new lens of accessibility can be frustrating at times, especially when working within an existing brand’s color scheme. It can be easy to get excited about a bright and edgy design, but the bottom line is that websites need to be both usable and beautiful.

Viewing ADA compliance as a challenge, rather than as a roadblock, can keep things in perspective and strengthen your design skills along the way. Plus, it will make the web a friendlier and more accessible place for everyone when we use accessible color palettes.

An older woman using a laptop in her office

At Tower, we work with many small businesses for whom individual customers are the prime focus, making visual accessibility, specifically accessible color palettes crucial for every site we build.

If you need to redesign or update your website to be ADA-compliant, our team of designers and developers is ready to help.

Explore Our Design Services

This blog was originally published on June 13, 2019. It was updated on July 6, 2023.

The big countdown to GA4 is finally coming to a close, and it brings a lot of changes, which include user engagement metrics. We’ve outlined the 8 key GA4 differences you can expect, but now we’ll explore how to use the engagement metrics in Google Analytics 4 to your advantage.

Once you become familiar with user engagement in Google Analytics 4, you’ll be able to use these metrics to better define your marketing strategies and ultimately gain an extensive understanding of your audience.

What User Engagement Metrics Should You Track?

There are a lot of metrics for you in GA4, and trying to track all of them would be very overwhelming. On the other hand, if you’re not tracking the right ones, you might become more confused about what’s successful for your company and what needs work.

As you consider what metrics to track, you should align this with the purpose of your website and your company’s marketing goals. For example, if you’re looking to sell your products or services online, your KPIs are going to look slightly different than a company looking to provide thought leadership to its audience.

Below, we’ll outline some of the most influential user engagement metrics you can track to know the effect of your marketing strategies.

In appropriate sections, we’ll highlight an industry average or target range. This may vary depending on what type of industry you’re in, so you can always use Google’s benchmarking tool to find specific averages on user engagement.

Users

There are three different types of users that you should be aware of in Google Analytics 4. Each is similar but tells you a slightly different story about what your audience is doing on your website.

New Users. In Universal Analytics, each device counted as a new user. However, GA4 will use cross-device tracking to recognize the same user on different devices.
Total Users. Similar to what you’ve seen before, total users let you know the number of users that had an event on your website during a specific period of time.
Active Users. Active users are a new metric you can track within Google Analytics 4. These are engaged users, or someone who stayed on the page for longer than 10 seconds, had a conversion event or visited more than 2 pages on your website. Ideally, a good benchmark for active users is 60% – 70% of your total users.

*Note that in Google Analytics 4, active users will be labeled as just “users”.

Why is this metric important for understanding user engagement? Increasing new users is a really great indicator that your brand awareness is growing. If you want to take this a step further, you can also see how many of these users are engaging with your website, viewing multiple pages, and spending more time on your site.

If you’re noticing that you have a lot of new users but not as many active users, it may be because your site needs some UX improvements so visitors are given a great first impression of your website.

Engaged Sessions

The engaged session metric will also be something new with Google Analytics 4. Just like with an active user, an engaged session is when someone spends more than 10 seconds on your site, viewed more than 2 pages, or completed a conversion.

An additional, new metric in Google Analytics 4 is engaged sessions per user. This number can be found by dividing the number of engaged sessions by the number of total users. So, if you have 683 engaged sessions and 1,100 total users, your engaged sessions per user is 0.62, or 62%.

Just like your active users, a good benchmark for your engagement rate is anywhere between 60% – 70%.

Why is this metric important? What we provided above highlights your entire website’s engagement. But you can also narrow this down to specific pages. By finding specific pages that have higher engaged sessions, you can continue to promote that product/service/insight on multiple platforms.

On the other hand, you can find pages that aren’t performing as well and have lower engaged sessions. This could be a great indication to rework those pages, rewrite the blog, or to better promote the page across different mediums, like social media and email blasts.

Bounce Rate

Since engaged sessions are now an engagement metric in Google Analytics 4, you can use it to get a better idea of what your bounce rate percentage is. Simply inverse the percentage of engaged sessions to get your bounce rate.

This bounce rate will tell you how many users stayed less than 10 seconds on your site. So, continuing with the example above, if the engagement rate is 62% that means that 38% of total users went to your site and then immediately left.

Average Engagement Time

This is an important metric to show you how long your active users are spending on your website. If you’re noticing that people aren’t spending a lot of time on your page, and aren’t converting, it’s likely that something needs to be adjusted.

Again, use this metric to see where users are spending the most time on your site. If you’re noticing that your blog posts, case studies, landing pages, or other online materials are getting little engagement time, try creating evergreen, engaging, and authentic content.

Events

Now the main difference you’ll see in UA vs GA4 engagement metrics is it’s now tracking events rather than goals. Ultimately, this is going to help you see a more well-rounded view of your users and their engagement.

An event now includes any activity on your website, from a form being filled out to a user viewing one of your pages. This is where it is essential to analyze what you want to know about user activity on your website.

Make sure the events you are tracking are the most important for measuring your marketing strategies. So, if you’re an eCommerce website, you probably want to be tracking when users are browsing the inventory, adding products to their carts, and eventually checking out.

If your website’s main objective is to disperse information and show yourself as an industry expert, you should be tracking events that occur on your blog posts or case study pages. Events like page scroll depth, video progress (if relevant), and clicks.

a screenshot of conversion examples in Google Analytics 4.

Conversions

In Universal Analytics, you had to set up goals that would then track your conversions. It’s going to look a bit different in Google Analytics 4. All goals have turned into events, and you can mark your most important events as conversions.

Simply toggle the switch to indicate which events you’d like to mark as conversions. We recommend marking events like form submissions and phone calls as conversions.

two events that are showing they can be marked as conversions in Google Analytics 4.

Why is this metric important? No matter the purpose of your website, you’re going to want users to take action. Conversions are one of the best ways to track user engagement in Google Analytics 4.

Not only can you see specific actions being taken, but you can see where these conversions are coming from. You may see conversions come from an email campaign you sent out, a social advertisement, or a pay-per-click campaign.

Especially during a time when you need to reevaluate your strategies, being able to see where conversions are happening can help you focus your attention on those specific channels.

How to Improve Engagement Metrics in Google Analytics

With a little time, specific tools, and website testing, you can make changes that will benefit users navigating your site.

Explore the Why

In marketing, there isn’t usually a one-size-fits-all answer as to why things are happening. Here are a few tips you can explore to gain a more accurate depiction of ways to improve your engagement metrics.

Depending on your industry, there could be multiple reasons for a decrease in engagement. If you work in an economically dependent industry, this could play a huge factor in site engagement.

There will be similar effects if your business has a seasonality factor. If that’s the case, try comparing year-over-year data rather than month-over-month, so you can get a better view of what’s happening through each season of the year.

If you are seeing dips in engagement, don’t panic! What’s important is that you’re continuing your strategies and creating engaging, evergreen content that can be used across multiple platforms to engage more of your audience.

Encourage Engagement Across Multiple Channels

It’s important to reach your audience where they are. Cross-promotions allow for your message to spread to a wider audience, nudging them to visit your site and discover your content.

You can use various internet marketing tactics like content writing, email newsletters, social media advertising, and pay-per-click advertising to capture your user’s attention and send them to your website.

Test Your Theories

As we said, there sometimes isn’t a definitive answer to why engagement is increasing or decreasing. So, it’s never a bad idea to test what you think may be the reason for the fluctuation or try implementing a new strategy.

When you’re A/B testing, make sure you’re not changing everything at once. You should only change one element at a time, so you can accurately identify the most positive effects on your user engagement in Google Analytics 4.

Need help analyzing your current strategies and pinpointing areas of improvement on your website? Contact our specialists today!

Reach Out

This blog was originally published on September 25, 2019, and updated on June 28, 2023.

Blog writing seems deceptively easy. Some people think that all you need to do is write new and compelling content, publish it on a consistent schedule, and new traffic will be generated. While that is a necessary part of the process, experienced content marketers know there is more to it.

One way to drive traffic to your website is forum link-building. After reading this blog, you’ll learn why forum link-building is important, what forums you can use, and why it’s beneficial.

What is Link Building?

Link building refers to the variety of methods marketers use to increase the number of high-quality links that refer to your website. It often includes spending lots of time researching and reaching out to external sources.

If you use the correct link-building strategy, you can increase your website traffic, boost your brand awareness, and increase your domain authority.

What is Forum Link Building?

This type of link-building activity uses forums. By interacting on the forum and answering questions, you can establish backlinks to your website.

These backlinks increase your page’s ranking in Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) because you have more links pointing back to your site. This becomes important when you’re trying to outrank competitors in your industry.

Why Should You Use It?

You want to be known as an authority in your industry and a brand people can trust. Every time you interact with a person is a chance to build a relationship with your audience. Creating quality content to share also demonstrates your brand’s expertise.

This content gives your audience something to refer to when checking your site. They might not have originally gone to your website for this topic, but they’ll remember you had a post on it. Since you’ve already built that trust with your audience, you’ve become a go-to resource for them, making it more likely that they will recommend your site to others or visit again.

What Forums Should I Use?

If people discuss a topic, then there is a forum for it. There are forums for cars, travel, cooking, computer programming, and everything in between. But are all forums created equal? Below we’ll explore which ones are going to best benefit your website.

Quora

Quora is a question-and-answer forum. It covers over 400,000 topics and is used by 300 million people per month.

Why Should You Use It?

While anyone can use Quora for advice on any issue, it can be more professional than other forums. Part of that is because the site is heavily moderated and any topics or answers that don’t adhere to the guidelines are removed.

Since Quora is only for questions and answers, your answers are less likely to get lost in conversation threads.

Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow

Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow are online communities that allow users to ask and answer questions, mostly on technology and software. Stack Exchange is the overarching network and Stack Overflow is a specific community hosted in that network.

Why Should You Use It?

Stack is one of the largest and most active programming Q&A communities on the internet, with a large community of users who provide help and support to other developers around the world. It is a well-known resource for programmers and software developers. If you’re a part of that industry, being involved with Stack is a good way to get your brand out there.

Like Quora, Reddit is a social news and discussion website where users can submit content, such as links, text posts, and images, and engage in discussions with other users. It has 430 million monthly users. Where it differs from Quora is that Reddit shows the latest news as well.

Why Should You Use It?

Since more people use Reddit, you can reach a larger audience. Reddit also allows you to discuss recent news stories and see what issues your audience is interacting with.

There are questions on a variety of topics and different subcategories for more information/discussion to go more in-depth on an issue.

However, something to keep in mind when you’re using Reddit is to do some research before you start using this platform. Discussions can get contentious fairly quickly on Reddit so it’s a good idea to do some research and understand your community before you start posting.

Medium

Medium differs from the other platforms we’ve discussed as it’s a blogging platform. Once you create an account you can go on and either write blogs or you can repost ones already on your website. You can also determine if your articles are behind a paywall or not.

Medium is free to everyone; however, non-members are limited to three free articles per month. To gain unlimited access, you can get a membership to the site.

Why Should You Use It?

While there isn’t as much interaction on Medium, you can still create content that links back to your website and help you become an authority within your industry. You can also still reach portions of your target audience and see what content matters to them. While not instantaneous, it can still be a good research tool.

Which One is the Best?

Deciding which forum is best isn’t easy. It depends on several factors including your overall content marketing strategy, your audience demographics, the industry you’re in, and what you want to achieve.

For example, if you are a clothing designer, you might not use a forum like Stack Exchange that focuses on programming and software development. You might want to go somewhere like Reddit or Quora because you are more likely to find your target audience there.

What Can You Accomplish With Forum Link Building?

Before you start on any project, you must establish what the benefits are for your business—what potential outcomes you would expect. When you start on your forum link-building journey, here are some of the potential benefits you can experience.

Establish Your EAT

The acronym EAT stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trust. It’s a marketing theory that helps websites rank better in Google SERPs. However, it can be applied to just about any type of marketing, including forum link-building.

Expertise

Being a go-to expert in your field will not go unnoticed on whichever forum you select. By answering many questions with useful and relevant information, you will gain followers who will recognize your knowledge of the topic or industry.

Authority

In this case, authority goes hand-in-hand with your expertise. Answering questions gives you the ability to position yourself or your company over your competition.

Trust

By being a beneficial resource for users, you’ll work on gaining trust. That can then turn into loyalty, which means users will be more willing to use you or your company’s products and/or services over others.

Generate New Content Ideas

When you’re creating new content for your website, forums are an overlooked place to find content. Thanks to the vast amount of users using the platform each day, you’re bound to come across various patterns in the topics you see.

You’re likely to see questions surrounding your industry that you haven’t thought of. You can then use this information to create new, unique content for your website.

Gain Insight Into Your Audience

As you’re looking through posts on the forum, you can get an idea of what topics your target audience is interested in or have questions about. The forum lets you speak directly with your audience and gain valuable targeting data.

Drive Traffic To Your Website

The goal of using link building is to drive quality traffic to your website. If you have great content but no one’s seeing it, then you have a problem.

Getting your brand out in front of your audience and answering their questions helps show them that you’re knowledgeable and should be taken seriously as a resource.

Tower March 2023 blog image 1 min scaled How Good Forum Link Building Helps Drive Traffic

How to Get Started Building Forum Backlinks

Now that we’ve gone over all the benefits of using forums for link building, the real work begins—using the forum. However, by using these simple steps, you can get started sooner than you think.

1. Create Your Forum Profile

Once you’ve created your content, the next step is to create a profile on your forums of choice. You can create an individual profile or you can create a profile on behalf of your company. It all depends on if this is for a personal project or for a business.

2. Find Questions to Answer

Go through the forum and collect different questions you can confidently answer. When you’re searching for topics, you can bookmark topics so it will be easy to find them the next time you log in.

Look for questions that speak directly to your brand and messaging. Don’t try to make questions fit what you’re saying—your audience can tell when you’re being disingenuous and that will lead to you losing credibility with them.

3. Carefully Craft Your Answers

When you’re ready to begin answering questions, make sure your answers stand out from others. Don’t rush through your answers—take your time to think out your response and make sure that it’s beneficial.

Using the suggestions below, your answers will be concise, clear, and useful for users.

Format answers
Use images
Create links
Make sure answers have value

4. Maintain Your Profile

Once you’ve started your profile, you’ll need to take time to maintain it. Some of the ways you can interact with your profile are:

Continue answering questions
Add content to your profile page
Interact with other members
Create questions for other users to answer

Tower March 2023 blog image 2 min scaled How Good Forum Link Building Helps Drive Traffic

Is Forum Link-Building Right for You?

Having relevant, SEO-optimized content already created eases your workload as you try to link build and connect with your audience. You’ve done the hard work, now you just need to share it with your audience.

Remember, you want quality traffic over quantity. You are going straight to the source and talking directly to the audience you want to target. Since they’re searching for what you’re offering, they’re probably going to be interested in what you have to say.

Using forums provides the ability to spread brand awareness and speak directly with your audience, which helps you understand them better.

Want help reaching your target audience through forum link building? See how working with an experienced full-service agency can support your business.

Contact Our Team

Editor’s note: This blog was originally published on May 1, 2019. It was updated on June 9, 2023.

POV: You’re a driven, passionate content creator.

Whether you’re a blogger, marketer, or small business owner, your dedication shines through your writing. You’ve poured your heart into your work, investing endless hours into research, content creation, and meticulous revisions. Nothing is more satisfying than finally pressing the “publish” button on your masterpiece.

But the sad reality is, you can have the greatest content in the world, but unless you get it in front of the right people, it can’t impact anyone.

Over 7 million blog posts are published each day, and Google is extremely selective when deciding which posts make the cut for the top positions.

Think your blog has what it takes to rise to the top of the search results? You may be surprised to learn how many subtle blog SEO strategies you could be missing.

What Is Blog Optimization?

Blog optimization is the process of amending your blog to enhance its visibility in search results. Blog optimization often includes:

Well-written metadata
Internal linking
Descriptive anchor text
Effective image alt text
Optimized content for featured snippets

We’ll go into more detail below, but for a summary, download our easy-to-follow blog SEO checklist.

shutterstock 695980678 1 4 Blog SEO Tips To Increase Google Search Visibility

Need a summary of what’s covered in this blog?

Does Blogging Help SEO?

Regular blogging can help improve your SEO by positioning your website as an authority and supplying your users with fresh, relevant content that answers their questions.

More content = more opportunities for links, more discovered pages, and a larger variety of queries to appear for.

Follow these key blog SEO tips to increase Google search visibility.

Blog SEO Tip #1: Optimize Meta Titles & Descriptions (So Google Won’t Rewrite Them!)

Yep, you read that correctly – Google rewrites over 61% of all meta titles. While there’s no way to prevent Google from changing your meta titles, there are certain best practices to decrease the likelihood of your metadata being rewritten:

Ensure it’s the right length.

Keep meta titles around 50-60 characters. According to Moz research, approximately 90% of your meta titles will appear correctly if they’re under 60 characters. Meta description length should be around 155-160 characters.

The challenging part is that Google sometimes adds the date or bolds certain keywords to match a query, which may add space. Also, letters are varying widths (i.e. the letter “l” takes up less space than a “W”). Since Google actually registers pixels rather than characters, it’s best to keep it on the lower side of those ranges to account for this.

Use the Portent SERP Preview Tool to check your metadata length.

Keep it unique. Use a different primary keyword, meta title, and meta description for each page on your site to avoid keyword cannibalization (competing keywords).

Put your keyword at the beginning of your meta title. Since users (and Google) read left to right, you’ll want the user to immediately see the match to their query.

Include your brand name at the end for recognition and credibility. Use the full brand name when possible (i.e. Tower Marketing rather than Tower).

Avoid quotation marks in meta descriptions. Google may truncate the rest of the description if you use them. Also, avoid brackets or parentheses.

Don’t stuff your metadata with keywords. Keyword stuffing is when you unnaturally repeat the keyword multiple times to try to appease search engines.

Write for your user first, not the search engine. Create a positive experience!

Match the meta title to the H1 (the main title on your page) if possible. This can reduce the chance of rewriting by about 20%. If you decide to make them different, make sure they’re related so the user knows they went to the right page.

Additional Metadata Info:

While meta descriptions aren’t ranking factors, they do persuade users to click on your result over others. This can increase your click-through rate, which is a ranking factor.
Use numbers and ampersands (&) to save space.
Capitalization doesn’t affect metadata. Personally, we suggest capitalizing the first letter of each word for consistency.
Include a call to action. Or, rather, a call to value. Describe the value the user will get from clicking on your result.
Generally, Google prefers dashes to pipes. However, pipes take up less space and some experiments have shown a higher click-through rate (so customers prefer it).

Personally, we like to use a dash when describing something relevant (i.e. Train Rides – All Ages Welcome) and a pipe with two individual things, such as a title and a brand name (i.e. Train Rides | Strasburg Rail Road).

Blog SEO Tip #2: Optimize For Featured Snippets

What Is A Featured Snippet?

A featured snippet is a short piece of content that appears at the very top of a search engine results page. This is often referred to as “position 0.”

A featured snippet example in Google's search results on how to keep a plant alive.

How To Optimize For Featured Snippets

When doing keyword research, select questions as your secondary keywords. Then, use them as headings. Optimize for the featured snippet by answering the question in 30 words or less.

Types Of Content To Include To Optimize For Featured Snippets

Short, direct answers to questions
Bulleted or numbered lists
Tables/charts
Videos
Tools or calculators

Blog SEO Tip #3: Optimize Images

Alt text (a.k.a. “alt attributes,” “alt tags,” “alt descriptions,” or “alternative text”), is a short piece of content that describes what’s happening in the image. This allows search engines and people with disabilities who use screen readers to understand the image. Additionally, if the image doesn’t load, the alt text will show instead.

How To Effectively Write Alt Text For Search Engines & Screen Readers

A picture is worth a thousand words. But in this case, be concise. Keep it under 125 characters (that’s when screen readers typically cut off).

Don’t start with “A picture of” or “An image of.” Google knows it’s an image, and screen readers will announce that it’s an image before reading the alt text, so it would be repetitive.

Put a period after alt text so the screen reader will pause, creating a better user experience.

For decorative images, such as icons, the search bar magnifying glass, line page breaks, etc., use an empty alt attribute.

Note: This doesn’t mean leaving it out. If you leave it out, the screen reader will assume you forgot to write alt text, and may read the file name instead. This could just be random numbers/letters, creating a negative user experience. Use alt=”” to signal an empty alt attribute.

Going along with this, a descriptive image file name is helpful. Use keywords if applicable, and use hyphens, not spaces. We wouldn’t recommend going back and updating all of your image file names, but going forward, it’s a good practice.

Proofread! Spelling a word wrong could entirely change the image’s meaning.

For images with captions already on the site, you don’t need to include the captions in the alt text.

With linked images, describe the action rather than the appearance.

i.e. A question mark image that leads to a contact page could say, “Contact Our Experts” for its alt text rather than “question mark.”

Unless it’s an acronym, don’t use all caps. Screen readers may spell out entirely capitalized words.

For charts and graphs, list all important details in the text of the blog so that those with screen readers understand what it’s illustrating.

Include keywords if appropriate (but don’t stuff them). 62.6% of all Google searches are through Google Images, so including keywords in your alt text gives your images the chance to rank for them. Let’s look at an example below.

For this image, you may be tempted to say, “people shaking hands.”

However, try more descriptive alt text like, “A real estate agent and new homeowner shaking hands after closing a deal.” This provides context and a chance to rank in Google Images for keywords like, “real estate agent,” “new homeowner,” or “closing a deal.”

In addition to writing alt text, you should compress your images to reduce load time for a positive user experience.

Blog SEO Tip #4: Add Relevant Internal Links With Detailed Anchor Text

What Is Internal Linking & How Do Internal Links Help SEO?

Internal links lead from one page on your site to another page on your site. This helps users (and Google) navigate to other relevant pages. Here are just a few ways internal links help SEO:

Helps Google bot discover other pages on your site faster
Creates a well-structured website hierarchy, leading to the most important pages
Increases pages per session
Decreases bounce rate
Avoids orphaned pages

Anchor Text SEO Best Practices

Anchor text is the clickable, linked text throughout your content. Its purpose is to describe to your user (and Google) what that linked page is about. Follow these anchor text best practices:

Keep it succinct, yet relevant to the page it’s linking to.
Context is important. You look at the words around it – Google does, too!
Rather than repeating the same anchor text throughout your page, use a variety. Google’s penguin algorithm update in 2012 addressed spammy links. If your links all had the same anchor text, Google may penalize you, assuming you purchased them.
Beware of competing keywords. Essentially, don’t use your primary keyword as anchor text because you’ll be sending people to a competing site. This might confuse Google on which site to rank higher for that keyword.
Use keywords if they’re relevant, but avoid keyword stuffing. Here’s an example directly from Google on keyword-stuffed anchor text:

There are many wedding rings on the market. If you want to have a wedding, you will have to pick the best ring. You will also need to buy flowers and a wedding dress.

Multiple links that lead to the same page don’t affect SEO; each link is treated equally. It’s more of a user experience consideration. Be cautious about overwhelming or distracting the user with too many links.
Ensure anchor text is clearly clickable (underlined/a different color). Also, don’t cause confusion by underlining things that aren’t clickable.
Use a table of contents for easy navigation. It could also improve your click-through rate from the search results because Google may include “jump to” links.

An example of jump to links in Google's search results for HubSpot.

Summary: The Importance Of Writing SEO-Friendly Blog Posts

As an expert in your field, you’ve already perfected the art of creating fresh content for your website. Now, ensure that content can be found by search engines.

While you’re optimizing new content, it’s also a good idea to refresh older blogs for SEO with updated keyword research, links, and information.

If you’re looking for insight into a more in-depth content creation strategy, get in touch with our content marketing specialists to learn how we can generate and/or optimize the best content for your industry.

Get In Touch

Traditional radio still exists, but it’s like a flip phone. It’s still on the market, but why would you spend money on one when the smartphone exists? If you’re a marketer trying to reach listeners through traditional radio you might be wasting your budget.

But that doesn’t mean that you should scrap radio from your advertising budget altogether. It simply means that advertisers must evolve their marketing distribution channels. In the era of music streaming, marketers can leverage internet radio to reach their desired audience.

Because let’s face it — music and sound are captivating. Learn the properties of sound that make audio ads so effective and how to create Spotify ads that help you achieve your marketing goals.

What Makes Sound Effective?

Imagine you’re driving and you hear a fire siren. What are your first thoughts? You might be able to infer (1) there’s been a fire, (2) it’s within miles, and (3) that help is on the way. When you hear the siren, what do you feel? Maybe you feel uneasy or that danger is near. That’s the impact that sound can have on our minds.

Sound has the power to deliver information and evoke a feeling — we can observe that in the siren example. If your businesses can leverage those same elements of sound in your marketing, the return can be abundant.

Following the logic of the siren model, your company can communicate information about your brand and evoke a feeling from your listeners through sound, too. Using Spotify’s self-serving advertising platform, you can easily create Spotify ads that drive brand awareness and influence consumer behavior.

Advertising On Spotify: The Basics

Before jumping into how to create Spotify ads, there are some basics to understand about the platform, including how ads are delivered, the different ad formats, and their costs.

Spotify’s Ad Delivery Model

Like most software as a service (saas) companies, Spotify uses the “freemium” business model. This means users can join to experience the basic product features for free. To use the advanced options, they are incentivized to upgrade to a premium subscription.

In Spotify’s case, users can set up an account to listen for free. Among other restrictive features, freemium listeners are severed 15- to 30-second ads throughout their listening experience; and yours can be one of them.

Types of Spotify Ads

There are four types of Spotify ad experiences that your marketing team can consider when building out your ads:

1. Audio Ads

These are the most basic ads that brands can run on Spotify. They are audio spots, up to 30 seconds long, that Spotify plays in between songs. They’re sometimes referred to as “all-platform” ads because they’ll run on any device, in any environment, and at any hour of the day.

If you’re just starting out, audio ads are a good place to begin because they are inexpensive and Spotify can guarantee your ad will be heard, since they are only delivered to “in the moment” listeners. This means the ads are only played for users in active sessions.

The minimum budget for running a basic audio ad is $250.

2. Video Ads

Video takeover ads merge the strengths of audio and video to reach listeners. In this model, you have the ability to show listeners about your brand, not just tell them. The nature of video ads requires that they’re only shown to users actively browsing with the screen in view.

In some ways, the delivery model for video ads can limit your ad’s reach. But, in a study conducted for Dentsu International’s Attention Economy series, researchers found that Spotify video ads improved the platform average for holding users’ attention by over 150%.

If your brand has the production means and budget to create a video takeover ad, it could be worth the investment. Keep in mind, the minimum budget to run this type of ad is $250, plus whatever you spend on production.

3. Podcast Ads

Spotify premium promises “ad-free music listening,” but they don’t mention ad-free podcast listening. That means if you elect to run podcast ads, you have the ability to reach freemium and premium Spotify users.

Being able to reach premium and free listeners doesn’t mean your ad will be more successful, however. All users have the ability to pause, fast forward, and rewind to any part of the podcast episode, meaning you might be risking the chance for your ad to be heard at all.

The minimum budget to run this type of ad is $500.

4. Custom Experience Ads

Sponsored playlists, overlays, homepage takeovers, and leaderboard ads are some of the custom experiences Spotify offers to advertisers. They are multi-format ads designed to be more unique to your brand.

To put together a custom experience ad, marketers must work with a Spotify ad specialist, so this is not a true self-serve option.

How To Create a Spotify Ad

Now that you understand the basics of how Spotify advertising works, let’s jump into the actual process of creating your ads. We’ll outline how to create a Spotify ad in 6 steps and provide visual examples from our team.

1. Create Your Account

If you don’t have one already, the first step is to create your account. You’ll be prompted to fill out some basic information about you and your brand. Once it’s created, you’ll be directed to your dashboard.

Screenshot 2023 02 01 at 1.41.33 PM 3 How To Create Spotify Ads: A Complete Guide on Leveraging Sound in the Age of Streaming

2. Create Your Campaign

Now it’s time to create your first Spotify ad! You’ll start by creating a new campaign. If you’re familiar with Meta’s ad manager, the hierarchy of campaign > ad sets > ads is the same.

For general organization and tracking purposes, we suggest creating a single campaign per year, and simply creating a new ad set for each new ad during that year. This can help you compare ad performance year over year.

Click “Create Campaign” in the upper right corner of the screen. After you name your campaign, you’ll have to select the objective and placement of your ads. In this case, we selected “A brand, product, or organization” as the objective and “music” for the placement, but feel free to adjust accordingly.

Screenshot 2023 02 01 at 9.18.24 AM 3 How To Create Spotify Ads: A Complete Guide on Leveraging Sound in the Age of Streaming

3. Update The Ad Set

At the ad set level, you will determine your ad format, audience, budget, and schedule.

Ad Format

With music selected as your ad placement, you can choose between audio or video ad formats. We recommend starting with a basic audio ad to run across all platforms.

If you need to update the platforms, know that the option is available to you, but Spotify (and us) recommend maximizing your reach with all platforms especially since you’re just starting out.

Audience

Here, you’ll choose your target audience. You can do this by selecting

Locations
Ages
Genders
Interests
Behaviors
Postal Links

When setting your age preferences, you’ll have to select by predetermined ranges. Spotify doesn’t have the option to set your own, so you can’t narrow it down quite as much as some other platforms.

Where you can really start to define your audience is under the “Interests and behaviors” section. You can narrow it down by topics of interest, music genres, or real-time contexts.

Screenshot 2023 02 01 at 9.30.50 AM 3 How To Create Spotify Ads: A Complete Guide on Leveraging Sound in the Age of Streaming

If you’re in a niche that Spotify’s preset options support, real-time contexts could be something really cool to explore. This feature allows Spotify to deliver your ad to people participating in specific behaviors based on user-curated and Spotify-curated playlists.

Budget & Schedule

Time to determine how long you want your ad to run and how much money you’d like to spend. Remember, the minimum for an audio ad is $250, but you can enter a custom amount.

Then set the start and end dates for your ad to run, along with the hours that you’d like it to deliver. Unless you’re putting together several ads within the same ad set, you can keep the delivery hours at Spotify’s default settings. You’d only need to change it if you have multiple ads that you’d like to rotate to listeners.

The final step of updating the ad set is to set your bidding preferences. This includes setting a bid cap and a frequency cap. Spotify requires that you choose a bid cap, and before you panic — they will recommend an amount for you based on similar audiences. We suggest choosing a number in between the range that they offer.

Setting a frequency cap is not required, but it might be something beneficial to consider. By doing so, you can control the maximum amount of times your ad is delivered to the target audience per day, week, or month.

We’ve all experienced getting served the same ad over and over and over again. Eventually, it becomes a nuisance, and it could actually cause listeners to form a negative impression of your brand. Setting a frequency cap can help avoid this and gives you some more control over the delivery of your ad.

Screenshot 2023 02 01 at 11.01.31 AM 3 How To Create Spotify Ads: A Complete Guide on Leveraging Sound in the Age of Streaming

4. Build Your Ad

Now it’s time for the fun part: building your ad! If you already have an audio clip recorded and mixed, you can upload it directly to Spotify. If you don’t, you’ll have to write a script and Spotify will record the voiceover for you.

The latter option comes with some additional decisions. You’ll have to choose a voice actor, which Spotify makes easy. Then, you’ll have to give the voice actor some context. You can instruct them on the tone, speed, and emotion you’d like your ad to deliver.

Next, you’ll choose some background music. Spotify has a limited library of music that you can use, or you can upload your own. Tracks must be under 30 seconds long. If you’re uploading a file longer than that, you can edit which part of the song plays, but only after Spotify sends back your recording.

The next step is to upload an image and update the text that will show on the listeners’ screens. If you have a branded photo you’d like to use, you can upload it to Spotify. If you don’t, Spotify also has a small library of generic ad images advertisers can choose from.

Finally, you’ll add your brand’s name, choose your call-to-action button’s text, and the button language. If you use UTM tracking to gather information for Google Analytics, you can add your URL here, too.

Screenshot 2023 02 01 at 11.40.03 AM 3 How To Create Spotify Ads: A Complete Guide on Leveraging Sound in the Age of Streaming

5. Submit Your Ad For Review

When you’re satisfied with your ad, the final step is to submit it for review. Typically, it takes 1-3 days for Spotify to record and mix your ad. When your ad is ready for a final review, they’ll send it back to your dashboard where you can approve or revise the recording.

Sometimes the Spotify voice actors send back recordings that don’t match the tone or pace that you intended. Luckily, Spotify allows advertisers to submit revisions for voiceovers, so you have the option to send the ad for a rerecording with different instructions.

The only downside is that if you’re unhappy with the voice actor in general, Spotify doesn’t yet allow users to send a request for a new voice. If you want a new voice actor, you’ll have to reject the ad and start from the beginning.

Key Takeaways

At this point, you should have all the basic information you need to create a Spotify ad. Like most new things you try, it’s going to take some time to perfect. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try something new with your targeting or your script! You always have the ability to edit the ad throughout the month if it’s not yielding the results you’d like.

Are you ready to take your internet radio marketing to the next level? Reach out to a team member to start working with an experienced full-service agency.

Being a digital content professional is way more than just being good with words. If you’re working with one, they’re not just bringing you strong writing. They’re also bringing copywriting psychology into the mix.

At Tower, our team focuses on content marketing to create pieces that support your customer’s journey. But we also step into the role of copywriting, which requires a robust set of skills that often go unnoticed when executed correctly.

Below, we’ll look at what copywriting really means. Plus, I’ll break down seven psychological principles our team has found key in helping our clients create persuasive copywriting that accomplishes their marketing goals.

Copywriting vs. Content Marketing

Simply put, the difference between the two comes down to their objectives.

Content marketing is about your strategy. What does your target audience need and what format do they want to consume it in? It’s about informing and helping your audience through different touchpoints.

Copywriting is where writing psychology comes into play. What tactics can be used in the final piece to persuade and inspire the next step? It’s about getting someone to take action.

While some argue that these are separate practices that sometimes require separate people to execute, I’d make a case that a skilled content professional should be able to switch between both.

For example, a blog should be developed strategically and shared in an appealing way to inform. (That’s the content marketing component.) But it’s also not a successful piece for your business if there’s no clear and compelling next step. (That’s the copywriting component.)

7 Copywriting Psychology Tactics & Examples

While there are plenty of discoveries we’re still making about ourselves, there are also some foundational psychological triggers we’ve established that work well in marketing. Below we’ll look at the top 7 psychological principles you should keep in mind to help make your copywriting more effective.

1. Social Proof (Informational Social Influence)

As humans, we are easily influenced by what others do. We also have the desire to make the right choice when we’re experiencing something unknown. Social proof is a psychological occurrence where a person looks to other people and follows their actions when facing an unfamiliar situation.

How Social Proof Originated

This term was penned in the ’80s by Robert Cialdini, an American psychologist, who wrote the book Influence. This book looked at six key ways humans can be persuaded, and the idea of social proof was one of those tactics.

He was inspired by lots of research examples, including a study that Stanley Milgram, Leonard Bickman, and Lawrence Berkowitz conducted in the ‘60s.

To explain it simply, they had a single person staring up at the sky and most passersby ignored him. But when they had five people staring, more people stopped and looked up. And when they had 15 people looking up, you can imagine what happened — even more folks joined in than previously.

Ways It Plays Out In Marketing

You can leverage this in your copy in a few different ways. Some marketing social proof examples in action include:

Including influencers & endorsements.
Incorporating customer reviews/testimonials.
Featuring certifications from trusted organizations in your content.

An example of a facebook post where a company is sharing a customer review as social proof of its service. — An organic Facebook post showing a social proof example in copy.

2. Marketing Scarcity Principle

One way to summarize this is the idea of “FOMO” a.k.a. “fear of missing out.” We naturally want what we don’t have, and when we feel like something is limited, we elevate its value.

One warning to go along with using this tactic is to make sure you use it wisely and tactfully. Be sure that you’re not being dishonest with it, as that’s something your target audience can (and likely will) pick up on. If people sense or feel that you’re trying to manipulate them, it’ll hurt your brand equity.

How Marketing Scarcity Principle Originated

The origins of the marketing scarcity principle are a bit more nebulous. Some attribute it again to Cialdini, however, the principle of scarcity has been a long-standing theory in economics since Lionel Robbins introduced and defined it.

It’s safer to say that Cialdini saw how that economic principle could tie in with a psychological application.

Ways It Plays Out In Marketing

Some ways you’ve likely encountered this principle in copy include:

Limited-time offers.
Limited stock indicators/messaging.
Low-stock banners or markers.
Countdown timers or flash sale banners.

An example of a social advertisment using marketing scarcity in its call to action. — An example of how to use marketing scarcity principle in ad copywriting.

3. Endowment Effect & Loss Aversion

The endowment effect is the idea that we tend to overestimate the value of something we own compared to how we would value it if we didn’t own it. And around it, the ideas of loss aversion and ownership tend to feed into this psychological tendency.

As humans, we tend to prefer avoiding loss and are much more in favor of gaining something. Some studies have pointed out that we lean toward avoiding loss even in scenarios where what we gain is of equal value. (And we’re not losing value in terms of the tradeoff.)

The main takeaway from this — interjecting the endowment effect and loss aversion is a great way to motivate someone to respond to your marketing with action.

How Endowment Effect Originated

Similar to the scarcity principle, the endowment effect principle, in conjunction with loss aversion, stemmed from the study of behavioral economics and eventually was adopted in psychological studies. And while it’s been in play as long as humans have been around, it became popularized by a study performed by Daniel Kahneman, Jack Knetsch, and Richard Thaler.

Ways It Plays Out In Marketing

This tactic can hold weight in how you approach copywriting. To leverage it:

Use “negative” framing and help your audience consider what they lose from not taking action. (As opposed to the “positive” of what they gain.)
Give your audience ownership in what they’re getting, either through customization or the steps they take to acquire what you’re offering.
Consider specific phrasing like “don’t miss” or “free” to trigger your audience.

A Facebook ad uses copy that shows the endowment effect in use. — A Facebook ad example showing the endowment effect in use.

4. Storytelling

In this age where binge-watching is a pastime we’ve all likely enjoyed, it’s no secret that people like stories. But the reason is much deeper than just their entertainment value. Stories are a framework that helps us connect and relate to other people or concepts, especially when we’re encountering something new.

An interesting NPR article on storytelling summarizes the science to show that the act of listening or reading a story involves a lot more of our brain than processing straight data or statistics. (It elicits the process of mirroring, putting us in sync with the storyteller.) Even reading a story increases brain activity in the areas we use for deciphering and imagining.

Plus, stories are more memorable and we’re more likely to repeat them. This means they can better reinforce a new idea and even change our perspectives and attitudes.

How Storytelling Originated

Stories are as old as we are, but one of the first recorded stories that are recognized by historians is The Epic of Gilgamesh and Homer’s The Iliad. Over time inventions like written languages, the printing press, motion pictures, and the internet have diversified how we tell stories and also made them easier to share.

Ways It Plays Out In Marketing

There’s absolutely a time and a place for listing out benefits. But if you can weave them into a story, there’s a chance it will help your marketing message stick better and persuade. Whether you’re working on B2B or B2C copy try:

Telling stories and weaving narratives in landing page copy.
Using video anecdotes.
Encouraging user-submitted stories on social media.
Using customer testimonials to tell a story.

Pro tip: to make your story even stronger try having it follow a clear arch or using the Zeigarnik Effect.

5. Autonomy Bias

At the heart of our actions, humans have a natural desire to want to be in charge of making our own choices freely. We like having a sense of power and control over our future. So this bias can look like us exercising our will over how, why, where, or what we do.

When you can pivot your copywriting to speak to this and even give your audience a sense of control in how they interact with it, the better.

How Autonomy Bias Originated

While it’s a principle as old as time, this term itself became popularized in psychology when Richard Ryan and Edward Deci developed the self-determination theory of motivation. Their work in psychology showed that reinforcing actions with rewards wasn’t the only way to motivate people. Their research was highly esteemed as a big development in psychology at the time as it brought these new and different theories to the table.

Ways It Plays Out In Marketing

In looking at how to use this tactic in copywriting, here are some suggestions to start:

Speak directly to your audience and frame the message of them being in control.
Use self-guided interactive elements.
Create a self-stepped form.

A custom door design gallery lets you select drawings in line with your vision to submit and get quotes on. — A site landing page leans into autonomy bias, putting users in control of picking and choosing the designs they want.

6. Information Gap Theory

Simply explained, the information gap theory is the idea that if someone is uncertain they will put in work between what they know and what they need to learn to make a decision. Gathering relevant information is a tactic people use and rely on when they don’t have the experience to go off of.

How information Gap Theory Originated

This principle itself seems to have first shown up in the scientific community during the ‘60s, but it peaked in popularity in the ‘90s. Perhaps that spike can be attributed to George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon since he popularized the term itself in the studies he presented in the mid-‘90s.

Ways It Plays Out In Marketing

A few ways to leverage this natural tendency for curiosity include:

Using provoking questions in headlines and placing the answer in the body content that follows.
Incorporate it in the meta descriptions for landing pages leading to your site from search.
Craft it into your email subject lines and preheader text.

An email subject line says "Do-nut miss out" and uses an emoji to incite your curiosity of what the long john limited train ride event entails. — An email subject line uses information gap theory to persuade users to click and learn more.

7. Temporal Landmarks & Temporal Discounting

To put it simply, temporal landmarks are frameworks we mark time between our old self and future self. These are moments that stand out to us in time such as the start of the week, a new day, the new year, birthdays, and anniversaries, to name a few examples.

We use these to inspire ourselves to plan and begin taking specific steps, such as goal setting in the new year or starting a new diet at the start of the week. We’re more likely to do these things in certain times we associate as a meaningful break between the past and future, than choosing a random day to start.

On the flip side, temporal discounting gets at the idea that we’d rather have the gratification of something now instead of waiting, even if waiting ends with us getting slightly more. For example, taking a $100 check today instead of waiting six months for a $150 check. This all shows our relationship with time can be quite complicated.

How Temporal Landmark Theory Originated

Inspired by the work of psychologist Theodule Ribot, Nucgaek Shum wrote a popular paper in the late ‘80s on “The Role of Temporal Landmarks in Autobiographical Memory Processes.” As for where temporal discounting comes into play, it’s not clear exactly who first coined the term, but it initially came out of behavioral economic studies.

Ways It Plays Out In Marketing

A few ways you can find inspiration to use temporal landmarks and discounting in your marketing include:

Crafting email campaigns around landmarks your audience would value and use.
Creating page elements and CTAs that play into temporal discounting urges.
Schedule social posts and ad campaigns around those important landmarks.

An email sent in January uses temporal landmarking of the new year to convey a timely message on 2023 marketing. — An email sent in January relies on the temporal landmark theory to tie its messaging into new year planning.

Need more help crafting the right messaging? Get support from an experienced content marketing team who can help you frame your message with the right copywriting psychology tactics.

Upgrade Your Copywriting

Most people were unfamiliar with podcasts before 2005. But we don’t live in that world anymore. With over 383 million podcast listeners globally, it feels like everyone — from actors and comedians to talk show hosts and presidents — has a podcast of their own. While all this signal noise can make you feel like you’re too late to catch the podcasting wave, the data says differently.

In fact, that 383 million is expected to turn into 424 million in the coming year (with projections of continued annual growth). That’s why we’ve created a guide to starting a B2B podcast. We’ll help you understand what you need to get started, how to reach an audience, and how to track your results as you record, distribute, and record some more. Let’s get started.

B2B Podcasting — What Is It?

Before we dive into this guide to starting a B2B podcast, we first need to define the term. A B2B podcast is a podcast created and produced by a B2B (business to business) company. More often than not, it’s started with the intention of boosting brand awareness and building industry authority. It’s also a way to reach potential customers.

Different types of B2B podcasts will focus on different themes and subjects, and use different formats (audio or audio and video). The exact how and what of your podcast will depend on various factors we’ll cover below, including your vision, audience, and goals. However, at the heart of it, a B2B podcast is created with the intention of marketing your company by providing value to your target audience.

Is B2B Podcasting Worth It?

About 40% of all Americans listen to podcasts, a number that’s still on the rise. The audience is certainly there, so if you’re wondering if your podcast will disappear into the ether once you publish your first episode, it won’t (getting listeners is a different story, which we’ll cover below).

The most obvious reason to consider B2B podcasting is that it’s another weapon in the arsenal to help you get your business’s name, product, or service out there. It can help you attract new visitors, customers, and buyers. It can also serve as an excellent addition to your sales process. Additionally, podcasting can also help you network with other leaders in your industry.

Choosing a Team

Before you start thinking about equipment and distribution platforms, you need to think about building a strong team. Remember, your podcast host(s) make up the voice — and possibly, face — of your show. Decide whether you want to do a solo show or more of a roundtable discussion.

There’s no right or wrong decision here, necessarily. However, unless someone on your team has enough of a personality to handle a whole podcast episode themselves, it may be better to start out with a few team members to keep the conversation alive.

If you’re leaning towards a group show, we recommend having no more than 3-4 people on at once. Too many voices on the show can make an episode feel crowded and chaotic.

Two young professionals recording a podcast in an office space with brick walls.

Getting Started: 3 B2B Podcast Tips

Okay, you’ve assembled the dream ensemble. Now what? Starting a podcast can feel overwhelming, and as B2B podcast production quality continues to improve, it’s natural to feel like there’s a lot to do just to get going. To help you on your way, below are 3 of the most important B2B podcast tips as you start your own podcasting journey.

1. Set Goals

Podcasting is great, but like any marketing initiative, you want to set clear, definable goals so you can make sure it’s worth your time. One way to do this is to use the SMART goals framework:

Specific. What needs to be accomplished? Who’s responsible for it? What steps need to be taken?

Measurable. Quantify your goals. Make it easy to track progress and reach the finish line.

Achievable. Is your objective something you can reasonably accomplish? Goals should be achievable and not too grandiose.

Relevant. Why are you setting the goals you’re setting? How do they fit into your business’s overall initiatives?

Time-bound. When will you know the project (i.e., podcast) has been a success? Set realistic goals so you don’t give up after a month but also don’t continue with the same strategy indefinitely if it’s yielding no results.

Also, this is a good time to ask yourself what exactly you want to get out of your podcast. For instance, do you want to:

Build relationships with your customers?

Grow your audience for brand awareness purposes?

Highlight your business’s product or service and drive demand to it?

If your answer is a mix of the above, that’s totally fine. Just be sure to define your goals ahead of time. Also, your goals may change along the way, which is totally normal. The only real failure at the outset of B2B podcast production is failing to set clear expectations and goals for yourself. Doing so could leave you 6 months down the line wondering if what you’re doing is having any effect at all.

2. Find Your Niche & Develop Your Vision

Next up on the list is finding your voice. Unless you want your podcast to speak very generally about your industry with no specific angle, you’ll need to find what makes you worth tuning into. To do this, ask yourself the following questions:

Who is my audience?

What is my expertise?

What value can I offer my audience?

Let’s start with the audience. If possible, reference your company’s buyer personas to help you understand who may tune into your podcast. This will help you craft your voice for the show (serious, light-hearted, somewhere in between) and understand what challenges the audience faces that you can speak to.

Next up, you need to be honest about your expertise. This can include any collective industry knowledge, career history, and anything your business brings to the table that speaks to the needs of your target audience.

This question may also influence our section above on choosing your team. Having the host(s) of your podcast come to the podcasting table with enough industry knowledge and expertise to speak authentically and authoritatively can certainly impact the final product.

However, don’t allow a sense of imposter syndrome to prevent you from getting started. Nothing is perfect, and seldom is any endeavor excellent from the get-go. Sometimes the best way to learn is to five right in.

Finally, understanding the value you bring involves understanding what’s already been done among your industry’s top podcasts. While some overlap is natural, take this time to think of how to create something fresh. You certainly don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but a strict copycat model isn’t the most valuable approach. Instead of “brand-new”, think “brand-better”.

Take some time to listen to the top podcasts in your area of expertise. What are they doing right? Anything they’re doing wrong? From there, incorporate what works and learn to include what the current key players are missing.

3. Get Your Gear

When you’re brand new to starting a B2B podcast, you probably aren’t interested in contracting out and spending money recording at a third-party studio. In fact, one of the benefits of podcasting is the low-overhead it offers. Plus, given the fantastic tools on the market today to create a polished recording sound, you can get stellar sounds for relatively inexpensive.

To make sure you’ve got your tech stack covered before launching your podcast, you’ll want to have the following:

Equipment. Microphones, headphones, cameras (if you’re doing video), and an audio receiver (if you’re not using USB mics).

Recording software. For Mac users, Garageband is a free tool that comes with your computer that will suit all of your podcasting needs as your start out. Other popular recording software includes Audacity and Adobe Audition.

Editing software. This can and will often be the same as your recording software. Using a platform your can record and edit with makes the process even simpler, especially as you’re starting out. Riverside wrote a great blog on some of the top podcast recording software currently on the market!

A female business professional recording a podcast and filming herself on a digital camera.

Launching Your Podcast: 3 More Steps

The next steps in this guide to starting a B2B podcast is to focus on how to actually get your podcast up and listenable for your audience. From hosting to scheduling and style guides, here are 3 more B2B podcast tips to get you from the studio to the internet.

1. Choose Your Hosting & Distributing Platforms

Wondering how to distribute a B2B podcast? It’s actually pretty simple, and there are more than a few platforms available to choose from. Below are five of the most popular podcast hosting platforms:

BuzzSprout.Often ranked as the best overall hosting platform for podcasts.

RSS.com. This platform is very affordable and easy to use.

Podbean. Growing in popularity in recent years, this platform is easy to use. It also supports video.

Libsyn. At $5 a month, this is one of the most affordable podcast-hosting platforms.

Soundcloud.This platform offers you the opportunity to upload your podcast directly to Soundcloud and sync your RSS feed with distributing platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

All of the platforms mentioned above are known as hosting platforms. They allow you to upload your podcast so people can listen to it on the platforms they most frequently use. They’re not, in and of themselves, the platforms your listeners will most likely flock to.

This is where a podcast-distributing platform comes in. We recommend starting out with Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and YouTube (if you’re recording video). To get your podcast on a distributing platform, all you need is the RSS feed link generated by your podcast hosting service. From there, just submit the link to each aggregator.

2. Develop a Publishing Schedule

Once the more technical side of getting your podcast started is complete, you want to turn your attention to brainstorming B2B podcast topics and developing a schedule. Popular podcasts will often publish one episode a week. However, it may be better to start out by publishing one episode a month. Just figure out what works best for your schedule and do your best to stick to it.

From a branding perspective, it’s better to start by uploading less frequently but more regularly, instead of recording an episode every week and trailing off after two months. Everything — including the flow of your podcasts, the topics covered, and the production quality — will improve the more you stick with it.

Monday.com offers a great podcast planning template to help you get started!

3. Create a Style Guide

A style guide could include your podcast’s logo, the editing style, and even the set design if you’re doing a video podcast. Whatever it is, we recommend creating a style guide to make sure the podcasts stay consistent.

Something as simple as creating a folder in Google Drive is a good place to start. Have a folder for your podcast’s logo, a Google Doc that describes your podcast’s tone of voice/aesthetic, and anything else that can help other members of your team best represent your brand when they work on the podcast.

Remember, it doesn’t need to be anything too fancy at the start. It’s better to just get started and hone your craft from there, instead of waiting for all the housekeeping items to be in order.

An up-close picture of a studio microphone and a computer screen running recording software on it in the background.

Once you have your first episode uploaded (congratulations, by the way) you should consider how to promote your podcast. Sharing your podcast organically on social media platforms is a good way to get started (especially on LinkedIn). Instagram is another great platform for this, especially if you’re doing a video podcast since you can share smaller clips of each episode on your feed and your account’s story.

Once you have a few episodes recorded and you’re proud of the finished product, you may also consider turning to social media advertising to target a relevant audience. Once again, LinkedIn advertising is a great platform for this, but you may also consider Facebook ads and Google Ads.

Report & Measure the ROI

Any marketing initiative is best when backed by data. Recording your podcast may be fun, but as with any endeavor, you may get to the point where you’re wondering if the input is worth the output. How do you measure your podcast’s success? We recommend tracking ROI with these four frameworks:

Track your show’s downloads over time.

Compare your podcast data to your other marketing channels.

Compare your podcast data to benchmarks of other shows.

Track any leads/customers that found you through your podcast.

Taking a look at the world’s largest podcasts receiving millions of downloads in a month isn’t going to help you determine whether your podcast is successful or not. The only shows you should focus on are yours and podcasts very similar to yours. From there, simply focus on providing value and building relationships with your ideal customers and clients.

Welcome to the World Of Podcasting

While this guide to starting a B2B podcast has all the things you need to get started, it isn’t intended to be the be-all and end-all of your podcasting journey. Take the B2B podcast tips we’ve shared in this blog and apply them to your project. You’ll most likely experience some roadblocks along the way — and that’s okay. Just keep working at it and refining your strategy as you go. Happy ‘casting!

Join Team Tower over at After Hours to learn more about promoting your brand and elevating your business through content, social media, and PPC.

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Ever wondered if there’s merit to updating old blog posts for SEO instead of always focusing on new content? One of the most popular questions we hear from a review of our content calendars is “why are we doing a rewrite — do we need to do that?” (The short answer? Yes!)

When it comes to your blog, new isn’t always better. Sometimes there’s value in refurbishing what you have.

That’s why we’re going to take a closer look at the top 5 benefits of rewriting blog content. And towards the end, you’ll find tips on how to update blog posts for SEO in a way that can help your performance in search.

1. It Can Boost the Performance Of Your On-Page Optimizations

If your blog was published several years ago, you likely have some new competition trying to rank for the same query. But with some research into keywords, you can assess what kind of keyword updates will help your content writing strategy.

Plus, since our language is always evolving you’ll be able to capitalize on new ways of speaking about a topic. That way you’re capturing trending terms in your industry.

Keywords aside, you can also look at re-organizing the internal links used in your blog. An up-to-date internal linking strategy is important since it creates a better journey for visitors navigating your site. Plus, you can include new, relevant pages that were created and those pages will also benefit from being linked to applicable blogs.

And last but not least, when you update a blog you have a fresh chance to look at the schema. That way you can make changes that will positively affect which queries the blog is showing for. (And make sure it isn’t showing in the wrong searches, which can frustrate users.)

2. It Creates A Positive UX (User Experience)

Old blogs can have a few problems, such as:

Broken links
Dense content (with no/few headings or images)
Poor display on mobile

But fortunately, when you go to update a blog there are some workarounds. To start, you can use this handy tool to find any broken links. And while you’re revising the writing, you can also look at doing more visually with the blog.

With the help of tools like Canva, Unsplash, and Pexels, you don’t need to be a designer to create infographics or pay for an expensive subscription to find stock images. Although, when possible it’s better to use in-house over stock imagery, since it lends a more authentic feel.

Either way, including multi-media content in SEO-optimized content can extend your reach. Using rich media like videos, infographics, etc., can help your blog get pulled into different types of search features.

Visuals aside, make sure you consider mobile visitors. Keep paragraphs extremely short (2-3 sentences) so they don’t appear as walls of text on someone’s device. Otherwise, you risk someone immediately leaving because of how difficult the blog is to read.

Ultimately incorporating these practices will help ensure that anyone finding your content has a better experience. Which can affect important digital marketing metrics, like reducing bounce rates or creating a higher pages per session.

If you want more ways to improve your site’s UX, read our blog on 7 easy UX improvements to make on your site.

3. It Can Boost Your Brand’s Credibility

In Netflix’s show “Inventing Anna” (based on a real story) there’s a moment where a journalist is discussing the effects of content and the internet. She tells her husband “People forget but people use Google… and Google never forgets.”

And as a marketer, I couldn’t help but resonate with that line and commit it to memory. It’s easy to forget all the blogs published on your site once you have a lot of them — but Google doesn’t.

This means that an old piece from several years can still pull into a search, even if some of the information is a bit dated. And that in turn can dilute your brand’s reputation as a credible expert.

A good blog content strategy will help boost your E.A.T. (expertise, authority, and trust) on different search engines. But old blogs with incorrect information can degrade that among users.

Any time you see new research released or notable consumer shifts, take note of older pieces that should be revisited. Make sure the content you have in them holds true to the current industry.

It can definitely be difficult to keep tabs on your content library if you have a lot. So we recommend setting up a content index where you at minimum log details on the pieces you’ve created, keywords targeted, and publish dates.

That will help you identify blogs that need rewriting. And further down we’ll also look at how you can use Google analytics to spot potential targets for updating as well.

4. It Can Increase Your Click-Through Rate in the SERPs

At the end of the day if two pieces are pulled into a search and look fairly similar, but one was published more recently — which one do you think users will pick?

In the SEO world, fresh content is a google ranking factor. Google (and other SERPs) will tend to show more recent results at the top of searches. Keep in mind that you can’t trick the system and just re-do the publish date on a blog to take advantage of this.

Based on how search engines crawl your content, they’re also looking to see significant content updates paired with that date change. (Something we’ll discuss below in getting started updating blogs.)

5. It’s A Time-Saving Content Creation Tactic

If you’re in charge of any marketing efforts, you know that some seasons are busier than others. An added benefit of working blog updates to your blog publishing schedule is that they are typically faster to do than starting from scratch.

Where to Start: How to Update Old Blog Posts for SEO

Now that you have an idea of the benefits of rewriting content, you may be curious how often should a blog post be updated. There’s certainly no hard or fast rule, but what we find works best is a blended approach.

For example, in a 6-month content calendar, you could work on 2 blog rewrites and 4 new blogs. That way you’re still creating truly fresh content, but you’re holding your business accountable to keep older pieces in good shape.

As you look to get started, here is some helpful advice to guide you.

Tips For Identifying Blogs To Update

The most successful way to create a content strategy that wins in the SERPs is to identify your topics based on data instead of gut decisions. So you’ll want to make sure that you have a content reporting system in place to track the performance of what you’re publishing.

Once everything is tracking properly, you can identify blog updates in a few different ways:

Find low-ranking queries on Google Search Console and see if there are opportunities.
Identify blogs with an extremely high bounce rate. (Above 90%, since blogs typically have bounce rates between 70-90%.)
Find blogs getting the top clicks from queries and spot-check titles to find ones you know are old but are still getting a lot of traffic.

Steps For Updating Old Blog Posts for SEO

Whether you’re wondering how to republish a blog on WordPress or update one on a different CMS system (Shopify, Squarespace, etc.), here are some tips to keep in mind.

Step 1: Find the original blog and make sure that when you have content finalized, you update it directly in that post.

Step 2: Revisit your original primary keyword and do research. Is it still relevant or is there a new one with more opportunity?

Step 3: Re-write the content as you see fit. Keep the parts you think work well, but create new content wherever it’s needed.

Step 4: Once it’s ready to post, go into your post and replace the old blog with your rewritten one.

Step 5: Make sure to add an editor’s note at the bottom of the updated post to clarify. That way if someone finds your blog but sees comments on it from before the publish date, it doesn’t look suspicious.

Eg., editor’s note: “This blog was originally published on April 25, 2019. It was updated on March 25, 2022.”

Step 6: Keep the URL as is if possible. If not, update it but make sure you have a redirect put in place, in case someone saved that old link and tries to access the piece.

Step 7: Adjust the blog snippet to ensure it accurately describes the updated blog when users find it in SERPs.

Step 8: Revise the publish date to reflect the date you’re pushing the rewritten blog live and publish the piece.

Looking to elevate your blog strategy to better compete in the SERPs? See how our content services can support your business by creating optimized content that helps you connect with your audience online.

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Whether you listen to Christmas music year-round or dread the holiday rush, there’s no denying that the holidays are the most profitable time of year for many businesses. In fact, estimates from the National Retail Foundation attributed between $755.3 to $766.7 billion in sales last holiday season alone.

In order to capitalize on some of the biggest shopping days of the year, here are a few of our favorite holiday marketing ideas and advertising tips.

General Tips for Holiday Advertising

Before we dig into the tactics that can help boost your business during the holiday season, it’s important to understand the bigger picture of marketing during the holidays. Here are five goals to keep in mind when planning your holiday marketing campaigns.

1. Be Timely

It’s never too early to start planning your holiday marketing ideas and initiatives. Pages can take up to 45 days to rank, so we recommend moving any web-based tactics live no later than mid-October. While Christmas isn’t until the end of December, many people start shopping in early- to mid-November, well before Black Friday deals hit.

2. Be Brief

With advertising competition at an all-time high, attention spans are short. Keep your messaging short, sweet, and impactful for the best results.

3. Stay Focused

Online noise and increased ad costs mean that your holiday advertising ideas have to be sharply focused to make an impact. If you have a limited budget, focus on a few key days of sales based on historical data from years past.

If you’re looking for the strongest return possible on a small budget, remarketing is another great option, as you’re likely to see a higher conversion rate by advertising to former and current customers.

4. Respect Your Brand

Just because it’s the holiday season doesn’t mean that your blue brand has to transform to red and green! Consider what the holidays look like visually for your business, and allow your foundational brand to shine through in every marketing initiative you undertake.

Here are some holiday angles to consider:

Feel-good, charitable, emotional, and grateful
Exciting, flashy, and full of great deals
Fun, bright, and family-focused
Non-denominational, winter-focused, or inclusive of all winter holidays

When choosing a direction for your holiday marketing ideas, always consider your business’s brand, tone, and overall marketing goals. Slapping a graphic Santa Claus on your year-round advertising simply doesn’t cut it.

5. Be Truly Competitive

Don’t expect to own the market and see a massive boost in sales if you’re only willing to offer 10% off and free shipping. In order to succeed at marketing during the holidays, you’ll need to be generous with your sales and special offers, especially to loyal customers who have waited all year to make a big purchase and get a great deal.

If you’re a service-based company, consider offering vouchers or pre-orders that customers can buy now and use later. Not only does this create urgency and encourage sales, but it allows you to pre-schedule and guarantee your next year of business ahead of time.

Holiday Search Optimization

In order to rank during the competitive holiday season, you’ll need to foster strategic search engine optimization (SEO) on your website year round. That being said, here are a few considerations to keep top-of-mind to expand your optimization during the holidays.

Holiday SEO & PPC Strategies

SEO and PPC should be a major focus when it comes to holiday marketing ideas. Making timely gift guide landing pages for holiday search terms is one of the best ways to capitalize on the busy shopping season.

Fill these pages not only with best-selling products but thoughtful content that will help customers who are unfamiliar with your business make a quick and easy purchase. And, be sure to focus on internal linking and all of the usual SEO-boosting suspects to get your pages ranking.

Keep in mind that like with any paid medium during the holidays, you’ll pay more per click than you do during other times of the year. The heavy competition can be discouraging when deploying your holiday marketing ideas through PPC, but it can pay off big if you are strategic in your keywords and bids.

The Merits of Google My Business

An often-overlooked element of your website’s search engine optimization is your Google My Business (GMB) profile. This panel allows customers to view your company’s store hours, reviews, and updates without even having to click through to your website.

Be sure to complete your GMB profile before the holiday season begins, and revisit it frequently to ensure your hours, contact info, and other store details stay up to date.

Holiday Email Marketing Campaigns: Signups & Savings

The holiday season is one of the best times to grow your email list organically. The trick? Offering direct, valuable savings to customers to encourage them to sign up. Once you have a customer hooked, here are a few tricks to prevent them from unsubscribing:

Use subject lines to create urgency around sales and deals
Create email automations for abandoned carts
Offer valuable content like gift guides and product tips

Inboxes are especially cluttered this time of year, so be sure that each email you send has a true purpose and won’t simply frustrate your customer to the point of unsubscribing.

With high costs and oversaturated platforms, social advertising during the holidays can be incredibly competitive. You’ll have to be at the top of your game if you want to stand out among the crowd.

Giveaways, contests, and other content that encourages audience engagement can be particularly helpful in breaking through the noise. While you have limited space to get your message across, try to think about your audience and speak directly to them in a novel and creative way to grab their attention. At the end of the day, authentic ads that showcase great deals will do far more than screaming at users with all caps and bright flashing signs.

Writing Content for the Holiday Season

When it comes to holiday marketing ideas, content is everything. Here are three tips to keep your content thriving and bringing in new customers.

1. Be Timely

We can’t stress enough the importance of timeliness when it comes to seasonal content. It can take weeks or months for your content to be indexed and served to users. And, many users start researching holiday decorations, gifts, and more up to two months before the big day.

That means any search-driven content you have planned needs to go live no later than October. It may feel strange working on holiday copy before fall has even arrived, but it will pay off big time come the holiday season.

2. Consider Your Unique Holiday Customers

During the holidays, millions of people shop for gifts at stores they’re unfamiliar with. One of the best ways to earn a new customer is to make sure they have everything they need to make a decision (and a purchase), even if they’re unfamiliar with your industry.

Consider building out your product pages further to aid in product comparison and streamline decision-making. Product guides that go over sizing, features, and the differences between product models can also make online shopping a breeze for those unfamiliar with your store.

3. Utilize Internal Linking

Internal linking is one of the top ways that Google understands the architecture and content relationships on your website. This means that high-quality internal linking can help your holiday-themed blogs gain traction faster when every day counts.

Use links with purpose. No reader wants a constant bombardment of product links without any explanation to help them make a decision. Be sure to include plenty of helpful and educational content links, as well.

Breaking the Mold with Creative Holiday Campaigns

With so much noise online, you’ll need to think differently when brainstorming holiday marketing ideas if you want to stand out in your customers’ eyes. Consider the go-to marketing tactics of competitors and industry leaders, and then brainstorm adjacent or opposing ideas to get started.

One of our favorite innovative holiday marketing strategies over the years was a digital holiday card we created for local law firm Barley Snyder. They wanted a unique and memorable way to wish their clients and colleagues a happy holiday season. We planned, designed, and animated a custom digital greeting card that was equal parts meaningful and charming.

Barley Snyder Winter Holiday Wishes 2019

Check out the full Barley Snyder case study.

Dreaming of an amazing holiday marketing campaign but don’t have the time or resources to bring it to life? See how our team can help!