Category: Joey Armstrong

Marketing isn’t what it used to be. And that’s a good thing!

People don’t want to be sold anything. As of 2021, one in four people use ad blockers around the world, making a huge portion of users impossible to reach via traditional channels.

Joey Armstrong says it’s time for a new phase of marketing — using consumers themselves as lead generators and converters. These days, potential customers turn to their peers and networks for purchase recommendations, trusting their opinions as much as personal suggestions. Businesses can leverage this by playing on the fact that everybody has influence, regardless of how small their reach.

Standard marketing techniques are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Those looking to stay ahead of the curve must adapt, marketing with customers instead of to customers with the techniques below.

Loyalty Programs for Long-Term Purchasing

Loyalty programs work wonders to keep customers coming back for more. From discounts to perks to referral bonuses, they not only help forge long-lasting relationships but also spread brand awareness.

Often, companies begin by offering logo-decked freebies and slowly work up to providing discounts on repeat purchases.

Despite the negative stick email lists receive, they’re a useful marketing tool when crafting a loyalty program. As long as businesses add value and incorporate relevant messages about specific buyers’ behaviors, it’s a great communication channel.

Incentives to Share Feedback

Companies should find ways to incentivize satisfied customers to share their experiences with their social media audience. After all, it’s one of the best ways business owners can understand what’s working and what isn’t.

That said, negative information is more likely to end up on social profiles. So, companies must establish responsive feedback channels that allow customers to vent with their internal team.

Most importantly, it’s vital to act on negative feedback when it happens. Businesses that fail to improve their three P’s (products, processes, people) after receiving less-than-great responses don’t reach dizzying heights of success.

Customer Experience Over Everything

From the website to the service or product to the parking to face-to-face interactions with employees, everything makes up customers’ experiences.

Companies need to focus on every aspect of their customer’s interactions with their brand. Consumers aren’t interested in what brands have to say unless they’re regaled with stories of positive experiences from their friends.

One-to-One Connections

Businesses that engage in one-to-one interactions with their clients (e.g., through online communication tools or in person) build everlasting connections.

Striving to personalize these messages elicits emotional responses from consumers, making them more likely to tell their friends and family about the company.

Emotional Appeals for Greater Success

Brands can measure and target emotional motivators to boost sales, incentivize customer behavior, and strengthen connections. As the statistics say, one emotionally invested customer is 52% more valuable than a satisfied one.

According to the Harvard Business Review, the most impactful motivators include:

• Standing out from the crowd
• Future confidence
• Well-being

Naturally, these vary from business to business. However, understanding target markets and their motivations behind purchases drives connections, revenue, and profitability.

LinkedIn’s latest development – Articles for Pages – will allow company profiles to share newsletters directly within the LinkedIn platform. Whenever a company uploads a newsletter, the app will issue a one-time notification to all subscribers. Joey Armstrong explains that this development should increase in-app engagement and strengthen the bonds between brands and their consumers.

Let’s take a closer look at how LinkedIn continues to improve and build its mobile platform. In this post, we’ll explore the finer details of its new Articles for Pages update and discuss how the development will affect user experience and company profiles.

What is LinkedIn’s New Articles for Pages Update?

The new Articles for Pages update is a way for businesses to share long-form articles and newsletters directly on their LinkedIn Pages. Unlike older posting models, the new update allows page managers to share full-length writing rather than simple character-limited tags. This way, businesses and brands can promote content and drive traffic directly to their profiles.

The main draw for marketers, though, is that whenever a company posts new content, the LinkedIn app will directly send a notification to subscribers. This way, anyone interested in the brand can stay up to date on the latest posts. If subscribers do not want to receive notifications, they can opt out but they must do so manually in their settings.

Why Advertisers Are Jumping Onboard with Articles for Pages

For the average employee, LinkedIn is little more than a social media account to showcase their CV or resume. For businesses, though, the platform acts as a network to share developments, updates, and progress. LinkedIn’s latest update allows brands to extend their reach beyond press releases and into the job market.
Not only does this help businesses deliver more expressive content, but it also helps brands:

• Create their own image – Businesses can position themselves as industry leaders by posting long-form explanations of their most innovative ideas, latest research, or educational content.
• Expand their target audiences – The more a brand can engage with an audience, the wider its reach will grow. When a LinkedIn user likes or shares a business’s article, that user’s followers will also be exposed to the brand, helping to spread its message, research, innovations, or content.
• Reach industry experts – No industry exists independently. If brands can post long-form explanations of their business goals and ambitions, they have the power to directly influence decision-makers in their industry. This gives brands more power to create an impact in their field.

For these reasons, company profiles are quickly embracing the power of LinkedIn’s Articles for Pages update. When paired with LinkedIn’s new Campaign Manager interface, company profile managers can create and share powerful content and closely track engagement as if it were an actual corporate campaign.

Final Thoughts

Although LinkedIn has long been a platform for business-minded individuals, its latest update gives business profiles a much greater footprint on the site. Thanks to the update, brands can now share long-form information directly to their profiles, helping to drive user engagement and expand their market.

Google Analytics has been the gold standard for tracking web traffic for more than 20 years.

The fourth iteration, GA4, will soon be even more ubiquitous says Joey Armstrong.

Making good on its promise two years ago that future tracking platforms will all build upon the GA4 update, Google recently announced that the platform will officially replace Universal Analytics as well, meaning that those who have yet to convert fully to GA4 will soon need to if they want to keep using Google Analytics and save all previous tracking data.

By July 2023, Google’s Universal Analytics will be shut down completely by the company, and come Oct. 1, 2023, Universal Analytics 360 will no longer process hits. GA4 will also refrain from logging IP addresses for data collection purposes.

Data that has been previously processed through Universal Analytics will stay put up to six months after those dates. After that day, if you want to start comparing year-to-year data, you’ll need to set up GA4 since GA3 data doesn’t migrate.

While Google says the move will improve the overall tracking experience, many users aren’t as optimistic about the change.

What does GA4 Offer?

Functionality is the buzzword Google ties to GA4. The company has long said the new platform will offer better insight into the buying habits of customers, with expanded features to heighten and refine both decision-making for businesses and return on investment.

Google has called GA4 “future-proof,” emphasizing its role in protecting user privacy through machine learning artificial intelligence and filling gaps caused by new restrictions related to tracking and privacy.

GA4 has a new interface with the goal of making it more user-friendly, divided into key intuitive sections like “engagement,” “retention” and “analysis.”

It is also being fully integrated with a slew of other Google products including YouTube, Google Play, and Google Ads.

Other touted benefits of GA4 include a more comprehensive analysis of the full journey of a customer and its capability to combine customer-level data with its own data for a highly refined picture of customer journeys.

Why Reaction is Mixed

For one, many users prefer Universal Analytics. Users have said that while Universal Analytics often took 4 hours to process data, it has taken 72 hours for GA4 to do the same.

They also are dreading educating clients about GA4 and what the move away from Universal Analytics means.

Some technology watchers also say that the change may negatively impact the effectiveness of digital advertising in a new global privacy landscape. Users have also voiced complaints that Google did not find a way to migrate GA3 data to GA4, effectively booting people off Universal Analytics.

Users will have to devote time to exporting any collected from GA3 to compare it to new data on GA4.

If there isn’t a conversion to GA4, users won’t be able to track new hits. Then again, there are alternative analytics tools.

A Twitter poll posted by SEO consultant Aleyda Solis found that while 44.6% plan to move to GA4, nearly 34% say they will ditch it in favor of another data tool.

Content marketing and social media marketing are often used interchangeably, and there are areas where they overlap. However, there is one big difference between them: content marketing tells a brand story, while social media marketing starts a conversation.

Joey Armstrong explains that this difference affects all aspects of content marketing and social media marketing: the overall strategy, tools and activities, and metrics for success. While the two will often overlap and even be integrated in a marketing campaign, they can never substitute for the other.

Scope of the campaign

Content marketing uses different kinds of content, depending on the audience and communication goal, it can use different types of content: ads, infographics, blogs, webinars, websites, landing pages, videos, podcasts, ebooks, newsletters…and yes, social media.

So, social media marketing can be one component of a larger content marketing plan. For example, a beauty brand that is launching a new makeup line can ask influencers to talk about their product, run a giveaway, or ask social media followers to share pictures of the makeup looks they created.

Goals of the content

Content marketing provides more information about a product, service and the company. It determines the target audiences, key messages, and the specific action desired (download the ebook, sign up for the class, claim the voucher, etc).

Social media marketing can inform consumers, but its most important role is to engage. In fact, one of the biggest mistakes that brands make is that they just post content that “sells” the product, and neglect posts that spark conversations or build communities.

Also, instead of telling people about the product, social media should get people to talk about the product. It’s a platform where customers can share testimonials, ask questions, give thoughts and opinions, or raise concerns and complaints.

Acceptable formats

Social media content has to be short, bite-sized, and easy to digest. So, long form-content should reside on other platforms – not just because of length or size restrictions, but most people use social media to escape, not hunker down to read something serious.

However, brands can certainly repurpose their content marketing collaterals for social media: breaking down a blog posts into tips for posts or creating a teaser video that pushes readers to the full version on the website.

In fact, social media marketing goals often include generating traffic to a website or building enough curiosity for people to research more about the brand and consume its other content.

Value to brand

Let’s look at how social media marketing and content marketing will be experienced by the target audience.

A person who is shopping for a new cellphone may initially hear about a brand because a tech vlogger talked about it on his channel. Then, he will look at user reviews on different chatrooms and forums, then go to the brand website to look at the specific features. From there, he may go to the brand’s social media page to read comments on posts, or direct message them to ask a question.

This rather circular journey of gathering information shows how content marketing and social media marketing is experienced by the target market—and the different strengths they have. Content marketing can give knowledge (such as demos and FAQs); social media marketing can build social credibility (testimonials, influencer endorsements).

Thus, social media marketing and content marketing serve different but equally important roles in building sales and reputation.

Google SEO penalties are a type of action applied to a website that has violated one or more of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Joey Armstrong explains that there are several types of Google SEO penalties, each of but the two most common applications are manual and algorithmic penalties.

No content creator or webmaster wants to be smacked with an SEO penalty. These limit a site’s ability to pick up traction and essential leaves to page dead in the water. Let’s take a closer look at what these penalties do, learn how sites can avoid them, and explore the available options for webmasters dealing with SEO penalties.

What are Google SEO Penalties?

Google SEO penalties are a type of penalty issued to protect the integrity of Google’s search results. They’re designed to ensure that web users are given the most relevant and highest quality content, regardless of what they search. By issuing penalties for black-hat SEO tactics, such as keyword stuffing, spamming links, or creating sites with duplicate copy, Google is able to discourage improper and ineffective SEO marketing strategies.

If a site is hit with an SEO penalty, it may not appear as high up in the search results as it once did. Sometimes, sites may no longer appear in the search results at all. This is, of course, detrimental to content creators’ platforms as their webpages will cease to gain traction and slowly loose viewership.

Most Common Occurrences

Although there are a handful of different penalties, the two most common Google SEO penalties are manual and algorithmic:

• Manual actions – These penalties are directly handed down by the Google spam team when they detect improper SEO practices, such as spamming keywords or duplicate links.
• Algorithmic penalties – These penalties aren’t issued as much as they are inherently embedded within Google’s search algorithm. Algorithmic penalties usually come down to ineffective or outdated SEO that should be revamped to better fit the Google algorithm.

Depending on which type of penalty a site’s facing, webmasters may be able to fix the issues to restore their pages’ rankings.

How Webmasters Can Tell if Their Sites are Penalized

It’s not always easy for webmasters to tell if their sites are affected by SEO penalties, especially if a site’s been crippled by algorithmic penalties. Generally speaking, though, if a site’s been handed a manual penalty, Google will issue a statement along with the action.

To pick up on algorithmic penalties, webmasters must actively track their user engagements as well as regularly upload new content. The higher the quality of the content, the more likely it is to rise to the top of the search results.

What Webmasters Can Do to Resolve a Penalized Page or Domain

If hit with Google SEO penalties, webmasters can take the following actions to resolve the issues:

• Manual actions – Webmasters must first resolve the issues claimed within Google’s statement. After fixing any problems with their sites, they can then ask Google to reassess the webpage and remove the penalty.
• Algorithmic penalties – If content is struggling to overcome algorithmic penalties, the webmaster can implement more effective SEO keywords and work with a digital marketing firm to master Google’s algorithm.

It can take a few months to overcome SEO penalties but, once a site has done so, it can continue to attract new viewers.

Final Thoughts

Google’s SEO penalties are effectively in place to maintain the quality of the Internet. If a site has been issued a penalty, it can be reinstated by simply resolving the problems inherent to the page.