IM Sphere

Establishing credibility is important for all businesses.

There are only so many brand names today that speak for themselves. I’m referring to global giants such as Apple, Nike, and Walmart.

In these instances, consumers know those companies are legitimate. But the rest of us need all the help we can get to establish our credibility.

That’s why in the past, I’ve identified the top elements adding credibility to your website. Today, I want to explain one of those elements in much greater detail.

Customer testimonials.

Those of you currently displaying customer testimonials on your websites are off to the right start. But there is always room for improvement.

If you’re not using customer testimonials, that needs to change.

One of the reasons why these testimonials are so valuable for your business is because they create social proof.

Exactly how much of an impact will this have on your conversions? Here are some numbers you should take into consideration:

92% of consumers say they read testimonials and customer reviews when they are deciding to make a purchase
72% of consumers trust businesses more if they read positive testimonials about those businesses
88% of consumers trust these testimonials just as much as a personal recommendation.

One of the best ways to learn how to do something is by following the examples of those who succeeded before you. I found some great examples of existing companies do… Read More

In this special edition of the Social Media Marketing podcast, I reveal four lessons I have picked up from 6 years of podcasting (and growing Social Media Examiner). The topics I’ll cover include how to grow anything, how to succeed via omission, how to achieve thought leadership, and my view on competition. I’ll also share […]

The post How to Grow: Wisdom From 6 Years of Podcasting appeared first on Social Media Examiner.

… Read More

Posted by willcritchlow

Kids may search differently than adults, but there are some interesting insights from how they use Google that can help deepen our understanding of searchers in general. Comfort levels with particular search strategies, reading only the bold words, taking search suggestions and related searches as answers — there’s a lot to dig into. In this week’s slightly different-from-the-norm Whiteboard Friday, we welcome the fantastic Will Critchlow to share lessons from how kids search.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hi, everyone. I’m Will Critchlow, founder and CEO of Distilled, and this week’s Whiteboard Friday is a little bit different. I want to talk about some surprising and interesting and a few funny facts that I learnt when I was reading some research that Google did about how kids search for information. So this isn’t super actionable. This is not about tactics of improving your website particularly. But I think we get some insights — they were studying kids aged 7 to 11 — by looking at how kids interact. We can see some reflections or some ideas about how there might be some misconceptions out there about how adults search as well. So le… Read More

According to the 2018 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends in North America, 53 percent of respondents said a small or one-person marketing team serves the whole organization. Often, that’s not enough and that’s why 56 percent of them outsource one or more content marketing activities.

Nowadays, at least one of several types of AI technology can produce some form of written content. Some media companies use them these days to reduce costs and time spent in producing content. In fact, Gartner predicted that by 2018, nearly 20 percent of content will be produced by machines.

But we’re not talking about outsourcing to machines in this post. We’re addressing the steps you can take to properly outsource your content marketing to humans like you and me. Here they are:

1. Determine which type of content you’ll outsource

When the term content marketing is used, most … Read More

Posted by Dr-Pete

On August 1, Google (via Danny Sullivan’s @searchliaison account) announced that they released a “broad core algorithm update.” Algorithm trackers and webmaster chatter confirmed multiple days of heavy ranking flux, including our own MozCast system:

Temperatures peaked on August 1-2 (both around 114°F), with a 4-day period of sustained rankings flux (purple bars are all over 100°F). While this has settled somewhat, yesterday’s data suggests that we may not be done.

August 2nd set a 2018 record for MozCast at 114.4°F. Keep in mind that, while MozCast was originally tuned to an average temperature of 70°F, 2017-2018 average temperatures have been much higher (closer to 90° in 2018).

Temperatures by Vertical

There’s been speculation that this algo update targeted so called YMYL queries (Your Money or Your Life) and disproportionately impacted health and wellness sites. MozCast is broken up into 20 keyword categories (roughly corresponding to Google Ads categories). Here are the August 2nd temperatures by category:

At first glance, the “Health” category does appear to be the most impacted. Keywords in that category had a daily average temperature of 124°F. No… Read More