Thursday, September 1, 2016
How To Choose The Perfect WordPress Theme For Your Blog
While developing a WordPress blog is easy, choosing the most suitable theme for your site can be a bit challenging. In fact, a majority of beginners feel overwhelmed when it comes to choosing their theme.
Since there are literally hundreds of free and premium themes available, each theme may look better than the other. But knowing how to choose the best theme for your website is where newbie bloggers can struggle. Honestly, the answer is relative to your needs and can vary from website to website.
In today’s post, we have pulled together some tips for choosing a perfect WordPress theme which will help you save plenty of time and effort in the long run.
1. Identify your website’s purpose
The most important thing is to know what the purpose of your website is. If collecting email addresses is important to your business, then you probably should choose a theme that will help grow your email list, such as Focus Pro, Just Landed, or Nova.
If you are planning to create a travel blog, Travelo, Traveler or City Tours may attract your attention because of their soothing colors and fun design.
WordPress offers a wide range of theme categories. From choosing a professional corporate option to a simple health & medical theme, it will allow you to find the perfect theme no matter your website’s purpose.
2. Make a list of desired features
Unless you are planning to make a lot of changes in the code after installing and activating, it’s always a bright idea to make a note of all the features you are looking for in your theme.
There are certain additional features a theme should include such as a range of page templates, retina display support and a powerful admin panel to name just a few. However, more advanced features like page builders, sliders, custom post types etc. can be supplied via separate plugins instead of through your theme’s major features. This allows you to bring the flexibility and versatility to your theme without getting locked into a particular theme’s functionality.
So, before you plunge into shopping for your theme, ensure you have a list of features you desire.
3. The navigation / menu bar
The menu bar may not seem as an imperative element on your website, but it actually influences how your visitors see you and your brand.
You may find it challenging to add additional menus to your website if you are not familiar with PHP (a programming language). If you are looking for a theme that lets you add more than one menu bar, ensure you choose one this offers this features.
One such example is the Genesis Lifestyle Theme that allows its users to add two menus (above and below the header). You can conveniently turn them on and off as you need.
Also, if you want to add a drop down menu, it will let you add it right from the menu area. Not all themes are this flexible and offer these features. So make sure you’re getting what you want!
4. Responsiveness is the need of the hour
The evolution of mobile devices is on the rise. In fact, various networks have given rise to many powerful new devices in a variety of forms, ranging from smartphones to tablets to laptops.
A significant number of your blog’s traffic is sure to come from smartphones and other handheld devices. Depending on your website’s niche, this number can even go higher than 45%. Also, Google has made it mandatory to have mobile friendly websites, regardless of your blog’s niche.
Responsiveness is no longer optional. If you want to stay in the league, you have got to have a responsive website.
Responsive themes adjust their layout according to the screen size and make your website look presentable on almost every device available out there. Even though a majority of WordPress themes are responsive by default, you will still encounter developers who are building and selling ones with fixed width layouts that are non-responsive. Make sure the theme you are considering has a responsive layout and looks good on every device.
5. Free theme vs. Premium one
Choosing a free or premium theme completely depends on your budget. However, you’ll likely see a lot of WordPress users choosing premium themes over free ones. The main reason is free themes often come with little to no support, which makes it difficult for the bloggers to fix a bug they encounter.
Undoubtedly, premium themes come with a price but free themes also make your pay in the long run in the form of security threats and bugs. So make sure you know all the risks involved in using a free theme if you decide to go that route.
6. Supported Plugins
The real power of WordPress lies in its plugins. From adding a simpler slider on the homepage to making your website SEO-friendly, you can do anything with your blog with the help of these plugins.
While you will need to install additional plugins on your website, the selected theme should support all popular plugins. If you aren’t sure if the theme you’re choosing does, ask the theme developer.
7. SEO Friendliness
Your WordPress theme plays a vital role in improving your website’s SEO friendliness. A visually stunning theme may have poorly coded HTML, which can severely influence your website’s performance on various search engines.
Since it may be difficult for you to examine a theme’s source code, a majority of premium theme developers mention it on their theme download section. It will say something like the theme is optimized for SEO and speed. You can also make use of W3C Markup Validation service to check whether or not the theme generates proper HTML5.
Note: The W3C validation checker usually generates various unnecessary errors which are nothing to be worried about.
Conclusion:
When looking for a WordPress theme, whether for a new project or an existing website, there are many factors to be kept in mind besides its visual appearance. By digging deeper into the less-obvious traits of the theme, from its performance to customization options and integrated features, you can ensure that the theme checks all the points on your checklist.
Author Bio:
Jason is an expert WordPress developer having years of experience in working with various web development technologies. Currently, he is working for Word Succor Ltd. And providing PSD to WordPress Theme Service to global clients. He is always trying to share his intangible knowledge with others on the web.
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How To Choose The Perfect WordPress Theme For Your Blog
While developing a WordPress blog is easy, choosing the most suitable theme for your site can be a bit challenging. In fact, a majority of beginners feel overwhelmed when it comes to choosing their theme.
Since there are literally hundreds of free and premium themes available, each theme may look better than the other. But knowing how to choose the best theme for your website is where newbie bloggers can struggle. Honestly, the answer is relative to your needs and can vary from website to website.
In today’s post, we have pulled together some tips for choosing a perfect WordPress theme which will help you save plenty of time and effort in the long run.
1. Identify your website’s purpose
The most important thing is to know what the purpose of your website is. If collecting email addresses is important to your business, then you probably should choose a theme that will help grow your email list, such as Focus Pro, Just Landed, or Nova.
If you are planning to create a travel blog, Travelo, Traveler or City Tours may attract your attention because of their soothing colors and fun design.
WordPress offers a wide range of theme categories. From choosing a professional corporate option to a simple health & medical theme, it will allow you to find the perfect theme no matter your website’s purpose.
2. Make a list of desired features
Unless you are planning to make a lot of changes in the code after installing and activating, it’s always a bright idea to make a note of all the features you are looking for in your theme.
There are certain additional features a theme should include such as a range of page templates, retina display support and a powerful admin panel to name just a few. However, more advanced features like page builders, sliders, custom post types etc. can be supplied via separate plugins instead of through your theme’s major features. This allows you to bring the flexibility and versatility to your theme without getting locked into a particular theme’s functionality.
So, before you plunge into shopping for your theme, ensure you have a list of features you desire.
3. The navigation / menu bar
The menu bar may not seem as an imperative element on your website, but it actually influences how your visitors see you and your brand.
You may find it challenging to add additional menus to your website if you are not familiar with PHP (a programming language). If you are looking for a theme that lets you add more than one menu bar, ensure you choose one this offers this features.
One such example is the Genesis Lifestyle Theme that allows its users to add two menus (above and below the header). You can conveniently turn them on and off as you need.
Also, if you want to add a drop down menu, it will let you add it right from the menu area. Not all themes are this flexible and offer these features. So make sure you’re getting what you want!
4. Responsiveness is the need of the hour
The evolution of mobile devices is on the rise. In fact, various networks have given rise to many powerful new devices in a variety of forms, ranging from smartphones to tablets to laptops.
A significant number of your blog’s traffic is sure to come from smartphones and other handheld devices. Depending on your website’s niche, this number can even go higher than 45%. Also, Google has made it mandatory to have mobile friendly websites, regardless of your blog’s niche.
Responsiveness is no longer optional. If you want to stay in the league, you have got to have a responsive website.
Responsive themes adjust their layout according to the screen size and make your website look presentable on almost every device available out there. Even though a majority of WordPress themes are responsive by default, you will still encounter developers who are building and selling ones with fixed width layouts that are non-responsive. Make sure the theme you are considering has a responsive layout and looks good on every device.
5. Free theme vs. Premium one
Choosing a free or premium theme completely depends on your budget. However, you’ll likely see a lot of WordPress users choosing premium themes over free ones. The main reason is free themes often come with little to no support, which makes it difficult for the bloggers to fix a bug they encounter.
Undoubtedly, premium themes come with a price but free themes also make your pay in the long run in the form of security threats and bugs. So make sure you know all the risks involved in using a free theme if you decide to go that route.
6. Supported Plugins
The real power of WordPress lies in its plugins. From adding a simpler slider on the homepage to making your website SEO-friendly, you can do anything with your blog with the help of these plugins.
While you will need to install additional plugins on your website, the selected theme should support all popular plugins. If you aren’t sure if the theme you’re choosing does, ask the theme developer.
7. SEO Friendliness
Your WordPress theme plays a vital role in improving your website’s SEO friendliness. A visually stunning theme may have poorly coded HTML, which can severely influence your website’s performance on various search engines.
Since it may be difficult for you to examine a theme’s source code, a majority of premium theme developers mention it on their theme download section. It will say something like the theme is optimized for SEO and speed. You can also make use of W3C Markup Validation service to check whether or not the theme generates proper HTML5.
Note: The W3C validation checker usually generates various unnecessary errors which are nothing to be worried about.
Conclusion:
When looking for a WordPress theme, whether for a new project or an existing website, there are many factors to be kept in mind besides its visual appearance. By digging deeper into the less-obvious traits of the theme, from its performance to customization options and integrated features, you can ensure that the theme checks all the points on your checklist.
Author Bio:
Jason is an expert WordPress developer having years of experience in working with various web development technologies. Currently, he is working for Word Succor Ltd. And providing PSD to WordPress Theme Service to global clients. He is always trying to share his intangible knowledge with others on the web.
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Employers are stalking your Facebook and this startup helps them
For good or ill, social media is now fair game for recruiters and HR departments when checking out job candidates.
Still, it can be messy to Google-stalk potential hires and track down their various profiles. A Sydney-based startup, The Social Index, has built a tool that aims to streamline that process. From early 2015, the company has been building the platform and working with a few trusted businesses to really "push on it," founder Fiona McLean told Mashable.
It works like this: Shortlisted job candidates receive an email with a unique identifier. Following a two-factor authentication process, the candidate signs into their accounts for Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and the program's algorithm analyses their social footprint in around 30 seconds. Read more...
More about The Social Index, Australia, Social Media, and Startups
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Content Marketing: Stepping Into the Future! [A video]
Modern content marketing is a highly-automated, fully-instrumented discipline, guided by software and analytics and dials and numbers and stuff.
That’s why our own Content Operations practice is the fastest-growing part of the business.
It’s easy to forget that someone had to invent all this. Here, told for the first time, is the story of the birth of content performance science:
Inspiring, right?
Well, then it’s time to drag your own creaky, leaky operation into the Age of the Automobile. With stuff like:
B2B Content Marketing Benchmarking – a way to figure out exactly where you are today and pick the metrics that will guide you to the light.
B2B Performance Marketing – a fast-track way to set up your analytics, nurture flows and lead scoring so you can start tracking the wonga.
B2B Content Marketing Measurement – with a shiny digital dashboard that guides your revenue machine to The Land of Ka-Ching.
B2B Content Marketing Optimization – where the Spin Cycle™ comes around to improve your content programs and promotion.
Bottom line: the days of ‘throw it at the wall and see what happens’ ended last November.
The only question: Are YOU ready to… Step Into the Future?
(If so, Neil is your man and Agustin is his man and Lauren is their partner in crime — but she’s so new, she doesn’t have a profile yet.).
These guys love talking about content marketing performance (which is why they’re always so popular down at the pub). Contact them at your peril.
About the film
‘Content Marketing: Stepping Into The Future’ was researched, written, edited and even voiced by my brother Jason Kessler. All I had to do was tell him what the hell we do for a living. If you throw money at him, I’ll bet he’d make a funny archive-based video for you too.
The post Content Marketing: Stepping Into the Future! [A video] appeared first on Velocity Partners.
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Using the Barnacle SEO Method to Prove Local Community Awareness
Posted by MiriamEllis
‘Barnacle SEO’ was a term first popularized by Will Scott in 2011 to describe the process of attaching your business to existing high-ranking entities (like major directories) and then promoting them as a means of dominating search engine results for desired terms.
Today, we’re going to take that novel concept in a different direction, with the goal of increasing brand awareness for single, multi-location, and enterprise local businesses by latching onto existing influences in any given community. Up ahead: simple tips for interpreting your city, a downloadable community awareness spreadsheet, and real-world examples for your inspiration!
Before we dive in, take a look at these two eye-opening statistics:
“73% of people care about the company, not just the product, when they’re making purchasing decisions.”
– BBMG
“63% of global consumers would buy from a company they consider to be authentic, over and above competitors.”
– Cohn & Wolfe
The Cohn & Wolfe survey of 12,000 participants included these definitions of authenticity consumers care about: the business stands for more than just making money (74%), has a relevant and engaging story (43%), and is well-known in its region or field (63%). The combination of these three statistics should ring bells with any local search marketing expert or department.
Today is the last day you'll ever worry over what to write about
Independently owned businesses hit roadblocks when they fear they have nothing real to say. Multi-location businesses fret over meaningful differentiation of one location from another. Large enterprises struggle with fostering local authenticity because the distance between the CEO and the clerk behind the checkout counter is sometimes too great, and brand-wide initiatives may result in generic, rather than truly local, messaging.
How to overcome these challenges? The solution lies in realizing that almost any given community is already writing your local story; you just have to discover how to latch onto it.
A significant portion of your blog posts, social outreach, and even paid advertising can be based on the fact that there are local, national, and global influences already firmly established in the minds of your consumers, almost every day of the year. Whether it’s the small-town 4th of July BBQ or the big-city Earth Day celebration, there are events, holidays, weather patterns, long-standing customs, and emerging news items of which your customers are already aware. Your barnacle local awareness marketing simply involves tying your business into pre-existing conditions, proving that you, too, are aware.
Barnacle example #1
To put it another way, you don’t have to tell a customer that summer has arrived. He already sees the sunshine and feels the heat. But if one of the branches of your home improvement franchise is located in a steaming hot, asphalt-topped shopping center, you can:
- Set up a big, friendly, self-serve cooler of iced tea and invite customers to pop in for a free drink.
- Erect a doggy drinking station under a shady overhang and let customers know they can stop by anytime.
- Set up a few quality lawn chairs next to your big display of high-powered fans and invite customers to take a seat and enjoy the breeze.
- Blog, tweet, post, hang up signage, and otherwise share your call for neighbors to come cool off while they’re making their usual shopping rounds.
- Hold a summer contest with a prize of vouchers for the local swim center or other refreshing retreat.
- Sponsor the swim center and earn a sponsorship listing on their website
All of this says you’ve noticed it’s summer, too, that your customers are perspiring, and that you’d like to help. Your outreach establishes your goodwill and an extra reason to visit your business.
Barnacle example #2
Or maybe yours is a large natural foods store enterprise, and you’ve got a location in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Every October, the city hosts the famed week-long Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. Your customers are already aware of this event, already talking about it, and making plans surrounding it. Your proofs of local awareness could include:
- Sponsorships
- Donations of money or supplies
- A food booth at the event
- An event photo contest with a nice prize
- In-store specials on picnic items to take to the event
- Fun tips for planning a great picnic meal
- ‘Secret’ insider info on great parking spots near the event grounds
- Staff photos of the fiesta
- Sharing all of the above on your website and social profiles
Your outreach will put this branch of your enterprise right in the middle of a major community happening, establishing your local awareness.
With even a modest application of research and brainstorming, chances are, your community is literally overflowing with inspiration for barnacle local marketing opportunities. For efficiency’s sake, organization will play a key role in planning your schedule of timely outreach. Read on!
4 simple steps to becoming a seaworthy Barnacle Marketer
1. Start with a spreadsheet
There’s nothing quite so organized as a good old spreadsheet, and to save you trouble, we’ve created this one for you, pre-filled in with major holidays and a few influences and fields we think will help you get started. Some holidays are on fixed dates, of course, but you’ll want to edit the dates of others each year.
Here’s an example of what a completed spreadsheet might look like for the month of September for a hypothetical major medical center in the city of Boise, Idaho:
Access your complimentary spreadsheet here.
To make a copy for your own use, simply select “File” from the main menu, then “Make a copy.” You can then add in your own events, change up the formatting, translate it to Swahili, whatever you’d like.
2. Do local, national, and global research
Almost every local Chamber of Commerce website has an events calendar which will detail most significant community happenings. You can also use sites like Eventbrite for further inspiration. And, indeed, there are paid opportunity-finding services like ZipSprout that can do the work for you and hook you up with with relevant sponsorship matches. Remember, you’re looking for well-known happenings that are already part of your customers’ consciousness — events that they are seeing advertised around town, promoted on the web, local TV, and radio.
On the national/global side, major news sites will be your best bet. Some events (like international summits or sports championships) are publicized well in advance. Others will require-up-to the minute awareness of items in the ‘15 minutes news cycle’ that could impact your customers in some relevant way.
Gather links as you do your research and enter them in the spreadsheet.
3. Identify opportunities for participation & promotion
In our hypothetical example, the medical center has identified 2 holidays, 1 national/global influence and 3 local events in September. Their participation in these 6 existing circumstances might be broken down like this:
Image via Pixabay
Labor Day (9/5)
Given that this national holiday honors workers, the medical center has an opportunity for outreach about preventing common work-related injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome, eye strain from computer use, or back problems caused by heavy lifting or improper footwear.
Promotional Opportunities: The doctors could hold a free work-safety seminar for local start-up owners and blog about it. They could also post simple preventative health tips for workers on Facebook and Twitter. They could run an Instagram campaign with photos of optimal vs. risky postures for sitting, standing, and lifting at work, engaging the audience to check whether they are practicing good habits.
Image via Jeremy Noble
Local Labor Day Picnic (9/5)
Local traditions like this are a natural opportunity for sponsorships. New to sponsorships for local businesses? This excellent guide will give you a crash course. The medical center could simply help provide funds for the seating, food, and entertainment in exchange for being listed as a sponsor on promotional materials, or they could take a more active role. They could set up a booth at the picnic, offering refreshments high in electrolytes to rehydrate picnic-goers, or maybe free 5-minute therapeutic foot massages, or UV-protective sunscreen.
Promotional Opportunities: To truly ‘barnacle’ onto this event, the medical center should promote both it and their participation in it on their website and social profiles. Posts, tweets, and images to the tune of “Treat tired feet to a free massage by a licensed practitioner at the Labor Day Picnic, courtesy Green of Tree Medical Center,” with links to the event website would all be good. Promote the event, promote yourself.
Image via Clemens v. Vogelsang
Art in the Park (9/9–9/11)
Billed as one of the premiere art events in the Northwest, this annual Boise exhibit is another sponsorship no-brainer. These days, most event committees clearly post calls for sponsorship on their websites, and the really savvy ones detail exactly what sponsors can expect in return in terms of brand promotion including signage, blog posts, and social mentions. So, that’s one option. Another is to barnacle onto the idea that art serves many purposes in the human community and is, in fact, used as a form of therapy. If the medical center is full-service, there's a clear opportunity to connect health and art.
Promotional Opportunities: If the medical center is an event sponsor, they could promote the event on the clinic’s website, and tie the theme into the practice of art therapy. This would be an excellent month to raise awareness of the center’s group art therapy sessions, or to offer a series of social media tips about the ways in which many art forms are believed to have a positive impact on everything from depression to stroke recovery. Or, perhaps some of the doctors’ or patients’ artwork will be featured in the event. What a great chance for some Pinterest marketing and an invitation to come see more of this work hanging in the medical center’s reception area!
Image via bark
First Day of Fall (9/22)
At first glance, many businesses may struggle to see how they can tie in with community awareness of leaves changing color or pumpkins ripening, but it just takes a little ideation. The medical center might launch a Healthier Boise campaign, with free flu shots, reminders to get asthma inhaler prescriptions refilled against the coming onslaught of woodstove smoke, and healthy recipes for using all those butternut squashes and greens in the market for optimum vitamin intake.
Promotional Opportunities: The campaign can be promoted on all of the medical center’s social profiles, as well as on the homepage of the company website, supported by additional pages or posts of useful content. This would be a smart time to interview some of the clinic’s doctors on general preventative medicine tips to strengthen the community for the coming cold season.
Image via Susumu Komatsu
Walk to End Alzheimer’s (9/17)
A renowned event like this offers remarkable, diverse opportunities for advocacy, sponsorships, and donations. Doubtless, numerous staff members will be participating in the walk and the medical center can tell the story of this while also tying this into ongoing research and services relating to Alzheimer’s at their facility.
Promotional Opportunities: Event booths, individual sponsorships, staff photos, patient photos, fundraising goals, and education can all be socially promoted. Participation in a large event like this deserves top billing on the website homepage, too, backed up with blog posts.
Image via Pixabay
Global Obesity Summit Los Angeles (9/26 - 9/28)
Most industries have summits, conferences, and events that will be attended by staff members and, often, consumers as well. Given how often America’s obesity epidemic is mentioned in mainstream media, the medical center can see in this important global event an opportunity for education and outreach on a very current topic. Sponsorship opportunities are easily apparent. Or, if one or more of the doctors will present at the summit or even just attend, their research and discoveries can then be shared with the city of Boise.
Promotional Opportunities: Staff participants can be interviewed for the blog, offering new suggestions for maintaining a healthy weight based on summit presentations. If the medical center offers exercise classes or dietary counseling, here’s a perfect opportunity to reach out socially with a free first session offer to the community. Could be a fun time to experiment with Snapchat. Be as generous as possible in sharing tips that could improve patients’ lives.
Even at a glance, it’s easy to see that a local business can quickly fill every calendar month of the year with community outreach and promotion of the company’s involvement. Don’t forget that to be a good barnacle, you’ve got to promote awareness of community happenings as well as promoting your own participation in them. Put up in-store flyers and posters, tweet, share, and chat!
I’d further recommend tracking the outcomes of each campaign so that you learn, over the course of the next couple of years, which events and which forms of participation resonate most with a given community and result in the greatest ROI for the business.
My question for our readers: Which forms of tracking do you use to measure success from these types of activities? Please, share your expertise to benefit the community!
4. Designate a Local Expert at each business location
Hopefully the above three steps will already have the wheels turning about how your brand can discover and participate in the influences your potential consumers are already aware of, but doubtless, this questions arises:
“Who's going to do all of this work?”
The answer is, you’re going to need to give an existing employee or a new hire the nifty title of ‘Local Expert.’ If you’re the owner and your business is very small, the Local Expert may have to be you until you grow the company a bit more, but for most small-to-large local businesses, local marketing is vital enough to be a genuine job.
Multi-location companies and large enterprises should expect to appoint a Local Expert for each branch, or at least for each city in which the business operates. In the interview process, here are 5 things you want to look for in an existing or new staff member that should spell success:
- Has lived in the target city for some years. A born-and-bred local would be my ideal, because she may be aware of cherished history and customs beyond the ken of newcomers, but let’s stipulate that the Local Expert has lived in the region for at least a couple of years.
- Has above-average communication skills, both in person and on the web. Your expert will not only be socially promoting your company’s participation in events (necessitating interaction with the community), they will also likely be on the phone with event holders and attending some events in person. Be sure you feel confident about this person representing your business and that they have the real-world social skills necessary to foster excellent interactions.
- They must know or be willing to learn the basics of Local SEO. Even if this staff member has nothing to do with optimizing your website or managing your citations, they must understand that the core goal of all of their work will be increasing the local visibility of your brand. They need to understand how local search works to comprehend why this is such a big deal.
- They must know or be willing to learn local/social media marketing. If the candidate for the job can reel off the things they're already doing on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Periscope, smartphone apps, and their personal blog, you’ve got a winner on your hands. Better still if they tend to be ahead of the social technology curve and are able to identify trends in the popularity of various platforms that could spell out innovative opportunities for your local marketing.
- They should bring a sense of excitement and fun to the work. Based on the barnacle principle, your Local Expert should be energized by the task of promoting both his city and his workplace, enriching the community with useful information. This is one job in which enthusiasm will really shine through in the final product.
Would some real-world inspiration really get you going?
I always find it easier to conceptualize tasks when I take a look at what others have done. If that goes for you, too, here are some real-world examples of local awareness proofs.
- Here’s an inspiring story about a NYC-based organization called New Women New Yorkers which helps immigrant women gain access to resources that will make their lives safer, more profitable, and more interesting in their new country. A local Lebanese restaurant called Manousheh answered the organization’s call for sponsorships and donations for an event, and was thanked on an events page and mentioned on events sites like this one. To close the barnacle loop, all the restaurant needs to do is start a page on their own site mentioning that they support this organization and that they participated in an event. It would be nice, too, if the organization would make sponsor logos link to their websites. Everybody is off to a good start here and just needs to go one step further.
- 2016 marked the 41st anniversary of a Santa Fe event called Pancakes on The Plaza. Local bank First National of Santa Fe comes out as a winner with a featured logo on this sponsors page and with a barnacle shout out on their own website, promoting both their participation and the event, plus proud mentions on their Facebook page. The deal is further sweetened by blog mentions like this one, this one, this one... and the list goes on!
- And here’s a delightful example of just how grateful a really motivated business can be to its sponsors. In this case, the Prince Edward Island Potato Board is getting all kinds of Twitter love from a local restaurant and live theater venue:
And PEI Potato barnacles on like pros, holding a contest for tickets to a summer musical performance at the sponsored theater:
If restaurants, banks, & potato growers can do it, so can you!
Your community is already alive to the influences surrounding it: businesses, events, organizations, seasonal traditions, and relevant news. You don’t have to write a new story from scratch; you just need to discover where you fit into the existing storyline. Generosity, creativity, and a genuine desire to contribute to community well-being are what it takes to become a visible player in local life.
Has your business been using the barnacle method all along to prove local awareness? Our Moz community would benefit from your inspirational stories. Please share them in the comments!
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Here’s How to Create Original Images That Boost Conversions
Posted by nikkielizabethdemere
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a complex business with many different ways to approach it. One aspect of CRO that hasn't been discussed nearly enough is the potential for images to increase views, clicks, and conversions — in addition to customer success and net promoter scores (NPS).
But discussing what you can do with the right images isn’t helpful unless you know how to find or create these images quickly and economically.
A crash course in the power of pictures
To get to the root of how images improve conversion rates, we first have to look at the series of events that creates conversions.
According to Dr. Robert Cialdini’s 6 Principles of Influence, people...
- Feel obligated to reciprocate – give them something, and they’ll want to give you something
- Honor their commitments – if they say they’ll do something, they’ll likely do it, because they’ve established that goal as an integral part of their self-image
- Believe the word of their peers (which is why user reviews are so powerful) and copy behaviors they see
- Follow authority figures.
- Buy from people they like
- Act faster if they perceive scarcity (On Sale Now for a Limited Time!)
Our brains are hardwired to believe what we see over what we hear or read. Images have a way of driving straight to our emotional centers.
Based on Cialdini's research, some of the ways images can be used for influence include:
- Giving away a high-value infographic or set of high-quality stock photos that anyone can use (all they have to do is sign up for your newsletter)
- Creating a series of motivational images that encourage viewers to keep the goals they’ve set for themselves (which your product can help them do)
- Encouraging users to submit photos of themselves using, wearing, or enjoying your products (or, if you’re selling a service, including images of actual customers next to their reviews or testimonials)
- Using professional photos and/or high-quality stock images on your website
- Creating funny, personality-rich images, videos, or GIFs for your social media posts and emails
- Thinking of creative ways to visually represent scarcity — maybe by making a GIF of a warehouse as it goes from full to empty, or by creating an image that expresses the disappointment someone will fill if they miss out on an opportunity
Companies are also using images to delight existing customers and help them become more successful (which improves net promoter scores and leads to increased upsell opportunities). A customer success team, for example, could create GIF screencasts in response to help tickets or even stock an FAQ page with visual demonstrations of how to solve the most common customer support issues.
The fast track to DIY images
Images like these aren’t hard to produce if you have the right tools — and there are many tools to choose from.
Visage (free version available)
Visage is my go-to for creating images that look professional and tell a story through a combination of words, statistics, and graphs. They’re also a strong choice for making infographics and Pinterest-worthy motivational quotes.
Recordit (free version available)
Recordit allows you to create mini-screencasts and turn them into embeddable GIFs, which are an easy way to demonstrate on-screen functions, show off features, and help users find what they need in minutes.
GIFBoom (free)
GIFBoom, for iOS and Android, makes it easy to create original GIFs with text overlays directly from your smartphone. You could spruce up your About Us page with animated clips of the team (great for increasing your likeability factor) or record personal greetings for newsletters and social media posts.
Placeit (free version available)
Placeit. See it, like it. See it in action, buy it. That’s the difference between a good image and a conversion-oriented image that works almost like a quickie-demo of the product. HubSpot research shows that buyers now want product demos much earlier in the sales funnel than in previous years, which makes tools like Placeit especially useful. This tool allows you to generate product mockups instantly create demo videos pretty darn fast.
Studio (free version available)
Studio is a photo “remixing” app that offers pre-made templates, layering capabilities, beautiful fonts, sleek design options, and a community of marketers sharing their latest inspirations and creations. Check out their intro video, too. It’s a good one.
SnapChat (free)
SnapChat isn’t just for teenagers, though they may be the only ones who can show you how to use it. SnapChat is a messaging app that lets you take a photo or short video; add a caption, doodle, or lens graphic; and then broadcast it to your followers. Followers can view “snaps” for up to 10 seconds, and then they disappear. Marketing that disappears, you ask? How is that a good thing?! Consider scarcity. If you’ve got a “BUY NOW” sale going on, what could be more appropriate than advertising it in a format that is, by nature, there for a limited time only.
The right images, the right tools, and the right strategy can help set your marketing apart and give your company some real personality — which is exactly what today’s consumers crave. They want to get to know you, not just your product. They want to form a personal connection.
So let them see the real you. There’s no better way to do that than through pictures.
Now it's your turn. How is your brand using images to build brand awareness? Please share in the comments.
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