content marketing

Use Your Customer’s Voice to Create Powerful Content that Converts

Conversion Optimization, Persuasion Science

With the use of social media and web access at all-time highs, it’s more important than ever to create powerful content that converts and makes sure that you engage with your customers. With the 2018 marketing trends in mind, leads and potential customers are looking for a personal touch. They want an account of how your product or service works, what people are happy with and what challenges they face in using it. They do not want a marketing funnel.

This is where using your customer’s voice comes in. When used right, your current customers’ voices can be used to create powerful content that actually converts leads!

For the purpose of this post, you can all but forget fancy terms and processes. Conversion funnels, influencer marketing, engagement – these all have a place in business, but it’s not necessarily here. Instead, this post is all about why interacting with current customers is so important and how you can use this interaction to create authentic content. This is the kind of content customers are looking for – and it just so happens to be the kind of content that converts.

The Importance of Leveraging Honest & Authentic Reviews

At the base of using your customer’s voice to create powerful content is a preliminary step; encouraging and gathering honest and authentic user reviews. Without customer reviews, you won’t have much to go off of when it comes to incorporating customers’ perspectives into your content planning!

Thankfully, there is no shortage of review sites available to B2B and software companies. Do your research. Take the time find one or two that fit your business and your customer profile. Then take the time to invite (and maybe even incentivize?) your customers to submit reviews about your software, your service, your product. This will have more than a few benefits for your company, including:

It gives credibility: Content plan or not, opening up your service or product to authentic reviews is just a good idea – full stop. Instead of having to convincing leads with marketing language, you can rely on informative and positive feedback from current customers to help potential customers make their decision.
More leads: More customer reviews means more exposure and a better ranking, which means more leads. It’s as simple as that.
A pool of content: Of course, this is the focus of the post. Encouraging reviews gives you a pool of customer feedback to incorporate into your marketing content! Positive reviews can be translated into featured website content, blog posts, social media content, and more.

Using Your Customer’s Voice to Create Content That Converts

Of course, it’s not enough to simply open up your company to authentic customer reviews and leave it at that. You can take the time to translate your customer’s voice into marketing content! There are a few ways to go about this.

#1: Manage Your Potential Customer’s Expectations

You can use reviews to help potential customers understand what your service, product or software looks like in practice. Instead of imagining everything they could do with the features, customer reviews give leads the chance to explore how your product will truly work for them.

For example, sharing customer reviews that highlight specific features of your service or product will speak more specifically to a smaller target audience.

#2: Customer Experience Speaks Louder Than Marketing Language

This is absolutely the main benefit of customer reviews; you can use all of the positive quotes you want in developing a content strategy! You can incorporate reviews (especially specific and helpful reviews) into blog posts, landing pages, social media content, and even demos!

For example, try replacing the headline copy on one of your landing pages with a quote from an authentic user review. Run an A/B test and see how that page compares to others.

#3: Listen to What’s Important

If your current customers are focusing on technical support and price in their reviews, then you shouldn’t really be spending that much time on something else. Look at what features customers focus on in their feedback, and spend time developing content around those features.

For example, if most reviews focus on the quality for the price, you can use that in your marketing language for paids. Similarly, if customers are highlighting your customer service, home in on that for attracting new customers.

This should get you started on using your customer’s voice to create content that converts going into 2018!

About the Author

Brooklin Nash writes about the latest tools and small business trends for TrustRadius. When he’s not writing, you can find him reading YA dystopian fiction (with guilty pleasure) and cooking.

June 14, 2018/by Brooklin Nash

7 Conversion Copywriting Hacks You’ll Wish You Knew About Sooner

Conversion Optimization, Conversion-Centered Design, Persuasion Science

21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks to Skyrocket Conversions

Note: The following conversion copywriting tricks are reprinted from the ebook 21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks to Skyrocket Conversions.

You just lost some potential revenue.

There goes some more.

A poor conversion rate will pick your pocket day after day. That’s why you’ll love these 7 conversion copywriting hacks. They’re quick and easy. And you can start using them today.

REPEAT YOUR CUSTOMERS/PROSPECTS

You may have heard that you should write like your customers speak. It builds rapport and credibility. Readers are more likely to think to themselves, “This company gets me and my issue.”

But rather than just guess what your target audience would say, use their actual words.

That’s what Sarah Peterson did when promoting her Etsy course.

The highlighted phrase stood out among responses to a survey she sent to prospects.

A key phrase from survey response

She used that exact phrase to resonate with prospects in her sales email.

The key phrase inserted into marketing email

There are several ways you can do this same thing.

Speak with your customers and prospects. Pick up the phone and have a quick chat. Do more listening than speaking, and write down what they say. Or, if the person gives you permission, record it so you can transcribe it later.
Survey your audience. This could even be as simple as a one question survey that you put on your website. Make sure that it’s open-ended.
Search reviews and forums. See what people are saying not just about your offering, but your competitors as well. This can be a great way to uncover pain points.

SWAP YOUR HEADLINE AND SUBHEAD

It’s amazing how many times I see a landing page where the subhead is stronger than the headline. Maybe the writer is trying to be clever or creative. Perhaps they think the headline shouldn’t be more than a few words long.

Whatever the reason, it’s killing conversions. If it’s not immediately clear what you’re offering me, why should I read on?

Fortunately, the subheads usually have this information. So an easy fix is to just make the subhead your headline.

Here’s a good example:

The subheading is the value proposition

A stronger converting headline

See how much clearer this page is when the subhead and headline are switched?

CUT YOUR FIRST PARAGRAPH

This is a hack that goes back to the heyday of direct mail. It’s designed to help you get right to the point.

Getting to the point quickly sounds pretty obvious. But you’d be surprised how many marketing pieces waste words trying to introduce themselves or state the obvious.

People don’t care about that. They care about themselves. What is it your offer is going to do for them? Tell them right away why they should care.

If your first paragraph doesn’t do this, scrap it and start with the next one.

ADD ASSUMPTIVE PHRASING

Here’s a nifty little psychological hack.

Write your copy as if the conversion is a foregone conclusion.

Simply look through your copy and add phasing like this to some of your statements:

“When you start your trial…”

“You’ll love how…”

“As you’ll see…”

The power of this hack lies with the endowment effect, a phenomenon where we value what we already own more than something we never had. By writing as if your prospect already owns what you’re selling, he or she imagines that situation.

Presuppositions are another type of assumptive phrasing you can use to add persuasive power to your copy. These statements infer something else is true. For instance, if I ask, “Which of these copywriting hacks are you going to use first?” that infers that you are indeed going to use them.

You must accept the inference to be true in order to avoid incongruence within the sentence. We’re wired to avoid incongruence because it requires more brain power.

Use this to your advantage by creating presuppositions with words such as:

Finally. “You can finally get in shape without spending hours in the gym.” (Presupposes that you had to spend hours in the gym to get in shape.)

Start. “Start earning the income you deserve.” (Presupposes that you aren’t currently earning what you deserve.)

Stop. “Stop wasting time on diets that don’t work.” (Presupposes that you are wasting your time.)

Again. “This car makes driving fun again.” (Presupposes that you once enjoyed driving but now find it to be a chore.)

Anymore. “Getting your kids to do their homework won’t be a battle anymore.” (Presupposes that getting your kids to do their homework is a battle.)

How will you use assumptive language in your marketing? (See what I did there?)

USE THE WORD “BECAUSE”

We like to think that we’re rational. That’s why we like to have a reason for doing things people ask of us. But here’s the interesting part. Simply having a reason is often more important than the reason itself.

Consider this famous social experiment:

In 1978, researchers approached people in line for the copier machine and asked to cut in front. They tested the effectiveness of three different phrases.

“Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” was successful 60% of the time
“Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?” was successful 94% of the time
“Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I have to make copies?” was successful 93% of the time

It’s not surprising that people let the researchers cut in line more often when a reason was given. What is surprising is that whether that reason was valid or bogus had no significant impact.

Look at that third phrasing again. Of course, they had to make copies. So did everyone else in line. That’s what a copier is for.

So why did that excuse work?

Often with small requests, we take a mental shortcut. Instead of processing the actual request and reason, we recognize that a reason was given, and we comply.

It’s important to note that the reason for the request becomes more important as the request gets larger.

When the researchers repeated the experiment with 20 pages instead of 5, giving a bogus reason had the same effect as giving no reason. Both were successful only 24% of the time compared to 42% when a valid reason was given.

To use this in your marketing, look for areas where you want the reader to do something and add a “because.”

“Act now because this offer expires in 10 days.”

“Because you’re the type of person who…”

“We’re giving away free samples because we want you to see for yourself.”

USE PATTERN INTERRUPTS

Attention spans are short these days. Even if your copy is great, most readers will start to lose interest if you don’t shake things up a bit. Pattern Interrupts are a great way to do just that.

Pattern Interrupts are a neuro-linguistic programming technique designed to break the expected pattern of thoughts or behaviors. There are a couple of ways to use it in your marketing.

The first is to keep readers engaged. In a long-form piece of marketing, the reader expects paragraphs to follow paragraphs and on. This familiar pattern allows the brain to go on autopilot. You don’t want this. You want readers’ attention.

Break the pattern by adding testimonials, sidebars, callouts and other devices that temporarily interrupt the narrative of your text. Take a look at these examples.

Interrupting the pattern and flow

You can also use a Pattern Interrupt to disarm readers or refocus their attention. People don’t like to be sold to. As a result, they reflexively put their guards up when they expect a sales pitch.

But what if your copy doesn’t start off as expected?

Use a Pattern Interrupt to disarm readers or refocus their attention.

Readers expecting a typical sales pitch will probably have a different mindset when they read something like this:

Shift the mindset

REMIND READERS OF THEIR FREE WILL

A team in France first proved how effective the “But You Are Free (BYOF)” technique is with this social experiment.

One of the experimenters would stop people in a mall and ask for change to ride the bus. In half of the instances, he or she added the phrase, “But you are free to accept or to refuse.”

Significantly more people gave money when the BYOF technique was used. Not only that, but the amount they gave was twice as much.

Follow-up studies have proved BYOF effective in requests for donations to a tsunami relief fund, participation in a survey, and many other situations.

It works by combating something called psychological reactance. Wikipedia describes it this way:

“Reactance occurs when a person feels that someone or something is taking away his or her choices or limiting the range of alternatives.

Reactances can occur when someone is heavily pressured to accept a certain view or attitude. Reactance can cause the person to adopt or strengthen a view or attitude that is contrary to what was intended, and also increases resistance to persuasion.

With this one simple phrase, you remove reactance and open your prospect’s mind to your persuasion. “

Note: The specific wording doesn’t matter as much as the sentiment. You can also use variations such as:

The choice is yours
It’s completely up to you
You may do as you wish
But obviously do not feel obliged

When you see how well these techniques work you’ll wish you started using them sooner.

Download the full ebook for all 21 copywriting hacks.

21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks

Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.

43 Pages with Examples
Assumptive Phrasing
"We" vs. "You"
Pattern Interrupts
The Power of Three

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May 24, 2018/by Sean Kirby

4 Types of Useful AB Testing Tools You May Not Realize You Have

CRO Tests | Multivariate | AB Testing

Talking about useful AB testing tools to the readers of this blog may be like preaching to the choir. But if you are new to this blog, or new to conversion optimization in general, you may be wondering which AB testing tools you can start using without making a huge investment. Fortunately, there are some AB testing tools out there that are either free or won’t cost you any additional money because you already have them – you just don’t know it yet.
In this post, we’re going to look at AB testing tools that you may have had all along and how to use them to optimize different aspects of your marketing strategy for conversions.

Useful Website AB Testing Tools

Since most people will want to do AB testing on their website, we’ll start with the tools you can use here. Did you know that if you have fewer than 50,000 unique visitors per month, you can use tools like Optimizely for simple AB testing for free? It’s a really simple tool to use. You just sign up for your free account and start up a website project.

Create a project with Optimizely for free when you have fewer than 50,000 visitors a month

Once you’ve entered your URL, you will be taken to a screen where you can immediately start creating a variation to test on your website.

Create a variation for your AB test

Once you’ve created your variation, you click the Start Experiment button and get the code you need to add to your site.

Start your Optimizely experiment

You will set up a goal so you know which variation leads to the most conversions.

Create a goal for your AB testing experiment

And then sit back and wait for visitors to come to your website to determine which variation gets the most conversions!
If you’re stuck for ideas on what to test on your landing page, you can try the common elements – headlines, subheads, images, calls to action, etc. – as well as some creative options listed in our landing page testing ideas post.
If you have more than 50,000 visitors each month, or would prefer to not add another tool to your toolkit, you can also look into Google Analytics Content Experiments. This allows you to conduct testing with your Google Analytics.
To start, you go to Behavior > Experiments for your website and click the Create Experiment button. Then you define the experiment you want to perform, starting with the goal of your test. You will use your Google Analytics goals to ultimately determine which variation of your AB test is the winner.

Create an experiment in Google Analytics

The key difference between Google Content Experiments and your average AB testing tool is that you have to create an additional page on your website that has the variation, whereas most AB testing tools (like Optimizely) will let you “edit” your page in their editor. So depending on what you want to change, it may be an easy or difficult process to create that second page.

Setting up variants in Google Analytics may require more steps than using a traditional AB testing tool like Optimizely.

Next, you will receive the code you need to insert on your website to start your experiment.

You code for your AB test in Google Analytics

Finally, you will confirm that the code has been installed and you will start your experiment. Once your experiment is completed, Google Analytics will declare a definitive winner.

Alternatives to AB Testing Your Own Website

An alternative to doing AB testing on your own website is to monitor the tests of others. There’s a free way to do it and a paid way. First, you can try to find your competitor’s website history in the Internet Archives. The downside to the free is that you’ll have a lot of clicking to do.

The Internet Archive brings you the tool Wayback Machine which lets you see how a website appeared on a particular date.

The other option I mentioned in my landing page testing ideas post, Rival IQ, allows you to see your competitor’s website history in a much easier to digest format.

RivalIQ is a paid tool for viewing website histories.

There’s a good chance that if you look through your competitors designs over the last couple of years, you’ll see subtle changes to headlines, images, colors, etc. that will relate to some AB testing. So instead of testing on your own, you can learn from their tests and pave your own unique way from there.

Email Marketing AB Testing

If you are running email marketing campaigns, chances are you are using a popular email marketing software platform that likely has an AB testing component built in. MailChimp, for example, allows you to select an AB testing campaign and then allows you to test four aspects of your email campaign: the subject line (highly recommended), the from name, the content, and the send time.

AB testing options in MailChimp

You can choose a certain percentage of your recipients to test with and you can choose click rate, open rate, revenue, or other goals to judge the results of your testing. For example, if you chose to test subject lines, you would simply enter two subject lines for your recipients instead of one.

AB testing email subject lines in MailChimp

Or, if you were going to test two different types of newsletter content (such as a text-only email versus an HTML newsletter), you would get two email templates to send to your recipients.

AB test your email content

Most email marketing software offers AB testing. At the bare minimum, you can at least test your subject lines. Some go further with the from name testing, email content testing, send time testing, and other forms of AB testing.
But considering that your subject line is the make or break point of whether someone opens your emails, it’s safe to say that so long as you have the option of testing that, you are good!

Alternatives to AB Testing Your Own Email

There is a simple and free way to monitor your competition’s email and potentially see what headlines are working for them – just sign up for their emails. And be sure to at least open them. If you just ignore them, some will automate you out of their main line of emails. And that might mean you’ll miss out on some good subject lines!
Bonus tip: if your competition is using email marketing software like Infusionsoft, ActiveCampaign, or others that allow automations, you should open the emails and click on the links on occasion. You may get to see one of their automation funnels in action too!

Blog Content AB Testing

Similar to email AB testing, blog content performance can rely heavily on one specific element: the title. If you choose a great blog title, people will click through and read your post from your blog’s homepage, search engines, social networks, and other sources. If you choose a bad blog title, then you may not get an clicks or readers at all.
That’s why AB testing your blog post titles can be a crucial key to the success of your content marketing strategy. If you have WordPress, Nelio A/B Testing is a tool you can use to do just that.
While it’s not free, it starts at $29 a month for websites with 5,000 views per month. And it will allow you to test crucial elements of your blog, beyond just the headlines of your blog posts.

You can use Nelio A/B Testing to test WordPress blog content

For serious publishers, WordPress website owners, and WooCommerce website site owners, this can be a powerful AB testing tool that can help you test a variety of things that other testing tools simply can’t.

Alternatives to AB Testing Your Own Blog Headlines

Going back specifically to blog headlines, if you don’t want to test your own, there are ways of finding out the best headlines for a specific topic. The free way would be to use BuzzSumo – even without an account, you can usually get the top five to ten headlines about a specific topic based on social sharing.

Find the top headlines for a topic using BuzzSumo

If you don’t mind paying, a similarly priced tool that offers even more information that you can try or compare to BuzzSumo is Impactana. Both start at $99 per month, but Impactana goes a step further by allowing you to see headlines that are not popular based on social shares alone, but also based on views, backlinks, comments, and other metrics (based on the type of content).

Impactana uses more metrics than BuzzSumo to show you the top headlines for topics

This can give you a strong idea of what headlines and content generate the most social buzz, search authority, traffic, and audience engagement.

Social Media Ad Campaign AB Testing

While social media advertising is not free, AB testing for some social media ad platforms is because it’s built right in. Take Facebook, for example. You can create an Ad Campaign, an Ad Set that is targeted to a specific audience through specific placements, and multiple Ads under that set that help you test variations so you can determine which one drives the most conversions.
Here’s how the process looks in the standard Facebook Ads Manager. First, you will start by choosing your ad objective.

Choosing your ad objective in Facebook

Then you will name your Ad Campaign.

Naming your Facebook ad campaign

Next, you will define your Ad Set by choosing your target audience, ad placements (the desktop news feed, the mobile news feed, Instagram, etc.), and setting your budget.

Defining your Facebook Ad Set

Before you continue, you can save the name of your Ad Set.

Your budget and schedule for your Facebook ad

Finally, you will configure your first Ad.

Configuring your Facebook ad

Once you’re finished with your first ad creative, you will place your order. Once you do, that ad will go into review and you will get the option to create a similar ad.

After finishing your order for your Facebook ad, you’re ready to get set-up for your variation

This will allow you to create another Ad under the same Ad Campaign and Ad Set. You will get the option to modify the Ad Set if needed.

Modifying your Facebook ad set

Otherwise, you can click Continue to create your next Ad variation. This will bring up the same Ad you created before so you can create your variation by changing one specific element, such as the image, originating page, the headline, the text, the call to action, the news feed description, or the display link.

Change the element you want to test in your Facebook ad AB test

Once you have made your variation and placed your order, you will again get the option to create a similar ad or to continue to your Ads Manager. You can also decide to add more variations from the Ads Manager by clicking on the Create Similar Ad button.

You can add more variations by clicking Create Similar Ad

The downside, as you can see above, is that you can’t name the individual ad variations. Therefore, unless you’ve changed the images between them, they all look the same in the Ad Manager view. Hence, to know which variation in terms of originating page, the headline, the text, the call to action, the news feed description, or the display link is working, you will have to click through to the winning variation and view the post to learn from it.

It’s easy to toggle off an ad if it’s not working out

The upside, however, is you can easily toggle off the losing variation of your ad based on its performance.
But overall, this is a great way to use AB testing in your Facebook Ad Campaigns. And it’s the simplest way as it doesn’t require you to use Power Editor, although if you are more comfortable in Power Editor, it can be done there as well.
If you use LinkedIn Ads, they also offer an option for creating variations with their text and image ads. Fortunately, their variations editor is even simpler. Start by going to LinkedIn Ads Manager, select your LinkedIn advertising account, create a new Campaign, and then select Text Ads.

How to begin a LinkedIn ad campaign

Start by giving your campaign a name.

Name your LinkedIn ad campaign

Next, you will create your first ad.

Creating your first ad

When you save your first ad, you will get the option to continue or create up to 100 variations of your ad.

After you create your ad, LinkedIn makes it easy to create your variations

When you click to create another ad, you will be able to create an entirely new ad from scratch to test different URLs, headlines, descriptions, and images.

Building your LinkedIn ad variations

Once you are finished creating your variations, you will continue through the campaign creation process to select your target ad audience and set your ad campaign budget.

Select your targeted audience and your budget

Once you have finished creating your campaign, you will get a clear view in your ads dashboard of how each of your ad variations are performing. This will allow you to learn what works and what doesn’t quickly, as well as allow you to toggle the losing variations off.

Your dashboard will tell you how your ad variations are performing

Alternatives to Doing Your Own Social Media Ad AB Testing
There are two free alternatives when researching paid advertisements. The first is Moat. Moat allows you to look at other companies display banner ads. While this isn’t specific to social media ads, it can help you learn about the images and ad copy that big brands use to drive paid traffic to their websites.

Use Moat to discover what your competitors are doing with their ad testing

If you notice particular imagery, copy, calls to action, button colors, or other elements have been used over and over again, you can assume that said elements have been doing well, considering you can almost guarantee big brands are testing the elements that they are paying for.
The second resource you can tap into that is specific to Facebook is the AdSpresso Facebook Ads Gallery. Simply sign up for their newsletter and start searching for brands that advertise on Facebook. Not only will you get to see the variations of ads they have used over time, but you can click on their ads to get some pretty good details about the ads.

AdSpresso shares a lot of valuable information about Facebook ads

Between these two resources, you should learn a lot about how to create a successful ad campaign on social media and beyond. And they’re both better options than sitting around and refreshing your Facebook or LinkedIn news feed, hoping to see some ads from your competitors.

In Conclusion

As you can see, between free and premium tools, there are various ways to A/B test many aspects of your online marketing beyond just your landing pages. Be sure to look at the different aspects of your online marketing strategy and think about the ways you should be testing it to improve your results today!

About the Author

Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, blogger, and social media enthusiast. You can follow her latest tweets about business and marketing @kikolani or posts on Facebook @kristihinespage to stay informed.

May 20, 2016/by Kristi Hines

How to Approach Bloggers about Guest Posting: Dos and Don’ts

Conversion Marketing Strategy

When I first met Brian Massey, I had just attended a presentation he gave about his success with The Conversion Scientist Blog. I learned a lot during the presentation and was impressed by the analytics he shared about the blog’s readership and subscribers.

Conversion Scientist email subscribers have steadily increased in 2015

12 Rules for Maximizing AdWords Pageviews

Pageviews on guest post “12 Rules for Maximizing Conversions from AdWords“

Can Live Chat Increase Conversions Pageviews

Pageviews on guest post “Can Live Chat Increase Conversions?”

7 Best Practices Using Exit Intent Popovers Pageviews

Pageviews on guest post “7 Best Practices Using Exit Intent Popovers, Popups“. Guest posts can have a lasting impact on growth of traffic to your blog.

I knew as soon as the presentation was over: I wanted to write a guest post for this guy. Luckily, I got a chance to chat with Brian afterwards and I offered to send him a post for his blog. Sure enough, about a week later, I got an email from Brian asking if I’d like to send him the article we had discussed.
If only this was the way guest blogging always worked.
Far too often, I associate the term “guest blogging” with spammy emails and crappy content. This is despite the fact that Google has been penalizing sites that use guest blogging solely for SEO for over a year now. I also tend to associate guest blogging with the infuriating assumption that good content can be acquired for free.

Let me be clear: good content is not free.

Let me be clear: good content is not free. It may not cost you money per se, but you had better be prepared to offer something of value in exchange for good work.
As both a writer and a manager of several different blogs, I’ve had experience on both sides of the guest blogging scenario: contributing guest posts and seeking out guest contributors. Here are some Dos and Don’ts I’ve discovered about finding guest contributors for your blog.

Don’t: Be vague or beat around the bush.

I can’t tell you how irritating it is to get an email that basically says, “Hey! Are you interested in an opportunity to do free work? You’re a total stranger but I thought you’d like to do me a favor for no reason!” What’s worse is when you write back to politely find out what’s in it for you and you get a canned response that:

Tells you nothing about the blog’s readership, the person’s willingness to pay for content, or whether you will even get attribution for the article, and

Repeats the same vague message of the original email no matter how many times you respond with a direct question, leaving you with no choice but to ignore them entirely.

On the flip side, I once received a vague email from someone requesting to contribute a guest post to a site that I manage. When I asked for details, they responded that if I didn’t like their content, could I please just hide a backlink in my site for them? Um, no.

Do: Be clear and direct about what you want and what you are willing to give in return.

If all you’re offering is attribution and space for a short author bio, that’s fine. In several cases, that has been a good enough reason for me to contribute a guest post to a site. It all depends on the author’s goals and priorities. Just don’t expect it to work with everyone.

Do: Be willing to offer original content in exchange.

If you’re contacting a blogger, chances are they have a responsibility to create content for their own site on a regular basis. If that’s the case, they probably don’t have much time to write a shiny new post for your blog, no matter how much they want 30 minutes of your audience’s precious, undivided attention. That might not be an issue if you offer to provide content in exchange. Guest posting on each other’s sites is a great, symbiotic way to expand your audience and add variety and a new perspective to each other’s blogs.

Do: Tell them about your readership.

Before I sent my first guest post to Brian, I already knew that his blog had a significant number of readers and subscribers. Nobody had to convince me that guest posting on the Conversion Scientist Blog was a good idea. I was excited for the opportunity because it was a way to get my name in front of people, and by doing so, start building readership for the blog I had just launched.
Just remember that everyone can get their work “out there” online. When you’re convincing a writer to contribute content, give them the data that will make it worth their time. If you’re still building a following, tell them about your target audience. Some up-and-coming bloggers may actually care more about your niche than your current numbers anyway.

Don’t: Expect guest posts from established writers.

There’s a reason successful writers have become successful. It’s not just because they’re good at what they do. It’s also because at some point, they started asking to get paid for their work. If it’s in your budget to pay a freelance writer, then start reaching out to people. If it’s not, then those emails you’ve been sending out may just seem random and irritating. Which leads to my next point…

Do: Nurture relationships with bloggers and experts in your field.

This is a golden rule of guest blogging (and of any sort of influencer outreach). As you work on building content and readership for your blog, reach out in person or online to people whose work you admire. A common way to do this is by commenting on their posts. Don’t just do this as a spammy ploy to get backlinks to your site (bots are doing that enough as it is). Leave thoughtful comments that show interest and engagement and continue a dialogue. Once it seems appropriate, invite them to check out your site and go from there.
In building your network, you may have established a relationship with a subject matter expert who doesn’t have time to contribute a guest post. If this is the case, ask them if they’d be willing to do a phone or email interview. It could mean the difference between 15 minutes of their time and several hours.

Do: Let people help on their own terms.

Many writers have a strict editorial calendar to follow. Don’t add to the burden. Instead, offer them as much flexibility as you can. That being said, if you have certain guidelines and requirements for the content on your site, don’t be shy about sharing that. It’s not worth compromising the quality of your site just to for the sake of featuring guest content.

Don’t: Expect free content to be good.

There are a handful of guest blogger networks such as My Blog Guest, which have survived the scourge of Google Panda. In a few rare cases, I have connected with some talented writers on these networks. But, like I said, this is very rare. The vast majority of the time, I receive guest post submissions from these sites that at best, are off topic, and at worst, not even written by a human.
Unrelated to these networks, I also receive frequent emails and comments on the blogs that I manage in which people are offering to send me a guest post. I could be getting these emails for one of several reasons:

The person is trying to jumpstart a freelance writing career and is looking for exposure.

They have started their own blog or are managing a company blog and are looking to grow readership.

They are passionate about a topic and just want an opportunity to talk about it (yes, this actually happens).

They do SEO marketing for a company and are looking for ways to get backlinks to their site (a.k.a. guest blogging “just for SEO”).

Just as the reasons for wanting to guest blog are all across the board, so is the quality of the content you will receive. Moral of the story: don’t rely too heavily on guest content, particularly if it is acquired from guest blogging networks and out-of-the-blue emails.

Wrapping it Up

While Google has been trying its darndest to squelch the practice of guest blogging “just for SEO,” the practice still tends to dwell in some shady territory.

Cut through the noise and the spammy emails by building relationships with bloggers whose content you love.

Cut through the noise and the spammy emails by building relationships with bloggers whose content you love. Remember to be choosy about the content you post, no matter the source. (If you use your blog for brand building or lead generation, nothing destroys your credibility more than a high volume of bad content.) If you play your cards right, guest posts can be a great component of a high quality, high value blog.

About the Author

Colleen Ahern is a copyrighter at Page Agency, an independent marketing and advertising agency in Dallas, Texas. You can read more of her thoughts on the Page Agency Blog. Follow her on twitter @ColleenAhern.

September 29, 2015/by Colleen Ahern

Surprises from 2014: Popular vs. Effective Content Marketing

Conversion Marketing Strategy

It’s February and we’re just now publishing our “Most Popular Posts of 2014” post.

We were in a bit of a quandary on how to go about this. Even though we are the masters of metrics, the mullahs of measurement, and mightier than mayhem, we weren’t sure how to measure “popular.”

Wipe that quizzical look off of your face.

Effective content marketing is one reason we have enjoyed so much success, and our blog is the heart of our content marketing efforts. We take it very seriously.

We want posts that are popular to our target audience, marketers struggling to use data and testing wisely in their online efforts. We also want content that grows our subscriber lists. This is how we begin a relationship with you, our readers.

While we want to give you a list of great content to read, we are more focused on learning something from 2014 so we can give you more of what you love in 2015.

Before we reveal our top ten, we invite you to follow us on our journey through the data.

What Tells Us That a Post is Effective Content Marketing?

Which metrics tell us that a post is popular with our target market? We considered several. Our final top ten list was a blend of all of these.

Here’s our thought process.

Visits, or Sessions

It seems to make sense that the most visited posts would be the most popular. We pulled our visit statistics from Google Analytics on a post-by-post basis.

Our most visited post by far is entitled 63 Great Email Subject Lines from the SXSW Catalog. Google has fallen in love with this post. It was published in 2011 and is perennially our most visited post. This year, it has three times the visits of the next competitor.

This post is our most popular by visits, but it really isn’t as relevant as some other posts.

We had fun writing this post, but it isn’t particularly relevant to our business. It has a low conversion rate, low engagement and generated few shares relative to the traffic.

Once we weighted some of the other factors found in this story, this post fell out of the top 10. In our final selection, only four posts were in among the ten most-visited. No, visits are not a good proxy for popularity.

Bounce Rate

If people are visiting our site, but not sticking around, we say they bounce. We measure a bounce as a visit lasting less than 15 seconds. Pages with a low bounce rate would be considered more popular than those with an above-average bounce rate.

The standout post with regard to bounce rate was Rotating Headers Don’t have to Kill Your Conversion Rate.

Most people spent more than 15 seconds reading this post based on it’s low bounce rate (4.86%)

Overall, seven of the posts in our final top ten also had top-ten bounce rates.

Engagement: Time and Pages

If visitors are spending more time on our site, we could assume that they found the content relevant.

Of our top picks for 2014, Pages per Visit and Average Session Duration were highly correlated. Posts with high engagement also enjoyed high conversion rates and low bounce rates.

Our most engaging post was What are You Really Selling on Your Landing Page? [CASE STUDY]. This is what I call a highly efficient post.

Our most engaging post was taken from a free consultation. It did not require a great deal of research.

It took very little research to write. I took information from a free consultation for the example, and simply wrote up my conclusions.

This post brought a lot of return visitors, probably regular readers. It had the highest conversion rate and also generated the most comments.

Other high-efficiency posts included How to Present a High-Converting Value Proposition [CASE STUDY] and How Many Steps Should Your Online Checkout Have? [CASE STUDY].

Number of Leads Generated

The post that generated the most subscribers for our conversion course was a case study from a prospect.

When we’re not sharing our expertise with you fine folks, we spend our days finding out what our clients’ visitors want from their sites. We don’t bother asking them. We let them vote with their wallets and their contact information.

The same is true in our consulting business. If our guests truly enjoy our posts, they should naturally subscribe to our content or sign up for our free course. Growing our subscriber list is critical to our business. This is how we begin a conversation with potential clients. This is pretty important.

For each of our most-visited posts, we calculated the conversion rate. A conversion for our blog is a subscriber to our list or a conversion course student.

So what kind of content has the highest conversion rates? Oddly enough, our “highly efficient” content also enjoys high conversion rates. Three of the highest converting were created from free consultations. One was a client case study. One was an infodoodle captured live at the Business of Software conference.

All-in-all, seven of the top-converting posts made our final ten.

Social Shares

If someone is sharing our content on social media and by email, we can assume they found the content, well, shareable.

Our most shared post was an infographic submitted by another company.

To size up social shares, I calculated the shares per visit, or SPV. The post with our highest SPV was New Ideas for the New Year: Online Marketing in 2015 [INFOGRAPHIC] at 48.9%. This means that for every two visitors, one of them shared on social media – 221 on Twitter, 33 on LinkedIn, 24 on Facebook, and two on Google Plus.

This story was NOT in our final top ten list. It was hurt by a low conversion rate and short average session duration. Clearly, people came, scanned and shared. This post was an infographic, and of the posts with the highest SPV five were infographics.

Of our top-ten posts, six had strong shares to visit ratios.

Other Influences

The major point of doing this kind of analysis is to provide more of what visitors are looking for in 2015. Feeding the content machine required original content as well as curated content and guest writers. Our analysis teased out the value of these strategies.

Guest Posts

Two guests posts made our top ten list.

We had a lot of guest contributors – eleven of the top-twenty most visited posts. So, we were surprised that only two of our final top-ten were contributed by guest writers. Curiously, these were both infographics.

If we just look at the ten most visited posts, six were guest posts and five were among the most shared. Four had high conversion rates.

In general, most guest posts fell out on engagement metrics. For some reason, readers of guest posts visited few other pages, and didn’t stay long.

Infographics

I’ve always been somewhat cool to infographics. They generate a lot of traffic, but didn’t seem to deliver the goods when it comes to engaged and converting visitors.

Boy was I wrong in 2014.

Of our top ten posts, four were infographics. Two of them were among the highest converting posts of 2014.

Two of the four were infodoodles, hand-drawn during live presentations. This is highly efficient content for us.

Doing infodoodles allows us to leverage “celebrities” – Rand Fishkin and Bryan Eisenberg in this case – who may be more likely to share our infodoodles with their audiences. Sometimes it works. Over 81% of visitors to Rand Fishkin’s infodoodle were new top our blog, the highest in our top-ten. Thanks, Rand.

Infodoodles are unique to The Conversion Scientist. It leverages industry celebrities.

Maybe more celebrities would share if we didn’t include caricatures.

Angie Schottmuller

Oli Gardner and Joanna Wiebe

Case Studies

Humans love stories, and that is what a case study really is. We relate to the trials and tribulations of others in a way that “How to” posts can never enjoy. Our top ten list bear this out, with four of the final ten being case studies.

We’ll definitely give you more of this in 2015.

Headlines

Contrary to popular belief, typical headline strategies didn’t seem to apply to us.

None of the headlines started with a number. You don’t have to troll Twitter for long before you see the proliferation of headlines beginning like “# Ways to…”. Only three of the top 20 most visited posts used headlines in this format.

Questions should never invoke a “yes” or “no” answer.

Three headlines were stated as a question. Questions are dangerous. If the answer to your headline question is “Yes” or “No” then visitors don’t tend to read on. An example would be “Are you Struggling with Your Landing Pages?” Question headlines should cause the visitor to ask, “What is the answer,” or “How will you do that?”

We don’t use question headlines on our sites much. Maybe we should do it more.

Other Insights

By creating a weighted score for our posts, we were able to select a list of the most engaging, educational and efficient posts for 2014. There were some surprises in this list.

Only four from the list were found among the ten most visited posts.
Nine of them scored well for engagement (pages per visit and session duration).
Seven where high-converters.
Six were among the most shared.
Two featured “celebrities” Rand Fishkin and Bryan Eisenberg.
One featured a brand (Amazon) and one featured places (Austin and Vancouver).
Four were case studies.
Only one post containing video made the list.
None of my podcast posts made the list.

The Final Top-ten List

Our scoring system combined entrances (visits in which the post was the first page), bounce rate, pages per visit, average session duration, conversion rate, and shares per visit into a single score.

Here are the top scoring posts from 2014. Check them out.

Score	Post Title
3.35	What are You Really Selling on Your Landing Page? [CASE STUDY]
2.87	Rotating Headers Don’t have to Kill Your Conversion Rate [CASE STUDY]
2.85	The Science of Pricing [INFOGRAPHIC]
2.81	How to Present a High-Converting Value Proposition [CASE STUDY]
2.79	Your Landing Page Questions Answered: Unbounce Webinar Extended Edition
2.75	Is Austin Really The Conversion Capital of the World? Vancouver says “No Way, eh.”
2.74	Rand Fishkin Cracks the SEO Code in 2015 [INFODOODLE]
2.74	What Makes Shoppers Click? A Lesson in E-Commerce Consumer Psychology (INFOGRAPHIC)
2.71	How Many Steps Should Your Online Checkout Have? [CASE STUDY]
2.67	Bryan Eisenberg Explains Amazon’s Relentless Customer-Focused Optimization [INFODOODLE]

We’ll bring you more of what you want, dear reader, in 2015.

February 19, 2015/by Brian Massey

The Future of Content Marketing-Michael Brenner [INFOGRAPHIC]

Conversion Optimization

Content Marketing guru Michael Brenner has four kids. That violates my rule of parenting: “Never let them outnumber you.” He seems to be handling things fine, and even made the kids a part of his inspiring Ascend Summit presentation “The Future of Content Marketing.”
Michael says, “Content Marketing has always been about connecting through stories people love.” and “The Future Content Marketing is entertaining.”

Content Marketing and Stories

“Marketing has always been about connecting through stories people love.”
“60% to 70% of marketing content goes unused.”
“73% of people would not care if the brand they bought went away.”
“80% of CEOs are dissatisfied with their CMO.”
“Newspapers have lost $40 billion in revenue in the last 15 years.”
“The future of marketing is entertaining.”

Four Great Content Hubs

American Express OPEN Forum
Red Bull
taste by William Sonoma
Target
Here is my “instagraph” infographic recorded during his presentation.

Michael Brenner-The Future of Content Marketing

Click to Enlarge

October 23, 2014/by Brian Massey

7 Social Media Marketing Trends [INFOGRAPHIC]

Conversion-Centered Design

Should I waste my time on Facebook advertising or throw all my eggs into the blogging basket this year? What social media marketing trends do I need to integrate into my marketing?

The 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report holds results from over 2,800+ marketers. These experts share their experience with new and rising trends in social media marketing. The following infographic will answer marketers questions concerning where to focus their efforts in social media marketing this year.

Some relevant takeaways from the following infographic and Social Media Examiner article:

Over half of the marketers (58%) surveyed chose original written content as their most important form of social media content.
68% of marketers plan to increase their future use of blogging.
Only 6% of marketers podcast, with 28% wanting to learn more about it.
68% of marketers are using social media for 6 hours or more a week.

Enjoy and share!

Social media marketing trends for 2014 from Social Media Examiner.

Looking to gain more from your library of original content? Breath new life into your webinars and start generating leads today.

June 3, 2014/by Shelly Koenig

I Had to Write Over 200 Articles to Get These Nine – Conversion Course

News & Events

Sometime in the next eight days, Conversion Sciences will have published the 300th article on The Conversion Scientist blog.

Don’t get lost in the content that flows from this blog.

Every one of them is amazing, of course. While some of them were written by amazing guest contributors, I combed through over 200 of them to find the nine that I think you should read now. So important are these nine, that we are willing to give you a free review of your website by one of our best Conversion Scientists if you read them all. I know you have some burning questions.

How is my site performing compared to my competitors?
Is there anything fundamentally wrong with my pages?
What is the first thing I should change to increase leads and sales?
How do I prioritize all of the marketing campaigns I have on my plate?

If one or more of these questions aren’t on your mind, we have to ask, “Why not?” These are the questions we seek to answer during your review. But you have to earn your Ph.D. badge first.

How to get your formal website review

When you visit The Conversion Scientist blog and sign up for the free course we’ll take you through the chosen articles. When you read, you will be awarded points. Some of the articles include audio for your commute to and from work. All in all, you be able to finish the course in an hour or so. Then you’ll be ready.

May 21, 2014/by Brian Massey

Donation Throw-down: Social Media vs. Traditional Media

Conversion Optimization

When the Arizona PBS station asked Lon Safko to do a first-of-its-kind special on social media, they didn’t know what they were getting in to. Lon knew that this was going to be a throw-down between social media vs. traditional media, measured in donation dollars.
Believe it or not, KAET AZPBS does not do an online version of their specials during their key fundraising times.
We are changing that.
This is the first airing of a television program on the entire spectrum of social media. It will introduce the audience and businesses to the full potential of social media, from Twitter to Second Life. Lon addresses issues such as privacy, using social media as a meeting tool, and finding work using social networks.
We are pleased to work with some very innovative folks at AZPBS, but they are steeped in “the way things are done around here” syndrome. However, they have agreed to work with us to measure the effect of an aggressive social media program. I’ve joined Lon to see if social media can out-raise their on-air spots in a very real and measurable way and I can’t wait to see the data.
If we are able to demonstrate the donation-raising power of social media, more of these excellent programs will be available online. Furthermore, a successful program will get national coverage in June. If you help out, we can change hearts and minds across the nation.
This is where you come in.

Where You Can View this Special

Download the Free Viewer’s GuideTo View Online – You can view a pre-cast of the AZPBS special on Facebook. You can watch it in its entirety.
To View on Live TV (Arizona Residents only) – The on-air broadcast will be at 10:30pm MST.

Ways to Show your Support

The title of the AZPBS special is Social Media and You: Communicating in a Digital World. It will air online first and then be broadcast through Arizona TV stations later in the evening. Now is your chance to send a very real message to television stations everywhere. Vote for social media by donating online.
You can donate and show your support the following way:

Watch the special online at www.22s.com/LonSafko starting March 6 starting at 10:00pm EST. You can sign up for a reminder on this page now.

If you support public broadcasting, donate through the link on the page.

Spread the word.

Once you have viewed the special and donated to support local broadcasting, make sure to share this information with your friends, family, business associates, and anyone else you can think of. Note: you can donate at any time, even now.
Your donations will go to KAET AZPBS, home of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Is there a more appropriate place to start a revolution?

Will you join in the Throw-down?

Be sure to get your reminder and watch the program. Donate if you support public broadcasting, and let’s make some history together.
Here’s a sneak peak of Lon talking about mobile marketing.

Special thanks to our media pioneers: 22Social, Andrea Vahl, Phyllis Khare, Jamie Turner, Brian Massey and of course, Lon Safko.

February 20, 2014/by Brian Massey

Content Marketing Barriers: The Subject Matter Expert Problem

Conversion-Centered Design

How to tap into the brains of your subject matter experts.

How to tap into the brains of your subject matter experts.
As marketers, most of us are not masters of the products or services we are tasked with marketing. Sure, we’re smart and are fast learners. But, we’re relegated to the world of positioning, features and benefits when doing the work of getting the world excited about what we sell.
We can’t have the depth of knowledge of everyone in the company.
This causes a problem in a marketing landscape that gives prospects deep research tools with which to research buying decisions. They’ve got blogs, social media, forums and conferences, and it’s all made accessible with sophisticated search engines.
In short, well-positioned features and benefits aren’t enough. We have to get specific and go deep to feed the information beast. We have to entice others to lend share what they know, lending us their credibility.
For most of us, this exposes what I call “The Subject Matter Expert Problem,” or “The SME Problem.”

The SME Problem

Marketers of sports memorabilia are often not sports fanatics. Technology marketers are not developers. And no marketer will write with the authority of their CEO. In order for marketing to produce high-quality, shareable content, they have to get knowledge out of the head of the subject matter experts (SMEs) in their company.
This is not easy. It requires interviews, clarifications, co-editing, data collection and creation of charts and graphs.
This deep knowledge must be boiled down into something digestible, relevant and entertaining to share with prospects.
The SME is the barrier to great content.
Tell us about your Content Challenges with a 10-question survey.

Presentations Fix the SME Problem

But every so often, your CEO is asked to speak about some aspect of the market. Every now and then, your tech guru is asked to talk about how brilliant your technology is. And how many times is your sales team pitching to audiences about your fantastic offering? Each of these moments is a SME problem barrier-buster.
The SME has taken hours to lay out a cogent, presentable explanation relevant to your business. No one wants to look stupid in front of a crowd.
All you have to do is get this out to the marketplace.
Chapter 6 of my foundational book on conversion marketing is entitled “How Content Fuels Conversion.” Disclosure: Content Marketing Institute is the publisher.
Buried on page 92 I talk about “cascading” content. It’s a technique that we’ve used here at Conversion Sciences to great effect, even though I have been the chief marketer and subject matter expert.
This is really the money-saving brilliance of the presentation. Since your SME explains everything to us in their presentation, you have everything you need to turn it into a cascade of shareable, lead-generating content. You don’t need to interview anyone. You don’t need to do research. You don’t even need to create any charts and graphs. It’s all in the presentation.
That’s why a presentation can cascade content so inexpensively. Did I say “brilliant?”

The Tools of the Content Cascade

Most of us have a recorded webinar that is producing a trickle of leads. With the right tools, this could become a cascade sharable content.
Can you afford an inexpensive mic (like the Audio-Technica Lavalier we use) and a small digital recorder, (like the Sony Digital Flash Voice Recorder we use), you are setup to capture the audio of your upcoming presentations. Better yet, have your SME do the presentation at their desk while mic’d up.

Reports and eBooks Generate Leads

Send the audio or video off to transcription service like TranscribeMe for a quick, accurate transcription.
Save the slides from the presentation as images. Both PowerPoint, Keynote and Acrobat offer ways to do this.
By combining a choice of slides and the transcript, you can generate almost a report or eBook for lead-generation.
Open an Unbounce or Lander account to generate the landing page that will turn your content into leads.

Podcasts and Audio Posts

Edit the audio using the Audacity, a free and excellent audio editing app. It will even rip the audio from many video formats.
Edit out the noise from the front end. If you spend a little more time, you can edit out Ums and Ahs. You may have to delete the Q&A portion, as the audience usually can’t be heard.
Now create a blog post with a short description and the audio embedded. I like BluBrry for their analytics and SoundCloud for their audio embedding tools.
Place the transcript of the presentation on the page for maximum SEO impact.

Social Slide Presentations

Upload your slides to the service Slideshare. If you have good audio, they offer a tool to synchronize your audio track to the slides with ease.
Now you have a social presentation to share with posts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google Plus.
Create another blog post with the embedded presentation. Slideshare will give you the embed code.

Webinar-style Video

I’m a big fan of Camtasia for creating video and editing it. You can use the Camtasia recorder to record your slide presentation while the audio is playing. Camtasia will capture the audio synchronized with your slides.
Now you have turned a live presentation into webinar-style video.
Host this on YouTube, Wistia or Vimeo and grab the embed code. Now you’ve got another blog post. Use it for lead generation by creating a landing page.

Social Media Generates the Traffic

As you are going through the presentation, make note of the most salient, most controversial or funniest quotes. These form the meat of your social media posts.
For image-ready social networks like Facebook, use the most interesting slides from the deck as images for your posts.
You should be able to generate dozens of social media posts from any hour-long presentation. Schedule them over the month with Hootsuite Pro, Buffer or Spredfast and link to your landing pages or blog posts. Disclosure: Spredfast provides me with a free account.
My favorite social media channel is email. You should let your lists know about these landing pages and posts as you bring them online. This is valuable content!

The Complete Package

This process works because:

The presentation provides the information you need to get the SME’s knowledge
Presentations provide the text, audio and images needed for almost any channel
Landing pages and blog posts need little in the way of copywriting. The detail is in the video, audio and embedded slide presentation.
You can get maximal return on the time it took your CEO or SME to do the presentation.
These are usually more detailed topics that engaged prospects love.

Is Your Head Spinning?

This sounds like a lot, and there are a number of learning curves to be dealt with (audio editing, report layout, video editing).
Often, you can hand these tasks off to writers and content specialists to produce the assets. After all, the explanation is in the presentation.
The service Cascade Content seeks to do all of this work, like a fancy transcription service. Disclosure: I’m a partner in Cascade Content.
There is some lovely content sitting in the presentations that your company produces as a part of it’s day-to-day business. It’s time to turn these into shareable, sales-generating assets for your business.
Please, let us know your favorite content transformation tricks and tools in the comments.
Shelly Koenig

February 20, 2014/by Shelly Koenig