10 Local Digital Media Trends For 2014

If 2013 was the year that native advertising commanded much of the dialogue around digital media, 2014’s mantra looks like it will be mobile. By mid-2013, most local broadcasters had already reported that more than 50% of their overall digital traffic was coming through mobile, and newspapers aren’t tracking too far behind. With that in mind, here are 10 trends for local digital media we see developing around technology, disruption and revenue for 2014.

1. Mobile ad units will improve and better engage users. There are too many smart people working on this problem in too many different rooms not to see some kind of breakthrough on newer, more engaging ad units in 2014. Look for more intuitive, native models to break the banner mold, and watch the case studies closely.
2. There will be more content differentiation by device. Users are scratching a different itch when they access local content on desktop versus tablet, let alone smartphones. Newsrooms will increasingly need to integrate different headlines, body text and video pieces depending on where the content is being routed, which begets prediction No. 3 …
3. Content management systems will be under increasing pressure to improve their back-end tools for differentiation. CMSs are already evolving rapidly now that their clients have become savvier. Those same clients are going to demand that differentiation doesn’t put a drag on their workflow. Dashboards will improve to streamline that workflow. (And look for some more consolidation in the CMS space too as the industry continues its accelerating game of musical chairs.)
4. Video and content sharing networks will proliferate among and within local media companies. This process is already underway, led by players such as Digital First Media andSchurz Communications Inc., among others. Look for the deals to ramp up in 2014 as pressures rise to bring content generating costs down. The question is: Where will this leave the Associated Press?
5. Newspapers will start producing more polished online video (and more of it). The learning curve is nearing its end. There are too many vendors eager to jump in to help professionalize even the smallest papers’ nascent video efforts to have any excuse for amateur content. In 2014, video will become a more reflexive part of workflow for more journalists, and that will show in the work they more regularly produce.Now will it make enough money to justify the effort?
6. Everyone will be a publisher in 2014. Having changed its algorithms to emphasize original content, Google has put increased pressure on anyone with a website to update content more regularly. For brands and businesses, that is creating a steady need that someone is going to fill. Will it be on staff writers? Local search? Agencies? There’s a play for local media here if it can pivot into this business quickly.
7. Google Now will show us the early power of big data. The hyper-individualized experience offered by Google Now gives us a compelling window into the future of digital information consumption. Media companies need to study this experience closely, as it may prognosticate the next major usage shifts in digital.
8. Twitter News is coming. Vivian Schiller left NBC to build something at Twitter, but what? Will she serve as a kind of grand lobbyist/liaison to the news industry or lay the foundation for an entirely new and disruptive news service? In any event, local media that have come to rely on Twitter as a vital tool for newsgathering and breaking news ought to be on alert. The platform is too big to dismiss, and it’s fidgety with ambition.
9. The journalist as brand phenomenon will increase and localize. Sullivan, Swisher and Mossberg, Silver, Stelter, now maybe even Klein. Branding oneself effectively can (mostly) pay off, so look for more local journalists to leverage their personal brands into independent plays.
10. Digital marketing services have hit critical mass, and the space will now start to contract. This ship has sailed, and it’s carrying a lot of local media on board along with a big crowd from the Internet yellow pages space. Not everyone is going to execute on this well, and some companies haven’t given themselves enough runway to succeed (a pretty long one is necessary). For those not yet on board, and even those who are, it’s time to find yet another new revenue stream to get revved up about.

Sales Tip: Influence, Don't Just Inform

One of the biggest hindrances to selling success is being informative rather than persuasive. Information overwhelms us. Your role as a salesperson is to make the available information actionable for your buyers. To do that, you'll need to use all 'Five Prongs of Persuasion':

1. Word Choice: Positive, specific, precise words.
2. Rhetoric: Powerful phrasing and graceful grammar that pack a powerful punch on a buyer's memory.
3. Emotion: Feelings of pleasure, fear, safety, discomfort, pride, acceptance, rejection or prestige.
4. Logic: Reasoning and conclusions drawn from facts, information, opinions or ideas.
5. Trustworthiness: Trust in the principles, values and integrity of an individual or organization.

To persuade, you need to know and use the best words, to establish your own and your organization's credibility, and to identify the best strategies with each buyer -- whether that be primarily an appeal to emotion or an appeal to logic or a combination of both.

7 Common (and Dangerous) Misconceptions About SEO

Hey gang, I found this excellent article by Meghan Keaney Anderson...great info, enjoy! ~Curt

7 Common (and Dangerous) Misconceptions About SEO

With regular algorithm updates and new factors influencing search all the time, search engine optimization is a bit of a moving target these days. Add in the level of nuance that tends to surround search rank and you've created a perfect storm for misunderstanding and misattribution.

Does factor X directly affect rank or merely influence it? What are the differences among Google+, Google's +1s, and Google Authorship when it comes to search? How important are keywords and where do I put them now? I'll stop there before my head starts to hurt. These are some of the biggest areas of confusion I've come across (and experienced myself) in learning about SEO.

Below, you'll find some clarification regarding these sometimes confusing aspects of SEO that could help make it easier for you to optimize your marketing efforts for search moving forward.

Misconception #1: SEO is all about keywords and links.

Keywords and links certainly play a role in SEO, but they aren't the only factors. Everything from the mobile optimization of your site to the social virality of your content also influences your search rank.

With the release of Hummingbird, Google is getting much better at understanding full queries in addition to just single keywords, which means placing your keywords at the very front of your title may not be as important.

Reflecting the way that people have begun to search, Google is starting to recognize search queries in the context of the sentences around them --  even factoring location into some search queries. 

In a video released this summer, Google's Matt Cutts noted that he thinks marketers spend too much energy on link building. Inbound links certainly help pages rank well, but it is better to focus on creating the sort of content that gets shared than finding places to plant links. More and more people are finding content through social media, so optimizing your content for social shares is also important. 

Bottom Line: Search is becoming more complex with more factors influencing rankings. The good news is this complexity adds nuance and an understanding of the context of the person searching. Write for people first, search engines second.

Misconception #2: Bing doesn't really matter. 

According to comScore’s October search engine rankings, Bing received 18.1% of searches in the U.S. in April 2013. It's a figure that has doubled since 2009. While Bing may not be ready to overtake Google as the most widely used search engine, there's plenty this data should make you think about.

Bing's Relationship With Facebook

In early 2013, Facebook introduced Graph Search and its partnership with Bing. Graph search enables people to search for places and things within their social reach -- for example, "Restaurants in Key West liked by my friends." But it can't handle every search. For those it can't, it defaults to a Bing search. 

Bing's Relationship With Yahoo

In 2012, Bing became the engine which powers all Yahoo searches. Since the same comScore report puts Yahoo search traffic at 11.1% of the market, combining Yahoo and Bing, you're now talking nearly 30% of searches. 

New Opportunities With Bing

Bing's algorithm is a little less complex than Google's and prioritizes slightly different things, so if you're in a competitive space and have had trouble with Google, Bing might present some new opportunities to you.

Keyword Data From Bing

As noted above, this year, Google began encrypting all keyword data from its users' searches, cutting marketers short when it comes to keyword insights. Bing, on the other hand, still provides marketers with keyword data. While that doesn't change your prospective customers' search behavior, there is more opportunity for you to learn from the keywords that have brought in Bing searchers. 

Bottom Line: Optimizing for Google should probably still be your main approach, but Bing is on the move. Strategic partnerships with Facebook and Yahoo, make the search engine an interesting force for some marketers. 

Misconception #3: 'Keyword (not provided)' means the end of SEO.

Google's move to encrypt all keywords would be the worst thing ever if SEO were entirely about keywords. Thankfully, it's not.

Instead of focusing on the keywords that brought visitors to your site, focus on the content. For instance, it's best to go to your analytics and see which pages on your site had the highest portion of visitors from organic search (regardless of the keywords). What is the focus of those pages?  

You can even go to Google and type in a few of the phrases you want to be found for. How do you currently rank for them? Focus your next quarter on creating useful relevant content fort those phrases, then compare your ranking to the original benchmark. Were you able to move the needle?

Also, talk and listen to customers about what they were seeking when they found you, and focus on getting your content spread across social channels.

Search Engine Watch has even more options in this informative post: Google '(Not Provided)' Keywords: 10 Ways to Get Organic Search Data.

Bottom Line: It's an inconvenience that Google encrypted its keyword data, but it's not the end of days. SEO is about creating relevant and spreadable content, so focus on that. 

Misconception #4: I can get a good inbound link by linking to my site from the comments.

This one has mostly been put to rest, but I thought I'd include it for good measure.

Inbound links to your website are like votes of confidence for your content and have a positive impact on your page's ranking, but inbound links should be earned. Leaving links behind in the comments section of a blog isn't going to help you in that area. Most blogs have "no follow" instructions built into their comments section to avoid spam. Just as it sounds, "no follow" instructs the search engine crawlers to ignore any links within the comments. 

It's certainly not bad to occasionally link to relevant content in the comments you leave. In fact, if it's an insightful comment, it may get you some good traffic -- it's just not likely to increase your search rank directly. And be careful not to overdo it. "Having a large portion of those backlinks coming from blog comments, it can raise red flags with Google," explains Search Engine Watch. 

Bottom Line: Leave links in comments when they make sense or allow readers to learn more about your comment. Don't expect them to help with SEO.

Misconception #5: Subheaders are important for on-page SEO.

I found a number of differing opinions on this, so it might be one to keep an eye on, but by and large, SEO consensus seems to be that for ranking on Google, subheaders H2 through H6 don't actually carry much weight. They do have value in terms of accessibility, user experience, and reinforcing semantics, or meaning, of the content on the page, but they don't add much for SEO. The main header tag, or H1, does have some SEO value, but even that seems limited, according to the experts. Pitstop Media has a really in-depth post on H1 headings, if you want to dive in. 

Bottom Line: Use subheaders to improve your site's accessibility and HTML semantics. Put keywords in your subheaders if they help convey the message of the content underneath, but avoid keyword stuffing.

Misconception #6: Google +1s directly affect search.

Every two years, the search pros at Moz run a scientific correlation study to examine what webpage qualities are associated with high ranks on Google. In its most recent study, the company highlighted an interesting conclusion. What it found, Moz's Cyrus Shepard explains, was this: 

"After Page Authority, a URL's number of Google +1s is more highly correlated with search rankings than any other factor. In fact, the correlation of Google +1s beat out other well known metrics including linking root domains, Facebook shares, and even keyword usage." 

Once released, the interpretation of these findings got a little warped into a belief that +1s on Google were directly leading to higher search ranks -- a classic correlation-causation debate, but it caused a bit of a kerfuffle.

With one-click retweets and the common act of paraphrasing online, some began to interpret this discovery as a sign that that Google was actively giving more search credit to pages that had earned Google +1s. Google's Matt Cutts even joined in to state clearly that Google +1s donot directly lead to a higher search rankings, saying:

"If you make compelling content, people will link to it, like it, share it on Facebook, +1 it, etc. But that doesn't mean that Google is using those signals in our ranking. Rather than chasing +1s of content, your time is much better spent making great content."

So why does matter? After working through some of the debate, Shepard added some thoughts to his original posts which focused more on Google+ as a platform rather than the act of voting on a post through +1s. He explained:

"It's clear that Google doesn't use the raw number of +1s directly in its search algorithm, but Google+ posts have SEO benefits unlike other social platforms."

For example, Shepard noted, content on Google+ gets crawled almost immediately and, unlike Facebook or LinkedIn, Google+ posts are treated as blog posts with unique URLs and title tags.

Bottom Line: Posting to Google+ as a platform has search value, while clicking the +1 button on posts just correlates to good content. 

Misconception #7: Google Authorship drives higher rankings.

The answer to this one is no -- at least not yet. Establishing Google Authorship involves adding Rel=Author tags to your content and linking your Google+ page back to your blog.

Authorship helps Google attribute a collection of content to its author, which doesn't add to that content's rank, but DOES make your content stand out on the search engine result page by adding an image to your search result.

In the example below, you can see I'm not the first result for the search, but because of authorship, my result includes the picture.

In a really well-written post over on our Insiders blog, Gray MacKenzie summarizes the value of this well:

"Your goal isn’t high rankings for the purpose of high rankings -- you want to rank well so that you drive more quality traffic to your site. One important metric for growing your search traffic is your clickthrough rate (CTR). How many people who see your page in Google results actually click through to your site? Google Authorship puts a face and a name to the search engine results, helping to build trust, communicate relevance, establish credibility, and improve CTR -- in some cases by upwards of 150%."

Bottom Line: Authorship doesn't increase rank (for now), but it does grab searchers' attention and increase clickthrough rate, so you should absolutely still do it.

To attach an image to your search results, use this helpful tutorial from MacKenzie. (Note: If you're a HubSpot customer using the COS blog, the Rel=Author tag is already built into your author profiles, so you only need to do the first part and add your author profile in HubSpot.)

How to Find Out Who to Contact for Corporate Sponsorship

Who to target 

The first consideration is who you should target for your offer, and there are definitely roles you should avoid and roles that will be much more productive.

People you want to avoid... 

Sponsorship manager -- You'd think somebody called the "sponsorship manager" should be right person to receive your sponsorship proposal. That's just what the company is hoping you'll think, as one of the sponsorship manager's biggest roles is that of gatekeeper -– keeping you away from the real decision-makers. Yes, there are a few exceptions to this, but not enough to make this a good first entry into a company.

Online sponsorship submission forms -- These are nothing but automated gatekeepers and don't give you the scope to showcase what you really have to offer. Avoid them at all costs.

Agencies -- It's just not a good idea to volunteer to put a third party between you and the decision-maker. Stories of this working are rare, and I've never seen it happen myself.

CEO/MD/President -- Please hear me when I tell you this: The CEO is not going to say "yes" to you. They aren't going to say "no" to you, either. They'll pass your proposal down the line until it gets to the sponsorship manager and then s/he'll say "no." Meanwhile, you've burned a ton of time.

People you want to seek out... 

Brand manager (or a member of the brand team) -- In most companies, this is who has the authority, flexibility, and budget to say "yes" to you, and is who you need to target. As a bonus, because so many sponsorship seekers are wasting their time with the CEO and the sponsorship manager, very few are targeting the brand manager.

General manager -- This is often the right person to target in a smaller company, particularly a local or regional company. The good news is that you can call to confirm, as smaller companies tend to be less cagey about providing details to sponsorship seekers.

Regional marketing manager -- If what you're offering has a primarily local or regional focus, you could opt to approach the regional marketing manager. S/he may have the budget and authority locally, and can be a strong advocate in home office if your offer outstrips their budget.

Important 

If you contact one of these people and are referred to the sponsorship manager, an agency, or an online form, you're going to need to accept that you've probably just been told "no."

Getting names and contact details 

There are a lot of strategies for learning who to approach and how to contact her/him. How you go about it is a matter of the resources you have available and your own personal style. These are a few of the strategies you can use.

Use your network 

Sponsorship isn't anywhere near six degrees of separation. Chances are, you'll only be a couple of degrees away from someone who can tell you who the actual decision-maker is and how to reach her/him.

Scan their media releases 

Most corporate websites have a media centre, featuring their media releases from recent months or years. Find that page and scan for releases having to do with brand announcements. Chances are, there will be a quote from the brand manager in charge of that brand and voila, you have the name and correct title. You should also note if there is an email address for the media contact, as the syntax will likely be the same for the brand manager (e.g., firstname.lastname@company.com).

Search marketing publications 

If you are selling a significant number and amount of sponsorships, you need to subscribe to your national advertising/marketing weekly -- or at least their email alerts. Examples are AdAge, Adweek, AdNews, Media, and more around the world. Why? Because every time a new marketing initiative is announced for a major brand, it will be covered in one of those publications and will feature a quote from the brand manager in charge.

LinkedIn 

LinkedIn is a good way to find out the correct name and title for the brand manager, as well as some background information that may assist you with preparing for a meeting or phone call. I'm not convinced, however, that LinkedIn messaging is a great way to introduce yourself. Ditto asking someone that you have never done business with to make a LinkedIn introduction. I get asked this all the time, but if I don't have personal experience working with you, sorry, but I'm not going to vouch.

Ask 

If all else fails, call the switchboard and ask for the name of the (insert brand here) brand manager. Don't then ask to be put through. You need to prepare before you make that call.

Directories 

I am aware there are some directories available, but their value is really patchy. If it's sponsorship-oriented, it's the sponsorship manager (gatekeeper) that is usually listed. There are more general directories, listing brand managers. The biggest problem with directories, though, is that the turnover in marketing roles is high and the lists go out of date quickly. This is my least favorite option.

Now, don't screw it up! 

Once you've got the correct name, title, some background, and possibly an email address, you still have quite a lot to do before you're ready to make contact. Don't screw it up.

(Source: Kim Skildum-Reid, Power Sponsorship, 11/08/13) 

The 5 Marketing Benefits of Sponsoring a Contest

Sponsoring a Contest is an Investment with Huge ROI Potential -- and It's Up to You to Help Your Advertisers Understand That 

What do advertisers want? They want to see action. They want hot leads, foot traffic, more sales, a bigger email database, and more fans. They spend their marketing budget to achieve these goals, and they want ROI.

You can help them reach all of these goals with a contest!

Contests are the activation layer of any marketing plan. 

When you are selling contests, remember that what you are really offering is not only sponsorships -- it's the ability to activate potential customers. Contests provide an incentive for customers to engage with a brand on a deeper level in ways that traditional advertising alone often can’t duplicate -- AND most importantly, they are the best vehicle for capturing customer data.

So how do you explain the benefits of sponsoring a contest to a potential advertiser? 

While it all comes back to activation, here are 5 talking points to get you started:

1. Contests increase brand awareness and engagement. Advertising can take two forms. The first is branding, or setting customers' expectations for a product or service and differentiating it from others. The second is activation, which motivates customers to take a specific action, such as enter a contest, Like a Page on Facebook, purchase a deal, or print out a coupon. Traditional advertising is great for awareness, while promotions like contests and ballots supercharge your advertising, making it more effective by getting people involved in your site and encourage social sharing.

2. Contests grow social, email, and mobile databases. Whether your advertiser is hoping to grow their social media following, or even their mobile database, a contest can help. This is one of the absolute best ways to reach the marketing holy grail -- capturing data on customers! Add an email or mobile opt-in (or both!) to the registration page, or put the contest behind a Like-gate on Facebook.

3. Contests drive foot traffic. By including a coupon or offer on the contest thank-you page, advertisers have the power to direct foot traffic to their physical location (or website). You can also generate even more foot traffic by incorporating the online contest with an on-site event at the advertiser's location.

4. Contests reach the audience you want. Whether your advertiser wants to reach as many people as possible or only a highly targeted niche, there's a contest for that. Sweepstakes are easy to enter and appealing to everyone, while something like an "Ugliest Yard Makeover" photo submission contest attracts a more targeted (and equally valuable) audience. The key is to understand what your advertiser's objectives are and to then select the right contest type to achieve their goals. Here's a quick overview of the strengths of some of the most popular contest types:

• Sweepstakes: Low barrier to entry, drive entries, generates email opt-ins, drives Facebook Likes
• UGS (Photo, Video, MP3): High barrier to entry, drives engagement, drives website traffic, drives social shares

5. Contests generate qualified leads. If you add survey questions to a contest registration page, you have the power to deliver hot, qualified leads to your advertiser after the contest. For example, when a Ford dealer asked on a contest registration page if people were considering a new vehicle purchase, 12% of contest entrants indicated they were planning to buy a new car in the next 6 months! 

Sales Tip: You Are Always on Stage

What habits do you have that could potentially create a negative perception of you with your customers and prospects?

It could be your style of dress, a dirty or bent business card, disorganized samples, typos and grammar mistakes in written communication, your table manners at business dinners, a cluttered car, talking too much, or any of a myriad list of behaviors that your prospects and customers observe. Think hard, and be honest with yourself. Then begin the process of changing these behaviors.

You see, in sales you are always on stage. Everyone from the guys in the guard shacks, to the receptionists, to the decision makers are watching you and based on their perceptions, deciding if they like you or not.

If you want to close more business and earn more commissions, it is imperative that you work tirelessly to influence these perceptions. Being likable won't necessarily guarantee you get the deal done, but being unlikable will almost certainly guarantee that you won't get the sale.

How Google's Search Changes Affect Small Businesses

Google recently switched to something known as secure search, limiting the data that can be seen using its analytics.
This means Web site owners and managers can no longer see the string of words used by an individual to find their site in a search, which could have a profound effect on marketing efforts. Knowing how customers found them helps business owners optimize their sites so that they rank higher in search results.

Web site managers who use Google's Webmaster Tools, which are free, can see some data for the top 2,000 search queries in a selected period of time. The information is not sent in real time, but is available in a secure dashboard that managers log can in to. The goal of the change, according to a Google spokesman, is to stop hackers from gaining access to the data, but it also means that business owners will have a tougher time piecing together the moment in time someone found them and the browser they used to get there.

We asked Louis Gagnon, chief product and marketing officer at Yodle, which helps small businesses with online marketing, including search engine optimization, to help us make sense of the changes. Based in Manhattan, Yodle, serves about 35,000 small businesses in 400 industry segments, had 2012 revenue of $132 million and has been growing about 40 percent a year.

Q: What exactly did Google change? 

A: First, you need to understand the way search works. When you search for something on Google, at the top and on the right of the page are paid advertisements. Results on other areas of the page are called organic or the S.E.O. results.

In 2011, Google decided that for organic results, they would no longer make available the search terms a person used to get to that page if they searched while logged into a Google account like Gmail or another Google Web property. Before that point in 2011, if I had a Web site I could see the search words any individual who came to my site used to find me. Thirty percent of all global searches were made by people logged into a Google account. That meant if I was the owner of a business Web site, I lost information for about 30 percent of those who come to my site. I can't see the terms they used to get to me. Last week Google changed that again and expanded what they started in 2011, by applying it not just to those logged into a Google account but to most users -- not yet all users but likely 100 percent soon.

Q: Is there any way for business owners to get that information now? 

A: Yes -- you have to pay for it. You will have to create a Google AdWords account and an ad campaign. Paying for AdWords allows you to access that string of search words, but it's related to the number of people who click on your ad. If no one clicks on the ad, you won't see any information. That means there is an incentive to spend more and for a longer period of time, to test keywords.

Q: Is there any other way? 

A: I would suggest trying to get your hands on ranking data -- generally gotten by using an external vendor, who will tell you where your organic results are ranking and what keywords are connecting to you. Then combine that with several different reporting sources and look at the relationships between them. Those sources could include Google Webmaster Tools, Google Places for Business and Google Keyword Planner. Use those with Web site logs -- the database that records everything that people do while on your Web site, so you understand which page is actually getting traffic and what visitors do on these pages. You have to put together ranking data, impressions data, click data, etc., and none of these reports will bring them all together, so you may also need an expert to interpret the data.

Q: Do you really think small-business owners are going to do that? 

A: Most of them won't. The average business owner is working 12 hours a day, and then they come home and have to deal with the rest of their life. There are only a few hours a night to do their other business chores, and most of them lack the background and expertise to do that. Even for those that do have the expertise and understanding, it's not the best investment of their time. It's better for them to get someone else to do it.

Q: Do you think this is cause for them to panic? 

A: No. When you don't know what you don't know, it doesn't hurt. A lot of business owners weren't using this information before. Their level of understanding and sophistication is such that they just don't know this has changed. I'm convinced it's less than one percent that have this on the radar screen.

Q: Is it too early to know how much of an impact this will have and how businesses are reacting? 

A: It's early, but I think it will have a big impact on people who are managing their own sites. Maybe 20 to 30 percent of small businesses are doing this themselves and for those people, this change will hurt. They will have to pay for AdWords, or they will have to absorb the complexity in some way and do something with it. It's not easy. They have to work harder. There's no doubt it will require more time. The other 70 percent of small businesses have already outsourced this. There are different types of service providers that would help with solving the problem -- they are bigger technology companies, like ours, that are not affected. But if you've outsourced digital marketing and S.E.O. to your cousin, now your cousin has the problem. He's likely to come back with higher fees, because he has to spend more time on this, or he'll suggest you spend a little bit on AdWords.

Q: What do you think most business owners will do? 

A: Most people who really care about digital marketing and really understand it will reconsider what they're doing from an organic search standpoint and ask themselves if they should outsource this to a technology company.

(Source: Eilene Zimmerman, The New York Times, 10/09/13)