As a kid, I used to absolutely adore dinosaurs. I thought I was a bit of a dinosaur expert and one fun “fact” I would tell all my friends who were willing to listen was that dinosaurs had brains in their butts. However, my dinosaur butt dreams came crashing down when I was much older and read that it was a myth, the double brain theory is not true! Why am I telling you this? It’s a loose segue into good keyword practices for SEO. As you can see in the image above, that’s a thunder lizard, more commonly known as a Brontosaurus and it has quite a long tail. In term’s of keywords for SEO, there are Fathead and Longtail keywords. You should utilize both of those but in varying degrees.

Let’s say you know what Fathead keywords to use already, that’s the head of the dinosaur (tiny, nonspecific and generic). Say you have a healthy snacks company, good Fathead keywords would be “Healthy Snacks” “Granola Bars”. The issue with Fathead keywords is that they’re highly competitive and you have to pay highly to bid on them. So where do you go from here? Oh yeah! Choose some really good Longtail keywords.

Longtail keywords are more specific and have less competition therefore you’re bidding less. Going back to the dinosaur story, these are the brainier and smarter choices you can make hence the brain in the butt. If a healthy snacks company does some research into Longtail keywords, they would come up with things like: “snacks for people on a diet” “Healthy snacks that only uses sea salts” and whatever else would work for the company. Furthermore, it’s really important to a decent amount of keyword research because you want to target people who are further down the marketing funnel since they’d essentially have their wallet out and are ready to purchase. To conclude, use the brain in the butt theory and come up with some really smart Longtail keywords because they just might ensure you’re looking at some good conversion rates.

Content Marketing is a Major Key

Ah, social media. For those of us who were born in the years before internet gripped us without letting go, marketeers weren’t concerned about the most relevant hashtags, who to mention or what to re tweet. Things were simpler back then, right? It maybe so but the reality is that we have social media at our disposal and it’s an amazing way to reach out to your customer base. Besides Facebook and Instagram, Twitter is 1/3 of the Big Three (as I like to call them) and it is great for content marketing.

What do I mean by content marketing? You could look up the dictionary definition of it but to put it simply, you have to engage with content (pictures, videos, articles etc.) which is consistent with your brand. Let’s say your company sells healthy snacks like granola bars with raisins (spare me), you want to share content such as lifestyle blog articles about living healthy or how the content in granola bars helps you feel better rather than eating your standard chocolate bar. It’s imperative that every company makes use of all of the Big Three.

Here, I’ll list out simple things to do on Twitter when content marketing around your brand. All examples will assume that the brand being promoted has to do with healthy snacks.

1. Like, tweet and re-tweet content you think is relevant to your brand. Example: Re-tweet an article about a great daily routine for a person whose life revolves around eating healthy and remaining fit.
2. @mention people who have a larger audience than your own with relevant tweets. By doing this you’re ensuring that people who are not following you can see the post and therefore become aware of your product. Example: Usain Bolt has 4.5 million followers, I would say that’s pretty sizable. Tweet @ him and make it witty and/or interesting. A sample tweet could be: “@usainbolt Pretty sure if you eat a granola bar before you run, you can beat your own records. Be your own competition.”
3. Hashtags and visuals. These are two things you should make constant use of in the Twitterverse. Hashtags and visuals (videos or pictures) can increase engagement two fold which is something I’m sure any company is interested in doing. For this I cannot provide an example with a visual but relevant hashtags would be #BarsforFitness #Fitness #Fiberkeepsmehealthy. You’d want to do a bit of research into Longtail and Fathead hashtags just like you would for SEO.

Lastly, don’t forget the 80/20 rule! 80% is content marketing and 20% is self promotion.

I hope the tips above will help you gain more engagement and more followers which in turn can help you grow your customer base and convert more people. Content marketing on Twitter is a major key.

In this day and age, it’s well known that reading a bunch of words can get tedious. A web users average attention span has decreased from 12s in 2001 to 8s in 2015 and that means the words you’ve typed up explaining your product will not get read no matter how much effort you put into it. This is why it’s essential to have an explainer video as the first thing people see on their website. Let’s look at an example, go to this website: http://www2.meethue.com/en-ca/

What’s the first thing you see? A sign that says “Meet Hue” and a play button. What this video shows is a quick way to use their smart lighting product and additionally it provides the information they want to push forth in less than 100 words. By doing this, a company decreases the friction (no. of clicks) a website visitor has to face when trying to find information when they can get all they need from the video. This video HAS to be above the fold as well so people don’t have to scroll down to watch it therefore making it more convenient.

Okay, so you’re shooting your first video to put on your homepage and you’re wondering I listened to the guy on the blog, there are costs to this and what’s going to happen when I put it up? Well, what I can tell you is, according to Unbounce, that videos increase your conversion rates by 20%. That’s a juicy 20% that you and every business should think about capturing. Philips Hue already has a head start on this, what are you waiting for?