This person should be a strong writer with excellent communication skills. They can handle and prioritize a diverse workload to meet any and all deadlines and are quick on their feet when it comes to sudden changes in plans.

This person should be passionate about the world of digital marketing/content creation and should have a basic understanding of the current trends and technologies in the industry, i.e.blogging, infographics, motion graphics, viral content, ebooks/whitepapers, and anything and everything else that exists in the digital world.

Bonus points:

• Skills and understanding of graphic design.

• Understanding of WordPress

• Regular Blogger.

• Experience in PR, promotions, and outreach.

• Proofreader extraordinaire.

• Social media user (more points if you are an influencer)

If this sounds like you, and you’re not shaking in your boots, email your resumé and any other interesting and relevant links to mike@singlegrain.com.

Did you know that interesting content is one of the top 3 reasons why people follow brands on social media? In fact, according to content+, 6 in 10 Twitter or Facebook users are more likely to recommend a brand they follow to their family and friends. If this is anything to go by, it isn’t hard to see why content marketing is all the rage nowadays.

However, there is a right way to do it and a wrong way and in this article I will be highlighting 6 of the most common content marketing mistakes that even the pros make.

So let’s jump right into to it.

1. Trying to do everything by yourself

If anything, this should be considered a cardinal sin. Too many people try to do everything by themselves. There is a reason why Seth Godin, Brian Clark and Darren Rowse attract such huge followings – they focus all their energies on doing what they know how to do best – blogging.

Yes it is true that they might have the resources at their expense to allow them to focus on one particular area of their business, however, it is important to remember that everyone starts from somewhere.

A few short years ago, the pros were exactly where many of us find ourselves today and believe it or not, they had to learn the hard way that trying to be a one man show is the fastest way to failure.

They were wise enough to lay out a strategy that allowed them to focus more on their strengths rather than their weaknesses. The same should apply to you. Don’t wear yourself out trying to figure out every little trick that will get you tons of traffic at the expense of the value of your content.

Remember, it’s easy to get thousands of eyeballs viewing your content; however, it is a different story to convert them. So focus on your strengths. Content marketing isn’t effective without the content right?

2. Lack of an audience outreach plan

I have found that one of the main reasons why many content marketing/seo “experts” rarely achieve any success with their campaigns is because they don’t even know who their audience is.

They take the “one shoe fits all” approach to their campaigns and wonder why things aren’t working. In essence, this can only be likened to starting a journey without having a clear destination in mind.

Your audience is the most important part of your business and if you can’t successfully meet their needs, they will find someone who can. In order to stop your customers from walking out on you, you have to know who they are, understand what their problems are and find a way to solve them.

Once you know who your audience is, then you can devise ways to appeal to them. A few good methods would include:

• Offering them valuable free stuff like reports, manuals and video series that teach ways of solving their problems.
• Empathizing with them. Show that you care and that you are the right person who can help them with their problem. Jon Morrow explains this best in his post.

3. No follow up plan

Experts say it takes 7 exposures from the time a new lead lands on your content to the time they actually buy from you. This period in internet marketing circles is referred to as the warming up of your prospects cycle.

What’s surprising is the fact that a lot of people ignore this aspect of content marketing because it means work. Let’s be honest, we are all lazy and the thought of rolling up our sleeves and getting down to work is not the picture of success we were sold.

The reality however is that if you are going to be successful, you must be willing to put in the effort.

So though it might take you a couple of hours, may be even a few days to set up your whole follow up campaign, once it’s done it’s done. Remember, people become experts and pros because they are willing to do what they don’t like to do and what is necessary for them to do because they know the pay off is bigger.

So once your audience is interested in what you have to offer, make sure you employ strategies that will not only keep them as leads, but that will turn them into hot prospects.

4. Not measuring your statistics

The truth of the matter is that numbers are boring especially when they don’t add up to your bottom line. The thought of analyzing statistics for most people (myself included), is a major turn off.

However, this could be one of the biggest mistakes you can make. As a marketer, it is important to know your click through rate, your bounce rate, average time spent on your site — amongst other stats if you are going to have a successful campaign.

This might sound technical; however, it’s pretty simple. In fact, there are tools which will calculate all this for you so you don’t have to worry about it.

Understanding your stats will help you devise ways to optimize your content that will eventually help you build relationships with your visitors and improve brand loyalty to the point where your visitors automatically turn into customers.

5. Writing for the sake of writing

“Content is king” is a popular saying in internet marketing circles. In fact, you might have probably come across it a number of times.  In my case, it was one of the very first words I came across when I got started online.

Back then, there was no Google Panda or Penguin so people churned out massive numbers of articles just to get high rankings in the serps – and that was very acceptable. Boy, have things changed. Nowadays, submitting a dozen articles per day to the top directories just doesn’t work – at all.

Today what matters is relevance. Your content must be valuable if it is going to attract and convert prospects into customers. People are seeking genuine solutions to their problems. You are that link. The key then for you should be to provide all the useful information that will not only help your prospects find what they are looking for, but which will also present you as the expert authority on your subject.

This will not only build trust between you and your prospects, but it will also cause them to like you and as we know, people will always buy from those they know, like and trust.

6. Lack of effective content promotion methods

The last mistake which is very common among both pros and newbies alike is the lack of effective content promotion methods. Today, social media is all the rage. However, not a lot of people know the best ways to use this medium to reach their audiences.

Even the pros usually hire out the services of social media managers to help grow their brand. A good content promotion campaign should be simple, consistent and measurable. Posting random tweets and updates hoping that someone somewhere will click on your link and buy from you is like wishing for snow on a hot summer day. In order for your promotion methods to be effective, you must understand who your audience is.

Just as you would not sell ice to an Eskimo, it would be foolish to use a method of content promotion that does not appeal to your audience. The key is to understand what your audience likes and give them just that.

Here are some social media promotion tips:

• Find out what social sites your audience is most active and engaged. Then dominant that site.
• Find out what types of content your audience wants to consume – is it articles? Vidoes? Research Reports? Etc… – and give it to them.
• Social Media is a conversation so don’t forget to respond to your audience members. The more active you are the more active they will be.

That’s it! I would like to know your thoughts on this. These may not be the only content marketing mistakes out there, however, they are among the most common and avoiding them could be the tipping point between a successful campaign and a weak campaign.

The SEO rumor mills are at it again…  At this year’s SMX West conference, Matt Cutts – head of Google’s Web Spam team – announced that webmasters can expect to see the latest version of the Penguin algorithm rolled out sometime during 2013.

Of course, Cutts wouldn’t clarify exactly what types of sites or activities the update would target, nor how big of an impact the rollout would potentially have.  But that hasn’t stopped some SEO pundits from speculating that this could be another “big one” in the vein of the original Panda and Penguin algorithm changes.

Currently, the most widely circulated theory regarding Penguin 4.0 is that it will go after the link networks that weren’t affected by previous updates.

According to Julie Joyce, writing for Search Engine Watch:

“Simply, a link (or site/blog/article) network is a group of sites that are connected. They can be owned by one person or multiple people, their connections can be as obvious as a badge displayed that proudly identifies the site as a member of X network or as covert as a footprint uncovered by lots of digging.”

Google has been going after these properties since at least March 2012, when it completely deindexed the popular “BuildMyRank” service, as well as several other prominent link networks.  Certainly, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Google take further action in these areas as the sensitivity of its algorithms at detecting networked sites improves.

However, there’s another interesting piece of evidence that points to Penguin 4.0 being tied to low quality backlinks in some way.  A recent studied carried out by Portent indicated that Google is becoming increasingly stricter in terms of the percentage of spam links that can be pointed at a site before Penguin filters are triggered.

After looking at the link profiles of hundreds of different sites – including about 20 that were hit by the initial Penguin updates – Portent found that, while sites were initially able to survive negative effects with as many as 80% spam links, that number has since dropped to around 50%:

The troubling thing about this data is that no one is certain how low these limits will go.  Could Google refine its algorithms to the point where as few as 0-10% of spam links will be allowed?  Though this outcome certainly seems unlikely, there’s no way to guarantee how far Google will take things.

This steady progress towards the minimization of spam link influence – along with increased murmurings about future link network action – should give webmasters pause.  Even if these Penguin 4.0 predictions don’t come to pass (whether the impact of the update is much smaller or it targets an entirely different area), it’s clear that webmasters need to be concerned about the quality of their backlink profiles.

This is especially important when you consider how few websites ever fully recovered from the impact of the first Penguin rollouts.  According to a poll of more than 500 websites carried out by Search Engine Roundtable, only 6% of respondents were able to claim a full recovery:

In this case, the best defense against future Penguin actions is a good offense.  Consider taking all of the following steps to help minimize the potential impact of the forthcoming Penguin rollout on your own website:

Step #1 – Continue to clean up bad backlinks

Last May, we gave you a few recommendations on how to identify bad backlinks in your site’s link graph and how to remove them in order to prevent them from triggering Penguin’s filters.  Specifically, we asked you to:

• Assess the diversity of the domains linking back to your site
• Assess the PageRank distribution of all sites linking back to your pages
• Check for “bad neighborhood” links
• Assess your anchor text distribution to ensure high variability

All of these tips still hold up a year later and should remain a part of your site’s regular SEO activities.  At least once a month, check your site’s link profile using tools like SEOMoz and Majestic SEO in order to identify spam links (whether ones that you’ve created in the past or that your site has acquired as part of a negative SEO attack).  If you find these links, do your best to get them removed by contacting webmasters and link building services, or by using Google’s Disavow Links tool.

Step #2 – Think “natural” when it comes to new link creation

In addition, pay particular attention to the quality of any new link creation endeavors you undertake.  While it’s premature to say that you should avoid all link networks, it’s a good idea to balance any artificially created links with their naturally-driven counterparts.

So how can you acquire natural links?  Well, the easiest way is to simply do something link worthy!

For example, working with a designer and researcher to create a compelling infographic image that can be disseminated across industry sites could do as much for your website’s backlink profile as will hundreds of purchased spam links.  Writing great blog posts and engaging with followers on social networks can also help to create legitimate backlinks in a non-sleazy way.

Whatever you do, keep in mind that “natural” is the new name of the link building game.  No tool is ever going to be able to replicate the backlinking results generated by a committed group of readers and brand advocates.  Focus first on activities that will prompt link acquisition naturally and look at other solutions as nothing more than a way to supplement your main efforts.

Step #3 – Diversify your traffic sources

Finally, keep in mind that SEO should only represent one avenue of traffic generation.  If your site receives the bulk of its inbound traffic from Google alone, you’re setting yourself up for failure by placing all of your eggs in one basket.

For this reason, it’s important to make it a priority now to diversify your traffic sources.  In addition to Google, your site could receive visitors from:

• Other search engines
• Paid search ad placements
• Social media marketing
• Paid social ads
• Content marketing
• Media buys
• Guest articles published on other sites

Yes, some of these strategies may require more work than tweaking a few on-site and off-site variables (as in the case of traditional SEO), but the reassurance you’ll receive from knowing that your business is no longer vulnerable to Google’s unpredictable algorithm changes will be invaluable.

The best part about these recommended actions is that there’s almost no downside.  If you take steps to improve your site’s link profile and the next Penguin update winds up affecting only a tiny percentage of sites, you haven’t lost anything – in fact, you’ve improved your chances of staying safe throughout the next round of algorithm changes.

Remember, Google is never going to stop refining its algorithms.  Even if you’ve been safe throughout these tumultuous last few years, there’s no guarantee that your site won’t be filtered out by a future update.  Take the time to clean up your link building activities now – your long-term site stability will thank you!

If you’ve been reading along with us here on the Single Grain blog, you know that we’re all about creating high value content that engages readers and drives traffic as a method of website promotion.  So it might surprise you to know that we’re also highly in favor of stealing content – as long as it’s done ethically.

No, we’re not saying that you should go out and claim the work of others as your own.  That’s plagiarism, and it should be avoided like the plague.

Instead, what you have to recognize is that there are very few truly original ideas out there.  According to a telling quote from Mark Twain – as cited in “Mark Twain: A Biography” by Albert Bigelow Pain:

“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”

Artists, writers and other creative types have been adapting each other’s work and ideas for centuries – building on what’s been proven to work and discarding elements that don’t.  You can do the same with your digital content pieces!

The following are a few different ways that you can steal content ideas without violating any ethical guidelines.  Taken together, these techniques can make it much easier to develop winning content pieces and to avoid the type of burnout that plagues those who feel they must do everything from scratch.

Things to Steal #1 – Headlines

The first thing that you should absolutely “steal” is headline structures.  Scientific advertisers have been formulating and testing these headlines for decades, giving marketers today a pretty good idea of what works when it comes to these important content cues.  So why on earth would you try to reinvent the wheel or think that your “brilliant” headline will perform better than those that have stood up to the test of time?

Here’s how to do it…

First, find a well-trafficked blog in your industry that lists its most popular blog posts somewhere on the site (typically found in the sidebar widget or on a special “Start Here” page).  Then, take a look at the titles of the most popular articles on the site.

As an example, let’s look at “4 Hour Work Week” author Tim Ferriss’s popular lifestyle blog.  In this case, the most popular article of all time on the site is one titled, “How to Lose 20 lbs. of Fat in 30 Days… Without Doing Any Exercise.”

Now, you don’t need to operate in the health and fitness industry to steal this headline for your own use.  Instead, break it down so that you understand the root of what makes this article title so powerful:

• “How to” – Readers love instructional topics and tend to gravitate towards headlines that promise much-needed, easy-to-digest information.
• “Lose 20 lbs. of Fat in 30 Days” – This part of the headline touches on a hotly-emotional issue that many internet readers face.
• “Without Doing Any Exercise” – The clincher here is that the article headline delivers its benefits without requiring extra effort on the part of readers.  This is huge for driving reader engagement.

Once you know how the different emotional appeals behind the headline are operating, you can modify this headline structure to suit your own content pieces and industry.  All of the following headline examples follow this same format – effectively stealing what makes the original headline so effective without directly plagiarizing the author’s original work:

• How to Pay Off $5,000 in Credit Card Debt… Without Giving Up Your Daily Latte
• How to Pick Up Girls at Bars… Without Making a Fool of Yourself
• How to Easily Potty Train Your Child… Without All the Accidents

Things to Steal #2 – Content Structures

But beyond headlines, there are plenty of other content elements that you can steal for your own purposes.  For instance, how about the entire structure of your articles?

Writing your articles is another place where you don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time you put pen to paper (or, keys to keyboard as the case may be).  Plenty of successful bloggers and website owners have gone before you and determined which post structures audiences respond best to.  Don’t be afraid to steal their insight and use it to cultivate your own internet presence!

The following are a few different post structures that have been proven to work across different industries.  Give them a try today and see how well your audience responds!

• “How to” article – Instructional articles that provide specific information, as in the case of Tim’s most popular article referenced above.
• “Top 10” article – Also known as “list posts,” these articles – which can include as many as 100 items, draw in audiences who crave the most up-to-date information possible.
• “Myth busting” articles – Articles that dissect commonly-held industry beliefs can be great for generating attention and engagement.
• “Step-by-Step” articles – Make your content pieces easy for your audience to follow, and they’ll reward you with higher readership numbers.
• “Failure to success” case studies – We all love a good success story, so capitalize on this content structure by relating changes you or your clients have made to your audience through powerful content pieces.

Again, none of these ideas are new.  Go to any popular blog online and you’ll see examples of these content structures at work.  As long as you’re putting your own spin on the subject and bringing value to your audience, it doesn’t matter that you’re essentially stealing these widely-used formulas!

Things to Steal #3 – Content Topics

Finally, if you’re facing the inevitable burnout that threatens to derail all website owners, consider stealing topic ideas for your next set of blog posts or content marketing pieces from other popular sites in your industry.

To see how to do this, let’s head over to the popular “Art of Manliness” blog.  A quick glance at the “Popular Articles” widget displayed on the site’s sidebar reveals the following list of articles:

• “100 Must Read Books: the Man’s Essential Library”
• “How to Shave Like Your Grandpa”
• “100 Must See Movies: The Essential Men’s Movie Library”
• “How to Tie a Tie”
• “How to Carve a Turkey”

If you were targeting a similar audience, the list above could provide plenty of inspiration when it comes to possible post topics.  For example, Art of Manliness readers have demonstrated an interest in the topic of old-fashioned shaving.  Couldn’t you take that idea and write up your own article using a different content structure (perhaps something like, “The Step-by-Step Guide to Old-Fashioned Shaving,” using one of the sample formats discussed above)?

As long as you write the article itself using your own language and expertise, you aren’t truly stealing anything.  Instead, you’re leveraging the market research knowledge made available by others in your industry in order to provide new value to your own audience.  It’s a powerful technique, and it’s one that’ll keep you brimming with the content topics needed to keep your site fresh for the long haul.

So what do you think?  Do these techniques constitute “stealing” and would you use them on your own site?  Share your thoughts on the subject in the comments area below!

Image: elhombredenegro

With mobile internet browsing set to overtake traditional desktop internet usage as early as 2014, according to research reported by the Smart Insights marketing team, having a website that displays appropriately in a mobile environment is becoming less of a luxury for today’s businesses and more of a “must have.”

And when it comes to creating and releasing a mobile-optimized version of your site’s content, you have a number of different choices.  You can:

• Create a separate mobile version of your site that resides on your “m.domain.com”
• Use a plugin to automatically create a mobile version of your site on-the-fly
• Develop and release a mobile app that contains the same information as your website
• Utilize a responsive web design template that resizes based on a number of different criteria.

Let’s look at each of these options in more depth…

Separate mobile site versions

Launching separate versions of your website entails building two separate copies of your website – one that lives on your main URL and one that’s triggered to display on your “m.domain.com” subdomain whenever your site detects that it’s being displayed on a mobile browser.  Unfortunately, there are two major issues with this approach:

• Separate site versions only allows you to create one mobile site version, which won’t do you a bit of good when it comes to accommodating the huge variety of different digital devices in use today.  Say you design your mobile site version to look good on the iPhone 5.  That’s great for some users, but doing so runs the real risk of alienating users on tablets or smartphones with different screen sizes.
• Developing site versions across multiple URLs isn’t ideal from an SEO standpoint.  Bing has clearly come out in favor of single URL solutions and while Google’s been more circumspect on the issue, it’s easy to see how optimizing one site version is less hassle and represents fewer opportunities for errors than optimizing multiple site versions.

Mobile site plugins

Since mobile site versions don’t represent a great option, what about mobile site plugins?  Tools like “WP Touch” are freely available and take much of the hassle out of mobile site creation, as they allow you to install a simple piece of software and automatically trigger mobile site versions that display correctly in a number of different environments.

From an SEO perspective, this is a much stronger alternative than creating separate sites to accommodate mobile devices.  However, there’s one key weakness that you need to take into account with mobile site plugins – the loss of important branding elements.

Take a look at the following banner from the WP Touch Pro homepage:

Though the desktop is well-designed and well-branded with distinctive fonts and color schemes, the mobile interface loses all of this visual appeal.  While WPTouch and similar tools do offer the ability to control some visual elements, they don’t come close to replicating your desktop site – causing your company to lose out on the power a well-branded web presence has to offer.

Mobile app development

So, if displaying your desktop website’s content correctly in a mobile environment is so tricky, why not skip the process altogether and just release your site’s information through a mobile app?

Well, not so fast…  An October 2012 study conducted by the Pew Research Center discovered that 60% of web users would rather read news on their mobile browsers, rather than through website apps:

Though the study addressed the consumption of news media only, it’s safe to say that – given this demonstrated preference for reading text through mobile browsers – mobile apps should never be considered a true replacement for mobile website versions.

Responsive website design

The final option – and the one that most web users and SEOs prefer – when it comes to mobile website creation is something known as “responsive website design.”

Essentially, a responsive website design is one site design that automatically changes its display parameters, based on the type of device displaying the site.  If a website visitor lands on the site using a desktop computer, the site design displays at full width.  But if the site detects that it’s being displayed on a mobile device, it automatically aligns itself to display correctly within the new browser.

This occurs because of the presence of two important pieces of technology: the fluid grid and CSS3 media queries.

While many sites are designed on a fixed-pixel basis – meaning that the design is a set width that won’t change no matter where it’s displayed – responsive site designs utilize a “fluid grid.”  Fluid grids represent an advancement on past liquid layout designs, in that they’re designed to proportions, rather than arbitrary percentages.  When fluid grids are used, your website’s design automatically resizes according to the proportionate change in screen resolutions.

Of course, proportions can only take you so far.  If your website uses a 3-column layout, resizing your site design down to a 300-pixel mobile browser screen will result in a pretty cramped design!

That’s where CSS3 media queries come in.  In particular, responsive website designs make use of the min-width media query, which allows websites to conditionally serve up different CSS sets based on the detected size of the browser.  As an example, queries might be set to trigger different CSS rules when it detects browsers below 320px, 480px, 600px, 768px, 900px or 1,200px – accounting for most of the different screen sizes available on today’s desktop and mobile devices.

Following with our earlier 3-column layout example, combining the liquid grid with media queries enables designers to set a “break down” point, where the style of the website changes dramatically.  Instead of resizing the 3-column layout to any different screen size, media queries enable designers to switch to a single column layout as soon as it’s determined that the design is no longer displaying correctly.

And – best of all – because all of this happens from within a single site design, there are none of the SEO concerns that would otherwise arise from displaying these different versions on separate website subdomains!

Responsive website design isn’t a perfect solution, but it’s the best we’ve got right now.  According to Jeffrey Veen, author of “The Art and Science of Web Design”:

“Day by day, the number of devices, platforms, and browsers that need to work with your site grows.  Responsive web design represents a fundamental shift in how we’ll build websites for the decade to come.”

To create a responsive website version, you have two different options.  You can:

• Change over to a pre-built responsive theme (which are widely available through services like ThemeForest), or
• Hire a web developer to create a responsive version of your current site.

Switching over to a responsive theme is the cheaper alternative, but it may mean losing some of the branding elements found in your current site design (as replacing your theme or template involves modifying an entirely new design from scratch).  If you aren’t committed to your current site design, this could be a great approach to keep costs down while still accommodating mobile website users.

On the other hand, while hiring a web developer to custom-code your new responsive website version might be more expensive, the costs are often worth it in order to save on development headaches and preserve the website branding you’ve worked so hard to create.

Really, it doesn’t matter which of these two responsive site design options you choose – as long as you make a choice!  Mobile website browsing and responsive website design are the way of the future.  Don’t risk losing your site’s mobile visitors because you’re hesitant to pull the trigger on this powerful type of technology!

Image: MattsMacintosh

Content marketing is all the rage these days – and with good reason!

A well-executed content marketing campaign can result in a steady stream of website visitors who arrive regularly on your site’s pages for months following the launch of each new content piece.  And as members of your industry get used to seeing your name associated with high-value articles, videos and infographics, your brand’s reputation increases – continuing to improve your sales and profits without any additional direct effort on your part.

But all of that said, producing content for content’s sake isn’t a great strategy.  Releasing a content piece because some “marketing guru” told you it was a good idea and hoping for the best isn’t a legitimate business-building approach.  Instead, you need to actively measure whether or not your content marketing efforts are having the desired effect on your website’s bottom line.

The process for doing so is similar to the ROI measurement protocol we’ve described on this site for social media marketing, though there are a few special issues to be aware of when it comes to content marketing campaigns.  To ensure you’re getting the best possible bang for your content marketing buck, take the following steps to determine whether or not your campaigns are converting:

1 – Define your conversion goals

While plenty of website owners approach content marketing as a way to drive buyers back to their pages, this isn’t the only type of impact that can be used to assess the success of a campaign.  Other possible content marketing goals could include:

• Increasing brand mentions within your industry
• Increasing social followers of your brand
• Increasing overall website traffic
• Improving natural search engine results page (SERP) rankings
• Increasing email marketing opt-ins
• Increasing sales or lead generation form completions

Any of these goals are perfectly viable content marketing initiatives, but the key is that you must have a way to measure your goal completion rate.

For example, take the idea of increasing brand mentions through content marketing.  It isn’t enough to simply say, “I’m getting more traffic to my site, so my content marketing campaign must be causing more brand mentions in my industry.”  You need to actually be able to measure your change in mentions and tie these mentions back to content marketing campaign pieces!

Fortunately, for each of the different goals listed above, there’s a quantifiable way to measure campaign success.  In the example of brand mentions, it’s possible to measure a metric called “Share of Voice (SOV)” using the free Social Mentions tool that will tell you whether your brand mentions are increasing relative to competitors in your industry.  SERPs ranking changes can be measured using any SEO tracking tool.  And in the case of social followers, website traffic, email opt-ins and product sales, goal completions can be measured by pulling the day-to-day changes in your account metrics (as in, number of Twitter followers one day compared to the next).

2 – Measure and manage your campaigns

Of course, generating goal completion data is only half the battle.  In addition, you need to be able to tie changes in your goal metrics to your content marketing campaigns.

To see why this is so important, imagine you undertake a content marketing campaign and see a 25% increase in sales – your target goal completion.  Pleased with the results, you decide to invest significant resources in producing further content pieces, as you’re sure that doing so will lead to even better results.

Now, what happens if – unbeknownst to you – the reason for your increase in sales wasn’t actually your content marketing campaign, but an improvement in your natural search rankings that occurred at the same time due to a Google algorithm change that was out of your control?  In this case, investing further into content marketing isn’t likely to benefit your business in any major way, as it wasn’t the key factor behind your initial increase in sales.

Depending on the type of content marketing goal you’re tracking and the reach of your campaign, distinguishing goals that occurred due as the result of your content promotions from those that can be attributed to other sources can be difficult.

If you’re tracking conversions that occur on your site – for example, email opt-ins, sales or lead gen form completions – you’ll definitely want to take a look at the combination of Google Analytics Goals and Advanced Traffic Segments.  When paired together, these two tools allow you to note when a goal completion occurs, as well as to filter out individual goal completions according to content marketing specific traffic sources.

For more information on how to do this, check out Google’s help section on Conversion Tracking.

3 – Understand the limitations of a content marketing campaign

Once you’ve put a tracking system in place to measure both goal completions and the traffic sources that enable them, you’ll be able to better understand how much your content marketing campaigns are contributing to your business’s overall success.

However, don’t get too far ahead of yourself here…

When we work with new Single Grain content marketing clients, we’re very clear to say that it may take a few months to generate solid conversion data that can be used to inform your campaign.  This is because our campaigns usually run according to the following structure:

Months 1-2 – Traffic Generation.  The first goal of all of our content marketing campaigns is simply to get visitors to the page.  Some of these visitors might wind up converting, but that isn’t our primary focus at first.  Instead, we want to get as many sets of eyeballs on a site as possible in order to start generating site usage data – sort of a, “throw the spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks” approach.

Months 3-4 – Visitor Engagement.  After generating our preliminary traffic data, we’ll start attempting to engage the new audience that’s building on a deeper level.  This might involve disseminating content pieces based on what’s proven successful with readers in the past or it might involve things like visitor surveys and reviews.  All in all, though, the goal is to start taking the next step in engagement, building a sustainable readership that can then be relied upon for conversions.

Months 5-6 – Conversion Rate Optimization.  Once we’ve used content marketing techniques to build up a steady, reliable readership, we then start honing in on the best ways to spur this audience to action.  As listed above, the specific types of conversions we target for each client may vary, but we have found that it’s helpful to build relationships with a site’s readers before asking them to take significant action.

The reason I tell you this is to help you put things in perspective.  If you’ve written a few “viral style” articles and published a single infographic, you aren’t really content marketing – you’ve run a few standalone promotions that aren’t likely to have any meaningful impact on your website’s success.  While it’s important to have testing and tracking measures in place, it’s also crucial that you look at content marketing as a long-term strategy that will help you to both improve the relationships you have with your audience members and your website results at the same time.

Any questions about how to take your own content marketing campaigns to the next level?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below:

Advertising your business on Facebook is an important part of any good social media marketing plan – but there’s a big difference between posting effective, engaging updates and sharing posts that fail to draw any attention to your brand!

So if you’re struggling to attract followers and fan engagement, consider any of the following strategies for improving your Facebook marketing activities:

1 – Tie updates to current events

When in doubt, try a status update that relates to a current event – like an upcoming holiday, major sports game or other newsworthy item.  Not only are these posts more likely to attract reader attention, you can gain an extra boost in engagement if your update is included in the “Posted About” groupings that appear on your followers’ news feeds.

2 – Use photos

According to data published by the AMEX Open Forum, Facebook posts that feature images receive 39% higher rates of engagement than other types of content.  Take your own photos, share photos from the profiles you follow or source Creative Commons images from Flickr to create your own viral-style profile updates.

3 – Keep your updates short

The same Open Forum infographic reveals another surprising engagement factor that all web businesses need to be aware of – the fact that short posts (those that are 80 characters or longer), receive 23% more interaction than longer updates.  Do your brand a favor and keep things short and sweet in order to boost overall engagement!

4 – Run caption contests

Part of running a successful Facebook marketing campaign involves deepening the connection between your brand and your followers.  Facebook users follow brands they like all the time, but they only make it a priority to interact with a select few.

If you want your followers to up their engagement level with your brand, you’ve got to get them commenting on your updates.  One of the easiest ways to do this is with a caption contest.  Post a funny picture, ask your followers to caption it and give out a prize to the best submission.  It’s a fun, easy and low commitment way to up your Facebook interaction levels.

5 – Ask a question

On a similar note, try posing a seemingly-random question to your Facebook followers.  Don’t tie it to your branding or marketing objectives – instead, make it something fun and engaging for your fans to respond to.  As an example, posting a question like, “What super power would you most like to have?” could be a great way to get your followers talking!

6 – Share quotes

Everybody loves a good inspirational quote – even if we know they’re not going to provoke much positive action beyond a few minutes of warm, fuzzy feelings.  The key here is that Facebook users don’t just love quotes – they love to share them as well.  To try this technique for yourself, find an inspirational quote that speaks to you and then use PicMonkey to add it to an artful image found in Flickr.  Post your final creation to your Facebook page and see if your engagement doesn’t skyrocket as a result!

7 – Avoid URL shorteners

Interestingly, a study by Buddy Media found that Facebook post engagement rates were three times higher when a full URL was included, compared to a shortened URL (as in, those offered by services like bit.ly).  If you absolutely must use shortened URLs – perhaps because you’re advertising long ecommerce URLs that are full of character strings – set up a brand-specific URL shortener to minimize this effect.

8 – Know when your followers are active

Additional data compiled by Social Media Examiner has revealed some interesting trends regarding when Facebook users are most active.  Specifically:

• The best time to post on Facebook is between 1:00pm-3:00pm, with 3:00pm on Wednesdays being the best time to post overall.
• Links posted outside of the 8:00am-8:00pm window are less likely to be shared.
• Facebook engagement rates tend to be 18% higher on Thursdays and Fridays.
• Posts shared on Saturday and Sunday get the most “Likes” (keep this in mind if you’re measuring engagement in terms of “Likes,” rather than comments or shares).

Of course, every fan base is different, so the statistics listed above may not match up exactly with your experiences.  However, if you’re just getting started with Facebook marketing, this framework should give you a rough timeline for boosting your fan engagement through status updates.

9 – Understand the “lifespan” of your updates

The “lifespan” of an update refers to the amount of time it remains in a follower’s news feed, and typically averages around 3 hours.  If you post more frequently than the lifespan of your posts, you risk annoying your followers with excessive updates – leading to a decrease in engagement.

To find your Facebook post lifespan, you’ll need a tool like Edgerank Checker Pro.  Although the tool costs $15/month, you can take advantage of its two-week free trial to see if the data generated makes a big enough difference in your Facebook marketing efforts.

10 – Ask for engagement

Just as you’re advised to “ask for the job” while interviewing, it’s a good idea to ask your Facebook directly for the type of engagement you’d like to see.  In fact, the Buddy Media study cited earlier found that the use of specific words – including “post,” “comment,” “take,” “submit,” “like” and “tell us” – all led to higher levels of engagement when posed directly to Facebook fans.  Ask, and you shall receive – just be careful not to overdo it!

11 – Ask yourself, “Would I share this?”

When it comes to Facebook engagement, don’t forget to use your common sense.  You can follow all the rules and guidelines in the world, but if you get so tied up in social media marketing best practices that you pump out dry, formulaic content, you’re not going to get anywhere with your fans.  To prevent this from happening, ask yourself “Would I share this?” before hitting “Publish” on any new status update.  If the answer is, “No,” head back to the drawing board for something better.

12 – Be quirky

Facebook – and social media websites in general – isn’t the place for branding slogans and marketing jargon.  Instead, be yourself!  Be wacky, be quirky and be a little bit “out there.”  Users come to Facebook to relax and let off steam, making them far more likely to engage with you if your brand doesn’t appear to be trying too hard.  Just be aware that there’s a fine line between quirky and weird.  Watch your Facebook engagement metrics carefully to see what sticks and what falls flat.

13 – Respond quickly to others

Keep in mind that Facebook “engagement” isn’t just about posting fun status updates and getting more “Likes.”  It’s a two-way street, which means that if a follower reaches out to your company’s profile, you need to be ready to respond as quickly as possible.  Response times matter in the world of social media, so check your profile at least once a day and respond to others as necessary to prevent your company from being seen as an unengaged brand.

14 – Stick to a posting schedule

On that same note, don’t post several times a day for a week and then fall off the face of the planet.  Consistency is key when it comes to social media marketing, as you want your followers to get used to seeing you in their news feeds.  If you can’t commit to posting at least once a day on your own, use a tool like the Buffer App to handle automatic posts for you.

15 – Be a person and a business

Finally, keep in mind that Facebook posts need a personal touch in order to be successful.  Your fans want to hear about your company and its news – but they don’t want to be tied into 24/7 sales pitches from your marketing team.  Finding a balance between personal and professional updates can be challenging, but it’s worth it to experiment with different post ratios and measure the results in your Facebook analytics panel in order to reach your highest possible engagement levels.

Got any other ideas on how to successfully boost engagement on Facebook?  Share your experiences and recommendations in the comments section below!

Image: mhkmarketing

We all know that social media outreach is an important component of every business endeavor these days – whether you’re using social sites to generate interest in your product or to develop an “online resume” of sorts that’ll help to get you hired.

However, there’s a big difference between effectively managing your social media activities and simply engaging sporadically with your networks.  Good social media outreach requires active management in order to conclusively prove a positive ROI – which is where any of the following tools come in…

1 – Klout

Price: Free

No list of social media engagement tools is complete without Klout, so let’s just get this one out of the way right now…

Basically, Klout attempts to “score” social media performance by tracking your engagement on various networks, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, Google+ and more.  Compiling metrics such as number of followers, frequency of engagement and relative standing of your followers, the Klout score is reported on a 0-100 basis with the intent of measuring overall influence on social channels.

On the one hand, Klout is by far the most widely used social media engagement tracking tool, so signing up for an account makes sense in the “see and be seen” world of the social web.  But as far as reporting tools go, the program doesn’t offer much concrete data in terms of measuring engagement.  While you can see the change in your overall score, as well as a list of recent interactions, the program can – at best – be used as a general overview to gauge whether or not your engagement efforts are proceeding successfully.

2 – Commun.it

Price: Free plan available; Paid plans start at $8.99/month

If your social media outreach program focuses primarily on Twitter, Commun.it deserves a place in your marketing toolbox.

Once you sign up for an account, a custom Commun.it dashboard is created for you featuring three columns: your main Twitter feed in the central column, a “Prioritized” Twitter feed showcasing tweets from your most important and influential followers on the right and a series of management tools in the left-hand column.

In this left-hand column, pay particular attention to the following sorting options, which allow you to view specific subsets of your Twitter relationships:

• “High Value Members” – This list allows you to pull out tweets from the members of your feed with whom you’ve had the most interactions.
• “Consider to Reply” – This criteria filters out tweets that mention you that you haven’t responded to (even adding a handy “Reply” button to the tweet itself).
• “Consider to Follow” – This sorting tool pulls a list of Twitter users that you should consider following, based on your existing relationships.

In addition to these and other sorting tools made available by Commun.it, you’ll want to check out the program’s reporting features, which allow you to compile reports on your profile’s activity and engagement levels.  Currently, the free version of the program allows for only 3 days of data reporting, though you can upgrade to a paid plan if you’d like access to longer spans of information.

3 – TwentyFeet

Price: One Twitter account free forever; Tracking additional services/profiles is paid on a credit basis

Unlike Commun.it, TwentyFeet relies more on metrics reporting than on the tracking of relationships.  If you’re a die-hard numbers junkie, this tool absolutely deserves a spot on your list of social media engagement tools!

Currently, the program is able to import statistics from Twitter, Facebook, bit.ly, Google Analytics, Youtube, Myspace, Friend Feed and various RSS feeds.  Once compiled, this information is reported on a series of graphs that measure:

• Reputation indicators
• Influence indicators
• Conversations
• Following analysis
• Lists
• More details

While TwentyFeet doesn’t go into detail on who you’re engaging with, it does offer a flashy way to visualize your engagement metrics across different networks.  As an added bonus, the program will notify you whenever something noteworthy happens on your profile – and you can even sign up for TwentyFeet’s “Battle” program (currently in alpha testing) to race your friends to higher levels of social media engagement.

4 – Crowdbooster

Price: Free 30-day trial; Paid plans start at $9/month

Crowdbooster functions as an all-in-one database for information on your Facebook and Twitter profiles.  Not only does the program combine many of the features described in the tools referenced above (specifically, the tracking of influential relationships as in Commun.it and the metrics measurements found in TwentyFeet), it offers a number of additional features that social media managers will find helpful.

For example, a few of the different Crowdbooster tools you’ll want to pay special attention to include:

• Real-time Facebook and Twitter analytics – This allows you to see the performance of your social media updates as they go live, giving you the data needed to plan more effective posts in the future.
• Recommended update scheduling times – Based on the activity of your audience, Crowdbooster recommends the times during which your tweets and profile updates will reach the largest number of users.
• Internal update scheduling – Using the Crowdbooster interface, you can schedule your tweets and profile updates to go live at specific times.
• Personalized recommendations – Based on your social media activity, Crowdbooster develops custom recommendations alerting you to the users and messages you should be engaging with on a higher level.

Though many social media managers will find it frustrating that the program currently only tracks Facebook and Twitter, there’s no arguing with the fact that the program’s graphic interface is one of the most attractive out there.  If you’re called on to present social media engagement reports to your boss or colleagues, you’ll definitely want to take a closer look at Crowdbooster.

5 – My Web Career

Price: Free plan available; Paid plans start at $4.99/month

If you’re a LinkedIn junkie, tools like Crowdbooster simply won’t give you the data you need to actively understand and engage with your professional network.  Don’t worry – that’s where My Web Career comes in…

My Web Career allows you to uncover and evaluate your career-oriented digital footprint.  The company uses link analysis, visualization and semantic technologies to assign a score to your online presence, in addition to providing recommendations on how to expand your reach even further.

Currently, the tool offers helpful recommendations on three specific areas of improvement:

• Your Network – Including how many people you’ve connected with online and how influential your connections are.
• Your Profiles – Including how complete your existing profiles are and where changes should be made to improve the appearance of your profiles for both other users and the search engines.
• Your Search Results – Including how and where your social profiles appear in the search engine results pages (available to premium subscribers only).

If you use social media to build your professional network – rather than, say, to respond directly to customers – My Web Career absolutely deserves a place in your social media monitoring arsenal.  But if you’re less concerned about the career implications of your social media usage, pass on this tool in favor of others that provide better reporting for Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

6 – Cloze

Price: Free

Like My Web Career, Cloze offers a unique way of looking at your digital network and prioritizing the relationships you have with different people.  However, Cloze takes this process one step further by pulling data from your Gmail accounts, as well as your social profiles.

The result is a clean interface that tracks information according to three key areas:

• “What’s New” – A list of all the different email messages and social profile updates that you haven’t responded to (but should).
• “Key People” – A list of your 1-100 most important connections (as determined by Cloze or added by you).  Cloze will notify you automatically when something changes with these key relationships and will remind you to follow up with them if you’ve missed an engagement opportunity.
• “All People” – A list of everyone you’ve engaged with recently, how frequently you’ve engaged with them and how your relationship is trending, compared with others in your profile.

Unlike some of the other tools listed above, Cloze doesn’t offer metric tracking tools that show you how your social media accounts have performed over time.  Instead, what it does is help you to improve the relationships you have with those who are already in (or who you’d like to be in) your networks – helping professionals at any level to make the most out of the social web.

7 – Sprout Social

Price: Free 30-day trial; Paid plans starting at $39/month

Finally, let’s look at the “mac daddy” of all social media engagement tracking tools – Sprout Social.  At a minimum investment of $39/month, the program isn’t cheap, but you do get a lot of bang for these bucks.

In its current incarnation, Sprout Social includes the best features of all of the different programs listed above.  Pulling data from your Twitter, Facebook, Google Analytics, LinkedIn and Google+ accounts, the program’s metric monitoring tools enable you to track who’s engaging with your brand, how your scheduled status updates are performing and what people are saying about your brand online.

Basically, if there’s a type of social media data you want to track, Sprout Social can help you do it!

In addition to these primary features, Sprout Social is set up to facilitate group management of social profiles, making it an ideal solution for larger companies and social media teams.  Of particular interest to these users will be the following advanced features:

• “Single stream” inbox technology, which enables Sprout Social users to view social media interactions as they occur – preventing teams from missing any important customer communications.
• Collaboration tools, which enable groups to effectively divvy up social media tasks and work more efficiently overall.
• Mobile app interfaces, which allow social media teams to manage their profiles anywhere, at any time.

Again, Sprout Social isn’t cheap, so put some time into determining whether your company truly needs the features this program contains – or whether you’d do just as well with a more cost-effective alternative.  If your social media management needs are more complex, though, Sprout Social might just be the program for you!

Of course, these are only a handful of the different social media engagement monitoring tools out there.  If you have another recommendation for a program you like, please share your thoughts in the comments below!

Think, for a second, about how you organize your email inbox as a personal user.  If you’re like the majority of email users today, you probably skim through the huge number of sales messages and newsletters you receive in search of personal correspondence – stopping on these “mass market” subject lines only if something special catches your eye.

As a personal user, this behavior makes sense, given the huge number of subscriptions and mailing lists most people tend to sign up for.  But if you’re the business that’s sending these messages, the thought of the vast majority of your recipients breezing past your finely-crafted missives may be more than a little frustrating!

So what’s a business to do to get its messages to stand out amidst its recipients’ cluttered inboxes?  For starters, write better subject lines!

The subject line of each message that your company sends out is just about the only thing your recipients have to go off of when determining whether an individual message is worthy of their time.  As a result, your subject lines must be compelling, yet informative – quite a departure from the hasty subjects many companies tack on to the complex, sales-oriented messages they’ve created.

If you want to get more eyeballs on your email marketing messages, you’ve got to do a better job of writing subject lines that compel recipients to open them.  Here’s what you need to know about optimizing your email marketing subject lines:

1 – Understand subject line best practices

First of all, it’s important to recognize that not all subject lines are created equally.  As with every other type of copywriting, email marketing subject lines have their own sets of “do’s and don’ts” that should be ignored at a marketer’s peril.

Specifically, the most-opened email subject lines tend to:

• Contain an obvious benefit for recipients – According to Marketing Sherpa research, the three types of email subject lines with the highest open rates include those that promise a discount, offer a free product/trial or that mention a familiar brand name.  This isn’t surprising, given that much of online marketing revolves around making the benefits of your company’s products or services obvious to potential customers.
• Be short – Typically, short subject lines have much higher open rates than their longer competitors.  And given that most users’ email programs display only 38-47 of a subject line’s total characters, it makes sense to get your message out as quickly as possible when it comes to subject lines!
• Include your company’s name – Since most email users are plagued by inbox clutter, it’s not surprising that subject lines which include a company’s brand name tend to be opened more frequently than generic subjects.  Keep in mind, though, that this effect will only be observed if consumers respond positively to your brand!

Compare your past subject lines to these recommendations and note where you’ve veered away from accepted industry best practices.  If you utilize an autoresponder to deliver regular follow-up messages, change any subject lines that don’t conform to these standards.  Or, if you typically only send out broadcast messages, adjust your future subject lines to reflect these guidelines.

2 – Study popular subject line templates

Of course, comparing your past email subject lines to industry standards can feel like comparing your amateur marathon times to a Kenyan runner’s.  Sometimes – especially if you’re new to the world of email marketing – it can be difficult to determine how exactly to apply the recommendations described above if you’ve never had much success with this promotional technique.

So if the best practices described above seem overwhelmingly confusing to you, another approach to consider is the study of popular subject line templates.  By adapting – not outright copying – the subject lines that have worked for other businesses, you can jumpstart your own success in this area.

For a few subject line examples to consider, check out the following resources:

• Email Subject Lines That Work Like Crazy
• The Subject Line Strategy That Gets 541% More Responses
• How to Write the Perfect Email Subject Line [Infographic]

Give some of these strategies a try, but keep in mind that what works for one industry or business may not work for your unique company.  By using these templates as a jumping off point, you can dramatically cut down the amount of time needed to improve your email marketing results.

3 – Split test headlines amongst your particular audience

Finally, when it comes to identifying the most effective subject lines for your company, the only true way to improve your email marketing skills is to pit different subject variations against each other using split testing.

As with website split testing, email subject line split testing allows you to send out broadcast emails using two separate subject lines in order to test which variation results in more message opens or internal link clicks.  Depending on your particular email marketing program, the exact split testing protocols that are available for your use may vary.

For example, the MailChimp program allows you to send split test variations to a small percentage of your overall list and wait to message the rest until a winner has been chosen from your split test.  This helps to ensure that the majority of your list receives the most effective subject line possible.  Other programs simply broadcast to your entire list using two subject line variations – generating message data that can be used to inform future message subjects.

The reason that this process is so important is highlighted above in Steps #1 and #2.  No message subject guideline or template will work equally well across all industries – so it’s not unusual to find that what kills in one industry falls flat in another.  A short, punchy subject line that works well in the health and fitness niche might not translate as well to the home crafting industry, which is why it’s so important to generate your own primary data based on your unique audience.

For best results, combine all three of the steps above.  Start by understanding what makes a subject line effective and then apply this knowledge to proven message subject templates that have been modified to suit your industry.  Finally, split test different variations of these message subject lines and use the information you glean from your tests in terms of open rates and internal clicks to make future email messages as effective as possible.

It’s a lengthy process, to be sure, but it’s one that stands to make a major difference in the overall effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns!

Image: bburky

Get with the program!  It isn’t 1996 anymore – website visitors today are about as tolerant of slow-loading websites as they are of the old dial-up modem sounds we all used to listen to in order to connect.

But the thing is, it isn’t just visitors that hate slow sites – Google and other major search engines now use site speed as a ranking factor.  In other words, you’ll tick off readers as well as the search engines if you force both groups to wait on overly-large images, excess HTTP requests and other site elements that can slow down load times.

So, with all of this mind, if you undertake only one SEO task this week, make it putting the following site speed best practices into effect in order to make your website insanely fast:

Reduce HTTP requests by combining images into CSS sprites

A major factor that determines your site speed is how many HTTP requests need to be sent before your website is fully loaded. Given the complex layout of most websites these days, it’s not uncommon to have dozens of images that must be loaded whenever you try to access the site.

For each image loaded, an HTTP request is sent. As a result, using more images in your website’s layout leads to more HTTP requests – which adds to the time it takes to load your website, as the total size of all the images downloaded together is much larger than if only one image is requested.

The solution here is to compress and combine all of your website layout images using CSS sprites.  Using this technique, you can significantly reduce the amount of communication that occurs between a visitor’s browser and your server by addressing the number of HTTP requests that are sent, as well as the overall size of the image that must be downloaded before your website is loaded.

To get started with this technique, check out the Spriteme tool, as well as the instructions found on this page that explain the process of combining images into CSS sprites.

Optimize images used on your website

There’s no doubt that using images on your website makes your pages more visually appealing – but it’s also clear that every picture you add to your site has the potential to slow it down.  Since returning to pages composed entirely of text is pretty much out of the question at this point, it’s important to understand how to optimize your site’s images according to SEO best practices.

A study by The Poynter Institute, The Estlow Center for Journalism & New Media, and Eyetools.com revealed that bigger images are more likely to draw in visitors and hold their attention, compared to smaller images. In fact, according to the study, an experiment on smaller images vs. larger images showed that 600% more people pay attention when bigger images are used.

Unfortunately, while using big images on your website can be effective in drawing people to your content; the bigger the images you use, the more bandwidth is required to access your site and the slower it becomes. When you use too many images, your site becomes so slow that people will close it even before they have the chance to view the images.

In most cases, the solution lies in optimizing your images using smaller file sizes that still retain their quality and impact.  You can significantly reduce the size of each image on your site by compressing, resizing or optimizing your picture files before uploading them to your server.

However, it’s that “before” part that many webmasters miss.  If you use WordPress, you’re probably aware that this popular site management tool allows you to upload full-size images to your site and then display a resized version in your articles.  These changes are made on the fly and don’t require any extra effort on the webmaster’s part in terms of modifying or compressing image files.

But unbeknownst to most WordPress users, most browsers will first load the full image before noticing WordPress’ command to resize the image – eventually adding to the time it takes to load your site. As you might expect, you can prevent this by resizing your images to the exact sizes you want before uploading them to your site.  Specifically, you can:

• Resize your images with this tool provided at ImageOptimizer.net.
• Optimize your images to remove unnecessary bytes with Yahoo Smush.it
• If you’re a WordPress user, you can install the WP Smush.it, a WordPress plugin that automatically optimizes and reduce the size of each WordPress image you use.

Use a CDN

You can also speed up your website by making use of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) – large collections of servers housed in multiple locations all over the world.  Basically, when you upload your content to a CDN, several copies of your website will be stored on different servers in different countries – ready to be served to people visiting your website from nearby locations.

As a rule, one of the factors that influences how fast users will be able to access your website is their location.  For example, a user in the US will be able to access a website hosted in the US much faster than a user based in Germany will be able to load the same US-based pages.

By using a CDN, your server network will automatically serve up the version of your site that’s hosted on the nearest server, instead of serving up the same, locally-hosted version of your website to everybody.  The result?  Faster website load times and happier users overall.

If you’re intrigued by the potential of CDNs, check out MaxCDN and Amazon CloudFront – two great services that can help walk you through the process of transitioning to a CDN.

Reduce the number of plugins you use

Another step towards making your website lightning fast is to significantly reduce the number of plugins you use on your site.

Not only will multiple plugins slow down your website, they actually make your site more vulnerable to potential security threats. This is especially true if you use an open source CMS system like WordPress, as each plugin is coded by a different person – resulting in inconsistent code and new security loopholes.

Besides, the majority of the things you use plugins for could be coded into your theme, including:

• Social sharing buttons
• Opt-in forms
• Calls-to-action
• Archives
• Comments

Whenever you think about installing a plugin, ask yourself these two questions first:

• Is it necessary to have the feature the plugin provides?
• If it’s necessary, can it be coded into my theme?

If it’s possible to add your desired functionality to your site’s theme – rather than install yet another plugin – talk to your web developer about adding the necessary code in order to keep your load times fast.

Avoid hot-linking or linking to external images

One bad habit that plenty of webmasters fall into is embedding images that are hosted on other sites or servers into their articles – often because seems easier to do than to go about downloading, resizing and uploading images on their own.

Unfortunately, hosting your images on another server won’t benefit you. Not only can doing so set you up for potential copyright violations (especially if you don’t have permission to hot-link to the images in question), doing so can actually make your site slower.  When a reader visits a page on your site that uses a hot-linked image, the server will have to request content from your website first before requesting the image from the other server.

As a result, any of the following situations could occur:

• If a large number of people are trying to access the server where your image is loaded, it could slow down or even block access to people who are trying to access files from external sources. This, in turn, results in your website running extremely slowly.
• The external server could be down; in which case, your visitor’s browser will keep trying to pull images from a server that isn’t working, ultimately affecting your own site’s speed.

The obvious solution to this problem is to avoid hot-linking altogether and to host all of your site’s images on your server (following the tips outlined earlier in this article to optimize these images for site speed).

Cache your website

Finally, you can speed up your website by implementing caching system.  Essentially, this means that, when a certain page on your website is accessed by a user, a version of that page is automatically saved on the users’ computer so that it can be served up immediately – instead of being reloaded – should it be accessed again in the future.

When set up correctly, this prevents new requests being made to your server every time the same page is loaded, making your site faster for new and returning visitors as a result.

If you don’t yet have a caching solution installed, check out the Varnish program, which can be easily uploaded to your server.  Or, if you’re a WordPress user, you can install the W3 Total Cache plugin which will handle several different caching functions automatically.

Certainly, these are only a few of the different steps you can take in pursuit of an insanely fast website.  The science behind site speed is complex and highly-technical; though, by making these recommended changes, you should be able to improve your site’s load times sufficiently to satisfy both discerning visitors and the search engines’ indexing programs.

Image: JD Hancock