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By  Jay Shemenski  – Apr 26, 2016 2016-04-27T11:58:03+00:00   Jay Shemenski   Blogger Extraordinaire   Simply Measured Education & Analysis Social Media How to Set Social Media Goals and Define Success   2016-04-27T11:58:03+00:00   Jay Shemenski   Blogger Extraordinaire   Simply Measured One of the most difficult elements of developing  a social media marketing plan  is defining success and the metrics which will represent that success. There is an assortment of numbers to choose from, ranging from the much-maligned  “vanity” metrics  to advanced data, like Lifetime Value of a customer: Customer Acquisition Cost (LTV:CAC). How to Create a Monthly Social Media Report Download With many options and little precedent, a lot of  marketers  and  social media managers  are left asking, “Where do I start?” First, and most importantly, you need to establish the ultimate b...

April 8, 2016     Taylor Loren   Instagram can be a great marketing tool for your business, but how do you turn your Instagram followers into customers?  Meowbox  is a cat-related startup with over 500,00 Instagram followers, and they’ve built their business through Instagram (and cute cat photos). They increased  their Instagram followers  10x in a single year, with zero ad budget. Read on to learn about how you too can get more followers on Instagram and grow your business organically, without a budget! Meowbox  is a monthly subscription box dedicated to cats, and every month you get 5-7 unique goodies, so your cat never gets the same treat or toys twice. Each box is hand personalized with your cat’s name(s), and there’s also an emphasis on hand-made items you can’t find anywhere else. We caught up with Meowbox co-founder Olivia Canlas to chat about their Instagram strategy and what goes on behind-the-scenes of their popular In...

How do you submit your XML sitemap to Google Search Console? You can make your sitemap available to Google in one of two ways: submit it on Google Search Console or add it to your robots.txt file. Before you submit your sitemap to GSC, you must  verify your site  with Google. Then “add/test” your sitemap in GSC. Get the instructions  here . What You Should Know About XML Sitemaps From those surveyed, there are still many search marketers who aren’t confident in sitemap best practices. Google has a great resource that tells you exactly what they’re looking for in a  good sitemap  but we’ve put together a quick, little guide below. How to Create a Sitemap If you search for XML sitemap generator, there should be a number of free websites you can use to generate your sitemap. Screaming Frog is also a great option to create all five types of sitemaps with their paid version. Most content management systems also have plugins...

By  Jack Simpson  @ Econsultancy Counting shares 8 comments Email might not be the sexiest form of communication around these days what with smartphones and Apple Watches and  pigeon-drone hybrids  but it's still going strong in the business world. In our recent  email marketing census , 74% of marketers said they believe email still be one of the highest channels for delivering ROI in five years’ time. But email marketing is far from easy, and anyone like me who ignores 99% of the stuff that lands in their inbox will know first-hand how competitive this channel can be. I thought it would therefore be good to take a look at some tools that can make the life of an email marketer much easier. MailChimp MailChimp is one of the most popular email marketing platforms for a reason. Its interface is clean and simple, and it offers plenty of decent features on its free account. The best thing about this platform is how easy it is for...

Content Marketing by  Lesley Vos Lesley Vos is a content writer and blogger of  Bid4papers . Being an active social media user and current contributor to many websites, she is ready to share her writings and ideas with those people who need them. The first thing everyone finds out about me is that I love lists and checklists. Shopping lists, to-do lists, reading lists—I am always thrilled to make them. It’d be a shame if I didn’t have a detailed checklist for my #1 activity: content writing. For all my industry peers who face the daily challenge of keeping in mind all aspects of content creation, this list breaks down a content marketing process step-by-step. I bet you know all of them. But I bet my bottom dollar you forget some of them on an incredibly regular basis. And as we all know, repetition is the mother of skill, isn’t it? Idea Generation Stage Before implementation, idea generation comes. (As Yoda would phrase it...

Design   Published on  January 13th, 2016 |  by Lisa Furgison When it comes to email design, people often ask lots of questions. How many colors should I use in my template? What fonts or image formats are best? Should images be included in every email? It’s true – there’s a lot to consider. That’s why we’ve created this handy guide filled with tips to create effective and  well-designed emails . Among the key themes, we cover the dos and don’ts of email design for commonly sent emails including email newsletters, sales emails,  welcome emails  and event/invitation emails. Last but not least, at the end you’ll find a toolkit that features some of our favorite time-saving resources. Email Newsletters Email newsletters  are a great way to engage with your audience. That’s likely why 74% of  VerticalResponse  customers send newsletters. Email newsletter design should adjust to include more text than a typical email, so...

November 12, 2015  Chad Pollitt As 2015 begins to wind down, the prediction posts pontificating what the next year has in store have begun to ramp up. This has become something of an annual tradition for marketers and this season is no exception. What does next year hold in store for our industry? There’s no way of knowing for sure, but below is how I see things shaping up for next year. 1. Social media traffic to most websites will decline The more people go in-app with their social media use, the more it will appear as though social traffic is on the decline. In actuality, it’s likely an attribution error. Many mobile apps strip out what’s known as  UTM parameters  from links or simply obfuscate itself as a source. This causes analytics programs to view the traffic as direct as opposed to social or referral. Also, Twitter has been making changes to its API as of late, the result of which has led to the disablement of ...