June 2016

Recent Twitter Changes And Updates 2016
Gallery
Recent Twitter Changes And Updates 2016

Twitter, Social Media

24 06, 2016

Recent Twitter Changes And Updates 2016

By Stephen|2019-01-30T21:20:50+00:00June 24th, 2016|Twitter, Social Media|0 Comments

Twitter Changes And What They Mean For You

Social Media has come a long way from the simple format of typing something into a box, clicking the send button and people liking it. It has evolved into a format that every business and individual uses to promote, sell and create content that gets shared around on a regular basis. It is not just a service to connect with each other anymore, but somewhere to be ruthless in attracting the right individuals or companies back to your website.

Twitter is one of these social media platforms (and the basis of this post) that have evolved with the changing nature of how we interact with each other online, culminating in many updates to its core service and features.

Here Are Some Examples Of Twitter Changes Over The Years…

Promoted Tweets

First introduced in 2010 as Twitters answer to other platforms utilising promoted content (and how Twitter makes it’s money). Users can pay a fee each day to get their tweet promoted to a users twitter feed, regardless of whether they follow that account or not. Of course Twitter have updated this feature, improving it’s algorithm so it doesn’t come across as intrusive to the users experience when they are scrolling through their feed. Fun fact: Depending on the type of promotion/exposure you want, promoted tweets can range from £0.40 – £1.60 per engagement, promoted accounts £2.00 – £3.20 per new follower and if you want a promoted trend, that can set you back around £160,000 per day!
Profile Changes

Twitter has come a long way with it’s user interface, making really useful improvements for users and businesses to promote themselves if used effectively. The personalisation options have improved significantly, even to the point of allowing users to change their profile colour to match their brand. Take a look at the images below and you’ll get the picture (no pun intended) of how much Twitter has changed…

If you are wandering, yes that is my Twitter profile. Here is a link to Digital Web World’s.

Timeline Improvements

This is where it can get divisive with the Twitter user base. Twitter have constantly played around with the timeline and how users see the tweets and retweets of the accounts they are following. Most of the user base like the chronological nature of the old timeline and are not a fan of the new algorithm Twitter have only implemented recently. This new algorithm organises tweets into what it feels the user is most interested in (you can turn it off).
Changes To The Tweet

The core to Twitters successful rise, the tweet hasn’t really changed, only expanding. What I mean by that is many features have been added to make the tweet more than just text. This includes images, videos, gifs, polls, links and emojis. One thing that has remained the same is the 140 character limit for a tweet, and that doesn’t look set to change any time soon. Twitter actually wanted to expand this limit to the wrath of its loyal fan base, so instead they have decided to give users more freedom with the 140 character limit. This means that images and URLs will no longer count towards the character limit, allowing users more space to be creative whilst also keeping what makes Twitter unique in the first place.

There have also been many more Twitter changes that I haven’t put here, simply because this post will become too long (and I will feel bad if I take up anymore of your time). I have mentioned the key changes that have had the biggest effect on the way people use the platform and interact with each other.

If you are a start-up or any size of business, Twitter in its current state is perfect for promoting your services with a plethora of features to make your profile and tweets appealing to your target audience who are probably on Twitter!

For more on Twitter and Social Media in general, consider visiting:

Social Media

Keeping It Simple, How To Write Stunning Blog Posts – A 5 Minute Read
Gallery
Keeping It Simple, How To Write Stunning Blog Posts – A 5 Minute Read

Blog, Keywords

8 06, 2016

Keeping It Simple, How To Write Stunning Blog Posts – A 5 Minute Read

By Stephen|2019-01-30T21:20:50+00:00June 8th, 2016|Blog, Keywords|0 Comments

How To Write A Stunning Blog Post

Blog posts should be more than 300 words? Correct we all know this, but what about the really long 1,000 word plus blog posts you often see and give up on three paragraphs in? Well they are equally as important and providing they are well written will gain you significant SEO advantages.

Your blogs should be no fewer than 300 words that’s for certain. However writing a 1,000 word blog post is not easy and requires planning and a serious amount of research. The general rule is 1,000 word blog post to every three 300 plus word blog posts.

In this article we go through how you can really drive high quality traffic through to your website with really well written content that has a high key word density of greater than 2.5%, with great relevant back links that will really help drive your organic rankings.   Before we start advising on the structure and types of great content writing for your blog, we explore why a lengthy blog post really makes a difference with Google and Bing search engines.

At Digital Web World we have a few articles that are over 3,000 words in length, they really help drive some great organic traffic to our website. But why?

Google, Bing and the other major search engines all look at your key word density, your article structure, how easy to read your article is, your back links and interlinks within your post and rank your site accordingly. When you write a blog post of over 1,000 words compared to blog posts of only 300 words Google and Bing have more content to analyse and decide exactly what your article is about.

As part of your longer blog post you will have considerably more pictures, more headings, more links in which your chosen keyword are listed.

Your lengthy long tail key words you have within your article will also have a greater chance to be picked up by the search engines. The more associated topics, always related to your key word of course, the greater the possibility of your article being picked up and then bringing you valuable FREE organic traffic to your site.

Large blog posts require you to really hold your readers attention. 1000 well written words is not easy to achieve and a blog post that cannot hold your readers attention will work against you. If you don’t get the clicks on your article, it may be well optimised for Google and Bing but it won’t be of any use to your reader.

So what? We now show you how you can really get to grips with your blog posting and deliver some great, well researched content that your readers will love. Feel free to download our calendar at the end of this article which will give a free calendar with key events on a month by month basis all the way through to the end of 2017. Thats 18 months of FREE calendars that you can plug in your the key dates, marketing initiatives and other inspirational days for you to associate and blog content around.

How Much Time Should I Spend On My Blog?

We estimate it takes approximately 4 hours to create a well written 1000 word piece that has been optimised for your key words, links and pictures. 90 mins to produce an article of about 300 words that has been optimised with pictures and some relevant links. However if you are a first timer then this could well extend to over a week in time. BUT the preparation time is key here as this is what will save you the time in the long run.

So Where Do We Start?

Before you press a single key on your keyboard you need to answer these simple questions.

Why not try this now it will only take you a couple of minutes. You probably have an idea in your head, why not try and answer these questions before you start.

What do you want to achieve? There must be a higher purpose. What do you want the reader to do following the reading of your blog? What Call to Action are you trying to get the reader to follow ?  Here are some ideas: download a white paper, follow link to purchase, sign-up to an email resource?

What is the question you want to answer for your reader?
What audience are you writing for? This is fundamental and surprisingly often forgotten.
What information or research do you need to undertake to write your blog post? Don’t forget imagery here as this is also very important for SEO and engagement.
How do you want to structure your article? Tell your audience about the article at the beginning. Inform them and provide information in the article. Summarise the article by telling your audience what you have just told them.

Now Onto Writing Your Blog Post

We know that poorly written articles will simply not be read. So how do we make them read well?

Follow these easy steps for a great blog read…

Short Sentences

Keep sentences short and punctuated correctly. See what we did there.

Why not try this now it will only take you a couple of minutes. You probably have an idea in your head, why not try and answer these questions before you start.

Active Voice And Enthusiasm

Write in an ‘active’ and future tense NOT an ‘inactive’ or ‘past’ tense. Why? Well most readers prefer a positive and ‘active’ upbeat voice as opposed to a more perceptively negative ‘voice’.I do empathise with you if you are writing for a card-board manufacturing company and this doesn’t really float your boat. However writing with enthusiasm and a positive active voice will make a considerable difference and I suggest that anything can be made interesting with some research and an upbeat positive ‘active’ voice.

Good Structure

Structure your blog posts with short paragraphs. If writing a 1000 word plus article make sure that you use plenty of sub-headings. Possibly think about indexing the blog post at the start to ensure that the reader can go direct to a subject that interests them. This produces a better user experience and its all about the user experience right.

The Flesch–Kincaid

This readability score measures just how easy to read your blog post or article is. It looks at the sentence structure, paragraph length, ideas presented and words used.

Measured from 0 to 100 anything between 60.0 and 70.0 is generally seen as acceptable, with anything over this score your ideal target. Google considers readability very important and it is no coincidence that most blogs that rank well in search engines are ones with a Flesch–Kincaid score of 70 plus.

Use Formatting

It helps to slow down the reader.Highlighting specific text within your blog by underlining, highlighting in BOLD or italic will significantly improve readability.

Get Rid Of Filler Words

Filler words lengthen your blog but they are also irrelevant and will not improve your Flesch-Kincaid score. So here are a few examples that should be avoided:

NO: Why not use some of these great SEO blog techniques.   YES: Use some of these great SEO blog techniques.

NO: Make use of italics, underlining and highlighting.

YES: Use underlining, italics and highlighting.

Planning Your Content

Start of very simply to get a view on your Blog Requirements, target segment, and ;timescales for resource planning. We have provided a very simple but effective Blog Calendar in which you can download and simply plan your blogs.

If you don’t plan the old adage will stand true.

Simply brainstorm your content. Here is a great way to brainstorm your ideas for your Website for free.

After brainstorming your content then add the ideas to a list. Select the list and the target url’s that could be best associated with that topic you have captured that is most relevant. If you don’t have an appropriate topic or page it might be worth adding one to the list.

Your Keywords And Phrases

Then comes the keyword research bit. This is the bit where you capture the keywords that are most relevant to your business topic that you will be blogging about. The keyword research for volumes are important here, but most important is the fact that you will be keeping the keywords relevant. RELEVANCE RELEVANCE RELEVANCE!

Great keyword research tools are:

SEMrush

Google AdWords Keyword Planner

Your Keywords And Phrases

These should be positioned in a number of places throughout the blog.

Social Media Changes In 2016 In 5 Minutes
Gallery
Social Media Changes In 2016 In 5 Minutes

Social Media, Facebook, Twitter

1 06, 2016

Social Media Changes In 2016 In 5 Minutes

By Stephen|2019-01-30T21:20:50+00:00June 1st, 2016|Social Media, Facebook, Twitter|0 Comments

Social Media Changes 2016 Snippets

The following is a list of the Social Media Changes 2016 from our marketing survey conducted among fellow marketeers in a combination of B2B and B2C sectors and a wide range of multiple verticals.

72% of marketeers thought that marketing content will be the most important of their Marketing Strategies in 2016.
BUT only 38% of companies have documented strategies for content marketing within the company.
Out of those businesses only a staggering 18% share their content strategy with their colleagues in paid search! yet the two are inexorably linked.
Inbound Marketing delivered 39% more leads into the marketing department than other forms of marketing efforts at a smaller cost.
81% of marketing professionals felt more pressured to show a return on their investment in marketing, we don’t see that changing and the rise of implied easy to use analytics will become more important.
Over 60% of Marketeers said that great content will be the single most important focus in 2016 with blogs and inbound having a large effect on Social Media Changes 2016.
Inbound marketing saves a staggering 16% in overall cost per lead. A staggering 190 Million of Facebook’s users are “mobile only”.
Active content generates the greatest response of all content marketing efforts, with over 60% generating a response or conversion.
Personalised email content including integrating a persons name in your marketing content had a 28% impact on open rates.
Video is the greatest opportunity for businesses in 2016, with ever increasing YouTube and Periscope content being shared.
73% of marketers plan to increase their YouTube presence.
Video marketing will be the fastest growing marketing element for Google AdWords in 2016.

Live Video Streaming Trend to Continue?

Beyond all the stats of Social Media Changes in 2016, the biggest changes are happening in the way we surf and what we prefer to do when we do. The fascination and the desire to take pictures of everything and anything now being superseded by the desire to live video stream. Periscope and Meerkat being two of the largest of the app streaming services, with the only difference between the two platforms being the fact that Periscope keeps your video for a further 24 hours compared to Meerkats video that disappears once the live stream has finished.  Periscope was bought by Twitter back in May 2015 even before it officially launched for an estimated $50m. It also acquired the start-up, Niche that joins social media stars with brands to enable more monetisation of Social Media content. The combined costs for both the start-ups is $86m as there is not an exact figure for how much it acquired Periscope for.

The live video feeds have been made possible by the rapid deployment of 4G globally and now its possible to watch a live stream from a riot somewhere in the world to snippets of a gig flicking from one to the other.

Exactly what impact this will have on broadcasting is unclear as the live steams are a long way off having the production quality of a live broadcast, however the format does win with the instant capability of the software.  Twitter has now made the connection with Periscope so technically you can watch a live video feed from Twitter. BUT thats not all from Twitter, Jack Dorsey the creator of Twitter last week announced some other changes that are mostly welcomed by the community. The changes represent a major departure from the character limits that are well known from the social platform.

NEW! Twitter Changes Coming Soon

Social Media Changes 2016 continues with out list of the major changes from Twitter hot off the press. All good for the user, we don’t think there will be too many objections to these. We know that for the past ten years the Tweet hasn’t changed significantly from the simple 140 character text message, but this is about to change in the next month or so. Twitter are changing the tweet to a wider range of creative expression featuring photos, videos, hashtags, Vines, poll your community, use GIFs, and share live Periscope broadcasts in Tweets.

BUT Social Media Changes 2016 will change fundamentally with Twitter about to implement a huge simplification process. Those precious 140 characters will now go a lot further.   @names in replies and media attachments such as images, GIFs, videos etc. will no longer use any of your valuable 140 characters.

Retweet and Quote Tweet yourself! Twitter previously prevented from Re-Tweeting and Quoting yourself and this has now changed, so if you feel a tweet has been lost in the ether you can retweet yourself and quote yourself.

.@ you had to use the .@ convention to previously tweet to a broadcast audience which lets face it was pretty ugly. Now you don’t have to use the @ convention to tweet to a larger more broad audience anymore. You simply Retweet to get it noticed by a broader audience.

We think all of these changes in Twitter are welcome additions to a fantastic Social Media platform for marketers. What makes Twitter great is the fact that its brief, quick and simple.Twitter have got to make sure that it keeps its audience by not losing the brevity which makes it is so appealing.

For further information see Social Media

If you are interested in you or your team being more effective and confident with Social Media then why not book one of our day courses.

Credentials Area