7 best social media monitoring tools for any business

People have always talked about brands and products. They’ve praised and complained about companies in the dining rooms, by the water cooler, over the phone. With the rise of social media, this previously intangible word-of-mouth has finally become measurable — and thus amplifiable — for businesses. Social media listening, the process of using a tool to monitor online mentions of a brand (or anything else), gives companies access to that data.

For this post, we’ve put together a list of 7 most robust social media monitoring tools to bring you real-time insights on your customers, market, and competition.

1. Awario

Awario is a relative newcomer to the social media monitoring and analytics scene. Its ambition is to make social media insights affordable for any brand, be it a startup, an international company, or a digital agency. With pricing plans starting at $29/mo, Awario offers Enterprise capabilities (from Boolean search to Sentiment Analysis to Share of Voice) included in every plan.

You can use Awario to monitor mentions of your brand, competitors, industry, or set up queries for the less obvious use cases. For instance, the app lets you identify guest blogging opportunities, discover content ideas, and find industry influencers to partner with. That’s where the tool’s flexible Boolean search mode comes in handy: it lets you create complex queries that will satisfy even the nerdiest of marketers.

On top of social media, Awario covers news, blogs, and the entire web to give you a holistic picture of your brand’s online presence.

Supported platforms

Twitter,  Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, news, blogs, the web.

Customer rating

 

 4.5/5 (Capterra).

Reviewers mention Awario’s affordability, Boolean search, influencer marketing capabilities, and excellent customer support as the main pros.

Pricing

There’s a free trial that lets you test Awario out before settling on one of its paid plans.

2. Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a suite of 3 tools for marketing and PR teams. Its Audiences product lets you find groups of people based on your targeting rules, such as demographic criteria and interests. It lets you better understand your customers by analyzing their social media posts and pinpointing what sets them apart from the general public.

Vizia is a visualization tool that lets you build custom dashboards based on Brandwatch data. Vizia also works with third-party tools, such as BuzzSumo and Google Analytics, to give you a comprehensive way to measure your marketing efforts.

The company’s social media monitoring tool is called Analytics. It comes equipped with image recognition, API access, and analytical dashboards that can be downloaded as PowerPoint presentations in a click.

Supported platforms

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Sina Weibo, VK, QQ, blogs, news, the web.

Customer rating

   4/5 (Capterra).

The tool’s users love its media coverage and customizable dashboards. The biggest con is its cost.

Pricing

Brandwatch offers 3 plans to choose from. There’s no free trial, but you can contact the team for a demo of the product.

3. Hootsuite

If you aren’t looking for an in-depth social media monitoring tool, but would rather opt for something that offers publishing, collaboration, and monitoring features, Hootsuite is an excellent choice.

While the app itself doesn’t monitor sources beyond social media, it offers many useful integrations with tools like Brandwatch and Reputology for your reputation management needs. Some of those are free, while some need to be purchased as add-ons.

Supported platforms

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. More sources available via integrations.

Customer rating

 

 4.5/5 (Capterra).

Users love Hootsuite’s user-friendly layout and the fact that it supports all major social networks for scheduling.

Pricing

Hootsuite has a free trial that lets you play around with the tool before you jump on one of its three paid plans.

4. Meltwater

Meltwater is an Enterprise media intelligence tool. While not a dedicated social listening solution (Meltwater also offers PR and social media management capabilities), it includes robust tools for monitoring mentions of your keywords across the Internet.

Meltwater’s strength is the analytics the software provides: it lets you create custom dashboards with metrics that matter to you, from audience demographics to the reach of the social media chatter around your brand.

Supported platforms

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, blogs, news, the web, broadcast.

Customer rating

 3.5/5 (Capterra).

The biggest pros mentioned by users are Meltwater’s coverage and powerful reports, with the main downside being its cost.

Pricing

Meltwater’s social media monitoring package is priced at $15,000/year. For more information, you’ll need to talk to the company’s sales team.

5. Talkwalker

Talkwalker is a perfect social media listening tool for big brands and agencies. Apart from providing you with the latest mentions of your brand and competitors, Talkwalker offers powerful analytics that let you spot trends in the buzz around your keywords. It goes beyond basic reporting by analyzing your audience’s demographics, occupation, and interests. It also builds powerful word clouds that let you identify hashtags that are most commonly used together with your keyword.

On top of tracking conversations across social media channels and the web, Talkwalker monitors print and TV mentions. Image recognition is also available in the Enterprise plan.

Supported platforms

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Flickr, blogs, news, the web, print, TV.

Customer rating

 4.5/5 (Capterra).

Customers mention Talkwalker’s ease of use, extensive coverage, and real-time alerts as the main pros.

Pricing

Talkwalker offers three subscription plans on their website.

6. Tweetdeck

TweetDeck, owned by Twitter, is an all-in-one dashboard for your Twitter activity. It lets you schedule tweets, interact with your feed, manage your inbox, and track mentions of your company (or anything else) on the network.

While the tool’s social listening capabilities are limited to one social network, its search options are pretty impressive for a free app. You can add keywords in flexible formats, exclude certain terms, and filter results by country, language, or date. You can set up as many searches as you need and reply to tweets right from the dashboard by connecting your Twitter account to the app.

Supported platforms

Twitter.

Customer rating

 4.5/5 (Capterra).

Customers love TweetDeck’s column layout, multi-account support, and scheduling options.

Pricing

Tweetdeck is absolutely free.

7. Agorapulse

Agorapulse is another two-in-one social media tool: while the app primarily focuses on social media management, it also offers listening capabilities for selected social networks. Though Agorapulse doesn’t include web monitoring, it’s a great option if you’re looking for a scheduling app that will also notify you of social brand mentions.

On top of publishing and social media monitoring, Agorapulse lets you find influencers and streamline outreach and communication with the help of its inbuilt CRM.

Supported platforms

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube.

Customer rating

  4.5/5 (Capterra).

Users love the fact that Agorapulse combines social media management with social listening, the tool’s ease of use, and its excellent customer service.

Pricing

Agorapulse offers a free trial. After you try the tool, you can pick one of the four available subscription plans.

Conclusion

Social media has become the place where consumers talk about everything — and that includes your brand. As more companies turn to social media monitoring for insights, social media monitoring tools are catching up and becoming more elaborate and affordable. However, don’t forget that the insights the tools provide aren’t everything — it’s the decisions you make and the actions you take based on those insights that will make your brand stand out.

About The Author

Every day, the web is talking about your business. Most brands have limited insights into these conversations: only through their own social media feeds. To truly understand their customers, companies need access not only to their social media mentions, but to those from the rest of the web as well. Awario crawls over 13 billion web pages daily to bring instant mentions from everywhere online. Companies can now find all the important conversations, related to them, and join in. For more information and a free 14-day trial visit awario.com.

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Google Rolled Out The New GoogleBot Over Several Months

Just an FYI, Google did not simply flip the switch last week and turn on the new GoogleBot, the evergreen GoogleBot, over night. Google said it was already indexing 10% of the web back in November. It scaled from less than 1%, to 1%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 75%, to 100% over several months and just reached 100% last week.

We didn’t notice because Google didn’t change the useragent of this evergreen GoogleBot, although we did see some evidence of it back in April.

I asked Martin Splitt and John Mueller about this last Friday in a webmaster hangout. I was curious if this was the reason for the chatter around a possible Google update last week. It could have been related to indexing and not an algorithm update but based on Martin’s answer, it seems it was not related to the new GoogleBot.

Here is the video embed, it first starts with me asking John Mueller about it, before Martin Splitt joined the hangout at 6:47:

Barry Schwartz: Can we talk about Googlebot a little bit? So it went live technically two days ago, the new Googlebot, the new evergreen Googlebot?

John Mueller: Well we’ve been testing it for awhile. Hard to say when it went live because there’s always this kind of transition period.

Barry Schwartz: So where did it go a hundred percent live or it’s still transitioning? I don’t know right, I need to have the other Martin here. But my understanding is it’s it’s a hundred percent live.

Then at 20:45 Martin Splitt joined and John asked him the question for me:

John Mueller: Did we switch to the new version of Chrome completely for crawling and indexing?

Martin Splitt: Yes, yes. So the thing, the thing that we do is as you, know we keep experimenting on new stuff with Googlebot on very very small sets of URLs basically very small sample. Sometimes just like basically a couple of URLs really. But we continuously improve or increase the amount of the sites that we would be crawling with Googlebot over the last couple of months, very carefully monitoring what was happening. The things, the issue that we confirmed that happened a couple months that has nothing to do with rendering. But yeah so we have been increasing continuously increasing the sample size of the URLs that we were crawling with the new Googlebot and half ramped it up to 100% already. I don’t know the exact day when we did to be honest. I don’t have it on top of my head because it just went smoothly.

Barry Schwartz: Was it from like 10% to like a hundred percent?

Martin Splitt: No, no no. It was less than 1%, 1%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 75%, 100%, I think were the steps that I have observed.

Barry Schwartz: You could send me an email with the exact percentages and dates… I am joking.

Martin Splitt: But basically it was a pretty rolling thing. I just sampled it at random points of time and checked in with rendering team. Zoe is in the rendering team, the person that was yesterday on stage for that JavaScript session. And I would I was as excited about it as everyone else. I was like oh joy. But I don’t think I know the dates.

Barry Schwartz: But the whole process started a few months ago or a year ago? Or terms of the 1% testing.

Martin Splitt: I don’t know. So I remember so I remember I talked to Zoey in December last year and I think that was, oh November. November we were at 10 percent.

So it seems it was pretty close to 80-80% for some time and that algorithm update was likely unrelated to this GoogleBot release.

Forum discussion at YouTube.

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Martech platforms reduce costs as CMOs face budget cuts

Just this week, Gartner reported 65% of 176 marketing leaders said they are bracing for moderate to significant budget cuts as a result of coronavirus-related disruptions. Fortunately for our marketing operations community, many platforms are already making concessions to help marketers by reducing costs and, in some cases, even suspending billing.

Adobe is offering Magento Commerce and Marketo Engage free of charge for three months, and has put together a “Launch Package” for SMBs needing to take their business online as quickly as possible. Salesforce says it has expanded its Salesforce Care services and support solutions, making it available for free to customers and non-customers for 90-days.

Related: Compare marketing automation platforms

Adzooma, a digital ad platform for brands advertising via Google, Facebook and Microsoft, is not only offering free access to its platform until, at least, the start of June, 2020, it also is suspending billing for all existing agency and SME clients, “To help ease the load in these difficult times.”

The online video platform Loom announced earlier in March that it was cutting monthly fees from $10 a month to $5 a month through July 1, 2020. It also has removed recording limits on the free version of its plan and is extending free trials of Loom Pro from 14 days to 15 days. The company also made Loom Pro free for students and teachers at educational institutions.

“Our hope is that by stepping up, we’re making a dent in the global impact this pandemic is causing, not just by making our product more accessible, but by helping set the kind of example we hope more businesses will follow,” wrote the company’s CEO Joe Thomas.

TalentDesk.io, a freelance management system, has removed licensing fees for its platform through July 1 as well.

“We saw an increase in interest for our software as organizations have rushed to adapt to working from home during the COVID-19 crisis and decided to waive all software licensing fees until July 1, 2020,” said TalentDesk.io Founder and CEO Xenios Thrasyvoulou, “By enabling businesses — large or small — to remotely collaborate with their freelancers and employees, we’d like to help them continue their work seamlessly and use resources efficiently.”

The CEO says his company has seen an overwhelming response from clients, “They appreciate us being proactive and agile in the current environment.”

Zapier is another platform that has removed costs for any groups that are working on the front lines of COVID-19 relief efforts. The company is offering a free “starter plan” that would normally cost $19.99 per month if billed annually, or $24.99 if paying month-to-month. (Companies must submit an application to determine eligibility.)

Taking an opportunity to connect more deeply with clients

Jessica Breslav, executive managing director for Criteo, said the ad tech company is taking this opportunity to strengthen client relationships.

“What we’ve found at Criteo is that most of our clients are looking for a forum to ask questions and understand the impact that the pandemic is having on their business and the ecosystem as a whole,” said Breslav. One step the company is taking involves working with clients to think beyond today’s current challenges — solving for problems Criteo may not have dug into as readily in the past, “For example, we are connecting clients with our data science team to explore ways in which we can build deeper insights together.”

As far as financial concessions, the company is making decisions on a client-by-client basis and addressing needs accordingly. “Criteo doesn’t have a blanket policy because every client situation is unique and we’re working closely with our partners to foster a best plan of action moving forward,” said Breslav.

As managing director, Breslav said she is now speaking to clients much more often, sitting in on virtual round tables and taking calls over Zoom. According to Breslav, these online meetings are her new normal and that it has been going really well.

Short-term concessions could deliver long-term relationships

“I think concessions that are made with the genuine intent to help customers will be appreciated and repaid with increased loyalty and customer advocacy on the other side of this crisis,” said Chiefmartech.com Editor and MarTech Conference Chair Scott Brinker, “First of all, some of these products can really help people through their current circumstances, such as tools for remote work and video conferences. Second, even for martech products that don’t directly relate to current circumstances, offering benefits such as more free features or discounted pricing helps win or keep prospects and customers who have been forced to tighten their belts given economic uncertainty.”

Brinker notes that, with so many marketing operations and martech professionals stuck at home and working remotely, it may be a good time for them to experiment with new products, “Especially if it doesn’t cost anything.”

Just remember: Now may be a good opportunity to try out tools you’ve had an eye on — but don’t become reliant on a platform that won’t fit into your martech budget once the free-trial ends.

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About The Author

Amy Gesenhues is a senior editor for Third Door Media, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land, Search Engine Land and MarTech Today. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs, SoftwareCEO, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy’s articles.

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Daily Search Forum Recap: March 31, 2020

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

• Hide Search Performance For This Query In Google
  
  Yesterday I reported about new preferences with Google Search Console but focused on the email preferences. You can also communicate to Google that you want to hide the search performance for this query report snapshot you sometimes see in the Google search results in these new preferences.




• Google Posts In Google My Business Now Back After Being Disabled
  
  Google has said it has reenabled the ability to use Google Posts after it was temporarily disabled. Google wrote on Twitter “business posts were temporarily disabled and have now resumed.”




• Google Temporary Closed Status Now Doesn’t Hurt Your Search Rankings
  
  Google has posted an update on Twitter that now when you mark you business as temporarily closed, it will not impact your search rankings. Google said “keep customers updated on your status without affecting search rankings.”




• Google: We Can Look Up Internal PageRank But Toolbar PageRank Is Gone
  
  Gary Illyes from Google said technically he and his colleagues are able to lookup the PageRank values of a page but there “rarely” is ever a reason to do so he said. He said the toolbar PageRank score, the pretty one, which is 0 through 10, is long gone and has not been calculated by Google in a long time.




• Google Releases The Webmaster Conference Product Summit Videos
  
  Last November Google held an SEO and webmaster conference at their Mountain View offices, the GooglePlex. I was there and posted my takeaways over here. But today, Google has released all the video recordings from the event. Now you all can watch the several presentations given by Googlers throughout that day.




• Google Seattle Halloween Decorations; Even Android Got Dressed Up
  
  Yep, starting to go into the archives for these photos as no one is really at the Google office buildings these days. But here is a cute one from back during Halloween from the Seattle office. Check

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

• Give with Bing is a new way to give back. To try it, join Microsoft Rewards, and your Bing searches will earn points that are automatically donated to the cause of your choice. #GiveWithBing #MicrosoftEvent Join now: https://t.co/ScD, Bing on Twitter
• I tested positive for COVID-19 and am recovering. Listen to what John Oliver has to say about our national response so far: https://t.co/Adgiy3Z9NA, vinton g cerf on Twitter
• Usually it’s just a matter of editing the pages, and individually submitting them for reindexing. For a large number of pages, a sitemap would be a good approach. Happy to take a quick look if you want to, John Mueller on Twitter
• You can use multiple hreflang entries for the same URL, that’s fine., John Mueller on Twitter
• Content in the age of Covid-19, WebmasterWorld
• Google Ranking and Link Building Best Strategies in 2020, WebmasterWorld

Search Engine Land Stories:

Other Great Search Stories:

Analytics

Industry & Business

Links & Promotion Building

Local & Maps

Mobile & Voice

SEO

PPC

Search Features

Other Search

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Peter The Greeter – Welcomes Everyone To Google

We saw this guy numerous times, in fact, I see him come up in Google photos numerous times a day. He calls himself Peter The Greeter and says he greets everyone who comes to the Google sign at the GooglePlex in Mountain View, California.

His Instagram page is @peterthegreeter and he wrote “The Official page of Peter The Greeter. I greet everyone who comes to the GOOGLE sign. Come take a picture with me!”

He has over a 100 photos of him greeting people at Google.

I seriously wonder if he is on the Google payroll – he has to be right? I mean, well, maybe not?

This post is part of our daily Search Photo of the Day column, where we find fun and interesting photos related to the search industry and share them with our readers.

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COVID-19 stories: Marketers, martech firms pivot as world goes online

The massive disruption of COVID-19 is forcing many of us to rethink everything we do. And right now, our community needs fresh ideas on how to manage the overwhelming situation.

Here are some encouraging stories from marketers who made quick changes to adapt.

Digital to digital

The Challenge: We were a 15-month-old startup running out of money. In January 2020, cookies were crumbling and brand activations were thriving. We had finally found the sweet spot for our mobile tech: first-party data gathering at live events. A few weeks later, the ground began to shift under our feet.

I started to get nervous when my son wound up in the ER for neck pain on March 1 and was asked to wear a mask.

By March 7, the NBA had been advised to prepare to play without fans.

On March 11, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic.

It became clear that live events would be eliminated for the foreseeable future. Our funding would not survive this timeline.

The Solution: So, where were all our clients going? Online.

We had a small but real window to reassess the strengths and weaknesses of what we’d built, and decide if it could migrate it’s capabilities from the physical world to the virtual world.

On Friday, March 13, I sat down and rewrote our positioning statement. I only changed one word, but that one word changed everything.

Psychologically, this was not an easy shift for our team. It was radically changing our co-founders’ vision for the company and the product. After a few days of conversations and careful thought, we had made a decision.

We would move from physical to digital, to digital to digital.

On March 23, we launched a pro account giveaway through a video on LinkedIn, where I spitballed about our theory that this could work as a virtual activation tool. The platform was integrated in the video as the point of entry for the giveaway. To activate the entry form, viewers needed to scan a QR code on their mobile device, which would launch our micro experience. Would people do it? We rolled the dice.

The Impact: Not only did it fill our pipeline with leads, but it elicited a meeting with a multi-billion dollar non-profit organization. We established our first affiliate partnership. And on March 26th, I was given the opportunity to be a live webinar panelist where we leveraged the platform to gather psychographic, demographic and geographic information about the attendees: data for our first virtual case study.

We’ve never been busier with demos and onboarding than we are at this minute. What could have cut off our blood supply as a company enabled us to discover untapped opportunities with the product, build a stronger executive team relationship, and generate urgent interest in the solution.

– Karen Kelly is the Chief Marketing Officer of Tapple, Inc.

When everyone is looking for gold, sell pickaxes

The Challenge: As a social intranet provider, our product is built around facilitating better internal communications and employee engagement. Part of our vision already involves connecting international teams, but none of our content every truly expressed that. So the challenge was how do we steer the conversation so that we make it clear that our platform is not just a tool that enables international teams to communicate better, but a platform that enables remote workers of every kind?

The Solution: First, we had to differentiate between companies looking for processes to help them manage remote teams and companies looking for a software/tool to help them facilitate those processes (very different audiences in terms of intent). Then we catered our message towards the latter. Instead of focusing on how our software is the best thing for managing remote workers, we decided to highlight the solutions that support remote work (chat tool integrations, file sharing, knowledge management, employee directories, etc…)

The Impact: Rather than have another bland conversation about how “blah blah blah company is doing all it can to support you during COVID-19,” our prospects were able to make the logical conclusion that our platform supports remote work by seeing what our solutions are meant to address, While the market as a whole is starting to tightening the purse strings, we’re actually seeing an increase in traffic, engagement and ultimately conversions as prospects see a need for our product.

– Richard Castello is the PPC/Growth Marketer for Happeo

Live events to online series

The Challenge: Event and offline heavy calendar in the wake of COVID-19 needed a full pivot as all owned and sponsored events were canceled.

The Solution: Shifting the Yotpo offline flagship conference (Destination:D2C) to early 2021 and positioning the Destination:D2C brand as an online series held monthly featuring the top brands in the Direct-to-Consumer industry. Launch a weekly AMA series (IG Live + Zoom + LinkedIn Live) with industry and e-commerce experts to satiate the need for immediate tactical tips and tricks. For our Amazing Women in e-commerce series, we pivoted all offline events online, like a workout from home series every week. Lean on our partner ecosystem to join on events and combine forces with each event.

The Impact: Effectively replacing our entire marketing calendar and influence with a series of online engagements to continue and hit key pills like engagement, brand awareness, education and lead generation.

– Raj Nijjer is the VP of Brand Marketing at Yotpo

Games at staff meetings build camaraderie, keep us connected

The Challenge: My company sent people home to work for the foreseeable future. For those who mainly work in office positions, it easy for us to feel a disconnect with our colleagues and the greater mission of our organization.

The Solution: During a recent team meeting, we played a game. We all downloaded the same game to our phones — Psych! The game randomly selects one of our names and asks silly questions — like “If Steve was the star of an action movie, which one would it be?” or “Where would Steve bury his treasure?” Each player suggests an answer (the sillier, the better), and then everyone selects their favorite one.

The Impact: The entire team had fun, and we felt more connected as well as distracted from the craziness of today. It sparked a fun conversation and helped us maintain our bonds formed around inside jokes and friendly banter.

– Steve Petersen is the marketing technology manager at Western Governors University.

Share your own story

Share your creative thinking around how you’re pivoting and managing your work right now. It can be client-facing or something you’ve tried with your staff. We’ll round up some of the best and share them.

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Guide to get started with your ecommerce business

In a continued effort to slow the spread of COVID-19, local and state governments have issued orders for nonessential businesses and establishments to close their doors. These orders, combined with the lack of consumers making their way into physical stores, have had a major impact on small businesses across the country. Many brick-and-mortar small businesses have determined the only way to stay open and serve customers is to transition operations to online ecommerce business, which is something several businesses will do for the first time.

For brick-and-mortar businesses suddenly struggling to figure out how to bring their stores online during this unprecedented time, there are several key considerations. Here are six steps that can be taken to quickly establish an ecommerce business presence and continue reaching customers.

1. Set up an online platform

The first step for any business owner considering ecommerce is to research the platforms available to determine which best fits the needs of your business and your budget. There are a number of cost-efficient ecommerce providers that allow small businesses to get up and running in a matter of minutes. You can check out a full list of the ecommerce providers Avalara works with.

When evaluating ecommerce platforms, there are a number of factors to consider, including multiplatform operations, shipping and fulfillment features, security measures, and compliance capabilities. If your business is transitioning to online for the first time, simplicity in functionality both on the back end and customer-facing features will likely be top of mind. Most ecommerce platform providers have several different plans designed to best fit your business. A good rule of thumb when deciding which plan is best for you is to keep in mind the following:

• How many products do you plan on selling? If you’re not planning to sell a lot of products, a simpler plan with lower rates may be suitable. There is no product limit for many providers’ main plans.
• What features do you need? If you’re looking to have a site that enables customers to view your products and make purchases, a simpler plan is likely the best fit. However, many businesses find it’s beneficial to include additional features that contribute to positive customer experiences, like customer loyalty plans, abandoned cart recovery, and more.

Note that during this time, your business may not have the luxury of conducting extensive research on multiple platforms, and instead may need to rely on something that works now. Fortunately, there are providers that offer out-of-the-box functionality that will enable you to get your basic store up and running quickly.

“For business owners who have invested their energy into building lasting physical storefronts, the process of moving online doesn’t have to be intimidating, even when the future of your brand relies on your ability to launch and drive online sales. Ecommerce platforms, like BigCommerce, are designed with out-of-the-box functionality and application integrations to ensure that even the most novice sellers can get their stores online quickly, and offer the tools to help their business grow now and for years to come. In these uncertain times, having an online presence is an essential way to stay connected to your customers and continue driving revenue. While it may feel overwhelming to move online so quickly, this an easy business decision that will pay long-lasting dividends.”

— Meghan Stabler, VP of Product Marketing and Communications, BigCommerce

Once you’ve identified a platform that works best for you, the next step is to register your domain name and get your account set up — all of which can be done from any connected device. Once you’re in, it’s time to start customizing the features of your website, which begins in step #2.

2. Determine which products you’ll sell online

Given the necessary timeliness of your efforts to transition store functions to ecommerce, it’s important to prioritize which products you’ll be selling online, so your most profitable and in-demand products are available for purchase as you launch your website. It can feel like you need to have every product in your store available immediately, but by prioritizing the most popular products first, you can get your online operations up and running then begin fulfilling orders while adding additional inventory.

3. Diversify your payment methods

Setting up your accepted payment methods is a crucial part of converting a browser into a buyer. Consider which payment methods are the most commonly used and accommodate the largest number of customers. Fortunately, most ecommerce providers offer integrations with the most common payment methods like Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Apple Pay, and more. If you’re still unsure of which payment methods you’ll need to accept, a good rule of thumb is to incorporate the same payment methods you offer through your in-store point-of-sale system.

4. Set up your shipping and returns functions

Once you’ve outlined your products and set up payment methods, the next step is to ensure you can get products to customers. Shipping, fulfillment, and returns can be a major roadblock for many small businesses making the transition from brick-and-mortar to online. A key feature that should be included in your ecommerce platform capabilities is shipping options, including drop shipping, printable shipping labels, and pre-setup shipping providers.

If you’re fulfilling orders yourself, consider using a shipping app like ShipStation, which helps automate shipping for merchants of all sizes, and offers small businesses discounted shipping rates with USPS, UPS, and FedEx.

If you’re concerned about how to fulfill orders or that your current warehouse might be unable to fulfill orders, consider using an outsourced provider, like ShipBob, which processes orders for thousands of ecommerce brands. It’s also worth pointing out that your storefront can serve as a temporary fulfillment center during this time: It serves the dual benefit of getting the product to your customers quickly while simultaneously ensuring all that in-store inventory doesn’t go to waste. This is a model that works quite successfully for big-box retailers like Target.

Shipping costs are often something brick-and-mortar retailers haven’t had to consider when it comes to pricing, so be mindful of a product’s shipping cost and be sure it’s clearly displayed in the shopping cart. Be transparent about shipping costs throughout the shopping experience and avoid the risk of having customers abandon their cart if they discover a shipping cost “gotcha” at checkout.

5. Plan your online marketing strategy with social media

Perhaps one of the most important steps in this transition is communicating how your business will now be selling. This is where social media posts and advertising come into play to be certain that customers are in the know about your online strategy. On the upside, most brick-and-mortar shops are already using social media to market to their customers. However, it’s critical that businesses over-communicate the change in operations to ensure regular customers are aware of the new selling channel, and to capitalize on the expanded customer audience you can now reach.

Social media can be used to promote your new online presence and as a platform to advocate for your business’s distinguishing factors and unique value-add. Use this opportunity to tell your story and highlight the characteristics that make your small business stand out to consumers. Not only are consumers turning to social media to learn where they can continue making regular purchases during this time, but they’re especially inclined to support small businesses.

Another option, when using social media, is to go beyond your marketing efforts and consider using social selling platforms as a complement to your newly formed online store. In today’s social network-driven society, social media platforms are no longer just an avenue to increase brand awareness, but an opportunity to connect with customers and make sales in the social threads customers are already sifting through.

Comment selling platforms, like CommentSold, are blending content and commerce to convert social media comments into sales and automatically invoice shoppers from their social media timelines. By leveraging this method of “headless commerce”, or separating the front end and back end of an ecommerce application, businesses can easily combine their social media marketing and online selling for quick sales conversions and limited friction throughout the browsing and shopping experience. Through social selling capabilities, businesses can save customers the time they would otherwise have to spend sifting through websites to find the items that best fit their wants and needs.

“Captivating shoppers online can be increasingly difficult as more businesses turn to online during this time, so reaching customers where they are is more important than ever before. Social selling platforms allow retailers to connect directly with customers via live video and product content on Facebook and Instagram. Creative tools, like instant comment purchasing and real-time live sales events, can help retailers grab and keep their online customers’ attention.”

— Andy Smith, COO, CommentSold

6. Preview, test, and publish your store

The final step to bringing your store online is to ensure every function of your site is operational. Double-check each function by asking yourself these questions:

• Does my checkout work? Make sure orders work across all payment methods, your shipping options and charges are correct and visible, the items and price in your cart are correct. Check if discounts/promotions apply correctly and tax is calculated once shoppers enter their location. While often overlooked, ensuring sales tax is calculated correctly in real-time is critical to maintaining a positive shopping experience, and also helps prevent your business from being at risk of tax audits down the road.
• Is the content presented in a professional manner? Proofread all copy and double-check that spelling and grammar are correct across the website. It’s also important to check images, videos, and other forms of multimedia across platforms to make sure they don’t interfere with the customer experience.
• Does my store work on various channels and internet browsers? Consumers want to access products online whenever they choose from whatever device they are on. Testing your online site for functionality across channels is important to ensure that you’re not turning away potential customers who are unable to access your site.

At a time when more and more small businesses are at risk of closing their doors due to uncontrollable circumstances, ecommerce provides a viable alternative that, if executed on quickly and decisively, allows business owners to keep their operations up and running. Small businesses can take advantage of this unexpected time to explore new selling opportunities and ways to further serve their customers — something they might have otherwise not had the opportunity to do. Fortunately, the technology that exists today allows even the smallest of businesses to quickly ramp up online operations, reaching a broader audience, and incorporating all the necessary functions needed to provide a comprehensive, frictionless online shopping experience.

Content courtesy of Avalara.

Feel free to leave your questions and experiences in the comments section below.

More about:

This marketing news is not the copyright of Scott.Services – please click here to see the original source of this article. Author: Avalra

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Google’s Ranking Algorithm Allows SEOs To Be Unique

Google’s John Mueller responded to a Reddit thread where the webmaster didn’t understand why a competitor of his was outranking his site when the competitor had a page speed score of F.

John Mueller responded saying “The nice part about using so many factors for crawling, indexing, and ranking is that you don’t have to do everything exactly the same way as all of the other sites are doing.”

Yes, just because a site isn’t doing well with one specific area – it doesn’t mean that site cannot rank well in Google. In this case, speed is one of hundreds of factors Google uses and I believe speed is not even a really huge factor compared to other factors in the mix. You still want to make sure your site loads fast because the user can simply click back and go to the next search result listing in Google.

But you don’t have to be discouraged when you can’t do well with a specific metric. Just focus on what you are good at, excel there and you should see success. The algorithm does allow for SEOs to be unique in their own way.

Forum discussion at Reddit.

This marketing news is not the copyright of Scott.Services – please click here to see the original source of this article. Author: barry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)

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March Updates to Paid Advertising Platforms

In this monthly post, we bring you the latest from all of the major platforms.

General

What: Reacting to COVID-19

Resources: Prior to getting into platform-specific updates, it’s essential to address COVID-19 and its impacts on the industry. The resources below were compiled from a recent Hanapin/Brainlabs email blast, and are an excellent source of industry trends, strategic recommendations, grant opportunities, and more.

Google Ads

What: Google improves the appeal process of disapproved or limited ads

Details: A new feature within the interface will allow advertisers to resubmit an ad immediately after fixing the policy infraction. To evoke the review, simply hover over a disapproved or limited ad and click the “Appeal” link if applicable.

Impact: Unexpected ad disapprovals are a common source of stress for advertisers. The streamlined process likely will help alleviate that concern and lead to less unplanned “downtime”. It should be noted that in the short term, Google is expecting longer than usual reviews. The COVID-19 situation has impacted office staffing, and therefore the appeal process.

What:  Report Editor can operate with an expanded number of accounts

Details: Report Editor, located under the Reports Tab in the drop-down navigation, has expanded capacity from 10 to 200 accounts.

Impact: Multi-brand enterprises and agencies gain the potential to run simultaneous analysis on a larger set of accounts.

What:  Google delays deadline to adopt parallel tracking for video due to COVID-19 situation

Details: The deadline to switch to parallel tracking for video campaigns is now June 15th.

Impact: Parallel tracking creates a quicker page load for advertisers using third-party click tracking. Video represents the last campaign type to transition to this setup.

What: Google Ads updates attribution reporting

Details: The update significantly streamlines reporting in addition to changing the name from Search Attribution to simply Attribution. Many reports will be overhauled to ease the digestion of information, while familiar information such as Top Paths, Assisted Conversions, and Model Comparison reports will be included.

Impact: For the time being, you can still return to the previous reports. Moving forward, Google continues to focus on data and analytics that follow the full user journey, not simply last click.

What: Intro testing and Asset reporting come to App campaigns

Details: To help developers gain beta testers for their app, Google is launching open testing ads in Google App Campaigns. Additionally, Google is expanding the columns/metrics available to advertisers for assessing creative performance within its App campaigns.

Impact: Open testing ads will allow new apps to test for stability, retention, monetization, and effectiveness of ad creatives prior to full-scale launch. App campaign asset reporting improves the transparency of creative performance in Google App Campaigns, a campaign type considered somewhat of a “black box” when it comes to optimization.

What: Google Ads App now shares Optimization Score details

Details: Within the Google  Ads mobile app, advertisers are now able to see Google Optimization Scores details and notifications.

Impact: Google is promoting OptiScore aggressively as a means of ensuring best practices are maximized across its platform. This update, in addition to the Google Partners program requiring a specific agency-wide OptiScore, demonstrates the priority Google has placed on this metric.

Reddit Advertising

What: Introducing Trending Takeover Offering for Advertisers

Details: The new ad unit shows in the “Trending Today” section of Reddit. Current purchase options are limited to direct buy that can be executed by contacting Reddit Advertising.

Impact: Although Reddit’s ad offerings and audience appeal remain somewhat niche, this provides further evidence of an expanding approach on the platform.

Did we miss any major monthly updates? Not covering a certain platform close enough? Feel free to let me know on Twitter @Will_Larcom

This marketing news is not the copyright of Scott.Services – please click here to see the original source of this article. Author: William Larcom

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Nominate The Paid Media Experts Who Have Been Influential In Your Career

Every year, PPC Hero releases a list called The Top 25 Most Influential PPC Experts. This year will not be different!

The purpose of this list is to highlight those who have dedicated their time, energy, and expertise over the last year to empower the rest of us to excel at our jobs. And right now, amidst the uncertainty, is as good of a time as ever to celebrate those leaders.

The survey is simple. Just nominate 1-2 paid media experts and include their Twitter handles. It shouldn’t take more than 2-3 minutes.

This marketing news is not the copyright of Scott.Services – please click here to see the original source of this article. Author: Alaina Thompson

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Hide Search Performance For This Query In Google

Yesterday I reported about new preferences with Google Search Console but focused on the email preferences. You can also communicate to Google that you want to hide the search performance for this query report snapshot you sometimes see in the Google search results in these new preferences.

First, this is what it looks like to see the search performance for this query report in the Google search results. It shows up for relevant queries, when you are logged in to an account that has Google Search Console access. You will see this box towards the top of the search results page:

I personally find most of these annoying, so if you want to turn them off for all or some sites, you can. Here is how to hide the search performance for this query report:

(1) Click on the gear icon in Google Search Console:

(2) Click on “Search Console in Search results”

(3) Then you can uncheck “Enable for properties as listed below” if you want to hide the box for all sites or select individual sites you want it to show or hide below.

I like this new feature.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

This marketing news is not the copyright of Scott.Services – please click here to see the original source of this article. Author: barry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)

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Google Posts In Google My Business Now Back After Being Disabled

Google has said it has reenabled the ability to use Google Posts after it was temporarily disabled. Google wrote on Twitter “business posts were temporarily disabled and have now resumed.”

Here is that tweet:

Business posts were temporarily disabled and have now resumed. For more information, check out our Help Center→ https://t.co/cbEOr72wSR

— Google My Business (@GoogleMyBiz) March 30, 2020

Google wrote in the help document:

Attention: Business posts were temporarily disabled for some businesses and have since resumed. We’re working to reprocess previously rejected posts – please check within a few days to see whether your post is live, or create a new one. In addition, if you are creating a post about business updates related to COVID-19, you can now create a “COVID-19 update”, which will be featured more prominently within your Business Profile.

This feature stopped working last week but should now be used for communicating with customers about your business in Google Maps and Google Search.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

This marketing news is not the copyright of Scott.Services – please click here to see the original source of this article. Author: barry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)

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Google: We Can Look Up Internal PageRank But Toolbar PageRank Is Gone

Gary Illyes from Google said technically he and his colleagues are able to lookup the PageRank values of a page but there “rarely” is ever a reason to do so he said. He said the toolbar PageRank score, the pretty one, which is 0 through 10, is long gone and has not been calculated by Google in a long time.

I asked Gary if he is able to specifically look up the old toolbar PageRank scores and he said on Twitter “No, that’s not calculated anymore at all. Hasn’t been since like 2014?” Well, the feed was cut off in 2016, but yea.

He did add that the true internal PageRank value of a URL is still there, Google still uses PageRank, amongst other things. He said he can look up that score. He said “pagerank itself, the original, non toolbar version, still exist and we (at least John and i) can look that one up if need be. Rarely ever is though.”

Here are those tweets:

do Googlers have a way to look up Toolbar PageRank?

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) March 30, 2020

Addendum: pagerank itself, the original, non toolbar version, still exist and we (at least John and i) can look that one up if need be. Rarely ever is though.

— Socially distant Gary Illyes (@methode) March 30, 2020

Forum discussion at Twitter.

This marketing news is not the copyright of Scott.Services – please click here to see the original source of this article. Author: barry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)

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Google Releases The Webmaster Conference Product Summit Videos

Last November Google held an SEO and webmaster conference at their Mountain View offices, the GooglePlex. I was there and posted my takeaways over here. But today, Google has released all the video recordings from the event. Now you all can watch the several presentations given by Googlers throughout that day.

Here are those videos:

These are not ALL the videos but most of them I believe.

Forum discussion at YouTube.

This marketing news is not the copyright of Scott.Services – please click here to see the original source of this article. Author: barry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)

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