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Monday, 2 September 2019

Best Tweets from #SEMrushchat: How to Build An Online Reputation to Win New Clients

Our social team had a great conversation in last week’s SEMrushchat, with guest Kevin Gibbons and our community. They discussed strategies for building an online reputation that will help businesses win new clients. Topics discussed included common ORM issues, platforms to use, strategies for building a new reputations, ways to incentivize customers, and techniques for demonstrating expertise.

Our community shared several strategies businesses can use and things to avoid. As always, there were many great tweets to choose from, but we can only include so many in our recap. We hope the tweets we chose will give you a variety of insights and tips you can use.

You can retweet any of the tips below by clicking on the Twitter logo next to the quote.

It’s easy to be distracted by trying to look good, but you need to focus on being great internally first – then the external perception will follow, and is much more likely to succeed, because it’s genuine.

Ignoring negative feedback is a big no-no. This is your opportunity to learn from your customers and make the issue right. It shows you care about them.

A major reputation mgmt issue businesses need to be aware of is when a person from the company, especially an exec or leader, posts something sexist, racist, misogynist, or any other content that would cause a PR nightmare or hurt customers.

I would say online trolls. I have had clients freak out because something is wrong only to find out it’s a spammer/ troll. Most companies don’t understand this concept, but it’s important to know when to douce the fire and when to let it snuff itself out.

Lack of awareness – reputation damage can occur at any time! No strategy – having a strategy in place reduces the risk of various issues arising in the future. Lack of monitoring – something many small and large businesses fail to do.

Having a contingency plan when things go wrong. Look at @PopeyesChicken. Their marketing team got a new product to go viral but stores are running out of chicken sandwiches. How were they going to handle that? They didn’t & my last visit was a lil awkward.

I typically use @GatherUp. For me, I like having everything in one place and the ability to request reviews. Let’s face it, asking for reviews sucks and is a tedious (but necessary) task.

Every platform is an opportunity to build your reputation. No moment is too small to make an impact on a customer. It’s about speaking their language and showing a genuine interest in what they have to say. Empathy.

As a B2B agency, LinkedIn is our holy grail, a great way to connect with industry leaders and join groups. It’s definitely an underrated platform. This little site called Twitter isn’t bad either!

Previous agency used @GradeUs which intercepts poor reviews and gives staff an opportunity to respond to issues before going on blast. (I see they’re in this chat. Hopefully, I summarized that right!)

There are loads out there! Google Alerts, Review Push, Brand Yourself… Consistency is the key, there’s no point having them if you don’t utilise them

Specifically – @AwarioApp to see what people are saying across social media. @reputology to monitor and manage online reviews in real-time. @SEOSpyGlass to help monitor backlink profiles.

Eat your own dog food. Showcase your ability through thought leadership opinions/experiments, be authentic / transparent about your learnings (people will appreciate the honesty) and demonstrate your results.

When starting out you can: Provide free samples/trials for people to try and review. Incentivize people sharing their experiences online. Just ask. A simple prompt goes a long way sometimes!

Engage, engage, engage. Find communities in your niche and start a conversation. Get yourself out there. Be consistent. You will grow. I’ve been doing this personally and it has been very rewarding thus far 🙂 Pro tip: Engage only when relevant!

Find your target audience and jump into the conversation! Don’t worry about ‘building a reputation’ right away, just share your expertise and experience. Build up your industry and your ideal clients, and the reputation will follow.

It’s an answer people hate to hear – start from nothing. Create content, build a strategy, make a plan, a timeline, and get on appropriate networks. Then, start sharing. we all started with 0 experience. You have to do it to gain it.

Create content and share it in groups, create conversation, and be true and honest about where you are in your process. There’s nothing bad about starting off, and people will be happy to help you along the way and share your message.

Package it into something fun, such as a contest, a poll or a live chat. Throw out interesting questions that people love to share their insights on, such as what are some creative ways to use your products or what was the most memorable experience.

1. You could offer beta access to other areas of your product 2. Offer company swag in return for the review or the experience. Be careful though, as offering too much could cheapen your product or offer. Keep it relevant to your brand and message.

Think about it from their perspective. Why should they share? You need to give them a reason… There needs to be reciprocity. Your goal should be to make them look good. Do great work, build a strong relationship and then they’ll be much more likely to help.

Incentivize? Get relational. Ask your community for feedback and when it comes show them you are listening through conversation. Real people connecting is often incentive enough.

Think about what would incentivize you to share your experience. Reiterate how much value they have, offer to share their experience in your space, offer goods, discounts, etc.

Make them look good! Write case studies, for example, that make them the hero and your brand the trusty (necessary) sidekick. Be part of THEIR story, instead of making them part of yours.

Be generous! Demonstrating expertise means showing it regularly. Share information and solve problems for people in your network for no other reason than to help. Go the extra mile in breaking down the what and the why of your recommendations.

Help others without expecting anything in return.

1. Educate the audience. 2. Have an opinion within the industry. 3. Be transparent to build trust. 4. Be accountable for what you have done. 5. Be present in the conversation.

Niche is key – one of the best pieces of advice I’ve had is to aim an inch wide and a mile deep. This really helps to demonstrate that you’re a subject matter expert. It’s good to have a breath of knowledge, but you can’t know it all.

P.S. I love the Socrates saying ‘smart people learn from everything and everyone, average ones from experience, stupid ones have all the answers.’ The right mindset will take you to the next level!

The best ‘tactic’ is to look for situations where you can add value for people. Not being overbearing, being condescending or patronising, but genuinely where you can help, offer a constructive opinion. You have to earn the right to have your expertise trusted.

Do You Have Any Suggestions for Online Reputation Management?

If so, please share them in the comments below. We also want to thank everyone that participated in the chat. We will be looking for your expert insights this week; SEMrushchat starts at 11 am ET/4 pm BST on Wednesday, September 4th.

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Sunday, 1 September 2019

The Case For Time Flexible PPC Budgets

The One-Hour Guide to SEO: Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization – Whiteboard Friday

We’ve covered strategy, keyword research, and how to satisfy searcher intent — now it’s time to tackle optimizing the webpage itself! In the fourth part of the One-Hour Guide to SEO, Rand offers up an on-page SEO checklist to start you off on your way towards perfectly optimized and keyword-targeted pages.

If you missed them, check out the other episodes in the series so far:

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of our special One-Hour Guide to SEO. We are now on Part IV – Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization. So hopefully, you’ve watched Part III, where we talked about searcher satisfaction, how to make sure searchers are happy with the page content that you create and the user experience that you build for them, as well as Part II, where we talked about keyword research and how to make sure that you are targeting the right words and phrases that searchers are actually looking for, that you think you can actually rank for, and that actually get real organic click-through rate, because Google’s zero-click searches are rising.

A depiction of a site with important on-page SEO elements highlighted, drawn on the whiteboard.

Now we’re into on-page SEO. So this is essentially taking the words and phrases that we know we want to rank for with the content that we know will help searchers accomplish their task. Now how do we make sure that the page is optimal for ranking in Google?

On-page SEO has evolved

Well, this is very different from the way it was years ago. A long time ago, and unfortunately many people still believe this to be true about SEO, it was: How do I stuff my keywords into all the right tags and places on the page? How do I take advantage of things like the meta keywords tag, which hasn’t been used in a decade, maybe two? How do I take advantage of putting all the words and phrases stuffed into my title, my URL, my description, my headline, my H2 through H7 tags, all these kinds of things?

Most of that does not matter, but some of it still does. Some of it is still important, and we need to run through what those are so that you give yourself the best possible chance for ranking.

The on-page SEO checklist

So what I’ve done here is created a sort of brief, on-page SEO checklist. This is not comprehensive, especially on the technical portion, because we’re saving that for Part V, the technical SEO section, which we will get into, of this Guide. In this checklist, some of the most important things are on here.

☑ Descriptive, compelling, keyword-rich title element

Many of the most important things are on here, and those include things like a descriptive, compelling, keyword-rich but not stuffed title element, also called the page title or a title tag. So, for example, if I am a tool website, like toolsource.com — I made that domain name up, I assume it’s registered to somebody — and I want to rank for the “best online survey tools,” well, “The Best Online Survey Tools for 2019” is a great title tag, and it’s very different from best online survey tools, best online survey software, best online survey software 2019. You’ve seen title tags like that. You’ve seen pages that contain stuff like that. That is no longer good SEO practices.

So we want that descriptive, compelling, makes me want to click. Remember that this title is also going to show up in the search results as the title of the snippet that your website appears in.

☑ Meta description designed to draw the click

Second, a meta description. This is still used by search engines, not for rankings though. Sort of think of it like ad text. You are drawing a click, or you’re attempting to draw the click. So what you want to do is have a description that tells people what’s on the page and inspires them, incites them, makes them want to click on your result instead of somebody else’s. That’s your chance to say, “Here’s why we’re valuable and useful.”

☑ Easy-to-read, sensible, short URL

An easy-to-read, sensible, short URL. For example, toolsource.com/reviews/best-online-surveys-2019. Perfect, very legible, very readable. I see that in the results, I think, “Okay, I know what that page is going to be.” I see that copied and pasted somewhere on the web, I think, “I know what’s going to be at that URL. That looks relevant to me.”

Or reviews.best-online-tools.info. Okay, well, first off, that’s a freaking terrible domain name. /oldseqs?ide=17 bunch of weird letters and tab detail equals this, and UTM parameter equals that. I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what all this means. By the way, having more than one or two URL parameters is very poorly correlated with and not recommended for trying to rank in search results. So you want to try and rewrite these to be more friendly, shorter, more sensible, and readable by a human being. That will help Google as well.

☑ First paragraph optimized for appearing in featured snippets

That first paragraph, the first paragraph of the content or the first few words of the page should be optimized for appearing in what Google calls featured snippets. Now, featured snippets is when I perform a search, for many queries, I don’t just see a list of pages. Sometimes I’ll see this box, often with an image and a bunch of descriptive text that’s drawn from the page, often from the first paragraph or two. So if you want to get that featured snippet, you have to be able to rank on page one, and you need to be optimized to answer the query right in your first paragraph. But this is an opportunity for you to be ranking in position three or four or five, but still have the featured snippet answer above all the other results. Awesome when you can do this in SEO, very, very powerful thing. Featured snippet optimization, there’s a bunch of resources on Moz’s website that we can point you to there too.

☑ Use the keyword target intelligently in…

☑ The headline

So if I’m trying to rank for “best online survey tools,” I would try and use that in my headline. Generally speaking, I like to have the headline and the title of the piece nearly the same or exactly the same so that when someone clicks on that title, they get the same headline on the page and they don’t get this cognitive dissonance between the two.

☑ The first paragraph

The first paragraph, we talked about.

☑ The page content

The page’s content, you don’t want to have a page that’s talking about best online survey tools and you never mention online surveys. That would be a little weird.

☑ Internal link anchors

An internal link anchor. So if other places on your website talk about online survey tools, you should be linking to this page. This is helpful for Google finding it, helpful for visitors finding it, and helpful to say this is the page that is about this on our website.

A whiteboard drawing depicting how to target one page with multiple keywords vs multiple pages targeting single keywords.

I do strongly recommend taking the following advice, which is we are no longer in a world where it makes sense to target one keyword per page. For example, best online survey tools, best online survey software, and best online survey tools 2019 are technically three unique keyword phrases. They have different search volumes. Slightly different results will show up for each of them. But it is no longer the case, whereas it was maybe a decade ago, that I would go create a page for each one of those separate things.

Instead, because these all share the same searcher intent, I want to go with one page, just a single URL that targets all the keywords that share the exact same searcher intent. If searchers are looking to find exactly the same thing but with slightly modified or slight variations in how they phrase things, you should have a page that serves all of those keywords with that same searcher intent rather than multiple pages that try to break those up, for a bunch of reasons. One, it’s really hard to get links to all those different pages. Getting links just period is very challenging, and you need them to rank.

Second off, the difference between those is going to be very, very subtle, and it will be awkward and seem to Google very awkward that you have these slight variations with almost the same thing. It might even look to them like duplicate or very similar or low-quality content, which can get you down-ranked. So stick to one page per set of shared intent keywords.

☑ Leverage appropriate rich snippet options

Next, you want to leverage appropriate rich snippet options. So, for example, if you are in the recipes space, you can use a schema markup for recipes to show Google that you’ve got a picture of the recipe and a cooking time and all these different details. Google offers this in a wide variety of places. When you’re doing reviews, they offer you the star ratings. Schema.org has a full list of these, and Google’s rich snippets markup page offers a bunch more. So we’ll point you to both of those as well.

☑ Images on the page employ…

Last, but certainly not least, because image search is such a huge portion of where Google’s search traffic comes from and goes to, it is very wise to optimize the images on the page. Image search traffic can now send significant traffic to you, and optimizing for images can sometimes mean that other people will find your images through Google images and then take them, put them on their own website and link back to you, which solves a huge problem. Getting links is very hard. Images is a great way to do it.

☑ Descriptive, keyword-rich filenames

The images on your page should employ descriptive, keyword-rich filenames, meaning if I have one for typeform, I don’t want it to be pick one, two or three. I want it to be typeformlogo or typeformsurveysoftware as the name of the file.

☑ Descriptive alt attributes

The alt attribute or alt tag is part of how you describe that for screen readers and other accessibility-focused devices, and Google also uses that text too.

☑ Caption text (if appropriate)

Caption text, if that’s appropriate, if you have like a photograph and a caption describing it, you want to be descriptive of what’s actually in the picture.

☑ Stored in same domain and subdomain

These files, in order to perform well, they generally need to be hosted on the same domain and subdomain. If, for example, all your images are stored on an Amazon Web Services domain and you don’t bother rewriting or making sure that the domain looks like it’s on toolsource.com/photos or /images here, that can cause real ranking problems. Oftentimes you won’t perform at all in Google images because they don’t associate the image with the same domain. Same subdomain as well is preferable.

If you do all these things and you nail searcher intent and you’ve got your keyword research, you are ready to move on to technical SEO and link building and then start ranking. So we’ll see you for that next edition next week. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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

For more SEO, PPC, internet marketing news please check out https://news.scott.services

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The post The One-Hour Guide to SEO: Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization – Whiteboard Friday appeared first on Scott.Services Online Marketing News.

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7 Proven SEO Reporting Best Practices That Boost Client Retention

“Let’s hop on a call to go over this report.”

Did you hear that?

That was the collective sigh of SEOs everywhere.

If we’re being honest, most of us probably view reporting the same way we view taking out the trash or folding the laundry. It’s a chore that robs us of time we could have spent on more important or enjoyable things.

Adding to the frustration is the reality that many clients don’t even read their reports. That’s right. All that time you put into pulling together your data and the report might be forever resigned to the dusty corner of your client’s inbox.

In the words of Mama Boucher, reporting is the devil.

Hear me out though… have you ever thought of reporting as a client retention tool? While reporting is something that takes your time away from SEO work that moves the needle, reporting is also critical if you want to have a campaign to work on at all.

In other words, no reporting = no value communicated = no more client.

The good news is that the reverse is also true. When we do SEO reporting well, we communicate our value and keep more clients, which is something that every agency and consultant can agree is important.

That all sounds nice, but how can we do that? Throughout my six years at an SEO agency, I picked up some reporting tips that I hope you’ll be able to benefit from as well.

P.S. If you haven’t seen it already, Moz’s own Meghan Pahinui wrote an amazing post for the Moz blog on creating relevant and engaging SEO reports using Moz Pro Campaigns. Definitely check it out!

1. Report on what they care about

I’ve seen my share of reports that highlighted metrics that just didn’t reflect any of the client’s main objectives. Your clients are busy — the first sight of something irrelevant and they’ll lose interest, so make your reports count!

My process for determining what I should report on is fairly simple:

Identify the business objective
Create an SEO plan that will help achieve that goal
Execute the plan
Report on the metrics that best measure the work I did

In other words, choose appropriate KPIs to match their business objectives and your strategy, and stick to those for your reporting.

2. Set specific goals

You: “Good news! We got 4,000 organic visits last month.”

Client: “Why wasn’t it 5,000?”

If that’s ever happened to you before, you’re not alone.

This simple step is so easy to forget, but make sure your goals are specific and mutually agreed upon before you start! At the beginning of the month, tell your client what your goal is (ex: “We hope to be able to get 4,000 organic visits”). That way, when you review your report, you’ll be able to objectively say whether you missed/hit/exceeded your targets.

3. Eliminate jargon

Your clients are professionals in their own fields, not yours, so make sure to leave the shop-talking to Twitter. Before sending out a report, ask yourself:

Have I defined all potentially confusing metrics? I’ve seen some SEOs include a mini-glossary or analogies to explain some of their charts — I love this! It really helps disambiguate metrics that are easy to misunderstand.
Am I using words that aren’t used outside my own echo chamber? Some phrases become so ubiquitous in our immediate circles that we assume everyone uses them. In many cases, we’re using jargon without even realizing it!

Simply put, use clear language and layman’s terms in your client’s SEO reports. You won’t serve anyone by confusing them.

4. Visualize your data in meaningful ways

I once heard a client describe a report as “pretty, but useless.”

Ouch.

They had a point though. Their report was full of pie charts and line graphs that, while important-looking, conveyed no meaning to them.

Part of that “meaning” comes down to reporting on the metrics your client cares about (see #1), but the other half of that is choosing how you’ll display that information.

There are some great resources on Moz about data visualization such as Demystifying Data Visualization for Marketers, a video of Annie Cushing’s talk at MozCon 2014, and A Visualization Prescription for Impactful Data Storytelling, a Whiteboard Friday video by Lea Pica.

Resources like that will help you transform your data from metrics into a story that conveys meaning to your clients, so don’t skimp on this step!

5. Provide insights, not just metrics

I remember the first time someone explained to me the difference between metrics and insights. I was blown away.

It seems so simple now, but in my earliest days in digital marketing, I basically viewed “reporting” as synonymous with “data.” Raw, numeric, mind-numbing data.

The key to making your reports more meaningful to your clients is understanding that pure metrics don’t have intrinsic data. You have to unify the data in meaningful ways and pull out insights that help your client understand not just what the numbers are but why they matter.

I find it helpful to ask “so what?” when going through a report. Client’s ranking on page 1 for this list of keywords? That’s cool, but why should my client care about this? How is it contributing to their goals? Work on answering that question before you communicate your reports.

6. Connect SEO results to revenue

I’m going to be honest, this one is tricky.

First of all, SEO is a few layers removed from conversions. When it comes to “the big three” (as I like to refer to rankings, traffic, and conversions), SEOs can:

Most directly influence rankings
Influence organic traffic, but a little less directly than rankings. For example, organic traffic can go down despite sustained rankings due to things like seasonality.
Influence organic conversions, but even less directly than traffic. Everything from the website design to the product/service itself can affect that.

Second, it can be difficult to connect SEO to revenue especially on websites where the ultimate conversion happens offline (ex: lead gen). In order to tie organic traffic to revenue, you’ll want to set up goal conversions and add a value to those conversions in your analytics, but here’s where that gets difficult:

Clients often don’t know their average LCV (lifetime customer value)
Clients often don’t know their average close rate (the rough percentage of leads that they close)
Clients know, but they don’t want to share this information with you

Everyone has a different reporting methodology, but I personally tend to advocate for at least trying to connect SEO to revenue. I’ve been in enough situations where our client dropped us because they saw us as a cost-center rather than a profit-center to know that communicating your value in monetary terms can mean the difference between keeping your client or not.

Even though you can’t directly influence conversions and even if your client can only give you a rough ballpark figure for LCV and close rate, it’s better than nothing.

7. Be available to fill in the gaps

Not everything can be explained in a report. Even if you’re able to add text commentary to elaborate on your data, there’s still the risk that a key point will be lost on your client completely. Expect this!

I’ve seen plenty of client reporting calls go well over an hour. While no two situations are alike, I think starting with a report that contains clear insights on the KPIs your client cares about will do wonders for shortening that conversation.

Your clients will be able to understand those insights on their own, which frees you up to add context and answer any questions without getting bogged down with back-and-forth over “red herring” metrics that distract from the main point.

I want to hear from you!

What about you? Every SEO has their own reporting best practices, wins, and horror stories — I want to hear yours!

What reporting trick do you have up your sleeve that could help your fellow SEOs save time (& their sanity)?
What’s your biggest reporting struggle and how are you trying to solve it?
What’s an example of a time when reporting played a role in salvaging a client relationship?

We’re in this together — so let’s learn from each other!

And if you want more where this came from, please consider downloading our free whitepaper: High-Impact SEO Reporting for Agencies! It’s full of advice and helpful tips for using reports to communicate value to your clients.

Read the whitepaper

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

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Daily Search Forum Recap: April 5, 2019

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:

Search Buzz Video Recap: Widespread Google Indexing Issues, Algorithm Shifts, Icon Tests, AMP Changes & Google+ Dead
Today was an interesting day, a possible Google bug is dropping pages out of the Google index like flies. No word yet from Google on what the issue is yet. There was a potential Google update on March 29th again…
A New Google Useragent google-Read-Aloud?
I am seeing some webmasters and SEOs pick up on a new useragent potentially from Google named google-Read-Aloud. The useragent references a URL to Google’s useragent page but this specific one is not listed on that page.
Google Wants Feedback On Dynamic Rendering Success
As you know, Google released a method of getting some forms of JavaScript content indexed faster last year named dynamic rendering. It has been a year or so since it was introduced, Google’s documentation on it was released in October and Google’s Martin Splitt is looking for feedback from those webmasters who have tried it.
Google Is Dropping Pages Out Of The Search Index; A Bug?
Something weird is going on with the Google search index. I am seeing wide spread reports of SEOs and webmasters complaining that their URLs and web pages are being removed from the Google Index. Lots of folks are noticing that a nice percentage of their web sites are no longer coming up for a site command or showing in Search Console as being indexed.
AMP Stories Thumbnails In Google Search Results Snippets
It looks like Google is testing showing a new type of image thumbnail in the mobile search results snippets. Some pages that have AMP Stories are seeing that their snippets in the Google mobile search have images showing off that there is an AMP Story available to be clicked on.
Hedwig Kohn, The Physicist, Gets A Google Logo
Google today is honoring the contributions of Hedwig Kohn. Hedwig Kohn German-American physicist who was one of the only three women to obtain habilitation, the qualification for university teaching of physics in Germany before World War II. She also had to flee Germany during the Nazi rule, as she was Jewish.
Matt Cutts Use To Make Spam Pinata While At Google
You learn something new every day – did you know that Matt Cutts use to make spam pinata’s for team building events? He said so on Twitter yesterday.

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Search Engine Land Stories:

Other Great Search Stories:

Analytics

Industry & Business

Links & Promotion Building

Local & Maps

Mobile & Voice

SEO

PPC

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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Facebook’s shift to privacy is just a play on emerging market dynamics

Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Facebook’s family of apps will be pivoting to privacy and focusing on enabling private, fully encrypted messaging in his seminal 3,200-word pledge for change. Interestingly, this announcement comes a year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal was first reported by the media. At first glance, skeptical critics argue that nothing will change. They’ll say that Facebook is here to monetize its experience no matter how Zuckerberg changes up the platform’s experience. Moving towards privacy-focused communications may seem like a backward play for most marketers. But, it’s not exactly a defensive move given that ephemeral messaging is already used on Instagram and end-to-end encryption is deployed on WhatsApp. The changes are coming hard and fast. And, they show that Zuckerberg is offering up a smarter, more nuanced perspective to Facebook in a new age of privatization.

The platform is at an odd inflection point when it comes to communication dynamics. Zuckerberg says people are morphing from “town square” public sharing to more secure, privacy-protective “living room” sharing within intimate circles. Zuckerberg’s post also suggests that merging some of the technical infrastructure between platforms (which make it possible to send a message from someone on Instagram using Facebook Messenger) will lead to more meaningful communications and convenience. In other words, users are growing up.

Ease of use aside, Zuckerberg is addressing two points: a major flaw in the system and the simmering concerns over user engagement, ad targeting and user privacy. Betting on private messaging signals an evolutionary step in how the platform will reach users and shows us how he is working to balance targeted advertising and privacy in the face of a deepening public debate over data concerns. While many are blaming platform abuse for Facebook’s recent shift and/or slowing user growth, a growing body of research suggests Zuckerberg’s reasons are deeper and more strategic.

Facebook is seemingly in great health. Its user engagement is holding steady, which indicates – at least for now – that users are getting about the same amount of “meaningful interactions” and value out of being a Facebook user as they were before any of the latest changes by the company. Also, Facebook’s growth remains steady even as it takes proactive steps to protect its content and data. In 2019, the social media giant expects to double the number of people working on content security. And, it’s not exactly like the now defunct #DeleteFacebook movement has really led to any mass user exodus.

The latest quarterly results suggest ad spend on Facebook remains bullish (more than $55 billion in 2018). And, crucially for Facebook, this isn’t going to slow down anytime soon. Overall, ad spend will shift markedly this year in response to larger ad-market dynamics, such as the increase in aging consumers and the boom in social video. Little-seen data shows Facebook is seeing increased gains from the 55-plus segment, while younger users are simply shifting communication preferences to the family of Facebook-owned apps, namely Instagram. Video (particularly mobile) has taken center stage on social platforms that were once text- or photo-centric. Younger users are spending increasing amounts of time watching videos and sharing clips that amplify brand messages. Facebook users aren’t floundering. They are simply shifting, which goes to show that in the long term, advertising revenue will remain sustainable. All in all, it’s all about seeing around corners.

Zuckerberg has repeatedly stated that Facebook doesn’t read the content of your messages to target advertising, which suggests it’s irrelevant whether the messages are encrypted or not. So, can highly personalized targeting and user privacy coexist? This is absolutely doable. But it will require Facebook to greatly improve its commitment to educating consumers using small-scale private messaging on data controls and how the advertising experience will evolve.

Encrypted interoperability will challenge Facebook’s behavioral advertising model, but not eliminate it. Ad content is actually more profitable when its personalized with customer’s knowledge so it’s expected that Facebook will likely offer more ways to provide services to customers in unique, secure ways. As far as advertisers go, they are also going to get less experimental and more intentional. Instead of trial-and-erroring multiple targeting elements to see how they work across disparate user profiles, advertisers will likely fine tune one or two methods to better target complete data profiles. We’ll also see advertising move beyond personalization and towards “individualization,” which means messaging will speak less to who you are on a demographic level and more to social listening and community engagement. The net effect: better ad models allowing them to connect to smaller networks of grouped users.

Despite the dissatisfaction with Facebook’s current safety measures, users and advertisers aren’t leaving the platform. Both understand that data privacy isn’t an issue relegated to Facebook alone, but one that has industry-wide implications. Facebook will likely continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible with private messaging before developing community standards that will put its users feel at ease. Ultimately, Facebook is a utility built on connections and people are hesitant to let go of this connectivity. In the end, Facebook continues to evolve and bring in more communications to strengthen its core experience. It’s just not so shocking to see Zuckerberg test out a new approach. One that will work.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Steve Weiss is the founder and CEO of MuteSix, an award-winning, full funnel digital and creative studio founded in 2014. He is responsible for the overall vision, strategic leadership, service delivery, culture and growth of the creative agency leading to a billion dollars in trackable revenue for clients. Under Steve’s direction, MuteSix has earned the distinction as most awarded Facebook social advertising agency. Steve is a frequent speaker at industry events and serves as a regular commentator on ad tech topics and trends as they relate to the digital advertising ecosystem.

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

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Daily Search Forum Recap: May 20, 2019

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.