May 2021 Digital Marketing Tools Magazine

How to Buy
A Marketer’s
Followers
the Right Way
Guide to Increasing
Organic Reach
Republishing
Content
How to Use
How to Update
Old Blog Posts
for SEO
Analytics
to Track Social Media
SPECIAL:
21 StrategiesCustomer
How to Use
Acquisition
Shopping
to Drive Product Sales to Win New Customers
Digital Marketing Tools Magazine | Issue 95 | May 2021

© Digital Marketing Tools Magazine 2021
Nick Nicholls
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Website: http://digitalmarketingtools.com
Email: support@DigitalMarketingTools.com
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Contents
5
EDITOR’S NOTES
COVER STORY
21 Customer Acquisition Strategies to Win New Customers
7 by Matthew Barby
FEATURE STORIES
How to Use Google Analytics to Track Social Media:

51 Here are 5 Quick Ways by Andy Crestodina
Republishing Content: How to Update Old Blog Posts for SEO

70 by Joshua Hardwick
How to Use Instagram Shopping to Drive Product Sales

94 by Neil Patel
Increasing Facebook Organic Reach: A Marketer’s Guide

103
How to Buy Twitter Followers the Right Way: 5 Things to Know
116 by Johnny Pulling
How to Quickly and Easily Add Captions To Your Facebook

139 LIVE Videos
RESOURCES & REVIEWS
Contributor Bios
147
How To Find Your Audience’s Biggest Pain Points
156 by Lyn Wildwood
Digital Marketing Tools Magazine 4

Welcome to Digital Marketing Tools!
EDITOR’S NOTES
Thank you to everyone who clicked the link below and

took my quick survey. You said you wanted more SEO and
Content Marketing Tips.
My goal is to bring you the latest digital marketing tools,

practical step-by-step guides and ‘how-to’ blueprints from the
best SEO, Social and Content Marketing masters on the planet!
That said, here are the latest marketing strategies, Content

Marketing tools, Social Selling tips and SEO blueprints from
today’s top digital marketing professionals.
• 21 Customer Acquisition Strategies to Win New

Customers
• How to Use Google Analytics to Track Social Media:

Here are 5 Quick Ways
• Republishing Content: How to Update Old Blog Posts

for SEO
• How to Use Instagram Shopping to Drive Product Sales
• A Marketer’s Guide to Increasing Facebook Organic

Reach
• How to Buy Twitter Followers the Right Way:

5 Things to Know
• How to Quickly and Easily Add Captions To Your

Facebook LIVE Videos
• How To Find Your Audience’s Biggest Pain Points
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21 Customer
COVER STORY
Acquisition Strategies
to Win New Customers
by Matthew Barby
Figuring out how to acquire new customers is difficult.

I’ve spend the past few years working with all kinds of
different businesses across a range of industries to help
them figure this out. Now I’m going to share a whole host
of tactics that you can try out yourself to add more to
your bottom line.
Having a solid customer acquisition strategy is an essential component for any
business. Without it, you’re going to seriously struggle to grow your business in
any kind of meaningful way. That said, one of the most difficult parts of scaling any
business is actually figuring out which channel is the most sustainable for bringing
through new customers.
Justin Mares made a very good point in his book (co-authored with Gabriel Weinberg),
Traction, in which he says, “Phase 1 [of gaining traction] is very product focused and
involves pursuing initial traction while also building your initial product. This often
means getting traction in ways that don’t scale.”
“This often means getting traction in ways that don’t scale.”
Paul Graham, of Y Combinator, also echoes this point in his essay aptly titled, Do
Things that Don’t Scale, where he describes a tactic that Stripe used in their early
months - that he dubbed, Collison Installation - where they would physically install
Stripe onto potential customers laptops for them.
The other thing to bear in mind is that an acquisition channel that works for one
business may be terrible for another. At HubSpot, organic search is a huge channel
for us. We’ve based most of lead generation around ranking for relevant long tail
keywords that deliver millions of new visitors each month.
Conversely, if you take a company like Slack as an example, organic search just isn’t
as much of a huge channel for them. Most of their customer acquisition comes
from viral marketing; that is one user coming into Slack and inviting other members
from their business.
Another overused but obviously relevant example of this can be seen with Dropbox’s
early growth. Their incentivized referral program (invite a friend and get more storage
space for free) led to new customer acquisition exploding. Similar to Slack, organic
search wasn’t really a big channel for them.

Finding the Right Acquisition Channel
There are a ton of different frameworks that have been published that seek to help
you identify the right channel to pursue, but ultimately this comes down to a fair
amount of trial and error, especially if you have no historical data to work with.
I’m not going to delve into the details of a framework, per se. Instead I’m going to
give you a host of customer acquisition tactics, as well as a way to test them out,
in order to enable you to get a feel for which channels have the potential to deliver
the most value.
Before you start experimenting, make sure that you’ve set clear goals that you’d like
to achieve – even if you don’t have much data to base them on. Simply setting goals
here, albeit rough ones, will enable you to actually understand whether something is
working on not. After testing out a few different channels you’ll be able to compare
their individual success in relative terms against each other.
The final thing to note here is to come back to the quote I shared from Justin Mares
(above). It doesn’t matter if you can’t figure out a way to scale these individual
tactics right now. Instead, you’re looking to see if the channel provides what you’re
looking for – large volumes of high-quality new customers.
Customer Acquisition Tactics

As previously mentioned, the tactics that I’m going to share with you are designed
to test something very specific within an individual channel. The idea here is that it
can help you either discover new opportunities for growth within an existing channel
you’re pursuing or it can open up new ideas within channels you’re yet to utilize.
On top of this, I’ve tried to design each tactic in a way that enables a broad set of
businesses to test them out. While all of these may not be applicable to you, there
should be at least a handful that are.

1. Increase Engagement from Unopened Emails

TAG: EMAIL DIFFICULTY: EASY
Objective: Increase the number of people reading and engaging with the emails that you
send to your subscriber list by specifically targeting those that have failed to open them.
How: 48 hours or so after sending an email to your subscribers, go into your email
marketing software and find all of the subscribers that received the email but didn’t
open it. Resend your email with a completely new email subject to just these people
– this gives you a chance at increasing the number of opens of your campaign
without looking like you’re spamming subscribers’ inboxes with the same email.
I tested this out recently with my email subscriber list and found it to yield an increase
of 35.41% for the total number of opened emails, and an increase of 39.66% in click-
through rate. That’s huge when you put it into absolute numbers.
Here’s the stats breakdown:
Original Email Open Rate: 22.9%

Original Email Click Rate: 5.9%
Unopened Segment Open Rate: 10.8%

Unopened Segment Click Rate: 3.1%
Total Open Rate: 31.01% (35.41% increase)

Total Click Rate: 8.24% (39.66% increase)
(h/t to Noah Kagan for first mentioning this tactic)

2. Update and Republish Old Content

for a Ranking Boost
TAG: ORGANIC SEARCH DIFFICULTY: EASY
Objective: Generate more organic search traffic to existing content that lives on
your blog through improved keyword rankings.
How: Within a lot of websites that publish content regularly on their blog, there are
often a ton of posts that are sitting really deep in their website’s architecture. This is
primarily due to time-based blog feeds – i.e., the older a blog post is, the lower down
in the blog feed it will be, until it goes even further down into the various archived
pages of the blog.
A perfect example of this was with the HubSpot blog. We produce over 250 blog posts
every month and we have hundreds of blog feed pages. The blog posts published a
few years ago will very quickly drift down into page 30, 40, 50, etc. of the blog, and
consequently very deep in the overall architecture of the website.
In general, pages deeper in the architecture of a website will get a lower share of
internal PageRank. Unless the page has a significant amount of backlinks from
external webpages, it’s unlikely to rank very well in the search engines.
One quick solution here is to update the date of the blog post to the current day
and republish it. This will fire it to the top of page 1 of your blog feed and give it a
significant PageRank boost.
Not only that, but if you actually add some extra content to the blog post and
update any old stats/references, then you can fully re-promote it (via social media,
communities, email, etc.) and earn more backlinks from external websites.
I’ve used this tactic, and continue to do so, across pretty much every campaign I’ve
ever worked on that revolves heavily around content production and have had great
results. You can see an example of this with the 105% increase in organic search
traffic that my colleague, Pam Vaughan, achieved from executing this very tactic.

3. Aligning Search Intent to Content Upgrades

TAG: CONTENT MARKETING DIFFICULTY: EASY
Objective: Increase the number of people downloading content upgrades when

they’ve come through to content from organic search.
How: Identify the pages on your website that deliver the most organic search traffic,
ideally top-of-the-funnel content like blog articles. You can do this within your
analytics platform.
Once you’ve found the top performing content from organic search, use Google
Search Console to find which keywords are being searched for most to discover
and land on the content.

It’s easy to do this within Search Console - just filter down on each page using the
built-in filter and then select to view the Queries for that URL. You’ll then get a list like
in the above screenshot.
Now that you know what people are searching for to get to your content, you know
what they actually want. This is important because you can now create a content
upgrade, with the purpose of capturing contact information in return for access
that relates directly to one of these keywords.
In the above screenshot I show a page that ranks really well for “tuna salad recipe”.
A logical content upgrade would be a downloadable PDF tuna salad recipe card.
We scaled this specific test across around 80 different pages on the HubSpot blog
and saw an average increase in conversion rate of over 200%.
4. Integrations with Other Products

TAG: BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIFFICULTY: HARD
Objective: Acquire new customers by leveraging the existing user base of products
that you integrate with, offering an improved user experience in the process.
How: To explain how this tactic can work well I’d like to showcase one of the masters
of this: Zapier. For those of you that don’t know, Zapier is a platform that focuses
completely around connecting apps together in order to create unique value from
them. Zapier’s whole business revolves around leveraging integrations and it’s
primarily how they’ve scaled the business to date.
I spoke with Wade Foster, CEO of Zapier, and he said the following:
“Doing dedicated integrations can be a good source of early growth if you target the right
company. The trick is to build a great integration that fills a gap in another company’s
product offering that they aren’t likely to fill. If possible get their buy-in on co-marketing
efforts before hand. Then when you launch the integration make sure your new partner
will email their user base and setup a landing page featuring your new integration.

Don’t expect any integration to make or break your company though. Most integrations
get less than 1% penetration into a user base, so make sure to go in with expectations
set when building an integration.
Of course, this works great for Zapier because we can do hundreds of integrations and
the usage is meaningful when done across all of them. But don’t expect to have our
network effects when you build your integration.”
The real takeaway here is where Wade talks about integrations that “[fill] a gap in
another company’s product offering that they’re unlikely to fill.” An integration has
to be mutually beneficial to each partner company while also adding more value for
the customer than just simply using the two products independently.
Take Stripe’s integration with Shopify. This is an integration that I’ve personally taken
advantage of and it has actually been a huge factor in selecting Shopify as a CMS.
There have been many other examples of integrations similar to this that have had
a big impact on product adoption – another good example is when PayPal directly
integrated with eBay.
The hard part can often be to find the right integration partner. For an integration
to be both appealing to the individual partners and also add value to customers,
there shouldn’t be too much overlap in existing functionality. I’d start by figuring out
features that your customers would find useful but in areas that you’re not going to
actively pursue as a product development priority.
From here you can shortlist solution providers and evaluate who would add the
most value from a customer acquisition point of view. Things to consider when
evaluating potential integration partners are:
• Their total customer base.
• The likelihood that their customers would be interested in your product.
• Their online reach (i.e., email list, social followers, etc.).
• Ease of the integration.

5. Industry, Feature & Location Pages

TAG: ORGANIC SEARCH DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM
Objective: Increase organic search traffic with high commercial intent by ranking
for keywords related to specific industries and locations that you target, as well as
those related to individual features of your product.
How: Organic traffic that comes to your website with high commercial intent, i.e.,
the visitor is actively looking to buy, is probably the most valuable traffic you can
generate. That said, it’s often in much smaller numbers than that coming from more
informational queries (e.g., “how to do…”).
Outside of capturing people searching specifically for your brand name, there are a
few types of queries that will often work well to target, while not being too competitive
to rank for. These are made up of the following:
• Industry-specific queries. For example, “real estate CRM”.
• Feature-specific queries. For example, “document signing software”.
• Location-specific queries. For example, “used cars, Boston MA”.
Not all of these will be relevant to your business, but one of them probably will be.
Let’s start with industry-specific queries:
Industry-Specific Queries
This usually works better for B2B businesses and the goal is to build out a list of
different industries that you sell to. Once you have this list, match them up against
keywords directly related to your product and analyze total monthly search demand
for each within Adwords or a tools like Ahrefs.
Once you have a list of potential keywords, you’ll need to prioritize them and then
start building out webpages to target each one. Within these pages I’d recommend
having the following:

• Content that directly relates to the industry you’re targeting.
• Testimonials/case studies from customers in the industry you’re targeting.
• Imagery that prospects from the industry you’re targeting can relate to.
• Use the keyword in the URL of the page as well as the title tag.
An example of this strategy being implemented well is with SalesForce. They’ve built
out a ton of these pages that rank for keywords like, “CRM for nonprofits”, “financial
CRM”, “healthcare CRM”, “insurance CRM” and “retail CRM”.
The thing that I like about what SalesForce have done is that they have a ton of
information on each page that is relevant to each of the industries they’re targeting.
They have tailored imagery for each industry, including testimonials from relevant
companies. Here’s an example of their page targeting healthcare keywords:

Feature-Specific Pages
The goal of having feature-specific pages is two-fold. The first part is all about
ranking in the search engines for keywords related to specific features of your
product/service. For example, let’s say your product is a fitness tracker, like FitBit or
Jawbone. In this case you’d want to rank well for terms like, “fitness tracking”, “heart
rate monitoring” and “step counter”. These are all features that relate to a solution
that a potential customer is looking for.
The second goal of these pages is to provide a better user experience for visitors
already on your website that will lead to an increase in online conversions.
Think of it this way, if you’re checking out a product online, would it increase or
decrease the likelihood that you’re going to purchase it if you’re given detailed
information about all of the features related to that product. It’s a no-brainer.
To test this out, follow these steps:
1. List out all of the individual features of your product.
2. For each feature, outline the problems it solves.
3. Do keyword research around both the features and problems.
4. Stack-rank the most relevant keywords by the highest monthly search volume.
5. Build individual pages for each of the core features, aligning them to the keywords
you’ve researched.
Location-Specific Pages
Finally, there are location-specific pages. This works particularly well for businesses
that operate or serve customers in numerous locations, especially if they’re a
service-led business. This can also get messy very quickly (if you don’t structure
things correctly) - especially if you’re doing this across multiple countries (it’s worth
checking out this international SEO course for more information on that).

The core premise here is that you’d map out all of the locations that you’re targeting
customers in and then build out landing pages for each.
An example of a company doing this really well is Zillow.
Zillow rank for a whole host of location-based keywords that net them millions
or organic visitors every month. Take the above page as an example; it ranks #1
for “Austin real estate”, “homes for sale Austin TX”, “Austin homes for sale” and
many more. A modest estimate of organic traffic going to this page alone is 24,000
monthly visits (according to Ahrefs).
If you’re planning on rolling out a bunch of location-specific pages, it’s really important
that you consider the following:
1. Each page needs to have unique content on it that’s related to the location you’re
trying to rank for.
2. There should be something inherently linkable about the page. Zillow does a good
job here because they give real-time price updates for property in the area, so it
actually adds value to visitors.

3. Think about the internal linking to these pages. Building out a hub page that links
to each of the locations can be a good start.
4. Consider the conversion path for visitors to the page(s).
6. Acquire a Website and Migrate its Content

TAG: ORGANIC SEARCH DIFFICULTY: HARD
Objective: Rapidly increase organic search traffic, as well as traffic from a range
of other channels, through the acquisition of a relevant website, and consequently
their keyword rankings.
How: This is my #1 favorite tactic to roll out when I’m working on a project with a
brand new domain. It’s seriously powerful for scaling up traffic growth in a short
period of time. Not only that, but it can actually work out to be seriously cost-effective.
Before I go into an example of where I’ve done this previously, here’s the basic
process involved:
1. Scope out websites that rank for a large number of long tail keywords relevant to
your buyer persona.
2. From the list of websites, drill down on ones that could be potential acquisition
targets.
3. Approach the owners of the websites to see if they’re interested in selling and get
valuations.
4. Come to an agreement with one of them and acquire their web property(s).
5. Migrate over all of the content from their website into your existing domain and
set up canonical tags to point to your version of the content.
6. Once all the content is migrated, set up 301 redirects to push the rest of the
website’s content and backlinks to you.

7. You’ll now absorb all of the acquired domain’s traffic while getting an additional
SEO boost across your existing content for the large influx of backlinks you’ve
just added.
Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? That’s because it is.
The key here is picking the right website to acquire. I’m not going to lie to you, this
part can be quite tough, but I assure you it’s worth the time investment.
In order to find the right acquisition target, you’ll want to get an idea for what your
main buying criteria will be. This is usually made up of the following:
• Current overall web traffic.
• Current organic search traffic.
• Number of pages on the website.
• Number of backlinks/linking domains.
• Specific keyword rankings (i.e., is the site ranking for a very valuable keyword
to your business).
• Relevancy of the content to your audience (there’s no point buying content that
you can’t use).
• How much revenue does the website generate?
• Extended audience size (e.g., do they also have a large email subscriber list?).
• Price.
Anyone that owns a website where organic search is an important channel will
know that creating content and earning backlinks costs a lot of money. In a recent
e-commerce side-project of mine, we were spending roughly $450 per blog post we
created, which included custom imagery (important for our niche).
In the early stages of a campaign where you want to build out a ton of content,
$450 per blog post can really start to add up - more importantly, it meant we had to
spread content production over a longer period of time, and ultimately wait a longer
time to see results.

We scoped out an acquisition target that had over 500 articles, all hyper-relevant to
our audience, as well as around 3,000 backlinks from 550 different domains. At the
price we negotiated for the sale it worked out as the following cost:
• $31.70 per article.
• $5.28 per backlink.
• $28.28 per linking root domain.
That’s some huge savings. Not to mention the 60,000 monthly visits from organic
search that we captured.
While there’s often a lump sum involved with this play, the benefit you see from
economies of scale can be huge, and that’s not even factoring in the additional
benefits you’ll see across your existing content - which is very significant.
Once we’d gone live with the migration, not only did we absorb the traffic from the
acquired site, but we saw massive lifts in our core target keyword rankings that we
were going after - on average they jumped two pages.
The above graph shows the uplift in organic traffic after just 40% of the content was
migrated over (this is just with canonical tags, too!). Trust me when I say it’s very
difficult to see this kind of growth in just a couple of months on a new domain.
For more details on the technical aspects of a migration like this, read this post I
wrote back in 2015.

7. Pay to Email Someone Else’s Subscriber List

TAG: PAID DIFFICULTY: EASY
Objective: Generate highly targeted traffic to your content that has the potential to
convert against your business goals.
How: There are a few ways you can go about this, and it largely depends on both how
you want to work with the partner and how targeted you’d like the audience to be.
I always start with a campaign idea. Let’s say you’re promoting a free online course
that you want to funnel into a paid product – getting this in front of a targeted list of
subscribers could result in a ton of subscribers. For this example I’d ideally want to
have either a dedicated email sent or a substantial mention within an email.
Depending on how prominently you’re mentioned in an email send will impact both
pricing and availability. Some brands won’t actually offer a dedicated send but will
instead allow you to have a mention within a section of the email. Both can work but
you need to decide what would work better for your specific campaign and budget.
Next up is finding the right partner. You could use an advertising marketplace like
BuySellAds where you simply search for partners based on a few criteria. I’ve done
this in the past with varying results, to be honest.
My favorite approach is to get a list of hyper-relevant publications online and reach

out to them (most will have a specific email address for advertising inquiries). Within
the email I’ll ask the following:
• How big is your email list?
• What types of people are subscribes to your list?
• What’s the typical open/click rates of campaigns you run?
• What advertising options do you offer? (dedicated email, etc.)
• How much do you charge?

From there I’ll get data back from a few different partners and decide on the best
one. A little advice here if it’s your first time doing this – start out small to test the
conversion rate. Once you have proved it works on a small scale then you can go
about scaling it up.
8. Create Co-Branded Content and Share out

the Leads
TAG: CONTENT MARKETING DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM
Objective: Create a co-branded piece of content that is promoted by both brands to

dramatically increase the overall reach of the content as well as leads generated.
How: The scale of success will largely depend on how well your product/service
compliments offerings from other businesses. The idea here is that you’ll partner
with another company that has a large reach amongst the audience that you’re
targeting, but doesn’t directly compete with you.
A good example of this in the B2C world would be with Red Bull and GoPro. Their
“Stratos” campaign, where they worked together to drop a man from the stratosphere,
is probably one of the largest co-marketing efforts of all time.
On a smaller scale, and in the B2B world, Buffer and BuzzSumo collaborated to
produce a study across 500 million Facebook posts. They turned this into a webinar
and then shared out the leads that were generated. The beauty of this campaign
was the obvious synergy between the two companies’ offerings, which is going to
result in a much greater yield of leads that can be used by both companies.
Here’s the process that I use to start mapping out and executing a co-branded
content campaign:
1. Make a list of companies that target a similar audience but have an offering that
compliments yours.
2. Get in touch with them to find out their total reach (email list size, site traffic, etc.).

3. Work on a content idea together.
4. Create assets, including a landing page on each of your websites.
5. Go live.
6. Share out leads.
9. Build an Inherently Viral Mechanism into

your Product
TAG: VIRAL MARKETING DIFFICULTY: HARD
Objective: Acquire new users through a mechanism that enables existing users to
bring them into your product without increasing your customer acquisition cost by
any significant amount.
How: Virality is a term that gets banded around a LOT, and more often than not its
meaning is largely misunderstood. The core benefit of having virality baked into
your product is that you can scale up new user acquisition without increasing your
customer acquisition costs (CAC).
There are very few channels where this is the case. Paid is the perfect example
because for you to increase user acquisition from paid, you’ll also need to increase
CAC (more money spent = more users).
What you’re aiming for with virality is for CAC to remain a constant while user
acquisition increases. This is usually through an existing user being responsible for
the acquisition of a new user.
One of the most famous success stories of virality within a product is with Dropbox.
Dropbox built in a referral system that meant you’d receive an extra 500mb of storage
once you’d referred a friend into Dropbox. Not only that, but the person you referred in also
received an extra 500mb of free storage. The fact that both parties gained value from a
referral dramatically increased the likelihood that existing users would invite in others.

Airbnb is another company that has a pretty good viral mechanism built into their
product. They offer $100 in travel credit (to be spent on Airbnb) for every new Airbnb
host that you invite and $35 in travel credit for every Airbnb traveler that you invite.
The host that you invite also gets some Airbnb credit, which ensures that there is
value for both parties.

Another really good example is with MailChimp. MailChimp allow you to use their
email platform for free if you have less than 1,000 subscribers in your list. The other
caveat is that you have to include a rewards bade at the end of your email. This
means that anyone receiving your email will see a MailChimp signup link.
Not only does this help to acquire new users for MailChimp, but the user that refers
in someone will receive reward points, helping them to discover new features and
reducing their likelihood to churn.
Ultimately, virality is a hard thing to achieve. One of the things that you will want to do
when you’re scoping out the possibility of building in some kind of viral mechanism
into your product is what the viral potential is. This is usually worked out as a viral
coefficient.
While it’s difficult to give a boilerplate “how-to” on adding virality to your product,
here are some things you’ll want to think about:
1. What features of your product are most popular among your customer base?
2. Do you have any features that have usage caps that could be increased through
a referral incentive?
3. By inviting others into your product, would your existing users benefit from any
kind of network effect?
4. What can you use as incentives to existing users to bring in new users that will
have a minimal impact on CAC?

These are just a few to begin with. You’re going to want to test out some different
approaches with your existing customers, pull in the data and then make some
decisions on the most effective tactics to explore in more detail.
10. Seed Engagement Metrics on Facebook Ads

to Drive Down CPC
TAG: PAID DIFFICULTY: EASY
Objective: Reduce the amount that you’re paying per click across your paid Facebook
ads while maintaining the same quality of visitors.
How: After running a whole host of different Facebook advertising campaigns over
the past few years, one of the overwhelming factors that I’ve observed for increasing
ad engagement has been social proof.
Ads with lots of engagement on them (e.g., likes, comments, reactions, shares, etc.)
are typically clicked on a whole bunch more than those with either a small amount
or none at all.
So, how do you get a bunch of engagement on your ads? Well, there are three
different ways that you can explore:
Option 1: Run your ad only to your Facebook page fans initially and include a CTA
within the copy to comment.
Option 2: Do the same as above except run it to your website visitors using a custom
audience.
Option 3: Target ads to countries with super low CPC (e.g. Philippines, Brazil, etc.) to
seed initial engagement.
If you’re using option 3, make sure you filter out any obvious spam. To be honest
though, people rarely read the comments on an ad; it’s more about there being “X
comments” on your ad than having nothing at all.

Once you’ve seeded initial engagement, which should all come at a much lower
cost to you due to the finer targeting, tweak the copy of the ad and change up all of
the targeting, and I guarantee that you’ll see a much higher CTR and lower CPC.
Here’s a useful resource that’s related to this around creating Dark Posts for your
ads, which is basically a way to lock in and consolidate trust signals even during
split testing.
11. Set up an Affiliate Program

TAG: AFFILIATE DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM
Objective: Generate new customers through incentivized referrals.
How: There’s two ways to look at affiliate. The first would be your traditional affiliate
program where you give an individual, maybe a blogger, a unique referral link and
then every time someone signs up to your product from it, you pay them.
The other way could be driven more by business development partnerships. Let’s
say you integrate your product with another company’s product. Then, every time
someone signs up to your product as a direct result of the integration, you could
give a payout to your integration partner.
The right path to take will largely depend on your product set-up and pricing
model. That said, there’s not necessarily a cookie-cutter approach to building out a
programme. The basic things to consider are:
1. The maximum payout you can give to affiliates to retain a profit.
2. How you’ll compensate affiliates (e.g., per click, per signup, per activation, etc.)
3. The system that you will use for tracking affiliate referrals.
4. Who would be interested in being an affiliate for your company.
Running a successful affiliate program can offer a ton more benefits than just your
conversion goals. Ultimately, for affiliates to build revenue they have to talk about

your business. This can have a really positive impact on a bunch of other acquisition
channels outside of affiliate.
There’s a bunch of different affiliate software out there for you to roll out your own
affiliate program, including Post Affiliate Pro, OmniStar and Ambassador. On the
other hand, you can plug into pre-built platforms that will advertise your program to
their network of affiliates. Some examples of these platforms include, ShareASale,
ClickBank and CJ Affiliate.
Here’s an example of AdEspresso’s affiliate program details so that you can see an
example of a SaaS business affiliate program in action.
I asked Patrick Hathaway from URL Profiler, who has a successful affiliate program,
to share some advice. Here’s what he said:
“The best advice I can give to companies thinking about starting their own affiliate
program is this: ‘think about how your affiliates, like you, think about your customers.’
You don’t just want every affiliate under the sun, you want affiliates who are likely to
attract the right customers for the right reasons. If you don’t get this right, you could end
up with a bunch of users who require a high support burden, are more likely to churn, and
have a lower lifetime value.
As such, you need to identify potential affiliates in your space, and home in on the ones
whose audience matches your target market, and whose message aligns with yours.
Build out personas for these affiliates, think about how you are going to attract them,
incentivize them, and retain them (where retention means: ‘promoting your product on
a continuous basis’).
Similarly, you really need to manually vet your affiliates, and make sure applicants tick
all the right boxes. One way to do this is to ask them to fill in questions during the sign-
up process, such as ‘How do you plan to promote our product?’ If you don’t think the
applicants are a good fit (e.g., they just have a coupon website), then don’t feel bad about
rejecting them.
One you have the right affiliates on board, it is just a question of making sure that they
have all the resources they need to do an awesome job of selling your product!”

12. Test Keyword-Level Conversion Rate via Paid

TAG: ORGANIC SEARCH DIFFICULTY: EASY
Objective: Gain a better understanding of which keywords drive the most conversions
from search and place more focus on ranking for them in organic.
How: Keyword research can be a confusing task for a lot of people that haven’t
immersed themselves in SEO for a substantial amount of time. As a result, a lot of
the priority that’s placed on ranking for specific terms can end up being ill-conceived.
An example of this is making an assumption that ranking for a broad, informational

query with a large monthly search volume will drive huge amounts of revenue.
I’ve seen this first-hand with a bunch of businesses I’ve worked with, but a recent
example was with the term “CRM”.
We spent a bunch of time at HubSpot going after the “CRM” keyword to drive new
signups to our free CRM, and once we ranked on page 1 we soon realized that
this keyword contributed less signups than others with 100x less search volume
(literally).
The main reason here is that there isn’t any commercial intent behind the keyword.
Most people searching for it just want the definition of the acronym.
Rather than spending a bunch of time and resources on trying to rank for the wrong
keywords, you can run some small-scale tests via paid. In short, this is what it
involves:
1. Pull a list of your top keywords that you’re planning on going after.
2. Run a small scale paid ad campaign through AdWords.
3. Measure the conversion rate on a keyword level.
4. Prioritize your organic search focus based on the keywords that convert best.

13. Answer Quora Questions

TAG: SOCIAL DIFFICULTY: EASY
Objective: Generate qualified referral traffic

through to your website by answering
relevant questions on Quora.com.
How: For those of you that haven’t

used Quora before, it’s a question-
based social network. In short, lots of
people ask lots of questions, then lots
of people answer those questions. The
questions and answers span across all
kinds of topics, from the meaning of
life through to what happens when you
don’t cut grass.
The opportunity from an acquisition

point of view is to funnel traffic through
to your content by commenting on
questions that your content answers.
Jason Lemkin, CEO of SaaStr, has
answered over 2,000 questions on
Quora and generates over 1,000,000 SaaStr Quora Stats: https://www.saastr.
(yes, 1 million) views on them every com/saastr-crosses-10-millions-views-
month. on-quora/

Here’s how you can go about scoping out the right question to answer that will get
you the largest return on your time.
1. Log in to SEMrush and do a search on quora.com.
2. Navigate to the “Organic Research” tab under “Domain Analytics”.
3. You’ll now have a list of top ranking questions on Quora (within the search engines).
Run a search for a keyword related to your content. For example, “SaaS”.
4. Now sort the results in descending order by search volume.
You’ll now have a list of all the relevant questions on Quora (within the URL column)
that drive regular organic search traffic. These are the questions that you can
prioritize for answering.
When it comes to actually answering the questions, try to avoid just posting a link
to your content. That won’t fly with the Quora moderators and they’ll remove your
answer in no time at all (trust me, I know).
It’s okay to put links within your answers but try not to do this too much. Every
answer you publish should have inherent value without having to visit anything else.
It’s also worth building up some goodwill within the community by answering some
questions without any links at all. This is really a longer term play, but as is shown
above, it can pay off big-time.

14. Build Content off of Unique Data

TAG: CONTENT MARKETING DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM
Objective: Earn backlinks, press coverage and traffic to your content.
How: Investing big on content can often be a risky move. Simply pumping more
money into your content marketing won’t necessarily get you results. In the same
vein, not committing enough is likely to yield much. That’s why focusing your efforts
on bigger plays can be a better strategy to follow.
If you’re looking to earn mentions in top publications and generate all the traffic that
comes with that, sourcing original data is one of your best bets. Journalists love
original data, especially if it can be used to tell a wider story. Add to that the right
timing and you’re onto a winner.
Here’s a nice example of a campaign that I worked on that did just this...
The above chart shows the traffic over a two-week period for a single piece of content
that we launched, producing over 100,000 unique pageviews. Not only that, but it
also netted over 500 backlinks from over 300 different domains. This includes the
likes of TheNextWeb, Inc, Android Authority, Games Radar and Capterra.

This was all through creating a piece of content based off of data. It makes getting
attention from journalists and big sites so much easier, and the boost in traffic and
links has a huge knock-on effect across your whole site.
Contrary to popular belief, this doesn’t need to cost huge amounts and it isn’t just
for big brands - trust me, I’ve done this for brand new startups and big brands alike.
Here’s my typical process:
1. Figure out a topic relevant to your buyer persona/offering. I’m not going to dive
too much into this but the main takeaway is to try and keep your idea relevant in
some way to your business.
2. Find a specific question you’re going to answer within that topic, using data. To
us the above example, “How much revenue does the Pokemon Go app generate?”
3. Figure out the data points you will need to answer the question.
4. Map out how to gather this data. Will you need to do some secondary research (i.e.,
you’ll be patching existing data together to make it more valuable cumulatively) or
do you need to conduct primary research (e.g., running surveys through services
like PollFish)?
5. How can you add credibility to the data? One good way to do this is by getting
sector experts to give a quote around your findings. A nice way to do this is to
search the New Releases section of Amazon to find recently published authors
and reach out to them for a quote (having a quote from a published author goes
a long way with journalists). Thanks to Kirsty Hulse for that tip.
6. Visualize the data. Try not to overthink this part. Don’t just create some crazy
interactive piece because you think it’s ‘cool’. Format the content into something
that will make the takeaways easy to digest, and in a way that the target reader
will find easiest to consume.
7. Reach out to the press with some exclusives on the data before you go live. You
can use a tool like Lumanu or JustReachOut.io to find influencers/journalists to
reach out to.

Here are a few great examples of data-backed content that have performed really well:
• Today’s Teens are Better than You and We Can Prove it
• How Much Does a Website Cost?
• SaaS DNA Project
• Two Centuries of US Immigration
• Population Healthier
I spoke with Kirsty Hulse, of Manyminds Digital, and asked her what she’d found to work
well from her experience in producing data-backed content. Here’s what she said:
“It’s no secret that if you have data, you have news, and if you have news, you have links.
Though getting access to statistically significant, not outrageously expensive survey
data can be incredibly difficult. The good thing about working on the internet, however,
is that there are pockets of weirdos interested in everything. And I mean everything. For
example, here is an active forum for Pest Control Experts in the UK or these having
a conversation about chamber music or these absolute lads enjoying “tarmac chat”.
5,557 posts in general tarmac chat. Sure.

The point is, whatever your niche, whatever your brand, there is a community of people
actively interested and engaged in it. These are the people you should be sending your
surveys to. (I found these simply by Googling [thing] + forum). A few weeks ago I also
discovered Pollfish and they literally revolutionized my life (that’s the kind of life I lead).
It’s a survey and market research service, but it’s fast, it’s affordable and has lots of
different question formats and demographic and screening options.”
15. Build Custom Tools for Lead Generation

TAG: ENGINEERING DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM
Objective: Increase the number of leads you generate through the creation of highly
relevant, self-qualifying tools.
How: I can’t stress the importance of relevance here. The number 1 mistake that I
see businesses make when they try to execute this strategy is to build a tool that
generates a lot of traffic but either bears no relevance to their business or it doesn’t
inherently qualify leads.
When I talk about the tool being self-qualifying, I’m referring to the fact that it would
only be useful to users that would also get use from your product/service.
A good example of this is HubSpot’s Website Grader.

The tool grades the performance of your website based on a variety of inbound
marketing metrics.
You’ll get a report sent to you that outlines areas for improvement, as well as the
things you’re currently doing well.
Coincidentally, HubSpot’s marketing software is likely to help you improve on those

areas you’re lagging in. Not only that, but the sales team now have a bunch of data
on your current setup that will enable them to sell better to you.
A great lead generation tool will combine the ability to gather essential data on
the prospect in order to improve the likelihood of a sale, as well as fulfilling a core
pain point of the prospect. In this example, the pain point is that a lot of marketers
struggle to figure out how well their current website is performing.
In order to build a custom lead generation tool, go through the following steps:
1. Outline some core problems that your buyer persona has.
2. List out the most essential data points you’d need from a prospect to sell to them
(email, phone, etc.).
3. List out 2-3 basic solutions to the core problem that your buyer persona has
(from step 1).
4. Identify any of the solutions from step 3 that could be automated in some form.
5. For those that can be automated, list out the steps to automate each (in detail)
and work this into an ideal for a tool.
6. PIE score each idea and stack rank them highest to lowest to prioritize which to
look at.
7. Try to figure out ways to get the data you need from the user in a way that feels
part of the whole experience.
8. Build, test and iterate.
Don’t underestimate the complexity of this process. More often than not, the best
tools are the simplest, but it takes a lot of work to get to the stage where you can
make a simple idea work.

16. Publish Content on External Sites

Objective: Increase the volume of relevant traffic to your website, while boosting
your organic search rankings.
How: ‘Guest blogging’ gets a bad reputation, especially within SEO, because of the
fact that so many companies have been doing it to death. More to the point, focusing
on large volumes of low-value guest blogs in an attempt to build links.
For any of you involved in SEO, or that have rolled out guest blogging campaigns,
you’ll know that this doesn’t scale well at all, and it’s VERY difficult to get a return on
your time.
So just to be clear, what I’m about to go through is not focused around pumping out
a bunch of crappy content to low authority sites in order to build links.
What I am suggesting is working with blogs/publications that have a hyper-relevant

audience to you and the ability to refer traffic to you.
• Forget looking at things like Domain Authority to decide whether you should be
publishing content on a site.
• Forget about whether you’re going to get a dofollow link from the website.
• Forget sending 1,000 outreach emails to websites to see if they’ll accept a blog
post from you.
Trust me, I’ve been down the road of the above and it doesn’t play out well.
Here’s how you should evaluate a website that you want to publish content onto:
• Does each post on the website get a significant amount of engagement? i.e.,
comments, shares, etc.
• How much traffic does the website, and more importantly, the individual posts
get? (use SimilarWeb)

• Is their audience full of my buyer persona?
• Do I think that this will result in any kind of meaningful referral traffic to my
website?
You may be thinking, “A few of those seem like they’d take a while to evaluate.”
Well, that’s because this process takes a little time. The more time you spend doing
it, the better the results that you’ll get.
Instead of writing a piece of content and pushing it out to a bunch of different

websites, spend time crafting a specific piece that is tailored completely to the
audience of the site you’re going after.
On top of that, put time into pitching the idea. Figure out specifically who within
the business is the decision maker. Can you get an intro from someone you know?
If not, can you build a relationship via Twitter or LinkedIn first and add some value
before you ask for something?
Ultimately, the worst that they can say is no. If that’s the case, you can always
publish this on your own website.

Second Option: Publishing to Platforms
Outside of pitching to publications, you can publish content to platforms that enable
you to have an account with publishing rights. For example, Medium or BuzzFeed.
I’m not going to go into all the details of this here because I wrote a huge guide on
reaching the front page of BuzzFeed a while back. All I’ll say here is to take a similar
approach to the above where you’re looking to add as much value to the individual
platform’s audience.
17. Republish Content to Medium

Objective: Give your existing content a boost of traffic by tapping into Medium’s
referral engine.
How: Medium released a pretty amazing feature within their publishing platform
in late 2015 that seemed to go under the radar of a lot of content publishers. They
gave the opportunity to add a canonical tag to the content you publish on Medium.
This means that you can republish your existing content from your website over to
Medium and any backlinks that the medium post gets will be pushed back through
to your original post; and you don’t need to worry about content duplication.
How do you do this? Well, it’s really simple: the “Import a Story” feature.
Click on the button and then add the link to your existing piece of content.

Medium will work it’s magic and start formatting your content into their platform,
automatically adding a canonical tag.
If you’ve started to grow a following on Medium already then you should be able to
get a huge boost in traffic to your content by republishing it.
Realistically, you have very little to lose in doing this. Medium’s referral engine has
the ability to get a lot of eyeballs on your content too, so I’d recommend taking
some of your content that you think will be most suited to Medium and importing it.
Just make sure you take the time to tweak any formatting.
If you’re completely new to Medium, I’d recommend reading this beginners guide
from Buffer.

18. Map the Locations of your Potential

Customers
TAG: SALES DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM
Channel: Sales.
Objective: Identify the physical locations of your target market so that you can align
localized campaigns more effectively.
How: This tactic first came about in a campaign that I ran a few years ago where
we needed to figure the high concentration areas of where customers were located
in order to align a bunch of offline experiential ads in the most effective positions.
On top of this, this data can be gold for your sales teams, especially if it’s in a format
that’s easy to consume.

For B2B businesses, this can be a really useful technique to implement, even if you
don’t actually have the data in the first place.
To explain this, I’ll go through a basic process that I take. Just so that this makes
sense, let’s assume that your company is a building materials manufacturer that’s
looking to reach more individual building contractors within the UK.
1. First you need to identify a data source. If you don’t have existing data within a
CRM or otherwise, move to step 2; otherwise skip straight to step 4.
2. Identify online directories, such as freeindex.co.uk that has individual profile pages
that local business contractors can advertise their business on.
3. Crawl the directory using a tool like Screaming Frog SEO Spider to get a list of
URLs of the profile pages. You should be able to filter out building contractors via
the URL structure. Once you have these URLs, use data scraping to extract the
business name, address, phone number and website. If you’ve never done any
data scraping before check out this tutorial that I put together.
4. You’ll now have a spreadsheet with all the data on your prospects. Clean up any
formatting issues and go to BatchGeo.com.
5. Upload the spreadsheet and let BatchGeo do the hard work of mapping the data
points against markers on the map.
6. Pass on the final visualization to your sales team.
It’s simple but really effective.
19. Topic-Segmented Email Nurturing

Workflows
TAG: EMAIL DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM
Objective: Increase retention within your email list, while also increasing the volume
of traffic to your website from email.

How: I’m subscribed to less than a handful of email lists in total. The reason for this
is that most emails I receive either aren’t relevant to me or they don’t add any value.
If that’s the case, why would I stay subscribed?
I see hundreds of articles being published every day around “how to grow your email
list”, which is great, but barely anyone is thinking about what to do to keep those
subscribers happy and engaged - both of which go hand-in-hand.
The key to achieving this is a combination of matching the expectation of your

subscriber and also delivering enough value to them via email for them to want to
stay on board.
The way that I approach this is that the subscriber should get unique value from
being on your list. This is why I create whole blog posts that will only be sent to my
email subscriber (they’re not published anywhere else) so that you literally have to
be a subscriber to view it. This adds a lot of value, and most of the feedback I get
from long-time subscribers is around this fact.
This is why I consistently get a high open and click rate on my emails (see above).
Expectation-matching is another core part towards achieving this. I ensure that all
of my subscribers are segmented based on the kind of topics they like to learn about.
For example, if someone downloads my SEO Tactic Checklist then I know they want
to learn more around SEO, so they’re segmented into that bucket of subscribers and
have a separate workflow of emails sent to them.
Finally, you need to get the right balance of giving and extracting value.

The typical workflow that many companies will use when they bring on a new
subscriber is as follows:
Email #1: Welcome email.
Email #2: Share useful content
Email #3: CTA to convert into customer.
In the above example, there’s not a huge amount of value being given before
something is being asked of the subscriber. I actually have 8 individual emails that
are sent to subscribers that add a bunch of value before I ask for anything in return.
Those that reach the next email are highly engaged and will be much more likely to
give me something back in return.
I’m not saying you need to have 9 emails in all of your workflows for this to work, but
you can see where I’m going with this.
Here’s the process you can take to start mapping this out:
1. For every entry point into your list, add some kind of segmentation rule. For
example, if someone downloads an ebook on a specific topic, tag them with that
topic in your list.
2. Build out a simple workflow for each topic segment you have (3-4 will be more
than enough) that adds value outside of your website and other web properties.
3. Add some kind of feedback loop into your workflow. This could be a short survey
you ask people to take so that you can better understand what they want (make
sure you’ve added enough value before you start asking for this).
4. Add in a CTA to convert only when you’ve added significant value to your subscriber.
5. Don’t stop once they’ve converted. Email is a great retention tool - use it!

20. Build a Small-Scale Influencer Referral

Programme
TAG: AFFILIATE/ORGANIC SEARCH DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM
Objective: Grow customer referrals and increase your organic search engine rankings
and brand image.
How: This is a little different from an all-out affiliate program, which I outlined
previously, because this is highly targeted. Within an open affiliate program the
goal is to bring in as many affiliates as possible to generate the maximum revenue
possible.
With an influencer campaign, the focus is around getting top figures within your
industry to promote your product. Outside of the obvious benefits around generating
new customers, there is a lot to be said for the effect this can have on your overall
brand.
It’s one thing having a bunch of random bloggers pushing your product, it’s another
to have industry leaders validating that it’s worth investing in.
SumoMe, Noah Kagan’s lead generation software company, run a focused influencer
program where they will give referral fees to individual influencers that promote
their product.
They actually build out a special landing page for these influencers to direct traffic
to, which is a great way to add a bit more value to them. In some cases they will
even run specific offers for the influencer to use.

This is one of the pages that Matthew Woodward, a marketing influencer, uses to
promote SumoMe.
You probably noticed that I mentioned in the “Objective” section of this tactic that
you can ‘increase your search engine rankings’ as well. Well, here’s a nice trick that
you can implement with these landing pages to boost the ranking of your product
pages (or any page, for that matter).
When you have a bunch of these unique landing pages for influencers, they’re going
to be linking to you fairly frequently, which will push a bunch of PageRank to these
pages. Now that in itself is great but you probably don’t actually want these pages
to rank at all.
So, here’s what you can do...
Add a canonical link on each of your influencer landing pages that points to one
of your product pages that you want to rank better. Now, all of those links to these
landing pages will be pushed through to your product page and you should get a
nice ranking boost.

Just looking at SumoMe as an example and you can see there’s over 9,000 backlinks
from over 150 domains that point to these landing pages - a quick canonical tag will
push all that lovely PageRank into a page you care about.
Here’s a basic process for bringing in influencers to your program:
1. Put together a spreadsheet with the names and contact information of a number
of top influencers within your industry.
2. Individually reach out to them and outline what you’re looking to do, stressing the
exclusivity, and what they’re going to get in return.
3. Work with each influencer to put together a custom package.
4. Create assets for each influencer, including a landing page, creative and any offers.
5. Run an initial campaign with each influencer to show them initial value in the
partnership.
6. Spend a lot of time hand-holding and maintaining the partnerships you form.
21. Content Flipping

TAG: ORGANIC SEARCH DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM
Objective: Boost organic search traffic to high-value commercial pages on your

website.

How: One of the big challenges that a lot of businesses face with SEO is actually
getting their product pages, or other commercial pages, ranking well for highly
competitive search terms that can result in a large volume of conversions.
It’s one thing ranking blog content for long tail keywords that can drive leads; it’s
another thing ranking your product/service pages for highly competitive head
keywords that can create direct revenue conversions.
The reason for this? Commercial pages, like product pages, aren’t very linkable. It’s
much easier to acquire backlinks to your top-funnel blog content than it is to your
product pages. Unfortunately, backlinks are incredibly important towards ranking
for highly competitive commercial keywords.
This is where content flipping comes in.
The basic principle behind this technique is to build out blog content that is highly
related to the core commercial keyword you’re trying to rank your product page
for. For example, if you’re trying to get your product page ranking for “accounting
software”, then the blog content could be something along the lines of “11 Questions
You Need to Ask Before Choosing Your Accounting Software”.

Once you’ve built out a bunch of blog content, spend time promoting and earning
backlinks to it. As I mentioned above, it’s much easier to get links to top-funnel
content like this.
Finally, add a canonical tag from each of the blog posts through to your core product
page. By doing this, you’ll pass on all the SEO benefits of the links these articles
earn through to your product page, enabling it to perform much better in the search
engines.
You can also go through existing content on your site that is relevant and push a
canonical tag onto them that points to your product page.
One thing to be aware of is that any page with a canonical tag pointing to another
page will not rank in the search engines.
This is all about helping your product pages rank - and it’s seriously effective!
One tip here is to focus your blog content that you ‘flip’ into your product pages
around news-driven topics. Topical news content often generates the most links,
which will give you a ton more PageRank to push through to your important pages.

How to Use Google Analytics
FEATURE STORIES
to Track Social Media:

Here are 5 Quick Ways
by Andy Crestodina
Social media is hard work.

It takes a lot of time and energy. Connect and share.
Listen and engage. Grow your following. Be consistent.

Usually the list of social media marketing goals includes “brand awareness” and
How to Use Google Analytics to Track Social Media
“drive website traffic.” But how well is working? Is it bringing visitors to the site?
What are they doing? Not long after you start sharing content on social media, you
find yourself asking this question:
“How do I track social media in Google Analytics?”
Of course, there are all kinds of social media metrics right in front of you. There are
likes, shares, comments and followers. It’s a data-rich channel with tons of social
media analytics tools. But these numbers don’t necessarily translate into website
engagement.

In fact, these are the content marketing metrics least likely to correlate with business
outcomes.
But tracking social media in Google Analytics lets you connect the dots. You can
see which social networks, which shares and which content is getting traction in
which ways.
This post shows the step-by-step process for answering each of these questions.
• How much traffic is social media bringing to your site?
• Which specific social networks are sending traffic to your site?
• How much social traffic is going to any specific blog post or web page?
• How to create a segment to see social media traffic in any report?
• Which social media campaigns are attracting and converting visitors?
SHORTCUT! I built a custom report that will show you all of the social media traffic
to your website. Just click this button and then select the Google Analytics account
you’d like to add it to.
Click here to add our social traffic report to your Google Analytics

How much social media traffic are
we getting?
How to see social traffic in the Acquisition > Site Traffic > All Channels report
Let’s start with the big picture question. The answers are fast and the insights are
good.
In the Channels report, you can see that Social is one of the “Default Channel
Groupings.” Along with Direct, Organic Search, Referral and Email, it’s one of the big
buckets of traffic sources.
From this high level, you can see generally how social media traffic compares to
other sources
• How much traffic are we attracting from social media? (users, sessions)
• How engaged are visitors from social media? (bounce rate, pages/session, avg
session duration)
• How likely are social media visitors to take action? (goal conversion rate)

Don’t be surprised if…
• Conversion rates for visitors from social media are lower than those of the other
traffic sources. Social media visitors tend to have lower intent than search or
direct visitors.
• The numbers may be very low. If so, just set a bigger date range. Beware of
seasonality and changes in marketing activity.
Which specific social media

networks are driving traffic to this
website?
See each social network by “drilling down” in the Acquisition > Site Traffic > All Channels
report
The next level of reporting is literally one click away.
Just click on the “Social” link in that first column (the first column is the “primary
dimension”) to drill down into the next report.
Now “Social Network” is the primary dimension. And you’re looking at a list of every
social network that sent visitors to this website.

It’s easy to compare these social networks at a glance. Which one is attracting
more visitors? Which is attracting visitors who are more engaged?
To make the differences easier to spot, switch to the comparison view. Within this
view you can select any metric (here I’ve selected “users”) to see how each social
network compares.

• You may see surprise traffic from social networks where you aren’t even active.
Those networks may not be part of your strategy, but they still contain links to
your site.
• Instagram doesn’t bring in much traffic, but those visitors are highly engaged.
• Pinterest is a surprisingly good source of traffic!
How much social media traffic is

going to this specific blog post or
landing page?
How to filter for social traffic in the Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages reports
If one of your social media goals is content promotion, then you’ll definitely want to
measure traffic from social to a specific article (or to any kind of URL). Look at the
page in the Landing Pages report, but filter to show just visitors from social.
Here is the step-by-step process, but it may be even easier to just watch the video
above starting at minute 2:50.
Step 1. Find the page in the Landing Pages report
Go to the Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages report and find the URL, either
by scrolling through the list or with a quick filter. You can see the filter I used to find
an article in our Analytics, highlighted in this report.

Step 2. Click the URL to drill down into the report
Once you find it, click it. Now you’re looking at a one-row report with just that one
URL. That’s good.
Step 3. Add a “Secondary dimension”
Open the dropdown menu above the first column. This lets you add data from a
different report into this report in a second column. Search for “source” in the little
search box in the drop down, and click “Source / Medium”

Now you’re looking at all traffic sources and mediums for this URL, including email,
organic, direct. Next we want to remove all but the social sources.
But notice how some of the “social” sources have “referrer” as the medium and look
like referral traffic. Some networks seem to appear twice, with different mediums.
There’s no consistency. This is because social traffic is inherently difficult to attribute.
It comes from apps and websites, URL shorteners and redirects. Analytics is doing
its best!
A filter will clean it up.
Step 4. Use an (advanced) filter to see just social traffic
Click “Advanced” next to the filter box. Set the filter to just show the rows where the
“Source / Medium” are social networks. It will look something like this:

We need to use “Matches RegExp” (as in, “matches regular expression”) instead of
“Containing” so we can list a bunch of options: LinkedIn OR Facebook OR Twitter…
To filter for “A or B” in analytics, you need to use the vertical line “|” character, known
as the pipe. It’s the regular expression for “or” and it’s very useful. So to specify “A or
B or C” you use “A|B|C”
Shortcut! Copy and paste the following regular expression string into that last little
box. It should catch everything:
social|face|twitter|^t.co|linked|pinterest|youtube|quora|reddit|imgur|tumblr|stumble
upon|flickr|bit.ly|tinyurl
Done! Now you can see just how much traffic came from every social source to this
specific URL.
It was kind of a hassle to make this report. Don’t lose it! If you’d like to reference it
quickly later, click the Save button at the top and then find it later in Customizations
> Saved Reports. Or add it to a Google Analytics dashboard.

• You need to keep adjusting your filter to catch everything.
• The trendline is very spiky. Social is an unpredictable channel, right?
How can I see just social media

traffic in my Analytics reports?
How to build a Google Analytics segment for social media
When you customize a report in Google Analytics, all of those settings (secondary
dimensions, advanced filters, sorting) are only on that report. Go to a different report
and poof! They’re gone.
But add create a segment and it applies no matter which report you look at. Click
around and it’s still there. You can see just the social media traffic on any report.

Segments are subsets of your total audience. They are super useful. Social traffic is
a good example of how handy a good segment can be.
Step 1. Click the + Add Segment button
It’s at the top above the trendline in every report.
Step 2. Click the red + New Segment button
We need to create one of our own because there is no pre-built (system) segment for
social media traffic!
Step 3. Click “Conditions”
It’s in the left side menu, under “Advanced.” Also, this is a good time to name your
segment. Maybe something fun and creative like “Social media visits.”

Step 4. Set the conditions for your new segment
Conditional segments are built the same way we built the advanced filter a minute
ago, with one difference: they can apply to sessions (visits) or users (visitors).
Probably, it makes no difference which you select. You’ll get very similar insights
either way.
Your segment is for visits where the Source / Medium contains any of your social
networks. Put this long RegEx string into the open field:
social|face|twitter|^t.co|linked|pinterest|youtube|quora|reddit|imgur|tumblr|stumble
upon|flickr|bit.ly|tinyurl|ow.ly|myspace

It should look like this.
Notice how Analytics shows you the percentage of users on the right (3.5% in this
example). It’s fun that GA is giving you insights even before you save the segment!
Step 5: Save and browse around some reports!
It’s interesting, especially if you leave the “All Users” segment turned on. This lets
you compare social visitors to all visitors.
Check out the conversion reports. Or the Behavior > Overview report. Or the Audience
> Mobile > Overview report.

• Acquisition reports are all meaningless. Your segment zeroes out all but the
social traffic!
• Google Search Console reports don’t work at all. They’re all pre-click data from
organic search, irrelevant to social media. Besides, GSC doesn’t obey segments.
“If you want to know the real value of social traffic on your website,
use this segment and check out Conversions > Goals > Overview.
There, you’ll see how many visitors from social media converted
and became a lead! (Assuming you have good Goals set up.) See
how different social sites compare to each other, and how they
compare to other traffic sources. Now you can put your effort
where it makes the biggest impact.” – Laurel Miltner, Director of
Digital Strategy, Orbit Media

How to track the results from a
specific social media campaign?

How to use a URL builder to add campaign tracking code and track social media traffic
from any link
Some marketing efforts are worth tracking separately. For example:
• Traffic from a paid social campaign (Facebook ad, sponsored posts, etc.)
• Traffic from a social media video
• Traffic from a collaboration with an influencer
These are all “campaigns” and can (really, should) be tracked with campaign tracking
code. Without it, some visitors will be categorized as direct traffic, others will be
tracked as referral traffic. It’s a problem.
Campaign tracking code is a bit of info you can add to the end of any link to your
website. When the visitor clicks this link and lands on your page, this code is in
the address bar. Google Analytics sees it there and attributes that visitor to that
campaign.
This code is very easy to add. It takes less than a minute. It can be added using any
of the free “URL builders” on the web. There are many, but we’ve built our own URL
builder.
Ours is a little easier than most. It forces lower-case and previews the campaign
report.
Here’s how to use a URL builder to add campaign tracking code for any social media
campaign.

Step 1. Enter the link to your website in the first box
For example, if I want to track traffic to this little article about content promotion, I’d
add this link into the first form field:
https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/content-promotion-strategy/
Step 2. Set the campaign’s source, medium and name
These are the three tracking “parameters.”
• Campaign source:
“Source” is the specific origin of traffic. In this case, it’s the name of the social
media network, such as “linkedin.”
• Campaign medium:
“Medium” is the broadest origin of traffic. Select “social.”
• Campaign name:
This can be anything you’d like. Give it a name that will be meaningful to anyone
scanning through the campaign report, such as “content-promo-video”
As you entered these three bits of info, a new URL with the tracking code appended
to it appears below.
Step 3. Click “Copy URL” and use that (instead of the untagged link) in your social
media campaign
Now when that link gets clicked, Analytics will know that they came from this
campaign and will report on that visit in the campaign reports.

Here’s what it looks like in the URL builder:
Here’s what the campaign report looks like in Google Analytics, after the campaign
has run its course:

• The lifespan of that link is longer than expected. A single social post can drive
traffic for a week or more, with expanded reach and life for each social share.
• Conversion rates are zero? It’s hard to get any visitors (especially visitors from
social media) to take action. When traffic is there but conversion rates are low,
work harder on your calls to action.
Conclusion
Social media marketing is challenging. It takes strategic focus. It takes consistency.
It takes empathy and hard work. Ask any social media manager. So make sure to
measure. And make sure to go beyond the basic social media metrics.
Measuring social media marketing is also challenging. It takes a bit of skill to set up the
dimensions, filters and segments. Even then, when everything is tracking properly,
your data won’t be 100% accurate.
Keep in mind that Google Analytics has some inherent accuracy issues (as Amanda
explains here. Our goal isn’t to get perfect data. That’s impossible.
The goal is to get good enough data to make good marketing decisions. That is
definitely possible, even when tracking a tricky, diverse source of traffic like social
media.
And remember, there’s more to social media than dumping links into social streams.
Social is a channel for networking, listening, building real relationships and making
friends. If your only goal is website traffic, you’re not likely to win in the long game.

Republishing Content:
FEATURE STORIES
How to Update Old Blog Posts for SEO

by Joshua Hardwick
Not every blog post you publish will rank in search engines.
Even if you’ve done keyword research and written great
content, it’s not always possible to get things right on
your first attempt.
For example, we published a post about “what is SEO” in late 2018. It wasn’t a
complete failure, but it never ranked higher than the bottom of page one or got more
than an estimated 500 organic visits per month.

So, in August 2019, we rewrote and republished the post. Traffic pretty much doubled
overnight and kept climbing.
Data via Ahrefs’ Site Explorer.
We’ve done this several times with positive results. If you look at the number of
republished posts on the blog in Ahrefs’ Content Explorer, you’ll see that we’ve
republished 75 of our 200+ posts at least once.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to republish old blog posts for more organic traffic in
three easy steps.
1. Find underperforming pages with content issues
2. Refresh the content
3. Republish the post
Step 1. Find underperforming pages

with content issues
If you want to boost organic traffic, then republishing any old post isn’t going to
work. You need to find those that are underperforming because of content issues.

To do that, follow the steps in this flowchart:

Let’s go through each of these steps in more detail.
1. Find underperforming pages
2. Make sure it’s not a new page
3. Rule out backlink factors
4. Make sure it’s an ‘informational’ query
A. Find underperforming pages

If your post ranks in the top three for its target keyword, then it’s probably not a
great candidate for republishing because the risk outweighs the reward. It’s already
performing well, so republishing might do more harm than good.
For that reason, you need to look for posts that rank lower down for their main
keyword.
You can find those keywords in Google Search Console. Just head to the Search
Results report, toggle the average position selector, then filter the report for keywords
with an average ranking position of four or higher.

Sift through the list of keywords for topics that you’re targeting with blog posts.
For example, we wrote a post about guest blogging, so I know this is a keyword
we’re targeting.

Just know that Search Console only shows average ranking positions, so it’s usually
not a particularly accurate representation of your actual ranking position. For more
precise ranking data, paste your blog into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, then head to the Top
Pages report to see the posts that generate the most search traffic.
It’s then just a case of sifting through the report for posts that aren’t ranking high
for their primary target keyword. The best way to do this is to look at the URL, Top
keyword, and Position columns.
For example, if we look through the report for our blog, we see our guide to guest
blogging in position four for “guest blogged.”
It’s clear from the URL that our target keyword here is “guest blogging,” But as the
Top keyword is something else, it’s highly unlikely that we’re ranking in the top three
positions for “guest blogging.”

If we hit the “Keywords” caret, we can confirm this by looking for that keyword and
checking the ranking position.
Note that if your post isn’t targeting a ‘meaningful’ keyword with search traffic
potential, it’s probably not the best candidate for republishing. For example, our
post about starting a link building campaign fast doesn’t target a specific keyword,
so we wouldn’t republish that post to get more traffic from search engines.
B. Make sure it’s not a new page

There’s no point republishing posts that were published recently. It takes time for
posts to attract backlinks and for Google to understand where they deserve to rank.
For that reason, we don’t usually republish posts unless they’re at least twelve
months old.

You can quickly check a post’s age by looking at the publish date.
It seems that our guest blogging guide was published over two years ago, so this
one is ripe for an update.
C. Rule out backlink factors

Content isn’t always the reason your posts aren’t ranking. It’s sometimes because
those that outrank you have more high-quality backlinks and ‘link authority.’
To check if that’s the case, search for your keyword in Keywords Explorer, scroll to
the SERP overview, then look at the Domain Ratings (DR) and URL Ratings (UR) of
the sites and pages that outrank you.
If we do this for “guest blogging,” we see a few lower-authority pages from lower-
authority sites outranking us.

That tells us this is probably a content issue. If we were to refresh and republish the
post, it’s highly likely that we could rank at least one or two positions higher.
However, if we do the same thing for the keyword, “how to improve SEO,” we see the
opposite. All the posts that outrank us have higher UR scores, indicating higher page-
level authority. So, in this case, it’s probably a link authority issue, not a content issue.

D. Make sure it’s an ‘informational’ query
Just because there are pages that outrank you with fewer backlinks, that doesn’t
always mean there’s an opportunity to get more traffic by republishing your post.
If product, category, or landing pages are outranking you, then maybe searchers
aren’t looking for blog posts.
For example, it’s clear from the titles and URLs that the pages outranking us for
“guest blogging” are blog posts. That’s a good sign. It tells us that the type of content
searchers want to see is blog posts.
However, it’s an entirely different story for “website traffic.” All the pages that outrank
us are landing pages with free tools.
It’s unlikely that we could outrank them just by refreshing our content. Most people
are looking for tools here, not blog posts.

Step 2. Refresh the content
If you’ve found a post that could use a refresh, you can’t just update it any old way
and expect more organic traffic. You need to take a systematic approach.
Here are the steps:
1. Make sure your post aligns with search intent
2. Analyze the top-ranking pages
3. Analyze your backlink profile
A. Make sure your post aligns with search intent

Search intent is the reason behind a searcher’s query. We already assessed this
to an extent in the previous step when checking whether the pages outranking us
were blog posts or something else.
But search intent goes deeper than the type of content. You also need to make sure
your post aligns with the desired content format and angle.
Content format
This is the format of the pages most people are looking for. Common formats include:
• How-tos
• Tutorials
• List posts
• Guides
• Opinion editorials
• Expanded definitions (i.e., what is / what are type posts)

If we check the SERP overview for “guest blogging,” we see two main formats:
expanded definitions and guides. Ours is neither of those, which is probably part of
the reason it isn’t ranking.
Content angle
This is the selling point of your post. It’s basically the hook as to why someone
should click and who it’s for. Common angles include:
• Beginners’ guides
• Complete guides
• Top [Number] lists
If we check the top results for “guest blogging,” they’re all aimed at beginners. Yet
our post targets a more advanced audience with the angle of building links at scale.

That probably isn’t very appealing or helpful for a beginner and might be preventing
us from ranking higher.
Of course, as there are a couple of formats and angles we could go with here, you
might be wondering which should we choose? Should we republish our post as a
complete guide or expanded definition? (i.e., “what is guest blogging?”) In this case,
the most logical choice would be the expanded definition. Why? Because these
types of posts seem to be ranking with fewer links than complete guides.

That indicates that the expanded definition format may be a better match for search
intent.
However, if we were republishing our post, we’d probably still go for a complete
guide. That’s because this angle has more business value for us. It presents more
opportunities for us to showcase our product and allow us to go deeper into the
topic than an expanded definition.
B. Analyze the top-ranking pages

Now that you’ve decided on a format and angle, the next step is to analyze the
top-ranking pages to see what they’re doing right. This involves manually visiting
relevant pages and looking for key points.
If we were doing this for our post about guest blogging, we’d open a few of the top-
ranking complete guides as that’s the angle we settled on in the last step.

The good news is that there’s no need to read through every post word for word.
You just need to get an understanding of the structure and key talking points. The
easiest way to do this is to look at the heading tags for commonalities.

To speed up this process, install Ahrefs’ SEO toolbar and check the on-page report.
Amongst other things, this pulls the heading tags from the page into a neat list.
SIDENOTE. The on-page report is completely free. You can use this feature of the toolbar
even if you’re not an Ahrefs customer.
If we do this for the three guest blogging guides and paste the lists for each into a
spreadsheet, we see plenty of commonalities.

All three guides talk about finding guest blogging opportunities and preparing a pitch,
and two of the three also talk about writing posts, tracking results, and determining
goals. These are all things that would make sense to mention in our updated post.
Another way to find key talking points is to run a content gap analysis. To do this,
paste the URLs of a few relevant top-ranking pages into Ahrefs’ Content Gap tool.
Leave the bottom field blank, then hit “Show keywords.”
You should then see the keywords that one or more of these pages rank for. Many
of these will often be different ways of searching for the same thing, but there are
often subtopics amongst them too. For example, we see keywords like “what is guest
blogging” and “does guest blogging work” above. These would be useful sections to
include in our post.

C. Analyze your backlink profile

One of the mistakes people often make when republishing posts is to remove
important link-worthy points. For that reason, before rewriting your post, it’s best to
check its backlink profile to see how it earned its existing links.
Here’s how to do that:

Paste the URL into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, head to the Backlinks report, then skim for
common link reasons in the “Anchor and Backlink” column.
For example, it looks like a few people have linked to our guest blogging guide
because of a statistic that mentions “20%.”
To find out just how many others have linked to us because of this statistic, let’s
filter the report for backlinks mentioning “20” in the anchor or surrounding text.

It looks like 66 unique pages are linking because of this statistic, so it’s probably
worth keeping that mention in the republished post.
There are two reasons this is a good idea:
1. It ensures that existing links stay contextually relevant.
2. It may help you earn more links to the post in the future.
That said, there’s no reason to keep everything you find in the Backlinks report. Just
keep it in the post if it’s still relevant, valuable, and makes contextual sense. For
example, if a few people are linking because of an outdated statistic, it would make
more sense to replace it with an updated one or remove it altogether.

Step 3. Republish the post
Republishing your post is the easy part. Just log in to your site’s CMS (e.g., WordPress),
navigate to the old post, then delete the old content and replace it with the new.
Keep the URL as is, but make sure to update the title and OG tags to reflect the new
content.
Finally, change the publish date to the current date and hit update.
If you have your site set up in Google Search Console, it’s also worth requesting
reindexing after republishing. To do this, paste the full URL of the post into Google
Search Console’s URL Inspection tool and hit “Request reindexing” on the next
screen.

Note that this step is entirely optional. Google will eventually recrawl and reindex
the post regardless, but we’ve found that it tends to be faster when you request
reindexing.

Final thoughts
Republishing blog posts is a smart way to get more traffic to your posts. It’s been
part of our blog growth strategy for a while, and we’re not planning to stop anytime
soon.
However, it’s worth noting that more search traffic isn’t the only reason to update or
republish a post. You should also refresh posts to keep them updated and accurate.
Still not ranking higher despite republishing? Watch the video below.

How to Use Instagram Shopping
FEATURE STORIES
to Drive Product Sales

by Neil Patel
Have you used shops on Instagram? With over a billion

active users and growing, Instagram may already be one
of your favorite places to promote your e-commerce store.
However, lots of opportunities exist for marketing on the
channel, so it can be a great place to build a follower base
and get the word out about your products and brand.

What if you could take passive interaction to the next level and actually buy and
sell directly from the platform? That’s possible with Instagram shopping. This can
be enticing for Instagram users and e-commerce shops who want to keep their
interaction, from discovery to sale, right there on Instagram itself.
What Is an Instagram Shop?

Instagram shops are an option for Instagram account holders who have e-commerce
brands to sell directly from the Instagram platform.
They provide a way for Instagram users to interact and shop with brands they love,
find new brands they might like, and purchase through the Instagram app.
An Instagram shop exists like a mini e-commerce store, within Instagram, as an

extension of your brand’s page. As a brand owner, you can build collections that are
customizable and reflective of your style and perspective.
Shops can choose to allow purchasing directly from the app, using Facebook Pay,
or they use their Instagram shop to point to an off-site e-commerce store. Either
way, they can build a more interactive shopping experience for their users.
How Does Instagram Shopping Work?

Instagram Shopping is a pretty simple process for Instagram users. The whole idea
of this feature is to make things more enticing, so users spend more time on the
app, checking out the shops they love, as well as discovering new brands.

To find shops you want to explore or buy If you click “Browse Shops,” you’ll see a
from, go to the little shopping icon that listing of brands you already follow who
looks like a shopping bag on the app: have shops on Instagram. This can be a
great place to start when you’re exploring
because you probably already have an
interest in the products and may have
even purchased from them in the past.
From there, you will see shops from brands

you already follow, as well as some that are
recommended based on your interactions
on Instagram. You can also check out
“Editor’s Picks” to see different categories,
such as Gift Guides, and to explore
collections and other recommendations.

Once you click on a shop, you’ll see
the products and collections they have

available.
From there, you can learn more or

choose to buy, just like you would at an
e-commerce site.
How to Set Up an Instagram Shop

To set up a shop on Instagram for your brand, you must have an Instagram Business
account, and you must be eligible. According to Instagram, eligibility includes but is
not limited to:
• Operating in a supported market (dependent on your location)
• Having an e-commerce website from which you sell products
Remember, an Instagram shop is an extension of your e-commerce store, not

necessarily a replacement for it.

You will then have to connect your Facebook account. More later on how those two
are connected and why it matters for your Instagram Shopping account.
You then follow the steps to set up your account, load your product images, and
“turn on shopping.”
Here are a few tips to keep in mind as you go through those technical steps:
• Use high-quality, editorial images for your products and collections: Think
of your Instagram shop as a type of interactive catalog. Be selective about the
images you are using for your products. Make sure they stand out and show
lots of detail.
• Have all your product information on hand: Again, thinking about this as a
catalog, you will need to enter all the descriptive information about each product,
including prices, colors, sizes, flavors, types, etc. You’ll also need information
about shipping and other details. Keep it all at the ready before you dive in.
• Get ready to tag: After getting your Instagram shop set up, the last step
Instagram recommends is to start tagging. When you upload an image, select
“Tag Products” and type in the name of the product you want to tag to that
post. You will be able to do this in Instagram Stories as well.
Benefits of Having an Instagram Shop

Why would brand managers want to take the time to set up shops on Instagram?
First, let’s look at some numbers. According to Instagram, 60% of people interviewed
said they discover new products on the app. Facebook says 70% of people referred
to as shopping enthusiasts turn to Instagram to shop, and 36% of all Instagram
users consider shopping to be a hobby of theirs.
The best reason to set up shops on Instagram is to tap into that enthusiasm. Think
of Instagram Shopping as the trendiest mall from back in the day, with eager buyers
walking around and window shopping. You want to be there with your brand too,
right?

Here are some more benefits of having a shop on Instagram:
• It’s free: Yes, you can set up your Instagram shop for free. The only fees
associated would be a selling fee when customers place an order and the fee
for any ads you use to promote your products or shop.
• It’s another online storefront: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, they say,
and that applies to online shopping too. If a hiccup occurs with one platform,
you’re already set up somewhere else.
• It’s a mobile catalog: Instagram has designed these shops to be very clean
and scannable. They are easy to peruse and to get an overall idea of a brand’s
look, as well as to dig in and learn more about the products. For this reason,
you can think of shops on Instagram as a kind of mobile catalog. You may even
find yourself sending people there to get a feel for what you sell, just because
it’s so easy to scroll through.
• It’s a way to build your following: As we talked about earlier, people are going
on Instagram looking to shop. Setting up your shop there is a prime way to
draw buyers who are ready to make a purchase, as well as to build a following
for your Instagram account (which probably supports your overall social media
marketing strategy).
Instagram Shopping vs. Facebook Shops

You may be wondering how shops on Instagram compare with shops on Facebook.
While they are different platforms, they are both under the Facebook umbrella.
Remember that corporate Facebook owns Instagram, which means Facebook

powers Instagram Shopping. To set up your Instagram shop, you will need to link
to your Facebook account, and, as mentioned, payment is processed through
Facebook Pay.

Should you set up an Instagram shop and a Facebook shop? Here are a couple of
considerations to help you decide:
• Link easily: Because you need Facebook to launch the Instagram shop, it may
be worth having products on both platforms. You can use the same products
and collections on each if that makes sense for your target market and brand.
• Consider demographics: Your target market may spend more time on Instagram
than on Facebook. If that’s the case, you’ll want to make sure you set up an
Instagram shop. If your target market straddles both the demographics of
Facebook and Instagram, you may want to set up a shop on each.
Submitting and Receiving Payment

for Instagram Shopping Products
How do you go about actually buying and selling with Instagram Shopping? A big
part of this question is how money is exchanged.
Remember you can choose to have your products point to your e-commerce site.
Buyers will then be directed to your website, in a browser within the Instagram app,
rather than processing the purchase through the Instagram platform.
However, if you want to save buyers that step, you can set up payment options to
allow the transaction through Instagram. When you set up your shop, you’ll need
to link to Facebook Pay. We noted above the relationship between Facebook and
Instagram. Facebook Pay is how you receive payments for purchases made.
When you purchase something from shops on Instagram, you’ll need to submit
your credit card, debit card, or PayPal information to use Facebook Pay to finalize
the transaction.

How to Promote Your Instagram Shop
Once you have an Instagram shop up and running, you’ll want to find ways to
promote it and draw potential customers to your new location. Here are some tips
for achieving that:
• Launch timely collections: When you create collections or groupings of

products to showcase in your shop, think about the browsing buyers first and
what they are searching for right now. Instagram recommends thinking about
seasons, holidays, or pop culture moments to create collections that connect
with and attract buyers.
• Make it easy for shoppers: When you create posts and stories, make sure to
choose the “Tag Product” option to link directly to your shop products. Also,
Facebook recommends adding calls-to-action in your captions to remind buyers
of what to do. Another recommendation is to update your bio with shopping
information.
• Invest in ads: Want to reach even more people with your Instagram shop? You
could consider launching an ad on Instagram with clickable tags that draw
people to your shop.
Alternatives to Instagram Shopping

There could be a few reasons why a shop on Instagram is not the right platform
for your brand, or maybe you want to explore other shop options to find a better fit.
Some of those reasons may be:
• It’s not the right demographic: Yes, Instagram is wildly popular, but not everyone
is shopping there. If the target market of your brand is not tech-savvy, doesn’t
tend to use Instagram, or prefers not to shop on new platforms, you may not
want to set up an Instagram shop.
• There aren’t enough products: Shops on Instagram showcase collections of

products well, allowing brands to launch or promote groups of products. If you
are only selling one item, it may not be worth your time to set up a shop. However,
even one product, if photographed and promoted well, could be popular there.
• They aren’t physical products: You do need to sell a physical product. Digital
products or services are not sellable with the app.
• It’s not in the right location: As mentioned earlier, you do need to operate in a
location where Instagram Shopping is available. If you don’t, you’ll need to find
an alternative.
In these cases, or if you’re just looking for more customization or wider tools, you
may want to choose an alternative to Instagram Shopping. Examples may include:
• Like2Buy: With Like2Buy, you can build shoppable solutions, as well as

create other calls-to-action, such as requesting email addresses of potential
customers.
• Yotpo: In addition to several e-commerce marketing tools, Yotpo offers an

Instagram integration tool.
• FourSixty: Advertising a design-centric aesthetic, FourSixty provides Instagram

marketing tools, including shoppable galleries and scheduling.
Conclusion
Shops on Instagram allow you to interact with your followers (and new buyers!), in
a seamless way. You can create collections just in time for a season or holiday and
promote your products to an audience that is eager to buy.
This feature allows brand owners to sell on Instagram dynamically. While it may
not be the only solution you need, it can be a great addition to your Instagram sales
strategy.
Will you be shopping and selling directly on the Instagram app? Or do you prefer a more
traditional e-commerce platform?

Increasing Facebook
FEATURE STORIES
Organic Reach:
A Marketer’s Guide
2.74 billion. That’s how many active users Facebook has

in a month. If you want to tap into that market, you’re
going to need the right Facebook organic reach strategy.
That’s where we come in.

Organic reach marketing may not be as easy as it once was, but it isn’t dead. When
done thoughtfully and intentionally, Facebook organic reach marketing is still one of
the best ways to boost awareness of your product or services online.
What Is Facebook Organic Reach?

Facebook organic reach is a measure of the number of people who see your content
on the social platform when you don’t pay to boost that content. On the other hand,
advertising and boosted posts on Facebook involve marketers paying the platform
to make these promotions visible.
As time goes on, it has become harder for advertisers to leverage organic reach
on Facebook. This decline is primarily due to changes in their algorithm, which
promotes content you are connected with. But that doesn’t mean that this type of
marketing still can’t be done on Facebook.
Does Organic Reach Still Matter on

Facebook?
The short answer is yes.
Even though Facebook organic reach has been in decline across social media
platforms—especially on Facebook—it can still play an important role in your overall
Facebook advertising strategy.
But you might wonder: Can’t I just pay Facebook to get the same results?
The critical thing to remember is that paid ads are usually intended to get people in
the door. You still need a consistent stream of quality organic content on Facebook
to convert these viewers into believers in your brand and product.

Think of your Facebook strategy like a magazine. Your paid ad is the flashy cover
that draws people in and entices them to leaf through in the checkout line. Organic
content is the juicy stories and scandalous articles that convince people to buy the
magazine and take it home.
6 Ways to Improve Your Facebook

Organic Reach
Creating compelling organic content for Facebook isn’t easy. There is a lot of
competition on the platform, with the average Facebook page sharing 1.55 posts
every day.
With that in mind, we’ve come up with six actionable ways you can improve your
Facebook organic reach. In no time at all, you and your company can reap the
benefits that a strong presence on Facebook can bring.
1. Nail the Basics

It sounds obvious, but it needs to be said:
MAKE GOOD CONTENT AND FOLLOW THE RULES.
You can use all of the most advanced techniques on Facebook, but if you don’t
create high-quality posts and follow Facebook’s guidelines, it won’t really matter.
So, what is good content?
According to Facebook, good content engages, educates, or excites your readers.

Ideally, it does all three!

Consider this post from Walmart celebrating Valentine’s Day. It’s cute, it’s humanizing,
and, most importantly, it’s engaging.
There are currently 1.3K comments on

this post, mostly of people reminiscing
with their own stories of love found at
Walmart or other grocery store chains.
Next up, how to follow the rules.
Before you begin posting, make sure

to read and understand Facebook’s
community standards. In total, there are
six sections for you read over. Make sure
to pay close attention to Objectionable
Content so you know where the lines
are drawn on Facebook, as far as what
is acceptable and what isn’t it.
The repercussions for violating any

of these terms range from a warning
to removal from Facebook altogether.
Facebook has a system of strikes and
appeals for people who violate the
platform’s standards. Make sure to
understand this process as well, just in
case you ever get flagged.
With those basics out of the way, we

A Valentine’s Day post from Walmart’s can move on to more advanced organic
Facebook page. reach strategies.

2. Study Facebook’s Algorithm and Optimize for it
To determine what people want to see, Facebook uses an algorithm to rank current
posts on your news feed. Understanding this system can help you get the most out
of your Facebook organic reach by having your posts appear on more news feeds
more often.
So what does the algorithm look like?
Facebook keeps things pretty close to the vest, but we can still do our best to figure
out how to have our organic posts show up on more peoples’ feeds.
Hootsuite, the parent company of AdEspresso, recently did a deep dive into
Facebook’s 2021 algorithm, and it concluded that there were a couple of main
ranking signals that Facebook was considering when ranking posts:
• The relationship of the poster to the owner of the feed
• The kind of content that is being posted (video, picture, etc.)
• How well that post is being received by others in terms of reactions and
comments
• How new that post is
Based on these findings, Hootsuite recommends 11 tips on how to improve your

chances of having your organic content appear on peoples’ feeds, including:
• Replying to your Audience
• Encouraging Your Audience to Reply to Each Other
• Aiming for Love More Than Likes
To see the other eight tips, you can head over to Hootsuite’s article on 2021 Facebook
algorithm changes. With these insights, you’ll be able to make Facebook’s algorithm
work for, not against, your organic reach campaign.

3. Make Shareable Video content
Videos may not be as easy to make as basic picture posts, but statistics show
that they get more engagement and are shared more often. In fact, the average
engagement rate on a video is .26% compared to the average engagement of all
posts, which is .18%.
Videos aren’t just good for engagement—they’re also good for product education.
Create organic videos to introduce people to your products and show their value. In
fact, according to Facebook, 48% of users that took part in a survey claimed they
bought a product after watching a video on Facebook.
Luckily, it’s easier than ever to make professional-looking videos to put on Facebook,
even for people with no experience in the field.
Video-creation programs like Vyond allow you to easily make animated videos that
look professional without any film experience. With this platform, you can tap into a
market craving more and more video content.
An example of a video from Vyond.

If you want to learn more about making great video content on Facebook, take a look
at our how-to guide on Facebook video ads. It includes step-by-step instructions so

that you can get people consuming and interacting with your videos and boost your
brand awareness and organic reach.
4. Post Regularly and At Strategic Times

When you post on Facebook can be just as important as what you post. Improve
your organic reach results by thinking about when and how often you post.
Let’s start with how often we should post.
You first should consider how much quality content you can make every week.
As we’ve already discussed, Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes content that gets
reactions and comments. Making this engaging content takes time and energy, so
consider your bandwidth and plan accordingly.
To figure out posting frequency, some marketers just want a number. How many
times a week should I post? Just tell me!
According to Facebook, the answer is “at least 2-3 times per week.” They argue this
regularity is enough to keep your brand firmly in the minds of your readers.
But when, exactly, should you post during the day?
To find an answer, Hootsuite crunched the numbers to see when posts got the
most clicks.

The best times to post for B2B brands
The best times to post for B2C brands

As you can see, the best time for B2B companies appears to be between 9 a.m. and
2 p.m. For B2C, it’s around noon.
However, the time that is best for you to post will depend on your audience. You can
figure out the most successful times to post for your brand by:
1. Using Facebook Analytics
2. Doing some A/B testing
3. Checking when your competitors are posting
Want to learn more about posting at the perfect time to get the maximum organic
reach on Facebook? Take a look at our full guide on picking the best times to post
on Facebook.
5. Cultivate Loyal Fans

Loyal fans are the people who, day in and day out, love your product and advocate
for it across Facebook. These people are critical because they will share, comment,
and interact with your posts. This interaction helps Facebook’s algorithm see that
this post is something that people find interesting, and so the algorithm is more
likely to put it on other people’s news feeds.
Sounds great. How do we get more of them?
The first step is having an awesome product or service. We’ll leave that job to you!
The next step is building a community on Facebook so all of your fans have a single
place to congregate and discuss your most recent posts, offerings, and more.
These Facebook Groups become echo chambers that help you build momentum
for a post so that it can reach as far across Facebook as possible. In fact, the
engagement rate for groups of fewer than 10,000 people is .52%, which is nearly
triple the average post’s engagement rate (.18%).
More engagement from people who generally like your brand can only help your
overall metrics for each post.

Once you’ve garnered some brand loyalty,
your fans can help you by supplying you

with ready-made organic content. User-
generated content is created by your
fans but shared by you.
User-generated content rocks because:
• You don’t have to make it (duh).
• It is more likely to be viewed as

authentic by readers.
• It builds trust in your products.
User-generated content is truly a win-

win. It boosts your organic reach and
helps you harness the loyalty of your
fans to help persuade other consumers An example of user-generated content
to give you a try. from Toyota.
6. Don’t Be Afraid to Try Something Different

Don’t just rely on tried-and-true strategies. Experiment with your organic Facebook
content to see how your audience reacts to it. You may strike on the right content
that will get your fans sharing and engaging even more.
Here are a few content ideas to try to see what works best for you and your organic
content.

Facebook Live
According to Fidji Simo, head of the Facebook App, Facebook Live receives six times
more interactions than regular Facebook videos. More engagement means more
organic reach, so what are you waiting for? Take a look at our guide on how to make
awesome Facebook Live videos.
Popular live videos on Facebook

Contests last for only 24 hours, so they offer a
chance for businesses to make fun,

Facebook contests are another fun way experimental content that keeps their
to drum up engagement with your brand. brands top of mind. If you are looking
Who doesn’t like free things? for some inspiration, check out our post
on the best Facebook Stories and learn
why they are so successful.
A giveaway contest from Doritos
Facebook Stories
Facebook stories are great for directly
reaching out to your audience because
they aren’t affected by changes to the
news-feed algorithm. Facebook stories A Facebook story from Banana Republic

Content Curation
Content curation involves posting about

other people’s content in your field. It is
easy to put together, it helps you network
with others, and it helps you appear to
be an authority in your field.
Put your thinking cap on, and try

something different for your brand’s
organic content. You never know what
the next great idea will be.
A Strong
Facebook Organic
Reach Strategy Is
Still Important A piece of curated content from Lululemon
Despite its recent decline, organic content remains an important part of building
a strong social media presence online. It’s a critical way for brands to build
communities, earn trust, and find fans that will help their company succeed.
That being said, Facebook organic reach isn’t easy. It takes a lot of time, experimentation,
and know-how to get the word out about your brand without paid ads.
How does organic reach help you on Facebook? We’d love to hear about your
successes with Facebook organic content.

How to Buy Twitter
FEATURE STORIES
Followers the Right Way:

5 Things to Know
by Johnny Pulling
Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms,

and it’s been that way for years. Getting more followers
can be quite the challenge, so many people turn to buying
Twitter followers.

While it could be thought of as cutting corners, there are definitely some do’s and
don’ts to make sure you get the right Twitter followers to benefit your account.
With so much competition on Twitter these days, it doesn’t hurt to give yourself a
boost by buying a few followers.
Most people want to know how to buy real Twitter followers since it’s pretty well
known that fake Twitter followers won’t help your account – they’ll likely harm it.
For this reason, we’re bringing you the play-by-play with five key considerations on
how to buy Twitter followers the right way and keep your Twitter’s integrity intact.
TikTok and Instagram are both super popular platforms, but Twitter growth requires
even more commitment in the sense that you have to establish yourself as a
reputable source for people to take your Twitter seriously.
Twitter is all about current events and having meaningful conversations, so you’ve
got to be engaged and you’ve got to know about trending hashtags so that you can
become a key player on the platform.
When you have consistent conversations and add value to the community, you’ll
start to build your reputation and credibility, increasing your authority and natural
follower count.
We’ll talk more about all of that stuff later, but here’s a quick outline of what you’ll
learn in this article:
• Why some Twitter followers hurt your account
• How to buy Twitter followers safely
• The top 4 sites to buy Twitter followers
• How to avoid cheap Twitter followers
• Brand perspective on fake Twitter followers
• Security considerations for buying Twitter followers
• 5 pro tips to get more Twitter followers aside from buying them

We’re bringing you all of the best tips about buying Twitter followers as well as other
considerations to make sure your account stays safe, reputable, and prospering.
Let’s dive in!
Why some Twitter followers hurt

your account
People love to see high follower counts and engagement on their social media
network – it’s undeniable. Hey, we all love that ego stroke now and then, right?
It can be really easy to try and chase that feeling through buying fake followers
and engagements, which ultimately is a trap that can hurt your true success and
performance on not just Twitter, but all social media networks.
At first, you are overjoyed to see your order arrive quickly and your follower count
jump up, but it’s a temporary high.
It’s not long after that you realize, hey, these followers do nothing for my account.
Not only that, you may even see that they start falling off.
Why would that be?
Well, the majority of companies out there are selling fake Twitter followers. These
followers are hollow and a waste of your money because they hurt, not help your
account.
Twitter is hip to the scheme of people buying fake followers to increase the guise of
popularity, so for that reason, they have detection methods to know when followers
are fake, and when they’re legit.
Twitter, along with Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and most other reputable social
networks clear out their platforms to avoid the nuisance of fake followers hanging
around.

When you buy low-quality Twitter followers, you’ll rapidly see them fall off, which
means not only are they doing you no good, you’re actually throwing away your
money.
In addition, if they do hang around, these Twitter followers look fake, so they lower
your credibility. You’ll have a bunch of fake followers who don’t engage with your
account.
If you’ve got loads of Twitter followers and you have hardly any likes, comments, or
retweets, it’s not hard to tell that you’ve bought followers.
Users don’t look fondly upon this, and you’ll actually ding your authority more than
you’ll help it. This is the opposite of the progress you need to do well on Twitter.
Let’s take a look at how to avoid this headache and how you can buy Twitter followers
safely.
How to buy Twitter followers safely

Most sites you see out there are selling fake Twitter followers, so when you’re on
the market for real, active Twitter followers, you’ve got to use a critical eye to find
the right provider.
If everyone could rush out to the first company and buy real Twitter followers for a
low price, don’t you think they would? You’ve got to do some digging to find the real
companies that can actually help your Twitter growth.
It’s much better to do the work and buy real, authentic followers because you’re
likely to see a much better result than buying fake ones.
One of the best ways to buy real Twitter followers is to use a company that promotes
organic Twitter growth. Let’s talk a bit more about what organic growth is…

Organic Twitter Growth

Organic growth allows your social media accounts, in this case Twitter, to gain more
followers and likes through engagement with real users on the platform.
One of the most common ways to achieve this is through a fully-managed Twitter
growth service. These types of services perpetuate engagements on Twitter to get
you noticed by real users, in turn gaining you more real followers.
Most of these services use targeting instructions that you provide in order to engage
with people who are likely to be attracted to or interested in your content, increasing
the likelihood that they’ll follow.
While it doesn’t give you the immediate rush of seeing your follower count bump
up by thousands, it’s a much more long-term growth strategy that will actually help
you reach your Twitter goals and perpetually bring in more real followers for your
Twitter.
It will take a bit more time, but for that reason, it’s a reliable and viable method to
increase your Twitter followers.
The reason why not everyone is using this method is that they’re impatient and they
don’t want to do the work to gain real Twitter followers. They’re lazy, and that is why
not everyone rushes to use these services.
Don’t be like those people – trust the process. Anything worthwhile takes time and
patience, and organic Twitter growth will help you be successful in the long run.
There are no cutting corners to real social media growth.
Let’s take a look at the top sites to buy Twitter followers from.

The best Sites to buy Twitter

followers
The four sites you’ll find below are without a doubt the most authentic and trustworthy
options for real, organic Twitter growth.
We’ll discuss a bit about their services and features so you can head on over and
see which one might be right for you.
#1. TweSocial
Without a doubt, TweSocial is the go-to service provider for real, authentic Twitter
followers through their fully-managed growth service.
When you use TweSocial, you don’t have to spend hours engaging with new users
on Twitter; you’ll be able to set it up and focus on other strategy elements (such as
content or hashtags) so that your Twitter can grow exponentially.
One thing you’ll want to know when starting out with TweSocial is your target
audience – who do you want to look at your profile? Who are you trying to get to
check out your content?

When you know your target audience, you can give those targets to TweSocial, and
their advanced targeting system will do all the work. They’ll get your Twitter profile
and tweets in front of the right audience.
What to Expect When You Use TweSocial

The setup process for TweSocial is super simple, and they’ll want to know three
main things – what type of Twitter account you have, what goals you want to reach,
and who your target audience is.
Once you provide that info, they’ll concoct a detailed strategy to get your account
more reach through engagements such as following, liking, commenting, and
retweeting users in your target audience.
This is what we call organic growth, and it’s the best way to get more followers on
pretty much any social media platform. It’s a long-term growth strategy that’s 100%
best for your account’s health and success.
The better you know your target audience, the better results you’ll get, so do your
research now. Also, keep your content on point because ultimately that’s what will
make your new viewers want to sign on as new followers.
Why Use TweSocial?

Some people wonder why they’d use a service that takes longer instead of just
buying a bunch of followers.
One thing you should keep in mind is that social media success is a marathon, not
a race – your results have to last, and TweSocial offers the absolute best service to
make sure that you’re getting real, active Twitter followers over time.
Buying fake followers or packaged options looks good for a minute, but ultimately
crumbles and wastes your time and money. Working with a company like TweSocial
is a much better option.

Is TweSocial Safe?
TweSocial works in terms of the Twitter regulations on engagements, so your
TweSocial service will always be within healthy limits, replicating human behavior
closely.
Since TweSocial has these engagement settings in place, there’s absolutely no

risk that you’ll be flagged or in hot water with Twitter. You can rest assured that
TweSocial takes serious measures to work with Twitter’s terms of use.
All of your data and information is also securely stored and encrypted, so you’ll
never be at risk of being hacked or taken over.

#2. Tweeteev
Another great option to consider for your real Twitter growth is Tweeteev.
You’ll enjoy an effective service platform and top-notch account management that
allows you to gain more real Twitter followers in your target audience.
It’s too time-consuming for you to work on reaching your target audience all on
your own, so enlisting the help of a service like Tweeteev can make your life much
simpler and bring in better results than you’d hoped for.
Is Tweeteev Safe?
Like TweSocial, Tweeteev is hyper-protective of their clients’ security and success.
There has never been a single issue with the Tweeteev service on Twitter, and you
can only expect the best and safest when you work with them.
You’ll never go above the daily engagement limit when using Tweeteev, and you’ll be
in alignment with Twitter algorithms, mirroring human behavior through the service.

In addition, Tweeteev stays up-to-date with the Twitter algorithms, so they’re very
proactive in terms of security.
Results
Since Tweeteev is a growth service that works overtime, you’re not going to see an
instant boost, but know that the service is working to deliver powerful results.
As we mentioned, there is truly no overnight train to social media success, so it’s

better that you accept that now. You’re paying for an organic Twitter growth service
to help you reach more target audience members, therefore increasing your follower
count; Tweeteev is one of the best, by the way.
This type of organic growth not only brings you results, but also increases your
natural performance against the Twitter algorithm because real users are liking,
following, and engaging with your content.
It’s much better to invest time and money in a service that can help you gain real
followers instead of filling your account with useless and fake profiles.

#3. UseViral
If you’re looking for a company that can provide real followers that won’t hurt your
account, UseViral is a good option for you.
UseViral is one of the best companies for buying real Twitter followers, and they’ve
been in the industry for years, so they know exactly how to bring their clients the
best, real Twitter followers.
When you sign up with UseViral, you’ll be able to see real, organic Twitter growth
that keeps your account safe and gets you in contact with your target audience.
Remember, when you sign up with UseViral, you’re going to want to be extra clear
on exactly who you want to reach and what users are most likely to find your content
interesting and attractive.
In addition to an optimal Twitter growth service, UseViral will also keep your account
totally safe, both in terms of your data as well as your compliance with the Twitter
terms of use.

None of the engagements that UseViral performs will harm your Twitter account
and they work with the best partners in the industry to provide you with real Twitter
growth.
You can also grow other social media accounts with UseViral, including TikTok,
YouTube, Twitch, and more.
#4. SidesMedia
Our final option for the best Twitter growth service is SidesMedia. SidesMedia has a
network of over 5000 partners to help them bring you real social media growth for
not just Twitter but also platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, and more.
SidesMedia has two Twitter growth options – regular, and pro. When you sign up,
you’ll provide them with a list of your targeting options so that they can employ their
advanced targeting features when engaging with users on Twitter.
There is absolutely no risk whatsoever in using SidesMedia as their service is

modeled after real human behavior and will not breach any of the daily engagement
limits set by Twitter.

What’s more, they don’t put your account safety at risk by providing fake followers;
you’ll only be engaging with real Twitter users so that you can increase your real
follower count.
As we mentioned, buying fake followers is simply a bust for real social media growth.
Don’t waste your time and money buying from companies who don’t care about you
– check out our top 4 organic Twitter growth services and actually get somewhere
on Twitter.
Avoid cheap Twitter followers that

damage your brand
As we mentioned above, buying cheap Twitter followers can harm your account
and will likely fall off before you can even reap the benefits.
When you buy packaged Twitter followers from the average growth site, you’re not
going to be getting anything of value, and it’s not more than a quick boost to make
you feel good.
That feeling quickly runs out, and we’re going to talk about three key areas that are
hurt when you buy fake Twitter followers in bulk.
You always want to put your best foot forward on social media and present an image
that people can trust and get on board with, so if you are pumping your account full
of fake followers, you’re going nowhere fast.
Social Cred
Another term for social proof, you need to have a high level of social ‘credibility’ in
order to do well on any social media site.

What exactly does this mean? It means that you have set a distinct reputation up
for yourself as someone who is trustworthy and admirable, and people want to
copy that.
When you have even just a small yet engaged community on Twitter that is active
on your account, you’ll be able to build your social cred and show people you’re
something worth checking out.
When they see that people are engaged, they’ll want to be a part of that too, emulating
the actions of those in your community and buying into your content, giving you a
follow.
Buying fake followers breaks the rhythm of this social cred development and makes
you look out of touch and desperate instead of admirable.
Engagement
Over the years, the importance of a high follower count has decreased. Don’t get us
wrong – it’s still important, and the more followers you have, the more likely you are
to perform well on the metric that really matters: engagement.
Engagement is now the identifier of success on pretty much all social media
platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and more. When you
think about it, it makes perfect sense.
Even if you have a million followers, if none of them engage with your content
through likes, comments, shares, etc., what does it matter? If people engage with
you, it shows your content is truly valuable and successful.
If you have fake followers, you’re going to mess up your engagement ratio, and you
won’t be getting any more natural reach – that is, your content won’t be shared with
more people in the community naturally, minimizing the cycle of engagement.
Twitter has strict rules against fake followers, so they’re likely to clean them out
anyway, basically wasting your investment.

Credibility
As we mentioned, you need to have a certain level of authority to be a success on
Twitter. People want to read tweets from trusted sources that they can count on,
not ones who buy a bunch of fake followers.
You’ve got to be authentic on Twitter and offer users trusted value and information
they care about or that they find entertaining, and that’s what helps you build
authority and credibility on Twitter.
If people start to notice that you’ve bought fake followers – and they will, because
users easily detect this nowadays – you’re not going to be taken seriously at all.
A quick glance at your followers will tell them everything; usually fake followers
have weird usernames and/or no photo, so if you’re getting a bunch of followers
that look like that, people blow you off.
Not only will they not trust you, but you will not see the growth that you’re looking
for, hurting what you’ve already created. It would be a shame to see a decline in your
performance for buying fake Twitter followers.
The sad thing is most companies don’t care about you or your account health, and
they just want to make money. Don’t fall into their schemes and only use reputable
companies that take your Twitter growth seriously.
Brands or sponsors don’t respond to

fake followers
If you’re looking to expand your brand on Twitter or increase your influencer status,
you should definitely avoid buying fake followers and stick with organic growth.
Brands, sponsors, and partners couldn’t care less about how many followers you
have – they want to see you with exploding levels of engagement.

It’s really not rocket science: profit is likely to be made when there are a lot of people
who like, comment, share, and message you on your social media platform. Follower
count isn’t going to get you any profit.
When you have top-notch quality, you’re likely to pull more engagement, which means
higher sales. To be a successful influencer or brand partner, that’s what you’ll need.
If you’re hoping to expand your network and make any partnerships, you’ll have
to be able to speak to these numbers and performance metrics, and buying fake
followers will do nothing to help you in this regard.
Let’s take a look at what brands think of fake followers.
Real Followers and Real Engagement Only

Let’s say you have a potential partner that checks out your profile and sees that
you’ve got loads of Twitter followers. They note that, but they by no means stop
looking.
They’re then going to dig into your content – does it have likes? How many comments?
Was it re-tweeted? Does it seem like people like it?
They’ll also glance at your follower profiles, and if they notice no profile pics and
sketchy looking accounts, they’re going to pass on working with you.
So, users and brands alike think you’re a joke when you buy fake Twitter followers.
As you can see, it’s really not worth anything at all to buy from companies that
aren’t reputable.

Buy Twitter followers from

companies that protect your
security
Not only will your reputation be harmed, but your security and safety is also at risk
when you buy fake Twitter followers.
One thing you should always know is that if you decide to buy Twitter followers
in bulk, the company providing those followers will never need your password to
perform this service.
If you buy followers and a company asks for your password to deliver your order of
a set number of followers, head the other way. This company has shady intentions
and is trying to take advantage of your login information.
What’s more, when you buy fake followers, these accounts could be malicious and
have some kind of malware in them, causing your personal data to be up for grabs
or potentially giving your device a virus.
You’ve probably seen spam messages on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter from

someone you know; it left you wondering why they’d send you that and what’s going
on.
This is probably the effect of some bot or malicious account getting access to their
profile. You’re at a higher risk when you buy fake followers because you don’t know
if any of these accounts were loaded onto your profile.
It could be really devastating to have your personal information or devices hacked,

and you don’t want to have to recover from that. Don’t buy fake followers and put
your networks and devices at risk.

5 Other ways to get more Twitter

followers
If you haven’t figured it out by now, you’ve got to be ultra-selective when deciding
which company to use when buying Twitter followers.
The ones we listed above are great, and we absolutely recommend using them as
partners to your Twitter growth, but you should avoid buying fake Twitter followers
at all costs.
The good news is that buying followers for Twitter isn’t the only way to get more;
there are plenty of other tried-and-true methods to get more Twitter followers.
Even if you do decide to use one of the services on our list, these 5 pro tips can help
you gain even more followers, boosting your follower count through the growth
service as well as through your own long-term strategies.
We live in a society of “now;” everyone wants everything at the drop of a hat. The
problem is that real growth, even on social media, isn’t something that can be
instantly delivered.
For this reason, you’ve got to choose Twitter growth tools that help you over the long-
term, and you’ve also got to work hard on your own to build an effective strategy for
your social media.
All of the top-performing social media accounts have a behind-the-scenes workflow,

and they have to work pretty hard to make sure everything looks effortless. This is
true with anything – dancers work hard and physically exhaust themselves, but it
looks totally seamless.
You’ve got to know what to do on the backend to help your social media accounts,
including Twitter, get more likes, comments, and followers.
Here are 5 pro tips to help you do exactly that, building yourself an effective Twitter
strategy to work with your organic growth company.

#1. Tweet Relevant Information

As we mentioned earlier, Twitter is all about having meaningful conversations with
users and giving them valuable and trustworthy information. When people browse
Twitter, they want to see what’s going on and what social commentary is out there.
When you are creating your tweets, know about current events and what topics
are trending on the platform. You’ve got to stay relevant and on-topic in order to
perform well on Twitter.
The more you post relevant information that people find useful, the more likely they’ll
be to follow you and expect your take on whatever new thing is happening out there.
It doesn’t just have to be news – no matter what niche you’re in, you’ve got to stay
up-to-date on all the happenings so that you can tweet about them. That is how you
build authority on Twitter.
Don’t take it from us – this tip is directly from Twitter itself. You can include how-
tos, tips, words of wisdom, and more. These are all great ways to provide value to
your followers and show new viewers that they’ll be missing out on great stuff if
they don’t decide to follow you.
Another way you can decide which type of content and information to provide is to
check out your analytics – see which posts are performing best and which ones
aren’t. Create more content that performs well based on your data.
Sometimes it’s a trial and error game, but you can also keep your eye on competitors
to see what type of content they’re putting out.
That doesn’t mean you should full-on copy what someone else is saying; in fact,
that’s a great way to tank on Twitter.
Instead, look at accounts you want to be like, and use their content as inspiration.
Give it your own twist and find what works for you, but using other accounts for
motivation and ideas can help you take your content to the next level.
Be inventive, be witty, be entertaining, be relevant, be knowledgeable – the

possibilities are endless.

#2. Interact with Followers and Other Users

Again, since Twitter is all about conversations, it’s vital that people see you out there
engaging in some yourself.
Now, this doesn’t mean that you’re just going around writing any old thing to whoever
you want; find strategic ways to get your username in front of users who you might
want to check you out.
A good way to do this is to participate in conversations happening on very popular

accounts, or content that has a lot of likes, comments, and retweets.
When you participate, you are getting your username out there so that people get
curious about who you are and what your account is all about. That’s the key here
– entice them.
That means that you’ve got to participate in conversations in witty and/or interesting
and relevant ways so that people are drawn to check you out.
You should not only participate in conversations outside of your account but on
your own account as well. Social media is all about engagement, so you’ve got to
show up.
Respond to commenters on your posts and facilitate more conversation. Remember,

when you have high levels of engagement on Twitter, your content will get shown to
more people because it’s deemed as popular by the algorithm.
When you have conversations on your account and on other people’s, you’re
amplifying your discoverability. Imagine what a powerful impact that can have when
you use a social media growth service at the same time? Invaluable.
#3. Use Pictures in Your Tweets

Relevant content is great, and you’ve got to be reputable and credible, but what else
do people love? Visuals.

Tweets that have pictures and visuals usually perform better than those that don’t.
It doesn’t mean that you’ve got to put an image in every single tweet, but you should
know that Twitter loves a good picture.
It helps to set your post apart and catch the attention of someone who is browsing
through. Not only that, it can make your content more memorable, allowing people
to remember who you are and perhaps even go and check you out.
Not only that, tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than those that don’t
use images, so that alone should be some motivation for you! You’re much more
likely to be retweeted when you use a photo than when you don’t.
All in all, use them wisely and make sure they’re impactful and connected to your
content, but don’t be afraid to make your Twitter content more visual. It’ll grab
people’s attention at the very least, and could even boost your engagement, helping
your performance against the Twitter algorithm.
GIFs are also great additions to tweets!
#4. Post with Hashtags

The hashtag was created in 2007 and was first used on Twitter, so you know that
hashtags are still a big deal on Twitter and can help your content be discovered by
users who are looking for tweets about a certain topic.
When you use hashtags in your tweets, you’ll be getting more engagement – roughly
13% more, in fact. What’s more, people will actually be able to view your account
and see you as an active part of a topic.
If you don’t use hashtags, your content discoverability will be limited to only those
who follow you or at the mercy of the Twitter algorithm and how many people it
shows it to.
The surefire way to get your content under more eyes is to use hashtags.
How do you know which ones to use?

You can use hashtags that are popular in your community, branded hashtags,
hashtags related to your topic, and so much more. Do some research and check
out what’s trending.
Be careful not to overload your posts with hashtags, however, as that’s not attractive
and people find it annoying.
#5. Cross-Promote
Social media is a big ocean, and the more boats you have out there, the more likely
you are to catch some fish. If you’re only on Twitter, you should start expanding
your social media platforms now.
There are so many ways to integrate your social media networks so that you can
have your content appear on other sites, or at the very least you can promote your
content from other social media networks and direct people over to check them out.
The average person has 8 social media accounts, so you should definitely be taking
advantage of the huge opportunity these platforms provide in getting you more
reach for your content.
You’ll look even better when you have an established presence across a variety of
social media platforms, so that’s another advantage as well.

Final thoughts – Buy Twitter
followers the right way

All in all, buying Twitter followers is a viable option to help your Twitter growth, as
long as you do it the right way.
Stay away from companies that sell fake Twitter followers and opt for an organic
Twitter growth service that can amplify your long-term results.
Social media growth takes time, and you should always take advantage of the tools
at your disposal, but if you’re looking for overnight fame, sorry – even buying Twitter
followers won’t get you that.
Take advantage of the awesome 4 companies we discussed in this article and follow
our 5 pro tips and you’ll love the increase in Twitter followers for months and years
to come!

FEATURE STORIES
How to Quickly and Easily

Add Captions To Your
Facebook LIVE Videos
When you watch Facebook Live videos, do you do so with

the sound on?
If you’re like 85% of users, you probably don’t.
This means that for your OWN videos, giving viewers a way to quickly and easily
understand the content of your live video – even when it’s muted – is key.

How to Quickly and Easily Add Captions To Your Facebook LIVE Videos
The best way to do this is through adding subtitles and captions to your Facebook
Live videos.
Why Use Captions On Your Facebook

Lives?
With so many videos vying for attention in users’ feeds, it’s important to make your
videos as captivating as possible.
Not only do captions and subtitles attract viewers to your videos in the first place,
they can actually increase how long your videos get watched for; according to
Facebook’s own internal research, videos with captions are viewed an average of
12% longer than those without.
According to Rye Clifton, director of experience at ad agency GSD&M, making videos

as interesting as possible – even with the sound off – is key: “Sound is still an option
[on Facebook], but it’s not required. If you can make something compelling without
needing people to turn the audio on, you’re ahead of people who are not thinking
that way.”

3 Ways To Add Captions To Your

Facebook Lives
Unfortunately, adding captions to your Facebook Live videos hasn’t always been
as easy or as straightforward as you might hope. If you do a Google search for
“Facebook Live captions tutorial”, you’ll find a wide variety of strategies, but many
involve using complicated – and sometimes pricey – third party software.
You’ll also find there isn’t yet a way to add captions to your live videos as they
happen – which means that at this point, you can only add them to replays of your
videos.
Fortunately, it’s relatively easy to add captions to your videos after the fact…meaning
you can continue to use and promote your videos for many months to come.
This post will take the guesswork out of the process. Using the simple tools and
strategies below, you’ll be up and running in no time, with little technical know-how
required!
1. Have your Facebook Live Transcribed Using

Rev.com
Rev.com is the service I use to get highly-accurate captions for my Live videos at an
amazing price. For just $1 per recorded minute, Rev.com will convert the audio of
your video into captions. So, for a 30-minute video, you’re looking at just $30!
Here’s how it works: First, send them a copy of your Facebook Live video. Alternatively,
you can just send them a link to your video, and they’ll grab it directly.
Next, the Rev team quickly and confidentially captions the video. Turnaround time
can be as little as 30 minutes for really short videos, up to 24 hours for longer ones.
Finally, Rev will send you the completed captions file in .SRT format – which is the
format Facebook requires.

The final captions file will look something like this:
Your .SRT file will note time frames and the text that falls into each one
Now you just need to upload this .SRT file to Facebook and you’re good to go! To
upload your caption file, follow these simple steps:
• Go to your Facebook page, and select the Facebook Live video you want to add
captions to
• Click on the time stamp to open the video in theatre mode
• Under “Options”, click “Edit this video”
• Under “Captions” (below “Description”), select “Choose File”
• Upload your .SRT file and you’re good to go!
Now, when someone views your video, the captions will automatically show.

2. Create your own .SRT file and upload to

Facebook
This is the slightly more complicated and time-consuming option….but it’s completely
FREE!
The process is the same as above, except you’ll need to create your own .SRT file
instead of getting a third party company to do it.
Here’s how you’ll do it: Using a text editor (like TextEdit on Mac or Notepad on
Windows), open a new document.
The format of your document will look like this:
# of caption (starting at 1, going as high as you’d like)
Start time of segment you’d like to caption à End time of segment you’d like to
caption
• Actual caption
The actual text will look something like this:
00:00:00,000 –> 00:5:30,000
– Welcome to my Facebook Live
00:5:30,000 –> 00:7:55,000
– 5 Ways To Get More Customers
00:7:55,000 –> 00:9:30,000
– Wrapping it up

Once you’ve finished creating your file, simply save it as a .TXT file. If you’ve correctly
formatted your file, it should recognize that you created a captions file and will
automatically save it as a .SRT file.
Finally, upload your file to your Facebook Live video using the instructions above!
Need more detailed instructions (including screenshots) for creating and uploading
your .SRT file? Check out this great tutorial!
3. Use YouTube’s Video Manager

Apart from using a transcription service like Rev.com, this is the perhaps the easiest
way to create your subtitles. You’ll need to actually transcribe the video yourself, but
the process is a lot easier than creating your own .SRT file from scratch.
Here’s how it works: Upload your Facebook Live video to your YouTube account. Be
sure to set the video to “Private” since you won’t actually be publishing it to YouTube.
Next, click on Edit, then Subtitles/CC.
You’ll now have three options: Upload a file, transcribe and auto-sync, or create
new subtitles or CC. Select Transcribe and auto-sync. This will allow you to simply
transcribe your entire video at once, and then YouTube will automatically line up
your captions for you!

As you watch the video, you can now type in exactly what you hear. Be sure to select
Pause video while typing, as this will seriously cut down on the time it takes you to
transcribe your video.
When you’re done, simply click Set Timings and your video captions are done!

Keep in mind you’ll likely need to edit the timing and captions slightly, so be sure to
watch the video with captions before downloading it. To do this, simply click on the
video under Drafts and adjust the timing as needed.
Once you’re satisfied with your video, click Download under Actions and your .SRT
file will automatically download.
You can now upload your .SRT file to Facebook as outlined above.
Final Thoughts
I look forward to the time when Facebook (hopefully) puts a system in place for
automatically adding captions to our Facebook Lives. But until then, the three
strategies above are relatively simple and inexpensive, meaning anyone can add
captions to their videos in no time at all.
How do you create captions or subtitles for your Facebook Lives? Let us know!

Adam Connell
CONTRIBUTOR BIO
Operations Manager, UK Linkology

Adam is the Operations Manager at UK Linkology,
a progressive marketing agency based in the
UK. He can be found blogging over at ‘Blogging
Wizard’ where he shares actionable results to
help people get more traffic, social shares and
search visibility for their blog.

Ad Espresso
CONTRIBUTOR BIO
AdEspresso is the easiest online tool to manage

and optimize your Facebook Advertising
Campaigns.
AdEspresso makes Facebook Advertising easy

and profitable for small and medium businesses.
Whether you want to sell more products, grow
your fan base, or increase engagement with
your community, AdEspresso will help you
create and optimize an advertising campaign
that truly works!

Andy Crestodina
CONTRIBUTOR BIO
Co-Founder/Strategic Director,
Orbit Media Studios
Andy Crestodina is a co-founder and the
Strategic Director of Orbit Media, an award-
winning 38-person web design company in
Chicago.
Over the past 15 years, Andy has provided web

strategy and advice to more than a thousand
businesses. As a top-rated speaker at national
conferences and as a writer for many of the
biggest blogs, Andy has dedicated himself to
the teaching of marketing.
Andy has written hundreds of articles on content

marketing topics for dozens of blogs and media
websites. Favorite topics include content
strategy, search engine optimization, social
media and Analytics. He is also the author of
“Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Handbook
for Content Marketing.”

Dmitry Gerasimenko
CONTRIBUTOR BIO
Founder & CEO of Ahrefs

Dmitry Gerasimenko is author of idea, CEO and
founder of Ahrefs. Dmitry performs deep intuitive
control on all aspects of Ahrefs innovations and
developments. He is the one driving the team,
and keeping constant motivation running alive
through each and every team member.
Ahrefs.com is an independent tool for SEO

analysis with a wide range of features. It is
designed, first of all, for SEO specialists and
site owners but may be of interest to other
concerned Internet researchers.

Jeff Bullas
CONTRIBUTOR BIO
Strategist, Author & Speaker

Jeff Bullas is a blogger, author, strategist
and speaker and works with companies and
executives to optimize their online personal and
company presence and brand with digital and
social media marketing.
His blog, JeffBullas.com, is about all things to

do with Social Media and Online Marketing,
including Twitter, Blogging, Facebook, YouTube,
LinkedIn, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and
and content marketing.
The blog’s focus is to assist business in “getting

found online” in a digital world and making your
company visible and successful on a crowded web.
Jeff have a degree in Commerce and Economics

and has spent most of his career involved with
Information Technologies, Telecommunications
and the Web Industry.
Achievements include:
• Blogger at JeffBullas.com which more

than 4 million people visit every year
• Author of the Amazon Best Seller “Blogging

the Smart Way - How to Create and Market
a Killer Blog with Social Media”
• Forbes - “Top 50 Social Media Power

Influencers - 2013” - Ranked #11
• Huffington Post - “Top 100 Business,

Leadership and Technology Twitter
Accounts You Must Follow”

Kim Garst
CONTRIBUTOR BIO
Co-Founder of Boom Social

Kim is a marketing strategist, speaker, author
and the co-founder and CEO of Boom! Social,
a social “selling” consultancy agency. Through
her consulting and training business, Kim helps
businesses of all sizes to accelerate their profits
by integrating proven social media and digital
marketing strategies. She also travels the world
to share her wisdom and provides social media
keynotes and in-depth training. Additionally,
Kim mentors business owners to reach greater
heights in their business.
The creator of 4 six and seven figure businesses,

Kim’s, Boom Social blog, is ranked one of the
top social media blogs in the world and she was
recently named by Forbes as a Top 10 Social
Media Woman Influencers.
Kim is author of the forthcoming new book Will

the Real You Stand Up: Show Up, Be Authentic
and Prosper in Social Media and The Quick
and Easy Guide to Branding Your Business and
Creating Massive Sales with Pinterest.

Matthew Barby
CONTRIBUTOR BIO
Global Head of Growth & SEO at HubSpot

Matthew Barby is the Global Head of Growth &
SEO at HubSpot, award winning blogger, industry
speaker and lecturer for the Digital Marketing
Institute. I’ve worked with brands across the
world as a digital marketing consultant to deliver
revenue growth from content-focused inbound
marketing campaigns.
An award winning digital marketing master

specializing in developing growth strategies
for businesses of all sizes. Previously worked
with Blue Chip companies through to local
businesses across a range of industries.
Industry speaker and lecturer for the Digital

Marketing Institute, as well as a regular columnist
for a number of marketing publications, including
Marketing Land, Moz and Search Engine Journal.
Become a better marketer today!

Neil Patel
CONTRIBUTOR BIO
Co-Founder Crazy Egg,

Hello Bar & KISSmetrics
Neil Patel is the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello
Bar and KISSmetrics. He helps companies like
Amazon, NBC, GM, HP and Viacom grow their
revenue.
The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer

on the web and Entrepreneur Magazine says he
created one of the 100 most brilliant companies
in the world.
Neil was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur

under the age of 30 by President Obama and
one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age
of 35 by the United Nations. Neil has also been
awarded Congressional Recognition from the
United States House of Representatives.

Nick Nicholls
CONTRIBUTOR BIO
Publisher: Digital Marketing Tools

Nick Nicholls launched his marketing career
during the development of QUBE, MTV and
Nickelodeon and lead the development of the first
digital wireless high-speed Internet. As a marketer
and technologist, he now helps companies with
their integrated marketing, UI / UX and digital
automation. Nick brings his passion for digital
marketing to help professionals and business
owners better understand and integrate digital
marketing strategies with the introduction of
'Digital Marketing Tools' magazine for Apple
iTunes & Google Play Android.

RESOURCES & REVIEWS
How To Find Your

Audience’s Biggest Pain Points
by Lyn Wildwood
Consumers don’t care how great your content and your

products are. What they’re looking for are solutions to
their problems.
As a blogger (and business owner), you’ll see the most growth when you provide
solutions to those problems.
But what types of pain points does your audience have? And how exactly do you go
about discovering what those pain points are?

Why you need to pay attention to
your audience’s problems

The best products solve problems, either by offering a solution to a problem that’s
never been solved before or by offering an entirely new way of doing things.
That’s why you need to pay attention your audience’s problems. They’re your best
bet when it comes to driving more traffic to your blog and generating more revenue
for your business.
Think about the products and services you’ve used recently. They likely weren’t world
famous or spectacular in any way. Even so, they served an important purpose by
solving a problem you were having.
Your content and products can do the same.
You don’t need to fall into the same trap so many entrepreneurs find themselves
in. It’s the one where they try to outdo everything that’s been done before and fail
miserably while doing so.
All you need to do is find the challenges your audience is facing. They’ll give you
a guideline to follow as you search for topic and product ideas that will help you
achieve your goals.
With this information you’ll be able to create what’s known as an audience persona.
What types of pain points do audiences have?

Your audience is going to have a variety of different pain points that can be broken
down into the following categories:
• Monetary – They aren’t able to succeed in your niche due to financial constraints.
There could be several reasons for this, such as current solutions not being cost
effective for average consumers. They may also not be experienced enough in
your niche to know how to save, which leads me to my next point.

• Learning – A major reason why members of your niche may not succeed is
they’re having trouble learning all of the new skills that coincide with it. Again,
there could be several reasons for this, ranging from their own inexperience to
a lack of reliable information and tutorials on topics related to your niche.
• Productivity – This one piggybacks off of the previously mentioned pain

points. No matter what they do, members of your target audience may fail in
making progress when it comes to learning about or succeeding in your niche.
This could boil down to monetary issues or a lack of knowledge, or it could be
something else entirely.
• Support – Something you may come across while you go through each method
listed below is several members of your target audience lamenting about the
lack of support in your niche.
Your audience’s problems are obviously going to be a lot more specific than these.
If you run a gardening blog, for instance, instead of “productivity issues,” they’ll say
they aren’t able to keep plants alive or their plants aren’t growing as quickly as they
hoped.
Let’s get into the main focus of this post.
How to find your audience’s biggest

pain points
A lot of marketing articles encourage the use of cold data to determine the problems
people are having within your niche.
In reality, you aren’t a big name brand that can survive as a faceless corporation
in this way. As a small-time entrepreneur looking to make money blogging, your
audience’s trust is your most valuable asset.
No matter how much data you have access to, nothing beats getting this information
directly from the horse’s mouth.

That’s why many of the methods we’re going to cover focus on talking directly to
your target audience. Here’s a round-up of the methods we’ll be going over:
• Method #1: Ask Them
• Method #2: Listen to Them
• Method #3: Forums
• Method #4: Reviews
• Method #5: Comment Sections
• Method #6: Keyword Research
Let’s start at the top.
Method #1: Ask them

The most effective way to learn about the biggest problems your audience is facing
right now is to ask them directly. There’s no guesswork involved.
You won’t be creating content and products in hopes of hitting a moving target.
You’ll be hitting bullseyes everytime by creating solutions for problems they’ve told
you they’re having.
There are a number of different ways you can ask your audience what their biggest
pain points are. The most effective approach is one-on-one conversations.
See if some of your most engaged blog readers or email subscribers would be up
to chatting with you through voice chat, email, DM or the phone. You can also hit
people up on forums related to your niche or even in your personal life. Just make
sure they’re part of your target audience.

You can also add an email to your welcome email series that asks new subscribers
what their biggest problem is at the moment. Start the email with a very short, one
to two-paragraph story about one of the largest obstacles you’ve overcome in your
niche. Conclude with a simple question – ”What’s the biggest problem you’re facing
right now?”
You can even create a short survey and promote it through your site, email list and
social media. A free tool like Typeform.com will help.
Method #2: Listen to them

The second most effective way to find out what your audience’s biggest pain points
are is to simply listen to them. They likely already ask you questions all of the time.
They can alert you to anything your target audience is struggling with. Again, these
answers will guide you toward topics you should be focusing on.
Pay special attention to your comment section, email list and social media mentions.
Start jotting down all of the questions your audience asks you, and see if you can
spot any consistencies.
You can even set up an “Ask” contact form your audience can use to ask you
questions directly. Give this contact form its own page and place it on specific blog
posts, such as your most popular posts to ensure it’s seen by as many people as
possible.

Method #3: Forums
Now, we’re going to move away from your own audience and focus on your target
audience, which can exist virtually anywhere. We’ll start with online forums.
Similar to your own audience, what you’re looking for is patterns in the questions
members of your target audience ask. Begin with dedicated forums in your niche.
Do a simple Google search, such as “ice fishing forums.”
You can also look through topics related to your niche on Quora and browse through
subreddits on Reddit. If you’re having trouble finding questions on forums, start a
new thread called “What’s the biggest problem you’re facing right now in [niche]?”
Facebook Groups are a great place to look as well.

Method #4: Reviews
Image source: Amazon.com
A great place to find your audience’s biggest pain points are reviews for products
related to your niche. This mainly involves looking at books and courses, but you
can also look at applications and physical products if you’re interested in creating
them.

Look for any negative comments customers have made, especially in one and
two-star reviews. Jot down the negative points they make and what they claim the
creator didn’t cover or explain well enough.
Reviews on books and courses related to your niche on Amazon and Udemy are
fantastic places to look.
Method #5: Comment sections

This one relates to the previous method. Instead of looking for negative comments
in reviews, you’ll look for them in comment sections outside of your blog.
Start with the top dogs in your niche since they’re most likely to have active comment
sections. You can also look up YouTube videos related to your niche. Lastly, look
through the comment sections of articles related to your niche published by high-
profile sites.
Again, what you’re looking for are problems commenters mention. Look for
comments that criticize articles or videos specifically. Just like reviews, they’ll let
you know where your competitors fall short, which will give you opportunities to fill
any gaps they’re leaving behind.
Method #6: Keyword research

This should be your last resort since it forces you to rely on data rather than real
answers from your target audience. You’re going to use search volume to determine
which topics your audience cares about most.
The easiest (and cheapest) way of doing this is to use KWFinder by Mangools.
To start, input a broad search term that represents your niche, such as “succulent
garden,” “fly fishing” or “vegan cooking.” Use the Keyword Ideas tool to find related
terms users search for. The higher the search volume, the more they care about
that topic.

You can even use these related ideas as keywords for Methods 3, 4 and 5. This
gives you an opportunity to solidify keyword data with actual answers from your
target audience.
You’ll find more options in David’s post on keyword research tools.
How to use your audience’s biggest

pain points to grow your blog
Using your audience’s biggest pain points to grow your blog is simple. All you need
to do is come up with solutions for their problems and apply them. However, we can
get a little more specific than that.
By the time you’re done with Method 6, you should have a decent sized list filled
with the biggest pain points your audience is having right now. Start by rearranging
this list based on the number of times a problem was mentioned, placing the most
frequently mentioned problems at the top.
Instead of trying to solve all of these problems at once, tackle them one at a time,
starting with the most frequently mentioned pain point on your list. Brainstorm
several solutions to this problem with the following types of content and products:
• Blog posts
• Lead magnets
• Courses
• Books
• Software when applicable
• Physical products when applicable

If you’re going to create products, such as courses, consider starting with beta
courses that are only 10-25% finished. Use blog posts that relate to these courses
as a way to capture and segment email subscribers as being interested in the topics
they represent.
Use these segments to presell beta courses at discounted rates that are much
lower than what you’d charge for their full versions. If your conversion rates are
high, you’ll know you’ve got a profitable idea on your hands. Refund the money and
move on to the next idea if it doesn’t sell well.
If you speak with members of your audience and/or target audience one-on-one, be
sure to consult with them as you create your solutions, whether it’s a blog post or
a physical product.
They’re the ones that informed you of the problems they were having in the first
place, which makes them the best judge on whether or not you’ve come up with
viable solutions.
Final thoughts
Finding your audience’s biggest pain points is one of the most important steps you
can take as a blogger and solopreneur. It’s all about discovering what problems
they’re having in your niche so you can provide solutions to them with content and
products.
It’s a much more effective way to go about planning your business in the long run.
While you can’t guarantee you’ll earn more revenue this way, you’ll at least know
you’re creating solutions for topics you know your audience cares about.

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How to Buy

Digital Marketing Tools Magazine | Issue 95 | May 2021

how to use this app

Tap and Hold screen to show the bottom bar

How to Use Google Analytics to Track Social Media:

Republishing Content: How to Update Old Blog Posts for SEO

How to Use Instagram Shopping to Drive Product Sales

Increasing Facebook Organic Reach: A Marketer’s Guide

How to Quickly and Easily Add Captions To Your Facebook

RESOURCES & REVIEWS

Digital Marketing Tools Magazine 4

Thank you to everyone who clicked the link below and

My goal is to bring you the latest digital marketing tools,

That said, here are the latest marketing strategies, Content

• 21 Customer Acquisition Strategies to Win New

• How to Use Google Analytics to Track Social Media:

• Republishing Content: How to Update Old Blog Posts

• How to Use Instagram Shopping to Drive Product Sales

• A Marketer’s Guide to Increasing Facebook Organic

• How to Buy Twitter Followers the Right Way:

• How to Quickly and Easily Add Captions To Your

• How To Find Your Audience’s Biggest Pain Points

Digital Marketing Tools Magazine 5

Stay informed and up-to-

Subscribe & Connect with

Figuring out how to acquire new customers is difficult.

“This often means getting traction in ways that don’t scale.”

Digital Marketing Tools Magazine 8

Customer Acquisition Tactics

Digital Marketing Tools Magazine 9

1. Increase Engagement from Unopened Emails

Here’s the stats breakdown:

Original Email Open Rate: 22.9%

Unopened Segment Open Rate: 10.8%

Total Open Rate: 31.01% (35.41% increase)

(h/t to Noah Kagan for first mentioning this tactic)

Digital Marketing Tools Magazine 10

2. Update and Republish Old Content

Digital Marketing Tools Magazine 11

3. Aligning Search Intent to Content Upgrades

Objective: Increase the number of people downloading content upgrades when

Digital Marketing Tools Magazine 12

4. Integrations with Other Products

Digital Marketing Tools Magazine 13

• Their total customer base.

• The likelihood that their customers would be interested in your product.

• Their online reach (i.e., email list, social followers, etc.).

• Ease of the integration.

Digital Marketing Tools Magazine 14

5. Industry, Feature & Location Pages

• Industry-specific queries. For example, “real estate CRM”.

• Feature-specific queries. For example, “document signing software”.

• Location-specific queries. For example, “used cars, Boston MA”.

Digital Marketing Tools Magazine 15

• Testimonials/case studies from customers in the industry you’re targeting.

Digital Marketing Tools Magazine 16

To test this out, follow these steps:

1. List out all of the individual features of your product.

2. For each feature, outline the problems it solves.