As long as anyone can remember there’s been an debate raging in newsrooms across the country about the church vs. state-like separation between the editorial and advertising departments.

Having spent most of my 10 years in newspapers as an artist, however, I was always more concerned with slick visuals and delivering a clear message than I was with engaging in conversation about stodgy old ethical standards created way before the Interenet came along and changed the game of journalism forever.

In case you’re not familiar with it, here’s how the argument generally goes:

“We must maintain our credibility! How can we expect people to trust us if they don’t know what’s advertising and what’s not?” 

say the ink-stained wretches of the newsroom. 

“But profits are diving … If we don’t find new ways to drum up ad revenue, we’ll all be out of a job before you can even spell ‘unethical’,”

 reply the overworked ad reps trying desperately to squeeze every penny out of increasingly uninterested customers.

It’s a war of words that continues on and on until push comes to shove, at which time the bottom line generally dictates that advertising gets what it wants.

The editorial staff sucks up whatever pride it has left (likely not much after years of being beat down by the daily demands of a dying industry) and chalks it up to just another in a long line of sacrifices that includes taking on 3-4 beats, blogging, tweeting, taking their own photos and being asked to produce video content for the web.

Often, in the end, this process ends with some poor reporter sloppily throwing together an advertorial — the preferred journalism term for clearly-labeled content marketing — that’s so boring no reader in their right mind would ever read it.

An advertorial problem

The problem with advertorials is that although the attention and effort of putting together a story for an advertiser may keep them off your back momentarily, the effect is likely only short-term.

When you force this sort of half-assed collaboration, chances are you’re not really doing right by your advertisers.

And by creating something borderline unreadable that does little to help their business, you’re probably not doing much to secure their continued business long-term.

Often times the end product is nothing more than a couple hundred works of vanilla ad copy dictated by the company through a short conversation or — even worse — an e-mail of bulleted talking points about their business.

There’s no real effort by the writer to learn what the company is really about or what makes it special to its customers and there’s often very little leighway given by the business owner to say anything creative beyond  ”This is who we are. This is what we do. Please give us money!”

Because, like journalists, many business owners are also stuck in the past — especially the ones who rely heavily on print ads — they’re often often confined by an old-school mentality and operate under the misconception that effective advertising is all about stuffing their sales message down the throats of as many people as possible.

Many still don’t understand the benefits of connecting with a very targeted audience of potential customers at just the right time. Even fewer have the slightest clue about how to execute this strategy in order to drive conversions online.

This is often where a clever marketing company can step in and with a few clicks of a mouse (okay, more like hours of SEO, PPC and E-mail work) take what has been a longtime newspaper advertiser and convert them to its growing list of clients leaving print advertising for digital marketing.

Content marketing as a solution

Regardless of what you call it — content marketing, native advertising or brand publishing — the practice of creating highly-targeted, creative and engaging material that bridges the gap between the advertising and editorial is an effective and increasingly common option for businesses.

In fact, on some level nearly every company out there is now doing at least a basic form of content marketing by engaging with their customers online through Facebook or Twitter.

However, since most businesses are much better versed in making widgets than they are in writing engaging blog posts, creating easy-to-read infographics and producing vivrant video content, this do-it-yourself approach to content marketing can often do more damage to your brand than to help it.

Luckily, there’s a ton of great folks who have all the skills necessary to help deliver your company’s message in a clear, concise way that’s focused on converting customers and creating brand awareness.

And not all of them are marketers.

Just look around any newsroom and you’re likely to find plenty of talented writers, designer and content creators with all the skills needed to successfully provide content marketing services to their company’s advertisers.

So why not just take a deep breath and put aside the perception that ads are evil. Now stop sitting around and waiting for former journalists-turned-marketers out there like myself to come and chip away at your dwindling customer base and rethink the way you’re doing business.

Shifting to a marketing mindset

I know what you’re thinking journalists.

“Asking reporters to create marketing strategies is like asking the Kardashians to create world peace. It sure would be nice, but it’ll never happen!”

But really, inherent skepticism aside, there’s no reason publishers shouldn’t at least consider this shift to a more marketing-friendly mindset. After all, you’ve tried basically everything else and the ship’s still sinking.

The way I figure, with technology continuing to evolve and shape readers’ habits, it only seems right that journalists would evolve along with them.

As much as old-school journalists may hate to admit it, there’s already an entire generation of savvy young journalists having success online by working their asses off to sculpt the future of the industry.

Along the way, folks like these are erasing the long-standing ethical line between editorial and advertising by creating great niche content that serves both purposes.

Some of the most successful online media outlets — folks like The Onion, Gawker Media and others — have already begun creating spin-off agencies to help handle the content marketing side of their journalism-based core business. This innovative idea is sure to grow as others catch on to the trend.

And, why not? Who ever said a marketing message can’t be relevant, useful AND on message all at once? Who ever said that news MUST be unbiased in order to be informative?

Not this content marketer, that’s for sure.

Interactivity Marketing is hiring a career-oriented team member to serve the role of a Junior Analyst on the Paid Search team.  The perfect candidate must be a self motivated individual who loves a fast-paced environment and thrives under the pressure of concurrent deadlines and client results.

Specific Prospect Characteristics:

• Good understanding of common math formulas of business and statistics
• Knowledge of the Paid Search industry and best practices
• Ability to research and become knowledgable in many industries
• Ability to analyze data from programs such as Google Adwords and make educated decisions based on that data
• Be a self starter, quick learner and have the ability to work on tasks with limited supervision
• Ensures a strategic focus throughout the entire lifecycle of a client
• Finds opportunities to keep the rest of the agency current on the latest digital marketing trends
• Balances analytical thinking and approaches with creative thinking and long-term vision
• Maintain an active and professional presence on key social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and others as the industry sees fit
• Extremely organized with the ability to meet multiple concurrent deadlines
• Experience with industry leading paid search platforms

What Interactivity Marketing Offers

• A creative workspace.  Our office was first built in the 1930’s and a lot of our structural elements are still in place (Exposed Brick Walls, Original Floors, Exposed Ductwork, an original billboard painted on a wall and so forth)
• A true leader in the digital marketing space.  We are highly regarded as one of the fastest growing digital agencies on the East Coast. We are also considered true innovators in our field.
• We trust our staff.  We set expectations, give responsibility and work as a true team.
• We are hosting one of the premier digital marketing events of 2013.  Check out our lineup of speakers that you may get to network and interact with:  http://www.InteractivityDigital.com
• We offer 18 days of PTO and multiple flex days annually
• We have weekly team meetings that commonly include; breakfast, lunch, happy hour, ice cream or something else fun.
• We have quarterly outings where we spend a great part of the day doing team building exercises.
• A competitive salary with quick growth opportunity

To Apply

Please provide examples of your work, an up-to-date resume, links to your social media accounts and blog if you have one.  

Your company’s image is everything. It’s the first thing people see and the thing that people remember the most when they leave. As Facebook continues to evolve, they have made a subtle change to their main logo. Facebook has eliminated the lighter blue line near the bottom of the box and extended the body of the letter “f” with their new design. The changes may not even be noticeable to a majority of people, but the change has simplified their logo and proves less can be more.

Our job at Interactivity Marketing is to first help you find your brand’s voice and then help it speak to as many potential customers as possible. Whether it’s through your logo, tagline, website, or print, your brand’s voice needs to be consistent and clear. We’ll give you the stage and the microphone. Check out our services page to see how we can assist you!

So far we’ve discussed which products to sell online in part I and how to choose a top shopping cart for your store.  Now let’s look at how to setup the product pages to get some SEO right out of the gate.

1. Primary Search Term – Start with the light keyword research data that you compiled during the product selection phase.  Every product needs to have at least one high value search term associated it.  This may be the official brand and product name, or a descriptive term for a product.

2. Create Unique Copy – Throw out that canned description from the catalog or supplier’s website.  Using duplicate content is a big no-no.  Search engines only credit the original creator, and discredit any other website with duplicate content. Whenever possible, out do your competitors.  I like a minimum of 250 words for product pages, but prefer to meet or exceed my competition’s word count.

3. Unique Images – Pictures are just like copy, search engines don’t like to serve duplicate results.  If you use the stock images from the  manufacturer,  take the time to alter them to be at least  moderately unique.  Use an image editor to resize, crop, and rename your images.  The best practice is to shoot your own unique images.  Once again, aim to outdo your competition.

4. Use Video  -  Videos are great tools to inform your customers and impress the search engines.  Product demos and reviews are preferred, and when used on social platforms like Vimeo and Youtube can become marketing machines.  For a simple video solution, place the camera on a tripod and the product on a turntable. Rotate the product slowly for 360 degrees and embed the video on you product’s page.

5. Keyword Density – Make sure that your videos, images, and copy all represent your primary search term.  Don’t over-do-it, keep it natural sounding, but make sure each element contains at least a close variant of your primary keyword.

Keyword Research is an ongoing task for every SEO. We all have to do it, and do it regularly. Keyword research is what helps us find new optimization opportunities. While we all have our processes, here a few tips you may want to consider next time you perform keyword research.

Learn The Page Focus

I know this may seem obvious to most, but I’ve seen it happen where an SEO will select keywords strictly based on their volume. You need to understand the focus of the page and determine what terms will make the most sense. Read through the page a few times. Pull out some words that are being used often. See what kind of variations you can find of those often used terms. Choose variations that make sense in the existing content, yet still have volume.

Understand the Competition

Perform searches within Google for your targeted keywords. See what other sites are ranking for those terms and analyze them. Figure out where they are using their keywords in their content, how often they use them, and what other keywords that page may be optimized for. Programs like SpyFu can be very helpful for this. Keep an eye on the competition to see what they are doing right to identify your missed opportunities.

Set Realistic Expectations

Most SEOs have encountered the client who doesn’t understand why they cant be on page 1 for extremely competitive terms. It is our job as SEOs to set the expectation that ranking for those highly competitive terms may take years. It is also our job to explain why we target long-tail terms, why they are more likely to rank for long-tail terms and why long-tail terms can potentially drive more qualified traffic.

Although keyword research is much more involved, these 3 simple tips should help. View our older posts for some additional information on creating a keyword map or other SEO tactics. Also, feel free to leave comments if you have important keyword research tips.

Interactivity Marketing is hiring a career-oriented team member to serve the role of a Junior Analyst on the SEO team.  The perfect candidate must be a self motivated individual who loves a fast-paced environment and thrives under the pressure of concurrent deadlines and client results.

Specific Prospect Characteristics:

• Exceptional writing skills
• Knowledge of the SEO industry and best SEO practices
• Ability to research and become knowledgable in many industries
• Ability to analyze data from programs such as Google Analytics and make educated decisions based on that data
• Possesses knowledge of content marketing and content promotion best practices.
• Aim to increase qualified traffic to our clients websites
• Be a self starter, quick learner and have the ability to work on tasks with limited supervision
• Ensures a strategic focus throughout the entire lifecycle of a client
• Understands industry/market best practices and strives to incorporate them seamlessly in day-to-day processes
• Finds opportunities to keep the rest of the agency current on the latest digital marketing trends
• Balances analytical thinking and approaches with creative thinking and long-term vision
• Develop both outbound and inbound outreach strategies and initiatives
• Maintain an active and professional presence on key social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and others as the industry sees fit
• Extremely organized with the ability to meet multiple concurrent deadlines
• Experience with WordPress, Joomla, HTML, CSS

What Interactivity Marketing Offers

• A creative workspace.  Our office was first built in the 1930’s and a lot of our structural elements are still in place (Exposed Brick Walls, Original Floors, Exposed Ductwork, an original billboard painted on a wall and so forth)
• A true leader in the digital marketing space.  We are highly regarded as one of the fastest growing digital agencies on the East Coast. We are also considered true innovators in our field.
• We trust our staff.  We set expectations, give responsibility and work as a true team.
• We are hosting one of the premier digital marketing events of 2013.  Check out our lineup of speakers that you may get to network and interact with:  http://www.InteractivityDigital.com
• We offer 18 days of PTO and multiple flex days annually
• We have weekly team meetings that commonly include; breakfast, lunch, happy hour, ice cream or something else fun.
• We have quarterly outings where we spend a great part of the day doing team building exercises.
• A competitive salary with quick growth opportunity

To Apply

Please provide examples of your work, an up-to-date resume, links to your social media accounts and blog if you have one.  

So you have a nice size email list and you are looking to leverage it?  Enter Facebook Custom Audiences.  Read our 6 easy steps below and you will create your custom audience in 10 minutes or less!

Step 1:

In order to utilize custom audiences you will need your email list in a clean CSV file. You can export from most major programs such as Infusionsoft, Mailchimp, iContact or whatever you choose to use for marketing.  Once you have the list in a CSV it’s time to build your custom audience.

Step 2:

You do this by loading the Facebook Power Editor.

Step 3:

Once you have loaded the power editor you launch the audiences tab

Step 4:

Create a custom audience

Step 5:

Complete the form by naming your audience and typing a description.  Hit choose file and upload your custom created CSV file from stop 1.  You should keep “Emails” selected and hit “Create”

Step 6:

Wait for up to an hour while Facebook loads your custom list.  Once completed you can use this custom audience in ads and other promotions on Facebook!

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but most people don’t know how much a thousands words really is.  When it comes to SEO blogging, content writing for websites, or even status updates on Facebook, most people use too many words.

It’s easy to go overboard when writing something. Many people want to explain every little detail about a product, or want to hype it up by using extra superlatives. Fight this instinct. More words do not equal better sales, more informed consumers, or better Google rankings.  Trust me, it is harder to write 300 concise words about a product that articulate a message then it is to write 1000 words. The 300 words, however, are much more likely to get read and isn’t that the point? Bogging down a blog, Facebook post, email blast or advertisement with too many words just turns off people to the product.

There is no good way to tell how many words are going to be needed for a project. The best way to tell if you are having verbiage overload is to edit your works. Read it carefully; does it feature too many adjectives or unnecessary modifiers? Are you spending 200 words on an extraneous detail that isn’t pertinent to the overall point? Choose your words carefully and remember that less is more a lot of the time.

Strunk and White said it best in The Elements of Style:  “A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”

Color is not something most of us think about when designing a website.  I’d say most just use the colors of the brand; which may or may not be a good thing depending on how meaningful the colors of the brand are.  Not many think about what those colors mean and how it makes a viewer feel when they visit your side or see your brand.  Note that color meanings in the North American area, might not mean the same elsewhere.

Today I’m focusing on the warm colors, which I will call the attention-grabbers.

Red:

Red means action, power, and urge. On the other hand it means, passion, love, or life.  Red is known to increase heart rate and it creates excitement.  You would use this color for buttons or call-to-actions.  Retail stores use red on their clearance racks to get the buyer’s attention and create a sense of urgency, saying “buy now”. A number of fast food restaurants use red for that same reason.  Red is a tricky color since it is often used to represent ‘bad’.  

Orange:

Orange and red share a lot of the same feelings such as power and urge.  Orange is less agressive that red. It is very visible and is great to be used for promos, call-to-actions, and buttons.  It creates cravings and is also associated with healthy eating.

Yellow:

Yellow often means happy, joy, cheerfulness, and youthfulness. It is associated with food and safety.

Any good writer will tell you that writer’s block happens. Everyone hits a moment where they just can’t write. Whether it’s from lack of an idea, not knowing how to start a post or simply not being able to focus on what you are doing- writer’s block happens to us all.

When you are an SEO writer and you have deadlines to make and clients that are breathing down your neck about when they are getting their content, it’s easy to get even more frustrated. Don’t get discouraged though; there are plenty of simple tricks to get you out of your writer’s block funk.

• Take a break- Staring at a blank sheet of paper or computer screen for hours isn’t going to make the words come to you. Take a break from what you are doing and take a walk around the office, or spend twenty minutes on Buzzfeed. Your employer might not understand it, but 15 minutes of goofing off can often reenergize your brain.
• Use Google – If you can’t think of any topics for a client, sometimes it’s helpful to see what the competition is doing. They might have a blog topic that sparks an idea for your own topic.
• Play on Facebook- Check your client’s Facebook page or Twitter account for content ideas. Sometimes a customer review or a picture can spark an idea for a dozen blog post ideas.
• Sleep – You might not be able to do this in the office, but if you are having trouble writing sometimes the best cure is sleeping. Sleep allows your brain to disconnect from work and relax, and relaxation is the best cure for writer’s block.

So don’t worry the next time you find yourself unable to write. Use the internet or just goof off for a little while and you’ll be hopping over that writer’s block in no time.