Google Analytics recently added a really neat tool called “Assistant” that gives you automatic “Insights”.
The tool is only available in the Google Analytics Mobile App (available for Android or iPhone) .
Examples of the kinds of goodies the app will give you:
As with all data you need to approach it with wisdom. Not all “insights” are actually insights.
The tool will give you positive and negative insights. Occasionally checking this might alert you to a site issue of which you weren’t aware. Conversely, you might discover one of your posts picked up some steam or a big site linked to you.
This handy Assistant feature is coming to the browser at some point I believe.
Go download the app and login to your Google account. You may find undiscovered gems in your analytics data.
What is “thought leadership”? Blake alluded to this concept when discussing finding your industry heroes. Let’s take a deeper dive into what “thought leadership” means and why it is important to you.
Thought leaders are the informed opinion leadersand the go-to people in their field of expertise. They are trusted sources who move and inspire people…
This is an excellent definition of “thought leadership”. I love the above quote from Denise Brosseau of the Thought Leadership Lab. It not only defines what a thought leader is, it also shows whybeing considered a thought leader in your industry is a huge asset for your business.
Becoming a Thought Leader to Build Trust
“They are a trusted source…”
If people like you they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you they’ll do business with you.
Thought leaders have earned the trust of their target audience. They’ve taken their existing assets of wisdom, time, and experience and transformed them into one of the most valuable assets you can have in the sales process and business relationships – trust.
Becoming a Thought Leader to Drive Action
“They are trusted sources who move and inspire people”
Selling can sometimes feel like the dirty part of doing business. We’ve gotten into our industries and built our businesses because we truly believe in what we’re providing – we know we have value to bring to the table. The core of selling is communicating that value.
By becoming a thought leader, you organically create the desire for your solution within your target audience. You become the driver for informing your audience on what they need. In turn, they trust your opinion and judgment. They trust your opinions on your own products or services but ancillary aspects of your industry.
How Does One Become a Thought Leader?
At this point, you may be thinking “That’s great! But how does that help me and my business. I’m not a thought leader”
This is where I get to be a bit of a buzzkill. There isn’t a guaranteed process or a checklist that you can complete to make you successful.
However, there are actionable steps you can start taking today that will help in building your reputation within your industry and help you in the pursuit of becoming a thought leader.
1. Create Content
The greatest thing you can do is to create content that specifically addresses the problems and pain your target audience is experiencing. This can be done via your own blog, guest posts on popular sites within your industry, writing e-books or publishing a traditional book – the list goes on.
This is also not just limited to written content. You can create videos or your own podcasts to allow your audience to digest the wisdom you’re sharing in the way that is most convenient for them.
2. Participate on Social Media
Even if you think your industry is boring, there is still a target audience for your voice on most Social Media networks. Don’t just generate and share your own brilliant thoughts but generously re-share other people who are contributing great thinking.
3. Public Speaking
Are there any industry conferences that you could speak at? Are there opportunities to speak to groups of your industry peers? These can be great opportunities to get your name out there and establish yourself as an authority within your industry.
4. Be Generous with Your Expertise
There is a counterintuitive reality that those who give generously are usually rewarded generously. Don’t be stingy with your counsel. There are appropriate times to charge for your expertise but adopt a position of freely sharing the wisdom you’ve gained.
We love seeing real-world examples. Share with us your “thought leadership” niche in the comments.
Pursue these common missed website opportunities and find sweet success with your online efforts.
1. Missing Strategy / Being Thought-less
I’m reminded of the classic line asked of you while checking out at the grocery store: “Did you find everything ok?”. Great, I’ve got 6 anxious people behind me in line and now is the time to help me locate curry powder?
We see companies forming their web presences in the same manner. You need to have thoughtful strategic intent behind every part of your website.
2. Forgetting to Track Traffic or Analyze It
It never ceases to amaze me when I discover a new client has never looked at their analytics or, even worse, has none at all.
It would be like a running a restaurant with the lights out. You wouldn’t know if the restaurant was busy or not. You can’t tell if potential customers are being served. You have no idea if table 10 got the correct order.
You can’t optimize and improve what you don’t track!
3. Not Pursuing Snappy Site-Speed
How fast a web page loads is key to a great user experience and whether people stick around to dig further. The difference between a 2-second page load and a 4-second page load can massively affect your site success. (Here’s a tool we like to check site speed)
4. Letting the Site’s Content Go Stale
Blogging is hard! (Here you go: 4 Blogging Tips) Your company may be fast-moving so keeping the service and team pages updated is a never-ending chore. But wow, can it make a big difference in how people judge your brand. (Don’t forget Social Media!)
Picture this…you look up a local restaurant. The last post on the restaurant’s Facebook page is from two years ago. Half the items on the menu are no longer made or the price has changed. You’ll likely move on to another restaurant option.
Some firms neglect their websites in the same fashion. Your website is an online representation of your offline brand. It is likely to be one of the first and most important impressions of your brand!
5. Neglecting A/B Testing and Conversion Optimization
This one is hard and the most excusable in this list. However, if you have a sufficient level of traffic and clear next steps (e.g. contact forms, email lists, etc.) there may be huge missed opportunity to improve your pitch.
As always, we’re happy to chat and see if we’d be a great fit to help your firm capture opportunities.
The 4th post in our 4-part series investigating the difficulties between IT and Marketing.
Changing the Way IT or Marketing Communicates
Marketing should keep a few things in mind when communicating with IT:
Fully communicate the end-state – the goal you wish to accomplish and not just what you want to do. IT can be a strong strategic partner in helping you accomplish your goals and not a vendor to do your bidding.
Leave specific requests as open-ended as possible. Don’t jump too quickly into dictating specific solutions. You will miss out on potential undiscovered opportunities IT can suggest and you will undermine the expertise that they can bring to the table.
Make requests to-the-point and cut out fluff. IT-types may disdain small talk.
Treat IT as a key partner in the trenches, not as a vendor.
IT should keep a few things in mind when communicating with Marketing:
Try to understand the end customer, the sales process, and the strategic goals of the endeavor.
Approach the situation with positivity and a success-orientation.
Make an effort to communicate in layman’s terms and don’t overuse acronyms.
Proactively ask for clarification – especially if you see a potential weak spot. Take the time to fully marinate in the problem space before you jump into solution mode.
Don’t perform a requested task exactly-as-asked if you know it will fail just to prove Marketing lacks depth of knowledge. It may puff your ego but it isn’t kind.
When engaging, you may need to be more warm and schmoozy than you are when interacting with exclusively other IT-types.
This was the final post in our series on IT vs. Marketing. We hope you enjoyed it and got some value from our perspective. We did take liberty and spoke in generalities, there is a wide swathe of situations and sometimes there is zero friction between these two groups.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject! Please comment on any of the posts and add your two cents!
Need a firm to help bridge communication with IT / Marketing? We’d be happy to chat.
How to solve the friction and make the world a better place
We’ve seen four approaches that can work really well to solve the IT vs. Marketing conundrum.
1. Let One Group Lead and Take Ownership
We’ve seen this work but it can be really tricky. If Marketing takes ownership but doesn’t correctly care for the technical nuance of their endeavor they can end up making a mess of the site. While it might look pleasing and strategic, there are often gaping holes in technology interrelation, scalability, and/or weak security, to name a few common serious issues.
If IT takes the lead, the site might be built using the safest and most stable technologies but be extremely difficult for non-technical teams to manage. If they are not careful, IT could lock the site down in a “holding pattern” for years with no meaningful strategic readjustments or fresh content.
2. Partner IT and Marketing with Aligned Incentives and Common Goals
Have the project purpose and KPIs clearly defined so that all sides know where they are aiming. If there is maturity of leadership and a desire for success, this can certainly be a successful partnership.
3. Amalgamating IT and Marketing Together
For new companies and startups, it is common to no longer see a clear delineation between IT and Marketing. We think this can be a really enlightened approach if your business model will support it.
4. Third-Party Vendor Approach
A third-party vendor can be a solid bridge between IT and Marketing. Whether their role borders on U.N. Peacekeeping or is simply to be an interpreter for competing goals – a third-party vendor can bring much needed freshness to communication that has become stalemated in mature companies. At LimeCuda, we often find ourselves being “the vendor”.
A firm like ours is a hybrid mix of both IT and Marketing which means we are sensitive to the needs and concerns of both. Sometimes we work exclusively with Marketing-type folks and we play the role of “IT”. Other times we work closely with IT to integrate existing systems and alleviate their procedural and security concerns.
We are biased but an optimal solution may be a neutral third party both sides view as an expert.
Need a firm to help align IT / Marketing and coordinate your efforts on the web? We’d be happy to chat.
The second part in a 4-part series investigating the difficulties between IT and Marketing. Read Part 1: Why the Friction?
The Website, Troublemaker at the Center of It All
The website is a classic battleground of IT and Marketing. It’s like having a sibling who has all different interests as you EXCEPT for the same love interest. It is bound to get ugly.
Conversely, the website could be a hot potato for the two silos. Neither may want the ownership or responsibility of the website. Fighting to be relieved of the responsibility can be as ugly as fighting for control.
A Website is Equal Parts Technology and Marketing
By “website” I’m talking about the primary public website a potential customer visits in order to learn or buy from a company. Absolutely this could be an oversimplification. We have clients for whom we manage 12 websites.
Websites run on some sort of technology stack. They have technical components like a domain name, hosting, update caretaking, and a CMS. There is uptime, site speed, security, and a whole host of technically-oriented concerns.
But a website also needs to be highly strategic. It is usually a customer’s first impression. It has to be on-brand, positioned well, and tell the company’s story. It may leverage content marketing, analytics, Social Media, and SEO. All items that usually fall within the purview of Marketing!
Who’s to blame for the friction?
It is easy to chuckle while imagining the stereotypes for IT and for Marketing and assume this is where the trouble stems. The IT people are nerds, gruff, arrogant, and anti-social. The Marketers are jocks, gregarious, loud, and just drink all day like characters in Mad Men. Occasionally these may be somewhat true but really the diversity in both fields is increasing. We don’t think these personality penchants are really at the root of the issue…
This friction isn’t entirely the fault of IT or Marketing but they’re both rather unfortunate victims of a poorly constructed system of incentives. Our analysis is this friction usually stems from misunderstanding each other and misalignment of incentives. Next post coming up, how to find Success!
A 4-part series investigating the difficulties between IT and Marketing
If you’ve been in the corporate world, you know that IT (Information Technology) and Marketing often don’t get along or at least seem to be talking past each other. Why is that?
We’ve been building websites for 7 years and have seen both the good and the bad of this classic clash. There have been really ugly situations as well as wonderful partnerships. We’re sharing our observations to get to the core of the issue.
Looking at the State of IT and Marketing
We know we’re speaking in broad generalities here, a healthy IT or Marketing group may be a very different mix.
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Incentives of IT
IT usually has these aspects at their forefront:
Stability: preventing fires, heavy problem solving
Maintaining status quo
Managing risk / fear of the unknown
System integrity, Security, Scalability
Obsession with doing things correctly
Slow and steady / long term outlook
All of these things are threatened by change – more on that in a minute.
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Incentives of Marketing
Marketing usually has these aspects at their forefront:
Improving metrics: traffic, leads, sales
Experimenting with new methods
A “get it done” attitude that dislikes trivialities and minute details
Embracing the unknown
Fast, iterative with possibly a more near-term outlook
These things lead to an approach that only improves with constant change.
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Both Sectors are Morphing
IT has gotten more complicated in some ways. They navigate the use of third party tools, Managed Services, or building resources in-house. More is expected of them, security is hard, and they handle a broad array of interrelated pieces of technology.
In the last two decades, Marketers also have seen increased pressure to acquire fairly technical skills in addition to the creative skill set that has always been expected of them. The spend on marketing software and SaaS solutions has increased dramatically.
Cost Center or Profit Center?
IT is usually considered a “cost center” within a company, even though its functions can be integral to the business running at optimal efficiency. This means that IT sometimes has to fight aggressively for budget and can be understaffed.
Marketing is usually considered a “profit center”. Its actions can more easily be traced and tied directly to new business. This means budget can be more easily rationalized. If you can determine a real positive ROI then it is a no-brainer to spend that money!
What do they each DO?
Before I get tarred and feathered, let me say that these are caricatures of each. What IT does and what Marketing does vary a ton between companies.
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IT is tasked with aspects like:
Computer setup and maintenance
Office network and WiFi
Phone systems
Corporate software and Intranets
The Website
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Marketing is tasked with aspects like:
Customer acquisition
Promotional materials / Ad campaigns
Branding and design
Tradeshows and conferences
The Website
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Notice the common bullet point? This is where the friction can really heat up… The Website!
New Technology Stirs the Pot
The introduction of new technology (especially website-related) can threaten the fiefdom, control, and budget of IT. This can explain (not excuse) why new technology endeavors are met with suspicion or outright hostility.
One of IT’s greatest fears is Marketing “going rogue”. Non-technical people may break a system and IT is expected to step in and fix. Sometimes access is jealously guarded. Once given, it is hard to take back…
Marketing is increasing technologically-based. This means they are often the ones pushing for new endeavors.
Conversely (and ironically), sometimes IT introduces new technology and Marketing is leery and fights adoption.
LinkedIn and Medium can be great audience-reaching platforms… but you may already be publishing great content on your own website. Should you Cross-Post the same piece on both?
Any Linkedin member can self-publish a piece of content that gets exposure in LinkedIn’s system. Same goes for Medium; people love it for its easy-to-use interface and platform exposure.
What is Cross-Posting?
Cross-Posting is simply taking a piece of content and publishing it on two separate sites or platforms. Could be a great way to get your wise words in front of a bigger audience.
Keep in Mind with Platform Posting…
Will it Rank? (Search Engine Optimization)
If you are going to cross-post you may want to think about the potential for ranking in Google. Decide if ranking is key and if it is then how you approach posting needs to be strategic.
There is no Google penalty for duplicate content. However, certainly the piece Google views as a copy or less authoritative will have a harder time ranking. Definitionally, both posts are competing against each other as well. Ironically (and irritatingly), when researching for this post I stumbled on an article posted on several different platforms.
Analytics and Tracking are Minimal
When you post on LinkedIn or Medium you get precious little in terms of analytics.
May Limit Strategic Site Goals
If a reader is on LinkedIn or Medium, they aren’t on your site! Your ability to keep them navigating around and digging deeper is limited to the content within the post. The navigation, related articles, distracting ads… they’re all the platform’s, not your site. You’ll also need to decide which post you share and promote on other Social Media like: Twitter, Google+, and Facebook.
Your Network Has Power
If you have hundred of followers on Linkedin or Medium then it is likely the content will get some love. If you have a minimal network you could just be shouting into the abyss. If the piece is well-written and considered worthy it could even get promoted to LinkedIn Pulse or Medium’s Editors’ Picks.
5 Tactics to Cross-Post Correctly
1. Time-delay the Second Posting
Delay the second posting. Perhaps by a week or two. This will give Google a bit of time to find and assess the first post and clearly understand that it came first in time.
2. Link to the Other Post
Towards the beginning or the end have a line that says something like “This post originally appeared on…”.
I like to use italics and have some keywords linked. e.g
If you take the post and rewrite it sufficiently it may be seen by Google as unique content. You could perhaps tailor each post to the audience and platform.
It’s a great idea to rewrite the title and the content to target a slightly different keyphrase.
4. Give an Excerpt
You may want to use the secondary posting as a teaser to drive traffic to the first. You could put half of the article on LinkedIn for instance and give a link at the end to keep reading on your website. Give away enough good thoughts to keep them interested and coming to your site.
5. Use Your Blog’s Canonical Tag
If you’ve decided to let the LinkedIn post be the Search Engine golden boy then set the canonical tag for your own site’s post to be the LinkedIn post’s URL
My Recommendation for Cross-Posting…
Cross-Post in moderation. Some pieces will work really well on a secondary platform and some will not. For LinkedIn it seems to me business-related pieces of a more philosophical or anecdotal nature do really well.
If ranking is important, my preference would be first publishing to your own website and then waiting to publish on the platform with a link to the original post.
Whether you like it or not, your Social Media web presence is a core part of your business. It is one of the most publicly visible components of your business that many current and potential customers will encounter. It is often even their first impression!
This is the case even if you aren’t active online. A company in our industry recently faced serious speculation whether they were a “going concern” due to their lack of Social Media and blog engagement.
As a company, you could be completely healthy and providing amazing service to your existing customers. However, if you aren’t engaged within the avenues first encountered by your potential customers, you could appear to be an unhealthy or dying company.
Have existing Social Media profiles?
Do you have existing Social Media profiles? If so, ENGAGE!
Potential customers will see these profiles. Don’t be afraid of potential negative reviews here, all reviews can and should be treated as valuable feedback. It can seem bad for these negative reviews to be plastered on such a public avenue, however you do have complete control in how you respond. Our counsel would be to allow negative reviews (within reason) and respond to them positively while maintaining the high ground.
Most customers won’t write you off based on one negative comment. Many, however, will gain respect for your business if you respond to the comment in a pleasant and helpful way.
Don’t allow the potential for negative reviews to prevent you from engaging on Social Media. See it as a bigger opportunity to make your company more appealing to the potential customers that have stumbled onto your profiles.
Don’t have existing Social Media profiles?
Think you can bypass some of this by just hiding away and avoiding Social Media completely? Nope! Facebook and others have made sure that’s not an option for you.
How’s that? They’re called unmanaged profiles. Users can “check-in” to your business and if there isn’t an existing profile, Facebook will create one for your business. Google Local and LinkedIn have similar tactics.
Take control of these pages and ensure your business is properly represented. If you blog you can even hook your posts to automatically be shared on Social Media.
What story is your web presence telling potential customers?
Take a second and put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer… Google your business.
What comes up? Are there customer reviews you’ve never seen before? Are there angry customers that you could’ve easily appeased but have now been left to linger and paint a negative picture of your business for the world to see? Can you respond in a frank and upbeat manner?
As always if you disagree or have a great anecdote related to using Social Media we’d love to hear! Comment below or drop us a line.
Looking to the leader(s) of your pack can be a great way to stay on the cutting edge and maintain ambition.
My challenge to you: Find 3-5 leaders in your industry and follow what they have to say
1. What is Your Industry?
This is the smallest sensible niche that you can identify. If you sell health insurance to senior citizens in southeast Maryland then find the thought leaders in your space or be that thought leader. Follow people in the outer rings too. In this example a general insurance thought leader may be helpful.
Our industry is WordPress but really more specifically WordPress Agencies. So we listen to people like Chris Lema, Carrie Dils, Curtis McHale and agencies like: Modern Tribe and Crowd Favorite. Think of the people and businesses you look up to in your niche. People who are your peers or who you wish were your peers.
2. Following them means…
Finding them online. They should have an online presence. Maybe a blog, Social Media, email list, podcast, etc.
Then just listen and reflect on what they are saying.
Don’t blindly follow but don’t arrogantly dismiss. You’re looking for wisdom not marching orders.
3. Keep Growing and Become a Hero
Not saying you should seek fame but there is something to be said for striving to be a person or company that others look up to.
Strive for excellence and be a hero to others. Remember heroism involves great sacrifice and risk!
Does your web presence effectively build an audience and let you be a hero? Reach out to us if you’d like help in putting together the right tools for building your online reach
