admin, Author at Twenty3Media

Necessary elements of great website design

It is well known that content is the most important part of a website, but how you present that content is equally as important. Take a look at the following elements to learn what is crucial in providing visitors with an easy, informative experience with your website.

Meaningful content

Not all content is created equal. Identify your audience, and create content that answers their questions. You should take time to put yourself in their shoes and ask what they would ask – and then answer. Double and triple check for spelling or grammar mistakes – this creates credibility. If your website and content is muddled with misspelled words, no one will take what you’re saying seriously. Organise your content in a way that makes sense – make it detailed and specific to that landing page. Lastly, make sure all content is SEO optimized, and uses relevant keywords so your audience can find it.

“High quality content is the gateway to successfully retain visitors and to achieve high ranking on search engines.”

User-friendly navigation

Navigation is the GPS of your website. A good navigation experience will set your website apart from the rest. If your audience can seamlessly navigate through your website, and has no problem finding the content they are looking for, then you have achieved user-friendly navigation. Some things to keep in mind include: the amount of menu items, the positioning of your navigation bar, short and descriptive section titles, and always linking your brand logo to your Home page to name a few.

Navigation and accessibility directly impact your conversion rates. If your website isn’t easy to navigate, visitors can become frustrated (or confused!) which leads to a negative experience.

Good visual design

A website that is aesthetically pleasing, will help keep customers clicking through. Your website should attract visitors, and invite them in. Themes chosen should reflect the persona of your business – colours and fonts need to be balanced and match this theme. Page backgrounds shouldn’t be overcontrolling.

Remember, first impressions matter. If your website has a professional look and feel, your visitors are more likely to stick around. Make sure all pictures are high quality. Use complimentary colors, and utilize white/negative space on a page. This will create a clean, fresh, easy-to-read site.

Credibility

As mentioned above, your website needs to look, feel, and be credible. Visitors need to build a sense of trust as soon as they land on your website. Make sure you display a portfolio and/or client list, and tell explain your purpose upfront. People want to be able to find this right away. Show your physical address, and contact information.

These things will help gain the trust of your visitors and will ultimately generate those conversions you’re looking for.

The above elements are the most important for any website’s design. Making sure you grab your visitor’s attention and keep it for even a small amount of time, as this will help build your customer base.

Before we end this post, there are three other elements that are worth mentioning. These are: calls to action, mobile responsive design, and a search function. Your calls to action can be something as simple as signing up for a newsletter, or prompting a visitor to download a brochure – whatever you choose, this will create a conversion and provide you with a way to keep in contact with a visitor after they leave your website.

Making sure your website is mobile friendly will keep even more visitors on your page. These days, most people are searching using their smartphone, or tablet. Make sure your website can easily fit those screens or you risk losing these visitors because they don’t want to struggle with navigating your website.

Lastly, providing a search function on your website will help keep those visitors that don’t approve of your navigation system. You can’t please everyone – so place elements on your page to help avoid frustration.

If you need help designing your website, get in touch with our team and we’d be happy to get you going in the right direction!

Facebook Pixel tutorial: How to install Facebook’s Pixel code on your website

If you read our blog post about the benefits of using a Facebook Pixel and the wonders it can do for your advertising campaign conversions, then the next logical step is setting up a Facebook pixel for your existing campaign. That is why we created this easy-to-follow tutorial.

Feel free to get in touch with us for assistance if you get stuck with any of these steps.

Step 1: Activate your Facebook Pixel

First, you need to log into your account and go to the Facebook Ads Manager. Then, click on the upper-left corner on ‘Facebook Adverts’.

Then, expand the drop-down menu by selecting the ‘All tools’.

Under the ‘Assets’ column, you will have the option to select ‘Pixels’ – click on it.

Voila! Click to create your Facebook Pixel. There can be only one Pixel code per account.

Step 2: Insert the Facebook Pixel code

There are two ways to you can insert your code, and in this tutorial, we will cover the ‘copy and paste; method – which means manually inserting pixel code into your website. So, select the second option.

You must install two types of code in order for the Facebook Pixel to work. The first is the base code.

Simply click ‘Copy code to clipboard’ to copy your code.

Since the base code needs to be present on every page of your website, you need to paste this code into your header. If you have a WordPress website (or other content management systems), just search for a header template. Learn where to find this template or code in different web management systems. Facebook even offers help on how to find this template or code in different web management systems.

Since business owners mostly use WordPress as their CMS platform, in this tutorial we will cover how to paste the code into WordPress, but the main idea is similar to every platform. You need to access your code, find this </head> tag, and simply paste the Facebook pixel code above it.

If you are an average to advanced WordPress CMS user then use this method:

In your WordPress dashboard, you can reach that code by selecting Appearance > Editor. Find the header template (header.php) through the search function, click on that template and then find the </head> tag.

Now just paste the Facebook Pixel code.

The easier way to do this, is to install a plugin. Go to Plugins on your dashboard, and click Add New.

Then, search for the ‘tracking code manager’ plugin. Install one of your choice from the list, and paste the code where you are told. Save the change and now you have a Facebook Pixel code installed on your website.

In this tutorial, we are using the plugin Tracking Code Manager v1.

Step 3: Install the Facebook Pixel event code

Base code must be placed throughout the entire website, and that’s why we installed it on a template that is found on every page – the header. But, event code needs to be placed only on pages where we want to track the specific conversion. This allows us to track different conversions on different pages.

Facebook lets us track 9 different types of conversions/events.

1. Search

Facebook Pixel tracks this action when people use the search function on your website, and you need to type in a query you are interested in. You need to define that exact query in the code.

Instead of leather sandals shown in the Facebook’s example above, type in the query you are interested in.

2. View content

If you want to track people who clicked on product detail pages, landing pages, or any content, this is the option you should choose.

3. Add to basket

This is a great option everybody with an online shop should use. This event lets you track people who have added an item to the shopping cart. If you read our previous blog post, you learned that 3 out of 4 people abandon the shopping cart and don’t complete the purchase. Retargeting them could help you increase sales, and with this option, you can.

4. Add to wishlist

Quite similar to the add to basket event, add to wishlist lets you track people who have added a product to their wishlist. You can use this information to serve a Facebook ad, notifying the people about the discount for that exact item.

5. Initiate Checkout

Whenever someone clicks on the checkout, this event will be triggered. Also useful for retargeting and retargeting shopping cart abandonment.

6. Add payment info

This one is self-explanatory.

7. Purchase

Place this event on your order confirmation page so you can retarget your loyal customers.

8. Lead

A lead is a potential customer who has expressed an interest in your company. A person who has signed-up for your newsletter can be considered a lead, or completes a form, signs up for a trial, etc. This option allows you to market to your leads.

9. Complete registration

Whenever a person completes a registration for a product or a service, this event is triggered. Add this event to a registration confirmation page.

10. Custom event

Facebook lets you define the conversions you are interested in, but this does require a bit more advanced knowledge in order to set the right parameters.

Step 4: Installing the Facebook Pixel event code

You can place the event code when a user is taken to a new page, or when an action happens on the page. These two actions have different codes so you have to pay attention to which one you will use.

For example, if a person clicks the button for checkout and is taken to another page, then you would place the event code using option A.

Go to the installed plugin and click on the tracking code manager, then create a new tracking code. Name it however you prefer, and then paste the code from Facebook. Then, copy the code for the event you want to track on that page. Go back to Facebook. You can find event codes on your Facebook Ads Manager / Pixels / Create Conversion. Copy the code you want (the one that you want to track every time a specific page is opened). Go to the WordPress again.

The code you first pasted should look like this:

Click the exact place where the red arrow is pointing, and press Enter.

Now you need to paste the smaller event code you copied from Facebook Ads Manager. These codes look like this:

And now, paste it right above the </script> tag like this:

Unlike the base code placed in the header, these codes only make sense when they are used on the page they are supposed to, so make sure to select the correct page name from the drop-down menu below.

Whenever setting up codes in this manager, always choose the option: Standard code tracking in your WordPress. This opens up the menu where you get to choose on which pages you want to use this code. The base code is meant to be used throughout the whole website, and these event codes should be used only on specific pages.

Save the changes and voila! That is how you insert event codes into your website and can track them through Facebook Pixel.

Step 5: Check to see if Facebook Pixel is working

The only thing left to do is to confirm that the tracking is indeed working. Simply download the Facebook Pixel Helper Chrome browser extension (you can find it here), reload your website and click the icon in the upper-right hand corner. This is also a troubleshooting tool that shows all Pixel events, and a complete overview.

Learn how to maximize your Facebook ad budget with a Facebook Pixel

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Increasing conversions should be one of the main goals of every business. If you chose to do advertising through Facebook and have an ad budget in place, then you should do all that you can to maximise it. This is where Facebook’s Pixel comes in! Facebook’s Pixel is basically a short code that you put on your website, that will help you with conversion tracking, ad optimisation and retargeting. Don’t let the “code” part scare you, implementing a Facebook Pixel is really simple, and you don’t need to be a programmer to do it. If you want to know how to set up a Google Pixel, we’ve created a useful step-by-step tutorial that you can view here.

Why you should track conversions

In order for your marketing campaigns to work effectively, you need to measure them and make adjustments as needed. Tracking conversions is one of main KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). A conversion can be anything – it’s a completed goal on your website. This completed goal should relate to your overall marketing and business goals. If you are running an online shop, then checkout (a sale) will be your main conversion.

Facebook campaigns show you how much each ‘like’ or ad impression is worth, but what’s the use of these metrics when you don’t know how many customers have actually performed your desirable action or goal? Whatever your conversion goal might be – whether it’s gathering leads, subscribers, receiving phone calls, app downloads, and anything in between, it’s important that you measure it.

How to use Facebook Pixel to track conversions?

With Facebook Pixel, you’ll see a new tab labelled “Conversions” in your Facebook Ads Manager. Conversion metrics can tell you exactly how much it costs to get a person to buy your product through Facebook ads. Let’s say you have set your Facebook Ads budget to be ZAR500 and that you are selling a product for ZAR100. If you get hundreds of likes, but only sell 2 items, then that means that you have spent ZAR500 and earned only ZAR200 – of which you still need to deduct product cost, shipping costs, etc. Through Facebook Pixel conversions, you will be able to see if you are losing money, and whether you need to optimise your campaign.

How to maximise your campaigns through lookalike audiences

Facebook’s Pixel will help you expand your reach by optimising your conversions. Once the Pixel gathers sufficient data about the people who have already completed the conversion, it will find similar people through an algorithm – and show them your ad! It’s that simple, Facebook Pixel does all the work, and you get more conversions.

Sales funnel misinterpretation

Sometimes people just need a nudge in the right direction. Every sales funnel picture is the same, it shows a funnel, where the end goal is a completed conversion. In reality, things aren’t so funnel-shaped and easy. Ideally, a person will click on your Facebook ad, which will lead it to a landing page on your website. Ideally, there will be an action that the person can perform, like – complete the sale, sign up or call you. But people, now more than ever, make informed choices before they buy a product. The sales funnel would consider this person lost, because he or she exited your website without completing the goal. Many people just want to know more about the product before committing to the purchase. They will perhaps Google experiences, compare it with similar products, ask their friends about it. At this stage, they aren’t ready to buy your product, and that’s where that nudge in form of retargeting can really help you.

Creating retargeting ads with Facebook’s Pixel

According to eMarketer, three-thirds of shopping carts throughout the world remain abandoned, which means people got to the final stage of sales funnel, but didn’t complete the purchase. And with Facebook Pixel, that can be your goldmine. Create an ad that will specifically target people who have previously visited your website, or simply target people who have abandoned the cart. A Pixel also allows you to target people who have completed an action on your website, like pressing a call button, subscribing to your newsletter, or searching for something specific through your website’s search function (if you have it).

This opens a world of possibilities for marketing. For example, you can target email subscribers with an ad that will offer them a discount. Or you can serve an ad to people who added a product to the shopping cart and didn’t complete the purchase, so you can remind them to come back and finish it. Retargeted customers are 70 times more likely to complete the purchase! You can find a very interesting retargeting infographic here.

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

Image by Invesp

If you need help with your Facebook marketing campaigns or setting up Facebook Pixels for your different campaigns, get in touch with us. Let us help you optimise your advertising spend![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Where to start with designing a digital marketing strategy?

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Designing and implementing a digital marketing strategy from scratch can be a daunting task. Or, perhaps you took over the management of a brand’s digital marketing from another individual or team, and you need to determine what elements of the strategy are working, and what not.

While it may seem like an impossible task, if you break up the bigger process into smaller chunks, it’s completely manageable. In this post I’m going to explain very briefly the process we follow at Twenty3Media when we start working with new clients.

The best starting points are to determine what is currently working and what not – and to determine what your competitors are doing online. This is the starting point for our team too when we start working with a new client. We familiarize ourselves with the client’s industry, their target audience as well as their competitive landscape to name a few.

The first step is going to be to check whether or not the website in question (your brand’s website) has Google Analytics installed. If not, get the tracking code installed immediately, so that data can be generated. You will need to have at least a month’s data, ideally more, to do your audit.

If you need to wait for Google Analytics to generate data, you can take that time to draw up a thorough competitor analysis document. Firstly, you’ll need to determine whom you’re going to compare yourself with. We like to get feedback from the client with regards to their direct competitors in the industry, and then we also do online research to identify online competitors.

Select your top 5 (or 10 if you want to be thorough) competitors, and note them all in your competitor analysis document.

Next you’ll want to research all aspects of each competitor’s digital strategy, including:

Their website: What pages do they have on their website? What tone do they use for the content? Look at the page source for each page (in Chrome, right click and select ‘view source’), do you see optimized meta tags? Who do they link to from their website? How many backlinks to their website do they have? Do they have a blog? If yes, how often do they publish content on their blog? Can you pick up specific keywords that they are optimizing different pages for (in the actual content)? What type of calls to action do they have on their website?
Social media platforms: What social media platforms are they active on? How often do they post? What type of content do they post? What is the engagement rate (comments, like, shares, retweets, etc) on different posts? This can help you identify content that you can include in your social media strategy.
Online advertising: Have you seen any online ads (on Google, Facebook, etc) for the competitor in question? If yes, what is the CTA? What artwork / visuals are they using?
Newsletters and email marketing: Do they send out newsletters? If yes, how often? What is the content of the newsletters?

The above will provide you with a good starting point for your competitor audit. Make the competitor analysis document as thorough as possible, as this will help you determine what areas you need to focus on.

Next, you can move on to your own brand’s website and social media channels, and compare it against your competitors’ platforms. What are you doing better than competitors? Where can you improve? Again, include as much detail as possible.

Once you have sufficient Google Analytics data, look at:

The top content on your website: Which pages are the most popular? Do these pages have sufficient CTAs on them to convert visitors to leads?
Demographics: Where are you getting your most visitors from (country, city)?
Engagement rate: What is your website’s bounce rate? How many pages do people view on average per visit? How much time do they spend on your website? What can you do to improve this rate?
Devices: What devices do people use to view your website? Make sure that your website renders properly in all of the most popular devices.

Once you’ve worked through the checkpoints above, you will have quite a bit of information to add to your digital marketing strategy document. Firstly, start off with what you want to achieve. Let’s say your marketing goal is to ‘increase sales,’ then your marketing objective will need to follow the SMART rule, for instance: Increase sales by 25% over the next 4 months. You can create annual goals, or quarterly goals – it’s up to you to decide what will work best based on your scenario. However, it’s important to make your marketing goals as specific as possible, so that you can measure the success of the tactics you implement.

There are many free digital marketing strategy templates available online – but, there is no need to go fancy. The key is to identify areas that you need to focus on, design a strategy and consistently implement this strategy.

The above will provide you with a good starting point to design your digital marketing strategy. If you need help with identifying areas you can improve on, or if you don’t have the time or resources to implement the strategy, contact us and we’ll assist![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

How design plays a role in your marketing efforts

Marketers and graphic designers often have the same goals, but look at them from a different perspective. Marketing creates interest in a brand, and design communicates a brand.

Dan Slagen, VP of Marketing at Crayon explains how involving marketers in your design process is essential to a successful product, or brand. He says that when you hear marketers talk, you’ll hear words like content or copy, conversions, funnel, and brand tone. Talk about the same project with designers, and they’re focusing on hierarchy, purpose, emotion, and experience.

There’s a disconnect between the two teams, and figuring out how to collaborate is key to selling your business. “Focusing on performance can align marketing and design teams to better solve problems together,” suggest Slagen. “You can have clever copy and the best targeting, but if it doesn’t perform, it’s not viewed as a success.”

Creative graphic design is one of the fastest ways to build brand recognition and a following on social media. This in turn, helps your marketing team. A beautiful design will help you stand out from the hundreds of other companies competing for the same audience, and can be the deciding factor in how successful your next campaign will be.

Not only is it important to have strong visual content, but consistency is an equal priority. You want people to come across an image and immediately think ‘isn’t that that one company?’ Your brand should always show similar fonts, photos, colors, etc. Use the same logo – don’t constantly change the color. Each and every single element in a design piece should portray the message you’re trying to send.

Design elements also help build trust with your clients. If a client can see that your website is done professionally, and your flyers, and postcards all look well done, this helps with your credibility. Clients are more likely to trust a brand with professional graphics versus a company that just has a couple images and some text printed out on normal paper.

The most important part about all of this is the conversion. If you aren’t getting conversions, then your campaign isn’t working. Maybe it’s the graphics, maybe it’s the marketing, or maybe it’s both. Conversions are key to propelling your brand forward. A clear, concise call-to-action will help draw people in. Tell them to do something. The mere suggestion to ‘register’ will get them thinking about it.

If you’re company doesn’t have a graphic designer employed, it may be time to look at outsourcing some of your work. Take a look at your past campaigns and evaluate if there are areas that could have been done better. Take the time and invest in your company with well-done graphics that will convert and produce your audience.

If you need help with your graphic design projects or your digital marketing strategy overall, get in touch with us.

3 great resources to sharpen your design skills

Technology is always changing, and our skills need to adapt as new trends arise. Perhaps you are self-taught and don’t know Illustrator or Photoshop like the back of your hand. We are here to provide you with a few resources available to you to learn skills you didn’t even know you were missing!

Some of these programs are paid-for, and some have free options. None of them are the cost of a daylong boot camp. Take a look, maybe there is something for you.

Udemy

Udemy is a global marketplace for learning and teaching online where students are mastering new skills and achieving their goals by learning from an extensive library of over 45 000 courses taught by expert instructors.

Udemy can be your cheapest option. They offer some free courses, and the rest are priced individually. It might be a little harder to find classes you’re looking for, as the lessons can be specific versus an overview of the program you want to improve in.

Treehouse

Treehouse market themselves as a resource for coding (HTML and CSS predominantly), but they have a decent amount of design videos. You can browse through their design library to find Adobe Illustrator Foundations, Photoshop Foundations, and a whole slew of other relative items. Treehouse’s subscription starts out at $25/month. If you’re even remotely interested in learning web design skills, this is the place to do it. $25 is a whole lot cheaper than $1200 for a boot camp you might not even learn from.

Lynda

Lynda.com is a leading online learning platform that helps anyone learn a business, software, technology and creative skills to achieve personal and professional goals. Through individual, corporate, academic and government subscriptions, members have access to the Lynda.com video library of engaging, top-quality courses taught by recognized industry experts.

Lynda might be the most well-known resource. Lynda pops up whenever you google a skill, and you can often find shortened videos throughout YouTube. Lynda starts at $19.99/month with their basic package.

BONUS: Web Design

If you’re looking for a cheaper option to learn web design, and front-end development – check out Codeacademy. At Codeacademy, you can learn to code interactively for FREE. Check it out now to get started!

With the resources available today, there is no reason to fall behind in your design work. Take the time to invest in yourself and learn new skills to stay relevant in the job pool. We’ve used all three here at Twenty3Media and constantly go back and forth between sites to learn and improve our skillset. If you have other resources that you find useful, please share them with us in the comments section 🙂

How to determine which social media profiles to be active on

There are so many social media platforms to choose from – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Tumblr, Snapchat…it almost looks like new social media platforms are emerging on a daily basis!

If you are in the process of creating your social media strategy, your first instinct might be to simply choose all of them. We are here to tell you, don’t. Chances are you won’t have enough time or resources to commit yourself properly to each social media profile, so you might end up having a mediocre representation on all of them, instead of excelling at a chosen few.

Whatever your choice is, here is a detailed guide to get you started on your social media management journey, through a series of questions and answers.

Will you oversee your social media, or will you pay a professional to do it for you?

If you are in charge, then you should choose the platforms you are familiar and most comfortable with. Or, at least at first. As you gain experience, and more importantly – the routine to be active on selected channels, you can easily incorporate more profiles into your social media strategy. And yes, you WILL need a strategy.

Paying a professional will probably yield better results, but that is largely dependent on your budget, naturally. On the other hand, you will get their expertise, knowledge, and the benefit of having free time on your hands. Twenty3Media is more than happy to help you with that, of course.

What is the type of content you will be distributing?

Each social media platform has a type of content for which it’s better suited than the rest. Visual content should find its way to Pinterest and Instagram, and videos are certainly best hosted on YouTube and Vine, while short, concise updates are for Twitter. Facebook supports all formats successfully (but, the overall trend favours videos).

Twitter is a very in-the-moment channel, which demands a lot more attention (and a very good response rate) which means that if you have up to date news to share with the world, Twitter is the way to go. If your posts aren’t time sensitive, and would benefit from being shown to a highly-targeted audience, then you should choose Facebook. Determine the type of content you will be creating and choose the platform accordingly.

What is the main purpose of the chosen channel?

If you want to increase sales, achieve better ROI and have more conversions, then your social media strategy should also reflect that. In this case, it’s not really about the traffic. While traffic is important, it shouldn’t be the ultimate goal. But if you want to increase brand exposure, attain a loyal following and form connections, then traffic is of importance.

Choose the main purpose you wish to achieve and then select the channel best suited that will bring you results.

Stay tuned for more useful advice about social media platforms, community management and pro tips on how to become the very best social media marketer your brand deserves you to be!

6 free tools for creating awesome visuals

Did you know that 90% of the transmitted information in the human brain is visual? Including visuals in your marketing is a must, to help engage your visitors and grab the attention of potential customers.

This may seem daunting at first – especially if you didn’t go to school for design or don’t do it on a day-to-day basis – luckily, with technology these days, you can find a tool online for just about anything.

As you start to look for these tools, you’ll notice that each tool has their pros and cons – some are free, some you need to pay for and for almost all of them you’ll need to create an account. Take a look at our list below, and see what our favourites are!

Piktochart

Piktochart is one of the easiest tools to use to create infographics. Pick a template or start from scratch. The web app has over 100 customizable themes, and it doesn’t stop at infographics – create reports, banners, and presentations as well.

Piktochart is free to use with an account.

Canva

Canva is probably one of the most popular online platforms. Canva features pre-designed graphics that allow you to drag and drop photos, text, and other elements into the visual area.

Canva is best used to create infographics, menus, flyers, magazine covers, collages, and social media graphics.

There is a free version but you will need to create an account. Paid versions start at $9.95

PicMonkey

PicMonkey has been around for a while but is still relevant as a visual aid. Edit images, create collages, add text and utilize beautiful overlays. Save, download, and share across social networks. PicMonkey has a free version, as well as paid versions.

Pixlr

Pixlr is one of our team’s favourites and has a series of web apps. Pixlr Editor is set up much like Photoshop, while Pixlr Express is a quick and easy photo editor that will enhance your photos exponentially. For the non-designer, these apps can really help you step up your photo game when creating social media updates and blog posts.

In addition to their web apps, Pixlr has a mobile version so you can always create images fast, on the go!

Pixlr is 100% free – just one more reason to love it!

Snapseed

Snapseed is an app for your mobile device. It’s one of our go-to apps while on the go in addition to Pixlr’s mobile app. Create stunning photos right in the palm of your hand. Apply filters, use super cool effects, and even lay text over your images.

Snapseed is free – just download it from your app store!

Social Image Resizer

We’ve added this tool because sometimes you need a specific size for your social media posts and it can get a little tricky. Upload your image into this tool and then just choose where you plan to post it – it will automatically crop the photo to the size needed! 100% free to use.

In conclusion, there are many apps available – and you don’t have to have a design background to create wonderful images! Try them out, let us know your favourites, and share any other apps you’ve come across that you like.

Why a content calendar is critical for your content marketing strategy

For every business, regardless of its size and niche, content marketing is among its primary digital marketing strategies. However, unless this is organized and implemented with meticulous planning, all the content that goes out to its audience can be a waste of time and money.

At Twenty3Media, we believe that content marketing, in its simplest form, begins with knowing one’s audience, creating engaging content, and promoting it to the right audience across the platforms frequented by them.

During the content planning process, a content calendar is invaluable. Not only does it enable us share it with our virtual team to plan and monitor our content marketing activity in real time, but also shows us, at a glance, scheduled content, important event dates to keep in mind to plan content, and ensures that we have different types of content ready and published on schedule.

As we already know, a business must consistently publish quality content to build its brand, its credibility and its presence in its niche. The frequency of publishing can vary depending on the business and the industry in which it operates. It is also important to be flexible based on changes in the industry, showing that the business is up to date with trends.

So how do we build a strong content calendar to support our content marketing strategy? Here are our top three tips:

Know your target market

Practically every business activity is based on knowing one’s target audience, and content planning is no exception. In fact, a brand must plan its content in such a way that it appeals to all audience segments the business caters to: for example, prospective and existing customers, potential employees, investors, and suppliers. Besides focusing on lead generation and sales, this content must be diverse enough to connect with all its audience types. Based on this, content must be planned in terms of what, how much and how often for each segment.

Plan and create the content calendar

Depending on the business, content can either be created from scratch or take into account existing content to work from there. Existing marketing material can often be reworked into new forms of content. For instance, if there are marketing presentations in the form of PowerPoint, these can be made into videos, blog posts, or made into SlideShare presentations that can be shared online. Existing blog posts can be updated with new data to make them relevant. If there is market research, this can be made into infographics, which in turn can become blog posts. If there are industry white papers, these can be published as case studies and blog post series.

The idea is to leverage existing content, as well as to come up with new ideas, which can then populate the content calendar. Responsibilities can then be assigned and tracked. Once the content has been created, it can be scheduled for publication on various platforms as per the content marketing strategy.

Promote and monitor

Just publishing the content is not enough. It must be aggressively promoted on social media and through business newsletters, besides engaging with the audience it reaches. The response and engagement must then be monitored and compared with similar previous activity to gauge what works and what doesn’t.

Based on this the promotion strategy and content can be tweaked to achieve the content strategy goals. There are a number of analytics tools available to measure performance or each type of content.

In short, the content calendar can be used to record content ideas, determine types of content and frequency, create that content, schedule it, and monitor it, so that you can accomplish your content marketing goals.

Do you use a content calendar as part of your content marketing strategy? Let us know if you have any tips to share!

How to install Google Analytics on a self-hosted WordPress website

WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) and at Twenty3Media we recommend WordPress-based websites for our clients 90% of the time.

With WordPress, it’s easy to manage a website’s content once the design and development work has been done. If you have a self-hosted WordPress website, but don’t have Google Analytics installed yet then this blog post is for you.

A self-hosted website means that you bought a unique domain name (like www.twenty3media.com) and you (or your developer) installed WordPress on the domain.

Please note that the free version of WordPress (where your domain name will look something like www.yourwebsitename.wordpress.com) does not allow users to install Google Analytics tracking code.

Getting started with Google Analytics

To get started, you will need a Google account (click here to sign up for an account). If you have a Gmail address, you’re good to go. Once you have your account, go to the Google Analytics website. You will land on a page looking like this:

Click on ‘Sign up’ to create an account. If you’re already signed in to your Google account you will be taken to a landing page. If not, sign in with your Google account’s details.

Fill in all the relevant fields, I normally keep all of the ‘recommended’ fields ticked.

Once you click on ‘Get tracking ID’ you will need to accept a Terms of Service agreement. Once you click on ‘I accept’ button, you will be taken to a page where you will see your tracking code. You can copy this code and keep it safe, but it’s not needed for the plug-in that we’re going to use in this tutorial. You will verify your Google Analytics account without the tracking ID – the plug-in will automatically pick up the tracking code if you follow the steps below.

In a new window, open your website’s WordPress dashboard and navigate to Plugins > Add new. In the search box, search for ‘Google Analytics Monsterinsights’ and click on ‘Install now.’

Once your plug-in is installed, navigate back to ‘Plugins.’ In your list of installed plug-ins, search for the Google Analytics by MonsterInsights plug-in and click on ‘Settings’ underneath the plug-in’s name. You will be taken to a page where you have to authenticate your Google Analytics account for that specific website with your Google Analytics profile. Follow the prompts on the page.

Once you’re done, to check that your tracking code is working, go back to the window where your Google Analytics tracking code is open. Click on ‘Real-time’ in the left-hand menu and then ‘Overview’ in the left-hand column. In a new window, open your website (for instance, www.twenty3media.com) and wait a minute or two. If your tracking code is installed correctly, you will see the number of visitors on your website pop up.

I hope this was helpful. Good luck! 🙂