Where to publish your content, Facebook or LinkedIn?

A trend has became obvious after checking the analytics on my last three blog posts: LinkedIn referrals spend much more time reading my content than my Facebook friends.

In fact, in my case, the numbers are overwhelming.

                        Avg time spent
LinkedIn               2:09
Facebook             0:40

There are many factors that influence these numbers but mainly, the overriding factor is I create content that is much more targeted towards businesses - my LinkedIn contacts, and not my friends that predominantly populate my Facebook account. 

LinkedIn posts are also published on LinkedIn groups as well as to my connections  and available to anyone - non-connections and fellow group members alike. So presumably, anyone that clicks on a link is more likely to be interested in the content  = a more engaged reader and more interested in spending time reading the story. 

Facebook posts on the other hand might only reach a limited amount of my friends due to EdgeRank and not necessarily people interested in marketing and communications-related stories.

Testing the trend

In my last post: wow-should-i-be-pissed? I decided to test this trend. I created a story and headline with a much broader appeal (to both professionals and friends) just to see what would happen.

Once again, LinkedIn contacts spent much more time reading the post – despite its universal and personal appeal. In fact, LinkedIn contacts spent more than 4xs as much time on my last post than my FB friends. Heck, with FB friends like these, who needs…

Interestingly, both channels (and Twiter too) referred nearly identical amounts of viewers to the post. But again, the Linkedin connections spent time reading, while FB friends, I would guess, most-likely scanned it. 

Does this trend stack up for your business?

I thought it would be important to see if this trend is similar for businesses that actively use both channels - companies with successful LinkedIn and Facebook accounts.

Sebastian Gullack, CEO of Atcore – a leading digital marketing strategy company in Denmark, was kind enough to share some recent stats to help me out.

Atcore analytics screen shot

As you can see, the trend is the same for Atcore’s posts, though not as profound as in my case.
LinkedIn referrals spent on average 6 seconds more on posts than FB followers. Interestingly, twitter referrals spent nearly 30 seconds less on the content than the other two channels. (In my case, the difference was even greater) Is content more than 140 characters too challenging/boring? :)

Impressively, look at the number of referrals from FB compared to LinkedIn for Atcore: 1,020 vs 449 vs 927 (twitter). 

In Atcore’s case, Facebook is a much more successful source for sending viewers to their blog than LinkedIn.

This could be because Atcore only posts their stories on a limited number of groups on LinkedIn. Whereas I have 4-5 groups that I regularly share content with, I would guess Atcore is a little more dicreet in their LinkedIn pollenating.

In addition, Atcore mainly posts in Danish whereas mine  are in English -more than 55% of my readers are based in the USA.

Moreover, Atcore has built a loyal audience on Facebook that expects to find their content on the channel.

But again, once readers do get to Atcore’s post, the Facebook referrals spend less time on it. They also view fewer pages on average, 1.75 vs 2.10. My stat ratio was similar.

This once again reaffirms that LinkedIn referrals are, I believe, more interested in what you have to say or in gaining some type of insight that they can apply to their own business.

By nature, most of us post on LinkedIn groups for a reason – to share insight with like-minded professionals. So readers would naturally be more interested in what you are publishing.

OK, but the bottom line. Which network best converts to customers, Facebook or LinkedIn?  

Hubspot was recently asked how conversion rates on the channels stack up. They found that LinkedIn produced the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate.

Of the 3,128 B2B customers HubSpot examined, LinkedIn generated a 2.60% conversion rate. This was four times the 0.67% rate that Twitter generated, and seven times higher than Facebook’s 0.39% rate.

Cover your bases

When it comes down to it, I believe both channels are worth your time for marketing b2b content – as illustrated by Atcore’s and my stats. The more media you are on, the easier you are to find and the more chances of your content getting read.

But as always, it’s important to target your content to where and who your audience is, i.e. are they on FB, LinkedIn… or all.

LinkedIn versus Facebook infographic

Bopdesign, a marketing agency in San Diego, recently created an infographic highlighting some of the plus and minuses between the two channels.

Get the pdf here: http://cdn.bopdesign.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/BOP_Infographic_FINAL_012412.pdf

About Andrew Singer

I provide cost effective communications and inbound marketing services to a wide variety of Danish companies that do business globally. From hi-tech firms like Siemens and TrackMan to more mainstream organizations like Reputation Institute, Carlsberg and the Confederation of Danish Industry, I deliver strategic creative development and English copywriting services.

Check out examples of my work on my website www.andrewsinger.dk or online portfolio.

Wow… should I be pissed?

Back in October 2009, I sent a campaign promotion idea for Tuborg to a creative director I knew in Copenhagen.

When I came up with the campaign, I personally thought it was the most radical, coolest PR campaign ever. One, because it was so good natured, and two, it totally reversed why we create promotions in the first place: to get someone to do something for the brand and in turn, the brand, reward them.

Take a look at a couple of slides from my 2009 power point.

The creative director that I sent it to thought it was “a very good idea :-).”

She passed it on but then it kind of mysteriously died off – legalities… (I was not employed there…).

I never really found out why. And even though the creatives that had seen it (cc'd in emails) asked me to meet with them, those meetings never came about.

2012

Jump to this past month 2012, Robert/Boisen & Like-minded (a different Copenhagen agency) win a 1st place Bees Award! – the world’s #1 social media award – first time ever for a Danish company!

To top that, they were short listed for a Cannes Lion.

What’s their campaign? 

The Generous Store. -  No cash or credit cards, just good deeds 

To reconnect their brand with generosity and inspire people to see the positive effects of being generous Danish chocolate brand Anthon Berg opened the world’s first chocolate store where you couldn’t pay with cash or credit cards, just good deeds. The pop-up store was only open for a day and had people queuing up for one and a half hours to make generous promises towards a friend or loved one on Facebook for a box of chocolate.

Wow, that sounds awfully familiar...

In fact, here's the similarities vs. differences

The same

1. Fundamental (& what is so unique) premise - brand rewards customer for a good deed they do for a 3rd party & not the brand
2. Size of the reward based on the size of the good deed
3. Platform Facebook - (OK - not a hard choice for anyone)
   

Differences

1. Chocolate not Tuborg goodies
2. Retail based

Now, I fully understand that other people could have come up with the same concept. But having lived here in DK for many years, I never heard anyone ever use the term or even words, “good deed.”



In fact, if you look at the text on their website concerning the award: “The Bees Awards is recognized as the worlds 1st international social media marketing awards” – the agency can’t even conjugate is/are or put an apostrophe in “world’s.” Yet they come up with the idea of “good deeds.”

The questions haunting me now are: Am I a big baby? Delusionary or crying over spilt milk?

I knew three years ago when I came up with the idea that it was something special, but being named the world’s best SM campaign and short listed at Cannes is pretty cool.

Only thing is, was it my idea or did they coincidentally come up with the same idea to base their campaign on?

Please provide your feedback – and help a guy sleep a little better.

I really look forward to hearing from you.

About Andrew Singer

I provide cost effective communications and inbound marketing services to a wide variety of Danish companies that do business globally. From hi-tech firms like Siemens and TrackMan to more mainstream organizations like Carlsberg, Coloplast, Novo Nordisk and the Confederation of Danish Industry, I deliver strategic creative development and English copywriting services.

Check out examples of my work on my website www.andrewsinger.dk or online portfolio.

Nearly 30 things I learned in my 30 day Hubspot free demo

If you don’t know it, Hubspot enables you to test their all-in-one marketing software for 30 days for free. I decided to use the month long demo to see if it would make a good fit for clients.

My original aim was to demo my way through all their tools, but unfortunately, work got in the way. What I did manage to discover you can read below and in my previous posts.

Hubspot’s free demo is open to anyone. Regardless of whether you are a seasoned SEO pro or just starting your own business and want to learn about online marketing, I would definitely recommend you consider at least, trying Hubspot. There are no obligations or strings attached.

If you are the latter – just starting out or looking to optimize your online presence, you’ll discover a whole new world and basically, be walked through what you need to know to be successful across all digital channels like your website, email, social media and blogging. 

If you’re a seasoned pro, you’ll recognize many of the same benefits available in other programs out there from Adwords to Analytics. But it’s nice just the same to have this amount of tools all packaged and simplified into one neat box. 

Nearly 30 things I learned (In no particular order)

53% of my traffic – My Hubspot "sources" chart showed me that more than half of the traffic to my website is driven there by my blog and social media. Content is indeed, king!

Social media – Same chart said SM drives 31% of the visits to my site. LinkedIn dominates by sending 89% (of the 31%) of the visits. This is due mostly to posting on groups I belong to.

Twitter sent just 5%. But I am only now beginning to build my twitter account so I don’t have a big following which could account for the low percentage. Tweeting my blog posts did get the attention of some very cool contacts that I am now grateful to be connected with.  

Tell me why – Off the subject, can somebody explain to me why companies are having students handle their social media conversations when SM is most likely their most important communications channel? My analytics confirms this.

Return of the blog – According to the "sources" chart, my blog drives 21% of the visits to my site. Want to get traffic? Start writing.

Easy to get started – With Hubspot, you just need to put their tracking code on your web pages and blog template, log in your social media accounts and you’re up and running – with full analytics across all channels.

No website or blog? - Use Hubspot’s own CMS system to create your own site, blog, landing pages, CTAs and email campaigns.

I didn’t really get to demo Hubspot’s CMS system as I already have a site and blog but I did fiddle with the landing page CMS template and it seemed very simple and self explanatory. It neatly helps you incorporate your keywords into messaging/content for you.I would have liked to demo the landing page and email CMS tools, if I have had more time.

From what I’ve read online, people seem to be happy with the CMS system. Although a common complaint I’ve read is that the design is too basic or simplistic.

Hand-holding tutorials – if you don’t know much about programming you won’t have a hard time working with Hubspot. They take your hand and explain everything.

Friendly support - I called twice for support. The staff was friendly and eager to help. They also followed up on my inquiries. Did their help, help? That’s another question. I’ll get to that later.

Sources chart

“Sources” dashboard – easy to read/exportable all-in-one chart to learn where your website visits come from. Segmented by: Organic Search; Referrals; Direct Traffic and Social Media.

The chart makes it very easy to discover what drives traffic to your website. You can click on one of the above for more detailed breakdown and exportable reports. Basically a one stop shop instead of going to say, different sites’ services like Google analytics, HootSuite etc…  Although they are free, aren’t they?

“Pages” tool – Hubspot’s SEO optimizer for dummies. Basically walks you through what you need to correct on your website pages to optimize for SE influencers – see my last post on Hubspot analytics.

“Prospects” tool – identifies whose clicking on your pages by company name. Great idea that sometimes misfires and only gives the visitor’s internet service provider, but I love the thought.

BTW, when I was looking at the chart today, I found out a company that I had sent an application to was just on my site. Hopefully it was the person I sent the job app to. I can check that though with Google Analytics because I use unique tags on my email links. In fairness to Hubspot, they enable this and much more with their CRM lead generating tools too.

Daily Prospects Digest – email sent everyday by Hubspot with your latest prospects – nice to wake up to.

Generosity and insight – I love Hubspot’s ebooks. I find them to be extremely informative and timely. If ever there was ever a choice between Hubspot and a competitor, I would probably go with Hubspot due just to the sheer volume of information and insight they provide free. Talk about inbound marketing…  

Lead nurturing tools – while I didn’t get to test out their lead generating tools, I did look through them. As I’ve used other email systems, I was able to get a pretty good idea of what Hubspot can do.

Hubspot’s CRM looks like it is very well integrated within the system: both for emailing and creating landing pages. You can create prospect lists (list manager), drill down through them and target and create automated and personalized email campaigns as well as automatically create lists from your landing pages.

As most companies have their website leads created via emails they usually lose the source of these leads. As far as I can tell, Hubspot solves this problem with their lead generation tools.    

 

If your website matters – if online traffic is important to your business, you should listen to and probably also, take advantage of Hubspot. At the very least with Hubspot, your site will be optimized and you’ll understand what it takes to build traffic. If you’re dependent on visits, Hubspot will make you money.

How much does Hubspot cost? - I’m not sure if anyone else has this feeling, but for me, it seems like Hubspot is hiding the price from me. Is this out of politeness or strategic? Although there is a direct click to pricing on their website during the demo it kind of disappeared for me.

It takes some clicks to find out what it’s going to cost you to use Hubspot. Once you find the price chart, you then have to decipher which plan matches your needs and business.

I think if I’m going to choose between Hubspot and the plethora of free tools available, I would like to know the cost-differential right up front. I’m sure though, that they have their reasons or maybe they don’t even feel like they are hiding the price in the first place.

3 plans -  Hubspot’s “basic” price plan calls for you to use their CMS tools for your website, blog, email… “Professional” fully integrates with your system and is geared for mid-sized companies. The “enterprise” solution is for the big boys. Each plan’s price is further dependent on the amount of contacts you have.

According to Hubpost, a contact is a person in your marketing community who you've identified and deliver targeted marketing to. This could be the CEO of a target company, a lead who just visited the pricing page, or a prospect who followed you on twitter. Customers have full control over managing their number of contacts - should be an interesting discussion.

I’m not going to post any prices. That’s between you and Hubspot.

Does Hubspot save you money? I would guess that with the price of SEO consultants today and email lead nurturing programs/vendors, you probably would save a bundle with Hubspot. Their prices are not too expensive. And the system is as they market it, an all-in-one solution.

Analytics by the numbers – for me, I like Google Analytics over Hubspot: plus Google is free.  

Google goes more in depth and has now begun incorporating social media into their reports so they now both have similar capabilities. I just have to figure out how to implement Google with my social media accounts. My initial foray a couple of nights ago left me with a headache. Hubspot’s was simple and enables you to schedule publishing via it.

Google like Hubpost, also enables you to create campaigns, A/B testing etc… so with both, you can really target your marketing and see the results.

One Hubpost advantage that I mentioned before is the way they attempt to identify visitors by company.

Captain, I can’t get the engines started – one of the days I called the Hubspot support team because my website pages disappeared from the page grader tool. The very nice support person suggested I reset my Hubspot account and change my settings with my web hosting provider. It didn’t help and her advice was wrong.

After two days down, I got an email explaining that Hubspot had been in the process of changing the page grader tool to the now called “pages” tool. My website and blog pages reappeared in my analytics. They also apologized for the misinformation regarding my web hosting settings - all was cool- almost.

I’m only a doctor, Jim – What bothered me about the above scenario was that if I was working for a company and had convinced them to use Hubspot and the same had occurred, I’d be in deep $&@%?! Imagine telling your boss that I can’t get you those reports because, well… I don’t why.

Even more damaging, if I recommend Hubspot to one of my clients and that occurred; I’m toast. 

Basically, Hubspot’s support person didn’t know that they were modifying the app so she gave me the wrong advice. I’m sure this doesn’t happen every day but it is a little worrisome.

If I was a business owner I’d be mildly pissed with the above, but I understand that things can get weird with IT sometimes. But as a consultant recommending a product to a client, I need them to have my back.

  

My blog’s tracking – no it’s not – the first time I called support it was concerning my blog tracking. The help person said she would set it up. The second time I called regarding the page tool, the support person said, I can also see that your blog is not tracking correctly, let me set it up for you. Hmmm?  

Needless to say, it was tracking both times. However, Hubspot data never did come close to matching up with my blog hosting (blogger.com) analytics. If I was using Hubspot (and paying for this capability) this would need to be cleared up. Otherwise, I could just use the blog’s free analytics.

One final note - After spending as much time as I could allot on this 30 day trial testing the software, I am convinced that Hubspot is an excellent product: especially, because it gives you so much in one box.

I’ve used plenty of email programs, CMS systems, G Analytics and you know what, Hubspot’s just seems simpler. And in the case of their email and CMS being integrated with CRM, Hubspot is miles ahead of the systems I’ve worked with.

That’s not to say that there are probably great tools out there. It could just be that the systems I worked on with other companies were bad choices.

Another good thing about Hubspot is all the knowledge they share. The ebooks are terrific and you can really practically apply the learnings they provide with their software.

Aside from the glitches I mentioned above, the test was a great success and impressive. I will recommend Hubspot to clients but I will qualify that recommendation with a 30 day trial first – because of the mishaps I experienced and to cover my butt.

For myself, I might even implement the suggestions Hubspot’s page grader gave me for my own site – I’d be an idiot not to.

The demo certainly confirmed one thing: Content is King. I'll miss my Hubspot. Hi ho inbound marketing!

About Andrew Singer

I provide cost effective communications and inbound marketing services to a wide variety of Danish companies that do business globally. From hi-tech firms like Siemens and TrackMan to more mainstream organizations like Carlsberg, Coloplast, Novo Nordisk and the Confederation of Danish Industry, I deliver strategic creative development and English copywriting services.

Check out examples of my work on my website www.andrewsinger.dk or online portfolio.

Does Hubspot’s analytics measure up?

I’m now in the second week of my 30-day free demo of Hubspot’s marketing software. I’m using the demo to see if Hubspot’s all-in-one marketing software would make a good fit for some of my clients.

In these first two weeks, I’ve used the tool kit thus far to develop keyword lists and begin optimizing my website with their “page grader” tool.

The two applications have been simple to work with and provided some excellent insight. The keyword tool works essentially the same as Google’s, which you most likely know, is free to use.

This however, should not be your main reason for buying Hubspot’s software – and to be fair with Hubspot, they do recommend Google’ tool in their free-to download reports and papers so it’s not like they consider their keyword tool a major KSP.

What is unique about Hubspot’s tool is how it helps you incorporate your keywords into your content – from blog posts, SM, emails to landing and website pages. It enables you to incorporate and evaluate your use of keywords in your content.  I’ll get into this in a later post as I begin to explore the lead generating capabilities in the software.

Page grader makes the grade

So far in my demo, I have especially appreciated the input the page grader has provided. This is truly an SEO optimizer for dummies – like me.

As I mentioned in my last post, the page grader basically walks you through what you need to correct on your website pages to optimize SEO influencers:

• Page title
• Meta description
• Meta keywords
• URL
• HI
• Image tags
• Ranking
• Link analysis
• Inbound and internal links

With each of the categories above, the page grader tells you what needs fixing, stopping short of actually rewriting your text for you.

Getting down to the numbers – analytics

Having gathered two weeks of data from my blog posts, social media and website analytics, I’ve begun comparing the data with Google’s and from my blogging publisher (blogspot).

Screenshot is from the “Visits for All Sources” analytic

This chart from Hubspot gives a terrific and one-stop overview of the sources driving traffic to your site. If you incorporate your social media publishing – LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, FB etc…  as well as your blog posts in your Hubspot account, they will track them all in this data .  You can then see how well they, and the other usual suspects: organic & paid searches, direct traffic – drive visitors to your site.

This is great insight for pinpointing what works.  Although you could find the same stats by using other tracking and many times free software, Hubspot neatly puts the info into one easy-to-review chart instead of having to visit your different tracking sites like Hootsuite etc.. .

For me it was eye-opening to discover that more than 50% of the traffic to my website was being driven by my blog, LinkedIn and Twitter.

As I had been preaching to customers to step up their content creation, my stats provided statistical proof for them to get off their butts.  In fact, I immediately shared the data results with one client to try and convince them to be more active with their blog and SM channels.  Let’s hope they listen.

As a footnote, I’m guessing that Hubspot is already looking into how to incorporate “Pinterest” and any other relevant SM players into their analytics.

Look who’s lookin’

This is where things begin to get interesting, especially when you compare Hubspot and Google.

Hubspot gives you the high level stats like Google: page views, time on the page, visitors, but some of Hubspot’s other details I find very exciting.

Hubspot identifies the company that was visiting you site (not just the city like Google).  This is extremely interesting but also problematic. The company/visit is identified by its IP address. Because of this, the results can sometimes get skewed. For example, some of my results were just the internet service provider and not the actual company making the visit.

What is cool about this tool though is in addition to hopefully identifying the visitor by company name, they also give you a link to the company’s employees on LinkedIn so you can mine that for leads or names – saving a step or two in building lists. You could obviously do this on your own when targeting companies but again, this is helping you target those visiting your site.

Unlike Google, Hubspot does not include “bounce” or some of the other valuable Google stats but if you include Hubspot's other tools like the “page grader” etc… with your overall analysis, you should be able to put together more than enough insight to know who’s visiting your site and how well it is performing. 

Out of curiosity, I did compare the site visit data with Google’s and Lol, they matched exactly.

Incidentally, like Google, Hubspot also enables you to filter your own IP address from the reporting.

You can also hide irrelevant visits when you review or download reports. These might include the before-mentioned ISP addresses etc…

Daily mail follow up

Hubspot also sends a “Daily Prospects Digest” email (depending on the frequency of reports you choose) with your results. It provides the stats from your most recent visitors – nice to wake up to.

Major discrepancy – My first complaint

In terms of my blog stats, Hubspot gave me some very strange results.

Hubspot has its own dedicated blog analytics tool that works by you pasting their code into your blog template, if you’re not using their blog CMS tool.

For some reason, when I go to my Hubspot “Blog Analysis” chart and look at my last post’s stats, it says that I have only had 6 page views over the past week.

If I go to Hubspot’s “Page Views” analysis chart, (which analyzes all my pages including blog and website) it says that I have had 30 page views for the very same post over the same period.

And, if I go to Blogspots’ (my blog publisher) own analytics, it says that I have had 44 page views for the very same post. Plus, I know that blogspot is definitely excluding my URL from visits, which Hubspot analytics hasn’t been instructed to.

These are major differences that I need to get to the bottom of!

I have searched Hubsot’s help section unsuccessfully for an answer. I will chat with them later today to hear more. This will also give me a chance to demo their “help desk.” 

Don’t want to get all gushy but…

I just got off the phone with Hubspot’s help. Having lived in Europe for the last 20 years, I forgot what it’s like to have a friendly voice on the other end of a help line. The woman was very informative and enthusiastic. She noticed that my blog tracking was not working correctly – aha... She also recognized that I had placed Hubspot’s tracking code in my individual posts as opposed to the blog template – she thought this might have screwed up my results as well (not in those words). We’ll see how it works with this post.

Needless to say, it was very refreshing to speak with their help desk. It kind of felt like the classic marketing scenario: customer gets turned from a complaining moaner to your product’s biggest fan. Although I wasn’t really complaining, it is a free trial after all.

Next up, I’ll begin looking at the lead generating tools….

BTW, here’s a link to Hubspot’s latest paper on working with analytics

Memo: Ditch the SEO consultant, we’ve got Hubspot

If you don’t know it, Hubspot gives you a 30 day free trial of their marketing software. I decided to use the free demo to see if it would make a good fit for some of my clients.

After about a week of fiddling around with it, the benefits are becoming obvious.

I’ll be reviewing the whole pack throughout this month. But for now, this post will concentrate on the SEO tools.

In terms of SEO optimization, the Hubspot Dashboard recommends that you first create a keyword list. Hubspot suggests keywords for you based on your present keywords or a URL.

I found the tool worked fine and gave similar results to Google’s AdWords. Once your list is created, you can filter it by making different campaigns and assigning your keywords to a particular campaign. You can also export the lists to Excel sheets - standard.

Out of curiosity, I tested the “get (keyword) suggestions” tool on a Danish language website to see how it would do. The results were fine.  (That is, if you speak Danish)   

After creating the list, Hubspot like Google, ranks the keywords according to CPC and searches. They also advise you, as they do in the SEO-focused eBooks they publish, to target long-tail keywords. 

They recommend that you go for the low-hanging fruit or keywords with a higher number in the Searches column and a lower number in the Difficulty column.  You can organize your keyword list by these criteria.

As with the other steps I’ve demoed, they basically hold your hand and walk you through the process, which is always nice. They also offer lots of tutorials to help you move along.

Low Ranking Keywords

Interestingly,when I tried to get keyword recommendations based on my keywords I was given this message:

Problem: Your keywords are ranking in search results, but only barely. If you make it to page one, your visits may improve dramatically.

How to get there:

1. Get inbound links: Generate more inbound links to the pages ranking for these keywords.
2. Improve on-page SEO: Click on each keyword to see which pages the keyword is ranking for, and to fix the SEO bits that need improvement.

This makes perfect sense as my website was created without these present keywords and I have never utilized any inbound linking strategies.  

Because I am using my site for this demo, I will begin integrating the keywords and optimize my site according to their SEO recommendations.

Screenshot of the "Page Optimizer"

Optimizing my website

 

Hubspot’s website optimizer is a great tool for your SEO. Upon reviewing my website’s pages the “optimizer” pointed out the many SEO problems existing on my site.

These included everything from a lack of using my keywords (we know why), to meta descriptions missing, “alt” texts on my various images, inbound links as mentioned, and much more.

All very standard operating procedures in terms of inbound marketing strategies but nice to have them catalogued and spelled out, so you can go through your site step by step to fix them.

Again, as part of this demo, I will follow their recommendations on my pages and report what happens.

Should you take the SEO consultant for a ride?

I don’t want to put anyone out of business but this is a pretty robust tool. I worked with an SEO expert with one of my clients and he basically provided the same info that Hubspot is giving me – albeit at a slower, more costly pace.

Does that mean curtains for him and his colleagues?

After I make some of the changes and incorporate some of the keywords I’ll get back to you. There are also many other features in Hubspot’s toolbox to investigate so my aim here is to consider the ROI on the whole pack, not just SEO – although I’m already impressed.

There’s also plenty of other SEO do-it-yourself kits out there if you are just looking to ditch the SEO consultant. But again, I’m not interested in putting anyone out of business and every organization has their own needs.

About Andrew Singer

I provide cost effective communications and inbound marketing services to a wide variety of Danish companies that do business globally. From hi-tech firms like Siemens and TrackMan to more mainstream organizations like Carlsberg, Coloplast, Novo Nordisk and the Confederation of Danish Industry, I deliver strategic creative development and English copywriting expertise.

Check out examples of my work on my website www.andrewsinger.dk or online portfolio.

Day 1 in my Hubspot demo. I’m in

Today I signed up and started my 30 day free trial of Hubspot’s all-in-one marketing software.

I feel like a kid again on Christmas day waking up early to unwrap my presents.

First impression 

Log in worked great. Hubspot sent me an immediate confirmation mail with easy to follow tips for getting started or contacting help.

Once logged in, I arrived at the “trial Dashboard.”

Simple enough so far, the dashboard is neatly organized into four sections: Get started; Get found; Convert and Analyze. It seems like they’ll walk me through all the processes – nice. The first section, “get started” guided me through setting up my website for analytics. Basically just pasting Hubspot’s tracking code on my site – same as you do with Google’s tracking code. Then clicking a button to test the tracking code to make sure it was working, which it was.

Multiple accounts? 

If anyone is considering using Hubspot to monitor multiple clients’ performance, you can unfortunately, only enter one domain. Hubspot does however suggest contacting them, which I guess keeps the option open to creating multiple accounts. 

Here’s their help section’s response to that particular question:

Can I have multiple domains or multiple sites within one HubSpot portal?

Answer (Hubspot’s)
While it is possible to point multiple domains or subdomains to a single HubSpot portal, you are only allotted one page to point your base domain (represented in most file systems as '/') to.

This means that if you point multiple domains or subdomains to your HubSpot portal, you cannot point each domain at the base, root  level to a different page - each will resolve to the top page in your list in 'Create -> Website Pages'.  You can only have one page at the root level, and have to specify any other page by it's path in the HubSpot file system.
If you require a large number of sites, please contact us directly to discuss your situation.
Hopefully, their answer makes sense to you.
 
From here I quickly jumped past ”steps 2 & 3 to the ”analyze” section to see how it the tracking code performed - all seems well.

During my month long demo, I’ll make sure to compare Hubspot’s results with my Google analytics to see how the numbers match up.

Get Found

After checking out my analytics I went back to step two, “Get Found.”  This involved three steps: Creating keywords; Writing a blog story (creating content) and synching my social media accounts with my Hubspot account.

I quickly put together a keywords list and moved on to creating a blog entry (this is it).

Create a blog entry

Interestingly, when I initially went to this section (create a blog entry) my only option was to create a blog within Hubspot’s own CM system. This immediately depressed me because I thought that maybe I had missed something or had not realized that Hubspot was just another CMS system after all. Was I that dumb?

My initial thought was that all my content creating during this trial, blog entries or landing pages, would have to go through Hubspot’s CMS – oh well...

As this was just a test, I figured I might as well go with it and quickly put together a blog using their template. I planned to post this entry in it. 

Things change quickly

Worked called so I logged out and did some client stuff.

Later, when I logged back in to get to create my (Hubspot) blog entry, I was first prompted instead: if I would be using my own blog or domain – strange that this didn’t happen initially.

I followed the steps, entered my blog details, created a feedburner account and was off. Now my own blog was part of their system.

The process was easy to do and very well explained. I didn’t need Hubspot's CMS system after all!

I can now post this entry on my blog - as you can see.

For companies without the resources or know how to create their own blog, Hubspot’s CMS blog might be a good start - as it is already set up for analytics, easy to work with, etc…

Social Media

My next step was to connect my SM accounts and blog to their social media analytic and publishing tools. This was easy to set up. I like how they hold my hand.

This is all I have time for right now, I’ll post this entry and we'll see what happens.

About Andrew Singer
 I provide communications and inbound marketing services to a wide variety of international companies, ranging from hi-tech firms like Siemens and TrackMan to more mainstream clients like Carlsberg, Coloplast, Novo Nordisk and the World Youth and Student Travel Conference. Check out examples of my work on my website www.andrewsinger.dk or online portfolio.

Does Hubspot bring your whole marketing world together? Let’s find out

For the next month I’m going to demo their software and tell you what I think.

If you are into inbound marketing and social media, you probably have heard of Hubspot.

Hubspot produces an all-in-one marketing software kit that enables you to manage your SEO, multichannel analytics, lead nurturing and much more. In their words: HubSpot brings your whole marketing world together in one powerful, integrated system.

The company is also one of the most respected and my favorite online resource for marketing and communications tips and reports, in addition to being very generous in sharing their insight and knowledge.

As an avid reader of their content and reports, I thought it might be interesting to demo their software and find out what it’s all about. If the software is as good as their insight, I’ve got clients that will certainly benefit from it.

And anyway, they allow you to try it free for 30 days, so why not try?



For the next month, I’ll blog as often as possible about my test. I’ll try to give you as much insight as I can: from how it works, the reports, the ease of use…to how good their online help is (if needed).

I’m probably the perfect guinea pig for this.

I’ve been working in marketing forever, but not so much on the analytical side – so I’ll be learning too.  Together, we’ll at least discover the software’s usability and dummy quotient.I’ll use it when I blog, so we’ll really see how well it functions there too.

This should be interesting. Stand by. I’m going to push download now.

About Andrew Singer

I provide communications and inbound marketing services to a wide variety of international companies, ranging from hi-tech firms like Siemens and TrackMan to more mainstream clients like Carlsberg, Coloplast, Novo Nordisk and the World Youth and Student Travel Conference. Check out examples of my work on my website www.andrewsinger.dk or online portfolio.

Conferences: are you taking advantage of these two simple ways to market your event?

Let’s face it. The goal in the marketing of any conference is to increase awareness and thereby, grow attendance. The more people that come to your show, the more money it makes. 

There are plenty of ways to increase attendance like developing mailing lists and direct mail campaigns; advertising in industry-related trade magazines or getting press coverage from journalists that cover your sector.

I'd like to share two inbound marketing strategies that worked great for me.

A few years back I worked with an industry b2b conference. I used these two inbound strategies which ended up being amazingly cost efficient and successful in accomplishing the above two goals: building awareness & attendance.  

While they both require a hands-on resource to manage the campaigns, they cost virtually nothing to implement. I am fairly certain that your conference’s marketing department could handle the additional workload without stressing anyone out, especially, if you have a dedicated social media person.

#1 - LinkedIn Group

The first idea was to create a LinkedIn group for the industry the conference served. Importantly though, I chose not to brand the group around the conference. 

The reason for this was twofold. One, to allow us to monitor who was out there – getting a bird’s eye perspective on what the industry was talking about, and two, to have the group not made up of only conference attendees who might join the group simply because they attend the conference. I wanted to attract prospects we never heard of and those who never heard of us!

We knew anyway that as the season rolled along and we started gearing up for the event that there would be plenty of opportunities to market the show to the group. But the great thing about the LinkedIn group was we could mine it to target specific group members directly based on their relevance and decision making status just by checking their LinkedIn profile. 

In other words, the group provided us with a clean, screened and obviously very interested database/mailing list to market to and mine.

Of course, as with any inbound marketing/social media channel, we were careful not to abuse our relationship and position. 

As the conference and also a group member (not the group manager) we would post relevant industry stories, tips and seminars. This served to get our name out, position us as an industry authority and drive traffic to the conference’s website. We could also slip in important dates here and there. But again, as a group member, we adhered to the 10% rule for self promotion. 

As the group’s manager, we were able to promote and support the conversation. Even talk about the conference as a third party or allow rival conferences go get in on the forum. And as the group’s manager, we could always warn rivals not to use the group as just an advertising platform. Being king does have its privileges.

The result is the group is still growing. In fact it is almost as large now as the conference in size - with only about 50% of group members actually made up of conference attendees.  

In essence, we have reached professionals from our industry from around the world: Prospects that we may never have discovered or found us. And despite these past few years of doom and gloom economy, conference attendance has remained steady and/or grown depending on the year, basically due to the new blood that now attends. 

If your sector is not already served by a LinkedIn group or even if it is, I highly recommend creating your own targeted group to the types of individual/companies your conference benefits. In fact I suggest you drill down your LinkedIn group to your targeted attendee’s sector as much as possible. For example, form a LinkedIn group for “dog walkers specializing in poodles” rather than just “dog walkers,” even if your conference is for dog walkers.

#2 - Industry News Blog – flattery will get you everywhere

The second initiative I created was to make an industry news blog.  The idea behind this was obvious, to make the blog/conference website, the place to go for industry professionals looking for the latest industry-related news.

The results were bigger and better than we could have hoped for.

Using a content collator we picked and published industry news/stories daily.  

Now I need to backtrack for a minute. At the time we created the blog (4-5 years ago), I was new to blogging and didn’t realize that it was bad manners to just clip and paste posts, not to mention copyright infringement. In my defense, I did link to the original stories. 

My ignorance resulted in some of the publishers (newsletters and bloggers) writing me to complain and quickly set me straight. This was actually a blessing in disguise. All of a sudden I was building relationships (albeit off the wrong foot) with some of the leading journalist that covered our industry.     

They now started covering and even wanting to ATTEND our conference for the first time in the conference’s history. 

I also discovered that by just excerpting their stories (as I should have in the first place) and linking back to the full story on their site I accomplished the very same result. 

Through analytics, they knew who was publishing their content and wanted to learn more about us, which again, lead to them wanting to cover us. 

In other words, by publishing others’ content you get their attention and in most cases, favor. Flattery does get you everywhere.    

Now back to our original intention for the blog: be the #1 resource for industry related news.

This happened, and it happened quickly. Within six months we ranked #1 on Google when you searched for X industry news. 

The conference’s website visits grew and conference buzz improved significantly.      

Obviously the blog’s popularity also greatly influenced our SEO results when searching for anything to do with our industry and not just news about it. We jumped to the top of the Google heap. You can credit content creation marketing. 

Today

Since these initiatives were first put in place, the conference changed ownership and headquarters location. 

I kept the LinkedIn group and gave it to a leading consultant serving the industry. She now uses it as a platform to successfully promote her own business and serve the industry.

The blog, they got lazy and stopped updating the content and broke the 10% rule. It’s slowly dropping down the Google charts.

Interestingly, the conference’s marketing manager that took my spot when it switched owners and moved, left her position and is now using my ideas for a rival conference. She is currently creating a new LinkedIn Group and industry news blog. 

I’m flattered. 

It would be great if you can use these ideas to help grow your conference. They work!

If you do, please write and tell me if they are as successful for you as they were for us.  

About Andrew Singer
I provide communications and inbound marketing services to a wide variety of international companies, ranging from hi-tech firms like Siemens and TrackMan to more mainstream clients like Carlsberg, Coloplast, Novo Nordisk and the World Youth and Student Travel Conference. Check out examples of my work in the categories to your right or on my website www.andrewsinger.dk.

To beat or not to beat the NY Times

In March 2011, the The NY Times became one of the world’s first newspapers to start charging readers for a digital subscription. As a loyal Times reader, the idea of paying two hundred bucks a year for what was once (isn’t it supposed to be?) free, at the time seemed a little over the top. But I needed to stay in touch. I no longer lived in NYC and more importantly, my beloved Knicks were (and remain) in the midst of their latest overhaul. I still can’t bring myself to register for the NY Post or Daily News.

The original motive behind this post was to share with you how I learned to beat the Time’s digital subscription costs, legally. But after reading their recently released financial report, I’m not so sure I should.

We all know how hard newspapers have been hit by the world’s move online. I’m now having the strange feeling that like an endangered species, we should be helping these guys out, instead.

I’m not considering creating a ”Save the Times” charity. But I’m wondering if my actions, and those of anyone like me who beats the system, will end up being the straw that eventually breaks the camel’s back. I’d hate to see the Times and all their great writers end up at Fox News.



As we all know print newspapers are getting killed by the seismic shift to online reading. The global economy hasn’t helped either by killing ad spend and CPC, and of course, the growth in sharing articles via social networks just compounds the pain. This last point I’ll get to later.

Should we feel bad for the Times?
In case you did not know it, NYTimes.com is the world’s #1 news site, getting over 45 million unique visitors each month and reaching 1 in 6 Internet users.

That’s good news, because their print business has been dying over the past five years. They are still the third-largest U.S. newspaper on weekdays. The Wall Street Journal is No. 1 with an average weekday circulation of 2.1 million and in second place, USA Today, with 1.8 million followers. But subscriptions like ad revenues are shrinking and not nearly enough to foot the Time’s big-time operating costs.

According to its financial statement released in February, the Times’ digital subscription base is growing. The company has been restructuring and refocusing their business model to take advantage of the shift to digital. Times’ Chairman and CEO, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., in the report said, “In 2011 we made significant strides in our strategy to transform and rebalance our company. Our fourth-quarter results demonstrate the continued focus on building The Time’s digital subscription base and developing a new robust consumer revenue stream, while maintaining its significant digital advertising business.”

OK, so they’re counting on digital subscribers to save the day – even more guilt.

At least they are heading in the right direction. Paid digital subscribers for the Times and Herald Tribune are 390,000, an increase of approximately 20% since the end of the third quarter 2011. Even better, ad revenues increased on the year by 10 % despite falling cost-per-click prices.

Will this be enough to offset (no pun intended) the fall in its print business? We’ll have to wait and see. The rest of the news world is anxiously watching too, as the Times' digital subscription model is seen as a possible solution to their own revenue shortfalls.

Businessinsider.com believes the Time’s digital business will eventually support a newsroom of about one-third to one-half the size of the paper's current one. Could you imagine working at the Times now? Knowing you or the guy next to you will soon get the ax.

Who wants to cast the first stone?
As I mentioned, the purpose of this post was to share how I legally beat the Time’s subscription price.

Before I say how, let me state that I actually used to pay for my subscription - at least for a while. I didn’t realize that when my credit card was renewed, it null and voided the one I had registered with the Times. So in actuality, my subscription was cancelled unintentionally - beyond my control.

For the thirty odd years that I’ve been reading the NY Times, I have basically followed the same ritual almost every day. Read the sports pages, check the Knick articles, read a couple of favorite columnists, any interesting articles that stand out and that’s it.

Is that worth two hundred bucks per year? I’m still deciding.

In the meantime, here’s my secret, which is probably not a secret as there’s most likely a million other people (literally) doing the same thing.

I just follow my favorite journalists and columnists on Twitter. They now send the articles to me. If it sounds interesting, I can click their link. It’s faster, more effective and… it’s FREE! Goodbye subscription price. No more of the amazingly annoying pop banner that tells you that you have used up your 20/month free allotment of Time’s articles. BTW, does that 20/month allotment include when you click on a section or return clicks?

These days everybody seems starved for time. Is my Twitter trick the future model? Pre-choose what interests you and have it delivered. Google seems to be considering it. Tell us what you want… never mind, we know what you want; we will recommend what we think is relevant to you. You can then decide if you want to read it.



It all seems fine and dandy and a great time saver but you know what? Nearly every time I follow a tweet to a Times’ article, I stumble upon another interesting piece. I fear that with all the great tools created to bring and follow what we like to our doorstep: we are losing the joy of discovery.

The other day on the radio in the car, I heard an amazing song from an artist I never heard of. The chance of that happening online gets smaller every day.

Is the thrill of the unexpected worth two hundred dollars a year to you?

About Andrew Singer
I provide communications and inbound marketing services to a wide variety of international companies, ranging from hi-tech firms like Siemens and TrackMan to more mainstream clients like Carlsberg, Coloplast, Novo Nordisk and the World Youth and Student Travel Conference. Find examples of my work on my website www.andrewsinger.dk.

Women in the Workplace

Forbes Insight has ranked Denmark #5 in the world in terms of having women in the workplace in its study released yesterday, February 6.

Denmark’s strong global rank can be attributed to the high percentage of women in the Danish workforce.

As an American living and working in Denmark, the results come as no surprise. The study found that the percentage of females working in Denmark is upwards of 75%: Putting it right behind #1 Iceland at 78%.

Denmark’s gender diversity and opportunities for women makes the country a very attractive workplace. And according to the study, a prerequisite for any country’s continued economic growth.

Studies show that greater economic equality between men and women result in reduced poverty rates, a boost GDP and better governance.

Forbes’ new study suggests that in order to improve female participation rates, governments should adopt a number of proven approaches such as flex-time initiatives, free or subsidized childcare, and tax breaks for married couples when both partners work. Many initiatives already found in Denmark.

Likewise, given Denmark as well as the Nordic region’s strong social support network, it is little wonder that Norway ranked as the most gender diverse economy, followed by Sweden, Iceland, Finland and Denmark. The lowest-ranked countries for gender diversity are incidentally, Pakistan, the UAE and Turkey.

Denmark’s lack of women on the board

While Denmark ranked #2 in having women in the workplace, in terms of having female board members, Denmark dropped to a surprising 12th place.

I remember a similar story about the lack of Danish female board members in the news some months back; the Forbes’ study confirms this.

Importantly, the trend is one that Denmark should quickly look to reverse according to the report.

Studies have demonstrated a positive correlation between women in leadership positions and a company’s financial performance. For example, in the Forbes 2010 “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” issue, a study of the stock performance of the 26 publicly traded companies run by women on the list discovered that, as a group, they outperformed the market. On average, the 26 women-led companies beat the market by 28% and their respective industries by 15%.

For a nation to be competitive on the global stage, it must make use of its female talent pool.

The proportion of women who have climbed the corporate ladder and made it to board-of-director status varies greatly among countries. The nations with the highest percentage of female board members are as mentioned, Norway (36%), the Philippines (23%), Sweden (23%), Latvia (22%) and Slovakia (22%).

The countries with the lowest proportion of women on boards are Portugal (0.4%), Japan (0.9%), the UAE (0.9%), Korea (1%) and Chile (2.4%).

It is interesting to see such an advanced economy as Japan to appear so far down on the rankings. Its insular approach to boardroom diversity; the majority of boards are filled by Japanese men, with few women or non-Japanese, once considered its strength, may eventually be its downfall.

On the other hand, Norway’s leading position can be attributed to its being the first country to mandate a gender quota system for board participation in publicly listed companies.

What it means to your marketing

The study is definitely worth a read and consideration if you are in the marketing business.

With so many Danish women on the job, we should consider how we position our products, brands and services. The days of the Mr. Clean making a housewife’s day easier are long gone, at least in Denmark.

Are Danish advertising and marketing agencies acknowledging gender equality?

Please feel free to comment (and in Danish)




For the complete Forbes report

Should you be taking Google+ more seriously?

As we all look to improve our Google search ranking and communication channels, are we, and the companies that we advise, taking Google+ seriously enough?

Statistically, it seems the world is warming up to Google+. Google CEO, Larry Page in his recent Google state of the union address and sounding very much like a seasoned politician fiddling with an unemployment statistic said, “+users are very engaged with our products -- over 60% of them (90 million) engage daily, and over 80% weekly.”

When you read between the lines, did he actually mean Google+ users were interacting with their + pages or did he mean that they were using some type of Google product, i.e. searches, calendar, translator… May be it doesn’t matter.

If you compare those +’s numbers with Facebook, where at least half of its 800 million plus users use it every day, it may not sound so impressive. I reiterate; should we care?

Having an active presence on Google+ may not necessarily be about building your following, brand, interacting with your customers, or whatever, like on Facebook - although the brands with successful Google + pages will most likely disagree. And I believe rightly so as I’ve noticed that the conversations on

Google + are much more intense than they are on FB.

The main reason to get on Google+ as fast as possible is SEO.



You’re either with me or against me

Does anyone have the sneaking suspicion that Google is rigging the books in terms of rewarding companies with Google+ pages with better Google search results.

Many SEO experts can document how Google+ pages influence search results and can back it up with hard data. See John Lincoln’s article, The Many Ways Google +1s Influence Search Engine Optimization. But these stories mainly talk about how +s affect your search results.

My question is, is Google secretly thinking: if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Help us build Google+ and destroy Facebook and we’ll reward you with better rankings when customers search for you. Have I seen too many Michael Moore movies?

In Facebook’s SEC filing last week, they stated that one of the “risk factors” that could “materially and adversely affect” the company is, “The competition from Google, Microsoft and Twitter could heat up — not to mention other social networks around the world.”

Is this an understatement?

What’s your take on Google+ and its relevance?

Are you active on it?

In Erin Everhart’s recent Mashable post, How Google’s Social Search Shift Will Impact Your Brand’s 
SEO, she explains the recent changes in Google’s search parameters and why we need to pay attention to what and how we say it on Google+. Erin in fact, says that we should be thinking SEO our Google+ posts.

As a <H1> communications and inbound marketing professional (), I believe Google+ should be jumped on and shown the love.

I think as companies and brands, we need to view Google+ as an open blog - an ongoing conversation with any and everyone. Create content, make it relevant and make it different then Facebook. Check out NASA’s Google+ page. And while you’re at it, get the benefits of much improved search results.

I’m still getting my feet wet on Google+ as you can see by my lack of following anyone. If you’re not on Google+ yet, why not use this story as an opportunity to get started and experiment.

Feel free to add my page to your circles and I’ll add you back. Document and check your search results after.

Similarly, if you or your company already has a presence, I’d appreciate hearing how it’s working out for you.