Posts
Now You Know - And Knowing is Half of the Battle
Includes YouTube Targeting explanations.
#Ad – this is the standard disclosure for paid content on YouTube videos. It’s essential that if you post paid content, the
#Ad hashtag is visible BEFORE someone watches your video. This means it needs to be in the title, or the top sentence of the description underneath.
AMA – stands for “Ask Me Anything”, usually indicating a no-holds-barred Q&A. Here’s the AMA I filmed with Lindy for the Tots100 channel.
HUGE NEWS – YouTubers love a bit of drama. Headlines are to be mistrusted. “HUGE NEWS” is usually code for “I just made/I’m about to make some money”).
Other examples of blatant headline clickbait are “[ACTIVITY] FAIL!” “DEVASTATING NEWS!” or “WHY I AM CLOSING MY CHANNEL”. Basically, think of your headline as a hook to pull people into watching your video, and work it!
Challenge – YouTube Bread and Butter. This means doing something completely random in a ridiculously difficult way – ThatcherJoe is your friend if you’re new to the world of challenges.
Collab – A collab (or collaboration) is where you make a video featuring another YouTube user. Collabs are a great way to feature on someone else’s channel, and potentially reach new viewers for your videos.
Custom thumbnail – when you upload a video to YouTube, it will assign a ‘cover image’ for it, that will show to users looking at your channel. You can replace this with your own image, adding text, colour and excitement – people are a LOT more likely to click on these thumbnails, so it’s worth learning how to do them.
DITL – Stands for “day in the life” and offers an insight into someone’s daily routine. Best avoided if your daily routine involves sitting at your laptop for 8 hours, with a school run on either end.
Endslate – A branded screen at the end of a video, which can be used to link to other videos (see our tutorial to see how to make these for yourself)
Fail – sometimes I think if school wasn’t invented, my daughter could spend entire days watching “fail videos”. Basically people doing things and falling over, setting themselves on fire, getting wet. You get the picture. So your tutorial goes wrong? Post it as a fail video.
Faves – Another popular style of video, this is a monthly round-up of things you’ve bought, or been sent. Particularly popular with books, make-up and beauty products.
GRWM – Get Ready With Me, a sort of video that involves watching someone straighten their hair and put on carefully matched clothes. It will generally bear no resemblance to your morning, due to the absence of shouting/spilled cereal/toothpaste splashes on t-shirts/missing the bus.
Haul – Often clothes-related, this is a video round-up of stuff you bought, eg “Monster Primark Haul” or “Discount Food Haul from Tesco”. People like to watch weird stuff on the Internet. A clothing haul might also be a “try on” which means first you film yourself taking stuff out of a bag, THEN you film yourself wearing them.
First impressions – Don’t have time to do a full review? Tell us your first impressions of a product, then do the full review a few weeks later. Two videos for the price of one.
LikeCommentSubscribe – what everyone on YouTube says at the end of EVERY video. Because we’re all shameless hussies for a thumbs up, aren’t we?
Lookbook – Many OOTDs, put together in a single video of seasonal outfits. Great for kids and adults alike.
OOTD – Outfit of the Day. A video where you pose in your garden wearing your new outfit and pretend to be a supermodel. What’s not to love?
React To – There’s a whole genre of videos of people reacting to stuff. Kids react to 1980s video games. Old people react to smartphones. Middle-aged people react to explicit movies. Men react to women. Dogs react to cats. It’s a broad category. Show your kids something weird, and film it. You could end up with YouTube gold. (Don’t traumatize them, though. That would be wrong).
Review – YouTube is probably the #1 place to research new products. Got a product that’s new, or expensive? Or a baby product? Those type of videos do REALLY well on YouTube. So do room tours of popular hotels, cruise ships and resorts. Here’s a great review video of a hairdryer from Colette at We’re Going on an Adventure:
Tutorials: People love a good “how to” on YouTube. You might demonstrate a recipe, show how to fix a common problem on your vacuum cleaner, or demonstrate a make-up technique. Whatever it is you know what to do, chances are there’s someone on the Internet who wants to do that too. We love this recipe tutorial from Emily at A Mummy Too:
Unboxing – Film yourself unpacking a new product, toy, or package. People LOVE these online – kids are obsessed with unboxing of various trending toys, while adults like unboxing vids of expensive new products, so they can see it properly before they part with their cash.
Vlogmas – An annual tradition of filming a daily vlog every day in December until Christmas.
Weekly Vlog – if you’re stuck to know what to film, weekly vlogs are a great way to get into the habit of vlogging regularly – most people have at least one interesting day per week, whether it’s a family trip out, a business outing, meeting with friends or just a night at home with ALL THE SNACKS. Brummy Mummy of 2 makes some of my favorite weekly vlogs.
______________________________________________________
Youtube Glossary
A – Annotations
Annotations are the image or text which are clickable that appears on the desktop. By using the annotations, the users can direct the people to other videos or cross promote or to your channel page.
B – Branding
Branding is the most common practice on Youtube platform as brands mainly utilize Youtube as their medium for brand promotions. A branding watermark on Youtube acts as a logo on Your videos.
C – CC
Closed captions are the running translation of the video content tat is being played on Youtube. By using the closed captions, the users with the hearing disability can also access the information from the videos.
D – Demographics
Demographics are nothing but the gender, age, languages, and other personal information. Demographic targeting is the important practice in video marketing.
E – Events
You can go on with the Youtube events and can change the privacy settings for streaming the content.
F – Featured Content
Featured content is to manage your ad distribution on Youtube which can be featured by arranging playlists and with paid advertising.
G – Geo Tagging
Geotagging is the process of adding the location-based metadata.
I – In-Stream Video Ads
In-stream video ads are also called as True view ads. This type of ads can be run on different youtube video embedded sites. The viewers can skip the ad after five seconds. These are also called as skippable video ads.
K – KPI
KPI is called as a Key performance indicator which can be measured value to demonstrate the effectiveness of the company achieving the objectives in business.
L – Linear Video
Linear video is a type of ad unit which contains video ads that play sequentially in the video player.
M – Mid Roll
Mid Roll is one of the forms of online video ads which are generally played in the middle of the youtube video.
N – Native Video Ads
Native video ad is a blend of editorial content which runs along. They generally match the visual design and natural. They provide the consistent native user experience.
O – OTT
OTT means Over the Top which refers to the content that can be accessible via the internet without a television provider that includes online SVOD.
P – Playlists On Youtube Platform
Playlists can help the users to organize in the best way by differentiating the videos in different categories. Playlists help you to increase the exposure and views.
R – RTB
RTB means Real Time Bidding, The selling and purchasing the ad impressions online via real-time auctions within seconds on an online marketplace or online platforms.
S – Shoppable Ads
Youtube Shoppable ads are the most effective ads for e-commerce marketers as the people can be directed to the purchasers site if they click on to the shoppable ad. The people can make their purchase if they are interested and can be directed to the shopping site.
T – Trending
Youtube trending section is general consists of the most viewed and present trending videos across the platform basing on the country and location.
U –User Content ID
The User content ID system helps the users and creators to safeguard their own videos that are uploaded on Youtube from freebooting.
Viewability
Viewability is a metric on Youtube platform in which the number of views is counted for a video to know its engagement with the people on the platform.
W – Watch Later
The option watch later helps the Youtube users to mark a particular video to watch it later in your own time. This option saves a lot of time as the user can directly access the specific video from watch later section in his free time without searching again.
Glossary of Metrics - Analytics - YouTube
Number of Interactions - Distribution
The distribution of interactions (likes, comments, shares) during a selected time range.
Evolution of Interactions
The daily sum of interactions from monitored social media profiles.
Growth of Total Subscribers
This graph shows the increase or decrease in the total number of subscribers to the channel by day/day of the week/week or month during a selected time range.
Absolute Growth of Total Subscribers
The sum of all subscribers' increases and decreases of each Channel.
Relative Growth of Total Subscribers
The increase or decrease of subscribers relative to the audience size - number of subscribers.
Share of Subscribers
Percentage of each channel's subscribers compared to the total of all subscribers for the compared channels.
Share of Interactions
Percentage of interactions acquired by each channel compared to the sum of interactions acquired by all compared channels.
Share of Subscribers and Interactions
Share of subscribers to a channel and interactions with them.
Number of Interactions - Distribution
The distribution of interactions (likes, comments, shares) during a selected time range.
Number of Interactions - Evolution
The number of interactions (comments, likes, dislikes). The interactions are calculated on the day, when the interaction was made by the user. The data are aggregated and can be visualized per day, week, or month during a selected time range.
Number of Interactions - Compare
The number of interactions (likes, dislikes, comments) for each Channel during a selected time range.
Number of Interactions per 1000 Subscribers
Every video has a metric Number of interactions per 1000 subscribers that identifies how engaging the video is. It is the sum of interactions (likes, comments, dislikes) divided by the number of subscribers and multiplied by 1000.
The daily, weekly and monthly values for this metric are then calculated as the sum of these metrics for all posts made on a particular day, during a particular week or month.
Moving Averages of Number of Interactions per 1000 Subscribers -
Calculated from the sum of all daily values of Number of Interactions per 1000 Subscribers. For example, if in the last 7 days there are 4 days with Number of Interactions per 1000 Subscribers equal to 2, 3, 4 and 5, then the 7-Day Moving Average would equal ((2+3+4+5)/7) = 2
Number of New Videos
The number of videos uploaded by the YouTube channel during a selected time range.The data are aggregated and can be visualized per day, week, or month during a selected time range.
Number of Views
This graph shows the absolute number of Video Views during a selected time range. The data are aggregated and can be visualized per day, day of the week, week, or month during a selected time range.
Growth of Total Subscribers
The sum of the increases or decreases in subscribers of selected YouTube channels during a selected time range.
Number of Views
The sum of views the selected YouTube channels had during a selected time range.
Total Subscribers
The total number of a channel's subscribers.
Total Uploaded Video Views
This graph shows the total number of Video Views a channel has on a given day during a selected time range.
Total Videos
This graph shows the total number of videos a channel has day by day during a selected time range.
Top 5 Videos by Number of Interactions per 1000 Subscribers
5 best-performing videos from the selected monitored Youtube profiles according to the number of interactions per 1000 subscribers.
Glossary of Metrics - Dashboard - YouTube
Interactions per 1000 Subscribers
Sum of interactions (Likes, Comments, Dislikes) divided by the number of subscribers and multiplied by 1000.
Interactions
Number of all interactions (Comments, Likes, Dislikes) gained by all of your monitored YouTube Profiles over a selected date range.
Total Subscribers
Total number of Subscribers to a selected YouTube Profile.
Total Subscribers Growth
Increase or decrease in the number of YouTube Subscribers over a selected date range.
Number of Videos
Total number of videos a selected YouTube Profile has over a selected date range.
Video Views
Absolute number of Video Views received by a selected YouTube Profile’s videos over a selected date range.
Recent Content
Overview of the most recent Videos, with additional information on Interactions/1000 Subscribers, Interactions, Likes, Dislikes, Comments or Video views. Videos are displayed as a list with up to 8 videos included.
Top Content
Overview of the top Videos, sorted either by Interactions/1000 Subscribers, Likes, Dislikes, Comments or Video views. Videos are displayed as a list with up to 8 videos included.
A
A/B Testing (or Split-Testing)
Split-testing sounds like something you might find in a secret lab dealing with atoms, protons, and neutrons, but it’s actually a simple, methodical way to increase online conversions.
First, create two different versions of a landing page, where landing page 1 features headline A and landing page 2 features headline B. Then, send 50 percent of your traffic to version A, and 50 percent to version B.
Observe which version converts better and declare the winner. Take the winning landing page and test another element, such as with or without a video, different colored “Buy” buttons, or a simple sign-up form versus a complex one.
The elements you can split-test on a page are endless. And profitable. And the whole process, as you’ll probably discover, can become very addictive.
Above the Fold
Above the fold is the portion of a web page visible on the screen without scrolling.
Adaptive Content
The concept of crafting an experience that is tailored to a user’s customer experience, behavior, and desires. The goal is to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time.
Affiliate Marketing
Revenue sharing between online advertisers and publishers where payment is based on performance measures — usually in the form of sales, clicks, and/or registrations.
Agile
The word agile used in this sense comes from the world of software development and is based on iterative and incremental development.
The idea is you start with something simple, ask for feedback from a small, select audience of users, understand what needs to be improved, and then make those improvements based on feedback.
Repeat the process. This approach differs from traditional manufacturing practices that designed and developed a product until it was “perfect,” and then shared it with the public.
Analytics
This is the discovery and communication of meaningful patterns in data. Popular analytics tools used in content marketing include Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, and Facebook Insights. The data ranges from categories like customer behavior to acquisitions to conversions.
Autoresponder
An autoresponder is a sequence of email marketing messages that get sent to subscribers in the order and frequency that you decide.
B
B2B
Businesses that sell products or services to other businesses. Adobe and GE are examples of B2B companies.
B2C
Businesses that sell products or services directly to end-users or consumers. Apple and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream are B2C companies.
Backlinks
Backlinks display other web pages that link to your posts. You typically see backlinks at the end of blog posts or articles.
Blogging
Publishing content on the web. A “blog” is where the content is published. The word “blog” is a shortened version of “weblog,” which is a mashup of the words “web” and “log.” In the early days of blogging (late 1990s), blogs were diary-like. In the 2000s, blogging matured into a dominate way to publish online, with most businesses sporting a blog.
Bounce Rate
The percentage of visitors who enter your site and then leave (“bounce”) rather than continuing on to view other pages within the same site. Not to be confused with “exit rate,” which is the percentage of visitors to a site who actively click away to a different site from a specific page, after possibly having visited other pages on your site.
Buyer Persona
A detailed report by a business on the makeup of the ideal customer/s. Information in this report includes hopes and fears, typical career choices, hobbies, and common objections to your product or service.
Buying Cycle
The stages a customer passes through on his way to making a purchase with a business. There are at least five stages customers pass through: awareness, consideration, intent, purchase, and repurchase.
C
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The number of times someone clicks on a link based upon the number of times it was seen. If 100 people saw the link and 10 people clicked on it, then the CTR would be 10 percent. Commonly mentioned when discussing email marketing.
Content Management System (CMS)
The system a company uses to manage the content of a website. This might be software like Rainmaker Platform or WordPress. A CMS helps publish and manage online content.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is the process of creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell. In other words, you educate people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.
Content Shock
The notion that as content marketing becomes more and more popular, we’ll eventually face a “Content Cliff” — a period where content collapses in on itself as audiences max out on their abilities to consume it.
Copywriting
Copywriting is one of the most essential elements of effective online marketing. The art and science of direct-response copywriting involves strategically delivering words (whether written or spoken) that get people to take some form of action. Testing is a huge part of copywriting.
Cornerstone Content
Online, cornerstone content is the basic, essential, and indispensable information on your website that answers common questions, solves problems, entertains, educates, or all of the above.
The key is creating compelling content that’s worth linking to and then finding ways to get the word out. A page that hosts cornerstone content helps readers by pulling all of your content about a specific topic together in one place. You’ll often link to your cornerstone pages in your articles and blog posts because they help define common topics you talk about on your website.
Each cornerstone content page is a home for related content. It groups basic, essential, and indispensable information onto one page.
Cornerstone pages let you highlight your most important archived content. They also help you attract links, get subscribers, and increase traffic.
And that’s the goal of every profitable website.
Cost Per Action (CPA)
This is the measure of how much your business pays to convert a prospect into a customer.
Cost Per Click (CPC)
An online advertising model where a company pays for each click instead of paying by the number of impressions. A campaign stops running once the daily budget of clicks is reached.
Cost Per 1,000 Impressions (CPM)
A common measurement used in advertising, CPM is the cost to an advertiser of showing an ad to 1,000 people. Compare to CPC.
Cost Per Sale (CPS)
This is the amount an advertiser has to pay for each sale generated from an advertisement.
Creative Commons Licenses
Free licenses that allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators. For example, if you’re a photographer, you can allow others to “distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation.”
Crowdsourcing
A means of generating ideas, capital, content, or services by asking for contributions from a large group of people, typically through an online community.
Curation
The act of collecting, organizing, and sharing content. This can be done via a blog, social media, or an email newsletter.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
CRM is a set of processes that uses technology to organize, automate, and synchronize customers’ interactions with a company so all departments are on the same page. A CRM manages past, current, and future customers (leads) using technology that automates lead generation and keeps track of where the customer is in the sales cycle so all departments have a clear picture of the customer.
D
Digital Commerce
Digital commerce is what happens when a buyer gives a seller money for a digital product. The seller could be a single person or company. That’s simple enough.
But what is a digital product? Think software, online training courses, ebooks, streaming media, fonts and graphics, photographs, apps, online casino tokens, desktop wallpapers, video games, and music files.
In other words, non-physical products that exist only in digital form. So, the buying and selling of these products is known as digital commerce.
And the cool thing to keep in mind with a digital product is that once it is created, set up, and proven to sell, it can become, in many ways, a passive, long-term source of profit.
Digital Sharecropping
Digital sharecropping is a term coined by Nicholas Carr to describe a peculiar phenomenon of Web 2.0.: “One of the fundamental economic characteristics of Web 2.0 is the distribution of production into the hands of the many and the concentration of the economic rewards into the hands of the few.”
In other words, anyone can create content on social media sites like Facebook, but that content effectively belongs to Facebook. In the end, you’re building your business on someone else’s property.
Don’t do that.
Direct Marketing
Marketing efforts directed toward a specific targeted group — direct selling, mail, or catalog — for soliciting a response from the customer.
Direct Response
Promotions that permit or request consumers to directly respond to the advertiser — by mail, telephone, email, or another means of communication.
E
Ebook
A digital book designed to be read on a device like an e-reader, smartphone, laptop, or tablet. It may contain text, images, and links. E-books can be downloaded and purchased.
Echo Chamber
When a community repeats, reinforces, and amplifies certain ideas, information, or beliefs to the exclusion of competing information, ideas, or beliefs.
An editorial calendar is just a fancy term for a publishing schedule. The editorial calendar helps content marketers and organizations plan and coordinate what content will be published, and when. This content can include blog posts, podcasts, email newsletters, and social media updates.
eLearning
A broad term in the field of using technology to deliver learning and training programs, often with the benefits of anywhere/anytime delivery and personalization.
Email Marketing
Email marketing strikes many as old-fashioned … sort of like the horse-and-buggy of digital commerce. But that’s simply not the case.
See, effective email marketing begins with you asking your prospect for permission to send relevant and interesting email messages to her inbox. This is important, because everyone checks their inboxes, whereas only a small percentage of people see all of their messages on social media.
Email marketing deepens your relationship with your audience. Each email you send — whether daily or monthly, one-off or through an autoresponder series — carries your distinctive voice, while delivering quality, niche-specific content your prospects need. Effective email marketing builds trust, and that trust helps build your business.
Engagement
The ability to hold the attention of an audience and persuade the audience to participate in some sort of activity. Engagement might mean getting Twitter followers to reshare your content, comment on a blog post, or answer a quiz on Facebook.
Exit Rate
Unlike the bounce rate where there is only one session (your visitor landed on that page and left on that page), the exit rate calculates how many visitors left on that particular page after multiple sessions elsewhere on your site. Your visitor didn’t land on that page but found his way to that page. And then left. This could indicate a problem with the page content, but it must be evaluated based on the type of content on the page in comparison to the rest of your site’s content.
F
Facebook
Online social media network launched in February 2004. Facebook allows users to create a profile and post status updates, images, and videos. Users can also join groups dedicated to a school, company, or neighborhood. As of August 2015, Facebook had more than 1.18 billion active monthly users, making it the world’s largest social network.
Forum
Also known as a message board. An online site dedicated to discussing a particular topic. Unlike a chat room where the conversation is built upon short, rapid-fire responses, discussions in a forum are published through a thread often longer than a single-line of text. Conversations are typically archived. In some circumstances, moderators approve each post before they become visible.
G
Gamification
Applying features of game design — like keeping score, competing with others, rules of play — to everyday tasks to make them more fun and engaging.
Google+
The social media site Google forgot.
H
Hashtag#######
A label created for a microblogging site like Twitter or Instagram that allows users to search content within a narrow topic. For example, users can search #mountains on Instagram to find photographs of mountains. Hashtags can be used with events like #worldcup or #SXSW.
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the standard, universal language used to build every web page online. HTML gives web pages their structure. HTML is used to add paragraphs, headings, and images.
HTML5
HTML5 is the latest update to HTML, finalized in October 2014. Before that, the last update was in 1997. HTML5 improved the rich media experience online (streaming videos, audio, canvas) while remaining readable to both humans and machines (search engines).
I
Impression
In online advertising, an impression is counted when an ad is fetched from its source and seen by a user. Each impression is counted, whether or not the ad was clicked. Impressions are usually sold per thousand. See CPM.
Infographic
Infographics are digital posters full of facts, catchy images, and sexy fonts that catch the eyes of just about everyone. And they come in hundreds of varieties.
Infographics combine text and images to communicate interesting facts on a specific topic.
An infographic can be about the 10 commandments of typography … it can be a periodic chart of SEO terms … it can be about Marvel comic book superheroes … or it can be a complicated diagram of different types of beers.
And the infographic is the darling of the content marketing world. For good reason.
Research suggests that publishers who use infographics grow in traffic 12 percent more than those who don’t. This is because an infographic, unless it’s completely awful (and they exist), will get a lot more attention than a typical text blog post.
But a good infographic takes time to create. So don’t skimp. Make it beautiful. Your audience will love you for it.
Instagram
A social media site that allows users to post photos and short videos. Users can also “Like” and reply to other users’ photos. Instagram allows photos and videos to be pushed and shared on other social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr.
Interactive Learning Environment (ILE)
An online environment where people can learn at their own pace. Khan Academy is a free online learning community where video lessons allow people to learn about art history, algebra, or exploring Mars. Features of ILEs typically include progress charts, forums, and social media groups.
Join the ranks of some of the smartest online marketing folks on the planet.
K
Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
A metric chosen by an organization to help define success. KPIs will differ from business to business (new customer acquisition or customer loyalty) and can even differ from department to department (zero defects, uptime).
Keyword
A term used to identify the content of a web page. A keyword usually appears in the headline, subheadings, and is repeated throughout the copy. A keyword can be identified within most content management systems. Keywords are used by search engines to help determine the topic of a given web page. This only works for text pages. Search engines cannot search the content of a video or audio file, which is why transcripts are useful when producing those types of media.
L
Landing Page
A landing page is any page on a website where traffic is sent specifically to prompt a certain action or result. Think of a golf course… a landing page is the putting green that you drive the ball (prospect) to.
Once on the green, the goal is to put the little white ball in the hole in the grass. Likewise, the goal of the copy and design of a landing page is to get the prospect to take your desired action.
The goal could be to sell a product. It could be to get email newsletter sign-ups. It could be to download an ebook. Watch a video. Sign a petition.
The variety of landing page goals is endless, but the important thing to remember is to have one goal per landing page.
One page, one goal. Nothing more.
Lead Generation
The act of generating interest in a company to feed a sales pipeline. Lead generation is a deliberate act by a consumer that exchanges her contact information for a resource from the organization. This could be an email address in exchange for an exclusive report download.
Learning Management System (LMS)
A software program that manages the administration and tracking of an online course. For students, the software allows them to keep track of progress. For the instructor, the software allows them to store and organize results.
Learning Style
A person’s unique approach to learning based on strengths, weaknesses, and preferences.
Link Building
Links are the bridges between content online. Links allow search engines to crawl and discover content on the web. Links are also the online content creators’ currency. The more quality links that point to a particular page, the higher that page will rank in search engines.
LinkedIn
A social media network dedicated to the professional community with roughly 380-million active users. Users are encouraged to create profiles around their careers, network with other professionals, companies, schools, and other organizations, and publish content on the site.
Long Tail
The long tail is the portion of a statistical set of data to the right of the x,y axis that represents a narrow, diverse, and low-volume set of data. The data closest to the left represents a high concentration of a few sets of data, thus the most competitive set. A long-tail strategy is to focus on the underrepresented, forgotten, individual sets of data that can equal economic viability if a large set of these narrow, individual, and diverse sets of data can be met.
M
A summary of the characteristics of a market, including information of typical purchasers and competitors, and often general information on the economy and retailing patterns of an area.
Market Research
The systematic gathering, recording, analyzing, and use of data relating to the transfer and sale of goods and services from producer to consumer.
Market Segmentation
To divide a market by a strategy directed at gaining a major portion of sales to a subgroup in a category, rather than a more limited share of purchases by all category users.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation refers to software used by people and companies to streamline, automate, and measure marketing workflows by automating tasks.
In other words, it performs some manual marketing tasks for you. Night or day. Rain or shine.
Here’s an example of how it works. Imagine someone downloads one of your ebooks. Marketing automation software will capture the contact information from the form, segment the lead based upon the information it gathered, and then send out an appropriate series of emails for that person over a prescribed time.
That is marketing automation in a nutshell.
Membership Site
A membership site is a private website that’s protected by a password that offers exclusive content and training and (often) the ability for members to interact with one another.
The cool thing is these members may pay you a recurring monthly fee, if you charge a premium to become a member.
You’ve probably come across sites like these before — just like Authority, Vinny the Marketers Blog content marketing training and networking community.
So if you’re an expert in something, and want to go beyond just blogging, creating a membership site can leverage your time significantly — and, if done right, can become a very sustainable digital business.
Meme
A piece of content spreading online from user to user and changing along the way. Grumpy Cat and Numa Numa dance were two popular memes.
Mobile Marketing
Any advertising or promotional messages that appear on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.
Multimedia
The combination of different media — including text, graphics, audio, video, and animation — in one program. The article “Snow Fall” by John Branch in The New York Times uses multimedia to tell the story of the avalanche at Tunnel Creek.
N
Native Advertising
Native advertising is paid content that matches a publication’s editorial standards while meeting the audience’s expectations. Think Captain Morgan’s campaign on BuzzFeed, in general, and their 15 Things You Didn’t Know About 15 Captains, Commanders And Conquerors article, in particular.
Newsjacking
Newsjacking is the idea that when an event is breaking, either in the general news cycle or in the industry that you’re in or in the local market that you serve, that if you are very, very clever and very, very fast, and get something into the market that journalists are looking for in order to write their stories, you can become a part of those news stories.
O
Offer
The element of a sales page that defines what customers will get if they make a purchase. The offer can include a free trial (“free 14-day trial), deadline (“get 12 for the price of 6 if you order by midnight”), and/or guarantee (“30-day money-back guarantee”).
Off-page Optimization
A set of techniques that aren’t performed directly on your website but can help your website gain visibility in search engines and build authority. Techniques include guest blogging, posting in forums, building a community on social sites, and link building.
On-page Optimization
A set of techniques performed directly on a website to improve visibility in search engines. These techniques optimize aspects of your website such as title tags, content, and URLs.
Owned Media
This is media controlled by a brand. Includes a website, blog, and social media accounts. While owned media takes time to scale, in the long run it provides more control over communication, distribution, and cost.
P
PageRank
Google’s PageRank algorithm attempts to judge the relevancy of a page by asking two questions:
How many links point to a particular web page?
How valuable are those links?
In practice, the theory is this: when you have two identical pages on a specific topic, the one with the most links pointing to that page should rank higher in the search engines. However, the quality of those links matters a lot.
A page with 10 high-quality links could potentially outrank a page with 100 low-quality links. In other words, PageRank rewards keyword-rich content that attracts high-quality incoming links.
Page Views
Measures the number of pages that have been viewed. This is different from a “hit” because to be considered a page view, a web user clicks on a link that then translates to one request to load an HTML page file on a website. A hit measures the number of files on the page that are loaded. A page may have multiple hits due to images, ads, headers, widgets, and so on.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
An advertising model where businesses pay search engines or publishers to host an ad that sends traffic to their websites. Every time that ad is clicked, the business is charged a fee depending upon the popularity of that particular term.
Permission Marketing
The notion was popularized by Seth Godin’s book Permission Marketing. It refers to the idea that if businesses want to succeed, they need to earn the privilege of selling to their customers. In the past, businesses would interrupt potential customers with commercials, door-to-door sales visits, telemarketer calls, and junk mail. These days, customers can easily ignore marketing messages they don’t want to see.
Podcasting
A podcast is audio content you can listen to on demand. This American Life is a podcast. The incredibly popular crime-investigation show Serial is a podcast.
In fact, you can think of a podcast as portable content. Once you’ve downloaded the episode, you can listen to your favorite shows anytime, anywhere — as long as you have a smart device like a phone or tablet.
Some podcasts follow an interview format, like Marc Maron’s WTF. The podcast Stuff You Should Know uses a stable or rotating panel of experts to discuss different topics. Some are sheer entertainment, like The Truth, which is essentially a movie for your ears. And then there are monologues like Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History.
Unlike reading a blog post or watching a video, podcasts are the only truly mobile medium. You can listen to them while walking, driving, or lying down with your eyes closed.
Private Label Rights (PLR)
Private label rights give others permission to rebrand and sell products, such as software, articles, and ebooks. Sometimes the rights allow people to change the product and claim it as their own, and sometimes the product can be distributed as is with proper attribution to the creator.
Product Differentiation
Developing unique product differences with the intent to influence demand. It’s related to positioning, which is the consumer perception of a product or service as compared to its competition.
R
Responsive Web Design
A web design approach where the designer builds a website or website theme to fit any device — from a desktop to a smartphone — so that the user experience is fluid and seamless and there is little adjustment in scrolling, panning, or resizing. This includes the use of flexible images and fluid, proportion-based grids.
Retargeting
Also known as remarketing, retargeting is a form of online advertising that keeps your brand front and center with bounced traffic. Retargeting works by dropping a cookie (a small, non-obtrusive piece of code that won’t slow down your site) into the web browser to identify that user as a previous visitor. When that visitor then browses the web, that cookie notifies the retargeting ad network when to load relevant ads about the company. This increases conversions as visitors are constantly kept in front of your product.
Return on Investment (ROI)
The most common profitability ratio that measures the profit of an investment based on the cost of that investment.
S
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
The practice of marketing a business through paid online advertising. These ads appear on the search engine results pages of Google or Bing. Businesses pay for these ads based upon keywords. An effective way to advertise since a business’s ads are shown to motivated buyers in response to a keyword query (for example, “how to change a baby’s diaper” triggers an ad about diapers).
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It’s the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” or “natural” search results generated by search engines.
Google and Bing are the biggest search engines, and they use algorithms to examine the content on a page to decide what the page is about. Then based upon more than 200 factors, they decide how relevant that page is to certain keywords.
The job of a search engine like Google is to find content that matches your query — the basic question you are asking, like:
How far is the earth from the sun?
Who is the lead singer of Led Zeppelin?
What is a freemason?
Those questions contain keywords. The more your content matches those questions, the better the experience for the user. When you make people happy, you make Google happy.
Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
The page of links that a search engine delivers in response to a keyword query. Each search engine entry usually consists of a headline link, a brief description of the content, words bolded that match the keyword query, and the website URL.
Social Media
A broad term that refers to any technology that enables people to communicate, exchange ideas, publish content, play games, network, or bookmark online. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are examples of popular social media sites.
Split-Testing
Subject Matter Expert (SME)
An individual who exhibits the highest level of expertise in performing a specialized job, task, or skill. Think of him or her as a knowledge expert.
T
Target Market
A group of individuals who collectively make up the intended recipients of a marketer’s message or product. Products can have more than one specific target market. The process of dividing an audience into small, more relevant target markets is called “segmentation.”
Top of the Funnel
A reference to any touchpoint that begins a customer’s interaction with a company. This could be a prospect “Liking” a Facebook Business Page or signing up to receive an email newsletter.
U
Unique Page Views
A subset of “page views” that measures individual visitors who have viewed a website’s pages. This metric gives you an indication of how many people are looking at your website.
Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
In essence, a Unique Selling Proposition is something that you offer customers or clients that your competitors do not offer. It’s the “remarkable benefit.”
In the late 1970s, FedEx effectively branded itself as the fastest, most reliable shipping service with its “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight” tagline.
That was the remarkable benefit no other company could claim.
And once you identify that unique element for your business, you’ll know exactly what the theme of your content marketing should be, because that will become the big story of your business.
V
Viral
The phenomenon of a piece of content becoming very popular through shares on social networks. See the entry on Memes. Content that goes viral is usually shared on one site or social network, gets immensely popular, and then spreads to other social networks and even big publishers.
Visitors
People who visit your website.
W
Widgets
A small application that adds content like Search, Categories, or Tag Cloud to your website. Usually sits in the right or left column of a website.
What did you think? Like Comment Share Add to
Vinny the Marketer
