Why I work

Gavin Llewellyn on March 18, 2013 — Leave a Comment

Work in progress by Kevan Davis

Like many people, I spend the majority of my time at work, more often than not in an office building away from home and with people I have not actively chosen to be around. Yet when one activity dominates such a large proportion of one’s life, in my opinion it makes sense to try and enjoy and take something away from it, otherwise life can begin to feel like somewhat of a waste.

Put a ding in the universe

The reality is that we go to work because we have to. We’ve all got bills to pay, food to buy and goodies to enjoy. And whilst this reality is clear to me, I’m trying to figure out what I can do in order to make the most of my time at work so it doesn’t become just a chore.

One of the ways I’ve found to get the most out of work is to have a philosophy or raison d’etre. Whilst this might sound a little fancy or pretentious, it’s really just about having a clear outlook and set of beliefs and values about what you want to do in your working life. It’s a way of keeping sight of why you do what you do. Otherwise you become just a number, another cog in the machine.

I can’t stand the idea of looking back on my life and wondering what I really accomplished over all those years. I want to be able to look back and know that I made a genuine contribution to the world. Or, as Steve Jobs said, put a ding in the universe!

Why I work

I’ve realised over the last few years that the reason I work is because I want to add value to people’s lives. When I think about the people I admire most (which includes The Beatles, Richard Branson, Stephen King, Walt Disney, Steve Jobs) it’s clear that they all share something in common: they have all enriched people’s lives.

Whether it’s through music, technology, art or storytelling, the people I look up to (both personally and professionally) have all created something that enhances people’s existence in one way or another. And they’ve done this not through simple, short term actions but by creating something meaningful that really matters, for themselves and for others.

Whilst I may not have all of the natural and learned ability as many of my lofty heroes, I like to think that because I have a clear idea of why I do what I do, this will continue to inform what and how I do things so that I can continue to look for ways of adding value in different fields of work, hobbies and pursuits.

I think it’s important for anyone looking to create something meaningful to know why they work. An underlying philosophy provides focus and direction for why you turn up to the office 8+ hours a day, 5 days a week for the best part of 47 weeks of the year. For me, it’s about adding value in whatever I do so I can look back at the work and contributions I’ve made throughout my life and be proud of what I’ve achieved.

That’s why I work.


6 tips for a successful digital agency partnership

Gavin Llewellyn on March 4, 2013 — Leave a Comment

'mans' by Xavi Talleda

Over the last 7 years, I’ve had experience of working with various different traditional and digital marketing agencies. Whilst one agency’s skill set may differ from another, what I have found to be consistent is the way in which many agencies operate and how clients can get the best from a working relationship with them.

Working with a marketing agency should be a collaborative relationship. With digital marketing moving at such a frightening pace, it’s important to work closely with an agency and allow them to provide strategic insight and know-how whilst acting as an extension of the client’s in-house team.

In this post I’d like to share a few thoughts on how you, as a client, can establish a productive working relationship with your digital marketing agency so you can make the most of the partnership.

1. Set out your goals and objectives

In order for an agency to understand what you want to achieve, it’s important to clearly outline your goals and objectives early on in the relationship (as early as the pitch process and then re-iterate as priorities change).

These goals need to be aligned with what your particular agency or set of agencies can deliver. A digital marketing agency can come in many different forms:

  • Integrated – often a digital extension of an already established traditional marketing agency
  • Digital full-service – offer a combination of SEO, social media and affiliate marketing services with web design capabilities
  • Search marketing specialists – search engine optimisation specialists, often with expertise in pay per click (PPC), too
  • Inbound marketing specialists – these include agencies that specialise in content marketing, with expertise in social media, SEO and content production
  • Mobile marketing specialists – focus on apps, mobile messaging and potentially site design.

The key is to establish early on exactly what you want to achieve and how an agency can help. By being honest up front, it will allow you to choose an agency that has the right skills, expertise and personnel to help you work to fulfilling your business and marketing objectives.

2. Establish agreed working arrangements

Once you’ve decided on the digital marketing agency you want to work with, the next step is to establish an agreed working arrangement.

It’s important to agree from the beginning:

  • What will be the nature of the work? Strategic, tactical or a combination?
  • What is the service level agreement (SLA) and the turnaround time for work?
  • How will you measure activity and results? What KPIs will you measure?
  • Who will meet whom, when and how often?
  • How will the briefing process work?
  • How will information and data be shared and distributed?

By establishing an agreed working arrangement, both you and your agency can go about your work with confidence, knowing who is supposed to play what part.

3. Create focused briefs

Many clients often expect their agency to read their minds and figure out not only the problems they have but also how to solve them. However, without a tight, focused brief that outlines exactly what you want and how you want to achieve it, you’re unlikely to get the best our of your agency.

Whilst it’s the agency’ role to provide insight and expertise that the client lacks internally, it is the client’s role to guide an agency towards the work they want produced. It’s therefore up to you to provide the agency with detailed briefs that contains:

  • Business background – what are you trying to achieve
  • Objectives
  • Target audience
  • Key messages
  • Timings

Much of what you’re looking to achieve and your objectives will allow your agency to consider the best digital marketing approach to take. What may have initially seemed like a straightforward link-building project for SEO, may in fact turn into a content marketing project that encompasses both SEO and social media marketing.

However, a collaborative approach always works best and allows the client and agency to align their thinking.

4. Keep on top of budget and costs

Considering the current economic climate, budgeting is more important than ever. Whilst you may be working on a retainer with your agency, there may also be projects that are an extension to this agreement.

Regardless of the size of a project, always consider the agreed budget and ways to keep on top of growing costs. Whilst I am not suggesting that your agency will be looking to rack up costs for their own benefit, it is in their interest to produce as much work as possible.

Agree early on the scope of the project and ensure you manage both your agency and internal stakeholders effectively to keep control of budget, costs and timings.

5. Focus on knowledge transfer

When working with a digital marketing agency, always consider how you can benefit from knowledge transfer at every touchpoint of your relationship.

An agency with have a depth of knowledge and expertise that is unlikely to exist within your company (that’s why you’re working with them!). Working with them will therefore give you the opportunity to learn and develop as a result of the work you produce together.

Never become overly reliant on what your agency is telling you. It’s important to build up an understanding of your own so that you can more confidently challenge them on their proposals, ideas and suggestions.

6. Measure results

As with any activity, measurement is key. Go back to your initial meetings and discussions and consider what you’ve achieved over time since working with your agency.

Go over the shared goals, objectives and KPIs you set up with your agency and ask whether you’ve achieved what you’ve wanted with them over the time you’ve been working together.

If your agency specialises in SEO, then you’ll want to have seen an improvement in overall rankings for your top target key phrases, an increase in non-brand organic traffic and an improvement in the quality of visitors to your site.

Whilst if you’re working with an agency that specialises in social media marketing, you’ll want to have seen an overall improvement in engagement with your content, brand awareness and consideration of your product/ service portfolio through multiple social channels.

The key is to analyse not just how the agency has performed, but how both you and your agency have worked together to meet the objectives set out from the start of the relationship. By making an honest assessment, you can then work out how to move forward.

A version of this post was originally published on Smart Insights on 27th February 2013. I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure!


Good SEO is about quality, not quantity

Gavin Llewellyn on February 25, 2013 — Leave a Comment

Quality Street ® by Alex Brown

I’ve read three articles recently that have inspired me to write this post:

The first was this excellent post from Christopher S Penn on the enduring rule of SEO. The second, a timely reminder from Google about selling links that pass PageRank. And finally, this deep-dive analysis of Interflora’s penalty for bad links by Christoph C. Cemper.

Add value through great content

All three articles have one big thing in common: SEO is about adding value by creating content that people want to share and link to.

Creating content that people will really value isn’t easy – that’s why SEO is considered earned media. Unlike paid search or advertising, good SEO cannot be achieved through quick fixes and short-term tactics. A good presence in the SERPs has to be earned over time through focused effort and considerate approach to SEO. But unfortunately sometimes the advantages of natural search traffic can motivate shady behaviour to try and ‘cheat’ the system.

Good SEO takes time, effort and hard work

Those looking to get genuinely good natural search results by trickery and dodgy tactics remind me of people who fall for the ‘6 pack in 6 minutes’ commercials. Just as getting into shape takes hard work, focus and a committed regime, so does SEO. Some ‘grey hat’ tactics can indeed work in the short term but they’re unlikely to be scaleable. And if they are scaled can land you in trouble (as Interflora found to their detriment in recent weeks!).

It’s important to understand that search engines, like Google, want to provide the most relevant search results for users. And in order to do so, they have devised algorithms that allows them to index sites based on a number of ranking factors. However, because search engines want to present relevant results, unethical tactics to ‘game’ the system are often frowned upon.

Don’t chase the algorithm

Whilst it’s important to recognise ranking factors and optimise websites accordingly, website owners shouldn’t try and ‘chase the algorithm’.

The Panda and Penguin algorithm updates over the past 18 months – 2 years have proved that Google are constantly tweaking and optimising the way they crawl and index websites. Just as keyword stuffing or building large quantities of spammy links used to work for SEO, they don’t any more and the sites that built their search strategies around these types of tactics suffered as a consequence.

The websites who are succeeding are the ones that have a clear strategy based on:

  • A relevant set of keywords and phrases related to the site
  • Best practice on-page SEO
  • Helpful, value-adding and shareable content
  • Quality links
  • Effective technical SEO

I’ve written before about SEO basics and best practices.

Good SEO is about quality, not quantity

This post is hardly original and it’s something that’s been stated ad nauseum by hundreds of SEO and digital marketing bloggers around the world. But ‘ethical’ SEO is something I believe in and I felt I needed to make my views clear here.

It may be tempting to look for shortcuts but the road to good SEO is about quality content that people value and not just the quantity of inbound links you can generate for a site.


Competitive intelligence analysis – 5 key reports

Gavin Llewellyn on February 7, 2013 — Leave a Comment

Othello! by Noah

Whilst it’s important to analyse how your own website is performing in terms of visitors numbers, customer demographics and conversion rate, competitive intelligence analysis can tell you how you are performing relative your competitors and provide some insight into their visitor numbers, audience, marketing and search strategies.

Effective competitor intelligence analysis can provide real actionable insights that just aren’t possible using standard web analytics tools such as Site Catalyst, Google Analytics or Webtrends. By understanding more clearly as to what your competitors are doing, you can make more insightful decisions about what to do with your online marketing activities.

Key benefits of conducting online competitive analysis

Competitive intelligence analysis allows you to gain insight on:

  • Competitor activity – Gain insight into the activities and tactics of your competitors.How are they using paid and organic search? What affiliates are they working with? What are the key times of the year when they implement certain tactics? Where are they gaining the majority of their traffic from?
  • Consumer behaviour - Learn how your target consumers behave on the web. Who – and what – are they being influenced by? And are their seasonal trends you should be aware of?
  • Paid and organic search opportunities – Identify when to use paid search to supplement your organic search efforts at peak times and where you rank in comparison to your competitors for the top search terms in the market. Also discover what key terms your competitors are bidding on and which are brining in the most traffic and custom to their website(s).
  • New business relationship opportunities - What partners and affiliates are your competitors working with? Who and what is referring the most visitors to your website?

This insight can provide you with ideas as to who you may be able to work with in order to maintain and drive more targeted traffic to your site.

Top tools for conducting competitive analysis

Effective competitive intelligence analysis isn’t cheap – but if done well it is well worth the cost. Whilst there are a number of low-cost/ free tools available, the market leaders such as Hitwise and ComScore provide excellent data and insight that no free/ low-cost alternative can rival.

Nevertheless, tools such as Google Trends, Compete and (to an extent) Alexa can provide some useful competitive intelligence insight at a much lower cost. And small businesses who may not be able to afford a full license from tools such as Hitwise can purchase custom reports for a particular set of insights.

Competitive analysis best practice actions

Using a number of the tools above, here are five key reports you can use to help identify competitor active, trends, consumer behaviour:

1. Industry benchmark – share of visits

A good way of getting a ‘top-level’ view of where you rank in your industry or versus a specific set of competitors is to benchmark yourself for overall visits.

An industry benchmark report provides a snapshot of your online performance in context with your competitive landscape.

The objective is to determine the big players and identify the ‘movers and shakers’ in your industry. Where do you rank against them? Where are there gaps that can be built on (if you’re ahead) or closed (if you’re lagging behind)?

Using Compete, you can get an impression of how many unique visitors a particular website is getting and how they compare with similar sites as well as your own:

Compete unique visitor report

With Hitwise, you can build an even more accurate picture of where you are versus your competitors:

Hitwise share of visits report

2. ’Upstream and downstream’ visits

Upstream and downstream reporting allows you to form an impression of the behaviour, intention and ‘mindset’ of visitors to your website.

An ‘upstream’ report will show you what sites visitors have been to before visiting yours and shed light on the types of behaviour customers are displaying before they visit you.

However, the real benefit is in seeing where customers go before they visit your competitors.

For example, are they coming from search engines, aggregators or affiliate sites? Or are they coming from content heavy sites such as blogs or social networks? This type of insight gives you great insight into where you could be spending more time in order to connect with those potential customers.

Hitwise upstream traffic report

A ‘downstream’ report will show you the type of sites visitors go to after visiting yours.

Hitwise downstream traffic report

For example, how many people are visiting a competitor site or a search engine after visiting your site? Perhaps your price is out of kilter or your value proposition not compelling enough? Or maybe you didn’t provide the right information and so they returned to Google to search for something else?

3. Share of search

Search engines provide the vast majority of traffic to websites. And what’s more, organic search traffic is particularly valuable as it is focused, comprising of people intent on fulfilling their research and purchasing goals.

A share of search report can give you an indication of the percentage of traffic you are getting from search engines versus your competitors and provide insight as to how effectively your SEO strategy is performing against others.

Hitwise share of search report

The key benefit here is that a share of search report gives you an idea of fluctuations in search activity across the industry and can provide external validation of your search efforts. For example, if you notice an increase in organic search traffic for a particular month or period of time, competitor intelligence analysis can let you know whether your SEO efforts are paying off or if you (and your competitors) are just benefiting for an industry-wide rise.

4. Main traffic drivers

What type of sites are driving the most traffic to you, your competitors or the industry as a whole? A key traffic driver report will provide insight into the acquisition strategies of your competitors and possible opportunities that you yourself may not have exploited to their full potential.

Are your competitors relying a lot on search, social media or email? Are they using a set of affiliates that you have not considered? Or are they using a set of affiliates that you use but to a much larger degree?

Hitwise main traffic drivers report

5. New key term discovery

Competitive intelligence is great for discovering new key terms and phrases that you may have overlooked for your own site.

By looking at the terms driving traffic to your competitors’ sites and not yours, along with fast- moving search terms (key terms and phrases people are searching for most within a given time frame, for example the last few weeks or month) you can begin to formulate a ‘gap’ analysis.

The picture below shows a key term variation report from Hitwise. A report like this can show fast-moving phrases around a particular keyword or term.

Hitwise fast-moving terms report

Google Trends is a really simple, cheap and easy way to look for new key terms and their popularity relative to others. And it’s also ideal for comparing brands and products over a period of time.

In the example below, we can see the strength of three ISA related key terms over a period of 12 months in the UK.

Google Trends report for ISAs

Although each terms follows a near identical trend over a year, peaking at ISA-time in April before dropping away in May and June, this data gives a good indication as to what people were searching for in relation to ISAs in 2012 and some insight into their buying behaviour.

A version of this post was originally published on Smart Insights on 4th February 2013. I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure!


5 simple ways to protect your website

Gavin Llewellyn on January 21, 2013 — Leave a Comment

Warning sign by Robert Couse-Baker

Website security is a crucial aspect of website management, yet it’s an area that is so easily forgotten. Whilst we’re busy getting on with the fun stuff, be it writing blog posts, updating pages or improving the design and user experience, site security can often be overlooked.

Late last year, I learnt a harsh but very important lesson about website security when my website was hacked and infected with malware. I had not followed some of the basic security precautions and as a result my website was left vulnerable and open to attack.

In order to help others avoid some of the mistakes I made, I thought I’d jot down a few simple tips and actions that any website owners can take to help protect websites:

Back up regularly

Make sure you back your site up regularly. This can be done either manually (by transferring your website files from via FTP to your local machine) or if you’re using a CMS like WordPress there are free plugins such as the BackWPUp plugin which can archive everything into your Dropbox account on a weekly basis (hat tip to Chris Penn for this excellent piece of advice).

I also keep offline copies of all the blog content I produce on a separate memory drive so I know that this intellectual property (that forms the vast majority of all the content on my website) is kept safe.

Update your Passwords

Periodically change your FTP and any admin passwords as this is the main cause of sites getting infected. Make sure you choose a range of good passwords for your logins that include a minimum of 10 characters and contain letters, numbers and special characters, e.g. *, € or #.

The longer the password, the better. I’m terrible at remembering passwords so consider using lines from a favourite song or movie and replace some of the letters with numbers, e.g. ‘To be, or not to be, that is the question’ becomes ’2beornot2bthatisthequest10n’.

Upgrade to the latest version of your website software

If, like me, you are running your site on a CMS like WordPress, make sure you update to the latest version as soon as it becomes available. It’s also important to ensure that all plugins are up-to-date, too.

The most up-to-date version of a CMS’s software should be more secure as it will include bug fixes and improvements to other security issues and vulnerabilities that may have existed in previous versions of the software.

Run an anti-virus scan

One of the most common causes for sites getting infected outside of security issues is via your computer. It’s therefore advisable to run an anti-virus scan on your machine or anyone that manages your site. There are a whole host of free antivirus software tools available, including:

Consider using a professional malware monitoring service

Sometimes there is only so much we can do ourselves. Hackers are getting more and more sophisticated and so it may be worth considering using a professional malware removal or monitoring service.

I use the aptly named Malware Removal Service who helped me with my most recent bout of malware and will now monitor my website over the course the year and make peridoic updates when necessary.

Some helpful resources

Regardless of how many precautions we take, website security is a matter of mitigating damages as nothing can ever be made 100% ‘hackproof’. We can only put things in place to help protect against and deter attacks. However, by following some of these simple steps we can help make our websites as secure as possible.


5 key social media marketing priorities for 2013

Gavin Llewellyn on January 7, 2013 — 2 Comments

The Social Media Marketing Radar

Infographic: The Social Media Marketing Radar by First 10 and Smart Insights.

As another new year begins, marketers naturally look to develop their skills and awareness in the areas they are responsible for. For me, social media is a key area and within this, these are the areas that I believe are likely to effect social media marketing effectiveness in 2013. How do you see it?

1. Embrace social search

The launch of Google+ in 2011 and its continued development in 2012 is just one of many signs that traditional search is becoming increasingly influenced by social signals. Whilst great content and effective link building are still the most effective ways of optimising your website for search engines, genuine social media activity is also playing a part, too.

Google’s Search Plus Your World, its numerous algorithm updates and the introduction of the Knowledge Graph are yet more signs that quality content and social media will impact organic search.

Other factors such as social voting (e.g. the ‘Like’, ‘Tweet’ and ‘+1’ buttons) and social bookmarking (posting content to social sites) are also being used by search engines like Google to determine the influence and relevance of content on the web.

2. Adopt a content marketing strategy

Social media and search shouldn’t be considered as two completely separate disciplines. For some time now, there has been an overlap between search and social, with content being the glue the binds the two. They form the principles of what is known as inbound or earned media marketing.

One of the most powerful and effective ways of combining search and social is to focus on developing an integrated content marketing strategy. Brands should consider a strategic approach to content to take advantage of the various content sources present within a business:

  • Search marketing activities
  • Brand engagement activities
  • Buzz-building activities
  • Brand protection activities

Creating useful, unique, engaging content is a powerful way of connecting with prospects and customers and it underpins many other marketing efforts, including:

A strategic approach to content

3. Differentiating your social presence

As social media has developed and proliferated our lives (so much so that even the blandest of products have a Facebook or Twitter account!), it’s never been so important to ensure that your brand has a presence that stands out and make an impression. People’s attention is at a premium in today’s ‘always-on’ world and in order to make a genuine connection with discerning consumers on the social web gaining visibility is essential.

First and foremost, good branding is key. Whilst it’s difficult to ensure perfect consistency on the social web (consumer conversations cannot be controlled to be “on brand”, especially when they turn negative), it’s still important to have strong, impactful and well-designed branding across every social platform to ensure it aligns with your website, products and online/ offline presence. Integration is key too.

As for social channels, don’t just focus on the one or two ‘that everyone is using’. Whilst it’s not advisable to create a presence on every social network going (e.g. don’t spread yourself too thin!), consider the variety of social networks out there and what will work best for you. It may be the case that Facebook and Twitter work just fine for your brand. However, you might just discover that niche social platforms such as Google+, Instagram or Pinterest could work better given your unique set of brand propositions and objectives.

4. Develop actionable insights through social analytics

Social media is no longer a buzzword that can be used to dazzle your boss and get funding for a new social media initiative. Companies, both large and small, are quite rightly demanding proof, evidence and case studies to demonstrate the value that social media can bring to a business.

Why should a brand invest in a social media campaign as opposed to a traditional advertising approach that is ‘guaranteed’ to reach X number of eyeballs through a targeted TV, radio or online advertising campaign?

Analytics and tracking should be used to evaluate the contribution of traffic from social media sources and sharing of content from your site on social networks. Hard data should be used wherever possible to monitor social initiatives so that you can form a much clearer picture of what techniques are most effective for your business and to build a compelling business case for further social media marketing should it prove successful.

Free tools such as Google Analytics allows users to track social media marketing using a series of reports looking at social sources, pages, conversions, social plugins and visitors flow.

5. Mobile is the present… and future!

Smartphone usage has rocketed over the last few years, with sales overtaking that of PCs two years ahead of schedule, tablet sales growing 378% year-on-year and news that in the US 90% of 18-29 year olds sleep with their smartphones!

It’s fair to say that with 4G making inroads in the US and now the UK, mobile and tablet usage is becoming increasingly ubiquitous. In the UK, mobile devices are now used for everything from buying goods and services to accessing the internet and social media on the go.

Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 signified the social networking giant’s commitment to mobile moving forward and a clear sign that mobile will continue to play an increasingly important role in social media as the technology develops and users become savvier.

A version of this post was originally published on Smart Insights on 3rd January 2013. I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure!