The days of getting substantial organic reach on social networks are long gone. Research by UK-based social media analytics tracking company Locowise reported that across Facebook brand accounts it monitored typical...
Dave ChaffeyDark social media
You may have heard this mysterious term which references social media that may not be correctly identified under the ‘Social’ Channel grouping shown in Google Analytics. Instead, they are grouped under ‘Direct’ traffic...
Social media optimization (SMO)
Search engine optimization for improving the impact of organic search and conversion rate optimization for web pages are well-established techniques. But the equivalent technique of Social Media Optimization has never...
Path to purchase research
The path to purchase is shorthand used by marketers to describe the customer journey or different touchpoints across the customer lifecycle. These touchpoints may include paid, owned and earned digital media. The...
N-Grams analysis for Search marketing
An n-gram is a phrase made of n-words: a 1-gram is a single word, a 2-gram is a phrase made of two words, and so on. Within search marketing, they are used to assess the number of instances of a keyword or keyphrase...
SOSTAC® marketing plan model
I have featured PR Smith’s SOSTAC® Planning framework (explained more fully at Paul’s site: www.sostac.org) in all of my books on digital marketing strategy since it provides a simple, process-based structure for...
Digital Native Vertical Brand (DNVB)
Describes a brand that is initially created, sold and distributed online only. I say initially, since to scale and be distributed more widely, the ultimate aim of the owner may be to gain traditional retail distribution...
Marketing blog
A blog can range from a personal online diary, a regular series of articles on a company site a frequently updated news articles on a publisher. It can be compiled by one person, but in larger businesses there will be...
Marketing Playbook
Today’s marketing is fiercely competitive with multiple competitors and many best practices needed for digital marketing techniques which change through time. This has increased the need for a playbook to explain...
Google’s core updates
Previous Google created and publicised named algorithm updates like ‘Panda’, ‘Penguin’ and ‘Rankbrain’ focused on introducing a major change to improve the quality of results and...
Content ideation
Recommended tools and techniques to support content ideation Content ideation is a term commonly used in content marketing to define the process of identifying and selecting the most relevant topics that will engage...
Content marketing editorial calendar
A calendar to fuel content marketing should be designed to help support both shorter-term campaign plan goals and longer-term always-on marketing goals. The editorial calendar is best built around the intersection of...
Attribution in digital marketing
Media attribution involves analysis of media touchpoints (referral source) along the path to purchase to determine which has influenced sale and which credit should be given to for influencing conversion. The purpose of...
User Generated Content (UGC)
UGC is content published by consumers. Often it’s independent from branded content and not requested by the brand, for instance, on a social network. Here the UGC could be positive or negative, so companies need...
Brand relevance
Brand relevance is a relatively new concept. This exploration is based on an interview with an undergraduate dissertation student covering my thoughts on it. It’s an example of questions to subject matter expert...
TOFU vs MOFU vs BOFU content
What is the difference between ToFu, MoFu and BoFu content? In recent years, you hear content marketers talking a lot about ToFu, MoFu and MoFu content. I think these are useful abbreviations since they provide a way of...
Social listening
Social listening or social media listening is a process aimed at reputation management and market research in which relevant content and conversations, identified from social media sites such as blogs, social networks...
Social network sites (SNS)
Social network sites (SNS) If you are researching social media marketing, in academic papers, social network sites are sometimes known as Social Network Sites (SNS), but this acronynm isn’t widely used in industry...
Social media marketing
Social media marketing is one of the key types of digital marketing channels. It involves using social media across the big six platforms relevant to most businesses which are: Facebook (including Facebook Messenger)...
Local SEO
Working on Local SEO ranking factors is important to gain visibility for a business at a local geographical level if you have local audiences in towns and cities searching for local providers such as stores and services...
Google My Business / Google Local
Gaining visibility for a business at a local geographical level is important if you have local audiences in towns and cities searching for local providers such as stores and services as part of the activity known as...
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Search Engine Optimisation, typically shortened to SEO is one of the main channels used to attract website visitors as part of digital marketing. The technique is also known as Organic search or natural search. SEO is...
SERPs features
When search engines first launched, they only displayed plain text descriptions with a link, but today, they have a wide variety of formats. Understanding how to get included within the SERPs features is super-important...
Organic SERPs
SEO helps you get visible in the natural listings of the search engines. If effective, it’s one of the most cost-effective ways for businesses to get new visits, leads and sales. It’s about getting the organisation plus...
Referral source
A term used in digital analytics and more widely to indicate the source of visits to a website. This may reference the digital marketing channel (medium in Google Analytics) or individual website (source in Google...
