Social Web 3.0, a digital marketing conclave was organised by Madras Management Association on 23rd November at Hotel My Fortune, Chennai. The event was attended by industry bigwigs such as Maneesha Khanna, Director of Marketing, PepsiCo and Bhaskar Ramesh, Head of Industries – FMCG, Google India amongst the other notable ones.
The event started with an insightful keynote address by Hari Menon, CO-Founder & CEO, Big Basket on digital influence and analytics-driven future, which set the stage for the rest of the day. Vikas Chawla, Co-Founder & CEO of Social Beat spoke about how content & influencer marketing is changing the social media game. It was an interactive session with a series of questions on how brands can leverage content marketing to achieve business goals and what would be the ideal advertising-marketing mix.
Here are some insights on Content and Influencer Marketing discussed during the session:
If Content is king, there are too many kings out there.
Here are some tips to stand-out and leverage on relevant content to achieve business goals.
Influencer marketing is becoming an integral part of marketing budgets and here’s why:
Digital media endorsement by an influencer can work wonders for your brand, only if you pick the right one.
Here are some metrics you need to consider before choosing the influencers for your campaign.
The next session was a case study by Maneesha Khanna, on #CrashTheIPL campaign that involved consumer generated video content. The idea behind this talk was to understand how videos have become the way forward for FMCG brands to easily connect with the audience. The success of #CrashTheIPL campaign could be contributed to the strong cross channel promotion – yet another game changer in the advertising space. Hence, brand managers should also explore highly integrated digital + TV campaigns, as both of these channels are here to stay.
Apart from these expert sessions and case studies, there were also discussions on various trending topics in the digital & social space. Social Media 3.0 also witnessed a bunch of digital enthusiasts who actively participated in Twitter & Instagram contests conducted during the event.
Were you a part of this digital media conclave and have more stories to tell?
Write to us about your experience in the ‘Comments’ section.
Every marketing expert knows the importance of content marketing. It is a great way to engage with customers and to provide them with knowledge. Creating content that is both relevant and valuable to its target audience is at the very heart of effective content marketing. With the growth of mobile and internet in India, every town and village in India has access to Internet. Thanks to this internet revolution, most of the target audience can be found speaking another language apart from English. So how are you going to address this problem? Our solution is a multi-lingual content strategy.
Hindi content consumption is growing at 94%
English is, of course, most commonly used language online not just in the world but also in India. However, Google data shows 94% growth rate for Hindi content consumption. Keeping this in mind global brands has started focusing on regional language as art of their strategy. A year ago, Facebook users were flabbergasted to see the login page in Hindi script. This was followed by US based visual discovery tool Pinterest launching a Hindi version, allowing users in India to use the translated version.Today, Google supports languages such as Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, and Tamil among others.With 127 million Internet users in India consuming content in local language, all global social media sites have realized the fact that they if they don’t go local in India they might soon lose relevance. Catering to the internet users in tier II and III towns, Google is now focusing to expand usage of its products like Google maps in vernacular languages, especially Hindi.
Regional content availability can boost the growth of Internet in India by 24%
Of the literate 74%, only 10% read English while the rest consume content in the vernacular medium. Remaining 66% are literate in their local languages. According to a latest study conducted by Internet and Mobile Association of India and IMRB International, regional content availability can boost the growth of Internet in India by 24%. There are more than 70,000 newspapers printed in India and around 90% are either printed in Hindi or other vernacular languages. Realizing the importance of regional content, Indian app developers are also recognizing the need for local app distribution platforms. International app stores do not lend themselves to the easy discovery of highly India-specific regional content.
Growth of regional language content: A case study
Yourstory.com, one of India’s leading platform for entrepreneurs and promoting the entrepreneurial ecosystem, recently included separate sections for regional content.
The website also offers content in 10 other languages including Marathi, Telugu and Bengali.
Their regional content strategy has taken off well and has received positive response from the audience. As you can see, the Hindi article has 650 shares and the Tamil content has over 200 shares. The website is updating their regional language pages everyday with interesting articles.
So if you are convinced that regional content marketing is important, here are a few things to consider.
1. Wins audiences and drives traffic
It’s easy to ignore other languages if one dominant language makes up the majority. While English does make for the majority, there is a section that only consumes content in a regional language and this section could be your most important target audience. An English creative gets 0.1% to 0.15% Click Through Ratio (CTR), while a language creative can get 0.4-0.5% CTR. So if a language content and creative has a change to drive more traffic to your product or website, why not concentrate more on it?
2. Customers respond better to content in their mother tongue
When you market your brand in a regional language, it appeals to the emotional quotient of the audience. So localization of content should be an integral part of the creation process. For instance, McDonald’s involves its international teams at an early stage of product development, ensuring it can adapt their most effective marketing strategies to each individual culture where its campaigns are rolled out. Its in-country translation and localization teams ensure that the content strikes the right note in each country.
3. Integrate social media and content marketing
Your ultimate goal of participating in social media is likely to drive traffic back to your website so you can convert those visitors into leads. Without pitching brands directly, content marketing looks at generating relevant content that educates and creates awareness among customers. It has become an important marketing avenue for the fund-crunched startups to compete with the bigger brands. But it is very important that your content is unique and engaging for your customers. Duplicate or low-quality content can prove to be counter-productive. Once your regional content is up and running, the next step is to ensure that it reaches your target audience. There are many content amplification techniques that can help you promote your content to a large audience. The content strategy needs to be integrated with your social media marketing. It can be key to engaging consumers and many brands are successfully adopting this for their overseas marketing efforts. This video tells you why adopting a multilingual strategy is the only way to connect with the next billion Internet users in India.
What happens when eminent personalities from various industries come together to share their expertise on social media and its aspects? Yes, it is that time of the year! The much awaited Social Media Week is scheduled to happen next week in Mumbai (November 16th to 20th).
Social Media Week hosts conferences across Europe, Australia, North America, South America, Asia & Africa which aim at connecting more than 1 million people and stands to be a powerful source of information that can be instrumental in shaping the future of human connectivity.
Image Courtesy – brandwatch
The Mumbai edition of SMW conference this year will witness an entire week of all things social media. This time it is bigger than ever. Over 73 speakers from different verticals will be there to address and advice the audience on various aspects of social media. Celebrities from the media and communication world like Arnab Goswami, Editor-in-chief, Times Now will be there to deliver their thoughts on how social media is commanding the industry at present. SMW will also have successful marketing professionals like Neha Ahuja, Peter Claridge Eric Edge and many more. Entrepreneurs like Sachin Bhatia, Founder, Truly Madly will also be in the panel of speakers.
As of today, not many events that are focused on digital media/social media take place in India. SMW, one of its kind, does not only help build a platform where there are opportunities to learn and share ideas but also network with fellow social media enthusiasts. Overall, it is going to be a social-media filled week with a lot of idea sharing!
We are looking forward to it. Are you?
In this context, there are various SEO tools out there which can help and one which is critical for On Page SEO in case you are using WordPress as your CMS is the plugin by Yoast. It is a plugin recommended even for Advanced SEO by most industry leaders including QuickSprout, Moz & more.
YoastSEO Plugin is the powerhouse for WordPress search engine optimization. Barring structured markup data and schema tags, Yoast can handle most on page SEO elements. However, setting up this plugin might be tricky for some, and a startup or anyone without basic SEO skills, might find it difficult to configure. An incorrect configuration can stop search engine bots from indexing your website, or you might let bots crawl a part that might not be relevant to your business.
The best part is that most of the key features in YoastSEO are free, so let’s get started with the step by step tutorial to set up this free SEO plugin.
Step 1: General Settings
Clicking on the SEO icon takes you to WordPress SEO by Yoast’s General settings page. You can take a tour here to learn more about the plugin. You can also reset your plugin to default settings from this page. There is a tracking option, checking it will send anonymous usage data back to plugin author. You can uncheck this box if you don’t want to share this information.
Step 2: Your Info
This is where you will provide information about your site and the person or company behind it.
First you need to provide a site name and an alternate name for search engines to consider. Your site’s name could be your site’s title. If you do not enter anything here, then WordPress SEO will automatically use your site’s title (from the WordPress Settings Tab) as your website name
The next option is to choose whether this website is run by a company/organization or an individual person. If you choose company, then you will be asked to provide company name and you can also upload a company logo.
On the other hand, if you choose a person, then you can add the name of the person behind the website.
Step 3: Webmaster Tools
If you know a little bit about SEO, then you have probably heard that each of the popular search engines, Google& Bingallow site owners to add their sites using webmaster tools.
Webmaster tools let you see insights and other relevant data about your site from the specific search engines. In order to verify your site and see those exclusive data, you have just have to add the Meta code that you received from the search engines in the respective fields.
Step 4: Security
The last tab in general settings is labeled Security. This has only one option which disables advanced part of the WordPress SEO Meta box. We recommend that you leave it checked. Checking it will prevent your authors from making changes like redirects and no index which could create problem for you later on.
Step 5: Titles &Metas
Titles & Metas section under WordPress SEO has several tabs in it.
General:
Here you can configure some site wide general settings. WordPress SEO can auto-detect whether it needs to re-write titles or not. So you can leave this as it is, usually it is unchecked. You can also choose the separator used between post title and site title.
Homepage Title
By default you will see these fields pre-filled with title-template. So what is the difference between a title and a title template, you may ask. In instances like your home page, you may want to create a static title, description, and keywords. But for posts, the title will vary from one post to another. Title templates allow you to define a way that the title and other meta information is pulled and organized.
Let’s take a look at the image below for the home page settings. By default the template variables in the title field work fine for most website however you’re welcome to change it. The next option is to enter your site’s description. Once you are done, click on save settings button.
For example for our Pages Title Template we had put %%title%% %%page%% %%sep%% Social & Digital Marketing in India. So if the page is Content Marketing the Meta tag would become Content Marketing | Social & Digital Marketing in India. The same logic applies for the description template too.
Post Types Titles &Meta
WordPress SEO allows you to set titles and meta for posts, pages, media, and other custom post types.
WordPress SEO automatically enters title template variables for all your post types and leaves your description and other fields blank. We recommend that you change the title templates where you only keep the actual title and one of the critical keywords for your business – example %%title%% %%page%% %%sep%% Social & Digital Marketing in India
Remember WordPress SEO plugin also adds an SEO meta box in your post edit area so you can always customize the meta title & description for each page and each post. It may not be posibble to manually edit these, especially if there are multiple authors creating posts on your website. So this automated temple does make life easy in such cases.
Taxonomies
Here you can configure titles and meta for Categories, tags, custom taxonomies, and post format archives similar to how we discussed for Page & Post Title/Descriptions.
Archives
On the Archives tab you have title and meta settings for author archives, date archives, and special pages such as search and 404 pages. We recommended that you check disable author archives for single author blogs. If you are running a single author blog, then your main blog and the author archives contain exactly the same content.
Step 6. Social
One great feature of the plugin is that it integrates your site with Open Graph data for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ platforms so that it tells the search engines that your site is linked to these social media channels
Accounts
The first tab under the social settings is for all your social accounts. You need to simply add the URLs and Twitter username for the main social profiles of your business.
Facebook
On the Facebook tab, first thing you need to do is check the box that says add open graph meta data. Checking this allows WordPress SEO to add Facebook open graph meta data in your website’s <head> section. This will help Facebook pick up the right thumbnail and page information when a post from your website is shared on Facebook.
Twitter
As for Twitter, you can add Twitter cards into your site’s head section. You can also choose the card type to use. We recommend using summary with large image.
Pinterest
Pinterest uses Open Graph meta data just like Facebook. Make sure that you have open graph meta data box checked under Facebook settings. After that you just need to enter the site verification code provided by Pinterest. Simply visit your Pinterest account settings to add and verify your site. You will be provided with a meta tag that you need to enter here.
Google+
On the Google+ tab, check the box to allow Google plus related data for posts. The second option for this page is to enter your Google+ Publisher page. If you have created a Google+ page for your business enter its URL here.
Step 7. XML Sitemaps
Sitemaps are essential for any website. While its not a ranking factor by itself it does give clarity to search engines on the pages that exist and the hierarchy of your website. It is also the quickest way to get indexed and notify search engines about new content on the site..
Yoast SEO makes it easy to add an XML sitemap. First you need to make sure that the box that says ‘Check this box to enable XML sitemap functionality’ is checked.
After that you need to click on the ‘User Sitemap’ tab and disable author/user sitemap.
Lastly click on post type tabs, disable any post type that you don’t want to be included into sitemaps. By default WordPress SEO disables Media Attachments from sitemaps. If you are using a custom post type that you don’t want to be included, then you can disable it here.
Repeat the same process for taxonomies. If there is a taxonomy that you don’t want to be included into sitemaps, then you can exclude it here.
Step 8. Advanced (Breadcrumbs)
The advanced settings page allows you to configure breadcrumbs, permalinks, and RSS feed related settings.
Breadcrumbs are great for internal linking because it defines a clean path or trail to the page you are on. These breadcrumbs also appear in search results giving your site extra advantage in the search.
Simply check the ‘Enable Breadcrumbs’ box and rest of the settings will be displayed.
1.Permalinks
WordPress by default adds a category base in each urli.e /category/. By checking the first box, you can strip that part from your category URLs. This is something that a lot of people want. But you can leave it unchecked if you do not want your category urls and page urls to conflict if they are the same name.
Next feature is to enforce a trailing slash on all categories and tag urls. If you are one of the users, who have .html at the end of their posts, then you probably want to select this option.
The next option is to remove stop words from permalinks. Stop words are common words used in plain language. Yoast believes that by removing these, you will create cleaner URLs but its your call on whether to remove these.
Next option is to redirect attachment URLs to parent post. WordPress allows you to attach images and other media to posts. But all of those attachments get their own URLs which in most cases are unnecessary. Therefore by checking this box, you redirect all your attachment page URL to the original post URL.
The next option on the permalinks page is to remove? Replytocom variable from comment reply links. It disables the links for the users with JavaScript disabled. Most web crawlers when they visit your site have JavaScript disabled, so they do not see the URL and can quickly move on. This increases the crawl efficiency particularly if you are running a site with lots of comments.
Redirect ugly URLs to clean permalinks option is not needed in most cases. We advise you to ignore it unless you know what you’re doing.
The last option to configure on Permalinks page is canonical URL settings. We would recommend that you leave them as they are.
Under clean up the head section you can safely check hide hide RSD links and hide WLW Manifest Links.
RSS
WordPress SEO plugin has an RSS Feeds section, which is used to automatically add content to your RSS, more specifically, it’s meant to add links back to your blog and your blog posts, so bot scrapers will automatically add these links too, helping search engines identify you as the original source of the content. So we have added something like “The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on Social Beat”
Step 7. Tools
The bulk editor allows you to edit post titles and descriptions in bulk. It makes sense to use it when doing manual edit of all pages, for example when launching a new site or a new set of products/services.
The other tool is file editor, This section is only for advanced users as it gives access to the robots.txt file (which tells search engines which content to index and which not to) and .htaccess file (which allows in speed optimization – but that’s another blog post)
Step 8. Search Console
In case you have have given the plugin access to your Google Webmaster Account (which is recommended), you can see all the links that have issues – 404 errors, soft 404 error, server access error; access denied error. These could then be rectified by either upgrading the Yoast SEO Plugin or by using another free plugin called Redirection. You should check these once or twice every month to see & fix all such issues.
I hope that helps you set up the Yoast SEO Plugin and also gets you started on SEO. Please do follow our other SEO & Content Marketing Blogs here.
