Direct Placement Blog

In this blog series , we have well established the rise of the blog. “Blogging” is something most people have at least heard of, if not directly participated themselves. But, a blogging related term that might be less well-known is “microblogging.” Although the term microblogging might be new to many people, it is something that most of us have most likely seen or interacted with without knowing it. Like blogging, microblogging involves regularly and frequently posting content onto a platform. This content can range in format to include images, videos, text, etc. or any combination of those elements. The most significant difference is that microblogging involves much smaller posts than are allowed in the regular, flexible blogging format. In fact, some microblogging platforms will even have a maximum character limit that restricts how much content you are allowed to share in one post. If this is starting to sound familiar, it’s because most social media platforms are forms of micro

In the past, we have discussed the many benefits of advertising on both Facebook and Instagram individually. Advertising on Facebook can be highly beneficial for a business that wants to spread awareness about their company and/or products. At the same time, Instagram’s image and video-based concept make it so that visual advertisements can thrive. Because of these factors, Facebook and Instagram are both important social media platforms for businesses to keep in mind when they are trying to increase their brand or product’s presence online. What many people might not know is that advertising on these platforms can be done in the same Ads Manager on Facebook. You don’t even need to set up two different campaigns to achieve this goal. You can specialize your targeting on a single advertising campaign so that it runs on both platforms. This Ads Manager also offers a variety of ad formats , targeting criteria, and features that will help you target the right ads to the right people

At the start of 2018, a lot of articles and blog posts appeared that predicted digital marketing and website development trends for 2018. Although these articles differed in many ways, one common theme for many of the articles was a predicted rise in custom illustration in website design. Custom illustration in website design is when the design of the website is carefully constructed to fit the brand/product/person being featured. This often involves interactive images and other design aspects that are built to represent the goals of the designer’s client. It is important to note that the websites that are expected to result from the rise in custom illustration are also expected to be what is called ‘flat design.’ Flat design is when a website is built toward functionality and the user experience while remaining aesthetically pleasing and personalized to the particular brand. Instead of adding a lot of complicated bells and whistles to the website design to show off the customizati

Previously in this series , we have been breaking down what a blog is, why you might want one, and how you might start one. But, it has also become apparent that blogging is time intensive. It can take anywhere from 1 to 4 hours to write a single post, depending on the actual format, topic, etc. of the post. Plus, a successful blog needs a lot of regular, relevant content. That means starting a blog will become a large, long-term time commitment. This might get you wondering, is blogging really that important? Although it is a commitment, blogging can be extremely beneficial for companies for several reasons. As we touched on in “ Why & How ,” blogging can spread awareness about and generate more leads for a company. The main way blogging spreads awareness and generates leads is through something called backlinking. When you write and publish blog posts, you are producing content that can be found by searchers on search engines like Google or Bing. This makes it so that peop

A recent article released by Forbes predicts the 2018 social media marketing trends that businesses can expect to see on Facebook and other major social media companies. The predictions made by Forbes suggest that social media marketing is in for several major changes in the coming months. According to the article, one of the biggest trends of the year is that businesses can no longer rely on Facebook content reaching consumers organically. The ability to reach consumers on their news feed with content organically has been slowly decreasing in past years, but this year Forbes asserts that 2018 will be the year Facebook becomes a paid-advertising-only platform for businesses. Facebook has even been testing a new system where paid and organic content will be separated out into two different feeds. If this change occurs, it would mean drastic changes for companies advertising on the platform. Paying for ads and content boosts may soon be the only way to go. A general theme in a

In the last installment of this blog series , we discussed what blogging is and where it stemmed from. But, we didn’t touch on the reasons why you might want to use a blog or how to do so effectively. Blogging is not just for someone who wants to share their results with the world as they work their way through a famous cookbook. Although it can very successfully be used for that, blogs can serve as a useful tool for companies who want to generate leads, spread awareness of their company or products, and build consumer loyalty. According to Demand Metric , when compared to other forms of marketing, content marketing like blogging can create three times as many leads for a company. This is because blog posts make it so there is more content relating to your company available for search engines to index and present for those searching for related topics. With more content available for related topics, there is more possibility that people will read about you and want to do busines

In April of 2017, Verizon announced that it had created Oath to encompass both of its recently acquired platforms, Yahoo and AOL, in addition to numerous other popular brand names. Because Oath is an encompassing platform, Verizon did not change the name of Yahoo, AOL, and all of the other brands within Oath. Oath’s purpose is to house all of these brands, including Flickr, Tumblr, TechCrunch, etc., and utilize those platforms to advertise and grow existing and new brands. Oath’s focus is to specifically create “Brands People Love.” Their advertising campaign emphasizes the importance of brands in our everyday lives and the power brands have to connect people. There are multiple kinds of advertisements that can be created with Oath: video, search, native, and more. The search advertising services offered by Oath give advertisers the opportunity to feature their ads on the search results and 3-party networks for both Yahoo and AOL. According to the Oath webpage, it’s search adver

At the beginning of January, Direct Placement Internet Marketing Advisor Isaac Hegenbarth conducted a survey of real estate agents in Naples, Florida and Palo Alto, California. Both are prosperous real estate locations in the housing market. According to Zillow.com, Palo Alto is an especially hot real estate market. Zillow reports that Palo Alto’s median home value has increased 21% in the last year, resulting in the current $3,010,700 value. The questions asked in this survey were created in an attempt to assess how useful real estate agents in prosperous markets find Search Engine Marketing . In this survey, Isaac asked agents three questions: 1) Have you ever used Google to find a product or service online that you ended up purchasing? 2) Do you believe that people will shop more online in the future for products and services than ever before? and 3) As a real estate agent, which search engine do you think would make the most sense to spend your money marketing on? Out of the

In the last several years, blogs have increased exponentially in popularity. These days, it seems like almost everyone has a blog. Students have blogs. Parents have blogs. Even businesses have blogs. Blog posts are everywhere! They also seem to be about almost any topic. So, this might make you wonder: what exactly is a blog? According to New York Magazine, the word blog comes from the term ‘weblog.’ It has been widely reported that the term ‘weblog’ stems from a man named Jorn Barger, an early blogger, who referred to his work as “Logging the Web.” At its most basic, a blog is a collection of information in the form of a series of posts that are accessible on a website on the internet. Blog posts are made on a regular basis and focus on one or two specific topics associated with the individual blog. Most blogs produce content related to a specific topic, industry, or concept. But, there are blogs that post about anything and everything – topics practically not restricted. Posts a

Ad extensions as a whole are an excellent way to provide additional information about your business in your ads and direct more traffic to various parts of your website. This is because creating extensions for your campaigns can increase the number of clicks and conversions your ads receive. But, there are numerous kinds of extensions that provide information in your ads that is geared to different business goals. Location extensions are one of these kinds of extensions. Although location extensions can direct traffic to your website like the other kinds of extensions discussed in this series, location extensions are an especially useful choice for any business that thrives on customers actually coming to your location/store. These extensions make it possible for potential customers to easily access information about your location, like store hours, address, or even a map. They are especially effective when potential customers are on mobile devices because they can also provide a

What’s New In Bing Ads recently announced that Bing Intent Ads will now be available in Australia in addition to the United States and United Kingdom. Bing Intent Ads make it so that advertisers do not strictly need to rely on search ads to receive traffic. Instead, these native ads will be visually appealing and can display on webpages, within articles, and more places where they will integrate into the surrounding content. The ads are also just as easy to create and manage as search ads. In fact, the search ads you already have created are eligible to become Intent Ads in a few quick steps. The only slight difference that you should keep in mind when creating these ads is that they don’t work as well with calls to action. Instead, detailed text that informs the user about your product or service tends to produce the best results. Bing Intent Ads can be made even more unique from search ads in that they require an image in ad creation. But when clicked, these ads operate just like

Adding extensions to a campaign is an excellent way to provide more information in your ads. Ads that have additional information can then have a higher CTR because they are more useful to the user and take up more space on the page. Like other extensions, Callout extensions provide extra information in an ad in their own unique way. Callout extensions are unique because they highlight short bursts of information about your business. If you have special services or key aspects about your company that you would like someone glancing over your ad to notice, Callout extensions are a great way to go about doing that. For example, if you have lifetime warranties on products, special discounts, or other short selling points, these can be advertised through Callouts. When they show, Callout extensions are located in a line below your ad text separated by bullet points. Each extension cannot be more than 25 characters long. This draws a users’ eye to them without requiring a lot of focu

In November of 2014, Mozilla announced that it was not going to renew its ten-year contract with Google. Instead, they signed with Yahoo in an effort to maintain a more flexible search experience for Firefox users. The contract with Yahoo set Yahoo Search as the default search engine for Firefox in the United States and several other countries. With this new default, Mozilla included several other search engines, including Google, Bing, and even DuckDuckGo as alternate choices in the Firefox settings. Unfortunately, this decision was not popular among Firefox’s users. According to an article in TechCrunch, in November of 2017 Mozilla broke its contract with Yahoo early and re-signed with Google. The article speculates that Mozilla may have used a clause in their contract with Yahoo that stipulated what could happen if Yahoo were to be purchased by a company Mozilla did not want to work with. The exact process of the contract termination between Yahoo and Mozilla has been ve

Although other extensions do provide additional information in your ads, Structured Snippet extensions are a great way to focus on specific aspects of your business in your ads. These kinds of extensions are basically a list of items, facts, etc. that describe to a specific header (or subject) related to your business. You can choose from 13 different headers ranging from Amenities to Destinations, Service Catalogs, or Types. Depending on your industry and the specific aspects of your business you want to highlight, you can select a header and provide up to 10 values to define that header. For example, if you choose Service Catalog, you can provide up to 10 different services that your business performs which will be highlighted in your ad. In order to create a Structured Snippet, you need to provide at least 3 values for your header, but Google Best Practices suggests you provide at least 4 values for each extension. Like other extensions, Structured Snippet Extensions will onl

LinkedIn advertising is unique for the same reason the LinkedIn platform is a unique form of social media: everything is oriented to your profession. Almost all of the information the over 500 Million individual LinkedIn users provide the platform revolves around where they work, have worked, or can work. Because of this, LinkedIn advertising can be targeted based on job and skills much more effectively than with other kinds of social media advertising. There are four main kinds of targeting on LinkedIn: Your Own Audience, Persona, Interest Based, and Rich Demographic. Each of these categories allow you to target individual accounts or users through focused pieces of information like what groups they belong to, where they work, what title they have, and more. This means that LinkedIn advertising is especially useful for business to business advertising because it allows you to target a specific kind of audience within multiple companies. According to LinkedIn, 94% of B2B advertise

Sitelink extensions are another important extension to keep in mind when setting up ads. Like other extensions, adding sitelinks can give your ad a 10-15% increase in CTR . Sitelink extensions accomplish this in two main ways. The first is by expanding the size of your ad and providing users with more information about your business. When you have applied extensions to your ad and it is eligible to show sitelink extensions, 2-8 sitelinks can appear under your ad description. The number of links that appear will depend on the kind of device a user is searching on, the ad rank, and the space available on the search results list. These links will either appear as just the sitelink headline or as the full sitelink. A full sitelink consists of the headline and 2 additional description lines that allow for 35 characters of text each. This gives you a lot more space within an ad to provide information for your user and lead them into clicking on your ad. The second way sitelinks help bo