Curatti Best Articles of 2017 – Part Two
4 years and going strong! And we couldn’t have done it without our readers, our contributors and our good friends. As with any website, you will see our evolution if you go to earlier posts. No doubt, this will continue into 2018.
The last year has seen a site redesign.
The most obvious changes that are coming in 2018 are:
- After the 3rd of these 3 posts goes live on January 5th, we will no longer post on Fridays. Why? Because posting articles takes time, and because quite clearly, you, our readers have spoken! Friday is easily our quietest day of the week. And 4 posts a week is still quite enough.
- You’ll see a little more advertising on the site. We hope you won’t find it obnoxious, but will be open to your thoughts.
- We’ll be promoting our services, and perhaps rolling out others.
Here’s what won’t change – or at least, perhaps because of cutting down on our publishing schedule, it will improve for the better. You’ll continue to see great articles across the Digital Marketing spectrum, from some authors you’ve heard of, and others you haven’t. And every once in a while, we’ll take a chance on posting something really quite different.
Certainly, as time goes by, we get more request from would be contributors than ever before. And sadly, this has led to our rejection rate soaring, rather than our hopper size increasing. That is not the fun part of doing this L. As anyone who takes guest contributions will know, you see so many repeat article; so many rehashes. It’s an inevitable consequence of the rapidly expanding content ocean.
For now, we will present you with curated highlights from one article by each contributor who has posted 2 or more articles this year. There are so many, we must break this into 3 parts.
You’ll find an excerpt from each, and links so that you can read the rest of the article, if you desire. Some very interesting and helpful stuff here.
If you missed the first installment, you can find it here
The Curatti 2017 Retrospective, Part 2
In purely alphabetical order, articles 12-22 are by:
If you wish, you may click on any name to go directly to their content.
Nancy Kapoor
What’s New In The Latest Google AdWords Interface?
Google launched a new interface of AdWords earlier this year. Stacked with features, the latest version claims to provide a better user experience to advertisers in comparison to the previous one.
The new Google interface was gradually rolled out to select accounts over time. It is one of the biggest changes in visual appearance since the launch of AdWords.
The revamped features facilitate smooth navigation, further helping in quick decision making. Moreover, better categorization of these features has added an aesthetically pleasing look to AdWords.
To see the new features click here.
James Malone
15 Top Tools for Creating Amazing Visual Content
In the wild world of digital marketing,it is not only your contacts and experience that can make or break you! The tools you use that can be a real game-changer and make creating visual content much faster and easier. And this is true for companies, small businesses and marketers.
Visuals are no longer just a cool trend, They are now a critically important part of marketing for websites, eCommerce, sales, blogs, presentations and more. When it comes to using visual content, you can’t argue the statistics from Instagram alone. According to Sprout Social, as of August 2017, 70.7% of U.S. businesses were using Instagram – up from 48.8% in 2016. The Hootsuite blog states that 75% of Instagram users take action, such as visiting a website, after looking at an Instagram advertising post. And YotPo informs us that at least 30% of Instagram users have purchased a product they first discovered on Instagram. And one more stat for good measure – this from the Kissmetrics blog on conversions: People are up to 85% more likely to buy after watching a product video.
The numbers don’t lie
Statistics clearly show how visual content makes a huge difference in marketing and sales for companies at all levels in every industry.
Creating content with a real WOW! factor that captures audience interest and attention, requires a set of skills and tools to conceptualize and develop quality, shareable visual content. To help marketers and small businesses – including those working with a small budget and little to no design experience – there are some great and affordable tools available. To that end, we have put together a list of some great tools. Each is easy to use. And even better than affordable, some are free. Not just a free trial, but free!
Some of my personal favorites include both Canva and Piktochart, which I find are a couple of the best tools available for creating images and infographics. Animoto is great for videos, and I really like Giphy, which is a great source for finding free animated GIFs on the fly.
Here are 15 great tools in 5 specific areas, to help in creating and managing amazing content for your marketing and social media campaigns.
You’ll need to click here to see all of the tools.
Helen Miller
10 Proven eCommerce Web Design Hacks to Get More Sales
As an owner of an eCommerce site, your biggest goal is attracting more clients to your web resources, thus generating more sales. But how can one motivate a web user for a purchase? What are the secret tricks that one needs to take into account when working on the optimization and design of an eCommerce resource? Let’s consider the most proven tricks and techniques in this publication.
An eCommerce site is a powerful tool that every business needs to use properly in order to generate an instant revenue flow. There is no one-fit-all rule on how to boost sales on all sites (different hacks are applied to different industries). However, we will try to enumerate the 10 most effective tricks that can be applied to a variety of online projects safely.
To find out more click here.
Raymond Morin
The Changing Landscape of Social Media Usage
The 2016 Nielsen Report On Social Media Usage
At the beginning of the year, the Dutch survey firm Nielsen published its annual Social Media Report on the use of Internet and social media. It reveals very interesting figures on user habits. Contrary to expectations, we learn that the biggest users are not the Millennials. Gen X’ers (who are now between 35 and 50) spend an average of 7 hours per week online. This compares with 6 hours for the 18-34, and 4 hours for the 50+ years. And that women spend most of their time (25%) online on social networks (as opposed to 19% for men).
The Nielsen study first shows that the majority of adults aged 18 and over connect on different platforms: 87% on smart phones, 82% on computers and 65% on tablets. More than 97% of young people aged 18-34 use their smart phones frequently, with Generation X (35-49 years) not far behind – 94% of regular users. Also, just over 3 out of four consumers (77%) in the 50+ age group are smartphone enthusiasts. With usage so widespread, it is essential that any new Website design has small screen formatting and functionality as a top priority, rather than an afterthought.
To read the findings of the report click here.
Avinash Nair
3 Key Indicators That Your Website Needs a Change
New websites are popping up on the internet every second. The name of the game is creating a consumer-friendly platform to encourage user action. If a website fails to meet these demands, visitors will have no problem clicking away.
Simply having a website with product listings or content doesn’t cut it anymore. Brands must keep up and adhere to constantly-changing consumer trends. As fast as the eCommerce landscape moves, it can be extremely difficult to know when it is time to upgrade your platform.
Let’s talk about three big signs that make it clear your website needs some work.
You can click here to find out how to fix your website.
Ian Naylor
6 Social Media Mistakes That Cost Businesses Dearly
According to Statista, in 2020, the number of social media users will reach nearly 3 billion (2.95bn to be exact) – that’s 40% of the current world population. When you think of that as a marketing platform for businesses, social media is now an essential if not vital part of any business’s digital marketing strategy. Not only does a social media presence play a crucial role in building a company’s online reputation and brand presence but it also serves to enhance customer engagement.
Yet it’s naïve to think that just being ‘out there’ is good enough. Successful businesses invest a great deal of human and financial resources that are solely committed to maintaining long-term social media strategies and managing their social communities.
However, before you start to invest your resources into updating your Facebook status or creating your next tweet, it’s crucial to have a strong strategy in place with defined goals and objectives. Purely improvising won’t cut it.
There are various pitfalls along the road to social success – some will cost you money, your reputation, or both.
Here are 6 fundamental social media mistakes that many businesses fall victim to. You should know, confront and overcome them.
Click here to read more.
Kevin Ocasio
How to Master Local SEO Without Breaking A Sweat
In this article, we’ll be talking about local SEO in an effort to simplify it.
To understand SEO, learning about its elements first is a must. This includes anchor texts, links, site content, etc.
Recommended free resources are SEO Moz, Search Engine Land, and KissMetrics. Their blogs cover extensive topics related to SEO. A bit of digging will help you find the information you need.
You can also enroll in free or inexpensive courses, like on Udemy, for example.
But we won’t be going through that.
Like I mentioned at the beginning, this article focuses on making it easy to understand SEO.
We dug up 6 of the most important things to know about local SEO from the most reputable sources.
Instead of having to do it yourself, you can now just focus on what exactly it is that you need to do to improve your search engine rankings.
Learn how to improve your search engine ranking by clicking here.
Mark Preston
Stop It NOW! Why Are You Posting Re-Hashed Content?
It seems that since the buzz word ‘inbound marketing’ was invented by HubSpot, the world has gone content creation mad. Marketers all over the world became copywriters and the feeling of ‘write and publish as much content as possible’ started to become the norm.
Why? Why? Oh Why?
I really do not understand why there is so much panic to publish as much content as possible. If you have been told that publishing regular content on your website, increases your rankings. I’m afraid to tell you frankly, it’s a load of crap. Publishing regular content only increases rankings IF that content generates impact or your website already has such a high authority that anything that gets published will rank straight away.
You should click here to see if you’re publishing content the right way.
Niraj Ranjan
10 Phrases to Never Use in Business Emails
We think that writing an email is the simplest possible job to do in a business, and despite that, the number of seemingly small errors we make is simply alarming. Writing business emails – any email, come to that – is apparently not as straightforward and simple as we would like to think. One small unintentional error can quickly take things south. Good email etiquette is a lot more important than you think.
Since email is a written form of communication, your readers are free to make a number of assumptions about you based on your writing because they don’t have the luxury of meeting you in person, reading your expressions, body language, and tone.
That is why you have to be extra, extra careful when pitching on an email as opposed to when pitching in person or on phone.
Click here to find out how to write your emails effectively.
Anna Rud
Quick SEO Win: How to Refresh Your Old Content
You write compelling content which you believe can go viral. Your articles are full of value for the reader, including illustrative examples and useful tips. What could go wrong?
We know this harsh truth about content marketing: it doesn’t matter how brilliant your article is if no one can find it on the Internet. Unfortunately, great content is no longer enough to be a successful blogger. There are a bunch of technical steps which determine your success: from optimization for Google search to social media promotion. So if you don’t want to see your article taking a back seat, you should play by the rules of this SEO game. Let’s find out what you can do if your great article somehow isn’t getting traffic.
You can click here to learn more about the best SEO practices for content.
Adeel Sami
Want To Be a Blogging Champion? Don’t Give Up
How does it sound, being called the Blogging Champion?
Fantastic? Excellent? Dangerously happy?
Awesome, isn’t it, being called ‘the blogging champion’?
Winning something extraordinary in a sport sound so awesome as you’re the first from the competition. The champion.
To read more about becoming a Blogging Champion click here.
Click here to see “Curatti Best Articles of 2017 – Part One”.
Or click here to see Part Three.
Happy New Year!
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Jan Gordon
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