Anonymous messaging app Yik Yak is testing a photo feature

Yik Yak, the anonymous messaging app, is testing a new feature that would let users share photos, Mashable has learned.

Yik Yak is in the early stages of testing the feature on some college campuses for limited periods of time, sometimes as brief as several hours, in order to get feedback from users, according to sources familiar with the matter. Yik Yak confirmed the development to Mashable.

See also: How Ted Cruz's campaign speech played out on Yik Yak

Uploaded photos must be snapped from inside the app. (Photos from your camera roll need not apply.) Photos are moderated and approved by Yik Yak employees, which can result in a delay before the image shows up in feeds. Any photos featuring faces, nudity, or behavior the moderator deems "inappropriate" or "illegal" won't make into feeds. Read more...

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Facebook’s New Photo “Scrapbook” Lets Parents Give Kids An Official Presence

For the first time, children under 13 are allowed to have an official presence on Facebook. They still can’t have a profile, but their parents can now tag photos of them (or pet) to create a “Scrapbook”. This lets parents collect photos of their baby, toddler, or pre-teen in a centralized place they can share with friends or loved ones. Scrapbook will first roll out in the US… Read More

Social Media Management Company Sprinklr Raises $46M, Now Valued At More Than $1B

Sprinklr just announced that it has raised $46 million in new funding, at what it says is a valuation of more than $1 billion. The round was led by existing investors Battery Ventures, Intel Capital, and Iconiq Capital and brings the company’s total funding to $123.5 million. (Sprinklr’s last funding of $40 million was announced just under a year ago.) Read More

6 Simple Steps to Creating Your Content Marketing Strategy

Creating a content marketing strategy is no simple task. In fact, 2/3 of marketers feel they aren’t successful with their content marketing. For both small and large businesses, the content you create is the main bridge connecting your brand to your customer.

Last week, the hot topic of the Social Media Marketing World gathering in sunny San Diego was the critical importance of strong content marketing that captures and converts your customer. Captivating, concise, and consistent content is a core part of any brand. Joe Pulizzi, founder of the well-known content marketing hub Content Marketing Institute and author of Epic Content Marketing shared a simple 6-step process to create your content marketing strategy. Although his session was mainly geared toward small, new businesses and entrepreneurs, it serves as a great reminder and framework for big businesses to take a second look at their current content marketing strategy.

Here are 6 simple steps to creating your content marketing strategy:

1. Sweet Spot: The key first step to building your strategy is building an audience with a targeted group of people. It is not only about finding the sweet spot of what your audience wants to hear, but also finding the sweet spot of your knowledge and passion, so the content you are creating can connect on a shared level.


2. Content Tilt: Because there is such a vast and relentless content overload flooding the Internet, your content needs an edge or a “tilt.” So how do you make your content unique and differentiate yourself from other people out they’re writing about the same topics? When creating content, you should ask yourself: Is this story worth telling?
   
   Your content should be niche. To start, Joe suggests you follow in the steps of every media company and create an editorial mission or as he calls it: A Content Marketing Mission Statement.
   
   In this mission statement there are 3 stages that must be touched on: 1. Define Core Target Audience. You really should only target one. If you target more than one group, you aren’t going niche enough. 2. What will be delivered? 3. The outcome for the Audience. Tip: Add a column to your content marketing calendar spreadsheet called “outcomes”. This will help you define what the audience will get out of the post.


3. Building the Base: In this step, you actually begin creating your content. You should focus only on one content type, one main platform, having consistent delivery over a long period of time. In this step, consistency is key. Another important thing media companies can’t do is miss deadlines and neither should your brand.


4. Harvesting Audience: Building your audience is one feat, but maintaining subscribers is a whole other battle. One of the key metrics you should focus on is subscribers, your frequent flyers. After all, we as brands do not own Facebook or Twitter followers. Subscribers to your blog or email should be your main focus. Next, you should begin building an influencer list. This should consist of a small key base.
   
   However, many marketers make the mistake of thinking that these influencers will become advocates. The key for building this initial influencer list is to use them for reach. After that, you shift your focus on building more authority with your newly acquired eyeballs.


5. Diversification: Focus on being great at one thing on one platform. Then diversify.


6. Monetization: After successfully building your subscribers and you feel confident you have a solid base, then you can begin to think about monetizing your brand. On average, it takes 15-17 months to monetize your content. Your goal in the beginning should not be how to make money. First, build an audience with a targeted group of people. Then, monetize it.

Ask the Experts: Intro to Negative Keyword Match Types

Transcript

Hi everybody, thanks so much for joining us for today’s second installment of “Ask the Experts.” My name is Erin Sagin, and I’ll be walking you through today’s question.

So today we’ll be focusing on negatives. Negatives are hugely, hugely impactful to an AdWords account, and everybody out there should be using them. Negatives are important because they’re going to help you cut wasted spend, and eliminate unqualified traffic from seeing your ads.

The way this works is that if you set a word as a negative keyword, Google will understand that if anybody types that in a search query, they’re not a good fit for your business and it will prevent your ad from showing.

So let me give you an example. I have a client, her name is Kimmy, she sells cakes down in Baltimore. She sells every kind of cake you can imagine; birthday cakes, anniversary cakes, wedding cakes. The only type of cake that she doesn’t sell is crab cakes – but this is a huge issue for her, living in Baltimore where people are always searching for crab cakes, so it seems.

One day, I was looking through Kimmy’s Search Query report, and as we were looking through it, we started to notice she was getting a lot of impressions, and even clicks, for people looking for crab cake restaurants. So, we used negatives to take action on this, and eliminate it from happening again in the future.

One thing that I want to make clear to everyone out there is that not all negatives are created equally. They all work a little bit differently. Just like with regular keywords, there’s a concept of negative keyword match types. So just like with regular keywords, you have broad, phrase, and exact, same thing goes for negative keywords. Let me explain how each of these work.

So we’ll start with a negative broad match keyword. The way a negative broad match keyword works is, let’s take an example – crab cakes. If we set “crab cakes” to a negative broad match, any query that contains both “crab” and “cakes” will not trigger your ad to show. So, for example, if somebody types in, “crab and shrimp cakes” – because “crab” and “cakes” both appear within the search query – your ad won’t be triggered.

The next level is a phrase match negative. This works very similarly to a regular phrase match keyword. The only time it will serve as a negative is if “crab cakes,” as an intact phrase, appears within the search query. So if somebody types in “where can I buy blue crab cakes,” then my ad won’t show because “crab cakes” appeared as a phrase match.

And finally, the last and least common negative to use is an exact match negative. With an exact match negative, your ad will not be triggered to show if somebody types in that exact negative keyword. So that person would have to type in “crab cakes” in order for that ad to not show on Google.

If you guys have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out – I know negative match types can get a little bit confusing, but they’re really, really important to master because it is going to have a huge impact on how these negatives interact with keywords and search queries in your account.

As always, we’re happy to add more questions to the “Ask the Experts” series. Please don’t hesitate to send your questions to us via Twitter at @WordStream, or directly to me at @ErinSagin. You can also comment below!

 

Indie comedy starring all your favorite Vine celebs launches Kickstarter

Comedians and Vine stars Jason Nash and Brandon Calvillo have a new project that is largely inspired by their real lives: a full length film called FML: A Social Media Adventure.

The film centers around two men who travel across the country making short videos on a Vine-like app called Reload, trying to boost their social media following. Along with achieving viral fame, FML is also about the strong friendship between Nash and Calvillo's characters, as well as the real-life one that inspired it.

See also: 19 Viners Funnier Than Anyone You Know IRL

FML: A SOCIAL MEDIA ADVENTURE • Kickstarter Campaign Video from Fantail Entertainment on Vimeo. Read more...

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Naritiv Helped ‘Pretty Little Liars’ Get 800K Snapchat Followers In 3 Months

With every big social content network comes tools and services for brands to leverage those platforms. For Snapchat, that tool is Naritiv. The startup has been building out an influencer network that they can leverage to build out Snapchat campaigns for various brands, complete with analytics and reporting tools. Naritiv launched out of the Disney Accelerator, powered by Techstars, and was… Read More

Creating the Perfect Email/Digital Marketing Program for Your Organization Part 2

In part two of this look at how to create the ideal program for your brand, it's time to prioritize your wish list.

Drowning In The Live Streams

Phones can make us jerks. They let us ignore friends, cancel plans last-minute, and annoy those around us in public. But this month, we got a whole new way to abuse our mobile devices. Unless we can manage how we interrupt each other, it could ruin one of the most promising modern communication mediums: live streaming. Read More

Highlighted Aspects of the Solar Industry

Solar energy has entered our lives for decades, and has been the change in our lives since. With more spin-off industry, many things that have become difficult to treat. While many aspects have become very popular rooms that provide large amounts of benefits every day. What are they? Distributed solar Service The service relates to ...

Pushed Off

Phones can make us jerks. They let us ignore friends, cancel plans last-minute, and annoy those around us in public. But this month, we got a whole new way to abuse our mobile devices. Unless we can manage how we interrupt each other, it could ruin one of the most promising modern communication mediums: livestreaming. “Josh Constine is live: I’m bored so watch me”… Read More

How to use Facebook for thank you notes

We're all a little lax when it comes to sending as many "thank you" notes as we should

That's where Facebook comes in. It's the perfect platform for thank you missives that can be personalized and shared, giving a public shoutout to someone who's done you a solid

See also: Fake a handwritten note with these 4 online services

Here's our how and why of using Facebook to say thanks. Let us know your ideas in the comments below

Thank you scenarios

Image: Facebook

There are endless ways in which Facebook is ideal for sending a thank you note

• Someone's given you/your child/your pet a gift. Snap a picture of the recipient with said gift and create a photo post, tagging the giver as a thank you. You get to show her how much the present was appreciated and she gets a public shoutout for her thoughtfulness

• You enjoyed a delicious meal at someone's home. Be sure to grab a tasty-looking image of the food and the next day, post a Facebook #foodgram complimenting his amazing cuisine and tagging him as the chef. He'll be flattered you liked the food so much to create a post

• You were invited to a party or other event. Take some arty shots and create a mini-gallery on Facebook, tagging the organizer. Make sure you mention details (the decorations, the venue, the music, etc.) so the organizer knows you really noticed the small things Read more...

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Meerkat and Periscope for concerts? Katy Perry says 'embrace the future'

LOS ANGELES — It's inevitable: Meerkat and Periscope, the rival live-streaming apps that have taken the world by storm this month, will be used at countless concerts by fans who want to instantly share their experiences with their friends, family and followers.

But how do artists feel about their ticketed shows being broadcast to non-concertgoers for free? Mashable asked Katy Perry — the most-followed Twitter user and one of the biggest current touring acts — to weigh in on these hot new live-streaming apps

See also: Hands on with Twitter Periscope, the app gunning for Meerkat

"You've got to embrace the future or you're left behind," Perry, 30, told Mashable on Thursday at the Epix screening of the TV special for her Prismatic World Tour Read more...

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Anonymous Social App Cloaq Lets You Secretly Comment On Anything

The trend toward anonymous social applications may be on the downswing for some, but others believe there’s still a place for online discussions where users don’t have to reveal their real identity. Case in point: Cloaq, the anonymous app where users never had to provide an identifying piece of information, like a phone number or email, is today launching out of beta with a new twist. Read More

Facebook Took The Scenic Route, But Now It’s Nailing Mobile

A company can’t easily shore up its weaknesses, especially when it grows to the size of Facebook, but the social network has managed to slowly but surely reinvent itself on mobile in a way that makes sense and resonates with users. FB surely stumbled along the path, and some of its efforts even drew outright scorn, but presumably the ill-fated experiments informed recent successes, and… Read More

6 Strategic Trends Highlighted at Social Media Marketing World

Social Media Marketing World is back for the third time in San Diego this week. Many of the big names in the social media space are here including Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, Mari Smith, and more. A dream for any social media marketer, this event covers every topic from how to take your social media global, to Facebook advertising strategies, and how to get started with your own podcast.

At his opening keynote, CEO of Social Media Examiner, Mike Stelzner, started his presentation with an image of “The Dress” and of course took a poll from the crowd: Blue and black, or white and gold? The crowd was about even for both (I see blue and black), but Stelzner made the point that this is a great example of how we can all be looking at the same thing and come away with something different. It’s important to realize that this same thing can happen with our own social marketing.

Stelzner went on to discuss some of the major trends that we are seeing now in social media, with the main one being video.

1. YouTube is powerful. More than half (56%) of marketers say they want to improve their knowledge of YouTube, and two thirds of marketers plan to increase their use of it. However, Facebook, and even Twitter, are challenging that power. In fact, Facebook is actually degrading YouTube video exposure in the newsfeed.

2. Native video is now the best content to post to Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has noted video is a big priority for the channel right now. Video will now automatically be played in the newsfeed, which helps entice people to stop and watch. Facebook now even allows you to embed your videos into your blog posts, similarly to how you can with YouTube.

Twitter, too, has put an emphasis on video, with the announcement of their new Video on Twitter feature in February. This completely changes the game. Brands just went from 140 characters, to sharing 30 seconds of whatever content they want. This is a big opportunity for brands to not only be better storytellers, but also be able to show their personalities and become more human.

3. The new, cool app Meerkat is also taking video on Twitter to new lengths. Taking SXSW by storm, Meerkat is an app that allows you to stream live video to your followers on Twitter. Guy Kawasaki actually used Meerkat to live stream his entire presentation at Social Media Marketing World yesterday.

Although native video is still somewhat of an untapped frontier, according to Stelzner, 72% of marketers plan on increasing their use of video in 2015. So whether you hire a camera crew, or strap on your GoPro, it’s time to make video a priority in your marketing strategy.

Some other social trends that Stelzner highlighted are:

4.Podcasting is growing. With the booming success of the podcast Serial, we are now seeing more mainstream media outlets and big businesses are all starting to create their own podcasts. Even though it’s still a small space with only 9.7% of marketers participating in podcasts, 42% of marketers say that they want to learn more about podcasting, which is up from 28% in 2014.

5.Social reporting and ROI is on the rise. Nearly half (42%) of marketers are now able to measure and report on social ROI. A vast majority (78%) of marketers are able to show that social media increases traffic to their web properties, although 88% of marketers still say they want to know how to improve it.

6.Facebook is BIG for marketers…still. Even though Facebook has changed, then changed again their algorithms for businesses to get their content seen, 51% of marketers still say that it’s the most important social channel. In fact, the use of Facebook for marketing is actually growing, with 62% of marketers saying that they are increasing their use of Facebook in 2015.

What are some of the biggest trends that you’re seeing in social media today?

15 Google Analytics Tips to Speed Up Your Website Data Analysis & Optimization

Would you like to achieve more in less time and with less effort? The success of any online business depends on how quickly it can turn insights into action. This is true for data analysis as well. The good news is that you are about to learn 15 actionable tips you can use with Google […]

Burnbook: What parents need to know about the controversial app

"This app was created to increase cyberbullying. There's no other reason."

So begins the current top review on iTunes for the controversial Burnbook app. The social networking service has made headlines across the country in recent weeks for bringing anonymous cyberbullying and threats of violence to American high schools.

See also: How to debate the big issues on social media

The same reviewer goes on to say, "The app has become popular at my school and is specifically targeting a small group of people. I wish I could repeat the evil things that were posted so I could get my point across, but I cannot bring myself to spread those gruesome things even further." Read more...

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How to Generate $100,000 a Month from a Brand New Blog

A week ago, I wrote a blog post stating that anyone can generate $100,000 a month in income. To prove it, I told you that I’m going to create a new company and grow it from scratch without leveraging my connections. In the majority of your comments, you told me you wanted me to create a new company  [click to continue...]

Nanigans Raises $24M To Fuel Asian Growth And Expand Its Ad Tools Beyond Facebook

Leading Facebook ad company Nanigans is announcing that it has raised $24 million in Series B funding. In this case, it’s is taking money from a big Asian investor — Chinese Internet company Cheetah Mobile. (Cheetah led the round, while Avalon Ventures and Wellington Management Company also participated.) Naturally, one of the goals is to accelerate Nanigans’ growth in… Read More

Where AdWords Website Call Conversions Can Go Wrong

When Google AdWords launched their website call conversions program in August, I was ecstatic. I’m the Chief Marketing Officer for an agency that focuses on marketing for apartments, so our clients primarily rely on phone calls—their business objective is lead generation, rather than e-commerce transactions or ad impressions. The website call conversion program was a huge step forward in our ability not only to report the success of our AdWords marketing to clients, but also to help us optimize our campaigns by finding what was working and what wasn’t in the campaigns we were running.

But as we rolled this out to clients, we discovered a major flaw in the Google AdWords website call conversion feature that may also affect you, depending on your configuration. This flaw causes the tracking number of one website within your account to show up as the tracking number on your other websites within the same account.

To be clear, if your AdWords account only runs campaigns for one website, then you will not run into this problem. If, however, you use one account for campaigns to multiple websites, then you should be aware of this problem with Google AdWords website call conversions.

A Closer Look at the Problem

To use our own configuration as a concrete example, we are a marketing agency serving apartment companies, and many of those companies manage multiple apartment communities. As part of our marketing services, we create websites for each of those apartment communities, and then we manage their AdWords marketing within one account for the whole management company. We could split out each community into a different account, but we have chosen this strategy as a way of avoiding any possibility of breaking the rule against “double serving” ads by “promoting the same or similar content from multiple accounts on the same or similar queries” through sister properties of the same management company.

But one day, a client reported to us that the dynamic tracking phone number generated for one community’s website showed up on the website of another of their communities in the same account. Here is a screenshot of the two websites side-by-side:

Again, if you use Google website call conversions for multiple websites from a single account, your end users might dial a number that connects them to a completely different business than the website they are calling from.

This is especially problematic in the apartment industry, where apartment shoppers (like hotel shoppers) go through a “lay of the land” phase in their decision-making process, looking at many different apartment communities to try to figure out all the options available to them. In doing so, it is easy to imagine a scenario where someone visits the websites of multiple communities managed by the same company, so that the phone number points to an entirely different community than the one they are trying to contact.

How to Work Around this Problem

We contacted Google about this issue, who acknowledged that this configuration would cause a problem with the accuracy of the website call conversions destination phone numbers. That said, they told us that they are not likely to address this issue soon, since there is a relatively simple workaround.

The only way to fix this problem is to split each website into its own account so that the dynamic phone number of one website cannot bleed onto any other site. Or, simply don’t use the website call conversion tracking until Google fixes the problem.

Technical Details About Why This Issue Happens

Curious about why this actually happens? Here are the technical details if you are interested in reading further.

Google’s technology for tracking website call conversions is pretty simple—in concept, at least. Basically, when someone clicks on one of your AdWords ads, a couple of small snippets of JavaScript code on your website seamlessly replace your normal phone number with a dynamically generated phone number, unique to that one person who clicked the ad. Then, if the person converts as a lead by calling that phone number, AdWords can track that phone call as a conversion all the way back to the campaign that generated the click.

The first snippet to place on your website is a tracking tag:

This tracking tag includes two custom variables:

• ak: This numeric variable identifies your account. It isn’t identical to your account ID number, but if you generate multiple website call conversions within the same account, this number stays the same across all your “Calls from website” conversions.
• cl: This alphanumeric case-sensitive string is the conversion label, identifying which specific website call conversion was triggered in your AdWords account. This is unique for every website call conversion that you set up.

The second JavaScript snippet is the portion of code that actually replaces your business phone number with the AdWords dynamic tracking number that registers a call to that number as a website call conversion.

One of the best features of this program, then, is the fact that Google lets you specify a conversion window. So, if someone clicks an ad one day and then returns up to 60 days later, the phone number on your website will still display the dynamic tracking number to register that call as a conversion days, weeks, or months after the initial ad click.

It seems, then, that the variable in charge of assigning a user’s unique tracking number is the “ak” variable. In other words, this snippet provides for an account identifier, but not an individual website identifier. The “cl” variable only identifies the specific website call conversion, but nowhere in setting up the website call conversion within AdWords do you add a specific phone number or a specific website to associate with that conversion—all of that is done through the JavaScript snippet.

So, since the “ak” account identifier is the same for every website call conversion, that same unique tracking number will follow a user from site to site whenever that user finds a website from the same AdWords account.

TL;DR

If you use one Google AdWords account to run campaigns for multiple websites with different phone numbers, then Google AdWords website call conversions may not show the correct phone number if a user visits more than one of your websites. The only way to fix this (for now) is to separate each website into a unique AdWords account.

About the author:

Jacob Gerber is the Chief Marketing Officer for Rentping Media, a digital apartment marketing agency. Jacob has written extensively for the apartment industry about video marketing, SEO, Google AdWords, and website design. Jacob lives in Lincoln, NE with his wife, daughter, and son. You can follow him on Twitter @JacobGerber or on Google+.

Check out Jacob's previous article for Wordstream: How to Use Google AdWords for Apartment Marketing

 

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