The secret to share-worthy content

The secret to share-worthy content

Dark.net    September 12, 2016    Comment   

People love to share things with their friends, family, and colleagues. Presenting your users with relevant and unique content is the best way to encourage sharing and give you a competitive advantage. Content that is underscored by emotion, in particular, can help you strengthen your brand’s presence.

Here are some tips to help you get into the minds, and hearts, of your audience:


1. Be relatable

Taking the time to research what your visitors are interested in is the first step to creating shareable content. Diversify to cover multiple facets of your audience’s interests by including work, lifestyle and social topics to keep things fresh and engaging. Contextualizing your stories also increases the chances of your audience relating to and wanting to share your site.

2. Know what’s trending

Staying up-to-the-minute can require a lot of time and research. Luckily, online tools such as Google Trends can help you identify what’s important to your audience as well as offer helpful insights about people in specific regions you are trying to target. Being a thought leader means not only sharing up-to-the-minute industry news with your audience, but also offering insightful observations and predictions of what this may mean down the road. A trusted source is a followed source.

3. Increase your content’s shelf life

While timely articles are great for generating instant buzz, having content that maintains its importance over time yields higher traffic rate overall. Evergreen content is information that stays relevant no matter when it is consumed. Make sure to interlace trendier content with evergreen pieces every so often. 

 

To learn more about familiarizing your audience with your brand, check out the AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement.

Posted by Jay Castro
Audience Development Specialist
@jayciro

3 easy tips to build a relationship with your audience

3 easy tips to build a relationship with your audience

Dark.net    Agustus 25, 2016    Comment   

Drawing new visitors to your site is only half of the battle. Having a plan for them to follow once they get there is the key to encouraging repeat visits and building a meaningful relationship with your readers.

To engage user-focused design for your site, it’s important to consider the following:


1. Keep It Simple

Gating desirable content can be a great way to learn more about visitors by prompting them to fill out a form or sign up for your newsletter to access it. However, roughly 67% of users will abandon an effort to obtain information or purchase something online if there are too many steps to take. Make sure your users get what they need in as few steps as possible. Matched content is another way to keep visitors from checking out too soon by increasing your odds of presenting them with content they are directly interested in.

2. Identify User Moments

People often look for inspiration and ideas while they complete a task online. Anticipating your visitors’ needs can help you set up your site to better serve them so you can capture and capitalize on these important moments. Whether they are purchasing something or just browsing, presenting this information in the right format can greatly increase the amount of time they spend on your site. 

For example, if you’re an eCommerce site selling chocolates, having recommendations alongside each product such as gift boxes, complementing candy, and drink pairings can get your site visitor thinking about the holidays or gifts for their loved ones.

3. Create engaging Calls to Action 

Bold “sign up” buttons and friendly prompts or reminders move visitors to take action. From bold colors and text to exaggerated size and other visual clues, there are a number of ways to make these important actions stand out on your site and even fun for users to engage with. In fact, our own AdSense team tested different campaign graphics on our marketing campaigns and saw higher implementation and engagement rates.

 

To learn more about familiarizing your audience with your brand, check out the AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement.

Posted by Jay Castro

From the AdSense Team

@jayciro

Earn more from mobile: 3 rules and 6 best practices

Earn more from mobile: 3 rules and 6 best practices

Dark.net    Juni 15, 2016    Comment   

However important mobile is to your business today, it will become even more critical tomorrow.

That's true whether you’re blogging about your favorite sports team, building the site for your community theater, or selling products to potential customers. Your visitors simply must have a great experience when they visit your site on their mobile devices.

Research has found that 61% of users will leave a mobile site if they don’t see what they are looking for right away. 

Sites that are not mobile-friendly expect users to pinch, slide, and zoom in order to consume content. It’s a frustrating experience when users expect to find the information they’re looking for right away, but are presented with obstacles to obtain that information. This is what causes users to abandon sites. 

To create a mobile-friendly site, follow these three rules:

1. Make it fast. Research shows that 74% of people will abandon a mobile site that takes more than 5 seconds to load.
2. Make it easy. Research shows that 61% of users will leave a mobile site if they don’t find what they're looking for straight away.
3. Be consistent across screens. Make it easy for users to find what they need no matter what device they're using.

It's also important to think about your ads when you're designing or fine-tuning your mobile-friendly site. Focus on creating a flow between your content and your ads for the ultimate user experience and maximum viewability. Consult your analytics data and set events to track and understand where your users are most receptive to ads.

Here are some mobile-friendly ad best practice tips:

1. Swap out the 320x50 ad units for 320x100 for a potential RPM increase.
2. Place a 320x100 ad unit just above the fold.
3. Use the 300x250 ad unit below the fold (BTF) mixed in with your content.
4. Prevent accidental clicks on enhanced features in text ads by moving ad units 150 pixels away from your content.
5. Consider using responsive ad units, which optimize ad sizes to screen sizes and work seamlessly with your responsive site.  
6. Test your site. Pick the metrics that matter most to you – then experiment with them.

The ad experience on your site should be designed with your mobile users in mind, just like the site itself. 

There are many ways to improve your users’ mobile experience on your site. Download the AdSense Guide to Mobile Web Success today, and find out more on how to make mobile a major asset to your business.

Posted by: 

Chiara Ferraris

Publisher Monetization Specialist

@chiara_ferraris