This week my family and office are having their final adventure in moving. Our moving truck with our possessions that have been in storage since July is finally arriving on the 22nd to deliver all the things we were sure we had lost while moving.
After living in an apartment for too many months now, my office and family is finally being moved to our final location and newly built home.
I’ll be taking a break from blogging this week due to the loss of internet connectivity, chaos moving all my office furniture and files, and the fact that nearly our entire extended family and remote office staff will be coming to visit for the holiday.
I manage many AdWords accounts across a diverse selection of verticals and wanted to share with you an insight that I am finding out appears to be true for many of our clients.
Mobile is a very important part of the lead generation equation; even if you are not seeing strong lead generation coming directly from mobile do not discount its importance.
Here’s one test I did recently…
I moved a client totally out of mobile using a -100% bid as their Google Analytics traffic stated that only 3.0% of their visitors were coming in from a mobile device. This client runs a Yahoo store and is using one of Yahoo’s generated mobile websites.
Immediately we saw a 12% drop in overall conversions, a 33.87% drop in cost, a 35.38% drop in clicks, and 27.17% increase in cost per conversion.
What I am finding out is that for many clients mobile activity, when stopped completely, causes a drop in even desktop conversions.
So although mobile is valuable for your overall lead generation strategy controlling the bid is very important.
Google recommends using this formula to assign the correct bid for mobile to achieve the best return on ad spend.
(Mobile conversion rate divided by the desktop conversion rate) – 1. This give you the percentage to be up or down in your bid.
I personally review all accounts every 30 days and when I am in the account on a weekly basis review the setting based on an upward or downward trend in mobile conversions to tweak the bid.
Mobile bidding is certainly not a set and forget setting. Your success or lack of success in this important segment will impact your overall program’s conversions.
Learn From Our Experience How to Add Images Fast to Social Media.
Our clients are asking for images in their social media posts. Sounds easy right, but not so fast. Here’s what I’ve learned and wanted to share it with you.
For HootSuite users it is easy to add an image to LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+. You just open the writing panel, click the paperclip and then browse to the image you want to save. But what about when you are doing bulk loading and scheduling using a spreadsheet or when you are wanting images in Twitter?
Bulk Loading
You cannot add an image using the bulk load spreadsheet method in HootSuite. So if you want images, you will have to bulk load your updates and then manually go to each social media account and edit your post manually and add your image. Not so simple, but not so hard either.
Twitter
For Twitter, your content will need to be only about 10 to 15 words and if you have a link to shrink, know that the link will take up character space and so will the image. We are trying to stick with about 10 words or so.
You still have to do the manual upload of images and may need to rewrite or edit your post to have it once the image is in to be within character count.
Notes
All images you add to Facebook have to be under 5 mb. A good rule of thumb is that an image compressed for the web and no bigger than 600 pixels wide with a resolution of 175 dpi will meet this 5 mb criteria.
Nancy McCord – teaches you how to get your mail into the Cloud and out of Outlook.
Continued from Monday and Wednesday.
I have now fully transitioned my email to the Cloud. I am not going back to Outlook as the benefits for me of having my mail in the Cloud are positive and well beyond what I expected.
When I clear, delete, archive or label an email on my smartphone while out of the office, it is similarly done everywhere – tablet, laptop, desktop. I love this! How great will travel be, I will only need to review email once and when I come home my desktop will be up to date.
My online calendar is the boss! I’ll do a series on how to move your calendar to Google as that is also part of the equation on how to be more productive while working in the Cloud. I have my scheduling app Calendly feed directly into my Google calendar and without the hassle of feeding and creating duplicate events in Outlook my work flow is streamlined.
I was not sure I could wean myself off Outlook folders. I organize and save all client correspondence and was worried that in Gmail I would lose or not be able to find things without the same set up. What I learned is the power of labels and stars. Plus the Google email search function is wonderful and find my mail in a snap. Remember, labels are the new folder in Gmail. You can still nest labels and create folders if you really want to.
Make sure to go to the “lab” setting and select to enable these items to get the full use and power of Gmail – Canned Responses, Multiple In Boxes, Unread Message Icon, and Preview Pane. By using these lab functions you can set up your inbox to almost appear like the Outlook you were comfortable with.
There are tons of resources online to review to help you effectively and productively use Gmail. I read nearly everything at Google https://support.google.com/mail/?hl=en#topic=3394144 while I was transitioning and found the information very helpful.
