How to Build a Strong Brand Presence on Social Media

With social media’s highly saturated, ever-evolving, and competitive landscape today, building an impactful brand presence on any given platform may feel overwhelming.

And you’re not wrong!

Social media strategy requires effort and intention. There’s a constantly changing algorithm to navigate, and there are subtle yet impactful differences between the platforms, including LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and more. Each has its own demographic and vibe and requires a distinct content methodology.

But, with an estimated 4.89 billion social media users worldwide in 2023, there’s no question that social media is a compelling — and necessary — investment to reach your target audiences and get your brand noticed.

Here are eight tips to learn from brands with strong social media presence.

Identify Your Audience to Identify Your Platform(s)

Before you even press play on social media, it’s critical to identify who you’re trying to reach. Your intended audience will also help dictate which platform (or platforms) make the most sense for your brand to invest in — and the type of content you’ll generate.

Social media is all about segmentation. You want to message the right audience while amplifying your best strengths. It’s often not worth it to dilute your time and energy across too many platforms when you can put forth intentional effort on one or two.

For example, if your target group is Gen Z, TikTok should probably be part of your plan. Trying to reach an older B2B audience? LinkedIn — and even YouTube — will likely be good places to start. Have a more visually driven business? You may be missing out by not being on Instagram and Pinterest.

Create a Content Calendar

A social media calendar is vital to managing and organizing your content. It will help you keep tabs on your posting schedule, track content themes and campaigns, and navigate the nuances of each platform.

While you can grid it out yourself, social media planning and scheduling tools are available to streamline the process.

Stay Consistent and Active

A content calendar isn’t just helpful for tracking purposes; it can also ensure consistency with a regular posting schedule. This is important because brands that regularly post and engage on their platforms experience a much stronger and more successful brand presence than those with a more erratic approach.

While you can test out different posting frequencies and times, you can also consult some best practices for how often to post to each platform.

But it’s not just about posting. Brands should also reply to comments and direct messages to build relationships and trust with their followers. This engagement will also help you stay attuned to consumer sentiment, address any customer service issues, and spot any potential problems.

Social listening tools can help you engage quickly and effectively with your audience, track responses, and identify trends.

Deliver Value

If you need help determining what type of content to produce, err on the side of helping rather than hard selling. In fact, a 2024 survey conducted by Hootsuite found that audiences want to be entertained and want less self-promotion from companies.

After all, people follow brands that offer them some type of value or benefit — whether it be tutorials and advice, relevant educational information, cool inspiration, or just plain fun.

That said, feel free to experiment with different types of high-quality content to see what sticks with your audience and creates the most engagement. Giveaways can be a great way to reward your followers, too.

Celebrate User-Generated Content

Highlighting user-generated content—whether created by influencers or simply happy customers—is another way to demonstrate your value and relevance to your audience while building credibility and trustworthiness.

It also provides a nice and engaging change of pace for your followers, who will likely enjoy seeing and hearing what others have to say about your brand.

Stay Authentic to Your Brand

Focusing on intentionality and relevance in your content is important, but so is packaging that content. It’s important to develop your brand identity on social media and then always stay true to it.

For example, having a consistent voice, visual aesthetic, and messaging that’s unique to your brand and maintained across each social channel will pay dividends in amplifying your professional brand presence.

Remember to Be Human

People connect with people — so it’s essential to make sure your brand feels approachable, authentic, and human on social media.

When you ditch industry jargon and formal language and instead engage with your followers directly and honestly through your posts, comments, and messages, you give them a chance to develop a stronger connection, which ultimately creates brand affinity and loyalty.

Invest When Necessary

Sometimes, building a strong social presence means investing in paid advertising. From boosting posts so more of your targeted audience sees them to strategic ad campaigns delivering a specific message, it’s all part of a comprehensive social plan.

Brands with the best social media presence enlist help where needed. Many companies don’t have the time, expertise, or resources to build and manage their social media presence effectively. So, they bring in a dedicated team to take it on.

How to Get Brand Social Media Presence Help

Denver Post Media knows that social media provides an unprecedented opportunity to increase recognition, brand loyalty, conversions, customer base, and ultimately, ROI. With a team of social media and content experts, we take a customized approach to each and every brand we partner with.

Learn more about how we can help you build your brand presence here.

Key Metrics That Indicate Email Marketing Success

Email marketing campaigns can be highly advantageous to your business. But just as important as creating and sending those emails is analyzing their results to see what’s performing well — and what’s not.

Fortunately, email marketing metrics are easy to measure. Most email marketing services — from Mailchimp to Hubspot, Klaviyo, and more — include a robust set of reporting and analytics tools to track email performance and inform any adjustments or improvements you may need to make.

Here are five key email marketing metrics to track and assess, which will help you evaluate if your email campaigns are working.

Open Rate

Start with your email marketing campaign’s open rate. This is simply the percentage of people who opened your email.

Open rates tell you several things. First, they let you know if your subject lines are working for you, enticing your subscribers to open the email.

They can also provide information about the time of day that works best for your audience to receive an email — and the frequency at which to message them. For some audiences, twice a week might work. For others, once a week — or once every two weeks, might be better.

Open rates can also tell you about the quality of your email list. For example, if you have 20,000 people on your list but only 200 are consistently opening your emails, then you may need to consider your list strategy and whether you’re talking to the right target audience.

So, what kind of open rate should you aim for? While it can vary by industry, a good email marketing metrics benchmark is an average open rate of around 34%.

Clickthrough Rate (CTR)

Clickthrough rate (CTR) is another highly prioritized metric for email marketing. This statistic shows the percentage of email recipients who clicked on a hyperlink — often referred to as a Call to Action (CTA) in your email.

CTR helps you gauge the effectiveness of your email campaign because it indicates the engagement and interest level of your audience for a given product or promotion. Evaluated over time, CTR can also point to trends in how relevant or useful your emails are and which content your audience cares about most.

An optimal industry average CTR is 2.66%. However, depending on the industry, it may range from 1% to 5%.

Conversion Rate

One step beyond both open rate and CTR is conversion rate. This metric indicates the percentage of your subscribers who completed the intended action. However, what counts as a “conversion” may be different from business to business — and from email to email.

For example, if an email campaign was celebrating your latest white paper and the CTA linked to a landing page for the download, the conversion rate would tell you how many people completed that download. Successful email conversions can also involve completing an interest form, participating in a giveaway, making a purchase, and more.

For many marketers, the conversion rate is the most valuable metric because it provides a tangible return on investment for your email campaigns.

Generally, average conversion rates range from 2% to 5%, but this can vary dramatically based on the intended action. Some product sales may take longer to convert, whereas downloading an infographic or entering a contest is far easier for the consumer.

Unsubscribe Rate

The unsubscribe rate is the percentage of your email subscribers who ask to be removed from your email list after receiving any given email.

However, it’s far easier for recipients to just press “delete” or ignore emails than to formally “unsubscribe,” so this metric will not tell you the whole picture.

That said, it’s still important to track, as it will help you establish a baseline for your business’s normal behavior and monitor any changes in that percentage. Sudden spikes in unsubscribes may provide vital information about the type of email content, layout, or offers that people do not want to see.

The average email unsubscribe rate is about 0.1%.

List Growth Rate

Email attrition is a given. In fact, email lists degrade by an average of about 25% annually.

So, it’s critical to replace those unsubscribes with new people and continue building a quality email list with your business’s most engaged audiences.

Keeping tabs on your growth rate will help you determine whether your email lead generation strategy is working or if you need to double down on expanding your audience.

Optimizing Email Marketing for Success

Equipped with these email marketing metrics, you can track and assess how well your campaigns are performing over time. However, be sure to evaluate opportunities to grow your target audience list while improving your email content and strategy.

Whether you’re a small business looking to make an impact or an established powerhouse seeking next-level strategic ideas and advanced reporting, Denver Post Media customizes its approach to each and every partner organization.

While sends, opens, and clicks are all important for email marketing, we can also amplify your results by retargeting your list with display and video ads, plus unique email solutions. Learn more here.

How Your Business Can Keep Pace with Google Algorithm Updates

Maintaining current best practices for an online business presence can be a full-time job. Google’s search algorithm is a primary driver for determining who sees your content and how much traffic your site gets daily. When the Google algorithm changes, your business should be ready to adapt its online content to reflect the newest priorities in digital information.

Navigating Google Algorithm Updates as a Business

What Is the Google Algorithm?

Google’s algorithm is complex and multifaceted, but for most users and content creators, the search algorithm that determines what results to return for a given query is the most important to understand. Google’s process involves several steps.

Google constantly crawls pages; this means it seeks out sites across the internet and gathers information from its metadata (backend details) and page content.
Google then indexes some of these sites. I won’t include pages that don’t meet enough quality and content standards. Indexed pages retain information about their content and other measurement factors.
When a user starts a search, Google returns results based on its search algorithm, pulling results from indexed pages, not the entirety of the internet.

Factors That Go into Google’s Search Algorithm

Google’s exact algorithm to produce SERPs (search engine results pages) is proprietary. Even if content creators don’t know the algorithm’s inner workings, several general categories describe essential factors Google considers for rankings.

User history and context: Your search history, location, and user settings help drive the results you’ll see.
Page quality and authority: Pages that show strong signs of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness are prioritized, as is longer-form content. The number and quality of backlinks (other pages that link to the content) are a factor here.
User interface: Mobile-friendly sites, pages that load quickly, limited obtrusive ads, and security settings all improve a page ranking.
Relevance: Google returns sites that match your search terms, in part using data to show whether previous users have found the matches relevant. User time spent on a page helps drive this category.
Meaning: Pages that match your exact search terms rank high on the list, but so do synonyms, related terms, and pages that reflect what the algorithm can infer you’re looking for. Subheadings, bulleted lists, and image alt text help specify meaning on a page.

Quality Control for Algorithm Effectiveness

With every major update, Google contracts with search quality raters to manually assess the algorithm’s performance. The search quality rater guidelines show that a page’s quality score during this screening process relies heavily on the E-E-A-T components: experience, expertise, authority, and trust. Even if these metrics don’t explicitly factor into the automated rankings, Google clearly outlines its preference for pages demonstrating these qualities. Additionally, Google’s webspam team periodically assesses sites and issues manual penalties if the page doesn’t adhere to quality content guidelines. If your page receives a penalty, the algorithm will drop its rank. You can resolve the penalty and apply for review to improve your algorithm performance.

When Are Google Algorithm Updates?

Google updates its algorithm in small ways almost daily, but significant updates (core updates) that noticeably affect the search engine results happen once or twice a year. You can review a list of previous core updates through the end of 2022 to explore the trends you can expect with future changes. Google does not always announce what changes come with each core update, so staying connected with other content creators and marketing experts can help alert you when updates have dropped.

The Most Recent Algorithm Update

As of this article’s publication, the most recent core update was in March 2024. According to many experts in the field, this core update had largely unexpected results. The helpfulness and quality of pages drive this update far more than other search algorithm categories. Rather than simply adjusting some of the factors that go into rankings, Google’s most recent update has partially deindexed a large swath of pages altogether. In other words, pages aren’t just moving down the results list.

They’re missing entirely. A shift in how the algorithm views content quality to reduce spam may explain much of this change. This March update primarily aims to reduce unoriginal and unhelpful spam content by up to 40%, including sites that rely on AI-generated content in ways that could leave outdated and error-prone information.

A Business Response to Google Algorithm Updates

In light of recent updates, it’s more apparent than ever that businesses must constantly adapt to the changing dynamics of an online presence. As a matter of routine, content creators and executive teams should take advantage of Google’s Search Documentation, which outlines best practices for developers. Google’s stated priority is creating a website that is optimized for users rather than rankings; any SEO techniques that advance that goal are an added bonus for your company’s online presence.

Monitor Your Site Statistics

Although many Google algorithm updates have been announced, with some details explained, some of the core updates have been flying under the radar; the most recent March 2024 update is a prime example. Monitoring your site’s web traffic daily or weekly is crucial if you want to stay abreast of algorithm changes that might impact your pages. If you see static ranking results but limited click-throughs, partnering with a team like Denver Post Media to develop a paid search strategy might be an effective jumpstart.

Create a Web Presence for the Long Game

It’s tempting to produce a plethora of online content, but the most recent algorithm update shows Google’s increasingly prominent insistence on longevity, quality, and depth. Rather than just penalizing sites with thin content, a long domain presence with few updates, or a recent influx of overflowing content, Google rewards sites that avoid all of these pitfalls in favor of playing the long game. Invest time and money in your site’s depth (over breadth) and consistency. Don’t be tempted to play catch-up with every new update and lose sight of the overall picture; updates you produce now will reap benefits in the future.

Focus Efforts on Authority

The most recent algorithm update places even more emphasis on Google’s E-E-A-T directive. As more AI-generated material floods the internet, human analysis during the testing phases of upcoming updates may carry even more weight. Invest time and money now in building your site’s authority and trustworthiness. Include author bios and notes about relevant experience with every piece, current and future.

Build Connections Online and In Person

One of the biggest takeaways from the most recent Google algorithm update is that real-world connections will help drive page rankings as we move forward in an AI-rich landscape. Establishing authority and trust relies partly on the backlinks your page includes, so getting the attention of other prominent websites is critical. Similarly, making in-person connections with other companies or experts who can help add expertise to your site will be crucial for maintaining quality content over the long run.

These connections are not always easy to build. Working with an expert local organization like the team at Denver Post Media can give your business a leg up in digital marketing. Every time Google unveils an algorithm update, an expert team can help you focus your resources in the right places, balance immediate needs with long-term growth, and facilitate the real-world relationships that will be crucial to your success moving forward.

Which Metrics Matter for Content Marketing ROI?

How do you track the success of content marketing? It can take multiple forms, including blog posts, email campaigns, newsletters, and case studies. Understanding the relevant B2B content marketing metrics for your campaign is essential to ensuring and measuring the success of your content marketing efforts.

Content marketing is broad, and understanding all the content marketing metrics that matter can be challenging. However, failing to employ the proper metric-measuring strategies may hinder your content marketing efforts and limit your return on investment (ROI) success.

In this article, we will discuss the importance of measuring content marketing metrics and what factors to monitor to gauge the performance of your content.

What Is Content Marketing ROI?

Return on investment refers to the revenue generated from a campaign compared to the money spent. Since ROI represents the amount of money a campaign yields, it is one of the most important measures of successful content.

Fortunately, you can determine your content marketing ROI with four simple steps:

Step 1: Calculate the Cost of Content Production

Producing content costs money, whether a staff member creates it or you outsource it from a content provider. Total content production costs include the creator’s salary or fee and additional asset expenses such as photos, videos, graphics, or audio clips.

Step 2: Calculate the Cost of Content Distribution

For content to generate leads or revenue, you must distribute it to potential customers. Distribution costs include social media advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, other media promotions, and specific tools or software used to create or distribute the content.

Add the entire expense list for Step 1 and Step 2 to calculate total content production costs.

Step 3: Calculate the Exact Revenue Generated by the Content Campaign

The goal for any piece of content is to generate leads that eventually become sales. It’s easy to determine how much money a blog post makes, for example, if a customer clicks on a CTA link and buys a product or service.

A well-performing piece of content typically generates strong sales. To calculate the total revenue a particular piece of content’s campaign pulls in, tally all its historical sales.

Step 4: Calculate Content Marketing ROI with This Formula

“Return minus investment, divided by investment, expressed as a percentage.”

For instance, if your company spends $700 to produce (investment) a piece of content and it generates $2,000 in sales (return), the content’s ROI is ($2000-$700)/$700 x 100 = 185% ROI.

What Metrics Matter for Measuring Success?

Successful content marketing campaigns help B2B and B2C companies attract and earn subscribers, develop leads, increase revenue, and foster customer loyalty. It’s no wonder it’s a popular digital marketing strategy.

While 91% of B2B respondents embrace content marketing, 43% don’t measure its success metrics. Understanding which essential metrics measure content marketing ROI identifies which pieces of content perform well and which don’t.

Let’s explore which metrics to track to determine your ROI.

Website Traffic

Examining the traffic volume for each webpage identifies the content your online audience prefers. Analytics software, such as Google Analytics, measures overall web traffic and other important traffic data, including:

Traffic source (email, social media platforms, organic search, paid traffic)
Page views
Average time on page
Unique sessions
Popular landing pages

Promote content on communication channels and platforms that attract the most visitors to boost site traffic. Remember that factors like holidays, SEO trends, and website updates can cause traffic to vary.

Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

Click-through rates (CTR) identify the number of visitors who click on specific links as compared to all site visitors, email recipients, and social media users.

So, if an ad has 3,000 impressions and 600 clicks, calculate CTR as 3,000/600 = 5. The ad’s CTR is 5%. The higher the CTR, the more successful the advertising campaign.

Qualified Leads

B2B companies primarily implement content marketing strategies to attract prospects — especially those likely to buy from them.

Qualified leads are prospects who show interest in purchasing something. The more qualified leads a content marketing campaign generates, the more successful it is.

To measure ROI, measure qualified leads. To do this, monitor the number of prospects that act on CTAs, track content download numbers, and review completed purchases.

Sales Volume

Successful content boosts sales volume as it turns prospects into customers. To measure ROI with sales volume metrics, use analytics software to assess the following sales-related data:

Page value — Which website pages generate the most revenue
Conversion rates — Captures the percentage of site visitors who purchase something
Transactions – Number of purchases visitors complete at any given time
Time to purchase – Number of days site visitors take to buy something

High sales volume can potentially yield a more significant ROI.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

To measure content marketing ROI with SEO, keep an eye on the following:

Keyword ranking — Tailor your content marketing strategy to convert specific keywords, phrases, and brand keywords to boost SEO performance. You can also find keywords for your website to optimize SEO results with tools like Google Trends and Google Keyword Planner.
Site authority — Metrics that reinforce your website’s domain authority include people linking to it, improved page scores, and extended visits to the site.
Backlinks — You can use SEO tracking to see when people link to your site on their platforms or in their content.

Social Shares

Social media users often share content that resonates with them on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X. Fortunately, social shares broaden your content audience.

You can monitor follower increases, likes, comments, and video views to measure how content impacts social media engagement.

Onsite Engagement

The more engaged your audience is with your content, the better. To measure how visitors interact with your content, look at the bounce rate and time on the page.

Bounce rate shows how long visitors stay on your site, and time on page measures the time visitors spend on individual pages.

Content that promotes lower bounce rates and longer page durations is more likely to generate sales.

Using these metrics to measure content marketing ROI enables you to create and tailor content that generates qualified leads, improves conversion rates, establishes your online authority, and boosts sales revenue.

Using Analytics to Understand the Customer’s Path to Conversion

Using Analytics to Understand the Customer's Conversion Path

Harnessing the power of storytelling in marketing is a compelling way to engage with consumers and prospective customers. It’s important to tell your story through the awareness phase and the rest of the customer journey — including conversion, retention, and loyalty.

However, an awareness-driving marketing campaign or even an organic social media strategy is only the first step to driving people to your website or landing page.

The next step is conversion.

Conversion examines whether your site visitors are taking the intended actions — purchasing a product, signing up for a free consultation, opting in for a newsletter, downloading a white paper, or something else entirely.

Reviewing the customer’s path to conversion through an advanced analysis platform like GA4 offers essential data critical for crafting future marketing strategies that will resonate with the intended audiences. It also provides insight into the entire customer journey so you can know how to optimize touchpoints like landing pages and more.

Types of GA4 Conversion Reports

Google Analytics has several types of readily available conversion reports.

Conversion Paths Report

According to Google, this report helps you understand your customers’ conversion paths. You’ll see which channels initiate, assist, and close conversions and how different attribution models assign credit to the conversions.

Conversion Lag Report

The lag report helps you see how quickly and effectively your ads are driving conversions, which will provide insight into the length of your online sales cycle and whether your marketing campaign and organic social media marketing are working optimally.

For example, if your ads have an urgent call to action, you’ll want to see a shorter lag time — meaning fewer days to conversion. If you’re running an awareness campaign or something more evergreen, longer lag times might be expected and appropriate.

Conversion Path Length Report

The path length report shows how many clicks users take to complete conversions, which can help analyze website touchpoints.

Insights Available Through Conversion Path Analysis

By analyzing conversion path reports, you can glean many helpful insights, including:

Channel Performance

Discover which marketing channels (i.e., paid search, organic social media marketing, email, and more) are the most effective in creating audience engagement.

Conversion Path Length

Understand how consumers commonly engage with your content — whether it’s a fast, direct path or a longer, more informative process.

Customer Behavior

Identify patterns for how consumers navigate your site — and compare mobile versus desktop behaviors. The first step to conversion rate optimization is identifying where visitors are leaving your site. The next step is understanding why they are going.

Drop-off Identification

See the points where consumers fail to convert to work on optimizations to minimize the drop-off.

Time Lag Review

Review the average time it takes from the first touchpoint to the final engagement, which provides information about the consumer decision-making process on the path to conversion.

Tactics to Improve Your Conversion Rate

While GA4 will provide the analytics data to help you know which webpages and calls to action convert well among consumers — and which are underperforming — what GA4 cannot expressly do is tell you exactly “why.”

But there are a few ways you can use GA4 data to learn why and improve your conversion rate.

Mobile Optimization

If you notice that mobile could perform better on conversions, you may need to ensure your site is responsive and optimized across all devices.

Landing Page Enhancements

Landing pages can be critical to the conversion path because consumers turn their initial interest into action there. There are several ways to enhance a landing page that’s not converting, including:

A/B Testing: Try two landing page versions to evaluate what works best with the intended audiences.
Content Updates: Sometimes, a simple change in copy or call to action can amplify a consumer’s experience and improve conversion rates. Other times, a content overhaul may be necessary to repackage the message to be more relevant.
U/X Optimization: User experience is critical to successful conversions, as slow site loading times, clunky navigation, and poor layout can immediately drive audiences away and escalate bounce rates.

Heatmaps

A site heatmap shows where users click the most and least, how far they scroll, and what they focus on (and ignore). As such, they’re a powerful tool in partnership with analytics to understand the customer journey and the path to conversion. Many heatmap solutions are available; the most comprehensive options include click maps, scroll maps, move maps, engagement zone maps, and rage-click maps.

Session Replays

Session replay software allows you to be a fly on the wall, so to speak, and see how a user is navigating and interacting with your site or landing page. The software records and visually plays back a user’s session, giving you direct visibility and awareness about their experience. It’s also a great way to spot potential bugs, errors, or points of confusion.

Surveys

When in doubt, consider asking your audience! Setting up an onsite survey that triggers when a user begins to navigate away from your site or landing page can help you learn what’s causing consumers to leave without converting.

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Using analytics to understand your audience’s path to conversion is instrumental for informing data-backed optimizations and content and campaign strategies.

If you’re looking to improve your conversion rate but aren’t sure where to begin, Denver Post Media can help. We’re committed to the success of each of our partners — whether you’re a small business looking to make a name for yourself or an established powerhouse seeking next-level strategic ideas and advanced reporting.

We take a customized approach to every partner. Check out some of our success stories here.

The Power of Storytelling: How a Compelling Narrative Helps Build Your Audience Organically

How Storytelling Can Become the Most Valuable Tool in Your Social Media Toolkit

The power of good storytelling is undeniable.

Storytelling has been practiced for centuries to promote ideas, brag about accomplishments, and persuade people to support causes. So, who’s to say businesses can’t use it for self-promotion, advertising achievements, and gaining recognition among consumers?

In today’s dynamic digital world, storytelling has emerged as one of the most powerful tools for brands, especially on social media. Let’s examine how a good story can help organically build brand awareness and improve audience retention.

Why Tell Stories?

In marketing, storytelling combines classic storytelling practices with narrative journalism to relate to customers and create a sense of humanity. Stories told by companies aim to evoke an emotional response from viewers using characters, a distinct conflict, and, ultimately, a solution or positive outcome.

Storytelling allows brands to talk about their mission and where it started. It reaches beyond the scope of traditional content, which can be subject-focused and limited. Brand storytelling looks at a company holistically, creating an all-inclusive narrative that showcases the value of the brand’s products or services.

When brands tell their stories, they use client testimonials, success stories, and personal accomplishments that build trust among viewers and make them seem authentic. Customers are much more likely to engage with a brand they trust than an unfamiliar one.

Authentic Narratives Build Trust

When developing content, especially content for social media, it is essential to think about how it will contribute to your brand’s story and how it will affect your audiences. Customers aren’t stupid, and your brand’s stories will shape the way people view you and allow them to form connections to your brand.

Telling a story that exhibits your brand’s hard work and dedication to success is a good start, but customers also want to know how your brand can improve their lives. Showcasing ways your brand has changed the lives of its customers creates trust through real-world scenarios. When customers love what your brand does and stand for and can see it first-hand through storytelling, they will offer support, helping your brand thrive.

How to Tell Stories on Social Media

According to Forbes, social media is continuously growing in popularity, with the average person spending about 145 minutes on social media every day. With such a large audience, social media is proving to be one of the best platforms for brands to tell their stories to gain popularity and retention among customers.

Here are a few expert-backed tips for developing the best social media storytelling strategy for your brand:

Define Your Brand

Your brand’s story defines your company’s identity, what you hope to achieve, and how you plan to do it. For example, Tom’s Shoes, a footwear brand, donates one pair of shoes to a child in need for every purchase. This emphasizes their dedication to charity while also spreading their product worldwide. Defining your brand through short snippets of text, images, and videos can be impactful and memorable for consumers.

Know Your Audience

Using social media analytics to determine your audience will direct the content you create and where you publish it. Knowing your audience will help develop an ideal customer persona, making your audience’s needs and expectations clear. With a specific audience in mind, your brand can create better stories that resonate closely with your audience, and you’ll know right where to publish them.

Be Memorable

Telling stories works best when they are memorable. Personal stories and client testimonials are a few of the most effective ways brands tell their stories. These stories are remarkable because they evoke emotions and drive consumers to take action. For example, telling a story about a customer whose life changed because of your brand will encourage other viewers to consider your products or services in a similar situation.

The Bottom Line

With social media prevailing as one of the most common methods of content consumption, marketers recognize the importance of getting their brand’s story on various platforms for consumers to see.

Storytelling helps brands organically build their audience, establish trust in their advertising space, and increase their following and retention simultaneously. Consistency and truthfulness are essential when telling stories. Customers appreciate and gravitate toward authenticity.

Brands shouldn’t be afraid to humanize themselves by sharing behind-the-scenes information that will make customers value their transparency.

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At Denver Post Media, we understand the importance of telling stories through social media. But don’t take our word for it. Start telling your story today with these tips and experience the results yourself!

The Role of Social Proof in Email Marketing

Social proof…have you heard of it?

Social proof is basically a shortcut for consumers to decide how to act — and, as such, it can be a very effective marketing tool to help businesses of all sizes and types grow in popularity and wield influence while increasing their bottom line.

Social proof can be integrated into various marketing campaigns. Today, we’re going to dive into email marketing, specifically.

First, let’s take a closer look at the psychology of social proof.

Social Proof Definition

The Social Proof Theory, popularized by psychologist Robert Cialdini, Ph.D., in his bestselling book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, “maintains that if people don’t know the proper behavior for a specific situation, they will look to others to imitate what they’re doing and to provide guidance for their actions.”

Cialdini writes: “Whether the question is what to do with an empty popcorn box in a movie theater, how fast to drive on a certain stretch of highway, or how to eat the chicken at a dinner party, the actions of those around us will be important in defining the answer.”

It’s not just empty popcorn boxes, though. Social proof is integral in marketing and the buyer’s journey as people make purchasing decisions.

Social Proof in Marketing

Social proof is a psychological principle across many categories, including marketing, where customers want to feel assured that purchasing a product or service is the right decision. Social proof can help companies validate and simplify their customer’s buying decisions, build consumer trust, and increase credibility.

You’ll often hear the phrase “show, don’t tell” in social proof — and email is a perfect channel to do just that.

Here are a few easy and compelling examples of social proof in marketing emails.

1. Showcase Real Customer Reviews

While customer reviews may seem relatively basic, the research shows that they work — and they work well. In fact, 94% of people say that positive reviews make them more likely to use a business — 91% of individuals aged 18 to 34 trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Whether you’re listing the number of five-star reviews received in your email, or highlighting direct feedback from customers, it all can tip the scales in your favor when consumers are evaluating your business or product offering.

2. Feature User-Generated Content

Utilizing user-generated content (UGC) to your advantage is a perfect way to lean into social proof — especially as email content. That’s because 79% of people say UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions, and consumers find UGC 9.8x more impactful than influencer content when making a purchasing decision.

UGC includes things like giveaways or contests asking people to submit a video, photo, or testimonial. Social listening tools can also help you find organic content from customers — or you could always just ask your customer base!

3. Celebrate Case Studies

Results speak for themselves. Whether it’s “before and after” photos or an in-depth overview of problems solved, these case studies are convincing to consumers.

Email provides a way to succinctly summarize the top takeaways and results — while offering a CTA to link to the entire downloadable case study.

4. Highlight Expert Recommendations

An endorsement or “seal of approval” from an industry thought leader, influencer, or expert can go a long way in ratcheting up your social proof. It lends credibility to your business and your products or services — and it’s easy to integrate this type of content into an email.

5. Maximize Your Popularity

You want to show others that your brand is popular. One of the best ways to do that is by using real numbers. For example, you could integrate live social feeds into your email content that show how many people have “liked” a product post on Instagram. You could also create urgency by specifying how many people have already claimed an offer — and that only a certain number of products or offers are left.

6. Brag About Media Mentions

If your biz received some good press or was featured in a news story, interview, blog, or other media outlet, now is the time to tell your email list. These types of media features continue to build trust with your audience — and it’s the perfect opportunity to show off your company without being the one to do the talking. You can even devote an entire email to showing off the media story.

7. Put Your Subject Line to Work

While email subject lines are sometimes an afterthought, they should be a big part of your email marketing strategy and include some social proof cues. In your subject line, you could mention a standout statistic, say that “people are talking,” or tease an accolade, media mention, or expert endorsement — all to entice your email list to know what’s inside.

After all, it doesn’t matter how great your email is if people don’t click to open it! In fact, 47% of your email recipients will open your email solely based on the subject line.

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At Denver Post Media, we specialize in activating content strategies that effectively integrate social proof. But we don’t expect you to take our word for it!

“Since the Denver Post took over management of our digital marketing, we have double-digit revenue growth.” -Anthony Nicosia, EVP, Doctor Fix It

(See what we did there with social proof?!)

Check out more testimonials from our clients and key case studies here.

5 Ways to Optimize Your SEO Strategy for Zero-Click Searches

In the age of instant gratification and shorter attention spans, consumers seek an even faster Google search experience to discover the answers to their queries. And it has become increasingly possible to find answers without a single click-through to a website.

In recent years, as many as 57% of mobile and 53% of desktop users don’t click on results on the search engine results pages (SERPs) — and that number is only growing.

Welcome to the rise of the zero-click search.

Here’s what you need to know about zero-click searches in 2024.

What Is a Zero-Click Search?

As the name suggests, a zero-click or “no click” search occurs when a search engine shows the answer to a request without the user having to click a single link or website to access the information.

They’re becoming increasingly common, as Google offers readily available and helpful information — all directly within the SERPs. As such, these search results are changing how users search for and receive information.

How Information Is Delivered in a Zero-Click Search

There are several ways Google delivers info quickly and effectively in a zero-click search.

Featured Snippets: Featured snippets are the most popular type of zero-click content — and they come in various shapes and sizes, including paragraphs, tables, image packs, video carousels, lists, and more.
People Also Ask: Called PAA for short, People Also Ask automatically gives users additional questions related to their original queries and the associated quick answers. It’s the questions you didn’t even know you needed to ask!
Quick Answers: If you’ve ever searched for a time or currency conversion — or an answer to a math question — you’ve seen quick answers. These are common for searches that involve calculations but are also used for PAA and more.
Local Packs: That attention-grabbing map you see that lists the location, address, phone, hours, and more for a searched-for business is called a local pack. It’s part of the Google Business listings.
Knowledge Panel: Knowledge panels are automatically generated from multiple sources and show off a quick snapshot of information for entities, including people, places, organizations, and things.

How to Optimize for Zero-Click Searches

While zero-click searches are excellent and convenient for users, they can decrease website click-through rates and a decline in overall traffic. So, the uptick in these searches does present some challenges for website owners and businesses who want to drive traffic to their pages through a successful SEO strategy.

The good news is that you can evolve your digital marketing to accommodate and improve your website’s visibility on the search results page in several ways.

Here’s how to get value from zero-click searches:

1. Create Content for Featured Snippets

While you may be familiar with optimizing content and keywords to increase site traffic and Google ranking, creating content for featured snippets takes a slightly different approach. You’ll want to structure information in an easily digestible way and quickly answer the who, what, when, where, and/or why. It’s important to include visual assets, too — like video, photos, or infographics — to increase your chances of being picked up by Google’s algorithm.

2. Focus on Local

Because zero-click searches often strongly overlap with local search, it’s important to ensure you have a Google Business Profile — and that it’s up to date with contact information, business hours, location, and more. With accurate and consistent details, you have a better chance of earning a spot in the local pack on SERPs.

3. Think About Voice Search

With the rise of voice search, optimizing for this type of web query is important. Using conversational language in your website content can help you rank higher in a zero-click search. Also, it goes without saying that your site should be mobile-optimized.

4. Use Structured Data

Adding structured data to your web pages with schema markup — a form of HTML code — provides additional information about your content and boosts your search authority. As such, it’s essential for zero-click searches, as it can also impact what Google shows in its SERPs.

Google has a Rich Results Test that can tell you if your page supports rich results with the structured data it contains.

5. Don’t forget EEAT.

EEAT stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness — and it’s part of Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines. While it’s not a direct Google ranking factor, it’s a

vital signaling concept to remember when considering your website content.

Prioritizing EEAT will ultimately work in your favor for SEO and zero-click searches.

How to Measure and Track Zero-Click Searches

How can you analyze the impact of zero-click searches and track their results? A range of tools available can help with this, including Google Search Console, SEMrush, and Moz.

These tools are helpful because zero-click search and SEO best practices are constantly evolving and changing as Google algorithm updates continue to happen more and more frequently.

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Adaptability is vital — and having SEO experts on your side can be helpful. At Denver Post Media, we specialize in content development and strategy that can enhance your visibility and impact in search and beyond. Learn more here.

How to Build an Email Marketing List That Gets Results

Creating and building an email list with loyal, engaged subscribers is an essential investment for your business. That’s because email marketing remains a proven and effective tactic; the average ROI for email marketing is $42 for every dollar spent (DMA), and 73% of marketers rated their email ROI as “excellent” (SaleCycle).

Before we explore how to build an email list, it’s important to review the characteristics of good business email lists.

How to Build an Email Marketing List That Gets Results

High-Quality and Permission-Based

While it may seem like a quick fix to buy business email lists, this practice can negatively skew the truly engaged audience of your list (no matter how small it might be!). Often, purchased emails can include bots, spam accounts, or abandoned emails. Also, the people on that purchased list didn’t technically sign up, so they’re probably not going to be as engaged with your brand as you’d like. No one appreciates “spam,” and you should always follow marketing compliance guidelines for email.

Accurate and Updated

A good email list should be regularly maintained to ensure deliverability and engagement rates. This also means periodically curating your list to remove invalid or bounced emails!

Easily Segmented

Segmentation allows you to send targeted, personalized emails to specific groups that may have an affinity for a certain product, offer, or service. Segments can be based on demographics, psychographics, past purchases, engagement level, fundamental interests, and more. In fact, email segmentation can lead to a 760% increase in business revenue, according to Campaign Monitor.

Quantity

While quality is more important than quantity in email marketing, a more extensive list of permission-based, engaged, and accurate emails is always going to be better. That’s why it’s vital to consistently look for ways to build your list.

7 Easy Ways to Effectively Build an Email List

If you’re wondering how to create an email list for marketing, check out these seven tactics that can drive impressive results.

1. Offer Incentives for Signing Up

First and foremost, think of ways to encourage people to want to give you their email addresses. One of the most popular (and effective!) ways to get email addresses is through a lead magnet.

A lead magnet is usually a downloadable asset or a free virtual event that is relevant and actionable to your target audience.

Some ideas for a lead magnet include:

White papers
Case studies
Free webinar registrations
Free e-course
Worksheets or templates
Ebooks

The best lead magnet for your business will depend on your target consumers and marketing goals, but it can also be valuable to test a few different ideas to see what provides the best results.

2. Create a Customized Landing Page

A customized landing page can be helpful for your email incentivization and lead magnet efforts because it provides a central and dedicated hub where you can drive consumers to sign up. If you are utilizing a landing page, the experience should be easy and frictionless, with a clear and valuable offer message and call-to-action (CTA). The focus is on conversion — and you don’t want people to click away from the page until they provide their email.

Consider including an attention-grabbing headline emphasizing the benefits, short but effective copy amplifying the message, and a strong CTA.

3. Add Pop-Ups to Your Website

While website pop-ups may get a bad rap for being disruptive and irritating, they can be thoughtfully designed with a clear purpose. Therefore, they can work beautifully to build your list.

Pop-ups also provide an opportunity to promote a relevant lead magnet or another promotional offer or coupon savings offer in exchange for providing an email address. It’s an easy and effective tool to build an email list with an engaged audience already interacting with your website.

Don’t forget to make the CTA on the pop-up as friendly, clear, and aligned with your brand voice as possible. It should be attention-grabbing but easy to understand immediately.

4. Build an Opt-In Form Into Your Website

Another way to easily grow your email list is by adding an email sign-up form on your website pages, menu bar, and navigation.

This type of opt-in form can be a simple module that reminds site visitors to join your email list.

Again, you’ll want to use a strong, brand-aligned CTA about the value they’ll receive in exchange for providing their email address, such as a savings code, a lead magnet, or exclusive content and updates.

5. Run a Giveaway or Contest

A fun way to grow your email list — and generate a positive halo effect for your brand — is to activate a giveaway or contest that requires users to enter their email addresses. There are giveaway tools and website plugins, like Rafflecopter, that can help create this type of promotion.

You can also set up a landing page with a form fill to accept entries. Just ensure you provide an adequate opt-in marketing disclaimer so you can use those emails in the future!

6. Put Your Social Media to Work

You likely have at least a few social media accounts, so make sure you’re getting the most out of them when it comes to building your email list.

You can add an email sign-up button or opt-in form directly on your Facebook page and a link in your profile to platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

Social media accounts are also a great way to promote your lead magnet, giveaway, or contest to amplify awareness. To further increase reach, consider running a social media advertising campaign.

7. Consider an Email Marketing List Builder

Remember that many email marketing list builder services — like Hubspot, Optimonk, and Klayvio — might also be worth considering. These services require an additional financial investment. However, they can be helpful because many provide pre-built sign-up forms, pop-up capabilities, landing page creation, lead tracking and management, A/B testing, and more.

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“Slow and steady wins the race,” is a good mantra for building an email list that will pay dividends in the future. While it won’t happen overnight, putting tactics like these into place to garner an engaged, relevant audience for your brand will help expand your list in all the right ways.

If you don’t know where to start, Denver Post Media has a team of local, trusted experts in content marketing, email, and social media to help you effectively build your email list and more. Check out our full suite of marketing solutions here.

8 Tips to Write a Killer Call to Action

“If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” Mahatma Gandhi’s famous words summarize the mission and purpose of a marketing call to action — or CTA.

But what is a call to action, really? It’s a short phrase that prompts a target audience to take a desired action — like purchasing a product, downloading a white paper, or subscribing to a newsletter. Some common CTA examples you’ve likely seen include Buy Now, Subscribe, Contact Us, Read More, and Add to Cart.

CTAs can appear anywhere on the user journey — from social media posts to emails, paid ads, landing pages and websites, blog posts, and more. In digital formats, they can be clickable buttons, pop-up boxes, or banners. They can even be as simple as a piece of hyperlinked text.

While CTAs are short and sweet, thriving businesses and successful marketers always give them attention. That’s because they are crucial in getting your target audiences to act.

A Good CTA Makes a Difference

The best, most successful CTAs will grab your audience’s attention, encourage action, combat decision fatigue, and inspire confidence in your business. That’s a lot for one little button! The true test of a CTA is if it increases conversions and drives traffic.

That’s why knowing how to write a CTA effectively and strategically is so essential. Here are eight best practices for creating irresistibly clickable CTAs that drive results.

8 Tips for Crafting Irresistible CTAs

Start Strong

This is not the time to beat around the bush. The best call-to-action phrases generally start with a strong action word or verb — an imperative that directs people to do something. Your words will vary based on the desired action. But clear, concise, and authoritative words generally perform best. For e-commerce, that might be “shop,” “buy,” or “order.” For content, it could be “download,” “read,” or “subscribe.”

Have a Value Proposition

Your CTA should also effectively communicate the value afforded to someone when they complete the desired action while also ensuring there’s low risk. You must entice people to know that what’s in it for them is worth the click. Popular incentives include things like saving money, lower rates, and exclusive access.

Create FOMO

Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) works like a charm in marketing — especially in CTAs. FOMO can be a valuable tactic because when people think they might miss out, they’re more apt to be motivated to action. Some of the most effective CTAs instill time sensitivity or urgency, which can look like limited-time-only offers, member-only access, and “while supplies last” messaging.

Write Supporting Text

CTAs are so short that you may be unable to communicate the complete value proposition in one button. That’s where supporting text enters the chat. This can take the form of content that comes before or after a CTA to help the intended action. It can be as simple as an additional tagline — or it can be a longer explainer copy. Its primary purpose is to reinforce the benefits of the CTA to inspire action among your audience and get them to click.

Customize to Device

Laptops, tablets, and mobile devices often have different user behavior and search intent, so customizing your CTA based on the device is a good rule of thumb. For mobile, experts estimate that 80% of searches for local businesses convert. You may want to create a more phone-call-centric CTA for mobile placements because people can use that CTA button to call for additional information or to complete a purchase.

Go Bold

While basic and clear CTAs are often effective, a bolder approach can also catch your audience’s eye. It could be a play on words — something that elicits a chuckle, an unexpected expression, or using a negative to motivate a person to action. The goal here is to command attention in a spirited way that still feels aligned with your brand standards.

Test Different Options

Knowing exactly what will grab your audience’s attention can be difficult. That’s why it’s a great practice to A/B test your CTAs to see what performs the best. You might explore a more standard CTA as one option and then throw in a bolder, more outside-the-box option to see what generates the greatest results.

Make It Stand Out

A CTA isn’t only about the words. The design, placement, and color of the CTA button or text can also determine if you catch or lose your audience’s interest. For example, CTAs surrounded by less clutter and more white space can increase conversion rates by 232%.

You also want your CTA to be clearly visible on a page or graphic. One way to do this is with bright or contrasting colors that stand out but still align with your brand. For example, studies have shown that a red CTA button consistently outperforms a green one.

The best CTAs are visible, clear, understandable, and catchy. They tell your audience exactly what to do and what they can expect.

At Denver Post Media, we specialize in generating clicks for our clients through dynamic marketing campaigns and killer CTAs that really work. Learn more here.