SEO

7 Biggest Causes Of Stress For Digital Marketers

Published

2 years ago

May 17, 2022

Working in digital marketing, stress is inevitable. It’s part of the job description.

You can’t be effective without pushing your personal limits from time to time.

But, if you’re always stressed out, then maybe it’s time to reevaluate the causes and tackle your biggest stressors head-on.

Below you will find seven of the biggest causes of stress for digital marketers and some tips on how to deal with them.

1. Measuring Metrics

The Stress

Measuring metrics in itself isn’t exactly stressful. The stressful part of metrics comes in two forms.

First, you have the result of metrics.

Say you’ve been working on a campaign for the past six months and you’ve put your whole marketing heart and soul into it.

You’ve devoted more than full-time hours to the campaign and have done everything you were supposed to, and then some.

Then the campaign comes to an end and the results are calculated. The metrics come back to inform you that unfortunately, despite your efforts and doing everything the pros suggested, goals weren’t met.

You’ve utilized the last of the budget and spent the past six months on a campaign that didn’t produce results. Insert sad sigh.

So, you take the data that you have from the campaign, and you say it wasn’t a complete loss because you’ve at least learned more about the user behavior or the targeting, or the ad copy, or the keywords.

Now, it’s time to go plead for more budget and try again. Insert stress.

The second part of metric stress is the part I see digital marketers struggle with the most. This is the part of having no metrics at all! Yes, it happens. Like a lot.

Take content metrics for example. Fully 81% of marketers integrate content into their marketing strategies, but 65% of marketers are struggling to measure the impact of their content marketing strategies.

That’s more than half who don’t understand (or are at the very least having a difficult time trying to figure out) what metrics they’re supposed to measure.

How To Deal

Set yourself up for success, and not stress, right away.

In the beginning stages of your strategy development, you need to be defining what is the most important part of this campaign.

Is it direct sales? Increase video views? Perhaps it’s as simple as doubling engagement and not tied directly to a dollar amount.

Either way, you need to define what the primary goal is, and then the secondary, the tertiary, and so on.

It’s important to go past just defining the main goal of the campaign because the primary goal isn’t always met, especially in the first round.

Plus, you want to have a few other metrics to measure in order to quantify some success or total failure, not just focusing on a primary or secondary.

2. Low-to-No Budgets

The Stress

Oh boy. Not having a budget or having an extremely low budget to work with makes a digital marketer’s job extra stressful.

Lots of times the low-to-no budgets are paired with extra-high expectations.

These expectations could be something like generating 10,000 new leads by making a homemade video on YouTube and having no advertising budget to promote the video. Talk about a stressful situation!

How To Deal

Not everyone is gifted with large or “experimental” budgets.

As digital marketers, though, we need to be prepared to work with both players, the big and the small.

By clarifying realistic expectations from the beginning, you’ll be able to inform your boss or client what they can expect to receive by spending X amount.

No, we can’t predict the future.

Yes, we certainly hope and work hard for the best, but by making it known from the get-go what can actually happen with a specific budget range you’re avoiding extreme amounts of disappointment and stress.

After the budget meeting, head back to your desk and run your own numbers on what you’ve seen as a result in the past.

Get an idea of how much it took for similar goals to be achieved and how long it took.

Then, prepare a report clarifying what has worked, under what conditions, and a prediction of what your boss or client should be able to expect to receive based on X budget.

3. Google Updates

The Stress

Oh, Google. We are constantly trying to stay on top of every update that you make.

We even try to prep before the updates and algorithm changes happen. Yet, you still cause us, digital marketers, an insane amount of stress with every new update, Google.

Within the blink of an eye, a major change could have just happened and our websites or our clients’ websites are affected by it. Most of the time they’re affecting negatively, too.

So, yes Google, you do occasionally bring on the stress.

How To Deal

One of the best ways to deal with the Google stress is to stay on top of anything and everything that happens within the industry, just as Google does.

Google takes note of things like user behavior, cyber bugs, spam, and a handful of other web issues.

You should, too. Doing so will help you better predict when changes are going to happen and what kind of changes are most likely to come next.

Subscribe to the top SEO blogs. These blog posts are written by the experts, some of which have great connections with Google and long-term histories giving them better chances of predicting, adapting, and sharing strategies with other marketers.

Take it a step further and follow SEO experts who not only know their stuff but are great sources for SEO predictions.

4. Wearing Too Many Hats

The Stress

Whether you work in-house, agency, or own your own business I can bet all of the money in my wallet ($4 and change) on the fact that you wear way more than just one hat.

In-house marketers are generally trying to do it all, acting as the SEO, UX designer, social media specialist, PPC expert, and content marketer.

At the agency, employees have their unique specialty that they focus on but often find themselves assisting other departments.

The business owner, well they know very well what it’s like to balance 50 different types of hats on their heads at once better than anyone else.

How To Deal

Zone in and truly focus on your area of expertise.

Yes, stay on top of the millions of updates happening in all realms of the digital marketing world, but put your primary focus and research toward perfecting the craft of your niche.

Prioritize what the main objectives are for your specific niche and then, if time allows, see how you can assist in other departments.

A good example of this is if you’re a social media marketer to subscribe to both overarching digital marketing podcasts like Edge of the Web and more focused podcasts like the Perpetual Traffic Podcast that focuses on just Facebook.

This will keep you informed of both the industry and your specific niche’s trends, updates, and strategies.

5. Lack Of Strategy Development

The Stress

The pressure is always on to hurry up and produce results.

Even though it’s become common knowledge now that digital marketing takes T-I-M-E, we all still want results to happen yesterday.

This is why so many budgets are wasted because we go headfirst into trying to produce results and forget about first developing a strategy that will get us to those results.

How To Deal

Define your goals, what your needs are, and then define a strategy that should be able to get you there. Don’t work backward.

A new project or campaign flow should look like the following:

Define the audience: Who is this campaign going to be for? Who are you trying to reach?
Define the goal: What do you need to accomplish with this campaign? What’re the primary and secondary objectives?
Define the budget: How much can you afford to spend on this campaign? How much do you think it will take for you to achieve the goal?
Define the strategy: What is the best method to get there? What kind of marketing will help you accomplish the goal? Do you need ads? What kind of content do you need?
Implement the strategy: Put one to four together and give the chosen method a shot.
Define the results: Were any results produced? Did you collect any data? How close or how far did you align with the goal?
Do it again.

6. Not Generating Conversions

The Stress

You finally found the sweet spot with your PPC campaign and were able to drop the cost per click by 40%. Clicks are flying in and they’re coming from exactly where you want them to come from.

Yet, no one is buying. Traffic is at an all-time high and still, no one is converting on the website. Why?!

How To Deal

Usually, when it comes to gaining clicks and no conversions there is something wrong with the actual landing page or website.

Check the following to see if you can diagnose what’s causing people to leave without converting:

Page Speed: How fast is the page loading? If it’s taking too long to load, people aren’t going to wait and you’re going to gain the click without the conversion. Former Googler Maile Ohye says, “Two seconds is the threshold for ecommerce website acceptability. At Google, we aim for under a half-second.”
Design: Is it overwhelming coming to your site? When I land on a website, I’ll leave it without even digesting the content if it’s too overwhelming. What I mean by too overwhelming is a pop-up box that takes 3/4 of the page and isn’t clear how I can close it, a site that is 90% of text and no clear path on what text box to read first, and videos that play automatically only to freeze within the first two to three seconds. If you think your design is great and still aren’t receiving conversions, send the site to 10 different people (a variety of people) and gather feedback.
Content: Is what they clicked on what they’re actually going to get from the landing page/website? If you promise a 50% off coupon and send users to your “New Shoes” category page, then you can’t be too shocked when you receive a ton of clicks and zero conversions. Have your message actually match the page content.

7. Grammar Errors

The Stress

The to-do list is piling up and we need to get that piece of content published, like yesterday. So, we scram together and add the final pieces, give it a little branding flair and then send it off.

Within about 24.5 seconds, your phone goes off with a Twitter notification mentioning the brand and a screenshot of the subject line spelled, “How to Tackle Technical SEO on a Low Budget.” Your heart sinks, but you’re not the only one.

“Oopsie” subject lines, social media post corrections, and ad headline mistakes happen all of the time.

How To Deal

Slow down!

I promise you, it takes a lot less time to just re-read your copy before you publish or ask a colleague to check it over than it does to send out an apology social media post, an oopsie email newsletter, and restart the campaign.

Don’t pride yourself on being perfect. We’re all human and mistakes happen, but fewer mistakes will happen if you take an extra minute and double-check your work before publishing.

Conclusion

Did you notice that most of the “how to deal” tips in this article are ways to improve the organization or set clearer expectations?

Working in digital marketing can be incredibly stressful, so you need to think about how to remove or reduce the parts that don’t spark joy.

Whether it’s fine-tailoring processes or learning to let go and delegate, whatever works best for you, just be sure to stick with it.

More Resources:

Featured Image: fizkes/Shutterstock

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SEO

How To Write ChatGPT Prompts To Get The Best Results

Published

16 hours ago

April 24, 2024

Max

How To Write ChatGPT Prompts To Get The Best Results

ChatGPT is a game changer in the field of SEO. This powerful language model can generate human-like content, making it an invaluable tool for SEO professionals.

However, the prompts you provide largely determine the quality of the output.

To unlock the full potential of ChatGPT and create content that resonates with your audience and search engines, writing effective prompts is crucial.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the art of writing prompts for ChatGPT, covering everything from basic techniques to advanced strategies for layering prompts and generating high-quality, SEO-friendly content.

Writing Prompts For ChatGPT

What Is A ChatGPT Prompt?

A ChatGPT prompt is an instruction or discussion topic a user provides for the ChatGPT AI model to respond to.

The prompt can be a question, statement, or any other stimulus to spark creativity, reflection, or engagement.

Users can use the prompt to generate ideas, share their thoughts, or start a conversation.

ChatGPT prompts are designed to be open-ended and can be customized based on the user’s preferences and interests.

How To Write Prompts For ChatGPT

Start by giving ChatGPT a writing prompt, such as, “Write a short story about a person who discovers they have a superpower.”

ChatGPT will then generate a response based on your prompt. Depending on the prompt’s complexity and the level of detail you requested, the answer may be a few sentences or several paragraphs long.

Use the ChatGPT-generated response as a starting point for your writing. You can take the ideas and concepts presented in the answer and expand upon them, adding your own unique spin to the story.

If you want to generate additional ideas, try asking ChatGPT follow-up questions related to your original prompt.

For example, you could ask, “What challenges might the person face in exploring their newfound superpower?” Or, “How might the person’s relationships with others be affected by their superpower?”

Remember that ChatGPT’s answers are generated by artificial intelligence and may not always be perfect or exactly what you want.

However, they can still be a great source of inspiration and help you start writing.

Must-Have GPTs Assistant

I recommend installing the WebBrowser Assistant created by the OpenAI Team. This tool allows you to add relevant Bing results to your ChatGPT prompts.

This assistant adds the first web results to your ChatGPT prompts for more accurate and up-to-date conversations.

It is very easy to install in only two clicks. (Click on Start Chat.)

Screenshot from ChatGPT, April 2024

For example, if I ask, “Who is Vincent Terrasi?,” ChatGPT has no answer.

With WebBrower Assistant, the assistant creates a new prompt with the first Bing results, and now ChatGPT knows who Vincent Terrasi is.

Screenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023

You can test other GPT assistants available in the GPTs search engine if you want to use Google results.

Master Reverse Prompt Engineering

ChatGPT can be an excellent tool for reverse engineering prompts because it generates natural and engaging responses to any given input.

By analyzing the prompts generated by ChatGPT, it is possible to gain insight into the model’s underlying thought processes and decision-making strategies.

One key benefit of using ChatGPT to reverse engineer prompts is that the model is highly transparent in its decision-making.

This means that the reasoning and logic behind each response can be traced, making it easier to understand how the model arrives at its conclusions.

Once you’ve done this a few times for different types of content, you’ll gain insight into crafting more effective prompts.

Prepare Your ChatGPT For Generating Prompts

First, activate the reverse prompt engineering.

Type the following prompt: “Enable Reverse Prompt Engineering? By Reverse Prompt Engineering I mean creating a prompt from a given text.”

Screenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023

ChatGPT is now ready to generate your prompt. You can test the product description in a new chatbot session and evaluate the generated prompt.

Type: “Create a very technical reverse prompt engineering template for a product description about iPhone 11.”

Reverse Prompt engineering via WebChatGPT

Screenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023

The result is amazing. You can test with a full text that you want to reproduce. Here is an example of a prompt for selling a Kindle on Amazon.

Type: “Reverse Prompt engineer the following {product), capture the writing style and the length of the text :
product =”

Reverse prompt engineering: Amazon product

Screenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023

I tested it on an SEJ blog post. Enjoy the analysis – it is excellent.

Type: “Reverse Prompt engineer the following {text}, capture the tone and writing style of the {text} to include in the prompt :
text = all text coming from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-bard-training-data/478941/”

Reverse prompt engineering an SEJ blog post

Screenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023

But be careful not to use ChatGPT to generate your texts. It is just a personal assistant.

Go Deeper

Prompts and examples for SEO:

Keyword research and content ideas prompt: “Provide a list of 20 long-tail keyword ideas related to ‘local SEO strategies’ along with brief content topic descriptions for each keyword.”
Optimizing content for featured snippets prompt: “Write a 40-50 word paragraph optimized for the query ‘what is the featured snippet in Google search’ that could potentially earn the featured snippet.”
Creating meta descriptions prompt: “Draft a compelling meta description for the following blog post title: ’10 Technical SEO Factors You Can’t Ignore in 2024′.”

Important Considerations:

Always Fact-Check: While ChatGPT can be a helpful tool, it’s crucial to remember that it may generate inaccurate or fabricated information. Always verify any facts, statistics, or quotes generated by ChatGPT before incorporating them into your content.
Maintain Control and Creativity: Use ChatGPT as a tool to assist your writing, not replace it. Don’t rely on it to do your thinking or create content from scratch. Your unique perspective and creativity are essential for producing high-quality, engaging content.
Iteration is Key: Refine and revise the outputs generated by ChatGPT to ensure they align with your voice, style, and intended message.

Additional Prompts for Rewording and SEO:
– Rewrite this sentence to be more concise and impactful.
– Suggest alternative phrasing for this section to improve clarity.
– Identify opportunities to incorporate relevant internal and external links.
– Analyze the keyword density and suggest improvements for better SEO.

Remember, while ChatGPT can be a valuable tool, it’s essential to use it responsibly and maintain control over your content creation process.

Experiment And Refine Your Prompting Techniques

Writing effective prompts for ChatGPT is an essential skill for any SEO professional who wants to harness the power of AI-generated content.

Hopefully, the insights and examples shared in this article can inspire you and help guide you to crafting stronger prompts that yield high-quality content.

Remember to experiment with layering prompts, iterating on the output, and continually refining your prompting techniques.

This will help you stay ahead of the curve in the ever-changing world of SEO.

More resources:

Featured Image: Tapati Rinchumrus/Shutterstock

SEO

Measuring Content Impact Across The Customer Journey

Published

1 day ago

April 23, 2024

Max

Measuring Content Impact Across The Customer Journey

Understanding the impact of your content at every touchpoint of the customer journey is essential – but that’s easier said than done. From attracting potential leads to nurturing them into loyal customers, there are many touchpoints to look into.

So how do you identify and take advantage of these opportunities for growth?

Watch this on-demand webinar and learn a comprehensive approach for measuring the value of your content initiatives, so you can optimize resource allocation for maximum impact.

You’ll learn:

Fresh methods for measuring your content’s impact.
Fascinating insights using first-touch attribution, and how it differs from the usual last-touch perspective.
Ways to persuade decision-makers to invest in more content by showcasing its value convincingly.

With Bill Franklin and Oliver Tani of DAC Group, we unravel the nuances of attribution modeling, emphasizing the significance of layering first-touch and last-touch attribution within your measurement strategy.

Check out these insights to help you craft compelling content tailored to each stage, using an approach rooted in first-hand experience to ensure your content resonates.

Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or new to content measurement, this webinar promises valuable insights and actionable tactics to elevate your SEO game and optimize your content initiatives for success.

View the slides below or check out the full webinar for all the details.

SEO

How to Find and Use Competitor Keywords

Published

2 days ago

April 23, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Competitor keywords are the keywords your rivals rank for in Google’s search results. They may rank organically or pay for Google Ads to rank in the paid results.

Knowing your competitors’ keywords is the easiest form of keyword research. If your competitors rank for or target particular keywords, it might be worth it for you to target them, too.

There is no way to see your competitors’ keywords without a tool like Ahrefs, which has a database of keywords and the sites that rank for them. As far as we know, Ahrefs has the biggest database of these keywords.

How to find all the keywords your competitor ranks for

Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
Enter your competitor’s domain
Go to the Organic keywords report

The report is sorted by traffic to show you the keywords sending your competitor the most visits. For example, Mailchimp gets most of its organic traffic from the keyword “mailchimp.”

Since you’re unlikely to rank for your competitor’s brand, you might want to exclude branded keywords from the report. You can do this by adding a Keyword > Doesn’t contain filter. In this example, we’ll filter out keywords containing “mailchimp” or any potential misspellings:

Filtering out branded keywords in Organic keywords report

If you’re a new brand competing with one that’s established, you might also want to look for popular low-difficulty keywords. You can do this by setting the Volume filter to a minimum of 500 and the KD filter to a maximum of 10.

Finding popular, low-difficulty keywords in Organic keywords

How to find keywords your competitor ranks for, but you don’t

Go to Competitive Analysis
Enter your domain in the This target doesn’t rank for section
Enter your competitor’s domain in the But these competitors do section

Hit “Show keyword opportunities,” and you’ll see all the keywords your competitor ranks for, but you don’t.

You can also add a Volume and KD filter to find popular, low-difficulty keywords in this report.

How to find keywords multiple competitors rank for, but you don’t

Go to Competitive Analysis
Enter your domain in the This target doesn’t rank for section
Enter the domains of multiple competitors in the But these competitors do section

Competitive analysis report with multiple competitors

You’ll see all the keywords that at least one of these competitors ranks for, but you don’t.

Content gap report with multiple competitors

You can also narrow the list down to keywords that all competitors rank for. Click on the Competitors’ positions filter and choose All 3 competitors:

Selecting all 3 competitors to see keywords all 3 competitors rank for

Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
Enter your competitor’s domain
Go to the Paid keywords report

This report shows you the keywords your competitors are targeting via Google Ads.

Since your competitor is paying for traffic from these keywords, it may indicate that they’re profitable for them—and could be for you, too.

You know what keywords your competitors are ranking for or bidding on. But what do you do with them? There are basically three options.

1. Create pages to target these keywords

You can only rank for keywords if you have content about them. So, the most straightforward thing you can do for competitors’ keywords you want to rank for is to create pages to target them.

However, before you do this, it’s worth clustering your competitor’s keywords by Parent Topic. This will group keywords that mean the same or similar things so you can target them all with one page.

Here’s how to do that:

Export your competitor’s keywords, either from the Organic Keywords or Content Gap report

Paste them into Keywords Explorer
Click the “Clusters by Parent Topic” tab

For example, MailChimp ranks for keywords like “what is digital marketing” and “digital marketing definition.” These and many others get clustered under the Parent Topic of “digital marketing” because people searching for them are all looking for the same thing: a definition of digital marketing. You only need to create one page to potentially rank for all these keywords.

Keywords under the cluster of "digital marketing"

2. Optimize existing content by filling subtopics

You don’t always need to create new content to rank for competitors’ keywords. Sometimes, you can optimize the content you already have to rank for them.

How do you know which keywords you can do this for? Try this:

Export your competitor’s keywords

Paste them into Keywords Explorer
Click the “Clusters by Parent Topic” tab
Look for Parent Topics you already have content about

For example, if we analyze our competitor, we can see that seven keywords they rank for fall under the Parent Topic of “press release template.”

Our competitor ranks for seven keywords that fall under the "press release template" cluster

If we search our site, we see that we already have a page about this topic.

Site search finds that we already have a blog post on press release templates

If we click the caret and check the keywords in the cluster, we see keywords like “press release example” and “press release format.”

Keywords under the cluster of "press release template"

To rank for the keywords in the cluster, we can probably optimize the page we already have by adding sections about the subtopics of “press release examples” and “press release format.”