We’re rooting for you 🌱

Today's Agenda: Screaming into the abyss (two snack breaks)

It's been a long week, but you're handling it like a champ! Grab a snack and your blankie and dive into this week's newsletter.

I Live for the Applause-plause 👏 We all know the feeling when something we post gets a ton of likes and hearts from people. We love that feeling too, but how important is it really to be focusing on these numbers?What are vanity metrics? Vanity metrics include impressions, likes, comments, shares, open rates, followers, views, etc. These engagement metrics are the most commonly used metric in social media and content marketing to measure how successful specific campaigns are. However, we're here to tell you that these metrics are not the only way to gauge the success of a campaign. On paper, vanity metrics seem valuable, but they aren't always helpful for conversion rates. Instead of going viral, aim to generate conversations with your followers and impact even just one person, as these actions are more likely to turn into real opportunities for growth. Exchanges between you and a potential customer are more valuable than the number of likes at the end of the day. This LinkedIn article goes in-depth about what makes a good conversation starter and provides some great examples. Take a minute to check it out!

Conversation Starters

Open for Business! 🎉Word-of-mouth marketing is still essential to businesses in this digital age that we are in currently. Today, we want to show you one way to mimic word-of-mouth recommendations on LinkedIn. LinkedIn offers an "Open for Business" feature that allows freelancers and small business owners to highlight the services they provide on their profile. This feature is helpful because it enables clients to find you easier when they search for service providers. This feature is easy to use on desktop or mobile, and there's nothing to install.

We'll walk you through it step-by-step so you can start getting more clients today!

1) Go to your profile and click on the "Add services" link. If this section hasn't appeared on your profile yet, click "Add Profile Section" and click the plus sign next to "Providing services to clients."

2) Choose the category that closely represents your services using the “Business focus” drop-down menu. Then, select the services you provide. A quick tip here is to add your services in the order of how you want them to appear, as this will come in handy later on.

3) Once you have added your services, add your location, whether you're open to remote work or not, and if you want to allow members who aren't connected with you to be able to message you.

4) When finished, click "Add to profile," and you're ready to go!

If you need help implementing this feature, let us know, and we'd be happy to lend a hand! 😊

Alexa, Play Despacito 😔

Sixty million people in the US use smart speakers in their homes and cars. With the trend of digital voice assistants growing, so is speech search. Marketers are faced now with the task of optimizing their websites and content to tailor to speech search.

‍What does this mean?

‍Optimizing for speech search means focusing on long-tail keywords that mimic the speech patterns of real-life people. A customer might type into a Google search "best online invoicing software." But if they were asking a smart speaker, they would probably phrase it more like, "OK, Google: What online invoicing software should small businesses use?" 🤔

Making your website more conversational and including industry-specific keywords can help you appear in the results of more speech searches. Ensuring vital information is easy to find on your website will also allow users to find what they are looking for more quickly. Having a Frequently-Asked-Questions section is also helpful because it is easier for search engines like Google to pull content quickly. For more information and steps you can take to optimize your website for voice search, check out this Search Engine Journal article.

Search Engine Journal

That's all for this week, folks! We hope you have a terrific weekend, and we're here if you need anything!

With 💛,

The Boundless Media team