As members of the entertainment industry, not only do we have to be exceptional at our trade, we also have to be great digital marketers. As creative individuals, this can be difficult as the more logical tasks & side of business don’t come as easy to us. This is especially challenging in a world where social media has such a strong influence and the market is oversaturated by people who all have something to sell. To get you started, I’ve put together a list of crucial digital marketing terms that you need to know if you’re serious about growing your audience and getting your work out there.
Advertising: The act of promoting a product, service or work through an advertisement. Ads can be in the form of videos, writing and 2D or 3D media. An example of an ad is a commercial for Tim Hortons. In their ads, they display their brand colours, their product, logo and slogan.
Blogging: The act of writing an article that is digitally published through your site or a third-party site (I.g. Medium).
Bounce Rate: A bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave your site after only one visit. If your writing or sales are mainly digitally based, this is an important metric to watch out for. Ideally, you’ll want to keep your bounce rate between below 55%. Anything higher is an indication that your site design is poor or your content does not offer relevant value to your target audience.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): This term refers to the number of individuals who open an e-mail, a digital advertisement or a website. In addition, CTR is measured in percentages, so let’s say 80 people out of 100 followers click on one of your ads. Your CTR would then be equivalent to 80%.
This is an important metric to keep track of if you are monetizing your site or want to sell your novel, as it will help you gauge the effectiveness of your ad campaigns.
Conversions: Every time a client or visitor performs an action on your website, this is known as a conversion. For example, let’s say someone clicks on your most recent blog article, this is known as a conversion.
Digital Marketing: Consists of all the tactics, strategies and tasks a digital marketer performs in order to digitally promote the products and services of a business. This may include managing social media pages, running ad campaigns and bidding on keywords.
Domain Authority: Domain authority is the ranking of your website on a given search engine. In order for your blogs & writing to get the most visibility, you want to rank as high as you possibly can. This will not only ensure that search engines will trust your website, but you will also gain more exposure.
Ghostwriting: When you write a written piece for another person or business without taking credit for it. The best ghostwriters are able to write in the voice of their employers and readers cannot tell that it’s a different person writing the piece.
Impressions: Impressions are a crucial metric needed to measure the performance of an ad campaign. They indicate how many times someone has seen your ad. The higher the number of impressions, the more exposure you get, which may lead to conversions.
Influencer: An influencer is someone who has an established online presence and authority. For example, there are many influencers on Instagram. You can recognize an influencer by their large following, their impact on their followers and in their niche.
If you’re a writer and you want to gain more exposure, reaching out to an influencer may be a good choice. As they often charge for shoutouts and features, make sure you reach out to the right person for your niche and that their following consists of real people and not just bots.
Landing Page: This is the first page of someone who sees when they click on your website or see when they enter your site’s URL directly. It’s very important to have a well-designed, clear & engaging landing page if you want to keep your bounce rate to a minimum.
Meta Description: This is the short snippet of text under a website listing on a SERP. The best meta descriptions will describe your site and site pages in a clear way and provides insight as to its contents.
Networking: The act of establishing and maintaining a resourceful and strong social community. Your network can consist of people who work in the same field as you, your friends, coworkers, family…etc. The stronger your network, the more successful you will be.
However, it’s important to not establish relationships with people just to take advantage of their influence or expertise. Every relationship should have an equal balance of give and take, so you should be prepared to offer your support to others in your network as well.
Return of Investment (ROI): ROI is a metric used to calculate whether or not the money you have invested in an ad campaign or product was worth it. So the higher the ROI, the better it is.
The best way to calculate your ROI is through the following formula:
ROI= (Gain from investment- Investment cost)/Investment cost
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Is the strategy used to make a business’ website rank higher on search engines through the use of keywords.
If you are a blogger, this is something you want to invest some time in. The stronger and better your keywords, the higher you will rank and the greater the exposure your articles will receive.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Consists of the plans of action businesses or sole proprietors devise in order to rank higher on search engines like Bing or Google.
Search Engine Results Page (SERP): Is the site listings you see per page when you search for something using a keyword on a search engine. The sites with the highest domain authority, the best use of keywords and the longest published duration will appear on the first page.
SERP Report: A SERP report is an analysis of how a site ranks on the first search results page. This is calculated based on each individual keyword associated with your site.
Tags: The fancy word for keywords on blogging platforms. The optimal number of tags you should have per blog is 10. Additionally, they should be directly related to the content written within your blog post.
Target Audience: A target audience is the group of people your work is meant to be read and viewed by, or sold to.
The Three Main Types of Media:
Earned: When people spread the word about your product or work and you gain conversions, this is called earned media. Earned media can also refer to a successful ad campaign or a positive coverage in the local news.
Owned: Owned media are the things you have complete control over, such as your website or blog articles.
Paid: Paid media consists of ads that are placed by you on a search engine or third-party website.
The Two Main Types of Traffic:
Organic: Organic traffic is when people stumble upon your website by chance through a web search.
Paid: Paid traffic is when your site receives conversions and visitors from ads campaigns you are running. For example, let’s you have a paid Facebook ad for your newly released book that leads to your website. Each time someone clicks on the ad, they are brought to your website, thus generating traffic.
The Two Types of Keywords:
Keywords are words or phrases that a user searches on a search engine. For example, someone looking to buy books might use the keywords “Local bookstore” in their search.
Short-tail: Keywords that consist of less than 3 words.
Long-tail: Keywords that consist of more than 3 words.
Word-of-Mouth Marketing: When followers, clients or people in your network spread the word about your work. If your work is resourceful and provides value, you will gain conversions, trust and a good reputation from WOMM. If your work does not provide value, WOMM may result in a higher bounce rate, a loss of followers and a damaged reputation. This is one reason why it’s so important to be respectful, honest and put your best & most relevant work forward. For, your business is a reflection of who you are and people will judge you and your work based on what they see and not what you know to be true.
Thank you so much for reading this article! If you found this article helpful, I post marketing tips every Monday, so be sure to follow this blog if you don’t want to miss out!