User Experience (UX) Design, Digital Marketing & Business Strategy
I’ve started to see the same narrative repeated in the interaction between successful entrepreneurs and those frustrated millennials.
As millennials are asking about getting rich, starting businesses or being as successful and X, Y, Z, entrepreneurs are answering with helpful direction.
Watch my video for more of what the best entrepreneurs are saying.
Subscribe to my Youtube channel and continue to shine bright like a Ryland.
Reading and writing blogs can broaden perspective and strengthen your writing skills.
At University we were all encouraged to document our critical thinking and creative process by blogging. We’d consistently add to our personal blog over the three years of study.
After months of writing blog posts, I decided to do something different, to learn a new skill; vlogging (video blogging).
I started to simply recording short videos and not edit or cut any of my mistakes to give me an idea of how good I was.
Over 10 short videos I saw vast improvements in my confidence and communication.
Now married to a gorgeous corporate lawyer-come vlogger, I’ve decided to start vlogging again.
You can subscribe to my YouTube channel to watch my videos. Here’s my first:
Also three channels that have inspired me to vlog:
So in starting again, I now wanted to share the lessons I’m learning and the benefits I’m seeing.
I’ll also keep adding to this list as an encouragement to others who are thinking about vlogging for themselves.
Vlogging has increased my confidence in front of a camera.
It’s helped to unite my thinking with my speaking so there are less ‘umming’ and ‘aring’.
Video content in my opinion is more engaging than written content.
It also increases time spent on your site or page as users are more likely to watch a video rather than read a long post.
I’m now contributing to the YouTube community. I’m sharing more about myself, my personality and my life.
I’m learning new skills in video editing and video marketing.
I’m currently just using iMove to edit and some search engine optimisation (SEO) tips to craft optimising video content.
Read my tips to boost your YouTube views.
I’ve started to interview friends that are contracting or running businesses of their own.
In doing this, I’m learning about their industry and field.
For me, it’s better to get the content out there rather than perfecting each video for a
If you strip the audio from your video and upload to Anchor.fm, you now have your very own podcast.
You can check my podcast on Spotify or Anchor.fm
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I’d like to hear your tips on vlogging, so feel free to share them in the comments below.
Subscribe to my Youtube channel and continue to shine bright like a Ryland.
Imagine Sam, a marketing manager for a local charity based in London. He’s eager to better understand his visitors and wants to increase his website conversion rate.
Armed with Google Analytics, his two main goals are to increase donations and applications for their apprenticeships. So, where does he start?
Given that you already have Google Analytics on your site, through something like Google Tag Manager, we’ll need some way of telling Google Analytics that a user has completed a certain task or action for it then to be tracked.
In our case, both will be a destination goal defined by a user getting to a specific thank you page. Depending on the unique thank you page, Google Analytics will know if the user has make a donation or submitted an application form and track those conversions. It will also act as a baseline to see whether any of our improvements will increase these numbers over time.
Now that we have our goals in place, let’s now focus on asking questions around your users:
I’d say having an optimised experience for all users is important, but in this case I’ll be focusing on quick wins rather than a whole redesign of a site. Getting feedback from your users can also be a good addition to using your analytics data too.
To find out which device category is most popular navigate to:
Audience > Mobile > Overview
Now, let’s say your audience is about ~60% for mobile, we might then want want to see which counties these users come from. On the same Mobile Overview page, define a secondary dimension as Country.
From our list of countries we might find we have lots of international traffic from the States for example. Using this sort of data we can make some assumptions on how to improve the conversion rate for these users. Examples could include:
These are just some examples. Of course some might ring more true than others but the focus here is to spot where the hurdles are and to take action.
After looking at who your users you’re getting, you might want to look these:
To find your popular landing pages, navigated to the follow:
Behaviour > Site Content > Landing Pages
I’d suggest focusing your efforts on reviewing the top three pages that you find here. While looking at these pages you’ll want to look out for the following:
What kind of page speed are you getting? Use Google Page Speed tool to help find ways to improve your page speed. If a site is slow to load, users tend to give up.
Is the content clear? Is your content clear and easy to understand? Is there clarity and urgency to your actions?
Are call to actions clear? Does your button or link style stand out as a clickable object or does it blend into everything else?
Now that we have goals define and we know more information about our users, we can find the problem areas and craft solutions to improve the conversion rate.
Adding tools like HotJar can provide some really useful data through heatmaps, user recordings and funnels. Using all this data can really help spot possible problem areas for your users.
If you’re interested, you can read more about the tools for improving user feedback. I’d also be great to hear how you use your Google Analytics data to increase your conversion rates.
YouTube could become your best passive income generator.
You know you have great videos, you have monetisation enabled and now you’re glued to your analytics.
In my case, I’m glued to my fiancé’s analytics.
I use all the techniques outlined below to optimise her videos.
If you’re interested in relationships, fashion or corporate law Follow KimaOnline.
Plug over, I promise.
Also a note of warning before we continue: Patience is required.
Following these simple steps to optimise your YouTube videos could see your revenue increase over time.
So here we go:
Whether you have an Android or an iPhone, consider downloading the YouTube Creator Studio app.
It’s filled with useful data, graphs and helpful analysis on all of your videos.
The Creator app will help track the effectiveness of your changes in increasing your views.
Under the ‘Audience’ tab within your Creator app, you’ll be able to see which countries view your videos the most.
Using this data, jump over to Google Trends and let’s geek out on search terms.
For our Nigerian Wedding White Guy Dances Video, I looked at some variations to produce the best results.
Within Google Trends, you can compare search terms from selected countries.
Here’s some YouTube search data for the following key phrases:
Although we decided to go for ‘Nigerian wedding’, ‘Black wedding’ from a purely optimisation perspective could have proven better for natural search discovery.
You could even go one step further and look at search term variations for white guy, white man and white boy.
As a YouTube veteran, you will have heard of the ‘boyfriend tag’ – an introduction to someone’s relationship through stories that the boyfriend tells.
In publishing your boyfriend tag, you want to focus on those exact keywords. You should include those keywords…
You can again use Google Trends to help you discover related queries. I’d suggest adding some of these into your bank of keywords.
Once you’ve got your content optimised, you’ll then need to think about your thumbnail design.
Two things I’ve experimented with recently:
Try to disrupt the visual flow of the search results. Do this by adding more whitespace or changing the shape of your thumbnail.
Consider adding some sort of frame to again make the content of your thumbnail stand out against other videos.
Once your video has been public for some time, you’ll start to see how well it’s performing.
Under the ‘Discovery’ tab within your Creator app, you’ll find ‘Top YouTube search terms’. This is a list of search terms used to find your video.
You should consider adding these terms to your video’s meta data to make it more discoverable.
So to recap, optimise your YouTube video using these 5 steps:
Hope you enjoy seeing those view counts rise.
If you have any tips, share them in the comments below.
Where there is no vision, there is no hope
George Washington Carver
It makes you think doesn’t it?
What’s your vision?
Have you discovered your purpose?
What’s the dream? The big picture?
Why do you do the things you do? What are you building up to?
The deep ‘why’ behind these types of questions can make them hard to answer, but for me, it’s important to know the ‘why’.
Defining your ‘why’ can shape everything you do. A measuring stick of sorts.
Does this help or hinder the vision? Yes/No.
It’s considered to be a pivotal part of a business strategy.
My ‘why’ has changed over the years.
From becoming a rubbish collector – due to their cool trucks – to a serial entrepreneur/inspirational speaker. Things can change.
In 2015, I wrote simply:
Building on my talents: music and creativity. Applying my character: encourager and inspirer.
By 2017 it had changed:
To inspire and support entrepreneurs at all levels. Through mentorship and collaboration to develop strategies to solve business problems. To provide practical solutions across content, design and development.
Your vision will be unique to you. It will also change over time.
Take time to meditate on what you’re good at. What do you want to achieve?
Write it down.
Consider sharing it with close friends to get their feedback on it.
Achieving your vision requires time and energy.
To increase time and energy consider simplifying your life around your vision.
Write down all the things you do in life: job, friendships, social life, sports, etc.
One by one, assess whether that item needs simplifying or changing.
It could mean changing a few things.
It could mean saying ‘No’.
But it could also mean saying ‘Yes’ to things that compliment your vision.
Plan in times to review your vision.
Have those changes to simplify helped you towards achieving your goal?
Has your vision changed? If so, it’s ok. Write down your new vision.
Repeating this process can help you prioritise your vision.
The talk of ‘vision’ hopefully isn’t so daunting now.
Set your vision. Measure against it. Refine it often. Circulating these three points will help focus your time, energy and efforts – they’re all valuable.
So how has setting a vision increased your dive and focus?
Think of three people in your life that appreciate and value you.
What’s common between them?
Could it be how they listen to you? For me, it is.
When they listen, it makes me feel valued.
From people to products, customers need the same.
To feel valued.
Consider not only listening, but watching too.
Their interactions with your product or website can sometimes show much more than just words or an opinion.
In putting your customers above your own interests you’ll produce a product that your customers will love.
Consider these three steps within your products:
Use
Heatmaps can help reveal visitor behaviours.
Through a graphical representation of data, heatmaps visually represent clicks, taps and scrolling behaviour of your visitors.
This eliminates the guesswork.
Identify potential usability issues by watching how your visitors really interact with your site.
The aim is to funnel and convert all of your visitors into customers.
The truth is your funnel has holes.
Take time to optimise your conversion funnel and block those holes.
‘Did you find everything you were looking for today?’
I’m sure we’ve all been asked that question at a supermarket or a shop.
Surveys and pools can show if your helping your customers achieve their goals. It can improve customer satisfaction.
Using your data, craft better solutions and implement quickly. This will show your customers that you do care.
Keep listening, watching and asking to see how your improvements are performing. Whether they’re having a positive impact on your user engagement, increase conversions or customer satisfaction.
So those three key points in getting your customers to love your product: start collecting feedback, implement your improvements often and keep listening. Repeat.
How often do you listen, watch or ask your customers about their experiences with your product?
What customer feedback tools are you using?