Shaun the Sheep and Marketing with Animation

By Karen Cioffi

I’ve watched silent movies before. And, a couple of the ‘oldie’ cartoons (e.g., Tom and Jerry) that had no talking. But, I would never have thought a full length movie for kids would work in today’s dwindling attention span society.

Well, I was wrong.

Shaun the Sheep has NO talking. No captions either.

The entire 1 hour and 25 minute cartoon movie conveyed the-grass-is-greener concept, conflict, obstacles, heroism, loyalty, and emotions. And, it did it all through actions, through animation.

I took my grandsons to the movie and the theater had lots of other grandparents with their grandchildren. Every child was captivated, the adults too. In fact, you forgot there were no words – no dialogue.

My 9 year old grandson who has ADD paid attention through the entire movie – and, he didn’t want to go in the first place, thinking it was a baby movie.

I was amazed, not only that it held his attention, but it help my attention. Me, who is always thinking of what I have to do next.

Quite an accomplishment.

This is the power of animation.

And, just imagine if an hour and a half animated movie can hold children’s attention, think how it will hold your readers’ and visitors’ attention on your website in short focused clips.

But, aside from my own viewpoints of Shaun the Sheep, there is research that backs up animation’s benefit in content marketing and inbound marketing.

Some Statistics

According to TippingpointLabs.com

• People are 64% - 85% more likely to purchase your product or service after watching an animation/video – that’s a significant boost to your conversions.
• Visit lengths are another factor that gets a boost. Visitors will stay on your site at least two minutes longer with animation/video.
• And, there’s the power of YouTube. You're 53x more likely to get on Google's first-page for search results by embedding video on your site. (1)

Along with this, Shooting Business states that, “Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL are among the hundreds of Search Engines that give priority listings to websites that host video content.” (2) Taking advantage of tags, descriptions, and any other kind of SEO strategies allowed when publishing the video is another avenue of search visibility.

If this isn’t enough incentive to jump on the animation bandwagon, think about the social media marketing aspect. Sharing and clickthrough rates are increased significantly with video.

Animated videos can be humorous, serious, emotional, and educational.

Using animation in your marketing, specifically your content marketing, is a win-win strategy that you should be taking advantage of.

For the icing on the cake, according to Hubspot:

• Ninety percent of the information the brain receives is visual.
• The brain processes visual information 60,000 faster than text.
• Videos in posts get 3X the inbound links than posts with only text.
• Animation (visual content) increases engagement. (3)

If you’d like to try your hand at a free animation tool, go to PowToon.com and click on the FREE option. (I’m NOT an affiliate, I just think it’s a great marketing tool.)

If you’d like to get one done without the headache of creating it yourself, check out AWD’s Animation Service.

References:

(1) http://www.slideshare.net/tpldrew/steal-this-slide-ecommerce-video-conversion-rates-statistics
(2) http://www.shootingbusiness.com/web-video-statistics/
(3) http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33423/19-Reasons-You-Should-Include-Visual-Content-in-Your-Marketing-Data.aspx



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This article was originally published at:
http://www.articlewritingdoctor.com/2015/08/shaun-the-sheep-and-marketing-with-animation/ #ContentMarketing

SEO and Website Ranking - Inside Website Traffic ‘Visit Lengths’

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a key element in driving website traffic to your site and ranking in the search engines. But, simply getting traffic isn’t enough. Along with getting that traffic, there are other factors that search engines look at when ranking your site. One of those elements is ‘visit lengths.’

According to Statcounter.com, visit lengths are considered “the time between when a visitor accesses your first webpage of their visit, and when they access the last.” While this particular measure isn’t 100 percent accurate, it’s pretty close and provides important information about your visitors and what they’re doing.

This information allows you to see “just how much ‘pull’ and ‘interest’ your website is generating for your visitors.”

So, why is this SEO information important?

Put simply, the longer a visitor stays, the better standing you’ll have with the search engines.

If you were to check your statistics, chances are the majority of your site’s traffic stays for less than five seconds. Google and the other search engines take note of this. It can be considered that your website or its content isn’t valuable enough to hold visitors. Your lower rated ‘pull’ and ‘interest,’ will cause a lower website ranking.

As a measuring stick, Statcounter measures ‘visit lengths’ in increments of:

• Less than 5 seconds
• From 5 seconds to 30 seconds
• From 30 seconds to 5 minutes
• From 5 minutes to 20 minutes
• From 20 minutes to an hours
• Longer than an hour

If you can hold a visitor for over 30 seconds you’re doing pretty good. Each increment beyond that demonstrates a rise is your website’s ‘pull’ and ‘interest’ capabilities.

At this point, you may be wondering how you can get traffic to stay on your site beyond 5 minutes, which will give your rankings a boost.

Well, how long does it take you to read one article?

If that article is informative, a visitor will want to know what else of value you have on your site. This leads the visitor further and deeper into your site. She’ll look at older titles and read more articles of interest. I’ve been on sites where I’ve read three or four articles, causing me to go deeper and deeper into those sites.

This is how ‘pull’ and ‘interest’ work. A visitor is pulled in by the informative and interesting content. The easier it is to find additional relevant quality content, the longer you’ll hold that visitor’s attention  . .  and viewing time.

There are two basic and easy ways to hold a visitor’s attention and increase your website ranking:

1. Create embedded links within your content. For example: if you have the word ‘marketing’ in your article, link that word to another article on marketing within your site.

2. At the end of your article include three or four additional article titles and link them directly to the articles.

So, the next time you’re posting an article to your site, take the extra few minutes to include links to other articles within your site. This is a proven method of engaging and holding your visitors, thereby increasing your site’s ranking.

Originally published at:
http://www.karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com/2012/08/seo-and-website-ranking-inside-website.html

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Before I get into why you absolutely need a website as part of your book marketing strategy, according to TechTerms.com, the definition of a website is:

A Website, or Web site, is not the same thing as a Web page. Though the two terms are often used interchangeably, they should not be. So what's the difference? To put it simply, a Web site is a collection of Web pages. For example, Amazon.com is a Web site, but there are millions of Web pages that make up the site.

BusinessDictionary.com describes a website as a “virtual location” that’s accessible via unique URLs and an internet connection.

It's kind of like your house. It has a street address that people can find using roadways. If they have a GPS, they simply plug in the address and are given a direct path to your house.

Your website is your virtual home. Rather, it’s your virtual place of business and must be ‘findable’ and accessible. The URL is your address. And, rather than physical streets, people find you through virtual roadways in cyberspace. And, they find you within seconds.

The website is a critical part of every online platform. In fact, it’s fundamental to your platform and your content marketing (and inbound marketing) strategy.

Because of this, you need to generate visibility and traffic to that site.

Why?

Well, there’s so much ‘noise’ (competition) in cyberspace it’s very, very, very difficult to cut through it.

To give you an idea of the magnitude and power of the internet, here are several statistics:

•    Worldwide internets users have reached 3,035,749.340, as of June 2014

*Source: Internet World Stats
•    1.8 Billions are on Social Networks
•    North America has 81% Internet Penetration
•    Top Social Networks added 135 Million users in 2013
•    Facebook now has 1.184 Billion Users
•    There are 6.5 Billion Mobile Subscriptions globally

*Source: The 2014 Global Digital Statistics, Stats & Facts SlideShare presentation from the guys at We Are Social

•    There are over one billion active websites (1)
•    There are 347 WordPress blog posts added each minute (2)
•    Google processes over 40,000 global searches EVERY SECOND (1)
•    Google processes over 3.5 BILLION global searches EACH DAY (1)
•    81% of businesses consider their blogs an important asset (3)
•    Of all internet users, 82.6% use search (3)
•    Studies found that online searchers are more likely to buy

(1)  http://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-websites/
(2) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2381188/Revealed-happens-just-ONE-minute-internet-216-000-photos-posted-278-000-Tweets-1-8m-Facebook-likes.html
(3) http://www.searchenginejournal.com/24-eye-popping-seo-statistics/42665/

The internet is teeming with websites, information, and searches and these statistics are OLD. And, if you’re promoting or offering anything, you must have an optimized platform that includes an optimized website. There is no way around this fundamental fact.

To get your home business or small business moving in the right direction, you also need to take advantage of marketing strategies that will bring people to your website. You need to know the basics of website optimization (easy to do stuff), blogging, email marketing, and social media marketing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karen Cioffi is an award-winning children’s author and children’s ghostwriter/ rewriter, and coach. She is also the founder and editor-in-chief of Writers on the Move and author online platform instructor with WOW! Women on Writing.

If you’d like more writing tips or help with your children’s story, check out: Writing for Children with Karen Cioffi.

If you'd like to take a peek at my 4-week, interactive e-class through WOW! Women on Writing, BUILD YOUR AUTHOR/WRITER PLATFORM, just click the clickable link.

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