#5: How sketchy could it be?

👋 Hey, it’s the Ercule newsletter! We talk about algorithms, code and process so you can spend more time on storytelling, napping, pilates, absolutely anything else.

In this issue:

• Product marketing and comms will love this simple search metric
• Opt-in banners as a timed puzzle game
• What Google Tag Manager is – and how it can help your content get broader reach
• Open the gates! Liberate the freelancers! Listen to our friends!

🍱 Get PMM and comms excited about content with “share of search”

Your brand and product marketing teams might be really excited about this metric we’re running into called “Share of Search”.

It’s simple to understand: who do people search for the most in our category?

And it’s easy to calculate, too – get the monthly search volume for your brand, and see what percentage that is of all brands in your category. For example:

• If you have 10,000 searches a month, that’s 10,000 searches for you, and…
• Your 5 competitors all have 5,000 each, that’s 25,000 searches for them, then…
• Share of search is about 30% – your searches (10,000) over total searches (35,000)!
  

(A quick and very rough way to get a similar analysis is Google Trends, so start there if you don’t feel like doing a lot of math right now.)

Share of search is cool for a few reasons.

1. It’s meaningful. The more present you are in search, the more you can expect to sell.
2. To put it another way, share of search predicts share of market.
3. It’s easy to calculate, understand, and validate. You can track it easily over time.

But most importantly, it helps you make the case for visibility in organic search – and therefore, in investment in content – in a way that should get your colleagues excited. (Or depressed? But then maybe resolute.)

How to get started:

• Go in and explore Google Trends. Type in your name, and your competitors’ names. Adjust the time range.

• Compare your competitors. If that didn’t work, tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs will usually have the data even if Trends doesn’t deign to include it.

You can take this one step further by seeing what your share of search is for certain topics.

You’ll need a tool for this, but look for a tab called “Competitor Analysis” or something similar, and enter the topics that are most important for your brand.

Share this data with your comms and product marketing teams.

🪤 The misery of Terms & Conditions – in game form!

Pop-ups on your website are a UX issue – they can be helpful, or they can be really obnoxious.

Opt-in banners take that to the extreme. Terms & Conditions banners especially. This wild online game will remind you about the perils of UX design:

• Hyperactive pop-ups
• Muddy language
• Cluttered design

It’s brutal! Of course, for some (sketchy) sites this confusion blitz is the point. For other sites, it’s an honest oversight.

At Ercule, we insist that earning people’s trust is one of the best moves your brand can make.

If you’re feeling nervous about your site’s UX, you can drop us a line. We’re happy to do a five-minute video audit for you.

🥃 Google Tag Manager, Schmoogle Tag Manager

This question has come up in a few client meetings. Maybe you’ve been asking it too.

What is Google Tag Manager? Should I care, as a content marketer?

Google Tag Manager is a way of putting JavaScript tags on your site – and managing them – more easily.

It’s not weird for a site to have dozens of these tags for various purposes, with wide-ranging effects on analytics and site performance – both things that you probably care deeply about as a content marketer!

Tag Manager simplifies crucial web dev work:

• Add analytics tags when and where you need them
• Remove analytics tags when you don’t need them anymore – or only fire them if they’re needed – which makes your site faster
• Manage and troubleshoot analytics tags that are causing problems with the site.

That means more time for adding new functionality, implementing new features, and other things that are more obviously helpful to users.

What should you do?

Ask some questions of your web dev: Is your team using GTM? Who is managing it? If you’re not using Google Tag Manager – or if nobody’s looked at it in a while – there can be some quick wins there for site performance and tracking.

🎁 Ungating content, DocuSign trials, and… “Creator Mode”?!

A few choice pieces of content from friends and people we admire:

• Nicole Bump explained her success with non-gated content – and the philosophy behind it.

• John Ballinger launched a new e-signature company, with a much more sensible fee structure than you might be used to. Freelancers, go try it out instead of that trial DocuSign account!

• Erin Balsa talked about the perils of Creator Mode on LinkedIn. (Never heard of Creator Mode? That’s one of the perils discussed.)

• Josh Spilker shared his current tool stack for content marketing. He even got us to reconsider MarketMuse.

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