Social SEO Simplified: How to Optimize for the “Other” Search Engines

Do you want to compete with the best SEOs in the world?

It might be fun, but chances are you’ll either get crushed or have very slow success.

But that’s exactly what you’re doing when you try to rank for keywords on Google.

Sure, you can go after long-tail keywords to avoid the sharks, but you’ll still have some decent competition.

But what if you could go back in time when SEO wasn’t so evolved? You would be able to rapidly rank for terms and grow your organic traffic.

And although I can’t help you with time travel, I can help you find similar scenarios in the present that could deliver far better results than your current SEO strategy.

What am I talking about?

I’m talking about spending less time focusing on Google. Why? Because that’s where 99% of SEOs spend their time.

I’m talking about taking advantage of ranking for the “other” search engines—the ones on social media sites.

I’ve seen very few marketers and SEOs take full advantage of these opportunities, which means two things:

• Less competition – it’s much easier to beat out amateurs and hobbyists who are accidentally ranking for terms than it is professional SEOs
• Simpler rankings – since there aren’t a ton of people trying to manipulate search results, their algorithms don’t need to be as sophisticated as Google’s.

In this post, I’m going to show you how you can take advantage of these search engines. 

Why ignoring social media means missing a big opportunity

I know what you’re thinking…

Google is the only search engine big enough to be worth focusing on.

It’s true, Google is massive.

Google gets about 40,000 searches per second, which is around 3.5 billion searches per day.

Obviously, Google is the largest search engine.

The misconception, however, is that social search engines aren’t large themselves.

Take Twitter, for instance, which gets an impressive 2.1 billion queries per day. That’s not far behind Google.

Consider that Facebook reached 1 billion searches per day back in 2012, which has only grown since then.

And finally, YouTube—the largest video site—gets over 3 billion searches per month. It may not be as big as the others, but 3 billion searches is still a lot.

Other social sites also get millions of searches per day.

Although those are small fractions of what Google gets, all you need is a small percent of that traffic to build and sustain a very successful business.

One caveat: I’ll admit, social search traffic is different from Google search traffic. A large percentage of the searches performed are meeting the needs of people on a particular network—they are not traffic generators.

However, as I’ll show you later, there are still other types of searches on these networks that can be used to grow traffic to your site if you optimize for them.

There are some networks that are better for some types of businesses than others, but I’ll make those clear when the time comes.

1. Facebook has invested in search, so take advantage of it

Facebook is all about connection.

Users connect to friends, things they like, and communities on the biggest social media site by far.

It’s really hard to convert Facebook’s search traffic into traffic for your own business, but it can be done.

Facebook SEO for local business: Local businesses, particularly entertainment businesses, need to be on Facebook.

A significant portion of Facebook’s daily searches, billions of them, is used to find local businesses.

Users look for businesses for a few main reasons:

• to read reviews
• to get recent and upcoming deals, news, etc.
• to get more details (hours of operation, location, etc.)

Getting found in Facebook’s search results can get you immediate business. In addition, if you are active on the platform, you can often get the searcher to “like” your page.

This means that you have another follower that you can market your business to in the future.

Let’s look at an example…

Pretend that our user either lives in Chicago or is visiting the city. They are looking for a nearby pizza place, so they search for “pizza Chicago”:

Facebook’s algorithm understands that our searcher isn’t looking for people, photos, or groups, so all the top results are “pages” or “places.”

Note that if someone just types in “pizza,” Facebook will return results in the city they live in.

There are a few things to note in these results:

• Reviews are not king - The top result has the worst rating of the top 5 results at 3.8 out of 5. While high ratings are probably better for conversions once someone is on your business’ page, they are not mandatory for high rankings.

• Likes are also not king - Similarly, the second result has an amazing 340,000 likes, but it ranks below the page that has 3,700 likes. If likes were a huge part of the algorithm, this wouldn’t have happened.
• Facebook understands location - Facebook knows that “Chicago” in the search refers to a location, not a name. Even though the second result doesn’t have “Chicago” in the title, it ranks because its locations are in Chicago.

Reviews, likes, and having the exact search phrase in your title are all likely ranking factors, and they do count. However, it’s likely that they only count for a bit, and the benefit of having more quickly yields diminishing results.

Make sure to get a few hundred reviews and a few thousand likes, and you’ll likely come close to maxing out the effect they will have on your rankings.

The main factor, for local businesses, is location.

Unfortunately, this isn’t very easy to change. If you do have a business with a flexible address or are considering a location change, change your address on Facebook and see how that changes the way your business shows up in the results.

Search for “(your business type) + city”, and study the results.

An alternative strategy is to add a longer-tailed keyword to your business.

For example, instead of calling your page “Chicago Pizza,” you could call it “Chicago Pizza – Deep Dish Pizza and more.”

Looking at the search results for “Chicago deep dish pizza,” you can see that they are less competitive (pages have fewer reviews and likes):

Despite being a much easier keyword to target, it still likely gets a good search volume.

A quick check in the Keyword Planner reveals that it gets about a third of the volume of “Chicago Pizza”:

If you’re just starting out on Facebook, it will take time to get hundreds of reviews and likes. However, you can target a simpler keyword in your title and on your page (mention a few times) and still get some organic Facebook traffic to your page.

For non-local businesses, there are groups: Beyond people and local businesses, there is one other main thing that Facebook users search for—interests.

The first thing a new user does is search their favorite topic. Most of those searches will bring up a combination of groups and topic pages.

If you can rank highly for a relevant search in your niche, you can then funnel that traffic back to your website.

Here’s the plan:

Create a group or page in your niche around a popular interest, and rank for the main search term. Then, include a link in the page/group description back to your website, and periodically include links in your posts.

It might sound a bit complicated, but it’s very simple. Let’s walk through it.

If a Facebook user is interested in marketing, they might search for “content marketing” in the search bar.

All of the top results in this case are groups. For other searches, the results may contain pages in addition to the groups:

Groups are pages, where any group member can create a post. The creator of the group serves both as a regular member and as a moderator (can choose who gets to join the group and can remove posts).

While the number of members for each group may not seem very impressive, you can regularly drive thousands of visits a month to your site with just a few hundred active members.

These groups have two main components.

First, there is a group description on the right sidebar, where you could potentially put a link back to your site (if done tastefully).

This is the main place, other than your title, where you can include keywords. Note that “content marketing” appears three times in the above description.

The other main part of groups are posts, which can be made by any member.

Although it would make sense for groups with more engagement to rank higher in the search results, this doesn’t seem to be the case (perhaps in the future). Plenty of groups full of spam rank highly for broad terms.

You have two main options to take advantage of search traffic that leads to groups:

1. Create your own for a niche community, and build it up
2. Join groups already ranking high for your main keywords, be active, and then drop links back to your website occasionally

If you do make your own page, how do you get it to rank high?

The group search engine is very primitive and seems to focus mainly on:

• keyword in title
• keyword in page description
• number of members

The search results are terrible, i.e., irrelevant, for broad keywords such as “marketing,” so try to get more specific. Put your keyword in your group’s or page’s title as well as a few times in your page description.

It will take some work initially to grow your membership. However, once you get a few hundred members who regularly participate in the group, it will take less active work on your part to maintain the growth.

2. The 2 tactics behind Twitter search success

I’ll admit, it took me some time to understand Twitter. You might still be struggling with the platform, but once you do understand it, you’ll see that it can help almost any business.

The Twitter search engine is often used to look for other people to connect with, but not as often as Facebook’s.

The Twitter search engine is mainly used for two things, and you can use both of them to get more followers and, subsequently, more traffic to your website.

Tweeting about trending topics: Twitter is built so that great Tweets can quickly spread, while all the rest fade away.

This is why Twitter is one of the best ways to find what topics are trending in the online world.

Users of Twitter are naturally curious about what is trending, so they either click the trending hashtag or search for it.

When signed into Twitter, you can see a sidebar section just for trending hashtags:

The bar will show you trending tweets in your country. If you want to see trends in another country, use a tool such as this.

Just click the name of the country you’re interested in on the right sidebar, and it will load the current top 10 trending tweets:

Tons of people search for those trending hashtags.

When someone searches for a trending topic, they see results like these:

They will see the tweets that mention the trend—in this case, “Jorge Posada”—either in the text itself or in a hashtag.

The cool thing is that someone who searches that topic will see all the tweets about it, even by those who don’t have many followers.

If you want to get in front of an audience right away, this is an opportunity.

To take advantage of trending topics, you need to tweet about things that include one of those trends. However, you need to relate them to your business/niche.

Obviously, you can’t do this for all hashtags. But the idea is that if a lot of people see your tweet, at least a few of them will also be interested in your niche and could then follow you.

Assuming you have a social media strategy, you will be able to get your Twitter followers to go to your site later.

Twitter is run by hashtags: The other thing that people use Twitter to search for are hashtags.

Again, someone searching for a hashtag will see all recent tweets with that hashtag, no matter who made them. The only SEO that you have to do is strategically include hashtags in your tweets.

Your goal should be to include 1-3 hashtags for each tweet you make. They also need to be popular enough that people actually search for them, which means that you should keep them broad.

To find hashtags that are good for your business, use a free tool like Hashtagify.me. Search for your general niche:

The tool will show you other popular relevant hashtags:

Write down any that apply to your regular tweets, and include them when you get a chance.

There’s one more way to take advantage of hashtag searches.

When you search for a hashtag, the first results are often photos:

People obviously click on these; otherwise, Twitter wouldn’t prioritize them in the search results.

These can drive direct traffic to your site, and all you need to do is include relevant hashtags along with a title and link:

See that time stamp above? Even though this picture tweet was made 24 hours ago, it’s still showing up at the top of the results. That’s simply because the vast majority of tweets are text-based, not picture-based.

To take advantage of Twitter search traffic, tweet regularly: What you’ll quickly notice is that most tweets are short-lived unless they get re-tweeted a bunch of times.

I scrolled down about 30 tweets in the marketing hashtag results and got to posts that were only 9 hours old.

Very few people will search a hashtag and go past the first few results.

This means that it’s important to stay on top.

Other than trying to get re-tweets, the way you do this is by posting often.

You should tweet at least 3 times per day and test tweeting even more frequently. You can use social media tools to schedule all your tweets at once to save time.

3. LinkedIn is for thought leaders and finding clients

If you are a freelancer or B2B service provider, you have a lot of opportunity to market yourself on LinkedIn.

In addition to using the search engine to find people to connect with, people also use it to find potential people and companies to hire.

Some good LinkedIn optimization can lead to high paying clients down the road, which is why it’s so valuable.

Here’s an example. Let’s say a small business owner is looking for SEO help. He goes on LinkedIn and searches for “SEO consultant”:

Right away, you can notice that keywords are huge on LinkedIn. However, there isn’t too much of an advantage to have the exact phrase “SEO Consultant.”

It probably is still better, but as long as you have the words “SEO” and “Consultant” somewhere in your profile, you could still show up in the search results.

LinkedIn bolds all the keywords searched in the results.

In addition, if you click any of the results, LinkedIn highlights all the keywords on the person’s profile page:

Start by optimizing your profile: In order to show up in any search results, you need to have the right keywords in the right place.

LinkedIn shows your listing in the results if you have your keywords in three places:

• Your personal job description
• Your current job title
• Your past job titles

Obviously, having a keyword in your past job titles may make a prospect think that you’re not doing that kind of work anymore, so we’ll ignore that.

First, let’s pick some good keywords to target. It will depend on your niche, but try to include commonly searched for words such as:

• Freelance and freelancer
• Consultant
• Specialist
• Coach
• Strategist

To edit your professional description, view your profile while you are logged in, and click the pencil icon beside it:

This is the most important area of your profile. It shows up right under your name in search results.

You may not be able to do much with your current section, which lists your company name.

However, if you can find a way to incorporate a keyword into your current company, it can help you rank.

Get more profile views by connecting: You may have noticed one other thing about those search results, which is that they show how closely connected you are with someone:

It makes sense from LinkedIn’s point of view. If someone is looking to hire someone, they probably want to hire someone they know or who is trusted by someone in their network.

If you’re connected with someone, you’re their “1st” connection and will rank higher as long as you also have the keyword.

To take advantage of this:

• Connect to everyone you know
• Accept all requests, even if you don’t know them (you’ll show up higher for other people in their networks)
• Look for opportunities to connect with people with a lot of followers (like bloggers that you’ve emailed or connected with through comments)

Or…connect to the right people: You can also take a much more tactical approach by targeting people with certain job descriptions.

For example, if you were a freelance SEO or writer, you’d typically be hired by marketing directors. Luckily, you can type in “marketing director” in the search bar, and then explore the top suggested results.

Then, you have a few options:

• Just send a connection request
• Send them an Inmail message

If you have a related job (like a freelancer to a marketer), most people will just accept the request. However, you do run the risk of being marked as a spammer if you do it too much, so be careful.

“Inmail” is LinkedIn’s internal messaging system. You can pay to send anyone a message even if you’re not connected with them.

You could ask them to connect, explaining that you’re trying to grow your network. This will eliminate the risk of being flagged. If they say no, leave them alone.

4. Not surprisingly, Google+ has a search function that beats the rest

Google+ is not as big as Facebook, but it’s probably the better social network from a user experience point of view.

One of its better aspects is its search engine—for discovering new content. This should probably be expected, considering it is Google after all. However, it’s nowhere near as complex as the real Google algorithm, so don’t be scared about doing some SEO.

Users can search for their favorite topics, e.g., “content marketing”:

They get a nice collection of people, pages, and mainly recent posts. Since the posts make up such a large portion of the page, focus your efforts there.

Keywords are still important: First and foremost, you need to mention the keywords in your post if you want to be shown to searchers.

Start each post you create on Google+ with a description, where you can type whatever you want.

Then, you can attach pictures or links, and the title and the description will also be shown.

You should include important keywords in both the description and any content you link to (choose the titles of your content carefully beforehand):

One mention is good, but two or three is even better.

Always include tags: You can add hashtags to your post descriptions, just like on Twitter. Similarly, if you include the individual keywords searched as separate hashtags, they will be highlighted for the searcher:

Add hashtags to your description to help your rankings and to stand out more to searchers on the network.

Google+ also makes it really easy to find hashtags.

Search for your main niche, and then click on any of the hashtags that show up. Google will load the search results for that hashtag.

In addition, in the top left, there will be a box with a ton of popular relevant hashtags. Use these whenever you can in your descriptions.

Plus ones and shares matter: As you might have guessed, time is an important ranking factor.

On any social network, users want to see content that is new, so new posts are prioritized.

But unlike Twitter, which displays information mostly in chronological order, Google+ relies on much more than time to determine which posts to show to searchers.

We’ve already looked at keywords and hashtags, but the popularity of the posts also matters.

Here’s an example:

These two posts were by different people, who shared the same piece of content.

Although one was almost a day older, it still showed up side by side with the other one. The main reason for that is because the older one had a lot more engagement. The left one had zero engagement, but the right one had 38 plus ones and 6 shares at the time.

You can see the number of plus ones, comments, and shares at the bottom of each post.

This last ranking factor you can’t do too much about.

At first, when you have only a few connections on the network, you won’t get much engagement.

But if you plan to incorporate Google+ into your social media marketing strategy, you will get more engagement over time as you grow your network, so be patient.

5. For video content, YouTube is #1

One of the biggest sentiments I hear when it comes to social media is that “social media isn’t right for my business.”

Many platforms might not be, but YouTube is a platform where even “boring” niches come to life.

You can find multiple videos with hundreds of thousands of views about drywall—as boring a topic as it gets.

Ranking well on YouTube will not only get your video a lot of views from internal searches but it will also help you show up on Google. YouTube videos rank incredibly well on Google.

Considering how much videos stand out in Google’s search results, they also get good click-through rates, even when ranking in spots #4-6.

Keyword research has two functions: When picking keywords to target with your videos, you want to target those keywords that not only get searched on YouTube but that also get shown in Google’s video results.

There are 5 main types of keywords that typically have video results in Google:

• How-to keywords (“How to shave a cat”)
• Reviews (“Bluehost review”)
• Tutorials (“Setting up WordPress”)
• Anything fitness or sports related (“Cardio kickboxing”)
• Funny videos (“Cute animals”)

Include words related to those searches (e.g., “how to”, “review”, “tutorial”) wherever possible in your video title, which is the most important ranking factor.

Become an authority: In Google searches, content of the sites with a high domain authority ranks easier. Google knows that searchers trust the people behind the site, so it ranks their content better.

The same goes for YouTube videos. As you make more and more high quality videos and get subscribers, views, etc., your videos will start to rank easier and faster because YouTube will know that you make videos people generally like.

Take full advantage of your description: YouTube doesn’t know what’s in your video, and it’s not changing anytime soon. That is why basic keyword optimization is so important here.

You have two main places where you can include keywords:

• The video title
• The video description

You can also include keywords in the video file name, but it doesn’t make sense for that to be a significant ranking factor.

Here are some things to keep in mind for your description:

• Include links to your site (convert viewers into email subscribers)
• Include main keyword and secondary keyword(s) in the first 1-3 sentences
• Don’t stuff your keyword, but aim for 3-4 mentions in a 200-word description

User experience is crucial for ranking: Another way that YouTube can tell if people like a video is whether or not people interact with it.

Years ago, YouTube ranked videos purely on views, but those are easily faked with a bot or a gig on Fiverr.

Now, YouTube can tell which views are fake, partly by how much of the video was watched.

It’s unnatural for most viewers to watch a small fraction of the video. Or it could also mean that the video sucks.

YouTube provides a statistics panel that shows how many people make it to different parts of your video:

If your average view duration is 50% or more, that’s pretty good, but it doesn’t hurt to aim for a higher percentage.

You can also see other engagement statistics:

How do you take advantage of this?

Well, make great videos in the first place—that’s the most important factor. But you can also improve your videos by listening to the comments people leave.

If a comment says that your intro is too long or your video has volume problems, it’s likely that many other viewers thought the same and abandoned the video early.

Don’t forget your tags: While you are uploading a video, you can also add tags to it. These don’t play a very big part in ranking but are still worth quickly adding:

Conclusion

I hope you recognize the potential of ranking highly on social media networks.

It’s much easier than ranking for searches on Google and can still produce worthwhile results.

Your business probably isn’t suited to all of the networks I went over in this article, but it’s probably suited to at least one.

Your first step, if you haven’t already done it, is to create a social media marketing plan, which will tell you which networks to target.

If you also optimize your posts and profiles according to this post, you will get better results and get them faster.

If you’ve had some good results from performing SEO on a social network, please share your story in a comment below.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Generating Clients by Writing Case Studies

You can use many methods to improve your conversion rate.

But very few can improve your conversion rate as much as case studies can.

Case studies have a few big benefits:

• they resonate with prospects
• they show that your product or service can work
• the transparency increases the trust a reader has in you

All of these benefits are important, but the last one—in particular. 

Trust is one of the most important factors in conversion rate optimization:

Why is trust important? The reasons might seem obvious, but data explains these reasons to eliminate all doubt.

A study by Edelman showed that gaining a customer’s trust has many rewards:

Obviously, most will buy your products if they trust you and need what you’re selling.

On top of that, they will recommend you to friends. And because they trust you, they would rather pay you more for a product than go to a competitor, all because they know what they’re getting when they buy from you.

But trust is getting harder to earn.

The same study showed that 62% of people (worldwide) trusted corporations (businesses) less than the year before.

I don’t blame them.

You read story after story about shocking business practices (even from brands such as Amazon).

Without trust, there can be no loyalty. And loyalty is another key factor behind purchasing and recommending you to others.

There’s a reason I’m telling you all this.

Trust is something you can earn before or after a sale.

Both of these time periods are important, but one is harder than the other: gaining trust before a sale.

It’s tough to convince people to give you a chance when they don’t really know you.

And that’s where case studies come in: case studies are one of the best ways to not only attract the attention of prospects but to also gain their trust and get them to convert.

It’s for this reason almost all your favorite email marketers include case studies in their sales funnels.

3 reasons why case studies blow away all standard “trust” tactics (i.e., testimonials)

The case study is the perfect combination of content that can attract traffic and increase trust in your brand.

According to a survey of content marketers, 70% believe case studies are very effective as a marketing tactic.

The only tactic that’s rated higher is in-person events (tied with webinars).

Essentially, a case study is social proof on steroids, and I’ll explain why.

Reason #1 – They’re more detailed: A typical case study is at least 400-500 words. It describes the customer, their problem, and how the product helped them.

Compare that to a typical testimonial:

A testimonial is usually between 50-100 words.

Put simply, there’s no possible way to go into any serious detail in just a few words.

But when most people are trying to learn about a product or a brand, the number one thing they’re looking for is detail. You have to convince them that you’re the real deal, and providing detailed information is the best way to do that.

Reason #2 – They’re data-driven, and not just a bit: Part of being able to include more detail means being able to include data (and lots of it).

In a testimonial, you might be able to say that “[someone’s] traffic increased by 20%.”

But with a case study, you can provide graphs or snapshots of reports showing the traffic increase over time.

Furthermore, you could compare this to the year before, project future growth, and show how the increased traffic led to more traffic.

Reason #3 – They feel more “real”: Anyone can fake a testimonial pretty easily. I don’t recommend it, but obviously it happens.

You’ve probably seen testimonials that just seem made up:

They’re too perfect and sound like some intern from a marketing department wrote them.

Not surprisingly, people don’t put the same stock in testimonials as they used to.

But a case study is different.

You’re featuring actual customers who can be looked up. You’re including not just one quote, but several.

You’re also including real proof of your product or service being used.

For 99% of prospects, this is enough to ward off any suspicion of your case study being fake.

And because case studies include real details about your customer (or their company), they often resonate with readers. It helps them picture your product or service bringing them exactly the same success as your past customers had.

I probably don’t have to tell you that if you can get a prospect to picture your product helping them, a sale won’t be too difficult.

Where case studies fit in with your business

Here’s the bad news:

Case studies aren’t for everyone.

For some types of businesses, case studies are amazing. For others, they can actually be detrimental.

The basic guiding principle behind case studies is this:

The more uncertainty there is behind your product or service, the more case studies will help you.

The key word here is “uncertainty,” which is always defined from a prospect’s point of view.

You may need to survey your prospects in order to see what they are uncertain about. In general, potential buyers wonder:

• Will the product work for me?
• Will it work as well as I want it to?
• Does it justify its cost?
• How long will it take to get a result?
• Should I trust this company?

Take a complex product or service such as marketing consulting as an example.

An average client knows they need help with marketing, but not much more beyond that.

So when they come across a sales page of a marketing consultant, they are interested but feel a lot of uncertainty. They don’t know what “marketing consulting” really is or whether they need it.

One option for you would be to describe your process in great detail on your page. Many have tried that…and failed. People don’t care about the process—they care about the result.

The better option would be to create case studies that focus on the results, allowing you to clear up those questions that cause uncertainty.

Case studies are not for everyone: Wait a second, but what if you sell a really simple product? There’s not a lot of uncertainty for a customer.

If I am buying a five-dollar spatula, I’m not very worried whether or not my purchase pans out.

Can you imagine how ridiculous it would be if you created case studies for a simple product like a spatula?

Visitors might start to wonder if it’s a joke or why you’re trying so hard to sell a simple product. A case study for a simple product like this would have very little effect on your conversion rate.

So, what kind of companies should create case studies?

The answer is simple: any business that sells a complex product. Notice that I didn’t say expensive. Although price is often a source of some uncertainty, it’s only one part.

The most common products and services that benefit from case studies are:

• Software
• Consulting
• Web developer services
• Copywriting services  

Step 1: If you mess this up, no one will read your case study

By now, you should know if case studies are a good fit for your business. If not, go back and read the last section.

When you’re ready, let’s get started.

Now picture what a visitor to your website sees when they are checking out your products or services.

If you have case studies, you’ll either want to incorporate them into your existing sales page (like Ramit Sethi does), or you can make a separate page for just your case studies.

Either way, you can’t just shove your case study in front of your prospects.

Even though you’ll likely find that visitors who read your case studies convert at a much higher rate, you need to get them to read the case study first.

And it all starts with one thing: a descriptive headline.

A great case study headline is different from a great headline for a blog post.

Think about it: the context is completely different.

If you’re trying to get someone to visit your website and read a blog post, you need to stand out from all the competing content on social media, forums, or in search results.

You do this by crafting a headline that provokes curiosity and interest.

But when someone is already on your website and has shown interest in your product, you don’t need to create the curiosity (it’s already there).

Instead, when creating a case study headline, you need to be descriptive and results-oriented.

Include percentages, sales numbers, or any other relevant metrics that show that your product or service produces the results that your prospect is interested in.

Numbers are huge for case studies. Quantifying your results makes everything more tangible for your readers.

Sometimes, however, numbers are not an option because that wasn’t the desired result.

A good headline, in those cases, describes the result.

The two highlighted examples in the picture above both emphasize a unique type of result.

On the right, the headline tells you that HubSpot software was used to grow TechShepherd’s client base. But not just any type of client—enterprise clients.

HubSpot knows that some visitors looking at case studies are wondering if the software can help them get more enterprise clients (a very specific type of client). This headline will immediately draw clicks from those prospects.

In the second example, the headline tells us that the software can be used to improve lead nurturing and sales productivity of chat services. This is a result that HubSpot knows other chat services would be interested in.

A great case study headline consists of 3 things:

1. The customer – You need to either name the customer if well known or specify the type of company if relevant (e.g., live chat service provider). Optional: do both.
2. The benefit or result – The main focus of the headline is to tell your prospects how your past customer benefited from your product or service. Use numbers when possible, but a description is better than nothing.
3. The service or product - Prospects want to know if there is a specific product or service that you offer that they should be interested in. If you sell multiple products, specify which one.

If you ever need some good examples of case study headlines, take a look at HubSpot’s continuously growing collection of case studies.

The reason why it’s so important to be descriptive is that you want to have headlines that appeal directly to different parts of your audience.

The more relevant a case study is to a prospect (in terms of niche and use), the higher your conversion rate will be.

Step 2: How to put the case study in terms your visitors will understand

After you get your prospects hooked on the headline, your next goal is to focus on the customer in your case study.

You want to describe not only the company but also the big problem they faced before using your product.

The reason behind this kind of description is to help your reader relate to your case study customer as much as possible.

You want your prospect to think: “They’re basically describing my company.”

That’s what resonance is.

If you can get them to think that, what do you think will happen when you reveal that you tripled your customer’s profit (or some other benefit)? They’ll have no choice but to try your service.

Now, you’re not likely to perfectly describe your every prospect, but the more aspects of your customer they can relate to, the better. That’s why it’s important to describe your case study customer in detail.

The situation matters just as much as the company: Start by describing the company and their main product(s).

After that, you want to describe the problem your past customer faced.

But don’t just describe it, agitate it.

Chances are if your prospect works for a similar type of company, they’re facing the same problem themselves. Take this chance to spell out the problem so that your prospects are able to relate to the difficulties your customer faced:

Many potential HubSpot customers (for whom the case study in the above picture was created) are trying to compete with big, “deep-pocketed competitors.”

Highlighting problems like these ensures that your case study resonates with your readers as much as possible.

Step 3: Leave out the bias, focus on the customer

The next main part of writing a great case study is to explain your customer’s thought process and research.

There are two main reasons why you would want to do this.

First, it makes the case study seem less biased. You don’t want it to read as a typical “sales page.” You want it to be a real account of your customer’s experience. Try to use your customer’s actual words as much as possible.

Secondly, it also prevents your prospects from spending time on your competitors’ websites.

Imagine if your prospect lands on your site first to begin their research. Although they may also be planning to research your main competitors, if your case study can make them feel as if they are reading about themselves, chances are they will stay on your website instead of going to the competitors’.

You’ll notice that in most great case studies, the reason why the customer chose your product is usually given as a quote.

It’s kind of weird to write something like: “Customer X chose Quick Sprout for marketing help because we’re obviously amazing.”

It doesn’t sound real or convincing compared to a quote from an actual customer.

Step 4: You’ve earned a chance to explain

Up until this point, you’ve focused solely on your customer.

You’ve captured your prospect’s attention and made your past customer’s story resonate with them.

Because the reader already knows the end result (from the headline), they are insanely curious at this point, wondering what exactly did you do?

Now, they are more than willing to hear more about your products and learn about their main uses.

Mention all of the key aspects of your product that the customer used and explain how they used them:

If you were selling a consulting service, you’d want to talk about how you helped conduct an audit, develop a strategy, and then implement it.

You can expand this section from a single paragraph to two or three if there are a lot of important parts to your product or service that led to the end result.

Step 5: Show that you’re not all talk

You made bold claims of great results in the headline, and now it’s time to back those up.

Just like when writing a data-driven blog post, you never want to just claim that your product produced a result.

You need to support it by either the data that your customer supplied you with or by a quote from your customer.

Numbers will stand out automatically. On top of that, you can also use bold or italics to make the most important results stand out further.

This is the point where you want your reader to say, “I want that too!”

Step 6: Make your case study more compelling by including these

If you implement the first 5 steps, you’ll have a very solid 400-500 word case study.

But there are a few more things you need to include if you want to maximize your conversion rate.

Considering that case studies take a lot of time and effort to put together, you need to make them as effective as possible in order to achieve a good return on your investment.

One of the main ways you can maximize the effectiveness of a case study is with images.

First of all, images help break up the text and make the case study more readable as a whole. Even though your prospect is highly interested in the subject, it’s hard to just read text (think of reading a textbook with no pictures—boring).

But the most important reason to use images is that they convey complex results in a way that is obvious and easy to understand and that they add yet another degree of realism to your case study (I’ll explain more soon).

Image type #1 – images of results: One of the best types of images to include are charts.

Charts allow you to show the most important result (profit, leads, conversions, etc.) over time. This makes any impact of your product obvious:

HubSpot usually includes at least one chart per case study, partly because the graph is generated by their software:

But you can incorporate other types of images as well.

Ramit Sethi includes screenshots of his students’ successes, e.g., being featured on big sites such as Lifehacker:

Any image that shows the results that a customer has gotten is worth including.

Image type #2 – images of customers: Part of having content resonate with your readers is finding as many ways to connect with them as possible.

You started making a connection with your prospects when you described their company, products, and problems.

But there’s one other way that people love to connect through: other people.

It’s nice to see a face behind an article. Or, in this situation, a case study.

In addition to typical case studies, HubSpot also features their partners, complete with relatively large pictures of them:

On top of that, you’ll also see at least one picture of the customer (or their team) in the actual case study itself:

I would recommend going a bit bigger with the picture

In the case studies on I Will Teach You To Be Rich, the customer is usually featured right away under the headline in a large picture:

The sooner you introduce the “face” of your customer, the sooner a reader can tie all the information in your case study to an actual person.

On top of just including a picture of a person, it’s always great to include a picture of the customer’s result.

For this particular product, the result was creating a highly successful book:

Including a picture of the end result is also a viable strategy for some companies. It helps the reader picture what the product will look like in their own life:

Step 7: Don’t let the fire burn out

You’ve led your prospect through quite a story.

First, they empathized with your customer, and now, after learning of all the results, they envy your customer.

Your prospect is pumped and in the perfect state to enter your sales funnel.

Even if you just end your case study here, you’ll still get a good conversion rate. Readers will navigate around your site and find a way to purchase your products.

However, you will lose some of your potential customers.

To minimize that loss, make an extremely clear call to action (CTA) asking them to take the next step (whatever that is for your product).

At the bottom of every HubSpot case study, there is not just one CTA, but 4.

The CTAs come right at the end of the article and are the only things there. If someone reads the whole case study, it’s very clear what they should do next.

Ramit does it a bit differently. He ends his case studies with a CTA to download a highly related lead magnet.

Again, the use of color and large text makes the next action obvious to the reader.

This second approach works well if you have a well-developed email marketing funnel or only sell a course or product at certain times (let them know through email when they can buy next).

How to solve the hardest part of making case studies…

The hardest part of creating case studies is writing them, right?

Nope.

Writing them is actually pretty straightforward if you follow all the steps in this post up until this point.

The hardest part is getting customers to agree to be featured and allowing you to publish their data.

However, if you plan ahead and approach it right, you can create a system that regularly produces highly motivated case study subjects.

Part 1 – Pick the right customers: While not all customers will want to be the subject of a case study, you also don’t want to write a case study about every customer.

If you created websites primarily for large companies, would it make sense to create case studies of every customer that owned a small business?

Probably not. You want to create case studies that are going to resonate with the main types of prospects you attract (or want to attract).

That’s because if someone from a big business sees only examples of your work for small businesses featured on your website, they will not relate to those case studies. 

Pick customers that not only love your product and got great results from it but also fit the profile of the customers you’re trying to convert.

Part 2 – Identify them early: Most companies decide at some point that they should probably have a few case studies on their website.

So they contact past customers and ask them to participate.

Chances are that customer won’t have relevant data from their experience sitting around.

You’ll end up producing low quality case studies with this method.

Instead, every time you get a new customer, decide if you want to create a case study with them.

Part 3 – Give value before asking them to participate: Just because you’ve decided that you want to create a case study using your new customer doesn’t mean you should ask them right away.

If you do, it will sound like you’re asking them to do the work for you, which most will understandably pass on.

Additionally, this can turn your new customers off your product, reducing the chance that they will buy again in the future.

The better alternative is to give them value first.

Check in with them often during the post-buy period and make sure that they aren’t having any issues with your product.

Obviously, you should fix any issues they may encounter and provide any required assistance at this point.

Then, once you’re sure they like your product, think about how being involved in a case study could help your customer.

Here are some common benefits:

• Exposure - being featured positively in a case study can expose their company to a new audience. It’s good for the brand and can even lead to customers. If you can also promote the case study to a large email list, let them know.
• Extra help (free) - when someone is a case study subject, you have even more incentive to make sure they have amazing results. Offer to assign extra help integrating and optimizing your product into their business for free (and also take care of compiling reports/data so they don’t have to do any extra work).
• Recognition - if you’re a well-known company in your industry, you can highlight your case study participants elsewhere on your website as industry leaders.

Start with the benefits, and then ask if they’d like to participate.

If you’re really eager to do a case study on a particular customer, you can sweeten the deal even more.

The most common way to do this is to offer a free product or a free month of your product, depending on what it is.

Part 4 – Make it clear what you’re looking for: This is when a case study can either become great or just mediocre.

You cannot make up a case study as you go along. I can’t emphasize this enough. Before you start, you need to outline the problem your customer is facing and know the specific outcomes you’re trying to produce.

That way, you know exactly where to focus your extra attention to produce a great result.

In addition, knowing what you will be evaluating will ensure that you can collect data from the beginning that can be used in the case study.

Unless you sell a product with built-in reporting like HubSpot does, you need to take extra care to ensure that you have the right data (and enough of it).

Start by showing your customer what a good case study looks like (preferably one of your own). While some customers may already know, many may not.

Next, explain what you need from them and provide a document with all the information. Typically, this will include certain data and access to at least one person for quotes and explanations (if your customer is a company).

If you don’t do this, you’ll often have a difficult time getting information from anyone. They’ll all try to say that they’re too busy and try to pass it off to someone else. Get one to three specific contacts who are involved in implementing the product (and make sure they know about it).

Finally, give them a rough timeline so they know what to expect and when to expect any benefits (that you explained previously).

Conclusion

Creating content that both resonates with your readers and makes them want to buy your products isn’t easy.

However, case studies are your best bet at achieving that.

Although writing case studies may seem a bit abstract at first, if follow these 7 steps, you’ll produce compelling high-converting case studies.

If you have any questions about creating case studies or whether they’re a good fit for your business, let me know in a comment below, and I’ll try to help.