Category: Digital Marketing

Growing Your Blog Audience Is Not A Rocket Science

June 23, 2015

Whether it’s blogging about leaders or blogging about your favorite food joints, writing great stories and publishing them in your blog does not carry any value until they are exposed to the outer world. Do you know blogging can do a lot of your marketing effort? It can drive traffic to your website and help you capture leads. Provided you know the right ways, it can expand your reach to an extended network of individuals. Your blog can help you connect with people without spending any additional marketing dollars. All you need is a right strategy and not luck as many believe. Today’s blog post aims at focusing on your efforts to gain attention of people and help you to grow your blog. Quality is the King A blog post may contain 2,000 words or 4,000 words. Well, that’s quite a lot of text. To add to this, it should also have screenshots and images. However, only if the content has valuable information to impart, you’re bound to get traffic on a consistent basis. Most importantly, consider writing the hot topic of discussion in an extremely detailed manner so that no one dares to copy you. But of course, editing remains a crucial part. Conversational Tone of Writing By making your blog post sound like conversation, instead of an essay, you’re actually inviting more audience to read your content and encouraging them to comment naturally. The simple ways to bring in a conversational tone is by: Using ‘you’ and ‘I’ within your content Keeping the paragraphs short and to the point Using common words Asking questions in your blog post and solving readers’ problems Respond and Build a Fan Base If you’re thinking that why would anyone want to be your fan, you need to immediately stop thinking that way. Reciprocate and build your blog fan base. How often do you reply back to the comments on your blog? Comments are a great way to increase your readers’ loyalty. If people comment on your blog on a consistent basis, it means they’re reading your content and they’re more likely to share it via social platforms. Also when your readers email you, are you taking out the time to email them back? If not, it’s high time you start caring about your readers and help them as far as possible. They’ll certainly come back. Syndicate Your Content to Third Party Publications Third party sites are usually cited by a variety of people quite frequently. Therefore, syndicating your content to these sites will have a higher likelihood of getting more social shares. These sites can better expose your company, links, name and thought leadership to a wider spectrum of audience and turn steer more people back to your own site. However, you need to find sites that have high traffic and social sharing numbers and whose subject matter is relevant to your brand and content strategy. Promote Your Content The best way to grow your blog audience is to promote your content through different channels. Do not stick only to social media to share your post. You may email your list and reach out to influencers in your niche or pin the shares of your post either in your Facebook page or Twitter profile. You can also use social media advertising to promote shares of your blog post. Content Publication on a Consistent Basis Writing one or two content a month can never increase your fan base. It is important to write and publish content on a consistent basis. One blog post should get published at least once a week. If your readers are expecting a new article every week, don’t disappoint them. Give them the confidence that if they visit your blog, they’ll be greeted with a new content. Use Forums Forum like Quora is an effective way to drive relevant and targeted traffic to your blog. Search for questions and topics relevant to the subject matters you had covered and answer them with valuable information. If possible, add a link back to your appropriate blog post. Remember not to include a link forcefully. This helps establish you and your blog as a trustworthy and useful source of information. Link Other Relevant Sites to Your Own Post Readers, bloggers and even search engines appreciate valuable links. When your own material in-content are referred in such a way that is not manipulative, you automatically draw visitors to your content. Besides, it is always valuable to refer content of others, especially, the high quality sites and great content. When the site owners get to see that you’ve linked to their content, they’ll also reciprocate in the future. Guest Blogging Another best way to get your name or company’s name in front of a broader section of audience is through guest blogging. Make a list of relevant blogs who have the best crossover with the audience that you’d like to connect with. Now, start reaching out to the bloggers or editors who are most willing to accept high quality, free content on their site. Pitch in the specific blog topic ideas in your first inquiry email. Send a brief synopsis of what you’d write about. However, make sure you write all original content for any guest posting you do. Build a Strong Social Media Profile There are tons of social media networks that you could potentially use to market your blog. Most of the social media channels also have paid options that allow you to market to targeted individuals. Promote the best work through paid amplification including PPC, influencer outreach, social ads and different social networks. Community building is an art, what works for one community may not work for another one. Therefore keep engaging and optimizing your social efforts for the best outcomes. There is no rocket science behind growing your blog traffic. A few simple strategies should be able to get you visitors more than you expect in a month. So, why not give it a shot?

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A New Addition in Instagram’s Creative Platform

June 19, 2015

With 300 million people using Instagram satisfactorily, it is time for the advertisers to experience the same on this powerful social media platform. Instagram has always been a creative platform for visual content for business. To add to this, Instagram in this week, announced the expansion of its new ad system for brands to tell their ‘deeper stories’. Although advertising on social networks is commonplace now, the trick of using this new Instagram ad platform is to ensure that the ads are well targeted. Also it offers enough visually appealing content to prompt positive engagement from users. The News in Town Seeing Instagram having a younger audience than any other social media platforms, brands saw an excellent response in terms of brand awareness and reach, especially, among the 18-34 age groups. Keeping this in mind, Instagram, the well known photo sharing social media site, has recently rolled out its carousal ad platform worldwide to help brands become more ingenious and reach their target audience with their ads. The ad format is designed to serve advertisers drive business results across variety of objectives – from website visit to brand awareness or offline sales. According to Instagram’s global head of business and brand development, James Quarles ‘the quality of ad experience remains a very important point of differentiation for us’. The new ad system will enable advertisers reach people on Instagram based on demographics and interests, as well as information businesses have about their customers. Besides, the platform will have feedback system within the network to allow people greater control and improve the relevancy of the ads they see. Instagram will increase the ad frequency up from 1-2 ads per user per day. Also the ads will soon be layered into Power Editor as well as available through partners. Control over Creativity With Instagram allowing ads on its platform, it has also offered advertisers more creative control over their assets. The Instagram users will have control over what advertising gets placed in areas they frequent. However, the call-to-action buttons will be beta tested before fully implementing it. The ads will look like regular Instagram post with only difference being the usual time stamp, which used to appear on a post will be replaced  by the word ‘sponsored’ marked above the top right corner of the photo, thereby, indicating to the users that they’re looking at a paid-for post. The Ad Platform to Empower Large and Small Businesses People want to connect with brands of all sizes on Instagram – from restaurants to their favourite local clothing store. Brands who have access to Instagram’s Sponsored posts are the ones who can incorporate ad content into the user’s Home Feeds as non-intrusively as possible. Instagram advertising will be available through an Instagram API and Facebook ad buying interface. With two million advertisers using Facebook to market their businesses, they can leverage the best of Facebook’s infrastructure for managing, purchasing and measuring the success of ads on Instagram.  The advertisers can link the ads to the external websites or app stores with button as ‘sign up’, ‘shop now’, ‘install now’ or ‘learn more’. This is, indeed, a golden opportunity for businesses to reach the right people through expanded targeting options. Not Anyone or Everyone can Advertise on Instagram It is not that any brand can pay to appear in the user’s Home feeds. Only brands with existing Instagram followers are chosen to advertise their posts. Advertisers of big brands including American Express, Starbucks, Stella Artois and Mercedes Benz are the first ones to get selected by Instagram to advertise on the platform. It aims at making any advertising look as natural as Instagram photos that are enjoyed by the followers from their favourite brands. Strategies to Use Advertisements on Instagram Instagram Giveaways Whether it’s a partnered or solo-branded giveaway, conducting giveaway is a popular option for businesses, especially, those who wants to invest for creating brand awareness on Instagram. To drive maximum awareness, host contests that require users to tag a friend in the post’s comment section. Even contests that require entrants to post photos or video on their personal Instagram profile and that tag the business or their contest Hashtag in their posts ideally get great exposures. Brand’s Instagram Account Takeover by Influencer When a brand invites a popular guest instagrammer who has a huge following to post on their account for a certain period of time, the process is called Instagram account takeover. This enables your business to get exposed to a unique group of followers and leads to an increase in followers, clicks and post likes on the bio’s URL. The influencer posts on their accounts whenever an Instagram takeover happens. This is done to let their followers know that they’re taking over a brand’s account. Pay the Influencers to Post for Your Brand In addition to hosting alluring giveaways, paying the influencers can do wonders. You’ll find that every time a paid influencer posts about your brand, there is a certain increase in the number of followers following your account. For instance, if you have fitness products, team up with fitness experts on Instagram and see the benefits. Business Partnership and Instagram If your business is planning for a partnership agreement with an influencer, it is always advantageous to include posting stipulations in your partnership contract. Both the partners can decide on a number of brand-related Instagram posts within a specific period of time. Also you may specify that influencer must use particular call-to-action and tag your brand’s Instagram account on their post’s copy. This would also help you to promote new products or promote your giveaways. A Great Go for the Followers It will be, indeed, exciting to see photo of Lebron’s newest sneakers in the Instagram feeds for those who’re following James, the NBA or any other sport-related account. Also, anyone searching for the nearest cafe on Facebook can have the advantage of seeing Starbuck photo in the Instagram feed provided the user have connected their Facebook account

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Actionable Video Marketing Techniques for Online Business

June 10, 2015

In an era where digitalization has taken over traditional ways of businesses, companies also must invest in digital marketing to maintain their market presence. E-commerce is trending like never before and with it, there are new marketing techniques coming up. Video Marketing is a relatively new strategy in the digital world, which has become very popular among various audiences. Consumer psychology shows that when you market a product through videos, it remains in the memory of the audience for a longer time. It is a well-known fact that human beings process visual information much better than textual content. Yet, we have always been used to reading books, web copy and now, blogs. While we do not discount the utility of textual content and words, it is also useful to publish and create videos that help to present content in an audio-visual format. A lot of people prefer videos to text and we could be using videos to tap into this sub-section of the audience. While it is quite a task to create videos, it is yet another to create actionable videos. Actionable videos encourage the user to take some action, mostly respond to a call to action. This could involve signing up at the end of the video, providing e-mail address after watching the video or even buying the product. However, to create such actionable videos, we need to bear a few things in mind. Let us find some video marketing techniques that can act as a catalyst in boosting your business: Demos Descriptions of a product or a video demonstrating a product works well with the audience, as there are many websites and products competing for attention. You need to find a USP or unique selling proposition to increase your audience base and also to turn your audience into your future clients. You can do this by making your website more interesting; create small videos to showcase your product. You can use animation or a music video format to be different from others. Product demos can also be used to encourage viewers to take some action. This could be in the form of a covert message within the video to contact you for further information or to sign up at the end of the video, which is a more overt form of asking to take action. Both these methods work very well and demo videos are increasingly being used by companies that have a flagship product. Descriptive video content You can also use descriptive content for the videos on your webpage. You may wonder why anyone would want to add descriptive video when you can just post a video. However, research studies show that descriptive video content adds to the effect. It is quite natural, as we have been used to reading pages of content and all of a sudden, videos are becoming more visible. Adding the content will entertain the audience who are getting used to the new format. However, content need not be too long; it needs to be short and crisp. If possible, add in humor and quirkiness. This can be used as a subscript or as textual matter that is inserted within a video. What this actually does is, it grabs the attention of those people who are not very fond of watching videos. By making descriptive videos, we are targeting two different and opposing kinds of audience – one that loves videos and the other, which is still getting used to video content but is very much happy with text. Corporate videos Corporate videos are a big hit among the audience as it evokes a sense of loyalty in your customers. Everyone is interested in what goes on in a company, especially, a corporate company. Use this advantage and boost up your video marketing by bringing in more corporate videos. The themes could be anything from production of a product or showing the fun you have while working. In order to make corporate videos actionable, you could request viewers to add you on LinkedIn at the end of the video. A short note, which screams out your LinkedIn profile address, can also be useful. Another option is to have a running message at the bottom, which occasionally reads out your e-mail address or your LinkedIn address. This will help interested viewers to contact you and probably clinch a deal or two. Social videos What are social videos? Basically, using the marketing videos on social platforms constitutes the idea of social videos. You can use Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to share your video, to reach out to a larger crowd & increase your audience base. You might probably think that if your target audience is youth or the IT sector, then this is the best way to turn them into your clients. However, this is not quite true. Social media is used by all ages and demographics & it is a great platform for you to showcase your products. If you can manage to create videos that can go viral on YouTube, Vimeo and DailyMotion, you can achieve surprisingly high rates of conversion. The key here is to make videos that can go viral. For that to happen, you need to hire good script writers and video producers. To make social videos more actionable, ensure that you always have a call-to-action when you share them on social platforms. This could include urging your audience to follow you back like your page or simply, share your content more. Market research Market research is a must. You need to be aware of new trends in video marketing, if you don’t constantly update your knowledge on the current themes and also the format of product videos. This will help you to bring innovation in your videos. The more ‘newness’ you bring into your videos, the more client base you will gain. The reason why market research is an actionable video marketing technique is because it helps you understand your audience better. You need to save all the

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The SEO Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization

June 8, 2015

Companies which previously invested a lot of money in Search Engine Optimization have come to realize the importance of content marketing as an additional tool. This is because of the recent updates made to Google’s algorithms and the fact that content has become important not only for SEO but also for increasing conversion rates. With that in mind, a number of SEO professionals have begun to feel that if one is to desire increasing conversion rates, they would also have to focus on content marketing. Other than content marketing, there are a number of other ways with which one can increase conversion rates. This starts with fixing the website, making it load faster and also ensuring there are no error pages or confusing content that could leave your visitors distracted. In this article, we need to take a look at some of the ways in which SEO can be used to optimize conversion rates. Fix the website One of the most important functions of Search Engine Optimization is to fix websites. While you might believe this is the job of a web developer, SEO works in a different way. It helps a website to be found by search engine bots and convey information about the website to them. This helps search engines to index the websites correctly and help people to find your website when they enter search queries in Google, Yahoo! and Bing. If you wish to increase conversions, ensure that there are no broken links, 404 error pages, missing tags, missing meta data and other issues, which websites, usually, experience. When all these problems are fixed, a website naturally starts to get indexed more often and this results in more footfalls. That is very important to optimize conversion rates. Build better content Search engine optimization is all about building better content. Google made it clear that websites that have better content will be given priority over those with inferior level of content. This means, websites need to pay attention to grammar, semantics, meaning, context and profoundness of content. Writing great content is not just a matter of marketing but also search engine optimization. Invariably, great content impresses prospects and leads when they visit your website. This helps directly in boosting conversion rates. Well-written content not only helps improve your SEO but it will also fetch targeted traffic, which has a higher chance of converting. Use search engine marketing techniques SEO is not just about fixing broken links or concentrating on which keyword we need to focus on. It also involves marketing techniques that utilize PPC ads, CPC, CPL and other forms of online advertisements. These advertisements are crucial in bringing back important traffic. This traffic has the potential to convert and help you achieve sales. It is important to focus on online marketing from an SEO perspective because a lot of people still find websites with the help of banner ads and text ads that are powered by Google, Yahoo! and other search engines. This tendency is not going to change very soon. Investing money in Search Engine Marketing is a very good idea as that will help to convert more leads. Build your authority with backlinks Search engine optimization is not complete without mentioning backlinks. Backlinks help you to prove not only to search engines that you are important but also to regular visitors. If people find that an authoritative website has linked to you and if they come from that source, they are more likely to believe in your products and services because you were listed on that website. Backlinks need to be generated organically and using unethical means will never help you in any way. This brings the focus back to good content, PR skills, marketing and having a reliable product inventory. This will help you to achieve the kind of authority you deserve and the kind of authority that will help you to increase your conversion rates. Final thoughts It is important to integrate SEO with conversion increment plans because ultimately, both are inter-connected and they aid one another with SEO, usually, helping to increase conversions than the other way around. SEO is a great tool that will not only help you to have a good online presence and be found by search engines but is also an important tool in increasing conversions.

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Effective Social Media Marketing to Boost Your Content Reach

May 29, 2015

If you are looking for the best way to publicize your content and are looking for a greater social exposure, you need to try and exploit social media platforms more often. Using social media effectively helps you to build a larger audience and finally, disseminate your content to a larger audience. The moment you publish a blog post, article, a video or podcast, there needs to be enough social signals for it to be picked up by search engines. For this to happen, you need to utilize your social media tools effectively. Though it might sound daunting initially, it is not very difficult. In this article, let us take a look at how to use existing social media tools to our benefit and create a wider reach for our content. How to use Facebook When we speak about Facebook, we are speaking about a very large and diverse audience. Anybody could have a Facebook account and anyone could be following your page. In order to fully utilize this platform, you need to share your post within 24 hours once. Do not post new content more than two or three times after your first one goes live. Also, try to keep your content diverse. Your first piece of content could be a blog, then a video and then a link or an image & so on and so forth. This will help you to tap different kinds of audiences who like different forms of content. Ensure that your preview images are all different so that it does not look like you are duplicating your own posts. You can also ask your employees, friends and others to occasionally share your posts on their own wall. How to use Twitter to boost content marketing? With the first twenty four hours, you could share the same piece of content at least three or four times a day. Do not post the same content consequently. Instead, tweet other links, posts and statuses as well in between & respond to your followers’ tweets. You could play around with different hashtags, words and mentions each time you share the same link, so that it looks & feels different. If someone retweets or mentions you when you share an article, respond to them politely. Do not thank mechanically but try to engage them in a useful conversation. Twitter now provides useful tweets that were tweeted while your followers were away. Thus, it is quite possible that they will end up seeing your tweet in that list if your tweet becomes popular. How to use LinkedIn for content marketing? LinkedIn is a great way to reach your professional and business audience. It helps you to make new professional contacts, build client base and also interact with people who might prove to be useful to you later on. Within the first twenty four hours, you could either share your post as a status update or as a blog post within LinkedIn. Try and understand your audience & you can even share your content on a busy group that you are a member of. LinkedIn has the advantage of being one of the more serious social platforms and thus, you do not have to beat around the bush when it comes to content marketing. You can get down to business straightaway and that will help you to market your content to a more niche and sophisticated audience. Final thoughts Ultimately, we are not only looking at increasing our audience but also trying to get a better SEO score organically. The only ethical and professional way to do this is to fully utilize social media to widen our content reach. As word spreads about your newly published content, you will probably receive more calls regarding your business and you might be able to clinch new deals. Thus, in order to fully optimize your content marketing campaigns, you will need to fall back upon your social media marketing as well. In fact, both the techniques are tied to each other and the psychologists would say of a relationship, they are codependent. All that you need to ensure is that you have a formidable plan and strategy to combine both the techniques.

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How to Build the Perfect Landing Page which Won’t Let Your Visitors Go

May 27, 2015

Landing page is the first page seen by your visitors on your website or blog. Landing page needs to be built in such a manner that it stimulates the visitors to take an action as expected by you. Suitable landing page enhances user experience and your marketing goals are very likely to get accomplished. If your traffic goes to unsuitable landing page, visitors will abandon you and you will hardly get any conversion. Marketers need to be wary of committing such a mistake. Before we discuss how to build a perfect landing page, you need to know what goes into planning a perfect landing page. Clarity of goals What do you expect visitors to do when they land on your webpage? Is it subscription to newsletter? Download an e-book? Submit their basic information? Buy? Follow your social media profile? Whatever it is, it needs to be directed through your landing page. If your landing page is irrelevant, customers will get confused. Having clarity of goals is must and they will further help you to track conversion rate of your marketing campaign. Know your competition Which kind of landing pages are being used by your competitors? You have to build upon that. Anything less is unsatisfactory. Are they offering better experience for the visitors? If they do something new, try to imitate that. Customers are flooded with choices today, knowing your competition, their strategy and campaign is crucial to take a lead. Also, follow your industry leaders and see what they are doing. This will inspire you to think big. Know your audience The reason for you to be in business is your target audience. Once the segmentation part is over, how do you position your company, product and brand in front of the audience? For that, you need to understand a lot more. As a marketer, you should know that most of the decisions made by consumers are driven by emotions. Do you empathize with their expectations and aspirations? Understand the variation required in landing page Your target audience could be spread across the globe. Traffic could come to you through social media networks, ads, emails or blogs. Try experimenting with the message depending upon the source of the user to offer a unique experience. Businesses with different landing pages often get more results than others. In the beginning, try to find out the sources from where majority of your traffic comes. Make a variation on those sources first before moving ahead. How to build a perfect landing page? 1. Collect contact information on landing page itself People always think twice before giving their contact information online. You will augment their dilemma by forcing them to navigate. The result is that you lose out on customers. So, when you are directing them to a page to get their contact information, always use a strong headline stating the benefits to be offered by you. For instance, is it a subscription to newsletter, eBook download or anything else? Use a strong call-to-action. While offering a free download, it is advisable to use an image to enhance visual appeal of your digital product. The opt-in form needs to be short and simple & seek minimum personal details. 2. Content-specific landing page If you are creating a lot of interesting content with a large shelf life, it is a great idea to create content-specific landing page. Delivering the information sought-after by customers on landing page itself will save their time in navigation. Take a call on which topics you want to be featured on landing page and then create one for each topic. Including a short introduction to each post gives it more attention. The landing page, thence, can be promoted on social media networks and emails. 3. Landing page for first-time visitors A first-time visitor might not be sure which part to navigate first on your website or blog. It is quite possible that they land on a page where they don’t find anything interesting. By creating a custom landing page driving them to information necessary for first-time visitors, a lasting impression will be created. Even if a new visitor lands on an unsuitable landing page, include an option of “start here” in the navigation. The introduction page can share about your product USP and how you’ve managed to keep your customers happy. Direct your visitors thereafter to a page where they can seek more information relevant to them. 4. Landing page for visitors on guest post It is always good to write guest posts to tap the audience on popular blogs. Most marketers send that traffic to their home page, which is not a very good thing to do. To maintain the relevance of the guest post, visitors need to be directed to suitable landing page that provides them additional information. This helps in maintaining consistency of the information being shared. It intrigues the visitors to take further action depending upon your call-to-action. 5. Short, sweet and conversion-friendly An ideal landing page is the one that contains just enough information for the visitors. Don’t expose too much information on the landing page that it just shoo the visitors away. The goal of the landing page should be to convert the visitors. Your desired conversion goal could be anything. Visitors need to feel encouraged to go ahead with it through visual appeal, sound design and relevant links. 6. Videos and images A landing page loaded with bright and easy to load images creates more attraction for the visitors. Many times simple links don’t work. Images embedded with links prompt the visitors to take action. Similarly, if a nice self-explanatory video is uploaded on the landing page, it will help the visitors to understand your product and its features. Videos can also be used in place of text to state a point as they carry more weight when it comes to convincing. 7. It needs to be in line with your ad text The keywords used on your landing page should match with

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YouTube Card- The New Tool of YouTube Video Marketing

May 18, 2015

YouTube is not just a forum to watch the most desired videos; it is also an opportunity to market your business to millions of people. The platform is perfect for building business client relationships and to reap the benefits of creative marketing strategy. Most importantly, there are no big budgets. If YouTube is still not a part of your social media business marketing, it’s high time that you consider this medium for your business growth. As people are treating YouTube channels as almost like a homepage of a website, YouTube introduced YouTube Cards that allow you to add more interactive cards to your videos. The elements including custom images, titles and call-to-action text integrated within YouTube Cards add an extra layer of interactivity to your video content. YouTube Cards YouTube Cards are side bar options shown on YouTube videos. They allow users to place external links, call-to-actions and other YouTube related videos. You no longer have to anticipate whether your audience would remember your website address you mentioned or check the video description for a link. They can simply click on your video card to check for any important information. The Six Different Types of Card you can add to your Videos Merchandise Card Merchandise card helps in promoting a creator’s licensed merchandise directly from the video. Fan Funding Card This type of card allows your fans to appreciate your videos and make monetary contribution directly to your video page. Fundraising Card This card link viewers directly to the projects on whitelist fundraising sites. Video or Playlist Card This card helps in linking to another public YouTube video or playlist, which can interest other viewers of the current video. Playlist Card Playlist card helps in promoting various playlists on YouTube. Associated Website Card You can directly link your viewers to your website through YouTube card. Ensure whichever card you use aligns with the goals of your YouTube video. Features that make the card widely accepted among its users It is easy to customize the card with images, titles and call-to-actions. If you use three cards or less, you’ll have higher click-through rates. Although cards are available to open and view at any time, you can choose any particular time for the card’s teaser to appear in your video. Users can make the card icon appear and click the ‘i’ tab for getting the desired card. YouTube cards function across all mobile and desktop devices. This is a great advantage, especially, for those who gets frustrated by the lack of annotations when they watch YouTube video on Smartphones. The card’s performance can be checked in YouTube’s Analytics. YouTube is still surfacing the most relevant card teasers, based on fan behaviour, card performance and the devices users are using to watch the videos. Here’s how your business can benefit from new school of YouTube Marketing You have more audience to your website Each video you create needs to have a clear goal; and this is where the call-to-action is important in your card. YouTube Card allows you to send viewers to other pages on your website. However, ensure that you know where they need to go and what you want them to do once they get there. For instance, if your video is about ‘how-to-guide’, you can accordingly use a card and send it to your audience to discover the tips and guidance on your site. You might also add the link of your ‘how-to-guide’ video to your blog. Your audience are well-aware of your brand Video marketing is an effective way to make your prospects aware of what’s new and happening within your brand. Use YouTube card to discuss a particular topic, about products and services or answering common questions, especially, when your website has blog articles & valuable information for the viewers to read. Direct promotion of your products and services YouTube video cards are quite impressive when it is about promoting your products. One great way of showcasing your products is by creating and publishing a series of short videos for your viewers to know who you are. You might also create a video that demonstrates what you’re selling or how to use your products. Once you’re done with your video, incorporate a YouTube card to promote the entire product and a link & call-to-action to buy them. You have your viewers’ email addresses Email list is a significant aspect of customer relationship development in your business. As YouTube video can have up to 5 YouTube cards, one of them can be an enticement to sign up for email address. Place a URL to one of your lead magnets where users will have to share their email addresses to receive it. Email marketing is crucial to stay in touch with your audience, warm them up and promote your products & services. While you offer free content in exchange for an email sign up through YouTube card, you’re actually giving your potential customers the opportunity to learn more about you and your offerings. So, here’s your chance to make your YouTube channel a destination to generate more leads.

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What You Need to Know Before Hiring an SEO Professional

May 11, 2015

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO as we all know it, is not the same anymore. It is continuously evolving and is becoming more entwined with content marketing, design and public relations. With that in mind, do you really want to hire just about anyone who calls himself or herself an SEO professional? You will need to give this issue a thought before jumping into making decisions. If an SEO professional does not understand the way mobile and content systems have taken over the Internet, you probably need not be dealing with that person anyway. There are several parameters you need to consider before hiring an SEO agency or professional. With so many of them around, making the right choice can become somewhat difficult. In this article, let us take a look at what is required of an SEO agency or professional and we shall also take a look at which kinds of SEO agencies you need to avoid & which questions you need to ask before hiring them. After all, if you know and understand the murky waters you are wading through, you will be able to reach the other side of the shore much more easily. 1. Do they follow outdated SEO practices? There are many outdated SEO practices, which simply do not have a place in today’s world. Two of them are purchasing backlinks and talking a lot about SEO copywriting. Backlinks, as a matter of fact, need not be purchased. You need to get those links from various websites because of your amazing content, services and products. Unless your SEO agency helps you to understand this, they probably do not know it themselves. A few years ago, it was perfectly OK to purchase backlinks in order to deceive search engines into thinking that a particular website is probably more worthy than it is supposed to be. Thankfully, Google has put an end to all that and has continued to launch new updates in order to weed out such malpractices. Another question you need to ask yourself is whether the SEO agency or professional is speaking a lot about SEO copywriting. What this basically means is they are discussing keyword stuffing, writing content specifically for search engines and trying to play hide & seek with search engine algorithms. You really need not be experimenting with SEO agencies and professionals who discuss these things. Instead, look for an agency that helps you to achieve your goals with the help of organically driven campaigns that will take you back to the basics of marketing and advertising. 2. Are they promising too much? A number of SEO agencies and professionals are known to use their bravado to attract clients. A lot of clients fall for this kind of charm and end up in situations they wish they were not in. One of such situations is falling for promises and fast results. SEO is not something that can turn your low traffic website into a multi-million visitor drawing website overnight. It takes a lot of time and effort to see improvements & expectations need to be realistic. If the SEO agency promises you something that makes you feel really good, stop for a minute and think. Just the fact that you are feeling really good shows that it might be something unrealistic that is being sold to you. Carefully analyze your own situation and how much success you expect from an SEO contract. Chances are, you already know what you can expect and have realistic goals. Any SEO agency worth its salt will tell you that you need to be realistic in order to actually achieve success. SEO would certainly help you to make your mark online and it is important to change the way you market yourself online as the Internet evolves. However, falling for big promises and bravado will only land you into trouble. 3. Do they have references or are they very new? Another question you need to ask yourself is how long they have been around in the business. There are some SEO professionals who are still looking for their first client. You probably wouldn’t want to be their first client and endure all the experiments they will subject you to in the name of building your SEO ranking. Try and choose an agency that has been around for a while and that which has a list of clients. When you see that list, make sure that you seek permission to speak to those clients or references. References are a great source of information not because of what they say about your SEO agency or professional but also because who they really are. A lot of time, we can use the quality of the references themselves in order to judge the vendor. This requires a little expertise in the form of assessing business needs, why the references say what they really say and also to assess if the references provided are legitimate enough. When you are armed with this kind of information, you will find it easier to choose an SEO agency that will help you to achieve success. 4. Do they speak as if things are very easy? When you interview an SEO agency or professional, you might feel that they offer very easy solutions. They might behave as if success is very easy and it is guaranteed. They might also provide you with packages, which actually is doublespeak for “one size fits all”. You need to be wary of these professionals. They might lack the enthusiasm and creativity to take on complex challenges & might offer packages that will eventually land in trouble. Each client is unique and comes with a different set of requirements. We need to remember that SEO is no longer just about fixing metatags and working around keywords but it is a completely different ball game. We need to remember that SEO entails content marketing, PR and advertising in order to achieve its goals. An SEO professional who is not aware

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Maximize the Exposure of Your Facebook Ads with Power Editor

May 6, 2015

It is not new that every marketers turn to social media to accomplish their marketing goals. Social media is one of the effective ways to get the word out about your brand. To make it easier to manage your brand, Facebook introduced Power Editor to help marketers have greater control over their advertising segment. Facebook Encouraging Marketers to Spend More Time on Ads Facebook introduces Power Editor. This social media tool is used to create bulk ads and manage the same on Facebook. Power Editor is typically used by advertisers who are looking for advanced features. Advertisers, on a large scale, can efficiently manage their ads and campaigns. With these bulk ads being targeted to the right audience, marketers can definitely enhance their customer experiences. This plugin works on download and upload system with Google Chrome. So, every time when you want to work in Power Editor, you’ve to download all the data from the Ads Manager and then create your campaign, ads & ad sets within Power Editor. Take a look at the comprehensive guide to setting Power Editor. Core Features to Consider Lookalike Audience The Lookalike Audience feature helps you to reach people who are similar to your existing customers for brand awareness, fan acquisition, coupon claims or site registration. Saved Audience Demographic information is essential. The Saved Audience feature allows you to save time needed for target audience selections and apply them to future ads with a single click. Once the audience has been created, select the ‘Use Existing Targeting Group’ option within the Audience segment and automatically apply your target preferences. Fan Targeting It has been observed that targeting fans only with Facebook ads can dramatically increase click-through rates by 700 percent. If you want to expand your reach beyond your existing followers, you have to target your ads to them through Power Editor. Bulk Ad Power Editor has the ability to simplify the bulk ad creation process. The ‘Duplicate Button’ in the Power Editor’s Ad creation makes any type of campaign set-up function very efficiently. Partner Categories Partner categories represent groups of Facebook users that can be served different types of ads based on their previous online browsing and shopping histories. Conversion Pixel Conversion Pixel is code needed to follow conversions on your webpage back to the ad on Facebook. You Have Enough Reasons to Use Power Editor Here’s how Facebook Power Editor offers you all the perks: Better Management of Ad Images With Facebook Power Editor, a larger number of ads and their images can be saved in one place. It not only enables you to see which images are tied to which ad but also while creating ads, you can choose an image you had previously used. However, the most impressive feature is its ability to allow marketers to see the click-through effectiveness of each image and exclude images that do not work. Bulk Uploading of Ads The bulk uploading feature of Power Editor allows you to run multiple ads. It enables you to upload an Excel spreadsheet of your ads, download them as well as edit them. This is useful specifically when one needs to save time on large campaigns. Bulk Editing Your wide array of ads and ad sets can be easily modified with the help of bulk editing. You can apply changes to all of your ads at once and update them accordingly. Optimization of Ads You can optimize your ads for the same things available in the Ads Manager. These might include post engagement, impressions or clicks. In addition, you can also choose daily unique reach that helps you to bid on impressions. The feature ensures that your ads get viewed by people at least once a day. You can truly optimize the amount of views and engagement your ads receive. Custom Audience Custom Audience allows you to make your own contact lists with phone numbers and emails, in order to reach customers with targeted Facebook ads. Run Ads According to Different Time Zones If you know your audience is on Facebook at certain times of the day, you can progress your ad performance by showing your ads at the local times. You have the option to choose which times you want your ad to run in any time zone. Mobile-Friendly Ads Power Editor allows you to create and run ads specifically on mobile devices used by the customers. You can run your advertising campaigns for iOS or Android users. This kind of targeting can be used for luxury products, which are more likely to be used by the smart device owners. Marketers can also target the teens by running campaigns specifically for the iPod users. Run Unpublished Page Post Unpublished page post allows you to create ads with longer text. Unpublished posts look similar to regular page posts and include a call-to-action button to draw attention to the desired actions. The greatest advantage of using unpublished page post is its ability to split test ads without promoting too much of promotional content multiple times on a day. Advertise through News Feed Power Editor helps you to advertise on Facebook through news feed. It has been observed that the click-through rate for advertisements in news feed have shown great impact. Power Editor helps in analyzing what kind of audience is actually responding to the advertisements. Split Testing and Duplication You are able to do split testing on Facebook advertising using Power Editor. It is now easy to create a large number of variations of the advertisement on Facebook on the basis of headlines, images, ad text or colors. These variations can be tested and done by using ‘duplicate’ button on the Power Editor. This means, you can create an ad, duplicate it and modify as per your requirements. Here you have it…the best way to maximize the exposure of your Facebook ads.

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How to Stop Sounding Automated on Facebook Pages

May 4, 2015

There are a number of reasons why people have been using automation programs to update their social networks. The more we expect from social profiles, the more active they need to be. When customers expect too much, it becomes difficult to keep up with the demands. Thus, companies began to use tools like Buffer App and Hootsuite, which help you to automate your status updates. Even when you are in a conference, you can set up Hootsuite to keep posting on your behalf so that there is always a steady stream of updates available for your audience. But really, does it work this way? Won’t people know that you are automating your status updates if they arrive at regular intervals and you are not responding to comments left by your audience? What happens if there are comments, which require immediate attention and Hootsuite or Buffer App posts an inane status update because you didn’t see the crisis coming while you were away at a conference? All these and more difficult questions have begun to arise and people now know that it is not a very good idea to completely depend on tools that automate your Facebook page updates. On that note, in this article, let us take a look at the available options and how you can stop automating and stop sounding automated when it comes to Facebook page updates. Do you really need to automate? There are a number of reasons why people automate their Facebook updates. They may not have the time or resources to constantly update Facebook pages as and when required. They might fear that they will forget updating when there was something to share. Many people automate their Facebook pages because it is easier to track and manage what was shared. It is always better to do follow the rules of automation, if one were to do it at all. Tools like Hootsuite and Buffer App do not just automate your updates but also help you to track & measure your social media campaigns. It becomes easier to know which update received more likes and clicks. This way, these two tools are not just automation software programs but they help you to arrive at metrics and measurement. With all these things considered, it might be possible that it is not quite necessary to automate your Facebook posts. If your company is not large enough, you can probably use Facebook pages at your own convenience and update them as you like, built upon a strategy. If you fear you will not be able to do it all by yourself, there are social media agencies who will maintain and nurture a social community through lively conversations and information sharing. However, if you still want to go the automation way, there are a few things that you need to know. Divide your content: It is important to segregate your social updates according to their level of importance. For instance, a tried and tested method is to automate informative links and always stay online to respond to queries & potential leads. Understand that it is not possible to automate everything: Many people have a wrong belief that they can automate all their updates without ever having to login to their Facebook pages. This is a very common mistake that companies do. This can be worse than not updating the page at all. For example, if your company has winded down operations and your social profile is still updating the Facebook page because Hootsuite was set up to keep updating statuses, it is going to be an embarrassing mistake. The ideal way to resolve this issue is to automate certain updates and manage everything else in real-time. How not to sound automated? Whether you choose to go the hybrid way by automating partly and responding to critical queries in real-time or you choose to hire full-time social media managers, it is important to not sound automated. It is quite possible to sound automated even when you are responding in real-time. Below, let us take a look at how we can avoid sounding automated. 1. Be real and enthusiastic One of the first signs of automation is that content sounds robotic. If there is no sign of enthusiasm or motivation, people assume you are using automation tools to update your social profiles. Display enthusiasm and actively engage in conversations. Do not stick to scripts while updating your status messages. A little bit of enthusiasm will go a long way. 2. Hire a social media agency If you are unable to do this all by yourself, you can hire the services of a social media agency. When you outsource your social media tasks, you will be able to focus on your core competencies. It is, therefore, a good idea to outsource your social media management tasks to an external agency. Professional social media agencies have an army of social media experts who understand what your business is and who your target audience is. According to these factors, they will update your social media profiles, which will help you to look natural and real. 3. Participate enthusiastically When you post updates yourself, do not stop it at just leaving a message or sharing pictures and logging off. When people like your images or leave comments, engage them in conversations. These conversations help you to build long lasting relationships with your prospects. Most often, it is these prospects on social media who comment on your posts and images, who will end up using your services & products. Never underestimate the power of enthusiastic and engaging conversations. 4. Be kind and display empathy If someone has a grouse, try to show empathy. Do not wear your defensive shoes and try to explain the problem. Instead, allow people to speak and then offer your empathy and kindness. You could probably thank them for bringing touchy topics to the surface and then prove to them that you are working on resolving whatever issues they might be

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