Category: Digital Marketing

10 Techniques to Drive Clicks from Twitter

January 26, 2015

Marketers use Twitter to promote their brand/event, take customer feedback and suggestions and naturally converse with their followers. The goal of your business could be to drive sales, increase awareness about your brand or a social cause, subscription etc. Twitter helps you to achieve everything what you desire, provided you follow a thought-out Twitter strategy. Random tweets here and there are harmful for your brand & your customers are unlikely to take you seriously. To sustain your Twitter image for a long time, you need to work consistently towards it. There are a number of simple techniques that simplify your Twitter agenda. This article will highlight the ten most common techniques used by businesses to drive more clicks. 1. Offer something compelling Users get curious if a brand offers them something unique. The tweet does not have to mention the details of the reward. Phrases like participate to win, click here for your gift, goodie inside etc. are some tactics used by brands to generate clicks. Users come across hundreds of tweets on a daily basis. Once you start offering something interesting periodically, users will start keeping a track of your tweets. Keep your offers timely. A timely offer is the one that is well-suited and moves ahead of your competitors. If you are planning to offer something entirely different, create excitement around it. 2. Use image and videos The option of posting images and video links has been available for a long time. The problem with it was that users had to click the link to see the image or the video behind. The click-through rates were less as it depended on whether the user is driven by the short description to click on the link; but last year, with the introduction of inline image with Buffer’s browser extension, Twitter users are capable of seeing the image with the tweet itself. This has greatly influenced brand engagement by increasing click-through rates and retweets. A link to your store or website can be embedded in the image to increase the respective visits. Likewise, you can also use videos to drive more clicks. 3. Create a sense of urgency The best thing about tweets is they are short and function in real-time. A short message can be used to show a sense of urgency. So, when you are tweeting something to get instant clicks, mention the validity of your offer. If you are offering a special discount for first 10 buyers, mention it explicitly to thrill the audience. If your offer is valid for a day only, tell your followers not to miss it and share the link of your store. Besides that, you can also use Twitter for urgent public causes like blood donation, organ donation and other similar causes. Tying up with a hospital to spread the message through your tweet will help your brand build a strong image. 4. Engaging people with well-written tweets Tweets have to be informative and need to relate with target audience. Try to figure out what your followers want. Would they be interested in retweeting? Use witty one-liners to draw more attention. The tone of your business needs to match with customers’ expectations. There is no room for making a marketing pitch with your tweets. Your tweets need to sound like a regular conversation with your customers and not be very formal. Be receptive to both positive and negative feedback. Reply to all your feedbacks by using a personal “@” symbol to express a genuine regard and consideration for their valuable feedback. 5. Using viral words and phrases You would always want your tweet to be original and resonate with your brand’s voice unless you are quoting someone; and if you incorporate viral words that instantly grab viewers’ attention, you will definitely get retweets. It is astonishing to note that 78% of user engagement with a brand’s tweets is the form of retweets. Using words like here, like, see, look etc. attract readers’ attention and phrases like click here, know more, make you, amaze you, the best, the most etc. are all used frequently to engage their attention & get clicks. Use of “how to” phrase to educate or teach a skill is another interesting way to engage your Twitter followers. 6. Powerful hashtags Hashtags are an interesting way to generate clicks from Twitter. They act as powerful motivators for consumers to explore more content. Big events and brands use their own hashtags to begin their campaigns; and they do turn out to be successful, provided they are created with a strategy in mind. If you are tweeting about a social cause, find the most relevant hashtag being used for that cause. You can tie your hashtag with a contest as well. It can be a hashtag with an actionable language. Don’t try to use your brand or product hashtag until you have a huge list of followers as it will reflect your desperation to start your own movement. Look for viral hashtags around your idea. 7. Optimum length of a tweet Twitter provides you a space of 140 characters for writing your twee; but it is observed that using every single space to express an idea does not increase engagement. The best length for tweeting is 70-100 characters. These medium length tweets add a lot of value to your tweets, especially, if you are tweeting frequently. The probability of retweet increases and the readers are likely to add commentary to your tweet. Thus, it is generating more clicks. Furthermore, short and crisp tweets take less time to read & have an instant impact on the reader. 8. Are you tweeting at the right frequency? Higher frequency does get a higher exposure but your tweeting frequency, actually, needs to depend upon the content of your tweets. As a business user, if you are publishing 10 tweets a day, it is considered to be reasonable. Followers do like to hear you when you are sharing interesting content with them. A combination of tweets,

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10 Critical Mistakes You Should Never Make in Content Marketing

January 21, 2015

Content marketing is the most essential marketing tactic used to deliver content to a focused target group. Whether it is used for social media marketing, SEO content delivery or email marketing, content used needs to be to-the-point, relevant and generate value for the reader. You need to classify your content to align with your target groups to get yourself heard. It is important to share valuable content to get noticed and ensure repeated visits from your customers. A good content marketing strategy does not go in vain and promises to build brand, create awareness and generate sales for your company. It clearly shows that utmost care is required while creating and delivering content. Content marketing needs to be backed by due diligence and well thought-out strategy but many marketers, knowingly or unknowingly, fail in content marketing. This article will highlight ten critical mistakes often made by marketers and what you can do to avoid them. 1. Irrelevance While creating content, a marketer needs to make sure that he is sharing something significant and different. It needs to be used to educate the consumer. It might not necessarily discuss about your product or company but anything what you feel is suitable for your audience. Sharing repetitive content puts off the reader and you are no different from others. Another important thing is to bear your target audience in mind before content creation. Many marketers fail to do so as their focus turns towards delivering superior content full of jargons in a bid to impress their readers or to outperform their competitors. In the end, the content bores and does not create any impact on the target audience. Narrow down the tone to what that resounds with the audience. 2. Non-sharable content The content becomes sharable only when it is able to beat the clutter. A reader impressed by your content will definitely take that extra step to share the content with his friends through social media and email. The information shared needs to be supported by facts and figures & true to your personal experience. Your content needs to include relevant links to be shared on Twitter, Google+, Facebook etc. You can also improve the visual design of your content by creating appropriate infographics (often used for sharing on Pinterest). Make your website and blog content sharable by using tools like “click to follow us on Facebook”, “click to share” and “click to tweet”. 3. Pushing too much content Marketers misguidedly think that posting excessive information will help them to get closer to their audience faster. You need to remember that there is no such race in content marketing. It is a gradual process and takes time to build reputation. If you start posting frequently, you will lose credibility and the readers are very likely to skip your content. Assume that your readers are a busy lot and hardly pay attention to your content initially. Post powerful content at regular but “not frequent” intervals to win your audience. 4. Posting too short a content piece A genuine marketer always values his audience’s time. If you are able to create valuable content of sufficient length, your audience can easily spare you 5-10 minutes. Make sure that you create a resourceful content full of sources and highlights. Short content pieces hardly share anything in detail and are just a waste of time for the readers. In-depth and original content is very likely to get you higher search engine ranking. Moreover, many content marketers are looking for options to monetize their content not for the sake of profit but to recover cost of production and more importantly, gain credibility. 5. Poor content quality The language and expression is utterly crucial while creating content. There is no room for spelling and grammatical mistakes. Proofread your content several times and avoid committing typo errors besides giving care to intricate details like punctuation. Use short paragraphs and sub-headings to improve readability. Use bullet points wherever possible. Poor titles often play a spoilsport for many content marketers. The best of the content goes amiss with an unsuitable title. Carefully think over your title before rushing to publish it. 6. Weak PR skills Content marketing is not just about creating great content with SEO tactics. Marketers need to build relationship with blog owners, social media profile owners and other suitable website owners to reach out to their target audience. Many marketers fail to pay attention to building personal rapport with the owners; and the result is too bad for a deserving piece of content. Nurture these free media openings to post your content and form a symbiosis. Aggressively posting your links on different sites for generating clicks is not how a content marketer needs to proceed. Take time to identify the right partners for building a long-term relationship. Use the power of SEO tactics and PR skills together to step ahead. 7. Choosing wrong venues of content placement Posting your content on Facebook is of no use, if your audience is not on Facebook; and even if they are present on Facebook, they won’t find it an appropriate platform for reading your content or probably sharing it with their friends. Focus on other venues like LinkedIn, emailing newsletters etc. to share content. Besides that, some marketers choose blogs that host low-quality content, perhaps, because they are easy to approach or just to do some good to others. In their bid to help other blog owners with quality content, such brands often end up biting the dust. The problem could be that your audience does not visit those blogs or even if they do start visiting, they might not like to stay longer as the majority content is low-quality. 8. Choosing the wrong medium Content marketing is not limited to creating informative articles and posting them to blogs. It is also not limited to creating videos and posting them on YouTube. The idea is to expand the reach of your content by sharing it on appropriate medium. If your audience is field sales force, delivering content through

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Content Is not the King, but Editing is

January 19, 2015

The phrase “content is king” is often repeated much to the discontent of many professional writers and editors, pun intended. An often repeated phrase, it has almost become farcical now to mention it. Well-written content isn’t enough. What we really need is professional editing, which is the most important aspect of content creative. A blog or an article or an e-book that is not well edited simply is a bane more than a boon. It is very common to see shoddily written articles that are published in the quest to appear in search results or to generate leads. If the content is rife with syntactical, semantic and contextual errors, it is going to do you no help. With that in mind, it is very important to hire professional editors who can ensure that your quality of content never goes down. If we need to rephrase the phrase, we could probably say “professional edited content is king”. There are many reasons why editing is important even if your budget is not huge enough. In this article, let us take a look at how professional editing is the king and why you need to hire more editors than you probably do at the moment. 1. Editing saves embarrassments First and foremost, editing helps you to make sure that you didn’t mean to say what wasn’t meant to be written. Certain mistakes can prove to be particularly embarrassing. If you are writing for a niche audience or an audience that is located in a particular geographical area, you might want to make sure your content is culture-appropriate as well; and this requires an editor. An editor makes sure that not only is your content free from grammatical mistakes but also context-specific. This helps you to save yourself from embarrassments, which can prove to be very costly in today’s world. 2. Editing makes you look professional A well-edited document ensures that you do not come across as a novice. Content that isn’t professionally edited often looks sappy and sometimes very salesy. Very salesy content can put people off and they certainly will not bother to find out what you are trying to sell precisely because you look (or read) like a salesman. A well-edited document makes sure that your content is engaging, professional and very engaging. This is one of the main reasons why editing is very important even if it is expensive. 3. Editing helps you drive traffic It is a well-known fact that search engines rate content based on the level of syntax and semantics. If your content is rife with punctuation, spelling and grammatical errors, search engine algorithms often place you at a lower level. What’s more, you might even be mistaken for an unreliable website. Google famously announced that when it means quality content, it also means grammatically correct and well-edited content. This is one of the main reasons why you need to make sure that your content is well-edited. It helps you to get that precious traffic which is so very important. 4. Editing helps lead generation When people visit your website, they often look for something that is impressive. It needs to make them intrigued and interested in the products & services you promote. If your content is not impressive enough, they might falsely believe that your services and products are not top-notch either. This is one of the main reasons why you need to make sure that your content is professionally written as well as professionally edited. It helps you to generate leads and prospects who might later purchase what you are trying to sell. What are the alternatives? If you are unable to hire a professional editor for a number of reasons, you could opt to get it edited by peers. While the quality will not be the same as getting it edited by an experienced editor, you can opt to hire someone who is good at writing skills and language to read what has been written. It is certainly not better than editing at all; and if you do not know anyone, at least read through the document yourself before publishing it online. At the end of the day, there is nothing like a well-edited document to drive traffic and leads.

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Should You Outsource Your Blogging Requirements?

January 16, 2015

Company blogs are more than just blogs where opinions are noted. They serve as op-eds where opinions are shared, information is given away and useful networking is enabled. It helps the company to be known as a thriving and contributing entity, rather than just another business among many others. The purpose of a company blog A company blog, thus, has the purpose of disseminating information about itself, about the industry that it works in, information and opinion about the broad range of products & services it offers and also connecting with readers who might turn out to be prospects. Thus, a blog has several different functions. Only a person who knows how to put all this information, content marketing and other strategies together can be assigned the task of managing a blog. But can a blog be managed by just one person? It is becoming increasingly common to outsource blogging requirements to established content writing providers. This is almost like getting your website built by a web developer and a designer. You don’t really want to spend time building a website yourself. You would rather focus on what you do best – your core competencies. Even then, here are a few situations when you need to outsource your blogging requirements: 1. Your company is a large or medium sized entity Large and medium sized companies might have their own content marketing departments. Yet, it is useful to outsource the blogging requirements so that blogs are written in a more professional and focused manner. On-site content marketing professionals often lack the editing and grammatical skills that are expected from a professional blogger. A professional blogging agency ensures that blogs are written well, edited thoroughly and that information & opinions are presented in a lively and engaging manner. 2. Your company is small Small companies have obvious reasons to outsource whatever they can choose to or afford to outsource. Other than the reasons mentioned above, a small organization cannot afford to have full time content writers. If it is a small and a new company as well, it would probably lack the expertise of marketing as well. Small companies can benefit from outsourcing blogging requirements and focus on making the company stronger & more valuable. When things begin to start, companies can look up for content marketing departments within their organizations. 3. You have information and opinions to share This is the main reason for running a blog. It is our honest opinion that any business entity, small or medium or large, has some information or opinion to share. Blogs offer you a platform to share your knowledge, showcase your expertise and provide validity & reliability that is desperately needed in times like these. It needs to be noted that companies do not live on islands and we are connected to each other. Our ideas, opinions and information would help us to gain customers & clients from other businesses near us. 4. You want more exposure Traditionally, companies have had the ever-present website and they would get the website designed & forget about it. However, now if you want to be featured in organic search results, you need to possess enough content on your websites to make it to the search results; and that means, having a website that would always fetch you the kind of readers who would search for your kind of products & services. If you are looking for exposure, setting up a blog and outsourcing it to a professional blogging agency is one of the smartest things to do. Final thoughts Not every company understands the importance of having a blog, let alone outsourcing it. Thankfully, we are seeing more number of companies that are willing to update their blogs regularly, get their blogs written by professionals and get them edited as well. A blog that isn’t professionally written or edited is going to do more damage to your company than help. Outsourcing your blogging requirements helps you to avoid these worries and focus on what you do best – building your niche and focusing on your core competencies. At the end of the day, we are looking at how to improve our ROI. Outsourcing non-essential tasks certainly helps you with that.

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What Is a White Paper Anyway?

January 9, 2015

It is impossible to pass a day without hearing the term “whitepaper”. Most of the times, it is used in an incorrect manner and most of the times, companies continue to publish documents that they claim are “white papers”. A white paper originally referred to an authoritative document published or released by Government bodies. It referred to official reports that Governments used to publish from time to time with regard to making policies, forming opinions and even for advocating changes. Here lies the clue of what a white paper is. Many Governments published documents that were known as white papers but were propaganda material. They tried to sell their ideas to people with the help of facts and figures so that they could persuade citizens to form an opinion and people adopt these changes. Increasingly, corporations and companies began to adopt a similar strategy to convince their target audience using factually correct information. Currently, when we refer to a white paper in the context of B2B communication, we refer to documents that are released by corporations in order to persuade, make a point, develop a case and convince the reader to buy a product or service. White papers today and content marketing strategy The advent of Internet has only helped for content marketing to evolve. Today, a content marketing strategy isn’t complete without publishing whitepapers from time to time. Most companies spend a lot of time conducting research and gathering facts in order to publish white papers that help to sell their products. For instance, a company that manufactures a particular type of wooden frame might make a case for its product by describing the problem of termites and how its wood is resistant to termite attacks. There is already a problem and the company tries to present the problem & find a solution, which usually is its own product. White papers of today are marketing tools that are widely accepted and acknowledged. One does not need to pretend that a white paper isn’t trying to sell a product. It is a brutally honest document that relies on facts and figures, an existing problem & how that problem is solved by a product or service that it offers. This sort of document helps companies to build credibility not only among clients and consumers but also among competitors. It helps when a different company cites your white paper while it creates its own. It is almost the way scientists cite each other’s works to make a point in their favor. The format, length and style of a white paper A white paper needs to, usually, be of at least 6 pages in length. It needn’t exceed 50 pages, according to an article published on Hubspot. It needs to contain illustrations, charts, references, and might even include case studies & interviews. Usually, a white paper needs to have a title page, table of contents, an abstract, an introduction, a section that describes a problem, a section that possibly could be a solution and a section that offers a solution in the form of a service or a product that the company offers. One could publish these white papers in a PDF format and the tone needs to be professional, well-written and thoroughly edited. You could also get a graphic designer to design the layout and format. A white paper is different from an e-book A white paper is neither an e-book nor a blog post. It is the most difficult and expensive document a company can publish. An e-book, on the other hand, can be more creative and less professional in nature. Always make sure that your white paper is well-researched and well-written. It needs to help you to gain credibility not only among clients and consumers but also within the industry peers. Your reader needs to be able to recognize that you know what you are selling and what your product or service needs to be bought, with the help of honest facts & figures. If you are planning to publish a white paper, make sure that you seek the help of professional writers and editors who would be better able to guide you. After all, every white paper needs to be published only after careful planning.

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Using Twitter to Market to a Reluctant Audience

January 7, 2015

One of the interesting phenomena that we have observed is that people tend to be more open to ideas if they were presented by people they follow on Twitter, rather than by advertisers themselves. This may not be so surprising, after all and it has been proven time & again that people often depend on known people to gather information and opinions. Twitter is one of the top 3 social networking sites and it has already carved out a niche for itself. Being one of the most popular media to offer customer services, Twitter has been used by businesses to reach out to the target audience. However, if your target audience is not open to your soliciting and is averse to the idea of being marketed something, how do we tackle? Twitter might provide you some answers. As we mentioned before, Twitter can be thought of as a medium where known and unknown people, who share similar interests, gather & converse, share information and just observe. With that in mind, if a product or service is endorsed by certain influential people on Twitter, chances are, reluctant prospects will slowly open up to your marketing campaigns. In this article, let us take a look at how you can use Twitter to market to a reluctant audience. Lurk around your prospects Social media provides a valuable opportunity to learn about our prospects in a deep and intimate manner. It is simply not possible to follow our prospects and learn what they like & don’t, if we stick to traditional methods of studying consumer base. With a strong social media team, you can lurk around their Twitter accounts, see what they talk about and understand why they share certain links more often than others; you can understand them in a way that is not possible on other media. Twitter helps you to collect valuable information without being invasive or annoying. Lurking around your prospects’ accounts is a great way to understand their buying behavior. Connect with your prospects’ influencers Most of your prospects follow other people who might be more influential than they are. They might respect these influencers more than others and might often retweet links that they share. They might engage in conversations with these influencers and noticeably, have a more positive tone in interactions. You need to follow these influencers and even try to connect with them. If they are willing, you can try and collaborate with these influencers to create marketing campaigns that are subtle & persuasive. If there is a local celebrity with a few hundreds of ardent followers, you can rope in that celebrity for a marketing campaign without looking all that obtrusive. This is a great technique to reach out to audience who might not be willing to respond to your marketing communications. Keep your interactions on Twitter friendly Twitter is a social platform and people expect friendliness & polite behavior. It is not a place to engage in hardcore marketing techniques and that will only drive away people from you. In order to succeed, you will have to be friendly, less salesy and approach people with a less threatening demeanor. Do not try to push your products or services without forethought. Engage in conversations and offer to help them with your services & products when you see there is a need. Being polite and friendly on social media can take you a long way & even the most reluctant user might finally start opening up to your communications. Twitter can urge a reluctant audience to pay more attention Though we might believe certain prospects are difficult people to market to, approaching them in an unobtrusive manner can help you to break the ice. Twitter can provide a platform that is as non-invasive as possible and help you build valuable relationships that will assist you in succeeding in your marketing campaigns. It might take a while but Twitter will help you to understand your audience and device marketing strategies that will actually make even reluctant people begin to show more attention to you & your messages. Twitter is, indeed, becoming an obvious choice for marketers who want to reach out and understand their target audience better, even if they are reluctant.

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Can Measurement Kill Your Content Marketing Strategy?

January 2, 2015

There has been a lot of discussion related to measurement and how companies are investing in content marketing but are just not doing enough to measure the dreaded ROI. This is a very justifiable argument and everything that is done towards building a company needs to be measured for its success or the lack of it. Measuring ROI helps you to attach a number to your investment and its returns. It lets you do things, which you probably were missing out on and it also helps you to stop spending money on tasks that are not bringing you any benefits. With that in mind, we need to stress that measurement can actually kill your marketing strategy. Eric Wittlake wrote about how measurement of marketing has reduced actual marketing strategies to a dog that is controlled by its tail. Measurement needs to be controlled by marketing strategies and not vice-versa. Unfortunately, this fallacy has been repeating much too often. A good example is the way we are letting our content marketing strategies be controlled by measurement. While measurement can certainly help us to become more focused on our content marketing approach, it need not result in mechanical “strategies” that ultimately alienate your customers or readership and thereby, defeat the originally intended purpose. Your consumers are not robots It is often wrongly assumed that content can easily be created, if one understood one’s consumers. Consumers are not as homogenous as we would like to believe. Any content strategy needs to take this into account. While measurement can help you to define and understand who is actually viewing your content & making those important decisions to choose your services or products, what remains important is to create content that appeals to humans. Humans are not robotic. One cannot measure or even predict human behavior accurately. While measurement has all the right intentions in place, it risks mechanizing your content strategy and thereby, considers your consumers as robots. That would be a bad decision to make. Content need to add value to your business It is easy to find statistics related to your content strategy. After all, measurement is all about attaching numbers that will help you. These numbers and data about what works & what doesn’t can help you measure your ROI and also design future content strategies. However, content is not only about ROI and marketing. It needs to add value to your business. IT needs to set it apart. Apart from being a marketing strategy, content is also a branding strategy. It helps you to set your company apart from your competitors and thus, add value to your business in the long term. This is a very important factor to note and many businesses often take measurement way too seriously & create content that appears manufactured. Measurement need not result in distractions Often, measuring content strategies leads us to invest in more advertisements, forms and thank you notes. All these can end up becoming distractions from your original content. If your clients or consumers are forced to fill up forms at each level, they will end up becoming annoyed and might find something else to do. Obviously, this cannot be a very effective strategy of any sort, to distract your own readers from what they need to be looking at. Pay attention to aesthetics and how your website appears & do not only go by the measurement aspect of it. While measuring one’s ROI is a great thing to do, one needs to also make sure that resulting strategies do not distract people from the actual content. Can measurement really ruin your content strategy? Well, the bottom line is that it might or might not and it depends on you. You need to understand that content marketing is not a mechanical task and it cannot be reduced to numbers in a simple way. While numbers and data will help us to understand if a content marketing campaign is successful, one needs to also understand that content marketing itself is not a very robotic task. It deals with actual human beings who all have their individual differences. As long as you put in that extra effort to not alienate your consumers, measurement can only help you.

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How to Sell the Value of Web to Small-Town Clients

December 19, 2014

Currently, there are 2.92 billion users with access to internet across the world. Internet penetration has grown exponentially with increasing bandwidth and broadband connectivity. Use of internet has seen a sharp rise with some of the most popular online activities like online shopping, e-mails and social networking. Considering that, large businesses realized much earlier, the importance of having a website. Soon after, small-scale businesses in big cities followed in their footsteps to pose them a competition. But there is a lot of scope to explore the opportunity of website creation among small-town clients. Small-town businesses still think that the number of customers they cater to versus the amount of investment required in a website is a no-go for them. The problem is that they don’t realize the potential a website holds. The need is to educate them and make them think big. For a small-scale businessman in a small town, everything ultimately comes down to the investment required. They are extremely cautious in spending every penny. Let them know the value for money they are going to get. Don’t limit your selling proposition to the benefits of having a website with 24X7 access theory. Following are some of the critical points that you need to stress upon: A. Share with them the advantages of setting up a website 1. Ability to track visitors Creating a website is easy. But how effective it is for your client? Do they understand how can they improve the performance of their website? Expose them to various analytical tools that help the website owner to track and understand their visitors. Google Analytics is one of the free tools that track the visitors coming from every platform i.e. online ads, videos, smartphone, tablet or PC. It also helps them to gain insight into customer purchase behavior, revise their marketing approach and improve the traffic on the website. They can learn to conduct A/B testing and share their learning with their colleagues. Reaching the right target audience was never so easy and your clients need to be convinced with that. 2. Building a strong brand image Your client has been probably following traditional marketing ways of reaching the target audience. Though there is nothing wrong with that but looking at the reach required and demographics of a small town makes a website look more progressive & professional. It portrays a strong brand image. People in small towns are aspiring to become tech-savvy with the penetration of internet in the remotest areas. The target audience of your clients is this group of people who are learning to have everything at their disposal at the click of a button. The way your clients market themselves and the convenience they offer plays a significant role in the brand building exercise. Beyond the name recognition they get through online medium, it is the communication about their service potential that gets them true recognition. 3. Advertising a website is a lot easier It is true that online advertisement of website is a lot easier than traditional modes of advertising through pamphlets, newspapers, magazines etc. Online advertisement gives you a sea of opportunities to pick and choose from a variety of mediums. Social media advertisement is one of the leading ways of online advertisement. The fact is that people feel free to interact on social media and the marketer is open to follow the interests & likes of their audience. Company blog interlinked with social media profiles is a dexterous approach taken by an online marketer. Apart from that, listing the website through online ads is another interesting way of expanding the reach. Furthermore, they can tweak the website content to keep it SEO-friendly and original that differentiates them from others. Online modes of advertisement are under the control of the business-owner and their ability to engage with their audience makes them superior unlike traditional marketing. 4. Getting more leads Website has a global presence. It gives them the opportunity to reach the customers beyond their town. Business queries that usually happen over a phone can now easily happen through a website. Moreover, complex queries become difficult to address through phone or SMS. Use of fax and posts is, gradually, fading away. Websites are the only efficient way left for both buyer and seller to generate and respond to business queries. Adding to that, people are more willing to submit a form online than to pick up the phone and explain. As a seller, your clients get sufficient time to think, choose their words and give the right quotation to the customers. On the contrary, if your client has a retail business, running an e-commerce website for online selling sounds appropriate. B. What more can they do with a website? Many people are simply unaware what they can do with a website. They can receive online bill payments, sell their products and services, manage their content, start subscription for new offers and discounts, newsletter registration, start a customer portal & a whole lot of other things. If your client is able to understand this and finds it relevant to his business needs, you have made an excellent start. C. How is design of the website important? A good website design is equally essential as quality content. Your clients might argue that they can get a new website made at a fraction of the cost. But what they really don’t understand is the ability of that website to show any meaningful results. • Color, fonts and logo play a significant role in determining the look of the website. Besides looking good, a website needs to be easily navigable helping the potential customers to locate what they are looking for. The usability factor needs to be kept in mind without compromising for the sake of appearance. • The images need to get uploaded faster as a higher loading time irks the visitors. Moreover, a website owner has a time of couple of seconds to impress the visitor. If they fail to do so, the

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Social Media Plans That Retailers Might Use This Holiday Season

December 13, 2014

For any retailer, holiday session is one of the most important times when they maximize their sales. Usually, holidays are associated with festivals and the custom of buying gifts during the festivals is something that triggers their sales. People also love to pamper themselves by buying gifts for their own. Thus, an effective digital marketing strategy during this time can boost sales for a retailer. Go aggressive on Social: Having presence in social profiles is mandatory as part of modern marketing strategy. It helps to stay connected with your buyer everyday and thus, helping in Top of Mind Recall. During holidays, you may roll out special offers in terms of discounts and free gifts, which can provide a strong reason to visit your store. Promote the products with images and a strong message along with the offers. Facebook allows paid promotion of posts. So, you can spend few dollars to boost the post and reach out to a larger audience beyond your Facebook fan base. Run Contests: One of the best ways to engage people is by running contests. Don’t make the contest too tough, else you will not get good number of participants. The objective is not to test the knowledge of users but to encourage them to participate so that the desired engagement happens. This will help you to collect the email ids of the participants which can be used for Email Marketing at a later stage. SMS Marketing: Sending SMS with offers is a new trend. If you have a large data base of mobile numbers, then use it in SMS Marketing. You can send a promo code through SMS showing which a customer can get extra discount. Trust me it works. Targeting Existing Customers: Targeting existing customers can give you good amount of repeat business. Engage them on Facebook and Twitter. Announce an award for Customer of the Week. These recognitions become viral very easily and give huge publicity. Video Marketing: Either shoot a video or create an animated video on your store and products. Develop an interesting storyline with a strong message to the society and publish on sites like YouTube, Vimeo etc. These videos can be shared on other social platforms like Facebook and Twitter, which helps in making the content viral. More people share the video, more importance the content gets. If you can attach the emotion of the festival with the content, then the video becomes more relevant and hence, you get more value out of it. Setup an e-store If you don’t have an e-store yet, then it’s time to build one. E–commerce market is booming and you can target buyers outside your geography, if you have the right delivery logistics. Successful social campaigns for an e-store also indulge in impulsive buying. During holidays, you can run special offers with promo codes and offer lucrative discounts. Lots of people prefer to shop online. So, why miss them? Don’t neglect the power of Pinterest/Instagram Facebook influences 30% of American women when deciding what professional clothing to buy while Pinterest influences 22%, according to a joint study by Netbase and Edison Research. When it comes to clothing for a special occasion, Pinterest influences 28% of American women and Instagram influences 17%. (Source: http://www.businessinsider.in/) As you know a picture speaks a thousand words, proper content marketing with beautiful product images in Pinterest and Instagram can help you to gain customers in festive season. All of the above are some small ideas you can work upon to create a big impact. A right cocktail of all can help you to achieve more footfalls and hence, more sales.   This article is part of the employee experience sharing & content contribution initiative for Indus Net Technologies’ Blog site. Content Credit: Santanu Mukherjee – Senior Manager – Operations (Digital Marketing)    

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Social Influence: Incorporating Social Identity Theory into Design

December 10, 2014

Social identity theory plays an important role in all sections of the society. This theory, developed by Henri Tejfal in 1979, proposes that every human being tries to identify himself or herself with a group. It is a three-phase step – social categorization, social identity and social comparison. This theory is responsible for the behavior of every human being. Every person tries to categorize himself to become a part of a group. The group that he or she becomes a part of is known as the in-group, while all the other groups are termed as out-groups. This social categorization comes naturally to human beings and leads them towards social identity. Using social identity theory marketing, brands can craft messages that resonate with specific group identities, a concept originally explored in the work of Tajfel. Many brands use insights from social identity theory in their marketing to create stronger emotional connections with target consumer groups. Understanding social identity through an example For instance, a cricket fan will try to categorize him among all the cricket fans of the world by joining an online cricket forum. Social identity is the ability of a human being to identify himself with a social group and adopt the behavior common to the group members. All the members in the cricket forum will try to relate with each other by showing common interests and sharing common excitement towards the game. This helps them in strengthening their social bonding by interacting with each other. Social comparison is the phenomenon with which a social group tries to compare itself with another group. Here, the group feeling strengthens further as the in-group members see all the other groups as out-groups. This helps them to take solace in their superiority and in their ability to being different from others. So, the cricket forum members might think that football fans are a bunch of idiots. This negative feeling is natural to develop and creates an elevated feeling of pride within the in-group. The same phenomenon is responsible for extreme cases of communal riots and hatred within two communities or even two countries. For instance, the historical hatred between the Bosnians and the Serbs etc. had cost the lives of millions of people. How do designers and marketers use Social Identity Theory into design? Marketers study behavior of their customers to give significant input to designers. Whether it is a website designer or a car designer, Social Identity Theory forms the basis of their design. User experience (UX) design is the process that takes all aspects into mind to simplify the interaction between the users and the product. The idea is to enhance the value, convenience and usability of the product to the users. The UX design is frequently used to create product prototypes, simulated models for research and market testing purposes. While developing a website, web designers engage themselves in A/B testing to enhance user experience and ultimately improve conversion rates. Let us consider the following examples to understand the concept better: 1. Facebook/Twitter The social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are excellent examples of user design considering the use of Social Identity Theory. Facebook reflects a group where the group members have a common need for social identity. Facebook allows its users to see friend suggestions from the existing group of friends. Users like a post, which is seen by their friends. If their friends like it, share it or comment on it, it is further seen by their friends and the cycle goes on. What’s more, users can share, tag, like and comment on pictures and videos as well. The key to Facebook ideology is that users will like what their friends like. This is the formation of a strong in-group. Though the visibility of the post depends upon the users’ personal settings, it offers a huge potential for the marketers to target their customers. Many online marketers track the user data to find out their interests and likes. This allows them to fine-tune their online advertisements and display the relevant ads to the user. For instance, if a group of Facebook friends like an NGO’s page to help quit smoking, it is highly likely that they will start campaigning against the cigarette lovers group. Here, marketers will pick up the lead from NGO’s page to target users with dislike for tobacco. Such users might then be targeted by marketers of products that help to quit smoking like nicotine chewing gums, e-cigarettes etc. On the other hand, the cigarette lovers’ group members might be targeted with books on the history of cultivation of tobacco, fancy cigarette lighters and tobacco-flavored colognes. Similarly, Twitter has shown a huge potential for marketers to promote their events and products using hashtags. Marketers often link real-time offers with the use of a defined hashtag. Hashtags enable them to talk about a specific subject and seek their consumers’ feedback at a common platform. 2. Amazon Amazon is a well-known online shopping platform, which allows users to share their purchase decision with their friends through social media networking. This generates further sales due to a strong social influence of friends in the group. If a user visits Amazon to look for a product but does not buy it for some or the other reason, Amazon marketers make a note of it and they target the same individual by advertising the product offer through his social media profile. It also allows users on Amazon to exchange product reviews helping subsequent consumers to take a purchasing decision. 3. Mercedes Benz/Harley Davidson The same strategy is adopted by an automobile or a two-wheeler manufacturer. A luxury car designer Mercedes Benz will make sure that their design is classy and is identified with the upper crust of the society. Thus, besides the in-built features in the car, the outer look and the comfort of driving the car play a significant role in appealing to its high-profile target audience. Consequently, marketers design their marketing messages like “Designed for the upper

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