Category: Marketing

Five Reasons Why Social Responsibility Is Crucial for Success

Five Reasons Why Social Responsibility Is Crucial for Success

October 10, 2014

Almost two years ago, the Time published an article describing why companies can no longer avoid their social responsibilities. It started the article with Nobel laureate Milton Friedman’s quote, who said “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” He described corporate social responsibility (CSR) as hypocritical window dressing and dismissed it as a suicidal impulse. Sometimes, we wonder why so many people who get their Nobel prizes, really do get them. Obviously, Friedman probably didn’t deserve that prize, if he thought corporate social responsibility was hypocritical and suicidal. Nevertheless, his ideas find a lot of takers even today. That is probably why we are seeing global warming and increased pollution levels. And of course, corporate social responsibility is not just limited to going green, but it includes a number of activities that leads to better communities and a safer world. We must also note that things have really changed from the times of Milton Friedman. Today, businesses can no longer operate without a strict corporate social responsibility agenda that works. In this article, we will discuss 5 important reasons why corporate social responsibility is important and we will thereby prove Milton Friedman wrong. Corporate social responsibility provides a competitive edge Most of us are in business because we are competitive in nature. If we were not competitive, our competitors would have usurped on our businesses. Today, we can remain competitive only if we are socially responsible. It is not just about having a “go green” campaign every year and sticking posters all across the work floor. Corporate social responsibility goes beyond that. You will need to make sure that you find your unique cause and fight for it, with all the privileges that you as a company have. Companies usually have a lot of privileges as opposed to individuals. The very fact that a company can hire people legally is proof enough that it can do much more to a community. Making sure that a company has corporate social responsibilities is the surest way of making sure that it remains competitive. Studies have shown that most successful companies are those which are socially responsible. When Chipotle released its “Pure Imagination” video that documented the horrors that farm animals endure, it struck a note with both vegetarians and non-vegetarians. And a lot of people began to buy burgers from Chipotle rather than from McDonalds. Consumers prefer to associate with companies that are socially responsible Consumers and clients like to view the company they deal with as an entity that cares for the community. No one wants to do business with a company that is solely obsessed with making more money. Such a company can no longer exist in a world that is increasingly becoming aware of social rights and morality. When consumers look for social responsibility, companies that have no CSR policies often lose out. People do not want to buy from companies that encourage child labor. Instead, they prefer to buy from companies that treat their employees well. Likewise, it is being noticed that energy companies that often do not clean up oil spills suffer the same way. British Petroleum (BP) has suffered a lot because of its carelessness towards protecting the nature after causing oil spills. In a survey, it was found that more than 89% of consumers prefer to do business with companies that not only make profits but also work towards improving the environment and the society we live in. 83% of consumers also felt that companies should donate more money in order to stay in business. Great employees look for corporate social responsibility (CSR) while joining a company While consumers are gung-ho about companies that are socially responsible, employees are not far behind. A shocking 32% of people were ready to quit their jobs if their company did not donate money to charities. Obviously, employees feel they are a part of the company and they do not want to be associated with a company that refuses to part with its profits to the disadvantaged. 65% of employees were also ready to quit if their companies were engaging in activities that harmed the environment. If only companies took care of the environment, we would not be experiencing the global warming we are experiencing today. Even more positively, 83% of those who were interviewed were ready to quit their jobs if their company used child labor. It is often noticed that those companies which practice CSR tend to have a high degree of employee morale and loyalty. Corporate social responsibility policies help companies to avoid attrition, recruit great employees and increase productivity and efficiency. Employees want to work at great organizations, and not in companies which do not care about the environment or the society. Capitalism cannot focus solely on profits It is becoming increasingly common for companies to not work with other companies that only think about profits. If a company has engaged in activities that are seen as discriminatory, immediate fallouts can be witnessed. When Abercrombie & Fitch’s CEO said unpleasant things about overweight people, it was pretty obvious that Abercrombie’s ratings and shares would go down. Many companies also do not like to associate with such companies. For a very long time, business has only been about profits. The more profit a company made, the more successful it was deemed to be. Such antiquated ideas are no longer in vogue and companies that are capitalist machines without CSR are often ignored by investors and consumers. It is becoming increasingly important for companies to have a strong CSR policy in order to remain in business. The better your corporate social responsibility policy is, the more successful you will likely be. In fact, doing good things to the environment and the society can actually help you make more money. Corporate social responsibility gives companies long term advantage If you have heard about the word ‘sustainable’, you will understand why corporate social responsibility is important. No company can remain sustainable if it does not sustain the

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Why Small Businesses Should Make Friends with Leads

Why Small Businesses Should Make Friends with Leads

September 29, 2014

If you are running a small business, you very well know the difficulties posed by not having enough leads. Your leads probably are your biggest saviors when it comes to remaining in the playing field for a long time. Thus, lead nurturing is an important task for all small business owners. Whether your leads are interested in your products or they are not, you can always nurture them through proven methods that have often been discussed. Lead nurturing is an important activity not only for small businesses but also for medium and big businesses. In this article however, we shall only discuss lead nurturing from the perspective of small businesses. Small business can make friends with their leads very easily The smaller a business is, the more it depends on its leads for its future sales and profits. A small business should continue to track its leads without stalking and make sure that there is always some sort of communication. In fact, the ideal scenario is to consider your leads to be your acquaintances or distant friends, with whom you stay in touch once in a while. The best way to make friends with your leads is to go and start following them on their social media accounts. Leads reciprocate when their presence is acknowledged Every human being likes his or her presence being acknowledged. We are all here in this world to be recognized and validated. When our presence is validated, we feel special. Follow your leads on their Twitter and Facebook accounts. Interact with them non-intrusively. If it is their birthday, wish them on Twitter by sending a tweet. Or like a picture of their on Facebook, without being a cryptic stalker. Leads like to be reminded that their interests matter Follow what leads talk about. If leads are talking about the floods in Serbia, express your sympathy and talk about how hard it is to deal with floods. If it is on Facebook, you could probably narrate an incident yourself. If it is on Twitter, you could probably tweet them a picture of survivors being rescued. Show that you care about their fears, worries and joy. This will help to build a long lasting non-business relationship. Leads become prospects when marketing communication is non-intrusive but persistent The kind of communication that we described above is non-intrusive, non-commercial yet persuasive in its own way. When they are consistently but non-intrusively communicated sans marketing communication, people tend to notice you. They see a human identity behind the business garb. That makes them value you and thus, your business as well. Slowly, leads will begin to start noticing your products and services as well. Leads become your cheerleaders when you remain friends Once they realize that you have something great to offer to them, they will begin to buy your products and even comment about how great it is (only if your products are great enough). Make sure that you express your gratitude and continue being the non-intrusive acquaintance that you always were. They will slowly become your cheerleaders. They will begin to speak positive things about you on social media. Being friendly with leads will help you gain more leads It is clear that leads attract more leads. When you make sure that you are being nice to your leads, they will begin to notice as well. More importantly, their friends will notice that you both are being nice to each other. Their friends and followers will end up becoming your leads. And then, it becomes your duty to start becoming their friends as well. The cycle of lead nurturing can thus continue when you begin to emphasize the human face behind the word “lead”. When you can no longer keep making friends with your leads, you could hire a social media agency which will continue to do the work that you were doing. Businesses grow and so will their social media activities. As long as you are a small business, you can afford to do all the social media activity yourself. However, when you become successful and large, making friends with your leads should be the responsibility of a professional social media agency.

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Internet-Culture

10 Internet Subcultures You Need to Know

September 26, 2014

Have you ever found yourself amazed at the number of internet subcultures that are around today? Ever since the evolution of Internet, there have been a number of internet subcultures that have catered to all sorts of audiences across the world. These internet subcultures tell us a lot about how people live, how people use the Internet and how things can often change before we know. Internet subcultures can be defined as a lifestyle that is enabled by some sort of internet connectivity, but is exclusive to a certain group of people. Now, that may not seem particularly interesting but you need to know your subculture to operate within a digital space. Digital marketing and digital professions ensure that we know what we are doing and that includes knowing all the Internet subcultures. In this article, we have compiled a list of Internet subcultures that are worthy enough of discussing. In fact, these subcultures are quite important and if you know them, you could turn out to be the more informed person of your group and that is not a bad thing at all. Internet Meme If you already didn’t know what an Internet meme is, you should probably visit the website of “Know Your Meme”. An Internet Meme is a style, action or idea that goes viral on the Internet and has a certain amount of mimicry or satire behind it. It could be anything from a picture with a caption that goes viral to a group of people dancing to the tune of Harlem Shake. A good example for this is the “Ridiculously Photogenic Guy”, who became a meme after his picture of running with a smile was published online. A simple Google search will yield a number of pictures which have been published with captions. Otaku Japan has a number of subcultures and Otaku is one of them. Before that, Japan has also inspired a number subcultures both online and offline. Otaku is a Japanese term for those who have interest that veer towards obsessions. These obsessions could be related to Manga or Anime and has had a negative connotation for a long time. However, a lot of people on the Internet have begun to identify themselves with Otaku, which relates to positive comic imagery inspired from Anime and Manga publications. Manga and Anime Manga and Anime themselves have given rise to several internet subcultures. A quick Google search will yield us a number of forums and clubs dedicated to Naruto, one of the Anime protagonists. There is also an Internet subculture that fetishizes Anime characters. The more we understand these subcultures, the better we will be able to address our target audiences. Thus, no matter how bizarre these subcultures may sound to us, we need to know them. If you have to design a social media campaign for Anime fans, you know what you should be doing: design campaigns that specifically cater to their interests! Otherkin Otherkin is a subculture of people who believe they are not human beings but ethereal beings such as vampires, ghosts, elves and even demons. They are primarily Internet-based and share their ideas, thoughts on forums that are dedicated to them. One can easily find them on social networking sites. Elvenkind Digest is one of the oldest Internet resources for Otherkin. If you plan to design a campaign for them, make sure that you know which ethereal being they most identify with and create a campaign that will attract them. Cosplay Cosplay is yet another Internet subculture that is a short form for costume play. People belonging to this subculture dress up in costumes and accessories that are inspired by a particular character. This character is usually inspired by manga, anime, video games and even films. They usually post the pictures on social networking sites and thus, their connection to the Internet is crystallized. Japanese street fashion is particularly inspired by cosplay and vice versa. One can also say that this subculture is somehow related to role play. Video Game subcultures There are a number of video games that attract huge fan followings. Super Mario, Pacman and others are immensely popular among Internet users. They predominantly use social networking sites to share their ideas and nostalgia for these games. One must be particularly attentive to their needs as video game fans are very common and most tech professionals tend to play video games anyway. One of your colleagues could be a video game fan. GPS dating With the rise of smartphones, GPS based dating applications have become very popular. They have become so popular that there are GPS based dating application for every fetish out there. There are applications for those who prefer ‘bears’ and also for those who prefer “lolitas”. In fact, online dating applications which use GPS have given rise to a new subculture. If you are planning to start a dating website or a social networking site, you need to know that there are already a number of GPS-based applications catering to every fetish out there. How different are you from them and which subculture are you targeting at? You need to answer that question. Secret groups Internet comes with a lot of secrecy, though that secrecy is not accessible to most of us. Yet, there are a number of people who use applications such as Tor to communicate in secrecy. These secret clubs and societies which are formed online give space to the disadvantaged, especially those who are unfairly prosecuted in their repressive countries. Nevertheless, a number of people have also misused these spaces, leading to blacking out of these websites. Secret groups tend to be very elusive and do not let outsiders in easily. Hashtags Surprisingly, a number of subcultures can be found readily on Twitter. These Twitter subcultures are defined by the use of their hashtags and those who use that hashtag are immediately recognized as part of a group. Thus, creating a subculture on twitter is easier than ever. Use of hashtags has

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Boost Your Training Program with Simulation and e-Games

Boost Your Training Program with Simulation and e-Games

September 22, 2014

Most people think training programs have to be staid and formal. It is really not so. Using props and aids in education and training have always been preferred methods of teaching. In corporate training, one usually encounters very few educational aids mostly because of the misconception that adult learners do not respond well to visual teaching aids. On the contrary, adult learners get easily distracted when there is monotony, just like child learners. Thus, it is important to make sure that our training programs are as versatile and entertaining as possible. The first step is to include a good set of simulation and e-games that are designed to ameliorate the knowledge of the learners. It is not difficult to make sure that simulation games are in sync with training programs. There are several professional organizations that can create e-games and simulation games based on your curriculum. No matter what your training program consists of, there will always be a simulation or video game to create. There are several reasons why simulation games are good for training programs. In this article, let us take a look at the few advantages: Simulation games add life to training programs Most training programs utilize audio visual aids that are rather staid in nature. Trainers often make use of PowerPoint presentations, slides and handouts to make sure that trainees are learning what they must. However, simulation games add a certain sense of life to training programs. They ensure that training programs are relaxed, fun and interesting at the same time. They also add life by boosting interaction between the trainer and the trainees. Simulation games provide hands-on experience Most trainees depend on lectures and handouts to learn what they must. This is not the ideal method of learning. There must be a balance of theoretical and practical training when it comes to official programs. Unfortunately, most trainers lecture for hours and then finally assess with a test. A simulation game provides trainees with the option to apply their theoretical knowledge within the game. These games can be built to attend to the needs of training programs. Simulation and electronic games allow trainers to monitor and assess trainees In traditional learning models, trainers often use convoluted methods to assess their trainees. This may include going as far as checking what trainees are doing in the classroom, in order to assess and mark them. However, simulation games make things much easier. All that a trainer needs to do is to let students play simulated and coordinated games which can help the trainer to assess and monitor the progress of trainees. Simulation games increase competitive spirit among learners Learning is never an activity that happens without a sense of competition. Every trainee is inherently hard wired to compete and outperform other trainees. Video games, simulation games and other forms of games help trainees to engage in competitive gameplay that will increase their motivation to learn more. Gamifying training programs has the unique advantage of motivating and encouraging learners to learn more. Simulation and electronic games break the monotony of traditional learning We must admit that adult learners find it quite tiresome to go through training programs unless they are designed well. Simulated games help adult learners to apply what they have learned and make progress eventually. Simulated and other forms of games break the monotony that is associated with training programs. This is one of the reasons why educationists always exhort trainers to gamify their training sessions. Training programs must always include some sort of dedicated simulation and eGames within the curriculum. Specialized e-learning agencies are equipped with the knowledge and expertise to create simulation games for any training program that clients may request for. Based on what the goal of the training program is, one can always design simulation games with the goal of helping students to break monotony and increase productivity. A number of studies have proven that simulation and eGames contribute to the success of training programs, no matter where they are conducted. If you have a training program in progress, do think about inserting a simulation game into the program and that must help.

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10 Reasons to Have Multiple Explainer Videos on Your Website

10 Reasons to Have Multiple Explainer Videos on Your Website

September 19, 2014

The use of explainer videos is growing exponentially in the business environment. Businesses gain several benefits by uploading multiple videos on their website. Videos make it easier for marketers to influence the customers thus serving as an effective marketing tool. With that background, let us discuss the ten most essential reasons for having multiple explainer videos on your website. • Higher traffic and conversion rate As a matter of fact, video is hundred times more enticing than the use of text. Customers find it irking to go through elaborate textual content when a short video is enough to explain what they want to know. If your website has multiple explainer videos, then your customer will be enlightened and is likely to generate more satisfaction with your offerings. A satisfied visitor will be glad to become your customer and share your videos with his friends. We have already experienced the virality of social media campaigns. This brings us to the necessity of embedding social media buttons with the video. This will direct more traffic to your website and consequently a higher conversion rate. Even a survey conducted by Video Rascal concluded that 85% visitors are more likely to buy your product after watching an accompanying explainer video. • Videos are fun to watch Reading text becomes boring and tiresome. It is undeniable that videos hold the potential of instilling an element of entertainment for the fast-paced customers today. Besides infusing knowledge and information to your customers’ head, you are providing them a means of amusement that can bring a smile on your customers’ face. A happy visitor goes a long way onto the loyalty track. We have seen that TV ads work quite effectively for brand promotion but then they carry a huge cost of production and distribution. On the contrary, explainer videos are produced and distributed at a much cheaper cost. On top of that, such videos turn out to be 38% more effective than TV ads according to a survey by comscore.com.  Impressive videos with graphics and animation component leave an indelible mark on your customers. It improves your brand recall value. • More than one story to share Often businesses are caught in the dilemma of selecting one video out of multiple good videos to share. It keeps the marketers unsatisfied as they want to share myriad stories with their customers.  A website with multiple explainer videos provide the marketers with the power to share different customer success stories, case studies, experiments, new products, experiences, challenges and so on. Moreover, when you venture into different business verticals, the need more multiple videos for different sections further increase. A number of video hosting sites are available which helps to do away with storage issues on website. • Videos for landing page Customers have different queries depending upon the information they require from your company. It is not necessary that they land at your homepage when they click a result on the search page. Place multiple videos at different landing pages so that there is a video for the required information at every page they land. Your homepage may contain a video that talks about the vision and mission of your company. On the other hand, there are sections like problem diagnosis, new products, R&D etc for which you can create unique set of videos. For instance, problem diagnosis section may contain videos which guide the customers to resolve the issue with their product by following user-friendly procedure. Similarly, I would suggest you to create interesting video clips when your company launches a new product or invests in innovative ideas. • Higher ranking on SERP I am sure you have observed that besides investing in SEO tactics, your company is unable to garner top position in the search results. It is due to the fact that the search engine algorithms are becoming complex with every passing day and their focus is skewed towards quality and originality of your content. When you create and upload original videos on your website, search engines automatically give more preference to your web page. And higher the number of videos you create for different search queries, higher is your likelihood of appearing in the top search results. Make sure that you provide new information and problem solving videos. And do remember to tag your videos with appropriate keywords and meta-data. Though I would recommend you to host high quality videos on Youtube and Vimeo, but you must prefer using your own domain for hosting most of your regular videos. It will help you to create video sitemap on a sub domain of your own site. • Visitors spend more time on your website The sole objective of your website content is to have a prolonged visiting time by your visitors. But often plunge on this objective when you fail to create content that interests the visitors. And t is a known fact that visitors read less but watch more. Why not take advantage of this congenital and congenial habit? It is also found out by researchers that visitors tend to spend more time on the website after watching an interesting video clip. And spending more time means they will get to know your company and products more. Companies often build upon this fact and introduce email and video subscription by asking them to sign up. The whole idea is to grab the attention of the viewers to take forward your interaction with them. • Data collection It is a lesser known fact that many marketers use explainer videos to track the behavior and demands of their customers. Tracking the video metrics will empower you to serve your customers very effectively. You can track play rate that shows the number of people who actually clicked the play button. Play through rate adjudges the number of people who saw the entire video. Apart from that, you can find what keywords led them to the video page. You can also determine your sales volume as compared to

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How to Run a Pinterest Campaign for E-Commerce Websites

How to Run a Pinterest Campaign for E-Commerce Websites

September 16, 2014

Pinterest is the third most popular social media networking site after Facebook and Twitter. Imagine a photo album with catalogues for different events in life. Pinterest is not just another social media to sell your goods, it is a visual delight exclusively designed to promote the images of your product and sell them through your e-store. Pinterest is a visual social networking platform We’ve already seen in the past how marketers use integrated Facebook stores and Twitter hashtags to sell their products online and increase traffic to their e-stores. We have also seen that these platforms are flooded with content like status updates, links to blog, articles, websites, images, videos etc in a textual format. Both these platforms undeniably serve good to meet your content marketing needs. But if you see Pinterest, it is clearly focused on promoting content through visually charged content i.e. images pinned on a board of your choice. So whether you want to promote your content or sell a product, Pinterest does equally well to serve the dual purpose. Pinterest allows you to upload any number of images on a board. The images on Pinboards are displayed with an embedded link to your e-store check-out page, thus, selling is faster and fun-filled. People love to re-pin images which they like and share it with their friends. Your products should be accompanied by a good quality image to attract viewers’ attention so that it gets re-pinned more that drives traffic to your e-store. Another thing to note is that always prefer using an original image on your board with a washed out brand logo at the corner to stay distinct. Two important components of Pinterest Pinboard – A pinboard is a set of images that have something in common. Every board has a different story to tell and different product category to sell. You can create and classify boards as per your choice. Every board has a different cover photo. And visitors don’t follow you they rather follow your board. Pin – Images are called pins here. Visitors can like the image, share it on Facebook, send it to their friends and visit the source of pin. The source will be your e-store here. Running a Pinterest campaign to boost traffic on your e-store Make it SEO friendly by using sufficient links  Images pinned on your board have to be linked to your e-store.  Google identifies the images more that are linked to a verified website rather than just an image upload from your computer. Even if you are attaching image that is not directly linked to your e-store, make sure it is linked to your blog, website or other social media profile.This will ensure that your target audience is following you by hook or by crook. The image links can be embedded through Call-to-Action buttons like Buy Now, Visit, Browse e-store, Subscribe for latest offers and so on. You can even upload pins from different sources that have similar products as yours. Create interesting boards with proper description and prices  Every pinboard you create should be specific to a single topic and share the images related to that content. In this case of promoting your e-store, you can display a particular collection on a pinboard like a stock clearance pinboard, new product pinboard, limited availability pinboard, best selling products etc.Every pin you want to sell should have a relevant description that talks about the usefulness and quality of the product to help people know about your product. Though your images are linked to your e-store, do not forget to add a hyperlink in the description to increase click through rate. Adding a price tag to the pin gives you an edge as people who are really interested in buying your product will click through it. Embed Pinterest sharing buttons on blogs and website  To create awareness among your target audience about your presence on Pinterest, make it a point that you add Pinterest sharing button on your blog and website. This gives you an opportunity to increase exposure of your brand. And understand that getting those initial likes is completely driven by your content marketing strategy. A satisfied visitor will share your content with his friends. Create shareable pins  Your pins don’t have to match the product images on your e—store. These pins are used to attract users attention. For instance, if you are selling products for Valentine’s day, you can use love quotes with roses as your pins. But try to keep some link between the pin and the image on your product page.  Hold activities  Ask your fans and followers to repin the best product from your board of new products. This will tell you the most popular product in the category. The products that receives maximum pins will be among the most popular one and you can set all those products in a trending now category.Once you pick up the most popular product, hold a caption contest for that product. Choose the best caption and award the participant with freebies or special offer on the entire category. Such activities will arouse visitor curiosity and enhance recognition to your brand. Increase interaction with the board followers  People love to repin interesting pins. Why don’t express your gratitude to the ones who repin it. Ask them to check your entire range of product on your e-store. Reply to the queries of your board followers. You also have the leverage to grant access to your ardent board follower to upload content on your board.Likewise, you can also repin the content from the board of your followers. Such gestures attract the attention of your followers and they are most likely to visit your e-store. It also increases your follower base. Added to that, you can start following the boards of your followers. Pin exclusive offers  Create a unique pinboard for latest offers and discounts. Keep this offer time-bound and for Pinterest users only. This will spread word-of-mouth through your followers and your Facebook & Twitter users

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The Power of Storytelling in the Marketing and Online World

September 8, 2014

Everybody likes stories. Right from a toddler who likes to pore through picture books to adults who like to read novels, we all like stories. Narration and forming stories have been the basis of much of our imaginative and real lives. When the prehistoric men hunted and brought food to their families, they created stories to keep themselves entertained in an otherwise scary and dangerous world. As our civilizations grew, our stories grew more complex. No matter what, the art and science of storytelling never left us. Instead, it has now become even more embedded in our culture and psyche. Importance of storytelling in running businesses When it comes to promoting businesses, stories can not only make but also break the very business they are supposed to support. You might have noticed that a number of websites often use a story of how the founders met, how the business grew and other details in the “About Us” page. You may also notice the art of storytelling in blogs, web copy and sometimes, even on product packaging. The power of storytelling in online world is so important that the very success of your online existence depends on how well you tell your story. In this article, we shall take a look at the power of storytelling in an online world, in the context of making explainer videos. Psychology and the art & science of storytelling Because there is a natural storytelling urge and ability in all human beings, even just a little nurturing of this impulse can bring about astonishing and delightful results. — Nancy Mellon, The Art of Storytelling The field of psychology has devoted a large part of its research activities to the importance of storytelling. Postmodernists like Ludwig Wittgenstein often stressed on the importance of narration in therapy. Psychological healing occurs when we narrate our stories and restructure, reform and redefine our stories, which are often clouded and distorted by our thoughts and feelings. Thus, stories can change the way we think, and the people that we are. Similarly, the story you tell of your business and of your products and services will decide whether you will be successful or not. In an ideal world, we can narrate our stories, impress our target audience and rake in all the profits. Unfortunately, real life and real business are both tough. In order to conquer these real problems, we need to start weaving stories not only into the About Us page or into blogs and web copy, but also into explainer videos that we make. Weaving stories into explainer videos Explainer videos may seem like a pretty straight forward method where you instruct your viewers about your business, products and services. However, when you narrate a story within an explainer video, use metaphors and allegories, you will be able to connect with your audience better. As explainer videos are all about connecting with your audience, the importance of storytelling cannot be stressed enough. When you write the script for an explainer video, ensure that there is some sort of story involved in it. If that story involves your own story of how your company came to be, or a form of narration that subliminally communicates to the viewer about “story story”, half of your job is done. Stories need not be explicit. Often, novelists use a number of techniques to narrate their stories. Likewise, when you write the script for an explainer video, your storytelling needs to be varied: sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit and sometimes, just plain adventurous. Final thoughts At the end of the day, the most important thing for you to do as a business is to make sure that your explainer video ticks. And for that, the narration has to be strong. And for that to happen, the storytelling needs to be powerful. With all this in mind, you could be pretty sure that you will get the attention of the audience you want, and that you will be able to touch their hearts and souls without looking like you are being too pushy. Often, stories indicate that there are humans behind a logo and behind a company. And that always works in the favor of businesses. If you want to make this work in favor of your business, talk to the animation specialists at Oomphbox.

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How to Leverage Social Media for Effective Content Marketing

September 6, 2014

Content marketing is the foremost step taken by digital marketers to woo their target audience. The idea behind this is to offer relevant, valuable and quality content to your visitors so that your message does not go unheard. An intrigued visitor will make repeated visits to your website and will not shy away from becoming your customer in future. What is content marketing? Content marketing is a way to get closer to your potential customers to gain their interest and become valuable for them. A content marketer will never provide excessive information to its customers but only what is necessary and that too in phases. To say the least, if your content is effective, there is no power in this world that can stop you from getting higher ranking on search engines. As a marketer you must understand the paucity of time with your consumer. If you share usual boring and preachy content, your audience is very likely to reject you. You can market your content through various online mediums like website, blog, email, video, newsletter, eBooks, discussion portals and social media. In this article, we are going to discuss how social media can be used to market your content. Social media – a powerful medium for content marketing Social media is an epicenter for sharing information with friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Consumers believe that the content shared on social media is rich, genuine and testified by their friends. Which is why, the sharing chain grows larger and becomes viral at the spur of the moment. Moreover, it is a place to relax, serving as a casual platform to engage with your target audience through communities and one-on-one interaction. Social media helps you to gather data and find out interests of your target audience through tools like Buffer. This ultimately facilitates you in designing a targeted campaign. Let us discuss the potential of different social networking platforms used by marketers today. Facebook  Facebook still remains the top networking platform in the world. Invite your target customer to like your Facebook fan page but with a promise to share something useful with them. Every brand is running towards Facebook and get liked. But these likes turn unlikes if your profile stays stagnant. How to use Facebook for content marketing Use Google Chrome built-in Power Editor to create lookalike audience list from your existing Facebook followers. Lookalike audience is the one which is similar to your existing customer base with similar interests, likings and demographic characteristics. Share content like an eBook or a case study which you do with your existing customers and you’ll see magical results. You can promote your content through Facebook Ad with limited time availability. Facebook Ads targeted at your lookalike audience also let you generate a significant list of subscribers. So, if your content is good, people targeted will subscribe and subscription will give you an opportunity for personal interaction with your audience. Another advantage of Facebook Ads is that you can retarget your lost visitors. Many a times, visitors browse your site but do not visit it again. To target them again, tools like Adroll let you place a pixel on the landing page of your website and Facebook Ads of your content is displayed when they sign in next time. Thus, it increases the exposure of your content among lost visitors. Marketers are progressively using hashtags to listen to their followers and admirers on Facebook. Following the brand hashtags gives them the consumers perspective about their brand. They can interact and answer to the queries of their admirers. People are easily attracted towards emotions, jokes and thought-provoking content. And images are the best bet to increase engagement. Use personal, interesting and stimulating images to grab the attention of your fans. Audience Insights feature helps you to know your consumer behavior, interests and their location that assists you in making a customized content for them. A Facebook marketer is enabled to go through the profiles of his followers to understand their likings and design a relevant campaign. Twitter Twitter is a remarkable platform for marketers as it is the fastest way to communicate with the followers. The content posted instantly goes viral. Marketers quite often using action hashtags to engage their followers like #subscribe, #vote, #like etc. Hashtags are engaging and fun. It helps marketers to increase their brand popularity, generate leads and increase traffic to their website. How to use Twitter for content marketing? Many marketers use a time-bound content sharing strategy triggered by retweets by interested consumers. You can also use targeted tweets to send to a specific audience based on their geographical location. What’s more, sharing images on Twitter leads to increased click-through-rate and significant increase in retweets. To ensure that your content is seen by your followers, you can share the same content a number of times in small intervals. It can significantly increase traffic and fan following. Tools like Twitter Counter help you to track follower growth so that you know when the time is just right to repost the same engaging content. Marketers also use A/B testing to know what content pulls the visitors more to their website or blog. Such experiments help you to reframe your content to suit more to the target audience. Followerwonk is an interesting tool used by many businesses to schedule a set number of tweets at desired intervals in a day. It also analyzes the time when most of your followers are active. Pinterest Image pinning is what leads you to winning on Pinterest. Marketers are using innovative ways to engage with their fans on this fairly new social networking site. How to use Pinterest for content marketing? Different pinboards can be created for segregating your content. Pinboards use interesting imagery and infographics to increase click-through-rate. Fans can be asked to opine on new content pinned with the associated image on your board. Visitors have the option to repin your content to increase exposure of your content. Images can be embedded with call

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10 Tips to Optimize Your Explainer Video for Search Engines

September 3, 2014

Explainer videos are short and concise videos ideally 60-90 seconds that explain your product or service to the potential customers. They are being rapidly used by businesses in the form of animation to explain a problem and provide a solution to the problems. We want you to know that a good script defines the quality of your video. Do search engines understand good scripts? But search engines will not recognize good scripted videos until you incorporate good SEO tactics. And it is no fun when an explainer video with a good script is unable to generate traffic to your website. The whole idea behind creating an explainer video is to create brand awareness and increase conversion rate. Search engines give higher ranking to authentic and quality textual content. Videos are no different provided they are optimized for search engines. Search engine crawlers can only understand text associated with the video for indexing purpose. There is no room for ignorance as video SEO tactics is a must practice to increase visibility of your video on the web. No wonder that 70% of the top 100 search listings contain a video. Let me share with you 10 important tips for optimizing your explainer video. Apt title Your titles must look natural. A video title must include your most important keyword. Titles are the first visible piece of information in the search engine results. A good title has to be simple and catchy. YouTube provides a character limit of 100 for video titling. Adding trigger keywords attracts the attention of the viewer and you are most likely to have a higher click-through-rate. Trigger keywords are supporting words used with your keywords to form a title. Also, prefer to use the keyword in the beginning of the title. For instance, if you are making an explainer video to demonstrate how to operate the application ABC, then you can use the title as “Operating ABC application” or “Learn ABC application” instead of using “How to operate ABC application” Gripping description and thumbnail Video description is the longest textual content associated with the video used by search engines to index your information. Write quality and SEO-friendly content with relevant keywords. Your title and description should relate with each other. A good description contains the summary of the video with a link to your website. Place your link both in the beginning and at the end of the description to get a better chance of being viewed. Place an attractive thumbnail of your video to grab attention of the viewers. Thumbnail is a snapshot of your video that is visible on the result page. Right set of keywords Knowing the most popular set of keywords is important to get higher visibility for your explainer video. You must know what keyword phrases are used by your target audience to search for your product so that you can optimize your title and description accordingly. There are a number of free tools that allow you to do keyword research and note the response received to your website. Doing a check for keywords will tell you if you chose the right keyword. Type your selected keyword on Google and see if you get any video results on the top page. If you do, then you have chosen the right word. You must also remember not to stuff keywords in your content unnecessarily as it deteriorates the quality of your content and search engines mark it as spam. Tags Quite similar to keywords, tags are additional keywords that you pick up and place with your video assuming that many people use these tags to search for your product. In other words, tags are keywords with lesser significance. Unlike keywords, tags are not placed strategically in your video title and description. Your keywords should definitely be a part of your tag list but the opposite is not necessary. Tags also help the crawlers to define the category of your video. Create a video sitemap After all the hard work of creating an explainer video, you will certainly not like to miss the traffic. Video sitemap is necessary when you have multiple videos on your site but they are hosted by video-hosting websites like YouTube, Vimeo etc and you want the visitors to be directed to your site. Video sitemap includes detail like category, title, tags, description, published date, duration of your videos etc that guides the search engines to index your videos correctly. A searcher who finds your video will be directed to your site and not to YouTube after you create a video sitemap. Google Webmaster Tools help you to submit a video sitemap. Transcript your video Video transcription adds value to your content. Search engines index according to the content associated with your video. Finding your video will become easier for search engines when people type content in your transcript in the search bar. Moreover, transcription helps people with impaired hearing and who speak a different language to see what your video say. Transcript content can be easily translated via Google Translate to the language of the viewers’ choice. Video quality A low resolution video with poor clarity often puts off the viewers. Besides that, bad audio and blurred readability makes it hard for the viewers to understand your message. It also affects your brand image. The content of your video can be good enough but a standard video quality is a bare minimum requirement to get more number of hits. And you don’t really need a HD resolution for this. Post on your own website Your priority should be to host your video on your own website as it gives your website a prominence over video-hosting sites like YouTube.  Furthermore, it reflects your brand personality and promotes your brand. And the visitors land directly on your website which allows them to browse further information on your product instantly. On the contrary, you should also post your video on YouTube and Vimeo as it increases your visibility on the web.

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7 Innovative Ways of Using Animated Explanatory Videos

September 1, 2014

A video, and not a picture, says more than a thousand words. Explainer videos are turning the tide for many marketers as they help them to take a giant leap in achieving not only their marketing goals but also their employee engagement and customer service goals. Predominantly used for introducing a new product or company, animated explainer videos create curiosity; infuse knowledge and acquaintance in a short while. A short and crispy explainer video usually 1-3 min long for your customers or employees saves you a lot of time in answering their queries and problem solving. Explainer videos can be enabled to prompt customers to take action at the end of the video. For instance, they can be asked to subscribe your newsletter, visit your website and a lot more. Apart from that, it offers an attractive way of promoting your product and services to prospective customers. Let us see how your explainer videos can be best put to use: Testing an idea in the market There could be many a reason for new product failures but they say that wise men always prefer testing over resting. Market testing is an important activity to get a sense of the market especially for the marketers who are willing to take risk through innovation. You’ve got a brilliant concept for a new product. But you fear whether it has acceptance among the masses. An explainer video will help you to take this idea to the market through your blog, social media platform and website. It further helps you to track customer responses and take their valuable feedback. It will tell you if your concept is ready to roll in the market or does it need to be dropped. There are many cases where the companies wanted to surprise their customers through new products. But unfortunately it did not somehow clicked with them resulting in considerable losses in invention, production and marketing. Idea testing through explainer videos will save you enough time and money in R&D investment. Furthermore, you may get opinions from your customers to amend and reform your concept. Advertisement through social media Advertisement can be used for promoting your company, brand, a new or an existing product. While TV and print media is used to increase brand recall value, social media platforms are probably the best bet for the marketers to increase liking for their brand and encourage customer engagement. Innovative and engaging video content on Facebook, Twitter etc often grabs eye balls and is liked and shared by your fans and followers. Make sure that all your social media profiles are integrated. This increases your presence across the social media networks.  People are free to comment and give opinions on your advertisement on the platform of their choice. Moreover, social media is a casual platform for netizens to relax so avoid uploading boring video description of your products.  Pervade emotions like joy, surprise, excitement, thrill or thoughtfulness, knowledge, innovation to get a widespread popularity for your brand. Live demos in trade shows If you happen to participate in a trade show, you often find that it becomes difficult to catch hold of customers, leave aside interaction with them. Customers tend to walk across your stall if they don’t find anything interesting from a distance. And we don’t expect customers to stop at every stall in the show. Here comes the role of explainer videos. Get those couple of inspiring videos that talk about your product and company. Play them all through the day. You’ll find customers stopping to see the video and gain information. And if they really like something about your product or the company per se then they are most likely to approach you for further queries. You’ve succeeded in your effort of making explainer videos as it does half the job for you. The rest lies with your face-to-face communication skills to acquire leads. And even if you miss out the customers who saw your video but didn’t turn up for interaction, you’ve been able to entertain them and advertise yourself. Pitching an idea to investors Accept the fact that explainer videos are studded with presentation abilities if made correctly. This is what you need when you are pitching an idea to worthy investors. If you want the investors to take you seriously, then spend time in making a great video. An investor will not spend time in reading your report or see your power point presentation until and unless he finds something haunting to invest in. Create a persuasive video that leaves your investors enthralled. Don’t go into too much detail but it should be able to highlight your idea clearly and the potential it beholds. Furthermore, an explainer video adds credibility to your company and leaves a lasting impression on them. Even if they are not ready to invest in your concept right now, they will not mind giving you a call back at a later stage. Another scenario could be that they pitch your concept to fellow investors by showing them the explainer video. Helping your employees In a large organization, HR department plays a pivotal role during induction of new employees in the company. It is but natural that new employees have a lot of anxiety and curiosity to understand the company well so that they can adapt in their respective roles aptly. Due to this, HR department has to devote a lot of time to this unproductive task. To avoid the same, many companies are using explainer videos for answering different queries of their employees.  For instance, a marketing professional employed in your company stays miles away from the production facility of your company. And for some reason, he is unable to visit the factory and is unaware of the production processes. At this point, a short video giving the gist of your production processes will instill confidence in the employee and he will be able to perform his job in a much better way. Similarly, you can make explainer

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