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Tag: online marketing

Are You Correcting the Major Digital Marketing Flaws in 2015?

July 8, 2015

A lot of small business players have realized the importance of digital marketing in their marketing budget. Digital marketing puts your business online and therefore becomes an essential part of your online reputation. Can your customers find you in search results? Are you engaging with your customers? Are you gaining insights into customer behavior? There is plenty to learn from your digital marketing efforts and get closer to your customers. However, many businessmen fail to rectify the flaws they are encountering in their pursuit. It is important to overcome your shortcomings and move ahead of competitors. This article will take a look at the major digital marketing flaws in the year gone-by and how you can mend them in 2015. 1. Mobile at the backburner A growing number of customers are consuming your content through the comfort of their smartphone. Small business owners can’t afford to remain stuck with desktop website by publishing content including text, photos and video, which is inaccessible or illegible on mobile. Having a mobile-friendly website with a responsive design is a necessity in 2015. The website needs to be published with just enough content that are easy to view on mobile. Furthermore, urban consumers prefer smartphone as their best friend while commuting to work. Tweaking your content into mobile-friendly form will enhance your reach. Push notifications feature for email and RSS feeds in mobile has long been used by digital marketers to share content with their target audience. Creating more mobile-friendly emails will further strengthen your effort. 2. Underutilization of Facebook page It is easier to create a Facebook page but it is a blunder to leave it unutilized. An unutilized Facebook page will soon go into oblivion and users unlike it; and it is very difficult to get the lost customers again. It is important to utilize it for sharing the most interesting content with your customers. Moreover, Facebook algorithm is changing in the way news feed works for the users and how businesses use their FB page. Use your FB page to know your audience. The main idea behind FB is to share content that is liked by your audience. So, shift your focus from selling on FB to posting engaging content. Let your employees support you in your initiative and respond to the customer queries. 3. Failure to form a content marketing strategy Digital marketing content is scattered across company website, blogs, social media profiles, emails, YouTube and so many other digital mediums but have you failed to form a coherent strategy that resonates clearly in the minds of your audience? There has to be some connection between your content across the mediums so that people don’t get confused. There are already too many digital marketers out there to steal your customers. Focus on quality content and use each medium as it is designed to be used. However, it does not mean that you can’t be resilient with your content strategy. The best way forward is to maintain a consistency of posting content, whatever medium(s) you choose. Experienced marketers have already realized the power of SEO with the right content. 4. Getting carried away by new trend Digital marketing arena evolves rapidly and digital marketers are always in search for new tactics. While a new trend might look exciting, it might not work for every marketer. They need to understand their target audience and find out what their audience likes. While the basic approach towards your well-known audience need not change, you can try new tactics over new customers. The idea is not to sway with the new trends. For instance, many big players indulge in flash sales and discounts to promote their products through social media but such a trend might turn into demise of a small player. Small players need to remember to play smart and fill in the gaps left by the bigger players. 5. Stuffing keywords to your disadvantage Google keeps changing its algorithm to be more just to original content providers. Keyword is an essential part of their algorithm. Digital marketers, in their bid to outsmart Google algorithm by stuffing keywords, relegate the quality of their content. On the other hand, Google makes sure that such unqualified content is not visible to the target audience. It is one of the significant changes made by the search engine giant to prepare for 2015. Try to use synonyms that relate to your keywords. Use the long-tail list of keywords rather than the most common ones to be more specific. Google Analytics is a great tool that helps you to do that. 6. Failure to track your digital marketing initiatives As we are already aware, digital marketing initiatives are speckled across various online mediums, it is quintessentially true that your customers too are varied and strewn across the internet. This brings us to pay importance to digital metrics that helps us to closely understand our audience. But, there is a caveat here. This exercise needs to be done precisely, else it might prove counter-productive. Boo.com and Pets.com failed miserably after they miscalculated their CLTV (Customer Lifetime value) and CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost). This led them to overestimate the size of their market and make wrong presumptions. Tracking your metrics rightly will get you closer to your marketing goals and objectives. Infographic like this often serves as a guide for small business owners to understand key digital marketing metrics. 7. Irrelevant landing pages It is irking for the customer who gets excited by your ad to land on an irrelevant page. Many marketers have done a slip-up to trap the customers into sign-up or pay a website visit by showing them an enticing product. Be clear with your call-to-action buttons to avoid turning-off your visitors. The customer acquisition cost is already running high as customers have become choosy and they are constantly bombarded with marketing messages from all sources. Follow a consistent approach in getting your message across through correct landing page. If your ad link says “sign up for newsletter”, then your landing page needs to

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How to Make Your Digital Marketing Experience More Meaningful?

July 6, 2015

As it is rightly said that change is the only constant factor, the same is applicable in every business world, especially when we are talking about digital marketing industry today. The process of integrating platforms and customer’s experience through a digital channel is extremely crucial. Digital marketing enhances the prospect of increasing and improving interactions and relationships with the existing and prospective customers. The whole process needs constant upgradation in order to stay relevant in the industry. It is time of the year again when your digital marketing strategy needs a boost to stay ahead of the curve. Marketers Need to Enhance Their Collaboration Effort When you’re trying to develop a brand as a marketer, you need to have a good collaboration skill to execute your responsibilities properly. Collaboration delivers the best results. It is a recursive process to realize and accomplish shared goals. It is more than the intersection of common goals and collective determination to reach an identical objective by sharing learning, knowledge and consensus. And when a marketer can put together the right people, the right strategy and some well-advanced tools, he has the powerful plan of actions that can make any campaign successful. Understand the Meaning beyond Money Being authentic will better connect people to your brand. Understanding the core meaning of your business helps align your messaging and marketing efforts. Your brand story can significantly develop interests and engagement in your business. Your brand story is a picture of facts, feelings and interpretations, which are shared by you, your customers and your community. It is an effective way to keep you real and on top of mind. It inspires, educates, and builds indispensable relationships and loyalty with your clients. Crowdfunding, the Soon-to-be Digital Marketing Frontier Crowdfunding has been backing up several projects and has attracted millions of potential investors. It empowers passionate people with ideas to take their shots. The campaign raises a certain amount of monetary funding with contributions coming from a large number of people using the internet as their platform. The industry, as a whole, has ideas that are relatively young. While social media allows things to happen through communication and enables people to share and communicate, crowdfunding has added a commerce element, where people are not just asked to share their ideas but to raise money for them to make them a reality. Video Marketing Will Continue to be the Buzz As we all know how the Ice Bucket Challenge was one of the biggest sensations of 2014. The video generated billions of clicks. Video is an effective way for people to share their experience and tell their stories easily. These days, anyone can produce a quality short film using their camera along with the help of several video apps that can be accessed online. The 6 second approach with Vine or Twitter’s mobile video is playing an important part in the rising popularity of video content. Content does not necessarily have to be written text. Harnessing this enthusiastic medium to facilitate user-generated content can ultimately yield massive results in widening brand reach and getting target audience. Embracing Native Advertising Native advertising is the practice of using paid content to build trust and engagement with the would-be-customers. The content are creatively constructed and placed to flow naturally with the original content of a website. Native ads have the potential to pass as organic content to the untrained eyes. Consequently, you can create strong brand awareness through native advertising campaigns as it helps in generating clicks, shares and comments for the advertisers. This type of content is more likely to increase click-through-rates and encourages audience engagement than average banner ads. Your Presence in Social Media Channels Makes a Difference You are well-aware of the influence of social media but did you know the importance of social media data that can influence marketing decisions? Social media data is pretty complex and difficult to put into actions. However, digital marketing marketers can add a hat to their collections – the social media analyst hat. This analytics is the practice of collecting data from blogs and social media websites and later analyzing the data to make business decisions. Optimize All Marketing Channels Your biggest responsibility is to ensure that your brand message is unanimously conveyed across through marketing channels including: Blog post Paid marketing efforts Email marketing and follow-up emails to communicate the next steps of action Social media campaign Automated emails Create Micro Goals To make your goals easier to accomplish, break them into smaller action steps Create landing page for email list and allow visitors to subscribe to your newsletters Prepare automated emails and make a plan to send them on particular days of a week Make use of content idea creation tool to create content and add them to automated email series for newsletters Track the number of subscribers and improve your email marketing strategy until you found 1,000 subscribers Remember, not to repeat the mistakes as you had done in the previous years Are You Calculating the ROI of Your Digital Marketing Activities? To achieve success, companies must look back in their journey and measure digital proficiency. Companies approach digital marketing strategies in order to create an omnichannel experience that customers have come to expect. This entails starting the required infrastructure, digital strategy’s objectives and of course, its measurements. Calculating ROI of digital marketing movements is considered as the Holy Grail of marketing measurement. Although there are several factors that generate positive outcomes typically, two important things account for positive ROI – Bringing more visitors to the store Converting more visitors Businesses are finding it difficult, if not impossible to ignore the need to incorporate digital marketing as a part of their long term business strategies. It has become the priority for businesses around the world. An integrated digital marketing strategy gives you a strong foundation for all the key online marketing activities and helps you take the right decision to make a business successful online.

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Top Ten Tools to Increase Marketing Effectiveness

July 1, 2015

2015 is going to be more competitive than the last year. You must have realized it by this time. Whether you’ve a big marketing budget or you’re a start up, with little money in hand, harnessing the power of user experience marketing tools can be a major advantage in your ability to move swiftly in your professional field. Make a resolution to make better decisions and find effective ways to communicate with your audience with some of the finest marketing tools to successfully run your marketing campaign. Ten Most Powerful Tools to Gain Insights into Your Visitor’s Heart and Mind… 1. BuzzSumo BuzzSumo is a fabulous content development tool that is worthy of praise. Marketers can use BuzzSumo to research on content that your audience really want to read. All you need to do is enter a keyword or backlinks to get a detailed report on how well a content has performed based on social media shares. You can also filter the results based on language, time, type of content and country. 2. Crazy Egg If you’re curious enough to learn the reason behind why visitors are leaving your site, Crazy Egg is the apt tool for you. The Heat Map tool tells you exactly where people are clicking, and where they’re not. The Scroll Map tool shows you exactly what portion of the page that people are leaving on, and how you can place your most important content to make it more visible. And lastly, the Confetti Map that allows you to visualize what’s happening on your page and from which traffic source they’re coming from. 3. Uberflip If you do not want to let your visitors leave your site, Uberflip can be used to share a curated list of your content on your website. You can also create targeted call-to-action within your content to convert visitors into customers with the help of this user experience testing tools. 4. Kissmetrics Rather than simply tracking the general flow of traffic, Kissmetrics enables you to track a specific group of visitors and their online behaviours. The data collected can be extremely useful in increasing the marketing effectiveness. These insights help you to discover the best campaign sources, drive better retention and double the number of your most valuable customers. The primary strength of this software is its ability to handle user identities much more clearly. 5. Raven Tools If your marketing team need all-in-one internet marketing software, Raven tool is the solution. From robust SEO research tools to media monitoring to comprehensive reporting, Raven tool has it all. Once you’re set up with raven, you can easily create your first campaign within a minute. Raven is the ultimate time-saving machinery to make automated, interactive marketing report. Moreover, they’re continually innovating their platform with new features to make it better for their customers. 6. Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) VWO is a testing and optimizing tool that allows marketers to form A/B or Split tests and geo-behavioural targeting campaigns without the need for any HTML or technical knowledge. With split-testing, marketers can also test multiple versions of a website and landing pages and choose one that performs the best. VWO also has flexible multivariate testing software and a number of additional tools including usability testing, heat maps and behavioural targeting to ensure conversion rate optimization activities are taken care of. 7. Open.nr This tool allows you to add any relevant, targeted promotional message on any page that you share especially on social media platforms. With Open.nr you get your social media followers to share, buy, respond to your questions and also subscribe by adding a call-to-action to your social media posts. You can also conduct A/B testing, redirect link traffic back to the home page or customize your posts with brand colours and images. 8. SideKick Who’s opening your emails and how many times a day can now be easily tracked through Sidekick. It is always interesting to know your contact’s history, their latest tweets and other professional activities. Not only this, Sidekick also gives you the ability to schedule emails that you intend to send in the future. Furthermore, looking at contact information in Sidekick helps you to see which social media channels your prospects are active in. 9. Socedo No more you have to filter through millions of users on Twitter to find the relevant profiles. Socedo does the work for you. The tool also has the ability to boost web traffic, increase conversions by inputting hashtags, keywords or other search criteria. Socedo even helps you to automatically favorite tweets, follow prospects and send messages to initiate conversation. 10. Mention Wondering what people are talking about your brand? Now, it’s easy to keep a pulse on the conversation of customers, competitors and prospects with Mention. This powerful marketing tool helps you to track key phrases and brand names, in real time. This ensures that you never miss out a conversation with your existing and potential customers. So, here you’ve the best of tools to accomplish your goals.

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Growing Your Blog Audience Is Not A Rocket Science

Growing Your Blog Audience Is Not A Rocket Science

June 23, 2015

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

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An Overview of Content Monetization in Recent Times

June 12, 2015

Whether you run a blog or a business website, monetizing your site to make some extra money is always beneficial for your business. Investments in content marketing are transforming business models; however, part of the investments often goes unmonetized, especially when it fails to generate highly qualified lead volume and purchases. So, to combat the spoilage of content marketing assets, content monetization is an effective method to quickly increase production efforts to repeat the content marketing cycle. Monetization of Content Since creation of each piece of content is time-effective, there is a finite and objective cost for a content marketing strategy. Content monetization entails learning new ways to distribute and market content. This is done to reach potential buyers and leads that offer a large number of engaged users who are ready to buy premium digital content. Before we proceed to the steps towards monetizing your content, your first priority should be to create high-quality content that people will love to read… Finding the Right Membership Sites The key to getting a great membership site is by understanding the right concept of membership. Membership sites ask users to create an account and pay membership fees before they can access pages of the website. People need to see the value of paying for the content. Members need to feel that they’re gaining high-value information, access to the director of the sites and networking opportunities with other members. The 3 Important Models for Paid Content Subscription It is users’ subscription to your membership site for a monthly or annual fee. Transaction Individual content involving reports, audio or video downloads or training programs are sold separately. Metered This model allows users to read some of your content before they decide to pay for the full access. Lifetime Membership Strategies to Follow Users need to pay for in-depth content Ask for membership ‘sign-in’ to continue reading Open a members-only forum and offer perks Create information products, books and course for a fee Direct Advertising of Your Content Direct advertising is easy to set up and removes the middlemen. You as a publisher get full incentive for your service. Besides, you can also offer almost any type of ad formats for the advertisers including: Banner RSS Ads Site Reviews Text Links Audio Video Ads Newsletter Ads Through direct advertising, you can accept multiple flexible payment options without any chance of losing the deal. This not only opens the door for consistent streams of income from the advertisers but also increases the probability of getting more advertising deals through referrals. A blog that acquires consistent direct advertisement deals automatically builds its credibility and is considered as an authority in its niche. Create Content to Sale The key to selling content is to provide high-quality content… Decide on the topic idea. Research and find the topic your followers are interested in. To do this, you can test your idea and produce short versions of your final idea to test responses. Post titles in social media and check the responses. Check responses through blog posts and do a guesswork regarding the acceptance of the subject matter. Send emails to your list of members and ask them to fill a survey. The survey should contain as few questions as possible. E-books, audio-video downloads or special reports are inexpensive and easy to digest. Highly premium content such as instructional materials, worksheets, ad resources, seminars or audio and video materials often offer personalized solutions. If you’re active on social media and say for instance, you’re active in Pinterest, you can create original graphics of your content that can be pinned in Pinterest board. The pictures will link to your content, which will bring more traffic to your sales funnel. Consider Affiliate Marketing A good way to monetize your articles is to start with affiliate marketing, guiding readers to a product or service in exchange for a charge on the sale. However, the product that you sell must be relevant to the topic you produce. Here are a few quick steps to monetize your blog through affiliate marketing: Place affiliate ads and encourage visitors to click on the ads and then either sign up, register or make a purchase before you get paid for the action. The more relevant the ad is to your content, the higher the likelihood that visitors will click on your ads and perform the required actions. Consider affiliate aggregator service such as VigLink, which will automatically monetize the links on your site. In addition to this, VigLink can also optionally insert new relevant links, which optimizes both the user experiences and revenue. Look for Sponsorship If you have enough traffic for your blog, you may find sponsors for your website/blog. Sponsors are organizations that pay a monthly fee for the space ads they place on your website because the majority of your audience is among their target groups. You may promote your sponsors in whatever way you can. How to Find the Sponsors? Check other blogs that have similar target audience as your own website Find the advertisings and sponsors on other sites in your niche Make a list of companies that specializes in your niche and their products & services must align to the topics you produce for your content How to Make Sponsors Find You? Create a sales page and place a link in your sidebar. This page should explain your different sponsorship prices, packages and payment methods. The sponsorship packages should have a ‘buy now’, ‘order’ or ‘make payment’ link at the end. Also, detail the benefits that sponsors will get. Give details of the traffic statistics and demographic information to help potential sponsors evaluate the value of sponsoring your website. The sponsors should be able to see the number of unique visitors, subscribers and page views. People are more likely to respond if they know the terms of sponsorship, the payment methods and your contact details. For an enhanced content monetization, you need to be constantly updating your content, re-launch, repost across

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Effective Social Media Marketing to Boost Your Content Reach

May 29, 2015

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

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What You Need to Know Before Hiring an SEO Professional

What You Need to Know Before Hiring an SEO Professional

May 11, 2015

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

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How to Stop Sounding Automated on Facebook Pages

May 4, 2015

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

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