Category: Digital Branding

Digital BrandingPersonal Branding

9 Blog Promotion Tactics That Every Blogger Should Know

As far as working from home jobs are concerned, blogging is one of the highest-rated activities or businesses that an individual can run. Blogging does not require a college degree nor does it require years and years of technical training. It does, however, require passion, great grammar command and the willingness and tenacity to work. Many people hear about blogging and think that it is a breeze, an easy way to make money. The truth is, it is very difficult to make money from a blog unless you have what it takes. This means you have to have great content, garner a sizeable and commendable audience, and most of all, have the necessary know-how in effective ways to monetize your blog. Monetizing your blog is the ultimate test when it comes to blogging success. This involves extensive marketing for no matter how monetized your blog is, if it does not get the necessary and right traffic, it will still be useless to you. Getting your blog noticed and standing out from the millions and millions of blogs online today is no easy task, it takes quite a bit of skill. Here are 9 blog promotion tactics by http://socialmarketway.com that every blogger should know.

Go social

Other than Google, social media sites command the highest amount of online user traffic today. Facebook is second only to Google. Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and the rest are not so far behind. This means that these social media sites are where your audience is to be found on a regular basis. If you want to effectively direct this substantial amount of traffic, then you need to engage with the community in general, the easiest way to do this is through these social media sites. The thing to remember is this, a social media campaign can look a lot like spam. This is mainly because people come here to interact with one another and share ideas. Unless you are actually contributing to the conversation in a meaningful way, simply posting a link to your blog will be considered spamming and this will result in you getting banned. You need to interact with the community. This involves taking an interest in what they are discussing and contributing relevant information which you can then link to or from your blog.

Target a ‘sharing’ audience

This should be part of your strategy. Try as much as you can to make your target audience the sharing type. There is certain demography of people that is more likely to share material online than others. Audiences that include people looking to lose weight, bodybuilders, technologically astute people, and serial shoppers are all examples of audiences that will willingly help spread the word about you and your blog. This is provided the content is relevant and useful.

Guest blog

Once you have found a niche, look for other authoritative sites and blogs within that niche and guest post on them. This involves writing articles, following forum threads and interacting with the site administrator and the audience. Once you have gained their trust and your opinion is valued, you can simply request the site administrator to let you link back to your blog. This way, you will gain their audience and hopefully the people they recommend.

Appeal to the vertical markets

You have to make your blog an authority with relevant content as well as offering solutions to the society at large. This means FAQ pages and several ‘How To’ articles. Feature different industry trends with credible and verifiable statistics. Once this is done, your blog will be regarded as a valuable resource and this will keep people coming back.

Participate in forums and discussions

These are platforms where likeminded people go to hold meaningful discussions. Once you have found your niche, find all the highly-trafficked and relevant forums and actively participate. Give relevant advice and links to actionable and useful information. As part of this advice, you can send them over to your blog. Remember, these are serious people and spamming will NOT be tolerated.

Include your blog in everything about you

This means that you should always mention your blog whenever and wherever your name appears. In your bio, your online resume, your other websites, your email signature, your internet profile, your social media accounts…anything that features you should also feature your blog.

Utilize bookmarking sites

Making use of social bookmarking sites can be a very resourceful way of gaining backlinks. These are ways through which you can widely advertise your blog without paying for it. You can always opt for paid advertising.

Make your content SEO friendly

When it comes to blogging, the number one rule is quality content. In your struggle to churn out high-quality content, make sure that it is SEO friendly. As mentioned earlier, only the various search engines like Google have more traffic than social media sites. This means that the majority of organic traffic can be found in search engine page results. Properly optimizing your blog content gives you an added advantage of getting this organic traffic.

Use web analytics

This is similar to carrying out a survey. Analytics gives you a break down on where most of your traffic comes from, which pages and content they spend more time and what they actually think of your blog. Paying attention to these statistics and tweaking your blog in accordance with the results will go a long way in improving your performance. It is a way of giving the client what he/she wants.

Call to action

Sometimes you just have to be blunt and tell your readers what you want them to do. In every article or comment you make, find a way to include actionable and relevant information that can link back to your site. This way you can simply tell them to click over to your blog for further information. They know what they are getting and you are not being vague about asking them to switch over.

These are 9 Blog Promotion Tactics That Every Blogger Should Know. However, what you need to remember is this, for your blog to succeed, you need to be passionate about what you are writing. Without this passion, you will not be motivated to churn out high-quality content consistently, which is the core of every blog.

Digital Branding

3 lessons learned responding to a PR Crisis

Building a brand from the ground up can be very rewarding. However, it takes a lot of hard work and usually, a lot of time.

Unfortunately, an unexpected PR crisis can ruin a brand overnight. This can be devastating, especially when the crisis is caused by events unrelated to your company.

This is what happened to the UK dry herb vaporizer company, Vape Elevate. Last summer, a mysterious vaping illness swept the USA. Eventually, this illness was linked to a company selling illicit E-Liquid. Unfortunately for Vape Elevate, this illicit company shared a name with one of its brands; Dank Vapes.

Eventually, customers in the UK were becoming confused between the two unrelated brands and sales were greatly affected.

We spoke to Cara Robinson, Customer Experience Manager at Vape Elevate to find out what lessons she learned responding to a PR crisis.

Act quickly and preempt any damaging news

To this day, Cara’s biggest regret is not preempting the public relations crisis by communicating as soon as possible with her customers

“We were fully aware that a company sharing our name was being linked to the vaping illness. However, because it was happening over 2000 miles away and our sales were unaffected we decided to ignore it – much to our regret”.

By not acting quickly, customers are left to draw their conclusions of events. Even if the conclusions are wrong, it can still be damaging for business.

Cara agrees “Had we not buried our heads in the sand, we could have prevented our customers from confusing our brand with the illicit vaping brand.”

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes

One thing that Vape Elevate did get right was putting themselves in their customer’s shoes.

“We quickly found that anyone searching for our brand on Google would be presented with stories about people falling ill. This is the last thing you want to read when shopping. It was then we knew we had to rebrand.”

By viewing the brand as a customer would, Cara’s team was able to identify exactly where the crisis lay and ensure they came up with the response that best met their customer’s needs.

Have a communications plan

Once a plan of action has been decided upon, the entire team must be singing from the same hymn sheet.

Social Media is increasingly likely to be the first port of call for confused, angry and inquisitive customers. During a PR crisis, any responses customers or press receive should be predetermined and approved by senior management. It’s important to not allow any employees to go rogue.

Sending out a mass email to your customer database is another great way to manage communications. This is exactly what Vape Elevate did as Cara recalls:

“We announced our brand change by sending an email simultaneously to our customers, our suppliers, and the press. It gave us control of the narrative and we were able to reposition the brand change as exciting.”

Top Tips For Handling A PR Crisis

It’s a worst-case scenario that can befall even the most prestigious organization: a public relations crisis. From a string of bad reviews to a serious financial scandal, a negative incident can have a powerful impact on a company’s reputation — no matter how small or diplomatic it is. That’s why it’s critical for every business to have a reaction plan in place. Here are some do’s and don’ts when navigating a PR crisis.

In today’s digital age, news can go viral almost instantly. The implementation of a swift and effective crisis management plan is essential. An organization should address the issue head-on, whether it’s with an apology, an explanation or an announcement. If an immediate, informative response is not possible, the business should at least communicate that it’s looking into the issue and give a reason as to why there will be a delay. Above all else, it’s important to take responsibility for what happened.

Before sending representatives to address the media, make sure they fully understand the response strategy and are given enough information to answer questions. If time allows, set up a practice session to ensure they are prepared. Emphasize that the company’s message must be consistent across multiple channels.

Refrain from saying “no comment,” as these are two of the most damaging words in PR. Shutting down communication leaves a gap for others to fill, and what they say may be worse than the truth. If an organization is waiting for more information, it should let the public know that it is working on a response or a reaction to the situation.

For more tips on how to handle a PR crisis, see the accompanying infographic.

News Exposure provides a variety of media monitoring services, including TV broadcast monitoring.
Digital Branding

Types of Purpose-made Website Templates and the Various Usages of Those

A web template or website template is primarily a web page, which is pre-designed with a custom set of elements, which anyone can simply pick and simply plug-in your text or image to build a fully functional website. Unlike the need for custom coding and designing, the pre-built website templates will let anyone, even those who don’t have any knowledge of coding, to set up their professional websites.

Website templates are usually built with HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap codes and will let anyone tweak the layout to set up a unique website. There is no need to hire a professional developer or designer to construct a website. Nowadays, even many of the developers who are into professional website creation make use of these templates to prepare business websites. Website templates will let the amateur web developers build their websites quickly and easily without the need to do the coding from scratch.

Usage of these templates also lets anyone make websites at a reasonable cost, and the entire process of web development is also made less time consuming with the use of templates. The modern-day templates are also coming search engine ready out of the box, so the users can easily search for and find your products and services online. Each template available out there in the website template repositories are also self-contained. You just have to plug-in your unique content as text, images, or videos, and then tweak the layout according to your needs with drag and drop options to complete the layout and publish the website.

Various types of web templates

As discussed above, the website templates come self-contained as downloadable zip files or kind of an online web builder user interface. If you are a bit coding-savvy, then you can use an HTML code editing program also to do the customization. These could be made simply static or highly responsive and dynamic. You can configure these templates to be adaptive to the needs of any mobile or PC browsing. You can also put the file extensions as.htm, .html .php, .asp and so in. In any case, these could be built using the HTM and CSS codes. The modern-day templates are coming responsive out of the box, and the layout could simply flex to the entire width effectively for a comfortable view.

What are all there in the website templates?

Usually, you can find or include text and images (.jpg, .png or .gif formats), HTML5, CSS3 elements, jQuery, shopping carts, payment gateways, contact forms, slideshows, dynamic image galleries PDF download, video, and graphic players, embedded YouTube, etc. to point out a few. The designs and codes of the web templates may vary largely from case to case, so the users need to be very careful and picky while choosing their most appropriate website template. Ensure that you check all the functions of the template as well as the scripts, functions, and applications you need for your website. With the Designmodo free website templates, you can all add custom text, scripts, stock photos, third-party plug-ins, or anything to the template easily to create custom-built pages. The default stock images could also be replaced with the user content like.jpg or .gif images.

The website templates come as standalone zip files, including built-in scripts for multiple pages. There may have been many developers who worked behind it to create these pre-built templates and for the clients. In addition to it, the website templates can also be purchased by the clients and make use of a developer at their end to customize the layout and design. Most of these website templates can be used as a base, and using a professional to complete it will help save a lot of time and effort compared to building a site from scratch. Using website templates, there is also no restriction as to how to customize a website and what all elements to be included in it later. However, you can also have a look at the user agreement while downloading a website template to see if there are any such restrictions.

More about HTML and CSS-based designs

HTML, as well as CSS, are plain text coding languages which can be used for browsers to render the webpage designs. The latest versions are HTML5 & CSS3, which are now considered as the website standards. It is W3C, World Wide Web Consortium, which updates and maintains the standards for these.

The web templates now come in various flavors, and you need to be very careful while considering the options and choose one. You shouldn’t instantly commit to any design without scrutinizing them. It is also ideal to choose one which will be compliant with the current standards and also ply responsive on the mobile screens. Ensure that the website you develop passes the Mobile-Friendly Test by Google.

Adaptive design vs. responsive design

Adaptive web templates are similar to responsive web designs and will consist of the media queries of CSS code. The major difference in terms of adaptive design is that it targets the desktops and mobile devices separately. There could either be a separate design or another set of web pages for each device. Detection of CSS, PHP, jQuery, or ASP could be used to redirect the users from various devices to corresponding web pages. However, there could be many gray areas in adaptive design. On the other hand, responsive web design only needs one type of development. Bootstrap uses a grid-based system with which the web page gets open based on the characteristics of the browser and the device screen on which the website is open.

There are also many web builder systems offered by hosting companies and proprietary CMS providers. However, while combined with the template designs coming packed with the hosting packages, your websites may not be portable, and you will find it difficult to port it to another hosting server later. So, it is best to stay away from such hosting service add-ons, and it’s ideal to choose independent website templates, which you can seamlessly customize and personalize with code updates.

Digital Branding

Guest Posting: How To Find The Right Service Provider For Your Business

Guest posting is one of the most rewarding practices for link building and marketing for businesses from every industry. It not only helps with securing high-quality backlinks but also helps with brand building.

Let us understand first how guest posting can help your business:

  • It helps bring in referral traffic through contextual links
  • Your mention on reputable blogs and websites improves your brand recognition
  • You get to generate more revenue through high in-flow of targetted traffic
  • You can earn the trust of your audience as a genuine content creator

Having known these benefits of guest posting, you may consider it for acquiring backlinks to your website. But, the time and amount of effort required in blogger outreach and securing backlinks from influencers may seem like a daunting task.

Nevertheless, you can hire SEO reseller services to help you with your guest posting exercise.

Here’s how you can find the right fit for your business.

Start your search from Google

Your old friend Google has answers for everything. You can begin your quest to find the best service provider for your guest posting by searching for relevant terms. For example, you can search for, “list of guest posting service providers”, which would bring up a long list of agencies and SEO companies offering guest posting services.

Sort the most reliable ones

The search result would bring up thousands of companies that offer guest posting services. Obviously it gets tough to sort which one is the best out of these. Here’s a secret tip: choose the ones that rank on the first three pages. These service providers certainly understand how links work, that is why they are ranking at the best positions for the most competitive search term.

Alternatively, you also need to understand that the ones with the best reviews are the most reliable ones. Sort for the ones that have the best customer feedback and highest ratings across various business portals. Once again, Google can help you find these reviews.

Understand the benefits they offer

Apart from simply guest posting, you also need to know if your potential service provider can offer you any other benefits. For example, some agencies offer content creation and blogger outreach services as well in combination with guest posting. Having these services along with the primary task, can reduce your efforts and improve the returns for link building through guest posting.

Place your order and relax

Now that you have all the information to choose the best service provider, the last step is to make sure that their services fit in your budget. Once you have identified the service provider that satisfies all your requirements and that too within your budget, it’s time you start working with them.

At first, you should place a few orders, just to make sure that you’ve chosen the best service. Having made sure that you can rely on your service provider, you can proceed with placing your link building orders with them.

Having said that, it is important that you always keep in touch with your link building service provider to stay on top of the campaigns that are carried out for you.

Digital Branding

4 Useful SEO Tools to Help You in Your Business

There is no online business owner today who doesn’t understand the importance of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). With the online mode becoming the preferred medium for both social and business interactions, the SEO services in Mumbai, Delhi, etc. have gained importance. According to a survey, nearly 93% of the total net users today use the online medium to get the desired information. Looking for the desired information, these users are just interested in clicking on the first few results that get displayed and hardly bother to go past them.

Thus, the focus of the SEO company in Mumbai that you have hired would be to get your business to appear in the first few listings and for that, they make use of various SEO tools. Some of the SEO tools that can help in taking your business to the next level are:

SEO Profiler

Keyword research, link building and researching the keywords used by your competitors are some of the important SEO activities. SEO Profiler is an apt tool that makes it possible to do all these on a single platform. Competitive intelligence research is very much required to gain an edge on your competitors.

This tool, besides providing all these, also offers aesthetically pleasing and detailed reporting features, which can be used for displaying the data that is generated by this tool. It is free for the 30-day trial, post which you have to choose a plan depending on whether you are using it for beginner-level accounts or for professional SEO agencies.

All in One SEO Pack

It is a feature-rich plugin, which is making its presence felt since its debut in 2007. It is used by SEO services in Mumbai, Delhi, etc. as it features automatic title optimization and meta tags, built-in API, Google’s AMP and analytics support and more. SEO beginners, as well as advanced users, find it useful. The beginners often use it with its default settings, while the advanced users override the default settings and create their own custom settings.

WPTouch

WPTouch is again a feature-packed mobile plugin for WordPress and it is also recommended by Google. It is used for creating a mobile-optimized version automatically for a website. The best part is that no code change is required for doing so.

UberSuggest

If you want to gather any data related to your domain name or keyword, you can do so for free using UberSuggest. It is a free program that tells you a keyword’s volume, suggests long-tail keywords related to your content, the average cost per click and shows which site tops the ranking for the particular keyword you have entered. By entering your URL into UberSuggest, you can get all the details about the organic traffic and keywords of your website. It also tells about the backlinks that your site has generated and other similar details.

Making use of the SEO tools helps in improving visibility and rankings on the search pages as they are designed to perform specific tasks brilliantly.

Digital Branding

How Web Push Notifications Provide An Edge to Ed-Tech Industry?  

Marketers from the education industry face huge challenges and immense setbacks while communicating with their target audience; hence, they are constantly on the lookout for a solution. Web push notifications, the latest marketing innovation is the answer to their problems!

Web push notifications, be it browser or app have been brilliant in reaching out to prospects in a timely manner alongside encouraging them to register or perform the desired course of action. With its customization and personalized features, it helps segment the user groups conveniently hence, it is one such channel that can help marketers of the online education industry. Let’s have a look at how!

Meanwhile, you can refer the elearning browser push notifications guide to be well-acquainted about what exactly push notifications are, how to use them, browsers which support push notifications, their impact on different industries and others such.

Retargeting

This is one of the most significant ways which helps the ed-tech industry reach out to their customers. Upon successful completion of a particular course, users may not come to your website. So, it is the right time for you to target them with push notifications about other highly demanded courses they would like to take up. Make them realize the true potential of the course and how it can help them enhance their skills, which in turn, gives with an edge over others in their domain.

Content Marketing

Polish your audience’s knowledge by regularly delivering interesting facts and information like key strategies, difficult problems, interviews with industry experts and other such relevant details about your courses. Moreover, you must encourage them to visit your website and also take up a quiz or a mock test.

Course Updates

Reach and re-engage online learners by providing them valuable course information and its related updates. Make sure to keep them informed regarding course timings, concepts in brief, and other such information. All of this information is imparted to users in no time through web push notifications.

Discount offers

Sending across discount offers’ information as a part of push notifications is one of the preferred ways to attract the audience’s attention as these prove to be a win-win situation. Offers such as ‘sign up for a free course’, ‘get a free trial today’ and the like, grab numerous eyeballs and the audience is tempted to click on the link, thereby maximizing profits.

Cross-sell and Upsell

With cross-sell, the idea is to sell more by leveraging less effort. So, while you promote your new course to your prospects, try and sell a guide along with it. Because clearly, a person who is interested to take up a new course would also want some guidance to refer to, increasing the chances of a transaction. This not only increases the chances of larger revenue but also improves customer satisfaction which is, in fact, higher when users receive these kinds of notifications.  

On the other hand with upselling, as soon as you see that a user is almost done with a course, you need to make sure that you don’t lose them. So, provide them with information about the advanced level of that course or something that is related to it. Moreover, you can offer to give them a one on one interaction with one of the lecturers to clear their doubts and so on.

Web push notifications are being used by various tech companies as a part of upscaling their marketing efforts which helps them generate more leads and increase user engagement. Now that we’ve mentioned how the education industry can reap the benefits via leveraging this latest tool which reaches users in no time, marketers must not wait to put it in use to replicate the tech giants’ results.

virtual-reality-img-6
Digital Branding

Virtual Reality in Shopping Experience – eCommerce Future

Cutting-edge technology revolution would be impossible without businesses’ natural pursuit of competitive advantage via new ways to maximize customers experience. Virtual reality (VR) comes as one of the fascinating technologies to deliver an exceptional customer experience by providing users the concept where real and simulated worlds collide. This technology is now considered as a game-changer in the hyper-competitive marketplace. Understanding this matter from the perspective of an entrepreneur, we want to share with you the useful information with the hope that it can be applied effectively to your business strategy. Now, Let’ dive in!

virtual-reality-img-1

What is Virtual reality?

General knowledge

virtual-reality-img-2

Virtual reality is an artificial environment that is created and displayed to the user in such a way that they suspend belief and assume it as a real environment. Virtual reality has come a long way in a short period, and it continues to develop at a rapid rate. VR widens a nearly infinite potential, with applications in education, medicine, Ecommerce retail, and numerous other domains.

This shinning electronic technology has made a quantum leap over the past few years, with an ambition to revolutionize mainstream markets. In 2017, virtual reality became affordable and available to the masses, rather than just the gaming elite. According to CCS Insightby 2018, it’s estimated that 24 million VR devices were sold globally. 2019 is shaping the big year for VR, providing a solid base for the growth VR market. Its volume is expected to reach 98.4 million sales by 2023.

What is a virtual reality in Ecommerce?

Today there are more and more online merchants using VR due to its unique tangibility hallmarks and mind-blowing emotional footprint in advancing customer experience. Suppose that you run an e-commerce business in which your client can discover, choose, pay for inventory, and you can also interface to your buyer in that virtual store. Let’s say, and it is the general picture of virtual reality technology in the business world. Take a closer look in the following examples to see in details.

Yamaha clients can use a special headset to scrutinize the mechanics of their motorbike and see virtual renders of the bike’ engine status, the fuel mixture, parameters coming from sensors. Thanks to VR, the Customer’s interaction with the high-tech product are emotionalized, and machine components are presented vividly to customers or otherwise, they would never see.

Consumers can preview the menu in sit-down restaurants or when ordering food online when they use Kabaq app. The true-to-life 3D models are presented under multiple angles and zoom levels as if the offerings were on a plate in front of you. This app gives the customer a better idea of the portion size and ingredients.

What are the advantages of VR in the online shopping experience

Consumers are excited about shopping’s tech-enabled future. According to research by GfK, 38 percent of U.S. consumers hope to see improved improved experience in stores, while 35 percent want improved customer service based on individual needs, and another 35 percent seek enhanced ways to find and compare different products. With their ability to replace the parts shoppers dislike about shopping, VR in retail holds promise to create the differentiated brand experiences that drive conversions, repeat visits, and higher revenue.

Improve customer’ s online shopping experience

Because VR provides a three-dimension angle of the object, users can virtually visualize the products they want to purchase online. A mocked-up version for testing is a new way of approaching product before making to last decision of buying. That is because sometimes simple product’s description can not speak for all product’s functions and customers want to know the product from inside out. You know,  58% more likely to purchase a product after they have an opportunity to test it first.

Furthermore, thanks to the broad flexibility of VR, clients can also explore many virtual showrooms in a short time, which makes the experience more appealing to consumers. Consequently, thanks to new levels of in-store engagement, you can give customers the intrigue to visit your store, not the other one. In summary, VR technology will be the future of Ecommerce as it helps establish positive emotional connections before the deal and evokes an immediate sense of ownership.

Engage and generate buzz

virtual-reality-img-3

It is undenied that new technologies bring about a new trend in our modern life and it is true for the online business world, where everything changes up to a minute. VR can also generate a buzz and direct the way the marketplace leans towards.

For example, In 2016, NARS Cosmetics cooperated with Facebook 360 Video to create a VR makeup tutorial that helps viewers to control which specific portions of the video to focus on. So instead of skipping to the part of the video, they want to see (or watching through the whole thing), users can look around or “drag” the video to find the part they want to watch. After that, a massive wave of making VR video like this massively pops up for product of different kinds such as real estate, motorbike, etc.

Create a live event for marketing

For Ecommerce Retailers, online marketing is never enough if they want to widen potential customers outside the virtual world. The live event may be an excellent solution regarding this issue. However, the biggest problem with this is getting people to attend because of the distance.

With VR technology, distance is no longer a matter as it can bring the event to your audience instead of vice versa. Excitingly, VR lets everyone sit in the front row, so no one is left sitting at the back, trying to make out the way to find details of whatever is being showcased. This way can go a long way to enhance your guests’ experience, make them leave with a more favorable impression of your brand. 

Let’s take an example at New York Fashion Week. While the show was held in New York City, guests were allowed to virtually attend a show in Milan a week earlier by using a VR headset. This featured 360-degree videos of exclusive fashion collections and gave users a red carpet experience.

How can you use VR to enhance the shopping experience

So far, we’ve gone through the benefits of virtual reality in ecommerce. Now, we’ll discuss the specific steps to implement VR technology. 

Decide your goals and the experience you want to give

virtual-reality-img-4

Because it takes you a considerable amount of work and investment to have VR technology implemented successfully, having a clear vision of who is our target audience and what type of experience do you want people to have should be prioritized. VR is such a massive experience change for both businesses and customers; if there is not enough preparation, it will be too easy to rat hole on the possibilities.

For example, think about the scenario that your customers can easily add filter product attributes with real-life experience as the most Advanced Layered Navigation Extension can do now by mouse clicks with multiple- filter navigation, price slider, AJAX loading technology. It seems to be promising as you can decide your target customer’s experience to get the technology fit for it.

Decide how you will make it  happen

virtual-reality-img-5

VR technology

VR technology is vital for your entire program, so determine how it will arrive the next step. The experience that you want to provide your clients is the core value deciding what kind of VR technology you will use.  For example, if you want your customers to walk around and manipulate different product features, you need to consider to use a VR platform which can support three degrees of freedom (3DoF). And more advanced, six degrees of freedom (6DoF) can help you to support positional tracking.

Developers

Regarding VR technology, things can get technical very quickly, and you need to be assisted by VR expert. Businesses need to look for VR developers who have experience with large, enterprise projects and the skills to make a virtual environment. Not so many out there right now, and most of them know each other. Depended on the goals and scope of the project, you should decide to find the right fit.

Hardware

Remember the hardware, the must-have element for your VR initiative typically hinges on how you’ll want to deliver your experience.

Develop, test, implement and iterate

Depending on your project, these steps will be taken differently. 

For developing, this will involve developing a prototype, and then ironing out the kinks before testing the program with a small market. After that, you can further refine the program to improve it for a broader rollout.

The testing process will vary from one program to the others; however, in general,  the technical functionality and user experience is what you want to test. Let’ see how your VR program operates on various devices and how your virtual world applied on different platforms. You should keep an eye on these matters: Are all the elements working correctly? Do they coincide with the user’s movements?

Besides usability, you should pay attention to the effects that the program brings to an individual. When installed incorrectly, VR can be uncomfortable or even nauseating. Make sure to monitor VR accurately so that you can minimize motion sickness, fatigue, or discomfort on any form.

Market your VR initiatives

When you already develop and test your VR technology, it is time to get the world know about it. You can consider these ideas.

Encourage people to share their VR experience with your product

Encourage people to talk about your program through the social channel. Make a hashtag for your initiative, and then encourage users to spread the word.

In the eBay virtual store, the e-tailer used the hashtag #ebayVR, which is so direct and straightforward to make people share their experiences on social media.

virtual-reality-img-6

Do not just market the technology – make it about the experience with your product.

You should remember that the central focus of using VR technology is to provide your clients with real experience with your product, so do not get stuck marketing its cool feature. Some questions you should keep in mind that: What feelings will the initiative evoke in the user?  How will your VR solution make shopping more enjoyable or convenient? Do customers get a real sense of your product when they use VR?

Gather data

Gathering data on how users are engaging with your program will give you valuable feedback and the insight recipe to boost your marketing strategy and online sales.

Final words

It is well worth making VR investment if ecommerce is your playfield. When implemented correctly, VR technology can not only provide memorable experiences setting your brand apart from competitors but also bridge the touch-feel gap of online customers.

Start with a strong vision. Make clear what you’d like to achieve, recognize the technologies that can turn your idea in reality, then recruit VR experts who can develop this virtual world for you.

Because virtual reality should be more about experiences than technology, make sure it offers value and gives users an experience they won’t find anywhere else.

Author Bio

Daisy is a passionate expert writer from Mageplaza. Throughout many years collaborating with Mageplaza-a Magento Extension Builder, she hopes to give readers the most practical solutions and useful advice on online business issues. 

Digital BrandingPersonal Branding

Top Tips for Boosting Retail Brand Awareness

In the world of retail, if you don’t have a brand, you don’t have much at all. Without one, you risk entering the market (and possibly exiting one rather quickly) as yet another nameless name on the shelf, one often purchased by accident when mom sends her kid to the store to get the product that actually sits next to your product on that same shelf. Your brand is the key reason for your buyers to come back, the key reason they wear or use your product, to begin with.

But just having a brand is also not enough in the ever-growing realm of retail. To make sure you get in front of the right audience, and preferably in front of enough people so that your chances of boosting sales are high, you should use all of your creativity and marketing know-how to grow your brand awareness every day. Here are a few ideas to keep in mind that will help you enhance your presence in the retail universe and grow your chances to become a household name.

Diversify your content creation

From the SEO point of view, as well as that of pure credibility, content is your best, if not your only bet in the oversaturated world of retail. Mere fluff-laden blogs with an occasional keyword here and there will no longer cut it to help your brand stand out in search engines, especially for common phrases such as “quality sneakers” or “best prom dress”. People want personalized, highly selective experiences, and they expect you to provide them through every bit of content you produce. That includes all of your product descriptions, every blog post, and every video you add.

From your website content, the kind you share on social media, all the way to the content you allow and inspire your users and customers to create (such as product reviews, blog posts, and videos), you need to make sure that your content pool is diverse, trendy, and up to date. Of course, brand consistency also needs to permeate all of your content efforts, to allow your brand to emerge no matter where, when, and who creates and posts is. 

Build a stellar web presence

Your website is your retail brand’s greatest asset, and it can make or break your efforts to increase sales, engage more customers, reduce the number of abandoned carts, and inspire reviews. In fact, stellar website design needs to reflect your brand’s values perfectly and to serve as its most trusted vessel to convey your brand’s messages. It’s the key to keeping your retail brand memorable and to make sure it stands out among so many others that have similar offers.

Not to mention that a great part of your website’s design includes its ease of navigation, its loading speed, and of course, its visual appeal that will determine how long your customers will stay interested, linger on your site, or how often they’ll decide to go through with the purchase. No modern retail brand can survive without a spotless website, hence the need to regularly update your digital presence to ensure consistency as well as a wonderful user experience. 

Work with influencers

Influencers play a great part in increasing brand awareness in the retail industry. They are the digital versions of our traditional word-of-mouth recommendations, they are relatable, and they have a vast pool of followers eager to look up to them, mimic them, and make the same choices based on their preferences. Therein lies the rub: handpicking influencers to work with is far better than investing in random collaborations that are short-lived. Consider it a commitment that will skyrocket your retail brand’s awareness in the eyes of your audience and soon-to-be audience. 

From locally-based micro-influencers all the way to major players on social media as well as celebrities, you have numerous opportunities to build and grow your brand’s digital presence through such collaborations. Make sure that the influencers you choose are, of course, in line with your brand’s values, and that they actually have access to people that fit your target market. Because the only thing worse than no brand awareness is having any awareness in the wrong crowd.

Partner up with the right people

Are you a small retail brand that specializes in a certain wearable? Or do you own a chain of stores that sell different brands in different locations? In both scenarios, working with the right local people means gaining more exposure in the right locations for your brand. For example, if you’re a larger retail business, you can benefit from supporting a smaller local brand by working on a project to add their accessories to your stores, while they support your effort to enter the local market by giving you a share of their shelves.

As a smaller retail brand, partnering up with a complementary business in the neighborhood can help you gain the right exposure, too. For example, we all know that coffee goes delightfully well with scones and muffins. If you have a brilliant recipe for cinnamon rolls or pumpkin pie, why not work with local coffee shops to offer your lovely goods in their stores? Multiply that by a range of different collaborations of local nature, and you’ll quickly gain more traction for your brand.

The retail world is fast to change, and those who cannot adapt tend to fade into oblivion. Use these tips to stay one (or several) steps ahead of the competition and stay relevant to your audience, no matter where they are. 

Digital Branding

Placing Ads on Instagram – Three Powerful Tips for Creating Business Videos

Instagram has a high potential when it comes to user engagement and awareness. This visual social media platform offers a lot of options for your business. You can make optimal use of carousels and photo ads with it. Video ads, as well as Instagram Story videos, are quite effective in marketing and promoting the products of your business. Experts in digital and social media marketing suggest that videos are the hot trending thing now when it comes to marketing your business and grabbing the attention of the targeted audience in the market.

Increase the effectiveness of your Instagram videos with these three powerful tips

It is high time businesses wake up to the tremendous benefits of Instagram when it comes to marketing and promotion of their products. Videos should be created and shared on this platform for better brand visibility and qualified inbound traffic. The following are some powerful tips that you can use when you are creating and uploading videos for Instagram. 

1. The first few seconds matter

 

Note that the user will need to be attracted to your business video in the first few seconds. So, lay emphasis on the first part of the video. Once it is clicked on, the content should generate interest in the viewer so that he/she stays till the end. Your business message has to be short, precise, and powerful to invoke the desired action.

 

 

2. Add text to the video

Instagram videos are muted by default, so it is prudent to add text to your video content. There may be times when the user does not wish to switch on the audio sound and so adding text to the video will help the user understand the content better when there is no sound. This generates free Instagram likes if you manage to blend the video and text perfectly. Moreover, experts in the field of Instagram marketing state that the addition of text reinforces the business message to the audience better. Video captions should never be ignored nor left out when you wish to reach out and connect with the targeted audience. 

 

 

3. Resolve a problem

If you wish to get outstanding success with video marketing on Instagram, create a video that solves an issue. The problem should be identified, and the content of the video should be a remedy to that problem. In this way, you effectively are able to gather more followers, likes, shares, and comments. Note that when you are creating such a video, you should always focus on one problem and have a single goal!

 

Therefore, if you have not started with Instagram video marketing for your business, it is high time you do so now. In this way, you effectively are able to generate interest and leads from your targeted audience. Note that the video should be short and contain powerful brand messages in the first few seconds. In this way, you can attract the right customers and gain a competitive edge in the market for your business!

Author Bio

Ariya Stark is a leading blog writer and content marketing professional with thousands of Like4Like for her postings.

Digital Branding

Ten Great Free Android Weather Apps

By God, There are hundreds of terrific free Android climate computer programs that added/more than makeup for the not being present of paid in the Current Android market. The simple fact that there are a lot more free of charge Android climate computer programs is a terrific matter for those people of us who like to thoroughly examine a computer program in advance of deciding on to make it a section of our lasting mixed group of things. This checklist is pretty a different a person with quite a few different specialties. Here are 10 of the most effective no cost Android climate computer programs close to.

Weather

This well-named free Android temperature computer program, created by Michael Bachman, is a single I would recommend to those people who want a basic and straightforward, simple-to-use computer program. It’s quick and very trusted this is a computer program to try out if all you want is a simple forecast and not lots of other bells and whistles.

iMap Weather

This application offers radar pictures or photos and projections. It can also give you complete present climate sicknesses for community and worldwide destinations. If you pick to look at this climate computer program, you will be pleasantly amazed by the beautiful visuals!

Moon Phase

An incredibly simple free Android climate computer program designed by Udell Businesses, Inc, it tells about you the particular section of the moon for the presented knowledge. Although this use doesn’t have some helping increase-on to make it really/honestly impressive, it does especially what it claims rather skilled.

Snowstorm Climate Widget

This is one more very like nothing else or cost-free Android temperature computer program. Snowstorm offers you forecasts with regards to snowstorms and outside of. If you are like me and you stay in snow state, this is undoubtedly a computer program I would recommend for when you are out and about for the length of time of the snow period.

Radar Now! If you want a computer program that will visually display screen the existing climate by radar,

Radar Now

Is your most exceptional free Android application possibility. Quick and straightforward, Radar Now! It offers you what you have to have without any inconvenience.

AccuWeather.com A GPS-mostly based temperature update computer program, the AccuWeather.com computer program is fantastic for getting around the globe forecasts. As you could have guessed, this computer program was produced by the same people powering Accuweather.com, so you will be (promised that something will happen or that something will work as described) the facts you get is correct and responsible and that this computer program will only get improved!

Weather Widget – Free Although there is a paid out model of this no-cost Android climate computer program, this a person stays to be reasonably acceptable in offering brief and dependable temperature updates. This is just one of the climate computer programs that will do just about nearly anything for you. Trust me; this computer program would be an excellent addition to your Android telephone. To increase this computer program, get the Weather Widget Forecast Addon, one more no cost computer program that does just what it suggests. If you try out the Weather Widget and like it, download the free Forecast Addon and you are going to have a money-making mix!

WSBT Weather

Another excellent free Android climate computer program that presents nearby temperature updates as perfectly as just about anything else you’d want to know about a typical climate. The updates take and, the include-one, which includes maps and movies, are shocking. This is a person of the really couple of free of charge Android computer programs that are up there in a league of their have.

The Weather Channel Easily the most effective free of charge Android climate application readily available in the Android Market it is also the most well-liked Android computer program in the temperature classification. The formal Weather Channel computer program offers temperature updates straight from a person of the most respected temperature useful things. You can establish a default site to get frequent updates without performing just about anything else. The previous factor I’ll say about this computer program: you should get this computer program for your Android cell phone.

I have the Android Apps Finder web site wherever you can locate every single Android computer program. The first most crucial purpose of the web page is to supply everybody a quick way to examine all of the Android applications. If you’d somewhat look at web sites on extra article content like this 1, check out my Android Apps and Games shared online writing page Weather