Category: Digital Branding

Driving Website Traffic Through Social Media Needs A Strategic Approach

Steven on October 4, 2019

For most of the business websites, it seems the common goal is to drive more traffic towards their site. Yes, a nicely designed and meaningful website will be of great help but that is actually noted enough when you consider the high competition in this business world, which is highly digitized in all its aspects.

In order to get the best results and more traffic the best platform to use in social media is Instagram. This is because:

This is a primary photo and video sharing app that will help you to showcase your skill, creativity and your product in the best possible way and raise the interest of the audience and
It has the largest number of active users making it easier for you to reach out to a larger section of the crowd in an instant.

Both these features of this platform make it the most suitable platform for business and product promotion as well as raise the number of traffic.

Your profile is crucial

In order to make Instagram work for your marketing strategy, there are a few essential things that you should do. The most essential thing to do is to consider your profile and fill it up properly. This is the most important thing to do because this is the first thing that people will see when they click on your social media page.

Therefore, whether it is Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, your profile will play a significant role in your marketing success and driving more traffic to your site. Therefore, focus on:

Twitter Bio if you want to use Twitter as your business marketing platform
Facebook About section if that is what you decide to use
LinkedIn company page if that is your choice and
Instagram profile if you want to use this most popular photo-sharing platform.

It is ideally the profile that will tell the users about your business and provide info about your product or service, making it a perfect spot to drop a link that will take the users directly to your website. Therefore, your profile equates to more Instagram followers which will result in more traffic and an increased chance of conversion of traffic to your loyal customers.

Social media and traffic

According to research, using social media for business promotion purposes is considered to be the most effective in these present times because it is found to drive 31% of all referral traffic.

You can make it even more effective to drive traffic to your site and get a slice of this huge fan following by adding a few meaningful and relevant backlinks to your site that aligns with your brand. If you can raise the interest of the people with your content and images shared on Instagram, you will not only gain more Instagram followers and more likes and comments, but it will also increase:

Sharing
Discussing and
Promoting.

If people are interested in your product, they will surely click on the link in your Instagram profile and visit your site to get more information about:

Your business
About you and most importantly
About your product.

This will raise the number of traffic count to your site. Gaining further and proper knowledge, it is likely that they will end up making a buying decision, meaning you will have larger sales prospects and revenue for your business.

Promote blog content

Just like the backlinks on your social media profiles will give the users a chance to click-through to see what your business and product is all about, your blog content is another useful component that will enable them to read about it and gain further knowledge. Therefore, focus on your blog content for your business promotion as well as to drive more traffic to your site.

The content of your blog should be:

Clear
Meaningful
Informative and
Easy to read.

It should not be cluttered with too many elements such as images, graphics, and animations in it. It should not be boring so that the readers do not even get to the middle of it and leave your site. Ideally, readers should not search for the things that they are looking for. Everything should be very clear, distinct, and evitable.

Creating a meaningful content

Social media is all about conveying and sharing information. It is, for this reason, your content will play an important role in your social marketing strategy. Creating content for social media will need you to put quite a significant amount of effort, time and planning. If it is not done properly you will find that two months have passed and nothing significant has happened in terms of an increase in traffic to your site.

In order to make sure that only a few people do not feast their eyes on your content and readers do read the entire thing, you need to create 15 blog posts a week and post it on social media. You simply need to create the best one and make it a point that you keep it fresh with some tweaks done on a constant basis. This will help your content to be seen by your ideal customers.

Time it well

Lastly, if you want to see tangible results, you should not post your content any time you feel like. Time it well so that you make sure that the recent followers do not miss it or not get to see a content that you published weeks ago.

You can use a social media schedule so that you can promote your old content. There are lots of tools out there such as Buffer, Social Jukebox, and Hootsuite, that will help you to do it automatically using tools like Buffer, Social Jukebox, and Hootsuite. This will make sure that the audience reads your content whenever you post them.

Remember, using social media for your business is not easy but it is not impossible either. All you need is a little bit of effort and a meticulous plan that will help you to surge ahead.

Author Bio

Ariya Stark has been working on the importance of social media in marketing with thousands of real Instagram followers for her postings.

Digital Branding Personal Branding

Your Logo Is A Brand Awareness Solution

Steven on October 3, 2019

When you see the logo where a bite has been taken out of the side of an apple, then you understand immediately that the logo belongs to Apple, Inc. A business logo has a subtle effect on its customers. Customers will associate your trademark with a good feeling and a pleasant experience when they see your logo.

One part of starting an LLC is to have your Articles of Organization created. This outlines the basic details about your company such as the company’s name, address, and registered agent.

The right logo for your business is a type of brand awareness solution to take your investment to the next level of success. Your logo represents your business name and helps to set you apart from your competition. Your logo needs to present a strong yet friendly impression.

As you grow your business, your well-planned logo will also give your business prominence allowing more people to know all about your goals. Logos widely represent business loyalty and honesty.

When your business, its products, and/or services welcome customers and the public with quality, your logo will bring customers to you because it will be your logo that they will look for.

Does a logo have any legal standing? No, there are no legal requirements to register your business logo. However, to protect it from being used by someone else, you should register it as a “trademark.” Your specially designed logo should be registered with the U.S. Intellectual Property Office.

Legally, your logo must follow certain rules, that include the following:

The logo should not contain any offensive material
The logo must not be misleading
The logo should not contain or describe what your business represents
The logo cannot be a commonly-used statement, phrase or a collection of everyday words

Lastly, you must conduct logo research to ensure that your logo likeness is not used by another business in the U.S. or globally.

There are around five things that a good business logo should have:

1. What’s In a Name?

When Apple was first created, its logo featured the apple plus its name on the right side. Now, as a global brand, it no longer needs a name—just its logo. Your early business startup is small, therefore your logo should include your brand name. Your startup will require a good deal of exposure and using a logo with your brand name will keep your name in the public’s eye.

2. Coloring/Fonts

Did you know that there is color psychology in logo designs? Logo coloring is to invoke emotions within people to become your future customers. For example, black represents tradition or authority; red represents boldness and excitement; green represents peace and newness, while blue represents strength and confidence.

Choosing the right font for your logo is not as easy as it sounds. Your business logo will need to look at size and typeface. Play around with fonts but be careful when you use “script” fonts because your business name or wording could become illegible.

3. Adaptability

You may design a logo for your startup business, but since your plans involve growth, your logo must remain relative or adaptable to your expansion plans. Remember, a logo symbolizes your entire brand, not just what you are asking the public to buy right now. Your logo is the personality of your company that will appear on all your paper products like letterhead, business cards, and more.

4. Simple Is Best

Have you noticed the simplicity in logo designs today by the leading brands? Simple wording has nothing to do with your business being the new horse out the gate or whether you have been operating for years. Simple logo designs convey more meaning than you think. It is a less complicated process in your creation of what will reflect the nature of your business.

5. Consistency

What your logo concept requires is consistency. There is no such thing as using your logo too much. Use it often and widely with the services you provide, with the products you design, and on all outgoing and in-office correspondence. Large brands whose logo says it all began by flooding the market with its design and name. A small business should also use its logo in a variety of scenarios.

Digital Branding Legal Branding

Eight Reasons Your Business Should Become an E-commerce Store

Steven on October 1, 2019

Do you avoid putting your business online because you aren’t sure where to start or how you’ll handle the demand? It does take some effort to get your online store set up and manage the additional business. However, it also gives you another source of revenue, particularly during times when cash flow is a trickle.

The amount of U.S. online sales for the second quarter of 2019 was around $146.2 billion. Global studies that show around 40% of consumers bought something online. If you don’t have an e-commerce store, you’re missing out on potential profits that may put you ahead of the game. As a small business owner, anything you do to improve sales could mean the difference between success and failure.

In addition to increased potential revenue, discover eight reasons to transition to an e-commerce store.

1. Collect Customer Data

An online presence gives you a way of connecting with people in your target audience. Offer a discount, a newsletter or other content. Use this information to draw in the buyers you want most, then get them to sign up for your mailing list.

You can even target people in a specific location with your online advertising. Draw customers from your area to your online store while encouraging them to visit your physical site.

2. Put Inventory in the Cloud

No matter what type of business you run, an easily accessible inventory is a must to see what you need and what you have too much of. Small businesses can compete on an international scale with cloud computing. If you have sales agents out in the field, they can also access the inventory via the online portal and mark items sold.

Bon Bon Bon creates artisan chocolates in Detroit, Michigan. When they took their stores online, they knew they needed a highly-responsive e-commerce design to highlight their unique confectioneries. They highlight the ability to build your own box, a customized experience similar to what you’d see in a brick-and-mortar store.

3. Automate Customer Service

Customer service can make or break your store. An online presence, on the other hand, gives you a chance to automate most interactions. For example, you can add a live chat feature to your website’s product page. Most bots are automated, able to answer common queries — like a product’s best uses or ingredients — without human interference.

Train agents to deal with customers who buy online and in-store. A multi-channel customer service approach makes your brand highly attractive to young professionals.

4. Offer a Wide Variety

With drop shipping, you don’t have to worry about display space. Therefore, you can offer a wide range of products in your online store. E-commerce is an excellent place to experiment with items you wouldn’t usually carry but would like to test out. Order a limited quantity and see how they move before committing to a large volume.

Costco is well-known for its wholesale stores. However, they also have an online presence where they offer things you can’t purchase in-store. They separate offerings by the department, including a section called “Business Delivery,” where businesses can order in bulk and have items delivered.

5. Solidify Your Branding

Reaching people and making your brand a household name is difficult on a local level. Sure, you can attend local trade shows, send out coupons in mailers and advertise in your newspaper, but many people will simply overlook these efforts.

On the other hand, you can send out highly targeted digital ads, drive people to your online store and convert them into buyers. A website offers the opportunity to post articles on topics related to what you sell. After, share your expertise on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

6. Market Special Promotions

You likely offer specials from time to time, but it’s difficult to let everyone know about your promotions. With an online store, you can begin to collect emails. When you have a new announcement — BOGO sale going on! — send the ad to everyone at once.

You can also advertise specials on Facebook or Google, targeting users based on their location. This method, called geolocation, ensures only consumers within a certain radius gets the message.

Taylor Stitch offers to clothe online and in brick-and-mortar stores. You’ll find similar items in both. However, one advantage to the online store is expanded sizes and more color choices compared to what you’ll find in the physical location. Once shoppers know their sizes and how things fit, they can go online and place additional orders without the need to visit the store and try pieces on.

7. Tap into Different Needs

Some people are very tactile. They want to come into a store and touch items before buying. Other people hate getting out in the crowds and would rather shop at home. If something doesn’t fit or they don’t like it, they’ll return it to the store.

An online version of your store taps into the needs of different users and allows you to reach people where they’re most comfortable.

8. Sell More for Less

The overhead costs of online stores are far less than renting a building, hiring employees to staff a retail location and paying for utilities. Instead, you only have the cost to host and maintain your site, plus employees needed to fulfill the orders.

When you open an e-commerce store, you create a new outlet for selling goods without spending additional money. The result is more profit for your business.

E-commerce Is a Process

In the beginning, your online store may not pay for itself. However, as it starts to turn a profit, and you become smarter with your marketing efforts, you can invest more time and money into dynamic advertising geared at specific, individual users.

Your strategic campaigns will become highly-personalized and more successful. With a little effort, you’ll find your e-commerce store is a vital part of your business model.

About the author

Lexie is a branding enthusiast and web designer. She loves checking out local flea markets and taking her Goldendoodle on hikes. Follow her on Twitter @lexieludesigner and check out her design blog, Design Roast.

Digital Branding Personal Branding

The Ultimate Cheat Sheet to Using Big Data for Influencer Marketing

Steven on October 1, 2019

Influencer marketing is estimated to become a $10 billion industry by 2020. One of the major reasons for this is the high ROI that you can get from it. In fact, almost 90% of all marketers feel that its ROI is greater than that of other marketing modes.

As the interest in influencer marketing grows, more brands are starting to incorporate it into their marketing strategies. However, a successful influencer marketing campaign isn’t easy to execute. You need to plan a lot beforehand and find the right influencers to collaborate with as well.

Numerous steps, such as figuring out who your target audience is, planning your budget, optimizing the content, and tracking your progress make it complicated. However, big data can help you do all of that with ease. Through big data analytics, you can use your data to find and create new opportunities for your brand.

Here’s how you can do so:

1. Calculate Your ROI

It’s crucial to calculate the ROI of your influencer marketing campaigns to understand how successful they were. For that, you need to keep track of your engagement, reach, sales, and more.

However, almost 84% of marketers say that calculating an accurate ROI from influencer marketing campaigns is challenging.

When your campaign doesn’t meet your expectations, you should consider analyzing how you can manage these losses. To do so, all you need is big data and a solid tool like Google Analytics. You need to figure out how much value the campaign brought your brand. This should be compared to the amount that you’ve invested in the campaign.

If you find that repeatedly your returns are less than your investment, you may need to rethink your strategy. In some cases, you may have to end your partnerships with specific influencers as well.

2. Find Relevant Influencers

One of the biggest challenges that brands face is that of finding suitable influencers for their campaigns. In fact, about 50% of marketers say that finding fake followers and engagement is their chief marketing challenge.

Finding influencers manually can be quite a task. You need to go through every influencer’s profile to check if they are authentic. In this case, too, big data can come to your rescue. Through big data, influencer marketing platforms can create a database of influencers from a variety of niches and locations.

Using these databases, you can simplify your search for the perfect influencers for your brand. There are many platforms like Influence.co, where you can find relevant influencers and reach out to them. Influence.co takes it a step further by allowing you to post your campaigns on the website so that interested influencers can approach you instead.

Apart from helping you find relevant influencers, big data can also help you find genuine influencers. The engagement data and audience metrics can help you make an informed decision quickly.

3. Decide on a Direction

There are multiple options available for brands to partner with influencers. You can launch a variety of different campaigns that are aimed at different goals.

However, deciding on the goals is quite a task in itself. You must decide what your specific goal is. For example, it could be to increase your website traffic, generate more engagement, or get more sales.

Big data can help you make a more informed decision about your goals from influencer marketing. Your sales data will be able to give you a better idea of what you need to do to improve your brand. It’ll also help you decide on an ideal influencer who can best help you achieve your goal.

For instance, say your own footwear business, and most of your sales are coming from Instagram. In this case, you should consider partnering with an influencer on Instagram who showcases footwear regularly. This type of collaboration with a relevant influencer could help you increase your sales.

4. Reaction to Updates

It’s necessary to change your approach with time to grow successfully. Marketing trends keep changing dynamically, and you must adapt in order to stay relevant. Big data can help you do so by keeping you updated with the latest changes in digital marketing.

Such an analysis beforehand can help you take the right steps to increase the performance of your campaign.

5. Creating Engaging Content

The content that you use for your influencer marketing campaigns decides how well the campaign will perform. If your content isn’t authentic or seems forced, it may not be effective with your target audience. This can lead to the loss of your credibility.

It’s best to give your influencers complete creative freedom. Most influencers value this, and at the same time, it’s better for your campaign too. Influencers know their audiences better than you do so they know what works for them.

You can, however, provide general guidelines to your influencers. Big data can help you with content in this case as well. Based on data from tools like Mention, you can see what’s trending in your niche. You can monitor keywords, brand names, and topics to figure out what type of content is most effective with your target audience.

By staying on top of the latest discussions in your niche, you can create great content that your audience will connect with.

Final Thoughts

Big data is very helpful when it comes to influencer marketing. It helps you make more informed decisions based on solid data.

You can calculate your ROI and find relevant influencers for your brand using data. At the same time, it can help you create better content and help you remain on top of the latest changes in marketing and in your industry. Lastly, it can make the process of setting a goal for your campaigns easier too.

Are there other ways big data can help marketers improve their influencer marketing campaigns? Let me know in the comments.

Digital Branding Legal Branding

Five Key Takeaways for Building a Customer Portal in 2019

Steven on October 1, 2019

Andrea Pretorian manages content at BitIRA, where for the past year she’s been leading efforts to get women more involved in crypto and blockchain. When she’s not crusading to empower people with knowledge, she’s likely firing up her camera or learning to play drums. She’s prepared this awesome article below to help you build a better customer experience and scale your business:

Building rapport with prospects is a critical step on the way to conversion, but it’s just important to maintain—if not, develop—relationships with existing customers.

In our world of cryptocurrency IRAs, we have to tackle a healthy dose of lingering skepticism. Alongside the public’s knowledge of the wild west days of early crypto, some reservations may from a thirst for more information surrounding retirement savings and investment options. But the nuances of these specific needs betray the same central problem every business faces: retention, which in turn relies on keeping customers satisfied and engaged.

Earlier this year, we released our My BitIRA portal to give our customers 24/7 access to their accounts. We were strategic about how exactly we went about doing this.

1. Listen to what your audience asks for.

Ask your customers for feedback. This can be a quick online survey you share with your audience or even a brief add-on to a phone call. Offer up a few quick ratings to gauge where you most need to grow, and then end with an open-ended question.

It became clear that our users wanted to be able to check their account information 24-7, as well as flexibly initiate transactions. We knew that these two features were vital to our portal, which we then built to center around them.

2. Know when to say no.

Listening to your customers is extremely important, but this is only true when you also remember that your business is the industry expert. While you should meet your customers’ needs, it is also your job to remain the authority and to serve your customers with best practices. They are paying in part for your expertise, and so it is your responsibility to wield it towards their best interests.

Practically this often means saying no to some requests. It’s a good idea, whenever possible, to shed light on why and to turn this into a learning moment for your public. In fact, a lot of strong brand product and messaging relies on this.

For us, there were some features that wouldn’t have made sense within the portal because they could compromise security or lead to complications. We have to be protective of the process behind transactions in order to make sure that our customers continue to receive the service and security that they expect.

3. Use design to translate your product.

As you dig into the feedback on what your customers want, you will find that specific themes and trends emerge. These should inform not just what you build, but they should also guide how you design and explain it. Great features and applications of your product can go missing if you do not explain them in a way that makes sense.

Our cryptocurrency IRA customers said that they wanted more control over their accounts. We created our portal to grant customers access to their accounts at any time of the day along with the ability to launch transactions and read curated news content. We saw an opportunity to give our customers a level of transparency that translates into more control over their retirement—which is just what they were looking for.

4. Go where the people are.

How is your audience actually engaging with your brand and your products? Knowing as much as you can about the platforms and devices they are using—and even sometimes demographic information including age and geography—can help you optimize their experience. The easier it is for users to engage with you, the more likely they will continue to choose you over the competition.

For us, knowing that 40%—or almost half—of our users were on mobile devices, we knew that we needed to make our portal mobile-friendly. We designed it to be efficient and easy-to-navigate on both desktop and mobile so that all of our users could have the most positive experience possible.

5. Stay true to your values.

As you work to build solutions to meet customer needs, make sure you always stay true to your core brand values. Being very aware of these during the entire design and execution process will keep your voice consistent and your offerings strong.

Security is a top concern and value for us. As we designed this portal, we focused on making sure that we not only built a secure platform but also subjected it to rigorous quality control checks and heavy testing. While we continue to add more functionality to it, it was—and remains—important that our users know, first and foremost, that we are following industry best practices to protect their security.

While the release of this portal has been a critical step forward, we’re always looking to see what new features and strengths we can add to our products. Our customers are on the path of growing their retirement savings with us, but we’re on the path of growing with our customers and our industry.

After all, at the end of the day, it is the commitment to growth and action that sets apart successful brands from the rest of the pack.

Digital Branding

5 Home Office Productivity Hacks You Can Start Using Right Now

Steven on September 29, 2019

Working from home is considered “the dream” for most people. Some companies even offer to telecommute, giving their employees this is an added benefit. However, there are a lot of instances where productivity can actually go down due to poor office design and planning.

Today, we are going to focus on five home office productivity hacks that you can start using right now. In fact, there is a good chance that you will not have to spend anything extra to become more productive and more creative in your home office.

Are you ready to see what can be done RIGHT NOW?

1. Turn Off Your Cell Phone

We have become extremely engrossed with our cell phones. We get onto our kids for using them all day long and then we do the exact same thing (just at work). So, turn your cell phone off.

Do not check the messenger. Do not play games on it. Do not look for a new outfit. Do not look for new toys. All of this can be done on your break or whenever you are done with your work for the day. If your cell phone is your work phone, set it across the room and only answer it when it is a phone call (no text messages).

2. Change The Ergonomics

Ergonomics is a broad term used in a plethora of ways. Today, we want to focus on your body and office space. You need to make sure that you have a chair with proper support and height for your body to sit comfortably. Also, the chair should have wheels so that you can move back and forth quickly. According to 10Desks.com, your desk should be high enough that your arms rest comfortably at close to a 90° angle. However, your desk should not be so large that you have to reach across it to get to your keyboard or other devices.

When considering office design, place your trash away from your desk giving you a reason to get up and move every now and again. Do not bring drinks and/or food to your desk, instead leave them in another room where you need to get up and move. Again, you should find a way to stay mobile throughout the day – this is extremely important.

3. Take Breaks

Another office productivity hack that you can use right now is taking breaks. There is no way you can work eight hours straight and be productive. Sure, you might be able to pull it off for a day or two, but it will wear you out over time.

Breaks give your mind the ability to rest, making it easier to focus and complete tasks. There are numerous recommendations on the amount of time you should work between breaks, with the most common being a 45/15 schedule. On this schedule, you would work for 45 minutes and then take a break for 15 minutes. There are other schedules as well such as the 55/5, the 40/20, and the 50/10 (x4) + 40/20. As we said, there are plenty of schedules to work with; find one that works for you.

4. Save Easy Tasks For The End Of The Day

Most people like to knock out the easy stuff first. However, it is best to focus on the tasks that are hardest first as you are the most alert and/or productive when you start working. Basically, save your mindless jobs for the end of the day.

For instance, instead of waiting until the end of the day to finish that four-page report, knock it out first; this can help in two ways. First, you will not be stressed out trying to get everything done before your deadline/time to clock out. And secondly, you will be able to take it easy for the rest of the day while you knock out the smaller/easier tasks. In fact, you could even take it a step further and work on some of tomorrow’s harder projects if you have the time and/or energy.

5. Leave The Office Early (Sometimes)

And finally, make sure that you do not get “stuck in a rut” per se. A lot of employees get overwhelmed with monotonous tasks in the long, drawn-out hours. Instead of getting burned out, make sure to leave early on Friday (if all of your work is finished or can be delayed).

Now, we are not suggesting that you only work for one or two hours. Instead, we are suggesting that you leave at three or four o’clock instead of five. While this may seem insignificant, it can rejuvenate your mind as well as increase the time you can spend with friends and family.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, all of these office productivity hacks are free/cheap. And, they can all be implemented today or by the end of this week. If you have been struggling with keeping up with your deadlines while working from home, these five tips should help you tremendously in getting back on task.

Digital Branding

5 Ways to Scale Your Content Marketing Campaign

Steven on September 27, 2019

Struggling to scale your content marketing campaigns past where they are right now? You’re in the right place. It’s easy to get started in content marketing, but it can be tough to get past campaign bottlenecks.

Results slow down and it’s common to become demotivated. Today we’ll be teaching you how to grow your content marketing efforts so they generate more traffic and leads for your business if you continue reading.

Take an omnichannel approach to distribution

What’s your main channel for reaching customers through content? Is it your blog? YouTube channel? Podcast? No matter what platform you focus on, there’s one simple thing you can do to instantly improve the performance of content campaigns: use other channels.

It seems simple, right? You’d be surprised how many companies forget to expand onto other platforms despite it being so easy.

Let’s say that you have been growing your business through a blog, for example. You could begin producing videos for YouTube and podcast episodes for iTunes. It’s free to reach and brand awareness at no extra cost besides your time.

This brings us to our next point.

Repurpose your content into different formats

Being on many different platforms is efficient, but do you know what’s more efficient? Repurposing content.

This is the process of taking one piece of content and reformatting it into different types. Most of the work is already done for you as you simply have to turn it into a different format.

You should be taking your content and turning it into the major content types, such as:

Blog posts
Videos
Podcast episodes
Slideshows
Infographics
Social media posts

Hire more content writers

Blogging is one of the most common strategies within content marketing as you turn your website into a content hub that attracts visitors directly to your own platform.

Some of the best marketers like Neil Patel and HubSpot produce several long-form pieces of content every day. How often are you publishing?

Don’t worry if it’s not as often as them because they have one thing many businesses don’t which is a large team of content creators.

One of the secrets of scaling content marketing campaigns that they understand is to simply grow your team. If you have more people able to blog, do outreach, create social media graphics, and other content marketing tasks, campaigns explode much faster.

You should consider using freelance writing job boards like ProBlogger that are designed for finding talented writers.

Invest in content marketing tools

You can do everything by hand in marketing, but that will require a fair amount of elbow grease. You’ll be working harder, not smarter. Businesses can scale campaigns while being more time efficient by investing in content marketing tools.

These web apps and software help with outreach, discovering content ideas and keeping tabs on the competition.

One tool that is very popular in the digital marketing community is BuzzSumo. The free version allows you to find the most viral content in any industry which is great for producing fresh and relevant content.

Learn to do industry outreach

Creating relationships in your industry and leveraging their audiences is one of the most effective content marketing strategies to date. It’s also a great way to scale any campaign as you quickly broaden your reach.

Industry outreach begins with narrowing down websites that share a similar audience and topics. You can do this by using Google queries like:

Keyword + “blog”
Keyword + “service”
Keyword + “magazine”

Visit their website and look for contact information on the contact page or via the footer. Once you have their email, organize it into a spreadsheet.

Begin sending customized emails to each prospect via your email provider or a CRM. Introduce yourself and send them a high quality piece of content you produced which you believe their audience could benefit from. Ask if they’d be willing to give you feedback or share it.

The best part about his technique is that you don’t need a ton of conversions to see drastic improvements in performance. Getting your content shared by a few sites can produce big traffic jumps.

Wrapping up content marketing scaling

Content marketing is crucial for the success of any modern business. It helps attract leads to you naturally, build trust with customers, and turns your brand into an authority. However, scaling campaigns is a tough obstacle.

You can ramp up your campaigns by first expanding onto more channels and repurposing existing content into different formats.

Businesses can also hire more content creators to produce more content on a regular basis and use tools to automate processes.

Lastly, don’t underestimate the power of connecting with industry influencers to share your content.

Combining all of these strategies will help you scale your content campaigns to reach a wider audience and drive better results.

About the author

Carmine Mastropierro is a copywriter who has written for Neil Patel, GoDaddy, Smart Insights, and other popular publications. He helps businesses generate traffic and leads through copywriting.

Digital Branding Legal Branding Personal Branding

3 Ways to Increase Brand Awareness with Content Marketing

Steven on September 26, 2019

What measures the success of a business? Without a doubt, the number of sales and revenues are pretty clear indicators. However, those are not the only things you should keep track of as a business owner. The way you interact with the masses is often much more critical.

No matter what service or product you offer, it can be rather challenging to encourage your potential clients to buy it if they have no idea who you are. That brings us to another indicator of success – brand awareness.

Let’s face the truth, increasing awareness is not as easy as riding a bike downhill. As a rule, positive changes don’t happen overnight. It is a long-term goal that can be reached through consistent actions and a well thought-through strategy.

Now, let’s look at some common techniques that businesses use to reach this goal:

SEO;
Advertising;
Branded packaging;
Effective use of corporate social media accounts.

Each of these techniques can potentially help you in this endeavor. However, some of them may not suit everyone due to high costs or other issues.

Are there any alternatives? Luckily, there is another way to reach the goal. Content marketing is one of the best ways to increase brand awareness and, in this article, we are going to tell you about some of the most effective ways to alert potential customers through delivering high-quality content!

source: https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/content-word-wooden-background_4973634.htm#page=1&query=content&position=14

Content Marketing for Brand Awareness

The key to success is a solid strategy that considers your company’s spirit, the needs of your target audience, and a bunch of other factors. Another vital thing is the quality of the content itself. If it’s not written well, the chances of success will be much lower. Thus, if you have never done anything like that before, you might want to get some help from a professional writing essay service or freelance specialist.

This technique is much different from traditional advertising that focuses on bringing one-time profit. Unlike it, content marketing focuses on what really matters. It delivers relevant, compelling, and value-adding content that establishes your authoritative voice notifies people about you and eventually grows your customer base.

As you can see, content marketing is not much about selling stuff, it is about adding value, and it really works! How to get your content marketing strategy off the ground and succeed? Here are some of the best ways to do this:

Newsletters

For decades, marketers and businesses were using email as a primary channel for advertising and marketing. Today, despite the broad availability of alternative channels, email still remains widely used.

Email newsletters are great for keeping your customers engaged and increasing brand awareness. Such newsletters can share news, give valuable tips, deliver new and relevant information, and even offer free services/products.

Here are a few tips to help you get started:

Make sure it is valuable, relevant, and engaging;
Create an eye-catching topic to make the customers want to open your letter and read it;
Include contact details and links;
Engage potential clients in friendly, personable, and encouraging conversation.

If you follow these tips, you will create excellent newsletters that will help to keep your company at the forefront of customer’s minds, so be sure to try this method!

Blog

Running a company’s blog is another effective way to empower your content marketing strategy and increase brand awareness.

As a matter of fact, having a corporate blog can give you plenty of benefits if you approach it wisely. Thus, if you still don’t have one, be sure to change this as soon as possible!

Have no clue where to start? Here are a few ideas on how to build your brand through the corporate blog:

Choose topics that are interesting and relevant to your audience;
Make sure that each article brings real value;
Don’t hesitate to adopt some SEO techniques to make your articles more visible on the Web, but don’t get too hard on it;
Deliver unique content.

These tips should help you create an excellent blog that grows customers’ awareness and trust. Also, be sure to check out what your competitors deliver to their clients. This can help you get on the right track and grasp the general idea of what works well.

Social Media

Finally, building a brand is possible with various social media channels. Today, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have already become viral tools for marketing, advertising, interaction with the audience, and other goals.

source: https://www.freepik.com/premium-photo/new-idea-creative-concept-business-woman-hand-holding-light-bulb_2752038.htm#page=1&query=brand%20awareness&position=13

Wrapping Up

Businesses have discovered the benefits of social media and use them to accomplish their ultimate goals. It is another effective way to grow brand awareness with the help of high-quality content, so be sure to try it!

Digital Branding

5 Design Hacks that Cannot be Ignored by UX Designers

Steven on September 26, 2019

If you are designing a website for a small business, then the main purpose of the site would be to improve conversions. While a well-optimized site with the help of enterprise SEO can attract more audience to the page, if the website is not designed for a good user experience then the conversions may fail.

Building a user-friendly website has some basic rules to be followed but many times designers get indulged in implementing complicated designs while they forget simple design parameters hence, we have highlighted those design hacks below that cannot be skipped while designing a UX website.

1. Include Microcopy

While providing any online forms which has blank fields that need to be filled, many users do not understand the format in which it needs to be filled, hence the submission may fail. For example, if the field says ‘card number’, you would assume that the user would be aware of it but you never know who is visiting the site and may be new to this hence providing an example of how the card number looks like will help them fill-in the fields easily. Similarly, if you are asking them to fill phone number, make it clear that the field only accepts numbers and no alphabets. Instructions will make sure that users find it easy to fill the form and can go through the process smoothly.

2. Provide Previews

Providing the writer’s and the website owners with a preview option is just not questionable as it makes it clear how the blog post or the page will look when published. Text editor does not really give a complete idea of how the page looks until previewed hence make sure to add the preview option in your design for ease of use by the site author. If such options are not included, broken or under-optimized pages will cause negative user experience hence adding preview will help author’s edit the page after checking the preview for a better user experience.

3. Allow Editing After Submission

Another important website design element which cannot be ignored is providing an editing option to the audience when they post a comment or submit a registration form. Users are skeptical to click on the save button as they do not wish to submit a form or comment with an error. Also, let the users know by adding it below the form that they can make the required changes in the form which will encourage them to take immediate action.

4. Re-Confirmation Before Submission

Many times you take certain actions which you may regret later, for example closing a page without saving the changes made hence in such a scenario, add double confirmation by asking questions like, ‘Are you sure you want to close the window without saving it?’, this will avoid any errors in submission.

5. Giving Submission Confirmation

A confirmation pop-up as soon as someone saves a form or subscribes is also important as, if nothing happens then the user will not know if the form got submitted or not. A confirmation will make it clear that the form has been submitted and you can also show the users some gratitude for taking the time to fill in the form.

Another important design technique is to show a message that, ‘you have already subscribed’ to the users who have filled the form previously so that they do not double submit it.

Conclusion

These design rules may seem basic, but it is something which a UX designer cannot ignore as simple solutions like these will make accessing the site much smoother by the users and that is what you intend in the first place.

Digital Branding

7 Basic Digital Marketing Terms You Need To Know

Steven on September 25, 2019

Digital marketing has revolutionized the way the business industry operates. It has done so by ignoring the benefits of traditional methods and taking advantage of the endless benefits that the internet brings. More specifically, it has reversed the way the business industry works in a way that no one expected. In many ways, given how this field has been in such a short amount of time, it’s safe to assume that there will never be another industry tactic as effective as it. Even better, it was designed so that the average everyday business owner can understand the platforms and take advantage of them. With all of that being said, it may come as a surprise to see how many people can’t even get a grip of the simplest digital terms that are needed to get the fullest effect. Without knowing so much as a simple definition, it’s difficult to get the most out of digital strategies such as paid advertisement and search engine optimization which can get technical in some areas. In extreme cases, not knowing some of these terms can do more harm to a campaign than good. While knowing these terms can’t guarantee success for your campaign, at the very least, it will give you a heads up on the competition. With this in mind, let’s go over seven basic digital terms you need to know.

#1: Return On Investment(ROI)

One of the most important digital terms to understand is Return On Investment. Otherwise known as ROI, knowing this term will allow you to structure the rest of your campaign with efficiency. More importantly, it holds more weight than people realize. Apart from a campaign, this is a golden business term every business owner needs to know to be successful. It’s a simple term that allows you to simplify your business. Overall, the business lesson this term teaches you is to earn more money than you invest.

#2: Return On Ad Spend(ROAS)

Not to be confused with Return On Investment, Return On Ad Spend is a separate term that has to do more with online strategies than business as opposed to the other way around. Also known as ROAS, this term is similar to ROI in that it deals with figuring out a way to see a higher return on the amount you invest. The only difference is that ROAS has to do with the amount of money that is invested in ads. More than anything, this term provides a more detailed analysis that the broader ROI term does.

#3: A/B Split Testing

On the technical side of a campaign, it’s hard to find a term that is more important than A/B Split Testing. This term teaches you what is arguably the most important rule in the field, test everything. However, it is usually associated with testing different ad copy as a way to find the best performing one.

#4: Remarketing

Another important technical term you need to know is Remarketing. Quite self-explanatory, this term deals with the strategy of sending new ads to potential clients who might have been lost within your sales funnel.

#5: Quality Score

Quality score is a determining performance factor of your ads and other similar contributors. However, it is one of the most controversial terms in the entire field. It’s controversial in that no one knows exactly what it takes to receive a higher score. All there is to go buy are the guidance tips that Google gives.

#6: Bounce Rate

Given how important a website is to implement any digital strategy, a term you will need to know is Bounce Rate. This term shows how long a website visitor stays on a page before they leave. It’s an important metric term in that it shows you what web pages can be optimized to perform better.

#7: Call To Action

Perhaps the most important digital term to know is a Call To Action. This term is important in that it entails virtually every part of the field. From website content, website pages, and ad copy, this term will remind you to always keep the client in mind.