Category: Digital Branding

Digital Branding

Key Tips on Creating an Ecommerce Marketing Strategy

Ecommerce is one of the most revolutionary transformations ushered on the internet. It has streamlined the virtual exchange of goods and services across different industries globally. Because of its capacity to streamline business processes, many established and budding entrepreneurs have shifted the majority of their transactions online.

However, given the volume of ecommerce websites in the market today, it’s crucial for you to develop an effective marketing strategy to stay top-of-mind with both existing and prospective clients. If designed correctly and with the help of the right ecommerce marketing agency, such an initiative will help you optimize your advertising and sales process.

In this article, let’s learn surefire tips on creating a marketing strategy for your ecommerce business.

Sign Up for a Google+ MyBusiness Profile

One of the primary ways to establish a web presence for your ecommerce business is Google’s My Business Profile. It’s the internet giant’s free web platform that streamlines the dissemination of information between business owners and their customers. It provides an outline of your business right when people are searching for you on Search or Maps. Among the critical information your customers can access instantly are the product’s price, reviews, and location if you have a brick-and-mortar counterpart for your online business.

Google prioritizes listings uploaded on Google+ My Business Pages in local searches. Thus, optimizing your profile will help boost your local search results ranking.

Here are other vital ways of how this platform can help you enhance your marketing strategy:

  • Having a Google+ My Business Profile increases your chances of getting into Google’s most sought-after local three-pack. These are the search results that appear even before the organic results, thus increasing web clicks for your business.
  • Aside from having a fuss-free platform on top of your website, you also get to enjoy creating content in the form of texts, photos, and videos. It also has an Insights feature that’ll allow you to track your customers’ essential site activities, such as inquiries, calls, or web visits.
  • Since Google runs multiple verification steps before allowing businesses to get listed for local searches, potential customers can make sure that your company is trustworthy.

Educate Customers with Useful Blog Content

Content is king when it comes to ecommerce marketing. However, in a data-saturated marketplace, you need to ensure that the content you put out adds value to the lives of your potential and existing customers.

With thousands of blog posts being published and circulated online daily, how do you intend to win the hearts of your target audience?

  • Showcase your expertise in the industry by creating content that’ll help your audience make informed decisions. Remember to write for humans and not merely for keyword ranking.

For example, if you’re running a clothing website, outline tips that’ll help users find the right fit and style for their budget. Don’t make it sound like your shoving down the products you sell to your customers’ throats. Ensure that your brand voice remains friendly and reliable, not intrusive. You can also publish easy-to-follow hacks that’ll guide your customers, or inspire them to produce some organic user-generated content.

  • Play with relevant visuals. Given a person’s diminishing online attention span, it’s essential to capture your audience’s attention through compelling visuals. Whether you’re into B2B (Business-to-Business) or B2C (Business-to-Customer) business, you can bank on appealing and useful infographics to simplify complex topics relevant to your brand. With the right ratio of text, image, or moving graphics, you can establish brand authority across different market segments.
  • Remember to write blogs with high EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). These three principles are significant benchmarks by Google’s content raters, as indicated in their Quality Rater’s Guidelines.

Reach Out to Relevant Online Influencers

Suppose you already have the right product and service, a functioning website, and a smooth distribution channel. How can you then outshine competitors who promise the same marketing offerings as you?

  • Although in-house content marketing for your ecommerce business is a good step towards attracting quality leads, it’s also essential to enhance your content distribution channel to achieve maximum exposure.
  • Today, people hold in high regard online influencers’ reviews on specific products and services before making a purchase. Many people, especially the millennial market, find their candid first-hand experience reliable and value-rich as opposed to the outbound content most brands distribute.
  • With the level of influence these so-called “everyday experts” have over your potential buyers, it’ll undoubtedly play to your advantage if you consider tapping them to create and publish content for your product or service.
  • Look for online influencers that’ll best represent your brand. As a rule of thumb, remember not to rely on the number of their following alone. Instead, choose an influencer that you think will generate quality engagement for your product or service.

In a Nutshell

When finding ways to create an ecommerce marketing strategy, remember not just to sell but add value to your customers’ overall experience. Kick-start your campaigns with concrete, realistic, and measurable marketing plans today. Define your goals and develop tactics that’ll help you achieve it!

Digital BrandingLocal Branding

How to Nail Your Small Business Branding 

Do you believe that branding is only meant for large corporations and companies in the world? If your answer is yes, then you will be surprised to know that small businesses need branding just as much as the market leaders. However, you should also know how to get it right. 

Remember- starting a small business is only the first step but you can take these additional steps to take your enterprise to the next level with branding:

1. Start with a Logo

One of the most important aspects of a brand is the logo- there is no question about it. You can study various examples like Coca-Cola, Nike, Apple, etc. All of them are considered top brands and they all have iconic logos. What this goes to show is that even if yours is a small and generic business, you can project it as a big and trustworthy brand by creating a unique logo. Then, once you are happy with your logo you can work on improving your brand awareness. This can be done in several ways. For instance, you may wish to Create Stickers with Cricut as this can be a great marketing tool, especially for small businesses.

2. Work on Your Relationship with Customers 

You can’t build a brand without bolstering your bond with your customers. So, learn how to build strong customer relationships online and apply methods that can help them trust you more easily. These include improving your public messaging, becoming more accessible to the customers, and providing better customer service.

3. Use Social Media to Your Advantage

Social media provides you one of the most inexpensive ways to market your business. You can use it to connect to your target demographic and also open a channel for them to communicate with you i.e. share feedback and complaints. This can go a long way in establishing a brand.

4. Find Your Voice

Let’s say that you sell handcrafted wood furniture in a particular city. If you have competition, then how will you stand out? If all the businesses sell handcrafted furniture, then what makes you special? Well, branding is the answer.

By finding your unique voice, you can attract new customers easily no matter how crowded the marketplace is. There are various ways you can go about it too. For instance, you can create a brand that’s all about providing employment to the veterans, or you could be a brand that appeals to the college students who need affordable and long-lasting chairs, tables, etc. 

5. Don’t Let Your Customers Down

Small businesses often take unethical measures to fight competition which is the opposite of what you want to do if you want to create a brand. For instance, some businesses start offering subpar products or ignore the complaints of their customers which only hurts their reputation. 

Strong brands have strong customer bases because the customers take pride in being their patrons. That’s something which can only happen if you offer exceptional customer service and treat them with the best products that you can provide.

6. Never Take Your Eyes off the Target Demographic

As a business owner, you want as many customers as possible. However, you simply can’t sell to everyone. There is only a small portion of the market that you can target for your products/services. So, it’s important that your messaging, logo, slogan, etc. are appealing to the kind of individuals you want to focus on. 

Brands are important to small businesses, and there is no way around it either if you want to maintain your market position. That said, the tips shared above are quite effective and proven to work. So, apply as many of them as possible and you will see a considerable rise in foot traffic/online traffic to your store/website. Good luck!

Digital Branding

Seeing the Red Flags: How to Spot Fake Printing Businesses Online

https://www.pexels.com/photo/coward-cowardly-crime-cyber-crime-271078/

 

There is no denying that the Internet has made doing business easier, more convenient, and faster. However, the sad fact is that while you also want to ensure that all that speed and convenience also comes with safety and security issues. There are so many websites that are scams, fraudulent, or fake. The ease and speed of the Internet has given rise to so many cybercrimes that it has ballooned into a $1.5 trillion (yes, with a “T”) industry.

There are many types of cybercrimes, such as third-party content injection (where external parties can “inject” content into your system where you connect to unsecured WiFi connections), fraud ($40 brand new iPad anyone?), or most commonly, phishing.

 

What is Phishing, exactly?

Phishing is a type of cybercrime where a scammer will try to gain your sensitive information, particularly financial information, by providing false pretenses. There are various methods of phishing, such as sending out fake emails about your bank account getting hacked, or websites asking you to “validate” your account. Usually these messages have a link attached that will lead you to another website where you will enter your financial information, thus making it available to the scammer. These messages will often appear as legitimate emails from banks, online payment portals, or other financial companies, luring you into a false sense of security.

When you try to buy checks online, you are a prime target for these scammers because you will need to provide your financial information in order to complete the ordering process!

How Can I Protect Myself?

While there is no 100% guaranteed method of protecting yourself from scammers online, there are ways to avoid websites that can make you a more vulnerable target. Here are some tell-tale signs that you can look out for, and if you see even one of them, you should immediately close that window.

  1.     The URL is your first clue

You might think that a suspicious URL would be a dead giveaway, but you would be shocked how many people don’t take the time to actually check the address bar when they visit various websites. Trusted and reliable websites will have a URL that begins with “https://” and there is a small padlock icon on the right side of the address bar. Google will even do a lot of the work for you; if the site is safe and trusted, it will highlight the URL in green. If there is something suspicious about the URL, it highlights the whole address bar in red and you might even get a warning message!

There’s even a concept called “The Line of Death”, which is an idea that an Internet user should not trust anything below a certain point on your browser, as it is easy for a scammer to make the website appear legitimate. In the case of websites where you will give sensitive financial information, the “Line of Death” is as early as the address bar.

  1.     Trust seals should be available

Many companies that handle sensitive financial information for their clients will go out of their way to show that they invest in their security protocols, so you will most likely find trust seals on top of their website. These can include logos from trusted anti-virus companies such as McAfee or Norton, or even an accreditation from the Better Business Bureau. However, it is also quite easy to just copy-paste these seals into a website’s layout, so make sure to click on these seals to see if they are legitimate.

  1.     The content CAN be a red flag

In the past, it was quite easy to spot a website that was fraudulent. These websites often used stock images, the layout was cheap, and the grammar of the content was horrible. These days, however, scammers have gotten more sophisticated, and you can find fraudulent websites that are difficult to distinguish from the real thing at a glance. If you are in doubt (some websites do use generic images and content while still being actual businesses), try looking for other details such as a physical address for the business, contact numbers, a policy page, or customer reviews. Most scam websites won’t go as far these details because they simply won’t have the time, manpower, or resources to create such a detailed scam website. They want to be able to scam as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time, so they go for quantity over quality.

  1.     Google can be your best friend

Google can be a useful, if not completely foolproof, tool in determining if a website is legitimate or not. You can use their Google Safe Browsing Transparency feature. Simply copy-paste the URL of the website in question, and Google will give you an idea whether or not you can trust a website. However, the simplest way is still the most basic way: if in doubt, just close your browser and look for another website.

Digital Branding

Essential KPIs that Matter to Savvy Social Media Managers

This post is contributed by Olu Bunmi.

 

Social media managers must master and monitor certain essential key performance indicators (KPIs) for more effective social media management, which encompasses the process of strategizing, creating, and managing content and interactions across social networks.

Doing this per network can be time-consuming and confusing without measurable KPIs, and given several such indicators, social media managers must decide which ones align most with their business goals. This would inform what strategy, approach, and platforms will be most effective.

In this post, we’ll be highlighting seven (7) such social media KPIs that should inform your social media marketing strategy and help you improve productivity, results, and ROI for your business ASAP, but first

https://pixabay.com/photos/twitter-facebook-together-292988/

What is Social Media KPIs?

Social media KPIs are social media metrics that measure the performance of your social media activities. Some of these are vanity metrics that do not really impact your bottom line but are measured simply because they’re measurable.

Recently, Instagram announced it will be hiding the number of likes from the public in selected countries as a test case. The aim is to get users to focus more on engagement than the number of likes. If your entire Instagram marketing revolves around a number of likes, for instance, you may need to start considering other ways to get more Instagram followers to grow your business for social commerce purposes.

This brings us to

The Evolution of Social Commerce

In the early 90’s, retail websites were like mere online product brochures with limited accessibiility and functionality, cahracterized by poor UI and UX. The term ‘Social Commerce’ was coined in 2005.

These days, social commerce has evolved and improved and  differs from social media marketing. As a social media manager, understanding this difference will most likely be the difference between just promoting brand visibility and actually making sales.

Creating online brand awareness with the aim of creating visibility and driving traffic to your social media page is social media marketing. This does not guarantee sales, even though it promotes sales. Direct sales resulting from social media marketing is social commerce because at this point, you can measure ROI.

Social Media Marketing by the Numbers

Statista reports that social media global penetration rate is now 45%. Meaning nearly half the world’s population or 3.48billion people are on social media, growing the worldwide total by 288 million (9%) since this time last year.

  • As of Q4 2018, Facebook had 2.32 billion monthly active users.
  • As at April 2019, Instagram had over 1billion monthly active users.
  • Youtube currently has 1.9 billion monthly logged in users

This shows how social media is shrinking global space and creating opportunities for large scale commerce for businesses.

Furthermore,

  • 95% of young adults between the ages of 18-34 are most likely to follow a brand on social media
  • Currently, there are over 60 million businesses using Facebook Pages
  • 6 million of these businesses use Facebook Ads.
  • 78% of people who complain to a brand via Twitter always expect and receive a response within an hour.
  • On Instagram, top brands get to see a per-follower engagement rate of 4.21% which is 58 times higher than on Facebook and 120 times higher than on Twitter.
  • 90% of Instagram users are less than 35 years old, making it the best social media platform to target millenials, etc

Why Businesses Need a Social Media Strategy in Place

Without a social media strategy in place you’d be beating about the social media bush. As more businesses go online, your competition increases as evident in the foregoing statistics. To stay ahead of the game, you will need an effective social media marketing strategy that will boost visibility, sales and customer satisfaction.

To implement your social media strategy, you’ll need a platform.

Here’s how to pick the right social network for your kind of business:

  • Identify your audience and their favorite social networks with the highest engagement. You can identify your targeted audience by studying their demography, which includes their age range, gender, income and social trends that interest them.
  • Identify the resources needed for a successful social marketing plan, bearing in mind that each social media platform is unique. This will ensure that your business goals and network align.

Next step is to find a good social media manager who can help coordinate and implement your social media strategy.

Following are seven (7) key areas to judge your social media manager’s performance

7 Essential KPIs For Savvy Social Media Managers

Measurable metrics generally vary per network, some are similar. Following are 7 key social media KPIs you should watch:

  1. Audience Growth Rate

This indicates how fast your brand is growing. This can be tracked by identifying the number of new followers for the month divided by the number of your total audience. If you’re currently focusing on Instagram, here’re smart ways to get more Instagram followers.

  1. Click Through Rate

The number of clicks on links you post show how eye catching the title and images in your posts are. This typically shows if it got the attention of your audience. You can calculate this by dividing the number of link clicks you have by the number of people who have seen the post.

  1. Likes

This also shows how interesting your content was, and it helps in favoring your page visibility for platform algorithms. Instagram is currently experimenting with hiding likes from the public to encourage more engagement.

  1. Shares

Shares indicate that your posts are interesting enough to warrant recommendation, and this can be used to measure your virality rate by dividing the number of people who shared your post by the number of people who saw it. This also shows your amplification rate. Also note the number of mentions you get, for virality.

  1. Comments

Note that relevant content sparks conversations and engagement is one of the top areas you should pay attention to on social media. Engagement is often evident in the comment section. Authentic engagement means you’re doing a lot of things right.

  1. Reviews/Feedbacks

Customer testimonials help to build trust and credibility for your brand. You can also measure this by creating a survey to evaluate customer satisfaction with your products or services.

  1. Impressions/Profile Visits

Although not every social network displays the number of new people who visit your profile, most do, and this will tell you how well all other factors above have influenced people who heard of, or came across your brand to check it out. It shows you your reach.

Conclusion

As a social media manager, the success or failure of your social media strategy or campaigns largely depend on you. Knowing what to and how to measure this success or failure rate (progress) is key. Let us know which social media metrics or KPI matter most to you.

 

Author Bio:

Olu Bunmi is a freelance writer who loves to write business, ecommerce, entrepreneurship and social media content.

Crisis management
Digital Branding

Handling Of Crisis Management

In your company, a crisis is an event or circumstance that alters the regular dynamics of business processes. Appearing unexpectedly, crises can come from both internal and external factors. Industrial or occupational accidents, strikes, problems in customer service, product failures, or policy changes might produce internal crises while changing economic policies, social changes, or natural phenomena outside the control of the organization might upset a company as well and require crisis management.

Such moments of difficulty are natural in any company, and it is important to understand how to identify a crisis in your company. Before a negative event upsets the normal flow of business, becomes public, and threatens to harm the brand, it is time to activate crisis management techniques before the crisis calls into question the image of the company in front of consumers.

An administrator should know that no matter how bad the situation is, it can always get worse. By applying such proactive techniques, the company does not destabilize after that event.

One of the first questions that usually arise is: “Should you speak or remain silent about the situation?” Poorly conducted communication in times of crisis, with misconceived statements, will enhance what is already ruined, but choosing to keep quiet is usually not an option in crisis management. If the company doesn’t speak out about something that is obviously happening, journalists can write whatever they want.

Crises can destabilize your business

Employ Crisis Management Techniques

When Is The Best Time To Act?

When situations arise that break down the normal functioning of the organization, it is time to immediately proceed to implement business crisis management tips such as those offered at www.PR360.com to develop strategies.

Once the importance of having excellent business crisis management strategies is understood, the next step is to design your plan. Given this, several questions may arise, such as: what factors should you consider? What should you do first? Who makes decisions? What resources do you need?

The management of business crises includes all the actions or measures taken to address the different scenarios to be presented at three different moments along a timeline:

  • The pre-crisis or prevention stage
  • The crisis
  • The post-crisis or recovery stage

Pre-crisis is the most crucial stage because all possible risk scenarios are projected here. You should analyze your strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, and threats. This will develop strategies, that is, a Pr 360 Business Crisis Management Plan.

In this first stage, Pr360 should follow the following steps:

Evaluation And Identification

It is recommended to audit possible known risks. An activity or production process can perform risk analysis by conversion-based PR Agency. It is also feasible to conduct drills and exercises with different scenarios.

Meet crises head on

Crisis Committee

After identifying the risks, you need to assemble a committee chaired by the top executives of the organization and composed of those responsible for the areas involved. The makeup of the committee signals that you are serious about addressing the problems and ensures that the committee has the authority to develop policies to handle them.

Prepare the Business Crisis Management Plan

After completing the previous steps, a strategic plan is drawn up. This must contain a description of all the processes and the risks identified, and instructions and procedures to follow to address each emergency.

Apply The Plan

After the pre-crisis stage, and once the corresponding plan has been developed, you will have a tool with defined strategies to deal with any emergency, with specific specifications for each moment of its development.

Measure plan effectiveness

Measure The Effectiveness Of Your Business Crisis Plan

Crises are seldom solitary events. To be better prepared for the future, your plan should contain mechanisms to measure the effectiveness of your actions. If you properly manage the crisis, you will be in better shape to identify and respond to future disruptions that are a part of running a business.

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

The Most Efficient Ways to Make Money on Instagram

A lot of people are discovering the benefits of working on the internet. It would seem like being stuck in a dead-end job from 9 to 5 is not that appealing anymore. But you know what does sound attractive? Mastering Instagram and making it the sole source of income.

There are definitely more than one way on how to monetize Instagram, and if you are looking to get started yourself, this article is the perfect place to find some inspiration.

Start with Building an Audience

Before moving on to the methods, it is important to note one thing – your monetization will not come to fruition if you do not have enough followers and decent engagement. Instagram is all about those two.

Building account takes time, but that is not enough. You will also have to:

  • Optimize your profile by adding contact information in your bio. Consider including a couple of keywords and hashtags as well. It becomes much easier to find you on Instagram.
  • Keep to your schedule. If there are one or two days of no posts, that is not a big problem. Nevertheless, you should still try to post at least once or twice every day.
  • Quality images. Visuals play a very important part of Instagram. If your images are not looking great, you will lose credibility, especially in the long run. Get a camera if your smartphone is not good enough.

Your account will grow faster if you follow these tips. And once you have a hefty number of followers, you can move on to the monetization.

https://unsplash.com/photos/tMI2_-r5Nfo

Writing a Blog

Not a conventional method, but quite a few bloggers have moved on from a standard website blogging to Instagram. This behavior suggests that finding an audience here is easier. Even more so if you prefer to show off pictures instead of writing walls of text. 

Monetizing a blog is pretty easy as well. You can promote other people’s products by mentioning them in your posts, or redirect your readers to an online store.

Influencing

Top influencers make thousands of dollars by posting a simple picture with themselves and a product.

Becoming an influencer is a lot of work, but not out of your reach. If you have a decent strategy and are willing to work towards this goal, it should become a reality sooner or later.

Dropshipping

Similar to blogging, a lot of entrepreneurs are finding Instagram to be another great channel of increasing sales. Since the audience which comes from organic traffic and social media is different, it is not that surprising to see such a behavior.

It does not mean that you need to have a website to start dropshipping. Instagram by itself is more than enough. Just make sure to not run out of content to post.

Affiliate Marketing

Putting shortened links in your posts and bio can bring money if you can convince your followers to click the link and make a purchase.

Affiliate marketing is different from influencing because your goal is to make a sale rather than try and raise brand awareness. Therefore, the words you use in posts will also change. Read this guide on affiliate marketing to make the most out of it.

Grow and Sell Accounts 

After you get more experience with growing Instagram accounts, you can easily make a business out of it. A lot of people have no patience themselves and are looking to cut corners.

The internet is full of people who are willing to buy an account which already has thousands of followers. Try researching which niches are high in demand, and build a few accounts for sale.

Instagram Marketing

All those Instagram models in pictures are definitely not the ones who write the posts or edit videos. There is someone else behind it, and if you can learn Instagram marketing, that person could be you.

Showcase Your Products

There should be plenty of individuals who would be happy to purchase your products if you have a talent for creating something unique. A few of the most popular ideas would be:

  • High-quality pictures which could be used for promotional posters;
  • Handmade accessories or jewelry;
  • Custom-made phone cases, t-shirts, calendars.

Even a single post with something truly spectacular could create a snowball effect and give you more than enough customers for the future.

In summary, Instagram certainly creates more than enough opportunities for those who are willing to give it a try. Instead of hesitating, put these doubts aside and start. Even if you set extremely low expectations at first, you can build on from that to a point where making money becomes the easiest thing ever.

Digital Branding

How to Maximize Your Instagram Ads Strategy To Boost Your ROI Fast

Instagram is massive right now. Do you how huge is it these days?

Well, in 2019, IG’s ad revenue is set to hit a staggering 10.8 billion dollars. The platform generates that kind of revenue because they have over 2 million active advertisers.

Amazing, right?

So, what’s up with all the Instagram-mania? Instagram’s visually focused nature is a fantastic platform for brands who want to showcase their products and services. On the plus side, millions of Instagram users are actively seeking out brands that deliver the most visually stimulating experience.

So, how do you ensure that you maximize the platform? We’re breaking it up to five effective tactics on how you can maximize your ads strategy to boost your ROI, setting you off to the right direction in no time.

https://pixabay.com/photos/instagram-social-media-web-pages-1519537/

Research your customer interests

One of the first things that you should add on your list when developing a strategy is your target audience research. For you to be able to maximize Instagram’s greatness to the full, you need to start by knowing your audience first. Gaining valuable insight into their interests, preferences, and other behaviors pave the way to creating a successful Instagram strategy.

Think of your buyer’s persona. What’s the typical profile of an average customer that you want you market your products to? Then, check your Instagram demographics. By knowing key statistics such as age, gender, and their location, you’ll get your content out to your target audience using that data.

Deliver the type of material that most of your audience can relate to. Doing so shows that you care about the same things and have the same interests as your followers.

Leverage user-generated content

User-generated content, also known as UGC, is any form of content that’s created by users or past customers about a specific product or brand. The authenticity it creates makes the user one of the brand’s advertisers as well.

In a survey, almost 76% of individuals say that they trust a content more if ‘average’ people share it compared to a traditional advertisement. There’s no doubt that a vast majority of people believe the recommendations of others more.

UGC generates more engagement on Instagram and is critical to the success of brands in the platform. As more and more users engage in your material, your posts will be prioritized. As a result, more people will stumble upon your content on the Explore tab.

Building relationships with customers

Social media is here to stay, and it’s incredibly crucial that you build and foster relationships online, as it is in real life. According to VoyMedia, “By building meaningful relationships with your customers, they’ll eventually turn into the most loyal followers, sharing your products and services to their circle and other communities.”

So, you need to identify what your customers value about your products and services, as well as in their life. Actively engage with your followers, so that people will feel that they have someone whom they can personally talk to, or have a connection with.

Unlock the power of Instagram carousel

Until much recently, Instagram allowed users to post multiple images in a single post. These are known as image ‘carousels.’ Ever since it was released, brands and businesses are thinking of creative ways to incorporate them in their ad marketing strategy.

 

So, if you’re launching a new product or service, it’s an excellent way to drive your audience’s interest, and ultimately, sales.

What’s more, you can also incorporate photos with videos on your Instagram carousel to promote various campaigns. As you know, videos can covey extensive information in just a short amount of time. Therefore, it’s a great way to share product photos without saturating your feed or being over promotional about it.

Use the right hashtags

Why are hashtags so important? Well, they make your content a lot more discoverable and puts you in front of new users. But the challenge is finding the right amount of balance when it comes to choosing specific hashtags in your account.

Knowing the right hashtags to implement is essential. Study your competitors and other top influencers in the platform to find the best hashtags that work out for you. Find the ones that are relevant and trending. Also, get familiar with Instagram’s lingo and scour for evergreen hashtags. Making all of these a habit is vital.

Understand your CTA

Call-to-Action also known as CTAs, play a crucial role in directing people what to do next. Through CTAs, you can ask people to buy your product, get in touch with you, or visit your site.

 

However, not all of them are created equal. The key here is to be as creative as possible to encourage people to take action. Tease your followers, make them understand why they need your product, and help persuade customers to take action by using active language.

Additionally, injecting a sense of urgency will make your customers feel like they’re missing out if they don’t make immediate action. CTAs like ‘for a limited time only’ or ‘available to the first 150 customers’ never fail to work its magic.

Measure what’s important

Now that you have a good idea of what type of content you’ll be creating, you have to deal with metrics to help you track things. Measure the performance of your posts, as you find the ones that drive the most engagement.

 

As your numbers grow on Instagram, it makes sense to start checking the numbers and watch how it progresses. Tracking your Instagram metrics will give you insight with what’s working for your business to help your business and brand grow.

To wrap it up

There are a lot of opportunities to make your business flourish in the world of Instagram marketing.  The good news is when it comes to boosting your ROI, you don’t need to have millions of followers. All you need to have is to develop a solid Instagram marketing strategy that helps connect your audience on a meaningful level as you meet their needs.

SEO trends in 2019
Digital Branding

5 Trends You NEED To Know About To Do SEO In 2019

If you’re just starting out with SEO it can be easy to get confused by the overload of information you can find on the internet. We’ve all been there, don’t worry. But everyone has to start somewhere, so why not start with something you know will work? If you’re just starting to get into SEO, there are some important things to know before you get started so you´re not stuck with outdated SEO tactics.

We sat down as a team and talked about the things that have changed over the course of 2019, what’s worked, and what hasn’t, and came up with a set of things you need to know if you’re going to be doing SEO for your website. For each of these topics, I could easily write an essay (and maybe I will!), but for now they’re a fantastic starting place if you’re looking to get really good at SEO in 2019.

Mobilize for mobile

1. Optimize For Mobile First For Great SEO In 2019

The mobile revolution is upon us, with Google leading the way. With a recent update to the search ranking system, Google now ranks websites based on their mobile versions first. This means that if your website isn’t ready for mobile users, your rankings overall are going to suffer.

With more people using mobile search than ever before (a whopping 57% of all web traffic!) there’s no reason not to optimize your website for mobile. In fact, these days it’s non-negotiable. If you want to rank well, you need to be catering to mobile users. The best way to start thinking about mobile-first is to consider your users. If you’re looking for something on your mobile phone, chances are you’ll want to get the information you’re looking for fast, without too much scrolling, zooming, or effort involved. Keep this in mind when you’re designing your website and you’ll already be a step ahead of most people

2. Write For Humans, Optimize For Search Engines

While having a lot of fresh content is important, if you’re not writing it for your audience specifically you may as well not be writing at all. In 2019, it’s not enough to just be writing content for keywords. Your blog articles, webpages, and all your other content has to be relevant to your users and their needs. Write your articles for people first, and focus on creating high-quality content that provides real value.

This kind of content is great for more than rankings. Leveraging top-tier content can get you links from other sites, influencers, and can land you opportunities for guest posting and outreach if you play your cards right.

To sum it all up: Write your content for people first. Optimize it for SEO second.

Do the first and the other often comes naturally, but a good balance of both will get you the best results.

3. Page Speed

Sometimes all your page might need a little TLC in the speed department. Meaning the speed your page loads at, and the speed at which people can find the information they’re looking for have to be quick. With the rise of mobile, people’s attention spans have been dropping. And with the freedom of choice the internet gives you, you’ve not got much time before your website visitors jump ship and visit the next site down the list. Your competitors.

Your website needs to be fast, with a load speed of under 5 seconds to stay competitive. Any longer and people start getting bored waiting and will close your site just to keep things moving. There are a dozen ways to increase the speed at which your page loads, but a lot of it comes down to optimizing images, code, and any website plugins you might have. Optimizing for page speed is integral to ranking well on SEO in 2019 and is a core ranking factor.

Write for your readers

4. Think Like Your Users For Best SEO In 2019

While picking the right keywords for your website is always important, 2019 has shaped up to be the year of search intent. It’s not enough anymore to just find effective keywords that lead traffic to your site. You need to know what your users are searching for when they type something specific, and create your website and webpages to best answer their questions, and meet their needs.

Google takes into account bounce rates (how many users immediately leave a web page after clicking), page dwell time (how long a user spends on a page), content depth and length, along with a bunch of other factors when ranking pages. Understanding exactly what your visitors are looking for and tailoring your content and offerings to best answer those questions and searches goes a long way to ranking high on Google. If your SEO agency is not implementing these changes, please speak to them right away.

Google voice search

5. Jump On The Voice Search Bandwagon

If you’ve done any SEO stuff over the last year. there’s no way you haven’t heard someone talk about Voice Search. And if by some miracle you’ve missed it, then you need to get on board and implement it into your SEO strategy right now. If what’s happening right now indicates anything, it’s that voice search is about to flip SEO upside down.

In 2017, Comscore predicted that 50% of all searches would be made by voice in 2020. Current statistics show that 41% of adults use voice search at least once a day, making the 50% prediction extremely achievable.

With more and more people using voice search every day, the landscape for SEO is changing to one that relies more on being able to hit the top 3 results on a search term, and securing a featured snippet for your page.

With more and more people using voice search every day, your SEO efforts need to be focused on reaching the top 3 results for a search term and securing a featured snippet for your page. The way Google Assistant and Google Home currently conduct voice search is by reading out either the most relevant of the top 3 results, or the featured snippets. This snippet is part of a webpage that gets displayed at the top of the search rankings, making it a holy grail of SEO even if you’re not looking to rank specifically for voice search.

If you voice searched “what is the best dog”, Google would read out this list.

Ranking this high for voice search isn’t easy. It requires time, effort, and incredible, quality content. People tend to use longer questions and more conversational queries when searching by voice. And just like traditional searches, you’ve got to understand how user search intent will affect search terms and what your website is ranking for. You’ve got to answer your user’s questions as thoroughly as possible, and in the way that’s most relevant to their search term and intent. If you thought the quality of web content was getting crazy good now, stick around because things are going to get even better.

If you’re looking to improve your SEO and rank better in 2019, these tips from Digital Agency Melbourne (Xugar) will point you in the right path. Looking for more advanced tips? Check out Xugar for more quality content just like this.

This Post Was Submitted By Qurban Shah From https://techpin.com/

Build your Instagram account
Digital Branding

How To Get Your First 10,000 Followers On Instagram

If you are planning to use the online world for your business then building a community on flagship social media platforms is highly imperative. And it just happens so, Instagram is the giant in the world of online marketing. Most of the well-established marketers and influencers will tell you that the first 10,000 followers on Instagram are the hardest to get. It’s because you are entering this world as a newbie, where people are yet to recognize you and your offerings. Getting more followers on Instagram is about getting to know the game, playing the game and then making your own rules. The game is getting interactions and engagements and knowing which content to post at what times.

If you are finding this a bit overwhelming, then don’t worry. You are not alone! Fortunately, we have lined up some best ways to reach your dream 10k figure, in the minimum amount of time.

Get  Followers On Instagram

Food blog phoot

1. Finding the right content

The hardest part in your journey to success on Instagram is probably the first step. To get 10,000 followers on Instagram you need to know what type of content you want to produce and which theme to follow. You need to form your own identity, one that aligns with your product or service and the expectations of your audience. Generally speaking, humorous content or inspirational quotes attract almost all types of audience. They are great to get yourself started on Instagram. Put yourself in the shoes of your followers determine which type of content they would like or how they would like to be reached. Pictures, images, and illustrations attract the eye way more than plain text.

Finally, think of how you will get your new followers. Which type of hashtags you should use so that you will appear more in search results? Focus on quality more than quantity. With so much competition on Instagram nowadays, you need to do something out of the ordinary to get attention.

2. Make your followers feel special

Your followers are everything for you. Without them your business is nothing. So, you have to treat them with respect. Respond to comments, provide support, answer queries, and engage in personal chats to form a loyal user base. Developing a specific count on your number of followers means nothing. Even if you have not so significant number of loyal followers, it will benefit you a lot more. You don’t want those superficial comments or reactions, but you want them to engage with your content. And ultimately, they would end up buying your product or service.

Build interactions

3. Set timely goals

Having a standard or preset goal for you to check your progress with can be of great help. It helps you decide if your ideas or techniques are working or not. Your goals can be simple. For example, you want to achieve 500 followers in a month and get 100 engagements too. If you fall short then you would know you have to try something different. Checking your progress can regularly can prove very helpful on your road to gain 10,000 followers on Instagram.

4. Work with other influencers or marketers

If you want to get recognition in the market you need to engage with other brands. Interaction or partnering with other brands allows you to become visible to a bigger audience. Not only their followers but many other will be find and even engage with your content. You can also get much-needed ideas and creative advice from these brands and influencers as well.

Always use hashtags

5. ALWAYS use hashtags

Set your own custom hashtag and use it with your every post and story. Also use popular hashtags similar to your niche and as many of them. For searching any content on social media, hashtags are the way to go. So, you can only imagine the kind of exposure you would get through using them. If you don’t know which hashtags to use, just use the search option on Instagram. You will easily find which hashtags are popular and even get new ideas about your content.

6. Keep track of your Instagram Insights

Instagram Insights is a very convenient free tool that allows you to keep track of your audience, engagements etc. It will help you identify your audience by age, gender and location and their online times as well. You will also know engagements and interactions on each post and story. It is too good a tool to be free, so you should take advantage of it.

Join Instagram groups

7. Learn from Instagram Engagement Groups

There are many groups on Instagram that give you ideas and techniques to get more engagements on your account. They can valuable advice to grow your account and increase your followers. Most of them are free to join and are very helpful/

8. Call your followers to contribute

As a brand, you would want your followers to give reviews and share their experience. You can have them post pictures with your product. You can also ask them to contribute photos of their food if you are into food blogging. It depends upon your niche, but don’t forget to include call-for-action in your content.

Follow us on Instagram

9. Embed Instagram links in your blog posts

By embedding Instagram link to your stories, feed, or a certain post on your webpage, you are doing yourself a favor. You are likely to get some viewers on your Instagram account and some of them may stick around and become customers,.

This Post Submitted By Qurban Shah From http://techshur.com/

Digital Branding

The Most Effective Digital Marketing Firm Strategy

You can find hundreds of digital marketing strategies online. But choosing the most effective digital marketing firm strategy is quite a tough job. To compete with your competitors, you need to adopt the right marketing strategies. Here in this article, we are going to share a list of some effective digital marketing strategies.

1. Search engine optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a key role in digital marketing. It’s always recommended to hire a professional for SEO to help your business prosper. Make sure your web pages are on the format of HTTPs to get better SEO results.

2. Content marketing

Content marketing can help attract the target audience. All you need is to make your content unique, consistent, valuable, and relevant to make it worth reading. Make sure your content provides a solution for pain points and remain evergreen. For optimum working of content marketing, try to concentrate on mobile content, influencer marketing, and native advertising. You can also use marketing automation tools to send content on your target audience mobile phones at the right time.

3. Responsive web design

These days, there has been a trend to reach customers by mobile. So, you need to make your website mobile-friendly and that can be possible through responsive web design. With the help of responsive web design, you can make your business successful as customers can easily browse your website on their mobile phone. Here you can benefit from Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) code to fast load your mobile pages. Google gives preference to websites that use AMP, therefore, it is worth using it.

4. Social media marketing

It is another effective digital marketing firm strategy. All you need is to post your content on social media to help attract the maximum number of customers. You can use automation tools to post content on social media when your target audience is reading. Also, you can hire influencers to post content on your behalf on trendy social media sites.

5. Email marketing

You might have done some email marketing but are you sure it’s effective in reaching your target audience at the right time? No doubt, email marketing is a great digital marketing strategy to generate more leads, higher sales, and better conversion rates. If you don’t want to spend on digital marketing, then email marketing is the right choice for you.

6. Remarketing

If in case your potential customers have not responded to your website banner ads, then approach them once more with marketing content. Just track those visitors through new ads and cookies. Find their pain points and then target them with the new ads. It would not be wrong to say that remarketing can keep you more engaged with potential customers. Plus, it also helps in brand awareness, increased conversions, and more sales.

Whom to trust for your digital marketing strategy?

OnecoreMedia is an experienced firm that has specialists for digital marketing campaigns. This company is well aware of the latest trends in digital marketing and can help generate more leads for your business.