Month: April 2019

Digital Branding

Top 7 Online Courses to Help You Get Started with Digital Branding

With today’s technological advancements, many online courses are designed to help businesses and individuals to achieve their goals. Whether you’re a business owner or someone who is looking for a digital marketing job, it’s essential to keep yourself up-to-date with the latest digital branding and marketing trends nowadays. If you want to hone your skills and improve your business with digital branding, here are the top seven online courses to help you get started.

1. Content Marketing Certification Course

If you want to become a certified content marketer, you can give this online course a try. It’s designed to help you create an effective marketing strategy for your business or job. If you have a scalable content marketing approach, you can be able to convert your prospects into customers. When taking up this certification course, you’re going to learn about content planning, creation, promotion, and analytics.

2. Inbound Marketing Online Course

Digital marketing also struggles to provide positive results, which is why inbound marketing can be one of the solutions to generate real marketing ROI (return on investment) in the business. By taking up an inbound marketing online course, you will be able to use an innovative framework that enables you to gain more leads, customers, sales through your virtual presence. This online course also allows you to develop the skills necessary to building effective inbound campaigns from setting up your business goals to analyzing your inbound ROI.

3. Graphic Design Online Course

When it comes to digital branding, you also need to have excellent skills in graphic designs for your websites, social media, and other online platforms. Remember, having remarkable graphics can add value to your website such that it encourages your visitors to stay longer in that site. From repurposing images, setting up a picture on your own, and adding logos to modifying texts and colors, everything you need to learn about graphic design and digital branding can be taken up through online courses like the HubSpot graphic design course.

4. Social Media Certification Course

If you want to learn more about creating a social media strategy, making and sharing useful social content, and optimizing social media profiles for the business, taking a social media certification course can be a great option. The course will help test your knowledge about the fundamentals of social media marketing and how it contributes to the success of your digital branding. By completing this course, you can stay up-to-date on the current social media practices, as well as create a strategy that supports your marketing and sales efforts.

5. Search Engine Optimization Course

Taking this online course will help you build a competent SEO (search engine optimization) strategy that provides better business results. You’ll learn the fundamentals of SEO such as building links to your website, using blogging for SEO, and other digital marketing approaches. If you want to sharpen your SEO knowledge and skills that can help boost your digital branding, then you should consider taking this course as soon as you can.

6. Lead Management Course

If you’re looking to manage sales leads effectively, learning about a lead management course can help. Moreover, the course is also designed to help you come up with a comprehensive lead generation plan that allows you and your marketing team to obtain, assess, and provide leads to the sales team. Keep in mind that having a strategic lead management system in place is the key to a successful digital branding and marketing efforts of your company.

7. Video Marketing Course

Creating video content is one of the top digital branding trends this year. Since videos are more attractive to young generations, it’s a great way of gaining publicity and promoting your brand. For that reason, taking up a video marketing online course can be beneficial. The course is designed for you to learn how to develop a solid video marketing strategy and figure out the best types of video content you should incorporate in your website and social media platforms. Moreover, you’re also expected to learn about video production, and video tracking and analysis at the end of this online course.

Conclusion

Clearly, a robust digital branding campaign is vital toward achieving business success. It doesn’t only boost your company’s online popularity and visibility, but it also lets you establish a stronger relationship with your prospects and customers. If you want to get the most out of digital branding for your business, it’s important to equip yourself with the right knowledge and skills using these seven online courses.

Local Branding

Smart Ways to Reduce Startup Expenditures

Starting a company is always a great challenge, with many uncertainties waiting around the corner. Is your idea good enough? Will people respond to it? Are you going to cover all the costs and create a sustainable business? All these questions and many more linger in the minds of those about to embark on the track of entrepreneurship. Still, everyone agrees that the way you start has the greatest effect on the future.

So, what are the typical problems at a very early age? Securing financial backup and having a clear idea about how the business should be run spring to mind. With around 90 percent of all startups failing in the first year, getting it right from the very beginning is crucial. One of the things you need to ensure is that you don’t waste any money, especially when starting a company. Let’s take a look at some tips that should help you keep your costs to the minimum.

Rental costs

Success can greatly depend on the location of your office, as we all know. The more you depend on it, the fewer options you have at your disposal. If you have to work 24/7, sharing the premises with some other business in order to save money on the rent is impossible. However, if your business is such that will allow you to split the rental costs with some other company, make sure you use the opportunity to do so. Sharing office space with another business can be tricky, but if done correctly, it can save both you and the other company a lot of money and could easily be the difference between making it and breaking it.

Purchase in bulk

It’s understandable that startups wish to limit the expenditure by buying small quantities of items they need and repeating such purchases more frequently. However, in doing so, they are actually spending much more than necessary. Office equipment and stationery are the things each company needs and they are best bought in bulk. Also, finding a reliable supplier, like Winc Australia, for example, who will offer free delivery and match any lower price you find for the same items, is very important if you want to keep your expenditure low. Naturally, you shouldn’t clutter your office with the stuff you won’t be needing any time soon, but if you have a suitable storage facility, this is a chance to save some big bucks.

Streamline and automate as much as possible

Many startups fall into the trap of having everyone doing everything, powered and inspired mostly by the thrill of setting up a new business. Still, that fuel doesn’t last forever. People get tired, disillusioned and realize that there is no method in the madness. The right way to go about it, which is going to save you both human and financial resources, is to automate processes such as payroll, accounting, and administration as much as possible from the start. The more you allow yourself and your colleagues to focus on work, the better it will be for the company.

Consider hiring freelancers

If the nature of your business allows it, think about employing freelance employees instead of full-time ones. The latter cost more, since you have to pay for a full-time salary, sick-leaves, benefits, equipment, and other expenses. Such costs are non-existent when it comes to freelancers and that can save you quite a lot. Just make sure you aren’t breaking any laws when offering such employment since one lawsuit can easily be the end of your startup.

Plan and monitor expenses

It’s vital that you make a plan for your expenditure and monitor where, when and how much of your money is spent. Make sure you don’t forget things such as insurance, utilities, salaries, and others, which are often overlooked as something that will figure itself out. Without a plan, you’ll never be able to know if you’re doing something right and if your business is successful or not. What you also have to plan is the period after which your company should start making a profit. However, in order to live to see that day, you have to be extremely careful with your expenditure before that moment.

What you need to understand when starting up a business is that there are no guarantees and that in order to succeed, you have to do several things right. In the beginning, you have very little margin for error, which makes the task even more challenging. On the other hand, every successful company was once a startup, which means you too can do it. However, you need to be doing a lot of things right from the onset.

Digital Branding

6 Ways to Use Social Media to Boost Your eCommerce Sales

https://pixabay.com/photos/ecommerce-shopping-cart-buying-3530785/ 

If you want your eCommerce business to succeed in 2019, you should craft an excellent social media marketing strategy. Today, it’s not enough to just produce share-worthy content. It’s also important to utilize sneaky marketing tricks to improve brand awareness and customer loyalty.

In this article, you will find recommendations on how to use Facebook, Instagram, and Tweeter to boost your eCommerce sales. Follow them, and you will take your business to the next level.

Collaborate with influencers

It’s always challenging to make your first online sale. When no one knows your brand yet, no one wants to buy your products.

If you have just started your eCommerce business and want to get first orders immediately, you should collaborate with digital celebrities in your niche. They can easily influence the opinion of your target audience and make people believe that your product is worth buying.

If you can’t afford collaboration with influencers, which have more than 100,000 followers, you can collaborate with micro-influencers. The services of micro-influencers, who have around 15,000 followers, will not cost you a fortune.

Run giveaways

People love freebies even more than you can imagine. Can you guess what the simplest way to draw the audience’s attention to your brand and boost sales is? All you need to do is to provide people with a chance to get something for free.

So, why don’t you run a giveaway on social media? It will help you to raise brand awareness and generate enormous sales. To run a successful giveaway, you should make four simple steps:

  • Offer a valuable prize. It can be a new product, gift card, huge discount, etc.
  • Craft a catchy post to inform followers about the giveaway. If you have no idea how to write winning captions, you may check writing services company reviews and get help from a professional writer.
  • Ask influencers in your niche to inform their followers about a giveaway. The more people will participate in your giveaway, the more returns you will get.
  • Utilize reliable social media contest tools to make sure that the process of winner selection is fair and transparent.

Generate social media buzz

Do you know how to launch a brand new product successfully? You should make people talk about your product everywhere: on social media platforms, at parties, and even in Starbucks’ toilet queues. You should make people feel excited about getting a new product and encourage them to place pre-orders as soon as possible.

To hit this goal, you should generate social media buzz and make your brand irresistible. Every post related to the new product launch should intrigue your followers. Try not to reveal any specific details, but to drive curiosity. Here are a few ideas, which you can use:

  • Start countdown 30 or 50 days prior launch. Mention in every new post how many days have left. Make people wait for your new product as impatiently as they wait for Christmas.
  • Collaborate with bloggers in your niche. Allow them to “leak” some details related to the new product launch on social media
  • Add countdown sticker to Instagram stories

Ask questions to get feedback

If you need to get feedback from your target audience, don’t waste your money on running surveys. In the digital age, you can get answers to your questions using social media.

Let’s imagine that you operate in the fashion industry. This spring, you are going to sell a vintage style dress available in five colors. You need to forecast demand for different colors to avoid inventory stockouts.

To create a demand forecast, you need to be neither a financial expert nor a fashion guru. You just need to use the Instagram carousel. Upload five photos of the dress in different colors and ask your followers to comment on which one they like the most.

That’s all! Now you just need to check the answers. If you know that the green dress gets 2,000 “votes”, and the blue one only 500 “votes”, you can forecast demand easily.

Share user-generated content (UGC)

Another great way to boost eCommerce sales is to share user-generated content on social media. As you know, people tend to trust real customer reviews more than the advertisement. For this reason, user-generated content attracts more potential buyers than any paid ad. Also, UGC costs no money.

It’s worth mentioning that people like to interact with companies. And they feel happy if someone finds their photos and videos share-worthy.

If you want to base your marketing strategy on user-generated content, here is a short guide for you:

  • Create your branded hashtag
  • Invite your followers to share their opinions about your brand on social media
  • Remind them that they should use your hashtag and tag you on photos and videos
  • If you have just started your social media profile, it’s highly likely that you have no followers. In this case, you may send your customers an email to invite them to follow you on social media and share their reviews.
  • Never forget to mention the content creator, when you share UGC on your business profile

Share behind-the-scenes

Let people know more about your company. Reveal information about the technologies and materials you use. Show the team of professionals behind your business.

If you want to build a trustful relationship with your customers, you should share behind-the-scenes photos and videos. It will help to explain to your audience how your company actually works. Absolute honesty will boost customer loyalty and, as a consequence, sales.

In conclusion

As you can see, social media can help you to increase eCommerce sales in numerous ways. You just need to choose a marketing strategy, which perfectly suits your business concept.

Author’s bio.

Daniela McVicker is a blogger with rich experience in writing about UX design, content planning, and digital marketing. Currently, she is the chief contributor at RatedbyStudents where she helps individuals and organizations improve their web content writing, design, and planning skills.

Digital Branding

The Micro Voice Recorder Can Help You to Secure Your Home and Office

In this day and age, one of the most pressing concerns with any big company is that of security. Security is, in fact, a major concern not only for big companies but also for personal use also. One of the main aspects that every household and every office invests heavily in is in the security methods and technologies that are equipped to protect it. A good security system will ensure better protection for your home and office. The rapid progress and development of science and technology have enabled the invention of more such amazing security services equipment. In this article, you will be learning about getting a micro voice recorder and how it will also increase the security of your place.

Micro audio Recorders

In today’s world of ultra-modern spy technology, perhaps the most popular equipment out there is what is known as the audio bugging system. You must have often wondered about what this audio bug is and what it entails. It is a micro audio recorder. It is a very small and tiny device, and it will be recording high-quality audio from the surroundings. Such a device will enable an individual, and nobody will be either seeing it or even suspect that it is a little audio recorder. It will be useful for different purposes. Generally, people will be not aware of where they can get such a micro audio recorder.

But you are lucky because devices like this and other cool secret security gadgets are easily available in the market. These secretive devices are of immense importance and utility because of the help that they can provide. A micro audio recorder will be looking just like regular USB pen drives or flash drives. However, in reality, they are mini voice recorders.

Who are the people who can make use of these micro audio recorders?

  1. Students in school and colleges – Often we hear of students who are tired or are unable to keep up with the pace of a lecture and successfully take down notes. Also, some students are afraid that they may suddenly miss any essential part of the lecture in the class. A micro audio recorder will be quite useful in these cases, and it will ensure that you do not miss any single word ever. It is, of course, obvious that you can also go on to use these devices when you are going to absent from your class because of some reason, you can keep it in your class and get the entire lecture recorded, and you can listen to it later when you can.
  2. People who are business owners – You can use these micro audio recorders efficiently and keep a detailed recording of all the important meetings that you hold with your clients and your employees. These meetings generally involve discussions of important matters and company policies, and it will do you good to be able to go back to the recordings to check the discussions later on to help you in brainstorming or for any other purpose. Your employees can also use this in the event that they do not want to take handwritten notes and would rather record the entire meeting. The fact that the recorder looks like a tiny USB drive will make it quite inconspicuous too, and nobody will even think that it is a recording device.
  3. People who work as private investigators and in the law enforcement departments – these devices are quite useful for people who are working in the police department or are detectives. These micro audio recorders can be used for gathering essential evidence and especially when you are required to take interviews and testimonies of various people. Also, these devices can be used to catch various criminals talking about the next potential crimes which they are going to commit and can also be used to catch them in their act. They will never be suspected that they had been recorded secretly.

What are some popular features that you need to be aware of these audio recorders?

Some of the high tech features which make the mini audio recorder such an effective security device are as follows:

  1. One touch for recording – All you need to do is to press a little button that is on the side of the device, and you will then have it start to record audio in high quality and digital sounds automatically. You will not need to be aware of any specific scientific tech knowledge to be able to operate these devices.
  2. Secret and covert – These mini audio recorders are completely secretive in their appearance. They do not have any form of lights, sounds and other such types of indicators on them and hence they will never be giving you away and will keep your secret safe. No one would know that you were recording audio and hence you can leave it inside your desk or wherever you want to, and then it will go on to record the audio and not let anyone become alerted.
  3. Will work like a normal USB drive – These mini audio recording devices will not only appear like regular flash drives, but they would also function like one too, and hence you will be able to store all the essential files on this drive too and access them whenever you want to.

For more information on where and how you can get these mini audio and voice recording devices, it is crucial for you to visit https://spycentre.com/products/micro-voice-recorder and get the best deals at the best prices. Everyone has varied requirements and you will surely find something that suits you best.

Conclusion

A mini voice recording device is an effective device for security purposes and other reasons like taking notes. These devices can be used by a lot of people from varying professions like students, business owners, and law enforcement officials. Hopefully, the information mentioned in this article will have helped you.

Ecommerce branding
Digital Branding

3 Steps To Branding Your New E-Commerce Business

There is no doubt to the fact that we are currently living in the digital era because right now if you look around, you will see that most industries and businesses are getting digitized as products are not only shown and described online but sold there as well. All of this is justifiable because the number of customers you can get to your local store is nothing as compared to the quantity that you can get online. Now everyone has a phone and almost everyone is using the internet, instead of going door to door to sell your products and services, wouldn’t it be better to use the internet and reach out to the masses that too without any physical efforts? Going online is one wise choice to make so long as you  pay attention to e-commerce branding concepts.

Now, if you are someone who just recently started your e-commerce business and if you want to know how to establish your brand and then promote it then, yes, you are at the right place, reading the right content. You see, you might be selling the best quality products and your services can be extremely amazing but if you aren’t visible to your audience, there’s no point to be on the internet in the first place. Long story short, your visibility is all that matters and that should matter.

Tips For E-Commerce Branding

Here are a few tips that can come in handy to you for branding your e-commerce business:

Select your logo carefully

1- Creating a brand identity

It is but very obvious that to start with the branding process, you first need to create a brand identity for your business which means that the first thing you need to do is to get a logo. Not just any logo will do; in fact, you need to make a proper investment on your logo and hire a professional because your logo will be representing your e-commerce store so make sure to take logo selection seriously. Once you are done with the logo, you then need to focus on your branding guide which includes the color palette you have to follow, the typography, and the style that you will always be following.

2- The story of your brand

People love it when they get to hear the story behind a brand. You need to create a story for your brand too and make your audience hear that story out. From your core values to your missions and goals, you need to mention each and everything in your story. Above all of it, you need to tell and show people that they matter to you and you are there to make an improvement in their lives.

Develop a social media presence

3- Get your hands on social media

Yes, having an e-commerce website of your own is imperative, but what’s more important is the fact that you need to be on social media platforms. You see, right now, every single individual is using social media. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are a few most important platforms to be on because believe it or not, you can make millions of customers just by being on these sites. Long story short, you cannot just overlook the fact that social media is supposed to be a part of your business and you need separate marketing strategies too for being successful there.

Conclusion

These are some of the steps to e-commerce branding that you need to follow in order to be successful. So, use the tips we just gave and make sure to give the best of your efforts to your business if you really want it to reach new heights of success.

Local BrandingUncategorized

How to Make a Living Abroad

Living abroad is never easy, and adjusting to this situation takes a lot of effort. You’re far away from home and nowhere close to people who can give you comfort, strength, and support, and that can turn out to be rather scary. Another problem you may face is trying to make a living, which is quite hard no matter where you are and what kind of work you did back home. Today, people change careers more easily than ever, and you need to be adaptable in order to survive, so if you too are starting to live in a foreign country and don’t know how to survive financially, here are a few suggestions that might give you inspiration.

image freelancing

Become a freelancer

In this day and age, it doesn’t really matter who you are, where you’re coming from and what you do – as long as you have a computer and a connection to the Internet, you can make a living by freelancing. This is a great opportunity for anyone who’s just moved to a new country and can’t find work, and it’s even better if you have some experience too.

Freelancing will give you a chance to travel the world and have lots of different experiences, but also allow you to make a decent living. Still, be sure to explore all the details of freelancing in a foreign country – especially the legal boundaries that may or may not apply – before you actually start doing it, just to make sure nothing bad happens.

Become a writer

Being a writer is one of the best jobs in the world, but it’s one of those things that don’t feel like hard work even though they actually are. If you want to become a good writer, you need to invest time into getting there – reading, practicing, editing your own work, etc.

The reason why writing is so great for all those people moving to a foreign country is that they can do that wherever they are. Whether you’re a content writer, a journalist, a poet or a fiction writer, all you need is a computer, and you’re good to go. So, if you’re struggling with a career abroad, take this idea into consideration, and you’ll surely find a way to make a living by writing.

 

Become a teacher

This is another amazing idea for all those creative people out there who are good with words but are struggling to find work. If English is your native language, you’ll surely be able to work as an English teacher anywhere in the world, from South America to Asia, and you often won’t need any qualifications at all. You can even turn this into a full-time position, especially if you’re in Hong Kong, for instance, so consider joining the professional Monkey Tree ESL team, and you might be on the road towards finding work in no time at all.

People who speak English fluently aren’t the only ones who can start teaching – on the contrary, being fluent in languages like Japanese, French or Arabic can be more than helpful in certain parts of the world. This means you’re different from all those English teachers and can give the local community something special, and that means you’ll find work easily.

 

Become an au pair

If you love children and don’t mind living in someone else’s home, this is the perfect job for you. Most people aren’t aware that au pairs can earn a considerable amount of money in certain countries, not to mention free board and food. This experience will also help you work on your language skills, especially if you’re taking care of younger kids.

If you’ve never done this in your life, don’t worry – au pairs don’t need any particular skills or previous experience, although having some could only benefit you and help you make even more money. What’s also great is that you’ll probably get the weekends off, which means you’ll be free to explore the country you’re living in and enjoy all of its beauties.

 

Living abroad is a challenge, but if you get a great job, it doesn’t have to be too hard, so just find something you like and enjoy the next chapter of your life.