Steven – Page 87 – Altitude Branding

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What Is an RTO and What Would You Need to Start One

Steven on November 27, 2018

The education industry is a vast and diverse one, however, not all of its beneficial aspects are intellectual and altruistic. By becoming an RTO (registered training organization), you can provide an invaluable service to those who desperately need it while making a profit for yourself along the way. RTO is an organization that provides vocational education and training (VET) to students in order to prepare them for their specialized careers later on. Now, even though there are over 5000 RTOs in Australia, most of which are in specialized niches, there’s still some room for growth and advancement.

1. TAFE vs. RTO

Before we proceed to discuss this important issue, it’s important to mention that there are a lot of people who mistake the term TAFE (technical and further education) with the term RTO. While on the surface, these two terms may sound somewhat similar, the fact is that TAFE is government owned and RTO is privately owned makes all the difference in the world. Other than this, TAFE is less niched than RTOs, which are mostly oriented towards equipping one to deal with a very narrow, specific set of services. As for the popularity and the issue of how widespread both of these organization types are, last year about 2.4 million students enrolled in various RTOs across the country, while only about 739,000 did so in various TAFE organizations.

2. RTOs in the business world

One of the greatest differences between RTOs and the traditional, formal, education, lies in the fact that RTO has a great application in the business world. First of all, an RTO expert can make an estimate of skills that are in the greatest demand by your business, as well as compose a development of training program that will allow for it to satisfy its needs. Other than consulting and planning, an RTO can provide training equipment, personnel and reliable RTO materials that are necessary for this task. Most important of all, sometimes knowledge isn’t enough and, in that case, RTO can produce a nationally-recognized qualification or a certificate. In other words, the RTO system isn’t just an element in the present-day business world, it’s one of its supporting pillars.

3. Steps to start an RTO

In order to launch your own RTO, you need to apply for a registration and fulfill several vital steps. First of all, you have to complete the application, pay all the fees for initial registration, go through an initial annual RTO registration charge (right away) and, of course, meet data provision requirements. Keep in mind that this organization isn’t just educational but also financial, in nature, which is why it’ll have to undergo a thorough audit. Later on, if necessary, you’ll have to make certain changes to registration and renew it year after year. Australian Skills Quality Authority is in charge of this and their decision is final, yet, their decision can be contested and changed, provided that you manage to persuade them otherwise. Still, the body reviewing your registration usually tends to be fair and unbiased.

In conclusion

Regardless if you’re someone with an aspiration of starting your own RTO or merely aim to collaborate with one (individually or as a business). Knowing how they work, why they are relevant and what types there are may help you understand them better. As for the registration process, getting familiar with the organization in charge of their approval and supervision might help you trust them substantially more in the future. Either way, all of the above-discussed is a common knowledge that’s more than worth possessing, even though a lot of people still remain oblivious when it comes to specifics of this topic.

SaaS Branding

6 Essential Attributes Of Transformational Leadership

Steven on November 26, 2018

Positions of leadership are meant to be for service; you are more of a servant that is working hard to shape the way for others to follow. The strategies discussed below are meant to help you become a better leader and are worth implementing in your daily life.

1. Understand Your Leadership Style

You should start with understanding the kind of leadership style you have; your strengths and weakness so that you know which areas need improvements. You can start by answering this leadership style questionnaire to help you have an idea of how you do things.

After that, you can read about the various attributes of a dominant leadership style and see if the qualities you exude help or hinder your leadership. You will know what to address and how once you know which areas need improvement. There is a big difference between styles – for example read the differences between transformational vs transactional leadership principles here to get an idea of the differences.

2. Be A Role Model

You will know you are a role model when your followers idealize you. Idealized influence is often a sign of excellent leadership and is among the four primary components of transformational leadership. Such a leader has a character and behavior that encourage others to want to be the same. How they walk, talk, and related with others is something the team members desire to emulate.

So, work on being a role model, and you will exude the qualities that make you be seen as a good leader.

3. Have A Positive Attitude

Any transformational leader should be upbeat, having an optimistic attitude that members can find to be a source of inspiration. A leader that seems weak, disheartened, or apathetic will never inspire his or her group members.

You should never seem dreary or disheartened even when things look bleak. While it does not mean that you always need to have high hopes things will get better, you should exude optimism in the face of uncertainties.

4. Listen & Communicate Effectively

A leader will encourage one-on-one communication among the members of the team. Every transformation leadership will never fail to express sincere care and concern, and this can should be evidenced through verbal and nonverbal communication.

The channels of communication should always be open so that member feel that their leader is always reachable and available to listen to their concerns and give recognition for their contributions.

5. Inspire Creativity

A transformational leader is one that perks intellectual stimulation in others. The under your leadership often need encouragement when it comes to expressing their creativity. Therefore, always provide ample support when your present new challenges and help your followers to exercise their creativity to come up with solutions confidently.

You can achieve this objective by the challenges your present and what you wish to achieve (the goals) are within your team members’ abilities. The aim should be to get them to stretch their creativity to the limit without feeling that their shortcoming regarding the same is a barrier to their success.

6. Be Passionate

As a leader, you should show that you genuinely care about the growth, goals, and success of your group. That is how the member of your team will look to you for guidance. You should not come across as being only focused on achieving set goals, but how you do it; having the passion and enthusiasm to guide your followers through the process.

Kind of different ways of doing things, of expressing your zeal, or showing you are there for your group. It is about showing you care and you appreciate the input of each member of the team.

instagram opens new marketing opportunities

Digital Branding

How to Use Instagram to Promote Your Brand

Steven on November 26, 2018

Gone are the days when Facebook was the only platform where people could promote their brand or market their business. Now is the time when there are a lot of other social media platforms that are quite famous with higher user engagements than Facebook and here by those platforms we are talking about none other than Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest etc.

Instagram is the application that has a lot of hype nowadays, and well, all the hype for this application is quite justified as there are more than 700 million monthly active users on Instagram and this figure is increasing each day. You might be wondering that what’s so special about this platform and why is it so famous nowadays. Well, there are two reasons to why Instagram is growing. First of all, it’s an easy to use application with no complications and second, it’s a visually based platform where your pictures and videos do the talking.

Now, if you are someone new to the digital marketing world and if you want to promote your brand then we’d suggest you to start with Instagram because it actually is a pretty effective platform that can bring you a lot of followers and customers within a short time span.

Want to know how to get started on Instagram? Well, here’s what you need to do;

1- Set up your business account

The first thing that you need to do is to set up your business account on Instagram, and that too is very easy. All you need to do is to sign up, put in your information, put your brand name, and get started. You will be guided by Instagram on what steps you need to take to make your account perfect for your brand. If it’s for your brand, then keep your personal account separate from your business account. Keep one thing in your mind that your audience cares about what you have to offer to them and how you are offering it to them. They clearly don’t care about your selfies or anything related to your personal life so make sure to stay brand oriented and focus on telling people about your brand.

2- Content matters the most

Sure, you can opt for buying Instagram followers but you need to make some effort on your own too, and that’s possible if you post quality content. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter or any other platform, your content will always be the king, and you cannot drift away from this fact. So, the first thing you need to put all your focus on is your content. Make sure that you’ve got the best photography skills and the best-edited posts because that’s what will bring you more and more followers.

3- Using hashtags

Hashtags should be your number one priority because they will help you increase your visibility. At the end of the day, it’s all about increasing your visibility because that’s the only thing that will bring your more and more customers. You see Instagram allows you to put a total 30 hashtags under each of your posts and you need to think of these 30 hashtags as 30 different opportunities to come in front of your customers. So, never forget using the hashtags and give some extraordinary captions too.

Conclusion

These are some of the main tips that can help you promote your brand on Instagram. You can also use ads to increase your visibility and gather more customers. Use these tips, and we promise you that you will see some positive results within a short time period.

Digital Branding

Video Marketing Tips to Get You Ready for 2019

Steven on November 26, 2018

Video marketing and video content, in general, will become more prominent in 2019. More and more marketers are using video content to convey key messages for one simple reason: the audience responds better to videos.

The video marketing landscape is about to get more competitive as we get closer to 2019, so it is time to bring your best game and craft a campaign that separates you from your competitors. These next tips and tricks will help you get ready for 2019.

Photo credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/two-person-watching-video-on-laptop-1321732/

Tell a Story

I cannot stress enough how important it is to tell a compelling story when producing video content for marketing purposes. While promotional videos worked really well a few years ago, the way forward is capturing the stories around your products and delivering those stories in a positive and engaging way.

Storytelling should be a big part of your video marketing campaign. The best agencies like Spiel Creative now focus not just on the short-term, in-the-moment stories, but also on the bigger picture; they use long-term brand stories to convey their message to the audience. You should too.

Make Demos Interesting

Just because you need to start telling stories, it doesn’t mean you should drop making product videos altogether. There are still ways to utilize product videos and product-related tutorials to engage the audience. That said, you need to make demo videos and other relevant content more interesting.

One of the ways you can do that is by employing 360-video technology. Rather than displaying the product in a more conventional way, you can add a 360-degree view of the product in video format. You can then use the content on your product page and other outlets.

Go with Explainers

Animated explainer videos, as well as whiteboard videos, are also going to be more popular in 2019. They are as effective as they were this year, but with a few added tweaks you can now use to boost the level of effectiveness further.

For example, you can make an explainer video that also works when the audience is only listening to the audio rather than actively watching the video. This is a content consumption pattern that it is certainly a trend you want to follow.

Think Mobile

Don’t forget that the majority of your viewers use mobile devices, which means you need to start tailoring your content for mobile audiences first. Avoid text and captions that are too small, elements that will not work on smaller screens, and videos that will not work without sound.

The latter is another data-driven strategy based on viewers’ content consumption pattern. We see people staring at their screens without wearing headsets, tuning in to videos with clear captions and engaging content that they really enjoy.

Rely on Data

Analytics and data-driven decision making are also becoming more prominent in 2019. The decisions you make regarding your video marketing campaign and the content you put out must take the available insights into consideration whenever possible; by “whenever possible,” I mean most of the time.

Data and other supporting information give you the reasons behind usage patterns and other insights you gather from the market. A good video marketing campaign is one that gets evaluated and refined regularly. The more you rely on data, the more you will understand your users and how to best cater to their content needs.

(Always) Deliver Value

While storytelling is the core of many successful video marketing campaigns in the future, delivering value remains one of the most important objectives to achieve. You cannot expect viewers to continue watching your videos when they don’t deliver value.

At the very least, you must deliver relevant information about your products and services. Adding information about how to benefit more from the products and services you have is also a good way to add value to your videos.

Commit!

Consistency is another important element if you want to have a successful video marketing campaign. You cannot build a larger and stronger audience base when you only upload one video every two months.

You need to invest in making more content while maintaining – if not improving – your production quality at the same time. Ideally, you want to release a new video every week to keep users excited and wanting for more. That takes a lot of commitment.

Involve the Customers

Telling stories about your products and services doesn’t always mean telling YOUR SIDE of the story. You can also explore the products’ stories from the customers’ standpoint. In fact, you should. Testimonials and user stories are some of the most engaging video content to produce right now, and it will continue to be impactful in 2019.

Always find ways to connect with your real customers and the audience in general. You can feature their stories to build even stronger relationships with the viewers. Besides, you can never go wrong with investing in relationships and maintaining genuine connections with your audience.

Use Video in Other Activities

Video marketing – just like other digital marketing instruments – cannot stand on its own. However, there so many ways to use video content to help the rest of your digital marketing efforts. You can, for instance, use videos to boost conversion rates with a stronger and more compelling call to action.

There is no better time to start crafting and fine-tuning your video marketing campaign for 2019 than right now. We are still a few weeks away from the New Year, but getting a head start is never a bad idea.

Digital Branding

How to Generate More Sales with Digital Marketing Campaigns

Steven on November 22, 2018

In 2017, advertisers spent 209 billion USD on digital ads worldwide compared to only 178 billion USD for their more traditional TV counterparts. The statistics show that the future of marketing is increasingly headed towards the digital space, as more and more businesses compete, promote and sell their products and services online.

You may have always wanted to use digital marketing to do the same for your business, but you’ll need to initiate a series of actions known as campaigns to convert a potential customer into a buyer. But how can you generate more sales of your products or services with digital marketing campaigns? Here are some of the ways:

Build a website for your business.

Businesses that originated prior to the Internet’s existence had to have a brick and mortar location so that people knew they were around. However, in recent years, it’s easier to start a business of your own even without the initial need for a physical address. All you need to do is to establish your presence on the Internet through the creation of a website where you can sell whatever products or services that you want your target customers to avail from you.

It’s entirely up to you if you wish to build a website on your own, if you have enough coding and web design skills under your sleeve, or outsource it to a web development agency instead. No matter the current size of your business, you shouldn’t skimp on building an updated website unless you want to earn a bad reputation for being out of touch with the times. Remember, the website is the face of the company.

Optimise your business website for search engines’ top ten results.

Even if you already have a business website built, don’t expect it to generate a decent amount of visitor traffic and eventually sales of whatever products or services you offer on its own. To organically increase the number of potential customers visiting your business website, you should make some adjustments to it such that it would consistently appear in the first page of results of every search engine with the use of search engine optimization (SEO) practices.

A few of those adjustments you can make right off the bat include naturally incorporating keywords throughout your website content that your target customers would most likely type, putting descriptive and relevant alt text in all of your site’s images, and ensuring that every webpage of your business website has an easily readable URL.

After all, you wouldn’t want your business website to die a silent death after it gets listed anywhere other than search results page one.

Make your business website mobile-friendly.

In 2018, mobile users make up a majority of Internet users. It only follows that you should make your business website mobile-friendly so that you can attract more customers who might chance upon it while casually browsing on their preferred handheld device. To optimise your business website for mobile, you should use responsive design wherein its layout as well as all images in it would adjust themselves to scale no matter the size of a device’s screen. All buttons in your business website’s mobile-friendly version should also be large enough to prevent anyone accessing it from tapping on the wrong button or link.

Consider setting up a blog for your business as well.

Even if you’ve already established a website for your business, your target customers would want to seek a more genuine connection with you. They want to feel that they’re more than just mere digits to your business’s sales figures. That’s why aside from putting up a website, you should also consider creating a blog for your business as well where you can connect to your target customers and sell you’re your products or services without sounding too cold and distant. You can incorporate it as part of your business website just like how most others do it – though you can also try making a standalone business blog as well if your budget permits you to do so.

Just make sure to craft content for your business blog that’s uniquely yours, interesting, relevant, informative, and of added value to your target customers all at the same time. For best results, combine long-form content that anyone can easily finish in less than five to ten minutes, the occasional infographic, and video posts in your business blog.

Use social media to your advantage.

Assuming you’ve already built a website and blog for your business, you might find their visitor traffic to be quite lacklustre. You can remedy that by tapping into the vast pool of potential customers known as social media.

You’ll very rarely meet anyone interested to avail of a product or service who still doesn’t have any social media account nowadays that it’s only logical for you to set up at least one for your business as well. However, you should identify which social media platform a majority of your potential customers often use. If most of your target market is on Facebook, for example, it won’t make any sense at all to sell your products or services via Twitter.

Conclusion

While traditional marketing has yet to go completely extinct, its digital counterpart threatens to displace the decades-long monopoly it once had, especially as more and more people learn about the products and services being sold by different businesses online. That’s why as someone who has a business of your own, you should allocate a good portion of your budget on doing the above-listed digital marketing campaigns to generate more sales of the products or services that you offer. But in case you find it difficult to implement them yourself, you can consider hiring a digital marketing agency instead – though you should ensure that they use a large file transfer service whenever they send their work back and forth with you.

Digital Branding

Guest Post and SEO Digital Marketing Training: Your Course Review Benefits

Steven on November 15, 2018

Guest posting and SEO (search engine optimization) digital marketing have become relatively common nowadays in the blogosphere. In our world today, both of these have become crucial in driving traffic to your website and business. Guest posting and SEO digital marketing are excellent strategies to build traffic, establish your brand, and boost search engine rankings.

Assuming you’re already aware of guest posting and SEO digital marketing as online strategies, are you also informed of their benefits? Both of these methods are actually useful for any business in all industries. If done correctly, guest posting and SEO digital marketing can lead to unique hits or traffic to your website or blog allowing you to reach more potential customers. If you’re into e-commerce, blogging business, or just any activity that requires marketing on the internet, you may want to consider training in guest posting and SEO digital marketing. In this article, benefits regarding a guest post and SEO digital marketing training course will be discussed.

1. Effective Guest Posting and SEO Digital Marketing

By joining this type of training course, you’ll be able to make use of more effective guest posting. Guest posting is as simple as having someone else write material on your site — or vice versa. Guest posting works both ways for the site owner and writer. Site owners receive more content to publish, while writers get to feature their content to a new audience. Doing guest posts correctly, you’ll be able to reap the benefits by having more views and traffic.

For SEO Digital Marketing, a training course will guide you on which relevant keywords to choose by having a clear website and quality content. Main goals will be:

A user-friendly website
Easy navigation
SEO keywords
Optimized tags and title tags

This course will also teach you to pay attention to details like keyword themes and relevant links to build more web traffic.

2. Guest Posting and SEO Digital Marketing Strategy

Next question you’re probably asking yourself is how posting can earn you traffic. A training course will teach you which ways your guest posting can influence traffic. These include:

Direct referrals
Social traffic
Organic traffic
Name recognition
+ more

These are key strategies that can make your website reach its optimal level.

As for SEO, this makes your website easy to find, navigate and categorize. By helping out customers easily browse through your site, you drive more people to your business and online platforms. Factors that come into play are the selection of right keywords, behavioral marketing, mobile advertisements, banner advertisements, social media marketing, and others. This course will train you on how to achieve just that and more.

3. Increased Rankings

Guest posts earn backlinks that can help you rank higher on Google, which in turn, creates more traffic to your website. SEO will also help you gain higher website ranks in the SERP (search engine result page) by performing well on social media marketing and digital marketing. The perfect guest post and SEO digital marketing training course will help you position yourself as a well-respected blogger as well. The course will teach you how to create the buzz that gets other people curious to look at what your site has to offer.

Digital marketing is a never-ending process, and you must be equipped enough to handle the ever-changing behavior and trends of your target audience — all of which will be taught in the training course. Numerous factors that will affect your site’s popularity and the time viewers spend on your page will be discussed in the training. Be the top ranking webmarketing123.com website by signing up for training today.

SEO and guest post best practices are constantly evolving — and a training course is the best way to stay on the top of the game. Has this article given you a more unobstructed view of the benefits of SEO digital marketing and guest posting? Digital marketing can be challenging and entail a great deal of work, but once you learn the ropes, developing strategies will be a walk in the park. You’ll have a well thought out optimization plan and traffic acquisition strategy once you take a training course if you’re up for it.

Digital Branding SaaS Branding

6 Things to Keep in Mind When Hiring an SEO Expert

Steven on November 13, 2018

Although search engine optimization can be understood and implemented by most people, businesses should still consider hiring an SEO consultant. Hiring an expert is important, particularly for business owners who are overwhelmed with business responsibilities and lack the time for their website SEO. A professional can also help if the basic techniques applied on your website are not yielding the results that you desire. When hiring an expert for your business, here are a few factors to keep in mind.

Experience

Given the rapid changes in the search engine algorithms, it is crucial to hire an SEO professional who has experience navigating the regular search engine updates without compromising or affecting the effectiveness of your campaigns. When it comes to SEO, you should never judge the experience of a consultant based on the number of years that they have been in operation. Be sure to check case studies that demonstrate the past success of the professionals.

Results

With an SEO consultant, you should pay attention to the results that they promise to provide. You should steer clear of professionals who give big promises like getting your site ranked on the first page of the search engine within a short time frame. Unless your business niche targets the uncompetitive keywords, it is impossible for anyone to predict the time frame required to achieve a higher ranking for any keyword phrases. A trustworthy professional will make realistic promises of results that they can achieve.

Customer reviews

When hiring an SEO professional, you should seek customer references. You should not just rely on the testimonials that are published on their websites. This is because it is easy for anyone to make up these recommendations or even pay other people to write biased reviews. Request the SEO expert to give you the contact information of about five references. Legitimate professionals will have this information available for their clients and you should be wary of consultants who refuse to provide this information. Make sure that you get in touch with these clients and inquire whether their SEO projects were successful and whether they would work with the consultant again. You can get a lot of helpful information from these reference checks to assist you in determining whether the consultant will be a perfect fit for the SEO goals of your business.

Industry presence

When hiring an SEO professional, you should consider their industry presence. You need a professional who has established him/herself in the SEO industry. Such professionals will regularly publish guest posts on renowned search engine industry websites, for example, Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Journal. They will also release white papers based on their experience and research and will be present in popular industry conferences. However, this does not mean that you should not hire upcoming SEO experts for your business just because they have not established themselves in the industry. With experts who have established an industry presence, you will be assured of getting excellent results because they already know their work and what is expected of them.

Provide clear expectations

Hiring an experienced and expert SEO provider is not an assurance that your campaigns will be successful. This is because it is difficult to tell whether your SEO plan will provide results just by looking at it. However, a good SEO consultant should explain to you what to expect when your campaigns are running. If you have already provided your needs and objectives, the professional should provide a detailed report on what he/she will do to meet your objectives. When it comes to SEO, metrics are crucial and by setting up clear expectations, you can easily determine the success of your SEO campaigns.

Cost of SEO services

When seeking SEO services, the fee charged by the consultant is a critical consideration. Very few businesses will have unlimited marketing budgets, and this is why you must consider costs when making your decision. You should be upfront about your SEO budget when speaking with prospective consultants. A good professional will offer ideas on what he/she can do with your specified budget and will inform you whether they are comfortable working within this spending limits. You should avoid consultants who are way out of your budget as it may strain your business financially.

Hiring an SEO consultant to help promote your business is a significant investment. As a business owner or website owner, you should mitigate your risks by hiring the right professional to provide quality SEO services. Therefore, keep the above-mentioned factors in mind when hiring an SEO expert to ensure that they have the knowledge, expertise, and experience to boost your website rankings and improve your business earnings.

Digital Branding SaaS Branding

5 Ways How Knowledge Base Software Can Prove To Be Useful For Your Organization

Steven on November 13, 2018

The larger an organization becomes, the more important it is for it to ensure speedy communication between its employees. A customer service representative, for example, is going to need to be able to access information at a moment’s notice. After all, making an informed decision is one of the cornerstones of good quality customer service. A great way to make information readily available to all of your customer service representatives is to use a knowledge base software such as the one offered by Kayako. However, you might be wondering what a knowledge base software is in the first place.

A knowledge base is essentially a hub of information. It is a place where an employee of your company can put all of their findings and data in a way that would make it very easy to access. All it would take is a line of text and all of the information relevant to your search query is going to end up being presented to you. A knowledge base can also be used by CSRs to get their questions answered quickly without having to get up from their seat. There are clearly a lot of benefits associated with using a knowledge base. Here are some of the most prominent benefits that we have found.

#1 Boosts Efficiency at Work

If your employee has to scramble every time they need something, they are going to end up wasting a lot of time. Having instant access to the information they need can allow them to cut down on response and resolution times. This time will add up eventually until your employees are saving so much time that the number of customers they are able to serve will end up increasing significantly. A more convenient way of storing information also helps make work more dynamic. If your employee doesn’t have to scroll through endless lines of bland data, they are going to be more energized and therefore more proactive about the job that they are doing. It’s all about making life easier for your employees after all.

#2 Facilitates Employee Cooperation

One of the most important things to work on in your company is making sure that all of your employees are working together. This creates a sense of synergy that can allow your company to move forward because all of the cogs in the machine will be working in perfect harmony with one another. A knowledge base software allows your employees to communicate with each other much more efficiently. Instead of having to get up and go to where their fellow employee is to ask a question, they can just do that through the knowledge base software. Since cooperating and collaborating with their fellow employees will have become so much easier, your CSRs are probably going to end up doing it a lot more often which will definitely contribute to an overall feeling of synergy in your workplace.

#3 Helps Preserve Knowledge

Not all of your employees are going to treat your company as a lifelong employment opportunity. Everyone wants to move up in the world, and for the current generation working for too long in the same place can end up being a boring experience, so you should expect a lot of your employees to move on to greener pastures eventually. However, just because you are losing an employee does not mean that you have to lose the work that they have done. Through a knowledge base software, you can keep your employee’s contribution to your IP secure and easily accessible for all future employees.

#4 Allows Employees to Work Remotely

We live in a day and age where coming to the office is no longer a requirement in order to be a good employee. Nowadays you can work from pretty much anywhere and do a fine job. A knowledge base software can allow your employees to work remotely. It also makes it possible for satellite employees to communicate with one another, sometimes despite never having met each other! This can really improve your prospects by hiring employees that might have seemed impractical before due to how far away that employee is from your office.

#5 Improves Customer Satisfaction

Needless to say, a knowledge base software is going to really improve how your customers feel after they have phoned in with a complaint. Faster response and resolution times mean that your customers will be pleasantly surprised by how quickly they can get done with the call or chat. This is going to keep adding up over time until your company has a stellar reputation for the customer service that it provides. A knowledge base software can thus contribute a lot towards making your company’s future a lot more secure than it might be right now.

Digital Branding

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Which is the Better E-commerce Platform

Steven on November 9, 2018

Photo credits: https://pixabay.com/en/ecommerce-shopping-credit-card-2607114/

Are you in the market for an e-commerce solution? If so, you’ll definitely love this short WooCommerce vs Shopify comparison. I also think you’ll agree creating an online store is a challenging feat. Turns out you can create an online store easily, and in this post, we help you to choose the better e-commerce platform for your needs.

We break down the post into sections such as features, pricing, and support among other things. By the end of it all, you will pick the right platform for your online store. Do you lean towards WooCommerce or Shopify? Let us know that in the comment section at the end.

Without further ado, let us weigh anchor and sail.

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Basic Overview

WooCommerce is a plugin that you install on your WordPress-based website. It allows you to add powerful e-commerce features to any WordPress site. On the other hand, Shopify is a subscription-based e-commerce service. You don’t install Shopify; you simply sign up.

WooCommerce requires that you have a WordPress site first. Shopify doesn’t require you to have a website first; it’s a cloud-hosted e-commerce platform. While WooCommerce comes with a long (and often times arduous) configuration process, creating an online store on Shopify is a breeze.

Setting up a site on WooCommerce requires that you’re familiar with web-related things, even though it’s easy stuff once you get the hang of it. Things are a bit tidier with Shopify; setting a store on the platform is akin to signing up for a blog at, say, Blogger.com, or getting an email address at Gmail.com. Well, sort of.

All the same, both platforms come with enough features to launch a highly successful online store, whether big or small. Also, allow me to mention that the e-commerce platform that you end up picking from this comparison post boils down to personal preference and, of course, your needs.

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Features

WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin that ships with enough features to create a basic online store. If you need more features, however, you can count on the wide range of free and premium WooCommerce add-ons.

Out of the box, WooCommerce ships with a ready-to-use cart, a checkout page, shop and a “my account” area where buyers can track orders and view their profiles. On top of that, it comes with five default methods of payment but you can add more.

Other than that, WooCommerce comes with an intuitive admin dashboard that makes managing your online store as easy as A, B, C. And thanks to a dedicated Products menu, you can sell digital and physical products on your e-store like a boss.

In terms of store design, WooCommerce is compatible with most if not all WordPress themes, such as the free BuddyBoss theme, since it’s just a plugin. There are, however, WordPress themes that are specifically made for WooCommerce. As such, designing the perfect e-commerce store is a theme or a developer away.

Shopify, too, shines in the features department what with a slew of nice e-commerce-centric features. Since it is a dedicated e-commerce service, you can expect all the features you need to build small and enterprise-level stores. You also get a free sub-domain (you can add a custom domain later) and free SSL certificate.

On top of that, Shopify comes with a good number of free and premium extensions that allow you to add some nice features to your store. Still, Shopify is incredibly easy to use no matter your experience or coding knowledge.

In the design department, Shopify features hundreds of themes. Well, the number of themes available for Shopify fades in comparison to what’s available for WooCommerce. All the same, the themes are professional and specifically designed for e-commerce.

An intuitive quick-start wizard helps you to set up either, but Shopify’s onboarding process offers you much more convenience. It takes fewer steps and effort to set up a store on Shopify, something we can’t say about WooCommerce.

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Performance and SEO

On the web, content is king. Without amazing content, you cannot expect your store to perform well money-wise and on search engines. However, the quality of your content is only one of the more than 200 SEO ranking signals.

Nowadays, page load speed is an important SEO ranking factor. Now, this is where things get tricky, with some users claiming WooCommerce outshines Shopify and/or vice versa. Well, I root for Shopify here because it has dedicated servers that guarantee great speeds and uptimes.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have WooCommerce. The page load times you’ll record on WooCommerce depends on a couple of factors, the most important being the host you choose. Go for dirt-cheap hosts at your own risk – because, come on, what kind of performance do you expect from a host that charges a $1 buck per month.

In terms of performance and SEO, Shopify outshines WooCommerce since Shopify’s engineers do a great work of maintaining the servers for you. You just focus on the business side of things, unlike WooCommerce where you are in charge of site administration among other things.

Both platforms come with great SEO-related features, but that speed thing we just mentioned can be a deal breaker for WooCommerce stores, especially if you end up with a poor host. The chances of getting poor speeds on Shopify are slim.

Photo credits: https://pixabay.com/en/ecommerce-online-shopping-e-commerce-1992280/

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Pricing

As we’ve already mentioned, WooCommerce is a free plugin. However, to add more features, you will need extensions and these don’t come cheap. Your costs can quickly rack up depending on the extensions you choose, and this applies to Shopify as well.

To run a basic e-commerce store, though, you need about $29 bucks a month whether you choose WooCommerce or Shopify. But depending on the time commitment you put towards setting up a store, Shopify is the cheaper option in my opinion.

Besides, Shopify offers you a free 14-day trial to test the waters. You just need a paid plan to start selling. With WooCommerce, you need to find a web host, buy a domain name, set up WordPress, install SSL and then install the e-commerce plugin, before selling.

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Support

WooCommerce is open source, meaning you can get help on the support forums at WordPress.org. On top of that, you can sign up on the official WooCommerce site to get support. Shopify, on the other hand, is a commercial e-commerce solution. You get professional 24/7 support via email, chat or phone.

Final Words

Whether you go with Shopify or WooCommerce, running a successful online store is all about providing great value to your users. Endeavor to provide amazing products and user experience, and you’re golden no matter the platform you choose.

WooCommerce has a steeper learning curve compared to Shopify, but once you get used to either of the platforms, the cost, and effort required to run your store depend on the features you need. Shopify is for the entrepreneur who wants to hit the ground running. WooCommerce is perfect for the businessperson who isn’t afraid to play around with myriad settings.

Between WooCommerce and Shopify, which platform do you feel is the better option for your business? Please let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.

Digital Branding

5 Branding Strategies to Adopt for Vape Products

Steven on November 8, 2018

It is true that there have been speculations about vape branding; many of you would feel that marketing vape products and services would be risky. However, the truth is entirely different.

Ever since reports have come out in support of vape products, people have become more inclined towards switching from smoking to vaping. In fact, new bill has passed in favour of E cigarettes which will encourage businesses to promote vape products. It is being also claimed by NHS that vaping is 95% safer than tobacco cigarettes.

How do these ads affect people?

We all know the role of media in today’s world; people are more likely to pick things from seeing ads. According to the studies conducted by university of Kansas, watching advertisements regarding vape can stimulate one’s mind and attract a person to vape even if they have never vaped in their life.

CDC has also backed these facts claiming that expose to the advertisements about vaping products can definitely alter the brain chemistry of people making them vape. Hence, number of vape users is more likely to increase after being exposed to vape ads.

But how we market vape products?

It sounds like a tricky question, but to be honest, it is further from that. There are ways to brand vape products and spread word-of-mouth among people, like one of the best premium e liquids brand LongHornVapor did very well in its branding. Let’s talk about some of those strategies.

Creating an online presence

If you ever make a guess about someone and say they don’t use social media, you will lose that bet. It is one of the most cost effective strategies compared to conventional branding. According to Tobacco Control, it was reported that in the branding of JUUL, millions of dollars were spent online by the people in vape market. No wonder why there is so much buzz around youngsters wanting to add vaping in their lifestyle. What people see on Instagram, Twitter and other social media platforms, suddenly becomes a hot commodity. Yes, we are still talking about vape products. Infusing attractive elements of hip-culture, fun and relaxing ads with a bit of sex appeal will do the trick just fine.

Sponsoring events is the game-changer

Be it a movie star, a musician or someone whose who is famous, you can sponsor an event under your company’s banner. Letting a top-performer setting the stage on fire can give the most enthralling experience to the people making them want to vape.

Some of you might think getting sponsorships might be hard because of all the fuss that has been around. At the same time, people have been realizing great things about vaping. And unlike smoking, there are absolutely no restrictions when it comes to promoting vape products in any way you want.

It all starts with the flavor

That’s right! If you are someone who is thinking about spending a huge lump of money on marketing, make sure you set your target market first. You can do that by having the right flavors in your vapestore, Flavors like Cotton-candy, Whipped Cream eJuice, Gummy bear and Candy King can attract the younger lot, while flavors like brain freeze can promise to cater adults’ needs and really increase the footfall.

According to Truth Initiative, more than 40 percent of the people only opt to vape because of the promising flavors.

Go Hollywood!

No, we don’t mean auditioning for roles in a film but fusing your vape brand with the film industry can be the name of the game. Moreover, Product Placement is one of the most sought-after branding strategies in today’s world.

It is not something risky as many have opted to showcase vaping in the movies. Johnny Depp, Kevin Spacey and even Zac Efron have been seen vaping on the big screen. When stars vape, Boom! Everyone starts doing it. That’s the magic of right product placement!

Develop an app

Thanks to Google and Apple, a digital platform has been set for you to make your own mark and let your business flourish. But why would you need an app? It’s a very reasonable question to ask.

Many people who are having problems regarding vaping, the apps can be a way to provide them guidance. Apps like Vape Boss, Vaffle and couple more have been committed to providing useful information to beginners and people who enjoy vape-culture. You can also develop something on those lines. For that, distinguishing yourself from your rivals would be the key and focusing on the needs of people is a way to go.