Category: Digital Branding

Five Key Takeaways for Building a Customer Portal in 2019

Steven on October 1, 2019

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

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

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

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

1. Listen to what your audience asks for.

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

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

2. Know when to say no.

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

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

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

3. Use design to translate your product.

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

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

4. Go where the people are.

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

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

5. Stay true to your values.

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

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

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

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

Digital Branding

5 Home Office Productivity Hacks You Can Start Using Right Now

Steven on September 29, 2019

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

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

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

1. Turn Off Your Cell Phone

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

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

2. Change The Ergonomics

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

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

3. Take Breaks

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

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

4. Save Easy Tasks For The End Of The Day

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

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

5. Leave The Office Early (Sometimes)

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

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

Final Thoughts

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

Digital Branding

5 Ways to Scale Your Content Marketing Campaign

Steven on September 27, 2019

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

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

Take an omnichannel approach to distribution

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

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

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

This brings us to our next point.

Repurpose your content into different formats

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

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

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

Blog posts
Videos
Podcast episodes
Slideshows
Infographics
Social media posts

Hire more content writers

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

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

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

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

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

Invest in content marketing tools

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

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

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

Learn to do industry outreach

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wrapping up content marketing scaling

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

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

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

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

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

About the author

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

Digital Branding Legal Branding Personal Branding

3 Ways to Increase Brand Awareness with Content Marketing

Steven on September 26, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Content Marketing for Brand Awareness

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

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

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

Newsletters

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

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

Here are a few tips to help you get started:

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

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

Blog

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

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

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

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

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

Social Media

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

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

Wrapping Up

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

Digital Branding

5 Design Hacks that Cannot be Ignored by UX Designers

Steven on September 26, 2019

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

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

1. Include Microcopy

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

2. Provide Previews

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

3. Allow Editing After Submission

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

4. Re-Confirmation Before Submission

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

5. Giving Submission Confirmation

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

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

Conclusion

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

Digital Branding

7 Basic Digital Marketing Terms You Need To Know

Steven on September 25, 2019

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

#1: Return On Investment(ROI)

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

#2: Return On Ad Spend(ROAS)

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

#3: A/B Split Testing

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

#4: Remarketing

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

#5: Quality Score

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

#6: Bounce Rate

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

#7: Call To Action

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

Digital Branding

Benefits of Using a Press Release Distribution Service for Your Business

Steven on September 16, 2019

The Internet has drastically changed the way people get their news and information. In fact, most of them get important updates from their favorite companies through social media.

These days, many businesses have recognized how social media and digital marketing strategies are powerful tools in improving profits and statistics. However, they tend to forget about press releases, which are equally effective in rallying desirable numbers. When done right, press releases can have a huge leverage on your audience’s brand opinions, as well as potential investors’ financial decisions.

Why Should You Consider Press Release Distribution?

Say you’ve decided to include press release writing into your company tasks and budget. You can either reach out to media outlets on your own, or you can also enlist the help of a press release distribution service. A distribution service is highly recommended when you have big announcements, such as a change of leadership or a new product announcement.

What are the Benefits of Enlisting a Distribution Service?

Services like Pressat press release distribution make the job of getting desirable media coverage a lot more efficient. It can also give you a lot of search engine optimization (SEO) benefits when you put out well-written press releases.

Listed below are the benefits of sending your press releases to trustworthy distribution services:

1. It Attracts Positive Publicity

Regardless of how small or big your company is, press release distribution can make your business look good to every kind of audience. You may not always have an explosive kind of story to tell, but you constantly have stories that are worth telling. There will always be magazines, journals, blogs, and other media that will be interested to share your story.

Distribution services have a wide network of media outlets, so you can be sure that your press release will reach more audiences compared to when you choose to distribute it by yourself.

2. It is Relatively Inexpensive

Businesses usually have an in-house press release writer. Hence, press release distribution usually isn’t that expensive since the only thing they need to do is to get your story to their various media connections. Compared to advertising, press releases are a lot cheaper, and it’s a lot more likely to widen your brand’s reach.

For a small investment, it can give pretty decent returns on your investment when you do it regularly. You may not see the results immediately, but you will surely benefit from the good effects of positive publicity when the time comes.

3. It Improves Brand Awareness and Visibility

Press releases are one of the best ways to put your brand on top of people’s minds. If you’ve made your press release campaign as part of your marketing efforts, your audience will always be in the know about your brand.

This can be especially helpful for small companies. Although marketing strategies can help you communicate with your target audience, press releases can also capture the attention of credible media outlets––which leads us to our next point.

4. It Boosts Your Company’s Credibility

Once your story gets shared by long-established and trusted media outlets, people are a lot more likely to believe that you’re a field expert. If you are just starting out, it is very essential that you establish yourself as someone who is very knowledgeable in your field. That way, your audience will be a lot more likely to trust you and get your products or services.

Being a field expert can also be good with your public relations strategy. When a story related to your field comes up, you’d be the one that they will turn to for comments and opinions. Hence, people will also recognize your expertise in the same manner as your media partners.

5. It Reaches the People You Want

Because press release distributors are able to widen your company’s reach, it can attract all the types of people that you would want on your side. We are talking about your target market, potential employees, and investors.

When your company’s stories consistently make it to media outlets, people are a lot more likely to follow your story and what you’ve been doing. They will be interested in what happens next, and they will be enticed to stay with you.

Conclusion

Press release writing can be one of the best strategies that you can ever add to your marketing campaign. If you are currently not well-connected with established media outlets, a press release distribution service can get your word out to the right people. They know exactly who to contact when it comes to sharing important stories with the world.

Digital Branding

How Proper SEO Can Help Boost Your Brand Better

Steven on September 16, 2019

Improving your company’s brand awareness among its potential clients is a necessary step in hitting your numbers goal. When more people are able to recognize and trust your brand, it’s generally a lot easier for you to establish your credibility within your chosen niche. This can be challenging at first, but with the help of experienced search engine optimization (SEO) companies like rankfire.agency/, you can certainly penetrate the target market that you’re after.

Employing effective marketing strategies becomes all the more important if competition exists. In order to stay relevant, you have to make sure that people will choose you among all the other companies that offer similar products or services. That’s where proper SEO comes in.

SEO as a Marketing Booster

Before, SEO was plagued with marketing shortcuts like keyword stuffing. People kept on sprinkling keywords on their pages and sacrificed content quality so that search engines could pick up what their website talked about the most. This may have helped brands get better search result rankings, but the Internet eventually evolved with the people who constantly use it.

Now, SEO techniques have dramatically improved: it now focuses on high-quality content and user engagement. When you do it right, it will attract all the right customers, which eventually converts their loyalty into desirable numbers for your brand. Listed below are some reasons why proper SEO can shoot your brand’s image right to the top:It Helps Create Niche Posts

Nowadays, it has become a lot easier for businesses to connect with their audiences through their social media platforms. To ensure that you get to keep the interest and loyalty of whomever comes across your brand, you can create niche posts with the help of SEO so you can target them specifically.

This is especially useful for small businesses, as the content’s specificity can help them get ahead of their competitors. Although being very focused with your content doesn’t exactly cast a wide net, it actually gives you a higher chance of attracting new customers––and engaging with the ones that you already have on your team.

1. It Makes Your Posts Very Specific Using Long-Tail Keywords

This one is connected to the first point. Long-tail keywords allow you to get in touch with more specific audiences. For example, if your business involves creating custom-made hiking packs, you should focus your SEO efforts on ranking for “custom-made hiking packs prices” (long-tail keyword) as opposed to “hiking packs” or “custom-made hiking packs” (short-tail).

In this manner, it’s easier to filter out those who are really interested in what you have to offer as opposed to those who are just looking for general information.

2. It Enhances Your Brand-Related Content

A reliable SEO company can improve your website’s content such that it is able to reach the right audience at the right time. It helps establish your place in the field as a reliable source of information, products, or services. If you focus on producing quality content even for just a few loyal customers, then more people like them will gravitate towards your brand.

Once you figure out how to satisfy the information and product needs of your audience––and ranking high on search engines at the same time––your brand will definitely be known for the better. Many people will begin to see you as a brand that knows what they are doing, and knows how to follow through.

4. It Helps You with Link Building

SEO also takes care of creating content that will appropriately link back to your website. With the existence of various social media platforms and online forums, employing proper SEO strategies can help you gain traction among various online communities. When done right, this can grow your audience organically.

5. It Promotes Your Brand Image

The ultimate goal of any brand awareness campaign is to promote a desirable brand image. Consequently, this will boost not only your website traffic and audience engagement, but also your sales.

But what role does SEO play in this? If you focus on all the keywords that you want to be connected to your company, SEO can be a powerful tool in influencing your audience’s perception of your brand. The more that they associate important keywords to you, the more that they will choose you over your competitors.

Conclusion

SEO is just one of the many marketing strategies that can boost your brand among your target market. However, when you get it properly done, the right people will always find you through a quick and simple Google search.

Digital Branding Legal Branding Personal Branding

Why Is Automation Important in Business

Steven on September 13, 2019

Changes in global trade policies brought increased demand for business to perform high-level complex functions which were labor-intensive modules. The advent of cloud computing and technological advances have made automation a reality, bringing not only quality and consistency but also governance and reliability, improving return on investment by a removal/reducing manual effort which improved operational efficiency.

1. IMPROVED OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY: Particularly in the service industry, automation has given leverage to overcome the traditional barriers between information and communication, by enhancing customer onboarding and engagements that help generate revenues. As per Industry reports, it has been observed that customers prefer a company if they can interact with them. We know the operational cost associated with opening and maintaining a call center. Small business cannot afford to have one, but automated phone lines they can afford to look after their huge client base by providing basic information about their products or services, process payment, and other non-essential queries.

2. QUALITY & CONSISTENCY: Quality is a crucial parameter that cannot be undermined, whereas automation makes sure that all actions are carried out the same way to ensure the consistently good quality outcome, with reliable on-time results. With Automation, generating reports to scheduling social media posts or be it to deliver email marketing campaigns can be performed with ease. Data has become the driving force for contemporary business operations, which has helped firms gain key insight into consumer behavior, audience engagement and their buying patterns. Without automation, it is impossible to think about handling huge amount of data and to safeguard clients and staff information. Automation software’s like BiG EVAL provide data quality solutions for the whole life cycle of data to turn the principle into value in / value out. Hence, automation software has become an indispensable tool for business operations, which can help us maintain, recover and save data This, in turn, can provide a high level of service to your customers at low costs.

3. TIME SAVINGS: Time management is of prime importance when it comes to service deliverables. Most of the employees have been observed performing repetitive tasks which are viewed as counterproductive and boring. Automation can help automate many of these repetitive tasks, which can either reduce headcounts or deploy your employees to do something more important or scale your business. Hence this has two aspects, one that allows to use staff members more effectively and secondly to hire only staff which are necessary, cutting down on expensive outsource workers and extra staffing. Just imagine what a 30% increase in staff productivity would contribute towards business operations?

4. GOVERNANCE & RELIABILITY: Automation can handle complex work, eliminating hours of manual work without any error. One of the prime concerns with companies is to avoid human errors. Automation has not only brought expertise but also reduced processing errors. Making an error would mean operational loss with high penalty or compensation, also putting reputation at stake.

5. REDUCED TURNAROUND TIMES & COSTS: Leveraging automation would mean, teams, spend less time creating tickets, working on them and eliminating unnecessary tasks. Manual work is synonyms to perform one task at a time which is labor-intensive and need long hours, which would increase the overhead cost. Automation helps streamline the process, increase accountability, transparency and centralize processes which in turn helps to optimize the flow of information throughout, example – production, billing, servicing and more. Hence, we can claim it as the key ingredients for any company to grow and serve more clients…

6. BETTER COLLABORATION: Creating and maintaining several spreadsheets, account data is no easy job either, let alone retrieving any specific information out of them on time. Automation platforms increase transparency into business operations by consolidating data in such a way that at any point of time one can figure out the performance of the organization as well as the of the team members. Even though the implementation of automation is not cheap, need dedicated developing team who can respond to challenges posed by the change in market trends and requirements, and there are no immediate returns, still, automation is a necessity to sustain in the market.

Automation and predictions

Experts believe that there will be a complete re-embodiment of chatbot features with enterprise expectations. From being just providing simple service desk functions, chatbots may have voice and chat enabled cognitive knowledge engines that can address a range of customer requirements. Automation coming in aid to governance and compliance will be a reality, for example, EU’s GDPR will enforce organizations to automate their processes to enhance their accuracy, speed, and governance. Such encouragement will initiate setting up of automation centers by the enterprises which will be a move towards governance and compliance. Risk management, auditing, controlling and change management activities will gain prominence. For any automation please check Wyzebulb for connecting all your apps.

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How to Invest in Foreign Markets

Steven on September 9, 2019

If you’re an investor, putting your money into foreign markets makes a lot of sense. We all know how important portfolio diversification is and foreign markets may be exactly what you need to spread out your investments. However, this is one of those things that are easier said than done. Anything from language barriers to foreign regulations can become an issue and make your job much more difficult. In case you’re looking for some help, here’s how to invest in foreign markets with stock apps.

Be aware of the risks

One of the first things we have to mention about investing in foreign markets is that it can be quite risky. After all, you probably don’t know much about the markets you’re investing in nor are you familiar with the political situation in those specific countries. Things like this are important since they can affect your investments on so many levels. Although investing in foreign markets comes with its risks, it’s still worth doing because it’s a great addition to your portfolio. However, it’s recommended that you don’t allocate more than 25 percent of your money to them. No matter how much money you invest in these markets, it’s first necessary to do some research, just to make sure you’re making the right decision.

Don’t forget to rebalance

We already said that investing in foreign markets isn’t easy. Still, setting up your foreign investors isn’t necessarily the most difficult part of it. With a little bit of research, you should be able to find markets that look worth investing in and exactly what your portfolio needs. But what comes after is a lot of rebalancing. You can’t just keep contributing the same amount into each of your investments every month. Instead, it’s up to you to keep track of how well each of these markets is doing and rebalance your investments accordingly. These efforts can turn out to do wonders for your investments, especially if you look at it long-term.

Work with the pros

As mentioned above, investing in foreign markets can be tough. The internet is a great place for finding information, but that information isn’t always going to be as accurate as you may think. Even if you do find the right markets to invest in, executing those investments can prove to be challenging as well. The good news is, there are experts like those at ETF who can help you find the best solutions for your portfolio. These companies are specialized in foreign markets and know much more about them than you’ll be able to find online. Turn to these experts if you want to ensure you make the right investments and do a huge favor to your portfolio.

Choose the right stocks

When investing in foreign markets, it’s extremely important to identify the right stocks to put your money into. Have in mind that these aren’t always the stocks that are expected to bring the most income in the next couple of years. Instead, it’s up to you to figure out how much money you’re working with and how much risk you can accept. Once you know exactly what you’re ready to do, only then you can find the “best” stocks to buy in foreign markets. If you’re not sure where to begin, just take a look at the stocks you already own and try not to go with something too different. Coming up with a list of both short-term and long-term goals can help as well.

Try to be consistent

Most rookie investors believe that it’s all about making your investments at the right time, especially when investing in foreign markets. However, trying to sell your stocks just before decline or buy them just before they reach their value increases is usually just a fool’s errand. We’ve seen a lot of examples where “staying in cash” tactic outperformed bad timing by a lot. Therefore, don’t put too much thought into headlines about “Brexit” or financial situation in Greece. Instead, being consistent with your investments should help you perform at your best. If you hear about the next emerging market, don’t just go and assume your timing is right. Do your research and only then consider investing in that specific market.

Final thoughts

Some say that people are now more ready to take risks when it comes to their investments than they did a decade or two ago. Even if this is true, it doesn’t really have to translate into poor investment decisions. Instead, it means you should be more ready to explore different options such as foreign markets. Still, however, investing in these markets requires a lot of hard work and getting all the assistance that you might need. Do everything right and you’ll ensure you maximize your returns over time.