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Digital marketing is an industry where everything happens with lightning speed.

Every year new trends appear while others pass into history. There is hardly a company that does not invest in marketing activities today. Software development agencies, eCommerce and even your favorite coffee-house at the corner, all use different means to promote their businesses.

Today, it is important to build a whole digital marketing strategy to maximize performance and minimize expenses. Let’s jump right into juicy details and learn what it takes to build successful marketing activities in 2020.

What is Digital Marketing and Why Use It?

Digital marketing encompasses all marketing activities performed on the Internet. Today, it consists of a wide range of marketing efforts and includes content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, paid to advertisements, etc.

Consumers spend a lot of time on the Internet surfing social media, looking up information and entertaining. In most cases, if you need to reach the target audience, the online world is the best place for that. 

Digital marketing forms the basis of all marketing activities for a company. Embracing it, you will be able to stay competitive. Moreover, customers expect companies to invest in marketing so that they have the ability to interact with their favorite brands online.

Main Types of Digital Marketing

As was already mentioned, digital marketing consists of different activities that companies engage in to attract new clients and retain existing ones. Let’s take a look at the main types of digital marketing that can be applied in 2020.

Search Engine Optimization

You’ve probably heard a thing or two about SEO. During the process, you need to optimize the website and its content to make it rank higher in search engine results.

Search engine optimization includes both on-page (you perform directly on your website) and off-page activities (one that you perform outside your website but in relation to it). The first type of SEO usually includes working with keywords, meta tags, etc., while the second encompasses link building, guest posting, etc.

Content Marketing

Content marketing directly correlates with SEO. The main purpose of this marketing activity is to improve brand awareness with the help of content, including blog posts, ebooks, whitepapers, infographics, etc. For example, if your company provides software development services, you can write an article “How much does it cost to develop an app?” explaining to the readers of your blog how your company approaches app development.

Social Media Marketing

The promotion of brand and content through social media channels is a common practice both among big and small companies. Based on the type of business you are running, you might need to engage Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, etc. Content that your share on social media should be fun, interesting, and created with less formality. Often, companies show the behind-the-scenes life of their companies and people that back-up all their operations.

PPC

Pay-per-click ads are thriving and bringing great results for companies that utilize them wisely. Aside from the most famous Google Ads, almost every social media offers such services. You can set up paid campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even on Quora.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the type of marketing activity when you pay other people or companies for promoting your services and bringing new customers. It is based on providing your affiliate partners with links that direct users to your website. You either pay some percentage from the sales generate from a brought customer or operate on the per-customer-based basis.

Email Marketing

Even though some say that email marketing will be dead soon, today it brings no less significant results than it brought a few years ago. Companies use email marketing as a way to communicate with their audience, promote content, offer discounts, tell about holiday sales, invite to events, and much more.

Influencer Marketing

In 2020, the number of social media users worldwide has surpassed 3.8 billion. For some companies, including eCommerce, fashion, and lifestyle, there is no better way to reach a target audience.

While the creation of your own dedicated group of followers on Facebook or YouTube can take a lot of time, you can speed up the process of building brand awareness with influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing entails cooperation with influencers, people or organizations that are widely known for having an expert level of knowledge and social influence in some specific field. When choosing such influencers, it is important to pay attention to their target audience and whether it relates to your target audience and niche.

Digital Marketing in 2020: Final Thoughts

With thousands of companies offering the same services and products, the need to invest in marketing activities has never been so pressing. There is a saying that if a business is not online, no one will know about it.

Digital marketing is a complex approach to business promotion that requires the participation of a whole group of specialists. Still, for small and medium businesses, it is possible to select up to three types of activities and concentrate all the efforts on them and later move to others.

Author’s Bio

Ana Lastovetska is a technology writer at MLSDev, a custom software development company in Ukraine. She has been researching the field of technologies to create educative content of distinct topics including app development, UX/UI design, tech & business consulting, etc. The opportunity to deliver information for people who want to understand more about IT and app development processes is something that inspires Ana. You can get in touch with her on LinkedIn or reach her at ana.lastovetska@mlsdev.com.

Conversion Rate Optimization is crucial for successful e-commerce. It is important that you convert visitors into customers otherwise e-commerce will not be able to earn a profit no matter how many visitors it gets. Whenever a visitor decides to come to your store, there is an opportunity to improve the conversion rate.

To enhance CRO e-commerce needs to observe customer behavior and offer a shopping experience that will help in earning their trust and loyalty. Learn from the actions of the customers and position your website in a way that customers are encouraged to make purchases.

Successful conversion rate optimization requires proper planning and strategizing. Here are a few important dos and don’ts regarding CRO.

Do’s

1. Technology has made its way into every aspect of our life. It is hard to imagine getting through the day without using your smartphone or laptop. To compete with other e-commerce businesses you must be aware of the latest technologies that you can use to improve conversion rate and improve sales. Digital marketing is continuously evolving and keeping up-to-date with all the emerging technologies. It is important to integrate the latest technology and you will be able to bring up the conversion rate.
2. To improve the conversion rate you need to be observant and vigilant. You also need to take a scientists’ approach and test strategies of the e-commerce site. By testing strategies, you will know if you are dedicating your resources and effort to the right strategy or not. You should also keep an eye on the competitors.
3. Measuring results is vital for CRO success. If you are not measuring results then you will not know if you are achieving your goals or not. Measuring results let you know about the effectiveness of the strategies you are using. You need to collect data and analyze it to get better results.
4. You must not let any sales opportunity pass by. There are going to be visitors that are ready to make a purchase and are on your e-commerce just to explore. You need to figure out a way to encourage customers to come back to your e-store and make a purchase. Make sure that you allow signing up for an email alert or newsletter so that you can keep them updated about what you have to offer. Easy signups are effective in bringing customers back to the online store and make some purchases.
5. Using exit-intent technology is a smart move as it offers a second chance to convert visitors just as they are about to leave the website. You need to offer a well-timed incentive that makes visitors curious and they are compelled to try out whatever you are offering.

Don’ts

1. Never make the mistake of thinking that you can never be wrong. To achieve success you need to focus on numbers as they are instead of as you want them to be.
2. It is not easy to find visitors for an e-commerce site because there is a lot of competition. If you are having trouble finding visitors then you should not just sit around and wait for visitors to come. Consider using paid advertisements as it will give you the boost you need.
3. Mistakes are a part of life and to run a successful e-commerce business you will need to take some risks. You need to realize that not all of your strategies are going to work. You should always plan for the best but prepare for the worst. Do not get discouraged if you make any mistakes because they offer a great learning experience. Mistakes let you know what strategies you need to avoid in the future.
4. Making drastic changes is not good for the conversion rate. It is the aim of every online store to quickly increase conversions but it is not something that is going to happen overnight. Conversion optimization takes planning and time as it is the science of making incremental changes and keep track of everything. Drastic changes do not pay off so it is better to add up changes and achieve the result you want.
5. Never forget the importance of business metrics. Metrics help in tracking the progress of a business and find ways to increase the conversion rate.

About the author

Usman Raza is the co-founder of a Church Marketing Company and marketing strategist working with various brands online. Usman is the content marketing manager at an Email Marketing Agency, WordPress Customization Service, and Nano Hearing Aids. He is devoted to helping small businesses bridge success gaps by providing in-depth, actionable advice on digital marketing, SEO, and small business growth. Follow him on Twitter @usmanintrotech.

Twitter does not just claim one of the top spots as a Social Media Platform, it is also one of the best platforms used by the business for promotions.

While it is being already used by most businesses for promotions, there is no doubt that new and growing businesses can make use of it for more business and increased reach among the masses.

Twitter can play a crucial role in scoring new clients and business for many start-ups that keep popping up almost every day. Several innovative startups begin with great motives and ideas that could really make a difference; however, because of the lack of proper marketing, many of them fail to gain recognition.

Here in this piece, we take a look at the top Twitter Marketing Tips for Startups that can help you make your business flourish, starting right from scratch.

1. Use Right Hashtags: In order to make tweets, you need to find out the hashtags around which you will be creating content. The top priorities should be tweeting with trending hashtags that belong to your industry. This needs constant monitoring of trending hashtags and being creative in order to find a connection between the hashtags and your business. You can also go to the extent of using hashtags that do not belong to your field yet is a hot trending topic.

One more thing that you need to take care of is to make sure not to use more than 2 hashtags in a single tweet. Tweets with 2 or fewer hashtags get more than 20% engagement than the tweets with 3 or more hashtags. You can always make new tweets with fresh content with the other hashtags that you wished to use.

2. Create Engaging Content: We all know Content is the King, and the same applies to Twitter as well. A successful Twitter Marketing Strategy always prioritizes short, crisp, informative, and engaging content. Try to create content that revolves around your brand and the products/services you offer.

The maximum text limit of a tweet is 140 characters; however, it is always recommended to accommodate your content within 100-110 characters. Tweets falling in this category get higher engagement.

Also, try to include photos, videos, and links in your tweets for more engagement. You can even build a tweet around an image or video. You can use multimedia to provide more information to the audience than a tweet allows.

3. Build a Great Profile: Your startup’s profile plays an important role in getting new followers and building trust around your brand.

A great profile has an attractive profile picture, a cover picture with additional information about your startup, a crisp and straight forward bio, your website, and other useful information. You can even add your startup’s location on your profile.

You can also use your profile to pin an important tweet to the top which you would wish the visitors see.

A great profile always helps to build rapport among visitors and pushes them to follow your profile.

4. Engage with Audience and Influencers: Twitter is an engagement-driven community. The more you engage with people, the more you will be noticed. You can mention users in your tweets, reply to their tweets, and even retweet their content for engagement. With more engagement, you will be visible to more Twitter users from different user communities.

Along with your followers and other users, it is also important for you to engage with influencers in your field. These influencers may have many followers interested in your startup and you can gain new followings by regularly being visible with great content.

5. Use Twitter Analytics: Twitter Analytics is a very important tool that can help a startup with more followers and building your business. Analytics will provide engagement information for every tweet made by you. By using Twitter Analytics you will get information regarding which sort of tweet gets more engagement. This way, you can plan and create a Twitter Marketing Strategy with the kind of tweets that will get you more engagement.

Startups can really make use of Twitter to grow their business multiple folds. You can even go for paid promotions on Twitter to get more engagement. I hope these Twitter Marketing tips for startups were helpful. Feel free to contact us in case of any doubt.

Tech is evolving fast and you more or less have no choice but to digitize your business to compete. However, this is not without its demerits as organized hackers and criminals have come out full throttle to take the slightest benefit from any security loopholes in business systems. That is why, as a startup owner, you need to take serious considerations of the security measures to put in place to evade cybersecurity attacks. Now, let’s explore the crucial steps that you can consider implementing to protect your business from cybercrime.

Ways to Protect your Business from Cyber Attacks

Use secure file sharing

While sharing files over the internet, you are at risk of attackers or even malware that may distort your documents. To ensure that your data is safe from any form of attack, go for secure file sharing with secure data room as you collaborate on files in your work environment. Go for a service that offers end-to-end encryption that will protect you from external hackers while letting you take control of your data

As a rule of thumb, you can always double-check permission settings so that you can determine who to allow to view your documents. Moreover, you can run audits on your files to see who is accessing them. If you no longer need the file, you can opt to remove it from the cloud altogether.

Update your software regularly

Outdated software is prone to cyber-attacks, malware, and viruses. To keep the files of your startup safe, you need to ensure that the software you are using to carry out your business transactions is up to date and patched for vulnerabilities frequently. That will deny any unauthorized third parties access to your system via the bugs in outdated software.

Enforce the use of strong passwords

Ensure that all your team members with corporate emails and profiles on your website create strong passwords for accessing the system. Remember, hackers take advantage of weak passwords to gain entry into a system, thereby corrupting your data and stealing your information. You should encourage your workers to create a strong password of about ten characters long, with a mix of letters and numbers. Additionally, forbid your team members from sharing their passwords with unauthorized parties. They should also keep changing their passwords frequently.

Educate your team members about email and email use

Make sure to teach your team members about malware and phishing attacks and urge them not to open attachments from unknown sources. Ask them to report any suspicious emails that they may receive. This will ensure that they don’t get to fall into the traps of hackers.

Backup your files

The need to have a backup for all your business files cannot be overstated. You should make sure to back up your files as often as you can. Remember that the backup drives should only connect to the machine during the backup, and after that, you should disconnect to minimize the risk that they may be affected. Ideally, go for automated backups to make things a little easier for you.

Use a reliable antivirus software suite

Choose a good antivirus software, whether free or paid, that provides maximum protection against viruses, malware, and internet threats. Ensure to take a lot of caution so that each time a USB stick is inserted into your business PC, you should make sure to scan it before using it. Always turn on the safe browsing feature of the antivirus to avoid accidentally visiting any malicious websites.

Take caution while visiting websites

You should also switch to HTTPS from HTTP as far as your site is concerned. The HTTPS protocol for browsing uses encryption techniques and is more secure than HTTP. Make sure that essential places like the ones for email and financial payments contain the secure HTTPS protocol.

Find the best security solutions for your business

Choosing the right security solution is essential as it gives you a chance to get the desired level of protection necessary for your business. Top cybersecurity solutions are designed in a way that gives protection to your business against things like Man in The Middle (MITM) attacks, and other vulnerabilities. So, find a security solution that’s ready and simple to use. You can hire experts to find vulnerabilities in your business and implement the best solutions.

Conclusion

While technology has come in handy to make running business easy, the challenge of cybersecurity threat cannot be underestimated. You should ensure that you take the necessary measures to protect your business from any threats. Don’t wait for a breach that can destroy your business!

When people hear the term “fake news“, their usual first thought is about those social-media posts that contain inconceivable and bizarre stories. While the posts that are shared on different social media channels happens to be an aspect that is most visible, there is a lot more to “fake news” than an exaggerated article title on a social media feed. The Doe is an anonymous newspaper that provides a safe space for honest, straightforward thought-provoking news and is central in the fight against fake news. They discuss the use and abuse of social media in the world of news at the moment.

Cyber Propaganda And Fake News

Fake news often appears to be new. However, it usually just the platform that has been used that is new. Propaganda has been in use and around for hundreds of years, and the Internet has become the most current form of communication that is abused to tell lies and spread misinformation.

A Fire Triangle is a representation of 3 elements that are needed for a fire to burn. This includes fuel, heat, and oxygen. In a similar way, “fake news” needs 3 items in order to succeed. These items combined represent the Fake News Triangle. When one of these factors is missing, the misinformation and lies are not able to reach targeted audiences and spread.

The Fake News Triangle

The initial requirement includes services and tools to spread and manipulate a message across specific social media platforms or networks and many of these are sold across several online communities all over the world. There is a wide range of services and tools available, with some that are somewhat simple (paid followers/likes, etc.), while others are a bit more unusual, with services that promise to overstuff online polls. There are even services that force the owners of websites to remove stories. Regardless of what tactic is used, the services and tools for social media promotions are available from outside and the inside of the underground scenes.

In order for these types of tools to become useful, social channels need to be present as the platforms to spread propaganda. With more and more people spending a lot more of their time on such sites to gather information and to keep up-to-date with the current news, their importance when it comes to spreading fake stories and news should not be underestimated. However, there are differences between just putting up a propaganda post and turning the post into something targeted audiences consume. We give information on the types of techniques that spammers use to attract users into watching or reading their stories.

Analyzing social media provides us with more of an understanding of relationships that occur between bots and recipients of a social media promotion when it comes to platforms such as Twitter. This offers us a good idea of the organization and scope of these campaigns that are attempting to manipulate the opinions of the public.

Finally, propaganda campaigns are also always accompanied by the question: why? We talk about the motivations and goals behind these fake stories and news. In some cases, it is simply the desire to make profits through advertising. While in other situations, the goals may vary from political to criminal. Regardless of what the motive might be, how successful the propaganda campaign will be is based on the way that it has an impact on the “real world”.

Users, companies, and governments, have started to become more aware of the seriousness of manipulating public opinion, which has manifested in the form “fake news”.

Governments have started to realize that propaganda and “fake news” is something that needs to be dealt with. Many different government agencies have now started to set up services that are focused on exposing these stories, that they believe are false. Some government entities have even started to consider imposing regulations along with punishing and fining websites that have published this misinformation.

There is plenty of room for opinion-based reporting without it becoming fake news. Thedoe is a great source for this.

Some of the targets linked to the latest regulations include social-networking services. This will make misinformation and fake news extremely bad for businesses, and this is why they have taken the necessary steps to avoid it. These steps include suspending suspicious accounts/bots, adding in features that allow their users to file a report on fake news, and hiring additional personnel to assist with handling such reports.

However, at the end of the day, users need to become more informed and educated. In our paper, we go over the main signals to look out for when it comes to fake news, which will help readers to determine whether the posts they are reading are real or fake. We also go over the psychology linked to fake news in the way of explaining what makes these types of campaigns work, along with how they convince readers. When readers are aware of these techniques we hope that it will empower them to resist these misleading stories and information.