Results for: content marketing

How to Nail Your Small Business Branding

Steven on August 16, 2019

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

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

1. Start with a Logo

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

2. Work on Your Relationship with Customers

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

3. Use Social Media to Your Advantage

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

4. Find Your Voice

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

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

5. Don’t Let Your Customers Down

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

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

6. Never Take Your Eyes off the Target Demographic

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

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

Digital Branding

Essential KPIs that Matter to Savvy Social Media Managers

Steven on August 11, 2019

This post is contributed by Olu Bunmi.

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

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

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

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

What is Social Media KPIs?

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

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

This brings us to

The Evolution of Social Commerce

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

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

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

Social Media Marketing by the Numbers

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

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

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

Furthermore,

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

Why Businesses Need a Social Media Strategy in Place

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

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

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

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

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

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

7 Essential KPIs For Savvy Social Media Managers

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

Audience Growth Rate

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

Click Through Rate

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

Likes

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

Shares

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

Comments

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

Reviews/Feedbacks

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

Impressions/Profile Visits

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

Conclusion

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

Author Bio:

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

Legal Branding Local Branding

5 Inexpensive Ways to Market Your Business

Steven on August 11, 2019

Every business owner is always looking for two things: growing their business and saving money. It would be great if everyone simply came in and gave volunteer hours or 100 million people suddenly decided that they needed to buy your products.

Marketers are always trying to make sure they are at the top of their game and looking for new ways to improve their brand. Tactics are changing constantly and what may work one month isn’t going to work the next.

While you may never receive Shark Tank like exposure either, there are surefire ways where you can successfully grow and market your business without breaking the bank.

Social Media

Social media is king these days. People get their news from social media, communicate with one another and use their profiles to promote businesses and products.

The good news for you is that creating a social media page is 100% free. There’s no subscription service, up-front payment or money you have to commit. Making your business’ social media page is quite easy.

Now, you can do paid promotions for your business which are much cheaper than traditional advertising. With social media, you’ll want to make sure you’re consistently updating your page. That could be with photos, news on sales or links to your company’s website.

Just remember to keep it updated and fresh, so people won’t be trying to figure out if you’re still in business or not.

Networking

It’s a tale as old as time, but word of mouth and old-fashioned networking can do wonders for your business. You never know if that person at the convention, your neighbor or your friend’s cousin can help you or vice versa.

You don’t have to be that person who is whipping out their business card at every single minute, passing it around and making sure everyone knows who you are. You can be the kind and the cordial person who isn’t afraid to talk about themselves, up to a certain point.

Cross-Promotions

There are plenty of businesses out there who are direct competitors and others who can simply go together. Don’t you think the CEOs of Peanut Butter and Jelly love working together?

In all seriousness, cross-promotions are a great way to promote your business while helping others. If you run a tour business, you can put your information in local restaurants while you let them print their information in your tour packet.

Look for other business and workplaces that can offer you a symbiotic relationship. It also helps to have plenty of referrals out there as well!

Direct Emailing

Making a newsletter is a simple way to keep your customers involved in what is going on with any sales or promotions.

Just have customers give you their email address upon purchase or completion of services and voila! You’ve just found a surefire way to keep in contact with your customers for as long as you want.

Whether you may your newsletter weekly or monthly, make sure you’re consistent so you have constant feedback and outreach with existing customers and maybe even reach some new ones.

Giveaways

You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone that would turn down something that was being given to them for free. That’s why you can offer put on various promotions and giveaways with your business.

You can do it through social media or your storefront. Have people like, comment and share your latest announcement to enter into a drawing. You could be doing a buy one, get one free with your store.

Pass out items at trade shows or conventions to have your name and logo circulating out there as much as possible.

Local Media

If you’re local, one of the ways to easily promote yourself is through local media. That can be a radio, TV or the newspaper. Local news is always looking for a story, and you can all and ask them to talk about your business.

It’s an easy way to not only talk about yourself but to make sure your business is being put in front of hundreds of eyes or ears. You don’t have to go on a blazing media trail, but just having something out there will help people become aware of what you’re doing and how they can reach you.

Digital Branding

The Most Efficient Ways to Make Money on Instagram

Steven on August 7, 2019

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

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

Start with Building an Audience

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

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

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

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

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

Writing a Blog

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

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

Influencing

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

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

Dropshipping

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

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

Affiliate Marketing

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

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

Grow and Sell Accounts

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

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

Instagram Marketing

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

Showcase Your Products

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

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

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

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

Digital Branding

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

Steven on August 6, 2019

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

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

Amazing, right?

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

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

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

Research your customer interests

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

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

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

Leverage user-generated content

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

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

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

Building relationships with customers

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

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

Unlock the power of Instagram carousel

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

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

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

Use the right hashtags

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

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

Understand your CTA

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

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

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

Measure what’s important

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

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

To wrap it up

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

Digital Branding

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

Steven on August 4, 2019

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

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

1. Optimize For Mobile First For Great SEO In 2019

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

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

2. Write For Humans, Optimize For Search Engines

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

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

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

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

3. Page Speed

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

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

4. Think Like Your Users For Best SEO In 2019

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

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

5. Jump On The Voice Search Bandwagon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Digital Branding

How To Get Your First 10,000 Followers On Instagram

Steven on August 4, 2019

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

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

Get Followers On Instagram

Food blog phoot

1. Finding the right content

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

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

2. Make your followers feel special

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

Build interactions

3. Set timely goals

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

4. Work with other influencers or marketers

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

Always use hashtags

5. ALWAYS use hashtags

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

6. Keep track of your Instagram Insights

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

7. Learn from Instagram Engagement Groups

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

8. Call your followers to contribute

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

9. Embed Instagram links in your blog posts

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

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

Digital Branding

5 Reasons Why SEO Is The Most Powerful B2B Strategy of 2019

Steven on July 31, 2019

Over the course of the last two decades, digital marketing in the world of B2B sales have exploded.

Now, it’s almost impossible to run a successful business if you don’t have a basic understanding of digital marketing and the most effective strategies within it.

In such a fast moving, largely digital industry, staying on top of the best strategies to use isn’t always easy.

There are new tips, tricks and innovative ideas that are tested on the market every year, and others that disappear just as quickly as they arrived.

However, one strategy that has stood the test of time and proved to be a powerful strategy for B2B marketers everywhere is search engine optimization.

This strategy involves optimizing web pages using a number of different methods to make sure you rank high in search engine results for specific keywords.

Most marketers have heard of this strategy, but the reality is that it takes hard work to implement and see the results you’re looking for (aka, it does NOT happen overnight).

With that being said, we definitely think it’s worth the time to invest in SEO, which is why we’re naming it the most powerful strategy for B2B businesses in 2019.

Here is everything you need to know about how re reached this conclusion, and why you should implement SEO for your B2B business today.

https://unsplash.com/photos/zhZydTyNMPg

Search Engines Bring The Most Organic Traffic To Websites

One of the most powerful tools in B2B marketing is online traffic to your web property. The more qualified traffic you have, the more successful your marketing efforts will be.

Some B2B businesses have found success on social media platforms like Pinterest and Instagram, but it’s absolutely essential that most of your attention is focused on SEO.

In fact, SEO is a key strategy for most successful marketers because it allows you to drive organic traffic directly to your website.

You might not think this is a big deal, but when you consider that there were over 63000 searches per second on any given day in 2018, it’s something you need to take advantage of.

Using researched keywords, both longtail and short phrases, can prove invaluable in the world of online digital marketing.

SEO Provides Targeted Traffic

You shouldn’t be focusing on SEO just because it brings organic traffic to your website.

SEO is also great for B2B companies because the traffic you receive will be targeted, with your web pages being found by those genuinely interested in your industry, products or services.

Obviously with so many searches being made every second, there may be some curious website visitors, but the vast majority will be visiting your website because they want to learn more about what you’re talking about.

This is extremely important to consider when, according to Moz, the average search session lasts less than a minute, giving you a minute amount of time to catch the attention of your target audience.

SEO In B2B Marketing Can Profit From Low Volume Keywords

One of the ways SEO is powerful to B2B marketing efforts in particular is that it allows you to profit from low volume keywords.

This is different from B2C companies, where competing for high volume keywords is the main goal, and one that even many B2B companies needlessly chase.

Instead of doing this, stop fighting things and go for the more specialized keywords. You need to find out what your audience are really searching for.

Having this information will allow you to provide real value towards those that need them, even when you aren’t appearing in the best search results.

Better yet, with less competition, it’s far easier to appear at the top of search results, which is always a bonus.

It Has A Long Term ROI

Digital Authority Partners explains that the priority of B2B companies should lie with the ROI a specific product, tool or service can bring to an organization.

The good news is that SEO can provide extremely high ROI, in the long term as well as the short term.

This is because the weeks and months of effort you put into practicing SEO will build up your authority with search engines, allowing you to gain more traction as time goes on.

In fact, using SEO is far more successful than other advertisements, with Website Magazine suggesting that SEO brings in 6 times the number of leads that SEM does.

If you continue to update your content over time to make sure it relates to the keywords you are using and is still the most informative thing in your industry, you are likely to reap even more ROI benefits.

This is because your article will remain high up in the search results for longer periods of time, and you will be labeled as a front-runner in your industry in the eyes of search engines like Google.

Gives You Access To A Larger Market

SEO definitely isn’t the only way to gain access to a larger market if you’re operating within the B2B market.

Things like social media are also used by a number of businesses throughout the world, and can go some way into helping you gain networking connections.

With that being said, many social media websites have restrictions that mean they don’t work in certain countries.

One such instance of this is China, which has a booming B2B market but no access to many traditional social media websites used in the western world.

Despite this, they account for 3.6% of Google visitors, making them one of the top visitors from across the globe.

By using SEO to target these B2B customers, you are giving your business the best possible chance of getting in front of some of the biggest markets in the world.

Summary

If you’re looking for a B2B marketing strategy that will provide you with instant results, SEO may not be the right option for you.

Given the patience and nurturing this strategy needs, however, SEO could land yourself with significant conversions that continue bringing you results for a long time after you’ve optimized a webpage.

Considering B2B businesses are all about calculating the best ROI possible, we definitely recommend giving this a go and seeing if you can make it work for you today.

This article is contributed by Codrin Arsene @ Digital Authority Partners

Legal Branding Local Branding Personal Branding

5 Tips for Hosting a Successful Small Business Event

Steven on July 26, 2019

Planning a small business event isn’t easy. Any missteps can hurt your mission and have serious repercussions for your company. On the other hand, if you get everything right, a festivity like this can help your operations in many ways. For example, it can help you attract investors or increase your base of loyal customers. But how exactly do you host a successful small business event? Listed below are five tips you might want to know about.

Know what you want to achieve

You’d be surprised by how many small business owners in Australia believe hosting an event is a great idea but when asked what their goals are, they can’t seem to find an answer. To make certain this isn’t the case with you, start thinking about what you want your event to achieve as soon as you decide to host it. Do you want to draw attention to your newest product? Do you need financing for your next project? Or you just want your Facebook page to start growing? Know what your goals are and coming up with the ideas that’ll make your event a success will be much easier. Fail to do this and your event will turn out to be nothing but a waste of money.

Don’t forget about money

Obviously, hosting a small business event can be expensive. Not only do you need to pay for a venue but there also other aspects of it such as catering and entertainment. That said, it’s very important to establish a budget and stick to it when planning the entire thing. Having a clearly-set budget will help you avoid overspending and ensure there’s always some money left just in case some unexpected costs come up. One trick that worked well for many business owners is breaking the budget into small pieces. You can then assign those pieces to every aspect of your event and make certain everything goes as planned. Of course, keep a record of all your costs so that you can later determine whether your event can be labeled as a success.

Think about catering

There’s no point in hosting a small business event if you’re not going to serve food and drink. Forget about catering and you’ll see your attendees leave even before you get to say everything you want. When it comes to choosing food for your event, it’s important to have in mind that people know have different diets and getting something for everyone if your safest bet. For example, you can never go wrong with adding a few vegetarian options on your menu. Sydney experts in corporate events say that serving alcohol at your gathering is a perfect way to have everyone enjoy it. Therefore, turning to experts who offer professional alcohol delivery service in Sydney can turn out to be a great idea.

Delegate some of the tasks

You may believe that you’re capable of planning your upcoming gathering yourself but in reality, letting others help you is a much better idea. Juggling too many things at once means you can’t pay attention to details and details matter a lot when it comes to small business events. Luckily, all you need to do is turn to your staff members and find ways to include them in the planning process. Think about each of your employees’ strengths and interests and you’ll be able to assign them the roles they’ll enjoy. For example, if there’s an employee you know has a good taste in music, why not have them create a playlist for your event? This will allow you to focus on more important aspects of the planning process and ensure everyone enjoys the music at your event.

Get the word out

Depending on the type of event you’re hosting, you might need to promote it if you want to achieve all your goals. The good news is, there doesn’t seem to be a lack of channels you can use to promote your event. So, if you aim at reaching customers who might want to attend your event, using social media is a must. All you need to do is create a Facebook event and have your followers share it with their friends and family. In case there are important clients you’d want to attend your gathering, sending them a carefully-written email invitation is always going to work. Just don’t forget to include a signature that’ll help them remember your business. For local businesses, channels such as newspaper and radio commercials are guaranteed to work as well.

Final thoughts

Providing people with a fun event is a great way to help your business achieve its goals. The best way to do it is to start preparing on time and paying attention to every little detail. Have these five tips in mind and you should be able to host an event everyone will find memorable and enjoyable.

Legal Branding Local Branding

3 Main Reasons You Have to Host an Open House

Steven on July 24, 2019

Selling a property on desirable prices is a difficult and time-consuming process as well. When you want to sell your apartment you usually think about different real estate agents and online advertisements of your property. The open house is a term that makes people think that they will face a strange type of peoples in their home. A huge amount will be required for the event of an open house. In reality, the open house is the best tool for the seller. The open house will bring customers directly to your doorstep. If you have an apartment in the Palm Jumeirah and you want to sell that apartment, then an open house will be a great tool for your selling process. The people who want to buy an apartment in Palm Jumeirah will visit your open house and will check your apartment without any long procedures. The open house will save you from a long time-consuming selling process. The open house needs proper ways and methods to attract customers. The following are the details of these ways by which you can make your open house successful and can get your desired customer and price as well.

It’s an Opportunity to Set Your House Apart from The Rest

Posting ads related to your apartment on the internet along with the pictures will not attract customers properly. The open house will allow them to visit your home and check everything without any realtors and other time-consuming processes. This type of open house hosting needs a proper home decoration. The decoration of your home will attract customers more. Hire staging company for furnishings. The good appearance of your home will make the process of selling faster.

Social Situations Ease Tension

In the open house, you will face multiple types of customers along with their agents. You and your agent can directly meet with customers and can discuss the process of your home without any embarrassment. These types of social events give a good and relaxed environment. The timely home viewing is usually not relaxed for you and the customer as well. You will get embarrassed by customers that come to visit your home at different times open house can save you from this time-consuming process by inviting all customers at the same.

Reduction in Marketing Cost

The open house will reduce marketing cost. You can easily sell your home by an open house as too many eyes on your apartment in a small duration of time will make selling process faster· The individual showings usually take more time and the open house can skip all these individual showings. The one-day affair is easy then every day showings of customers at your home doorstep.