Digital Branding

LinkedIn Branding and Sales Tips For Beginners

on November 28, 2019

Today, most businesses are on LinkedIn, probably including your company. But with your current efforts, are you even generating leads and converting it into sales? 

Your personal brand’s website is essential in creating connections. To establish yourself as an expert in the field, you must have great content. LinkedIn is a great platform to establish your brand, share valuable content, and convert leads into sales.

Indeed, lead generation is an essential part of the business. If you wish to gather paying customers, then you must have a good stream of leads. However, doing it on LinkedIn is not always easy. It demands skills, effort, and time. 

Thus, in this article, you will learn tips on how to generate sales leads on LinkedIn. 

1. Optimize your LinkedIn Profile

To optimize your page, polish it to make it as engaging as possible. Make it visually pleasing to make the content optimized during searches. Here are some steps on how to do it: 

  • Make Your Profile SEO Friendly – When you are filling out the information on LinkedIn, it should be SEO friendly. This can increase traffic, return on investment (ROI), and brand awareness.  Furthermore, you can compete with other business rivals and grow your business. 

Do this by conducting proper research to come up with keywords to optimize your profile.  Check what are the keywords your clients are searching for and incorporate it into your page. Proper keywords can provide you with direction, new topics, and wise use of your time. 

  • Fill Up All The Information – Fill up all the information in your profile completely. Research says you will more likely to receive inquiries if your page has all the information needed by the customers.  
  • Create A Vanity URL – A vanity URL, or branded link, refers to a descriptive and easily recognizable URL. It is a long URL that is converted to a short link to redirect from one location to another. It is different from short URLs of Goo.gl because it does not include the brand name of the person who created the link. It works by giving the audience a clear indication of the owner of the link. 

A vanity URL can increase brand awareness and improve your LinkedIn SEO. You can establish trust with your clients since people can easily recognize and remember your page URL.

  • 30-Second Commercial – Create a 30-second video commercial that answers the question “What do you do in your business?” and “What are the services that you provide?” Make sure that you include the text in your profile. This is a video pitch.
  • Showcase Your Projects – You have the chance to post the URL of your portfolio on your LinkedIn profile. Seize this opportunity. With projects, you can highlight your past work. You can demonstrate your talents and let clients understand the services you offer. 

As soon as your profile is done, don’t abandon it. Continue nurturing your page. To be a constant figure in the feeds of your clients, update your page regularly. 

Spend a minute each day to post an update for your LinkedIn network. Every time you post an update, your profile will be displayed on the feed of your connections. Make sure to add value to every post you make. See to it that everything is inviting and practical. Write articles, or share your business presentations. Finally, always take note of your goals. 

2. Write Effective Connection Requests  

Building your network is important to get the word out about your brand. When you reach out to people, you have reasons in your mind to justify why you want to connect with them. To connect with people, check their profile first. Look for something interesting and make sure to mention it in your personal message. 

For connection requests, the limit is 300 characters only. Make sure that you use this space wisely. Be straight to the point while also being genuine. 

3. Engage With Clients And Partners 

Encourage your contacts from other social media networks to connect to your LinkedIn profile, too. Thereafter, find opportunities on how to generate sales leads on LinkedIn from their connections.

Try manual searches to invite potential clients to visit your page. Join social media groups and be active in answering their questions. Post links to direct your contacts to your page. 

Remember, give the prospects what they want and need. At the end of the day, they are interested in building professional relationships. Thus, make sure that you avoid shallow marketing. Focus on professional engagement instead. 

You can achieve this by planning and conducting research. Be as detailed as possible to come up with a viable niche. Then, tailor your message to create a lasting impact. 

4. Write Recommendations For Your Contacts  

Write and post recommendations for your prospects and key contacts. After this contact approves your testimonial, it will appear on their LinkedIn profile. With this, they are more likely to return the favor. This can be a recommendation or referral, which would reflect positively on your brand.

Conclusion

It is possible to start generating leads on LinkedIn. But achieving hundreds of leads will not happen in one day. Learn to optimize your profile, connect with key people, and post content regularly. You will need to be creative on your posts to be noticed by prospects. If you are willing to exert time and effort, you will get leads in no time and win the hearts of your audience. 

Legal BrandingPersonal Branding

Importance of ID Badges in Company Branding

on November 28, 2019

The use of ID badges in all companies regardless of how big, small, or what they do is highly recommended. Any company that is not using them is missing an opportunity to take its brand to higher marketing levels. These badges have a significant impact in brand creation and promotion. Beginners have a better opportunity to compete with big brands if their employees and visitors are wearing branded ID badges.

Preparing the Right ID Badge for Branding

It all starts by preparing the ID badge that your business deserves. The procedure requires innovative minds and a reputable design and printing expert.

The journey starts with the preparation of the company logo. The company theme colors should be maintained, but they should be vibrant and clear. A visible logo that strikes a balance between size and visibility is perfect.

You should utilize both sides of the ID badge when you want to brand your company. While the main face of these promotional badges should have the name of the employee and logo, the backside can have less important information like a bar code to access the doors. This will leave the front face for the logo and perhaps the company slogan.

Many people ignore the ID badge strap, but this is another opportunity to promote your brand. Although it should not be too wide, medium-width straps can also be printed with the company name and logo for more promotion.

The last consideration to make is to ensure that the ID badge is durable. Both the design and the material used play a significant role in this. Thus, working closely with reputable experts will be a benefit to this project.

Why ID Badges are Important in a Company

As mentioned, the primary goal is to increase brand recognition. Yes, any visitor or person who interacts with your employees will note your newly designed logo, slogan, message, or any other information. They can remember the name of the company once they see it on the badge. But this badge goes way beyond this.

  • Improves employee confidence – A good ID badge displays the identity and sometimes the title of the employee. As they work, they feel that they are an important part of the company. Therefore, they will serve the company with a high level of confidence. This creates an excellent brand ambassador in the long run.
  • Better customer relations – Both customers and employees relate well when there is an identity. Many customers feel better when they know the name of the employee who is serving them. Because the badge increases employee confidence, the level of customer satisfaction increases as well.

Conclusion

All companies should have an ID badge for all employees. They are an excellent brand promotional tool that serves many other purposes as well. As seen from the above insights, it is easy to create a useful ID badge design if you use reputable designers. When the project is completed, you will definitely enjoy the fruits that will come forth.

Digital Branding

Google Autocomplete for Reputation Management and Other Activities

on November 27, 2019

Autocomplete is a Google feature that expedites your search process by throwing in some automated suggestions based on popular trends. Surveys tell you that this single component helps reduce more than 200 years of daily writing efforts. Ever since late 2004, this algorithm has been available for desktop, and then it became an integral part of mobile devices too. The main reason behind its widespread adoption is ease and convenience. Typing on mobile phones is comparatively tougher. Hence, it came as a welcome tool. 

However, you may wonder how to autocomplete can predict user behavior. An answer to this is that it collects information from different sources of Google searches, results, content, comments, reviews, and so on. Anything that gets more attention from people populates this space. Now, from this, one thing is clear you cannot limit its utility in terms of reducing writing efforts. If used smartly, you can benefit from it in many areas of digital marketing campaigns.

Online reputation management (ORM)

You can benefit from autocomplete in the field of online reputation management big time. When someone searches for your business or your name, he comes across autofill suggestions before your website. If it contains any negative terms about it, users can easily get influenced. So you cannot afford to ignore it. You have to be on the qui vive regarding anything that is partly or wholly negative about your business and make attempts to balance the predictions. For that, you have to detect areas where your image is highlighted in the negative light, interact with customers, and create positive feedback for yourself. 

Since social signals enjoy considerable search engine attention, you can emphasize your content, engagement, and messages there. Use and optimize positive keywords on your website and other accounts. Plus, try to establish higher positive connections so that you can gain positive reviews, ratings, and focus.

Keyword suggestions

Doing keyword analysis, which is an inherent part of all SEO techniques, is not an easy job. You have to spot the relevant keywords and the ideas that go well with them while doing search engine promotions. Although you cannot depend on Autocomplete thoroughly for this, you can start from here for content development. For best results, you can use it along with Google keyword planner and other third-party tools. It can prove hugely useful in predicting CPC, competition, and other things. 

Besides, if you intend to fill the content gap with long-tail keywords, then again, it can come in handy for you.

Customer behavior

Search patterns can reveal what your users are searching for online. They speak of their intention. If you can go deep down their intent, you can optimize your pages, messages, layout, and photos accordingly. For that, you may have to search many websites and their content also to have a fair idea of people’s expectations. When you do this, autocomplete gives a peek into strong long-tail keywords as well as user intent. You can target them through your content for different stages of the buyer’s journey and benefit. 

If you want to exploit this feature for long-term benefit for ORM and SEO purposes, contact a reliable NYC based digital agency, such as RMG Digital Solutions, for assistance. The experts can guide you properly.

Digital Branding

Tips To Prevent AdWords Spend Wastage

on November 26, 2019

Reaching the top of search results organically is a massive challenge considering the competition out there. Where SEO struggles to get you there, Google AdWords can serve quick and effective results. This paid form of advertising can take your website to the top sooner than you expect. However, the major concern is that burning money on AdWords is equally easy. This is because you tend to focus on maximizing your reach to get the highest possible number of clicks.

But you may end up adding those click costs very fast by casting a wide net since a majority of them may be irrelevant. Simply speaking, the number of people clicking your ads increases but a majority of them are not qualified leads. Considering this contradictory behavior of AdWords, you need to look for a strategy that gets you the best results while minimizing irrelevant clicks that cause ad spend wastage.  Here are some tips that can help.

Target specific audiences

The worst mistake that a PPC marketer can make is aiming too broadly. By targeting a broader audience, you may be able to reach a greater number of people. But only a small percentage of the targeted audience is likely to convert. Conversely, your campaign should target specific audiences who are more likely to convert. With this approach, you spend less and still get a higher proportion of conversions with more qualified leads clicking your ads.

Opt for modified broad match keywords

Another good idea to filter out unwanted clicks is to opt for modified broad match keywords. With the default broad match setting, your ads will appear for all the searches which are related to your keywords, not specifically the precise ones. This means that you may get more impressions but they will probably be less targeted. Inevitably, you will end up paying for clicks from the users who are least likely to convert. The solution lies in modifying your broad match keywords by appending more keywords that are likely to match the buyer intent.

Use negative keywords as well

Choosing what not to target is another smart way to curb costs and curtail wastage on your AdWords spend. A negative keyword is essentially the opposite of a regular keyword that you would want to focus on. With negative keywords, you tell Google about the specific words for which you do not want your ad to be served when they are a part of the search query. This strategy lets you eliminate the unwanted traffic and avoid worthless clicks, thus bringing down your ad spend to a considerable extent.

Track and tweak

Though you need to be bang on while targeting your audience and keywords, it won’t be enough. Keeping track of your campaign is equally important. The idea is to track its performance so that you can identify the flaws and tweak the campaign to address them. Tools such as Google Ads Cost Calculator can be of great help. This smart tool lets you know about the money being wasted on non-converting activities. At the same time, it also provides the CPA aggressiveness score for the campaign. With clear numbers, you have a picture of wasteful activities and can easily come up with a plan to reduce them.

Leverage geographic targeting

Not using geographic targeting is another reason why you may be wasting your ad spend. What if you are shipping only to a particular location but running your ads for the whole world? Obviously, you will be getting irrelevant clicks with very little conversions. The best approach is to set geographic targeting preferences for your campaign so that your ad reaches the customers at the right locations. Reaching them at the right times location-wise is equally important. These customers are the ones who can yield conversions and make your AdWords campaign more profitable as well.

Optimize for mobile

And how can you forget optimizing your AdWords campaign for mobile searches! If you are bidding on mobile searches (which you surely should consider the number of people who use these devices), having mobile optimized ads does not remain a choice. These are the ones that are tailored to deliver seamless user experiences for mobile users. Ideally, these ads should have mobile-specific CTAs so that users can easily click them. Further, they should also have corresponding mobile-optimized landing pages.

Undoubtedly, PPC acts as a catalyst for boosting a brand because it can get you on top of SERP rankings with lesser effort. However, it can be a big financial burden for your business if you fail to achieve a positive ROI with your campaign. Only the right mindset and approach can help in this context. While maximizing the clicks is one side of the picture, everything boils down to the relevance of these clicks. These strategies can definitely help you get the best benefits from your AdWords campaign while minimizing the wastage of your ad spend.

Digital Branding

How to Maximize Your Email Response Rate?

on November 26, 2019

Almost everybody today has an email account, which lets them get messages.

Email advertising is using the email’s application to send advertising messages to the audience.

Email is among the easiest, cheapest, the quickest, and most ways. Email advertising provides all the flexibility of sending any message, make it a picture, a video to you. Among the benefits of marketing is reported that it permits you to send your message if this is a significant facet for you personally.

When you send out an email like in blogger outreaching procedure, it’s generally to receive a reaction in return in the customers or possible clients, ordinarily.

What is a Response rate in Email Marketing?

A response rate is the number of answers or answers. Response rates are significant since they ease sales and production, finally earnings for the businesses. They supply confirmation that marketing is delivering the estimated or required yield on investment or not.

Response rates also inform you which readers are faithful, providing you with a means to move.

Some of the top tips to improve your email response speed are:

Boost subject line

The line is the thing in an email a receiver would read. The rates, which are, the amount of all emails opened per 100, would be increased by Enhancing your subject line. The firms have a tendency to concentrate more on the content of not the subject line and their email. If your subject line isn’t attracting, the people who the email is sent by you to, may not open it!

With, shouldn’t be a formality, it has to be private. One thing that’s performed and that is the easiest thing which could be done would be to bring the name of the company. Avoid asking questions. This raises the prices that are open, a notch up.

And the most significant issue is that the subject line should not be overly long. Anything might lead to a dip at the reaction prices to be particular.

Quality articles

The standard of articles that you write is significant in the email, but also from a post that you send to possible clients or clients. The higher the quality of the material, the more probable it is the clients (or potential clients ) will undergo the email and browse the proposal you need to offer you. The quality increases the reaction prices and helps to understand the material.

Personalization

The email that you send out has to be as private as you can. Personalization provides a sense to the readers the email was crafted for them with a person in the business.

Because it’s from the templates, the email shouldn’t be copied. There are odds of this reader moving through the content. They discard it mid-way and would stop reading. The private or exceptional that you seem, inflow, and the more probable it are, you will find a reaction resulting in eventual lead creation of earnings.

Also, remember that the email ought to be crisp and short and to the point. That the readers may eliminate interest, Should you beat around the bush. It’s ideal to be as brief as you can, to create the most as the attention folks of these people is short nowadays.

Format of this email

This facet of an email is the one that is ignored or not paid attention to. Precisely the same time that it needs to be private, and the email that you send should have a look and should provide the picture of a real person crafting it out. It could be a waste of time to devote a few hours without going through it, but the readers discarding it. To avert this scenario formatting the is needed.

To possess the perfect formatting, remove the font you might have used. Attempt to maintain the material tidy, not utilizing flashy colors or font types. Organize the substance in amounts and bullets to get ordered content and better.

Also, add your touch, which includes your signature and name along with the essential information that can come in helpful for calling you to the existing or prospective customers.

Digital Branding

What Are the Benefits of jQuery for Your Website’s SEO?

on November 26, 2019

If you are a business owner who is about to build a new business website, then it will be important for you to check out the implications of using jQuery to improve the search engine optimization of your business website. This article will help you understand the various different nuances of jQuery and its effect on your SEO.

It is important first to understand what jQuery means – jQuery is basically an accurate and quick JavaScript library that will simplify the traversing of HHTML documents. It will help in the event handling, the production of animated content and also Ajax interactions which can help you with faster web development. jQuery will completely change the way that you use your JavaScript.

What are the basic benefits of using jQuery?

Here you will get a short and brief presentation of the different benefits that you can get by using jQuery on your website.

1. Improves your search engine optimization – These days, search engines have developed a lot with regards to being able to go through content which is set up in Flash also. Everything that is put in jQuery will get set up as the text. As a result of this, this content will be easily readable to various major search engines. This will help in exposing your content (which needs to be rich in its keywords) to a large global audience.

2. It will help to save your time – The five lines of a jQuery would be equivalent to about twenty-five lines of a conventional and traditional code in JavaScript. As a result of this, the sizes of your various files would get smaller, and this will help in making your web pages load faster. As you are already aware, that fast load speed is one of the most crucial aspects of SEO in our times, and hence, this will greatly help in increasing the organic traffic on your business website.

3. Plug-in friendly – With jQuery, you will never be in short of plug INS. There are thousands of plug-ins that you can find all over the internet for jQuery. These plug-ins will help in making your business website more enhanced. They will help you to create amazing special effects in a relatively quick and short span of time. Plug-ins will help in improving the utility of a business website, and hence, it will be making your website more functional.

4. Help in clearing doubts – You will be getting plenty of plug-ins for using with jQuery all over the internet. This will automatically mean that you will find plenty of help and guidance to help you solve and sort out any technical issue which you might face while developing your website. You will find a very helpful and large support community over the internet that would help you and solve any bug related issues that you may face.

5. Ease of use – It is worthwhile to understand that jQuery is also extremely user-friendly, and it is quite easy to implement by web developers while compared to other types of applications. Thus you will be able to get a hassle-free experience.

6. It is friendly with different browsers – Because of its huge popularity all over the world; jQuery has become the most sought-after JavaScript library at the present moment. It will continue to remain so for a long time in the future also. As a result of this, jQuery easily works in every major web browser. Thus your website can be easily accessed by users from all over the world on all major web browsers.

7. It is free – jQuery is free and open-source software. This means you will get plenty of added advantages like themes, modes, plug-ins, and so on. You will also be saving money.

8. It is mobile friendly – These days it is quite common to see that most people access the internet from their mobile phones. The rise of smartphone technology and cheap data and internet plans has ensured that in the future, most business transactions would take place over smartphones. As a result of this busing, owners would have to make their websites become mobile-friendly as well; this means your website needs to have a responsive web design so that it can easily be opened on different devices with different screen sizes.

Responsive web design is crucial for this to happen. But along with the responsive web design, you will need to have applications on your website, which can be easily accessed from mobile phones also. It is amazing that jQuery is also supported by all major mobile devices (this includes tablets also). Any mobile phone in which the web browser can support JavaScript would be able also to run jQuery. However, you should remember that some devices like the iPad and the iPhone do not run any Flash ever at all.

9. It will simplify your AJAX – The Ajax matrices are crucial technical aspects of your business website. With a simplified Ajax, you will be able to improve the crawlability of your business website for search engines. This will help in making your website get indexed in a more efficient and beneficial manner, and that will consequently help in improving the organic web traffic of your business website also.

Because of a combination of all these factors, jQuery will be extremely useful for your business website. Your web developers would be able to make your web pages come alive; they can make them more exciting and interactive. The web designs will appear cleaner, and it would be effectively user-friendly. The visitors to your website would be amazed by the experience. For more information on jQuery and search engine optimization, you should visit Dental SEO companies.

Conclusion

Search engine optimization is a crucial aspect of business websites. You need to make sure that you implement it to become successful online. And by using jQuery, you will be making your business website more optimized. Get the help of professionals for this.

Legal Branding

5 Factors Affecting the Success of Your Small Business

on November 25, 2019

Being a business owner sure does sound nice. Not only that you get to be your own boss but there’s also a potentially unlimited income that we all dream of. Contrary to what many people believe, there’s much more to running a business than coming up with a good product idea. There are many factors that contribute to how successful your small business will be and being aware of them is a huge plus. With that said, let’s take a look at five factors affecting the success of your small business.

Goals

Ask any entrepreneur out there and they’ll tell you that setting business goals is a must when running an organization. It’s just that without a list of clearly-defined goals, you and your team members simply won’t know what to strive for in your operations. Not to mention that by not setting goals, you actually make it more difficult for you and your employees to stay motivated. If you don’t have one already, make sure you come up with a list of realistic goals for your business and revisit it every now and then.

Marketing

Another thing no business can survive without is marketing. Obviously, your goal is to attract as many customers as you can and maximize your profit. In order to do this, you first have to know more about your customers and develop the right marketing strategy for your business. Luckily, small businesses can now promote their products without breaking the bank. Valid product schema markup significantly helps products get found online. For example, you can set up social media pages for your business and use them to interact with people on the web. Plus, there are traditional marketing channels such as radio commercials and promotional products.

Finances

There’s no need to say that money is the most important thing in any business. If your company isn’t making money, there’s no point in operating. Dealing with business finances isn’t easy and it’ll probably take you some time to get a hang of it. Just have in mind that keeping your personal and business finances is recommended as it makes doing your taxes much easier. Another smart thing for business owners to do is invest things earnings in things such as forex. Connect with experts at Ever Forex and you’ll be able to make just enough to help your business move forward.

Business relationships

Knowing the right people can do your business a huge favor. There are so many small businesses out there and by connecting with other entrepreneurs, you open up new opportunities for your business. For example, you and another company can start a buddy marketing system where you promote each other’s products for free. One of the best ways to meet the right people is to attend networking events and be on social media platforms such as LinkedIn.

Employees

Chances are you’ve already heard people say that your employees are your most valuable asset. They’re right. Without your staff members, the company wouldn’t be able to operate and you’d be forced to shut down. Some entrepreneurs believe they can do everything themselves but they soon realize that wearing all the hats is just impossible. Bringing in the right people, on the other hand, is quite easy and it allows you to focus all your time and energy on your core operations. Be careful when conducting interviews and do everything that’s in your power to keep your employees happy.

Want to achieve success faster?

If you want to achieve success significantly faster with a small business, consider buying an existing business for sale. This will allow you to trade under an already established and trusted brand name in your local area. You will also get access to the previous business owners’ proven methods of success. This is invaluable, especially if you are a first-time business owner. Suppose you would like to learn more about the types of businesses for sale. In that case, we recommend you visit a trusted directory of business opportunities such as Businessweek, where you can find a wide range of different business opportunities, from small businesses for sale all the way to medium-sized and large businesses for sale.

Over to you

The life of a business owner isn’t as easy as some people would have you believe. Only by keeping a close eye on each of these factors do you get to see your business become relevant in the industry and start competing with large corporations.

Digital BrandingSaaS Branding

How to Get on Top of Competitive Analysis for SEO

on November 22, 2019

Competition is an inevitable and extremely healthy aspect of every activity. Without competition, complacency would set in and there would be no incentive to innovate. Because there is competition, all players are forced to keep on trying to do better in every aspect of their business so that they can steal valuable market share and build enduring customer loyalty. According to https://www.forbes.com, performing competitor analysis enables you to keep on improving and also provides you with an effective benchmarking system so that you know if your marketing strategy is paying off or not. For this to happen, a business has to first identify its main competitors, find out why they are getting better search engine ranks, and then decide what strategy to adopt to get ahead of them. Some practical tips on performing competitor analysis effectively:

Find Out Your Principal SEO Competitors

Most business owners will very easily be able to name the main competitors in their industry; however, it is quite likely that they will end up looking confused if you ask them who their main SEO competitors are because the two are not necessarily the same. It is also quite possible that you may have to contend with several SEO competitors who operate outside of your business niche while competing for superior SERP rankings. The main SEO competitors are those online businesses that rank in the first Google search results page for the target keywords or phrases, irrespective of whether they actually compete with you for the same business. If you operate in several niches, it is quite likely that you will have separate and distinct competitor lists with very little overlap. Luckily, the process of identifying your main competitors is as simple as examining the search results page for every important keyword. You can even use a specialized competitor analysis tool to make the process easier. 

Evaluate the Strength of Competitors

Even before, you jump into tweaking your on-page SEO or adjusting your link-building strategy, it can be a very good idea to analyze the SEO strength of your competitors. Theoretically, you can outrank any competitor for any keyword in any niche; it may not be practically feasible due to the huge amount of resources required. To avoid wasting your resources, you should use a competitor analysis tool to figure out the total domain strength of your competitors. Thereafter, you can analyze specific factors like domain authority, domain age, and location, search engine indexing, backlink data, catalog listings, the volume of traffic and social signals so that you can try to discover any weakness that you can exploit. It is more productive to concentrate on competitors who rank well for niche keywords but have a lower overall score because outranking SEO for strong competitors can be tough and expensive. 

Identify New Keyword Opportunities

Term frequency-inverse document frequency analysis (TF-IDF) is a very handy method for elevating the quality of your existing content with keywords that are being productively used by the competition, according to the CEO of arguably the best SEO Company in Washington. The complicated-sounding expression is a figure derived by the number of times that the keyword appears in the content multiplied by its expected frequency. This method allows you to optimize your web pages better for SEO and also for discovering keywords with low competition that you may have overlooked. By analyzing TF-IDF, you may find out that many of the top-ranking pages that you are competing against have many terms and phrases in common. If you are not already targeting these keywords, you can gain a lot by adding them to your existing content or even building new content to accommodate them to boost semantic search relevance.

Scrutinize On-Page Optimization and Content

The analysis of the on-site SEO of your competitors using any commonly available competitive analysis tool will unearth lots of valuable information that you can work with for boosting your SEO. Factors like the frequency of content publishing, content types, and target keywords can be especially helpful in tweaking your own content management strategy. Among other things, you should focus on things like metadata, title tags, title keywords, length of the title, internal linking strategies, etc. that seem to be the bedrock of their SEO success. By figuring out the things that your competitors are doing especially well, you can adjust your SEO strategies for better performance delivery. Content analysis is also of vital importance; monitor the topics being published, the type of media used to deliver content, word count or length of the videos, the extent of details, etc. as they all are valuable signals that are picked up by Google bots as they crawl websites.

Investigate the Backlink Profiles of the Competitors

The number and quality of the backlinks are very important signals for search engines for page rankings. Accordingly, you should find out where your main competitors are getting their backlinks and what sort of content is attracting the backlinks. Using that insight, you can improve on the quality and relevance of the content of your website so that you become an equally attractive destination for sites with high domain authority. Backlink analysis is best done with a proper competitive analytics tool, as a manual operation is not feasible.

Study the Site Architecture and User Experience

Among the many recent changes Google has made to its algorithm, quite a few have been on focused on a better user experience; these include improved search results, quicker page loading, improved mobile experience, etc. when compared to your competitors, if your website is unresponsive or has a confusing navigation, you should take steps to address the issues immediately. Essential steps include optimizing the sitemap for improved crawl-ability, prioritizing the loading times of pages according to their values, and ensuring search intent is paramount across all pages.

Conclusion

Competitive analysis is not something that you do once and forget about. Remember, your competitors are not asleep and doing everything that they can to rise to the top of search engine page rankings to grab the maximum volume of organic traffic. You need to keep on constantly monitoring them across the most important metrics as well as finding out the impact of Google updates on the performance of your site so that you can stay on top of the situation consistently. 

Digital Branding

15 Ways Live Streaming Can Improve Your Business

on November 22, 2019

Live streaming is an innovative solution for businesses that want to leverage the opportunities offered by technology without spending a fortune. Unlike earlier days when live streaming required expensive setups, today both amateurs and huge enterprises do it in the same way. Businesses of all sizes and levels are streaming live videos to conduct live virtual meetings, online training, and seminars, etc. 

According to the Interactive advertising bureau, nearly two-thirds of the global online audience has watched live videos of some kind. With live streaming quickly becoming a mainstream thing, its utilization as a marketing tool is inevitable. Today, live streaming is an important asset in the marketing strategies of businesses of all kinds.

To start with, you can use social media streaming on platforms like YouTube Live, Periscope, Facebook Live, or Instagram’s IGTV. Use Blerp if you want to add sound alerts to your stream. You can also move a step ahead and create a live-streaming website of your own to explore unlimited business opportunities. So how to create a live-streaming website?

It’s a systematic process with multiple steps where the first step is to understand the benefits of live streaming and how to use the same for business improvement, which we are going to discuss in this article. Here, we look into 15 ways of how live streaming can improve your business growth.

1. Build trust and transparency

As per the general purchase behavior of online customers, people prefer brands they already trust. Customers tend to associate trust-worthiness with the quality of the services offered. Live streaming can be a great way to build trust among your audience by showing an unscripted side of the brand in a transparent way. 

For example, you can live stream to candid moments, behind-the-scenes, and back-end processes to magnify your brand’s transparency to the audience outside your customer base. Moreover, when you share your live videos on social media channels, your posts could earn more shares and positive comments, which further help in establishing yourself as a reliable brand. 

2. It is cost-effective

One of the best aspects of using live streaming for marketing is affordability. Before live-streaming came into existence, most brands relied on TV to display their ads, videos, and reports. This, of course, was a costly process. However, today with a high definition camera or a smartphone and an internet connection, businesses can broadcast live videos effortlessly. Additionally, most social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube allow live streaming free of cost, though there are some restrictions.

3. Encourage user engagement

With live streaming, it is easy for businesses to get feedback from their viewers through comments, likes, and the number of shares. Facebook says that people comment 10 times more on Facebook Live videos than normal videos. Live streaming is an excellent way to engage your online audience. It generates buzz that excites viewers. Chats and live commenting are significant to engagement and besides that, you can also create polls to keep your viewers engaged and get real-time feedback.

4. Facilitates real-time interaction

Live streaming offers a unique advantage to be real and genuine with your audience and followers. Being a real-time tool, live streaming helps in establishing a genuine real-time connection with your audience effortlessly. 

5. Sharing a live stream is easy

Another unique thing about live streaming is that, even after a live stream ends, it is easy to save a video to your social media channels and use it as a video-on-demand. It helps in bringing-in repeated exposure to your audience. For example, if you are broadcasting live via Facebook Live, the video shows up when a user’s friend reacts to it or leave a comment on a live stream. Once the live stream is posted to Facebook page, it again shows up in the feed so that people who have missed it can view it again and share it with other people.

6. The possibilities to experiment are endless

Unlike other digital platforms, live streaming offers a lot of opportunities for businesses to experiment. You can try out new production styles for live videos to see what works best for your audience. Try testing raw video and highly produced live videos to see what your audience responds to the most.

7. To recruit employees and interns

Yes, you heard it right. When technological advancements are at peak, why not use them the right way to capitalize? You can use live streaming to take your hiring process to the next level. For example, Grubhub used Snapchat to enhance the interest of the audience in their internship program and lock down a summer intern. It posted a slideshow in snapchat stories to explain how interns could apply for the post.

8. Collaborating with a popular event

One of the best ways to gain more exposure in live streaming channels is by coordinating with a popular event where most people tune. 

For example, Taco bell gained more exposure on snapchat when it uploaded a snap story movie in coordination with MTV movie awards gaining a huge reach and improving brand awareness. 

9. Show off the real process

Broadcast live sessions to show your followers how your business works. Generally, your audience gets to see either the final product or services you offer. They never get a chance to understand what exactly goes in the back-end or the processes involved in the whole game. 

For example, Nasa hosts live videos on google hangouts especially for audiences who are interested in aerospace research and who like to learn more about the organization. 

10. Run a contest

Another way of using the power of live streaming to promote your business is to run a contest through your live videos. You can run the entire contest through a live session by interacting with the audience and allowing them to participate via comments or a link that you provide in the video description. 

11. Show off skills

Live streaming can be a great way to show off your skills. It can be anything like broadcasting a USP of your business to show that you are really good at what you do. For example, Tastemade hosts food show series on Facebook live and showcase their skills to gain social traffic and to engage their fans. This works well to gain exposure and make people coming back to your brand. 

12. Get your fans to laugh

Live streaming needs not always be about the technical aspects of your business. You can also go live just to entertain your audience. Occasionally, try doing different types of videos doing something humorous to create tons of social and website traffic. Use a professional live streaming software to create a great looking broadcast with advanced features to impress your audience. 

13. Make product announcements

Showing the unique moments like product announcements and related news, you can build excitement among your target audience about your brand. Make them a part of your new venture to improve the chance of them converting to your customers. For instant Chevrolet live-streamed the CES 2016 event where it introduced its Bolt EV model. In this way, the brand could reach out to both audiences who were a part of the event and who weren’t physically present.

14. Broadcast interview sessions

Do live sessions to interview important people who are connected with your business or with anyone whom your target audience can relate to. Broadcasting live interview sessions generate interest among your target audience as they get to know the otherwise-not-known side of your business. For example, Benefit cosmetics went live with their chief Beauty Ambassadors Annie & Maggie Ford Danielson which fostered pretty good engagement.

15. Go behind the scenes

Host behind the scenes live sessions to show your audience about the things normally they won’t get to experience. It can be anything like showing the backstage of an event, the making scenes of a product or something that is out of your business activities as well. Offering anything out of the box will keep your audience interested and engaged.

In conclusion

Live streaming is an excellent way to reach out and connect with your audience by facilitating real-time conversations. Launching a live streaming platform also holds potential in this technological environment. You can start a live streaming business and let other businesses use your platform to connect with their audiences. Learning how to start a live streaming business is a profitable idea in 2019. Now is the real-time to leverage the power and potential of live streaming to grow your business or start a new business aligned with it.

Digital Branding

10 Branding Strategies You Shouldn’t Miss Out On In 2020

on November 22, 2019

Creating an image of your company that sticks in the minds of consumers is a complex task that seemingly never ends. You should do some tried-and-true things year after year, such as ensuring you have a style guide, adding unique content and getting your name out in the local community and world at large. Each year, you’ll also need to add some new strategies into the mix so that you can reach people you’ve not reached before and reinforced your presence.

In a recent study, researchers found brands with a specific purpose grow about twice as fast as brands without one. Before you implement any of the techniques outlined here, make sure you know what the purpose of your organization is and why you do what you do. Once you have a firm basis to build on, look at these 10 branding strategies to get your message in the right hands.

1. Create Shoppable Posts

Today, social media drives online shopping. Its nature allows retailers to put interesting products in front of the exact target audience they want. Over time, it’s become easier for people to purchase right from the app they are on. For example, Instagram now allows people to purchase via a business post. About 70% of Instagram users state they’ve made a purchase via the app.

2. Engage on Twitter

Gaining followers and engagement on Twitter requires more than throwing a page up on the site. You have to be active on the platform and interact with influencers as well as potential audience members. Add something of interest to a conversation. Provide valuable content they can’t find anywhere else. Instead of selling to people all the time, start relating to them on a personal level.

3. Green Your Business

People who care about the environment will appreciate your efforts to reduce your carbon footprint. Eco-friendly practices can become part of your branding strategy. Look for ways to recycle your company’s waste, and encourage your customers to get active in green living as well.

Don’t just go green to gain customers, though. You have to really believe in the reasons behind environmentally friendly living, or you’ll fizzle out on the effort involved. If you care about this topic, you’ll discover people who seek out like-minded businesses based on their green rating.

4. Host an Experience

People say they connect better with a brand when they are emotionally engaged via real-life experiences. Think about how you can spread the word about your firm by hosting some event or experience. You might invite local media to a soft opening of your new restaurant, for example. You could also pull in experiential graphics and create a one-of-a-kind event with a popular theme, such as images from “Harry Potter” or a popular television series.

5. Get Personal

Marketing professionals can access more data today than at any time in history. You likely know where your customers live, what type of browser they use to access your site and even what keywords they searched for before landing on your webpage. With cookies and surveys, you can gather even more information about your site’s visitors. Use the intel and create a personalized experience for them. Offer products they might be interested in based on past browsing or buying behaviors.

6. Find the Right Influencers

Brands will spend an estimated $15 billion a year on influencer marketing by 2022. However, the trend is moving away from seeking out the biggest, most popular influencers and toward finding smaller, niche influencers with specific audiences. When finding influencers for your brand, pay attention to who interacts with their posts and if their followers engage and share. Focus on the type of people they reach rather than how many they affect.

7. Use Immersive Technology

Set your brand apart by using chatbots and other immersive technology to grab site visitors and keep them engaged. Rather than hiring 24/7 live agents to staff your chat, you can utilize a chatbot to answer common questions and collect basic information before moving the user to a trained customer service rep. Look for ways of using technology to set your brand apart from your competitors while keeping the experience affordable.

8. Share Your Story

Every brand has a unique story that starts well before the business opened its doors. Think about your own tale and its differences than the details of other beginnings. What challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them?

Tug at the emotional heartstrings of your target audience. Once you have your story fleshed out, share it via a video on your website, a series of social media posts or a timeline on your About page.

9. Start an Online Community

Online communities offer numerous benefits to your branding strategy. Members often ask questions and provide solutions, helping keep your image positive. These outlets also allow members to feel heard and instill trust in your company.

Communities have a good return on investment (ROI). After two years, the ROI is around 1,352% for most brands. You can easily start a community via your Facebook page. The more you can tie your group into social media, the more participation you’re likely to generate.

10. Keep Creating Content

You might wonder if it’s still worth your time to create content for branding purposes. The answer is yes.

In a recent report, researchers found 91% of brands still use content marketing to reach consumers. The key to using content for branding is making sure you have guidelines in place about what type of content you’ll use, how it looks and where to place it. Be consistent with the types of information you offer and the voice you choose. Even your images need to have a similar theme and be highly relevant to your business.

Know Thyself

Before you can create a brand image in the eyes of others, you have to know yourself as a business. Outline your principles and your goals as an organization. Then, set out some plans for how you’d like others to see your company. Understanding who you are and what you stand for makes it easier to reflect that vision to other people

Lexie is a branding enthusiast and web designer. She loves checking out local flea markets and taking her Goldendoodle on hikes. Follow her on Twitter @lexieludesigner and check out her design blog, Design Roast.

1 … 53 54 55 56 57 … 94