editor, Author at Mediastreet

In News

Thinking of Adding a Blog to Your Website? Here’s How to Get Started

May 30, 2019 No Comments

Blogging is one of the most valuable tools you can use to engage with your customers online and ultimately improve your marketing and business results. If you don’t have a blog already, you should definitely start one now.

Over the years, blogging has emerged as one of the main elements in marketing strategies today. And 2019 promises to be the year of blogging.

Before we delve into how you can use blogging to connect with your audience, let’s examine the benefits of adding a blog to your website. Then, we’ll discuss how to get started with blogging.

The Benefits of Blogging

A blog is really a simple, concise and easy-to-use platform that allows you to connect with your target audience online and share with them relevant information about your business and other relevant information. Because it is your own platform, you can explain directly to your audience all about your products or services and how to use them. Also, you can easily track customer engagement on your blog and get their valuable feedback firsthand.

As SEO is a part of most content marketing strategies nowadays, more and more businesses are focusing on optimization to improve their search engine rankings. To have a better ranking on Google, the most popular search engine, the most effective way is to add a blog to your website. However, it’s not enough just to have a blog. It will have to be active and you’ll need to learn how to apply SEO recommendations to make your blog popular.

According to a Hubspot survey, 60% of businesses that have a blog on their website acquire more customers. Your blog is where your content strategy starts. From your blog, you can pull out content for your email and newsletter campaigns, social media channels, webinars, eBooks, guides, and so on. Having all your vital information in one place will not only be helpful for your customers, but also for yourself as well.

Keep in mind, though, that your target website or business audience is whom you’re writing to when blogging. That’s why it’s important to provide them with useful tips and tricks so they are benefiting from the blog and finding reason to keep coming back for more information.

Among the numerous benefits of adding a blog to your website, the most crucial one is that it gives you and your company a voice. There is no better way to personalize your company than by having a blog. For instance, you can show all the values that are important to your company and its employees by writing about company culture.

Your blog is also a place where you can write about upcoming products or services, and comment on industry trends. Use it to showcase your brand personality and industry expertise. Remember that customers are less likely to buy a product from a company they don’t like. However, they are more loyal and likely to become repeat customers for those brands they like.

5 Steps to Add a Blog and Start Blogging

Starting a blog is easier than it once was, but you have to be more determined and have clearly defined goals before you start working on your platform.

Here’re crucial steps to make your blogging an interesting and beneficial process.

Step 1: Prepare and plan ahead

Every good strategy requires preparation, and it’s the same with blogging. What are the goals of your blog? Do you wish to inform people about your products or service? Do you want to provide them with additional information on product usage? Do you want to position yourself as an opinion maker in your industry so you’ll comment on recent trends and provide guidelines?

Answering these questions will help you determine in which way to go. Don’t forget about writing a list of topics for your blog. To research and get some ideas, use Google Trends, a free tool provided by Google.

Step 2: Add a blog page on your existing website

As a company or serious professional, you probably already have an existing website. To add a blog to the website, create a new website page with a link to a blog you set up on a popular blogging platform like WordPress (WP).

Alternatively, you can move your website to WordPress. Use .htaccess codes to redirect old links on your existing website to new ones on WP. The power of a static blog homepage in WordPress can allow you to run your blog with your website name as the main domain.

You can then customize your blog to match your website and post content on the blog. Visitors will not have a problem identifying and reading your blog.

Step 3: Publish the blog page

If you want your blog to be accessible on your website so that other people can read it, you will have to publish the website page with a link pointing to your blog, or add the blog link to your website navigation. Check that everything is correct in the page and click the ‘Publish’ button.

After publishing and making your blog link live on your website, go to your WP Dashboard and choose ‘Settings’ on the left side. Click the button to create a new static page in WP and select ‘Blog’ under the drop-down menu for ‘Posts.’

It’s very important that you choose ‘Blog’ under the drop-down menu for ‘Posts’ and not the ‘Front’ page, because it will determine where your blog feed appears on your website.

When you’re done with that, you will now have to decide how many posts you want to appear when your readers visit your blog. The number is up to you.

Step 4: Add your first blog post

This is where you’re going to need that list of blogging topics you created in the first step of preparation. Decide on the title and subject or topic that is best to publish as your first blog post.

With blogging topics already decided and written down in the first step, you will have no problem creating content that is high converting. This is why it’s essential that you don’t skip the preparation phase.

Don’t be too strict on yourself, though, especially if this is your first blog post ever. The good thing about blogging is that you can edit all your posts after they’re published without any problem.

Step 5: Create an editorial/blogging calendar

Blog posting should follow a pre-determined strategy for it to be effective. For this reason, create an editorial calendar for your upcoming articles, with topics, deadlines, the persons who will write them and any other information you find useful. Have this information clearly written down ahead of time.

When you blog without an editorial calendar, your blogging messages and schedules are likely to be all over the place, making your blog look disorganized and messy. Your customers may easily get confused. Blogging is pretty straightforward, but mistakes like these can harm your blog performance.

Conclusion

Adding a blog to your website is not something you can ignore today at a time when every business is focused on content marketing. When you decide to start a blog, remember these key points:

With a blog, you can easily communicate and engage your audience
Blogging will increase your search engine ranking results
A blog is a perfect platform for publishing converting content
Having a blog allows you to show your company culture
With quality preparation, you will simplify your blogging process
Having an editorial calendar is crucial for your content to succeed

With all of this in mind, blogging will be inspiring for you and your audience. It will simplify your communication with customers and make it easier for you to convert prospects into customers as well. So, get blogging today!

By Melissa Burns

Melissa Burns is an independent journalist and marketing consultant. Business innovations, technology, and marketing are central topics of her articles. She started writing with a single goal of sharing her expertise with other people. Melissa also provides workshops for start-ups and small businesses.

Sourced from The Web Writer Spotlight

In News

Powerful Ways to Market your Company

May 30, 2019 No Comments

By Ali zulfiqar,

Marketing efficiently online can guarantee major business success. Marketing is the number one way to increase a companies credibility, popularity, and sales made online. Behind marketing, there are some tricks that businesses should now in order to create a successful marketing campaign. The true base behind marketing is directly targeting the right demographics and capturing their consumer attention. Read below the 9 most powerful ways to market your business online.

9 Powerful Ways to Market your Business Online

1-Social Media Platforms. Sharing links and unique content on the top social media platforms is a great way to market your business. The truth is, there are billions of users that share things at least once a day on social media. Social media makes it possible for people of all professions to connect together around the world, thus, producing worldwide exposure. The average person will automatically relate a companies credibility to its social media follow 90% of the time. Aside from earning a great group of followers, social media is also an SEO factors. Websites that use social media constantly are seen to be more active on the web, thus, producing positive results for SEO.

2-Pre Advertisement. Before an upcoming event or product launch that your business may have, it is a great idea start advertising ahead of time. This will build up suspense until the even actually arrives, thus, making it ever more popular. Releasing press releases of this upcoming event will generate a good amount of online buzz and increase event popularity.

3-Website Content Writing. Blogging is king in 2017. This year, blogging is the number one way to increase website visibility in search engines and gain more website viewers. With every new blog created and released online, a new link will be generated. This will be indexed somewhere in google’s search engine directory and eventually get viewers. The more blogs a website has, the more viewers it will obtain. Blogging is also a great way to prove domain trust and increase domain authority online. With quality content, search engines can rule that a website is unique and specifically related to their keyword of choice. It is proven that blogging on schedule brings greater results.

4-Full Screen Subscription. A custom full-screen subscription box is the latest web design trend and new effective way to increase subscribers. Fortune 500 companies are using this method because of its instant results. A cookie based subscription box that opens full screen every time a new visitor enters the page will efficiently increase the number of subscribers.

5-Mobile Optimization. With the high amount of mobile device use, a mobile friendly website has now become a standard in web design. Mobile devices are much handier and people around the world browse the internet through a mobile device regularly. Having a mobile friendly web design can increase website ranks in mobile search engines and satisfy mobile device users. The first way for mobile optimization is to start adding the viewport tag onto the head section of every web page. This tag will state to mobile devices that the website should be converted to a mobile-friendly layout.

6-Bigger, Bolder, Better. The bigger a website is, the better it becomes visually. As previously mentioned, mobile web design has become a standard. This has resulted in bigger website designs. A bigger design has proven to be convenient for the average mobile visitor and visually alluring for al other viewers. The bigger a website is, the clearer the message will become. To achieve a bigger website start by increasing page elements, font size, menu bar, and images. The one-page web design is a modern new layout that has tons of room for bigger design.

7-Online Exclusive Deals. Marketing your products with exclusive deals can make the items even more valuable. Exclusive deals have proven to generate faster sales online. Marketing these deals with the right color choices like red, orange, or blue can do the trick.

8-Public Opinions and Consumer Reviews. Leaving a website open for public comments and user interaction can increase website engagement flow. The more reviews and comments there are about a website online, the more trustable that site becomes.

9-Customized Images. An image can make a person feel a certain way. When marketing, the feeling should be happiness, vibrancy, possibility, and optimism. Getting clients in the right frame of mind can certainly guarantee a sale. Custom images will attract many followers online.

Marketing online the correct way can guarantee major success. A digital marketing services like Artimization has great knowledge of how important marketing really is. With million of websites online, businesses under the same category fight for the same position. Use the 9 ways above to powerfully market your business online and instantly get one step ahead of your competitors.

By Ali zulfiqar,

Sourced from Thrive Global

In News

5 Tips for Video Marketing Success

May 29, 2019 No Comments

By Justin Runyon

There are more than 4billion hours of video watched each month. With an active audience, it’s no wonder many businesses have begun to embrace video marketing…

As more businesses embrace content marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy, it’s become critical for brands to distinguish themselves through newer, more innovative means.

Video has long been a favorite among online giants like Google and SEOMoz, and it’s no surprise why; according to YouTube.com, there are more than 4billion hours of video watched each month.

With an active audience, it’s no wonder many businesses have begun to embrace the medium.

Related: Get your online marketing on track before moving onto video — talk with one of our vendors

Why Video?

Video provides three important benefits generally lacking from text-only content:

Video search results have been previously reported to be 50 times more likely to earn clicks than text-only links.
Video can be consumed quickly, and does not require a watcher’s singular focus in the way text-only content might.
Video encourages watchers to connect to the content, as well as to the subject or presenter, on a more human level. Whether crafting a narrative or online tutorial, video captures inflection, tone and many other human subtleties that text-only content generally does not.

Adapt Video to New Media

In order to successfully use video online, brands must be sure to tailor their videos to the unique online medium. Following are 5 tips for getting started.

1. Focus on Results-Based Narratives

Traditional executive two-person interview-style videos remain relevant, but a more compelling option is to produce short, high-quality narratives that focus on consumer results.

Filmmaker and StoryFirst Media Co-Founder, Michael Neelsen, suggests that brands take a planned approach to crafting video if they decide that the narrative format gels with their overall marketing goals. He says:

“It can be easy for inexperienced videographers to think you can just go out and shoot a bunch of footage and see how it fits together later. However, visualizing what the final product should look like beforehand and being deliberate about what you film will make for a far more efficient production and a more considerate end result.”

With carefully planned and executed narrative-style video, brands can convey the benefits of their products and services by featuring real-life, human subjects — a highly-effective maneuver for making the message hit home.

2: Know Your Medium

Among the many new challenges marketers now face is the need to create content that’s optimized for smaller devices and platforms. This is especially true of online video — a medium increasingly viewed on smaller screens.

“Hollywood has begun to adapt their filming style to smaller screens by including more close-ups than before,” says Neelsen. “They recognize that, over time, more viewers are likely to watch films on laptops and tablets than in the theaters.” This same principle applies to corporate video. Reviewing website analytics should provide insights about which devices visitors use to consume your content.

3: Integrate Video into Your Existing Content Marketing Strategy

If your brand has already embraced content marketing, video can be an effective way to add variety to the ongoing strategy.

CloudTactix Social Media Manager, Sam Zastrow, suggests integrating video content into corporate blog publishing and social media campaigns.

“The best part about video is its versatility,” says Zastrow. “Video blogs are great for getting busy decision-makers involved in content marketing without eating into their schedules more than once per quarter or so.”

4: Err on the Side of Shorter

Video analytics are proving just how short our online attention spans really are. It was found in a 2009 study conducted by online video hosting service, Wistia, that video completion rates drop significantly after the first 30 seconds: The average 30-second video was viewed 85% of the way through, while the average 2-minute video was viewed on average 50% of the way through.

5: It Doesn’t Matter What You Shoot On

Although first-time filmmakers tend to believe they need the highest quality hardware to create something worth watching, this is rarely the case.

“It really doesn’t matter what you shoot on,” says Neelsen. “We’ve had cinematographers shoot brilliant footage using just an iPhone. Audiences are engaged by compelling content.”

When adding video to your corporate content marketing strategy, don’t become overly preoccupied with less-than-stellar screen resolution — create something remarkable and viewers will be too engaged to notice.

By Justin Runyon

Sourced from Digital Doughnut

In News

LinkedIn Sponsored InMail, Micro-Influencers and Blogging: A Winning Combination

May 29, 2019 No Comments

By Nick Mattar

LinkedIn’s Sponsored InMail isn’t always seen as the most effective type of outreach method, but there are ways that it can be used to great effect.

My organization hosts several events each year, focused on best practice-sharing and helping small businesses, and I recently took the lead on marketing a new event which focused on digital marketing and how companies can use it to drive their bottom line. I was ambitious and set a goal of 200 event registrations. With two months to market the event, I had some time to drive registrations using my organization’s traditional marketing channels.

The Problem

My traditional marketing playbook was simply not working. I managed to bring in approximately 15% of my event registration goal through email and organic social media, but I needed to reach more marketers – in particular, digital marketers or those who worked in the online space.

My database of contacts simply didn’t provide the target market necessary to reach my goal, and after two weeks running social media ads on Facebook and LinkedIn, my budget was nearly depleted, and my registration numbers hadn’t moved significantly.

It was clear, at this point, that I needed to take a different approach.

The Big Idea

I not only needed to reach marketers, but I needed to establish a relationship with them, and drive enough brand trust where they would feel comfortable spending money to register for my event. I wasn’t going to be able to do this alone.

My first thought was to use influencers to help spread the word. Recent studies have shown that 94% of marketers have found influencer marketing to be effective. They would help drive brand awareness, and subsequently bring in new event registrations. The ticket price was not cheap ($55) so I needed to really focus on the brand awareness aspect.

But then I thought about the specific influencers in more depth. Simply reaching out to my core digital marketing influencers wasn’t going to do the trick – I needed over 150 people, and there was nobody within a hundred-mile radius that had that kind of pull with the budget I had remaining.

This led to a new plan – aim for dozens of micro-influencers who would each be able to bring in a small handful of paid registrations.

The Implementation

I like to think of myself as a relatively well-known digital marketer, but I don’t have nearly the network required to achieve my micro-influencer goal. I needed a platform to broadcast my call for these people.

This is where LinkedIn Sponsored InMail was useful. Rather than using it for annoying sales pitches or free e-books, I was going to use it to appeal to marketers’ egos. Most marketers like to consider themselves subject matter experts in at least one area. If people were going to respond to my call for help, there needed to be something in it for them.

Thus, I would ask them to provide their expertise by writing a blog post, publishing it with a plug for my event, and then promoting it on their top social channels. In return, they would receive a free registration to the event, and then I would also promote their blog post, giving them the byline and bowing to their expertise.

I made sure my Sponsored InMail headline would catch their eyes: “Call For Digital Marketing Experts.”

I was careful to target only the most experienced and connected digital marketers. Thanks to LinkedIn’s superior ad targeting capabilities, I was able to narrow down my search to a few hundred individuals that would help me achieve my goal.

The Results

My Sponsored InMail campaign only ran for 48 hours, and resulted in 150 delivered messages. Of the 150, 70 responded and 33 eventually became official micro-influencers.

I provided each micro-influencer with a unique link to my event page so I could track the traffic they would bring in to the event site. In total, my 33 unique links led to 2,000 unique pageviews, and 160 event registrations, giving me the numbers I needed to exceed my initial goal.

The numbers may not seem overwhelming, but they’re exactly what I wanted out of my micro-influencers. I gained thousands of new users at minimal cost, while also gaining valuable content from new connections.

Final Takeaways

If you’re considering an influencer campaign, but lack the budget for big names, consider micro-influencers instead. You may need to do a call out to attract their attention, but by bringing together the right combination of people, content and promotion, you can achieve your goals.

Most businesspeople are influencers at some level – it just requires the right type of action to activate their networks.

By Nick Mattar

Follow Nick Mattar on Twitter

Sourced from Social Media Today

In News

What to Do When Your Inbound Marketing Fails

May 29, 2019 No Comments

By Neil Patel

There’s no debate today about whether blogging works or not. Studies show that inbound marketing can deliver a high volume of leads. However, inbound marketing isn’t exactly a silver bullet. Just because it works well for one type of company with one type of product trying to reach one type of customer, doesn’t mean it will work well for you.

Here’s why problems pop up and what you should do when they happen.

Where Inbound Marketing Commonly Fails

Inbound marketing can work well for most companies in the long run, as long as you plan for:

How long it will take to pay off (years).
Knowing it doesn’t always attract the right type of buyer.

New companies don’t always have the luxury of waiting around for a few years for enough inbound leads to flood their salespeople’s inboxes.

And other content-based campaigns like blogging or webinars almost never get to hard-to-reach people that need to sign off on six or seven-figure deals (think: lawyers, CEOs, etc.). These people barely have enough time to answer an email, let alone attend a webinar for a full hour (or longer).

Blogging acts like a net, helping you to attract and catch people who may one day need what you sell. But like fishing, you’re also going to catch a lot of stuff that will never, ever convert. Instead of tossing out some bait and waiting around for a nibble, you need to go spearfishing.

Related Article: Beware the Inbound Marketing Trap

How You Can Generate High-Ticket Leads (Instead of Inbound Marketing)

In “Predictable Revenue,” Aaron Ross writes about how his team generated over $100 million for Salesforce in new recurring revenue. They did that by first qualifying the types of companies who need what they do, and then conducting outreach to get introductions to the right person inside each large organization. That sounds easy enough on the surface, right?

Call it account-based marketing or just call it good direct sales. The concept is simple: you need to directly get in touch with the right types of buyers through email, phone calls, direct mail or conferences.

The problem is most marketers don’t do enough of these activities quickly enough. High-ticket deals can take months to close. The revenue you’re booking this month actually comes from the work you did over the past three months (or longer).

The reality is you can’t just focus on increasing the top of your funnel like most marketers and advertisers do. Everyone’s familiar with reach and frequency. Reach is the number of new unique people, while frequency is the number of times you reach the same person.

Direct marketing and selling place a greater emphasis on increasing frequency, instead of reach. It transitions you from mass, one-to-many tactics to one-to-one tactics as quickly as possible. Because the data is pretty clear no matter where you look:

People still prefer phone calls over lead forms.
Phone calls convert better than website conversions.
Even direct mail, which seems old and tired, converts better than email.

And anyone who’s ever had to sell anything will tell you how much easier it is to close face-to-face than through a digital alternative.

All of these activities are labor intensive. You won’t be able to reach the same number of people, as easily as throwing up a few blog posts. But instead of impressions or eyeballs, you’ll get something much more valuable in return — more sales-ready leads who can turn into new revenue tomorrow.

Feature Image Credit: PHOTO: Paul Bergmeir

By Neil Patel

Neil is the co-founder of Neil Patel Digital. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies.

Sourced from CMS Wire

In News

5 Tips for Better Email Marketing Performance

May 28, 2019 No Comments

By Thomas Smale

Email is a powerful marketing tool, but too many businesses miss out on its potential. Is yours one of these?

Email is one of the most effective ways for businesses to advertise their services. While many businesses still use direct mail, their budgets might be better spent on email marketing. According to a partnership study conducted by the Data and Marketing Association and United States Postal Service, more than half (57 percent) of mail being sent at the time of the study was still direct mail.

But this strategy, the researchers said, produced a return on investment of just 7 percent. In comparison, email marketing offered an ROI of 28.5 percent. In terms of value, studies have found that email marketing offers businesses $44 for every $1 spent.

Still, some businesses fail to realize email marketing’s full benefits, so to convince them, here are five of the best ways for any business to improve its email campaigns.

1. Personalize your email content.

Most marketers are aware of the benefits of personalization, but many don’t take it seriously. Personalized email content is by far one of the best ways to increase email marketing effectiveness. According to statistics, personalized emails offer six times higher transaction rates than emails without any personalization. Other studies have shown click-through rates are 14 percent higher and conversion rates are 10 percent higher when personalization is part of the general email content.

However, personalization for many businesses means they’re just including the name of the contact in the content. This is far from perfect as a strategy, and many subscribers are now fully aware of this tactic. Instead, personalization needs to be taken to the next level.

One way of doing this is to segment your audience into groups. Then you can send more relevant content to each group. A wedding specialist website that attempted this asked one question: Are you shopping as the couple or for the couple? This simple question split the website’s audience into two groups, but the results showed a 244 percent increase in open-rates and 161 percent increase in click-through rate.

2. Avoid certain words.

Spam filters are there to stop malicious emails from reaching audiences. Of course, spammers usually use words that businesses themselves would like to use. So filters are growing more sophisticated, and allowing more genuine content to gain access into inboxes. Still, there are times when your email might be mistaken for something malicious.

Therefore, you need to minimize the use of certain words that are considered spam by these filters. For instance, words like “bargain,” “50 percent off” and similar keywords will likely send your email to the spam folder.

When you do want to use a typical spam word, because it is relevant to your content, be inventive with your subject lines. Also restrict yourself to just one high-level spam word per email within the content and email subject line. This will reduce the chance of your emails being blacklisted.

3. Change the times you send your emails.

The aim here is to catch people who are just about to check their inbox or are in the process of doing so. This will put your email close to the top of their inbox. The more time between your sending it and customers checking it, the less likely it will be that your email is read.

You also don’t want to be sending your promotional content at the same time as everyone else, so sending your emails on the weekend might be the best option. Research has shown that many businesses don’t start campaigns on weekends, so you’ll have less competition, and more people are checking their emails on the weekends now than ever before.

4. Ensure you’re building an engaged email list.

It is often the pride of some entrepreneurs to promote how many people they have on their email lists. However, long lists mean nothing if those people aren’t engaged.

There are many ways to ensure that your list is engaged. It requires removing old and inactive subscribers, but in the end, it will help you achieve more profitable campaigns. The first thing is to check for addresses that have bounced three or more times. Ensure that a simple typo such as .con instead of .com is not responsible for the error.

You can also use email verification services. Those services will identify emails that bounce or are inactive, and they can help to remove spam traps: old emails that ISPs use as a tool to identify businesses that send spam.

5. Optimize emails for mobile.

The number of people who open emails on their mobile varies depending on the study being cited. One study said that 46 percent of people opened emails on their mobiles while another found that 59 percent of emails were being opened on these devices. Very few people actually use a desktop mail client to open emails (15 to 18 percent).

To support your efforts, ensure that your campaigns are optimized for these devices. If your campaigns don’t look good on a mobile device, people aren’t going to read them and take action. Therefore, check to make sure you have great mobile templates. A few quick tips include:

Have short subject lines.
Use one-column email designs.
Keep your email design under 600 pixels.
Usie a larger font (13 or 14 pixels).

Conclusion

Email marketing could be the best way to make your business grow. For over a decade now, it has remained the most profitable form of digital marketing. Yet, too many businesses are failing to optimize their campaigns to maximize potential revenue. So, ensure that you are personalizing your emails as much as possible and make sure you avoid the traps your competitors are falling into. Most of these changes can be made without too much disruption to your current campaigns. So, why not implement them right away?

Feature Image Credit: Image credit: anyaberkut | Getty Images

By Thomas Smale

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

In News

The Death Of Mobile?

May 28, 2019 No Comments

By Cory Treffiletti

Mobile is absolutely the centerpiece for a consumer media experience, but its future is in question if it continues to be the primary means of junk, spam and general frustration in our lives. We may be witnessing the death of mobile before our very eyes.

OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration. Your mobile phone is supposed to be a tool that gives you access to people and information, and has become the primary screen for accessing video. All that’s great, but there’s a parallel set of negative issues as well.

My phone rings as much as 10 times a day, but 75% of the calls are robocalls and spam. I get text messages that are unsolicited. I access email on my phone and the majority of that email is spam. I get alerts and notifications all day and most of them are abused by the publisher or platform that I opted into.

Case in point: If I get more than five notifications a day from the same news app telling me there’s “breaking news,” how is any of it considered important?

My phone is a way to access the world, but it has also become a way for the world to access me. I’m relatively in control of the technology on my device, but my number is a direct line int to me and an invasion of my attention span. It’s desensitizing me and making me question the usefulness of the phone that I carry around everywhere I go.

I don’t really pay attention to notifications in the moment. I rarely answer the phone unless I know exactly who it is. I get annoyed when too many text messages are sitting there awaiting my response.

The carriers need to become more involved in protecting their customers from unwanted intrusions. I read recently that they are starting to wade into the waters and test some new tools, but they really need to dive in and help us. Call Protect is a great step in the right direction and I use it every day, but there needs to be more to block unsolicited robocalls and help clean up the piping for texts and emails.

Spam by itself is probably tolerable and companies like Google have taken steps to help here, so now it’s time for AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile to take a leadership position on this issue.

The cellphone manufacturers could probably help here, too. Apple and Google, along with Samsung and any other companies, should work together to remind consumers about settings for notifications and ensure that app developers don’t overdo the notifications systems. When your phone is buzzing 40 or 50 times a day with new notifications, but you only access a small percentage of the apps on your phone, they could determine if there is a correlation there and help consumers turn off notifications from apps they don’t use.

It’s not about censoring or stopping the apps from being there. It’s about ensuring that the notifications are truly valuable to the user. If they had some tools in place that alerted users regularly and suggested updates to their setting, then users could be more in control of the experience.

Mobile is certainly not going away any time soon, but it does have issues if it continues to decline into a frustrating user experience.

I hope the carriers, the manufacturers and the operating system companies can figure this out. Otherwise, I might be digging out the Treo and the Razr for reintegration into my life!

By Cory Treffiletti

Sourced from MediaPost

In News

What is display advertising?

May 27, 2019 No Comments

By Poppy Mortiboys-Harrison

Many successful marketing strategies are built on banner advertising – but why? Find out the secret to banner ads, and how they work, in our dedicated guide.

Display advertising is everywhere you look. Splashed across social media, bordering that blog you like sat atop the headlines on the Sky News website – it’s the paid, digital marketing tactic used by most businesses, without you even knowing it.

That said, we’re so used to seeing adverts that we habitually flick the anti-ad switch in our brain. In fact, approximately 200 million internet users have installed ad blocking software for this very reason.

The modern marketer is now faced with a new kind of challenge: make a display ad campaign that both stands out from the crowd, and sticks in the mind – which, considering the competition, is easier said than done.

Read on to learn what display advertising actually is, how it works, and for examples of display ads designed for a variety of online platforms.

On this page, we’ll cover:

What is display advertising?

A visual form of advertising that incorporates both text and graphics, display advertising appears on specifically designated areas of a website or social media platform in the form of a banner ad.

The internet’s answer to billboard advertising, display adverts (otherwise known as banner ads) are designed to increase the click-through rate to a landing page. This is done by cleverly combining striking imagery, attention-grabbing copy, animation, and even video content – using more than just words to create a stand-out, snapshot ad.

Display advertising is most commonly used to increase brand awareness, and to re-engage with customers who have previously paid your site a visit. It can also be used, to generate new customers by leading them to a landing page via a click-through path. The point of a display ad is to engage the potential buyer, and develop their interest in your product or service before going in with the hard sell.

If you’re thinking of making a display ad yourself, be sure to consider the format. JPEG, JPG, PNG, and GIF images are all accepted by any network, but not all networks accept HTML5. Animated banners come with their own technical specifications, while image banners only need to be under 150kb in size – and of course, be compliant with regulations set by the ASA.

Top-performing display ad sizes include:

Ad size (measured in pixels):	Description:
300×250	The medium rectangle ad – at it’s best when embedded within text, or at the bottom of an article.
336×280	The large rectangle ad – also performs well when embedded within a block of text.7
728×90	The leaderboard ad – does well when placed at the top of content and is a popular choice on forum sites.
300×600	The half page ad – more space means more content, but it also means more money. Highly appealing visually, and highly clickable.
320×100	The mobile banner ad – can be used as an alternative to the medium/large rectangle ad, and provide twice the height of the standard mobile leaderboard size.

Types of display advertising

Display advertising can be separated into three broad categories:

1. Retargeting

Delivers highly relevant ads to your audience based on specific user behaviour and interactions.

For example, creating specific adverts targeting users who have reached your pricing page, but do not complete their order is an example of retargeted display advertising. This works by using the data generated from their visit to your site to then direct adverts containing similar, or same-category products. This can be done automatically using dynamic remarketing display adverts, which are popular on e-commerce sites.

Dynamic remarketing works by pooling information from the data feed regarding the product or service that the customer has been viewing. This information is then used to automatically create a customer-specific banner ad based on a premade template.

To do this yourself:

Link your Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) account with your Google Analytics account.
You’ll then need to add a small bit of code (provided by AdWords) across all pages of your site
Next, create remarketing lists. These are specific website visitors to be targeted on account of their previous interactions with your website, ie: those who have seen a particular category collection.
Finally, within AdWords, make a remarketing campaign with different ads targeting different customers based on their interest in the product or service.
All done! Now, when your customers visit your website then leave again, they’ll still have visibility of your brand via online marketing. This recurrent visibility will help to build trust with your audience, as brand familiarity increases brand trust.

2. Acquisition

This type of campaign focuses on driving direct sales and acquiring new customers, doing so via in-market audiences, affinity audiences, and interest targeting.

In-market audiences are those looking to make an immediate purchase. Google will be able to know who these people are based on search history.

For example, someone reading mattress reviews, searching for local bed shops, and looking at different supplier sites is probably on the hunt for a new mattress (and maybe some funky new pyjamas too).

Affinity audiences are a little harder to pin down. This term might refer to those who aren’t in ‘research mode’, but might – in light of their online profile – still be in the mood to buy. These people are categorised as ‘long term interest’ prospects by Google.

The affinity marketing audiences in Google Ads are split into the following ‘long term interest’ categories:

Banking
Beauty
Food and dining
Home and garden
Lifestyle and hobbies
Media and entertainment
News and politics
Shoppers (bargain)
Shoppers (value)
Shoppers (luxury)
Sports and fitness
Technology
Travel
Vehicles and transport

Once the affinity audience member has been categorised, streamlined display adverts will appear on the sites they visit that support display adverts.

To illustrate: someone who avidly reads the interior design blogs they subscribe to, and regularly listens to a ‘how to decorate’ podcast, would be categorised into the ‘home and garden’ affinity marketing group (available in Google Ads).

3. Brand Awareness

Focussing on reach rather than conversion, an awareness campaign requires careful planning. In order to be effective, it will also need to run for quite a long time, which is costly in both time and resource.

The aim of the awareness game is to reach as many people as possible whilst sticking to your budget. Likes and shares will help to further your reach, but securing these in the first place can be tricky. Some businesses will even pay for more visibility and followers, but this can be obvious to the reader, so we recommend sticking to organic, SEO-driven methods.

Whilst a brand awareness campaign won’t have the same clear ROI as one that focuses on acquisitions, it will have possibly unseen benefits in the long run. Brand familiarity can do wonders for your business, as the more the customers see the brand, the more they’re likely to they are to trust it.

How do display ads work?

Using the same basic principles as print advertising, display ads are designed to inform, engage, notify, and increase awareness. They work by generating traffic to your website from an external source.

The point of a display ad is to encourage the customer to click on it. Simple. To increase the chances of being clicked, display advertising targets people with specific internet habits that are linked to the product or service being advertised.

Rather than just appearing in the customer’s search results, , display ads differ from normal ads in that they appear on different websites in a variety of forms. They can be static or animated, contain text, an image or both, and can appear on social media platforms in the form of Facebook banners, Snapchat geofilters, or Instagram sponsored ads.

Banner ads also appear on regular websites in the reserved advertisement space, ie at the top, bottom, or down the sides of a page.

Display ads work by targeting customers who have already expressed an interest in your product or service, which is detectable through their previous site visits or browser habits. This increases the ad’s chance of being clicked, and your chances of getting a conversion.

Don’t worry, though – it’s not all left to Google guesswork. You can have a say when it comes to the placement of your Google ads, and can opt for either automatic or managed placements.

Automatic Placements
Google will determine the placement of your ads based on the sites it deems relevant to your business.

Managed Placements
You can decide on the placement of your ads based on customer search trends and business relevancy.

Of course, the way to gain complete control over who sees your advert is to buy advertising space on a specific website. That way, you’ll already know the tone of the site and the type of audience likely to see the advert.

Display advertising examples

To properly describe what different display ads might look like would take quite some time. So, as pictures speak a thousand words, we’ve put together some display ad examples to show what display advertising really means.

Example one:

LinkedIn banner ad – This is an example of brand awareness display advertising that is specifically designed for LinkedIn, and made to get the brand name ‘out there’. The reference to ‘work’ in the slogan makes it clear that the ad is designed for LinkedIn – the pun is intriguing, but there’s no hard sell here. An ad like this would feature in LinkedIn’s paid advertising space.

Note: LinkedIn banner ads are: 1400×245 px.

Example two:

A medium-rectangle ad, designed to be an acquisition display advert on a search-appropriate website, such as an interior design blog. This captures the user intent – interior design – and subtly displays an advert that is in-line with that intent. This display advert would appear in a paid ad slot.

Example three:

Large-rectangle ad – designed as a retargeting display advert to be used on any site the targeted prospect is likely to use, ie: social media. The discount offer and code are larger than the brand name, as prior brand familiarity is assumed.

The same background image as other display adverts is used for consistency. However, the slogans have been replaced with an enticing offer, which encourages the customer to click through to the website and use the promotional code.

All three of the above display ads are marketing the same company, using the same principle, but targeting different customers at various stages of the user journey.

The time and placement of the adverts is determined by the audience’s search habits. If they’ve never searched for ‘beds to buy’ on Google, they’re likely to see example one (the brand awareness ad); if they have Googled ‘beds to buy’ but never visited the Start-up Bed Co’s site, then Google will assume they’re interested in buying a bed, and will show them example two (the acquisition ad); and, if they’ve previously visited the Start-up Bed Co’s site but didn’t purchase a new bed, then Google will show them example three (the retargeting ad) to lure them back with an exciting offer they can’t refuse.

Overall

Display advertising is a type of paid marketing that grants access to a variety of online platforms, and targets customers and prospects according to their search intent.

An efficient and effective method of digital marketing, display advertising gets your business’ name out there and keeps it in the mind of the buyer. Using social media ad space, as well as related websites and organic searches, display advertising is everywhere – and now you’ve read this article, you probably won’t be able to stop spotting display ads in your day-to-day online activity.

For properly targeted social media campaigns, a social media management system can streamline your approach – maximising efficiency and your profits. Keen to find out more? Pop to the top of the page, and we’ll put you in touch with reputable suppliers.

By Poppy Mortiboys-Harrison

Sourced from Startups

In News

How To Use Instagram To Power Your Business Blogging

May 27, 2019 No Comments

By Dave Schneider

You might have heard it already…

Instagram has recently surpassed 1 billion users and has taken the social media industry by storm.

For the blogging community, it works as a gateway to find new followers and like-minded people in their niche. It has become one of the top social media marketing platforms not only for many influential bloggers but also for many major businesses.

In this post, you’ll learn why Instagram is important and how you can use it for your business to complement your blogging strategy.

There was a misconception about Instagram’s importance being limited to businesses like retailers, restaurants, or travel companies.

Not anymore!

Now, it’s increasingly important for all kinds of businesses looking to build their brands online. Despite the surprising fact that it’s been underutilized by many, Instagram is one of the best ways to use visual marketing for your business.

Industry bloggers are consistently leveraging the power of Instagram marketing to promote their brands and grow their business on a large scale.

Why?

Because Instagram is all about visual content, and visual content makes it easier to grab their audience’s attention.

After all, 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual!

Image Source: Kissmetrics Blog

Why You Need Instagram For Your Business

Think about this for a moment, bloggers are always using Instagram to connect with peers and colleagues, influencers and readers.

How do you think it affects their brand and their business?

It’s simple.

Their network evolves and grows, their brand is exposed to millions of followers, all thanks to the influencers they network with.

According to Brandwatch, “48.8% of brands are on Instagram and by 2017 this number is likely to rise to 70.7%.”

Surely, you don’t want to be left behind, do you?

There are many reasons why you should consider Instagram for business. One of the main reasons is the level of user engagement you get.

The number one goal of your social media marketing strategy is to be where your target audience is engaging and spending their time.

Research suggests that the engagement on Instagram is 10 times higher than Facebook, 54 times better than Pinterest, and 84 times greater than Twitter.

So if your business is not active on Instagram, you are missing out…big time!

How To Use Instagram For Your Business

Using Instagram to promote your business is pretty straight forward, but you need a solid strategy to get your desired results.

Remember:

Like any other social media platform, you must have a strategic plan for marketing on Instagram to gain traffic, get leads, and generate sales.

Instagram Marketing Strategy

First, you need to establish your marketing goals.

Do you want to increase your product sales?
Do you want to increase traffic to your website?
Do you want to increase your brand awareness?

Each social media network has its own features and advantages. You have to determine which of Instagram’s features match best with your marketing goals.

Next, you should be asking yourself –

Who is my target audience?
Having a well-defined target audience is critical. You cannot say that your target audience is “anyone who is interested in my products or services”!
Your target audience should be a specific market that is more likely to engage and buy from you. For example, single moms over 30 who speak English as their first language. This is a more effective and efficient way to reach your potential clients.Check out this detailed guide by Neil Patel to understand how to define and reach your target audience.
Which part of my audience is most active on Instagram?
After you have a clear idea of who your target audience is, next you need to find out which part of your audience is most active on Instagram; men and women of different age groups, college students with different taste and styles – who is actively using Instagram?
What kind of content do they love to engage with?
Find out what kind of content your target audience is mostly sharing, liking, and commenting on. This will help you create content they’ll love to engage with.

As you can see, doing market research is an important part of your Instagram marketing strategy.

You need data to find out what other brands, businesses, and competitors in your niche are doing on Instagram.

Use this data to evaluate what is working for them, and to find things they are missing out on, as well as things you can implement better than them.

High engaging visual content is the key for Instagram marketing so your goals and strategy should reflect that.

Your Instagram marketing strategy should involve –

Strategizing what you should post on your Instagram.
Finding out how often you should post.
Creating a well-maintained content calendar.
A strategy to get more engaged followers.

Instagram Marketing Tips

Tools: You can use tools like Hootsuite, Later, ScheduGram to schedule your Instagram posts in advance. Schedule your posts at your audience’s most active times.
Hashtags: They play a very vital role these days in social media. It’s the same with Instagram too! Using hashtags the right way will allow your target audience to discover your content easily. So choose them wisely!
Tagging people: This is a powerful technique and can play a huge part in your Instagram marketing strategy. Tag influencers, brands, or businesses featured in your posts and it will show up in their profiles.
Following influencers on Instagram: This will keep you updated on the latest industry trends. You can also find interesting, engaging and inspirational content ideas for your own posts.
Monitor and Analyze: Monitor and analyze your marketing strategies and see what is working and what is not. Adopt new tactics when necessary.

Image source: Social Media Examiner

Use tools like Iconosquare to measure your performance and optimize your strategy. Some other tools similar to Iconosquare are Dash Hudson, Simply Measured, and Sprout Social.

When you are setting up your Instagram marketing campaigns, pay very close attention to your target audience and what they are interested in.

Make sure you are engaging with them by liking, commenting, replying to their mentions and direct messages in a timely fashion.

Eventually, you will find what types of content and strategies are working for your business.

By Dave Schneider

Dave Schneider is an expert on Blogging. Dave is the cofounder of NinjaOutreach, an innovative new blogger outreach software for marketers based in Boston, Massachusetts. He writes about blogging for businesses, entrepreneurship, and has a love for travel, having visited over 40 countries. Dave can be found at lesschurn.io and daveschneider.me.

Sourced from Neal Schaffer

In News

3 Blogging Best Practices for Business

May 24, 2019 No Comments

By Laura Hill

An essential part of an effective content marketing program, blogging is a great way to accomplish several of your marketing goals at once.

Need fresh content for your website? Post a blog. Want to establish yourself as a subject matter expert? Write a blog that demonstrates your mastery. Need high-quality content for social media that drives traffic to your website? What about writing you can repurpose for email marketing? Yep. Blogs.

Aren’t there already a ton of blogs out there? Well, yes. But that doesn’t mean you’re too late to start leveraging this very effective tool. Here are some helpful guidelines, so the time you spend on your blog will return the highest return on your investment!

Our top 3 tips for business blogging

1. Provide value

Give prospective customers a real reason to make the jump to your content on the website. Write about topics that are relevant to your audience, whether they are timely or evergreen. A good place to start is with questions you are frequently asked about your services or products. These are questions people will be using on search engines, using keywords that relate directly to your business, making it even more likely you will be found online!

2. Keep it interesting

Make the text easily scannable by breaking up large blocks of text with attractive white space, and adding pictures, videos, and links. Need quality sources for free or low cost images? Create your own using graphic design tools or try free photo sites that provide a natural range of people in current and realistic settings.

3. Connect your blog to your website

Hopefully, by sharing links to your blog through social media and email marketing, and by being found during online search, you will be driving traffic directly to your blog. HubSpot recommends making sure your blog is directly connected to your business website, either as a subdomain (blog.yourdomain.com) or as a page (yourdomain.com/blog) so visitors can easily access additional information about your company.

Reviving a blogging program or starting a new one?

Beginning a blogging program (or restarting a dormant one) can be intimidating and overwhelming. Listen to your customers and clients to learn what topics they are interested in, and follow these best practices to make the time you spend blogging more rewarding and effective.

By Laura Hill

Sourced from BreezyHill