Video Marketing | Boost Website Traffic

Boost Traffic, Clicks, And Followers Using Video Marketing

Scroll on your favorite social media channel and you can surely see several videos instantly. While looking at those videos, you will notice some user-generated content, but there are also videos which various brands uploaded that feature their products or services.

Today, if there’s another strategy that marketers should utilize, it is no other than the so-called “video marketing.”

What’s with video marketing?

Humans are highly-visual creatures. Most of the time, we respond better to images or videos than to plain text alone. Given in figures, a research suggests that our brain can process visuals 60,000 times faster than text.

It doesn’t end there. Each time we try to remember something, a picture usually comes into our mind rather than the words associated with it. Visuals — particularly videos — stimulates our senses. With our sense of sight and sense of hearing working together with our brain, it can evoke an emotional response or appeal to our interests. In return, it can trigger us into action — or even a deep recognition of past events.

This reality opens opportunities to marketers to create deeper connections with their audience through video marketing.

This digital marketing strategy grows rapidly because of its capacity to bring ideas into life. It is a very powerful way of storytelling which, as mentioned before, evokes an emotional response. It’s either their audience can relate to it or it would make them want to get or experience what they have just watched. Video marketing is also an effective way to cultivate in the minds of customers the message of your brand.

READ MORE >>

Social Media Marketing | Social Media Strategy

Apply These 10 Simple Secrets to Improve Your Social Media Marketing

Social media is constantly changing and presenting new challenges and opportunities for small businesses. To really make the most of those platforms and communicate effectively with potential customers, you can learn a lot from online business experts. Here are some insights from members of the online small business community to help you step up your social media game.

Learn How Consumers and Brands Use Instagram

If you’re looking to make the most of Instagram as a marketing platform for your small business, you need to understand how consumers and other brands are using it. The statistics in this Jumper Media post by Gian Pepe may be able to shed some light on some of those habits and trends.

Think Outside the Box When It Comes to Social Media Content

There are tons of different brands using social media. And sometimes the content from those brands can start to sort of blend together. In order to stand out from the competition, you may need to think about your content in new and different ways. Christian Zilles elaborates in this Social Media HQ post.

Seek Out Pro Advice

Social media pros who have been making use of these platforms for years have made plenty of mistakes and learned a ton of lessons along the way. So you can gain a lot of useful knowledge from heeding their advice, like what’s listed in this Strella Social Media post by Rachel Strella. Biz Sugar members also shared thoughts on the post here.

READ MORE >>

Social Media Marketing | Science

How Science Redefined Social Media Marketing And Recruiting

When we think about social media, we think about something that we go to at the end of our day to take our mind of things, look at what our friends are doing, maybe read a couple of articles or simply see some beautiful pictures. However, social media tool is a powerful tool for capturing audiences and many of companies have realized that. It is prevalent to hire people who are known as 'influencers', who have amassed a large following, to market various products or services to consumers. In the past, I have written that data has steeped into fields that are outside of the STEM space, thus making traditional non-STEM fields more 'STEM' like. The same is true for marketing and social media. Moreover, social media has become a popular tool for recruiting.

As a matter of fact, 41% of the Gen Z talent, which is the next group to go out in the workforce, say they like seeing ads from prospective employers on social media. Many recruiters in the space, do use social media as a means of recruiting talent. A survey found that 92% of recruiters use social media for their searches. Although various platforms provide a different feel and attract different content, almost all social media sites provide analytical tools for content. These analytical tools have made the space very scientific like. Based on the various data about the posted content, employers can understand whether their content is resonating with the audience they are trying to reach. Thereby this gives them an opportunity to better understand the talent in advance.

READ MORE >>

Online Marketing Tips For Businesses | Daymond John

Social Media Marketing Tips | Yoga Principles

Six Ways You Can Use Yoga Principles In Your Social Media Marketing

Most social media marketers know that their jobs can be hectic. With customers using social media 24/7, and with so many platforms to use, where policies and best practices seem to change daily, comparing social media marketing to yoga might sound like a stretch (no pun intended). But it’s not. Here are six ways you can find your social media Zen.

Strength

Yoga is a great way to help strengthen your body. And just like a pose to tone up your tummy, you need a strong core to get started on a successful social media campaign. Brands cannot “do” social media just to do it. Before the first line of content gets written, objectives and goals must be well laid out. Ask yourself:

• Why are we using social media?

• What do we want to accomplish?

• Who do we want to reach?

• How do we reach them?

• Where do we reach them?

• Do we have enough time and resources to not only allocate to social media but also to do it consistently well?

A solid plan with proper goals will lead to a strong and successful campaign.

Alignment

Proper alignment in yoga not only allows students to really feel the benefit of the pose, but it also helps to keep them safe and free from injury. Your social media marketing goals need to be in alignment with your brand’s voice, the content being produced and, most importantly, with the audience’s expectation and perception of your brand. If they are not all cohesive and aligned, your brand messaging will be mixed and confusing to consumers, and you just might hurt your brand image.

Balance

Tree pose, where you’re standing on one leg with the other leg bent, foot pressed flat against the standing leg’s inner thigh, is a tough pose for many. Balance is hard on one leg, just like balancing a career and life is hard in reality. However, balancing your social media content should not be.

Ensure that your content is a mix of promotional, educational, fun and even includes behind-the-scenes posts that keep readers and viewers engaged. Think of social media like walking into a bar with friends. You don’t automatically try to start selling your friends and bar patrons a product. If you do talk about your product or brand, it should come up naturally, organically. No one really enjoys in-your-face, "salesy" promotions.

Be transparent, have fun and show the story behind your brand. People are more apt to buy and become brand loyal when they either identify with the brand or get to know it more than just as a flashy logo. It’s OK to push out a promotional piece of content, just review your content calendar to ensure that you have a balance of other types of content, too, and that anything you push out is in alignment with your goals and objectives.

READ MORE >>

SEO | Content Marketing | Content Strategy

How to Optimize Content Efforts for SEO

SEO is not a singular effort that your company can just “do”.

Instead, SEO is a process that describes various services and factors that improve your site’s chances to be displayed prominently in search engine results for certain keywords and terms. 

Optimizing your content to rank for your target terms is among the core SEO services you can pursue. This applies both to your site content and content marketing efforts.

This article details how to optimize your content for SEO through on-site optimization and content marketing and how these efforts work to benefit your search rankings.

Use Keyword Optimization for All of Your Site’s Content

Keywords are the backbone of SEO. They are the most basic, underlying factor on which search engine results pages (SERPs) are built.

Given their importance to your search engine visibility, it is imperative that you consider how to optimize your content for your target terms, both for your on-site and off-site content efforts.

Your site content refers to everything that is included on the pages of your website: Product descriptions, your “About Us” page, client testimonials, etc.  

Optimizing your site for keywords does not mean stuffing them as much as possible in your site content. It means strategically placing keywords where search engines will recognize and associate them with related search queries.

3 On-Site Optimization Techniques

Three example methods of on-site optimization methods for your site content are title tags, meta descriptions, and image alt text.

• Title tags: Include your target keywords in the title tags, or the HTML code that represents the title of your web pages, of relevant pages on your site. For example, if you are targeting the term “men’s reef sandals”, make sure to include that wording in the titles for relevant product pages.
• Meta descriptions: Meta descriptions provide insight to searchers about the content that they will encounter by clicking on your search listing. Include your target keywords terms in your descriptions to show that your content is relevant to the term.
• Image alt text: Include alt text with every image you use on your site. Image alt text describes the content of your images so Google can recognize and associate that with a given topic. Ideally, most of your images relate to one of your key terms, so including keywords that includes your keywords can have SEO benefit.

It should be said that each of these tactics require familiarity with the basic back-end structure of your website.

Make sure you consult with your site administrator or consider hiring an SEO company that you can consult to make sure you properly adjust these functions.

READ MORE >>

SEO For Businesses | SEO Tips

13 Things Every CEO Needs to Understand About SEO

Organic search engine optimization (SEO) has enough specialization and technical aspects that it can be overwhelming to the C-suite.

Or, worse yet, over-simplified and thought to be something easy and that can be done quickly leading to unmet expectations.

The mysterious nature of SEO can lead to misunderstanding and frustration for CEOs.

Understanding the high-level principles and some of the important aspects of SEO success can set the right expectations with executives.

Here are 13 key things that every CEO needs to understand about SEO.

1. Layout of the SERP

The search engine results page (SERP) has evolved a lot over the past several years.

It used to provide a standard layout with a few different variations that always included the “10 blue links” for the organic results and included ads above and to the side. Plus, news, map, or other content relevant to the search query.

Now, we see varying layouts that are intended to provide an optimal experience on a mobile device and cascade to desktops and other sizes.

The number of ads varies and other information is pulled into the SERP ahead of organic results. You don’t always see 10 organic results and sometimes they are pushed way down the page or mixed in with other content.

First step first, know what you’re looking at in the anatomy of the SERP understanding what is paid, what is organic, and what sources all of the other items come from including local listings, video, images, news, shopping ads, and more.

2. Results & Timing Expectations

SEO doesn’t offer the same level of instant gratification of paid search. While there are low-hanging-fruit terms and easy wins, in most cases, SEO is a long-term play.

For competitive queries, hard work and time have to be invested to move up in the rankings. Search engine algorithm updates and competitor updates create a moving target that takes time and discipline to achieve.

While SEO professionals are trained to not make guarantees and carefully set performance expectations, it is safe to say that we’re talking about months for lesser competitive terms and longer (sometimes much longer) to achieve top results for competitive queries.

Assuming we’re following the search engines’ guidelines, our limits are in areas of collaboration and resources put into the effort.

3. Influence over the Search Engines

When we’re not seeing the search rankings and results we hope and expect, we can’t simply call Google and pressure for better positioning.

Unfortunately, organic search isn’t like getting support for Google Ads, Google My Business, Analytics, or other products. This is a service Google provides to its users – those that use the search engine. It owes us nothing.

SEO professionals gain a lot of information and knowledge through experience, industry sources like Search Engine Journal, and hearing directly from the search engine representatives themselves.

Ultimately, though, we have no individual sway over the search engines or algorithms.

4. Meta Tags

No one area of SEO holds the magical power to influence rankings. Context and addressing the wide range of factors have the most impact.

Meta tags are still sometimes asked about or mentioned as the first thing someone thinks of when asked about SEO.

Yes, you should optimize the title and meta description tags for your site.

No, those items alone don’t have much impact if that’s all you do.

SEO is about so much more than just tags.

5. Submitting Pages

Another old-school tactic that is, fortunately, being asked about and mentioned less than it used to is “submitting to Google.”

Google has recently removed the form where you can submit URLs to it. In the past, a part of getting content indexed was to submit the URLs of new or updated pages through a form. That practice became obsolete when XML sitemaps went into use.

More importantly, submitting to Google and indexing is important to ensure that content is known about, but is not a ranking factor itself.

Focus on submitting and getting stuff indexed needs to be prioritized after creating good content that is worthy of being at the top of the SERPs.

READ MORE >>

Social Media Tips - Content Sharing | Neil Patel

SEO | Website Traffic

5 Basic SEO Principles to Increase Your Website Traffic

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the cornerstone of the modern business. If you are an ecommerce seller, you cannot grow the base of loyal customers being stuck on page 6 in search results. A lot of studies already revealed the importance of SEO and here are a few stats to prove it:

• As much as 93% of all traffic comes from a search engine.
• 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results.
• More than 60% of marketers say improving SEO and growing organic presence is their top inbound marketing priority.
• The first position on Google’s organic search results on the desktop has a 34% clickthrough rate.

Bearing all these figures in mind, it is not the issue of whether you should create a good SEO strategy for your website but rather how to do it most productively. Here are basic SEO principles to increase website traffic in the long run.

READ MORE >>

Marketing | Brands - The Cheers Effect

Is Norm The New Norm? The 'Cheers' Effect On Marketing

Click Here to Read About the 'Cheers' Effect!