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November 1st, 2019
Creative Ways To Use Social Media For Businesses
Social Media is an extremely important digital marketing tactic
Social Media has become an integral part of any brands digital marketing strategy. It’s so important for companies to utilize these free platforms because it is extremely versatile, has an enormous reach, and there is no limit to how much you can grow your brand within social media. Here are a few social media marketing ideas to promote your brand with a limited budget.
Social Media Recruiting
If your business is looking for new employees social media is not a bad place to start, considering that about 80% of American citizens have some sort of social media account. You can post a job description on any platform and then promote that post to people you are targeting. This strategy is also free, so if your posts happen to reach a qualified applicant it has no cost for you.
Drive Traffic
Driving traffic back to your website can be a lot easier than you think. If you are an e-commerce website promoting your products to a targeted audience can be very beneficial. You could either use paid advertisements on platforms like Facebook and Instagram where you can boost your posts so it will be seen by more people than just your followers. Pinterest is another great platform to promote your e-commerce products. You can create pins that show off your products in a creative way to customers that are more likely to purchase.
Capture Customers Attention
Social media has become such an influx of information that it is very hard to get someone to stop and be engaged in one of your posts. Businesses need to use more clever and creative tactics to attract eyeballs to their social media content. One form of media that has proved to be a lot more successful than just a simple post of a picture, is a video. A simple 30-sec video of something funny that has to do with your brand, or maybe a 60-sec how-to video answering a common problem in your industry. Videos will break through the masses and draw users' attention more often.
Research Tool
Social media is a great way to garner exposure and target specific users for one's brand. It is also a great way for marketers to understand the effectiveness of any message that is put out by allowing the clicks, likes, and overall engagement to be tracked. Linking your social media posts back to your website is a great way to measure if your content is drawing consumers in and getting them closer to a purchase. Likes and comments can show you that the content you are posting is appealing to your audience or vice-versa. Through this analysis, you can figure out what content is best working for your audience and what isn’t working as well.
To find out more tips on different creative ways you can use social media to grow your business click here.
Social Media Recruiting
If your business is looking for new employees social media is not a bad place to start, considering that about 80% of American citizens have some sort of social media account. You can post a job description on any platform and then promote that post to people you are targeting. This strategy is also free, so if your posts happen to reach a qualified applicant it has no cost for you.
Drive Traffic
Driving traffic back to your website can be a lot easier than you think. If you are an e-commerce website promoting your products to a targeted audience can be very beneficial. You could either use paid advertisements on platforms like Facebook and Instagram where you can boost your posts so it will be seen by more people than just your followers. Pinterest is another great platform to promote your e-commerce products. You can create pins that show off your products in a creative way to customers that are more likely to purchase.
Capture Customers Attention
Social media has become such an influx of information that it is very hard to get someone to stop and be engaged in one of your posts. Businesses need to use more clever and creative tactics to attract eyeballs to their social media content. One form of media that has proved to be a lot more successful than just a simple post of a picture, is a video. A simple 30-sec video of something funny that has to do with your brand, or maybe a 60-sec how-to video answering a common problem in your industry. Videos will break through the masses and draw users' attention more often.
Research Tool
Social media is a great way to garner exposure and target specific users for one's brand. It is also a great way for marketers to understand the effectiveness of any message that is put out by allowing the clicks, likes, and overall engagement to be tracked. Linking your social media posts back to your website is a great way to measure if your content is drawing consumers in and getting them closer to a purchase. Likes and comments can show you that the content you are posting is appealing to your audience or vice-versa. Through this analysis, you can figure out what content is best working for your audience and what isn’t working as well.
To find out more tips on different creative ways you can use social media to grow your business click here.
November 2nd, 2019
Instagram is Now Providing Tips to Help Marketers Maximize Their On-Platform Efforts
Utilize Instagram to help your business succeed
Instagram is on the rise and more brands are looking to make an Instagram presence, and market their products via Instagram stories, posts, and videos. Instagram says that 80% of its users follow at least one business and 60% of users regularly discover new products. Furthermore, 75% of users have taken action after seeing brand content on the platform. They recently have published a set of platform pointers and notes to help marketers create more resonant content and build a stronger presence.
First, they have provided a set of tips for image composition that includes notes on how to maximize your visual presentation. For example, one of the tips says to use space to spotlight your subject. Adding space around the subject will make it stand out. Another one is to experiment with light at different times of the day. You can utilize daytime, sunset, and nighttime shots in different ways that appeal to your follower's eyes. Instagram also provides a set of tips on how to sell products on its platform. Some of the tips include; Tease products ahead of the launch, use a countdown sticker on your stories, and make products available for sale on launch day. These pointers will give you a better approach to maximize your Instagram brand presence. As with all social media platforms it still takes planning, consistency and time to elevate your brand on social media
To read more about Instagram's tips to help your brand be successful on their platform, click here.
First, they have provided a set of tips for image composition that includes notes on how to maximize your visual presentation. For example, one of the tips says to use space to spotlight your subject. Adding space around the subject will make it stand out. Another one is to experiment with light at different times of the day. You can utilize daytime, sunset, and nighttime shots in different ways that appeal to your follower's eyes. Instagram also provides a set of tips on how to sell products on its platform. Some of the tips include; Tease products ahead of the launch, use a countdown sticker on your stories, and make products available for sale on launch day. These pointers will give you a better approach to maximize your Instagram brand presence. As with all social media platforms it still takes planning, consistency and time to elevate your brand on social media
To read more about Instagram's tips to help your brand be successful on their platform, click here.
November 3rd, 2019
Measuring the Impact of Your Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing is an important tactic in any digital marketing strategy
Content marketing is delivering valuable, relevant, and consistent content to your audience to drive interest and potential action. Having a Content marketing strategy is necessary but understanding how to adapt and evolve that strategy is even more important. I'm going to talk about why measuring your content is important and how you can use that analysis to improve your content marketing.
If you are a marketer or entrepreneur creating some sort of content is a very large part of what you do. It is also time-consuming and uses resources so being able to effectively measure how successful your content marketing is key. Different pieces of content interact with users at different points in their journey. For example, blog posts aren't exactly supposed to just drive leads, they are a tool to interact and engage users at the start of their journey. Also, white-papers are not for first-time visitors but for people who are farther in the buying process. Once you figure out the objectives of each type of content you create, you can measure them more accurately. How many unique visitors viewed your recent blog post? How many downloads has each white-paper received? These types of measurement give you a better understanding of your content marketing performance which leads to decisions based on that understanding.
Overall, a fully informed, data-driven, strategic approach to your content marketing strategy will yield you better results for your budget. To read more about content marketing click here.
If you are a marketer or entrepreneur creating some sort of content is a very large part of what you do. It is also time-consuming and uses resources so being able to effectively measure how successful your content marketing is key. Different pieces of content interact with users at different points in their journey. For example, blog posts aren't exactly supposed to just drive leads, they are a tool to interact and engage users at the start of their journey. Also, white-papers are not for first-time visitors but for people who are farther in the buying process. Once you figure out the objectives of each type of content you create, you can measure them more accurately. How many unique visitors viewed your recent blog post? How many downloads has each white-paper received? These types of measurement give you a better understanding of your content marketing performance which leads to decisions based on that understanding.
Overall, a fully informed, data-driven, strategic approach to your content marketing strategy will yield you better results for your budget. To read more about content marketing click here.
November 4th, 2019
SEO Tools: SEMrush vs. Ahrefs
What SEO tool is the best?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is vital to the success of a company in terms of digital marketing and e-commerce. There are tons of SEO tools around the internet that can be extremely useful when analyzing how well your website does with SEO. Two of the most popular tools are SEMrush and Ahrefs. These two sites have incredible keyword research features, backlink analysis, and technical SEO tools which is what I will be analyzing them on.
SEO Keyword Research:
Starting with Ahrefs, they have two main keyword research features; keyword explorer and organic keywords. Keyword explorer gives you a list of ideas from a designated keyword but what's unique about it is that it gives you how many clicks you'll get if you rank for that keyword. This is important because Google is packed with SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) which give you a result that doesn't lead to a website. Ahrefs takes these into account to give you a more accurate estimation of how many clicks your page will get without including SERP's. Moving on to SEMrush, you can get a lot more in-depth keyword data than Ahrefs. For example, Ahrefs shows your search volume, CPC, and competition. SEMrush shows you these things plus a ton more data on each term like search volume trend and number of results. One super helpful feature that SEMrush includes is data on Google PPC which is something that most company's use so data on that can be super useful as well. Overall, SEMrush wins this battle because they give you more data which makes it a more well-rounded tool.
Analyzing Backlinks
First of all, when seeing how many backlinks your site has, it depends on the size of the index that the tool has. SEMrush has a much larger backlink index than Ahrefs so you will get more accurate results. As for Ahrefs, they beat SEMrush in UI (User-Interface). UI is extremely important when using these tools because they can make them much easier to understand. Ahrefs shows you a sneak preview of the text around each backlink. This gives you an idea of why people are linking to a specific page. So when it comes to backlink features, SEMrush and Ahrefs are tied. SEMrush has an expanded index but Ahrefs beats them out with UI, both are very important when analyzing backlinks.
Technical SEO Audit
When figuring out how well your website performs in terms of SEO, you want the best analytics possible. So which tool is best for finding technical SEO problems and opportunities for your website. Both of the sites will give you an overall SEO health score, and they both will give you problems you have with your SEO like slow pages, broken links, the meta description is too short, etc. Ahrefs features a "Site structure" feature that shows you how deep your pages are from the home page. What is cool that SEMrush has is it gives you issues that you should start working on right away. It also gives you how well your internal link distribution is set up. Overall, SEMrush beats Ahrefs on Technical SEO analysis because it does a better job of letting you know what to fix first, and the audit feature is more robust.
There are a ton more important features that these two tools compete on like Rank Tracking, Support, Unique Features, and price. They both have amazing programs and tools to help you with SEO so it is extremely difficult to pick a better one. If you only could use one of them, I would choose SEMrush. Even though it doesn't have as good as a UI, it has a little better analysis and if your brand uses PPC it is much more useful. To read more about the comparisons of SEMrush and Ahrefs click here.
SEO Keyword Research:
Starting with Ahrefs, they have two main keyword research features; keyword explorer and organic keywords. Keyword explorer gives you a list of ideas from a designated keyword but what's unique about it is that it gives you how many clicks you'll get if you rank for that keyword. This is important because Google is packed with SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) which give you a result that doesn't lead to a website. Ahrefs takes these into account to give you a more accurate estimation of how many clicks your page will get without including SERP's. Moving on to SEMrush, you can get a lot more in-depth keyword data than Ahrefs. For example, Ahrefs shows your search volume, CPC, and competition. SEMrush shows you these things plus a ton more data on each term like search volume trend and number of results. One super helpful feature that SEMrush includes is data on Google PPC which is something that most company's use so data on that can be super useful as well. Overall, SEMrush wins this battle because they give you more data which makes it a more well-rounded tool.
Analyzing Backlinks
First of all, when seeing how many backlinks your site has, it depends on the size of the index that the tool has. SEMrush has a much larger backlink index than Ahrefs so you will get more accurate results. As for Ahrefs, they beat SEMrush in UI (User-Interface). UI is extremely important when using these tools because they can make them much easier to understand. Ahrefs shows you a sneak preview of the text around each backlink. This gives you an idea of why people are linking to a specific page. So when it comes to backlink features, SEMrush and Ahrefs are tied. SEMrush has an expanded index but Ahrefs beats them out with UI, both are very important when analyzing backlinks.
Technical SEO Audit
When figuring out how well your website performs in terms of SEO, you want the best analytics possible. So which tool is best for finding technical SEO problems and opportunities for your website. Both of the sites will give you an overall SEO health score, and they both will give you problems you have with your SEO like slow pages, broken links, the meta description is too short, etc. Ahrefs features a "Site structure" feature that shows you how deep your pages are from the home page. What is cool that SEMrush has is it gives you issues that you should start working on right away. It also gives you how well your internal link distribution is set up. Overall, SEMrush beats Ahrefs on Technical SEO analysis because it does a better job of letting you know what to fix first, and the audit feature is more robust.
There are a ton more important features that these two tools compete on like Rank Tracking, Support, Unique Features, and price. They both have amazing programs and tools to help you with SEO so it is extremely difficult to pick a better one. If you only could use one of them, I would choose SEMrush. Even though it doesn't have as good as a UI, it has a little better analysis and if your brand uses PPC it is much more useful. To read more about the comparisons of SEMrush and Ahrefs click here.
Check out last months blogs here!
