Happy Monday!
Following is this month's content marketing roundup, social media and SEO roundup about what happened at Visual Contenting and from around the web.
Enjoy!
From Visual Contenting
6 Ways to Come Up with Attention-Grabbing Social Media Photos
Social media users normally scroll through their timeline rapidly and skim over most content. It is only if they notice something interesting that they may click on it to check it out and decide whether or not it interests them.
That is why above and beyond anything else it is important that your social media photos are able to grab attention. That can be tricky considering the amount of competition you’re up against, but it must be done.
If you want to start to come up with social media photos that are able to draw peoples’ attention, there are a few ways that you can go about it.
Using Social Media Reports to Optimize Your Marketing
There is a large range of social media platforms, each with their own target audience, advertising quirks, and reporting options. You can spend a lot of time and money in creating your social media accounts, creating content, building your following and devising your campaign strategy, but with most social media platforms you run into problems when trying to test the effectiveness of your work.
10 Best Marketing Advices for A Fresh e-Commerce Entrepreneur
Starting a new e-commerce business can be a difficult venture if you’ve never dealt with retail, shipping, customer service, and every other detail that goes into a dynamic web store.
Sometimes it can seem so complicated and scary that it stops some entrepreneurs from every beginning of their journey.
To help avoid some of these pitfalls, today I want to discuss ten of the best marketing advices for a new e-commerce entrepreneur coming into this business. Hopefully, this will help in preparing you for some of the pitfalls you should try and avoid.
So let’s jump right in!
SEO Is A Team Sport: Agency Interview with Monkee Boy
Creative people and technical SEO people must work together for the success of their common clients. As a result, SEO is now a team sport. Everything must be properly formatted with SEO, even when this places constraints on the creative deliverables.
Below is an interview with an Austin, TX based agency on how they solve this.
How to Build a Foolproof Communication Strategy for Your Brand
Communicating your brand meaning and values to your customers and the masses is essential across all of your products and services. You need to be recognized, and people need to quickly comprehend what your brand is all about.
Once you have caught the eye of your prospective customers, you need to stay at the forefront of their minds so that they choose your products rather than a competitor’s.
It should be noted that gaining and keeping consumers’ trust through authenticity is becoming more and more essential, and has often been the core reason why consumers have parted ways with a particular brand. Read on to learn how to stand out amongst a sea of companies, and how to keep your relevancy afloat.
Usefulness And Benefits of A Mobile Application
There are many business owners in the industry who think that mobile applications are meant for big brands. This is absolutely wrong. There are a lot of small and midsize companies which are following the trend of mobile application. They understand that an efficient mobile strategy means more than a mobile friendly website. The sooner you understand this, the better it is for your business.
You might have noticed that a lot of small businesses you interact with on a daily basis have their own dedicated mobile app. This includes the corner coffee shop or even a spa downtown. Companies with a mobile application are ahead of the game and have taken marketing to a whole new level. If you are still not sure whether you want a mobile application for your business or not, here are some benefits of developing a mobile app for your business.
5 Tips for Improving Inclusion in 21st Century Advertising
The images that tell us what to buy, wear and use are omnipresent in American life, but it’s generally conceded that more needs to be done to make those images reflective of the overall population. By doing so, businesses can grow and reach more potential customers.
Modern America is progressively growing more diverse. Accordingly, business leaders increasingly recognize the value of diversity and inclusion across the spectrum of enterprise operations.
6 Pop-Up Calls-To-Action Users Will Enjoy
In recent years, pop-ups have gotten a bad rap. Some experts say never use them, and others say use them with caution. While users find some pop-ups distracting, there is a time and place for using them to drive conversions.
Exit pop-ups, for example, are a popular exit-intent strategy. Top performing pop-ups have about a 50 percent conversion rate, but the average conversion rates trend toward single digits. Think carefully about when and where pop-ups work best for your target audience.
Combining the power of the call the action (CTA) and the pop-up gives you more opportunities for converting visitors into leads. Some types of CTAs work better than others. Here are six elements that drive pop-up conversions.
Create Videos Easily and Quickly with FlexClip Video Maker
Many video programs come with a huge range of functions, which is often not needed. Accordingly, these applications require more or less long training periods and are often quite expensive.
It does not have to be the high-end video application for a nice family video and advertising videos for your own business. If you see the same, you can take a closer look at the FlexClip Video Maker. What ever speaks for this software is the price. It is free. Of course, this alone cannot lead to a recommendation. Another advantage of FlexClip is the uncomplicated and intuitive use of the program.
How to Write A Perfect Guest Post Pitch (We Asked 84 Editors)
When you know what you’re doing, writing guest posts can drastically increase traffic on your own website and help you to build brand authority. But, let's be real, it can be really challenging to find a website that will want to publish our masterpiece.
To make blogger outreach successful, the first challenge we need to overcome is to know how to write a perfect guest post pitch. A pitch that will make the person that we don't know to open our email and even do us a favor.
So, what is the secret formula?
Well, the secret formula doesn't exist. The essential question here is “What editors really want to see in the pitches we send them?”.
How to Protect Your Brand Design in 2019
Establishing your brand design is not an easy thing. You don’t invest your time, energy and resources for months getting it just perfect, sometimes even struggling on your own, just to realize that someone else has copied almost the whole thing for their business. This can easily happen if you’ve forgotten to protect your brand design. Or maybe you have protected it but didn’t give too much though during the process. And now you’re inside a real-life horror story - your business is being sued for trademark infringement. And legal expenses are the least of your worries - this means you’re gonna have to rebrand your business from scratch. And just the thought of changing domain names, redoing marketing materials, and other nightmarish tasks is enough to make you quit altogether.
This can all be avoided if you protect your brand design and if you do it right. So what precisely do you need to protect? The very thing that distinguishes your business from others - your logo. In other words, you need to protect your corporate identity.
The Key to Team SEO Is Communications, Knowledge, Processes, and Tools
Envision Creative is a marketing agency in Austin, TX. Michelle Loughry is their Director of Marketing. This article is the result of an interview with Michelle which I conducted on January 15, 2019.
3 Steps to Reach Your Ideal Audience with Facebook Ads Targeting
It’s no secret that Facebook Ads offers incredible opportunities for reaching your ideal audience to promote your products and services. Some even consider Facebook Ads to be the largest psycho-graphic and demographic database in the world - a marketer’s dream!
But with so many targeting options to choose from, it can be a little intimidating! As with all seemingly complicated tasks, it’s best to approach Facebook’s targeting options in a series of steps. The audiences, in addition to the offer and landing page, all play important factors and can greatly influence the success (or failure) of your Facebook advertising campaign.
When defining a custom audience on Facebook Ads, it is important that you start with the “location” and “demographics” targeting options. Once chosen, you continue on to pick the “interest-based” and “behavioral” options that will help pinpoint your ideal customer - the type of visitor that is likely to buy from you! Once you apply target filters it’s time to get even more specific. You’ll choose specified filters that really let you get to the core of the market you’re after.
Does America Need More Authentic Ads? I Say Yes…
Can ads – particularly within the digital sphere – help inspire change? Modern advertising needs to reflect the diverse fabric of America.
By promoting equity in advertisements, marketers give underrepresented groups influence and power. This isn’t a new topic among advertising and marketing professionals. However, the time has come to spark conversations into action around the four distinct issues of diversity, equality, equity and inclusion.
Equity in advertising is one very important area that’s been overlooked in the industry. To date, the topic of equity is nearly absent in ongoing discussions about promoting fairness in advertising practices. By promoting advertising equity, marketing professionals can drive the industry toward an attitude that’s more representative of society.
Nevertheless, after decades of ongoing discussion, there’s still a marked disparity between the appearance of mainstream advertisements and the composition of society. For some reason, the marketing industry has chosen to ignore the divide between an idealized world and reality.
Most Anticipated eCommerce Trends in 2019
The world of e-commerce is getting more and more formidable by the hour. In 2018, the total worldwide e-commerce sales were in the value of roughly 2.8 billion, while it is estimated that this number will reach 3.3 billion this year. In just two years’ time (in 2021), this figure will be almost double of what it was in 2017, which is a huge leap for any industry. Still, these predictions are hard to make (at least accurately), due to numerous trends that are emerging every year. These trends are changing the landscape of e-commerce, making it more efficient or changing its public image. In order to better understand what we’re talking about, here are several such trends that are expected to be huge in 2019.
5 Ways Your eCommerce Store Can Beat Amazon
Launching an eCommerce store for the first time is pretty exciting. But the excitement can soon wear off when you realize that your rivals are tougher to beat than you thought… and Amazon is even more dominant than you thought.
We all live in the shadow of the Big A, especially now that its private labels have broken out. Competition is one-sided at times, with Amazon’s batteries alone growing over 90% each year.
Then there’s the fact that Amazon has loads of weapons in their armory that so few of us can compete with - staggeringly low prices, super duper fast shipping, and Amazon Prime among them. In the face of all this, what can you do?
Fortunately, there are answers. Roll your sleeves up, put your best game face on, and let’s take a look at 5 ways your eCommerce store can beat Amazon.
Pros and Cons of Remote Working Teams
Is 9-to-5 slowly becoming a history? With more and more companies ditching the traditional work week in favor of flexible options, remote teams are quickly becoming the new normal. Thanks to the rise of online tools, working remotely has never been easier. With the online clock in clock out system from Clockspotas well as cloud-based collaboration tools, managing a remote working team is as simple as managing one that’s in-office.
Are you considering a remote working team for your business? If so, there are some pros and cons to consider. As expected, no option is perfect. Remote working might just be the right option for your organization.
How to Best Manage Your Freelance Content Team
For any online marketing strategy to be successful, it needs a frequent stream of new content that has value for the visitors. Almost 85% of consumers expect some content creation from their brands. Although it may sound like an easy job, one that only requires a basic knowledge of the English language, many companies simply do not have the necessary time and motivation to do it.
Unless your business has a dedicated writer in its premises or your employees can contribute, you can outsource these jobs to freelance remote writers. The perks from outsourcing such jobs are many – there is a wider talent pool, no overhead costs and many writers work more creatively in their homes.
But some cons are also present, such as a challenge to find the right writer and more stress when managing freelancers. Read about the next few pieces of advice we've prepared to help you better deal with such a process.
Small Businesses Can Use SEO to Great Effect for Their Ultimate Success
For small businesses/startups, SEO can be really beneficial to market their website and products/services online. According to latest statistics, search engines drive more than 300% traffic than social media websites and apps. Furthermore, around 93% of online experiences that we all indulge in is initiated by a query on a search engine. Just these 2 stats are enough to compel any company to pursue SEO for their company.
How the Twitter Algorithm Works and How to Make It Work for You
Brand promotion through social media has become the new norm and has proven to be quite effective so far. Out of the available social media platforms, Twitter is considered the dark horse. Many marketers fail to utilize Twitter properly for brand promotion purposes.
The fact that Twitter gives its users a chance to make their voices heard makes it a unique platform. However, there is a limit to the number of words that can be used in a single tweet (140, later increased to 280). Due to this, the Tweeter must come up with a creative way to get their message conveyed in a short and precise way.
How Mobile SEO Review Can Help You to Choose the Best Mobile SEO Services?
Online business has altered the traditional concept business in the 21st century and smartphones have played the role of the biggest catalyst. The invention of smartphones has changed the internet use and now a large number of people tend to use their smartphones to choose their desired products and services. Today, you can find various mobile apps launched by different websites and online businesses, and people can easily access their products and services from their dedicated mobile app. If you do not have any mobile app then you must optimize your website with a mobile responsive layout. So people can easily open your website on their smartphone and access your services.
PR Distribution Service Reviews 2019
PR distribution sites help businesses achieve their business goals by distributing their news far and wide. It helps organizations boost their brand awareness, visibility, and engagement.
Press release isn’t dead, contrary to the beliefs of some experts. It’s still useful to deliver brand benefits that they can’t find in other communication and public relations strategies.
This is basically the reason why press release distribution services are still existing. Organizations can get results from the distribution.
If you are new in distributing releases or it’s already included in your PR pipeline, you should know that there are several choices available for you in the market. There are factors to consider before making a decision.
How to Build High-Quality Backlinks for Your WordPress Blog in 2019
It’s no secret that a blog is a very effective form of content marketing. If you can get your blog in front of the right eyeballs, you can build your brand whilst building a stronger relationship with your audience. Then, conversions and sales rise.
Awesome, huh?
If producing all-star content comes easy to you but driving traffic and establishing your brand doesn’t, you’ve probably been told to go and chase some high-quality backlinks. The more top-notch backlinks you have, the higher your blog starts to rank in the SERPs.
But what does this mean exactly and how do you capture those A++ backlinks? This article is going to first take a look at what a high-quality backlink is, before demonstrating the steps you need to take to bag yourself more of them.
5 Tips to Improve LMS User Experience Using Your Social Media
Social media platforms are powerful assets, always at the disposal of both businesses and individuals.
If you are using an LMS (Learning Management System), you are probably wondering if it’s possible to leverage your social media profile to promote your LMS software, increase the enrollment rates, and monetize it. The answer is yes, but it is a bit more complicated than that.
Improving LMS user-experience using your social media is a long-term effort. First, you will have to devise a strategy, a plan of sorts. You might need help here, especially if you haven’t done it before.
This is why we give you these five tips to improve LMS user-experience using your social media.
6 Questions to Ask Yourself If Your Business Is Failing
Running a small business requires a lot of attention and energy. If that business begins failing, it's heartbreaking because most business owners invest so much of themselves into the process of creating something they're passionate about.
Only 50 percent of small businesses survive to the five-year mark, and a mere 30 percent make it to the 10-year mark. However, your business isn't only about the numbers. It is a unique company built by you and your dreams.
Even if your business is failing at the moment, there are some questions you can ask yourself to help you get back on track and beat the odds.
Being Creative: How Content Marketing Boosts Online Sales
Today, content marketing is considered better than traditional marketing, because it increases sales, saves money and gives loyal customers. Content marketing inculcates a strategic approach to an online business by attracting an audience through relevant, valuable and appealing content to generate revenue.
E-commerce platforms are emphasizing more on customer satisfaction to enhance their branding. So if your content is good enough to cater customer demands you definitely have an edge over your competitors.
Why Your Cold Emails Are Ignored (and What to Do About It)
Crafting and sending cold emails are a hard sell. It’s difficult enough getting your emails seen and opened, let alone convincing the prospect to take action on your call to action.
And look, the stats don’t lie: According to MailChimp the average open rate can be as low as 15.22%. That makes for pretty grim reading. So why do we even bother with cold emails?
From Around the Web
Monthly Content, Social and SEO Roundup (March 01 - 31 2019)
Latest News
If you're a regular reader of Visual Contenting, you know that we've recently launched a new section on the site called NEWS where we keep you updated with the latest changes, announcements and resources from brands and experts in the industry.
If you want to get your news spread out to Visual Contenting community, please contact Jacqueline at Jacqueline@visualcontenting.com so that she can help you create an account.
Latest News (Mar 01 - Mar 31 2019)
Community manager at Visual Contenting. Jacqueline loves to talk about social media trends, new technology and how they help businesses accelerate their marketing efforts.
