Instagram Reels: Everything You Need To Know
There’s this extra feature on Instagram in the Explore page – an alternative way to record 15 to 30-second clips that allows you to uncover your most creative side with your effects, music, or audios to create content – Instagram Reels. Instagram Reels was first launched in Brazil in late 2019, and it is now available in over 50 other countries, including the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and Japan, on both iOS and Android. Various influencers and brands have already adopted though it’s being disparaged as a “TikTok copycat. The idea is to maintain the already existing TikTok accounts whilst also leveraging on the new Instagram Reels for more sales. Brands like Walmart, Sephora France, Loius Vuitton. If you are wondering what Instagram reels is about, and how it works, we would answer all of your questions and more in this post. What is Instagram Reels? Instagram Reels is a new way to create fun and engaging video content. In a couple of Instagram Stories from the @creators account, Instagram explained the Reels tab as a “place to watch short, fun videos, and helps your Reels get discovered by new audiences on a bigger, global stage.” Just like TikTok, Instagram users can record and edit together 15 to 30-second video clips set to music, and share them to their Stories, Explore Feed, and the new Reels tab on a user’s profile. But where TikTok has the “For You” page, Instagram gives Reels an exclusive landing spot at the top of the Explore page. Just tap the first reel at the top, and you can access the Reels feed. From here, you’ll see Reels from popular and trending accounts on Instagram. How Do I Create My First Instagram Reel? Using Reels is not so different from using Instagram Stories. However, ensure that your Instagram app is updated to the minimum version of 153.0. Then, follow the steps below: Step 1: Open your Instagram account, the Instagram Stories camera, and tap Reels. Step 2: You will notice a change in the interface as there are now 3 choices at the bottom – Live, Story, Reels. Step 3: Tap the Reels option Step 4: Before and after you record footage on your Reels camera, you’ll see four editing icons on the left side of your camera screen. The four controls include: Sound: This allows you to add an already recorded sound from other users or an Instagram Reels’ featured song list to your content. Sound overlay tool in these reels. Playback Speed: This allows you to change the speed of your video, either to speed up or slow down the content. Effects: This icon, which looks like an emoji outline, allows you to apply special effects. You get to add stickers and filter effects to your video. Timer: You can tap this icon to set the recording time for your clip. When you tap record, a countdown of three seconds will appear on your screen before Reels starts to record. Then Reels will automatically film for the time you chose. Step 5: To record an Instagram reel, tap and hold the ‘Record’ button or tap on the video, and to end the clip, tap on it again. You can also choose the Camera roll option on the left to upload a video from your phone. Step 6: Once you have your Reels recorded, review your work by pressing the ‘Back arrow’ button. Here you can choose to trim your video or discard it with the ‘Delete’ button right below. Step 7: Next, tap the ‘Forward arrow’ button to add stickers and emojis. You can’t add polls or question boxes to it, but you can experiment with some drawing, recording, the eraser stick, and customize the text. Step 8: Press the forward arrow after reviewing the video and adding any last-minute effects, and you’ll be taken to the post screen, where you can choose a cover image, write a caption, add hashtags, and publish your video to Reels. Step 9: Tap Share and Done. You can also share the Reel in your Instagram stories. Further Reading: How Do Instagram Promotions Work & How Will They Help? How do I find Reels to Watch? There are four ways to find reels to watch on Instagram: 1. Your Feed You can browse your Feed to see reels created by people you follow. A Reels icon looks like a small clapperboard on the left-bottom side of all reels. The idea is to differentiate the reels from other Instagram videos. 2. Your Explore tab On the Explore page, a reel will be at the top right side of the screen. Tap the video to watch, and then scroll down to see more reels. 3. A particular audio or hashtag If you tap the audio name or hashtag at the bottom of a reel you’re watching, you’ll see a page with other reels featuring the same audio or hashtags. 4. Search for hashtags If you type a specific hashtag into the search bar, you’ll probably find reels using that hashtag. Reels in Explore shows the most trending culture on Instagram. There’s an entertaining selection of Instagram Reels made by various people on Instagram, in a vertical feed recommended for you. So, if you come across a reel you love, you can easily like, comment, or share it with your friends. You may also come across some reels with a “Featured” label. Featured reels are a selection of public reels Instagram chooses to show you original content to entertain and inspire you. If your Reel is featured in Explore, you’ll receive a notification. What’s Next for Instagram Reels? When Instagram launched Instagram stories in 2016, they had just about 150 million users. Currently, Instagram stories have over 500 million users and counting. Quite frankly, Instagram Reels has a similar potential to even surpass Instagram stories. Many influencers and brands already use these reels to promote products. With the branded content tags on reels, brands are leveraging the opportunity
TikTok Ads: Everything You Need to Know About
Tiktok is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms. Although they’ve gained high user numbers and popularity, many people don’t use Tiktok ads as much as they use Facebook and Instagram ads. Hence, this means you have an opportunity to market your product and services to billions of Tiktok users. There are about 6 billion lifetime downloads of TikTok on iOS App Store and Google Play as of December 2020 (Sensor Tower). And TikTok global penetration estimated at 18% of global internet users aged 16-64 (GlobalWebIndex). This large margin of users makes it possible to advertise a wide range of products as most people with buying power fall within this age range. Running Tiktok Ads demands you hold the knowledge of the entire advertising process. And that is what the core of this post will discuss. So, ensure you take into cognizance the key strategies you will see in this article when you’re running a Tiktok ad. What are Tiktok Ads? TikTok Ads is where you can show your brand’s creative side. AIt’s a platform where your audience can connect with you on a deeper level. No matter how big or small your business, no matter what you’re making or selling, your brand can get the push it deserves on Tiktok. Tiktok Ads don’t have the same framework as LinkedIn Ads. Their setup is still crude, as you cannot target specific audiences and it sets your budget in a monthly range. However, with promised advancements, there’ll surely be an improvement. So, you can now tap into unique engagement solutions and highly creative formats to creatively and authentically connect with audiences around the world. This way, you can build a strong rapport which is instrumental for your business. What Are The Types Of TikTok Ads? There are different products, and each product has its target market. To simplify creating ads, Tiktok has sectioned the two categories of product and service providers into business professionals and individual professionals. Business If you run a business, then you would need to use the business account to run your ads. With a business ad, you can promote your goods and services easily following the procedures you will see in the next section. Individual If you’re looking to promote your personal brand or drive traffic to your personal blog, then you’ll need to run an individual ad on the platform using the procedures we will lay out below. How To Run TikTok Ads TikTok may have blossomed as a social media platform, but there is still a lot of work to be done regarding advertising on the platform. It doesn’t give you the type of flexibility you can get from Instagram promotions. When you want to run a Tiktok promotion, you would need to first choose whether you’re running for business purposes or for individual purposes. Business purposes involves your company, promoting goods and core services, while individual purposes involves your website and pages on the platform. Generally, when you want to run TikTok ads, input the following details: Company name Full name Business Email Phone number Monthly budget (USD) Region/Country Company website In summary, you must let Tiktok know if you’re an agency and the type of industry you’re functioning in. This way, they’ll ensure they tailor your Ad to meet the right target market. Conclusion Tiktok ads might not be as efficient as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter ads. However, as they keep getting more users, they will scale. Hopefully, they’ll expand from being strongly a video creation and editing application to a complete social media space.
Clubhouse: Everything You Need to Know about Clubhouse
I first heard about this app from a colleague. He wanted me to listen in on a conversation about music. I was thrilled and instantly wanted to know more about this app. Turns out, the app was Clubhouse but I couldn’t get it because I wasn’t an iPhone user yet. Fast forward to a month after that and I got an iPhone. I wanted to finally understand how the legendary clubhouse app worked. If you are just like I was, wonder no more as I would be spilling the tea on how this app; clubhouse, works. What is Clubhouse? Clubhouse is an iPhone-only voice chatting app where users can create and join rooms for different conversations. It was developed by Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Paul Davison, and former Google employee, Rohan Seth. While the app is solely for iPhone users, for now, there are plans underway to make it available for android users as well. How do I Join Clubhouse? You have to first be an iPhone user. Then proceed to the App Store and download it to reserve your username on a waiting list. However, that’s how far you can go without an invitation, plus there’s no guarantee that you will ever get an account that way. Clubhouse is practically invite-only. Thus, anyone that wants to join, has to be invited by an already existing member with an account. So, once you receive an invite, click on the link, download the app, and set up your profile. You can set up a profile photo, a bio, and link any relevant social media accounts. The app will just, as usual, alert your friends that you are now a member, you can follow them and them, you. How does Clubhouse Work? In Clubhouse, users can enter into different rooms to listen, or join in on conversations (be careful not to accidentally join rooms that would make you uncomfortable). In those rooms, there are no pictures or videos except the faces on the profile. You only get to hear voices. The person who created the room, the moderator, gets to choose the participants they want to join the conversation. They can have as many people as they want “on stage” with them. They also get to invite and remove people from the stage as time goes on. When the person on stage is not the one speaking, they are advised to mute, so as to enable the speaker to speak audibly. Also, when someone on stage wants to speak, they too have to wait their turn before they unmute themselves and speak. In the same vein, if a member of the audience desires to speak, they can raise their hands and wait to be invited on stage by the moderator. Since they are all supposed to be muted when you are talking, how do you know when they are in support of what you are saying? Or simply put, how’s excitement and support for a point been made, shown? You can flip your mute buttons on and off quickly for that. How Do I Join Groups on ClubHouse? After the sign-up process, you can select your interests and be given options for groups to join. Choose whatever niche you want to be a part of – from social media to fashion, beauty, the editorial world, etc. Clubhouse handles different topics, from religion to dating, to sports, to pop culture, and a lot more. Some groups are particular about business, networking, while others are fun groups for good laughs. Fundamentally, Clubhouse can be whatever you choose to make it – entertaining, or solely professional. Once you join the groups, you will get access to what groups they are hosting and joining in. You can also search for topics of interest to you on the explore page. Why is Clubhouse App So Popular? There are a couple of reasons this app is as popular as it is now. A standout reason was they launched it early in the pandemic when being with people in an enclosed environment and conversing was impossible. So, people leveraged this new app that allowed them the opportunity of joining a room and hearing other humans talk, albeit virtually. The exclusivity Clubhouse offers also played a good part here. It was a classic case of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) because people love the things they can’t readily have. Nevertheless, they attracted some pretty big names on the app, and it unequivocally encouraged more people to sign up and listen to their favorite talk. Which Celebrities are on Clubhouse App? There are a bunch of celebrities joining Clubhouse every day. From Tory Burch, Virgil Abloh, to other big fashion names to Tiffany Haddish, Drake, Oprah, and Kevin Hart. Actor Jared Leto, filmmaker Ava DuVernay, and Silicon Valley elite like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and others. Among the Clubhouse, ranks are Oprah, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, actor Terry Crews, CBS This Morning host Gayle King, and venture capitalists like Mark Cuban, Marc Andreesen, and Reddit founder, Alexis Ohanian. Currently, the app boasts a whopping 10.1 million users and has expanded to include popular podcast hosts and social-media stars such as Lindsey Metselaar, and Serena Kerrigan, who use the platform to host more private discussions with their friends and followers. The exclusivity of Clubhouse offers high-profile users a sense of security and allows them to engage in interesting conversations. For example, while MC Hammer is known for hosting rooms about cryptocurrencies, Kevin Hart drops in on debates about whether he is even funny and more. Clubhouse is one where you’ve got to be there to follow conversations. None of the conversations are recorded, and it does not make transcripts available after the conversations. So, celebrities (and you) don’t have to fear that everything they say on Clubhouse will become a news headline. What Comes Next for Clubhouse? Clubhouse’s reputation was built with conversations hosted by big personalities like Oprah Winfrey, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk. Now, the app is already considered
10 Tips for Developing a Fantastic Mobile-Friendly Website
If you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, then you’re losing so much traffic to your competitors. The world has gradually adopted mobile devices as the first line of communication and research, so anyone who wants to learn about you or your business first searches about you – and many of them use their mobile devices. Statista believes that mobile accounts for approximately half of the web traffic worldwide. In the third quarter of 2020, mobile devices generated 50.81% of global website traffic, consistently hovering around the 50% mark since the beginning of 2017. These data communicate the heightened importance of having a mobile-friendly website. Apart from the huge traffic you can get, there is so much more optimizing your website for mobile can do for you. So, this is the core conversation in this article, much attention will be given to how mobile optimization has strengthened. How Do I Know If My Website is Mobile-Friendly? If you have a new website, then the chances of your website are optimized for mobile is great. However, you need to run a complete check to be extra sure your website is mobile-friendly. Google has a mobile-friendly testing tool. In using this tool, you only need to input the URL of your website and it will run an automatic check. Apart from getting an answer on the mobile-friendliness of your website, you will receive a screenshot of how your page pops on a smartphone screen and a list of recommendations to improve the overall mobile experience. If the tool signals your website needs a lot of work, then you need to pay key attention to the problems and create top-notch solutions for each of them. By executing this, you improve your website’s visibility in the search engines, ensure more of your visitors stick around and improve conversions on your site. Alternatively, if you get an excellent report, then you don’t need to prioritize updating your website. But never stop considering ways to improve the mobile experience of your users. 10 Tips for Developing a Fantastic Mobile-Friendly Website When you want to develop a mobile-friendly website, you need to follow the right steps so you don’t cause irrecoverable damage to your website. Some of the tips you should follow include: 1. Choose Mobile Responsive Template Building a responsive website is the best way to create a site that functions effectively and optimally across mobile and desktop. All designers believe this because a responsive website contains every content and information you can access through all your devices, but the site aligns to portray itself depending on the device used in displaying it. For example, when you visit LinkedIn with your mobile device, you get to access a page that portrays the key features of the platform with most of the icons on the bottom end of the screen. When you use your desktop to view this same website, the interphase is bigger as you can see jobs, opportunities and so much more on the same homepage screen. With a quality, responsive design, you can make your website mobile-friendly without limiting the information your mobile visitors can access—they still get all the same content the rest of your visitors do. And responsive design is also good for SEO. Google directly recommends it. Even if you don’t know how to build a responsive website, that’s not really a problem as you can access a lot of resource tools to help you. And even when those tools don’t give you what you really desire, then you can take the next big step. 2. Apply Shorter Paragraphs and Sentences Reading on large devices has been difficult, and when you now bring a smaller device and fill a paragraph with chunks of text, you worsen the case. Even Readable believes simply shortening the length of your sentences will lead to the most impressive effect on the readability score. Instead of using long paragraphs, break them into brief paragraphs and try to keep your sentences below twenty words. Even if you’re still going on a train of thought, you can create a divergence to continue it on a new paragraph. 3. Use Light Images A light website is vital when you want it to be mobile-friendly. Because almost every website has plugins and files that have some weight, they can pull down the website speed and make it very difficult for mobile users who would experience a slow loading time. Google strongly believes that website speed is a vital ranking factor. The Search team announced speed would be a ranking signal for desktop searches in 2010 and as of (July 2018), page speed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches too. Well, we’ve seen how accelerated mobile pages take stronger priority compared to others. When it comes to mobile, this is so vital. If you’ve ever tried to load a webpage somewhere remote, the slow loading time can be so frustrating, You might wait for up to a minute for a single page to load and you might just give up your goal. 4. Avoid Flash According to CMN, FLASH is a bandwidth-friendly and browser-independent vector-graphic animation technology. There are benefits to using websites developed in FLASH and several drawbacks that can influence a person’s ability to surf the web pages effectively. Flash creates an interesting animation design for a website, but with more emphasis on functionality and little on design, you need to investigate how using a FLASH is really important. Apart from the fact that search engine bots can not read flash pages, they make surfing through a website difficult for any user. For example, when you visit a flash website and you click a certain button if you want to return to the previous page and you press “back”, the flash functionality doesn’t support such a move. 5. Use Buttons Carefully Large buttons might not look aesthetically correct for a designer. So, the next line of action would be to reduce the size of the button tremendously. However, when a user cannot press a button on your
10 Small Business Website Essentials You Need for Your Site
When you run a small business, installing certain website essentials for your site will keep your customers returning. And you know returning customers will save you the money you will spend on re-targeted advertising. While quality user experience and effective functionalities are the biggest reasons while users return to small business websites, there are other useful resources you can use. Poor website loading speed can be extremely harmful to businesses. Most consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or fewer. 79% of shoppers reported they would not return to purchase from a slow-loading website. Additionally, another 75% of consumers admit they judge a business’ credibility based on its website design (MarkBrinker) Hence, it’s clear that having a functional and well-optimized website is vital for success in the business world. But what are the essentials and for a great business website and how long does it take to effect them? That’s what a lot of our conversations will cover in this content. What is a Business Website? A business website acts as a space to provide general information about your business or a direct e-commerce platform. Whether you create a simple website that has a little about your business or an e-commerce site complex, the most important thing to do is to make clear what your company does, on the homepage in simple terms. In building a great website, you must put into serious consideration the pathway of your user. And an added advantage would be to possess web analysis tools that help you track their behavior on your site. It doesn’t matter the fundamental goal you have for your business website, it’s important you simplify the process for users. 10 Small Business Website Essentials You Need for Your Site Getting overwhelmed when starting with a website project is normal; there is a lot to consider. While every business is unique, there are some things you should always plan for when you’re designing and developing a business webiste. These business website essentials include: 1. Clear Roadmap Certainly, your small business website should be aesthetically pleasing, but most importantly, useful. Before choosing a server or writing an HTML tag, you need to define how you want your website to function. This is important for both user experience and SEO, as Google takes site content and structure into account when ranking the search. A good trick would be to create a site layout diagram and take it out. This is what designers call “grid layout,” and run it with a few friends to make sure it’s logical and intuitive. You can plan this journey using a lot of applications although Adobe XD is quite the favourite choice. 2. Mobile Optimization Smartphones and tablets are influencing increasing numbers of web traffic, and the numbers will only increase as mobile devices become cheaper and more ubiquitous. Mobile internet use had increased significantly. 53 percent of web traffic worldwide came from mobile users in 2019, compared to 56.7 percent from desktop users. This didn’t come as an enormous surprise because, as far back as 2015, Google reported that more searches were conducted on mobile than on any other device category. Hence, if some one searches for a club on their smartphone, they will probably be waiting to hit a club in an hour. Therefore, it is better if your website can be read on mobile devices. Responsive website design allows you to use flexible offers so that your website design adapts to the screen you are browsing. You can enter HTML code to fill the sidebar, to transfer 20% of the width of the screen, with the remaining 80% reserved for your website text. Formats are adjustable and images are scalable to provide a better web experience on a wide variety of devices. 3. Strong Call to Action It is never enough to present interesting content and options on your website; You need a strong call-to-action statement at the end of every piece of content to turn your viewer visitors into action takers. Your goal must be to help them build an understanding of your offers and ultimately make a purchase. Never assume that your visitors know how everything works; a great marketing funnel is all you need. However, use calls to action throughout the sales funnel and subtly guide them through each stage of the process. It sounds simple, and it works in a simpler way. 4. Easy Navigation Big, busy navigation bars and visual menus went the way of the dinosaurs. Effective and simple frames took up higher attention as it became a strong demand among other website essentials for individuals and companies with websites. The design of the site should completely incorporate the mobile and desktop platforms, especially since up to 60% of internet access is now via mobile devices, and 34% of mobile users use it. People primarily use mobile phones to access the web, rather than laptops or desktops. Studies have shown that ghost buttons have lower conversions compared to solid colored buttons, which are easy to see in an image page. By all means, use the Ghost buttons sparingly, in places where you won’t get lost. And remember, when it comes to web design, the simplest is generally the best. 5. Strong Security If you sell something online, do your best to protect your site with an SSL certificate. SSL will encrypt communications between you and your customers (ie, credit card number, social security number), easing their fear of providing such information. To make securing your website easier, Google Chrome already displays a message saying “Your connection to this site is not secure” in the address bar of all pages without the HTTPS prefix. While it is too early to get consistent numbers, sites without up-to-date HTTPS addresses will probably lose visitors, who may view the site as a potential security risk. Make all the necessary encoding adjustments now, so you don’t have to worry about it later. 6. Compelling Imagery When you use them efficiently, images on your site can
LinkedIn Ads: Everything You Need to Know About
LinkedIn is the foremost platform for business professionals seeking to network, connect and grow their career and business. A significant advantage LinkedIn has over other social media platforms is the ability to connect individuals to job and internship opportunities. However, with LinkedIn powering over 760 million users, finding opportunities that are tailored to your expertise. So, you would need to rely strongly on LinkedIn ads to help you get your brand, business, or qualifications a boost. And to effectively use these ads, you must understand the steps and processes involved in starting and completing a successful advertisement campaign. What Are LinkedIn Ads? LinkedIn Ads is a paid marketing tool that grants you access to LinkedIn social networks through diverse sponsored posts and other methods. These ads are a powerful marketing tool for B2B companies to gain leads, online recognition, boost content, and more. LinkedIn Ads uses a bidding system like other ad platforms and allows you to show an ad to the audience of your choice. You can target specific audiences and control your budget all at once. However, this is pretty similar to what we’ve seen on other platforms. If you can sustain the recommended budget and have a deal size large enough to create a positive ROI, LinkedIn ads are a great investment option. LinkedIn ads strongly yield high-quality leads and offer larger niche targeting options that give them an edge. What Are The Types Of LinkedIn Ads? LinkedIn has diverse advertising formats that interact differently with users. Each format has a structure that it follows, and this determines how every ad will run on the platform. LinkedIn has organized this structure into four key aspects that include: Sponsored Content Sponsored content is any content that appears directly on the news feed of your targeted LinkedIn users. This content appears as singular images, videos, or even carousels. Sponsored content has select core advantages that make it a preferable option to many users. Some of these advantages include: Message Ads Message Ads are another unique form of LinkedIn ads. Through message ads, you directly connect to your audience via inbox, and this is very similar to email marketing. With message ads, you can personalize certain aspects of your message to draw user appeal. Dynamic Ads Message Ads and Sponsored Content are great options, however, dynamic ads possess interesting features that knock them off. With a dynamic ad, you can personalize your creativity for each member of your target group. To be precise, you can extract and use data such as their company name, profile, job title. Pushing engagement with this ad type is pretty easy because of the personalization option. Of course, personalization is one of the emerging digital trends to look out for. So, you utilize dynamic ads in formats such as: Text Ads Text Ads are simple but interesting pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM) ads. Basically, they usually sit pretty by the side of your news feed screen and LinkedIn users that access the platform with their laptops and desktops get a splendid view of this ad. Using Text Ads, you can: Further Reading: How Do Instagram Promotions Work & How Will They Help? How To Run LinkedIn Ads Now you’ve learned about the different LinkedIn ads and their formats, let’s get into the business of the day, which is how to run proper highly converting LinkedIn ads. You will find a step-by-step procedure that will help you gravitate from one process to another easily. Hence, the processes include: Choose Self-Service or Managed Campaigns Self-serve advertising is simply an advertiser placing their own ads without the help of an advertising sales representative. In many ways, self-service provides major advantages and can benefit everyone involved in the ad sales equation. You can engage certain stipulations for your ads which will help your campaign. On the other hand, Campaign Manager is LinkedIn’s ad management tool that helps anyone to create, launch, and evaluate the performance of LinkedIn ad campaigns. This self-service online tool guides advertisers to launch campaigns in 23 languages to reach the world’s largest professional network. Summarily, self-service advertising has been submerged into campaign manager advertising, and this collaboration has empowered LinkedIn users to run their ads effectively and easily. With just a few clicks, anyone who has never run an ad before would easily set up a campaign and get it running in minutes. Choose Objective Every ad campaign has an objective, and all objectives have diverse ways through which they can perform optimally on the LinkedIn platform. In other words, there’s no singular road to achieve any goal you have with your ad campaign. To make it easier for advertisers, LinkedIn has branched its campaign objectives into three singular goals which include: Awareness: This is the type of campaign you use when you simply want to create awareness for your brand. FOr example, you started a t-shirt design business, running a brand awareness campaign is a great way to introduce yourself to the buzzing marketplace. Brand awareness campaigns are basically an introduction to a brand, and you have to ensure you use high-quality images or videos for this type of ad. Consideration: In consideration campaign, you’re looking to get an audience to engage with you on a personal level. For example, using the same t-shirt branding business, you can create content that will get views while driving engagement. A good example will be content on “What color of the shirt fits you best?” This type of content drives engagement largely, and you can even get people to visit your website to see the diverse colours of shirts you have designed. Consideration is an outstanding campaign objective when you need to build social proof in the market. Conversion: Conversion is a simple language and we all understand the meaning. When you want to convert, you want to take people on a journey from lead to customers. However, this journey starts with deep lead generation techniques. Furthermore, you can seek to get individuals interested in an
10 Reasons Your Business Should Invest in Digital Marketing
Every business should heavily invest in digital marketing. Of course, this might not persuade you until every conversation about the reasons you should take this decision is clear to you. Well, it’s vital you understand that there are only a few things that can limit a successful business, and the lack of a futuristic approach is one of them. Digital marketing has grown so big that its importance to a business cannot be overemphasized. With people always making a Google or Bing search about any business before they make a purchase, you must understand how much you’ll lose when your business is not leveraging digital marketing. Summarily, you must accept that investing in digital marketing is a survival strategy and not just a business hack. All you need to do would be to look at some reasons I’ll state here and start looking for how to scale your business through digital marketing. 1. Increased Traffic Traffic is the live-wire of any business. Without traffic, a business won’t get its targeted customers as they will lose out on so much. Poor traffic is usually the result of bad advertising or no advertising at all. And without customers, a business is not a business. A good investment in digital marketing will turn the fortunes around for you as a businessperson. You’ll draw traffic from both old and new customers, which will make your marketing easier all around. You can start by implementing some strategies you know, or you can follow the instruction below. In increasing traffic, there are many strategies. However, using the right ones that will give you the best results in less time is difficult to find. However, Socialander is in the business of helping you get real time traffic that will convert strongly for you. Book a free consultation session with us today by clicking “I want a Free Consultation Session”, so we get started. 2. Greater Brand Awareness Building your brand is a powerful way to scale your business. As more people get to know about your offerings, you become an option for them when they’re seeking for a solution in your chosen industry. According to Taboola, brand awareness is important because it helps audiences understand, recall, and become comfortable with your branding and products. Since customers already recognize your brand, they will be more likely to buy from your business than, say, a competitor’s business with which they’re not as familiar. So, creating powerful awareness about your brand is fully your responsibility. Take it as a serious goal and invest strongly in digital marketing to make it a reality. With greater brand awareness and an outstanding marketing funnel, you can convert any lead to a customer while you’re asleep. 3. More Marketing Channels Marketing is a serious business. Without marketing your products or services, no one would know that you exist, hence, they won’t patronize you even if you can solve their problem. Now, many businesses do a lot of marketing, but many of them use the wrong channels which doesn’t get them a good return on investment. Digital marketing will offer you an opportunity to explore many marketing channels you can use. Some channels have a wide variety of users, while the other channels have a more targeted audience. For example, Facebook has a variety of users, while LinkedIn is basically for business professionals. 4. Less Advertising Cost Advertising costs serious money. A lot of companies spend about 20% of their profits on advertisements in order to ensure they keep their position in the market. And as many of these companies in competition keep dumping money into advertising, the cost of advertising keeps increasing. But this was the case when there were fewer advertising channels like newspapers, magazines, and television. Today, television remains a sound choice for many industries in business, however, the others have switched to social media channels and search engines. On these channels, you don’t get to pay a fixed advertising rate. Instead, you can choose a budget and timeline for your advertisement. When you invest in digital marketing, you can save a lot of money on advertising. 5. Access to Data Insights Data is important. Without data, you will make poor business decisions wherein you will lose money, time, customers, and other resources. So, for every decision, you take as a business professional, solid data must support it to ensure it’s not another stone thrown into the deep sea. According to Datapine, the importance of data in decision lies in consistency and continual growth. It enables companies to create new business opportunities, generate more revenue, predict future trends, optimize current operational efforts, and produce actionable insights. With this knowledge, ensure you’re paying attention to your metrics each time. Because correct data insight will help you make the right decision when you use the right tools. 6. Flexibility Rigidity is the curse of any business. When you cannot adapt your business to the growing technological demands, then you’ll remain strongly limited and your business can go underground. According to Flexjobs, inflexible companies would be smart to take these tidbits to heart and examine their current policies. Not only do flexible businesses have a more engaged and productive workforce, but they also see cost savings and revenue growth. So, you must avoid this at all costs by setting up a structure to stay relevant. Setting up this flexible structure demands you’re knowledgeable about strategies which you can leverage to get work done easier and faster. An investment in digital marketing will help you set this up. 7. Increase in Mobile Users The number of smartphone users worldwide today surpasses three billion and is forecast to further grow by several hundred million in the next few years. China, India, and the United States are the countries with the highest number of smartphone users, with each country easily surpassing the 100 million user mark (Statista). With a stronger level of attention now on phones instead of newspapers or magazines, advertising companies have shifted their attention as well. Search engines have jumped on this trend by making mobile optimization
9 Ways Realtors Can Use Digital Marketing to Boost Sales
In every area of business, digital marketing continues to show its importance and strength. Before anyone makes a purchase from any product or service provider, they’ll perform a quick search to determine the viability of the business online. When the result is negative, it weakens buyer-decision immediately. As a realtor, you shouldn’t miss out on the beauty and ease digital marketing can add to your business. With a substantial structure, you can close deals and get to work with many clients without doing a lot of sourcing – the clients come to you. It’s really simple, and I’ll be showing you 9 Ways Realtors Can Use Digital Marketing to Boost Sales. The Role of Digital Marketing in Real Estate Digital marketing cuts across every area of business. If you run a profitable business without digital marketing, then you’re standing at the edge of the cliff because your competitors using it are coming to run down your profits to deep pocket losses. A suitable cover for you would be to learn about how digital marketing can be an extra tool in your business arsenal, so you stay on top of your competition while spending less on overhead and advertising. With a great digital company working alongside you, you won’t fail. 9 Ways Realtors Can Use Digital Marketing to Boost Sales As a realtor who wants to use digital marketing to boost sales, you must understand certain foundational subjects and the key hacks that will give you speed. In here, you will find nine ways realtor can use digital marketing to boost sales. They include: 1. Paid Advertising Paid advertising remains as viable as ever. If you want to reach your target customer without burning deep holes in your company’s pocket, then you need to use paid advertising. On paid advertising, you have the guarantee that you’ll pay for every click you get, and you can only get these clicks from potential customers. The average conversion rate across Google Ads is 4.40% on the search network and 0.57% on the display network. The last time calculations show average Google Ads conversion rates, as a benchmark of 3.75% on the search network and a benchmark of 0.77% on the display network (WordStream). A lot of conversions are possible on paid advertising if you have a great copy and an even better funnel. In creating a great funnel, there are nine key principles you must implement from start to finish. Don’t worry, we have a detailed guide on creating a marketing funnel that will make your journey easy. Further Reading: How to Create the Ultimate Marketing Funnel 2. Host Virtual Tours In purchasing a house, people want to have the first-hand experience. They want a tour of the facility where they can structure their imaginations to see how the place will be a great environment for them to live in. But with the new normal, physical tours are in a race to keep their heads up. According to Hometrack, a 3D virtual tour, on the other hand, offers benefits and alleviates anxieties for all parties. And now, at a time when agents are adapting to stay-at-home orders in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, an efficient and engaging tool is just what an agent needs in the toolbox. You can run virtual tours using a plethora of tools available for you such as Lapentor, OpenSpace3D, and Marzipano. However, you need to ensure you take real footage of the home and you don’t miss out on key detailing regarding the home, neighbourhood and views. 3. Build a User-Friendly Website Websites are your online home. When you fail to implement an amazing structure to your website, you will keep getting a lot of new and returning visitors. But this possibility will happen when you invest not only in a beautiful user experience, but in a simplified system design. Even Search Engine Journal believes without creating something that makes logical sense, your other SEO, content, and even design efforts may be for nothing. A good website structure should have a significant impact on SEO traffic and conversion. So, you must ensure your website fulfils all the vital requirements regarding usability and functionality. Since you’re in the real estate market, use a lot of pictures to communicate the luxurious experience a lot of homes can give, then have a simple contact form wherein people can reach you for more information. 4. Host a Webinar Webinars are getting more traction than physical conferences. With social distancing rules, hosting webinars save a lot of logistics costs for many companies and industries. And if you’ve not convinced the client enough to take them on a tour, a webinar is a great place to start. When you want to host a webinar, you need to find an efficient platform that can contain the number of people you’ve invited. Zoom has captured the heart of many individuals in the tech space with its efficient and astounding platform which can host hundreds of people. With a great webinar hosting tool, you can reach out to individuals who are still contemplating a decision to do business with you as a realtor. 5. Structure an Email Campaign Emails still give the highest conversion rate among all other advertising platforms in the world. Your email marketing conversion rate is the percentage of subscribers who complete a goal action after reading your email. This is an important metric for most marketers, as it shows how effective your email marketing is and determines your return on investment. (Campaign Monitor). But in creating an email, you need to use the right structure, language, and target market to make it work. One solid advantage email gives any realtor in the digital marketing space is the ability to personalize messages. Of course, personalization is one of the biggest digital marketing trends in the world. 6. Invest in SEO Search engine optimization holds an important position for realtors who seek to use digital marketing strategies to grow their business. When you don’t understand and completely utilize
10 Effective SEO Techniques to Drive Organic Traffic in 2021
When you want to drive traffic, search engine marketing can help set you on top of your competitors for a while, but nothing beats SEO in the long run. For this reason, search engine optimization remains the one true efficient strategy that businesses utilize to draw traffic away from their competition and to themselves. But SEO is so broad. It has many intricacies, so mastering and implementing all the SEO techniques will take you years of practice. Well, with search engines updating their algorithms from time to time, so much will still change. However, some SEO techniques will never burn out as the importance of quality content still carries the same value. Conclusively, let’s look at some key SEO techniques that can help you pull organic traffic easier and faster to your blog from search engines. These techniques will contain practical insights, which will show you how to get it all done while drawing examples from blogs that have practiced these techniques consistently. Setting Up Your Site For Optimal Performance A lot of websites possess quality content that can make them show up on the top of SERPs, however, poor site structure and optimization can crumble their chances. Testing your page ranking using Keyword Rank Checker is a very important step. When you input your URL, you can have access to see certain keywords where you’re ranking. If you truly seek to sit on top of the result pages, then you have to start with understanding the keywords you have and what other keywords you need to rank for. For checking the overall health of your site, simply head over to GTMetrix, where you get real-time analysis on your site speed, bounce rate, and a lot more. 10 Effective SEO Techniques to Drive Organic Traffic in 2021 There are a lot of techniques that can help you draw organic traffic from the search engines to your blog. However, these we are about to list here are the best and easiest strategies to implement that will give you the highest results in less time. So, the strategies include: 10. Invest in Long-Form Content According to Neil Patel, long-form content offers you a higher number of backlinks than short-form content. Now, this doesn’t mean that writing long-form content is the best strategy every time, however, it simply acts as a signal to a lot of individuals that long-form content means the writer has a firm knowledge of the subject. Long-form content isn’t perfect for all forms of content. Certain contents require an immediate response or a well-outlined set of directives. These directives can lead any user to their goal, and this is vital, as satisfying user intent has greater importance compared to pleasing search engine robots. For example, when a user makes a search query on “how to drive”, the user isn’t looking for well-detailed content that analyzes all the key aspects of a vehicle. The user isn’t completely interested in knowing about the different car engines, transmission processes, and even characteristics. As a blogger, you might think that writing exhaustively on this topic will make you rank for the keyword. Well, I hate to break it to you that a set of clear directives on how to start and move a vehicle well will trump all your hard work. On the other hand, a topic like this one you’re reading demands a stronger level of detail, hence, you can address it as a long form content. And long form contents can help you target over one keyword, which is an age old SEO technique. But when you need to use bullet points, use them as search engine easily pick them off. Optimizing Older Posts When you probably don’t want to write another 2,000 words for an article, an excellent strategy would be to check if you have anything similar to what you want to write on your blog. When you find something with a high level of similarity, you only need to edit it and expand on the content with your new train of thought. In choosing a content to update, you must ensure it has enough authority – people have constantly read it and found it interesting. Of course, the content needs to be in line with your current research. You would need to use a tool like Google Search Console to check the behaviour of the content and apply the vital changes immediately. 9. Utilize YouTube SEO YouTube remains the platform with the second biggest traffic in the world. When you have a video, that solves a certain problem, uploading it on YouTube will make it reach a wider audience and build you a strong list of subscribers that can help you build your brand and fan base. YouTube results show up on search engines as much as results from other normal articles. So, you must ensure you can optimize to show up for results that demand the presence of a video before any sort of article. To get visible on search engines, you need to: Create Playlists Playlists help users find videos that are closely related. For example, you can create a playlist for copywriting videos that will outline subjects such as “6 Copyrighting Hacks For Any Beginner” and “How To Start Your Copywriting Career” instead of leaving them as stand-alone videos. Optimize Your Video For Search Engines When your videos cannot show up on search engines, then you’re losing a lot of traffic and money. So, you must do better for yourself by ensuring you optimize your videos to rank for select search engine queries in your specific niche or area of interest. A good way to optimize your videos would be to use the right hashtags, keywords, and other SEO techniques that are peculiar to the platform alone. Use Custom Thumbnails Picking up videos without copyright can get you a serious ban from the platform. So, I’m sure you know about that and wouldn’t want to dabble into such practice. Creating original videos that will
9 Tools for Easy Competitive Website Analysis
Analysis of web data is critical in every decision-making process. When you know where your customers are going, you can create a diversion to ensure they come to you. But getting this data is difficult when you don’t have the right web analysis tools and applications. FocusTapps believe that web apps offer options for enhanced customer support. They can be the first line of contact between potential customers and the business. Applications are developed so customer support is accessed at any time, and this can help drive customer loyalty. While many tools can perform this function, we will simply consider about nine smart and efficient tools that can perform a comprehensive web analysis between two competitor sites. With these tools, you can spy on your competition and get to know where they’re drawing a pool of their customers from, and the process they use. But before we get into the tools, let’s define web analysis and reiterate its importance to your business. What is Web Analysis Finding and comparing information over two similar platforms is difficult. If you would visit the websites one by one to check them out, it would take a very long time. And truly; you won’t get a lot of information, hence, you need to employ another strategy. According to Wikipedia, Web analytics or Website Analysis is the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of web data to understand and optimize web usage. Web analytics is not just a process for measuring web traffic, but can be a tool for business and market research in order to assess and improve website effectiveness. With this definition, you can see that web analytics play an important role in the business decision process, creating marketing funnels and even developing social media marketing strategies. What Are Web Analysis Tools? Web Analysis tools are tools that give you a standard and comprehensive summary of everything you need to know about a website. With websites having so much data, a tool that removes the clutter and helps you focus on what’s truly important is vital. For example, assuming you want to compare how Amazon gets their traffic with how Microsoft gets their traffic, an excellent tool will do the job. With a quality web analysis tool, you can perform a lot of investigations, however, that’s what we will fully consider in the next section. How Do Web Analysis Tools Work? Web analytics tools work in so many ways. However, we want to apportion it to a few important roles they play in the entire process. These roles include: Tagging web pages by inserting a snippet of JavaScript in the web page’s code. Counting time the page gets a visitor or a click on a link. The tag can also gather other information like device, browser, and geographic location (via IP address). Using cookies to track individual sessions and to determine repeat visits from the same browser. Many people usually delete cookies and browsing history, so it makes it difficult for many web analysis tools to function effectively. However, the tools I’m about to show you aren’t limited by these deterrents. 9 Tools for Easy Competitive Website Analysis Web analysis is broad. Traditionally following the process will take you time, energy and more resources. A better way would be to utilize a web analysis tool, but with many of them in the market, settling for an efficient one becomes an additional problem. Well, you don’t need to think a lot on it as this section outlines the best tools for easy competitive web analysis. These tools include: 9. Woopra Woopra is an outstanding web analysis tool that gives real-time analytics tracking. Unlike Google Analytics that can take hours to update, Woopra operates in a different measure. It is an application that gives you complete data on visitor stats, and all their touch points on your webpage. Syncing user data has never been simpler without the help of any developer, but Woopra does that for you. With the possibility of seamlessly unifying data across product marketing, sales, and customer support, you will take real-time action with the right triggers. You also can interact with individual site visitors and analyze the growth metric of any trend. This can be a significant feature for your e-commerce site to interact with customers. Woopra offers a limited freebie plan and three special premium plans which cost $349, and $999 per month. 8. Mouseflow Mouseflow believes your users aren’t converting to customers because you’ve not utilized their platform. And maybe they have a point considering the outstanding features that they have made available for you. Mouseflow automatically creates 6 types of heat maps for all your pages immediately after you record your website. With this heat mat, you will discover the part on your page that generates the most clicks, how far they scroll and move through your page, what gets their attention, where are your visitors from, and how they interact with dynamic elements on your site. With automated funnels tailored for every campaign, user feedback where you get to see what problems your customer is facing, Mouseflow will give you data that will make your profits flow. You can choose from any of their plans which cost $79,$159, and $229 per month. 7. Chartbeat Chartbeat seeks to perform one obligation; monitor and optimize your content for long-term audience loyalty. Of course, with a plethora of alternatives available for your product or service, you know the value of retaining visitors. This web analysis tool reveals how your audience connects with your content in actual time, assessing KPIs over the long term, and how easily your videos capture viewer attention. Chartbeat helps you improve audience engagement, make editorial decisions, and increase readership. It delivers real-time analytics, insights, and transformative tools for content teams around the world. At the beginning of each day, you will take important decisions — whether it’s automated insights delivered to you or flexible tools to build more in-depth reports. On this platform, you have standard, basic, and premium