Socialander

10 Underestimated Social Media Marketing Services

Social media and social media marketing services are here to stay. It has given small businesses a chance to increase brand awareness, get more followers or audience, boost traffic, and get more conversions or qualified leads without spending tons of money on adverts. There are so many services you need that will help you achieve your social media marketing goals. These services will range from profile creation, page management, content creation, and a host of many others. You either get these services within your organization or you can outsource from agencies that offer these services. In the course of this article, you will get to know the 10 social media marketing services you need for your business and why it is important for the growth of your business. This will give you an idea of what your brand needs to succeed with social media and what to expect from any social media agency you hire. But before jumping right into these social media marketing services, let’s take a look at some certain important details about social media. WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING Social media marketing involves utilizing various social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and many other existing platforms with huge audiences to drive the growth of the business to a higher level. Social media marketing is more than just creating a social media profile and publishing great content on it. Its major aim is to drive traffic to your business home page, generate leads, make sales, run massive audience-targeted ads, as well as analyze reach and engagement. All this boils down to one factor, which is to generate more revenue. This is why only a good and reliable digital agency like socialander can help achieve such desired results in a relatively shorter period of time with its top-notch social media marketing strategy. WHAT IS THE GOAL OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING? The major aim of social media marketing is to generate more revenue. When a business goal is to increase its reach, and increase sales, social media marketing is what such business is expected to turn to. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING PLATFORMS FOR BUSINESSES Looking at this heading, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are the very first that comes to your mind right away since they are still the best social media platform for marketing. Asides from those three social media platforms, there are a host of other social media platforms available that you can use to grow your business and they include REDDIT – Reddit is a community-driven social media platform with arguably any topic or community you need already present there. On this social media platform, you can create or join a community that is relevant to the services your business offers and get to reach a larger audience of potential customers. PINTEREST – This social media platform can be likened to a search engine of various types of media. Here, you can create an account as a business or individual whichever one works for you. TUMBLR – This is a social media platform that allows you to create your own mini-blog in it and get people to have a taste of your personal lifestyle or what your business entails. VIMEO – This is a professional video platform. Although not as huge as YouTube, it is a reliable platform for videographers to project their services to a relatively large audience. BIZSUGAR – This social media platform is specifically for small business owners and entrepreneurs. It is a fast-growing social media platform and a nice place to build an audience for your small business. DIGG – A social media platform where you can read and post updates about events and happenings. MEDIUM – Just like Twitter, Medium is a highly content-based social media platform. Here you can publish content daily about your business and get people to know what your business is all about. VIBER – With over 260 million users, it is a good social media platform to place your business and reach more audiences. WeChat – This is a social media platform that aids easy sending and receiving of calls, messages, pictures, and many more. It can be used to easily reach out to business partners. WhatsApp – Just like WeChat, WhatsApp is arguably the most used instant messaging social media platform for businesses. Here, you can create an account, set up a catchy profile, and project your business to reach a wide audience. Other social media platforms that can be used to assist the growth of your business are; SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING SERVICES THAT YOU NEED There are a host of social media marketing services that you need if you truly want your business or businesses to be at the very top and outperform your competitors in the industry. Below is the list of social media services required for the growth of your business. Although, you can save yourself going through such cumbersome stress and just place a call to SOCIALANDER DIGITAL AGENCY. Socialander provides various services which range from digital marketing in Abuja, digital marketing in Lagos, digital marketing in Nigeria at large and around the world. They also provide branding, search engine optimization, web development, and app development services. 1. Profile creation This is the service your brand needs to get started on social media marketing. It involves creating a profile that reflects what your brand is all about, thereby making it easy for potential customers to find it on different platforms and know exactly the kind of services to expect from you and your business. For instance, you can google search the word “socialander”, Google will provide details about the services socialander offers, as well as socialander’s social media profiles which you can visit to get more insight about the business. Your brand’s social media profile has to be intentional and easy to understand. It should tell at a glance what your business is about. 2. Social Media Page Management You need to keep your business page up and running. It

How Much Do Facebook Ads Cost?

The advent of social media ads (especially Facebook ads) has changed the way businesses do online marketing. It has presented brands with so many options. You either run ads on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, or several social media platforms. Facebook ads keep evolving. As more brands run ads on Facebook, new preferences come up, and Facebook keeps incorporating these new things to satisfy the users. Facebook has become a platform for brands to get in front of new people and to get them to convert. When it comes to social media advertising, Facebook offers a competitive advantage with its ownership of Instagram. Via Facebook, you can create Facebook and Instagram ads with ease, which saves your team time. Why should your business run ads on Facebook? With over 2.8 billion users worldwide, Facebook currently ranks as the largest and most active social media platform in the world compared to YouTube (2.3 billion), Instagram (1.3 billion), and TikTok (7.3 million). Facebook has the evenest distribution of users compared to other popular social media platforms like Instagram and Linkedin which means you can target a larger range of age groups with your ads. This is because Facebook has more people using the platform, and their data is large. It is easier for you to target a specific audience from Facebook’s large user data With Facebook, you have more tools for testing, remarketing, reporting, and analysis. These tools will help you make the most of every dollar you spend. According to wordstream, the average CPCs for each of the four major social media advertising platforms in 2021 are: Facebook offers two types of budgeting to accommodate different advertising strategies. Lifetime budgets, which are good if you run ads on a schedule and/or a fixed budget and end date; and daily budgets, which are good for maximizing ongoing campaigns and planning around a fluctuating budget. How Does a Facebook ad work? Facebook ads work the same way your Instagram ads work I.e taking your brand’s message to the faces of people who needs to see it. Facebook Ads Work on an Auction. This is to prevent bombarding users with ads and creating a bad perception of the platform. So Facebook limits the number of advertisements that each user sees. In other words, there’s only so much ad space available and there are many people that want to use it to grow a business. Advertisers must bid against each other to secure an advertising placement. In the simplest terms, whoever bids the highest gets to show their ad. How much do Facebook ads cost? Facebook has three types of cost for their ads  Cost per click This is the price you pay for each click on your Facebook ad. Facebook will try to get you as many clicks as it can within your budget if you choose this option.  Facebook CPC ranges from $0.25 to $3.30 Cost Per thousand impressions This is the amount you pay for every 1000 impressions you get for your ads. The difference between impressions and reach is that impressions are the number of times your ads were seen while reach is the number of people that saw your ads. The average CPM on Facebook across all industries is $11.54. Cost per Engagement Facebook CPE is the cost of the total amount of engagements on a Facebook post. these include: likes and reactions, comments, shares, clicks to page, etc The average Facebook CPE by campaign objective ranges from $0.11 to $0.70. Factors to consider when creating Facebook ads Factors that affect the cost of Facebook ads  As a small business, understanding how Facebook ads cost helps in keeping them low.  Facebook ads costs are influenced by several variables just like that of Instagram ads. Campaign objectives  This is related to the nature of your desired goals. For example, Brand awareness or Engagement campaigns will cost less than action-oriented campaigns like Conversions that drive purchases. It’s easier to get someone to engage with an ad than it is to entice them to click through, open up their wallet, and complete a purchase. Your Industry  If your industry is highly competitive, you would have to pay more.  Advertising to competitive industries like fashion, food, health, etc. will result in giving Facebook more work and this will cost you more. Audience size Targeting larger and broader audiences will generally cost less than for smaller audiences. When you target a more specific audience, Facebook will have more work to do and that will cost you more money. Targeting a small number of people tend to be more specific, smaller in size, therefore more competitive. Budget  Small money for a small value. If you want to get more results, you would pay more money. Also, costs for new ad sets are often higher because the system is still getting to understand your audience and their reactions to your ad. If your ads are well engaged with, Facebook and Instagram will reward you with lower costs over time. Think of it like this, when faced with more resistance, Facebook will cost you more. But when they’ve understood your audience, the resistance will be lesser she which means less money. Click through rates(CTR) Also, think of CTR as the measure of resistance that is more action-driven.  If your CTR is low, especially in a website traffic campaign, you would pay more because Facebook will interpret it as a disconnect between your target audience and the messaging in your ads. In that case, you’re paying them for the more work they would do to get your audience to interact with your ad. It is the opposite when your CTR is high. It means that your audience likes your ad and so Facebook wouldn’t do much to get them to engage. Seasonality Facebook ads costs tend to temporarily increase as more people are advertising within a certain period. Say Christmas holiday or any other important celebration.  During this period, the competition for your audience is higher and you already know

How much does an Instagram ad cost?

Instagram ads are a more detailed form of Instagram promotion. The aim here goes beyond visibility to conversion. There are more features on the Instagram ad and you would need to create the ad from the Facebook ads manager. Instagram ads offer advanced targeting and flexibility to be accessible for just about any business. Why Instagram ads? Instagram ads offer advanced targeting and more features:  Instagram has over 1 billion monthly users, ranking second after Facebook. The platform has a variety of targeting data and since Facebook owns Instagram, Instagram advertising uses the same comprehensive demographic and geographic data as Facebook. This advanced targeting is what makes Instagram Ads work so well, as you can be specific when targeting various audiences. Instagram Feed and Explore video can be up to 60 seconds in duration and while Stories are typically up to 15 seconds in duration, if you run ads in these three ad placements, you can have up to 2 minutes of video content. This gives you more opportunity to convey both your brand and the features and benefits of your offer through your products and/or services. High engagement rate: Instagram is known for its high engagement rates organically and through paid ads. Here’s a breakdown: Images on Instagram receive an average of 23% more engagement than when shared on Facebook. Only about 4% of a brand’s followers see its content. This is still higher than Facebook’s nearly non-existent reach, but you can amplify your visibility with paid ads.  Brands typically see about 38% more engagement with video ads. As a visual platform, images and videos are powerful in driving more engagement than on other more text-based social platforms. It is cheaper: With Instagram ads, you would reach a wider range of people more than you would do using the traditional method with and for a lesser price. This is because Instagram has over 1 billion people and reaching this large number of people through traditional advertising would cost a lot. But with Instagram, you will spend less. How do Instagram ads work? Depending on your goals, Instagram ads have different call-to-action buttons. It can be to visit your website, download an app, pay for something or shop online.  With Instagram advertising, you can include outside links, which enables you to designate a destination URL to your website or another external URL.  You don’t even need an Instagram account to advertise on Instagram. Since Meta which also owns Facebook is its parent company, all you need is a Facebook business page. Though it is best to have an Instagram account so you get acquainted with the kind of content that your Instagram audience resonates with. This will help complement and amplify your organic Instagram marketing efforts. To set up Instagram Ads, use Facebook’s Ads Manager to set up campaigns where you select your budget, target audience, ad placements, and optimization options. Similar to Facebook Ads, your ads will run within the selected time frame, budget parameters, audience selection, and optimization goals. Factors that affect the cost of Instagram ads Objectives:  This is what you set to achieve from the ad campaign. Your advertising cost can be higher or lower depending on what you want to achieve and how it fits your target audience. For example, targeting a broader audience for brand awareness will cost lower than an ad that is solely for conversion. Audience size: If you’re targeting a broader audience, the cost will be lower compared to targeting a specific audience.  When you narrow down your audience to a more specific one such as a particular age, location, preferences, etc. The price goes up. This is due to the fact that other people are targeting that specific audience and so the competition is higher. Budget:  How much money you’re willing to pay will affect how your ad will go. The cost of an Instagram ad will be more expensive at first before the system learns and understands your campaign type and optimization goals, and how your audience engages with your ads. If your ads are well engaged with, Facebook and Instagram will reward you with lower costs over time. Click through rates:  If your audience is interacting more with your content, the price will be lower as not much work needs to be done. Other factors, such as relevance, estimated action rate, and your bid amount, will also help determine the exact cost you’ll pay for your ad clicks. How much do Instagram ads cost? The cost of an ad depends on how competitive your audience is. If you’re in a highly competitive industry like fashion, travel, etc. You would pay more. When analyzing Instagram advertising costs in 2018, AdEspresso found that the average cost-per-click on Instagram is around $0.80. For fresher data, here are the Facebook and Instagram advertising cost numbers from 2021, based on data by Revealbot. From the Facebook ads cost data from April 2020 to April 2021, the average CPC is between $0.5 – $3,5. For all metrics, Instagram cost per click in 2021 ranges from $0.40-$0.70. This takes into account all clicks that happen on an ad, which includes not only link clicks, but likes/reactions, comments, and shares. For ads that have a destination URL, Instagram’s cost per click in 2021 ranges from $0.50-$0.95. Instagram cost per thousand impressions (CPM) Another metric is the cost per 1000 views (CPM) Instagram cost per one thousand impressions in 2021 ranges between $2.50-$3.50 for better-performing better-performing campaigns and their respective ad sets. When it comes to CPMs, Facebook tends to be higher than Instagram, by nearly 2 times but CPCs tend to be lower by nearly half on Facebook compared to Instagram. In summary: An Instagram ads cost per click costs $0.40-$0.70 (link clicks, likes, reactions, comments, shares) Instagram ads cost per click to destination URL costs $0.50-$0.95. Instagram ads cost per engagement costs $0.01-0.05. The cost per thousand impressions costs $2.50-$3.50 How much ROI would you get from an Instagram ad? When thinking about your

How does Instagram promotion work?

Promotion on Instagram is a type of web marketing that involves Instagram. Instagram promotion feature helps you convert regular Instagram posts, stories, highlights into a sponsored one for a fee. It looks similar to organic posts on feeds or stories but would be identified by the “Sponsored” tag that appears below the handle. Promotion would let you add a call to action that is clickable for the feed or a swipe-up option for stories. With the Instagram promotion, you can introduce your brand, announce an event or sales, contests, giveaways, influencer collaborations, etc. Instagram promotions will help you increase brand awareness and recognition, grow your Instagram followers, find new customers, boost sales, create a community, etc. With roughly one billion monthly active users, Instagram belongs to the most popular social network worldwide. Instagram is a huge platform that has the potential of bringing in a lot of revenue.  Why Promoting on Instagram? Instagram promotion vs. Instagram ad The purpose of an ad is to convert and so there are so many features peculiar to this. Instagram ads offer more preference for targeting. While the purpose of a promotion is for visibility. It is to make a particular post get seen by a lot of people. The goal is to get a lot of people to visit your page and not necessarily to convert. Promotion is a good way to take your content marketing to the next level in terms of profile views, likes, comments, and shares. This is because as more people visit your page, they see more of your content and interact more with them. The “Sponsored post” tag is present in both of them but the Instagram algorithm treats them both differently. Instagram promotion can be done directly with your phone but with ads, you need to do it with ads manager. How does Instagram promotion work? Instagram promotion works by popularity. Make your content(s) go viral beyond the audience you already have. Your content will appear on a lot of people’s feeds and they get to interact with your post and visit your profile for other posts. They would probably follow your page. When do you use Instagram promotion? You should use Instagram promotion when your goal is visibility, reach, and engagement. Things you can promote on Instagram In Instagram promotion, there is a wide range of options; photo, video, carousels, story ads, reels, etc. You can promote the following on Instagram: A post you’ve shared:  This works the same way as a Facebook boost. You can promote a video or picture that has gathered more shares, likes, and comments. High engagement shows that people like the post and there’s a higher possibility that other people not in your audience will like it too. This gives the content extra awareness and visibility to more people. A story from your profile, highlights, or story archive:  This helps you capture authentic moments that speak to your business. Though it is limited to photos taken with an Instagram camera or posts only in a vertical form, it’s still a good way to promote your content.  Creating a promotion from the promotion button on your profile:  This is best if you don’t know which post to use for your promotion. Instagram will recommend which post they think will do well. This option allows you to start another new campaign from your Instagram profile. How to boost post on Instagram First, your profile should be a business account. Personal accounts do not have the promotion features. You can convert your account to a business account from the settings in your profile. On your profile, tap the promotion button. Choose the post you would like to promote and move forward from there. Set your goal: Here you get to decide your goals for the promotion. Decide whether it’s for more profile visits, more website visits, or more promotion views. Decide your post’s call to action: This depends on your goal for the promotion. Is it for more profile visits?, Engagement? sign-ups? visiting your website? visit your physical store? call a number? etc. It could learn more, call now, sign up, watch more, shop now, contact us, book now, etc. Select your target audience: Here there’s the option of creating an automatic, local, or manual audience. Instagram provides the basic parameters such as location, age, gender but you are allowed to target certain interests(Up to 10 interests). It can range from music, events, sexual orientation, hobbies, etc. Set your budgets and promotion duration: After the age, gender, location, and interests, you will get to decide your budget, duration, and distribution. Instagram gives you an estimate of your reach depending on your daily budget and how long you would like to run the promotion. It would also decide if stories or feeds would be better for your selected audience. Maximum limits for Instagram promotion are set at $1000 daily and up to 30 days on the duration for a maximum reach of 400k-1million people  Review your promotion: This is where you make sure everything is in place. You check for the following: Keep checking insights: This will help you decide whether you will continue the promotion or terminate it. How to promote your Instagram story If you wish to promote an old or archived story, go to your Instagram profile,  tap on the three dots and select “archives”. You would access any of the stories you want to promote from there. The best practices for Instagram promotion includes: In conclusion, Instagram promotion is not a one size fits all thing. It is best to keep testing the different forms of content, whether pictures, videos, carousel, etc. Always measure your results to know what works best and leverage that information for your future promotions.  When you need help from a professional, you can book a free consultation session with us by clicking on I want a free consultation.

9 Popular Social Messaging Apps For Business Growth In 2022

Social messaging apps are tools for your inbound marketing. It is where you can nurture your leads and turn them into loyal customers.  With social messaging apps, you can answer questions that do not require phone calls or emails, find new customers, meet more people, and get more sales. It is where you interact with your customers, get their feedback, and communicate with them on a more personal level. Why Are Social Messaging Apps Important For Four Businesses? 9 Popular Social Messaging Apps For The Growth Of Your Business In 2022 The 9 social messaging apps for your business include: 1. Messenger – One of the biggest social messaging apps Once you have a Facebook business page, you can easily log in with your information on Messenger. It was initially linked to Facebook but became an app of its own due to its popularity. Messenger has over 1.3 billion users with over 20 billion messages sent every day. Messenger is a good location for your business to interact with your audience. You can send texts, short videos, GIFs, stickers, or emojis. There’s a feature that lets you respond to messages directly, so you won’t get lost in messages. With messenger, you can set up a chatbox. It replaces a part of your customer services online and saves time. It allows your customers to get quicker information if need be. You can also use it to send triggered information like order confirmation, receipts, or tracking information. You can also send and receive documents like pdfs, customer data, application CVs, etc. 2. WhatsApp:  WhatsApp works like your phone, where you can send text messages, make calls, or receive audio messages, but it works over the Internet. Your WhatsApp account is linked to your phone number, so you have more control. WhatsApp has a larger user base than Messenger. It currently boasts over 1.5 billion users. It has more population so it’s a good place for your business to build a relationship with your customers. There’s a feature for a group chat that can have up to 252 contacts. This is good for your inbound marketing. You can house your customers in one group or more and send them periodic messages and updates. WhatsApp allows you to share media and audio files for up to 100MB. The end-to-end encryption allows you to connect with your audience on a more personal level. There’s is also your status for the advert. Anything you post on your status disappears after 24 hours and you can leverage this to promote your brand. With WhatsApp, you connect to your audience while sharing valuable information with them. 3. Viber:  Is more complex than other platforms, it has more options and additional capabilities. Viber boasts over 260 million users. With Viber, you can send messages, calls, stickers, pictures, GIFs, etc. You can like and respond to messages individually in a group chat. It offers a lot of interesting features. If you’re looking to do a lot with one app, Viber is a good deal 4. Instagram direct message:  You can send and receive messages via Instagram. You can respond to your customer’s inquiries via Instagram direct. It lets you send texts, images, videos, labels even audio messages. 5. Twitter direct message:  Twitter is becoming more popular and brands are taking advantage of this. Your customers are on Twitter and one of the best ways to communicate with them is via direct message. You can use Twitter directly to share updates, respond to feedback, send purchase reminders, etc. 6. Skype:  Skype makes it easier for your team to come together and communicate using multiple applications through a single interface using any device from any location. Your team can use skype for instant messaging, conference video call meetings, sharing files, etc. Skype is a good social messaging app for your brand’s in-house communication. 7. Telegram:  The good thing about telegram is that it runs on the cloud. It boasts of about 200 million users so it’s a good place for your business to be seen.  With the App, you can send and receive texts, stickers, emojis, do audio calls, etc. There’s a feature for secret chats that once you create it, it can disappear after a certain amount of time. This is for messages such as your bank details, or your business private information. You can have a channel on telegram where you nurture your leads and customers and even connect with them. Telegram also offers a feature that lets you send larger documents and files. This would be good for your business content marketing. 8. Snapchat:  Snapchat is a popular App. According to Zephoria, there are 238 million active users on Snapchat. This is the best App if you want to reach a younger audience. Before you use Snapchat, make sure your brand has a good positioning already. Snapchat will work well when your goal is visibility and creating a buzz. Snapchat lets you send your brand’s photos and videos to your customers or your story. The post disappears after 24 hours. What makes this feature unique is that it thrives on the fear of missing out. People would like to view your post once it’s up because they know it will disappear after 24 hours. You can leverage this feature to promote your brand, announce any event happening in your brand and connect with your audience. You can also create a geo filter for physical stores/events for your marketing. 9. Slack:  Slack is for project management and connection within your organization. It can be used across multiple devices and platforms and is equipped with robust features that allow you to do not only chat one-on-one with people but also in groups. With slack, you and your team can keep up with tasks and get updates on events going on in your organization. Now you know about the 9 popular social messaging apps for your business, it might be hard to choose a particular one. Conclusion On Social Messaging Apps The

Top 13 Pros & Cons of Social Media For Your Business 

Social-Media-For-Your-Business

Social media has evolved from direct electronic information exchange to a virtual gathering place, retail platform, and a vital 21st-century marketing tool.  It has been around since the 1980s and more and more population of the world are going into the social media space. Social media had since gone from desktop and laptop computers to mobile phones. This had made it more accessible to a lot of people. According to smartinsights, more than half of the world now uses social media. 4.55 billion people around the world now use social media, 400 million new users have come online within the last 12 months. 5.29 billion unique mobile users mean more than two-thirds of the world have access to a mobile phone. Because of the evolution of Social Media, businesses have taken advantage of this new consumer mobility by serving their customers new, simpler methods of interacting and new ways of buying goods and services. A brand needs to have a social media presence. This is because it is where you interact with your customers, get their feedback, and communicate with them on a more personal level. Is Social Media perfect? With Social Media, you reach a larger audience and build your brand. There’s always a bad side to everything good.  Social media is good for your business because it has so many advantages. It can also have a negative effect on your business when used wrongly. In the course of this advantages and disadvantages of social media to your business article, we’re going to explore the advantages and disadvantages of social media to your business. Advantages of social media for your business Disadvantages of social media for your business The remedy for this problem is to be patient. Nothing good comes easy. The remedy for this is to provide quality products and top-notch customer services. The best way to avoid this is to ensure security. Turn on two-factor authentication on all your pages. Announcing the punishment for anybody that hacks your page can help. To solve this problem, your brand should always have a budget allocated to your social media activities, and you should also check reviews online before starting This will help you stay organized and avoid the risk of running into debt. Always seek to bring the best people to your team. You can solve this problem by being innovative. Always be the first to think out new ways of doing things. Always be the first to launch. This will give you a first-mover advantage and make you stand out.  You can manage this problem by being extra careful with the way you manage your brand’s information. You shouldn’t give people the chance to know the things they’re not supposed to know about your brand. In conclusion of the advantages and disadvantages of social media, irrespective of the disadvantages social media offers your business, you need to invest your time and money in social media marketing strategies. You cannot know what to expect from social media because it involves humans, and human beings evolve with time. But that should not stop you from expanding your business online. Research on how to do business better online and find help from professionals to avoid landing on the wrong side. Do you have any challenges with your social media marketing strategies? Our team of experts can help you get on the right track, book a free strategy session with us by clicking on I want a free consultation.

5 Ways to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking on Google

Ranking high on Google is the basis of all your web marketing goals. Most of the traffic that comes to your website comes from search engines. Your website showing up on the first page of a search engine gives it the opportunity to be seen by searchers and once they see it, they can be able to click on it. Traffic to your website will lead to more brand awareness and conversion. According to Backlinko, the first result on Google gets 31.7 percent of all clicks while results on the second page receive just .78 percent of clicks. The best page is written for both the user and SEO in mind, not either of them but both of them. Always have it in mind to satisfy both the reader and the search engine in your web writing activities. Ways to improve your search engine ranking on Google Doing these 5 things will help you rank high on Google: Publish relevant contents  Publishing relevant content means answering everything the user has in mind in a search query. You do this by understanding your customers and their behaviors. This will help you write the kind of content they would love to read. This involves using their language and the kind of tone that appeals to them. This requires an in-depth study of your buyer persona. Another aspect of this is using the right keywords in your content.  When you use the right keyword and your content is written the way your audience likes it, your website will have a chance to rank higher on a search engine. Speed If your site is slow, you have a little chance of a high rank in a search position. It will affect your ability to convert and sell to new customers, too. Walmart experienced a sharp decline in conversions when its page load times increased from one to four seconds. If this happens, it doesn’t matter what your on-page SEO, meta description, or title tags are. The search algorithm will punish you, even if you’re a giant like Walmart. You can use the following and other tools to check for your site’s speed: Optimize for mobile More than half of all website traffic comes from a mobile device. That means if you want to rank well, your site needs to perform well on mobile. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test offers a quick way to determine if your site is mobile-friendly or not. In 2020, Google moved to “mobile-first indexing” which means Google looks at websites as a mobile device. If your site is hard to navigate, your ranking will be impacted. Information from this will help you take steps in making your website mobile-friendly. Update your website regularly This indicates how relevant your website is. Relevancy is one of the key factors to rank high on a search engine. Keep adding new content to your website at least every week. This could be adding information about a new product or service you’re selling, a customer story, or a product video. It’s also important to update your web content pages at least every 6 months and remove content that is no longer relevant. Regular updates on your website encourage search engines to visit your website more often. The more frequently they visit, the faster they can discover new content on your websites and this will give your website a good ranking benefit. Gain external links on your site This is a major factor for your off-page ranking factors. Links from external websites are considered a vote of confidence in the accuracy, relevance, and usefulness of your content especially links from high-ranking websites. Your goal should be to have the kind of content other websites will like to link to.  How do you achieve this? Quality contents! Quality content means different things to different people, but in all, your content should be meaningful and well detailed to earn backlinks from reputable websites. A bonus,  This is a way of letting Google know what your website contains. With this, Google will rank your website based on what it contains. And if your website contains what a user is searching for, it would be a high ranking for you! Title metadata is one of the most important metadata on your website. It is responsible for the page titles displayed at the top of a browser and as a headline within the search engine’s results. Description metadata is what tells what is on your page. It is an appealing description of what is contained within a particular page. Also, always use alt tags to describe your image and video media. This tells Google what is contained in the image or video. In summary, relevant content, a good website speed, a website optimized for mobile, link-worthy content, content with metadata and alt texts, and a website that is refreshed and up to date will always win for a high ranking on Google. Once you have these things in mind, you are good to go for a good ranking on Google. Do you want to talk to a professional about your website ranking issue? Book a free consultation session and talk to a team member by clicking on I want a free consultation.

What Does SEO Mean?

There is so much information out there, but not so much information can be seen with one click. The goal of SEO is to make your content visible once anything related to your content is searched for. SEO means Search Engine Optimization. It’s not such a big word. In a simpler term, SEO is making your content visible on the web. With SEO, you can make your brand’s content appear on a search engine’s SERP. SERP means search engine result page. Your company’s SERP ranking is where it ranks in the search engine. You won’t have so much competition online, once you prioritize SEO. SEO is a long-term strategy, it’s not what you do today and expects results tomorrow. According to Semrush, SEO should show results within a 6- to 12-month period. It takes time and patience to get the required result. Aim for daily activities with the goal of long-term success. Does SEO involve only blog content? SEO deals with everything on the internet including social media, email, etc.  It then means that once your business is online, SEO should be your priority. In both blog content and social media, human interactions and algorithms are the major keys for SEO. The goal of this post is to make you understand the importance of SEO and how you should go about it in your business. What does SEO involve? SEO focuses on making your content seen by both the search engine’s algorithm and humans. Is your content relevant for humans? Can the algorithm notice your content? These two questions would guide your SEO process The three main components of SEO are Content, popularity, and speed. Content: Focus on writing well-informed quality content. The content should be relevant. SEO starts with content because it is the one you can work on without external help. Also, consider your goals before writing any content. Is it to generate more traffic? get more sales? or get more visibility? SEO-optimized content involves structuring your content the way search engines will see it. Prioritize your keyword, make sure to use the keyword in these 5 places: title, header, image alt text, link text to that page body. Example: Target word: SEO Title: What does SEO mean? Headers: <h2>What does SEO involve? Links to the page: Good: What does SEO mean? Bad: How to rank higher on Google Aim for 2% keyword usage of the word count (explain) Your site HTML matters. Without proper tags, headers, and descriptions, google would not find your content. Another thing is the design of your headers. Headings are the titles of each section on a web page. They organize the text and make it scannable.  On any website, headers are set by tags. The largest is <h1> and normally goes at the top of a page. The next largest is <h2> and so to <h6>. Note that you shouldn’t overuse the keyword in your content. This would result in keyword stuffing and it is bad for SEO. Also, freshness counts for SEO. Posting new content signals to google and brings its attention to your site. Always go through your content to check for accuracy, fix any broken link, refresh old data, bringing in new statistics are good ways to tell google that your content is relevant. For social media, updating your content and repurposing the old one does the trick. The structure of the content is important. Make sure the texts are broken up and the sentences are not long. Make use of short sentences and paragraphs for easy readability. There’s a thing called bounce rate. How much time people spend on your content matters. This shows the search engine that your content is of good quality and relevant. People coming to your site and leaving immediately would result in a high bounce rate and it’s not good for your search engine optimization. Popularity: How popular is the keyword you want to rank for?. The main idea of SEO is to have content that people are searching for. Tools like Google trend and Google keyword planner can help you target the right keyword. Another way to gain popularity is by writing guest posts. Guest posts bring traffic to your site. Aim to write guest posts for websites in your niche. The idea is to offer free and quality content and get exposure to their audience and an SEO boost from linking back to your website. Also, content promotion is key. Promote your content on your social media platforms and other media outlets. Run good ads on google and make sure to drive enough traffic to your website. The goal is to get more people to see your content. Once there is much traffic coming into your site, the search engine will classify the content as important and will make it rank higher. This will boost your search ranking. Popularity also involves how many backlinks your website has. This goes both ways, a lot of websites linking to your page will bring more traffic to your site. This will get the attention of the search engine and it will rank your website high. The basic trick for getting traffic is creating content people would want to share. This works for social media too.  Speed: This is mainly for web content. Optimizing your website for search engines requires you to make your web page easy to access and this involves working on the speed. You can use tools like google speed insights or webpage tests to check your web speed.  In conclusion, make sure your content is relevant and optimized, prioritize link building, and ensure your website has the best user experience in terms of speed and navigation. Pro tip: Optimize your website for voice search. Voice search is becoming more popular. It is what the future holds. Optimizing Your website for voice search will do a lot for your SEO.  In addition, pay attention to your metrics, use tools like Google Analytics, Google search console to keep track of your page

What Is SEO And How Does It Work?

Have you ever wondered how contents make it to the first page of a Google search? If no or non-vehement yes, then you need to know more about SEO and how it works These contents are displayed on the first page of a search result because they have been optimized. Optimization simply means making something fit a particular system by following a set of rules. SEO means Search engine optimization. They are those steps you take to make your content seen on a search engine, especially on the first page. One of the goals you should have is directing traffic to your website. And the best way to do this is to make people see your website’s content online. These website contents could be your business blog, landing page, and even your home page. SEO is like coming out and standing in front of the people interested in your products so that whenever they search for a keyword related to your products, your brand shows up. The end goal of SEO is first, to build your brand’s awareness and then to generate leads that could convert. There are different steps you should take to make your SEO a success and you would learn them in the course of this article. The two sides of SEO Every activity that contributes to SEO are classified into two types On-page SEO refers to changes you make on your site that impact SEO. These include writing quality content that readers will like, using keywords that people are searching for, adding meta tags and alt tags, using HTML headers, structuring your website well, etc. Off-page SEO is all those activities that take place outside your website to raise your site’s rankings. Those activities include earning backlinks, getting traffic from social media and other sources. How does SEO work? Your SEO success is determined by how search engines work and how well you’re able to keep your site up to its standard for ranking. You can say your website content is search engine optimized when it appears on the first page of a search engine like Google, bing, yahoo, etc. Different processes take place before your content get’s to a search engine’s first page. For a search engine like Google, the first thing that will qualify your website for ranking is when Google robots can crawl your site.  If a search engine can’t crawl your site, it could be for the following reasons: Making Your site crawlable is all about making Google see your site. A search engine scours the Internet for content, looking over the code/content for each URL they find after which they store everything they found in a database, this is known as indexing.  After indexing, it now has the chance to be displayed as a result of relevant queries. Once your page has been crawled and is placed in a search engine’s index, it is your SEO efforts that will place you in the SERPs(Search Engine’s Result Page) Google will rank your content on the first page if it provides the pieces of content that will best answer a searcher’s query, which means that results are ordered according to relevance. How would you make your content relevant? Keyword research provides you with specific search data that can help you answer questions like: After that, the next thing is to help the search engine understand what your page contains by adding the necessary title and meta descriptions, adding alt tags to your images, choosing the right format and arrangement for your content, and, making sure your pictures, videos and other files are compressed enough to enhance the speed of your website. You can now go on with other off-page activities like directing traffic from your social media and earning backlinks from other websites. This improves the popularity of your website and popularity is a major factor for SEO. In summary, once your website can be crawled by a search engine, relevant optimized content will always win. SEO is a long-term thing. It requires patience and time for it to be effective. Always have a consistent budget for SEO for your brand and keep testing and trying new things. Don’t forget to measure and keep track of your progress. If you have questions about SEO, you can book a free consultation session to talk to a team member by clicking on I want a free consultation.

Professional Email Subject Lines That’d Lead To Higher Open Rate

Part of your web marketing activities is writing good email subject lines. Emails are a way to build relationships with your customers. Good email subject lines create a good first impression on your subscribers. Your main concern as a company is getting your emails read by your customers. It is only when people read and engage with your emails that you would achieve your goals for writing that email in the first place. Your email subject line is the most important part because it is what will determine if the email will be opened or not. For customers to know what the business has to say, a good email subject line comes into play. In one study, 47% of people said the subject line is the main reason they open an email. What does this say? that you should take your email subject lines very seriously. Why is writing professional email subject lines important for your business? Writing good subject lines is important because it tells what the email is about at a glance. People are faced with tons of emails every day in their inbox and so there is a high possibility of your emails being left unopened. If people can tell what an email is about once they set their eyes on them, then they would decide if they would read it or not. While writing a good email subject line first make sure it is straight to the point and then catchy enough to draw people in.  These are the two major things you consider while writing an email subject line. Do you write an email subject line first? It depends on your style and the way you flow. You can write a suitable email subject line after you have written the body of the mail or before you start.  Is keyword research necessary for email subject lines? The email subject line is similar to a blog post title. The only difference is that they are sent straight to a subscriber’s inbox and do not need to be searched for on a search engine. Using keywords that people want to engage with is important. It is always good to write for humans in your web marketing activities. Write something that people want to engage with, write something that people want to hear. This will lead to a higher open rate and possible conversion. So yes, keyword research is important for writing email subject lines. When your email subject line contains what people are searching for, they will open it and possibly read through and take action.  Best email subject line styles The best email subject line styles include: 1. Action subject lines: A subject line that requires action will draw people’s attention. Passive and dull subject lines would bore people. People like energy, people like something that will be worth their time. You should leverage that while writing your email subject lines. Examples: If your shoe company is running a discount and you write something like “Shoe sales discount!” as your subject line, it will not give much open rate as an active sentence like “Get a 15% discount on any shoe you buy!” Although, it is not advisable to use too much action on your subject lines in order not to give the wrong message. You don’t want to sound like you’re forcing your subscribers to do something for you. 2. Exclusive information subject lines: Always use subject lines that make your subscribers feel special. Let them feel they are not treated as others. Be sure to be authentic, nobody wants to be lied to. Examples of these subject lines include; “For our esteemed customers”, ” Discount only for you!”, “Exclusive information”, ” private invitation”, etc. People have the innate desire to be treated specially, leverage on that while remaining honest. 3. Urgency/Scarcity subject lines: Nobody wants to be left out on anything. Appeal to the subscriber’s sense of urgency while writing your email subject lines. Make them feel that if they don’t take action, they will miss out. Be cautious while using this type of subject line. Too much zeal would sound too salesy and could be misconstrued as spam. People don’t like spammy messages in their inboxes. Examples of these subject lines include:  “Free product offer for the next 10 days!”, “Free coupons for you if you buy now!” etc. Always be careful with how you infuse urgency in your subject lines. Subject lines in form of questions that a subscriber would want the answer to: This works like magic. It is normal for human beings to be curious about things. When you ask a question that subscribers are curious about in your email subject line, they will tend to open your email more. Make sure to answer the question in the body of your email so they won’t tag you as fake. Examples: While asking these questions, avoid being obscure and go straight to the point. Email Subject lines that are Controversial and Shocking: The good thing about controversial email subject lines is that it is unique, intriguing, and catches a recipient by surprise. People like to engage with something different and you should use that as an advantage. Controversial subject lines can also go wrong. People can misunderstand what you mean. This will backfire and give off the wrong result. You have to be extra careful while writing controversial email subject lines. Examples of these kinds of subject lines are: “The evils of Mark Zuckerberg” “How Jeff Bezos is a goal digger” Tips for writing better subject lines for your emails. For example, instead of saying “Our company is organizing something that will help you save more money” You can say: “Exclusive promo deals just for you!” 55% of emails are opened with a mobile device, a short, clear, and concise email subject line will do a lot to optimize your emails for mobile. An example of such subject lines could be ‘The full story behind the rape saga: Always use emojis