Category Archives: Tips

Some tips that help your content for improving your brand. You should have useful content that attract more clients.

How to Use Social Media to Build your Email List?

How to Use Social Media to Build your Email List?

Email marketing is one of the most successful and valuable methods of marketing; it’s practical, affordable, immediate, and estimable. One of the most critical aspects of email marketing is getting somebody to join your email list.

Maybe you’re already gathering email addresses offline with a paper sign-up sheet at your office or store. You may have also attached an online sign-up form to your blog or website.

Did you also know that using social media can help you grow your email list?

The best thing about using social media for business is that your social media pages can be public, meaning that anyone can find you and your page on the platform and become a fan.

The best thing about using social media for business is that your social media pages can be public, meaning that anyone can find you and your page on the platform and become a fan.

Here are three easy ways you can leverage the social media to build your email list:

1- Take advantage of social sharing

Resharing or reusing your valuable content on social media platforms provides your email campaigns a lasting life and extended reach to more consumers and prospects.

The users who follow you on social media, but haven’t yet subscribed to your email list, will now be able to find out about your email campaigns and subscribe right then and there. So, any shares and retweets of your email campaigns open up the opportunity of new email subscribers.

2- Run a contest or promotion

Planning contests or promotions is an excellent way to get your audience to sign up for your email list. Try hosting a campaign with a link to join your email list by giving the first 20 subscribers a 20% off or another excuse. Try running a promotion or contest every month or so and see what type of offer gives you the best results.

3-  Add social buttons to your emails

When you send out emails remember to include linking buttons to all of your social profiles.

Driving your current email contacts to share on social may look a bit backward, but because your current email subscribers already like your content, they are more likely to share it on their social network accounts. Their followers are seemingly like-minded and would find your content appealing as well, proceeding to build your following.

Once you reach these new followers on social media, you can ask them to subscribe to your emails.

Consider these things while turning your followers into email subscribers:

  • Are you making it easy for other people to subscribe to your emails on social media?
  • Are you sharing your emails on your social media account and inspiring your audience to like, comment and share?
  • Are you seeking opportunities to contribute an extra incentive to get people on social media to join your list?
  • Are you making it easy for your current audience to connect with you on socials and share your emails with their fans and followers using a single-click?

Do you have any recommendation on getting social media followers to join your mailing list? Let us know in the comments below.

Why you shouldn’t Focus on Only One Social Media Platform?

There are too many social media platforms to choose from these days, and if you are concerned about which one to use, you should only concentrate on one social media platform. It is best to put most of your efforts on one platform, although we do recommend creating accounts on other social media platforms in case you want to change strategies down the line.

The question is, how do you choose that one social media platform?

Target a platform with more potential customers

You need to make sales. So while it is essential to stay in touch with your companions, it is more critical that you choose a platform where your potential and existing customers are.

How do we find out what platform they are using?

We’re living in the digital age; Google can easily find interests, age, gender, and other demographics. Find out where your target audience logs in and start signing up.

Don’t go into unknown territories

If your target customer is immature kids, then make a list of their preferred social media platforms. If you believe you don’t know anything about the platforms in that list, but you have better control over the second one, then we recommend you get there, pronto. You can rely on others’ professional help too, but in many cases, Brands like to know what they are paying for, so don’t force yourself to go into unknown territory. Pick the platform which you have good control over.

By now you realize that the case has been made to why you should hold to one social media platform at a time to get better results. Social media can make you win if you work smartly.

What is your main platform? Tell us in the comments below.

How to Handle Negative Comments and Complaints on Social Media?

Some of us are a lot more sensitive than others. Make a bad or negative comment, and some people will break into tears. Some will take that on board and change their behavior; others will turn into a werewolf and bite right back!

Dealing with negative comments on social media is a lot more different than dealing with usual complaints, received y chat, email or phone. And there is one reason for it: it is too easy to turn a social media complaint into a complete disaster.

Why should I care about negative comments and complaints on social media?

Social media is a public place. Every time a user writes something wrong about your product or service, the whole audience on social media can see it. They will judge you based on different criteria:

  • How quickly did you reply?
  • What was your reaction?
  • What was your customer’s reaction?
  • How did the whole thing end?

Social media is all about immediate reaction and quick response. People present on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter literally live there and can post in the morning, while having breakfast, after dinner or even in the middle of the night.

If you choose to have a business profile, you should be ready to do the same. You might think that no one will notice one negative comment, but they definitely will! And if you don’t get response, they’ll get the idea of you not caring about your PR and your customers.

How am I supposed to reply social media complaints if I don’t see them?

It’s simple to reply to a complaint that was sent directly to your email, right? In the case of social media, it isn’t that easy! If you are lucky enough, users will tag your brand in their posts, and you will get notifications about it. Things start to get more complicated when people are sharing a lousy word of mouth about your brand, and you can’t respond to it because you can’t see it.

This is where you Google Alerts comes handy.

Enter your Brand’s name and optimize your settings. Remember you can choose more than one keyword alert for the search to get more specific information. This way you will get notified immediately when your keyword was mentioned, once a day or once a week. You can choose the language, region, and source (e.g., blogs, news, videos.)

How quickly should I response?

You should reply as soon as you’ve received a negative comment. Try to aim for responding in at least15 minutes to make a good impression, but if you can’t do that, try to answer in an hour. According to researches, 43% of your customers will expect a “one hour” response time and 30% of them expect a reply within 30 minutes.

The faster you reply, the better you will look in the eyes of the social media community. Yes, there is no mercy!

How should I react to negative comments?

If you let yourself discharge in public, you’ll be judged by your behavior. You might find yourself discussing with other people who will stand in the trolls’ defense and trust me, that’s the last thing you want! So, whether you’re speaking with an angry troll or customer, make sure you are doing the following:

  • appreciate them for their opinion (try not to be too formal, just a “thanks for reaching out to us” should be excellent)
  • apologize for the inconvenience (“sorry to hear that you didn’t like our services/ you’re having problems with our product”)
  • inspire them to send you a private message.

The last thing is essential: whatever happens, you want the unsatisfied customer to send you a private message.

Should I delete negative comments?

No!I know, you might be intrigued to delete them, but you should never, ever do that.

The thing is, if you delete a real comment from an angry customer, you can be sure they’ll come back: louder, more upset and more frustrated. Also, negative comments show that you’re a genuine, honest brand. You shouldn’t think about dealing with negative trolls and complaints on social media as an offensive obligation but more as an opportunity.

Opportunity to turn your customers’ lousy experience into a good one and to turn complaints into compliments.

How to Respond to a Negative Twitter Reply or Feedback

One primary reason why brands are unwilling to use Twitter is because of negative customer feedback. More and more often customers are using Twitter as a forum to place customer service complaints, making brands wary of joining what seems like a black hole of customer complaints.

Twitter users can apply smartest techniques to grow on the platform and even can buy Twitter followers on WP Dev Shed. But how to deal with the negative feedback? While not all tweets that get on your way will be negative, there is a benefit to having your brand on Twitter: you have control over turning negative feedback into positive ones. Negative feedback will be present on Twitter whether you have a twitter account or not. You can’t control what’s being said about you, but you do have control over your answers to unhappy customers. Here are many ways that you can deal with negative feedback on Twitter.

  • Kill them with humor and kindness

Last week, ThinkGeek had a typo in an email they sent out to their loyal customers. They had a lot of Twitter followers point out this typo through Twitter. Instead of ignoring the typo or getting disturbed at the hundreds of finger-pointing tweets, ThinkGeek responded with funny tweets to their followers. One example:

Can’t you just see those ThinkGeek monkeys wailing because of their typo? Makes me smile every time.”

  • Be honest

Southwest Airlines was having a problem with their website, getting many angry tweets from exhausted customers. Instead of replying with the general customer support tweet, Southwest Airlines responded with a genuine apology and honest answer. It’s hard to stay mad at someone who is willing to empathize with your pain.

  • Give them a solution

A Gap client was unsatisfied with the quality of one of her purchases. The company was proactive in reaching out to the customer to suggest that she return the product. Instead of being afraid of negative feedback on Twitter, embrace the chance to change negative customer experiences. Reach out to angry customers, frustrated clients or out to make you look like a fool. The more honesty and empathy you share with your customers, the more they will appreciate the experience you create for them.

Tips for Successful Digital Marketing Activities

As a business owner, even a small one, it is easy to feel like you are lagging behind the competition. After all, if you’re not a big brand, you can’t afford to hire an army of digital marketers to keep up with the latest digital marketing trends. But, it doesn’t mean you cannot become a one-person army! You can use your knowledge as a weapon. After reading this blog, you will be able to pick up your weapons and beat your competitor all by yourself. Many different digital marketing tips can carry you to success, but most of your competitors don’t know how to use them.

Our primary focus of this article is on the most popular digital marketing tips. They are popular because they are practical, but only if you know how, why and when to employ them. But first, let’s address a wrong way of thinking that many business owners have.

1- Eggs in too many baskets

This is a mistake that many amateur marketers make, trying to do everything at the same time with no experience. They set up ten different social media accounts, a PPC campaign, and a rigorous content schedule on a topic that they didn’t adequately researched into yet. The worst thing is that they have never been used more than half of those social media platforms before!

Are you familiar with this?

If so, then you should hold on. The worst mistake a new business can make is trying to manage too many social media accounts all at once. I will get to that in the next section.

But for now, you should learn that less is more! When you are just starting out, concentration and consistency should be your primary goal.

Concentration: if you try to manage several campaigns at once, you will be overwhelmed and wouldn’t find out which marketing campaigns are better than the others.

Consistency: this is the best way to get your brand off the ground.

  • Being consistent on social media will give you a loyal following.
  • Being consistent in your blogging will build a loyal customer base for you and turn new, cold readers into new customers.
  • Being consistent in SEO means that you will be able to save money in the long run instead of relying too much on purchased ads.

So, if small business owners try to do everything at the same time, they will fall flat on their faces. But you don’t have to be one of them.  By employing these digital marketing tips, you will be ahead of the game.

2- Find your place in social media

Most marketers know that they have to be on social media. After all, social media is not going anywhere! In 2018, 85% of Americans had a social media account.

3- Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is almost new in the field of digital marketing tips. In fact, most of your competition might have never heard of it! And for the ones who have, they are probably going about it the wrong way. But influencer marketing can be a potent tool when used correctly.

So what exactly is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing means that instead of marketing to your target customer directly, you inspire or pay influential people in your community to get the word out about you. When it comes to social platform users, influencers are basically one of the strongest referrals that your company can get.

So what people get wrong with influencer marketing?

Many small businesses still believe that getting lots of backlinks and doing loads of guest blogging will drive traffic and boost SEO. This was accurate in the past, but not anymore. Small brands these days have to tread carefully with getting backlinks and guest blogging because Google has cracked down on this method many times in the past. Google penalizes sites that abuse this method, and that’s not what you want for your new website!

Now that’s not to say that guest blogging is naturally a wrong method. Far from it! But it shouldn’t be done in a spammy form. Instead, it should be done with the primary goals in mind being:

  • Promoting your brand.
  • Building credibility by leaning on the shoulders of your industry giants.
  • Getting into another community.

4- Create an Email List

An email list is probably one of the most responsive and valuable assets you can have.

  • Responsive: according to researches, email subscribers are 4x more likely to share content on social media platforms.
  • Valuable: researchers on CRM found that customers who buy products through email spend 138% more money than the others.

The good thing is, unlike social media fans and followers, you own your email marketing list. However, believe it or not, many people don’t even think about having an email list. Instead, they believe that they can get away with just generating a social media following, which is a huge mistake. Sure, having a good social media following is very essential! But when it comes to turning random visitors into customers, email marketing is one the best ways to do it.

5- The 80-20 Rule for creating content

The 80-20 Rule means that 80 percent of your success on social media will come from 20 percent of your effort. For instance: webinars, videos, blog posts, infographics, etc.

So, how do you apply the 80-20 rule?

It’s quite simple, 80% of your content should bring value, and 20% of it should be promotional content. Valuable content means the content that is fresh, unique, educational, relevant, timely and solves real problems of your audience. So, your success will come from 20% of your effort, but that other 80% is necessary to draw it.

Many brands have it the other way around, which is wrong. 80% of the blogs are overly sales-y, and only 20% of their content contains valuable information! It is said that brands with valuable blogs receive 68% more leads than brands without blogs.

Other benefits of having a valuable blog include;

  • Getting more targeted traffic.
  • Adds a human side to your brand, therefore building loyalty and with your audience.
  • Cost-effective and easy to set up.

6- When should you rely on SEO?

Every marketer who is familiar with digital marketing has heard about SEO. But still, many brands shy away from it because they think it is complicated and too time-consuming. While both of these are true, SEO is the best way to drive organic and free traffic to your blog and website.

Even something as simple as your brand’s name can affect your ranking in search engine. Businesses with a strong keyword in their brand’s name rank two spots higher than brands without a keyword in their name. Instead of focusing on a long-term SEO plan, too many brands blow their digital marketing budgets on PPC ads on the beginning. We will talk more about it in the next section.

So what are the areas that SEO covers?

SEO can cover a wide area. But these are the main ones:

  • Page optimization
  • Website optimization
  • Device optimization
  • Reliable link building

There is a lot to learn, but implementing and learning SEO is necessary y for website visibility, you can take a look at past Google updates. The most critical Google update made websites that aren’t responsive on different digital devices not even show up in the search results at all! You don’t have to learn everything about SEO, learning the basics would be enough. Don’t expect immediate web traffic from doing SEO. It takes time to show results.

7- When is the right time to use paid advertising?

Many brands spend too much of their digital budget on PPC. They think they should spend money on paid advertising while starting out to get more traffic. But without a long term SEO strategy and a sales funnel, they start to rely on PPC to drive most of their sales. This is not a proper digital marketing method on its own. Because, well, more traffic is an excellent thing, but in the absence of a marketing funnel, you will not get optimal results.

Instead, you need to follow these three easy steps:

  1. Create a compelling and relevant offer. For instance, a free eBook or a newsletter.
  2. Create high-quality content for your website.
  3. Create targeted PPC to get more traffic.

Remember one of the best digital marketing tips: “Traffic isn’t Everything.”

A rookie mistake is to expect to turn random visitors into immediate customers.  You should bring them in first, and convert them into buyers later.

8- Improve the User’s Experience (UX)

Enhancing UX (User Experience) will be the glue that holds all of your strategies together.

The following are the popular ways to do this. There are also a lot more digital marketing tips for analyzing user experience.

  • The content on your website.
  • An intuitive user interface (UI).
  • The communication channels.
  • The loading speed of your Website.
  • Chatbots to use in communication.
  • Intuitive menu navigation.
  • An excellent tone for your content.

To make the optimal choices for those areas, you’ll want to learn more about your target audience.

How to create a good user experience?

  1. Remember to inspire and inform your audience with your content. This will give them a permanent impression of your brand and make engagement more comfortable.
  2. You’ll need a customer management plan to help you relate better with customers. It will take you through complaint and query management. It’ll also collect customer feedback and make them feel like they are a part of your community.
  3. Another thing to have in mind is the effectiveness of video marketing. It proceeds to trend upward in popularity with the growth of live streaming. Popular social media platforms have already embraced live streaming. Consider Instagram Stories, Facebook Live, and Snapchat Stories to engage with your target audience.

Final thoughts

As you can see, the most excellent way you can get ahead of your competition is to use the right and tried methods of digital marketing suitably. Your competitors will keep making the same mistakes, while you will be sidestepping the deviated paths and growing your brand with these digital marketing tips.

What do you think? Make sure to check on our other blogs about digital marketing. If you have any other questions about digital marketing or Instagram marketing, you can ask us in the comments below

5 Pinterest Tips to Grow your Blog Traffic

Pinterest is my BFF! It has been my BFF for a long time, and I have found out that it has huge potential for business if you know how to use it. According to the recent researches, Pinterest is driving more online traffic referrals than Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google and the average pin results in .78 sales. That’s something, isn’t it? Ok, now that I have tweaked your interest, do you want to know how to use Pinterest for your business? You have come to the right place, in this article I am going to share 10 Pinterest tips and tricks for you, business users.

Pinterest has taken the same concept as the other social platforms and created a social networking site that lets you create picture collections online – like an online scrapbook. It is fundamentally a photo sharing platform where the users are allowed to create albums on a theme or pattern.

Pinterest is an excellent opportunity for businesses because it can be a gateway for their services, products, and even their content. It is a good way to lead with content and allow the social interaction to take a secondary role. Brands will be able to see what their audience care about instead of who they care about. The market research on its own is priceless from a branding perspective! Are you there yet? If not, this is how you can get started:

Create quality content related to your niche

You should create content-rich boards and share your content just as you would on any other social media platform. Pin your content and product to themed boards on Pinterest followed by shortened links that let you track your Pinterest traffic. Make sure that you are representing your service, product, and content in a visually appealing way, because it will draw people’s attention. They won’t read the subtext in other words. Stand out, try to be creative and most important; be unique.

I recommend a minimum of 10 boards with at least five pins in each, because that’s where people check when they come to your site. Whatever you do, just do not leave your boards empty. You should give your visitors a good first impression. They should know that you are engaging, active and have great content.

Make yourself a brand

Remember to feature your business name on your Pinterest profile. If you are trying to brand your business name, you should have your business name as your Pinterest username. In the “about” section, write a short description about who you are, what you do and what are you passionate about. This section is similar to the bio area on Twitter and should be as brief as possible but provide a proper description of your work and how you solve a pain point for your target audience.

Connect your Pinterest account with your Twitter and Facebook accounts. And of course, remember to include a link to your website as it’s displayed as a clickable link under your bio! You can use URL Shorteners like iLink if you can’t decide which link to put on your Pinterest bio.

Interact with other users

If you come across a pin that you like but are not necessarily beneficial to your audience or be something that you would pin to one of your boards, you should consider liking them rather than repining them. Anytime you like someone’s pin; they will get notified. So, it may grab their attention and get them to follow you on Pinterest.

Include keywords to show up on search results

Hashtags are no longer useful on Pinterest as the platform looks for keywords in pin descriptions. While writing your pin description, make sure you use the relevant keywords., keywords most users would use to find your content. This makes it easier for you to be exposed and will gain more followers for you as well. And as you may know, more followers = more exposure.

Mention other Pinterest users

You can mention people in your Pinterest comments or pin descriptions to catch their attention or to recognize someone special. A ‘mention’ on Pinterest is much like Facebook and Twitter. Just type the @ symbol before the person’s name. A drop-down box will appear, and you can select from the users appearing in the search result. But remember you can only mention people who are following you on at least one board.

That’s all guys; you can use these tips to grow your business on Pinterest. Also if you have any other questions about social media marketing, you can ask us in the comments below.

How to Set up your 2019 Social Media Content Calendar?

The social media content forest is getting a little scary for brands who don’t have content strategies. Because it is noisier and more crowded than ever, the methods that worked in past years wouldn’t work in 2019. Social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and even Twitter are being made to use stronger algorithms and filter out the noise, fluff, spam, and irrelevant content so that they create the exciting conversations, organic engagement and elicit feelings of connection to the social network. The social network platforms are feeling the pressure as much as any social media marketer working in any business.

Boost your social media marketing with a good content calendar

If you want to get a grip on your social media marketing in 2019 and see unbelievable, measurable results, then you should employ a content calendar. You will not achieve goals you don’t plan for and can’t measure. A media calendar will let you organize and prepare your content so that you can use content to attract your target audience and achieve your brand goals.

Content is not a random set of words, videos or pictures you pay an intern or an SEO agency to create and hope it magically boosts your community and generates more leads and revenues although some inefficient agencies may try to sell you on this fact, run from them. “Create it, and they will come running” has never worked, and it’s absolutely not a strategy for success in 2019. You’ll get out of your content marketing what you place into it. The best place to begin if you want to get a grip on your content is by a content calendar. You should also make sure that your content is part of your more significant business and marketing and strategy.

Your content marketing must be the air you and your target audience breathes as they explore your brand, not just purchase your products. Organization and Planning is your solution to success in the crazy noisy online world of today, trust me!

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is an umbrella term embracing all marketing forms that include the production and sharing of content to engage target audience bases. Content marketing contributes to the impression that producing high-quality, relevant and valuable data to prospects and consumers drives valuable consumer action. Content marketing helps you retain user attention and improve your brand awareness.

In simple terms, content marketing lets you sell to your client without actually selling to them. You instead have a communication with them that draws them to you and your brand with relevant, high quality, and valuable information.

How a Content Calendar Helps You handle Your social media Marketing?

The purpose of this blog is not to give you an MBA level education on content marketing. Doing this much in one simple blog post would be impossible. So here are some tips to help you so through planning your media calendar. There are three things you need to consider while evaluating your channels:

  1. Where is your target audience? If your audience is more active on one social media platform over another, that platform is where you need to be adjusting your efforts.
  2.  Which platform had the most growth in the last year? If you see enormous growth on a platform, look through your analytics to understand why. Is it a particular content type that’s attracting people’s attention? Alternatively, maybe a precise campaign boosted your growth?
  3.  Where are your engagement and traffic coming from? Is there a specific social channel that seems to be engaging your customers and driving more traffic to your website? What is your brand doing on that channel differently than others that are causing that difference?

Find Out Which Types of Social Media Content You’ll Create

you have to decide which types of posts you’ll be sharing across each of your social media channels.

There are four different post types that your brand can publish on social media:

  • Pictures: Including single photos or gallery posts.
  • Videos: Including live video streaming or natively uploaded video content.
  • Text: Sometimes one catchy copy is all you need.
  • Links: Links to external content (curate or downed) would fall under this category.

Depending on your brand’s abilities and which platforms you’re on, some of these content types might be more valuable to you than others. If you’re already posting consistently on different social media platforms, use in-app analytics for each platform to look for spikes in traffic and engagement.

Here are some tips to create the best content calendar in 2019:

  1. Take a brand selfie

Brands need to see the art and value of first-person or “selfie” video content. Customers are becoming less accepting of old promo-based messaging. A selfie approach to video content on Instagram stories, Snapchat and IGTV, make your brand more relatable. Users spend hours watching their friends on IG Stories and Snapchat, so encourage them with content that offers a firsthand look at your business.

  • Understand Your Social Audiences

Most brands don’t ever consider this when they are running ads. Find out where the prospect is about their problem. When marketing to someone who doesn’t understand they have a problem vs. someone who realizes they have a problem, the message is very different. Social media is about segmenting people so you can be relevant to the right customer at the right time.

  • Quality Over Quantity

As platforms grow, brands jump onto these trends and flood the social media platforms with average content in an attempt to ride the wave. This causes the audiences they’re trying to attract to tune out before they’ve even processed what brands are trying to reach. Control the impulse to create content for the sake of doing so. Be profitable.

  • Invest in Data Research

Invest your money and time in data research. Companies that understand and continuously optimize their social media marketing strategy are winning the customer retention war. They’re targeting the correct audience. Numbers don’t lie — businesses that prioritize trends and stats will be the ones we notice in 2019.

  • Craft a Significant Brand Narrative

Optimize your business narrative to step up social in 2019. It’s not enough to generate a content calendar based on product or brand messaging. Your content needs to be compelling and evocative to lead people to action. Evaluate your brand story and make sure it’s inspiring and stands out between the social clutter. Ground your content in that message, and it will undoubtedly rise above.

  • Engage with Relevant Influencers

As social networks like Instagram continue to get impressive audiences, it’s time to think outside of the old advertising box. More users, look to influencers for their suggestions on products, what to watch, experiences, etc. Reach out to a public figure in your industry and ask if they will promote your product in a post.

  • Create a Perfect Social Media Strategy

Snapchat Story Ads, IGTV, Facebook features and everything else are methods, not strategies. The best way to up your game is to up your strategy. Do some research and Learn more about your audience.

Creating a stable, research-based plan will help you leap in 2019.

  • Be an Early Adopter

Do not hang around to observe if anyone is going to leap to use a new feature and if it works for them before trying it yourself. Experiment with every new feature that rolls out. You will quickly discover if it will work for you or won’t be a big hit, and you’ll receive a massive boost as a trendsetter by being the first one to try it in your industry.

Conclusion

Now, I understand this seems like much work. It takes time to put features, systems, and workflows in place. These updates will make things faster and more productive, but the implementation still needs some time commitment. However, you know what? It’s well worth it! A well-planned and well-organized content calendar will make a significant difference when it comes to traffic and leads coming to your site. Most brands share content without any purposes or thinking behind it.

Having a good content calendar gives you a considerable advantage and develops your social media authority. Try it, give it 4 to 6 months and come back here to share your results!

How to Write a Killer LinkedIn Summary?

A few years ago, I posted an article about writing the perfect LinkedIn summary. A lot has changed since then. LinkedIn has made many revisions and updates, and lately, they launched a whole new interface. Also, the world of work has developed even more into a place where the free-agent mindset is necessary for success. So it’s time for a significant update to my last post on this topic.

Before we get into the methods of crafting a brilliant summary, let’s begin with why your LinkedIn summary is so important for your success:

  • LinkedIn is usually the first place people go when they are looking to estimate you in a professional position.
  • If people search your name on Google to learn about you, your LinkedIn profile will likely show up in one of the top places in the search results. Since 78% of Google clicks go to the top three results, those who begin at Google will end up at LinkedIn.
  • For most of us, a LinkedIn profile is the most extensive bio we have online. Your LinkedIn summary will likely be seen by more people than any other social media bio. This added exposure gives you an outstanding opportunity to catch the attention of decision-makers — but only if you have a relatable summary.

A valuable LinkedIn summary does three things:

  1.  It shows the connection. It attracts the right audience who are crucial to your career success, letting them know what you’re about so they can decide if you are related to their goals.
  2. It differentiates you from competitors. With so many people presenting the same services as you, standing out is important.
  3. It makes people want to learn more about you and eventually interact with you one-on-one. Of course, this means congruence with the real-world you is essential.

I have had the chance to help a lot of professionals describe their story in their LinkedIn summary, and what I write here is the proven process we use. It’s a simple method that makes your summary shine:

Step one: Set the scene

First of all, you should decide what you like your summary to say and want you want visitors to do. These questions will help you set the scene for your summary:

  • Who is your target audience? Who are the most important influencers and decision-makers in your world?
  • What do you want them to know or do?
  • How do you want to make the visitors feel?

Write our responses to these questions so you can begin gathering your raw data.

Step two: collect your content

You may feel overwhelmed by the different choices for writing your bio. I recommend organizing your content into these seven buckets:

Skills: write a few sentences about what you do to provide value for your team, brand, and internal or external customers. (I’m the content manager. I have a team of best and brightest writers. I brought them together to write about the most important updates in the world!)

Victories: write about your achievements in your career. Be sure to describe the value you brought. (I saved my company $100k by using a better and cheaper version of blogging software.)

Passions: values and passions. write your operating principles and the things that inspire or energize you (for example, “diversity, creativity, and developing win-win relationships” along with UNICEF.”)

Your superpowers: Explain the things you do better than anyone else – the talents that allow you to be a hero for your colleagues (for instance, “I make team conferences fun and productive, making everyone feel involved; I have been told I am the best listener”).

Interesting stats: Mention things you can quantify – and don’t limit yourself to just the ones that are work-related. (“I climbed four of the tallest peaks; I speak two foreign languages and travel to at least eight new countries every year”)

Validation: Cover all those things that help you prove what you say about yourself such as awards and accolades (for example, “Graduated from the University of Harvard; was awarded an innovation fellowship by the Association of Advanced science”)

Uniqueness: One of the most crucial aspects of reliable content is exclusiveness. If the content on your website is duplicated or plagiarized, then you may not get the desired results from it. One of the best and easiest ways to detect piracy in content is the use of an online plagiarism checker. You can find many online duplication finder tools over the web that can assist you in detecting duplication in writing within a few seconds. You can get access to an effective free online similarity checker by clicking on plagiarismdetector.net without any hurdles. 

After completing your content category collection, take a look at them and try answering these questions:

  • Is there anything missing?
  • Is there anything irrelevant?
  • Is it aspirational and authentic?

Make any adjustment, deletion, and additions to your raw content and then prepare to share.

Step three: showcase your story

Before writing anything, give yourself a “permission to suck.”  we put a lot of pressure on ourselves while writing, and if we lower the expectations of our first attempt, we can typically improve, edit, or recreate something that’s really quite satisfying.

 I recommend crafting your summary in the first person for these reasons:

  1.  Everyone understands you wrote your own LinkedIn summary, so drafting about yourself in the third person looks a bit insincere.
  2.  Writing in the first person creates communication between you and your audience, and that’s the best way to develop a relationship.
  3.  The first person version of your bio seems more like storytelling and less like recording your accomplishments — and the LinkedIn summary is all about storytelling.

That’s it.

Comment us below and tell us about your methods of writing a good bio on social media.

Best Way to Use Social Media for Multiple Affiliate Marketing Programs

Using social media for affiliate marketing is one of the easiest and quickest ways to start making money online. Affiliate marketing is a partnership between a brand and an external website, where the external party helps promoting a product or service, and the brand pays them a commission for each click that drives into an actual sale.

While using social media for affiliate marketing can be the most efficient method, you have to make sure your social media posts not only spread your affiliate and website links but include actual value as well.

Posts without value are the ones that will cause your followers to lose interest in you. And without your audience, you can’ be successful in affiliate marketing. For example, on my social accounts, I like to have 75% of my posts as education or entertainment purposes only, and only 25% of my posts are promotional.

Facebook for affiliate marketing

Many influencers are focusing on Instagram, but we should have Facebook in our minds too. The average user spends 35 minutes per day on Facebook, compare that number to 15 minutes per day on Instagram. Additionally, based on my personal experience of running multiple affiliate programs, Facebook produces higher conversions for affiliate marketing campaigns.

Multiple affiliate marketing programs

Organizing and maintaining affiliate links on a single website can be a task one person can manage. If you own multiple affiliate programs, though, managing links without an effective strategy can waste so much of your time that leaves little to no time for creating new content and building relationships with your audience. To manage our affiliate links efficiently across different websites, you can use the platforms which can help you convert your multiple links into one short link.

  • Create a fan page: yes, fan pages can be challenging when it comes to audience reach. However, only fan-pages can boost a post on Facebook, so your affiliate blog should be seen on your fan page at first.
  • Boost your post: A Facebook boost is required if you want To catch some fresh eyes on your post,  The first type of boost I suggest is to your existing followers. Because they have already Liked your page. It is the most modest and top converting boost.
  1. To get started, just click on the Boost Post button.
  2. Once you click, select users Who Like Your Page, Your Total Budget and Duration.

 I recommend beginning with a small budget and duration until you have endorsed your return on investment. If you got your Likes authentically and chose a product your audience responds to, your ROI will be high. If you do not have a substantial ROI, test different titles and content.

  • Share on personal pages: Don’t forget to share your Page post to your personal Profile too. Facebook’s algorithms do not affect personal Profiles. Personal profiles are an excellent way to reach out to family and friends who want to support your business.

YouTube for affiliate marketing

Videos are a fantastic way to engage your audience on a personal and relatable level. Every top converting affiliate creates both a regular blog post as well as a video review.

  • Keep your YouTube videos under 5 minutes if possible. The shorter, the better.
  • Begin the video with your key selling points.
  • Ask your subscribers to click on the affiliate links for more information and to purchase.
  • Include multiple calls to action throughout the post.
  • Titles are the first impression. Your video title should include keywords and be engaging.
  • Include your script in the Closed Caption for optimization goals.

Instagram for affiliate marketing

Instagram is an excellent tool for affiliate marketing. The challenge with Instagram is persuading your followers to click on a link. Instagram has only one place for clickable links, and that is just in the bio. Remember; it is absolutely okay to change your bio link frequently.

  • Use a URL shortening platform for your affiliate links like iLink.
  • Use a unique and personal photo whenever possible.
  • Direct followers to your blog where you have included your affiliate link.
  • Use Instagram to drive traffic to your website and develop your email list.
  • Do not purchase followers. Organic engagement equals conversions. Don’t be seduced by offers of cheap followers or fake likes and comments through “comment pod” groups.
  • Use related hashtags and be consistent with them.
  • Reach for influencers in your niche and take notes.

Multiple affiliate marketing on one social media account

As you may know, every social media platform has its own flows. For Example, Instagram doesn’t let you use more than one link on your profile bio. Or in some social networks, links you share would not be clickable. So as for Instagram, you should consistently change the link on your bio to be able to affiliate for different brands.

But don’t worry.

I have the best solution to this problem. Just keep reading.

Have as many affiliate links as you want

You can be an affiliate to different brands by using short link generators or creating a landing page for your affiliate links. This way you don’t have to spend your precious time on replacing links all the time. Instead, you can focus on creating engaging content to attract new followers from your target audience, therefore make more money, right?

Best platform for URL shortening

iLink

iLink is a full-service URL shortener that helps you convert multiple links into one short link. Part of the appeal is that iLink is simple and easy to use. It has a comprehensive dashboard where you can track and analyze the statistics about your links like click-through numbers and rates. Tools for trailing campaigns are easy to use as well.

  • You can also set beautiful themes for your iLink page
  • You can add your contact information to your iLink bio
  • You can also add your social media accounts to your home page so that people can reach you online.
  • iLink is entirely free! So you can enjoy using it without paying anything.

That’s it

Have you tried link shorteners before? What do you think about affiliate marketing on social media?

10 Awesome Instagram Christmas Campaign Ideas to Boost your Engagement

Here comes the Christmas and there is magic in the air! One may think that it’s the season to be jolly, but brands are probably thinking it’s time to begin engaging people by spreading some Xmas cheer. One of the best ways of doing so is by launching interesting contests relevant to the upcoming holidays.

Many brands have performed this in the past and are proceeding with it. Organizing interesting and interactive contests and campaigns is an excellent way to get people’s attention. If you are a new startup, you should consider making the most out of the holiday season by investing in contests, games, and promotional competitions.

If you are wondering how to perform that, I have got a few ideas to help you use the holiday spirit to engage the audience and gain their loyalty.

Run a holiday-themed campaign

By this time of the year, you can run a campaign to use the holiday spirit for promoting your brand on Instagram. Consider adding elements from the holidays into your campaign and marketing strategy. Tie up with charities and offer to donate a part of your holiday sales to their cause. This is really useful in bringing about a sense of harmony, unity and good cheer. Also, this sort of contest is excellent because they target families and not just a restricted section of your audience.

Run a Christmas quiz

Enter social media to create and run an interactive quiz. This way, you can find out what your audience is looking forward to during the Christmas and employ this information to your own advantage. Ask different questions to let them select the answer they feel most related to. Make sure to use simple participation rules to encourage maximum engagement. Ask questions in a way that enables you to get insights into customer’s preferences.

Make a wish come true

The holiday season is the time when we all like to send gifts to the ones we love. Use this information to your advantage by running a campaign around this idea to show off your good intentions. Ask your followers to reveal their holiday wishes to their loved ones in comments. Announce that for every wish sent, your brand will donate a specific amount of money to a good cause.

For example, UPS produces millions of gift packages, which start with a wish. In keeping with this, UPS began the “your wishes delivered” campaign, through which they inspire their followers to share their Christmas wishes. For every wish shared on their website with the hashtag #wishesdelivered, UPS donates $1 to charitable organizations.

Holiday selfie contest

Who doesn’t like taking selfies? You can turn this fun activity into a contest, right? You can ask your followers to get into the holiday spirit and take selfies with their Christmas tree, snowman or a Santa Claus while showing off your product. Ask them to share their selfies to your Instagram page with your branded-hashtags and win prizes.

A Christmas gift with a message

You can use the holiday season to spread the message of preserving the environment. This is an excellent time to get your works to protect our planet noticed. This will not only bring you enormous customer goodwill and trust but also improves your brand credibility. You can do this by a simple, direct message campaign.

Name your favorite Christmas movie campaign

We all have at least one specific Christmas movie that we like so much. This is the movie we watch every year on holidays. Your followers will definitely love to talk about their favorite Christmas movie. All they should do is tell you the name of the movie with the reason to be able to sin some great prizes from you.

Caption contest

A good caption can promote your campaign as nothing else can. Are you having trouble coming up with a good one? Get your followers to create one for you, as you keep them engaged with your brand at the same time. Just post an engaging photo on your Instagram account and ask your followers for an exciting caption, which will qualify them for winning a good prize.

Video sharing contest

The holiday time is when most people fill their Instagram accounts with holiday videos about the celebrations at their office and home. Focus on this and ask your followers to share a video of their Christmas decorations to win prizes.

Christmas game campaign

An excellent way to use Instagram to keep followers engaged during the holiday season is by getting them to participate in holiday-themed online games that are related to your brand.Ted baker’s Instagram game for the Christmas has been a great hit. It features Santa’s seven elves, who have gone missing. They were last seen in an #elfie taken by Santa.

Users can find the elves by visiting @tedsElfie on Instagram and participating in the game therein. The three-week campaign offers many chances to win prizes.

Vote contest

You can set up a new vote contest every day and ask your audience to choose between two products and mention the reason for their choice in the comment section. The product can be related to the Christmas, such as eggnog vs. hot chocolate, stocking vs. Santa hats, or candy cane vs. gingerbread man.

Conclusion

Running a good Instagram campaign can help brands and audiences connect better. Holiday campaigns can be beneficial in not only keeping followers’ engaged but also in sneaking to their emotional side and capturing their heart. Christmas serves as the perfect chance to get in touch with your existing followers and gain new ones.

7 Creative ways to Add Christmas Spirit to Your Social Media

Holiday shopping Is not a marathon; it’s something that happens in the moment. Instead of going to different shopping malls and searching for the best offers, marketers are turning to their social media channels during the holiday season.

In 2015 over 90% of holiday sales took place in malls and stores, but 57% of them were influenced by social media. According to researches around 65% of shoppers are signing up to social media to find some inspiration for purchase.

Such trends are expected to continue growing in 2019. So, it’s essential for every brand to be present on social media to capture the attention of their target customers and trigger the holiday shopping. So if you haven’t done anything about it yet, you can use these tips that makes your social media more festive and merry for this Christmas.

Decorate your profile and cover picture

Your cover photo should always represent the personality and values for your brand, but if you want to get your customers in the holiday spirit, you have to change it to reflect the season. People are using social media all the time, so a new cover picture will motivate them to check your account and look for exclusive offers or gift ideas.

To start, try to think of the cover picture as your billboard and wonder what information you like to promote during the holiday season. Maybe you have a unique holiday product you want to showcase or some special holiday discounts that your audience would love to hear about? Share that with your customers by a simple and beautiful design that includes bold background color and a right combination of serif and sans-serif fonts.

Even if your brand cannot offer any specific holiday discounts, post a photo of your office Christmas decorations and brand it with your logo to create an inviting and pleasant vibe for your social media.

According to researches, each person owns an average of 6 social media accounts but actively uses three so don’t limit your posts on using just one social media. Share similar holiday-themed cover photos to all your other social media channels to create consistency and allow people to quickly find and recognize your brand on their preferred social media network platform. This will tie in all your social accounts together and help customers who are using Instagram or Twitter to research your offer in more detail.

Create a Christmassy offer!

Christmas is one of the biggest shopping seasons of the year during which most marketers earn as much as 30% of their annual income, so they try a lot to attract people to choose a particular brand.

Messages such as one day only, buy-one-get-one-free, limited quantity sales, holiday coupons or special discounts are among the most common deals used. To drive attention to the message, make sure you put the text on a background that will not be too distracting for your audience. Apply the principle of font hierarchy and use bigger font size for more essential pieces of the information, such as your discount value.

Share the joy of Christmas

Social media is meant to be social, so use the holiday season to give your content some festive vibe. You will get people excited not only about the holiday season but also about your brand!

You can begin by creating content that ask users what’s their favorite thing about Christmas or what’s their most memorable holiday moments, favorite Christmas food, favorite Christmas present, etc. Whatever you want to write about, make sure that your text doesn’t invade the photo. Use background shapes as a text holder to make them easier to read.

  • Make a wish come true

An excellent way to encourage engagement is to create a prize game on your page or through platforms. Multiple giveaways, in which you give out rewards every day for a certain period (maybe “the 12 days of Christmas”) have the best engagement rate because they make customers come back again and again. Your contest mechanism could be as simple as creating a quiz with holiday-related topics or inviting your followers to share pictures in their worst Christmas sweaters.

Do you have other ideas on how to get your social media accounts ready for the Christmas? Will you try the ones we have recommended? Let us know in the comments below!

Twitter Bio Ideas to Get more Followers

Twitter Bio Ideas to Get more FollowersAfter wondering a lot between a lot of twitter bio ideas, I found one that actually worked for me. Or at least, my followers loved it when I changed my twitter bio.In this article, I will show you how to nail you twitter bio to get some eyes on you and make yourself unforgettable.

1-   Use keywords

The best twitter bios contain industry targeted keywords. Identify your top keywords and use them organically. You should think about what your audience is going to search and then include those words as keywords in your bio to be more transparent.

Instead of using general hashtags like #blogging and #social media in your bio, just tell them about what you do. Don’t make them figure it out by themselves.

Keywords are useful for people who are trying to build a twitter following.

2-   Embrace the space

A good bio is a combination of professional and personal information. Share something that will connect you to your follower.

The hardest thing about writing a good Twitter bio is fitting all your information into 164 characters. But you should remember that you will rarely write the perfect Twitter bio the first time. So keep trying. For instance, my current bio has gone through at least 15 re-writes.

3-   Mention what you do or believe in

Use your twitter bio to inform people of what you do or what you believe in and are passionate about!Instead of telling us about your work, tell us about what you do. You can save some time for people by writing your skills as brief as possible. This will make you different from others in your industry. Richard Branson has nailed it in this case.

4-   Include the name of your employer

If your Twitter bio has your employer’s twitter handle, you will appear in the search results when people search for the brand or business on the twitter.This way people can send you a personal note just in case, they need some help or have a particular question about your work.

5-   Avoid meaningless buzzwords

Every professional uses buzzwords these days, but your customers don’t. You can never stand out by using the same old ways.

  • Marketing expert (guru)
  • Growth hacker
  • Networking Ninja!
  • Entrepreneur
  • Hustler or something like that!

Let me tell you something; these buzzwords are cute. But they are too old to use, get rid of them. Because everyone is using them these days, you should be unique, not another one of those. I am sure that you can come up with something much more better!

6-   Use humor

A little humor is always helpful if you want to be remembered by other people. Yes, people will never forget the funny ones, ain’t true? So don’t waste the opportunity to let your personality shine, on Twitter at least! Humor shows that you have take some time to write a good bio, do it like a pro, just like tom hanks here!

7-   Add social proof

What are your greatest achievement and accomplishments?

Mention some of your significant awards and recognition in your Twitter bio. This social proof can be great start for your conversion. You can write about your successes, your awards, books you have written, lists you have been in, etc.

Wrapping up

Although you can utilize the best Twitter bot to get people’s attention, your bio is your best opportunity to catch some eyes and get new followers on twitter, don’t waste it. It is the first thing people see when they are deciding whether to follow you or not.

So have in mind that you only have 160 characters to get their attention.

Try to be creative and leave us a comment that no one has ever did!

What are the Skills that Every Social Media Manager must have?

A few years ago the social media manager role was not even a career or a job; it simply didn’t exist!

here we are now after a decade, and every organization is trying to have a social media manager, whether part-time or full time. Social media managing requires some skillsets to be able to manage many parts at the same time. Analytical, Technical and creative with a bit of project management thrown in. So:

What does the life of a social media manager look like?

It’s almost a 24 hour job. It means managing, updating, monitoring and getting new ideas from customers and other resources.

Essential skills of a social media manager

They should always be online and keep tabs on their community which involves being artistically creative but also be like a data scientist. In the digital world, the geeks may take over the world.

So here are the top skills every social media manager should have to excel and succeed:

1- Strategy planning

You should try to see the bigger picture here. How content, search and social media all work together. You need to define goals, outline your target audience and find out which platform works better for your business. Social media marketing can be too complicated so, you will need the right tool to perform “social at scale” and automate.

2- Execution and tactics

Tactical accomplishment is paramount to the success of any social media manager’s day to day work. This means you should pay attention to the detail or understand whom you need to hire to maintain day to day proper execution of the expected tactics.

3- Community management

Social media is about observing, creating and responding to discussions within your brand community. Monitoring comments, responding to Instagram posts and engaging with your followers. It means understanding how to respond to trolls and negative feedback. It is part PR and part common sense.4- Social content marketing

Social media produces and expands content. The social media manager has to know what content works and what doesn’t on social networks. It also means understanding which media format such as articles, videos, images, and podcasts resonate with your niche. It would help if you learned how to make content progress and maybe even go viral across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and the other social media platforms.

5- Creating and optimizing content

The social media is an ecosystem of search, content, and mobile. Making sure that you know how to drive a customer to a sales funnel from engagement, following and finally sales needs some particular skill sets.

  • Understanding the required for creating content for SEO so search engines will rank high for your phrases and keywords on Google
  • directing traffic to your landing pages, so followers register for webinars, download your ebooks and share your content on social media platforms.
6- Unique mindset

Social media marketing is not just about cold hard methods. It means flowing with the creative process that affords creative content that engages with your followers and impresses their hearts, not only their minds. Don’t underestimate the power of creative visual content and be willing to test and experiment. Artists are always pushing their limits further.

7- Writing skills

Pictures are essential on a visual social media platform, and images of cats, cute babies, and funny memes can be very attractive. But great writing is also crucial. Which includes:

  • The science and art of headline writing
  • Writing an excellent and engaging introduction
  • Structure of your writings, for easy reading online. People will be scanning and skimming, so that means bullet points, subtitles and numbering are a vital part of the skillset.
8- Communication skills

Try to keep the management informed, your team motivated and followers excited. Managed means to know the art of communication. This includes presentation skills both written and verbally. A social media manager should know how to manage things; this means they have to be a leader.

9- Analytical skills

You can use social media automation tools to monitor and schedule your social media activities. This way you can measure what works for you and what doesn’t in real time. These days you can even measure sentiment!

10- Be on the trend list

Social media is not just a singularity. The social media is made up of intersecting trends as it grows and evolves. These mean learning some of the following:

  • The rise and role of smartphones
  • The rise of visual marketing platforms as Instagram and Twitter
  • The growth of “pay to play” with facebook which is reducing its organic reach

Conclusion

These skills are the ones that will build the most effective social media manager. So, what are you waiting for? Comment us below and let us know about the skills you have as a social media manager.

The Potential of Social Media for B2B

Social media is the digital marketing tool with the potential to give you the most result for your business – and it doesn’t have to cost you a penny. What do you know about the benefits social media can provide to B2B brands?

B2B Benefits

Social media will help to generate leads for more than half of all B2B companies. However, that isn’t the only benefit to be had from a good social media strategy.

B2B marketers has reported these benefits for using social media:

  • 50% reduced their marketing expenses
  • 55% grew their business partnerships
  • 55% established thought leadership
  • 58% improved their search engine rankings
  • 69% developed loyal fans
  • 77% increased their traffic
  • 90% increased their exposure

Top social media sites for B2B

Facebook may be the best one with 1.59 billion users per month, but the best business platform of last year was Instagram, which increased its monthly active users to the tune of 400 million in 12 months– not even Facebook can grow that much. Other social media options include:

 

  • YouTube at 1.44 billion monthly users
  • Twitter at 320 million active users
  • Pinterest at 100 million active monthly users
  • LinkedIn has up to 400 million users, but only 25% use it monthly.

 

Challenges

  • 17% of B2B service businesses have not been able to determine the impact of social media on their business
  • Only 30% of B2B marketing projects use marketing analytics
  • 15% of B2B companies find it challenging to meet “the expectations of the always-connected

Tips and tricks

What should I do to get the most out of social media?

  • Include pictures in your posts
  • Start an employee promotion campaign
  • Invest in shareable content
  • Get into live streaming with Facebook Live
  • Try new platforms
  • experiment with 360-degree video