How to Find Quality Web Content Writing Services for Small Businesses in India

Quality content can transform the way businesses interact with customers. Good content, better SEO rankings, and greater online visibility are crucial factors that decide your business’ fate. Good content marketing strategies are ideal for companies of any size and especially for small business. Several SEO companies in India provide content writing services. But it is critical to choose the right service that meets your requirement.

Consider certain factors before choosing a content marketing service for your business

  • Accuracy – Accurate information is what readers are looking for, which helps them make better decisions. Check whether your content marketing agency can provide reliable content.
  • Quality – Quality content can convert traffic into sales. Judge the quality of services provided by the chosen company. Content should be unique and engaging, it should also offer value to your customers. Make sure that the files should pass through plagiarism checks.
  • Experience – Check out the company’s official website and list of clients they worked with and request for few samples. Read the testimonials. Also have a clear idea about the content marketing strategies they offer and make sure that these strategies would be of help for your online business.
  • Editing and proofreading – Not only writing, editing should also be good. Understand the companies policies related to editing and revision. Checkout if there are limitations for the revisions to be done.
  • Cost – Before signing up for their service, check out the costs. Compare their rates with their competitors. You can also request for a Free Trial.

Ideal Content Writer–Qualities to Check

Professional copywriting companies provide services of experienced and skilled writers who can communicate intelligent and powerful messages to your potential customers in the most effective manner. The success of an online marketing campaign mainly depends on your writer. Make sure that the writer assigned for your project can-

  • Understand your business and provide suitable content that satisfies your customers as well as search engines. They should have a clear knowledge of your services or product.
  • Create newsworthy content that your target audience will be looking for. They should be patient enough to do a lot of research and provide educative stuff, which is current too.
  • Improve your content’s structure such as H1 headings, bolding and anchor text, which can boost your SEO ranking. They should also create effective title tags that incorporate keywords associated with your service.
  • Add proper URLs as it can be an effective way to provide readers with right information and guide them to other engaging content. Improper URLs can hurt your search engine rankings. Use social media sites effectively for your marketing purpose. Their quality blog posts should help you get connected to more people through social media platform, thus receiving more traffic and improving your search engine visibility.
  • Include relevant meta descriptions that is typically 150 characters or less that are rich in relevant keywords. This description will often appear when people share your articles across other websites and social channels.
  • Know the standard keyword to text ratio. They must make sure to use low-competition long-tail keywords in a perfect amount.
  • Meet your deadlines by providing required content at the right time.

Not all services suit your specific business. Keep all those factors discussed above, before choosing a content writing service for your business. Also monitor their work progress and make sure whether it is providing positive results for your website’s search engine ranking.

A Checklist for App Store Optimization [Infographic]

App Store Optimization (ASO) is a way of optimizing your mobile apps to ensure higher ranking in the app store search results and top charts rankings. Since it has similarities to search engine optimization (SEO), ASO is also referred to as mobile app SEO, App Store SEO and App Search Optimization. But, as a marketer how can you optimize your app for better discoverability in an app store?

To help you boost your app marketing strategy, we have created a checklist for effective App Store Optimization. Let’s go through this infographic and create a better app marketing strategy to improve your app’s discoverability in the app stores.

app-store-optimization-checklist-infographic

 

Is App Store Optimization Enough for Mobile App Marketing

In this competitive world it is important to market your mobile apps in the right manner so that your customers get to know about them and can access them when required. With discoverable mobile apps, brands become more accessible and reliable for customers.

App Store Optimization or ASO is a process of optimizing your mobile app to rank higher or improving the visibility of a mobile app in the app store.  That is just like search engine optimization (SEO) for websites, ASO is for mobile apps. Therefore it’s clear that ASO is a crucial piece of any marketing plan in the mobile app.  But ASO alone cannot boost your mobile app marketing efforts. ASO and an inbound marketing can be a good method of marketing strategy.

App Store Optimization involves both on-page and off-page marketing strategies. An effective ASO –

  • Targets your right audience
  • Research the right search keywords and optimize your app for these keywords
  • Design a suitable app icon
  • Provides quality content that provides details about your app to the readers
  • Encourages audience to submit reviews and ratings

The objective is to increase the visibility of your app for the target keywords and thereby drive more traffic to your app page in the respective app store. According to Forrester, 63% of apps are discovered through app store searches. This makes search, in the app store, the most used method for discovering and downloading new apps.

Recently, at Google I/O, Ankit Jain reported that “For the average app, search actually makes up the vast majority of installs.” Ranking higher in search results and top charts will drive more downloads for a mobile app. The higher your app ranks in an app store’s search results, the more visible it is to potential customers. Mobile apps can help your brand upgrade its business operations and enhance customer focus in the following ways:

  • Stay connected with your customers, audience all the time and retains more of them.
  • Through push notifications and localization tools, brands can better reach out to customers with the help of a mobile app.
  • Provide information about promotional offers, discounts and deals faster than any other means, keeping the customers informed.
  • ASO can boost the brand name at a global scale.

ASO act as a secret weapon that its ultimate objective is to drive more traffic, indexing, downloads, brand value and potential customers to your apps in the app store. An example for ASO is Apple’s Search Ads program. This program made many developers concerned because, it was just another way to award popularity to the highest bidders in the App Store. It works as however, while the ads technically operate on an auction system, there is more at play in landing a popular search ad than just paying a high amount.

It is not that App Store Optimization is the only method of marketing. It is that ASO and other marketing services go hand in hand. For instance, social media platforms can be used to increase your app’s visibility.

App’s quality too matters. “A satisfied customer will be a marketer for you”, this is rightly said, and that importance needs to be given to the user experience. It is just your app’s quality that keeps the users hold to your product.

To implement successful marketing strategies, keep on updating your app with more advanced features frequently. A thorough research of the competitors and prevailing market trends would help in better marketing. To perform all this, you need a perfect, strong and creative team of developers.  If your app is useful then the user will recommend your app to more and more people which could be an excellent marketing strategy apart from ASO and other optimizations.

ASO service providers in India is equipped with appropriate tools to perform research and incorporate the right keywords in the right way. Reliable companies also make sure to highlight the positive reviews and lapse the negative ones at foremost. This is important because the reviews of previous users would affect the credibility of your app to a considerable level.

 

How Blogging Helps Ecommerce Businesses in the Long Run

Is blogging helpful for an ecommerce website? The answer is a resounding ‘Yes’.

Take the case of Marcus Sheridan owner of River Pools and Spas. His blog post on fiberglass pool costing led to sales worth more than $1.7 million for his swimming pool company.

While it is rare for a single blog post to lead to such huge amount in sales, there are numerous small businesses that have seen substantial increase in their conversion over the long term. According to a study by Hubspot, businesses that blog get 55% more visitors and 97% more inbound links.

Here is how blogging can help your ecommerce site in the long run:

  • Blogging improves SEO

Blogging regularly leads to better ranking on search engines such as  Google and Bing. More blog posts mean more indexed pages for Google to crawl. An average company that blogs has 434% more indexed pages compared to one that does not blog. This translates to better ranking on Google.

Search engines also prefer sites that are updated regularly with fresh content. This is why adding new blog posts regularly will boost your rankings.

Blogging will also give you an opportunity to rank for keywords that do not fit into your product pages. For example an ecommerce website selling bicycles cannot target popular keyword ‘best bicycles for mountain trails’ unless they write a blog about it. Blogging will also increase keyword density of important keywords in your site and drive up your rankings.

Lastly blogging allows other bloggers or businesses to link to your informative post and earn you precious back links. Blogs are also sharable and this helps to optimize your site for search engines.

  • Helps in Branding

All successful businesses are great storytellers. Nobody wants to visit a site with just a list of products. Blogging is an effective way to tell your brand story.

Blog lends a personality and voice to your website. Visitors can know more about your business and product philosophy through blogs. Blogs can be used to connect with your visitors and build a relation with them.

An informative blog that addresses reader’s pain points will keep them coming back for more. Educating your readers with what they are passionate about will build a certain brand authority in their mind. They will turn to you for any query in your industry. This helps to establish a loyal online community that values your brand.

  • Increases Conversions

Yes, blogging has a direct impact on your sales conversions too. In fact, businesses that prioritize blogging experience 13 times increase in ROI according to Hubspot. This is because of the continuous stream of traffic that blogs drive to your website. The marketing ‘rule of 7’ says that most of your prospects won’t buy from you unless they have seen your brand at least seven times.

A quality blog will keep your audience coming back and make sure that you are on top of their mind when they think of purchase in your industry.

  • Supports Content Marketing and Inbound Sales

Blogging provides a continuous stream of content to drive your content marketing. Sharing others content can build audience, but how do you make sure your following becomes your traffic to ecommerce site?

Blogs are an integral part of inbound methodology to convert visitors into leads. This can be done by inserting a call to action in your blog itself. This could be a discount coupon, free guidebooks or free shipping in lieu of their email id.

Sharing your own quality content will build your brand authority, drive traffic and also convert it to customers in your ecommerce business.

  • Customer Touch point

Blogs are also a great way to be in touch with your prospects and customers. Encourage your readers to comment on your post to have a dialogue with them. This drives up user engagement and gives your readers a sense on involvement in the business. Blog comments can also be used to choose the next topic for your blog. Many of the successful blogs just answer the most pressing questions that customers in their industry have. Encouraging a two way communication on your blogs will drive user engagement, conversion and feedback.

The importance of a blog for an ecommerce site must be clear after reading this. So have you started on your blogging journey yet?

11 Reasons Why No One is Watching Your Video Content [Infographic]

Video is a powerful medium for promotional activities of businesses. As a marketer, you might have created several videos for the promotional activities of your business. Though such videos are of good quality you may not get enough viewers for it. What will be the reason for this? There may be many reasons for less viewership of your videos. The problem may be with your video content strategy.

We have a created a list of reasons that keep the viewers skip your video. There are also suggestions listed here in the form an infographic to get you more viewers for your marketing videos. We hope this illustration will help you to formulate a better video content strategy next time.

no-one-watching-your-video-content-infographic

Choosing the Best Social Media Marketing Services for Small Businesses

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is an integral part of digital marketing. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram are used by marketers to drive traffic, distribute content and provide a customer experience. According to Social Media Examiner, 92% of marketers have increased their exposure through social media and 80% had positive results in terms traffic.

This blog is for you if you have your own business page and want to improve returns from social media marketing. Social media marketing includes all the activities done online to market your product or service. SMM can lead to more following, increased traffic to your website and customer relationship building.

Whether you are considering hiring a digital marketing agency or buying  SMM software to manage on your own, following is the information you must know to choose the best SMM service for your small business:

  • Have a Documented Strategy

Has your marketing agency developed a written documented Social Media Marketing Strategy? Not having a formalized plan will only lead to ineffective posting on social media platforms. Here is what you can do to document a formal strategy:

1. Know your audience Think of the profile of followers you want to generate on social media. Quality of traffic is as important as quantity. Develop buyer personas and document the needs of your target audience.

2. Develop content to address those needs. Content creation must fit into the broad content plan that you have developed.

3. Make a content calendar to plan when you will share your content. This will ensure consistency in your posting.

4. Also share interesting content by other players in your industry. This could be industry reports, studies and news. Post polls to engage users.

  • Use Social Media Marketing Tools

social-media-marketing-screenshot

There are many tools that allow you to manage all your social media accounts at one place. Platforms like HooteSuite, SproutSocial and Buffer are well known. Using these tools will allow you to schedule posts, track user engagement and monitor your growth on social media.

According to eMarketer, 60% of small business owners say they are not able to track ROI from their social media activities. Tools like Kissmetrics allow you to measure the ROI for each platform  and track traffic and conversions coming from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. It also tracks multiple site visits to give the long lifecycle return from a visitor.

  • SMM must be tailored to your business

The goals of each small business will be different on social media. Define your ultimate goal clearly. Do you want to drive social media traffic to your site or just want to increase brand awareness in the audience?

As a small business you may also have some budget constraints. Here’s the good news. You do not need a huge budget to market on social media. High level of targeting allows you to reach your relevant audience and convert them.

  • Visual Content

According to Buffer, visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared on social media. Many of the social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest are visual platforms. For this reason, any SMM service that you choose must have experience in producing infographics, images and videos for each channel.

  • Paid Marketing

All social media platforms have paid marketing tools that make your posts and ads visible to target audience. In fact, major social media networks are focusing on paid channels to monetize their platforms.

It has become difficult for business pages on Facebook to be visible without running an ad campaign. Instagram has introduced carousel ads and ‘shop now’ buttons to its ads.

social-media-usage-screenshot

As per above graph 92% of marketing professionals are using Facebook to advertise. You can start on Facebook with a small budget. The platform is sure to give you returns by micro targeting your audience based on age, location, interests and much more.

Although social media is only one part of digital marketing, it is by far emerging as the biggest and most influential part of it. According to Hubspot’s marketing statistics, more than half of marketers who’ve been using social media for at least two years report it helped them improve sales.

SMM failed for the others because succeeding at social media requires keeping up to date with the latest algorithm changes and new features. You can take help of a digital marketing expert who will take care of all the above points mentioned.

 

How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy that Works Best for SEO

High quality content is still the king in online marketing.  Most businesses are now focusing on creating more content than ever before. The major thing to note is that the content is used everywhere and influences every other type of marketing strategy; let that be emails, blogs, articles, press releases or even social media comments. A smart content marketing strategy helps to drive more organic traffic to your website.

Pushing out fresh content that keeps your audience engaged is the requirement that helps you score better in SEO. Professional SEO companies use advanced strategies to promote your brand and business.

Let us discuss some points that help you create a content marketing strategy that best describes your business goals.

Know your goals – Before you begin planning, define your goals. Think about how your content marketing should help you meet your objectives such as

Your audience is your asset

Determine your target audience and get to know them. Before you start suggesting topics and creating titles, you need to know exactly what your target audience is looking for.

Knowing your target audience needs will help you to produce more relevant and valuable content. Understand your audience clearly either using Google Analytics traffic report or with surveys. Learning to provide the right content for the right reader makes your job much easier.

There are few more tools that provide insight on your audience’s interests and requirements. Tools include

Answer the Public

The auto-suggest results provided by search engines provide insight for content marketers. When users start typing a word, Answer the Public allows them to link the keyword that relates to their product or service, the people’s queries about the concerned service, and it comes up with a number of search phrases drawn from Google, Bing and other search engines.

Twitter Audience Insights

This latest analytics tool from Twitter will provide marketers with relevant information about what kinds of people are interacting with their brand. The tool offers access to information such as key demographics, interests, lifestyle, purchasing behavior, and mobile footprint, which helps marketers know exactly what kind of people follow their brand and what sort of content attracts them to their website.

Competitor analysis, a great way to reach the right path

Grab a list of competitors, analyze them and understand what makes them different. Realizing your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, and the opportunities and threats helps to find what exactly your customers are searching for in your industry. This analysis also can discover the most useful keywords your clients may be using to search you.

Quality, a priority

High quality, engaging posts with useful details are likely to get more shares on social media platforms. With top quality blogs and articles, even you can get attention from your competitors or even from other industry who take your company as an expert. Also make sure to choose trending topics that are relevant for your business and include a back link to the source, which helps them to know about your article.

Get familiar with content types

Once you establish goals and your target audience, try to provide content that includes informative data that is of use for your audience.

Useful content types include

  • Infographics
  • Video tutorials
  • Case Studies
  • Social media ads
  • Email newsletters
  • Ebooks
  • Templates
  • Podcasts

Don’t just create content, track them too

Set a goal to publish one piece of content daily, weekly or in alternate days. Don’t just leave the content after publishing. Promote them and track the progress of your content. For instance, if you have posted a blog in Facebook, check how many people liked it, respond to the comments, provide answers if any questions were asked and write a follow-up blog with more updated information. This helps to keep your audience in track.

Editorial Calendar helps

Once you have an idea as to how great content can be created, then it’s the right time to go for an editorial calendar. This calendar, which includes social media posts, audit rates and more, helps to keep track of your content. They are extremely helpful to organize our workflow without any error.

Editorial calendar –

  • Provides chance to carefully plan content creation beforehand
  • Helps writers to overcome writer’s block
  • Allows to keep track of every single post in social media
  • Maintain the right track for publishing a well-balanced and diverse content on website

Social media is your friend

Engaging with your audiences in real conversations will bring better results and add more value to your social streams. Know your audience’s priorities as you plan. Focus on what they want to know and not what you want to tell them. Also stay up to date with latest social media changes.

Learn ways to distribute your content

Ways you choose to promote your content is also important. A detailed plan will help. Few suggested ways include

  • Using paid ads on social media platforms like Facebook
  • Preparing a list of sites and bloggers whom you need to contact, which helps in getting a steady traffic and fresh leads
  • Sending Emails and following up them using tools such as Yesware and Mixmax.

Creating a content marketing strategy may be time-consuming, but provide fruitful results for SEO.  If you are not that familiar with SEO or content, consider choosing an experienced SEO firm that can work as an extension to your company.

Why Hire a Content Marketing Agency for Startups and Small Businesses

Needless to mention, any business thrives only when it has a solid customer base. With so many startups and businesses targeting the same consumer segment, it is your prerogative as an entrepreneur to do everything that is within your reach to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

In what way is my product or service meeting the needs of my customer?

In how many ways is my product different from others?

These are the two questions of introspection that should drive you to take certain measures in line with your marketing strategy. All for the sake of generating leads which will ultimately become your brand loyalists, thereby increasing your sales, your marketing strategy should be your prime instrument for change.

It is a thing of the past when customers were influenced to buy certain products that flashed on their TVs or in their morning newspapers. Billboards and hoardings too became promising advertising tools promising a greater reach. But this is not the scene anymore. With technology penetrating into every sphere of human life, the World Wide Web is the pivotal marketplace to checkout and order stuff.

Just signup with your chosen e-commerce website, select a product of your choice, order it online and receive the delivery at your doorstep without any fuss. Doing away the strain of physically knocking on the doors of a showroom, shoppers can shop for their needs from the comfort of their living rooms.

Offering a great deal of freedom and convenience to the shopping fraternity, online shopping has revolutionized the way in which people pick up and use stuff. And what makes this type of business proposition click?

Content – The Magic Wand of Words and Pictures

Primarily focused on customer engagement, it is only through good website content that you can attract the attention of potential customers. It can be a social media update or a compelling blog post. Both these are the techniques that will engage your customers while paving way for a stronger brand positioning.

Genuine content tagged with images and videos is what drives your customers to pause for a second to understand what you are conveying. And if they like it, they will go a step further by sharing it within their contacts.

Commenting about your offering is another way in which online shoppers influence each other. Basically adding value to your service or product, it is only through effective content that you can increase traffic to your website; eventually leading to good sale figures.

The Need to Hire a Content Marketing Agency

Notwithstanding the fact that a professional setup can handhold your business on to the right path, the same belief holds good when it concerns hiring the services of a content marketing agency. Signing up the dotted line with such agencies will deliver you the following advantages.

1. The team of content marketing executives will help you organize, implement and test your content marketing strategy. Along with this, the added advantage comes in the form of tracking the progress of your strategy.

2. The agency can step in to give your current content marketing activities a facelift.

3. When you compare the cost v/s the numerous benefits that an agency has in store for you, allocation of a certain budget will lower your expenditure when you do not have to hire a full-time content strategist or a graphic designer. The team will step in to take care of all your content requirements at a much lower cost.

The Job Description of a Content Marketing Company

Having identified the functional and financial advantages of hiring a content marketing agency, now is the time to discuss about the different ways in which such companies help boost your sale figures.

1. A single-window service that will take care of all your content marketing needs including web content writing, SEO initiatives and all the aspects of your content marketing that will impact your supply chain.

2. The agency helps you gain a comprehensive idea of your business goals looking through the lens of your online presence. Recommending changes to the content alongside fixing content deficiencies will hence be the responsibility of the team.

3. As an outside agency, the team of content marketers will be able to offer you objective suggestions to build your brand. Tagged as a reliable source of marketing information, it is through their years of marketing experience that you will be able to create your market niche.

4. A consolidated report from the professional agency will help you assess whether the current situation is in sync with what was agreed upon earlier as part of the agency contract requirements.

5. Teaming up with a content marketing agency is a purse-friendly decision when you will be spared of incurring employee training costs.

6. Helping you realize your short terms goals, a content marketing agency can be of utmost help when you are hard pressed to deliver an urgent project. While your workforce is getting tuned to the upcoming project, you can be at peace to work around a complete marketing plan offered by the agency. The prompt implementation of your marketing plan does wonders to your bottom line, allowing you to make the most of an unexpected opportunity.

Conclusion

Mindful of the advantages of hiring a content marketing agency for your small entrepreneurial venture, it comes as a wise move to hand over the reins of your content requirements to professionals. Bringing to the fore the cost-benefit analysis, it is evident that the benefits outweigh the costing factor of availing professional content marketing services.

Allowing your business to thrive with unique and high quality content, you will able to differentiate yourself from your competitors by signing up with professionals who can bring in informative and engaging text, videos, webinars, podcasts and infographics. All these enhancements to your website will make you stand apart in your business circles, not only through a better online presence but also in terms of long-standing profitability.

15 Best Social Media Monitoring Tools You Can Use in 2017

Social Media and its evolution into an effective digital marketing medium have changed the face of marketing big time.

At present social media marketing is not just confined to posting and sharing content out there. There are a variety of tools which helps users to retrieve data of their choice from the internet and assist them in creating effective marketing strategies and campaigns.

But what was the reason behind the invention of such tools?

Listening to the audience is crucial for any marketing business. It became impossible at a point of time owing to the vastness of the internet.  As a result, there was a desperate need for an innovation. Thus, social media monitoring tools were born.

Also called social media listening tools, they have great potential if used correctly. They can be the driving force and lucky charm behind your decision making in business.

Modern tools are much more advanced and integrated than it used to be. They can incorporate insight as well as analytics to come up with promising marketing strategies.

People often get confused while choosing a social media monitoring tool as there are plenty of them.

Even though monitoring tools like, HootSuite,  Keyhole, Google Alert, Klout etc. are famous nowadays. There are others which are considered as effective by many.

Let’s go through an infographic to know about the most effective tools in the market.

best-social-media-monitoring-tools-infographic