15 Best Content Curation Tools You Can Use in 2018 [Infographic]

Creating content that is relevant to your audience is crucial for digital marketing success. Content curation can help you to find interesting topics from a variety of sources and share it strategically via different social media channels. It also help you to determine the interests of your target audience. There are many tools available for content curation. Using the right tools will help you to generate content that your target audience like to read.

We have listed some popular content curation tools in the form an infographic to help you create high quality content.

Let’s have a look

best content curation tools to use in 2018 infographic

How to Attract More Shoppers to Your Website

In the competitive world today, a new strategy is being introduced every now and then with the focus on attracting customers to your website. However, the fundamental key to getting people to open your website and reach out to you is the content on your page.

Ways to Get More Customers to Your Website

1. Make your website attractive and captivating

Basically, one should understand the basic fundamentals and principles needed to uplift sales, whether it is online or offline. A major attraction for the customer to buy from your website is the captions you add to your page and how attractive you make it for the customer.

You should regularly add new variety to the stock on your page so that a customer finds something different every time he opens your page. Also, the user should look forward to seeing your page because he has an attraction to find something new.

2. Customer engagement

Remember to take general information such as phone number, address and other details from your customers so that you can update them about the promotions you are offering.

Another way of making your website popular is by hiring a digital media expert to advertise your page. They have the knack of bringing your page up and increasing the visibility of your page.

3. Blogging

Another way of attracting more customers to your website is by creating an amazing blog that can attract people by delivering useful and interesting information about your page and products as well. In your blog, you can mention all about your product and can also highlight the product so that it attracts the customer.

Give a very attractive headline to your blog. Give examples and ask your customers to share their e-mails so that you can get in touch with them. Ask them to subscribe to your page so that they will become your permanent customers and will look into your page each time they turn on their computers.

4. Free Giveaways and Events

Another important way of attracting people is by hosting a party. This party does not necessarily need a dance floor but it needs to have food for free or promotional gifts. Even if you are not doing a party yourself but sponsoring an event, people appreciate the sponsorship and visit your page to also see your products.

5. Innovative Branding

A very innovative and successful method of marketing your website is by branding. This can be done by decorating the exteriors of your vehicle with good graphics and displaying information about your website on both sides of the vehicle. People around will see your website; the more your vehicle moves, the faster will be your publicity.

6. Advertising and Promotions

One way customers can know about your business is through advertising in new online directories. You can also share your ideas and plans through local yellow pages and advertising magazines that are circulated in colonies. These advertisements are totally free and also profitable.

7. Video Marketing

Video marketing is also an effective strategy to attract customers to your website. You can create a series of video posts with solutions to problems in harmony with the kind of services or products you offer. Use YouTube to reach out to more individuals and establish an authority in the industry.

Conclusion

Each of the activities mentioned above takes time and therefore, it is not advisable for you to expect overnight results. Remain constant in your efforts and gradually, you will notice an increase in the number of visitors on your website. Once traffic has been generated, use attractive offers, and product ranges with eye-catching captions and CTAs to generate conversions.

Top 7 Benefits of Blogging on Your Website

Most small business owners are confused whether to include blogging in their content marketing strategy. This is primarily because they do not know how they can regularly create high-quality content and the skills required for the same.

However, the fact is that investing in a content publication strategy can be extremely fruitful, leading to improvement in search visibility, leads, and conversions. Start your content strategy with a company blog and get ready to experience the top 7 benefits of blogging on your website:

  1. Enhances search engine traffic

Blogging is just like fishing – when you have more hooks in the water, chances to catch a fish are higher. Adding content to your website increases the number of pages indexed by search engines. Every new blog on your website gives you the opportunity to rank higher for keywords relevant in your industry. This further helps to enhance web traffic organically.

  1. Adds a voice and personality

Your home page or about page sticks to information about your business and the services you offer. A blog post, on the other hand, allows you touch on issues that are of interest to your prospects. It enables you to voice your opinions. It adds a human approach to your brand giving you a unique personality that clicks better with the target audience. The likeability quotient of the brand also improves.

  1. Assists with social media activities

Maintaining a social media presence requires a continuous generation of content. Most of the time, small business owners resort to sharing other people’s content on their own pages. While this is an effective strategy, it won’t take you far. You need to redirect people to your own website in order to be able to directly pull customers for your products and services. Sharing your own blog posts on your social media pages comes in handy here.

Additionally, blog posts help in creating email newsletters. Simply compile the blogs of last week or list the top 10 and shoot a newsletter to all your readers.

  1. Establish Authority

With a blog, you can position yourself as an expert in the industry. You can share information and insights related to the current trends and build trust among the target audience. A brand that has established authority through its content tends to familiarize with prospects and remains in their top-of-mind recall, thereby generating more queries and leads.

  1. Pulls up conversion rates

A blog with content updated actively shows that  the business is alive, updated and loved. This is why just having a blog is not enough. The blog needs to be updated with high-quality content regularly to establish brand loyalty. Customers see the expertise and innovation the brand brings to the table through their blog and helps to improve conversion rates.

  1. Helps with long-tail keyword rankings

If a website does not have a blog, ranking well for long-tail search queries will be a challenge. Regular industry-specific keywords can be easily taken care of; however, when it comes to targeted keywords with special search queries, content is vital. It is the only tool that helps you rank for the less commonly searched queries.

  1. Facilitates two-way communication

Blogging allows two-way communication. It gives users the opportunity to comment and interact with the brand on industry updates, company updates, and launch announcements. Any feedback from the customers can be recorded through the blog and getting an insight into the customers’ perspective is essential for the marketing team. Your next marketing initiatives can also be planned on the basis of the inputs you have received from your customers.

Conclusion

Blogging on your website is an important way to differentiate your business from that of the competitors. Sharing such content allows you to express your own words, your own thoughts and insights building a trust factor and connect with the target audience. This further impacts the search traffic and ultimately sales positively.

Blogging is more crucial for small business owners as it gives them the opportunity to compete with the big brands without spending much. Blogging is cost effective and you don’t have to set aside a large marketing budget to execute a content strategy.

Why Video Marketing is So Powerful for Businesses

Video content has emerged as the preferred format of consuming content. You don’t need statistics to figure that out. Just think of your own browsing choices. If you wanted to know about the top 10 places to holiday (or any other topic), would you read about it or watch a three minute video?

Here are some staggering statistics that shows the popularity of videos:

> Video traffic was 73% of all consumer internet traffic in 2016. This will rise to 82% by 2021. (Cisco VNI, 2016)

> YouTube has one billion users. That’s two third of all internet users.

> 87% of online marketers use video marketing. (Outbrain)

> 10 million videos are watched in Snapchat everyday

> More than 500 million hours of video is watched on  Youtube everyday

Why Do We Prefer Video?

So what is it that makes us prefer video over text? It’s our lazy brain.

Our brains need more work to construct meaning from text. On the other hand, comprehending visuals is easy for our brains.

The eyes are our most active sense and we have used visual communication for thousands of years.  The combination of visuals and auditory input is what makes video a more natural way of communication for us.

90% of information sent to the brain is visuals and the interesting fact is that visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text. This is the reason videos need fewer steps to extract meaning and are perceived with ease.

What Video Marketing Can Do for Your Business?

Videos can do all that a successful marketing tool should do for your business. It can increase your conversion, builds your brand and sell your product convincingly. Consider the following numbers:

  • Videos on landing page improve conversion rate by 80% (Eyeview Digital)
  • 4 in 5 consumers believe that demo videos are helpful
  • Online shoppers who view video are 1.8 times more likely to make a purchase than non-viewers. (Animoto,2015)
  • Using the word ‘video’ in the e-mail subject line increase the open rate by 19% (Syndacast)
  • Visitors spend 2.6 times more time on a page with video (Wistia)

Videos also help in SEO as more time spent on page and greater shareability of videos boost rankings on search engines. Product videos explain your product in an easy to understand and captivating way.

Check out this video of Ultra Ever Dry that went viral.

In his book Influence, Rober Caildni gives six techniques to influence anyone. Videos use all these techniques effectively which makes them great for marketing.

The six factors of influence are reciprocity, likeability, trust, authority, social proof and scarcity.

Videos can play on all of these techniques. Videos featuring founder or employees naturally build trust and likeability among viewers. A video where someone is speaking to you is much more personal than reading text. This builds relation with the brand and personifies it.

Although a text article can also show your expertise, a video gives more information to build authority. For example, authority is also built by the expressions, tone of voice and clothing.

Testimonial videos are a great way to build social proof. A compilation of your satisfied and happy customers makes visitors more likely to make the purchase.

Finally, the principle of reciprocity is also used when you give lots of information in the form of video which is easier to consume but harder to make. Your customers are more likely to notice the effort and pay you back.

Our natural preference for visuals and human interaction make video marketing the most powerful tool for business. Here are some tips to make sure your videos drive consumer action.

#1 Keep videos short and to the point

According to Animoto, Almost 75% of consumers prefer video under 60 seconds. Consumers are impatient with their attention and penalize brands that waste their time. Ask yourself if there is a shorter way to tell your message.

#2 Prefer Humans over Animation

Videos with people get more engagement than animated or whiteboard videos. We naturally connect more to a smiling human face and a trusting voice. However, animation may be a better option for explaining complex concepts and processes.

#3 Use the right type of video

There are many categories of video. You can make a product video, testimonial video, founder story video or an entertaining content video. Use the right video on the right page.

For example, a testimonial video would be great to convert leads on landing page whereas founder’s story would fit well on the homepage of your website. You must also choose the video based on your industry. A product business will require a product video but a law consultancy will do well to produce videos with legal tips for clients.

#4 Budget Videos

A popular video doesn’t have to be expensive. Many small business owners shoot regular videos from their desk and get good results.

The important part is to understand what your customers would like to see and deliver that in the simplest way possible. Make sure the lighting is sufficient and voice is audible.

7 Ways to Improve Your Social Media Presence

Having a stellar social media presence is on every marketer’s agenda this year and there is a good reason for it. Social media drives more than 31% of all referral traffic and it has emerged as the most important traffic source after SEO. Not only does it get traffic, it gets ‘targeted’ traffic that is easier to move along your sales funnel.

But social media marketing can be frustrating for many small and medium size businesses. Founders and marketers invest time and post regularly only to see no visible results. They either struggle with increasing their followers or getting conversions. This can be disappointing and many give up on social media altogether.

Unfortunately , most people are not aware that there are some tactics without which you cannot succeed at social media. Hard work with no smart work can be tiring. In this blog we will tell you how to do that.

But, first things first. You need to understand that social media growth takes time. Just six hours a week on social media can start showing you results in three to four months. However these six hours must be well planned. Work smartly with the following seven tips to improve your social media presence.

1. Get Social

You must use the social networks in social media to your advantage. Invest time in building relations with peers and industry leaders. There is a lot that can be done in collaboration with influencers and communities on social media.

Neil Patel ran a campaign on social media where models with large following were paid to  promote ‘#whoisneilpatel’. As a result the hastag #whoisneilpatel was used 11,000 times and Google searches for ‘Neil Patel’ went up by 71%.

who-is-neil-patel-screenshot

You do not have to spend hefty amounts on Influencer campaigns. A free gift or a percentage of revenue generated by their followers is also good offer to make.

Participate in communities and groups that are relevant to your industry. Answer queries and comment on blogs posted on groups other than yours. Don’t be salesy and avoid talking about how great your product is. The point is to add value to other users. If they see you as a subject matter expert they will follow you.

2. Include your followers

Social media channels are a two way communication street. Just posting interesting content with no conversations is a disengaging and boring way to exist on social media. Instead, make your followers an active part of your page or profile. Here are some ways to do it

  • Start a trivia game. Pick a topic that is close to your follower’s heart and related to your brand.
  • Ask your followers to post how their life has changed after using your product.
  • Use Facebook Polls to understand their interests.
  • Word your posts to get more comments and responses. For example, a fitness apparel brand can post asking followers of ‘their favorite fitness activity and what they like about it’

3. Promote Everywhere

Let all your customers know that you are on social media. Mention your twitter handle and facebook page on all company merchandise, marketing material, PR and advertising copies, blogs and product packaging.

social-media-icons-screenshot

You can get decent traction even if all your current customers and employees promote your page among their friends. Make sure you are creating interesting content. This way they would be happy to share without feeling spammy. 

4. Use your website

You can optimize your website to drive more traffic to your social media profiles. Make it easy for your visitors to share at the click of a mouse button.

Install Click to tweet plugin that allows you to convert blog text into tweetable text.

Use social media icons on your website pages. However, be sure to insert them only where they are relevant. Putting social share icons on your home page or contact page is useless as nobody is going to share these pages.

Instead, place the icons on pages with content that is funny, informative and valuable. Make sure your icons scroll down the page with your visitors. Use Add this plug-in to add scrollable icons and make your images shareable on Pinterest at a click.

5. Be human

It helps to show your soft side on social media as people want to connect with real humans and not a faceless brand. Feel free to share behind the scene photos or founder’s story.

Not every social site is fit for all types of content. Always keep in the mind the mood of the social media platform you share on.

Instagram is great for lifestyle promotion; feel free to share glamorous photos here. LinkedIn is professional and suitable to share your expert take on your client’s industry. Facebook has a friendly mood and you can show your personal side here.

The rules of great conversation also apply to social media interactions. Make the conversation more about your followers than about your brand.

It’s good to post content that is not directly related to your products but connects with your audience. Use the 80:20 rules. 80% of your posts should be non-promotional and only 20% should be promotional.

6. Have a Plan

You already know the result if you have been posting on social media sites without a formal plan. It gets you nowhere.

You must have a goal and a content strategy that chalks out how you are going to get there. It does not have to be a super complicated document. Just a structured content calendar that lists what you are going to share everyday will be good to go.

You must decide what platforms are best suited for your brand based on where your target market spends their time. Also make sure your goals are specific, measurable, realistic and time-based.

A structured plan will serve two goals. First it will make sure you post regularly. Second, you will get the content ready beforehand since you know what you have to post. This removes haphazard posting.

7. Live Videos

Live videos have made a mark as the most exciting marketing tool this year. Internet celebrities like Gary Vaynerchuk have used it successfully to grow their following on social media.

According to Livestream.com , 82% of brand audience would prefer a live video rather than social post. Individuals and brands are using it to give more immersive feel of their life to their followers. It has become the new reality TV in every person’s hand.

Live videos are not yet fully exploited which is why social media sites are pushing the feature. Facebook and Instagram send users a notification every time any of their contact starts a live video.

Conclusion

Following these seven practices consistently will increase your social media presence. What are some other tactics that have worked for you to increase social media presence? Let us know in the comments below.

How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming the Customer Experience in Ecommerce

Have you noticed the relevant product recommendations by Amazon or the interesting movie suggestions by Netflix ? This is not a coincidence but the work of Artificial Intelligence systems supporting ecommerce sites.

Artificial Intelligence or AI is being put to use by tech giants as well as by smaller players across all industries. AI application is changing everything from gaming experience to security systems.

Ecommerce is also undergoing transformation as AI is enriching customers’ experience while shopping online. In fact, a study by Business Insider estimated that as much as 85% of the customer interactions will be managed without a human by 2020.

This is made possible because of the big data collected on customers from various sources. Combining high processing capability and machine learning by computers allows AI to learn about customers and give a human touch to shopping online. AI can take on the roles of salesperson, inventory manager, marketing and store manager!

 Virtual Assistant

AI is bringing back the experience of a salesperson helping you out in a brick and mortar store. Human like virtual assistant can recommend products based on your past purchases and your customer profile. A detailed database gathered about each user allows assistants to give hyper personalized experience.

Virtual assistants can also suggest on the right clothing based on your location, weather or suggest a suitable phone according to your day–to-day usage. For example, a virtual assistant may help you to choose the right type of boot for your dress.

This is done by searching the web for information on fashion and boots. The assistant visits fashion blogs, looks at Pinterest images and gathers data on similar shoppers to suggest the best pair of boots. Your assistant will continuously learn about you and your interest to come up with relevant product recommendations.

Companies are also working on voice recognizing assistants that can have a conversation with shoppers. Soon it would be possible to tell your personal AI powered assistant what you want rather than searching for the right keyword for your product. Natural language programming enabled AI systems will be intuitive and understand the context of interaction like a human.

Personalized Store

Ecommerce stores have had to choose their layout, branding and product assortment that would appeal to their target until now. This will soon change as machines learn about you to give you a personalized store altogether.

People of different countries may prefer a different layout and feel of the store. Similarly, different age demographics may have different expectation from ecommerce sites. Baby boomers may be more likely to buy a product bought by their friends whereas millennials may prefer to wait until prices drop.

AI allows online stores to change their layout, offers, and branding to fit the customer. This is done by customizing smart banners, smart pages and smart elements that adapt to the customer visiting your site. This is like walking into a store custom built for you.

Fight Counterfeits

Artificial Intelligence will also help to identify counterfeit and duplicate products.  Chicago based start-up 3PM Marketplace Solution is working on an algorithm that identifies counterfeit products. The algorithm uses pointers such as fake reviews, customer reviews and data from other marketplaces to spot a duplicate product.

Removing deceiving third party sellers will build trust and credibility for sites using AI.

Intelligent Marketing

According to Conversica, one third of the leads are never followed up with. AI can reduce missed leads by automating follow up messages and remarketing to visitors who browsed for considerable amount of time.

AI can be used for pre-sales marketing too. This is already done by many sites by remarketing the products that a customer abandoned in shopping cart. AI can target a customer who visited and follow them in all social media channels to show the exact same ad. For example, searching for mobile phones will trigger the AI powered remarketing to show your smartphone advertisements on all social media channels and display ads.

Using machines to learn and improve also allows a lot of marketing work to be automated. Companies are currently automating marketing tasks such as mailing, lead conversion and answering objections of prospects.

 Store Operations

AI is also helping at the back end of ecommerce stores. The usual business intelligence systems fall short in inventory management and assortment management in today’s dynamic marketplace. AI can forecast demand trends based on predictive analysis in these cases.

Many factors such as competitors pricing, velocity of orders, supply and demand, seasonal popularity affect the demand of a product. By using AI to estimate stock required the store can avoid being out of stock or over-stoking on products that won’t sell in future.

 After Sales Service

The role of marketing does not end at sale. After-sales service is important to get repeat business. AI is helping personalize after-sales service by automated feedback forms, timely mailers and renewal/replacement alerts.

Some brands are even connecting to intelligent appliances and send service alerts or fix problems remotely. For example, AI powered service system at Bosch can detect service issues with its dryers and washers and notify customers.

Being in continuous contact with customers ensure share of mind and brand loyalty.

AI enabled ecommerce sites are able to process data that is impossible for a human to comprehend. This gives the opportunity to gather data on the bigger picture for strategic decisions and yet act on a granular level to give a personalized experience to customers. AI is changing how customers browse, shop and experience ecommerce for the better.

How Businesses Benefit from Social Media Marketing

Social media was considered to be a passing fad a few years ago. Today it is a proven platform for businesses to reach target audience and grow revenue. Businesses are taking social media seriously. Facebook reported $9.16 billion in advertising revenue in the second quarter of 2017.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter help businesses reach out to their prospects personally and develop relations. Here are some ways businesses benefit from social media marketing:

  • Builds a Brand and Brand Loyalty

 A brand is built by consistent messaging and presence. According to Global Web Index, people spend more than two hours on social media platforms daily. You are missing out on precious customer attention if you are not active on social media.

time spent on social media screenshot

Source : MarketingProfs

Having a profile on social media allows you to post and interact with your target market. A Study by Convince and Convert has also shown that people who follow a brand on social media are more loyal to that brand.

A profile on these platforms ‘humanizes’ your brand. You can like and comment on your followers’ posts like a friend. This is great because people like to do business with humans and not a company without any human traits.

Social media is a necessary platform to be on and give your audience a seamless experience between the offline and online branding efforts.

  • Reach more people

In traditional marketing, businesses had to spend big money to reach their target customers. Advertisements in print and television assured no guarantee that your target audience would see it despite investing huge amount.

This has changed with social media. Now you can reach the right target audience for free! Followers increase consistently with time as long as you post content regularly. What’s more, users who follow you are interested in your brand and ready to engage with you. This is much better than placing a hoarding that most people don’t even look at.

It is also an excellent platform to reach the global audience. Viral marketing can increase your followers exponentially overnight. Although there is not set recipe for a viral content you must strive to post content that connects with your audience and is something that they identify with.

  • Source of Inbound traffic

 Social media is an important source of traffic in inbound marketing. It is a channel for content distribution and is great to attract new visitors to your site.

Every post, infographic or video you share can lead your followers to your site. This is the reason why more than 58% of marketers who have been using social media for one year or longer see improved search engine rankings (Source: Social Media Examiner, 2015). Most of the social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter allow you to include a link in your post.

Make sure to include a call to action in your post. This way social media will give you a steady flow of traffic to your website. This works great for your inbound sales funnel as more targeted visitors convert to leads and eventually customers.

  • Get Detailed Customer Profile

 Never in the history of marketing have marketers been able to gather so much data about their audience. You can know the locations, interests, like and dislikes of your followers on social media. Social media is a gold mine of data for marketers. You can know your customers and prospects intimately by the conversations they are having and concerns they are voicing.

A simple search on your industry or topic can give you large amounts of data for research.

This detailed data on your followers can help you in market research, business idea validation and customer profiling.

  • Grow a Community

 Social media is a two way communication platform where you can grow a community. Some companies are using it to foster brand loyalty among their current customers. This can be done by encouraging conversations between customers.

You can also share tips on product usage and lifestyle. For example, if you are a company selling bicycle you can share information on fitness and diet to encourage a healthy lifestyle among your customers. This lets the customers know that you care and increases chances of them recommending you to their friends.

Brands are also using Facebook pages for handling customer complaints, feedback and product training. In fact social media has now emerged as the top choice for customer care contact.

Source: Sproutsocial

  • Increase Conversion rate

Yes! Social media has a direct impact on your sales too. Studies have shown that social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing.

This is because you can get highly targeted leads from social media. Only users who are interested in your brand follow you and are more likely to visit your website. Also, a higher number of social media followers tend to improve trust and credibility in your brand which then drives higher conversions.

  • Support HR and R&D

 Social media has benefits beyond sales and marketing too. Human resource can use social media for recruiting, employee engagement and monitoring employee sentiment. According to Jobvite, 59% of recruiters rated candidates found through social media as “highest quality”. LinkedIn has become a major source of data on prospective candidates for HR.

Contacts and conversations on social media can also be helpful for product development and research teams. Social media is also the place for latest news and trends in the industry. Therefore all departments can benefit from having a presence in social media and being in touch with industry influencers.

With so many benefits at no extra cost, a brand must invest in social media platforms. It does take time to build your followers on social media but the opportunity of being in close touch with your market is something we must take advantage of. It is something the previous generations of businesses had no access to.

According to Hubspot, 84% of marketers found that as little as six hours of effort per week were enough to generate increased traffic. Even an hour a day can show results over the long run.

Choosing the Best Content Marketing Agency: Tips for Startups and Small Businesses

Marketing can be a changeable world, as the trends to keep up with,analytics to track, reports to create, consumers to reach, distribution channels to optimize, emails to send, and a ton of other things fighting for your attention.

Startup marketing is a unique challenge often times because of the limited resources, whether it’s time, money or talent. The key role content marketing plays in driving leads and delivering results is something most businesses are aware of.

Content marketing has become an integral part for businesses, whether it is a start-up or small business.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing can be defined as “ A strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

If you are not familiar with content creation or marketing, it is better to outsource the task to any professional content marketing agency.

A reliable agency can help you to focus on your target market. Here are certain tips for businesses to consider when choosing the best content marketing agency.

1. Flexible with Diverse Forms of Content: It is important that the agency of your choice should understand where and how your potential customers spend their time online. From landing pages and white papers to eBooks and news articles, it is important to make sure that content marketing efforts are in such a way to attract your targeted audience.

2. Look for the Quality of Previous Works: By reviewing marketing agency’s previous and current customer references and piece of content, campaigns and work, start-ups or small businesses could evaluate their capability before hiring.

3. Content Marketing Success and Latest Technology: It’s important to know that your agency is using the latest technology. Make sure that you ask questions, research technologies and tools they are using to improve content writing skills and understand how your agency will use the data to optimize performance.

4. Checkout their work and its quality: Make sure to have a clear idea about their current as well as previous work. Read out their content marketing case studies and how they assisted their clients, how skilled their content writers are. If possible, get a phone interview with those clients.

5. Check whether they are trustworthy, transparent, and credible: Trust is the vital part of any business; you should have a clear view about the agency, meaning, you should make sure that the agency is good for its word and they can work in line with your business goals.

Take the time and study your needs and options available. People buy from business they trust and you can build their trust by utilizing high-quality, intended, and properly optimized content that your target market actually wants to read and is likely to share.

You may find many agencies, where each agency is different and every provider carries unique specifications. All you have to follow is to partner with the best content marketing agency, who can assure you quality services with consistency.

Guide to Create Exceptional Content for Your Business

It is totally your choice on how much time and effort you want to put into creating exceptional content and helping your brand prosper. You can choose to go on with bad content but you will definitely not get anywhere with it. It will prove to be a total waste of time, energy and money.

In order to boost your ranking in SEO and increase website traffic, you need quality content on your website. If the content is original, then that could help you get more exposure on search engines. In fact, Google penalizes sites which have copied or duplicated content. So, quality content would not only help to make your website look more attractive but also help to improve the overall ranking of your website.

Below are a few tips to create exceptional content for your business:

1. Create Original and Unique Content

Copying content from other websites could lead to severe consequences from Google and your visitors. When we say originality, we mean original ideas and not re-phrasing the existing content and concept. If you think that you can hire cheap labour to just fill up your website with content or just collect different articles available on the internet and re-post them, then you are making a big mistake.

Always remember, if you pay well, then you get quality and if you don’t have any quality content, then it is better to not write anything. These are two simple principles which you should remember. These would take you a long way.

2. Pay more focus on Headers and Sub-headers

Your content should have proper headings and sub-headings. If the headlines are interesting, then the reader automatically gains interest in the article. As per commonly known statistics, about 80% of the people tend to read only the headlines and only 20% of the readers actually spend the time to read the other content under the headers.

Have as many headings as possible in your article. You should try to highlight the headings to make them prominent to your readers. Take the time to create good, relevant to the topic and interesting headlines. A good way for deciding headings would be by thinking of a few and then shortlisting the one you like the most. Don’t ignore the headings. Depending on the headings, people decide if they are going to read your blog or not.

3. Give your Readers Actionable Content

You should give proper guidance on how to use or apply the information given in the content. Don’t feel that you are degrading the users by telling them what to do. You must give assurance to the readers that they are very well aware of how to use the knowledge they have picked up from the content.

In your content, you must give tips to your readers about what information you are offering to them. You have to write in a way that you cover all the possible questions the readers have in mind – why, what, how, where etc.

4. Your Content should be able to Give all the Answers

When people use a search engine like Google, they are looking for some answers. They search for a particular query and search engine delivers the answer to their query. Similarly, when a reader is reading your blog or article, then he is expecting some answer so that he can gain some knowledge about the topic.

You should make your content easy to read and scan because readers are looking for answers, that too fast. So, it is important to make sure that they get all the answers too quickly. Include as many titles and sub-titles in your content which makes it easy for the reader to read and understand.

5. The Source of Information and the Statistics should be Accurate

Thousands of people are going to read your content and it is extremely bad for the reputation of your business in case the information stated in it is not relevant.

The content on your website is the reflection of your business. You must get statistics verified before you mention them on your website. Accuracy is important to gain the readers’ trust. Below are certain tips which you can follow when tackling the accuracy issues:

> Be sure of the source from where you are picking up the statistic details. If you are intending to provide a link to another website in yours for statistics, then you must make sure that it is a genuine and authentic website. If it is a quality website, then it would help gain the trust of the readers.

> If you are linking content within your website to substantiate what you are writing, then that can be extremely helpful in gaining the readers’ trust. People start feeling that the content is authentic as it can be validated.

> If you link your content to other sources then that would help the search engines in knowing about your content and it will help them categorize it.

6. Create Content that keeps the Readers Engaged and Curious to Read more

If a reader finds your content engaging and interesting then he spends more time on your website. The only trick to achieve this is by writing your content well. Here are a few tips to achieve this:

  • Include many questions in the article which keep the readers thinking about what the answer could be. You need to build the readers’ curiosity to continue reading to get the answers. Remember not to leave any question unanswered in your article. This could make the reader feel irritated.
  • Most of the readers read the first few lines of the article properly and continue reading the article only if they like the introduction. You should have an interesting and involving start to your article or blog. You should discuss the key features of your article and give the readers a motivation to keep reading.
  • Visitors like reading about different experiences and stories that people have actually experienced in life. Stories keep people involved, engaged and give them a huge amount of information.

7. Adding Images and Videos is Always Liked

As we all know that people understand better by seeing, images and videos are always a good idea to make people learn about what you are talking in the article. Diagrams and graphs are also a great way to illustrate your point..

8. Content should be Crisp and Precise

You should always remember to make your content brief and to the point. Make sure you don’t repeat the same point in your article in different ways. Readers don’t like repetition. No need to worry about the word count, instead focus on making it precise. Avoid going off the topic, as that might make readers lose their interest in your article.

9. Keep Updating Your Article Frequently

Once you build a website, you should always remember that you have to stay committed to it forever. Search engines prefer those sites more who are regularly updating their content. Most of the top websites update their content very often. There are several statistics too which prove that websites whose content is updated frequently tend to attract visitors.

Don’t treat the content of your website lightly. It is difficult and extremely time-consuming to write good content. You must make sure that the language you use is simple and the article shouldn’t have grammatical and spelling errors.

After you have written an article, you should proofread it at least two times before publishing it on the website. Keep the content entertaining and original for the readers.

Is There any Such Thing as SEO for Mobile Apps

The increasing popularity of mobile apps has reshaped the world of iOS App Store and Google Play Store. The number of app downloads and the rating given by users drive the popular apps listed on these platforms to rank higher. This means that improving the visibility of your mobile app is becoming more  challenging today. However, better visibility would increase popularity and  number of downloads for the app.

App store optimization is the first thing that comes in one’s mind when we talk about SEO for mobile apps. But are you aware of the fact that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can actually be used for boosting your mobile apps download?  Just like SEO techniques help to improve your site’s rank on Google Search, there are also some tips and tricks that help to improve the ranking and visibility of your mobile app in the app store.

SEO tips to get Better Ranking for your Mobile App

If your app has a good Google visibility, then automatically app downloads increase. With increased number of app downloads, the app popularity increases and thereby, it achieves higher ranks on the app store. Hence, it is now a proven fact that higher the visibility on Google, higher would be your app store visibility. Below are a few tips of how you can ensure this in an organic manner:

Tip#1 – Your app name should be the brand name

The brand name should definitely come in the download page URL. You can use the brand name as the link on the page from where it can be downloaded.

Tip#2 – Provide link to download app on the home page or prominent page of your website

You should provide a link to download the app on the most prominent page of the website. These are small tips which majorly all website designers miss. You can build a page which has screenshots, tips, main features, reviews, ratings of the app highlighted. This can definitely leave an impact on the users and motivate them to download the apps.

Tip#3 –Use the brand name on the clickable link text which is used to download the app

You should not lose the opportunity of highlighting the name of your brand here. Many companies make this mistake. You should not have link text like – ‘Download iPhone app’ used for downloading the app. You should rather have link names with the brand name like ‘Download the Amazon iPhone app’. This way you can market your brand and also make it clear to the users what they are about to download.

Tip#4 – Provide QR link for app download

QR codes help to give desktop users an easy way to access the apps. Once you scan the right device with the QR code, the app download should occur. You should not forget to compress the URL length before generating the QR. If the URL length exceeds 50 characters, then the QR code that is generated is heavy and many a times scanning them becomes difficult. The best way is to use a compressed URL to generate the QR code. This concept is surely going to become very popular in the next one year. So, you should probably start experimenting on it from now.

Tip#5 –Promote your app to the browsers checking your website

The whole world is sitting for you to make the correct and suitable app search simpler for them. They want to be able to easily find the relevant apps or mobile pages. Every time any browser hits your website, you should prompt them to download the app for their device for ease.

There are several apps available today which are really good but most of them are either not very popular or not on any top lists. This is the main cause for all the owners of good apps to realize the urgency and need to optimize app pages for better ranking.

The brands with large amount of traffic, good content, and social popularity should use these digital opportunities to increase app popularity and increase ranking. App store and Play Store are new assets for mobile researchers.

So, get set go and start investing time in SEO for mobile apps, if you wish to improve your ranking and get more app downloads.