6 Tips to Create Kickass Infographics

 

Do you have to convince your audience about topics which are complicated and confusing; which are important but boring? Every digital marketing agency is faced with this problem. Infographics is the best solution for effectively expressing complicated information.

It lets you pack information in less space intelligently. Often, a digital marketing agency will have to create efficient information presentations focusing on a lot of facts and figures. Over the years, comparing things like prices or representing a long list of serial data has seldom been practical that you had to put them into written content. With infographics, you can distribute data in a visually appealing way.

Read Also: Role of Visual Content in Digital World

Let us look at some tips that will help you create kickass infographics.

1. Catchy Headline

Your infographics headline is extremely important. It is the backbone of your presentation. Since the amount of content in an infographics is ideally kept to the possible minimum, the attention

Your infographics headline is extremely important. It is the backbone of your presentation. Since the amount of content in an infographics is ideally kept to the possible minimum, the attention

2. Include Visual Representations for Your Data

Infographics as the name suggests, lets you represent information visually. The info that is represented should be clear-cut and accurate because discrepancies are bound to get noticed faster when you represent data visually. There should be a balance maintained between the written content and graphical data that goes into your infographics.

Though visual elements are important, do not overload it with too much designs or flashy colors. Limit the number of different colors used to three. Use appropriate images, charts and diagrams. Whenyou want to represent lengthy data, use line graphs and when you want to represent proportional data, use pie charts. Use compact and standardized designs for more serious topics.

3. Keep it Simple and Focused

The main reason infographics is widely adopted is due the simplicity with which data could be represented compared to the written content. Overloaded data and design complexity can create confusion and it will get misinterpreted by the viewers. To get a simple design, you should concentrate on things such as limiting the number of colors and font sizes used, readability of font types selected etc. Also use simple understandable language and appropriate charts.

Another important thing that you need to focus on is the ‘focus’ itself i.e., the idea represented in the infographics should be focused. Do not drift away from the subject under discussion. Cut elaborations and unwanted references. When you have a lot of data to put into your infographics, divide them into sub-headings and put them in separate infographics that focus on each individual idea.

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4. Create a Natural Flow

When presenting the information in an infographics, it is best advised to be arranged in a sequential format. Do not dump the ideas together or throw them randomly without any connection between them. Ideas should be integrated and should flow from one to another in an ordered fashion.

5. White Spaces are Important

Spacing the content is important for readability and cognition of the data. The right arrangement should have the perfect balance between used space and unused space in the infographics. Overly packed graphics could repel the viewer from reading through the content, and too much negative spacing will generate the opinion in the reader’s mind that the infographics is not worth reading.

6. Check your Facts and Figures

It is important that you always double check the facts and figures. An infographics reader could pinpoint contradictions and errors more accurately since there is more readability of the facts and figures. Once viewers find a single inaccuracy, they will resort to thinking that the whole information presented can probably be wrong. Keeping a close check on these tips is crucial for the success of infographics created by your digital marketing agency.

Email Marketing: Still Far from Over

 

The status of email marketing is a popular topic for debate in every Digital Marketing Agency. Is it dead or alive as of now? Well, email marketing is something that will never ever leave its place in the world of digital marketing. Its importance and presence can never be ignored. Email marketing is not dead, definitely not, and neither will it die anytime in the near future.

A simple statistic will prove the importance of emails in our everyday lives: Over 200 million emails are sent out in a single minute every day. So, you see how heavily email is used as a communication platform for brands, marketers, and even consumers.

There are even more numbers to prove this fact. Over 72% of the adults in USA have stated that they prefer the companies to communicate with them through email rather than any other platform. 91% said they would love to receive promotional emails from the companies that they do business with. As far as the companies are concerned, 72% of them have said that they use email marketing as an integral part of their business and marketing efforts. 25% of the companies consider email as the top most priority and channel for an advantageous return on investment.

Read Also: 14 Smart Tips to Get Your Email Subscriber’s Attention

If you are still not convinced and doubtful about the existence of email marketing, here you have three major reasons why email marketing is not going anywhere. Go through them and decide for yourself.

  1. The advantages of social marketing

Social media has a lot of fancy and exciting options to it. This is why there are several rumours that it is slowly killing email marketing which is more of old school. Well, even though social marketing may seem to be more effective in certain case, this one marketing medium is not able to do anything alone by its own. This is one point you need to keep in mind. Vanity metrics and other hollow impressions usually give the marketers a sense of false satisfaction about social marketing. There are simply distracting you.

There are a number of marketers who try their best to gather attention through slightly spammy tactics on social media like filling out Twitter feeds with automated tweets all round the clock, blasting their pages on Facebook with completely irrelevant posts and updates, sending direct messages that are nothing but automated, and also using a huge number of cat memes and circulating them. They do not understand how annoying these techniques can be. Spamming only reduces your followers. They tempt the users to click the unfollow button, and you do more harm than good.

Email marketing, on the other hand, provides useful and relevant content to the audience. This audience consists of people who have willingly subscribed to receive newsletters and other informative emails and would love to learn more. As per data collected in 2012, nearly 90 percent of the internet users have an email account while a smaller number of just 70 percent have an account on any of the social media networking websites. This proves that email is still reigning as the top most form of communication. If you want to reach a majority of the audience and increase your reach, then email is definitely what you need as it is the most effective method in this case.

  1. It is evolving at a higher rate

With emails, brands could get the power to drive customer engagement by monitoring, testing, measuring, and tweaking the emails sent out as newsletters or targeted offerings. The whole game of email marketing has now changed and evolved to a greater extent. Slowly, it is ceasing to be a medium purely for communication purposes to a complete platform that could help the different brands deliver their experiences across various channels.

Here are some of the key email trends that have been explored by Liga Bizune in a recent article that illustrate how emails are slowly evolving to become more than just a channel for communication:

  • Wearable technologies are evolving. This will slowly change the way brands communicate with the email subscribers.
  • A new technique of email marketing will surface, which will be hyper-targeted and also location based. The credits for this goes to the integration of proximity and geo-location applications into emails.
  • Behavioural email marketing will start to get driven by predictive analysis.
  • As emails are transitioning to mobiles, it has become more necessary than ever to develop better and more creative content. This is the only way to capture the attention of the audience and keep them hooked on.
  • Videos have started to evolve and find their own place in the world of marketing. They will start playing an even bigger role in email marketing. A bigger emphasis needs to be put into this aspect.

You May Also Like: 10 E-mail Marketing Hacks That Every Marketer Should Know

  1. Correct execution makes it most effective

Emails need to be used properly and effectively to make it more than just a passé. The biggest challenge you face in case of newsletters is that only a small part of the subscribers actually care to open and read the email newsletters you send out to them. This does not, in any way, imply that email is dead or dying. It just points to the fact that your newsletters are not able to make the mark among the audience. They either fail to create the interest in them or your calls to action are not effective enough. Ask yourself a few questions to get your answers:

  • How is the tone of your content? Is it purely promotional and impersonal, or is it helpful and friendly?
  • Are you making an effective and meaningful one on one engagement through your content?
  • Are you striking up a conversation with the reader, or are you just talking at them to get your job done?

These questions will help you understand where you are going wrong. Understand the effectiveness of email marketing to be able to use it in the best way possible.

One thing you need to remember is that email marketing is not going anywhere. Each and every Digital Marketing Agency makes sure to emphasise this point. If you even believe that emails are dying and there is no point in marketing via emails, you will surely start missing out on the wide range of opportunities that this platform has got to offer you. Do not make this mistake, and keep your place in the digital world.

Best Practices of Website Localization

The article explains certain best practices to make your website localization a success.

Expanding any business abroad is a major undertaking and often it happens that most businesses take a long time to touch a matured state in their approach to website localization. Often localization of a website is confused with translation. Website localization goes beyond translation and is a more specialized process of adapting web content and applications for regional (local) consumption. The process modifies the source language and other site elements, making it appeal to the customer’s preferences in their own local language. It is crucial for businesses to understand that website translation refers to the process of shifting an original language version of web content such as text, multimedia, e-books, or apps into a different language by simply substituting words from one language to another—in context. Experienced digital marketing agencies can help businesses with content localization.

Adapting localization strategies to the online content and deliverables for regional specificity help global brands to ensure a quality customer experience. Website localization is all about refining your message and curating your brand to meet the cultural, functional, and language expectations of your global markets.

Read Also: Website Localization – The Future of Digital Marketing?

Here are a few tips for optimized website localization –

Consider Web Analytics –Along with selecting the right language set, make sure to align with your leadership, sales team, and to mine language insights of your global audience from web analytics data. Make sure to look at the geographic locations from where your visitors most frequently access your website, and also their browser language setting. These two data points can provide significant insights about the languages that your visitors use day-to-day.

Consider Basics –Pay attention to even basic details. Some of them such as punctuation formats, time and date, can have significant impact on how the user perceives. Make sure that your content matches the accepted standards of your target market. For instance, consider whether your target market uses names of months in alphabets or do they prefer numerals? Do they prefer 12-hour standard time format or 24-hour format? Displaying dates and times in the preferred local formats is also recommended as it avoids confusion and allows for an improved user experience.

Offer Diverse Currency & Payment Options –For online E-commerce website, it is really crucial to display prices in the local currency. When users arrive at your site, the last thing they will want to do is convert the prices into values that leads to further decisions. Users in different countries also have different payment preferences such as iDeal in the Netherlands, Alipay and Tenpay in China, while few prefer cash pay delivery.

Create a Style Guide –Creating a style guide will help throughout the localization of your website. Different languages require different fonts and styles.This framework will help the readers understand the written and visual presentation of a company’s content.

Use Advanced Coding and Software –Use Unicode to standardize your website structure. This universal character encoding standard is an ideal way to mix various scripts and languages in a document and exchange documents between people with different locales. . Also consider implementing a multilingual user interface, which helps to change to other languages.

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Use Global Design Templates –The need for global consistency will only strengthen, with more and more companies adding languages and local websites. It allows management of a lot of country sites by very few people. It also allows all content managers to use common tools and processes. The global template is easier to manage.For the end user, these templates provide a reliable interface that will help in usability and credibility.

Choose a Reliable Digital Marketing AgencyMake sure to benefit from the services a translator who knows the cultural differences between both the countries, that is your country and the one you’re marketing to. Reputable online marketing agencies provide services from expert translators who stay in or have lived in that country. Such native speakers can pin point the ideas that will work in your advertising campaign. They can assist you with the viewpoint of the local people.

With appropriate planning, an intensive localization strategy along with a skilled LSP partner can help you successfully execute your strategy.

How to do SEO in 2016? [Guide]

 

As usual, more and more SEO changes will hit us in 2016. People still search online for what they want and now more increasingly search is done from mobile phones. Google’s algorithm undergoes dozens of significant changes each year. 2016 will not be different. Let us check the SEO trends that are set to rule search marketing next year. Professional assistance from a digital marketing agency in your area can help you with these changes.

Certain Predictions

• Mobile searches will surpass desktop in 2016 – As already seen the trend is shifting now. Mobile traffic is becoming more and more crucial for ROI.
• Video Content will overtake – Video content could also provide greater ROI than written content in terms of reach, engagement, effectiveness, for brands and industries in the B2C category.
• Greater indexing of social media content – Social media content will get indexed more, as you can already see when you do mobile search for some news item on Google and tweets appear in the search results. Social posts will carry a value and a consideration similar to any independent web page, and the separation of “web” and “social media” will begin to blur even further from an SEO perspective.

Read Also: How to Choose the Right SEO Expert for Your Company

• Aggregated content changes the content marketing game – Twitter Moments is bringing aggregated social media and news content into the picture, which narrows the content marketing field but provides new opportunities as well. News articles must be automatically sourced by Twitter to be visible. Users, whom you target, themselves become content creators and become firsthand witnesses of current events.
• Local search will be given greater specificity – Local search is set to get even more specific, thanks to Google’s local indexes getting even more localized and the arrival of wearable technology such as the Apple Watch. It won’t be long before rankings could be generated in terms of neighborhood rather than city or state.

SEO tactics you need to focus on to continue performing strongly on search engines.

• Keyword Research – Keywords and phrases are still crucial as prospects are using them to find out business, service and products. Keyword research tools such as SEMrush, Keyword Planner from Google, Keyword Analysis Tool for searching the most effective keyword trends in 2016. Also analyzing your own website to check that which keywords are generating more traffic and which are getting more popular. You can use this analysis to find the new related keywords or you can use the same keywords to generate the new content. Reputable digital marketing agencies provide service from experienced SEO analysts who can choose and optimize appropriate keywords based on client’s service.
• On-Page SEO –There has hardly been any changes in the on-page SEO elements over the past couple of years. But, the major goal should be to produce content that is unique and of high-quality. This way, it can meet the needs and expectations of your audience. And like before, it is still crucial to have your keywords in your URL, Title tag, heading tags, Alt image tags and content (3 or 4 times minimum).

Recommended Read: Role of SEO in Brand Awareness

• Mobile SEO – Web designers have already determined that a website needs to load in less than 3 seconds in order to hold the attention of its visitors. For faster accessibility, it is crucial to optimize all the websites for mobile. Mobile search will take reign over desktop in 2016. Google, the search engine giant has put out its own guidebook for brands ready to create a usable and attractive mobile site.
• Link Building – Manual link building cannot be replaced with other marketing strategies. Links have always been an important ranking signal. Quality links can be achieved by asking for backlinks from trust worthy sources, building relationships. Creating testimonials provide a great opportunity to get a backlink and potential traffic from the other site and it usually has a much higher approval rate than your standard link request e-mails. Google Webmaster Tools will help to find out if your link profile could be negatively impacted by low-quality or bad links.
• Content Marketing – Unique, quality content is still crucial. An Online marketing agency with professional content writers can help. Focus on your top keywords while creating content. Blog posts, videos, whitepapers, research report and webinars give people something to link to. In addition, the content you create can rank by itself in the search engines. For example, if you write a blog post on “How to Pick an SEO Company,” there is a possibility it will rank for some of the keywords you use in the title and in the body post, especially if the post gets linked to from other websites or shared a lot on social media. It also helps if your website as a whole already has significant high-quality links.

Adapting changing market trends can be time-consuming for busy professionals. It will be ideal to choose a digital market agency with relevant experience in performing SEO for various industries.

Google Penguin Update Happening Only Next Year

 

Google informed that because of the holidays, the Google Penguin update won’t be released until next year.

A Google spokesperson told, “With the holidays upon us, it looks like the penguins won’t march until next year.”

As soon as Google discovers the links of the site, the Penguin algorithm will analyze those links in real time. And then ranking would be given in almost real time.

Read Also: Google Introduces Fast Loading AMP for Advertising

The update of Google penguin will be done continuously. Hence SEOs and webmasters do not have to wait so longer for the Google to update it.

Penguin 3.0 was the last official update of penguin which was in October 17, 2014

Source(s)

Google’s New Car Loan Calculator Makes Car Payment Easier

 

Google is currently testing a new loan interactive calculator for making car payments easier.

The test was spotted by both Dr. Pete Meyers and Kyle Sanders.

The car loan calculator is similar to the Google’s mortgage calculator  which was launched on February 2015.

The functioning of the calculator is quite easy. One can enter the loan amount, its interest rate and the period of loan. Google gives details regarding monthly payments.

Read Also: Google Introduces Fast Loading AMP for Advertising

One can access the details of maximum amount provided for loan with this feature.

The feature is very much useful to people as they are often confused with the car loan and its payment.

Source(s)

Save Images For Later With the New Google Search!

Google has rolled out a new feature to its revamped image search. Users can now save the images to save them to your collection or to see later.

This Google image search feature works across desktop and mobile and is now available to US searchers also.
Images can be saved to a folder by starring it. To create a folder, just tap the pencil icon and give it a name.
Saved images can be organized to form a collection.

Read Also: Google Introduces Fast Loading AMP for Advertising

In order to review the saved images later, simply click the star icon in the bottom right and pull up the saved files.

iOS and Android users in the US can currently use the feature.
One needs to log into Google account to avail this feature.

Source(s)

Google Introduces Fast Loading AMP for Advertising

 

Google plans to introduce fast loading AMP into mobile search from early next year.

Google’s Vice President David Besbris announced “Google will begin sending traffic to your AMP pages in Google Search early next year, and we plan to share more concrete specifics on timing very soon”.

Google said that several new advertising platforms have joined the AMP project, including its own DoubleClick and AdSense:

Read Also: 348085 “Right to be forgotten” Requests Received by Google

“Today we’re announcing that Outbrain, AOL, OpenX, DoubleClick, and AdSense are working within the framework to improve the advertising experience for users, publishers and advertisers on the mobile web. More to come as we continue to ramp this aspect of the effort.”

AMP would open a new chapter for advertising of Google in 2016 with its fast loading feature.

Source(s)

348085 “Right to be forgotten” Requests Received by Google

 

Google has received 3, 48,085 requests for “Right to be forgotten”.

This “Right” allows a user to ask the search engine to remove results that are inaccurate or no longer relevant about them.

There was a ruling from European Court of Justice in May 2014 recognizing the “right to be forgotten”, which opened the door for Google users.

A report released by Google showed that most requests were sent from France.Google set up an online form for users to fill and ask for information to be excluded from search results especially for people in Europe.

Read Also: Yahoo Directory is Now Officially Gone, Forever!

Google said that right-to-be-forgotten requests have targeted slightly more than 1.23 million Internet pages. And Google agreed to remove 42 per cent of them from online search results in Europe.

The report indicated that Google granted about 38 percent of the 43,101 requests submitted in the United Kingdom. 37 percent of the 33,106 requests are from Spain. 30 percent of the 26,186 requests made from Italy.

Source

14 Smart Tips to Get Your Email Subscriber’s Attention

 

Email marketing is always an effective strategy to reach out to people. It is also one of the least expensive ways to ensure that you get your word spread out among prospective clients. Every Digital Marketing Agency you approach will surely bring out this one aspect out to you.

Even though email marketing works great, people keep getting promotional emails all through the day. Very few people bother to actually open emails and read their content. It is very likely that your email could get lost in this clutter and remain ignored. As such, it is a marketer’s job to ensure that your email is actually opened and read. You need to increase your chances of being noticed among the crowd. This does take some effort, but is worth it for sure.

Here are a few tips to help you get your emails opened and read:

  1. Make A Targeted List Of Recipients

Make a list of targeted receivers. This is very important if your expertise covers various areas. You need to create content that is specific for a group of people with similar interests. This way, your email would match their interests and increase your chances of getting noted. Your content will be able to speak directly to the audience’s interests and will make the mark. Also, it is necessary to have a list that is clean, and consists of only people who have opted to receive your emails.

  1. Set Up Specific Expectations

Each time a subscriber signs in to receive your e-newsletters or such emails, or subscribes to you, do send them an auto-response email to let them know what to expect from you. Give them a detailed idea about the kind of emails and also the frequency of emails you will be sending out. This lets your subscribers know what to expect from you in due course.

  1. Show That You Are Real

This point should reflect in your content first of all. The content in your email should be real and accurate. No fake promises or messages should be promoted. This is also applicable to your email address. Use a real name instead of generics like info@abc.com and such ids for the address that you use as a “reply to”.

  1. Keep A Catchy Subject Line

Your subject line needs to be a well researched one. Spend enough time to sit and think about what you would put as a subject for your email. This must be something that actually provokes your recipient to open your email and check its contents. It needs to be really enticing.

Read Also: 10 E-mail Marketing Hacks That Every Marketer Should Know

  1. A Good Pre-header

A number of e-newsletters and emails have pre-headers that instruct the reader to open the email in a web browser in case the viewer is not able to see it properly in the mail. This is actually not a good way to proceed. You need to use this option to give the user a really compelling reason to go on and read the email completely.

  1. Call to Action

A Call to Action or CTA is necessary in every email. This lets the user get to know what you actually expect them to do. A common mistake is to let this portion go towards the end of the email. Instead, place this somewhere near the top of the email. This will help the readers notice it soon \enough rather than giving them pains to scroll through the entire email to get it.

  1. Give them Control

You need to allow the subscribers to opt out easily if they want to. There is no point in marketing to people who have no intention to do business with you. It is better to let them opt out and not disturb them with your emails again.

  1. Personal Message

Make your email personal by greeting your readers using their name. You could also use their first names in the subject line. According to market studies, it has been found that the by using personalized emails you could increase the chances of getting your email opened by around 14%.

  1. Share

It is a good idea to add some sharing features to your emails. You could make use of social sharing options to allow your readers to share the email to their family and friends. This could highly increase your chances of being opened and help you get a much wider audience. According to researches, it has been found that emails that have social sharing buttons have a 115% higher click through rate as compared to other emails that do not implement the feature.

  1. Mobile Optimization

Mobile optimization is an essential part of every digital marketing strategy these days. With increased use of smartphones and tablets, this is one aspect that you can never overlook. Around 40% of all emails are now opened using these devices. This number just keeps growing all the time. As such, you need to have your email optimised for mobile devices so that your viewers are able to view it properly on any device. You can also use email services to do this for you. Such services also give you detailed statistics about how many of your emails are opened on mobile devices.

  1. Analyze and Monitor

You need to analyze and monitor the behaviour of your email recipients. This will help you understand what content they prefer, when they prefer, and other such minute details. This will help you build better strategies and succeed in your ventures based on these statistics.

  1. Update your Subscriber list Periodically

You need to keep this one point in mind. “Keep only those subscribers who open your emails”. This is an overlooked point that usually no one cares about. One sure thing is that every person is not going to open your email. The smaller the list, the higher will be the open rate you can achieve. Just keep those people in your list who are interested in receiving your emails and reading them. There is no point in keeping others there. You need detailed statistics to know how many of your emails are being opened and by whom. Once you have this ready, you can direct your emails to specific targets.

Based on the emails opened over the course of a few months, you need to edit your lists and update them. If there are subscribers who have had no interaction with you over a few months, there is no logic in emailing them all the time.

Before you cut them down, you could send them a small notification as to you are deleting their subscription or so. Another thing you could do is ask them if they are interested in receiving your emails. If you get a response, keep them in. If there is no response, you could surely delete them from the list. This is a subtle way of letting them know.

Recommended Read: Effective Social Media Marketing Tricks for 2015

  1. Encourage Email Classification

You need to ensure that your recipients receive your emails bypassing any of the possible filters. This is a way to make sure that they open all your emails. You could send them detailed instructions to prevent the emails from going in to the spam folder or promotions tab. They need to follow the instructions to prevent it with the email provider. You could ask them to add you to their contacts, or even better, to their favourites.

  1. Reward them for reading

Give your readers some kind of rewards for reading your emails. You could share a useful tip to make them benefit or try something simple like that. This inspires them and makes them feel better.

These simple and easy techniques will surely help you go a long way in getting your emails noted and opened by your recipients. Every Digital Marketing Agency is sure to suggest you the above. Email marketing is one with great scope. If you use it smartly, you can get lots of benefits out of it.