Snapchat Reimagines Content Discovery with “Story Explorer”

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Snapchat has launched its latest feature, called Story Explorer. Story Explorer is a setting that will let users for more perspectives of the same moment within a Live Story.

Story Explorer lets users get deeper into Stories   and helps to view related images that were taken at the same location.

“Story Explorer relies on technology developed by our research team to provide more depth to every Snap in a Story,” Snapchat wrote in the announcement on its blog.

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

Story Explorer is just one of the features introduced by Snapchat recently.

Story Explorer is currently available for only Los Angeles and New York City.  Snapchat‘s new UGC-discovery feature is expected to reach in other cities in the near future.

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Yahoo Directory is Now Officially Gone, Forever!

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The Yahoo Directory, core part of Yahoo, is now officially closed.

The core service that launched Yahoo as an internet company, the Yahoo Directory has finally closed 20 years after it began.

This Directory used to offer free, standard listings and a paid submission process before moving to a model of $299 for a non-refundable “review fee”. Each year it would cost the same amount for the sites.

For some of them there has always been Google and it is the main way people have found things on the web. It was the Yahoo Directory that came first and its hand-compiled list of websites which is organized into topics.

The closure of the most notable directory indicated major shift in the history of modern web.

Recap: Social Media Sites and Applications to Be Exempted From the Encryption’s Domain Policy

‘Yahoo gave AltaVista’, was another effort by Yahoo which also met the same tragic end.

The Yahoo Directory now redirects to Aabaco.

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How to Choose the Right SEO Expert for Your Company

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Getting top rankings on Google search engine results pages (SERPs) were quite easy in the past. But now, the terms and policies are changing. You have to be aware of a number of criteria to show up in results. The Google Page Rank system determines the most applicable websites for every keyword. An SEO expert or a professional digital marketing agency can help your page show up higher in SERPs.

An online marketing agency will guide you on the right path. The trick here is to find the one that is worth investing in. You can find hundreds of SEO agencies who claim to be experts. But only the best can help you achieve the results you expect. Trusting someone with your whole website and online image is a risky task. As such, it must be done with utmost care.

Read Also: Ways Digital Marketing Will Change In 2016

Choose the Right SEO Expert

Here are a few points you need to keep in mind while choosing an SEO expert for your firm:

  • Search Intelligently

On checking out Google, you will find a large number of SEO companies. The top ranked companies may be the best, but they even charge too high. Here, the question you need to ask yourself is”Will it be worth it?” A small business will not require a huge and mighty firm for business.

The best way to search will be to ask your vendors and peers. People in the same field will be able to give you honest and reliable suggestions. Stay away from spammers and hire only trustworthy employers for your job.

Finding an SEO firm in your own locality is a good idea as it helps develop interpersonal relations as well. Find out the history of the company and their market record also before you commit to a deal.

  • Budget

You need to have a basic idea about how much is your budget and how much you can afford to spend on online marketing. This should be the basis of your interactions with any Digital Marketing Agency. Fees will keep varying, so you must keep a clear cut idea.

There are some freelancers that charge really low, making it a viable method rather than approaching large firms. But, you must never go for cheap labour, as it may affect the quality of the output as well.

The payment may be hourly, project-wise, or by the web page. Different companies have different policies. One more thing you need to keep in mind is that SEO will be required even after the changes are done. Maintenance is also an important task. You must confirm the rates for maintenance as well.

  • Effective Communication and Reporting

Once the rates are decided, you need to make clear about the Return on Investment, and how you could expect to track it. Regular updates and reports must be provided for you to understand the progress. If not, then you may be in for great trouble!

You need to discuss the techniques the online marketing agency plans to implement. Stay clear of all black hat techniques, or else your website could even be banned. Have a clear communication plan in mind before moving forward.

  • Background Check

It is important to have an idea about the past background of the company. First-hand information from previous customers would be really helpful. You could ask them for at least three names from whom you could get an honest opinion.

These clients will be able to tell you how long it took for them to see positive changes, how it impacted their business, how the firm was able to keep up to their commitments, their satisfaction level, and so on.

On Googling the name of the firm, you may even hit on reviews and experiences by customers. Not all companies have their own website, so you may not have much luck in that route.

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

  • Strategy

A good SEO company must be able to put forward an intelligent strategy in front of you. Page rank, keyword optimization, and linking strategy are most important. Give them a chance to demonstrate their capabilities and give you a basic idea about their style of work to understand them better. Moreover, they must also be able to cater to your website irrespective of the size.

For your business to succeed and reach the top ranks, it is essential to make full use of the online marketing opportunities in front of you. An apt online marketing agency will be able to offer you all the results you expect and even more. So, stay alert, be on your guard, and choose wisely. The future of your firm depends on your decision. You cannot afford to make mistakes.

Snapdeal on Its Way to Create Digital Commerce Ecosystem

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Snapdeal is planning to build a discovery platform and associated tools for brands as well as for its sellers on the marketplace.

This platform would leverage artificial intelligence, real-time data and other tools, delivering high return on investment for advertising campaigns.

It is being built by an engineering team led by technology entrepreneur Ali, which has customers across UK, US and India.

Read Also:Brick and Mortar Stores Still Important to Digital Buyers

Speaking about this acquisition, Rohit Bansal, Co-founder, Snapdeal, said, “At Snapdeal, we are always on the lookout for talented people, who come with specialized skills that augment our capabilities. Ali comes with 17 years of rich experience in building web scale technologies, Product Management and building highly specialized teams focused on a data platform and ad tech products. We are confident that Ali and his team will further strengthen our technological capabilities.”

Snapdeal has the widest assortment of 15 million products in more than 500 categories.

Ali joins a growing battalion of successful entrepreneurs and technology leaders who are joining Snapdeal to build most impactful digital commerce platform in India.

 As a part of this vision, Snapdeal has partnered with several global marquee investors and individuals such as SoftBank, BlackRock, Temasek, eBay Inc., Premji Invest, Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Ratan Tata amongst others

Brick and Mortar Stores Still Important to Digital Buyers

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Recent survey by e-tailing group for B2C Partners established how important brick and mortar stores are to digital buyers. According to digital buyers, “stores have a lot to offer”.

In the survey, 84% responded that they liked combining the efficiency of digital with the tangibility of retail stores.

In terms of digital buying, digital buyers always needed a knowledgeable associate to make their final decisions.

Complication in purchase and how they work makes the digital buyers think twice.

Read Also: Amazing! Facebook Testing New Features for Users

Digital buyers support Brick and Mortar as they offer more speed and efficiency.

Stores with more technology can be an added advantage to digital buyers in the future.

So, entrepreneurs would be rewarded better by empowering brick and mortar stores with additional technology.

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Website Localization – The Future of Digital Marketing?

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You may have a well optimized website with good search engine rankings and increased user visits. But the increasing competition makes it vital to ensure your digital marketing efforts are also focused locally. Consider website localization. Reports state that web users are more likely to purchase from a company that communicates in their own language.

Localizing a website will provide fruitful results such as-

  • Add value to your brand
  • Increase in site visitors
  • Increase the number of customers
  • increase the number of visitors returning to your website

Localization process of a website involves numerous technical and linguistic stages: preparation, cultural adaptation, translation, multilingual adaptation, integration of multilingual content, functional and linguistic validation, quality control, final validation and the final process of going online.

Read Also: Ways Digital Marketing Will Change In 2016

Is it enough to translate your original website content?

A common mistake with localized websites is considering the translated content to be just another version of the pages in the original language. Translation isn’t everything. Of course, for the user it’s all about the content. The user will check whether the content is relevant and understandable and in line with the user’s cultural context. Therefore, winning consumers in these new highly competitive business markets will require companies to scale their global marketing initiatives and manage cultural diversity at a whole new level.

Localizing a website is an important business decision that will have a great impact on how well you achieve your business goals in certain markets. Before localizing any content, make sure to partner up with a digital marketing agency. This helps to better understand the target audience, and check whether your product meets local standards and is in line with the core cultural values of the audience. Understanding the basic differences in customs and practices between nations is important.

Translating a website (especially a complex one) can be a challenge. You need to decide on your core markets first and then choose the language version accordingly. Decision should be made earlier whether to display a language version based on the user’s IP address or on the browser’s settings. To be more effective in emerging markets, global brands must ensure that their content not only speaks to the culture of the audience but also reflects the intended brand message consistently from one region to the next.

What surveys indicate:

A survey conducted by Lionbridge earlier in 2015 revealed that

  • Many companies don’t have a localization strategy. Nearly 40 percent of respondents say they do not currently have a web content localization strategy and 13 percent of respondents handle localization requests on an ad hoc basis
  • When asked about the most important aspects of website localization, a majority (56 percent) of respondents identified quality and accuracy as the top answer, followed by customer experience (34 percent)

You may also like: 6 Benefits of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses

Businesses will need to radically change their mindset about localization, as well as their translation processes and allocation of resources. It is very important for companies to focus on building a localization strategy to ensure the process is streamlined, consistent, and, most importantly, effective. By addressing the regular cadence of localization needs in a centralized manner, companies can ensure that translation quality and brand consistency are maintained across a number of channels, languages, and projects.

Few elements that you should keep in mind while localizing a website are – branding, culture-specific design and simple forms, lines, text and composition. An experienced digital marketing agency can provide comprehensive website localization services that can ensure that all content is addressed in an efficient and effective manner. It helps brands to stay engaged with customers and offer the best customer experience possible across all markets.

Ways Digital Marketing Will Change In 2016

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Marketing and sales have come a long way from how they used to work in earlier days. The buyers have changed and their behaviour has seen drastic changes. Following the traditional marketing methods do not work anymore. As such, many businesses are failing these days. There was a time when a little amount of advertising and cold calling was able to get you a whole lot of appointments. But, this is not the case anymore.

A major change is that the buyers have control over the sales process these days. Every piece of information is available on the internet. If you need it, you get it! Earlier, sellers were able to control the sales process. The buyers had to interact with the sales people for all requirements. But now, they have every bit of information readily available. All you need is your phone or laptop. In such a situation, the buyers engage with the salespeople only when they are ready.

Adapt to the Changes

Every company now needs the help of a digital marketing agency to take up the job of marketing and promotions. With drastic changes in the buying process, businesses have been forced to change and adapt to these changes. You need to make strategic buying decisions and use marketing to match the all new buying techniques. The changes in marketing have also brought  some new opportunities.

Buyers have now started to become more knowledgeable. As such, marketing has turned out to be lesser of a single sided endeavour. The customers now place a whole lot of emphasis on building good relations with companies. This has led to the two most important concepts in marketing – Responsiveness and Personalization. Marketing now has to be become more of a dynamic creature that could incorporate all kinds of technologies to help efficient communication between the business and the buyer.

Read Also: 6 Benefits of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses

Content Marketing

It has been found that about 25% of all the marketing dollars in the US are now spent on custom and branded content. This is a great step with the fact that content marketing had just started baby steps one decade ago. With the advancements in this field, the demand for a good and efficient digital marketing agency has increased considerably.

These days, organizations are investing heavily on digital content and marketing. From white papers to custom videos, there are numerous options in front of you. This is a field that is changing rapidly. Every company is now used to send visually stimulating emails about the various deals and offer, and also has its own blog. If you do not put in much effort into your organization’s online content management, you are sure to be in for a loss.

Expectations for 2016

Based on the latest trends and changes in the market, here are a few ways in which the market could be expected to change in the year 2016. A look at these points would help your organization go a long way ahead:

  1. SEO will move way ahead from being just Search Engines 

It is not always possible to find everything you search for on the usual search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing. There are over 30 trillion pages on the web, and no matter how much the algorithms improve, accommodating all of them to show you the best results is not always accurately possible. You do not always get what you want.

The consumers these days have become more social as far as purchases are concerned. It is seen that about 88% of the consumers decide on a purchase based on comments and reviews. They rely on others’ experiences before buying. As such, you can see an increased search for products on YouTube and Pinterest.

The brands that are sharp and smart enough will start the move from pure search engine based efforts to social media networks. They will invest both time and money into making their mark in social media. Building strategies for more social and interactive ways to get your customers is advised.

  1. Competition will become even more Fierce

At the current stage, content marketing is the second largest component of digital marketing budgets. It falls just behind mobile marketing, which includes optimizing websites for the mobile version. The amount spent on content creation and management is tremendous for SMBs and enterprises. For extremely talented content makers who have a good track record, the competition is really high.

This is some unfortunate news for beginners and amateurs. For individuals who have niche specialities and can drive really good results, things will get worse. In the coming year, the following competencies could turn out to be the most sought after by the content departments in organizations:

  • Visual email marketing specialists
  • Workflow content specialists
  • Data-driven content creators
  • Sales/case study experts

The shortage of entry-level creators would never turn out to be a problem now. Individuals who have high creativity and knowledge of technology would be in greater demand.

  1. Touch screen/Interactive Content will see a Rise

Mobile optimization is of utmost importance in this era of smartphones and other gadgets. Every digital marketer could understand how important it is to keep up with the rising demand for mobile optimization of all websites and content. Using the tablet or smartphone to perform the various actions online will only increase your prospects for the better. Here are a few actions that you need to focus on:

  • Listen to music and watch videos
  • Read and write text messages and emails
  • Research and navigate local business listings
  • Use the various social media networks
  • Consume news, entertainment, or other types of content that are relevant professionally
  • Use the different apps or media to send messages to friends, family, and colleagues
  • Research products and make purchases online
  • Consume or complete product reviews

Making your website mobile responsive is very important. It must be designed such that it appears well on any kind of screen size. Creating content that is optimized specifically for touch screens is the main aim of the sharpest digital marketers.

Most people are likely to prefer to shop on a mobile app rather than taking pains to surf on the mobile website in the Smartphone. In every aspect, the mobile app is well optimised and comfortable. Creating mobile apps is now much easier for organizations, even if they have on-staff mobile developers for the different smartphone platforms.

In case you need time to optimise your concept of a branded app and create the related content, you could delay the release of your app. As such, you could think of the following ideas for creating mobile-only content:

  • Discounts codes, deals, or coupons specifically for smartphones
  • Emails or landing pages that are mobile-only
  • Social media content designed for smaller screens
  1. Budgetary Control will Change

Till now, budgetary control has always rested in the hands of CFOs and sometimes the CIOs. As per predictions, this practice will slightly change and the control of budget will shift to the CMOs.

Extreme flexibility is required for good and proper content. “Agile SEO” and “Agile Inbound Marketing” have started to become buzzwords. The brands that are able to pivot, respond, and also create proper and relevant work in real time will turn out to the best content brands in the world.

For content marketing teams, the traditional budgetary approval processes could never work out. Navigating through the usual processes like filling out forms and waiting for signatures from the management are difficult and time consuming, especially in an agile environment. As such, the average CMO will need to have much more control over the budget and monetary autonomy than before. Companies that have a strong leadership and strategic marketers will surely get benefits by following this step.

  1. Bigger Digital Content

Recently, the CMO Council’s Annual Survey has revealed that digital marketing will soon overtake television ads. Though expected by the year 2018, the world has slowly started to move in that direction. This is exciting news for all digital marketing companies given the fact that creating television ads is actually so expensive and time consuming. You need to have a good budget set up if you want a great commercial.

Enterprise organizations would soon shift from expensive TV commercials to strategies involving web marketing. The quality of the content created exclusively for mobile devices, tablets, and computers will increase considerably. This will offer high-quality games and apps, amazing web interfaces, and an exciting experience online. With fewer television commercials and better content for the web, the consumers are sure to be happy.

Recommended Read: What Is Content Curation? How Is It Relevant To Digital Marketing

  1. Virtual Reality

A number of virtual reality devices are set to release in the coming years. This will increase the emphasis on virtual reality especially for applications like video games and others used on a general basis. The Oculus Rift is the most hyped device based on Virtual Reality which is slated for release by the first quarter of 2016. An entirely new medium of online advertising will open up with these devices storming the market. Integration to the popular social media platforms, the video channels, and even messaging services will be an additional feature.

  1. Wearable Technology and the Internet of Things

Wearable Smart Devices will start getting more focus by the year 2016. The Apple Watch was unveiled in 2015 as the first generation smart watch. Come next year, we could expect a lot more smart watches and other wearable technology in the market to change the face of marketing completely. This will immensely blur the line between online marketing and real marketing.

The above trends are the most significant ones among the many that would make an impact in the year 2016. The way these trends will manifest and how they will impact the customer-client relation is something that you will have to wait and watch. Since most of them are driven by customer adoption, you could place a safe bet on trying them out to see positive results.

Amazing! Facebook Testing New Features for Users

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As Facebook becoming the one and only place where many people spend most of their time, its effort to transform News Feed into a storefront is once again raising up.

Facebook is in the opening tiers of testing a feature- “Local Market”.

Abs Elmaz, Reader of Social House Media shared the screenshots with SocialTimes, informing about “Local Market” icon.

The feature took the place of icon for messages at the bottom of Fb software.

These are the latest steps Facebook has taken in the retail area. The company has tested “buy” buttons already in its app allowing users to buy products directly without leaving.

It also rolled out “Shop” sections on small businesses’ pages.

Recap: Facebook Introduces SIGNAL, A Social News Gathering Tool for Journalists

“On Facebook we’ve seen that people are coming to our platform not only to connect with friends and family but also with products and brands,” the company said in a blog post. Nearly half of people come to Facebook to actively look for products, the company said.

Elmaz, residing in Melbourne, Australia, brought that clicking “sell” said that the function was no longer to be had in his area once but he stated that every proof of “Local Market” has vanished from his app now.

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How to Decide the Ideal Social Media for Your Business

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Social media is an inevitable platform when you come to marketing. An efficient social media strategy helps you boost your brand and business. The main idea here is to select the best social media that is apt for your requirements. Approaching a Digital Marketing Agency solves this issue for you.

A large number of social media platforms are available these days. You need to go through them and select the one that offers you the highest potential to reach out to your ideal audience. You need to broadcast the type of content you need to market your company. It is not possible to be the best on every platform. It is better to concentrate on a few of them and try to make your best.

Read Also: Effective Social Media Marketing Tricks for 2015

An online marketing agency will be able to choose out the best for your company. The professionals help you build an amazing online profile to make your mark among the target audience. Here are the most common social media that your social media expert would suggest you:

Pinterest

Pinterest is a simple content sharing service. Members are able to pin or post their videos, videos, and other such content on their boards. Such media are shared among others.
Pinterest is known to have a majority of female users. As such, it will be highly effective for businesses where visual imagery plays an important role. This platform is apt for businesses involving travel destinations, fashion or foods, wedding planning, interior decorating, and so on. A great deal can be marketed about your products by using videos and photos on Pinterest.
Pinterest has generally got a niche market. It serves this purpose really well. You have the option to share posts, comment on posts or boards, and also click to go to the web page from where a particular image came. You could “pin” something on to your board if you like it. The boards are attached to every user’s profile. This helps people see the person or company from where a particular video or photo came.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a very popular networking site. It mainly aims at creating contacts in the world of business. You connect to people or companies, and you could utilize this network to build up your profile.
LinkedIn helps you create professional networks. This way you could connect to people and be there for them when they require your services. There are groups and discussions where you can actively participate to get noted. Politely discussing your interests, showing your transparency, impressing others with your expertise, asking and answering questions, and interacting with others does the trick here. This is not a visual medium, and you get to talk about yourself, and what your business does. Service providers are a majority in here as compared to retailers.

YouTube

This visually driven media is a much more powerful tool than you think. It has got high potential if you utilize it well enough. Homemade and company made videos are found in abundance. People keep posting videos on it hoping them to get viral and earn popularity. If you feature your business in an efficient manner, you can make it big. The user base of this medium is really high, and you get a huge audience. Make it exciting and you will achieve what you want.
YouTube is based on visuals. You could see millions and millions of videos here which have been watched numerous times. Check out the videos that have generated maximum hits to get an idea of what will work out for you. Demonstrating your product, teaching people to do something, and introducing something new are cool ideas to start with.

You may also like: Video Marketing and Its Impact On Your Business

Twitter

Twitter is another popular social media platform that is an ongoing conversation. Twitter is more of a real time thing that is based on “in the moment” concept. Users can choose what to view and whether to respond.
Using twitter, you could reach out to the public and wait for them to respond. Breaking news, questions, updates, opinions, and other such things can be shared via twitter. You “tweet” whatever you feel like. This reaches out to the public. You directly interact with the people here.

Facebook

At this point of time, Facebook is the most popular social media in the world. It is a must for online marketing. The size of Facebook is enough to realise its importance. It is safe to assume that every person is on Facebook.
Businesses have the option to build their profile and show the image they prefer to show out to the public. People get to directly interact by commenting, asking questions, and expressing views. Facebook is more of a long-term commitment.

The main purpose of Facebook is to show out your face to the public. It does not deal with selling alone. You portray your business in a way that users are able to relate to you. By using this platform to its full capacity, you can generate a large number of fans and become popular.

Being active on all platforms is hard and not at all practical. An effective online marketing strategy is to select the three that suit your requirements aptly. Hire a Digital Marketing Agency to choose the best ideas and monitor your online activities. Stay involved on social media and see the difference it can bring out in your business!

Video Marketing and Its Impact On Your Business

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When it comes to digital or online marketing, the use of videos is gaining in popularity. The reason for this is the impact they provide. It is far greater than mere words as text and even static images. Research by top digital marketing agencies says that on Facebook, videos are clicked more often than mere pictures or text. And we know that Facebook‘s move to auto play videos is only going to increase video viewership.

Sharing of videos through social media has become the recent trend and statistics has shown that sharing of videos is 267% more when compared to posts.

Recommended Read: Video Content Marketing Trends 2015

Why Videos?

What videos have achieved is not a big secret, but what has led to this boom in video marketing is something to be analyzed. So, what is so special about videos?

  • The engagement power of a video is very high. While a reader may leave a post mid way, a video is capable of holding him onto his seat, simply because it has the capability to tell a story.
  • A video can easily convey an emotion to the viewer when compared to a reading an article or any other content.
  • Time is an important factor. A thousand words article may take some time to read, whereas the same article can be explained elaborately through a video.  1.8 Million Words = 1 minute video is something to keep in mind.
  • An average user of the internet sees 32.2 videos in a month and 16 minutes and 49 sec is the time he spends on watching online videos in a month.
  • A 2010 survey showed that the advent of videos increased the click through rate by 96%.
  • Moreover videos can also increase brand association by up to 139%.

How to Make Videos that Can Make an Impact?

While it is true that videos can make the impact that can push your products online, one should be really careful about the videos that they make. A bad video can be as viral as a good one. If not made properly, a video can do more damage to your business and you may not even realize it. So how to make videos that can boost your business?

  • Knowing what the audience wants is the key. When marketing a product online using a video, it should target the audience to whom the product or service is intended for. The viewer should easily relate to the video and understand what it is.
  • What is the product, how it works, how it helps the user, how can the viewer get the product, are the common question that the video must answer.
  • Remember, the idea of making a video is to free the viewer from reading a lengthy description page and hence save his time. Therefore making a 5 minute video can be suicide. The video should be short and simple.
  • Videos that are 15 sec or shorter are shared 37% or more than those between 30 sec to 1 minute.
  • The video should be engaging right from the beginning. If not, viewers may choose to skip them midway. 8 seconds is the amount of time within which the video must grab the attention of the viewer. VisibleMeasures, a popular consumer behaviour research team found in their research that 20% of viewers click away after 8 sec or fewer.
  • The video must be visually appealing to the audience and there should be clarity in the idea presented.
  • It was also found that 16% of YouTube videos that are liked or shared are on Tuesdays between 11 am and 1 pm. Hence, care should be given about when and where to post a video.

You may also like: Role of Visual Content in Digital World

The importance of videos is clear. But one should also keep in mind that video alone cannot help boost your product or services. Giving importance only to videos may also affect your online marketing strategies.

When combining videos with full page ads, it can boost engagement by up to 22% as compared to using them individually. It is noted that while 80% of the visitors go for videos, the remaining 20% prefers text. Even though it is a smaller percentage, it is an important one. A comprehensive technique is vital for online marketing.