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.

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.

How to Choose the Right SEO Expert for Your Company

 

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.

Website Localization – The Future of Digital Marketing?

 

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

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.

How to Decide the Ideal Social Media for Your Business

 

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

 

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.

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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.

Why Is Segmentation Important In Email Marketing?

 

When we talk about email marketing, the success of your effort is mainly affected by the nature of your email segmentation. By knowing how to segment your email audience properly, you can create more effective email campaigns for enterprise level marketing and can achieve your goal efficiently.

When we discuss the significance of this type of email list separation, you must know exactly why segmentation is important in email marketing? It’s quite simple:

  • All Your Customers are Not the Same. Generally businesses serve more than one type of clients. Even if you deal with only single product or service, there are various types of clients that should be treated independently, with a specific end goal to get their attention in the most effective way.
  • You’ll Create Your Fame. It could be excessive, but here it’s one more of a chance: If you send focused, significant emails with luring content to your potential client base, you will come to be more fascinating and captivating to your customers. This will result in finding increased number of subscribers.

Read Must: 10 Best E-Mail Subject Line Formulae to Rock Your E-Mail Marketing Campaigns

  • You Need More and More Leads. The more you speak to your different customers about the value of your services, the probability of them purchasing from you is also higher. If you furnish content that speaks and relates to your clients, you will develop a bond with them. This bond creates an interest your emails, and they will come to see it! What’s more, with such a relationship, you will be the main priority when they want to buy a product.

Once you have segmented your lists, no matter to what extent, it’s vital to keep the categories up-to-date. Segmenting your lists can be tedious. This can be helpful when you have both prospects and buyers on the list. When someone becomes a customer, they can easily be moved from one segment to another without any kind of subscription process.

So, it’s necessary as it helps you to comply with applicable laws and send the right messages to your contacts. And you can expect immediate positive responses from your customers once you’ve gone through the process.

What Is Content Curation? How Is It Relevant To Digital Marketing

 

Content curation is an art of collecting, analyzing, organizing, and displaying relevant information that can boost traffic to your website.

Content marketing is one of the key strategies any digital marketing agency offers. With the release of Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, digital marketers, as well as website owners have become very careful in maintaining their website with fresh, informative and search engine friendly content.

Content curation is an ideal way to attract targeted traffic to websites. To make it simple, Wikipedia explains content curation as the process of collecting, organizing and displaying information relevant to a particular topic or area of interest.

In this form of content marketing, a publisher collects the best content related to a specific topic and targeted to a specific audience. Then, that content is enhanced by adding personal opinions and expertise. This unique content that includes your personal insights can help readers understand why the information you’re citing is valuable and relevant to them.

This form of content has incredible benefits for credibility and brand awareness. Promoting the insights coming from your original content helps to facilitate a stronger relationship with your content consumers – encouraging them to come back to your organization as a source for quality content and a richer experience when navigating through the web. It also gets you ranking for both long and short tail keywords.

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Types of curated content are – Aggregation (collection of relevant information on any topic in a specific location), Distillation (curating information into a more simplistic format only with relevant ideas), Elevation (identifying a larger trend or insight), Mashups (merging existing content is used to create a new point of view) and Chronology (gathering information on a particular topic for a specific period of time).

Done properly, content curation can be an excellent piece of your content marketing services campaign. Digital marketing agencies can provide services from experienced content writers to help businesses with content curation.

Tips for including content curation into your content marketing strategy:

  1. Publish curated content in the form of social media blog posts as well as email newsletters
  2. Avoid duplicate content. The more unique content you add, the better the content will perform in search engines, and the safer you’ll be with regard to future algorithm changes.
  3. Avoid promotional stuff. Include informative content.
  4. While curating content, link only to high-quality sites. Less trustworthy sites can impact your performance in search engine rankings.
  5. Target your audience. Add value to the reader. Unless your audience likes the content, they’re not going to share it.
  6. Take permission to add content from curation sources and build a relationship with them that can maximize your reach and value.

Read Also: 8 Reasons Blogging Is Vital For Your Digital Presence

Top Content Curation Tools for 2015

  • Pressly – This is a smart online platform that helps to aggregate the right content for your audience and establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry.
  • Scoop.it – This tool will not only generate the most relevant articles to view and share, but it will also include complementary topics. This tool can not only get to curate content but you are also put in connection with other content curators, which helps to gain insight from leaders in various fields.
  • TrapIt – This “intelligent” tool allows marketers to set up content collections–called “traps”. It delivers a constant feed of real-time, relevant content based on these trapped topics and how you interact with the content.
  • Feedly – This RSS feed is ideal to curate blog content that can be used as resources for future posts or give you great ideas for upcoming content. Free for the basic service, this is an easy to use tool .

An established digital marketing agency with relevant experience in the field can help your business find right source of information online and personalize it, thus attract more readers and improve your brand awareness in short time.

8 Reasons Blogging Is Vital For Your Digital Presence

 

In the current internet based world, your service or product needs great online presence to reach the desired heights. It will help bring large number, of traffic to your site and stand out among your competitors.

To improve the online presence of your business, you can seek search engine optimization. SEO is highly effective in bringing your business in front of the whole world. Blogging is a vital part of an SEO strategy.

Reasons Why Blogging Is Essential For Your Digital Presence:

Higher Ranking In SERP – Making use of blog in a regular basis is a better way of adding relevant content in your site. These blogs play an important role as they are useful to your customers. It is one of the best ways to increase your search engine ranking.

Your website gets one more indexed page every time you write a new blog, increasing your chances of a higher ranking in SERP (search engine results page). Blogging can increase your web page indexing by 434%. Linked posts will get Google to index your website for high-quality keywords as well.

Read Also: 6 Essential Steps to a Successful Blog Post

Social Media Presence – Blogging also helps you to get social media presence as people can share these blogs on Social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and many more. This results in getting new, audience to your business. If you have a blog for your website, then you don’t have to ask your social media manager to come up with new content for your brand on a frequent basis.

More Inbound Links – Blogging helps to generate 97% more inbound links. If you share relevant and quality posts, then many people will link to your blog. This will result in generating traffic to your business. Quality inbound links is another factor that can influence search engines positively.

Helps To Bring Traffic – With regular posting, your blog will generate traffic to your site on a large scale. Thus, they will come to know about your brand. In time, brand, trust would grow manifold.

Convert Traffic Into Leads – You will get more sales and high-quality traffic when people find your blog through Google. When you get such traffic, it will be easy for you to convert them to leads with strategic placements of CTAs (call to actions) placed at right places in the blog.

Builds Trust and Reputation – Blogs are where you begin to influence, persuade and move your prospects to act. It’s where they begin to know, like and trust you. Reading about genuine information will make them come back to your website and look for more relevant topics. This builds trust in their mind, leading to better reputation for your website.

Read Also: SEO  Two Secret Ingredients for SEO Success 

Create Conversations – Keeping your audience engaged is always a good way to build your brand. Blogs create two-way conversations with prospects, customers, and industry peers. It strengthens interaction, comments and feedback.

Knowing Your Audience Better – Blog analytics enables you to track readers, popular topics, click-through, share and comments. By analyzing such data, you will be able to learn more about your audience. Knowledge thus gained can be utilized for furthering marketing strategies.

The earlier you start blogging, the faster your business will obtain its benefits – and don’t forget to set a goal. If you think there are more benefits to blogging, please share with us in the comment section.