These 6 Online Screw Ups Are Driving Away Your Prospects

I’m sure you’ll agree that website copy should lock a prospect in a tight grip, lull their objections, excite them about a product, and seduce into making an inquiry.

But I bet that looking at traffic data you feel prospects run away confused, bored, or perhaps even annoyed. Bounce rate is sky high, average time on site is barely noticeable and nobody seems to be reading everything you have to say.

But what if that was the problem exactly? What if the amount of information and how you present it is driving away prospects?

Let’s look at why this is happening.

You Lose Readers with Warm Up Paragraphs

You know, it’s kind of scary. It turns out that humans now have shorter attention spans than a goldfish. According to this research, our attention span on the Web is only eight seconds. The attention span of a goldfish, however, is a second longer.

It also means that you have only eight seconds to grab your readers’ attention.

And chances are you waste it with warm-up paragraph. That’s copy that does nothing else but beat around the bush until you’re finally ready to introduce the key message.

If the first 20 words, or about two paragraphs of your copy, don’t introduce the problem, remove them. Chances are that they’re there only because you needed to warm up to finally write the key points.

There is one other thing to remember when you write Web copy: Your prospects are in a rush.

They have other websites to visit before making the buying decision.

And the quicker you tell them what they need to know, the bigger the chance they’ll remember you and come back to buy.

You Feature Long Lists of … (nomen omen) … Features

I know, features are easy to write. After all, they’re tangible aspects of your product, functionality or technology behind it.

They can also take a lot of space on a page, making it seem richer with content.

But they don’t sell.

At least, not until a prospect had familiarized him or herself with your business.

Prospects visit your site for a reason. They want to find out:

• If your product could help them solve their particular problem,
• If it’s a solution for people like them,
• What makes it different from other alternatives and,
• Why they should buy from you.

Lists of features only distract them from finding it out.

When writing your web copy, focus on benefits – tell visitors what they are going to gain by using your solution.

And leave features for the last stage of the buying cycle, when you’ll have to overcome your prospects’ final sales objections.

You’re Trying to Please Everyone

You can’t write content that satisfies everyone.

Or fill a single page with arguments that’ll speak to and attract different audiences.

But chances are that you really don’t need to target them all.

You probably offer a solution to a particular market. And so, write copy with that audience in mind:

Make it clear that your solution is for them

Less Accounting is open as to what audience they’re trying to attract: business owners who dislike bookkeeping.

But what if you need to target a secondary audience too? Use a separate, dedicated landing page.

(Less Accounting’s site features additional landing pages targeting other customer groups).

Use a language your audience can relate to make copy more relevant

Wishpond product tour page mentions epic content marketing. And it a one thing every marketer strives for?

Showcase images that communicate with whom you want to do business

It’s an interesting fact – our brains process images 60,000 times faster than text.

This means that visitors will have made up their mind about your page before they finished decoding the copy. How? By processing images and other visual cues.

To make your copy more effective you need to back it up with relevant images. In a case of landing pages, ones that communicate who a page is for.

Harpoon features an image that backs up the main headline – a contempt looking freelancer.

Nudge your audience a little, too

Lastly, nudge your audience with something only they will understand. Use cues to connect with them on emotional level,too.

Workado’s product screenshot features projects from companies like MomCorp, Stark Industries and Wayne Enterprises. I’m sure every geek or comic fan will know what these are.

Your Copy Includes Only Long Paragraphs

This may come as a surprise but, you don’t have to elaborate on all points.

Some are self-explanatory. Others are easier to consume in a condensed form. And some ideas might be easier to understand if they’re abbreviated. In such cases, convert them into bulleted lists.

• They grab the reader’s attention.
• Help them focus on the key message of your copy.
• Break the dense chunks of text.
• And make it easier to scan.

You’re Not Using Images to Communicate Emotions

You know, sometimes the best way to connect with a reader is by telling her that you know how she feels.

That you’ve been in her situation before and can relate to the problem.

But describing it in words might just fill the page with unnecessary copy

In those situations, communicate emotions with an image or animated gif.

Here’s one example how I do it:

See the post live here: http://blog.ahrefs.com/manage-cash-flow/

You Don’t Catch the Reader’s Attention with Numbers

Numbers stop a wandering eye.

When you have to use statistics or data to back up your points, use digits instead of words.

Numbers make the copy easier to scan too. Also, readers often associate them with the most important information on the page and thus naturally seek them out when skimming through it.

And there’s data to prove it:

In one eye-tracking study. Jakob Nielsen discovered that numbers often work well to stop a wandering eye, even when they are embedded within a mass of words.

According to his findings this happens because:

• Numbers represent facts. And that’s what readers are often looking for.
• The shape of a group of digits is significantly different from a group of letters. That’s the reason why they stand out in the reader’s peripheral vision. Take a look at this example: the number 2015 looks different from the word five. And yet they both include the same number of characters.

Keep these items above in mind the next time you’re producing website copy to seduce your prospects into becoming your new customers.

Disgruntled Web Reader Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "These 6 Online Screw Ups Are Driving Away Your Prospects" was first published on Small Business Trends

Taboo Topic? Communicate Through Infographics

In a single day, we create more than 1.5 billion pieces of content, including 140 million tweets and 2 million videos, according to this great infographic on “big data”.

It’s no surprise that even with the most careful planning, our marketing messages often get lost in the data chaos. On the flip side, how many articles we see on a daily basis and mentally mark as “interesting” but fail to ever read or save the great data within the article?

Infographics are a visually compelling communication medium that breaks down complex data into easily digestible content.

In essence, they’re the perfect marketing solution for a world that’s overrun with interesting data and lacking an effective means for organizing this information.

Ninety percent of the information that comes into the brain is visual.

Infographics help us quickly and easily visualize relationships between statistics. But great infographics are more than just a powerful data visualization tool for content marketing. They’re also an effective viral marketing tool for taboo products that are in high-demand but not always easy to advertise through traditional channels.

Case in point: an online STD test. While there’s clearly a built-in market for STD tests, you can’t just buy a commercial during the Super Bowl and call it a day.

Not only would such a commercial be prohibitively expensive, but it would also be a bit awkward and uncomfortable for viewers at home to see in between their favorite chip and beer ads — and it might even turn off your target audience.

For a socially taboo product, you need to think creatively about how to get the word out to potential customers. Infographics focused on raising awareness about a relevant issue are the perfect solution.

1. Identify the Data

Even with a clever infographic, a collection of random, dense statistics is still a collection of random, dense statistics! Don’t just grab a bunch of random facts and throw them into your infographic.

You need to think strategically about which statistics to include. One option is to select data around a problem or issue that individuals in the target market may not realize is as common as it is.

Diaper Buys created an infographic that shows the different causes of adult incontinence and aims to remove some of the stigma associated with wearing an adult diaper.

2. Raise Awareness

Another option when creating an infographic would be to addresses a common issue that individuals in your target demographic may be experiencing, even if this issue is only tangentially related to the product that your business is selling.

For example, older individuals who need adult diapers may also face additional challenges in their daily lives, especially if they live alone. Diaper Buys created just such a demographic for “National Senior Independence Month”.

Organizing the data around an awareness theme makes the infographic relevant and timely, two key characteristics of viral content.

3. Be Smart About Design

If you are not a graphic designer, it’s probably best to leave the heavy lifting to someone who is.

After all, you don’t want a poor design to cloud out your message! The good news is that you don’t have to spend a fortune on great design. Visual.ly, one of the world’s most popular infographic sharing sites, can also connect individuals with a graphic designer for affordable infographic design.

After the infographic is complete, you can create your own business profile and publish the infographic directly on the site.

4. Share Your Infographic

Once the design is complete, think strategically about the best ways to get your infographic out to the right target audience.

In addition to sharing the infographic via Visual.ly, be sure to post it on your company’s blog and cross-post on Pinterest (one of the most popular social networks for infographics) as well as other social media channels.

Tweet a different, interesting statistics found in the infographic each day for a week with a link back to your company’s blog post. Share it on Facebook and include a link to your company’s weekly newsletter digest (if you have one).

The key is to get cross-posts on as many relevant platforms as possible.

Bottom Line

Marketing a taboo product or service can be tricky, but by using infographics to focus on an educational or awareness-building angle, you can position your product for viral marketing success.

Taboo Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "Taboo Topic? Communicate Through Infographics" was first published on Small Business Trends

Twitter Audience Insights: This Week in Social Media

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention. What’s New This Week Twitter Unveils Audience Insights Dashboard: “With audience insights, you can easily discover valuable insights about your followers and […]

This post Twitter Audience Insights: This Week in Social Media first appeared on Social Media Examiner.
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Content Marketing Tips: 11 Types of Content That People Love To Share

Content marketing is about attracting attention.

Then it’s about turning that into engagement and converting that into leads and customers. The ultimate goal is to create such loyal fans and advocates that they rave about you online and offline. That’s when the real magic happens. You only have to look at Apple that has its customers waiting in lines for 48 hours to get their latest phones to understand that fan power.

But that goal of attracting traffic and attention is getting harder.

What has made the challenge of getting noticed in a noisy world so much harder? Why is it that a 200 word blog post just doesn’t cut it anymore?

Why is it getting harder?

When I started creating content I could write 300-400 words without any visuals and we were all happy. Today it’s a 1,000 plus words and needs a bunch of visuals.

There are a few elements that led us to this explosion in data.

The content standard has been dialled up. People expect more for free. The volume of information created has exploded due to everyone becoming publishers. We all have smart phones and the growth and access to hundreds of social networks.

We have also seen the dramatic increase in the number people having internet access.

Noise has accelerated.

The growth in web content

To put some perspective on this explosion of content and web traffic here are the facts on the growth of content and the internet.

Since 2008 when I started using social networks this is what has happened:

• The number of people online has more than doubled from 1.4 billion to over 3 billion
• Facebook has gone from 80 million users to more than 1.4 billion
• Twitter had 2 million accounts and now it is 300 million and counting.
• The number of smartphones was 250 million in 2008 and today there are more than 2 billion. That is an 800% increase!

Today this is what happens every minute on the web.

• 4 million search queries on Google
• Facebook users share 2.46 million pieces of content
• Email users send 204 million messages

Source: Aci.info

So that is your challenge. It is your competition. Daunting isn’t it.

So how do you win?

To win you have to do two things first. Create the best content you can and grow your online distribution for that content.

Content needs to achieve a few things to get shared. Inform, entertain, educate and inspire.

The specific tactics and media preferences also vary between platforms. Blogs require a variety of content types. On Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram it is all about images.

The type of content that people love to share is not just about going viral but content that keeps getting shared when it is discovered on Twitter or in an email.

Here are some content marketing tips that will help in getting your content shared..

1. How to’s

Showing people how to do something in a blog post is an oldie but a goodie. It might not go viral but adding that value to your readers gets them to share with colleagues, bosses and peers.

2. Large listicles

These can be fun or serious. They can be positive, negative and sometimes just plain silly. But I discovered the power of using a large negative list to drive sharing with this headline in 2010, “30 Things You Should Not Share in on Social Media“.

3. Statistics and facts

This has worked for me for years and has led to this post ranking #1 on Google for “social media facts“. If you look hard enough in almost any industry you will find amazing facts and figures that people,will love to know about.

Let’s look at an industry like events or conferences.

I was in Las Vegas recently and I heard some facts about how many conventions are held every year and the number of delegates.

The facts.

22,103 conventions were held in 2014 and the number of attendees?  5,169,054. Those numbers I find fascinating.

4. Infographics

Infographics were really hot and now they are just hot as a shareable piece of content. Here is an example from the Bufferapp blog. Using multiple infographics in one post can also work really well

5. Authentic images of people

Upworthy uses raw but real photos a lot in its content. Here is an example titled.  ”Rather than let his student’s baby continue to cry, this professor took matters into his own hands.”

It was the #3 top shared article for the week.

6. Personal photographs

Social media has moved the dial between what used to be treated as private and what is now considered safe for public viewing.

It is different for everyone.

But reveal something personal and willing to share and both they and their friends will share.

7. Tweets with images

This type of content wasn’t available just 18 months ago. But with Twitter changing its platform to be more visual at the end of 2013 the rules of engagement changed. I have found that mini-infographics (or snapshots of a larger infographic) can be one of the most effective.

Here is the top media tweet for April from my Twitter account

8. Curiosity gap headlines

The headlines that work and don’t work has been challenged by experimentation and data on a social web. Longer headlines that tease your curiosity gene can work very well. This headline has 13 words.

The data tells us that. So do some experimenting of your own.

9. Long form content

Blog articles that are 1,500 words will not be a viral piece of content. But if done well they will become a resource for your niche, be printed off and put senior managers desk or even the CEO.

This article is nearly 3,000 words and continues to be shared.

10. Articles with multiple images

Buzzfeed has perfected the art of stacking images in articles. Here is one of their most popular articles of all time with over 15 million views. This tactic is very effective because you are giving your article the best chance to resonate with your audience so it “has” to be shared. They also make it easy for the reader to share by using technology that enables share buttons to pop up as you mouse over each image.

If it was just one or two images it would not have received that level of viral traffic.

11. Quotes as an image

With Twitter becoming more visual you need to mix up the text tweets with visual tweets. Using a tool like Canva to turn quotes into images can increase sharing by 200-300%.

Kim Garst does this on her Twitter account on a regular basis to great effect.

Optimizing the content

So you have created the content people love to share and now you just publish it. Take a deep breath. You need to optimize your content for a variety of factors.

You need to consider some of these factors: But these will vary according to content types and platforms.

Short attention spans. So use a mix of punchy catchy text mixed with visuals

Readability. Use simple language, rhythm in your writing and sub-titles

Sharing: These include social sharing buttons and plugins that enable image sharing (use a technology like Snip.ly)

Search engines: Many don’t spend that last bit of effort to ensure your content is optimized for search engines.

Mobile: Many websites are seeing 50% of their traffic coming from mobile. This should be a priority

This fine tuning and optimization can produce big benefits when combined.

A final and strange tip.

Use odd numbers in your list headlines. If you check out Buzzfeed’s headlines they are almost always an odd number.

Why?

They work better than even numbers.

Over to you

What content works for you? Any results that have surprised you? Look forward to  reading your insights and stories in the comments below.

Thinking about building your own website or blog? It’s easier than you think!

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The post Content Marketing Tips: 11 Types of Content That People Love To Share appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

Twitter Marketing: How Smart Marketers Are Succeeding

Do you use Twitter for your business? Want to discover how to use the latest Twitter updates? To learn more about Twitter marketing, I interview Joel Comm. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners […]

This post Twitter Marketing: How Smart Marketers Are Succeeding first appeared on Social Media Examiner.
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What is Brand Storytelling?

Brand storytelling can greatly enhance interest and engagement in you and your business. It has emerged from the explosion of content marketing, brand journalism and article writing that has taken a prominent role in today’s marketing mix.

Each one of these brands consistently tells their story through their visual imaging and content messaging over several platforms and media. They have all built an awareness and relationship with you of their products and values.

Who doesn’t know these names and what they offer?

Your brand story is more than what you tell people. It is what they believe about you based on all the signals your brand sends out. The story is a complete picture of the facts, feelings and interpretations, which are shared about your business by you, your customers, your community and the public in general.

As Christopher Ratcliff of Econsultancy explains:

“It’s a phrase we all understand because it’s one of the fundamental ways we communicate ideas, educate and entertain each other from infancy. We remember information far better when it’s in the form of story rather than as a list of facts. People tell stories, art tells stories, TV tells stories, ads tell stories… so it seems straightforward enough when a marketer talks about ‘storytelling’, we know what they mean…”

Business Brand Storytelling Combines Several Essential Aspects

• Who you are
• What you specifically do
• How you solve problems
• How you add value and care
• How you engage and contribute

Here’s part of a cool infographic that follows 85 years of brand storytelling since the 1930s.

5 Elements Make for Great Brand Storytelling

Keep it Simple and Easy to Understand

It’s best to brand for the masses, not just your insiders.

A great example of this is Dove. According to statistics, only 4 percent of women feel good about themselves across the globe. Dove decided to do something that would move the other 96 percent.

From the very beginning, they tried to look for an idea that could actually prove that most women were wrong about their self-image.

They had several ideas, but “Real Beauty Sketches” really stood out. The ad depicts an FBI forensic artist named Gil Zamora sketching women (that he can’t see) by the way they describe themselves. The idea is that women are too critical of themselves.

The tagline: “YOU are more beautiful than you think!”

Make it Emotional

Include characters, personality, humor, pain and joy. Some of the best ways to accomplish this is through blogging, article writing, video, podcasting, webinars and workshops.

Tell Your Truth

Insofar as you believe it and as it has helped others. Share specific examples of your brand in action including the product, process and people that make it happen.

Use First Hand, Real Time Experiences and Examples

Show and tell what you do daily and tell the stories of others you see going through their experiences.

Make it Relatable

So that it is touches people, is poignant and authentic, lingers, entertains and inspires people to want to share and pass it on.

Your brand is you. Your branding is everything you do to promote and market yourself.

4 Tips and Examples for Telling Your Brand Story

Use Specific, Meaningful Ideas

Go Pro Camera is an amazing example of a company and product that is such an integral and important part of our personal and business lives today: visual marketing and storytelling. They make cameras and accessories that fit and fulfill what we do today to capture and share our lives. Their slogan is “This is your life. Be the hero. Capture and share your world.”

Use your Website, Social Media and Email Marketing

Clif Bar is much more than just a power bar for athletes. Husband and wife team, Gary and Kit Crawford, were being pressured to sell Clif Bar. In 2001, they made the brave decision to stay private allowing them to develop an innovative business model guided by Five Aspirations—Sustaining our Business, Brands, People, Community and the Planet. With a portfolio of great-tasting food crafted for athletes and active people, they have become a category leader among health and lifestyle bars.

Balance your Online and In-Person Activities

Ben & Jerry’s operates on a three-part mission that aims to create linked prosperity for everyone that’s connected to our business: suppliers, employees, farmers, franchisees, customers, and neighbors alike. Their product, economic and social missions assure that their central role that business in society is initiating innovative ways to improve the quality of life locally, nationally and internationally.

Share your Successes and Failures

The NFL, Target and McDonald’s all have a compelling comeback story. They all got hit with safety and health issues, massive data breaches, higher worker wages and changing food wants, needs and options.

They had to make swift and significant changes to streamline, simplify and align with public opinion. They learned they cannot hide or rest on any laurels and must be accountable to their employees and all their generational customers.

Brand storytelling is a powerful, personal and effective way to keep you real and top of mind. It educates, inspires and ultimately will help you sell and build indispensable relationships and loyalty with your customers and community.

There was a person that had a dream of helping other people solve their problems. So, they created a simple, easy to use solution and asked people to test and try it.

The people really liked it, but had a few suggestions on how to make it better. The person listened, made some modifications and continued to test it. When they were sure it was ready for all to see, they launched it on a bigger scale through marketing, advertising, networking, word of mouth, journalism and social media and it is now a successful small business that helps many people.

This can be your story and it can come true for you, too.

Apple Store Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "What is Brand Storytelling?" was first published on Small Business Trends

6 Ways to Grow Your Blog Audience

Do you want to attract more readers to your blog? Looking for ways to keep visitors coming back for more? Creating great blog posts won’t get you results unless you have an audience that reads and engages with them. In this article I’ll share six ways to grow your blog audience and turn first-time visitors […]

This post 6 Ways to Grow Your Blog Audience first appeared on Social Media Examiner.
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What is Native Advertising?

What is native advertising? If you were to ask for the most straightforward answer to the question, “What is native advertising?” it would be:

“Native advertising is a form of online advertising that matches the form and function of the platform on which it appears.”

Of course, straightforward isn’t always clear, at least not without some context, so before we get into the why of native advertising, let’s take a look at some examples.

Examples of Native Advertising

Because the purpose of native advertising is to blend into the form and function of the content around it, it can be tricky to spot. Here are some examples of native advertising caught in “the wild”:

Native Search Engine Ads

As you can see, search engine ads are designed to look just like organic search engine results:

Native Twitter Ads

Another form of native advertising is Twitter’s promoted tweets. As you can see below, apart from the “Promoted by” text, a promoted tweet looks just like any other.

Native News Feed Ads

These are promoted posts that show up next to real news in a publisher’s news feed like the one you can see here:

Photo courtesy of BuzzFeed and The Onion

In the language of native advertising, these “news” stories can be “Sponsored” or “Branded”:

• Sponsored – a brand pays a publisher to create the content.
• Branded – the brand creates the content and the publisher well, publishes it.

Native Advertorial Ads

Advertorials look like regular editorial content but are actually created to advertise a brand. These ads are popular both online and off and have been around for a long time. Here’s one popular example: Guinness’ “Guide to” series:

Native Video Ads

Native advertising is not limited to text and images – videos have been increasingly popular as well. The “First & Long” series produced by Nike and published on SBNation is one such example.

Photo courtesy of SBNation

Goals of Native Advertising

Native ads have two primary goals:

1. Positioning a brand image in the consumer’s mind as the “First & Long” video series above positioned Nike; or
2. Driving consumers to take one particular action as in the case of the search engine ads above.

What are the Benefits of Native Advertising?

In our advertising-saturated world, consumers have become very savvy. They recognize advertising from a mile away and, except for Super Bowl ads, avoid it like the plague.

Additionally, consumers tend to view the information imparted within ads skeptically. Since someone is paying to have something printed, said, or acted, who knows how much fact checking went into the project before it went live.

Native advertising was developed to combat both of these issues. By looking like the content around it, native advertising camouflages the marketing messages so that they look and sound like editorial content.

This blending effect makes it more likely that native ads will be perceived as editorial content leading to two powerful benefits:

• A higher likelihood that the ads will be watched, read and listened to; and
• A greater chance that the trust that consumers have in the publisher will “rub-off” on the brand.

Doesn’t That Make Native Advertising Sort of Sketchy?

One of the often-heard criticisms of native advertising is that it was designed to trick consumers into consuming ads and trusting brands by making said ads look like editorial content.

This ethical discussion continues to rage.

The “native advertising is OK” side of the debate goes like this:

• Native advertising is clearly labeled as such using words like “Promoted” and “Sponsored”.
• Native advertising is a win-win-win solution: publishers get revenue, brands get exposure and consumer get educational, entertaining or inspirational content.

The “native advertising is not OK” side of the debate in turn argues that:

• Labels such as “Promoted” and “Sponsored” are easily overlooked and seem to get smaller all the time leading to at best consumer confusion and at worst consumer deception.
• Native advertising is not a win for publishers because “selling out” erodes the trust that consumers have in their editorial content.

Author Aside

Perhaps the key to settling this debate lies in an experience I had early in my career. As a young public relations account executive, I attended a “Meet the Press” event in New York City. Editorial staff from many the major publications were present, each of who took turns telling us how to best pitch our client’s stories to their publication.

At the tail end, a staffer from one of the more radical publications treated us to a rant in which he accused public relations folks of working against the greater good as only those who could afford our services had their stories pitched to the media. He went on to contend that it wasn’t our entire fault however, the media who printed our news releases with no changes or even fact checks where culpable as well.

Ranting aside, I did take one important point away from his talk and that point applies to native advertising: each party needs to be responsible.

• Publishers need to make it clear as day that native ads are paid-for advertisement placements so that consumers are not confused.
• Brands need to provide useful information within their native ads while also making it clear that there’s a commercial goal in play.
• Consumers need to pay attention to what content is editorial and what content is native advertising. If the rules are being followed, native advertising is always marked as such so look for the “Promoted” or “Sponsored” labels.

Is Content Marketing Native Advertising?

You may be thinking that native advertising looks an awful lot like content marketing.

Welcome to the second great native advertising debate.

Both content marketing and native advertising use useful content to position a brand and drive action. However, that’s where the similarity ends.

The best argument for separating the two was made in a Content Marketing Institute post, within which Joe Pulizzi noted:

“I hate to bring out the obvious, but native advertising is ‘pay to play.’ If a brand or individual did not pay for the spot, it’s not native advertising. Although brands may choose to promote their content by paying for visibility, content marketing is not advertising. You do not pay to create or curate content to your own platform. If you are, you should stop that right now.”

Enough said.

Conclusion

Native advertising is hot and growing hotter. As a marketing tactic, it provides two powerful benefits:

• A higher likelihood that the ads will be watched, read and listened to; and
• A greater chance that the trust that consumers have in the publisher will “rub-off” on the brand.

That said, native advertising could have a dark side. If an ad is not clearly marked as such, consumers can be confused and even deceived into believing that the native ad’s content is a objective and trustworthy as regular editorial content.

In the end, if publishers and brands make it their responsibility to draw line clearly between editorial and native ad content and consumers make it their responsibility tolook for and be aware of that line, native advertising is a win-win-win for all three parties.

iPad/Facebook Ad Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "What is Native Advertising?" was first published on Small Business Trends

5 Ways to Standout on Social Media with a Bootstrap Budget

Social media is crowded.

Most of us make an assumption that this makes it much harder to standout, or that to standout you have to spend thousands of dollars.

Our natural tendency is to pay for attention, because that is how we are programmed to think thanks to traditional advertising.

For a minute, let’s imagine that the more noise there is on social media, the EASIER it is to standout – and the cheaper it can be to do so.

That’s crazy right?

Well maybe not.

The more noise there is, the more mediocrity we accept as being normal. If we set ourselves higher standards than everyone else, there is an opportunity to cut through the clutter.

This simple mindset shift, sprinkled with a little creativity and some elbow grease, can help you earn trust and awareness on social media that everyone else only dreams of. And it’s all free

Lets look at 5 ways you can standout on social media that won’t break your budget.

1. Do the unexpected

Be bold!

Brands who claim authority as the top social content producers often earn that title by taking risks that simultaneously resonate with their core values.

For instance, take Taco Bell’s social media blackout campaign. This campaign came unannounced and shocked fans when all social channels went dark alongside the launch of its new mobile app. This not only created a buzz for the brand, but also resulted in 75 percent of stores seeing mobile payments in the first 24 hours alone.

The takeaway is that doing the unexpected can help bring excitement to your brand that will increase exposure, get users talking, and create real ROI. Take the time to weigh the risk vs. reward of a situation and develop a deep understanding of audience behavior so you can surprise fans with confidence and strategic direction.

Image Source: Ad Week

2. Make it fun & human

The best brands standout on social media by building strong connections with their fans through human qualities and relatable messaging.

In today’s social age, there has been a shift in how companies connect with their fans. No longer is it just about strong calls to action, clear benefits, and quality service; instead, consumers now look for deeper connections and content that offers value through entertainment and education.

To be competitive your brand must focus on developing a personality that reflects its core values and delivers content in a relatable and engaging voice.

The key is to make social fun – for you and for your audience.

Here is an example of a back and forth on Twitter between Kit Kat and Oreo.

Oreo’s response…

3. Let customers define your brand

Another way to standout on social media is to let your customers define your brand for you.

• Identify why customers use your brand today and analyze similar brands in your industry.
• Ask your fans to share stories about your products or service to get a real-world understanding of your value.
• Leverage user-generated content to build strong connections and develop brand advocacy.
• Encourage customers to share their ideas, and don’t be afraid to be direct when asking about their expectations.

Communication is key for developing an engaging brand that is built for your audience, by your audience.

Warby Parker embrace this concept below.

Image source: Postano

4. Leverage all content mediums

Content is more than just written articles and blog posts – it is an all-encompassing mix of website copy, blogs, white papers, webinars, pictures, infographics, videos, advertisements, and almost any material you create for audience engagement.

To be seen as brand to watch, and standout on social media, you must make the most of a variety of content mediums that generate high engagement across different channels. Test your delivery, calls to action, and value proposition across different content mediums and channels to identify trends in engagement. Leverage the data you collect to shape your content strategy and bring character to your social presence.

5. Create a seamless experience

Bring social elements to all of your digital content through your website, blog, and sales.

By keeping your social presence top of mind you can keep your audience more engaged. Do this by embedding social elements into your content, including social links on your site, and encouraging fans to engage on different mediums.

Each social space should maintain a unique personality but continue a consistent theme and brand message that elevates your overall user experience.

Conclusion

The social landscape is filled with competitors of all shapes and sizes looking for a piece of the action.

To earn your position as a brand that demands authority and generates quality engagement, align your voice and core values to resonate with what drew your customers to you in the first place.

Create an experience for your customers, not just more noise for the already crowded social channels.

This mindset and a little creativity will help you standout on social media.

Guest author: Chris Moreno is the Director of Social Media at Zog Media.

The post 5 Ways to Standout on Social Media with a Bootstrap Budget appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

Social Media Marketing Trends Gaining Traction in 2015: New Research

Do you track social media marketing trends? Are you wondering whether predictions for 2015 are proving true? In this article you’ll discover findings from recent studies to help you gauge whether your social media marketing choices are on track. #1: Sales Through Social Media Are Rising For years now, marketers have reported their greatest social […]

This post Social Media Marketing Trends Gaining Traction in 2015: New Research first appeared on Social Media Examiner.
Social Media Examiner - Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

Get Some Motherly Insights About Your Website with this New Service

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

And so is the user-friendliness of your website.

Some professional Web designers and developers might find a site incredibly easy to use and straightforward. But the average person might just find a confusing jumble. And even some regular old Internet users might be able to easily navigate websites where others, say, their moms, might have trouble.

That’s why Scotty Allen and Richard Littauer started The User is My Mom, a UX testing service with a twist.

Allen’s mom is the one who reviews each website. You can see her review Twitter in the video below, with a bit of help from her son.

For $75, you can have Allen’s mom take a look at your site and provide you with a write-up and screencast about the user experience.

There are plenty of other UX testing services out there. Some will provide similar screencast or video type reviews. But if you’ve ever had to provide tech support for not-so-tech-savvy parents or relatives, you understand. Having active Web users review a site isn’t always the same as having an older parent who doesn’t spend a lot of time online do so.

The company’s website states:

“My mom tutors high school students and likes quilting and hiking. She yells at her computer, doesn’t know what a twitter is, and struggles to find windows she’s minimized. You should design with your mother in mind. If she can’t understand your site, others will struggle as well.”

So, if your site targets this type of demographic, it could be a service worth looking into. If your site is targeted at Web professionals, online gamers, or others who spend a lot of time online, not so much. You don’t necessarily need to know what Allen’s mom thinks of your site.

But there are plenty of sites out there that could potentially benefit from some motherly insights.

The company is an offshoot of The User is Drunk. That’s a service that provides a UX testing service from an intoxicated Littauer. But the team ensures that the insights from The User is My Mom don’t involve alcohol. They’re even looking for more moms to test websites. There’s a form on the site for anyone interested.

Image: The User is My Mom

This article, "Get Some Motherly Insights About Your Website with this New Service" was first published on Small Business Trends

Why You Should Get Serious About Social Media Automation

Don’t you wish you had a few extra hours in your day?

Your to do list keeps getting longer and longer, and your stress levels are rising. Something needs to get pushed back.

Social media is on the chopping block.

Even though you know it has long term benefits, right now it feels like a pretty low priority. No one will notice if you don’t send out a Tweet today right?

What if there was a way to have an even bigger impact on social media than you are having right now, and do it in less time?

Social media automation enables you to do this.

3 things social media automation will help you achieve;

1. Maintain consistent content

Consistency is key to building a strong following on social media.

Businesses often create accounts on social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, but have trouble achieving consistency. A  survey conducted with 900 social media users identified consistency as one of the most important factors that determines whether people continue to follow a brand.

Businesses that are strapped for time or do not have sufficient manpower to assign a dedicated team for social media management tend to drop off the social media radar.

As a result, they reap little or no benefits from marketing on social media.

Social media automation holds the solution to this problem.

Tools like DrumUp and Feedly help you discover fresh, trending content that you can share to your audience. DrumUp also lets you schedule posts, ensuring that your social accounts stay active even while you’re offline.

Feedly

DrumUp

2. Get control over your strategy

Automation tools give you more control over your social accounts and helps you post more content.

Depending on the tool you choose to use, you can control the kind of content that is shared, the time at which it is posted,  and also the frequency of posting.

Plus you can monitor the level of engagement you’re receiving and modify your strategy to get more Likes, Shares or Retweets.

Since social media automation tools help you develop insight into the nature and extent of readership (or viewership) you’ll also be able to share content in a more targeted manner. More importantly, automation helps you deal with volume – it allows you to post more content on multiple accounts, more frequently, with more ease.

3. Give back your time

The biggest incentive of using social media automation is the amount of time it helps you free up.

Rather than spending hours on end trying to find content that might just get shared and bring your website a few visitors, use tools to identify trending topics and discover relevant content. Using a centralized dashboard to schedule content in advance also saves you the trouble of having to log into each account individually and post the content manually.

But note that saving time does not mean spending no time at all on your social media accounts. That would only be counter-productive. While you can automate some of the tasks associated with social media management, you’ll still have to keep a tab on all your accounts and respond to comments and mentions.

Remember that one of the objectives of using social media marketing is to make your brand more relatable. This can only be achieved by communicating with your audience.

3 tips on how to use social media automation;

1. Keep the schedule flexible

Make sure that you always leave room for timely updates when scheduling posts in advance.

There may be an announcement regarding your business that you’d like to make, or perhaps a piece of important news or viral content that you want to share with your audience. Whatever be the case, know that it’s okay to do ad-hoc posts on top of your automated schedule. Just be careful not to do it too often, since that would defeat the purpose of scheduling posts in the first place.

2. Time it right

If you’re looking to increase engagement on your social accounts, it’s important to first understand when you’re audience is most active. Posting content in this time window will increase the likelihood of it being seen and shared.

One of the things to consider in this regard is the demographic information of your audience. This is particularly relevant if your audience are in different time zones.

Although timing your posts requires a trial and error approach to see which schedule works best with your audience, here are few insights into audience behavior on Facebook and Twitter.

• Engagement on Facebook is at its peak on Thursday and Fridays.
• To see an increase in the number of times a post is shared, schedule it at 1pm.
• While Tweets by B2B businesses get more engagement between Monday and Friday, B2C businesses see higher rates of engagement on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays.
• Twitter users are 181 percent more likely to be logged in while they are commuting.

3. Use analytics

Once you’ve successfully established a steady presence on your chosen social media platforms, it’s time to measure how your accounts are performing.

Are they taking you closer to the goal you set for your business?

There are several social media analytics tools that allow you to measure the performance of your posts. While the number of views a post gets is a good indicator of your reach, there’s little meaning in paying attention to it if what you’re really looking for is more sales. So get clear on what metrics are important to you in relation to your business goals.

The metrics you choose to track may vary based on the objective of your efforts, but can be broadly classified into four categories – Consumption Metrics, Sharing Metrics, Lead Generation Metrics and Sales Metrics.

Using analytics helps you understand what works, and what doesn’t for your business. It gives you valuable knowledge that can be used to improve your social media marketing strategy.

Conclusion

These are the key points from this article;

• Social media automation is a good idea, particularly for businesses with multiple accounts
• Automation helps you achieve consistency in your social media marketing efforts
• It gives you greater control over the content you share, and how you share it
• It helps you save time, which you can then use to grow your business
• Post schedules must be flexible and ad-hoc posts are important, especially if they’re time-sensitive
• Posting content at a time when your audience is online increases the likelihood of it being viewed and shared
• Analytics help you understand what works and what doesn’t for your business

What automation tools do you use?

Guest Author: Jessica has a keen interest in social media and content marketing, and writes extensively about it. She represents Godot Media, a leading content marketing firm that also offer blog writing services. 

The post Why You Should Get Serious About Social Media Automation appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

5 Effective Positioning Techniques for the Non-Salesy Entrepreneur

It just happened again.

Someone asked you about your business and once again, you didn’t have a compelling answer for them. You quickly tried to remember your “elevator pitch” that you’d practiced for hours in front of the mirror, but it didn’t work. The best you could do was just stammer out a weak description of the product or service your company offers.

We’ve all been there.

Every entrepreneur has completely botched it when it was time to pitch their company. It’s normal, especially for people who do not have a background in sales.

It’s likely that you read tons of articles in an effort to figure out the perfect way to describe your company.

But what if you didn’t have to? What if there were practical and effective techniques you could utilize to make your introduction more effective?

When trying to sell your brand, it’s better to understand effective sales techniques rather than just memorize a script. When you take the time to learn these techniques, you will introduce your company in a way that will make your company irresistible.

If you master the techniques in this post, you will find it easier to:

• Give a persuasive introduction to your company.
• Reinforce your branding throughout the conversation.
• Inhabit a niche in your prospect’s mind.
• Get them interested in your offerings.

These are techniques that successful salespeople use to charm their customers and get them to buy. They will also work for you!

Don’t Tell Them What You Do, Tell Them Who You Are

When you’re introducing your business, it’s not time to talk about the products or services that your company offers. Chances are, your prospect already knows what services you provide.

Instead, you need to let them know who you are, and you need to do it in a way that differentiates you from your competitors. The last thing you want to do is introduce your company as another “me too” brand.

Here’s an example:

If your business sells fishing equipment, don’t just tell them that you’re a fishing equipment provider. Tell them you’re the premier fishing equipment supplier in your locale. Or you could tell them that your company specializes in providing quality equipment specifically for bass fishermen.

Find a way to set yourself apart from your competition. Don’t tell them what you do, tell them who you are.

Focus On Outcomes

When positioning your company, it’s important to remember that it’s the outcomes your services provide that are important, not the services themselves. Your prospects only care about the services you provide when they know what these services will do for them. This is why it’s important to focus on the benefits your services offer.

If you have a management consulting firm, you don’t want to just talk about the consulting services you provide. Talk about the fact that your services help managers increase efficiency and make their teams more profitable.

Focusing on the outcomes of your services will help your prospects understand why they need them.

Give Them Evidence

Your claims, while certainly compelling, will not be able to stand on their own. Back them up with some evidence.

No, this doesn’t mean you need to show them all of the data and analytics that prove that your services work. It just means making a short statement about things your company has done.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. Here’s some examples:

• We helped over 1,000 businesses optimize their IT procurement programs.
• My last client experienced a 50 percent increase in sales.
• We helped a client reduce their costs by $500,000 a month.

Not too hard, right? A quick example of the results your product or service has produced can strengthen your positioning.

Tell Them What You Stand For

Nowadays, consumers want to know what a brand stands for. You have to be about more than just your products or services.

Your brand has to have an actual personality. Yes, it is important to have a unique selling proposition, but it’s even more important to have a purpose.

A great example of this is Dell. Through their YouthConnect program, they provide technology education to kids in emerging countries. They don’t just stand for selling computers, they stand for helping disadvantaged children understand technology and how it can benefit their lives.

If your company is going to attract customers, you need to stand for something they can believe in. What problems can your product or service solve? When you identify your brand’s purpose, you can show your company’s human side. This will make it easier for prospects to relate to you.

Don’t Just Say It Once

When it comes to positioning, repetition is key. If you only use these techniques once, don’t expect the prospect to remember it. You have to reaffirm your position in each interaction.

Whenever there’s an opportunity in a conversation to reinforce your position, take the opportunity! Just make sure you do it in a way that isn’t awkward.

If the prospect makes a statement that is favorable to your position, use it.  In every interaction you have with your prospect, you should look for areas where you can reaffirm your position.

If the prospect starts talking about an issue they are having that your services could solve, it might be a good time to provide some evidence of how you have solved the same problem. You could also take the opportunity to reaffirm the outcome that solving this problem will provide.

Conclusion

For the non-salesy entrepreneur, the idea of being persuasive can be daunting. Many are intimidated by the prospect of having to influence others. However, it doesn’t have to be scary.

The same techniques that salespeople use can work for you. Effective positioning of your company will help you set the tone for your interactions with your prospects. If you do this right, you will impress your prospect and make it easier to get them to say “yes.”

Salesman Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "5 Effective Positioning Techniques for the Non-Salesy Entrepreneur" was first published on Small Business Trends

2015 Social Media Marketing Industry Report

Do you wonder how your peers are using social media? Wondering if you should focus on Pinterest, Instagram or SlideShare? Thinking of getting into podcasting? In our seventh annual social media study, more than 3700 marketers reveal where they focus their social media activities. This industry report also shows you which social tactics are most […]

This post 2015 Social Media Marketing Industry Report first appeared on Social Media Examiner.
Social Media Examiner - Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

Increase Site Traffic with a Website Card on Twitter

We don’t always talk about Twitter much on this blog, particularly since we focus on Facebook Ads, but Twitter itself is an important social media platform (one we recommend all businesses have) that increases exposure and potentially traffic to your site.

Twitter as a marketing platform offers a great deal of value. The very nature of Twitter makes it a natural environment for posts to get shared frequently, potentially even going viral, and creating a great deal of awareness about your brand.

Twitter Ads has been working hard to improve their platform to be more competitive with Facebook Ads, too. They’ve recently added Website Cards as another improvement to their ad platform, giving businesses another tool they can utilize. For businesses that use Twitter Ads, it’s a great feature, and it’s one that you should consider testing.

What is a Website Card on Twitter?

A website card on twitter is a new tool Twitter recently released with the goal of helping users to connect with your business and increase traffic to your site, increasing conversions in turn. It is part of their paid ad platform, and it allows you to give users more context and information about your site on your Twitter Ad campaigns.

The website card is made up of an image, a button, and a link to your site. Each of these components are a link to your site, so if users click anywhere on it, they’re automatically taken there. The idea is to give users more information about your business, and thus more motivation to click to it and increase your site traffic.

By Twitter’s own statistics, which yes, may be a touch biased, Website Cards have been shown to drive 43% more engagement to your main website off of Twitter. Even if most users don’t get that massive boost, even a partial boost is one to take a look at, and at least worth testing out.

Twitter Ads can be more expensive than Facebook Ads, and often are. However, their ads also have higher click-through rates, so if you’re really seeking to boost traffic to your site, a website card on Twitter could be the way to go.

Now that we know what this tool is, we can take a look at how to set up a Website Card on Twitter Ads to start sending more traffic to your website….

How To Set It Up        

To set up a Website Card on Twitter, you have to run a Twitter Ad campaign with the objective being to increase website traffic or conversions.

In the section of ad creation where you compose your Tweet, you have the option to create a website card. You’ll enter in your website URL, an image, a headline, and a call to action.

A great benefit to the Website Card tool is the great variety of Call to Actions you can choose from, which offers consistently more options than Facebook’s call to action button.

This allows you to add extra content to catch the attention of users and increase those clicks, sometimes boosting engagement but most often increasing website traffic to your site.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, any tool you can use to increase traffic to your website is a good thing—especially if it’s easy to use and cost effective. Considering Twitter Ad’s already high ratio of click-through rates, adding another tool onto your campaign to increase clicks to your site can be a great way to get that extra boost of traffic that you need.

What do you think about Twitter Ads? Have you used their Website Card feature yet? Leave us a comment and let us know what you think!

We’ve got our Beginner’s Guide to Twitter coming soon, giving you all the information you need to

The post Increase Site Traffic with a Website Card on Twitter appeared first on Ryan Shaw - Your Online Marketing Coach.

Boost Loyalty with Perks for Repeat Customer

Do you have a customer loyalty program? If not, you’re missing out — because loyalty programs drive sales. Sixty-three percent of customers in the 2015 Loyalty Report say a loyalty program makes their relationships with a brand better, and 34 percent say they wouldn’t be loyal to a brand without a loyalty program. In addition, 64 percent modify the brands they buy, and 76 percent modify when and where they buy, in order to maximize their loyalty program benefits.

So what makes for a successful loyalty program? The top criteria for customer satisfaction include:

• How appealing the program rewards are,
• How easy the rewards are to redeem,
• The amount accumulated per $1 spent,
• Being able to build up meaningful rewards in a timely manner, and
• Having different options for how rewards/benefits can be earned.

Customers also want loyalty programs to be simple, easy to understand and fun to use.

What about mobility as part of loyalty programs?

The data is inconclusive here — while about half the respondents say they would like to engage with loyalty programs through a mobile device, just 12 percent of them have actually downloaded a mobile loyalty program app to do so.

However, there are a few ways in which loyalty programs are falling short — not for customers, but for brands. For instance, only 49 percent of consumers report that joining a loyalty program leads them to spend more with the brand.

That means you might be throwing away money on a loyalty program that isn’t bringing in enough financial returns.

In addition, almost half (44 percent) of consumers polled agree that “… it would be easy to replace the program with a competitor’s program.” In other words, loyalty programs aren’t differentiating themselves enough from the competition.

Interestingly, the survey notes that some of America’s most popular brands don’t have a formal loyalty program, but achieve many of the same goals without one. By focusing not solely on transactions, but also on treating customers as individuals, making them feel valued and providing personalized experiences, they build a relationship that makes customers willing to pay more for and be loyal to a brand.

In other words, whether you use technology or just plain old human interaction, loyalty is all about creating a human connection.

Republished by permission. Original here.

Repeat Customer Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "Boost Loyalty with Perks for Repeat Customer" was first published on Small Business Trends

9 Tips for Becoming a Social Media Influencer

Do you want people to come to you for social media advice? Are you trying to become a social media influencer? Publishing on social media is a great way to share expert knowledge and develop your influencer status. In this article I’ll share nine tips that can help you become a social media influencer. #1: […]

This post 9 Tips for Becoming a Social Media Influencer first appeared on Social Media Examiner.
Social Media Examiner - Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

How to Become a Master Presenter and Rock Your Next Speech

Ruth Sherman prepares CEOs, Oscar-winning celebrities and entrepreneurs for public speaking and video opportunities. She recently spoke with Small Business Trends in an exclusive interview regarding the art of giving a great speech, whether live or as a video presentation.

Many tend to avoid public speaking, mainly out of fear. However, this is something the great public speakers seek to benefit from rather than eliminate. The ability to give great speeches can help you thrive in other important areas of business, Sherman believes.

“I look at it as a shortcut to sales, to recognition,” she told Small Business Trends. “No matter how long you’ve been in business, how much you love what you do, how experienced you are, if you cannot command the platform or the video camera these days, you and your business will be left behind.”

“You will continue to be underpaid, unrecognized and you will continue to struggle to labor to attract the highest-paying customers. These skills eliminate all those obstacles more than anything else,” Sherman added.

There are two general schools of thought regarding giving a speech: write out word-for-word what you plan to say or sketch an outline, perhaps using cue cards.

“My preference is don’t read verbatim unless you know how to write for the ear,” Sherman said. Professional writers can write in a conversational tone for the ear. But you don’t want to sound like you are reading a speech.

Today, it is more important than ever to be able to speak in a conversational tone, she added.

Giving an excellent speech requires an investment of time and effort. This is where many — especially busy, high-level executive types — typically fall down.

“It takes work to get through a great speech,” Sherman said. “It takes work to eliminate obstacles. You have to decide: are you going to take the time that is necessary to rehearse your speech?”

How precisely do you rehearse? There is only one way, Sherman said.

“You have to say it out loud,” she explained. “In your head doesn’t count. We’re all very eloquent in our own heads. We imagine ourselves walking up to the platform and being fabulous, being wonderful. We don’t anticipate being a flop.”

Start with a Bang

The award-acceptance speech is prominent in the business world. And while there are plenty of great ways to give such a speech, there is one major way not to give one.

Never start with a thank you list, Sherman warned. Also, drop the “boilerplate,” the obligatory opening remarks you hear before every clichéd, sleep-inducing long-winded speech.

Instead, start with a bang, Sherman said.

She explains One of her clients, an attorney who handles trusts, was preparing to give a speech for a philanthropy award she was going to receive at an upcoming event.

She worked with Sherman to prepare for her speech.

“She said what everyone always says: ‘I don’t have anything to say — it’s all been said before and I’m not funny,’” Sherman explained. Instead, Sherman sat down with the woman to discuss what was going on in the attorney’s life and business, always fertile areas to mine when preparing a speech.

Turns out, the young attorney revealed that a Victoria’s Secret executive also was receiving an award at the same event. And the attorney had a Victoria’s Secret-related anecdote she’d been holding onto for some 20 years.

For their honeymoon the attorney’s new husband had rented out the upper floor of a former sugar plantation on Barbados. The couple checked in at night.

The next morning the two awoke to discover that a bevy of Victoria’s Secret supermodels had rented out the bottom floor.

When Sherman learned this, she and the attorney discussed including the anecdote in the speech, which eventually included the punch line that the attorney had been waiting ever since her honeymoon to “thank” Victoria’s Secret.

“This is a technique. And she was hilarious,” Sherman recalled. “When she went up there, she didn’t say, ‘thank you, I appreciate it,’ she just launched into her story.  She was the only one who did that. She started off with a bang and people are still talking about it.”

Embrace Your Stage Fright

“Everyone gets nervous,” Sherman said. “Even Oscar-winning clients of mine.”

This should be viewed as simply a signal that the speech is important to you and that you want to do it well.

The trick, Sherman said, is knowing to use your stage fright by doing all the work to prepare yourself ahead of time. (And, yes, this includes saying the speech out loud.)

“The adrenaline rush should make you more interesting, exciting and engaging to watch,” Sherman added.

It also can help you to handle any of a variety of things that can go wrong during a speech, such as the microphone suddenly cutting off or you dropping your notes on stage.

“Things like that will happen, but you want to be calm. You don’t want stage fright to work against you,” she said.

It’s similar to the fight or flight autonomic response.

“Just like someone physically fit can better flee from danger, someone prepared, who did the work and who has experience saying the speech out loud is much better able to weather the inevitable problems,” Sherman explained.

How To Give a TED Talk

TED has certainly raised the bar for speech making. At the same time, it has also fueled interest in public speaking in general.

“They are really smart and creative and have built excitement around public speaking,” Sherman explained. “Doing a TED talk is a badge of honor.”

The key to delivering one, if you ever get the opportunity, is to make sure you’re using a conversational tone.

“The audience is young, media- and tech-savvy people who, if you don’t entertain them, will turn to their smart phones,” Sherman said. “They are a challenge, but this can be done.”

TED talks are limited to 18 minutes at the most, which is another challenge.

“That is not a lot of time for a really impactful talk,” Sherman admitted. “It takes real art and talent to deliver an 18-minute speech that is effective. It’s easier to give a long speech than a short one.”

In this kind of talk, story is important.

“How do you create a narrative arc in 18 minutes? It’s not easy to do. There’s a lot of editing going on. You have to throw out lines that you might love,” Sherman explains.

Brevity is Key in Video Presentations

Video presentations are another important trend and are usually done by the entrepreneur or small business owner to be embedded on a blog or website

“Instead of writing an article I will shoot a video of me talking about a topic,” Sherman said, referring to her own blogging strategy.

The thing to remember when crafting—and rehearsing out loud—a video speech is people generally speak at a rate of 140 words per minute. Make sure you aren’t talking too rapidly. And these videos should not be more than two minutes — or 280 words — in duration.

Ideally, Web videos should run for one to 1 1/2 minutes.

Keeping videos short and compact is important, especially when one is new to crafting this form of presentation. And the reason is simple:

“Most viewers are going to click off at about one minute and a half unless you really grab them,” Sherman explains.

Properly Stage Your Video

“Video is not only what you say but how you look when you say it,” Sherman said. “You want to look good. And the way you look should be consistent with your brand.”

One key factor to consider when shooting a video presentation is the way you present yourself, Sherman said.

First off, there is the backdrop to consider. You wouldn’t want to take video of yourself standing in front of your unmade bed, for example.

You can stand in front of a clear wall, Sherman said. Hang a painting behind you or place a stack of books on the floor. You can put a vase of flowers on a step stool, behind you.

Sherman learned a big lesson about the importance of staging when she published her first video presentation on her website some five years ago.

She billed herself as the speaker of the Hollywood stars — and got criticism from a meticulous, tough first audience.

“I got feedback from someone in the film industry who said ‘You look like you were reading. And your bookshelves were sagging,’” Sherman said.

Resist Using a Green Screen

“If you’re tech savvy, you can do green screen for your backdrop,” Sherman said, adding that you can purchase various rudimentary editing software to do this.

Green screen is the common term for the process of superimposing yourself onto a virtual background, such as a desert oasis. You can even give your video talk standing against an animated backdrop.

Apps are even available, some free of charge. Amazon.com’s Best Green Screen app, for example, offers more than 1,800 Green Screen effects, the developer claims.

But Sherman said she is not a fan of using green screen, in general.

“They look pretty awful. I just hate the way people look silhouetted, unless it is professionally done,” she explained.

Use a Teleprompter when necessary

Using a teleprompter certainly helps those not gifted with great fluency. These too are available as apps for your smartphone.

Teleprompter Pro Lite is one example of such an app. It is also available free of charge in the iTunes store, though the $7 upgrade seems to be preferred based on reviews, sje said.

These Teleprompters often provide features including the ability to write and store multiple scripts. You usually can control the speed of the text lines, the type font and text size.

Some apps even give the impression you are looking into the camera, Sherman said. And that’s reason enough to use them.

Audio Quality Beats Video Quality Every Time

When you post a video presentation on your website, your audience must be able to hear you. In fact, Sherman says it’s often more important for your audience to hear than to see.

“If you have something to say, people will listen to you unless the sound is bad,” she added.

Watch Your Lighting

This said, your appearance in videos is still important.

Video is unforgiving. This is especially so with HD, high-definition.

In HD video, a viewer can clearly see whether a single hair strand is pointing upward. Even the pores of the skin on your face can be clearly visible.

“Lighting and makeup are really the way that many people look so good,” Sherman said

The best light of all is sunlight. “Position your webcam in front of a window,” she explained.

You can also purchase any of a vast array of lights also, ranging from the inexpensive to the premium-priced.

Florescent lights and LED lights, which are compact and adjustable, both are good choices.

Sherman personally prefers a Ring Light. Decent ones are available for around $200 or less.

Video Offers Major Competitive Advantage

Possibly the most important advantage of using video for presentations is simply this. Very few others are doing it!

“It is such a fantastic opportunity for someone ready to take the lead. To get good at this is a competitive advantage,” Sherman said.

Mastering the art of video presentations, is basically the result of taking small practice steps. Sherman recommends small businesspeople book local speaking engagements and do lots of video presentations. The accumulation of experience will make you a master.

Public Speaking Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "How to Become a Master Presenter and Rock Your Next Speech" was first published on Small Business Trends