Website Content: Your Biggest Sales Driver

If you have a small business or startup, you're probably an all-in-one shipper, customer representative, and web developer. While you want a flashy website with video, audio, and all sorts of other material, marketing research finds quality website content drives sales and is the biggest factor affecting online traffic.

Quality Website Content Drives Sales

Ninety-two percent of marketers report that content creation is either “very” or “somewhat” effective for search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing love high-quality content. In fact, their newest algorithms direct web surfers to the most relevant, high-quality websites. Superior, frequently updated content equals higher rankings on search engines.

Posting relevant information in the form of blogs, articles, or whitepapers can help develop closer customer relationships. The relevant information you're providing gives them your perspective as an industry expert. Customers may be more willing to do business with you because you're a thought leader who provides valuable content.

Knowing Your Audience

Before we begin any conversation on the types of content to put on your webpage, know your audience. You can have all the content in the world, but if you're missing your target audience, it's not going to have the desired results.

First, determine who your high-value customers are. This can help you find a persona for your website and determine how to target an audience. For example, if research shows that your target customers are 20-something millennials, retirement villages in Florida aren't going to be relevant. You may have to design your site with a minimalist aesthetic and post about the latest technological trends.

Types of Quality Website Content That Drives Sales

Once we establish a target audience, then we can talk about types of content:

• Think of each blog as an opportunity to provide your audience with relevant information and a way to subtly work in your sales pitch. They also provide an excellent opportunity to boost organic search rankings.

• Products and services. When discussing your product or service on your site, provide enough information to generate interest. Then, insert a clear, compelling CTA.

• Show the audience your business is growing. Share interesting content, and then position your business in the subject matter. It's an opportunity to look like the industry expert and insert your sales pitch.

• Social media. Do you want a successful social media presence? Then have interesting, fresh content with a mix of entertaining and serious material. This content then becomes sharable content, and those shares boost brand awareness.

Simple Tips for Good Web Copy

• Web surfers are usually impatient. Give them just enough to satisfy them, and then provide a clear directive (such as a contact form) if they want to know more.

• Let your content create a smooth transition from the conversation you're having with the customer to the CTA.

• Don't misspell or use bad grammar. This hurts your credibility.

• Let your content have energetic and descriptive words. Active writing engages your audience.

• Do your homework. Use analytic tools to research what people want to know more about, and then write on these topics. Cater to your customer with your content.

As a new small business, realize the biggest key to your success online is your content. You don't need a huge budget to create quality content. High-quality website content drives sales and gives you a great SEO boost. Know your audience, and see that every blog post or news article is just another opportunity to educate and subtly sell to your audience.

 

Writing Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "Website Content: Your Biggest Sales Driver" was first published on Small Business Trends

7 Top Secret Ways To Connect With Influencers and A-Listers

One of the biggest mistakes we make with online marketing is relying on a single traffic source…

Where does all your website traffic come from?

Social media, search engines, ad campaigns, referral traffic…

Is your traffic evenly distributed across all of these mediums?

It's dangerous to focus on one platform to promote your content and drive traffic. Look what happened when Google changed the game…

To this guy.

And this guy.

And this guy.

The same thing happened when Facebook decreased organic reach and decided to focus on “paying to play”.

It's better to get even amounts of traffic from several different sources, than one huge source. It diversifies the risk and helps your traffic levels stay consistent.

Influencer marketing is a great way to build a diversified traffic portfolio, because influencers have an effect on multiple traffic channels.

The cool thing is that if you connect really well with influencers, you'll get traffic from search engines and other platforms as well.

Instead of chasing traffic, you should let it chase you. How?

Don't see influencers as an opportunity for backlinks, likes or re-tweets – see them as an opportunity to connect and become their friend!

Let's dive into the tactics that will help.

To bring a little weight to this and show that I have experience, check out this video that was made about me by a legend in the social media field.

This guy has a email list of almost half a million people, he runs the largest social media conference in the world, and he's making a video about me? Yup, he sure did, but how did I get this busy guy to do this for me?

Below are seven ways people don't usually connect with influencers, that I used to get results exactly like this.

These are all methods I use to connect and stay connected with the best. The methods are working, but you must keep trying and never give up. Some of these methods are new and some are old, but the thing is that they're hardly being used. That's the path you want to take to stand out, do something different.

For more information on how I got results like this: Get My Free Short Email Course

Let's start…

1. Build a connection spreadSheet

A great starting point is to list out your contacts, the people you think are important for building your brand. Do a “memory dump” into an excel sheet and start building from there.

I know this can be hard at first, but you want to type these down and keep track of everyone. These people need to stay in your loop.

This is greater than your email list, these are the people who help build your email list. Yes, your email list is your tribe, but without the power circles, influencers and networks, you wouldn't have a tribe.

Staying in the loop with these guys helps keep the traffic, shares, and revenue coming. That's why you keep coming back to this spreadsheet and keep up with these names. By not doing this, it could mean a lost connection, and you definitely don't want that.

Within the list you should include:

1. Their name


2. Their email


3. Their website


4. Their Twitter handle


5. Last time you've contacted them


6. Your status with them. For example: Close, acquainted, cold, etc.

2. Leverage snapchat

There are over 100 million users on Snapchat according to this post. That's 1/10 as saturated as Facebook, which gives you room to be seen. Less saturation means more engagement. More engagement means higher chances of connecting with influencers.

Here's how…

I follow A-listers, watch them act crazy, then I send them a message and do it regularly.

They reply back at this point, because Snapchat isn't flooded with noise (yet). From there you can build a connection.

Where else can you send a video to someone and actually be seen by a major influencer? Within minutes on top of that.

I've actually used this tool to help me build connections with some very influential people. However I understand this place will be flooded and won't be as powerful very soon.

Platforms at their youngest stages do better when it comes to connecting.

So this is what this looks like in strategy mode:

1. Find bloggers/influencers who use Snapchat


2. Open your Snapchat and watch them


3. When you see something interesting, comment and tell them your thoughts


4. Do this regularly. That's the secret, stay consistent


5. Then after a while go for the point of action and see how they react


6. The biggest thing is to become a familiar name

3. Mention them when you guest post on big blogs

I wanted to interview a legend (Neil Patel) on my marketing podcast. He's not an easy guy to get a hold of and was looking for a way to persuade him to get on.

Me being a blogger, I naturally use his blog posts as resources within some big blog articles. I sent him an email and told him what I wanted, how I was a fan, and how I mentioned his articles in many places. Within a few minutes I had him scheduled for that weekend to do an interview.

At this point I realized how powerful this method was. It's like a snowball effect, where one mention results in another mention and so on.

Doing this gives you something to email them about. It's like presenting a gift to them, and they'll definitely love you for it. It gives you a reason to connect and a way to build your power circle.

Mention 3-5 influencers per article and soon you'll be connecting to so many at a swift rate.

So this is what this looks like in strategy mode:

1. Find major blogs to be featured on


2. Outreach to 10-20 major blogs


3. Land just one of those blogs


4. Write an epic article


5. Mention 3-5 bloggers within that article


6. Get published


7. Email those bloggers


8. Get featured on their blogs


9. Repeat steps 5-9

4. Create a SlideShare presentation all about them.

When you're famous, rich, and at the top there's nothing more important to know than to know you left your mark.

To know that you've inspired millions. It's breathtaking really.

If you can demonstrate the impact influencers have made on Slideshare, Prezi or anything creative like this, be ready for them to share this and connect with you.

This is the “Bryan Harris” effect. It's how he built Video Fruit, by writing, and sharing his success stories with those who inspired it. They bring him out as a trophy in front of thousands and see people come to love Bryan.

I've also used this to be featured on Smart Passive Income. However, in my situation, I wrote about how Pat's style of email marketing increased his email rates (you can read that here). Then I based it on a case study I built and Pat loved it. He replied to my email within minutes.

So this is what this looks like in strategy mode:

1. Find one influencer who you really love


2. Make sure their audience is huge


3. Study their life and major accomplishments


4. Turn their story into a creative Slideshare, presentation, blogpost etc.


5. Make it really entertaining


6. Reach out with Twitter and email


7. Watch and see what happens

Here's one done about Seth Godin:

15 Motivational Marketing Quotes from Seth Godin from InsightSquared

5. Send them a video

I did an interview with another legend and he said the #1 thing people didn't do, that he liked, was send him a short video in an email.

Within the video you connect with the influencer and convince them to do XYZ.

Snapchat is great with this, however, not everyone has Snapchat. So uploading a video and sending the link to an influencer is the other best way. Within the video, make it creative, quick, and straight to the point. Also, how does this help the influencer? If it doesn't, implement that before sending.

You must learn the deal process, why will this influencer help you, what do they get out of this? It's called the art of the deal.

So this is what this looks like in strategy mode:

1. Figure out what you're proposing. How does this benefit them?


2. Then think creatively. How can you keep their attention for 3-4 minutes?


3. Maybe do a song, a poem, an action clip, or just you talking


4. Tell them what they've done for you. Confirm their content is working


5. Offer your proposal at the end

6. Interview them

Connections bring swinging doors before us, introducing us to new galaxies we have never seen before. Connections are the hinges to new opportunities.

That's why I started a podcast. If nothing else, I built connections and I make them look good. That's all that matters to me. If you do this with a 100 legends a year and you'll be growing like fire. That's why I took this route and it's definitely helped me build the network.

So this is what this looks like in strategy mode:

1. Look for an influencer you'd love to speak to


2. Use the above methods to connect with them


3. Get them on your podcast or interview them for some other reason


4. Build a stronger relationship (podcasts do that)


5. Publish and email the influencer when it's out


6. Stay connected

7. Implement the “Saturation Effect”

After you do all these things and do them consistently, you'll be achieving what I call the “Saturation Effect”.

Soon, you'll be famous in their mind. They'll be thinking about you because you're a connecting ninja. You do something 99% of people don't do. You follow up and you do it like a pro. You're not annoying, but you're giving.

Very few have this gift and you're sticking out to these influencers. Many go hard for a few weeks (or days) and just give up. The “long-termers” keep going, and they give everything they've got. This is how you get planted deep within the minds of these legends, and that's exactly what you want. And soon, you'll be the very influencer you've always looked up to!

To Learn More About How To Connect With Influencers, Join My Free Email Course

Guest Author: Luke Guy is THE SEO guy who doesn't focus on backlinks alone. Instead he focuses on connections and uses this ability to rank well among search engines while using his strategies. Luke also loves getting emails from his fans and looks forward to them everyday. Consider contacting him anytime.

The post 7 Top Secret Ways To Connect With Influencers and A-Listers appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

5 Instagram Changes: What Marketers Need to Know

Are you up to date with the latest Instagram changes? Want to know what the changes mean for marketers? In addition to a brand-new logo, Instagram has rolled out updates to its ad products, video features, and news feed algorithm. In this article, you'll discover how the most recent Instagram changes can affect your marketing. [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

5 Tips for Better Facebook Live Broadcasts

Thinking of going live on Facebook? Wondering how to get the most out of your Facebook Live broadcast? With Facebook Live, you can show your expertise in real time, take people behind the scenes, and much more. In this article, you'll discover five tips to succeed with your next Facebook Live broadcast. #1: Promote Before [...]

This post 5 Tips for Better Facebook Live Broadcasts first appeared on .

- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

6 Simple Tricks To Make More Money From Your Blog

Are you getting traffic to your blog, but still struggling to make a good income?

Blogging is a great career option but only if you do it the right way. Of course, everything starts with providing great content to your readers and steadily growing your traffic. Once you have decent traffic to your blog and a loyal audience, it's time to focus on the revenue.

You may have heard a lot of people say that your blog revenue is directly proportional to the traffic coming in, but that's not really true. It's all about executing the money-making ideas in the right way.

So here are six marketing tips to make more money from your blog:

1. Place your ads better

Placing ads on your website is not enough, you have to place ads where your readers are more likely to click on them.

Before placing an advertisement, ask yourself why the readers are here and where exactly you should place the ads so that they don't hamper the user experience and yet, are starkly visible.

Here are a few ideas for ad placement for a better click-through-rate:

• Sidebar banner


• Above a blog post title


• Right below the post title


• Between different sections of your post


• At the end of your post, above the author bio

But, of course, every website is different, and that is why I would recommend checking your website's heat map which could tell you where exactly your users tend to click more, and that is where you should place the majority of your ads.

I also recommend checking Google's ad placement policies at regular intervals so you can stay on top of any changes. Also, it's in Google's best interests to make sure the user experience isn't affected, so you won't have to worry about bothering your readers either if you follow their guidelines.

Here is an image that depicts the best places to put ads, the darker the orange the better the placement;

Image Source: Shout Me Loud

2. Go beyond AdSense

Yes, Google AdSense generates the most intuitive ads for your readers, since Google already knows what the readers have been searching and surfing. But, with a minimum payout threshold of $100 and a difficult approval process, it doesn't hurt to look at some other options as well.

Here a few ad platforms you should definitely consider (all of them work alongside AdSense):

Infolinks

With in-text and in-frame ads, Infolinks can monetize your blog in a completely different way. Getting approval on Infolinks is extremely easy and there is a minimum payout of $50 through PayPal.

BuySellAds

This is one of the premier ad platforms which gets you direct advertisements from clients and takes a 25% commission charge. With a minimum payout of $20, the only downside to BuySellAds is that it's not that easy to get approved.

Viglink

What Viglink does is, it monetizes your outbound links. It turns your ordinary links into affiliate links, so when a reader clicks on your link and buys something, you get a commission through it. This brings the power of affiliate marketing to natural link building.

3. Explore native languages

With so many languages in the world, why should you only focus on English? Google AdSense now supports over 35 languages, and this gives you no reason to ignore native languages.

While English might be one of the most popular languages on the internet, there is an array of readers looking for blogs in their regional languages and you can be the first few to exploit that market.

I launched my blog's Hindi version, ShoutMeHindi, back in June 2015 and I've been getting great feedback ever since.

You don't need to make it exclusively in your local language – you can mix and match English terms, as people tend to be familiar with the digital marketing terminology in English.

4. Collaborate with brands for sponsored posts and reviews

This is the quickest way to earn some good cash, but at the same time, you have to be very cautious about it.

Sponsored posts are where you talk about a product in general, or you try to incorporate something associated with the product naturally into your content. Sponsored reviews are when the company pays you to write reviews about their products.

Sponsored posts should only be done when you can talk about products or brands that your readers would be interested in. I don't need to tell you that when you attempt blatant advertising, readers' trust evaporates.

Now, sponsored reviews are a very sensitive ground. You might be getting paid by the company, but you don't have to completely sell the product. It's important to be unbiased and write your honest thoughts about the products.

Test the product extensively, and then list down all the pros and cons. Be sure to let the company know beforehand that you would be writing an honest review.

To connect with brands, you can create a media kit explaining what advertisers can expect from sponsored posts and reviews and how much you would be charging them.

Suggested networks;

• Famebit (Popular among Youtubers but not limited to it)


• Tapinfluence


• Fango.me


• Blogmint (Popular brand to get sponsored posts for blogs & social media channels.)

5. Implement affiliate programs

Affiliate marketing, in a nutshell, is where you refer your readers a product and when they buy it through your recommendation, you get a commission out of it.

Our very own Jeff described affiliate marketing as one of the top ways to make money by blogging in 2016. Every affiliate program has a different commission rate and minimum payout. But the reason why it's so popular among bloggers is because you only have to set it up once and you can get paid from all your posts, whether they are old or new.

Even the traffic doesn't matter so much, because it all depends upon the readers buying products through your recommendation.

There are many different kinds of affiliate programs available, and you can select the ones that relate the most to your blog niche.

6. Write an impressive Ebook

One of the best ways to get revenue from your blog is by developing premium content for your readers. Creating ebooks are cheap, and they also make you a niche expert, which can drive in more business later.

You can also build up your subscriber list with an ebook by providing the book – or the first few chapters, depending on your inclination and the worth of the information – free of charge for every subscriber.

But, there is a burning question plaguing every blogger who creates an ebook – should you sell it on your blog or Amazon?

Well, the answer is not as simple as you would want it to be. To make the right decision, you should definitely check out this post by Jeff.

Your turn

Now that you have some amazing tips for how to make more money from your blog, it's your turn to implement them. Remember that what might not work for some, might work for you. You need to be patient, monitor your analytics and keep a track of all the revenue being generated by every method.

What are the techniques you currently use to increase blog revenue? Please share in the comments.

Guest Author: Harsh Agrawal, a blog scientist and CEO of ShoutDreams Media, started blogging in 2008 and since then has written numerous posts on Blogging, SEO, Social media, Technology, Affiliate Marketing and more. He has also partnered with various international companies, helping them promote their online businesses. His blog ShoutMeLoud has more than 832K subscribers and receives 1 million Pageviews per month.

The post 6 Simple Tricks To Make More Money From Your Blog appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

10 Tips to Boost Your Content Marketing

Content marketing can be a great tool for small businesses to better communicate with customers. But you can't expect to just create a blog or social media post and have customers come running to buy from you. Instead, take a look at these tips from members of our small business community on how to make the most of your content marketing efforts.

Provide Value as an Expert Contributor

Serving as an expert contributor, or having expert contributors on your own site, can add value for your audience and allow you to share your expertise with a growing audience. However, it's important that you go about this process in the right way. Sian Phillips offers some tips in this Tweak Your Biz post. And BizSugar members share input here.

Understand the Benefits of Medium

If you haven't yet heard of Medium, it's a platform that allows people to share their written work in a super simple setting that also has a potentially powerful reach. In this TKM Labs post, Steven Tran shares a bit about Medium and how businesses and bloggers can potentially benefit from it.

Learn These Lessons from BuzzFeed's Most Popular Content

If you want to create great shareable content, you have to learn from the best. BuzzFeed's posts get consistently high views and shares. So if you look at some of the site's most popular content, as discussed in this Marketing Land post by Kerry Jones, you may be able to learn some lessons that apply to your own content.

Figure Out Where and When to Use Online Advertising

Online advertising can be a great way to increase the impact of your content. But not all types of ads are created equal. Here, Gary Shouldis of 3Bug Media shares some tips you can use to make the most of your online ads. And the BizSugar community shares thoughts on the post here.

Create Beautiful Graphics With Canva

If you're going to blog or use social media, you'll need to consider what images you share with each post or update. That likely means that you'll need to create graphics at some point. Here, Debra Garber offers tips on the dlvr.it blog for using Canva to create beautiful graphics for social media.

Become a Podcast Guest

Whether you're a podcaster yourself or you just have some expert insights to share, being a guest on a popular podcast that's related to your industry can really help you grow your brand. In this MyBlogU post, Ann Smarty shares some tips and insights about being a podcast guest.

Pin Your Way to the Bank

Pinterest can be used for more than just saving cool recipes or home projects. As this Perpetto post by Ed Leake points out, you can actually use Pinterest to drive sales. And check out what BizSugar members are saying about the post here.

Grow Your Audience on Snapchat

Snapchat has been gaining traction with both consumers and brands in recent years. So if you want to use it as part of your content marketing strategy, you need to know the best methods for growing your Snapchat audience. Here, Calvin Wayman shares some tips on Social Media Examiner.

Make the Most of Your Content Marketing Efforts

Content marketing isn't some magical solution that will automatically bring your business millions of new customers. You have to actually make the most of your content in order to see results. In this Madison Logic post, Nick Price shares some tips for making the most of your content marketing.

Keep Up With Platforms Like Blab

Some entrepreneurs and content marketers have been using Blab to broadcast content to their audiences for years. But some recent changes have people worried about Blab's future. And as a marketer, you need to be familiar with the changes in the various platforms you use, as Mike Allton discusses in this post on the Social Media Hat. You can see further discussion about the post over on BizSugar.

If you'd like to suggest your favorite small business content to be considered for an upcoming community roundup, please send your news tips to:  sbtips@gmail.com.

Megaphone Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "10 Tips to Boost Your Content Marketing" was first published on Small Business Trends

Facebook Live Rolls Out Continuous Streaming: 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 Facebook Enables Continuous Live Video Support and Geogating: “Facebook will now allow non-stop, long-form broadcasting.” TechCrunch reports that the [...]

This post Facebook Live Rolls Out Continuous Streaming: This Week in Social Media first appeared on .

- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

7 Content Marketing Tools You Need To Be Successful

Did you know that 59% of B2C marketers and 55% of B2B marketers are planning to increase their content marketing spend this year?

Content marketing has become an extremely competitive arena now. Businesses are vying to develop their strategies with an eye on engaging their audience with interesting content, that encourages profitable behaviors of the target clientele.

In today's competitive market, you have to invest wisely to make your brand hog the limelight. It's equally important to judge how well your content marketing strategies are performing against the industry standards. That makes planning your content marketing strategy a vital element in your business success.

Ideally, your strategy should have one simple tenet at its heart – to deliver unique, fresh and informative content that entices your target audience, taps into their interests and drives them to engage with your brand.

For this, you need to understand the buyer's journey. It's interesting to note that 70% of the buyer's journey gets complete before they even reach out to a sales rep.

So focusing just on sales would make you miss out on a major part of the buyer's journey.

With marketing automation tools, you can influence this journey at different stages:

• Awareness: This is the start of the buyer's journey, where your buyer is probably unaware of your business and that they have a need. At this stage, you should focus on creating awareness for your business and offerings so that your buyers start to understand what you do, and how you can help them address their needs/overcome their pain points.


• Consideration: Buyers now have already shortlisted a few companies and start to do deeper research to arrive at a decision. You should use your marketing automation tools to keep track of their growing interest and adjust your content so that they see what can influence their decision in your favor.


• Decision: Buyers are ready to make a purchase and start thinking and comparing about implementation, costs, customer support etc, which will decide the company they'll finally buy from. This is the time to get brand-specific with your content. You can use customer testimonials and case studies to brag about how others have had a positive experience with your offerings.

Let's have a look at some tools that will help you experience content marketing success, and nurture buyer's all the way along this journey:

1. BuzzSumo for research

This tool lets you find what works in your niche, for the competition and who to promote your content to for optimal exposure.

From finding hot and trending content around a topic, viral pages on competitor sites, content to share and curate, quality guest posting targets and influencers in a niche. To locating target placements for your infographics and promoting your content on Twitter, you can do it all with this tool.

Without a doubt you can boost your content marketing ROI with BuzzSumo.

BuzzSumo's available plans are:

• Pro at $99/month – the starter plan for small teams and bloggers.


• Agency at $299/month – Agency teams can opt for it where they will get the Facebook Analyzer along with all Pro features.


• Enterprise at $999/month – This the best bet for brands and publishers that need advanced functionality for large teams.

Where is it used?

When referred to a number of instances where business owners and webmasters use this tool, it is seen that most of them use it either to find influencers within their industry, or writers who can contribute to their blogs.

Richard Moynihan, Social Media Editor at the Telegraph, and Jimi Smoot, an entrepreneur, use BuzzSumo to search influencers in their respective fields. Whereas, AJ Ghergich, of Ghergich & Co. uses BuzzSumo to track which content is performing well and then outreach and contact bloggers and writers to write for their website.

2. CoSchedule for organization

Managing the content on your website or blog is a breeze with this editorial calendar. With Co-Schedule, you can now keep your content as fresh, consistent and engaging as possible. This will help you fortify your web presence and grow your readership.

Thanks to its great layout, CoSchedule lays out all your scheduled posts with ease. You can even see all your scheduled social media posts in one place. It's drag-and-drop feature, seamless integration with WordPress, easy scheduling of social media posts, rescheduling an old post (after checking from the dashboard how many times it has been shared and from where it has received the most traffic) are other features that make your content marketing job that much easier.

You can even use asks and comments on posts to create workflows for your team without emails. Some other features of CoSchedule are:

• Manage Google Docs Content


• Convert Google Docs & Evernote Content to WordPress


• Manage Evernote Content


• Several integrations to simplify your content marketing tasks

CoSchedule plans available are:

• “Solo Standard” at $15/month (per calendar billed annually) or $19 month-to-month for a single user, 5 social profiles; it's suitable when you start building your audience.


• When you plan to use premium integrations and custom workflows to save time and publish even faster, “Solo Marketing” for a single user, 10 social profiles is suitable. It's available at $39 month-to-month or $30/month (per calendar billed annually).


• “Solo Automation” is fit for those aiming to work smarter with auto-pilot publishing, robust social automation and data driven intelligence. This plan is available at $79 month-to-month or $60/month (per calendar billed annually).

Where is it used?

CoSchedule is a widely used editorial calendar that helps keep content fresh, consistent and engaging. Webmasters and site owners have claimed that they have seen a considerable growth in readership after they started using CoSchedule.

Arienne Holland, the Director of Marketing and Customer Experience at Raven said that their marketing team had to send about 75 fewer emails than before.

3. Crazy Egg for optimization

Apart from a heat map, Crazy Egg offers scroll maps, overlay maps and the confetti report. All these together help you get valuable insight into how your content is performing.

The heat map report displays actual clicks of your visitors to let you know how they engage with your website. Scroll maps gives you insight into time spent by visitors in viewing particular sections of your page.

You can use Crazy Egg to re-prioritize your vital content to areas of your more popular pages. The overlay displays a bunch of little colored markers, attached to every section that has been clicked.

To get more information about a particular section, you just need to open the relevant marker attached to it. Extensive information about each click is given by the confetti report. So, you can categorize clicks by country, browser, referrals and devices used to check how your content is doing and make adjustments where needed.

Available plans for Crazy Egg are:

• The Basic plan at $9/month for starting out. This plan provides daily reports for 10 active pages and 10,000 visits per month.


• Growing businesses should use the Standard plan at an annual fee of $19/month. This plan provides daily reports for 20 active pages and 25,000 visits per month.


• Plus at $49/month is Crazy Egg's most popular plan. It offers hourly reports for 50 active pages and 100,000 visits per month. It also comes with mobile heat maps, advanced filtering and priority email support.


• To get all that you need, Pro at $99/month is your best bet. It offers hourly reports for 100 active pages and 250,000 visits per month. Other features are same as the Plus plan.

Where is it used?

When researched about the areas and reasons people used Crazy Egg for, it is seen that many use it to increase conversions, a few use it for improving their website design, while others use it for Local SEO.

Softmedia and Conversion Rate Experts saw a rise in conversion by about 51% and 25.9% respectively. Pagely used this tool to identify Design Flaws, while Local Visibility System used it for improving their Local SEO.

4. ConvertPlug for increasing email subscriptions

This is touted as the best WordPress subscription plugin currently available. Apart from bringing back your abandoning visitors, this tool can help you gain more leads and subscribers. So, if you are struggling to get subscribers for your newsletter, whitepapers or other content, ConvertPlug can help.

With it, you can;

• Build a robust email list


• Promote videos


• Drive traffic to your site/blog


• Share updates with your subscribers


• Get useful insight from analytics to fine tune your content to boost visitor engagement


• Offer coupons and special deals to bring back those visitors that were previously abandoning your web pages.


• Capture more leads and boost ROI

You can start using ConvertPlug at an unbelievable price of $21. This price tag includes QC by Envato, lifetime future updates and 6 months support. You can also pay just an additional amount of $6.30 to extend the support period to 12 months.

Where is it used?

ConvertPlug is being widely used to build effective email lists and hold back abandoning visitors. Ivailo Durmonski, in his case study posted on http://www.narrowem.com recently, said he experienced about 412% rise in email subscribers within a week of using ConvertPlug.

5. MailChimp for email marketing

Email marketing plays a key role in a business's overall content marketing strategy. You can use MailChimp to automate your emails and send them to different audiences.

This tool lets you:

• Create your own newsletter or leverage one of its several elegant templates.


• Target different audiences by segmenting your mailing list based on preferences, behavior and previous sales.


• Send out your newsletter every time you update your blog, thanks to its RSS-to-email option.


• Know how well your marketing campaigns are doing by sending reports detailing who's opening your newsletters or sharing them on social networks. With hundreds of app integrations for apps you already use, importing content from other sources and tracking your campaigns' performance is made easy.

MailChimp also has apps that facilitate work on the move from iPhones and Androids.

Pricing plans for MailChimp:

• Free: If you have less than 2,000 subscribers, you can send a maximum of 12,000 emails every month for free.


• Growing businesses: Businesses with varying subscribers (from 1,001 – 1,500; 1,501 – 2,000; 2,001 to 2,500 and 2,501 – 2,600) can take their pick from plans costing $20, $25, $30 and $35 respectively.


• Pro Marketer: This enterprise-level package is suitable for 1,001 – 1,500 subscribers to 2,501 – 2,600 subscribers. Pricing varies from $20 to $35.

Where is it used?

The average open rate for emails is usually seen to hover around 20%. But, with the use of the automation feature of MailChimp, it was seen that the open rate was doubled instantly.

6. Buffer for social media scheduling

For busy business owners, managing their social media accounts and keeping them updated with fresh posts is an ordeal. Buffer brings a great solution by automating the process.

With Buffer, you can:

• Manage multiple Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn Accounts


• Set up your own updating schedule


• Add/Change/Delete updates Easily


• Use Buffer with different browsers, leveraging its many extensions, apps and extras

Pricing for individuals:

• Individual for Free: For 1 user, 1 social profile per platform and 10 scheduled posts.


• Awesome at $10: For 1 user, 10 social profiles per platform and 100 scheduled posts.

Teams and agencies can choose from three plans namely Small ($99), Medium ($199) and Large ($399).

Where is it used?

When you think of promoting your business on social media – time, consistency, statistics and analysis are among a few things you need to think of. Buffer is an effective tool that has been helping a number of companies and businesses spread across social media. In a case study that speaks about Campaign Monitor using Buffer, it is seen that using the right features for the right purpose will help triple social media shares.

7. Google Analytics for tracking traffic

Gaining insight into which content your users are engaging with the most, as well as what works and what doesn't, can help your content marketing strategy significantly.

With Google Analytics, you can:

• Find out your most popular web pages


• Find out your most popular/most shared blog posts


• Spot the type of content users are looking for on your website (with the site search functionality)


• See the clickable page elements your visitors interact with the most (using In-Page Analytics Reports within the Google Analytics' Behavior section)


• Leverage UTM parameters to attach additional information to links that point to your website, thus collecting more in-depth data about the clicks leading visitors to your website


• Determine the location of visitors who make up the major chunk of your web traffic


• Detect the online campaigns that bring the most traffic and conversions.

Where is it used?

Google Analytics is a trusted tool that can be used to track the performance of all your marketing efforts.

Companies like Panasonic have used Google Analytics to improve the Return on Investment (ROI) obtained through their digital marketing campaigns. While tracking the performance and sharing it with various media tools, they managed to increase ROI by about 30%.

Wrap

Content marketing isn't just about framing what to write and how to write. It's much more than that. You not only need to create interesting, precise and engaging content, but have to ensure that it reaches your target audience and is shared by them across various social networking platforms.

It's an uphill task but with the tools mentioned above, you can automate a sizable chunk of the job and get useful insights to fine tune your content to make it work.

Wooing your visitors and keeping your existing and potential customers happy with tailor-made content was never this easy!

Guest Author: Soumya Nair. Dedication, timely efforts and passion are the key protocols that keep me succeeding as an outstanding Digital Marketer, blogger and trainer. I love what I do. My main target is to get conversions. Believe in learning and exploring digital marketing.  Thanks for reading  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Soumya_M_Nair

The post 7 Content Marketing Tools You Need To Be Successful appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

How to Use Facebook Lead Ads

It's called Facebook Lead Ads.

Now, I've been known for a while for generating leads on Facebook. So naturally, I needed to dissect this new feature on the ads platform.

So, it was time to watch the video: (You can click the video image to be sent to their official page.)

Okay, great. So we can get data straight from Facebook users and have it for ourselves to market to.

It looks something like this process:

 

Real World Case Studies Using Lead Ads

“Initial tests on Facebook have shown costs as low as 1/3 of the website conversion objective campaigns. It's a win-win situation: the user receives a better experience without having to leave the Facebook app, while you receive higher conversion rates with automatically populated fields.”

Michael McEuen, Adstage

“In early A/B testing, Facebook's native lead ads outperformed link ads driving to the website to fill out a lead form in terms of total leads and conversion rate, while driving a 4x reduction in cost per lead compared to previous social lead generation tactics.”

Kim Kyaw, Manager Digital Marketing, Land Rover

“This ad product has taken our customer acquisition efforts on Facebook to the next level. Lead ads have driven robust volume while maintaining exceptionally low acquisition costs-up to 50% less than comparable ad platforms. We are incredibly excited to continue scaling with this product.”

René Fielder Marketing Director, Sona Med Spa

“Lead ads were a game-changer product for Properati. In the past, we had tested similar products from other channels but they didn't work for us. Since testing lead ads, we have seen a 4x reduction in the cost per lead, with a more than 3x increase in the number of leads we normally generate in Brazil.”

Gabriel Gruber, CEO, Properati

Here's Where Zuckerberg Messed Up With Marketers

Facebook has done a great job with creating Facebook Lead Ads which works now for both desktop and mobile users.

It's capturing millions of leads per month for advertisers.

However, they really did make a huge mistake that has led to many marketers wondering if Facebook really is out of touch with your average online marketer.

Facebook has never bridged the gap from capturing the lead information on the form to marketing platforms that we as marketers use every day.

Does Mark Zuckerberg really expect us to login to our Facebook account daily and download a spreadsheet of raw lead data like this is still 1996 that looks like this:

 

That is why we just released a new software to connect Facebook with any autoresponder / CRM that you may use.

We are excited since now, you too, can get access to this brand new tool.

For members only, we just did a live training on how to use Facebook Lead Ads.

It's simpler than traditional ads and you will get to see me setup an entire ad that gets leads LIVE during the video in just a couple minutes flat.

Check it Out:

Click Here to Get Facebook Lead Ads Pro

Leave a comment / question below on how I can help you further.

The post How to Use Facebook Lead Ads appeared first on Ryan Shaw - Your Online Marketing Coach.

How to Beat Your Competition in the Advertising Game

It's often said that competition is good for your business. It pushes you to be your best. Think Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi, Visa vs. MasterCard, Xbox vs. PlayStation, or Apple vs. Microsoft.

Of course, part of the fun of rivalry is stealing customers from your rivals. You can do that with the help of advertising!

Competitive Advertising Strategies

Today you'll learn five brilliant competitive advertising strategies you can use to get in front of your competitors' customers and (with a little work) turn them into YOUR customers instead. *Evil laughter*

1. Target Facebook Users Whose Interests Include Your Competitors

Facebook Ads doesn't offer keyword targeting for your ads and you can't specifically target people who have liked your competitors' pages. However, Facebook offers something called interest-based targeting.

On Facebook, interests range from extremely broad (e.g., business or entrepreneurship) to very specific. In this case, your competitor's name is the specific interest you want to target, because Facebook allows you to choose to target people based on, among other things, brands and products they like.

Type in your competitor's website URL. Or, if that doesn't work, you can type in your competitor's brand name or try a few keyword combinations to figure out best option for reaching their target audience – which is now your target audience!

Make sure your Facebook ads are awesome and your competitive campaign will be off and running.

2. Disrupt Your Competitors' Videos with YouTube Ads

Recently I was on YouTube searching for an AT&T ad. Before I could watch the ad I was looking for, I had to sit through another ad – I know, that's modern life. But the genius part was that this ad wasn't for AT&T, but for its competitor, Sprint.

In this ad Sprint explained why it is a better provider than AT&T and highlighted an offer to switch carriers, before I could even see the ad for the brand I had searched for.

To execute this competitive advertising strategy for your own campaigns, create the most watchable TrueView ad you can, adding in how much you're willing to spend.

There are many targeting options to choose from (e.g., demographics, interests, keywords, remarketing). But today we're feeling competitive!

You want to target your video ads so that whenever someone searches for the YouTube videos of your competitor that they'll see your ad first. If you play it right, they might not even watch your competitor's video!

For best results, make sure your video ad is memorable.

3. Use Your Competitors' Emails Against Them with Gmail Ads

Another brilliantly sneaky competitive advertising tactic you should start using now is targeting people who have recently shown interest in the things your competition sells.

With Gmail Ads (those ads that appear at the top of the Promotions tab of users' personal email accounts), you can do keyword targeting on your competitors' brand terms.

As you read this, people who are in the market for your competitor's products are getting emails from your competitors – and those emails mention your competitors' brand terms. For example, if you were competing with Sephora, you could target its brand name as part of a Gmail ad campaign so that every time a Sephora newsletter arrives in someone's Gmail inbox, your brand ends up in its inbox as well. Obviously, your email should tell Sephora subscribers all about your great competing site and product and why they should check your out.

So if you want to try to steal some sales, target the trademarks of your competitors. Make sure you use an email subject line that will have users clicking your Gmail Ads in droves. Use only the best-performing subject lines, the ones with the highest open rates – your unicorns. As an added bonus, because these people are already in the market for a competing solution, it's likely that more people will click on your ads, which reduces your costs.

 

4. Reach Your Competitors' Audiences through the Google Display Network

Google has some great display ad technology. But if you want to beat up on your competition, you need to use Google's custom affinity audience feature.

Affinity audiences let you target a predefined audience, one that should be more receptive to seeing your ads.

To make this work brilliantly, and avoid wasting your ad budget, you'll want to target the home page of your competitor. AdWords will then figure out the brand trademarks and the behavior of the people who visit and are interested in that domain name (or search for content on related topics).

Let's use MailChimp as an example: MailChimp is a publication that's geared toward businesses doing email marketing. So if I'm running a similar business geared toward email marketers, MailChimp visitors would form the basis of our “ideal customer” we want to reach with our own display ads.

This will start the process of getting the right people familiar with your brand and the products or service you provide. And hopefully, with the right message, you'll start stealing business away from your competitors and experiencing breakout growth.

5. Download and Target Your Competitors' Twitter Followers

There are tools that allow you to download a list of every Twitter follower for any account, such as BirdSong Analytics. You can use these to download a list of all your competitor's Twitter followers. Costs generally start around $35 and go up the more followers the account has.

Once you have your report, you can use those Twitter handles to create a list that you'll then upload to Twitter Ads. Make sure to select the option to “add tailored audiences.” Uploading the list will take about 3 hours to process.

You can then create ads to get your business in front of the Twitter users who are already following your competitors and are likely in the market to buy or switch to a similar product or service. Genius, right?

After setting your budget comes the real fun. It's time to get creative and compose your tweet copy. Here are some quick and (relatively) easy ways to produce creative for your Twitter ad and make it stand out from the crowd.

Don't Let Your Competitors Have All the Fun!

Remember, all these competitive advertising strategies are putting your business in front of users who are interested in your competitors, which means they're much more likely to be in the market for your product/service. You just have to show them that what you offer is better than what your competitors do!

Republished by permission. Original here.

Handmade Soap Photo via Shutterstock

Rafting Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "How to Beat Your Competition in the Advertising Game" was first published on Small Business Trends

Instagram Algorithm: How Marketers Should Alter Their Strategy

Do you use Instagram to showcase your business? Have you heard about the new algorithm and other changes? Sue B. Zimmerman joins us to explore the latest Instagram updates. 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 [...]

This post Instagram Algorithm: How Marketers Should Alter Their Strategy first appeared on .

- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

The 7 Best Ways to Fight Banner Blindness

A few days ago I received a call from a friend of mine, a marketing manager at an e-commerce company.

It's a story I've heard all too often these days: He'd purchased banner ad space - unfortunately, the results didn't meet his expectations.

To say the least, he was very frustrated. He needed to get the word out about his company and their products. But the networks he was using weren't delivering.

Frankly, he didn't know what to do.

The problem he was facing is called banner blindness.

After our conversation ended, I thought to myself, is banner blindness killing the ad industry? And perhaps more importantly, what can we do to beat banner blindness?

After some thought… I felt compelled to share my thoughts with you.

The ad industry isn't going anywhere. On the contrary, it's more effective than ever thanks to online advertising. And in this blog post, I'm going to share with you how to beat banner blindness.

But first, what is it?

What is banner blindness?

Banner blindness happens when people ignore banner ads.

Think of yourself for a second. You probably saw a few banners today. Do you recall any of them or their offers?

Many studies have shown that online users ignore banner ads and the messages they contain. In fact, only 14% of consumers remember the last ad they saw and the company or product it promoted. Even with today's sophisticated targeting technology, relevance remains a key challenge – only 2.8% of online browsers think ads are relevant.

To sum up the research: Banner blindness especially affects savvy online users, who look for something specific on a website and ignore banner ads as unimportant. Over the years, people have become conditioned to ignore traditional banner ads and have stopped noticing them almost completely.

It's true, banner blindness exists and it's one of the advertising industry's biggest challenges.

Marketers and publishers need to take note and take the necessary steps to improve the ecosystem.

So how do you fight banner blindness?

Here are the 7 best ways to beat banner blindness, and increase your traffic and cash flow.

1. Check your ad placement

People disregard the routine, the usual, the cliché. And that's even more true when it comes to advertising.

So try to place your ads in unconventional places, including:

• Above the fold where it'll get more visibility. (This is at the top of the page)


• In the text or right after it. Most people start reading a page at the top and give it more attention.


• Within your blog - for example, between the posts in your blog.

Remember, your ad can be beautiful, interactive, surprising. To improve your click-through-rate (CTR), experiment as much as you can with elements that attract attention like social media buttons and video.

Pro Tip: Google Adwords allows you to test your ads performance. Also, try native advertising leader Infolinks – who conducted a banner blindness study and developed anti-banner blindness ads. For example, Infolinks' InFold ads appear in a unique, above-the-fold location.

Try Infolinks today

2. Use relevant content

As an advertiser, you should understand your audience's needs and be able to offer a relevant solution.

Avoid being irrelevant and ignored:

• Don't deliver ads without first identifying what your visitors want.


• Use relevant content, including the keywords that reflect the interests of your primary audience.


• Choose the right ad network so you're linking your audience to publishers who are relevant to your audience and your specific focus.


• Use cookies to create relevant personal ads – which will help your site identify people who've previously visited your site.

If you make sure your site offer ads that are targeted, useful, relevant and delightful, then your visitors will respond more positively.

Pro Tip: Amazon reports that contextual links within blog posts work best. Taboola and Outbrain are good platforms to test this out on.

3. Try non-standard sizes, colors, and ad formats

Seeing the same thing over and over again gets boring – and can decrease the performance of your ads.

• When creating ad space, choose non-traditional and memorable locations to improve user recall. Non-standard formats and designs will also help you avoid being overlooked.


• Create your banner as a part of the page, not as an outer ad.


• Use unusual colors and brand personality, extraordinary ideas, animated banner ads and even 3D design. In addition, applying motion effects could also be a method of increasing interaction.

Pro Tip: Make sure your banner ads have a compelling story and an emotional hook to get people's attention. Try Canva or Infolinks.

4. Optimize for mobile

Nowadays, in order to keep up with today's younger, smartphone audience; you need to have a mobile and social presence. When you do, consider:

• Using video for your mobile banner ads


• Activating your Facebook campaigns


• Including a 'Call Now' button in your ads

Note: A key benefit of online advertising is that you can easily track the effectiveness of your banner ads, including how many people are seeing it, how many people click on it, and much more.

Pro Tip: Make sure your site is mobile-friendly. You can test your site to see what you need to do to make your site look as good as possible on smaller screens. You'll be glad you did!

To make sure people can view your content on the small screen of a smartphone, it's especially important to decrease clutter by serving fewer ads. Publishers who reduce clutter on their pages will attract advertisers who will pay more for premium, uncluttered space.

5. Participate in affiliate programs

Affiliate programs allow you to partner with other companies who share the same audience. By showing your ads on an affiliated publisher's site, you can easily combat banner blindness.

Pro Tip: Infolinks' publisher referral program is one of the most beneficial programs in the industry today. It pays 10% out of the referred publishers' revenue during the first 12 months of your referral!

6. Follow your passion

To attract and keep an engaged audience, you'll want to publish content that people love. In my experience, the best way to do this is to create content about something you're passionate about. Whether it's nature, biking or technology – you can write blogs about it, share photos of it and build a strong community around it.

Find what you really love and transform your site by featuring that passion!

Pro tip: Many terrific blogs create a community of loyal followers by linking to other, related sites. Do you link your site to sites that you admire? Also, give your visitors relevant links within your blogs. For instance, the Infolinks' blog offers the best form of native advertising, giving your audience information that interests them – and you can make money, too!

Try Infolinks today

7. Experiment

Last – but definitely not least – if you're not getting the performance you want, experiment.

Consider each of the previous six recommendations – ad placement, relevant content, non-standard design elements, optimizing for mobile, affiliate programs and following your passion.

How can you transform the content you already have, including your site design and content calendar, to reinvigorate your visitors?

Pro tip: To re-energize your site and overcome banner blindness, consider experimenting with your site design.

If you're using WordPress, there are lots of custom templates you can choose from. When you do, see if you can come up with unexpected content like an interview, a gallery of photos from a trip, something totally different.

Remember, when you put your imagination to work, you can create amazing experiences for your followers.

A final word

What does it all add up to? More money for you!

Let's be honest: Banners are ads.

And they are a useful way for advertisers and publishers to spread the word about their site.

When ads are well thought out and provide the right information, they give your site visitors valuable information about products and services they may not be aware of.

To overcome banner blindness, create better ads. How? By concentrating on what your visitors are interested in. It's about their needs, not yours!

With the right ad network, placing compelling ads in the right locations will increase your traffic and your cash flow.

There are a lot of companies that can help you beat banner blindness. For many bloggers and site owners, you've probably tried many solutions. I've used them all too. Today, I'm here to highly recommend Infolinks. See why now

Plus, Infolinks is regularly introducing new features – including the recently announced AdShop. AdShop is a self-service advertising platform that allows you to advertise globally. Now, you can reach high-quality, targeted users with your ads, and only pay entry-level prices. Sign up to AdShop by Infolinks now

Do you have additional ways to beat banner blindness? Share your story below.

The post The 7 Best Ways to Fight Banner Blindness appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.