Blog Writing - 3 Important Tips

I am sure many of you are familiar with what a blog is but wait, didn’t we cover that already? Isn’t content writing the same as blog writing? Well, kinda but yet they are subtly different. 

Content writing is much broader and it is basically writing about any topic given by a client to meet their specific business goals and that covers a large range of topics. The content can be used to educate, entertain or tease whichever the objective is. Its main purpose is to give value-added information to readers.

Blog writing or blogging as it is commonly known, is more of a personal diary, journaling regularly about the latest happenings in one’s life. It refers to writing, photography and other media that are self-published online. 

Blog Writing - 3 Important Tips

Blog writing started as an opportunity for individuals to write diary-style entries and to share with the world about their personal interests and experiences. This has since become a new trend that is being incorporated into many company websites.  

Why? Because consumer behaviour is evolving at an unprecedented rate and with advancing technology like Google, social media and e-commerce, it is no wonder blog writing has become a necessary new norm for businesses.  

Consumers are getting more tech-savvy and with the social media wave, they search for information online before making a checklist or an informed decision on shopping, food and even professional services etc.  

“But I am not sure what to write and whether the content is good…” Fret not, you came to the right place! Here are 3 essential tips to get you started on blog writing:

Blog Writing - 3 Important Tips

1. Set up the blog

Nowadays you don’t need to know Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) code to start a blog. There are many free blogging sites which you can use to start blog writing and they even come with themes and templates. Basically it is just a few simple clicks of choosing your preferred blog “look” and tada, you have your very own blog in a jiffy!

It all depends on your objectives – whether they are purely for personal pleasure, for business or maybe, a mixture of both. If you want to retain control and maintain a professional image, do consider investing in a domain name and a hosting service. You can install your preferred content management system on your host if you do not wish to create the whole website from scratch. 

2. Find your niche

It might sound cool to write whatever is trending right now but I would suggest that you sit down for a while and ponder about what are the topics that really interest you. 

What have you always been interested in since you were a child or what do you turn to as your stress outlet when you feel down? What do you feel most passionate about? These will form your niche in blog writing.

Blog Writing - 3 Important Tips

Eg. I have always been interested in reading because I believe that knowledge is a great source of power. When you have the necessary information at your fingertips, you can make better decisions about life in general. 

Meditation is something I practice often and it helps me a lot especially during challenging times. A conscious method I use to bring back my focus and inner calm. Combined with the knowledge and experience accumulated over the years, it helps me harness creative solutions and actions to take for the needed hour. 

3. Promote your blog

Creating a well-designed blog and writing great content is merely the tip of the iceberg. In order to get visitors aka organic traffic to your blog, you would need to spend some time promoting it and the effort needs to be consistent. 

Ideally, you should blog as often as possible because the more you blog, the more organic traffic you will have due to optimized content. Especially for blogging newbies, it is important to build your personal brand through the blog content. 

You can alert your inner circle like family and friends. It is also a way to gather constructive feedback about your blog writing. At the same time, be active on social media and post a link to your blog so readers can take a look. Be a giver of information too by posting relevant links or news that you think they might be interested in. 

So there you have it! In summary, we hope that blogging not only helps you unleash your inner creative geek but also open up new avenues of connections too. With consistency, your passion will show through the blog content and branding is just a matter of time. 

 

Related topics –> Email Marketing – 7 Amazing Tips To Increase Sales

Social Media Marketing Collaboration - 4 Keys To Success

You might have seen it somewhere else but let me explain for the benefit of anyone who is unsure of what social media marketing collaboration is. Collaboration or otherwise known as collaborative partnerships, are agreements and actions made by consenting organizations to share resources to accomplish mutual goals. 

In order for collaboration to happen effectively, organizations in a collaborative partnership must share common goals and rely on participation of at least two parties who agree to share resources, including knowledge, people and finances. The essence of collaboration is a win-win situation where all parties involved benefit from mutually working together. 

Social Media Marketing Collaboration - 4 Keys To Success

As the saying goes, teamwork makes the dream work. Collaboration is also about teamwork and if you are fairly new to this, don’t worry.

We gathered 4 practical tips to get you started:

 

1. Find the right brand to collaborate with

The goal is to expand your reach and acquire new potential customers but in order to do that, you need to find and partner with a brand that will not only help you to achieve your goal but most importantly, care about your products or services too. 

It is not just about working with the big boys, no doubt numbers are important but so is quality. Eg. If you own a salad company, you may want to partner with a gym because many people are health conscious nowadays and hence the collaboration between a salad company and gym makes sense because the concept of healthy lifestyle is being advocated. 

This collaboration will expose your business to new people who will by default, be interested in your brand because diet and exercise go hand in hand together to create a healthy lifestyle. 

Something to note is that you should look for brands who are already active on social media because when you do a collaboration, it is about sharing resources and responsibilities together to achieve mutual goals. If they are not active, most probably it is safe to assume that you won’t benefit much from collaborating with them.

Social Media Marketing Collaboration - 4 Keys To Success

2. Set clear goals, expectations and deadlines

It is good to have collaborations but collaborations without measurable metrics equals to having none at all. There must be clear goals, expectations and deadlines. Eg. If your goal is to grow your email list, then you should focus on email marketing so you can use a contest or giveaway to achieve this.

The more people there are working on the social media campaigns or projects, the easier it is for things to slip through the cracks. Accountability is of utmost importance and crystal clear deadlines should be set on deliverables as well as individual roles from both companies. 

Don’t just assume that the other party knows what to do and in order to prevent the collaboration from backfiring, craft a clear concise strategy on roles, responsibilities and deadlines so everyone knows what is expected and will work together to achieve the same goals. 

3. Social media style guide

Once the goals, roles and deadlines are outlined, you can further refine the processes by writing a social media style guide. This will cover the look, feel, voice, tone and language so it will be consistent among team members. 

That means whenever a graphic or document is produced, there must be uniformity in the fonts, colours, logos, formats and product names etc. You could also consider having an adjusted style to showcase the two brands working together. 

This guide must be available to everyone involved in the collaboration so you can spend some time to plan and do the writing up. Once it is completed, you can upload into a common folder where everyone can refer to the guide any time.

Social Media Marketing Collaboration - 4 Keys To Success

4. Work with influencers

We mentioned about giveaways so both parties can consider working with influencers to increase your reach and branding. You can reach out to a relevant influencer and encourage them to run a giveaway post for their audience. It is an effective way to gain new followers and raise brand awareness. We call it the 3-fold effect!

Another common method to increase brand awareness via influencer marketing is asking them to do paid posts. When doing paid posts, consider their audience quality, correspondence of their audience and engagement rates before choosing the right influencer. 

If you offer the influencer more than they demand, chances are they will offer you better discounts and options. Instead of asking them to do one-off partnerships, you can ask them to give you more discounts for another few more posts and due to retargeting options, it will convince people to make a purchase when they see the influencer talking about your products or services more than once.  

There are so many ways to market your business and joining forces will definitely benefit your business tremendously. We hope these tips have put you on the fast track and happy collaborating!

 

Related topics –> Snapchat Marketing – 5 Best Practices For Your Business

 

Snapchat Marketing - 5 Best Practices For Your Business

What is Snapchat, otherwise commonly referred to as Snap? Launched in 2011, it is a mobile app for Android and iOS devices. One core concept of the app is that any media you send will only be made available to the recipient for only a short time before it becomes inaccessible. Why so? Because it is designed to encourage a more natural flow of communication between users. 

When Snapchat started, it was focused on private, person-to-person sharing but now you can use it for a variety of tasks – live video chatting, messaging, sending short videos, creating caricature-like Bitmoji avatars and sharing 24 hour chronological stories that are broadcasted to all your followers and “Discover”; letting brands show ad-supported short-form content.  

Snapchat Marketing - 5 Best Practices For Your Business

It also allows you to store media in a password-protected space which is helpful especially if you feel certain files are private and confidential. That’s not all, there are other features available like the ability to add geo-filters and AR-based lenses to maps. 

According to a survey done in January 2020, 218 million users were active on Snapchat each day and that means millions of Snaps are created, sent and seen every day. It is highly popular among millennials and if your business’s target audience is more of the younger crowd especially those under 35 years old, this is still a good platform to market your branding. 

Some of you might not be familiar as Facebook and Instagram are more commonly used for promoting your business but fret not, we got you covered.

Here are 5 best practices to help you with your branding:

Snapchat Marketing - 5 Best Practices For Your Business

1. Research and execution 

This is a must when planning your marketing strategies. Always do your research first on competitors and what kind of campaigns attract followers as well as conversions. At the same time, it will help you decide what your objectives are and finally, branding that you want to tell people about. Eg. Your business might be selling burgers, but if you are a vegetarian or a firm believer of healthier eating; you can sell plant-based meat burgers especially when people are so health conscious nowadays. 

Once you have identified your business branding objectives, look and feel; create a content calendar so you will know what content to post, when to post and how much time you should spend on follower engagement. And remember – consistency is key when it comes to branding. Make sure your concept, look and feel are consistently the same so your branding presence on Snapchat can be increased.  

2. Let your audience know you are on Snapchat

If Snapchat is a new marketing platform for your business, the first step is to inform your audience you are here. As Snapchat is designed differently from the other social media giants like Facebook and Instagram, you will need to use some new techniques to attract more Snapchat followers.

There are 3 ways to do this:

  • Cross-promote your Snapchat username: If you already have gained a following, you can schedule or share posts on Facebook and Instagram etc to share your Snapchat username.
  • Create a “add me” url: Under the “settings” icon in your Snapchat business account, you can click on “username” and see what is your unique url (snapchat.com/add/yourusername) so you can put it in your posts or marketing materials.
  • Create a snapcode: A snapcode is a badge that people can scan with their mobile phones. Works exactly like a QR code, users can add you easily. It also allows users to find your brand’s unique filters, lenses and content. You can add this to marketing materials or even merchandise.

Snapchat Marketing - 5 Best Practices For Your Business

3. Brand engagement

According to statistics, Snapchatters are 60% more likely to make an impulse purchase. While chatting with friends, users are likely to discover new businesses. With the current design of Snapchat, chats happen on the left side of the screen while brands (Eg. Cosmopolitan magazine, MTV) and content creators can be found under “Discover”, on the right side of the screen. 

Because users spend such a long time chatting every day, they are spending 35% more time in the “Discover” section where constant exposure to brands makes them purchase something. That is what you call the effect of brand awareness on consumer buying behaviour. 

4. Make the most of sponsored AR lenses

Snapchat’s artificial reality (AR) lenses change the way users experience the world. You can superimpose digital effects, animations or graphics on top of a real-life image. Snapchatters can interact with the superimposed image and the AR effects move as your real-life image moves. 

75% of Snapchat users engage with AR every day so it will be a good idea to use it in your branding because it allows users to interact with your branding and increase engagement at the same time. Especially for businesses in the makeup, fashion, cooking, travel and fitness industries; they will definitely do well due to the aesthetics etc. 

5. Advertising and tracking metrics

To make the most out of Snapchat and to test which type of ads works the best for your target audience, you might want to incorporate various ad formats as part of your marketing strategies. There are 4 types of ad formats – Snap ads, Collection ads, Story ads and Dynamic ads. You can increase brand awareness and drive traffic to your website, resulting in potential purchases. 

Similar to Facebook, Snapchat has an analytics tool – Snapchat Insights. You can see who is viewing your content and check which campaigns are doing well; letting you know and understand user preferences as well as tweaking to produce better strategies the next time. 

In conclusion, Snapchat features are not exhaustive to these few but these are some of the best practices for marketing on Snapchat. We hope this helps you to kickstart your new marketing journey!

 

Related topics –> TikTok Marketing – 5 Useful Tips For Business

TikTok Marketing - 5 Useful Tips For Business

TikTok which originated in China, is a Chinese video-sharing social networking service. It is used to make and share a variety of short videos in many genres; dance, comedy, education and makeup tutorials etc. The videos have a duration of 3 to 60 seconds. 

TikTok eventually came out with an international version in 2018 and though low in initial download numbers, it caught up soon worldwide and became 9th in the ranks of social networking sites. As of 2020, it has 689 million active users worldwide.   

The mission statement of TikTok is to capture and present the world’s creativity, knowledge and precious life moments from the mobile phone directly. As such, it empowers and enables everyone to be a content creator; sharing their interests, passion and creativity through their videos. 

TikTok Marketing - 5 Useful Tips For Business

Its user-friendly functions combined with this unique feature of TikTok; it is more of an entertainment platform so it makes content creation and shareability easy. Anyone can be a content creator and due to the time duration of videos, consumption is crazy high; making it a force not to be reckoned with whilst competing against social media giants like Youtube, Facebook and Instagram. 

So what can TikTok do for businesses?  The largest demographic of TikTok users is between the ages of 16 to 24 but is not limited to only Gen Z as there are users from other age groups using TikTok actively. Because it is more of an entertainment and visual platform, it would benefit certain industries greatly like fitness, makeup, skincare, dance, baking and filmmaking etc.

Now let’s look at these 5 tips to get you started:

 

1. Research

This is a mandatory prior work that every business needs to run through before planning, writing and creating the type of content suitable for their target audience. Like social media channels, you need to do some research on trending topics or what your competitors are doing so you know what topics or themes to use for your videos. To be prepared is half the victory – Miguel de Cervantes.

TikTok Marketing - 5 Useful Tips For Business

2. Create fun content

Tiktok’s main attraction is fun and creativity so in order to attract viewers, you need to create fun videos. And because Tiktok encourages people to create and share content with their mobile devices, creating your content is so easy and the least expensive. It also comes across as authentic when you use your mobile phone, making people feel connected to you as you build their trust with your branding. 

If you watch enough Tiktok, you would realise some of the highly popular videos are those with pets or children so if you have a pet or child, you can try creating videos with them as your cast. You will be surprised at how viral these videos are! Nothing complicated, just do a simple theme and weave your branding into the videos – this is what you call the TikTok magic! 

3. Work with TikTok influencers

The number of TikTok-specific influencers might not be many yet, but they will be in time to come and you can work with them to widen your reach on the platform. It also depends on the modus operandi of your business or your target market. 

If your business includes the Chinese market, you can work with Chinese influencers to promote your branding as TikTok originated from there and they have many influencers who can easily help you spike brand awareness and conversion rates. 

TikTok Marketing - 5 Useful Tips For Business

4. Use hashtags

Another way to promote your business is to launch a hashtag challenge. A hashtag challenge is when you encourage TikTok users to create or recreate content and add your branded hashtag to it. 

What do we mean? Eg. The brand, Guess, was one of the first companies to launch a hashtag challenge. They encouraged TikTok users to film themselves wearing Guess’ new denim line with the hashtag, #InMyDenim. That was how the hashtag challenge trend started because it not only promotes your branding, but it also drives user interaction and engagement.  

5. Advertising with TikTok

Similar to Facebook, they offer a few ad formats and they include:

  • Infeed Native Content: This type of ad is similar to Instagram story ads and supports multiple features like website clicks or app downloads. They play between user content; are between 9 to 15 seconds long and include buttons.
  • Brand Takeovers: The brands’ one day of monopolizing TikTok by creating images, videos or GIFs (Graphics Interchange Formats) with embedded links to landing pages or hashtag challenges. Only one ad can show in that slot for the specific category per day.
  • Sponsored Hashtag Challenges: As you know, hashtag challenges are always a traffic-driving strategy so your business can pay to sponsor a hashtag challenge and obtain a custom banner across the Discover page so millions of users can see and join in, viewing the challenges with your branding promoted in the background. 

In conclusion, if your business is targeting a younger audience or if it is more to the beauty, fun or even fitness genres; using TikTok as one of your marketing channels will definitely make sense. It is all about practice and personality is also one X-factor in TikTok success. Combined with fun interactive content and marketing strategies, you are going to ace that TikTok game!

 

Related topics –> Telegram Marketing For Business – 4 Great Features You Should Know About

 

Telegram Marketing For Business - 4 Great Features You Should Know About

Similar to Whatsapp, Telegram is a cross-platform cloud-based instant messaging, video calling and VoIP service. It provides end-to-end encrypted calls and end-to-end encrypted “secret” chats between two online users. 

Other user features include sending text and voice messages, animated stickers, making voice and video calls and sharing of various media and information like images, documents, location and contacts. 

During the pandemic, there has been a surge in business owners using social media as the primary platform for their marketing campaigns due to various factors which include reaching the masses within a short period of time at a low cost, increasing brand awareness through engagement by going live and etc. 

Telegram has also unexpectedly experienced the same surge. As of 2020, Telegram reached 400 million monthly active users and 70 billion messages are shared on the platform every day. This makes it a booming platform for increased engagements and opportunities, directing professionals to leverage on this platform for their business marketing. 

It is a new digital channel that even the government bodies and media companies have tapped into, indicating its immense potential to be an effective communications channel.

So without further ado, let’s go into how we can effectively use Telegram for business!

Telegram Marketing For Business - 4 Great Features You Should Know About

1. Pods

For businesses who want to amplify their reach on Facebook and Instagram, they can use Telegram pods. A Telegram pod consists of people who are passionate about the brand and whenever a post is shared on a Telegram group, they will like the pictures or comment on the post. It serves as a powerful tool for organic reach

These are most useful for tech companies or other industries which have a strong technological presence and are aware about coding bots as well as other additional features. Alternatively, there are many basic and free bots on the platform that can be used to create reminders from the companies’ end and keep constant engagement with audiences; saving labour and time. That’s what you call killing two birds with one stone!

2. Large reach

Unlike Whatsapp who has a limited group size of 200, Telegram has no limit on group size which means when you are marketing your brand, you can be assured that it reaches a maximum number of people at any given time. 

The developers of Telegram, Nikolai and Pavel Durov, take pride in their software’s ability to deliver messages quicker than any other messenger application. What makes them uniquely different is that they have this default unchangeable option which is to notify everyone whenever your channel posts something. Talk about the power of default effects! 

Some popular groups on Telegram have more than 1 million followers so you can tap into these and leverage on the group popularity to increase your brand awareness or any new announcements that you have.

Telegram Marketing For Business - 4 Great Features You Should Know About

3. Cost

This verse “survival of the fittest” rings true for 2020 which has seen companies, even large corporations, to close down during the pandemic. So profit loss margin definitely hits home for many business owners. Whatsapp Business charges anywhere between 0.5 to 9 cents for every message sent, depending on country and they will be implementing a new chargeable feature called Whatsapp Story Ads. 

Then what about Telegram? Zero…zilch, yes you did not hear wrongly, my friend. This is indeed a saving grace in the face of the pandemic where most business owners are struggling to tally their accounts. As for advertising, it costs nothing too. All you need to do is craft and schedule a message; it will reach tons of subscribers quickly. 

4. Security

Many businesses are turning to use Telegram because it is a more secure application due to rising concerns over Whatsapp’s security and encryption. 2020 has seen many people being forced to work from home as part of global measures to contain and annihilate COVID-19. Hence it is very important to make sure for businesses to make sure their company information is talked about somewhere safe. 

Many businesses are using Telegram to have discussions with their team and besides the end-to-end encryption, there are also the options of “secret” chats and self-destructive messages. How cool is that?

Overall, Telegram is a good new marketing tool which every business can use to leverage on for generation of leads, sales and revenue. With well-executed marketing strategies, this is not impossible!

 

Related topics –> WhatsApp Business – 6 Big Advantages

Webinar Marketing - 5 Useful Tips To Success

Webinar technology first emerged in the 1990s as a business tool and it was developed to provide multimedia streams. However, it had limited functions including interaction capability. 

Fast forward to 2020, the technology has developed exponentially since then. No longer do hosts and attendees need specialized software to use webinar technology nor is it a tool solely reserved for the big guns in business. With today’s tools, anyone can access or host webinars. 

Why are webinars important and how do business owners take advantage of this trending technology tool? Webinar marketing is basically using an online seminar to connect with a wider audience and promote your branding. For businesses who want to improve conversion rates, webinars are a great marketing strategy to provide value, improve engagement and increase sales revenue. 

It usually consists of a presentation followed by a Question and Answer (Q&A) session. Due to them being a visual and interactive medium with chat features, they can help presenters connect quickly with participants. Most people will also grasp the information better. 

Webinar Marketing - 5 Useful Tips To Success

Businesses can use webinar marketing to give a demonstration on their products and services, showcase their expertise and knowledge as well as expound on content that has been published in a blog post. Now that you know the benefits of webinar marketing, let’s talk about setting it up!

Here are 5 tips to get you started:

 

1. Choose a host

All webinars need a host to make the engagement happen. There are some free hosting providers whereas some are paid. To save you the trouble and time of doing research, we have included a list here. Some of the best webinar software tools are WebinarJam, Webinar Ninja, GotoWebinar and etc. 

A good webinar tool should help you deliver live high-quality video, automate your sales process and engage marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) during live training and product demos. 

2. Interesting topic

This is the most important factor as your topic is the hook to bait your target audience and/ or potential customers. Do some prior research as to what other people are presenting especially your competitors and anticipate what your target audience might want to know about so you can keep them engaged and interested.

Using these 2 pointers in hand, draft out a presentation plan that takes an hour; which 40 minutes should be the actual presentation while the remaining 20 minutes is used to do a little icebreaker or welcome from the start of webinar plus Q&A at the end after the presentation. 

3. Timing is critical

As the saying goes, there is a timing for everything and this rings true when it comes to hosting a webinar. According to research, the best time to hold a webinar is at 11am in the middle of the week when everyone has cleared their initial workload when the week starts and before Friday when everyone autotunes to the weekend mood. 

However, if you are reaching out to a global community, you might want to consider the time zone. Scheduling countries with similar time zones will be instrumental to increasing the number of participant registrations and makes it less stressful on yourself too in terms of time management.

Webinar Marketing - 5 Useful Tips To Success

4. Pick your preferred webinar style

If you are just starting to use webinars, these 2 marketing styles will be more suitable: The Interview and The Panel. The Interview consists of someone who is a highly influential industry-specific expert and well known at the same time. 

Their reputation and credibility will be a signup booster to your webinar. You just need to make sure to go through the script with him/ her so there won’t be any glitches when you go live. 

The Panel is providing access to a group of experienced professionals who are willing to discuss popular topics and share their experiences in a panel format. This can work exceptionally well because participants will think they have access to a treasure vault of knowledge and expertise. 

You will need to brief every panelist on the script and it is also good to use an experienced and unbiased facilitator to manage the flow of conversation. A good candidate will be someone who is impartial, familiar with the topic and knows how to handle the panel as well as participants. 

For the experienced and/ or more adventurous presenters, you can use The Q&A format as this engages your attendees the most. Always ask for questions so the audience is more likely to interact and engage when they are waiting to see whose question will be chosen. 

At the same time, it is the perfect opportunity to put your top brass in the hot seat as this will build brand loyalty and makes your offer more valuable. 

Alternatively, you can use The Presentation format which is the most straightforward and popular style. However, to host a successful webinar, the presenter will need to be as engaging and enthusiastic as possible besides being an expert on the topic. 

In order to guarantee the success rate, it will be necessary to provide content that is relevant and valuable to the target audience. Delivery in a clear, concise and confident manner will nail that success for you! 

5. Promote your webinar

Strategy is important when it comes to promoting your webinar. According to The 2017 Big Book of Webinar Stats and compiled by GoToMeeting, 45% of marketers use email as their primary promotional tool. However, the signup rate will increase dramatically at the last minute because 69% of signups take place in the final week. 

There are a few ways to do it and these are not exhaustive. You can post about your webinar details on social media, business website and/ or blog, email marketing list, industry forums or partner with someone to maximise your reach and if you are working with an industry expert or a panel, it will be good to ask them to mention your webinar on their social media and other channels. After all, they are involved in it too!

For those who are starting out, we advise you not to be discouraged. Practice makes perfect and once you get the hang of it, it is like taking a walk in the park! For the more experienced presenters, we hope this inspires you about new ideas for presentation and brand promotion too. All the best!

 

Related topics –> Youtube – 4 Tips To Making Great Videos

 

Youtube - 4 Tips To Making Great Videos

Would you agree besides Google, Youtube is our next go to when we need information and/ or to learn something new? It is the internet’s second largest search engine and everyone’s favourite online video sharing platform. Youtube allows users to view, share, upload, rate, add to playlists, report, comment on videos and subscribe to other users. With current mobile phone technology, we can even use our mobile phones to shoot videos and upload them onto Youtube. Easy peasy!

What does this mean for individuals and more importantly, for business owners? Similar to social media, not only you can use Youtube to share about your personal hobbies but also your business especially if it depends heavily on any category or mixture of visual, auditory and kinesthetic senses like fitness workouts or travel vlogging. The video genres are vast and unlimited on Youtube.  

Youtube has over 1.9 billion monthly active users and they watch a billion hours of videos every day. That translates into 114,000 years of videos being consumed every day. You might have tried to play around with video making before but still fuzzy about how to make good ones to upload onto Youtube for branding so here you are.

These are the top 4 tips for making great Youtube videos.

Youtube - 4 Tips To Making Great Videos

1. Plan your video content

Before you start working on your first script or storyboard, think about your target audience. What their problems are, what they need to know and how they benefit from your videos. If you are not sure, you can do some research and see how your competitors are using video content in their marketing strategies. 

At the same time, you can also do a keyword research so you can put highly ranked search keywords into your content and meta description to enhance the search engine optimization (SEO) to dramatically increase number of views. 

Use a cohesive tone for your video content, making sure how the overall mood and video elements such as music, lighting and colour composition are well-pieced together and thus reflect your branding in a clear and eye-catching manner. 

2. Use the equipment you have 

You might think you need to buy very expensive equipment to shoot good videos. Well, not totally true. With current smartphone models and their high quality cameras, you can use even your mobile phones to shoot videos and this is suitable for Youtube amateurs or for businesses who are working on a tight budget. 

Before you start shooting, be sure to run an audio test. Nothing turns people off more than poor quality audio so having clear audio is crucial to making your target audience feel that you are an expert and professional in your niche. Choose a quiet environment to test how close you need to be to the camera. Alternatively, you may want to invest in an external microphone to ensure effortless clear and high quality audio. 

Youtube - 4 Tips To Making Great Videos

3. Attention-grabbing intro and outro

How many times did you start watching a video but to close it within 5 seconds? In our recent blog article, we talked about the goldfish memory effect so the same rule of thumb applies. Today’s video viewers are very fussy about content and quality so you gotta grab their attention in the first 5 seconds if not they will be gone in a jiffy!

A good attention grabbing intro is a 2 liner, telling viewers what you are sharing and how they are going to benefit from watching. Eg. If you are in the fitness industry, you can say “In just 15 minutes, I am going to show you simple workout techniques and share some helpful tips to lose 5kg in 1 month! 

Assuming you got your target audience hooked from the intro to the end of your video, you can use the outro video to compel them to take action. It should include a call to action like subscribing to your channel, visiting your website or contacting your team to find out more. Either way, it is good to guide them in clear and concise steps so they know what to do next. 

4. Video editing and optimization

There are many free resources available on the web to edit your videos on various operating systems. Just like blog articles, it is good to make longer videos as they rank better than shorter videos. Backlinko analyzed 1.3 Million YouTube Videos and found that the average length of a video on the first page of YouTube is 14 minutes, 50 seconds.

You will want to make sure when you upload your videos, they are optimized. Youtube transcribes your video content so make sure the main keyword is spoken at least 2 to 3 times in the script. Put the keyword in the title and description, preferably at the front and make sure it is click-worthy adding an attractive thumbnail. Choose a thumbnail with bright and engaging colours and put some text in too so it will instantly grab people’s attention!

Finally, use tags to ensure maximum impact. You can use multiple variations of the same idea. Eg. “How to lose 5kg in 1 month” or “Use 1 month to lose 5kg”. Combined with the keyword research, you can be sure that there is significant leverage on making your video noticeable and clickbaitable during search results.  

Now that we have shown you making videos is not difficult even for the amateurs and with just a little tweak in content, audio and lighting; it can make a huge difference between good and bad quality videos. We hope these tips will help you and give you the confidence to get started on your video making journey!

 

Related topics –> Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – 6 Critical Ranking Factors

 

Content Writing - 4 Awesome Tips To Effective Marketing

What is content writing and why do we need it? Content writing is basically creating content for your business website with the purpose of attracting online visitors. It is the process of putting yourself into your target audience’s shoes, anticipating what they want to see and planning what to write to best engage with them; eventually promoting a product or service successfully. 

It can include writing blog articles, scripts for videos, product descriptions as well as content for specific platforms such as Twitter or Reddit. A major and important component of digital marketing, great content writing that engages your target audience is the key booster to sales revenue besides the aesthetics of your website. It drives search engine results, increases traffic to your website and establishes your credibility as well as branding in the industry. Sales revenue increases naturally as an effect of great content writing. 

There is no “one size fits for all” when it comes to content writing because every individual has their own preferences and quirks but what we can share with you is the secret sauce to great content writing for the masses. Just like success stories, there are always some common “ingredients” or X factors that produce the desired outcome.

Here are 4 important tips when it comes to content writing:

Content Writing - 4 Awesome Tips To Effective Marketing

1. Effective research

Understanding your target audience and creating buyer personas is fundamental to building a solid marketing strategy. You need to make sure the content you offer at different stages of the buying cycle is attractive enough to keep them engaged from start to finish when they visit your website. 

Content strategy and distribution is equally important. You can use the calendar tool in Asana to help you plan content ahead of time and distribute to the relevant social media channels. You can also write and put up blog articles or posts around key events. 

Eg. If you are running a pâtisserie, you can write about popular tarts or cakes to serve for Christmas and some history of how these came about when the month of December is approaching. Good visuals and engaging content will pull consumers into thinking of the sweet treats as potential Christmas ideas and eventually leading to a successful purchase.

2. Use a head-turning headline

Sounds cheesy but this is so true! We are flooded with so many different types of information every day that our brain automatically becomes goldfish-like when it comes to processing information. Because we sift through tons of information and 99% is similar anyway, we basically only remember it for that 3 to 5 seconds. 

It is like going through a mass of black and white so unless you use a head-turning headline, creating a shade of red among the mass of monochrome; the chances are people will not be attracted to turn back and look at what you are offering. You only have that few seconds to catch their attention hence great content writing is important.

Eg. If you are in the financial industry, most people will write “Want to have peace of mind?” but instead of writing this, you could write “How practising yoga helped me save money?” to link the importance of taking care of our physical health and potentially avoiding medical costs as you lead a healthy lifestyle and medical costs are getting higher. This is what we term as “emotion mapping” – a commonly used marketing strategy nowadays.

Content Writing - 4 Awesome Tips To Effective Marketing

3. Execute in the right channels and time

Though many businesses are turning to social media to promote their branding, we will advise you not all platforms are suitable based on the nature of your business. What do we mean? 

Eg. If you are in the legal industry, using a Facebook page and LinkedIn will be deemed more appropriate. However, if you are in the interior design business, using a Facebook page and Instagram will be more suitable as you can showcase your designs and decor. Get the drift? 

As for post timings, according to a Buffer study, the best time to post on Facebook is between 1pm to 3pm during the week and Saturdays while the best time to post on LinkedIn is 8am to 2pm on Tuesdays to Thursdays. 

4. Keep it updated and easy to consume

To ensure continued traffic to your business website and to drive turnover, you need to consistently update your content. A good frequency will be at least once or twice a week. 

Content that is easy to consume makes it easy for shareability too. To add some sass to your content writing, you can include short funny videos for some humour to engage your target audience. 

Alternatively, you can put in some stunning visuals to mix things up and most importantly, keep the content writing to short paragraphs so people can skim over easily and get the information they want within a short period of time. 

Now that you have the secret sauce at your fingertips, we hope it helps you to write great content. With well-planned marketing strategies and execution, you are on the road to success!

 

Related topics –> Email Marketing – 4 Amazing Tips To Increase Sales

Email Marketing - 7 Amazing Tips To Increase Sales

Now that your business website is up and running with search engine optimization and etc in place, what else can business owners do to drive potential traffic and increase business turnover? Another way to constantly showcase your product or service offerings is to create an email database aka email marketing where you can “push” new offerings or promotions to customers. Direct but yet not overly aggressive. 

You must be thinking “They are not going to open the email or even if they open, they are not going to get anything?”. Not necessarily true. A survey in 2018 on Statista showed that 65 percent of responding marketers found their email marketing return on investment (ROI) was either good or excellent while 4 percent said it was very poor. Usually, the possible open rate will be higher when 2 emails are sent for each campaign. 

Email marketing by far, is a cost effective marketing strategy that delivers real time results for business revenue regardless of marketing budget. It is also a great and personalized way to keep customers engaged into new products and promotions plus the results can be tracked easily. Still not convinced of its effectiveness?

Let me tell you the top 7 reasons on what email marketing can do for your business:

Email Marketing - 7 Amazing Tips To Increase Sales

1. Stay connected with your audience

Emails have the ability to keep your customers informed and capture their attention at the same time. Consumers have the freedom to check their emails and what your business can offer without feeling pressured to do anything compared to traditional brick and mortar businesses. 

It is also a subtle way to tell them that you are thinking of them and you are updating them on the latest happenings that they might have missed in their hectic schedules. Those who have signed up into your email list would mean they already have an interest in what you are offering and as long as you give them something worth reading, it will boost engagement with your customers.

2. Reach customers in real time

Nowadays, we bring our mobile phones wherever we go. On the bus, in the train, even to the washroom – our mobile phones are inseparable and if the mobile battery runs low, we fly into a panic. According to Litmus, 54% of all emails were opened on a mobile device. This is a significant percentage and should be taken into consideration when planning any marketing strategy. 

More and more consumers are using their mobile devices to access not only emails but other types of information as well. Hence well-designed emails will produce higher conversion rates on mobile devices compared to any other electronic gadgets. 

3. Results are measurable

Most email marketing tools like Mailchimp and Zoho offer the ability to track consumer analytics after you sent out your email campaign. You can track delivery rates, click through rates, bounce rates, open rates and unsubscribe rates. This gives you a better understanding of which email campaigns are working so you can tweak from there and choose which ones to remove altogether. 

These metrics form an important part of your internet marketing strategies because they tell you about consumer preferences so you can adjust your content accordingly. Generally, sending an email once or twice a week is good enough to keep customers engaged and yet not overbearing to the point that it becomes a turn off. 

4. Targeted marketing for segmentation

There might be many consumers who subscribe to your email list but the truth is, they are potential customers who are possibly at different stages of the buying cycle. Some may be in the research and compare stage, some are in the consideration stage and some may be in the ready to buy stage. 

Creating buyer personas aka targeted customer demographics will help you determine what type of content to create for each campaign. Segmentation of these customers into appropriate email marketing lists helps businesses to target these groups more effectively, “pushing” them into the next appropriate stage in the buying cycle.

Email Marketing - 7 Amazing Tips To Increase Sales

5. Personalized

We are thinking of sales all the time but yet more often than not, we forget that personalization is one of the most crucial keys to getting sales. Being able to showcase your product or service offerings in email marketing is good but it will be more effective if you know how to use it in the right fashion. 

It is important to use whatever customer data and information you have available. Sending customers a special offer on their birthday or letting them know their favourite lipstick brand is half off is much more effective than simply sending them a generic offer. They will be more likely to make a purchase when they know you remember their preferences and were thinking of them. 

6. Affordability

This is what you were holding your breath for, correct? When we mentioned cost effective, you were probably thinking “Ya right?” Email marketing can reach a large number of consumers for less than a few cents per message. The cost per potential conversion is so low that we will be surprised which company would not want to use email marketing to engage their customers. 

For starters, you can use Mail Chimp which allows you to send up to 12,000 emails a month for free! Alternatively, you may use SendGrid which allows you to send each message at $0.0001 with their Essentials level. The various platforms come with free and paid plans so you can choose the one most suited for your business needs. You can also schedule email campaigns and all the email marketing tools would come with dynamic templates for you to use. 

7. Everyone uses email

If we make phone calls, the recipients will either reject or cut the calls short, right? Using email as an alternative sales and marketing technique will be better because it is non-invasive and allows the consumers to find out about what your business is offering at their own pace. A Hubspot survey states that 91% of consumers use email and that alone should convince you to explore email marketing. 

Not only can you provide them with the latest deals, new products and more, email marketing also makes it easier for them to share or forward those emails to anyone they like without much hassle. A good and successful email marketing strategy is to encourage customers not only to make a purchase but also to share as much as possible. That is free brand awareness for you! 

There are many platforms and/ or ways to market your business, including Google Ads and Instagram. However, email marketing has been proven to be one of the most effective and inexpensive ways to promote your product and service offerings with well-planned execution. This makes brand awareness possible for new entrepreneurs or businesses that are working with a limited budget. We hope this information has been useful to get you started on your email marketing journey. 

 

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Google Ads - 6 Easy Ways To Increase Traffic

After building your business website and implementing SEO, what else can business owners do to drive potential traffic quickly? With a little budget, you can set up a Google Ads account to start your online advertising campaigns. Google Ads, formerly known as Google Adwords, is basically an online paid advertising platform where advertisers bid on certain keywords to display brief advertisements, product or service offerings and videos to users in Google’s search results. Services offered are based on a pay-per-click (PPC) pricing model. 

You might be thinking “Do I need to spend a lot of money?” or “It is too expensive!” Many people have misconceptions that they need to spend a lot of money on Google Ads to drive and increase traffic to their business websites. However, this is not totally true. The cost varies due to a number of factors, including the competitiveness of your keywords and industry, geographic location and etc. 

For example, the business service industries like real estate and accounting; they are one of the more competitive verticals in Google Ads and that means it would result in higher costs per click (CPC). This is due to the nature of a niche market and one client could yield significant revenue of $1K to $10K depending on your business so a CPC of $50 is a minor price to pay for that client.  

On the other hand, industries like arts and entertainment incur smaller CPCs because they need to reach many more customers to hit that same revenue of $1K to $10K. So how do you manage when you don’t have a big advertising budget? Similar to Facebook, you can actually set a daily budget. Let me explain. If you want to place an ad with a CPC of $0.50 and you like to receive 100 clicks, that would put you on an estimated daily budget of $100. 

In this example, it means $0.50 is the maximum amount you will be charged per click if that is your maximum CPC. In reality, the actual amount might vary every time, depending on individual ad auctions but it also means you will not pay more than $0.50 per click but could possibly end up paying less. There are other advanced options that might affect the overall budget such as dayparting, geotargeting and device targeting but we will leave that to another time.

More importantly, let’s talk about 6 most practical features to help you master the basics of Google Ads and increase traffic to your website!

Google Ads - 6 Easy Ways To Increase Traffic

1. New ad copy formats

Since 2019, Google has released different ad format options to use and if you have not used them yet, it is a good time to look into these new options. Previously, advertisers had limited text space to put in their ads but now the space has almost doubled and there are powerful ads that can use any number of preset options to create an attractive advertisement for individual users. Eg. Video ads can be used to provide an interactive and fun experience to customers. These can be featured on websites that partner with Google. 

2. Search impression share

Just because you run Google ads does not mean that you will automatically get traffic. A major factor is the use of keywords. Sometimes, your business does not show up because the ad rank is too low which is a prompt to work on improving your quality score. Other times, it might be due to budget constraints. With search impression share, you can find out how often your business appears based on the keywords you use and pinpointing you to where the underlying problem is so you can make the rectifications accordingly to increase traffic.

3. The Home tab

Do you agree that when you see this tab, you tend to “switch off” in a way cuz it seems like a mass of information to digest? This is often the most overlooked but insightful page. Within the Home tab, you will find interesting information like missed clicks due to budget, good quality but low traffic keywords and even suggestions to increase traffic by adding new keywords. A great free tool to help you improve on directing more traffic to your business website.

Google Ads - 6 Easy Ways To Increase Traffic

4. Auction insights

While you cannot directly see how much your competitors are bidding for keywords or their quality scores, there is still a lot of information you can gather from the Auction Insights tab. It offers an in-depth analysis at what your competitors are bidding alongside you, how often their ads appear for your keywords and where their ads show up on the page. If you find that the bids need to be at the top of the page to increase traffic clicks, you can review your competitors to see who is outbidding you.

5. Different bidding strategies

Google Ads has put in place several automated bidding systems to help businesses in achieving different goals – search page location, clicks and conversions etc. You will want to have your account set up and running for some time before using any of these automated bidding strategies as research has shown that past account history plays a part in their effectiveness. By doing this, it helps you save time and money in the long run as the analytics will show you which strategy works best for your business. 

6. Remarketing

If you are not familiar with the concept of remarketing, it is worth doing some research. With this tool, you can “push” ads to people once they visit your business website. Retargeting can be specified down to particular pages of your website so you can tailor ads for those unique areas. Similar to traditional advertising, some people need to visually see your brand many times before they decide to connect. With remarketing as an indirect advertising strategy, you can continue to remind them of their previous visit and make the first ad click worthwhile by “pushing” ads even after they left your website

We hope this information has been insightful and helpful so you can maximize using Google Ads to increase traffic to your business website. You may need tweaks here and there but you will definitely achieve the desired results in due time!

 

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