According to HubSpot, 80% of a website’s traffic begins with a search query. That is why search engine optimization (SEO) is immensely important. Also, it is must for you to learn how to improve your SEO.
You definitely need to improve your SEO with the below mentioned innovative approaches since it is a vital element for any business or any individual enterprise. The practise of SEO is not only restricted to traffic and visibility, but it is also equally important for creating a BRAND. An excellent implementation of SEO can efficiently and productively convert a startup into a BRAND.
It can even help in maintaining the quality and reputation of a brand in the digital environment for the long-term. However, how to improve your SEO? What are the innovative approaches to improve your SEO?
Here, we present the most known yet innovative approaches to structure and improve your SEO and advance the way you are working for website optimization of search engines.
Top 6 Innovative approaches to improving your SEO
Organic SEO (natural SEO) is a free and usual way to bring traffic to the website from the search engine. An organic SEO is a time-consuming process and results may take considerable time to affect the bottom line, whereas an inorganic SEO provides results in substantial short times.
The implementation of these advanced and innovative approaches will improve your SEO and double your organic website traffic.
1. Acquisition of link building
According to Jayson DeMers, “Don’t buy links. Earn them, because the quantity and quality of inbound links have a significant impact on a website’s rankings”.
Earlier link building was often done through black hat SEO techniques. However, fortunately after the Google Penguin, an algorithm update that was created to penalize sites that were creating unnatural Backlinks, the scenario is improving and moving towards white hat link building.
SEMRush has given a perfect formula for backlinks: Quality Backlinks = Relevancy + Trust + Authoritative Website
In order to obtain quality inbound links, follow these innovative yet effective techniques to improve your SEO and boost your rankings:
Understand the link-building strategy and innovative approaches of your competitors
Build ethical business relationships: promote your articles/blogs on other websites and do blog commenting and posting on various sites having high DA/ PA.
Build a professional network on social media platforms and let your followers know about your website and your business
Get rid of broken links
Implement Schema mark-up to your website. Schema.org provides a particular set shared vocabulary that you can use to mark up your pages so that the major search engines can understand them.
Do guest blog posting on quality and relevant sites.
An unbeatable keyword strategy, as a part of innovative approaches, involves choosing high-performing keywords that drive relevant traffic to the intended website. Selecting the right keywords can make a remarkable difference in SEO campaigns and ultimately improve your SEO results. The right selection of the right keywords will help your website rank well on Google and other search engines. The ideal keyword strategies comprise highly relevant keywords that relate closely to a particular business or are associated with a particular industry.
Always have long-tail keywords to compete with already established SEO. It means instead of short-tail keywords of 1-3 words like “make money online”, “lose weight”, and “communication skills” use long-tail keywords like “how to make money online with affiliate marketing”, “how to lose 20 kg weight in 3 months without dieting”, and “how to improve online communication skills”.
To determine the success of keywords that improve your SEO, you need to consider the following parameters:
Extraction of a general list of keywords and keyword phrases from competitors’ website & target market
The relevance of keywords concerning your website content
Research of keywords on a regular basis
The resemblance of keywords with the vocabulary of the target audience
Usage of keywords that are unique to the content for each web page
Remember, Google penalizes for keyword stuffing.
3. Focus on quality of content vs. quantity of content
Google Panda considers the quality of a site’s content when ranking sites in the search results. For websites that have lower quality content or copied content, they would possibly get adversely impacted by Panda.
By now we all know that ‘content is king’ and it is. In fact, it is a “kingdom” and can effectively improve your SEO. Your quality content brings engagement and ultimately boosts brand awareness. Has content optimized thoroughly on your each and every web page? The key here is to come up with engaging and quality content is writing for your users, search engines will then automatically take care of your rankings.
Of course, long-form content performs well; however, short-form content hasn’t yet lost its charm. So, maintain the right amount of proportion of long-form vs. short-form blogs and other content. In a nutshell, have all sort of content (textual and visual i.e. images, infographics, GIFs, and videos), to delight your readers with a variety of quality and original content. According to one school of thought, good quality content matters more than the domain age in the long run; which resultantly improve your SEO.
And hence, original content is critical. The spinning of content will never get you good rankings. Your blog or website can even get penalized by Google for such low-quality content. For whatever content you publish on your website, you need to ensure that the content is user-friendly. Visitors prefer content that reads in straightforward and easy-to-understand language. Google boosts all those websites that can engage the readers to keep them hooked on the site longer.
4. Optimization of on-page factors
You can earn quality backlinks through strategic techniques and innovative approaches to off-page SEO. However, your on-page factors also need to be optimized for better rankings.
Here are a few handy things which you can take care of to improve your SEO:
Your SEO efforts can go waste if you use either too long or too short titles and descriptions
Always have your Focus Keyword in Meta titles, Meta descriptions, and headings
Check the presence, relevance, and optimization of Title tags and Meta descriptions on each of your website page
As compared to Title tags, Meta descriptions have lost power in the ranking algorithm; however, it still helps in increasing clicks from search results. So keep them most relevant and attractive.
Also pay due attention to conversion optimization aspects such as site speed, image optimization, video optimization, code optimization, the aesthetic look of the site, and more.
5. Implementation of a timely website audit
An innovative SEO is just not possible if your website audit does not take place on a timely basis. A website SEO audit should not miss on any of the following parameters:
Elimination of Site and URL errors
Evaluation of XML sitemap
Assessment of content
Assessment of site speed and canonicalization
Verification of Robots.txt files
Authentication of site architecture
Ensure your website is responsive
An audit report of your website will reveal insights on your site’s ranking criteria, bounce rates, user engagement time on any specific page, search percentages, and website traffic. Furthermore, it also aids you to address broken links, response time, download time, and other HTML errors, if any. Get performed your website audit on a timely basis by an SEO expert to get the exact review needed for search engine optimization.
We recommend the following tools/tips for a great website SEO audit:
Improvement cannot be made possible if you are not aware of flaws. Similarly, SEO cannot be improved if you do not measure the effectiveness of your SEO efforts through analytics.
In Google Analytics, track your SEO campaigns. Apart from monitoring your ranking, keep an eye on your non-branded traffic, improvements in engagements, and other parameters. Figure out which online campaigns bring the most traffic and conversions and why they are performing better. Check the location of your best visitors. With the help of ‘site search’ function, the site determines what people are searching on the web and what they are looking for on your site. To check your goal conversions, checkout at what point of site people abandon the shopping cart.
Conclusion
SEO is more like fishing rather than hunting. Search Engine Optimization is a cornerstone of any good web marketing strategy. Good SEO skills are excellent web management skills as well since they result in standard-based website implementation, well-organized information architecture, and well-written on-topic content.
Are you ready to improve your SEO? If yes, right away implement these innovative approaches and experience the exquisite results. If you have anything else to add, do drop in your words in the comments section!
According to Sprout Social, more than 1.86 billion are monthly active users on Facebook, which includes a 17% year over year spike since 2016.
This shows how important and preferred Facebook is as a social media network. Facebook has expanded its wings and has moved beyond just a network to connect with family and friends. It is, in fact, considered one of the most important social media marketing platforms. Keeping the amount of audience that visits Facebook and its growing importance in digital marketing services, you should not ignore the dominance of Facebook advertising strategies that bring instant conversions.
A lot many search marketers are either unclear or unaware of how to advertise on Facebook. Hence, first of all, your entire social media marketing strategy has to be crystal-clear and completely in-line with your social media goals. Facebook advertising strategies also require the same logic and action.
How to build Facebook advertising strategies that bring instant conversions?
Facebook advertising strategies come in various varieties. The options include the promotion of your business page, promotion of your posts on a business page, promotion of your popular posts on which users have taken action, or promotion of your website.
A Facebook advert makes it easy to find the right people, capture their attention towards your advertisement, and get the desired results. According to KISSmetrics, Facebook ads are more like display ads than search ads. Facebook advertising strategies should be used to generate demand, not fulfil it.
If you are worried or unsure about how should you advertise on Facebook, here is the suggestion!
Figure out at which stage your Facebook advertising strategies will fit
Build ideal customer audience i.e. connect with your target audience
Display advertisements to your target audience whom you already know
Perform A/B testing of your creative advertisements
Track performance of your Facebook adverts and incorporate improvements in your Facebook advertising strategies.
QL Tech Tip:
In Facebook advertising, the ad content works well on the basis of three parameters:
1. Relevant target audience
2. Quality of content and
3. Perfect timing of posting content including timely interactions
Keeping the above mentioned three points in the mind, your Facebook advertising campaign needs to be prepared.
Facebook ads can appear in your target audience’s News Feed or right column of Facebook. Run through various types of Facebook advertising strategies which can bring traffic and boost conversions.
Types of Facebook ads
1. Page Post Engagements
These ads are basically the posts that invite you to like, comment, or share. Hence, such ads are targeted to boost engagement of the posts of your fan page.
2. Page Likes
The amount of likes serves as social proof. And hence, the higher the likes, the better the social image. These are the most popular category of Facebook advertising strategies. Because once your audience base increases through likes, it will spread awareness of your brand in their networks too if they like or share your posts.
3. Clicks to Websites
Such facebook ads are targeted to take some desired action. Such ads are best fit if you want your target audience to visit your website by inviting them to read your blog or any offer.
4. Website Conversions
These ads rather than focusing on any other information direct user to take the desired action on their CTA. These ads work best when you want to promote any special offer or limited time discount coupons.
5. App Instalments
These ads are getting attraction from the young crowd. Such ads direct users to download their app and use it rather than browsing their sites on the internet. Flipkart app, Ola cabs app, etc.
6. Event Responses
These ads are treated as special ads. Whenever any event or webinar is organized by your business and you want to promote it over social media to invite attendees, these ads are the best options.
7. Lead generation campaigns
Lead generation encompasses two elements: generating interest in your business and then capturing it. And hence, lead generation campaign advertisements often ask a target audience to take action.
8. Offer Claims
On special days or special occasions, brands prefer to go for this option to boost sales. For instance, Social Media Perth had invited people to join their special event of entrepreneurs meets on their 4th birthday, June 27, 2017.
Now let’s have a look at how Facebook advertising strategies work for a brand for instant conversions.
As seen above, there can be a variety of advertisements based on marketing goals. Before you start with your Facebook advertising campaigns, run through the below-mentioned tactics.
1. Select a campaign based on your marketing goal
For campaigns and paid advertisements, Facebook has three objective categories: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion. According to Charlie Lawrance, “The best way to determine your campaign objective is to work backward from your goal.”
It means if your marketing goal is to generate sales for your ecommerce business, for instance, you could offer the customers of 20% discount on their first purchase to tempt them to make a transaction on your e-commerce site.
For all three categories, the structure of a Facebook advertising campaign consists of three levels. They are a campaign, an ad set, and an ad. The first level, the campaign, is the starting point of your Facebook ad.
At the first stage, you need to set the advertising goal at the campaign level, for example, get more page likes, drive more traffic, etc.
At the second stage of the ad set, you need to define your targeting strategy by organizing factors like targeting, budget, and schedule.
And, at the third stage, finally, your ads are creative visuals in the form of images or video clips which will drive your target audience your offerings.
2. Make your brand popular by creating interest in it
It is sort of creating awareness of your brand. This works best when you target the audience for such campaigns who have already liked your page and are aware of your business and social media presence. Create compelling advertisements that create interest in your brand. Such ads are best for start-ups since they do not focus on generating sales but they more work towards the establishment of brand awareness.
3. Build and test the creativity of your advertisements
The ad level is the final/third stage of the Facebook campaign structure. Your final published ad copy is going to be visual in front of your audience. So, it is imperative that you choose your image, content and timing of ad very wisely. Do not compromise on the creativity and format of your advertisement.
Facebook advertisement format is divided into 6 elements:
It is must to do A/B testing of your Facebook advertising elements to check what is performing well over others. Three elements can be tested i.e. image, copy, and timing. However, not all elements can be tested in a single experiment, do it one-by-one and check the relevance scores. If an ad is not at all doing well, replace it with another. However, introduce new ads when the relevance scores of your current ads decline, often due to ad frequency, as the best way to continue to generate results from your campaign. Moreover, frequent blunder people commit is to kill the campaign and start a new one.
4. Identify the products/services that you want to promote vigorously
If your marketing goal is maximising conversions, focus on creating campaigns of the products/services that are the best among the lot. And, you need to promote them vigorously. Through your advertisements, convey and convince your audience why they are best for them.
5. Encourage users to participate in activities
If your marketing goal is to succeed at the consideration stage, create advertisements that compel users to participate in various activities you want to perform them. Here, such type of ads is applicable for almost all brands that are looking forward to growing their subscriber base.
For example, if you are promoting your bags and purses, write a copy defining how a particular product will define their style statement and ask them to read a related blog or subscribe to your newsletters.
6. Offer incentives at the conversion stage
The conversion stage is often an important stage of your marketing funnel. At this stage, create advertisements offering some special discounts, coupons, or vouchers. These are the best when your target audience is your active fan following. Here, you can offer them the discounts on their special events like: “Get 20% off on your anniversary”, or “Get FREE vouchers worth $XX on your birthday for shopping above $XX”. Precisely, Advertise to your audience with these tactics in mind in order to increase brand trust, awareness, and overall conversions.
Conclusion
Prior to creating your Facebook advertisement campaign, dedicate your time to define your campaign strategy. It is a must for you to decide how and where in your sales funnel you can use in creating Facebook ads to grow your business.
Do share your thoughts on how effectively you are using your Facebook advertising strategy to boost conversions.
Audit term is not just restricted to the finance and accounting domain. It applies in each those sectors where functions have been carried out with the help of strategic decision and dedicated investments. Digital marketing is also not an exception here. As a digital marketer, with the help of social media audit, you need to evaluate each of the digital marketing activities to judge its performance and handle its areas of improvements.
Based on the results, corrective actions need to be taken from time to time to enhance performance and sustain competition. Along with search engine optimisation and pay-per-click, social media marketing is equally important to spread brand awareness and boost online presence. A social media audit evaluates the effectiveness and ROI of social media marketing activities.
What is a Social Media Audit?
Social media audit is a key ingredient of a social media marketing plan. It evaluates how well your current social media performance is, how it works for you, and how better you can explore it for business benefits.
Why you need Social Media Audit?
For any business that has a social media presence on one or multiple networks needs to conduct personal social media audit from time to time.
The fundamental purpose is:
to ensure that each of your social media profiles is on brand and functioning correctly
to make sure that you’re using the right channels for your brand
to identify and eliminate any inactive or abandoned accounts
to analyse how relevant your social media activities are on your marketing goals
A social media audit reflects a complete picture of your activities in the form of metrics such as engagement, impressions, likes, retweets, shares, etc. The contemporary approach also focuses on interactions, sentiments from engaged users, response rates, and response times.
How to Conduct a Social Media Audit?
Have you ever wondered why you are a member of various LinkedIn groups but not getting any engagement? You do share your blogs and posts in different Facebook groups but unable to churn likes on it? You have made your pinned post both aesthetic and valuable in the context of content but failed to earn impressions? Are you consistent with your posts and posts mix across all channels? Well, you can unpack all such answers if you conduct a social media audit with a correct approach.
You need to have analytics in place for all platforms. Make a discipline to maintain monthly post schedule. At the end of the month, when you pull your monthly data from analytics, you will get a list of each of the post along with the posted date, time, permalink, reach, engagement, likes, retweet/repost, share, mention, impression, etc.
As a social media marketer, you should focus on engagement and impression of your tweets. Then analyse top 10 or 20 posts based on the highest reach, engagement, and impression. Once you have your list of top posts ready, it will be easy for you to interpret what type of content is working well for you. You will also come to know the best time to post. Also, it will pave the smooth way to strengthen your A/B testing regarding timing, content, and images.
Focus points while conducting Social Media Audit
1. Analyse the quality of your engagements
How great is it to see so many unread notifications daily morning in each of your social networks? Yes, it gives immense satisfaction to realise that your profile and social presence have come into notice of others and they have preferred to interact with you.
However, have you ever verified those accounts that have liked, shared or ping you in one or other way? If they are from similar industry and have similar interest, keep them engaged and build online rapport with them. Vice-versa, if they have by chance come across your feed and do not relate to your industry, you no need to invest a dedicated time in keeping them active. Because one or other day they will either discontinue following you or stop posting on your feed. The reason is the difference between theirs and your areas of interest and goals of social media.
2. Identify and eliminate branding gaps
Whatever social media audit results you get based on the analysis, divide it into two areas from your social media marketing goals perspective, strong areas and areas of improvements. Have a consistent focus on your strengths and convert your weak points into manageable areas.
Your social media presence should spread your brand awareness. Each of your social profile should speak about your brand and if required, keep making improvements as and when required.
Try to grab the attention of your target audience with the help of posting curated content, tagging them, mentioning them, sharing relevant posts, and keeping the important post as a pinned post.
3. Keep a note of personal messages
Not everyone will post on your feed directly. Some may tag you, or some may send you a private message. Remember not all direct messages are auto-generated. Most of the social media marketers are aware of the annoyance that DM creates.
It is very likely that your DM is knocking the door of opportunities for you. Never ignore them. If found irrelevant, you may delay replying but do read them! Similarly, keep sending personalised messages to thank, congratulate or acknowledge the things which matter to you.
4. Review your posts
This though sounds pretty obvious is of utmost importance. Your social media profile is the face of your business. Neither you can fake anything there, nor can you post anything on your feed that can harm your brand image.
Study your audience and their tastes; accordingly, tailor your content to post. If they like visual content, have a more focus on videos, podcasts, infographics and images with little text.
Keep a note of your most engaged posts and analyse them to figure out what was the high point in it that has benefited you well. Similarly, have a look at all those posts that were right from your point of view but somehow failed to perform well on social networks. Compare the results and draw conclusions.
Social media is a very handy place for communication and brand promotion. So, carefully and enthusiastically keep walking ahead in your journey.
Here are some tips for social media audit for the TWO most popular platforms which we believe: Twitter and Facebook.QL Tech Tip: Make the use of social media automation tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, Post Planner, and others to schedule your posts so that you can reach the maximum audience when they are online. It will give you good results in your analytics.
Twitter Audit
Twitter is the most loved platform for users. It’s 140 character limit makes it more interesting. Furthermore, you can add images, links and Infographics to make it more interactive. Consequently, these attempts increase your post reach and network.According to Internet Live Stats, there are some 6,000 tweets sent per second on average, which translates to over 350,000 tweets per minute or about 500 million tweets per day.
Your social media audit for the Twitter platform should focus on:
Likes on your posts
Shares of your posts that can drive traffic to your website
Comments and interactions on your posts
Clicks and opens of your links and images
Video views
Number of followers
are they increasing, decreasing, or fluctuating consistency
are they relevant or fake
are they active on their feed
Number of followings – how many relevant people are you following
are you following the people that belong to your industry
are you following your dedicated followers
how many of your following falls under fake identities
what is the social authority of your following
what is the engagement level with and from following
Post reach
Number of mentions
Social authority
Twitteraudit.com tool is a handy tool that finds out your fake followers on Twitter
Twitter Analytics is the very first place to get an analysis of your monthly performance. You can also make use of various FREE and paid tools available. To name a few, they are:
Sprout social
Twitonomy
Twitter Counter
Moz Followerwonk
Tweepi
Fanpage Karma will analyse your and your competitors’ accounts across Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest.
Facebook Audit
According to the recent article of dreamgrow.com, Facebook has retained its dominant position among all social networking sites.
Considering the traffic Facebook can bring to your website, one should make the most use of it as a social media marketing platform. However, it is a crowded place, so you need to be active with your marketing skills. Paid advertisements work very well in case of Facebook. The Facebook audit will reveal how good your posts and ads are performing and what content suits best in front of what demography.
Facebook page audit is aimed to ensure that you are optimising your marketing efforts on Facebook. Like Twitter, Facebook also provides analytics on the same lines i.e. engagement, reach, impression, and others. Your social media audit for the Facebook Page should focus on:
Audience
are we posting in front of the right audience
are we posting the content which our audience wants
are we replying to each of our message and comments on our posts
Content
are we enough flexible in posting our content with respect to taste and timings of our target audience
what type of content is working well and why
what is the content mix we are posting and is it suffice based on competition and industry standards
Brand promotion
does our Facebook page, profile picture, and cover image provides all information which a user needs to know
are you reviewing your thumbnails which are in display for your audience
are we presenting our brand consistently
are we confusing our readers and users with brand identity since we have multiple Facebook pages for multiple goals
Facebook Analytics is the very first place to get an analysis of your monthly performance. Furthermore, there are various FREE and paid tools available, like:
QL Tech Tip: To boost engagement on Facebook, maximise the use of tab apps.
Closing thoughts
Here, we have tried to facilitate our readers by providing the most popular tools for Twitter Audit and Facebook Audit which every social media marketer wants. The importance of Social Media is undeniable, and so as social media marketing. And what’s the use of such marketing activities which we don’t measure to analyse the importance and effectiveness. Hence, social media audit is crucial. The topic of social media audit has very broad coverage. One blog is not enough to conclude on any results. Keep checking our resources section, there are many FREE resources lined up for you which will aid you in conducting your social media audit in line with your marketing goals.
The last year 2016 was quite a roller coaster for search marketers due to substantial and unforeseen changes took place in paid search marketing, for both Google and Bing platforms. Taking into consideration these changes and their impacts, at the start of the year 2017, lot many people have published numerous posts regarding most prominent and top SEO trends to watch out for. Various predictions were made on SEO, search engine, and ranking algorithms. Now, we are halfway through the year 2017. The exciting part is most of the anticipated trends proved to be of significance for SEO.
Here we present the most talked SEO trends and how it proved their prominence in this year:
1. Video content is booming
People love audio-visual content over textual content. As predicted at the start of the year 2017, many established as well as newbie brands are banking their advertising campaigns on video content. With so many active social networks like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat where people love to share their stories, how come brands stay behind this trend?
Crowdcart is quite prominent in the race of video advertising. Crowdcart helps to connect and engage with your audience through LIVE video. It enables to teach, share, and connect over webinars, Q&As, live courses, and summits.
Coming back to video advertisements, popular brand Coca Cola’s advertisement #LiftTheFeeling has gone viral on digital media. The video garnered over 20 million views (around 12+ million views on official YouTube page and around 9 million views on the Facebook page of Coca Cola) in just two days of the advertisement.
The ad titled ‘Elevator’ has been made under the ‘taste the feeling’ campaign keeping the Indian audience in mind. It is about a tale of togetherness between two strangers, a celebrity and a diehard fan. The video content focus on those two strangers who meet up in an elevator and coca-cola helps them to break the ice and make the connection between them. Since it was an elevator, they promoted it as ‘lift the feeling’. The amazing dance and music quality make video content more interesting.
Before the digital launch of the ad, teasers of the campaign sent the consumers in a dither guessing what is next. Creating curiosity amongst viewers, the launch on digital media had consumers liking, sharing, and commenting persistently, which resulted in greater engagement between consumers and the brand.
Later on, the ‘Taste the Feeling’ campaign was featured by more than 200 countries across TV, outdoor, print, retail signage and more.
Here is the curated list of the most popular video ads (visual marketing) on YouTube in the year 2017:
Samsung: This is a phone (March/April 2017)
A Better Super Bowl | NFL Hyundai Super Bowl LI (February 2017)
2017 Kia Niro | “Hero’s Journey” (February 2017)
2. User-generated content is shared and perceived most
If you serve what your audience is seeking, you are surely going to rock with all your campaigns. But, how to know what they are looking for? There is a marketing gimmick called user-generated content. User-generated content (i.e. UGC) comprise any form of content that is created by users and consumers about a brand or product. Ask users indirectly what they want and accordingly tailor your content marketing and SEO content.
Especially on Instagram, UGC is highly prevalent, shared, and perceived. UGC generates more engagement on social media and from there attract more organic traffic towards the website.
According to HubSpot, 76% of individuals surveyed said they trusted content shared by “average” people more than by brands, and nearly 100% of consumers trust recommendations from others.
Let us take a glance over how SEO can be benefited with the help of user-generated content.
Wayfair, an online furniture store, is one of the world’s largest online destinations for the home decor. Wayfair is running a fun UGC campaign since 2016 to boost its online sales. Basically, this campaign intends to let customers display their online shopping experiences using hashtag #WayfairAtHome. Many buyers who did online shopping posted millions of content using this hashtags. This hashtag is highly popular on Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. And, in June 2017 also, people are highly using this hashtag to convey their experiences. Lots of UGC is available for this brand and it is cashing on it through varied advertisements.
Here, are some of the recent examples posted on social media:
Whatever hashtags are posted on social media by users, they all are reposted by the brand with relevant hyperlinks that can drive organic traffic and boost conversions. The user-generated content serves two-way benefits – it acts as testimonials plus it provides an exact idea of what they want and how they feel about the specific product/service.
3. Intense content paves a smooth road for SEO
“Don’t optimize your keywords, optimize your content”. This was emphasized as one of the top SEO trends for the year 2017. Unlike past years, the focus has shifted on comprehensive and long-form content for SEO to provide value to the readers. On the other hand, search marketers can also have a higher number of Backlinks and internal links in the intense and long-form content, which eventually boost their SEO. Airstream is a popular and iconic American brand, dealing in Travel Trailers and Touring Coach. Their policy is “Let’s not make any changes, let’s make only improvements!” They well applied their philosophy for their content to boost their conversions. They were not much worried about the number of visitors, but their real challenge was their conversions.
According to Hileman, the team needed content that would appeal to people who were higher up in the funnel. They did take help of lifecycle content (by developing gated and lifestyle-centred eBooks, revamped newsletters) to boost their conversions. The new content they created included guides — such as “Road Trips Across the U.S.” and “Farms & Wineries” — as well as ebooks like “Why Airstream?”
Their textual content was beautified by adding image content. Earlier they discovered that inclusion of an image of the cover of the eBook resulted in much higher conversion rates than just a text-heavy page. Later on, they also realized that video headers on a landing page distracted people from performing an action on their CTA buttons. Minor updates resulted in huge conversions, their brochure download conversion rates surprised and satisfied them with good traffic.
4. Personal branding – verified as an undisclosed SEO strategy
Branding makes a huge difference in your overall online impression and foothold. Personal branding is an unexplored yet very powerful tool for your SEO. The biggest benefit it provides is the trustworthiness of the brand. In the digital marketing field, there are some giants who have established their personal branding very well. People just trust their offerings by their names.
Examples include:
Neil Patel: there is hardly anyone who hasn’t heard about him for SEO and digital marketing. He has consistently grown his personal brand through blogging and guest posting on sites like Entrepreneur, Forbes, Inc., etc. Owner of neilpatel.com, quicksprout.com, and crazzyegg.com. Also, a co-founder of hellobar.com and KISSmetrics.com
Rand Fishkin: He is the CEO and Co-Founder of SEOMoz, a leader in the field of SEO tools, resources & community. Furthermore, he is the host of Whiteboard Friday, co-author of a pair of books on SEO, co-founder of Inbound.org, and serves on the board of the presentation software firm, Haiku Deck.
Gary Vaynerchuk: He runs VaynerMedia. He is regarded as one of the well-known entrepreneur personal brands. He’s active on Snapchat and YouTube and his podcasts are everywhere on the internet.
Jeff Bullas: His blog receives over 5 million visitors a year. He helps businesses and personal brands with digital marketing services that include blogs, social media marketing, and search engine optimization.
Larry Kim: He is the founder and Chief Technology Officer at Mobile Monkey. In addition, he is regarded as the most influential PPC expert. No doubt, building a personal brand takes a lot of efforts and consistency matters. But, one should try it out persistently. A strong and recognizable personal brand can attract tons of organic traffic.
5. AMP does make a significant difference in your SEO
As we already know that Google favours the websites which have switched over to AMPs.
According to Google, more than 50% of search queries, globally, are now take place from mobile devices.
Here’s how 2Dogs Media churn out huge results from improvised SEO due to AMP in place.In November 2016, there were no AMP pages indexed on the website. On 2nd December 2016, they implemented accelerated mobile pages on their WordPress website. They also submitted a new sitemap into Google Search Console so that Google can easily notice the site. On the first day of AMP installation, they experienced website traffic on all 14 AMP indexed web pages.
Not only this, other massive benefits include:
Within 6 months of AMP implementation, observed much higher CTR on AMP pages as compared to traditional pages
Improved website speed (earlier non-AMP page load time was 11 seconds which went down to 2.2 seconds for AMP pages, with reduced page size and reduced requests)
40% of the traffic on AMP pages was organic (Excluding referral, social and direct traffic sources)
The gist of the entire story is if a greater portion of your traffic comes from mobile, implement AMP NOW! However, even if your traffic sources include both desktop and mobile devices, then also we suggest you go for AMP. This is because we cannot deny the fact that mobile optimization is already extremely important in SEO strategies in 2017.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
The above-mentioned SEO trends are just a portion of the chunk of anticipations. There is a high reliance on other trends as well, which are: voice search, user intent, the influential role of structured data and schema implementation, the influence of artificial intelligence on working of algorithms, local search, cross-channel marketing, and optimization for user-intent. As a general tip, continue to optimize your online presence to boost your SEO.
In case you feel something else can change the scenario of SEO in the rest of the year 2017, do drop in your words in the comments section, we would love to hear from you!
Social media – who doesn’t know about it? In this digital tech savvy world, social media has gained a massive toehold. Various social media platforms are explored in-depth for digital marketing. No doubt, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are the most receptive social platforms for business; however, various platforms, including Instagram, are preferred for various marketing activities; they are:
Facebook dominates among all social media marketing platforms as a source of social traffic and sales.
Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms. The name Instagram is derived from a combination of “Instant Photo” and “Telegram.” Instagram, an incredible social media platform for sharing pictures, was launched in the Spring Season of 2010. In a less than a decade, this platform has grown into a powerful social media force, not to be overlooked.
Since 2012, Instagram is owned by Facebook. This acquisition of Instagram by Facebook shows where digital marketing trends are heading. Since both social media platforms are owned by the same owner, you can easily connect these two to boost your digital marketing strategies.
In the recent past, Instagram has literally competed extremely well with the dominant top four platforms viz. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest. Instagram has more than 500 million users.
Instagram is a great platform for online marketing since it is more popular on mobile; moreover, mobile is gaining huge traction day by day by both users and search engines.
People are prioritizing visual content over plain, and hence, Instagram is considered as one of the most effective social media marketing platforms for the coming days. As a business owner, you should use Instagram to market your products and services. Apart from product images, you can also share videos. Its ‘LIVE recording and sharing’ feature are getting way popular bit by bit.
Explore Instagram as a social media marketing platform
Social media management starts with the base of your followers and followings. To boost your Instagram marketing, first of all, you need to boost your followers on a constant and stable basis. The more people are aware of your brand, the greater your chances are to potentially reach your target audience.
Let’s run through the tips and tactics on how to explore Instagram as a social media marketing platform to make your brand more popular.
1. Hashtags – use unique, crisp, meaningful, and attractive
Hashtags are not only important for Twitter; they also play a prominent role on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and google plus.
According to Dominique Jackson, the beauty of hashtags for Instagram is they make your content discoverable and increase your chances of engagement.
It’s a big way of how users can find you through their mobile Instagram searches. As compared to Twitter, where you’re not restricted by character count. You can include a few tags in your posts to get connected. While deciding on the hashtag for branding, it is advisable to create brand-specific hashtags. Try to keep it as unique and crisp as possible.
Make usage of both sorts of hashtags; brand-specific hashtags and community-specific hashtags. Brand hashtags help you to popularize your brand and community hashtags help you to become more discoverable.
Try multiple variants of hashtags such as brand-specific hashtags, general hashtags, and trending hashtags, to get noticed in searches.
Examples of brand specific hashtags are:
#PutACanOnIt—Red Bull
#ShareaCoke—Coca Cola
#SpeakBeautiful – Dove
#TweetFromTheSeat—Charmin
#OreoHorrorStories—Oreo
#WantAnR8—Audi
An ideal general hashtag should be prepared with two words over a single word to make it meaningful e.g. rather than #QL, #AskQL is a better hashtag.
2. Emojis – use the right Emojis to keep your audience engaged
In any sort of online communication, Emojis is the best substitute for the absence of facial expression, tonal inflection, and body language.
Nearly 50 per cent of all captions and comments on Instagram now have an emoji or two.
The same source has mentioned that posts with Emojis bring 17% higher interaction rates on Instagram.
Based on the fact that 80% of smartphone users regularly use Emojis in their daily communication, their use has been quoted as the highest growing ‘language’ in some of the countries across the globe. Worldwide brands are obviously energized and enthusiastic to cash on this new form of communication.
3. Interaction – consistently interact with your followers
Once you get follower/s, do not shy away to stay engaged. Constantly post impressive content which your followers find relevant to their interest and business. Avoid throwing random posts, i.e. once in a week or ten in a go, as far as possible. At least, twice a day posting is requisite. Once your followers start increasing, you can start posting three to four times a day. Consistency matters most!
According to Anthony Carbone, “If you stick to a niche and show authenticity and passion in your posts, you will find a strong following”
The more people you can dynamically involve and persuade to comment on your content (images/videos), the better for you. Since it will inculcate the interest for others who want to contribute or comment on your content as well.
A good example of how to stay engaged with your customers is well set by Starbucks. It is considered as one of the top brands on Instagram. Starbucks often appreciates their followers/customers by giving a shout-out with cool images. This is how they had updated their Facebook cover image using Instagram post.
4. Networking – create a positive community
Once you will have an active profile, you will surely start getting followers of your niche. But the main question here is retention! You need to retain them as your dedicated followers.
This is, in fact, the most important, most tricky, and most significant matter for any social media account. You need to build a network of your domain and keep them engaged. Interact with them, share their posts, give opinion/comments on their posts, ask them relevant questions, reply to their questions, and keep having all such sort of communication. In addition, stay away from controversial posts. It can badly impact your brand value. Build a vast network of your industry and create a positive community through your posts and engagement.
Follow your followers and work hard to turn your following into followers.
5. Amount of information – do not bore your audience with information overload
No doubt consistency is inevitable, but if it lacks harmony and relevancy of content, it results in either spamming or information overload. Keep your frequency correct and consistent. Rather than preaching them, engage with them. It’s better to ask sometimes, they should feel being valued. Dig out meaningful interaction from them.
The ideal proportion of posts based on followers suggested by industry experts are:
6. Free tools – make the most use of Instagram marketing tools that are free
Instagram also provides free analytics tools for business profiles; prudently and sensibly make the most use of them to market your products and services.
For example, “insights”, an analytical tool, provides you access to engagement data. If your account is initially signed up as a personal account for your business, do get switched to a business profile. That’s how you can cash advantage of the free tools that businesses use to track the shape of their brand on Instagram. ‘Insights’ assists you understand your audience, provides you data on posts with most impressions, engagements, and shares. Ultimately, you will conclude which posts are effective and which ones are not working well with your audience.
With SocialBakers, you can get a FREE report on the most engaged Instagram posts. If your Instagram followers are below 25,000, you can use Simply Measured to check your highly popularized posts.
Alternatively, there are many other scheduling tools available. With the help of tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Autogrammer, and others post your content when your audiences are online and earn more engagement.
7. Promotion – utilize cross-posting function
As a business, one normally stays active and present on all possible platforms. Now, practically speaking, not all your Twitter followers are your LinkedIn buddies and not all your Instagram followers know about your presence on Google Plus.
Here, to expand your relevant reach and knock your target audience from all possible angles, you need to do cross-promotion of your own posts.
A research conducted by Harvard Business School reported that retailers using cross-media marketing are more profitable than those that use only one channel for promotion.
Invite your followers from other networks to visit your Instagram profile and build your network. Whatever posts get better engagement on Twitter or Facebook, repost them on Instagram too and vice-versa.
8. Content – repurpose content from other related sources
As stated in earlier paragraphs, effective and successful Instagram marketing
needs consistent posts related to your products and services. It is well obvious that every time coming up with creative and engaging posts is not as easy as it seems. That’s where repurposing content or curating content offers a hand of help.
As per Amanda DiSilvestro, Content repurposing is your hidden online marketing gem.
It’s absolutely fine to use other content which is relevant to your products and services provided you either have tagged or mentioned the original poster. Tagging is the best way, you need to give the credit to the original creator, and that’s how it becomes a completely ethical marketing practice and does not fall under the black clouds of plagiarism.
Tagging provides you with another major benefit of engagement. You may receive like or report from the person whom you have tagged and your post can easily reach to their audience. You need to ensure that the posts which you wither repurpose or curate are relevant to your followers.
9. Engage with influencers – you need them!!
According to KISSmetrics, 70% of Instagram users have already looked up various brands on the platform and actually want to consume their content
Here comes the power of Instagram influencers in the picture. Instagram beats all other massive social networks like Facebook and Twitter when it comes to influencer marketing. This is because the other platforms share information whereas Instagram is about sharing experiences with the help of visual content.
Your content shared, acknowledged, or praised by any influencer can embark a real positive image on your followers.
To reach on the peak in no time, we suggest you make use of the tool, Revfluence. The Revfluence platform enables you to create original content with influential content creators that can drive new customers and followers for your brand.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
If you have an online business, why can’t you have a strong social media presence too? Social media marketing via Instagram can assist you to achieve your targeted business goals with much of the ease.
Instagram has very dedicated users, who often use it daily. It provides a great social media marketing platform to reach potential customers across the world. Use Instagram extensively and appropriately, and grow bigger!
Being a startup, one has to face many challenges in the initial period. Normally, startups face common concerns like lack of finance, inadequate resources, high employee turnover, inefficient time management, and lesser projects in hand. However, the journey from a startup to an established brand isn’t much hard-hitting or unattainable, but it needs a good amount of patience, analytical skills, and timely execution of planning.
The biggest challenge for any startup is to strike a balance between providing value and utilizing limited resources in an effective manner.
Startups aim to provide value in terms of innovation, quality, and convenience, albeit having limited resources and may be facing intense competition to be a pioneer in the market. In the initial period, startups can’t afford to recruit a lot of many employees. They employ people based on project requirements. And hence, they prefer an alternative approach that many other companies have actually utilized during their startup phase, i.e. outsourcing. Outsourcing some of the secondary tasks to other companies or freelancers can help startups to meet deadlines with minimal cash outflow.
How outsourcing and freelancing can help startups?
Most of the startup entrepreneurs prefer to outsource some of their tasks to the freelancers or hire dedicated resources for other than core tasks during the project tenure.
Outsourcing of some of the tasks provides several benefits to startups, as listed below:
1. Focus on organizational growth
Entrepreneurs can pay special attention to core tasks if their secondary tasks are outsourced to experts / dedicated resources. As an entrepreneur, you must experience the constant pressure to stay on top of industry trends, keep updated with and ahead of your competitors, and look forward. At times, freelancing, freelancer are blessings in disguise.
Most popular business tasks preferred for outsourcing are
Social media marketing
Customer services
Search engine optimization
Content marketing/copywriting
Web development and coding
Web designing
Accounting and bookkeeping
Payroll processing
Tax preparation and filing
Event management
Depending upon organizational core function, management decides what tasks are better to outsource. For example, if you are a digital marketing agency, you can opt for outsourcing payroll processing, accounting and tax filing tasks. On the other hand, if you are into the accounts and finance sector, you can outsource website development, website designing, and online marketing.
2. Increase inefficiency
When non-core tasks are outsourced, your productive time can be focused on organizational core tasks. Moreover, you can get done your secondary tasks from experts and skilled professionals. Furthermore, there are some of the special benefits of outsourcing. Freelancers are stoutly dependent on five-star client feedback and mouth-to-mouth advertising. In such cases, delivering high-quality projects on time is their key concern.
Most of the freelancers handle one client at a time in order to provide quality output and maintain their dependability, so you’re at the centre of their attention. So as a whole, outsourcing tasks to skilled freelancers increase the organization’s efficiency.
3. Reduction in risks
An underperforming employee is a significant cost to the company. Because they either fail to deliver timely or provide the output that is below par.
According to HR, it can take a while to get rid of an underperforming employee. In case, an organization has an obligatory long-term contract with a service provider, it can be complex and costly to avoid it if you need to.
When you prefer outsourcing, it reduces that risk, particularly for short-term arrangements while you see how a freelancer works. If a company is not satisfied with the output or behaviour of a freelancer, it has no obligation to continue with that resource or hire them again beyond the original contract.
4. Savings on cash outflows
The decision of outsourcing is a major strategic one for most companies since it involves evaluating the potential cost savings against the consequences of a loss in control over the product or service. You can employ the best and most talented workforce as freelancers within your restricted budget to get done technical tasks. Outsourcing costs form a part of your variable costs and hence your fixed costs remain static regardless of total output.
Steps to successful outsourcing and freelancing for startups
According to Richard Branson, everything in your business can be outsourced, if you are not emotionally attached to doing it all.
Are you ready to outsource your non-core or technical tasks to freelancers? Here are the handy tips on how to find a perfect freelancer to whom you can outsource.
Determine the task which you want to outsource
Search for freelancers on sites like Elance, Fiverr
Check the credentials and past work of freelancers
Establish procedures and benchmarks to get them on board
Set expectation levels with respect to work, timeliness, quality, and payment
Stay in touch with them during the project tenure and provide them required assistance
Take follow-up on time to time basis
Provide feedback
Closing thoughts on outsourcing and freelancing
Most of the millennial today prefer to take up freelance projects as compared to fix the 9to5 job. This trend is growing and is projected to show an upward shift in the coming future. A number of online services such as Elance-oDesk, upwork, BidModo and others serve as virtual marketplaces for contractors and business owners to connect and begin working relationships. Future of freelancers is indeed bright and the time is not far that they will establish themselves as an entrepreneur based on the outsourced projects in hand.
Startups should take the best possible advantage of this trend and establish themselves as a strong brand in an optimal manner. Here are a few examples of large startups that have thrived using this strategy to launch their highly-valued businesses:
Skype
Klout
Appsumo
Slack
Staff.com
GitHub
MySQL
Net2Text
MindSpark
Mailburn
Opera
Feel free to share your insight in the comments box with regards to the trends of outsourcing, freelancing, entrepreneurship and startups. We’d love to hear from you.
This post is by guest author, Umair Qureshi. This article has been edited and published with the author’s permission.
Australia is the 7th largest economy in the Asia-Pacific region and the 12th largest in the world. Since the last two decades, Australia has enjoyed uninterrupted economic growth, a result that is reflected in the per capita GDP of the country (the fifth highest in the world today). World Bank Group ranks Australia as the 15th easiest country to set-up and runs a business. Furthermore, the establishment process of e-commerce stores is so easy that you can set up a new business in just two days. Here, we shall focus on the process and potential hurdles of the establishment of e-commerce stores in Australia.
Establishment of an eCommerce store in Australia
For people who like to crunch numbers, here are some interesting statistics and facts pertaining to the Australian economy and eCommerce scenario in perspective:
Australia’s eCommerce sales were more than $20 billion in 2016 and, are estimated to exceed $24 billion by 2018.
Australian eCommerce customer demographics are mostly dominated by the youth with the age curve around 30 years. This means a somewhat limited market as of now. However, this also implies that there is a huge potential for growth in the upcoming years. The number of online buyers is steadily increasing. At the moment, the number of online transactions is low, but the cart size is on the rise. All these cumulatively indicate that more and more people are comfortable with online shopping.
Australia is fortunate in terms of eCommerce and online business because it has a clear-cut high demographic yield that responds well to the market. 90% of online transactions in Australia involve three or fewer brands. This can also be interpreted as brand loyalty because customers trust the brand for the quality of products/services and remain loyal to the chosen brand. Therefore, it is important that an online store should establish itself as a trustworthy brand in the market.
Now, running an eCommerce store in the competitive Australian market is not that easy. Although there are a number of platforms that streamline the process of setting up and managing online stores, you as the owner/manager should also be well versed in the relevant fields such as logistics, referencing, and customer management.
So, if you wish to launch and manage an online store in Australia, read through this blog. This blog will help you to avoid the hurdles that have the potential to sink many online stores.
The process to Follow to Establish an E-commerce Store in Australia
The success of any business is dependent on proper planning and following a well-prepared plan. Setting up an eCommerce store in Australia is a step-by-step process that requires thorough planning and attention to minute details.
I will now present several important pointers that will help you come up with proper planning and action items for your business setup process.
1. Choose Your Legal Form
Opening an online store begins with the legal recognition of the brand/store. You will have to define the legal status of your store before registering it with the relevant services such as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). This authority allows a registration number to your business. You could choose any legal status you see fit. However, I recommend that you opt for being registered as a self-employed entrepreneur or a sole proprietor. It is always best to consult an expert (an accountant or a business advisor) at this point.
2. Draft a Business Plan
A business plan documents all the required details about how your store will be established and how will it function. Many people skip this important step because creating a business plan appears too cumbersome to follow. However, following this step allows you to analyze your action plan and ensures that your project is on the right track at all times.
3. Choose A Domain Name
The choice of the domain name pretty much determines the future of your eCommerce store. Plan to invest several hours in discovering the right domain name for your store. A number of online tools (like Mashable, shopify) help you in choosing the best name for your new store. Remember that your domain name has to be catchy and unique.
4. Choose Your Hosting Service
Very few people actually know how to set up and manage servers. Even if you are among the very few of such technical experts, it is still a tedious and time-consuming process for you. I recommend that you opt for managed cloud-based hosting for your online store. This way you will be able to sidestep all server related issues (including security) and focus on your business full-time.
You are definitely wondering: which hosting provider to choose for your e-commerce store? A very legitimate question indeed! Choosing the right eCommerce web host, as Cloudways helps you by providing:
● 24x7x365 chat supports so that you are able to get quick help at all times. ● A powerful stack comprising of high-performing and optimized caching technologies. ● Auto-scalability with almost zero downtime. ● Dispersed data centres to reduce latency and target your audience more effectively.
5. Create the Store
There are many platforms in the market which you can use to open an online store. Depending on your requirements and technical expertise, you can choose Woo Commerce, Magento, Prestashop, Opencart, or others. Some of these platforms offer turnkey e-commerce solutions, while others require extensive design and development skills. Other platforms request for HTML and CSS skills. A competent developer who specializes in eCommerce solutions could prove to be an ideal partner.
6. Standards and Technical Regulations
Suppliers and manufacturers have a legal and moral obligation to ensure that their products are safe for consumers to use. All products must comply with the appropriate safety standards, contain clear instructions for proper use, and include warnings about probable abuse. If a product does not meet the mandatory standards as set by Australian authorities, there is a risk of legal actions against the business. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) requires compliance with product safety, information standards, and the prohibition of dangerous goods as declared in the Trade Practices Act. The “Fair Trade Offices” also play an important role in the safety of products.
7. Finding and Dealing with Suppliers
As an eCommerce store owner, reliable suppliers should be of utmost and important priority. For this, explore your industry to discover wholesalers. Once you have the suppliers lined up, you need to set up logistics.
Many people prefer handling the supply lines through the post office. However, third-party logistics partners such as DHL are also popular business partners. Whatever your choice is, it is essential to negotiate an advantageous contract in your favour.
8. Manage the Inventory
No customer, willing to buy, likes the “Out-of-Stock” notice. To avoid this (embarrassing) situation, it is important that you pay close attention to inventory management. This is an ongoing process and requires good relationships with your suppliers and logistics partners.
Sales data analysis is an important part of inventory management. Over a period of time, you will acquire the skill of juggling between often contrasting requirements of inventory management.
9. Define (Legal) T&C and Policies
Well defined and easy to understand policies are one of the essential requirements for any eCommerce store. Many customers often check out the payment and return policies prior to finalizing their purchase decision.
In order to come up with an ethical and concrete set of terms and conditions, ask a lawyer to go through your draft of T&C and policies. He will ensure that your draft complies with the existing Australian consumer protection laws.
10. Build Your Online Presence
“You can’t just open a website and expect people to flood in. If you really want to succeed you have to create traffic.”- Joel Anderson, Walmart CEO
Once your e-commerce site/store is ready, you have to build your online presence in order to reach new customers and build rapport with them. This step demands careful planning and working with vendors and suppliers so that you could build a solid and trustworthy online presence on social media channels. This necessarily involves good digital marketing strategies that include an email campaign, a customer loyalty program, a blog on a persistent basis, and a proactive presence on multiple social networks.
Closing thoughts – Now Realize Your Dream
As I mentioned earlier in this article, Australia is the country where people are not at all stranger to online shopping. Proper planning and meticulous attention to details are the real keys to the success of your online store in Australia.
Mobile devices like tablets and smartphones have become an inseparable part of everyone’s daily lives. From the early morning when you wake up till the night when going to bed, how many times you use your mobile phones? For reading news, checking emails, staying in touch with friends, colleagues, and families through social media, listening music, reading eBooks, and for many other routine activities, you use your mobile phones and inset mobile applications. Moreover, the ever-increasing popularity of Android and iOS shows how mobile usage is growing by leaps and bounds. As a result, there is a bright future for the mobile application development market.
Gartner’s prediction narrates that over 268 billion mobile downloads will generate an income of $77 billion in 2017
This blog is going to enlighten you on the best and not-to-miss Top 13 mobile application development trends for the year 2017.
Most prominent mobile application development trends
Last year we had already talked about what top 13 trends were projected for the year 2016 for the mobile application development market. All those mobile application development trends are going to stay in the year 2017 as well, along with new additions. Let’s walk through each one by one:
1. More Spotlight on Security and Privacy In Apps
Along with growing mobile usage and mobile application development, the necessity to adopt best practices in data security, app security, and privacy are in the spotlight.
In accordance with the prediction by Gartner, 75% of mobile apps would not pass even basic security tests.
Hackers, in order to steal sensitive and confidential information, will learn to carry on with the tendency of misusing recognized security gaps in mobile apps. This was the greatest concern last year as well. Furthermore, this negative mobile application development trend is predicted to continue in the year 2017. In addition, one of the studies conducted by HP also mentioned that 70.6% of mobile apps can access to external storage and 94.7% mobile apps include logging methods.
However, there are some JavaScript frameworks that can help you develop a secure and scalable mobile application.
2. More pleasing User Experience (UX)
Trends have changed in almost all fields. Be it website designing and development or mobile application development, the main focus is better user experience (UX). Effectual display of data and content on your mobile user interface is important for a sound user experience. In the year 2017, industry experts have projected an innovative enhancement in this feature in a sensible manner. Various Android Apps and iOS Apps should make use of technologies with novel features such as interactive content layers, circular design pattern, cards and manipulation of content. Mobile users find it very easy to operate mobile apps. If those apps are not user-friendly, users will not wait for an update. They will straightaway quit its usage. Hence, the primary focus is on the more pleasing user experience of all mobile application developers, for both Android and iOS.
3. Shifting landscape of web-based app due to Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
AMPs have become the common talk of the town for more than a year.Google has announced that there will be a separate search index for the mobile web. This announcement is been considered as one of the revolutions in the field of development in digital marketing. It has a significant impact on your SEO and rankings. Web-based apps that are supported by Google AMP will load much quicker on mobile devices. It will, hence, reduce bounce rates in a huge quantity. Publishers will also get the benefit of increased ad visibility and more website visitors. Hence, this trend in mobile application development is definitely expected to the rock the entire year 2017.
4. The Trending of Chatbots
Chatbots are computer programs that imitate a conversation with users using artificial intelligence. Chatbots are getting a huge attraction to mobile apps. The most popular chatbots include Allo, Alexa, Cortana, Google Assistant, and Siri. Most mobile app developers are motivated to comprehend how chatbots work. This year, in 2017, trends indicate that most of the Android developers and iOS developers will work towards developing Chatbots. They’ll resemble human beings in the style of speech detection and personalities that lead to smoother interactions.
5. Growing Cloud-Driven Mobile Apps
Cloud computing is a pretty familiar term for almost everyone, from customers to tech professionals. Nowadays, cloud computing has marked its presence in mobile applications also. Users can expect a great upsurge in powerful mobile apps that can directly acquire data from the cloud and take minimum space in your smartphone internal memory. The Android, iOS and Windows Phone apps all have automatic photo uploads, meaning that when you shoot a photo with your phone, it’s automatically saved to your account.
Google Drive, launched in 2012, has apps available for Windows, OS X, Android, and iOS. Dropbox, launched in 2007, has apps available for each major platform and some smaller ones like the Blackberry, Linux, and Kindle Fire. OneDrive which launched in 2014 is also incorporated compactly with Microsoft Office, and it’s built into Windows 8 and Windows 10. It’s available on Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and Windows Phone.
OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box are just a baby step towards it. A vast ocean is yet to explore in cloud storage realm.
Based on Cisco research, cloud apps will drive 90% of total mobile data traffic by 2019, and Mobile cloud traffic will be 11-fold with compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 60%.
These statistics clearly demonstrate that the mobile application development trend related to the cloud will be prominent in the year 2017.
6. Internet of Things (IoT) Will Be Much Bigger
The rapid adoption of cloud-based apps brings us to one of the latest mobile application development trends that have irritated mobile developer interest in 2016 – the Internet of Things. It’s fair enough to say that the Internet of Things (IoT) is still in its infancy. However, the way IoT is growing, it directly impacts the mobile application development trends since IoT devices are majorly controlled by Smartphones and mobile devices. Currently, the IoT is gaining traction in the fields like security, health, education, smart homes, and automobiles.
IoT integration of mobile apps will unquestionably flourish and it will be a grand move in the year 2017.
7. Artificial Intelligence Is Real Now
Based on the research of Gartner, there will be a more than 300% increase in investment on artificial intelligence in the year 2017 as compared to the last year.
Artificial intelligence (Ai) is expected to provide access to powerful insights to the business users which weren’t available earlier. This access will be provided with the use of advanced analytics, cognitive interfaces into complex systems, and machine learning techs. Giants like Google, IBM, eBay, Facebook have started acquiring startups those who are proficient in Artificial Intelligence.
Already we have seen some wonderful AI apps such as Siri, Alexa, Tesla, Prisma, and Google Now. Much more is expected in 2017 keeping the AI mobile application development trends in one piece.
In the world of modern mobile application development trends, Augmented Reality (AR), and Virtual Reality (VR) apps are getting universal for all.
Market research analysts at Technavio predicted that the global mobile AR and VR apps market will grow steadily in terms of downloads at a CAGR of more than 74% during 2016-2020.
Both AR & VR have been avant-garde in gaming & entertainment industry in the last year, 2016.
Popular examples of AR games include Pokemon Go, Zombies Run, iOnRoad, Sky Siege, Ingress, and myNav. On the other hand, VR devices that are gaining popularity include Oculus Rift, HTC Vive VR, Samsung Gear VR, Google Cardboard and PlayStation VR among others.
Based on the trends and growth in the mobile application development market, AR and VR both are expected to show some magic in the year 2017.
9. Wearable Devices Are Getting Attention
Wearable technology is one of the most exciting areas of interest for consumers. This has boosted improvements in mobile application developments.
According to International Data Corporation (IDC), the market for wearable devices is going to experience a composite annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.3%, leading to 213.6 million units shipped in 2020.
There are some amazing wearable devices which gained huge traction from consumers and audiences in the year 2016. Such wearable devices include but are not limited to Apple Watch Series 1, Xiaomi Mi Band 2, Google Daydream View, Pebble 2, Garmin Vivomove, Fitbit Flex 2, and others.
These wearable devices have proved that now they are not restricted to the health and fitness sector. They have also progressed in other sectors and will definitely gain more prominence as a mobile application development trend of the year 2017.
10. M-Commerce – a growing bud in Mobile Application development realm
Instead of swiping debit cards and credit cards, nowadays, most of the customers prefer to pay through other options. Such options include the transfer of money through Apply Pay, PayTM, Google wallet and other cashless options. In short, mobile apps are slowly replacing plastic money. This is acting as a driver of M-Commerce.
Furthermore, along with the growing market of wearable devices, M-Commerce payment options will take a distinct form in the year 2017. As predicted by experts, wearable devices will play a prominent role in the future of Mobile Application Development.
The following stats throw light on the prediction of mobile app development trends.
11. Usage of real-time geo-data from a mobile device for LBS
In order to determine your tentative location, Location-based Services (LBS) allows apps and websites (including Maps, Camera, Weather, and other apps) to use information from cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Global Positioning System (GPS), and related networks. Integrated LBS mobile applications like Apple’s iBeacons and Google Beacon are trendy. This highly developed technology gives a foremost scale to tailored mobile app marketing.
12. Swift language – ahead of other programming languages
Apple’s programming language, Swift, was first introduced at Apple’s 2014 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). As a multi-paradigm and compiled programming language, Swift was developed for iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS & Linux.
It was included in Xcode since Version 6. This programming language gives comfort to all mobile app developers since it is built on the best of C & Objective-C minus the compatibility issues of C. Swift possess some robust features that will transform the mobile application development process. Such attributes are mentioned in the below chart:
Swift 2 offers a host of new and developer-friendly attributes; this latest programming language is undoubtedly going to stay in the year 2017.
13. Enterprise mobile apps and micro-apps – a way to a go-ahead
Over and above, these Top 12 mobile application development trends for the year 2017, experts have also anticipated that enterprise mobile apps and micro-apps will further advance.
According to Natalie Lambert, VP Marketing at Sappho, “with more than 2 million mobile apps to choose from, most of us have installed at least 40 of them on our smartphones. Downloads from the Apple App Store alone surpassed 100 billion last years, and that number is expected to double in 2017.”
Enterprises mobile application aims to assist you to streamline, restructure and deal with critical business processes on the go. While the prime motive of a micro-app is to meet the requirements of highly targeted operations in lesser load time. However, both have gained success in the field of Mobile Application Development.
CLOSING THOUGHTS – FUTURE OF APP DEVELOPERS
Looking at the potential of mobile application development and its trends, skilled app developers perhaps need to get rid of outdated tools and trends at the development stage. Both Android app developers and iOS app developers can augment their development skills better provided they have insight into the latest mobile app development trends. Following these TOP 13 trends, certainly app developers will benefit themselves for their business.
When it comes to your SEO practices, along with link building, keywords, and on-page elements, content is also one of the most significant elements. Are you wondering content is still the king of SEO? Well, as per Lee Odden, Content isn’t king, its kingdom. Content curation strengthens your content marketing strategy.
According to Content Marketing Institute, content curation assembles, selects, categorizes, comments on, and presents the most relevant, highest quality information to meet your audience’s needs on a specific subject.
According to Curata, 42% of companies have an executive responsible for content marketing, reaching 49% in 2017
Basically, content curation is not about creating new content. However, to a certain extent, it is about discovering and compiling existing content written by industry experts and sharing it with your online followers.
Why content curation matters?
The reason why a content curation matters are simple; content curation boosts your target audience reach. Content curation also has a role in your SEO. Of course, duplication of content will be penalized by search engines and your rankings will get hampered. But, a correct approach of content curation will augment your SEO, as mentioned below:
Furthermore, content curation will help you establish as a thought leader in your industry. The good thing about content curation is it is not restricted to sharing others’ content. You can curate your own content and share it again and again, which is called repurposing of content. Last but not the least, content curation does matter a lot for you because in this exercise you are going to learn a more about our content and your industry since there will be extensive research and reading of similar other content.
In short, to preserve booming online presence, it’s vital for you to adopt content curation as a digital marketing tactic.
How content curation helps on social media?
Content curation is more like an art rather than science. There isn’t any particular technique to be followed for any particular social media platform. In the case of twitter, curating quality content from industry influencers and sharing it on your feed will send them a notification. In turn, there are high chances that they’ll follow back you and your brand. This way you can engage with others while connecting your content with their audiences.
The most important thing for a digital marketer is to understand that content curation helps you build invaluable relationships while providing value to your audience. That is why your social media page should not be snowed under only curated content. Your social media page should strike an ideal balance between curated content and your own created content.
Most of the acquainted content marketers prefer a content mix in their content marketing strategy as:
If content curation is done right, it assists you to build valuable relationships while providing value to your audience on varied social media platforms.
What are the most preferred content curation tools?
Till now, we talked about why content curation is important. Now let us move to the main point, how to curate the content. For content marketers, content curation is integral to online strategy. Effective content curation helps position you as a thought leader in your domain. Moreover, it is an affordable way to retain a consistent publishing schedule of quality content.
“Content curation is the process of both creating and linking to pertinent content on a B2B website”
Content curation process can be graphically represented as:
However, don’t you agree, manually attempting to search for the most relevant content in a given industry and then publishing it across multiple channels can be time-consuming?
Yes, it is not only time consuming but it is also less effective. For perfect content curation, you need to take help of automation.
Here, we present the most preferred and ultimate list of content curation tools.
As we discussed in the above paragraphs, content curation is a grand manner to support a created content strategy, consistently publish content, and keep a track of your desired information sources. Let us know each content curation tool in a deeper way to understand how it can boost your overall content marketing strategy.
1. Curata
Curata is the leading provider of business-grade content curation software (CCS). Curata’s content curation software will ease you if you are struggling to scale your content marketing due to a lack of content. Curata’s CCS enables content marketers to discover fresh content, create new content, curate content from various sources, refine content flow, and publish & promote the most relevant and highest quality content as part of a successful content marketing strategy.
As a part of content curation, Curata’s CCS easily organize, interpret, and contextualize the content. Curata digs content from hundreds and thousands of relevant sources, keeping your content engine buzzing without a requirement of constant creation of your own content. It provides great support on content marketing platform by adding your own unique perspective to curated content and filtering content by relevancy & timing. CCS is best for planning, developing, and evaluating your content marketing.
According to several resources, Curata services start from $1,500 on a month-to-month basis.
2. Pinterest
Reading at first sight you might be surprised how can a social media platform act as content curation, right? But yes, it is indeed a content curation tool.
According to Julia McCoy, Pinterest is also fantastic for collecting useful “hacks”, tricks and tips you can build your content around
It is often called as an online pinboard. Pinterest is a visual discovery platform since it works on images, video clips, and infographics. Open your business account on Pinterest and follow people in your industry and pop culture icons to catch access to millions of great content ideas. You need to save these content ideas to interactive boards on your account and pin them. Apply these pins to curate exceptional videos, podcasts, and images content for you and for your clients.
Furthermore, the content you pin can easily comprise an image and a link that drives back to the source. The source can be either a blog or infographic. With the help of Pinterest search, you can reveal great content that is probably interesting to your audience. It is a great platform to search and share content by domain to various social platforms.
The icing on the cake is Pinterest is a free means for content marketers to discover great content.
3. Scoop.it
A tool called Scoop.it is fantastic for content curation since it builds your relationship with other content curators. Scoop.it helps individuals and businesses to publish their content in a proficient and impacting way. This tool uses big-data semantic technology to assist you in promptly finding relevant content. Scoop.it displays the content curated by other users and offers similar topics shared. This allows you to get insight from influencers and industry leaders regarding a specific topic. It also gives you an opportunity to share your information with others and help them curate their own content.
Its top features include choosing specific keywords with the help of Boolean research, adding own sources with RSS feeds, suggesting content based on big data, and filtering content based on various criteria.
Scoop.it is a free tool; however, its paid options come with a more robust search.
4. Storify
Storify is a wonderful visual content curation tool that creates ‘stories’ or ‘timelines’ by gathering and publishing your content from social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It is intended for organizations of any size, looking for integrating curated content into their own website or their social media page. Either you can create the content and offer people to curate the content, or you can glance through the storyboards and curate content from others.
Storify helped one woman raise $650,000 when her Storify story went viral and had 1.5 million hits
Jeff Bullas
In addition, Storify enables you to research and pool content from multiple sources, merge that content with original content, and then share the mixed content as a unique story. Once can use Storify to search blog posts, comments, and videos that others have shared online.
Storify is a free tool and it also has options of paid versions.
5. Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo believes that there is ample content on internet and web pages, no shortage at all. But what matters most is to search the relevant content and use it on a timely basis. BuzzSumo gets content research to a new level using social search. The key to getting relevant content is to search using filters. You can make out the total number of shares on a particular content resource and even can identify content by author. Buzzsumo masters the art of filtering out the content that resounds with audiences, the content that is currently trending, and the content about to trend.
Buzzsumo was a go-to resource of mine to find the most shareable content that resonated with the largest audience
Margot da Cunha
It is a highly popular content curation tool which is FREE till limited searches and then offers some advanced features underpaid options. Their plan starts from $79/month and goes beyond that based on the package you opt for.
6. Triberr
Basically, Triberr is a marketing platform for influencers. However, it also acts as a content curation tool by providing the ability to discover great content. Triberr is a community where tribes curate their own content and promote others’ content.
Either you can create an account or can log in with your twitter, facebook or LinkedIn ID to join as a tribe and follow relevant people.
Triberr has various plans as follows:
7. Post Planner
According to Ian Cleary, The content engine in Postplanner is a great way to find content.
For smarter content, better posts, and mind blogging results – reach out to only one social media destination called Post Planner. It aids you to find the best and the right content for your audience and post it. Furthermore, it delivers content based on users’ keywords, provides status ideas, and assists users to search blogs and experts in their forte.
Post planner plans start from $9/month.
8. Feedly
Feedly is known for its user-friendly design. It delivers fast, mobile-optimized content using RSS feeds. Feedly enables you to browse and share content from your favourite news sites, blogs, feeds, and YouTube channels. Feedly displays the latest content being shared on a particular website or using a precise keyword on top of the entire content.
Cas McCullough : I use Feedly to categorize content for my own social platforms, as well as my clients’ platforms
Up to 100 feeds, services of Feedly are FREE, and its paid plans start from $5.41 or $18 for a team.
9. Pocket
Pocket, as the name suggests, works like a pocket where you can save your content and view it later when required. Pocket provides service for saving web pages and articles. There you can view later when you want. Pocket, as a content curation tool, enables content discovery as well as arms you with the skill to search for content on specific topics. It displays the most trending and ‘must read’ sort of posts and articles.
Pocket is a great place to get into the habit of accruing content to save and share later.
Pocket is user-friendly, can work in your browser, as well as from apps such as Twitter, Flipboard, and others. If the content is stored in Pocket, (your phone, tablet or computer), you don’t even need an Internet connection to view it again and again.
The pocket can be used for FREE; it’s paid plan starts from $44.99/yr for an ad-free experience…
10. Trap.it
Trap.it is a content curation tool and a social selling service. It is considered as the best social media management solution too. It assists you to manage employee advocacy. With the help of Trap.it, you can search relevant and new content within minutes, which can be shared via email, LinkedIn or other social media platforms. Its top features include salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics Integration and Artificial Intelligence for content curation.
11. Curation Suite
Curation Suite is the renewed version of Curation Traffic. To discover, curate, publish and share multiple types of content, curation suite is the most popular platform. Curation Suite is a robust WordPress plugin that works right within your WordPress dashboard. It works with any theme and any plugin you have, to search content in the form of posts, articles, videos, infographics, and others.
Curation Suite plans start from $97 which is a one-time payment and then you can go for a top-up according to your content curation needs.
12. Quora
Quora is yet another underestimated but most important content curation tool. It is a great place to share your knowledge and ideas and engage with similar interests people. It is a forum where questions are asked and pertaining replies are given by the varied users.
You can set up an account, and then search your keywords to find outstanding content for future use. In addition, you can turn on notifications about specified topics pertaining to your field. By doing so, you can get access to more and more relevant articles and interesting ideas in your inbox.
Quora platform is FREE and can be accessed for multiple times a day
Closing thoughts
The list does not end here, there are much more content curation tools available in the market which can help you boost your content marketing strategy. Over and above these 12 tools, 39 more tools have been listed here for you as additional reading.
Sr No
Content Curation Tool
Description
13.
Addict-o-Matic
· Search the best LIVE sites across the web. · Dig the latest and trending news, blog posts, videos and images
14.
BagTheWeb
· Search, create and share ‘bags’ of web content on varied topics
15.
Bundlepost
· Aggregate and plan social media content · Find, edit, and schedule with the browser plugin or social media dashboard
16.
Channel kit
· Enables you to tag and organize all sorts of information in one place · Includes articles, websites, contacts, PDF files or various format images—all showcased as neat cards in channels
· Mechanically integrates real-time social content beside editorial content to raise engagement and boost revenue
19.
CurationSoft
· Helps establish brands as a reliable voice, and a “not to miss” source of information
20.
DrumUp
· Mines web content in real-time to suggest to your audience · Reduces your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter management time
21.
elink
· Offers a swift way to transform a bunch of links into content · Enables to curate, publish, and share content online in a visually appealing manner
22.
Flipboard
· Create your own personalized magazines and brochures · Catch up on news, read stories across the globe, and browse articles,videos,and photos your friends are sharing across the web
23.
Flockler
· Combine all your content, including what your fans and followers say about you, into one social hub. ·Create your own social hub or bring social content into your existing websites, applications, eCommerce sites, and other services
24.
Folloze
· A great B2B platform to create content experiences that dynamically adapt to a visitor’s profile, company, industry, and stage of the deal
25.
HeadSlinger
· Saves your research time by 50%, find all your news in half the time · Scan your favourite sites’ headlines in a matter of seconds and store your favourite news sources in a swift and simple manner to find folders
26.
Huzzaz
· Video curation platform that enables you to search, mine, collect and showcase YouTube and Vimeo videos · Analyze user’s viewing behaviour and figure out which videos matter most to your viewers and to enhance the site engagement
27.
Juxtapost
· Swift, simple and FREE way to bookmark online images · Gather and handle categorized post boards
28.
Kbucket
· Being it a user indexed search site, here, skilled “content curators” categorize, comment, tag, and publish their research to support their content marketing strategy
29.
Curator
· Persistently publish fresh and new content on websites or blogs in minutes a day to keep up readers engagement
30.
LinkHubb
· Curate and share multiple links from around the web in one organized page, upload documents and files to the cloud, and use affiliate technology to generate ad-based revenue
31.
List.ly
· Curate, crowdsource and engage readers via LIVE rooted list content inside blog posts
32.
Newsle
· Track users’ Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, and email contacts in the news. By no means miss a key story about a follower, professional contact, or public figure
33.
papaly
· Bookmark management and discovery tool
34.
Paper.li
· Publish ‘newspapers’ comprised of content from anywhere on the web to treat your readers to fresh news daily
35.
Pearltrees
· Visual and collaborative curation tool. Allows you to collect, organize, and share any URL, and upload personal images and notes
36.
Pluggio
· Secure web-based system that helps individuals, businesses, organizations and marketers easily grow and manage their social media profiles
37.
RebelMouse
· Create a blog, website, or social page in seconds. Simply connect your social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+ or LinkedIn.
38.
RockTheDeadline
· Simplifies for brands, agencies, and publishers to create and manage compelling content ·Curate timely and trending news and promote that content over multiple channels
39.
Roojoom
· Create Smart MiniSites, online magazines, and e-newsletters · Content can be personalized to increase engagement and improve conversions across the customer life-cycle
40.
Shareist
· Capture bookmarks and ideas, share them on social media and save them for building and publishing pages to blogs
41.
Sharpr
· Segregate information silos, advance collaboration, and share what matters most with the users who matter most to your business
42.
Spredfast
· Helps brands, media, and agencies involve and connect with audience integrating social media into their marketing and advertising efforts
43.
sprinklr
· Helps brands and organizations distribute curated social media content to support their content strategy. Platforms include websites, event displays, retail signage, and mobile apps.
44.
Storyful
· Helps newsrooms find the most valuable content on the social web. Uses a “human algorithm” to sort through verified curated news from various mediums.
45.
Sutori
· Create and share visual stories, collaboratively
46.
symbaloo
· A personal Startpage that allows you to easily navigate the web. Compile your favourite sites into one visual interface. Save your bookmarks in the cloud and access them from anywhere with any device.
47.
TagBoard
· Social media hub for hashtags · Collect, moderate, and follow hashtags, as well as create and follow your own hashtag conversations
48.
The Tweeted Times
· Comprehends news in your Twitter flow every hour · Ranks each section by its popularity amid your friends
49.
UpContent
· Content mining and content curation tool that crawls the web to draw news, articles, and blog posts · Sorts by parameters such as the social influence · Reduces browsing needs of surfing 1000s of page results
50.
Vidinterest
· A platform to discover social videos that enables you to bookmark videos and create private or public playlists of videos · Allows surfing any website featuring videos from Vimeo, YouTube, and Daily Motion.
51.
Waywire
· Video curation tool that embeds hundreds of top-quality sources from trusted media makers to improve your site with current, timely, trending and contextually-relevant videos
Again, this is not an exhaustive list of content curation tools. Feel free to drop in the comments section if you use any of the other tools and how is your content curation experience with that content curation tool. We are excited to hear from you regarding your insights on content curation tools!
Affiliate marketing is now not a new concept, but it is still a very fresh and rewarding way of marketing online. It is about a relationship between three main parties: the affiliate (publisher), the merchant (advertiser), and the customer. Furthermore, affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways of making money online.
It offers a low-cost technique for traders and dealers to display their products and services and build brand awareness.
Geno Prussakov has mentioned in of his blogs that 38% of marketers call affiliate marketing one of the top customer acquisition methods.
What is affiliate marketing?
An affiliate marketing model is straightforward; it acts as a commission-based recommendation practice. A partner or affiliate promotes a trader or a dealer’s products for a slice of the pie. Affiliates are as good as extended sales and marketing departments of the merchants. They play a major role in your marketing campaign and assist the customers to choose products and buy them online.
According to a study, in most affiliate programs less than 10% of affiliates drive 90% of traffic and conversions.
Affiliate marketing is performance-based marketing. Despite affiliate marketing doesn’t require a fate and years of struggle to get started, you shouldn’t presume excellent results overnight. It is intensely competitive and you need to dedicate productive time for choosing products and ensuring that they meet market needs. Consequently, learn how to promote them and how to measure the success of an affiliate marketing program.
How to become an affiliate marketer?
Let us have a look at the traits of a successful affiliate marketer. Typically, an excellent affiliate possesses the following traits:
To become a successful affiliate marketer is not a tough job; it is a simple process as shown below:
1. Discover an exclusive niche
As a secret success formula, do not try to straightaway offer anything at all. Rather, stay focused on a precise niche market. Figure out your audience, analyze their pain points, offer them solutions to solve their issues, and ultimately assist them to achieve their goals. To identify the service area which can work best for you and your audience, the best place is to visit forum and question answers’ websites of your industry.
2. Make powerful use of search engine marketing
Search engine marketing is a powerful mechanism for online businesses. After assembling affiliate storehouse, jump into its timely and logical promotion. The preferred option of most of the affiliates is pay-per-click. However, to reap long-term benefits use a proper blend of organic search and paid search. PPC can definitely give you instant results but if you rely only on PPC for a longer time, all your profits might end up in the hands of Google Adwords.
3. Understand Your Product and Identify Your Audience
This is a complete analytical exercise. You need to devote your time in knowing your product and knowing your audience. Create a database, you will find it handy as and when required glancing through. Learn in-depth about the products and/or services. Think about the value you can provide to your customers along with your products/services offerings which can help you to build your credibility. This is because trust can be earned from credibility builds trust.
Have a psychological study of your audience. This will help you in developing and designing a web site that converts well and ultimately boosts your ROI.
4. Don’t ponder all your prospects or resources in one thing or place
This is the excellent tip to become a successful affiliate marketer. Promote products from diverse merchants. This way you will be able to balance the cash flows. Furthermore, out of multiple merchants, if one or two fail to promote your product, the overall impact on your business will be minimal. It is absolutely fine to opt for diversification and promote niche products from diverse merchants.
5. Gain excellence in internet marketing
Internet marketing is a very dynamic field. On an ongoing basis, trends keep changing. You need to act intelligently here to succeed. Keep yourself updated with the latest trends, tips, and tactics. In order to become an expert affiliate, you must always dedicate your time in reading, learning, and embracing the dynamics of Internet marketing.
6. Monitor your efforts
As an affiliate, don’t give up if it doesn’t reach the satisfaction levels. Try and try, again and again. Monitor your efforts and analyze your statistics, to figure out what is working well and what is going wrong. Accordingly, amend your affiliate marketing strategy.
How does affiliate marketing work?
Affiliate marketing works on click; by clicking on a special hyperlink made available by the particular affiliate program. The most common type of tracking is tracking via a cookie. When a user clicks on the link, a cookie is stored on their computers. This cookie lets the merchant know that in case a sale transaction happens, it has come from you.
To get started with affiliate marketing, the first step is to sign up for a partner program. On getting login details, you will be assigned a link with a unique ID that makes it feasible to track all traffic sent by you to the advertiser’s site. If your visitor clicks on it and performs the qualified action, you will receive a commission. Qualified action depends on the compensation model. The most commonly used one is pay per sale model which is based on the revenue sharing when a merchant pays an affiliate the percentage of the sale.
Affiliate marketing works best in three types of products /services promotion where it has shown highest success till date:
1. Information products
can make you earn commission up to 50% since they are cost-effective; production costs are lower as compared to prospects they offer
2. Physical products
easiest to sell but churns out a lesser commission (not more than 5 to 10%) since most of the amounts get deducted in variables like shipping, wholesaling, and others
3. Services
based on trends, one can normally expect commission in the range of 10 to 30%
Over 50% of topmost affiliate programs fall into these FOUR categories: Fashion, Sports, travel, and Health & Beauty.
Affiliate marketing can provide you with a stable stream of income. How much you can earn entirely depends on how successful you are in converting your browsers into buyers and service subscribers. Affiliate marketing is cost-effective; the place is not important, you can work from anywhere in the world and still earn handsome amounts.
How to make money as an affiliate marketer?
Affiliate marketing experts often make an income that can tally over five figures per month, however, only 1 to 5% of thousands of marketers literally achieve this level. When an affiliate reaches this elite level, they are often referred to as a “super” affiliate.
“Affiliate Marketing Has Made Businesses Millions And Ordinary People Millionaires. Affiliate Marketing may be Your Next Best Career Move.”
Bo Benette
If anyone asks can you make money with affiliate marketing, the precise answer is “yes”. It is true that affiliate programs can earn extra money and even a full-time income from home. The long answer is a little more complicated. Like any home income venture, success comes not so much from what you choose to do to make money, but whether or not you do what needs to be done correctly and consistently.
Affiliate marketing is the ultimate home business since it has no dependence on finance to get started. Furthermore, neither you need to manufacture, stock, ship product inventory, nor you need to deliver a service on demand. Under affiliate marketing, you are fundamentally paid for referring new clients and customers to other businesses.
[A] Affiliate marketing WITH website
It is better to do affiliate marketing with a website. Once you have figured out your niche and have zeroed down your research on an affiliate marketing program, the immediate step is to build your site. For a newbie in the realm of building sites, an easy option is to go for WordPress. Since the WordPress CMS provides ease in operation and coding skill required is zilch, you can set up your own site effortlessly.
Make sure that you go for the authorized domain for better authenticity of your site. And, the content which you publish on your site should be of excellent quality. Your content plays a major role in your overall marketing strategy.
The type of content could consist of product reviews, banner ads, blog posts, common questions and answers (FAQs), informational content, etc. In your blog posts, you can mention about your products, how it helps your target audience, why they should buy it, what are the common issues with the product and how to deal with it, etc. Coming to the informational content, you can have a tab of FREE resources wherein you can add some slideshow, presentation, tutorial, EBook, etc. all these tactics will bring traffic to your website. In case your product is admired enough and brings sufficient relevant traffic to your website, you could also monetize the traffic in other ways, such as AdSense.
Promotion of website and content
Once your website is ready with relevant content, the next step is the promotion of your website and your content on various social media platforms. On the basis of your niche, you can choose from FacebookTwitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn, and several other niches and location-specific networks.
Now, everything is ready for your affiliate marketing, starting from website to content and social media. Once all requirements are fulfilled, you can straightaway go ahead with the promotion of affiliate offers.
Remember, under affiliate marketing, merchants only pay for actual customers, not just visits. This gives affiliate marketing a major benefit over other promotional channels, such as PPC, where it’s trouble-free to spend a large chunk of money on clicks without producing any actual conversions. Successful affiliate programs use the multi-channel acknowledgment to ensure the affiliates that create the most value get paid the most.
According to Bill Burnice, top affiliate networks for 2017 are:
It might be sounding absurd, but yes, you can do affiliate marketing without having a website also.
You can start posting the products which you want to promote on blogs and forums with your affiliate link in your signature
You can take help of EBook as a promotional scheme. Go for writing a ‘viral’ book and post on sites like eBay. An informative and useful book as compared to simply laden with affiliate ads might get quite better traction from your target.
Video marketing is one of the most prominent content marketing strategies as per SEO Trends 2017. Hence, go for sites like YouTube and Vimeo and promote your video clips. You will surely convert a good amount of fan base into affiliate profits.
A simple yet effective technique is to write classifieds for the products you want to promote and submit them on various sites. Classified submissions are regarded as one of the most favoured marketing prompts for affiliates who don’t use websites.
Build your own social network and let your followers know about you and the products you promote.
Write guest posts for the website having high traffic.
Little less recommended method is PPC. Because promotion through pay-per-click technique involves creating PPC campaigns through search engines like Google and Bing, and promoting the merchant website directly through your affiliate link.
Closing thoughts on affiliate marketing
The problem with affiliate marketing, like many other home business options, is the self-styled sages and get-rich-quick programs. These sages and programs hint that affiliate marketing can be done fast and with little or zero effort. So, the issue isn’t really whether or not affiliate marketing is a viable income option (it is), but whether or not you can make affiliate marketing work for you. Affiliate marketing isn’t hard, but it does require knowledge, planning, and consistent effort to make any significant income.
