#popular to stay relevant and to maintain your follows list? not even a community just a number of followers?

[wall-eye]

i said this yesterday and its been a while since i mentioned it and even longer since i explained what it means and why? basically a primary/intended audience is the people that will care about what youre putting out the most, first and foremost. ive centered my art's intended audience around myself, as a way to make sure i dont cloutchase or pin self worth on other's approval or get burnt out on things i dont want to draw. i know myself and how my brain works and none of those would be a good situation for either of us, so i make sure that i like the art i draw myself before i post it, and while i do consider what others think, i dont prioritize other's approval or attention over my own approval or attention on my art. its always appreciated but its never like. the main sole initiative to post whatever ive drawn next

[influencermarketingagencys-blog]

What is Meme Marketing and How to Use Memes Perfectly

What is Meme Marketing and How to Use Memes Perfectly

A new movie may be coming out, or a celebrity may make headlines for some actions. Perhaps a huge sporting event is unfolding somewhere, or a politician said something controversial - today, you can hear about them all through memes before you can find them on the news or any generic online content. In fact, even popular news outlets use memes as memes have the power to relate with the audience.

According to a report by a top meme marketing agency, businesses are incorporating memes in their content marketing strategies, and it is not surprising since in a marketplace where consumers - especially the younger demographic - show increased aversion to advertisements, memes have become a medium to promote a business while maintaining the humor that people love. 

What is not to love about memes? 

Memes are everywhere on the Internet, and they keep improving, as creators can easily access diverse content and get creative using audio, pictures, videos, and GIFs. Furthermore, when you consider how easy it is to create memes and the massive communities responsible for meme vitality, there is absolutely no reason why you should not invest in meme marketing today.

What is Meme Marketing? 

In Meme marketing, the humorous context of popular/unique memes is used to entertain and inform your target audience. It is an ongoing process of creating multiple memes with consistent themes, messaging, and voice to meet your marketing objectives - which can include raising awareness, building relatability, and promoting brand stories, products, or services. 

Over the years, Brands of all sizes have created personalized meme strategies for blogs, social media platforms, and emails by working with a top meme marketing agency like Grynow.

Top 3 Ways to Use Memes Perfectly in 2024 

Social media 

Social media platforms are where your audiences encounter different types of memes daily. Hence, In a time when people generally skip or forget generic pictures and videos, memes are your best option to reach and convert your social media audience, especially the younger crowd, since memes are inspired by popular trends they follow. Furthermore, trends change constantly, but by consistently repurposing viral memes - like the recent Bhupendra Jogi meme - to fit your social media image, you can stay relevant in the eyes of your current and potential customers.

Blog Posts 

You would have created several memes for your social media handles, and by uploading them on your blog, you can create consistency in branding, style, and voice.

Imagine your readers clicking on your blog link, and they are compelled to stay after every blog section because you created an engaging interaction with memes. For example, ending the introduction of the "salt bae" meme with the text "Just the intro keep reading ;)" and as the reader progresses, they are greeted with memes that help them understand every blog section - like including Charlie Day's Meme with the caption, "digital marketers trying to keep up with multiples Trends be like" before you start listing the solutions. Using memes helps provide substance to your lengthier articles, which keeps the readers reading for longer, thus helping your search engine optimization efforts.

Emails 

Instead of attaching videos with large file sizes, you can insert memes in your email copies to your email lists. Memes do not affect your primary email message delivery. They can significantly improve your open and click-through rates, as your audience will always have something interesting to look forward to every time their screens light up with your email notification. 

Memes are also a fun addition to emails you send to -

Your staff, for important event notices, birthday wishes, festive greetings, etc.

Your shareholders, to give them moments of quirky humor by highlighting, for instance, your company's quarterly performance in memes.

Tips for Creating the Best Memes 

Picture Selection 

Understand trends: look at the images that are trending online. By listing pictures already engaging your audience in real-time, you can capitalize on their popularity by adding your unique branding mix.

Consider audience preferences: analyze the type of memes your audience likes, comments on, shares, upvotes, retweets, or bookmarks most of the time.

Consider using unique content: you can look for inspiration from successful memes to select new images (never used in any memes). Ensure the pictures you choose align with your brand identity and can help generate relatability with your audience.

Copyright: ensure the images you select are not tied with copyright or trademark claims. Get the necessary license and permission to use the photos.

Text Usage 

Clear Distinctions: the text you add to your memes should enhance the overall appeal of the image instead of competing with it for the audience's attention. The text should align with the Meme's intended humor. 

Business-centric: the text you utilize should subtly talk about your business while keeping the humor element of the Meme alive.

Use simple language: make it easier for the audience to read your text so that they can understand your intended message and context.

Platform Selection 

The selection of your ideal platform should be determined by where your target audience is most active and the types of memes you create that can perfectly encapsulate your brand's ideologies, values, and messages. Select generic platforms when you are piggybacking on the popularity of viral memes, while niche platforms work for memes you create with new ideas, text, and images.

[paragonrobits]

A friend asked me to give a stab at a Tierlist Maker for Video Games Not Yet In the Video Game Hall of Fame Tier List Maker, so here's my list for it!

This is based primarily on what I considered to be overall value to gaming history as a whole, with games with greater influence or impact ranking higher than those that had less impact on those to follow, or on culture. All the entries are those that have been nominated to the Hall of Fame, but not actually inducted as of this post's writing. Games that I personally like are generally rated higher, though mostly because I'm more familiar with them and thus can judge their impact from a personal POV.

(Tier List explainations, below!)

SHOULD BE IN ALREADY

Final Fantasy: I mean seriously. How is this one not already in yet?? It is not, as my research suggests, the first true RPG; that likely goes to games like Ultima. It is certainly an incredibly influential one; FF is a name closely associated with JRPGs in general, and its diverse class system is one of the strongest things to do with it, as noted by challenges like beating the game with a party of Black Belts. FF is THE name of RPGs in general and I'm startled it hasn't made it in, though I suppose that's owing to more notable entries (Hard as that is to imagine). It doesn't hurt that the majority of my favorite FF titles are those most similar to this one, such as FF6 and FF9, in terms of approaching the general world setting and class systems. Most significantly is that this game popularized RPGs and made them accessible, in ways that previous games such as Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest did not; the field of gaming would be VERY different without it; RPGs became VERY popular, to the extent of RPG elements being almost universal among other games in the modern day. (I am also pleased and amused to see 8-Bit Theater mentioned on the actual Wikipedia page. Now THAT'S notability!)

Sid Meir's Civilization: HEY NOW HALL OF FAME JUDGES, DON'T YOU BE MOCKING CIV, ALRIGHT. CIV IS FUCKING AWESOME. Okay, jokes aside, I'm genuinely astonished as the Civ series is considered the first true main game of the 4x series, and it shows; the entire genre centers around expansion, resource usage and diplomacying or conquering your enemies, and considering the impact of this game and its sheer popularity, to the extent of the meme of the game getting people to play for Just One More Turn, I'm a bit disappointed that it's not already in the hall of fame. I also note that I am personally more familiar with the spin off Alpha Centauri, a sci fi variant, which is still one of my all time favorite games.

Half-Life: Given this game's popularity, to the point of its release alone consigning the likes of Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines to cult classic status and its engine spawning a whole THING with GMod and the usage of physics mechanics in FPS games, one thing of note is its use of scripted sequences; at the time, an unknown in most games of the time. There may be something to be said for how the entire game is spent as Gordon Freeman, behind his eyes, possibly engendering a lack of separation between self and character that would be later emphasized in games like Bioshock. It's influence on games cannot be denied, with publications using it as a bookend between eras of gaming. One consistent element of what seems to make this game so distinctive is its approach to storytelling, without simply imitating film techniques which don't always work well with gameplay.

Candy Crush: This is an example of something I don't personally play myself, or even like very much, but I'd be remiss to dismiss it out of hand. There's no denial that phone games are one of, if not THE biggest market of games in the here in now; if now in scale, certainly in quantity. You might call it the TF2 Hat Economy theory; people aren't spending BIG bucks, but they are spending a LOT of little bucks all the time. It proves that highly accessible games that are generally free to play, with optional purchases, are a legitimate means of game business, and this certainly revolutionized how games were seen by the money-makers.

Super Smash Bros Melee: I loved this game as a kid, but truth be told i have a bit of a love-hate relationship; i REALLY dislike the competitive community that has fixated hard on this game, so any thoughts on it will have a slight element of pause beforehand. Even so, I can't forget the thrilled delight I felt watching the trailer for this game in supermarkets for the first time as a kid. at a time when getting any new games at all was a HUGE deal in my family. So, there is a lot of feeling behind this one! Ultimately, I have to concede that while i have complicated feelings about this game, its worth noting that the vast majority of things that made Smash iconic, and influenced the competitive scene AND the games inspired by Smash AND shaped the course of the series going forwards, largely owe themselves to Melee in particular. 64 was far more slow paced, while Melee began the trend towards much more fast paced action (and while I doubt it's SPECIFIC to melee as a whole, it may have been a trend for the genre from then). Melee is STILL widely played, especially on the competitive scene, and this sort of longevity always bears evidence of notability.

Goldeneye 007: I have to admit that despite being a kid in the 90s, despite someone who put most of their time into gaming, and despite being someone whose favorite system at the time was the Nintendo 64, I mostly missed out on the trend of history by honestly not being that much into this game. I have to say that I DID play it, however; I just never managed to get past the first level or so. I have strong memories of triyng and failing to sneak around a snowy lair of some description; it wouldn't be until the mid-2000s, playing Deus Ex Human Revolution, that I got the hang of stealth. All the same, personal indifference really doesn't matter much because HOLY SHIT THIS GAME HAS SOME STAYING POWER. IT HAS INFLUENCE, FRIENDORITOS. Perhaps chiefly, at the time it was made, consoles were not considered viable platforms for first person shooters; Goldeneye revised that notion, and created a whole revolution in multiplayer and shooter games. We would later see the ultimate consequence of this in games like Halo, which further revolutionized the whole genre. Ironically, the stealth attributes I was so bad at were part of what made the game so unique! It's one of those games that may not have aged well, by modern standards, but its import to gaming as a whole goes a long, long way.

Guitar Hero: I expect this one might be a bit hard to justify, but on its own, this game is INCREDIBLY innovative, though its not entirely the first of its kind, having mechanics based on earlier games. The very first entry has a respectable library of 30 songs, which is impressive considered at the time it was made, its not likely people expected it to get as far as it did; bear in mind that the massive libraries of later games were the result of years of this game series being a massive steamroller of a franchise! At the time, this one was an unknown. It has an interesting history as being a successor of sorts to an arcade exclusive, and inspiring a genre of imitators and spiritual successors on its own; of great note is the sheer impact this game had. With so many of those successors, the increased value of liscened soundtracks, and the way the game's concept became so influential, its astounding this one isn't already on the hall of fame. (It's also very fun, but fun alone doesn't make for memorability, sad to say.)

DESERVES IT AT SOME POINT

Myst - an iconic and incredibly atmospheric puzzle game, I'm genuinely surprised that I haven't heard talk about this one in some respect; it bears note as a rare game with absolutely no conflict whatsoever. I actually rank this one on par with the 7th Guest in terms of atmospheric games, though their tones could not be more different. So why do I think this game deserves it at some point? It was an incredibly immersive and beautiful game, lacking in genuine danger or threat, encouraging the player to explore and tackle the puzzles of the game. This sort of open-ended lack of peril makes it an interesting precursor towards certain flavors of sandbox games around now. It's worth noting that it was a tremendous achievement, given technical limitations of things such as the CD-Rom it was stored on, maintaining a consistent experience, as well as tying narrative reasons into those very constraints. It has been compared to an art film; if so, it certainly is the sort that invited imitators and proved to be a great technical achievement.

Portal: PORTAL! What can I honestly say that hasn't already been said by other people? The amazing integration of a physics engine into innovative puzzle solving, combined with a slow burn sort of minimalist plot reveal concerning the AI proving itself to be a kind of reverse HAL 9000? This game got a HUGE number of memes back in the day, and I expect anyone reading this can probably reference a few. The cake thing, certainly, and its relevance to matters of deception. There is much discussion over the game's utility in academic circles, which is certainly quite notable, and for my part, I'm interested by the point that at first the game gives you a lot of hints towards what you're supposed to do, gradually making it less obvious for the player you're on your own entirely, using your experience with the game to get past the puzzles from there, and its excellent game design. Ultimately though, I place this below Half Life in hall of fame urgency, because while I probably like this one more, it doesn't have the same impact on other games, per say. (That's a lot of awards for it, though. Wowza.)

Resident Evil: Is it fair to call this one the major survival horror game of its era? No, because it's apparently the FIRST, or at least the first to be called such. It's certainly up there with shaping the genre as a whole, both its immediate predecessors and modern games. The flavor of a survival horror can even be judged about whether its close to Resident Evil's style of defending yourself with limited resources vs controlled helplessness. It's also worth pointing out that I quite like the restricted, cramped setting of the mansion, rather than an expansive city; Biohazard was a real return to form, even if its something I mostly watched through funny lets plays because OH NO ITS TOO SCARY I CANT WATCH.

Asteroids: It's called the first major hit of the golden age of the arcade. I'm forced to say... yeah, it absolutely deserves it. The actual implementation and hardware of the game makes for interesting reading, and so its innovative nature ought to be noted: it lacked a soundchip at all, making use of handmade circuits wired to the board. It's reception was great, beating out Space Invaders and needing larger boxes just to hold all the money people spent on it. It also invented the notion of tracking initials on the top ten score, which has implications for arcade challenges.

Ms. Pac Man: This one consistently ranks HIGH in gaming records of its time, though there is admittedly some confusion to whether it or Donkey Kong was a better seller. Interestingly it appears to shape most of the gameplay mechanics people remember most for Pac-Man, such as the improved AI of the ghosts. It's more highly regarded than the original game, and on a personal note, I remember being a kid and seeing this arcade machine at ALL the laundry places my family usually wound up going to.

Frogger: It's placing on this list is not solely because CUTE FROG. The accessibility and wide appeal of the game bears a great deal of consideration, the flexibility of its formula, and just how many dang times it's been ported in one form or another. (And also, cute frog.) It also gets points for the creator being inspired for the game when he saw a frog trying to cross a road, hampered by the vehicles in the way, and he got out of his car and carried the frog across the street. The game is also evident of broad appeal, and some money-makers resisting it, goes back a long way; it was apparently dismissed as a kid's game by some, which just goes to show that some problems are older than quite a lot of gamers alive today.

Uncharted 2: this is one of those games where I cannot honestly say I have personal experience to draw from. Of the playstation's big games, I remember the Jak and Daxter series; I remember Kingdom Hearts, and I remember Ratchet and Clank, and I remember Infamous, but the Uncharted series remains

something of a 'I don't go here?' obscurity in my personal playbook. It does look memorable and charming from what I've seen, and one consistent element I've seen in comments about it is the cinematic nature of the game; it feels very much like a fun heist movie, based on what I have seen of it, and the notable thing is how the game FEELS cinematic.. in a literal way. As in, it combined elements of cinematography with game design, and that's no mean feat: what works for movies are unlikely to translate well to the interactive side, and it shows how that can be done for other games. The extensive praise does the game a LOT of credit!

WORTH NOMINATION AT LEAST

Angry Birds: As noted before, I'm not the biggest fan of most phone games, given that i prefer a more passive experience than most provide. As such, Angry Birds isn't something I've played as of this writing, but I have to appreciate the straightforward and simple gameplay; it reminds me a bit of the Burrito Bison game series, which I HAVE played, and I'm going to go out on a limb and assume it's because Angry Birds is probably the innovation that coined that particular style of gameplay. It's an example of what made phone games profitable and worth the time of developers to work at them; its easy for casual players to get into, and there's a fun sort of impact involved. Given the popularity of phone games, this one has a LOT of influence in getting that rolling, similar to candy crush, if not as much.

FIFA International Soccer: Simulation games are a tricky business; it can be really difficult to get them right, and this game provides an example of it being done in a way that a lot of people REALLY loved, set up an entire game series, and revived the 3DO system after a very bad year. Of note, apparently it was commented that it was more of a simulator than a console game, and this is rather funny considering how simulator is its own genre nowadays! Such do things change. It seems to have been a revolutionary game and simulation; setting the shape for modern sport games of its type, and tending more towards realism (accounting for acceptable breaks in reality) than was typical of the time. This one's position is thus picked for its impact as a whole; while it may not necessarily be a household name now, the series continues on, and is popular enough that even after 20 years, it's still been going.

Elite: I nominate this game in this position for being a startlingly early entry into what we would now consider open-ended games, even with an element of exploration and trading; if one stretches definitions a bit, a precursor towards gameplay of the like scene in 4X players who strive to avoid conflict, if possible. Its technical breakthroughs are some very interesting reading and make for good game history; a vast and complex game (not just by the standards of the era, either), and opening the door for persistent world games such as World of Warcraft.

Wii Sports: A significant game, and much as how other titles mentioned above were famed for gateway entries into gaming for an unfamiliar audience, or those that would want o play on a more casual basis. It seems notable to me for being most suited as a family game, or a more casual experience of multiplayer than usually associated with games like this; this has greatly influenced Nintendo's design philosophy, and one can see elements of this all the way through the Wii U onwards. It's essentially a fliparound from Mario Party; less competitiveness, but definitely meant as a group thing. Controversy is evident, because like with Mario Party, injuries did result from it.

Call of Duty: I place this one here because, while it DOES hold a very significant role in gaming history, with countless imitators, spiritual successors, being a game-changer in ways that its modern reputation might surprise you with, ultimately it is less so than other games such as Goldeneye, Halo or Half-Life. It's development in AI pathfinding and tactics is incredibly noteworthy from a mechanical perpsective, and the sheer level of awards it won is notable. In the end this game's popularity and continuing influence means that it shouldn't be overlooked.

Metroid: You can't spell 'Metroidvania' without this game! A relatively open ended exploration-based game with further options opening as new tools were found give it an interesting vibe, and the oppressive atmosphere distinctive to the game says great things about its sound and level designs. It wasn't the first open world game, or explorer, or even the first to open new aereas based on equipment, but it had ALL of these elements in a very memorable package. (Samus Aran as a female protagonist is something I'm a bit reluctant to give it credit for, as her identity was obfuscated for most of the game, and only revealed in a fanservicey way in a secret ending. All the same, credit where it is due, I suppose!) It's music seems to endure as a mood setter, too!

Pole Position: Perhaps not the FIRST racing game, but still considered one of the most important from the golden age of gaming, and the one to codify many of the firm rules of the game series. It's three dimensional gameplay is incredibly innovative for its time, and having played it and games like it in the past, I'm struck by how smooth the whole thing feels. No wonder it was popular! It is notable for having been designed specifically as a 3d Experience, meant to execute techniques like real drivers might attempt, which makes it a different sort of beast in that it tried to do more realistic actions; in some ways, a precursor to modern trends of realism in many games, for ill or best. Ultimately I think this one is worth a nomination because of its influence towards racing games (a popular and long lived genre, to say the least) as a whole.

OUTSIDE CHANCE

Nurburgring 1: On the one hand, I feel a bit guilty putting this one so low; it is recognized as likely being the earliest racing game in history, and given that I just finished noting Pole Position's influence, it feels a bit mean to rate this one as relatively insignificant all the same. However, in terms of notability, I never even heard of this one, and it was tricky finding information about it. Accordingly, that may say something about its influence, though this position DOES make it noteworthy as the first of its kind, albeit with Pole Position refining and introducing elements that shaped the genre.

Dance Dance Revolution: It feels a bit strange, putting this one fairly low. This thing was a MONSTER back in the day; entire arcades were built around the dancing control peripherals it required, rhythm based games or mechanics specifically invoked it by name, and it was an absolute cultural touchstone for years and years. So, why place it low? Partly, its because I can't just shove EVERYTHING into the 'deserves a nomination' folder; I do think it's fairly reasonable for this one to at some point get a nomination in the future, though ultimately there's games more noteworthy on the whole. It's specific rhythm qualities continue outside of its genre, and are quite influential to gaming as a whole, though unfortunately the series seems to have lost something in notability over time; popularity is a factor, but so is the impact on other games.

NBA 2K and NBA Jam: I put these two together because they touch on similar touchstones for me, and they really did popularize basketball games back in the day. Jam in particular seems to be invoking the Big Head mode that were a big thing in games at the time, at least going from the screenshot. They were very popular and highly beloved games back in the day, though I don't know if they have much influence on later games. I note that interestingly, they take opposite approaches; 2k focuses on AI and realistic experiences, while Jam was deliberately less realistic and more actiony in its over the top gameplay.

Nokia Snake: This one really impresses me for the sheer number of releases, in various forms, it's had! Interestingly, there seems to be little consensus on the name of this game; most just call it Snake or something on that theme. I went with Nokia Snake because... mostly, it sounds funny, and that's how its done on the list. This one is fairly low, but I Have to give it credit for having hundreds of releases!

Farmville: My mom liked Facebook games, a lot. And I am certain this one was one of her main ones! I rate it fairly low, and no doubt her spirit is yelling imprecations at me across the void of time, space, and abandoned socks; all the same, this one is ranked low because of the sheer number of displeasure aimed this one's way. (And to be fair, she complained about it. A LOT.) It is thus notable for unusually negative reasons; an example of exploitation, pressuring players to pester their friends to play it in an equivalent to electronic chain mail, and microtranscations.

Tron: I'm inclined to give any game that takes place in a computer land and uses programming or mechanical terminology a free pass! Interestingly, this has some association with the Snake game, as they have similar gameplay and Snake games are sometimes called Light Cylce games, after this one. It has an interesting history; the graphical system was chosen largely because it was believed it was more likely to be achieved before the deadline.

NO BUSINESS IN THE HALL OF FAME

Mattel Football: I do feel a little mean putting anything in this category; firstly because I don't want to make actual fans of something sad, and secondly because I believe you can probably find notability anywhere you look, if you are inclined. And here is the chief difficulty with this one: I could not find any real information in this one. It has no Wikipedia page, a google search only led to undescriptive links of SALES for the game, but not any information on the game itself. Notability is my main resource for sorting these entries, and honestly? If google has nothing on you, that's a pretty poor sign. Sorry, Mattel Football, but you look like a poor man's Game And Watch. You're no Portal, Myst or Pole Position.

[kalim10]

The Revelation of Emotional Intelligence.

The word "Emotional Intelligence" originated in the middle of the 20s century. At first, it was called "social Intelligence" and by the 1930s it was called "Emotional Power". But whatsoever the name, the subject is pretty much the same. However, due to the fact that the concept of this subject is becoming clearer day by day, it has been given a relevant name.

What is Emotional Intelligence (EI)?

Emotional Intelligence is actually a tidy way of life. Ei or EQ is the qualification to recognize, understand and manage our own emotions. Also understand, recognize and influencing the emotions of others. In Practical, It suggests being informed that emotions can push our behavior and impact people positively and negativity and learning how to conduct this in a better way, especially when we are under pressure.

Importance of Emotional Intelligence in life :

You may require Emotional Intelligence in every condition of life. I am highlighting the need for it in some aspects of life. But beyond that, in many cases emotional intelligence will help you.

•Physical Fitness : we are constantly under stress in our lives. Every day we deal with small and big mental stress. This stress has a big impact on our physical well-being. Many people can't stay physically healthy just not being able to hold this stress even after everything is fine. The more EQ a person has, the more he or she will be able to control his or her stress in a normal way. And the less stress you have, the more possible you are to stay healthy. Stress is the main source of many major diseases, including heart disease and hypertension.

•Mental Well-being: Emotional cause various mental problems among us. Therefore, it is important to control the emotions and attitudes that are born in different affairs for ones mental well-being. Emotions cannot have bad effects on us. If we find out the cause of our emotions and feelings, and control them by perceiving how logical it is to indulge them.

•Good relationship: Happiness, peace and success in our lives depend largely on our relationship. If we can understand the feelings of ourselves and others and respond accordingly, we will be able to hold our relationships much better. At the same time, this aspect of emotional intelligence also helps in building new relationships.

•Success : No matter where you want success, if you have a high standard of emotional Intelligence, your chances of success will widen a lot. Many times we give up after the initial failure on the way to achieving the goal. Emotional Intelligence is also very helpful in maintaining self-confidence by motivating oneself in this case.

•Leadership : The key to being a successful leader is to understand the feelings of your followers and what they want, and to guide them accordingly. It is possible for a leader with high EQ to build a much stronger and more effective team.

 We have highlighted the importance of Emotional Intelligence in our lives. It is needed in every aspect of our life. It is said that emotional Intelligence (EI/EQ) is more important than having a better IQ. Because it develops one's ability to judge and react to people around them. EI is more important than IQ in any kind of workplace. Research in 2013 said 71% people value emotional intelligence in an employee more than IQ. 59% employers would not hire someone who has a high IQ but low EI/EQ. 75% are more likely to promote an employee with high EI/EQ over one with a high IQ.

Proper Emotion can make a man's life better in every aspect. What is meant by proper Emotion? Philosopher Aristotle's famouse qoute "anyone can get angry (and) it's easy. But with the right time, with the right purpose and in the right way, getting angry (at all) is not an easy task"

We have discussed the importance of emotional intelligence. Now we are moving forward to seeing the structure of emotional intelligence and how it was founded.

The founder of emotional intelligence are Peter Solovey and John D.Mayer. They gave the term 'Emotional Intelligence' in 1990 describing it as a form of social Intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one's own and others feelings and emotions. After five years in 1995, the concept of emotional intelligence was popularized after the publication of Daniel Goleman's book 'Emotional Intelligence : why it can matter more than IQ" according to Daniel Goleman's, there are 5 key pillars of emotional intelligence. They are:

Emotional Awareness : self-awarnesses is having a clear idea about one's motivation emotions and personality. Have a clear idea of his likes and dislikes, aspect of his weakness and strengths, and his own abilities to understand what kind of feelings works in him in any situation and how he will feel in any situation in the future. Keep your thoughts, beliefs, values and expectations clear to yourself.

Self-Regulation: It is the ability to recognize one's emotions properly and to adapt to different emotional situations accordingly. Human beings are always optimistic, start different activities on their own initiative and are ready to conform to any environment. He can control anger even properly. It can also create emotions between oneself or others as needed. We can upgrade our strength to Self-Regulate if we keep this thing in our mind.

1) Knowing our values

(2) Holding ourselves accountable

(3) Practicing being calm

Motivation: Self-motivation covers our personal drive to develop and achieve, commitment to our goals, initiative or keenness to act resilience. How can we improve our self-motivation? Follow-

(1) Re-examine why we're doing our job

(2) Knowing where we stand

(3) Be hopeful and find something good

Empathy: The leaders who have empathy are critical to administering a successful unit or organization. They have the qualification to put themselves in someone else's situation. They help to develop the people on their team, challenge others who are acting unfairly, give positive feedback and listen to those who need it. How can we improve our empathy?

(1) Putting ourselves in someone else's position

(2) Pay attention to body language

(3) Respond to feelings

Social Skills: Leaders who do well in the social skills element of emotional intelligence are great communicators. They're just as open to hearing bad news as good news. With good social skills they are also good at administering change and resolving conflicts diplomatically. To improve social skill we should keep these in ourselves-

(1) Learning conflict resolution

(2) Improving our communication skills

(3) Learn how to praise others

Key Points of these five backbones: To be dynamic, leaders must have a solid knowledge of how their emotions and actions affect the people. The better a leader relates to and works with others, the more successful he or she will be. Take the time on self-awarness, Self-Regulation, empathy and social skills. Working on these areas will help you Excel in the future.

Is emotional intelligence a natural talent? Can emotional intelligence be thought? Many of us have this question in our mind. The Good news is that while some people have EQ as a natural talent, for those that don't, EQ skills can be learned. We can learn how to interact more effectively at work and increase our emotional intelligence. To make this happen, we need to be personally motivated to do this. To develop our emotional intelligence we should keep an eye on the signs of low emotional intelligence. Here are some of them-

(1) You get stressed easily

(2) You have difficulty upholding yourself

(3) You have limited emotional vocabulary

(4) You make assumptions quickly and defend them vehemently

(5) You hold grudges

(6) You don't make mistakes

(7) You often feel misunderstood

(8) You don't know your triggers

(9) You don't get angry

(10) You criticize other people for how they make you feel

(11) You're easily horrified

These are the primary sign that you're lack of Emotional Intelligence. Now the most crucial question is how can we improve those areas.

Ways to increase Emotional Intelligence: Emotional Intelligence can be upgraded through self-effort and coaching. Some elements need to be acquired in order to increase Emotional Intelligence. There are many strategies for acquiring each quality. Some of these strategies are discussed here:

(1) Do you know the names of the emotions? Write down on a piece of paper. Which of these have you experienced yourself? When? Under what cases? Write that too.

(2) Write down on a separate piece of paper how you feel each day.

(3) Did your body change during the feeling. Find out what kind of physical change take place in your emotions.

(4) Try to figure out what thoughts work behind each emotions. If required, take the help of someone experienced.

(5) Make a list of the situations in which your emotions are under your control and the situations in which your emotions are not under control.

(6) Inspect the situations in which you lose control. Find out what kind of thoughts were working in you at that time. Consider whether the thought is right or wrong. Find out what is right thought if wrong.

(7) Build up your happiness by controlling your thoughts. For this, stay in the present without staying in the past and distant future.

(8) If you have a problem or stress, find numerous ways to solve it and find the right way to solve the problem. If you can't solve it, try to accept it.

(9) Recognize your physical or nonverbal expression is correct along with your feelings.

(10) Try to reading other people's nonverbal language.

(11) Try to capture the feelings of others. in this case, it is easy to understand if you imagine yourself in his place.

(12) When talking to another person, speak with respect to his or her feeling and position and express what you understand.

(13) Practice expressing your feelings nicely. if necessary, take feedback from someone experienced. Do not store negative emotions.

(14) Notice the relationship your own feelings and those of others.

(15) Practice presenting yourself well and learn to make nice requests, say no, and Practice accepting requests if they are rejected.

(16) Learn to apologize for mistakes.

(17) Work on setting needs and goals. Honor yourself for getting the job accomplished at the right time.

(18) Practice working in unity with the team. Strengthen communication with people. Identify where problems are appearing and how to deal with them.

(19) Acquire leadership qualities and manufacture the ability to follow.

(20) Have at least some ideas about recent and current issues.

It is possible to increase and develop emotional Intelligence by taking the steps suggested above. However, there are a few disadvantages of being very emotionally intelligent. Higher EI include lower levels of creativity and innovation capability. People with high EQ tend to be great at building relations and working with others but may lack the necessary level of nonconformity and unconventionality to challenge the status quo.

We may meet people with Emotionally Unintelligent people. We have to negotiate with them by the help of our EQ. There are a lot of disagreement between someone with high EQ and someone who lacks EQ. People with high EQ are curious about people. They welcome change in their life. They knows what is his strengths and weaknesses. Difficult to offend and good judge of character. The most important is they let go mistakes.

While people with low EQ always live in anxiety and depression. They don't try to move ahead. Get offend easily and they don't know literally what they are doing.

Having a good EQ impact our life. It influence undoubtedly in our personal and business life. Good EQ help us to make good determination. We can explore ourselves to others and get what we need from them. But also giving others what they really want. It take care of our body and especially to manage our stress is directly linked to our EQ. It facilitate Improved physical and mental health. At the end it help us to achieve personal and professional success.

Here is the conclusion of emotional Intelligence: It is a proactive system that will help you become more sufficient whatever you walk of life. If your emotions are controlling you rather than controlling your emotions, you need to develop your EI.

"Emotional Intelligence is a master aptitude a capacity that profoundly affects all other abilities, either facilitating or interfering with them" -Daniel Goleman

[adstargets]

The logic behind banner advertising and how it work

Banner advertising is known to be one of the most popular forms of advertising online. it's no news that most it is also the most effective way of adverting online among many other methods of advertising but how does it start and how can online advertisers and publishers benefit most from it?. In this article, we are going to explain what is banner advertising, how it started and how effective is banner advertising. Historically, the first banner ad was created on October 27 in 1994 on Wired Magazine (then it was called hotwired.com). the message on the simple but innovative banner ad states “Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will”. the aim was to send traffic to the AT&T website. Now that you know how it all started, let's jump into it.

1. What is Banner Advertising?

The primary aim of banner advertising which is also known as display advertising is to direct potential customers to a website or a specific landing page. Giving it visually and attractiveness, banner ads are usually used for promoting brands across different advertising platform by simply sending traffic from the host website to the advertiser's websites or landing page. Today anyone can start a banner advertising campaign through Google Adwords or Ad networks also called display network.

2. what is Banner Ad?

Banner Ad is a web banner crafted by the advertiser and displayed on a website or a webpage which consists of an image (.jpg, .png, .gif) or of a multimedia object (usually created using Flash or HTML5). Depending on the technology used in creating banner ads, it can be a static banner ad or animated banner ad. The static banner ad can be a simple image or a visual that is acting just like an ad but technically it takes you to the advertiser's website or landing page of the advertisement once you click on it. You may also like One of the most asked questions about on banner ads is “What is an animated banner ad?” because of this, we decided to answer the question here as follows: An animated banner ad (or web banner) is a type of digital advertising that is delivered by an ad server. The aim is primarily similar to static banner ad: to get noticed on the website and make the user click on it. Also, you can call the animated ad a programmatically generated display or sequential visual that creates the illusion that the objects in the image are moving. To learn more about banner ads, watch the video below. 

3. How do Banner Ads work?

The logic behind banner ads is simply to direct traffic to the advertiser's webpage, website or landing page which result to more sales, brand awareness, conversions, lead generation etc. the most common function of banner ads is they must be clickable and send the visitor to the desired destination. This brings us to the next question about banner ads which "why should I use banner Advertising?" the following lines give a brief explanation of why you should use banner advertising. 1. Brand awareness – it helps to give your brand the online and off-line exposure that helps grow your brand awareness so people can easily recognize your products and service which lead to more sales and possibly more profit. Big brands such as Amazon, IBM, Apple, Target and Nike among so many others used banner ads to grow their business. 2. Lead generator – it gives you the opportunity to build your customer list. As a stater, a banner ad can help you to get more users to signup and try your products or services and at the same time maintain a massive list of emails you can reach anytime when you have new products or services listed on your website. 3. Retarget your audience – by using tracking tools, you will be able to re-target visitors who came to your website and did not signup but show some interest. For more information on how banner ads works and the best way to use them, watch the video below

4. Is banner Advertising effective?

One great advantage of online advertising generally over the traditional ones is that it is to measure its effectiveness in comparison to the money spent on it. Regarding banner ads, the main effectiveness indicator for measuring banner ads campaign is the click-through rate. The click-through rate (CTR) is calculated simply by dividing the total number of users who clicked on the banner by the number of times the ad was shown to them (impressions). For example, a marketer can say a particular ad unit has a click-through rate of 4% or 5%. That means that out of 100 impressions delivered, the banner was clicked on four or five times respectively. Therefore, the higher the CTR is, the more effective we can say the advertisement is.

5. Standard banner sizes for advertising

I am sure you come across various kinds of banner sizes, which are designed to fit specific spaces on the publisher's web pages. this helps reduces the amount of work advertisers face when creating a lot of banner ads. When you browse across the Internet it’s likely for you to encounter all kinds of banners in all kinds of sizes. Lucky for us, there are some standards too. And their role is to reduce the amount of work for agencies when faced with the problem of creating many banners and similar sizes for different publishers. And here is where the IAB standards come into play. But we’ll talk more about ad standards in a future post. Check the list below with the banner ad standard size: Ad size Name Where it’s featured Supply 300×250 Medium Rectangle Embedded within or at the end of articles Good inventory 336×280 Large Rectangle Embedded within or at the end of articles Good inventory 728×90 Leaderboard Placed on top or in inserted in an article Good inventory 300×600 Half Page Featured in the right or left-hand side Growing inventory 468×60 Banner Featured in small spaces inside or on the left in articles Limited, declining inventory 234×60 Half Banner Featured in small spaces inside or on the left in articles Limited, declining inventory 120×600 Skyscraper Featured in websites sidebars Limited inventory 160×600 Wide Skyscraper Featured in websites sidebars Good inventory 970×90 Wide Skyscraper Top of website pages Limited inventory 200×200 Small Square Usually featured in the right-hand sidebar Limited inventory 250×250 Square Usually featured in the right-hand sidebar Limited inventory

6. How to create a banner for advertising

Creating banners is no magic and does not require special skills. However, you need a bit of fast learning ability to watch a couple of videos on YouTube and you are good to go. if you choose to use other automated resources online still fine, you will be able to use hundreds of free Canva banner templates Or still you can use the premium banner template on bannersnack. The video below will teach you how to create banners using Photoshop 1. Who is your main target and what do you want from them? Before you design a banner ad you need to know who is your core audience and what you want from them. Maybe you want them to click on your website, or to buy your limited sale product or to try your service for free. Think about that! 2. What is your value proposition? This will help you write the text of your banner and also choose a good CTA button text. 3. Choose a Standard web banner ad size – Because the publishers are usually using the standard banner ad sizes on their websites. So, if you pick another size you limit the reach of your banner ad campaigns. 4. Use readable fonts – You want the user to understand what you want to offer and what he can get if he will click your banner ad. 5. Use high-quality photos – A very low-quality photos and images used in a banner ad can create mistrust between the brand and the user. 54% of users don’t click banner ads because they don’t trust them. 6. Use your brand colors – If you want to create professional banner ads and you want people to recognize your brand on the internet I recommend you to stay close to your brand color. 7. Don’t overcrowd your banner ad – The simpler the banner ad is the easier you can communicate the right message to your audience. 8. Don’t forget to use a branding element (logo, company name or website) – It doesn’t matter how big you are in your industry, you need to use one of your branding elements to show the user that your company is behind that banner ad.

7. How do I advertise my banner?

Advertising your created banners is not difficult at all, there are a lot of platforms how there including Blogs that are relevant to your niche and also have a fair amount of traffic. the most favorable banner advertising platform these days are Ad network such as AdsTargets, Google Adwords, Yahoo and Bing Ads, BuyAds among many others. You can even use the link below to start banner adverting for a very cheap rate.

8. How to start effective banner advertising?

advertising generally require some principles and knowledge for it to be effective advertising champagne, whether you are advertising using Facebook Ads, Google Adwords, AdsTargets, You need to have a strategy on what you want to achieve with your Ad campaign, the great thing about banner ad campaign is the visual presentation of banner ads as it has the ability to use images and videos and can also allow the use of buttons, animations, colours and many more depending on the used technology. so what are the most important things you must know before starting banner Ads 1. What do you want to achieve from your campaign – think strategically about the product or service you are advertising and decide what you want your audience to know about it.hat’s the specific idea you can build your campaign on. 2. Determine your budget – Here you decide on how much you are willing to invest in your advertising campaign to get you the return on investment. You may decide to spend $100 a day or $1000 a month to reach your specific targets audience. since money is valuable, you need to scale your investment in advertising to get the best out of your campaigns. 3. Who is your audience – Understanding who your target audience is will help you create a better banner ad campaign? Knowing your target audience need will help you design banners that will communicate the message in the best possible way to attract them. you may decide to target your audience based on their location, age, gender and their interest depending on the products or services you are selling.

Conclusion

Banner adverting has earned created over the years for playing a strategic role in building most of the biggest brands we know today, for example, e-commerce giants like Amazon were one of the biggest spenders in the early days of Google advertising,Wall Mart, Airbnb, Time Magazine and many others are a living testimony on how effective banner Ads could be. Banner ads have proven to be one of the most effective forms of advertising since its invention. we hope you have learned a lot from this article. Please let us know in the comment section what is your experience with banner advertising :) Read the full article

[jacob-lawton]

Ethics of Social Media

Jacob Lawton

The current state of social media ethics: what trends are happening in the industry? What are two current cases related to social media ethics? Outline the current code of ethics for social media by a professional organization you would be interesting in joining as part of their social media staff.

New trends are happening daily in the social media industry. Whether it is the use of new platforms like TikTok that basically took over as one of the most popular social media platforms, or new trends such as virtual reality or the metaverse that are being used on social media platforms to grow viewership. Each day, weeks, months, there are new trends that are taking over the internet. Going off TikTok, it has a large current code of ethics or as they call it, there code of conduct. Listed on the TikTok site is their long list of code of conduct. An example of some of these conduct codes are minor safety, violent extremism, and integrity and authenticity. By having this code of ethics, TikTok is looking to “maintaining a supportive environment for our growing community”. TikTok also lists in their introduction that they will remove any content or even ban users if they do not adhere by the rules and regulations established.

Brands/professionals with strong social media ethical codes: what brands are utilizing proper social media ethical practices? Are there any professionals that you feel practice strong ethical behavior on social media? Support your choice with evidence. What are some takeaways you can bring forth in your own practices?

PlayStation is the most followed brand currently on Twitter. They are using proper social media ethical practices to keep their platform engaging and fresh. One of the most recent positive impacts that PlayStation has done is the project they called the PlayAtHome project to encourage users to stay at home and play while the current global pandemic was at the state it was. PlayStation is continuing to practice their positive ethical behavior by enforcing their rules and regulations such as “Do not organize hate groups or use or promote hate speech,” and “Do not threaten, harm, bully, harass, troll, or stalk anyone, or encourage anyone to do so.” Those are just two examples of the over 20 rules and regulations that they enforce on their users across their platform. After seeing the things PlayStation uses, I can take a few things away from them. They enforce their rules strongly and have the proper punishments towards users depending on the rules they break. I think having that strong enforcement is key and important to really establish and create my own social media ethics.

Key concepts and issues: what main concepts do you are necessary to adhere to for your own personal conduct online?

I think all concepts are necessary to adhere to for my own personal conduct online. Misappropriation, abandonment, manipulation, ignorance, monotony, narcissism, and uniformity are all principles that I should adhere by.

What to do and what not to do: what main concepts do you feel strongly against and want to make sure you avoid on social media?

One main concept that I feel strongly against is uniformity. To be a content creator, brand holder or someone that uses multiple forms of social media, I think it is very important to have uniform content but also content that is not a copy and paste along all platforms. Keeping the audience engaged and fresh with you content is so important to stay relevant. Having multiple forms of content allows users to see something new and exciting. Versus posting the same thing repeatedly. Each platform has different users and follows different characteristics to that platform. So staying engaging and new on these platforms I think is very important.

[digistrategixpune]

10 Digital marketing trends you can't ignore in 2021

Businesses suffered a huge loss as a result of the COVID-19. Customers' shopping habits have altered since then. Physical purchasing is no longer a preferred mode of transportation. Consumers are actively purchasing online, and many businesses have gone online in order to stay in touch with their customers. With the tremendous surge in internet shopping, business competition has grown to new heights. Many businesses are turning to Digital Marketing Company because they are up to date on the latest marketing trends. These digital marketing firms are cutting-edge, professional, and provide brands an immediate solution.  

It can be difficult to know where to focus your weaponry in the current uncertain atmosphere. Here are four of the most talked-about digital marketing trends in 2021 that will put you ahead of the pack.

Inclusivity:

Today's youth and marginalized groups want an optimistic brand or business to be inclusive and equal in terms of ethnicities, sexualities, faiths, physical and learning disabilities, and many other factors. To be a part of this generation's lifestyle, you can use photos and/or videos, social media and/or blogs, or even your brand's line of items. 

Chatbots:

Chatbots are software applications that engage in real-time interactions with humans using either text or speech. They're programmable since they provide pre-programmed responses to often asked inquiries that anyone can have.

Many companies, such as Facebook, have created chatbots to assist people in running their businesses on the platform. You can even design your own chatbot to assist you with first-time consumers and their obvious queries while you concentrate on other aspects of your business.

The SEO advancements:

Surprisingly, the search engine industry has become synonymous with continual modifications and updates, which has had a significant impact on user search results. Google's BERT update has been the most noticeable change. BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representational from Transformers) is a natural language processing deep learning algorithm. This indicates that Google is enhancing its search engine by making it smarter and boosting its ability to understand complicated linguistic distinctions as well as the searcher's intent. This means that BERT can respond to search queries that are context-dependent.

Voice search:

Prepare yourself to say and hear Because more and more people are using phones with voice assistants, we're hearing a lot more from Google, Alexa, and Siri. As a result, Google, Alexa, and Siri have become major digital marketing elements. When it comes to using voice search for business, it's crucial. It contributes to the growth of a diverse mobile-friendly movement while also improving the value of local SEO. Voice search also facilitates the use of AI by organizing the semantics of searches.

Influencer Marketing:

Influencer marketing is a sort of word-of-mouth marketing that focuses on using influential people to spread your business message to a wider audience. Influencers can be well-known celebrities, but they're more likely to be Instagram or YouTube personalities with a large niche following who can help promote your brand or product through their social media platforms. 

Video Marketing:

For the next five to 10 years, this trend is unlikely to fall out of vogue. This is due to the fact that it is the most popular method for buyers to learn about new products. This isn't restricted to YouTube; video marketing can be used in a variety of ways to increase engagement. Making a video or doing a live broadcast on social media are two examples. In fact, videos will attract far more visitors to your website than text alone. This is because, as previously said, customers find videos more appealing than text, thus Google will favor pages with videos. 

Visual Search:

Visual search is here to change the scene. You may no longer need to type your search phrases into search engines, as technology advances at a much faster rate than anyone could have expected. Users can do a search by just uploading an image and receiving more specific and relevant results. According to current trends, visual search is set to explode in 2021.

Personalization:

Personalized content, goods, emails, and other forms of communication are the way to go if you want your business to stand out and be remembered by your customers. It distinguishes you from the crowd. The ability to target a certain demographic and potential clients is a key benefit of personalized marketing. Furthermore, by collecting client data from list segments, polls, or studies, you'll be in a better position to send increasingly relevant and enticing email campaigns to your target audience based on their purchasing proclivities, interests, and behaviors.

Social Shopping:

Instagram checks out, which allows users to complete transactions using Instagram, started this trend of combining business with pleasure. Internet retailers hope that by doing so, customers will be less likely to abandon their shopping carts because they required to switch programs or check in to an unfamiliar store. As more people are willing to purchase things through promotions they see in their feeds, visual commerce is gaining traction. Clients may click and shop with ease with online business brands. Instagram believes that this will make it easier for businesses to reach out to potential new customers since it will effectively reduce the sales funnel by providing buyers with immediate access.

Retaining customers:

It is more important to keep present consumers than to acquire new ones in the future. Organizations understand that keeping existing customers satisfied costs less money, so they'll put more work into the middle and end of the buyer's journey, where better data and a focus on market segmentation can help save money. Retaining clients increases revenue since they are more likely to notify their friends and provide you referrals if you maintain them. Clients who are loyal are also more likely to be open and honest with you about any issues, allowing you to develop your brand.

This brings us to the end of our list of ten digital marketing trends to watch for and implement in 2021. It is critical to keep up with current trends and be on top of your game in terms of digital marketing when running a business. That is why the majority of business owners hire a professional digital marketing agency to stay on top of the latest trends. You may not only stay on top of your game, but also thrive at the top, if you follow these trends. Now that you've got a clear vision, it's time to get your digital marketing and social media marketing on!

[moneyhacks]

What are some creative ways to use a mailing list for marketing?

Whether you are just starting with email marketing or you're already sending marketing emails every week, you know that emails are one of the best channels to sell. But smart marketers are always looking for new ways they can build relationships and grow revenue.

Should you nurture your subscribers with weekly newsletters? Are dedicated sends (stand-alone emails with one offer) better at optimizing your sales and marketing funnel? What about email digests?

These are all valid questions marketers find themselves asking when selecting the right format to meets their email marketing goals. In this post, we're review the different types of marketing emails you can send, and their respective advantages and disadvantages. This information should help you make an educated decision about picking the most appropriate email type and how to go about using it.

7 Types Of Email Marketing You Should Be Sending

1. Welcome Emails

Initial contact with prospects typically finds them unready to do business. In fact, research shows that only 25% of leads are immediately sales-ready, while 50% of leads are qualified but not yet ready to buy. Nurturing, therefore, is critical for pushing your leads closer to the buying stage.

Welcome emails show better open and click-through rates when they offer a personal touch and introduce your organization without slathering on the sales pitch. Don’t introduce a new product or service before you’ve built a relationship. Simply work on giving off a good first impression — one that illustrates your industry knowledge and expertise — and pave the way for future contact.

Advantages Of Welcome Emails

The Start Of A Business Partnership: When you fire off that first welcome email to potential prospects, it's the first step in forming a relationship. When done correctly, this will be a positive experience for them and will leave them more receptive to future emails. In fact, subscribers who read an initial welcome email will read 40 percent more content from a sender over the subsequent 180 days.

Boost Metrics: Welcome emails have higher open rates and click-through rates than standard marketing emails. This can be a good way to kickstart your email marketing metrics for the better.

Disadvantages Of Welcome Emails

Bad First Impressions: A welcome email is the first communication you will have with a potential buyer and if you don't nail it right out of the gate, you can blow any chance of closing a deal.

2. Email Newsletters

Many businesses and organizations send email newsletters to stay top of mind for their recipients. Most industrial businesses actually use email newsletters as the foundation of their email marketing program because they are great tools for educating customers and prospects about your business and showcasing employee profiles, company passion projects, and relevant graphics.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty details of creating email newsletters, you will need to determine your goal. What is it that you want your email newsletter to achieve? You might want to nurture your existing contacts and become the first brand they think of when they need a product or service in your industry. Or your goal might be to increase sharing so that you attract new people to your list. As you define your goal, think about what metrics you can use to track your progress.

Newsletters are great not only for marketing to prospects but also for nurturing your existing customers with company news and events, product announcements, and feedback requests. Such ongoing communication will help you retain happy customers and collect valuable insights about them, so make sure you're using a marketing CRM like Hubspot to send your emails and track metrics.

For example, if your goal is to drive traffic to specific pages, you would need to closely monitor click-through rates (CTR). A CTR measures the number of times someone has clicked the link versus the number of people who viewed the link.

What kinds of links do they click on the most? Can you upsell to them at all? Which email subject lines have a high open-rate? What time of the day is better to send an email? Without a marketing CRM, these questions are left unanswered — and actually one of the top pitfalls industrial sellers and marketers experience.

Do (Need a refresher on marketing terms? Check out The Essential Dictionary Of Industrial Marketing Terms You Should Know.)

As you work on your newsletter layout and content creation, stay mindful of your goal and make sure you are working towards meeting it by prioritizing the design and placement of calls-to-actions.

Advantages Of Email Newsletters

Brand Awareness: Similar to newspapers, newsletters create certain anticipation in readers. Whether it is a daily newsletter or a weekend communication, readers get into the habit of receiving it. So if you're considering sending email newsletters, make sure you're sending them on a regular cadence. If readers enjoy the content, they will most likely stay subscribed to the newsletter. Building a habit in your email subscribers enables them to recognize your brand and associate it with a positive sentiment.

Repurpose Content: Newsletters generally contain information that you have already published. Many companies do quick summaries of their most popular blog posts and link to the articles from their newsletter. In this way, they bring subscribers back to the company website and engage them with more company content.

Diverse Content: Email newsletters give you the freedom to include different content types all in one email that might be important to your organization. For instance, the same newsletter can contain a popular blog post, a new offer, an announcement of an upcoming event, information about a discount, and a link to a survey. There might even be a video embedded in the email.

Disadvantages Of Email Newsletters

Diluted Call-To-Action: Due to their format — a long compilation of information — newsletters can be overwhelming with multiple calls-to-action. If you include a series of blurbs or article summaries, the attention of your recipients will most likely be spread across these tidbits of information as opposed to staying focused on a certain element. Of course, you can address this by prioritizing the most important information at the top of the newsletter and include a clear call-to-action after/alongside each block of text.

Design: With newsletters, the layout becomes a much more complicated task than with dedicated email sends. You’ll have to spend some time deciding on the right placement of images and text, alignment and prioritization of information. This is where A/B testing comes into play.

3. Dedicated Emails

Dedicated emails, or also known as stand-alone emails, contain information about only one offer. For instance, you can notify your target audience about a new whitepaper you have released or invite them to attend an industry event that you are hosting.

Dedicated emails help you set up the context to introduce the main call-to-action. In this sense, they are similar to landing pages. Dedicated sends are generally used to reach out to your entire email database — a practice that is not necessarily efficient in optimizing conversions and minimizing unsubscribes.

While there are instances when all of your subscribers should be notified, such as a timely new offer or an unprecedented national emergency, in most cases you would want to segment heavily based on your subscribers’ different behaviors and interests.

Advantages Of Dedicated Emails

Focused Call-To-Action: Unlike newsletters, dedicated sends can focus on really driving results for one call-to-action, because there is just one message and one goal.

Easy To Build: Once you have your email template in place, building dedicated sends should be easy. You will generally grab some of the information already on the landing page, make a few tweaks to it and spend most time nailing down the subject line.

Fast To Measure: Naturally, if you have one main message and call-to-action in your dedicated send, it will be easy for you to track progress. You can quickly check the email CTR, landing page views and conversions, and follow the long-term ROI.

New call-to-action

Disadvantages Of Dedicated Emails

Less Consistency: With newsletters, marketers generally stick to a specific schedule. For instance, you might create a weekly newsletter that goes out on Tuesday mornings. Or your company might be sending a weekend newsletter summarizing information published throughout the week. With dedicated sends, the schedule is less clear and, potentially, less consistent. You might use dedicated emails when you have published a new offer (and new products or services are not always launched regularly). Even if you decide to maintain a specific schedule, your subscribers might not realize it or expect communication from you because there is no clear connection between the separate sends.

Homogenous Content: As dedicated sends contain one message, it’s tough to include a shout-out about some other campaign that might also be important to your organization. Use the landing page your email is linking to in order to showcase other relevant information.

Thank you page example - Email marketing

4. Lead Nurturing Emails

As an inbound marketing tactic, lead nurturing is all about understanding the nuances of your leads’ timing and needs. That's why it's important to define your buyer personas to reach your target audience effectively. Otherwise, your emails get left unopened or deleted.

Lead nurturing introduces a tightly connected series of emails with a coherent purpose and full of useful content. In this context, lead nurturing offers more advantages than just an individual email blast.

Promotional emails are a multifaceted beast. They can be designed to promote a number of things, from marketing materials, such as blog posts, webinars, and eBooks, or discounted service offerings. These types of emails can also serve to inform your customer about what’s happening within your organization. You can even send out these emails using an automated system, cutting down on time and labor needs.

Be sure to create different types of promotional nurturing emails to suit the needs of your users based on where they are in the marketing funnel. This ensures you’re providing directly useful content to all prospects, at the right stage of their buying journey. The overall goal here is to guide them through the sales cycle to move them down the funnel and, ultimately, convert them into loyal customers.

Advantages Of Lead Nurturing Emails

It's Timely: Study after study shows that email response rates decline over the age of the lead. You need to use lead nurturing campaigns to take advantage of the dynamic between subscriber recency and CTR. What that means is that if you have a new lead, don't wait to contact them!

It's Automated: Once you set up lead nurturing, emails are sent out automatically according to your schedule as new leads come in. This leads to a high return on a low investment. You might launch the campaigns and forget about them, but the emails will be doing the work for you, helping you qualify leads and push them down the sales funnel faster. See what we mean by needing a marketing CRM platform? Take a look at our Must-Have Digital Marketing Apps And Tools (Including Free Ones).

It's Targeted: Studies show that targeted and segmented emails perform better than mass email communications. Lead nurturing enables you to tie a series of emails to a specific activity or conversion event. You can craft your follow-up email based on the action a lead has taken on your website, thus showing that you know their interests in the topic and what they might need next. Lead nurturing emails can highlight reconversion opportunities that tie back to their earlier interests based on this information.

Disadvantages Of Lead Nurturing Emails

Generates Less Concurrent Buzz: With dedicated sends to your email database, you can generate a lot of buzz around your brand. If you're sharing a brand new product or service, there is usually an increase in engagement resulting from simultaneous forwarding and social media sharing (especially if you have Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter sharing links in your email). Lead nurturing cannot quite achieve the same buzz effect because it is programmed to schedule fewer emails to segmented audiences. So while there will still be sharing, you won’t see a huge spike in traffic and conversions on a specific day. Rather, the visits and leads will trickle in.

Dive Deeper: How Marketing & Sales Pros Can Build Effective Prospect Lists

Passive Tracking: Because lead nurturing is automated and marketers often forget about it after they’ve set it up, it also tends to be underreported. Make sure your lead nurturing campaigns include unique tracking tokens. Remember to revisit your marketing analytics often to evaluate performance and prove the ROI of your efforts.

Learn how emails and inbound marketing together drive growth for manufacturers and industrial companies.

5. Sponsorship Emails

All the types of marketing emails we have discussed so far are under the assumption that you are sending communications to your own email database. If you want to reach a different audience and gain new leads, you might want to try out sponsorship emails with display ads. A sponsorship usually entails you paying to include your copy in another vendor's newsletter or dedicated send.

Sponsorship email campaigns are one component of a paid media strategy, including pay-per-click (PPC), display advertising, mobile advertising, affiliate advertising, etc.

In this paid media universe, you benefit from being super specific when describing the target audience you want to reach.

Generally, you’ll have to design your email copy or ad placement according to the specifications listed by the vendor. Check if the partner has any size restrictions or image suggestions. Provide them with both the HTML and plain text versions of the copy in advance.

Ensure you trust that they are a credible partner and understand your manufacturing business needs (if you're not already in a business relationship).

Advantages Of Sponsorship Emails

Highly Targeted: The biggest advantage of sponsorship emails is that you can be specific in defining the segment you want to reach. Get granular in identifying the different characteristics of your target audience — number of employees, geographic location, their interests, and challenges, etc.

Exact ROI: There is a very specific investment in sponsorship emails — you know how much you are paying the vendor. Now you only need to track the results you are getting (visits, leads, sales) to determine your return on the cost you have paid. Knowledge of the exact ROI will help you fit it into your marketing budget and build accurate marketing reports at the end of the quarter.

Reach 300,000+ buyers today with a display advertisement in the daily email newsletter, Thomas Industry Update.

Disadvantages Of Sponsorship Emails

It's Paid: Sponsorship emails are being sent to people you haven’t earned as subscribers (they didn’t opt-in to your list). In this context, you have to pay to get content in front of them. Vendors offer different payment packages and here you enter the land of negotiation. Some of the most popular options are paying a flat fee, paying based on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) model, or paying per new lead acquired.

Dedicated Resources: Sponsorship emails and management of the vendor relationship require a big marketing effort and tight control. In addition to brand synergies, you'll also need to understand the data behind their emails. If your industrial business has a small marketing team, this type of email marketing can be difficult to execute.

6. Transactional Emails

Transactional emails are the messages triggered by a specific action your contacts have taken and enable them to complete that action. For instance, if you are signing up for an industry webinar, you will fill out a form and then receive a transactional (thank-you) email, which gives you login information to join. If you are using a double opt-in, people will receive an email asking them to click on a link to confirm their registration.

Transactions are also the messages you receive from eCommerce sites that confirm your order and give you shipment information and other details about your recent purchase.

Advantages Of Transactional Emails

High CTR: Recipients anticipate transactional emails because they help them complete an action. That is why they open them and click on them. Take advantage of this dynamic and include a highly customized call-to-action (maybe even as a P.S.) to leverage the fact that the subscriber is fresh and very actively engaged with your email communication.

Disadvantages Of Transactional Emails

Creates An Obstacle: Sometimes the idea of taking yet another action discourages contacts from completing their activity altogether because it seems to them like they are jumping through hoops.

7. Re-Engagement Emails

If metrics show that a portion of your subscribed client list has been inactive, it may be time to send out a re-engagement email to re-establish contact and goodwill. Asking for feedback is an excellent way to bring your business back to their minds, and if they respond, it’s a win-win; they’re again actively aware of your business, and you’ve got fresh feedback to work with for improving processes and marketing tactics.

And even if they wind up unsubscribing, there is a bright side: Your email engagement rates will improve overall, and your email reputation will see a boost among internet service providers (ISPs).

Advantages Of Re-Engagement Emails

Turning A Loss Into A Win: According to Active Campaign, turning an inactive subscriber into a customer is 5 times cheaper than acquiring a brand new customer.

Clean Up Your Lists: Worst case scenario is that your re-engagement emails don't reel these prospects back in. The silver lining is that no matter what the outcome of this send, you'll be able to clean up your email lists.

Disadvantages Or Re-Engagement Emails

Don't pester: If a contact has become unengaged once before, maybe they don't want to be contacted again. Sending a re-engagement series is definitely worth it because we all have to shoot our shot to win new business, but be sure not to pester your prospects again if they're not ready to partner up.

thankyou……..

[cryptobitcointrading-whalea-blog]

Bitfinex Exchange Review: Is It Safe To Trade On It?

Cryptocurrency exchange is a hot business nowadays.  And given the meteoric rise of Bitcoin and altcoins last year, this was expected to say the least.  But as you know, running a crypto exchange is not an easy business to be in. Moreover, being centralized in nature, these exchanges are prone to numerous attacks and hacks.  However, in all the hullabaloo, some exchanges have left a positive mark on the crypto space. And one of them is  Bitfinex Exchange .  Some may say I am biased. Therefore, I am going to review Bitfinex in detail today and leave the decision upto you   Introduction      Biftinex is the world’s largest and most advanced cryptocurrency trading platform operating since 2013 in this space. It is based out of Hong Kong and serves almost every country in the world (except for few which we are going to reveal further in this article).  For quite some time, it has been the busiest exchange in the world that was pulling the most USD/BTC volume and still ranks number one in this aspect.   Still thinking why to use Bitfinex?   Well, it is because apart from trading BTC, it also trades numerous other altcoins and is a popular multi-coin exchange of the cryptosphere.  It also maintains order books and facilitates P2P trading for an exchange fee. The specifics of the same will be discussed later in this article.   Bitfinex: Multi-coin Exchange    Bitfinex  is a multi-coin exchange and has many advanced features that a newbie might not require when starting cryptocurrency trading.  In this section, I will highlight some of the features and facilities that Bitfinex provides.   1. Buy/Sell Walls   The buy/sell walls are clearly visible in the order book. From here, you can select the deal that attracts you. But you can place and complete your order only when you have a verified & approved account.  More on that later.  On the first look, I found their UI somewhat cluttered, but you can dig through and find the relevant options for yourself. It’s just that you have to look with intent.  The one thing I liked about the Bitfinex dashboard is that you can customize it to make your own unique workstation to some extent which is a cool feature in my opinion and is not available on any other exchange yet.      2. Supported Cryptocurrencies      There is more to it:  Bitfinex supports a wide range of cryptocurrencies. As of now, there are over 75 cryptocurrencies/pairs listed on it.  Amongst which, you will find popular cryptocurrencies like BTC, BCH, LTC, ETH, XMR and LTC, etc. and numerous other popular ERC20 tokens.  Bitfinex also supports fiat currencies such as USD, EUR, GBP, JPY which can be used to trade many cryptocurrencies against fiat pairs.    Note: As of now, fiat deposits are     blocked     until further notice.     3. Fee Schedule Of Bitfinex   Bitfinex follows the maker & taker fee schedule for the investors trading on their platform based on their volume and here the specific details on the same:     Note: Margin trading is not the same as listed above.   4. Supported Countries   Bitfinex serves all countries except the   United States  , Bosnia and Herzegovina, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Uganda, Vanuatu, and Yemen.   5. Margin Trading   Bitfinex also allows you to margin trade and get leverage of up to 3.33X. Let us assume you have USD 1000 in your margin wallet. That 1000 USD will serve as collateral for opening margin positions up to 3.33:1, i.e., a margin position with a USD value up to 3333.33 USD can be opened.  One can borrow USD or BTC on Bitfinex for margin trading. Here is the fee overview for margin trading on Bitfinex.     Read more about Bitfinex Margin trading here:  Bitfinex’s intro to margin trading    6. Customer Support   Bitfinex help center has many commonly asked questions and answers in their knowledge base. So you can use that to troubleshoot your issues. But if you are unable to find answers here, you can always drop an email to  support@bitfinex.com  to submit a new help desk ticket.   7. Mobile Apps      As if all this was not enough!  Bitfinex also provides cool mobile apps for both iOS and Android users. One can deposit and withdraw cryptocurrencies and fiat through it and trade other crypto pairs.  I find a mobile app easier to exchange and trade cryptocurrencies even if we are not in front of our computer. So it is good to have mobile apps for Bitfinex too  (Download Bitfinex Android app  |  Download Bitfinex iOS app) .   8. Advanced Charts      Bitfinex provides seamless trading experience for experienced traders who love to watch crypto charts. It is so because it provides advanced charting features where traders can:   Visualize your orders, positions, and price alerts  Drag to change the price  Tap to modify order properties  See your position profits   You also get features such as limit orders, stop orders, trailing stop, fill or kill, TWAP, and others, along with different market charts for various intervals.  Last but not the least, Trading View powers Bitfinex’s charts so you can enjoy a complete suite of tools to draw, annotation, download and share your charts.   9. Hack History   Unfortunately, Bitfinex has had a controversial existence so far.  Bitfinex was hacked in August 2016 and lost 120,000 BTCs. It happened because attackers were able to exploit a vulnerability in the  multisig wallet  architecture of Bitfinex and BitGo. They have recently upgraded their security architecture, post which there have been no hacks/attacks on this exchange.  Another controversy Bitfinex is associated with is that of USDT (Tether). Tether, a crypto company owned by Bitfinex, has been accused of printing digital fiat USDT token. And it is believed that Bitfinex is using this to pump and dump crypto markets artificially.   Who Is Bitfinex For   Before we go any further, let me tell you Bitfinex is not for beginners or newbies. It is for professionals and intermediate traders who satisfy specific criteria.  Plus, they have certain barriers to entry that makes it difficult for a newcomer to start with which has been politely highlighted on their exchange too.  Here are the pre-requisites to opening an account on Bitfinex:     PROFESSIONAL PLATFORM : Bitfinex is a platform for professional traders. If you are new to cryptocurrency trading, please consider another, more straightforward platform first and return to Bitfinex later.   MINIMUM ACCOUNT EQUITY:  New accounts will not be able to trade or perform any platform function until they reach minimum account equity of USD 10,000, achieved by depositing cryptocurrency.   VERIFICATION TIMELINE:  If you wish to complete the verification process to gain access to additional features such as fiat deposits and withdrawals, please understand that the verification process is significantly backlogged. New verification requests are taking 6-8 weeks to complete.   INACTIVITY FEE:  Bitfinex is not a wallet service. If you are not participating in Bitfinex markets, please withdraw your funds from the platform. In the future, users who hold balances in their Bitfinex account but do not participate in markets may be charged a small inactivity fee.   Only after accepting these conditions can one initiate the process to open an account on Bitfinex.  So keep these things in mind people who can use this exchange are:   High net worth individuals  Professional traders  Institutional investors, etc.     How To Get Started On Bitfinex   For getting started on Bitfinex, you need to accept all the conditions mentioned above and get started by signing-up using your email ID and other details.     Then you need to submit your valid ID proofs for the KYC and which can take typically 6-8 weeks to get over. That’s why one should plan accordingly if they intend to use Bitfinex  Can You Trust Bitfinex? Is It Safe?  Of course, one can trust Biffinex for trading given its track record. But like I said, it is not for everyone.  Plus, you need to stay on guard against using their inbuilt wallet as your permanent wallet because hacks like August 2016 can happen anytime and nothing is full proof in crypto.  They have taken their security game to another level since the hack and have also repaid the customers who lost their money but you should not take chances. Always store your coins in  Ledger Nano S -like device.  I used Bitfinex in my early crypto days when the UI was simple, and there were no minimum limits to get started on it.    Make A Free Account On Bitfinex     Now time to hear from you:   Which exchange do you use? Have you used Bitfinex yet? If you have, do share your experience with us in the comments below.     Like this post? Don’t forget to share it!    Here are a few other hand-picked reviews that you should read next:    Meet KryptoGraphe: The Cryptocurrency Portfolio Manager    A Beginners Guide to Ethfinex [An ERC20 Exchange]    3commas: The Smart Cryptocurrency Trading Bot    Binance Exchange Review: Is It Safe And Reliable?    The post  Bitfinex Exchange Review: Is It Safe To Trade On It?  appeared first on  CoinSutra - Bitcoin Community .

https://coinsutra.com/bitfinex-review/

#Exchanges  #Bitcoin Exchanges  #Bitfinex  #Exchange  #Review

[clarencenicholsonata]

12 Reasons to Attend the SMX Growth Summit 2021

The world of social media is an ever-changing landscape. You needed to stay up-to-date with the latest changes and trends if you want your business to reach its potential online. To help you with this, we’ve been hard at work gathering social media experts from around the world for the Social Media X Growth Summit 2021.

Designed to help you navigate this space effectively, this summit will see the speakers proven social media tricks and tactics to help your business grow. FREE and LIVE, the 3rd of June will be a day jam-packed with all the information you need to best utilize social media to boost sales.

If you’ve been wanting to take your social media marketing to the next level but weren’t sure where to start, this summit is the place for you. Not convinced? Check out these 12 reasons below to find out why should book a seat at the Social Media X Growth Summit 2021.

12 Reasons to Attend the SMX Growth Summit 2021

Maintain A Steady Presence Online Without Losing Your Passion

Understand the Impact of Responding to Social Comments

Gain Brand Awareness on Social Media Through Design

Bust 10 Social Media Marketing Myths With Science

Grow On YouTube

Launch Your First Influencer Marketing Program

Create Revenue for Your Business With TikTok Ads

Repurpose Your Content for Social Media

Discover the Social Media Marketing Tool Landscape

Learn How to Sell on Facebook Groups

Launch Your Own ‘Show’ In 3 Simple Steps

Get Examples of Foolproof Social Media Campaigns That Actually Drive Sales in 2021

1. Maintain A Steady Presence Online Without Losing Your Passion

Let’s face it, life can be stressful if you’re a social media manager. Having to maintain an online presence and deal with a barrage of inquiries from your audience can make it tough to keep calm and not burn out.

To help prevent this, Elaisha Jade, a social media manager at Thinkific, will share tips on how to be more mindful in your position using boundaries and self-care practices, that will still achieve successful results for your employer.

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2. Understand the Impact of Responding to Social Comments

Social media can be a tough place, especially when it comes to the comments section. While it’s easy to just ignore negative comments, doing so is a missed opportunity for sales.

To find out how you can get revenue from responding to social comments, join Nicole Baqai from Gorgias as she shares tips on turning haters into fans.

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3. Gain Brand Awareness on Social Media Through Design

Think about all the biggest brands and one thing they’ve all got in common is a consistent design language. Good design allows consumers to easily recognize brand assets increasing awareness.

Join Payman Taei, CEO of Visme, as he shares his tips for using good design on social media to build brand awareness.

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4. Bust 10 Social Media Marketing Myths With Science

The world of social media can often seem mysterious, with platforms not always giving clear information regarding how they organically promote, moderate, or otherwise handle content.

This means that it’s easy for myths about social media marketing to take hold and spread without being verified.

To bust 10 of the myths, Scott Ayres from Agorapulse will use the scientific method to share his insights on 10 different social media marketing tactics that will immediately give you better results based on data.

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5. Grow On YouTube

Are you frustrated with your lack of lead subscribers? Do you wonder why your marketing efforts aren’t producing more fruit and results? Are you confused about how to even begin marketing your company with videos?

If so, you’re not alone, and video marketing strategist expert Antoine Dupont, from katapult.biz, will show you the tools and techniques for creating remarkable videos in order to get more subscribers and grow your business.

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6. Launch Your First Influencer Marketing Program

Depending on your strategy, influencer marketing can either help incite word of mouth and sales for your brand, or it can become an expensive initiative with little to no ROI.

Working with the wrong influencer is a great way to waste money. Learn how to build an influencer program the right way by focusing on nano and micro-influencers who already know, like, and trust your brand.

Neal Schaffer, the author of the definitive playbook for influencer marketing, “The Age of Influence”, will provide you a tactical roadmap to begin your long-term success in re-imaging who is an influencer and how to work with them.

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7. Create Revenue for Your Business With TikTok Ads

TikTok is rapidly growing in popularity, having overtaken the likes of Twitter and Pinterest in terms of active users. This makes it an important platform to advertise on, especially if your target market matches TikTok’s demographics.

With its focus on short video clips combined with audio, TikTok content is very different from that of other platforms, meaning the type of ads that work well are also different.

To help you understand and develop a TikTok ads strategy, Savannah Sanchez from The Social Savannah will show you how to make TikTok ad creatives that convert.

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8. Repurpose Your Content for Social Media

If you have existing content on one platform, adapting it for another is great way to give your content extra legs, saving you time and money!

While you can just post the same content or different platforms, this is not always practical, and even in the best cases, doesn’t look good.

Join Laura Palladino from Smart Marketer as she shares tips and tricks on how to pull quotes or tips from existing content and using it for social posts, how to turn a video into an article and vice versa, as well as how to get the holy grail of social content, user-generated content.

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9. Discover the Social Media Marketing Tool Landscape

Manually managing all your social media accounts can be tough, especially if you have a lot of posts that need to be published regularly, customer questions to answer, or ads to turn.

Luckily, there’s a vast selection of tools available to help you with your social media marketing. But this means that choosing the right ones can be difficult.

To help, Derric Haynie, Chief Ecommerce Technologist at Ecommercetech.io, will share the top 10 tools that will help you get more sales with social media. These include scheduling tools, ad tech, messenger marketing, and Instagram Stories-oriented tools that will help your business grow.

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10. Learn How to Sell on Facebook Groups

You might’ve heard that one strategy to boost sales is to find relevant Facebook groups and joining them in the hopes of engaging with members and converting them to customers.

While this might sound good on paper, it’s not always that easy without an effective strategy.

To assist you with this, Christina Jandali of deliveryourgenius.com will share tips with you on how to create a Facebook community where members want to be sold to.

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11. Launch Your Own ‘Show’ In 3 Simple Steps

Don't let the word 'show' scare you. Launching your own show simply means taking a structured approach to creating content and content is currency in the Attention Economy.

Join Sheryl Plouffe as she digs deep into her television broadcasting experience and teaches you how to launch your own online show in 3 simple steps so that you can impact more people with your message, build more influence in the marketplace and generate more income in your business.

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12. Get Examples of Foolproof Social Media Campaigns That Actually Drive Sales in 2021

Let’s face it, when it comes to social media marketing, there are a ton of different campaigns you can run, but how can you be sure that the campaign you choose actually drives sales?

Having helped agencies and businesses generate over 100 million leads over the past 10 years, Wishpond has the experience and strategies to answer that question.

Join Kevin, Wishpond's VP of Marketing, as he walks you through Wishpond's strategy for running giveaways to grow an email list and the exact follow-up strategy Wishpond's been using to drive revenue for clients.

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Related Content

7 Amazing TikTok Stats That Prove Why Brands Should Start Using It

12 Youtube Analytics Every YouTuber Should Know

25 Creative Facebook Contest Ideas You Can Use Today

How Influencer Marketing on Instagram Became a $1B Market

Social Media Marketing Plan: An 11-Step Template

Summary

Now that you’ve seen exactly what to expect from the Social Media X Growth Summit 2021, you can better decide if you want to attend all the talks or which specific ones you’ll be tuning in to. With topics ranging from YouTube growth and TikTok ads to selling on Facebook and effectively using influencers, this year’s summit promises to be packed with all the information you’ll need to best leverage the different social media platforms for your business.

If you haven’t registered yet, do so now, because places are limited.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8230801 https://ift.tt/3w4Ak92 via IFTTT

[wickedbananas]

How to Diagnose Your SEO Client's Search Maturity

Posted by HeatherPhysioc

One of the biggest mistakes I see (and am guilty of making) is assuming a client is knowledgeable, bought-in, and motivated to execute search work simply because they agreed to pay us to do it. We start trucking full-speed ahead, dumping recommendations in their laps, and are surprised when the work doesn’t get implemented.

We put the cart before the horse. It’s easy to forget that clients start at different points of maturity and knowledge levels about search, and even clients with advanced knowledge may have organizational challenges that create barriers to implementing the work. Identifying where your client falls on a maturity curve can help you better tailor communication and recommendations to meet them where they are, and increase the likelihood that your work will be implemented.

How mature is your client?

No, not emotional maturity. Search practice maturity. This article will present a search maturity model, and provide guidance on how to diagnose where your client falls on that maturity spectrum.

This is where maturity models can help. Originally developed for the Department of Defense, and later popularized by Six Sigma methodologies, maturity models are designed to measure the ability of an organization to continuously improve in a practice. They help you diagnose the current maturity of the business in a certain area, and help identify where to focus efforts to evolve to the next stage on the maturity curve. It’s a powerful tool for meeting the client where they are, and understanding how to move forward together with them.

There are a number of different maturity models you can research online that use different language, but most maturity models follow a pattern something like this:

Stage 1 - Ad Hoc & Developing

Stage 2 - Reactive & Repeatable

Stage 3 - Strategic & Defined

Stage 4 - Managed & Measured

Stage 5 - Efficient & Optimizing

For search, we can think about a maturity model two ways.

One is the actual technical implementation of search best practices — is the client implementing exceptional, advanced SEO, just the basics, nothing at all, or even operating counterproductively? This can help you figure out what kinds of projects make the most sense to activate.

The second way is the organizational maturity around search engine optimization as a marketing program. Is the client aligned to the importance of organic search, allocating budget and personnel appropriately, and systematically integrating search into marketing efforts? This can help you identify the most important institutional challenges to solve for that can otherwise block the implementation of your work.

Technical SEO capabilities maturity

First, let’s dive into a maturity model for search knowledge and capabilities.

SEO capabilities criteria

We measure an organization on several important criteria that contribute to the success of SEO:

Collaboration - how well relevant stakeholders integrate and collaborate to do the best work possible, including inside the organization, and between the organization and the service providers.

Mobility - how mobile-friendly and optimized the brand is.

Technical - how consistently foundational technical best practices are implemented and maintained.

Content - how integrated organic search is into the digital content marketing practice and process.

On-page - how limited or extensive on-page optimization is for the brand’s content.

Off-page - the breadth and depth of the brand’s off-site optimization, including link-building, local listings, social profiles and other non-site assets.

New technology -the appetite for and adoption of new technology that impacts search, such as voice search, AMP, even structured data.

Analytics - how data-centric the organization is, ranging from not managed and measured at all, to rearview mirror performance reporting, to entirely data-driven in search decision-making.

Click the image to see the full-size version.

SEO capabilities maturity stages

We assign each of the aforementioned criteria to one of these stages:

Stage 0 (Counterproductive) - The client is engaging in harmful or damaging SEO practices.

Stage 1 (Nonexistent) - There is no discernible SEO strategy or tactical implementation, and search is an all-new program for the client.

Stage 2 (Tactical) - The client may be doing some basic SEO best practices, but it tends to be ad hoc inclusion with little structure or pre-planning. The skills and the work meet minimum industry standards, but work is fairly basic and perhaps not cohesive.

Stage 3 (Strategic) - The client is aligned to the value of SEO, and makes an effort to dedicate resources to implementing best practices and staying current, as well as bake it into key initiatives. Search implementation is more cohesive and strategic.

Stage 4 (Practice) - Inclusion of SEO is an expectation for most of the client’s marketing initiatives, if not mandatory. They are not only implementing basic best practices but actively testing and iterating new techniques to improve their search presence. They use performance of past initiatives to drive next steps.

Stage 5 (Culture) - At this stage, clients are operating as if SEO is part of their marketing DNA. They have resources and processes in place, and they are knowledgeable and committed to learning more, their processes are continually reviewed and optimized, and their SEO program is evolving as the industry evolves. They are seeking cutting-edge new SEO opportunities to test.

Click the image to see the full-size version.

While this maturity model has been peer reviewed by a number of respected SEO peers in the industry (special thanks to Kim Jones at Seer Interactive, Stephanie Briggs at Briggsby, John Doherty at Credo, Dan Shure at Evolving SEO, and Blake Denman at Rickety Roo for your time and expertise), it is a fluid, living document designed to evolve as our industry does. If necessary, evolve this to your own reality as well.

You can download a Google Sheets copy of this maturity model here to begin using it with your client.

Download the maturity model

Why Stage 0?

In this search capabilities maturity model, I added an unconventional “Stage 0 - Counterproductive,” because organic search is unique in that they could do real damage and be at a deficit, not just at a baseline of zero.

In a scenario like this, the client has no collaboration inside the company or with the partner agency to do smart search work. Content may be thin, weak, duplicative, spun, or over-optimized. Perhaps their mobile experience is nonexistent or very poor. Maybe they’re even engaging in black hat SEO practices, and they have link-related or other penalties.

Choosing projects based on a client’s capabilities maturity

For a client that is starting on the lower end of the maturity scale, you may not recommend starting with advanced work like AMP and visual search technology, or even detailed Schema markup or extensive targeted link-building campaigns. You may have to start with the basics like securing the site, cleaning up information architecture, and fixing title tags and meta descriptions.

For a client that is starting on the higher end of the maturity scale, you wouldn’t want to waste their time recommending the basics — they’ve probably already done them. You're better off finding new and innovative opportunities to do great search work they haven’t already mastered.

But we’re just getting started...

But technical capabilities and knowledge are only beginning to scratch the surface with clients. This starts to solve for what you should implement, but doesn’t touch why it’s so hard to get your work implemented. The real problems tend to be a lot squishier, and aren’t so simple as checking some SEO best practices boxes.

How mature is your client’s search practice?

The real challenges to implementation tend to be organizational, people, integration, and process problems. Conducting a search maturity assessment with your client can be eye-opening as to what needs to be solved internally before great search work can be implemented and start reaping the rewards. Pair this with the technical capabilities maturity model above, and you have a powerhouse of knowledge and tools to help your client.

Before we dig in, I want to note one important caveat: While this maturity model focuses heavily on organizational adoption and process, I don’t want to suggest that process and procedure are substitutes for using your actual brain. You still have to think critically and make hard choices when you execute a best-in-class search program, and often that requires solving all-new problems that didn’t exist before and therefore don’t have a formal process.

Search practice maturity criteria

We measure an organization on several important criteria that contribute to the success of SEO:

Process, policy, or procedure - Do documented, repeatable processes for inclusion of organic search exist, and are they continually improving? Is it an organizational policy to include organic search in marketing efforts? This can mean that the process of including organic search in marketing initiatives is defined as a clear series of actions or steps taken, including both developing organic search strategy and implementing SEO tactics.

Personnel resources & integration - Does the necessary talent exist at the organization or within the service provider’s scope? Personnel resources may include SEO professionals, as well as support staff such as developers, data analysts, and copywriters necessary to implement organic search successfully. Active resources may work independently in a disjointed manner or collaboratively in an integrated manner.

Knowledge & learning - Because search is a constantly evolving field, is the organization knowledgeable about search and committed to continuously learning? Information can include existing knowledge, past experience, or training in organic search strategy and tactics. It can also include a commitment to learning more, possibly through willingness to undertake trainings, attendance of conferences, regular consumption of learning materials, or staying current in industry news and trends.

Means, capacity, & capabilities - Does the organization budget appropriately for and prioritize the organic search program? Means, capacity and capabilities can include being scoped into a client contract, adequate budget being allocated to the work, adequate human resources being allocated to the work, the capacity to complete the work when measured against competing demands, and the prioritization of search work alongside competing demands.

Planning & preparation - Is organic search aligned to business goals, brand goals, and/or campaign goals? Is organic search proactively planned, reactive, or not included at all? This measure evaluates how frequently organic search efforts are included in marketing efforts for a brand. It also measures how frequently the work is included proactively and pre-planned, as opposed to reactively as an afterthought. Work may be aligned to or disconnected from the "big picture."

Click the image to see the full-size version.

Search practice stages of maturity

Stage 1 - Initial & ad hoc

At this stage, the organizations’ search application may be nonexistent, unstable, or uncontrolled. There may be rare and small SEO efforts, but they are entirely ad hoc and inconsistent, and retrofitted to the work after the fact, at best. They tend to lack any discernible goal orientation. If SEO exists, it is disconnected from larger goals, and not integrated with any other practices across the organization. They may be just beginning their search practice for the first time.

Stage 2 - Repeatable but reactive

These organizations are at least doing some search basics, though there is no rigorous use or enforcement of it. It is very reactive and in-the-moment while projects are being implemented; it is rarely pre-planned and often SEO is applied as an afterthought. They are executing only in the present or when it’s too late to do the highest caliber search work, but they are making an effort. SEO efforts may occasionally be going after goals, but it is unlikely to be tied to larger business goals. (Most of my client relationships have started here.)

Stage 3 - Defined & understood

These organizations have started to document their processes and are satisfactorily knowledgeable and competent in search. They have minimum standards for search best practices and process is emerging. Many people inside and outside the organization understand that search is important and are taking steps to integrate. There is a clear search strategy that aligns to organizational goals and processes. Proactive search preparation and planning happens prior to activating projects.

Stage 4 - Managed & capable

These organizations have proactive, predictable implementation of search work. They have quality-focused rules for products and processes, and can quickly detect and correct missteps. They have clearly defined processes for integration, implementation and oversight, but are flexible enough to adapt to a range of conditions without sacrificing quality. These organizations consider search part of their “way of life.”

Stage 5 - Efficient & optimizing

Organizations at this stage have a strong mastery of search and efficiently implementing as a matter of policy. They have cross-organizational integration and proactively work to strengthen their search performance. They are always improving the process through incremental or innovative change. They review and analyze their process and implementation to keep optimizing. These organizations could potentially be considered market-leading or innovative.

Click the image to see the full-size version.

You are here

Before you can know how to get where you want to go, you need to know where you are. It's important to understand where the organization stands, and then where they need to be in the future. Going through the quantitative exercise of diagnosing their maturity can help everyone align to where to start.

You can use these scorecards to assess factors like leadership alignment to the value of search, employee availability and involvement, knowledge and training, process and standardization, their culture (or lack thereof) of data-driven problem-solving and continuous improvement, and even budget.

A collaborative exercise

This should be a deeper exercise than just punching numbers into a spreadsheet, and it certainly shouldn’t be a one-sided assessment from you as an outsider. It is much more valuable to ask several relevant people at multiple levels across the client organization to participate in this exercise, and can become much richer if you take the time to talk to people at various points in the process.

How to use the scorecard & diagnose maturity

Once you download the scorecards, follow these steps to begin the maturity assessment process.

Client-side distribution - Distribute surveys to relevant stakeholders on the client's internal team. Ideally, these individuals serve at a variety of levels at the company and occupy a mix of roles relevant to the organic search practice. These could include CEO, CMO, Marketing VPs and directors, digital marketing coordinators, and in-house SEOs.

Agency-side distribution - Distribute surveys to relevant stakeholders on the agency team. Ideally, these individuals serve at a variety of levels at the agency and occupy a mix of roles relevant to the organic search practice. These could include digital marketing coordinators, client engagement specialists, analysts, digital copywriters, or SEO practitioners.

Assign a level of maturity to each criteria - Each survey participant can simply mark one "X" per category row in the column that most accurately reflects perception of the brand organization as it pertains to organic search. (For example, if the survey respondent feels that SEO process and procedure are non-existent based on the description, they can mark an “X” in the “Initial/Ad Hoc” column. Alternatively, if they feel they are extraordinarily advanced and efficient in their processes, they may mark the “X” in the “Efficient & Optimizing” column.)

Collect the surveys - Assign a point value of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 to the responses from left to right in the scorecard. Average the points to get a final score for each. (For example, if five client stakeholders score their SEO process and procedure as 3, 4, 2, 3, 3 respectively, the average score is 3 for that criteria.)

Comparing client to agency perception - You may also choose to ask survey respondents to denote whether they are client-side or agency-side so you can look at the data both in aggregate, and by client and agency separately, to determine if there is alignment or disagreement on where the brand falls on the maturity curve. This can be great material for discussion with the client that can open up conversations about why those differences in perception exist.

To get your own scorecard, click the image and make a copy of the Google Sheet.

Choosing where to start

The goal is to identify together where to start working. This means finding the strengths to capitalize upon, areas of acceptability that can be nudged to a strength with a little work, weaknesses to improve upon, agreeing on areas to focus, and finally, how to get started tackling the first change together.

For a client that is starting on the low end of the maturity scale, it is unrealistic to expect that they have connected all the dots between important stakeholders, that they have a clearly defined and repeatable process, and that their search program is a well-oiled machine. If you don’t work together to solve the underlying problems like knowledge or adequate personnel resources first, you will struggle to get buy-in for the work or the resources to get it done, so it doesn’t matter what projects you recommend.

For a client that is advanced in a few areas, say process, planning, and capacity, but weaker in others like knowledge and capacity, that might suggest that you need to focus efforts on an education campaign to help the client prioritize the work and fit it into a busy queue.

For a client that is already advanced across the board, your role instead may be to keep the machine running while also helping them spot minor areas of improvement so they can keep iterating and perfecting the process. This client might also be ready for more advanced search strategies and tactical recommendations, or perhaps more robust integrations across additional disciplines.

One foot in front of the other

It’s rare that we live in a world of radical change where we overhaul everything en masse and see epic change overnight. We tweak, test, learn, and iterate. A maturity model is a continuum, and brands must evolve from one step to the next. Skipping levels is not an option. Some may also call this a “crawl, walk, run” approach.

Your goal as their trusted search advisor is not to help them leap from Stage 2 to Stage 5. Accomplishing that trajectory and speed of growth is exceedingly difficult and rare. Instead, focus your efforts on how the client can get to the next stage over the next 12 months. As they progress up the maturity model, the length of time it takes to unlock the next level may grow longer and longer.

Click the image to see the full-size version.

Even when an organization reaches Stage 5, your/their work is not done. Master-level organizations continue to refine and optimize their processes and capabilities.

There is no finish line to search maturity

There is a French culinary phrase, “mise en place,” that refers to having everything — ingredients, tools, recipe — in its place to begin cooking most successfully. There are several key ingredients to any successful project implementation: buy-in, process, knowledge and skills, capacity, planning, and more.

As your client evolves up the maturity curve, you will see and feel a transition from thinking about aspects only once a project is sliding off the rails, to including these things real-time and reactively, to anticipating these before every project and doing your due diligence to come prepared. Essentially, the client can move from not being able to spell “SEO” to making SEO a part of their DNA by moving up these maturity curves.

It is important to revisit the maturity model discussion periodically — I recommend doing so at least annually — to level-set and realign with the client. Conducting this exercise again can remind us to pause and reflect on all we have accomplished since the first scoring. It can also re-energize stakeholders to make even more progress in the upcoming year.

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[teksmobiles]

Top 14 Digital Marketing Tips For Your Mobile App

It’s only a matter of time before the total number of mobile applications in Apple App Store and Google Play store (combined) touches the 5 million mark. At the start of the year, the former already had 2.2+ million apps, while there were more than 2.6 million Android apps available for download. With the rapidly escalating competition in the app marketplace, it is no longer enough for developers to simply come up with ‘good’ apps. Discoverability/Visibility remains a big issue, there are plenty of ‘zombie apps’ in the stores – and researches have shown that, only 4 out of every 10 people actually bother to search for apps in the stores. The onus is on the app makers to market their products well on the digital platform after launch, to generate awareness and maintain steady download figures. Let us here take a look at some useful mobile app marketing strategies:

1. Use press releases and news articles

You need to, obviously, explain how your app works in the store description, using relevant keywords. However, people would see that description only AFTER they have arrived on the app’s download page. You can increase the chances of that happening, by publishing informative press releases (on both free and paid channels) – each highlighting one or two core functionalities or benefits of the application. If you release an update of an existing app, make it a point to publish a news article regarding that. The focus should always be on letting as many people as possible find out about your app.

2. Have a website

Get more info about : creating apps for iphone

There was a time – sometime around the mid-90s, when a product could be successful without the support of a dedicated website. Things have moved on radically since then – and at present, an app simply must have its very own website. Mobile app developers can collaborate with web developers to create nicely-designed, responsive, user-friendly websites – with all the relevant information about the concerned app present in it (often, a single-page website is enough). Include the app store link(s) of your software in the website, and make it easily visible. Users, once intrigued, should be able to check it out.

3. Trailer videos

Call them trailers or demo videos – they are extremely useful ‘first-look’ tools for your mobile application. You can create a series of short (45 seconds to 1 minute, maximum) videos of your app – explaining the signup process, the in-app navigation, the UI/UX, the settings and other key features. Ideally, you should also include audio – to make it easier for viewers to ‘understand’ your app. Consider creating videos with a host (or a couple of them) discussing the various nitty-gritties of your app. From Youtube and Snapchat, to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and even WhatsApp – there are so many social media channels where you can share these app demo videos.

Note: Twitter’s Vine was fairly popular among app developers to showcase their software (with 6-second videos). It was, however, discontinued last October.

4. Pay attention to initial reviews

The first 7-10 days after your app becomes available for download at the store(s) are crucial. This is the time when the first set of users will leave their ratings and reviews – and you need to consider them very carefully. If the early reviews are unfavourable, consider that as a red herring – and try to find out about the thing(s) that the users are not liking. Make the necessary modifications and release an update as quickly as possible. You can do all the internal testing and bug-fixing you like prior to launch – but it is, at the end of the day, the final users who can say whether your app is any good or not.

Note: Good reviews and high-ratings also work as great word-of-mouth publicity for your app. If that translates into high initial downloads, the chances of your app getting featured at the store(s) go up.

5. Blog about your app

Leading mobile app companies typically have a blog section in their company websites – and they typically publish post(s) about newly-released applications. In addition, you can also consider pitching ‘guest posts’ about your app on other well-known, high-traffic tech blogs (that’s the trick here, to choose other blogs that belong to the same domain). Avoid adopting a strong promotional tone in your post – and instead, keep your write-ups informative, easily formatted, and easy to read. At the end of the post, don’t forget to put in the download link of your app!

6. Ask for reviews

People who download your app out of their own accord will – in most likelihood – leave their reviews. However, you need to be more proactive, and ask around for reviews on the social media space. Both Facebook and Google Plus have plenty of pages/groups/communities for review exchanges (for iOS apps as well as Android apps) – where you can post your app, and request reviews from fellow-members. Keep in mind that you have to review others’ apps to in return. Otherwise, your review requests might start getting ignored.

Note: Phase out this review exchange strategy gradually, as your app captures a steady target audience, and authentic reviews – from final users – start coming in.

7. Review through social media

Ah, social media integration – that must-have feature of practically every mobile application. Android and iPhone developers should make sure that users can post reviews directly through the app – instead of having to go to the app store again for doing so. The app website should also have social media tabs, through which ratings and reviews can be posted. The benefit of this is two-fold: first, people can easily interact with friends (Facebook connections, Twitter followers, etc.) directly through the app. Secondly, sharing opinion about the app itself becomes a lot more straightforward.

8. Have social media pages

On Facebook in particular, create a dedicated page for your new app – and start posting little tidbits (including screenshots) about it. Promote your app’s FB page extensively, so that you have a high number of ‘page likes’/followers – that will, in turn, mean you have a large enough digital audience to interact with. After launch, keep posting interesting details about your app (with or without images) on a daily basis. Developers should also actively ask for reviews, suggestions and feedback from the users. Under no consequences should people feel that your app has ‘gone static’, and there is not much happening about it. It’s all about creating, and maintaining, a good buzz about your app.

Note: Try to come up with engaging post ideas. The more the number of ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ on your posts, the better will it be.

9. Get in touch with app review sites – There are many reliable sites – large and small – that publish app reviews on a regular basis. Pitch your software to such sites, and request for a review (note that, these review requests are different from the social media review exchanges explained earlier). Once the review is live on their website, you can share it on social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the others. One note of caution though: don’t try to spam by posing as a third-party reviewer!

10. Participate in competitions – In 2014, an airport dating app called ‘Stopover’ created a big splash right after it was released. The app – which was available for both Android and iOS – helped its owner bag the ‘Rising Star’ prize at the Talent Unleashed Awards (with none other than Steve Wozniak speaking good things about the app). Similarly, if you are confident about the quality and performance about your product – you should push it out to as many app competitions and contests as possible. If the app indeed manages to bag a couple of prestigious awards, the news will spread.

Note: You should also try to get your app included in the ‘top-XX…’ lists, published by several leading e-magazines and tech journals. That will give a further thrust to the overall digital marketing endeavours.

  11. Implement and monitor app analytics

The total number of downloads is not the only metric that you need to monitor about your just-launched application. According to reports, close to 30% of new apps are launched/used only once after download (many of these are soon uninstalled). That. in turn, brings to light the importance of high-quality app analytics tools that would help you monitor detailed app engagement and stickiness figures. Knowing the analytics will also help you stay aware of the user-distribution and the device-distribution of your application. You will be able to customize your marketing strategies accordingly. If you find that the app is indeed being discarded soon by users – find out the underlying problem(s), and sort things out.

  12. Start paid ad campaigns

There is Facebook Ads, there is Google AdWords, and there are paid advertising options in LinkedIn as well. For the first few weeks after your app has been launched – run simultaneous ad campaigns on multiple platforms, to quickly bolster the visibility, traffic and (hopefully) the download stats. Make sure that the ad groups and ads are optimally planned, and the bids are chosen carefully (choose ‘negative keywords’ to minimize chances of unwanted clicks). You can even consider collaborating with other developers to advertise related apps together. The expenses will be shared, and there will still be chances of conversions.

 13. Go for newsletters and email marketing

Bulk SMS campaigns might not be as effective as they once were, but email marketing is something you should definitely consider for your new mobile app. Create newsletters to highlight the main talking points about your software, and send it to a focused audience group (email platforms like MailChimp makes this extremely easy). Avoid sending mails too frequently though (that would irritate readers) and track the engagement/clickthrough rates of these e-newsletters. Do not make your emails seem too generic or overtly promotional. Once again, the communication has to be personalized and mostly informative.

 14. Hire a digital marketing partner

For a full-fledged, ongoing digital marketing campaign for your mobile app, you should ideally avail the services of a professional online marketing company. Many of the top app companies across the world double up as app-marketers (for their clients) as well. Do some research on the web, create a shortlist of the best digital marketing companies, check out their plans and packages (and of course, rates!) and hire the one that seems the best.

For more information :  android app consultant There are close to 3.575 billion internet users in the globe (nearly 47% of the world’s population). Not having a digital marketing plan in place would be akin to losing a large chunk of this audience – many of whom are smartphone-owners. Follow the strategies we have discussed over here, and help your app gain a nice early momentum (and sustain it too) among users.

[michaelandy101-blog]

The State of Local SEO: Experts Weigh in on Industry-Specific Tactics

New Post has been published on https://tiptopreview.com/the-state-of-local-seo-experts-weigh-in-on-industry-specific-tactics/

The State of Local SEO: Experts Weigh in on Industry-Specific Tactics

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the way we engage with local businesses. We’re ordering more food for delivery, spending more money in online shops, and checking for safety measures on the web listings of businesses of all kinds. But what do these new trends mean for the ways businesses market themselves online?

We asked five local SEO experts to zero in on the trends and tactics businesses across five industries should focus on to get ahead — and stay ahead — during this time. 

For more local insights, download our State of Local SEO Industry Report.

1. 70% of local marketers reported marketing budget cuts due to COVID-19, leading marketers to focus even more on the most impactful local SEO campaign elements. Which three local search marketing tactics are delivering the most value for businesses right now, and why?

Phil Rozek: Health and Wellness Services

1. Detailed, recent reviews — especially on Google Maps, but preferably also on other sites. 

2. Where applicable, a “telehealth”-type page that goes into great detail on what specific problem(s) the doctor or wellness profession can help with remotely. 

3. A detailed page on every specific service, procedure, or condition the practice handles, each with a section that explicitly states whether a telehealth or similar “virtual” option is applicable to it.

Joy Hawkins: Legal Services

1. Link building. A lot of businesses have a hard time getting quality links on their own, so when you have link building tactics at an agency that work, it can be a huge value add.  

2. Optimizing internal linking structure on the business website. Most websites for small businesses are not structured properly, and making a few adjustments to internal linking can make fairly impressive changes in the search results. It also impacts both the local and organic search results, just like link building.

3. Localizing content on the website. Taking existing pages on a business’ website and optimizing them for city, county, or state queries can have really great impacts on both local and organic results. We’ve also seen great results from optimizing for “near me” queries.

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Blake Denman: Home Services

For home services, identifying and reporting Google My Business spam/violations are the most impactful. Why? If you’re using accurate rank tracking and see that you rank #5 for a popular keyword in your target market BUT three of the listings above you are violating Google My Business guidelines, getting those listings updated or removed (depending on the violation) would move you up three spots. Knowing the Google My Business guidelines is crucial along with knowing how to spot violations. 

The second most impactful marketing “tactic” is implementing and maintaining a review building strategy. You can’t outrank a sh*tty reputation. 

The third most important marketing tactic is understanding who your customers are, where they live, how you can relate to them, and what they care about. From a strategic standpoint, the more information you have on your target customers, the more you’re able to get involved in the local community that they belong to. For local search, I’m of the opinion that Google wants to highlight popular companies from the offline world in the online world. Start focusing on building a better, LOCAL brand.

Brodie Clark: Hospitality

For restaurant and hotel listings in particular, there’s certainly a lot that can be done to stand out from other listings. With COVID, both categories have been impacted heavily. Many listings needed to either be marked as “Permanently Closed” or the newly created “Temporarily Closed”. Three tactics that are important to utilize right now include:

Effective attribute usage: There are now attributes in GMB for “Health & Safety” and “Service Options”. Both are extremely important right now, especially the mask-related attributes, which can give customers a lot of reassurance. The same goes for how hospitality businesses are operating with respect to whether there are in-store or pick-up options.

Google Post notices: Google Posts are an effective way of communicating important changes to operations. The COVID-19 update post is a great one to use because it never expires. But there is the downside that other posts are buried (COVID-19 posts are given prominence).

Proactive updates: For hotel listings, GMB can be a complicated space with how booking sites are deeply integrated into the UI. As COVID regulations change based on your location, details on these sites need to be kept updated quickly to reach customers and avoid negative experiences.

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Amanda Jordan: Financial Services

Make sure that your GMB listings use the COVID posts to share information about how you are keeping your clients safe. Our financial client created COVID landing pages for both personal and business accounts. This client saw a 95% increase in organic goal completions from February to March. There was also a 97% increase in organic goal completions YoY. Google posts that focused on coronavirus-related services and products have also performed well.

2. 75% of marketers agree that elements of Google My Business profiles (categories, reviews, photos, etc.) are local search ranking factors. Which three GMB elements do you recommend businesses focus on right now to influence their local pack rankings, and why?

Phil Rozek: Health and Wellness Services

Number one: reviews.  

Number two: categories — particularly the “primary” category.  

Number three: getting your “practitioner” GMB pages right, by which I mean you’ve got a detailed “bio” page serving as the GMB landing page, a primary category that reflects the practitioner’s specialty, and Google reviews for each practitioner from their patients.

Joy Hawkins: Legal Services

There are only four elements inside Google My Business that really impact ranking.  Since the first one is the business name, I’d suggest focusing on the other three: Reviews, the page on your website you link the listing to, and the categories you choose. For example, in this article, I detailed the difference between the family lawyer category and the divorce lawyer category, and which keywords they correlate to.

Blake Denman: Home Services

Specifically for the home services industry, adjusting your primary category in Google My Business when seasons change. HVAC company? Winter is fast approaching, your primary category should be changed to a relevant heating category instead of your summer category, AC. Your primary Google My Business category is going to have more of a ranking improvement than secondary categories. 

I hate to sound like a broken record, but take a look at all of your competitor’s listings for Google My Business violations. And finally, reviews are going to make or break your listing. If you haven’t implemented a review building strategy by now, you really need to get one set up ASAP.

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Brodie Clark: Hospitality

As a starting point, opening hours and whether a listing is marked as permanently/temporarily closed are major influencers of local pack rankings. Each is key to showing up at all, but incremental increases can certainly be achieved with gaining a high volume of positive reviews and making sure both your primary and secondary categories are set effectively. With categories, a great place to start is completing a competitor analysis with GMBspy Chrome extension.

Amanda Jordan: Financial Services

Reviews are one of the most important ranking factors, as well as being important for improving conversions. 

Second is the proximity to searchers — are there ATMs or branches that currently do not have GMB listings? New listings can help increase visibility in Google Maps.

Build local links. Now is a great time to work on link building. Try to find directories and organizations specific to your geographic location to join.

3. 90% of our survey respondents agree that GMB reviews influence local pack rankings. What advice can you offer businesses looking to maximize the value of reviews?

Phil Rozek: Health and Wellness Services

Stop going for easy, fast, drive-by email requests, and start trying to identify patients who might go into a little detail in their reviews. Lazy requests result in lazy reviews.  At the very least, don’t send “Dear Valued Patient”-type requests by email, but ideally you also find a discreet way to ask in-person, with a follow-up email to come later.  See my 2017 post on “Why Your Review-Encouragement Software Is a Meat Grinder”.

These days, more than ever, patients want to know things like what safety and hygiene procedures you follow, what wait times are like, whether the standard of care has changed, etc. Longtime patients are in the best position to write crunchy, detailed reviews, but you should encourage every patient to go into as much detail as they can.  Try having a designated “review person” who knows a thing or two about any given patient, and will take a couple of minutes to make a personal and personalized request. Do it because you want “keywords” in your reviews, and because a five-star review that doesn’t impress anyone won’t help your practice much.

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Joy Hawkins: Legal Services

Make sure you ask every customer for a review and come up with a process that is streamlined and easy to keep organized. We normally suggest using a paid platform for review management (we use GatherUp) because it can automate the process and send reminders to people who haven’t responded yet. 

Blake Denman: Home Services

Figure out the best method for earning reviews. Test email, texting, and in-person requests from your team, physical cards with a bit.ly link, etc. Test each one for a few months, then switch to a different method. Test until you find the method that works best for your customers. 

The other thing that really needs to be considered is how to get customers to write about the specific services they used when working with your company. Little prompts or questions that they could answer when you reach out will help customers write better reviews.

Brodie Clark: Hospitality

Getting reviews on GMB has never been easy. You can always try to take the manual route, but that’s impossible to properly scale. I rely on and recommend using GatherUp for hospitality business with multiple listings that need an integrated strategy to gather reviews effectively. The upside of using GatherUp is that you can capture first party reviews to use on your website or as an internal feedback mechanism. 

Amanda Jordan: Financial Services

My number one tactic for reviews has always been to have an actual person ask for a review during key points in the customer journey. For example, an associate that helps someone open a checking account, a mortgage advisor who is helping a family refinance their home, etc.

4. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, 78% of local marketers agreed with Mike Blumenthal’s popularized concept that Google is the new homepage for local businesses. Do your observations and analytics data indicate that this concept is still correct? Has the role of websites for currently operational businesses grown or decreased as a result of the public health emergency, and what does that mean for those websites?

Phil Rozek: Health and Wellness Services

I’ve never been too much of that school of thought, and have been even less so since roughly the start of the COVID era: See my March 26, 2020 post: “Is COVID-19 the End of “Google As Your New Homepage?”

For casual, drop-in businesses, where customers or clients don’t need to do much research or make a big decision, I could see how maybe Google has made the SERPs an almost-suitable substitute for the homepage. That may also be true of medical practices to the extent they have current or returning patients who just want or need quick information fast on a practice they’re already familiar with. But when people’s health is at stake, they tend to dig a little deeper. Often they want or need to find out what procedures a practice does or doesn’t offer, learn more about the doctors or other staff, learn more about insurance and billing, or confirm what they saw in the search results.

Joy Hawkins: Legal Services

I agree that Google My Business is becoming a more important factor, as there are a ton of options that Google is pushing out due to COVID-19 that you can take advantage of.

For example, you can use the online appointments attribute, which shows up prominently in the Knowledge Panel and the 3-pack. They also recently added online operating hours as an additional hours set. 

I think it’s important, though, for people to realize that Google My Business is mainly there to provide the opportunity to share more about what your business does and provide ways for customers to contact you. Most of the fields inside Google My Business do not impact ranking. Traditional SEO factors are needed to make sure your business actually ranks on Google, and then Google My Business will help ensure those customers see the right information. Additionally, Google My Business has not replaced the need for a website — it’s simply another place that needs to be monitored and updated frequently. 

Blake Denman: Home Services

Yes, Google My Business might be the first interaction people have with before (or needing) to go to your website. Websites are still really important — not just for traditional organic SEO, but for traditional SEO signals that influence Google My Business rankings, too. 

Since the public health emergency emerged, we’re seeing an uptick in traffic to websites. Yes, you can add certain attributes to your GMB listing to address public health concerns, but people need more information. What kinds of protocols are you taking? How far out are you booked? 

Brodie Clark: Hospitality

It really depends on the business type, but at the moment, many local businesses (especially in hospitality) are under a lot of pressure. This means they might not have the capacity to keep their websites updated or their GMB listings in check. So, they’re having to resort to food delivery services like UberEats — which has become far more mainstream in recent years, and I’m guessing there’s been an increase during 2020. And hotels, where I’m located in Melbourne, anyway, haven’t been able to operate for some time, but I probably wouldn’t be relying on their GMB listing to give the most up-to-date information.

Amanda Jordan: Financial Services

The role of the website has definitely grown for our financial clients. Websites are hubs for useful information, especially in the case of a crisis or for products and services that play a large role in your life. For many business categories, the information found on GMB listings is enough to get conversions. Consumers do significant research when choosing a financial product, and they need all of the information they can get to make a well-informed decision based on rates, fees, and policies.

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5. Only 39% of marketers feel that Google’s emphasis on user-to-business proximity always delivers high-quality results. In the industry, does Google tend to prioritize proximity over quality for core search terms? Would you say they over-emphasize proximity in your experience?

Phil Rozek: Health and Wellness Services

That’s truest in saturated industries, in my experience. But in more specialized fields, or for more specific (niche) terms, Google doesn’t seem to fixate on proximity as much. To some extent that’s because it can’t: Google needs to go a little farther afield to grab enough relevant results to fill up a page or a 3-pack.

Joy Hawkins: Legal Services

Absolutely. Proximity is one of the main reasons why spam is a problem in the legal services industry. Marketing companies will create lead-generating Google My Business listings and be able to get them to rank simply based on having keyword-rich business names. They create them in mass so they rank when people close to them are searching (due to the proximity factor).  

Here is an example of some of the spam we see in the legal services industry. 

Blake Denman: Home Services

Proximity for certain types of industries (restaurants, coffee shops, dry cleaners, etc.) are great, but for others, like home industries, they are not. Most home service businesses should not be displaying their address since they are a Service Area Business, but this doesn’t stop some from keeping their address up to rank in that city. 

Google does tend to prioritize proximity in the home services industry, unfortunately. 

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Brodie Clark: Hospitality

I think Google does a reasonable job at dialing up the proximity meter where necessary. If you were to pin keywords in a business listing name against proximity, keywords in the business name would win nine times out of 10. So in that instance, other signals should be dialled up further, but proximity may only be relevant in certain cases.

Amanda Jordan: Financial Services

Absolutely. With digital banking and the amount of trust we put into financial organizations, proximity isn’t a major factor when considering a financial service provider, but Google results don’t reflect that. 

Proximity is a much bigger factor when you’re choosing a place to order takeout from than it is when you’re choosing who to trust with your 30-year mortgage. Reviews should definitely play a bigger factor than proximity for financial institutions.

6. 91% of marketers tell us they have a strategy in place for capturing featured snippet visibility in the SERPs. Which featured snippets should businesses focus on most, and why?

Phil Rozek: Health and Wellness Services

Focus on FAQs, particularly on your “service,” “treatment,” or “condition” pages. Focus on those sorts of pages rather than on blog posts or other purely informational resources, which generally are less likely to help bring you new patients.  

Those FAQs and your answers, of course, should be specific to the service, treatment, procedure, or condition you describe on a given page. The questions should be phrased in the way your patients (or searchers) would phrase them, and your answers should be blurb-length and relatively simple.

Joy Hawkins: Legal Services

I have seen featured snippets for lots of really long-tail, commercial-intent keywords that probably shouldn’t have featured snippets. These can be really amazing sources of traffic if you get one of them (see photo below). Additionally, creating content around things like “can you sue for [insert information]” can be a great way to win featured snippets.

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Blake Denman: Home Services  

With more and more personalization coming into the SERPs, I believe that featured snippets will become more and more regionally specific. If you do a search for “new water heater cost” you see a featured snippet for Home Advisor. If a company that is local to me published content around the cost and installation, why wouldn’t Google serve that snippet to me instead of what is shown nationally?

Brodie Clark: Hospitality

Featured snippets are a topic that I write about regularly. When it comes to hospitality businesses, featured snippets can be a lower-end priority. According to the MozCast, featured snippets appear on ~9% of all SERPs in the ~10K MozCast query set. I would expect it to be lower than that for most hospitality businesses. Focus on the featured snippets that provide the highest return for your time, and ensure you’ve got a tracking strategy in place. I wrote a post recently that described a method for using Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to capture these insights.

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Amanda Jordan: Financial Services

We teach our financial clients to focus on educating their customers by making sure we research the right topics and provide the best possible answer. Paragraph, table, and carousel featured snippets are typically the types that we see financial websites achieving most often.

7. We saw an increase in the number of consultants advising clients about offline strategy, instead of keeping strictly to online SEO consulting. What can businesses be doing offline right now to strengthen their chances of success?

Phil Rozek: Health and Wellness Services

Don’t keep patients waiting anywhere close to how long they’d wait pre-COVID.  Patients should think, “I wish it happened under better circumstances, but I do like that I don’t wait around as much as I used to.”

Make sure your patient-facing staff are always friendly, patient, and organized. Many practices get bad reviews online not because of the doctor(s), but because of complaints regarding staff. Yes, admins and other staff have a tough job, and no, patients aren’t always reasonable. Just the same, staff-patient issues can bring down a practice. Continually working with staff on soft skills is time well-spent.

Get to know more doctors or business owners outside of your field of practice.  Occasionally they have great ideas that you can adapt to your situation, to your practice.

Joy Hawkins: Legal Services

I would focus on tactics offline that would increase branded searches on Google.  Branded searches are one of the things we’ve found that correlate with your business getting a place label on Google Maps. Our study on this is releasing later this year.

Blake Denman: Home Services

Start focusing on building a BETTER. LOCAL. BRAND. I’ve come across websites that have a horrible backlink profile or haven’t updated their website since 2010, yet they rank prominently in their market — why? They have been involved in their local community for a long time. 

If you know who your customers are and have dived into your affinity categories in Google Analytics, you will have a really good understanding of what your target audience cares about outside of your service. 

Brodie Clark: Hospitality

Talk to your customers. Ask them questions and understand their concerns. Taking important conversations offline still plays an important role in your marketing strategy. 

Amanda Jordan: Financial Services

Review strategies should include offline tactics. Community outreach and involvement are crucial. I would argue that anyone who is consulting about online reputation management should focus on the company’s reputation offline as well.

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Every business is different and no tactic is one-size-fits-all. As with all good things in SEO, the key is testing. Whether you’re releasing a new product or service, upleveling your review management process, or changing the way you use Google My Business, we encourage you to try out some of these expert tips to see what will stick for your business.

Have a local SEO strategy that’s working well for your business, or want us to feature your industry in our next post? Let us know in the comments below.

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