Napkin AI Review: An In-Depth Exploration

Creating high-quality infographics, charts, and social media visuals can be a daunting task. However, with the advent of Napkin AI, this process has become significantly more streamlined. Among various AI apps, Napkin AI distinguishes itself by simplifying graphic design through AI-powered automation, quickly becoming a favorite for content creators, marketers, and business owners. But does it truly stand out as the best AI design tool available? Let’s delve into this comprehensive Napkin AI review and evaluate its capabilities.

What is Napkin AI?

Napkin AI is a cutting-edge AI tool designed to seamlessly transform text into visuals. It allows users to generate stunning infographics, data-driven charts, and branded social media graphics without the need for advanced design skills. Unlike traditional design software, Napkin AI leverages artificial intelligence to automate layout, color selection, and data visualization, making it easier than ever to create polished content.

Key Features of Napkin AI for Graphic Design

1. AI-Powered Infographic Creation

Napkin AI revolutionizes infographic design by enabling users to create visuals from their key points or data effortlessly. By simply entering your key points or data, the AI arranges them into professional-quality graphics, streamlining the design process.

2. Smart Chart & Graph Generation

For those involved in creating reports, presentations, or blog visuals, Napkin AI transforms raw data into engaging charts with minimal effort. The AI optimizes the design of various visual formats like charts and graphs instantly, eliminating the need for manual adjustments.

3. One-Click Branding & Customizable Templates

Brand consistency is critical in today’s market, and Napkin AI allows users to apply their brand colors, fonts, and styles across all visuals automatically. The platform boasts a library of pre-made templates tailored for different industries and content types, ensuring brand uniformity.

4. Seamless Social Media Integration

Napkin AI facilitates the resizing and optimization of graphics for different social media platforms. Whether you’re designing a LinkedIn infographic, an Instagram carousel, or a Twitter post, the AI ensures that your visuals are perfectly tailored for each channel.

5. Easy Collaboration & Export Options

Collaboration is key in content creation, and Napkin AI enables users to share and develop their visual ideas with teams. Users can export designs in multiple formats (PNG, SVG, PDF) and integrate with popular workflow tools like Trello, Notion, and Google Drive, enhancing productivity.

How Napkin AI Works

Napkin AI is an innovative artificial intelligence tool designed to transform your text descriptions into visual sketches and diagrams effortlessly. By leveraging advanced machine learning models trained on extensive sketch data and visual representations, Napkin AI combines natural language processing with computer vision to understand your intent and create appropriate visualizations.

Using Napkin AI is straightforward: simply write or paste your text content into the platform, and the AI will generate a visual representation of your ideas. This process not only saves time but also ensures that your visuals are accurate and relevant. Once the visuals are generated, you can easily customize and edit them to fit your specific needs, making the design process both efficient and user-friendly.

Benefits of Using Napkin AI

Napkin AI offers a multitude of benefits that make it a standout tool in the realm of graphic design:

• Time-saving: With Napkin AI, you can generate visuals in seconds, drastically reducing the time and effort typically required for graphic design.
• Ease of use: The platform’s user-friendly interface ensures that even those without graphic design experience can create professional-looking visuals with ease.
• Multiple visual styles: Napkin AI can produce a variety of visuals, including diagrams, charts, scenes, and images, providing you with the flexibility to choose the best representation for your ideas.
• Artificial intelligence: The AI technology behind Napkin AI ensures that the visuals created are both accurate and relevant to your text content.
• Customizable templates: Napkin AI offers a range of customizable templates to help you get started quickly and easily with your visual creation.

Getting Started

Getting started with Napkin AI is a breeze. Follow these simple steps to begin creating stunning visuals:

1. Sign up: Create an account on the Napkin AI website to access the platform.
2. Write or paste text: Enter your text content into the platform’s workspace.
3. Generate visuals: Click the “Spark” icon to generate visuals based on your text content.
4. Customize and edit: Tailor the visuals to fit your needs using the platform’s editing tools.
5. Export: Export your visuals in various formats, including PNG, PDF, and SVG, to use them across different platforms and media.

Why It Stands Out

Napkin AI is an essential tool for creating infographics and charts for blogs, reports, and social media posts. Here’s why it’s become a favorite among content creators:

• Saves Hours of Manual Design Work – AI handles the heavy lifting, making graphic creation fast and effortless.
• No Design Experience Needed – The tool’s smart templates and automation mean anyone can create stunning visuals.
• Enhances Blog & Social Media Engagement – High-quality visuals improve engagement, making content more shareable and impactful.
• Affordable Alternative to Expensive Design Tools – Compared to hiring a designer or subscribing to advanced software, Napkin AI is a budget-friendly powerhouse.

Napkin AI vs. Canva vs. Adobe Express

How does Napkin AI compare to popular design tools? Let’s break it down:

While Canva and Adobe Express are great for general design needs, Napkin AI dominates when it comes to AI-driven infographic and chart creation. If your goal is to turn complex ideas into simple, engaging visuals effortlessly, Napkin AI is the clear winner.

Pricing & Plans

Napkin AI offers affordable pricing tiers based on user needs. Here’s a quick breakdown:

• Free Plan – Basic design tools with watermark branding.
• Pro Plan (TBD after Beta ends) – Unlocks premium templates, branding tools, and advanced AI features.
• Enterprise Plan (Custom Pricing) – Ideal for businesses needing team collaboration and API access.

Support and Resources for Napkin AI

Napkin AI provides a wealth of support and resources to help you make the most of the platform:

• Tutorials: Access video guides and detailed articles to help you get started and master Napkin AI.
• Help center: Visit the dedicated help center for answers to frequently asked questions and troubleshooting tips.
• Email support: Premium users can benefit from email support for more personalized assistance.
• Live chat: Premium users also have access to live chat support for real-time help.
• Community: Join a community of users and developers who can offer feedback, support, and share their experiences with Napkin AI.

By leveraging these resources and through this Napkin AI Review, you can ensure that you are fully equipped to utilize Napkin AI to its fullest potential.

Final Verdict: Is It Worth It?

If you create infographics, charts, or social media visuals, Napkin AI is a game-changer. It simplifies design, speeds up content creation, and ensures your visuals look professional with minimal effort.

For business owners, marketers, and content creators who want to stand out with engaging graphics—without spending hours on design—Napkin AI is an absolute must-have. Hopefully this Napkin AI Review has been helpful to your content creation process. 

FAQ

Q: Is Napkin AI beginner-friendly?
A: Yes! Even if you have zero design experience, the AI-powered templates and automation make it incredibly easy to use.

Q: Can I use Napkin AI for business branding?
A: Absolutely! The one-click branding feature ensures all your visuals align with your brand’s colors, fonts, and style.

Q: Does Napkin AI replace Canva or Adobe Express?
A: Not entirely—it depends on what you need. If you primarily create infographics and data-driven visuals, Napkin AI is far superior to traditional design tools.

Q: Is there a free version of Napkin AI?
A: Yes! There’s a free plan with limited features, and you can upgrade to Pro or Enterprise for more advanced options

Did you find this Napkin AI Review Helpful? If so, check out our other Artificial Intelligence related articles!

AI Isn’t the Future—It’s the Present. Are You Using It to Your Advantage?

Most business owners are either wasting time on tasks AI could handle or missing out on powerful automation because they don’t know where to start. If you want to free up hours in your week, increase revenue, and scale without burnout, AI is the answer –> but only if you use it the right way.

Let’s talk. Book a free strategy call, and we’ll walk through how AI can be integrated into your business to make you more efficient, profitable, and unstoppable.

Schedule Your Free Call Now

The post Napkin AI Review: A Simple and Affordable Design Tool for Everyone appeared first on Done For You.

AI-generated content often includes mistakes such as context errors and repetitive phrases. This article identifies common AI content mistakes and provides solutions to fix them. You’ll learn how to use human oversight to enhance content quality.

Key Takeaways

• AI-generated content often lacks contextual understanding, necessitating clear prompts and human oversight for accuracy and relevance.
• Repetitive phrases and outdated information can detract from the quality of AI-generated content; employing diverse vocabulary and regular updates are essential.
• Combining human creativity with AI efficiency improves engagement and emotional connection, while strategic SEO practices enhance visibility and user experience.

Main AI Content Mistake: Lack of Contextual Understanding

One significant problem with AI content mistakes is its often poor contextual understanding. This can lead to misunderstandings or inaccuracies in the information provided. While advanced ai technology systems use machine learning to interpret keywords, topics, and instructions, they can still miss the nuances that human writers instinctively grasp. This often leads to irrelevant or confusing information, such as interpreting the phrase “shooting bricks” literally instead of understanding it as a basketball term. The ability of artificial intelligence to grasp how meaning varies based on context can significantly improve the accuracy and relevance of its outputs. However, without proper guidance, AI can produce content that is disjointed and filled with false information, detracting from its value.

Mitigating these AI content mistakes involves providing clear prompts and ensuring human oversight. Machines can enhance their understanding by considering broader environmental contexts beyond just surface-level data. For instance, AI models can be conditioned to understand specific nuances through better training and more precise instructions.

But ultimately, the role of human writers in overseeing and refining AI outputs cannot be overstated.

Clear Prompts to Avoid AI Content Mistakes

Clear and concise prompts are crucial for ensuring AI generates accurate and relevant content. Clear guidelines help condition AI tool responses, making them more reliable and precise, especially when using the same prompt.

For example, a snippet of writing can serve as a style guide for the AI, helping it emulate a user’s specific tone and manner. Providing numerical data or concrete examples within the prompts can streamline the content creation process and enhance the precision of the outputs.

Clear instructions reduce the likelihood of AI generating incorrect information.

Human Oversight

Human oversight is critical; it ensures the contextual accuracy and relevance of AI-generated content despite advances in technology. Fact-checking AI outputs and integrating human creativity adds depth and nuance. Regular intervention maintains ethical standards, preventing the spread of misinformation.

Combining AI efficiency with human oversight results in content that is both accurate and engaging.

Overuse of Repetitive Phrases

A common AI content mistake is the overuse of repetitive phrases, which can make the text monotonous and less engaging for readers. This repetition arises because AI models predict words based on learned patterns, often leading to redundancy. When phrases are repeated frequently, the content loses its originality and becomes less compelling. This issue can detract from the reader’s experience, making the content feel robotic and uninspired.

Varying the vocabulary in AI-generated content is crucial to address this AI content mistake. Employing diverse vocabulary not only keeps the content fresh but also prevents predictability. Integrating synonyms and varied expressions can enhance the richness and appeal of the text.

Editing tools can significantly enhance content quality by identifying and eliminating redundant phrases. These tools act as powerful aids in refining the text, ensuring it remains engaging and free from unnecessary repetition.

Varying Vocabulary to Correct AI Content Mistakes

A diverse vocabulary keeps AI-generated content engaging and prevents predictability. Integrating synonyms and varied expressions keeps content fresh and interesting. Large language models trained on vast amounts of data can benefit from a more varied vocabulary, reducing the risk of disengagement and boredom among readers.

This enriches the create content, making it more appealing and dynamic.

Editing Tools

Editing tools enhance AI-generated content by identifying and amending repetitive phrases. They pinpoint redundancy and suggest alternatives, thus improving readability. For instance, powerful text generators equipped with editing capabilities can ensure the content is polished and engaging, free from the pitfalls of monotony.

Using these tools can elevate writing standards, making content more compelling for the audience.

Incorrect or Outdated Information

Another critical AI content mistake is the potential for incorrect or outdated information. AI systems often produce a mix of accurate and false information, leading to the risk of misinformation. This can have serious consequences, such as damaging credibility and misleading readers. For example, AI has been known to generate deepfake clips of politicians misbehaving, which can have real-world impacts.

Moreover, AI models do not inherently evaluate the correctness of the information they provide, focusing instead on generating probable responses based on their training data.

Regular updates and diligent fact-checking mitigate these AI content mistakes. AI’s training data limitations mean it may not have access to the latest information, resulting in outdated outputs. Updating AI systems and thorough fact-checking can prevent misinformation. This maintains the accuracy and reliability of AI-generated content, protecting the credibility of content creators.

Fact Checking AI Content Mistakes

Fact-checking is critical to ensuring the accuracy of AI-generated outputs. Cross-referencing AI-generated content with reliable human-created sources can help catch inaccuracies and prevent the dissemination of false information. Human oversight is indispensable in this process, as it provides the necessary checks to ensure factual correctness and relevance.

Diligent fact-checking significantly enhances the credibility and reliability of AI-generated content.

Regular Updates to Prevent AI Content Mistakes

Regular updates maintain the relevance and accuracy of AI-generated content. Outdated information can mislead readers and damage the credibility of the content creator. Consistently updating content ensures that it reflects the latest facts and insights, thereby maintaining its value.

Regular updates ensure high-quality content remains relevant and reliable.

Lack of Creativity and Originality in AI Content

AI-generated content often suffers from a lack of creativity and originality, which limits its effectiveness in engaging readers. Generative ai tends to produce generic outputs that mirror common themes and patterns derived from its training data. This reliance on established patterns results in AI content mistakes that lack a unique voice and fail to stand out in a saturated market. Without human intervention, AI-generated content can become repetitive and formulaic, missing the creative spark that captivates audiences.

Addressing these AI content mistakes requires human creativity. Human writers enhance AI-generated content with unique insights and personal anecdotes, adding emotional intelligence and depth. Combining AI efficiency with human creativity produces more engaging and high-quality content. This approach leverages the strengths of both, resulting in efficient and innovative content.

Human Creativity to Correct AI Content Mistakes

Human creativity is crucial in the content creation process, especially with AI tools. Human writers add unique insights and personal anecdotes, providing the emotional depth and contextual understanding that AI lacks.

Resources like thesauruses and writing aids diversify language and reduce repetitiveness, making content more engaging and original. This human touch is indispensable in creating content that resonates with readers on a deeper level.

Combining AI and Human Efforts to Avoid AI Content Mistakes

Integrating AI and human efforts in content creation leads to outstanding results. AI tools enhance human productivity, while human writers guide the creative direction. Leveraging AI for efficiency and human creativity for originality produces high-quality, engaging, and effective content.

This collaborative approach combines AI’s capabilities with the irreplaceable human touch, benefiting the content.

Poor Understanding of Reader Intent

AI often struggles to grasp reader intent, leading to AI content mistakes that may not meet audience needs or expectations. This can result in higher bounce rates and poor engagement metrics, as users quickly leave content that doesn’t resonate. AI-generated content lacking depth or substance negatively affects search ranking and user experience. Understanding reader intent allows for the creation of high-quality, relevant, and SEO-optimized content.

Thorough audience research and tailoring content to specific insights can significantly improve the relevance and effectiveness of AI-generated content. Understanding target demographic preferences and behaviors ensures content aligns with audience expectations and needs. This approach enhances engagement and improves overall content quality.

Audience Research to Correct AI Content Mistakes

Thorough audience research aligns content with target demographic needs and expectations. Tools like social media analytics provide valuable insights into audience behavior and preferences. Understanding audience interests and goals enables the production of more relevant and engaging content.

Tailored Content to Avoid AI Content Mistakes

Customizing content based on audience insights significantly enhances effectiveness. Tailored content more effectively engages readers and meets their specific needs, resulting in higher engagement and shares. Focusing on practical applications and avoiding jargon helps produce high-quality content that captivates the audience.

Limited Emotional Engagement

AI-generated content often struggles to evoke deep emotions, limiting its ability to connect personally with readers. This lack of genuine emotional connection can make content feel superficial and mechanical. Emotional engagement resonates with readers and motivates meaningful action. Human writers ensure content retains emotional depth and personal connection.

Storytelling techniques and adjustments in tone and style significantly enhance emotional engagement. Weaving relatable stories and experiences into the narrative creates a more immersive and emotionally resonant experience.

Storytelling to Correct AI Content Mistakes

Effective storytelling transforms data into engaging narratives that resonate with audiences. Conflict maintains audience interest and deepens emotional engagement in storytelling. Incorporate key business lessons with relatable stories and experiences, making the content more impactful and memorable.

Integrating storytelling techniques into AI-generated content ensures it is informative and emotionally engaging.

Tone and Style to Avoid AI Content Mistakes

Adjusting tone and style is essential for evoking the right emotions in readers. Aligning tone, style, and desired emotional response significantly influences audience perception and engagement.

Maintaining a consistent brand tone is challenging for AI, often resulting in AI content mistakes that misalign with desired messaging. Carefully adjusting tone and style enhances content effectiveness and ensures it resonates with the audience.

Issues with Flow and Transitions

AI-generated content often struggles to maintain a logical flow, making it difficult for readers to follow the narrative. Ineffective transitions disrupt the reading experience and confuse the audience. Flawed transitions in AI-generated content create a disjointed reading experience, detracting from overall quality and coherence.

A clear logical arrangement of ideas enhances coherence and effectively conveys the intended message. Transition words and phrases can significantly improve the readability of AI-generated text. Transition words create a more fluid and engaging reading experience by seamlessly connecting ideas.

Logical Structure to Correct AI Content Mistakes

A coherent structure ensures each part connects logically, enhancing overall clarity. This helps readers follow the narrative easily and understand the main ideas.

Organizing content with clear headings and subheadings guides the reader logically, improving readability and effectiveness.

Transition Words to Avoid AI Content Mistakes

Transition words seamlessly connect ideas, significantly improving readability. Transitional phrases enhance clarity and flow, making it easier for readers to follow the narrative.

Phrases like “in addition,” “however,” and “as a result” link sentences and paragraphs, creating a cohesive and engaging reading experience.

Ethical Concerns and Bias

AI systems can reflect and exacerbate biases in their training data, leading to unfair outcomes. This raises significant ethical concerns, as biased AI-generated content can propagate falsehoods and harmful stereotypes. Content creators must uphold ethical standards to avoid misinformation and plagiarism. Ensuring fairness in AI algorithms is a significant ethical challenge requiring ongoing attention and diligence.

Addressing these ethical concerns requires the use of diverse and inclusive datasets in AI training. This mitigates bias and improves the fairness of AI models. Establishing guidelines and ethical standards for AI-generated content prevents misinformation and upholds integrity.

Training Data to Correct AI Content Mistakes

Diverse and inclusive datasets mitigate bias in AI training and improve model fairness. Ensuring diverse perspectives and experiences are represented produces more accurate and respectable AI-generated content.

Inclusivity in training data creates fairer and more equitable AI outputs, crucial for maintaining credibility and integrity.

Ethical Standards in AI Content Mistakes

Establishing ethical standards prevents misinformation and upholds ethical practices. Content creators must adhere to these standards to avoid the propagation of false information and ensure the integrity of their work.

By maintaining high ethical standards, content creators can build trust with their audience and ensure that their content is reliable and credible.

SEO Optimization Challenges

Effective SEO is critical for increasing content visibility and impacting search rankings significantly. However, AI content mistakes often face challenges in SEO optimization, such as the lack of optimized elements like meta descriptions, URLs, and schema markups. Without proper SEO optimization, AI-generated content may not receive any organic traffic, rendering it ineffective. Additionally, duplicate content that offers no new information may lead to penalties from search engines, harming site ranking.

To overcome these AI content mistakes, it is essential to focus on keyword integration and crafting effective meta descriptions. By incorporating LSI keywords and ensuring that content aligns with user search intent, content creators can enhance their SEO efforts and improve search rankings.

Regular audits of internal links and ensuring proper internal linking can also boost SEO performance and enhance user experience.

Keyword Integration to Avoid AI Content Mistakes

Effective keyword integration is essential for enhancing search engine visibility and driving organic traffic. By incorporating LSI keywords into the content, creators can optimize for SEO and improve the chances of matching a user’s search intent. This not only helps in reaching a broader audience but also ensures that the content remains relevant and engaging.

Natural language processing tools can assist in identifying and integrating relevant keywords, thereby enhancing the overall SEO performance of AI-generated content.

Meta Descriptions to Correct AI Content Mistakes

Crafting effective meta descriptions is essential for increasing click-through rates on search engine results pages. Well-written meta descriptions convey the content’s value and entice users to click, thus enhancing overall visibility. For instance, using compelling and concise language in meta descriptions can significantly impact the click-through rate and improve the content’s performance in search results.

Ensuring that meta descriptions are optimized is a crucial step in the content creation process, especially when using AI tools for digital marketing and SEO.

Missed Opportunities for Internal Linking

Internal linking plays a crucial role in improving SEO, increasing page authority, and enhancing user navigation. However, AI content mistakes often generate isolated content without suggesting or incorporating internal links. This can reduce reader engagement and conversion opportunities, as users may not find related content easily. Enhancing internal linking in AI-generated content is essential for maximizing SEO benefits and ensuring a seamless user experience.

Strategic internal linking can significantly improve website navigation and help pages rank higher in search engine results. By leveraging AI to identify relevant internal links, content creators can optimize website structure and improve overall performance.

Strategic Linking to Avoid AI Content Mistakes

Strategic internal linking is crucial for enhancing navigation and SEO. AI tools can automatically find relevant internal links on a website, simplifying the linking process and enhancing content connectivity. Effective internal linking not only improves user experience but also aids in search engine optimization, helping pages rank higher.

By implementing strategic internal linking, content creators can ensure that users easily find related content, thereby increasing engagement and conversion opportunities.

Link Maintenance to Correct AI Content Mistakes

Regularly updating and maintaining internal links prevents errors and ensures a seamless user experience. Updating internal links ensures that they lead to current content, which is essential for maintaining site authority.

Regular audits of internal links are necessary to remove broken links and redirect users to relevant content. Effective link maintenance helps retain user engagement and improves overall website credibility, ensuring that users have a positive experience navigating the site.

Common AI Content Mistakes in AI-Generated Content Creation

AI-generated content creation is not without its common mistakes. AI often fails to recognize the difference between various types of user intent, which can lead to ineffective content. This struggle to interpret nuances in reader intent can result in AI content mistakes that do not meet user expectations. Additionally, the nature of training data and design focus on pattern generation can cause inaccuracies in AI-generated content. If AI produces incorrect information in specialized fields, it can erode trust, damage brand reputation, and even lead to legal consequences.

Common issues with AI-generated content include errors affecting readability, credibility, and SEO effectiveness. The potential for plagiarism is also a significant risk due to reliance on existing data. To avoid these AI content mistakes, it is essential to incorporate human oversight and continuously refine AI-generated content based on user feedback.

Lack of Human Touch

Human intervention is vital to mitigate known limitations of AI. AI systems often generate outputs that lack the depth and nuance that human oversight can provide. A human touch can enhance AI-generated content by adding emotional depth and contextual understanding that AI lacks.

Striking a balance between AI efficiency and the human touch can lead to higher quality content that resonates with readers and meets their expectations.

Ignoring User Feedback

Incorporating user feedback is crucial for improving content quality. Colleagues and friends offer valuable feedback. This feedback highlights both strengths and areas that need improvement. Consistent feedback loops allow creators to refine and adapt their content over time, ensuring it remains relevant and effective.

Implementing strategies such as surveys or discussion sessions to gather and apply user feedback can significantly enhance the quality and relevance of AI-generated content.

Summary

In summary, while AI has revolutionized the content creation process, it is not without its challenges. From lacking contextual understanding to struggling with emotional engagement, AI content mistakes often require human oversight and creativity to reach their full potential. By providing clear prompts, ensuring diligent fact-checking, and incorporating regular updates, content creators can mitigate the risks of incorrect or outdated information. Additionally, varying vocabulary and using editing tools can enhance the readability and engagement of AI-generated content.

Combining AI efficiency with human creativity and oversight leads to high-quality content that resonates with readers and meets their needs. Understanding reader intent, conducting thorough audience research, and tailoring content accordingly can significantly improve the relevance and effectiveness of AI-generated content. By addressing ethical concerns and ensuring SEO optimization, content creators can produce reliable, engaging, and high-ranking content. Ultimately, the key to successful AI-generated content lies in balancing the strengths of AI with the irreplaceable human touch.

Frequently Asked Questions About AI Content Mistakes

Why do AI content mistakes often lack contextual understanding?

AI content mistakes often lack contextual understanding because these models analyze keywords and instructions without fully grasping nuanced meanings, which can result in irrelevant or confusing output.

How can I prevent repetitive phrases in AI content mistakes?

To prevent repetitive phrases in AI content mistakes, utilize a diverse vocabulary and editing tools that highlight redundant expressions. This will enhance both readability and engagement.

What are the risks of using outdated information in AI content mistakes?

Using outdated information in AI content mistakes can mislead readers and significantly harm the credibility of the content creator. Therefore, it is crucial to regularly update content to ensure its relevance and accuracy.

How can human creativity improve AI content mistakes?

Human creativity enhances AI content mistakes by infusing them with unique insights, emotional depth, and personal anecdotes, resulting in more engaging and original material.

What are the ethical concerns associated with AI content mistakes?

Ethical concerns surrounding AI content mistakes primarily include bias in training data, the risk of misinformation, and issues of plagiarism. It is essential to ensure diverse datasets and adhere to ethical standards to mitigate these challenges.

The post Top AI Content Mistakes and How to Fix Them for Better Results appeared first on Done For You.

What makes AI marketing tools so powerful is their ability to process massive amounts of data in seconds, uncovering patterns and insights that would take humans hours—if not days—to analyze. This means marketers can make data-backed decisions faster, optimize their strategies in real-time, and stay ahead of the competition without second-guessing their next move.

Beyond efficiency, AI marketing tools also open the door to hyper-personalization. Whether it’s delivering tailored content to specific audience segments or adjusting ad campaigns based on user behavior, AI enables businesses to create more meaningful, one-to-one connections with their customers at scale. This level of personalization leads to higher engagement, increased trust, and ultimately, better conversion rates.

Why AI Marketing Matters

AI marketing is not just a trend—it is a fundamental shift in how businesses approach customer engagement and operational efficiency. From automating repetitive tasks to analyzing vast amounts of data in seconds, AI enables marketers to focus on strategic growth rather than manual processes. Businesses that embrace AI marketing tools can improve customer personalization, optimize campaigns, and make data-backed decisions that drive real results.

If you’re looking to integrate AI into your marketing strategy, here are some of the best AI marketing tools available today.

1. ChatGPT for Content Creation

Best for: Generating blog posts, ad copy, and social media content.

ChatGPT is one of the most powerful AI-driven content generation tools available. It helps marketers craft compelling blog posts, landing page copy, and social media captions in minutes. By providing detailed prompts, you can create high-quality content that aligns with your brand voice and audience needs.

2. SEMrush AI

Best for: AI-powered keyword research and competitor analysis.

SEMrush AI is a comprehensive tool designed to help marketers optimize their SEO and PPC campaigns. It provides AI-driven insights into keyword trends, competitor strategies, and backlink opportunities. With its machine-learning algorithms, SEMrush AI helps businesses refine their digital marketing strategies and maximize their online visibility.

3. Surfer SEO

Best for: Optimizing content for search engines.

Surfer SEO helps marketers create content that ranks by analyzing SERP results and suggesting keyword placements, heading structures, and content length. With AI marketing tools insights, you can optimize your blog posts and web pages for better organic visibility.

4. Adzooma

Best for: Managing and optimizing ad campaigns.

Adzooma simplifies ad management by using AI to optimize PPC campaigns across platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads. It provides automated suggestions for improving performance, reducing wasted ad spend, and increasing ROI.

5. Smartly.io

Best for: Automating social media advertising.

Smartly.io is a powerful AI-driven ad automation platform that helps businesses scale their social media advertising. It allows marketers to create, test, and optimize ad creatives across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

6. Persado

Best for: AI-powered email marketing and messaging.

Persado uses AI to generate personalized email subject lines, headlines, and calls-to-action that maximize conversions. It analyzes customer response data to improve messaging effectiveness over time.

7. HubSpot AI Tools

Best for: Customer relationship management and marketing automation.

HubSpot integrates AI into its CRM and marketing platform, helping businesses automate lead nurturing, email marketing, and sales processes. The AI marketing tools analytics feature helps companies understand customer behavior and tailor their strategies accordingly.

8. Brandwatch

Best for: AI-powered social media listening.

Brandwatch helps businesses track brand sentiment and customer conversations across social media platforms. By using AI to analyze trends, businesses can gain insights into consumer behavior and refine their messaging strategies.

9. Pathmatics

Best for: Competitive ad intelligence.

Pathmatics provides marketers with AI marketing tools insights into competitors’ ad strategies. By analyzing ad placements, creative elements, and spending trends, businesses can refine their own marketing strategies and stay ahead of the competition.

10. MarketMuse

Best for: AI-driven content strategy.

MarketMuse helps content marketers plan and optimize their content strategy. It provides AI-generated topic recommendations, keyword insights, and content gap analysis to ensure your content performs well in search rankings.

The Role of AI in Data-Driven Marketing

AI marketing tools are not just for automation; it plays a crucial role in data-driven marketing. By analyzing large datasets, AI marketing tools can uncover trends, predict customer behavior, and provide actionable insights that improve decision-making. Marketers can leverage AI to optimize ad targeting, enhance customer segmentation, and measure campaign effectiveness in real time. This data-driven approach allows businesses to refine their strategies and maximize return on investment.

Maximizing the Impact of AI Marketing Tools

AI marketing tools are transforming how businesses attract, engage, and convert customers. By integrating these tools into your marketing strategy, you can streamline processes, improve efficiency, and ultimately drive more revenue. Which AI marketing tool are you most excited to try? Let us know how AI is helping your business grow.

FAQ

1. What are AI marketing tools? AI marketing tools leverage artificial intelligence to automate and optimize various marketing tasks, such as content creation, ad management, email marketing, and customer relationship management.

2. How can AI improve my marketing efforts? AI can enhance personalization, automate repetitive tasks, analyze data in real-time, and optimize ad performance, leading to more efficient and effective marketing strategies.

3. Are AI marketing tools suitable for small businesses? Yes, many AI marketing tools offer scalable solutions that fit the budgets and needs of small businesses, helping them compete with larger companies.

4. Do AI marketing tools require technical expertise? Not necessarily. Many AI-driven platforms are designed with user-friendly interfaces that require little to no technical knowledge.

5. Which AI marketing tool should I start with? It depends on your needs. If you focus on content creation, ChatGPT or Writesonic may be ideal. For SEO, Surfer SEO is a great option, while HubSpot AI Tools can help with CRM and automation. AI marketing tools are revolutionizing how businesses attract, engage, and convert customers. By integrating these tools into your marketing strategy, you can streamline processes, improve efficiency, and ultimately drive more revenue. 

AI Isn’t the Future—It’s the Present. Are You Using It to Your Advantage?

Most business owners are either wasting time on tasks AI could handle or missing out on powerful automation because they don’t know where to start. If you want to free up hours in your week, increase revenue, and scale without burnout, AI is the answer –> but only if you use it the right way.

Let’s talk. Book a free strategy call, and we’ll walk through how AI can be integrated into your business to make you more efficient, profitable, and unstoppable.

Schedule Your Free Call Now

The post Top AI Marketing Tools to Streamline Your Business appeared first on Done For You.

A robust

In this article, we’ll explore the three pillars of a media strategy, paid, owned, and earned media, discuss their unique benefits and challenges, and provide actionable tips for integrating them into a cohesive plan.

What Is a Media Strategy?

A media strategy is the roadmap that guides how businesses communicate with their audience using various platforms and channels. It ensures that marketing efforts are cohesive, targeted, and effective. Instead of scattering messages across random channels, a media strategy aligns your goals with the best tools to reach your audience, maximizing impact and ROI. This planning process encompasses the selection of platforms, the development of messaging, and the timing of delivery.

At its core, a well-defined media strategy helps businesses connect with their audience in meaningful ways. It creates a unified approach to paid, owned, and earned media channels, ensuring consistent messaging across all touchpoints. By taking the time to define objectives and understand the target audience, businesses can craft strategies that resonate and drive measurable results. Whether you’re launching a new product or nurturing existing customers, a solid media strategy lays the foundation for success.

 A media strategy helps businesses:

• Define objectives, such as increasing brand awareness or driving conversions.
• Determine the best mix of paid, owned, and earned media.
• Allocate resources and budget effectively.
• Optimize campaigns for maximum impact.

The ultimate goal is to create a consistent and engaging experience for your audience across all touchpoints, reinforcing your brand message and driving measurable results.

The Three Pillars of a Media Strategy

To build a successful media strategy, you need to understand and leverage three distinct media types: paid, owned, and earned media. Each plays a unique role in your marketing ecosystem.

Paid Media: Expanding Your Reach with Targeted Advertising

Paid media includes all the channels where you invest money to promote your brand. Examples include:

• Search Engine Ads: Google Ads to appear in search results.
• Social Media Ads: Sponsored posts on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
• Display Ads: Banner ads on websites to boost visibility.

Why Paid Media Matters:
Paid media accelerates your reach and ensures your message gets in front of the right audience. By using data-driven targeting, you can attract customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

Challenges:
Paid media can be costly, and the competition is fierce. Without careful optimization, campaigns can quickly drain your budget without delivering the desired ROI.

Owned Media: Building Your Digital Assets

Owned media refers to the channels and content you control entirely, such as:

• Your website or blog.
• Email newsletters.
• Social media profiles.

Why Owned Media Matters:
Owned media allows you to establish a strong online presence while maintaining complete control over the messaging and user experience. It’s cost-effective and provides a platform to nurture long-term customer relationships.

Challenges:
The main limitation is distribution. Unlike paid media, reaching a larger audience often requires time and effort, such as search engine optimization (SEO) or organic social media growth.

Earned Media: Leveraging Third-Party Validation

Earned media includes any content about your brand that is created and shared by others. Examples include:

• Online reviews.
• Mentions in news articles.
• Social media shares and user-generated content.

Why Earned Media Matters:
This type of media builds trust and credibility, as it comes from unbiased third parties. A glowing review or a viral tweet can significantly boost your brand reputation.

Challenges:
You have little to no control over earned media. A negative review or unfavorable mention can harm your brand, and gaining significant exposure often requires sustained effort in building relationships.

Crafting a Balanced Media Strategy

Creating a balanced media strategy requires careful consideration of your goals and the channels that will best support them. A strong balance involves integrating paid, owned, and earned media into a seamless plan that amplifies your message. Paid media offers instant visibility, owned media ensures long-term control, and earned media builds credibility through third-party endorsements.

To achieve balance, it’s essential to understand the unique strengths of each type of media. Paid campaigns can quickly generate traffic, but they need to be supported by engaging owned media like blogs or social posts to keep the audience engaged. Similarly, earned media builds trust and reinforces the messaging across paid and owned efforts. By strategically blending these elements, businesses can create a holistic approach that ensures every dollar and effort spent drives maximum results.

Here’s how:

Set Clear Goals

Define specific objectives for each media type. For instance:

• Use paid media to generate immediate traffic and leads.
• Focus owned media on educating and nurturing your audience.
• Leverage earned media to build trust and social proof.

Allocate Resources Wisely

Distribute your budget based on your goals and audience behavior. A business targeting millennials might prioritize Instagram ads (paid) and TikTok content (earned), while a B2B company could focus on LinkedIn (owned and paid).

Optimize Continuously

Track performance metrics such as:

• Conversion rates for paid media.
• Engagement rates for owned media.
• Sentiment analysis for earned media.

Regularly adjust your strategy based on these insights to maximize results.

Measuring the Success of Your Media Strategy

Success isn’t just about launching campaigns… it’s about ensuring they deliver the intended outcomes. Metrics like ROI, engagement rates, and lead conversions are essential in determining whether your media strategy is working. By closely monitoring these indicators, you can identify what’s effective and refine underperforming areas to align with your goals.

Equally important is understanding qualitative feedback, such as customer sentiment and brand perception. While quantitative data highlights measurable results, qualitative insights provide context, showing how your audience feels about your messaging. Together, these metrics allow businesses to paint a comprehensive picture of their strategy’s success, helping refine campaigns for sustained growth.

Key metrics include:

• Paid Media: Click-through rates, cost-per-click, and return on ad spend.
• Owned Media: Website traffic, time on page, and email open rates.
• Earned Media: Number of brand mentions, share of voice, and audience sentiment.

Use tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot, or Hootsuite to track these metrics and make data-driven decisions.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Many businesses falter by over-investing in one media channel while neglecting others. For example, relying solely on paid ads might generate traffic but fail to build trust or long-term relationships. A balanced approach ensures no single channel dominates at the expense of the others, providing a robust and sustainable media strategy.

Another common mistake is failing to define clear objectives. Without actionable goals, campaigns lack focus and direction, leading to wasted resources. Similarly, skipping audience research can result in mismatched messaging that fails to resonate. By taking the time to understand your target audience and establish measurable goals, you can avoid these pitfalls and ensure your media strategy delivers meaningful results.

Watch out for these pitfalls when implementing your media strategy:

• Over-reliance on Paid Media: Don’t neglect owned and earned media, as they provide long-term value.
• Inconsistent Messaging: Ensure a seamless experience across all channels to avoid confusing your audience.
• Neglecting Analytics: Regularly review performance data to identify opportunities for improvement.

Final Thoughts

A well-crafted media strategy is essential for navigating the complexities of digital marketing. By effectively integrating paid, owned, and earned media, you can create a balanced approach that amplifies your reach, builds trust, and drives measurable results. Remember, the key to success is ongoing optimization, regularly analyze your performance, adapt to changing trends, and refine your strategy to stay ahead.

Ready to take your media strategy to the next level? Start by evaluating your current efforts and identifying areas for improvement. With the right approach, you’ll transform your marketing efforts into a powerful engine for growth.

FAQs About Media Strategy

1. What is a media strategy?
   A media strategy is a plan for using paid, owned, and earned media channels to achieve specific marketing goals, such as increasing brand awareness or driving sales.
2. Why is a balanced media strategy important?
   Balancing paid, owned, and earned media ensures you leverage the strengths of each channel, creating a cohesive and effective marketing approach.
3. How do I measure the success of my media strategy?
   Track metrics like conversion rates, engagement rates, and brand mentions. Use analytics tools to assess performance and make data-driven adjustments.
4. What are the biggest challenges in implementing a media strategy?
   Challenges include budget constraints, maintaining consistent messaging, and keeping up with ever-changing digital trends.
5. Can a media strategy work for small businesses?
   Absolutely! A tailored media strategy can help small businesses maximize their reach and ROI, even with limited resources.

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Advertorial examples are a powerful marketing tool, blending engaging storytelling with promotional content. They create meaningful connections with readers while driving action. In this article, we’ll showcase 10 exceptional advertorial examples, highlighting their unique approaches and why they stand out.

The old ways of digital marketing have lost their impact. Banner ads are often overlooked, barely registering with audiences who scroll past them without a second glance. For brands to make an impact, they need to offer more value—something beyond a quick sales pitch.

Advertorials bridge this gap by providing content that feels meaningful and authentic. They tell a story, offer solutions, or engage the reader on a deeper level. Unlike traditional advertisements, advertorials don’t scream for attention—they invite it. Let’s explore why this form of content marketing has become a cornerstone for brands seeking to build genuine connections.

What Makes a Good Advertorial?

Customers today expect more than just a product or service—they seek brands that resonate on a personal level. A good advertorial is an opportunity to create that connection. By combining useful information, storytelling, and subtle promotion, advertorials become more than just marketing—they become conversations. Effective advertorial examples highlight how this balance can be achieved.

Here are a few characteristics that make a good advertorial:

• Relevance and Value: The content addresses a real need or question the audience has.
• Authenticity: The tone is relatable, and the brand comes across as trustworthy.
• Engaging Narrative: It tells a story that draws readers in and keeps them engaged.
• Subtle Promotion: While the message is clear, it never feels pushy or sales-driven.

By focusing on these elements, brands can craft advertorials that not only attract attention but also leave a lasting impression. The best advertorial examples reflect this balance perfectly.

Advertorial Design Best Practices

Design plays a critical role in an advertorial’s effectiveness. The aim is to create a seamless experience where readers feel they’re engaging with meaningful content rather than an obvious ad. This requires thoughtful design choices that align with the brand and its message. Strong advertorial examples often follow these practices:

• Inform, Don’t Sell: A successful advertorial should focus on educating or entertaining the audience while weaving in promotional elements naturally.
• Visual Momentum: Incorporate dynamic visuals, such as animations, infographics, or custom illustrations, to keep the reader engaged.
• Consistent Tone and Branding: Ensure the voice and design match the brand’s identity and fit within the platform hosting the content.
• Balanced Layout: Avoid overcrowding with graphics or overwhelming blocks of text. The right balance between visuals and copy creates an inviting and digestible piece of content.

This balance makes advertorials stand out, delivering value while reinforcing brand identity. The result? Content that readers not only enjoy but also trust. Advertorial examples listed below showcase how to achieve this harmony.

10 Immersive Advertorial Examples to Inspire Your Marketing

Since the medium is so flexible, there are a variety of inspiring advertorial examples out there to draw from. We’ve analyzed ten different approaches to break down their design and showcase what’s possible with this highly creative content format.

1. AARP and TIME: “Care at Home”

Link: Read here

This advertorial by AARP on TIME focuses on solutions for aging in place. It skillfully combines personal stories with actionable advice, creating a narrative that resonates with families navigating elder care decisions. By addressing a sensitive topic with empathy, it builds trust and positions AARP as a helpful resource.

What makes this advertorial stand out is its emotional depth and practicality. The use of real-life scenarios allows readers to connect with the content on a personal level, while the actionable tips provide immediate value. AARP effectively demonstrates its expertise and commitment to addressing the challenges of caregiving. This is one of the best advertorial examples in health and wellness.

2. Shift on TechCrunch: “Too Many Tabs? Dodge the Toggling Tax”

Link: Read here

Shift’s advertorial on TechCrunch targets productivity enthusiasts by offering a solution to tab overload. The piece educates readers about the “toggling tax” and demonstrates how Shift’s browser eliminates this common pain point, blending technical insights with relatable scenarios.

The strength of this advertorial lies in its ability to address a universal productivity issue while showcasing the product’s unique value proposition. By highlighting a problem that many readers experience daily, Shift creates an immediate connection, positioning itself as the go-to solution for enhanced efficiency. This makes it one of the most relatable advertorial examples in the tech space.

3. Newsweek: “The Multibillion-Dollar Cost of Incivility”

Link: Read here

This advertorial explores workplace dynamics, shedding light on the financial and cultural costs of incivility. Newsweek collaborates with experts to offer actionable strategies, positioning itself as a source of thought leadership while promoting relevant tools for workplace improvement.

The advertorial succeeds by combining hard-hitting data with practical advice. The inclusion of expert insights not only builds credibility but also offers readers tangible takeaways to improve their own workplace environments, enhancing engagement and trust. It’s an ideal example of how advertorial examples can blend research with actionable content.

4. AllBusiness: “Financial Tools for Small Businesses”

Link: Read here

Targeted at entrepreneurs, this advertorial provides a comprehensive guide to financial tools. It balances educational content with subtle promotion, ensuring readers leave with practical knowledge and an interest in the featured products.

What sets this example apart is its straightforward, solution-oriented approach. By addressing common financial pain points for small business owners, the content establishes AllBusiness as a reliable source of guidance, driving trust and interest in the promoted tools. It’s a shining illustration of advertorial examples catering to the entrepreneurial community.

5. Metro Parent: “What Every Kid Should Get for the Holidays”

Link: Read here

This holiday-themed advertorial on Metro Parent blends product recommendations with heartfelt storytelling. By focusing on family-friendly gifts, it captures the emotional essence of the holiday season while subtly promoting partner brands.

The emotional appeal and seasonal relevance of this advertorial make it particularly effective. By weaving relatable family moments into the narrative, Metro Parent creates a compelling context for its recommendations, fostering both engagement and conversion. This is one of the most heartwarming advertorial examples in the lifestyle space.

6. Cunard on The Telegraph: “Chef’s Culinary Residencies”

Link: Read here

Cunard’s partnership with The Telegraph showcases its luxury cruises through the lens of culinary excellence. Highlighting exclusive chef residencies, the piece appeals to food enthusiasts and travelers seeking unique experiences.

This advertorial stands out by aligning Cunard’s luxury brand image with a specific interest—culinary travel. The detailed descriptions of chef experiences add depth, making the content both aspirational and informative, which is perfect for its target audience.

7. Stylist: “AI Advice and Productivity Tips”

Link: Read here

This advertorial merges career advice with cutting-edge AI tools. By offering actionable tips, it engages professionals looking to enhance productivity while seamlessly introducing AI solutions that align with their needs.

The combination of timely advice and innovative solutions makes this advertorial highly effective. By addressing a growing interest in AI tools for career development, Stylist creates value for readers while driving awareness for the featured technologies.

8. People Magazine: “Online Shopping Tools”

Link: Read here

Appearing on People Magazine’s site, this advertorial blends seamlessly with editorial content. By positioning online shopping tools as must-haves for savvy shoppers, it offers practical tips while integrating affiliate promotions.

The seamless integration into the site’s regular content enhances its credibility. By providing actionable advice alongside promotional elements, the advertorial creates a win-win scenario for readers and advertisers alike. This is one of the most user-friendly advertorial examples.

9. Brightspot on TechCrunch: “Protecting Your Content Platform”

Link: Read here

Brightspot’s advertorial highlights the importance of cybersecurity for businesses. Published on TechCrunch, it combines urgency with solutions, addressing a critical issue while promoting Brightspot’s expertise.

This advertorial excels by tapping into a timely and relevant topic. The urgency surrounding cybersecurity threats makes the content compelling, while the clear presentation of solutions builds trust and positions Brightspot as a leader in the field.

10. Buzzfeed: “Tips for Dog Parents Returning to Work”

Link: Read here

This Buzzfeed advertorial offers practical advice for pet owners managing work-life balance. By providing solutions for dog parents, it creates an emotional connection while promoting pet care products.

What makes this advertorial effective is its relatability and emotional appeal. By addressing a common concern among dog owners, Buzzfeed engages its audience on a personal level while seamlessly integrating relevant product promotions. This is one of the most relatable advertorial examples in the pet care industry.

Learn From These Advertorial Examples

These 10 advertorial examples demonstrate the power of blending storytelling with subtle promotion. Whether you’re in tech, health, or retail, creating authentic, engaging content that resonates with your audience can drive meaningful results. Learn from these examples to craft your own compelling advertorials that educate, inspire, and convert.

The post Advertorial Examples: 10 Great Case Studies to Learn From appeared first on Done For You.

In the dynamic landscape of digital marketing, building meaningful connections with your audience has never been more crucial. The importance of forging authentic relationships, fostering engagement, and creating value for your audience cannot be overstated. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore strategies and tactics to help you build deeper connections with your audience, driving loyalty, advocacy, and long-term success.

Understanding the Importance of Audience Connection

In today’s hyperconnected world, consumers have more choices and higher expectations than ever before. They seek authenticity, relevance, and personalization from the brands they engage with. Building deeper connections with your audience goes beyond transactional interactions; it’s about creating meaningful experiences, understanding their needs and preferences, and demonstrating genuine care and empathy. By cultivating strong connections with your audience, you can foster loyalty, advocacy, and brand affinity, driving sustainable growth and success.

Leveraging Data for Audience Insights

Data is a powerful tool for understanding your audience and tailoring your marketing efforts to their preferences and behaviors. By leveraging data analytics, market research, and audience segmentation, you can gain valuable insights into who your audience is, what they care about, and how they interact with your brand. Use this data to develop detailed buyer personas, identify key touchpoints along the customer journey, and tailor your messaging and content to resonate with your audience’s needs and interests.

Authentic Storytelling and Brand Narrative

Storytelling is a powerful tool for connecting with your audience on an emotional level and conveying your brand’s values, mission, and personality. Authenticity is key; tell stories that are genuine, relatable, and reflective of your brand identity. Whether it’s sharing behind-the-scenes glimpses, customer success stories, or the journey of your brand, storytelling humanizes your brand and fosters a deeper connection with your audience.

Engaging Content Across Multiple Channels

In a multi-channel world, it’s essential to meet your audience where they are and deliver engaging content across a variety of platforms and formats. From social media and email marketing to blogs, podcasts, and video content, diversify your content strategy to appeal to different preferences and consumption habits. Experiment with interactive content, live streaming, and user-generated content to foster two-way communication and encourage active participation from your audience.

Personalization and Tailored Experiences

Personalization is the key to delivering relevant and compelling experiences that resonate with your audience. Use data-driven insights to personalize your messaging, content recommendations, and offers based on individual preferences, behaviors, and demographics. Whether it’s personalized email campaigns, product recommendations, or dynamic website content, tailor your interactions to make each audience member feel valued and understood.

Building Community and Fostering Engagement

Community-building is a powerful way to create a sense of belonging and foster deeper connections with your audience. Create spaces where your audience can connect with each other, share experiences, and engage with your brand on a deeper level. Whether it’s through online forums, social media groups, or live events, building a community around your brand strengthens relationships and drives loyalty and advocacy.

Authenticity and Transparency

Authenticity and transparency are essential pillars of building trust and credibility with your audience. Be open and honest in your communications, admit mistakes when necessary, and actively listen to feedback from your audience. Transparency builds trust, fosters loyalty, and reinforces your commitment to putting your audience’s needs first.

Consistency and Reliability

Consistency is key to building trust and maintaining strong relationships with your audience over time. Be consistent in your messaging, branding, and content delivery across all channels and touchpoints. Set clear expectations for your audience and deliver on your promises consistently to reinforce your reliability and dependability as a brand.

Measuring Success and Iterating

As you implement strategies to build deeper connections with your audience, it’s essential to measure your progress and iterate based on insights and feedback. Use key performance indicators (KPIs) such as engagement metrics, customer satisfaction scores, and retention rates to track the effectiveness of your efforts. Analyze data regularly, identify areas for improvement, and make adjustments to optimize your approach and drive continuous growth and success.

Conclusion: Nurturing Relationships in the Digital Age

In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, building deeper connections with your audience is essential for driving long-term success and sustainability as a brand. By understanding your audience, leveraging data-driven insights, and prioritizing authenticity, personalization, and engagement, you can foster meaningful relationships that transcend transactions and create lasting value for both your brand and your audience. As we navigate the opportunities and challenges, remember that building connections is not just about what you say or do—it’s about how you make your audience feel. By prioritizing empathy, trust, and genuine human connection, you can create experiences that resonate deeply and inspire loyalty, advocacy, and growth.

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In the fast-paced world of content consumption, attention spans are dwindling, and audiences crave quick, engaging, and easily digestible content. Enter the era of video snacks – bite-sized, compelling videos that deliver maximum impact in minimal time. As we delve into 2024, it’s evident that video snacks are poised to dominate the content marketing landscape, reshaping how brands connect with audiences and capture attention online.

The Rise of Video Snacks

Video snacks, also known as micro-videos or short-form videos, have been gaining momentum in recent years, fueled by the popularity of platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Snapchat. These platforms have revolutionized content consumption habits, with users flocking to short, entertaining videos that offer quick bursts of entertainment or information. From playful memes and catchy challenges to informative tutorials and product demos, video snacks come in various forms, catering to diverse audiences and interests.

The Appeal of Short-form Content

What makes video snacks so appealing in today’s digital landscape? Several factors contribute to their popularity:

1. Accessibility

Video snacks are accessible to anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection, making them highly inclusive and widely accessible. Unlike long-form content, which requires a significant time commitment, video snacks can be consumed on the go, in between tasks, or during brief moments of downtime.

2. Engagement

Video snacks are designed to capture attention quickly and keep viewers engaged from start to finish. Their short duration and dynamic format make them inherently more engaging than traditional text-based content, allowing brands to convey their message effectively and leave a lasting impression on audiences.

3. Shareability

Video snacks are highly shareable, making them ideal for virality and word-of-mouth marketing. With just a few taps, users can easily share entertaining or informative videos with their friends, family, and followers, amplifying reach and engagement organically.

4. Creativity

Video snacks offer limitless creative possibilities, allowing brands to experiment with storytelling techniques, visual effects, and editing styles. From stop-motion animation and time-lapse sequences to interactive filters and augmented reality overlays, the only limit is the imagination.

The Role of Video Snacks in Content Marketing

As attention spans continue to shrink, brands must adapt their content strategies to meet the evolving needs and preferences of consumers. Video snacks offer a compelling solution for brands looking to cut through the noise and capture attention in a crowded digital landscape. Here’s why video snacks will dominate content marketing in 2024 and beyond:

1. Capturing Attention

In an age of information overload, capturing and retaining audience attention is more challenging than ever. Video snacks offer a concise and captivating format that grabs attention from the get-go and holds it until the end. By delivering engaging content in short bursts, brands can cut through the clutter and make a memorable impression on viewers.

2. Driving Engagement

Engagement is the currency of the digital age, and video snacks excel at driving meaningful interactions with audiences. Whether it’s sparking conversation, eliciting emotions, or prompting actions, video snacks have the power to engage viewers on a deeper level than traditional text-based content. By leveraging interactive features, such as polls, quizzes, and stickers, brands can encourage active participation and foster community engagement.

3. Building Brand Awareness

Video snacks offer an effective way for brands to increase visibility and build brand awareness online. By creating compelling and shareable content that aligns with their brand identity and values, brands can reach new audiences and strengthen connections with existing followers. Whether it’s showcasing products, sharing behind-the-scenes glimpses, or highlighting customer testimonials, video snacks provide a platform for brands to showcase their personality and story authentically.

4. Driving Conversions

While video snacks are primarily focused on engagement and brand building, they can also play a role in driving conversions and sales. By incorporating clear calls-to-action and linking to relevant landing pages or product pages, brands can seamlessly guide viewers through the customer journey and encourage them to take the next step. Whether it’s making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or booking a consultation, video snacks can be a powerful tool for driving action and achieving business objectives.

Strategies for Creating Compelling Video Snacks

Creating effective video snacks requires careful planning, creativity, and attention to detail. Here are some strategies for crafting compelling video snacks that resonate with audiences:

1. Keep it Short and Sweet

The key to a successful video snack is brevity. Aim for a duration of 15 to 60 seconds to ensure maximum impact and engagement. Keep the message concise and focused, delivering the most important information or emotion in a brief and memorable format.

2. Hook Viewers from the Start

Grab attention from the first frame to hook viewers and keep them watching until the end. Use eye-catching visuals, intriguing captions, or compelling narratives to pique curiosity and entice viewers to continue watching.

3. Tell a Story

Storytelling is a powerful tool for connecting with audiences and conveying brand messages effectively. Use storytelling techniques, such as narrative arcs, character development, and emotional storytelling, to create a compelling and memorable story that resonates with viewers.

4. Be Authentic and Relatable

Authenticity is key to building trust and credibility with audiences. Be genuine, transparent, and relatable in your video snacks, showcasing the human side of your brand and connecting with viewers on a personal level.

5. Experiment with Creativity

Don’t be afraid to think outside the box and experiment with creative concepts, formats, and styles. From humor and entertainment to education and inspiration, there are endless possibilities for creating engaging and innovative video snacks that stand out from the crowd.

Conclusion: Embracing the Era of Video Snacks

As we navigate the ever-changing landscape of digital marketing, one thing remains clear: the era of video snacks is here to stay. In an age of fleeting attention and constant scrolling, brands must adapt their content strategies to meet the evolving needs and preferences of consumers. By embracing the power of short and sweet video content, brands can cut through the noise, capture attention, and forge deeper connections with their audiences. Whether it’s sparking engagement, building brand awareness, or driving conversions, video snacks offer a versatile and effective tool for achieving marketing objectives in 2024 and beyond. So, let’s raise a toast to the rise of video snacks – the future of content marketing awaits

The post The Power of Bite-sized Brilliance: How Video Content is Reshaping Digital Marketing appeared first on Done For You.

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, content remains king, but not all content is created equal. With consumers becoming increasingly discerning and ad-fatigued, businesses must adapt their content strategies to cut through the noise and engage audiences authentically. Gone are the days of clickbait and shallow tactics; today’s consumers crave meaningful connections and authentic storytelling. This comprehensive guide will explore how businesses can create content that converts by shifting from clickbait to captivating stories.

The Evolution of Content Marketing

Over the years, content marketing has evolved from a purely promotional tool to a strategic approach to building long-term customer relationships. Today’s consumers are bombarded with advertisements and branded messages at every turn, leading to a phenomenon known as ad blindness. To break through this barrier, businesses must deliver content that provides genuine value, resonates with their audience, and sparks meaningful interactions.

The Pitfalls of Clickbait

Clickbait, characterized by sensational headlines and misleading content, may generate clicks in the short term but often fails to deliver on its promises. Consumers have grown weary of clickbait tactics and are quick to dismiss content that lacks substance or authenticity. Moreover, search engines and social media platforms are cracking down on clickbait, prioritizing high-quality, relevant content in their algorithms. Businesses that rely on clickbait risk damaging their reputation and alienating their audience in the long run.

The Power of Captivating Stories

In contrast to clickbait, captivating stories can forge deep emotional connections with audiences and drive meaningful engagement. Whether it’s a compelling narrative, an inspiring testimonial, or a behind-the-scenes glimpse into your brand’s journey, storytelling allows businesses to connect with their audience on a human level. By tapping into emotions such as joy, empathy, or nostalgia, businesses can create content that resonates with their audience and inspires action.

Strategies for Creating Captivating Content

So, how can businesses create content that captivates audiences and drives conversions? Here are some strategies to consider:

• Know Your Audience: Understanding your audience’s demographics, interests, and pain points is essential for creating resonating content. Conduct market research, analyze customer data, and engage with your audience to understand their preferences and behaviors.
• Craft Compelling Stories: Whether you’re sharing customer success stories, highlighting your brand’s values, or showcasing your team’s expertise, storytelling should be at the heart of your content strategy. Focus on creating narratives that are authentic, relatable, and emotionally resonant.
• Provide Value: Offer your audience something of value, whether it’s useful information, entertainment, or inspiration. Solve their problems, answer their questions, or entertain them with engaging content that enriches their lives somehow.
• Be Authentic: Authenticity is key to building trust and credibility with your audience. Be transparent, genuine, and honest in your communications, and avoid misleading or exaggerated claims.
• Optimize for Engagement: Encourage interaction and engagement with your content by incorporating calls-to-action, asking questions, or inviting feedback. Foster a sense of community and dialogue around your brand to deepen relationships with your audience.

Case Studies: Brands That Get It Right

Several brands have successfully embraced the power of captivating storytelling to connect with their audience and drive results. For example, Airbnb’s “Belong Anywhere” campaign celebrates the diversity and inclusivity of its community. At the same time, Nike’s “Dream Crazy” ad featuring Colin Kaepernick sparked a global conversation about social justice and activism. These brands understand that storytelling is not just about selling products; it’s about creating meaningful connections and inspiring change.

Conclusion

Businesses must prioritize quality over quantity and authenticity over clickbait in content marketing. By shifting from clickbait to captivating stories, businesses can create content that resonates with their audience, fosters genuine connections, and drives meaningful engagement and conversions. So, as you craft your content strategy for the year ahead, remember that the most powerful stories capture attention, hearts, and minds.

The post Content that Converts: From Clickbait to Captivating Stories appeared first on Done For You.

In an ever-evolving digital landscape, allocating marketing budgets is critical for businesses seeking growth and success. With new technologies, changing consumer behaviors, and emerging trends, staying ahead of the curve is essential to maximize your marketing dollars’ return on investment (ROI). It’s crucial to adopt strategies prioritizing efficiency, effectiveness, and adaptability. This comprehensive guide will explore actionable tips and insights to help you maximize your marketing dollars.

1. Embrace Data-Driven Decision-Making

In today’s data-rich environment, harnessing the power of data is paramount to effective marketing strategies. Businesses can gain valuable insights into consumer behavior, preferences, and trends by leveraging analytics tools and platforms. Use data to inform your marketing decisions, identify opportunities, and optimize your campaigns for maximum impact and ROI.

2. Focus on Personalization and Customer Experience

In an age of hyper-personalization, delivering tailored experiences to your target audience is essential for driving engagement and loyalty. Invest in customer relationship management (CRM) systems and marketing automation tools to segment your audience and deliver personalized content and offers based on their preferences and behavior. Prioritize customer experience across all touchpoints, from initial engagement to post-purchase support, to create meaningful connections and drive long-term customer satisfaction and loyalty.

3. Leverage the Power of Content Marketing

Content remains king in digital marketing, providing businesses with a powerful tool to educate, entertain, and engage their target audience. Invest in high-quality, relevant content that resonates with your audience and adds value to their lives. Utilize a mix of formats, including blog posts, videos, infographics, and podcasts, to reach and engage your audience across different channels and platforms. Focus on creating evergreen content that continues to drive traffic and generate leads long after publication.

4. Embrace Emerging Technologies and Trends

Stay ahead of the curve by embracing emerging technologies and trends that have the potential to disrupt the marketing landscape. Keep an eye on developments in artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and voice search, and explore how these technologies can be integrated into your marketing strategies to enhance engagement and drive results. Experiment with new channels and platforms like TikTok, Clubhouse, and emerging social media networks to reach new audiences and stay relevant in an increasingly competitive market.

5. Optimize Your Digital Advertising Efforts

Digital advertising continues to be a powerful tool for reaching and engaging target audiences, but optimizing your efforts to maximize ROI is essential. Use advanced targeting options and audience segmentation to deliver relevant ads to the right people at the right time. Experiment with different ad formats and platforms, including search, display, social media, and video ads, to identify what resonates best with your audience and drives the most conversions. Monitor your campaigns closely and adjust your strategies and budgets based on performance data to ensure you get the most out of your advertising dollars.

6. Cultivate Strategic Partnerships and Collaborations

Collaborating with complementary businesses and strategic partners can help amplify your marketing efforts and reach new audiences. Identify potential partners whose products or services align with yours and explore co-marketing campaigns, joint promotions, and cross-promotion opportunities. By leveraging each other’s networks and resources, you can expand your reach, increase brand awareness, and drive mutual benefit for both parties.

7. Measure, Analyze, and Iterate

Continuous improvement is key to success in marketing, so it’s essential to regularly measure, analyze, and iterate on your strategies and tactics. Track key performance indicators (KPIs) related to your marketing goals, such as website traffic, engagement metrics, conversion rates, and customer acquisition costs, and use this data to evaluate the effectiveness of your campaigns. Identify areas for improvement and experimentation, and be willing to adjust your strategies and allocate resources accordingly to optimize performance and maximize ROI.

Conclusion

Making the most of your marketing dollars requires a strategic and data-driven approach. By embracing data-driven decision-making, prioritizing personalization and customer experience, leveraging the power of content marketing, embracing emerging technologies and trends, optimizing digital advertising efforts, cultivating strategic partnerships and collaborations, and continuously measuring, analyzing, and iterating on your strategies, you can maximize the impact of your marketing dollars and drive sustainable growth and success for your business. So, take these insights and actionable tips to heart as you chart your course for marketing success.

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Maximize Your Small Business Potential with Proven Digital Marketing

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, marketing efforts can either propel a business forward or leave it lagging behind. With the vast array of tools and platforms available, digital marketing has become essential to any successful business strategy. However, despite its potential success, many businesses still need to catch up on common pitfalls hindering their digital marketing efforts. In this blog post, we’ll explore the five most prominent and common digital marketing mistakes and provide actionable tips on avoiding them.

Neglecting to Define Clear Goals and Metrics

One of the most significant mistakes businesses make in digital marketing is embarking on campaigns without clear goals and metrics. Without a clear understanding of what you want to achieve, measuring success accurately is impossible. Whether it’s increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or driving sales, defining specific, measurable goals is crucial.

Solution: Take the time to establish SMART goals – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Identify key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your goals and regularly track and analyze them. This will provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts and allow you to make data-driven decisions to optimize performance.

Failing to Understand the Target Audience

Another common mistake in digital marketing is failing to understand the target audience thoroughly. Without a deep understanding of your audience’s demographics, interests, and pain points, your marketing efforts will likely miss the mark. Generic, one-size-fits-all messaging is unlikely to resonate with your audience and may result in wasted resources and missed opportunities.

Solution: Invest time in market research to comprehensively understand your target audience. Utilize tools such as Google Analytics, social media insights, and customer surveys to gather data about your audience’s demographics, preferences, and behavior. Use this information to create detailed buyer personas that represent your ideal customers. Tailor your marketing strategies and messaging to address each audience segment’s specific needs and interests for maximum impact.

Overlooking the Importance of SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a fundamental aspect of digital marketing that businesses often overlook or misunderstand. With millions of websites competing for attention online, ensuring your content ranks highly in search engine results pages (SERPs) is essential for driving organic traffic to your site. Neglecting SEO can result in your content being buried beneath competitors, making it difficult for potential customers to find you.

Solution: Prioritize SEO as an integral part of your digital marketing strategy. Conduct keyword research to identify relevant search terms and phrases your target audience uses. Optimize your website and content to incorporate these keywords naturally, including titles, headings, meta descriptions, and body copy. Focus on creating high-quality, valuable content that solves your audience’s problems and encourages engagement and sharing. Regularly monitor and analyze your website’s performance using tools like Google Search Console and adjust your SEO strategy to improve rankings and visibility.

Ignoring the Power of Content Marketing

Content is king in digital marketing, yet many businesses underestimate its importance or fail to invest in it adequately. Content marketing encompasses various formats, including blog posts, videos, infographics, and podcasts, which can be powerful tools for attracting, engaging, and converting customers. Neglecting content marketing deprives businesses of the opportunity to showcase their expertise, build trust with their audience, and establish themselves as industry leaders.

Solution: Develop a comprehensive content marketing strategy aligning with your business objectives and target audience preferences. Create a content calendar to plan and organize content creation efforts, ensuring a consistent publishing schedule across various channels. Focus on producing high-quality, relevant content that provides value to your audience and addresses their needs and interests. Experiment with different formats and distribution channels to maximize reach and engagement. Monitor performance metrics such as website traffic, engagement rates, and conversion rates to evaluate the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts and refine your strategy accordingly.

Neglecting Mobile Optimization

With the increasing prevalence of smartphones and tablets, mobile optimization has become non-negotiable in the digital marketing landscape. Yet, many businesses still neglect to optimize their websites and marketing campaigns for mobile users, resulting in a poor user experience and lost opportunities for engagement and conversion. In today’s mobile-first world, failing to prioritize mobile optimization can harm your brand’s reputation and bottom line.

Solution: Ensure your website is fully optimized for mobile devices, with responsive design, fast loading times, and easy navigation. Test your website across various devices and screen sizes to ensure a seamless user experience for mobile users. Pay attention to mobile-specific SEO factors such as local and voice search optimization to improve visibility and accessibility for mobile users. Additionally, consider leveraging mobile-specific advertising formats and targeting options to effectively reach and engage mobile audiences.

Avoiding these five common digital marketing mistakes can significantly improve the effectiveness and ROI of your marketing efforts. By defining clear goals and metrics, understanding your target audience, prioritizing SEO and content marketing, and optimizing for mobile, you can position your business for success in the ever-evolving digital landscape. Remember, digital marketing is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Be prepared to continually test, iterate, and refine your strategies to stay ahead of the competition and achieve your business objectives.

The post 5 Biggest Digital Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them appeared first on Done For You.

It has become essential for businesses to have an online presence. With the rise of social media, search engines, and other digital platforms, companies seek ways to reach their target audience online. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is through online advertising. However, many small businesses may not have the budget to invest in expensive online advertising campaigns. This blog post will explore ways to revolutionize your marketing strategy by leveraging online advertising without investment.

What is online advertising without investment?

Online advertising without investment refers to using free or low-cost digital marketing strategies to promote your business online. This can include social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and more. These strategies can help you reach your target audience and drive traffic to your website without spending much money on advertising.

How to leverage online advertising without investment for your business

1. Social media marketing

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are excellent channels for promoting your business online. With billions of users, these platforms provide a massive audience for your business. Creating engaging content and interacting with your followers can build a loyal following and increase your brand awareness. Moreover, you can track your performance and optimize your strategy using social media analytics tools.

2. Email marketing

Email marketing is another effective way to reach your target audience online. By building an email list and sending regular newsletters and promotional emails, you can inform your customers about your business and drive traffic to your website. Moreover, you can increase your open and click-through rates by personalizing your emails and segmenting your audience.

3. Content marketing

Content marketing involves creating high-quality content that resonates with your target audience and provides value to them. This can include blog posts, videos, infographics, and more. By creating relevant and engaging content, you can attract visitors to your website and establish your business as a thought leader in your industry.

4. Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). Using relevant keywords, optimizing your website structure, and building high-quality backlinks can improve your website’s visibility and attract more organic traffic. Moreover, by using SEO analytics tools, you can track your performance and optimize your online advertising strategy accordingly.

Conclusion

Online advertising without investment can be a game-changer for small businesses looking to promote their brand online. By leveraging free or low-cost digital marketing strategies like social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, and SEO, you can reach your target audience and drive traffic to your website without spending much money on advertising. So, start implementing these strategies today and revolutionize your marketing strategy.

The post Beyond Budgets: Advanced Techniques for No-Investment Online Advertising appeared first on Done For You.

As a business owner, you know that building a strong brand is essential for success. But how do you go about building brand equity? In this post, we’ll share 10 proven strategies for building brand equity that will help you boost your business success today.

Strategy 1: Define your brand

The first step in building brand equity is defining your brand. This means identifying your brand values, personality, and voice. You should also clearly understand your target audience and how your brand can meet their needs.

Strategy 2: Develop a brand identity

Once you’ve defined your brand, it’s time to develop a brand identity. This includes your logo, tagline, and visual elements such as color schemes and typography. Your brand identity should be consistent across all channels, from your website and social media to your packaging and advertising.

Strategy 3: Create valuable content

Creating valuable content is key to building brand equity. Whether blog posts, videos, or social media updates, your content should be informative, engaging, and relevant to your target audience. This will help establish your brand as an authority in your industry and build trust with your audience.

Strategy 4: Leverage social media

Social media is a powerful tool for building brand equity. You can increase brand awareness and loyalty by engaging with your audience on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Share valuable content, respond to comments and messages, and monitor your brand mentions.

Strategy 5: Partner with influencers

Partnering with influencers can help you reach a wider audience and build brand credibility. Look for influencers who align with your brand values and have a strong following in your target market. Offer them free products or services in exchange for promotion on their social media channels.

Strategy 6: Provide excellent customer service

Providing excellent customer service is essential for building brand equity. This means responding promptly to customer inquiries, resolving issues quickly and effectively, and going above and beyond to exceed customer expectations. Happy customers are more likely to become loyal brand advocates.

Strategy 7: Focus on quality

Quality is key to building brand equity. Everything should be top-notch, whether it’s the quality of your products or services, your customer service, or your marketing materials. This will help establish your brand as a leader in your industry and build trust with your audience.

Strategy 8: Build a community

Building a community around your brand is another effective way to build brand equity. This can be done through social media groups, forums, or events. You can foster loyalty and advocacy by creating a space where your audience can connect with each other and with your brand.

Strategy 9: Monitor your brand reputation

Monitoring your brand reputation is essential for building brand equity. This means keeping an eye on what people say about your brand online and responding to negative comments or reviews. You can build trust and credibility with your audience by addressing issues quickly and transparently.

Strategy 10: Measure your success

Finally, it’s essential to measure your success in building brand equity. This means tracking metrics such as brand awareness, engagement, and loyalty. Use tools like Google Analytics and social media analytics to monitor your progress and adjust as needed.

You can boost your business success today by following these 10 proven strategies for building brand equity. Remember to focus on quality, provide value to your audience, and be consistent in your branding efforts. With time and effort, you can establish your brand as a leader in your industry and build a loyal customer base.

The post 10 Proven Strategies for Building Brand Equity: Boost Your Business Success Today! appeared first on Done For You.

If you are an online business owner, you know the importance of effective e-commerce marketing strategies. In today’s digital marketplace, standing out from the competition can be difficult. However, you can increase your online sales and grow your business with the right marketing plan.

This article will discuss 10 proven e-commerce marketing strategies to help you achieve explosive online sales growth.

1. Create a User-Friendly Website

A user-friendly website is essential for any e-commerce business. Your website should be easy to navigate, visually appealing, and optimized for mobile devices. Make sure your website is fast and responsive, as slow loading times can lead to a high bounce rate.

2. Use Social Media to Your Advantage

Social media is a powerful tool for e-commerce marketing. Use social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to promote your products and engage with your audience. Consider running social media ads to reach a larger audience and increase your online sales.

3. Invest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the process of optimizing your website for search engines like Google. By optimizing your website for specific keywords, you can increase your visibility in search results and drive more traffic to your website. Consider hiring an SEO expert to help you develop an effective SEO strategy.

4. Offer Discounts and Promotions

Everyone loves a good deal. Offering discounts and promotions is a great way to attract new customers and increase your online sales. Consider offering free shipping, buy-one-get-one-free deals, or limited-time discounts to entice customers to purchase.

5. Leverage Email Marketing

Email marketing is a highly effective e-commerce marketing strategy. Use email to stay in touch with your customers, promote your products, and offer exclusive discounts and promotions. Make sure your emails are personalized and relevant to your audience.

6. Use Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing involves partnering with social media influencers to promote your products to their audience. This can be a highly effective way to reach a larger audience and increase your online sales. Consider partnering with influencers who align with your brand values and target audience.

7. Optimize Product Descriptions

Your product descriptions should be clear, informative, and optimized for search engines. Use high-quality images and provide detailed information about your products, including dimensions, materials, and care instructions. This will help potential customers make informed purchasing decisions.

8. Provide Excellent Customer Service

Excellent customer service is key to building a loyal customer base. Make sure you have a clear and easy-to-find contact page on your website, and respond to customer inquiries in a timely manner. Consider offering a live chat feature to provide instant support to your customers.

9. Use Retargeting Ads

Retargeting ads are a great way to reach customers who have interacted with your website. By showing targeted ads to customers who have previously visited your website, you can increase the likelihood of a sale. Consider using retargeting ads on social media platforms and Google AdWords.

10. Monitor and Analyze Your Results

Finally, it’s essential to monitor and analyze your e-commerce marketing efforts. Use tools like Google Analytics to track your website traffic, conversion rates, and other key metrics. Use this data to refine your marketing strategy and improve your online sales growth.

In conclusion, by using these 10 proven e-commerce marketing strategies, you can achieve explosive online sales growth for your business. Remember to prioritize user experience, optimize for search engines, and constantly analyze your results to refine your marketing strategy.

The post 10 Proven E-commerce Marketing Strategies for Explosive Online Sales Growth appeared first on Done For You.

Do you need help generating new leads for your business? If so, you’re not alone. Many companies need help with lead generation, but the good news is that there are proven techniques you can use to boost your results.

This blog post will cover 10 lead-generation techniques proven to work. By implementing these strategies, you can generate more leads and grow your business.

1. Content Marketing

Content marketing is a powerful way to attract new leads to your business. By creating high-quality content that provides value to your target audience, you can establish yourself as an authority in your industry and attract new leads to your website.

To get started with content marketing, you’ll need to create a content strategy that includes blog posts, videos, infographics, and other types of content that your audience will find valuable. You can then promote your content through social media, email marketing, and other channels to reach a wider audience.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). You can attract organic traffic and generate more leads by improving your website’s ranking for relevant keywords.

To optimize your website for SEO, you must conduct keyword research to identify the most relevant keywords for your business. You can then optimize your website’s content, meta tags, and other elements to improve your ranking for those keywords.

3. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a powerful way to generate leads quickly. With PPC advertising, you can create ads that target specific keywords and demographics and only pay when someone clicks on your ad.

To get started with PPC advertising, you’ll need to create an account with a platform like Google Ads or Facebook Ads. You can then create ads that target specific keywords and demographics and set a budget for your campaign.

4. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is a great way to reach a wider audience and generate more leads. By creating engaging content and promoting it through social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you can attract new leads to your business.

To get started with social media marketing, you’ll need to create profiles on your target audience’s social media platforms. You can then create and share content that your audience will find valuable and engage with your followers to build relationships and generate leads.

5. Email Marketing

Email marketing is a powerful way to nurture leads and convert them into customers. By creating targeted email campaigns that provide value to your subscribers, you can build trust and establish a relationship with your audience.

To get started with email marketing, you’ll need to build an email list of subscribers who have opted in to receive your emails. You can then create targeted email campaigns that provide value to your subscribers and encourage them to take action.

6. Webinars

Webinars are a great way to generate leads and establish yourself as an authority in your industry. By creating informative webinars that provide value to your audience, you can attract new leads to your business and build relationships with your existing subscribers.

To get started with webinars, you’ll need to choose a topic your audience will find valuable and create a presentation that provides actionable insights. You can then promote your webinar through email marketing, social media, and other channels to attract a wider audience.

7. Referral Marketing

Referral marketing is a powerful way to generate leads from your existing customers. By creating a referral program that incentivizes your customers to refer their friends and family to your business, you can generate new leads and grow your customer base.

To get started with referral marketing, you’ll need to create a referral program that offers rewards to customers who refer new business to you. You can then promote your referral program through email marketing, social media, and other channels to encourage your customers to participate.

8. Networking

Networking is a great way to generate leads and build relationships with other professionals in your industry. By attending industry events and connecting with other professionals, you can establish yourself as an authority in your industry and generate new leads for your business.

To start networking, you’ll need to identify relevant industry events for your business and attend them regularly. You can then connect with other professionals and build relationships that can lead to new business opportunities.

9. Direct Mail

Direct mail is a powerful way to generate leads and reach customers who may need to be more active online. By creating targeted direct mail campaigns that provide value to your audience, you can generate new leads and grow your business.

To get started with direct mail, you’ll need to create a targeted mailing list of potential customers and create a direct mail campaign that provides value to your audience. You can then send your direct mail campaign to your mailing list and track your results to see how many leads you generate.

10. Customer Reviews

Customer reviews are a powerful way to generate leads and establish trust with your audience. By encouraging your customers to leave reviews on sites like Yelp, Google, and Facebook, you can attract new leads to your business and build a positive reputation online.

To get started with customer reviews, you’ll need to encourage your customers to leave reviews on sites relevant to your business. You can then monitor your reviews and respond to negative feedback to show that you care about your customers and are committed to providing great service.

In conclusion, lead generation is essential for any business that wants to grow and succeed. By implementing these 10 proven lead-generation techniques, you can attract more leads to your business and achieve your goals.

The post Beyond Conversions: Mastering 10 Lead Generation Techniques appeared first on Done For You.

In today’s digital age, having a solid online presence is crucial for the success of any business. Digital branding strategies are the key to unlocking this power and ensuring that customers recognize and remember your brand. This blog post will discuss the top strategies for success in digital branding in 2024.

Understanding Digital Branding

Before diving into the strategies, it’s important to understand digital branding. Digital branding is creating a unique online identity for your brand. It involves creating a consistent message, look, and feel across all digital platforms to ensure your brand is recognizable and memorable.

Strategy 1: Consistency is Key

The first strategy for success in digital branding is consistency. Your brand should have a consistent message, look, and feel across all digital platforms. This means using the same logo, color scheme, and tone of voice on your website, social media, and other digital channels. Consistency helps to build trust and recognition with your audience.

Strategy 2: Content is King

Creating high-quality content is another important strategy for success in digital branding. Your content should be informative, engaging, and relevant to your target audience. It should also be optimized for search engines to ensure your brand is easily discoverable online. This includes using keywords, meta descriptions, and other SEO techniques.

Strategy 3: Embrace Video Marketing

Video marketing is becoming increasingly popular and is a great way to engage with your audience. Videos are more memorable and shareable than other types of content, making them a powerful tool for digital branding. You can use videos to showcase your products or services, share customer reviews, or provide helpful tips and advice.

Strategy 4: Personalize the Customer Experience

Personalization is another important strategy for success in digital branding. Customers expect a personalized experience when interacting with brands online. This means using their name in emails, offering customized product recommendations, and tailoring your marketing messages to their interests and preferences.

Strategy 5: Leverage Social Media

Social media is a powerful tool for digital branding. It lets you connect with your audience, share content, and build relationships. To succeed on social media, you must have a clear strategy. This includes choosing the right platforms, creating engaging content, and interacting with your followers.

Strategy 6: Keep Up with the Latest Trends

Finally, it’s important to keep up with the latest trends in digital branding. The digital landscape constantly changes, and new technologies and platforms are always emerging. Staying up-to-date with the latest trends will help you stay ahead of the competition and ensure your brand remains relevant and engaging.

In conclusion, digital branding is essential for the success of any business in today’s digital age. By following these top strategies for success in digital branding, you can create a strong online presence and build a loyal customer base. Remember to prioritize consistency, content, video marketing, personalization, social media, and staying up-to-date with the latest trends.

The post Beyond Logos: Mastering Digital Branding Strategies appeared first on Done For You.

Mastering Video Marketing Tactics: 10 Strategies to Boost Engagement and Sales

You ever feel like you’re putting your heart and soul into your brand, but it’s just not getting the traction it deserves? Trust me, I’ve been there. That’s why I’m a huge fan of video marketing tactics. Video content is hands down one of the most powerful tools you can use to connect with your audience, build trust, and drive serious results.

The best part? You don’t need a Hollywood budget to make it work. It’s all about being strategic, consistent, and, most importantly, authentic. So, let’s break down 10 must-try video marketing tactics that will not only boost engagement but also help you turn those views into actual sales.

1. Define Your Audience

Look, you can’t create content for everyone and you shouldn’t. The first step to nailing your video marketing tactics is knowing exactly who you’re talking to. Who are they? What do they care about? What’s keeping them up at night? These are the questions that guide everything else.

When you get crystal clear on your audience, your content naturally resonates more. It’s not about guessing—it’s about listening, learning, and meeting people where they are.

• Create audience personas to define your ideal viewers.
• Use tools like Google Analytics to dig into your audience demographics.
• Survey your existing audience to understand their needs.

2. Choose the Right Platform

Here’s the deal: not every platform is the right fit for your audience or content. One of the smartest video marketing tactics is knowing where your people hang out and focusing your efforts there. YouTube is amazing for tutorials, TikTok is great for quick tips, and Instagram Stories are perfect for behind-the-scenes peeks.

By playing to the strengths of each platform, you’ll maximize your reach without spreading yourself too thin. Work smarter, not harder, right?

• Research platform demographics to align with your target audience.
• Experiment with short-form (TikTok, Reels) and long-form (YouTube) content.
• Repurpose your videos to fit multiple platforms efficiently.

3. Create Compelling Content

Nobody has time for boring content. If you want your videos to work, they’ve got to be engaging, valuable, and entertaining. Think about what your audience needs and deliver it in a way that’s impossible to ignore. This is the heart of effective video marketing tactics.

I’ve found that storytelling is the ultimate game-changer. People don’t just want information; they want to feel something. Use your videos to connect on an emotional level, and you’ll keep them coming back for more.

• Hook your audience in the first 5 seconds—attention spans are short.
• Use visuals, animations, and storytelling to keep them engaged.
• Always leave viewers with a clear takeaway or action step.

4. Optimize for Search Engines

Creating a killer video is great, but it won’t do much if no one sees it. That’s where optimization comes in. Using video marketing tactics like SEO ensures your content gets in front of the right people. Think titles, descriptions, tags, and even closed captions.

Here’s a quick win: include your focus keywords in your video script, then add transcripts to make your content more accessible (and search-friendly).

• Use keyword research tools like TubeBuddy or VidIQ for inspiration.
• Add timestamps to help viewers and improve your SEO ranking.
• Optimize thumbnails to increase click-through rates.

5. Use Calls to Action (CTAs)

If you’re not telling people what to do next, you’re leaving money on the table. Every video you create should include a clear and compelling CTA. Whether it’s subscribing, visiting your website, or signing up for a freebie, CTAs guide your audience to the next step.

Don’t overcomplicate it—just be direct and make it easy for them to act. When you include CTAs, you turn passive viewers into active participants in your brand’s journey.

• Add CTAs at the beginning, middle, and end of your videos.
• Use clickable buttons or on-screen prompts for extra clarity.
• Test different CTAs to see which drives the best results.

6. Leverage Influencers

Let’s face it: people trust people more than they trust brands. Partnering with influencers is one of the most effective video marketing tactics out there. These collaborations let you tap into an engaged audience that already trusts the creator.

But here’s the key: choose influencers whose values and style align with your brand. Authenticity always wins.

• Research influencers in your niche and evaluate their audience engagement.
• Co-create content that feels genuine and not overly promotional.
• Track campaign performance to ensure it’s worth the investment.

7. Experiment with Live Video

There’s something raw and real about live video that pre-recorded content just can’t replicate. Whether you’re hosting a Q&A, announcing a launch, or giving a behind-the-scenes tour, live video lets you connect in real-time.

The beauty of live video is that it doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, the unscripted moments are often the most memorable.

• Schedule live sessions in advance and promote them to your audience.
• Engage with viewers by responding to comments and questions.
• Save and repurpose your live streams for future use.

8. Repurpose Your Content

You worked hard on that video—don’t let it sit idle. Repurposing is one of the best video marketing tactics to get more mileage from your content. Think of it like this: one video can become a dozen pieces of content across various platforms.

Not only does this save you time, but it also helps you reach different audience segments.

• Turn long-form videos into short clips for social media.
• Extract key insights to create blog posts or email content.
• Use video stills to design graphics or quote cards.

9. Analyze Your Results

Here’s the thing: if you’re not tracking your results, you’re guessing. Use analytics to measure how your video marketing tactics are performing. Look at metrics like watch time, click-through rates, and conversions to understand what’s working.

Once you have the data, use it to refine your strategy. It’s all about continuous improvement.

• Monitor metrics on platforms like YouTube Studio or Facebook Insights.
• Set clear goals for each video and measure against them.
• Use feedback to improve future content.

10. Keep Learning and Evolving

The world of video marketing doesn’t stand still—and neither should you. Staying ahead means constantly experimenting with new video marketing tactics, tools, and trends. Every piece of content you create is a chance to learn and grow.

The key is to stay curious. The more you adapt, the more your brand will thrive.

• Follow industry blogs and experts to stay informed.
• Test new formats like interactive videos or AR content.
• Invest in your skills with courses or workshops.

Final Thoughts

Video marketing is about more than just creating content it’s about building connections and driving results. These video marketing tactics are your roadmap to more engagement, better brand visibility, and stronger sales. Ready to take your video strategy to the next level? Let’s make it happen.

The post 10 Must-Try Video Marketing Tactics for Explosive Growth: Boost Your Engagement and Sales with These Proven Strategies! appeared first on Done For You.

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach potential customers and promote your business. With a well-planned email marketing strategy, you can build strong relationships with your audience, increase brand awareness, and boost sales.

In this blog post, we’ll share 10 killer email marketing strategies to help you take your business to the next level. We’ve got you covered, from crafting compelling subject lines to segmenting your audience!

1. Craft Compelling Subject Lines

The subject line is the first thing your subscribers see when they receive your email. It can make or break your email marketing campaign. A compelling subject line should be short, sweet, and concise. It should grab your reader’s attention and entice them to open your email.

Here are some tips for crafting compelling subject lines:

• Use numbers and statistics
• Ask a question
• Use humor
• Create a sense of urgency
• Personalize the subject line

2. Segment Your Audience

Segmenting your audience means dividing your subscribers into smaller groups based on their interests, behavior, and demographics. By segmenting your audience, you can send targeted emails more relevant to their interests.

Here are some ways to segment your audience:

• By location
• By behavior (e.g., opened/clicked on previous emails)
• By interests
• By demographics (e.g., age, gender)

3. Personalize Your Emails

Personalized emails can help you build stronger relationships with your subscribers. Adding the subscriber’s name and other personal details to the email can make them feel valued and appreciated.

Here are some ways to personalize your emails:

• Use the subscriber’s name
• Mention their previous purchases or interests
• Send birthday or anniversary emails
• Use dynamic content to show different products based on their behavior

4. Use Visuals

Visuals can make your emails more engaging and memorable. They can help you convey your message more effectively and make your emails stand out.

Here are some ways to use visuals in your emails:

• Add images or videos
• Use infographics to showcase statistics
• Use GIFs to add a touch of humor

5. Make Your Emails Mobile-Friendly

More than half of all emails are opened on mobile devices. If your emails are not optimized for mobile, you could miss out on potential customers.

Here are some tips for making your emails mobile-friendly:

• Use a responsive email template
• Keep your subject lines short
• Use a single-column layout
• Use large font sizes
• Add a clear call to action

6. A/B Test Your Emails

A/B testing involves sending two versions of your email to a small group of subscribers and measuring which one performs better. By A/B testing your emails, you can optimize your email marketing strategy and improve your conversion rates.

Here are some elements you can A/B test:

• Subject lines
• Call-to-action buttons
• Images
• Layout
• Personalization

7. Provide Value

Your subscribers receive dozens of emails every day. To stand out from the crowd, you need to provide value in every email you send. Your emails should offer something useful or interesting to your subscribers.

Here are some ways to provide value in your emails:

• Share industry insights or news
• Offer exclusive discounts or promotions
• Provide helpful tips or tutorials
• Send personalized recommendations based on their behavior

8. Use Social Proof

Social proof is a powerful tool that can help you build trust with your subscribers. By showing that other people trust and use your products or services, you can convince your subscribers to do the same.

Here are some ways to use social proof in your emails:

• Add customer reviews or testimonials
• Show social media shares or likes
• Mention awards or recognitions your business has received

9. Keep Your Emails Simple

Your emails should be easy to read and understand. They should have a clear message and a single call to action. If your emails are too complex or confusing, subscribers may lose interest or unsubscribe.

Here are some tips for keeping your emails simple:

• Use short paragraphs and sentences
• Use bullet points to highlight key information
• Avoid using jargon or technical terms
• Use a clear and concise call-to-action

10. Measure Your Results

Measuring your email marketing results is crucial to improving your strategy and achieving your goals. You can identify what works and what doesn’t by tracking your open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.

Here are some metrics you should track:

• Open rates
• Click-through rates
• Conversion rates
• Bounce rates
• Unsubscribe rates

In conclusion, email marketing can be a powerful tool for boosting your business. Following these 10 killer email marketing strategies, you can create compelling emails that resonate with your audience and drive results. Remember to continuously test, optimize, and measure your results to improve your email marketing strategy.

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The landscape of content marketing is constantly evolving. To stay ahead of the game and remain competitive, it is important to keep an eye on emerging trends and adapt your strategies accordingly. This blog post will explore 10 content marketing trends to watch.

Trend 1: Video Content Continues to Reign Supreme

Video content has been on the rise for years and shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, video content will be estimated to make up 80% of all internet traffic. This means businesses need to prioritize video content in their marketing strategies to stay relevant.

Trend 2: Personalization Becomes the Norm

Consumers expect personalized content that speaks directly to their needs and interests as they become increasingly savvy. Personalization will no longer be a nice-to-have but a must-have. Businesses can create targeted content that resonates with their audience by leveraging data and analytics.

Trend 3: Artificial Intelligence Takes Center Stage

Artificial intelligence (AI) has already made waves in the content marketing world, but it will become even more prevalent. AI will play an increasingly important role in delivering personalized content at scale, from chatbots to customized recommendations.

Trend 4: Interactive Content Captivates Audiences

Interactive content, such as quizzes, polls, and surveys, has increased engagement and driven conversions. We can expect more businesses to leverage interactive content to capture and retain their audiences’ attention.

Trend 5: Voice Search Changes the Game

With the rise of smart speakers and voice assistants, voice search is poised to become a major player in the content marketing landscape. Businesses will need to optimize their content for voice search to remain visible and competitive.

Trend 6: Influencer Marketing Continues to Evolve

Influencer marketing has been around for years, we can expect it to evolve in new and exciting ways. From nano-influencers to virtual influencers, businesses must stay on top of the latest trends in influencer marketing to leverage this strategy effectively.

Trend 7: User-Generated Content Takes Center Stage

User-generated content (UGC) has proven to be a powerful tool for building audience trust and engagement. We can expect more businesses to leverage UGC in their content marketing strategies to create authentic, relatable content.

Trend 8: Augmented Reality Becomes Mainstream

Augmented reality (AR) has already made a splash in industries like gaming and entertainment,  it will become more mainstream in the content marketing world. From virtual try-ons to immersive brand experiences, businesses must embrace AR to stay ahead of the game.

Trend 9: Long-Form Content Makes a Comeback

While short-form content has been the norm for years,  we can expect to see a resurgence in long-form content. From in-depth blog posts to comprehensive guides, businesses will need to prioritize quality over quantity to capture and retain their audiences’ attention.

Trend 10: Sustainability Takes Center Stage

As consumers become increasingly environmentally conscious, sustainability will become a key consideration in content marketing. Businesses prioritizing sustainable practices and messaging will be better positioned to connect with their audiences and build long-term brand loyalty.

In conclusion, by staying on top of emerging trends and adapting your strategies accordingly, you can stay ahead of the game and remain competitive in an ever-changing landscape.

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Social media has become a crucial element in the success of businesses today. With over 3.6 billion people using social media worldwide, it has become a powerful platform to reach and engage with potential customers. However, with so many businesses vying for attention on these platforms, standing out and maximizing your social media reach can take time and effort. 

In this blog post, we will discuss the top 10 tips for effective social media marketing to help you boost your online presence and connect with your target audience.

Tip #1: Define Your Goals and Objectives

Before diving into any social media strategy, defining your goals and objectives is essential. What do you want to achieve with your social media marketing efforts? Is it brand awareness, lead generation, or customer retention? Once you clearly understand your goals, you can create a social media strategy that aligns with them.

Tip #2: Know Your Target Audience

Knowing your target audience is key to creating a successful social media strategy. Who are your ideal customers? What are their interests, pain points, and challenges? By understanding your target audience, you can create content that resonates with them and drives engagement.

Tip #3: Choose the Right Social Media Platforms

Not all social media platforms are created equal. Each platform has its strengths and weaknesses, and choosing the ones that align with your goals and target audience is crucial. For example, if you’re targeting a younger audience, platforms like TikTok and Snapchat may be more effective than LinkedIn.

Tip #4: Create High-Quality Content

Creating high-quality content is essential to stand out on social media. Your content should be visually appealing, informative, and engaging. Use various formats like images, videos, and infographics to keep your audience engaged.

Tip #5: Focus on Consistency

Consistency is key to building a solid social media presence. Establish a posting schedule that aligns with your goals and audience, and stick to it. Consistency helps build trust with your audience and keeps your brand top of mind.

Tip #6: Engage with Your Audience

Social media is a two-way conversation, and engaging with your audience is essential. Respond promptly to comments, messages, and mentions, and show your followers that you value their feedback.

Tip #7: Leverage Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has become a popular tactic for businesses on social media. Partnering with influencers who align with your brand can help you reach a wider audience and build credibility.

Tip #8: Utilize Paid Advertising

Paid advertising can help you reach your target audience more effectively on social media. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram offer various advertising options, including targeted ads, sponsored posts, and promoted stories.

Tip #9: Monitor Your Metrics

Monitoring your social media metrics is crucial to understanding what’s working and what’s not. Track metrics like engagement, reach, and conversions, and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Tip #10: Stay Up-to-Date with Trends and Best Practices

Social media is constantly evolving, and staying up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices is essential. Attend industry events, follow thought leaders, and invest in ongoing education to keep your social media strategy fresh and effective.

In conclusion, social media marketing can be a powerful tool for businesses when executed effectively. Following these top 10 tips can maximize your social media reach and connect with your target audience. Remember to define your goals, know your audience, create high-quality content, and stay consistent. Engage with your audience, leverage influencers and paid advertising, monitor your metrics, and stay up-to-date with trends and best practices. With these tips, you can take your social media marketing to the next level.

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Digital marketing is constantly evolving, and keeping up with the latest trends and strategies can be challenging. However, staying ahead of the curve is essential to remain competitive in today’s ever-changing business landscape. This blog will explore ten game-changing digital marketing strategies you can’t afford to ignore in 2023 and beyond.

Strategy 1: Personalization

Personalization is the key to creating a unique and memorable customer experience. By leveraging customer data and using AI-powered tools, you can tailor your marketing messages to each customer’s needs and preferences. This approach can help you increase customer engagement and loyalty while boosting conversion rates.

Strategy 2: Voice Search Optimization

As more and more people use voice assistants like Alexa and Google Home, optimizing your content for voice search is becoming increasingly important. This means incorporating conversational keywords and phrases into your content and ensuring your website is mobile-friendly and fast-loading.

Strategy 3: Video Marketing

Video marketing has exploded in popularity in recent years and shows no signs of slowing down. Creating engaging videos showcasing your products or services can capture your audience’s attention and drive more traffic to your website. You can also use video to tell your brand’s story and build a stronger emotional connection with your customers.

Strategy 4: Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a powerful way to reach new audiences and build customer trust. By partnering with influencers in your industry, you can tap into their established networks and leverage their credibility to promote your brand. This approach can help you increase your reach and drive more conversions.

Strategy 5: Chatbots

Chatbots are becoming increasingly sophisticated and can now handle various customer service and marketing tasks. Using chatbots on your website or social media channels can provide instant support to your customers and streamline your marketing processes. This can help you save time and money while improving your customer experience.

Strategy 6: Social Media Stories

Social media stories are short, brief pieces of content that disappear after 24 hours. However, they can be an incredibly effective way to engage your audience and build your brand. Creating compelling stories showcasing your products or services can capture your audience’s attention and drive more traffic to your website.

Strategy 7: User-Generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) is any content created by your customers and shared online. You can increase your brand’s reach and build social proof by encouraging your customers to create and share UGC. This approach can also help you improve your SEO by generating more backlinks to your website.

Strategy 8: Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that overlays digital content onto the real world. By using AR in your marketing campaigns, you can create immersive experiences that engage your audience and showcase your products or services. This approach can help you stand out from your competitors and drive more conversions.

Strategy 9: Micro-Moments

Micro-moments are brief, intent-driven moments when a person reaches for their mobile device to take action on a need or want. Understanding your customers’ micro-moments and tailoring your marketing messages to them can improve your relevance and drive more conversions. This approach requires a deep understanding of your customer’s needs and preferences and the ability to deliver personalized messages in real-time.

Strategy 10: Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly sophisticated and can now be used to automate many marketing tasks. By using AI-powered tools, you can optimize your marketing campaigns, personalize your messages, and improve your ROI. This approach can help you save time and money while delivering more targeted and effective marketing messages.

In conclusion, the digital marketing landscape is constantly evolving, and staying ahead of the curve is essential to remain competitive. By leveraging these ten game-changing digital marketing strategies, you can improve your customer experience, increase your reach, and drive more conversions. However, it’s important to remember that no single strategy will work for every business. You’ll need to experiment, test, and iterate to find the right mix of strategies that work for your unique needs and goals.

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Online advertising has become an essential part of any successful business strategy. With the increasing number of people using the internet, it’s important to know the most effective techniques for online advertising. This blog post will explore ten proven online advertising techniques that can skyrocket your business growth.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). This technique involves optimizing your website’s content, structure, and coding to ensure it’s easy for search engines to crawl and index. By ranking higher in SERPs, you can attract more organic traffic to your website, leading to more leads and sales.

2. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC advertising is a form of online advertising where advertisers pay each time a user clicks on one of their ads. This technique allows businesses to target specific keywords and demographics to reach their ideal audience. By using PPC advertising, businesses can increase their visibility and drive more traffic to their website.

3. Social Media Advertising

Social media advertising is a form of online advertising that involves placing ads on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This technique allows businesses to target specific demographics based on interests, behaviors, and location. By using social media advertising, businesses can increase their brand awareness and engagement with their target audience.

4. Content Marketing

Content marketing creates and shares valuable content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. This technique involves creating blog posts, videos, infographics, and other relevant and informative content for your target audience. By using content marketing, businesses can establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry and attract more organic traffic to their websites.

5. Email Marketing

Email marketing is a form of online marketing that involves sending promotional emails to a list of subscribers. This technique allows businesses to nurture leads and build relationships with their audience. By using email marketing, businesses can increase their sales and customer loyalty.

6. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a form of online advertising that involves partnering with influencers to promote your products or services. This technique allows businesses to reach a larger audience and increase brand awareness. By using influencer marketing, businesses can leverage the credibility and trust influencers have built with their followers.

7. Retargeting

Retargeting is a form of online advertising that targets users who have previously visited your website. This technique involves placing a tracking pixel on your website, which allows you to retarget users with ads as they browse the internet. By using retargeting, businesses can increase their conversion rates and maximize their ROI.

8. Video Advertising

Video advertising is a form of online advertising that involves creating video ads to promote your products or services. This technique allows businesses to engage their audience with visually appealing content. By using video advertising, businesses can increase their brand awareness and drive more traffic to their website.

9. Mobile Advertising

Mobile advertising is a form of online advertising that targets users on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. This technique allows businesses to reach on-the-go users and increase their brand awareness. By using mobile advertising, businesses can optimize their ads for mobile devices and improve their overall user experience.

10. Native Advertising

Native advertising is a form of online advertising that blends in with the content of the website or app it’s displayed on. This technique allows businesses to promote their products or services non-intrusively. By using native advertising, businesses can increase their visibility and improve their user experience.

In conclusion, online advertising is essential to any successful business strategy. By using these ten proven online advertising techniques, businesses can increase their brand awareness, drive more traffic to their website, and ultimately, skyrocket their business growth.

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In today’s fast-paced business world, success often hinges on a company’s ability to provide excellent service to its customers. This is where service marketing comes in – it’s a powerful tool to help businesses differentiate themselves from their competitors and create a loyal customer base.

What is Service Marketing?

Service marketing is the process of promoting and selling services to customers. It’s different from traditional marketing, which focuses on promoting and selling physical products. Service marketing involves creating a positive customer experience by providing high-quality services that meet their needs and exceed their expectations.

The Benefits

Service marketing can provide many benefits for businesses. Here are just a few:

Differentiation

In today’s crowded marketplace, it can be difficult for businesses to stand out. Service marketing can help differentiate a business by providing a unique and personalized customer experience.

Customer Loyalty

Providing excellent service can help create loyal customers who are more likely to return and recommend the business to others. This can lead to increased sales and revenue in the long run.

Competitive Advantage

By providing superior service, businesses can gain a competitive advantage over their competitors. This can lead to increased market share and profitability.

Implementing Service Marketing Strategies

Implementing these strategies requires a comprehensive understanding of the customer’s needs and expectations. Here are a few strategies that businesses can consider:

Personalization

Personalization involves tailoring the service to meet the individual needs of the customer. This can include customized products or services, personalized communication, and individualized attention.

Service Recovery

It is crucial you address and resolve customer complaints and issues promptly and effectively. Doing so can help build customer trust and loyalty, even in the face of negative experiences.

Employee Training

Providing comprehensive training to employees can help ensure they have the skills and knowledge necessary to provide excellent customer service. This can include training in communication, problem-solving, and customer service.

Conclusion

Service marketing can be a powerful tool for businesses to differentiate themselves from their competitors and create a loyal customer base. Businesses can drive success and achieve long-term profitability by focusing on providing excellent service and implementing these effective marketing strategies.

The post Revolutionizing Business: The Power of Service Marketing to Drive Success appeared first on Done For You.

Marketing is an essential aspect of any business, and a well-crafted, effective marketing strategy can be the difference between success and failure. In today’s digital age, numerous marketing channels are available, making it challenging to know which ones to focus on.

A powerful marketing strategy can help you connect with your target audience, boost brand awareness, and ultimately increase revenue. If you want to propel your business to new heights, here are ten tips to help you craft an effective marketing strategy. 

1. Define Your Target Audience

Defining your target audience is the first step in crafting an effective marketing strategy. Who are you trying to reach? What are their needs and pain points? Understanding your target audience will help you create a message that resonates with them and ultimately drives results. 

2. Conduct Market Research

Conducting market research is crucial to understanding your industry and competitors. It will help you identify gaps in the market and opportunities to differentiate your brand. Use surveys, focus groups, and social media listening to gather insights and make informed decisions. Thorough market research will allow you to identify your ideal customer’s demographics, interests, and pain points. You can tailor your marketing messages to resonate with them effectively. 

3. Set Measurable Goals

You can start by setting clear and specific goals for your marketing strategy. Whether you aim to increase website traffic, generate leads, or boost sales, having well-defined objectives will guide your efforts and measure your success.

Setting measurable goals will also help track your progress and determine whether your marketing strategy is effective. Could you make sure your goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART)?

4. Develop a Unique Value Proposition

A unique value proposition (UVP) sets your brand apart. It is a clear statement that communicates the benefits of your product or service and why customers should choose you over others. Could you ensure your UVP is concise, compelling, and easy to understand? Your UVP should address the specific needs and desires of your target audience.

5. Choose the Right Marketing Channels

Choosing the proper marketing channels is essential to reaching your target audience effectively. Please look at the channels your audience is most active on and focus your efforts there. Common marketing channels include social media, email marketing, SEO, PPC, and content marketing.

6. Create Valuable Content

Creating valuable content is an effective way to attract and engage your target audience. Ensure your content is updated with the latest digital trends to remain relevant, informative, and entertaining. Use visuals and storytelling to make your content stand out and leverage social media, content marketing, SEO, and email marketing to reach a broader online audience.

7. Build a Strong Brand Identity

Your brand identity is what makes your brand recognizable and memorable. It includes your logo, color palette, typography, and messaging. Please ensure your brand identity is consistent across all channels and resonates with your target audience.

Building and nurturing relationships with your customers is vital for long-term success. Implement customer relationship management (CRM) systems to track interactions and provide personalized experiences.

8. Leverage Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a powerful way to reach your target audience and build brand awareness. Identify influencers in your industry and collaborate with them to create content and promote your brand. Ensure the influencers you choose align with your brand values and have an engaged following.

9. Measure and Analyze Your Results

Measuring and analyzing your results is essential to determining the effectiveness of your marketing strategy. Use tools like Google Analytics, social media, and email marketing analytics to track your progress and make data-driven decisions. Monitor critical metrics like website traffic, conversion rates, and customer behavior. Use this data to refine your strategy continually.

10. Continuously Improve Your Strategy

Finally, continuously improving your marketing strategy is critical to staying ahead. Be willing to adapt and make necessary changes based on what works and doesn’t. The marketing landscape is dynamic, and flexibility is critical. Use the insights you gather from measuring and analyzing your results to tweak your strategy and optimize your performance continually.

Crafting an effective marketing strategy is an ongoing process that requires dedication and a willingness to evolve. By following these ten tips and staying committed to your system, you’ll be well on your way to achieving significant business growth. Remember that success may not happen overnight, but you can skyrocket your business with persistence and the right approach.

Still, trying to figure out where to start? Click here.

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E-marketing has become essential for businesses looking to connect with their target audience. With the rise of social media and online advertising, it offers a cost-effective and efficient way to maximize your reach and grow your business. 

In this blog post, we will explore the benefits of e-marketing and provide practical tips for businesses looking to harness its power.

What is E-Marketing?

E-marketing, digital marketing, or online marketing, refers to the use of electronic media to promote products or services. This can include email marketing, social media advertising, search engine optimization, content marketing, and more. The primary goal of e-marketing is to reach a targeted audience and drive conversions.

The Benefits of E-Marketing

Increased Reach

One of the primary benefits of e-marketing is its ability to reach a large audience quickly and efficiently. With social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, businesses can connect with potential customers all over the world. E-marketing also allows businesses to target specific demographics, interests, and behaviors, ensuring that their message is delivered to the right people at the right time.

Cost-Effective

Compared to traditional marketing methods like print ads and billboards, e-marketing is much more cost-effective. With social media advertising, for example, businesses can set a budget and only pay when someone clicks on their ad. This means that businesses can maximize their reach while keeping their advertising costs under control.

Measurable Results

Another advantage of e-marketing is that it provides measurable results. With tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Insights, businesses can track their website traffic, ad clicks, and social media engagement. This data can be used to optimize campaigns and make informed decisions about future marketing strategies.

Tips for Maximizing Your E-Marketing Reach

Define Your Target Audience

To maximize your e-marketing reach, it’s essential to define your target audience. Who are your ideal customers? What are their interests, behaviors, and pain points? By understanding your audience, you can create content and advertising that resonates with them and drives conversions.

Use Multiple Channels

To reach the widest possible audience, it’s important to use multiple marketing channels. This could include email marketing, social media advertising, content marketing, and search engine optimization. By diversifying your marketing efforts, you can maximize your reach and connect with potential customers wherever they are.

Create Compelling Content

Compelling content is the key to successful marketing. Whether it’s a blog post, social media ad, or email newsletter, your content should be engaging, informative, and relevant to your target audience. Consider using images, videos, and infographics to make your content more visually appealing and shareable.

Test and Optimize

Finally, it’s important to test and optimize your e-marketing campaigns. Use A/B testing to try out different headlines, images, and calls to action, and track the results to see what works best. Use the data you collect to optimize your campaigns and make informed decisions about future marketing strategies.

Overall, marketing offers a powerful way for businesses to connect with their target audience and drive conversions. By defining your target audience, using multiple channels, creating compelling content, and testing and optimizing your campaigns, you can maximize your e-marketing reach and grow your business.

Click here to see how we can help your business!

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Customer segmentation analysis is a powerful tool that enables businesses to unlock growth potential by identifying unique customer groups with specific needs and preferences. Understanding your customers is a critical element in maintaining a competitive edge.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the benefits of customer segmentation analysis and how it can help businesses thrive.

Understanding Customer Segmentation Analysis

Customer Segmentation Analysis divides customers into distinct groups based on shared characteristics such as demographics, behavior, and needs. By segmenting customers, businesses can fine-tune their marketing strategies and offerings to meet the unique needs of each group, gain a deeper understanding of customers, and tailor marketing, product development, and customer service efforts to meet the individual needs of each segment, thus increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Benefits of Customer Analysis

1. Better Understanding of Customer Needs

By segmenting customers, businesses can better understand their needs and preferences. This understanding enables businesses to create targeted marketing campaigns, products, and services that cater to specific customer segments. This approach leads to an increase in customer satisfaction and loyalty, as customers feel seen and heard.

2. Increased Revenue

Customer segmentation analysis can lead to revenue by identifying high-value segments most likely to purchase from the business. Businesses can increase their sales and revenue by targeting these segments with tailored marketing campaigns and offerings sales and revenue.

3. Improved Customer Retention

Customer segmentation analysis can help businesses identify at-risk customers and take proactive measures to retain them. Companies can offer personalized solutions that increase customer satisfaction and loyalty by understanding each customer segment’s unique needs and preferences.

How to Conduct Customer Analysis

1. Identify key customer characteristics, such as demographics, behavior, and needs.
2. Collect data: Collect data on these critical characteristics by conducting surveys, analyzing customer interactions, and using data analytics tools.
3. Analyze the data: Analyze the data to identify patterns and similarities between customer groups.
4. Segment customers: Use the data analysis to segment customers into distinct groups based on shared characteristics.
5. Tailor marketing strategies and offerings: Tailor marketing strategies and offerings to meet the unique needs of each customer segment.

To take your business to the next level, consider investing in Customer Segmentation Analysis. Book an Action Plan Call if you aren’t sure where to start!

The post Demystifying Customer Segmentation Analysis: A Roadmap to Business Growth appeared first on Done For You.

Our Tuesday episodes are going to be automated, or marketing automation episodes.

It’s going to be marketing to your prospects without you having to do the marketing. It’s going to be automated email promotion, it is going to be retargeting kind of stuff.

It is going to be Zapier integrations that let you know that things are happening in your business without you having to touch them or do them. It’s going to be making sure your clients and prospects are consistently receiving marketing information from you. And all that happy stuff. That’s really what the Automation Tuesdays are going to be about. So today I want to talk about what happens after somebody signs up for one of your automated webinars.

Webinar

They sign up for your webinar, find you on Facebook, paid traffic, whatever. After they sign up for a webinar, and then what happens next? So obviously they attend the webinar. They should attend the webinar. Hopefully, they attend the webinar, but what happens? What do they see next? What do they do next? So over here, let me just share this with you. So I went through and diagrammed the structure of what this ends up looking like. On automated webinar automation, it’s pretty straightforward. You have your webinar registration page. This page is the thing that gets somebody to sign up for your webinar. Then, they sign up, they go into your webinar room, they get your webinar replay, whatever. They consume the webinar.

Sometimes that is in go to the webinar, sometimes that is in a zoom meeting format. How we like it lately is to be an on-demand webinar that just plays on a page whenever the page loads, so that way somebody is not wasting time. They are immediately signing up for the on-demand presentation. They are receiving, they are viewing that presentation. And then at the end of that presentation, we’re making a call to action. From there they go to a call to action page, it’s a sales page or a bridge page, or something that recaps the offer, and those have been working well for us. And then from there, they go to the order form. So this is a four-page automated webinar set up. Easy, really straightforward. You’ve seen it a million times and you’ve gone through it a million times.

1. Webinar Replay Automated Email Promotion

The revolutionary part is what happens after they sign up for the webinar and attend the webinar. So the first thing is, I used to always think that people normally just kind of got a replay automated email promotion, and then that was it. So this was like eight years ago when webinars started getting more popular. I went to this event in San Diego, by a guy named Trey Smith, I think at the time he was doing an app kind of launch, how to make your software, how to build your game apps, like that kind of thing. He was talking about this extended replay sequence that he would mail out to all of his people who signed up for a webinar. It was like an 11 or 12-day replay sequence, where they were getting sometimes four emails in a day. Just absolutely craziness.

We tested a bunch of different things and that’s nuts. Especially if it isn’t a live launch and there wasn’t a lot of hype around a product. Like the hype keeps them engaged. But if it’s not a live launch, then what we were doing was we would do a six-day webinar replay sequence. They wanted day two … and, if you want to download this, we have done for you .com and then the top navbar right there, automated webinar playbook, this automated webinar playbook goes through what I’m about to tell you right here. This webinar automated email promotion sequence is six days long, the first two days are promoting the webinar replay. What we do is we want to send traffic back to that webinar room. And then day three, we promote to the webinar room and also the call to action.

On day three, we’re promoting the webinar room, plus the call to action page. Then days four, five, and six, we’re promoting just the contacts and we don’t talk about the webinar replay anymore. That is the six-day email sequence.

2. Multi-Pay Email Sequence

Now, most people leave it at that. If you were selling a product that is around a thousand dollars or above, then we usually like to add another element to this thing which is a multi-pay email sequence. The multi-pay email sequence is where you break that bigger payment down into two, three, or four payments that are where, so it was the first time they hear about this multi-pay email sequence or the multi-pay offer. You don’t talk about it on the webinar. We kind of use it as a down-sell. So then we send a three email sequence that talks about the multi-pay option.

3. Buyer Sequence

So day nine, 10, and 11. Then they either take you up on that, in which case they’re then put into your buyer sequence. If they don’t, then they go to the next option. The next option being more free previews. So basically you’re giving some of your best content away. And you’re just building up that goodwill again, because this person, they hit your webinar registration, they consume your content or at least a portion of it. Then we hit them pretty hard with some buying, sales emails, then we down sold them.

4. Free Preview Sequence

Now it’s time to reinvest, to put some goodwill back in that tank so that you can continue educating, continue bonding, continue providing content and value, and making a transformation in their life. That ends up being like a 12-day free preview sequence. That is maybe four videos, five videos. It can be two, three minutes snippets of your course or content. Below each of those videos, you’re going to have a link to then go purchase the full course.

5. Flash Sale Email Sequence

If they still don’t buy, then what you do is you send them into a flash sale. The flash sale email sequence is typically three days, days 30, 31, and 32. And this sequence is very hard-hitting, it’s also very cheap. So we try to take like 50% off the purchase price away from this original offer, but we want to also remove something from it. So that something can be a live call, it can be a coaching call. It can be a membership to a Facebook group, then maybe they can opt into it at a later time. We want to like to reduce the commitment of the offer to only be something that is fulfilled digitally, usually.

Doesn’t necessarily take a whole lot of time. And we also want to strip a lot of the costs away from it too. So that is going to be your flash sale sequence that is sent out day 30 through 32. Now, being that this is a 32-day long sequence from beginning to end, what I have found is that sometimes your message can be diluted. And what I mean by that is when you’re mailing. So you should be mailing your list three, four times a week. That’s just what you should be doing. If you’re emailing your list and people are also going through this automated 32-day long sequence, they’re going to be getting mixed messages. They’re going to get an email that is like a broadcast from you, as well as an automated email promotion.

Separating Your List for Email Promotion

Like, let’s say they get this multi-day email on day nine. And then later in the day, they get an email to your blog posts. And the blog post is talking about something different. But you don’t want to throw your prospects off track. So what I like to do, is I like to apply a tag to all of the people who were in this 32-day process, all the people have a tag that is in process. And what that means is that when you send a broadcast out to your list, you exclude everybody who is in process. If they are in process, if they are in this sequence, they do not receive your broadcast emails. All they do is just get your emails that are specifically about this automated email promotion. And they continue getting this promotion until they buy, or until they exit.

At that point, they are put back into your general broadcast cycle. And then when they buy or when they exit, that tag gets removed. So we remove the in-process tag and they are put back into like the general population. So in this way, what we’re doing is we’re making it easy for prospects who sign up for a webinar to get all of the emails about the webinar before they get anything else that might steal their focus away onto something different.

We want to keep all the automated email promotion all nice and chunked so that all they’re hearing about is what was on the webinar, what was pitched in the webinar, different ways to buy that thing in the webinar, different videos, and free preview kind of stuff of what is in the course that we wanted them to buy on the webinar. And then ultimately to end up with a great deal on that course, minus maybe some live components or whatever in the flash sale. So that is a typical automation cycle for an automated webinar. And kind of created graphically, I guess.

For Questions and Guide

If you have any questions at all, go ahead and just drop them in the comments here. I’ll make sure to answer throughout the day. And then also, if you would like to talk about traffic funnels, anything like that, just go to doneforyou.com/start, and I will talk to you soon. All right. Thanks.

The post Planning Out 30 Days Worth Of Automated Email Promotion appeared first on Done For You.

Content marketing isn’t just about creating content and publishing it on different social media platforms, but the most crucial part begins just after that – measuring and analyzing its success.

Although it is important to evaluate your content marketing activity, only 8% of marketers consider themselves ‘good enough’ at finding the right way to analyze and measure their content marketing success. If you’ve been finding it hard to track results, you desperately need to find a way to measure the impact of your efforts. Before we delve straight into it, let’s get our basics straight.

What is content marketing?

According to the Content Marketing Institute, “Content Marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

If you read the definition again, you would realize that the main purpose of content marketing is to get more conversions. Having a specific process does help you to achieve that.

Here are some basic content marketing metrics that will give you a starting point and an overview to form and analyze your strategy in the right way:

1. Unique visits (website traffic)

One of the easiest and most basic ways to analyze your content is to track the number of visitors that viewed the content on your website within a specific time frame. The major part of measurement should revolve around website analytics because your content is web-based.

Having an analytics solution like Statly is a great way to keep track of website traffic, understand the game of keywords, crawl rate, bounce rate, and more. Collecting this information could be game-changing for you and ultimately, improve conversions in a big way.

However, if you’re using Google Analytics, here’s what you need to know:

To measure unique visitors in Google Analytics, click on Audience in the top left and then click on Overview. You will get a graph indicating the number of times a unique visitor has visited a site over the last 30 days.

Analyzing this information could be game-changing for you and it could, ultimately, improve conversions massively.

2. Social media metrics

The content you share on various social media handles could often reveal your true standing in the market in the form of likes, comments, shares, and an increase in followers.

Likes and comments: The number of likes and comments directly reflect if the content resonates and can evoke a reaction or not.

Shares: The high number of shares means the audience finds the content relatable and valuable.

Follower growth: The rise in the number of followers over a specific period of time is indicative of whether your brand is headed in the right direction or not. LinkedIn, Facebook, the Instagram following are some great platforms to check the total rise in your followers.

You don’t have to take the pain to find the analytics as there are plenty of tools like HootSuite that help track shares and scheduling posts.

For instance, in Hootsuite, you get to see real-time results, insights into trends that can help you measure the impact of your content across various platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Apart from HootSuite, some other popular tools which you can use are Klout, Quintly, and SproutSocial to name the major ones.

3. Email and newsletter metrics

Email is used worldwide and according to Radicati’s Email statistics reports, emails will be used by more than 3 billion people by 2020. While there are many benefits of using email marketing, the one that is surely going to keep you in the business is the fact that email’s return on investment is massive.

With email metrics such as:

• the number of opened emails
• email click-throughs
• conversions 
• bounce rate
• overall ROI,

you can easily gauge if your product can strike a chord with prospects or not.

Here is a look at how to calculate each of them.

To calculate the click-through rate:

(Total clicks / Number of delivered emails) * 100

To calculate the conversion rate:

(Number of people who completed the desired action ÷ Number of total emails delivered) * 100

To calculate bounce rate:

(Total number of bounced emails ÷ Number of emails sent) * 100

To calculate the overall ROI:

[($ in additional sales made minus $ invested in the campaign) ÷ $ invested in the campaign] * 100

It is worth mentioning here that the statistics you need to track to measure your email marketing success may vary based on what you are trying to achieve with your content. Therefore the list mentioned here is not strictly exclusive of these metrics.

These metrics give you an overall idea of whether the efforts you are putting are going in the right direction or not? Based on the results you can either plan to change the entire strategy or make amends in the existing one and crack the code of successful content marketing.

4. Lead generation

The ultimate aim and top organizational goals for content marketers are generating leads. Needless to say, one should definitely track these metrics and observe how they can be incorporated into your strategy. Don’t just stick to blogging – explore other avenues, like that of ebooks, which could massively boost your leads. 

Using content for lead generation is one of the oldest and most dependable methods. However, to measure the success of your content marketing lead generation campaign, make yourself well-aware with lead generation metrics such as:

Click-through rate (CTR)

(Total number of clicks / Total number of visitors) X 100

Conversion time

Total time spent by all visitors / total number of leads

ROI

But before you do that you need to be well versed with the basic lead generation funnel. Here’s a pictorial representation that might help you understand it better:

Source: Singlegrain.com

Lead scoring is the best way to identify high-quality leads which is a process of ranking and identification of leads in terms of their chances to convert into sales.

Apart from these basic metrics, it is always a smart idea to keep a check on the cost you are spending on the campaigns. Hence you must also track metrics such as Cost-per-click (CPC), Cost per lead, etc.

The most important reason behind keeping track of the metrics is well explained in these words by Peter Drucker, “If you can track and measure something, you can also manage and improve it.”

5. SEO metrics

If you see a considerable rise in page visits, website rankings, and conversions, then SEO had a big role to play. Knowledge of the right keywords and advising writers on how and where to use them in the content and title are some surefire ways to increase traffic and generate increased click-throughs from search results.

Here are the basic elements of a successful SEO strategy:

Keywords: To target what people are searching for when discovering their business in a search engine. Google Keyword Planner is a great tool that can help you in this.

Meta tags: To help Google look at your page title as a signal of relevance.

Content: Creating quality content is the best way to create a great user experience and Google agrees to it. when it comes to creating and curating the most impactful content on the web, Curtely is a tool that can be of great help.

Backlinks: If the content is the king, backlinks are the queen, and quality matters a lot here.

Social media: To send signals of authority to the search engines.

It is essential to leverage the importance of SEO and incorporate the elements mentioned here with content that is crisp, out-of-the-box, engaging, and actionable.

To help you perform the analysis of your SEO strategies better, there are tools such as BuzzSumo and SEMRush that are very useful to discover the most shared content and relevant keywords in just a few seconds. You can use them to good effect and see how they can be game-changers.

6. Subscribers

Your subscription-list could be a direct indicator of the value and impact you leave on your audience. After all, you haven’t made your business blog only to get a huge list of followers, right?

Having a large and loyal fan-base is an effective way to get more views, reads, and visits on your blog. The larger the list of subscribers, the more chances of getting them converted. If the number of subscribers is nose-diving or becoming stagnant, it could be a hint to produce more engaging content to get more traffic, which would further become your subscribers.

What are the metrics that matter to you the most?

The most successful content marketing strategies are those that smartly tick off most of the above methods to track and analyze results. It is advisable to make use of capable social media tools to gain more insights and get more leads.

What are your key content marketing metrics for measuring content marketing success? Are there any other ways or metrics that you would like included on the list?

How to measure content marketing success?

For our GSDdaily today, we are going to be talking about how to measure content marketing success.

TOPICS:

1. how to measure content marketing success results
2. measuring performance
3. how to create content
4. how to do keyword research
5. what kind of content to create
6. how to split test subject lines for your blog posts
7. all kinds of different how to measure content marketing success related things.

At the end of the day, that is really what is going to drive the success of your business, the success of how well that content is going to perform. We’ve talked about advertorials, we’ve talked about a lot of different stuff.

Today we’re just going to dig into the stats side, the numbers side of content, so that you can start to take a look at how to know if what you’re doing is actually working, which is difficult to tell sometimes because you put a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of money into creating content, and we kick this whole thing off with the idea that there’s no free traffic. You are either going to pay for traffic in time or money. If you want quick traffic, then the quickest way to do it is to pay for traffic in money, is to do Facebook ads or Google ads or any of those other things.

If you are okay investing time and knowing that it’s going to take a little bit longer to get results, then you can absolutely write content, have content written for you that then ends up ranking on Google, or ends up bonding with your clients, or you end up being able to use it as advertorial content, that kind of thing. At the end of the day, it’s really just about figuring out what people want to read, what people want to learn about, what people are coming to you for in terms of problems, and then putting content together that is posed as solutions for those things. That’s really going to be what ends up moving the needle for your business. Now, we have a blog post that we’re going to cover today.

We’re also going to go through some stats and some of the stuff that I look for our content, for our business. So here is the link. Let me just share this inside the comments section here. This is going to be the post, that’s every morning post, there we go. That’s the post that we’re going to start riffing on today. Then let me just share this screen here real quick. You should be able to see that now.

1. Unique Website Visitors Metrics

Probably the biggest number one driver that your content marketing is working is going to be unique visitors. How many unique visitors is your content serving up for your business? How many people are coming into your, or hitting your website, or reading your content from a unique user standpoint? That is one person, one set of eyeballs that come to your website within one month. How many users, how many individual people are you bringing in?

That is metric number one. But oftentimes it doesn’t really start there. One of the things that we track a lot is impressions, SEO impressions, organic impressions. And the reason we track that so much really is because before you get a sale, you got to get somebody to opt-in, or you got to get them to raise their hand and say, yes, I have a problem. Content is the same thing. Before you get a unique visitor, you have to get ranked in the search engines and it will guide you on how to measure content marketing success.

You are not going to write a piece of content and then, well not anymore, and then two days later you’re going to get ranked on the first page of Google and get a flock of traffic. It is a gradual process. You are going to write a piece of content and then it’s going to rank on the fifth page of Google. Then you need to be aware that it ranks on the fifth page of Google so that you can then optimize the content so that it ranks to the third page and the second page and the first page of Google. That is when you start getting traffic.

But you have to be aware that it’s ranking before you can start optimizing for it. Do you know what I mean? It all follows this kind of content optimization process. Now, you might get lucky. You might write a blog post, put a video out, do a podcast, or whatever, and it’s just a freaking barn burner and it gets shared. The likelihood of that is, you’re probably better off being struck by lightning before that actually happens. So you can take the analytic and procedural approach and watch rankings, watch traffic, see where your opportunities are and then influence those opportunities. But unique visitors is the primary number one metric before you can start digging into everything else.

2. Social Media Metrics

There are social media metrics too, page likes, shares. We don’t do a lot with social media marketing, with social media virality. Of course, building an audience is building an audience. But like I said, posting a piece of content and then having it be awesome is a rare occurrence. But you can use a tool like Hootsuite, which we use Hootsuite for our social media posts. We don’t have great engagement with our staff. But for us, it’s more about being present and being on, being seen in the social media spheres and then we augment that through paid traffic.

3. Email and Newsletter Metrics

There’s also email and newsletter metrics. If somebody is coming in because of your content, they are opting in for your reports, buying your products, all of that kind of stuff. Then, of course, there are metrics there. So you’re looking at new leads, you’re looking at sales, you’re looking at the number of opened emails or the email click-throughs, the bounce rate of the pages. Basically, overall like ROI, return on ad spend kind of stuff. Then there are some useful little nuggets here, little equations to help you calculate that stuff.

4. Lead Generation Metrics

Lead generation is a big one. So much of our content, we try to generate leads from, whether it’s an exit pop or whether it’s a native ad or something like that. But generating the ROI from the content is… The content itself doesn’t generate ROI. Content frames the sales piece that generates the ROI. Content is always a piece of the funnel, it isn’t the funnel. So you have to just be diligent in understanding that whenever you’re putting your own campaigns together.

5. SEO Metrics

The last one is SEO metrics. We have what pages are you ranked for? What keywords are you ranked for? How many impressions does that particular keyword phrase get? Those are all the big questions when it comes to organics that guides us on how to measure content marketing success. And we’re going to walk through some of the things that I look through in stats. Then we have subscribers, subscribers to your YouTube channel, subscribers, followers, views, time watched is a big one on YouTube. All of that stuff, useful metrics to take a look at. I would say pick three that are important to you.

My personal pick:

1. Users
2. SERP rankings
3. daily leading

My own personal three that I look at all the time and I actually have a little dashboard set up for myself are users – organic users and SERPs. The rankings inside the search engines. Users, SERP rankings, and then the third one is daily leading. How many leads you are signing up for. When those three things are in line, then the business is doing really well. None of them have to do with revenue on the outset, but they’re all correlated in some way. More leads, more search traffic. More search traffic means less money we’re spending on ads to acquire new customers, that’s a good number. The more leads we have, the more people in the email sequences and open up stuff inside sales funnels. Anything we do to drive those metrics makes a lot of sense and will help on how to measure content marketing success.

Now we’re going to kick over to, there are three things that we’re going to dig into. One of them is Google Analytics. Let me just open it up here, analytics. google. We’re going to dig into Google Webmaster Tools, and then we’re also going to dig into SEMrush. All right. We’re going to start with Analytics. I’m just going to walk you through what I look at when I’m digging into Analytics. So we’re going to go here. All right. When I’m looking at Google Analytics… I’m just going to make this big so you can see it here. All right, I don’t know that that’s quite big, but let me widen this out a little bit. Yeah, I think that helps a little bit. Okay.

Google Analytics

When I’m looking at Google Analytics, basically what I’m looking at is, of course, we have us, this is users within a week. What I tend to dig down into is I’m looking at acquisition and then I’m looking at search console and I’m looking at mostly queries. What I want to know when I’m looking at queries is what are we ranking for, where is our traffic coming from and how to measure content marketing success? Where is our opportunity? When we’re looking at this number here, let me get back here, here we go. So when we’re looking at our query information, then what it’s going to do it right now it’s organized based on clicks.

The number of clicks we received for these particular keyword phrases. Really, really good information, but this isn’t necessarily where I always start. This is good to know. Done For You, we get a lot of traffic for done for your agency, done for your service, done for your marketing agency, webinar creator. But oftentimes, what I do is I sorted a little bit differently. I sorted based on impressions because when I sorted based on impressions, then what I’m seeing is we have 21,000 impressions for keyword phrases and only 229 clicks. So there’s a lot of opportunities there that we can play with.

I’m going to drop this down to a hundred queries here, and we see that one of our biggest opportunities is the keyword phrase business consultant, Done For You showed up and got 763 impressions for the keyword phrase done for you or the keyword phrase business consultant. But we got zero clicks. So where did that happen? Our average position is 74, which means it’s on the eighth page of Google, the eighth page, seventh page. And it’s way deep in Google, but still 763 impressions. Marketing automation agency, 529 impressions. We’re 41 in Google. What is a flash sale? 255 impressions. We got 10, average position tens, we are at the bottom on the front page.

When I’m looking at results, I’m like, okay, where can I exploit some of these things? Can we have a lead magnet blog post about business consulting or how to become a business consultant, which we do? How do I continue growing the traffic with these particular keyword phrases? So this is the question that I’m asking myself. Like Done For You services, 142 visitors. We got 18 clicks and we were in spot three for that. So how do we get to spot two? How did we get to spot one? These are just some of the things that I look at when I’m looking at data and saying, okay, how do we exploit this stuff? How do we get in here and rank for these keyword phrases a little bit better?

Now, you can do the reverse of this. Like if we go in and we’re looking at business consultants, we can go into the pages and say, what are our best, what are our top pages? So it’s going to list all of our top pages and then our impressions, and then we have the number of clicks.

Here we see that the top 15 fastest ways to increase online sales have got 967 impressions, but yet it only got three clicks. Why is that? And the click-through rate is 0.31. Our average position is spot 44, which means it’s on the fifth page of Google. We, of course, can click here or we can go visit the page. So let’s go visit the page. We’re just going to take a look at it. Actually, it opens in another window, which you cannot see. So let me just copy this. Here you go. This is the other window.

This is the blog post. There was a podcast episode 17. So this video is quite old. I made that video last year sometime. When you have a lot of content, this is one of those things that happens. Some shit gets old. Here, we have a podcast, we have some stuff, whatever. But from a blog standpoint, there’s an opportunity there. Top 15 fastest way to increase online sales, we got 967 impressions. So let’s click this URL. When we click this URL, what it’s going to do is it’s going to give us the search queries that we’re ranking for. So these, it looks like 86 keyword phrases. If you look way down here, this is the first 10 of 86 keyword phrases.

What we’re going to do is we’re going to expand this to a hundred and then we’re going to run a similar little thing. To increase online sales, that particular keyword phrase, we are spot 41 and there were 168 impressions, but zero clicks. Now, how to increase online sales, 50 impressions, spot 32? Boost website sales, 39 impressions, spot 31. Basically, what I’m doing is if I can rank for any one of these keyword phrases on the blog post that is already there, if I can push the phrases up so I’m ranking in on the first page, second page, third page, whatever, then I’m able to increase my traffic without having to do a whole lot of work. So I’m seeing how I can generate more free traffic for these particular keyword phrases to a blog post.

These are just all things that I look for in quantifying how to measure content marketing success. This is just one little area, we can dig in. We’ve done some dailies on content optimization. It’s probably going to take a little bit longer to put together a content optimization. Maybe I’ll do a content optimization week at some point. So these are just some of the stuff that we look at.

Google Webmaster Tools

Now, Google Webmaster Tools, actually, this search console tool, this is what we’re looking at inside here. This gives you some good, solid analytic data. I tend to find some different opportunities if I go look at the same type of data, but from the inside, let’s see, I have too many accounts. This tool will help on how to measure content marketing success

So here inside the search console, we see different kinds of stats. So if we go to a performance, then what we can do is we can open up. We have in the last, so we’ve got 7,000 total clicks, 361,000 total impressions. Then we have our average position site-wide, it’s spot 42. Then we have our keyword phrases down below. We have all of our ones and we can resort from impressions. Now, notice how this gives us a little bit of different information. So when we did this over inside Google Analytics, the business consultants came up first and the number was smaller. Then a marketing automation agency came up below that. But marketing automation agency, it’s huge, it would be a huge win for Done For You to rank for. That’s what we’re trying to rank for.

Now, if we click on a marketing automation agency, it is then going to show us, it’s just going to single it out. Then what we can do is if we add, if we just hit pages then, so we have pages, Oh, I’m sorry, we got queries. That’s it. We have a marketing automation agency. Here, there’s a way that we can see. Yeah, there we go. This is the page that we can optimize for marketing automation agencies. Now let’s pull this back and if we can go into queries, or here, let’s do this. We’re going to look at doneforyou.com and see all the keyword phrases that we’re ranked for the homepage. So we’re just looking at Done For You, we got 27,000 total impressions, 2,100 total clicks.

If we look at queries, you will see that we’re ranking for 211 keyword phrases in total on the homepage. Done for you, done for your services, done for you, do for your agency, blah, blah, blah. Then all the keyword phrases were ranked in the top 10 pages of Google.

SEMrush

Some of them are like 10 and then other ones are like, there’s a spot 75. Sales funnel development agency, we are spot 75 in Google. So anyone of these is great opportunities to rank for too. Of course, just tracking all of it tends to be one of the challenges, which is why there’s a tool called SEMrush, which makes it somewhat easy. Maybe not totally, totally easy, but easy enough. So we’re going to log into SEMrush. If I can remember my password here, I usually do this on my other computer. Here we go.

All right. Here, we have Done For You, and this is our main dashboard. Let’s see, we’re going to do position tracking here. What position tracking is going to do is going to tell us all of our position tracking in time. So our landscape is, over the last, we ended up getting a pretty good bump in position. If we go into overview here, we’re going to see how our visibility has changed. And some of it is due to just algorithm updates, they always do an algorithm update checker, but here we have Done For You. Position one on July 16th, position one on July 22nd. Then we have a self-hosted landing page builder. We were spot 35 and now we’re spot 32. For the promotion of our affiliate products, we were spot 99, but we fell out of the top 100.

There are lots of ways to track the keyword phrases here. SEMrush tends to be one of the best ones that we have found. You can also do a lot of paid traffic stuff and competitive intelligence. Whenever we are trying to put together with intelligence reports for competitors, like for our paid traffic clients, we’ll jump into SEMrush and see how much traffic their competitors are spending. If we can find some competitors that we maybe didn’t know existed for that ad spend or for their Google ads or if somebody is ranking for a particular keyword phrase, or when we’re looking at doing a site audit or investment or whatever, we’ll come in here and see how much traffic their website is really getting. Before we have to do a deep dive into their analytics, we can get a good idea of what we’re seeing just through SEMrush.

There’s a lot of different ways you can cut up this tool, but bringing the whole thing back around, tracking metrics and tracking for your content marketing and for your search results and your organic views and all that stuff. It’s really just spending 10, 15, 20 minutes a day looking at your traffic, seeing what you can do to better it, taking action on that and implementing those changes, and then moving forward the next day. It sounds easy and it is easy, but it just takes a little bit of time. You just have to be diligent, write content, and track it. Also, you have to know what you’re looking at and optimize it. The only way to get good at it is really to do it. Just do it, get some experience in it, track it, see what influences your rankings, and go from there.

For Questions and Guide

If you have any questions at all, any thoughts, just go to doneforyou.com/start, fill out the little application. We can jump on a call and we can go through and look at your content. Look at your traffic stats. We can go through, do a marketing audit, put together an action plan for your sales funnels or your paid traffic strategies, whatever, make sure you got the right sales funnel in place. If you have any questions, if you just hit Done For You, just go to the Done For You main page, in the lower right-hand corner, there’s a little chatbox. You can go in, you can search from the dropdown. You can ask the question here, it’s going to get routed to our team. If there’s anything we can do, just let us know. Doneforyou.com, and have a fantastic weekend.

Next week, I’m not real sure what we’re going to talk about yet. It’s episode 96. Next week is episode 96 to 100. And then the week after, is that it’s going to be episode 101 when you’re going to be, it’s switching things up. We’re still going to do dailies, but we’re going to do them in different categories. I’m not real sure how it’s going to look yet. It’s going to be like just create, just the automation, scale and expand. I’m not sure if we’re going to do it weekly. If we’re going to do them weekly, we’re going to put them into their own podcast channels. I’m not sure yet, but we’re still going to do them daily. So we’ll still have those.

The post Measuring Content Marketing Success Of Your Business appeared first on Done For You.

“Content is the king.”

“It is the most important thing for business marketing today.”

“You cannot succeed in the game of marketing unless you leverage the power of content.”

All these have become more of a cliché than anything else today.

Yes, content is important for marketing. But is it enough to create world-class content?

No, certainly not. No matter how good and effective the content is, it is of no use unless spread on the right channels to boost user engagement.

Unfortunately, this is where the majority of content marketers miss the boat.

In this post, we are going to share some of the easiest content marketing tactics that will help you boost audience engagement and leverage the power of your content in the most effective manner.

So, let us take a look…

The concept of buyer personas

When writing content, you need to remember the fundamental principle – you are writing for a specific someone.

Who is this someone? Is it a teenager? A corporate officer? A middle-aged man? What are his or her preferences?

You need to build a buyer persona and then create a killer content copy based on that persona.

Unless you know the person with whom you are trying to engage, how can you draft copy that will entice him or her?

This is the reason that understating the concept of buyer personas has become the need of the hour to boost user engagement.

Some of the important factors to consider when developing buyer personas:

• Demography
• Age
• Gender
• Qualification
• Area of work
• Relationship status

Writing genuine content

There is a difference between writing content and writing content to engage your audience.

You might be wondering what this difference is. Well, the difference lies in whether you have a genuine interest in what you’re writing about.

Remember, your community will come to you searching for the solution to their problems. It is up to you to create valuable content that provides a solution.

Here are some of the factors that contribute to creating something that we like to call genuine content:

• Should solve the reader’s problem
• It Will help them get more value from your product/service
• Could cheer them up, encourage or inspire them

You must focus on creating content that is able to entice the users and supplement their needs.

Are you looking for the right marketing advice? Want to become a pro at online marketing? Want to learn the art of smart content marketing? If that’s the case, you need to take a look at this tool.

Don’t look for attention – grab it!

There are two ways to grab people’s attention: write something that creates controversy or write something that your audience can easily relate to.

Creating controversy isn’t really a good idea, as you never know when it might backfire. So, the easiest way to grab people’s attention especially with your content is to focus on their most common problems.

What this means is to try to write about subjects that relate to their lives. For instance, targeting the day-to-day problems that a 9 am-5 pm employee has to face.

Now, you might ask: how will my content stand out if there is already so much content on this topic? This is where your creativity comes into play. You need to find that angle which strikes the right emotional chord with your audience.

Keep testing by writing on diverse topics until you find the one alchemy (i.e. niche) that can convert your content into gold!

Remember, if you look for attention people might become part of the herd. But if you create something that grabs their attention, you are surely going to achieve the desired results with your content!

It all begins with a good headline

It is a well-established fact that today’s generation has a relatively shorter attention span than any other generation.

So, you need to create compelling headlines that could entice the users to read the entire content.

For instance, using emotional and actionable words, like “how-to” and “5-steps” always perform better than regular titles.

In a similar way, you can always A-B test different forms of titles and see which one appeals to most of your audience.

After all, there is no point in writing content that people would not read beyond the title. So, why not create something that keeps them hooked from the word go?

Monitor, track and respond

Okay, so we are trying to create content that boosts your audience engagement. But how will you know whether your content has reached that goal?

This is where monitoring performance and keeping track of the response it is getting from the readers becomes crucial.

Using tools such as Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics, Twitter Analytics and more can prove to be a blessing. You can get to know about the reaction your content is garnering from your audience and plan your future content marketing tactics accordingly.

As they say, failing to plan is like planning to fail – you cannot survive in the competition without having a good plan. Monitoring performance could be the first step towards that planning!

Conclusion

All we have to say is that creating content is the initial part of a successful content marketing strategy. You need to amalgamate it with the right distribution tricks in order to get the best results.

If you have been running around in circles looking for tips and advice on how you can create the most enticing content that could skyrocket your audience engagement, then the advice shared in this post can prove to be just the perfect thing.

So, what are you waiting for? Try these content marketing strategies and see how beneficial they turn out for you!

Content Marketing Strategies That Boost Engagement

This week we’ve been talking about content marketing strategies and how content marketing drives sales in your business, regardless of what you sell, whether it’s services, or physical products, or digital products, or e-comm, whatever. You can sell more by putting content out. We talked about some of the benefits of content marketing and some of the history of content marketing and search engine optimization on Monday. Tuesday, I shared some of the tips and tricks that you can use from your content marketing strategies. Yesterday, we talked a lot about content types including advertorials, and I showed some advertorials that we run traffic to, that other media buyers run traffic to, and why advertorials are great from a bridge page standpoint.

Today, we’re going to talk about content marketing strategies that boost engagement. These are just some simple things that you’re going to do inside your blog posts and inside your content that is going to help you get more traffic, number one, and engage with more prospects, number two. Your content is often times it’s the thing that sucks people in. It’s always content in one form or another. It might be a live stream you do, a blog post that you write,t be an advertorial that you send traffic to, and be an ebook or something that people read or a Kindle book or whatever. It’s always a piece of content.

In the absence of having them learning about you and you being up on stage, or you being out at a networking group; in the absence of you, there is content, and that is the thing that sells people into whatever it is you’re doing. That is why content is so important.

Now, my name is Jason Drohn, for those of you who don’t know who I am. Every day we get a bunch more people who are watching these live streams. I created doneforyou.com. We specialize in building sales funnels, creating offers, and doing content marketing strategies automation, and driving traffic to grow businesses online. To put it short, we help people build shit and sell shit online. Content marketing strategies are always a big part of that.

Today’s article that we’re going to be digging through is over here. I’m going to throw this up on the screen. And then of course here is the post. I’m going to drop it in the comments box. You can check it out on your own. Now, here we have this live stream up top. If you haven’t subscribed to the channel yet, go ahead and subscribe there. This is episode 94. We’re coming up on 100. In episode 100 I have some interesting things. We’re going to be switching some things around. Still going to be GSD Daily, but it’s just going to be indifferent tracks. I’ll let you know a little bit more about that.

Content is king.

Basically no matter how you slice it, content is king. That’s the absolute most important thing that you can be doing in your business content marketing strategies When the pandemic hit, when the crisis hit, so many people shifted their focus from ad budgets to content marketing strategies, and then they ended up discounting a lot of their products and services and everything. It’s one of the reasons why you see so much more content being pushed out right now. It’s why we started doing content, but the reverse happened for us. We started doing more content marketing strategies and then we started upping our ad budget to promote the content. That was an interesting shift. Content is the thing. It is the driver.

One thing you really, really need to stick in your head when it comes to creating content is you need to have this idea of a buyer persona. A buyer persona is really important when you’re building sales funnels, of course. You always want to write your emails, your webinars, your sales videos, all of that stuff, you want to write it to one particular person.

I have this avatar. I use it in a lot of examples. It’s exactly a boss to a degree that I used to have a long time ago now. His name is Matt. Matt runs around and basically, he’s running a $3 million shop, like a production shop. He’s the chief sales guy, the CEO, and the head ass-kicker. He’s everything. There is no executive-level other than him. It’s him and the accountant and then everybody underneath. He’s too busy to be growing his business any other way, too busy to learn, and never read a book.

Actually, he’s just so caught up in reacting all the time, that’s how he runs his business. This is literally the person that I write to, this Matt. Every single time I’m writing a local B2B sales letter or email or blog post, if I want to hit that person then I write for Matt.

It really helps you focus your writing and your content. Even this week, we’re talking about content marketing strategies. Content marketing strategies, I have a persona in my head. I have a person who I’m talking to when I’m recording this video. It’s a different person than last week when last week we covered … SEO? Yeah, we covered SEO. Yeah. I don’t remember. We covered something last week.

Target that Buyer Persona

It’s always a different person. I’m always talking to somebody different. It’s important when you’re creating content to target that buyer persona and target that person who is most apt to listen to the message and hear it. Every week for me is different because each of the weekly focus changes and in your business it’s going to be the same. You’re going to have a buyer persona. You’re probably going to have one, but you might have three.

I was on the phone with a client the other day and they have three buyer personas. They have grandmas, and then they have moms, then they have daughters, like age groups. It’s really three personas. It’s three different styles of writing. Unless you write for the mom and you write it so that you still talk about the family, in which case the mom makes the buying decision for the other two. In that sense, you’re still a one buyer persona, but you’re adding in a couple of other ones into the mix and you’re talking about grandma and you’re talking about daughter to the mom. It’s just important to organize them in your brain when you’re creating content. And speak to one person. You’re not speaking to a group, you’re not speaking to everyone; you’re speaking to one person. That’s the idea behind buyer personas.

Demographics and Psychographics

You can get really deep into the woods between demographics and psychographics too. Demographics are going to be:

• age
• gender
• qualifications
• income
• where they live

Your psychographics:

• feelings
• emotions
• dreams
• fears
• desires

Your buyer persona is a combination of the two and that’s who we’re really writing for. We can target demographics in ads. We can target age, we can target gender, we can target all of that kind of stuff. Psychographics is always the emotional triggers that we’re hitting within the ad copy itself. Between the two of them, they end up working out pretty well. That’s your persona is the person in the middle of that.

Writing Genuine Content

Now writing genuine content … We went out to dinner with a friend on Friday, a friend/client. Basically, we were just talking about sales and sales on the phone. He does a lot of stuff. We were talking about how sales are just real solutions. If you have a solution to a problem, then you’re always going to be able to sell it. He’s a damn good sales guy.

At the end of the day, writing genuine content is about framing solutions for people. These are going to be simple, quick solutions that somebody can get immediate value from within your content and be able to take something away very, very quickly just by even scrolling through a post and then just learning something or whatever. There are lots of different ways to frame content, but everything should be solution-based, especially when that content is framing up a product.

Like we talked about yesterday about the advertorials. If you have a blog post that is promoting a thing … The whole idea of the blog post is to talk about the eight things you can do with a two by four. And then what you’re doing is you want to sell a toolkit with maybe, I don’t know, a hammer and a screwdriver or whatever, from that to blog post. The whole goal of the blog post is to push them into that solution, into that toolkit. The content that you write is not going to be any different. You’re trying to find a very, very, very small, like a little, little tiny sliver of a problem, deliver a solution to that, and then move them into your offer. That’s what every single piece of content should be.

Writing better content is really just about framing up better solutions.

1. Good Headline

Now the big part is it all starts with a good headline. When you have your persona and you have your content, and then you’re going out and you’re putting it in front of people, so when you’re posting it on social media, you’re running paid traffic to your blog posts, like an advertorial would, all of that stuff then … which is all best practice. We’ve talked about it in some of our previous podcasts about creating celebrities. You’re creating content and then running traffic to the content and then the people who watch so much of that content, end up then seeing your next ad. It’s stuff we do all the time. You’re putting that content out to be consumed actively not waiting for somebody to click through or waiting for it to get indexed in Google and then see it. Basically, you’re actively promoting it.

It really all begins with a good headline. If the headline sucks, the headline of the blog post doesn’t work, then nobody’s going to click it. Nobody’s going to read it. We have a little headline optimizer tool that I’m going to show you. I’ve shown it in previous episodes, but I want to bring it back up. At the end of the day, you really just want to monitor your performance.

2. Monitor your website visitors using Google Analytics

Take a look at Google analytics. Make sure that people are landing on the webpage, staying on the webpage, reading the webpage, how they’re moving through your website, how they’re tracking from blog post to sales page, or whatever, all of that stuff is really an exercise in analytics. So being very attuned and accustomed to Google Analytics is going to be the best way to figure out whether your content is doing what it should be doing. Of course, you can do split testing tools and heat maps and all kinds of other crazy wiz-bang stuff that we should get into. Not this week, but maybe next week we will. It all starts with the content because content brings traffic.

Now, the tool that I want to show you is this headline optimizer tool. You can see it here. I’m just going to make this a little bigger on the screen so that you can check this out. You might not be able to read it, but it’ll be close enough. This is called Thrive Headline Optimizer Tool. Let’s go just look at it.

Thrive Headline Optimizer

This is part of the Thrive plugin suite. Really, really nice. It’s really, really good software. I don’t know. It’s one of these, but anyway. Basically what it lets you do is it lets you run tests. You can split test the headline of any blog post that is on your website. I’ve been using this tool for probably four or five months now, and I’ve seen a marked improvement in website traffic because more people are reading headlines that they like. Our headlines are now more clickable. What they’re doing is they’re going in and reading and all that stuff.

Every time we post a blog post, we always post four variations of that subject line. We have no attachment to any of the variations. All we’re trying to do is we’re trying to maximize clicks through that, whether it’s in Google, whether it’s in related posts, or whatever. Now, if we scroll down here, we will see that all of these articles have subject line split tests in them. We have the date started, July 22nd [inaudible 00:14:05] started July 21st. We do these every blog post that is now published we do a split test on.

Now, all of these are posts. These are the number of views here, so this column. Engagements and engagement rate; basically what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to maximize the engagement rate based on the headline. I usually just let it run until it has 75 or 80 engagements. Here’s one that has 62. Here’s one that has 373. Let’s see. Here’s one that has 143. We’re pretty diligent about logging in and T activating the ones that cross those thresholds. I can’t remember when the last time we did this.

Basically, I’m just going to go in here and I’m going to open up to this guy, which has had 143 views and 38 engagements. And then I’m going to check out this one, which had 90 views. Actually, that’s not a good one because it doesn’t look like it has had any engagements. There’s this one, which is 373 and 146 engagements. And then here’s one; 47 views, eight engagements. We’re going to take a look at this one, too.

Basically, this software just runs in the background. All it’s doing is split testing different subject lines. You can have as many subject lines as you want in here. Our rule of thumb is to have four or five. What happens is you get a graph like this. Our original headline is to create a lead funnel that generates leads 24/7. This one looks like we have a percentage improvement of negative 27.61. That did not win.

Our chance to be original is only 16%. We actually lost conversion on this particular one and all of the tests. We didn’t beat our control. The control is the winner and then what we’ll do is we’ll re-setup the test and then see if we can beat our control again. We start a new test, try to beat the control. But at the end of the day, we might not ever find something that beats the control there.

Now check out this one. This one was the one that had zero engagement. We’re not going to do that one. Then there’s this one, SAS KPIs, how to grow sales by tracking the right metrics. That’s the primary blog post title. We have two additional tests here. One of them is SAS KPIs, tracking the right metrics on your website and grow your sales, and then we have SAS KPIs, how to have successful sales. The winner surprisingly is this yellow one. It just barely overtook the red one.

What we’re going to do is we’re going to stop this test. We are going to choose the winner. That’s going to lock in the winning subject line. And then if we want to retest, we can always just start up a new test and try to beat the control again. We’re constantly working on finding the better headlines for our blog posts, and it does not even work. We’re just setting it up, letting the test run, and then we’re going from there.

This one looks like it all sucks except for that top one. We’re going to stop this test and we’re going to choose the winner. That first one is going to be the winner. The rest of them didn’t even get any clicks. I think that’s the last example here.

That’s a couple of different looks at how to run a headline analyzer tool and go from there. Let’s see. I think that’s about it for this article too. Those are just some quick tips on how to boost your engagement from your blog posts, write better content. Tomorrow we’re going to wrap everything up with content. If you have any thoughts, questions, anything related to how content marketing strategies work, how to get your stuff ranked in search engines, how to run traffic to your websites, building a sales funnel that converts, email marketing automation, anything goes to doneforyou.com/start, fill out the little application and then book a time on the calendar that’s going to pop up right afterward, and the team will get on the phone with you and walk you through everything.

For Questions and Guide

If you have any questions at all, just go to doneforyou.com, hit that little chat box in the lower right-hand corner. It’s going to pop up with some different options you can go through and drop through the chat here, or just ask there and we’ll have somebody reach back out ASAP. Let me know if you have any questions.

The post Content Marketing Strategies That Boost Engagement appeared first on Done For You.

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.Content has always been the backbone of successful marketing. From the days when word of mouth was the only means to spread awareness about a business to the current digital era where everything is available, literally, at your fingertips; there is nothing quite like engaging content when it comes to converting buyers.

Today, I am going to explore some amazing ways that content marketing can drive buyers through the sales journey…

Discovery – the first point of contact with the buyer

Every buyer out there is on the lookout for a solution for the problems that they’re experiencing right now.

Considering the fact that there are virtually countless options available to them, the only way to capture the buyer’s eye is to provide them with something unique and intriguing.  This is where content comes into the picture.

During the discovery stage, the buyer is completely naïve (i.e. he has a problem does not know the solution). So, he’s trying to figure out what to do to get some satisfaction. And, more importantly, he’s in a place where he’s looking for content that educates, inspires, and most importantly helps him with his problem…  Content that can play a key role in getting him to the next stage in your marketing funnel.

Powerful content, like informative blogs and articles, creates an initial impression with your brand, building a connection and enticing him further into your sales funnel and sales letters.

Consideration – one step further in the relationship

So, now the buyer knows that you have the solution to this problem. What next? He’d want to know how good you are or in other words – are you the best help he can get?

This is again where the power of content marketing can make or break the connection established between your brand and your prospective buyer. Now that the buyer is considering your business as one of the probable solutions to his problem, he will want to explore your products and services more specifically.

Powerful content makes sure that your buyers get to know about your expertise in the field and what makes you the perfect fit for his problem. Content like landing pages and “content upgrades,” therefore, become the key component of content marketing that can drive sales.

Decision – the phase that can make or break your marketing efforts

Now, the client has moved down further in the marketing funnel, but he has is still indecisive on whether you are the best fit for his needs or not… So, how are you going make sure that he makes the decision in your favor?

The one word answer to this question is – CONTENT!  (Notice a trend?)

Content forms like case studies, buyer testimonials, and success stories work towards building faith and confidence within your buyer’s mind. It is a basic human psychology to trust the experience of others. Therefore, by going through content like use cases and success stories, you can give your prospect a taste of what it’s like to finally have their problems solved because of your business!

As a matter of fact, this works as the final push that drives the buyer into the last stage of the buying journey…  Getting converted!

Retention – going above and beyond

Most businesses think that the buyer’s journey is limited to only the intial sale…  This is a big mistake.

Smart businesses know that there is still another important step left on this journey. This step is to retain those buyers AND sell them more stuff. You might be shocked to know that studies reveal that 80% of future sales come from 20% of your existing buyers.

So, continuing to feed your buyer with more information once the sale has been completed becomes key. This is where content elements like email newsletters, product updates, festive greetings and social media posts come into the picture.

Remember, buyer relationships are a journey that you need to keep nurturing or else it becomes stale. After all, building trust is not just a one-time thing. You need to keep the buyer hooked on the fact that you are constantly evolving and doing things to make their life easier, and better.

Content plays a role at every stage of the funnel!

The points mentioned above paint a clear picture of how content plays an integral role to keep buyers hooked at every stage of the marketing funnel. A slight weakness in content at any stage could mean losing the buyer forever.

While there are many businesses that focus too strongly on the top of the funnel, it is quite evident that content plays an inseparable role at every stage. From building buyer’s interest in your business to ensuring that the buyer completes the journey by converting into a customer rather than leaving before they ever get the chance – content is the one decisive factor in conversion.

So, are you putting the right focus on content?

Now the question is – how much importance do you put on creating content and aligning it with your marketing efforts in your sales funnel?

Remember – no matter how good your marketing strategies are – if they are not supplemented with the well-crafted content they will prove to be of no use. That’s why the adage, “Content is King,” has been around forever…

And, in order to get the best out of your marketing efforts, you need to focus on crafting content that leaves an instant impact on your prospects.

Producing content that matches the customer’s psychology, offers help and support, and builds trust can be the key differentiator between your business being a hit or a miss. So, pull up your socks and invest in content if you want to see your business shining brightly in your market.

After all, the ultimate reason for a business is to help customers and create revenue, making sure they stick to you for the long haul. Powerful content can help you do that!

Get an inside look at generating revenue online through a sales funnel.
Register for the free Digital ROI Workshop here!

How Content Marketing Drives Sales Throughout The Buyer Journey

This entire week we’ve been talking about content marketing. Today, in particular, we are going to be covering, how content marketing drives sales throughout the buyer journey.

Content marketing is interesting because all our clients that we run paid traffic experience the first level of awareness. When you’re getting brand exposure – basically throwing your brand, offer out there, and you’re trying to get people to pay attention to you, it always starts with a piece of content. That content, sometimes a Facebook post, social video, you’ve seen all kinds of this stuff from us and our clients.

Basically what we’re trying to do is get awareness.

We’re trying to engage with prospects so that they raise their hand and say “Yes, I’m interested in what it is you do.” That is where the whole sales funnel starts. They raise their hand and say, “I’m interested in what you do. I read a blog post and an article.”. What we’re going to talk about today are blogging and advertorials. “I watched 15 seconds of video,” whatever, basically something triggers where that person is now engaged with our brands. What we want to do is we want to continue putting messages in front of them so that they engage deeper with our brands. That’s the role that content marketing should have. Then your paid traffic kind of exacerbates that. It amplifies that content marketing piece.

Today what we’re going to talk about is, how content marketing drives sales throughout the buyer journey.

Now, so content marketing, it’s always been the backbone of successful marketing. I mean, the saying forever is “content is king.” Way, way back, when I started getting into blogging, I don’t know how many people know kind of where I originally started, but basically, I was a Pepsi truck driver. A lot of you know that. I was driving a Pepsi truck and I ended up stumbling across this PDF one day that was half-finished, and I don’t even remember the author, but it was this 14 or 15-page document on how to become a professional blogger. And I was like, “Well, I can type, I can write. Maybe I’ll try to be a professional blogger.”

This entire PDF was how to be a professional blogger by writing online, and the steps were really pretty simple. You log in, create a Blogspot blog, which for those of you who don’t remember, blogspot.com used to be a free blog. It’s kind of like WordPress.com now. It might even still be around. So this is what I did and I ended up kind of falling in love with the blogging thing.

I had zero visitors and nobody gave a shit. I had very, very little traffic and I blogged every day and I wrote about whatever the hell I wanted to write about it. It wasn’t focused, niched and it wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t anything, but it was a start. And so I wrote a couple of hundred blog posts within the course of a couple of years, and in the first check that I got from Google, you would’ve thought it was a million dollars, it was like $104. There’s a picture of it somewhere online. And that was my advertising check because I put Google AdSense the posts.

Then I figured out that if I put text link ads, then I could make a lot more money, just having text links on the website. Those PayPal payments were like six, 700 bucks, and all of a sudden I started making money, and then that made me really, really dig into it. To get more traffic, I started doing research.  How do I get things ranked in Google, I run paid traffic, or how do I make money online?

I started down those rabbit holes, and everything came back to this idea that content is king. And as we talked on Monday, you know that I ended up having some affiliate sites that were making 10, $20,000 a month. Google happened, the Panda update happened, Penguin happened, and all of a sudden those sites disappeared, which is fine. You know, it wasn’t at the time, but that of course led to growth.

Buyer’s Journey

We started running paid traffic, selling our own products and building sales funnels, working with clients, working with folks, and all of that other stuff. So it all ended up being good. But at the end of the day, the journey started with content and it ends with content. There will always be content. If you think you can build an online business without content, then nobody’s going to buy anything. I mean, you’re never going to sell stuff because every business, the only thing you have, the only currency you have, is content. Whether it’s a Facebook ad, a video, a sales copy, or an email copy, everything is content-based, so that’s where we’re at.

1. Awareness Phase

Now, so the first thing, the first time that somebody is probably going to interact with you or your business is this discovery phase, this awareness phase, and this is where people end up kind of jumping down your rabbit hole. It’s the time that somebody Googles something and lands on your website. It is the time that they’re scrolling through something on Facebook and they see your logo, and then there’s a video or there’s a post or there’s something that engages them. It is always that first piece of awareness, that first interaction that somebody gets. The beautiful thing with what we’re able to do with content marketing now is that we can quantify that engagement and we can advertise to that engagement.

If somebody watches more than 10 seconds of a video, we can throw up some banner ads in front of them. If they hit our websites, we can follow them around with banner ads. We could never do that before. Before they always had to buy there, or they have to sign up for an email list. They had to take concrete action. But now we have all these kinds of loose actions that somebody can take to learn more about us. They can follow us, they can like our stuff. Just showing up on a website means that we can retarget them. There are all of these small pieces of commitment that then lead to bigger commitments and it’s all content-based.

2. Consideration Phase

The next step is a consideration, so basically, buyers know that you have the solution for the problem and they’re asking, What’s next, are you a good fit, are you good at what you do, are you going to be around. All of that stuff starts to kind of play into the … or play into the decision, which is the next phase.

3. Decision Phase

The decision really is the make or break for your marketing efforts. You know, it’s that sales copy, the webinar copy, the email that they get that tells them to go do something or to buy something or to book a call with your service-based team, or whatever. That’s the decision, you know? So once you cross that, it might be a decision, it might be desirable, you get them to take action, but once you get them to cross that threshold and sell them, then basically you’re moved into the retention piece.

Now, your content marketing, kind of aids every piece of this journey, because every piece is based on content. It’s just really, really, really important to understand what each piece of content means throughout how content marketing drives the sales funnel. Your blog posts and advertorials are all front side stuff. That’s all front side content marketing, content that you need to have in your funnel, whereas your webinar is kind of like … that’s desire content. I mean, that’s decision content. That is the pivotal piece of content that is going to get somebody to go from, this person has a solution to I want to work with this person and this is how I do it. That’s where, how the content comes into play.

Advertorials

I have a couple of pieces of kind of front-end content that we’re going to talk about. These are advertorials. You already know of this content. You’ve seen them in magazines. You’ve seen them all over the internet, whether you know you’re looking at an advertorial or not. I have one popular blog that a lot of people have ripped off for years for an antiaging skin cream. Basically, it’s kind of the same blog post, same page. You see it all over and they just swap out different CPA offers.

This is an Instagram-worthy anti-aging content marketing post that is a skin cream, called HER, this particular. If you look at the language here we have, “and although they’ve run out of stock,” oh, we’ve got to show that here. They’ve run out of stock a few times over the past month. This is due to a huge spike in demand from women all over the world. They are currently running a special offer that lets you try the entire HER solution booty system for a massive 70% discount for first-time customers. This is obviously a call to action link. So you click this link, you’re going to be able to go buy this.

Now, if this company went defunct or whatever, then they could just swap in another skincare cream. Just run traffic to the same advertorial. This is the pre-framing piece. So this is the piece that pre-frames a buyer to actually purchase the thing. You see this kind of stuff all over the place once you actually learn to look for it. Basically,  advertorials are inserted in newspapers and magazines. This stuff all the time is always present with digital traffic. You click an ad, which oftentimes put you on an advertorial that is going to presell the solution. Then that advertorial then gets the clickthrough to ultimately go through and buy.

Now, I used to think, a long time ago, that why would you put another step in between the ad and the offer? Why would you throw an advertorial in there and make somebody read when you could just go right to how content marketing drives sales copy?  Then I started seeing that all the big media buyers were using advertorials, every single one of them. They basically had this bridge page, which was the page that’s sandwiched between the ad, bridge page, offer. The advertorial is required when you’re driving a tremendous amount of traffic. What it does is it lets you advertise some things that maybe Facebook won’t necessarily want you to advertise straight away or Google.

More than that, it lets you pre-frame the offer. You can standardize how people are going to show up and take in the offer on the next page. Think about this, you’re scrolling through your Facebook feed and you’ve had a really long, hard grueling day. The kids were crying and you’ve worked and all this other stuff. You’re scrolling through your newsfeed, then you hit an ad. It goes right to how content marketing drives the sales page, but you’re not in the frame of mind to actually buy that thing. You are mad and you’re just not in the frame of mind to go get your credit card and purchase something.

Now, compare that to somebody. They’re on vacation and they are sitting in a hotel. They’re on Facebook and they’re just kind of enjoying life for that particular moment of that day. They are scrolling through Facebook. They hit an ad, the same ad as you, then they go to how content marketing drives sales page. Next, they buy because they are in the frame of mind to buy. Now, what a good bridge page, kind of advertorial page does a good piece of content, is it puts both of those people in the different frames of mind on the same page, quite literally, pun intended.

It puts them on the same page so that they’re reading, and then by the time they get to the call to action, by the time they see that link, they are both thinking the same thing. It standardizes it, normalizes their thoughts so that they know exactly what they’re getting into. They’re both reading the same piece of material, and they click the link and then they go buy. So that is what a good bridge page, that’s what a good advertorial, does is it standardizes how content marketing drives sales process.

It allows for a bunch of different people with different emotions and feelings and thoughts and preconceived notions and biases and all that other stuff to hit a page, normalize, and then go to how content marketing drives sales offers. Oftentimes with the right bridge page, the conversions will go up as opposed to just direct linking right to the sales page. So that’s why the big media buyers do it. It takes a lot of testing to make sure that the advertorial is working the way it should. It’s something that you definitely need in your toolkit.

Now, we have a couple of advertorials that we use. I just wanted to kind of throw them up here just for example’s sake. Here’s one sales funnel, “Avoid the needless bottlenecks and maximize output”. It just kind of goes through all the bottlenecks you might have when you have content marketing drives sales funnel. It is like KPIs and metrics that matter. Of course, we have a call to action, which is to watch the video. We’ve been throwing more videos on these things too.  Here are “Three tips to make your sales funnels less complicated”. These are all blog posts. I mean, that’s all of these, are blog posts with calls to action in them.

“Tip number one, strive for simplicity, tip number two, avoid multi-step landing pages”

Then all the way down, so we have a little banner call-out box here, a little feature box. We have a button at the very bottom, a little call to action. Here’s another one, “How to use lead generation to improve your sales funnel. We drive cold traffic to these pages all day long,  and we split test them. We split test the headlines, split test the little banner boxes, all that other stuff.

Here, we’re talking about content marketing and some different things to do. Then we have one here for Facebook. We drive a lot of traffic to this too, so Facebook ads for e-commerce, so people who are running Facebook. I want to run Facebook ads for e-commerce specifically. These are just some of our kind of internal pages that I was kind of going through. Some of the advertorials end up turning a lot of our folks into how content marketing drives sales. Somebody said they still have – “still have those Blogspots”. That’s funny. I think Google bought them? Or maybe Google-owned them way back then. I’m really not sure.

Well, what ended up happening was, when I got into blogging, I went from Blogspot, and then I knew that I was going to try to make money. I wanted more customization over the theme because I knew I was going to want to put in banner ads. I ended up moving to WordPress and it was WordPress 1.2 or 1.3, years and years. That’s really where I started falling in love with WordPress and then web design. Then mucking through FTP servers and web servers, and all of that stuff was very self-taught. So that’s really where I started way back in the day.

For Questions and Guide

For those of you who would like to go through and do kind of a content marketing audit, where we go through, look at your content, plan out some content, look at how content marketing drives sales funnels, look at your traffic sources, all that other stuff, go to doneforyou.com/start, fill out the little form and then book a call with our team and we’ll go through and put together an action plan for you.

If there’s anything we can do ever, just go to doneforyou.com. In the lower right-hand corner, there’s a little chatbox. Here you can go through, you can learn a little bit more about our services. So if there’s anything we can do ever, just, by all means, let us know, drop us a line.

The post How Content Marketing Will Increase Your Revenue appeared first on Done For You.

Having a website of your own can be a pain.  I know.  There’s this constant expectation that you’ll be posting new stuff and updating it from time to time.

You get by not putting any time and effort into it, but here’s the thing…

Your audience needs you to add new content to your site so they can get to know you and your business – so they can like you and trust you.

Google needs you to post new blog posts to your website because that’s how they know you’re relevant and deserving of the traffic that they want to send you.

Your power users – the folks who LOVE you and actively go out and spread the word about what you’re doing for them – want something that they can share from you because they look smarter because of it!

You see, having a website and keeping it fresh with new content is of much greater importance than you might be putting on it…

But, I get it.  Your website or your blog isn’t making you any money so why waste the time?

Today, we’re going to cover that.

You see, there are 13 different ways that you can monetize the pages of your site, from selling stuff to posting ads to running a job board.

We tend to be myopic in our thinking that we JUST sell affiliate products or we ONLY post banner ads…  What ends up happening though is we cap out our revenue because we aren’t diversifying our cashflow generators! That’s how to make money blogging…

That, my friends, is a big mistake.

So, let’s get into it.  13 revenue generators to supercharge your site…

How To Make Money Blogging: 12 Blog Monetization Strategies

Admittedly, there are hundreds of ways to make money from your site.  You can sell high end consulting or Kindle books or protein powder.

What follows are my quick tips for how to make money blogging… Stuff that I’ve done in the past (and still do) as it’s done pretty well in generating revenue…

1: Selling Your Products

Although not the easiest to start, selling your products and services is (almost) always the most profitable. Firstly, you aren’t splitting the money with anyone else.  Secondly, you have an audience and distribution, so you know what they want and what they’ll buy.

I’ve read a lot lately about information and how it’s dying.  I don’t think that’s quite the case – but it IS changing!  Gone are the days of Clickbank ebooks making a killing for $47 a pop.  Sure, some of that still works but we’re seeing far fewer stories like that.

Products that are selling; video courses, memberships, Kindle ebooks, higher-end hybrid courses (course plus coaching), and events are all thriving.  If you need proof of that, just check out any of the marketplaces, like Udemy or Kindle.

I’ve also done a podcast in the past on effectively preselling products…

Now, the bad news.  Running your offers is awesome and it’s one of the best ways to answer the “how to make money blogging” question, but there are things that you’ll need to be successful.

You’ll need:

• Email Copy for your autoresponders
• Sales copy like a webinar or a video sales letter
• A merchant account, whether that be something like Clickbank or Stripe
• Customer support, like through ZenDesk
• A steady source of traffic, especially when you're getting started!

This is a longer path, so it might be smarter and simpler to start with affiliate marketing or banner ads…

2: Selling Services

Another way you can make an offer to your audience is to sell services.  That might be websites, consulting, coaching, or masterminds.  Your audience will tell you what you need to sell.  They’re usually pretty vocal about it.  That’s how to make money blogging…  For them at least!

I’ve had a Marketing Done For You Service for years, where I work with clients directly.  It doesn’t make a huge portion of revenue but I get incredible satisfaction from it, which is why I still do it.  It can be trying at times if a campaign isn’t working out as planned, but those phases symbolize growth, which is something we all need!

Examples of some services you can offer through your blog:

• Coaching on something you are exceptionally experienced in (or what your blog topic is about!)
• Consulting for individuals or groups based around the topic you write on
• Starting a mastermind for like-minded people who all share the same purpose and would benefit knowing each other.
• Hourly services for smaller, freelance types of projects

There are lots of different ways to take this one.  Just listen to your audience and figure out what you want to do in the years to come…

3: Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is where you sell products that aren’t your own, but you get a commission.  Sometimes, that commission can be 75% to 100% of the purchase price.

I’ve done a LOT of affiliate marketing, and written a lot about it over the years.  Some of the best material I have can be found here:

• Step by Step Process For Promoting Affiliate Products
• How to Set Up a Hidden Affiliate System (for you product owners...)
• The Lead Fire PDF - setting up Facebook ads to a landing page successfully (screenshot tutorials)
• Affiliate marketing as an additional profit stream

At the end of the day, affiliate marketing is about solving a problem for your audience.  It doesn’t matter that it’s not your product – if it’ll help it should be in their hands!  You still get paid for it!

As an affiliate, answering the question, “how to make money blogging,” you usually make the lion’s share of the money and you deal with next to zero of the hassle…

4: Banner Ads / Ad Network / Private Sales

A few days ago, I posted a very long, very thorough explanation of ad networks and their place in the blogging monetization ecosystem.

Here’s a link for you to check that out >>

The premise of it is this…

By putting ads from Adsense, Doubleclick, or one of the other native or contextual ad networks you get paid.

Sometimes, you get paid on a cost per click (CPC) basis (every time someone clicks, you get paid).  Other times, you get paid on a cost per thousand impressions (CPM) basis, where you make money every time someone sees your ad.

There’s another way to profit from the real estate on your website that wasn’t mentioned…

Private Site Buys.

As an advertiser, private site buys are the holy grail of media buying.  When you buy ads directly from a website owner, you can negotiate better rates (much better) and you effectively cut out the middleman (the ad networks).

Now, Buy Sell Ads started as a way for bloggers to list their inventory and get paid.  They still do some of that, but they’ve grown up a lot.  Now, you need a certain amount of traffic and blah, blah…

The BEST way to get private ad requests is to simply put a page on your site, in the main navigation area, detailed your traffic, your demographics, banner sizes, and the cost.

There’s a LOT of money exchanged in Paypal for Private Site Buys every single day…  Keep it open as an option for your site as well.

5: Text Link Ads

We talk about text link ads a little bit in the ad network article, but they don’t produce near the volume that they use to…

The idea for how to make money blogging is that someone gives you money and you put a link to their site in individual articles or on your whole site.  It used to boost search engine ranking incredibly well.  Now though, it serves as a great way to get native traffic to your landing pages and sales pages.

There will be a time or two that you’ll be approached by someone offering to buy a link on your site.  The nice thing about text link ads is they can be upsold pretty readily…

If someone offers you $50, tell them you only do yearly deals, so it’d be $400.  They save 4 months and you get all the money in one shot.  They’ll pay you and you’ll never hear from them again.

(NOTE: Remember to take the link off your site though!)

6: Sponsored Content

Sponsored content is a bit like a text link ad, but it’s usually more time-consuming.

Typically, it comes in the form of writing paid reviews for companies.  In terms of how to make money blogging, they’ll give you some money and the product, and you’ll write a review based on your experience.

The vendor hopes to engage your audience and get some business out of it.  You, well you get to demo something cool, tell your friends about it, and get paid to do it.

Plus, it’ll be a piece of content that you don’t have to think real hard about writing…

These might also come in the form of advertorials, which are content marketing strategies.  They’re fine – just make sure to choose wisely!

7: Site Sponsorships

Site sponsorships are where someone sponsors your entire site.  I see them a lot in woodworking because I’m constantly trolling through wood projects, looking for weekend projects.

Here’s a great example: Ryobi Nation

Ryobi is a tool company and they sponsor bloggers who build stuff… Simple enough.

They give them tools and (maybe?) pay them for their involvement, and the bloggers share their experiences through the Ryobi tools.

I don’t know what the requirements are, like if they have to take photos with the merchandise on every post or what…  All I know is I see Ryobi all over Pinterest in browsing through wood projects.

There’s no reason why you can’t have a sponsor for your site…  Maybe a piece of software or a corporate partner who pays some of the hosting bills…

8: Job Boards

Job boards are another great source of income for bloggers who have a strong audience.  A great example is Problogger’s.

It’s simple, clean, and makes Darren plenty…

The trick is having a blog that has enough traction where you have both people LOOKING for jobs and people who need talent.

9: Sponsored Mailings

Sponsored mailings, otherwise known as ‘solo ads’ are great for a burst of cash too.  If you’re building an email list, and you should be, you can rent your list out to anyone who wants to pay for it.

Entire industries have been built on buying data, both email addresses and mailing addresses… And an industry that you’d be participating in if you allow other people access to your list.

The prices are largely determined by responsiveness and list size and can go up to $70,000 for one mailing…  That’s for tens of millions of people, of course, but you get the idea :0)

The process?  A vendor approaches you for a mailing.  You charge him/her money.  They send you their email copy.  You mail it out.

Done.  Doesn’t get much simpler than that now, does it?

10: Brokering

As a blogger, you are at the center of the action.  You have buyers, sellers, creators  and consumers.

All on the other side of your blog.

Connecting them in a meaningful, financially beneficial way is what we call brokering.  It takes getting to know the people who follow you, but the simplicity of this model can’t be overstated.

If you connect a vendor and an affiliate, you should get 10% of everything that’s sold.  If you connect a creator with a consumer, you should get a finder’s fee.

You need to wedge yourself in the middle and make the transaction happen, but you can do it because it’s your site!

11: Podcast Advertising

Everyone’s got a podcast it seems.  Way back in 2006, I started my first one… Way before they were cool!

Since, I’ve started and stopped a few of them, always getting too busy or caught up which is entirely my fault.  Today, I considered starting one for each of our software properties.

Will that happen?  I’m not sure.  But, if you have one, you might as well be selling sponsorships!

Revision3 started with one show – Diggnation.  The stumbled on how lucrative podcast sponsorship was.  They were drinking a type of tea on the show and the place that carried it ended up selling out, so…

Diggnation started accepting cash for sponsorships.

Since, Revision3 has grown to be a HUGE brand, with millions of podcast viewers every month with their shows.

There’s no reason why you can’t start selling advertising blocks on your podcast!

12: Video Advertising

This last one is something we’ll see a lot more of.  With so much content being created and consumed online, it only makes sense that a lot of those videos will start having ads that the creator is paid for.

Now, Youtube and the video creator split the ads that are before the content… But, ads IN the content are solely paid out to the creators themselves!

Like podcasting, we’ll start to see in video commercials, like what’s on TV, rather than letting Youtube suck up all that space…

If you’re into video, then start thinking of creative advertising packages that you can offer sponsors!

Your Next Step…

If content marketing and blogging are important to you, but you just don’t have time to sit down, do the research, and write blog posts from scratch…

GSDdaily Episode 45

Today we’re going to talk about how to make money blogging, 12 tips that will supercharge your website. This serves two purposes. The first is to recap the last nine episodes, which we went through and talked about creating products, selling services, coaching, consulting and building software.

We went through and dove deep into nine business models. Huge business models that you can use in your business if you choose. We’re also going to dig into some additional things, affiliate marketing stuff today. This kind of serves as the capstone for this last couple of weeks’ worth of material.

For those of you who are new to me, my name is Jason Drohn, and I am the creator of doneforyou.com. We specialize in helping people build and sell their stuff online. We create and sell. Create their digital products, their coaching programs, everything else, and then also automate the sales process to make it easy from a growth and scalability standpoint.

How to make money blogging?

We talked about nine of these revenue generation strategies in the last nine episodes.

1. Selling Your Products

The first couple of days we talked about selling your products. You can sell your products. You can either sell eBooks, you can sell video courses, membership sites, the things that you create. Those things would be information-based. If you have a particular skillset or something you’re good at, or an experience that you have, or something you lived through or something you worked through, and you can help other people make that same transformation, then they will pay you money for it. They will find you online, and then whether it’s a book, whether it’s a course, they will learn that from you.

Right now in this pandemic that has never, ever, ever been more true, because people are learning stuff and they’re spending money on education. They’re pivoting, they’re upping their own game. They are on this self-development, personal development kind of journey. Everybody is all at the same time.

Information products are selling better than they ever have. And more people are more comfortable with spending money because they have to now.

Selling your products is a great way of generating some cash flow from your website.

It’s also the most scalable way, and you’re not trading time for dollars. You’re not trading hours for money. In terms of how to make money blogging, you’re a trading product for the money.

You’re creating a product, you’re packaging it once, and then you’re selling that thing 10 times, 100 times, 1000 times. Also, you’re still selling that knowledge or that information, but you’ve replaced yourself. You’re learning how to make money blogging because you’re able to sell a lot more of it and you’re not personally responsible for delivering it and fulfilling it.

2. Selling  Services

We talked about selling professional services, I think it might’ve been yesterday. And this is selling… I mean, it can be accounting, it can be legal work, it can be web design, it can be coding, it can be graphic design. You name it, you can sell services online. The primary kind of way that you generate those leads is you have a video on your website and then you have them click the button below the video to apply, or fill out the form underneath the video to apply to then talk to you.

That’s the modality of how you sell services. With services, they’re highly complex and they’re expensive, services are. They’re more expensive than a $67 digital product. Do you know what I mean?

You need somebody to express interest, and then you’re probably going to be closing on a sales call, or at least some sort of a consultative sales thing because people want to know that you’re able to customize your offer for them. Even if you’re selling logo design. You’re rarely going to get top dollar for logo design and also be able to sell it without talking to somebody.

You can think of Fiverr as a great example. For them to sell services, they have to only charge $5. So is your design work rather than $5? Well, I’d hope so. On Fiverr, sure, you can sell a great volume of things and then upsell as you create a relationship with somebody, and that’s an entire business model all unto itself.

But at the same time, when you’re trying to figure out how to make money blogging, you’re not going to come right out of the gate, charge a $1,000 for logo design and then hope to sell it through an add-to-cart page.

Selling services requires a relationship and it requires handling.

Somebody when they come to your website, they need to have a way to raise their hand and say, “Yes, I’m interested. How can I get more information?” And then you call them. So that’s how you sell services.

3. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing we’ve touched on a little bit in the past. Not necessarily in the previous series, but in these sessions we’ve talked about affiliate marketing. So you can sell affiliate products, and if you go to like ClickBank.com. This is an affiliate network. Go and sell digital products through ClickBank and then get paid 50%, 75% commission on those products. You can also go to an affiliate network like commissionjunction.com.

You can become an advertiser or a publisher, and you can promote things on commissionjunction.com. Get paid a commission and you can do the same thing with Amazon. So you can link to anything on Amazon. Amazon affiliate program. It’s called Amazon Associates. If you’re an Amazon affiliate, you can link to anything on Amazon and get paid as an affiliate.

If you’re recommending a book on Facebook, you can make 4%, which isn’t a lot, but it’s still something. You get paid for everything somebody orders within 24 hours. If they buy the book and they also buy dishwasher detergent and supplements and a TV, then you get paid on all of it within a 24-hour window.

That’s another way to figure out how to make money blogging. I used to do a lot of affiliate marketing. We still do a little bit here and there. I don’t go out of my way to do affiliate marketing anymore.

Even if I post something on Facebook, like a book or something, I don’t go track down any affiliate link and then post it. But if it’s there, then I will. Sometimes for CRMs and stuff, you can get affiliate links and software, and they pay monthly recurring. So when you get a sale, then that sale continues paying you for a long time.

4. Banner Ads / Ad Networks / Private Sales

Banner ads are great when you’re learning how to make money blogging. Whenever you have a banner ad on your website, you can go to a company called BuySellAds. And on your website pages, you can put banner ads.

BuySellAds is a place if you have a lot of traffic coming to your website, you can submit your site to BuySellAds, and then they might include you. Probably the best and easiest way to just get started though is if you go to Google AdSense. Google AdSense is a way to earn money on your website by showing ads. And Google manages it.

It’s the other side of their AdWords platform. Businesses come in and they spend money to advertise to people. Here they’re spending money in AdWords, and over here we have bloggers who are posting those ads on their website. Google is then taking that money and then splitting it with the publisher.

In answering the question, how to make money blogging, a great way is AdSense is. So you can go to, I think this is adsense.google.com. And that’s just google.com/adsense. Sign up for an account, and then you can generate money from the people who come to your website.

They click ads and then you get paid per click, or sometimes you get paid per 1,000 impressions. You’re not going to make a lot of money with AdSense. That’s not a great way of going about how to make money blogging.

I mean, you can, but you’re going to make far and away more money selling services or selling products. But it is a way to generate revenue. And there’s an entire school of thought that you can just have 300 websites, and then each website is generating $100 bucks a month. So then that adds up to some pretty significant revenue. This is fine if you want to manage 300 websites, with the content and everything else. So you just have to figure out what it is you’re looking for.

5. Text Link Ads

TextLinkAds is another one that I used to make a lot of money on. When I got started trying to figure out how to make money blogging, TextLinkAds huge for me…  TLA was a website. It was kind of a broker service that, what they would do is they would give you $50 bucks or $100 bucks to put a little text link on the sidebar of your website.

This was way before the SEO stuff started cracking down. It was my absolute biggest way of generating revenue before I knew what the hell I was doing.

I was making $600, $700 a month just with this little block of TextLinkAds because my site had a pretty good page rank on it. That was 12 years ago, 11 years ago, maybe. That practice has since kind of gone away because Google found out that people were doing it to artificially rank in the search engines, which was the primary reason people were doing it.

But now, some people are going to email you on your… So I probably get four or five of them a day now. People are wanting me to put an article on my website and they’ll give me $50 bucks for it. Or they’ll want to put a link in my content or they’ll scan through my blog posts and find a keyword phrase they’re trying to rank for. And then they’ll email me and say, “Hey, I’ll give you $100 bucks if you can put my link right here.”

That’s a quick way of figuring out how to make money blogging!  Or sometimes they just want it for free. But oftentimes they tell you they’ll pay, they will pay. So if you want to do that, that’s fine.

My strategy is different. I mean, every keyword phrase on the site is there for a reason. A lot of the keyword phrases that they’re looking to monetize, I also want to monetize, and it’s worth more to me not letting them monetize that because I’m ranking for it. So, there’s that, but it is a way to generate revenue.

6. Sponsored Content

Another one is sponsored content, kind of in that same TextLinkAds vein. People will pay you to place their content on your site, or also for you to write content promoting them.

It’s all content-based, but they might pay $50 an article for you to review their offer or review their product, whether it’s physical or digital or whatever. Or they will send you a full article and it’ll have three or four of their client links in it and then they’ll pay you $50 bucks for that article. $50 or $100, or whatever.

Just know that they’re getting something out of it too. I mean, they might have three or four clients all with links in this article, and each of those clients paid them $100 to then pay you $50 to put it on your website.

There’s always that. I mean, sometimes you can reach out right to the end-user and say, “Hey, I have a lot of content if you want a link.” So there are lots of things around sponsored content, but it’s just an important understanding of how the money transfers in this so that you can then maximize your revenue. Do you know what I mean? So like here, the vendor hopes to engage your audience and get some business out of it.

7. Site Sponsorships / Podcast Sponsorships

Site sponsorships and podcast sponsorships are big. Well, they were. They were big. There was an article I was just reading yesterday morning. I might have posted it somewhere. But it was talking about how the podcast revenues are down because advertisers are pulling out of the market.

If you want to start up quickly, podcasts are great ways to do it right now, if you want to drop some money in a podcast sponsorship. That’s a good way of figuring out how to make money blogging…

How very few things fuel a startup quite the way a podcast sponsorship does. I don’t know that that is true or not. I’ve never sponsored a podcast, so I don’t know. I think the article was in Ad Week. But it was interesting because podcasts and site sponsorships are kind of in that same vein. There’s a lot of advertisers that are pulling out of the market right now.

If you want to sponsor the posts of a website or the podcast episodes… Which podcasts live on in perpetuity. Do posts, but podcasts you still get traffic from those sponsorships forever.

I had a podcast like 10 years ago. It was just dumb and I was just playing around with it. And I think I had like 13 or 14 episodes, and it was a site that I first started called JD’s Blog. The content was random. I just kind of talked about whatever I was thinking.

The content wasn’t very focused, but I stopped updating that site. And then like two years later I logged back in and there were like 50,000 people who had downloaded that podcast over the two years that it was just sitting there.

That was well before a lot of podcasts started. But podcasts have this incredible longevity, this incredible lifespan to them. So a podcast sponsorship wouldn’t be a bad idea. But the site sponsorships are a little bit less sticky. The site sponsorship, unless it’s attached to like a post, you’re probably not going to get any long long-term traffic from it.

8. Job Boards

Job boards are another one. If you have a site with a lot of traffic, you can get away with adding a job board.

A great example is a ProBlogger job board or anything content marketing-related. So if you have a lot of content marketers who are coming to your site, you can go to the job board, and then other businesses know that they can come to you for content marketing.

9. Sponsored Mailings

Sponsored mailings are another one. Solo ads. So if you have an email list, then you can charge $20 per email send or whatever. Not $20, but like $200 per email sent, or $1,000 per email sent. What you’re going to do and how you would kind of base that metric, is you know that if you send an email, you’re going to get roughly.

Let’s say you get roughly 2,000 clicks. Well, each of those clicks is worth roughly $0.50. So that mailing will cost $1,000. So that’s typically how people end up pricing their sponsored mailings.

10. Broker Deals

In some other passive ways, you can broker deals. As a blogger, you’re really at the center of the action. So you have buyers and you have sellers, you have creators, you have consumers, so you can create opportunities around the content.

If you contact the vendor in an affiliate, you can get 10% off everything. So this is where some of the second-tier affiliate marketing comes into play. You have content, you might have an affiliate, and then you have a publisher. You can bring those two together and make 10%. It’s glorified business development, is what it is.

11. Podcast Advertising

We talked a little bit about podcast advertising up above, and I said something about… I wrote this article four years ago.

12. Video Advertising

The two big ways now, the two big, easy, low cost, easy ways of getting started with video advertising is you just upload a video, either a video or a bumper ad, to either Facebook or YouTube. And then your video is served up before the actual video starts, or it’s sort of up in the stream, depending on the length.

You have a video that is presenting itself as a commercial, and you’re only paying like $0.01 per view or $0.02 a view. I had a webinar last night and we were digging through some video engagement. And there was one live stream that I did that we kind of went through the stats, and I had spent $120 promoting this live stream. And for the $120, I got 122 people who watched the entire live stream from beginning to end.

Somebody is on Facebook and they’re just scrolling through and then they see my live stream. The live stream is like 27 minutes long. And then they just sit back and then they watch it.

It’s like, I can’t say that I have done that in a very, very long time. I don’t know what I would have. I don’t think I would just grab a live stream and then watch it for 27 minutes. My live streams aren’t all that entertaining, so yeah, it was interesting. But video advertising, it’s easy to get into, especially when you start with a live stream and then you promote it. Or you do clips or bumper ads, little six-second video clips and then you upload them. Yeah, that’s pretty nice.

Next week’s GSDdaily Topics

Now, next week we’re going to talk about going in and selling online, selling on the phone. It was an idea that struck me yesterday. I think we’re going to have some guests. We’re going to have some guests who are going to come on and talk about some phone selling strategies. I’m going to reveal some of my tips for selling on the phone, and this is going to be high ticket stuff.

Some of the things we talked about during the week were selling coaching, selling consulting, selling high ticket digital products, all of which require a sales call.

Next week, it’s going to be entirely about selling high ticket offers on the phone. And I’m going to walk through some of my processes and then there’s going to be some guests who are going to walk through some of theirs.

I’m excited about it, it’s going to be a lot of fun. I’m still waiting back to hear from a couple of people to see if they want to share some of their strategies because they’re pretty behind-the-scenes people. And I know they sell the lights out and they know they sell the lights out, but I don’t know that they want to get on publicly and share their strategies. So I’m kind of hitting them over the head a little bit.

But yeah, I think that’s about it for the week. If you have any questions at all, go to doneforyou.com/start, and I will be glad to get on the phone with you, answer any questions, build up an action plan, all that good stuff.

The post How Do you Earn By Blogging appeared first on Done For You.

When I started my first blog, I relied 100% on website ad networks.  I needed to find out how to monetize your website with ads because I didn't have products or services to sell...

And it was a challenge trying to find the best ad networks for small publishers - even though I didn't know what a 'small publisher' was then!

I had given up my Pepsi truck driving gig and had no idea about getting traffic or affiliate products, so I did what anyone with a site does...

I posted ads all over the place!  I was trying my damnedest to monetize website traffic, the little bit of website traffic I got at the time, with ad networks.

I only had about two people a day coming to my site, so I surely didn't make too much money...  But the few bucks a day added to my first check from Google!

That was a big day.  I still have a picture of it...  Check out that date!  2006!

Since then, the internet and blogging have grown up a lot.  Rather than a few ad networks that'll pay you on a CPM or CPC basis, there are hundreds of good ones...

There are what are considered the best ad networks for advertisers...  We do a lot of advertising nowadays!

And there are lots of ad networks for publishers that pay well.

As you'll discover in the video, very few of the ad networks will pay you more than if you had your book, course, digital product, or offer!

Now, monetizing your website makes our job of wading through the mess a little more intense, but don't worry.  This post will cover how to make money from your website without affiliate products or selling your stuff!

If you want to learn how to sell your stuff, we wrote an entire book about it.

We're also going to trudge through a bit of the 'process' associated with displaying ads on your site so you know how you will get paid by these networks...

What Are Ad Networks?

Ad networks are the collective watering holes of Internet commerce...  Inside an ad network, you'll have an advertiser and a publisher.

If you're familiar with a lot of our other work, our Axis CRM Project called Triggers, you know that we talk a LOT about being on the advertising side...  You know, getting traffic...

Now, take everything you know about advertising - and flip it.

When you're a 'publisher,' you're offering space on your website or blog that advertisers can use!  That means ads will be in your sidebars and below your blog posts about other people's products.  Some of them might be affiliate products.  Some of them might be retargeted ads.  Others might be ads for digital products or physical products.

We don't care what's being advertised...

Why?  Because we get paid in one of two ways...  CPM or CPC.

CPM vs. CPC

Two terms you've no doubt heard a lot are CPM and CPC.

• CPM - Cost Per Thousand Impressions
• CPC - Cost Per Click

Usually, you get paid one of two ways...   Whenever someone clicks an ad on your website or views an ad.

Nothing needs to be sold.  You don't make a commission or anything like that.  Very simply, you get paid by a click or a view.

Different ad networks have other parameters; some even pay out when either event happens...

Which brings me to my next point - how much traffic do you need?

Unique Visitors Are Crucial

The best ad networks are the ones that cater to big-traffic websites...  Think 500,000 or more visitors a month.  Some may argue that if you're getting that much traffic, generating revenue shouldn't be a problem.  I agree.

There are a handful of website owners out there who buy traffic for 9 cents and then make 15 cents on all the ads that are viewed.

That, my friends, is called Click Arbitrage.

You pull someone into your website, have them go through a slideshow (where they have to click next), show them pictures of "36 Dirty Jokes You Forgot As A Kid," and make a small fortune.

If you're just getting started, though, or only have a few hundred or thousands of visitors a month - that's still cool.  There are plenty of ad networks you can plug into.  Sometimes, the networks that accept anyone don't have the best offers or deliver the best experience for your readers...

It's up to you who you want to work with!

Now, I know you're asking yourself, what's better?  Selling affiliate products or my products OR simply posting content only and showing display ads?

What's Better - Selling Or Showing?

Now that you know about ad networks, how you'll get paid, click arbitrage, and the types of traffic some of the networks expect, we get to the heart of the matter.

Should you be plugging in banner ads or not?

The truth is that running banner ads and giving your traffic and impressions away has a cost to...  Sure, you'll get a check from the ad network, but is it worth it?

If you have a product or service you've created and you're selling on your site, then probably not.  Using that ad space, you would have tied up with an ad network, which is perhaps better served in promoting your stuff!

However, if you're an affiliate marketer (selling other people's products) or currently don't have any revenue model set up, ad networks are a great resource.

Generally, you'll make far MORE money selling your stuff, but there are a lot of things that come into play.  You must concern yourself with sales copy, webinars, merchant processing, email autoresponder copy, and hundreds of other things.

Sometimes, setting aside a portion of your website for banner ads is easier!

Choosing The Right Ad Network

Choosing the right ad network is essentially a matter of personal preference.  When you're getting started and don't have much traffic to offer, you'll find that the networks are a little cumbersome.

Chikita doesn't have great payouts.  Bidvertiser and Clicksor 'feel' weird.  They don't have the best advertisers, so they don't have the best ads...

It would be best to balance what you're going for with your brand and what you give up in allowing ad networks to post ads you don't directly control.

I've worked with many networks across the hundreds of websites I've owned and countless clients I've worked with.  Some are great.  Some, not so much.

Impression Stacking

There's a trick to ads, especially when you aren't trying to build a brand, that works every time.  I refer to it as Impression Stacking.

That is where you post ad groups from different ad networks, stacking payouts from each network.

When you get one new visitor, you're getting credit for that visitor from 4 or 5 different ad networks!  If you were wondering how the Click Arbitrage guys are doing it - that's how!

For each page a visitor hits, the ads reload, and they get another impression in each network!

A simple, genius model lets you stack up some considerable payouts.  A warning, though - not all ad networks work together!  Google doesn't play well with others...

Here Today.  Gone Tomorrow!

Over the years, I've seen many ad networks come and go.  One of my FAVORITE back in the day was Text Link Ads.  An SEO company bought them up, but at one point, they were paying me $1200 a month for a small block of text ads in my sidebar.

When you start your blog, that's big money for letting a company sell a few links on your sidebar!

My point is this: ad networks come and go, so it's always essential to keep your eye out and test diligently.  Try out new networks, and if you get better payouts, make the switch permanent!  It's nothing personal.

So now, let's talk about 7 of my favorite ad networks - ones I've used - that have withstood the test of time and grown through the years.

7 Ad Networks You Should Be Using

Most of these networks have been around for a long time, requiring next to no traffic to get started.

Also, they offer highly competitive payouts, and they've got technology that makes including them in your site less of a pain, both from the implementation standpoint and the 'what ads are you going to be showing my people' perspective.

1: Doubleclick By Google

Owned by Google, Doubleclick is by far the most prominent advertising network. It has access to the world’s largest pool of advertisers paying the highest CPMs.

It’s the premium version of AdSense, but this isn’t one of those dinky little upgrades. Ad Exchange is a real-time marketplace that works perfectly with Google’s DoubleClick for Publishers.

It’s a platform interconnecting advertisers, publishers, and networks that allows publishers to set the rates at which they want their inventory sold. If it can’t be sold at the premium price you select, it will be auctioned off in Exchange, and the highest-paying ad will be served. Google Ad Exchange has an 80% publisher revenue share.

2: Google Adsense

Adsense is by far the most well-known network, and most agree that their ads tend to perform the best but work better on sites relating to specific niches.  Maybe we'll post an article on the top-paying Adsense places...

You can choose from all sizes, text, or display ads and customize your ads (colors, font, etc.) to a point. They pay once a month via direct deposit or mailed check; you have earned at least $100 to qualify for a payment every month.

3: Buy Sell Ads

I like Buy Sell Ads for many reasons - one of the most prominent being that I remember when they started, and I've watched them grow.  When they started, I was one of their very early entrants with a few of my sites.

When they started, their premise was that they made it easy to sell banner ads on your site while they took only a tiny portion of the proceeds.  Now, they're working with huge and small publishers and advertisers alike.

They pay right to PayPal and are as dependable as the day is long...

4: Media.net

Media.net is the ad network powered by Yahoo! and Bing. Their ads look different because they’re just these little colored keyword blocks. Media.net works to ensure that the keyword blocks blend well with your site — they will often use the same color scheme. These ads complement Adsense ads very well, mainly because they look very different. Media.net pays monthly with PayPal, but like Adsense, you must have met that $100 minimum in a month to get a payment.

5: AdThrive

AdThrive displays family-friendly ads, plus they set up DFP (Double Click For Publishers) on their ads once installed on your blog. These are display ads, and once you sign up, they will analyze your site and tell you where they think their ads will perform best. Then, they go in and do all the setup for you. AdThrive pays monthly with direct deposit.

6: Advertising.com

An AOL platform, Advertising.com, offers you CPM and revenue share ads. Its rates for CPM ads are pretty impressive, but if your website has a high CTR, then its RevShare ads can be the ideal way to monetize your blog and rake in a lot of money.

The platform represents 92 of the top 100 Ad Age-listed advertisers. Getting approved is tricky as AOL only accepts websites with monthly traffic of 500,000 or more.

You can start getting paid as soon as you earn $25, and payments can be withdrawn through a cheque or wire transfer.

7: Criteo

Criteo has quickly gained traction and become a top earner for website owners and bloggers. With over 740 billion ads served in 2014 alone and an impressive 7800+ global advertisers, Criteo is placed perfectly to offer website owners ads with high CPM and excellent conversions.  Plus, they're putting a significant emphasis on machine learning and mobile...

Criteo sees an astonishing 96% renewal of service agreements by advertisers due to its ability to generate more significant revenue for its clients.  This effectively translates into more earnings for publishers who regularly benefit from more significant gains than the competitors.

8: RadiumOne

RadiumOne pioneered social media as an advertising tool and is a viral CPM ad platform that you can use to monetize a wide range of content. It works with texts, images, and video content and is optimized to target desktop and mobile users.

Payments are made every second week; you must earn $100 to be eligible for a payout. Once you start generating revenue through RadiumOne, you can request payment through PayPal, wire transfer, or a check addressed to your name.

9: Technorati Media (Synacor)

Professional bloggers prefer Technorati (just acquired by Synacor), which has a vast network of ad publishers who use the platform. It is also the world's prominent social media ad network and is perfect for websites that get a lot of traction on social networks.

They are a reputed ad platform and offer highly targeted ads, which are also great for increasing clickthrough rates.

When you serve ads through Technorati, you must maintain exclusivity, which may be a deal-breaker for some. If you get a lot of visitors, but AdSense isn’t working for you, then Technorati can be the perfect alternative.

10: Adelaide

AdBlade lets you publish ads for paid content for some top brands on your website. The product's niche makes it a lucrative market to tap into, and you get a high CPM rate for your efforts.  AdBlade also caters to the needs of several, so finding ads your audience will like is more accessible.

With AdBlade, your website should generate a minimum of 500,000 visitors per month to be accepted, which is too exclusive if you're starting...  For those who do qualify, they will be displaying ads on websites like Fox News and Yahoo! and getting paid very well for it.

Payments get credited to your PayPal after 30 days if they are over $100, and you can run AdBlade ads alongside AdSense without any problems.

Video Transcript:

In this video, we're going to talk about ad networks.

More specifically, how to monetize your website without selling affiliate products and your stuff without selling your services, creating content for your website, getting traffic to that content, and then monetizing it through advertisers.

And this was the very, very, very first thing I learned to do when I first started blogging, like in 2006. So basically, what I did was I had a website called JDs blog, and I posted fucking nonsense to it.

Looking back, you know, it's like there was no structure. I just wrote about whatever I want it well; I guess that's blogging, though. So whatever.

But I remember writing about all kinds of crazy stuff. I started a podcast back then. I got like 60,000 downloads because there weren't any podcasts out there. I had no idea what I was doing. If I had known what I was doing, I would have lit the world on fire, but I didn't. So there's that.

But I monetized my little traffic; I started getting into these ad networks, where you posted a banner ad to your website in the sidebar or the pages or the header or whatever.

And whenever somebody clicked that ad, or whenever that ad impression that ad was served, like the page, loaded in the ad was served, then you make a buck or 12 cents, or eight cents, or four cents or whatever, you know, there's some monetary value for that thing. So the very, very, very first check that I got back in 2006 was for $103 and 53 cents. And in the blog post here.

There's a picture of it. But that was a big day because Google bit was paying me, Which was huge, anyway.

So, what are ad networks? Well, ad networks are they work as the middleman. So basically, an ad network has two two sides to two different. It's a platform; they have two sides to their business: the advertisers on one and the publishers on another.

So advertisers get to come in and pay the network money to get traffic to their websites, then, you know, their pages and everything else. And everybody has their secret sauce.

You know, some of them are banner ads, other ones are retargeting of ads, and other ones are in-text links and whatever. So, if you're an advertiser, you understand the advertising side of this coin.

The publishers are the people who have a website and have traffic and content, and they're looking to monetize that traffic. They don't necessarily have anything to sell. They are 100% lead, pleased to have somebody on their website, clicking an ad, and then going off to an advertiser.

So they're happy with that because they usually make some form of money, whether a couple of cents or a couple of dollars. So, these ad networks bring together the advertisers and the publishers. And that is their business model. They keep the money in the middle. So, as you can expect, the largest ad network is Google. I mean, Google has a couple of different variations of, you know, their ad network. So there's a double click, and then there's Google AdSense.

So Google AdSense is the version where a publisher can go in and sign up, you know, with Google AdSense being approved, and then put a block of ads on their website. And those ads are served based on the keyword phrases in those blog posts. The other side of AdSense for us advertisers is AdWords.

So AdWords Well, it's Google Ads now. But it won't ever be Google ads to AdWords to me. Um, Google AdWords is for advertisers, and AdSense is for publishers. If you want to go and pay money for traffic, you go to AdWords; if you want to go and put banner ads on your website and get paid for those, you go to AdSense, two sides to the ad network. There's another one called buy-sell ads; they were really in their infancy, you know, years and years ago.

When I first got started online, I remember when they, you know, it used to be, you know, $5 a month, and you could get a banner ad on a website, which was super awesome, you know, so then there's some other there are all kinds of different networks, and they tend to change hands every once in a while.

You know, so in the blog advertising.com is one of them criteo Radio One, there's lots ad blade, you know, every once in a while they merge, there are new ones that come out.

But by and large, they serve the same purpose. And that purpose is to, you know, to marry up advertisers and publishers and make money in the middle.

There are so many Dunphy blog posts that there are many ad networks you can click through and look at and check out and see which one works for you. But there are a couple of things that I want to talk about when it comes to ad networks.

That is important. So, the first is CPM versus CPC. CPM is your cost per thousand impressions. So that's you make, you know, $1 per thousand times that that page loads that ad loads. So it's a lot of traffic and not a lot of money. There's also cost per click, like what Google AdSense is.

So, the cost per click is that you don't get paid every time the ad loads, but you get paid every time somebody clicks the ad. So it depends on how much traffic you're getting, what kind of quality of traffic it is, you know what is going to end up paying you out the best, but you unique visitors, unique visitors are crucial.

So, the best ad networks cater to websites that get a lot of traffic, like half a million monthly visitors. So the best and the best payouts, the best ad networks are going to, you know, hop on board. Suppose you get a lot of traffic. If you don't, then they're still, I mean, you can still run Google AdSense, but you're just not going to get that top-tier placement, you know, from ads.

And really, the age-old question is, Do you want to create your own products and services and sell your own thing? Or do you want to put ad blocks up and sell somebody else's or get paid to advertise somebody else's thing? I 100% wholeheartedly think that you're going to, you're going to go, you're going to make a whole lot more money if you use the impressions and the eyeballs and the traffic that you get daily to promote your products, your services, you know, whether that is an ebook or a digital course or, you know, a coaching offer consulting offer, or, you know, just having five clients that you do, you know, kind of distance remote coaching with, you know, you're going to make a lot more money that way, serving a relatively few amounts of people.

Then you're going to get publishing content blog posts, after blog posts, you know, day after day, and, you know, hoping the banner ads will pay the bills. I mean, you're going. It would be best if you had a lot of traffic. You can make five and six figures a month with 10,000, 10,000, 12,000, 5,000, and 6,000 visitors monthly. If you're selling your products and services with banner ads, you will be lucky to make 100 bucks a month with that kind of traffic.

So it's just something to think about, you know, with affiliate products, it's even much easier to make more considerable money not as high you're not going to make as much Won't you will you could. Still, you're probably not going to make as much as if you had your products and services, but affiliate Commission, you know, will still pay about under the banner networks, you know, your ad networks.

So it's just something to think about how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go. You know, if you have your products and services, you got to fill those, you know, you're going to have customers and clients and support and, you know, sales and all that other stuff. If you sell affiliate products, you don't have fulfillment and support and all that stuff, but you do need traffic and marketing and all of that, you know?

Whereas if you have a website that you sure you can, you know, hope for a viral video that gets you, you know, half a million or a million visitors a month or whatever, is it going to happen? Probably not. But it could, you know, so it just depends on what level you want to play it. I hope you like this video; subscribe to future videos and click the like button. That would be awesome.

SaveSave

The post Unlocking the Potential of Top Ad Networks for Online Income appeared first on Done For You.

Video content marketing is at an all-time high, with more kids (and adults included) wanting to be Youtube Stars than doctors and lawyers anymore.

People's attention to video has been always through the roof. It doesn't really have anything to do with what's on, we'll keep watching, and this happens because eyesight is our dominant sense counting for about 80% of the stimulus our brain gets. That's why television is the main source of information for so many people.

But things evolve. What we see remains the main way we learn, but the way we get our information has changed a lot over the past 50 years or so. Yes, television is still a huge thing, but with the development of mobile devices (laptops, tablets, smartphones) we have the opportunity to deliver our message to even more people, without paying enormous amounts of money to get on national television.

Having a video content strategy can make the difference between competing small businesses. One could spend a lot of money to get on TV but the other could take the better option - investing in video content marketing.

4 Tips to Jumpstart Your Video Content Marketing Strategy

You know how big Youtube is. You see how rapidly Facebook is developing tools and new ways for video content (ie. Facebook Video Ads). You read about small businesses going viral with the help with video and now you want to start working on your own little video studio and start producing great video content for marketing. Here are some of our tips for those who want to jump-start their small business' video content strategy.

1. Always do your research.

Don't get ahead of yourself. You should build a video content strategy, but first things first, you need to gather up data and analyze. Find out what's your target audience, what's your most selling product and how can you reach them.

If you're a local business, your video content marketing should be different than what another company who deals online should have. Be smart about the questions you ask and you'll get your answers.

2. Do it on your own vs. video marketing team.

Don't know if you should hire someone to apply the best video marketing tactics to your content strategy or if you should do it alone? It all depends on the size of your business. If you only have 2 - 3 employees and sell selected wine from your suppliers, maybe start your very own Youtube channel where you post wine reviews, tips, tricks and do your magic.

Don't worry if you won't get a lot of views at the beginning. You will improve your video content and those who are interested will find your videos entertaining.

The great thing about a video content strategy is that's always scalable. You can start small and then upgrade your video gear and team to make more professional videos.

If you're already a bigger business, then you should focus on hiring people who know what they're doing. Budget still low? Try to focus on students who study video marketing and production and those who still haven't made a name for themselves in the industry.

3. You don't need a fancy video studio.

At least not at the beginning. If you have a small business, there's a high chance that your budget is limited so make do with what you have. While doing this, you should try to focus on using your resources to get good lighting, sound and scenery.

Like I said before, if you have a really small local business, you should focus on getting your content online and then improve your performance. Always mix your video content with online written content.

You can read my other article on how to find untapped sources for great content.

4. Find your working video channel.

You may think there are two main video channels where you could share your content. That's not entirely true. Yes. You can make your video and upload it to Youtube or Facebook (and I'm saving the pros and cons for these on for a future article) but you shouldn't stop here.

More and more services start to show up and promote the video content marketing tools they have. If I was the owner of a small business I would do the following:

1. I would think of a video idea.
2. I would make the video and upload it to Youtube. After a few hours I would add a promo of it on my Facebook page directing people to my Youtube channel.
3. I would use other social platforms and apps centered on video such as Instagram, Snapchat, Periscope and Meerkat to promote my Youtube content (you can do this even when you're filming the Youtube video, like a promo or after the video is released to get in touch with your customers & fans for their feedback.
4. I would continue using the above video apps (Snapchat, Periscope, Meerkat) to promote my business and let people see what's happening behind the curtains.

You can jumpstart your video content strategy in no time at all. You just have to be smart about it, do your research, choose the best ideas for video content and the right channels to promote it. Start small and analyze after every step. Is your viewer & customer base increasing? Do you get feedback? Are you happy with the outcome of your video content strategy? Always ask these questions and you should be just fine.

The post 4 Tips to Jumpstart Your Video Content Marketing Strategy appeared first on Done For You.

Some businesses have the luxury of hiring a content creation team but what should you do if you don't have the resources for this? Are you going to give up on quality content on your websites? That would be a mistake.

You need quality content on your website or blog because it allows you to interact with your audience and to grow by increasing your chances to be found in search engines' results pages. Of course, there are other big reasons why a business needs a content creation strategy but we chose to focus on the most important stuff - getting seen by people and growing as a company.

Not just big companies need quality content added using some sort of publication schedule. Imagine a niche blog that makes money through affiliate marketing or own products. What traffic numbers would it have without quality content added frequently?

Bottom line:

quality content = more income & conversions for everyone working in online.

So, you may choose to spend hours on creating long-form quality content and not resolve other important business tasks, or you could follow our guidelines to create awesome content, fast, and without losing quality.

How To Write A Blog Post Fast: 7 Easy steps to create quality blog posts in under 60 minutes

Yes, writing a quality blog post can be done in under one hour. This means you won't have to spend more time on this and you'll be able to finish other business tasks. The following steps don't require you to be an expert content writer and ensure that you publish quality & fast content on your blog.

1. Research

Before starting to write anything, you'll have to spend a few hours each week discovering great topics to talk about on your blog. We encourage you to have a content creation strategy and to use various types of content (long-form, short-form or cornerstone content). The alternative to spending that much time on researching topics is basically... to let others do it for you. Start by creating a list of similar blogs or inspiration sources, you'll need them further.

2. Create an account on Curately

Using our web app to publish curated content requires you to create an account on Curately. Don't worry, it only takes a few minutes and you can visit your dashboard, where the content creation process begins.

Add those content sources you've researched in Curately and watch how the web app offers you blog posts ideas.

3. Find the topic and write a great headline

After adding your content sources in Curately, you'll be able to select any blog posts from those blogs and start creating your own quality content. Don't just copy/paste the original blog post but only use a snippet of text and start creating from there.

We recommend you to change the blog post title into a headline that will spark a conversation between you and your fans or readers. Don't forget that most people only read the headline of your blog post. Your blog post title should be short and descriptive while also intriguing your audience. If you choose to write a longer headline, don't forget that readers tend to absorb only the first and last 3 words of a given headline.

4. Write the quality blog post

Since you already have the topic of discussion, the process of writing a quality blog post should run smoothly. You'll need to respect a few guidelines for your blog post to be a success.

Write a story. Even if you're using someone else's idea, you'll need to adapt it to your experiences. Writing to write a story from your own perspective will increase the number of full-page readers and their average time spent on the site.

Use a good featured image. Don't forget to add a featured image to your blog posts. Depending on the original story, you'll need to get publishing rights if you want to use the original image. The better alternative is to create your own (since you're providing your readers with a story).

Don't forget about headings. Your blog post needs a good structure and since we recommend a blog post length of around 1,500 words, using headings is a great way to mark off different parts of your blog posts. Headings also allow you to signal important pieces of content.

Add a conclusion paragraph. When writing long-form content, you'll need to respect the introduction, main content, and conclusion. This will allow your readers to better understand the information and your point of view - essential when using the curated content.

To learn more about the creation of the perfect blog post, you may want to read: 5 Questions & Answers About The Ideal Blog Post Length.

5. Add sharing cues within the blog post

Even if your spending under 60 minutes to write quality blog posts, this doesn't mean you don't need to take care of every aspect. You'll want to add some sharing cues within the text of your blog post. For example, you can install a Twitter sharing plugin and allow people to share quotes from your blog post just by one click.

Add sharing buttons in the form of a sharing floating bar and at the end of the blog post.

6. Proofread your blog post

Yes, you'll create a quality blog post in under one hour. When you do this, don't forget to spend at least 5 minutes proofreading the blog post and checking it for errors. Since you're doing this, you will also want to check any links you added and make sure to provide a link to the original blog post.

7. Share it on social networks

Your content creation strategy should include social media content, not just blog posts and web pages. Microblogging is equally important when trying to grow a business. Make sure your blog post has the right image size and meta information for different social networks.

You may also want to read our previous article on How to Choose Between 11 Social Networks to Grow Your Business.

The post How To Write A Blog Post Fast – In Under 30 Minutes appeared first on Done For You.

A lot of our clients ask us how to write better blog posts because content marketing is so crucial in this day and age...

When we created this blog post we meant it to help new bloggers but soon after we drafted the first ideas, we soon realized that even the older bloggers have moments when they think that they're not doing enough or aren't able to escape a writer's block. Improving your blogging skills is a subject of interest for all bloggers, no matter their experience in their niche.

Just having a blog and adding regular content isn't enough to maintain a high volume of targeted traffic. You'll always have to research, read about new things and apply new tactics. Since you're a blogger and you have some kind of passion driving you forward, you'll need to find creative ways to improve your blogging skills.

There are so many reasons why you'd like to learn how to write better blog posts:

• Your traffic is declining.
• You don't like the content you're adding.
• You look at other bloggers and want to apply their tactics.

...or everything is working out great but you know that bloggers should always try to improve themselves so their content will get more social shares and comments.

Taking all of this into consideration, have you decided it's time to be a better blogger? If that is the case, read on because we have some recommendations for new and established bloggers alike.

6 Creative Ways To Improve Your Blog Posts

Before we continue, you need to understand that sometimes, you don't have to make huge changes to improve yourself... it could just be something you overlooked and improving your blogging skills transforms into a matter of beating on your craft every day. Here's our take on becoming a better blogger - the creative way.

1. Understand it takes time and patience.

Learning how to write better blog posts isn't like fixing a broken widget on the blog sidebar. Most of the times, you'll need to be patient and spend your time reading, researching and trying out stuff. It may work, it may not - the secret is to learn from every action you take and see what went wrong or right, depending on the situation.

2. Start by making changes to your lifestyle.

Like we said before, on your hunt to discover how to write better, the problem may not be entirely related to your blog or content. You could be facing a bigger problem related to your physical or mental state. Ensure that you eat the right foods and find creative ways to spend your time as this will be vital to your mental state thus improve your daily mood.

Start taking walks since they are both beneficial for your body and mind. They also provide you with a creative way to find ideas for new blog posts.

3. In a slump and trying to figure out how to write better blog posts? Try something else.

We're not saying to give up blogging and start working at a farm (although you could do that if you wanted to). No - we're recommending to start a side project, maybe start a blog for another passion or hobby you may have? Starting something new is a creative way to encourage your brain to work better and allow him to switch between tasks.

Doing the same thing over and over again makes it easier but it won't improve your creativity.

4. Forget about eBooks and manuals.

Find out there's something wrong with the content you put out every day? Don't go running to eBooks or blogging manuals who claim to fix everything. There isn't a simple solution to improving your blogging skills. The creative approach would be to sit down and really think about what's wrong with your blogging experience and start from there.

5. Start talking to other bloggers.

What happened to you may have happened to others as well. Get involved in the local blogging community and start discussions in your Facebook group. You may be surprised but improving your blogging skills can happen just by talking to people who went through the same thing.

6. Is your problem content related?

Depending on your blog's niche, finding great content to share with your readers can be problematic. Finding out what are the best sources of inspiration for your blog can be an ordeal when you're writing in a "boring niche".

If you'd like an Action Plan on creating content for your site OR would rather hand it off to a team dedicated to writing for you, click here!

The post How To Write Better Blog Posts appeared first on Done For You.

A few searches will tell you that there are hundreds of ways to monetize a blog...  But very few of them will generate tremendous, life-changing revenue...  In fact, you'll find out that most people recommend using ads in 99% of the cases.

Yes, ads are probably the easiest way to monetize your website but if you do, you're missing out on a tremendous amount of money by utilizing some of these other methods...

There are several reasons why you wouldn't be able to use ads to monetize a blog and you should be prepared to apply alternative tactics if you still want to get income from that website.

Why wouldn't you be able to use ads for blog monetization?

• Your niche doesn't allow it. This doesn't mean it's illegal but some ad networks don't allow ads on all niches. For example, you can see where Google forbids the display of ads.
• You're recovering from a mistake. You did something wrong and got banned from an ad network. These things happen, not being able to display an ad doesn't mean you should stop trying to monetize your website.
• You don't want to use ads. There are several reasons why you'd want this for your website. Many website owners don't use ads because they want to control the content displayed on their projects. Maybe they're working on a website for parents and kids and don't want intrusive ads or maybe you just want to keep the UX to the highest level and have a clean template.

There probably are other reasons as well but we're not here to talk about why people can't use ads on their website but how they can monetize a blog without having the ad option.

5 Trending Ways To Monetize a Blog Without Using Ads

Whatever your reason may be, if you still want to monetize a blog without using ads, you should try one of these trending methods. You've probably read about some of them so why not try them out. Not all alternatives will work for your blog so make sure you're going to apply the right tactic.

1. Make money with your blog by reviewing products.

Product reviews are a trending way to monetize a blog but don't work on all websites. To be successful at making money through product reviews you need to have a big audience. Even more, you'll need to target a specific niche to get the best results for your blog.

It's probably better to mix your product review strategy with affiliate marketing, but we'll talk about this later down the line.

2. Offer certain services on your blog.

This would a great way to work on your skills and monetize your blog. Most people start a blog because they're really good at something and want to share their expertise with others. Why not offers the services you're talking about as a way of monetization?

You'll keep writing for an audience who's interested in your field of work and you'll promote yourself to offer your expertise & time to others.

3. Write eBooks or provide other resources.

Are you really passionate about your field of work and want to get more out of it? Writing eBooks and creating digital products is an easy way to get some income from your blog if you're smart about it. You'll need a strong audience and to build a good online presence. Developing your personal brand should be your primary goal while writing on your blog.

After you built a good community around your blog and people see you as an expert in your domain, take some time each day and start writing eBooks you can sell on your website.

You can also choose to provide other paid content for your readers such as podcasts or videos.

4. Give affiliate marketing a try.

If your blog isn't big enough to make money by simply reviewing products, you should try affiliate marketing. There are so many affiliate networks you can choose these days so you're sure you'll find something relevant to your blog's niche. You can use links, banners and other ways to redirect possible customers to the online stores and get a big commission from this.

The key to successful affiliate marketing is to find a good niche with a high number of people interested. Use your skills to bring traffic to your blog and increase conversion rates.

5. Become a consultant.

If you're really good at something, you may try to become a business consultant. Freelancing is something people are turning to way often than you'd think so why not give it a try. But if you're going to be good as a consultant you'll have to invest a lot of time in your personal brand and the services you can offer to others.

Start writing really targeted content for your line of work and mix that content with personal opinion, tutorials, and free resources. This should be a good starting point for you to become a well-known consultant.

What are some ways to monetize a blog that you've tried until now? Did you find them to be what you've looked for? If not, what was wrong? You're not obligated to use ads on your website if you want to monetize it. There are other options out there that will help you monetize a blog but as always, you'll need to work hard since there is no easy way to get income from online businesses.

The post 5 Profitable Ways To Monetize a Blog Without Using Ads appeared first on Done For You.

Your path to increase website traffic is usually a marathon, not a sprint.  It's possible to increase website traffic FAST, but you don't want to risk exploiting some short term gain or some 'loophole' that's here today and gone tomorrow.

But sometimes you just want a quick traffic boost for your new blog post.

The secret to pulling loads of traffic fast is doing what other site owners are not doing. This post will give you a few surefire ways to increase website traffic in under 30 minutes.

These traffic tips are simple to grasp, easy to implement and effective in bringing in highly-targeted traffic.

Here's the thing though - you can't ever ease up.  Free traffic requires content.  Paid traffic requires constant management and testing to optimize performance.  To run a successful digital business, you need to make sure that traffic is something you're prioritizing!

... Otherwise, all of your sales and revenue dries up.

Try them out and watch the number of visitors increase faster than ever before.

1. Promote massively on social media

When you think of traffic, what is the first method to come to mind? Right, social media. Almost every website owner has at least one social media profile.  Linkedin.  Facebook.  Instagram.  Twitter.  Youtube.  Each 'channel' has its users - many of whom are your buyers!

Promoting your blog content on social media is like trumpet calls to their digital doorstep. Every person who sees your site link on social media and is interested in the topic will want to click. The result? Instant boost in traffic.

When you engage with social users—directly or publicly by liking or re-sharing their posts, or just by engaging them in conversation—you introduce them to your brand. It takes some up-front work, but you could probably build an audience of thousands within weeks to serve as a scene for even further audience growth.

Start by sharing interesting content—your own blog posts, those of peers in your industry who've impressed you and anything that you feel has a chance to go "viral" and earn sharing from others.

For best results and really fast traffic, focus on the leading social networks:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• LinkedIn

You must’ve seen people insert different hashtags into their social media updates. Use trending hashtags and a link back to your site for an instant traffic boost. Hashtags expand the reach of your social media posts beyond your direct followers and help you reach new audiences.

Here's a tool top-hashtags.com to help you find the top hashtags to add to your posts for maximum exposure.

Now, what about some advanced ways to grab traffic from social media? A surefire way to increase website traffic fast is to tweet 15 to 20 influencers about your latest article. It won't take more than 30 minutes to send direct messages to a list you have previously compiled.

Choose influencers carefully. They need to be active, have a massive following and broadcast about topics that are closely related to your niche.

Use Buzzsumo's Influencers feature to find influencers in different social networks.

Another way to maximize your results from Twitter is to set a schedule to tweet your post six times over a 24-hour period.

Your tweet has an average life of fewer than 24 minutes. After that, your followers are not likely to see it. Tweet your link 6 times a day to attract as many eyeballs as possible.

Use a free service called Recurpost to schedule recurring posts.

Other premium tools that might help you schedule your posts and save time are CoSchedule and Hootsuite.

2. Use paid ads

Paid advertising works like a charm when you want to increase website traffic fast...  as fast as possible!  ie. Instantly! Paid ads require a budget and there's definitely a formula you should employ to get leads, but it’s totally worth spending money if you know who you want to attract and where you have them land on.

If you just run a Facebook ad with no strategy or sales funnel behind it to back it up, then you’ll receive inbound traffic to your site, but once you withdraw that budget, your traffic will disappear.

What you can do instead is:

• Choose very carefully who you target with your ads,
• Send people who click on your ads to a highly-relevant blog post,
• Put advanced lead-generation and conversion tactics to keep new visitors on your lists. Such tactics are content upgrades, list building plugins and exit pops, and browser notifications.

All in all, advertising is a good strategy that is both profitable and fast. Here are some good options for fast paid traffic:

• Facebook Ads
• Instagram Ads
• Twitter Ads
• Outbrain/Taboola Ads
• LinkedIn Ads
• Google Adwords
• Bing Ads
• StumbleUpon Paid Discovery
• Reddit Ads

3. Participate in question and answer sites

Quora is an online platform where people post their questions and seek answers. You can find questions on practically anything.

Quora is currently number 79 site in the US and number 133 in the world in terms of incoming traffic (source: alexa.com, January 2018). You don't want to miss out on potential traffic from a site that attracts hundreds of thousands of users per month.

To increase website traffic quickly, go to Quora and start answering questions that are directly related to your blog posts. At the end of each of your answers, post a link back to the most relevant blog post. This is free publicity for you and your brand right in the middle of a targeted audience.

Be careful though. Don't spam people with your links. You always need to be genuinely helping people with your answers. And then, at the end of the answer, give them a resource to learn more.

A lot of experts will jump in and answer a question extensively. So, don't be lazy; do your best to present a well-thought answer if you want to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise.

The best strategy with Q&A sites isn't to answer every single question that appears on your feed, but rather, to strategically offer high-value answers to the community. You can do that by spotting questions that are more difficult to answer, thus, get a small number of answers.

That kind of question is more likely to rank well for on-site search queries or on Google, and also get more social traffic or referrals from blogs. If you stick to the strategy of providing remarkable value to anyone who's honestly curious you will see an instant and long-term benefit to your blog.

Some people walk the extra mile and create a blog post to tackle really important questions. Quora is also an effective way to find blog post topics; Each good question gives you a topic that folks are heavily interested in.

4. Run contests and giveaways

Giveaways and contests are somewhat similar to paid advertising methods in the sense that you’ll need to invest some money upfront—usually in a hot tech product, an Amazon gift card, or something of value that your audience will crave.

Then, you run a contest where you ask the participants to perform some action to be entered into the giveaway. For example, you might ask them to share your contest page on social media.

Contests will have a big impact on growing your email list and boosting your blog traffic because folks simply love to get free stuff. A good contest will go viral and spread the word to more and more people, so it’s a perfect way to get widespread brand visibility faster than ever.

Make sure you follow up with all the new subscribers that will opt in for your mailing list so that you reap the long-term traffic benefit as well.

Rufflecopter is a full-featured tool that makes it simple to launch and manage a viral giveaway on any website.

5. Get visitors to come back to your site

Don’t let the anonymous user browse your site and then never come back. There are a bunch of tools today, that you can employ to grab people's email or cookie them, so you can get back to them at a later time.

This is a long term game right here.  With this model, it's about capturing website traffic and making sure you can reach out to them.  After that, you're able to increase website traffic instantly by simply posting something new - or sending an email!

People don’t bookmark sites anymore. If someone drops by your blog and finds it pretty interesting, you have a slim chance of them coming back anytime soon. That sucks and it shouldn't be the case. People are exposed to tons of information every day and they have busy lives. It’s impossible to remember every new resource we find online.

To tackle that issue and pull back some of these potential prospects, employ the following tactics:

• Enable subscriptions via RSS Feed. This can be done using Feedburner on the sidebar of your site.
  Grab their email address. Use optin form inline or at the end of the posts. Use welcome mats to grab the whole screen. You can use Sumo to do all that.
• Ask them to allow browser notifications. PushCrew is a popular to that help you implement push notifications for mobile and web browsers
• Use a Facebook Messenger bot. ManyChat is a simple tool that helps you create a chatbot and have people automatically allow Messenger communication and broadcasts.
• Enable Facebook Page chat on your site. Facebook Customer Chat is a WordPress plugin to help you do exactly that. People are *always* on Facebook, so why not give them an easy way to chat with you using the service they’re already logged in?
• Start building an email list with exit pops, content upgrades and so much more...

Once you've set up any of those tools, ideally all of them, you'll see an exponential growth in your subscriber base—no matter the medium. In time, you’ll be able to track which one of these strategies bring you more traffic. Finding out what plays well for your audience can help make fast traffic work in the long-term as well.

6. Guest post

When you’re looking to increase website traffic fast, what you need is an audience expansion. Guest posts are a good strategy for fast traffic gain because guest posts connect you and your brand with a new, laser-focused audience.

Guest blogging serves multiple functions but the most important fact is that a single guest post may give you instant access to an authority’s established audience.

The minute the guest post is published you get a possibility for direct traffic; The blog owner will most like promote that post on social media and send a link to their email list.

Frequent visitors will also see the new content and some of them will click your link to learn more about you and your services. Plus, as a long-term benefit, guest posts will help you in both SEO and content marketing.

Great content is a prerequisite for any effective traffic strategy. Given the limited resources that every entrepreneur has, you need the proper tools to make your content marketing as simple as possible.

So, in essence, guest blogging is one of the most effective strategies for quick traffic because new people who have never seen your work before getting exposed to your brand and ideas. You also get quality backlinks and references, which are a key part of the way search engines algorithm work.

Now, how do you find those guest posting opportunities for a quick traffic boost?

There are numerous smart methods to find blogs that accept posts for instant traffic but we will show you the easiest one:

Go to google and type in your niche and any of the following:

• “Submit a guest post” / “Submit post” / “Submit blog post”
• “Submit an article”
• “Write for us”
• “Become an author”
• “Contribute to our site”
• “Become a contributor”
• “Become guest writer”
• “Suggest a guest post”
• “Send a guest post”
• “Add blog post”
• “Guest bloggers wanted”
• “(Write for our) guest column”.

7. Be interviewed

Think of interviews as video or audio guest posts. There are advantages to getting interviewed on niche sites, podcasts, and vlogs.

Obviously, an interview published on another site will help you capitalize on their audience. This increases your website traffic, but more importantly, it helps your brand be seen by more people. It also adds to your efforts to be established as an authority in your niche. Why would anyone spend their time interviewing a professional if they're not important?

Because you will be perceived as an expert in your niche, people who come to check out your blog will be more likely to subscribe to your list and come back.

Use HARO to find an interview opportunity. HARO stands for Help A Reporter Out and is a service that used by news agencies like ABC and FOX.

When you sign up for HARO, which is totally free by the way, you will receive queries in your inbox every day. These queries come from bloggers, PR specialists, and reporters who are looking for expert insights, data, and opinions. You will often find opportunities to be interviewed or be part of an expert roundup.

Increase Website Traffic Fast WITH QUALITY VISITORS

Keep in mind that “fast” traffic might not always be good traffic—it’s possible that you don’t get a good ROI.

Whatever action you take on acquiring traffic fast, do your best to laser-target the audience that will see your brand. Whether it be niche blogs or targeted Facebook advertising, you are more like to get a good ROI on every dollar spent, when you know where your brand stands and who you want to attract.

And then, when it comes to the long-term benefit from your traffic strategies, SEO and content marketing are the top to utilize.

Never forget to publish good, valuable and search engine optimized content to position yourself strategically and be found organically.

Think of long-term traffic strategies and planting seeds to grow your own garden versus buying the vegetables directly from the farmers’ market.

So, try to keep these quick traffic methods in balance with your long-term tactics to reap the benefits of a 360° traffic strategy.

The post How To Increase Website Traffic Fast appeared first on Done For You.

Such benefits are: top search engine rankings, increased website traffic, improved lead generation and conversion processes, and better customer engagement.

And, these content marketing benefits are true for B2C as well as B2B product and services.

According to Statista, content marketing revenue was reached 32.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2017, up from 28 billion a year earlier. Why? Mainly, because businesses, whether big, medium or small, have started to take content marketing seriously.

They recognize that intrusive ads and in-your-face marketing are less effective than they used to be in attracting and converting customers.

Channels like social media give customers the ability to reject poor to average content in favor of transparent, friendly and engaging content. So, if you are confident about the quality of your content, the challenge lies in reaching the right audiences that are present on such advertising channels.

No wonder that the most successful B2B and B2C marketers allocate 40% and 26% of their total marketing budget respectively to market content (Content Marketing Institute). While content marketing budget is not an issue for big and even medium-size businesses, it may pose an obstacle to startups and small companies.

However, anyone can minimize the budget without compromising content marketing quality.

Here are seven tried and tested ways to create high-quality content marketing campaigns on a budget.

1. Evaluate everything

No marketing campaign can begin without self-evaluation. You must do a reality check of what do you have at present and what do you expect in the future. By doing so, you would save yourself from allocating an unnecessarily large content marketing budget at the start itself.

Start by evaluating:

• Goals: Decide monthly, six-monthly and yearly revenue goals. Then, decide how many social media subscribers, email subscribers, new sign-ups etc you target to achieve within the first week or month of starting content marketing.
• Current Situation: Do you already have content posted on the internet? If yes, assess how it is performing, what are the content gaps, does it feature in the search engine results and so on.
• Resources: What tools and technologies do you have in hand? Do you need to hire more people? Do you need in-house content creators or freelancers or unique talents for different varieties of content?

2. Research a lot

This step actually falls into the content creation stage of the entire marketing process. It is because if you don’t research well to create precise, informative, unique and engaging content, marketing it would push your spending to the drain.

So, what you need to research to keep your content marketing efforts on budget?

• Keywords: Use all great keyword research tools to feed your content with the precisely searchable queries. It would not only bring the content on the top of the search engine results, but would also create channels for the targeted audiences to find it. In fact, optimal keyword usage can reduce your marketing efforts significantly.
• Audiences: Know your content viewers, their needs and expectations and where do they look for the content. If your content is not marketed for the ‘right’ kind of audience, it would prove to be a costly affair.
• Competition: In order to be unique and better than your rivals, you need to keep a watch on the content they generate. It would not only inspire you for better marketing efforts, but also save you from being repetitive.

3. Choose the best

A number of choices you make in the process of content marketing can dramatically influence the outcomes and put your budget in the right direction. Keep your eyes open when you choose:

• Content-Type: While the old content types continue to be popular, many new ones are creating the right buzz as well. For example, social media posts, infographics, podcasts, videos, illustrations and interactive content (like quiz and survey) are currently the hot trends and you must cash on them.

Image Source: blog.bufferapp.com

• Publishers: Why to waste money posting your content on low-traffic and low-authority platforms. Rather, choose sites and blogs that are ranking high and are popular and reliable among consistent viewers.
• Marketing Channels: Are you distributing your content on the right channels? Apart from the buzzing social media networks, focus on online community channels like Quora. The well-known audiovisual content channels too must feature in the list. After all, these are the places where the online audiences extensively hang out.

4. Quality over quantity

If you focus more on creating and marketing content in quantity, your marketing budget is sure to dry up soon. Instead, concentrate on providing quality that would not only keep a check on the budget, but would exploit the benefits in long terms. How to do it?

• Amazing Content: Don’t mind paying higher to create top-quality content that would be shared again and again. Such articles, blogs, and social media posts enjoy a long life and never go outdated.
• Post Frequency: Don’t bombard the marketing channels with content. Once you start engaging the audiences, promise them no more than 3-4 posts a week. It would keep them on the toe waiting for your quality content and would also utilize the budget optimally. Use tools like content marketing calendar to keep the track. 

Image Source: contentmarketinginstitute.com

• Cash on the ‘Performing’ Content: Consider that one of your blogs garners huge number of views and comments. Now, don’t mind paying to get it published on the paid platforms as it is bound to bring in more traffic to your site.

5. Review to save

Image Source: neilpatel.com

Analyzing and reviewing the marketed content not only improves its performance but also cuts down the unnecessary spending. In this context, you can also rely on the golden 80:20 rule.

The 80% of success would come from the 20% of the total marketing efforts you put in. In order to highlight these best 20% efforts, you must indulge in the process of content reviewing. The tools like Google Analytics would track down the performance of your content, allowing you to:

• Measure Popularity: How many times the content has been viewed? Out of the platforms where you marketed your content, which one has generated the more number of views, comments and leads? How many times the content has been shared? And, so on.
• Choose the Best: By periodically measuring the performance, you would have a clear idea about things like the best content types, the best channels and platforms and also the interests and expectations of the readers.
• Modify and Save: Obviously, you would modify your marketing strategy, focusing more on the best-performing ones and letting go the least-performing ones. In the end, you would have the best marketing knowledge and considerably saved budget.

6. Reuse… smartly

Image Source: blog.hootsuite.com

Reuse, repurpose and recycle are the popular terms associated with environmental conservation. Surprisingly, these are also applicable to the discussion of how to market content in the budget. This process can start at the very beginning of content creation. Find out how:

• Create Evergreen Content: Rather than creating content which is time critical, opt for evergreen content which would hold the weight in the many years to come as well. If it is a quality content and gets popular, you can republish it on other platforms for the new viewers.
• Convert the Content: Articles can be converted into blogs, blogs in to social media posts, posts into videos and videos into infographics. Smartly, you can maintain the content’s mettle, but change its presentation and face to use it again and for the sole purpose of viewer engagement.
•  Update the Content: Even if you can’t do without writing time-critical content, take out time to review it and update it to meet the changed scenarios. The efforts would be minimal and the budget would be saved.

However, make sure you stick to the rule of creating unique content and note the mere copies of the existing ones.

7. Keep scope for the future

Don’t be strict when you plan a budget for content marketing. You can follow each of the above strategies to utilize the allocated budget wisely. But then, there is nothing fixed when it comes to marketing for business. For example, what if you need to target a completely new batch of audiences where your existing content is not of much use. Here are some great tips:

• Start With What’s Essential: For a new business, you just need to try and test the content marketing strategies. At this point of time, start with the minimal budget and keep on adding to it with the passage of time. In this way, your future marketing budget requirements would be met conveniently.
• Market According to Demand: If you want to cater to your audience only during a season or a particular time of the year, why spend uselessly on content marketing throughout the year? Keep the campaign passive during off-seasons and accelerate its pace just before and during the peak times.
• Room for Changing Trends: As new trends and forms of content are being discovered, be ready to adopt them. For this, keep your content marketing budget reserved to welcome these changes.

As content marketing is never going to lose its worth, your business deserves to make the best out of it. You have just learned how a small budget can also accomplish respectable benefits, provided you align it with quality smartly. You can thrive in content marketing on a budget even if your business is small or just starting out.

The post 7 Smart Ways To Thrive In Content Marketing On A Budget appeared first on Done For You.

But, what exactly is marketing automation?

Marketing automation – What it is and what it is not

Marketing automation is a way of targeting customers using software that works on auto pilot after you initially set it up. Software sends automated marketing messages and notifications across multiple channels, such as emails, text messages, social networks, pop up notifications, push messages, etc.

Undoubtedly, marketing automation fuels efficiency as well as global outreach. Research shows that marketing automation increases sales productivity by 14.5% and reduces marketing overhead by 12.2%.

Automation tools and software are very effective in lead generation through chatbots across several platforms such as email marketing, webpages, social media, and SMS. Another research reveals that 4 out of 5 users increased leads by choosing marketing automation software and almost 77% experienced increased conversions.

Automation tools are effective in analyzing customer demographics, usage patterns, and behavior. Data collected can be further used for effective customer targeting and segmentation. Using Axis Advanced Analytics, users can understand marketing data better and improve sales performance.

The most effective ways to optimize marketing automation is to map customer experience and use dynamic and personalized content.

Brief history of marketing automation

When IBM launched Unica automation software back in 1992, it was one of its kind. Presently, the same Unica products power the omnichannel marketing as well as real-time automation solutions of the company. When Unica was launched, most businesses did not even think of having an online interface. In fact, the internet was in its infancy.

With the penetration of the internet in the mid-2000s and cloud-based marketing tools like Act-In and HubSpot development, things changed. By 2010, there were almost a billion social media users. Around the same time, Infusionsoft and HubSpot integrated social marketing tools. Webinars and mobile commerce started becoming popular, thus contributing to the development of some of the finest automated marketing tools.

According to reports released by EmailModay, in 2017 over 50% of the companies were already using marketing automation tools whereas 60% of all B2B companies planned to adopt this new technology.

Today, marketing automation is touted to be a game changer. Its benefits are inarguable. Obviously, it is a massive time as well as money saver; but there is a lot more to it. Over 90% of marketers consider these tools because of their ability to deliver uninterrupted and autonomous optimization across various channels. In addition, these tools also enable teams to analyze, review and take action on marketing data and customer in real-time.

Implementing marketing automation

Marketing plays a key role in business. As your business scales, it may be impossible to communicate with all your customers and manage your relationship at a one-to-one level. As a result, marketing automation is the only solution. It not only makes communication easier but also helps businesses operate professionally and efficiently. Most importantly, it ensures that you are punctual and prompt with communication.

Automation tools are designed to serve your purpose depending on the nature of your business. For instance, if your business is a bank, you can choose marketing automation tools to nurture your prospects, convert them into customers, help with customer relationship management, etc.

Contrary to popular beliefs, most marketing automation tools and software improve communication and give time to emphasize on the quality of messages and ad campaigns. Furthermore, it also gives importance to personal space in communication through regulated conversations.

Overall, marketing automation with all its weapons aims to improve the user experience. However, we must realize that the concept of automation is not just limited to technology or software. It is, rather, a channel and a medium used to perform crucial activities for the benefit of your business.

In order to make the most out of marketing automation, you must take some preventive measures to avoid making mistakes.

Noted below are some of the major mistakes to avoid while implementing marketing automation:

1. Start with a plan

Automation is a powerful tool. As a result, it is prone to misuse. As automation allows you to create ad campaigns and schedule email campaigns with less money, time and energy, you should not go overboard to become a spammer. Because it is easy, don’t blast email your leads, especially if your figures are good. You wouldn’t know when you cross the line to hit the spam list.

In the digital domain, you have to avoid spamming. It can hurt your business like none other. So, send only relevant emails to your target audience at the right time.

Moreover, when you are aimless, the process may seem to be too expensive with not so promising result. So, set your goals right, be specific, and take the correct approach.

2. Not having a sound inbound strategy

Wise marketers use marketing automation together with an inbound lead marketing strategy for best results. However, as most marketers rely heavily on automation, they give no importance to inbound marketing.

The traditional marketing strategy involving the sales funnel is very effective. While it takes you through a series of steps to arrive at a sale, automation is a mere way of communicating with your existing leads and converting them.

If your existing lead data is not ready, automation cannot be productive. Although both the strategies are not mutually exclusive of the other, it is difficult to use one optimally without the influence of the other.

3. Don’t be an aggressive seller

When marketers target customers and convert them, they tend to pressurize a lot. Some marketers may also become pushy and intrusive with their offers, discounts, and deals. This indicates that their leads are not engaged before pursuing with their sales pitch and communication. That’s a bad attitude.

You can only engage leads and convert them with defined and relevant content. It is crucial to carry out a sale. By engaging with your leads, you can pass on information related to your business, its principles, and factors making you stand apart from your counterparts. Using a call to action such as signups, surveys, or questionnaire, can benefit too.

4. Not segmenting your audience

You have to categorize your email list based on user behavior, demographics, location, sex, and other relevant factors. Non-segmentation might lead to fruitless exercise. This is primarily because if you deliver the same content to people of all age groups and various professions, there is a possibility that most of your audience would not be interested.

Analyzing buyer personas and segmenting them can boost your returns. It also helps you to aim at the right audience before implementing a marketing automation process. As a result, there is a higher chance of conversion. For instance, if you segment your audience into married, unmarried, and divorced individuals, you would be able to deliver content, which concerns them separately, and gets a response from a likely potential customer.

5. Don’t forget you are human, not a robot

Undoubtedly, marketing automation is wonderful. Everything works on its deal and there is no hassle of the manual process. However, though it allows you to focus on important matters, there is a slight risk of becoming organic.

As you are, your prospects are also humans. You would not want them to realize that a robot is dealing with them. It is critical to humanize the brand and add value to the user experience. Simply by adding a personal touch to messages and making communication more genuine and authentic can make a difference. Make your emails more relevant to your recipients.

6. Don’t build content without a call to action

Ensure to build content with a call to action for better engagement and returns. If you believe that automation can do it all, you may be wrong.

To bring your customers back repeatedly, engage them with sign-up forms, simple clicks, questionnaires, or surveys, and make sure it has a call to action. It would help you to have access to your audience, especially those who are interested in the content or would like to know about your products and services. Depending on the purpose of your content and the nature of the call to action, your audience may engage or disengage with you.

7. Not scheduling and running tests

Running tests is non-negotiable. It is a strategy to predict consumer behavior and learn more about them. This is the gospel of truth for any marketing strategy, including marketing automation.

Always schedule and run tests for your campaigns to maximize the advanced features of the tool or software used. For example, A/B testing allows you to compare two distinct versions of a campaign and deliver better results by emphasizing on a particular element like CTA, subject line, landing page or any other important concern.

Conclusion

Marketing automation is prepared for massive growth. There would be significant changes and technological advancements. A brilliant strategy would be to focus on customers and their needs. Collecting data through customer interaction across several channels may also help businesses to optimize their content targeting client base. To succeed, analyze data and understand the pattern of your customers, their needs, and buying behavior to influence decision making in the future.

Implement Marketing Automation now. Leverage the potential of software tools, marketing solutions and expertise we have to help you grow your business.  Schedule a call with us.

The post Implementing Marketing Automation? Avoid These Common Mistakes appeared first on Done For You.

Whether you choose to work with organic or paid methods to attract web visitors, all that traffic should be sent to landing pages and sales funnels to make the most out of your efforts and budget. Landing pages and sales funnels ring it all together by collecting leads, nurturing them, and making sales happen while building a pipeline of highly-interested, potential customers.

But not every business has the funds and tools needed for a full-blown paid advertising campaign that brings results. At least, they don’t initially when most businesses bootstrap and struggle to stay afloat.

Your best bet (whether or not you do paid advertising) is to ensure that you always invest in ongoing organic digital marketing efforts such as blogging, social management, content marketing, content curation, search engine optimization (SEO), and growing your email list naturally.

Think of doing organic digital marketing as your base, a foundation to maintain and continue. This is your long-term game.

In our experience, about 80% to 90% of organic traffic will come in thanks to your search engine optimization efforts. While the SEO landscape is always changing and becoming more and more competitive, you don’t have to stress yourself over it.

As such, you don’t need to overdo your SEO. Do everything else pertaining to organic digital marketing such as social media management and continue to grow your email list by tapping into the traffic you are already receiving.

Here’s how you put in continuous effort to up your SEO game in 2019:

Optimize your website for SEO friendliness & user experience

Too many marketers and businesses focus on SEO hacks and growth hacking tricks while completely ignoring the basics. A good digital marketing strategy starts with how your website is built and optimized for search.

At the outset, host your websites on servers that are optimized for speed, security, and long-term reliability.

When visitors arrive on your website, it should be immediately clear as to what your business is. Then, as they “dwell” on your site, consume content, scroll through each page, and visit multiple pages, it’s the user experience that really matters today.

Google made it clear that user experience is paramount to the search engine giant. So much that it also introduced RankBrain — a machine learning system that continuously monitors your web pages for user experience, the average dwell time (time spent on your site), and the “stickiness” factor of your content.

RankBrain monitors how users interact with search results and links leading to your site and then how well your website delivers the information that your potential visitors are looking for.

RankBrain is of the top factors for Search engine optimization today (more so in 2019 and beyond) and all of it centers around the user experience on your site.

Ensure faster web page loading speed

How important is “speed” when it comes to websites and online stores? According to BigCommerce, if an online store makes $50,000 a day, a 1-second delay in page load time causes about $1 million in losses per year. Each second delay causes 7% loss in conversion.

The faster your web pages load, the more money you will make. Period.

According to Billy Hoffman who wrote for Moz, your website backend performance has a direct correlation with your search rankings than your website’s frontend performance. While frontend performance matters for user experience, the backend performance affects your search rankings.

In a nutshell, you’ll need faster websites and user-focused design to make it all ring together.

Use the following free tools to see how your website performs:

• Conduct quick web page speed tests with Pingdom
• Test your website’s mobile-readiness with TestMysite from ThinkWithGoogle
• Get your page speed load time and recommendations from GTMetrix 
• Use Google’s Page speed Insights & the entire suite of tools Google provides for page speed optimization
• Rigor’s Free performance report

Then, take the necessary steps to increase your page load speeds.

Note: Shared hosting sucks and penny-pinching here would mean that your site is vulnerable to hacking, susceptible to malware and vulnerable scripts, and your web pages will load slowly

Start before you really need to start

Everything you need to do with organic digital marketing such as search engine optimization will take a significant amount of time. As such, it’s critical that you have time on your side before depending on SEO to produce results for your business.

According to Jeff Baker of Moz, it’ll take you about 90-100 days or more for your new content to start ranking and to realize its full potential. It’ll take anywhere from 3-5 months for your new content to perform and fully-mature.

So, despite doing what you do with regards to content marketing, you’d also have to give it all the time in the world. What this means for many businesses is that they’d have to start working on SEO at least 6-9 months prior to the period of time that you actually expect results.

Since most businesses barely have the time and patience to wait, we always recommend starting to put in all the efforts even before you officially launch.

This is an incredibly effective strategy that allows you to not only take advantage of the traffic resulting from your organic efforts but also allow you to build an audience even before you launch your business.

Produce and distribute content systematically

The biggest open secret when it comes to SEO is to produce and distribute content across channels consistently, regularly, and with a predictable frequency over long periods of time. You should:

• Create blog posts published with a regular frequency (usually weekly)
• Update your social feeds with your published content, other relevant content from non-competing sources, and to maintain those conversations on social networks.
• Produce other pieces of content such as curated lists, infographics, podcasts, and videos along with your main blog posts and social updates. Then, distribute these content pieces along with your main content.
• Repurpose your existing content into other formats. For instance, you can repurpose a long list-type blog post as a slide deck. You can then share your slides on LinkedIn SlideShare.
• Use content curation to not only create content quickly but also provide huge benefits to your readers or visitors. Content curation also helps you with link building and rapid growth.

Each of the points above will demand continuous production of content and consistent distribution. Use marketing tools (software and apps) or people or a combination of both to achieve results.

Keep updating your old content

This might seem obvious, but it isn’t. Updating your previously published blog posts is like your content marketing Swiss army knife with multiple benefits.

First, updating your old content helps keep your content updated, informative, and most relevant.

Second, as you update your blog posts, you’d end up adding more juice to your existing content and inch towards creating long-form content which is great for optimizing for search results.

Third, you’ll help add more statistics, contributor quotes, research, social proof, outbound links, and inbound links as you go big on quality by updating your top performing blog posts.

Use videos as a part of your content

User behavior when it comes to consuming content is changing fast. More than 43% of your online visitors demand video content. Video plays a huge role when it comes to user engagement, how long people will spend on your site, and how they consume content.

Further, video ranks well while making it easier for your visitors to consume content. Cisco predicts that by 2022, more than 82% of all traffic will be video-driven.

Create dedicated videos for your YouTube Channel. Create videos to explain concepts or to share your screen while you write your blog posts. Use a bunch of related videos and use them to create a free course which works as an awesome lead magnet to help you grow your email list.

Integrating videos with the rest of your content marketing strategy is the single best thing you’d do for your business in 2019.

If you’d like us to help you with your digital marketing strategy, sales funnels, landing pages, and paid advertising campaigns or if you’d like to know how to best position your marketing strategy for results, fill out this form and we’ll get in touch with you right away.

The post How To Ramp Up Your SEO Game In 2019 And Beyond appeared first on Done For You.

The problem is that not every market knows how to use the power of email marketing to good effect. Most simply think of email as a means of communication. In reality, it is the most powerful marketing source that can help your business in generating a huge amount of revenue.

If you are someone looking to leverage the power of email marketing, then we have got plenty of advice for you. Let us begin with that advice step by step.

But before that, let us have a look at a few more statistics.

Want to learn the art of reengagement using email marketing? If yes, then check this out.

You might be shocked to know that most sales emails have a merely a 1% response rate.

In order to get this number to climb, you need to follow these tips.

The structure

Every sales email is divided into three parts:

• The opening
• The body
• The closing

In order to create a successful sales email, it is important to get the right balance among these three. The opening consists of the subject line, which is the most important factor that contributes to the success of your email. In the body, you must present all the information needed to not just entice the customer but also to make him or her aware of the benefits that your business can bring. Lastly, the closing part of the email which must compel the user to take some action!

The right balance among these three could mean that you now have everything in place for a successful email marketing campaign.

The content of sales emails

It’s all in the content. The success of your email marketing campaign depends entirely on the content that you are feeding the customers. Even if you are writing a sales email, it must not sound like one.

Today’s smart customer is aware of the internet and he is simply not convinced by a robotic sounding sales email. He looks for something more personal and less-robotic.

This is the reason that you need to write the content of your email targeting the human side of the customer. Don’t think of yourself as a business owner; think of yourself as a facilitator who is here to solve a problem for the customer.

This will help you choose the right words when writing the email content.

Errors – a big no!

One of the biggest turn-offs in an email marketing campaign are errors, be it grammatical, typos or structural ones.

When you are drafting email content, you must get your grammar, facts, and logic right. You cannot just write anything and expect the user to be attracted. A small mistake, in this regard, could cost your business a lot in terms of loyalty, faithfulness, and seriousness of your customer.

If you don’t want that to happen, then the best idea is to proofread the email copy as many times as possible or get the experts to analyze it and only then send it out to the market.

Leverage the power of social proofs

Another smart way to incorporate your business success into your sales email campaigns is to leverage your social media proofs. Wondering how?

Well, here’s how – use testimonials from your biggest customers in your email marketing. Share any message from a happy customer who has used your service or product and has words of praise to share. Things like these can go a long way to creating a chain of trust, which can prove to be the most positive thing that you can bring to your email marketing campaigns.

Remember, in today’s world it is all about social proofs. People really like what other people say. In fact, numbers show that close to 40% of the customers form an opinion about a business only after reading a review.

Looking at all this, there is no denying that using the positive words from your existing customers can eventually work towards enticing new customers.

The right use of power words

Last, but not the least, a thing that you can do in order to crack the code of successful email marketing is to know how to use what word, and at what place. In technical terms, this is called as word placement.

As someone who is trying to weave magic with words, it becomes imperative to know which power words to use in your email to attract more customers.

Here is a list of the top 500 power words that make an instant impact when used in headlines – https://coschedule.com/headline-power-words. Similarly, there are plenty of other lists available. So, you must know how to use them to good effect when drafting your sales email.

After all, sales emails are all about using the power of words to get your customer to take an action after reading the email. Without those power words, whatever you write is simply not going to make the cut.

So, are you ready?

That was all about tips and tricks to create a powerful email marketing campaign from which your business can benefit. With these simple words of wisdom, you can easily find your way to better traction and more success with your email marketing campaigns.

However, you will need to invest the right amount of time in order to figure out how to use these tricks to good effect.

Are you ready to invest that time in writing sales emails that attract more customers? If yes, then begin now and see how it turns out.

Check out this amazing free tool on how to run a successful email sequence campaign.

The post Do These Things In Your Sales Emails To Attract More Customers appeared first on Done For You.

It so happens that we are stuck in the era of industrial revolution where you’d just create products and your potential customers will line up to buy (Remember the Ford T-Model car?).

The “industrial revolution” kind of marketing won’t work anymore, for obvious reasons. Customer behavior changes faster than the clouds over Oklahoma.

Businesses can’t just choose to show up and make money. Your customers have way too many choices.

With ever-increasing content, a never-ending tsunami of ads, and decreasing attention spans, how do you stand out? How can you make an impact? What are you going to do to ensure that your own sales pipeline stays profitable?

Narrate stories with video

As a brand, you have to give your audience what they want. HubSpot research clearly points to videos as the most preferred medium that audiences want next only to emails, social graphics, and social videos again. Videos combined (across media) make up for over 80% of content that’s in-demand.

Video reigns supreme when it comes to storytelling. There’s just nothing that beats video when it comes to reach, impact, and how easy it is to narrate stories with videos.

You can bring in the human touch, make your content memorable, and wield greater power with much less content.

Communicate stories with blog posts

Your blog posts don’t always have to communicate tips and insights. You can also use blog posts to narrate stories.

Giving a little peek behind the scenes, an inside story, or bringing in a personal touch related to your business goes a long way to open the doors to your audiences.

Here’s what Wistia did when they opened up an inside story on how they refused to sell the company and take on $17 Million in debt instead or how Unbounce stopped blogging for 2 weeks and got 700 leads in that time.

Communicating in the story format brings in the human touch. It’ll make audiences understand that you are just as human as they are, you make mistakes too and that you learn from your mistakes.

Practice storytelling with ad sequencing

The irresistible power of classic storytelling is no secret.

We humans have been communicating using stories for several thousand years. Several businesses spend fortunes on trying to use stories to draw attention and to make sales.

Businesses use stories in ads, in presentations, and in every conceivable way left to communicate.

Harrison Monarth of Harvard Business Review writes:

Data can persuade people, but it doesn’t inspire them to act; to do that, you need to wrap your vision in a story that fires the imagination and stirs the soul.

Think of sequencing as rolling out ads in a sequence. No, you won’t be using a single ad. Not even a series of ads. None of the ads will go right out and say “buy now”.

Instead, you can use sequencing as a way to gently introduce your brand to your customers. A common example could be:

• general ads that can get the attention of completely cold audiences,
• ads for warm audiences, and
• targeted ads that are meant to move the needle to make hot leads buy.

In a combined study by Facebook, Adaptly, and Refinery29, it was clear that brands that focus on telling stories have better results with their ads than companies that just launch ads to get others to take a specific action.

According to the report,

To make campaigns more effective, there is great value in developing a creative strategy that first builds awareness and consideration before driving to conversion.

Here’s how Adaptly and Refinery29 planned their sequenced ads campaign in 2014, as explained by Adespresso:

The ads were lined up in a sequence and one set of their chosen audiences (including a lookalike audience of over 2 million Facebook users).

One audience set only saw a regular Facebook Ad for 12 days straight while the other set sees a set of sequenced ads, with each ad showing for a pre-defined number of days.

Sequenced ad A:

Introduces customers to Refinery29 to help them build an emotional connection with the brand. (Shown to customers on days 1-4).

Sequenced ad B:

Builds on that connection, and suggests how customers might interact with Refinery29. (Shown to customers on days 5-8).

Sequenced ad C:

Strongly suggests users click the call-to-action. (Shown to customers on days 9-12).

Thanks to the “storytelling” approach taken by Adaptly and Refinery69, the campaigns saw a whopping 87% increase in landing page visitors who saw these sequenced ads, compared to being shown just a single ad.

For sets of audiences that saw the sequenced ads, subscriptions increased by 56% (compared to when audiences saw a single ad).

Particularly interesting is a finding that people who saw all three of the ads converted at much higher rates than those who happened to see just an add or two.

Other ideas

Your ad sequencing doesn’t always have to follow a path. Ads don’t have to be launched in the same way that Refinery29 did.

You could get creative or smart or both with using storytelling. Here are a few other ways to use storytelling together with ad sequencing:

• Just have ads in a sequence (instead of three). Use your first ad for introducing your brand to cold audiences and the second ad to have your audiences click on a CTA.
• Use video ads for cold audiences, create custom audiences for those watch your videos at least 95% of the time, and then show specific ads to those who watched your videos.
• Launch ads to those who engage with your carousel ads.
• Collect leads using Facebook Lead Ads and then launch direct campaigns to your leads exclusively.

Do you use storytelling?

How are you narrating stories for your business? How are you getting closer to your potential customers? And finally, how do you make an impact?

If you need help with your digital marketing strategy, Facebook ads, Google Ads or sales funnels, fill out this inquiry form, and a member of our team will contact you to schedule a discovery call.

The post Why Storytelling Is A Smarter Way To Marketing Success appeared first on Done For You.

In fact, there are many schools starting with the likes of Hubspot, Moz, Wistia, Marketo, and several others.

We are great fans and we learn a great deal from each of those authoritative sites (each of them, a school in its own right).

Inbound marketing isn’t hard by itself. There are just a few specific channels or pathways (if you want to call it that) that you’d have to work on (not including full-fledged sales funnels, paid advertising strategies, and marketing automation to a large extent).

• Blogging, at an established frequency, on topics that are useful for your target audiences
• Adding to your original publishing efforts above, you could also add other forms of content marketing such as Content Curation, repurposing content, and creating slide decks. You may also look at producing infographics, videos, and podcasts.
• Amplifying what you publish on social media, on top of regular interactions, micro interactions, and sharing what your business stands for.
• Collecting, building, and managing an email list to enable you to nurture your subscribers with an intention of turning them into lifelong subscribers. Nowadays, you even have access to automated and simple email marketing, without you having to do any heavy lifting.

When you do all of the above, consistently enough, for a long period of time, you’ll get to close to working on your brand building efforts.

But it’s easier said than done. We can write a couple of paragraphs on it, and you’ll read it. It takes a lot more to actually make all this work for your business.

That’s because we all miss out on the hard school of knocks. The inbound marketing school failed to tell us about the rolling beads of sweat, the backbreaking job or continuously producing high-quality content, and the terrifying odds of failing despite doing all that you do have to do — since all this is just about marketing for your business; it’s still doesn’t have anything to do with:

• Whether or not your idea is validated?
• Is there a demand for your service or product?
• Do you have the tenacity and the endurance to “go to market” and stay there?

All that’s for business strategy. Sorry for digressing.

Coming back to just inbound marketing and what the inbound marketing school of business didn’t teach you, here are a few things you forget:

Inbound marketing takes the most valuable resource: Time

You could raise all the capital in the world. Have investors make a beeline to fund your business. Throw all the money at advertising you want.
You could still get all that money back.

You won’t get the time back.

Inbound marketing — a mix of everything you do to attract, retain, and convert casual readers and visitors into paying customers — takes time.

A lot of time.

So much time that most businesses actually give up even before they see any results at all (and this isn’t true just for businesses; it also applies to casual bloggers, YouTubers, and everyone else who wants to depend on “organic growth”).

Alex Dunn of BlueLeadz predicts that it’d take your business at least 6 months before you can correlate your inbound marketing efforts to actual Return on Investment. This is assuming that you are doing everything right, firing away on all cylinders.

In some rare cases, you’ll see faster results. The more competitive your Industry is (and the more inbound marketing your competitors do), the longer it’ll take you to gain traction, invoke trust, and generate leads or make sales happen.

Consistency is the name of the game

Most businesses, if and when they are sold on the power of inbound marketing, do start to put in the work.

For a few months. Maybe even for two to three years. Then, it all stops.

Inbound marketing efforts stop when business owners can’t keep up with the “content production”, when content producing teams take a break, or when businesses can’t find competent writers, video production teams, or other vendors or partners.

Inbound marketing initiates audiences that get hungry for more content in all its formats.

If you stop delivering, you are quickly forgotten.

When you create high-quality content consistently, you are putting in the work to influence your audience on an ongoing basis.

We are humans, and we need constant nurturing to get anything done. John Hall, Author of  the book Top of Mind writes:

With consistent, engaging content, you can hit touch points on your audience members’ online journeys, build connections with them, and position your brand to be top-of-mind when they think of their most trusted and liked resources.

To get consistent with your inbound marketing, here are a few tips:

• Create an editorial calendar, and get comfortable with it. That calendar needs stellar execution. Using WordPress? Use this WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin . Or use Co-Schedule. Maybe just Trello? Kevan Lee of Buffer goes into great detail about content calendars and you should check it out.
• Be smart about content creation. You don’t have to actually “produce” everything yourself. You can also reproduce what you already have. Repurpose your content into other formats. Also, add content curation into the mix using smart tools like Curately.
• Make yourself a superhuman content producer (if you work by yourself), but aim to get help along the way. Build a super team.

It’s not just about content creation. Make content distribution a priority; not an afterthought.

SEO isn’t what you thought it is

Just type in “SEO is dead” or “Is SEO dead?” on Google and you’ll see this:

That has to tell you something, eh?

Inbound marketing isn’t just SEO.

There’s no such thing called SEO writing.

If you focus on extinct concepts such as “keyword density”, and to ensure adding “keywords at the beginning of the title, the end of the first paragraph, and at least 3 times in the body of the blog post”, it’s guaranteed that you won’t produce good content that real humans will get value out of.

Look around you — the blogs you read, the forums you hang out at, and anywhere else really. There’s all this talk about how Important SEO is and that you’d need to this and that.

In reality, SEO is all about high-quality content. Consistently. All the time. For years on end.

In fact, here’s an incredible article on SEO from the beginning – to the present day.

For most businesses, writing years worth of high-quality content is too much of an ask (thanks to limited time, resources, budgets, manpower, and skills).

So, they’ll look for smart SEO tools. They’ll look for shortcuts. They’ll want to bank on SEO specialists who are already having it hard enough with nothing to show for directory submissions and “link building”.

We aren’t saying SEO is dead or that link building doesn’t work, or that guest posting is a waste of time.

Just don’t go about doing SEO, link building, guest posting, blogging, content marketing, and on-Page SEO as if Google Search results page is the only source of traffic in the world.

Inbound marketing needs commitment, consistency, the right approach to content creation, and endurance on the part of marketers and businesses to see it all through.

If you need help with strategy, execution, and to find the right path for inbound marketing along with building sales funnels and marketing automation, our team is on standby to help guide you along. Just hop on a scheduled call, and we’ll take it from there.

Are you going to stay committed?

The post What They Don’t Teach You At The School Of Inbound Marketing appeared first on Done For You.

What’s more, there are so many different types of content and venues to publish content, such as articles, guest posts, podcasts, YouTube, and other video-marketing channels—you name it. So, as a small business owner, how do you decide among all these different types of content? So, how do you know what’s worth your time, money, and effort?

The answer is twofold:

1. You need to place your brand in as many places as possible.
2. You need to choose the content marketing activities that bring in the highest ROI.

In other words, as a small business or startup with a limited number of team members and a small marketing budget, you need to prioritize. You cannot drop content creation and content marketing completely, nor can you be everywhere. But you can choose as many of the types of content and content marketing channels as possible among the ones that bring the best results for your business.

How do you do that? By putting content out there, tracking every bit of how it performs, measuring results, and focusing on the actions that work for you.

Step 1: Create and publish content

Start with what you like doing best. Is it writing posts? Is it speaking on a mic? Or do you feel more comfortable on camera? Whatever type of content resonates with you is what you need to be producing. It only makes sense to start with what you’re best at instead of trying to improve your productivity doing what is of no interest to you.

Just keep in mind that the type of content you create is dependent on your industry and audience. For example, if you are a coach and your business heavily depend on your personal brand, video might be the best fit for your audience. On the other hand, if you’re into internet marketing and want to rank high in Google organic search results, an elaborate step-by-step guide on your blog might attract more prospects.

Step 2: Track how your content performs

The only real way you can make a decision is to have hard data to back it up. It’s one thing to base your decision process on your instincts or experience, and it’s another thing to make an informed business decision based on real performance.

To do that, to actually find out which type of content and on which marketing channel performs better, you need to set a goal or a couple of KPIs and set up a tracking system.

For example, if you want to measure how many leads opt in to download a free e-book, you need to know how those leads land on your page, what they do after that, and how many of those give up their e-mail.

To achieve that, you first need to use custom UTM links to track the source of traffic. Then, you need to have set up a visitor tracking system with complete funnel analytics, like Statly. You will also define your goals in Statly. In this example, the goal is achieved (or the event happens) when someone subscribes to your list.

Finally, you need an autoresponder to add new subscribers to your e-mail list and follow up with them.

Step 3: Measure medium-term results

Now, to have enough data to decide which type of content works best for your business, you need to have your campaigns run for some time. How long? Well, it depends on how fast you’ll get results. Usually, a couple of months will allow you to gather enough data and reach a safe conclusion.

Use a simple Google sheet to gather all meaningful data from different campaigns over time. Keep it as simple as possible. Here’s some basic information you should include in such a report so that you are able to calculate ROI of different campaigns.

• Campaign name
• Type of content (e.g. blog post, video, podcast)
• Advertising budget
• Content creation budget
• Number of visitors
• Opt-ins
• Number of purchases
• Value of purchases

Compare different campaigns over the same period of time to reach safe results. And of course, this is just an example where list opt-ins are one goal and purchases another. These are practically two events (opt-ins and purchases) that exist in a basic sales funnel.

Step 4: Rank by ROI and prioritize

After a couple of months, you should be able to calculate your ROI and other KPIs.

How much did you earn for the money you spent – Value of purchases over (advertising budget & content creation budget)?

Which type of content and marketing channel had the highest conversion rate – Number of opt-ins over the number of visitors from a campaign?

These are two basic metrics that should be a good advisor on how to prioritize your content creation and promotion tasks. Rank the campaigns according to their ROI and basic conversion rate, and you should be able to see what’s the way to move forward. Choose one or two content types from text, audio, and video. Go with the channel that performs better, whether it be your blog or iTunes or YouTube.

Then, as your business grows and more cash flows in, you’ll be able to add more content marketing tactics to your online-marketing strategy.

Content marketing tips

1. Use the right software

Do you need help with your content marketing? you get a high ROI from your content? Try these tools:

• Scriptly – Your sales funnel machine

• Curately – Your content creation engine

• Statly – Your analytics and tracking toolset

You can try any of the tools for free or schedule a complimentary call with us to help you jumpstart your online-marketing strategy.

2. Outsource what you can

Today, in the gig economy, there are a handful of platforms you can use to hire content creators at an affordable price. Go to Upwork.com or Fiverr.com and find writers with 5-star reviews who have the skills that you need and are within budget. As your business grows, hire a permanent team member who will create content that matches your brand, culture, and style.

3. Promote evergreen content

As your content pool grows, you’ll be able to spot pieces of content that not only perform extremely well but are also classic and timeless. Instead of putting 100% of your effort in creating new content, don’t neglect to also promote your evergreen content on social media, email, and PPC campaigns.

4. Create a content calendar

Having a content calendar will save you time and money if you’re managing a large copywriting and editorial team. A content calendar will also help create content strategically to serve business goals and to improve SEO. Use a simple Google sheet or any to-do app to plan content creation and publishing.

5. Create content for all types of customers

Maybe you start with writing blog posts that interest part of your target audience. But what about the rest? You should be able to define different buyer personas and create content that serves them best. Read more about defining your ideal customer in this article. What’s more, you should publish content for all stages of the buyer’s journey. Here’s an article we wrote about generating appropriate content for the top and bottom of the funnel.

Need to create lead magnets and reports that your target audience will love in minutes, not days? Watch this video to learn more about our proven method!

The post The Content Maze: How To Escape And Create Content That Generates Sales appeared first on Done For You.

It can take many forms, from blog posts and white papers to podcasts and webinars.

The benefits of content marketing are many – one among them is creating a sense of intrigue and knowledge about products or services on an online platform. Not only does content marketing tap potential customers, it is also beneficial in attracting readers and identifying prospective customers.

Content marketing has also proven to be an effective way to handle rumors and myths since it allows the audience access to the correct information.

With all this in mind, content marketing should be the present and future for all leading brands so as to ensure increased sales, cost reductions and a loyal customer base.

Sometimes quantifying the benefits of content marketing is difficult, which is why we built Statly…  To get a complete picture of what’s driving sales and where you should be spending your time on the marketing front.  There’s even a free 3-part video series that’ll walk you through filling the gaps in your metrics…

However, if you haven’t achieved meaningful results, here are the reasons why your content may be falling short of its expected output and what you can do to resolve this.

1. Your content isn’t captivating enough

In order for content marketing to achieve its intended results of appealing to your intended customer base and creating awareness through helpful information, the content must be very unique.

Almost all businesses use content marketing; therefore, expect a lot of competition. Approaching the same idea at a different angle can be captivating and keep your readers glued and make them want to keep coming back for information.

Competition is a good incentive to produce content that is more beneficial to the target audience:

• Study your competitors’ content and identify gaps in areas where their content marketing isn’t captivating users enough.
• Build on it to maintain your audience engagement.
• Keep producing unique content to keep up with your competitors.

Content marketing is time-consuming, since a lot of research has to be done to determine market trends and analyze the strategies and the best one to adopt. Ensure that your content is done skillfully.

2. The main idea in your content is not clear

If you think that content marketing is only intended to attract more online customers and make a profitable business, then you need to think again.

Well…customers and profit may drive a lot of content marketing, but this school of thought alone cannot ensure successful results in your content marketing.

It would be beneficial to focus on the knowledge impact of the content to your online market; this is a more measurable tool.

Use your content as a way to connect with your customers and be as engaging as possible by responding to queries and complaints with facts and reliable content about your brand.

It is also helpful to have a clear strategy in your content marketing and always follow through. Content marketing with a well-documented strategy, not necessarily designed by the content marketer is wise for a business to achieve the expected results of content marketing.

• Start with thought-out valuables and performance indicators.

Don’t just seek to communicate your content – make sure you are engaging with your audience.

3. You only have one person writing the content every time

It is a fact that writing is not an easy pie for everyone and therefore finding a person who develops the content for your online market is tough. Effective content marketing requires the creation of unique strategies that are not only achieved by one person every time.

• Brainstorm ideas on the content with different people to ensure variety in your work.

Another person should also do editing of the content, so that you ensure that mistakes are not being ignored. A full-time proofreader would be the best choice to avoid any duplication of content.

The company CEO and other management personnel might have a myriad of information on the company but they will not always be the best people to develop the content every time. Rather than expecting such people to be the best content creators because of their knowledge use their ideas to develop even greater content.

4. You fail to promote your content regularly

Creating new and unique ideas by articles in your blog is a good part of content marketing, as this would increase your online audience. However, it would yield even more results if you promoted your article regularly.

Promoting the content is an integral part of ensuring you achieve results in content marketing.

• Use social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, to post and repost articles and take advantage of trending topics to streamline your content.
• Mention your work when commenting on other posts and articles and blogs.

There are influencers in the online domain who could also help you reach out to your target audience.

Content that is valuable to the audience will most likely be shared and most times people would refer to it when making shopping decisions. Responding to questions on the social sites with related topics to your content is a simple way of convincing your audience that you are well informed.

5. You expect to see results immediately

Patience is a virtue and no empire can be built in a day. Content marketing requires a lot of effort and is quite time-consuming.

And while content marketing has enabled many businesses to thrive and be successful, it is important to remember that all this did not happen in a day.

• Allow time for your content to find footing and bring results, this could be possible in weeks and even months…who knows? In the meantime, just stay positive and keep working at it!

The best way to track the effectiveness of your content marketing is by using the right tool to showcase how buyers are doing business with you…  Statly has a patent-pending algorithm designed to do just that…

Need more content sources and topic ideas for your blog? Try Curately, the ultimate tool for fast content creation. With Curately, you will have an endless supply of new, fresh content that will get you traffic, leads and sales! Visit curately.org to learn more.

To wrap this up…

Content marketing is a helpful tool for marketers and I hope this article helps you identify your areas of improvement and enables you to reap its benefits!

Do your research, create reliable and valuable content, strive to create better content every time and remember to always distribute it regularly.

The post Why Your Content Marketing Isn’t Achieving Results appeared first on Done For You.

As you read this, it’s only getting harder to be found online, to gain traction, and to generate leads. It’s getting harder to get the average web-dwelling, Instagram-happy, and Facebook-addicted customers to pay any attention to what you produce on a daily basis.

While it’s getting harder, it’s certainly not impossible to create buzz, get noticed, build your own tribe, and to generate qualified leads.

You know that your sales funnels can be set up in a way that nurtures leads automatically. This will ultimately lead to sales. If you need help building custom sales funnels for your business, get our Funnel Blueprint video series.

Chances are that most of the content you create for your funnels will not make the kind of impact it should; that is usually because of a few things forgotten. Here’s what you need to do to make your content sweat:

1. You have a voice. Use it.

If you thought that it’s only Anthony Robbins and Gary Vaynerchuk who have a voice while others are constantly being drowned out, you are completely wrong. Let’s go back a few steps for once:

• We are all unique.
• Our way of saying (and writing) things is different from one another.
• People want to hear from other people, not machines (at least, we aren’t there yet).
• You know what you know. Others want to know what you know.
• Everyone wants to get from point A to point B. If you can show people how it’s done, you win.

Your content strategy doesn’t have to bore when it comes from your heart. You might be saying the same thing that your competition is but what’ll stand out is your voice. Your voice will come through your blog content, podcasts, videos, and social media updates.

You have a voice and you should use it for communication. If you think you don’t have a voice, you haven’t heard yourself properly yet.

2. Find creative angles

Creativity isn’t just about wall paintings, art, and illustrations. It’s also about how you happen to wing two different things together and still make sense. It’s about picking up an idea from one popular content piece online and twisting that idea to create a different content piece that’s relevant to your niche.

Next time you try to cook up a blog post title, try to think of how you could pull out information from a completely irrelevant and different source to use it in your content strategy. Or get others’ opinions on what works (in your niche) and give it your own twist.

Your voice, combined with your insights, and the creative angle you pick is the formula you need to produce content that always works.

3. Hook, Line, and Sinker

Let’s just assume that you are going to follow point one and two above. Even then, it’s hard to keep your visitors engaged with your content.

You have another card in your content strategy deck that you can use to strengthen the stickiness factor of your content.

It’s called Hook, Line, and Sinker.

First, you hook your readers and this is where powerful headlines work their best. You’d then, make your visitors follow a structured path to ensure that they keep reading.

At some point, you’ll give (whatever your headline promised) it away.

The Hook, Line, Sinker method works across industries, for all niches. You just have to be prepared enough to use it and then benefit from it.

4. Curate to convert

Quick question: Assuming you want to get serious about content marketing, what’s fast, easy, bring you links, boost your SEO, and allows you to produce content like a machine?

The answer: Content Curation!

You don’t have to create content all the time (it’s just an inefficient way of doing content marketing). You could also do content curation which is much easier to accomplish than creating content. Curating content is also a great way to link out to various sources and in turn getting linked to.

With tools like Curately and others, content curation can be fast and efficient. Content curation is a must-have for your content strategy while allowing yourself to also create listicles, repurpose old content, and so much more.

How does your content marketing playbook look like, right now?

The post How To Amplify Your Content Strategy (And Make It Interesting) appeared first on Done For You.

Also, the best idea is to come up only with some little changes. You don’t want those changes to be way too significant. So, things like adjusting the sending time, modifying the content a little bit or choosing the subject line can be extremely important and valuable for the A/B test.

Why do you need email A/B testing?

The reason is simple; you just can’t know how your audience will react to your campaign.

Sure, you can conduct a few studies beforehand, but the idea is still the same, results can vary. The only way to get amazing results is to opt for A/B testing.

As you can imagine, no two A/B tests are equal. Some of them are more comprehensive; others tend to be lengthy and so on. There’s no need to create multiple A/B tests that are identical to one another.

The idea is to come up with various types of tests that will make it clear how customers react and what they expect from you.

Identify the campaign goal.

Each campaign type will come with some unique requirements and benefits. Some of these campaigns are focused specifically on driving traffic to your site, in which case you have to focus on clicks. With some campaigns we want to accomplish a higher open rate, while with others we want to focus on generating direct sales.

The waiting time can differ based on each one of the winning metrics you want to focus on. According to MailChimp, the best waiting time for around 80% accuracy in the case of clicks is around 1 hour. For opens is 2 hours and for revenue focused emails is 12 hours.

But that doesn’t mean it will be the ultimate waiting time. Each business has a variety of clients. They pertain to various industries, work at different times and don’t care about being online all the time. In this case, you have to figure out what campaign goal works for you and how you need to adapt it based on the company specifics.

Also, some CEOs who focus on revenue and don’t care about testing will just use software to define this. And while A/B Testing software is pretty good, it can’t bring you the desired results. That’s why you need to put your knowledge and attention to work. Fulfilling this will be quite a challenge for a lot of people, but then again it will also be worth it.

Is a higher waiting time the best option?

It comes down to what metric you are focused on. But yes, if you wait a bit more, you may be able to get information that is a bit more comprehensive. A lot more people will open up the email, which means you have more accuracy and data to go through.

On the other hand, you don’t want the A/B Testing to last for a very long time. This is a test, not a full-fledged campaign. So, the focus has to be on identifying metrics as quickly as possible. Then, you will adjust the campaign and see which one works for you.

Criteria you have to focus on for A/B testing.

First, you need to take into account the size of that sample and the representativeness of it. Then you have the test period and the devices that you are testing. You also need to consider things like the statistical confidence level of that sample too.

The confidence level shows how certain readers are when they act on your desired system. The sample size is all about seeing how much the conversion rate will be affected based on the sample size, baseline conversion rate, and the detectable effects.

Business representativeness includes things like traffic sources and business cycles too, among others. The devices used for that test and timing can also be an important factor that you need to take into consideration. Again, patience is key, so you have to consider that.

Understanding the A/B test hypotheses.

You have two components here, the null hypothesis and the alternate hypothesis. The null one states the status quo so that you will get a null result. The alternate one is designed to challenge the null hypothesis, and it will show if there are variations and if those particular variations will bring in a much better conversion rate when compared to the original.

Here you have to take into account things like the P-Value, which is a statistical measure designed to figure out if the null hypothesis is correct or not. In case this P-Value is less than .05 or equal to that shows that the results shouldn’t be dismissed due to sampling error.

So, how much time should you wait?

That’s up to the type of metric you follow. Ideally, you should wait at least two hours if you want to find the right campaign for opens, one hour for finding out the winning idea when it comes to targeting clicks and twelve hours if you want to see which one delivers the utmost revenue.

The idea here is to be fair and to bring in front a great, professional approach. Who knows, maybe the A/B test that you don’t trust will end up being the winner. That’s why A/B test exists, to show you facts and to bring you a great insight into the reality of your customer’s needs and choices.

Set up your A/B test and then try to experiment as much as possible.

Trying out various ideas and approaches will work well here. Don’t rush, instead take your time and you will be quite impressed with the unique range of benefits that would be delivered. Once you have all the metrics in place, identify which ones work best for you.

Of course, you can try to pick two of the best tests and then run them again. You should always try to opt for A/B testing, as it’s quite helpful for your business and it does offer a lot of important information for your business!

The post How Long Should You Run Email A/B Tests? appeared first on Done For You.

What is good content anyway?

But what exactly do we mean by “good content”… Well, think of it like this: The reason why a business would publish content is to attract the right leads and convert them into customers. Makes sense, right? So, good content needs to serve that goal which is twofold.

First off, you want your web copy to attract organic traffic from Google and other search engines;

Secondly, because that content will be the first point of contact with your business, you want it to be valuable for the reader, and eventually, convince them to try out your product or service. Good content is content that converts.

How to create content that converts

Now, how do you craft content that captivates the reader and converts them into a lead or, even better, a customer?

Long gone are the days when a short blog post would do the trick. There’s too much competition among companies that offer the same products. Each piece of content competes with hundreds if not thousands of others.

Furthermore, your goal though should be to create content that can be found in Google Search. No matter how much value you’ve put into your article, if no one can find it, then it’s less effective. In this context, the first element of a well-written article is keywords.

Keywords are important and need to be the pillar of your content creation strategy. Successful content that converts requires some effort and careful thinking before you actually start writing. In fact, you need to do know exactly what keyword and buyer persona you’re targeting if you want to funnel traffic to your website for the long-term.

After you’ve figured that out, your concern should be how to write good copy that will catch the user’s attention and keep their eyes glued to their screens.

Creating content is easy! What about good content?

We can all agree that creating content is easy. Anyone with a half-decent command of the English language can write a post. But not everyone can craft interesting and engaging content, and not to mention content that converts. In fact, creating truly enticing content that is both search-engine optimized AND that has an impact on your ideal customer is hard work — even for copywriters.

Why? Simply put, you need to satisfy a bot and a human being by creating content that ranks well and converts readers into leads or prospects. And although Google’s algorithm can be predictable to some extent, human emotions and behaviors are far from it.

Best tips for creating content that converts

As you start to create high-converting web copy, keep these points in mind:

• Writing sales letters is both an art and a science.
• Quality, as we defined it in this post, is more important than quantity.
• Always write copy with your customer in mind.
• Writing for your readers is more important than writing for SEO. However, you need to keep both parties happy.
• Your copy should be captivating, mind-boggling or entertaining.
• Use stories or case studies or examples to help people relate directly to the topic.
• Your content should address the reader’s questions, give practical tools and demonstrate your authority.
• Also, your content should be engaging and have people react to it in a given way, such as commenting or sharing the post. If nothing else, people should at least want to read more of what you have to say.
• Use a straightforward layout. Nobody likes clutter, so keep in mind that “clean and organized” works best.
• Last but not least, each piece of content on your site should entice the reader to take a pre-planned action, like subscribe to your newsletter or sign up for a free webinar.

What type of content converts better?

In order to discover what type of content converts well, you need to work your way backwards. Identify exactly who you want to attract as a customer and what they care about. Do extensive keyword research to find out about any pressing questions they might have which you’re not aware of.

Additionally, check out your competition to find out what kind of content they’re publishing. Look for content that ranks well in the search engines or content that becomes viral on social media. Find out what they’re doing, and do it better! You could write your own spin on the issue and include or throw more light on the topic from a different angle. Take notes as you do your market research so you can keep track of any ideas that might spring up.

Another easy way to create better content than your competitors is to explore the comments below a popular article. Also, look at comments for the same post on social media. This type of direct reader feedback can be a goldmine of knowledge and will help to shape the value-packed content you create.

Readers’ feedback would tell you exactly what additional information you should include in your own article if you were to hit all the points a reader might expect to see.

This is especially true if you see the same type of comments multiple times. Taking note of how often you come across a particular pain point or comment will help prepare an epic post.

By studying your competitors’ content, focusing on the comments it receives, and on the level of distribution it gets through sharing on social media, you will have a better understanding about the type of content that would be most appealing to your average prospect.

Finally, when you sit down to write sales letters or any type of web copy, make sure your content is well-structured and is easy to read and apply. Add different forms of visual elements, like images, videos or infographics. Easy-to-follow and pleasant content will make your visitors want to stick around much longer.

And a parting piece of advice…

It is essential to publish the type of content that you would personally enjoy and share, but you must also make sure this content is right for your target market. That’s why it is important to research extensively before you start writing.

Have you run out of ideas for content that converts? Do you want to craft blog posts in minutes, not days? Do you want readers to keep coming back for more? This tool might be the solution you’ve been looking for. Curately will help you create content that converts.

The post How To Create Content That Converts appeared first on Done For You.

Is this you?

As the adage goes – getting your website to rank on the first page of Google is easier said than done, so we’re here to discuss some of the possible reasons why you are not getting ranked and how you can get out of this trap.

Let us have a look at the reasons first –

You don’t have original content

Your content is your passport to enter Google’s search engine, as well as influence prospects to do business with you.  It’s a two-edged sword.

By having duplicate content on your website you are waving a red flag for Google’s bots.  Duplicate content leads to a split ranking scores, causing those pages to rank mediocrely.

You don’t want this to happen, as it greatly reduces the chances of your website getting ranked well…

What’s the solution?  

The solution is pretty simple – change the content to create original, persuasive, useful, natural, informative and engaging content that gives something of value to the readers.

Fresh content entices Google’s bots and you can eventually see your website popping up in the search results.

You don’t use social media for business

There is a difference between being on social media and being active on social media.

A big chunk of businesses thinks of social media as a place for posting paid ads and getting results.   However, the real power of social media lies in engagement, which works as social signals for Google.

Believe it or not but these social signals contribute towards Google’s decision of making websites rank higher in the search results.

What’s the solution?

Leverage social media!

Published some new content? Use social media to spread the word.

Get active on Facebook. Start posting tweets. Make use of Instagram to good effect by spreading funny pictures of your work.

There is more to social media than you can ever think. Start leveraging it to good effect!

Not publishing content more often

Consistent efforts are the key to getting ranked higher in Google’s search results.

When was the last time you published a new blog?

Or, should we ask – do you have a fixed schedule for publishing content?

Google values fresh and knowledgeable content.

If you are not producing and publishing good content, Google will soon start to overlook your website and bring into focus the ones that are doing this constantly.

What’s the solution?

If you don’t have, you need to get started with it right away!

According to what Google says – the more content you have, the better it is for your website. It’s as simple as this!

Start with creating a marketing calendar. Create a fixed schedule and out all the efforts you can on creating useful content for your niche.

The results will start to show immediately.

Your website is not indexed

Wondering what this indexing thing is?

Well, this means that Google is currently unaware of your website because you have not allowed Google’s bots to crawl on your website.

As a result of this, you cannot see your website in Google’s search results even when you type the name of the website.

What’s the solution?

Get Google to index your website. Here’s how to do it –

• Go to Google search console.
• Check for any crawl errors.
• Click the Fetch button.
• And, in a moment you will get the option to request for indexing.

Once done Google’s robots will be able to crawl on your website and your chances of getting ranked will be skyrocketed!

You don’t have a mobile-friendly site

Remember – having a mobile app for business and having a mobile-friendly site are two different things.

Google puts a huge value on websites that are mobile friendly.

You might be doing everything right, but not having a mobile friendly site could negate all the efforts.

If you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, chances are that Google won’t even consider ranking your website.

What’s the solution?

Figure out whether your website is mobile friendly or not? There are plenty of tools available in the market that can help you in this regard.

If the website is not mobile-friendly, it is time to get the design fixed and change it to a website that runs equally well on mobile.

And, voila!

You’re not on Google Business

Not many people actually believe the fact that registering your business on Google Business could actually help your SEO efforts.

The reality, however, is that this is one of the easiest steps and a free way to ramp up your search engine optimization endeavors.

The reason behind this is the fact that Google wants businesses to be smart enough to utilize the easiest route to delivering relevant search results.

Hence, Google Business becomes important.

What’s the solution?

Get your business registered on Google Business right away!

• Just go to Google My Business Home Page.
• Click Start Now.
• Follow the steps until you’ve reached the end, and your account is active.

It’s really simple!

Apart from all these, factors like speed of your website also contribute to your website getting ranked in Google. Websites that are generally too slow are penalized by Google.

In fact, it puts weight on websites that have less loading time because Google wants people to get access to relevant information in quick time.

So, you need to keep an eye on your website loading time as well. After all, you would not want the website to get penalized for something like website loading speed. Would you?

There you have it – all the possible reasons that were making your website unfit for Google. Get going with the changes and see how things start to turn around.

The post 6 Reasons You’re NOT Ranking in Google And How to Fix It appeared first on Done For You.

You would.

It’s called content curation.

Do content curation well and you can possibly bake a lifetime’s worth of content marketing goodness into your content marketing strategy.

Curating content doesn’t even have to be hard. All you need is any of the following content curation tools or a combination of one or more tools to get you going.

Good content curation begins with due diligence and research. Simply put, you can’t share content that you don’t even find in the first place. Research is a critical element of content curation that helps you search, find, and organize content. You’d research, collect, organize, create, distribute, and even use content curation to generate traffic, audiences, or generate leads.

Here are different sources & tools to help you begin looking out for content:

Curately

Now, we wouldn’t start a list of content curation tools without including our very own, do we?

Curately helps make your content marketing very simple. You can research, collect, and organize content using Curately by just specifying your source RSS feeds or by searching and adding source websites.  You can also add Youtube videos right to your indexes.

If you want to build a curated blog post, you can also pick and select the content you want to include from the sources above, and assemble your content.

Publish it, and you are good to go with your first blog post, a full-blown resource page, or a content hub.

Buzzsumo

If Google helps you find anything, Buzzsumo is a more focused tool that tries to find high-performing, popular, and much shared content based off your search parameters (usually keywords).

Pocket

No, Pocket isn’t just for reading (although it can be). You can also use Pocket to stay connected all the new content that Pocket pushes your way (to the app, or to your Inbox). You can then collect all the content that you think is worth sharing. Using Pocket almost makes all the good content come to you.

Twitter lists

Chances are that you login to Twitter almost everyday. As you go about using twitter, make it a habit to create lists of people who share content almost everyday (in your niche). While you make lists, those lists themselves become a great source to collect information.

But if you want, you can also follow other lists, others’ lists of lists, and so on.

Quora

Quora is almost always teeming with questions and answers. At the time of writing this, it’s one of the most popular, general, and highly-active community on enthusiasts on practically every topic.

Some users go to great lengths to post their answers (for their own reasons).
An entire collection of answers for a single question can be true wealth of an information.

Pinterest

You thought Pinterest was just about images of home decor ideas or cooking recipes?

Pinterest boards can be a treasure trove of information if you know where to look (or train yourself to). Plus, all that information is visually-aided.

Feedly

Google RSS feeds are dead, but Feedly isn’t. Feedly allows you to track, follow, collect, and organize all your favourite content.

You can start following blogs, online publications, and possible anything on the Internet with an RSS feed. Makes for a great content curation tool, eh?

Flocker

Flocker allows you to bring all the content into one social hub (includes comments and other social Interactions).

With all the content shared on social media, you can easily automate content collection using hashtags or handles.

With flocker, you can build a content hub which you can also make a starting point for any kind of content curation.

Flip

Flip works just like Feedly does, and you can use the web-based version or other versions for tablets and phones.

Flip is a great way (also visual) to get a constant feed of content (sorted and organized according to your niche or interests) so that you don’t have to keep looking for new content.

While you can add your own RSS feeds or add publications or blogs directly, you can also discover new content.

Scoop.It

Scoop.it allows you to discover, sort, organize, and arrange content (like any of the tools here).

However, scoop.it is also a content discovery focused social network and it has its own network of users. This gives your curated content a platform for others to discover, share, and to engage with.

With your own Scoop.it profiles, all the content you curate also works much like a standalone resource hub that you can get more traffic from, grow your authority, or just generate leads (paid plan).

Elink

eLink allows you to create, manage, and distribute content pages or curated newsletters quickly and easily. Here’s an example of how eLink curated pages might look like.

Using eLink, you can send out industry news, news about your company, embed content resources, curate research, or organize marketing assets. Anything you create can also be shared on social, embedded on your website, etc.

Your first step in writing engaging content is picking a content curation tool to get started with…  Which will you choose?

The post 11 Essential Content Curation Tools For Your Business appeared first on Done For You.

The ultimate target of your content marketing strategies is to entice the a prospect throughout the buyers journey so that you can ultimately convert him into a customer, whether you’re selling products or services…

And, writing content that can work out at every stage of the journey requires expertise and a well developed customer avatar.

Today, we are going to talk about some simple tricks that can help you create powerful content for every stage of buyer’s journey.

Stage 1 – Awareness

A buyer has a problem, and he or she is looking for a solution to that problem.

This is the initial stage of the buyer’s journey, and during this stage, the buyer is open to all the options available in the market. The buyer is in the initial researching stage, looking for options that can help him bring an end to the problem he is facing.

So, during this phase, the content must –

• First of all, show them that you understand their problem and what they are going through
• Secondly, show that you have a solution to their problem
• Thirdly, reflect your expertise in the field

(NOTE: Well written sales letters follow a similar content strategy, in a more condensed format)

The most common forms of content that you need to target during this phase include

• Website content
• Blogs and articles
• Social media posts
• Research reports
• EBooks
• White papers

And, almost every other thing that makes the potential buyer’s aware of your capabilities.  If it’s material that sits at the front side of your sales funnel, it should be structured to raise awareness to your brand.

Don’t forget, 81% of all the buyers rely on online research before making a purchase. You need to target this figure and create content that entices buyers to move further down the sales funnel.

Stage 2 – Consideration

Once the buyer has moved from the awareness stage to the second stage i.e. consideration, he now has a clear idea of what he needs and starts to consider the various options that best fit his needs.

Your prospect now has a list of names and brands that offer solutions – of which your business is one.

At this point, your prospect starts evaluating the pros and cons of various providers and brands, and is trying to figure out which is the best investment for them.

Hence at this stage, you need to focus on the forms of content that fulfill their need for more information; particularly targeting how your business is better than the others in the market.

This requires you to create content forms such as

• Comparison charts and infographics
• Expert guides
• Video content

Stage 3 – Decision making

Once the buyer has moved down the funnel further and has gathered information about various brands, comparing them, he will now be more interested in learning more about the brand he has chosen. At this point, your prospect is looking for content that reflects your authenticity and expertise as a business.

You need to feed the buyer with content that is more brand-centric, and highlight the key features and benefit that you will bring to the buyer if he chooses you.

Some of the most common forms of content targeting this stage of buyer’s journey encompass –

• Use cases
• Expert guides
• Case studies
• Tutorial videos
• Testimonials

And all other forms of content which can build confidence in the buyer’s mind that he or she is making the right decision by choosing your business. This type of content is more centered on the fact that people who were stuck in a similar situation as the buyer right now have already used your product and services, and have reaped great results. It works as a confidence booster that they are at the right place to find the solution for their problem!

Talking about brands that you can research in terms of offering powerful content during the decision-making stage, Kissmetrics has to be one of the first names in the list followed by Hubspot.

With smart use of statistics in their content, they eventually sway a user’s decision away quite easily – something all businesses can learn from them!

Stage 4 – Retention

Now that you have enticed the buyer to make the purchase, does this mean the buyer’s journey is over?

No, certainly not!

This is a mistake almost every business makes – they forget that buying is really only the beginning of the buyer’s journey.

You need to continue feeding him with content that builds an long relationship and creates brand loyalty. This is again where powerful content comes into the picture. Content forms to target during this phase of buyer’s journey include –

• Newsletters
• Product guides
• Product update emails
• Greeting emails
• Newsletters and event forms

Basically, anything that keeps the buyer’s engaged and aware of the fact your business is striving continuously to make their life better.

It’s all about keeping the buyer hooked up

The most basic thing about creating compelling content is to keep the buyer hooked up throughout the journey.

Pointing them to the right content at the right time becomes the key. Understanding your buyer’s needs and then feeding him content that addresses those needs can be the difference between successful and not-so-successful marketing.

Businesses that manage to understand the buyer’s journey and target them with the right content at the right time can make a fortune… And it all starts with  understanding the different stages of the buyer’s journey.

If you’d like us to put together an action plan specific to your offer and the buyer’s journey that’s already taking place, make sure to schedule a free call with us!

The post How to Create Content for Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey appeared first on Done For You.

Taking into account all pillars of online marketing can help you reap the benefits of a 360-degree digital strategy.

• Take advantage of all digital channels.
• Reach a wider audience.
• Get to run experiments and optimize for the tactics that serve you best.
• Have more opportunities for revenue and income.
• Take into account the entire customer journey through the sales funnel, from discovery to purchase.
• Communicate a consistent message across all marketing channels.
• Capitalize on your staff’s creativity.

A well-rounded online marketing strategy includes SEO, SEM, content marketing, social media marketing, PPC, online reputation management, influencer marketing, email marketing, mobile marketing and affiliate marketing.

Let’s briefly talk about each of these pillars (in no particular order) so that you get a grasp of what they’re all about and how they contribute to your online marketing strategy.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is an essential part of your online marketing strategy.

Search Engine Land defines SEO as the process of getting web traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines. SEO is basically a set of techniques and tools that help your site get visitors from Google.

It is divided into on-page SEO and off-page SEO.

Simply put, on-page SEO has to do with your site’s structure, content, and code optimization.

Off-page SEO involves techniques that result in building links that point back to your site as well as social signals.

SEO efforts involve keyword-optimized content that gets ranked on Google for particular search queries. When a user performs a search, your webpage will appear in the search results and get clicked.

2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

As HubSpot explains it, SEM is considered internet marketing that increases a site’s visibility through organic search engines results and advertising. SEM includes SEO as well as other search marketing tactics.

Sometimes, marketers separate SEO from SEM, with the latter referring to paid search engine marketing only. The following image demonstrates this approach.

3. Content marketing

Content marketing is a strategic online marketing approach focused on producing and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience—and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)

Content marketing includes all types of content, such as text, image, video, voice across all channels (blog, social media, YouTube, podcasting etc.)  In your content marketing pieces, you’d have content upgrades to collect leads.

Often content marketing is the most time-consuming online marketing method. With the use of effective content marketing tools, like Curately, you can create fresh content in minutes.

4. Social media marketing

Social media marketing is all about interaction and promotion via various social media networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter (to name just a few). .

With social media, marketing businesses are able to engage with their audience on third-party platforms that they hang out.

Social media marketing helps get the word out about your products and business. But even more important than the exposure, it allows you to grow lasting relationships with your target audience.

The best part is that it’s free. It doesn’t take a huge budget to be present in the most popular online hangouts, like Facebook and Instagram.

5. Paid advertising

When it comes to an online marketing strategy, paid advertising can be distinguished between pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, network adverting, and social media advertising.

WordStream explains that PPC is an online advertising model in which advertisers can display ads for their goods or services when users–people searching for things online–enter relevant queries into search engines. Advertisers are only charged when a user actually clicks on their ad, hence the name “pay-per-click.”

Due to the nature of keywords and the role they play in paid search, pay-per-click advertising can also be referred to as keyword advertising.

If you’re wondering how PPC is different from SEM, let us explain. PPC and SEM are both concerned with promotion via search engines. PPC advertising specifically relates to the ads you see at the top of a search results page, while SEM is a much broader umbrella term covering different sorts of promotion through search engines, including SEO.

Network advertising may refer to other networks that are not related to search engines. For example, an advertising network might place your banner on a publisher’s site and charge you a price per click.

Social media advertising is quite different. Although the pricing model (pay-per-click) can be the same, the advertising channel changes. Facebook ads are the most typical example of paid advertising on social media. There’s also Twitter Ads, LinkedIn Ads and so on.

6. Online reputation management

Online reputation management includes word-of-mouth marketing over the internet. It is a basic pillar of your online marketing strategy.

Online reputation management is the craft of creating a positive perception of your brand on the internet, one that falls in line with your business goals.

Online reputation management is closely related to some of the other pillars of online marketing, such as content marketing, social media, and SEO.

A bad reputation can stick like glue. Businesses manage online reputation by attracting positive reviews and removing negative search engine results. Online reputation management also involves how you deal with the aftermath when something goes sideways.

7. Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is a type of online marketing strategy that focuses on using key leaders to drive your brand’s message to the larger market. Rather than marketing directly to a large group of consumers, you instead inspire/ hire/pay influencers to get out the word for you. (Source: TapInfluence)

Utilizing influencer marketing drives brand awareness and cultivates an audience over time. Businesses that do influencer marketing enjoy benefits like improved word-of-mouth advertising, increased number of experts talking about their brand and social proof.

8. Email marketing

Email marketing is a method of reaching leads or customers directly via commercial email. In a typical business case scenario, an organization builds a mailing list to reach established and prospective customers.

An email list may be coupled with a marketing database that allows for personalization, web data integration and precise targeting. (Source: Techopedia)

Most businesses use one of the best email marketing platforms that are managed by email marketing companies, instead of using their own hosted email marketing software.

Email marketing is considered to be one of the most budget-friendly ways to reach your audience. It is reported that for every dollar spent on email marketing, an average of $44 dollar return on investment is realized. (Source: Campaign Monitor, 2016)

9. Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing is a multi-channel, digital marketing strategy aimed at reaching a target audience on their smartphones, tablets, and/or other mobile devices, via websites, email, SMS and MMS, social media, and apps. (Source: Marketo)

As with any online marketing strategy effort, every business needs to develop a unique mobile advertising strategy based on the niche and ideal customer. Mobile marketing is all about customization and personalization of the user experience with the use of the ever-changing technology.

10. Affiliate Marketing

Last but not least and according to Wikipedia, affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.

The affiliate marketing model is applicable to any type of business to increase sales and pay commissions to partners who refer sales. Where does affiliate marketing fit into your online marketing strategy? Although either product- or service-based organizations can have affiliates, typically affiliate programs are used by service or software businesses.

Your online marketing strategy demystified

Devising an online marketing strategy is not an easy endeavor. Marketing is a complex discipline and one that demands unique solutions for every organization. It is impossible to explain everything about the 10 pillars of digital marketing in one post. But it’s important to stress the following point.

Since you’ve come thus far in the article, you must have recognized that the 10 pillars of online marketing form a complex web. Each pillar is interconnected to others because it involves utilizing common avenues (e.g. Google search) or the same sort of content (e.g. video).

Just as an example, when doing content marketing as part of your online marketing strategy, you publish content on your blog. The same goes for SEO. With SEO, keyword-optimized content needs to be published on your site. So, the venue is the same AND the type of content is identical (blog post).

The goals though might be quite different. For instance, the goal of an SEO post will probably be to achieve high rankings in Google search results. A post published as part of your content marketing strategy might serve as an entry point for top-of-funnel traffic that is generated from PPC campaigns.

It is important to plan out your online marketing strategy with that complexity in mind. Make sure you

• make a plan on how you are going to use each pillar,
• keep consistency across different channels and
• take actions that are complementary and help you fulfill your online marketing strategy.

Some of these strategies are more leveraged than others, especially early on, and we’d be happy to help you put an Action Plan together on getting launched.  Click here to schedule a call with us!

The post 10 Pillars Of An Online Marketing Strategy appeared first on Done For You.

But content marketing is hard. Creating content is a tedious, arduous process for the best of us; especially as when we’re busy running a business that takes up all of our time in the first place!

As Shannon Johnson of HubSpot points out, you can pretty much forget about anything fancy you might have read about content marketing. As she puts it,

• Forget content marketing “strategy.” Just do the work.
• You don’t need “content creator” for content marketing. You only need hard working people who can think creatively, write well, and those who can think beyond 500 words and SEO keyword stuffing.
• You can cheat (Copy from others who’ve been there and done that).
• Content is not the king, distribution is.
• Quantity Vs Quality? No one wins the debate.
• Writing a blog isn’t like the writing exercises you did in college.

Content marketing is powerful. It can be instrumental to get you the leads and sales without ever spending a dollar on paid advertising.

It’s almost like growing your business for free, on auto-pilot, and on the pure strength of inbound marketing.

As your website visitors consume the content you publish (top of the funnel), your brand recall improves, your visitors become regular, and they start to trust you more. They’ll consider you to be an authority (at whatever it is that products and services relate to) and they’d value your word.

Continue to do it right and your visitors, subscribers, followers, and your customers can even be evangelists, spreading the word and passionately suggesting your products and services to everyone else who’d hear.

If content marketing is that hard, are there any easier ways to make this work? Is there a way you could put in much less work but get the gains of an efficient and sustainable marketing strategy?  In short, is there a way to be a content creator without putting in the hours?

Of course, yes. Here are some smart ways to do content marketing without losing your sanity:

Don’t Sweat The Start

While content marketing certainly starts with your blog and/or website, you don’t have to look for help for you to develop your web presence.

One perusal of our Build Blueprint, for instance, lets you know exactly how to develop your blog or website from scratch, the exact plugins and software we use to produce content almost on an automated basis, and much more.

Whatever you do, don’t sweat the “start” phase of your blog.

You’ll learn by doing, and you’ll figure out various ways to continuously produce content while on the go.

Start Creating Videos

At the time of writing this, Online Video already accounts for about 74% of all Internet traffic.

While we are aware that a lot of people have a huge difficulty getting in front of the camera and to shoot videos, it is still surprisingly easier to create videos than typing out a 3500-word blog post. For videos in which you appear, all you need is a table tripod and a smartphone (you don’t have to get fancy with the equipment).

If you have a business that revolves around software, services, tools, etc., you don’t even need to appear in the video. Shooting simple screencasts are more than enough to get your video content rolling.

Of course, you can simply use tools for specific use cases of video such as to help build a video sales letter or to create video-based lead magnets.

Content Curation

Museums don’t create the amazing things you go to see, such as artifacts and collectibles. People donate those artifacts. Or museum curators make it their job to collect and display them for the thousands of people who visit each year.

And people pay money to get inside museums!

Content curation is much like that. Instead of curating artifacts, though, you’ll collect incredible content (around the niche that your business relates to and for the kind of topics that your audience might be interested in).

See how legendary content creator, Brian Clark (of the Copyblogger fame) curates content for his newsletter called Unemployable and sends it out to his email subscribers regularly.

See? He only writes an introduction. The rest of his content is all curated, collected, and sorted into categories. Because it’s coming from Brian, his subscribers still trust his judgment and end up reading or listening to podcasts or watching videos.

Setup a schedule to curate content, use a tool like Curately, and make it a habit to produce content regularly.

None of this content has to be yours…  Sometimes, being a content creator isn’t about writing new content – it’s about arranging existing content into a format that your readers will enjoy, exposing them to a lot of new material!

Repurpose Content

If you are already writing content for your blog posts, you can repurpose your content. A blog post can be turned into an infographic, a video, or even a podcast. Likewise, a video can turn into a blog post or an Infographic.

Other infographics can turn out to be great sources of information for a blog post.

Blog posts can also be repurposed as slide decks (share on SlideShare) and a string of blog posts on the same topic can be republished as a lead magnet, like a PDF document, an eBook, or a report.

If you have content that’s heavy on data, build an infographic first (makes for great visual content) and then get into detail by explaining the data points as a white paper or as a blog post.

Repurposing content isn’t as hard as creating content from scratch.

Get Into The Habit Of Making Lists

Every conceivable topic on this earth can be put into simple lists. On the web, people don’t read; they scan.

As such, list-type content is like fast food for web users. They won’t tire of them; they need more of it, and such content is easy to create and consume.

• When you create blog posts, think of lists.
• Your email list building giveaway could be a simple list, a checklist, or a sequence of steps for your subscribers to take.
• Provide step-by-step instructions to do something, to achieve something, or to hack something.
• Point to X number of tools, Y types of [Fill in the blank], or Z Reasons Why [ Whatever ] doesn’t work (or works).Lists are easier than academic writing. Lists take almost no time to compile and they are the best kind of content for the web (this is a list post, in case you missed that).

What are you doing to create content for your site?  Or for content marketing in general?

If you’d like help to get started or if you need advice on strategy and implementation, schedule a strategy call with us now.

The post Content Marketing: 5 No-Brainer Content Creator Tactics appeared first on Done For You.

At the beginning of every year, marketers typically have ad budgets unlocked and come up with their predictions, analysis, and trends that are going to rock in the months to come. If you are running a business, and are looking forward to making this year a successful growth year, then this post will present you with some amazing tips that will help in the same.

Let us have a look at those tips one by one and see what you can do –

Aim Big, Plan Small

Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor can your business empire be. You cannot expect to get results in a day unless you are following a paid traffic strategy and already have your sales funnel set up.

While it would be awesome to climb the ladder of success and make your business a household name, it is also a fact that you are not going to reach that goal the first day out.

The first thing on your list must be to figure out where you want to go in the next 12 months. Once you’ve got that locked in, it’s time to put together your action plan.  And if you don’t have an action plan in place, it’s something we can help you with if you book a call with us here!

Suppose you want to generate twice the number of leads and sales from your paid marketing than you did last year… So, create a step by step strategy on what you would need to do in order to achieve this – like how to get a conversion bump on your landing pages and sales letters.

Keep Your Competitors Close

Imitation is the truest form of flattery. You aren’t in business to flatter someone though. You need to keep an eye on what others are doing, but rather than copying what they do, take a lesson out of their book and come up with something unique.

Don’t forget – innovation is the biggest asset for your business. So, while keeping an eye on the competition, don’t miss out on being innovative.

For example, you can consider looking at what big brands are doing in your niche… Then, incorporate some of the best elements into your marketing efforts, without making it too obvious. Small, meaningful, tweaks will help you eventually define yourself in your category.

Step Outside Your Bubble

Your biggest rewards lie outside your comfort zone. This is one harsh reality that businesses usually realize too late (or worse, never).

If you stay in your comfort zone, you never split test or experiment and continue to run on a single track…  A track that’s not getting you anywhere.

However, smart businesses are always willing to take the leap of faith. They are always willing to experiment and come up with strategies they’ve never tried before. Again, innovation is the one thing that separates successful marketing strategies from the not so successful ones.

If your business hasn’t tried utilizing the power of social media – test it.  If you’ve never built an audience – start working on it.  If you’ve never thought about what a sales funnel would look like – use one of these.

Who knows it could turn out to be the potential gold mine that you have been looking for (it is a goldmine for businesses that have been able to use it to good effect).

Build A Strong Foundation

No matter how much you ignore it, the fact of the matter is that paid marketing reaps great rewards. Analyze the pros and cons, keeping customer lifetime value at the front of your mind.  Are you spending less for a customer than what they’re worth to you?  If so, paid traffic is a great fit.  If not, free traffic will work for you.

Get in touch with us to help you understand the paid marketing process thoroughly, and even help you create a foolproof plan on how to get the best results out of your paid marketing endeavors.

Make Content A Priority

Just like an alchemist that turns everything he touches into gold, powerful content can convert even the most rigid customers into paying ones.

Content is The King!

Get your creative juices flowing and focus on creating powerful, meaningful and effective content. What this means is that you need to develop a content marketing strategy that brings together your marketing aim, and your interest in spreading the word about your business.

Targeting multiple content platforms can be one great way to begin. Wondering how can you do it? Multiple platforms mean video content, graphic content, along with the usual form of written content. Try an experiment with the different content mediums and see what your audience resonates with…

Or, you could always just publish the type of content that you enjoy creating the most :0)

Now, these are a few strategies you can easily implement without giving them a second thought. At the end of it all, just know that marketing is constantly evolving and coming up with new tricks to keep your audience hooked is how you’ll be spending most of your days.

Whether you are running a small shop or multi-million dollar business, as long as your marketing strategies are being updated, you’ll never be caught off guard.  And if you’d like a fresh set of eyes on your campaigns and sales material, make sure to book a call with us!

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The post The Perfect Growth Strategy For Your Small Business appeared first on Done For You.

Instagram has an increasing number of active users, therefore, it’s a source of unlimited traffic. According to the most recent data, Instagram has surpassed 800 million users.

And here’s Instagram ranks among other networks by the number of active users (in millions, source: Statista, September 2017):

Statista reports that Instagram is most popular among verticals like beauty, fashion, eCommerce, auto and sporting goods.

Even if these stats change as time goes by and more marketers start using Instagram, one thing is certain: Any type of business that can produce engaging visual content can thrive on grabbing Instagram traffic.

As with all social media you need to build a following first before you can start seeing big results in traffic and monetization.

Instagram is a marketing platform with rising potential. Entrepreneurs wonder what’s the fastest way to build an Instagram audience and start seeing results.

We’ll show you 3 of the top features of Instagram which you can start using right now to reach your audience, engage with that audience, and turn them into paying customers.

The right content marketing tools

But, first, let’s talk about something really important and relevant. Content. Nowadays, marketers and entrepreneurs need tons of content for social media and their site. When people get excited about an Instagram post they might want to go to your site and learn more. That is why you always need fresh content on your site as well.

To save time, you need the right tools. Two tools will help you create amazing content for both your site and your Instagram account.

Curately

The first one is Curately.

Curately helps bloggers, entrepreneurs, and marketers thrive in content generation by using a technique called content curation. With content curation, you can get new ideas fast, overcome your writer’s block and create fresh content for your site.

Canva

Then, the second tool, which is for the visual part of your marketing strategy, is Canva. With Canva you don’t need to be a designer; Anyone can create stunning images, with quotes or your word on them. It also has an app that you can use on your mobile to create and post Instagram images faster.

With the combination of those two powerful tools, you can get faster and easier traffic results from Instagram.

Wait… What IS Instagram?

Naturally, some business owners haven’t had a chance to use Instagram. If that’s you, you might be wondering exactly what Instagram is and how it works.

Instagram is a mobile app. You cannot post to Instagram from your desktop, well at least not from a native Instagram app for cloud or desktop. However, there are services like Later.com which allow you to publish posts from your laptop. To do that you need to download the Later mobile app as well.

On Instagram, most of the content is visual. It’s also owned by Facebook, which means that you can use Facebook’s familiar ad interface to advertise on Instagram as well.

A major difference with other networks is backlinks. It’s harder with Instagram to create links because you can’t link out to your site. The only place where you can put a link is in your profile.

Marketers also add URLs to their posts, in the text or on the image, which of course are not linkable but are noticed by your followers. So, the greater strategy behind traffic is to create a massive following and increase engagement with your brand, so that more people see your URLs and click the link in your profile.

That’s a couple of basic things you need to know about Instagram. Now, let’s see how you can use Instagram to attract more traffic back to your site.

Here are the top 3 Instagram techniques for unlimited traffic.

1. Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories is very popular right now—and a great tool for traffic. But what is it? Instagram Stories is a flexible built-in tool that allows users to add images, gifs or video to a part of the app that is visible to their following.

The users can edit their photos and videos natively on the app. They can add words, icons, or drawings. Only a couple of days ago, Instagram also introduced GIF stickers that you can add to your stories.

To create their story, users arrange images and videos in the order that they want their Instagram audience to see them.

Once the Instagram story is edited and published, your followers can see it. Then it will vanish after 24 hours. Each day is a different story anyway, right?

Stories Highlights

Recently, Instagram introduced the Stories Highligts section where you can create featured content out of groups of stories you previously published. Stories Highlights appear below your profile photo.

To create Stories Highlights you need to choose a cover image (which is important if you have a different set of videos or pictures in a single group of stories) and give it a name.

Stories you add as highlights remain visible as highlights (and saved in Stories Archive) until you remove them, even after the original story has disappeared.

Facebook Messenger and Snapchat have similar features, by the way. Snapchat lets you create a sequence of pictures and videos that expire after a day. Facebook Messenger also allows you to publish your today’s story which is visible to your friends.

It’s always a good strategy to research ideas, especially when you’re new to a marketing platform before you jump into publishing your content. You first need to explore and feel how it is to be on Instagram.

Usually, brands use eye-catching images and live videos to capture people’s interest and imagination. You first need to attract and excite people before you motivate them to engage with your brand. Always remember that so many other forces are competing for the user’s attention.

2. Publish fun and inspirational content

Need quality traffic from Instagram? The first thing you need to do to ensure that your account on Instagram grows quickly is to post content consistently. Consistency is a must in any business endeavor if you want to see results.

Interesting content

On social media, people love to be inspired, read about original ideas and have fun. Use that mix of inspiration, innovation, and fun to create a content calendar. Be consistent and make sure that you are posting relevant content daily, and you will soon see the first signs of Instagram traffic.

Either you have a personal or a business brand, you need to create the visual material that will inspire people or entice them to explore a new idea or just help them have fun.

Branding

You also need to do whatever else you can do to help people know what your brand is all about. One of your most powerful tools in this respect will be your logo and your brand name.

If you have an account all about fitness, then you need a logo and a name that will communicate this as soon as people see it. You want your first-time viewers to instantly know what you’re all about so that they can decide then and there that they want to follow you and that your content is for them.

Hashtags

Another important tip is to always tag your images. Hashtags are a very powerful tool for growing your following. Use more than one hashtags every time you post. Using a lot of relevant hashtags will bring you instant results. Just try this method and see for yourself!

Hashtags work just the same as they do on Twitter. You add them next to any new picture you publish or in the comments. A hashtag looks like this: #buzzword. Instagram users will then be able to search for them to see what new content has been posted on that subject.

While you’re growing your Instagram following, use at least a dozen hashtags in each post. Use a mobile app called “Best HashTags for Instagram” to copy and paste the most popular hashtags on your topic.

Also, at the end of 2017, Instagram announced that users have the ability to follow hashtags on Instagram. Now, users don’t need to search using a hashtag to find new interesting content; they can simply follow a hashtag to have the content regularly appearing on their devices. So, that’s another reason why you should tag all of your images.

3. Instagram live video

Video is yet another powerful marketing strategy. It was dominant in 2017 and will be even more impactful in 2018 and beyond. All forecasts agree on that.

By 2019, video traffic will account for 80% of all consumer Internet traffic (source: SmallBizTrends).

YouTube reports mobile video consumption rises 100% every year (source: Hubspot).

Instagram, like Facebook, allows you to do a live video that seems to have an even bigger impact as a marketing tool. From a marketing standpoint, being able to communicate directly with your followers is unprecedented.

You can use Instagram Live video within Instagram Stories.

It’s really easy to start a real-time video; you just tap the camera button and then confirm that you want to start a live broadcast.

You can also tap on the Your Story option (with the + sign next to it) at the top of the Instagram news feed.

This takes you to your Instagram Stories, where you can choose from different options, like to go live, record a normal video (that will disappear after 24 hours) or shoot a time-lapse-like video, called Boomerang.

A cool thing is that you can create a recording of your video, so your efforts can result in a bigger audience reach. Yes, your live video doesn’t need to vanish; You can have an extra 24-hour view time for your real-time videos with Instagram Live video replays.

Here’s a complete guide on Instagram Live if that’s a path you are thinking to take.

More ways to get Instagram traffic

Instagram is constantly adding new features to Stories and Videos. A coin has two sides, and Instagram is both a social network and a marketing platform. So, always look out for the latest additions which will help you market your business more effectively.

An don’t forget: Post at least one tagged picture every day, to see a consistent stream of new Instagram followers and traffic.

The post 3 Features Get Your Free Traffic From Instagram appeared first on Done For You.

Aggressive marketing — what with multiple pop-ups on your website and all those widgets sliding in and out — is annoying.

We get it. It’s alright not to hustle too much. It’s ok to slow down a bit. In fact, why even bother with so many pop-ups and opt-in boxes showing up when you can do with less?

Let’s explore a few smart and less annoying ways to build your email list instead:

Follow the “SDSB (Slow Down & Step Back)” Strategy

No one likes being hustled, pushed around, and cornered. When you push too hard (applies to most things), you’d lose your visitors. Finding the right balance between showing up enough to make things happen and stepping back enough to let visitors get more of you is an art.

Most marketers and business owners don’t get it. You, however, can do better with what we call as the Slow Down & Step Back strategy.

First, embrace simplicity and minimalism. Instead of “doing more”, do less. Instead of filling every corner of your website, blog — and other pages with opt-in forms –remove most of them.

Simplicity and minimalism can help you go a long way but minimalism is hard to achieve. To get minimalistic, you’d have to shed your own preconceived notions of what you normally think would work.

One opt-in form instead of 4. Ask only once per visit per user instead of showing up every time.

Less For More

Instead of having a pop-up show each time someone arrives or scrolls down 70% of the page, or after a time delay, choose to show pop-ups only once with exit-intent.

Instead of embedding lead generation opt-in boxes two to three times within a single post, use only one opt-in box at the end of the post.

Get rid of the sidebar completely and use a large welcome mat or a full-screen pop-up that entices your visitors to part with their email address for something valuable.

Or you could do an a/b test and find the right kind of strategy for your pop-ups to surface with one of the many list building plugins and tools available.

Give More & Ask For Little

Marketers and business owners need leads. That’s understandable, except that your customers aren’t under any sort of obligation or under pressure to sign up just because you showed up.

The way to do business sustainably, over long-term, and with relatively less friction is to always give more than you ask for.

You need a sale. You need your customers to buy once and then buy from you again and again. You have a need to meet sales targets and pull in revenues.

Your customers want to solve a problem they have; they hope you can do it for them with your products and services.

Give more than your competition can. Have your potential subscribers sign up for free trials if it’s possible, give them access to free video or email courses,

Use Content Upgrades

It’s annoying when you visit a website and a pop-up is on your face every 5 minutes. However, if you take a passive approach and just let visitors click a link to download something, it’s welcome.

Content upgrades are pieces of informational material packaged as PDF documents, for instance, provided at the end of a regular blog post in case your readers want to learn more.

Content Upgrades are a fantastic way to grow your leads.

For you, as a business, content upgrades are also easy to create. Using Curately, for instance, you can create or curate content quickly and package your content in any format. Give it away as a content upgrade.

If you are looking for some great content upgrades examples, Mary Fernandez of OptinMonster has a huge list of 30 Content Upgrade Ideas you can get inspiration from. Also, be sure to bookmark this sumo-sized list of 28 ideas for content upgrades by David Khim. 

With the right kind of autoresponder setup, you can have a perfectly working marketing automation and lead generation machine working 24 x 7.

Use Interactive Elements

Today, there’s an increased risk of lead capture form blindness and a complete lack of personalization. If you feel like your lead generation efforts are paying off as much as they should, you should try using Interactive marketing elements such as bots, quizzes, and more for lead generation.

To start with, you could pour some life into traditional marketing elements such as your landing pages, marketing pages, and others. For instance, you could create video sales letters instead of a typical, long-form sales letter.

But there’s more. Using Quizzes, you can completely change the way you generate leads. GothRider — an e-commerce site that sells Jewelry — generated about 75,813 leads just by using quizzes.

Dan Scalco of Inc writes that well-created marketing quizzes can generate 50% or higher opt-in rates and an average marketing quiz is shared around 1900 times on social media.

Further, the open rates are 150% higher for the follow-up emails after prospects leave their email addresses for quizzes than normal open rates for emails.

Profit From Webinars

There’s something to be said about putting your face and voice out there in the front, for the whole world to see. This also precisely the reason why social platforms like Instagram grew in popularity and how many Youtubers make a killing.

But how do you bring the power of authenticity, being true to yourself, and go about actually showing your face while letting the world hear your voice?

The answer: Webinars

Webinars are awesome, personalized, and an engaging way to generate leads. It’s reported that the average viewing time for Webinars is a staggering 56 minutes. How is that for some sticky engagement?

Not only do you generate leads but you’d also get the opportunity to influence your audiences by educating, teaching, solving problems, and adding some real value that makes a difference for your webinar attendees.

Doing webinars doesn’t even have to make you feel like you have to get started from scratch. Our webinar creation wizard helps you get started with Webinars in no time.

How subtle or aggressive are you with your email marketing? Tell us all about it.

The post Email List Building: Smart & Less Annoying Ways to Build Your Audience appeared first on Done For You.

Can you just sit down there and wait for the traffic to come? Of course not. You need to obviously employ some strategies so that traffic pours in to your website, and fulfils the ultimate motive behind you creating it.

The question is – how to achieve that?

In this post we are going to talk about seven surefire ways that will help you get traffic to your website – quickly.

Without wasting too much time, let us jump to the first point –

Optimize your website for search engines

Google is the biggest source of traffic for your website. Therefore, getting your site ranked on top of the search results is something you need to work on. Using state of the art on-page and off-page search engine optimization techniques can get your website to the top of Google and you can start getting serious traffic for the keyword phrases that people search…

From creating internal links to new content to updating meta descriptions and what not – you need to shift your entire focus towards Google for a while and wait for the magic to happen.

Get on with your social media game

A layman might look at Facebook as a means of entertainment, but in the eyes of an online marketer, social media is a lot more than that. Channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are a goldmine for business; where they can easily get traffic and qualified leads as well.

So, in order to get your website to perform well in terms of traffic, you need to speed up your social media game. Build a community by sharing engaging content. Use paid advertising to funnel traffic to your website. Once you have community, you can easily engage with them and introduce them to your brand.

Find opportunities to guest blog

One of the easiest and the smartest way to get quick traffic on your website is guest blogging. Rather than waiting for things to happen on their own, you can simply place your content in a place where there is already a lot of traffic. This will not only bring your brand into the limelight…  It’ll also increase the chances of you getting more traffic from the place you posted the content AND Google!

In order to get some amazing opportunities to guest blog all you need is quality content with genuine links and that’s about it. You can easily put your website in front of an already established community and get more traffic flooding towards your website.

Rope in influencers to vouch for you

Somewhat similar to guest blogging, online influencers are also a channel where you already have a wide pool of people coming in daily.  If you can get an influencer to vouch for you or your new website, chances of the traffic hitting your site skyrock.

If you are wondering how to find influencers or how to approach them, social media is the most powerful way to do so. Follow and connect with them using social channels and build a relationship by sharing their content. Once they know who you are, you can eventually ask them to share your content as well (being respectful of course). It might take a little more time than the strategies mentioned above, but the results are going to be overwhelming.

Don’t forget about paid marketing

One sure way to get more traffic to your website is my using paid advertising. Paid advertising ensures that you get an upfront stream of genuine traffic. The traffic, however, will only continue to flow as long as you are investing money. Once you stop paying for traffic – it stops.

At DFY, we prefer paid traffic because it’s something that can’t be taken away from you (ie. Google’s algorithm updates) and you can build a strong foundation under your business that’s predictable and scalable.  There are lots of ways to get free traffic, like what’s mentioned above, but they all take time…

So, it depends on the investment that you want to make – time or money.  One of two will be needed to grow your business online.

Email marketing is still alive

It has become a popular adage that emails marketing is dead. The reality, however, is otherwise. Email marketing is very much alive. In fact, it is one of the easiest and most preferred way for marketers to get more traffic to their website…  When you have a list, you simply email your subscribers and boom – traffic!

A well-targeted and well-designed email marketing campaign can work wonders to get your website traffic up instantly. With simple things like creating personalized email campaigns, utilizing the power of creative and engaging content, you can convert those subscribers into paid customers quickly.

Need help with creating powerful email marketing campaigns? Check out this Ultimate Lead Generation Template.

Don’t overlook the power of word-of-mouth

Last but not the least, use “word of mouth” marketing. I know that might sound a little ridiculous as we’re talking about free traffic and paid traffic strategies, but how many times have you told a friend about a cool website you just found or shared a link through Messenger with a friend?

How can you employ WOM marketing? By blending in the power of digital marketing with promotions and offers.

Run campaigns and giveaways. Create a referral program. Leverage the power of community building to get folks engaged with your website. Once you achieve this, you can get a continuous flow people, bringing great traffic that you can build lists with and get sales from.

Those were some of the easiest ways you can get high quality, quick traffic to your website. Some of the strategies are quicker than others, but if implemented correctly, they can prove to be effective for long time.

So, what are you waiting for? If you have created a website and are looking for ways to promote it, get started with one or two of the strategies above!  Do more of what works and less of what doesn’t!

The post 7 Surefire Ways to Get Traffic for Your Website Quickly! appeared first on Done For You.

It’s not that you’re not working hard enough or that you make mistakes but others may apply some of the following content tips to unlock the full potential of their affiliate marketing strategy.

Sometimes it’s all about making tweaks to your content so you boost your affiliate sales. If you’re planning to amp up your online business through affiliate marketing then make sure to read the following 11 content tips. Marketers won’t share the following piece of information with you, but we will.

1. Provide more than one option for your visitor

When you’re creating the content for promoting affiliate products, you will generally add links to one advertiser. Why should you stop there? When you add affiliate links to the same product from other websites, you will increase your conversion rate. Visitors will have more options to find a better price.

2. Put cheap and expensive products together.

Don’t create content targeted only for one price range. You don’t know the buyer’s budget so only providing expensive affiliate products will lower your chance to get a commission. When creating the page content for an affiliate offer, try to include links to other similar products from a different price range. Remember that you can only capture the buyer’s interest, he’s doing the rest on his own.

3. Don’t optimize the same keywords as the advertisers

Try to create a content strategy that doesn’t use the same keywords as your affiliate advertisers. They will usually focus on general keywords so your safe bet would be to focus on what people will normally search.

For example, don’t optimize your content for keywords like “cheap t-shirt” but write compelling content for those who search for “t-shirt for parties”.

4. Write compelling but easy to understand content

Creating quality content with a lot of data and metrics is a good way to convince your visitors to buy certain products but what’s your strategy for the rest? You need to mix your content so it provides them with valuable insight but it’s easy to understand.

5. Focus on seasonal content

Some of the best buyers an affiliate blogger or marketer can dream for is that person who HAS to BUY something NOW. While some people end up doing this by necessity (home appliance is broken, laptop not working, etc.) the majority of this category is made up of seasonal buyers.

People will look to buy for children outfits for school one or two months before school starts, summer they focus on comfortable clothes and beach items, and so on. It’s up to you to streamline your content so it’s targeted to the seasonal buyers.

6. Don’t focus the content around the product

When you’re writing your blog posts where you add affiliate links, don’t try to make it all about that product. Instead of writing blog posts or web pages for one specific affiliate product, focus on writing content for the category or what persons are looking for (related to that product).

So instead of creating a blog post called “Why you should buy the X laptop model” think of something more need-related such as “Top X laptops with long battery life” or even make it seasonal: “What laptop is the coolest in the hot summer time“.

7. Make sure that you use email marketing

If you’re a content creator and want to sell more affiliate products, you need to have a solid email list and email marketing strategy. This can easily be achieved by creating an account on Scriptly and accessing some of the best, proven to sell, email sequences for your email list.

Even if you’re not using your email list to promote affiliate products, you need a healthy subscribers list to drive more traffic to your website and consequently sell more affiliate products.

8. Ask advertisers to use native advertising

This may seem an option available only for top bloggers, right? Well, if your traffic numbers are right, you should be able to ask advertisers to try native advertising on your blog. Fitting affiliate products into the content your write will increase your conversion rate. Don’t forget to write compelling content and provide context when you’re using native advertising.

9. Make affiliate deals where there aren’t any

Just because one online store doesn’t have an affiliate program, that doesn’t mean they won’t be open to this. Of course, you will need some numbers to back your proposition (web traffic, email subscribers, etc.) but there isn’t any harm in asking, right?

You don’t want to miss out on any opportunities so if you see a product that would be great for your audience, contact the owner and try to set up an affiliate method to help him sell more and for you to get more money from your affiliate blog.

10. Optimize your content for mobile devices

People are using their mobile devices to buy stuff online at an increased rate. This is a great opportunity to sell more by optimizing your content to fit all displays. There’s a high chance that you use banners to promote affiliate deals so make sure those banners are responsive and can be adequately be displayed on all devices.

11. Look for new, exciting opportunities

2016 is the year when people are looking to buy drones and virtual reality headsets. This should tell you a lot about where is the buying process headed to and will allow you to make any necessary changes. For example, while you have your regular blog where you promote affiliate products, why not try some new and exciting niches? People are buying a lot of new products this year such as drones, VR gadgets, hoverboards, tech bikes and much more.

Want to know more about these new niches? You can start by learning how to start a VR (virtual reality) blog and make money.

The post 11 Content Tips To Unlock the Full Potential of Affiliate Marketing appeared first on Done For You.

In fact, if you’re the sort of person who’s always putting your website on the back burner, telling yourself that tomorrow will be the day you add a new article, then today’s lesson is for you.

You see, a good content marketing piece is more about structure than anything else… You don’t need to be a good writer or invest hours, days or weeks into an article before it’s ready to go live.

All you need to do is make sure that your article checks a few boxes – boxes that I’m going to teach you today. Once your blog post checks these boxes, you’re ready to go live!

After you hit publish, you will know how successful your article is once some traffic hits it and you find out how well you’re converting everyday traffic into sales opportunities.

For sake of argument though, there is something that we need to clear up…

What Exactly Is A Content Marketing Piece?

Whenever you attempt to educate and sell to your prospect through video, audio or text; you’re employing content marketing strategies.

It doesn’t get any simpler than that.

For our purposes though, we’re referring to content marketing pieces as being blog posts.  These ‘blog posts’ stand alone as one of the first pieces of content that a prospect has the pleasure of reading about the product or service you want to promote.

So, in the scheme of things, changing out the front end of your offer is really as simple as adding a new blog post!

Now, these blog posts are special, as the standalone as a marketing piece, all unto themselves.  You can deliver educational material.  You can stir emotions in your prospect.  You can deliver value and ask for nothing in return…

That’s why they work.

In different markets, you’ll hear lots of terms for these types of content too…  Blog posts.  Advertorials.  Native ads.  Articles.  Sometimes, they’re called reports, even though the content of them is delivered on a web page!

The premise is simple though…

1. You post a new article on your site
2. Your audience reads that article…
3. A certain number of those folks click through, engaging with you by signing up to your list or buying something…

Where content marketing really shines though is in what’s called “Pre-framing.

Why Your Audience Needs “Pre-framed.”

Pre-framing is an NLP thing.  The idea is:

A Pre-frame is a frame of reference given about an experience before the experience has taken place. It is commonly used to setup an activity or action assisting in the anticipation of the result. [source]

If you don’t preframe the objections and proof through pre-framing  people hang on to their objections and then respond to your ideas with: “Yes, but…”

Think about it this way…

Everyone who views your sales letter or sales video is coming to it from different points…

When you send an email out to your list about your newest product…

• A busy mom clicks through, late from picking her kids up from practice...
• An overworked husband who just got in a fight with his wife about not doing the dishes
• An approval seeking secretary who just got off of a seething phone call with her boss...
• A wealthy gentleman who just financed the first round in a tech startup...

Each of these people are coming to your sales video with other, more pertinent thoughts in their mind.

So, what does that do?  It skews your message!

Now, the sales letter that you just published, after working for months, is getting lackluster results.

If only there was a way to ground ALL of them so that they started to see what you see, and when the click through to your sales video, they’re all in the exact same place.

Enter content marketing.

Your blog post should preframe readers…  Removing doubt.  Removing objections.  And ultimately, putting them all in the right frame of mind to take action!

In our last post, we talked about making the transition between content and sales…

Today, I’m going to give you a checklist that you can use to make sure that the folks reading your site click through to your sales material and landing pages!

The Content Marketing Checklist

Your content should have AS MANY of the following points as possible, without being too pushy or salesy.  It’s usually not enough to just have a banner in a side bar either – you need to make sure to link right from the text itself!

1: Engaging Deeper With Your Brand

The premise behind all successful content is that it includes ways for folks to engage more deeply with yourself, your business and your brand.

By allowing someone to share experiences with you, learn from you, and ultimately sign up for your email list, share your post, and/or buy from you – you’re engaging the readers who really, truly want to be engaged.

You’re not sending them right to a sales video or a promotional piece…  You’re putting a buffer in the way so that only the most qualified, actionable of your readers will take you up on your offers.

And, the better your content does, the more sales and optins you get!

Make no mistake…  Sending your entire list to a blog post rather than a sales page can be risky because it might lower your overall revenue at first, but…

Well executed content actually increases overall revenue long term, while also reducing unsubscribes and refunds.  Plus, thanks to pre-framing, you’ll enjoy a healthy increase in conversion rate on your sales video itself…

2: A Call To Action

Secondly, every blog post should have at LEAST 3 calls to action.  That can be:

• Banner ads in your sidebar or displaying right in the content of your article
• In-text links going directly to your landing pages and sales pages
• Native ads that appear as being part of the article or aside, linking right to a product or landing page

Why 3?  I’ve found that when you include at least one link or banner towards the top of the blog post, and at least one link or banner at the bottom of the blog post, it greatly increased the clickthrough to the sales video.

Here’s the thing though…

You should only post a link AFTER you’ve given the reader sufficient time to get out of his or her own head.  Meaning, when they click that link, they should be thinking what they need to be thinking to make the purchasing decision…

3: Internal Content Links

There are certain readers who need more proof – more support – before buying and they go looking for it throughout the rest of your site.

For these people, it’s important to include links in your content to other material available on your site.  This is where having a great backlog of content comes into play.

If you’ve done a great writeup on a certain strategy or plan, and you reference it…  Hotlink it so your readers can travel deeper in your site.

This reinforces your brand and positions you as an expert…  Plus, you reader can simply back up to the first blog post, click a sales link, and buy!

4: Links To External Content

Another thing that you’ll want to do is link to outside content, where appropriate.  I know, back in the SEO days, this was a big deal to show Google that your site was authoritative.

What we want to do here though, is show actual human beings that our site is authoritative!

A great way to do that is to link through to a Youtube video, another writer’s great blog post, or some of your stuff on another site (think Twitter or Facebook)!

And don’t worry…  You won’t be sending that much traffic to someone else!

5: Images

All great content has images.  Especially with sites like Pinterest, images are easy to share so they must be included.

Whether you get the images from a piece of curated content, like what Curately does, or you buy stock photography or post Creative Commons work in your blog post – it must have images.

Plus, with so much traffic hitting your site from mobile devices anymore, images are the storytelling medium that really bonds your content together like glue!

6: Social Sharing

Being that we’re delivering value through content, we want to make sure that our readers have a way to share it with other people they’re connected with, so…

Make sure to have social sharing buttons enabled on your site.  There are plenty of plugins that do this for you, and most newer themes have functionality for sharing built right in.

Remember though, people share stuff that makes them seem smart, educated, valuable or entertaining.  If your material is dry or it’s something that will reflect poorly on the individual sharing – he simply won’t share!

7: Good Flow

Lastly, your content needs to have good flow to it.

• Use sub-headlines to call out individual sections of your content
• Include relevant keywords to the text so Google indexes and ranks it
• Make sure that your links show up in a different color from the rest of the text
• Post well through out articles that take your readers on a journey, and...
• Overall, deliver value!

Your content will live long after it’s published.  It should stand the test of time and work as a resource ALWAYS live and always selling for you, whenever someone’s reading it!

Your Next Step…

If content marketing and blogging is important to you, but you just don’t have time to sit down, do the research, and write blog posts from scratch..

There is a better way.  Click here to watch the video.

SaveSaveSaveSave

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The post 7 Critical Elements Of A Solid Content Marketing Piece appeared first on Done For You.

If you’re in the second camp – where your website and content are pushing visitors away – then you’re in luck.

In this article, we’re going to break down the elements of successful content marketing, plus give you a resource that you can use to significantly speed up the process of writing for your website.

Why Content Matters

Your website is most likely split up into various parts…  You have your products and services – the things that get you paid.

You have your home page and static pages, like your About page, contact page, and support page. Those pages are necessary pieces to give your website and brand a presence.

And then, you have your blog.

Your blog is (and has always been) this thing that you are unsure what to do with…  You know it’s essential because you read other people’s blog posts, and you’ve heard about countless businesses launching from their blog, but when it comes time to write your own, you’re not sure what to do…

Let me simplify things for you a little bit.

Your blog isn’t about you…  It’s about your audience.

So, if your audience, or the audience you hope to build, is interested in something…  It’s a worthwhile topic to write about as long as the focus is on solving a problem that they’re having!

Solving Problems

Most likely, you’re in business because you’ve discovered the solution to something ailing your audience.

After all, the great businesses and the highly trafficked websites all solve a problem. The problem can be significant, like learning how to start a business online or demonstrating how to build a nightstand from 2x4s…

Or, they can be smaller in scope – assembling a bunch of cat videos to make your audience laugh…

There are a few ways to discover the problems that your audience has, though:

• You ARE your audience, so the problems and solutions you discover are worthwhile to talk about
• You can survey your audience and ask them what they want more of...
• Or, you know someone who's IN your audience and you have experience that benefits them...

Most likely, you’re writing for a reason, though, and the more you can help, the more ‘bonded’ your audience feels to you.

How To Write A Blog Post: Brainstorming

So, you want to know how to write a blog post that grabs attention and keeps your readers hooked? It all starts with brainstorming—the cornerstone of excellent content creation. Whether you’re a seasoned blogger or new to the digital landscape, brainstorming effectively can make all the difference in crafting a compelling blog post. In this guide, we’ll explore powerful strategies for brainstorming and list seven essential websites that can help you discover trends and hot topics.

The Importance of Brainstorming in Blogging

Before diving into “how to write a blog post,” let’s understand why brainstorming is critical. The brainstorming stage is your playground—a sacred space where exciting mingle, clash, and evolve. Proper brainstorming enables you to:

1. Identify your target audience’s pain points
2. Clarify the primary objective of your post
3. Develop a structure that guides your readers through a coherent narrative
4. Discover interesting angles or perspectives that make your post unique

So how do you accomplish all these? Let’s dive in.

The Classic Mind Map Technique

The mind map technique lets you visually organize your thoughts around a central theme. Start by writing down the core idea or topic on a blank page. Then, create branches that stem from this central node, each representing a sub-topic or a potential section for your blog post. Feel free to add additional layers as you dive deeper into each sub-topic. This will give you a panoramic view of your blog post, making it easier to write and structure.

The List Method

Some people find it more comfortable working with lists. Create a list of possible headings, sub-headings, and bullet points. This doesn’t need to be in order; the objective is to put all your ideas on paper. Once you have a comprehensive list, you can rearrange the elements to construct a coherent narrative for your blog post.

The Question & Answer Approach

Another effective technique is formulating questions your blog post aims to answer. This ensures that your content remains focused on solving specific problems or providing value to your audience. Questions like, “What problem am I solving?”, “Why should someone read this?” and “What actionable steps can the reader take?” can help you stay aligned with your post’s primary objective.

Websites to Discover Trends and Hot Topics

To write a blog post that resonates with your audience, knowing what’s trending or relevant in your niche is essential. Here are seven websites that can aid your brainstorming process by providing insights into current trends:

1. Google Trends: An invaluable tool that shows how frequently a particular search term is entered over time.
2. BuzzSumo: This website lets you discover the most shared content for a particular keyword or domain. Great for finding hot topics and how they’re being discussed.
3. Reddit: Dubbed “The Front Page of the Internet,” Reddit has subreddits for virtually any topic. Browse through to find trending discussions related to your niche.
4. Twitter Trending Topics: Don’t underestimate the power of social media. Twitter’s trending section can provide a quick snapshot of what’s now capturing people’s attention.
5. Answer the Public: This tool generates a list of questions that people are asking about a particular keyword. Great for the Question & Answer Approach mentioned earlier.
6. Quora: This Q&A platform offers a wealth of information on various subjects. See what questions people are asking and what problems they want to solve.
7. Medium: Browse trending stories or specific tags to gauge what topics resonate with readers.

By incorporating trending topics from these websites, you ensure that your blog post is relevant and increase the chances of it being shared, liked, and ranked higher in search engines.

Blog Post Transitions and Consistency: Effective Content Marketing

When you’re wondering how to write a blog post that informs and converts, it’s essential to understand two key factors: the seamless transition into your product or service and the importance of consistency. Both elements help create a compelling narrative that captivates your audience and turns casual readers into loyal customers. Here’s how:

The Power of a Smooth Transition

Often, a blog post is limited in how deeply it can dive into a specific personal problem for each reader. You’re naturally confined to discussing general ideas or topics. This is where the transition comes into play. By naturally guiding your readers from the available content of your blog post to the specific solutions offered by your product or service, you accomplish a crucial task—you publish a content marketing piece that serves a dual purpose.

Leveraging Multi-Channel Traffic

Once you’ve created this harmonious transition, don’t stop at just publishing your post. Utilize multi-channel strategies to drive traffic to it. Please send it to your email list, run Facebook ads, employ YouTube marketing, and even set up Google Advertising to direct traffic to this page. Connect it to your sales funnel; you’ve just created a potent avenue for immediate and future sales.

Consistency is King

The key to a thriving audience and a vibrant brand? Consistency. The stark reality is that 97 out of 100 people won’t purchase their first visit. You could create various front-end offers or downloadable reports to entice them back. However, publishing your next content marketing piece or blog post is a more straightforward and more effective strategy.

Length Matters

Don’t overlook the length when pondering how to write a blog post that captivates. Industry best practices suggest that long-form content, ideally around 1,200 to 2,000 words, performs better in search engines and offers more value to your readers.

Deepening Audience Connection Through Consistency

Every new post you publish fortifies the relationship between your brand and your audience. It offers fresh perspectives on your products and services, helping them recognize that you solve many of their challenges. Consistency in publishing builds trust and keeps your audience engaged coming back for more.

Conclusion: Your Essential Checklist for How to Write a Blog Post

Crafting a blog post is more than just an exercise in writing; it’s an art form that requires thoughtful planning, smooth transitions, compelling calls to action, and consistent messaging. As we’ve navigated through the essentials of how to write a blog post that engages and converts, let’s wrap things up with a quick checklist to run through before you hit that “Publish” button:

Quick Checklist Before Publishing:

1. Headline: Does it grab attention and include your target keyword?
2. Introduction: Have you succinctly stated what the reader will gain from your post?
3. Content Structure: Is your blog post well-organized with headings, sub-headings, and bullet points for easier readability?
4. Transitions: Have you transitioned from general content to specific solutions, including a seamless link to your product or service?
5. Calls to Action: Are compelling CTAs placed strategically throughout the post to guide the reader on what to do next?
6. Consistency: Is your tone and messaging consistent throughout the post?
7. Blog Post Length: Does your post adhere to the ideal length for better SEO and reader engagement? Aim for 1,200 to 2,000 words for optimal results.
8. Visual Elements: Have you included relevant images, graphs, or videos to break up the text and enhance understanding?
9. SEO: Are your target keywords naturally integrated throughout the post? Don’t forget about meta descriptions and image alt tags.
10. Proofreading: Have you thoroughly proofread the post for grammatical errors and readability?

By following this checklist, you can be confident that you’ve done the groundwork necessary for publishing a blog post that’s set up for success. Here’s to impactful blogging that not only educates but also drives results!

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The post Blank To Blog Post: How to Write a Blog Post For Beginners appeared first on Done For You.

To get a reader to DO something.

Now, depending on where you’re learning about content marketing, you’re going to see language relating to ‘native ads’ and ‘advertorials,’ but the intent is always the same.

Content marketing is content that’s freely available (usually as a blog post), designed to elicit a reaction from a reader.

Now, one of our favorite uses of content is in email marketing campaigns!  We’ll break up a the sales sequence or an affiliate promo sequence inside Scriptly and toss in some blog content into the email autoresponder copy…

That way, our lists stay engaged and active and we don’t have to worry too much about unsubscribes or complaints!  The double edged sword?  Some pieces of content sell what’s in them better than others, so if you mail your list to a dud piece of content, it’s going to take longer to recoup any ad costs that you’ve put into them!

What’s the Difference Between Content Marketing and Copywriting?

From a traditional marketing standpoint, the answer to the question in the headline above is simple. Content marketing means creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers — and customers into repeat buyers. Copywriting gets a reader to take a specific action. Sometimes that’s making a purchase, but it can also educate and entertain, it performs a dual purpose.

Click here to read more about the difference between content marketing and copywriting >>

6 Marks of Effective Content: ‘The Lego Movie’ Edition

Shortly after the release of The Lego Movie (2014), more than one professional marketer went on record to say that it was the best piece of content marketing they’d seen in a long time. Well, I finally saw the movie, and I don’t buy that claim.

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5 Ways to Get More Traffic with Content Marketing

It’s the question I get asked more often than any other when I’m talking with business owners about content marketing strategy. And it’s the question we see most often from new members in our Authority Q&A sessions. “How do I get more traffic?” There’s more — a lot more — to content marketing than traffic.

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3 Ways to Track the True Value, Not Just Return on Investment, of Your Content Marketing

Here are a few ways to shift your thinking away from the dollars-generated-per-webinar mindset and toward a focus on how your content powers your entire sales and marketing engine.

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