Monday, April 30, 2018
How Micro Influencers Have Taken Over Asian Digital Marketing
10 years ago 80% of marketing budgets went to the media. Roughly 90% of them were spent on TV.
Recently, a chance brought me to work in a digital media agency in Southeast Asia. We got a brief from a huge client for their new movie promotion. To my surprise, three-quarters of the allocated budget got labeled with ‘Influencers’ from the get-go.
Why all brands in Asia go crazy about influencer marketing?
Asia is at the peak of digital growth, with smartphones penetration levels close to 90%. The populations of Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Korea are very young. People under thirty years of age make 30 to 50 percent of the population. According to NexMo, East Asia and Southeast Asia are the #1 and #2 social markets worldwide, with 1 billion cumulative users accessing social media platforms across both regions.
Young people are into smartphones, not the TV. And they’re quite aware of advertising. They don’t swallow it easily – unless it’s from influencers.
In Vietnam, over 50% of the young audience would be influenced by the fashion choices of an opinion leader. Over 60% are ready to learn from their life experiences.
A few specifics of the region make authentic influencers extremely powerful:
- Content tailored to the audience. People in Southeast Asia mostly use mobile internet. Instead of looking for things via desktop browsers, they pick up the information from reviews in social feeds. This is exactly the right soil for an influencers performance.
- Understanding the local data realities. Unstable connections and small portions of intermittent data. By fine-tuning tiny bits of content for the various channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), influencers make life easier for their audience.
- Intimate emotional connection. The Southeast Asian audience craves for very personal treatment. Influencers here curate their feeds according to followers comments and reactions. Thus they win deep trust and monetize it by sprinkling themselves with stealthy ads.
How internet nerds became the cool kids
Movie and music stars boast millions of followers. But their audience engagement rates are barely half of what micro influencers have, according to Digiday.
In Asia, these statistics are even more impressive. Narratrs, the Singaporean micro-influencer platform, claims that content created and amplified by micro-influencers generated up to 10 times higher engagement rates than macro-influencers.
Niche accounts with 10K to 100K followers are real opinion leaders for their friends, family, and followers. The benefit of their ready-made, organically grown audiences is outstanding levels of trust.
Simply put, the “micro” range brings you best engagement and best conversion rates.
Where do brands find micro influencers?
Agencies
CampaignAsia noticed a boom of influencer marketing agencies bringing new names every day. Bigger Western players like Maker Studios, StyleHaul and adMingle are entering the market, too.
The pros of hiring one are the hassle-free process. You just set KPIs and point out your desired audience. The cons are the prices. Be prepared to shell out an extra 20-30% of the cost.
Platforms
Are you staffed enough to court a dozen micro-influencers in-house? Then there is a ton of automated platforms for you.
- https://withfluence.com/
- http://casting-asia.com
- http://www.parklu.com/
- http://buzzoole.com/
- http://www.gnackapp.com/
- https://www.narratrs.com
- https://www.influenster.com/
Register to create your campaign in less than 5 minutes. Point out your desired market, message, and budget, and you’re good to go.
What influencers do brands like most?
- Involved in long-term campaigns, but not “stuck”
- Provide good data for stakeholders: not too much, not too little
- Good engagement rates and growth rate over time, not the number of followers
- Dazzling results are treated with suspicion. Steady and organic growth is preferred.
- To reduce the risk and increase efficiency, the brand often works with several influencers. But they all have to be a good match for the product.
Smaller numbers shouldn’t discourage you. Here’s an example of a restaurant launch engagement report:
How brands plan their content with influencers
Brand generated
The brand comes up with the content for the influencers to spread it across their networks. It is a very safe way, though least effective due to low personalization.
Co-developed
Content must follow the guidelines and checklists provided by the brand. Influencers come up with their own concepts accordingly. Higher impact, but risk increased.
Influencer generated
Brand gives a general brief task. From there, influencers are only limited by their creativity. It’s a chance to get outstanding content pieces. But the risk calls for the review checkpoints.
Which strategies proved to bring the highest ROI?
Attendance at sponsored events and partnerships
Takashimaya Mid Autumn Campaign
Results
- Exposure to over 588,000 followers of influencers
- 98 campaign-related posts
- 29,400+ likes on Instagram
- 1,100+ comments
Results
- Exposure to over 430,000 followers of influencers
- 47 campaign-related posts
- 23,000+ likes on Instagram
- 460 new Instagram fans
Building hype around product launches
Results
- Exposure to over 390,000 followers of influencers
- 40 campaign-related posts
- 23,000+ likes on Instagram
- 350+ comments
- 205 clicks to the restaurant’s pages
Results
- Exposure to over 180,000 followers of influencers
- 15 campaign-related posts
Creating product reviews to increase trust with the audience
Ayam Brand in search for long-term ambassadors
Results
- Exposure to over 200,000 followers of influencers
- 34 campaign-related posts
- 17,000+ likes on Instagram
- 440+ comments
Promotion for the Changi Airport Group online shopping
Results
- Exposure to over 300,000+ followers of influencers on Instagram
- 4,000+ likes and comments received
Having an always-on strategy to increase brand love
Promoting a fitness supplement for women
Results
- 120+ influencers engaged
- 390 product reviews in 3 months
- +250% product inquiries
- +220% organic website traffic
- 15% average social media engagement
- +450% organic fans
Always-on community building campaign for Alce Nero
1st Month Results
- Exposure to over 98,000+ followers of influencers
- 20 campaign-related posts
- 5,500+ likes received
- 370+ comments received
Creating opportunities for conversion through offers and promotions
Redeem Promotion of Bust Enhancement Programme
Results
- 6 blog posts
- Exposure to over 140,000 followers of influencers on Instagram
- 12 Instagram posts
- 5,900+ likes on Instagram
- 350+ comments
Seasonal offer for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day
Results
- Exposure to over 647,000 followers of influencers
- 12,500+ likes and comments on Instagram
What’s “Always-On vs. Campaign” relationships?
Choosing between long-term brand advocacy and situational short-term messaging?
Lumanu found that the best strategy is using a mix of both. Endorse a group of the most relevant bloggers on a constant basis. Then add up as needed with campaign-specific influencers. (It’s a great way to tap another niche market safely, as well.)
How do brands get best results from micro influencers?
- Be symbiotic.
- Make your intentions clear. Be specific about your goals, objectives, and timeline.
- Excite them. Micro influencers look for various incentives. Some only care about hard cash. Others would love to have VIP treatment by your brand, or being featured on the company website.
- Find the right communication style. Not all bloggers, by far instagrammers, would check their emails as religiously as the office folks. If there is a gap in communication, try Viber or Telegram to find the best solution for everyone.
- Make it long-term to win a lifetime exclusive advocate for your brand.
Wrap up
As prices are rising, micro influencers are not the Bonanza they used to be even 12 months ago. Yet, what I see working from an ROI perspective is two heads taller than that of other marketing channels. Especially paid ads.
The era of ad-blockers calls for genuine promotions. In Asia today, the brands who want to stand out on the web have made their choice. Every day they engage more micro influencers for the advocacy of their products.
Lifelong contracts are just a matter of time.
Guest author: Samantha Engman has a passion for good content and working smart. After a decade in marketing agencies, she switched to consultancy for aspiring businesses. Recently Sam was noticed creating brand strategies for Bid4papers and sharing tips on building online success via her Twitter.
The post How Micro Influencers Have Taken Over Asian Digital Marketing appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.
Read Full Article: http://bathseoexpert.tumblr.com/post/173450987501
How Content Can Create a Self-Sustaining Customer Referral Engine
Robert Rose, CMI chief strategy advisor, loves to reset his audience’s brains with a truth bomb:
The purpose of a business is to create a customer.
This 60-year-old quote from management great Peter Drucker reminds marketers that their work – creating demand, generating traffic, prompting social shares, or even gathering leads — is in service of this one clear goal. It’s a refreshing pause button on all the distracting possibilities available.
Sulte Group CEO Teju Owoye takes the customer-creation concept one ambitious step further.
Your content can create a self-replicating referral engine, as Teju shares in her Content Marketing World presentation Accelerating Growth by Hacking Your Conversion Journey.
To get there, though, you first must help users learn to love the product or service they just signed up for.
Don’t stop building relationships at conversion
In the conventional sales and marketing funnel, marketing teams work on building awareness and nurturing prospects so some become leads and some eventually purchase a product or service. It’s tempting to celebrate those wins.
“It’s super exciting that you’ve got the customer to purchase your product, your service, engage with your platform,” Teju says.
But, what most marketers call “conversions” are truly a relatively minor transactional event that signals the start of a change. What happens next can determine who does the bulk of your future funnel-filling work — you or your happy customers.
“Marketers need to be intimately involved post-conversion to make sure that the customer is not only utilizing the product, but they become evangelists — and they’re referring their counterparts, their friends, their family, whoever is in their sphere of influence,” Teju says.
To boost growth, Teju suggests you guide the newly converted (through personalized content delivered at key moments) to become a different kind of customer – an active user who gets so much value from your product or service that the impulse to share it with others is almost irresistible.
Guide a new conversion to be a different kind of customer - an active user. @TejuOwoye. Read more>>
Click To Tweet
Change how you view the buyer’s journey
What if, instead of applauding a conversion, a transaction, or a sale, you view a new subscriber or buyer as beginning the journey? What if you devoted the same measure of consideration and resources to new customers as to your red-hot leads? The traditional funnel changes to something more like this:
The right side is what Teju calls “our new job as marketers … making sure that the consumer has a delightful experience and is unlocking value at critical points while using your product.”
Get inside customers’ hearts and heads
To understand how best to guide your new customers toward this value, ask these familiar questions:
- What is it about our favorite product or service that make customers really love it?
- How does it make their lives easier?
- How does the brand respond when they have questions or problems?
- How does the product or service assimilate into or effect other aspects of their lives?
How does your brand respond when customers have questions or problems, asks @TejuOwoye. Read more>>
Click To Tweet
Then add a new, somewhat mind-bending question:
- Does their behavior change because of how they feel about the user experience? Or do their feelings change because of the new behavior once equipped with the product?
Good consumer sentiment prompts behavioral change. It’s no surprise that when customers feel a product or service can ease their pain, they engage with it. But did you know that the opposite is true?
Customer behavior can change how a customer feels. The more people act like power users, the more they feel like they are power users. The result is a magical, self-perpetuating brand advocate (a power user).
The more people act like power users, the more they feel they are power users. @TejuOwoye via @thanybethanybe.
Click To Tweet
(A note about “power users.” Although that term is often associated with software or apps, Teju is adamant that the concept works for any B2B or B2C company: “The same thing applies for a software as a service company, applies for a law office, or for a marketing agency: You want to make sure you have delighted customers who are referring you to people they know.”)
Use data to understand power users’ behavior
To bring the behavior-drives-feelings concept down to earth, Teju describes a client whose goal was to popularize its software — an app that powered a cash-back rewards program.
First, they dug deep into website tracking data to identify a handful of behavioral markers that distinguish their most active, engaged, happy customers — in other words, the super users.
Here’s what they found:
- Super users linked their credit cards to the mobile app right away. Immediately after signing up, they navigate their way to the “link-a-card” function, and they make it happen.
- Within the first seven days, super users visited about four restaurants, usually around lunch time on weekdays.
- Over the next couple weeks, they linked more credit cards — three on average.
The brand used the findings in a surprising way. Instead of going out to find new potential power users, Teju says, the team set out to create new power users within the existing subscriber base by developing a calendar of activation milestones.
Create content that changes existing users’ behavior
To support these milestones, the marketing team devised personalized messages for users who didn’t do these things, those who signed up without fully using the application’s features or getting the rewards. It started with a message like this:
“Glad to see you in our cash back rewards program. Next, link a card so you don’t miss out on any rewards.”
The goal of this message is to motivate an otherwise lukewarm customer to hit what Teju calls an “activation milestone.” In the expanded funnel, activation is the step that prompts people to really unlock the features of a product.
The marketing team did not expect an emotional investment in the program right away. That could come later. At this stage, a user’s actions mattered most.
Once a customer links some cards, the team sends a reminder like this:
“Looks like you haven’t tried using our app at a restaurant quite yet. Doing that separates our most well-rewarded ($$$!) app users from people who don’t get as much out of the experience.
“Tell you what. If you visit one of our affiliated venues in the next week, then we’ll sweeten your day by giving you a chance to win a restaurant gift card.”
The goal was to get this person to adopt the product or service and use it as a power user would. Incentives were a great way to achieve that goal – especially when your product rewards users organically in time.
Guide the aha moment
For example, this software company realized an aha moment would come for users who took enough power-user actions. A supremely gratifying moment would happen when the user would look down to find a fulfilling $10 reward on the app – just for continuing his usual spending habits.
Often, Teju says, the moment was so powerful the user remarked aloud to friends and family in casual conversation, creating a genuine word-of-mouth referral that sent new prospects right to the app.
The aha moment for power users is when they talk to friends about your product. @TejuOwoye. #wordofmouth
Click To Tweet
Get this right, Teju says, and you’ve not just created a loyal customer, you’ve created a potential viral loop, the self-fueled engine of word-of-mouth marketing.
Much of today’s content endeavors to spark a feeling or perception. It’s tempting to try to convince consumers of their own desire for your solution – to make promises, brag, or otherwise compel audiences to a faux enthusiasm. When maybe, just maybe, another tactic could be to move them one step further toward power-user behavior.
The closer their behaviors inch them toward your product’s built-in rewards, the sooner they reach that natural aha moment. And that’s the kind of moment they can’t help but share with others.
Want more pause buttons, truth bombs, and aha moments of your own? Register for Content Marketing World Sept. 4-7 in Cleveland, Ohio, and earn a $100 discount when you enter code BLOG100.
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
The post How Content Can Create a Self-Sustaining Customer Referral Engine appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.
Sunday, April 29, 2018
4 Instagram Tips You Should Follow for driving Traffic to Your Blog
Are you successfully driving traffic to your blog? For marketers or business owners, it is very important to be on top of every digital marketing strategy. This is the only way you’ll generate leads.
Instagram can be a great social media marketing tool to drive people to your website. The platform has grown exponentially over the years.
As of April 2017, Instagram has 700 million active users. As one of the most popular social media tools all around the world, about 71% of businesses use it. This behavior reflects the increasing number of customers depending on the platform to find a product or service.
In this article, you’ll discover 4 tips that you should follow to attract people to your blog through Instagram.
1. Boost your brand identity
Strengthen your brand through Instagram. Create an advertising campaign that will stand out from hundreds of campaigns on IG. Give the users something unique and useful to them. Connect with their emotions, answer their needs, and you will surely be at the top of your followers’ minds.
An inspiring example is Playdoh’s colorful clay sets. The company is aligned with its goals and objectives. It focuses on a campaign that shows its followers the potential uses of their products. It incorporates the elements of fun and interest while educating audiences.
2. Use hashtags that are relevant to your business
Instagram is similar to Twitter in that people use hashtags. Hashtags are an important tool to increase your reach. They work by making your Instagram post more visible especially to people who haven’t followed you yet. So, if you’re not using hashtags now, you’re missing out on opportunities to be discovered.
While there are so many popular hashtags you can use to your advantage, it’s more important to prioritize relevance. Whether you’re using hashtags to increase your likes or driving website traffic, attracting the right audience gives you more targeted leads.
For example, if your blog caters to coffee enthusiasts, examples of relevant Instagram hashtags include #coffeelover and #coffeetime.
3. Promote the right way
Marketing is all about the right promotion, at the right time and to the right target audience. You can promote your Instagram account by collaborating with influencers. They are called influencers because of the impact they have on the society that they are in. Influencer marketing is effective in increasing brand awareness.
You can also promote your account by holding actual events or a contest. Make these activities simple, easy to follow, relatable and interesting to your target audience. To throw some ideas, you can launch a “Selfie or Groupie” contest,” “Like-to-Win” or a content that deals with posting a photo of you and your loved one.
You can also use Instagram to promote offers, discounts, special events and other promos. Promotion is the core of marketing. And of course, do not hesitate to try paid ads on Instagram. It may cost you a little, but the returns are great.
4. Optimize the clickable link in your bio
Your business may have wow-worthy, jaw-dropping images – but are you paying attention to that one link you have in your bio? The bio section on Instagram is the only place where you get to include a link to your blog.
The advantage of optimizing this link is that you can take an Instagram visitor to any page. It can be a landing page where you offer a lead magnet in exchange for their email address. That page can also be one of your cornerstone pieces of content. Make sure that you track this link so you’ll know whether your traffic driving strategy has been effective.
Wrapping Up
Instagram has been loved by many – both enterprise and end customers alike. It is a great way to promote brands, build followers, enhance relationships with customers and, most of all, increase website traffic.
All of these will eventually lead to higher conversion rates and a boost in sales. You do not want to be left behind by the competition, right? Now is the right time to reinforce your marketing strategy through various Instagram campaigns and activities. Waste no time. Start it now!
Original post: 4 Instagram Tips You Should Follow for driving Traffic to Your Blog
This post is courtesy of: https://www.dailyblogtips.com
Let Your Content Determine Your Website’s Design Elements
When creating a new website, the first thing most people do is search for a beautiful theme on sites like Theme Forest of Template Monster. This makes sense; websites should look good. However, there are reasons to avoid choosing a theme based on looks alone.
When you select a theme based on looks, you’re going to need to fit all of your content into that theme’s existing structure and it may not be a match. For example, say you’re building a website for your local mail center business. Your content will likely consist of a few pages detailing the services you provide and perhaps a blurb on who runs the company.
If you look at most themes today, you’ll notice nearly all of them come with a sidebar and endless spots for stock photos. From a professional designer’s point of view, a small, local mail center wouldn’t benefit from a sidebar or stock photos. Regardless, when you fall in love with the demo version of a theme, it’s tempting to want to recreate the way the demo site looks – excess elements and all. However, doing this can detract from the usability of your website.
Filling in those excess elements makes your site look complicated. Users form an opinion about your website in less than 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds). That opinion will determine whether they stay or bounce. If your website looks too complicated for what it’s designed to be, visitors will bounce.
Design elements should be used intentionally
A sidebar isn’t just a placeholder for aesthetics. It’s a page element designed to highlight important information that visitors should have easy access to. If you don’t have anything to highlight, you don’t need a sidebar. Stuffing content into a sidebar just to fill in the space is a backwards approach to web design.
The proper way to build a website is to allow your content to determine the design you choose. When you organize your content ahead of time, you’ll know which page elements you need, and which ones you don’t. For instance, if you’re a building a photography portfolio, you’ll benefit from a homepage slider. Or, if you’re building an in-depth research website, you’ll benefit by using a sidebar for extensive navigation.
The possibility that any website benefits from stock photography is questionable. As Intechnic puts it, “No matter how professional the stock photo, it will always be someone else’s vision and someone else’s interpretation of the idea, concept, emotion, etc. that you are trying to convey.”
You can avoid making these mistakes by determining which page elements you need before you search for a design. Look at potential themes through the lens of what you actually need. You can’t afford to make a bad first impression.
According to Kat Kocurek from Kinesis, first impressions are 94% design related. This makes sense considering 90% of the information we process is visual. Kocurek remarks, “Even the best content is rendered powerless when it’s embedded in poor design. Studies of user behavior have found that visual appeal and website navigation have the biggest influence on people’s first impressions of your brand.”
Popular elements aren’t always relevant
Just like sidebars, there are other website elements that aren’t relevant for every website. A prime example is the mega menu. Just like sidebars, mega menus are popular because they look cool, but often make navigation too complicated. It’s rare for a website to make proper use of a mega menu, but it’s not unheard of.
Implemented well by Decaso, their mega menu supports the content. With high-end and one-of-a-kind décor, Decaso uses the mega menu element sparingly. Rather than bombarding users with links to every page on the entire website, they use the menu space to display images of their décor. This appeals to the visual orientation of the human brain. When users click on main menu items, their visual mega menu provides satisfaction rather than confusion.
Premade themes come with limitations
Regardless of how well thought out your content is, using a template will always limit you to the structure of that template. If you’re using a dynamic CMS like WordPress you can add and remove elements like headers, sidebars, and widgets. However, you’ll still be stuck with the overall structure created by the template designer.
A website is an asset for any business, whether you’re a brick-and-mortar store, an ecommerce shop, or a blogger marketing content. To give your website the best chance at impressing, retaining, and converting visitors is to hire a designer to develop your website from scratch.
Original post: Let Your Content Determine Your Website’s Design Elements
This post is courtesy of: https://www.dailyblogtips.com
Friday, April 27, 2018
7 Tips to Become an Influencer in Your Industry
Every industry has influencers.
Blogging, marketing, stock marketing, affiliate marketing, health, fitness… Anything you can think of.
These are the people who teach us the right ways to do the things.
We follow them, we consider them the trendsetters, we trust their advice, their diet plans, their daily routine and the books they read.
In short – we try to emulate them.
As an influencer, people want to be like you, eat like you, read like you and work like you.
Wouldn’t you love to be one of these influencers in your industry?
I had the same dream when I started my blogging career in 2011. I wanted to be someone who can influence people, who can inspire them, ignite their hidden powers and show them the right path to become a successful person in their field.
With time, I have reached a point where I can say that I am an influencer.
Having more than 60,000+ readers in a month on my blog, 20,000+ followers on my Facebook page, 10,000+ subscribers and 4000+ people in my private Facebook group, I can say that I am an influencer.
Becoming an influencer is all about the mindset.
Once you know your goals, becoming an influencer is not that difficult.
Note: It takes 2-3 years to become a perfect influencer in your industry.
Here I am going to share some personal tips that can help you to become an influencer in your industry.
1. Make your presence everywhere
Pay Flynn says, “Be Everywhere.”
This is one of finest suggestions you can ever get from an entrepreneur. Try to be everywhere. Write blog posts on different blogs (like I am doing now), get into podcasts, video interviews, submit slides, attend meetings or whatever the option is there to meet with your prospects, just be there.
Gary Vaynerchuk is another live example. This guy is everywhere. This guy has changed the definition of word “Hustle.”
He keeps on hustling.
There is a complete psychology behind doing this. When we see any brand everywhere (TV, hoardings, newspaper, etc.), we conceive it as a brand.
Exactly the same applies to you. When you are everywhere, people consider you as a brand.
2. Get into interviews
Interviews are one of the best ways to influence people. Either get into text interviews, podcasts or video interviews, just try to get featured on some good websites.
People love to read real life stories because they can relate it with their own life and be motivated to do something better in their life.
MyBlogU is a great platform where you can find some blogs in your industry and get featured on them by sending them an answer to a few questions.
Otherwise, you can go to Google and search about the interviews of other people from your industry.
Search – “Your industry name + interview” in Google.
E.g., “Blogging + Interview.”
You can perform this search query with any terms.
Once you get those blogs, send them an email to interview you on their blogs.
Show them the quality of your blog posts, your other interviews, your presence or any other authoritative proof to convince them to have you on their blog.
By doing this, you can interact with their audience and gain more trust in the industry.
3. Maintain your social profiles
Many people call this a time sucker.
But if you use it in the right way, it can be a big asset to build your business.
Be humble on your social media profiles and try to help as many people as you can. If you are on Facebook, you can join some authoritative groups on Facebook, which can help you to gain the real exposure and more trust.
Here are 3 Facebook groups in the internet marketing industry I recommend to join.
4. Read industry specific books
Books are the real friends.
They can shape your career if you use them in the right way.
Back in 2011, I was struggling hard in my career. I was a newbie, and I had no job.
All I had was a vision to become a successful blogger in upcoming years.
When you are a newbie, finding a mentor can be very hard. Because either they are looking for some professional guys who can help them to build their business or they charge some money to become your mentor.
Unfortunately, we don’t have anything when we are a newbie.
So books can help you find the path.
I started reading a lot of books related to the industry and some motivational books to stay on track.
Start picking some good books recommended by the experts in your industry and read them very carefully. The best thing about books is; you can gain author’s years of knowledge in just a few dollars.
So learn the basics of your industry from books and keep on increasing the level of books.
Recently I bought a book called, “You Squared.” This is just a 34 page book having 17 almost blank pages.
So I can say this is a book of just 17 pages.
This book cost 2200 INR ($32) in India, but the wisdom I got from this book was beyond imagination.
5. Attend industry specific seminars/meetings/masterminds
I personally attend a lot of seminars. Earlier I was attending local seminars in India only, but last year I started going international and attended 4-5 awesome seminars in various countries.
Show your face to your audience, talk with them, laugh with them and hear what they want to say.
Meeting personally builds a strong relationship with your audience. Recently Jeff Bullas was in India where he delivered an awesome lecture.
Although I was not in that Seminar I followed each and every update from Jeff, where I could see people going crazy to meet him.
My wall was filled with picture updates with Jeff, and bloggers here were feeling super awesome to meet their ideal for the first time.
People feel awesome when you meet them in person.
So start attending seminars to build your presence.
6. Interact with your audience
Your audience feels awesome when you reply to them on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus or personal email.
If you are running a blog, be active in the comment section.
Keep your eyes on the questions in the comment section. Do your best to solve their queries, because it will help you to strengthen your relations with your readers.
If you are giving a reply on a public platform (Forum, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), it’s going to help many other people as well. So always do your best when you reply on any individual query.
7. Build a relationship with your email list
All big players in the industry always recommend building an email list on your blog.
These are your loyal readers, who want to read every article written by you, who want to receive your updates, who want to learn more from you.
This is the place where you should take every step very carefully.
A person has joined your email list because they liked your stuff and finally decided to follow all your future updates. So if you are not treating them well, they are going to leave you.
If you hurt them, they are never going to come back.
So learn how to build relationships with your subscribers and keep sending them only important stuff rather than pushy stuff.
Once you fulfil their requirements (you won’t be able to fulfil everyone’s requirements), you win the heart of your readers.
They start following you from the bottom of their heart, and you become an influencer.
Final Words
People are your brand ambassador.
They recommend your blog, your YouTube channel, your Facebook profile whenever they get the chance.
Becoming an influencer is not about pleasing everyone and putting in lots of effort to build your authority. It’s about becoming good with a handful of people, and they do free marketing for you.
Every time they see someone in your industry in trouble, they will recommend your name to them.
I have personally used all the methods discussed above, and I can say proudly that I am an INFLUENCER. 
Guest Author: Kulwant Nagi is a professional blogger and an affiliate marketer. He loves to share the tips about starting a blog and bringing traffic. His latest venture is KnowledgeCage.com, which is a 100% targeted blog for “how to” industry.
The post 7 Tips to Become an Influencer in Your Industry appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.
Read Full Article: http://bathseoexpert.tumblr.com/post/173362700491
Thursday, April 26, 2018
How To Break Into China – The Biggest and Toughest Market In The World
Conquering China is the Nirvana for businesses seeking to grow internationally.
Everyone wants a piece of it, but why have so few businesses taken advantage of it?
This article by the China Australia Events Association (CAEA) and Lead Creation explores:
- Why the Chinese market is such a challenge
- The drivers behind China’s growth and why it will continue
- How to get your business behind the Wall
Why the Chinese Market is such a challenge
It has been difficult to enter this huge new market because China has a vastly different culture from the ‘West’. It has also been a closed economy for well over a 100 years. But it’s all changing, things are getting easier…
- Premier Xi again made opening up China a priority in the latest 5 Year Plan.
- The more business China does with the outside world, the better their people understand how to engage with foreign business. China’s only been engaged for a few years so every year is making a big difference.
- The development of powerful new cloud technologies, such as robust and free video conferencing, now allow easy connection with businesses outside China.
- They are, finally, actively discouraging IP theft (though much more is needed)
So, it’s getting easier to enter China as each year passes. The flip side of this? Your opportunities to capitalize on China are shrinking because the competition from other countries is growing rapidly.
And there’s another reason why time is running out: innovation has recently accelerated in China (see below for why). So year by year, their need for the ‘West’ or the ‘Asian Tigers’ is also shrinking just as it did in Japan and South Korea many years ago.
But how has China grown so fast in the last 20 years? There are 4 main factors…
- A huge borderless market united by one language.
- A giant population determined to build a better life.
- A hunger for international trade and global leadership.
- Great rail and road connections – more high-speed rail than the rest of the world combined!
Interesting that these are the same factors that powered America’s growth in the 19th century!
Apart from these four ‘growth engines’, what is the ‘Big Gun’ in their new economic arsenal?
WeChat: More than just social networking
With 1 billion users in less than 7 years, WeChat is worth billions and is transforming the business landscape. Most importantly, it connects and harnesses the power of the huge network of overseas Chinese from Vancouver to Vietnam and Africa.
It goes without saying that WeChat is a social network. However, it is also a powerful business network combining features of LinkedIn, Skype, PayPal and Facebook. Many small businesses now run completely on WeChat, where they share content, run video conferences and make payments, etc.
When combined with powerful handheld computers (Smartphones) and fast internet, it’s hard to overestimate WeChat’s power and impact. These technologies have put a rocket under China’s economy and are making it an innovation powerhouse.
However, this innovation-driven growth is also rapidly closing many windows of opportunity for foreign businesses.
The new China approach
Successfully entering China may seem impossible to businesses with little to no experience of working there. But everyone knows that business starts with building relationships and trust, and this is particularly important in China.
What can be done to accelerate trust-building in China?
It starts with a new approach that combines the power of Social Media with the power of face-to-face events.
Over the last six years, the CAEA and Lead Creation have been supported by R&D funding to create this new way of promoting business in China.
The current model of events echoes the traditional town marketplace where sellers prop up a stand in the hope that people learn about you and buy. Events and Expos are no longer needed to fulfill this original purpose. People can easily learn about you and your business online. Therefore, a radical new model is needed. It must deliver valuable prospects to your booth for targeted meetings and conversations.
The new model harnesses the power of social and business networks. This involves LinkedIn, which is still powerful in China and used by those who are internationally focused. It also means leveraging the powerful Chinese social media platforms, particularly, WeChat and Weibo. While Chinese Social Media are powerful tools, they have very different protocols. For example, they require you to have a China-based company and a ‘.com’ or ‘.cn’ website URL to market effectively.
But just having these platforms is not enough. The effective marketing of your business in China requires experienced bilingual marketers. This means you need two things:
- An expert service provider in China who can help you leverage these vast networks to produce persuasive and culturally appropriate content; and
- On-the-ground Mandarin-speaking assistants at the Expo or event to overcome the language barrier
Lastly, the event ‘architecture’ is critical. It must integrate Social Media and build these Media into its design and processes. Doing this means…
- It will deliver conversations with valuable prospects – before, during and after the event
- It uses Social Media to create relationships before you land in China, and continue them upon return
Are you ready to break into China?
Guest author: Toby Marshall is the Founder of Lead Creation.
The post How To Break Into China – The Biggest and Toughest Market In The World appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.
Read Full Article: http://bathseoexpert.tumblr.com/post/173325328146
How 3 Content Brands Tackle Their Toughest Internal Challenges
What keeps you up at night about your content marketing program? I’ll bet one of your top concerns is how to prove its value to the company.
There’s also a good chance other stress-inducing concerns include your tech stack and/or your team. Well, guess what? Your peers – even at brands lauded for their content approach – struggle with the same issues.
At the recent Intelligent Content Conference, Robert Rose, CMI’s chief strategy advisor, questioned the leaders of notable content brands about how they tackle the issues. Their advice during the keynote panel Let’s Get Real: What Does It Take to Run an Enterprise Publication may help you take on your tough challenges – and maybe even get some sleep.
Meet the panel:
Dusty DiMercurio leads Autodesk’s content marketing and social media team and serves as publisher and editorial director for Redshift, the company’s digital publication about the future of design and making things.
Luke Kintigh and Deb Landau are head of publishing and managing editor, respectively, of iQ by Intel, which features long-form journalistic stories about tech designed to inspire.
Whitney Kisling, senior content strategist at Capital Group and managing editor of the investment fund’s content destination Capital Ideas, which educates financial advisors about the impact of economic and political trends and events on the investment environment.
Challenge: Stay true to the editorial mission and show value to the company
All three of the panelists’ publications sit at the top of the funnel, attracting audiences with compelling stories and typically keeping brand and product mentions to a minimum. Each team focuses on creating a sustained cadence of editorial content, not white papers, e-books, or other demand-gen pieces.
It’s no surprise, then, that the panelists acknowledge how difficult proving value can be.
Sure, the problem is partly technological: Collecting the right data, analyzing it, and delivering it to the right people (not to mention getting them to read it) often involves plugging a “leaky bucket,” as Intel’s Luke Kintigh put it.
But the answers, they all agree, aren’t purely tech driven. They’re about people: helping, educating, and collaborating with internal teams, just as you would for your external audience.
What to try: Invest in other teams’ success
First, lay the groundwork for proving value by making the right friends. For both Capital Ideas and Redshift, some of the best friends come from the sales team.
In fact, the Capital Group’s sales force was once its content distribution strategy. Salespeople delivered content pieces when they paid quarterly visits to prospects and customers. When Capital Ideas launched, the team’s de facto Chief Content Officer Will McKenna tapped into the relationships he had built over 16 years with the company to help the sales team understand how the new online resource helps them start conversations with their prospects more often.
Capital Group’s sales force was part of its distribution strategy. They delivered the #content. @KMoutsos
Click To Tweet
At Autodesk, Dusty DiMercurio takes a similar tack. “We go to sales and say, ‘We know you’re trying to strike up conversations in this sector. Here’s a bunch of great content that will allow you to start conversations (with new prospects) or give you proof points for conversations you might already have started with leads.”
Why this works
Enlisting salespeople as champions isn’t the only tactic Capital Group’s Whitney Kisling uses. She educates leadership about the role thought-leadership content plays in the broader marketing mission of engaging and educating financial advisors to increase the likelihood they’ll choose Capital Group’s funds. But sales support provides powerful anecdotal evidence.
“We get a feedback loop from the sales force saying, ‘We love having this website we can go to to quickly find what we’re looking for,’” Whitney explains. “We can take that to senior leadership and show there is value.”
Dusty’s strategy of understanding his internal audience’s goals and explaining how content can help has made Redshift popular with the sales team. “They go there all the time. In fact, they sign up for the newsletter so they get the content when it’s first published,” he says.
Building “a coalition of the willing,” as Dusty calls it, helps prove your own team’s success. “Not everybody’s going to be on board, but there will be some people who really are,” he says. “Find those people and make them an extended part of your team. Make them the hero. Make them successful. Then you’ll create demand for what your team does.”
Building “a coalition of the willing” helps prove your own team’s success, says @dustycd. #contentstrategy
Click To Tweet
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:
What else to try: Share the audience-insight wealth
One of the benefits of an “always-on” digital publication, of course, is the ability to observe audience behavior over time. It’s an idea that Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi have pushed for years – the content you create isn’t the asset, the asset is the audience that content helps you build.
The content you create isn’t the asset. The asset is the audience content helps you build. @robert_rose
Click To Tweet
At iQ, Luke and his team fully bought into that notion, and they use it to feed insights into what the audience cares about to other teams.
Why this works
Without the built-in end date that accompanies many campaigns, the iQ team develops much deeper insight into what people care about. Luke shares the example of artificial intelligence, a pillar concept for the company. iQ created dozens of content pieces about AI over a year, enabling the team to report on the key attributes of what the audience consumed.
By promoting the content on social and engaging with followers, the team also gathers feedback and shares any questions people had with sales and other relevant teams.
Promoting content on social enables #content team to get feedback for sales & other teams. @LukeKintigh
Click To Tweet
One more tip: Collaborate at the planning stage
Editorial teams often sit within larger marketing organizations, yet operate with a mission that’s somewhat removed from traditional marketing efforts like demand generation and direct brand promotions. Still, coordinating with other marketing teams is essential to delivering value to the business.
Dusty sees his team’s mission as making people fall in love with Autodesk by showcasing big ideas. Other Autodesk marketing teams try to generate product demand. The goals are related, but the execution is different. They collaborate to align the right content with the specific goal.
“We brainstorm with partners in the verticals who are driving lines of business. They might tell us they’re doing a video on a cool robotics startup that’s using our product,” Dusty says. “We’ll do a story, too, but ours is about how neat the people are and how they’re an interesting example of where the industry is going. We up-level it.”
Why this works
Autodesk’s Redshift angle attracts visitors who might be interested in stories about trends in robotics in a way that more product-oriented content might not. That audience gives the demand-gen team the ability to retarget people, offering content that goes a step deeper. Dusty frames an example follow-up piece as, “Want to learn more about how they’re doing the neat thing they’re doing?” Audience generation, he says, replaces the top of the funnel and gives other teams opportunities to move the audience along its journey.
Challenge: Make the best use of the right technology
The array of technologies for companies is dizzying: Trello, Asana, WordPress, Adobe Experience Manager, Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, Box, Eloqua, Simple Reach, Kapost, Opal, Excel, Sprinklr, Slack, Dynamic Signal.
The list goes on – forming a stack that Luke compares to the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
“It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the tech that’s available,” Intel’s Deb Landau acknowledges. “We have a huge tech stack that most of us don’t use well. It’s like when you have a toolkit and you always use your favorite screwdriver and hammer. The rest is there in case you need it.”
With so many options available, getting a single team to stick to an agreed-on set of tools and to use it to the best effect isn’t easy. Simply communicating the requirements to the development team and understanding the impact of seemingly simple requests can be a struggle. One team understands the tech side, the other team understands the content side.
What to try: Create a shared road map and language
Luke finds that a one-pager he developed to show the kinds of visitors iQ attracts (from fly-bys through fanatics) serves as a useful guide to share with Intel’s internal tech team.
When Whitney struggled to help her dev team correct a related-content algorithm that seemed to return the same four Capital Ideas stories again and again, she created a spreadsheet to show the dev team the relationships among the stories and to clarify the taxonomy.
Why this works
Mapping the tools to their function within the audience development strategy gives Intel’s tech team insight into the business need behind iQ’s requirements. At the Capital Group, Whitney’s spreadsheet helped her bridge the understanding gap between the content need and the strain on page load times on the tech side.
“The ability and the need to communicate with the dev team is so important,” she says. “Understand where they’re coming from and create a shared language so you can meet objectives.”
That shared language has come in handy. Since its launch on Adobe Experience Manager two years ago, Capital Ideas moved over to WordPress – and back to AEM. But that’s a story for another post.
Challenge: Build publishing skills within a marketing team
If you think an enterprise content brand comes with a sizable team, you might be surprised how lean the teams really are. iQ, for example, runs with a publisher (Luke, who doubles as audience development and content distribution wizard), a managing editor (Deb), an executive editor, and one additional editor who helps with WordPress publishing. All four come from journalism and PR backgrounds, and they supplement their writing with a team of contractors and freelancers.
Whitney works with a team of six internal writers, also with journalism backgrounds, and experiments with agency resources for human interest stories. Will McKenna and Fred Macri, who shared the tale of how they built Capital Ideas at Content Marketing World 2017, round out the publication’s leadership.
Dusty’s team includes a managing editor for operations and measurement; a head of video, design and UX; and a person in charge of engagement, distribution, and promotion. Editorial is produced by a blend of contractors and freelancers.
While freelancers typically bring storytelling expertise and a journalistic approach, they can struggle with the tricky balance of audience and brand interests.
What to try: Create a roster of reliable contractors and stringers with journalism backgrounds
“It’s hard to find writers who get it,” Deb said. “The core values of journalism go against traditional marketing. Marketers only want to talk about the thing they want to sell or ourselves. But we know if we keep talking about ourselves people will leave quickly.”
We know if we keep talking about ourselves people will leave our site quickly, says @debword. Read more>>
Click To Tweet
At Redshift, Dusty and the team cultivated a set of writers who understood the message well enough that they can now pitch stories rather than just accept assignments. That takes time, though, so once you find your reliable stringers, hang onto them.
Cultivate writers who can pitch stories, not just accept assignments, says @dustycd.
Click To Tweet
Why this works
“We’ve learned to refer to freelancers as longtime contributors. The more they work with you, the more they understand your voice and tone,” Luke said. “It becomes more efficient to work with them, and they have more skin in the game when you hire them to do, say, four stories over the next two months.”
The reasons to look for a journalism background over a marketing background go beyond writing ability.
“Think about where they’ve come from: They’ve been trying to earn the front page of the paper. To do that, you’ve got to know the audience and make it so engaging that it earns that position,” Dusty says. You need a blend of marketing and journalism skills on a team. As he says, it’s “easier to find a journalist and turn them into a marketer than to find a marketer and turn them into a journalist.”
If nothing else, do this one thing
“Nobody starts one day and says I’ve decided content marketing is really important and we’re just going to do it. You have to sell it to people,” Whitney says.
#Contentmarketing is important & we’re going to do it said no one ever. You have to sell it. @whitaknee
Click To Tweet
That’s why her recommendation for something anybody can do to improve their content marketing challenges is this: “Communicating with people outside your department. Leaving your cube and going to talk to your developer or the sales team and get to know what they’re trying to do.
Here’s an excerpt from their keynote panel discussion:
Editor’s note: No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).
Hear from some of the best content brands at Content Marketing World Sept. 4-7 in Cleveland, Ohio. Register today using code BLOG100 to save $100.
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
The post How 3 Content Brands Tackle Their Toughest Internal Challenges appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
3 Key Tips On How to Make Your Website User-Friendly
Making your website user-friendly is extremely important to make sure your customers keep coming back.
When UsabilityTools published the results of a case study that analyzed and tested the websites of 8 universities, it became clear that the people preferred websites with clear menu labels and transparent information.
We have all come across a website or blog that simply does not work, or takes forever to find the right thing, and it is honestly a hassle. This either makes us, consumers, want to quit in frustration or swear we will never come back. The official website for the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia, for example, is not user-friendly at all. That’s one of the greatest reasons for bad reviews this impressive destination gets from tourists.
Making sure your website is user-friendly is not as easy as it sounds; the key is to put yourself in the consumer’s shoes.
A successful user friendly website includes a combination of these elements:
Navigation
Making your website easy to navigate is one of the most important factors that we have to take into account. Knowing where to go to find the exact product that you are looking for is what all consumers love.
- Making a menu or easy to follow links is important. All crucial information should be easily-accessible through the main menu. Consequence of Sound, an influential music blog, is a really user-friendly website because of the effective menu.
- Adding drop down menus will make it even easier for customers to go directly to what they want.
- Don’t make the menu too long. Pixiwoo blog, for example, has a huge Labels menu that takes a lot of space without being actually useful. Since there is a search bar on the site, there is no need for lists of this type.
- Make sure the links and menus work. Broken links cause frustration and ultimately hurt your website.
- If you carry multiple products in different categories, break them into smaller categories so they can be easier to find.
- Make a separate section for promotions. Customers are always looking for the best promotions and setting up a promotion category will be greatly appreciated. Asos, a popular online shopping destination, gets huge attention through promotions and sales. Since most of its customers are looking for these deals, the website clearly provides them in a separate category.
- Your website needs to be accessible across all platforms; cellphones, tablets, computers and even gaming systems.
- Do your best to make the website look similar across all platforms, so the customers will know where to find the product they are looking for.
- A search bar is a must have. These help customers navigate your website faster than clicking through links.
- Make product pictures linked to their description. This is vital, since some consumers may not know the exact name of a product, but if they can click on the picture, the website should redirect them to the specific item.
Design
There are many schools of thought when it comes to the design of a website. Some claim that a simpler color scheme is best to present your products while others say the more dynamic the more attention it will receive.
- A simple color scheme is favorable when you want to promote your best item, since it will be your focal point. Apple, for example, is known for its simplistic design that makes your eyes focused on a specific section of the website.
- A more dynamic design is used to promote more than one item. Use this when you want to show off your best items all at once. Asos, which was already mentioned above, is a dynamic website that features several categories and items.
- An easy-to-follow theme should accompany your company’s theme colors. A simple trick that gives the entire website a sense of unity.
- Long paragraphs are not always the best, unless they are needed.
- Adding pictures between the paragraphs or explanations is helpful. This helps the visual learners better understand. The Huffington Post, for example, is a very comprehensive site that proves how important visual content is.
- If you have a special offer or promotion going on, make it your focus point on your homepage. This will help consumers ensure they do not miss out on the great promotion.
- Clumped information will never be good. Try to spread out the information as evenly as possible.
- Color choice is just as important as the way you show your content.
- Try to avoid eye straining colors like neon green or yellow unless you really need to use them.
- Make sure the colors compliment or contrast perfectly like black and white.
- Try the F-Layout that serves the most important information where the eyes of your viewers usually focus. This design was captured using an eye tracking camera that shows that consumers favor an F design. It has been proven to be effective, and most successful websites do have this design in fact.
(Image source)
- Make all the pages equally as attractive. Ensuring that all the pages from the homepage to the products page are visually attractive will show unison of a great design.
- Place contact, about, FAQ’s and other similar links where they are usually found – at the bottom of the page. This is important, since every page online has these links at the bottom.
Audience
Targeting your content to consumers is a great way to make your website more appealing. To do this, first you will have to do some research, like who is buying your product and is there a time when it sells more? Do you want your product to target other age groups?
- Finding out what your consumers love will help you improve the way you showcase your products.
- Target your products. Not all products are meant for everyone; some are age specific, while others are experience specific. Either way make sure your audience is targeted. Levi’s for example, is targeted towards young, fashionable people who want classy, but modern jeans. Although the brand has a broader audience, this is the group its website promotes on the main page.
- Hot items that sell should be the focus point in times when they previously sold the most last year or last month.
- If your plan is working, do not “fix” it. This is a huge mistake many companies do which is trying to better the website when nothing is wrong with it. Consumers like what they know and know what they like. If you change the format of your website, it may be harder for regulars or new customers to find what they are looking for.
- If you do change your theme, keep track of your traffic and sales with this new design and tweak it weekly until you get the best results.
- Your audience will define your theme and color scheme. A younger audience would be attracted to a colorful theme, while an older generation prefers simpler themes.
Overview: How to achieve a whole new level of website usability
Making sure your website is user-friendly is vital to any successful business. It is not the easiest task in the world, but you can make it as easy as it gets if you follow the helpful tips listed above.
For starters, we have to ensure that navigation of your website is easy. The links and menus must be easy to find and follow. Remember: a dead link means frustration. It’s also important to test your website personally, since you will see small details that you may have missed.
Making sure that people can access it across all platforms is also vital since, today people look at websites on a daily basis on portable devices. The website should be as similar as possible to the computer version, since most of the customers look up items primarily on a computer, and then tend to do further research on their smartphones or tablets. Nothing is more frustrating than knowing for a fact that you saw some items at a certain category on your computer, but they do not show up on your tablet.
The next big item in our list is an attractive web design. This really depends on the products your company sells. For companies that have a main product that is the focal point, it is best to have a simpler theme showcasing the product. However, if your company has many items, then a dynamic design that promotes all your items is best.
Color schemes go hand in hand with the design of your website. The easier the words can be seen on your background the better, since the last thing customers want is having a hard time reading the description. One of the most productive web-design strategies is to use a proven pattern called the F-design, which is easier to read and more attractive.
Lastly, we have to make sure that your company is targeting its audience. This is crucially important, since it will be easier to promote your product to potential customers if you know exactly who your audience is. Younger people are into these modern designs with lots of colors and options, whereas an older crowd prefers an easy to use website with fewer distractions.
It is also important to note that if your current website design works, then there is no reason to change it. Unnecessary changes cause hundreds of consumers to become angry, since they were used to this old format that was updated to hopefully improve traffic to the website. Of course, these are just a few examples of ways to make your website more user-friendly with some information from generalassemb.ly and thenextweb. These two great websites have more information and tips on how to improve the user experience with your website.
The last thing to mention is to give your website a try for yourself. Remember that everyone is a consumer at some point in their life; just try to recall the last time you bought something online. What did you like or dislike? Was there anything you wish you could change? Your personal experiences will help you create a user-friendly website from both the vendor’s and consumer’s point of view.
Guest Author: Stephanie Norman is a professional writer with 4 years of experience from Sydney. Also, she works as web designer and content marketing specialist in Australian Writings, a company that offers assignment help for students. You can follow her at Facebook and Google+.
The post 3 Key Tips On How to Make Your Website User-Friendly appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.
Read Full Article: http://bathseoexpert.tumblr.com/post/173300256011