Online Marketing Help

Elevate Your Brand Presence with Digital Harvest Marketing's Web Mastery

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 13:00:02 GMT

In today's digital age, having an online presence isn't merely an option—it's a pivotal driver of success. At Digital Harvest Marketing, we pride ourselves on creating not just websites but immersive digital journeys that fortify brand identity and catalyze growth. Here's why businesses, big or small, trust us with their digital aspirations:

1. Aesthetic Excellence:

Win Customers with Striking Design

A compelling design isn't just about aesthetics—it's about forging a connection with visitors. We craft sites that resonate with your brand's essence and leave lasting impressions.

2. Unwavering Expertise:

Your Vision, Our Craft

From start-ups to established enterprises, our bespoke solutions ensure every website mirrors the unique heartbeat of the business it represents.

3. Truly Responsive Design:

Deliver Consistent Experiences Across Devices

The screen size shouldn't dictate experience quality. We design sites ensuring impeccable performance, be it on desktop, tablet, or mobile.

4. eCommerce Excellence:

Unlock the Potential of Online Sales

With capabilities to showcase up to 2,500 products, our eCommerce platforms are designed to elevate your sales and simplify shopping for your customers.

5. Seamless Site Management:

Editing on the Go

Businesses evolve, and so should their websites. Make real-time changes from your mobile device, reflecting your brand's dynamism.

6. Stand Out in the Crowd:

Enhanced SEO for Maximum Visibility

Being online is just half the battle won; visibility is key. Our SEO strategies ensure you're not just online, but on top.

7. Hosting Redefined:

Experience Unrivaled Reliability with Amazon AWS

We promise consistent online presence with a 99.99% monthly uptime, thanks to our partnership with Amazon AWS.

8. Transformative Widgets:

Drive Engagement and Growth
Our widgets do more than just adorn your site—they catalyze interactions, fostering more calls, appointments, and conversions.

9. A Digital Experience like No Other:

Customized Interactions for Every Visitor

Boost engagement through personalized website features—from tailored ads to unique experiences based on visitor dynamics.

Conclusion:

Every brand has a story. Let us help you tell yours. With Digital Harvest Marketing, your digital presence will be more than just a website—it'll be a beacon of your brand's brilliance.

Ready to Redefine Your Digital Narrative? Connect with Us!

Share insights about your business, and we'll craft a strategy tailored for you. Embark on a transformative digital journey with us today. [ Engage with Digital Harvest Marketing Now! ]

Hitting Home: Tailoring Websites for the Home Services Industry

Mon, 11 Sep 2023 13:30:00 GMT

The home services industry, whether it's landscaping, plumbing, or interior designing, thrives largely on trust and reliability. And in today's digital age, a substantial chunk of that trust is established through an effective online presence. Let's delve into the pivotal elements that make a home services website not just informative but also a powerful tool for conversion.

1. Designed for Conversion

Every visitor on your website is a potential lead. By incorporating strong calls to action (CTAs), intuitive navigation, and clear service descriptions, you can transform casual website traffic into valuable business leads.

2. Showcase Your Craft

A gallery or portfolio of past projects serves as a testament to your expertise. High-quality images or videos of completed jobs, be it a newly designed room or a repaired HVAC system, provide tangible evidence of your prowess.

3. The Power of Reviews

In the home services industry, word of mouth is digitalized through online reviews. A positive testimonial can sway potential clients who are on the fence about choosing your services. Highlighting these reviews prominently can significantly boost credibility.

4. Easy Review Collection Process

We understand the importance of gathering these golden words of praise. That's why we offer a simplified review collection process, making it convenient for your satisfied customers to share their positive experiences, and equally seamless for you to display them.

5. Mobile Optimization is Key

Many users will access your site from mobile devices, especially when facing home emergencies. Ensuring your website is mobile-optimized guarantees that potential clients have a seamless experience, irrespective of the device they use.

6. Transparent Pricing & Services

A clear outline of services offered, along with transparent pricing (if applicable), sets the right expectations. It also filters out individuals looking for services you might not offer, ensuring you attract only the most relevant leads.

7. Contact & Location Details

Incorporating easily accessible contact information, perhaps even with a click-to-call feature, expedites the conversion process. Additionally, detailed location information, possibly with maps integration, instills further trust in local visitors.

8. Content that Educates

Offering blogs or articles that provide tips, DIY advice, or insights into home services establishes your brand as an industry expert. Educative content not only drives traffic but also nurtures trust among readers.

9. Intuitive Service Request Forms

Make the lead generation process a breeze with user-friendly service request forms. These should be simple yet detailed enough to gather essential information from potential clients.

10. Social Proof & Certifications

Display any certifications, awards, or affiliations you might have prominently. In an industry that thrives on trust, these can play a pivotal role in convincing visitors of your credibility and expertise.

Conclusion

In the home services sector, your website is often the first touchpoint for potential clients. It needs to echo the quality, trustworthiness, and professionalism that you bring to your work. With the right elements in place, your website can become your strongest ally in converting traffic into leads, and leads into loyal clients. Ready to nail that first impression? Let's craft a digital space that truly feels like home to your visitors. ��️

Transform your online presence into a lead-generating powerhouse. Get in touch with us today and pave the way for a digital journey that resonates with every homeowner's need. [ Start Your Home Services Web Makeover Now! ]

Building for Taste: Web Solutions for the Food & Beverage Industry

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 13:00:00 GMT

The modern culinary world isn't just about delightful dishes and exquisite drinks; it's also about offering a digital experience that matches. With the rise of online ordering, reservations, and digital payments, a strong online presence for the food & beverage industry has become more critical than ever. Let's dive deep into the essential features and benefits of a website tailored for the food & beverage sector.

1. Mouthwatering Design

First impressions count. A clean, appetizing design can convey the atmosphere of your restaurant, cafe, or bar. High-quality images of dishes, drinks, and your establishment can instantly attract and entice visitors.

2. Online Ordering Made Easy

Today's consumers cherish convenience. Integrating an easy-to-use online ordering system allows your customers to enjoy your culinary offerings from the comfort of their homes. This not only broadens your reach but can significantly boost revenue.

3. Safe & Secure Credit Card Processing

In a world increasingly moving towards cashless transactions, offering diverse credit card processing options is crucial. Ensure your website integrates with reliable payment gateways, prioritizing the safety of your customer's data.

4. Mobile Optimization

With many customers browsing and ordering from their smartphones, a mobile-optimized site is non-negotiable. Whether it's checking out the menu, making a reservation, or placing an order, the experience should be seamless across all devices.

5. Efficient Menu Management

Menus evolve. Maybe you have a new seasonal dish or a special cocktail for the weekend. Your website should allow for easy menu updates, reflecting the latest your kitchen has to offer.

6. Loyalty Programs & Promotions

Reward your loyal customers and attract new ones by integrating loyalty programs and showcasing promotions directly on your website. Special deals, loyalty points, or exclusive member menus can be easily managed and promoted.

7. Integrated Reservation System

Allow your customers to book their favorite table with just a few clicks. An efficient reservation system not only provides convenience to your customers but aids in managing restaurant operations.

8. Customer Reviews & Testimonials

Word of mouth, especially in the food & beverage industry, is gold. Incorporate a section for customer reviews and testimonials. Positive feedback serves as a powerful recommendation for potential patrons.

9. Newsletter Sign-ups & Event Announcements

Keep your customer base informed. Whether it's a new dish launch, a live music night, or a wine tasting event, an integrated newsletter sign-up can help spread the word and drive footfall.

10. Interactive Features

Consider adding features like a virtual tour of your establishment, 'meet the chef' videos, or interactive wine pairing suggestions. Such features enhance user engagement and can provide a unique selling point.

Conclusion

The food & beverage industry is a blend of taste, experience, and connection. A well-crafted website, tailored for the sector, encapsulates these elements, offering patrons a digital taste of what they can expect in person. In an era where online presence directly impacts offline footfall, investing in a robust, feature-rich website is not just desirable but essential for any establishment in the food & beverage sector. Cheers to combining taste with tech! ��️.

Elevate Your Culinary Experience Online

Don't let your delicious dishes and refreshing beverages go unnoticed in the digital realm. Let us help you create an online presence as captivating as your culinary creations. Take the leap now, and ensure your brand resonates with every click, every order, and every reservation. Contact us today to transform your food & beverage website into a digital masterpiece! ��

Get Started with Your Culinary Web Journey Here!

Why Companies Choose Digital Harvest Marketing for Their Web Development Needs

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 13:30:00 GMT

The digital realm is the frontline for any business's first impression. While there are numerous companies offering web development services, it's essential to partner with one that understands your business's unique needs and can translate that into a powerful online presence. Here's why businesses consistently choose Digital Harvest Marketing for their web development projects.

1. Bespoke Designs Tailored to Your Brand

At Digital Harvest Marketing, we believe in the power of individuality. We don’t employ cookie-cutter templates; instead, we delve deep into your brand's ethos, ensuring every design choice mirrors your company’s identity and goals.

2. Experience & Expertise

Our team comprises seasoned professionals with years of experience across various industry verticals. This expertise allows us to cater to the diverse needs of our clientele, be it e-commerce, B2B, non-profit, or any other niche.

3. Future-Proofing Your Business

Digital landscapes evolve rapidly. We're committed to ensuring that your website is not just relevant today but remains so for years to come. Our forward-thinking approach incorporates the latest trends and technologies, ensuring longevity and adaptability.

4. Holistic Digital Solutions

We’re not just about building beautiful websites. We offer a suite of digital services ranging from SEO optimization to content marketing, ensuring that once your website is live, it's visible, engaging, and converting visitors into loyal customers.

5. Transparent Communication

We pride ourselves on open, transparent communication. Our clients are kept in the loop at every stage of development. Regular check-ins and updates mean there are no surprises, only delight at the finished product.

6. Cost-Effective Solutions

Quality doesn’t always have to break the bank. Digital Harvest Marketing provides premium services at competitive rates. Our modular approach allows businesses of all sizes to avail top-notch web development without straining their budgets.

7. Post-Launch Support

Our relationship doesn’t end once your website goes live. We provide robust post-launch support, ensuring any tweaks, updates, or issues are dealt with promptly. We're in it for the long haul with our clients.

8. Trust and Testimonials

Our reputation precedes us. Just take a look at the glowing testimonials from our satisfied clients. These are real stories from businesses that have experienced transformative results through our services.

9. Flexibility and Adaptability

We understand that every business's needs are fluid and can change over time. Our flexible approach ensures that we can pivot and adapt as your business grows and evolves, making sure your digital presence is always aligned with your objectives.

10. Secure and Reliable

In an age of increased cyber threats, we prioritize the security of your website. Our development process integrates best security practices, ensuring that your data, and your customer's data, remains protected.

Conclusion

Choosing a web development partner is a pivotal decision for any business. With Digital Harvest Marketing, you're not just getting a service provider; you're gaining a partner dedicated to catapulting your digital presence to the forefront of your industry. So, when it's time to reap the benefits of an impeccable online presence, trust in the expertise of Digital Harvest Marketing.

Transform Your Restaurant's Online Reputation with ReviewReplyGPT

Thu, 17 Aug 2023 14:00:02 GMT

In the digital age, online reviews can make or break a restaurant's reputation. For restaurant owners and operators, managing Google reviews might feel like a full-time job. Crafting personalized responses to every review, staying on top of new ones, and tactfully addressing any negative feedback can be overwhelming and highly time-consuming. What if there was a solution that could handle all this while you focus on what you do best - creating unforgettable dining experiences? Enter ReviewReplyGPT.

Revolutionizing Google Reviews Management

ReviewReplyGPT is a groundbreaking AI-powered platform designed to automate the process of managing your Google reviews. Here's what it offers:

Automated Review Responses

The first, and perhaps the most significant, feature of ReviewReplyGPT is its ability to generate professional, tailored responses to all your reviews. No more spending countless hours figuring out how to respond to each review. Instead, you can let the AI do the heavy lifting and free up your time to focus on other aspects of your restaurant business.

Ultimate Control

With ReviewReplyGPT, you retain complete control over your responses. You decide whether to post the proposed response, have it rewritten, or tweak it yourself. It's your brand, and you should be the one to decide how you communicate with your customers.

Addressing Negative Reviews

Negative reviews can have a drastic impact on your restaurant's reputation. ReviewReplyGPT understands this. It generates thoughtful, respectful responses to negative reviews, focusing on addressing concerns, offering solutions, and demonstrating your commitment to customer satisfaction.

User-Friendly Interface

You don't need any technical knowledge to use ReviewReplyGPT. It's designed to be user-friendly and intuitive. Your job is simply to review, edit, and approve the AI-generated responses.

Boost SEO

Another incredible benefit of using ReviewReplyGPT is its ability to help boost your SEO. The platform ensures that you maintain a high response rate to your reviews, which can improve your online visibility, drive more traffic to your restaurant, and ultimately lead to more customers walking through your doors.

For restaurants, every review counts. The way you handle these reviews can have a significant impact on your brand's image. By using ReviewReplyGPT , you can effectively and efficiently manage your reviews, show your customers that you care, and take your customer engagement to the next level. Visit ReviewReplyGPT and start revolutionizing your restaurant's review management today.

Three FREE Digital Marketing Tools You Should Be Using

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 13:00:01 GMT

Small businesses are constantly looking for ways to make the most of their budget. Free digital marketing tools are a convenient way to do just that. With these tools, you can enjoy the benefits of digital marketing while keeping costs low.

If your marketing budget is limited or you just want to see if free marketing tools can help you achieve your business’ goals, keep the following platforms in mind.

Google Analytics

Every single small business should use Google Analytics, as this tool is built right into the most popular search engine. This free tool tracks your website activity as well as your engagement. It also helps you track your SEO and customer demographics.

Use Google Analytics to see what sources bring the most people to your website. Then, focus your efforts on those sources or work to improve the others. See how long people spend on your website on average. You can even use Google Analytics to view real-time information about who is currently on your website.

Depending on your goals, some useful metrics you can track on Google Analytics include conversions, bounce rates, and session duration. You can use the data from these metrics to improve your website’s user experience.

Special Mention: Google Business Profile

While it is not technically a tool, your Google Business Profile is free, and it should be an essential part of your marketing strategy. Claiming and updating your Google Business Profile will help your SEO efforts. It delivers even better results if you take full advantage of its features, such as the ability to make posts, add photos and videos, create Q&As, and encourage and respond to reviews.

Special Mention: Google Alerts

Google Alerts is yet another tool from Google. This is a fairly straightforward tool that sends you an email alert whenever your company is mentioned online. If you prefer, you can also get alerts about competitors.

Special Mention: Google Trends

Yet another Google tool you should use is Google Trends. This free tool lets you see what topics are currently trending, letting you plan relevant content that is likely to gain interest and bring people to your website.

Canva

Digital marketing is highly visual. You will need eye-catching graphics for social media posts, pay-per-click ads, your emails, and more. But most small businesses don’t have the budget for a graphic designer. Canva is a great tool in this case, offering both a free and paid version.

The free version of Canva should be more than enough for most small businesses. You will be able to access more than 100 design types, thousands of stock photos, and more than 250,000 templates.

In addition to the templates and stock photos, you can also take advantage of optimized sizes when using Canva. You will find yourself using Canva to make square images optimized for Instagram and Facebook. You can make rectangular ones optimized for Twitter and tall pictures optimized for Pinterest.

In addition to social media content and email newsletters, you can also use Canva to create presentations, graphs, proposals, and other business documents. Canva also supports collaboration, so more than one person can work on an image at a time.

Mailchimp

MailChimp is one of the most popular email marketing tools, and it also offers a free version. Use MailChimp to manage as many as 2,000 subscribers. This is more than enough for most small businesses, and if you need more, you can opt for one of the more affordable plans.

Even with the free version, Mailchimp allows for basic audience segmentation. You can also create tags and send out surveys. You will also get various other tools built into MailChimp, such as one-step automations and a subject line helper.

In addition to mail, MailChimp has free multichannel marketing for social media platforms, a content studio, an AI creative assistant, and a marketing calendar. It also integrates with more than 250 other apps, which is useful if you’re starting to build your business’ tech stack.

Conclusion

Thanks to free tools, small businesses don’t have to break the bank to get the features they need for digital marketing. Start with Google Analytics and take advantage of Google’s other free offerings. Then, consider using Canva to create images and MailChimp for email marketing and coordinating your social media platforms.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

How To Grow Your Instagram Following For Your Small Business

Mon, 24 Jul 2023 13:30:00 GMT

Social media plays a significant role in marketing your small business. You can use it to increase your brand awareness, announce upcoming events, run promotions, and more. But to maximize the potential of Instagram and other social media platforms, you need to have a strong following. Use the following tips to grow your Instagram following.

Stick to Organic Methods

When it comes to growing your Instagram following, doing so organically will always be the best approach. You don’t necessarily want to buy followers, as this will just give you short-term results. You are also unlikely to see the engagement you want from those followers. Putting in the effort to grow your followers organically will lead to long-lasting results and make it easier to achieve your marketing goals.

Optimize Your Profile

The very first thing to do is optimize your Instagram profile. Start with your username. It needs to be relevant and search-friendly. If possible, use the same handle across social media profiles and choose a variation of your brand name.

Create an Instagram bio that includes your tagline, branded hashtag, or slogan. Choose an interesting and relevant profile picture that includes your brand name, such as your logo or one of your most popular products. Make sure you choose a relevant profile photo as well. Decide what link to put in your bio, such as a dedicated landing page or a link to a promotion.

Set – And Follow – a Content Calendar

The key to getting and maintaining followers on Instagram is having a consistent content calendar. Your followers want to see that you post interesting content regularly. You can decide how frequently you want to post, but once you decide on a schedule, be sure to stick to it. That being said, you can allow for some minor variation in your posting schedule, as necessary.

Post Relevant, Interesting Content

The type of content you post on Instagram is even more important than how often you post. Make sure that it is relevant to your followers and something they want to see. Look at competitors or poll your audience to see whether they prefer carousels, reels, or a combination of the two. Then, figure out if they prefer behind-the-scenes content, detailed looks at your products, industry news, or something else.

Choose Your Post Times Carefully

Once you have your content calendar, see what time your audience is most likely to be online. Then, post your content at this time. There are even ways to schedule Instagram posts, so you aren’t limited to working hours and don’t have to worry about accidentally forgetting to make a post.

Engage Your Audience

Building a following on Instagram is about building a community in addition to expanding your reach. To do so, be sure to engage your audience. This engagement will also help you gain more followers as it encourages your current ones to share your posts.

What does engaging your audience look like? To start, respond to comments on your posts. Then, find relevant posts within your target audience and comment on them or even share them.

One of the most popular and effective strategies is to create a hashtag your followers can use. This will help you encourage user-generated content and build a sense of community.

Consider Micro or Local Influencers

Another popular strategy is to work with influencers to engage your audience. You can start by partnering with local influencers. They may have a smaller following, but they should still be helpful as long as their followers are in your target audience and the influencer’s content is relevant to your brand.

Share Your Instagram

People can’t follow you on Instagram if they don’t know that your account exists. So, make it a point to share your Instagram anywhere that is relevant to your business. Include a link to it on your website. You may even want to include an Instagram feed on your website.

Don’t forget to share your Instagram content on other social media platforms as well. You can also include a link to your Instagram page at the bottom of your emails.

Conclusion

With the above tips in mind, you will be on your way to growing your business’s Instagram following. Once you have a strong following, maintain it by engaging your audience and posting content regularly.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

4 Pitfalls to Avoid When Using TikTok for Marketing Your Small Business

Wed, 19 Jul 2023 13:00:01 GMT

Marketing is not what it used to be. Today, you have to understand several different social media platforms and the tools they offer to effectively advertise your business. This can be a steep learning curve for many people.

TikTok is one platform that many people use to market their businesses, products, and services. You do have to understand some things about this social media platform to effectively use it for your marketing. You will need to avoid these four potential pitfalls to get the most out of your TikTok marketing plan. Consider the following common mistakes that you should avoid.

1. Making Boring Videos

TikTok is all about entertainment and you only have about 15 to 60 seconds to make a point with your audience. They are going to want to participate on the platform, not just watch the videos. This means that you should take the time to plan out your videos.

Look at popular videos in your industry. What makes these work? Why do so many people enjoy them? Do they encourage followers to participate as well? Are they funny? What makes the videos different? Use your creative skills and try to tap into your potential audience.

You need to remember once you start putting out a boring video or two, you won’t get the following and show up on people’s For You Page. This will make it harder for you to effectively market with your TikTok account in the future.

2. Not Using Music In Your Videos

TikTok makes it extremely easy to use music with your videos. This is because it started out as a music app. If you are putting videos out there but aren’t adding music, you aren’t using the platform to your advantage. Young people on the platform expect to hear music in the videos they watch. Music also makes videos more entertaining to watch.

It is easy to find trending songs or songs that are popular on TikTok. This will not only make your video more interesting, but it will also help you gain a following on TikTok. You can choose music from trending or viral videos or just choose pre-cleared music from TikTok’s Creative Center.

3. Being Too Sales-Driven On The Platform

Everyone gets a bad feeling when they think someone is just trying to sell them something. This applies to most users on social media platforms but especially to TikTok users. Don’t use pushy sales tactics and the typical calls-to-action. This will annoy TikTok followers and make it hard for you to get more followers

Instead, opt for more subtle ways of getting your products sold and try to avoid being sales-driven. Get your audience engaged with your brand instead. Once they’re familiar with your brand, potential customers may be more open to trying your products and services.

You can also use your products to create an entertaining and fun video and highlight unique ways these products can be used. Doing so will keep your audience engaged and they will want to try the product as well.

Once your TikTok audience is highly engaged, you can try the platform’s live shopping feature. Through this feature, you can showcase your products to an audience who’s watching in real-time through livestreaming. This way, you can interact with customers and answer their questions during the shopping process.

4. Not Utilizing All the Tools

TikTok is a platform that was developed for the creation of entertaining videos. There are tons of tools for editing the videos and making them more entertaining. From editing your video to adding special effects, there are dozens of ways you can enhance your video to make it more entertaining and convey your message better.

Look for trending special effects and start there if you are at a loss for ideas. There are effects like face filters and speeding the video up. Any of the effects can add depth to your video and increase your following, thus helping to grow your business.

Conclusion

One of the best tips for effectively using TikTok for marketing your business is to get started and spend some time researching different tactics and tips for marketing your videos. Avoid the above mistakes and you will get started on the right foot.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

How to Write an Email That Converts – From the Subject Line to the CTA

Thu, 13 Apr 2023 14:00:46 GMT

Email marketing is a crucial part of running any business today. For an effective email marketing campaign, you need to be able to write an email that achieves a good conversion rate. However, this process doesn’t have to be intimidating. We’ve gathered the most important tips to help you craft that perfect email.

Choose an Attention-Grabbing Subject Line

Start your emails off on the right foot with a great subject line. You need the subject line to grab recipients’ attention, as the subject determines whether people even read the email. Even the best-written email won’t convert if no one reads it.

To create an engaging subject line, you should make sure that the subject line:

● Implies a benefit to reading the email

● Offers a deal or a discount

● Is timely

● Is personalized

Take Advantage of Preview Text

In addition to the subject line, the other preview text is a crucial factor that determines whether a recipient opens your email. This is the little bit of text that is displayed in the recipient’s inbox and gives a hint of the email’s content. Depending on the device and email client, the preview text will be 35 to 140 characters.

You can take one of two approaches with the preview text. Use it to supplement your subject line. Or use it to highlight something else in the content to further encourage people to open the email.

Make Sure the Subject and Preview Text Are Relevant to the Body

While you want your email’s subject line and preview text to draw attention, you don’t want to do so in a way that misleads. So, always ensure that the text in these areas is relevant to the rest of your email.

The body of the email should flow smoothly from the subject and preview text. Otherwise, recipients will just close your email. Even worse, having a misleading or irrelevant subject line can hurt your reputation and cause people to unsubscribe.

Use Short Paragraphs

When it comes to formatting the content within your email, follow the same best practices you would for a blog post or your website. Keep your sentences short and sweet, and stick to paragraphs that are just a few lines long. Break up the text with paragraph breaks and bullet points. The goal is to make the email easy to read or even skim.

Keep It Conversational

The overall tone of your marketing emails should be conversational. You want the recipient to feel as if you are a friend talking to them, so use second-person pronouns. This will help you build relationships with your clients, boosting engagement and pushing them along the sales funnel.

Don’t Overuse All Caps and Exclamation Marks

Part of keeping the tone in your email conversational is avoiding “shouting.” All caps seem like shouting online, so while you can occasionally put a single word or two in all caps for emphasis, don’t overuse it. The same is true of going overboard with exclamation points.

Choose Words to Stir Emotions

As you write marketing email copy, consider the language you want to use. Overall, you should try to stir the readers’ emotions. Including sensory words helps readers build an emotional connection with what you’re saying. Analogies can also be incredibly useful when it comes to evoking emotions.

Use Psychology to Your Advantage

With any type of marketing, including email marketing, you want to take advantage of psychology to encourage conversions and action.

Fear of Missing Out

One of the most useful elements of psychology to include is the fear of missing out. This is why many marketing emails include scarcity or urgency and limited-time offers are so effective.

Social Proof

Social proof is a phenomenon where people copy others’ actions when unsure of how to behave in a situation. One way to use social proof in your emails is to highlight customer testimonials or awards your business has received. You can also include press mentions or even customer usage statistics.

This information gives email recipients more reasons to trust your brand. As a result, your emails get a much higher chance of conversion.

Include Photos of People

When choosing images for your email, include at least some with faces in them. These will elicit more of an emotional response and connect to the recipient.

Segment and Personalize

Segmentation and personalization go together, as you need to segment your contact list so you can better personalize the emails. This will ensure that you only send emails to people who will find them useful. You won’t overload your subscribers with irrelevant emails, as that could lead to them unsubscribing.

Consider using email marketing software that lets you automatically insert the recipient’s name or recent purchase into the email. At the very least, segment your audience based on categories such as where they are in the sales funnel, recent purchases, and demographics.

Include a CTA

Every single email you send should have a goal, and you will use a call to action or CTA to work toward that goal. Not including a CTA is a missed opportunity.

The tricky part is choosing a call to action that makes sense for your email. You don’t want to push for a sale in every single email. Yes, some emails will have a CTA encouraging a purchase with a coupon code. But others should encourage something like reading a relevant article on your website or sharing feedback.

Do A/B Testing

A/B testing is a great tool for perfecting your email marketing copy. Use it to see what subject line or CTA performs best. You can also use A/B testing to compare formatting, images, and copy used in your email. You should also look at other analytics, such as clickthrough rate, open rate, and bounce rate.

The Bottom Line

Writing an email that converts starts with an attention-grabbing subject line and interesting preview text. From there, keep the tone conversational and format the content so that it is readable. Include a clear CTA at the end that aligns with your overall goals.

Lastly, don’t forget to review metrics for your email marketing and consider A/B testing to fully optimize your email.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

Why Link Building is Still Essential for SEO in 2023

steeldaddeh3@gmail.com (Chet Mitchell) — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 14:00:01 GMT

What’s going to change for SEO in 2023? That’s a question that many marketers have and rightly so. Just before the new year rolled in, Google released a significant update for its search algorithm and the effects of that update are only just becoming apparent. That’s also led many to question whether this update is going to have any impact on link building initiatives and whether that will continue to remain relevant going forward.

Many trends have come and gone but link building has remained a consistent SEO best practice. It remains an exceptional way to increase the visibility of your content by indicating to Google that your content is relevant and provides value to readers. These signals are viewed favorably by Google which results in elevated rankings.

With that being said, there is a difference in how link building should be utilized as a tool in 2023 compared to how it was used in the past. Google has also changed the way it views links. It’s important for embarking on link building initiatives the right way so that the full potential may be realized.

What is link building?

As the name suggests, link building is an initiative that you undertake to "build" links from one or more websites to your own. Links are vital for users to navigate and discover new sources for the information that they're looking for. For example, if their search for a query lands them on a website that provides surface-level information and that website links to yours as a more in-depth resource, users will likely view your website as a source of a credible source of information.

Much like how users navigate from one website to another when they're surfing the internet, the search engine's bots also crawl web pages to index them for ranking on Google search results. These bots decide where each webpage will be ranked in response to a search on Google. They make these decisions based on a wide variety of signals. Google never discloses exactly what signals its bots are looking for, but it often provides some insight into the process.

Link building is known to be one of those signals. If a website has a lot of inbound links from high-authority websites in its niche, Google's bots and the algorithm will view it as a positive signal and rank those web pages higher up in the results.

Link building is still essential in 2023

Marketers revamping the SEO approach for their projects in 2023 must keep link building in mind as it’s still essential and can contribute to significantly improving the rankings of the websites that they’re managing. Google has indeed changed the way it views inbound links over the years. It’s no longer a matter of simply having as many websites link to yours as possible. That’s one of the reasons why some feel that link building is no longer important but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Google’s algorithm has gone from basing its decisions on the quantity of links to the quality of links. For example, it’s entirely possible for one link from a highly relevant website to result in improved rankings and for 10 links from irrelevant websites to not move the needle in your favor at all. Therefore, your link building strategies in 2023 shouldn’t be about casting a wide net and catching as many inbound links as you can manage. Instead, the focus should be on receiving links from high quality websites in your niche.

The search engine has become very adept at disregarding junk links. In the past, a higher concentration of junk links could end up tanking a website’s rankings. That required webmasters to keep an eye on bad links and manually disavow them so as to prevent a negative impact. Junk sites linking to your content don’t seem to have much impact anymore as Google’s algorithm has become pretty good at figuring out unsolicited links. It goes without saying that a low quality website that gets plenty of links from similar junk sites is not going to go anywhere in search rankings.

How to improve your link building efforts in 2023

If you’ve looked into link building over the years, you already know about the most common methods that are suggested to go about it. Guest posting is one of them. The idea is that you offer to post some relevant content for a website in your niche in exchange for a link to your website. Your mileage may vary with this approach as it often requires approaching a very large number of website owners to only get one or two links.

Infographics and other visual content have also proven to be useful. The idea behind this strategy is to create some visual medium to provide information relevant to other websites in your industry. If they share that information with their audience, chances are that they'll provide a link to the source, thereby helping you gain some valuable inbound links.

However, if you're looking for a fresh approach to link building in 2023, look at HARO (Help A Reporter Out). It's a very useful tool to provide quality content and gain links from some of the best websites in the business. Major publishers from across the globe often require assistance with the stories that they're writing. It could be about a specific topic, industry, event, etc. Sign up for HARO and configure alerts for requests for information in your niche. Reply to those requests with your expertise and if accepted, you'll receive a link in exchange.

HARO thus provides a very natural and scalable way of building links from high quality websites, and it should most definitely be a part of your strategy in 2023.

Link building isn’t the be-all and end-all of SEO

It’s pertinent to keep in mind that link building is just one part of SEO, albeit an important one, it’s not the only thing that matters. A comprehensive SEO strategy includes link building but doesn’t rely on it entirely. Ultimately, content is king, and if the content isn’t relevant or doesn’t address the search intent, it doesn’t matter how many inbound links the website has, Google isn’t going to rank it high.

Marketers shouldn’t focus entirely on building as many links as possible. They should also ensure that the content is updated and new content is posted with reasonable frequency. All of the other SEO best practices should be followed. It’s only then that the link building efforts can bear fruit.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

What is Mastodon and Will Brands Need to Ditch Twitter for It?

Sat, 01 Apr 2023 13:30:00 GMT

There has been significant upheaval at Twitter ever since it was acquired and taken private by Elon Musk. Many reports have revealed that in the wake of this volatility, a lot of advertisers have decided against spending their marketing budgets on the microblogging network for now. There’s also concern among market watchers regarding the direction of the social network which continues to play an instrumental role for journalists, world leaders, artists, etc in addition to the average user.

Musk remains the acting CEO of Twitter and while has said that the job will be handed over to a permanent candidate once one is found, there’s no indication of that happening any time soon. While Musk continues to assert that user numbers at Twitter have never been higher than they are right now, some continue to take a view of doom and gloom, believing that Twitter may be on its way out.

If that happens, there would be a void that would require filling, and Mastodon is poised to do that. It has surely become a lot more popular as a result of all the Twitter drama, but is Mastodon uniquely poised to take over from Twitter, and should brands be looking to make the move?

What is Mastodon?

Mastodon can best be described as a decentralized social network. It's not owned by one company or person like Facebook or Twitter. Independent servers power Mastodon and they're organized around specific interests, themes, and topics. Each server is essentially its own social media site with Mastodon being the software that provides a unified user experience across them all. These servers work like any other social network. Members can follow each other, start conversations, interact with posts, etc.

Mastodon isn't exactly new. It shot to popularity because of everything that was happening with Twitter. It's been available since March 2016 with a stable version of the software only being launched in November 2022. The timing aligned with Twitter’s change of ownership and Mastodon thus emerged as a viable alternative for those who were thinking about leaving Twitter.

How does Mastodon work?

Users need to choose a server to join Mastodon. Some servers are private so they require an invitation to join. Others are open to the public and can be joined by everyone. It's sort of how subreddits work on Reddit. Each server has its own moderates and rules for users. It also has its own privacy policy.

Users are able to join multiple servers and they can redirect their profiles across servers. Once a server is joined, the user can interact with anyone on Mastodon, regardless of the server they're on.

The biggest servers on Mastodon are general and these are the ones that most resemble Twitter. They're not focused on one particular topic so the conversations tend to be general in nature. There are plenty of specific servers too, such as those that are focused on technology, finance, photography, etc.

Do brands need to transition from Twitter to Mastodon?

It's common for businesses to follow wherever their customers are going. This is to ensure that they can secure the maximum exposure for their content to the audience that's most relevant to their business objectives. With a seemingly mass migration to Mastodon from Twitter, one would expect brands to jump ship as well. While a move of that magnitude hasn’t happened yet, even if it does, the opportunities for brands on Mastodon remain limited when viewed in comparison to Twitter.

Twitter has a robust ad product with great targeting and tracking tools. Mastodon has none of it. The decentralized nature of this social platform is also a barrier. There's no single server or platform which means that brands have no single point of entry or contact to run their campaigns through.

What may have also gotten lost in all of this hype around the decentralized platform is that Mastodon has made it public that it will never serve ads to promote some profiles over others in exchange for money. The Mastodon software is run by a non-profit so they're not motivated to work with advertisers.

As things stand, there are no ad products that brands can utilize to target all of their relevant audiences on Mastodon. That may remain the case unless the stewardship of Mastodon moves from the non-profit or that they eventually change the way this platform is run in the future. There’s no indication of that happening any time soon.

However, that doesn’t mean brands can’t derive any value whatsoever from Mastodon. There’s a case to be made for brands to get in on the action early and maintain a presence on this rising social platform so that they’re able to best leverage any opportunities that present themselves in the future.

Brands should view Mastodon as a way to expand organic reach

There may be no paid marketing features available on Mastodon but by virtue of how it operates, it provides brands with an incredible opportunity to maximize their organic reach. Each Mastodon server is its own community which means brands are served up highly targeted audiences on a silver platter.

Once a presence has been established in these communities, brands can run different types of organic marketing campaigns to not only build brand awareness but also increase sales. These may include sponsorships, affiliate marketing campaigns, and user generated content campaigns.

Influencer marketing campaigns can also be run on Mastodon. The process is not unlike how it would work on any other social network. It would require the brand to reach out to a user that has a significant following on Mastodon and have them promote a product or service.

Brands can also create their own communities on Mastodon to have the most impact. They will exercise complete control over their Mastodon server and will thus be able to filter who they want in that server, fully control content moderation, and guide conversations in a manner that suits their business objectives.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

11 Top Free Keyword Research Tools for Your SEO and PPC

steeldaddeh3@gmail.com (Chet Mitchell) — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 14:00:00 GMT

These days, businesses of all sizes need strategies for search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising (PPC). One of the many challenges for those unfamiliar with SEO and PPC is figuring out what keywords to use. Luckily, there are numerous tools available that make researching and choosing keywords a breeze.

While many of these tools require paid subscriptions, there are also plenty of free options available. Those may have fewer features than the paid versions, but they are usually more than enough for small businesses. Here are the top free keyword research tools for your PPC and SEO strategies.

1. Ahrefs Keyword Generator

This is one of the many keyword tools that offer a free or paid version, so you can easily upgrade in the future. Just enter your target phrase or keyword to get the top 100 ideas from the database. For each, you will see the search volume, the keyword difficulty, and related questions. You’ll also see how recently the result was updated.

This tool is incredibly useful for finding long-tailed keywords and less competitive options. You can also easily export data.

2. AnswerThePublic

While it won’t give you much data on keyword use, you can use AnswerThePublic for ideas of long-tailed keywords. You enter a search term, and the website shows you the questions people ask about the topic. For these questions, you will see results that indicate who, what, where, why, and when. Just keep in mind that the free version limits the number of free searches per day, so you will want to plan your use of this tool.

3. Google Keyword Planner

It should come as no surprise that Google offers its own keyword tool. This tool is free to use for your PPC research, even if you decide not to buy any Google Ads and there aren’t any limits.

The Keyword Ideas feature lets you find keyword ideas by entering a term. You see changes over time, competition, bid ranges, ad impression share, and monthly search volumes. You can also conduct more in-depth research on forecasting and search volume.

4. Jaaxy

Jaaxy makes it easy to optimize affiliate marketing and perform general keyword research. For the keyword feature, just enter a topic or URL to see suggested keywords. Each will show you information like the traffic to page-one results and monthly search volume.

As mentioned, the bonus is that you can also use Jaaxy for affiliate programs to supplement your business’s income. Entering a keyword into this feature will show you affiliate programs you may want to join. You’ll see the Alexa rank and listed commission for each program and its products.

5. Keyworddit

This free tool looks at Reddit to find keywords. This is a very specific use case, but it can be helpful as a supplement to other keyword tools. You just choose a subreddit that has at least 10,000 subscribers and choose the timeframe. The tool will extract as many as 500 keywords, giving you search volumes for each.

6. Keyword Sheeter

This is another keyword tool for generating long-tail keywords or quickly gathering a long list of possibilities. The tool relies on Google autocomplete results and lets you easily export your list. That said, it does not give you data on competitiveness or search volume for keywords. That information requires upgrading to the paid version.

7. Keyword Surfer

Keyword Surfer is a Chrome extension. It automatically displays results on the side of the page when you enter search terms. You can see keyword ideas, each with their search volume. This tool also shows you traffic to pages with a ranking up to the top ten and the pages that rank for the term. You also get the cost-per-click of each term.

8. Moz Keyword Explorer

Moz Keyword Explorer is one of the big names in keyword research, and it offers a free version of this tool. You can view monthly volume, organic click-through rate, organic difficulty, and priority scores. You will also get many keyword suggestions that include relevancy and monthly search volume.

The search results also include free SERP analysis with ten pages that rank for the keyword. For each, you will see the URL, page title, domain authority, page authority, and the number of backlinks. The only downside is that you can only do 10 searches a month with the free version.

9. QuestionDB

This is yet another long-tail keyword tool. It helps you generate long-tailed keywords or potential blog topics. You enter a topic and get the common questions that people ask about the keyword in question. You can also see the source link for questions and see the answers. There are unlimited searches for the free version, but you’ll only see 50 results for each query.

10. Semrush Keyword Magic Tool

No discussion of keyword tools is complete without mentioning Semrush. This is one of the brand’s free tools, and there are also premium options available. With this keyword tool, you can access over 20 billion keywords from more than 120 geographical databases. For each term, you will see the monthly search volume, the competitive density, and the keyword difficulty.

As a bonus, this tool also lets you sort and organize keywords. You can use smart filters, export lists easily, and sort the keywords into subgroups. Just keep in mind that with a free version, you are limited to ten searches total on any Semrush free tool.

11. Ubersuggest

keyword you enter. It also tells you how many backlinks you would need to get a page-one ranking on Google.

This tool will also give you ideas for both keywords and page content, including relevant blog titles. Those suggestions include the number of clicks and shares for similar blogs. You can also easily export most data. Just remember that the free version is limited to three searches each day and a single website.

Conclusion

You can use any combination of the above keyword tools to help you decide which terms to use in your SEO and PPC strategies. You may want to try a few before deciding which one you prefer. Or you may want to try a tool that offers a paid version, so you have the opportunity to upgrade and get more features.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

10 Tips for Participating in TikTok Trends to Promote Your Business

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 18:47:21 GMT

TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media channels, but it can be difficult to gain a following. You will need to put in the work and develop a strategy to get videos to trend.

Many business owners forget about TikTok when they are marketing their business, and this can be a loss. Though the audience is younger, they are growing in numbers. When your TikTok videos become viral, increased engagement can mean improved conversion for your business.

The following will help you make the most of the platform and its trends.

1. Select the Right Niche

You need to find your niche when it comes to social media marketing, especially if you want people to consider you successful. You can’t just make random videos and hope that people start to follow you. You need to find your objective in the social media world. What are you looking to achieve when you upload your videos? What kind of people do you want to follow you?

Once you have a target audience, you can reflect on your videos and what that audience will find interesting. If you want trending videos to get popular, you need to understand ‘your’ people and what entertains them.

2. Post Regularly

The most successful creators post often. If you want to go viral, you have to make enough content to get noticed. Keeping a low profile won’t work with the TikTok feed. The best accounts put several TikTok videos out there every day. You should be able to publish at least one video every day. The more content you make, the more likely you will hit on something viral. Just make sure that the videos are relevant and fresh.

3. Use Music

One of the notable differences between TikTok and other platforms is that TikTok allows for the use of music and encourages it in videos. It has some roots in Musical.ly, and, therefore, the fixation has never left. It is simple to add music to your short clips, and the legalities are already covered.

Add trending tracks and well-known songs to help your videos perform well. You can put these in when filming or editing. There are fewer options for longer videos, but you still will have an easy time adding music.

4. Interact with Others

Don’t forget about the social aspect of using TikTok. You need to engage with other users. You need to view, comment, and like other videos to be a part of the algorithm. The more you interact with other TikTok users, the more your videos come up in their feeds.

You can also grow collaborations out of these interactions. Some influencers will even agree to work with lesser-known brands to get more content.

5. Show Off Your Talents

The best place to start with content is with your own skills. Many TikTok videos focus on someone’s unique skill set. Whether it is cooking, fire-eating, skateboarding, or dog grooming - show it off. Consider your videos a talent show, and make several clips of your best talents.

6. Show ‘How To’ Videos

Your ‘How To’ video can be a great way to show off a tutorial while highlighting your talents. A short clip about trimming dog nails or making a pie crust will get interest as it teaches people a specific skill. There are many tips on cooking and beauty on TikTok. Keep it short and precise to get a better following. Make sure your tutorials are clear. You can also use TikTok as a teaser for longer videos on a platform such as YouTube.

7. Make High-Quality Videos

When making your TikTok videos, make sure you make them top-notch. This is of vital importance. You will never see a trending video that is poorly made. You need to upload videos regularly without compromising the footage’s quality.

You don’t need to have a professional cameraman; you simply need to develop your eye and use your smartphone. Get the basics right, and you can turn out content. You may need a tripod or external microphone. Edit your video, and remember that TikTok has many functions you can use. There are also other apps if you want more specific video-editing features.

Make sure that you pick quality topics as well. This will help keep people engaged. Make sure that your videos are interesting and that you are giving people something they need.

8. Cover Current Events

There is a world of events outside of TikTok. Recognizing this will help bring to your page followers interested in world events. This doesn’t always mean news; it may mean something such as a popular TV show, a great book, or another cultural event. You can find videos talking about pop culture all over TikTok.

No matter how much content you’re planning to discuss, though, remember that you need to keep your videos concise.

9. Feature Kids and Pets

There was an actor who once said they wouldn’t work with pets or kids because they steal the show. It is true on TikTok. Videos with kids and pets gain traffic quicker than those that don’t feature babies and animals. The cuter the pet, the better chance they will get out there. Of course, if you have something more exotic, like a snake or a fox, your videos will already have a better chance of getting viral.

10. Use Trending Hashtags

The best way to take advantage of trends on TikTok is to participate in trending hashtags. Looking at trending hashtags makes it easy to spot current trends. Look at some of the content that uses the hashtag to get an idea of what the trend involves, so you can create appropriate content. When you participate in those trends, use the hashtag to make sure your content gets seen.

Conclusion

TikTok should be part of your digital marketing strategy, no matter the size of your business. The above tips should help you take advantage of trends to grow your following and, therefore, your brand recognition.

Sources:

https://influencermarketinghub.com/tiktok-trending-videos-tips/

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

Why Reposting on Instagram Can Be So Powerful

Tue, 07 Mar 2023 17:47:12 GMT

There's no secret to going viral. It's not like you can reproduce a certain number of steps to guarantee that your post goes viral. It’s often the simplest of ideas that end up going viral, leading us to wonder why we hadn’t thought of that. There’s no point in dwelling over that since you can’t go into the past and change it. Ripping off the idea entirely would reflect badly on the brand so doing that is out of the question as well.

Reposting is thus a great way to extract some value for your brand from a piece of content that’s doing exceptionally well. It’s a genuine approach to showing appreciation for the hard work and creativity of others while recognizing its potential and highlighting it on your own platform to extract additional value from it.

A good Instagram strategy requires high-quality content. There's no way to circumvent that. Only high-quality content can ensure a higher rate of engagement for your content and provide a good chance of going viral. However, that's easier said than done. Furthermore, it's also time-consuming and requires resources. It’s impossible to hit the nail on the head all the time, which is why reposting content that your audience is already engaging with can be a great strategy.

How does reposting work on Instagram?

Instagram does offer a native reposting feature but it's limited in its ability. You can use it to repost others' posts and Reels on your Instagram Story. Reposting other users' content to any permanent part of your profile such as feed or videos is not allowed.

Simply put, this means that Instagram lets you repost content from other users for only 24 hours, but if you'd like to keep it around permanently you could add it to an Instagram Story Highlight. Do keep in mind that content from only public profiles can be reposted.

Find the paper airplane symbol on that post which will then bring up a pop-up menu that has an "Add post to your story" option. You're given the option to either show or hide the caption from the original post in addition to adding any stickers, hashtags, or texts that you may want to include. The reposted content can then be shared on your story.

Reposting content on Instagram has many benefits

Reposting content that users are already engaging with is a great way to improve interactions with your followers on Instagram. There already tends to be more engagement from people with brands on the social network. By providing them with more relevant content to interact with, you can ensure that your audience remains engaged with the brand on Instagram.

User generated content (UGC) tends to perform very well for brands. It's no secret that people base their online purchase decisions on what other customers say about a product. Reposting UGC enables you to put positive testimonials from your customers front and center. So even if an entirely new lead discovers your Instagram for the first time, they'll instantly find out how your product or service has made someone's life better.

Reposting is often entirely just to get in on a silly online trend that’s making waves on the internet. Whether it’s a sound on Instagram Reels that’s going viral or a funny meme that everybody can’t stop talking about, reposting content based on what’s hot on the internet is also a great way to endear your brand to followers.

A humorous post that leverages those trends can do wonders for the brand’s exposure. Since that trending content is already getting a lot of eyeballs, brands can essentially piggyback off of that to expand their reach and elevate their brand awareness. This is a strategy that requires a delicate touch since it can often be difficult to execute it properly. When it’s done correctly, it can reap significant dividends.

Instagram reposting tips to follow

Always seek permission

When reposting user generated content, it's always good to approach the original creator for permission, even though it isn't always explicitly required. It's a measure of courtesy that should be extended since it's entirely possible that the creator may not want their photos or videos being shared.

Reach out through direct messages or even by leaving a simple comment on their post to let them know that you intend to share their content. Most users would be happy to provide it. This ensures that your brand saves itself from any embarrassment down the line if the original creator were to call out and say they never gave permission and would like for their reposted content to be taken down by the brand.

Don’t edit the original content

The content that's being reposted should be left in its original form. Never edit the photo or change the caption. Usually there’s going to be enough space when reposting to your Story to add your own spin on the content, whether through text, sticker, emoji, etc.

This ensures that the original creator gets due recognition for the content that they’ve created. It doesn’t feel that the brand would like to change things around in their content. It should always be reposted in its original form.

Repost from a variety of accounts

It’s possible that one of your customers creates the best content but always reposting content from one single account isn’t going to look good to all of your followers. There should be a reasonable variety in the source accounts for the content that you repost.

This will ensure that your followers get to see different styles of content and won’t feel fatigued by seeing the same kind of content from the same creator every single time. It will also provide other creators with the opportunity of being featured on the official brand account, thus making them more likely to create additional content with the sole aim of being featured on the brand’s account.

Instagram reposting should never be just about selling products

Your Instagram reposting efforts shouldn’t always be seen to be selling products. There needs to be a subtle balance in all of it. Highlight user generated content periodically to showcase how your products help improve lives but don’t make it the entire crux of this strategy.

Keep an eye on trending and viral topics. Take a humorous approach and just have some fun with it. Customers don’t always want a serious vibe from the brands they follow on Instagram. Show them an entirely different side that endears the brand to them. That’s the key to long-term sustained engagement on the social network.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing.

The 10 Most Important Social Media Trends for 2023

Mon, 27 Feb 2023 14:00:12 GMT

The social media landscape evolves constantly. The platforms, trends, and ideas that may have done very well for you a few months ago may not deliver similar results in the future. New trends and strategies may emerge that would require you to adapt quickly to maximize the return on your efforts or risk being left behind.

As the new year approaches, now is the perfect time for marketers to take a holistic view of the landscape, and put themselves in the best possible position to hit the ground running in 2023. The trends that will carry into the new year have already begun taking shape, and it’s now a matter of recognizing them and getting on board at the most opportune time.

It’s easier said than done, though, especially when almost every digital marketer on the planet is looking to do the same thing. The competition is going to be tougher than ever and with these few months being some of the most lucrative for marketers, it’s imperative to get a jumpstart for the coming year.

10 important social media trends for 2023

1. Twitter is cool again

Twitter never appealed to marketers as much as other networks like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc did. There simply wasn’t enough opportunity to amplify campaigns as there is on the aforementioned platforms. The micro-blogging network’s bot problem also didn’t win it any favors with marketers.

There’s been a drastic change in the hype around Twitter this year because Elon Musk took it private. His ownership of the platform, as divisive as it may be, has been like a shot of adrenaline for the flagging platform. Twitter is now seeing record high active user and engagement figures.

There’s also a general sense of excitement to see what Twitter 2.0 could end up being. This presents marketers with a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor of what might be one of the biggest overhauls of a major social network in decades. An effective Twitter strategy can certainly pay dividends in 2023.

2. Capitalize on ChatGPT’s AI hype

Artificial intelligence-based large language models have been around for a while but most weren’t packaged in a simple user interface that enabled average users to experience this cutting-edge technology for themselves.

ChatGPT has changed that, it has allowed everyone to get a glimpse of the power that AI holds. Naturally, this has created a lot of hype around ChatGPT, as people use the AI chatbot for everything from crafting poems and stories to writing code.

There are plenty of AI-powered services available for marketers that can be deployed in campaigns to elevate the experience for users. AI-based solutions, whether for customer outreach or support, will dominate the landscape in 2023.

3. It's time to BeReal

For most people, social media is a curated feed of the best moments in life, whether that's a dream vacation, the perfect meal, a luxury bag, etc. Life is rarely so picture perfect and there's now a large demographic, particularly those under the age of 25, who would much rather see behind the facade that people put up on social media.

That's previously why a photo-sharing app called BeReal has become extremely popular in 2022 and will only continue to grow in 2023. It sends a notification to everyone at the same time and encourages them to share one unfiltered, completely real photo with friends. While BeReal doesn't offer any ad products for businesses at this point in time, it's pertinent to keep an eye on how it evolves in the coming year.

4. YouTube Shorts can supercharge your subscriber growth

The primary goal for every YouTube channel is to have as many subscribers as possible. Amassing a major following takes time, since the algorithm that ranks videos is unpredictable and often doesn't favor channels that have low engagement. YouTube Shorts presents a great opportunity to get those numbers up relatively quickly.

This feature is YouTube’s answer to TikTok and Instagram Reels. Given users’ love for short-form video, it sees incredible engagement. Utilize short-form videos on YouTube Shorts to get as many eyeballs on your content as possible. Views on shorts can lead to an increase in channel views and subscriptions, thereby helping grow your presence on the world’s leading video platform.

5. Social commerce is more powerful than ever

Early 2022 was the best time to get into social commerce, they're features designed to help people make purchases without leaving their favorite social media networks. The second best time to start your social commerce journey is now. It shows no signs of slowing down and will continue its strong momentum in 2023.

By some estimates, global social commerce sales are expected to top $6 billion by 2026. The US alone is projected to have 108 million social commerce customers by 2025. Focus on relevant features like Facebook Shops, for example, to set up storefronts that make it possible for users to make purchases without leaving the platform.

6. TikTok is where you need to be

TikTok has become one of the most lucrative platforms for marketers in just a few years and it shows no signs of slowing down. It has managed to poach the younger demographics from other social networks. That's the secret behind its meteoric rise.

The platform is constantly being updated with new features and functionality, providing users with even more incentive to stick around, and helping grow its already 1 billion-strong user base further. Ad revenues generated by TikTok are already slated to match YouTube's ad revenue by 2024, thus giving marketers all the more reason to tap into the incredible audiences available on this platform.

7. User Generated Content will drive more sales

User Generated Content or UGC tends to perform very well online. Most consumers are swayed by UGC when they're considering making a purchase online. Marketers can tap into this by leaning into UGC for their products to increase sales.

Even if there's no in-house team at your disposal to create content that looks organic, aim to incentivize existing customers to create content like a short video or just a simple post to talk about their experience. There are also plenty of freelance content creators that help brands with UGC content for nominal fees.

8. Prepare to get a lot more personal on LinkedIn

The LinkedIn of 2022 feels a lot different than just a few years ago and this monumental shift is going to carry into the new year. You may have noticed that posts on LinkedIn are exceedingly becoming of a more personal nature, much as they would on Facebook, even though this is supposed to be a "professional" social network.

Perhaps it's a subtle change in the platform's algorithm that's favoring personal posts or perhaps people now want to show a more human side on a platform that has largely remained strictly business. LinkedIn is further supporting these initiatives by launching a Creator Fund and encouraging community-building. It's an interesting space to watch as this is bound to bring new opportunities for expanding reach.

9. Closed captions on videos are a must

The vast majority of people watch the videos that they come across when scrolling through Facebook or Twitter on silent, particularly if they're on the train or even having a relaxing cup of coffee at a cafe.

Since short form video now reigns supreme online, closed captions help catch users' attention that may otherwise be fleeting since they're not interested in listening to the audio. Captions are a great way to keep viewers engaged in the video. The added benefit is that they're more accessible, enabling people with hearing impairments to participate as well.

10. Expand customer service through social networks

People are increasingly relying on social media for customer support. If they run into an issue with a product or service they've purchased, they're likely to reach out to the company through one of its social media profiles. It's best to focus on expanding your customer support presence across social media in 2023.

Be where the customers are, address their queries promptly, and utilize the inherently public nature of customer support through social media to convince others of your excellence in this department.

Set yourself up for success in 2023

There will most certainly be new trends and strategies that emerge as we get into the new year, such as the fluid and dynamic nature of social media. However, by focusing your energies on the trends highlighted above, you put yourself in a much stronger position to make the most of what the new year can offer.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

How to Supercharge Engagement with Instagram Collabs posts

Mon, 20 Feb 2023 14:30:06 GMT

Instagram is the ideal social network for brands. It's entirely focused on photos and video, meaning that its visuals-forward approach provides brands with a great opportunity to show off their products and services in the best light possible. People love to follow brands on Instagram, too, the vast majority of users follow at least one brand.

For most people, Instagram is as much a tool for discovery as it is to keep tabs on what their friends had for dinner. Whether they want to see the view from a hotel they’re looking to stay at or see how others have styled a pair of shoes, they’ll likely fire up Instagram for different variations of the visual representation that they’re after.

There are many strategies that brands can rely on to maximize their reach on Instagram and lean into the user behaviors that make Instagram such a valuable platform. It also provides additional functionality that brands can utilize to further expand their reach, and Collabs are one of them.

What you need to know about the Instagram Collabs feature

The Instagram Collabs feature was first rolled out in June last year as a test in a handful of markets. The Meta-owned company eventually released it to users across the globe in October 2021. Instagram Collabs enables two users to share the same post in their Feeds or Reels. It lets you double the reach of your content.

For example, if you've posted great pictures or videos to your brand profile, you can have an influencer post that content on their own profile through the Collabs feature. What it effectively does is double the reach of your content, allowing it to become visible to a new audience that can then be enticed to engage with your content.

How does the Instagram Collabs feature work

The Instagram Collabs feature provides users with the ability to co-author content with other users on the social network. The original creator needs to have a public account for the feature to work, the collaborator's account can be private or public.

The original creator has to tag the account they want to collaborate with. A request is then sent to the collaborating account and it's up to them if they want to accept or deny it. Once they accept, the post made by the original creator will be displayed on their profile as well.

The Collabs post is distributed to the followers of both accounts. Likes, views, shares, and comments are shared for the post. The original creator always has the option to add or remove the creator whenever they so desire.

Why Instagram Collabs are more powerful than simple advertising

Instagram Collabs are more powerful than running a generic Instagram Ads campaign because you can choose precisely which audience you want the ad to reach. For example, if you’re a fitness company, you can collab with a fitness influencer that has the perfect audience you’re after, and have your content reach them with pinpoint accuracy.

It’s also different from a simple influencer marketing campaign, where the creatives are either sent beforehand to the influencer or they’re asked to shoot their own. All of the creative control remains in your hands. Create, post, and caption your posts however you like and once it’s done, simply send a collab request to your influencer of choice to start the campaign.

Instagram Collabs work great for new product launches. They usually require a lot of hype so a collab on Instagram is the perfect way to leverage another account's audience and reach for maximum impact.

The many benefits of Instagram Collabs

As with any social media network, it's the algorithm that dictates what users do and don't see on Instagram. Trying to increase reach can often seem like fighting with the algorithm to increase the visibility of posts. The Collabs feature is a way to effectively bypass this battle and land directly in the feeds of the people you want to target.

There's a much greater chance that they'll see your post since they're already interacting and engaging with the collaborator's content frequently. This sends a signal to the algorithm that they're interested in that user's posts. So when your content gets posted on their profile due to a collab, it's filtered into the feeds of their audience, thereby amplifying the reach of your content.

The benefit of Instagram Collabs goes beyond increased views, shares, comments, and likes. It's also a great way to increase the number of followers for the brand. Your content basically gets a seal of approval from the collaborator when it shows up in their profile. Their followers are more likely to view your brand as trustworthy and will be more inclined to tap on that follow button.

Social commerce is big on Instagram. People use the social network to make big and small purchase decisions every single day. Use shoppable posts and run a collab to extract the most benefit out of the campaign. The audience will see those shoppable posts on the collaborator's feed and will be able to purchase there, even if they've never visited your profile before.

Best practices for launching Instagram Collabs

Since the entire value is being driven by the collaborator's audience, you can only extract the full potential of the Instagram Collabs feature by teaming up with the perfect collaborator. This could even be another brand, with which you can launch a cross-promoting shoppable collaboration, to increase sales and engagement.

Influencers are the perfect fit for collabs as well. Instagram is the primary platform for influencer marketing and with this feature, it’s an even more natural fit. Collab posts are a particularly great way for smaller brands to boost their engagement and visibility. Perform due diligence as you would on any influencer, and ensure that their engagement rates are solid and the demographic most relevant for your brand, before proceeding with the collab.

Collab posts should now be an integral part of a brand's Instagram marketing strategy going forward. This is a genuinely powerful feature that can yield great dividends when deployed correctly.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

How to Best Scale Facebook Ads in 2023

steeldaddeh3@gmail.com (Chet Mitchell) — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 15:42:17 GMT

It's impossible to talk about digital marketing and not consider Facebook. The Meta-owned company is the largest social network on the planet with over 2.9 billion users. No matter what industry you're in and what product or service you're trying to sell, there's a good chance that you'll be able to find a buyer on Facebook. To put that into context, consider that with over 2.9 billion users, Facebook's reach expands to nearly 37% of the entire global population.

Annual ad spend on Facebook from the US alone tops $50 billion. It's expected to grow 12.2% year-over-year in 2013 to a whopping $65.21 billion. If there was ever a vote of confidence needed in the social network’s ability to be what its advertisers need it to be, this is most certainly it.

Merely running ads on Facebook isn’t enough. If not done properly, it can quickly become a money pit that swallows your entire marketing budget whole without giving anything in return. It’s extremely important for marketers to know how to optimize and scale their Facebook ad campaigns in order to extract the maximum ROI.

What is scaling and why is it so important?

The main problem that marketers face when running ad campaigns on Facebook is that their Return on Ad Spend is extremely high. That simply means they're spending way too much money than they should be to hit their campaign objectives. Even if it may seem like the logical thing to do, you don't throw money at this problem.

Scaling up a Facebook ad campaign does require an increase in ad spend but that should result in a higher positive return.Scaling the campaign is a key part of overall optimization. It's important because it enables you to reach wider audiences with the best possible ROI.

Tips to scale Facebook ads in 2023

Cast a wide net for your target audience

Audience saturation is one of the harsh realities of online advertising. Even if you've found the perfect target audience and the campaign delivers great results initially, there will come a time when that audience will become saturated. The initial results are promising in that the campaign is optimized enough to meet its objectives.

Once you see the ad costs and frequency start to increase, that's when you know that the audience has been saturated. Scaling up the campaign from there will require you to expand the target audience. This method of horizontal scaling is best executed in a separate ad set, so that you're instantly able to see what results the expanded audience is able to achieve. Compare multiple options by running A/B tests and then add the winning segment to the optimized ad set.

Duplicate ad sets that are performing well

It's best not to change things on ad sets that are performing well. There's no point in messing up their performance. Instead, duplicate those successful ad sets with a higher budget to more effectively reach the entire intended audience.

However, audience overlap should be kept in mind when duplicating ad sets, since multiple ad sets will be targeting the same audience. This is one of the more aggressive tactics for scaling up campaigns and when executed correctly can deliver incredible results.

Opt for gradual budget increases

Increasing the ad budget is an important part of scaling up your campaigns but it needs to be done in a mindful way. For example, if your current budget is $100 and the campaign is performing well, bumping it up to $500 a day won't bring you a 5x bump in performance. The fact of the matter is that a significant budget increase can restart the learning phase for the campaign which is what you want to avoid when scaling up a campaign that’s performing well.

It's considered to be a good idea to increase the budget by 15-20% on ad sets every couple of days. This will ensure that the performance of the campaign remains stable as a new learning phase won't kick in. This gradual approach to budget increase will ensure that the ad set has a longer life and is able to continue its winning streak.

Leverage lookalike audiences

Lookalike audiences are what makes Facebook advertising so powerful. This method of horizontal scaling opens up an entirely new audience for your campaign based on the data that it has already collected. Create lookalike audiences for your campaigns once your existing audience segments have become saturated.

Facebook's algorithm uses those seed audiences to find people who are most similar and are most likely to be the relevant audience for your ads. For example, a seed audience can be your list of highest paying customers or those that have interacted the most with your posts.

Pay attention to ad fatigue

If your audience is seeing the same ad over and over again, they now have what’s referred to as ad fatigue. Regardless of the method you utilize to scale up that campaign, if they’re no longer interested in the creative, the campaign isn’t going to benefit from any of it.

When scaling up a campaign, it's just as important to test new versions of creatives. This can include minor changes to the ad copy and the creatives that are already performing well. Keeping things fresh for the audience helps retain their attention for longer. Otherwise, they will begin to subconsciously ignore your ads if they’ve already seen them multiple times, thereby defeating the whole purpose of scaling up.

For Facebook ads, the proof is in the pudding

Great digital marketers are incredibly data-driven. Dive deep into your campaign’s data to figure out where it’s struggling and what needs to be done in order to turn things around. The data is also going to show you clearly which ad sets can be scaled up for maximum impact.

As long as an entirely simple approach of merely increasing the ad budget every time a campaign is to be scaled up is avoided, there’s a lot of value that can be unlocked continuously from your best-performing Facebook ad campaigns.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

How and Why to Use a Competition or Giveaway in Your Social Media Marketing

Wed, 01 Feb 2023 15:00:04 GMT

Social media marketing can be a whole new world of marketing for many people. There are things that seem easy to understand and other areas that seem more complicated. Giveaways frequently fall into the latter category.

Here are a few reasons you should consider doing a giveaway on social media.

Grow Your Followers

One of the biggest reasons to initiate a giveaway is to grow your follower base. You use your giveaways to build new audiences on other social media channels as well.

Get More Email Subscribers

You can easily use a giveaway as a means to get more email addresses. Just use a lead capture form or require people to sign up for your newsletter to participate.

Build a Community

When done properly, you can use a giveaway to build a sense of community. This will maximize your increase in followers and fans and require you to keep engaging with your new followers.

Boost Brand Awareness

This is an excellent way to help people get more familiar with your brand. To increase awareness, ask people to tag their friends in your post. Giveaways are an excellent way to get people to notice your company.

Increase Engagement

Whatever campaign you are working on, there’s little doubt that giveaways help drive engagement with your brand. This gets people talking and commenting on your posts.

Gather Social Proof

Depending on how participants enter your giveaway, you can also use it to build social proof. For example, if you require them to post an image with your brand hashtag, you will get a wealth of user-generated content that may prove useful in future marketing efforts.

Promote Products

Another fantastic reason to participate in social media giveaways is to promote your new products or products that need to get some more traffic. This kind of promotion is an excellent way to generate more sales and increase leads.

Boost Sales

Because of the increase in followers, brand awareness, and engagement, you are almost guaranteed to see a boost in sales after a giveaway. An increase in revenue is the ultimate motivation for most giveaways, even if the stated goal is to get more leads or increase brand awareness.

How to Use a Giveaway With Social Media

Now that you have a better idea of why you should consider a giveaway on social media, how do you run one?

Decide on a Goal

Before starting any giveaway, you should understand what your objective is. For example, maybe you want to grow your email list. Giveaways are an excellent opportunity to grow this valuable resource. To participate, simply have everyone submit an email to be part of the contest. This will help you grow your list of potential clients to offer your promotions and discounts to.

Overall, some popular goals include:

● Increase followers

● Drive engagement

● Get more email signups

● Boost brand awareness

● Promote new products

Remember that you always want to pick a measurable goal, as this will let you confirm whether or not you reached it.

Choose a Platform

One of the first things to do is pick the appropriate social media platform to do your giveaway. It is best to use the one that has the strongest presence and the most engagement with its audience.

You should also remember not all social media platforms are the same. Depending on many variables, some platforms may be better for what you are doing. Once you have the social media platform in mind, you can move on to the next step.

Pick the Prize to Promote

The next thing you will need to do is decide what you will give away. Make sure what you are giving away is a quality prize that makes people want to win it. If it isn’t attractive enough, people won’t share it, and you will see a low engagement.

You want to make sure the prize is proportionate to what participants should do to win it. For instance, if you are looking for more followers, offering sample products may be a great way to get them involved. If you want them to use your brand hashtags, a bigger prize will need to be offered, as this will require more effort on their part.

Plan the Details

Now, it is time to plan out the details of your giveaway. The most important details to consider are the following:

Timeline: When does it start, and when does it end? You will need to make the last day to participate clear in your announcements.
Posting schedule: Once you know the timeline, you can decide when and how often you will post about the giveaway to maximize participation.
Eligibility: Decide who can participate in the giveaway. Do the participants have to be a certain age or in a certain location?
Mode of participation: Decide how participants will participate, whether by sharing your post, using your hashtag, or another method.
Winners and announcement: Think about how many winners you will award and when you will announce the winners.
Prize: You already decided on the prize, but this is a good time to confirm that it will appeal to your audience.
Confirm the platform’s rules: Before finalizing anything, make sure your giveaway complies with the rules of the social media platform you will be hosting it on.

Consider Using Tools

If you want to make it easier to track and run your giveaway, consider using one of the many available tools. Several tools even offer free plans with limited features or a limited timeframe, so this doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive.

Conclusion

Hosting a giveaway on social media is an excellent way to grow your business. It can help you gain more followers, build an online community, spread brand awareness, gather leads, and more. You just need to make sure to choose the social media platform your audience is on and select a prize your audience wants and is appropriate for what you are asking them to do. With the right strategy, your giveaway will help you meet your business goals.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

9 Tips for Building Quality Backlinks to Your Business’ Website

steeldaddeh3@gmail.com (Chet Mitchell) — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 15:45:00 GMT

If you are working on getting more traffic to your website, there are many things you need to take into consideration. One of the best ways to increase your traffic is to get quality backlinks integrated throughout your pages. This can be a bit tricky, which is why we have a few tips below to help you.

1. Build Links From Websites With Outdated Sources

With this step, you need to find some websites in your niche that have:

● Stopped giving a service

● Shut down

● Stopped updating resources

● Moved to new URLs

● Changed names

Then, look for backlinks that still exist to those websites. From there, reach out to the websites containing those outdated backlinks and suggest your page as an alternative.

For instance, when SEOMoz changed to MOZ, there was an opportunity to reach out to many sites still linking to the outdated SEOMoz.org addresses.

Why does this work? You are adding value to the websites you reach out to. For starters, you inform them that their link is outdated, which hurts their rankings and visitor experience. On top of that, you give them a valuable alternative resource that requires minimal effort to link to instead.

2. Use Your Top Referral Sources

Referral sources are the websites that are already sending traffic to your website. So, they already link to your content, giving you a backlink. If you already have a backlink from these sources, then you know the content they linked to is useful and high-quality.

Use that content as a guide for what type of content that website (and your audience) likes. You can then create more content like that. Doing so should increase your chances of getting a backlink.

3. Publish Complete Guides

The best way to move up Google rankings is to have plenty of high-quality backlinks. One of the best ways to do this is to publish complete or ultimate guides.

These guides work well because they are a large chunk of information gathered in one place. Many complete guides are between 4,000 and 5,000 words and tend to cover the scope of a specific topic. Longer content performs better with the Google algorithms than shorter articles.

The first step to proceeding is to choose a good topic. Select something that is popular but isn’t overdone. You don’t want to be the umpteenth ultimate guide to something, so do your research. Make sure your topic is very specific and offers unique value.

Once you have a topic, get it outlined. List out all the subtopics. For instance, if you are creating an ultimate guide to bathing a dog, you might have subtopics that look like this:

● Pre-bath work

● Shampoo selection

● Lathering the coat

● Rinsing the coat

● Conditioner application

● Towel drying

From your outline, get everything detailed and planned out. Remember that you need to cover all the important details thoroughly, making it comprehensive and informative.

4. Create the Right Type of Content

Complete guides are just one type of content more likely to get backlinks. You should also consider posts about “why” or “what.” You may also want to consider videos and infographics.

Just remember that choosing the right type of content isn’t enough. You also have to make amazing content.

5. Use Your Brand Mentions

One resource that many people seem to forget is to use their brand mentions. That means there are many websites out there that may mention you without linking to you. These mentions can be easy to get backlinks with because the author already talked about you.

Simply shoot them a friendly email, reaching out and asking that they link back to your article or website. Instead of asking directly, send out a feeler email. This will be written like, “I saw your recent post on such and such where you mentioned this brand. I have written this article talking about X, would you like to see it?”

These get double the response that a direct request for a link gets.

6. Become a Source for Bloggers and Reporters

Some of the best backlinks you can get are from reporters and journalists, as these will be white hat links. Various services can connect you with reporters and bloggers, such as HARO (Help a Reporter Out). This will take some effort, but it can be worth it.

When using websites like this, remember to keep your pitches brief and only respond to requests that you can actually help with.

7. Use “Skyscraper” Content

To utilize skyscraper content, you must first understand what it is. Skyscraper content builds on the top-ranked website for a piece of content in which your industry has previously performed well. Your goal is to create content that is five to 10 times better than the existing content. This is a “skyscraper” because it puts you ahead of the other content.

For example, you may have noticed that all the popular lists of tips on a certain topic in your industry only have about 10 to 15 tips. If you create a list with 100+ or even 50+, it will stand out and be several times better than the existing content.

8. Write Testimonials

If there is a tool, product, or service that you regularly use, reach out to them, and offer to write a testimonial in exchange for a backlink. They will get social proof and marketing via the testimonial. You will get a backlink in the author portion of the testimonial, as you’ll write something like “[Name] from [Business]” and link to your website.

9. Get Inspiration From Competitors

Like any other part of your digital marketing plan, you can also get inspiration from your competitors. This is as simple as seeing what websites backlink to your competition. You will likely find plenty of great backlink opportunities.

For example, if your competitor has a backlink within a forum, consider joining the forum to get your own backlink. Or if they wrote a guest post on a particular website, send that website a pitch for a guest post of your own.

Conclusion

Backlinks help you boost your SEO rankings and bring more traffic to your website. The above strategies will help you build backlinks with white hat methods, boosting your company’s reputation and online presence.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

What to Know About Your Audience Before Starting Your Marketing Efforts

Tue, 17 Jan 2023 15:45:00 GMT

Getting an idea of who your audience is and other facts about them is best done before you start marketing. This will not only save you time but money as well. Both are some of the biggest assets you will have while in business. Keep reading for ideas on getting to know your audience and more.

Basic Demographics

Start with knowing the most basic demographics of your audience, including age groups, locations, gender, income, hobbies, and more. If your audience demographics fall into multiple categories, consider segmenting them and using a slightly different advertising campaign for each.

Why They Have Purchase Intent

One of the most important things to know about your audience is why they are looking for the product you offer. This involves understanding their pain points and the challenges they are facing.

Once you have that knowledge, you can directly address those pain points in your marketing. It will show potential customers that you understand them and convince them to buy your product or service.

Other Preferences

To maximize the effectiveness of your marketing, you will also need to know a few other important things about your audience. Learn about what social media platforms they prefer, how they buy, when they buy, and when they prefer to engage with your brand.

Things to Know to Help You Segment Your Audience

You must learn several facets about your target audience to help you segment them. Remember that segmenting your audience lets you deliver more targeted advertisements, emails, or other marketing efforts.

Special Interests

Pay attention to the various special interests of your audience. This will tell you what influences their buying preferences. If you run a fitness store, you could divide your audience into those interested in cardio and those in strength training. You can also categorize them according to those looking for gear to compete in athletics versus those doing sports for fun or exercising for fitness.

Subgroups and Cultures

You also want to look for subgroups within your audience to help with segmentation. This can be based on common experiences, such as watching particular shows. This will let you understand their motivation and create advertising that appeals more to them.

Turn the Information Into Buyer Personas

Once you have gathered the relevant information on your audience, turn it into buyer personas. Make as many as you need to in order to address your entire audience. As a bonus, buyer personas will give you further insight into preferences.

You will use these personas to better target your marketing efforts and create long-lasting relationships with clients.

How to Gather Details About Your Audience

Now that you know what information you need to gather about your audience, how do you go about doing so? There are several different ways to start gathering data on your audience.

Surveys

Surveys work well for providing specific information, such as the location most of your clients come from, what they are using your business for, and what their preferences are. With this, you can begin to look for patterns in how your services are utilized and how purchases are made.

You can ask for as much detail as you want with surveys. Just remember that response rates will be higher for shorter, simpler surveys, while more detailed surveys can provide you with more useful information. It’s a trade-off.

Competitors

Another way to get a feel for your potential clientele is to keep an eye on your competition. See what they are offering and the kinds of clients that frequent their venues. In fact, competitors are often one of the best tools to utilize in furthering your marketing strategies. Changes to their products, services, and campaigns can help you target their audience and, by offering improvements, win them over.

Complementary Businesses

In addition to competitors, you can look at complementary businesses. These are small businesses that aren’t your direct competition but have a similar audience. For example, a gym and fitness store would have complementary audiences. Or maybe a jewelry store and a luxury clothing boutique could work together. You can share audience research with this complementary company.

Engagement

In addition to this, you should also monitor comments, feedback, and other engagements with your audience. The more content you put out there in various forms and on a variety of platforms, the more information you will have about your clients. You will see what they interact with and what they aren’t interested in. Pay attention to what gets shared and what gets engagement so you can offer more of that. Use this information to create the best marketing strategies for your products and services.

Social Media for Data and Engagement

Before a paid marketing program, the various social media platforms are an ideal way to learn more about your audience. You can post frequently across a variety of social media accounts and see which posts get the most engagement. Each bit of content gives you the opportunity to evaluate what works best for your business.

Review the Data and Use It

Getting all the data is just one step of the process. You must use the data and analyze it to your advantage. Offer your audience what they want, and they will come to your business. Provide excellent value, and they will become loyal advocates.

Test New Ideas

You can also get important information about your audience by testing new ideas or marketing efforts with them. One example is when you are considering marketing on an additional channel. You can try a small-scale effort and gather data on how it works. Look at analytics, surveys, and feedback that come directly from your audience.

Conclusion

Getting to know your audience is not a simple process, but it is an important one. By knowing who your audience is, you keep your content on point with your clientele. It will also help you provide services and products that your audience needs.

Identifying your audience converts them into paying customers who stick around long-term and become loyal ambassadors of your brand. This is just one facet of why getting to know your customers well will help your marketing strategies.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

What Is Experiential Marketing And Does It Even Work?

Tue, 10 Jan 2023 15:30:01 GMT

The world of marketing can often be like an echo chamber. Most marketers often look at what’s working for everybody else and try to emulate that in their own efforts. Much of the advice also focuses on following the herd. This often results in marketers not paying attention to many of the other methods that are also available to them.

Ask any marketer where you should start your marketing efforts and the vast majority of them will direct you to either Facebook, Instagram, Google, or TikTok. There’s no denying the power of digital marketing in this day and age. However, that doesn’t mean that one can’t still tap into the basic human nature that makes people want to experience new things.

That’s precisely why experiential marketing can be so powerful. It sparks curiosity while also enabling brands to reach their desired audiences more effectively. A well-rounded experiential marketing strategy would tie the brand’s digital marketing efforts into those experiences as well, effectively creating a path for the audience to follow from the real world to the digital realm.

What is Experiential Marketing?

Experiential marketing can simply be defined as a way of reaching the desired audience in the real world. The idea is to capture their attention by utilizing real-life experiences to increase brand awareness with the ultimate goal of generating more sales.

Live events and conferences are some of the simplest examples of experiential marketing. Through such events, brands can offer a curated experience to their potential customers, enabling them to introduce their products and services in the perfect manner. Demo days and trade shows are also forms of experiential marketing.

What are the benefits of Experiential Marketing?

Brands can also opt to take a hybrid approach by combining their in-person experiences with virtual events. This allows them to expand their reach to those who may not be able to attend the events personally, yet they can still take part in the proceedings.

There’s an element of authenticity attached to experiential marketing efforts as well, particularly for brands that are just starting out. A lot of people would be apprehensive of trusting a brand that exists entirely online and they’ve never heard of it before. By enabling customers to interact with them in real life, brands can appear authentic and well-established, thereby inspiring confidence in customers to open their wallets.

Does Experiential Marketing even work?

It most certainly does and there have been several studies that attest to the power of experiential marketing. Through an experiential marketing campaign, you're essentially enabling the audience to gain an understanding of how their lives will be improved if they use your product or service instead of directly promoting those products.

Studies have shown that experiential marketing can play a vital role in influencing customer behavior, helping evoke a feeling of satisfaction in addition to creating a loyal customer base.

How to create an experiential marketing strategy

Know what your target audience is

This may sound elementary but the basis of a great experiential marketing strategy is an acute understanding of your target audience. Since the idea is to create memorable and fun experiences that enable them to get a sense of your products and services, it's important to have a sense of the audience’s capability to interact with those experiences.

For example, a very hi-tech product experience may not be entirely suited to an audience that primarily consists of senior citizens. However, if the target audience consists of a younger demographic, advanced technologies such as virtual and mixed reality can be utilized to deliver the experience.

Know what your goals are

All marketing campaigns strive to achieve a goal and that's no different with experiential marketing. Before executing the campaign, there should be absolute clarity on the goal that's to be achieved.

Whether it's entering into a new market, generating more leads for an online business, promoting the launch of a new product or showcasing changes to existing products, prepare the campaign in line with those goals to generate maximum impact.

Prioritize audience engagement

Experiential marketing is all about enabling customers to get a sense of your products in the real world. They should be able to go hands-on with whatever it is that you’re promoting. Fun experiences should be built around those products with the aim of getting the target audience to engage with those experiences.

Brainstorm truly unique ideas to generate more buzz for your campaign. For example, if you’re offering an engaging experience at a trade show or pop-up, chances are that people who like it will tell others about it, enabling you to expand the audience through word of mouth.

Focus on cross-channel marketing

Your experiential marketing campaign need not be limited to its physical location. It doesn't need to be limited to only those who are able to visit it in person. The ROI of the campaign can be increased significantly by implementing a cross-channel marketing plan.

For example, by adding a social media component to the experience or simply live streaming the activities from the site will help generate more buzz and also incentivize people who visit to interact with your brand through online mediums.

Remember to not come across as too salesy

Your experiential marketing campaign shouldn't come across as a hard sell. That would put off a lot of people who do interact with it. This is a balance that many brands struggle to strike, thereby preventing them from getting the most out of this trendy practice. Always keep in mind that the people who visit aren't there to get a sales pitch.

They're there out of curiosity and it's best to spark that curiosity further through experiences that feel natural while giving them a gentle nudge toward your product and services. Allow them to experience how their lives can be improved if they decide to become a customer. Let them come to that realization on their own without being made to feel that they’re being put through a sales funnel.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

From YouTube to TikTok: What Platforms to Include in Your Video Marketing Strategy

steeldaddeh3@gmail.com (Chet Mitchell) — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 16:15:01 GMT

Video marketing is an important part of marketing for any business, regardless of size. But it can seem overwhelming to decide which platforms to include. After all, nearly every platform supports videos.

We’ve gathered the most useful video marketing platforms, along with tips for using each. This way, you can easily decide where to share your videos.

Use the Platforms Your Audience Is On

When it comes to video marketing or any other type of marketing, the key is to use the platforms your audience is on. Don’t waste your marketing efforts on a platform with a small audience, at least not initially. That said, some platforms, like YouTube and TikTok, will be useful for most audiences. Others, however, like LinkedIn, will depend entirely on your audience.

Consider the Preferences of the Platform’s Users

You also want to consider the type of videos you will produce and the preferences of the platform’s users. Combine this with the limitations of the platform, such as whether you can include sound and how long your videos can be. You’ll want to consider factors like budget, communities, sound and size limitations, and average view time.

With that in mind, take a closer look at the various video marketing platforms you should at least consider.

YouTube

Nearly every single small business that uses video marketing will want to post videos on YouTube. This is still the largest platform for hosting videos, with more than five billion videos viewed every day on the platform.

Some highlights of YouTube include:

YouTube is free to use. You can also optimize your videos to appear in YouTube’s search results for free.
YouTube lets you encourage subscribers. Your subscribers will be notified when you post new videos, increasing your views.
You can create playlists to organize your videos and encourage viewers to watch more than one at a time.
You can target a specific audience, especially if you use paid advertising.
There are numerous opportunities for engagement, including likes and comments.

A bonus of using YouTube is that it is owned by Google. As such, YouTube videos are likely to show up in Google search results, especially if you optimize them. This further expands your reach.

Vimeo

You may consider using Vimeo for your videos. It is a common alternative to YouTube and the second-largest platform for hosting videos. Despite being smaller, it has the following highlights that make it worth considering for your video marketing:

It has fewer ads than YouTube, improving the user experience.
Vimeo is known for higher-quality videos, giving your business a more professional reputation.
You can choose from various premium accounts.

Facebook

Facebook remains an incredibly useful social media platform for video marketing. Research has confirmed that Facebook improves your brand reach in the newsfeed. In one ad test, videos received 480% more clicks than still images. This emphasizes the reach you get with Facebook.

If you plan on using Facebook for videos, make sure to upload your video to Facebook instead of just linking a YouTube or TikTok video. This will help you stand out in Facebook’s algorithm. Don’t forget to consider Facebook for live videos as well.

Instagram

Instagram is an excellent platform for video marketing for any company whose audience is on the platform. Part of it comes from the fact that you can choose from various video formats:

Instagram Video: A new version of IGTV, Instagram Videos can be up to 60 minutes long.
Live Video: Live videos on Instagram are a great way to connect and interact with your audience. Just be sure to announce your videos ahead of time to boost engagement.
Reels: These are 15 to 30 seconds and include filters, timed text, sound (from an audio library), and timer and speed controls.
Stories: These are 60-second videos that disappear in 24 hours. You can also include direct links for Instagram shopping.

In addition, you can also make a video post on your Instagram timeline just like you would post a picture.

Not all small businesses will want to use LinkedIn for video marketing, but B2B companies will strongly consider it. This professional platform is ideal for sharing videos with useful information or industry news. Think of LinkedIn as a spot for sharing information than directly advertising or providing entertainment with your video marketing.

For example, LinkedIn can be great for videos about events or industry conferences. It is also a great place to post product tutorials or show off new technologies.

Pinterest is more suited for larger businesses, but depending on your niche or industry, you may want to consider it. That said, 2020 saw a 20-times increase in product searches.

The platform launched live streaming in 2022, giving you another option for videos. When creating videos for Pinterest, focus on those that encourage an action, such as buying something, reading a post, watching a video, or saving a pin.

TikTok

Nearly every small business will want to consider video marketing on TikTok. As of 2022, it has a billion monthly active users. TikTok’s audience started with Gen Z, but it has expanded, and the audience now includes nearly all ages and demographics.

When posting on TikTok, you want to do so frequently, using authenticity and humor. For the best results, participate in trends and hashtags.

Twitter

When using Twitter videos, keep them short and sweet. The ideal video length on Twitter is just six to 15 seconds. So, you will want to make the most of that short duration. For example, you can include your logo in the corner of the video throughout to help potential customers recall your brand.

Conclusion

Most small businesses will want to host their videos on YouTube and TikTok, at the very least. Depending on your audience, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are also excellent options. Based on your niche and audience, you may also consider Vimeo, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. The key is to use the platforms that your audience spends time on.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

Best Social Media Contest Ideas For The 2022 Holiday Season

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 15:00:00 GMT

The holiday season is upon us. It’s a frantic time of the year for brands as online marketing efforts peak during this period. With so much competition for both organic and paid traffic, brands need to think outside the box to ensure that they can generate buzz and achieve maximum ROI for their efforts.

Pick any major brand and you’ll see their content strategy start to incorporate content focused around the holiday season by this time of the year. Positioning for this crucial time begins months before as many brands want people to look forward to the deals and offers that they introduce to increase sales.

That’s not the only way that a brand can generate buzz and increase engagement for the holiday season, though. Contests are a great way to keep the audience engaged and hooked to the content. Everybody loves free stuff, after all, and what better time of the year to give free stuff away than the holiday season?

Why contests can help improve your overall social media presence

Contests are a great way to incentivize people to follow and interact with the brand. There's always the potential for them to win something and that's good enough to keep people interested in the brand. It's also a great way to build awareness since people are likely going to share the contests with their friends. This helps bring more people into the fold, thereby amplifying the brand's reach.

The incentive that contests provide can also be leveraged to increase subscribers, whether for a social media account or a newsletter. That can be made one of the ways for people to enter the contest. It's a minor action on their part that results in a significant increase of followers for the brand.

Contests also see higher engagement compared to conventional social media posts. Higher engagement is a favorable signal for the algorithms that rank content on social media networks. Once it picks up that the brand is getting a lot of likes, retweets, pins, shares, comments, and more from its audience, it will boost the reach so that more people are attracted to that page.

Top social media contest ideas for this holiday season

Launch a multi-day giveaway contest

Since the idea here is to elevate the reach for as long as possible, a multi-day contest that promises a giveaway at the end is a great way to achieve that objective. It's also a great way to keep up the momentum and stand out from the competition.

Remember, most brands are performing similar activities this time of the year, so there needs to be some differentiation. A multi-day contest that promises giveaways is a good idea since it will entice the audience to keep checking back even if they don't win one. As long as they're returning to the brand's page, they’re continuing to interact with the content and that also increases the possibility of conversions.

It’s important to strike the right balance. A multi-day giveaway contest shouldn’t be dragged out for too long that it ultimately ends up feeling like a neverending mess. Keep it limited to 3-4 days and better yet, launch multiple such contests throughout the month to sustain the elevated engagement levels.

Harness the power of video content

Video content tends to do very well online, particularly short-form video, and it’s become a powerful method of leveraging user-generated content. This can be a rather simple approach, whereby the audience has to post creative short videos to win prizes.

There are several ways to execute a video contest. For example, ask customers to share a fond memory or experience that they have with your product. Perhaps they can showcase all of the clever ways that your products can be used. Whoever makes the best short videos based on the contest theme wins.

Attaching hashtags to these video contests will ensure that even those that don’t directly follow your brand online can video the submissions and take part in the proceedings should they so desire.

Incentivize tagging to expand your contest’s reach

People like to win free stuff and they also like it when people in their circle have a chance to win free stuff. Tap into this basic human nature by incentivizing people to tag friends and family as part of their entry into the contest.

This ensures that the contest reaches people who don’t follow the brand, ultimately achieving a snowball effect for interactions and engagement. For example, if you're offering a giveaway of Christmas goodies, ask followers to tag people that they'd like to share it.

The more people they tag, the greater the number of entries they get in the contest. It’s a simple yet effective way to get as many entries for the contest as possible.

Offer coupons to increase sales

Countless people will enter your contest but only one or a few will win, so what about all the rest? Everyone who took part in the contest is effectively an active lead. They saw something that they wanted from your brand and hoped for a chance to get it for free. Perhaps they might be interested in buying it as long as they scored a discount?

Sending everyone who didn’t win a coupon code can help increase conversions. They’ll feel that perhaps some good came out of their taking part in the contest after all. Since they’ve engaged and interacted with the brand recently, it will be at the top of their mind.

A coupon code during one of the most lucrative shopping seasons of the year may also encourage impulse purchases.

Be clear about eligibility requirements

Depending on the kinds of products and services that you offer, not everybody will likely be able to enter the contests, particularly those that are under the age of 18. There may also be certain geographical or legal restrictions to take into account.

Ensure that all of the eligibility requirements are specified. These requirements must be highlighted every time the contest is promoted online so that there’s absolute clarity for everyone that participates.

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5 Ways To Prevent Negative Comments From Ruining Your Brand Equity

steeldaddeh3@gmail.com (Chet Mitchell) — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 15:00:00 GMT

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There's no avoiding negative comments online. That's just the reality of operating in the digital space. While social media can be particularly toxic for individuals who suffer abuse and hate, brands are not immune to negativity online, either. Whether it's warranted or unwarranted, people have an opinion and the internet makes it easy for them to express it.

Preserving brand equity online can be a challenge if there’s an onslaught of negative comments regarding the brand’s products and services. It can snowball rather quickly since the vast majority of customers look for reviews online before they decide to open their wallets. If the brand doesn’t nip the problem in the bud, it risks ruining its reputation for good.

That’s one of the reasons why it’s so important for brands to quite literally be on their toes when it comes to online reputation management. This will prevent the far-reaching fallout from unwarranted negativity as well as provide the brand an opportunity to respond to justified criticism from customers and make amends where necessary while maintaining control of the narrative.

Be proactive in responding to negative comments

This too shall pass, is what a wise sage would say, but that wouldn’t apply to negative comments online. It’s easy to operate under the assumption that there won’t be an impact of such comments and that the best course of action would just be to bury your head in the sand and wait for time to work its magic.

Ignoring negative comments is perhaps the worst thing a brand can do when it comes to online reputation management. It gives off the impression that the brand just doesn't care what customers think about it. This will cause a trust deficit and prevent new potential customers from making a purchase.

Whether a comment is neutral, positive, or negative, the goal should always be to respond to every one of them. This proactive approach would signify that the brand takes customers' feedback seriously and is willing to make amends where necessary.

Keeping on top of all comments is also a great way to understand the pulse of the customer. Understand the customer sentiment about your brand as well as the content that you're sharing to make informed decisions about the way ahead.

Always provide a custom and thoughtful response

If your brand posts the same response to every comment that it receives, whether good or bad, it shows that not much thought has gone behind the exercise and that it’s merely being done to tick a box. This shouldn’t be the approach to online reputation management.

Remember, each customer will likely have a different reason why they’re not happy with the brand. They often feel personally let down by the product or service that they've spent money on. It’s important to make them feel heard and the best way to do that is to provide a custom response that appears thoughtful.

It should be apparent that the people responsible for responding to comments online have taken a moment to understand the issue at hand and are genuinely interested in making amends. Such thoughtful customer service significantly increases the chances of bringing back even the most disappointed of customers.

Resolve the dispute out of the spotlight

It’s in the brand’s best interests to deal with customers who have left a negative comment delicately. They already feel wronged and it’s important to quickly address their concerns to prevent them from leaving similar comments across other online channels.

Once you’ve made the initial contact, take the conversation out of the spotlight. The customer will likely have much more to say and it wouldn’t be nice for all of their grievances with the brand to be posted publicly across your social media pages.

Offer a compassionate response to show that the brand cares and is willing to make things right for them and then reach out through direct messages to understand the dispute in greater detail. Any further steps may then be taken to satisfy the customer.

Never delete comments without resolving the issue

What do you think an angry customer would do when they find that their comment has been deleted without any response from the brand? They’ll only get angrier and leave multiple negative comments across all online channels just to make sure that their voice is heard.

Deleting negative comments without resolving the issue is a recipe for disaster. The customer will only seek to amplify their grievances and that’s going to attract more attention to an issue that would have been resolved quickly and amicably.

Even though it might seem like a good option to delete the comments and hope that the customer doesn’t take note, it’s not the right thing to do. Once the issue has been resolved and the customer is satisfied with the same, perhaps ask them to amend their original review so that others can also see how the brand provides proactive customer service.

Leverage good customer service for more impact

If the issue is resolved, always ask the customer for their feedback, particularly about how they feel you could do better. Their feedback will be instrumental in helping you further improve the reputation of your brand online.

Customers will feel happy when their concerns are addressed and things have been made right for them. This will provide them with the confidence to continue being a loyal customer. They’re also likely to tell people in their circle about the positive customer experience that they had dealing with the brand.

Thus good customer service stemming from a negative online review can be leveraged to create more impact through the power of word of mouth.

A little empathy and compassion go a long way

Dealing with negative comments online is more of an art than a science. Simply by showing a little empathy and compassion with customers who feel that they’ve been wronged, the brand can do wonders for its online image while also ensuring that customers feel heard.

Effective engagement is crucial for creating a loyal customer base that not only sticks with the brand but ultimately becomes an advocate for it.

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8 Video Ideas Small Businesses Should Incorporate Into Their Digital Marketing

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 16:45:00 GMT

Every small business should at least consider video marketing. Videos are an incredibly popular form of consuming content. If you don’t create videos, you are missing out on a large segment of your potential audience. You can share your videos on your website, YouTube, and social media channels.

But one of the challenges with video marketing is coming up with new ideas. After all, you want to continue creating content to attract more customers. The following video ideas will help you avoid running out of ideas for this part of your digital marketing—at least for the time being.

1. Tell Your Brand Story

One of the most compelling types of videos to make is one about your brand story. This humanizes your small business, showing potential customers that there are real people behind it. It also helps them form a connection with you. That, in turn, will encourage them to consider buying from your brand.

2. Have Team Members Share Their Stories

This video idea is an extension of telling your brand story, but it makes it even more personal. With this idea, you have key members of your team tell their stories. They can share their past experience in the industry or how they ended up in the industry. They can talk about how they started working for your company and how long they’ve been there. Another good option is having them explain exactly what their role involves. This can help show all the people involved in your business.

You can also get creative with team members sharing stories. Ask them to share their favorite experience helping a client. Or ask them to talk about their favorite among your products. You can even tie this into current themes. For example, if Halloween is coming up, make a compilation video of your employees sharing their favorite past Halloween costumes.

3. Behind-the-scenes Products

Having your team tell their stories is just one type of behind-the-scenes video that you should consider. You can also look at day-to-day activities or any other aspect of your business. Maybe show the process that goes into developing a new product or creating the new storefront display.

These are very easy to make and are another way to encourage customers to connect with your brand. They also help show all the effort that goes into delivering your products and services, helping boost your perceived value.

4. Show Off Products

We mentioned the option of having your team members describe their favorite products in videos, but that’s not the only way to highlight products. If you have a very popular product or one that has a lot of common questions, create a video about it.

When launching a new product or service, make a video describing what makes it different and its benefits. Explain the customer pain points it will solve. If you sell something that isn’t necessarily intuitive to use, share a video on how to use it.

You can make videos offering tips on how best to use a certain product. For example, if you sell clothes, consider a video with outfit suggestions or one on care instructions. If you are a hair salon, offer tips on what to do to your hair (if anything) before visiting, such as washing it.

5. Event Videos

If you host an event, record during it. Then, create a video with highlights of the event. You could even livestream your event. This can help potential customers get to know your brand and make them feel like part of the community.

6. Educate Your Watchers

One of the most popular types of videos for digital marketing is educational videos. The already-mentioned videos on how to use products or offering tips on them fit into this category to some extent. But educational videos can also be much broader. They can include Q&As, guides, and more.

The great thing about educational videos is that they aren’t just limited to products and services you sell. You can also make them about related things. For example, if you sell workout gear, you could offer exercise tips in a video.

There is also another great advantage of educating your clients in videos. It shows off your expertise. People will see your brand as an expert in the industry, and that will encourage them to choose you over the competitors.

Not sure what content to include in educational videos? Look at your blog for inspiration. Consider turning your most popular blog posts into videos.

7. Customer Testimonials

Some of the best videos to include in your digital marketing are customer testimonials. These are just one type of social proof, but they can do wonders. They are a modern version of referrals and online reviews. Considering that most people look at reviews before buying a product or choosing a service, they are incredibly important.

You can get creative with these customer testimonials as well. Combine them with an influencer marketing strategy or with brand ambassadors. And think outside of the box when it comes to what clients talk about. They can talk about the overall experience buying from you, their favorite product, why they like you better than the competition, or anything else.

8. Videos With User-generated Content

One of your goals with digital marketing is to make customers feel as if they are part of a community. Sharing user-generated content is an excellent way to do this. The people whose content you include will feel special and included. At the same time, it will help potential clients see that you have clients just like them.

Depending on how you film them, customer testimonials can fit into this category. But you can also include images or videos that customers share on social media using your brand. Just remember to get permission first. A great way to generate user-generated content is with a hashtag or challenge. For example, a clothing store could ask users to tag them in photos wearing clothes from them.

Conclusion

Once you start making your videos, try to set a schedule for sharing them. This way, customers know when to expect new content from you. You should notice a boost in engagement and sales.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

13 Tips to Take the Perfect Photo for Your Digital Marketing – With Your Smartphone

Thu, 08 Dec 2022 16:45:01 GMT

You may think that you need a high-quality camera to take photos for your business. The good news is that you don’t need to invest in a camera. As long as you have at least a mid-range smartphone, you can likely take very good pictures with it. If you have a high-end smartphone, there is no question about it. Your phone is more than capable of taking high-quality images that will catch your customers’ attention.

But saying you can use your smartphone to take photos for digital marketing is one thing. Doing so well can be intimidating. The following tips will help you overcome that intimidation and take great photos.

1. Clean the Lens

Before you do anything else, take a second to clean your smartphone’s lens. Given how much we use our smartphones, this is an essential step. You likely have fingerprints on your lens, and those can make images look fuzzy or soft. Or dirt may cause foggy streaks.

This is as simple as occasionally using a good lens cleaner. Then, use a soft cloth regularly to touch up the lens.

2. Set the Highest Resolution

Before you start taking the photos, go into the settings in your smartphone’s camera. Confirm that it is set to the highest resolution. This will give you the best-quality image and the most options for editing. The tip below about avoiding the zoom function serves a similar purpose.

3. Always Stabilize the Camera

Your hands may be steady, but it’s always best to stabilize your phone. This eliminates the risk of your hands shaking and causing small imperfections. The good news is that there are a lot of compact, affordable smartphone tripods. And if you don’t have another option, just prop it against a wall, water bottle, or another object.

4. Don’t Use Flash – Use Other Light Sources

Lighting is crucial for any photo, but you don’t want to rely on your phone’s flash. Ideally, you will never use the flash in your photos. Instead, you will add more lighting from another source. This is because the flash tends to deliver harsh lighting.

The best light source will always be natural light. But that isn’t always feasible. Indoor lights, another smartphone’s flashlight, or candles also make good options. Just make sure to position the light so you aren’t taking a picture right into it.

5. Stick to Simple Backgrounds

No matter the type of photo you are taking for digital marketing, try to stick to simple, soft, and neutral backgrounds. This is especially important for product photos. This may require changing your angle slightly to find a unique point of view, but it is worth it.

6. Try Different Angles

Speaking of angles, don’t always take photos of things that are directly in front of you. Experiment with taking photos from other angles. Depending on your goals and what you are photographing, you may want to bend down and shoot up or climb up higher and shoot down.

7. Use Portrait Mode Strategically

Depending on the background and the focus of your photo, consider using portrait mode. Given the name, it may seem like a no-brainer to use portrait mode when taking photos of people, such as employees for the About Us page or behind-the-scenes photos. But you can also use it for animals or even objects.

That is because portrait mode lets you focus on the subject within the foreground. It reduces the depth of field, making the object you focus on clear but everything else slightly blurry. This makes it a good option if you can’t use a simple background.

8. Use the Grids as Your Guides

Your smartphone will have the option to turn grids on or off. Turn them on whenever taking photos for your digital marketing. These grids will help with two things. First, they will help you make sure the photo is straight. Second, they will help you follow the rule of thirds, which brings us to the next tip.

9. Follow the Rule of Thirds

This photography rule says that the subject of your photo should not be centered in the frame. Instead, it should sit on the lines that divide the photo into thirds. This is where the grid lines come in handy. There will be two gridlines, each horizontally and vertically, dividing the image into thirds. Place the focus of your photograph on the line.

10. Avoid the Zoom

You may want to use the zoom feature on your smartphone camera but don’t. As you zoom in, the resolution of the photo decreases. This makes your photos look grainy and makes them harder to edit. So, if you need a close-up photo of something for your business, get close to the object in question.

11. Don’t Use Effects During Photography

Modern smartphone cameras have a lot of cool effects, such as black and white or various filters. While these look cool, they limit your options and can be applied later. It’s better to take a photo without any effects, as this lets you experiment with every single option available later on.

12. Adjust Your Exposure

Modern smartphones let you adjust many of the same settings that you would on a standalone camera, including exposure. Use this to your advantage if you understand how exposure affects images. On many phones, you don’t even need to do anything fancy. Just tapping the screen on the part of the image that you want to be sharp will automatically reset the focus with good exposure.

13. Edit in a Consistent Style

You want to edit your photos before using them for digital marketing. When you do so for the first time, decide what type of style you want. This is important as you should be consistent with your style across all your photos. This will help with your branding. For example, you may want to use the same filter on all your photos (but you don’t have to).

Conclusion

With the above tips, you will find yourself taking high-quality photos with your smartphone. Use them in all your digital marketing, from your website to social media to paid ads.

Content create for Digital Harvest Marketing

What is Search Intent and How to Leverage it to Increase Rankings

steeldaddeh3@gmail.com (Chet Mitchell) — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 16:30:13 GMT

Google’s ranking algorithms have progressed significantly in the past few years. While it was possible to obtain high rankings for your content through strategic keyword placement and link building in the past, that’s no longer the case. They’re still crucial elements for any SEO strategy but Google now takes into account a lot more before deciding how to rank content on the results page.

In recent years, the internet search giant has made a considerable shift to give more weight to the intent of the search. The simple way to understand search intent is to put yourself in the users' position. Consider all of the factors behind why they are making this search. Is it because they want to purchase a product or they just want to learn something about it? Are they trying to find a website or just a quick answer to a question?

Search intent also comes into play when trying to optimize your content for SERP features like featured snippets and local business listings. For example, if you own a plumbing business in Los Angeles, people searching for “plumbers in Los Angeles” might be shown your Google Business profile, if you have one. Google’s algorithm understands that the person who made this search wants to find a local plumber. They won’t be interested in general information about plumbers.

Once you truly understand how Google has been using the concept of search intent to improve its rankings and provide more accurate search results, it’s not that difficult to optimize your content so that it fulfills the intent with which your audience is using the search engine.

Understanding the different types of search intent

Google has divided search intent into four types. The brief explanation that follows should make it evident which type of search intent you should be optimizing your content for, depending on the nature of your business.

Informational Intent

If a person is seeking to find out information about any particular topic, Google's algorithm will deem it to have informational intent. It could be something simple like "what is the capital of the United States" or complex like "what is the theory of relativity."

Do bear in mind that not all queries that have informational intent will be posed as questions. For example, a person could search for "Einstein theory" or "Roger Federer age." Google will then show content that is best optimized to answer these queries on the results page.

Navigational Intent

The consideration behind navigational intent is that the user must be looking for a specific website. They're not searching for the unknown. They know precisely what website they want to visit, but just need a little help getting there.

A lot of people commonly just type out the name of a website they want to visit in Google as opposed to typing the entire URL themselves since it's just easier. Queries with navigational intent might include things like "Mercedes Benz US website," "Facebook login," "Instagram Web," etc.

Commercial Intent

A user is deemed to have commercial intent when they're looking for information about products that they want to purchase. They need a little help deciding what they should buy. This may include reading reviews and comparisons of similar products from different manufacturers.

For example, a customer who wants to buy a phone may search for "iPhone 14 vs Galaxy S22." Someone who's in the market for a new car might search for "BMW X3 review," etc.

Transactional Intent

A search with transactional intent represents customers who are further along in the sales funnel and are almost ready to make a purchase. They may have done the research and comparisons previously. Now, they want to go ahead and purchase the product.

The reason behind their transactional intent search may also be to find the best possible deal. A transactional intent search may include keywords such as "buy Apple Watch," "macbook pro discount," etc.

How to leverage search intent to improve rankings

A new approach to keyword research

Understanding your audience's search intent is generally quite obvious from the keywords they use in Google. If you sell leather jackets, the keyword "buy leather jackets" is definitely one you should be optimizing for. Keep that in mind when doing keyword research for content optimization.

SEO research tools, you can take your pick from the many that are available, are worth investing into. They can provide detailed information about keywords and the volume of searches across different regions and even languages. Many of the top SEO tools also indicate the search intent alongside keyword suggestions, thus making it much easier for you to sort out the relevant keywords.

Create content based on search intent

It should have become evident by now that the search intent of your audience should make it clear how your content needs to be structured. If your audience primarily has informational intent, create detailed blog posts that sufficiently answer their queries.

A product page works if your visitors have transactional intent. The structure of the content and the layout of the page should make it easier for visitors to find what it is they’re looking for. This would signal to the algorithm that your content is relevant.

Capitalize on your competitors’ weaknesses

It’s possible that despite not being able to entirely fulfill the search intent, your competitors’ might be ranking higher than you due to low competition on any given keyword. If Google's algorithms aren't able to understand if that content truly meets the search intent, chances are that the ranking will see a lot of fluctuation.

It shows that Google isn't confident in that content's ability and thus this presents an opportunity for content that can check all of the boxes for that query. Utilize any of the widely used SEO research tools to find out such opportunities and create content that’s evidently better that what your competitor is ranking with, while taking particular care of satisfying the intent.

Search intent goes hand in hand with other SEO elements

Other SEO factors still remain important. Fulfilling search intent alone isn't going to magically give top 5 rankings to all of your content. The various other ranking factors that Google weighs are still important, but search intent is an important part of that mix.

Ensure frequency of content, avoid repetition, and unnecessary keyword stuffing. By relying on SEO best practices with further optimization achieved through search intent, you give your content a much better chance of cutting through the clutter and reaching the top of the rankings.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

Preparing Your Social Media for the 2022 Holiday Sales Push

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 16:30:59 GMT

Social media is crucial for brand marketing now more than ever before. It's of particular importance during the holiday season when people are actively looking to purchase items for themselves and their loved ones. The holiday season is both an opportunity and a challenge for brands as the competition is fierce at this time of the year.

Ad rates tend to be at their highest during the holiday season. Brands have to spend more to reach their intended audiences since most, if not all, of their competitors are also in the same race on the same social networks. It’s simply not a question of who’s got the biggest social media marketing budget.

An effective social media marketing campaign is never just about the budget. There are several other factors that play a crucial role in ensuring that the campaign is able to hit all of its goals, and the brand is able to achieve its desired ROAS. There’s a lot that brands can do ahead of the holiday season to ensure that they’re in a great position to push when the time comes.

Don’t fly blind into the 2022 holiday sales season

While it might sound amazing to just go guns blazing with your social media strategy for this holiday season, it would be better to take some time and study data from previous years to understand what worked and what didn’t.

Dive into the previous year's data to see which campaigns delivered the intended results or didn't. See which platforms saw the highest engagement for your content and where was the highest ROI achieved. Think of this data as the basis of your game plan for the 2022 holiday sales push.

For instance, it will make a lot of things clear, such as the platform where your most engaged audience is, what content and creatives have resonated with the audiences before, what sort of content to avoid this year, how customers responded to any offers and promotions, etc.

Once you’ve answered these and the many other questions that will come up when you’re going through the previous data, it’s time to get started with the preparation for this year’s holiday season.

Optimize your social media ahead of the 2022 holiday season

Start creating hype about your holiday deals

Some of the biggest brands in the world follow this strategy. They get into the groove much earlier than the crunch time. It gives them the opportunity to warm up their audiences so that they can be targeted more effectively during those crucial weeks.

Amazon is the perfect example of this. The online e-commerce juggernaut has its own online shopping event called Prime Day. Weeks before the actual event takes place, Amazon runs teaser deals and promotions to get customers excited for the main event.

Take a similar approach and start creating hype about your holiday deals. Give people an idea of what they can expect from the promotions that will be offered during those weeks. Give them the opportunity to take advantage of early deals. If they start buying from you ahead of the holiday season, chances are they will return to see your holiday deals when the time comes.

Launch an engaging hashtag campaign

Now is the right time to start elevating your brand profile, even if a lot of people already know about it. Remember, people are bombarded with ads and promotions during the holiday season. They may not be able to recall your brand. It's better to start an engaging hashtag campaign ahead of the holiday season just to remind the audience about the brand and also to introduce it to new people.

The possibilities are endless with a hashtag campaign. For example, you can create a unique hashtag that invites people to share their best holiday memories with your product. This is a great way to get the ball rolling on user generated content.

Customers will share their experiences and memories with the hashtag, leading to increased exposure for the brand and renewed interest among customers when the holidays come around.

Get your social media profiles into holiday mode

The brand assets that you use on your social media profiles are what create the first impression for your audience. Running promotions for the holiday season when all of the content on your website hasn’t been updated since the summer will not inspire confidence among those who come across your brand for the very first time.

Now is the right time to start updating those brand assets gradually. This will also ease the audience into the festive mode and they’ll essentially be informed that they can expect holiday deals and promotions from the brand in just a few short weeks.

Start by changing elements such as the profile and cover photos, perhaps add a festive touch to the bio as well. It sets the stage nicely for what’s to come.

Ask your customers how you can do better

Taking action on customer feedback is a great way to set yourself up for success. Is there anything that your customers felt let down by during the previous holiday sales season? Would they have wanted you to do something differently?

Now is the right time to reach out and engage with those customers through your social media profiles. Ask them for suggestions and feedback that you can incorporate into your 2022 holiday sales plan to ensure that customers get the best possible experience.

This will help build trust and improve the overall relationship with your customers ahead of the lucrative shopping season. If they see the brand they like making a genuine effort to improve based on their feedback, it’s quite likely that they will continue to support it.

Adding new resources if required

More sales during the holiday season will result in an increase for customer support. The last thing you’d want to do is to leave people with a bad customer support experience when they’ve ordered something for a loved one and there has been a problem.

Given the mad rush that the holiday season tends to bring, adding new resources to the team is just as important as optimizing the entirety of your social media presence. Whether you need new customer service agents or community managers for your social media profiles, this is a necessary step.

Ensure that the people are in place and have been trained in accordance with your brand guidelines to ensure that they can provide excellent customer support during what is often one of the most stressful shopping periods for customers all year.

Take this momentum into the new year

Once you’ve got a good momentum going during the holiday sales season, there’s no point why it shouldn’t be carried into the new year. That provides its own set of opportunities to increase conversions through targeted campaigns and messaging.

The holiday sales push can be a tough nut to crack for brands, particularly smaller brands with limited budgets, but the incredible opportunity that it provides makes it well worth the effort. All it requires is a bit of creativity and consistency. Combine that with a product that customers are happy to spend their money on and you’ve got this in the bag.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

The Importance of Hosting a Blog

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 17:18:26 GMT

Around 71% of small businesses have a website, so there's a good chance that you do too. You might put all your effort into the landing pages, and leave the blog pages alone since those are traditionally for personal and recreational use.

However, things have changed in the last decade, and blogs are vital in commercial marketing strategies now.

If you don't already have a blog, then it's about time to get started. Here are the reasons why hosting a blog would be great for your business.

It Helps With SEO

SEO (search engine optimization) is a practice that helps push your website to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs).

This is important because the #1 result on Google gets 34% of all organic traffic . Also, moving from #2 to #1 will double your organic traffic, and this position is worth the second through fifth positions combined.

Needless to say, having the top position on SERPs is a must. And well-written blog articles with good keywords sprinkled throughout will achieve this for you.

It's Great for Awareness

Are you having trouble spreading the word about your company and pulling in new customers? Then the good news is, a blog can help boost awareness.

When users see your blog page pop up in SERPs, they'll click to read since you're providing relevant content. They'll learn more about what you do and who you are. This can then drive them to find out more about your offerings, and hopefully, to convert in the future.

Blog posts are easy to share on social media too. If someone likes what they've read, they'll usually share the link on their accounts, and the result is your brand name being spread around.

It Builds Trust With Consumers

Not only do people learn more about your company and its offerings by reading your blog posts, but they also gain trust.

Every blog post you publish positions you as a thought leader in your industry. You'll show that you know your stuff and can help people effectively. So when consumers need your products or services, they'll automatically think of you instead of your competition.

The same goes for existing customers. If you continue to show them your dedication to your craft, it'll grow trust and loyalty, and prevent them from switching to competitors.

Hosting a Blog Is an Excellent Business Move

As you can see, hosting a blog comes with numerous benefits for your business. Not only can it help with your digital marketing plan, but it can also boost awareness, trust, and loyalty.

So if you don't already host a blog, it's time to get one. Thankfully, Digital Harvest Marketing is here to do the blog writing for you. That way, you can reap the benefits without extra effort.

If you'd like professional help with your business blog, then book an appointment with one of our brand visibility specialists today.

Live Q&As on Social Media: Tips for Small Businesses

steeldaddeh3@gmail.com (Chet Mitchell) — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 16:45:00 GMT

Hosting a live Q&A on social media is an excellent way to connect with your client base and attract new clients. But to make the most of it, there are a few important things to bear in mind.

Benefits of Live Q&As

Before getting into tips to run a live Q&A successfully on social media, it’s important to understand why they matter. A live Q&A can deliver the following benefits for your small business:

● Boost engagement

● Expand your reach

● Improve your online presence

Choose the Platform Carefully

The first thing to do is decide what platform to host your live Q&A on. Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch are all popular options, but they are far from the only choices. Remember to use a channel that will let your audience interact with you via chats.

The key to making the right decision is to choose the social media channel that your customers are on. If you want to maximize engagement during the Q&A, opt for the platform where you have the most followers and where your audience is most active. Still, you could also try using a Q&A livestream to grow your audience on a lesser-used channel. In that case, you will need to make sure to advertise heavily on the channels your audience spends more time on.

Promote the Q&A

Speaking of promotion, make sure you announce and market your Q&A. Otherwise, potential and current clients may not even know you are hosting the online event. They may even find out about it when it’s too late and not be able to attend. Aside from informing your current customers, promoting the livestream also helps generate additional interest, growing your number of attendees.

Promote at Least a Few Weeks Early

Ideally, you want to announce your small business’s Q&A sessions at least a few weeks ahead of time. At the very least, aim for a week before the event. For the best results, you want to treat the Q&A like you would an actual onsite event, which merits announcing it earlier.

Highlight the Benefits

As you promote your Q&A, do so in a way that highlights how it benefits attendees. By providing value, you will move attendees along the customer journey. You will also find yourself better able to attract attendees.

Encourage Setting Up Notifications

As part of advertising your live Q&A, consider encouraging your audience to set up notifications. At the very least, you can instruct them to set up notifications for your livestream. But ideally, activating notifications for all of your activity is the best way for them to stay engaged in your brand.

Prepare for the Q&A

While there is a time and place for impromptu business live streams, being prepared for a Q&A communicates that you value your customers’ time. Of course, you want to be prepared without appearing too stiff and rehearsed. You need to be prepared enough to answer questions and control the conversation yet natural enough to sound authentic and keep the conversation flowing.

Make an Outline

Start by drafting an outline or a list of the primary points you want to cover. This ensures that all vital information is included in the Q&A.

Ask for Questions and Prepare Answers

When advertising your upcoming Q&A, encourage people to submit questions to you. This saves you the stress of having to choose a question and answer it on the fly. It also lets you choose questions to answer based on your goals. Preselecting questions to answer will also help you address the most common queries of your customer base.

Once you have your list of questions, you can adequately prepare answers. It’s best to prepare your answers in bullet points and not sentences. Doing so will make your responses sound natural and not rehearsed, and you will ensure that all important points are covered since they are listed down.

Come Up with Additional Questions

If your audience doesn’t submit a substantial number of questions before the Q&A, come up with a few yourself. If you need inspiration, think about the most common questions thrown at your customer support team. Once you identify potential questions, you can prepare your responses in advance.

By preparing for this, you ensure that you have enough content to fill your planned livestream. With an adequate amount of questions and answers, you decrease the chances of lulls or dead air in your live online event.

Choose a Moderator

While you don’t need a moderator for a successful livestream, it can be incredibly helpful for a Q&A. This is especially important if you plan on answering questions that your audience submits during the livestream. In that case, the moderator will be responsible for deciding which questions get answered.

Even if you have your audience submit questions ahead of time, the moderator can help ensure that multiple people don’t start talking at once. Moderators help you run your event smoothly.

Interact With Your Audience

While you want to prepare some answers to questions before the Q&A session, you also want to give the audience opportunities to interact with you. Without the interaction, you might as well show a pre-recorded video instead of doing a livestream.

A good method to keep your audience engaged is to interact with users as they join. You can mention specific names as you welcome them. When you answer questions asked by users, make your responses personalized and sincere.

Do a Tech Run

One of the worst things that can happen is for you to experience technical difficulties while you are live. This will reflect poorly on your brand. By testing your equipment and technical setup ahead of time, you avoid this kind of problem. Most social media platforms let you set livestreams to private, enabling you to test your live event without any viewers. During this tech run, confirm that all your equipment works properly, especially your camera and microphone. Doing so also lets you confirm that the lighting is good and that your internet connection is stable.

Record It

Don’t forget to record your livestream. This is a good practice for any livestream your small business does, as it lets you save the video onto your YouTube or social media page. The video can then turn into a reference for people who have common questions. You can even edit the video to shorter versions posted on social media, each addressing one question at a time.

Conclusion

A livestream Q&A will let you engage with your customers and create a sense of community. To maximize your chances of success, choose the channel that your audience prefers and promote the Q&A across all other channels. Prepare some questions and topics to cover ahead of time, but encourage interaction from the audience as well. Finally, be sure to record your livestream for valuable content you can reuse.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

How playlists on TikTok can significantly increase views

Tue, 08 Nov 2022 16:59:44 GMT

It seems that TikTok came out of nowhere and quickly established itself as a bonafide social network. To do that in a surprisingly amount of time in what happens to be a very competitive market is certainly deserving of praise.

TikTok has a major advantage that incumbents like Facebook don't: a primarily younger demographic. In the US, Gen-Z is the dominant audience on TikTok, whereas Facebook is finding it difficult to retain young users on its platform.

For most marketers, though, TikTok still remains a mystery. While TikTok has built out its ad suite to compete with the incumbents, there isn’t as much widespread acceptability when you compare it to Facebook Ads or Google Ads. That’s not to say that the value isn’t there. On the contrary, TikTok can be a great source of highly targeted traffic, provided that it’s done right.

The platform continues to improve its offerings to provide features that can be utilized to increase views and engagement. Playlists on TikTok are one such feature. They’ve been around since last year and are a great way to instantly boost views on videos, thereby leading to an increase in engagement.

How playlists work and who can make them on TikTok

Tiktok announced the launch of its playlists feature in 2021. As the name suggests, it enables users to categorize their videos in an easily playable format, so that viewers can seamlessly see some of their best work without having to dig through their profile. TikTok puts playlists on the user's profile above their pinned and recently posted videos.

Sounds like a feature that should be available to every TikTok user, right? Sadly, that isn't the case at this point in time. The TikTok playlists feature is only available for select content creators at this point in time. How do you know if you can create a playlist on TikTok? You'll see an option to create one in the Video tab of your profile.

It's not known for sure what requirements there are for a user to meet before this feature is enabled for them. Perhaps TikTok is doing a phased roll out of this feature, so eventually it should be possible for all TikTok users to create playlists.

The benefits of creating playlists on TikTok

If you're among the lucky users who have been given access to this feature, it's time that you considered the benefits of creating TikTok playlists.

Prime placement for your best content

TikTok’s For You page is built with the idea helping users discover new creators. The app actively sends people your way who may never have seen your content before. You’d definitely want them to see your best work first so that they stick around and become an engaged follower.

When someone comes across your video and opens your profile, the playlists will be front and center. It presents you the perfect opportunity to make the best first impression with your content. A playlist with some of your best work will ensure that these new visitors appreciate your work and become part of your audience.

Significant increase in watch time

Watch time is one of the most important metrics for video content creators. It tells them precisely how long their content is able to keep the viewer’s attention. Higher watch times mean that the viewers are appreciating the content and are happy to stick around for more.

Playlists on TikTok provide users with the ability to increase their watch time. By offering curated selections of their content, they can keep viewers engaged and entertained for longer, thereby increasing watch time and also establishing a stronger connection with the audience which would translate into more engagement with all of their content.

Help viewers find what they’re looking for

If you create episodic content on TikTok, viewers would want to have all of the related videos available for seamless viewing. For example, if you create videos about cooking and knitting, someone who is only interested in your recipes may not want to watch any content about knitting.

By creating separate playlists for the topics that you create content on, you can help viewers find what they’re looking for with relative ease. This creates a good first impression and the fact that you made the process easier for them will encourage them to continue engaging with your content in the long run.

Best practices for TikTok playlists

The playlists that you create on TikTok should have a structure that helps viewers understand what they're watching and what they can expect from the videos coming up ahead. This is of particular importance for brand accounts as not all viewers will likely be interested in all of your products or services.

It's important to remember that great playlists tell a story. They aren't just a random collection of videos thrown together. They're meant to weave a complex fabric made up of your best content that captures the viewer's attention and keeps them coming back for more.

A great way to start your playlists is by adding an intro video. It serves as an introduction to the content that the viewer is about to experience. The intro should be catchy and engaging so that they're naturally intrigued to follow along and check out the rest of your content.

Social media users have a notoriously low attention span. If your videos are excessively long or appear to be in the rambling territory, chances are your viewers won't view more than a couple of videos and probably won't return. It's vital to keep content length in check so that the message you want to convey is sent across in a concise manner that also retains the viewer's attention.

Lastly, audience engagement is always the most important part of any social media activity. People who watch your playlists will leave comments on the videos, some with suggestions and some likely with criticism. Take time to engage with all of them as viewers appreciate when creators make an effort to connect with their audiences.

Playlists are crucial to success on TikTok in the long term

It’s evident that playlists on TikTok have a big role in ensuring success on the platform and also increasing views. Once people enjoy the content that your playlists provide them, they are more likely to go through your profile and follow you.

Think of playlists as another funnel to bring traffic to your main profile. If they find content that they’re interested in, they’ll want to follow you so that they can keep seeing your content. This will lead to an increase in video views across the board, providing you with continued success on one of the largest social media networks in the world right now.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

Building Your Small Business Blog: Where to Find Great Topic Ideas

steeldaddeh3@gmail.com (Chet Mitchell) — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 15:45:00 GMT

You know that having a blog on your small business website is a smart idea. After all, it helps with SEO and positions you as an industry expert. However, coming up with blog topics can be incredibly challenging. While you will likely be able to generate a dozen or more topics off the top of your head, you’ll eventually hit a roadblock.

Luckily, there are plenty of great resources available. These give you enough ideas for your blog posts for the foreseeable future.

Do an Online Search for Topics

A simple starting point is to search online. Just enter the term “[Industry] blog topics.” You will likely find numerous lists with dozens of ideas. These topics will range from industry-specific blog posts, such as news stories in your industry. You will also find general topics, such as telling your brand story.

Share Industry News

News stories in your industry will also make for an excellent source for blog topics. The key here is to focus on stories that are newsworthy to your audience. For instance, if you are a clothing store, you could find news stories about celebrity outfits or fashion trends. Or if you are a pharmacy, you could share stories about new medicines and breakthroughs in the field.

Use Content Tools

Don’t overlook the usefulness of content tools to help you come up with topics. There are various tools that will generate topics for you based on keywords. You can also use content tools to determine what keywords you should focus on. From there, you can create blog posts that revolve around those keywords.

Ask Your Customers

Part of your goal with your blog is to appeal to your customers and provide the information they need. You want them to see you as their go-to source for answers. Given that, it makes perfect sense that you ask them what they would like you to write about.

You can do so by sending out a quick survey. You can even ask a few questions about potential topics or categories of topics along with another survey that you send out. For the best results, keep the survey short, sticking to about five to ten questions. To make it even simpler, stick to multiple choice or checkboxes when crafting your survey. Just add a space for optional comments.

Look for Common Online Searches

In addition to asking your customers what they want to know more about, you can try to figure out what people are looking for online. Type in a keyword or phrase for your industry or business and look at Google’s “People Also Ask” section. You can also check the “related searches” section. Both of these are excellent sources for topics.

Look at Online Forums

Yet another option to determine the questions your audience wants answered is to look at forums. While forums are less popular than they have been in the past, there are still plenty of online communities and forums to get inspiration from. Some options include Reddit and Quora.

Check Comments on Blogs, Posts, Photos, and More

Comments are also a good source of topics your audience is interested in. These can include comments on nearly any topic under the sun. If there’s a comment on a recent blog post asking about a related topic, use it as an idea. Browse through your posts and photos on social media. Topics people commonly mention in the comments section give you a picture of the kind of content that would engage your target audience.

Ask Your Team

Your team can provide great ideas for blog ideas. Maybe they have a special interest within your industry that they could write about. Or perhaps the frequently asked questions from clients would make good topics for blog posts.

Get Ideas from Other Blogs

A simple and effective way to find good blog topics that attract attention is to look at blogs of competitors in your industry. Ideally, find a few companies in your industry that have really good blogs and keep them bookmarked for easy reference. Whenever you need inspiration, you can easily visit their blogs to get ideas for your own blog topics.

Just remember that you need to churn out original work. If you see a topic you like, read what other blogs have written about the same topic. Combine all the information from multiple resources and add your own personal touch based on your industry knowledge.

Get Ideas From Your Business

A long list of blog topics can come from within your business. Depending on how you use these ideas, you get an endless list of potential topics as your company grows. Some topics can easily lead to dozens of posts. For example, you could have a separate post interviewing each member of your staff. Some other ideas can include:

● Different aspects of your company story

● Interviews with staff members

● Interviews/testimonials of clients

● Introductions to products and services

● Announcements of new products

● Upcoming expansions

● Any other company news

Convert Other Types of Content Into Blogs

Your small business likely creates multiple types of content as part of your marketing efforts. In addition to blogs, you likely have video marketing and social media posts. Get in the habit of reusing content. You can take a popular video and turn it into a blog post or turn a blog post with a lot of comments into a video. If one of your social media posts gets a lot of engagement, see if you can turn it into a full-length blog post.

Incorporate Local Events

Small businesses tend to be closely connected with their communities. So, it makes sense to include the occasional blog post about your community. Use your blog to write about upcoming community events that are somehow related to your industry. You may opt to interview community members that are involved in the events. A good example of this is when a business like a gym interviews local college athletes for a blog post.

Write Down All Your Ideas

Some great ideas for blog topics can come up in the most random moments. Get in the habit of jotting down your ideas when they come to mind. Even if you already have a lineup of next month’s set of headlines, keeping a record of all your ideas ensures you never run out of interesting and relevant blog topics.

Conclusion

With these tips, you will find yourself with a never-ending supply of blog topics. All you have to do is write engaging and compelling content, making sure you post your blogs strategically to maximize their impact.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

What Google's Latest SEO Update Is All About

Thu, 27 Oct 2022 15:18:55 GMT

There are many who proclaim that SEO is dead and there is enough circumstantial evidence for them to back up this claim. The rise of video content, particularly short from video, has drastically changed the way people consume knowledge on the internet. So while people may have searched for something they had a question about on Google first, these days you might find them searching on YouTube or even TikTok first.

There’s no denying that the way people consume knowledge on the internet has changed but that certainly doesn’t mean that SEO is dead. If that were true, Google still wouldn't be the most visited website on the planet. It's visited nearly 90 billion times every month . As of January 2022, Google accounts for a staggering 92% of the search engine market . If anything, these stats show that SEO is certainly here to stay. As long as Google continues to receive the kind of traffic it does, there will always be an opportunity to optimize content for higher rankings in search results.

Google operates a variety of online services but search continues to be one of its most important and lucrative services. No wonder, then, that the company is known for not resting on its laurels for the search engine. Google often releases both minor and major updates for its search algorithm.

These updates are meant to improve the user experience for the billions of people that rely on Google every single day. However, it can often be tricky for publishers to navigate these updates, since they can often result in significant traffic drops. Google released its most recent significant update in August.

August 2022 brought Google's 'Helpful Content' update

The Helpful Content updates that Google periodically releases have the sole purpose of improving the quality of content that surfaces in response to a query. Unfortunately, a lot of publishers still try to game the system by writing content for the express purpose of ranking in search results.

This content is usually light on the information that the visitor actually requires and thus they need to visit several pages before they can find what they're looking for. In Google's own words, the August 2022 update was meant to "help make sure that unoriginal, low-quality content doesn't rank highly in Search."

All content is written with the aim of getting it to rank in Google search. However, this update won’t affect those who are creating quality content that matches the user intent of the people searching on Google. Publishers who are only creating low quality content that’s stuffed with keywords and doesn’t provide the visitor with value will likely see their rankings being hit following this update.

How to prevent a traffic drop after Google’s latest update

1. Keep your site focused

Google's release notes for the update have implied that it's important for websites to have a niche. Websites that have a primary purpose or focus are essentially deemed to be of a higher quality compared to those that seem to cover content without any focus. This is obviously going to be unhelpful for visitors.

For example, someone searching for tips on how to improve their credit score would be surprised to see tips on woodworking on that same site. This also presents a problem for Google's crawlers to properly understand the site and thus index the pages that are to be ranked. The website could end up being flagged as low quality by the algorithm since it may presume that a lot of content is being produced on different topics simply in the hopes of ranking on Google.

2. Don’t go too far from your area of expertise

Google wants publishers to ask themselves a few questions, namely, is the content meant for humans or for search engines? Are topics being covered that have no similarity to the focus of the website simply because they're trending? Is the website offering advice on any niche area that it doesn't have any real expertise in?

For example, if you have a website about travel deals, your visitors would be a bit confused if they start seeing healthy recipes. You might decide to cover them if you come across high volume, low competition keywords, but Google might view it as an attempt to go way beyond the scope of your website to write content simply with the purpose of getting it to rank.

3. Focus on providing a good reader experience

Intent and experience now play a significant role in rankings on Google. For the keywords that people type into the search engine, the algorithm now detects the intent behind their query and surfaces the results that it deems most appropriate.

Google is now also placing weight on the reader experience, in that the visitor should leave your website feeling that they had a good experience. For example, a reader might land on your website from Google and go through a lengthy post but still feel that their query remained unanswered. This wouldn't be a satisfying user experience.

4. Avoid answering questions that have no definite answer

Many publishers, particularly in the tech or entertainment space, tend to create posts that answer questions that don't have a definitive answer yet. An article about the release date for a major superhero movie that hasn't even been announced by the studio would fit this description.

It's up to the publisher to make it clear to the reader that the information that they're presenting is rumored or not conclusive. If this isn't clear, the algorithm may deem the post to be misleading, causing the site to be flagged and the rankings being lowered as a consequence.

How to recover from the latest Google SEO update?

Google’s updates normally take a couple of weeks to roll out. Since this latest update started rolling out at the end of August, most publishers would have seen an impact in their rankings by now. If yours have lowered after the update was released, you need to revisit the content on your website.

Follow the tips provided up to make changes so that the content is in line with Google’s guidelines. Do keep in mind that you won’t see an instant improvement in the rankings after making these changes. It normally takes a few months and subsequent Google updates for the site’s fortunes to reverse.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

5 Tools to Build Your Own Online Community, and Why Every Business Should

Wed, 19 Oct 2022 15:50:56 GMT

Online communities can prove to be a highly effective tool for marketing. The ROI that these communities can generate is immense. Businesses can utilize these communities to increase their brand awareness, build trust in the business, and ultimately get people to convert into paying customers. Furthermore, they also enable brands to control the narrative about their products and services, thereby ensuring that their brand value doesn't suffer as a result of misinformation.

There's no shortage of community-building tools available to businesses. Whether you’re just a startup with a limited marketing budget or a well-established organization, there are plenty of tools that make it much easier to launch community-building initiatives that help elevate the status of your brand.

5 top tools to use for online communities

1. Community forums

Some of the largest brands in the world, across multiple industries, operate their own community forums. The forums serve as a sort of meeting place for fans of the company, who can learn from the experiences of others and ask any questions that they may have about the products.

Community forums are also great for troubleshooting, since members often help each other out and provide tips on how to extract the most value out of the products. Discussion forums also happen to be one of the oldest community-building tools. Back in the day, forums were only text-based, without any multimedia functionality. Now, you can choose from a wide variety of discussion forum tools that provide excellent usability with the option to add videos, emojis, GIFs, and more.

2. Live streaming on social networks

Live streaming has become an incredibly popular tool for building communities and keeping members engaged. Video content tends to perform very well online and customers are now increasingly making purchase decisions based off of livestreams. The numbers speak for themselves. Live streaming as a format saw over 8.2 billion hours of content being consumed in the third quarter of 2021. This number is only set to grow even more.

The great thing about this platform is that it doesn’t require any investment in additional tools. The largest social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, and YouTube, are free to use and they’re also the leading live streaming service providers. Simply set up a free page for your brand on any of these services and start live streaming.

3. Email marketing tools

It's easy to believe that perhaps email marketing doesn't have the relevance in 2022 that it did before but this couldn't be further from the truth. Email marketing remains one of the most popular ways to build a loyal community. The ROI on email marketing is also considerably higher compared to other methods.

There are popular tools like MailChimp and ConvertKit that can supercharge a brand's email marketing efforts. They make it possible to capture emails through opt-in and lead generation pages, which is a great way to grow the email list. Similar tools also make it possible to segment and tag subscribers, set up automations for email campaigns while also providing detailed stats to help you get the best out of email marketing.

4. Facebook Groups

This is another great option for businesses who may not be able to spend a lot of money on their marketing efforts. Facebook is free to use, even if you’re a business, and Facebook Groups are a powerful tool for creating communities of highly engaged members. Since this happens to be the world’s largest social media network, the groups on Facebook tend to see a flurry of activity. Recent figures have shown that over 1.8 billion people use Facebook Groups every month. The potential here is endless.

Make the loyal fans and customers who join your group feel valued. They will be the most vocal advocates for your products. Use the group to provide them with exclusive access to the company, whether that's true interactive sessions with key decision makers or sneak peeks at new products. Businesses can get far more reach for their posts in groups that they can get for their pages.

5. Dedicated app

While this may be better suited to more established businesses, given the costs involved in creating a full-fledged app, a dedicated app is one of the greatest community tools with an incredible growth potential. There’s far more control over the user experience in your own app compared to that of a social network.

The business can provide features and functionality that it deems most appropriate for its community. For example, the app can also be used to provide exclusive deals and discounts on products not available anywhere else. This ensures that customers always purchase directly through mediums provided by the company, instead of going through a third-party. A separate app can only include more social commerce features that fully tie the customer into the brand’s ecosystem.

Why every business should build a community

There are benefits to communities beyond customer retention and increased sales. People inherently want to be part of a community, of a tribe. They appreciate the feelings that it evokes. In the case of businesses, it makes them feel that they have a voice and can influence how the company they love to patronize operates.

This provides exceptional growth potential for a business, as long as it’s able to effectively tap into the community. It’s not just about increasing sales or keeping customers coming back for more. Businesses must also listen to what their community is saying. Whether it’s push back for a marketing campaign that wasn’t well received or feedback that can genuinely help make their products better.

It’s supposed to be a two-way street. Take the guidance and criticism that you receive from community members in your stride. Ensure that they feel heard and that their legitimate concerns are addressed. Learn from their experiences to see how your products and services can be improved. Keep communicating with them so that they remain engaged and feel product of supporting a company that they feel emotionally invested in. Such potential is difficult to replicate through any other medium.

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7 Link Building Strategies for Small Businesses That Deliver Results

Sun, 09 Oct 2022 15:00:00 GMT

How do you get more traffic and boost your website’s visibility in the search engines? Link building is a proven way to accomplish both!

It will not only increase the chances that someone comes across a link to your website, but it also adds to your reputation factor in the search engines, giving you a boost in the search engine rankings.

With that in mind, what link-building strategies should your small business use?

Consider the following strategies, all of which can be done with very little resources.

Look for Mentions Without Links – And Claim the Links

Your company is likely mentioned more frequently than you realize. But most of those mentions likely won’t include backlinks. If you find those, you can ask for them to include a backlink. This should be a simple sell, as someone mentioning your brand is already satisfied enough to mention you.

Of course, take the time to look at the mention before reaching out and asking for a backlink. Don’t ask for backlinks from negative mentions; that would be in poor form and potentially counterintuitive.

Support the Local Community

One of the best ways to naturally build links to your website is to be active in the community. If you support or even just volunteer with local charities and nonprofits, they are likely to mention it. At the very least, you can write a press release about it that will be picked up by the local paper. If you go for a larger sponsorship or donation, the organization you help will almost always give you backlinks. Get creative with this, and don’t just focus on local charities. Don’t forget about schools or any other type of local event.

Consider Offering a Scholarship

Another way to support the local community and get some backlinks in return is by offering a scholarship. As a bonus, some of your backlinks will be very high value because they will be from .edu websites. Of course, you will need to budget for this, but it can be highly effective. Ideally, you want to limit applicants to those in the local area. You could also limit it to majors that are relevant to your industry.

Reach Out to Local or Niche Bloggers

Influencer marketing is real, and you can take advantage of it by working with local bloggers popular in your city. Bloggers will be in search of partnerships, however brief, with local businesses. After all, they can only come up with so many content ideas on their own.

Offer to write a guest post for their blog. Or offer a free service or product in exchange for a review or mention. Don’t forget to also create a natural relationship by resharing their content. They will eventually do the same. For the best results, make sure you choose a blogger who is relevant to your business.

Write Guest Posts

Local bloggers are far from the only ones you can offer to write guest posts for. Look for other websites that are relevant to your industry and accept guest blogging. You will have to find relevant websites that accept guest posts and come up with a compelling topic. Then, you will have to pitch the topic and get approval before you can even write the piece.

Promote Your Content

When you write something on your website or blog, go ahead and share it. Promote your content on more than just social media. You can even post on LinkedIn, Medium, and more.

Offer Testimonials or Case Studies

The idea of offering case studies or testimonials may seem a bit odd from an advertising perspective. After all, you want to gather these things for your company, not offer them to others. But most of the time, when you offer a testimonial or participate in a case study, the company in question will link back to your website. The caveat is that there is no guarantee they will backlink. On top of that, you are putting your reputation on the line, so only do this if you believe in the company.

Conclusion

With the above tips in mind, you should be on your way to getting more backlinks for your small business’s website. This, in turn, should lead to an increase in traffic and more sales.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

8 Creative Ways for Small Businesses to Grow Their Email List

Fri, 07 Oct 2022 13:30:04 GMT

Every small business needs to have an email list - it’s one of the most valuable assets you can develop in today’s largely digital world.

Having a list of people you can send information to regarding product launches, sales, and service reminders will give you a big boost to your business.

But you need people to opt-in to receive emails; you can’t just add someone to your email list without their consent.

The following strategies will help you grow your list.

Make It Easy to Sign Up

Start by ensuring that it is as easy as possible for people to sign up for your email list. Asking for someone’s first name helps with personalization, but your list will grow more quickly if you get rid of this field. You will have to decide whether that is worth it for you. The bottom line is that the less information you ask for, the quicker your list will grow.

No matter what information you ask for, make sure that your email signup list is in an obvious location on your website. And reduce the number of clicks people have to make to get the signup.

Invite on Social Media

Take advantage of your presence on social media platforms to occasionally remind people to subscribe. Include a link to do so in your bio on your social media profile pages. Then, every once in a while, create a post encouraging subscriptions.

Pitch the Newsletter

Whether you promote your email list on social media, your website, or somewhere else, consider pitching the newsletter directly. Of course, you first have to create a newsletter that is relevant to your audience for this to work. For example, a clothing store could offer a weekly or monthly style guide. Or, if you provide a service, you can offer a regular newsletter with industry insights.

Use QR Codes to Get Signups

Speaking of making it easy to sign up for your email list, consider creating a QR code that will take users right to the signup page. Then, place this in physical locations in your store and on your physical advertisements. Add them to the bottom of your receipts. You could even put one on your website, but these are more effective in the real world.

Offer an Incentive

A classic method of gathering emails is offering some sort of incentive. Depending on your business, this can be a discount code on the next purchase or a free item with the next purchase. Or maybe it will be a free trial of your service.

Or you can offer something educational and useful, such as an e-book. For example, if you are a realtor, consider writing an e-book about tips for buying or selling homes.

Host an Event – And Ask for Email Addresses

A related idea is to host a webinar or in-person event and ask for emails as part of the registration process. Just make sure to make the process of opting in clear. You don’t want to fall into legal trouble. (This can be as simple as adding an appropriate checkbox.)

Thank New Subscribers Right Away

Part of building your email list means not losing the subscribers that you have already gained. One way to do this is to engage with new subscribers immediately. This can be as simple as a thank-you page after they sign up. Or sending a welcome email. This is also a great time to throw in those discount codes, e-books, or other incentives mentioned before.

Let Users Control the Content They Receive

Another way to reduce the number of people who unsubscribe is to increase the chances that they receive the content they want. Start by making sure you always offer high-quality, relevant content in the messages you send.

But consider taking this to the next level and giving your subscribers options. You can offer emails at various frequency intervals or give them the option to only receive certain types of emails. For example, maybe they don’t want to receive your weekly product round-up but do want to know about discounts or new products.

Conclusion

With the above tips in mind, you should notice your email list growing and your unsubscribes dropping. Now, you have to focus on creating an effective email marketing strategy.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

Why Content Marketing Is Still Relevant in 2022

Tue, 04 Oct 2022 17:39:32 GMT

Every marketer has heard the adage “Content is King.” The idea behind is simple enough. If your content speaks for itself and helps people find the answers to what they’re looking for, then you’re set.

However, with the significant evolution that online marketing has gone through over the past decade or so, many now believe that perhaps content marketing isn’t as relevant in 2022 as it once was.

At first glance, this may appear to be true. Video is now the preferred medium of choice for both creators and audiences. Short-form video has seen explosive growth backed by the likes of TikTok and Instagram Reels.

With people accustomed to bite-sized videos providing them the information that they need, is the opportunity for doing content marketing with more substance gone for good?

That assumption couldn’t be further from the truth.

If people simply stopped searching for information online then Google, which is the world’s leading online search engine, would see a significant traffic decline.

That hasn’t materialized. In fact, searches continue to see rapid growth on the search engine, highlighting the fact that content marketing is far from over.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a broad term that includes all forms of content, not just blog content. People who post videos on YouTube and other platforms are also content marketers, it’s just that they have a different platform that they prefer to use. However, these are still fairly recent additions to this strategy.

Blogs are still considered to be the primary form of content marketing. That’s basically how this aspect of online marketing got its start. Marketers and brands would create relevant blogs, articles, lists, and more to bring in as many people as they could who were searching for relevant terms on Google.

Why is blog content marketing so powerful?

Google remains one of the biggest traffic sources on the planet. If you’re able to get your blog ranked for high-traffic keywords, the search engine will send highly qualified traffic your way. That traffic will turn into leads and a percentage of those visitors would convert into customers.

This is one of the reasons why marketers focus so much on SEO or search engine optimization. It’s more of an art than a science, taking a piece of content and optimizing it so that it outranks the competition on Google. That’s also what makes it so powerful.

Even though the Google search results page has transformed into much more than just 10 blue links on every page, video content still doesn’t get as much visibility on the results page. You can’t get a TikTok video ranked in Google. The company does show limited results from YouTube, only because its parent company Alphabet also owns YouTube. Similarly, videos from Facebook can’t be ranked in Google.

Consider this for a moment. One of the world’s top sources for highly qualified traffic is effectively closed off to video content. This allows blog content to shine through as Google’s aim is to send people to websites that provide the information most relevant to their query.

The barrier of entry is much lower

Blog content writing doesn’t really require much investment right off the bat. This is why it’s such a great option for small businesses that have a very limited marketing budget. They will most likely already have a website. What they need to do is create a blog to go along with that website and they can then start posting content based on the products and services that they provide.

It’s not the same with other forms of content marketing, particularly video. People are used to seeing high-quality and well-produced videos on the internet now. The higher the quality, the more it’s likely to gain traction on platforms like YouTube.

Small businesses often don’t have the budget to hire professional presenters, acquire high-end camera equipment, and invest in powerful computers for processing and editing. It makes the cost prohibitive from the get-go even before the business can figure out whether their content direction is even going to yield any favorable results.

The simplicity remains unmatched

Another reason why blog content marketing remains a preferred option for small businesses is because it’s relatively simple compared to the other formats. Even a small business that has just one employee can execute this strategy without requiring much in equipment. In fact, most small business owners who are just starting out rely on this marketing strategy for precisely this reason.

What it simply requires is a great understanding of how the product or service that the business is providing helps make customers’ lives easier. Then it’s just a matter of explaining that through a series of posts and helpful articles that make potential customers understand the benefits of buying from that business.

This is something that can be done entirely by a single person. It’s even better for those who may not be comfortable putting themselves out there by creating video content. With blog content marketing, they’re able to remain in their comfort zones while also ensuring that their business has a good chance of expanding its visibility online.

Content marketing will thrive in 2022 and beyond

All those who made predictions of doom for blog content marketing have already been proven wrong. The numbers don’t lie. People still search for information online more than ever before. They’re actively looking for content that can help solve a problem that they’re facing or answer a question that they have.

Some of the world’s leading brands continue to invest heavily in their content marketing efforts for precisely this reason. There’s no reason why small businesses should give up on it just because it seems that video is the sort of content that tends to do very well online.

Content marketing is here to stay. It will thrive in 2022 and beyond, and the only thing that’s left for small business owners is to take the plunge so that they can start extracting its full potential.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

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The Social Media Metrics That Matter The Most In 2022

Wed, 21 Sep 2022 18:09:32 GMT

Simply having a social media presence in today’s business world isn’t good enough.

The digital marketing landscape has evolved considerably over the past few years, and it’s more competitive than ever before. Brands are going head to head against each other to ensure that their messaging doesn’t just resonate with people online but also continues to retain their attention for as long as possible.

Accurate data is essential to figuring out how your social media efforts are performing so far and what changes need to be made in order to either reverse any decline in the performance or to achieve further growth.

Success on social media is no longer something that marketers can achieve by flying in the dark. What they require is precise data that enables them to make data-driven decisions.

The great thing about social media platforms is that they provide you with a wealth of data to track, measure, and analyze. However, it’s important to know which of those metrics matter the most and how to utilize that knowledge to make improvements to the campaign in order to achieve the desired results.

Important social media metrics in 2022

1. Follower growth

This is perhaps the simplest but one of the most important social media metrics. You need to keep a close eye on follower growth to see if your efforts are paying off and more people are essentially signing up to be regularly updated with whatever content you share.

This holds true for both organic growth and social media marketing campaigns that are focused entirely on increasing the follower count. If the numbers aren’t going up as quickly as you might have hoped, it would suggest that perhaps the campaign needs to be tweaked so that it can achieve a considerable ROI. Having a lot of followers on social media is also a sign to others who just come across your brand that it's already viewed favorably by so many other people.

2. Impressions

Simply put, impressions are the number of times that users see your content. It's pertinent to note that one user can result in multiple impressions. This metric isn't a measure of how many users have seen your content. Rather, it measures the number of times your content has been seen by all users.

This is an important metric because it highlights your content's ability to get views. If you have a good enough follower count but the impressions are low, chances are that the content isn't gaining enough traction. Some changes may be required to the content strategy to increase the number of impressions.

3. Reach

Reach is another simple yet powerful metric. It lets you know the number of users who have seen your content. Even if a user sees your content multiple times, they'll still be counted as one user. For example, if 1000 followers of a brand see their content many times, the brand's reach remains 1000.

This metric makes it easier to figure out if your content is making its way to new users. Brands with low reach will need to improve their content strategies to ensure that whatever their posting has a better chance of surfacing for new users.

4. Engagement Rate

On any social media platform, engagement is the true representation of how frequently your followers choose to interact with your client. The engagement rate includes likes, comments, shares, and other interactions on content. Social media platforms provide more visibility to content that has a higher engagement rate.

A brand that has a significant number of followers but a low engagement rate runs the risk of appearing as if it has fake followers. If your content isn't generating enough engagement, it may need to be fixed so that people who see it are inclined to either like it or leave a comment. This will give the content a greater chance of surfacing in front of users who may never have interacted with your brand in the past.

5. Bounce Rate

It’s not just about how many people you’re able to bring on your page. That's just one piece of the puzzle. You also need to consider data on how users exit from the page. This data is crucial in figuring out whether structural changes need to be made to ensure that visitors stay on the page for as long as possible.

A higher bounce rate is a clear indication to marketers that the content isn't resonating with the visitors and they're quickly moving on to the next page. They simply don't want to engage with the content after they visit the first page. With the insight gleaned from this data, changes can then be made as part of the efforts to bring down the bounce rate.

6. Cost Per Click

Running paid campaigns on social media is simple enough but do keep in mind that the costs can quickly spiral out of control if you're not keeping a close eye on the data. For marketers that are running these campaigns, the cost per click is perhaps one of the most important metrics.

It tells them precisely how much money they're spending for every click on one of their ads. A high cost per click clearly shows that their targeting isn't right and the traffic isn't converting. Bringing down the cost per click is essential to the long term success of campaigns. A campaign with a consistently high cost per click would likely struggle to even break even, let alone generate a decent return on investment.

The best online marketers are always data-driven

It has been proven time and time again that data-driven decisions are highly effective when it comes to social media. There’s no shortcut or easy way to extract the results that you’re after. It needs to be a conscious effort to comb through some of these important data points to figure out whether the strengths and weaknesses lie, so that accurate decisions can then be taken to achieve growth.

Many other important metrics also exist that when analyzed in conjunction with these highly important metrics will provide marketers with the perfect platform to launch highly optimized campaigns from.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

Why You Should Focus on Local SEO in 2022

Sat, 17 Sep 2022 14:45:00 GMT

What comes to your mind when you think of SEO?

For most, the answer is a combination of content marketing and keywords.

To say that this is a narrow view of SEO, particularly in 2022, wouldn’t entirely be inaccurate.

While it’s true that conventional SEO is still as important today as it was many, many years ago, there's another element that businesses should focus on, one that has significant potential to bring in a lot more customers.

Interestingly, it has little to do with the number of blogs you’re writing or the content you’re creating to target featured snippets on the results page.

It requires a hyperlocal focus, with the idea being that you should be paying particular attention to customers that are in the vicinity of your premises.

Local SEO: What is it?

The optimizations you make to your website in order to increase traffic and brand awareness for your business from local search is basically how you'd define local SEO in a nutshell. This is done to target customers in a specific neighborhood, city or even region.

The idea here is to get high up in the ratings for local search results that include the Map Pack/Local Pack from Google.

Why local SEO has become so important

There has been a significant change in the way Google ranks websites in response to queries. It's not just about the keywords in the queries that users are typing. Google's algorithm has become a lot better at figuring out the intent behind what the user is searching for.

User intent is a major ranking factor. Businesses can capitalize on that to ensure that their business appears in front of people who are searching for products and services in their area.

Consider this: 46% of all searches on Google include local intent. This means that a vast majority of people are now searching for information on Google that pertains to their locality.

The conversion metrics are even more impressive. 80% of all local searches end up in a conversion. Queries that include the keywords "near me" have surged more than 500% in the past few years, highlighting yet again that people are now searching for information related to their area more than ever before.

Best practices to improve your local SEO

Create your Google My Business profile

A Google My Business profile is one of the most important elements of a well-rounded local SEO strategy. The reason behind it is that Google is most confident about sharing information that it can verify, and the company individually verifies all businesses that create this profile.

Start by creating and verifying your Google My Business profile.

You can then use Google Posts within your account and also encourage customers to share reviews online. This also ensures that you can provide Google with accurate information about your business, including opening hours, contact details, description of services, and more.

Leverage the Google Map Pack

Often referred to as the Google 3-Pack, the Map Pack is shown at the very top of the search results page for queries that have a local intent. This pack highlights three businesses that Google feels are the most appropriate match for the query.

Given that these businesses are positioned even above the very first search results, they get a lot of visibility and a lot of clicks.

The goal for every business should be to win a place in the 3-Pack. This will require some optimization efforts on your part.

Help Google understand what your business is about so that it can display it prominently in response to local search queries. Use keywords that include words and phrases relevant to your business.

Build local citations

This is kind of like backlinking but for local businesses. Even though much has changed in the SEO realm, backlinking has remained a solid strategy. As long as you can find relevant high-quality backlinks to your website, chances are that Google will begin to view it favorably and rank the content higher.

It operates a similar method for local businesses.

Google looks at local citations as a ranking factor. A local citation is anywhere the name, address, and phone number information of your business appears online. This is usually via local listings on online business directories such as Bing Places, Yelp, and Facebook.

The more citations, the higher the chance that Google will rank you in the 3-Pack.

Create content for a local audience

If content marketing is part of your digital marketing efforts, ensure that you're also creating content with a local focus. The idea with content marketing has always been to write in a broader sense to attract as many people as possible.

While you should still be doing that, content with a local focus will further improve your website's rankings when someone in Google puts in a query with a local intent.

This will enable you to effectively become the local authority on the subject matter. You can bring in more visitors to the website through educational content that solves a problem that people in your area have.

Once they see helpful content, and considering that they're actively looking for a service, the chances of them converting become significantly higher.

Make Local SEO a pillar of your online marketing strategy

Online marketing isn’t easy these days. There are plenty of different online platforms and each has its own benefits. If you’re chasing after audiences across these different platforms, it can soon become overwhelming.

Local SEO is unique in the sense that it requires little active upkeep but can deliver tangible, long-lasting results when done right.

There are already people who are searching for a solution - so make it easy for them to find it!

All it takes is just putting in some focused effort with local SEO to ensure that it's your business that Google recommends.

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Top 5 Online Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses

steeldaddeh3@gmail.com (Chet Mitchell) — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 17:51:14 GMT

Marketing is essential for any business. You need to put your message in front of the desired audience in order to grow the business substantially.

Marketing has evolved significantly over the past few decades. Online or digital marketing in particular has revolutionized the way businesses reach out to prospects, nurture leads, and close sales.

At its core, online marketing is no different than placing an ad in a local newspaper or putting up a billboard. However, both of those options may either be too expensive for most small businesses or not targeted enough to generate a decent return on their investment.

That’s one of the benefits of digital marketing. It provides small businesses the opportunity to maximize their ROI while also leveraging the incredible targeting tools to precisely focus their campaigns on the right audiences.

It's not uncommon for small business owners to feel overwhelmed by digital marketing, particularly if they don't have any experience with it. After all, there are just too many digital platforms with different ad products. Don't let that become a hurdle. Utilize these top 5 online marketing strategies to nail your messaging and increase brand awareness.

1. Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization or SEO might seem like a buzzword that gets thrown around a lot but it's a tried and tested strategy of increasing your presence online. It's actually one of the most powerful ways that you can use to put your content in front of countless people online.

Whether they need to solve a problem, have a question or want to buy something, Google is the first website that billions of people visit. Over 99,000 searches are done by users on Google every single second. That's over 8.5 billion searches every day.

Whatever your business offers to help make customers’ lives easier, leverage that to create content that answers the questions that they have. While many have claimed that SEO is dead in this day and age, that couldn’t be further from the truth. SEO remains one of the best marketing strategies online with boundless potential.

It’s also a great option for those small businesses that don’t want to invest heavily in online marketing activities. Content marketing-based SEO requires you to create articles, blogs, and other content that meets the intent of what searchers are looking for on Google. The results tend to come gradually, especially for new websites, but it’s still not impossible to rank at the top of Google’s search results in your industry.

2. Affiliate Marketing

As a small business owner you probably can't have a full time sales team with a significant budget dedicated to selling your products online. However, with affiliate marketing, you can effectively outsource this job to people who are willing to take on all of the risk in return for a commission of every sale that they generate.

That’s the beauty of affiliate marketing and why it’s a must for small business owners who can deploy it. Experienced affiliate marketers are great at creating content, running highly targeted ads, and leveraging every tool available on the leading social media networks to generate the most amount of leads for the lowest cost possible.

Offer them a generous commission and you’ll quickly have affiliates lining up to sell your product. This strategy suits small businesses because they take on none of the risk when setting up campaigns. It’s not their ad dollars on the line if the campaign fails to perform. Since affiliates only get paid when they make a sale, they try their hardest to bring the most qualified leads, and that will most likely result in a bump in sales.

3. Provide Customer Support Through Social Media

Word travels fast on the internet and if you become known as the brand that provides quick and efficient customer support through its social media channels, you’ll not only see an increase in brand awareness but also in customer retention. Customers like to keep doing business with brands that they feel provide them with a good service. Social media is great for quick customer support.

After all, social media is where most customers turn to whenever they have a question or concern about a product. They’ll look up that company’s social media channels and reach out with a query. This is also easier for them, since they’re already actively using social media and don’t need to go out of their way to either fill out a form or visit another website just to seek redressal of their grievance.

For the most part, this proactive support offer to customers provides them with confidence in the brand. They’ll be more likely to recommend it to people in their circles, thus leading to increased awareness for your brand through word of mouth.

4. Local Search

If your business has physical locations, local search is an online marketing strategy that you can utilize to significantly increase the footfall for it. Consider the fact that since 2011, "near me" searches on Google have increased 34 times. If you provide a service that people nearby will benefit from, deploy the local search strategy to win new customers.

This will require the use of Google my Business. Add information about your business on Google my Business, such as the website, contact information, opening times as well as information about products and services.

Ensure that you timely respond to reviews on your local business listing. People appreciate when brands are active on their listing, this gives them confidence and makes it more likely for them to convert into customers.

5. Social Media Marketing

No online marketing strategy can be complete without social media marketing. Your brand needs to have a presence on leading social media platforms. That's where customers are now discovering businesses and new products.

Be where your customers are to increase brand uplift. These platforms also provide exceptional ad products and targeting tools that can be utilized to create highly focused campaigns. While it might seem daunting to most small business owners, launching paid campaigns on social media networks isn't that difficult. Most people get the hang of it with some trial and error.

With full control over ad budgets and how you'd like it to be spent, social media marketing campaigns give you incredible flexibility and control over ad campaigns.

Going online first is inevitable for small businesses now

You can choose to explore other marketing avenues for your small business, but remember, in this day and age any business that’s not focusing on online marketing is effectively leaving a lot of money on the table.

If other marketing avenues are working well for you, add digital marketing to the mix as well to further elevate the status of your brand, expand your message far and wide to bring in more customers.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

How to Perform a Successful Social Media Rebrand

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 18:47:42 GMT

Rebranding is a significant exercise but it's not uncommon. It's rare for businesses to look and continue to operate the same way that they did when they launched. In the age of social media, rebranding has become even more crucial, since social networks are now the first touchpoint for most prospective customers.

It’s vital for businesses to ensure that their brand appears consistent across social media, that it appears to be keeping up with the times, and reflects the values and customs of the modern era. Often a significant rebrand is required to achieve all of that, and it’s easier said than done.

These may not be the only reason for a social media rebrand. Some brands also feel the need to revamp their online presence after some controversy or social media faux pas. In such a scenario, absolutely nailing the brand becomes even more important.

When do you launch a social media rebrand?

This is a question that many businesses who are considering a rebrand struggle with. How do they know what is the perfect time to take such a big step? Unless it’s in response to a very obvious significant event, it can be a bit confusing to settle on the perfect time.

Ideally, you could introduce a social media rebrand alongside a new product. Since you'll already be generating hype for the new product, this method effectively lets you kill two birds with one stone.

If you're refreshing your messaging to reach a new target audience, a visual rebranding will go along with it very nicely. If your existing brand appears to be quite similar to competitors, that's also when you should consider changing it.

There may be other scenarios, such as rebranding to change public perception after a controversy, but generally these are some of the most appropriate times to launch a rebrand.

Steps for launching a successful social media rebrand

1. Define your new social media identity

Think about how you want to position your revamped brand, what do you want it to convey, and how it will be differentiated from the competition. It's always best to look into what your competitors are doing. This will provide you with insights on what's working for them and what could be better. Use that knowledge to make informed decisions.

This initial step is the launchpad for all ideas that will collectively result in a revamped brand that best represents the stage that your business is in right now. Having absolute clarity of the vision behind the rebrand will ensure that this monumental exercise delivers that desired results.

2. Create your new assets and update the style guide

Here comes the fun part. Now that you have a clear vision, it’s time to get creative. Work with your designers to create new assets. You'll also need to revamp your social media style guide to ensure that there's consistency across all platforms.

Remember, a brand new logo isn't the only new asset you need to consider. Assets may also include new profile and cover images, post templates, usernames and profile URLs for various social networks, fonts, and much more. All of these assets are part and parcel of a comprehensive social media rebrand.

3. Keep your finger on the audience's pulse

It's no secret that online audiences can be highly resistant to change. Some of your most loyal fans and customers will likely have some of the strongest opinions about your rebrand. As you transition to your new online identity, it's imperative to keep a finger on the pulse. A clear transition engagement strategy will be required at this stage.

It will gradually inform and convince the audience about the rebranding efforts. This is so that your rebranding story can be understood properly. Also take time to highlight things that aren't changing, such as service levels, products, pricing, etc as audiences often tend to link rebrands to significant changes in other areas of the business.

4. Decide what to do with your old posts

This is one of the biggest dilemmas that brands run into when they're revamping their online presence. What do they do with all of the past content and posts on their profiles? In some cases, it would be beneficial to go for a clean break, delete everything and start from scratch. However, this strategy needs to be executed properly, since fans and followers can often find it jarring.

It's a great way to build hype as well. Once you scrub your entire social media presence, there's going to be the expectation that a big announcement is coming soon. If not executed properly, this could lead to disappointment if the rebrand announcement isn't well received. The other option would be to edit legacy posts to make them fit your new brand image or archive them.

5. Promote your rebrand

Now that the rebrand is official, it's time to promote it! You need to get the word out that your business has a new look and feel. This will ensure that all existing fans and customers know about the change and don't get the impression that the brand they were familiar with has disappeared without a trace.

Ensure that the rebrand is consistent across all social media platforms, run marketing campaigns to old and new audiences to let them know about the rebrand and hype up this major achievement.

Once you rebrand, never look back

Once the rebrand is launched, there's no looking back. Avoid mixing new post styles with the old ones that have been around for a long time. This is only going to confuse customers and complicate your brand messaging for no reason.

Trying to roll back things soon after launching them is never a good idea. Even if it's not getting as much traction as you had hoped, look into how you can further optimize the messaging, assets, and content to make it more appealing. Consistency is key to pulling off a successful social media rebrand.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

How TikTok Spark Ads Can Supercharge Your Advertising

Thu, 25 Aug 2022 15:33:34 GMT

TikTok has become a global phenomenon in just a few years. The short-form video sharing service has seen its popularity skyrocket, largely due to how it differentiates itself from other social media platforms.

There’s a lot of focus on discovery, enabling users to easily discover content from new creators that they may not be following, while the full-screen video experience makes using the app feel very immersive.

So it’s not surprising to see that brands have been flocking to TikTok. Spark Ads is one of the more interesting ad products that the social platform has in its ad suite that allows you to tap into its incredible reach.

What are TikTok Spark Ads?

Spark Ads is a genius product as it enables brands to leverage user-generated content as the creatives for their campaigns. UGC thrives on TikTok and with Spark Ads, the platform enables brands to utilize content made by its users for campaigns. This is in line with the platform's "Don't Make Ads, Make TikToks" vision.

The idea behind this product is that viewers are likely going to be more receptive to an ad that doesn't look like an ad at all, and given how popular Spark Ads have become, the idea seems to be a hit. With Spark Ads, a brand can boost its own posts or posts made by TikTok creators as In-Feed or TopView ads. For brands, this means that the content they want to promote must already have been published on TikTok before they launch the campaign.

Spark Ads are labeled as 'Sponsored' and they will include a Call to Action of the brand's choice, while it will also retain all of the user engagement options that a normal TikTok post has. Thus the ad doesn't look too out of place on a user's For You page as it behaves the same way as a normal TikTok post. When users click on the CTA, they are taken to the brand's chosen landing page.

The numbers speak for themselves

Spark Ads have proven to be a high-impact ad product. TikTok's own figures reveal that Spark Ads have a 30% higher completion rate and a 142% higher engagement rate compared to standard In-Feed Ads. They also boast a 43% higher conversion rate and a 4.2% lower CPM compared to standard ads.

A lot of this may also have to do with the fact that Spark Ads facilitate engagement. Users who come across your Spark Ad can create a video with its soundtrack, co-create with you by making a duet with the sponsored video, and directly follow the brand account by tapping on the + icon in the profile picture. It feels as natural to them as interacting with any other TikTok post.

How Spark Ads can benefit your campaigns

Your campaigns stand to benefit from Spark Ads because they provide the audience with a better ad experience. They're not intrusive or obstructive. Even sponsored content shown to them appears like just another TikTok post and they can engage with it in a similar manner. It looks so similar to organic content that it's entirely possible for most users to not even realize that what they're watching is an advertisement.

If you're boosting your own posts, Spark Ads deliver an elevated marketing impact, since the views that Spark Ads get are added to the total amount of views that the organic video gets. There's also the added benefit of increasing the number of your followers through these campaigns. TikTok also provides incredibly detailed data on Spark Ads. Clicks on the ad caption, CTA button, profile picture, nickname and left swipe gestures are recorded, in addition to those on music clicks, profile visits, and followers.

The ability to use a creator's post, with their permission, to run an ad for your brand is another reason why Spark Ads can be very beneficial for your campaigns. TikTok creators have some of the most loyal fan followings of any social media creator. That’s a tailor-made audience for you to target. By opting to work with those creators, you can quickly get your product in front of the customers that it’s most relevant for.

Top tips for running TikTok Spark Ads

Sort out permissions for posts from creators

If you boost a duetted or stitched TikTok, make sure that you have permission for all of the creators in that TikTok before you boost it through Spark Ads. Since it may be difficult to obtain permission from multiple creators, it's best to steer clear of these posts and opt for more straightforward posts.

Be mindful of branded hashtags

Another thing to keep in mind when using creators' posts for Spark Ads is branded hashtags. If the original creator's post has one, and it's a copyright or trademark term, if they're not licensed to promote the brand chances are the ad may not deliver as it would be in violation of TikTok's copyright policies. Don't use content that has a branded or trademarked hashtag.

Remember that creators' approval is not indefinite

If a creator allows you to use their content for Spark Ads, that permission isn't going to be indefinite. They can authorize you to use the content for 7, 30 or 60 days. Therefore, if you need to run another campaign after that time period is up, you'll need to ask the creator again to renew the authorization period.

If you aren’t doing Spark Ads, you’re missing out

This is one of those rare ad products that delivers incredible engagement for lower costs overall. While that used to be possible on other social media platforms in the past, that’s no longer the case. This makes TikTok and particularly Spark Ads an outlier, one that you should be taking full advantage of.

Brands must make TikTok a part of their online marketing efforts. There’s no doubt about it. In addition to the other ad products that the platform offers, Spark Ads are one that are definitely deserving of your ad dollars.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

An In-depth Comparison of SEO and PPC for Small Business

Wed, 17 Aug 2022 17:10:00 GMT

With the current state of technology, getting new customers for your business doesn’t look like it did twenty years ago. You need to have a quality website, and you need to have a fundamental understanding of what you need to do to get people to find you online. To get your site noticed, consider two main tools at your disposal: SEO and pay-per-click advertisements. We take a closer look at each to help you decide which is best for your small business.

What Is SEO?

SEO is short for search engine optimization. To put it simply, it is a method of getting more traffic to your site by including words those potential clients use to search for your products or services in the content on your site. Think of SEO as an organic method of increasing site traffic.

How It Works

Search engines like Bing and Google use crawl bots to gather site information and place them on indexes. An index is similar to a library where sites that are most relevant to what a person searches pop up in results first.

To determine the order that these pages appear in results, algorithms analyze the pages for many factors to determine where they will fall in the search results. SEO success is determined by how closely your website matches what the searcher is looking for.

How to Use It

SEO is unlike PPC ads because you cannot pay for a higher ranking. This means that SEO rankings come organically. In other words, to get ranked high with your site’s SEO, you must have lots of quality, relevant content.

There are several factors that go into your SEO. It is more than just keywords. Quality of content, as well as keywords, are important factors. You also need to factor in speed and crawlability for your SEO quality.

At first, site owners could just put a few buzzwords in specific areas of their content and a site would start ranking. However, algorithms are advancing and keeping relevant sites at the top of search results. As such, you need to put in more effort.

There are also multiple SEO categories, including local SEO, e-commerce SEO, and news/publishing SEO.

PPC or Pay-per-click Marketing

If you are looking for ways to get more people to notice you online, you have likely come across pay-per-click marketing. This is where you pay a fee each time one of your ads gets clicked on. It is basically a way of purchasing visits to your website rather than getting those visits organically.

How It Works

This allows a client to bid for placement in the sponsored links when a search is done. When bidding on a keyword such as “dog grooming,” your ad may get the top placement.

When this sponsored ad is clicked, you will pay a fee. When used well, it is a nominal fee because you will make more in traffic and conversions than you pay for the marketing. For instance, if you pay $3 for a click but get a $300 sale, you have a solid gain.

How to Use It

At first glance, PPC may look like a no-research option, but you still need to select and research quality keywords and get those worked into great campaigns and advertisements. While it may seem like busy work, Google and other search engines reward you for creating relevant content that is targeted. With these ads, you will pay less for your clicks. This discount means it truly does pay to know what you are doing with PPC.

Differences Between PPC and SEO Campaigns

To help consider which is best for your campaign, think about your budget and resources, your objectives and goals, your industry, as well as how your site is currently doing.

With all these in mind, should you use PPC or SEO? It depends, as they are different ways to drive traffic to your site. Most companies will use both to get the advantages of each.

SEO Benefits

● It is cost-effective

● Sustainable and stable results

● Organic clicks are free

● Content targeted for different funnel stages

● Organic results are more powerful than paid results

● Higher traffic volume

SEO Drawbacks

● Time-consuming and work-intensive

● Requires continual improvements to keep at the top of searches

● Needs attention to link-building, content creation, and other factors

● No guarantees

● The learning curve can be overwhelming, and there are regular changes to algorithms

Advantages of PPC

● Nearly instant results

● Ads are placed right at the top of search results

● You can make your presence better with address and phone numbers in search results

● Smaller base of knowledge needed

● Google experts offer support and assistance

● You have access to tons of data

● You can have test runs

Drawbacks of PPC

● Price per click can add up

● With more competitors advertising, price increases

● Higher initial investment

● You need to have someone manage the campaign

● You can’t just stop; will your site continue without these leads?

Conclusion

Most small businesses will want to use a combination of SEO and PPC tactics to get the best results and make the most of their overall marketing budget. This lets you harness the advantages of each while minimizing the downsides.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

8 Tips to Conduct Successful Keyword Research for Your Small Business Marketing

Mon, 08 Aug 2022 14:39:41 GMT

Owning a small business in the time of technology means looking at marketing and advertising in a different light. You need to think outside the box and think of ways to draw people to your website in addition to your actual store. But how do you get people to visit your site?

Every internet search is based on keywords. Every business owner should have a fundamental understanding of keywords and how SEO affects their site and its traffic. At the core of this is keyword research. You will need to understand what keywords your clients may use to find you in their search results.

Here are a few pointers for brainstorming keywords for your site.

Use Your Location

Location, location, location! This is a long-time business mantra for a reason. Here, you need to consider it in a broader sense. If you are in Michigan, someone from Florida isn’t going to request your services. So, small businesses should add a location to their keywords. Choose phrases like “plumbers in Michigan” or “print shops in Detroit” and you will have a surefire way to help increase your traffic.

Create a Primary Keyword List for Your Business

The first thing to do is create a list of keywords or buzzwords that relate to your business. Brainstorm all the different phrases and words that are relevant to your niche, such as explanations on how to do things, care for products and tools, or other industry-related words.

You should have some keywords, but you won’t need a ton to get started building content around them. You will evolve the list as you grow your online content.

Think Like Someone Searching

When brainstorming your keywords, you need to think like the person at home in front of their computer. What are they going to ask that might bring them to your business? What words will they use? For a dog grooming business, a potential client may search for “dog groomers with openings near me” or “dog groomers specializing in show trims.”

Trying to get in the head of customers is an old marketing tactic because it works. When it comes to searching your keywords, you can get creative. Look at the different products or services you offer and think about the questions clients often ask while working with you.

Understand the Competition

Visit your competitors’ sites. What words stick out? What words and phrases are they using to describe their businesses? Do they have rich content that offers useful information to solve clients’ problems? These questions can help you develop a more thoughtful approach to your keyword brainstorming sessions.

Utilize Long-tail Keywords

Once you develop a basic knowledge of keywords and work through your content, you need to use long-tail keywords for the best optimization.

These keywords add to your rankings because they are very relevant and specific. A long-tail keyword tends to be four-plus words. This leads to increased traffic—specifically traffic interested in your site. Consequently, long-tail keywords give you a higher conversion rate.

Use All the Tools

In this industry, many tools exist at your disposal to help with researching. Using the keyword research tools at your disposal will allow you to find how each keyword is ranked and what the competition looks like.

Google Search Console and Google Keyword Planner are both free tools that many beginners start with. Google Search Console allows you to create and optimize content based on what your site is offering. Many small businesses use Google Keyword Planner to get started because it is easy to understand and use. These options do have some limitations. For instance, unless running a Google Ads paid campaign, you generally only get keyword ranges such as 100-1,000.

Consider Paying for Tools

Once you have exhausted the free tools available, you should consider the advantages of the paid tools on offer. There are some paid tools you can use, like Ahrefs, SE Ranking, and SEMrush, which provide access to metrics that free tools do not. Many will give you access to more metrics and offer better suggestions based on their access to data. This can help you increase your traffic and further develop your site.

Use “People Also Ask” Questions

When you are doing a search, you will notice a “people also ask” section at the bottom of the results page. This is an excellent resource for long-tail keywords. This is excellent fuel for content. If you provide detailed answers to these questions, people will spend more time on your site. When you are seen as helpful, you get more conversions and so more clients.

Conclusion

The above tips should have you well on your way to choosing the best keywords for your digital marketing strategy. From there, you can use those keywords in your SEO or PPC strategies.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

Ways Local Businesses Can Use Instagram to Get More Customers

Sat, 30 Jul 2022 17:15:00 GMT

One of the most known social media platforms among the younger generations is Instagram. It is an extremely visual platform. Instagram primarily focuses on videos and images rather than posts made up of texts. On the global list of platforms that engage users, Instagram holds a solid place, with Facebook continuing to dominate the field.

With that level of popularity, you can’t afford to ignore the platform. But what is the best way to make use of it? Here are a few useful tips to take your Instagram marketing strategy to the next level.

Share the Best Content You Can Find

Instagram is known for being a visual platform. People use it to share videos and images from their life. If you want to make the most of this media, make your content stand out from the rest.

Instagram is easy to use, and you can create high-quality images with just a finger’s touch. The platform has a variety of filters to add contrast, shade, and other visual effects. If you play around with Instagram, you will be surprised by the many ways you can customize your photos. You may have to try a few before finding the ones that work best with your images, so have fun exploring.

Consider these tips for appealing content:

● High-resolution usually signifies quality.

● Rich colors make a statement.

● Videos really help to showcase products being used but remember to keep them short.

● Images that offer unusual, intriguing, or arresting images will catch people’s attention.

To keep your account well-rounded and followers engaging, add content that isn’t just about your brand. This will bring more viewers and keep your account feeling more natural and less about the sale, a big draw for the younger population. Do remember to keep your content consistent — a kid’s clothing website shouldn’t be discussing adult topics, for example.

Tag It and Hashtag Your Content

You can tag other people in your photos and images, and you should. When you tag a business or follower, you develop a connection through shared content.

Hashtags also give you the opportunity to add notes to your images. Use hashtags to convey messages about the photo, such as #dogsandbeaches, #doggyswimmeet, or #dogdaysofsummer. When a follower clicks on a hashtag, they get to see all the posts related to it. This is one of the best ways to keep your brand in relevant conversations.

It is important to note that your hashtags should be relatable. If you put random hashtags without connections, you will have confusion and won’t get the following you are working for.

Increase Your Reach

With small businesses, your marketing strategy should be centered around increasing your reach. Your goal and measurements should also be centered around your Instagram following increasing. If your videos and images aren’t getting shared or liked, you need to refocus your strategy.

One key factor to Instagram is to make sure you are engaging with the people who follow you. You can’t expect to increase engagement if you aren’t active on your account, starting conversations, and responding to people. This is especially important to younger followers. They want an active account to be a part of.

You can add as many posts as you like for free. There is also an option to pay for promoting your content. This may be worth it for you but isn’t required to create a following.

Share Quality Information

Your Instagram marketing strategy is to bring in more followers and, therefore, more customers. You will need to let them know how to find you, which means you need to have all your contact information connected to your account, especially your link to your website. Instagram followers are more likely to use online methods rather than call you. Be sure to include a professional bio as well as what customers can expect from your business. This is the perfect spot to let people know what makes your business unique.

It’s Better to Show Instead of Tell

Instagram is meant to be visual. Don’t tell them about your dog grooming salon, show pictures of pups covered in suds. If you are selling food, don’t share recipes without interesting images. Sharing photos of your business that show why it’s special will give you instant branding.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

Six Tips to Incorporate TikTok into Your Small Business Marketing

Wed, 27 Jul 2022 16:55:03 GMT

When talking about small business digital marketing, TikTok likely isn’t the first platform to come to mind. But most businesses should at least consider marketing on TikTok. If many of your target audience are on TikTok, you need to be there. Whether you already have a TikTok marketing strategy you are looking to improve or need to get started, the following tips will help.

Start With a Business Account

The first step to TikTok marketing will be creating a business account. This is incredibly simple to do. Just log in to your personal profile and head to “Settings and Privacy.” Click “Manage account.” Go to “Account control,” then “Switch to Business Account.” You will be prompted to make a business account. You’ll choose the most relevant business category. Then, you can add your business email and website.

Understand the Types of Paid Ads

Using TikTok for marketing will likely involve a combination of free strategies and paid ads. You don’t necessarily need to use paid ads, but it is still smart to be familiar with them. There are two main categories—in-feed ads and ads for managed brands. With managed ads, you pay TikTok to manage your ads for you. This will give you extra types of ads, including branded hashtag challenges, branded effects, and Topview ads (that play when opening the app). But it isn’t necessary for most small businesses.

The regular paid ads on TikTok available to every business account include:

● Image ads

● Video ads

● Spark ads (boosting your content)

● Pangle ads

● Carousel ads

Create Content

But paid advertising is just one part of TikTok marketing. And it may not even fit your small business’s budget. At the very least, you want to consider the following tips for creating and promoting content.

The great news about TikTok marketing for small businesses is that the platform doesn’t just promote accounts with a lot of followers. It also promotes similar content, including those from lesser-known creators.

Make Relevant, Authentic, Informative Content

As you create your videos for content, you want them to be relevant, authentic, and informative. Some good options for small businesses include offering expert tips or sharing behind-the-scenes footage.

This type of video will help your company seem like it is run by real people and encourage your audience to feel connected.

Share Content From Users

Just like on other social media platforms, your TikTok strategy should involve sharing relevant user-generated content. But TikTok has a few features that make this even easier to do and more effective. This comes from the “duet” or “stitch” feature. These features essentially let you create a video that is your content on one side and content from another user on the other.

Encourage User Content

To get the most of this tip, you need to encourage users to create content in the first place. A simple option is to ask for honest customer testimonials. You could then share good ones and respond to negative ones. Another great option is to ask the audience a question or have them ask a question. If they ask a question, you can duet their video and answer it.

Remember that user-generated content is helpful in a few ways. To start, you don’t have to create the content yourself, saving you time. On top of that, the users who create content are engaging with your brand. Additionally, when people see others engaging, they are more likely to do so as well.

Consider Influencers

If you’re already working with micro or local influencers on other social media platforms, consider doing so on TikTok as well. You may even be able to work with the same influencer as you do on Instagram or another platform.

Harness the Power of Hashtags

As mentioned, TikTok makes sure that even creators with fewer views show up in the feed. But you need to create relevant content to make the most of this. A great way of doing so is via hashtags. Check out the popular videos or hashtags on TikTok to see current trends. Then, participate. When choosing the right hashtags (or challenges), look for ones that are relevant to your business and your audience.

Conclusion

Small businesses should take the time to create a TikTok strategy to reach a larger audience. You should start by creating content that is authentic and relevant and participating in hashtags. Don’t forget to consider if paid advertising is right for you as well.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

How to Write More Engaging Social Media Posts

Tue, 19 Jul 2022 16:12:01 GMT

It can be difficult to create and keep engagement with social media accounts because the algorithms make it tricky. When you invest money, effort, and time, you want to see results for your efforts. This means you will want to reach your goals on your social media platform.

With the right tips, your posts will appeal to more people and help you achieve your goals. The following tips will get you on the right track to boosting engagement and meeting your social media advertising objectives.

Why Does Social Media Engagement Matter?

You may not feel motivated to write more engaging social media posts if you don’t see the point of social media engagement. Simply put, the more engagement you get on social media, the more connected people will feel to your brand. This boosts customer loyalty. Higher engagement online can also help with your overall branding and name recognition. After all, someone liking or commenting on a post may be their friends’ first introduction to your brand.

Focus on Your Language

Learn how your audience likes to communicate. Develop this language so that your posts resonate with your audience. This helps build a connection and shows you understand your audience.

For example, if you create a senior-level post for LinkedIn, you won’t want to use it for new moms on Facebook. These two groups face different things, and their language is different because of this. Their phrasing, sense of humor, and their needs are often very different, so you should use specific language with each group.

Research

When you want your audience to engage with your posts, you need to make sure they make sense to your targeted group. Keep them relevant and your page will grow exponentially. Understand your audience and you will build better content. General demographic details are a great starting point, and from there, you can develop it further.

What are their needs? Do they have challenges and obstacles? To start, focus on one need and create posts that help to provide solutions for that one.

For a more emotional connection, consider adding success stories of clients who are satisfied or have been helped by you. This makes potential clients envision their own success through your help as well.

KISS - Keep It Simple & Short

Time is valuable and attention spans are increasingly short. Take the time to make sure your posts are written simply. An eighth-grade reading level is best. Use lists, bullets, and headings to help break the content up and keep it scannable.

You will want your writing to be succinct and easy to understand. Also, keep your paragraphs short, at just a few sentences. This makes it easier for people to read and engage with your content.

Positivity Engages

If you sound like Eeyore, you won’t have many people who want to engage with you. Your posts don’t need to be super sweet. However, keeping it positive makes a world of difference.

You want to build and keep excitement and inspiration. While sharing your opinion is great, attacking people and brands is harmful. Don’t engage in bullying and don’t criticize people or businesses publicly.

Develop a Voice

Developing a voice takes work, time, and consistently putting out content. Whether your voice is sarcastic, humorous, or authoritative, a definitive voice helps your readers recognize you. It also helps to build trust.

Use Videos & Images

The use of graphics, images, and videos helps move your story. Content that is visual engages more people. The phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” is the truth. In fact, you can use an image or video to convey a complete message on your social media.

Bear in mind that video can help connect you with your audience on a better level. Video gets better responses from people. People often feel like they understand or know you better when video is involved.

Call to Action

Once your post is wrapped up, you should add a CTA or call to action. If you do not ask for business, you will never get it. If you don’t ask for action, it is also hard to get it, even when people enjoy your content.

A CTA can come in a variety of forms and has a range of purposes. Here are a few different ideas to get you started:

● Send clients to landing pages.

● Send your audience to your website.

● Ask for likes and shares.

● Ask for their experience, opinion, or something similar in the comments.

● Ask for connections on other social media platforms.

● Ask them to subscribe to emails and newsletters.

Conclusion

Boosting engagement on social media can take time and effort, but it is well worth it. It will expand your reach and add more touchpoints to your customer journey. Engaging social media posts should be well-researched, appeal to your target audience, follow your brand voice, and feature images and videos.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

12 Pieces of Data You Should Be Collecting to Track Your Digital Marketing Success

Tue, 12 Jul 2022 16:56:48 GMT

None of your marketing strategies are set in stone. You want to constantly evaluate them to ensure they deliver the desired results. This way, you can determine if you need to make changes or are on the right track. But what data should you be collecting to track your digital marketing success?

Engagement Data – Including Likes, Shares, Comments, and Mentions

One of the most important pieces of data to track is the overall engagement level. Higher engagement typically leads to improved sales and brand loyalty, so this is important. It includes several main elements, although there are also other types of engagement.

● Likes: Having many likes not only shows engagement but also encourages others to look at your content, as people tend to search out popular ideas.

● Shares: Shares are an excellent indicator of brand loyalty. They also help you extend your reach.

● Comments: Comments show a higher level of engagement. More importantly, you can glean information from the comments, such as what your audience likes or doesn’t like.

● Mentions: Mentions help track how many people are talking about you.

When tracking this type of engagement data, your goal is to look for overall trends. Ideally, your engagement should increase or at least stay the same.

Website-related Data

One of the most important data points to track in digital advertising is your website traffic. But you will want to go beyond just the site traffic itself. You also want to track what people do on your website. Specifically, look at:

● Website traffic: This lets you know how many people have visited your website.

● Bounce rate: How many people visit your website only to leave within seconds. A higher number indicates either your website doesn’t appeal to your audience or your ads are attracting the wrong audience.

● Time spent on website: This gives you a better idea of how long you have to convert a website visitor.

Important Conversion Metrics

Yet another category of data that helps you track your digital marketing is conversions. This is especially important as conversions are your end goal. Remember that a conversion refers to someone buying your product or service. Some of the most important of these data points include:

● Lead conversion rate: This rate shows how many of the people you consider to be qualified leads become clients or customers.

● Cost per lead: Combine your data on how much you spend per lead with your data on the lead conversion rate to see how much you pay per converted lead on average. Then, compare this to your revenue per lead to see if your marketing strategies are delivering an ROI.

● ROI: Return on investment compares the amount of money that you invest into a campaign to the amount you receive from it. It is one of the most important measurements of customer success.

● Lifetime value of customers: figuring out the average lifetime value of each successfully converted customer gives you a better idea of your ROI, or at least another way of looking at it.

● Sales revenue: Tracking the sales revenue for various campaigns will give you a better idea of which ones are performing the best.

Bonus: Customer Data to Track to Improve Marketing Content

The above pieces of data focus on measuring the effectiveness of your digital marketing campaign. But you will also want to collect data on customers and potential customers. This will help you better target your advertising, boosting results. These include:

● Demographic data

● Contact information

● IP address information

● Behavioral data

How to Collect the Data

Collecting some of the data is as simple as using a program like Google Analytics. Every business should be using Google Analytics, thanks to its impressive insights. You can also supplement it with other analytic programs. You can use programs that track transactional data in addition to webpage activity. For consumer data, surveys are a great option, as is collecting some data at the point of sale, whether online or in-store.

Conclusion

Tracking data helps ensure that your digital marketing efforts are on track. You should track overall data as well as campaign-specific data. This will let you better allocate your marketing budget to have the largest impact.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

16 Websites Small Businesses Can Use Video Marketing On

Wed, 06 Jul 2022 18:54:51 GMT

You hopefully know that video marketing is an important part of your small business digital marketing. But just creating videos and posting them on your website is not enough to see results. Instead, you should be sharing your videos on various websites.

The websites that you decide to use video marketing on will depend on where your target audience is. For example, if they spend a lot of time on Facebook, focus your efforts there. If your audience is younger, however, you may want to focus more on video marketing on Snapchat or TikTok.

With that in mind, the following are some of the most popular websites you should consider using as part of your video marketing strategy.

YouTube

Nearly every single business will want to use YouTube in its video marketing strategy due to its popularity. Remember that Google owns YouTube and now many YouTube videos appear on Google search results. So, posting videos on YouTube can also boost your SEO efforts.

Just remember to always create titles and add tags and descriptions for your YouTube videos. Be sure to include keywords as well.

Facebook

Facebook is among the most common social media platforms for video marketing. Some estimates say that sharing video on social media leads to 1200% more shares compared to images or text (or both combined). Facebook videos get 8 billion views every single day.

But there is one key fact about videos on Facebook. Sharing a YouTube link on Facebook works, but uploading a video to Facebook is even more effective. Part of this is because Facebook set up its algorithms to favor native videos. After all, the website wants to grow its reach.

As a bonus for you, native videos automatically play. You can also turn them into ads and take advantage of Facebook’s extensive user data for better targeting.

But remember that Facebook videos won’t show up on Google search results. That’s why you still need to have a presence on YouTube.

Instagram

Instagram is another great social media platform for sharing your video content. As a bonus, you get the option of several types of videos to share, including shorter reels. You can also share videos on your page permanently or in your story, where they disappear after 24 hours.

Other Social Media Pages

There are also plenty of other social media pages worth considering for your video content.

Twitter

Twitter focuses more on shorter content, but you can easily share videos in addition to images on it.

Others

The following are some other social media platforms that support videos. Remember to focus on those where your audience is instead of wasting effort on platforms that won’t deliver results.

● Tumblr

● Reddit

● LinkedIn

● Pinterest

● Snapchat

● TikTok

Yelp

While you primarily think of Yelp as a review website, it is also a good place to share videos. Yelp lets you add professional videos or images to your business listing, giving you another way to engage potential customers.

TripAdvisor

Like Yelp, TripAdvisor is a great way to engage potential customers with videos when they are already interested in your business.

Medium

If part of your digital marketing strategy includes guest blogs on other websites, consider Medium. You could write a blog and include a video with it.

Vimeo

Vimeo is another video-sharing platform like YouTube, and while it isn’t as popular, it is still one of the big names. It also has extra tools for businesses, such as analytics and collaboration.

Wistia

Wistia is yet another video-sharing platform, and while it is not as well known, it has a lot of marketing-related features.

Your Website and More

In addition to posting your video marketing efforts on various platforms, there are also some great options that you are in control of, starting with your website.

Where on Your Website to Post Videos

You have your choice of places to post videos on your website. It is a good practice to host these on YouTube and embed them on your website on the following pages. That way, you get the benefits of YouTube videos as well.

● Welcome videos on your homepage

● Behind-the-scenes videos on your “About Us” page

● Product videos on product pages

● Testimonial videos on a review page

● Various videos on your FAQ or help page

In Emails

You hopefully already have an email newsletter set up. Consider boosting engagement by adding videos to this.

Bonus Video Tips

No matter where you plan to post your videos, keep the following tips in mind:

● Brand your video

● Add captions

● Speak clearly

● Ensure they are high quality

● Have good lighting

● Include a CTA

Conclusion

Video marketing is a great way to boost engagement with your audience. You can use videos on various platforms in addition to your website. Social media platforms and YouTube are among the most popular options. To decide to share your videos, think about where your audience is. That being said, every business should strongly consider using YouTube with or without other channels.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

What is Web3 and what does it mean for the future of your business?

Wed, 29 Jun 2022 18:00:48 GMT

Major shifts in the tech landscape often have a buzzword associated with them. Every few years it seems that something or the other comes out of the woodwork that’s presented as a revolution of the internet as we know it. Some may just be passing fads but many have stuck around and have indeed changed how we use the internet.

Web3 is the latest buzzword that every tech company and their copywriters can’t seem to get enough of. For the vast majority of people, though, it’s a concept that they know little about. Subsequently, people aren’t really sure what Web3 is, how they will access the products and services that it will offer, and if it’s really anything of substance.

Turn back the dial to just a few years ago when Bitcoin and crypto were the buzzwords of the day. It felt like everyone online was jumping on the digital currency revolution that would lead them to immense riches overnight. However, over the years, the public's understanding of digital currencies has improved and it's no longer largely perceived as a get-rich-quick scheme. Millions of people are now actively investing in such digital currencies as part of a diversified portfolio.

Web3 is closely tied to the digital currency revolution as it will play a major role in facilitating transactions in this next iteration of the internet.

What is Web3?

The term 'Web 3.0' was coined by Gavin Wood in 2014. He's the founder of a blockchain infrastructure company called Parity Technologies. He used this term to describe his vision for the future of the internet. It was ultimately shortened to Web3. The concept envisioned a decentralized version of the internet that isn't dominated by a handful of major companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc.

With decentralization at its core, Web3 is meant to be a more democratic version of the internet where major companies don't hold much influence. The services that we use on Web3 won't be hosted by a single service provider company, such as Google, but they'd essentially be algorithmic creations that are hosted by participants in Web3.

This fundamental difference between Web3 and Web2 - the version of the internet that we use currently - is that nobody will have an advantage over anyone else. The blockchain technology is key to bringing Web3 to life. It works as a public ledger of activity. As Web3 is based on a trustless model, all of the decentralized products and services will be built on the blockchain and users will have to trust the underlying blockchain algorithm to deliver the experience they desire.

How Web3 will change online marketing

Given how Web3 works, it will require online marketers to go through a significant evolution as well. Data privacy is at the heart of this decentralized version of the internet and data is the bread and butter of online marketers.

The limits on how data is collected and used within Web3 will fundamentally change online marketing as we know it. Marketers will also have to focus more on community building as Web3 puts users in the driving seat. Users will be able to promote their interests and ideas. Brands will have to focus on creating communities that drive those conversations for more effective messaging.

Elevate your brand in Web3

Start exploring NFTs

NFT is another buzzword that's closely associated with Web3. NFTs or non-fungible tokens are pieces of intellectual property that exist on the blockchain. Brands can use them effectively for digital scarcity campaigns to increase brand awareness and sales.

It's evident that NFTs are a crucial element of content creation for Web3. Some of the world's biggest brands have already started creating these tokens to drive brand awareness and reach. It's also a way for them to deliver new and interesting digital experiences to their customers in addition to linking the NFTs with real-world experiences.

Brands that have yet to establish their presence in Web3 should start exploring NFTs to leverage this explosive trend.

Focus on decentralized apps

Decentralization is at the heart of the Web3 experience. That's one of the reasons why it will bring a significant change to social media as we know it. Existing networks like Facebook and Instagram offer great features but also exercise total control over their services. Web3 flips the script with dApps or decentralized apps.

These apps won't have a central authority that controls users' data, thus leaving much of the control up to the users themselves. The dApps provide brands with a great opportunity to connect with their customers and build meaningful relationships that are beneficial for both parties.

Strike a balance between the real and virtual worlds

Experiential marketing is front and center in Web3. As people crave more personalized experiences online, brands need to revamp their marketing efforts around the changing market landscape. Brands should thus opt for a more hybrid approach that ties together their efforts in both the real and virtual worlds.

Brands need to ensure that their voice seamlessly transitions across the worlds and enables them to effectively connect and communicate with their customers across both worlds. This can be done by building experiences and interactive elements that cut through the barrier.

The time to embrace Web3 is now

Widespread adoption of Web3 is going to take time, particularly as accessibility issues are still a hurdle for most people as buying headsets to access interactive spaces is a major barrier to entry. With that being said, the pace at which Web3 is evolving makes it clear that the time to embrace this monumental change is now.

Brands must not risk being left behind or shown to not be proactive when their competitors are actively pursuing opportunities in Web3. A complete shift is not possible at this stage but a comprehensive marketing strategy in this day and age must have an element in Web3. This hybrid approach will work well for the coming years as Web3 continues to grow.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

How virtual influencers could dominate the marketing landscape

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 17:32:11 GMT

Social media networks have made it possible for the average person to clinch fame and fortune that was once the exclusive domain of bonafide celebrities. People who are able to establish significant communities on social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, etc are known as influencers.

Brands are more than happy to pay big money to reach out to these highly curated audiences. The influencer marketing business is well and truly on the rise. It has seen exponential growth in less than a decade. The market's value has grown from $1.7 billion in 2016 to $13.8 in 2021. The following year, it's projected that influencer marketing will become a $16.4 billion industry.

It’s easily understandable why there’s such appeal for influencer marketing. People follow and often emulate their favorite influencers. It’s real people creating content for the average person whose life, beliefs, or values may resonate with them. Brands tap into this connection to reach pockets of highly targeted audiences.

Change is inevitable in every industry and it appears that the influencer marketing industry is also on the cusp of a major change, one that might see human influencers competing for a slice of the pie with virtual influencers.

What are virtual influencers?

This might be the first time that you've heard the term virtual influencer. Simply put, these influencers are digital computer-generated avatars or characters that are made to appear like real people. They're effectively a substitute for human influencers and are now being widely used for social media marketing.

As you'd expect, a virtual influencer exists entirely in the virtual world. Everything from their physical attributes to what they wear, how they speak, what they sound like and the environments they post pictures and videos in is computer generated. At first glance, it might be difficult to tell them apart from real influencers, given as they're as polished and airbrushed as some of the best human influencers.

Leading virtual influencers

Lu do Magalu is one of the earliest virtual influencers as she was created back in 2009 to promote Magazine Luiza's iBlogTV. She shares product reviews, unboxing videos, and other tips on her Instagram account which has 5.9 million followers. Magula happens to be the most followed virtual influencer in the world.

Lil Miquela is another leading virtual influencer that was created by an artificial intelligence company in 2016. The virtual persona also happens to be a singer and a YouTuber. With more than 3 million followers on Instagram, Lil Miquela has worked with some of the world's top brands like Dior and Prada on influencer marketing campaigns.

How virtual influencers began gaining traction

Luxury fashion brands were among the first to embrace the virtual influencer trend, with these computer-generated personalities being featured in fashion promotions. Virtual influencers Margot, Shudu, and Zhi were used by Balmain in 2018 for its fashion army. Fenty Beauty also partnered with Shudu on a cosmetics campaign. Prada had Lil Miquela take over its official Instagram account for Milan Fashion Week.

With the biggest names in fashion throwing their weight behind this new phenomenon, it was only a matter of time before other brands jumped on the bandwagon as well. Brands from a diverse range of industries have now started teaming up with virtual influencers. For example, instant ramen manufacturer Nissin has collaborated with virtual YouTuber Kizuna. Samsung, Calvin Klein, and Nike have utilized Lil Miquela while even KFC has launched a computer-generated model of Colonel Sanders.

Why brands are starting to prefer virtual influencers

There are obvious benefits for brands that choose to spend their marketing dollars on influencers that aren’t humans. They can have full creative control as human influencers, particularly those that are well established, will often not give full creative control to the brands they work with.

They may want to retain a certain aesthetic that their audience prefers or may just feel that their vision for the campaign doesn't align with that of the brand. None of that is a concern with virtual influencers. The brands can create the entire campaign exactly how they want it since they will intentionally produce everything, from the creatives to the copy.

There's also less risk of having to deal with the fallout should a human influencer that a brand has previously collaborated with find themselves in an unsavory scandal or face backlash from their audience. Marketers are thus guaranteed full control over the messaging and the narrative even after the campaign is over. This is a level of control that is simply not possible with a human influencer.

Creating the perfect virtual influencer for your brand

It's a fair bit of work that starts with first identifying your audience. If you're catering to a demographic that's not technically savvy or doesn't use social media much then it obviously makes no sense to go down this route. Once you have a firm understanding of who you're marketing to, the next steps will become far easier.

You need to create an entire persona around the virtual influencer. It needs to appear and feel as close to being human as possible, so this is one of the most crucial steps. Work out what characteristics, personality traits, and values you'd like your virtual influencer to have. As always, incorporate traits that will resonate with your audience

You can always work with an external CGI firm to design and create the virtual influencer once you've figured out what you want it to look like.

Virtual influencers have immense future potential

Since the virtual influencer space is only just starting to expand, it provides brands with an incredible opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a trend that’s going to explode in the years to come.

This first-mover advantage will definitely come in handy when there inevitably comes a time when virtual influencers are the leading trendsetters online. Market research firm, Gartner, predicts that by 2025, 30% of influencer marketing budgets will be spent on virtual influencers, making it quite clear that this is where the influencer marketing industry intends to go in the future.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

How to Create a Digital Marketing Budget as a Small Business

Fri, 17 Jun 2022 16:06:21 GMT

Every aspect of running a small business can be incredibly challenging, including creating a budget. Most small businesses are on a very tight budget, so you want to ensure that you distribute it in a way that doesn’t neglect any of your business needs. Depending on your digital marketing experience, it can be even harder to figure out how much to budget for this part of your business expenses.

Whether you need to create your first digital marketing budget or need to adjust your existing one, the following tips will make it much easier.

The Rule of Thumb by Percentage

Remember that every single company is different, and your digital marketing budget will depend on a long list of factors. That being said, there are some general rules. B2B companies typically spend about 2-5% of their revenue on marketing as a whole. This figure is about 5-10% for B2C companies.

But there are two things to remember when using these general guidelines. First, there are significant variations within the range, and you may not even fit in the range. As such, use the ranges as a general guideline and don’t feel like you have to stick to the figures. Second, those percentages are for all marketing, not just digital marketing.

So, that 2-10% of your revenue will also include any non-digital marketing you do. For example, do you have radio ads, ads at bus stations, print flyers, or in-store advertising? All of those also need to be accounted for.

List All of the Potential Digital Marketing Expenses

To start figuring out where you fall within the typical range for digital marketing budgets, make a list of all the expenses you have or will have. Be sure to include digital marketing strategies you don’t yet implement but plan on using, such as local influencers. The following are some of the most important potential costs to consider:

● Website

● Social media advertising

● Social media management outsourcing

● Online advertising, including Google ads

● SEO and PPC

● Email marketing

● Video marketing

● Content marketing

● Local influencer marketing

● Brand development

● Training for anyone internal who will handle digital marketing

For each of these categories, remember to think about all of the associated costs. For example, your website cost is not just to design the website in the first place. There are also hosting fees and domain fees. You will also need website maintenance and potential updates.

Then, you also have website-related advertising costs, such as SEO. If you are going to hire someone to write a blog for your website, you also have those costs.

Take social media as another example. We mentioned both general social media management and paid ads, but you will want to consider more than this. Specifically, think about what social media pages you will need to be present on and allocate a budget for each of them.

Think About Your Customers

Once you have your list of potential expenses, it is time to think about your customer base. What channels are they on? What type of content are they most likely to respond to?

Use those answers to decide how to allocate your budget. You will focus your budget and efforts on the channels and marketing strategies that are most likely to deliver results.

Create Clear Goals

Next, set goals for your digital marketing efforts. Remember that your goals should be measurable, as this lets you track them. For example, instead of saying “get more website visitors,” say “get X more website visitors per week.”

Consider What Tools to Use, Including Free Ones

Most small businesses will want to keep their digital marketing budget as low as possible. Luckily, there are many free tools that can help with this. Google AdWords Keyword Planner is one great example. Just remember that paid tools will give you more resources and features than free ones; however, your business may not need those extras.

This is also the time to figure out what you will do in-house and what you will outsource. Remember that doing your digital marketing in-house is not always cheaper, as you will have a learning curve and spend time that you could’ve spent on something else. You may also get a lower ROI. As such, you need to carefully evaluate the pros and cons before deciding whether to outsource specific marketing efforts.

Track the Budget and Results and Adjust as Needed

As with any other aspect of running your small business, don’t force yourself to stick to a marketing budget long-term once you establish it. Instead, make it a point to regularly evaluate your digital marketing results and your expenditure. Compare your results to baseline figures from before you implemented your new strategies.

If you see results but they aren’t enough to let you reach your goal, consider increasing your budget. If you surpass your goals, see if you can reduce your budget. Or if you aren’t seeing results, temporarily reduce your marketing budget while you figure out what works best.

Conclusion

Most B2B businesses spend between 2 and 5% of their total revenue on marketing, and B2C businesses usually spend 5-10%. Use those figures as a starting point, but consider your goals and potential costs. Most importantly, regularly evaluate your marketing efforts and results, changing your budget as needed.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing.

Are Instagram chatbots useful for providing customer service?

Thu, 09 Jun 2022 18:40:20 GMT

People are now buying products online more than ever before. Even if they come across a product that they’re interested in at a store, they’re more than likely to look it up online to find reviews or experiences from existing customers before they spend their money on it. This has made it imperative for brands to establish an online presence that provides the information that their customers might be looking for.

That’s why you see a lot of brands interacting with questions, queries, and concerns about their products through social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. They set up dedicated support and customer service teams that are tasked with helping existing and potential customers.

It goes without saying that this is a massive endeavor and certainly not one that a lot of small businesses can afford. That’s why there are so many social media automation tools that use the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence to streamline customer service tasks that might otherwise require a substantial human team.

What are Instagram chatbots?

Instagram chatbots are a tool used by brands to provide customer service. They're able to handle queries, questions, and concerns from humans by providing appropriate automated responses by relying on artificial intelligence.

Chatbots have become quite advanced now. They're able to answer questions, make recommendations and even help connect the customer to a real human if their query has not been resolved.

It's made clear to the customer that they're communicating with a bot. The chatbot is integrated into the brand's official Instagram account so users don't have to go out of their way to interact with it. They have now become a legitimate customer service tool that’s in use by some of the world’s top brands.

Why Instagram chatbots make sense for brands

Instagram is widely used by customers to learn more about the products that they want to buy. They're more often than not likely to reach out to the brand on Instagram to get more information about the product.

The social commerce features that have been built into Instagram have also made it a source of revenue for brands. So they must have the ability to address any questions or concerns the customers might have when they interact with the brand on Instagram.

Chatbots make the entire process very streamlined. There are many queries that can easily be answered through automated responses. For example, questions about shipping or return policies, product pricing, sizing, and availability can be handled by chatbots.

There’s no limit to the number of customers chatbots can cater to at any given time. A human customer service rep can only attend to one person at a time. With chatbots, brands no longer need a massive customer service team. Chatbots will filter out many of the queries that can be handled with automated responses, directly only those that genuinely require human assistance to customer service reps.

How Instagram chatbots can improve your customer service

1. Reduce wait times for customers

Customers expect things to move quickly online. They will not appreciate having to wait for a long time until a customer service representative gets free to attend to them. At times when there are a lot of customers requiring support, wait times can increase significantly and lead to a negative user experience.

Chatbots fix this problem as they’re instantly available to attend to all customers. An extra advantage is that while humans take time to type out answers, chatbots are delivering automated answers which means they can reply almost instantly.

2. Leverage data to make informed decisions

Chatbots are also a great source of data to find out exactly what your customers are asking about. Keeping an eye on the type of questions customers are asking can provide valuable insights into your products and let you know if there's something that needs to be improved.

For instance, if the vast majority of customers are asking about sizing for a specific product, it might be because the product page doesn’t feature the sizing guide prominently. This would only require a simple tweak to the page’s design, leading to an improved user experience for customers shopping for products on your website.

3. Lead generation automation

Your lead generation efforts can also be automated using chatbots on Instagram. When they're interacting with a customer, they can also pitch other products directly to them in the chat. This surfaces additional products to the customer, even those that they may not have known about.

Since they’re powered by AI, chatbots can make personalized recommendations based on the products that the customer is interested in, leading to a higher chance of a conversion.

4. Provide support in multiple languages

If you have customers across the globe, this adds a level of complexity to your customer service operations. There may be a need to provide customer service in local languages and that would require hiring a lot more resources, which will be an immensely expensive endeavor.

Instagram chatbots eliminate this hurdle as the technology has evolved enough to support multiple languages. A multilingual chatbot will deliver automated responses in a variety of languages, enabling you to provide improved and personalized service to customers across the globe.

5. Improve brand reputation

Brands that provide customer service better than their competitors do gain an inherent advantage through word of mouth. Customers are likely to talk about their positive experiences with others, thereby improving brand reputation.

Deploying chatbots has multiple benefits and chief among them is the speed at which queries can get resolved. When customers don’t have to wait to get the answers that they’re looking for, they will view the brand favorably and would likely return to purchase products from it in the future as well.

Don’t fire your customer service team just yet

Given the benefits of chatbots, it might feel tempting to transfer the entire customer service operation over to them, but that would be a mistake. You should keep a dedicated team that will handle all of the complex queries that the chatbot is unable to handle.

Furthermore, it’s also imperative to keep checking up on the chatbot’s activity to ensure that it’s working within the scope that has been defined to it, the automated answers are being delivered as desired and that there are no technical issues that could negatively impact the user experience.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

Link-building strategies that work in 2022

Thu, 26 May 2022 16:11:14 GMT

The guidance on how to get your content to rank high in search results has changed over the years. The focus is always on Google, which is the world’s leading search engine, and it often makes changes to its algorithms that require content marketers to adapt their strategies.

The algorithm updates that Google makes can often make or break sites. If it significantly changes ranking signals, some sites can end up losing a big chunk of their traffic overnight, and getting it back seems almost impossible.

However, there’s one SEO best practice that has stood the test of time and that’s link building. It has been used since the very early days of the online search engine. Quality inbound links are viewed as a positive ranking factor by Google and other search engines.

Unfortunately, a lot of people try to take shortcuts when it comes to link building by employing methods that are frowned upon. Blackhat link-building strategies are most certainly going to get your site penalized and so is buying copious amounts of backlinks from spammy websites. The 2022 link-building strategies don’t include any of that.

What is link building?

Link building is the name of the process through which a landing page on your website is given a hyperlink on another website. When someone clicks on that link on the other website, they'll be taken to your landing page. The aim here is to improve search engine visibility.

These backlinks can be obtained through a variety of ways. For example, a website might organically link to your homepage or a post on your blog just because they found your content to be interesting. You can also develop and execute well thought out strategies to reach out to relevant websites in your niche to gain new backlinks.

Why is link building important for improving search rankings?

To understand this, it's important to realize how Google changed online search as we know it. Back in the day the outdated search engines like Alta Vista were ranking websites based entirely on the webpage's content. Google switched things up with its PageRank Algorithm that also ranked how many people were linking to a particular page.

Google views inbound links as a measure of the content's quality. The assumption here is that if a lot of people are linking to the content, chances are that they find it to be relevant. So others who search for a similar query will likely be shown the results that have a greater number of backlinks.

Over the years, Google has refined this further so that it's not about the quantity of the backlinks but the quality. Even if you have a million inbound links from spammy websites with low domain authority scores it won't help improve your rankings. On the other hand, even a few links from high-quality websites that are relevant to your niche can help push your content further up the rankings.

2022 link building strategies to follow

1. Create helpful visual assets

Providing value through your content is a great way to gain inbound links. People who come across your content and find it useful will likely link back to it, particularly if it’s going to be useful for their audience.

Infographics, charts, diagrams and other visual assets tend to do very well online. They enable people to get the gist of what they’re looking for far more easily than a lengthy blog post. This strategy effectively doubles the exposure since not only will they link back to your website but likely also share the visual assets you have created on theirs.

2. Post guest blogs on relevant websites

This is one of the oldest yet among the most successful link-building strategies, but in 2022 it doesn’t quite work in the same way that it used to. Large scale link-building campaigns through copy/paste guest blog content is usually picked up by Google and your website can end up getting penalized for it.

What you need to do instead is reach out to websites that you can provide real value to through your content. If they agree to take on your guest post, create high-quality content that will remain unique to that site. This way, a link that’s naturally placed in that post has a much higher chance of achieving the objective.

3. Don’t forget about internal link building

A lot of people seem to forget that link building efforts shouldn't just be focused on inbound links. Internal linking, that is when you link to your own content, is equally as important for SEO. The great thing about it is that internal linking is entirely within your control, so you can maximize its potential.

Internal links are a great way to help Google understand your content so that it can be ranked appropriately. They enable the algorithm to find new high-quality content and can also be used to direct traffic to the most important pages on your website.

4. Leverage Reddit for inbound links

There's just about something for everyone on Reddit and chances are that whatever your niche is, it already has a subreddit and community on Reddit. This presents you with a great opportunity to expand the reach of your inbound link-building efforts.

It's important to note that Reddit users won't likely appreciate you spamming their subreddits with links aggressively. The idea should always be to add value to that subreddit through content and build a good reputation over time so when you do ultimately share links, they will be well received.

5. Write testimonials and reviews

If you're considered to be a leading authority in your niche, you can take advantage of the opportunity and gain some valuable links for your website. You're likely working with partners and organizations that provide services crucial for your brand.

Reach out to them and ask if they would like to have a testimonial or review of their product from you. Given your position as a leader, it's likely that they'll want to have that on their website to attract more customers. The testimonial or review you create for them can include a backlink to your site.

Link building isn’t dead, it just requires more diligence

It’s easy to give up on this process since it tends to be tedious and isn’t nearly as easy as it used to be before. However, there’s still incredible value to be unlocked from a well thought out link-building campaign.

Create one with diligence and eventually you’ll start to see results. As the links keep rolling in, you’ll see how your content rankings begin to improve in search results.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

Why the Facebook Ad Library can be your secret weapon

Tue, 17 May 2022 14:40:29 GMT

Running Facebook ads can be a daunting experience, particularly if you’re a small business that can’t afford to have a digital marketing agency on the payroll. You’re probably having to do everything yourself, from designing the creatives to writing copy, setting up campaigns, dialing in the targeting and executing the campaigns.

It can all get a bit too much and if you’re a novice, chances are that you’ll end up burning up a significant chunk of your ad budget before you get the hang of things. In such cases, you may often find yourself wondering if there was a secret weapon of sorts that you could use to learn how the pros are doing marketing on Facebook these days and what seems to be working for them.

Trying to search for such a Facebook secret weapon can turn up all sorts of dubious results online. From useless courses to shady tools, there’s no shortage of people willing to make a quick buck on the backs of small business owners that just want to take advantage of the great advertising opportunities that Facebook provides.

Now for the good news. There is a Facebook secret weapon of sorts that you’ve probably never heard of. It’s called the Facebook Ad Library. This tool is officially offered by Facebook so you don’t have to pay for it. Just fire it up and see what your competitors are doing to make the most of their Facebook ad campaigns.

What is Facebook Ad Library?

The Facebook Ad Library is quite simply a collection of all ads that are running on Facebook and related properties like Instagram. The Ad Library was created to promote transparency in the ads being run on the world's largest social network. If your competitor, no matter how big or small, is running an ad on Facebook you can use this tool to see what creative and copy they’re using and how it’s performing for them.

There's a lot of information that the Facebook Ad Library shows you. It lists the date when a particular ad started running and the platforms on which it's being run. If an ad has multiple versions, which it may well have if A/B testing is being performed, you'll see that as well. The Ad Library also provides you with the entire ad copy and creative for even more insight into your competitors.

The Facebook Ad Library is accessible to everyone, even those who may not be signed into Facebook. Do remember that it only displays ads that are currently running, it won't provide information on ads that are no longer being run on Facebook’s platforms.

How the Facebook Ad Library can be useful for your campaigns

1. It’s great for seeking inspiration

You can never outright copy your competitor’s digital marketing content. That’s a recipe for disaster and it’s not a good reflection on your brand. It’s important to realize that the purpose of Facebook Ad Library is not to copy what others are doing, it’s to seek inspiration when brainstorming for your own campaigns.

With this tool, you can instantly see what creatives copy that brands you will compete with are using. Take note of the finer details as well, whether they have a certain style for the copy or if they’re using short-form videos more over images, for example. These insights will help you craft a campaign that has a higher chance of resonating with the audience.

2. Keep an eye on the trends

For digital marketers, it’s necessary to be on top of the trends. Brands that are able to successfully leverage trends can see their campaign’s reach skyrocket organically as content that’s trending tends to go viral.

This Facebook Ad Library is your secret weapon to catch trends as they're just taking off, allowing you to ride the wave with your own campaigns. By effectively keeping your finger on the pulse, you can understand advertising trends based on what others are doing and pick the patterns that will help elevate your campaigns.

3. Find new potential audiences

You may not even be aware that your competitors are focusing their advertising efforts on other markets that you may not even have considered to have potential for your brand. With Facebook Ad Library, you can sort your competitors' campaigns by country, allowing you to see if there are any new potential markets that you should be considering for your brand.

You can even try searching for ads targeted to specific cities by typing the name of the desired city in the keyword box. If the ad uses the city's name in the copy, you'll be able to see it.

4. Understand how your competitors’ funnel works

A fully optimized online sales funnel is the dream of every digital marketing. However, achieving it is often easier said than done. There's always room for improvement and so also for inspiration.

This tool makes it possible to research how your competitors are building their funnel. You can utilize this information to effectively crack open their funnel and see what approach they're taking. By iterating on that, you can further improve the sales funnel for your brand.

5. Learn from the deals they offer

Digital marketers are always on a mission to figure out how their competitors are driving their conversions. There are valuable lessons to be learned here as they can then put that same knowledge to use in order to increase their own conversions.

If your competitor is running ads through which they offer limited-time deals or offers, the Facebook Ad Library will reveal all of that to you. See what offers they promote consistently, it's an indicator that they're converting. That way, you can create a similar strategy to lift conversions.

Why the Ads Library is the ultimate Facebook ads spy tool

There will be little incentive to waste your money on a dubious Facebook ads spy tool once you start using the Ads Library. This official tool from Facebook provides enough information and inspiration for you to take what your competitors are doing and make it even better.

It should be a starting point for all small business owners that start advertising on Facebook. The tool can prevent you from making costly mistakes and help improve your return on ad spend.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

Why you should be maximizing your content on social media

Thu, 12 May 2022 18:06:57 GMT

Build it and they will come, is how the popular saying goes, but it’s not entirely accurate when it comes to social media. The general advice for brands now is that they must absolutely have a social media presence. However, this goes far beyond just firing up your favorite social media platform and creating an account.

It’s not that simple. Just having accounts or posting randomly without a defined strategy isn’t going to get you the desired results. With so many different social media platforms available now, brands also need to be more diligent about what they’re posting, when they’re posting and how they can drive the maximum engagement out of it.

Building out your brand on social media, particularly organically, can be a soul crushing experience. That’s seriously not an exaggeration. Many brands that don’t want to throw money on the problem right out the gate struggle with establishing their social media presence. It can be quite draining when you spend a lot of time and effort on creating content only for your efforts to not result in any significant gains in views and followers.

It’s no secret that the key to success on social media is consistency. Even if your content isn’t taking off at first, it’s important to continue posting and gradually building up your audience. It’s equally as important to not neglect other platforms where you could reshare that content to further maximize the value of what you’ve created

Picking the right platforms will set you up for success

Most of the leading social media platforms offer a lot of similar features these days. For example, the ephemeral “stories” feature may have gained popularity through Snapchat but now you can also find it on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and others. The same holds true for short-form video.

Creating unique content for all of these different platforms won’t be possible unless you’ve got a full-blown media production department and copious amounts of marketing dollars. When deciding which social media platforms to create a presence on, look for the feature similarities between the different options.

This will give you the flexibility to utilize the content that you’ve already created and spread it across all of these different platforms. This approach has a greater chance of setting you up for success.

Extract more out of your content calendar

This circles back to consistency which is a big factor in all successful social media endeavors. Just look at all of the major players in your industry and you'll find a common thread. They have their posting schedules locked down.

A content calendar is a great way to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks. If you're looking to maximize your content on social media, a calendar can help you divide how much of it you're going to post on a given day and on which platforms. This can be useful in preventing content fatigue for your audience.

The added benefit of this approach is that you're able to work on your social media postings in a much more professional manner. You can fine-tune your posts to suit each individual social media platform without having to jump through the sites. Timing them correctly will ensure maximum engagement from the audience.

Avoid inactive social media feeds

For most people who are looking at brands online, an inactive social media feed is a big red flag. It instantly makes them question the brand’s authenticity as it’s unfathomable that a business in this day and age would not be actively promoting itself across all of its social media channels.

This is a pitfall that you can avoid by maximizing your content on social media. For example, even if you’ve just recorded one video for a day, you could post it with minor edits across all of the social media platforms you’re on so that the clip is suited to each individual platform.

The audience there would thus see that the brand regularly updates its feed with content and they’ll likely to continue engaging with it. Dead social media feeds also tend to impact the reach of your content, since the platform’s algorithms will slowly stop pushing the old content to users.

Paid campaigns should always be an option

Social media platforms may position themselves as free services but they are increasingly finding ways to extract more ad revenue out of brands. To truly succeed on social media, paid marketing is inevitable.

As you work through maximizing your content on social media, look at opportunities that you can leverage to further expand the reach of your content. This may be through paid campaigns through the platform's ad tools or via influencer marketing.

If you've created a great piece of content and would like to promote it further, you can always find an influencer in your niche that has a relevant audience. Work with them to put your content in front of more people who could potentially be new customers

Your interactions are just as important as your content

A clear focus on the quality and quantity of content is required for an effective social media strategy, however, the buck doesn’t stop there. How you drive the engagements that the content brings is equally important. This should be the guiding principle when interacting with the people who engage with your content.

People prefer interactions that feel human on social media. Your brand shouldn't come off as being a cold, faceless corporation that has no personality. When people engage with your brand’s content online, they’re looking for a response that feels more natural and human.

That's one of the main reasons why brands are increasingly taking a more informal approach to their conversations on social media, a tone that you wouldn't expect to see in their professional communications. From making jokes on Twitter to sharing behind the scenes stories on Instagram, your content maximization efforts will only be as good as the quality of interactions that people get from them.

Remember, content is still king on social media

There’s no substitute for great content. Whether it’s a well-produced video, an exceptional image or even a hilarious tweet that goes viral. Nothing beats great content on social media networks.

If you are able to nail that down and spread that content across all of the platforms that you have a presence on, it won’t be long before you see brand lift across all platforms.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

Why Your Marketing Strategy Needs YouTube Shorts

Thu, 05 May 2022 13:45:49 GMT

The popularity of short form video content has skyrocketed online with social networks like TikTok being the major drivers of this trend. Other social networks have taken notice and launched their own short form video platforms.

Most people wouldn’t associate short form videos with YouTube. It’s the place where they go to watch lengthy vlogs, tutorials, clips from their favorite news shows and more. Yet, the Alphabet-owned video streaming service had to come up with something to counter the rising competition from the likes of TikTok and Instagram Reels.

It's not like YouTube doesn't have short form video pedigree. The very first video that was uploaded on YouTube was just 18-seconds long. As vertical video continues to dominate the online landscape, YouTube had to come up with an offering that would capture the interest of both creators and viewers.

In September 2020, it announced YouTube Shorts. This is a new short form video experience that's built right into the video streaming service for 15-second videos. The feature was first tested in India where it became an instant hit. The following year, YouTube Shorts would then be released across the globe, bringing in over 6.5 billion daily views.

YouTube Shorts is seeing incredible engagement from the community and thus it provides brands with a great opportunity to further expand their reach.

What is YouTube Shorts?

YouTube Shorts is a new short form video format that enables creators to express themselves in 15 seconds or less. Creation is at the heart of YouTube Shorts and as such, it's easy and fun to create these short form videos on the platform.

Tools like multi-segment camera that allow creators to string multiple video clips together as well as the option to record with music from a large library of songs provides new creative avenues. It has also been made easier for viewers to discover new content. YouTube Shorts gets its own row on the home page and viewers can easily swipe vertically to move from one video to the next so that it's even easier for users to keep on watching these short form videos.

Why should you be posting YouTube Shorts?

Most brands already focus on creating a YouTube presence. It's the leading video streaming platform and as such, it demands the attention of brands looking to expand their presence online. Think of YouTube Shorts simply as an extension of your YouTube presence. The ease with which YouTube Shorts can be created is a big plus point. You don't really need any equipment other than a smartphone to create this digestible content that viewers can easily consume on the go.

YouTube Shorts enables you to tap into the massive base that uses YouTube through their mobile devices. That's really when this new experience should be a part of your marketing strategy. As more and more people start using YouTube Shorts, it’s important that your brand maintains a presence there as well.

Why incorporating YouTube Shorts in your marketing strategy is a good idea

1. The demographics may work in your favor

TikTok may be the leading short form video app but its relatively younger demographic may not be suitable for all brands, particularly those in the B2B space. YouTube is home to a more diverse demographic as there's essentially something available for everyone on the video streaming platform.

For example, brands can share industry insights or thought leadership content through YouTube Shorts even though that same content may not find much traction on the likes of TikTok and Instagram Reels.

2. The content sticks around for longer

YouTube Shorts is fundamentally different from other experiences such as Instagram Stories and Reels. The latter focuses on ephemeral content that disappears after 24 hours. This means your audience may never see all of the content that you produce.

This isn't the case with YouTube Shorts. The short form videos remain on the page so whenever someone comes across your content, they'll be able to see all of the short videos that you've created, regardless of how long ago they were posted.

3. Gain the first-mover advantage

This is still a relatively new platform and there isn’t as much competition for eyeballs here as there might be on other platforms. Brands that incorporate YouTube Shorts in their marketing strategies now will be in a better position to gain the first-mover advantage.

They will be able to establish themselves as an authority on this platform. YouTube users who view the short form videos will be more familiar with the brand and are thus more likely to gravitate towards their content in the future.

4. Lead the conversation on short form topics

There may be industry trends or events in your niche that can be adequately addressed with short form content. With YouTube Shorts, brands have the opportunity to drive the conversation on such topics.

This content could be anything from short videos that provide quick tips or data points to recap of industry news. It would help build authority among the viewers, particularly those that may have only just discovered your brand.

5. Differentiate yourself from the competition

If you have competitors that aren’t capitalizing on this trend, it gives you even more incentive to dive head first into YouTube Shorts. The competition is essentially giving up the space to you and it’s an incredible opportunity to get a leg up on it.

A brand’s online presence is the first thing that most people evaluate before they decide to try one of its products. By having a presence on a platform where the competition is effectively non-existent, you have a much higher chance of winning more customers.

YouTube Shorts aren’t going anywhere

It may seem like an experiment but there’s no indication that this platform will go away. YouTube is serious about its Shorts experience which is why it has been gradually rolled out to more than 100 markets across the globe since the initial test.

The sooner brands start incorporating YouTube Shorts in their marketing strategies, the higher the chances of them growing their audience on the platform as it grows further in the years to come.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

5 Social Media Platforms Every Small Business Should Consider in Their Digital Marketing Strategy

Wed, 27 Apr 2022 18:25:19 GMT

For people running all parts of their business, serving as the sole marketing person, or part of a small marketing team, you know the multiple hats needed to make it work. When this is the case, social media may seem like a non-essential element of your marketing plan. It becomes easy to push aside when things get busy. But do not write it off that quickly.

More and more people spend their free time on their phones and social media apps. You have to be on those platforms if you want to engage them.

Social Media Platforms You Need to Use

While you are likely familiar with Facebook, there are many other platforms your company should consider when running a social media campaign. Here are the five that most companies need to use:

● YouTube

● Instagram

● LinkedIn

● Twitter

● Facebook

YouTube

YouTube is a video platform with more than 1.9 billion active users monthly. This is a giant social platform with billions of hours of videos watched every day. It is second for searches and traffic only to Google. For these reasons alone, you should be using it. Video is also an excellent means of engaging with your audience.

You need to make sure to optimize your videos to rank, so they reach for people looking for content. Because YouTube is owned by Google, you can run your campaign through Google Ads and reach your target audience. Consider posting “how-to” videos as it is among the top-four most searched content categories on YouTube.

Also, those who use YouTube are as much as three times as likely to watch videos on how to use a product over reading how to use it. You can even reuse existing content from your site to boost the rankings. Keep the videos at around two minutes to maximize views.

You should post as often as your team is capable of producing quality content. Once you have utilized this platform regularly for some time, look at your referral traffic from YouTube. This will let you know if you’re on the right track.

To increase your engagement, make sure to optimize videos for SEO, use good titles, utilize keywords, and tag accordingly. Don’t forget to use CTAs or links to get that traffic back to your site.

Instagram

Instagram is a visual platform that can help move your business along. You can make permanent posts or short-lived ones. Therefore, you have creativity in your Instagram presence while still focusing on your business goals.

What to post really depends on the medium you select. You should keep your posts to short videos or images that embody your company and expertise. Speckle these with some promotions.

Stories go live for 24 hours. You can drive engagement with polls or by asking questions. You can choose to create a mood through music or promote an announcement. Instagram is a great way to tag people and locations as well. Stories offer a chance for behind-the-scenes look into your company.

Share consistent, quality content, and you will get a following. Remember, it is all about the visuals.

Twitter

Where Instagram is a visual platform, Twitter is more like a conversation. This is a fast-paced platform that sees more than 500 million tweets daily and 320 million active monthly users. It relies heavily on news and international users.

You only have 280 characters, so keep it short. You have the opportunity to post about contests, funny ideas or thoughts, promotions, sales, industry data, and findings.

Because of the number of tweets, posting multiple times a day is the best way to get seen.

One of the older social media platforms, LinkedIn still has over 250 million active monthly users. It is best for B2B or business-to-business marketing. With that in mind, keep your content more industry-related and offer business ideas instead of content for individual clients. This platform is ideal for video content as well. Look to post about twice a week.

Facebook

With so many companies moving into the Facebook platform, there is less to say that you don’t already know. You could pay for ad placement with this OG of the social media platforms. It is a conversational platform, but the content still needs to be useful.

Remember to mix it up with videos, images, and text. Also, Facebook business pages offer tons of ways to maximize and determine ROI on posts. You will get instant ideas of what is working and what isn’t.

Conclusion

By using the above social media platforms, you will notice a boost to your digital marketing results. Start by focusing your efforts on whichever platform your customers are most likely to be on. Then, expand to make sure you cover all of the platforms.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

How Instagram Can Help You Increase Website Traffic

Tue, 19 Apr 2022 17:28:29 GMT

Website traffic is fast becoming an elusive commodity. You’d be hard pressed to find a niche without any competition. This makes it incredibly difficult to rank well on search engines, thus leaving you at the mercy of paid ads to drive traffic.

The conventional wisdom around increasing website traffic is no longer enough. Yes, you can work on a well-rounded content marketing strategy, do SEO and run link building campaigns. This is just one part of the puzzle now. There’s a greater need now to leverage your social media presence in order to increase website traffic.

It’s easier said than done, though. Getting people to leave a social network that they want to spend a lot of their free time on to visit a website is difficult. With enough optimization and focus, it’s entirely possible, and it works out well there’s nothing quite like it.

As one of the leading social media networks of our time, Instagram is a great resource to leverage when trying to increase the traffic on your website. It’s particularly useful if you already have a decent presence on the social network. Those followers can be converted into regular website visitors fairly quickly.

Why Instagram is so important when trying to increase traffic to your website

For marketers, Instagram is a goldmine. It's one of the most effective social media networks with an audience that's ready to engage. Instagram also happens to be pretty big across the globe. It has over 1.4 billion users across the globe, making it the fourth more popular social media platform in the world. Studies have also shown that people tend to spend more time on Instagram compared to some of the other networks.

Instagram’s focus on discovery considerably levels the playing field for brands, enabling startups and established businesses alike to tap into an audience that’s actively looking to find new content that appeals to their interests.

Such an engaged audience can be hard to come by on other social networks and this is precisely why Instagram is such an important tool to use when trying to increase traffic to your website.

How Instagram makes things difficult

It’s never too easy. Instagram has made a conscious decision to not make it too easy for brands to send people off the app. That’s understandable, the Meta-owned social media network obviously wants people to not leave the app as much as possible. That might be why it doesn't allow clickable links in posts.

No matter how much engagement your posts get, the caption can’t include a clickable link. This makes it difficult even for people who want to visit your website, since it requires a bit of manual work from them, and that’s one of the easiest ways to make potential visitors lose interest.

Fortunately, there are several different ways through which you can use Instagram to direct traffic to your website.

How to increase website traffic from Instagram

1. Make the most of the Link in Bio

You've probably heard your favorite Instagram influencer mention this multiple times. Instagram allows users to add just one external link in the bio on their profile page. So it’s imperative that you make the most of this allowance.

Think of the Link in Bio as the prime real estate on your Instagram profile. You can put the link to your website here or if you'd like to have multiple links, use one of the many Link in Bio tools available to create a landing page that includes as many links as you want.

Since the Link in Bio is a treasured commodity, be sure of the goal you want to achieve. Whether it's just driving traffic to the home page or a specific landing page, offering an incentive or growing your newsletter subscriber base.

2. Remind people that you have a Link in Bio

Remember, there are no clickable links in Instagram posts. Simply adding a Link in Bio isn’t enough. You need to remind your audience that they need to click on the link in your bio, otherwise they may not know that it even exists.

Your Instagram posts can include a reminder in the caption that invites the audience to check out the link in your bio. If you tend to post videos on your feed, that’s another great opportunity to get them to click the link.

Instagram users are very familiar with the Link in Bio. It’s widely used across the entire platform so there’s not going to be a learning curve here for them. They know exactly where to find it and how to use it.

3. Don’t sleep on Instagram Stories

Instagram may not have invented the stories format, but it has surely made it its own. Shoppable stories are particularly useful if you’re in the ecommerce business, as you can send visitors directly to a product page.

A shoppable story has a "swipe up" link, so viewers only need to swipe up on the content in the story to be taken to that page. If they're even remotely interested in your product, chances are they will swipe up.

This is a simple yet powerful way of bringing more organic visitors to the site. The people who follow you on Instagram likely check out the stories that you’re posting. Simply by relying on this feature you could be sending a big chunk of them to your website.

4. Use a smart Call to Action with every post

A call to action is one of the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal. It sounds very simple, just telling people what you want them to do, but you'd be surprised just how effective it is online.

So whether you're posting just an image, a video or a story, be sure to include a call to action that invites people to check out your website. The golden rule here is that your call to action shouldn't appear to be pushing a sale.

It should feel natural, one that stokes the curiosity of the viewer and compels them to visit your website to find out more about the brand.

5. Optimize your website for mobile

Think about it. People use Instagram on their mobile devices. When you send them to your website, they’ll still be on their smartphone. If your website is not properly optimized for mobile viewing, they’re more likely to leave it without even seeing what you have to offer.

So while you focus your efforts on trying to get more people from Instagram to your website, do make sure that it’s optimized for mobile. Otherwise, all those efforts will have been for nothing.

Boost your efforts with Instagram marketing

Your marketing efforts on Instagram should go far beyond getting people to the website. There are a plethora of tools offered on the social network that you can utilize to grow your Instagram presence further and increase engagement.

Remember, the more popular your Instagram account, the larger the audience is going to be. Even getting a fraction of them over to the website could prove to be very beneficial.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

6 Ways To Increase Your ROI With Digital Marketing

steeldaddeh3@gmail.com (Chet Mitchell) — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 17:24:12 GMT

Some people mistakenly believe that digital marketing is an expensive way to market a business. But it is more affordable than you realize and easily pays for itself. On top of that, it is a necessity. If you don’t create a strong online presence, it can be difficult to grow your business.

You won’t get the full impact of a campaign if you don’t use digital marketing to make it happen. As with any mode of marketing, you will need to see if your digital marketing campaigns are worth the time and money you’ve invested. There are several metrics you can use to determine the ROI of your digital marketing campaigns. This will help you know where to spend your time and when to move on.

Consider the following ways to improve your digital marketing strategy and boost your ROI.

Define Your Campaign Goals

When setting business goals, you need to keep several factors in mind. One way to establish a system is to use the SMART goal-setting method. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound goals. This will help you understand how to set and measure achievement with your goals.

This applies to campaign goals when trying to determine your ROI. Marketing ROI will depend on your industry, market demand, cost structure, and other factors. Your ROI is also determined by the campaign. Make sure that you define the purpose of your marketing strategies in detail and be mindful of having realistic goals.

Create Content People Want

Your clients are exposed to constant information online. You need to give your brand something that sets you apart to see a return. Content is one of the most important tools for you to stand out.

No client wants a sales ad. They want value and a connection. To get this, make sure your content is personalized. Look at your target customers and create for them. This may be based on their demographics, interests, location, or gender.

Moreover, there are a few other key factors to consider when creating content.

Develop Useful Content

Make sure you are providing something your audience can use. Solve a problem, whether by telling them how to care for equipment, how to utilize an item in a new way, or how to clean something, for example. Give them information that solves specific challenges.

Develop User-Centric Content

Whether sharing a service or product to your audience through emails or FB posts, connect with them on a personal level.

Get Regular Feedback

One of the best tools for determining what your audience wants is to send out surveys. These can get you real feedback on what your audience needs and expects your brand to deliver. Be sure to utilize regular Q&A sessions, polls, surveys, and webinars to keep in touch with your customers. This will be used to create more useful content.

Use Influencers to Market

Consider collaborations with influencers to keep marketing and working with your audience. They will know what content you need because they are immersed in it. When collaborating with a partner, you open your business to new leads and prospects.

Let Predictive Analytics Work for You

This essential tool boosts and measures ROI. Through AI and machine learning, you gain insights using models, datasets, and algorithms in an effort to predict future consumer behavior. You can also use predictive analytics for prioritizing leads based on which customers are ideal for conversion. This aids in customer conversion and retention rates by helping meet consumers’ needs.

Predictive analytics also helps fine-tune a marketing strategy by allowing you to focus on needs and spend your energy and time well.

Use Automation to Your Advantage

There are many different automation tools available for you to use to your advantage and reduce costs. That is why the automation industry is predicted to reach $6.4 billion by 2024. These tools perform repetitive tasks like managing docs, images, and email lists. That will give you more time to focus on running your business.

Conclusion

By adding the right strategies to your digital marketing, you will find an improved return on investment. Incorporate the above strategies to make the most of your marketing budget.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

How To Reduce Facebook Ads Cost In 2022

Fri, 08 Apr 2022 15:15:51 GMT

Whether you’ve been running Facebook Ads for a long time or are only just starting out advertising on the world’s leading social media network, the cost of running these ads will certainly be a major consideration.

With billions of users across the globe in every demographic, Facebook is arguably the best place to be for brands to spend their advertising dollars on. To aid them in this endeavor, Facebook provides advertisers with powerful tools that enable them to fine tune their campaigns in order to achieve the maximum return on ad spend.

The fact remains, though, that Facebook advertising costs have risen steadily over the past few years. There's no denying that Facebook Ads have become expensive and that presents brands with a risk. If their ad campaigns aren't successful, they could end up losing a significant chunk of money.

Even if their campaigns don’t completely flop, the money that brands have to put in for these campaigns may simply not be enough to justify the return on ad spend. That’s why there’s a lot of focus these days on figuring out ways to reduce Facebook Ads cost. It’s easier said than done but it’s not entirely impossible.

How are Facebook Ads costs calculated?

It's important to first understand the factors that determine the cost for your Facebook ads. The social network relies on real-time auctions powered by its AI algorithms to determine the price of every impression or click.

It takes into account characteristics such as locations, interests and even ad placements to reach the final cost. For example, brands will pay more for a campaign targeted to users in the United States than for those in Thailand. The time of the year also has an impact on ad costs. During peak shopping seasons, the average CPMs tend to jump by double digits.

Competition is another factor to keep in mind. Many different businesses are competing against each other for the same Facebook audience. This tends to drive up prices for everyone, as the auction model prioritizes those that pay top dollar.

Generally, the highest bidder wins the ad placement but there are other factors that weigh on it as well. Relevance is one of them. Facebook wants to make sure that its users see ads that are relevant to them, so it tries to strike a balance.

Tips to reduce your Facebook Ads costs in 2022

1. Use the Campaign Budget Optimization feature

Campaign Budget Optimization is a feature that Facebook offers advertisers. When enabled, this allows Facebook's ad algorithm to decide how the budget for your ad campaign is split. It distributes the budget across ad sets to get more results depending on your delivery optimization choices and bid strategy.

Once you've set the entire budget for the campaign, this feature will then distribute it across the ad sets to favor those that are performing better than the others. It's important to note that this feature is different from split testing.

Campaign budget optimization doesn't choose a winning ad set to spend all the budget on, rather it simply allocates more or less budget based on how the different ad sets in the campaign are performing.

With Campaign Budget Optimization, you’re able to run more ad sets while Facebook’s algorithm handles the spend based on how they’re spending, and this can help prevent your budget being burned on ad sets that aren’t doing well.

2. Use fresh ad creatives at least once every month

If the ad costs on your campaigns are rising, you can always refresh the ad creatives. The general wisdom is that this should be done at least once per month. That's due to the fact that Facebook's ad algorithm favors new creatives over olders, so it won't spend as much money pushing it in news feeds.

Most marketers agree that swapping the creatives at least once per month is enough. The guidance on ads that run on a higher budget is that if the statistics indicate rising costs, it's better to opt for fresh creatives even sooner.

Remember, this is only required if the stats show that the ad costs are rising. If the campaign is delivering optimized conversions with fast delivery at low costs, then it's best to not try and fix something that's evidently not broken.

3. Improve audience targeting

Targeting the right audience is crucial to the success of your Facebook ad campaigns. If you've got it locked down, your campaign will not only hit the desired objectives but will also do that in a cost effective manner. Even if you've created an amazing ad with great copy, unless the targeting is right, it's not going to achieve much.

When selecting the audience, try and find one that has a higher possibility of engaging with your ads instead of just looking at them. This may require you to test new audiences that may be a fit for your brand. It's also important to use the ad targeting features to exclude sections of the audience that may not be relevant in order to reduce unwanted impressions.

The formula is quite simple. Work on improving your audience targeting to achieve a higher CTR for more conversions. This will mean you're paying less CPM, thereby getting the best return on ad spend.

4. Don’t sleep on lookalike audiences

This is one of the most powerful tools that Facebook offers its advertisers. Facebook's algorithm is great at finding new audiences that are quite similar to the audience that has already taken a certain action related to your business. For example, these may be people that have visited your website or purchased a product.

The algorithm will use this data to find completely new audiences that are essentially a lookalike of the audience that has already engaged with your brand. The source audience can come from a custom audience that you provide Facebook with or you can also use the Facebook Pixel to collect data.

Since the source audience already specifics to the algorithm exactly what it’s looking for, it doesn’t burn through as much of the budget as it would when trying to find a completely new audience for you without any direction.

5. Capture leads with retargeting

Converting cold traffic, or people who have never heard about your brand before, is extremely difficult. Brands in almost every industry struggle with this. It happens very rarely that someone will buy a product after seeing just one ad for it online.

Through retargeting, you can put ads in front of people who have already interacted or engaged with the brand. Retargeting allows you to continue to capture their attention and if so desired, even provide them with an incentive such as a special discount to get them to convert.

Retargeting tends to be light on the overall campaign budget compared to blasting the ad to a completely cold audience. If done correctly, it enables brands to significantly improve their CTR and conversions.

It’s not impossible to reduce Facebook Ads cost

It may seem very difficult at first, but diligently following these steps and other best practices, it’s entirely possible to reduce Facebook Ads cost in 2022. Even as competition increases and overall ad rates increase, there’s always room to optimize.

Brands shouldn’t lose faith in Facebook ads yet. It continues to provide brands with an incredible opportunity to reach new customers across the globe at a scale that few other social networks are capable of matching.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

5 Budget-friendly Digital Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

steeldaddeh3@gmail.com (Chet Mitchell) — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 17:43:56 GMT

Small businesses tend to be on tight budgets. No matter how tight your budget, however, you need to make sure to set funds aside for digital marketing. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to stick to a budget with your digital marketing strategy. The following tips should help you do just that.

1. Make Your Free Google MyBusiness Account

Google MyBusiness accounts are completely free and are essential to digital marketing. Once you claim your free listing, you will ensure that your company shows up when people search for you on Google. Your business will also show up on Google Maps.

Take this to the next level by optimizing your Business Profile. This will help ensure your Business Profile shows up higher on the search results page.

2. Use Social Media to Your Advantage

There are both free and paid ways to use social media in your digital marketing. Ads are the classic paid option, but it only costs you time to use social media in other ways. Start by making sure that you have a business page on the major social media platforms. Even if you aren’t active on them, claim your page and set up your basic contact information.

Doing this will make it much easier for potential clients to find you. It will also prevent someone else from claiming the account with your business name and causing confusion.

Once you have your social media pages set up, focus on a few platforms. Decide which ones to focus on based on which platforms your customers spend the most time on.

Use your social media pages to promote your blog posts as well as sales, and engage with current customers and potential ones on these platforms. You can ask for feedback or run polls. You can comment on relevant topics or even join hashtags.

Tag People and Brands

To make the most of social media, consider tagging people as well as brands. Maybe you and another local business agree to promote each other, so you occasionally tag each other in posts. This lets you both expand your audiences.

Or if you have brand influencers or even excellent customers, tag them in your posts. Remember that tagging another profile will extend your reach, as people who follow that profile may see your post.

Of course, you should also encourage people to tag your business in their posts.

Use Hashtags

As mentioned, incorporating hashtags into your social media posts can be an excellent tool. Hashtags help you expand your reach.

You can also use hashtags to weigh in on trends or events. For example, if your city is hosting a major sporting event, make a post about that, complete with the hashtag. It could be as simple as rooting for your home team, or you could mention how your products or services would improve the experience of event-goers.

3. Use Local SEO

Technically, local SEO is completely free if you do it yourself. That being said, it will take time away from other responsibilities. Because of this, some small businesses will want to outsource their SEO to a professional. Even then, it can be a budget-friendly way to boost your website visitor count.

If you want to start with SEO on your own, look for location-based keywords and create blog posts or landing pages that focus on your local neighborhood. Another part of local SEO is claiming your profile in online directories.

4. Use Email Marketing

No digital marketing plan is complete without email marketing, and you can make this surprisingly budget-friendly. Yes, you will likely need software of some sort to make email marketing feasible, but you may not need very many features.

A small investment in email marketing can deliver significant results. Just make sure to use A/B testing and create compelling subject lines. You should also segment your audience for the best results.

5. Apply for Awards

If your business has earned awards, use that to your advantage in your marketing. Display the award logos on your website and social media.

Take this to the next level and apply to various business awards that you think you could win. After all, this increases your chances of winning one.

Conclusion

Even if your small business is on a tight budget, you will still have plenty of digital marketing strategies at your disposal. The above tips can help you make the most of limited funds, helping your bottom line while growing your business.

Content create for Digital Harvest Marketing

6 Things to Know About Using Local Influencers in Your Digital Marketing

Tue, 22 Mar 2022 15:25:29 GMT

As you think about your digital marketing strategy, don’t forget to consider using local influencers. This can be a very useful and cost-effective way to promote your company. Additionally, even small businesses likely have the budget to work with local influencers. You simply have to know which influencers to focus on.

Understanding Local Influencers

First, what are local influencers? They are localized and sometimes called nano influencers because their audiences tend to be much smaller. Expect an audience of about 1,000 to 10,000 people.

While this may seem like a small number, local influencers have the advantage of being focused in your area. This means that nearly every single one of those followers is in your community. This is especially important for small businesses that want to attract local customers.

Their smaller audience size also means that local influencers are much more affordable than those with larger audiences. So, you get to stick to your budget while taking advantage of an audience that is much more likely to be close to your store.

You Get the Same Benefits as With Any Other Type of Influencer Marketing

When you use local influencers, you get the same benefits you would if you used an influencer with a wider audience. The difference is, they are more affordable, and a higher proportion of their audience lives nearby.

Remember that with any influencer marketing, the influencer becomes your spokesperson. Think of them as a brand ambassador who refers your company to a wide audience.

People looking for recommendations are likely to turn to influencers, especially if the influencer in question has built a strong reputation for providing good recommendations.

Simply put, influencers of any size will generate creative content, deliver recommendations, promote your brand, and boost engagement.

As with any other type of brand ambassador, you can also look for a local influencer who fits into a certain niche. So, maybe you sell jewelry or makeup and look for a beauty influencer. Or maybe you are with a gym and look for a fitness influencer. Some local influencers may also straddle multiple niches.

But You Also Get Other Benefits

But using local influencers doesn’t just give you the same advantages you would get with a larger influencer. We’ve already touched on some of the advantages, such as their affordability and localized audience that’s more likely to be close to your business, but don’t forget that local influencers also likely have a higher level of engagement than larger influencers because of their smaller audiences.

Make Sure the Content Is Relatable and Transparent

When using local influencers, you want to make sure that they post content that is relatable and transparent. Don’t encourage influencers to lie about your products, as this will lead to disappointed customers and a bad reputation. It could also get you in legal trouble if your influencers misrepresent your product.

You also want them to post relatable content. This helps their audience connect with them. If their content is more relatable, the influencer starts to seem like a friend. This makes the audience give their recommendations more weight than they would otherwise.

How to Choose Local Influencers

It is also crucial to know how to choose which local influencers to work with. Since you want their posts to be relatable and transparent, look for people who already have those traits in their posts. This will help ensure a natural fit.

Overall, you want your influencer to have common values. They should also have interests that are relevant to your company in some way.

When it comes time to narrow down your influencers, you want to pay more attention to engagement than to their follower count. Remember that the more engaged their audience is, the more likely they are to convert. And remember that local influencers won’t necessarily have massive audiences, as their audience will be mostly local.

Don’t Forget to Evaluate the Campaigns

As with any other marketing campaign, be sure to collect data so you can evaluate your influencer marketing campaign. This will help you decide if it is worth the cost and spot areas for improvement.

Conclusion

Using local influencers is a cost-effective alternative to choosing influencers with larger audiences. You get the added benefits of improved engagement and a local audience in addition to the other assets of using influencers such as recommendations and more content.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

How Organic Social Content Can Drive Engagement

Thu, 17 Mar 2022 18:06:38 GMT

Paid social media advertising promises quick results. A campaign can be launched on any number of social media networks within minutes. Before long, the metrics are there for you to see. If the campaign isn’t hitting the right numbers, cut it before it burns the budget. If it’s performing well, scale it up and let the highly tuned algorithms work their magic.

Is that enough, though? Most marketers wouldn’t agree. In this day and age, brands need to maintain an online presence that relies on a hybrid of organic and paid social media strategy. Content will always be king online but the way it’s presented to the audience is quite important in achieving the desired objectives.

However, it seems like the vast majority of brands would much rather focus on a paid social media strategy exclusively. Only a few would opt for the organic option and even fewer will be able to do it right. There's no denying the fact that gaining organic social research has become difficult.

Social media networks want to extract more money out of marketers and are thus making changes to their platforms that effectively deprioritize content that doesn't have advertising dollars behind it.

Despite the proclamations of many that organic social content is dead on arrival, it’s far from a lost cause, and the brands that are able to do it well are still able to extract considerable engagement from it.

What is organic social content?

Organic social content can simply be described as any post on a social media network, whether text or media, that's not boosted to the audience through a paid promotion. The content is posted to the brand’s page or profile without any advertising push.

It can be anything from a video posted on the brand’s official YouTube channel, a TikTok, a Story on Instagram, a Tweet or a post on your brand's Facebook page.

Once it's posted, you can expect a fraction of your followers to see it. For example, if your Facebook page has one million followers, it doesn’t mean that anything you post on your page will be shown to a million followers.

This is what's called the organic reach. Estimates suggest that the average organic reach for a Facebook Page post is 5.20%. Going by the aforementioned example, on average only 5.20% of the million followers would see that post.

If your followers like what they see, they'll probably share it on their own feeds. This will enable their followers to see content from your brand's social media presence even if they're not following it. Lastly, if you use hashtags in your posts, the people who follow those hashtags may also see your posts.

How organic social content resonates with your audience

Authenticity goes a long way online. People value brands that appear genuine and approachable online. By posting organic social content, brands can build trust with their audience and that in turn helps drive conversions down the line.

There's also an element of community building to it. Brands that leverage this strategy successfully are able to build loyal tribes online that not only consistently buy their products but also advocate for them.

Organic social content plays a major role in convincing people who may have just discovered your online presence to stick around. If a visitor lands on your Facebook page through an ad and sees no other content other than the ads, they wouldn't want to stick around for so long.

On the contrary if they find an abundance of organic content, whether that be brand insights, customer testimonials, product reviews, etc not only will they stick around for longer but they would likely take more of an interest in your brand.

Extracting engagement from organic social content is an art

It’s true. Extracting the most engagement possible from organic content is more of an art than a science. It requires a lot more diligence than a paid post. The engagement will continue to roll in for a post that has an ad spend behind it. The algorithm will keep pushing it even if the audience is not responding favorably.

Organic social content has the ability to take on a life of its own. Most viral content that you find online doesn’t have a paid campaign behind it. The content just needs to be interesting enough to attract the attention of a lot of people. If they keep sharing it, things just snowball from there and the engagement metrics would be much higher than even the best paid campaigns.

1. Tap into the moment

A brand can’t manufacture the current moment. Whether it’s a celebrity faux pas, a global event or simply a heartwarming story from any corner of the planet. If it intersects with your brands, it’s organic content gold.

These are perhaps the best opportunities for your organic content to shine. The event already has traction online, simply by becoming part of the conversation you can leverage it to increase engagement for your own brand.

However, it requires a deft touch. Take it too far and your brand might appear to be insensitive or tone deaf. Any negative perception created as a result has the possibility of snowballing as well. As long as you’re mindful of that possibility, such moments will provide an incredible change to gain substantial organic reach.

2. Celebrate your community in its purest form

Organic content that shows viewers how others benefit from or use a product to enrich their lives has the potential of reaching a lot of people online. It’s the kind of stuff that people want to see and share with their friends, an organic reach gold mine.

By sharing unpolished and unfiltered content, ideally user-generated, the brand projects an air of authenticity and affinity for its community. By celebrating them on official channels, brands can draw in viewers who may not be familiar with them but would be intrigued just enough to learn more about them and their products.

3. Know the best practices for different platforms

No two social media networks are built alike. What works on Facebook may not work on TikTok. If something drives engagement on Instagram it may not perform well on Snapchat. When creating your organic social content, keep in mind the best practices for the network that it will be posted on.

A one-size-fits-all solution is simply not going to work. For example, long captions on your Instagram posts aren't likely to see a lot of interest compared to clean, crisp images that users expect on the platform. Written content that has a feel of community and sentimentality will do well on Facebook instead, as the audience there is more receptive to it.

These considerations may appear minor but they can make a world of difference to your organic content strategy.

Paid vs organic social content is not mutually exclusive

This is not a zero sum game. The best social media strategies rely on a mix of both paid and organic social content. Paid social media is a behemoth in its own right and it provides brands with immense power to get the word out and reach new audiences.

Organic social content should be viewed more as a marathon and not a sprint. By consistently putting out content that will resonate with audiences, both existing and new alike, brands can continue to elevate trust and sustain engagement over the long term. When paired with paid campaigns, this makes for a formidable social media strategy.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

Facebook Marketing Myths You Need To Forget

Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:07:02 GMT

Facebook sounds like the best place to start with your paid social media campaigns and with good reason. It has almost 3 billion users across the globe, reaching 59% of the entire social networking population across the globe. That massive user base makes Facebook an attractive destination for brands.

More than 10 million active advertisers use Facebook to promote their products and services. A significant chunk of its ad sales are generated through mobile. That's not surprising when you consider the fact that over 80% of Facebook users across the platform via a mobile device.

The stats are incredible, to say the least. It would not be wrong to suggest that Facebook has fundamentally changed the way businesses promote their products and services on the internet. So it’s unsurprising to see marketers focus the bulk of their efforts on the platform.

There is no shortage of articles and guides that explain how to make the most of Facebook ads. Such is the interest in the subject matter that experts and gurus of dubious provenance claim to provide strategies that will make you a master in no time.

This tends to do more harm than good as it leads to the creation of myths and misconceptions that people who may be new to Facebook ads follow blindly. Ultimately, this can severely limit their ability to get the most out of this powerful advertising platform.

Common Facebook marketing myths you should forget

1. Small businesses can’t afford Facebook ads

Nobody can deny that the cost of advertising on Facebook has gone up considerably even from just a few years ago. A combination of factors has contributed to this. There's a lot more competition now among advertisers on the social network. Changes to Facebook’s algorithm have also limited the potential reach even of paid ads.

Many would discourage a small business, particularly one in an industry with major players, from spending any money on Facebook ads. It would make sense on the surface. How can a small company compete with a big rival that's spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on Facebook alone?

The fact remains that extracting great value out of Facebook ads has less to do with the overall budget and more to do with how the campaign is set up and just how effective the creative and copy is. It's also possible to set bid caps to ensure that the campaign isn't burning money beyond the level you're comfortable at.

2. Start out with small and very targeted audiences

This is another myth that doesn't really set up newcomers for success. Facebook provides incredibly detailed targeting for ad campaigns, allowing advertisers to narrow down the target audience significantly. It sounds like a great idea at first. Laser-focus your targeting so the ad reaches the people you think will best respond to it.
It's actually more risky to narrow down your audience too much. Testing audiences is the way to go. Often you'll find that campaigns with more broad audiences tend to perform better compared to those with highly targeted ones.
You have to let Facebook's algorithm do its thing. It's ability to find people who are the most qualified for your campaign is unmatched. Give the algorithm the freedom it needs to find you the people you're looking for at the cheapest cost.

3. More followers will result in more engagement

This is a rookie mistake and anyone who approaches Facebook ads with this mindset is simply setting their ad spend on fire. No matter how many millions of followers your Facebook page has, it will never directly result in completely proportionate engagement.

Running a campaign just to increase the number of followers on the page isn’t going to get you anywhere. Sure, you’ll end up with a page that looks like a lot of people want to see what’s posted on it, but you actually have no control over how many followers see what you post.

Facebook has limited organic reach severely, this means even if your page has a lot of followers, it will only show your posts to a fraction of them. Even if you do want to increase the number of followers, it’s much better to split the ad spend between campaigns with focused objectives such as conversions or website visits, for example.

4. Boosting a post has the same result as a campaign

Facebook allows you to boost posts on your pages. This feature is positioned as a quick and easy way to increase the reach of a particular post and possibly gain new followers.

There's a common misconception that this achieves the same results as a full-fledged ad campaign. This myth couldn't be further from the truth. There's little evidence to suggest that boosting a post works in the same way to increase conversions as a planned ad campaign.

Brands get sucked into this since boosting a post seems like the better option to those with little experience with Facebook ads, but its efficacy is limited in the grand scheme of things.

5. Always retarget all website visitors

With the Facebook pixel, you can track the behavior of users on your website and retarget them on Facebook with a campaign. The common wisdom is that you should be retargeting all website visitors but it's nothing more than a misconception. The truth is that not all people who visit your website should be retargeted on Facebook.

For example, some visitors may only be looking for contact information or searching for open positions. They may not be a customer for your products or services. Retargeting website visitors can be very lucrative but only when it's done right.

It's usually better to retarget visitors that have shown high-intent behaviors, such as those who added products to cart but abandoned it, read product reviews, looked at the product catalog, etc.

Facebook is still the best destination to spend your ad dollars

There is no slowing down the juggernaut that is Facebook. It continues to fine tune its ad products and algorithms, thereby providing brands with a great opportunity to leverage its massive user base for new customers.

Brands can lose faith in the platform if they don’t see results quickly and particularly when they have their decisions guided by these common myths. For those who are new to this, it’s always best to test on a small scale first with a limited ad spend.

Learn the ropes, figure out how the different campaign objectives work and how all of the different tools can be used. Once you start disregarding the myths and start making decisions based on your own testing, you may come to feel that there’s nothing better than Facebook ads for online marketing.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

Best Ways To Increase Conversions Through Your YouTube Channel

Wed, 02 Mar 2022 16:20:55 GMT

YouTube is the most popular online video sharing platform. It has revolutionized the way people consume video on the internet while empowering individuals to launch their vlogging careers with little more than a camera and an internet connection, wherever they may be.

The stats don't lie. There were over 1.8 billion YouTube users across the globe in 2021. Approximately 30,000 hours of video is uploaded to the platform every hour. Over 60% of marketers say that they would increase their ad spend on YouTube.

That’s not surprising. YouTube provides businesses with an incredible opportunity to tap into a massive audience. They can also tap into YouTube’s vibrant creator community to forge partnerships and collaborations that enable them to get their message out to the right audience.

YouTube is a great social media channel for brands. Most now have their own channel where they can share everything from behind-the-scenes content to marketing videos and product reviews. Views may be easy to come across, but how do brands turn those views into customers?

How to increase conversions on YouTube

1. Capture viewers’ ‘next click’

People have a very short attention span online. They jump quickly from one website to the other, and in the case of YouTube, from one video to the other. As a brand, you want viewers to complete an action once they’re done with the video, and not just move on.

This requires influencing viewers on what their "next click" should be. The video should nudge them to complete a specific task. For example, this could be as simple as asking them to subscribe to your channel. If you want to drive them to a landing page, the video should tell them that they should visit the page for more information, an incentive, etc.

This strategy is tied to the production of your videos. They should be created in such a way that incentivizes viewers to take that next step once the video is done. Guiding them through this journey will bring a noticeable increase in conversions.

2. Using SEO to your advantage

Now this might have you confused. Isn’t SEO more about search engines than YouTube? When you think about it, YouTube is actually one of the biggest search engines after Google. People are literally searching for the content they want to view on the platform.

The idea with YouTube SEO is much the same as conventional SEO. You want your videos to appear at the top positions on the front page. The basics hold true here. Carefully construct the titles of your videos to include the keywords and phrases you want the video to rank for. Go one step further, include it in the description and even in the video's file name when it's uploaded to YouTube.

These steps are crucial to improving the ranking of your videos. A video on the front page is likely to get a lot more views than one that doesn’t even appear on page number five. Improving the traffic coming in for your videos is one of the simplest ways to increase YouTube conversions.

3. Design eye-catching thumbnails

A simple search on YouTube brings up a sea of videos that most viewers would just scroll through without a second thought. Usually, it’s either the title or the video’s thumbnail that catches their eye and makes them want to watch it.

Brands can’t go for outright clickbait titles that seem to be so common on the video platform. They have to exercise a level of restraint. However, that doesn’t prevent them from using the thumbnails to their advantage in order to increase the click-through rate.

There should be consistency in the video thumbnails that you use, as it helps with elevating the brand and familiarizing it with viewers. The thumbnails should be eye-catching and instantly recognizable as being related to your brand.

4. Boost engagement through live content

Live content is king on the internet and that holds true for YouTube as well. Brands have an incredible opportunity to increase engagement with their audience by going live on the platform. It provides viewers with an opportunity to interact and have a conversation with the brand in real time.

Viewers tend to appreciate live content because it appears more authentic. This helps the brand build trust, a vital element in getting viewers to convert. It's up to you whether you want your live content to have a more casual or professional appeal.

For the latter, you could prepare scripts in advance and invest in a professional set. This would result in a much higher quality of video production, further elevating the brand's position in the eyes of the viewer.

5. Don’t sleep on collaborations

Collabs are the name of the game on YouTube. Working together with other known YouTube personalities is a big trend these days. It allows for instant amplification of your videos since the YouTuber the brand collabs with brings their already established audience to the table.

Brands can work together with influencers on YouTube that are related to their niche in order to push their content to a significantly wider audience. The collabs not only increase the brand’s visibility but also effectively pitch it to the influencer’s audience that’s already quite receptive to their recommendations.

Being featured on a prominent YouTuber's channel or even getting a shout out from them can result in a bump in conversions, simply by piggybacking on their audience.

YouTube’s eCommerce features are great for conversions, too

If your brand sells products online, it could benefit from YouTube's ecommerce features. For channels that meet the eligibility requirements, YouTube allows them to have a merch shelf on their channel that's displayed on each video and also gets a separate Store tab on the channel.

Once it's set up, the merch shelf can also be promoted by pinning items during a live stream. Viewers can instantly purchase any of the listed products, and thus it's a great way of getting them to purchase your swag.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

How To Manage A Social Media Crisis

Wed, 02 Mar 2022 16:15:51 GMT

You're on social media for one reason and that's to get your message out to as many people as possible. Social media is all about amplification. Those that are able to attract the most amount of eyeballs to their posts, videos, images, etc are considered to be the mavericks of their field.

That’s because social media can be a tough nut to track, particularly for businesses. Maintaining a presence across all of the different networks can be difficult and time consuming. That’s why brands often try to go above and beyond in their efforts to increase their organic reach.

Sometimes, that can end up doing more harm than good. A social media crisis is always best avoided. It has the potential to permanently harm the reputation of a brand and turn customers away forever.

How you might find yourself in a social media crisis

There’s a lot that could go very wrong very quickly on social media. Whether it's an insensitive image or comment, an ill-timed post that ends up being offensive or the dreaded mix-up between personal and brand accounts by your account manager, a social media crisis can seemingly come out of nowhere.

These things then take on a life of their own. As much as the power of amplification that social media provides can be good for business, the same power can turn out to be a thorn in your side during such times of crisis.

In mere hours, there may be a full blown organic hashtag campaign against your brand just because of a social media faux pas. The viral organic reach that something like this generates will likely dent the reputation of your brand significantly.

Reduce your risk by implementing a social media policy

There’s a simple step that brands can take to greatly limit their risk of a crisis. Never run your brand accounts without a crystal clear social media policy in place first. Otherwise, you and your team will quite literally be flying blind.

A social media policy ensures that the people authorized to post using company accounts know exactly what they're supposed to say, how they are to interact with followers and what they need to steer clear of.

The policy should also contain guidelines about confidentiality, privacy and copyright. Most importantly, brand voice guidelines will ensure that all account managers know exactly what tone the company wants to keep on social media.

Despite this protection in place if you still find yourself in the midst of a social media crisis, these are the steps to be followed in order to salvage your brand’s reputation.

How brands can recover from a social media crisis

1. Time and speed are of the essence

The best way to recover from a social media crisis is to react quickly. Both time and speed are of the essence when trying to control the damage. If an offending or controversial post has gone online, it should be taken down immediately.

Leaving it up for longer is only going to cause more damage. The longer it stays up the more chances that it will end up being shared far and wide. Now this doesn’t mean just to quietly delete the offending post and pretend that this never happened.

That strategy will do more harm than good. It’s important to acknowledge and make amends. However, it’s always important to remove whatever the social media mistake was made as soon as possible.

2. Honesty is the best policy

Don’t try to dig yourself out of the hole by digging an even bigger one. Trying to shift the blame or making an excuse for what happened is not going to rectify the situation.

Even if the offending post was deleted in mere seconds after it went up, if you have a big enough following, chances are somebody will have seen it, taken a screenshot and shared it before you even had the chance to react.

Never pretend that nothing happened or what did wasn’t all that important. Managing a social media faux pas requires taking ownership of the mistake. Provide an honest explanation to your followers about what happened and what steps have now been taken to ensure something like that doesn't happen again.

3. Pause all campaigns and review

When there appears to be a potential crisis, it's always best to pull the plug on any campaigns and schedule posts until you know exactly what happened.

If your social media accounts are operating as if nothing happened that will give off the perception that the brand just doesn't care or happens to be very insensitive. That will further negatively impact its reputation.

Pausing all campaigns and reviewing the material that’s supposed to go live later limits the risk of the additional content adding fuel to the fire.

4. Engage with followers but don’t argue

Once the initial statement has been put out explaining what happened, chances are that your followers will have questions. They would want to know more about the situation and perhaps learn more about the steps you have taken to prevent such mistakes from being made again.

It’s important to engage with your followers after a social media crisis. This helps regain their trust that may have been lost during the crisis. They will recognize that the brand shows remorse over what happened.

When engaging with followers, try to be as concise as possible. Offer information that they require but don’t get sucked into arguments or appear to justify the offending actions.

5. Conduct an audit of your social media practices

A social media faux pas necessitates an audit of your social media practices. Think of it as a post-mortem of the incident. Work with the relevant teams internally to figure out what went wrong.

Speak to the people who were responsible and also take insight from those who have been dealing with the fallout. After a thorough assessment, make changes to the social media practices to limit the possibility of the incident repeating.

Share the results of the audit and the steps to be taken going forward with your followers. This way they’ll know that the brand is being responsible and taking ownership for its mistakes.

Not all social media crises are fatal if you’re quick to respond

Never think that it’s impossible to come back from a social media faux pas. Unless there has been an unthinkable mistake, the chances of recovering from a crisis like this are actually quite good.

The followers just need to see that the brand has learned from its mistakes and that it’s willing to do a better job preventing such incidents from taking place in the future. Just be quick and decisive when tackling such a controversy.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

How To Scale Your Instagram Ads More Effectively

Tue, 15 Feb 2022 16:43:11 GMT

Marketers love Instagram for a variety of reasons. The Facebook-owned social media network has more than a billion users across the globe. It's quite popular with the younger demographic and has engagement numbers that can put some of its rivals to shame.

So it's no surprise to hear predictions about Instagram's ad revenue crossing $20 billion in 2022. They've already crossed the $18 billion mark in 2021. Tens of millions of businesses across the globe now rely on Instagram ads to reach their target demographic.

Instagram is all about visual experiences. People use it to see photos and videos from their favorite creators and brands. Since visual content tends to do well online, this puts advertisers on Instagram at an advantage. Their audience is receptive to great visual content, they just have to seize the opportunity and deliver on it.

Getting started with an Instagram ad campaign is simple enough but optimizing it for maximum return on ad spend is a different matter altogether. Marketers have to stay on top of the campaigns that they launch to ensure that they’re not burning through their budget without extracting the maximum value out of it.

This tends to be easier said than done. There are many metrics that need to be tracked meticulously and important decisions that need to be taken thereafter for effective scaling of Instagram ad campaigns. In our view, there are the 5 important steps that marketers need to take in order to maximize their return on ad spend from Instagram campaigns.

How to effectively scale Instagram ads

1. Increase your ad spend

This may sound like a no-brainer. If you want an ad campaign to reach a lot more people, just increase the ad spend. That’s true but in reality, achieving the intended objective isn’t as simple. If the ad spend is increased without further optimization, chances are you’ll end up burning through the entire budget without much to show for it.

The ad spend for your Instagram campaigns needs to be increased strategically. It may appear tempting to double or triple the budget on a campaign that's showing promising results initially. It's generally recommended to not make drastic changes to the spend.

Consider how Instagram's algorithm works. It utilizes the budget you've set to optimize ad delivery to the intended audience. Therefore, it’s important to let the ad run for a few days after it’s approved to let the algorithm do what it does best. Frequent changes at this stage when the algorithm hasn’t been able to properly optimize the campaign will do more harm than good.

Once the initial data clearly shows that the campaign is working, only then you should think about scaling the ad spend. A good rule of thumb is to increase the ad spend by 25% every week or at a slightly lower interval.

2. Use Lookalike Audiences

Ad fatigue is a real problem that online marketers face. If they are constantly displaying ads to the same audience, there's a greater chance that they'll stop interacting or engaging with the content. This issue can be addressed through Lookalike audiences.

It's a much smarter way of reaching out to new people who may be interested in your product instead of launching a campaign with wide targeting. The Lookalike audiences feature relies on the power of the algorithm to find new audiences that are quite similar to your existing customer base.

These are the people that the algorithm deems most likely to convert based on all of the data that it has collected so far. The source audience that you use to build Lookalike audiences can be people who have visited your website or added an item to cart, for example. If you track value-based data sources, you could also build high-value lookalike audiences based on purchase events.

It's recommended that when creating the first Lookalike audience from a source audience, opt for a 1% size since this will target people who are most similar to the original. You can then utilize the same source to create large and less similar Lookalikes when scaling up the campaign.

3. Rely on Campaign Budget Optimization for increased ROAS

Return on ad spend (ROAS) is all about maximizing the potential of your campaigns while reducing cost as much as possible. If you have multiple ad sets running in a campaign, you might find yourself being confused about the ad sets that you should scale up with an increased budget.

This is where the Campaign Budget Optimization feature comes in handy. When this feature is enabled, Instagram will optimize ad spend across the entire campaign, regardless of the number of ad sets in it.

This provides the algorithm with a lot of flexibility to deliver good results. It can limit ad spend on ads that aren't performing well and automatically focus the budget on the ad sets that seem to be performing the best.

The feature brings automation to vertically scaling ad campaigns. It can be enabled before or after publication but marketers should keep in mind that tweaking this setting when campaigns are running will likely revert them back to the learning phase. So it's important to keep an eye on the results after the fact just to ensure that there are no significant changes in performance.

4. A/B test your audiences

If you have ad sets that you'd like to test against a few similar audiences, you should rely on A/B testing. This is a great way to find audiences that are the best-performing ones and to weed out others that may not be as receptive to your content.

When creating an Instagram campaign, you can select the A/B Test feature and choose the ad sets that you want to compare. It frees you up from having to manually track the results of the test. You just select the metric that you'd like to measure. This can be cost per purchase or cost per click, for example.

Once the test has been published and the ads are live, the Ads Manager will automatically track the results and declare a winner. The feature makes it very easy to identify audiences that are best for your campaign and budget. Use this information to scale the relevant ad sets accordingly.

5. Opt for multiple ad placements

If you don't feel the need to expand your audience, how do you counter the ad fatigue that they will inevitably face? This will also lead to higher costs. This requires horizontal scaling of your campaigns and that's best done through adding multiple ad placements on Instagram.

For example, when you first started your Instagram campaign, you may have only shown ads in the Explore tab. Once signs start to appear that ad fatigue is setting in for the audience, you can switch up the placement.

Without changing the audience or the ad set, you can simply choose to have it shown in the news feed, Reels or Stories. What this will do is enable your campaigns to reach an even wider portion of your target demographic while optimizing ad costs.

Then it’s just a matter of keeping an eye on which placements are performing the best and scaling them up to further optimize the campaign.

Instagram is the place to be for brands in 2022

If you’re a brand that doesn’t have a serious Instagram marketing strategy in 2022, you’re missing out. There are few networks that can provide the sort of engaged and vibrant target demographic that Instagram can.

Winning at Instagram advertising doesn’t have to be difficult but it does require diligence. Create great visual experiences and back them up with highly optimized campaigns. That’s your secret to success.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

Top 5 Social Media Trends To Prepare For In 2022

Wed, 09 Feb 2022 18:24:33 GMT

Social media can be a tough nut to crack for brands. There’s a plethora of networks each with their own set of marketing tools and products. Brands can’t take a one-size-fits-all approach to their online marketing campaigns.

The challenges are further exacerbated by the rapid pace at which social media evolves. Trends come and go quickly than most brands can jump on them. Social media networks regularly tweak their algorithms and that means a strategy that may have previously been working for a brand may no longer work in the future.

Despite the rapid pace at which the social media landscape can change, trends continue to be constant. They may be fleeting, spurred by a meme or event, or they could last for months. On a wider scale, trends may also emerge from changes that these social media networks introduce to their products and services.

Therefore, it’s imperative for marketers to stay on top of these changes. The new year certainly brings a need to revamp strategies so that brands are able to extract the most value out of their campaigns. In our view, these are the top 5 social media trends to prepare for in 2022.

Top 5 social media trends of 2022

1. Rise of shopping on social media platforms

A lot has changed in the way people shop for goods and services online over the past decade. Gone are the days when an online store used to be the only channel to sell your products online. The advancement of social media networks has unlocked new opportunities for brands to sell directly to their intended demographic.

Top networks like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest have all developed robust features that enable businesses to sell their products online. People have responded positively to the ability of shopping for goods directly through a social media network. This is one trend that's likely going to surge even more in 2022.

The pandemic has also played a role in the surge of this trend. Shopping was increasingly being done online as the world was locked indoors. Social media networks facilitated this need with new tools that made the shopping experience easier, people could now buy their favorite items without even having to leave their social media network.

In the United States alone, the number of social commerce buyers crossed 80 million last year. The younger demographic in particular is more inclined to purchase things through social networks. Instagram remains one of the highly used platforms for social commerce.

If you sell products online, consider the shopping tools that these social media networks have developed. This provides you with an incredible opportunity to reach a wider demographic for your products.

2. Augmented reality goes mainstream

Augmented reality projects have existed for several years now but they haven’t really evolved beyond being a niche product. It was largely the early adopters who bought into the augmented reality craze when it first emerged on the market.

In 2022, both augmented and virtual reality are likely to go mainstream, and a lot of it will have to do with the metaverse. The metaverse does sound like the buzzword that will define 2022. The public’s understanding of the concept is still in its early stages but the incredible hype around it is driving more and more people to get interested in the metaverse.

AR and VR both tie into the metaverse as major companies like Facebook are developing experiences that will help people connect with the people they love in a completely virtual setting. As such, you also find brands lining up to grab their spot in the metaverse as more people flock to the virtual world.

Brands, particularly those that are tech-forward, should absolutely leverage this trend to put them in a position to gain the first mover advantage. The AR and VR experiences around the metaverse are still being developed and this provides brands with the opportunity to become leaders in this space.

3. Influencer marketing will continue to grow

People love to follow content creators online that produce content that resonates with them. This has led to the creation of the multi-billion dollar industry known as influencer marketing. It didn't exist before social networks were a thing but has grown significantly over the past decade or so.

It won't be surprising to see influencer marketing go from strength to strength in 2022. Creators have become more savvy and now have a wide variety of tools and networks at their disposal to grow their following.

The large influencers will continue to charge top dollar for campaigns, providing brands with access to a highly qualified demographic that’s receptive to recommendations from the creators that they like to follow.

Brands must expand on their influencer marketing efforts in 2022 to take maximum advantage from this surging trend. Their strategy shouldn’t rely on top influencers only. There’s incredible value to be had by collaborating with micro-influencers as well.

Often influencers with small but extremely engaged followers can help deliver better results on campaigns than those who may have a large following but not a lot of engagement on their content.

4. Short form video content reigns supreme

By now, everybody knows that video content tends to perform better online compared to anything else. People just love consuming video on their mobile devices and brands have responded effectively to this change in consumer behavior.

However, over the past few years, there has been a surge in the popularity of short form video content. So it remains a top social media trend to watch in 2022. The explosive growth of TikTok is one of the reasons why short form video content will become even more powerful this year.

Many companies have tried to replicate TikTok’s success. Instagram wants similar short form content on its app even though Instagram Stories has been around for longer and is proven to be effective.

You’ll find short form video support on most major social networks. Utilize that as much as possible to expand your reach not only with people who are already connected to your brand to also with those who may never have heard about it.

5. Share more User Generated Content (UGC)

You may not know it, but your followers will most likely jump at the chance to provide you with unique content about your product or service that you can then share on your social media channels. User Generated Content is increasingly becoming popular and brands have now started making it a central pillar of their online marketing strategy.

Studies have shown brands that incorporate UGS tend to see a 20% increase in return visitors in addition to a staggering 90% increase in time spent by customers on their website. These stats alone explain why UGC may be one of the most important 2022 social media trends.

Brands can gain a lot of benefit from UGC. Firstly, it tends to be a lot cheaper than conventional advertising. It also appears more relatable. Any new customers who see content from existing users who have paid money for your product advocating about it are likely to take a chance on your product. UGC adds an element of authenticity to your product that's completely unique.

Fill your social media feeds with more UGC. Give your customers an incentive to share it with you and see how it leads to an increase in engagement.

Trends will come and go, be prepared to pounce

This list is obviously not exhaustive and it doesn't cover all of the 2022 social media trends that may emerge. There may be others, some entirely new, but brands must remember that need to be prepared to pounce.

On some trends, there may be a very short window of opportunity to get the maximum benefit out of it. Often, these opportunities led to content going viral and generating a lot of positive buzz, which is always a great outcome for brands.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

Why Social Listening Is Incredibly Powerful For Lead Generation

steeldaddeh3@gmail.com (Chet Mitchell) — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:39:55 GMT

Most online marketers swear by social listening and if you don't already have a strategy in place to leverage it, you're seriously missing out. It will provide you with some of the most valuable data about your business and how it’s being perceived online, enabling you to make more informed decisions regarding your online marketing efforts.

Social listening is a great way to increase interaction with your existing and potential customers online. People tend to appreciate when the businesses they support interact with them online. This lets them know that you care about what they think and believe in providing them with great service.

There’s another aspect to social listening that makes it so powerful. Don’t just leverage it to find out what people are saying about your business. Utilize it to find out what they’re saying about your competition. This will let you identify gaps that you can fill in order to compete more effectively.

What is social listening?

Social listening is the process through which you gain valuable insight by analyzing the mentions and conversations about your brand on social media networks so that you can make more informed marketing decisions.

It shouldn't just be limited to the conversations that are taking place online about your brand only. Keep an eye on the conversations and trends concerning your particular industry. Also pay attention to what people are saying about your competition online. If they’re doing something better than you are, you’ll likely hear about it online.

Why is social listening important?

There's a reason why social listening has proven to be so important. The insights that you obtain from this exercise will allow you to understand what's the driving force behind the conversation about your brand online. Think of it as a window into the mind of your customer, allowing you to figure out what perception people have formed about your brand.

These are valuable insights that can help fine tune your online marketing efforts. For example, are you seeing a lot of mentions online regarding your blog content not adequately explaining the product? This is how you find out that you need to make improvements.

Perhaps the copy of your recent ad campaign has got people feeling not so good about your brand, so now you can quickly make amends and turn a campaign around. The possibilities here are endless.

How social listening can help generate more leads

1.Elevate your engagement

Increasing your social media engagement is just one part of the story. It's always great when the content you post online gets a lot of likes, comments, shares and retweets. That alone is never enough to generate leads and grow your organic reach.

With social listening, you can be mindful of what your customers and others online are looking for. For example, you could spot a conversation online where people are searching for a product or solution.

You could pop into that conversation either with a recommendation or a relevant comment. It should never be a hard sell as that tends to put off people. Just a proactive approach that lets people know you have a product that can help solve a problem for them will do wonders.

Similarly, you might find that your customers are recommending your brand online to their peers. This presents yet another opportunity to generate leads. Become a part of that conversation through a reply that serves as positive encouragement and you might just get a new customer.

2.Pounce on the competition

Social media is now the first place people turn to when they have a complaint about a brand or its products. This presents companies with an incredible opportunity to generate leads at the expense of their rivals.

Brands must realize that social listening goes far beyond what people are saying about you. Approach it with a view to help people who might benefit from your product. Is your competitor's product not helping people achieve their goals? Does yours have better functionality?

Chime into conversations where such topics are being discovered with a gentle reminder about your product’s salient features. People who are already frustrated with the competition are more likely to consider an alternative, thereby possibly generating a new lead for your business.

3.Create powerful collaborations

Collaborations tend to be very effective on social media. It’s something that people who use social media are already quite accustomed to. That’s because many of their favorite social media content creators will definitely be “collabing” with other creators.

Social listening can unlock new opportunities to strike collaborations like thought leaders, industry titans and tight knit online communities that have meaningful conversations about something that you might be able to help with.

Online collaborations require a certain level of finesse, though. It shouldn’t appear that this has been done for the sole purpose of making a hard sell or trying to force a product on people who don’t seem to be receptive to it.

Through collaborations, you can add value to the content that the other creators present to their audience. This opens up new demographics and audiences that your brand can benefit from. The increased brand awareness that collaborations will bring is going to help generate new leads.

4.Use social media as a tool for customer support

Nobody wants to go through tedious methods of getting a response when they run into a problem with a product or service. The internet has made people expect instant resolution of such issues, therefore, it’s important to have a robust customer support operation on social media.

Proactive customer support through social media helps build brand equity. People are likely going to notice online when brands are doing a good job with providing their customers support for any issues they might be facing.

The elevated brand equity can be great for generating leads as people will feel confident about trusting a business that’s visibly investing in ensuring that their customers are well looked after.

Social listening can make your online campaigns incredibly effective

To maximize any online marketing campaign you need data. Even the advertising tools that marketers use, such as Facebook and Google Ads, rely on sophisticated algorithms that optimize campaigns using the data generated from serving ads.

Social listening is effectively a way to pool the data that’s being generated by you and about you on various social media networks. This data provides an incredible amount of insight about your customers and potential leads who might be better served by your service or product.

By simply leveraging the power of social media and spending some time on these networks to listen to what people are saying about your brand and responding in an effective manner, you can gain valuable insights that can be used to fine tune all subsequent paid and organic marketing campaigns.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

5 Tips to Adapt Your Remarketing Strategy for the New Apple iOS Privacy Updates

Mon, 24 Jan 2022 15:46:30 GMT

We’ve known since late 2020 that Apple iOS had some privacy updates in store for us, and they are finally here. If you haven’t already made changes to adapt your remarketing strategy, there are still some things you can do.

About the Privacy Updates

Before looking at how to adapt to the changes, make sure you understand what changes occurred and why Apple made them.

Previously, if an iOS user wanted to opt-out of having an app collect browsing data, they had to go to settings and manually opt-out. With the update, opting-out becomes the default, not opting-in. When users download an app on iOS 14, they will be asked for permission to share and collect data via a prompt.

This is important for marketing because that data helps you personalize your app and do so much more. You use that data for personalization, segmentation, retargeting, exclusion targeting, and lookalike audiences, among other functions.

That means that if your users opt-out, you will lose the ability to perform all of those functions, or at least the effectiveness of doing so. It can have a particularly strong effect on your Facebook marketing, as the social media platform uses many of those features in its advertising capabilities.

Why Apple Changed Its Privacy Policy

The reason for the update comes down to privacy. Apple prides itself on being a “privacy-first” company and this is just one step in the process of ensuring that is the case.

Now that you know what these privacy updates are and the reasons behind them, it’s time to tweak your remarketing strategies. This will minimize the impact of the privacy update on your marketing efforts while helping your business adapt.

Below are some tips you can follow.

1. Verify Your Domain on Facebook’s Business Manager

If you haven’t already done so, go to your Facebook Business Manager account and verify your domain. If you skip this step, you may not be able to configure conversion events on Facebook.

2. Expand Your Customer Acquisition Channels

While the update will affect every app on iPhones and iPads, you should expect to see a more significant impact on your Facebook advertising than other platforms. This is because of the way Facebook uses cookies and data.

The best way to overcome this is to expand your customer acquisition channels, especially if your focus was primarily on Facebook. Even if you already have several customer acquisition channels, consider adding a few more. After all, each will likely become slightly less effective if you rely on cookies.

3. Go All-In on Email Marketing

The privacy update is also the perfect opportunity to boost your email marketing strategy. You can use email for many of the same remarketing tasks you would do with other types of ads, such as offering discounts, sharing sales, and sharing product tutorials. You can also use email marketing to recover abandoned carts, request reviews, and more.

Most importantly, email marketing strategies don’t rely as strongly on tracking and cookies. Instead, these methods have more to do with purchases and registration. You may even segment your email audience via surveys or sign-up forms.

That being said, remember that some of your email marketing efforts, including segmentation and abandoned product emails, do rely on cookies.

4. Get Data from Other Sources

When talking about email marketing, we hinted at some other sources of data, such as surveys or asking questions in sign-up forms. Use these and other methods to get the data you can no longer count on from iOS.

One excellent source is your website’s metrics. Your website will already be monitoring where visitors come from and what they do on your website. While you won’t be able to connect those actions to specific users, you can still see general trends.

If you want to focus on sign-up forms and self-reported data, create more landing pages. Or consider using chatbots to interact with users and then creating lookalike audiences based on those interactions.

5. Focus Your Efforts on Android Devices

You should also keep in mind that while a lot of people have iPhones, even more use Android devices. This means that even if you no longer have access to some of the data you use for retargeting iPhone users, you still have that data for Android users. If you focus your efforts on Android devices, you should be able to make up for at least some of the loss of data from iOS users.

Conclusion

With the latest privacy update, iOS users have to opt-in to share their data with you. This may limit your ability to target, segment, and personalize content. But you can overcome this by getting data from other sources and expanding your marketing channels, along with a few other simple strategies.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

How to use LinkedIn to Grow Your Brand's Influence

steeldaddeh3@gmail.com (Chet Mitchell) — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 16:39:09 GMT

LinkedIn isn't just useful to see what your old buddies from work are up to these days. Billed as a professional social network, LinkedIn is a powerful job hunting and career networking platform that has an incredible global reach.

Despite its surging popularity and rising user base, it remains under utilized as a marketing platform by many brands who would much rather focus their energies on the main social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

In this day and age, it’s imperative that brands recognize the unique position of LinkedIn that makes it such a powerful tool to increase their brand’s influence.

LinkedIn is a powerful social media platform in its own right

LinkedIn has been around for a long time, it was actually launched even before Facebook. It's safe to say that LinkedIn isn't some passing fad. It's a proven social media network that's in it for the long haul. Users also view it favorably as it's been voted the most trusted social network in the United States.

It doesn't have a billion-plus users like some of the other social networks do. However, it's important to remember that those social networks have all sorts of users. LinkedIn primarily attracts professionals interested in a business-oriented network. It boasts impressive numbers as well. At last count, LinkedIn had nearly 800 million members across the globe.

Over the years, LinkedIn has transformed into a professional network and is no longer just a recruitment platform. Users can post content, stream video and do much more. Content on LinkedIn actually gets 15x more impressions than job postings.

Some of you may also be surprised to find out that LinkedIn is the top network for B2B content marketers. It's used by 96% of them to be precise. These stats are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s plenty more that reiterates LinkedIn’s status as a powerful social media platform.

LinkedIn’s unique market positioning unlocks new opportunities for brands

We see an overlap with some of the world’s leading social media networks. They often have features and tools that do the same thing. The user base tends to be similar as well since the primary objective of these networks is to entertain, not educate.

LinkedIn has been built from the ground up to be a place for professionals. It got its start as a recruitment platform where people created profiles and got scouted for new roles. They could also search for and apply to new positions through LinkedIn.

Over time, it has grown into a capable social media platform. Thought leaders now prefer uploading content on LinkedIn to immediately reach a vast like minded audience. This results in higher engagement and organic reach, something that’s fast becoming elusive on conventional social networks.

The issue of overlap is mitigated as well since there’s really no big competitor to LinkedIn. It exists in its own bubble with a target demographic that’s well aware that LinkedIn is the place they need to be in order to meet their professional objectives.

That’s what makes LinkedIn so unique among all of the social media networks. The demographic it wants seeks the platform out on its own because it’s the only true fit. On the other hand, a user might find TikTok more to their liking than Facebook so they may not use the latter at all.

With LinkedIn, professionals know that they must use this platform because that’s pretty much where the party’s at.

How to leverage LinkedIn to increase your brand’s influence

1. Use it to tell your brand’s story

LinkedIn's core demographic is already primed to interact with brands and particularly market leaders. They're actively seeking out content from these companies and want to learn the thought process of the people behind the brand.

Use this eagerness to your advantage by detailing your brand's story on LinkedIn. Think of it as a way to inspire followers and share content that provides them with value. This is also a great strategy for increasing brand visibility on LinkedIn.

The more people see content from your brand on LinkedIn, the more its influence is going to grow.

2. Host a live video conversation

Video content reigns supreme online and that’s one of the main reasons why LinkedIn made it possible for users to stream video live on the platform. LinkedIn users are no different from the rest of the social media users and they too prefer video content.

To grow their influence, brands can host live video sessions on LinkedIn. It can be anything from a fireside chat to a roundtable discussion or even a town hall with dozens of executives and employees.

Most people instantly prefer watching videos to reading a lengthy blog post. Live video can thus prove to be incredibly powerful when trying to expand your brand’s influence on LinkedIn.

3. Shed a positive light on your brand through employee advocacy

Authenticity thrives on social media and LinkedIn is no different. Brands can rely on employee advocacy to reach out more effectively to their target demographic.

It's always a good sign when employees stand behind their company's products. By having your employees vouch for it online, you not only improve the brand's influence but also expand product awareness.

4. Rely on user-generated content to create buzz

LinkedIn is a social network after all and that means user-generated content tends to do well on it. Brands need to have a conversation going in order to increase their visibility and organic reach. What better way to do that than through content contributed by users.

Ask your followers for content regarding their professional goals or about their vision for your particular industry. Any opinions and suggestions that they can provide will also help spark a conversation that leads to increased visibility.

5. Highlight your brand’s social good campaigns

People like to see the brands that they appreciate and support give back to the community. Social good campaigns serve a dual purpose. They're effective marketing tools and also a great way for brands to make a real difference.

It's the sort of content that does well on any social media network and it definitely has a place on LinkedIn. Brands can increase their influence on the social network by showcasing the causes they actively support.

Make LinkedIn one of the pillars of your social media marketing strategy

For a holistic social media marketing strategy, brands must consider LinkedIn as one of the pillars. There’s incredible value to be unlocked from the world’s only proper social media network for professionals.

Just by following these simple steps, brands can put themselves in control of the narrative on LinkedIn. This will help them attract more professionals and establish a great reputation on the platform.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

Why Twitter Spaces Can Be An Exciting Opportunity For Your Brand

Mon, 03 Jan 2022 19:08:55 GMT

Over the past year, the audio chat format has become very popular. The pandemic probably had a lot to do with its meteoric rise. With people locked indoors, this became a new outlet for expression, discussion and connection, feelings that become extremely important during those difficult times.

The social audio chat app Clubhouse played a major role in facilitating this trend. Even though it was invite-only and available for iPhones initially, the app gained traction very quickly and everyone wanted to jump onboard.

Recognizing the popularity of Clubhouse and the power of the social audio chat platform, Twitter launched its own product called Twitter Spaces.

What is Twitter Spaces?

Twitter Spaces is a platform that enables users to create their own audio chat rooms or be a part of chat rooms created by others. The conversation in these rooms are centered around a topic. Hosts control who can speak and when, they’re also able to mute, remove and block participants if need be. Twitter places this power in the hands of hosts to foster healthy and dynamic conversations.

Twitter Spaces isn't a separate app. It's an inherent part of the Twitter platform. The feature can be accessed using the same app that's used to post Tweets. Twitter Spaces does work quite similarly to Clubhouse. However, it was made available to both Android and iOS users from the very beginning and it wasn't an invite-only feature.

With Twitter Spaces, the microblogging network has thrown its weight behind the social audio platform. It's a big vote of confidence in its future. Brands are always wary of passing fads. There's no point divertising significant advertising and marketing resources to a platform that may go away as quickly as it came on the scene.

Twitter certainly doesn't view social audio as a passing fad and that's great news for brands who may be thinking of leveraging this platform. Much like Tweets, Spaces are also public. Anyone on Twitter can join them as a listener even if they don't follow the account that created it. The number of listeners is unlimited.

On the surface, it may appear that Twitter Spaces is a platform that's better suited to influencers than brands. However, there's incredible potential here that brands can unlock.

How can brands benefit from Twitter Spaces?

People appreciate when the brands they follow take initiative to reach out and listen to their concerns. They feel valued when they're made a part of the conversation, when the brand keeps an open line of communication with them. Social audio is the perfect platform to facilitate these discussions.

Brands can utilize Twitter Spaces to communicate with their customers and followers more effectively. The ease of use is also a major point here. There's no need to register anywhere or jump through any hoops to join an audio hangout.

Users access Spaces through the app and they can easily jump through different Spaces to listen to brand and thought leaders from organization's they're interested in. Twitter Spaces also provides powerful engagement options that can be utilized to further improve the interaction between brands and their customers.

Brands also stand to benefit from Twitter's global user base. The microblogging network has over 300 million monthly active users in different demographics spread across the globe. This enables brands that utilize Spaces to target audiences from different backgrounds and interests. This incredible level of reach is not possible on Clubhouse, which while being popular in its own right, has nowhere near the sheer numbers that Twitter does.

The visually interactive features that Twitter has developed for Spaces also suit brands since they encourage users to interact with speaker comments. Listeners in a Space and use emojis to react to what the speaker is saying. This type of feedback lets the speakers know what's resonating with the audience while also enabling listeners to express themselves.

How to use Twitter Spaces to increase your brand visibility

1. Position yourself as a thought leader of the industry

Those who are interested in your industry likely want to hear from thought leaders to gain more insight. With Twitter Spaces, brands have the perfect platform to launch an interactive initiative that positions them as thought leaders.

Use Spaces to engage in conversation with experts in the industry. The brand can also get its own people involved in the conversation so listeners can get a sense of the organization's thought process.

For example, a tech company can use Spaces to drive conversation about new legislation, or discuss what the impact of new and upcoming technologies might be on the industry as a whole. Customers will certainly appreciate the real-time insights provided by experts.

2.Use Spaces to gain feedback more effectively

Customers appreciate when they see that the brands they support are receptive to feedback. Spaces provides brands with a powerful new way to obtain authentic feedback from the people that use their products.

The platform can be utilized to either gain authentic and direct feedback about a particular product or about the organization as a whole. It's best to think of Spaces as a digital focus group.

While it can be very time consuming to get feedback from actual focus groups gathered in a physical location, Spaces enables brands to quickly tap into the pulse of their base.

3.Get more visibility for a new product launch

Brands always want to get as many people as possible talking about their new products. That usually requires significant marketing efforts to get the word out and get a conversation going.

With Spaces, brands can plan their product launches in a way that encourages maximum conversation. For example, people from within the organization can speak about the idea behind the new product and provide insight on how it came to be.

They can also have members of the audience join the audio hangout to provide their perspective.

4.Take full advantage of the casual nature of audio chats

Brands normally have detailed guidelines that they need to follow when interacting with their communities on social media. It can often feel quite mechanical and not authentic enough, ultimately making their followers lose interest.

The social audio chat tends to be casual in nature. This enables the brands to connect with their followers on a human level. People generally appreciate the laid back environment regardless of the topic being discussed.

It presents brands with a great opportunity to connect even with those followers who may feel otherwise intimidated to reach out and become a part of the conversation.

5. Boost visibility with contests and promotions

Who doesn’t love free stuff? Twitter Spaces effectively functions as a live radio show and this format is great for hosting contests and promotions that incentivizes active participation from followers.

This is a great way to boost visibility as people are also likely to share such contests and promotions with people in their circle. This can increase the brand’s organic reach exponentially.

Twitter Spaces may be new but it’s here to stay

Many marketers have initially viewed Twitter Spaces with caution, thinking that it may not turn out to be more than just a passing fad. Considerable time has passed since it was launched and the increasing adoption of this functionality shows that there’s real value to be unlocked here.

Brands should absolutely utilize Twitter Spaces to improve their interactions with customers and to reach a wider audience. The platform is here to stay, now it’s up to you to make the most of it.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

4 Ways to Manage Your Small Business’s Online Reputation

Mon, 27 Dec 2021 16:33:38 GMT

Taking your business online means you are bringing it where the world will be able to reach it. With this new chapter comes many new things to learn for most business owners. One of those is the fact that you will need to keep track of your online reputation. This may seem intimidating at first, but following a few simple tips will help make it manageable.

1. Create Social Media Accounts and Keep Them Active

A social media presence is vital to your online presence and reputation. Once you decide to create business social media profiles, it is important to keep them alive. This doesn’t mean 20 posts a day. Instead, find something that feels right for your business and keep with it. Create a regular schedule, whether it is one post a day or a few posts a week.

If you are not sure what to post, here are a few things to consider. How-to guides are perfect, while insider tips, anecdotes, and memes are also wonderful for your business. Giving your clients value through engaging posts will keep your followers engaged and make your presence more relatable.

Inactive and stale accounts make a business look unprofessional. Remember, an active social presence on just one platform is better than inactive accounts across several platforms.

2. Claim Your Business Name Across All Platforms

One of your first steps as a small business owner should have been to claim your domain name and all social media names. If you haven’t already done so, do it now. If your ideal name is available, claim it immediately. You do not want to have your potential customers run across a competitor or imposter instead of you when they search for you online. If the perfect one isn’t available, get one that is as close as possible to your business name so customers can intuitively search it out.

You want your presence to be nearly identical across all platforms for branding and recognition purposes. This will add to your trustworthiness. When your social media matches up, it boosts your reputation online. This not only creates consistency across the brand but will also keep competitors from grabbing your space.

It is recommended to claim all social media handles right away. Only make these public when you know you can maintain them. An account that isn’t used is harmful, as mentioned above. Think about where your potential clients are most likely to be and utilize those accounts first. When you are ready to expand, your handles will be available.

3. Respond to and Monitor Online Reviews

Customers generally have something to say about businesses they work with. Whether it’s a raving review or a comment about something they didn’t like, feedback is inevitable. In surveys, three-quarters of people believe that checking reviews is important before working with a business. With this kind of influence, it is critical that you know what your reviews look like.

Depending on the type and size of your business, reviews may get posted to third-party sites such as OpenTable and Yelp. They may also just post about you on their site. The point is, wherever there is a discussion about your business, you need to be there. Google Alerts is one way of keeping track of these mentions.

Responding to both positive and negative reviews is important. When you respond to the positive reviews, you reinforce that you are a business that cares about service. When responding to negative reviews, you are showing your clients that they can give feedback and you are willing to work for a solution. Timely responses are the best responses.

4. Verify Your Google Listing

One way to be proactive about your online reputation is to claim your Google listing. This way, local searches can easily find you. This listing is the profile that pops up when you search your business in Google. It is important to fill all the details out and keep them accurate.

As many as 36% of customers said they find out about a business from an online search. As such, keep this listing updated with current details about your business, including when it’s open. Keeping this information accurate is the way to keep giving your customers the best impression.

Conclusion

Stepping into the digital world with your business can be intimidating. Luckily, there are tons of tools available for you to utilize to maintain your reputation. All you need to do is be proactive and do some searches.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

8 Free Digital Marketing Tools That Every Small Business Should Be Aware Of

Tue, 30 Nov 2021 18:10:55 GMT

Running a business is hard work. It will take hours of manpower, money, and motivation, especially in the beginning. One way to help keep your customers coming is to learn digital marketing skills. Marketing your business has never been easier or more cost-effective than in the age of the internet. We have put together a slew of free digital marketing tools for you to utilize while growing your company.

1. Google Analytics

A tool like this can track engagement and website activity. This free tool is the perfect way to check the strategy of your SEO and get details about customer demographics. It can help you discover what is and isn’t working in your marketing strategy. It will tell you where you are getting most of your traffic and what pages are visited the most, as well as which pages are most engaging to visitors.

2. HootSuite

Maintaining a social media presence can be hard work, but it is necessary for digital marketing. To keep it more efficient, there are digital marketing tools like Hootsuite. Hootsuite provides a platform for your social media channels, allowing you to organize and schedule posts. You can track mentions and messages and calculate ROI with this effective tool.

3. LinkedIn

This free tool is powerful for small business marketing, particularly with B2B companies. LinkedIn is highly trusted and has 722 million members and 55 million businesses across the US. With a LinkedIn profile, networking becomes a breeze.

4. Google My Business

If your business is heavily reliant on local traffic, then your Google My Business listing should be claimed. When your business is searched, it will not get shoved aside for others that offer similar products or services. But you need to do more than just claim your business. Encourage customers to leave reviews and add photos and do your part to keep details updated so this tool is optimized.

5. MailChimp

A quality email list can help you keep in contact with your customers and grow your business. Social media has not pushed email campaigns completely to the wayside. Social media followers do not work quite the same as an email list, which will allow for more control of your marketing campaign.

MailChimp is a very popular free management tool for email for up to 2,000 subscribers. It is the ideal way for small businesses to begin their email marketing. You can send surveys, segment your audience, and create tags.

6. HubSpot

Once your business starts running its digital marketing campaigns, it may be difficult to keep up with managing them all. Not only that, but you also need to have data available to make improvements. HubSpot offers marketing software that can optimize your digital marketing strategy. With their application, you can bring your various channels together and manage everything, creating a better ROI. Create landing pages, utilize live chats, and increase your engagement.

Other advantages you will get with HubSpot include lead management, email templates, content optimizing tools, analytics, optimized landing pages, social media management, and more. You can get started with their free package, and if your needs increase, they have more options.

7. Canva

You need visual content to keep your marketing campaigns alive. Graphics, pictures, memes, and infographics all help keep your clients engaged. Canva has evolved with many templates and tools to help with your business cards, social media, marketing posters, infographics, e-books, and everything else. They offer a host of free templates that are very useful. The site is full of photos you can use or upload your own. You can even utilize their tools to create new images!

8. Yoast

Your content is an excellent marketing tool. Keywords and topics are all wonderful but will need to be properly utilized when integrating your content. Use Yoast to get your SEO-optimized content up to par. There is a wonderful free version that will help you with readability and placing keywords and let you know what you are doing wrong. The free version allows you to get insight through audits and tips. Once you are familiar with this version, there are paid options that have more applications.

To do well in today’s business world, you need to make waves in the digital marketing world as well. You will need to be a jack of all trades and learn a variety of tools to build the best campaign. Luckily, there are plenty of free options above to get you started!

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

8 Link Building Tips All Small Businesses Need to Follow

Tue, 16 Nov 2021 16:26:12 GMT

Building backlinks to your website is just one of many important steps to boost your SEO rankings and bring more people to your website. Small businesses may feel intimidated by the idea of link building, not knowing where to start. Once you break it down into various tips, however, it becomes clear that while link building will take some effort, it is something any small business owner or marketing person should be able to handle. To get the best results, keep the following tips in mind.

1. Develop High-quality, Useful Content

Your number one priority for link building should be to create high-quality content. Remember, it should be content that people want to share. This is the absolute best way to get organic links. This content doesn’t have to be written either. In addition to blog posts, it can be podcasts, infographics, how-to guides, tutorials, videos, and more.

● Reuse What You Have

If you already have some content from other marketing efforts, take advantage of it! You can combine and repurpose content in a fresh way.

● Promote Your Content

Just creating the right content won’t be enough; you also need to get it out there. To do so, find out what social media platforms your audience uses and promote on there.

2. Create Some Local Content

The challenge with creating high-quality content is the level of competition you will face. The good news is that the competition reduces if you focus on more local or specific issues. For example, a bike store could make a blog post or video about great local bike paths. Think about topics that are relevant to your business and community.

3. Get Ideas From Keyword Research

Typically, keyword research is done so you can include those keywords in your content marketing or bid on ads for them. This is a related idea, but a bit different. Essentially, you want to look at keywords to see what your audience is searching for. Specifically, pay attention to the intent behind the search. Then, use this to create the content that they want.

By creating quality content, you should automatically generate some backlinks.

4. Write Guest Posts

While putting high-quality content on your company’s website is useful, it isn’t your only option for building backlinks. You should also consider guest posts or appearing as a guest on a podcast or something similar. Just remember to focus on delivering useful and interesting content, not on backlinks. The backlinks should come naturally.

5. Work With Other Local Businesses

As a small business, you get a unique opportunity to build connections with other local businesses. You can then promote each other and become strategic partners. You share their content, and they share yours. If someone asks for a recommendation, you recommend them, and they do the same.

6. Work With Local Bloggers and Influencers

Don’t limit yourself to working with other “traditional” businesses. Consider working with local bloggers or influencers as well. You could both benefit from a partnership. For example, you could give them free products in exchange for a post or set up an affiliate partnership where they earn commissions.

7. Be Active Locally

Another link building method that focuses on local connections is interacting with the community. Consider sponsoring an event or hosting events. Most local events will have a website and list your website on it if you sponsor them. This will also get your company’s name in the local papers and social media pages.

Remember that you aren’t limited to sponsoring one-time events. You can also look for opportunities to sponsor local non-profits in the long term.

8. Don’t Forget About Local Directories

You hopefully already listed your business on all the relevant local directories, as well as Yelp and Google My Business. If you haven’t, do so now. If you have, take a moment to confirm that all of the information on the listings is up to date.

Join Local Organizations to Get in More Directories

When looking for local directories you can have your business listed in, don’t forget about those from local organizations. For example, there may be a chamber of commerce focused on a particular demographic that you fit into.

With the help of these tips, you’ll be well on your way to building backlinks and increasing your audience.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

10 Methods to Build Your Email List as a Small Business

Tue, 02 Nov 2021 16:50:23 GMT

One of the many marketing challenges small businesses face is trying to grow their email lists. The larger your email list is, the larger your reach and therefore the more potential purchases you will generate. But it can be hard to convince people to give you their email addresses. This is especially true with so much spam being sent.

The good news is that there are some methods, both simple and complex, that can help small businesses build their email lists.

1. Develop Compelling Content

One of the most important things to do when building an email list is to make sure that subscribers will be interested in the content you send them. After all, just the act of providing them with quality, relevant information should encourage them to sign up. This is the reason that people sign up for emails from news platforms; they want the content. You just have to figure out what that interesting content looks like for your audience.

2. Run a Contest

Creating a contest that requires submitting an email address is a simple yet very effective way of getting those addresses. The contest can be as simple or involved as you want. You can just ask for email addresses and choose one at random to get a free item or service from your store.

You can also get creative and ask people to share something else, like a photo or funny story on social media, to participate. Just remember to ask for an email address as well. When choosing the format of the contest and the prize, think about your customer base and what they likely want.

3. Try Other Freebies (Or Lead Magnets)

Contests aren’t the only type of offer that will encourage people to give you their email addresses. Offering something for free in exchange for an email address is called using a lead magnet.

Other examples include eBooks, product samples, coupons, free trials, and access to podcasts, webinars, and templates. Or give subscribers early access to features or products. Once again, think about your audience and what would appeal to them, as well as what works for your product. The best lead magnets are high-value ones.

4. Create Landing Pages

For the best results, consider making a landing page for your lead magnet or for your email list. This page should have the single goal of getting people to submit their email addresses. It keeps things simple and encourages visitors to take the desired action.

For the best results, incorporate social proof, make the copy customer-centric, and have one prominent call to action.

5. Put Pop-ups on Your Website

While pop-ups asking for an email address are annoying, they also work. This is a great way to get the attention of anyone visiting your website. You can keep the form simple and just ask for an email address to encourage them to sign up for a newsletter. Or you can use it to offer a lead magnet or announce a contest.

6. Advertise Lead Magnets on Social Media

Your website shouldn’t be the only place that you advertise your lead magnets. You also want to advertise them on social media. You can do this via posts on your social media pages as well as via paid advertising.

7. Add Social Sharing Buttons

Take a look at the emails that you send out. If you don’t already have social sharing buttons, add them. One study found that social sharing buttons may boost click-through rates up to 158%. They are great for your SEO rankings, customer experience, and attracting new potential customers.

8. Encourage Referrals

Another option is to encourage referrals and subscriptions. For example, you could set up a referral program with discounts for both the person referring and the person being referred.

9. Attend Local Events

If your business regularly attends local events, use those as an opportunity to grow your email list. You can offer attendees lead magnets, including physical freebies and those mentioned above. Anytime your company is in the public eye at an event, try to get email addresses.

10. Limit What You Ask For

People are already hesitant about sharing information online, so don’t ask them for too much. Stick to their name, email address, and of course their permission. In addition to showing that you respect their privacy and alleviating security concerns, this also means that they can sign up very quickly.

If you follow these methods to drive customers to share their email addresses, you’ll be one step closer to growing your business.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

2021 Twitter Changes and What You Need to do to Adapt

Tue, 26 Oct 2021 18:39:18 GMT

Twitter is still a force to be reckoned with in the social media landscape. The platform has seen its fair share of ups and downs in its over a decade of existence. Yet, it has been able to scale those challenges to deliver a social media experience unlike any other.

In addition to popularizing the use of hashtags, Twitter has emerged as a great platform for news, trends and viral content. It's particularly useful as a customer service tool. The rapid engagement that is at the heart of Twitter makes it possible for brands to deliver exceptional customer support.

The number's don't lie. Twitter isn't running out of steam just yet. Its user base has been consistently growing over the past few years. It's expected to grow by a further 2.4% to 322 million in 2021.

A big chunk of that user base is located in the United States, almost 20% to be precise. The United States is the biggest market for Twitter. Evidently, marketers still need to be paying attention to Twitter.

Like other social networks, Twitter regularly makes changes to its offerings and that often requires marketers to adapt and change their strategies. Here are some of the 2021 Twitter changes and how your strategies need to change to get the most out of the microblogging network.

What changes has Twitter made in 2021?

Fleets is no more

Twitter had launched Fleets in late 2020. Like many of its rivals, the company wanted an ephemeral feature as well. Tweets posted to Fleets would disappear automatically after a day. This helped reduce some of the pressure around tweeting that users would have often felt.

Tweets stick around. They rack up likes and retweets. With Fleets, a tweet could just be a fleeting thought. Fleets were positioned at the top of the timeline in a row of bubbles not unlike how you see Stories in Facebook.

There was initially a lot of engagement. That’s because most people are so used to browsing Stories on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc that they’d check out the row at the top as if due to just muscle memory alone.

Merely a year after Fleets launched, Twitter announced that it would remove the feature on August 3, 2021. It’s now gone for good.

How to adapt: You may have created a strategy around Fleets, leveraging the ephemeral aspect to push new deals or incentives, for example. That can no longer be done. Since ephemeral tweets are not an option, rely instead on conventional tweets alone as you would have previously.

Time to get verified for a blue checkmark

The blue checkmark has long been coveted by Twitter users. Not everyone has a verified profile on the social network. It might be a status symbol for some users but for brands, it's an important symbol of authenticity. It helps build trust with consumers.

Twitter had decided at the end of 2017 that it needed to launch a new verification program to improve the process. This was also done to ensure that verified accounts meet its new guidelines. So it stopped accepting new submissions for profile verification. Twitter finally reopened verification submissions in May 2021.

Initially, the submissions could only be made for accounts belonging to public figures or accounts of high interest in the government, companies, brands and organizations, news organizations and journalists, entertainment, sports and gaming as well as activities, organizers and other influential individuals categories.

By September, it had eventually opened verification submissions to all Twitter users across the globe. It does require accounts that seek verification to meet certain thresholds before that coveted blue checkmark is provided to them.

How to adapt: Send your submission in now if you've been waiting to get that blue checkmark. Twitter requires that account holders confirm their identity with the network before they can be verified.

This can be done either by providing a link to an official website that references your organization, by providing a photo of a government-issued identification or by providing an official email address with a domain relevant to your category.

Grab that mic and start talking with Spaces

Twitter has made several moves in 2021 that show it's getting serious about audio on its platform. The beta version of its Spaces feature was first launched in 2020. It's an audio-only chat feature not unlike the widely popular app Clubhouse.

Spaces was rolled out more widely in 2021. Twitter also acquired Breaker, a podcast listening app, possibly with the intention of bringing some of its functionality to Spaces. It now surfaces Spaces in the top bar where Fleets were previously displayed. Such prime positioning shows that Twitter wants to squarely put the spotlight on this feature.

Twitter users can join a Space when someone they follow starts or speaks in one. If they join as a listener, they can react to what they hear with an emoji. They can also check out relevant pinned tweets and follow along with captions. Those who would like to participate can request to speak in the Space.

How to adapt: The Spaces feature provides an excellent opportunity for brands. It's an exceptional communication tool. Users can easily start listening to the audio hangout without needing to register and that too in real-time.

Brands can also use Spaces to announce new collaborations, product launches, campaigns and more. It can help build hype and enthusiasm among consumers.

This incredible platform deserves a shot

Some brands might think that perhaps Twitter doesn’t provide them with enough value to focus their energies on utilizing its platform. In reality, this platform certainly deserves a shot, even if the assumption is that the value just isn’t there.

Twitter’s user base is expanding and it’s also highly engaged. Organic reach on its platform is still far better than the likes of Facebook. That, coupled with its great feature set, makes Twitter a viable option.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

Getting Started with Hashtag Campaigns in 2021

Tue, 19 Oct 2021 18:23:07 GMT

Hashtags are an incredibly powerful tool to increase engagement and brand awareness. They have become an integral part of the social media experience. It's the great equalizer among social media platforms. Hashtags serve the same purpose whether you're on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or TikTok.

Hashtags are now firmly entrenched into the social media culture. So much so that the word itself was added to the Oxford English Dictionary which defined it as a word or phrase that is "used on social media websites and apps so that you can search for all messages with the same subject".

Consequently, billions of people across the globe use millions of hashtags on a daily basis. They are used to them and know what they're for. That’s precisely what presents brands with an opportunity to leverage them in order to increase engagement.

What is a hashtag campaign?

A hashtag campaign is a very targeted social media campaign. Brands create a hashtag to build the entire campaign around. This can either be for a product launch, collaboration, milestone, etc. The goal is very simple. Put the hashtag in front of as many people as possible and get them to contribute to the hype.

That hashtag is then going to create all the buzz, so it's very important to choose the right one that adequately represents the nature of the campaign. It should be related to the content that's going to be shared with that hashtag. It should also be simple and easy enough to remember. Long, drawn out hashtags rarely achieve the objective.

The hashtag needs to be catchy and easy to remember because the entire objective behind the campaign is to have social media users pick it up and start making their own contribution to it. Only then will the campaign's true objective be achieved.

The benefits of a hashtag campaign

There's a reason why some of the biggest brands in the world run hashtag campaigns. They're incredibly powerful and have a potential of going viral. So you can probably imagine that the benefits of a hashtag campaign are immense. It's one of the simplest ways to get your brand out there. By using a hashtag, you can quickly raise awareness for your brands and the products that it offers. Anyone who comes across it can easily see all of the posts that use that particular hashtag.

They can learn more about your products and see reviews from the people who are already using them. If they have a query, they can use the hashtag for it as well, enabling the brand to leverage this as a product support avenue.

No brand wants to willingly spend as much money as they possibly can to grow their reach online. There's a reason why marketers love organic reach. It delivers increased engagement and costs nothing.

Hashtags are exceptional at delivering organic reach. You may have used sponsored posts to push the hashtag initially and if it does well, it ends up taking a life of its own. People from all over will start interacting with the hashtag there by increasing the organic reach of your posts.

User generated content tends to do well online. When people are thinking about buying something, often their first thought is to search for its reviews online. If you encourage users to post their experiences with your products with a hashtag, anyone who searches it will be able to see how real customers liked your products.

This acts as a sort of social proof which comes in handy when you want to convert leads into customers.

How to launch a hashtag campaign in 2021

Look into what your competitors are doing

Competitor research always pays off when you're launching a social media marketing campaign. See what they have been doing with hashtag campaigns. This will give you an idea of what’s working and what’s not.

It’s a chance for you to learn from any mistakes that your competitors might have made when they set out to do this themselves. This is going to save you both time and money. By seeing where they went wrong, hit the ground running from the get go to achieve better results.

See what people are already saying about you

Chances are that your existing customers might already be talking about your brand online. Take a good look at how they're talking about the brand and its products, whether negative experiences are being shared with an associated hashtag.

This will help you craft your hashtag campaign more effectively. Thorough research will ensure that there’s nothing that can potentially affect your brand negatively once the campaign launches. It will also provide valuable insight on campaign targeting.

Create the right hashtag

As you can probably guess, this part requires the most diligence. The hashtag itself will be what makes or breaks the campaign. The one you choose should be relevant to the brand, it should resonate with the target audience, should be catchy and not one that can easily be forgotten.

It's also important to ensure that the hashtag you come up with isn't being used by someone else. Otherwise, you risk diverting the reach to a competitor or a completely unrelated campaign.

Keep an eye on the metrics

Hashtag campaigns aren't of the set and forget kind. Like you would with any social media campaign, it's vital to keep an eye on the metrics. Measure the results, see how the hashtag is doing and whether it's generating the kind of results you were expecting.

Only then will you be able to conclude whether the campaign was a success. This will also provide valuable insight that you can use to make your next hashtag campaign even better.

Leverage the ubiquity of hashtags to launch powerful campaigns

Hashtags are everywhere and on every social network. A single hashtag campaign can be run across all of the major networks. That’s because they work the same way everywhere. That’s what makes them so ubiquitous.

Leverage this ubiquity to your advantage. Come up with hashtag campaigns that have the potential of going viral across networks. It will deliver the kind of organic reach that will be the stuff of dreams for most marketers.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

Understanding Facebook Reach and How to Quickly Grow Yours

Wed, 13 Oct 2021 19:48:33 GMT

Facebook is the largest social media network on the planet. Brands love it because it enables them to connect with a truly global audience. The advertising tools that it offers are also among the best in the business.

It goes without saying that any business that’s trying to generate sales online will devote a big chunk of its time and resources trying to crack Facebook marketing. That might sound easy but the reality is completely different.

Facebook ads have steadily become expensive over the years. The average CPM is now close to $11. There are a variety of factors that have contributed to it. Oversaturation of the Facebook marketplace is one of them. Too many advertisers are paying to capture the attention of the same people which is pushing costs higher for everyone.

On the other hand, the organic reach has steadily declined on Facebook over the years. Brands can’t really reach people at scale unless they pay for it. Those who truly understand Facebook reach and take steps to maximize it organically end up saving a lot of money in the process.

What is Facebook Reach?

Reach is a key metric on Facebook. The social network itself defines Reach as the number of unique users that saw any content from your Facebook Page or about your Page on their device.

For example, if you like a Page, you might see a post from it in your News Feed, where you might also see suggested posts by the algorithm from a Page that you haven’t liked. Simply put, reach is a metric that adds up all of the Facebook users that saw your brand on the social network.

There are three reporting windows for Facebook reach: 1-day, 7-day and 28-day. The way numbers are reported can often end up confusing people. The reporting increment you choose will dictate what your reach looks like.

Imagine if a user saw your content multiple times over two days. They would only be counted once on each individual day if you view reach in the 1-day reporting window. However, the same user would be counted only once in the 7-day and 28-day windows no matter how many times they came across your content.

This is merely a way to represent the same performance in a different way depending on the timespan to allow for more in-depth analysis.

The three types of Facebook reach you should know about

Organic: They say that the best things in life are free. So is the organic reach on Facebook. This includes users who like your page, interact with your content and those that see mentions of your page in their News Feed.

Viral: Going viral online for the right reasons is the dream for every brand. It provides them with an immense amount of reach at no cost. Viral reach includes Facebook users that see your content because of a third person, like their own friends who share your posts.

Paid: Lastly, paid reach is what you pay Facebook for. Use its tools to fine tune your campaigns, target the right audiences and wait for Facebook's algorithm to do its thing. As previously mentioned, paid reach has gradually become more expensive.

The number of people who like your Facebook page isn't your organic reach. Even if you have a million likes, only a very small fraction will serve your posts. Consider these numbers: By the end of 2020, the average reach for an organic Facebook post dropped to 5.2%. The average engagement rate is at 0.25%.

That number drops further to 0.08% for those with over 100K followers. Facebook has made it abundantly clear that organic reach alone isn't going to help brands achieve their objectives on the social network. They need to pay up.

There’s no need to lose all hope in organic reach just yet. By switching up a few things, it’s entirely possible to quickly grow your Facebook organic reach. This will enable you to better leverage the existing audience that has already been amassed through the Page.

Better organic reach also means that you need to spend less on Facebook advertising as you’d be able to get your message out more effectively to the people who already know about your brand and are known to engage with it.

Steps to quickly grow your Facebook reach

Post when most of your followers are online

Recency is a big ranking factor that Facebook's algorithm considers when deciding which posts to show users. It places new posts higher up in the News Feed. Facebook itself stresses that by posting when most of your followers are online, you have a greater chance of increasing your organic reach.

So dive deep into the audience metrics for your Facebook Page. See when most of your followers are online. Use the Post scheduling tool that Facebook provides to have new content lined up to publish at just the right moment.

Engage with your audience

Your Facebook page shouldn't look like a link farm. Take time out to engage directly with the people who are interacting with your posts. Facebook's algorithm considers interactions between users and Pages as a signal.

The more a user interacts, the more often they see posts from that Page. The best way to do that is to reply to users either in the comments or through Messenger. Keep them engaged and Facebook will keep serving them your posts.

Leverage the algorithm’s love for live video

Facebook's algorithm really loves live video. The social network has been increasingly giving it more importance. Brands that use Facebook Live tend to see 6x more engagement compared to regular video posts.

Not only does it provide brands with a unique way of reaching out to their community, but it also helps them extract the best reach out of the algorithm.

Don’t give up on Facebook organic reach just yet

It’s easy to feel disheartened and think that unless you’re spending thousands of dollars on Facebook, it’s really not possible to get any traction on the social network. There are countless examples of brands who utilize these steps to elevate themselves on the world’s top social network.

This does require some trial and error. As long as you’re putting in the work and leveraging every tool that Facebook provides to improve your organic reach, it won’t be long before you start seeing some real results.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

The Fast Way To Boost Your Social Media Reach: Get Rid of Fake Followers

Wed, 22 Sep 2021 16:26:35 GMT

Social media is obsessed with numbers. Who has the most followers, whose posts see higher engagement, videos get more views or blog gets the most readers. It’s all a numbers game. When brands work with influencers, they prefer those who have a large following. However, numbers alone never tell the whole story.

The fake social media followers plague affects every social platform out there. There is no shortage of online services that will gladly take your money in return for what they claim to be genuine followers. In reality, they’re simply unleashing a horde of bots on your account to artificially inflate the following count.

Social media’s fake follower problem extends far beyond those who indulge in these transactions. Even if you’ve never bought followers, chances are that you might still have bot accounts following you. They might seem harmless but they’re negatively impacting your online presence.

Why do fake social media followers exist in the first place?

Social media is very competitive. People want to stand out and appear as if they command the attention of countless people. They want a slice of the influencer marketing pie and with more money being spent on these campaigns than ever before, it’s a way for them to pad their numbers a bit.

Brands often indulge in the purchase of fake followers as well, particularly if they’re just starting out and competing in a market with well established competitors. They want to project an aura of scale and success to potential customers who might discover their social media profiles.

That’s not the only reason why fake followers exist on social media. There are entire bot networks being operated to spread disinformation online. Unscrupulous actors use bot networks to spread spam, malware and viruses.

I’ve never paid for bots, so why are they following me?

A recent study assessed the follower counts of the top 20 accounts on Instagram. As you'd expect, the top 20 accounts belong to superstar celebrities that tens of millions of people follow organically.

You wouldn't expect that an A-list actor, model or singer would buy or have their social media team buy fake followers when they can't even step outside the home without being mobbed by fans.

If you look at that report, though, you'd find that even these top accounts can have fake followers make up over 25% of their entire following. At this rate, an account with 100 million followers on Instagram has 25 million fake followers. That's just unreal.

These bots are meant to appear like actual users. So they tend to follow many high visibility accounts in order to appear legitimate. The bots may also follow random personal or brand accounts just to avoid detection.

So even if you’ve never paid for a single fake follower, there still might be many that follow you, even more than you’d be expecting. The social networks are trying to handle the fake follower problem by routinely kicking bots off their platform.

Twitter, for example, deletes millions of fake accounts every week. Facebook and Instagram do the same. However, their efforts don’t appear to have made a dent in the bot problem. Many have called on the social networks to do more to protect their users from this plague.

Tools to get rid of fake social media followers

HypeAuditor

HypeAuditor is one of the best tools that you can use to check for fake followers on your Instagram account. This tool was built from the ground up for fraud detection. It relies on artificial intelligence technologies to track 28 different metrics and scores to provide valuable insight about your audience.

It's also a great tool for brands who are getting into influencer marketing. The many fraud detection features that it offers can help you audit the following of an influencer that you might want to collaborate with.

It digs deep into their audience data and discovers bot generated comments or sudden spikes in follower growth. Armed with this information, brands can negotiate fees with the influencer to ensure that they're only paying for the legitimate reach.

2. SocialBlade

If you are looking for one tool that can provide insight about your audience on a variety of different social media platforms, consider SocialBlade. This tool is capable of tracking user stats for YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Dailymotion and more.

It provides a lot of useful analytics data that can deliver clarity about the state of your following. These actionable insights are important as they can then be used to rid your account of bots that are skewing your results.

3. FakeCheck

FakeCheck has been developed for the sole purpose of checking if an Instagram account has fake followers. It dives deep into the audience data of the target account and delivers a report which highlights the percentage of fake followers that an account might have.

Similarly, this tool can also be used by brands to audit the audience of an influencer that they want to work with. The percentage of fake followers that the account might have will reveal the true picture about the reach that the influencer will be able to generate for the brand.

4. SparkToro

SparkToro is headed by one of the team members of MOZ, a highly regarded SEO tool, so you can rest assured that it's going to be a quality product. SparkToro can only provide an audit of Twitter accounts right now so it will be useful if your audience on the microblogging network is of concern to you.

It crawls millions of profiles to audit the audience so that you can check the results and make any changes that may be necessary. Additional features enable you to build your outreach, analyze your audience vs your competitors and even discover opportunities to amplify your message online.

The faster you get rid of your fake followers, the better
Fake follo wers are skewing your engagement results and preventing you from getting the complete picture about your audience. Use any of the tools available to help you with the bot problem to clean up your social media accounts and boost your organic reach.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

11 Ways Small Businesses Can Use Local Influencers in Their Digital Marketing Strategy

Mon, 06 Sep 2021 14:22:44 GMT

As a small business owner, you want to use all of the strategies and tools at your disposal when it comes to marketing. One of the strategies that you should not overlook is influencer marketing.

You may not realize it, but influencer marketing isn’t just for big companies. While major multinational companies can afford to use A-list celebrities that aren’t within reach for most of us, small businesses can get excellent results from using local influencers instead.

1. Understand Why Local Influencers Are a Good Choice

Before tapping local influencers in your marketing strategy, make sure you understand why this is a good decision. Think of this as the first step for a successful influencer marketing strategy.

Simply put, you get similar benefits with local or micro-influencers as you would with big stars, plus a few extras. These include:

● They seem more authentic and relatable to your audience.

● Their engagement rates tend to be higher.

● They have a more targeted audience.

● Their audience is local, so they can visit your store.

● They cost a lot less, easily fitting into your marketing budget.

● They are much more accessible. (You can just send a message instead of having to work through representatives.)

2. Find Potential Influencers Within Your Current Customers

Once you know why you want to use local influencer marketing, it is time to start doing so. The first step is to begin looking for influencers, and a great starting point is your existing customers or subscribers.

Remember that you just want local influencers; they don’t need to have hundreds of thousands of followers. Start by looking at your social media pages and see who follows you there.

Specifically, look for anyone who has at least 1,000 followers and posts about topics related to your brand. It’s even better if they have shown outright interest in your brand on their page before.

3. Find Influencers Using Hashtags

Another great strategy for finding potential influencers is to search with hashtags. Look at the hashtags relevant to your business, and be sure to include a location-based hashtag in your search. Remember, the goal is to get local influencers. For example, if you run a restaurant, you could search for #[City]foodblogger and see what shows up.

4. Find Local Bloggers

You can also look for local people who run blogs in your area. They will likely already have a strong following on social media.

5. Don’t Be Afraid to Use Search Tools, Even If They Are Paid

While it is not ideal for every business, you may want to consider using an influencer search tool. Of course, doing this will likely take up a bit more of your marketing budget. On the other hand, it will save you time so you can focus on other aspects of your business.

The important caveat here is that if you use a tool, especially a paid one, make sure it will give you relevant results. In other words, make sure that it will include micro-influencers in your area. If it doesn’t, it will just be a waste of money. Because of this requirement, your options for influencer tools may be somewhat limited.

6. Choose Your Influencers With Care

As you browse for influencers, don’t just contact and start working with everyone that you find. Instead, work to narrow down your list of influencers to only include those that make sense for your business and brand.

Start by ensuring that their style and overall personality fit in with your brand. You want your chosen influencers to have similar values to your brand.

One of the most important things is to ensure that the influencers you choose post content relevant to your company. So, if you are a gym, you may want to look for local fitness influencers. Or, if you are a bakery, you would look for influencers who focus on baked goods, desserts, or food in general. How specific you choose to be will depend on the options available and the audience size. The most important part is to ensure they are relevant.

Finally, take a look at the content the influencer posts. Try to avoid influencers who tend to go over to promote brands or only post sponsored content. If your brand appears as just one of many sponsored posts, it won’t seem authentic. Ideally, you should look for influencers who have non-sponsored posts mixed in, and whose sponsored content has a more natural feel.

7. Negotiate Payment

Most larger influencers will want to receive financial compensation for their posts, but some smaller local influencers may be happy with freebies. This will depend entirely on the influencer, your product, and your preference. You should expect to have to pay some influencers, but you can also see if candidates are open to free products or services in exchange for posts.

8. Sponsor Influencer Posts

The most obvious type of content you will have influencers post is your sponsored posts. Those are the ones that you pay the influencer to share. They typically promote a product or service. An example would be a close-up photo of your product either alone or with the influencer using it.

9. Have Influencers Mention You in Posts

You can also compensate influencers for mentioning your company in posts that aren’t clearly sponsored content. For example, if the influencer regularly goes on picnics and posts photos of the spread, have them include your food product in it and mention you. Or if you sell clothes, have them wear something and mention where they got it from in the description.

10. Give Influencers Some Creativity

Most influencers are fairly creative people by nature. Take advantage of this when figuring out what type of content you want them to post.

For example, if you sell accessories, ask them to incorporate them into an outfit. If you sell a food product or drink, have them incorporate it in a recipe or meal and share that. If you sell exercise equipment, encourage them to share how they would use it in their workouts.

11. Schedule Social Media Takeovers

Another great option is to have influencers take over your social media page for a day or a few hours. This can be a great way to make them more relatable or to highlight how your products or services fit into their daily lives.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

The 5 Best Free Graphic Design Tools for Marketers

Mon, 23 Aug 2021 14:44:14 GMT

Nothing beats visually appealing content online. Regardless of how detailed your content is or how much value it provides to the reader, the vast majority of visitors would prefer it to be visually appealing. That’s why graphic design is so important for marketers.

There's ample research to show that your online audience takes mere seconds to decide whether or not it wants to stick around. One research found that visitors only take 2.6 seconds on average to focus on a specific area of the website.

So marketers only have one opportunity to capture the attention of their audience. If they're unable to do that, or if they end up leaving a bad impression, chances are they might not see that visitor again.

Good graphic design is key, but it can be expensive to hire a designer! Fortunately, there’s no shortage of great graphic design tools that are free to help you add a visually-appealing edge to your content.

Here are a few of our favorites:

5 best free graphic design software for marketers

1. Canva

Canva is a powerful and free graphic design tool that has something to offer to both novice and skilled graphic designers. Those who are new to graphic design can quickly create visually appealing creatives using the easy drag and drop format.

Canva provides a very user-friendly interface and templates that can be used to easily create the right-sized creatives for social media networks. It also provides more than 8000 free templates for users to choose from.

There are some features that require the user to upgrade to a premium membership but they’re really only for the skilled designers. For those who are just starting out, the core features that they need to make amazing creatives are all free.

2. Easel.ly

Infographics are a great visual resource. They help condense a lot of information into an appealing graphic that's able to get the point across to the reader effectively. Easel.ly makes it very simple to create great infographics online.

The software's powerful features can be used to visualize just about any kind of data. It's fairly easy to even create flowcharts, design reports and maps based on the data. Some of the more advanced features do require a subscription, though.

To help users along, Easel.ly provides them with free templates and tutorials that enable them to get the most out of this free graphic design software.

3. Adobe Spark

Adobe is highly regarded for making some of the best graphic design software on the market. However, it's premium products tend to be expensive. The company later launched Adobe Spark as a free alternative to Adobe Illustrator.

It has many powerful graphic design features in addition to free templates that make it very easy to create great graphics. The features it offers are perfect for quickly creating visuals for social media campaigns or blog posts.

The limited feature set also means that beginners won't be overwhelmed by the software. Adobe Spark is available for both mobile and web, enabling marketers to design using any device of their choice.

4. Gravit

Marketers who are looking for a free vector design solution will be better served by Gravit. This graphic design software has been developed by the fine people behind Corel Draw.

Gravit provides a wide variety of tools that enable users to create vector art through a self-adjusting interface. In addition to vector illustration, Gravit also enables lighting and color adjustments, filters, blending, effects and more.

The free version isn't fully adapted for touch-enabled devices so it's best used on the desktop. It also lacks some of the advanced features but the free tier offers more than what most designers will need.

5. Gimp

Gimp is another highly regarded graphic design tool that’s been available for free for 25 years! It's popularly referred to as the open source version of Adobe Photoshop.

It supports all file formats and enables designers to create artworks from a blank canvas. The advanced features include layer masks, curves, animation, and more. The interface is also customizable for an enhanced user experience.

The best part about Gimp is that all of its features are free since it’s an open source software. That makes it a compelling solution for even those who are very skilled when it comes to graphics design.

Happy designing!

Content Created for Digital Harvest Marketing

How to adapt your eCommerce strategies to increase sales in the summer

Tue, 10 Aug 2021 19:24:51 GMT

Summer is finally upon us and with it comes a thriving retail season. Summer has traditionally been a good time of the year for brands. People approach the season with a zeal. Some overhaul their wardrobes, others make travel plans or look to have new experiences to make good memories.

This provides brands with an incredible opportunity to increase sales. Their prospective customers are already pre-qualified by virtue of the season. The customers already know they want to buy something new, it’s the brand’s job to position themselves well enough to win that sale.

The summer 2021 retail season is expected to be significantly better than last year. Summer 2020 saw much of the world under lockdown. With the COVID threat subsiding to an extent and vaccinations picking up, people are finally excited to enjoy a “normal” summer.

eCommerce spending really took off during the pandemic. This change in customer behavior will likely persist. So even as things open up again, your focus shouldn’t shift from eCommerce.

Existing customers remain vital to your eCommerce strategy

You’re buzzing with energy for the new season, excited for all the new customers you’re going to bring in through your eCommerce strategy. It’s good to be excited and look towards expanding the customer base but don’t let that make you lose sight of your existing customers.

Countless studies have shown that it's cheaper for a business to capture a sale from a returning customer than it is to win an entirely new customer. Some studies peg the conversion rate for existing customers at up to an impressive 20%.

Start off your campaigns for the new season by first focusing on your previous customers. They’re already familiar with the brand and the quality of your product. You already have the data you need to retarget them with your ads. It will be a crucial mistake to go chasing after new leads before doing that.

eCommerce strategies to increase sales in summer 2021

1. Add User Generated Content to the mix

People had a lot of free time on their hands when the pandemic forced them indoors last year. Many of them picked up hobbies and activities that they otherwise felt they had no time for. That’s one of the reasons why social media networks saw an increase in usage during this period.

A lot more people are now comfortable creating content with their smartphones. They've experimented with it for the better part of a year. Tap into the creativity of your customer base by adding user generated content to the mix. This can either be in the form of reviews, testimonials, unboxings or even photos.

Remember, most new customers tend to search social media networks about the real-world experiences from customers who have purchased a product they're interested in. The more user generated content is out there about your brand, the higher the chances of potential customers converting.

2. Utilize video marketing to elevate your brand image

The explosive growth of snackable video platforms like TikTok present brands with a great opportunity to elevate their brand image by using video content. Internet users also prefer video more than any other type of content.

As a brand, strive to strike balance when creating video content. It shouldn't be too lengthy that viewers lose interest or too bland that they fail to even notice the video. Remember, your video can only make a lasting impression in the first few seconds. Make sure that it's well put together because all it takes for a viewer to skip ahead is a simple tap.

3. Start optimizing for voice search

More buyers are now using voice search to find products than ever before. That's partly because voice assistants have become an integral part of the smartphone experience. Some market analysts expect that voice-assisted shopping will cross the $20 billion mark in 2021.

So how does a brand go about optimizing for voice search? Be mindful of the fact that a user who speaks out a query will word it differently than they would when typing in that same query. Capitalize on this opportunity by optimizing your pages for long-tail keywords and phrases that people will likely say when they want someone that your business offers.

4. Improve your m-commerce experience

Mobile commerce isn't a new trend but it's importance continues to grow. Market analysts predict that mobile commerce will make up 54% of all online sales in 2021. So if you haven't already invested in improving your mobile shopping experience, now is the time to do so.

Whether that be through a mobile app or a dedicated mobile site, your brand must have a mobile optimized storefront that enables customers to shop with ease. Consider expanding the functionality of your m-commerce efforts through next-generation technologies like augmented reality.

5. Start accepting new payment options

A lot has changed in the world of online finance, particularly after the cryptocurrency boom. People are actively looking for businesses that allow them to spend their crypto. Consider accepting these new payment options if it makes sense in your particular niche.

It won't be for everybody, of course. However, this is a great way to expand the market reach for your business. While it remains unclear what the future holds for crypto, there's more widespread acceptability and understanding about it now than ever before.

Test first, and then test some more

Remember, what works for one business may not necessarily work for yours. It’s easy to feel excited about a strategy that delivers incredible results for your competitor but there’s every chance it may not work with your audience.

So test these strategies out. Don’t be afraid to try something new. Eventually you’ll settle on the strategies that make perfect business sense. That really is how you go about this.

Content Created for Digital Harvest Marketing

7 Tips to Do More (and Better) Video Marketing for Your Business

Tue, 10 Aug 2021 19:20:01 GMT

As a small business, you are always searching for ways to make the most of your marketing budget to expand your reach and boost sales. No marketing strategy is complete without video marketing, but it can be hard to know where to start. Whether you need to create your first video marketing strategy or improve an existing one, the following tips can help you.

Start With What You Have - It’s Enough

Video marketing is one of the more intimidating areas of marketing for many small businesses. You may think you need to spend a lot to create high-quality videos, but this is not the case.

You can start producing quality videos and take advantage of this type of marketing on a very low budget. After all, most smartphones today have great cameras, and there are plenty of free or highly affordable video editing software options available.

Start your video marketing wherever you can, but make sure that you focus on learning new skills and improving this type of marketing.

Do Your Research

Your priority when creating video content for your marketing campaign should always be on quality, not quantity. You will notice much better results if you deliver just a few high-quality videos that people enjoy watching than if you create numerous low-quality videos.

But what is a quality video? Quality videos result from market research and a good understanding of your customers. They feature compelling content that appeals to your audience and genuinely interests them.

That means you need to do your research to make sure you know the topics your audience want to hear about.

Two good places to start: keyword research on Google and Youtube, and also visit online forums and communities where your customers ‘hang out’, and study the video topics that are already getting great attention and response from your audience on Youtube.

Provide Educational Content

One of the easiest ways to make compelling video content is to make it educational to your audience. Remember that you don’t need to have a high video budget to create quality videos; the content is more important.

How-to videos are a particularly great option for any small business. You can also create videos sharing tips and tricks, explaining features in more detail, or serving as buying guides.

Try Live Video

Try doing live video on your favorite social platforms. This is a good opportunity to connect directly with your audience and boost engagement.

What kind of videos are good for live?

Behind-the-scenes videos are incredibly popular. These are a great way to introduce your team, your story, and your products. They can also be ideal for making announcements.

Simply turn on the camera and start broadcasting, introducing members of your team and telling your audience what’s happening with your day. People love the candid connection!

Start With an Attention Grabber

There are so many videos online, so you need to create videos that stand out. One of the best ways of doing this is to ensure that your video catches the attention of viewers within the first few seconds.

Most experts agree that you need to catch the viewer’s attention within the first three seconds. If you don’t, people are likely to turn away.

Don’t Forget About Keywords

You are hopefully used to incorporating keywords into your written content, but you may not realize you should be doing this with video content as well. YouTube will automatically transcribe your video. This means that Google can use that transcription for search results.

There are a few things to do with this knowledge. Start by making sure you include your keywords early on in the video. Then, keep incorporating them naturally through the video. As a bonus, consider checking the automatically generated transcript for accuracy.

Remember There Are Multiple Platforms for Video Marketing

When it comes to video marketing, it is easy to just focus on YouTube and forget about everything else. However, you need to remember that other social media platforms also host videos. You will want to post your videos on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and other relevant channels, depending on where your audience is.

For the best results, do more than just post the same video everywhere. You also want to take a few minutes to optimize the video for each platform before sharing it.

Content Created for Digital Harvest Marketing

6 Tips to Help You Manage Your Small Business’ Reputation

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 18:12:23 GMT

There are so many elements of small business marketing to keep up with that it can be easy to let some things slip. But if there is one area that you always want to stay on top of, it’s your reputation - it’s simply too important to ignore!

Why It Matters

Before getting into the advice, you may wonder why managing your small business’s reputation is important. It comes down to the fact that your reputation is one of the biggest factors influencing a potential customer’s conversion journey from a lead to a client. Most people will take a few minutes to check a company’s reputation before hiring or buying from them the first time, so having a poor reputation can mean that your company misses opportunities.

The following tips will help you stay on top of managing your business’s reputation:

Start By Googling Your Company

Before you get too far in your reputation management, start by googling your company’s name. This will give you a better idea of your starting point. Pay attention to positives and negatives in the search results.

If you see negatives, think about how you can address or overcome them. Plan to make changes to prevent similar complaints in the future. Also, make a note of those negatives and where they are so that you can directly address them in your strategy. Suppose you have a lot of negative reviews on one website. In that case, you may want to focus your review strategy on responding to those reviews.

Claim Your Listings and Domains

A simple step that you hopefully haven’t overlooked is to register and list your business on all of the major directories. At the very least, make pages on Google My Business, Yelp, Bing, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The more platforms you can claim a page on, the better.

This connects to the tip, claiming your domains. If your business name is still available on Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter, and other social media platforms, claim it. If www.[yourcompany].com is available, buy the page. Claim the Gmail account as well.

Going through this process serves several purposes. To start, it gives your customers even more ways to reach you. It also helps expand your online presence and deliver confidence in your brand by providing the same information everywhere.

It also prevents anyone with ill will from posing as your company. Others don’t even need to have bad intentions to hurt your business. If someone from a business with a similar name makes a Tweet, potential customers may think it is from your company. There’ll be even more confusion if they can’t find your official Twitter page, as they may assume the one with the controversial post is you.

Encourage and Respond to Reviews

Reviews are a crucial part of your online reputation. Think of reviews as a modern-day extension of referrals to family and friends. Few people buy products or services without looking at a minimum of a few reviews.

To take advantage of this, encourage your customers to leave reviews. A simple reminder can do wonders. If you don’t have enough reviews, you can also offer discounts or freebies on their next purchase in exchange for a review.

Then, go out of your way to respond to reviews, both the good and the bad. In the case of good reviews, you can say something simple like, “I’m glad you enjoyed our product. We can’t wait to work with you again.” In the case of bad reviews, try to resolve whatever issue the reviewer mentions. For example, if they complain about product quality, offer a replacement. This will show others that if an issue does arise, you will work hard to overcome it. It essentially gives you the impression of outstanding customer support.

Don’t Create Fake Reviews

It can be tempting to use fake reviews to promote your business. This is especially true with so many fake reviews online and for smaller businesses that don’t have many reviews yet. However, it can hurt you in the long run.

The bottom line is that someone will eventually realize you have fake reviews. When they do, your reputation will plummet.

Create a Reputation As an Expert

Part of managing your reputation also comes down to the content that you create and posts you share on social media. You want to create content that frames your company as an expert. You can do this by sharing recent research and guides. Hopefully, people will start associating your company with expertise. Then, when they want a product or service your company offers, they will turn to you.

Content Created for Digital Harvest Marketing

5 Social Media Trends to Capitalize on in 2021

Mon, 05 Jul 2021 16:15:17 GMT

Social media is an incredibly powerful tool. Changemakers across the globe rely on its power and reach to make the world a better place. People use it to be entertained and stay in touch with their family and friends.

The numbers don't lie. More than 3.6 billion people were using social media worldwide. This number is expected to surge to almost 4.41 billion by 2025 as smartphone and internet penetration grows in emerging markets. Users spend 144 minutes checking social media per day on average.

It’s hard to imagine living in a world right now where social media does not exist. These networks have cemented their place in our lives in a very short period of time. It’s impressive that most of us can’t go a day without checking up on social media even though these networks have only been around for a decade or so.

They’ve also given businesses the opportunity to reach billions of potential customers across the globe. The sheer amount of data that these networks collect enables them to offer businesses with laser-like targeting options for their campaigns, enabling them to achieve a greater ROI that no other form of marketing can even come close to.

The fleeting nature of Social Media Trends

Social media trends can change very rapidly. It's partly due to the networks themselves. They keep adding new features and changing algorithms to meet their own business objectives. Any such change could flip a brand's entire social media marketing strategy on its head. Something that worked before isn't necessarily going to work in the future.

Trends that emerge due to something going viral can fizzle out pretty quickly. Remember the Ice Bucket Challenge? People would get doused with ice cold water to raise awareness and donations for ALS charities.

They would also nominate other people in the video which is how the Ice Bucket Challenge went viral. Various iterations of the challenge had been floating online for years. It was only in 2014 that this trend went viral across the globe. Over $220 million was raised worldwide for ALS research.

In 2015, an attempt was made by several ALS organizations in the United States to re-introduce the challenge. It wasn't successful because the trend had fizzled out by then and social media users simply didn't respond in the way that they had in the previous year.

Businesses need to constantly adapt to changing trends in order to maximize the ROI from their social media marketing campaigns. A significant rethink of strategies is required in 2021 as the social media landscape has once again gone through a significant shift due to the COVID19 pandemic.

5 Social Media Trends you should be following in 2021

1. Live streams are in vogue

Video content really took off in 2020 as people were forced indoors by the pandemic. Suddenly, everything from work to school and even catching up with friends could only be done through video calls.

People also had more free time since they had to be indoors most of the time. This meant they consumed more video content. Artists turned to live streams for performances while singers performed impromptu virtual concerts for their fans online.

This shift in consumer behavior has carried over into 2021. A lot more people now prefer interacting with their favorite brands live without having to leave their home. Live streaming will continue to become more popular and businesses should certainly make it a part of their 2021 strategy.

2. Video content is king

One of the reasons why conventional blogs are finding it hard to thrive is that people simply prefer consuming video content now. YouTube is the world’s most popular resource for informational and entertainment content on just about everything under the sun.

However, YouTube is now extremely saturated. Look elsewhere if you'd like your video content to stand out. There are plenty of other social video channels that provide access to a wide audience. Tailor your video content for channels like IGTV, Instagram Reels, Twitter Fleets, etc.

Utilize all of these different social media channels to reach out to new audiences. You may also find that the engagement rates may be higher on these channels compared to YouTube since it’s much easier for viewers to share content that they like with other people.

3. Get on the social commerce train

Social media networks have transformed the way people purchase things online. For example, a customer might like a hat worn by their favorite influencer. They can click on the product tag in the influencer's post and be instantly taken to that brand's shop on Facebook. They can purchase the hat there and then without ever having to switch tabs.

Social media greatly influences purchase decisions. Capitalize on this trend by setting up your own social media storefronts. Complement your customers’ visual research journey with convenience and a swift checkout experience.

4. Create content that resonates with your customers

A lot of people have become more mindful about their place in the world post pandemic. They understand that we as a species need to change things in order to ensure the survival of our future generations. There's more empathy and thoughtfulness in their actions. They're now more likely to support businesses that share the same social values.

Now is the time to show a more relatable side of your business. Highlight the efforts that you make for environmental protection, for example, or the social responsibility projects you've initiated to help people in the community. Talk about the brand's larger purpose or highlight customer stories to form a deeper connection with your audience.

5. Launch purpose-driven campaigns

74% of respondents in a Twitter survey said that they prefer brands to showcase an act of kindness. Brands that are seen to be supporting society during a crisis evoke a more positive perception among customers.

Purpose-driven social media campaigns are thus a great way for brands to elevate themselves. This can be achieved either through support for vulnerable members of the community or through support for a cause that people care deeply about.

Remember to always be authentic

Authenticity goes a long way online. All content and campaigns, particularly those related to issues or a crisis, must be genuine and authentic. Your audience shouldn’t feel that the brand is simply jumping on the bandwagon to increase its visibility. Such negative perception can be difficult to shake off once created.

Content Created for Digital Harvest Marketing

8 Methods to Get the Most From Your Digital Marketing Budget

Tue, 22 Jun 2021 16:14:31 GMT

Businesses of any size always try to get the most out of their budgets, but this is particularly important for small businesses with limited funds. Careful planning and prioritizing, along with following a few tips, can help you get the most from your digital marketing budget. This approach lets you keep more funds free for other aspects of your business.

Research the Market

Before you even start thinking about your marketing budget, take some time to research the market. Try to figure out approximately what your competitors are spending to give you a baseline estimate. You can also research how much you will need to budget for various strategies, such as PPC, to see the results you want.

This should help you create an early estimate for your budget and how to allocate it. As you go through the other methods on this list, you can adjust that estimate.

Take the Time to Create a Marketing Strategy

If you want to make the most of your marketing budget, you should have a strategy to apply. Without a plan, your marketing spending will likely be random and wasteful.

By contrast, if you have specific goals in mind with your marketing campaign, you will know how to focus your budget on reaching the set goals. This lets you allocate your marketing budget based on how you prioritize your goals and campaigns.

Prioritize Marketing Goals

One reason why a marketing strategy is so important for making the most of your marketing budget is that it helps you prioritize. This prioritization is crucial as it ensures that you allocate enough of the budget for your most important goals.

Be Aware of Hidden or Potentially Changing Costs

As you create your marketing budget, set some aside for hidden or unexpected costs. This is a natural part of digital marketing. You can never be sure exactly how much you will spend on Facebook ads or how much time your team will have to put into certain marketing tasks.

By allocating a bit of the budget for these unforeseen expenses, you will prevent yourself from going over budget or having to take away some of the funds from an important goal.

Balance Out Time and Money

When it comes to marketing, small businesses have to decide what they want to do themselves in-house and what they want to outsource to a marketing agency. Taking the time to do it in-house will save money but cost you time. By contrast, you will save time by hiring a marketing agency.

When balancing the two options, don’t forget to account for the fact that a marketing agency will likely deliver better results than you can get yourself and do so more efficiently.

Target the Right Audience

Targeting your audience right will increase the effectiveness of your money in a marketing budget. If you try to reach a wide audience with your marketing strategy, you will find yourself spending a great deal of money. Even worse, you will have a low ROI because not everyone you reach will be likely to convert into a customer.

Instead, take the time to figure out your target audience and then direct your advertising efforts. Think of it as focusing your digital marketing expenses on the people who are most likely to buy from you.

Recycle Creatives When Possible

Creating creatives is a costly part of your marketing campaign, so find ways to reuse them. For example, you can make small changes to a blog and post it on another website as a guest post. Or you could tweak a post on one social media page to use on another.

Always Evaluate and Reevaluate

Throughout all of your digital marketing efforts, make sure to pay attention to data, such as Google Analytics. Your biggest goal when examining the data is to confirm that your marketing efforts are working. Specifically, you want to find out which marketing campaigns or tactics have the best results and which have the worst results.

You can then use that information to reallocate your marketing budget. Reduce the budget for campaigns performing poorly or consider completely eliminating them. At the same time, if you see a marketing campaign delivering amazing results, reallocate more of the budget to go to that campaign. This will help ensure that you are using your budget in ways that are most likely to deliver results.

Content Created for Digital Harvest Marketing

10 Strategies to Make Sure Your Email Newsletter Gets Opened

Fri, 11 Jun 2021 14:41:09 GMT

With so many different marketing channels available now, it's easy to feel that email has no place in modern strategies. Many feel that email is outdated. It's certainly been around for far longer than any of the dominant social media networks.

The fact remains that email is not dying and is, in fact, incredibly effective.

Over 102.6 trillion emails are sent annually with the number only projected to increase in the coming years. People are also far more attached to their email accounts than you may think, checking their inbox at least once if not multiple times throughout the day.

However, with users receiving 13 commercial emails per day on average, capturing their attention is more art than science. It's the failure to properly leverage the audience that forms the misconception that email marketing is dying.

Marketers need to be a lot more diligent and crafty when it comes to email marketing compared to launching campaigns on social media networks. Use these 10 strategies to increase the chances of your email newsletter not being confined to the depths of your leads’ inbox.

#1 Get crafty with the subject lines

The subject line is what will make or break your email marketing efforts. Your lead will have dozens of unread emails that they’ll be skimming through. The subject line needs to not only catch their eye but also compel them to open the email.

There are countless studies on words for subject lines that boost email open rates. Similar studies can also be found on the words to not include in subject lines as they may reduce open rates or even worse, trigger spam filters.

#2 Keep it short

A lengthy email subject is going to get cut off. Remain mindful of character lengths and try to fit the subject within it. With the vast majority of emails being opened on mobile devices, your focus should be on limiting the subject lines to 17-24 characters.

Remember, iPhones show approximately 38 characters in portrait mode while Android devices show around 33 characters. Your hook may not deliver the intended objective if the recipient can't even read it.

#3 Take a genuine tone

Don’t try to come off as an overly enthusiastic salesperson in the emails. Nobody appreciates that in a retail environment, either. Similarly, they’re not going to respond positively to being pushed hard for a sale through an email.

Keep in mind that you're reaching to actual people, not machines. Keep a genuine and empathetic tone in your messaging, similar to what you'd not be offended by either.

#4 Send your email blasts at the right time

Before pressing send to light up your entire email list, think about whether it’s the right time to drop a line in their inbox. For example, if you have leads in different timezones, sending out emails to everyone at the same time would mean that a lot of people would get the email when they’re asleep.

By the time they check their inbox in the morning, your email would likely be buried under dozens of other emails they received throughout the night. This reduces open rates and makes your email marketing efforts ineffective.

#5 Don’t spam your leads with too many emails

Email drip marketing can be a very effective tool. A series of automated messages sent at appropriate intervals is a proven method of warming up leads and increasing the chances of them converting.

However, going overboard can very quickly cause you to be relegated to the spam folder. Nobody likes being drowned by emails from the same source several times a day. Space out the emails so that your leads don’t feel hounded.

#6 Scrub your email lists

Email lists can go stale. Perhaps most of them have unsubscribed to you or applied the spam filters. Others may no longer be interested in your brand. Sending emails to them isn't going to serve any purpose. Don't forget to scrub out your email list from time to time.

Remove those that have unsubscribed or otherwise show no interest in interacting with your brand.

#7 Segment your list

Segmentation of your email list helps you tailor your marketing efforts accordingly. There are many different ways that the single primary list can be segmented. You can split it up by demographic, gender, location, average spend, etc.

This will enable you to finetune your email marketing efforts, sending the most relevant messages that are laser targeted towards the appropriate audience.

#8 Add a personal touch

A study found that 68% of Americans decide whether they want to open an email or not based on the "from" name. By adding this personal touch, you can increase your email open rates significantly.

Instead of just the company name in the sender's name, use your own or of those who manage your email marketing. For example, "Adam from ABC Brands" is a much better sender name instead of simply "ABC Brands"

#9 Focus on email design

Good email design will lead to drastically improved open rates. Messages that consistently feature high quality design will leave a mark on your leads. This will spark their natural curiosity and compel them to check out your emails.

Make sure that your emails are well structured, use appropriate color and fonts, provide valuable information and include dynamic content like GIFs or videos.

#10 Content is king

Content remains king and it plays an important part in the success of your email marketing efforts. Ensure that you’re using a copy that’s well written, easy to understand and doesn’t come off as too good to be true.

What you write in that email is ultimately going to decide whether or not that lead is going to convert. Pay special attention to what’s being written and how it’s put together.

Overhaul your email marketing efforts with these strategies

It’s right to expect a return on the significant investment that you’ll make on your email marketing campaigns. The changes of that actually being realized depend greatly upon how you approach the campaigns.

By utilizing these simple strategies, you can improve your email open rates as well as the chances of making your leads convert.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

9 Reasons All Small Businesses Should Take Advantage of Content Marketing

Fri, 04 Jun 2021 13:55:47 GMT

As a small business owner, it can be challenging to know what to include in your digital marketing efforts. Content marketing should always be one of your priorities because it serves several functions at once and offers numerous benefits. Explore some reasons you should take advantage of content marketing.

1. Part of a Well-rounded SEO Strategy

To start, including content marketing on your small business’ website is an excellent way to ensure your SEO strategy is well-rounded. That is because content marketing allows you to incorporate keywords in your website in a way that is natural and search engines reward. Simply put, having a good content marketing strategy will boost your SEO.

2. Great ROI

When it comes to the different types of advertising, content marketing and SEO can lead to a high ROI due to the lower initial costs. You can pay nothing for the initial efforts if you do them yourself. Even if you outsource it, some estimates indicate that content marketing will cost around 62% less compared to outbound or traditional marketing.

3. Build Trust in Your Brand

No matter the industry you are in, creating a content marketing strategy via a blog or other content will help build trust and confidence in your brand. By sharing relevant content and information in a way that website visitors can understand, you show potential customers that your company is knowledgeable and experienced. They will be more likely to hire you if you highlight your expertise.

4. Can Showcase Your Brand Story

Small businesses are less likely to have an established brand identity or story. Still, many shoppers want to know more about the company they are buying from. Content marketing is a great way to overcome this by sharing your story and brand identity. For example, you could post content that gives a behind-the-scenes look at your operations or explains how the idea for your company came to be.

5. Bring People to Your Website

The most basic benefit of content marketing is that it will bring more people to your website. When you create helpful and engaging content, people are more likely to read, watch, or listen to you. Doing so will bring them to your page. This takes care of the initial step to turning them into leads.

6. Encourage Shares to Expand Your Audience

4. Can Showcase Your Brand Story

5. Bring People to Your Website

6. Encourage Shares to Expand Your Audience

Not only does content marketing encourage others to share your new content, but it gives you something else to feature on your social media websites that is not pure promotion. This is important because having an active and engaged social media presence is crucial for any business. While you don’t want to solely share links to your content, throwing it into the mix occasionally gives you one more thing to post about.

9. Encourage Repeat Website Visitors

Depending on the type of content you create, you may be able to encourage website visitors to return to see your latest content. This is great as you get another chance to convert them into a lead. At the very least, encouraging them to revisit your website puts them one step closer to converting and creates another opportunity for social sharing as well.

In the best-case scenario, the ability of content marketing to encourage repeat visitors will combine with you being seen as a trusted industry authority, and you will become someone’s go-to source for information. This puts them closer to becoming paying customers.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing

How to Use Instagram for Sales Prospecting in 2021

Tue, 01 Jun 2021 15:39:31 GMT

There are compelling reasons why Instagram should now be at the center of your marketing strategy. It’s far from being just another social network where people share pictures of what they ate that afternoon.

Instagram actually sees higher user growth compared to other networks. Users also spend more time on average browsing through posts, feeds and stories. For a lot of users, Instagram is the primary source of discovering new products that they’d want to purchase.

The stats speak for themselves. More than 1 billion people use Instagram every month with 51% of them being female. 30 minutes is the average amount of time users spend per day on Instagram. 81% of people use Instagram to research products and services with 130 million interacting with shopping posts every month.

Businesses with a savvy social media marketing department understand the value that they can derive from Instagram. They focus their energies on creating communities around their brand by using the power of visual content.

Given Instagram’s highly interactive nature, this also means that businesses engage more with the reactions that they get on their posts. That’s particularly useful when you’re trying to use Instagram for sales prospecting.

Why you should use Instagram for sales prospecting

Gaining leads is difficult enough and qualified leads even more so. Instagram's biggest benefit is that it seems to have been tailor made for certain industries. Auto, beauty, fashion and travel are among the few industries that are a perfect fit for the network. Thus the target audience is already sorted for those looking for leads in these industries.

Some of the best internet marketers consider Instagram’s Direct Message (DM) feature to be the biggest network development opportunity available online now. It’s prime real estate because the DM inbox is rarely used for casual conversations that users have on Facebook Messenger or any of the many cross-platform messaging apps.

So if you drop a line for a prospect, there’s a higher chance of them actually seeing it and interacting with it. There are also a variety of ways that you can show up in a lead’s inbox, by tagging them in your Story posts, for example, and all of this can be leveraged for maximum visibility.

Strategies for Sales Prospecting on Instagram

Use Instagram’s powerful discovery tools to find leads

Content discovery is what Instagram is all about. That’s why it provides users with powerful tools through which they can discover new content and creators that post exactly what they’re looking for.

These features are very useful for sales prospecting. Use the Explore tab, type in a relevant hashtag or filter by location to find what you're looking for. Then see the top and most recent posts for every result to shortlist potential leads that have the right audience size and enough engagement to make your efforts worthwhile.

Look beyond the follower count

It's very easy to get distracted by the follower count. An account with 100,000 followers won't necessarily be a better lead than an account with half that amount. Due diligence is required at this stage to understand the target's activity, likes and dislikes.

Use this information to tailor your message. Having an understanding of the prospect will allow you to be more genuine and personalized when you reach out. That just might be what gets you a reply.

Provide value first

This is something that can’t be stressed enough. Don’t bombard leads with messages before providing them with some value first. If you’re reaching out to them, chances are that other marketers are too. If they see a dozen mostly similar messages hoping to win a sale every single day, chances are that they won’t even bother responding.

The idea behind prospecting on Instagram shouldn't be what you can get out of it, at least not initially. It should either be to amplify their message, by sharing their posts on your Story, for example. Or to provide them with a solution to a problem that they’re facing or haven’t anticipated.

Don’t be too aggressive

Nobody likes overly salesy behavior. Just as you wouldn’t like a salesperson to be all up in your personal space at a store, the lead won’t appreciate being bombarded with DMs even before they’ve had a chance to think over what you’re offering.

The best way to approach this is to treat them as you’d like to be treated. Try to get your message across to them in a balanced and natural manner. The idea is to get them to understand the potential of your offer, not for them to feel hounded.

Be patient

Being patient will definitely pay off in the long run. It’s entirely possible that you properly approach 100 leads and only a couple of them respond. That’s just part of the game. Don’t be disappointed and don’t lose hope.

Patience at this stage will result in highly qualified leads. Those that do respond will likely see the value in your proposition. Therefore, you’d have a greater chance of converting that lead into a paying customer.

Don’t fail to deliver what you’ve promised

Sales prospecting on Instagram can work wonders for your business. Once it helps you win the lead, the rest all depends on how you deliver what you’ve promised. That is the real benchmark upon which the reputation of your business will be judged.

Content Created for Digital Harvest Marketing

5 Small-Business-Friendly Ways to Improve Your Online Presence

Fri, 28 May 2021 17:07:06 GMT

This is a subtitle for your new post

Just how robust is your online presence? Are there plenty of channels that lead possible customers right to your website? Or are you “making do” with a basic Facebook page and a website that looks like it hasn’t been updated since hit counters were all the rage?

“Online presence” is a blanket term for both how easy it is to find your products and services online, and how you present your brand. This includes any owned platforms like your website, your social media profiles, and any other sites you use to share your products or branding, like an Amazon product listing or a Medium blog.

Put simply — your online presence is how you show up on the internet.

While this may seem too broad to approach, an improvement in your overall online presence can help you find more leads, improve your connection with your audience, and earn more sales

A rising tide lifts all boats! By working on some of these core tactics, you can improve your visibility across the entire internet.

#1 Improve your page speed

Site speed has always been an important ranking factor for websites. But with Google’s new Core Web Vitals rolling out later this year, it’s going to be more important than ever. These ranking factors make up the “page experience,” and they’ll be getting more weight than before.

The speed measurement is called Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). This metric refers to how long it takes a page to load. You can check an individual page on Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool, or go to your Google Search Console to see a list of your website’s URLs to see which are loading too slowly.

Fixing slow loading times could be as simple as switching to a faster web host, or it could require re-uploading smaller images. Whatever the solution, focus on speed to improve your site’s performance and overall search engine rankings.

#2 Get listed on the right web directories

We tend to focus on Google My Business as the place to create an online listing for your business. But GMB isn’t the only game in town. And if you don’t have a brick and mortar store, GMB isn’t even an option for you.

Instead, look for other online directories where you can create a profile or listing. Start local. Does your city or county have a chamber of commerce with an online directory? That could be a good source of local leads. Physical stores can also get into big online directories like Yellow Pages, Bing Places, and Foursquare.

Then there are the specialty directories. Angie’s List for home improvement projects. Realtor.com for real estate. Justia for legal services.

These directories can be a unique source of leads, getting you new web traffic and possible inquiries from the non-Google-obsessed.

#3 Create consistent content

Wherever you’re showing up, show up consistently. Whether that’s a blog on your website, a Facebook page, a podcast, or a YouTube channel, regular updates are key.

Each of these marketing channels will be someone’s very first introduction to your brand. If a potential lead first finds you on Instagram and you haven’t updated your feed in a year, why would they click on the link in your profile to learn more about your business? They may assume that you’re no longer in business, or that you’re inconsistent. Either way, they’ll go find another company to do business with.

You have to “check the traps” wherever you set them, to make sure that each marketing platform is doing its job and bringing in leads.

#4 Marry PPC and SEO

Pay per click advertising (PPC) and organic search engine optimization (SEO) are sometimes viewed as either/or tactics. “Right now we’re focused on PPC, but next quarter we’ll work more on our SEO…”

Really, they’re two different paths to the same result — more qualified leads.

While PPC campaigns can lead to a rapid increase in clicks, those improvements will only last as long as you continue your ad spend. SEO, on the other hand, isn’t tied to any sort of cost per click. While the results are usually slow, they can also last for months or even years.

If your brand shows up as both a paid ad and an organic result for a keyword on the front page, you’ve doubled your real estate and increased the chances that the searcher will end up on your site.

Think of PPC as a vitamin B-12 shot, and SEO as a lifestyle rich in exercise and leafy greens. The shot will give you a quick boost, but a dedication to fitness will keep you energized and healthy in the long run.

#5 Show up where your competitors are

Where’s the party, and why aren’t you there?

Social media algorithms are always trying to promote more content that users may like. If someone follows your competitor, it’s very likely that your profile will also show up as a similar account they might be interested in. But you have to be there!

Do a Google search for some of your top competitors to see what profiles they have. If you don’t have an account on those sites, make sure to get one.

What’s next?

Building an online presence is a process, not a task. Each of these strategies will take time and consistency to be effective.

As these elements work together to increase your online visibility, you’ll start to see an increase in web traffic. Then it’s up to you to turn those leads into customers!

Content written for Digital Harvest Marketing

9 Ways to Optimize Your Website to Improving Your Search Engine Ranking

Tue, 25 May 2021 19:29:15 GMT

Boosting your search engine ranking does not have to be an impossible task for small businesses. While you don’t have the budget of larger companies, you can still use many of the same strategies. The great thing about SEO is that it delivers long-term results that don’t require you to pay for every single click like PPC ads would.

The following are some of the best methods to optimize your small business’ website to boost your search engine ranking:

1. Research Your Keywords

A crucial part of SEO is using the right keywords. One of the best ways to find the right keywords is to figure out what your potential customers search for.

Start by typing a few words into Google’s search bar and then look at the suggestions from autocomplete. You should also use keyword research tools to help you. There are both free and paid options available, so you can easily find one that meets your budget.

2. Consider Long-tail Keywords

As you look for keywords, don’t forget to consider long-tail keywords. These will have a higher chance of conversion as they are more specific. After all, this helps increase the chances of selling the product that the searcher wants to buy. As a bonus, it is easier to rank for long-tail keywords as there is less competition for them due to their specificity.

3. Optimize SEO on the Page

Your on-page SEO efforts focus on ensuring that all of the headings and titles on your website have been optimized. You essentially want to structure your content to have a better chance of appearing in search results.

Consider the following tips as starting points:

● Create catchy titles of about 60 characters

● Use header tags

● Use meta tags

● Use keywords in the file names of pictures you use

4. Look at Technical SEO

While you should definitely create great content for your website, you don’t want to do so while neglecting technical SEO. This refers to optimizing your website’s structure to ensure that Google’s crawlers index your site properly.

Essentially, you want the website to load quickly, be well-organized and secure, and have working links.

Some of the ways you can incorporate technical SEO include the following:

● Update encryption and security protocols.

● Optimize the page speed.

● Structure your website data.

● Incorporate schema markup.

● Create your sitemap and then submit it to Google.

● Optimize images to include “alt text.”

● Prune down old websites without much traffic.

● Check for broken or old links and fix them.

● Ensure the website is optimized for mobile.

You can likely handle some of these yourself, but you may need to hire someone to take care of some of them.

5. Prioritize Local SEO

As a small business, you likely don’t have the resources to compete on a national or global level. This is fine as almost a third of mobile searches include the phrase “near me” or something else to make it local.

By focusing on local searches, you will have less competition and better target the people who are likely to become your clients.

Use Google My Business

Your first step for local SEO should be to set up your Google My Business profile if you haven’t already done so. You want to fill out as much information as possible and ensure it is accurate. When you get alerts for reviews, respond to start a conversation. You can also fill out the question and answer section ahead of time and then add to it when customers have more questions.

Look at Other Listings

While Google My Business should be the first local business listing you make sure you have, it should not be the last. You want to get your business information on as many relevant directories as possible. This lets Google know that your information is accurate as it matches on multiple websites.

Encourage Reviews

Reviews make a big difference when it comes to local SEO, in addition to helping with your overall brand image. Find ways to encourage customers to leave reviews. If necessary, consider offering incentives, like discounts or freebies, for a review.

6. Create More Content

Content marketing is the process of creating content for a blog or something similar to attract people to your page. It is your opportunity to easily incorporate keywords on your website while also helping customers by providing useful content and showing your credibility and authority.

If the idea of creating enough content is overwhelming, consider creating a template that you could follow. For example, you could do an in-depth look at various products and follow the same format for each. Or you could do a buying guide for products and follow the format.

Consider Creating Videos

Although not always the case, many small business owners find it quicker and easier to create videos instead of posts. Try to create a combination of the two as this will attract customers with a range of preferences. Even if you don’t think videos are easier than text, you should create at least a few, as consumers love videos.

7. Create Landing Pages

Landing pages can be a very useful part of an SEO strategy for businesses of any size. You can use them in various ways. You can make a separate landing page for mobile users. More popular options include making landing pages for specific cities or towns in your area or for specific products or product categories.

As a bonus, these landing pages give you a great opportunity to incorporate keywords, especially geo-focused ones.

8. Share Your Content

After you create content, make sure to promote it without being too pushy. Some great options that don’t require any upfront cost include sharing on social media or question and answer forums.

9. Gain Backlinks

Your SEO strategy should also include getting links back to your website. Google views sites with more backlinks as higher quality.

Combine this with local SEO and talk to other local companies, bloggers, newspapers, and event pages to see if they will help you with a backlink. One excellent option is to write a guest post on another website.

Content written for Digital Harvest Marketing

5 Strategies for Business Growth as the Economy Begins to Open Back Up Again

Thu, 20 May 2021 19:13:58 GMT

The COVID19 pandemic has had a drastic impact on every industry. The retail industry was among those hit the hardest. As venturing outside quite literally became the difference between life and death, retail outlets were forced to shut down as governments across the globe struggled to get a grip on the virus.

Even businesses that had a robust online presence before the pandemic hit struggled. As millions of people lost their jobs and faced economic uncertainty, they significantly cut back on personal spending in an effort to weather the storm.

Small businesses were particularly at a disadvantage. A study conducted by MIT found that small business revenue in the United States dropped by almost 40% in March 2020 compared to a year earlier.

These economic considerations ultimately forced governments to try and strike a balance between the urgent need to support businesses and the public health measures required to control the spread.

A year later, things are finally looking up. Multiple COVID vaccines have been approved by regulators and millions of people, particularly those extremely vulnerable, have already received the jabs. Economic experts are now of the view that rapidly vaccinating the population is key for a return to a more “normal” economy.

This is echoed by health professionals including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the United States' leading authority on infectious diseases who believes that the early stages of herd immunity can be achieved by late spring or the summer if the vaccination drive continues at pace.

The post-COVID business environment is going to be a lot different. Businesses will need to adapt to these changes if they not only want to survive but thrive. These are the five things that every business should be doing right now in order to increase sales as the world gradually opens up again.

#1 Increase brand awareness for your business

After being in quarantine for the better part of an entire year, you'll need to forgive prospective customers if they no longer remember that your business exists. That is why it's so crucial to increase brand awareness for your business in the post-COVID environment.

As a result of people staying indoors, customers are spending more time on online platforms than ever before. Leverage this to increase brand awareness by advertising on social media networks and through Google Ads.

Reach your desired audiences through the incredible targeting tools offered by these platforms. Get the word out about your business and increase the chances of getting more prospects in your sales pipeline.

#2 Let sales data guide decisions about new products

The pandemic has changed customers' spending habits for good. It's quite possible that some of your products may no longer do as well as they did in the past. Informed decisions will thus need to be made before updating the product lineup.

Take a deep dive into the sales data for the past year and a half. This insight will help you realize what your customers no longer want and what they want to purchase now. Adjust your product lineup accordingly. Use this information to make strategic growth decisions on new products.

#3 Enhance the e-commerce experience

E-Commerce was growing rapidly even before the pandemic hit. Online sales skyrocketed during it. COVID19 has contributed an additional $105 billion in online revenue for businesses in the US last year.

This is only going to grow further in the post-COVID economy. It is vital for businesses that already have an e-commerce strategy to further enhance the experience for their customers. Those that haven’t yet made the switch to e-commerce are quite frankly setting themselves up for failure.

Take initiatives like improving online store layouts and customer service, offer incentives for online purchases, and more to provide an elevated online shopping experience.

#4 Invest in improving SEO

Since people remain apprehensive of going outside unless absolutely necessary, investing in improving the SEO for your online presence will help bring in more sales. A lot more people are searching online for information about the products they want to purchase.

It's a great way to cater to local customers in particular. Consumers are actively looking to support local businesses and are structuring their search queries accordingly.

This presents a great opportunity for businesses that can quickly capitalize on these changing consumer search behaviors to ensure that their website or online store gets prime position in search results.

#5 Generate goodwill through community support initiatives

Customers want the businesses that they support to have socially conscious values now more than ever before. Launching community support initiatives is a great way to generate goodwill for the business and increase customer trust.

It will go a long way in customer retention and will also stand out as a positive element for prospective customers who may make their purchase decisions contingent on the business holding the same values.

Complacency has no place in the post-COVID world

What worked before for a business is not necessarily going to work as the world recovers from the economic shocks caused by COVID. There will be no room for complacency.

Businesses need to take stock of what has happened and how they need to adapt in order to effectively compete in the future. Otherwise, they risk being left behind.

Content written for Digital Harvest Marketing

12 Ways to Grow Your Online Sales

Tue, 18 May 2021 15:56:32 GMT

If there is one thing that the pandemic clearly proved, it’s that every business should have the ability to take online orders. Customers are shopping online more now than ever before, and there is no sign that the trend will slow down even as the pandemic does.

Whether you are selling exclusively to local customers, or you’re ready to expand your reach to customers around the globe, now is the time to grow your online sales. Here are 12 strategies to get it done.

Write Optimized Product Descriptions

Take another look at your product descriptions, even if you are already confident in them. You want to make sure that they clearly convey why customers need your products.

If you are savvy, you may also want to include some important keywords in the descriptions, as this will make your items easier to find.

Take Great Product Photos

While you evaluate your product descriptions, look at the photos as well. You want clear photos that make it easy to see your product and any details that customers may want to know.

Your images should feature your actual product and have thumbnails. For even better results, include both photos and videos.

Make Landing Pages

You want to start incorporating SEO strategies into your website to help boost your rankings on search engines. A convenient and useful way to do this is via landing pages.

You can make landing pages for categories of products, subscriptions, or any other goal you have. Just be sure that your landing page is consistent with the keywords and search intent behind them.

Set Up Safe, Encrypted Payments

If your chosen e-commerce platform doesn’t already offer this feature, take the time to set up an encrypted payment system. This will protect your customers’ information, giving them peace of mind. At the same time, it shows your customers that you care about their data security, which implies you care about them overall.

Streamline the Checkout

Take a look at the process for checking out once someone decides to buy from you. If it is long and overly complicated, reevaluate the process and see what changes you can make.

People want a good shopping experience in addition to good products and services. If you can reduce the number of pages they have to click through, this improves the experience.

At the very least, consider adding a progress bar to the top of the page so customers know how long they have left in the checkout process.

Don’t Make Shipping Costs a Surprise

One important part of the checkout process that deserves its own advice is the shipping cost. While you cannot always control your shipping costs, you can make sure that they don’t surprise your customers.

Customers do not want to have to go through the entire checkout process just to see how much shipping is. They will think this is a waste of time. Additionally, if your shipping is expensive, they will feel misled.

If your shipping is affordable, you should be advertising that to attract customers.

Avoid issues by making your shipping costs clear from the start. At the very least, make them easy to find on your website.

Consider Upselling

If you can do it well, upselling will deliver a boost to your sales per customer. On average, it drives about 4% more sales just within the customer base you already have. It is easy to incorporate into the checkout process and can come in various forms.

You can suggest related products, suggest a bundle that includes the product and something else, or offer a warranty.

Make Your E-commerce Website Easy to Navigate

As you evaluate your website, make sure that it is intuitive to navigate. If potential customers cannot figure out where to find products, their shopping cart, or answers to common questions, they will leave your page and buy elsewhere.

Avoid this with clear organization, including a well-organized menu and navigation bar. While you are at it, make sure to add a search bar if you don’t already have one.

Create a Sales Funnel Specific to Your Business

One of the first things you should do with e-commerce is creating your sales funnel. While you can get inspiration online, it will be unique to your business.

Knowing how long it typically takes to convert a lead into a sale will help you better plan your online marketing efforts.

Take Advantage of Email Marketing

Email marketing is a great way to reach your target audience and create a more personalized experience. To make the most of email marketing, segment your email list into categories based on the type of content to sell.

You also want to make sure that not every email pushes a sale. Most of them should provide valuable information as people are more likely to open your emails if they see value in them.

Use Retargeting

One of those email segments should be to retarget past customers. You already put in the effort to move these customers through your sales funnel successfully, so take advantage of that.

Getting a repeat customer tends to require less effort than gaining a new one. Incorporate retargeting into your email marketing as well as display ads.

Work on Building Social Proof

Social proof refers to reviews and testimonials. Having strong social proof dramatically improves the chances of people choosing to buy from you, as they will see that you are an established and reputable company.

To do this, encourage customers to leave reviews and testimonials on your products. If you can, gather reviews from various websites and directories and share the best ones on your page.

If you don’t currently have many reviews, encourage customers to leave a review. You can send them a follow-up email reminding them to do so after a purchase. You can even offer an incentive, such as a discount on the next purchase in exchange for a review.

Go for Growth!

The economy is predicted to make a major comeback, now is the time to set your business up for growth so you can capitalize!

Content written for Digital harvest Marketing

The Basics of Backlinks: How to Get Started

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 16:50:26 GMT

Some marketers focus the majority of their efforts on keyword research and content creation. And while those are certainly important pieces to the content marketing puzzle, they’re not the entire puzzle.

You can write post after post of perfectly optimized content, but unless other sources are leading people to that content, your site won’t succeed the way you want it to. That’s why a backlink strategy is so important. Backlinks get eyes on your content and improve your website’s performance in Google search results.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re not alone! That’s why I’ve put together a simple explanation of what backlinks are, why they’re important, and how you can start to build yours.

What is a backlink?

A backlink is any external link back to your website. It can come from a blog, news outlet, social media profile, or anywhere else online. But it has to come from an outside website. If you link your homepage to your blog page, that’s an internal link, not a backlink.

Backlinks to your site from reputable websites are a key indicator of something called Domain Authority. Domain Authority is a number on a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being the best. Google and Facebook’s Domain Authority is 100.

Domain Authority (DA) is important because it’s one of Google’s ranking factors. Let’s say you and a competitor each write a blog post about the same topic. The blog posts are of equal length, on the same topic, and both provide the same information. But your website’s DA is 14, and your competitor’s DA is 72. Which blog post do you think has a better chance of hitting the front page?

So that’s why DA is important — which is why backlinks are important.

Good vs. bad backlinks

Not all backlinks provide the same DA “juice.” The more reputable a website that links back to yours, the better for you. That’s why you want to try to get backlinks from websites with better DA than yours.

Back in the early days of search engine optimization, unethical SEOs would get dozens of backlinks from any site they could, in an attempt to cheat the system. So Google made an update that penalizes an abundance of “low authority” backlinks, and rewards “high authority” backlinks.

To find out any website’s DA, use a free tool like Neil Patel’s UberSuggest. Just type in the URL to get a basic DA report.

So now that you understand the basics of backlinks...

How should you get them?

Write valuable content

To start, you have to provide something worth linking to. Your blog posts should be in-depth and authoritative. Length isn’t required, but the most detailed and useful pieces of content usually come with higher word counts.

Ask!

Reach out to bloggers or other businesses in your niche. Offer to write a guest post for them in exchange for a link back to your website. Content marketers always need more content! This has the added advantage of exposing your name and work to a new audience.

If you’re having trouble getting responses from people who may see you as a competitor, reach out to industries that are adjacent to yours. For example, a SaaS marketing firm may not want to publish a guest post from another SaaS marketer. But a restaurant marketing firm may be interested in what a SaaS marketer has to offer.

Become a reporter’s source

Ever wonder where reporters and journalists find all the experts that they quote in their articles? These days, many of them use Help a Reporter Out (HARO).

To become a source for writers, create a “source” account on HARO’s website. Then, you can choose the industries where you have expertise, like High Tech or Business and Finance. You’ll get emails from HARO a few times a day with queries from reporters all over the world who need experts to weigh in for their articles.

If a journalist or blogger uses your quote, you’ll get a juicy backlink. Plus, you’ll be cited as an expert and that’s pretty neat.

Find unlinked mentions

You might have backlink potential you don’t even know about yet in the form of unlinked mentions. An unlinked mention is any citation of you or your company that doesn’t include a backlink to your website.

To find sites that have listed your name, search for your brand, but subtract out your own URL, plus any social media sites. To subtract a URL, just type in the address with a minus sign in front of it, like this: -pinterest.com

A search for your brand could look like this: “My company” -mycompany.com -facebook.com -pinterest.com -twitter.com - instagram.com

If the search returns thousands of results, click Tools under the search bar. Then click “Any Time” to the left, and filter by date. Start with the past month. Check the results for unlinked mentions.

If you find any, send a quick email to the webmaster or any contact you can find. Be very clear about where the mention is, and ask them to insert a link! (Make sure the page has good Domain Authority before you request the link!)

To stay on top of future mentions, set up a Google Alert for your brand going forward. Any time someone mentions your brand name, you’ll get a notification, and you can double check for those backlinks.

The basics of backlinks

There are dozens of strategies you can use to increase your backlink volume. These are just a few to get you started. Once you’ve started along this process, you can start using more advanced backlink strategies. Some can be done for free, but others become cumbersome unless you invest in some helpful technology to make the job easier.

But as always with SEO, the best way to get quality links is to put out quality content!

How to Market Your Business in a Down Economy

Wed, 13 May 2020 17:44:40 GMT

When times get tough, there’s no doubt that lots of businesses slow down or stop their marketing altogether, bracing themselves for the unknown. But smart companies know that marketing is critical to the success of your company, whether times are good or bad.

Today, I’m going to let you in on 8 tips for marketing your business in a down economy. That way, you can brace for success instead of the unknown.

#1 You May Have to Cut Budget, But Don’t Cut Activity

The reality is that you may have to cut your marketing budget during an economic downturn, but you don’t ever have to cut activity. This is the time for you to swap hustle for budget and dedicate even more energy into showing current and prospective customers the value of your business. Consumers change their buying habits in tough economic times, and many begin searching for other, more affordable options than what they’ve been purchasing. This means that you have added (not reduced!) opportunities to get your name in front of them and offer them your product or service. Don’t miss out!

#2 Change Your Perspective

Keep an eye on the bottom line, but realize that it doesn’t reflect the big picture. Instead, remind yourself that marketing is an investment for the future health of your company. If you don’t invest now, you’re giving up market share and profitability in the future. Keep your eye on the long-game!

#3 Wow Them With Service

Your performance with your customers is always the best marketing you can do. Now is the time to take an honest, hard look at your service performance. Is it a ‘Wow!’ experience? If not, it’s time to step-up your game! Excellent service will drive word-of-mouth marketing, the best ROI you’ll find in any economy.

#4 Check-In With Established Customers

It doesn’t cost any money to reach out to those who have purchased from you in the past or who are still doing business with you. Send a check-in email, pick up the phone and call, or text to see if there is any way you can serve them further. You’ll remind your established customers of your stellar customer service, and you stand to make even more sales.

#5 Measure, Cut, and Reinvest

Take a good look at the data. What marketing strategies have shown significant ROI in the last year? Which ones seem to be dead on arrival? If you haven’t already, use a web analytics tool (like the FREE version of Google Analytics) to measure whether you’re reaching your goals or stalling. Another measuring tip: track leads (and find out where they came from!) by using trackable phone numbers and web addresses for each of your campaigns. That way, you’re sure of which marketing techniques are working and which aren’t. Then, cut the techniques that aren’t working and reinvest the save time and budget into the ideas on this list instead.

#6 Update Your Website

Do you recognize the power that your website has to either make or break your business? It’s true! If prospects aren’t excited by the aesthetics, reassured by the structure and organization, and met with engaging and informative content at every turn, they will likely do business with the company whose website does. If you haven’t already, make sure to clearly convey the benefits of doing business with your company and be sure to include straightforward CTAs that will engage your prospects.

And although we shouldn’t have to say it, stats tell us we do: respond quickly to all inbound leads! Response time is one of the greatest factors in determining if a lead converts into business.

#7 Focus on Search Engine Marketing

These days, most of your prospective customers will search for your business online. And the last thing you want is for your business to show up on page 7 or 8 in the search results-- let’s be honest, they’ll read the first page of results and choose one of those companies. That’s why it’s so important to learn about how to compete with your competition in search engine rankings.

Take advantage of some free keyword research tools and begin incorporating them into your website’s written content, meta descriptions, subheadings, image captions, and URLs. It’s easy and free to increase your keyword savvy-- it just takes time, which there is no shortage of right now.

#8 Build Trust With Content

When times are tough, you want to show your customers that your business is trustworthy and solid. But how do you do that? Consistently produce educational content and share it on social media. Your consistent activity will make it clear that you aren’t going anywhere, and that you’re focused on adding value even during the hard times. Trust us, prospects are watching!

The Bottom Line

It’s hard not to panic when economic unpredictability is everywhere you turn. But continuing to invest in marketing can be a matter of survival in times like this. Position your company to come out of an economic downturn with more customers than when you entered it, not by cutting marketing but rather by marketing smart and increasing the hustle.

How to Incorporate a Facebook Ads Retargeting Strategy Into Your Marketing

Tue, 05 May 2020 01:18:21 GMT

If you haven’t already, it’s definitely time to incorporate Facebook Retargeting into your marketing strategy.

But first, what is retargeting? Put simply, it’s a marketing tool used to “target” those prospects who have, in some way, shown interest in your website in the past.

Why is this such a great idea? Well, those potential customers could have been one click away from making a purchase and, for whatever reason, decided to keep scrolling. Retargeting will remind them of their interest and, hopefully, turn them from “almost buyers” to customers.

It’s one of the highest ROI marketing activities for just about every business that uses it - so let’s get started!

Setting Up Your Facebook Retargeting Campaign

First, we’ll go over the steps you’ll need to take in creating a Facebook retargeting campaign.

1. Set up a Facebook account for business ads, if you haven’t already.

2. Log in to Ads Manager and select Audiences.

You can select Audiences from a dropdown menu on Business Manager.

3. Choose your audience.

Click on Create Audience and then choose Custom Audiences. In order to retarget, you’ll need to reach those who visit your site. Therefore, you’ll want to select Website Traffic.

4. Select your target audience.

Here, you’ll have the option of targeting different groups of website visitors. You can either choose to target anyone who visits your site, or you can choose a group or combination of groups based on different factors, like when they visited or what specific pages they visited.

5. Select a date range and name your campaign.

6. Get your pixel code and add it to your website for tracking.

Go to the Audiences section of Ads Manager and locate your retargeting campaign. Once you select it, click Actions and then View Panel from the dropdown menu. There, you’ll see your pixel code. Place this code on your website.

Time to Retarget!

No retargeting campaign is successful without engaging content, so your next step is to decide what groups of prospects you want to target and how you’ll gear your strategy to draw them in.

For example, if you want to target those who view your landing page but click away without engaging further with your website, then you’ve got to create ads with CTAs that reach this group. If you want to reach those who added items to their cart but didn’t complete their purchase, then make sure your ad’s language draws these potential customers back in.

Try one of these Facebook Retargeting Strategies:

Tell Your Story

Maybe you want to retarget those who engaged with your website but didn’t make a purchase. Retarget them with a video ad where you tell the story of your brand, give them a behind-the-scenes look into your day-to-day, or let them in on the inspiration behind your startup. Telling a story is a great way to re-engage hesitant customers, and it’s a less pushy way to create brand awareness.

From there, you can now target those who watched your video (or even part of it) with a first-time purchase promo code or a free product with their purchase.

Remind Them of Their “Almost-Buy”

We’ve all been there. We’re JUST about to make a purchase, and then we decide against it. Maybe we can’t justify spending the money. Or maybe we’re considering purchasing something similar somewhere else. No matter what the reason, customers don’t scroll through your product pages if they’re not interested in buying from you.

If you want to retarget those who have scanned through your product pages and those who have even gone so far as to add an item to their cart, simply create this custom audience (those who have viewed your product pages only). Then, exclude those who visited your order confirmation page since they clearly already purchased from you. Now, create an ad that draws your customer back in to ultimately make the purchase.

Welcoming Back Prior Customers

Maybe you’ve got an audience who purchased a while back but haven’t been around for a few weeks or even a few months. If so, you can draw these customers back with a simple ad targeted toward prior customers. Tell them you miss their business and offer them some kind of can’t-say-no incentive to bring them back into the fold.

Get Started on Your Retargeting Campaign Today

Retargeting is one of the best marketing tools to help you realize increased conversions and sales - so make this a priority! Of course, there are virtually hundreds of ways for you to reach back out to your audiences using Facebook Ad Retargeting. Test a few ideas, analyze customer engagement, and you’ll soon be running profitable ads that draw people back to your business!

7 Tips for Writing Compelling Headlines That Your Audience Can’t Resist

Wed, 22 Apr 2020 00:00:18 GMT

What is the absolute most important piece of any content you create? It’s not the call to action, the keywords, or even the overall premise of the piece.

It’s the headline.

Around 80% of people will read your headline. But only 20% will go on to read your article.

Think of it this way: the headline is the gate that every member of your audience has to pass through in order to interact with your content. If your gate isn’t appealing, no one will bother to pass through, and your content can’t do its job.

So here are some tips you can apply to your headlines right now for a bigger audience and more engagement on your blog posts, articles, and videos.

#1 Focus on the benefits

Copywriters know that it’s not features that sell a product. It’s benefits. In other words, don’t tell people what you’re going to share with them. Tell them how it will make their lives better or solve a problem.

For example, one blog on Copyblogger that’s had thousands of shares and comments is called 37 Tips for Writing Emails that Get Opened, Read, and Clicked. This highlights an immediate benefit to the reader: getting better results out of their email marketing. Always try to think of what problem your content is solving for the audience, and highlight it in your headline.

#2 Make a promise and then deliver

If you want to make an audacious promise, you have to deliver. An article called How to Make $100,000 in One Day is never going to be able to deliver on that promise. But an article called How to Grow Your Business By 20% Over the Next Year may.

Making a promise in your headline and not delivering is clickbait. We’ve all made the mistake of clicking on something that sounds intriguing like, 8 Amazing Things You Never New About [Beloved Celebrity]. We’re then disappointed to find out that each item on the list is either common knowledge or on Wikipedia. It’s a surefire way to lose the trust of your audience.

Also, keep an eye out for terms like “ultimate” or “definitive.” If your Ultimate Guide to Fly Fishing is really more of an introduction to fly fishing, readers will feel cheated by your misleading headline. So make sure your headline accurately describes the content of the piece.

#3 Use the “curiosity gap”

The “curiosity gap” is just a fancy term for the space between what people know and what they want to know. We all remember overzealous headlines from sites like Upworthy and Buzzfeed that used to shout “You’ll never guess what happened next!” They abused the curiosity gap. But it can still be used in a more subtle way.

How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life from the New York Times is a great example. It piques your curiosity — how can one dumb tweet ruin someone’s life?

To use it effectively, make you’re still being clear about the topic of the content. Check out this old Upworthy headline, for example: His first 4 sentences are interesting. The 5th blew my mind. And made me a little sick. It misses the mark because you have no idea what the article is about. And that leads to my next tip...

#4 Don’t sacrifice clarity for cleverness

Writers love to show people how clever they are. It’s one of our all-time favorite things. And if you’re not careful, it can seriously backfire.

Good headlines are easy to understand and tell us exactly what’s coming next. So if you’re trying to shoehorn a pun or clever reference into your headline, it may turn your audience off.

Here’s an example from Bloomberg: Shark Oil for HIV Shot Takes Cue From Hemingway’s Old Man.

What?

It turns out that the article is referring to Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. In the book, the fisherman took shark liver oil to stay healthy. And the writer uses that reference as the lead into an article about a drugmaker that was testing the efficacy of shark oil in an AIDS vaccine. After reading the article, the headline makes sense. But the purpose of your headline is to get the reader to keep reading or watching. It’s not supposed to be a puzzle to solve.

#5 Use numbers

There’s a reason why the “listicle” is so popular. The format of a numbered list is predictable and easy to follow. If you promise your readers 107 Tips for Increasing Widget Sales, they know to settle in for a nice long list. On the other hand, 5 Tips for Increasing Widget Sales will be shorter and may provide more detail in each tip.

Headlines with numbers are preferred by 36% of readers. They can be used to list secrets, types, problems, or tips. You can also do the list in reverse. Instead of listing ways to create a better outcome, try a list of ways people might be making a mistake, like 7 Ways You May Be Sabotaging Your Workouts.

This doesn’t only work in list-type content. If your blog is a story or a how-to, is there an impressive percentage or dollar amount that you can fit into your headline? A title like The Small Mistake That Cost My Business $182,000 can pique curiosity (tip #3!) and attract a lot of readers.

#6 Learn from others

If you’re creating a lot of content, you’re going to need headlines on a weekly or even daily basis. So keep an eye out for headlines that have worked on you, both online and in the real world.

Keep a swipe file of intriguing articles. Evernote is a great place to do this. You can save articles you find online, and add photos that you take while you’re out and about. Next time you’re in line at the grocery store, flip through a magazine and see if there’s anything that draws you in.

Next time you’re stuck, browse your swipe file and see if there are some ideas you can repurpose (never steal!) to fit your content.

#7 Write a bunch and pick the best

All the headline-writing experts agree — the way to hit the headline jackpot is to play the headline lottery. You should be writing 20 to 25 headlines for every piece of content you create.

Most will be fine. Some will be terrible. But somewhere in that superabundance of headlines will be one or two gems that really hit the mark. Writing headlines, like anything else, gets better with practice. So don’t take any shortcuts.

Too Important to Ignore

Many bloggers spend all their time creating content and treat the headline as an afterthought. It should really be the other way around. Dedicate plenty of time to coming up with headline options. If you have the option, do some A/B testing of different headlines to see what performs best before you hit Publish.

One little tweak could be the difference between a headline that goes viral and one that falls flat.

10 Tips For Writing a Powerful Social Media Ad

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 21:22:17 GMT

Over the past decade, social media has become quite the marketing force, with businesses of all shapes and sizes expanding their ad game on multiple social platforms. But are all ads created equal? The answer is unequivocally “no.” You only have a second or two to engage the social media user, so your ads have got to stand out. But how? Today, I’m going to let you in on 10 tips for writing a powerful social media ad.

#1 Don’t Forget About Your Brand Voice

You want your current and potential customers to recognize your brand voice everywhere, so consistency is key. If your business’s brand voice is light and carefree everywhere else, then you want to make sure your social media ad copy reflects that too. On the other hand, if you’re trying to reach investors for a high-end real estate firm, for example, you’ll want to avoid ad copy that lacks the professional branding that you’ve worked so hard to establish.

#2 Keep It Simple

Remember: you’ve only got a second or two before the user will scroll on and forget your ad even existed. That’s why it’s important to keep your social media ad copy simple. If it’s possible, for example, to take your ad from 5 sentences to 1 and maintain the same message, then do it. “Longer,” in the case of social media copy, most certainly does not mean “better.”

#3 Engage Your Audience

The real purpose of social media is socializing, so your ad copy needs to reflect that. Instead of promoting, promoting, promoting, you’ll want to engage your audience in conversation. Ask them questions, ask for their opinions, or start a debate about a relevant topic and ask them to weigh in.

Yes, you can still advertise, but don’t forget to converse with your base and prospective customers. No matter how you choose to do it, socializing is much more effective in helping you make human connections than just posting ads.

#4 Target the Senses

Enhance your social media ad copy with visuals like intriguing images or videos. Much of your audience will be attracted to what they see and not necessarily what they read, so make sure those images or videos are good!

Think about your scrolling habits. When you’re perusing Instagram, for instance, does the written copy or the visual image/video catch your eye first? Chances are, you chose the visuals, and chances are, so will your audience.

#5 Proofread and Edit

Nothing is more of a turn-off than an ad that contains typos. Even the best writers overlook an error or two, so don’t feel bad about running your ad copy past another set of eyes. Trust me: you don’t want your audience to catch them before your team does. After all, your credibility and professionalism are on the line every time you click the “publish” button.

And there are extra benefits to passing your work off to another set of eyes. For one, your colleague could notice inconsistencies with brand voice. And second, you could get a different perspective on the tone of your ad. Sometimes when we’re “too close to the project,” we can’t see where changes need to be made.

#6 Target the FOMO

There needs to be a sense of urgency in your ad copy. If not, then what would stop a potential customer from scrolling past while vowing to themselves to come back later? Adding an element of FOMO, or the Fear of Missing Out, is a critical part of getting potential customers to click and buy in the moment.

So, how do you create this urgency? Offer a same-day discount or a special promo code if the customer buys within a certain time frame.

#7 Align Your Advertising

Instead of thinking of your social media ad as a stand-alone piece, you’ll want to take a step back and ask yourself how it fits into your strategy as a whole. Make sure that this ad -- along with all of your others -- is just a piece of a broader message about who you are, how you treat your customers, and what customers can expect from your company.

#8 Your CTA

Once you’ve determined the goal of your social media ad (whether it’s for your potential customer to learn more, make a purchase, or refer a friend), write a call-to-action that encourages customers to take steps toward that goal.

Keep them simple and short, and make sure they deliver on the promise. In other words, if your call-to-action says “learn more,” then be sure that when they click on it, they learn more -- avoid making your customers jump through several hoops by clicking on CTAs that don’t deliver.

#9 Use Emojis

If appropriate for your business’s tone, style, and feel, try incorporating emojis into your ad copy. Of course, if your audience isn’t in tune with emojis, then you should probably avoid them. But if you do decide to use them, make sure you’re consistent with which ones you use and how you use them. You can be funny and quirky and engaging if you choose the right emojis.

#10 Analyze Your Ad’s Performance

As always, in advertising your product or service, there is usually quite a bit of trial and error. As long as you expect that and keep an open mind, you should be able to tweak your ads to reach a wider or more relevant audience.

Once your ad goes live, take a look at how well it performs. Analyze the “why” behind its performance, and use this information to make changes to future ads. Then, analyze their performance to see if your tweak worked or if you need to make further changes.

It’s All About Ads That Perform

Of course, every business wants to produce ads that perform well. That’s why it’s important to assess your current ad copy’s strengths and weaknesses and to incorporate the above tips as you write more. Trying the new and tweaking the old is essential to good copywriting, and you’re sure to see results if you keep pressing forward.

The Surprising Truth about Keywords — And What You Should Focus On Instead

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 18:24:35 GMT

Keywords are one of the most often-cited and perhaps least understood aspects of SEO. Content marketers from rank amateurs to seasoned pros suggest that you “focus on your keyword density” and “never publish a post without including your keyword in these 9 places.”

But is that really the best way to get your content to rank for a certain search term?

The Truth About Keywords

The exact importance of each of Google’s 200+ ranking factors is not public information. But research by SEMrush indicates that keywords are a surprisingly low ranking factor. They come in below time spent on your site, pages per session, bounce rate, number and quality of backlinks, and more.

In fact, the pages that rank highest for a specific keyword often don’t directly target that phrase at all. According to research by Ahrefs, nearly 75% of pages that rank in the top 10 on Google don’t ever mention the exact keyword in their content.

So how do they rank so well? Because they are among the best resources on the internet for that particular topic.

Another thing to remember about keywords — competition is fierce. Most keywords that have a decent search volume have very high keyword difficulty. Even the super-specific long-tail keywords can be a major battle. So unless your site’s domain authority rivals the biggest sites in your industry, you probably won’t be able to rank for those words based on keywords alone.

With all this in mind, why is it that many content marketers continue to cling so hard to the myth of the all-powerful keyword?

My guess is that it’s because tips like “include your keyword 12 times in these 7 places” is simple and actionable. And it’s much easier to write a mediocre piece of content with X number of keywords than to write an earth-shattering, break-the-internet-quality blog post.

Now, keep in mind that I’m not saying there is no value in keywords. Keyword research is a great way to figure out what questions need to be answered and what kind of content your audience is looking for.

But instead of spending hours searching for the perfect keyword and then shoehorning it into your content to achieve a perfect 3% density, try these strategies instead.

#1 Focus on search intent

Search intent is the basic “why” behind a search. It’s the reason a user typed their search term into Google. There are four main types of search intent:

● Informational - Searches that are looking for more information on a topic. Examples include “how old is George Clooney” or “Chicago Cubs stats.”

● Navigational - Searches that are aimed at finding a specific website. For example, “facebook” is usually a navigational search aimed at getting the user to Facebook’s website.

● Transactional - Searches with the intention of buying something, like “used Toyota Camry” or “pizza near me”

● Commercial - Searches that provide additional information about products, such as reviews and comparisons. Examples include “best binoculars under $25” or “email marketing services.” These often lead to a purchase down the line.

If you don’t focus on search intent, you could do a lot of work and get very little results.

For example, let’s say you’ve started a new content marketing service, and you want your website landing page to focus on the search term “content marketing business.” But when you do a Google search for that term, you’ll find that all the top results are “how-to” posts (an informational search) rather than looking for a business to hire for their content marketing services (a transactional search). By failing to address search intent, you’ve now optimized your landing page for a term that people don’t use when looking for marketing services.

To figure out search intent, get your clues from what is already ranking on Google. A first page full of “how-to” posts will indicate informational intent. A page full of Amazon or eBay results will signal transactional intent. And a page full of reviews and product comparisons will be evidence of commercial intent.

#2 Use semantic keywords for context

Google’s algorithm is pretty smart. It understands synonyms as well as terms that are related to your content topic. These related terms are called “latent semantic keywords,” or LSI’s. A blog post about “how to start a youtube channel” could also be expected to include related LSI’s like “how to enable monetization on youtube” or “how to make money on youtube.”

Just like with regular keywords, I’m not suggesting that you pluck these related terms and pepper them throughout your content.

Instead, use these related terms as inspiration for additional talking points in your content. Do a Google search for your main topic, and scroll down to “related searches” at the bottom of the results page. This list will include related terms that people often search for, letting you create a more informative and helpful piece of content for your audience.

The added context from these LSI’s will help Google to understand what your post is about in an organic way while also improving the quality of your content.

#3 Write the best possible content

Content is more important than keywords. An in-depth, useful piece of content that completely ignores keywords will get you better results than a perfectly keyword-optimized piece of content that provides no value.

Great content keeps people on your site longer, reduces bounces, and gets more backlinks. These are much bigger ranking factors than keywords.

Plus, great content displays authority. If you can provide a useful piece of content to your audience, they’ll be more likely to think of you next time they have a question in your field. That means more web traffic and even better rankings.

Topics, not keywords

Keyword research is a useful way to get ideas for great topics that you’d like to explore in your content. But rather than awkwardly repeating a clunky phrase in your title, URL, subheadings, and blog post, just use the phrase as a jumping-off point for your piece.

Use Google’s “related searches” list to figure out what else users are interested in on the topic, and then spend your time writing or filming the best, most useful information you can put together.

That’s how you get the top spot and the biggest audience.

5 Tools Every Small Business Should Use For Better Content Marketing

Wed, 11 Mar 2020 01:28:36 GMT

Anyone who has worked for a small business knows that in order to be successful, especially in the beginning, you’ve got to wear a lot of hats. From answering phones to social media marketing, you’ve probably figured out how to do it all, and do it all well. But that doesn’t mean it’s all been a piece of cake.

Luckily, though, cutting edge tech tools keep popping up with the sole purpose of making small businesses more competitive and efficient, so why not take advantage?

We compiled a list of the top tech tools that will help you improve your Content Marketing game and make your life a little easier.

SEMrush

A major reason you’re doing content marketing is to show up in the search engines, and that’s where SEMrush can help!

SEMrush is a comprehensive SEO tool that does everything from making you aware of backlinking opportunities to help you determine what keywords you need to incorporate to rank higher than your competitors on Google.

SEMrush will also run an SEO audit on your site and help you find areas that need improvement.

Price: After a 14-day free trial, SEMrush has several monthly pricing plans-- ranging from $99.95 to $399.95-- for you to choose from. You can also get a discount by purchasing the yearly subscription.

Canva

You want your content to look good! If you don’t have the budget for a design team, look into Canva.

This graphic design software can help you create aesthetically pleasing branding and marketing tools. And the best news? You don’t need a graphic design degree to pull it off.

Think of any marketing material you may need-- invites, email funnels, social media posts-- you name it, Canva can help you create it all with your branding in mind. Other exciting news: you can use Canva as a plugin inside WordPress. This means you don’t have to choose between your content management platform and your design platform. You CAN have both.

Price: Canva does have a free option, but if you want more advanced customization, you can go with the Pro plan at $12.95 per month ($9.95 if you pay for the whole year at once) or the Enterprise plan at $30 per month.

Vidyard

2020 is the year of the video. So if you haven’t incorporated videos into your marketing strategy, it’s time to get going. Luckily, one relatively new tool, Vidyard, will make it easy for you to create engaging videos with interactive call-to-actions.

Use it to create videos in only a few minutes, making your content more engaging and giving you more opportunities to generate leads and sales.

Price: Vidyard offers a free option, but you can also gain more functionality with their Pro, Starter, or Plus plans start at just $15 a month.

WordPress

Ok, this recommendation probably is exactly news to you - WordPress has been a standard with small businesses for a long time now.

But we highly recommend that you make 2020 the year that you dive into all of the options the platform has to take your marketing to the next level!

You can choose from countless plugins that make your site more attractive, more functional, and a more integrated part of your marketing plan.

Best of all? You don’t need to understand coding to use this platform. Again, it’s WordPress’s easy-to-navigate design that makes this a win-win for small businesses.

Price: FREE, but there are charges within the platform for things like your site’s domain name, design features, hosting, and plugins.

Google Analytics

Again, Google Analytics is nothing new, but it’s one of the least understood and underutilized tools, and yet one of the most powerful and useful by far.

You can track conversions, analyze data, and measure engagement all with one free tool. Best of all, you can use it alongside other Google tools like Tag Manager and Google Adwords Keyword Planner to integrate smart data throughout your marketing process.

If you need to brush up on your Google Analytics knowledge (we ALL do!), we highly recommend that free training on the Measure School Youtube Channel - he’s brilliant at keeping it simple!

Price: FREE

Power Tools!

With new technology coming out every day, you can still compete with the big guys even with your small business budget. Using the five affordable ‘power tools’ above, you can research and reach your target market, increase leads, and drive revenue - take full advantage of them!

5 Simple Ways to Optimize Your Social Profiles to Generate More Leads & Customers

Tue, 18 Feb 2020 20:11:46 GMT

A robust social media following is fantastic — if it’s driving results. But if you have 100,000 social followers who will never buy anything from you, then you’re wasting a lot of time and not making any money.

That’s why you should always be thinking about what you can do to bring more leads into your online social circle, and how you can turn those leads into paying customers. So I’m going to show you five simple steps you can take on your social media profiles to bring in more leads, and get more conversions.

1. Link to a lead magnet

A social media user that checks out your feed once and then disappears is no good to you. Even if they follow one of your social accounts, it’s very possible that the dreaded algorithms will hide your content from a large portion of your followers.

But if you had an email address for that person, you’d be able to reach them anytime you want, building that relationship and encouraging them to work with you in the future.

To get that valuable contact info, link to a freebie in your social bios. This could be an ebook, white paper, webinar — something that would be attractive to one of your future customers. And all they have to do to get it is hand over that email address.

2. Use the right keywords

Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn bios and posts are all searchable. So make sure to pepper in relevant keywords in your industry. To figure out the right keywords, you’ll have to do a little keyword research. Just like with any SEO, you want a keyword with a high search volume and not too much competition.

But what about Instagram? On IG, your username and actual name are the only “searchable” fields. To get around this, consider using the name field as an opportunity to use a relevant keyword, instead of your name or company name. You can always put your name below in the description box.

3. Use Calls to Action

Copywriting 101 — you need a call to action. Your call to action is the step that you want a person to take next. It could be the step that turns a prospect into a lead (“Download our free ebook”) or the step that turns a lead into a customer (“Click here to order”).

A good CTA will usually start with a verb like Click, Learn, Buy, or Download.

On Facebook, you can add a call to action right to your page. Just click “Add Page Button” under your header image, and select the button you’d like to add. Options include Contact Us, Sign Up (great for a mailing list!), and Shop Now. There are plenty more.

LinkedIn also offers pre-set CTA buttons, like Contact Us, Register, and Visit Website.

On Twitter, here are no set Call to Action buttons, but you can add CTAs with links in your bio or in your posts.

And on Instagram, Business or Creator accounts have action buttons that you can add right to your profile, like Email, Book Now, and Buy Tickets. With a link to a site like Eventbrite, you could make a sale right from your IG profile.

Make sure not to “set and forget” your CTA. Experiment with different options to see what gets you the best result.

4. Geolocate your profiles

If your business is brick and mortar or provides a location-specific service, where do you want leads to come from? Should they be from the three states away? Or should they be in your immediate area?

To get discovered by qualified, local leads, you have to focus on local prospects. To start, tag your location in everything you post. Not only do you want your posts to be associated with your location, but posts with a tagged location also tend to perform better on social media. We’re talking 79% higher engagement on Instagram over posts that don’t have a tagged location!

You should also use location hashtags. These could include your city, neighborhood, or even your street name if it’s well-known. Influencers are big on local hashtags, so you could catch the eye of someone that you’d like to work with in the future.

5. Link to your content (the right way)

Linking to your personal or company blog on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn is easy. But linking to third-party sites on Instagram is a bit tricker.

You only get one link on Instagram (unless you have over 10,000 followers), so you want to use it well. Just linking to your website means if someone is looking for a blog post, they’ll have to do a lot of hunting to find it. You could update your one link to go directly to that blog post every time you publish one, but who has time for that?

Instead, you can use your one link to send leads to a landing page. From that landing page, you can post links to your blogs, lead magnets, or sales pages. There are third-party services like Linktree that will let you do this. Or you can set up your own landing page on your website. If you put it on your own site, you can easily track the traffic from Instagram in your site’s analytics, making it easy to figure out what your Instagram leads are the most interested in.

Get Optimized!

There is a lot more traffic going to your social profile than you may realize, making it a great tool to get more leads and customers. Start out with these five, and make sure to experiment. You should always be testing and tweaking, figuring out what works best for you and your business.

Remember, social media is a tool, and if it’s not driving leads or customers, then all those followers are just a vanity number.

Run Your Content Through This 7 Step Checklist Before You Share It

Thu, 06 Feb 2020 21:12:05 GMT

1. Have you done your keyword research?

When you’re creating a lot of content on a weekly or monthly basis, you may think you’ve got it down. But with the constant workflow of new ideas, content creation, and promotion of your blogs, podcast episodes, or videos, you may be forgetting a few crucial steps before you hit “publish.”

If you fail to properly set up your content, you could be selling yourself short. Badly optimized content is harder to find and frustrating to read. The result is low traffic and a high bounce rate — the exact opposite of what you want.

So before you send your content out into the world to make its mark, make sure you go through these 7 steps to give it the best possible chance of being seen and making an impact.

It’s amazing how much content is released with little-to-no thought put into a keyword strategy. A thorough explanation of keywords would be an article on its own, but here are a few things to remember.

Address search intent

A “perfect” keyword with high search volume and low competition is not actually a good choice if your content doesn’t address search intent.

Here’s an example: Let’s say you have a new subscription-based service that is meant to help small businesses with lead generation. So you decide the keyword “website for lead generation” is a great choice for a piece of content about your service.

The problem is that when you google “website for lead generation,” all the top results are about how companies should optimize their websites for lead generation — NOT for third-party services. So that keyword is probably not a great fit. If you optimize for a keyword that doesn’t address search intent, your content will languish.

Don’t duplicate keywords

Avoid focusing on a keyword that you’ve already used. You’ll just be competing with your own content for rankings. If your previous piece of content isn’t performing well for that keyword, consider rewriting it instead of trying to get another article to rank.

Where to put your keyword

Where possible and organic, include your keyword in the following places:

❏ Headline

❏ First paragraph

❏ Image alt text

❏ Meta title

❏ Meta description

❏ Headers

❏ URL

❏ Outgoing links

If you can’t fit your keyword into these places in a way that is readable and makes sense, don’t do it.

2. Do you have a strong headline?

Your headline has one real job. That job is to get the intended audience to read the first sentence of your content or to push play on your video. As many as 8 in 10 people will read the headline. But only 2 in 10 will go on to read the blog post or article. Your job is to do better than 2 in 10, which you can accomplish with a strong headline.

Start with the benefit to the audience. Why should the reader or viewer spend their time on this piece of content? What will they get out of it?

Next, try to create a sense of urgency. Words like now, today, or fast will encourage your audience to take action (aka read your article) right away. This is key. If they plan to come back to it later, chances are they’ll forget.

Numbers work really well in headlines (like the one for this article). And always remember that clear is better than clever. If your brilliant pun muddies the intention of your article, you have to let it go.

Many content marketers suggest writing 20 to 25 headlines for each piece of content. Many of those will be duds. But chances are that at least one of them will be a winner.

3. Have you added a meta title & meta description?

If you don’t specify what you want your meta title and meta description to be, Google will select whatever it deems appropriate. This may work out for you, or it may not. So take the uncertainty out of it by writing your own.

Google usually only displays 50 to 60 characters of your title tag, so try to keep it under 60. And your meta description should be between 150 and 160 characters so it won’t be truncated. Make sure to use your keyword!

4. Have you broken up your text?

A wall of 2,000 words will discourage most readers. But 2,000 words broken up into 5 or 6 sections with subheaders will be much more readable.

The most successful content is easily readable and skimmable. Often people will skim through a piece of content, and only read the sections that attract their attention.

You can further separate your text with images, bulleted lists, infographics, and more.

Try to use your keyword in headers if it makes sense to do so.

5. Have you linked to related content?

If your audience has come across your article and found the headline compelling enough that they’re reading your article or blog post, they’re proving that they’re interested in what you have to say. So it stands to reason that they may be interested in more of your content.

Make it easy for them to find by linking to other articles you’ve written on similar subjects. The longer you can keep your audience on your site, the better your site’s organic rankings will be.

6. Have you optimized your images?

We’ve already discussed how useful images can be to break up the text on your content. But they also serve an important SEO function. By adding alt text to the images on your site, you’ll be providing another indication to the search engines as to what the content is about.

The alt text should accurately describe the image. But if possible, you should add your focus keyword or related keywords to the description. In addition to the SEO boost, this can also send more traffic to your site if your image appears in a related image search.

7. Do you have a clear call to action?

What step do you want your audience to take, now that they’ve read your blog post or watched your video? Make sure to tell them what to do next with a clear call to action.

On a YouTube video, it could be a request to like the video and subscribe to your channel. On your blog, it could be an invitation to share on social media or sign up for your mailing list. Or it could be a request to check out your pricing or sign up for push notifications.

Every piece of content you put out should have some kind of call to action. Without it, you’re encouraging your relationship with the audience to be one-sided — you produce, and they consume. You want an engaged audience that interacts with your content and with your business.

The Quickie Version

Here’s a quickie checklist of the 7 steps outlined above. Make sure to run through it before you hit “publish” on anything you post!

❏ Strong headline

❏ Keyword research that addresses search intent

❏ Meta title & meta description

❏ Subheaders to break up text

❏ Links to related content

❏ Images with alt text

❏ Call to Action

What other steps do you think content creators should take before they share their work? Let me know in the comments!

5 Reasons Why You Should Publish Longer Content

Tue, 15 Oct 2019 22:31:29 GMT

In today’s world of bite-sized social posts, it may be tempting to believe that long-form content is dead. Nothing could be further from the truth, and if you aren’t creating longer content, you are missing a lot of great benefits from your content marketing.

Yes, producing 3000-4000 words for a post involves a lot of work - research, writing, editing - that may seem like overkill in an era of decreasing attention spans.

But the reality is that long-form content has a lot of benefits that make the investment worth the effort.

5 reasons why you should publish long-form content

Here are five reasons why you should still be creating long-form content for your business.

1. Increased viewing time

The amount of time a visitor spends on your site is an important metric for a variety of reasons, from increased engagement of your visitors to better quality and relevance scores in search engines and advertising platforms.

Longer content can increase the average time on site - It takes about eight minutes for a person to read through an 1800-word long post. It can also increase the likelihood that readers will engage with other content of yours as well.

2. Greater position of authority

The ability to produce long content generally means that you have more information that can be useful for your readers, positioning you as an authority. Of course, it can’t simply be long for the sake of being long - it needs to be high-quality and demonstrate that you put in the effort to create content worthy of your reader’s time.

3. Higher quality conversions

Making your readers devour a well-detailed, informative and comprehensive piece of content before they can opt-in or purchase practically guarantees that you’ll get a higher-quality conversion than short-form content will produce.

Yes, there will be fewer of them since not everyone will make it through longer content, but they’ll be more educated and show a higher degree of commitment. This makes long-form content particularly useful for selling high-ticket products and services

4. Higher rank in search engines

It’s a well-known fact that Google likes long authority posts and gives them preference in search results. In fact, a ccording to serpIQ , the top ten results of searches in google average to about 2000 words in length.

Google loves longer content. An investment in creating a single long-form authority post can result in ranking higher in the search engines for years to come. Depending on your industry, the value of visibility, leads and sales that come from that can reach well into the six-figures.

5. More shares

Results show that long-form content gets more social shares than short content.

The theory behind why this works so well is simply that by sharing, the person doing the sharing gets a ‘halo effect’ from the value of the post with their followers that end up reading it - everyone wins!

Go long (sometimes)!

Long-form content has undeniable benefits, but that doesn’t mean that every post needs to be a novel. Continue making that great, bite-sized content that people love to quickly consume, but make sure that 10-20% of your content goes long!

And remember, when it comes to long-form content, quality is critical. Carefully plan your content, do your research and share your best insights to ensure that your investment in long-form content gets the ROI you’re looking for.

Four Tips for Rolling Out a Flexible Work Arrangement Policy at Your Business

Tue, 15 Oct 2019 22:24:07 GMT

Considering the benefits of a more flexible work arrangement for employees of your company? We don’t blame you. We’re big believers that flexible work arrangements are the future of many (if not most) workplaces.

And we aren’t alone...some pretty smart people agree! According to a recent Inc.com article :

“...Bill Gates shared what he thinks is the most important perk companies can give the best employees: flexible work arrangements .”

Also from the same article:

“Now a new study from Harvard Business School says companies that let their employees "work from anywhere" and work whenever they want wind up with employees who are more loyal, more productive and cost less.”

Why Does Flexibility Work?

What are some of the reasons why the ability to work outside of the typical office environment is so popular and generates loyalty?

● Employees can choose to live in more affordable locations, which in turn boosts their real incomes;

● They can more easily take care of other personal needs, such as caring for children or elderly parents;

● Less time spent commuting;

● More flexibility to travel and set their own schedules

Tips for a Successful Flexible Work Arrangement Rollout at Your Business

1. Define very clear outcomes and measures of success

When your team is dispersed to more locations and working on more flexible schedules, you’ll have less oversight of exactly how they do their daily work. The best way to make this work for both employer and employee is to have very clear outcome-based metrics that your employee’s performance will be measured against. After all, it’s the results of their work that you’re really after.

2. Put as much of your work processes and tools online

Each employee in a new location effectively creates a new office for your business, which can create a logistical nightmare if you don’t have the right tools and processes in place to support them.

So what are the “right” tools and processes?

That will vary by the nature of your business of course, but we can say with certainty that you’ll be better off by transitioning as much as you can online.

Online systems and processes are, by their nature, more easily scaled to multiple locations.

3. Hold virtual face-to-face meetings on a regular basis

Getting face time with your team is still incredibly valuable, no matter how flexible your work arrangements are. A great way to accomplish this is by using tools with video call capabilities such as Facebook Workplace , Zoom , or Slack .

All of these tools are great for quick one-on-one meetings and can accommodate large team meetings as well, creating more of a ‘team’ feel and more personal connections.

4. Bring your team together at least once each year

If possible, we highly recommend that you still find a way to get your teams together in-person at least once each year. Nothing beats the opportunity to connect and meet the people you work with every day.

Be Flexible In Your Approach

Pun intended! Seriously though, we’ve learned that making a flexible work arrangement policy work takes time, commitment, and flexibility - but the rewards can be worth it!

6 TipsTo Getting More Engagement With Your Content

Mon, 19 Aug 2019 18:35:09 GMT

Gaining steam on social media is undeniably an uphill battle these days. You have to contend with algorithms that make it nearly impossible to get discovered until you achieve a certain level of visibility.

Nevermind the fact that social media overwhelmingly prefers silly or opinionated content—two things that really don’t gel with the average business’s branding. Sure, you can gain thousands of shares by posting ridiculous cat videos, but there’s a slim chance all that attention will aid your business goals.

In spite of the challenges, putting your business out there on social media isn’t just worth it; it’s necessary. In the U.S., 87 percent of mobile internet time is spent in apps . What are the most common apps? Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat , to name a few. In fact, two thirds of U.S. adults say they get their news from social media .

Put simply: if you aren’t on social media, you will have an incredibly hard time gaining brand recognition for your business.

So how can you get traction and grow your audience on social these days? The key is engagement; the social networks want to see that your content actually matters to your audience.

How do you get engagement? Start with these six tips below:

#1 Talk About Your Audience, Not Your Business

No one logs into social media to talk about you! Okay, that may be an unfair exaggeration, but our point is that most people enjoy social media because it’s all about me , me , me .

You can use that tendency to your advantage and stand out from the crowd by creating content that’s more engaging. Instead of talking about your business, talk about your industry in a way that people can relate to. Suddenly, you’re not just promoting, you’re conversing.

Here’s an example: consider a post written by a local dry cleaner that says, “Our new power cleaning process can bust the deepest stains! Come in today and mention this post for $5 off.”

While the offer may be tempting and the service may be useful, people may tune them out. Instead, the business can say,

“Have a piece of clothing hiding in your closet because you can’t remove a stubborn stain? Bring it to us! With our new power cleaning process, your favorite outfits can find new life. Get $5 off your service when you mention this post!”

The difference is all about perspective. When you write content, don’t just subtly hint at relevance to your audiences. Instead, write things for them that subtly steer them towards your business services.

Flipping your thinking around can be a quick path to more consistent conversions.

#2 Be a Niche News Station

Another way to branch away from overpromotion, and to easily find topics to create content about, is to be a font of news and information for your industry.

A restaurant can discuss exciting new culinary movements. A healthcare provider can offer self-care tips and the latest studies on which health practices are most effective. A local gym can share stretches and exercises people can do at home to start feeling better.

When done right, this content earns your audience’s interest without your business appearing like it wants something in return.

#3 Participate in the Conversation

What if your brand were a really helpful person? That’s the approach many of the most successful social media marketers take when they’re building an audience.

Every community has active conversations happening online - in groups, forums, and by hashtags. Find them and participate.

When building your initial audience pool, try to be very active in Facebook groups and public discussions. Avoid coming across too opinionated and don’t promote, but don’t be shy about being involved.

By being a helpful participant in the conversations happening, you build brand awareness for free, become more relatable, and the default option to turn to when your prospects need something!

#4 Aim for Emotion

The smartest marketers know that content that stirs emotions gets more engagement and shares, and ultimately creates a stronger connection to your brand.

Any product or service can be used to create a positive emotional impact with prospects and customers.

Consider Gatorade’s mini film “ The Boy Who Learned to Fly ,” which earned the sports beverage company 15.3 million views and over 68,000 “likes” on YouTube. It told a powerful story that ranged from exciting to tragic to joyous in just seven minutes.

But you don’t have to produce a multi-million dollar Hollywood-style production to have the impact you’re looking for.

Get to the emotional core of what your product or service offers, and then start small by telling stories about your customers the highlight the emotions you want to connect with.

If you’re an event caterer, you’re offering strong memories and good times. If you’re an IT and cybersecurity services provider, you’re providing reliability and peace of mind. If you’re a dry cleaner, it’s making your customers feel confident and sharp!

Look for simple opportunities to consistently add emotion to your content and watch your engagement and visibility improve.

#5 Ask Questions

There is probably no more powerful social media marketing phrase than “What do you think?”

The best content creates a conversation, and questions are the best way to get a conversation started. Asking for opinions is a surefire way to get your audience talking.

The beauty of asking others for their opinion is that it can be done in just about every post. If you’re a cybersecurity company talking about the dangers of weak passwords, you can ask people for some of the worst passwords they’ve ever seen. Or, if you’re a restaurant writing about the best foods from around the world, throw in a question on your post asking your audience about the best meal they’ve eaten abroad.

Soliciting opinions is easy, and it can reliably earn engagement.

#6 Really Get To Know Your Audience

The most important factor in creating content that engages is empathy. Really knowing and understanding your audience is what will allow you to create content that stands out.

All of the tactics above work well on their own, but you turbocharge their effectiveness by doing the work of truly understanding your audiences. Unfortunately, there’s no shortcut to this - you just have care enough about your audience to put in the work.

Your Turn!

There are six powerful tips to creating more engaging content; the secret to growing your audience fast. You won’t get it all exactly right straight out of the gate - but don’t stop!

Write down your strategy, measure your results, and experiment to find better performance over time.

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