As of April 2021, Instagram recorded 1.29 million users worldwide. Users spend more than 53 minutes daily on Instagram, more than Facebook or Twitter. Besides, it has the highest engagement rate among all the other social platforms.

Budding entrepreneurs leveraging profitable online business ideas often begin their product promotion on social platforms. Brands are a little hesitant at the beginning but sooner they also adopt different product promotion strategies to expand brand reach.

Therefore, businesses of all kinds — whether a startup or an established brand — should elevate their Instagram marketing strategy for a powerful brand presence to attract and engage with potential customers.

However, drawing the attention of the majority of users is not a piece of cake, especially when 100 million videos and images are posted every day on Instagram. Businesses need to continually assess and adjust their Instagram strategies to stand out. Listed below are the top hacks to promote your products on Instagram.

1. Adopt Instagram AR Filters

The new in-house AR filters application — Spark AR Studio by Facebook — is a great way to create original augmented reality effects for Instagram Stories.

AR filters work with the user's camera, allowing them to add a layer of imagery in the foreground or background of their image.

Here are some of the things you can do with AR filters to engage audiences on Instagram:

• Create filters that users can use on their images to get an experience of how they would look with your product.
• Use best-in-class face tracking to create realistic effects.
• Allow users to interact with what they see using touch gestures.
• Put your content on real-world objects and places or transport people to new places.

When you add a fun element to your Instagram product promotions, people are more likely to engage with your brand.

For instance, NARS cosmetics used AR filters to enable users to virtually try on the lipstick shades of their choice. The idea was excellent and it attracted women of all ages to try a lipstick shade they love.

Trying leads to buying. Start using AR filters to encourage users to try your products and you'll acquire more customers. 

2. Embrace Instagram Reels

Instagram allows you to upload 30-second multi-clip videos under its new Reels feature, inspired by the highly popular TikTok. It's an amazing way to promote products or raise brand awareness.

You can utilize Instagram’s creative editing tools to create short, relevant, and engaging content for your audience.

You can use a video editor such as Beatleap to create short video clips. The app lets you easily pick your content and add music to it effortlessly. You can create incredible videos in just a few taps – the app uses intelligent automation to sync the music to the footage you feed it.

For example, fashion brand H&M shared this Reel to showcase sixteen outfits in thirty seconds to promote their latest collection. The video is relevant and displays the products in a unique manner.

You can also utilize Facebook Creator Studio to create and edit your Reels. Another option is the Instagram camera to create reels on the go.

Make sure you consistently post content from your Instagram business account. Who knows which of your reels might go viral and drives tons of traffic to your Instagram Shop?

3. Use Instagram Video Subtitles and Closed Captions

Approximately 30% of Instagram users view stories without sound. Add subtitles and captions to your videos so that any important marketing message is not left unheard in your Instagram product promotions.

Take a look at this Adidas video posted on Instagram in June 2021. The video is of the Euro 2020 game, showcasing the power of unity and celebrating sport as a connector of people, ideas, and creativity. With captions, the video became more meaningful and easier to understand for viewers even without sound.

Facebook has the option to create an auto-captioned video while uploading, which you can save and then post on Instagram.

However, you should check the caption for errors. Alternatively, you can also create your own dedicated captioning file.

Make sure to add captions on every video you share on Instagram to expand the reach of your marketing messages.

4. Set Up Your Instagram Shop for Product Promotions

Instagram shopping is a free-to-use feature that enables you to build your own mobile-first custom storefront.

If you are selling products online then you should take a look at the Instagram shopping feature for your business. With the help of this feature, users can shop your products directly via your business profile, stories, or posts.

Users can tap product tags, save items on a wishlist, or buy directly with FacebookPay. Tapping on the product tag reveals details such as name and price. Users can save items on their wishlist while browsing and check out with Facebook Pay for a seamless buying experience.

To enable people to buy your products directly from Instagram, create collections in Instagram Shops similar to your eCommerce store. Link to products in a live stream or stories to help users quickly get to the product page and buy.

In the image at right, you can see Lulus has set up its Instagram Shop. When a user taps on the image, they land on the shop from where they can buy the product.

5. Leverage Instagram’s Messenger Feature

Instagram Messenger works similar to Facebook Messenger. The two messaging platforms are merged to easily capture conversation threads and stay connected.

Start using this feature to manage customer communication across Facebook and Instagram. Instagram Messenger will help to save your time and be active on both platforms.

You get several benefits from merging like this. For instance, you can reply to specific messages, send stickers, animated messages, and custom emoji reactions. It also has the vanish mode, using which you can send messages that will disappear after reading the message or closing the chat, hence offering more privacy.

Leverage this feature to stay connected with your audience or fan following more closely. 

6. Mix Professional Photography and User-Generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) has a 4.5% higher conversion rate than non-UGC posts. Start leveraging the power of UGC content to increase your brand reach on Instagram.

The biggest advantage of posting UGC is that customers are able to see themselves with the product on your Insta page, which triggers more sharing and likes.

Encourage your customers to post their images with your product by sponsoring a contest. Thereafter, you can mix these posts with professionally produced images to boost brand reach.

Take Teva for example, which manufactures sports sandals. The brand used both professional photography and user-generated content. It helped the brand convey a straightforward message: "Teva sandals are for everyone."

7. Professional Model Images with Styled Product Shots

Many brands use professional model images on their Instagram profile, but you can bring a twist to it by combining it with styled product shots.

Capture the best angle of your products to showcase how stylish they look. Keep posting these images with professional model images to promote both their qualities and looks.

Beardbrand, a line of high-quality grooming products, used Instagram smartly to create and share the sophisticated lifestyle of their target market. They used product shots that not only appealed to their audience but also enhanced the thought of men’s grooming in general.

8. Using Real Customers as Models

There is perhaps no better way to be authentic and connect with the audience than posting customer’s pictures on social media. When you post customer images, it becomes so easy for the audience to relate themselves to the brand.

Start collecting pictures directly from customers or routinely take pictures of customers using your products or services. The images do not necessarily have to be of professional quality. A random or natural snapshot can do wonders for your strategy. However, never forget to get customer permission before using their photos on your Instagram business account.

Some brands such as Chubbies used this idea and garnered a huge number of followers. The diversity in the following images shares different emotions such as humor, light memories, and experiences. They successfully engage their target audience of 18-40-year-old males, while improving their brand reach.

Some Final Thoughts on Instagram Product Promotions

Instagram has grown immensely in recent years and continues to be a top platform for brands to running marketing campaigns.

The rush to market on this social media channel and regular changes in its algorithm makes it tough for businesses to stay on the top of the Instagram trend.

If your brand is struggling to get audience attention, try out one or more of the above strategies for Instagram product promotion.

The post Instagram Product Promotions: 8 Great Strategies to Try appeared first on RELEVANCE.

The influencer marketing world has changed the way we buy things. Sixty-seven percent of marketers are using some form of influencer marketing to promote their brand. It’s all about leveraging an influencer’s reach to support your brand, promote your product, or create content. The focus is to increase brand awareness, leading to sales.

Most marketers say influencer marketing is the best way to attract higher-quality customers to their brand. In fact, 22% of these marketers consider influencer marketing as the most cost-effective channel for acquiring customers.

In addition, 89% of marketers claim that influencer marketing generates much better ROI than other marketing methods. Social media users tend to recommend products to family and friends. Nearly 40% of people buy a product after they saw it used by an influencer on any social media platform.

Here are the top five tips to help you get started with influencer marketing.

1. Work with Micro-Influencers

Most micro-influencers focus on a specific niche, create their own content, and manage their accounts themselves, conveying a personal tone that resonates with followers. Approximately 82% of consumers are most likely to buy a product at the recommendation of a micro-influencer. For this reason alone, one of the best influencer marketing tips is to work with micro-influencers to help you better communicate with your target audience.

Additionally, micro-influencers are generally more affordable than influencers with millions of followers. Most micro-influencers on Instagram charge less than $500 for promoting a product. In 2020, 46.4% of brand mentions featuring the hashtag #ads were published by Instagram influencers with 1k-20k followers.

Also, as they have a small following, they tend to build a more personal connection with their followers. Their audiences tend to buy products based on their recommendations much more than those of a macro-influencer.

Brands can benefit by collaborating with a micro-influencer for their influencer marketing campaign. For example, Amanda Frederickson collaborated with Lowe’s Home Improvement. She shared some recipes using all the foods one can grow using Lowe’s products.

2. Build Creative Influencer Campaigns

There’s an ongoing increase in the number of people and brands using social media platforms to buy or promote their products. Therefore, it makes sense to be more creative while creating your influencer marketing strategies and campaigns. This gives brands an edge to pull the audience toward their product and outperform competitors.

For example, VideoLeap collaborated with Kevin Parry, a famous video creator with 1.1 million followers on Instagram. VideoLeap is a video editing app that easily combines clips, adds text, artistic effects, and edits videos using an iPhone or iPad.

The idea was to demonstrate how easy and fun it is to create high-quality videos with VideoLeap by using light tricks. Parry created a top-quality trick video using VideoLeap software and added value by explaining the process. The day he chose made all the difference. He chose to post the video on April Fool’s Day. The video had more than 200,000 views in just 20 days.

3. Pay Attention to New Platforms

Today, new social media platforms are always being developed. For example, TikTok is now a mainstream marketing platform with more than 800 million users, 75% of whom are active each day.

TikTok offers various ad formats to create awareness about your product, brand, or service. These include Brand Takeover, TopView ads, In-Feed Ad, Branded Hashtag Challenge, and Branded Effect.

There are other social media formats that are gaining popularity, such as Instagram Reels, IGTV. Now, the trend continues to gain steam, so using emerging platforms can become an extremely profitable investment.

For their launch on TikTok, Fendi was looking to increase its awareness and engagement. They decided to launch the “F is For” campaign on TikTok to play on their values. These included family, fearlessness, freedom, friendship, and the future. The campaign resulted in 15,000 new followers and over 4 million views.

4. Build Long-Term Influencer Relationships

Nowadays, brands are prioritizing building long-term relationships with influencers while collaborating with them.

Consequently, long-term influencer relationships represent a win-win for both the brand and the influencers. For brands, it means that the influencer is more invested in you and your product. Aligning your brand with the right influencers for the long-term allows you to tap into their influencing power. For influencers, it shows that the brand trusts them and opens up new collaboration opportunities. You can send them your products for personal use and develop casual communication channels.

Lately in the fashion industry, for example, brands create PR lists with trusted influencers. They send the influencer newly launched products and ask them to promote those products, invite them to events, or take them on trips. In the example below, a YouTube influencer, TheLineUp, has partnered with Zara, creating awareness about the new products through videos.

5. Short-Form Video is King in Influencer Marketing

Influencers are using social video to their advantage in 2021, encouraging marketers to up their video creativity. Most likely, the video marketing industry will reach nearly $50 billion by 2022.

One of the most effective media formats is short-form video. Approximately 56% of videos created by brands and influencers are two minutes or less.

Influencers use social video to great effects. Examples include hashtag challenges on TikTok or makeup tutorials on IGTV. The short video formats give creators a more dynamic and personalized way to engage with followers. A few other creative video formats apart from hashtag challenges and IGTV are:

• step-by-step videos;
• behind-the-scenes sneak peeks;
• Q&A format;
• tips and advice;
• FAQs.

Final Thoughts

These five influencer marketing tips can help brands leverage the power of influencers and successfully combine advertising into any social media marketing strategy. Choosing the right platform and influencers is the key to reach the target audience. This helps your brand gain loyalty and win the trust of your target customers.

Applying these tactics helps improve engagement and conversions. For maximum impact, make sure your content is valuable and your brand message is clearly communicated by influencers.

The post Influencer Marketing Tips to Promote Positive Brand Awareness appeared first on RELEVANCE.

As companies across sectors change their business models to remain productive and reach consumers in times of mass isolation, the “value of digital” is now undeniable, along with SaaS platforms. 

The SaaS market has skyrocketed in recent years and 2020 has been a landmark year for service-based digital platforms of all varieties.

This year alone, experts project that the SaaS sector will generate $105 billion in revenue. And, by 2027, SaaS market value is likely to soar to $219.5 billion. A recent comprehensive TrustRadius study covering business buying patterns found that companies are planning to increase their investments in several categories of SaaS products and other tech solutions.

As businesses across sectors continue to embrace the power of remote working, we expect a host of new innovations to emerge from the digital woodwork in the near future. This includes game-changing offerings from industry-leading businesswomen. 

For too long, the tech sector has been crippled by gender bias. However, the playing field is on its way towards equality, with an increasing share of funded startups now being founded and led by women. It’s easy to formulate an argument that women are leading growth in the SaaS sector.

Let’s take a look at some of the executives who have pushed SaaS forward in 2020 and happen to be women.

1. Kris McKee, Senior Product Manager, Optimizely

Kris’ career has taken her around the world, working for both profit and non-profit organizations in a number of locations in Africa, Asia, the UK and the US. She’s passionate about the impact that tech can have on the way we live our lives, and she’s dedicated her career to enabling that impact. 

As senior product manager, Kris leads product development for Optimizely’s conversion optimization tools. Kris is also in high demand as an international speaker on all things SaaS, growth strategy and ecommerce. 

2. Eynat Guez, Co-founder and CEO, Papaya Global

Papaya Global is Eynat’s third successful venture, following Relocation Source, which helped corporations with their relocation needs, and Expert Source, which helped global companies expand into new geos. While running Expert Source, she noticed what she calls a significant “technology gap in global payroll processing that provided the ‘genesis’ for Papaya Global.” 

Since its launch in 2016, Papaya Global has expanded operations, offering its global payroll and workforce management solution in over 140 countries. The platform has also picked up a number of industry awards. Arguably as impressive is that during the first year of Papaya Global, Guez was pregnant while leading the company and steering the evolution of its product. 

3. Marie Prokopets, Co-founder and COO, FYI

Marie’s background is unusual for the founder of a successful startup — she’s a talented comedy writer who’s won awards for her screenplays — but her understanding of business strategy is undeniable. In 2019, Marie was named Product Hunt’s Maker of the Year. 

FYI is her third document organization startup, and its success is based on all the lessons that Marie and her co-founder Hiten Shah learned from their previous attempts. A product for organizing your work on other platforms, FYI has grown quickly from an MVP the pair built in just five days. 

4. Christine Lee, Director of Product Management, GoDaddy

Christine has an impressive history of product management roles, leading up to her current position as director of product management at GoDaddy, the leading web hosting service, which boasts over 20 million customers worldwide. 

Like many high-level women in SaaS, Christine isn’t content just to advance her own career. She’s also concerned about helping other women progress in tech, which is why she founded the non-profit organization Women in Product. This collective has over 10,000 global members, and it offers mentoring and development workshops for women who want to rise in the product management and development space. 

5. Adi Engel, CBDO, vcita

During Adi’s six years as the chief business development officer at vcita, the company has gone from strength to strength. Adi is known as a strong leader with big vision, and she’s proven it by building an impressive network of revenue-generating strategic partnerships for the startup. Adi was also selected as one of 2020’s Top 50 Women Leaders in SaaS by The Software Report. 

An all-in-one small business management and customer communications platform, vcita has had an especially busy year in 2020, launching an education portal in partnership with MasterCard, joining the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion’s SME Finance Forum and releasing a series of features designed to help solopreneurs survive the pandemic. 

6. Asia Orangio, CEO and Co-founder, DemandMaven

Asia already had an impressive career in marketing and demand generation before she founded her successful startup, DemandMaven, two years ago. Designed to help SaaS businesses with growth marketing and product-driven growth, which are Asia’s specialties, DemandMaven counts products like Terminus, Motivo and Rindle among its clientele. 

Asia also puts her talents to good use as a board member of Moz and a lead mentor at TechStars. She is also a mentor and advisor at three more startup communities – yes, all at the same time. 

7. Jaana Metsamaa, Product Operations Manager, Pipedrive

Jaana’s background spans both IT and engineering, as she has a master’s degree in both subjects. Jaana joined Pipedrive, a leading CRM, as a product manager almost three years ago, and now she’s the company’s product lead. As she puts it, that means her team is responsible for all “lego pieces” that other teams use for their solutions, giving her a lot of responsibility for Pipedrive’s continued growth. 

Jaana loves the fast-paced atmosphere of the tech startup world so much that in her spare time she’s growing her own startup, Alfred. She hopes Alfred will innovate infosec in much the same way Pipedrive innovated the marketing and sales world. Alfred finished in the top five at a recent business idea competition in Estonia. 

8. Inga Chen, Senior Product Manager, Spotify

Spotify has grown enormously over the past few years to 248 million active users, largely because of its success in delivering a personalized music experience to every user. Much of those capabilities are a direct result of Inga’s work. Spotify’s senior product manager, Inga is passionate about the role that machine learning can play in personalizing user experiences. She leads the teams that manage the algorithms behind Spotify’s most popular playlists. 

Previously, Inga led Squarespace’s user-facing analytics product teams, growing its iOS and Android apps. She’s also an in-demand speaker and thought leader at international conferences, and runs the NYC chapter of Women In Product. 

9. Melanie Perkins, CEO and Co-founder, Canva

Melanie began her career by running a yearbook design company as a side business during her college days. The business was popular, but at its core was the idea that grew into Canva, today a $3.2 billion company. 

When Canva launched in 2013, it made Melanie one of the world’s youngest female tech CEOs. Canva won hearts and subscribers thanks to its easy-to-use interface that made attractive design accessible to anyone. Now it has over 15 million users in 190 countries and testimonials from celebrities like Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson.

10. Emilia Chagas, CEO, GrowthHackers

Emilia Chagas began her career as a content manager for multiple clients. She wished there was a single platform to streamline the content creation process. That dream led her to set up Contentools, which launched in 2015. The platform gathered tens of thousands of users within just a few years. 

In 2018, Contentools joined forces with Sean Ellis’s GrowthHackers, and Emilia moved to her current position of CEO of the combined company. The GrowthHackers community and annual conference are among the most visible brands in the industry. The newer GrowthHackers Experiments, GrowthHackers Workflow and GrowthHackers Insights software products are emerging as highly popular tools. 

11. Promise Phelon, CEO and Founder, GrowthWarrior

Promise is proud to be an “underdog” in Silicon Valley, with a track record of raising capital and transforming companies. She arrived at Silicon Valley to serve as the CEO for TapInfluence, a SaaS platform that uses AI to help brands tap into the power of influencer marketing, but she didn’t stop there. 

Promise set up her own business, GrowthWarrior, which invests in and assists SaaS startups to fulfill their potential, and wrote a soon-to-be-published book, 7 Secrets of the Growth Warrior. Previously, Promise founded and served as CEO of two other businesses. She also served as CRO for JazzHR and head of product marketing for BEA Systems.

12. Edith Harbaugh, Founder and CEO, LaunchDarkly

Edith already had a strong background in product management and software development before she founded LaunchDarkly, including authoring thought leadership blog posts and podcasts on continuous delivery, software trends, and DevOps issues. 

In 2015, she founded LaunchDarkly, a feature management platform that helps software teams develop better software by flagging features to eliminate risk from the dev cycle. LaunchDarkly quickly became popular among DevOps teams, raising over $54 million so far from various funding rounds. 

13. Mada Seghete, VP Marketing, Branch

Like many startup founders, Mada developed the idea for Branch while trying to launch another startup. While Mada was in business school, she joined up with another student to launch a photo book printing mobile app. They soon found the challenges involved with attributing referrals intensely frustrating. 

Mada and her co-founders sold the app and focused on the challenge of mobile growth analytics. The result is Branch, a SaaS platform for managing deep links and mobile attribution. The platform is used by big names like Airbnb, Pinterest, Slack and Yelp. Mada also spends her time teaching mobile growth workshops and championing the merits of data-driven strategy. As a partner at Xfactor Ventures, she only invests in companies with at least one woman among the founders.

14. Agatha Krajewski, Director of Product, Shopify

Agatha leads Shopify’s large and diverse product team. Her primary concern is the ecommerce website builder ecosystem, Shopify’s flagship product. Agatha is also responsible for Shopify’s new native email marketing platform. 

Agatha began her career in software development and product management. She quickly worked her way up the ranks to her current position. She attributes her success to being highly organized, forming close and mutually supportive friendships within the organization, and her ability to command influence and respect in a new position. 

15. Tatyana Mamut, Strategic Advisor

A serial entrepreneur and innovator, Tatyana's willingness to take risks has borne fruit time and again. Tatyana is the co-founder and former senior director of Ideo, a global design company. She has filled senior product and management roles in companies like Amazon Web Services, Salesforce and NextDoor. She has also served as strategist, client relationship manager, and project lead on a by-project basis for numerous multinational corporations, leading design of user-centered digital experiences and driving innovation. 

Today, Tatyana spends most of her time advising startup founders and serving as a partner in VCs. She focuses particularly on blockchain and cryptocurrency startups and companies building their product strategy and culture. In all her positions, Tatyana has played a key role in innovating and developing new products. 

16. Anutthara Bharadwaj, VP Product, Atlassian

As VP of product at Atlassian, Anutthara is at the peak of a career that she says began back when she was a child, coding custom games on her PC. Since her modest beginnings as a software developer, Anutthara has gained many patents for tech innovations at Microsoft. She has also become an accomplished executive who is passionate about tech and philanthropy. 

At Atlassian, Anutthara coordinates teams for the company’s servers, data centers and enterprise cloud across multiple product lines. She grows great teams and ships popular products worldwide. Anuthara also mentors others in the tech field. 

17. Maggie Crowley, Director of Product Management, Drift

Maggie brings a rather unusual set of talents to the SaaS world. She is a former Olympian who was part of the US field team in 2006. Her more conventional SaaS experience includes stints as an analyst, business strategist and product manager at a number of companies. 

At Drift, Maggie heads the product management teams, helping develop and refine the company’s signature conversational marketing platform. 

18. Deboshree Dutta, Group Product Manager, PayPal

Deboshree currently works as the Group Product Manager for PayPal, as well as CEO of her startup, RoomPlays, an online platform for interior e-design services, and serving as mentor and advisor to many aspiring entrepreneurs. She’s passionate about design, and in her “spare time” curates Deesignplay, a hi-tech lifestyle blog and Instagram account with a global following. 

Deboshree’s achievements include winning an EB-1 Green Card reserved for people with extraordinary abilities; speaking at various conferences and summits; and founding the Bay Area chapter of Lead for Women in Product. She has been featured on numerous lists of women product leaders and disruptive women in tech. She is a powerful voice advocating for women and people of color in software. 

19. Laura Behrens Wu, Founder and CEO, Shippo

As the founder and CEO of Shippo, Laura has had a huge influence on the lives of small business owners and ecommerce entrepreneurs everywhere. This SaaS company offers a simple API for businesses to use to simplify logistics and lower shipping costs. 

Shippo raised $30 million in its latest funding round. Laura was also included in Forbes’s enterprise tech list of “30 under 30.”

Conclusion

In terms of evolution and innovation, women are leading the way in the SaaS industry. As the digital world continues to expand, we can’t wait to see what these inspiring women will achieve in 2021 and beyond. 

The post Top Women Product Leaders in the SaaS Industry 2020 appeared first on RELEVANCE.

Hiring and managing a team of content writers is not easy. Especially during the COVID-19, it has become even more difficult to coordinate with your writing team in a timely manner. 

Hence, in this article, I am sharing a list of the best tools that are a must-have for your content writing teams. You can share this list with your team and choose the tools that fit your exact needs. 

Let’s begin!

1. ProofHub (online proofing and collaboration)

Reviewing the content of remote writers and collaborating with them in real time is a big challenge when you do not have the right tool in place. ProofHub is an amazing tool for proofing and collaboration. It helps you review, approve, and share feedback on the content effortlessly.  

Your team members can share documents and files via Google Drive, DropBox, & other cloud platforms and from their computers in various formats including JPEG, PNG, PDF, and more.  

Editors can make real-time changes in documents which can be tracked and reviewed by writers. They can add annotations to provide clear, actionable feedback instantly on the documents. This tool also allows you to create multiple versions of the same document using File Versioning.     

Your team can collaborate using real-time inline task comments. There is no need to back and forth emails to find feedback. This saves a lot of time and makes the process frictionless. 

For regular one-on-one or group discussions, you can use the built-in chat. 

ProofHub has another great feature that allows external collaborators, such as clients, to review and approve content and creative assets by accessing a shareable link, without logging into ProofHub. This makes editing and approval a breeze.       

You can use the Project Discussions to keep project collaborators and stakeholders on the same page. These enhanced capabilities make ProofHub is a complete tool for online proofing and collaboration.

2. Jell (Accountability Check)

Completing any project isn't easy for content writers while working remotely, especially when there is no straightforward way to monitor their progress or set accountability. Jell is a cloud-based solution that provides features to measure your team's performance. 

It enables you to set deadlines for each member of the team according to their time-zone. Further, you can set one-on-one weekly or bi-weekly check-in to get an update on the tasks assigned. You can also track their progress and even quantify it or score your progress.

With Jell, you can assign quarterly or annual goals to every level of your organization. The team can share their progress on the same platform. This way you have the track of your team’s performance. 

The application displays your progress with updated metrics, comments and linked daily tasks. Such messages, keep reminding you of your goals and meeting them becomes easy.

Jell makes it easier for your team to fit into the existing workflow and stay updated with the progress. With the tool, you can integrate the app with different tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, GitHub, Jira, Trello, etc.  

3. Trello (Project Management)

Working for any content writing team becomes a breeze when they are updated about their schedules. Trello is a superb tool that makes team collaboration better and project management easy. 

This intuitive kanban board app is best for organizing, coordinating, and tracking work of a team.

Basically, Trello works using its three elements – boards, lists, and cards. Board contains the complete details of a particular project. Each board is categorized using lists. Further, each list includes individual cards containing more information on a project. The details might consist of the info like the team members involved, task checklists, discussions, and comments.

This is a solid tool for managing work and workflows, and most importantly it is easy to use, plus it allows you to share Trello boards with outside collaborators.

Trello has another powerful feature i.e., integrating different apps like Dropbox, Google Drive, and more. Also, it empowers the user by syncing Trello with any device.

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4. Google Drive (Content sharing)

You and your team must have accessibility to the content created by each member of the team. Google Drive is an easy solution to that. 

It is cloud storage for project documents created on any platform. Also, it allows access to the team member with whom the document is shared. 

Besides, Google Drive provides a number of editing tools. Using the tools, you can create text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, forms, and more. and give other team members accessibility permission.

Moreover, the same shared document can be edited by multiple team members at once. The changes made in the document will be saved and will be traceable.  

Users can also have offline access to the files with Google Drive app with offline capabilities. The content team can edit and save the file even when they don’t have access to the internet. The app supports varieties of platforms, such as Windows and macOS computers, and Android and iOS smartphones, and tablets.

5. NordVPN (Security)

You must have an extra layer of security to ensure that all your data stays safe. NordVPN gives you a sense of relief while sharing your content online. It has been rated as the top VPN in several countries in terms of reliability and security. 

NordVPN follows next-generation encryption to safeguard your connection. It makes your account accessibility, banking transactions, and documents sharing super secure. It works even on unprotected Wi-Fi and supports varieties of platforms like Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS. 

NordVPN also provides an application for Android TV. Besides, Manual setup is offered for wireless routers, NAS devices and other platforms.

It works on advanced CyberSec technology, which automatically blocks suspicious websites to prevent any threat from malware.

NordVPN has a strict privacy policy, and therefore it doesn't track, collect, or share your private data at any cost.

Top of all, users can securely access their favourite content anywhere and anytime through 5400+ NordVPN servers distributed in 59 countries around the world.

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6. Slack (Communication)

While working with remote teams, fast communication is essential to accomplish a project in time. Slack, an instant messaging tool, gives you the ability to connect with the team in real-time. Though it is a text messaging tool, it also supports voice calling, video calling, files sharing, and connecting with other apps. 

With Slack's chat feature, you get functions like direct messaging or group chats. Also, your team can chat among themselves. If you want, you can set up open or private channels and invite users to join conversations.

File sharing or data stored in the app is completely safe as the accessibility of the data is completely visible and can be accessed only through the user’s encrypted keys.

For every topic, project or team, you can create dedicated channels. This way, tracking their development becomes easy. As every activity is saved, finding any answer for your query becomes effortless.

7. Loom (Video Calling and Sharing)

Sometimes you need a little extra than just a video calling for your remote content writing teams. Loom provides many features that Slack doesn't. 

The most significant feature of Loom is its ability to record your screen, with or without your camera. Also, you can share recorded video or voice calls instantly. Once the video call is over or you stopped it explicitly, the link will be available on your clipboard to let you share.  

You can also edit the videos. Loom's editing features allow you to trim the videos and add call-to-action and thumbnails. Moreover, you can control the permission to view videos to specific email addresses or make it password protected. Once the video is shared, the viewers can reply or react with emojis or comments. 

Loom supports various platforms, including Windows, Mac, Chrome, and iOS. So, no matter what platform your team members are using, it is easier to connect.

As far as security concerned, any video call is not accessible to Loom. Also, the videos are not available online for view, unless that option is enabled. 

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8. Basecamp (Chat Messenger)

When you choose to connect with your remote team, a multi-featured tool can make things even better. Basecamp has sound and extensive chat functions. 

Though Basecamp is a project management tool but has incredible chat features to meet remote teams' communication requirements. For example, for every project, there are separate chat rooms. 

To start chatting, you simply have to write @mention people, and you can carry out real-time communication. While chatting, you can attach files, quotes, and code samples. Also, you can respond with sound, videos, or emojis. To access the chat function, you don't have to use any additional apps.   

With Basecamp, you don’t have to rely on meetings. The Check-ins allows you to ask questions daily, weekly, or monthly. You can ask the whole team or a particular member at the prescheduled time of the day. Also, there is an option to comment directly on individual answers.

9. Time Doctor (Time Tracking)

Keeping projects on time is highly important when your team is operating remotely. 

Time Doctor helps you keep track of your project. It is a secure and straightforward desk-time tracking app that features real-time automatic tracking functionality. 

Using this tool, you can monitor your teams' every action like daily activity, sick leaves, vacations, and overtime. It gives a crystal-clear overview of your team's workflow. 

Time Doctor can give you detailed information about the apps and websites your team members are using and visiting. Also, it can track the activities they've specified for their offline time.

Plus, you can even follow an individual team member's time on particular projects, using auto screenshots and activity rate trackers. DeskTime updates you with the task your team is working on and gives in-depth details by recording titles of documents or files and time spent on each of them. 

Final Thoughts

Working with remote content writing teams has a number of benefits. However, it is also challenging to manage the team and ensure content deliverability in time. 

Using these nine must-have tools for your remote content writing team, you can minimize your effort, save time, streamline every task, and make your team exceptionally productive. 

This post was updated on April 28th, 2023.

The post 9 Must-Have Tools for Remote Content Writing Teams appeared first on RELEVANCE.

Consequently, 70% of businesses are already investing heavily in content marketing and enhanced social media support. If you've already launched your startup, then you probably shouldn't lag on your own content marketing strategy. Before you start, you need a robust content marketing plan to ensure you are heading in the right direction and not wasting your budget.

In other words, developing effective content is only part of the process. You might also want to conduct a content audit, tweak existing content, create buyer personas, optimize your efforts for search engine impact, or perhaps drop back for a bit and analyze your preconceptions as to what constitutes the typical customer journey. In short, creating content that succeeds flows naturally from doing some digital marketing research.

Relax, though! A content plan need not be too complicated. Successful inbound marketing consists largely of connecting a potential customer with valuable content. Assuming you can create great content, the job of a content marketer becomes decidedly simpler. Here is the six-step content marketing strategy that businesses can use to reach their target audience and increase conversions. Use these to build your own custom ultimate guide tailored to your specific niche.

1. Specify Your Target Audience and Content Marketing Goals

The first step to creating a successful content marketing strategy is to define your target audience. As you conduct your website content audit and perform at least some keyword research, ask yourself these four questions:

• Who is my ideal customer?
• What are their pain points?
• Where do they look for solutions to their problems - Google, Bing, Facebook, Instagram, or any other channel?
• What type of content do they prefer - reading a blog post, infographics, videos, influencer marketing, or something else?

These questions help create content that addresses your audience's issues. Likewise, it will also enable you to distribute the content in your customer's preferred format and channel. At the same time, you should also set content marketing goals. What is that you want to achieve from your content marketing efforts? Check out Adobe Spark's free marketing templates for one that aligns with your goals. Some of the most common goals of content marketing for startups are:

• increase organic traffic;
• boost brand awareness;
• increase social media engagement and get more followers;
• improve the website's position in search engines; and
• attract new email subscribers.

Additionally, set a deadline by when you want to achieve each of the marketing goals.

2. Decide on Content Types for Each Stage of the Sales Funnel

In the previous step, you determined what format of content your target audience prefers. Now, dig a little deeper to decide what types of content you should be creating for each stage of the sales funnel.

Blogging is the most common type of content marketing strategy that every business does. However, to get the most out of content marketing, you need to create different content for each stage of the funnel.

Here are the three stages of the sales funnel and the best content types for each of them.

Awareness

In this stage, prospects are looking for solutions to their problems. This is when they become aware of your brand. As a result, the best type of content for this stage includes:

• How-To Guides: This article from Moz about "improving domain authority" is a good example of a how-to guide. It provides steps by step instructions to increase your website's domain authority, a critical metric for any content plan.
• Informational Content: This article on "birthday gifts" from MyUKMailBox is a great example of informational content. As a result, anyone looking for ideas to give something to their loved ones might land on this page.
• Infographics: For example, Oberlo publishes infographics regularly to increase shareability and drive more traffic to its website.

Consideration

In this stage, prospects have identified a few solutions to their problems. They want to ensure whether you are the right choice for them. The best type of content plan for this stage might include:

• Case Studies: This case study by Hootsuite is an excellent example of the consideration stage's content. The post highlights how Amway used Hootsuite to harness the power of social media to generate sales. It also includes the numbers to entice prospects into considering their platform for social media marketing.
• Webinars: For example, Slack conducts webinars that talk about their product and how to make the most out of it. This way, Slack is able to demonstrate what customers can get from their product to entice them to convert.

Purchase

The customer has decided to purchase from you and needs a last piece of information before converting. The best type of content for this stage includes:

• Competitive Comparisons: This comparison article by Hubspot is a great example of the content for the last stage of the sales funnel. The post shows the top CRM tools for businesses while keeping Hubspot in the best light possible.
• Detailed Specifications: For example, Mailchimp has a separate landing page highlighting each feature of the product and why you should be using it. Additionally, the specifications are divided into different industries and businesses. This increases the chances of conversions as the specs are explicitly catered to each industry.

3. Determine Your Content Creation Process

The next step is to define how your brand will create content. This would be something that all your content creators need to follow every time they are writing for your company. The content production phase will proceed far more smoothly when it's clear what's expected of those actually creating content!

Your people will also benefit enormously from an editorial calendar (see below). An effective editorial calendar can serve creative types well as they see the bigger picture of the current content marketing campaign as well as the track record of previous efforts. Your editorial calendar should give everyone a birds-eye view of content ideas and content promotion tactics across time.

Every step in your content creation process should be in sequential order. For example:

1. Decide on the content type - blog, infographic, video content, etc. - and your content creator.
2. Choose a topic appropriate to the content format and decide on the desired length.
3. Research keywords to help guide the creation of effective content.
4. Prepare an outline that includes an intro and all the subheadings.
5. Get the outline approved.
6. Write/produce the content.
7. Forward the content asset to the editor.
8. Edit the content as per suggestions from the editor.
9. Forward the final content to the marketer.

Designing a content creation process ensures everyone in your organization stays on the same page.

4. Create a Content Calendar

It is essential to publish content regularly to get the best possible results. If you don't have a dedicated team of content creators, it is easy to go inconsistent.

Therefore, make sure to create a calendar that includes what type of content you will be publishing and when. (This is where your content audit comes in handy.) Be sure to include a reminder of the big-picture content marketing goal to every deadline.

For example, you can create a Google Calendar and add due dates for each piece of content.

If you want advanced tools to create a content calendar, you can try CoSchedule or Trello. I use Trello for content management. It allows adding team members who should be creating content, writing detailed descriptions about the topic, and tagging the due date. In my experience, successful content marketing plans don't happen without a content calendar everyone can access.

5. Identify the Best Promotion Channels

You are producing amazing content, but it won't be of any worth if you don't promote it effectively. When building any content marketing strategy, it is crucial to identify where most of your target audience is spending time online. Depending on the size of your company, this is where your marketing funnel might benefit by crossing paths with your public relations people.

For example, if you sell women's accessories, Instagram might be the best channel for you as it has 43%, female users. But, if you aim to advertise to the older generation, YouTube might be a good choice as 70% of 50-64-year-olds use the platform.

Some of the best ways to promote your content include:

• Use email marketing to distribute effective content to your subscribers.
• If you mention any influencers in your content, notify them about it to spread the word about your brand.
• Repurpose your blog to multiple small contents and promote it on social media. For example, Social Bakers, an AI-powered social media marketing tool, uses Instagram to advertise its content and drive traffic to its website.
• Leverage Q&A sites like Quora to share your content to the audience that is interested in your industry.
• Promote your content to different groups on social media. For instance, make it part of your content marketing strategy to join industry-specific groups on Facebook and LinkedIn to widen your reach.

6. Measure and Optimize

It is essential to measure the results of your content marketing strategy. You will need to go back to the goals you specified in the first step.

Check whether you have achieved those goals or are at least near to accomplishing them. If not, it's time to revisit your content marketing plan and determine where you are going wrong. Are you producing quality content? Was your content marketing effort high quality but targeted to the wrong audience? Did your content marketing plan miss an important step somewhere along the way? Did you optimize all of your channels for search engine optimization?

Apart from your goals, focus on these metrics to determine the success of your content marketing plan success:

• organic traffic;
• website ranking on search engines;
• lead quality;
• social media engagement;
• conversion rate; and
• quality and quantity of backlinks.

Compare these metrics to the previous period - before you started content marketing - and see if there's an increase in them. If yes, you are going in the right direction. If not, optimize your content marketing strategy. For example, go back to your content audit and look for previously missed insights. Additionally, scan user-generated comments on every blog post.

Final Thoughts

Developing a content marketing strategy is a constant process that every business must invest in to gain a competitive edge as they seek potential customers. For startups, employing the best content marketing strategy is key to increasing sales and establishing an excellent online reputation.

Follow the six steps mentioned above to create a robust content marketing plan to take your startup to the next level. Maybe set aside some downtime to peruse a few Content Marketing Institute articles relevant to your business. Last but not least, follow the best practices of content marketing to get the most of your content marketing strategy.

The post 6 Step Guide To Create A Winning Content Marketing Plan appeared first on RELEVANCE.

Content marketing costs 62% less and generates three times as many leads as traditional marketing.

Here are five ways startups can generate leads using content marketing:

1. Create Lead Magnet Content

Lead magnet refers to offering an incentive to potential customers in exchange for their personal information like an email address.

Here are some of the most reliable types of lead magnet content for startups:

• Ebooks: These types of content offer in-depth knowledge about a specific topic to readers. For example, Hubspot offers tons of ebooks for free in exchange for details like name, email, phone number, and website URL.

• Original research reports: People always look for the latest research reports. Make sure to conduct research and offer the report for free to your target audience.
• Infographics: Create infographics full of facts and statistics in the form of a lead magnet. For example, Satmetrix releases research reports in the form of infographics. However, to get access to it, you will need to fill in your personal details, such as name, business email, phone number, etc.

• Free courses: This is yet another great way to attract potential customers. Create educational videos (or written content) on something that your ideal customers are most interested in learning.
• Free templates: Offer downloadable, interactive templates to make it easier for your target audience to do their work. For example, if you are in the digital marketing business, you can give templates related to email marketing, SEO reporting, or a social media calendar.

2. Host Webinars

When it comes to generating leads, webinars can prove very effective because of their high perceived value. Besides, webinars are easily accessible as compared to traditional seminars, thereby attracting more leads.

Follow the best practices while conducting webinars to generate more leads:

• Address your ideal customer’s biggest pain points in the webinar.
• Promote your webinar at least three to four weeks before the day of the event.
• Leave some time for a question and answer session in your webinar. 92% of webinar attendees want a live Q&A session at the end of the webinar.
• Follow up with participants to check how their experience was with the webinar and if they wish to access the offline version of the event.
• Use webinar software, the best of which allows you to automate email marketing (to promote the event), supports chat functionality and offers split-screen features to add co-presenters.

3. Use Interactive Content

Interactive content refers to the content that requires input from the readers. Quizzes are one the examples of interactive content that you can use to generate leads. You can then ask users for their email addresses to send the quiz results to them.

Here are some more types of interactive content for lead generation:

• Run a contest and offer your customers something for participation. One of the most recent examples of this is the OnePlus Nord PopUp Contest. To buy the OnePlus Nord before the official release date, customers need to create an avatar and share it on Instagram with the #NordPopUp. In the end, OnePlus asks users to share their email addresses so they can inform them if they win an invitation code to early access to the sale.

• Create a tool related to your industry that you think would be beneficial for your target audience. For example, if you are in digital marketing, you can create a calculator that helps customers predict the ROI of their ad campaigns.
• Create interactive infographics that provide valuable information to your target audience quickly. It also gives the flexibility of exploring the data in detail to the viewers.

4. Publish Highly-Valuable Blog Posts

Blog posts help educate your target audience and demonstrate your expertise in the industry. This is essential, especially for startups who need to convince prospects to choose them over other big companies.

Here are some of the qualities that every highly valuable and converting blog post has:

• An enticing headline: Ensure that your content’s headline is compelling enough to make potential customers click on it.
• Actionable tips: Remember, your ideal customers are looking for solutions to their problems. Give them solutions that can be implemented instantly.
• Relevant visuals: Publishing text-only content makes the blog boring. Make sure it has suitable visuals that make your posts more engaging.
• Links to high-quality resources: Add links to external (and internal) valuable posts on the topic. This makes your content more useful for your target audience.
• Is not sales-oriented: It might be compelling to add your company or product details in the blogs you publish. But, the highly-converting contents are just the opposite. They focus solely on adding value to the reader’s life.

Also, make sure each blog post has an option that allows readers to subscribe to your newsletter.

Tip: Create blog posts related to the topics you have covered on the lead magnet to encourage readers to download it.

5. Distribute Content Through the Right Channels

Now that you have created highly-converting content, it’s time to distribute them. If it doesn’t reach your ideal customers, all your efforts will go in vain.

However, it is crucial to choose the right distribution channel. By “right,” I mean the platforms your ideal customers are using.

Here are some ways and channels you can distribute your content:

• Send it to your email subscribers to nurture them until they convert.
• Repurpose the content and share them on social media (along with a link) to drive customers to your website.
• Run paid ads to widen your reach and get more people to view your content.
• Consider Quora marketing. Answer the questions related to your content and add a link at the end for users interested in learning more about the topic.
• Consider re-publishing your content in “Medium,” along with a link to your website.

Final Thoughts

Generating high-quality leads isn’t tough, especially when you have a solid content marketing strategy in place. Follow the five tactics discussed in this article to generate leads using content marketing. Don’t forget to measure each channel’s performance to determine what’s working the best for your business. Happy Lead Generation!

The post 5 Ways To Generate Leads Using Content Marketing appeared first on RELEVANCE.

According to Statista, more than 3.6 billion people are using social media, and 3.5 billion people own smartphones in 2020. With such huge numbers, businesses cannot ignore the power of text and social messaging marketing to promote their content.

Here are five ways to promote your content via text and social messaging apps.

1. Identify the Right Social Media Platforms

The first step to making the most of messaging marketing is identifying the right platforms for your business.

Find out which social networks your ideal customers use. One way to do so is by looking at your existing numbers. Check on which social media platforms you have the maximum followers. Test social messaging apps on those networks first and then migrate to other platforms slowly.

Also, check which social networks your competitors are using. This would help you decide which messaging apps to use.

2. Use Facebook Messenger To Deliver New Content

Consider promoting content via text and social messaging apps similar to email marketing. Just like you send newsletters to your subscribers, and share content with your followers and leads through messaging.

In an experiment, Hubspot found that Facebook Messenger is a better alternative to email marketing. Delivering content via Messenger resulted in a 242% increase in open rate and a 609% increment in click-through rate.

When delivering new content via text and social messaging, follow these tips to get the most of it:

• Let users decide how frequently they want to receive content updates from you.
• Unlike emails, you have a text limit in messaging. Therefore, make sure to pick the best sentences from your content to entice readers into clicking on the link.
• Allow receivers to unsubscribe to your messages at any time.
• Just like you segment your email subscribers, divide your followers based on the type of content they engage with. This will prevent you from annoying them with posts that don’t interest them.

3. Leverage Text Messaging to Deliver Personalized Content

Text messaging is a great way to share the right content at the right time. Business texting gives you an advantage over your competitors. It is a primary communication channel for several businesses. With the right steps, we can use this channel for content marketing.

Here are some tips to follow:

• Create a qualified SMS list containing people who are genuinely interested in your products or services.
• Schedule messages when your audience is most likely to click on them.
• Send personalized content recommendations to customers based on their browsing history.
• Your message should be a medium to build relationships.
• Reward loyal customers so that they pass on your message to others.
• Always track your performance and try to optimize your messages for better responses.

4. Train Messaging Bot To Pull Relevant Information From Existing Content

At times, people don’t want to read the whole content to find solutions to their problems, they want a short and quick answer. That’s where content repurposing can help.

With a conversational approach to content promotion, you can revive a specific part of the text from existing content that’s relevant to the user’s request.

As you can see in the below example, a user asks a question to the bot, “can I create Dialogflow bots for Whats App as well?” The bot then pulls out a paragraph and bullet points from the existing content, explaining the company’s product. When the user requests more information, it pulls out a YouTube video (uploaded by the company) to better solve their query.

Source

This way, all your customers and leads will have access to your best content and not just the most recent.

However, you might need to train the social messaging bot before it can pull relevant information from existing content.

5. Apply Artificial Intelligence To Help Followers Find the Most Relevant Content Themselves

Besides repurposing your content to solve a user’s query, you can also use social messaging apps to let them find the most relevant ones themselves.

For example, Whole Foods Market uses Facebook Messenger chatbots to help its followers find recipes using food emojis. As soon as someone sends an emoji (or text), the chatbot pulls out recipes related to it. Since it offers content in a slider (along with images and a small description), it makes it easier for users to pick the best ones on their own.

Source

Please note that letting customers find the content themselves using text messaging might be a little difficult. They won’t be able to see a preview or a slider to choose the most relevant content. As a result, it will lead to several clicks back and forth, hampering the overall user experience.

However, by asking a few more questions, you can narrow down their needs and deliver the best content.

For example, when a user requests a vegan recipe, ask if they are looking for soup, fast food, smoothie, or salad. Then send the links to recipes based on the user’s response.

Final Thoughts

Content marketing helps prospects find you in the first place and gives them reasons to stay with you. Share timely updates and content with your followers on social media to build trust and nurture them. The five strategies mentioned above can help you begin with and excel at using messaging apps to improve your content marketing game. Happy Content Marketing!

The post Boost Content Marketing With Text And Social Messaging Apps appeared first on RELEVANCE.

45% of businesses struggle with developing content that resonates with their target audience. Hence, you need to implement content marketing strategies to generate a steady flow of organic traffic for your website.

Here are the six best ways for small businesses to improve their content marketing efforts:

1. Repurpose Your Videos as Webinars

Webinars are an excellent way to boost your content marketing efforts. It enables you to engage with your target audience and generate sales.

Another benefit of repurposing your videos as webinars is that it is cost-effective as you don’t have to write the script or create webinars from scratch.

Here is how to repurpose videos as webinars:

Step 1: Determine the topics to conduct webinars. It could be educational or product-related.

Step 2: Define your target audience. Is the webinar for beginners or experts? Depending on your audience, you will have to pick different videos.

Step 3: Combine the videos that have performed well, as those are the ones that best resonate with your target audience. For example, if you are conducting a webinar on “email marketing for eCommerce,” repurpose the videos that talk about email marketing and are specific to “eCommerce.”

Step 4: Choose the right webinar software. It allows you to automate the whole webinar, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business. As such, it's best to compare the top webinar platforms for their pros and cons before choosing one, so that you make sure you get one that suits your business and the funnels you intend to build. Spend at least a week or two trying them out, and you'll avoid making common beginner webinar mistakes.

2. Use Email Marketing to Increase Engagement

Email marketing helps increase your blog’s reach and drive traffic to your website.

Follow these steps to make the most of email marketing:

• Leverage email automation to ensure your subscribers receive notifications every time you publish new content.
• Go beyond just personalizing with the recipient’s first name. Analyze customers’ interests by observing their email behavior. Check what kind of emails they engage with the most. Then use the data to send relevant content and increase engagement.
• Use “preview text” to provide more information about the email and entice users into opening it.
• Send old blog posts to new subscribers to engage with them from day one.

Email marketing software can help you create new campaigns in under ten minutes. Built especially for non-experts, Weave aims to help small businesses leverage email marketing without the knowledge of writing or graphic designing.

3. Convert Your Videos to Podcasts

Podcasts are yet another popular way to up your content marketing game. The number of podcast listeners is expected to reach  164 million by 2024.

Here’s how you can convert your videos into podcasts:

Step 1: Determine the topic of the podcast. One way to do so is by analyzing what your competitors are doing. I am not saying you should copy them, but checking the topics on which they are podcasting can give you a fair idea of what you should be doing.

Step 2: Find the best-performing videos related to your topic across channels.

Step 3: Eliminate the content that requires visuals to understand. For example, you might have videos that show graphs to explain the context.

Step 4: Convert the videos to audio. Tools like Zamzar can help you do that.

Step 5: Combine the audio as per the sequence. Avoid haphazardly mixing them. Your podcast should make sense when listened to from the start.

If you want to save time and streamline your audio production process, automate the podcast uploading process. There are a few platforms that make this incredibly easy. As podcasting continues to take over the content marketing world, automation is key to keeping pace with your competition.

4. Create Infographics

Infographics are a graphical representation of information. They are easy to consume and share.

Here’s how you can create infographics that enhance your content marketing game:

Step 1: Determine the goal of your infographic. It should address and solve only one of your audience’s problems. For example, how to get rid of bad eating habits.

Step 2: Identify who the infographic is for. There are five possible audiences for infographics:

• Novice
• Generalist
• Managerial
• Expert
• Executive

Your audience will define how advanced your infographic will be. For example, if you want to target a novice, you will need data whose meaning is more evident at first reading. However, if you are going to focus on experts, you can use industry jargon or advanced tips.

Step 3: Depending on your audience, organize the data that you will use in your infographic. You can either use your own research or use third-party resources.

Step 4: Now that you have collected all the information, design an infographic that works explicitly for the type of content you are presenting. For example, if you want to educate your readers, use a pictograph. If you are going to compare, use the bar or pie charts. If you want to show a step-by-step guide, use a flowchart.

Step 5: The last step is to customize your infographic. Add a catchy headline. Experiment with different colors, themes, and fonts to determine which one looks the best.

5. Leverage Native Advertising

Native advertising refers to the use of paid ads in a way that matches the platform on which it is published. These ads can take the form of any type of content, article, blog, infographics, or video.

Native ads can increase the purchase intent by 18% as compared to banner ads.

Let the visitor know it is paid content. This ensures transparency and builds trust with your target audience.

Partner with the top ad networks to increase your reach and make sure your native ads are mobile-friendly.

This post about ad fraud is a great example of native advertising. At the top of the content, it says, “promoted from Integral Ad Science.” IAS is a company that develops technologies to make the advertising ecosystem safer and fraud-free. The content educates the readers about ad fraud and encourages them to download a whitepaper containing in-depth information about the phenomenon and how to combat it.

6. Test, Measure, and Optimize

Lastly, measure your content marketing results. The key metrics you should be analyzing are:

• User behavior (page views, unique visitors, page depth, bounce rate, and traffic sources)
• Engagement rate (likes, comments, shares, and mentions).
• SEO success (organic traffic, backlinks, dwell time, and rankings).
• Revenue (existing leads converted, new leads generated, conversion rate, cost per acquisition, and return on investment).

You can find information on these KPIs in your Google Analytics. Compare the results from the previous period. If you don’t notice any improvement in these metrics, it’s time to optimize your content marketing strategy.

Also, check how many people are attending webinars and listening to your podcasts. Do you see an increase in the number over time? Or is it declining? If it is constant or descending, it’s time to improve the quality and change the topics of webinars and podcasts.

Final Thoughts

However, as a small business, it might be difficult to improve your content marketing strategy, basically due to limited resources. The six strategies mentioned above are easy to implement and can help to boost your content marketing game.

The post 6 Best Ways to Improve Small Business Content Marketing appeared first on RELEVANCE.

Websites that leverage content marketing receive more traffic and have higher conversion rates.

Without giving it a second thought, you should apply the power of content marketing to boost your branding, acquire new customers, and even generate repeat sales.

Let’s have a look at the top five ecommerce content marketing strategies that drive the maximum ROI.

1. Move Beyond Traditional Blog Posts to Interactive Storytelling

54% of online users don’t trust branded content. Moving towards interactive storytelling can help create a deep emotional connection with your audience.

Our brain loves stories, and a memorable brand tale is what consumers need to feel connected to your business.

Once your audience starts to trust your brand, they are more likely to purchase from you. The best stories are the ones that the readers can relate to.

Yeti is a company that manufactures coolers and drinkware for outdoor activities.

Yeti is a great example of a brand leveraging the power of interactive storytelling. It creates videos that illustrate the stories of hunting, fishing, and other outdoor adventures that make their audience relate to it.

In their video story, they fit their product naturally. It doesn’t look promotional, yet it does the work.

The following questions can help you find the right kind of stories for your audience.

• Who are your customers?
• What do they care about (adventures, traveling, comfort, etc.)?
• What do they do in their free time (shop, read, watch movies, etc.)?
• What social causes do they care about?
• How does your product help them?

You can find answers to most of these questions via email surveys, questionnaires, and by interviewing your existing customers.

You can share your stories through different types of content, including blog posts, GIFs, videos, and a series of images.

2. Create Epic Content Pieces

Epic content refers to anything that makes people stop everything they’re doing to read/watch and share it.

Epic content pieces help your audience solve their problem or achieve their desired result. In the process, these types of content also increase awareness about your business.

Epic content is highly useful, engaging, and makes people bookmark it. Another characteristic of epic content is that it is comprehensive.

[bctt tweet="When creating epic content, begin with identifying one specific aspect of a larger problem that your business helps your customer solve." username="relevance"]

For instance, if you sell male grooming products, a good topic for you would be “men’s grooming: an ultimate guide”. Make sure to include everything about men’s grooming in the post.

Also, conduct extensive research on your topic. Research makes your content accurate and trustworthy.

This article from ProFlowers is a great example of epic content. They’ve compiled a list of the right type of flowers that fulfills different needs. The table (and the image) for each flower makes it easier to find the perfect one based on your requirements.

3. Leverage The Power of Social Listening To Create Content Using Real Data

Social listening is a great way to determine what your prospects are expecting from you in real-time.

Social listening also lets you identify what your competitors are lacking, and if any of their customers are not satisfied. This is yet another opportunity to find your audience’s problems and desires, which you can capitalize on content marketing.

Social listening tools like Sprout Social or Hootsuite will gather mentions that include keywords and find out the context of discussion related to your business.

For example, if you sell sports shoes, then you should monitor phrases like “gym shoes”, “running shoes”, “running”, etc.

Bonus: You can use tools like Omniconvert to test the effectiveness of your content based on data. Omniconvert’s experiment analysis feature will provide you with real-time insights on how your content is performing so you can stick with the best.

4. Generate Content Ideas From Amazon Reviews

Amazon reviews are yet another great place to learn about your target audience’s pain points.

There are thousands of reviews under each product category in Amazon, making it a perfect spot to generate content ideas.

Reviews like this are an excellent source of voice-of-customer data. You won’t only figure out the pain points of your target audience. You’ll also learn what they expect when reading a content related to a specific product.

To find reviews on Amazon, just enter your product in the search bar and click on any of the top products. Another great way to find reviews like this is by changing the category to books. Amazon has millions of books, so the chances of finding one for the products you sell is high.

5. Start Creating Shoppable Videos

Video content marketing has always remained powerful. In the recent age, shoppable videos help you bring ecommerce and content closer in a seamless, engaging, and interactive viewing environment.

Customers see a variety of products in a shoppable video and can click on it. When clicked, the shopper will be redirected to the product’s page where they can buy it. It reduces the number of steps a consumer takes to buy a specific product.

Estée Lauder, for example, uses shoppable videos to their advantage. They created a video on “how to take care of your skin before going to bed”. The video shows their product being used along with a link to buy it on the top-left corner.

This is great because this video not only teaches something to the audience but also allows them to buy the product quickly.

Bonus: Tools like Wideo can help you create shoppable videos. You have the option to insert CTA buttons or sign-up forms. Add a URL to the interactive options present in the sidebar, and your video will be ready.

What’s Next?

Creating content to boost the ROI of your ecommerce business isn’t easy. But with the right tactics, you can drive more sales and increase the net profit. The five strategies mentioned above are tried and tested to increase the ROI of ecommerce. Happy ecommerce content marketing!

The post 5 Best Ecommerce Content Marketing Strategies To Maximize ROI appeared first on RELEVANCE.

It can bring thousands of clicks to your site, leading to increased sales and desired results.

Every webmaster wishes to get their website content on Google News.

There are just a few essential tips to keep in mind, and you, too, can be a part of this massive source of targeted traffic.

1. Publish Newsworthy Content

Firstly, you need to understand what types of content are published in Google News to determine your chances.

The most frequently asked question is - does the site have to be a News site to be in Google News? Well, not really. Google treats content as News that has noteworthy information or tells about recent or important events.

So, Google News loves sites or blogs that consistently come up with informative content on a timely basis. This way, if your site has newsworthy content to interest your audience, say about your industry or business, your chances of being indexed are higher, even if your website is not a news site.

Take a look at the Macrumors site, which is not entirely a news website but is listed in Google News.

In the case of Google, honesty is the only policy as they strictly adhere to standard journalism practices. However, you don’t need to be a professional; it is about your thought process.

Unlike copywriting practices that are done to promote a business before the target audience, journalism requires a straight focus on the story and not on promotion. So, be honest with what you report along with the style and the substance of the article.

2. Use The Publisher Center

Publisher Center is a very useful tool to get surfaced in Google News.

Share your content with Google News with RSS feeds, website URLs, or videos, using the Publisher Center tool. It uses a specialized web crawler to find your site and helps your article be recognized as News.

Please note, surfacing or ranking in Google News is not guaranteed by the Publisher Center.

Though it is not necessary to use the Publisher Center tool, it provides certain benefits.

• You can customize the section of your publication and content in Google News. Also, you can design and brand as per your requirements.
• You can use your content area to run ads as Google News supports ad serving, even premium solution ads, and it is done via Google Ad Manager. An option of paywalls is also there, which can be used through Subscribe with Google.
• You get an added advantage if your publication is with business terms. Google News has its merchandising team, who select such publications independently for Newsstand depending on certain things like the timing of promotion, quality of user experience, and relevance to the promotional theme.

3. Publish Fresh Content

Google News is programmed to list fresh news articles.

As said earlier, News is what is happening around, and therefore it has to be fresh.

Anything published should be based on current affairs so that it matches the level of originality of your site.

Prefer producing only recent and high-quality content in your feed that complies with Google News content policies. This way, your site automatically becomes eligible for the Google News app and website.

4. Avoid Duplicate Content

Many people embed thumbnails or the same image in multiple sizes, or slightly different cropped images in their feed. Little do they realize that they may all appear in the article and ruin the quality of their post.

The same goes for the articles. To identify new articles Google’s system uses the <guid> tag in the feed.

If an article is updated on your website and it generates a new <guid> tag, the two different versions of the articles in the edition are displayed, giving an impression of duplicity. In order to avoid this, make sure no new ID is generated for article updates in your feed.

5. Make Sure Your Site is Safe For Browsing

Google drops sites from the search results that are unsafe for browsing. This drop is temporary until the site again becomes safe from browsing.

Sites that regularly face issues related to malware, site downtime, and site security, then you risk your site getting dropped from Google News.

Make sure to regularly check your site for safe browsing using the Google safe browsing tool, monitor your site uptime using these free services, and get an SSL certificate for your website.

6. Check for Missing Media

While embedding media to the content, make sure you adhere to the feed guidelines.

Google News strictly cares for its readers, and therefore, they ensure they provide quality for better user experience.

So, always check for broken slideshows and the missing media in Podcasts, articles referring to audio, and articles referring to a video.

7. Prepare Well Formatted Articles

A well-formatted article is easier to read, retains the interest of the reader, and creates a good feeling. It is all possible because the article is displayed correctly.

Now, how can you format your article?

• Emphasize proper character encoding.
• Break the paragraphs and make them shorter. 2-3 lines of paragraphs are quite popular. Also, there should be a break between headers, sub-headers, and paragraphs.
• Place the image captions near the associated images.
• Make your content spelling and grammatical error-free.
• Lastly, make sure that your content must comply with Google News policies.

8. Update Your Site Regularly

To boost the possibility of being added to Google News, you must post multiple news stories every day. For this, you would need writers to create new stories professionally and submit them the same day.

The writers also have to be trained and should be aware of the journalistic approach that Google News follows for stories. Additionally, there has to be an author page on your site to introduce each one in the writer’s team.

Besides, for bylined articles, it must have a short bio of the writer at the end, along with professional achievements and an email address.

This is the part of Google’s requirement where they ask every news site for a list of authors responsible for reporting stories on their website. Google also asks to submit contact details for each author while applying.

Conclusion

After you have read all the tips, it is time to implement them and get the desired results. However, before proceeding any further, it is crucial that you first create a route map and the way of approach.

Be patient and carefully observe other news sites and their activities. While the listed tips will help you achieve your target, your observance will be an added benefit.

The post How to Get Your Website Content Appear on Google News? appeared first on RELEVANCE.