Author: Wasiq Naeem

  • What is a Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score, and why does it matter?

    What is a Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score, and why does it matter?

    Successful businesses always seek new ways to improve their performance even when they seem to be performing excellently. However, companies might not improve the way they should if they don’t get feedback from their customers. That’s where CSAT score help them.

    Fortunately for all businesses, customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores can help them know their customers’ minds. This article will teach you things a business-oriented mind should know about customer satisfaction scores. The items you will find here include the following:

    • What is a Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score?
    • What Types of Metrics Measure Customer Satisfaction?
    • How to Calculate CSAT Score
    • Top Tips for Conducting a Customer Satisfaction Survey
    • How to Increase Customer Satisfaction Score?
    • Benchmark for Customer Satisfaction Score
    • What brands can do with Customer Satisfaction Scores
    • Why does CSAT Score Matter?

    Let’s start right away:

    What is a Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score?

    Customer satisfaction score is a metric that measures the satisfaction customers derive from services or goods. Businesses use this metric to check whether their goods and services meet customers’ expectations.

    As a business owner, you can obtain raw data from simple customer satisfaction surveys. After that, you can calculate the CSAT score from the raw data. Customers often come across surveys after purchasing goods and services, but they come across them a few times before they complete a purchase.

    What Types of Metrics Measure Customer Satisfaction?

    CSAT score isn’t the only metric that measures customer satisfaction. A few other metrics that measure customer satisfaction include the following:

    • Net Promoter Score (NPS)

    NPS measures customer satisfaction as well as their loyalty to a business.

    Customer Service Satisfaction (CSS)

    Just as the name implies, this metric measures the satisfaction customers derive from services.

    • Customer Health Score (CHS)

    This metric measures customer satisfaction and also indicate customers’ willingness to continue patronizing a particular business.

    • Customer reviews

    Customers can use reviews to express their satisfaction with a business.

    customer reviews

    The image above shows an example of a survey for obtaining a customer satisfaction score. Customers can complete this particular survey within a few seconds since they only need to tick on the number of stars representing their level of satisfaction.

    How to Calculate CSAT Score

    Now that you know what customer satisfaction score is and its importance in increasing business growth and sustainability, you may wonder how businesses derive the score. Let’s show you how to calculate customer satisfaction scores. You should know that companies calculate CSAT scores using the data they obtain from customer satisfaction surveys.

    csat score formula

    The best time customers should answer CSAT surveys are as follows:

    • After purchasing or testing a product
    • After interacting with customer support
    • After attending a webinar
    • After a business change, one of its major strategies

    CSAT surveys usually contain a few rating scale questions. The scale is generally between 1 to 5. Scale 5 and 4 are positive. Scale 3 is neutral. Scale 2 and 1, on the other hand, are negative.

    Based on the scale we just mentioned, the CSAT score calculation goes thus:

    CSAT score in percentage =  X 100%

    The example below illustrates the CSAT calculation.

    Company X created a survey containing the following scales for 30 customers.

    • Very satisfied
    • Satisfied
    • Somewhat satisfied
    • Not satisfied
    • Very dissatisfied

    If the business delights 20 customers, satisfies 4 customers, but fails to satisfy 6 customers, the CSAT score of company X is as follows:

    Company X’s CSAT score = X 100% = 80%

    What Is a Good Customer Satisfaction Score?

    The average customer satisfaction score and customer satisfaction net promoter score vary across sectors. But does that mean the CSAT score that businesses consider to be good also varies across sectors? A good customer satisfaction score for all sectors is 75% or higher. Any score below 75% is bad.

    Top Tips for Conducting Customer Satisfaction Survey

    Are you aware that some businesses don’t get responses from many customers when they conduct a survey? If you are aware, do you know that some factors are responsible for the inadequate response? We will tell you some top tips to encourage people to participate in a customer satisfaction survey. Here are those tips:

    1.      Keep the survey short and straightforward

    Nobody likes answering complex and lengthy surveys. Don’t include unnecessary phrases in your questions. Also, you should avoid asking too many questions. You may seem to have many questions to ask from your customers, but you shouldn’t ask every question that comes to your mind. Instead, it would be best to filter out some questions after coming up with a long list of questions.

    2.      Don’t ask too many questions at once

    Customers may become confused if you ask too many questions at a time in surveys. For instance, a question which says “will you like to test our product and recommend it to your friend?” isn’t good enough. While the question may appear straightforward, some customers may not be willing to answer with a yes or no.

    Some customers might be willing to test the product but feel reluctant to recommend it. Others might even not have a chance to try it but are eager to recommend it to friends. These two different categories of customers can’t simply answer the question with yes or no. You can avoid issues of this kind by asking only one question at a time.

    3.      Don’t include leading questions in surveys

    Leading questions can influence customers’ decisions while answering a survey. While this fact may seem to help businesses get positive feedbacks, it makes the data obtained from surveys unreliable. The purpose of a customer satisfaction survey is to check whether a business satisfies customers and not make customers declare satisfaction.

    Besides, leading questions may appear like pride, making such questions sound irritating to some customers. Kindly check this question to see an example of a leading question. “Our services are greater than your expectations. What can you say about that?” We recommend that you avoid questions like this because it already suggests an opinion to readers.

    4.      Reward survey respondents

    You may not be able to get many responses if you don’t reward survey respondents. Having many respondents allows you to obtain reliable data because you’ll have lots of answers to analyze. Some of the rewards you can offer include discounts and giveaways.

    How to Increase Customer Satisfaction Score?

    You shouldn’t feel bad if you own a business and you notice that the CSAT score of your business is meager. Instead, you should work hard and smartly to increase it. After all, the purpose of a CSAT score is to identify areas that need improvement. The things that we recommend doing to improve customer satisfaction scores are:

    1.      Work on complaints from customers

    There are lots of things you can learn from your customers. If you take your time to examine the things customers complained about and fix the complaints, your business’s CSAT score will increase when you conduct another CSAT survey. Your customers will also be happy when you select things they complain about. Listening to customer complaints and fixing them can raise your CSAT score in the next survey and satisfy customers. Convin automates call center quality checks, ensuring steady service and better CSAT by efficiently monitoring calls.

    customer satisfaction

    2.      Work on your customer service

    Most customers won’t give negative feedback through a customer satisfaction survey if your business’s customer service is excellent. Good customer service allows you to identify your customers’ problems and solve them as soon as possible.

    Besides, some of the negative feedbacks that affect CSAT scores aren’t related to the overall business performance; instead, they relate to a customer service experience. Customer service representatives are like business ambassadors, so customers will likely give negative feedback through the CSAT survey if the representatives don’t satisfy them.

    You can dramatically improve your customer service experience with the help of customer support tools that are readily available in the market. Equipping your support team with such tools will let them interact with customers and respond to their queries faster, ensuring a timely resolution. Another tool businesses are adopting is an AI answering service, which helps handle customer calls more efficiently without adding pressure to the support team.

    3.      Increase the quality of the things you offer to customers

    Low-quality products and services can cause your business’s CSAT score to be meager. As a business owner, you should evaluate your products and services if you notice that your company has a low customer satisfaction score. Even if your customers were once delighted with your business, you still need to seek ways to improve your products and services.

    It’s important to note that customers’ expectations change over time. As a result, your business may not satisfy your customers forever if you fail to improve as time goes by.

    4.      Build a strong relationship with your customers

    There are several reasons businesses should build a relationship with their customers. One of those reasons is to identify what customers desire and grant those desires. Successful companies don’t wait for things to go wrong before interacting with their customers; instead, they interact with them all the time.

    Businesses will have the privilege to know exactly what their customers think about their products and services when they maintain a good relationship. Customers are unlikely to show dissatisfaction for a business that maintains a good relationship with them. Some brands even use humor and meme marketing to promote cordial relationships with customers.

    Even if a few issues arise, customers are likely to be patient until businesses resolve the problems rather than show dissatisfaction. However, we don’t encourage companies to allow matters to rise and hope for positive attitudes from customers.

    5.      Use modern technology

    Modern technology can help you satisfy your customers better than ever. For instance, technology can help you track the things your customers want. Also, technology enables you to serve your customers maximally.

    Benchmark for Customer Satisfaction Score

    As a business owner, you might want to know the ideal CSAT score to target. The CSAT score indeed varies by sector. Check the table below to see the CSAT benchmark for various sectors in the US this year.

    SectorBenchmark for CSAT score
    Manufacturing sector (non-durable goods)79.2%
    Manufacturing sector (durable goods)78.3%
    Accommodation and Food Services77.9%
    Finance & Insurance76.0%
    Transportation sector75.6%
    Retail Trade75.5%
    Telecommunications and Information72.2%
    Energy Utilities72.1%
    Health Care and Social Assistance71.7%
    Public Administration/Government63.8%

    Businesses shouldn’t stop taking actions to improve their customer satisfaction scores even if they are above the benchmark. The benchmark should serve only as a reference and not a limit. There are many companies whose CSAT scores are higher than their sector’s benchmark.

    In 2020, For instance, the customer satisfaction score of Amazon.com was 79%, even when the benchmark for retail trade was 75.5%.

    What Brands Can Do with Customer Satisfaction Score

    Although the customer satisfaction score is primarily for measuring customer satisfaction, brands can use the score for other things. Here are some of the things brands can do with customer satisfaction scores:

    1.      For building brand reputation

    People love doing business with reputable brands. Fortunately, high CSAT scores can help brands build a strong reputation. For instance, a brand with a CSAT score of 90% will be attractive to everyone.

    Even if the public doesn’t believe the message from a brand’s marketing team, a high CSAT score will convince the people to do business with the brand.

    customer satisfaction index

    The customer who tweeted the message above referred to Amazon’s customer satisfaction score while promoting Amazon on Twitter. This type of massage can help Amazon build a solid reputation.

    2.      For developing a new business strategy

    Brands can come up with a new strategy after analyzing their CSAT score. Some brands conduct customer satisfaction surveys primarily for this purpose. For instance, a brand that wants to introduce a new feature can ask customers to test the unique quality and rate it. If a brand notices that the new feature has a low CSAT score, it can create a different digital marketing strategy.

    3.      For training employees

    Customer satisfaction score gives brands the privilege to monitor their overall performance and the performance of employees. For instance, the CSAT surveys customers usually come across after speaking with customer service generally mean to train customer service representatives.

    There are lots of things employees can learn from customers. They can learn how to treat customers, relate with them, satisfy them, and lots more. Also, they will understand how their efforts affect customers. Additionally, offering branded corporate gifts can further strengthen the relationship between employees and customers, leaving a lasting positive impression.

    4.      For tracking brand’s progress

    Brands can use the CSAT score to track progress, especially when combining the score with other tracking metrics. Their high customer satisfaction score can identify successful businesses. If a brand that once had a high CSAT score suddenly starts noticing a decrease in the score, it means something is wrong somewhere. We recommend that brands compare their current CSAT scores to the past ones to see whether they are progressing or not. Such comparison can motivate brands to improve as time travels.

    Why does CSAT Score Matter?

    CSAT score isn’t just a metric that has nothing to do with the success of a business. Instead, it helps companies to succeed, mainly when they use it appropriately. Some of the important reasons for customer satisfaction scores are:

    1.      It helps businesses monitor their performance

    Sales determine the success of businesses, and customers are the ultimate target for selling the goods or services. A good company should perform according to customers’ expectations. Most business owners find it hard to tell whether their business is performing according to customers’ expectations. However, the smart ones use the CSAT score to get performance feedback from their customers. Check the tweet below to see what Walmart intends to do with input from customers.

    customer feedback

    Walmart uses feedback to monitor and improve its performance.

    2.      It helps businesses make the best choice

    All kinds of businesses make decisions almost all the time. Sometimes the choices that companies make don’t favor their customers. But how can a company know whether its options incline its customers?

    Luckily, it isn’t hard to know since businesses can see their customers’ responses from customer satisfaction surveys. For instance, if a business suddenly introduces a new feature or product, it would be best for such a company to find out whether customers are happy about the newly introduced feature/product.

    If the customer satisfaction score reveals that customers are happy about the new feature, the business will know that its decision to introduce a new feature is good. However, if the customer satisfaction score reveals that customers are unhappy about the part or unique quality of the product, it can reverse its decision immediately.

    3.      It can serve as motivation

    In the current age of technology, feedback is the key player. Positive feedback can motivate a business to perform better. Although one may assume that a low CSAT score kills motivation, it drives companies to improve those areas highlighted by their customers.

    4.      It helps businesses determine their success

    CSAT scores can influence customers’ decisions. Customers are always willing to patronize businesses that are possible through high customer satisfaction scores. A low customer satisfaction score, on the other hand, repels customers. Of course, businesses need customers to be happy and satisfied.

    5.      It can make a business discoverable on the internet

    At this modern time, the majority of the individuals buying products or services seek potential sellers on the internet. Search engines never suggest all available sellers to searchers. Instead, they offer just the top sellers to searchers. It might surprise you to realize that customer satisfaction is among the full criteria search engines use for suggesting businesses to people.

    Bottom line          

    As the name implies, a customer satisfaction score is a metric for determining customers’ satisfaction with a business. Customer satisfaction score isn’t just a metric without real benefits; instead, it’s a metric that comes with lots of benefits. Innovative brands can even use it to market themselves, develop new strategies, and train staff.  If you are a business owner, we recommend taking the customer satisfaction score seriously and enjoying the benefits of a high CSAT score.

  • 5 Expert Tips For Optimizing Your eCommerce With Videos

    5 Expert Tips For Optimizing Your eCommerce With Videos

    It’s only getting more and more crowded in the eCommerce industry out there. Online shopping has always been popular — but since the pandemic strike, now it’s become people’s favorite way to buy things they need.

    Today, at least 2.14 billion people shop online (equivalent to 27.2% of the world’s population). And more than 24 million eCommerce sites are leaving no stone unturned to attract more customers and make them spend their money on the products.

    Now that the competition is getting bigger and your potential customers are getting pickier, how can you make your online store stand out from the crowd?

    One of the best ways to stay ahead of the competition is to optimize your online store. Yes, Your eCommerce business needs to take an SEO-friendly approach to sit on the top pages of search engine results pages.

    It might sound daunting. But, there is one SEO-friendly, engaging medium that can help you improve your eCommerce search rankings hassle-free: video content.

    So, how can you use videos to optimize your eCommerce website? Here are all the basics you need to know.

    E-Commerce Video: Why Do You Need It?

    Not only are videos well-known for their power to convey messages succinctly, but they are also a powerful tool to boost a website’s rank on search engines. According to the stats, a website with a video is 53 times more likely to reach the front page of Google.

    The reason?

    Because Google itself thinks that video is a unique multimedia format, it should come as no surprise that the world’s largest search engine loves this format and is much quicker to index it than the 1000-word text you write on your eCommerce website.

    Of course, the perk of using videos for your eCommerce marketing and optimization is so much more than that. Here are some other reasons why you should incorporate videos into your eCommerce website:

    Set the Customers Expectations

    Simply looking at product images and reading the text-heavy product descriptions are not enough to help them understand what to expect. In this case, videos can show your potential customers what your products look like in real life, making it easier for you to educate them about your product.

    Videos allow the potential customer to take a closer look at your products from different angles. Therefore, they should have a better knowledge of what your product is all about and avoid any surprises (or potential disappointment) in the future.

    Show the Products’ Fullest Potential

    Videos are an ideal medium to show how your products work and how potential customers can benefit from them. You can create explainer videos or product videos for your products to guide them using your product to its fullest potential.

    No more plain, underwhelming text-based descriptions. You can rely on videos to convey the essence of the products you sell on your eCommerce website.

    Make the Customers Stay Longer

    You can also use videos to make your potential customers spend more time on your online store. It helps you increase dwell time. And the higher dwell time you have, the higher your chances you will get to boost your eCommerce website ranking.

    Videos are so much more engaging and entertaining compared to other types of content. All the potential customers need to do is to click on the play button, and the video will deliver snackable messages to them effortlessly.

    Address Any Product-Related Concerns

    Videos also offer you a light-hearted way to generate more trust. It shows off the products in a typical box and demonstrates your value proposition. Therefore, the potential customers can be more convinced to purchase from you.

    By watching a video, potential customers can find the most answers to their questions. Therefore, they can have reasons why they need your product.

    How to Boost Your eCommerce Rank with Videos?

    Not all eCommerce videos bring and help you reap all the benefits mentioned above. You need to invest more time and effort to optimize the videos.

    Here are some handy and actionable ways to boost your eCommerce website rank with videos. This way, it would be much easier for potential customers to find your online stores.

    Do an In-Depth Keyword Research

    Just like a regular SEO practice, you will need keyword-based titles and descriptions for your eCommerce videos. Many eCommerce websites embed their videos from social media platforms like YouTube or other video hosting sites. This is where keyword-based titles and descriptions are needed.

    Make sure to choose the keyword that has low competition and a quite decent amount of volume. You can also opt for long-tail keywords to reach more specific, highly-targeted potential customers.

    Here’s an example of a keyword-based eCommerce video from Love Hair. They use “pure coconut oil” as a target keyword.

    Keep Them Short and Crispy

    Make sure you keep your eCommerce videos short and straightforward. Long-duration videos can only make your potential overwhelmed and lose interest in watching it.

    After all, no one wants to see a 10-minute video of a brand bragging about their products, right? This will lead to a higher bounce rate and harm your eCommerce SEO ranking.

    Eight seconds. That’s the time you have to grab your potential customer’s attention with your videos before you can engage them. That is why it’s crucial to include only information that brings value to your target customers.

    The sweet spot for eCommerce videos is around 2 minutes. After two minutes, potential customers tend to get distracted and move on to the next thing.

    See how Essie can give their potential customers a 1-minute how-to video to encourage them to buy their products:

    newsletter

    Optimize Videos for Mobile Users

    Do you know that younger generations (i.e., Generation X and Millennials shop online more often than older generations? Millennials make at least 60% of their purchases online. And that group age now makes more than 36% of their total purchases using mobile devices.

    Those staggering numbers are quite obvious since younger generations are mostly digital natives. In this situation, you need to make sure that your eCommerce videos are accessible for hand-held users.

    Mobile-friendly videos will help you expand your reach as it caters to mobile users. The more people click on your eCommerce website, the more likely you will gain more authority in your industry. And you know that Google will prioritize a website with high authority.

    See how Nine Line Apparel nailed their mobile responsive eCommerce video on their About Us page.

    Create Eye-Catching Thumbnails

    The thumbnail is the first thing your potential customers see when they find your video on your eCommerce website or search engine results. It’s a big deciding factor whether or not they click on your video. So, the more you create them eye-catchingly, the more people will click them.

    Video thumbnails have a direct impact on your eCommerce organic search visibility and click-through. It helps you to spark potential customers’ curiosity and even may transform their expectations of what the target URL is about.

    This key here is to give a more professional look to your video and make it more appealing to click. Make sure to make it clear and convey the content in the most effective way.

    You don’t have to go all fancy just to create catchy thumbnails. You can simply use your professionally-taken product photos just like what Bliss did for all of their product videos.

    embeded video

    Make the Content Engaging

    SEO can only get your eCommerce video to appear on your potential customers’ screen. But, it’s actually up to you to keep them engaged with your brand and move them through to the sales funnel.

    You need good, related content for this. The best way to do this is to put yourself in your potential customers’ shoes so you can think and behave like them towards the eCommerce website.

    Ask yourself, “what kind of content do I want to watch and make me spend money on the products?”

    For instance, if you want to create a product video, always make sure to highlight the benefits instead of bragging about your awesome features. And if you aim to make a brand history video for your About Us page, it’s always better to include your beginning and where you are now — avoid including any fluff and any unnecessary moments whenever possible.

    Not only will an engaging eCommerce video optimize your online store, but it will also make those potential customers come back for your content.

    See the eye-capturing and engaging video from ESQIDO. It demonstrates the easiest way of applying false lashes to get visitors’ attention and engage them right off the bat.

    ecommerce video

    Final Thoughts
    Video can be a powerful addition to your eCommerce website. One of the perks of having them on your online store is that it can boost your website presence, making it much easier for target customers to find you through the organic search for relevant keyword searches.

    When you optimize your online store, it would be much easier for you to drive more traffic to your website. This, as a result, will lead to an increase in conversion rate and revenue. After all, the more traffic you drive, the more chances you will get to convert them into paying customers, right?

    Author

    Andre Oentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order).

  • 5 tips to generate leads through cold emailing

    5 tips to generate leads through cold emailing

    Lead generation is a top priority for every organization. Cold emails have been an excellent avenue for lead generation for several brands.

    Using the right cold emailing formula, this form of lead generation can generate desired results. 

    Are you someone hoping to find the right formula to generate leads through cold emailing? 

    When you craft the perfect message and include all the elements needed, a successful cold email campaign will be your result. From warm to hot leads, results are almost guaranteed when cold emailing is undertaken in the right manner! 

    What is cold emailing? 

    The act of ‘cold emailing’ is best described as contacting a recipient without having any prior contact with the intent of converting them into paying customers. 

    Cold emailing has been around for decades and has proven to generate beneficial results for several reasons. While some might argue, cold emails are a shot in the dark; when done right, cold emailing can result in qualified leads and eventually conversions. 

    But how does one guarantee cold emails will land in the prospects’ inbox? How can one say with assurance that the email won’t get lost in a sea of existing emails? 

    Marketers and salespeople need to keep in mind that their prospects are individuals with feelings and their own set of challenges in life. If they view their prospects as more than just mere numbers, the results of cold emailing can be magnificent. Introducing empathy in your cold email outreach campaign is essentially what it all boils down to. 

    Writing the perfect cold email with the right structure and an effective subject line can in fact aid your organization in locking in on a prospect. 

    Despite its intrusive nature, cold emailing holds a number of benefits. Here are 5 reasons why you should absolutely invest your time and efforts in cold emailing: 

    • Cold Emails Reach Prospects At Favorable Timings: Everyone checks their emails daily, especially working individuals. With advanced email tracking tools, you can get notified as soon as someone opens your email. This can help you formulate a plan to send emails at the right time to recipients thus increasing your chances of visibility. 
    • Personalized Reach: Cold emails are highly targeted and can be tailored to each and every individual. When recipients read emails crafted specifically for them (various tools are available that allow mass personalization), the chance of a conversion is far greater than an impersonal email. 
    • Scalability: This is probably the most important advantage cold emails have to offer. While cold calling is effective for creating immediate, personal connections, cold emailing stands out in its ability to scale outreach efficiently across large prospect lists. You can reach a large number of prospects in one go as compared to cold calling. Various email tools are available to help you reach mass recipients all in one go. 
    • Cold Emails Are Persistent: Some folks probably don’t view this as an advantage. But from the POV of a sales or marketing manager, persistency is advantageous. With several follow-ups beyond the primary email, prospects can be persuaded a number of times. 
    • Brand Awareness: Every email sent out to a prospect is an opportunity for potential conversion. Cold emails act as an avenue for brand awareness. Even if the prospect does not require the product/service you are offering at the time they will still be made aware of your brand and will remember it for the future. 

    According to Clearbit, the average cold email response rate is as low as 1%. It makes one question the effectiveness of cold emailing. As mentioned earlier, if cold emailing is undertaken meticulously, it can achieve wonderful results. 

    Lead generation is the first step in any kind of sales form. Using the art of cold emailing, sales managers and marketers can secure leads using this low-cost marketing tool and achieve highly favourable conversion rates. 

    Keep these 5 tips in mind when drafting your cold email campaign and you will be guaranteed to secure leads: 

    5 Tips to generate leads through cold emailing

    1. Personalization Needs To Be Your Mantra!

    Put yourself in the shoes of the recipient for a moment. You are sitting in front of your laptop, browsing through your inbox. Suddenly, you come across an email with the subject line that reads ‘{Your_Name}, this is just for you!’. Now, won’t that pique your interest? It will! 

    Uplandsoftware found that open rates can be increased by 22% if the recipient’s name is included in the subject line. 

    Additionally, adding custom snippets like {First_Name} or {Company Name} can ensure a higher level of personalization that will speak to the email recipients directly. 

    In this regard, these emails will work because the recipient will feel that you personally took the time out of your day to compose the email specially for them with some interest. 

    Researching your prospects and gaining valuable information that can amp up the personalization process will go a long way. 

    2. Subject Lines Matter More Than The Content 

    subject line cold email

    Source: MailerLite

    What is the first thing your prospects will see before they even consider opening your email? The subject line! 

    The subject line is often overlooked and more emphasis is placed on the content of the email. Your subject line is the one that catches the attention of the prospect first, and then it is the content. 

    Attention-grabbing subject lines are a must when cold emailing. Adding a question, their name, promo, call to action directly in the subject line may very well increase your open rates. 

    Experts recommend that subject lines be below 60 characters and ten words in length. A great subject line should work in any environment the recipient receives the email in. 

    Before you craft the perfect subject line, consider asking yourself the following 3 questions:

    1. Is my intent clear? 
    2. Is the message I am trying to convey relevant currently?
    3. Has a sense of urgency been established?

    Testing out different subject lines is another beneficial practice to add to your strategy. Some individuals prefer receiving emails with enticing offers upfront. Others could probably want to know what you are offering before considering your services. There is a 26% increased likelihood of readers opening your email with personalized subject lines. 

    Additional tip: Creating a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) will invoke a sense of curiosity in the recipient. 

    Here are a few examples of subject lines that work: 

    “{First Name}, we have found exactly what you are looking for”

    “{First Name}, do you want some time off?”

    “What would you do if you had [number] more hours per week?”

    “Why {Company_Name}?”

    “You missed it!”

    3. Using Social Proof To Your Advantage

    social proof

    Social proofing is one of the oldest techniques used in the sales industry. Think about it for a second, if you hear that person X increased their revenue by 30% in under 6 months after using a particular product; would you not be intrigued? You would. 

    Thus, using social proofing techniques to bolster your email pitch can help you achieve your desired results. Of course, we don’t recommend embellishing your content with white lies. 

    Having more credibility will increase the chances of your prospects trusting you. Mentioning actual statistics and facts from existing or previous clients who have succeeded after using your services will strengthen your pitch. You can share customer success stories and achievements to convince recipients to opt for your services. 

    For example:

    “Hey {First Name}, 

    We have worked with over [500+] clients in the past, providing them with state-of-the-art [email marketing services]. 

    Recently, we worked with [ABC corp], and were able to increase their lead generation by 18%. They were having trouble generating leads through conventional methods and felt they needed to opt for professional email marketing services”

    Social proofing will make your cold emails a lot more compelling. As it is well known that people are more likely to adopt the opinions of trusted individuals. 

    Beyond mentioning organization names and quantifiable data, you can also include mutual connections and your professional credentials. 

    4. Follow-Ups Are Pivotal To The Success Of Your Campaign 

    follow up cold email

    Follow-ups are extremely important when cold emailing. Some would even go as far as to say that follow-ups are more critical in securing a reply than the initial email. 

    70% of email chains generally stop sending emails after the initial attempt. No response in the first email does not necessarily mean the prospect is not interested. 70% of email chains generally stop sending emails after the initial attempt. The primary email is a part of a much bigger picture in the process of cold emailing. 

    The initial email is only to grease the wheels; the follow-ups are the ones that do the heavy lifting. Also, persistency is key, remember? 

    Your cold email outreach should be an ongoing conversation. 80% of deals require an average of at least 5 touches before closing. 

    The graph below shows at which point a recipient is more likely to reply to your email. The more emails one sends out, the more they are likely to get noticed. If your prospect keeps seeing your name in their inbox, in some sense they will have been familiarized with your existence. 

    cold email stats

    Source: Yesware

    Eventually, they will want to know what you have to say. If you use the correct verbiage in your follow-ups, prospects won’t feel like they are just another name on a mass emailing list. 

    Additionally, by sending follow-ups, prospects actually feel like you care about their response or lack thereof. Thus, a humanizing element comes into play and that increases your chances of a reply. 

    It is entirely up to you, how many follow-up emails you want to include in your outreach. Experts recommend sending out at least 5 follow-up emails at timely intervals. 

    Here is a rough sequence you can follow: 

    • Follow up 1 (After 3 days)
    • Follow up 2 (After 7 days)
    • Follow up 3 (After 14 days)
    • Follow up 4 (After 30 days) 
    • Follow up 5 (After 60 days) 

    5. Ensuring The Prospect Is The Right Fit With Actual Intent

    Sending out cold emails to recipients that are not interested in your services would be a pure waste of time and resources. Marketers and salespeople often use intent data to skip ahead of the line and identify individuals that require the solution you are offering. 

    Intent data highlights behavioural signals that show the intention of your prospect to purchase a product or service. Recent studies have found that an average B2B prospect is already 67% into the purchasing journey. This data helps organizations jump ahead and use it to their advantage in securing prospects and qualified leads. 

    This technique is helpful for cold emailing, as you can reach out to prospects before they contact you; and this is especially effective since you are reaching out to them at the right time. 

    There are several other ways to find prospects besides this, these include: 

    1. Social Media 
    2. Referrals 
    3. Networking 
    4. Online Forums (Quora, StackExchange, Reddit, etc) 
    5. Google Analytics Data 
    6. Website Visitation 

    Now that you have locked in on a prospect, how do you ensure they are the right fit? If you already have a buyer persona in mind, that would be a great place to evaluate the fit. 

    Besides that, with data enrichment and predictive lead scoring technologies on the rise, evaluating fit can be assessed with a microscopic lens. 

    Below are 3 questions to consider when evaluating if a prospect is a right fit for your organization: 

    1. What technologies are they currently using? 
    2. How many employees do they have? 
    3. How much funding do they have? (i.e. can they afford your services?)

    Additional Tips For Lead Generation Through Cold Emailing 

    • Use Conversational Language: A successful email outreach program involves using language and verbiage that is conversational in nature. It is recommended that cliche or overused phrases be avoided altogether. Sticking to the basics is the best way to get your message across. 

    For example, “Hey there! John, are you ready for the weekend?”, “Hope you have a splendid week ahead”, “I am ready for the weekend” “Hope you aren’t having a bad case of the Monday Blues!” 

    • Ensure All Your Contact Information Is In Your Signature: This is an often-overlooked tip but is one that is quite important. All of your contact information should be included in your email signature, including your phone number, office address, LinkedIn, and website URL. An email signature acts as a digital card and shows professionalism.Through your email signature, you can provide extra resources. If someone were sceptical about your credentials, checking your LinkedIn account can help put their mind at ease. Additionally, if a prospect wanted to get in touch with you directly, they could contact you through the phone number provided and perhaps speed up the process of closing a deal.
      email signature
    • Use Cold Emailing Software: Using cold emailing software, you will be able to automate several time-consuming processes if undertaken manually. Cold emailing software also provides users with real-time data and analytics that can be used to your advantage to refine your campaign.
      You should also be using software to help create the template for your email marketing campaigns. A good email template builder software can save you hours of your time which would otherwise be required to set up email campaigns.With email software, you can segment lists into different target audiences with specific preferences. Each mass email sent out can be personalized for each prospect as if you were having a one-on-one conversation with them. 
    • Avoid Long-Form Content: If you intend to capture and retain your prospect’s attention, then avoiding long-form content is advisable. Keep your emails short, not more than two paragraphs.When people check their inboxes, they do it with the intention of clearing it out; if they come across a long-winded email, especially when they’re short on time, they will not read it. Remember that emails are not books, they are meant to be short. 
    • Ensure Your Timing Is Right: Timing is indeed everything and plays a huge role in the success of your cold email campaign. Familiarize yourself with your prospects before reaching out to them. Look at their social profiles to gain relevant insights into their professional life.You want to avoid being labelled as ‘spam’, so decide upon the perfect timing best suited for your prospect. Conduct A/B split testing to see which timings and days have recorded the highest open rates. This will tell you the best time to send an email.
    • Canned Content Is A No Go: If there’s one thing people dislike it is impersonal and canned content. Canned content is pre-made generic content that is used to speed up the email writing process.This content is generated with general ideas and assumptions of the customer’s needs and preferences. Personalize your content to the specific needs and preferences of your prospect. Try to make it as personal as possible, adding minor details can do wonders to your reply rate.
    • Don’t Beat Around The Bush: People are busy! If they do open your email, then you want to capture their attention as soon as possible. Be direct and get to the point in the second line. Keep your opening line/paragraph short. Building up to a point, with irrelevant details about yourself and the organization will impersonalize the content of the email.Get to the point directly, and present your value proposition within the first two lines. Show them the problem you aim to solve through your product or service. 
    • Add Call-To-Actions (CTAs): Adding a CTA at the end of your email will help you measure the success rate of your campaign. The real success metric is not open rates, but rather the number of people who actually undertook the desired action in the form of a CTA. Not all CTAs have to be too salesy. Emails with a single CTA have been known to increase clicks by 371% and sales by 1617%.Some CTA examples include, provide a specific day or time, learn more, read more, watch now, get the app, schedule a call, etc. Aesthetically appealing CTAs are also on the rise, so design your CTA in a way that prompts the user to click on it. 
    CTA

    Conclusion

    Cold email outreach is a great opportunity to find qualified leads and increase your conversion rate. This method works amazingly when undertaken in the right manner. It is a great way to start conversations with prospects and help them become aware of your brand. 

    The most effective method to date is in fact personalization. Instead of sending out generic messages that would instantly cause a prospect to turn away, offer tailor-made solutions. Hone in on their specific needs and then craft the perfect cold email. 

    Improved targeting can help you achieve desired results. A high open rate does not signify much if you are receiving no replies. Undelivered emails also affect your open rates thus it is best you re-verify your email marketing database using email verifier tools. 

    Trying out A/B split testing is another way of analyzing the effectiveness of your campaign. LeadGenius tried A/B split testing for their subject lines and concluded that they saw a 49% increase in open rates. 

    Cold emailing requires patience and persistence. It can be tricky and even feel monotonous but it is rewarding if you take the time to do it right. Use sales prospecting tools, CRM platforms, email marketing tools, and email tracking software to track, analyze, measure, and improve your results to maximize your efforts.  

    Happy Cold Emailing! 

    Author Bio:

    Dhruv is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Saleshandy, a sales engagement platform that helps sales professionals close more deals. He is an empathetic marketer, people person, SaaS enthusiast, hustler, and growth hacker. He is passionate about identifying customer needs, measuring success and delight. He loves to write on customer-centric problem solving and growth, enabling customers and businesses to make better decisions.

  • What is the Best Time to Post on TikTok

    What is the Best Time to Post on TikTok

    TikTok is breaking the internet with its trends and videos. If you are trying to grow on TikTok, you might be wondering what is the Best Time to Post on TikTok in 2021-22.

    How the TikTok algorithm works?

    What are the best hours to post on TikTok for maximum reach and engagement?

    Or might be thinking if there is a right time to post given the content on TikTok is so fast and spontaneous?

    TikTok has 1 billion active users globally – and the platform is still growing.

    So why not invest in TikTok Business?

    TikTok trends move at the speed of light, and people have become stars overnight through this platform. 

    TikTok growth tactics are continually evolving. Therefore, it is essential to have a TikTok strategy in place.

    In this article, we’ll cover what the best times to post on TikTok are? When most of your audience is online?

    And How you should prioritize your content and use TikTok analytics for better growth and engagement.

    So, Let’s dive in! 

    Why is it Important to Know the Best Time to Post on TikTok?  

    People love TikTok for the personalized mix of content that it has to offer for its users. The “For You” page shows the content from both big and small accounts.

    However, all the personalized content on the main interface of all users is not older than a couple of days. 

    This tells us two things about TikTok content: 

    1. Publishing needs to be consistent and timely 
    2. TikTok trends go viral because it promotes the content timely 

    Therefore, for best results and better reach, you should find out the best time to post on TikTok – and it is when your audience is online. 

    Two things are important to understand to find the best time to post on TikTok: 

    • Where your audience is located? (TimeZones) 
    • When are they online? 

    How to Tell the Best Time to Post on TikTok? 

    The best time to post on TikTok is favoured by both the algorithm and your audience’s online presence. 

    But how can you find out? – By combining tested timings and keeping a close eye on the performance of your content to find the frequency and timings that work best for you.  

    What is the Overall Best Time to Post on TikTok? 

    Based on the frequency of your content, you can select the best time to post on any given day from this list. 

    • Best time to post on TikTok on Monday: 6 AM, 10AM, 10 PM (EDT)  
    • Best time to post on TikTok on Tuesday: 2 AM, 4AM, 9 AM (EDT)
    • Best time to post on TikTok on Wednesday: 7 AM, 8 AM, 11 PM (EDT) 
    • Best time to post on TikTok on Thursday: 9 AM, 12 PM, 7 PM (EDT)
    • Best time to post on TikTok on Friday: 5 AM, 1 PM, 3 PM (EDT)
    • Best time to post on TikTok on Saturday: 11 AM, 7 PM, 8 PM (EDT) 
    • Best time to post on TikTok on Sunday: 7 AM, 8 AM, 4 PM (EDT)
    best time to post on tiktok

    That said, some hours and days seem to work better across the board. Based on research and experiments by HootSuite, some days and hours bring the maximum engagement on TikTok:

    • Tuesday: 10 AM (EDT) | 7 AM (PST) 
    • Thursday: 1 PM (EDT) | 10 AM (PST)
    • Friday: 8 AM (EDT) | 5 AM (PST) 

    You can use a time converter like SavvyTime to see the hours in your time zone. 

    best time to post on tiktok EDT

    How to Figure Out Your Own Best Time to Post on TikTok? 

    Your TikTok audience is unique to you, and your content is unique to them. Therefore, it’ll be good practice to couple your posting with tested time with ways to figure out the best times for your fans. 

    We will discuss how you can also figure out your own best time for posting on TikTok?

    Use TikTok Analytics 

    TikTok analytics will provide you with tons of information about your content and followers – from where are they located to when are they most active. You can use this information also to choose your own best time for publishing. 

    But, how to access TikTok analytics?

    Don’t worry; we’ll take you step-by-step on how to get access to analytics.

    Step 1: Switch to Pro-Account of TikTok

    • Tap the first three dots on the top-right of the profile. This is the menu. 
    tiktok profile

    • Tap on “Manage My Account”
    maanage tiktok account

    • Tap on “Switch to Pro-Account” 
    tiktok pro account

    • Select the type of your account. Follow the steps to complete the process.
    • Now you’ll be reverted to the account menu. You’ll receive an email of account up-gradation. 
    • Now, you can see “Analytics” in your menu
    tiktok analytics

    Step 2: Understand TikTok Analytics

    TikTok analytics will show you three tabs:

    1. Overview: This will give you the bird-eye-view of video views, profile views and followers.
    2. Content: This tab will show you the video metrics like views, likes, comments, average watch time etc. 
    3. Followers: This is the most helpful tab for you to determine the best time. It will show you about the follower growth, demographics, location and time when they are active.
    tiktok analytics

    source

    You Are Ready to Find Your Own Best Time to Post on TikTok 

    Know Your Audiences’ Location 

    You can identify the best time to post by knowing where your audience is located and when are they most active. 

    Tap on the “Followers” tab and scroll down to see the territories. The tab will show the name of the country where your audience is located. 

    But the problem is even in the same country. Let’s say the United States have different times in different states. For example, if you are based in New York, you might be assuming your audience is on the East coast of America but people in California might be preparing for the day.

    If your audience is US based, there are few things you can consider to identify your own best time to post on TikTok.  

    • Know when is the engagement rate is higher
    • Take insights from your high performing content.
    • Check insights from other platforms to predict audience availability. 

    In the analytics image below, you can see the audience distribution of a TikTok account. 

    tiktok analytics distribution

    Know When Your Followers are Most Engaged

    Identify when is your audience is most engaged. Click on the “Followers” tab. Scroll down to see the followers activity. 

    In this image, you can see the follower’s activity is almost the same throughout the week. 

    tiktok engagement

    From this, you can tell when the follower activity is highest and from which hour it starts spiking. Choose to publish between those hours. 

    The information from analytics will help you find the best time to post TikTok for maximum engagement.  

    Know Your Time Zone

    The time mentioned on TikTok is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Therefore, you’ll have to convert the hours according to the time zones of your audience. 

    You can use different time converting tools. 

    TikTok has global users. Therefore, you must see the time according to your audience’s time zone. 

    For example, 7 AM in New York is 4 AM in Los Angeles

    Generally, early morning posts seem to perform better early in the week (Monday till Wednesday), while on weekends (Thursday till Sunday), the afternoon and evening posting will get better traction.   

    Identify Your High-Performing Content

    TikTok analytics will show you your content performance. 

    1. Click on “Content” at the top of the analytics page (Image) to see it. Now you can see the last week’s content performance.
    2. Scroll down to see your trending videos. Each post will show more details about it. 
    3. Each post will show views, likes, comments and the total number of shares. It’ll also reveal the average watch time and where the most ideas came from.
    best time to post on tiktok


    Source

    Your key takeaways from your best performing content should e following: 

    • What was the date and time you shared that post? You’ll find it on the top of the page under the video thumbnail. 
    •  Where did the audience come from? What is their time zone? Convert Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) into your followers’ time zone.  

    Once you have these points, now make a pattern. 

    Let’s say one of your videos performed well on Friday evening; then, it is the best time for you to post on TikTok. 

    Track Your Content Performance Over Time 

    TikTok analytics only show the data of the last seven days, and it deletes it after 28 days. Therefore, it might be a bit challenging to find accurate time since it also involves guesswork.

    You can track your content’s weekly performance in Microsoft Excel or Google sheet. 

    Over time, you’ll have the information and see the patterns emerging between the type of content and the best hours and days to post on TikTok. 

    For example, your data might show you your comedy videos perform better than dance videos. Then you can focus more on the content types along with the best time to post. 

    Cross Check Your Audience with Other Platforms 

    Do you produce similar content for other platforms as well? If you have an active audience on Youtube or Instagram, these platforms can also help you identify the best times to post on TikTok.

    See Instagram, Facebook and YouTube analytics for similar content and see when is your audience live, what has been the best performing content when it was published.

    The chances are they’ll discover your TikTok videos on other platforms and then hop on TikTok to follow you. That’s why it is important to hook your audience and check their online behaviour across the board.

    You can share your social media profiles in bio links. One way to navigate traffic from Facebook and Instagram is to use Tiktok links as Instagram bio links.  

    All these tips will help you understand what your audience is loving and appreciating? When are they online? When are they most engaged? 

    Now, once you have found out about the kind of content your audience likes and when are they most engaged, the next step is how you can use the TikTok algorithm in your favour for the identified hours and content types. 

    How to Use TikTok Algorithm for Your Favour? 

    The success of content is to get it on as many “For You” pages as possible. 

    It is important to know how TikTok controls what appears on the ” For You Page”? 

    To get better social media engagement, here are some factors discussed which make the algorithm favour your content. 

    1. Hashtags
    2. Captions 
    3. Trending Sounds and Songs 
    4. When your audience is most active 
    5. Video Content & Editing 
    6. Location 

    Hashtags

    The “For You” page is personalized for every user for the type of content they mostly engage with. Landing on the “For You” page is like hitting the TikTok lottery. 

    According to a statement issued by TikTok, using hashtags like #ForYouPage #FYP etc. does not guarantee a spot on For You Page.  

     Rather than using generic hashtags, the best way to optimize your content for “For You Page” is to approach things scientifically. 

    Tips: 

    Some tips to optimize your content with the right hashtags are as following:

    1. Go to “Discover Tab”. Find trending hashtags. You can also see the performance of the hashtags you want to use. 
    2. Use the hashtags which have a fire icon next to them. Use these hashtags in your captions if they align. 
    3. Check the views of hashtags you want to use. The numbers will show which content is favoured.
    4. Research what hashtags are trending and see if your brand fits can create content around it to be part of the trend. 
    5. Be cautious of the content practices you are being part of. You have to evaluate and see if it is the right fit for your brand else; it can backfire. 
    hashtags tiktok

    Captions

    The next TikTok algorithm factor is Captions! 

    Unlike Instagram and Facebook, TikTok is a platform with short captions, timely hashtags and quickly digestible content.    

    Tips:

    1. To get better results, keep the copy short and snappy
    2. Include questions in your captions to lead conversations in your comments 
    3. Include jokes in your captions or add a touch of mystery to the copy
    4. Top comments have the prime spot on the comments list. You can lead conversations as people will notice comments on your video.
      Just like Cori Spruiell does:
    top comments tiktok

    Trending Sounds & Songs 

    TikTok’s trending sounds and music have played a significant role in the music industry. The trending sounds play a major role in content discoverability. Using trending sounds at the right time can help you boost the views. 

    Tips

    Here is how you can find the trending music for TikTok: 

    • Sounds on video editor: Go to TikTok video editor. Press the plus icon at the bottom of the screen. Tap “Sounds”. Scroll through what’s trending. 
    • Favourites: Similar to “Saves” on Instagram, favouriting a sound collects it for you in one handy spot. If you like a sound and want to use it in the future, tap on the sound under the username and tap “Add to Favorites” — it’ll come in clutch when you need it most.
    • Sounds your followers are listening: To find the top sounds your audience has listened to in the last seven days go to your Analytics tab (only accessible for TikTok Pro accounts) and under the Followers tab, scroll down to see the music your audience is vibing to!
    add sound tiktok

    When Your Audience Is Most Active

    Posting content when your audience is live will help you save your content from getting lost in the ocean of content. We have already discussed TikTok analytics with the TikTok Pro Account above to see when your followers are most active.

    Tips: 

    • Go with the best time to post on TikTok slots which we have shared above  
    • Use TikTok analytics to find where your audience is located and when are they active 

    Video Content & Editing

    TikTok is the hub of creativity. With millions of unique video styles, TikTok allows you to represent your brand as you like. 

    With a strong video strategy, you can hook viewers to re-watch and share your video. The re-watches and the videos users keep coming back to tells the algorithm that your content is being appreciated and thus it rewards your content by showing it to more people.

    This type of content is something TikTok is very likely monitoring, serving more of the content users are gravitating towards. It could be machine learning over personal preference that determines whether a video goes viral or not.

    Tips: 

    • Once you have the idea for a video, spend some time editing to make the format engaging for viewers. There are many MP4 editors that could help you with it
    • See the best performing video formats and the trends people are following

    Location 

    Tiktok serves hyper-local content to its viewers to make a more community-oriented feed. 

    “Location is definitely a key factor in what videos get recommended to users on their For You pages. Having a global team has really allowed us to explore and confirm patterns in how we’re served location-based content. Because of this, there’s a lot of potentials for smaller businesses to benefit from being on TikTok to really increase brand awareness – especially if they’re trying to reach Gen Z and Millennials. ” – Lindsay Ashcraft, Social Media Coordinator. 

    Although location is a small variable for the TikTok algorithm, there’s no denying that users have started to see (and engage!) with content that was posted closest to them.

    Tips: 

    • Use TikTok analytics to understand where your audience is located 
    • Convert the time zones according to their location 
    • Use hyper-local trends to make your content more engaging 
    tiktok analytics

    Why do Some Videos on TikTok go Viral and Others Not?  

    Many people have seen or heard of the “slow burn” phenomenon on TikTok — when something is posted, barely gets any engagement or reach, and then suddenly pops off on TikTok.

    This timing could be 48-hours after posting or weeks later, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it.

    For now, we can assume that while videos slowly gain likes, comments, and views, the TikTok algorithm may push your video onto the For You page, even if it’s not a brand new video.

    Or, a sound could suddenly get a lot of exposure, based on someone else’s video going viral, and your video that features the same sounds could get a little bump.

    So even though you might not get an initial huge reaction, it’s worth waiting and keeping an eye on your video for weeks, and even months after you’ve posted.

    Conclusion: 

    The combination of what is favoured by users as well as the TikTok algorithm define the best hours to post on tiktok.

    However, with series of experimenting and testing different times of publishing by industry experts and TikTok influencers, there are some days in the week and some hours which perform better across the board.

    The best time to post on TikTok is Tuesday, Thursday & Friday. Convert the slots according to your time zone and when your audience is most active. Combine the best hours to post along with the tips and tricks to hack the TikTok algorithm for the best engagement.

    What is the current brand you are handling? What are your objectives? Or if there is anything you have tested for your TikTok strategy, do share. 

    If you want to know about more tried and tested tips on content strategy for TikTok, let us know in the comments and we would love to help! 

    Steps you can take to discover the best time to post a TikTok

    Here’s a quick summary of the steps you can take to discover the best time to post a TikTok video to maximize audience engagement:

    1. Get a TikTok Pro account to gain access to analytics about your content and followers.
    2. Find out where your audience is based in the Followers tab.
    3. Convert the global best times to post on TikTok (mentioned above in EST) to your audience’s timezone.
    4. Discover when your followers are most engaged under the Followers tab. Then convert the time’s listed in TikTok (which are in UTC) to your audience’s time zone.
    5. Look at post analytics under the Content tab – is there a pattern of videos performing well when they’re posted at certain times?
    6. Track your video’s performance over time to identify trends that tell you the best time to post on TikTok.
    7. If you have an engaged audience on Youtube or another platform like Instagram, check out the analytics to see if they can inform when your target audience is the most engaged on social media.
  • How to build your brand on YouTube – branding on YouTube the right way!

    How to build your brand on YouTube – branding on YouTube the right way!

    [toc]

    Trying to expand your business ? Looking for branding on Youtube? 

    Most companies make the mistake of treating Youtube as a platform for self-expression and company updates…

    But the truth of the matter is that Youtube is a search engine and a marketing platform — just like Google.

    So most (if not all) strategies that apply to your blog also apply to Youtube.

    In this article, we’ll explore the strategies listed below for branding on YouTube and show you how to adapt them to the video format.

    1. Pick Your Niche Carefully
    2. Do Keyword Research for YouTube Videos
    3. Consistency is a GameChanger
    4. Bring Out the USP of Your Product in Your Videos
    5. Humanize Your Videos
    6. Have Great Production Quality
    7. Widen Your Audience Base With Collaborations
    8. YouTube Channel Promotion

    Once you expand your business across multiple channels, managing links becomes a pain. And that’s why pro Youtubers use Replug — an all-in-one link management tool. Click this link to register for free!

    1. Pick Your Niche Carefully to Build A Brand on YouTube

    Suppose you’re creating content in a niche you’re not familiar with.

    You’ve just done some research and got a feeling that this niche might be profitable…

    Well, if you’re not an expert on the topic your viewers will sense that you’re not giving real advice…

    And that’ll be a big turn-off.

    So before you pick a niche, make sure that:

    • You’re passionate about. 
    • You can quickly gain expertise in it
    • You have ideas on how to create unique content in this niche
    • Other people interested in the niche are willing to spend money on it

    2. Do Keyword Research for YouTube Videos

    Once you pick a niche, find what your audience is interested in. And guess what? The best way to know about their interest is through keyword research. 

    Just look at the image below, Best smartphones 2021 keyword can drive up to 880 visitors per month. 

    grow youtube keywrods

    Over time, all these keywords can bring immense traffic. 

    But remember, keyword research is just the basics. To get the most out of it, you’ve to do proper YouTube SEO optimization

    3. Consistency is the Real Game Changer for Your Brand

    To start with branding on YouTube, Just pick any successful YouTube channel you like and see how consistent it has been. Embedding your YouTube channel on your website can also help you gain more visibility and direct traffic to your content.

    Yes, YouTube’s algorithms help those who publish consistently. 

    When you upload regularly, it constantly reminds viewers about your channel and eventually gives them more recommendations

    And as you know, the more practice we do, the better we become. So with every video that you make, the quality gets better

    Everyone knows about the YouTube sensation, PewDiePie. 

    Most people that have ever looked him up or know a bit about him will tell you that he became viral overnight after his Amnesia gameplay videos. 

    But the truth is, he consistently uploaded a video every day for 3 years before getting the numbers he deserved.

    youtube growth case study

    #1 Strategy to Stay Consistent on YouTube

    To have a turtle-like consistency, follow these tips: 

    1. Schedule videos in advance with a content calendar
    2. Produce content in batches and beforehand
    3. Keep things simple and easy to follow
    4. Keep the publishing rate depending upon your free time and schedule

    As far as we know, there’s no ideal upload frequency since YouTube didn’t make any statements about it.

    If YouTube discloses this information, everyone will start making content with no value.  

    Nonetheless, try uploading a video anywhere between once a day or once a month depending on your niche

    The reason for such a wide range is because different niches require different engagement rates with your audience.

    For example, an educational channel doesn’t need to upload daily because their videos are evergreen and don’t go out of fashion after a few days…

    On the other hand, gamers and entertainers need to upload every day to keep their audience interested and happy. And that’s because a huge part of entertainment is linked to what’s currently going on in the world. 

    Another consistency element is your logo. It needs to be well-designed so it can look as good in a video as it does on your shop window or your merchandise.Using a youtube logo maker, you can create a logo that looks as good in a video as it does on your shop window or your merchandise. It may not seem relevant at first, but your logo is how people recognize you, it must be consistently present in your videos and look the same wherever people spot it. Take Nike for instance – no matter where you see their content, their logo is instantly recognizable.

    So consistency with both your image and how often you post are some of the most important factors, especially when building a brand from scratch.

    4. Bring Out the USP of Your Product in Your Videos

    YouTube has over 500 hours worth of videos uploaded every minute. 

    It means no matter what niche you’re in, you still have stiff competition for these precious views. 

    To experience success on YouTube Branding, there’s an enormous need to stand out

    In fact, this is where your USP (unique selling proposition) comes in. 

    It’s a unique aspect or trait about your videos that no other channel can bring. 

    If there is nothing different about your videos, the viewers won’t find you interesting. 

    Here are a few things to create and refine a solid USP for your YouTube presence and branding:

    • Understand the target audience, niche, and competitors to spot missing opportunities in the industry
    • Look at the trends and act on those that seem to be successful 
    • Find a way to communicate your USP in subtle yet effective ways
    • Look at surveys and stats in the target niche to stay updated about it

    If you can establish a good USP, use it to define your channel theme, style of videos, and content. 

    5. Humanize Your Videos and Keep Them Friendly

    Unlike written content, Youtube gives you the chance to leverage the power of facial expressions and various tonalities to create highly engaging content.

    But before you jump into that, keep a check on 2 things

    A. Don’t be a Professional Nerd – Speak Casually & Freely

    Although some niches demand seriousness, there are many that don’t. 

    But no matter how formal your niche is, always add a touch of fun to sound human. Learn to speak conversational English.

    After all, people hate getting advice from a robot. 

    B. Tell Stories To Sell Your Product 

    Whenever it comes to video marketing, the term storytelling often comes up.

    That’s because storytelling is a powerful way to grab someone’s attention and get them to adopt your reasoning, logic, and mental frame to increase video conversions.

    (And once that happens, your product pitches will be very well accepted within your brand community.)

    To understand how brands sell their products with stories, take a look at the 5 stages of storytelling: 

    • Exposition: Your intro video is the deciding factor whether the audience will stay or skip your video. You can use a YouTube intro maker tool to make your intro video creative and engaging.
    • Rising Action: Creating anticipation about your video and some kind of problem that requires a video-defining action or solution
    • Climax: Main point of the video that can give an actual answer to the problem
    • Falling Action: Performing the action with your product 
    • Resolution: The conclusion of your video with a proper ending
    youtube video

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    When you take viewers through these stages, they fully immerse in it. And as a result, you gain their trust through online branding.

    Related: Video Marketing Fundamentals to Increase Conversion Rates

    6. Have Great Production Quality

    Back then before 2012, video quality wasn’t a problem. But now, there are a lot of people who are trying to do the same thing as you. 

    In today’s era, having better production quality will definitely give you an edge. 

    HD videos and good audio make it easier for the viewer to focus on the main topic. 

    They also make your videos more attractive and aesthetically pleasing. 

    So you should try your best to have a proper set-up with a decent background, good lighting, and looking presentable in your videos to get the most video conversion rate

    Lastly, create attractive thumbnails and have well-edited videos to make everything stand out. 

    Always remember, quality over quantity always gives the best results especially for branding on YouTube. 

    7. Collaborate with Fellow YouTubers to Widen Your Audience Base

    Being a small YouTuber, gaining exposure can be life-changing. 

    You can find YouTubers like you who want to grow their channel and collaborate on a project.

    This way you can introduce your channel to their followers and vice versa. 

    If these followers see some value in your videos, they’ll surely check out your channel. 

    You can also learn something new along the way and push yourself to be more creative and diverse. 

    Even big channels love to collaborate. 

    Back in November 2020, Thomas from Yes Theory went on a crazy adventure to Afghanistan with a fellow YouTuber Drew Binsky.

    Both went on a 96-hour journey to see Afghanistan.

    Although the channels featured weren’t exactly similar, they still gained each other’s exposure through experience.

    To secure such relationships, all you gotta do is reach out to the influencer through social media or email.

    5 Key Steps to Successfully Collaborate with Other YouTubers 

    1. Find some people in the same niche or something closely related to it
    2. Create a plan or a rough sketch of what could be done with the collaboration
    3. Approach the YouTuber, propose the idea, and get their thoughts on it
    4. Try to fully utilize the creativity from both ends and make a video
    5. Promote your video across all social media channels 

    Also Read: How YouTube Algorithm works in 2022?

    Two brains are better than one. Therefore, go out into your community and find someone like-minded to make a video with. 

    8. YouTube Channel Promotion – A Must-do For Branding on Youtube

    Consistent uploads and great content are not enough. To get recognition, put efforts into marketing and promotions. 

    Right now, there are 4 popular methods that can help for promotion: 

    A. Paid Advertisements – Fastest Exposure on YouTube

    Paid YouTube Ads are great for maximum visibility

    Google claims that viewers who watch your YouTube Ad entirely are 23 times more likely to visit your channel and check out other videos.

    So, it’s definitely worth a shot!

    You can advertise your videos directly on the same platform, leaving an option for viewers to check your channel. 

    For ads, you can either choose an existing video or create a special ad campaign. 

    You can also choose from the following formats:

    • Display Ads
    • Skippable & Non-Skippable Video Ads
    • Bumper Ads
    • Overlay Ads
    • Sponsored Cards

    Another similar thing to YouTube Ads is a sponsored video on another channel. 

    You can hire another YouTuber to make a completely sponsored video or a sponsored segment in one of their videos. 

    Regardless of what type of ad you go with, keep a checklist of the following things:

    • Have a strong Call-To-Action in the ads
    • Create a highly targeted ad with YouTube targeting features 
    • Put your channel info or links with the ad
    • Choose the format based on your needs
    • Set up a remarketing plan if the ad is successful

    B. Giveaways and Contests

    Giveaways and contests can be extremely exciting for your audience. But yes, most YouTubers do this to gain new followers.

    Whenever you run a giveaway, the prospective follower has a chance to win something. 

    In return, they have to subscribe to your channel or follow your socials. This creates a win-win situation for you as well as your audience.

    Also, Contest CTA’s have a 3.73% higher conversion rate when compared to other CTA’s. So, there’s an increased chance of attracting new audiences.

    C. Seek Help from Other Social Media Channels

    YouTube being the only channel is a bad idea.

    Along with your YouTube channel, take your online presence to a whole new level with a website and social media. 

    All you need to do is maintain these channels and create content for them that is in conjunction with your YouTube channel. 

    If this is too much for you, simply post video updates and some personal status to increase social media engagement

    You can also use paid ads on social media like Facebook ads to promote your YouTube channel. 

    D. YouTube SEO and Video Optimization

    It’s true that good content is a must for your viewers. But to make these viewers see your good content, YouTube SEO is a must. 

    Focusing on optimization will increase your views substantially and boost your channel’s views and recommendations.

    And a fun fact about recommendations: Over 70% of videos watched on YouTube are determined by the recommendation algorithm!

    Here are a few ways you can perform YouTube SEO the right way: 

    • Do proper YouTube Keyword research and look for ideas with the most searches
    • Keep your videos engaging throughout the duration to keep the audience retention high
    • Focus on increasing metrics like video comments, likes, CTR, etc 
    • Add attractive and informative thumbnails
    • Write clear and concise titles without clickbait
    • Add Youtube links
    • Proper descriptions with a healthy amount of keywords in it
    • Add topic-related tags

    The practice doesn’t end here, there are plenty of crazy things you can do to boost your YouTube SEO. 

    Managing these promotional activities effortlessly

    YouTube is already a hectic occupation. Marketing on the other hand could get a lot more time-consuming as well. 

    With Paid Ads on YouTube or other platforms, giveaways, and social media marketing, you’ll be dealing with a ton of links. 

    Cross-linking means you will have several different links that could get tough to manage. This is where Replug comes to the rescue!

    Replug – all-in-one link management tool

    Replug is an all-in-one link management tool. It can shorten URLs, track links, and do much more.

    Replug

    With Replug, you can easily have all of your links in one place where you can:

    • Create branded shortened URLs for your website, social media, and links on Youtube
    • Tracking URL and monitoring the clicks and visits on the links with detailed analysis
    • Retarget every visitor who clicks the link
    • Create social media bio links like Instagram bio links
    • Embed a call-to-action to every link you share
    • Create custom bio link landing pages

    To get started, all you need is a link to share your YouTube channel or a video. 

    With replug, you can create a branded link that is optimized with customizable options for messages and appearance. 

    As soon as your link gets clicks, you can measure the stats and analyze your progress by link tracking clicks and visitors. 

    Visit Replug to know more about this URL shortener tool.

  • 40+ Funny Work From Home Memes

    40+ Funny Work From Home Memes

    Working from home is our new reality. However, the universe sent the early signs through Robert Kelly’s interview in 2017. We took it as a funny work from home meme until we all had our own BEST work from home memes in 2020-21 when the whole world was working from home.

    Did the universe send early signs?

    In March 2017, Robert Kelly, an associate professor of political science at Pusan University, South Korea was being interviewed by BBC news, about the South Korean president, from his home office when things got a bit chaotic.

    His 4-year-old daughter walked in the room followed by her 9-month-old baby brother rolling into his office in a ‘hippity hoppity’ style, which, by the way, has now become shorthand for confidently entering into the room.

    Kelly’s wife then scrambled in to hustle kids out of the scene leading this whole situation to an online family blooper.

    Somehow, Kelly maintained his composure through the whole situation which was later linked to the rumours that he didn’t stand up to shoo his kids because he wasn’t wearing pants.

    However, Kelly clarified that he didn’t stand up because he wanted the interviewer to cut the interview short.

    Is it Karma?

    The whole world laughed it off and he became a viral ‘dad’. However, Mr Karma also had Kelly’s episode tuned in and later it saw his memes trending on social media. It then decided to come to us in 2020 with a global pandemic, so we all could understand Kelly’s situation while working from home.

    karma meme

    Source

    Is our current work-life a big compilation of funny work from home memes? YES!

    The most difficult thing in the world is to spell pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, which refers to lung disease. The second most difficult thing is to imagine our digital lives without memes. Imagine your day without tripping on the best work from home memes? Can’t imagine, right?

    Meme marketing is here to stay and the popularity of meme advertising can be evaluated with the fact that according to Google trends “Memes” is a more popular search term than “Jesus”. Memes is the trending digital marketing strategy for brands these days.

    What makes memes so special is the way attitudes, feelings and situations are communicated in a quick, snappy and witty manner. Therefore, it is no surprise the best way for brands to communicate as well is through memes especially with ad-averse generations who smell branded content from miles away.

    The success of an organization majorly depends on its employees and employee work culture. Having proper remote work software can help businesses develop a perfect employee work culture.

    Working from home is the new norm and we had no standard to compare and relate our emotions and challenges of working from home until the best work from home memes started flowing in.

    Some of our top picks for best work from home memes are:

    How it has been in the beginning!

    The week started looking like this: Monday, Tuesday, another day, another day, another day seeped into the weekend, Sunday.

    funny work from home meme

    Zoom calls have become a part of our lives like vitamin supplements. Here is a guide to nail your zoom call while working from home – and hopefully not becoming the best work from home meme. 

    Preparing for Zoom Meetings Memes  and Zoom Memes

    Every Zoom call that could have been an email shows how everyone should not be a project or product manager. Have you ever heard about project management tools? They are there for a reason.

    email meme

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    There should be a standard guidebook circulated on how to take zoom meetings for maximum productivity in minimum time.

    prepare for a zoom meeting

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    Can someone already give promotions, Nobel prizes and special mention in Christopher Nolan’s next film to all the parents who have been managing kids and work from home?

    working from home as parent

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    Audio meetings only are the new name for employee empowerment.

    zoom meetings

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    Legends to learn from on how to nail your Zoom meeting looks:

    Legends to learn from on how to nail your Zoom meeting looks: Who is Tan France? The award for best zoom memes – style category goes to @GretchenTG.

    Pro tip: For those managing multiple devices during meetings, using a device tracking tool can ensure you stay organized and avoid technical hiccups, helping you maintain that polished look on Zoom.

    meme

    wfh meme

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     Who is Brad Pitt? The award for best work from meme and zoom meme- best-dressed category goes to @Sanfra79

    no pants

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    Who is James Bond? The award for best work from meme and zoom meme – Awesome dressed category goes to Austin

    best work from home meme

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    Or I will prefer to be a potato than to dress up for the meeting

    zoom funny meme

    However, after 4651208645132 Zoom calls, the data shows that the attention span of Zoom meetings is nearly the same for everyone

    While working from offices, your dressing and styling was the way to express yourself but no one has the energy to iron clothes and to get out of PJs in that case,

    Are Zoom backgrounds the new way to express yourself?

    HR and trainers had been trying to crack the code of engaging the employees and keeping them motivated for work, but the only thing that worked, Thanks to Zoom, are the virtual backgrounds.

    Some of our top picks from the most creative backgrounds for video calls are:

    Here are some zoom background memes

    zoom background meme

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    zoom background

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    perfect zoom background

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    zoom meme

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    funny zoom meme

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    best zoom memes

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    Other than looks, our most favourite work from home phrases have been

    shared screen meme

                

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    “Hey guys! let me know when you can share my screen!

    Not yet!

    Now?

    Nope!

    Now?

    Yes, we can!”

    meeting meme

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    “Ahh, My bad! I had been talking to myself for the last 20 seconds”

    wrong screen share

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    “Nice to see you are a BTS fan too!”

    wrong chat

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    I hope nobody saw it *fingers crossed*

    online meme

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    “Hey, I am online!”

    “Just wrapping up another meeting. Sorry for the delay!”

    But is it possible for everyone to work from home? Well, it depends on how devoted you are!

     LifeGuards working from home:

    “Please don’t eat your soap”

    lifeguards work from home


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    Uber drivers working from home:

    “Did you book the ride from bed to the bathroom?

    I have reached your destination”

    best work from home memes


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     Marine Biologists working from home:

    “Why do you keep sitting in the bathtub most of the time?”

    biologist work home


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    Archaeologists working from home:

    “Honey, I found the vase which you broke and hid”


    Source

     Pilots:

    “Everyone be aware of low flying aircrafts”

    funny work from home memes


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     Iron Man:

    “Heroes are made by the path they choose not by the powers they are graced with”

    funny work from home meme

     

    Spider-man

    “Gotta save the city; online!”

    spider man work from home meme


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    Scientists

    “What does 1 portion of honey and 2 portions of milk make? Honey Milk! *Boom*”

    funny work from home memes


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    Surgeons

    “Be careful with the stitches”  

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    Funny Work from Home Memes – An opportunity for brands

    Meme sharing has escalated in this pandemic due to their relevance, wit and timing. According to a survey, memes have been the 3rd most shared type of content after personal news and funny videos.

    Meme marketing and meme advertising is short-lived but the timely hijacking of trends can bring enormous results for brands and for driving consumer behaviors. Brands need to be very timely to hitch the wagons to stay relevant. There is nothing worse than an audience associating your brand with bad meme marketing, who are late to the trends.

    How brands have navigated the meme game with funny work from home memes?

    Meme-jacking for marketing benefit has been the most favorite and go-to strategy for marketers.

    But making great use of memes isn’t as easy as it is to spell. Especially while working from home, brands had to up their brand meme game to get the attention of their audience in the ocean of content they are shown.

    However, there are brands that have used funny work from home memes for advertising and engaged their social media audiences through challenges to let people enjoy themselves while they are staying and working from home.  

    Getty Museum:

    By the end of March 2020, Getty Museum issued a playful challenge asking people to recreate their artwork using 3 objects lying around their home. People loved it! They used their creative ideas and sense of humour to share-worthy paintings which made a great case study for meme marketers, with these funny work from home memes. Getty museum accounts received thousands and thousands of submissions where people recreated Jeff Koons with piles of socks, Jacques Louis David with a fleece blanket, duct tape and used towels, scarves, shower caps for MacGyvered costumes.

    1.     Arnolfini Wedding Portrait by Jan van Eyck

    Recreated by Covid Classics

        The Harp and the vacuum

    meme

    Recreated by Irena Ochódzka

     

        Me and My Parrots by Frida Kahhlo

    portrait

    Recreated by lana09 on reddit

        Psyche Opening the Door into Cupid’s Garden by John William Waterhouse

    meme

    Recreated by moorelei on reddit

        Spring by Édouard Manet

    wfh meme

                Recreated by OldMan603 on reddit

    But do we want to go back?

    Despite all the challenges we faced while working from home, are we ready to go back to the way things were before we hosted (or attended) webinars daily? Brands jumped in through best work from home memes to tell how they feel about this question.

    While working from home was no less than a challenge for everyone especially when one has to manage kids, food, home and pets along with work, everyone slowly adjusted into the comfort of working from their homes, managing chaos from left, right and centre in their PJs. Now going back to work like we used to look far from something we all want. The time we took to adjust and gain productivity while working from home will be 5X more when we are asked to go back to work. 

    Therefore, for absolutely non-selfish reasons, I loved the idea of hybrid work.

    Rounak Bhavsar even put together a pie chart for the reasons the majority is not happy going back to offices. I won’t be surprised if Mark Zuckerberg (CEO, Facebook) and Jack Dorsey (CEO, Twitter) come forward and admit that this pie chart has been the reason they approved a hybrid work policy for their employees. For businesses looking to implement hybrid work models effectively, platforms like Archie can streamline workspace management and enhance collaboration

     

    But how mindful do we have to be while working from home? 

    While working from home, the lines of work and home get blurrier. 

    Are you working from home? Or are you staying at your office? While work-life balance has been an important discussion while we were working from offices, it is more crucial than ever before to set boundaries when we are working from home. 

    While funny work from home memes and videos might give you a sense of relevance to how everyone is in the same boat, it is important to set the boundaries where work is a part of your life – and not your whole life.  

    Funny work from home memes are a great way to connect with the common challenges and laugh at your problems, but it is also important to communicate the ways you can manage your work-life balance while working from home in content formats that get your attention. 

    How to strive for a better work-life balance? 

    Here are some tips to strive towards your work-life balance while working from home:

    work from home tips

    Just Kidding, These are some tips Really Simple Systems posted to their fb page.

    Getting back to some real tips now.

    1.       Set the morning routine, which does not centre around work. Get dressed to take over the day.
    2.       Never check your work messages and emails from bed
    3.       Set a designated space and time for work that separates life from work to minimize distractions
    4.        Find simple ways to stay fit in sedentary work, like stretching or short walks.
    5.       Align a remote work schedule that has your start, end and availability hours  
    6.       Avoid spending time in your home office space on weekends
    7.       Avail your lunch break hours
    8.       Use remote work productivity and management tools to stay focused and to remain on schedule
    9.   Prepare a productive meeting space that isn’t too personal
    10.   Guarantee time for hobbies or something creative
    11.   Give yourself a weekly check-in so you don’t feel burned out
    12.   Train yourself to prepare lunch rather than ordering in
    13.   Continue to network and foster new relationships while working from home
    14.   Set rewards for yourself in the form of post-work activities that you enjoy
    15.   Set a designated space for meetings
    16.   Close your laptop at a specific wrap uptime

    Setting ground rules for both work and home will not only help to maintain one’s sanity, it will also help a great deal to manage the expectations of your bosses and peers.

    Otherwise, the freedom of working whenever you want can change the impression of someone not serious about their work and only trips over the funny work from home memes.

    The perception of non-serious behavior is the last thing you want as an employee or even a boss.

    Sometimes an unplanned, unscheduled manner of working style, both at an individual and an organizational level.

    This is the reason most of us can relate to this funny work-from-home meme. 

    best work frpm home meme

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  • How to create the perfect LinkedIn content strategy in 10 easy steps [advanced tactics included]

    How to create the perfect LinkedIn content strategy in 10 easy steps [advanced tactics included]

    With over 1.2 billion members in more than 200 countries, LinkedIn is the place to be. Whether you’re looking for side hustle opportunities, a new job, or simply want to grow as a thought leader, LinkedIn can help.

    Whatever your goal, however, you’ll need to create high-quality content to stand out in the crowd. So, let’s help you create the perfect LinkedIn content strategy plan for growing your personal brand and attracting the right people to your network.

    We’ll start with looking at the benefits of posting more content on LinkedIn. Then, we’ll dip into the algorithm’s working so you can create a strategy that’ll get you high reach and engagement. Finally, we’ll give you the ten steps to create your strategy along with three advanced tips to grow on the platform.

    Let’s get on with it.

    Benefits of having a well-defined LinkedIn content strategy

    A thought-out LinkedIn strategy gives you direction. It sets objectives related to what you’ll post, how frequently you’ll post, and how you’ll grow on the network. Having such a strategy in place also means you’re carefully positioning yourself in front of your audience.

    Here’s a brief walkthrough of the upsides of having a defined LinkedIn content marketing  strategy

    • It helps you define your personal brand

    A LinkedIn content strategy help you position your personal brand in a manner that you become recognized for it. With the content you post, you show your values and what you stand for. It also positions you as a subject matter expert – the ultimate goal of LinkedIn users.

    • It works as a content testing channel

    While you can always listen to your audience on LinkedIn by reading and jumping into comments, you can also ask for their opinion yourself.

    For example, you can post on a topic and test how well it’s received by your audience. If it gets a positive reaction and stirs conversation, you can tell it’s a topic worth talking about more. For those of you running personal or company blogs and newsletter, this is a good way to identify engaging topics to cover.

    On the flip side, LinkedIn is an excellent channel to share the content you publish with your audience. Instead of sharing links on top of links in post after posts though, consider taking a community-building approach that’s based on value. More on this in a bit.

    Tip: Don’t share any links in your post as it’ll impact your reach. LinkedIn’s goal is to keep users on their platform and a link-bearing post indicates that you’re driving people away from the network, which reduces your reach. A popular alternate to this is adding the link in your first comment. Don’t forget to write, ‘link in comments’ to alert readers.

    • It opens doors for opportunities

    Lastly, LinkedIn is the hub of opportunities since it’s where professionals and decision makers hang out. As a freelance writer, I’ve got a ton of clients come through the network. Others have found their dream jobs, and still others have connect to collaborate on podcasts, co-marketing opportunities, and much more.

    Understanding the LinkedIn algorithm

    Before you go on to create your LinkedIn content marketing strategy, here’s the quick look at how LinkedIn algorithm works. Knowing this is essential so you can create content that works with it, rather than against it.

    Here goes:

        • The LinkedIn algorithm favors relevancy over recency/freshness. This means the more audience-relevant content you create, the better. It’s why we’ll start working on your strategy with a target audience survey.
        • The algorithm loves community and relationship building. It’s why it shows you content from people you know, share interests with, and engage with. Translation: be sure to engage with people in your target audience.
        • The algorithm also favors hashtags and going niche. Pete Davies, LinkedIn’s Senior Director of Product Management explains that going deep into topics stirs conversations, which the algorithm prioritizes. Hence, an important step in strategizing your content for the platform involves niching down.

    There’s more on the algorithm too. But, instead of bundling it here, I’ve added the details in relevant sections below so you can better understand its application.

    How to create the perfect LinkedIn content strategy in 10 simple steps

    Ready to learn? Let’s take things step by step.

    1. Start with learning about your audience

    As discussed, LinkedIn prioritizes content from the people you interact with. To put it another way, your target audience will only see your content if they interact with it regularly.

    One way for that to happen involves you engaging with them. This way, they’ll want to return the comments you make – thanks to the law of reciprocity (a person is likely to return something you do for them).

    Another way to get their attention is by posting content that’s valuable for them. This brings us to researching your target audience. If you’re new to LinkedIn, you won’t have much data to pull from your analytics to learn about your intended audience.

    So what now? Think of who your ideal audience is and survey your competitors’ audience to create your audience profile. As you spend time on LinkedIn, take insights from your analytics to refine this profile and create increasingly relevant content to attract the right people to your profile.

    2. Define your brand

    Your goal here is to answer the following: how do you want to position yourself on LinkedIn? Students, for example, can position themselves as learners, sharing what they’ve learned or read. Content managers, on the other hand, can show themselves as experts, sharing their experiences and tips on content creation, distribution, and more.

    Now, to get you to work: an easy way to go about creating a personal brand is to ask your colleagues and friends to define you in a few words. Traits that most of these people use to define you can help you define your brand. This way, you can be true to yourself and create an authentic brand as well.

    Plan to dive deep in personal branding by creating a logo and brand fonts and colors? Excellent. You can get a professional logo made or use a logo maker.

    For the fonts you choose, make sure they’re easy to read. As for the colors, pick ones that define you while also going into color psychology to understand the kind of impact your preferred colors have on your audience.

    3. Set a goal for yourself

    With your personal brand ready, let’s get into goal setting mode.

    Start by asking yourself: what do you want to achieve from LinkedIn? Typically, the answer to this lies somewhere among these pointers:

        • Grow your network and with it your opportunities
        • Distribute content to get in front of the right people
        • Position yourself as a go-to person of authority on a niche topic

    Either way, relationship building is the approach to take. Why? Because all opportunities, and networking, even thought leadership are based on strong relationships. On top of that, the LinkedIn algorithm also favors relationships.

    To this end, set a goal to offer value. The more value you offer, the better your audience will respond to the content you share until they start seeing you as an expert.

    With this out of the way, set yourself some numbers-based SMART goals too. Case in point: I want to grow my LinkedIn followers to X by posting Y times in [specified time].

    4. Niche down to a few topics you want to talk about

    To position yourself as an authority, you need to niche down to a few topics that you’ll talk about on LinkedIn. If your content’s subject is all over the place, people won’t instantly recall you as an authority on something. We’ve also seen how the algorithm favors niche content. So there’s that too

    For example, Bryan Kelly talks about the art of reading with his network:

    Similarly, Camille Trent talks about all things content:

    Hence, an action step for you here is to take a piece of paper and brainstorm on topics you can talk about. Don’t filter just yet. Create a list, then tally the topics with how likely your audience is going to like them. Once you do that, your list of topics will automatically chop. From there, narrow down to a topic that you’ll create content on for LinkedIn.

    Remember to go deep into the topic. That’s how you’ll use your hashtags too (#projectmanagement instead of #management). Speaking of which, LinkedIn recommends you use no more than three hashtags.

    5. Outline a writing style

    Identify your content style including tone and voice. Do you want to sound helpful or smart? Or, do you want to keep things light-hearted and humorous in your LinkedIn Posts? Whatever you settle on, don’t deviate far from your original self since it’ll be tough to keep up with a fabricated voice.

    Keep in mind: A strong brand has a strong voice. For example, my brand is against swear words. So there are none in my content. If someone from LinkedIn hops on a call with me, they won’t hear me swearing there too.

    6. Determine the angle your LinkedIn content will take?

    A solid angle helps you set apart from the noise on the platform. So ask yourself: will you tell stories? Do you plan to cover case studies or trending news? Or, do you want to explain your point with examples?

    Case in point: Here’s Eddie Shleyner with his storytelling chops on LinkedIn:

    Whatever you finalize, keep things human and actionable.

    Tip: I don’t recommend creating a year’s worth of LinkedIn content in one sitting. Create a week or month’s content. See how your audience reacts to it. Determine what gets the most attention and what doesn’t attract engagement. Create the next batch of content based on these takeaways.

    7. Decide on the visual aspect of your LinkedIn brand

    You can always stick with text-based LinkedIn posts. However, it helps to keep in mind that posts with images get 2x the comments that text posts get.

    Videos, on the other hand are five times more likely to get comments than text posts. So, in this step, determine what content format you’d like to create for LinkedIn.

    You can always start off with text posts, then diversify your content formats. Or, you can start strong by creating a video marketing strategy for the platform. This could be as simple as using GIFs to stand out in a busy LinkedIn feed as James Laurain does.

    Or, you can create branded LinkedIn carousels or videos. Here, you’ll find the brand colors you’ve worked on useful as it’s best to create all your visual content using your brand colors and fonts to create a recognizable, signature style.

    That said, another LinkedIn content format you can tap into are LinkedIn Stories. For this ephemeral content, brainstorm ideas for sharing behind the scenes content.

    Perhaps you’re shooting a new video and you can share a picture of it. Or, you can record yourself with a quick tip/food for thought for the day. Sharing snaps of your lunch or midday snack are also good ideas to engage your audience via Stories. Whatever your approach is, just make sure you’re using a high-quality online video editor to have superb video content.

    A 9 Y/o surprising his Doctor Mommy with a plate of nicely chopped melons

    8. Create an engagement plan

    Next up, work on your engagement plan. Since the algorithm favors engagement, you can’t ignore this step or put on the backburner.

    Your plan here is going to be two-fold:


    • Firstly, figure out how you’d engage with others

    Begin with setting up a goal of leaving X comments daily. Aim to drive conversations by sharing your experiences or asking questions in the comments.

    At the time of writing this, the LinkedIn community is speculating that the algorithm loves comments that get others to engage. For example, a comment is long enough (but not fluff-ridden) to trigger the ‘see more’ option and others click it to read it – signifying engagement. Comments that get likes also tell LinkedIn that you’re offering value to your readers, hence, boosting your content’s reach.

    Arwind Budhauliya abd other famous marketing specialists commenting on LinkedIn posts

    Source


    • Secondly, plan how you’ll drive engagement to your content

    Of course, commenting on other’s content does part of the job. For the remaining of it, the following tips will help: tag relevant people or brands to get them to engage with you (less is more when it comes to tagging), post on times when your audience is active, and ask questions as Mo Hassan does at the end of this post.

    Mo Hassan's sample LinkedIn post as a Growth Marketer

    Source

    If you’ve done your homework on understanding your audience well, you’ll be in a better position to create content that’s relevant to your audience, therefore, growing your engagement.

    With that out of the way, aim to rake engagement within the first 60 minutes of posting. The quicker people engage with your content, the faster the algorithm picks up their interest in your content and increases your post’s reach.

    9. Know how to format your content on LinkedIn

    This is critical. Content that looks easy to read is content that gets read. Formatting your LinkedIn content right makes it visually appealing to read and engage with.

    The following tips will help you format your content right:

        • Break text domination by adding color with relevant emojis. And, before you say emojis aren’t professional, know that they make your writing human. And, whether it’s LinkedIn or Twitter, you’ve got to show your human side.

    Tip: Use a brand emoji like Morning Brew has come to be known as coffee cup emoji. ☕

        • Make friends with whitespace. To this end, add spaces between your lines.
        • Each paragraph in your 1300-character long post should be no longer than two sentences. Three at most.
        • Use bullet points to change sentence-based text format. But, remember to keep them short to make them easy to read.
        • Mix sentence length. Long sentences are boring to read. Short sentences are digestible. Since you can’t do away with long sentences all together, consider mixing short, mid-length, and long sentences.

    Here’s a well-formatted LI post for reference:

    A well formatted LinkedIn post by an experience Saas Marketer

    Source

    10. Settle on a publishing frequency and stick to it

    You can learn what suits your audience best by checking your analytics. For starters, however, Tuesdays and Thursdays between 8 am and 2 pm are good posting times for LinkedIn. This varies by industry though. So, again, testing your posting times helps.

    What’s more, plan to be regular so your audience sees you regularly on the network. For the posting frequency, show up at least weekly. Four times a week is a good starting goal. This consistency in showing up, posting content, and engaging on LinkedIn regularly is key to success on the network.

    Keep in mind: it’s okay if you miss a post or two. Continue engaging with your audience’s content if you can. In this way, you’ll still be showing up and adding value.

    Also, remember that it’s easy to get carried away and end up scrolling for hours through LinkedIn. When you’re posting stick to the important actions that add value and avoid wasting time. You can use an hours tracker online app to make sure you stay on track.

    Advanced LinkedIn content strategy moves

    Once you’ve grown your followers and have a solid grip on your audience and what engages them, you can try these three advanced LinkedIn engagement tactics:

       1- Create a branded hashtag

    A custom or branded hashtag is one that you create and grow as your own hashtag on the platform. Erin Balsa, for example, posts content under #erin100. Balsa’s agenda is to post hundred content marketing tips using this hashtag.

    The predictive Index Marketing Director posting a content Marketing Tip

    Source

    Similarly, John Espirian runs a #LinkedInLearnerLounge where he shares LinkedIn tips.

       2.  Write LinkedIn articles

    The plus side to this is that LinkedIn articles get ranked in search, earning you eyeballs outside of the platform. And, if the content is absolute goodness, you can grow your followers further.

    Google search results for a query

    Question now is: what should you write about? You can always tweak content that you’ve already published and share it as LinkedIn articles. Or, you can work from scratch. Test the topic you want to cover by writing it out as a post. If it gets good response, go ahead and add details to it, turning it into an article that your audience will be interested in reading.

    3.   Go live

    Live video on the platform gets 7 times the reaction and 24 times more comments than posting native video according to the horse’s mouth. This makes LinkedIn Live gold. Is there a post that’s gotten excellent engagement? Take that topic and discuss it live. Or, ask your audience what they’d want to learn from you and do a live video on it.

    Looking for inspiration? Sarah Noel Block is great at hosting guests on LinkedIn Live.

    Wrapping up

    Tapping into LinkedIn can feel overwhelming in the start. But, that’s true for any social network you want to grow your personal brand on. So I’d say you put that overwhelm aside, create your content strategy and start using the platform. You don’t have to aim for perfection. Aim to get started, be consistent, and learn. Things will take off from there.

    So what are you waiting for? Grab a sheet of paper and get to work.

  • 5 B2B Email Marketing Tips to Swear By

    5 B2B Email Marketing Tips to Swear By

    B2B email marketing focuses on businesses ratfiher than individuals, and the purchase decisions are made on value transfer instead of impulsion. The sales cycle is considerably longer, and it may involve multiple decision-makers, making B2B email marketing significantly different from B2C. A lot of email marketers apply the same strategies for B2B email communication, which they use for B2C, thus never achieving the true potential of B2B email marketing. Today, I will discuss the top 5 B2B email marketing tips that will help you unlock the true potential of your mailing lists. Read on for a deep dive into the topic.

    What makes B2B email marketing different from B2C and how to approach it

    B2C is more focused on driving sales on almost every message, and it contains little to no educational content. Moreover, the purchase won’t have a long-term impact on consumers. However, B2B purchases have lasting effects on an organization, and one needs to invest in educational content spread over multiple emails before prospects start engaging truly. You will also have to optimize the messages to deliver value for each stakeholder who takes part in the buying processes. Thus, the B2C approach of generating revenue from single emails isn’t going to work out. We can consider that their identical objectives are the reason behind many email marketers applying similar strategies:

    b2b vs b2c

    (Image Credits)

    Now that we know about the differences between the two, let us understand how to approach B2B email marketing. Firstly, you will need to curate your content for a rational buyer and focus on lead warming. You also need to understand your prospect’s requirements and satisfy multiple employees’ concerns before your message reaches the actual decision-maker. You can find the subtle differences in the approach in the below table:

    difference in b2b and b2c

    (Image Credits)

    Emails have the best ROI as a digital marketing channel, and B2B emails have 47% higher CTR when compared to B2C messages. Also, checking work emails daily is still a part of every organization, and there’s no reason you should miss on B2B email marketing.

    email ROI

    (Image Credits)

    b2b email marketers

    (Image Credits)

    That’s enough of polishing the basics. Let us explore those five B2B email marketing tips that will help you need to try without fail:

    5 best B2B email marketing tips

    #1 Use Personalization + Dynamic Segmentation Simultaneously

    Just because you are going to communicate with different professionals from different levels of hierarchy, it doesn’t mean that you should give up on personalization efforts. You should segment your mailing lists in a way that helps you address different hierarchy levels and then run personalization efforts to make your messages relevant to the job profile. Focus on your prospect organization’s needs and send content as per the powers and understanding level of the concerned job profile.

    personalize email

    (Image Credits)

    Dynamic segmentation comes in handy in filtering your mailing list proactively. It aids in targeting the contacts based on their recent activity on your website and response rates to your ongoing email campaigns. Thus, you will be able to get the benefit of staying relevant to the current phase of their buying processes instead of sending messages in a generic fashion.

    list segmentation affect on email marketing

    (Credits)

    Personalization coupled with dynamic segmentation is one of the highly effective ways to achieve the right send times. For instance, if your prospect viewed a certain FAQ on your website, sending them a relevant resource on the topic within a few hours can significantly help the customer journey. 

    #2 Develop content for multiple stakeholders and offer cascading value propositions

    As I mentioned above, B2B email marketing relies on delivering value and establishing reliability. This will require you to create extensive content that complements all phases of the buyer journey. You should start by knowing which stakeholders are going to take part in the purchasing process. A finance manager’s concerns are always going to differ from that of a production or sales manager. Yet, all of them come into the picture at different times and even stay in the loop. You can use the below chart to create email content development guidelines for addressing them:

    b2b customers

    (Image Source)

    Also, optimize the subject lines, preheader text, and CTAs for various stakeholders when creating resources. Once you develop the basic framework for your email content, you should use different formats to distribute it. This makes content consumption easier. Drip email campaigns are the best solution for offering cascading value propositions. They help you deliver the right content via emails based on engagement and timing. Instead of bombarding the readers with huge amounts of information that either doesn’t connect with their job role or is irrelevant to their buyer journey only discourages further engagement. Below is a schematic diagram of how drip emails deliver meaningful resources using cascading send rules:

    CTA for emails

    (Image Credits)

    I find that using self-nurturing landing pages is a great way when you don’t know the exact profile of your recipient. You can use customized URLs from Replug to track their activity and improve your database. 

    #3 Leverage newsletters to project thought leadership

    Newsletters are a multi-purpose tool for B2B marketers. They help establish thought leadership by engaging the readers consistently over information that aids their business. They give you an opportunity to send insights on various aspects of your customer’s business and place your product/service as a facilitator of the benefits you mention. In many cases, it takes weeks to go through various offers, terms and conditions, technicalities, and discussions before they approach you again. You can use newsletters to keep your prospective clients engaged during those ‘colder’ phases, and it generally acts in your favour as opposed to brief periods of staying out of touch. No doubt, email is the hot favourite of B2B email marketers when it comes to content distribution:

    content distribution channels

    (Image Source)

    Sharing industry-level research, opinion pieces, and inputs from technical experts are some time-tested ways of projecting thought leadership. You can use tools like ContentStudio to keep your subscribers engaged through highly refined content pieces from third-party sources. The below email from Smartsheet helps it take an authoritative pose, and it will surely increase its trustworthiness among the readers:

    smart sheet

    (Image Credits)

    Similarly, if you are a SaaS company, you can send product-specific tips and tricks within your newsletter during the trial period. Here’s an example of doing so from Miro:

    Miro

    (Image Credits)

    #4 Be smart with curation in your email templates

    Having the right B2B HTML email templates matters! Content plays a decisive role, but curation is another aspect that impacts your campaign’s overall performance. The number of B2B buyers remains less when compared to the B2C buyers, but the ticket size is considerably huge. Thus, you should invest in beautiful email marketing templates that provide dynamic content blocks as it helps your personalization efforts apart from improving aesthetics. It also saves you from degrading your brand value in situations like sending an email with wrong images or URLs, as you can change them even after sending it.

    This is how Crowd Writer UK works when they email other businesses. Having personalized subject lines and simple and authentic content has boosted their email marketing campaigns. When curating your content blocks, use visual hierarchy rules for getting the best aesthetic appeal. Keeping the paragraphs and lines shorter is a must, but your email typefaces, branding elements, colour palette, the separation between adjacent elements, font size, and colour play a huge role in determining your message’s readability. Mobile optimization is also necessary as 51% of the total email opens come from smartphones. Here’s a great example of curating a B2B email template in the right manner coming from none other than Campaign Monitor:

    email template

    (Image Credits)

    #5 Constantly track your success rates and redesign your efforts

    Lastly, I would like to tell the readers that tracking your campaign results is 10x more important in B2B email marketing. The reason? Right from the decision-makers to the purchase cycle, everything keeps shifting while your competitors are going to target your leads far more aggressively than the B2C sector. Keeping a tab of how your email copies perform, the subject lines that get maximum opens, most coveted gated content, and CTAs apart from the regular email metrics will pave your way to success. You can learn from successful conversions and replicate the model that helped you convert in your ongoing efforts.

    email stats

    (Image Credits)

    Most businesses run an email audit on a yearly basis, but it is advisable for B2B firms to use real-time insights and constantly tweak their email marketing strategy as per the latest performance results. As the businesses continue to evolve with technological advancements and shifts in end-customer perception, B2B marketers will have to constantly evolve their processes through consistent evaluations.

    Putting it together

    Coming towards the end, I will draw your attention to one common trait among all of these five B2B email marketing tips: Cater to the needs of the buyer journey on a real-time basis and follow a flexible approach. No doubts that running email campaigns for business-to-business interactions is complicated but following these email marketing tips will help you focus on getting results through coordinated efforts. I hope these tips help you get greater success in your next B2B email marketing campaign.

    Author Bio

    Kevin George is Head of Marketing at Email Uplers, one of the fastest-growing full-service email marketing company that specializes in crafting professional email templates, PSD to HTML email conversion, and free HTML email templates in addition to providing email automation, campaign management, and data integration & migration services. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz, and eats and breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on his blog.

     

  • Video marketing fundamentals to increase conversion rates

    Video marketing fundamentals to increase conversion rates

    Video marketing has become a popular tool to generate conversion in such a short time. What makes it different from other marketing strategies is that it turns the art of old copy into an engaging video.

    But, there’s another distinct feature that only video marketing has. It is the personal touch of visual storytelling. Unlike any other online videos, this type of marketing video focuses on the audience’s perspective. As a result, the video will act as a great representation of them.

    But why must it be a video?

    If you’re an avid internet user, you won’t be surprised that most content is video. In reality, video has become a staple content in the online world.

    It’s nothing new, really.

    In fact, a statistic says that people consumed one billion gigabytes (56 exabytes) of online video monthly. And that’s in 2017 alone. The current stats predict that over 240 exabytes will be consumed monthly in 2022.

    In conclusion, the future of online video is bright. If you’re an entrepreneur, you must’ve taken this information into account. Promote your business with video marketing as soon as possible.

    What is Video Marketing?

    Video marketing is the practice of turning textual copy into an entertaining and informative visual with the touch of powerful storytelling. That’s what we call video marketing.

    Video marketing itself covers many types that are aimed for a different purpose – for example, educational videos, product videos, brand videos, and tutorial videos. These are the four major types of video marketing nowadays. 

    Each type also divides into a more specific video; for example, an explainer video is inside the educational type video. It is the introduction of a company or product to establish a new relationship with the audience.

    In short, it’s best to implement video marketing when you begin your entrepreneurial journey and hook the audience’s attention. Video marketing can also act as an educational video since you explain who you are to the public’s eyes.

    The Benefits of Video Marketing 

    Often, you may hear about powerful video marketing tactics that boost conversion rates in no time but you don’t get to know how it works to get you satisfied with the outcome. 

    Video marketing’s benefits don’t come overnight. In contrast, it is a compilation of teeny-tiny steps that lead to your conversion goals. Here are the benefits (in order) that show you how video marketing can bring you more conversion rates.

    1. Capture The Audience Attention

    Video marketing is an excellent tool for grabbing the audience’s attention. Since it centres around the audience’s point of view, it’s essential to incorporate a unique approach.

    For example, a tutorial video aims to solve the pain point of the audience. Most of the time, the audience doesn’t pay attention to what a product can be used for many possible usages. Your tutorial video will come in handy to help them understand better.

    Suppose you’re running an Italian Parmesan business. We all know what we can do with the cheese. It’s a basic complement dish that enhances pasta and pizza into a mouth-watering delicacy. Even without your tutorial, the audience knows how to incorporate parmesan into their meal.

    They will come up with the idea of making cheesy pizza or cheese fondue or something ‘normal’ thing to do with the cheese. But if you get your audience a tutorial video to try out something different, you can benefit the most from it.

    Pizza-Audience Attention Gif

    You can make a fantastic tutorial video by incorporating new recipes for your authentic Italian cheese. For example, cheese tends to be an expensive ingredient in some parts of the world. To tap into an audience of students or people who are tight on a budget, you decide to make a budget-friendly recipe with cheese.

    Engaging audiences through visually compelling content can drive remarkable conversion rates. One effective strategy includes leveraging platforms like Idomoo, which specializes in personalized video solutions that capture attention and resonate with viewers instantly. Exploring these advanced video marketing approaches enables brands to deepen connections with their audience.

    Doing so helps you reach a new market and provide insight for your existing audience. In the end, you get the best of both worlds.

    2. Improve Brand’s Awareness

    Video marketing can help you spread more awareness by incorporating an effective strategy. This is where explainer videos play a big part in the game.

    First off, an explainer video has the ability to convey a message about your brand and product concisely. If you’re new to the business, it’s an excellent way to apply this method sooner. For an entrepreneur looking to leverage powerful storytelling effectively, utilizing a video presentation maker with advanced capabilities such as text-to-speech, auto-generated subtitles, and AI script writing can revolutionize your marketing approach. Such tools not only simplify the process of turning ideas into compelling videos but also ensure scalability and consistency across different projects.

    Let’s get back to the cheese business.

    To begin with, there are tons of cheese companies in this world. They aren’t just cheese producers but also dairy companies that supply all dairy-derived products worldwide.

    Does it mean you lose the battle as a local cheese producer? No, you still have a chance to acquire markets, at least in your local area. 

    This is where video marketing comes to the rescue. It enables you to spread out the words about your local-authentic Italian cheese. It also allows the audience to know better about your brand in an amusing way- not too promotional.

    3. Boost SEO

    Every business needs to have a website to level-up its attention. Often, the audience looks up the website first to judge whether your company is credible or not. Basically, your website is an exceptional online presence that you should nurture in the long run.

    Besides, people rely heavily on the search engine to look for anything in today’s internet age. The chance of your business to appear on the search engine will be super low if you don’t incorporate a digital marketing tactic.

    A digital marketing tactic includes having video marketing as one of the plans. As mentioned above, video marketing won’t only act better to attract the audience but also the search engine. Including a video on your site will help the search engine rank your site.

    A good marketing video on your site allows visitors to get an in-depth explanation within minutes. The presence of video can also attract the eyes first when a user visits your site. It leads them to click and watch without spending time reading a bulky text inside the website.

    The relevancy of your marketing video enables the search engine to track your page better. This way, you can improve your site’s appearance on the search engine result page (SERP). 

    video marketing stats

    Source:offers.hqplrstore.com

     

    4. Bring More Traffic

    Now that you have a fundamental knowledge of websites and SEO, let’s dive into how a better SEO score can bring you more traffic.

    When you finally reach page one on the search engine result page, the chance is you generate massive visitors to your site. Although it’s apparent, our ‘local cheese business’ doesn’t even know this strategy.

    A small business mostly relies on the classic word of mouth without giving a chance of online presence. Although the former method is still effective today, the online representation can fuel up the businesses’ expansion.

    An embedded video marketing on your site isn’t the only source where your enormous traffic comes from. Thanks to social media platforms, people can share your video marketing multiple times. Also, don’t forget about the number of views and impressions. Those are the vital analytic tools to measure your video marketing success.

    If you succeed in delivering useful video marketing, the chance of getting overnight popular is very much likely. The audience will be curious as to what your brand is all about. They will dive into more information by visiting the only complete source of you: your website.

    Therefore, the more shared your video marketing is, the higher opportunity of you getting more traffic to your website. 

    5. Increase Conversion Rates

    Video marketing is designed to generate leads in the first place. So, there’s no debate on it. But how does it work?

    Firstly, in every video marketing, the narrative or storytelling guides the viewers to pay more attention to it. Without the audience realizing it, each video infuses marketing information, leading them to feel attached.

    This is where powerful storytelling works. It enchants the audience to stay within the video until it ends. Although many implement an urgency narration, some companies prefer to have it in the end.

    We call this actionable narration a call-to-action (CTA). It can be a text, button, banner, or even a story in the narration that gives the audience a sense of urgency to take action. CTA is the gate for every potential lead to embark on your brand’s journey.

    CTA works like a magic word. It doesn’t push anyone to click on something or visit your website. Rather, it beautifully persuades the audience to get an experience with you.

    That’s why it’s crucial to understand how CTA works for generating the audience. Placing CTAs can also be tricky as it needs some strategies without making your audience feel objectified. 

    In brief, every video marketing needs CTA to generate leads and measure the conversion rates. That’s a must-have. If not, then what’s the point of your video marketing?

    How To Write Your Video Marketing Script

    video marketing script

    Source: medium.com

    Now that you have a knowledge of video marketing, you may think it’s hard to make one, especially when you’re a novice in this practice. Although you can give it all to the social media video production company to handle, you should know the science behind it. Only then can you work together to receive the best outcome you desire.

    Here are some tips for you to create a compelling video marketing script that helps increase conversion rates.

    1. Write as you talk

    Sometimes scriptwriters don’t put this as equally important as giving the real conversation with the audience. They concentrate more on delivering whatever in their mind into words, which is terrible.

    Your writing text doesn’t automatically turn into an engaging story if you ignore this element. That’s why there’s this statement amongst writers, “Write as if you’re speaking.” It means that when you sound your writing, and it comes out great, you have succeeded in your writing hustle. This becomes even more important when using text to video AI tools, which turn your scripts into visual content because if the writing doesn’t feel authentic, no tool can save it.

    Writing for video marketing can be challenging, but that doesn’t mean impossible to tackle down. Continuously writing your script, or leveraging an AI video generator, can enhance your skill in the future to get a better hold of what’s enticing to the audience and what’s not.   

    2. Educate the audience

    Video marketing isn’t that salesy video where you push people into buying your product. It’s never like that, to begin with. There’s a reason why it’s called marketing, not sales. It aims to penetrate the market and acquire leads.

    Therefore, your video marketing should be informative and educational for the audience. If they find it helpful, you don’t need to worry much about the upcoming event. A broad audience will be right in your hand.

    Your video marketing script must be the first introduction of the following promotional video. In other words, you must create a solid audience that ‘understands’ your brand and your product. And, you can achieve this state by educating them properly.

    3. Accentuate your words and tones

    If you understand what it means to have a hidden agenda, well, then you can incorporate that method in your scriptwriting. It’s not about the wrong and misleading information to cruelly achieve your goal. It’s about focusing on the thing you want to deliver by accentuating your words.

    Words and tones can sometimes be complex to understand fully. People from diverse backgrounds can interpret the words differently too. That’s why a video marketing scriptwriter should emphasize it to give a concise message.

    Tones are also vital to leave an impression on the audience. It differs from every business or niche. You can’t apply a happy tone for a product that solves an emotionally dreading situation. That’s inappropriate in the first place, and secondly, it will leave a terrible impression of your brand.

    4. Incorporate narrative structure

    The thing about storytelling is the beauty of its structure, how it enchants the viewers to feel ‘something.’ Crafting exceptional storytelling needs a lot of practice. But to start on, try implementing the narrative structure in your scriptwriting.

    Well, storytelling itself is already in the form of narration. But, most marketers ignore this part as they may straightly think of the words to gain leads. Because, no- you can’t incorporate a brand-centred story if you target a different subject: the audience.

    It’s not about telling your features and so on (well, yes, you should put this into the writing), but it’s not the main thing. When you implement a narrative structure about your audience and make it all about them, they sure feel attached.

    5. Use illustrative words

    Lastly, don’t forget to use illustrative words in your video marketing script. Most scriptwriters forget to put this as they focus more on crafting the big words. The thing is, your heavy words are hard to translate into a video. 

    Keep in mind that a video needs illustrative words to be acted upon. Your words must be visually friendly so that the production engineer knows what you mean or the message you want to deliver.

    Illustrative words also allow the audience to visualize better, albeit there’s a video representing it. But still, it’s a crucial element that every scriptwriter should take notes of.

    Conclusion

    Video marketing is one of the most popular strategies every marketer has reverted to s in the past decades. Thanks to the growing world of the Internet, people are now relying on it to look up almost everything. 

    The content itself has shifted from visual to video as the latter has more information included than the former. This is where businesses take an opportunity from. They implement a marketing scheme into an online video that reaches out to a broader audience, in the hope of having more conversion rates and it’s true. Video marketing is now used by many businesses to elevate their performance.

    Author

    Andre Oentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order). Twitter.Linkedin Email: andre@breadnbeyond.com 

  • Effective link building: What is working in 2020?

    Effective link building: What is working in 2020?

    Being a webmaster requires persistence, hard work, and a lot of patience. However, these are just the essential traits of a successful SEO marketer; when you intend on achieving a higher rating on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) and boost your website’s reputation, it is essential to be familiar with all the state of the art link building and technical SEO strategies that could take your website to the next level.

    When analyzing such approaches, a site owner would have to particularly emphasize the importance of both on-page SEO and off-page SEO.  While the on-page SEO is related to managing the content that is on your particular site, off-page SEO is a way of ensuring that your approach and activity isn’t limited to engaging with your existing audience.

    The significance of off-page SEO is often undermined; several webmasters overlook what they can achieve with it. “Off-Page SEO” denotes every activity commenced by site owners away from their website that can assist them in achieving a higher rating on SERPs. On-page SEO takes place on the website while the off-page searches engine optimization outside your website.

    Related: How to Create a SEO Friendly URL: Ultimate Tips

    Backlinks and Internal Linking

    Backlinks and internal linking are separate concepts, and it is essential not to get caught up between the two. Proper understanding is a vital trait of a successful site owner.

    A proper linking structure is necessary for progression, and for it, you would need to understand the distinction between the two types.

    Internal linking refers to linking a particular web-page through a keyword in a different page. A demonstration of it would be to link a page of your website to another that has a similar content. What it effectively does is that it notifies the user that the site has similar but more in-depth content on a specific topic on the following page that is linked.

    Linking increases the bounce rate since the users who might be searching for a specific topic might scroll between pages and spend more time exploring your website. If the content quality of the website is high, then there are a lot more chances of an increased audience.

    Such activities are noticed by Google or search engines, and it contributes towards getting a higher and better rank on the SERPs.

    Backlinks and Their Significance

    Backlinks are when an external website mentions or gives mention yours, and such a reference is made through a backlink. It can provide significant assistance in reiterating your site’s reliability, producing a network of an entree through various web pages and publishers.

    The importance of link building cannot be undermined, and therefore it’s vital to be well-aware of how to proceed with it and how does it contribute towards building a robust online presence.

    Several site owners might think that link building isn’t that important, and they should spend the time and effort required into something else, but that’s not the case. Analysis has shown that various websites have achieved a higher rating even in 2020 through sensible use of link building.

    How Does a Webmaster Benefit from Link Building?

    The SEO technique of link building assists the reader in finding informational articles and blogs online through various web-pages; it aids brands in getting discovered through the great content sources to present online.

    Link building is beneficial for websites and webmasters. When you get backlinks from a website that has matching content as yours, it provides an enormous boost to the status. Since backlinks are often acquired sites that have a similar structure and content subject as yours, it helps attract the organic audience on the website. Access to organic traffic means a higher bounce rate, meaning that the people are more than likely to spend time on your website, exploring it for useful material.

    When you get a backlink from a well-reputed website that has a higher domain authority than yours, it provides a signal to search engines that the content that you share on your pages is high-quality content and worth mentioning on other sites; it is a crucial factor in getting a higher rating on search engines and moving up ranks.

    Although the user perceives simply a link’s part, the search engine comprehends the complete structure of the hyperlink and abstracts valuable data from it. Linking to a blog on your website is simple by way of a hyperlink, which will direct the user to the desired web-page. However, while linking back to the same blog on a different page, link building procedures need to be prudently obeyed to ensure that Google search engines can easily find and access your page. It means choosing the correct text to be used in the hyperlink. It would include confirming that the keyword exists within the hyperlinked text, and frequently checking to comprehend that your link is still active and it hasn’t broken.

    Factors to Consider With Significant Link Building

    Link building is a technique to enhance your website’s status and rating on the search engines. However, as stated previously, it required knowledge of not only SEO optimization but strategies as to how you can take your site to the front pages.

    High Quality Content

    The first thing that you need to ensure is that you post high-quality content on your website. The ‘’Content is King’’ phrase is every green for every site online. When compiling content for your website, there are a few things that must be considered because even if your content is well-written, these can still be a major turn-off for any visitor on your site.

    Content with Minimum Grammatical Mistakes

    If you are someone who doesn’t have a firm grip over the English language; an excellent way to composing the most error-free content is by verifying it through the Grammar checker tool. The online grammar checker is a straightforward tool to access and use; all it requires is the user inserting their text into it and searching for any grammatical errors. It can help you find punctuation, spelling, and sentence structure mistakes along with spotting and correcting any misuse of clauses and phrases. So, you can use the tool to ensure that your text complies with all the rules of English grammar and composition.

    Related: 5 Ways to Write Content that Leads to Engagement

    Avoid Plagiarism

    A webmaster is well-aware of the damage that can be inflicted by the detection of plagiarism in the posted content. Apart from resulting in a copyright strike, it could lead to a negative impact on the site. Therefore, it is always advised to check your work before any final submission. One exceptional tool to ensure that your work is plagiarism-free is by checking it through an originality checker before posting it online. The online free plagiarism checker is one of the most accurate tools in its category. Another benefit of using it is that there is no word limit imposed on the free edition, so you can effectively check the file without worrying about the word limit.

    Building Links from High Authority Sites

    Another major factor that needs to be stressed is that your site should be getting linked to the one which has a higher authority score than yours, or otherwise, it would be of no use since a site already ranks below yours on a SERPs wouldn’t possibly be of many benefits. You can check both the Domain Authority and the Page Authority of any website by the DA PA checker. It’s a free online tool that requires minimal computing expertise while delivering maximum benefit. The tool is developed with the latest MOZ ranking technique and evaluates the exact authority rating of a site.

    seo

    A key to writing an interesting article is by ensuring that it delivers complete meaning while staying in a specific word limit. The word counter tool can be used to confirm that the allocated word limit has been followed while writing the article.

    Some Do’s and Don’ts for Link Building

    There are certain things that you can do, and these are regarded as the best practices for a better and healthier internal linking structure.

    Google’s examination methods are progressive; they keep making amendments to it, and according to the latest rules laid down in September 2019, it is now capable of identifying spam links.

    Applying the rules on the link building sample, you would need to separately identify the content type you are sharing over the blog. When sharing a link, a tag of rel= “UGC” assists Google in understanding that you are mentioning the user-generated content.

    It is an ideal specimen of the developing characteristic of link building and how it could pose a challenge to marketers for compliance. Luckily, there are certain dos and don’ts that you can follow, which have proved to be extremely helpful over time.

    There are other things that you could follow, but they could be time-specific. So, you would have to identify the new rules and comply with them accordingly. As stated earlier, webmasters need to be aware of the development being made to ensure that they keep up with the high demands.

    The following set of dos and don’ts have appeared to be useful and applicable over every stage of criteria that has been introduced.

    Do: – Inserting Long Keyword While Link Building

    It should come to no surprise that keywords perhaps are central to generating traffic on your website. It provides the reader with the idea that they will get what they are searching for, and it also gives a positive impression since while reading an article, the user can access another one that it finds attractive.

    Keywords are central, and there are proper guidelines as to how you can come up with the perfect one. However, there is another thing that needs to be noticed. It’s that when linking, you should add the long keyword and link it to the particular article through a hyperlink.

    Adding a long keyword and linking it assists Google in link contextualization and shows it to honestly interested users. It’s one of the best ways to increase the bounce rate of your website. If you have published highly informative and helpful content on your site, link building can be a key to attracting more visitors.

    Do: – Increasing the Page’s Social Visibility

    Social sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are top-rated. Social visibility is one of the most successful and efficient ways of getting more visitors. Embedding links in multiple social sites can help to achieve a better rank on SERPs.

    However, there is one thing that is worth mentioning here, and it’s that if you are intending to encourage users to visit your website, targeting the right audience is extremely important. For instance, if your website is related to cooking recipes and techniques, then it is advised that you feature in pages and groups or engage with the community that is interested in cooking and intends on learning something new. It is the key to getting organic traffic on your site.

    DO: – Use Links to Add Value to Your Content

    Although link building has significant effects on your page’s SEO, remember that your content should, first and foremost, be helpful to your customers. 

    For example, if you’re talking about how to build an e-commerce site, use link-building as an opportunity to bridge your readers to tools that might be useful to them such as web hosting services, payment gateways, e-commerce platforms, and others. It wouldn’t make sense to add in links to completely unrelated sites, even if they happen to have great authority, right?

    Think about your customers’ objectives whenever you’re producing content. Then, use links to help them achieve their goals more efficiently.

    DO: – Keeping Track of Your Backlinks

    Several webmasters spend their time, effort, and energy in getting new backlinks, and they overlook one of the most critical aspects that are to keep track of the ones that have already been published previously.

    If you don’t track the backlinks, how can you conclude whether you want to have newer ones, or would you instead pause and work upon something else?

    At one instant, you might have hundreds of links pointing towards your website, but in a few days, when you check back to your surprise, you might find some of them gone. The key to it is that you actively engage with your audience on your social sites, it will effectively help you generate more links to your website, and it would be the more active ones.

    An important point to note here is that you have no control over what others would do with their website and particularly with your backlinks; hence you may find some of your previous links missing, which would impact your linking structure.

    Therefore, you should always keep track of your links before deciding to go for new ones.

    DO: – Establishing a Content Pillar

    Content is the heart and soul of your website. Whether you are an online business, informative site, or a news platform, the quality of your content is something that would decide the fate of your site.

    You should always publish well-written content, and it has all the essential traits that might be required for SEO optimization. Only such content attracts traffic and encourages people to access internal links and mention your site through a backlink on theirs.

    The posting frequency is a question that often confuses several site owners. The question ‘’How often should I post?’’ is the one that may have different opinions attached to it. While many publishers try to post content continuously, such a high posting frequency might lead to information overload.

    Such a tactic could hamper the site’s growth since not many people are free of their daily worries to continuously refreshing the site to access all the latest updates.

    Creating a content pillar is an excellent way to deal with it; it should be made once in a while. A pillar article is generally an article which follows a tutorial style. Usually, such articles are longer than 500 words with a lot of practical advice and tips. It is a unique way of engaging your audience in healthy activities. Furthermore, the length of the article ensures that it’s brief, which allows users to read it between their breaks.

    DON’T:- Searching for Paid Views

    You can find several people online that are selling views for a site. Buying links is a strategy that is disliked by Google and other various search engines, plus it isn’t of many benefits to a site owner as well.

    It’s a way that could help you increase viewers for the time being. But it isn’t instrumental in the long run since the bounce rate for it is extremely low, along with the engagement on your articles wouldn’t be very efficient. Furthermore, buying views won’t be very beneficial in the long run since people wouldn’t care to share your website further or recommend it to their friends.

    A link building practice for 2020 will be to refer to the rel=”sponsored” tag if you have an agreement that is based upon compensation.

    DON’T:- Mentioning the Same Keyword Repeatedly 

    We are all well-aware of the importance of keywords and how they could be crucial in achieving a higher rating. However, that is to say, and you should never mention the same keyword repeatedly over the article.

    It won’t be much sufficient, and you can replace it with slight modification based words that have a similar meaning and link them to the same web page over your article. It will make your link building SEO Technique more effective and would assist in getting a better rank.

    DON’T:- Spam Links

    The spamming link is a massive turn-off for the search engines and the viewers. The quote ‘’Quality rather than quantity’’ should be emphasized here, and you should only opt for linking more contextually and systematically.

    Spam links are annoying, whether they are internal links or backlinks, they frustrate visitors. Spammy links impact the engagement and visitors on your website.

    It is advised that while making the ink structure, only refer to a particular page a few times instead of linking every other line.  Many webmasters make the mistake of spamming links online either on social platforms or on their web-page. It leaves a harmful impact on the readers who prefer quality since it’s a well-acknowledged fact that people with quality content would instead engage with the right audience than with uninterested ones.

    Getting Backlinks

    Backlinks are essential to achieve a better rating than before on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). The long-anticipated dream of every webmaster to get to the first page can only be achieved through effort.

    Backlinks are essential, and a very efficient way for new websites to get backlinks is through the Backlink generator tool.

    The tool is encompassed with benefitting features that would help you find sites and attract organic traffic onto your platform.  To accomplish the requirement to get free backlinks from various platforms, this is crucial in attracting search engine on your website.

    Getting organic backlinks is difficult, and the Online backlink generators can help you with it. The best thing about it is that you can access it without any costs involved, which is excellent considering that beginner websites are usually tight on a budget. They can’t afford the expensive online software that can assist them with the task.

    Getting Backlinks From Websites With Higher Authority

    The crucial aspect is that you get backlinks from websites that rate higher than yours. Getting backlinks from sites with higher Domain Authority and Page Authority would assist you in getting more visitors.

    Artificial Intelligence Features

    Every backlink is produced; naturally, the tool is developed with artificial intelligence features, making it more convenient and accurate to find the right sites. It only contributes towards finding the websites that have a similar structure and genre as the one that you have developed.

    Relevancy of Backlinks 

    Relevancy is one of the most critical features of backlinks. IF you get a lot of backlinks from websites that don’t match what you have posted on your, there is a high amount of chance that such links are going to have low weightage. The backlink generators only create relevant backlinks and within a few seconds.

    Usage

    The usage is another characteristic of the tool that makes it an exceptional choice. Anyone aware of the basics of computers can easily use the tool to access links for their website.

    The following steps have to be followed:-

    • Access these tools
    • Scroll over to the Backlink generator tool
    • Paste the URL of your website

    Privacy

    Many users are concerned with the privacy of their search history.  Although, there are several websites out there claiming to be saving the user’s records and ensurinng that the security of the searched material would be the responsibility of the user. It would be entirely liable for any breach in the policy, although the tool is designed to discard any searched data as soon as the user is done with it.

    Further Benefits

    These sites developed for maximum benefit to the user. It has up to different tools that not only help in composing content but their application extends to efficient site management. You can use various tools for your benefit in the most straightforward possible manner since all of them are free and highly efficient.

    Conclusion

    Backlinks are one of the most essentials in order to increase the site’s ranking on the search engine result page. However, Google suggests to get the backlink from another websites naturally. If you still want then above ways can help you to get the backlinks quickly.

    Besides the ranking on the search engine, the backlinks are also effective to increase your site’s domain authority. According to the Moz, the biggest factor behind the increase in domain authority is the quality and quantity of the backlinks.

    Author Bio

    Afrasiab Ahmad writes SEO articles for online business marketers and SEO tools users to make their Google rankings surge. He contributes articles about digital marketing, SEO techniques, and tech regularly to Prepostseo.com”