Digital

Digital Marketing Trends of 2017

As 2016 came to an end, organisations are getting challenged every year, about their digital marketing strategy. Here are some of the digital marketing strategies that will dominate the year 2017. Video Marketing YouTube happens to be the second most used search engine in the world. Online video happens to be 50% of all mobile traffic. As users get savvier, they will have the need to connect with brands and engage with their stories. Platforms like Periscope and Facebook make it easy for brands and businesses to connect with their fans and followers in real time and get their message across by streaming live broadcasts. Also 2017 video will see tremendous growth, from Facebook news feeds to family groups on Whatsapp. With NASSCOMM estimating 700 million smartphones in India by 2020 and with every phone being a potential video device. The growth of video is only going north in 2017. With 4G becoming the norm, we’ll be getting a lot more videos in our newsfeeds. With eye balls migrating to small mobile screens, time spent on social media rising, video is going to see growth in 2017. Mobile to Dominate Desktop It has been seen that Google has already phased out websites that are not optimized for mobiles. With this trend on the rise, we are going to see an increasing number of marketers giving more attention to mobile search and optimization. This would mean Google is prioritizing mobile sites and will have Google ads oriented around mobile. This means ads are going to become more localized. So a search for ‘fast food’ will not come up with KFC, if there is no KFC with a 10 km radius. This trend is going to continue not only in 2017, but in the years to come. Instore Marketing There isn’t much connection between in-store marketing and digital marketing, but the difference between the physical and online sales techniques are fast shrinking. In a smartphone dominated world, 80% of the millennials use their phone inside the store and 75% of them are willing to receive location based text alerts. An organization with optimized mobile strategy, capturing customers in-store through digital techniques will prove to be an effective means of conversion. A fine example of this comes from the American supermarket Target. The store launched a reward app to present their customers with special offers as they walked through various departments of their stores. The method becomes even easier, when you use the new beacon technology (After downloading the app, customers can be sent customized content, when they happen to be at the vicinity of the store through beacon technology). Interactive Content In the current digital environment, engagement is everything and marketers succeed when users not only consume the content, but also enjoy it and act upon it. This makes it certain that interactive content will be the way forward in coming times. It is seen that when compared to static content interactive content is able to notch conversion rate of up to 70% higher conversions. In fact, it also is a good way of educating buyers and making your brand to stand out among competitors. It is a win-win situation, when people are turning away from traditional means of advertising in favor of online reviews and research. With digital technology getting more sophisticated, the scope to engage interactively is seemingly endless. Interactivity can come in the form of quizzes and polls to contests. It is for the brand to choose which type of interactive content it plans to choose from. Wearable Mobile Devices Currently there are 7.22 billion active mobile devices, that’s more technology in the world than people. Hence it is important to understand the importance of smartphone marketing and its relevance to an organization. The wearable market is expected to reach $4billion in 2017. Much like the emergence of mobile, brands and businesses will have to develop their platforms to cater to the average user who uses a wearable, and ensure they are optimized for small, more interactive screens to ensure quality user experience and prompt sales. In 2017, the giant network of wearables will provide marketers with more marketing data. The unprecedented access to this kind of knowledge will help marketers to focus on their target audience more accurately like never before. Disappearing Social Content One big change the social media is going to experience in the times to come will be in the form disappearing content. Disappearing or expiring content enables the brands and businesses to cut through the noise and clutter, gaining the attention of the target audience without spending massive amounts of money. The pioneer in this technology is Snapchat. To create a real sense of urgency users were given limited time to read or view the content before it disappeared. Meanwhile, the technology got copied by Instagram, causing rivalry between the two platforms. Expiring content is going to become a trendsetter in 2017, as per estimates. Influencer Marketing There is seamless amount of information, which is broadcast through the web. To make sense of it all, web users are turning to an unbiased expert with knowledge to share – the influencer. Today’s consumer is more likely to trust an influencer than a brand message. In 2016, there was a realization from the brand that the fastest way to reach the audience’s heart is through a trusted thought leader. Hence, today influencer marketing has become a line item in the marketing budget of brands’. In 2017, we are going to see more brands willing to spend their budget on a thought leader, who not only believes in the brand, but also is able to communicate it to the right following. Behaviour Based Email Marketing Digital marketing in 2017 would be all about segmented & behavior based e-mail marketing. With more and more users subscribing to brands online, there are more emails hitting the inbox and low open rates are becoming fairly common. This can only be combated by sending customized emails to users that are

Digital Marketing Trends of 2017 Read More »

As 2016 came to an end, organisations are getting challenged every year, about their digital marketing strategy. Here are some of the digital marketing strategies that will dominate the year 2017. Video Marketing YouTube happens to be the second most used search engine in the world. Online video happens to be 50% of all mobile traffic. As users get savvier, they will have the need to connect with brands and engage with their stories. Platforms like Periscope and Facebook make it easy for brands and businesses to connect with their fans and followers in real time and get their message across by streaming live broadcasts. Also 2017 video will see tremendous growth, from Facebook news feeds to family groups on Whatsapp. With NASSCOMM estimating 700 million smartphones in India by 2020 and with every phone being a potential video device. The growth of video is only going north in 2017. With 4G becoming the norm, we’ll be getting a lot more videos in our newsfeeds. With eye balls migrating to small mobile screens, time spent on social media rising, video is going to see growth in 2017. Mobile to Dominate Desktop It has been seen that Google has already phased out websites that are not optimized for mobiles. With this trend on the rise, we are going to see an increasing number of marketers giving more attention to mobile search and optimization. This would mean Google is prioritizing mobile sites and will have Google ads oriented around mobile. This means ads are going to become more localized. So a search for ‘fast food’ will not come up with KFC, if there is no KFC with a 10 km radius. This trend is going to continue not only in 2017, but in the years to come. Instore Marketing There isn’t much connection between in-store marketing and digital marketing, but the difference between the physical and online sales techniques are fast shrinking. In a smartphone dominated world, 80% of the millennials use their phone inside the store and 75% of them are willing to receive location based text alerts. An organization with optimized mobile strategy, capturing customers in-store through digital techniques will prove to be an effective means of conversion. A fine example of this comes from the American supermarket Target. The store launched a reward app to present their customers with special offers as they walked through various departments of their stores. The method becomes even easier, when you use the new beacon technology (After downloading the app, customers can be sent customized content, when they happen to be at the vicinity of the store through beacon technology). Interactive Content In the current digital environment, engagement is everything and marketers succeed when users not only consume the content, but also enjoy it and act upon it. This makes it certain that interactive content will be the way forward in coming times. It is seen that when compared to static content interactive content is able to notch conversion rate of up to 70% higher conversions. In fact, it also is a good way of educating buyers and making your brand to stand out among competitors. It is a win-win situation, when people are turning away from traditional means of advertising in favor of online reviews and research. With digital technology getting more sophisticated, the scope to engage interactively is seemingly endless. Interactivity can come in the form of quizzes and polls to contests. It is for the brand to choose which type of interactive content it plans to choose from. Wearable Mobile Devices Currently there are 7.22 billion active mobile devices, that’s more technology in the world than people. Hence it is important to understand the importance of smartphone marketing and its relevance to an organization. The wearable market is expected to reach $4billion in 2017. Much like the emergence of mobile, brands and businesses will have to develop their platforms to cater to the average user who uses a wearable, and ensure they are optimized for small, more interactive screens to ensure quality user experience and prompt sales. In 2017, the giant network of wearables will provide marketers with more marketing data. The unprecedented access to this kind of knowledge will help marketers to focus on their target audience more accurately like never before. Disappearing Social Content One big change the social media is going to experience in the times to come will be in the form disappearing content. Disappearing or expiring content enables the brands and businesses to cut through the noise and clutter, gaining the attention of the target audience without spending massive amounts of money. The pioneer in this technology is Snapchat. To create a real sense of urgency users were given limited time to read or view the content before it disappeared. Meanwhile, the technology got copied by Instagram, causing rivalry between the two platforms. Expiring content is going to become a trendsetter in 2017, as per estimates. Influencer Marketing There is seamless amount of information, which is broadcast through the web. To make sense of it all, web users are turning to an unbiased expert with knowledge to share – the influencer. Today’s consumer is more likely to trust an influencer than a brand message. In 2016, there was a realization from the brand that the fastest way to reach the audience’s heart is through a trusted thought leader. Hence, today influencer marketing has become a line item in the marketing budget of brands’. In 2017, we are going to see more brands willing to spend their budget on a thought leader, who not only believes in the brand, but also is able to communicate it to the right following. Behaviour Based Email Marketing Digital marketing in 2017 would be all about segmented & behavior based e-mail marketing. With more and more users subscribing to brands online, there are more emails hitting the inbox and low open rates are becoming fairly common. This can only be combated by sending customized emails to users that are

Top 10 trends on social media in 2017

This article seeks to share what are likely to be the key trends to shape up in 2017. As a small business you need to be on top of the trends to gauge, if you are connecting with the right audience or not. Here are some of the trends that are going to define 2017. Social Messaging It is an increasing trend for people to turn to private social messaging rather than engage on social networks. In February 2016, Whatsapp announced it has hit the 1 billion mark. Messaging has a much wider community compared to social networks, and hence companies are taking advantage of this situation. In fact, if you happen to click an ad on Facebook messenger, it directly takes you to the brand’s chat window. As companies learn about the advantage of these, compared to social networks, they will increasingly make their presence felt here. In 2017, we are likely to see more interesting developments on social messaging. Action on Fake News Today there are more people turning to social media platforms for their news. As a result, we see more inaccurate content getting circulated on these media platforms. We saw the worst of this in the US presidential election, where fake news about both candidates was circulated across Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. In terms of action, Facebook has already stopped these news outlets from advertising on its platform. In Europe, Germany is already considering legislation against platforms that allow fake news to proliferate. New age users are smart and tech savvy and are likely to investigate and authenticate the news, and reward actual reporting by sharing content. Chat Bots Instead of, on their Facebook wall, more companies are engaging with customers on a one-on-one basis within their messaging platforms. We are likely to see more companies deploy bots to automatically respond to customers. The content on the site and the response that is provided would become equally important. Artificial Intelligence is beginning to touch every part of our daily lives, with SIRI and Google Assistant, people are moving to voice recognition tools away from typing out a search. A majority of the major social networks now deploy chat bots to handle simple bookings and customer service. This in-turn can free up customer support representatives to answer more in-depth queries. Employees turn to brand promoters In 2017, we will see increasing number of employees turning brand ambassadors for their respective brands. This is especially true for companies that want to expand the reach and impact of social media without spending a penny. Employee Advocacy is the practice of incentivizing and encouraging team members to share brand messages on their own social media account. Brands have now started focusing on their employees to promote a brand. Promoting brands on one’s personal social account is a trusted practice. There is no right way or wrong way of doing it, but advocacy cannot be forced. Customer Support Social media has grown in ability to run effective client support programs. Brands are slowly but surely are becoming aware of the practice of having teams on their payrolls to answer and resolve issues. Research shows a high percentage of users expect responses from brands they follow, sometimes in as little as within an hour. This has led brands to heavily invest in teams and tools which help them remain on top of the latest social media developments. Beginning 2017, a large part of client service will shift to social media accounts. Social media analytics In the earlier days of social media, it was seen as an option and used more on a trial basis for marketing activities. Later, social media presence for brands became the norm. These days and in the coming months, we are likely to see powerful social media analytics tools that provide more comprehensive and easier to use tools for the layman. Marketers will come to heavily rely on social media statistics for key decision making in this year. In the current lot, Google Analytics, Followerwonk, Iconosquare are the most used analytics tools and also happen to be free. These can be of tremendous help for small business owners who want to know the latest on social media analytics. Live Video Social media sites have taken the engagement with video sharing to the next level by launching live video in real time. Live streaming first became popular by twitter’s periscope. Now, Facebook live has been launched. Social media videos have more engagement than any other content and, have been responsible for recent growth of Facebook. According to estimates, some 74% of the total traffic on the internet is due only to video content. Even news channels are quoting Facebook Live while they cover news. We could see brands releasing engaging content or conduct marketing around a particular event in the near future. We are going to see more of this in the months to come. Augmented Reality Pokemon Go and Snapchat selfie brought augmented reality into social sphere. Hence, one can expect other social platforms to jump on this bandwagon. Facebook has already confirmed that it is experimenting with augmented reality. The technology is actually old, but it has recently caught the attention of social media networks. In 2017, we will see more of this with brands choosing to engage with their audience using this technology. Social Media commerce Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest are offering ways to purchase products online. You can buy products displayed on social networks now. The buy buttons on these networks are soon going to become ubiquitous. Research shows that new age users are more likely to buy products which they are following online. Also product demonstration videos on social networks are also a factor in bringing sales to these social networks. Disappearing/ ephemeral Media First, it was Snapchat which started with disappearing visual content. Instagram was the second to join this bandwagon. New age users love intimate thoughts and risqué pictures to disappear forever. The content for the media

Top 10 trends on social media in 2017 Read More »

This article seeks to share what are likely to be the key trends to shape up in 2017. As a small business you need to be on top of the trends to gauge, if you are connecting with the right audience or not. Here are some of the trends that are going to define 2017. Social Messaging It is an increasing trend for people to turn to private social messaging rather than engage on social networks. In February 2016, Whatsapp announced it has hit the 1 billion mark. Messaging has a much wider community compared to social networks, and hence companies are taking advantage of this situation. In fact, if you happen to click an ad on Facebook messenger, it directly takes you to the brand’s chat window. As companies learn about the advantage of these, compared to social networks, they will increasingly make their presence felt here. In 2017, we are likely to see more interesting developments on social messaging. Action on Fake News Today there are more people turning to social media platforms for their news. As a result, we see more inaccurate content getting circulated on these media platforms. We saw the worst of this in the US presidential election, where fake news about both candidates was circulated across Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. In terms of action, Facebook has already stopped these news outlets from advertising on its platform. In Europe, Germany is already considering legislation against platforms that allow fake news to proliferate. New age users are smart and tech savvy and are likely to investigate and authenticate the news, and reward actual reporting by sharing content. Chat Bots Instead of, on their Facebook wall, more companies are engaging with customers on a one-on-one basis within their messaging platforms. We are likely to see more companies deploy bots to automatically respond to customers. The content on the site and the response that is provided would become equally important. Artificial Intelligence is beginning to touch every part of our daily lives, with SIRI and Google Assistant, people are moving to voice recognition tools away from typing out a search. A majority of the major social networks now deploy chat bots to handle simple bookings and customer service. This in-turn can free up customer support representatives to answer more in-depth queries. Employees turn to brand promoters In 2017, we will see increasing number of employees turning brand ambassadors for their respective brands. This is especially true for companies that want to expand the reach and impact of social media without spending a penny. Employee Advocacy is the practice of incentivizing and encouraging team members to share brand messages on their own social media account. Brands have now started focusing on their employees to promote a brand. Promoting brands on one’s personal social account is a trusted practice. There is no right way or wrong way of doing it, but advocacy cannot be forced. Customer Support Social media has grown in ability to run effective client support programs. Brands are slowly but surely are becoming aware of the practice of having teams on their payrolls to answer and resolve issues. Research shows a high percentage of users expect responses from brands they follow, sometimes in as little as within an hour. This has led brands to heavily invest in teams and tools which help them remain on top of the latest social media developments. Beginning 2017, a large part of client service will shift to social media accounts. Social media analytics In the earlier days of social media, it was seen as an option and used more on a trial basis for marketing activities. Later, social media presence for brands became the norm. These days and in the coming months, we are likely to see powerful social media analytics tools that provide more comprehensive and easier to use tools for the layman. Marketers will come to heavily rely on social media statistics for key decision making in this year. In the current lot, Google Analytics, Followerwonk, Iconosquare are the most used analytics tools and also happen to be free. These can be of tremendous help for small business owners who want to know the latest on social media analytics. Live Video Social media sites have taken the engagement with video sharing to the next level by launching live video in real time. Live streaming first became popular by twitter’s periscope. Now, Facebook live has been launched. Social media videos have more engagement than any other content and, have been responsible for recent growth of Facebook. According to estimates, some 74% of the total traffic on the internet is due only to video content. Even news channels are quoting Facebook Live while they cover news. We could see brands releasing engaging content or conduct marketing around a particular event in the near future. We are going to see more of this in the months to come. Augmented Reality Pokemon Go and Snapchat selfie brought augmented reality into social sphere. Hence, one can expect other social platforms to jump on this bandwagon. Facebook has already confirmed that it is experimenting with augmented reality. The technology is actually old, but it has recently caught the attention of social media networks. In 2017, we will see more of this with brands choosing to engage with their audience using this technology. Social Media commerce Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest are offering ways to purchase products online. You can buy products displayed on social networks now. The buy buttons on these networks are soon going to become ubiquitous. Research shows that new age users are more likely to buy products which they are following online. Also product demonstration videos on social networks are also a factor in bringing sales to these social networks. Disappearing/ ephemeral Media First, it was Snapchat which started with disappearing visual content. Instagram was the second to join this bandwagon. New age users love intimate thoughts and risqué pictures to disappear forever. The content for the media

Give your business a winning edge with effective content marketing strategy

Content marketing is an aspect of marketing which focuses on creating, distributing and analyzing content for target audience. In fact, content marketing is a cyclic process which includes the broad steps of content creation, content distribution, evaluation, analysis and content optimization. Nowadays content marketing is usually driven online but it is not limited to online activities. Billboard ads, TV ads, FM ads, jingles and the like are all various forms of content and their effects are augmented with content marketing. Content marketing is usually objectified to draw in more customers but nowadays the use of content has moved beyond merely attracting prospects. Nowadays content marketing is used even for sales conversion and closing. Thus, content marketing has evolved to be a broad field with deep influence in multiple aspects of the overall marketing. Content is an umbrella word with its significance in every step of marketing, whether it is in introducing a new brand in the market or closing sales with a customer of the brand. In fact, the process of fan building for a brand starts with the making of good content. Thus, content is important in every step of a marketing process and so is content marketing. A mere content marketing is not enough to fetch the best benefits. The results you reap from your content marketing depend on the quality of your content marketing. But it is also very important to strategize the marketing of the generated content. A good way to begin this would be to align it with the fundamentals of your business – the basic objectives of the business, the customer value proposition, brand value et al. Strategizing content marketing is an expansive term to be explained in this blog. A lot depends on the present state of your business, its target audience, it short and long term goals. So, content marketing strategies would differ according to these factors. Yet, a few standard rules must be followed by every content marketer and they are stated as below. The entire content marketing includes broadly the steps of creation, distribution, evaluation and analysis. Each of these steps must be fortified with some rules as follows: Rules for the making of great content: Understand your target audience: Understand your target audience in terms of their lifestyle, behavior, demographics and similar relevant parameters. Once you understand your target audience, analyze and list out their needs and how they react to their needs, what information they seek in regards to their needs and what information might excite them. Make your content easily understandable: Make your content easily understandable for your audience by avoiding jargons, using a reader friendly language, including infographics, etc. Enrich your content with information: Customize your content with relevant information by understanding where your audiences stand in the buyer’s journey. This will help to create useful content. For instance, if your audience is in the state of comparing you with your competitors for making the purchase decision your content must assist the decision making by reflecting how your service or product is differentiated from your competitors. And if your audience is interested in making the purchase, make it easier by using simple easy to navigate payment options and call to action buttons. Tips for content distribution: Reflect and decide: As you start with your content distribution you must reflect upon the following questions: Why do you want your audience to use your content? Where do your audiences mostly consume content? How frequently do they use content? The answers of these questions will set the guidelines for your content distribution. For instance, if you want your content to boost engagement and talk about your brand, a social media platform like Facebook is a good bet for you. Otherwise, if you want a large reach, you should opt for a paid search advertising network. If you want high returns with reach to niche audience, you should stress on SEO or organic marketing of your content in a media like LinkedIn. Optimize for Social Media: Optimize your social media distribution strategy by posting your content at the optimum frequency, using share buttons, using visuals, sharing bite-sized succinct and attractive content. Distribute your content uniformly: You may distribute your content in multiple media yet there must be a uniformity of your content throughout all media. The essence of your content like the value proposition, unique selling proposition should be the same in all the media. It will enhance your brand equity in your audiences. Measuring ROI: The right parameters reflect right ROI: If you want to measure the success of your content marketing, select the right parameters to measure it. Selection of parameters for measuring ROI depends on your content marketing objectives. If your want more fans for your brand then engagement rate and rate of shares found are two parameters which will give you the right ROI. Analyze and improve: Once you measure ROI for your content marketing, start analyzing to close the gaps and opportunities. Make a SWOT matrix and utilize the scope for improvement. This way, you will step up your content marketing strategy towards perfection at every cycle. The above discussed rules of content will help you meet the expectations of your audience, it enhances the success of your business. Content marketing is often a time consuming task. It requires regularity, dedication and most importantly professionalism. Specially, if you are already occupied with other tasks, content might become an unmanageable burden for you. A worthier way of managing content marketing is to outsource it to content expert virtual assistants, may be a content expert from GetFriday.

Give your business a winning edge with effective content marketing strategy Read More »

Content marketing is an aspect of marketing which focuses on creating, distributing and analyzing content for target audience. In fact, content marketing is a cyclic process which includes the broad steps of content creation, content distribution, evaluation, analysis and content optimization. Nowadays content marketing is usually driven online but it is not limited to online activities. Billboard ads, TV ads, FM ads, jingles and the like are all various forms of content and their effects are augmented with content marketing. Content marketing is usually objectified to draw in more customers but nowadays the use of content has moved beyond merely attracting prospects. Nowadays content marketing is used even for sales conversion and closing. Thus, content marketing has evolved to be a broad field with deep influence in multiple aspects of the overall marketing. Content is an umbrella word with its significance in every step of marketing, whether it is in introducing a new brand in the market or closing sales with a customer of the brand. In fact, the process of fan building for a brand starts with the making of good content. Thus, content is important in every step of a marketing process and so is content marketing. A mere content marketing is not enough to fetch the best benefits. The results you reap from your content marketing depend on the quality of your content marketing. But it is also very important to strategize the marketing of the generated content. A good way to begin this would be to align it with the fundamentals of your business – the basic objectives of the business, the customer value proposition, brand value et al. Strategizing content marketing is an expansive term to be explained in this blog. A lot depends on the present state of your business, its target audience, it short and long term goals. So, content marketing strategies would differ according to these factors. Yet, a few standard rules must be followed by every content marketer and they are stated as below. The entire content marketing includes broadly the steps of creation, distribution, evaluation and analysis. Each of these steps must be fortified with some rules as follows: Rules for the making of great content: Understand your target audience: Understand your target audience in terms of their lifestyle, behavior, demographics and similar relevant parameters. Once you understand your target audience, analyze and list out their needs and how they react to their needs, what information they seek in regards to their needs and what information might excite them. Make your content easily understandable: Make your content easily understandable for your audience by avoiding jargons, using a reader friendly language, including infographics, etc. Enrich your content with information: Customize your content with relevant information by understanding where your audiences stand in the buyer’s journey. This will help to create useful content. For instance, if your audience is in the state of comparing you with your competitors for making the purchase decision your content must assist the decision making by reflecting how your service or product is differentiated from your competitors. And if your audience is interested in making the purchase, make it easier by using simple easy to navigate payment options and call to action buttons. Tips for content distribution: Reflect and decide: As you start with your content distribution you must reflect upon the following questions: Why do you want your audience to use your content? Where do your audiences mostly consume content? How frequently do they use content? The answers of these questions will set the guidelines for your content distribution. For instance, if you want your content to boost engagement and talk about your brand, a social media platform like Facebook is a good bet for you. Otherwise, if you want a large reach, you should opt for a paid search advertising network. If you want high returns with reach to niche audience, you should stress on SEO or organic marketing of your content in a media like LinkedIn. Optimize for Social Media: Optimize your social media distribution strategy by posting your content at the optimum frequency, using share buttons, using visuals, sharing bite-sized succinct and attractive content. Distribute your content uniformly: You may distribute your content in multiple media yet there must be a uniformity of your content throughout all media. The essence of your content like the value proposition, unique selling proposition should be the same in all the media. It will enhance your brand equity in your audiences. Measuring ROI: The right parameters reflect right ROI: If you want to measure the success of your content marketing, select the right parameters to measure it. Selection of parameters for measuring ROI depends on your content marketing objectives. If your want more fans for your brand then engagement rate and rate of shares found are two parameters which will give you the right ROI. Analyze and improve: Once you measure ROI for your content marketing, start analyzing to close the gaps and opportunities. Make a SWOT matrix and utilize the scope for improvement. This way, you will step up your content marketing strategy towards perfection at every cycle. The above discussed rules of content will help you meet the expectations of your audience, it enhances the success of your business. Content marketing is often a time consuming task. It requires regularity, dedication and most importantly professionalism. Specially, if you are already occupied with other tasks, content might become an unmanageable burden for you. A worthier way of managing content marketing is to outsource it to content expert virtual assistants, may be a content expert from GetFriday.

Tips for Successful E-mail Marketing

If the title of this blog fascinated you, you must be an e-mail marketer. As you start your e-mail marketing you must reconcile the varied experiences invoked by e-mails – your inbox brimming with numerous mails every morning, finding useful information from an unexpected yet valuable mail, getting bombarded by spam e-mails, your delight at the reception of a long awaited mail and the like. In simple words, your e-mails are an intimate part of your daily life. E-mails are a mode of daily communication for over billions across the world Over 144 billion e-mails are sent daily all over the internet. In an era of versatile communication channels, e-mail remains one of the choicest channels of marketing communication all the time. There are a number of reasons behind this lasting popularity of e-mails. A few of them are: E-mails have a large reach. E-mails reach the recipients at their individual level. E-mails allow you a speedy communication at a lesser price. No wonder, E-mail is an expedient tool for marketers. E-mail marketing, if supported by an effective strategy, might drive the fortune of your business. Here, we sort out some useful tips to make your e-mail marketing all the more effective: Segment your e-mail recipients: As you start your e-mail marketing journey, you must segment your recipients. Segmenting is a very systematic process, which may be based on different parameters like demographics, geographic or psychological. Once you segment your audience in a systematic manner you will be able to understand many other aspects like at what frequency you must send your e-mails to different segments, tone of writing a message for striking the interest of a segment and the like. This way you will be able to tailor customized e-mails for each segment and address the specific needs of each segment. This improves your e-mail open rate. Reach your recipients at their individual level: Taking a step forward on segmentation as discussed above, marketers may create mails to reach recipients at their individual level. In fact, customizing mails is an art reinforced by segmentation. E-mails are an excellent mode of one- to-one communication, so make the recipient feel special by addressing his/her specific needs. Segmenting helps you in understanding the specific behavior, emotions and lifestyle of your audience and thus write unique e-mails to each segment of your audience. Make your e-mails mobile friendly: Survey shows that 64% of American e-mail users delete their mails if they are not mobile friendly. So, making your e-mails mobile friendly is an obligation to avoid high bounce rate. Generate a pleasurable experience for your audience by sending them mobile friendly e-mails i.e. write crisp messages suiting mobile screens, include visuals, include call to action points etc. Mobile screens occupy audience attention for most of the time. Hence customizing e-mails for mobile phones will improve the open rate as the recipient will be able to check your e-mail immediately. Well Written Subject Lines: Subject lines are the first impression makers of your e-mail. A well written subject line intrigues your readers and motivates them to open and read the entire mail. A well- written subject usually reflects the essence of your mail in a short one-liner. Good subject lines are usually limited to 50 characters. It is not a hard bound limit but try to keep your subject line as short as possible. Incentivize e-mail subscription in social media: Incentivizing e-mail subscription will help to draw in new e-mail subscribers and increases the number of your prospects. It will also improve the open rate of your mails. Sharing sign-up forms, giving discounts on subscription, winning subscribers with sweepstakes are a few ways to use social media for adding subscribers. Develop and maintain an e-mail list: You must own and maintain an e-mail list which includes all the people who showed interest in your marketing initiatives and who are likely to open and read your mails. You must update the e-mail list from time to time with systematic analysis of email statistics, open rates, engagement rates, active subscribers, new prospects, new segments and the like. A systematic execution of e-mail marketing will enhance your customer loyalty and value. Keeping your fans updated about your brand will increase your brand value and recognition amongst your fans. It will also add new fans and improve the success rate of your business. The rewards of e-mail marketing are remarkable but it needs a string of regular activities to drive successful e- mail marketing. If you are already occupied with other marketing activities you might not have enough time for e-mail marketing. A cost effective option for busy marketers is to outsource e-mail marketing to virtual assistants. Errands like keeping and maintaining e-mail list, research and segmentation, sending regular mails are easily and efficiently handled by Virtual assistants.

Tips for Successful E-mail Marketing Read More »

If the title of this blog fascinated you, you must be an e-mail marketer. As you start your e-mail marketing you must reconcile the varied experiences invoked by e-mails – your inbox brimming with numerous mails every morning, finding useful information from an unexpected yet valuable mail, getting bombarded by spam e-mails, your delight at the reception of a long awaited mail and the like. In simple words, your e-mails are an intimate part of your daily life. E-mails are a mode of daily communication for over billions across the world Over 144 billion e-mails are sent daily all over the internet. In an era of versatile communication channels, e-mail remains one of the choicest channels of marketing communication all the time. There are a number of reasons behind this lasting popularity of e-mails. A few of them are: E-mails have a large reach. E-mails reach the recipients at their individual level. E-mails allow you a speedy communication at a lesser price. No wonder, E-mail is an expedient tool for marketers. E-mail marketing, if supported by an effective strategy, might drive the fortune of your business. Here, we sort out some useful tips to make your e-mail marketing all the more effective: Segment your e-mail recipients: As you start your e-mail marketing journey, you must segment your recipients. Segmenting is a very systematic process, which may be based on different parameters like demographics, geographic or psychological. Once you segment your audience in a systematic manner you will be able to understand many other aspects like at what frequency you must send your e-mails to different segments, tone of writing a message for striking the interest of a segment and the like. This way you will be able to tailor customized e-mails for each segment and address the specific needs of each segment. This improves your e-mail open rate. Reach your recipients at their individual level: Taking a step forward on segmentation as discussed above, marketers may create mails to reach recipients at their individual level. In fact, customizing mails is an art reinforced by segmentation. E-mails are an excellent mode of one- to-one communication, so make the recipient feel special by addressing his/her specific needs. Segmenting helps you in understanding the specific behavior, emotions and lifestyle of your audience and thus write unique e-mails to each segment of your audience. Make your e-mails mobile friendly: Survey shows that 64% of American e-mail users delete their mails if they are not mobile friendly. So, making your e-mails mobile friendly is an obligation to avoid high bounce rate. Generate a pleasurable experience for your audience by sending them mobile friendly e-mails i.e. write crisp messages suiting mobile screens, include visuals, include call to action points etc. Mobile screens occupy audience attention for most of the time. Hence customizing e-mails for mobile phones will improve the open rate as the recipient will be able to check your e-mail immediately. Well Written Subject Lines: Subject lines are the first impression makers of your e-mail. A well written subject line intrigues your readers and motivates them to open and read the entire mail. A well- written subject usually reflects the essence of your mail in a short one-liner. Good subject lines are usually limited to 50 characters. It is not a hard bound limit but try to keep your subject line as short as possible. Incentivize e-mail subscription in social media: Incentivizing e-mail subscription will help to draw in new e-mail subscribers and increases the number of your prospects. It will also improve the open rate of your mails. Sharing sign-up forms, giving discounts on subscription, winning subscribers with sweepstakes are a few ways to use social media for adding subscribers. Develop and maintain an e-mail list: You must own and maintain an e-mail list which includes all the people who showed interest in your marketing initiatives and who are likely to open and read your mails. You must update the e-mail list from time to time with systematic analysis of email statistics, open rates, engagement rates, active subscribers, new prospects, new segments and the like. A systematic execution of e-mail marketing will enhance your customer loyalty and value. Keeping your fans updated about your brand will increase your brand value and recognition amongst your fans. It will also add new fans and improve the success rate of your business. The rewards of e-mail marketing are remarkable but it needs a string of regular activities to drive successful e- mail marketing. If you are already occupied with other marketing activities you might not have enough time for e-mail marketing. A cost effective option for busy marketers is to outsource e-mail marketing to virtual assistants. Errands like keeping and maintaining e-mail list, research and segmentation, sending regular mails are easily and efficiently handled by Virtual assistants.

Social Media: A nifty way for your business

Social media is a significant facet of this digital era. Its influence is reflected by the striking metrics like over a billion audiences in popular social media sites, the annual user increment of around 11%, the remarkable engagement rate and the like. With its evolution over the last decade, social media has eventually become a reliable medium of commercial information. 65% of social media users consider information which is shared on social media while making their purchase decision. No wonder, social media has come to be an effective weapon for business professionals, especially savvy marketers. Some specifics about social media which will encourage you to use social media for your business are sorted out as follows:   Social media offers you low – cost platform for advertising: Developing a social media strategy is the best way to decrease the marketing expenses in a business. While a 30 seconds TV ad pricing $350000 reaches a national audience a Facebook ad at a lesser cost reaches the global audience. So, social media gives you a better harvest for your marketing investments. Social media offers you a wide audience reach: If your aim is a wide reach then social media is your best bet. Facebook has over 1 billion active users across different demographics, geography and cultural parameters. Twitter which is logged in by over 100 million users daily is mostly used by the age ran. The twitter users aging above 60 are also increasing. Social media enables your faster reach to audience: There is hardly anyone who does not have a social media account. More than 60% of the social media account holders use their social media accounts daily. This justifies the fact and assures you that social media has a faster and ascertained reach to your target audience. Social media offers you an intense user engagement: User generated content in social media earns sincere attention of users. Apart from this, most of the content comes off in appealing forms like engaging games, queries, video ads and the like. Social media hikes brand loyalty of your fans: Most of the content in social media is user generated and it flows in from reliable sources. Moreover social media exposes your brand to a wide audience and it enables you to interact with the audience. It’s a three tier effect: it introduces your brand to your young prospective fans, invokes curiosity about your brand and emboldens the faith of your already existing fans. All these help you to earn brand loyalty from your fans. Social media offers you the scope of better customer service: Social media helps you in understanding the sentiment of your audience for your brand. By following the social buzz and analysing social sentiment of your target audience you understand the exact needs of your customers and follow them up with the required service. While the above stated advantages of social media gives you good returns, using social media for your brand is not free from risks. One of the risks arises from the fast reach of social media. So, if it’s a positive buzz your brand may become the king of the market while if it’s a negative buzz, you brand may get affected. So, using social media requires your vigilance all the time. You have to keep an eye on the reactions of your audiences to your marketing activities and keep the buzz about your brand under control. Giving prompt responses to your audience queries, regulating negative posts with an appeasing reply and pivoting audience attention to positive posts help you to regulate the reactions of your audience. If you are infusing social media in your business strategies you must not miss out on these tips:   Learn about the behaviour of your audience: Learning audience behaviour is a mixture of quantitative and qualitative process. It requires your intent observation, social sentiment analysis, search analysis etc. Learning about audience behaviour will help you to tune in your brand with your target audience. Do not beat the drum about your brand: Over promoting your brand will hamper your brand reputation. So, social media strategies must be objectified to win the heart of your audience rather than promoting your business. It should be customer oriented. Respond to messages and queries on time: Apt response to messages and queries from your audience helps you to earn new fans and maintain the relationship with already existing fans. Do not abuse the use of hash tags: The hash tags you use must be relevant to your business and must be popular at the time you make your post. Post at optimal frequencies: Posting at optimal frequencies increases the visibility of your brand in a social site. So, learn about the optimal frequency of posting in a particular site with real time posting as well as secondary research and post accordingly. Use the right parameters to measure the success of your brand: The ROI parameters tell you how effective have been your social media strategies and how you should proceed in the future. Choose the right parameters to evaluate your social media activities and earn rich returns. GetFriday (earlier YMII or YourManInIndia) is a service that was featured and used in the NYTimes best-selling productivity and lifestyle design book ‘The 4-Hour-Workweek’ by Timothy Ferris. Sign up now!

Social Media: A nifty way for your business Read More »

Social media is a significant facet of this digital era. Its influence is reflected by the striking metrics like over a billion audiences in popular social media sites, the annual user increment of around 11%, the remarkable engagement rate and the like. With its evolution over the last decade, social media has eventually become a reliable medium of commercial information. 65% of social media users consider information which is shared on social media while making their purchase decision. No wonder, social media has come to be an effective weapon for business professionals, especially savvy marketers. Some specifics about social media which will encourage you to use social media for your business are sorted out as follows:   Social media offers you low – cost platform for advertising: Developing a social media strategy is the best way to decrease the marketing expenses in a business. While a 30 seconds TV ad pricing $350000 reaches a national audience a Facebook ad at a lesser cost reaches the global audience. So, social media gives you a better harvest for your marketing investments. Social media offers you a wide audience reach: If your aim is a wide reach then social media is your best bet. Facebook has over 1 billion active users across different demographics, geography and cultural parameters. Twitter which is logged in by over 100 million users daily is mostly used by the age ran. The twitter users aging above 60 are also increasing. Social media enables your faster reach to audience: There is hardly anyone who does not have a social media account. More than 60% of the social media account holders use their social media accounts daily. This justifies the fact and assures you that social media has a faster and ascertained reach to your target audience. Social media offers you an intense user engagement: User generated content in social media earns sincere attention of users. Apart from this, most of the content comes off in appealing forms like engaging games, queries, video ads and the like. Social media hikes brand loyalty of your fans: Most of the content in social media is user generated and it flows in from reliable sources. Moreover social media exposes your brand to a wide audience and it enables you to interact with the audience. It’s a three tier effect: it introduces your brand to your young prospective fans, invokes curiosity about your brand and emboldens the faith of your already existing fans. All these help you to earn brand loyalty from your fans. Social media offers you the scope of better customer service: Social media helps you in understanding the sentiment of your audience for your brand. By following the social buzz and analysing social sentiment of your target audience you understand the exact needs of your customers and follow them up with the required service. While the above stated advantages of social media gives you good returns, using social media for your brand is not free from risks. One of the risks arises from the fast reach of social media. So, if it’s a positive buzz your brand may become the king of the market while if it’s a negative buzz, you brand may get affected. So, using social media requires your vigilance all the time. You have to keep an eye on the reactions of your audiences to your marketing activities and keep the buzz about your brand under control. Giving prompt responses to your audience queries, regulating negative posts with an appeasing reply and pivoting audience attention to positive posts help you to regulate the reactions of your audience. If you are infusing social media in your business strategies you must not miss out on these tips:   Learn about the behaviour of your audience: Learning audience behaviour is a mixture of quantitative and qualitative process. It requires your intent observation, social sentiment analysis, search analysis etc. Learning about audience behaviour will help you to tune in your brand with your target audience. Do not beat the drum about your brand: Over promoting your brand will hamper your brand reputation. So, social media strategies must be objectified to win the heart of your audience rather than promoting your business. It should be customer oriented. Respond to messages and queries on time: Apt response to messages and queries from your audience helps you to earn new fans and maintain the relationship with already existing fans. Do not abuse the use of hash tags: The hash tags you use must be relevant to your business and must be popular at the time you make your post. Post at optimal frequencies: Posting at optimal frequencies increases the visibility of your brand in a social site. So, learn about the optimal frequency of posting in a particular site with real time posting as well as secondary research and post accordingly. Use the right parameters to measure the success of your brand: The ROI parameters tell you how effective have been your social media strategies and how you should proceed in the future. Choose the right parameters to evaluate your social media activities and earn rich returns. GetFriday (earlier YMII or YourManInIndia) is a service that was featured and used in the NYTimes best-selling productivity and lifestyle design book ‘The 4-Hour-Workweek’ by Timothy Ferris. Sign up now!

Clash Of The Social Media Giants – Twitter Or FB, What Works Better For your Business?

The results you reap from your social media marketing depend a lot on the social platform you select. The social media sites you choose must satisfy your objectives of marketing. An astute marketer relates his social media marketing to the fundamentals of his business like branding, the value offered to customers, the target segment served etc. Before setting your foot in social media you have to reflect upon these fundamentals. There are a few questions which you must reflect upon mandatorily as you embark on your social media marketing. What type of content is compatible for your business marketing? Is the platform selected compatible with your content type? Is your target audience active in the social platform you have selected? How deep are the insights of ROI available in the social platform you use?   These questions help you justify your selection of the social media platform for marketing. When you select a social media platform you must ensure that your marketing activities are harmonious to the platform features. For instance, your advertisements must appeal to the active audiences; your post timings must match the time when a majority of your target audiences on the platform are active. Facebook and Twitter have been two most sought after social media platforms by a majority of the marketers worldwide for more than a decade. Despite the emergence of many new social media platforms such as Instagram, tumbler, facebook and twitter have managed to retain their positions of leadership as the ‘go-to’ platforms for most marketers. If you have to choose between facebook and twitter for marketing your business, it is good to find out the differences and benefits of each of these platforms. Whichever serves your business purpose, make it the focus of your social media presence. Here we take a quick look at the two giants:   Facebook     Twitter   Facebook started as a social site to reconnect with your school friends. Eventually facebook has started linking its users to experts and celebs apart from old friends. Twitter is a more formal networking site where the users express their opinions in crisp 140 characters. It’s still an informal social site for sharing information, personal and otherwise and creating noteworthy engagement of users. Every 1 million followers in facebook make 700 interactions while the same number of followers in twitter make 300 interactions. Twitter is very useful for spreading the word. Twitter tweets can be retweeted and shared. So, if you have great content that is likely to be shared, Twitter is a good bet. Facebook has a magnum audience of over 1.5 billion and the average age range of this crowd is 25-45. Twitter has a smaller audience of about 4 million and mostly in the age group of below 40. 60% of facebook users are female and 40% are male. Twitter is very mobile friendly. The user engagement in facebook is longer than Twitter. If you boost your facebook posts then the engagement lifespan increases even more. This is because facebook users spend more time on the site. It is a good platform for sharing news, running contests and seeking quick response from companies. Facebook indulges creativity. It allows multi-media content in the form of videos, images and graphics which is easily attracts audience. No wonder users stay intensely engaged in facebook. Twitter gives you the option of buying Twitter cards, which helps you to gather e-mail IDs and generate leads. This, in turn, helps you to track your ROI from your Twitter campaign. Facebook allows marketers the flexibility to choose from various advertising formats that are visually appealing. Twitter is slowly bringing in flexibility to its 140 character limit. Nowadays, Twitter allows vine videos and images which have enhanced the soulfulness of tweets. Based on the above facts, it might be safe to say that if your business is all about fashion, food, travel, film making or the like where visual imagery is important, then Facebook is more preferable. On the other hand, if your business is into services, twitter is a better site for you. It will associate you with the right industry professionals as well as your target audience. If you are a start-up, you can use twitter to generate leads at a low cost. Deciding upon your social marketing site needs some real-time learning. As you start with your social media activities you should make use of both twitter and facebook sites and make a note of the returns yielded by the sites. Whichever site yields you higher engagement and visibility; make it the crux of your social strategies to earn rich returns on your efforts. GetFriday is your personal virtual assistant helping you offload your time-consuming & mundane tasks. You just don’t get an assistant, but get access to an entire team with specialized skills to handle the entire spectrum of your business needs. GetFriday (earlier YMII or YourManInIndia) is a service that was featured and used in the NYTimes best-selling productivity and lifestyle design book ‘The 4-Hour-Workweek’ by Timothy Ferris. Sign up now!

Clash Of The Social Media Giants – Twitter Or FB, What Works Better For your Business? Read More »

The results you reap from your social media marketing depend a lot on the social platform you select. The social media sites you choose must satisfy your objectives of marketing. An astute marketer relates his social media marketing to the fundamentals of his business like branding, the value offered to customers, the target segment served etc. Before setting your foot in social media you have to reflect upon these fundamentals. There are a few questions which you must reflect upon mandatorily as you embark on your social media marketing. What type of content is compatible for your business marketing? Is the platform selected compatible with your content type? Is your target audience active in the social platform you have selected? How deep are the insights of ROI available in the social platform you use?   These questions help you justify your selection of the social media platform for marketing. When you select a social media platform you must ensure that your marketing activities are harmonious to the platform features. For instance, your advertisements must appeal to the active audiences; your post timings must match the time when a majority of your target audiences on the platform are active. Facebook and Twitter have been two most sought after social media platforms by a majority of the marketers worldwide for more than a decade. Despite the emergence of many new social media platforms such as Instagram, tumbler, facebook and twitter have managed to retain their positions of leadership as the ‘go-to’ platforms for most marketers. If you have to choose between facebook and twitter for marketing your business, it is good to find out the differences and benefits of each of these platforms. Whichever serves your business purpose, make it the focus of your social media presence. Here we take a quick look at the two giants:   Facebook     Twitter   Facebook started as a social site to reconnect with your school friends. Eventually facebook has started linking its users to experts and celebs apart from old friends. Twitter is a more formal networking site where the users express their opinions in crisp 140 characters. It’s still an informal social site for sharing information, personal and otherwise and creating noteworthy engagement of users. Every 1 million followers in facebook make 700 interactions while the same number of followers in twitter make 300 interactions. Twitter is very useful for spreading the word. Twitter tweets can be retweeted and shared. So, if you have great content that is likely to be shared, Twitter is a good bet. Facebook has a magnum audience of over 1.5 billion and the average age range of this crowd is 25-45. Twitter has a smaller audience of about 4 million and mostly in the age group of below 40. 60% of facebook users are female and 40% are male. Twitter is very mobile friendly. The user engagement in facebook is longer than Twitter. If you boost your facebook posts then the engagement lifespan increases even more. This is because facebook users spend more time on the site. It is a good platform for sharing news, running contests and seeking quick response from companies. Facebook indulges creativity. It allows multi-media content in the form of videos, images and graphics which is easily attracts audience. No wonder users stay intensely engaged in facebook. Twitter gives you the option of buying Twitter cards, which helps you to gather e-mail IDs and generate leads. This, in turn, helps you to track your ROI from your Twitter campaign. Facebook allows marketers the flexibility to choose from various advertising formats that are visually appealing. Twitter is slowly bringing in flexibility to its 140 character limit. Nowadays, Twitter allows vine videos and images which have enhanced the soulfulness of tweets. Based on the above facts, it might be safe to say that if your business is all about fashion, food, travel, film making or the like where visual imagery is important, then Facebook is more preferable. On the other hand, if your business is into services, twitter is a better site for you. It will associate you with the right industry professionals as well as your target audience. If you are a start-up, you can use twitter to generate leads at a low cost. Deciding upon your social marketing site needs some real-time learning. As you start with your social media activities you should make use of both twitter and facebook sites and make a note of the returns yielded by the sites. Whichever site yields you higher engagement and visibility; make it the crux of your social strategies to earn rich returns on your efforts. GetFriday is your personal virtual assistant helping you offload your time-consuming & mundane tasks. You just don’t get an assistant, but get access to an entire team with specialized skills to handle the entire spectrum of your business needs. GetFriday (earlier YMII or YourManInIndia) is a service that was featured and used in the NYTimes best-selling productivity and lifestyle design book ‘The 4-Hour-Workweek’ by Timothy Ferris. Sign up now!

How You Can Leverage Social Listening To Boost Business Growth- What It Is & What You Can Do

So, you are familiar with blogging and make sporadic appearances on message boards, commenting forums and your blog page. You are active on all social media accounts and as a result have an enviable digital presence. Does this make you feel like you have an advantage and can outdo your competitors? Don’t be too sure just yet. While forums, social media and blogging are essential for survival in a competitive business landscape, social listening is a crucial tool and can help you scale your business. Social listening is the act of monitoring or tracking various social media accounts, blogs, wiki pages, message boards and the like, to gauge the level of sentiments that people have towards a business and what they are saying about it. For instance, if you are following industry influencers, other well-known personalities who operate in the industry you work for and have a strong following by potential clients, there’s a very good chance that you will be followed or at least noticed too. Imagine what earning a blog link or a mention from an established personality can do for your following, brand and business growth. Social Listening Tips For Business Effective social listening can help boost sales for your business and more specifically, give you a competitive edge over your competitors. The question you need to be asking yourself is, how to leverage social media monitoring for better business. 1.By Tracking Your Competitors’ Activities If you are active on social media accounts, you should ideally be tracking what your competitors are doing too. Check for their success stories and make a note of their slipups. By monitoring your competitors across social media platforms, you will also be able to keep a close eye on any new, development from their side be it improved product/services offerings, policies or other prominent changes that could positively impact their businesses. 2.By Monitoring Your Online Reputation It is imperative to learn what the world thinks about your business. Monitor all the social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, online review sites, blogs, forums and other platform for mentions of your company or brand. If you want to boost credibility (and also visibility!) ensure that you always respond to your clients on time, with thoughtful replies, apologies or other appropriate comments for every mention you get on the World Wide Web. Fail to do this and you might risk your reputation. 3.By Discovering New Ideas & Trends Set up social alerts to identify the emerging trends and fresh ideas that may be relevant to your industry. In doing so, you will be able to update your products or services and keep them up-to-the-minute. What You Should Do Now, that you know why it is important, it is crucial to understand ‘what’ you should ideally be doing to get started with social listening. Social listening is a fairly simple practice and can be done easily with the use of platforms such as Google Alerts, Social Mention, Topsy, Hootsuite and Icerocket. Platforms like these can help collect aggregate data, track keywords and mentions across important social media channels. All you have to do is set up your alerts and monitor your social conversations on a day-to-day basis. Remember that social listening is not a quick process. It requires a thorough understanding and dedicated commitment of at least half an hour everyday, apart from working on other activities. You will additionally need to schedule alerts, manage your inbox and maintain commitment with the other work you do on a daily basis for your business. If you are just starting out with social listening and you have a lot on your platter, you might end up making mistakes, losing out on time and patience. If you want to save on time and still get your social listening right, why not outsource and hand over this responsibility to a reliable, social media virtual assistant from a virtual assistance provider like GetFriday? Talk to your social media virtual assistant about what you are expecting, what is relevant to the industry you operate in, map out your competitors, etc. You can also monitor your virtual assistant’s work along the way and ask for regular reports, alerts or other notifications for the social listening activities. Why should you compromise on your productivity and do complex, specialist work when you can have a professional do it for you in half the time? Think about it. Wouldn’t it be better for you if someone else could take care of your social media accounts while you focused on growing your business or doing other activities that interested you? In order to stay competitive, it is essential to learn about your clients, competitors and what the Internet has to say about your brand at large. If you partake in social listening activities, you will be able to take online conversations from being a one-way street to interactive and thus, boost business growth.

How You Can Leverage Social Listening To Boost Business Growth- What It Is & What You Can Do Read More »

So, you are familiar with blogging and make sporadic appearances on message boards, commenting forums and your blog page. You are active on all social media accounts and as a result have an enviable digital presence. Does this make you feel like you have an advantage and can outdo your competitors? Don’t be too sure just yet. While forums, social media and blogging are essential for survival in a competitive business landscape, social listening is a crucial tool and can help you scale your business. Social listening is the act of monitoring or tracking various social media accounts, blogs, wiki pages, message boards and the like, to gauge the level of sentiments that people have towards a business and what they are saying about it. For instance, if you are following industry influencers, other well-known personalities who operate in the industry you work for and have a strong following by potential clients, there’s a very good chance that you will be followed or at least noticed too. Imagine what earning a blog link or a mention from an established personality can do for your following, brand and business growth. Social Listening Tips For Business Effective social listening can help boost sales for your business and more specifically, give you a competitive edge over your competitors. The question you need to be asking yourself is, how to leverage social media monitoring for better business. 1.By Tracking Your Competitors’ Activities If you are active on social media accounts, you should ideally be tracking what your competitors are doing too. Check for their success stories and make a note of their slipups. By monitoring your competitors across social media platforms, you will also be able to keep a close eye on any new, development from their side be it improved product/services offerings, policies or other prominent changes that could positively impact their businesses. 2.By Monitoring Your Online Reputation It is imperative to learn what the world thinks about your business. Monitor all the social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, online review sites, blogs, forums and other platform for mentions of your company or brand. If you want to boost credibility (and also visibility!) ensure that you always respond to your clients on time, with thoughtful replies, apologies or other appropriate comments for every mention you get on the World Wide Web. Fail to do this and you might risk your reputation. 3.By Discovering New Ideas & Trends Set up social alerts to identify the emerging trends and fresh ideas that may be relevant to your industry. In doing so, you will be able to update your products or services and keep them up-to-the-minute. What You Should Do Now, that you know why it is important, it is crucial to understand ‘what’ you should ideally be doing to get started with social listening. Social listening is a fairly simple practice and can be done easily with the use of platforms such as Google Alerts, Social Mention, Topsy, Hootsuite and Icerocket. Platforms like these can help collect aggregate data, track keywords and mentions across important social media channels. All you have to do is set up your alerts and monitor your social conversations on a day-to-day basis. Remember that social listening is not a quick process. It requires a thorough understanding and dedicated commitment of at least half an hour everyday, apart from working on other activities. You will additionally need to schedule alerts, manage your inbox and maintain commitment with the other work you do on a daily basis for your business. If you are just starting out with social listening and you have a lot on your platter, you might end up making mistakes, losing out on time and patience. If you want to save on time and still get your social listening right, why not outsource and hand over this responsibility to a reliable, social media virtual assistant from a virtual assistance provider like GetFriday? Talk to your social media virtual assistant about what you are expecting, what is relevant to the industry you operate in, map out your competitors, etc. You can also monitor your virtual assistant’s work along the way and ask for regular reports, alerts or other notifications for the social listening activities. Why should you compromise on your productivity and do complex, specialist work when you can have a professional do it for you in half the time? Think about it. Wouldn’t it be better for you if someone else could take care of your social media accounts while you focused on growing your business or doing other activities that interested you? In order to stay competitive, it is essential to learn about your clients, competitors and what the Internet has to say about your brand at large. If you partake in social listening activities, you will be able to take online conversations from being a one-way street to interactive and thus, boost business growth.

Hear, Hear! Here’s Why Building Social Media Presence Is CRUCIAL For Your Business!

Are you ready to get ahead of your competitors? Social media presence plays a significant role in determining whether you stand a chance against your competitors in search engine rankings. Strong brands and smart businesses almost always use social media to market their business and to voice their content. This positively affects their rankings on search engine results, one of the many benefits of building social media presence and marketing your brand through social media channels. If Hubspot statistics are anything to go by, 92% of marketers claimed that social media channels were extremely important to their businesses. Why? Scroll further to find out – 1.Brand Exposure   Social media channels are perfect to voice the content you have in mind for your brand. It can help make your brand more recognizable for existing clients, bring in more visibility for prospective clients and also make uninterested clients re-consider your brand because of your wide, social media presence. 2.Building Credibility   Building your presence on social media channels will increase your followers and this in turn, can lead to an increase in marketing power. Every positive interaction you have with a client could increase chances of a subsequent conversion. Ranking higher in search engines like Google should be your top-most priority. As your social media presence increases over time, so will the credibility for your brand. 3.Making Competition Irrelevant   Forget about beating competition. Your aim should be to make competition irrelevant. A great way to start would be by building social media presence. Are you simply going to watch your competitors race ahead after all the effort you put into building your brand? Think of what a potential customer might think if he/she has visited your website and has learnt that they can?t follow you because you don’t have a social media account? If your social media presence is non-existent, so is your brand. 4.Drives Website Traffic   Hashtags are a great tool to help your content travel and get your brand out into relevant conversations. The more social media accounts you set up and the more hashtags you use, the better the chances of clients getting routed back to your website. All the content you post on these social media forums creates more opportunities for new visitors, more leads and higher conversion ratios. It may also interest you to know that some of the world’s top companies have adopted the hashtag almost completely to drive more traffic, leading to a 12% increase in overall engagement. Need we say more? Although the benefits are plenty, it is no secret that juggling multiple social media accounts can be a hassle, especially if you have a growing business to handle or if you are busy with other work. When you neglect social media, or if you don?t have the right understanding or know-how to operate or market your brand effectively through social media channels, there’s a high possibility that you may end up losing out on business growth and revenue. If you don’t want that to happen to you, outsource all the heavy-lifting to a reliable Virtual Assistance company. GetFriday, perhaps? Hire A Social Media Expert!   Yes, you can now outsource your social media accounts to a personal, social media virtual assistant – one who is up-to-date with new social media trends, hashtags and can carry out micro-blogging for the industry you operate in. All you need to do is, do your homework on the right outsourcing partner, sit back and outsource! Hiring a Social Media Virtual Assistant can ensure that your networks are up-to-date with keyword-rich content, are in line with your business objectives and your brand. Additionally, your social media virtual assistant can also post relevant information and images a number of times in the day, to make your brand appear ‘socially active’. This will draw more leads to your websites, result in more conversions as well as positively impact Google’s rankings Take your business to the next level. Understand the importance of building solid social media presence. If you haven’t gotten that far and don’t know where to start, cut through the chase and outsource. You’ll find that it will be easier to manage your business online if you have a dedicated, social media virtual assistant who can get your brand message out in a cost-effective manner and time your social media activities to reap optimum results!

Hear, Hear! Here’s Why Building Social Media Presence Is CRUCIAL For Your Business! Read More »

Are you ready to get ahead of your competitors? Social media presence plays a significant role in determining whether you stand a chance against your competitors in search engine rankings. Strong brands and smart businesses almost always use social media to market their business and to voice their content. This positively affects their rankings on search engine results, one of the many benefits of building social media presence and marketing your brand through social media channels. If Hubspot statistics are anything to go by, 92% of marketers claimed that social media channels were extremely important to their businesses. Why? Scroll further to find out – 1.Brand Exposure   Social media channels are perfect to voice the content you have in mind for your brand. It can help make your brand more recognizable for existing clients, bring in more visibility for prospective clients and also make uninterested clients re-consider your brand because of your wide, social media presence. 2.Building Credibility   Building your presence on social media channels will increase your followers and this in turn, can lead to an increase in marketing power. Every positive interaction you have with a client could increase chances of a subsequent conversion. Ranking higher in search engines like Google should be your top-most priority. As your social media presence increases over time, so will the credibility for your brand. 3.Making Competition Irrelevant   Forget about beating competition. Your aim should be to make competition irrelevant. A great way to start would be by building social media presence. Are you simply going to watch your competitors race ahead after all the effort you put into building your brand? Think of what a potential customer might think if he/she has visited your website and has learnt that they can?t follow you because you don’t have a social media account? If your social media presence is non-existent, so is your brand. 4.Drives Website Traffic   Hashtags are a great tool to help your content travel and get your brand out into relevant conversations. The more social media accounts you set up and the more hashtags you use, the better the chances of clients getting routed back to your website. All the content you post on these social media forums creates more opportunities for new visitors, more leads and higher conversion ratios. It may also interest you to know that some of the world’s top companies have adopted the hashtag almost completely to drive more traffic, leading to a 12% increase in overall engagement. Need we say more? Although the benefits are plenty, it is no secret that juggling multiple social media accounts can be a hassle, especially if you have a growing business to handle or if you are busy with other work. When you neglect social media, or if you don?t have the right understanding or know-how to operate or market your brand effectively through social media channels, there’s a high possibility that you may end up losing out on business growth and revenue. If you don’t want that to happen to you, outsource all the heavy-lifting to a reliable Virtual Assistance company. GetFriday, perhaps? Hire A Social Media Expert!   Yes, you can now outsource your social media accounts to a personal, social media virtual assistant – one who is up-to-date with new social media trends, hashtags and can carry out micro-blogging for the industry you operate in. All you need to do is, do your homework on the right outsourcing partner, sit back and outsource! Hiring a Social Media Virtual Assistant can ensure that your networks are up-to-date with keyword-rich content, are in line with your business objectives and your brand. Additionally, your social media virtual assistant can also post relevant information and images a number of times in the day, to make your brand appear ‘socially active’. This will draw more leads to your websites, result in more conversions as well as positively impact Google’s rankings Take your business to the next level. Understand the importance of building solid social media presence. If you haven’t gotten that far and don’t know where to start, cut through the chase and outsource. You’ll find that it will be easier to manage your business online if you have a dedicated, social media virtual assistant who can get your brand message out in a cost-effective manner and time your social media activities to reap optimum results!

GetFriday Newsletter – Get Friday and Social Media

With GetFriday stepping into its 10th year of operations, we would like to take the opportunity to firstly, offer our sincerest thanks and gratitude to every client who has supported us in our endeavors along the way. Without your conviction and belief, it would have been impossible for GetFriday to achieve the kind of success it has. We have spread our wings through social media marketing and have built our presence on a number of popular social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+. Through this, we aim to help clients discover our latest postings whilst also providing exciting opportunities to avail the best of GetFriday’s virtual assistance services. A series of social media campaigns will be launched on a monthly basis for this special year and clients, both old and new, will be chosen as the recipients of tremendous benefits. A recent ‘Friendship Day’ campaign was launched on the official GetFriday social media pages on July 27th, 2015. The campaign was primarily targeted at clients who had availed GetFriday’s services and to help clients’ friends avail the same, by gifting them GetFriday hours, along with submitting a special tweet, a shout-out or a personalized message for Friendship Day. The result of the campaign was nothing short of a grand success, wit the existing clients also receiving exciting, referral benefits. Similarly, GetFriday ran an exciting “World Entrepreneurs Day” campaign from the 17th-21st August. The prime motive behind launching such an exclusive campaign was to celebrate entrepreneurs and their contributions around the world. As many of our clients are businesspersons themselves, we offered them $25 as cash prizes and also a complementary offer wherein the clients referrals earned 25% off on the first month’s bill if they signed up during the offer period. The campaign proved to be fruitful and gave the golden opportunity to clients to earn exciting prizes and benefits and also gave GetFriday a chance to welcome new clients into the GetFriday family. More such campaigns will be launched across GetFriday’s official pages. Stay tuned and follow us on our social media sites for latest offerings, blogs and news. Not only will you be able to view the latest internal news, but you will also be able to benefit from the fresh, quality content posted for professionals and entrepreneurs across various domains and industries on a weekly basis. We love to hear from you and we bet you would love to hear from us too! Let’s stay connected.

GetFriday Newsletter – Get Friday and Social Media Read More »

With GetFriday stepping into its 10th year of operations, we would like to take the opportunity to firstly, offer our sincerest thanks and gratitude to every client who has supported us in our endeavors along the way. Without your conviction and belief, it would have been impossible for GetFriday to achieve the kind of success it has. We have spread our wings through social media marketing and have built our presence on a number of popular social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+. Through this, we aim to help clients discover our latest postings whilst also providing exciting opportunities to avail the best of GetFriday’s virtual assistance services. A series of social media campaigns will be launched on a monthly basis for this special year and clients, both old and new, will be chosen as the recipients of tremendous benefits. A recent ‘Friendship Day’ campaign was launched on the official GetFriday social media pages on July 27th, 2015. The campaign was primarily targeted at clients who had availed GetFriday’s services and to help clients’ friends avail the same, by gifting them GetFriday hours, along with submitting a special tweet, a shout-out or a personalized message for Friendship Day. The result of the campaign was nothing short of a grand success, wit the existing clients also receiving exciting, referral benefits. Similarly, GetFriday ran an exciting “World Entrepreneurs Day” campaign from the 17th-21st August. The prime motive behind launching such an exclusive campaign was to celebrate entrepreneurs and their contributions around the world. As many of our clients are businesspersons themselves, we offered them $25 as cash prizes and also a complementary offer wherein the clients referrals earned 25% off on the first month’s bill if they signed up during the offer period. The campaign proved to be fruitful and gave the golden opportunity to clients to earn exciting prizes and benefits and also gave GetFriday a chance to welcome new clients into the GetFriday family. More such campaigns will be launched across GetFriday’s official pages. Stay tuned and follow us on our social media sites for latest offerings, blogs and news. Not only will you be able to view the latest internal news, but you will also be able to benefit from the fresh, quality content posted for professionals and entrepreneurs across various domains and industries on a weekly basis. We love to hear from you and we bet you would love to hear from us too! Let’s stay connected.

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