Tuesday 31 August 2021

How to Outsource Your SEO Strategy the Right Way

Search engine optimization (SEO) is intimidating for newcomers, and I totally understand why. SEO requires your attention in multiple areas; you’ll need to improve your website, write content, research the competition, build links, and take care of a hundred other responsibilities. On top of that, you’ll need the experience to do all of these actions — well — and you’ll need to jump through hoops to stay current with the latest Google algorithm changes.

Outsource Your SEO Strategy the Right Way

Accordingly, most businesses that practice SEO end up outsourcing it in some way, either by hiring an agency or working with contractors. While this can be an effective strategy for supporting your SEO campaign, it can also work against you — so it pays to be cautious and do your research.

How SEO Outsourcing Goes Wrong

Let’s start by identifying some of the most critical ways that SEO outsourcing can fail.

Black hat practices and penalties. Some agencies build their business around “black hat” tactics. In the SEO world, that means using techniques like spamming links, writing low-quality content at high volumes, and even keyword stuffing. In some cases, these tactics can get you a short-term gain – just long enough for your contracting agency to cash the check. But in all cases, eventually, you’re going to face a Google penalty for doing this, ultimately negating any benefits you might have gotten along the way.

Scams and lack of work. Some companies don’t really exist; they’re shell organizations meant only to scam you out of money. For example, someone might claim they’re “optimizing your site,” but they might not actually be doing anything. These outright scams tend to be rare in the SEO community, but they can result in a total loss.

Cost and value. It’s also important to consider the balance between cost and true value. High-quality SEO services are necessarily expensive since it takes expertise, time, workforce, and other resources to execute effectively. But if you’re stuck paying $10,000 per month for SEO services, and you only see $9,800 in value, that’s not a good trade. SEO is a strategy that’s truly worth investing in, but if you’re not careful, you could end up paying too much when outsourcing.

Researching Potential Partners

So how can you prevent these problems?

Your best option is to seriously research your prospective outsourcing partners before hiring anyone. Generally, you’ll have two main options for who to hire:

Agencies. SEO agencies tend to be a bit more expensive. But, in exchange, you’ll typically have access to a bigger roster of experts – and support for every step of the SEO process. You’ll also typically have your own account manager and built-in guarantees to make sure you’re satisfied with the work that’s done.

Contractors. Contractors tend to be less expensive and more flexible. You can hire individual contractors to help you with specific needs, like link building or writing, or mix and match to build your own team. Either way, you might save money – but you’ll also need to expend more effort and face higher risks.

Whichever direction you go — you’ll want to research the following in every prospective hire:

Expertise. What kind of expertise does this potential partner have? Are they new to the SEO industry, or does the team have decades of combined experience? Are they familiar with your company and your industry, or is their experience mostly from a general background?

Services offered/high-level strategy. Figure out what services this partner offers and what kind of high-level strategy they’re going to follow. If they can’t answer your questions in this area, or if they try to avoid the subject, it’s a bad sign. Any SEO practitioner worth working with will explain the entire process to you and work to convince you that they’re capable of creating high-quality work. Good SEO strategies are a mix of technical onsite improvements, quality content generation, and value-focused link building with authoritative publishers. Link spamming and content spamming simply aren’t going to work.

Quality of work. You’ll also need to do your own investigating to figure out what quality of work this individual or organization is capable of. The best way to find this out is to ask to see examples. What are some examples of the best content this organization has written? What are some of the best live links currently pointing back to their site? If you’re not satisfied with this component, you may need to move onto someone else.

Reviews and testimonials. Next, look at the reviews and testimonials about this company left by its previous clients. Generally, when an agency or contractor follows black hat practices or scams people out of money, they have a cascade of bad reviews to show for it. Of course, good reviews and good testimonials aren’t a guarantee that you’ll get great service, but it’s a promising sign.

Past results. In line with this, see if you can get proof of past results. For example, does this agency or contractor evidence the ranking increases they’ve gotten for other clients in the past? New professionals in this industry still have a chance of getting good results for you, but you’re better off working with someone who has a long track record of success.

Communication. Reach out to promising candidates you’ve found throughout your research and start talking to the account managers and professionals who will be responsible for managing your campaign. Are they polite, prompt, and articulate? If so, it’s a great sign that you’re going to get the customer service you deserve.

Price. Of course, you’ll also need to think about the price of the services you’re getting. A company may check all the boxes above, but they may not be worth it if their service packages are too pricey.

The Working Relationship

Researching and hiring the right partner is a great first step, but you’ll also need to invest in the working relationship to see good results.

Push for transparency. A transparent SEO outsourcing agreement is ideal. You should be able to see everything your SEO partner is doing, down to the words they write for offsite content and the backend code changes they make to your website. If your agency or contractor refuses to report on their work, or if you’re not sure what they’re doing, consider it a red flag.

Insist on regular reporting. It’s also important to insist on regular reporting. Your partner should be showing you not just the work they’re actively doing on behalf of your brand, but also the results they’re getting you. How have your rankings changed over time? How much traffic is your website getting? Combine these metrics with your onsite sales and conversion statistics to calculate your overall return on investment (ROI).

Ask questions. If you don’t understand something, don’t assume that your SEO expert is taking care of it – or even that they know more than you. Ask questions. The more you learn about SEO in the process, the better you’ll be able to direct and make decisions about your campaign. And if your partner can’t answer a question or if they dodge a question, it might be a sign of trouble to come.

Hold the team accountable.

Finally, hold the team (or individual) accountable for their results. For example, if you drop in rankings for a specific keyword, ask them what they’re going to do about it. If you’re not getting the results, you wanted after several months of work, push them to make up the difference or give you a partial refund.

Conclusion

Outsourcing SEO can be incredibly valuable. In a best-case scenario, you’ll get to tap into some of the most creative and experienced minds in the industry while supporting your site with white hat tactics and saving money in the process.

But the worst-case scenario should be enough to scare you into doing your due diligence well in advance. In addition, not all SEO companies will give you a return on your investment (ROI), so keep that in mind during your research.

Image Credit: yan krukov; pexels; thank you!

The post How to Outsource Your SEO Strategy the Right Way appeared first on ReadWrite.

source https://readwrite.com/2021/08/31/how-to-outsource-your-seo-strategy-the-right-way/


In this blog you will find out about SEO news, tools and tips from different SEO companies and experts, which will helps you to grow your business.

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Which Social Media Channels See the Most ROI? [New Data + Expert Tips]

As any marketer knows, social media is an undeniably powerful tool to reach new audiences and connect with existing customers.

In fact, as of 2021, social media is now the #1 channel used by marketers.

But with all that Tweeting, Liking, Posting, and scrolling, it can be difficult to know which platforms give you the most bang for your buck.

Sure, it's important to ensure your brand interacts on whichever platforms are most popular with your audience, but it's equally critical you take the time to determine which platforms provide the best ROI for your business. This information can help you determine where to invest in paid advertising, as well as which channels you should use for lead generation.

However, social media usage can shift overnight. The platforms that provided marketers with the highest ROI five years ago likely don't deliver the same results anymore. That's why we conducted research to find out where marketers saw the highest ROI in 2021.

Here, we'll explore which channels provided marketers with the highest ROI in 2021. We also reached out to experts at Talkwalker, Socialinsider, Casted, Brandfolder, LiveChat, Sprout Social, MarketingLabs, and HubSpot to determine how marketers can leverage certain tactics within those channels to increase engagement and drive sales. Let's dive in.

Which social media channels have the best ROI?

According to HubSpot's 2021 State of Marketing report, Facebook is the social media channel that provides marketers with the highest ROI.

Over 40% of marketers cited Facebook as the most effective channel for their businesses, followed by the roughly 30% who saw the highest ROI from Instagram, which is another Facebook-owned social platform.

By comparison, the other social channels in the list — including LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Snapchat — all ranked much lower, with less than 10% citing each platform as the best channel for ROI.

Let's dive into each of these platforms to uncover why the top 3 social media sites perform better than others when it comes to ROI — and how you can leverage them.

1. Facebook

With roughly 2.8 billion monthly active users as of 2021, Facebook has an undeniably impressive reach. It also offers advertising opportunities to more than 200 million businesses, making it one of the most popular advertising platforms.

With Facebook, marketers can advertise on a user's News Feed, via Messenger or video, and more. Marketers can also leverage Facebook Lead Ads to encourage Facebook users to fill out a lead generation form without leaving the social platform.

One of the major benefits of Facebook's advertising tools is its segmentation abilities. You can target your ads towards certain audiences depending on interests, demographics, behaviors, or even connection to your business — like whether they've attended one of your events, or have friends who've liked your Business Page. These targeting capabilities can help your business reach users who are most likely to purchase your product or service.

Nicole Ondracek, HubSpot's Paid Advertising Marketing Manager, agrees that Facebook is an incredibly viable channel. She told me, "At HubSpot, Facebook is a valuable channel for us in driving return on ad spend. A main reason why is that we can provide our content to a relevant audience using Facebook's audience targeting features. For instance, Facebook's lookalike audiences allow us to go after people who look like our current customers."

"Facebook's algorithm is great at finding similar audiences who are likely to convert, which is why we see a positive return on investment going after these types of audiences."

Take a look at HubSpot's How to Run Facebook Ads: A Step-by-Step Guide to Advertising on Facebook to learn how to set up your own Facebook ads.

2. Instagram

With over one billion Instagram users, it's unsurprising that Instagram is second in this list when it comes to ROI. Instagram offers marketers the ability to increase reach, engagement, and sales through a variety of methods, including Instagram Shoppable ads, Stories, branded content, Reels, and more.

The platform has proven a viable strategy for businesses. In fact, 90% of users follow a business on Instagram, and 50% of users are more interested in a brand after seeing ads for it on Instagram.

So … why doesn't it surpass Facebook for generating ROI?

Most likely, Instagram falls short of producing strong ROI due to its more intangible metrics — such as brand awareness, reputation, loyalty, and consumer engagement.

For instance, an Instagram user might never click on one of your business' ads directly from the platform. Instead, perhaps the ad simply increases a user's awareness of your brand. Down the road, perhaps they click on your website after seeing a Google ad. Certain metrics are difficult to attribute to Instagram, but that doesn't mean it isn't a good idea for your business.

3. LinkedIn

Despite only roughly 10% of marketers rating LinkedIn as their top channel for ROI, LinkedIn is an incredibly effective channel for lead generation and nurturing. Over 750 million professionals use LinkedIn for networking, career advancement, and more.

The platform offers a variety of tools designed to increase your business' ROI, including Sponsored Content, Sponsored Messaging, Text or Video ads, and more.

To succeed on the platform, you'll want to create valuable content that resonates with your LinkedIn audience. Conduct research to determine which types of content perform best on LinkedIn — and which content will perform best with your target audience — to ensure you're hitting the mark here.

Additionally, try running experiments when you start using LinkedIn's advertising tools. For instance, Cellular IoT Connectivity company Aeris set up an ad plan and tracker to determine which targeting combinations worked best for the brand, which failed, and which generated the highest-quality leads. As noted in this post, "It took rounds of testing and optimization to get to [the brand's] 25% submission rates."

Now that we've explored a few of 2021's most popular social channels, let's explore the strategies and best practices you can implement to increase your ROI across platforms, according to experts.

Which social media tactics or strategies have the best ROI?

1. Conducting extensive research to understand your audience.

First and foremost, it's vital you understand your audience before creating any social media campaign. If you don't do your research, you risk spending time, money, and resources on the wrong channels — and missing out on more profitable connections elsewhere.

As Dan Seavers, Content Marketing Manager at Talkwalker, told me, "No matter the social media channel, the best way to increase your ROI is by improving your consumer intelligence. Get to know your customers better than your family, and understand what they're saying about your products, and where they're discussing them."

"That way, when you launch a campaign, you'll be hyper-relevant. Not a jarring ad that interrupts a customer's life, but a well-timed, well-targeted experience that people will engage with instantly."

2. Creating more video content — and testing out vertical videos.

People love videos – and yet, it seems most brands rely on images when advertising their products or services, and that's a mistake.

Adina Jipa, co-founder of Socialinsider, told me, "The most underused social media post is video content, which boosts engagement across all social media platforms."

"Facebook wants to become a video-first platform and favors pages with video content, but for most brands, it is [primarily] a photo-sharing platform."

Jipa adds, "A recent study about Facebook video strategy shows that only roughly 15% of the content [on Facebook] is video, while photos represent 38.58%."

To stand out and increase ROI, consider how you might incorporate video into your social media efforts.

Additionally, consider testing out different types of video formats across your channels. For instance, Facebook offers brands the opportunity to create vertical video ads for the mobile-friendly user.

As Jipa points out, "you can use vertical videos on ads to get more clicks. According to this poll, almost 69% of marketers say video ads outperform image and plain text ads on Facebook. 81% of Facebook users only access the platform via mobile devices, so using the vertical video format allows you to get more visibility and increase the chances of getting more clicks. Facebook videos ads can increase the CTR by 2-3X."

3. Re-using content across channels.

Most social teams create content in silos. Perhaps they tell one message via an Instagram post, and then create entirely different materials for a YouTube video or Tweet.

This undoubtedly requires a lot of time, effort, and resources — which can become frustrating when you don't see the ROI you need from these channels.

"Far too often, content is created for one-and-done campaigns or promotions," Casted's CEO and Co-founder Lindsay Tjepkema says. "This means marketers are working harder and harder to constantly produce more and more, yet ROI and ROE (return on effort) results are disappointing — and social is no exception."

She continues, "To change this, we must stop creating content for content's sake and start focusing instead on creating content that educates, entertains, and delights and can be broken down and amplified across all other channels — like social — not just once, but many times over. When you focus on creating engaging content that can be used in multiple ways across channels, you’ll see improved ROI and ROE (return on effort) across your campaigns — including your social activation."

To repurpose your content across channels, perhaps you post snippets of a full YouTube video on Facebook or Instagram. Alternatively, maybe you take text from a blog post and re-post on your channels to add value from your existing content, repurpose user-generated content across channels.

There are countless ways to refresh and re-use content to appeal to new audiences in unique ways without exhausting your social team.

4. Setting clear goals and devising a social strategy that works for your brand.

It's difficult to achieve results on social without taking the time to set clear goals for your team, and ensuring you've all discussed an appropriate strategy to get you there.

As Brandfolder's Senior Digital Marketing Manager Amanda Turcotte told me, "In order to achieve a return on your social media investment, you must have clear goals set before any tactical planning takes place. Various social media tactics can be applied differently to each of the platforms, meaning they'll produce different outcomes. So your goals need to be determined up front to ensure they're aligned with your social strategy."

Once you've determined your social goals, you'll want to create a consistent posting strategy so your audience knows when, and how often, they can expect content from your brand. To make this easier, try using a social posting tool like HubSpot's Social Inbox Tool or Later.

Turcotte told me, "In order to move your team from strategy to action and keep everyone on the same page, it's crucial to develop a regular posting plan that documents your approach across each channel, located where all team members have access. "

Agnieszka Jaśkiewicz, Head of Social Media & Community at LiveChat, agrees that creating a strategy and using tools to support your team's goals is critical for finding success on social channels.

As she puts it, "The greatest area of 'untapped potential' for most brands comes in the form of streamlining creative workflows to support the volume needed for quality social activity. Digital workspaces that allow creatives and marketers to collaborate from a central location to stage, revise, and produce content limits back-and-forth communication and unnecessary steps in production."

Additionally, Jaśkiewicz says, "Digital templates for creative assets — set to the specifications of the organization's core social media platforms — can also add agility to social media managers' ability to publish, allowing teams to be more timely and quickly act on new opportunities."

5. Allow your users to purchase your products or services on social media platforms.

Over the past few years we've seen rise to a new trend: social commerce.

In essence, social commerce is the ability to purchase from a brand within a social platform without leaving the site. Examples include shoppable ads and chatbot checkout.

Rachael Samuels, Senior Manager of Social Media at Sprout Social, told me she sees social commerce as a great opportunity to increase ROI on social channels.

Samuels says, "Social media has quickly become a primary communication channel for brands and consumers alike. As a result, marketers must seek new ways to engage with audiences while keeping other goals, such as lead generation, top of mind."

"One way we're seeing this unfold is through offerings like social commerce, which not only provide more seamless buying experiences for customers, but equip marketers with the ability to show direct attribution and ROI as a result of their efforts."

Samuels adds, "To maintain this momentum, marketers should ensure their tech stack enables them to integrate their CRM and social management tools so they can easily surface social insights with their broader sales and support teams."

6. Use UTM tags for tracking.

One reason you might not be seeing the ROI you're hoping for? Perhaps you're just not tracking properly.

As Matt Janaway, CEO of MarketingLabs, told me: "Tracking is now more important than ever thanks to the complications of iOS privacy improvements, so to really yield the best ROI, you have to make sure you are using UTM tags on all links. This way, you can correctly track the performance of your campaigns in Analytics."

Janaway adds, "This should give you the data you need to make decisions that can drive more engagement and ROI."

7. Encouraging your employees to become brand ambassadors.

One area of major untapped potential? Your employees.

As Casted's Tjepkema tells me, "Employee activation is a huge and mostly untapped resource for brands. As consumers, we're far more driven to engage with user-generated content, yet so many brands spend too much time and money trying to only push content from their own brand instead of enabling their employees (and partners, brand fans, etc.) to amplify their content."

"Rally your employees around the content you're creating and encourage them to share it with captions that show their unique and personal perspectives. This is a great way to help each member of your team build their personal brand, while also amplifying your content to audiences in a more authentic way."

LiveChat's Jaśkiewicz agrees with this notion, saying, "[You should] give employee advocacy a bigger seat at the table in your social media strategy, especially when it comes to LinkedIn. It takes some time and effort to provide people with the knowledge and imply the 'brand ambassadors' mindset in the organization — however, employee engagement is a cost-effective way to increase your reach organically."

HubSpot, for instance, created #HubSpotEmployeeTakeover on its HubSpot Life Instagram account. The campaign helps show audiences the faces behind the brand, and creates a sense of community and authenticity that you wouldn't find with branded content alone.

Increasing ROI across your social channels won't happen overnight — but by applying these strategies and remaining dedicated to iterating on your strategy as you collect audience insights over time, you'll surely begin to see stronger results from your social efforts.

Happy posting!

source https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-media-channel-roi


In this blog you will find out about SEO news, tools and tips from different SEO companies and experts, which will helps you to grow your business.

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What is Search Retargeting & How Does It Work?

When a user is on Google and searches for "athletic shoes," companies like Nike and Skechers probably want their ads to continuously show up for those users online because they're currently in the market for a product they sell.

But how could they do that when the user isn't searching for them and perhaps doesn't even know that their company sells athletic shoes?

That's where search retargeting comes in. With this behavioral targeting, companies can have their ads show up on search engine results pages (SERPs) and social media sites after a user types in certain keywords.

This is a popular strategy among marketers. In fact, 68% of marketing agencies and 49% of brands have a dedicated budget for retargeting. Additionally, it's also popular among online users -- 25% of online viewers enjoy seeing retargeted ads.

In this post, let's discuss what search retargeting is, how it works, and how you can use it to reach new audiences.

Continuing the example above, if a user searched for "athletic shoes," they might go on Facebook a few days later and see an ad for Nike or Skechers. This would mean that the company has set up a digital campaign to retarget users who are searching for athletic shoes in search engines.

Now you might be wondering, "How does this work?" Let's dive in below.

How does search retargeting work?

Essentially, search retargeting works through automation. Once a user searches for a keyword, certain display ads will begin to appear on their SERPs, social media, and other pages they visit online.

This works by creating a custom audience for your display ads. To do this, you'll create a list of keywords that are relevant to your business. You can choose to retarget people who use broad, exact, or phrase-matched keywords.

Then, you'll go to your search engine ads (whether on Google, Yahoo, or Bing) or any software you use to set up your display advertising and use their ecosystem to set up your campaign. The search engine or software will then use their data to retarget those users and display your ads to them online.

The idea is that a user will be searching for a product, see your company's ad, and then hopefully either visit your site then or consider coming back to your site when they're ready to make a purchase.

Before we dive too deep into search retargeting, right now you're probably thinking about site retargeting and asking yourself, "Isn't this the same thing?" The answer is no, but let's expand below.

The great thing about search retargeting is that the user doesn't even have to be aware your company exists. They'll see your ads because they're looking for a certain product or service, whether they know of your brand or not.

While site retargeting helps those in the consideration/decision phase of the purchasing process, search retargeting is for those who are in the awareness phase. The main difference is the type of consumer that is being targeted.

Benefits of Search Retargeting

1. Improve brand awareness.

Search retargeting is especially effective at improving brand awareness. So much so, that 70% of marketers turn to search retargeting primarily to increase brand awareness. This is because the audience you're targeting doesn't have to know who you are to see your ad. The more people who see your ad that hasn't heard of your company, the greater your brand awareness.

2. Increase visitors to your site.

Of course, a huge benefit of doing search retargeting is increasing visitors to your site. You'll be able to attract new visitors to your site that haven't heard of your company and wouldn't have otherwise shown up on your site through search retargeting. This is because you're capturing visitors through the intent of their searches.

3. Convert more consumers.

At the end of the day, you run digital campaigns to increase your ROI (return on investment) and drive revenue. Search retargeting can help with that. In fact, retargeted search ads have higher conversion rates than regular display ads. And it ends up being more cost-effective.

Google Search Retargeting

While you might use a marketing automation tool to set up your search retargeting ads, those will most likely only use data collected from Yahoo and Bing. Google prefers to keep its data in-house, so you can use Google Ads to conduct your search retargeting campaigns on this search engine.

Within Google, this process is called keyword contextual targeting. You'll use Google's keyword tool to select your keywords, and you can even use negative keywords to make sure your ads don't show up on irrelevant searches.

Reach New Audiences with Search Retargeting

Search retargeting is a great way to increase brand awareness and bring more engagement and visitors to your site. Not only does it work, but consumers prefer this type of advertising to other display ads.

source https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/search-retargeting


In this blog you will find out about SEO news, tools and tips from different SEO companies and experts, which will helps you to grow your business.

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How To Get Content Marketing Measurement Wrong: Do It Like a PR Person

Public relations and content marketing do overlap, but they’re not the same. Yet too many content marketers use PR-centered metrics to prove the value of their content. Here are four steps to change that. Continue reading →

The post How To Get Content Marketing Measurement Wrong: Do It Like a PR Person appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

source https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2021/08/content-marketing-measurement-pr/


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Monday 30 August 2021

5 Hacks to Attract Gen-Z Consumers

Article sponsored by PayPal.

Gen Z’ers, which includes those born between 1996 and 2012, now make up 20 percent of the US population and account for $143 billion in direct spending. If you are still focused on millennials, it’s time to start paying attention to a new generation of consumers. Here are five ways to attract and keep Gen Z customers.

1. Research Gen Z Culture

Gen Z’ers are digital natives; they’ve always had access to smartphones and social media. They are also one of the most diverse generations in history. This impacts how they think — and how they spend their money.

If you want to sell to this unique generation, your company needs to learn who they are and how they interact with brands in your industry.

Here are resources for your team to learn more about Gen Z.

Knit: Get instant feedback and Gen Z insights

NYTimes: Gen Z in Their Own Words

#GenZ: Podcast about Gen Z, their stories, experiences, and perspectives

Pew Research Center: Study on Gen Z trends, demographics, and more

2. Hire Social Media Managers or Social Media Firms that Employ Gen Z’ers

Gen Z consumers are savvy buyers and can spot inauthentic advertising. Having Gen Z representatives on your marketing team (or in the firms you use) will help you hit the right tone.

Look for Gen Z’ers that represent the best of this generation by offering the perks they care about, such as:

flexible working hours

ppportunities for growth

including them in projects that make a difference in the world

3. Offer Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) Payment Options

Gen Z customers value one thing above all else: flexibility. This is why offering BNPL options, like PayPal’s enterprise BNPL, is crucial for attracting the Gen Z market. As younger workers, they are unlikely to have the financial resources to make larger purchases. In fact, Gen Z is expected to make up 47.4 percent of BNPL users by 2025:

BNPL allows Gen Z access to greater flexibility (and little to no interest rates.) Since much of the group works paycheck to paycheck, this flexibility is crucial.

4. Take a Stance on Social Issues

Gen Z is politically aware and active, and they prioritize spending their money on brands that align with their views and values. Look for causes that naturally align with your brand, and take stands on those issues.

Don’t insert your brand into social issues that you don’t understand, or you risk alienating this generation. Instead, sponsor or promote causes you care about and find ways to make your brand more environmentally and socially conscious.

5. Take Steps to Make Your Brand Trustworthy and Authentic

Trust matters to Gen Z shoppers. They are less likely to respond to straight advertising (they often use ad blockers) and more likely to respond to brands that are transparent.

Here’s how to increase transparency:

Show how you use/gather data for ads, including how long you store it and whether you share it.

Create authentic ads and marketing campaigns; don’t try to trick Gen Z customers.

Make sure your contact information is easily accessible on your website and social accounts.

If you use influencer marketing, choose smaller, more trusted influencers to partner with.

Trust also impacts what payment methods Gen Z’ers are willing to use, and PayPal offers a considerable competitive advantage. In fact, 53 percent of consumers between 18 and 39 say they trust PayPal to keep their financial information secure.

Conclusion

Gen Z’ers already impact a large portion of consumer spending. In the coming years, their buying power will continue to grow. To market to this generation, executives must push their brand to understand how Gen Z’ers think and invite them to join a movement, not just market another product.

Use PayPal’s BNPL to build trust and provide Gen Z’ers with the financial flexibility they want. Learn more here.

source https://neilpatel.com/blog/gen-z-consumers/


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Twitter's Testing Social Commerce: What Marketers Need to Know

When you think of online shopping destinations, Twitter may not be the first place that comes to mind. However, with ecommerce sales continuing to rise due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, social platforms want in on the action.

On Instagram, business owners can add a "shop" feature to their profile, allowing users to make purchases directly from the profiles of their favorite brands. Similarly, TikTok teased an upcoming shop feature and integration with Shopify earlier this year. Now Twitter is testing new strategies to integrate online shopping experiences into the user experience.

The platform previously had a "Buy Now" button before retiring the feature in 2017 to focus on other avenues. Now Twitter appears to be circling back on this idea giving business account holders new tools for converting customers on the platform potentially turning Twitter into a space where buyers can discover new products while engaging in conversation with brands and communities.

Here’s what we know about Twitter’s commerce experiments so far.

Why Twitter Is Testing Ecommerce Features

In early 2021, Twitter executives announced their goal to double revenue to $7.5 billion and reach 315 million active users by the end of 2023.

Working towards such ambitious goals, Twitter is looking to introduce new revenue streams to help grow and monetize its user base – and one of those key streams is an ecommerce play designed to give businesses the tools they need to drive conversational sales.

During Twitter’s 2021 investor’s call Bruce Falck, Revenue Product Lead at Twitter said:

"We’re also starting to explore ways to better support commerce on Twitter. Our MAP (mobile application program) efforts help us understand how our users are transacting on the platform. Installing an app via an ad is in itself a form of commerce. We know people come to Twitter to interact with brands and discuss their favorite products.

In fact, you may have even noticed some businesses already developing creative ways to enable sales on our platform. This demand gives us confidence in the power of combining real-time conversation with an engaged and intentional audience."

Essentially, the platform has aggressive business goals over the next two years and sees commerce as a viable way to increase engagement and revenue opportunities outside of traditional advertising.

Then we’re also thinking about commerce. Helping people buy things on Twitter. We want to be really thoughtful about how we do this so that we're helping advertisers find their customers and continue to own that relationship with the customer. $TWTR

— Twitter Investor Relations (@TwitterIR) March 3, 2021

Twitter's Ecommerce Test

The Shop Module

In July 2021, Twitter rolled out a robust ecommerce test: The Shop Module.

Image Source

The Shop Module will allow brands to display products in a carousel format at the top of the profile. When a user visits a brand’s Twitter account, they will be able to scroll through a handful of products, have the ability to tap in to learn more about each product, and eventually purchase.

This initial test is designed to determine the shopability of Twitter profiles. Though consumers typically visit Twitter to connect directly with brands for questions and customer service inquiries, Twitter is looking to understand what in-app behavior can drive users to make a purchase. As more data is collected, it will be interesting to see if Twitter can see a clear link between conversation topics and sales of related products through the platform.

Twitter has rolled out this feature to a small number of brands across industries based in the United States, and Twitter users based in the U.S. who use the English app on iOS devices are currently able to see it live.

With the feature being deployed to business profiles offering vastly different products, Twitter is also testing which product verticals sell from the platform. See The Shop Module in action below.

Image Source

Shoppable Twitter Cards

In March 2021, Twitter also began testing commerce features for organic tweets. Essentially, tweets that feature a direct link to a shopping page or product can generate a new Twitter card with a "shop" button and auto-populated product details.

Image Source

When a user clicks the shop button, they would be taken directly to the product page of the account’s website. The shoppable Twitter card appears very similar to promoted tweets. With this feature, Twitter is testing the viability of commerce through organic shares.

At the time of publication, this feature is still an experiment and hasn’t been rolled out to all Twitter users. It has been reported the shoppable Twitter card has been seen by international users and on Android devices.

How Brands Could Leverage Social Commerce on Twitter

Even if your company profile hasn’t been granted access to these new features, now is the perfect time to put a strategy in place so you can be ready to use Twitter’s commerce tools to your advantage.

1. Create organic conversation around products and services.

Consumers engage with brands on Twitter to ask questions and surface customer service inquiries. Start organically aligning your content on Twitter with products and services you’d like to highlight in the space to prepare your audience for what’s ahead with these new commerce features.

For example, a skincare company could start a conversation with its audience on Twitter about creating the ideal skincare routine. The company’s profile could start a thread with educational tweets about each essential step of an effective skincare routine and why each step is beneficial.

The audience would likely join the conversation sharing steps of their skincare routine and asking for product recommendations, creating space for the brand to share more information about its products to an engaged audience.

By continuing to prime the audience with these types of interactions, once the skincare brand gains access to Twitter’s commerce features, they can begin featuring the products discussed and measuring the audience’s response (through clicks and purchases).

2. Select a variety of products to feature on The Shop Module.

If your company profile is granted access to The Shop Module, use it as an opportunity to conduct research on what products best resonate with your Twitter audience. Try incorporating a variety of products at different price points, and regularly assess which products are getting the most click-throughs and purchases.

3. Take an experimental approach.

In the initial stages, don’t rely too heavily on using these new features to drive more sales. Instead, take a more experimental approach to gauge performance with your audience then refine your strategy when you have a more robust set of data.

When rolling out these new features, Twitter has clearly stated it is testing things out to better understand user behavior. Marketers should take the same approach to learn what resonates with their unique audiences.

With social media platforms giving brands more opportunities to sell through their platforms, marketers can find innovative ways to organically connect consumers to products and services they’ll love.

source https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/twitter-ecommerce-test


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Marketing vs. Operations: The Battle for a Small Business' Attention

"Your company is one viral moment away from a potential shutdown."

Yes, you read that correctly.

Imagine your company is fortunate enough to appear for a few minutes on a national TV show with millions of viewers. You can hardly contain your excitement. All eyes are on you. There's no turning back.

Your excitement soon turns to horror, however, when you realize your company isn't ready for this type of attention. Suddenly, a surge in traffic to your company's website causes it to crash. Team members quit from the stress of performing under pressure. Vendors threaten to sue you for late payments. Customers are angry because their orders are either incorrect or weren't provided on-time.

What took you years to build has effectively been destroyed overnight.

How can a successful organization good enough to land a coveted spot on a TV show succumb so quickly? The answer lies in Marketing vs. Operations.

The Paradigm Shift from Not Enough Customers to Too Many

When an organization officially opens its doors for business, marketing-related activities tend to be the primary focus. And it makes sense. After all, if no one knows about your product or service, you won't be in business long. Those activities can include sales strategies, P.R. and social media campaigns, and digital ads that catalyze advancement from the startup to the growth stage of business.

Eventually, if you have a great product or service that customers want, you'll see a return on investment for those marketing activities. At this point, as an organization advances from the growth stage to the emerging and scaling stages of business, the need for Operations becomes paramount.

The reason is that this transition is usually accompanied by periods of unmanageable fast-growth – customer demand is greater than what your company can supply. It's at this point that Operations-related activities like building the right teams, documenting and standardizing processes, and upgrading equipment and digital technologies becomes a higher priority.

If Operations is critical for scaling, why don't more companies focus on it?

The answer depends. When it comes to Operations, leaders of small businesses fall in one of more of three categories:

Unaware: They either don't know about Operations or they've never been exposed to it.

Uninterested: They believe that Operations isn't "sexy."

Undiscovered: When they try to search for information to scale their organizations, they find the lion's share is reserved for large enterprises or manufacturing companies.

Let's unpack each of these.

1. Unaware

It's no surprise that many founders and leaders (business savvy and technical acumen aside), are largely unaware of Operations – what it is and how it applies to their businesses.

With customers and cash being the lifeline of any organization, special attention is given to customer-facing activities that ensure their satisfaction. This is an anchor against which we can define Operations.

As the diagram below illustrates, Marketing represents highly visible activities that customers tend to interact with directly. It involves making some sort of promise or guarantee to customers who purchase your product or service.

Conversely, Operations is like the stealthy cousin of Marketing. It represents those activities that ensure customer orders are fulfilled on time, within budget, and within specification.

As the heartbeat of an organization, day-to-day Operations are not necessarily seen by your customers, but they certainly experience the result of it.

Operations teams work behind the scenes to make sure a company can deliver on promises made.

A frustrated client in charge of Operations once told me, following a conversation with a Sales Manager, "They sell the dream while we deal with the nightmare!" It's a humorous take on the historical divide between Marketing and Operations teams.

That's why the Revenue Operations movement is so important — it breaks down these silos to encourage transparency while working toward the common goals of customer satisfaction and profitability.

2. Uninterested

Founders and CEOs are known for being big-picture, strategic visionaries. The thought of getting bogged down by details isn't necessarily their strength or interest. It's part of the reason why Operations can take a back seat to the more visible initiatives offered by the Marketing department.

But there's another culprit — small business event planners. Attend any small business seminar, webinar, or conference, and your chances of seeing an Operations topic included is slim to none. This omission creates a knowledge gap for leaders of small businesses and causes disinterest.

Through personal conversations and informal surveys, I've learned that a shockingly high percentage of these event planners think, "Operations is boring." I've also had many of them tell me that, "No one is interested." And perhaps most egregiously that, gasp, "Operations just isn't sexy." This type of thinking is dangerous and does a disservice to those seeking resources to scale to the next level.

Consider these stats from the U.S. Small Business Administration:

81% of businesses are sole-proprietorships

32% of small businesses fail within the first two years

51% of small businesses fail by year five

67% will fail by year 10

I've often argued that more businesses could graduate from sole-proprietorships if they had a better understanding of Operations. This means job creation which has a net positive effect on local communities and economies.

I also believe that more businesses can avoid failure if they had a solid Operations foundation. Yes, there are number of reasons why a business fails. But the reasons why they fail within the first five years versus years five through ten can vary significantly.

There are businesses that fail not from a lack of customers or poor cash flow, but because they have too many customers.

3. Undiscovered

When small business leaders proactively seek resources to scale, they often find that those resources are not written or formulated with them in mind. Plus, if they are lucky enough to find resources for small businesses, it's usually for those selling tangible goods.

Where can service-based businesses go for guidance on scaling without failing?

Learning about frameworks like Lean and Six Sigma can be intimidating and sometimes too "corporate" for a small business' needs. Thankfully, there's a growing faction within the Operations community who are actively working to make this information accessible to small businesses.

Learn More about Operations for small businesses in HubSpot's RevOps & Operations Community

Dr. Jeffrey K. Liker is one of them and he was careful to be more inclusive in the second edition of his critically acclaimed book, The Toyota Way.

Listen to my interview with Dr. Liker to learn more:

Ignore Operations at Your Own Risk: Cautionary Tales

Perhaps Kyle Jepson, Senior Inbound Sales Professor at HubSpot, said it best: "Operational failures are dramatic and visible. Operational success is invisible."

He's right. There's no shortage of examples of companies that, to their detriment, chose to ignore the due diligence and rigor required for sustainable Operations and continued to focus on the outward appearances that great Marketing afforded them.

One example is Ample Hills Creamery. Once known as "Brooklyn's most beloved" establishment, this local New York ice cream shop caught the attention of Disney's CEO. Soon, they landed a contract with Disney World only to lose it all a couple of years later as they hemorrhaged money despite enjoying a steady flow of customers.

One of their investors, Greg O'Connell noted, "It was a fairy tale. They were kind of living in a dream world because their marketing was so great." Their failure resulted in bankruptcy, but other more severe failures land leaders in jail.

Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos), Adam Neumann (WeWork), Billy McFarland (Fyre Festival), and Trevor Milton (Nikola) are highly visible examples of leaders who, despite receiving warnings, continued to mislead and defraud investors and customers only to find themselves either incarcerated or facing serious allegations.

Examine the back office of any wildly successful company and you will find ironclad Operations: solid teams backed by standardized, streamlined, and efficient processes and technologies. Operations pairs with innovation, and both are imbued into the fabric of the companies that are both profitable and sustainable.

Achieving this balance with Marketing is critical. This is what marketing expert Andrea D. Smith and I talked about on an episode of the Business Infrastructure podcast:

Business is complicated. It requires a constant balancing of not just Marketing and Operations, but all aspects of business. Don't silo or sacrifice one group for the other. Attracting a steady flow of customers is fruitless unless you can also guarantee customer satisfaction.

Join the quest to change the narrative about back-office activities. Operations is savvy, sophisticated, and smart. And that's very sexy!

source https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/marketing-versus-operations


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How an Agency Improved a Bakery's Local SEO to Increase Online Visibility

See how an expert agency optimized the local SEO of an artisanal bakery with Google My Business optimization & directory registration for improved visibility.

from Semrush blog https://www.semrush.com/blog/seo-reality-show-bakery-8


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13 Brainstorming Techniques to Spur Creativity on Content Marketing Teams

When challenged to create, rejuvenate, or rethink what your content marketing team does, it’s time to connect for a good brainstorming session. Try one or more of these 13 techniques. Continue reading →

The post 13 Brainstorming Techniques to Spur Creativity on Content Marketing Teams appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

source https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2021/08/content-brainstorming-ideas/


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Saturday 28 August 2021

How I Got Over 942,000 YouTube Subscribers (And You Can Too)

How did I get over 942,000 subscribers without spending money on ads? Plus I am not famous, I’m not funny and I’m not a male model. 😉

I use a formula and it works well to get more YouTube subscribers for any industry and any account.

Even my clients at my marketing agency are using it and it’s working wonders for them. So much so most of them have over 100,000 subscribers now.

Now before I teach you how to get more subscribers, let me give you a quick overview…

How to Get More YouTube Subscribers

There’s a simple formula that I go into this article to getting more YouTube subscribers (which you can read below.

Hook people with your intro

Ask them to subscribe

Create videos that are around 10 minutes long

Ask people to leave comments (this is how you go viral)

Respond to every comment with an answer and question

Leverage YouTube shorts

Run contests

Do keyword research and use keywords within your title

Optimize your thumbnails for click-through

Promote your video hard in the first 24 hours through email/push notifications

Don’t forget to upload the transcription

If you want to learn formula in-depth just keep reading below and I will go over what I just covered above. Or if you want the short version you can also watch the video below.

Give Your Channel a Theme to Gain YouTube Subscribers

Before you do anything, you need to give your channel a theme.

If you look at many of the top YouTube channels, you’ll notice that many of them stick to a theme.

Take a look at Derek Halpern‘s channel, for example.

Notice how a lot of the YouTube videos he creates are on topics related to business and success.

Having a theme makes it easier to create consistent YouTube content.

On top of that, you can make your channel the ‘go-to’ place for specific content. This is the goal of a social media platform.

If your channel caters to a specific niche, then people who care deeply about that niche will want to become subscribers.

For example, imagine your videos are all about Facebook marketing, and you aim to help business owners.

If a business owner who wants to learn more about Facebook marketing subscribes to your YouTube channel, they’ll get an update any time you post content.

This helps them stay ahead of the curve without having to do a lot of work.

If you’re struggling to come up with a theme for your channel, think about the problems your business solves and who it solves those problems for.

Then, produce videos based on the topics you know will help the people your business serves.

Post Incredible Content to Gain YouTube Subscribers

Many marketers agree that video converts better than other forms of media.

If you want to drive conversions, you need to learn how to create incredible content on your media platform.

Plus, if you can create incredible content, then a lot of the work related to growing your subscriber count is already done.

When people subscribe to your channel, they’re essentially signing up to get updates whenever a new piece of content is posted.

If your content is great, people won’t mind hearing from you again because their initial interaction with you and your content was positive.

Whether that’s a learning experience, an entertainment experience, or both — it’s worth watching your videos.

And remember that people take the time to watch great content.

According to Hubspot, 54% of people want to see more video content from marketers. This is a good foundation for your media platform that will expand social networks.

If your content is excellent, then you’ll benefit from the fact that 54% of senior executives share content with their social networks.

So how do you produce incredible content that makes viewers want to subscribe and share?

Start by focusing on producing content that is relevant to your target audience.

Provided that you’re sticking to a theme, as mentioned before, it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with a way to produce valuable content.

Then, use these tips.

Look for Popular Keywords on YouTube

Let’s say that you want to create a channel that covers the topic of ‘pencil drawing.’

One way to develop content ideas is by simply entering the broad keyword of ‘pencil drawing’ into the YouTube search engine.

YouTube is the second-largest search engine globally, so we know there’s going to be some relevant data here.

When we type in the keyword, we see the suggestions above.

Now, those topics might seem a little broad, so you may want to pick one of those keywords and go through the same process again so that you can generate something more concise.

Let’s add the word ‘tutorial,’ for instance.

By adding the word tutorial, we are now provided with more concise keywords.

The fact that these keywords appear in the suggestions lets us know that people are searching for these videos.

You might argue that there is a lot of competition for such keywords.

And while that may be true, later on in the post, we’ll figure out how we can get people to view our videos, even when there is a lot of competition — so don’t let it be a concern for now.

The great thing about the approach above is that it gives us a place to start.

If we want to produce content for a certain niche, this technique lets us know what kinds of content people will already have an interest in viewing.

My tool Ubersuggest is another great YouTube keyword research tool. Simply type in your main key term and click “Keyword ideas” in the right sidebar, and it will deliver more than 400 keywords for you to consider.

You can also use the Google Keyword Planner tool to come up with content ideas. That’s because there will be some coherence between Google search results and YouTube search results.

Let’s stick with the topic of ‘pencil drawing.’

In the ‘Your product or service’ box, enter a keyword-based on your business. If I were running a business that taught people how to do a pencil drawing, I’d enter ‘how to do a pencil drawing.’

You want to keep the keyword broad at this stage because it’ll allow for the keyword tool to develop a wide range of ideas for you.

Once you’ve entered the keyword, you’ll then see this page. It shows several ‘Ad groups’ of keywords.

Each group of keywords centers around a certain topic.

As you can see, I’ve arranged the groups in terms of ‘Average monthly searches’ and descending order. This gives us a sense of where there might be a lot of competition.

Let’s click on the mid-range group called ‘Drawing Techniques.’

I’ve highlighted a few keywords that might represent good YouTube content opportunities.

I chose these keywords because it’s clear to see how you could create a focused, high-value video centered around these keywords.

You might think that these keywords don’t have that many searches and, therefore, aren’t worthy in terms of effort required.

However, remember we’re not just going to post a handful of videos and then be done with it.

Cultivating a YouTube channel so that it eventually has many subscribers often requires posting a lot of content. In fact, the biggest YouTube channel has over 4,200 videos.

If you want to publish massive amounts of content while keeping it relevant, you need to be able to niche down your content as much as possible, so each video provides value.

If you niche down, it’s only natural that the level of searches per month will go down.

Even if you focus on low-volume keywords, they’ll all come together to help you build momentum and establish yourself in a YouTube niche.

You’ll also notice there isn’t a ton of content for those lower volume search terms, which represents an opportunity.

Look at what happens when I type in the ‘Simple drawing techniques’ keyword.

There’s a playlist there, but other than that, there aren’t any fully optimized titles or even videos based solely around the topic of ‘simple drawing techniques.’

Improve the Production Quality of Your YouTube Videos

Production quality shouldn’t be a top priority, but it can definitely increase the number of YouTube subscribers after a certain point.

As long as your videos are rich in value and provide the viewer with the information they need, you’re doing a good job.

When the videos start to bring you a return, then you can focus more on production quality.

Here are a few tips.

Ensure what you’re saying can be easily heard. You must speak clearly and enthusiastically. You’ve got to project your voice.

Otherwise, people might not be able to understand what you’re saying. They might even get bored.

You don’t need to act like an extrovert; just try and prevent your voice from becoming monotonous.

If you’re recording your content using a phone or a laptop, the microphone might not be enough. So, you may want to invest in a quality external microphone.

However, test it to see how things actually sound before you make this investment.

You also need to ensure that your video is easy to watch.

You don’t want to make it hard work for your viewers to see what is going on. This means you need to ensure lighting is adequate.

If you’re recording a talking head style video where you’re talking to the camera, ensure that your face can be clearly seen.

If someone is recording you, then ensure the camera isn’t shaking.

If you’re recording your laptop screen, make sure your actions can be clearly seen and that anything you type can be read.

Use Video Editing to Improve the Quality of Your YouTube Videos

When it comes to video editing, you have a couple of solutions. When speaking about video editing, what we’re referring to is improving your videos’ style and not so much about removing minor mistakes.

More often than not, you’re going to make minor mistakes when recording your video. You don’t need to put tons of focus into removing these bits, as they don’t harm your video all that much.

In fact, they might even help your video as they let other people know that they’re dealing with a real person rather than a sly media marketing salesman.

Where editing can come in handy, though, is when you need to create cuts in your video or add a title screen.

If you’re not an accomplished video editor, you could seek someone from Upwork or perhaps even Fiverr.

Alternatively, you could purchase a video editing suite and learn to do everything yourself.

That method might save you a bit more money, though you might end up spending a lot more time learning how to edit videos on your own. This takes time away from your media marketing.

That might not be the best trade-off, depending on your circumstances.

As mentioned, you don’t want to over-edit your videos, though you want to give them a sense of style that separates you from the crowd.

Often, the easiest way to do this is by having custom intro music and a custom title screen.

Another way that you can post incredible content is by creating videos based on your product being used.

Demonstration videos can go a long way in showcasing your product as something worth buying.

You can even turn some of your blog posts into videos. Nearly 59% of executives would rather watch a video than read a chunk of text.

Okay, so that’s the basics of creating incredible content.

The next point will be essential if you want to ensure that your YouTube subscriber rates grow consistently over time.

Get More YouTube Views by Posting Often and Consistently

This is probably the hardest part of growing a YouTube following — though it can also be one of the most important.

The average company posts 18 YouTube videos a month. Posting content consistently is a great way for you to compete.

Plus, if you’re constantly posting new content, then people have a reason to become a subscriber and share it on their social networks.

After all, people are less likely to subscribe if you’re not going to post any more content — why should they?

If you use the tips mentioned earlier, then coming up with ideas for posting new content is pretty easy.

You just need to set a schedule and stick to it.

How Often Should You Post New YouTube Videos?

If you want to keep things simple, look at what your competition is doing, and then one-up them. If they are posting twice a week, aim for three times a week.

Sometimes, however, the best plan is the one you can stick to.

Consistency in your media marketing campaign is important, as it’ll keep existing subscribers coming back for more. This will result in more YouTube views — and also improve engagement.

Engagement on a video tends to come in the following forms:

Thumbs up or Thumbs Down

Social sharing

Subscribing

Commenting

Favoriting

Ideally, you want to improve the engagement levels in each of these categories through any social media site.

People like to engage with content on YouTube; did you know that over 100 million people per week take a ‘social action’ on YouTube every week?

Another mind-blowing fact is that 700 videos are shared every minute on Twitter. So while YouTube is not a social media site, it is a valuable tool for any social media marketing platform.

Great engagement will help make the video more visible in the YouTube search engine.

This will expose your video to more people, who can then become subscribers themselves.

If you want to view some statistics in terms of how your videos perform, you can use the YouTube analytics dashboard.

You don’t have to be at a computer to post content consistently. That’s because you can use the scheduling feature provided by Google.

To gain access to this feature, you must first turn on monetization for your videos. This means that you are willing to show ads on your videos.

If you don’t want to show ads on your videos, don’t worry. You still have control over which videos are monetized and which ones aren’t.

Let’s take a look at how you can get that done.

Sign up for a YouTube account and then go to the ‘Creators Studio’ section.

On the left sidebar, under the ‘Channel’ option, select ‘Monetization.’

Choose ‘Enable My Account.’

Now, you’ll be able to access the scheduling features provided by YouTube to program your media platform.

You’ll also be able to access a lot more in the way of YouTube analytics.

If you want to schedule a video, click on the ‘Upload’ button.

Then click on the dropdown menu and select the ‘Scheduled’ option.

Then drag and drop your video, or click the icon to upload it.

On the next screen, you can adjust the scheduling options.

Now enter the date and time you want the video to go live.

If people are subscribed to your channel, they’ll get a message when your video goes live.

Make sure to schedule that date into your social media management platform, if you have one. This will ensure that Tweets, Facebook updates, and LinkedIn posts are sent out simultaneously.

If you have an email list relevant to your video, you might even want to send a message out to those folks.

Consider staggering the messages, so you’re not bombarding people on multiple platforms all at once.

Consider Turning Long Videos into Multiple Short Videos

If you’re struggling to develop content ideas daily, consider splitting up longer videos into several shorter ones.

In long videos, you likely cover several points about one main topic.

You could edit out certain topics and then create mini videos using those topics. Shorter videos are more convenient for social network sharing.

In fact, Hubspot found that 2 minutes is the optimal video length on YouTube for their audience.

You’ll notice that the channel ‘Inside Quest’ does this a lot. Here’s one of the videos on their channel. Note how it is nearly 49 minutes long:

For someone new to the channel, that video length can be pretty intimidating.

So, they have broken down the video into some ‘highlight clips,’ covering interesting points and topics.

Note how short each of these videos is — just around a minute.

Short videos can be a great way to introduce people to your channel by giving them a taste of your content and building your media marketing campaign.

Create Evergreen YouTube Videos

A great way to consistently generate subscribers is by creating evergreen content.

These are videos that will be relevant whether they are viewed today or five years in the future.

This will apply to some niches more than others.

For example, I spoke earlier about the pencil drawing business, which naturally lends itself to producing a lot of evergreen content. A video about Instagram marketing, however, might be out of date in five years.

Take a look at your niche and see if you can create ‘how-to’ videos that will stand the test of time.

Even if you’re not looking to create evergreen content, it’s worth creating ‘how-to’ videos to provide value.

Optimize Your Videos to Increase YouTube Subscribers

Before anyone can become a subscriber to your channel, they need to first click on your videos.

No matter how good your video is, once it is seen in the YouTube search engine or sidebar, it will have some competition in the form of other videos.

So how do you get people to pay attention to and click on your video?

You need to focus on three areas — the headline, the thumbnail, and the description.

These three elements will have the biggest impact on influencing YouTube users to click on your videos. Be sure the meta tag is relevant and includes key points.

This is because they’ll help your rankings in the YouTube search engine. They’ll also improve your videos’ ability to entice users to click on them and share them on social media.

YouTube categories and cards can also drive clicks, so we’ll cover those too.

How to Create a Good Headline for YouTube Videos

If your video is based on a certain keyword, then the video’s title must include this keyword.

When you do this, you increase the chances of someone clicking on your video.

If the video’s title matches what they were searching for, they’ll assume that the video covers everything that they need to know about that topic.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that you should be ridiculous in how you’re creating your titles.

‘Keyword stuffing’ can hurt you much more than it can help you.

One way you can get around this problem is by using a colon.

For instance, earlier, we identified the keyword — ‘simple drawing techniques.’

If we had a video on that topic, we could write the headline like this — ‘Simple drawing techniques: 5 tips that will make drawing easier.’

Side note: An interesting experiment might be to split the ‘simple drawing techniques’ title into separate niches. This is a common social media marketing technique for blogs and helps videos too.

For example, ‘simple drawing techniques for cars’ or ‘simple drawing techniques for eyes.’

This is a great example of how you can take a big niche or keyword that is receiving a lot of traffic and identify opportunities within that niche.

As I mentioned, you’ll have to experiment a little when you do things this way. But, there’s no telling what kind of opportunities you might uncover.

As you can see in the example above, the video title uses a colon to separate the text.

You’ll also notice that there are videos where the ‘|’ symbol is being used.

You’ll have to test which one works better, though it could just be that this symbol serves a similar purpose to what the colon would have done.

When it comes to creating YouTube headlines, you’ll want to follow the rules that already exist for blog posts.

You need to have a mix of something that people are searching for and something that grabs their attention. This is core media marketing that can lead to social network inclusion.

You can do that by using the keyword your video targets in the headline and then including power words in the gaps.

As we’ve discussed, the style of your videos is going to influence the headline. If you have a ‘how-to’ video, then you’ll need to account for that in your headline.

Similar to blog post headlines, numbers also tend to work well in YouTube headlines.

Use Engaging YouTube Thumbnails

When it comes to the thumbnail, there are a couple of approaches that you could take.

The first is to show a clear image of whatever the video is about. For example, if you’re talking about a laptop, you’d want to include a picture of a laptop.

Like this:

Alternatively, you could just show a picture of a person interacting with whatever the video is about.

Like this example:

However, one of the increasingly powerful ways of creating video thumbnails is by adding text, like this:

Don’t just drop some text and call it good. You can also heavily edit the thumbnail image so that it clearly stands out.

Here’s another one:

If you want to create thumbnails like this, you need to follow these rules.

How to Create a Custom Thumbnail for YouTube Videos

You can create a thumbnail using Canva.

If you want to learn more about using Canva, going through their initial setup process might be helpful.

They have a YouTube thumbnail template, so use that to get started.

If you have some images of your own, you can upload them and then overlay text onto them.

I’ve just gone with the option of creating a basic thumbnail from scratch. Obviously, you can create something much better than this.

If you want to upload a custom thumbnail for a video, just go through the normal upload process.

On the page where you can adjust the video information, pick the ‘Custom thumbnail’ option.

You’ll then have a custom thumbnail that will be shown around the YouTube platform.

Create Better YouTube Descriptions

Creating a description for your YouTube videos could become an entire post in itself. We’re going to cover the basics here.

You need to keep in mind that you have a lot of space here, and YouTube tends to use what you say to rank your content. Don’t ignore the meta tag and its importance.

The first couple of lines on your description should be written so that they are easy to read in the search results.

Here’s a great example.

In this section, you may want to use some of the keywords you used in your title. That way, you can ensure that it has some coherence. This will also improve the ranking ability of your video.

When people click on your video, they have the option to click on the ‘Show More’ text.

This will expand the description. You can use this space to insert a ‘subscribe to channel’ link.

If you want to do that, use the following link format: https://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=

Make sure that you enter your channel name after the ‘=.’

So, for Kissmetrics, it would be: https://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=Kissmetric

When people click on this link, they’ll be taken to your channel page, where a subscribe box will pop-up.

You can also enter some other information, such as your other social media profiles, important links, and even your content posting schedule in the description.

You can also describe the things that are being discussed in your video, like this —

You could even highlight what is discussed at certain time sections in your video like this: 21:48 – How to prevent your website from being penalized by Google.

These timestamps will actually take those who click on them directly to the specified location in the video.

Add Tags to Increase YouTube Views

It’s also important to add tags. This will help improve the chances of your video appearing in the YouTube search engine.

You don’t want to use anything that is misleading here. Have a mix of some really specific tags that describe your video. Then, add a few broad tags that are still related to the genre.

There’s no harm in using some of the suggested tags provided by YouTube, as long as they align with what your video is actually about.

Use YouTube Cards

YouTube Annotations used to be the best way to engage users by directly adding links and other content to your video.

However, annotations were disruptive and were discontinued and then deleted in 2019.

Today, you have the option of using YouTube cards. You can add up to five cards to your video with a customized image, text, and call to action.

Here’s how you would go about creating a ‘YouTube card’ for your video.

Select the ‘Video’ option inside of the ‘Video Manager.’ Then click on the ‘Edit’ drop-down menu for the video you want to add a card to.

Then select the ‘Cards’ option.

You should then see this screen.

Click on the ‘Add card’ option and then choose the ‘Channel.’

Then, enter your channel name and add text.

The teaser text is the text that appears on the little graphic that appears in the video.

Here is how it will look:

If you want to adjust when the card displays the ‘teaser text,’ adjust the slider below.

You’ll notice, however, that the ‘i’ will always be visible in the video.

If people hover their mouse cursor over the ‘i,’ they’ll see the following.

This card will also appear at the time that you have chosen above.

Clicking on this will take users straight to your YouTube channel. However, no subscriber box will pop-up.

Engage Your YouTube Audience

Another way to boost your YouTube subscriber numbers is by engaging with your audience and creating a community.

There are several ways that you can do this.

Respond to YouTube Viewer Comments

Responding to comments is a simple — but effective — way to engage users. This will show YouTube viewers that you value their opinion. Plus, the fact that you’re going through this effort might encourage them to subscribe.

You could even argue that this counts as customer service work that improves the customer experience.

When you look at it through that lens, you use the fact that 22% of people post positive things on social networks about a company after having previously posting something negative — all because they got a response.

If you’re getting any negative comments on your YouTube videos, address them promptly.

This can increase YouTube subscribers because people see this interaction and appreciate the fact that you engage.

Host a Q&A Session

You can do this using Google Hangouts on Air or YouTube Live. You might even just ask at the end of a video for viewers to post their questions in the comments section.

Then, in the next video, you could spend some time going through the questions you received.

Ask Viewers What They Want

Another way to engage your audience is by creating videos based on what they want. For example, you could use a survey to ask your audience what they want to see you talk about.

You can then create a video based on a viewer’s suggestions and call them out in the video to say thank you.

Consider Collaborating With Other YouTube Video Creators

When it comes to boosting subscriber numbers, you also have the option of doing collaborations with people in your industry.

Collaborations can massively boost your video marketing efforts.

If you go about things in the right way, you may just end up joining the 18% of companies that regard their video marketing as ‘very successful.’

The best way to go about this is to find channels with a similar audience.

Both of you could then arrange an event where you can both benefit from the interaction.

When you collaborate, you must encourage people to subscribe to your channel.

Also, make sure the videos you publish immediately after the collaboration are amazing, so they want to subscribe.

Host Interviews to Increase YouTube Subscribers

Alternatively, consider doing interviews on your channel. If you can find a way to interview the top people in your niche, you’ll be able to attract their audience to your channel.

When your channel has a decent number of subscribers, you’ll have a greater ability to attract these opportunities.

Of course, you shouldn’t let low subscribers be an impediment that stops you from trying.

Email a few people who might be worth having on your channel and ask them if they’d be willing to be a guest.

If they say no, respectfully ask if they’d be willing to do a show when your channel has more subscribers. See if they can provide you with a ballpark figure that they’d be happy with.

You don’t want to be rude, but there’s nothing wrong with asking for a potential future way to make it happen.

Consider YouTube Ads

I’ve already spoken extensively about using YouTube Ads.

To get the most out of ads, target keywords your videos are created around.

This will ensure that your videos appear at the top of the search results when people enter that keyword.

If you are just getting started, you might want to get a feel for the platform first. But, if you’ve got a solid YouTube monetization plan, ads can be an effective way to drive subscribers and YouTube views.

How to Get YouTube Subscribers: Frequently Asked Questions

How many followers do you need to monetize your YouTube videos?

You need at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in a year to make money off YouTube videos.

How do I become a successful YouTuber?

You can become successful as YouTuber by employing strategies such as producing great content, optimizing your YouTube videos for the algorithm, and sharing your videos across multiple social channels.

What are some ways to make money as a YouTuber?

You can make money from YouTube by publishing popular videos that run ads; becoming an affiliate; offering paid memberships; and more.

How do you get YouTube subscribers?

You can get YouTube subscribers by creating videos on pop culture and tie them to your niche; optimizing your videos for the YouTube search algorithm; posting and promoting your videos across multiple channels; and simply asking viewers to subscribe.

How to Get YouTube Suscribers Conclusion

Ignoring the potential on YouTube is a huge mistake.

One of the keys to consistent success on YouTube is increasing your subscriber count — but don’t fall victim to those buy YouTube subscribers scams.

Instead, work to create exceptional content that will keep your audience coming back for more.

Then, make people want to click on your content using brilliant thumbnails and killer headlines that draw them in.

When people finally click on your video, then you can ask for a subscription.

Once you’ve got those fundamentals down, you’re free to experiment with things like collaborations and YouTube Ads.

If you put enough effort in, you’ll see those subscriber numbers start climbing — which can lead to website clicks and more.

All you need to do is get started!

What have you found to be useful when it comes to boosting subscriber numbers on YouTube?

source https://neilpatel.com/blog/the-real-secret-to-growing-your-youtube-subscribers/


In this blog you will find out about SEO news, tools and tips from different SEO companies and experts, which will helps you to grow your business.

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Friday 27 August 2021

3 Content Lessons To Keep You Off the Long Road to Ruin

This week’s content lessons come from a musical road trip with Ram Truck, a new Stackla survey explaining what content influence’s real people’s buying decisions, and a Zoom initiative featuring strategically placed CTAs. Continue reading →

The post 3 Content Lessons To Keep You Off the Long Road to Ruin appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

source https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2021/08/content-lessons-ram-stackla-zoom/


In this blog you will find out about SEO news, tools and tips from different SEO companies and experts, which will helps you to grow your business.

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Lead Generation: The Beginner’s Guide

These people are all leads. Some of them will upgrade and become paying customers. In this guide, you’ll learn how to generate leads for your business. But first, some fundamentals… What is a lead? What types of leads are there?…

Read more ›

source https://ahrefs.com/blog/lead-generation/


In this blog you will find out about SEO news, tools and tips from different SEO companies and experts, which will helps you to grow your business.

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What is crawlability?

Ranking in search engines requires a website with flawless technical SEO and great, relevant content. Luckily, the Yoast SEO plugin takes care of (almost) everything on your WordPress site. Still, if you really want to get the most out of your website and keep outranking the competition, some basic knowledge of technical SEO is a must. In this post, we’ll explain one of the most important concepts of technical SEO: crawlability.

What is the crawler again?

A search engine like Google consists of a crawler, an index, and an algorithm. The crawler follows the links. When Google’s crawler — also known as Googlebot — finds your website, it’ll render it, read it and save the content in the index.

A crawler follows the links on the web. A crawler is also called a robot, a bot, or a spider. It goes around the internet 24/7. Once it comes to a website, it saves the HTML version in a gigantic database called the index. This index is updated every time the crawler comes around your website and finds a new or revised version of it. Depending on how important Google deems your site and the number of changes you make on your website, the crawler comes around more or less often.

Read more: SEO basics: what does Google do »

And what is crawlability?

Crawlability has to do with the possibilities Google has to crawl your website. You can block crawlers on your site. There are a few ways to block a crawler from your website. If your website or a page on your website is blocked, you’re saying to Google’s crawler: “do not come here.” Your site or the respective page won’t turn up in the search results in most of these cases.
There are a few things that could prevent Google from crawling (or indexing) your website:

If your robots.txt file blocks the crawler, Google will not come to your website or specific web page.

Before crawling your website, the crawler will take a look at the HTTP header of your page. This HTTP header contains a status code. If this status code says that a page doesn’t exist, Google won’t crawl your website. In the module about HTTP headers of our Technical SEO training we’ll tell you all about that.

If the robots meta tag on a specific page blocks the search engine from indexing that page, Google will crawl that page, but won’t add it to its index.

This flow chart might help you understand the process bots follow when attempting to index a page:

Want to learn all about crawlability?

Although crawlability is just the basics of technical SEO (it has to do with all the things that enable Google to index your site), it’s already pretty advanced stuff for most people. Nevertheless, if you’re blocking – perhaps even without knowing! – crawlers from your site, you’ll never rank high in Google. So, if you’re serious about SEO, this should matter to you.

If you really want to understand all the technical aspects of crawlability, you should check out our Technical SEO training. This SEO course will teach you how to detect technical SEO issues and solve them (with our Yoast SEO plugin). Yoast SEO Academy is included at no extra cost in your Premium subscription

Keep reading: What is technical SEO: 8 aspects everyone should know »

The post What is crawlability? appeared first on Yoast.

source https://yoast.com/what-is-crawlability/


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10 Best Python Web Development Frameworks

Python is a very popular, versatile, easy-to-learn, and easy-to-use programming language. It has many uses, including machine learning, da...