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Key Methods to Grow Your Twitter Followers

Key Methods to Grow Your Twitter Followers

Are you searching to receive a greater and more relevant Twitter following?  This blog will demonstrate the key methods to improve your Twitter experience.

#1 Post More Visual Content

Tweets involving visual content collect more likes, shares, and retweets than the tweets without visuals.Therefore, brands must attempt to combine their tweets with a supporting image. Even though there’s nothing wrong with text-based tweets, images are better poised to encourage visitors to look at your post. Temporarily, infographics are shared three times more frequently than any other image on Twitter. Hence, if you’ve got some persuasive data to share with the world, go for it. Just be sure to include a graphic!

#2 Hashtags

HashTags are an exclusive identifier for a particular topic. With just a hashtag, someone who knows nothing about you will notice your tweet if they click on it. Hashtags link tweets that have a similar concentration on a subject. Popular Topics are just trending hashtags at a particular time. Therefore, if you want to have a wider spread with your tweets, include a hashtag or two in your tweet. One thing to bear in mind though is be exciting, be humorous, and let your knowledge out. Dull tweets even on the most popular topic will have poor results.

#3 Add a follow button to your blog

In order to raise your following, it is essential to eliminate all barricades to entrance, and the main fence to entrance is people finding their way to your Twitter profile. The simplest way is to add a social media button to your blog.

#4 Add a Twitter share button to your blog posts

Adding a share button to a blog is imperative for achieving greater twitter followers. With share buttons included, readers can easily tweet posts. The essential phase is to confirm that your Twitter @username is included in your tweets. There are several social sharing plugins such as social warfare, wp social sharing, and swifty bar among others that have this option.

#5 Link out to influencers in your blog posts

There are people in your industry who have a great impact on your target audience. They have big audiences of their own, and you can expand into them. After you publish a blog post, make sure to link out to some influencers and let them know about it. You can inform influencers via Twitter, Google+, or email.

#6 Avoid sending many tweets in a small period

Sending numerous tweets in a short period will contribute to more people unfollowing you. If you’re using diverse tools to send tweets, it can become a bit of a juggling act. If you’re aware of it and attempt to space out your tweets, it will be a big help. Tools such as Buffer are helpful since rather than hitting the tweet button, adding tweets to Buffer will make them available at the agenda of your choosing.

Beginner’s Guide to Using MailChimp for Email Marketing

Beginner’s Guide to Using MailChimp for Email Marketing

Marketers use various online tools to build effective email marketing campaigns. One of those tools is MailChimp, which is an online email marketing service mainly used by small businesses and bloggers. It can be used for designing almost any kind of email, and it’s relatively easy to use even for beginners.

So, lets lay out the MailChimp basics.

Creating an account

To get started with MailChimp, you first need to set up a free account. You can do this by going to the MailChimp website and clicking on “Sign Up Free.” To create your account, you will provide an email address, username, and password. Then, after receiving a confirmation email you’ll also have to provide some personal information. Once you complete that, you can move on to the main menu and the dashboard, where you can find all the features you need to create an email marketing campaign.

Creating an email list

Before you start designing emails and creating campaigns, the first step is to create an email list or lists of subscribers to whom you will send your emails. To create a list, you should click on the “Lists” section in the top menu and provide list details which include list name, email address, your or your business’ name, as well as a reminder of how people got on your list. Then, you can start adding subscribers to your list by providing an email address, name, last name, address, and phone number for each one of them. You can also import lists from CSV of text files, copy and paste lists from .xls/.xlsx files, or import lists from integrated services like Google contacts, Salesforce, etc.

Creating a sign-up form

In MailChimp, you can create sign-up forms that you can add to your website and allow people to subscribe to your newsletter directly. To do this, you should navigate to the “Lists” section and choose the “sign-up forms” option in the right-hand drop-down menu on the list. You can choose to create general forms, embedded forms, subscriber popups, or form integrations. You will be able to build and design your forms according to your preferences, and you also have the option to translate your forms in other languages. After you create a form you can add it to your WordPress website via a plug-in called MailChimp for WordPress or manually–using an HTML code.

Creating an email template

To create an email template, you should go to the “Template” section in the main menu and click on “Create template.” There, you will have three different options: to choose a layout, to choose a theme, or to code your own template. Once you complete this step, you can move on to the Template editor. This is basically where you design the appearance of your email. On the left side you will see a preview of your template and on the right side you will see different content blocks and other design options. You can add text, images, social icons, buttons, and other elements by a simple drag and drop. You can also change the background color, the text color, use different fonts, etc. With a little bit of effort, you will be able to design beautiful email templates in no time. Once you are finished, you can send yourself and your team a test email to experience what your subscribers will see.

Creating a campaign

When your list and template are finished, you are ready to create a campaign. From the “Campaign” section on the main menu you should click on “Create campaign.” Then you can choose the type of campaign you want to create, which can be: a regular campaign, plain-text campaign, A/B split campaign, or RSS-driven campaign. Next, you will choose the list to which you will send your email, and then setup the campaign by providing details like campaign name, email subject, “from” name and email address, etc. As a final step, you should choose the template you want to send for the campaign or create a new one. Once you do that, you’re taken to a confirmation page where you can overview your campaign before finally hitting the “Send” button.

MailChimp can be a very helpful tool, and it is quite easy to learn. We recommend it to anyone willing to boost their email marketing efforts and create amazing email marketing campaigns.

Key Methods to Differentiate Your Business From the Competition

Key Methods to Differentiate Your Business From the Competition

Differentiation enables you to offer greater value to clients at a reasonable price, creating a situation that can increase the total profitability of your business. There are several methods to distinguish your business from competition, including product, service, channels of distribution, relationships, reputation/image, and price.

#1 Product Differentiation

Product differentiation is the most noticeable method. It includes actual physical and perceived differences, of which the latter can be shaped through advertising. Product differentiation may take the form of features, performance, efficacy (or the ability of the product to do what it is purported to do), meeting specifications, or a number of other criteria. This is the general area where most B2B marketers — and probably most consumer marketers as well — spend the majority of their time and dollars.

#2 Service Differentiation

Service differentiation contains not only distribution and clients service, but all additional supporting fundamentals of a business, such as: training, installation, and comfort of ordering. To many, these appear like the simple mechanisms of a business — the blocking and undertaking or the initial elements that do not require cleverness. For example, businesses like McDonald’s know how to differentiate on service. With rare exclusions, you will receive the identical product and the identical service at a McDonald’s in Texas that you will get in Georgia, Connecticut, or California. And in every location, the fries will be baked identical, have the identical amount of salt, and be served up likewise as fresh from the fryer.

#3 Distribution Differentiation

Channels of distribution are also an efficient means of differentiation. Distribution can deliver coverage or accessibility, instant access to know-how, greater ease of ordering, and better stages of clients or practical service.   For numerous producers facing a fragmented market, it is not possible to influence the end user without the distribution function. Structuring materials, for instance, requires having a plan to somehow transfer them from factory plant to contractor. These products characteristically transfer through two stages of distribution counting master distributors, specialty dealers, and retailers.

#4 Relationship Differentiation

Relationship differentiation is also an effective element of differentiation.  Employees and team members with customer interfaces can deliver and establish capability, civility, integrity, reliability, and receptiveness. Accountable for performing everyday client-facing communication, they are the connection between the product and client. If that connection breaks downs, the business is demolished.

In numerous businesses, the sales representative, CSR, or the technical service representative becomes a reliable associate of the customer’s team, confirming that the product is transported on time and works as it is supposed to, while undertaking any matters rapidly and precisely. Performance like this generates emotional bonds among the seller and customer.

This avenue of differentiation is nearly linked to service but directly targets the people. Clients desire to perform business with people, not an organization. Structuring this connection takes time but creates an extremely differentiated position.  This is the best way for any business method to become more detailed and differentiated from others.

8 Brilliant Guerrilla Marketing Ads and Campaigns

8 Brilliant Guerrilla Marketing Ads and Campaigns

Guerrilla marketing is an advertising concept that uses unconventional methods to promote a brand’s products and services. It is usually done with a low budget, and it is focused on getting the attention of the public in a unique way. Although it takes a lot of creativity and imagination to create a guerrilla marketing ad or campaign, it can be very beneficial as well. It can easily increase brand awareness and recognition, as well as drive sales. There are various types of guerrilla marketing: ambient marketing, ambush marketing, stealth marketing, viral/buzz marketing, guerrilla projection advertising, grassroots marketing, wild posting, astroturfing, and street marketing.

Here are 8 examples of attention-grabbing and memorable guerrilla marketing ads and campaigns.

#1 KitKat

KitKat took ordinary benches and turned them into genius ads. They made the benches look a lot like KitKat chocolate bars and added the brand message: “Have a break. Have a KitKat.”- inviting people to take a break and relax on the benches.

#2 McDonalds

Here is just one notable example of how the fast food giant McDonalds used guerrilla marketing, who is known for adapting this style many times in various ways. They painted a crosswalk to look like McDonalds fries as a cool way to target countless pedestrians and drivers that cross that street every day.

#3 National Geographic

National Geographic promoted their National Geographic Museum with a fun guerrilla marketing campaign. With simple dots, they connected their photos of lions and leopards to a framed text saying: “What’s it take to get this photo? Stand here with a camera for three years.”

#4 Nike

Nike ads are all about motivating people to move. Their brilliant guerrilla campaign in New York aimed to motivate people to run. They drew their logo on park benches and added the word “RUN” next to the logo. The benches’ seating panels were removed, implying people should run instead of sitting down.

#5 Jeep

Jeep promoted their vehicles by creating a simple but creative street marketing campaign. Across the city of Copenhagen in Denmark, they painted parking spaces across unusual places like stairs and trees, depicting the way Jeep drivers can park their vehicles.

#6 IKEA

IKEA is one of the most creative brands when it comes to guerrilla marketing. They implemented the concept multiple times in different cities across the world. Memorable examples are the Paris metro and bus campaigns, where they placed IKEA sofas in metro stations and bus stops across the city. Passengers were able to wait for their train or bus sitting on one of IKEA’s cozy sofas.

#7 Tyskie

The Polish beer brand Tyskie proved that simple advertising can be highly effective if done right. All they did was place stickers of beer mugs with their logo behind the door handles of restaurants, bars, etc. People entering the doors would feel like they were reaching out for a cold Tyskie beer.

#8 IWC

IWC, the luxury Swiss watch manufacturer, found a very simple yet original way to advertise their famous Big Pilot watches. In airport busses, they attached photos of the watches to the hanging straps so that anybody could experience the illusion of trying on one of their luxury Big Pilot watches while on the bus.

Ways to Optimize Your Website for Higher Search Engine Rankings

Ways to Optimize Your Website for Higher Search Engine Rankings

Follow these recommendations, and watch your website rise the ranks to the top of search-engine results.

#1 Publish relevant content

Quality content is a key component of search engine rankings, and there is no replacement for great content. Quality content produced specifically intended for users expands site traffic, which enhance the site’s authority and importance. Select a keyword phrase for each page and reflect about how your audience might search for that specific page. Afterwards, repeat this phrase various times throughout the page—once or twice in the opening and closing paragraphs and two to four more times throughout the remaining content. Use bold, italics, heading tags, and other emphasis tags to highlight keyword phrases when applicable.

#2 Focus on brand awareness 

Boosting brand awareness is also an important element for increasing a website’s popularity. To have a popular website means that your content needs to be well-liked. Producing brand awareness and growing your website’s popularity is a great method to optimize an asset for higher disposal within search engine results. This could be performed through effective marketing, keyword placement and additional SEO fundamentals

#3 Update your site frequently

Having a company blog will do miracles in completing this task. Google requires proof that your website is currently active. Certainly, you won’t continuously have novel products to promote or updates that need to be integrated with your website; that’s where the blog comes in. You can frequently issue blog posts on the newest topics and trends within your industry, which helps your search engine ranking in the long run.

#4 It’s all about the keywords 

It is essential to include your industry keywords all throughout your site. In order to expand your site’s optimization, you need to incorporate those keywords as much as possible. Nevertheless, the arrangement of those keywords has an enormous part to play in your rankings. You need to incorporate them in titles, descriptions, headings, content, images and their alt text, and URLs/domains. Include keywords naturally or you will be flagged by search engines.

Optimizing your site is vital for better search engine rankings but also for refining your visitors’ experience and your own Web presence. By doing this, your site will be seen as more applicable and widespread for a potential customer’s exploration query. SEO is all about producing a strong Web presence and structuring brand awareness that will be rewarded with greater search results page placement. Successful optimization includes discovering and producing stability between the technical side (for search engines) and the imaginative (for humans) side of things. By discovering this critical balance, your website will be noticed more constructively by search engines and your customers.

9 Amazing Commercials Made by Famous Movie Directors

9 Amazing Commercials Made by Famous Movie Directors

Commercials are great visual storytellers that have the power to captivate an audience, trigger people’s emotions, and greatly influence their buying decisions. This is why they are one of the most popular go-to advertising methods used by brands to market their products.

Coming up with a memorable and effective commercial is a challenging task, and sometimes brands hire famous movie directors and celebrities to help them create something unique. So, let’s look at 9 amazing movie-like commercials that are as captivating as they can possibly be.

#1 Chanel – Chanel N°5 The film

I’m kick-starting this list with a glamorous commercial from Chanel, made for promoting their Chanel N°5 perfume. This is just one of their many beautiful cinematic commercials, two of which I’ve included on this list. It is an advertising masterpiece directed by Australian director Baz Luhrmann, and it tells a story about a forbidden love between a rich and famous celebrity played by Nicole Kidman and a handsome commoner played by Rodrigo Santoro. The wonderful “Claire De Lune” fits perfectly as background music, adding a sad, romantic vibe to the story.

 

#2 Prada – Candy L’Eau

This is a beautiful three-part commercial about Prada’s Candy L’Eau perfume, directed by the incredibly talented director Wes Anderson in collaboration with Roman Coppola. It features Lea Seydoux as a girl who finds herself in a love triangle with two men, who are played by French actors Peter Gadiot and Rodolphe Pauly. The commercial easily connects to the consumers because it recreates the perfume as a real person – the beautiful, sensational Lea Seydoux.

 

#3 H&M – Come together

This is another iconic commercial by Wes Anderson, with stunning visuals, perfect symmetry, pastel colors, and a heartwarming story that resembles his movies. It was filmed for the H&M’s 2016 Christmas Collection campaign and features Adrien Brody as a conductor on a train who tries to cheer up the lone passengers, who because of the bad weather conditions are unable to arrive home on time to join their loved ones for Christmas.

 

#4 Apple – 1984

A list like this one can’t be complete without the legendary Apple Macintosh commercial. Its name and story are based on the famous book by George Orwell – 1984. Ridley Scott is the man behind this timeless masterpiece, which to this day is considered one of the best commercials ever made in the history of advertising.

 

#5 Smirnoff – Smarienberg

This fast-paced commercial made by French director Michel Gondry looks like a scene from an action movie. It features a young lady and her escort being chased through parallel worlds seen through the Smirnoff vodka bottle.

 

#6 IKEA – Lamp

Director Spike Jonze made this clever and funny commercial for the Swedish brand Ikea. He managed to make the viewers feel sad for an ordinary lamp in the beginning of the commercial and then put a hilarious twist in the end.

 

Tips for Creating a Successful Google AdWords Campaign

Tips for Creating a Successful Google AdWords Campaign

Google AdWords is one of the most progressive advertising platforms that allow businesses to have their products and services publicized to potential clients.
In this guide, we demonstrate the most important tips to keep in mind before launching an AdWords campaign.

#1 Perform keyword research

The key element of a successful campaign is recognizing the customer and what they want. If there is a lack of interest in the service or product that is advertised, the campaign will not be successful regardless of the budget. As a result, it’s essential that you know your customers’ wishes and desires before constructing your campaign.

#2 Observe what your competitors are doing

Make sure to identify what your competitors are doing and recognize the landing pages, keywords, and ads that function best and those that do not. Moreover, you can be aware of their keywords too with a competitive intelligence tool called KeywordSpy. It provides you with all of your competitors’ advertising history in an arranged and well-ordered format.

#3 Establish a unique selling proposition

It is essential to have a unique selling proposition that distinguishes you from your competition. There are three motives as to why you need a strong unique selling proposition: it will produce more traffic while keeping unwanted leads at bay, it will increase your conversion rates, and it’s a potential game changer that can reject price comparison shopping. If you’re offering one of a kind products or services, customers won’t think of you as an item but rather as an opportunity. Therefore, make sure to analyze customer shopping patterns, grasp what they like, and observe what they don’t like about your industry.

#4 Use negative keywords

Always make sure to include negative keywords in your targeting. Negative keywords are keywords related to other keywords in the campaign that are not related to what is being advertised. In this way, you can ensure that ads do not show to users who would not find them applicable.

#5 Campaign set up by device type

With the increased usage of mobile phones, there is a great possibility that the majority of the AdWords traffic will come from a mobile device. It’s not recommended to assume that desktop and mobile traffic produce identical results. The best method is categorizing campaigns by device type. This method allows you to manage desktop traffic independently from mobile traffic and to set bids one at a time, produce diverse funnels, and simply track the results by device in order to confirm you’re in complete control of your ROI regardless of device type.

#6 Implement conversion tracking

Setting up conversion tracking is an essential step, and without proper tracking in place, there isn’t a method to trace and promote successful keywords, ads, or keyword themes. Moreover, conversion tracking permits continuing optimization built on the data but also enables direct insight into the ROI for your efforts.

9 Types of Visual Content That Go Viral on Social Media

9 Types of Visual Content That Go Viral on Social Media

Creating and sharing unique visual content can help you improve your online presence and increase brand awareness. So, here are 10 types of visual content that go viral on social media.

#1 Photos/Images

Eye-catching photos and images always grab people’s attention and have a huge potential to go viral. You can easily find or create beautiful photos to include in your content on social media. You can download free photos from sites like Shutterstock, you can create your own designs on sites like Canva, or you can post photos taken by you that add a personal touch to your content.

#2 Videos

Videos are another type of visual content that work well on social media. There are many different types of videos you can post to your page, like educational videos, product demos, testimonials from customers, funny videos, tutorials, etc. Make sure your video content is relevant yet unique and sets you apart from your competitors.

#3 Infographics

Whenever you want to quickly and clearly present important information to your audience–use infographics. With infographics, you can easily inform or educate people on any given topic. By visually representing the information in an infographic, you make it easy to consume and understand. Therefore, infographics are some of the most shared types of visual content on social media.

#4 Data visualizations

Data visualization is a great way to visually represent any type of data using charts, graphs, maps, diagrams, etc. Data visualizations can help you represent different facts, figures, trends, etc. in a visual context. If you put enough effort into creating relevant visualizations that are easy to understand–they can go viral in no time.

#5 Quotes pictures

Pictures with smart, motivational, or inspirational quotes can go a long way on social media. Especially popular are the ones with quotes by famous people, celebrities, scientists, or experts in some field. Quotes have the power to trigger people’s emotions, so people often share this type of content with others.

#6 Screenshots

You can take screenshots when you want to share some positive comments from customers, testimonials, reviews, or any other information that you think is relevant to share with your audience. You can also annotate your screenshots if you want to point out a specific part of the image that you’d like your audience to pay attention to. Screenshots that contain relevant information can easily go viral.

#7 CTAs

You can add CTAs to your visuals that direct your followers to take a certain action, like visit your website, subscribe to your blog, answer a question, click on a link, buy a product, and so on. Combined with the right colors and imagery, CTAs are very likely to get your followers engaged.

#8 Memes/Comics

Memes and comics are a fun, humorous type of content that make people laugh and create positive emotions. Therefore, this type of content can easily drive engagement and go viral.

#9 GIFs

GIFs are fun visuals that run for 2-3 seconds. GIFs can be added to a certain post to emphasize its meaning, show an emotion, some sort of reaction, and so on. If used in the right context they can be quite effective, so you should definitely consider including them in your visual content strategy.

Free Social Media Marketing Courses to Boost Your Skills Now

Free Social Media Marketing Courses to Boost Your Skills Now

Social media is greatly affecting consumers shopping behavior and companies invest a lot of time and money into marketing specialists and their education. Nevertheless, even if you aren’t an employee working in an organization that is eager to invest in your skills, you can educate yourself. The internet provides many opportunities to approach free social media marketing courses to improve your skills. There are many free social media marketing courses you can use to boost your marketing and social media skills, so here are the top most effective ones.

#1 Social Media QuickStarter

Social Media QuickStarter is excellent for beginners, who’re searching for a way to enter the social media world without any difficulties getting in the way. It provides you a complete guide to creating a social media presence on the most significant social media platforms.

#2 Social Media Analytics Course

This course is more tailored and focused on social media analytics only. Everyone knows how vital the increasing of revenue with the support of social media is and in order to accomplish remarkable results you need to understand how social media analytics works. The Free Social Media Analytics Course provides you social media marketing certification on completion.

#3 Hubspot Academy’s Inbound Marketing Certification

This course provides a diversity of free Inbound Marketing Certification Program. Despite the fact that their courses are intended at people in digital marketing, if you’re devoted you can learn a lot about content marketing. You can watch the videos at your individual pace and when you finish all the courses you can take an Inbound Marketing Certification Exam to get a certificate from Hubspot.

#4 Introduction to Social Media Strategy

This course presents a rapid and direct introduction to social media strategy. It lasts only 45 minutes but assists you to build a remarkable social media basis for your business. You should complete the course if you want to receive a grasp on the fundamentals of social media strategy quickly.

#5 Social Media Monitoring Course

This course is excellent guide for those who want to acquire knowledge on how to monitor their audience. Not only it provides you all the guidelines on how to gain those skills, it also offers detailed examples of monitoring, letting you to learn from them. The course provides you with social media marketing certification on completion.

#6 Google Analytics Academy

Google Analytics Academy is a magnificent online course for marketers seeking to up their game in everything Google-related. There has never been a better time to acquire all the knowledge about one of the most data-rich resources in the world. Some of the modules from the Google Analytics Academy include Digital Analytics Fundamentals and Google Analytics Platform Principles.

#7 Social Media Ethics

Social Media Ethics is very vital and detailed course. Even though, we don’t hear about social media ethics much in our everyday lives, it’s imperative to recognize it if you do want to use social media not only successfully but ethically too. This course includes various laws that explain what is legal for social media and what is not. Like most of the other courses this course offers you social media marketing certification on completion.

12 Organic Ways to Get More Social Media Followers

12 Organic Ways to Get More Social Media Followers

#1 Optimize your social media profiles

Your social media profiles are the first thing new users look at, so it’s crucial to make a good first impression. Here are a few ideas on how to optimize your profiles:

  • Use a unique profile photo that represents your brand, like a nice image of your logo that will make your profile stand out in the news feed.
  • Fill your profile with relevant information about your business so that people will know what you do.
  • Optimize your profile for SEO by including keywords and phrases your audience might search for.

#2 Post original, engaging content

To catch people’s attention, your content needs to be new, fresh, and original. Focus on posting relevant, engaging content that you know your audience will like and share.

#3 Interact with your followers

Posting engaging content on your profiles is essential part of your strategy–but it’s also super important to find time to engage with your followers. Respond to their questions and comments, engage in two-way communication, and show your followers you value their feedback. Doing this will help you keep your followers as well as get new ones.

#4 Follow others

You shouldn’t only wait for others to follow you on social media–you should also find others and start following them. For example, you can follow other similar brands from your industry, your clients, associates, friends, etc. When they see you’re following them, they might want to follow you back.

#5 Be positive and funny

You can never go wrong by including positivity and humor in your social media posts. People always have a positive response to these types of content, and they are more likely to share it with others.

#6 Use relevant hashtags

Add hashtags to your posts that are relevant to your brand and business. Use words and phrases that your audience is most likely to search for.

#7 Create and post viral content

Viral content is one of the best ways to reach a large audience on social media. For a content to go viral it’s usually best to make it surprising, positive, relatable, easy to understand, and easy to share.

#8 Reshare other people’s content

When you see an interesting post shared by someone else, don’t hesitate to share it on your page. Sharing content form other businesses makes them more likely to share yours.

#9 Link to your social media accounts

Linking to your social media accounts will greatly increase your visibility. Put social share buttons on your blog posts, add clickable icons on your website, include links in your newsletters, emails, etc.

#10 Make sure your content is shareable

This should be a no-brainer; however, some people forget to make their content shareable. Always make your posts public, so that your followers can easily share them directly from your page.

#11 Reach out to influencers

Influencers are great promoters of content, because they have many followers. Find influencers in your niche and try reaching out to them. If influencers share your content with their followers, some of them might become your followers as well.

#12 Post regularly and at the right time

Determine what posting times and frequencies result in most engagement and shares, and create a posting schedule based on that information.