We know that content is king. Posting on social media and social media marketing is so important! But starting your journey on social media as a business can be overwhelming. You probably have a lot of questions like “just how often I should post content on social media?” or “what are the best times to post on social media?”

At Beanstalk, your local social media marketing firm, we’ve got you covered. We can answer your questions and get you started on your journey!

Understanding Your Audience

Before setting a posting schedule or choosing your content, it’s important to understand your audience’s preferences and online habits. Where are your target customers hanging out online? Different platforms have different peak times, and your target demographic might engage more during specific times of the day or week. Take advantage of the analytics features of social media platforms to provide insights into when your audience is most active, helping you schedule posts for optimal engagement.

Blog Content Updates

Blog posts are great for both social media marketing and SEO (search engine optimization)! Frequency of blog posts as well as content type can depend heavily on your industry and available resources:

• News-heavy industries: If your industry is something involved heavily current events, post several times a week to keep content fresh and relevant.
• Evergreen content: Posting once a week or bi-weekly can be effective if your industry isn’t news-heavy. Maintain a consistent schedule that your audience can rely on and make sure your posts are relevant and informative.

Quality trumps quantity. Each blog post should provide value, solutions, or entertainment. Don’t stuff a post full of key words and fluff content just so you have something to post. Find out what questions your audience is asking and answer them!

Social Media Posting

Social media platforms vary widely in terms of dynamics and audience preferences:

• X (Twitter): High frequency is acceptable; consider several posts per day.
• Facebook: Posting once a day or every other day is generally sufficient. 3 times a week is a perfectly acceptable amount.
• Instagram: Daily stories are recommended, with regular posts 3 times per week.
• LinkedIn: One or two posts per week are ideal for maintaining professional engagement. Also, don’t forget to engage with your feed and others in your industry! Leaving likes, comments, and ideas under other professionals posts as your brand can drive engagement and build trust.
• Consistency is Key: Keep your social media posting schedule fairly consistent. Also, try and use the same content across your platforms, reformatted and reimagined for the different audiences.

Best Times to Post on Social Media

• X (Twitter): Best to post during early morning or late at night, coinciding with commutes.
• Facebook: For Facebook, mid-morning and mid-afternoon during weekdays is ideal.
• Instagram: Late morning and evening on weekdays is the best for Instagram.
• LinkedIn: Early mornings, lunchtime, and late afternoons on weekdays are best for professional audiences.

What Type of Content to Post

• Inspirational and Educational: Content that teaches or inspires tends to perform well across platforms. Remember, answer the questions that your audience is asking!
• Interactive Content: Polls, questions, or contests can increase engagement. Engagement in turn increases awareness and brand recognition.
• Visual Content: High-quality images and videos are important, especially on visually oriented platforms like Instagram. Try free tools like Canva to create engaging and professional looking content.
• Timely Content: Posts that relate to current events or trends can capture more immediate interest and engagement.
• Check Out the Competition: Make sure to follow competitors and other brands in your field. Seeing what content the competition is posting can be great inspiration and can help you generate ideas for your posts.

Automation and Planning

Using social media scheduling tools like Meta Business Suite, Hootsuite, or Later allows you to plan and automate the delivery of content across platforms. This can ensure a consistent social media presence and free up your time to engage directly with followers, plan future posts, and reach your business goals!

Engage and Analyze

After setting up your posting schedule, actively engage with your audience and monitor the performance of your posts. Engagement metrics and feedback will help you better understand what your audience best reacts to, helping you plan better for future social posts.

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Social media marketing is a wild beast. There’s not one formula that fits best for every company and you might have to fail forward a couple of times before realizing what works best. But practice makes perfect!

If social media ads management and organic social posting doesn’t seem like something you have an interest in handling, there are always social media marketing firms like Beanstalk that can help out.

More questions regarding social media management? Let’s chat! Keep it simple and let’s grow your business.

The post How Often Should I Post Content on Social Media? appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Social Media Strategy For Your Business

The time to start thinking about creating a social media strategy for business is here. It might be a foreign concept, but the goals of this blog post are to show you that it doesn’t have to be difficult and to hopefully get you moving in the right direction creating your business’ social media strategy.

Before we get to our step-by-step guide, let’s start thinking about your social media strategy for business by addressing the five W’s.

What?

What is a social media strategy?

A social media strategy for business refers to using social media channels to promote your brand or sell a product or service that your company offers. This can refer to either paid or organic campaigns. They’re most commonly used to help businesses increase brand awareness, advertise products and services, build communities, or provide customer service.

Who?

Who is your ideal audience?

The first step in any social media marketing strategy for business should be learning everything you can about your audience. This will help you create content, determine when to post, and determine where to post. The entire goal of a social media strategy for business is to turn your social media followers into converting customers for your business.

When creating your audience personas, take into account the following demographics:

• Age
• Geo Location (Time Zone)
• Language
• Avg. Income / Spending Power
• Job Title
• Industry
• Interests
• Challenges

Once you’ve researched these demographics, compile data on your existing customers and your existing social media following. Chances are you probably already have tons of great information; you might just now know how to use it. From your current audience, you can determine things such as who your followers are, where they’re located, and how they engage with your brand online. You can use these audience insights to guide your social media strategy for business and increase your ROI.

When?

When should you be posting?

According to an article by Sprout Social, the best times to post depend on your industry and which platforms you have decided to use (more on that in the “Where?” section). Once you’ve determined who your target audience is, you will be able to decide better when exactly you should be posting. This article considers their over 20,000 customers’ social accounts and looks at when their content was most and least frequently engaged with, broken down by platform and industry. For example, the best time to post on Facebook is Thursday 3-4 PM in the tech industry.

Where?

Where should you be posting?

Rather than posting everywhere, we recommend identifying the social channels that your target audience uses. Then, select the social media channels to use that way. For example, if your target audience is chief marketing officers, LinkedIn and Facebook would be the recommended channels.

Why?

Why should you have a social media strategy for business?

Your customers and potential customers are online, and you need to be where they are; it’s as simple as that. Okay, there’s a little bit more to it than that. A social media strategy for business allows your brand to build a strong organic presence by setting a schedule and posting consistently. Along with this, a clear social media strategy for business will allow you to save time, achieve your goals, engage your existing audience, and grow your audience simultaneously. Most importantly, a social media strategy for business will allow you to stay ahead of your competition. With a consistent posting schedule, you can dial in on the details that help you stand out from the crowd. You can analyze what’s working, develop your brand’s message, get creative with the look and feel of your brand accounts, and provide a sense of value to your followers.

We’ve discussed the who, what, when, where, and why of creating a social media strategy for business. Now let’s tackle the most important part — how.

How?

How to create a social media strategy for business?

Let’s take it step by step. The first and most important step for creating a social media strategy for business is setting specific goals for your business. Think about what you hope to accomplish with your social media campaign. Do you wish to build a community? Do you hope to increase brand awareness? Generate leads? Drive sales? Grow your audience? Drive site traffic?

No matter your goals, a content strategy will help you achieve them.

We’ve broken creating your content strategy for business into ten easy to follow steps.

Step 1: Target Audience

As mentioned in the “Who?” section above, after setting your goals, you should take time to determine who your target audience is. Most of the information you need can be found by analyzing your current social media following; you just need to know where to look. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube allow you to analyze your following and determine things such as age and location. Once you’ve established your target audience, select which social media channels you wish to utilize.

Step 2: Pick Your Social Media Channels

The most important thing to remember when determining which social media channels to use is that different platforms attract different audiences. For example, LinkedIn’s users are well-educated businessmen and women, Facebook and YouTube users are high-earning individuals, and most of Instagram and TikTok’s users are millennials and Gen Zers.

The information above, combined with the information you pull from your real-world audiences, should provide you with enough information to base your decision on which channels to utilize and how to communicate on each.

Step 3: Based on your goals, establish your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

Similar to deciding on which channel, it might seem like you should focus on every metric, but narrow the focus to those that matter most. Your social media business goals should be SMART, and so should your social media KPIs. Need help determining which KPIs to target?

• Clicks – This refers to how many people click on the link or the call to action (CTA) in your post.
• Reach – This refers to how many users see your post.
• Engagement – This can be broken down into likes and comments, or simply average engagement rate, calculated using the following equation: Likes + Comments + Shares / Followers.
• Follower Count – The total number of followers your social channel has at the time.
• Reach – How many people have seen your post since going live. This can be calculated with the following equation: Post Views / Total Followers x 100.
• Conversion Rate – The number of users who follow your CTA compared to the number of clicks on any single post. This can be calculated using the following equation: Conversions / Total Clicks x 100.
• CTR (Click-Through-Rate) – This is the percentage of people who viewed your post and followed your CTA. This can be calculated using the following equation: Total Clicks / Total Impressions x 100.
• Bounce Rate – This is the percentage of visitors who click on a link and leave the landing page without taking any action. This number will inherently be very high but can be lowered by creating engaging landing pages with great UX.

Step 4: Fill Out Your Profiles

Now that we’ve taken care of our goals, picked our social channels, and set our KPIs, it’s time to move forward with our social media strategy for business. The next step is to fill out your profiles. A complete, cohesive profile across all platforms shows professionalism, and cohesive branding across the board shows users that you’re committed to your brand’s online image. Your profile requires both visuals and text. For visuals, you must create something on-brand and familiar to your customers. Here is a helpful cheat sheet for profile pictures and cover photo/header image sizes.

As for text, your message must be consistent and personable across all of the platforms you’ve selected with keywords tailored to your audience. Most importantly, don’t just write this and leave it for the next few years. Instead, revisit it often, and tweak it to improve it, specifically for potential followers.

Step 5: Find your voice.

Now that we’ve set up our profiles completely, let’s choose a voice and tone. Consider your brand’s personality, how you want your audience to hear you, what they want to hear, and how you want your customers to think about your company. Once you’ve completed this, you should have a good idea of your company’s voice and tone for your marketing. One of our partners, Semrush, has a great article to help you establish your voice and tone.

Step 6: Don’t ditch your planner.

Next, let’s create your posting schedule and strategy. We find it helps to create a calendar with each of the platforms and the graphic, topic, CTA, and link. Hootsuite has various templates to save you time and effort when creating your brand’s posting schedule and strategy. When it comes to what you should be posting, there are six types of updates: Links, videos, images, quotes, reshares, and plain-text updates. While you want to use a variety of these update types, as mentioned above, you want your audience to know what to expect from you as far as tone and voice regardless of the kind of update.

So, we know what to post, but how often should we post?

Refer to the “When?” section above for when to post based on industry and platform. Remember, these are just suggestions based on data, and you should analyze and test to find your sweet spot.

Step 7: Create & Curate Content.

Once you’ve set your KPIs, it’s now finally time to create your content. As mentioned, your posting schedule should be detailed enough that you know exactly what content to create and when to post it. You must create content that your audience is going to engage with. It should come as no surprise that a successful social media strategy for business relies on stellar content, from the graphics to the copy.

Step 8: Review and refine.

The last step is to analyze data and test. As with anything, you’re not going to be perfect right out of the gate. However, after reviewing our guide to social media strategy for business, hopefully you’ll be in a better spot. As you post, you will be able to analyze which content, timing, and frequency are working and is suitable for your brand and your audience. Once you have a benchmark of data, you will be able to set more realistic KPIs, test new techniques, and review how your campaign is going. Your social media strategy for business is not something that you plan once and never look at again. It’s a living thing that is ever-changing, so make sure to treat it as such.

Step 9: Automate

Once you have followed all of our steps to creating a social media strategy for business, you should be able to determine whether you have the time required to create content, post, and analyze your social media efforts. If the answer is no, there are very useful tools that you can use to automate the posting of all of your social media content and compile all of the analytics in one platform.

Step 10: Don’t stop at a social media strategy for business.

You did it! You now have a social media strategy for business that’s unique to your brand and automated as much or as little as you need. Now all that’s left is to engage with your audience. When users talk to you, mention you, comment, etc., make sure you talk back. These conversations online with customers, references, colleagues, or potential customers will drive conversations offline and ultimately lead to a growth in your following and more engagement.

Tips for Staying Current

When creating and curating your social media strategy for business, here are a few tips and trends that we believe are essential to keep in mind.

1. Stay up to date on trends, algorithm updates, new features on all of the social media platforms you’ve elected to utilize in your social media strategy for business, and constantly improve your strategy.
2. No matter the shifts in trends, make sure your content is on-brand and consistent. Following a consistent theme can help you zero in on your content strategy.
3. Engagement driving techniques such as stories are massive in 2021 and aren’t going anywhere. While with posts, you are at the mercy of algorithms, stories appear chronologically.
4. Another engagement driving technique that allows you to communicate with your audience in real-time is livestreaming. With more businesses going digital, livestreaming events rose to popularity and will undoubtedly continue to remain popular as users have gotten used to interacting with brands on their devices. Livestreaming should be a part of any brand’s social media strategy for business as it has been a growing trend, especially with the global health crisis that will affect all companies far beyond 2020.
5. Video is HUGE and is only getting bigger. The proof is in the pudding, as they say. As you scroll through your social media feeds, you’re likely to see videos all over.
6. Utilize platform-specific tools. Instagram, for example, is constantly adding new features such as shopping stickers, Reels, swipe-up links, and much more. Make sure to utilize these and use them to your advantage! At Beanstalk, we love Instagram Stories for business, and we think it’s entirely underutilized in almost every industry. Instagram stories, as mentioned above, appear chronologically at the top of a user’s feed and are essential to any organic social media strategy for business. Posting stories humanize a brand and engage your followers. You can also appear for those who aren’t yet following your account by utilizing hashtags in your story.
7. Authenticity! Be authentic and transparent about your products or services. You have to let people know that they can trust you, and authenticity online is a great way to do so.

Get Started on Your Social Media Strategy Today

In conclusion, these ten steps will allow you to create your social media strategy for business today and beyond.

1.  Set your brand goals

2. Define your target audience

3. Determine which social media platforms to use

4. Establish KPIs

5. Fill out Your Profiles

6. Choose a Voice and Tone for Your Brand

7. Plan a Posting Schedule and Strategy

8. Create and Curate Content

9. Analyze and Test

10. Automate and Engage

Social media will continue to be a massive part of our lives and somewhere that your customers are spending a lot of their time. After reading this article, we hope it no longer seems like an impossible task for you or your brand to tackle your social media strategy for business.

We hope this article has made it possible for you to tackle your social media strategy for business. If you have any questions about paid social media or creating your social media strategy for business, contact the professionals at Beanstalk Web Solutions.

The post Creating a Social Media Strategy For Your Business appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

1. Goals & Objectives

Before you start posting just to be active on Social Media, make sure that you establish your companies’ goals & objectives, so you don’t waste your time. Write down your goals, making sure they’re SMART. Setting goals will allow you to measure your social media marketing goals’ progress and drive future decisions.

2. Know Your Audience, Go Where They Are

First, you must understand who your target audience is and understand their likes and dislikes. Next, be where your audience is. If your target audience is a younger demographic, it’s Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, and Instagram. If you have older demographic, you’ll want to be active on Facebook, Facebook Messenger, and LinkedIn. Once you have your who and your where, pick one or two platforms that you know your audience is active on – you can waste a lot of time and energy trying to be on every platform.

3. Less is More

It is not about how much you post, but instead, it is about the quality of your post’s content. Ensure your posts bring value to your customers rather than just posting to make a post for the day. Your followers will engage more with your posts if you have put thought into it; when conceiving the post, put yourself in the eyes of your customer. What would they like? What would they share? How do I start a conversation with them? 

4. Engagement > # of Followers

Followers and views mean very little if those people are not engaging with you. You want people to comment, like, and share your posts with their friends. Make sure to engage your followers by listening to them and responding. It’s also a great idea to review your competition’s accounts and check if they respond to their followers’ comments; if they don’t, it’s an opportunity for you to insert yourself into the conversation.

5. Build Community

Along with knowing your audience and the importance of engagement, you must build community with your followers. Start a conversation with your community, engage with them, understand the current trends, and apply them. The goal is for your followers to talk about you offline and bring others to the conversation online.

6. Pro Tip

Look at your followers and recognize who has perceived influence or is a thought leader- make them your brand ambassadors. Let them lead the charge for your brand.

7. Be Authentic

Be a real person. People buy from people, not brands. Be as authentic as possible as your target audience doesn’t want to be sold to; they want you to speak to them. Consumers will buy if they can relate to who is using your product. This is what we call conversational marketing, and the biggest brands in the world are doing it. When is the last time you saw a Pepsi ad that didn’t feature the biggest celebrity? Brands understand that consumers trust and buy from people, not a logo.

8. Consistency is Key

The reality is that all of these things take time, don’t waver! Your community will not grow tenfold overnight, and your engagement rate might increase slower than you expect; keep being authentic online, and you will exceed your goals for social media marketing.

Use these tips for social media marketing in 2021, and connect with us if we can help!

The post Tips For Social Media Marketing appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

One of the most powerful tools at the disposal of any small business owner is their social media presence. Using most social media websites is very simple, but making the most out of the opportunities that social media provides is more complicated. Many small business owners make several damaging social media mistakes when managing their profiles. Here are just a few:

1. Having No Social Media Strategy

Not having an active social media account in today’s world is considered strange, even for businesses. However, it’s not enough to merely have a social media account and post on it. You also have to create a strategy for how you’ll use your social media accounts.

Do you want to use your account mostly for promotional purposes? What platforms do you want to focus on? Can it be used for customer service questions? Will you need a social media manager to handle your accounts? How often do you plan on posting? Good planning is the backbone to success on social media, and going in without a strategy will make your goals much harder to attain.

2. Too Many, Too Few, or Completely Wrong Hashtags

Using too many hashtags can turn any post into an eyesore, and it may make people think your post is spam. In the opposite extreme, not enough hashtags might hinder the exposure of your posts. In general, it’s a good idea to limit your hashtags to about two or three per post.

Knowing the right hashtags to use is a trickier matter. The best hashtags will depend on the subject matter of your posts and which tags in relation to those subjects are currently the most popular. However, it’s never a good idea to abuse hashtags by using a completely unrelated hashtag purely because it’s trending. Unrelated hashtags give off the vibe that your post is spam and won’t help your traffic.

3. Posting Photos Without Permission

Using images with your social media posts is a great way to grab attention. There is a nearly endless supply of images on the Internet, but they aren’t all free to use. One of the biggest social media mistakes most small business owners make is posting images they don’t own. Most photographers and graphic artists will allow for the private use of their images. The same isn’t usually said for professional purposes.

If you are using images to help promote your business on social media, you’re technically profiting off of the work of another person and associating their image with your brand, which they may not want. Whenever you locate an image on the Internet and want to use it in a post, contact the creator of the image. You may have to pay a small fee for licensing rights, but it’s better than unethically using someone’s image and possibly facing legal repercussions.

4. Failing to Engage with Followers

The social media accounts of businesses often come off as robotic and unfriendly because the people running the pages don’t engage with their audience. Your followers should be able to acknowledge that there is a real person behind the page who is willing to speak with them, even if it’s just a friendly greeting. When you get comments, respond to as many as you can. Help people out with their problems, thank them for their kind comments and respectfully respond to people who have negative comments.

5. Not Studying Campaign Metrics

How do you know if a social media campaign is truly being beneficial to your business if you don’t keep an eye on your metrics? There are many types of data that are vital to maximizing the efficiency of your social media pages such as view counts, which accounts get the most traffic, engagement stats, brand mentions, and the number of followers.

6. Using Influencers Who Don’t Mark Posts as Sponsored

For a fee, social media influencers will make posts about your products and services. Considering the massive audience that prominent influencers have, these posts can provide your social media pages and business a massive boost in traffic and sales. However, many businesses don’t ensure that the posts are clearly marked as sponsored. Leaving sponsored posts unmarked isn’t only unethical since it misleads people, but it may even be illegal in some circumstances.

While it’s very easy to make these social media mistakes, fixing them isn’t difficult. With a few alterations to your posting habits and keeping a close eye on all of the data on each account, the social media pages of your small business will become much more successful.

Valerie Cox is a contributing writer for TopSEOs.com. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling, biking local trails, and volunteering in her community.

The post 6 Social Media Mistakes Most Small Businesses Make appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Brand reputation, especially online reputation, is critical to the success of many businesses. However, poor management can lead to the collapse of a company’s prestige, especially online. In modern-day businesses, you must ensure that your company has a foolproof strategy for managing and maintaining its online reputation.

Today, social media is home to your business’s customers, clients, and potential clients, critiques, observers, etc. Therefore, your business needs to maintain an excellent presence and impression online. Positive reviews and comments from the online community are vital factors that strengthen your business’s reputation. Meanwhile, if you leave a negative review unaddressed online, it can drag down your brand’s reputation quickly.

Businesses today, including small or startup companies, can easily use social media as a fighting-front to establish and manage their brand effectively. Also, it can be used to monitor and maintain their reputation over the long run. 

The internet and social media offer smaller businesses an advantage over larger companies. How? With a small business, you have fewer fronts on which to battle over online reputation. If you commit to an effective social media management strategy, this can be used exclusively to your advantage for a stronger, more effective brand image/reputation.

To help your business’s online reputation excel in modern-day, here are some brilliant social media ideas that will benefit your brand tremendously.

Brilliant Social Media Ideas to Improve Your Company’s Online Reputation

Focus on Niche-Relevant Content

When developing social media content for your various channels, don’t rely too heavily on making sales. The truth is, customers do not just want to be sold to on social media. Rather, focus on content that will benefit your audience and reward them for their time.

Let your brand become a perpetual source of relevant and valuable content for your audience daily. You can engage in sharing insightful, helpful, inspiring, or entertaining social media content that is important to your brand. 

Also, remember that social media is primarily for interaction, so you should try to keep your channels as interactive as possible. Respond quickly to mentions, comments, and relevant questions. Strategic moves like this will keep your audience hooked and excited to keep coming back. Customers are excited when they know that the brand is also listening to them. Basically, encourage participation.

You can integrate the support of top rated translation services like The Word Point to develop and translate your social media content to broader audiences quickly.

Listen Socially and Review Analytics

Social listening is the process of analyzing, tracking, responding to any conversation that has to do with your industry or brand online. A lot of businesses and corporate entities are struggling for attention online. It is vital to “listen socially” if you want to strengthen your online reputation. This way, you can gauge the public’s view on your brand, its products, and services.

To achieve this, you will need to incorporate the assistance of some practical analytical tools. These devices will help you review and monitor any mentions of your brand online, including remarks unrelated to your posts. 

Useful analytics like this can help you improve your overall marketing strategy, products, and services, or any other areas your brand needs improvement.

Some effective social media listening tools include TweetReach, HootSuite, Buzzsumo, Google Alerts, etc.

Respond

It makes no difference what kind of business you run; people are likely talking about you online. The mistake most companies make is to ignore negative brand-targeted reviews/posts and leave them unaddressed. Deleting or ignoring bad comments will only help to fuel up a bad reputation for your brand. Instead, you can turn this to your advantage.

Instead of ignoring, respond. The good news is social media is interactive. Do not downplay the relevance of wrong information about your business online. Note that the internet and social media is where the modern audience gets news and updates about your brand.

No matter how good you’re doing currently, bad reviews often signify that something is wrong. However, you can turn this into something positive. The first step is by finding out the main root of the problem. Find out why that customer is distressed and respond kindly through the same channel that they queried your brand. 

Sometimes, a customer’s genuine intent for querying your business is for the benefit of your brand. If you do nothing, the customer is likely to come back to update other customers on how you handled the problem, and that’s bad for your brand.

Pay Attention to your Brand’s and Product’s Third Party Reviews

Most third party reviews are paid for, even though they sugarcoat them as genuine and objective efforts. Bad mentions result in more people reading negative reviews of your business or services.

Additionally, you must watch out for the online reputation of your staff because they are extensions of your brand. Your customer/ guest services should be impeccable and without reproach.

Ultimately, you should invest in regular high-quality SEO, optimized online content for your blog, website, and social channels. These web-media-contents should characteristically dominate the front page results of search engines and that of third-party.

Conclusion

While social media looks simplistic and almost irrelevant at first, it actually plays a vital role in your company’s online reputation. Success with social media involves staying proactive and being ten steps ahead. Also, while you dedicate a decent amount of resources to providing valuable content for your audience, you must be on the watch for reputation-spoilers. Another way to improve your social reputation is to look out for your employees, as they are ambassadors of your brand. Check notifications related to all your social networks daily. Identify and reply to relevant mentions kindly and sincerely. Importantly also, you must keep your channels as interactive as possible to ensure that customers are engaged and remain hooked.

The post Strategies for Improving Your Company’s Online Reputation appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Backlinks are one of the most important factors that Google uses to determine a website’s ranking. If multiple trusted and highly rated websites link to you, it means that your content is highly relevant. And Google is only interested in showing relevant search results to its users.

There are multiple ways to acquire high-quality backlinks, the most common ways are through guest posting and infographics. When you write an article, however, it can only be posted on one website. You have to write multiple different articles to get posted on different sites. Imagine the time you spend doing that.

That’s not the case with infographics. Infographic is one of the most effective tools to acquire backlinks because one infographic can be shared across different websites and platforms, unlike guest articles. This article will reveal the step by step process of using infographics to gain tons of backlinks:

1. Create the infographic

The first step is obviously to create the infographic. You don’t need to hire a professional infographic agency if you just get started. There are tons of free infographic making tools on the web. Just make sure that the infographic is relevant to your business and it gives value to a lot of people.

2. Publish it

After your infographic ready, the next step is to publish it. First, you need to publish it on your own site. This will be the source link for the infographic. Anytime someone wants to share your infographic in the future, they have to link back to this page. 

You also need to post it on infographic directory websites like Canva or Pinterest. These websites usually give you free backlinks as well. Here’s the complete list of infographic directories. 

3. Search for potential websites 

The third step in the process is to reach out to other websites within the same industry. You have to convince them how your infographic will give values to their readers and why they should publish your infographic.  

But, before that, you have to search for the potential websites to reach out first. Tools like Ahrefs can help you compile a lot of websites in a very short time. Just open the site, go to “Content Explorer”, type in your keyword, and then Ahrefs will give you all the relevant websites on the internet carrying that keyword, like this:

After that, export the result into a Google Spreadsheet. Now, here comes the most tiring and time-consuming part of the whole process. You need to visit all of those sites manually one by one to find information about their email addresses. 

Use FindThatLead to find email addresses quicker and more accurately. This tool allows you to search for emails by domain names and social media links. You can also use this tool to verify whether an email address is valid or not. 

4. Send email outreach 

After the email addresses are all collected, the next step is to reach out to them. There are two ways to send an email outreach, manually and automatically. Sending emails manually obviously takes a longer time, but you can personalize the copy based on the recipient.

On the other hand, sending emails automatically using tools like Mailmunch is definitely much faster, but the content will be generic and standardized. At the end of the day, whatever method you prefer, it all comes down to your copywriting abilities to make them interested.

5. Offer them benefits  

After sending all the emails, wait for the reply. Wait for people who express interest in your infographic. The average reply rate of cold email outreach isn’t very high, just around 1%. So, send as many emails as you can to gain optimal results. 

Because the reply rate is so low, you have to make the most out of people who reply. Offer them a benefit to get them interested in publishing your work. For example, if they publish your infographic, you would write an article for them. This way, you’ll get a valuable backlink and they get free content for their site. 

Wrap up

Attracting high-quality backlinks isn’t as hard as you think, as long as you know how to do it. Every website on the internet needs content. So logically, if you could offer them valuable content, then they’ll definitely share your work.  

There are many types of content you can make, such as videos, articles, and infographics. Out of those three, an infographic is easier to make and can be shared on multiple platforms. Thus, as long as you make the right infographic for the right audience, and know how to promote it, then backlinks will start flowing into your site.  

Author’s Bio

Andre Oentoro is one of the co-founders of Milkwhale, an internationally acknowledged infographic production agency. He helps businesses increase visibility on the internet with visual data and well-placed outreach campaigns. 

The post How to Attract Backlinks Using Infographics appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Every owner of an eCommerce business wants the same thing – to see his website working smoothly and bringing high sales. But unfortunately, not every site works effectively and generates enough conversions. Only business owners who understand the importance of conversion rate optimization get the results they want.

If you are reading this article, you may need help crafting a new strategy that will allow you to boost conversions. And we are happy to provide you with tips that will help you to get your eCommerce business back on track.

Take advantage of email marketing

Do you want to achieve the highest conversion rate optimization results? Think strategically. Find a way to improve not only your website but your entire marketing strategy. For instance, if you struggle to reduce shopping cart abandonment, use email marketing. 

Apply the following tips to create an effective abandoned cart email:

• Personalize your email. Use the recipient’s name in the subject line, or use information related to the recipient’s recent browsing history in the body of the email.
• Offer an extra discount or a small gift.
• Use the fear of missing out (FOMO). For instance, add a phrase “your cart is about to expire” or “complete this booking now, otherwise prices may increase” to urge the recipient to complete the action right here and right now.
• Use a prominent Call to Action (e.g., “complete booking”, “return to your cart”, “complete checkout”).
• Add visuals (e.g., image, animated GIF, short video).

If you do everything right, you will increase the recovery rate of up to 36%. 

Create high-quality content

It’s common that people focus more on how their websites look like rather than on what information they provide. And that’s a problem. 

Even if your website has a fantastic design that appeals to the target audience, high-quality content is a must. You should write interesting and informative blog posts to engage your website visitors. And you should create unique product descriptions to convince customers to click the button. 

Seriously. If you want to boost the conversions, you can’t just copy text from another website. You should develop a strong content marketing strategy and create every piece of content from scratch. Here are a few tips for you:

• Use Google’s keyword planner or Ubersuggest to find high volume, low competition keywords.
• Run an A/B test for your product page. Check what type of product descriptions work the best (e.g., short or long, written in informative or persuasive style)
• Write blog posts that are longer than 1,000 words. Yep, according to statistics, shorter articles are just a waste of time and money.
• If copywriting is not your cup of tea, get professional assistance. Hire a freelance content creator at Upwork or Fiverr, or use writing services like WoWGrade or SupremeDissertations.

Build a chatbot

AI-powered chatbots are still a new thing. And not that many brands use bots at their sites. 

However, statistics show that chatbots work effectively when it comes to conversion rate optimization. Firstly, bots help to make sales steps shorter, and that decreases that cart abandonment rate. Secondly, chatbots allow brands to collect more customer data and use it to upsell or and cross-promote products.

If you want to create a great chatbot for your website, take into account the following:

• Your chatbot should have a name and specific personality traits.
• A chatbot persona must fit your brand.
• Your bot should be able to answer all the frequently asked questions.
• You should use a friendly, “human-like greeting” greeting to engage customers in conversation

Use social proof

Today, customers tend to make more informed decisions about what products to buy.  According to statistics, 53% of shoppers always research products online and read product reviews before making a purchase. So it’s important to use social proof to convince customers that they make the best possible choice.

“Your website visitors do not trust salesy product descriptions. But they do trust product reviews written by real customers. So if you want to boost sales, do your best to increase social media proof,” says Andrew Blackstone, a head of marketing at PickTheWriter.

If you don’t know how to get more product reviews and how to use them on your website, here are a few tips for you.

• Use email marketing to invite customers to leave a review at your site. Offer a small reward, for instance, 15% off on the second purchase to maximize your efforts.
• Run a giveaway on social media. Offer your customers to share a product review on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube in exchange for a chance to get a prize.
• Use a social wall. Display user-generated content from different social media platforms on your website.
• Encourage customers to share their “before and after” products, if applicable to your business.

Use more visuals

To succeed in the eCommerce business, you should understand one important thing: people like visual content more than written content. Roughly 80% of users only skim web pages. They pay more attention to photos and videos rather than textual content. So if your site contains only a few images, don’t be surprised that you find it challenging to boost the conversion rate.

Statistics say that the use of visual elements increases the desire to read content by 80%. Thus, if you add YouTube videos, infographics, graphs, charts, maps, or animated GIFs to your site, you will draw the attention to your products and increase the conversion rate. 

There are dozens of free tools and services that allow creating high-quality visual content online. So you can produce all the content you need without the outside help.

Key Takeaways

Try out these strategies for advanced conversion rate optimization, and you will not be disappointed. You will maximize your marketing efforts and take your business to the next level. 

Use this article as a guide, and you will skyrocket your sales!

The post 5 Meaningful Strategies for Advanced Conversion Rate Optimization appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Whether you operate as a cloud-based service business or a retail company with an online presence, investing time and resources into social media advertising is always a good choice. Due to the increasing popularity and availability of social media platforms and messaging apps on the go, 2020 is poised to be a turning point in the social media advertising market. 

According to Social Media Today, social referral traffic has grown by 110% on average in the past two years, while Small Biz Genius reported that 84% of people expect brands to create and publish content on social media as a means of piquing their interests into making a purchase. 

Creating a brand new concept for your social media advertising campaign in 2020 is a must. You need to differentiate your business from the competition and attract relevant leads to your storefront. With that said, let’s take a look at several ways in which you can redefine your social media advertising concept going forward.

Main Advantages of Social Media Advertising

While you may already have a social media strategy in place, it’s worth pointing out what makes social media such a lucrative marketing playground before we dive any further. Josh Williams, Head of Content Management at Be Graded spoke on the matter recently: “Both local and international businesses have a lot to gain from positioning their brand on social media. Social media pages under your name make it easier for clients and customers to discover your retail stores, local representatives, company portfolio and other elements relevant to their conversion into leads and brand advocates.” 

Creating a social media presence, even if it is passive and semi-autonomous, will still help your business with being discovered via SEO, SERP and internal search, as well as make your pages and content shareable in private social circles and groups. Besides that, social media advertising can bring about several important advantages to your company going forward, including but not limited to:

• Cost-effective marketing and brand awareness
• Higher customer loyalty and word of mouth
• Increased B2B networking opportunities
• Higher website traffic, conversion and revenue rates

Social Media Advertising Concepts to Explore in 2020

Follower Engagement & Live Interactions

The decade in front of us is bound to bring changes and affect the ways brands interact with their followers. More specifically, social media platforms will continue to evolve their engagement and live broadcast mechanisms to allow for greater interactivity between users across the globe. 

As such, a big part of your social media advertising concept going forward should involve growth in follower engagement, user interaction and discussion via public posts and comment feed. In addition, live chats, Q&A sessions and interviews with industry experts and B2B partners can all find their way into your social media content plan in 2020. This will not only help grow your presence on the market but also instill newfound confidence and trust in your brand from anyone who comes across your events on social media going forward.

Mixing up Content Types

Given that mobile social media use has grown considerably over the past years, narrowing your content plan down to written words is a waste of potential. Videos, audio interviews or podcasts, as well as interactive visual materials should all be created and published on your social media pages. 

Platforms such as Top Essay Writing and Evernote can be utilized to write and edit very effective content for your updates, announcements and short posts in addition to longer pieces or articles you want to publish. Variations in your content plan will allow users from different backgrounds and interests to find something useful enough on your pages for them to follow interact and share your content with their social circles.

Native Chatbot Integration

Depending on the scale and industry in which you operate, you might not be able to act as a social media manager for your pages 24/7. With that in mind, you can opt to integrate chatbots into your social media advertising concept as your brand persona and customer support representative in one. 

Chatbots allow for greater flexibility in terms of localized user interaction, timely responses to queries and feedback, as well as around-the-clock coverage of your pages and gathering of relevant data along the way. In order to get started with your chatbot, you can opt for tools such as Classy Essay and Hemingway which will help you write succinct and legible content for a variety of situations including FAQ and personalized on-brand dialogue.

Time-Limited Exclusive Events

Lastly, the best way to increase your social media pages’ traffic and interactivity is to introduce timed events as a new concept in your marketing strategy in 2020. Timed events which revolve around exclusive interviews, first looks at new products as well as quizzes and giveaways will assuredly hype up your audience. 

This, in turn, will result in a spike in interactivity with your pages since people will instinctively check your feeds for announcements, new content and hints about upcoming events. While time-limited content may not seem like a good investment at first, we need to look no further than Starbucks’s marketing strategy to find out exactly what exclusive offers can do for your bottom line and buzz surrounding your brand in 2020 and beyond.

In Summary

The term “new year, new me” may be exaggerated when it comes to personal resolutions – however, in terms of social media advertising and the introduction of new concepts to your marketing strategy, it can indeed be applied. 

Ask your audience about their expectations, concerns and feedback in regards to your brand before committing to any one strategy. Try out different strategies and approaches to content creation and publishing before settling for a marketing concept for 2020. Once the two factors align, producing content and interacting with your followers will become both a more enjoyable and more lucrative experience.

Bio: Angela Baker is a self-driven specialist who is currently working as a freelance writer at writing services such as Studyker and is trying to improve her and her blogging career. She is always seeking to discover new ways for personal and professional growth and is convinced that it’s always important to broaden horizons. That’s why Angela develops and improves her skills throughout the writing process to help to inspire people. Also, she writes for LiveInspiredMagazine, rounding out her professional writing career.

The post A Brand New Concept for Social Media Advertising in 2020 appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Studies show that the average person is presented with more than 10,000 advertisements on the Internet each month. It is important to find new and creative ways to catch your audience’s attention with digital marketing and engage them better than your competitors. 

Today, solid digital marketing is critical for a successful business. With the right strategy, digital marketing can drive new customers, higher sales, and long-term growth. 

If you want to stay ahead in the digital marketing industry, you must offer engaging and relevant marketing projects. 

Here is a list of digital marketing tricks used by successful businesses. This will help you beat your competition and attract new audiences to your business: 

Preparation is Important

To have a successful business, you must plan ahead. Get ahead of technology and check all the tools you have available before getting started. See to it that your software, internet connection, and gadgets are all working. 

Establish a Solid Presence

One important factor in having a successful business is online visibility. This is true today especially now that the majority of the businesses have gone digital. A strong online presence will make you stand out among the rest. 

In many industries, you must also build your online presence on different social media platforms. There are various websites available, but identify where your customers spend the majority of their time and start with this platform. 

Choose the platforms that are relevant to your business and audiences, and begin establishing your online presence. You can do this by engaging people in your various marketing efforts. 

Write Original and High-Quality Content

Content is very important when it comes to digital marketing. This can include text, audio, and video. Make sure you’re posting high quality, original content. Avoid buzzwords in order to connect with your audience.  

Apart from writing quality content, make sure you’re producing new content on a regular basis. Since many businesses tend to go online today, the competition is going to be tougher. There is a wide range of online competition. If you think you cannot create digital content yourself, hire writers to do the job for you.

Make sure that your content is visible across all digital platforms. Your content may be of value, but if readers can only see it properly through a desktop computer, it will not create the impact that you’d like. Ensure that audiences can access it on both desktop and mobile gadgets. 

Advertise your Content

Don’t just write content; promote it too. Make your content is accessible to your target audience. This will make them share it with their friends, relatives, and network. 

Have an Email List

At the beginning of your business, create a mailing list of your current clients. Strategize on how to gather the email addresses. Then, send updates regarding your business. See to it that you can provide useful information to your readers. Avoid spamming your audiences. 

Make your Website and Social Media Accounts Mobile-Friendly

Your social media accounts and website must be accessible from cellphones and laptops. Today, most of your audience use tablets and smartphones to access the internet. Thus, it is important to make your content accessible to users on any screen size. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is Important

Indeed, SEO is essential when we talk about digital marketing and should be done continuously. New trends and best practices in SEO are coming and going just as fast. Thus, each day, you must serve your customers with fresh information. 

Google is always updating its algorithm. You need to keep up with these changes in order for your business to stay visible online. If you are not confident with SEO, hire a professional to help you. 

Conclusion

Competition is tight when fighting for space online. Build your reputation, get personal, and write original and high-quality content. Create a plan, do the job, and get your audience involved. With these steps, you can surely capture their attention and guarantee the success of your business.

The post Digital Marketing: How to Capture Your Audience’s Attention appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Why It’s Essential to Implement Content Marketing into Your Marketing Strategy

Content marketing works. You’ve been paying close attention, and you’re seeing what it does for other brands. To take your company’s marketing strategy in that direction certainly makes sense. So, why do you need to implement quality content? We’ve put together all of the information you need to make your case.

The Proven Performance of Content Marketing

Content marketing is no longer a new, unproven idea. Brands all over the world actively use content marketing. In fact, think of any of the top 100 brands in the world, and they’re almost assuredly using content marketing in some form or another.

Of course, this is not just a matter of ‘everybody’s doing it’. Content marketing is popular because it works. Content earns more leads than paid ads. As people do more research before making purchasing decisions, they seek out accurate and reliable information. Brands that are there with the right content to answer those questions and concerns are going to make the best impression.

Know The Risks And Get Ahead of Them

There are certainly ways to get content marketing wrong. For example, you could:

• Choose the wrong social media platforms
• Misjudge the interests and concerns of your target audience
• Fail to spend enough time editing and proofreading your content
• Drop the ball on content promotion
• Fail to leave enough resources for content engagement

Fortunately, most of these things can be avoided if you create a decent content creation strategy. Further, any mistakes or stumbling blocks can absolutely be mitigated. Remember that you can start very slowly with content. It’s as simple as publishing a few blog posts, perhaps an email newsletter, or just focusing on creating useful posts for a single social media platform. 

We spoke with Terrance Arthur, a lead content writer at BestEssay.Education about getting started with content management. He says, “All of these are things that can be done without hiring new staff, or taking up a significant amount of resources. Get started with a small project, set metrics, and get some success under your belt. This way, you have something small, yet provable to share with management.”

Find Some Relevant Examples

There are absolutely some great examples of B2B companies and other companies in boring industries that are succeeding with content marketing. Here’s something else to bring up with management. If nobody else in your space is using content marketing, there are definite advantages to being the first team on the field. Remember that can be focused on providing helpful, relevant information. Not all successful content marketing strategies are built around colorful images on Instagram, or hilarious exchanges on Twitter. Brands that can get in front of their customers with the answers they need are most likely to succeed at this. No matter the industry, this is best done with compelling content with lots of great visuals. Remember that flip books, brochures, and infographics are great tools for content marketing in any industry, not just the exciting ones.

Of course, if you can find an industry-relevant example of great content, you should absolutely use that to make your case. In fact, gather up some example posts, and collect some competitive analytics data. Let your management team see the positive results that are being earned by companies in your space.

Measure Your Results

You’ll want a way to prove your success. If the folks holding the purse strings have any influence in this, you’ll want to quantify your results, too. You’ll need to be able to articulate what you will measure to determine success, and how you are going to collect those measurements. Here are some of the best KPIs to track in a content marketing initiative.

• The ratio of traffic and leads
• Before and after page views
• Location of traffic to measure localized content marketing efforts
• Traffic source to determine the influence of content on traffic
• Subscriptions
• Time on page and bounce rate
• Social media engagement rates

Fortunately, these are all metrics that can be tracked using Google Analytics, and the analytics offered on other social media platforms. Get before and after data so that you can present a clear picture to your management team.

Final Thoughts

Any brand can increase traffic, engagement, and conversions with content marketing. All of these are things that should be appealing to your management team. Use the tips above to sell the benefits of this proven, marketing technique.

The post Content Marketing: The Best Long-Term Strategy to Improve Your Marketing Effectiveness appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.