Content Marketing
If you want to make real, repeatable waves with your company’s content, you can’t treat visuals as an afterthought. It’s time to give your visual strategy as much consideration as your blog strategy. Here’s why – and how to get started developing your brand’s visual strategy.
Why Marketers Need a Visual Influence Strategy via @amritachandra • @Uberflip
More than 50% of the traffic generated for the average business’ website comes from organic search. The right SEO strategies are critical to getting found in these searches (and ranking well on SERPs). Here’s how to leverage the key components of SEO to effectively reach your target audience, engage them, and drive business results forward.
Four Pillars of Seo Management: Optimizing Content for Success via @jimyu • @sewatch
Small businesses’ websites can have unique advantages – and hold unique opportunities – that big players’ sites lack. Here’s what small businesses can do to start making waves and getting noticed even if the big players seem to be taking the top spots in SERPs.
How Can Small Businesses/Websites Compete with Big Players in SEO? – Whiteboard Friday via @moz • @randfish
Content marketing is evolving quickly. Here’s an insider’s take on what 2017 holds for the future of content marketing. These insights can help you prepare for the upcoming trends so you can use them to gain more attention and authority for your brand.
8 Trends That Will Shape Content Marketing in 2017 via @SmallBizBrian • @forbes
If your content isn’t converting your audience into prospects, you’re either missing a key piece of your content marketing funnel – or you just don’t have one in place at all! Check out these easy steps to getting an effective content marketing funnel rolling so good leads no longer slip through your fingers.
The Simple 5-Step Content Marketing Funnel via @jamilvelji
Social Media Marketing
Instagram is the go-to place for over 300 million people.Here’s how to make the right noise on this popular (and continually growing) social platform to increase your followers and make better connections with them.
Instagram for Business: 30 Tips to Grow Your Audience and Stand Out on Instagram via @Ashread_ • @bufferapp
Bridge the gap between Instagram & your store (or website) by making Instagram “shoppable.” Here’s how.
7 Ways to Turn Instagram Into an Ecommerce Purchasing Powerhouse via @NadavDakner • @CrazyEgg
If you don’t know how your Facebook posts are performing, you’ll never really know what’s working – and what isn’t. Start digging into the data and gaining valuable insights about how to improve your Facebook posts with this helpful Facebook Analysis cheat sheet.
Facebook Analysis Cheat Sheet: Finding, Analyzing and Applying Data with Buzzsumo via @SusanCMoeller • @BuzzSumo
Find out how industry experts expect social media marketing to evolve over the coming year. These predictions can help you update your social media strategies so you remain on the cutting edge and are positioned to get the best results in 2017.
24 Predictions for Social Media and Social Media Marketing in 2017 via @adhutchinson • @socialmedia2day
Spending money to amplify your social posts is NOT the key to effective social media marketing in 2017, according to Industry Leader Gary Vaynerchuk. Here’s why and what you need to know to keep your brand’s social media game sharp in the coming year.
2017 Key To Small Business Social Media Marketing via @garyvee
How to Build Relationships with Influencers: 7 Simple Tips to Success
Developing relationships with influencers can be a powerful way to expand the reach and pull of your marketing messages while building authority for your brand. This strategy is known as influencer marketing, and it can pivotal to:
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● Driving more traffic to your content and site
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● Boosting engagement
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● Increasing brand awareness.
While influencers can be recognized bloggers, social media gurus or even celebrities, they can also be industry leaders or anyone who is highly regarded in a given marketplace.
So, to help you start developing meaningful connections with influencers (and levering these relationships to benefit your brand), this week, I’m sharing some useful tips for cultivating relationships with influencers.
How to Start & Build Relationships with Influencers
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1. Make it clear you dig their content – Share (and/or like) their blogs, social media posts, visual content, etc. Take it a step further by commenting on their content. If you’re actively showing an influencer that you’re following, engaging with and responding to their content, they are far more likely to take notice of you (and remember you if you keep it up and can add something interesting to the conversation, topic or issue).
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2. Ask a question – Questions can compel people to respond (especially if they know the answer or have something of value to share). So, pose questions to the influencer you want to connect with and/or his or her audience. This can start great conversations while actively keeping you in front an influencer.
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3. Keep a conversation going – Answer others’ questions or respond to their comments (in social media, on an Influencer’s website, in forums or wherever else these discussions arise and live online). Participating, sharing insights and staying active in ongoing threads that an influencer is part of can keep you on his or her radar. That can mean that, whenever you’re ready to make direct contact, the influencer will have an idea of who you are (which can make him or her far more likely engage with you, rather than ignore a message, disregard an email or otherwise cut off the seedlings of a relationship).
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4. Say thank you – When an influencer takes the time to answer your questions, give you advice or otherwise engage with you, show your appreciation with a simple, sincere ‘Thank You.’ This basic courtesy can go a long way to making you stand out – and to motivating the influencer to continue engaging with, helping, and/or supporting you in the future.
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5. Participate in a live event – If you know that an influencer you want to connect with will be hosting, participating in or attending a live event online (like a webinar, a Google Hangout, etc.), join the event! You may be just one of a handful of people in attendance, providing a great opportunity to directly interact with an influencer.
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6. Try to connect in person – Attend a conference, seminar, think tank, awards ceremony or another in-person event you know an Influencer will be at (it’s common for influencers to announce their attendance to industry events like these via their social pages, blogs, websites, etc.; so, you don’t have to go that far to find out when an opportunity like this arises). These events can be ideal for making personal contact and connections.
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7. Maintain contact – Once you’ve connected with an influencer, make it a point to regularly communicate and/or reach out to him or her. You don’t want to just make contact when you need something (because that can be off-putting and motivate the influencer to spend time doing something else – especially if (s)he’s not getting any value out of the relationship). Staying connected with – and continuing to provide value to – an influencer can set up the framework for a strong, lasting relationship.
Have you reached out to any influencers? If so, what challenges and/or successes have you experienced? If not, what’s holding you back?
Tell me more on Facebook and LinkedIn. And don’t hesitate to get a hold of me on social media to ask any digital marketing question or just to say ‘hi.’ I look forward to hearing from you!