How to Write Instagram Captions That Shine Posted on September 8, 2020September 4, 2020 by Natalie Slyman Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms out there. With more than one billion unique users visiting the platform every month, and 63 percent of those users visiting the platform every single day, there’s a lot of opportunity for connecting with both new and potential customers — and a lot of incentive for acing your Instagram game. Social media can impact your entire company. But, about 75 percent of brands use Instagram specifically for marketing, which means that there are many accounts, profiles, and stories to compete with for engagement and likes. And while Instagram is overwhelmingly about the visuals, if you really want your content to stand out, then you’re going to have to put equal amounts of effort into your captions. Yes, that’s right. You can’t just post a picture and keep your captions simple and call it a day. The more thought you put into your Instagram captions, the more likely you will hit that engagement soft spot with your audience. But just because you’re a marketer doesn’t mean you’re the cleverest when it comes to crafting captions (and that’s okay!). That’s why we’ve provided eight smart and simple tips that can help you make your Instagram captions shine. 1. Know Your Core Components Good Instagram captions do more than just explain what’s going on in your photo. So although a celebrity with millions of followers might be able to get away with just including an inspirational quote or a couple of emojis in their caption, you need to get more utility out of what you write. To make the most significant impact possible, your captions should hit on a few essential features, including showing off your brand’s personality, having a clear and obvious call to action, and including the appropriate hashtags and tags. More on all of these later. Identifying these core components is step number one in putting together clever captions. Make sure every post has a purpose, which will make actually putting together the components a sinch. 2. Be Personable Use the laid-back tone of Instagram to your advantage. Your captions are a great place to showcase your brand’s human side and don’t have to be all business all the time. Tell jokes, get silly, and highlight your personality as a way of forging stronger connections with your followers. Pull on popular phrases to show your audience that your company isn’t stuffy or unapproachable. The key to being personable in your captions is understanding that the platform is meant to help you pull people in. Being buttoned up and corporate won’t encourage your audience to like your photos, let alone follow your account. If you want to grow your social following organically, letting that personality peak through is a must. 3. Master the Call-to-Action To maximize the potential of your Instagram captions, you should always be including a call to action. Be super clear in what you want your followers to do, like, “Tag a friend who needs to see this” or “Leave a comment letting us know [XYZ].” The types of conversions that you’re aiming for might not be those that directly lead to a sale — especially since you can’t include links in your captions — but they’re incredibly useful for organic follower growth and increasing engagement. There are tons of CTA tips out there. But, these kinds of CTAs are what inspire a back and forth among your brand and your followers. They can even inspire your followers to engage with one another, which will help you use your Instagram to build a community. It’s important to be consistent with this method, however. The more frequently you encourage interaction, the more likely it will be that people will actually interact. 4. Make It a Micro-Blog The word “caption” might make you think that you have to be as short and concise as you can, but users on the platform respond quite well to longer descriptions. Turn your caption into a micro-blog, covering a topic related to your photo and useful for your marketing strategy. You’ve got 2,200 characters to work with, which is more than enough to say something truly meaningful. I recommend that you space out your points when going this route so that the lengthier caption is more readable. It’s also a good idea to use emojis to accompany each point, which is an added visual effect. Think about what you would want to see when reading a longer caption and use it to guide you. 5. Proofread — Then Proofread Again Just because they’re less formal than other types of marketing copy doesn’t mean that your Instagram captions don’t have to be grammatically on point. Not proofreading is a common blogging mistake marketers make, but it’s also a social media mistake, too. Proofreading is crucial since even a small typo can take away from the integrity of your brand. Read your captions out loud before posting to check for a balanced word flow, and if you can, get a second set of eyes on your caption to check for mistakes that you might have missed. A good rule of thumb is to type out your captions first, then use grammar tools (we like Grammarly) to check for any mistakes. Once you’ve made your corrections, email yourself the caption so you can easily copy and paste from your mobile email to your Instagram post. 6. Team Up With Influencers or Other Brands Tagging others in your captions (and having them tag you back) is an excellent way to broaden the scope of your reach. Team up with influencers or even other brands on promotional posts and then use the caption to strengthen the connection and bring more activity to your page. When your social media strategy includes influencer marketing, you’re able to get buy-in from a trusted third party, which strengthens your brand imprint and trust among your audience. Many people trust influencers because they know that most of them wouldn’t recommend a product unless they believed in it. Use influencers to not only get eyes on your posts but to create a tag in your captions that will be mutually beneficial. 7. Make Your Hashtags Count Hashtags are incredibly effective at getting your content seen by people who aren’t following your account but may be interested in your content. You can include up to 30 hashtags in your caption, and each one is a chance to attract and engage with those who might not yet be following you. Be strategic with your hashtags, putting in the research to figure out what tags will open up the door to an audience you’re not already connected with. And while general hashtags like #yum and #love offer potential too, it’s the niche tags that are most likely to get your posts in front of the right people and help you interact with other communities. I recommend searching through hashtags to see what kinds of content pops up. Also, see what hashtags other, more prominent brands in your industry are using. You’ll want a healthy mix of hashtags that have a lot of posts tied to them, as well as ones that have not so many. The latter will help your post stand out more when that particular hashtag is searched. 8. Establish a Look and Feel Many brands pay a lot of attention to ensuring that there’s some cohesion with their Instagram images, such as using the same filter or same point of view across the board. Equally important, though, is remaining consistent in your voice. Allow your brand voice to come through in your captions, and keep a similar tone and purpose post to post. I recommend downloading a photo editing and filter app, like VSCO, which will help you keep your images looking consistent. Writing good Instagram captions gets easier over time, and it can be pretty fun, too. The more you do it, the more you’ll hit your stride and figure out what inspires the platform’s most engagement. Look for what works best with your particular audience, and always be on the lookout for ways to use your captions to reach an even broader pool of users.
How Social Media Impacts Small Businesses Posted on September 3, 2020September 3, 2020 by Guest Author Social media needs no further introduction, as over half of the world’s population currently uses various social platforms. With its tentacles spreading across every facet of modern life, it comes as no surprise that small businesses are tapping into its huge potential. As a digital marketplace teeming with a potential audience of about three billion people, social media is a place for you to find potential clients and promote your brand and services. Even with a low marketing budget, all you need at your disposal is your Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter account, and you can reach a huge audience with your content. It is with a keen awareness of these benefits that companies are using social media to generate leads and build up their brand identity so that it can reach and resonate with a larger audience. But, let’s dive a little deeper into what a social media strategy can offer small businesses, and how exactly it can lead to certain benefits for your brand. 1. Social Media and Marketing Currently, an estimated 3.6 billion people use social media worldwide. Forty percent of those users rely on social media to unearth information about new brands. This presents a tremendous branding and marketing opportunity for your small business. Your brand matters greatly to your customers’ perception of your business, and it’s often the first line of defense in regards to what they can expect from you in the future. When you implement a well thought out social media strategy, you can expect some promising marketing benefits, like: Increased brand awareness. A direct line to millions of users. A free way to post original content that drives customers to your website. Brand humanization and a way to pull back the curtain so users can see the people behind the brand. But it isn’t all roses. There are some negative aspects to being more accessible to people, and they often get overlooked. Some issues that arise via social media include: Unfavorable reviews or comments tainting brand image. Slow responses to user outreach, leaving a bad taste in their mouths. Certain posts being misinterpreted and making users and followers disengage. None of these should deter you from an active social presence and thinking of unique ways to engage your audience on social media. Simply consider the negative aspects and have a plan of action for addressing them if or when they occur. You can also tap into social media to study your competitors and provide assistance with any competitor analysis. By following competing brands and certain hashtags, you can see what your competitors are creating, sharing, and what others are saying about those brands. 2. Social Media and Sales Social media can play a very pivotal role in driving more sales for your small business. Why? Well, just as I mentioned in my point about brand awareness, social allows you to deliver your services to the masses. While certain sales strategies are more effective when they’re focused on qualified leads, social is great because it allows you to cast that wide net. Using both will offer you some balance so you can reach interested prospects and expand your reach at the same time. However, it is necessary to understand what the best platforms are for selling your products, as well as the important sales KPIs you’ll be tracking to measure success. For instance, Facebook is a great platform for B2C sales, but if you’re looking for more B2B efforts, LinkedIn is ideal. When measuring success in regards to sales from your social efforts, make sure you track things like where your leads and website visits are coming from. If you see an influx of traffic from social, and that traffic is converting to, then you’ll know your efforts are paying off. 3. Social Media and Your Website Social media is a great solution when looking for cost-effective ways to drive more traffic to your website. The more you share relevant content, the more opportunity you have to create a connection with your followers. Any solid content distribution strategy includes a plan for effectively sharing via social media, and that’s because it’s the best way to get a ton of people to not only see your content but to click through to it and visit your website. This leads to more visitors, and more potential to convert those visitors into email subscribers and valuable leads. To use social media to generate traffic to your website, make sure you follow some rules: Your posts should always be relevant, original, and high-quality. Make your posts as engaging and enticing as possible. Always have an image accompany your post. Make sure the link your posting is to on-site content, preferably a blog post or a gated piece of content. 4. Social Media and Customer Service Social media offers a whole new avenue for reaching and engaging with customers. Obviously, the best way to offer customer service is directly; however, since many people rely on social media as a way to connect, it’s still a viable option. Social is a great way for small businesses to quickly and easily reply to customer inquiries and provide relevant updates. The key here is to make sure your social interaction is timely and thorough. You want to make your customers feel that you’re available to them and that you’re providing them with the attention they need. As stated in point number one, the last thing you want is for your lack of quick response (or no response) to have a negative impact on their impression of your business. Social media is not only a strategy every small business needs to implement, but it can do wonders for various facets of your company. Make sure you focus on the social platforms that your customers are most engaged with, and put together a plan for consistently publishing and engaging with them. Track your KPIs to determine what’s working, and make tweaks along the way for continued success. Author Bio Lori Wade is a journalist from Louisville and works at Timenotes, a time tracking app. She is a content writer specializing in news and conceptual business topics. For more tips on time management, entrepreneurship, or leadership, you can find her on LinkedIn.
How Long Should My Emails Be? Posted on September 2, 2020August 27, 2020 by Natalie Slyman Some of us are talkers. We may think people want to hear us rambling on for minutes on end, but the truth is, there’s probably a million other things they’d rather be doing. Sitting through an endless rant is about as fun as watching paint dry. The same can be said for your email marketing. AWeber analyzed 1,000 emails and found that over 50 percent of them were 300 words or less. Most email marketers understand that brevity is the key to their consumers’ hearts, but it isn’t easy to determine when things go from informative to too informative. Why is Shorter Better? Every brand under the sun has an email marketing strategy. This means that consumers are receiving more emails than ever before. With a busy inbox, each email is competing against each other for the attention of the recipient. And if you add a ton of lengthy emails, that attention gets shorter and shorter. This isn’t to say that you should never send longer emails. Sometimes the information you need to share is robust, and that’s fine. The critical thing to focus on is whether or not your email is offering value. Getting to the point and being more direct will provide your readers clarity and assist them with making quick decisions, rather than getting overwhelmed and exiting your email. You want your emails to convert and be engaging, and you lose a little bit of that with each line of copy you tack on. So, how do you know when your emails have turned that corner and start looking like a novel? Here are some signs: Your paragraphs are longer than three to four sentences. Identifying how long your paragraphs are will help you keep length in check and make sure your emails are readable. Your email resembles an article. When your email starts to look like a blog post or an article, that’s when you know you’ve gotten carried away. Your CTA is buried. Every email should have a call-to-action, and it should be easily seen. If you bury your CTA with tons of content, the chances of readers spotting it and clicking on it are extremely low. You’re scrolling for days. Most emails should be able to be read in their entirety without scrolling, or, if being read on a mobile device, with only a few scrolls. If you’re scrolling a bunch when reviewing your email, it’s time to cut it down. So, let’s uncover some tips for ensuring your emails don’t get too long, allowing you to maintain engagement and increase conversions. 4 Tips For Keeping Your Emails Concise Sometimes, we just need a little extra help when it comes to curtailing our emails. There’s no shame in the game, which is why we have some simple tips to follow that are sure to help: 1. Give Yourself a Word Cap A simple and easy way to keep your emails tight is to give yourself a word count limit. Maybe use AWeber’s report as a starting point, and try to keep your emails 300 words or less. You can test that out for a while, keeping track of your conversions and click rates. Over time, you can adjust as you see fit, but just make sure you don’t go from 300 to 3,000. 2. Make Sure There’s Enough White Space White space is our friend. When you want your emails to look less cluttered and easier to read, ensuring there’s enough white space is a great solution. White space lets your emails breathe and will reduce any feelings of being overwhelmed that comes with an abundance of email content. 3. Use Visuals When Necessary Visuals are a great way to provide information while still keeping your email short and light. Use infographics in your emails, or images that clearly depict any ideas, steps, processes, etc. to reduce the amount of copy on the page. They can also add some fun to your emails and increase engagement from your readers. 4. Have a Beginning, Middle, and End We tend to ramble when what we’re writing lacks structure. And when it comes to content in general, structure is your best friend. Not only does it help you organize your thoughts so you can be more direct, but it makes what you’re writing more digestible for your readers. Make sure your emails have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and keep each section simple. Your opening sets the scene and serves as a quick intro, and your middle is where you introduce the reason for your email. The end is where you can include your CTA (again, make sure it’s clear) so you can drive action from your recipients. We hope this article helps you understand just how important it is to keep your emails short and sweet. And if you ever have any trouble reigning it in a bit, just use the four tips listed above to keep yourself in check. Your email subscribers will thank you for it.
3 Types of Content People Want to Consume Posted on August 27, 2020August 27, 2020 by Natalie Slyman Everyone loves a good blog post. Or do they? When it comes to creating content that connects with your audience, the type of content you produce is just as important as what it has to say. That’s a good reason to diversify your content formats — and to pay special attention to the types of content that people most want to consume. According to NetLine’s 2020 State of B2B Content Consumption Report, there are three kinds of content that people like to engage with most, and no, none of them require a pivot to video. Below, we’ve broken down what you need to know about each type so that you can start putting them to work in your marketing strategy. 1. eBooks eBooks, which vary widely in terms of both scope and length, are excellent tools for engaging with (and expanding) your audience. And download per download, they’re far and away the most impactful type of content you can create. In NetLine’s report, the success of the eBook format is traced to its versatility. Within their pages, they can contain anything from in-depth case studies to industry-guiding thought leadership, leaving your business a lot of room to adapt the message to what benefits you. For the reader, effective eBooks provide an in-depth look at whatever they’re trying to learn about. More so than with articles on your blog, there’s an expectation with an eBook that it’s going to be a true deep dive — so much so that readers are willing to exchange their contact information with you in order to get access. To make sure you get the most out of your eBook, focus on producing high-quality, highly informative content, and pair it with eye-catching design to keep readers interested. And gate it, but don’t put into place too many barriers to obtaining it — just a form and a button should be all that people need to do to gain access. 2. White Papers Coming in hot at number two of the content people most want to consume is whitepapers. NetLine describes them as “the closest things content marketers have to scientific studies.” Whitepapers boost brand authority in big ways, serving a similar purpose to eBooks while focusing primarily on data and formal conclusions. They’re less about pushing a certain product or service and more about staking yourself out as a company that really knows what it’s doing. They also serve to assist you in gathering more contacts. In the world of content marketing, where it seems like every topic has already been dissected and re-dissected over and over again, a white paper is your opportunity to present something totally original. Because you’re using your own data and insights, your final product is something that your audience won’t find anywhere else, and that helps it stand out from the competition. Keep your format top of mind when creating a whitepaper to prevent it from getting dry. Include a formal summary at the beginning that breaks down the key points readers will find within, and further summarize the main takeaways throughout the piece with call-out boxes and sidebars. 3. Guides We don’t know about you, but we love a good guide — and so do consumers. Guides are “designed to walk a reader through a topic or procedure step-by-step from start to finish,” explains NetLine, and this definition helps explain why they tend to be such a hit. As an authority in your field, your customers expect you to know things that they don’t. By their nature, guides are an opportunity for you to prove you do while engaging with your audience in a more colloquial tone. And because they break down confusing tactics in a friendly and more personable way, they do a great job at helping you build trust and likeability in addition to brand authority. There’s a ton of potential in utilizing guides in content marketing, especially in terms of SEO. Strategize on the topics that you know you can lend authority to, and produce guides that are targeted to leads at various stages of the buyer’s journey. There’s also lots of distribution potential — including emails, social media, and gated landing pages — and any informative, well-written guide is always going to have traction with its audience. What’s On The Horizon? We’re all for planning ahead, which is why we also scoped out what type of content is turning a corner in terms of popularity, according to the NetLine report. And it looks like webinars take the cake. Per the report, webinars have a smaller reach since they’re mostly associated with prospects who are further down the funnel, but they’re also massively successful in serving their purpose. And with so many live events being canceled, it makes sense to focus on online events more and capitalize on digital engagement as much as possible. The best content strategy: focus on what works. That means turning your attention to the formats listed above — and keeping an eye out for what’s coming.
Mobile-Optimization Basics for Email Posted on August 26, 2020August 26, 2020 by Allie Wolff It’s pretty much a no-brainer that you need to be optimizing your emails for mobile. Your subscribers are just as likely to be opening up your emails on their mobile devices as they are on their desktops — and perhaps even more so. While mobile optimization used to be just one more thing that you could do to boost your email performance, it’s a necessity today. Optimizing for mobile needs to be as basic a part of your email marketing strategy as segmenting your contact list and taking steps to avoid the spam folder. This post will cover some basics that will help you pull it off so you can feel confident that your email is mobile-ready before you ever press send. Why Mobile-Optimization is Important In 2019, mobile opens accounted for 46 percent of all email opens. And with nearly 1.7 billion users checking emails on their mobile devices, that’s a huge percentage of your potential subscribers who are using their smartphones to read your messages. Recent trends show us that mobile open rates are only likely to increase. Since 2011, they’ve grown by more than 100 percent, with pretty consistent growth year after year. If your emails aren’t optimized for mobile, you’re definitely not reaching your full potential in terms of conversion rates and ROI, and you’re probably losing a fair share of leads as well. Everyone has their practices for triaging the emails that come into their inbox and deciding what to keep and delete. If they’re doing it from a mobile device, what’s the incentive to hold on to a message that isn’t formatted for appeal or information? Email users have limited time to devote to their inboxes, and they’re not going to waste it on messages that don’t meet their expectations. If you’re not optimizing for mobile, you’re giving plenty of your readers a reason to delete your message without opening it — and who wants to do that? The Basics of Creating Mobile-Friendly Emails Mobile optimization doesn’t happen by accident. You’ll want to take eight actions to ensure that your emails are just as likely to convert on a mobile device as they are on a desktop. 1. Use Marketing Automation Software Marketing automation creates a ton of efficiencies. It helps your sales team organize and accomplish tasks and customer information, and it assists with your marketing efforts. An effective marketing automation tool enables clean, on-brand email marketing so you can create drip campaigns, newsletters, and special promo messages to move your leads down the funnel. Another great feature of these tools is that the emails you create are automatically mobile-optimized, taking a lot of the heavy lifting off your shoulders. 2. Review Subject Line Length Shorter is better when it comes to email subject lines, especially when you’re optimizing for mobile. And while there’s no one-size-fits-all length that works for all devices and mobile email browsers, aim for somewhere between 41 and 50 characters. 3. Create Concise Preview Text Your preview text (also called pre-header text) is that snippet of text that appears after your subject line in an inbox — and you’d be remiss to neglect it. Make sure the copy is compelling enough to drive more interest to your message, and just like with your subject line, keep it short and put the most important info right at the front. 4. Pay Mind to Body Copy Length Once again, short and sweet is the way to go. Your body copy should be clear and engaging, providing just enough information to inspire a click. This is especially important with mobile opens since the condensed screen already makes your copy appear longer than it really is. Break it up too for readability, working in bullet points and paragraph breaks as needed, so it’s more appealing than just a bunch of text on the page. 5. Don’t Make It All About the Images Images are a great addition to emails, but things can get tricky on mobile. Your subscribers may have images blocked by default on their mobile email app, or they may be scrolling through their phone where the service isn’t strong enough to display images. Always check how (and if) images are displaying on mobile emails, and just in case, don’t make your messages all about the visuals. 6. Ensure Your CTA Is Easy to Find Many users check mobile emails on the go, so you don’t have a lot of time to direct an action. Your CTA should be clear from the get-go. Tie it into your subject line and the top of your copy, so readers acknowledge it (and hopefully act on it) before moving on to something else. 7. Test, Test, Test Before sending, test your email to see how it shows up on different desktop and mobile platforms. Again, many email automation tools will easily let you do this, so there’s no time like the present to invest in one. 8. Use Mobile-Friendly Templates Another benefit of email marketing automation tools is that they offer mobile-friendly templates that take the guesswork out of formatting your messages for mobile users. Quickly adapt your desktop-designed email for mobile without making HTML changes yourself, and get confidence that your email is good to go. Meet your subscribers where they are. From subjects to CTA buttons and everything in between, follow the tips above to optimize for mobile and get higher open rates and engagement from your mobile users.
Why Transparency Matters and How Not To Be Afraid Of It Posted on August 20, 2020August 10, 2020 by Natalie Slyman Today’s consumers have a lot of choices when it comes to where and with whom they make a purchase, and overwhelmingly, transparency seems to be a key deciding factor. In an Edelman survey of 16,000 consumers in eight global markets, 81 percent of respondents globally and 80 percent of U.S. respondents said that trust is integral to purchasing decisions. In fact, ranked among the 11 top buying considerations, brand trust came in just behind product quality, convenience, and value, outpacing good reviews and corporate reputation as major factors in whether or not a purchase happens. You don’t have to have been in marketing long to know that being transparent is one of the most effective strategies you can have. In this article, we’ll discuss why transparency is so important for your brand, plus tips for being more transparent in the content you create. The Value of Transparency Being well-liked is a good thing, especially in business. Digital marketing has broken down the conversational divide between brands and the people who buy from them, in turn increasing expectations around likeability and trust. Getting buyers to feel that way about you isn’t something that just happens on its own, though — it requires transparency and plenty of it. Transparency begets trust, trust begets likeability, and likeability begets strong, sustainable connections. Regardless of your niche, your audience, or the product or service that you’re selling, prioritizing transparency in your outreach is crucial for forging productive relationships and becoming a trusted brand. It has real benefits for long-term profit too, with 75 percent of respondents to the Edelman survey saying they value trust over trendiness and 66 percent saying they’d rather stick with a brand they trust than switch to a more innovative or technologically advanced competitor. When it comes to honesty, show and tell. It’s the best way to take control of the dialogue over your brand’s likeability, and a necessity for maintaining an edge over your competitors. How To Be Transparent In Your Content Transparency is about words as well as actions. Here’s how to build more trust with your audience through your content, so you come off as likable as possible. 1. Don’t Be Promotional If it’s not sales content, don’t use it to try and sell something. Promotion isn’t transparency, and it can actually backfire by showing your audience that you’ve got alternate intentions with the content that you’re creating. And while certainly all of your content is driven in some way toward making a sale, you have to know when to take off your promotional hat and put on your engagement hat, using your content to inform and connect instead of just touting how great your product or service is. 2. Understand Your Audience One of the best ways to show your audience how much you value them is to know who they are, what they’re looking for, and what they want to read. Which makes sense, since how can you build trust if you don’t know who you’re trying to build it with? Understanding your audience is a good marketing practice in many ways, especially when it comes to transparency. Collaborate with your sales team on coming up with accurate consumer personas, do some survey research, and use marketing automation and a CRM to understand the behaviors and needs of your audience better so that you can deliver content that checks off all the right boxes. 3. Always Strive to Deliver Value Trust must be earned. And to do it, you’re going to have to show a willingness to give something in return. Delivering value should be at the center of your content creation process, with every piece that you publish driven to benefit its readers in some way. So before you decide on a topic or campaign, ask yourself: what will readers get out of this? Have an answer that goes above and beyond just having more incentive to purchase from you. Value can be information or expert insight; it can also just be entertainment or enjoyment. What value you strive to deliver in your content is up to you, but per the first tip on this list, it should never be purely self-promotional. Don’t be afraid to be yourself. If you’re an honest company putting out a great product or service, then displaying it to your audience will only be an advantage. A lot of the work that you’ll do to be perceived as trustworthy and likable will be done on the backend, but your content tells a story about who you are and what your values are too. Put transparency at the top of the priority list to show your audience that you’re as committed to your relationship as you’re asking them to be, and enjoy the benefits of being liked for all the right reasons.
The 8 Best Free PPC Tools Posted on August 19, 2020December 15, 2022 by Allie Wolff When you’re investing money, time, and effort into a PPC strategy, you want to be sure that you squeeze as much potential as possible out of every dollar that you spend. And there are plenty of tools that can help you get there — including those that don’t require you to carve out any more space in your budget. Sound too good to be true? Well, it isn’t! We’ve narrowed down our picks for the best free PPC tools out there so you can increase your conversions and optimize your PPC spending without depleting your entire marketing budget. Try them, see what you like, and get to work on a PPC strategy that’s more specialized to your needs. Keyword and Topic Research To put together the right PPC strategy, you need to know the keywords your audience uses in their searches. The right keyword research puts your business in front of qualified prospective clients and improves your SEO strategy. Here are some free tools that help do the research for you. 1. Ahref’s Keyword Generator Search a term in Ahref’s free Keyword Generator, and you’ll get up to 150 keyword recommendations related to the term. We like that you can optimize by platform, keywords for Google, Bing, YouTube, or Amazon. You can also optimize by country so you can zero in on your preferred market. In addition to showing you keyword ideas, Keyword Generator also shows you the difficulty of ranking for the term and the search volume, along with up to 50 related question queries. 2. Keyword Sheeter You won’t get fancy features like keyword volume and ranking difficulty out of Keyword Sheeter, but you will get a super-fast way to generate keyword ideas. Type in a keyword, and in just a few seconds, you’ll have hundreds of ideas based on that term using Google autocomplete suggestions. Wait a couple more minutes, and you’ll have thousands. Use the positive and negative filter boxes to refine your search further, then export the list and do more research as needed. 3. Answer the Public Many people use Answer the Public as a free keyword research tool, but we actually think it has a lot of value as a topic generator, too. Type in a term and choose your country, and you’ll get a robust list of questions, prepositions, comparisons, etc. that people are searching about it. All of these can guide your PPC content and clue you in to exactly what people are looking for in relation to a specific term. 4. Soovle It truly doesn’t get any more simple than Soovle. Soolve compares keywords across platforms and is extremely easy to use. Just type in a keyword, and it will tell you what’s trending for that phrase on Google, Bing, Yahoo, Amazon, and more, so that you can know ahead of time if a query is likely to perform from channel to channel. PPC Management and Analysis After you’ve done your keyword research, it’s time to put together your PPC campaign, manage it, and analyze metrics to determine how well it performs. Here are some tools we’ve found to be easy-to-use and effective at providing us with the insights we need. 5. Google Ads Editor If you’re managing multiple PPC campaigns on Google Ads, you definitely want to make use of Google Ads Editor, a free platform for PPC management. Google Ads Editor allows you to create and edit ads all in one place. Bulk editing tools and offline capabilities make this an extremely useful tool to have in your back pocket, and you can also use it to track conversions and get a big picture look at your PPC performance. 6. Microsoft Advertising Editor It’s a good idea to diversify your PPC efforts with Bing placement in addition to Google. And if you are, then use Microsoft Advertising Editor to get the same bulk creation, review, and edit capabilities that you get out of Google Ads Editor, just for another interface. As a nice perk, this tool even allows you to import your Google Ads campaigns, so you don’t have to build everything from scratch. 7. Google Ad Performance Grader The Google Ad Performance Grader by Wordstream generates a free report that breaks down everything from your Google Ads performance metrics and conversion rates to where your spending is being wasted. It also provides you with a report summary score that benchmarks your performance against similar advertisers. It’s a great jumping-off point, providing insight you can use to make targeted improvements to your PPC strategy. 8. Google’s Ad Preview Tool There are a few different free ad preview tools, but we like this one, which allows you to easily mock-up what your ad will look like when it’s posted. Use it to help you or your clients visualize their ad’s appearance and ensure it’s compelling and has all of the necessary information. You won’t get any direct analytic data out of it, but it will help you put your ad into context and manage campaigns visually for better-written copy. There are tons of great free and paid PPC tools out there. We like the ones listed above because they provide utility no matter your industry or objectives, combining intuitive interfaces with clear-cut information so that you don’t have to dig around to figure out what matters on the page. Use them to amplify your existing suite of PPC tools, and you’ll have a complete toolkit that you can use to boost your strategy and improve your PPC performance.
How To Be An Agile Worker Posted on August 18, 2020August 10, 2020 by Jonathan Herrick A lot of us love our schedules. Maintaining a rigid routine and making sure that we know exactly what our day-to-day is going to look like is a way to manage stress and take some control over what might otherwise seem like an insurmountable workload. And yet, the more stuck we get in a routine, the less room we have to adapt — which can quickly turn into a problem in today’s always-changing business environment. What’s the fix then? For many professionals, learning to be flexible and an agile-oriented worker has helped solve the problems that rigidity can pose, allowing individuals to maintain autonomy over their schedules while still leaving room for adaptation. If you’re thinking about making the switch, here’s how to do it. The Benefits of Being an Agile Worker The concept of agility in the workplace refers as much to an individual’s attitude as it does their routine. Agility means prioritizing flexibility and personal strengths while minimizing the constraints of a set-in-stone work schedule. Sometimes referred to as activity-based working, or ABW, it’s a modern approach to an ancient problem, with the freedom for employees to work when and how they need to for peak productivity. There are a few big benefits to being an agile worker above and beyond having the freedom and flexibility to work according to preferences instead of prescriptions. Here are two of the surprising advantages that a lot of workers find when they make the switch. It shows coworkers that you’re multifaceted. When you’re able to shift gears and work on different projects as needed, you’re showing your coworkers that you’re not only skilled in various areas of work but also reliable, helpful, and a team player can help them get the job done. It helps you fine-tune your skills. Each project requires a different set of skills and various amounts of brainpower. By being agile, you can become a jack of all trades, capitalizing on what you do best and having the flexibility to develop those skills you still need to work on. For many professionals, being an agile worker means getting more done in less time and doing that work better. In a VersionOne State of Agile Survey, 69 percent of respondents reported that an agile approach has helped them manage changing priorities better, 64 percent said it’s boosted team morale, and 61 percent said it’s increased team productivity. With so many benefits, the question should really be why wouldn’t you go agile, not why you should. How To Be More Agile There are classes, courses, and conferences dedicated to helping workers become agile. But for our purposes here, we’re just going to break down a few of the essentials that will help get you where you want to be. 1. Start With Your Mindset When you’ve been doing something one way for so long, it can be hard to change course. That’s why an attitude adjustment is step one. Make sure you center yourself around the idea that a set schedule, while convenient, doesn’t always serve the bigger picture. Goals and tasks can (and do!) change on a whim, and if you’re securely tied to your schedule, you’ll just get irritated when you have to deal with that reality. 2. Be Organized To know how to best allot your focus, you need to know what your goals are. Use a calendar or project management tools to keep track of all the items on your to-do list so you can see at a glance what you need to tackle. Being more organized will help ensure that nothing gets neglected, especially when you have to switch gears quickly. 3. Have Fun! Agile working is all about breaking the yoke of inflexibility and allowing yourself to address your work in a way that makes you feel more satisfied. And while it might be hard to imagine having fun at your day job, if you make it an active goal, you’ll have an easier time learning not to sweat the small stuff. In most jobs and for most tasks, the outcome isn’t life or death. Allow yourself to relax a bit, and you might just find you’re able to roll with the punches a lot more than before. If you’ve gotten stuck in a rut with your work, your next step is to dig yourself out — not to sink in further. Try out an agile approach and see if it works for you, and don’t be afraid to workshop agile practices so you can find the exact set of tools that allows you to meet your objectives. Being an agile worker means letting go of the fear of change, riding the roller coaster of your workday, and addressing tasks and issues as needed instead of prioritizing everything at once. Not only will your team be happier, but so will you.
4 Content Marketing Tips from Grammarly’s Multi-Million Dollar SaaS Growth Strategy Posted on August 13, 2020September 29, 2022 by Guest Author There has been significant growth in the field of digital marketing. With growth comes major advantages, which is why it is crucial to have a strong online presence, no matter what business you’re in. However, if you have a small business, you will initially face several problems. Some of these include intense competition from big companies, gaining the trust of new customers, and the right way to position your product. You will ultimately have to overcome these if you want to increase traffic to your website and convert that traffic to valuable leads. One company that has growth down is Grammarly, a free online writing assistant. They currently have about 20 million users, with a whopping 60 million visits each month. With help from their simple content marketing tips, you’ll be able to achieve a strong online presence and, over time, see similar site traffic. Are you ready to make your business easily accessible and get the credibility required to attract more potential customers? Let’s dive into four content marketing tips that will get you there. 1. Target the Right Audience One of the most important reasons Grammarly has been so successful is that it knows how to target the right audience. The company’s audience includes students, writers, and entrepreneurs. Anyone who does a bit of writing has probably used their service at least once. Targeting the right audience might be the first and the most crucial marketing strategy for any business. Why? Because it allows you to find those valuable customers who would be interested in the product you’re selling or the service you’re providing. And it’s crucial in figuring out how to speak to them appropriately. Grammarly’s approach is to zero in on the demographic of people reading and engaging with their content pieces and then target that same demographic for their social media and paid ads. 2. Create and Distribute Relevant Content Pieces Most SaaS and B2B companies advertise with banner ads, touting how good they are and what a valuable solution they’d be. While this strategy does a great job of getting a business in front of a wider audience, it doesn’t guarantee clicks. Instead, take a note from Grammarly and target your audience by distributing relevant content online. This approach shows customers how knowledgeable you are and positions you as an industry leader who can be trusted. To do this, you need to understand what your audience is searching for online. For Grammarly, focusing on keywords and phrases like “writing and editing tools” or “grammar tips for non-writers” can help them shape content on those subjects so that those pieces pop up in search results. Being consistent with this approach can lead to higher and higher search results, making your content the first customers see. For Grammarly, this drives millions of traffic to their site every month. Take a look at the examples below to see how Grammarly ranks in Google searches. When searching “their or there,” Grammarly ranks first. 3. Use a Content Cluster Strategy Grammarly takes immense pride in its content topic cluster strategy for driving in over 20 million regular users. A topic cluster strategy is when you create one big pillar post on a topic, then tons of other related content that links back to it. This helps you not only create tons of high-quality content, but it helps increase your on-site SEO because it focuses on an internal link building strategy. It also improves user experience by navigating a visitor towards relevant content and articles easily. 4. Turn Visitors Into Users From the moment you start drawing up your strategy on the whiteboard, the one thing on your mind should be converting leads to customers. Even in the case of Grammarly, the secret behind their growing number of users lies in how they turn visitors into users and push them down the funnel. First, they try to focus on their content pieces by providing all the important information they can. This is essential because if your content has more value, you’ll naturally have more visitors and more returning visitors. High-quality content creation leads to trust and reliability. Once the visitors come to their site and read their content, Grammarly adds a pop-up invitation to access their product for free. They also link related content so readers can get more information. If you want your business to grow like Grammarly, then your focus should be on the creation of new content pieces and distributing them effectively. Don’t try to shamelessly promote or overly sell your product. Instead, focus on your audience’s issues and interests in conjunction with a keyword strategy to help bring your audience to you. Author Bio Bill Acholla is a digital content marketing consultant specializing in content marketing. If you need a blog post template that can help you create the right content and drive more traffic to your business, signup for his business blog at Billacholla.com.