How To Rank Your Featured Snippets on Google

If you would like to keep receiving high quality leads from Google you cannot afford to ignore Google’s guidelines as well as new features that they introduce. Any seasoned marketer already understands that change is a principle that Google strongly believes in. Even though a few years back marketers might not have liked Google’s sudden changes to their algorithms, we can all agree that those changes have led to a better user experience overall. The introduction of featured snippets is one such change.

In order for your site or client’s site to work, you need to understand how Google’s algorithms and features operate as it will result in making informed decisions on where and how to concentrate your resources.

Another important factor you need to consider is the steep competition offered by other sites in your industry and particular niche. Analyzing your competitor’s content creation and content marketing tactics are viewed as a necessity if you want your site to rank better.

This is a huge contrast compared to a few years ago, when reverse engineering your competition’s site might have been considered ‘lazy’ marketing strategy.

Unlike before when Google search results only contained links, the way results are now displayed on the SERPs (search engine result pages) has evolved to become more informative as well as intuitive. One of the ways that Google has changed how results are shown is by introducing featured snippets.

What Are Featured Snippets

Featured snippets are search results that are featured above other results on the search engine results pages but below the ads that are shown on a search result page.

Featured snippets are known mostly for offering a concise answer to the user when they type in a question. Due to the fact that they provide answers, they are also referred to as answer boxes.

Due to their concise approach in answering user questions, they have grown popular year on year.

According to a study conducted by Temple Consulting, the number of posts that had featured snippets grew from 250,000 to close to 400,000 from 2014 to 2016.

According to the same study, 60% of 1000 users said they liked featured snippets because they offered direct answers without pointing them to another web page or app. This is true, with a featured snippet, you don’t need to click on a link or anything else. The answer to your question is as plain as daylight.

A featured snippet is highlighted with a thin border.

Featured snippets are not just a good thing for users, but marketers as well. Their top rank, as well as the amount of real estate they take up, is referred to by many as position ‘zero’ and it is with reason.

A featured snippet is a great way for you to boost conversions, beat your competition as well as driving organic traffic directly to your site.

According to findings from a study conducted by HubSpot, content with a featured snippet gets a click-through rate that is double compared to content that is not.

Now that you know how important featured snippets are, you are probably asking yourself how do you optimize your content in order to have your own featured snippets rank?

Google usually pulls featured snippets from pages that are already ranking in position one, however, in some cases snippets might be acquired from pages that rank lower in the search results page.

How featured snippets are displayed differs from one answer to the next. Some featured snippets will be shown as lists (both numbered and numbered), while in some cases the featured snippet might be a full paragraph.

If your aim is to send qualified traffic back to your site, featured snippets are definitely the way to go. In fact, they are far more effective than having a web page rank at the top of search results.

When you compare how much a featured snippet takes on the search results pages and compare it to how much space a number 1 ranking takes, it is a no-brainer where you should spend most of your energy.

A featured snippet is a great way of giving your brand/website exposure, not to mention your brand will quickly gain credibility.

What’s exciting is the fact that you don’t even have to pay a dime to enjoy all these benefits. Your site does not even have to be the industry-leader in order to get a featured snippet display.

Getting a featured snippet however, might prove a little bit tricky as there is no direct formula for ensuring that Google displays a featured snippet taken from your site.

In addition, once you achieve the featured snippet, there is no guarantee that your position will not be taken up by another featured snippet from a different site.

So, how do you go about improving your chances of getting a featured snippet?

Through trial and error many online marketers have discovered the easiest way to achieve a featured snippet spot is by producing quality content and formatting it in a way Google approves of.

By including all the proper formatting, Google will easily detect any content that is best suited to be a featured snippet much easier.

According to data collected by Ahrefs, close to 100% of featured snippets are extracted from pages that are in the top 10% of search results.

This explains why I think you stand a better chance of getting your content featured as a snippet page if your page is already ranking.

Surprisingly, a different study from GetStat, indicates that about 70% of featured snippets are derived from pages that do not have a top ranking position.

Further study by GetStat indicates that some industries are more easier to get a featured snippet in than others. Some of the industries that GetStat found out are an easy target include finance, health as well as DIY.

GetStat even get more granular by showing which search queries are most likely to provide answers that have featured snippets. You might already have figured out some of these queries all by yourself. They include queries that have best, vs, make, recipe, definition etc.

Now that we have an idea of how we can optimize our featured snippets, let us look at the different types of featured snippets. There are three different types of featured snippets, they include table, list, and paragraph.

When the extracted featured snippet is styled as a paragraph, Google displays it in prose rather than a list. In some cases, there might be an image that accompanies the featured snippet.

Featured snippets that have an answer in list form might have the answer shown in ordered or unordered list form.

On the other hand, table snippets usually display the featured snippet in a tabular format.

Studies conducted by GetStat show that featured snippets in paragraph format are the most popular.

Before you set out to create and format your featured snippets, you should do some competitor analysis and find out first what your competitors are ranking for.

In order to achieve this there are a couple of things you need to do:

Use Online Marketing Tools To Find Competitors Snippets

SEMRush is renowned for being one of the best analytics tool out there, but did you know that you can use SEMRush to discover featured snippets?

Using SEMRush you can easily find out what featured snippets your competitors have managed to get displayed by Google as well as finding out which of your featured snippets has been accepted by Google.

All you need to do is run a regular domain search followed by clicking on the Organic Research tab on the left panel. Next, you will need to click on the ‘featured snippet’ on the right-hand side of the page.

You can even filter keywords by clicking on the ‘Advanced Filters’ in order to include featured snippets. After finding out which snippets your competition has managed to acquire, you can optimize your content by targeting those keywords and phrases.

When researching keywords and phrases for your featured snippet content, be sure to look for their variations as well.

Using Google To Find Snippet Opportunities

If for some reason you are unable to use SEMRush rest assured that you can always use Google to discover featured snippet opportunities.

One of the best ways to optimize content is to think like your target audience. That is, think of questions that your audience would like to have answered.

Let us say for instance, that your site caters to people who would like to know how to DJ. You need to write content in a format that answers questions that people in the DJ industry have.

Try searching for ‘How to DJ’ in Google and notice that the first result is a list featured snippet.

The featured snippet format will vary depending on the questions you ask.

Sometimes, the question you ask might not be found in the featured snippet provided. Thankfully, the way Google has designed search results pages, you can always dig deeper to find comprehensive answers.

Right below the featured snippet page, Google has a section titled “People also ask” which includes questions that people ask that are similar to the query you typed. Unlike featured snippets, these questions are designed like an accordion with an arrow that expands to show the ‘similar question’ as well as the answer.

Doing this kills two birds with one stone.

• You are able to get ideas for your content
• You are able to identify your competition

For more content ideas you can use a site like Answer The Public.

Answer the public is a nifty tool for content research purposes.

Basically, you type in a keyword you are interested in, in the search box and the site gives you a list of questions that are associated with that keyword.

It does sound basic, but one of the things that sets this tool apart, is that you have the option of choosing how you would like to have the results displayed.

You can either have the results shown in a list form, or if you like you can visualize the data.

In addition, the results are categorized into 5 classifications, that is;

• Questions – These category contains questions that people are asking, which are associated with your keyword. All the questions featured begin with one of the following words:
  • Why
  • Who
  • Are
  • How
  • When
  • What
  • Which
  • Where
  • Will
  • Can
    Even when there are no questions associated with any of these words they will still be featured in the results but there will be 0 questions associated with them.

• Prepositions – In case you are wondering what prepositions are, they are words that show a relationship between nouns and pronouns in the same clause. For instance, Peter stood on the platform. In this particular case, on is the pronoun.Answer The Public will show questions based on prepositions contained in them. The prepositions include:
  • Is
  • For
  • Near
  • To
  • With
  • Without
  • Can
    Unfortunately, this category is not yet perfect as sometimes phrases that might contain letters that form a preposition might be included as a preposition. For example, “Canton” contains the letters “c” ”a” ”n” and therefore is grouped as a preposition. This category is not totally useless though as you can gain useful insight from the other preposition.

• Comparisons – This category includes words that compare different things. The words include:
  • Or
  • And
  • Versus
  • Like
  • Vs

• Alphabeticals – This category includes your keyword plus any other word it might be associated with. The results are arranged in alphabetical order.
• Related – This category is particularly useful as it contains words you might want to include in your content that are related to the primary keyword you are trying to rank for.

When using ‘Answer The Public’ the results take time to show so you will need to be patient.

Keyword Research

After doing the preliminary keyword research, you will need to do some additional research to find out which keywords bring up featured snippets on the results page.

A good example of such a tool is Serpstat.

Whereas Ahrefs will be able to show you what keywords a domain has a featured snippet for, SERPStat will show you which keywords already have a featured snippet on Google. You can then create featured snipped content for that keyword with the hope that you will rank for it.

You actually might already be ranking for that keyword and all you need to do is optimize your page for it to get displayed as a featured snippet.

Answer More Than One Question

According to the Ahrefs study that I quoted earlier, a page that is already displayed as a featured snippet, is likely to shown in related queries as well.

It is recommended that you create your article in a way that it answers all the related questions. When creating the content, you should pay attention to the word count. The article should be long and informative as it factors into whether Google will select it.

Keep Your Answers Short

Google easily features content that is concise, so keep your answers short and to the point. You need to section off your paragraphs, lists etc instead of bundling them all together. A study conducted by SEMRush shows that the average length of a snippet is between 40 – 50 words.

When sectioning off your content use headers ensure that you organize your subheadings by size.

Consider Adding A “How-To” Section

Featured snippets offer a great opportunity to attract organic website traffic. Some websites such as Lowe’s have dedicated an entire section of their website to answering “how-to” questions. It is quite obvious that they are trying to score as many featured snippet opportunities as they can.

If you don’t think that a “how-to” section is not a great idea, you might want to consider a Q & A section.  This section would be dedicated to answering frequently asked questions regarding your industry, products, and or services.

It is also thought that posting high quality videos and images on your site will boost your chances of ranking for featured snippets.

According to figures provided by Syndcast, about 65% of people watch at least 75% of a video while MWP reveals that when confronted with a choice of video or text, 59% of executives would opt for video.

You can supplement your high-quality video with a transcript. The benefit of having your videos transcribed is that Google might select some of your answers as featured snippets.

I hope you have learned a lot about featured snippets by reading our post, if you would like to learn more about the subject feel free to get in touch anytime.

 

 

 

 

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Practical Tips To Assure You Don’t End Up In An Obsolete Job

The world is changing at a faster and faster rate. Jobs that may have once been crucial to society are becoming less important. The reason is because automation and outsourcing are becoming more and more prevalent.

If your current position looks like it may be becoming more replaceable every day, then it may be time to make a move. You don’t want to wait until the last minute and then find yourself without a job, nor the skills to land another one.

While it’s hard to predict how things will turn out, you should still be prepared for the worst. We have some simple tips that you may want to consider.

1. Aim For Continuous Improvement

You should seek to continually enhance your skills to keep up to date with the latest technological developments. While parts of your job may end up not being needed anymore, by improving your skills you can advance to tasks that are more complicated and maintain your value within your company.

2. Consider Switching Industries

Changes are happening so fast that industries that may have once reigned supreme are no longer important.  If you’re getting tired of your position anyway, then it may be time to leap to a different industry: preferably one more interesting and more financially rewarding.

You can find out about different jobs and their prospects by visiting qualityeducationandjobs.com.

3. Diversify Your Skills

Becoming a generalist rather than a specialist may also be a good way to stay valued in the workplace. If you focus entirely on one skill and it gets outsourced or delegated to a machine, then you’re in trouble. Having a broader skillset reduces the chance of this happening.

4. Remember, Tech Jobs Are On The Way Up

People with tech skills have been in demand for a long time, and it doesn’t look like things are going to change soon. While no one can predict the future of an industry, by developing tech skills, you are likely to land yourself a stable position. These skills could include programming, website development, app testing, databasing, and many others.

5. Don’t Forget About Education, Nursing, And Counseling

While some of the first robot teachers have started popping up in schools, it doesn’t look they will replace living, breathing versions anytime soon. A crucial part of teaching is developing a strong relationship with students, and it’s unlikely that a robot can achieve the same results.

Nursing and counseling jobs are also looking strong. Again, nobody wants to receive support from a robot when a human is available. If your current industry is taking a downhill slide, then you can be confident that these offer a good future.

Final Thoughts

We can’t predict the future so don’t take these facts as 100% probable. Rather they are something to think about as you develop your career and skills. Remember, there is nothing wrong with jumping ship to find a position that has a more guaranteed future.

The post Practical Tips To Assure You Don’t End Up In An Obsolete Job appeared first on The Texas SEO Company.

Stats You Need For Facebook Advertising

The issue that most people encounter when advertising on Facebook is not knowing where to start. This is occasioned by the fact that there isn’t enough meaningful data available that offers marketers a solid grasp of how to tackle marketing for their base demographic.

In this article, I will try and share some statistics that all in all will make you an all-around individual.

Facebook Growth and Revenue Statistics

Not one single person wants to invest in a platform that is losing its audience or is in decline. So before you settle on a platform of choice you should determine its longevity. One of the best ways is by taking a hard look at the growth and revenue statistics.

A few months ago, Facebook released its fourth-quarter earnings that are as follows:

Revenue in Q4

Revenue was roughly $13 billion with approximately 50% of that coming from the United States. Europe came in at a close second.

Numbers from Statista indicate that Facebook’s revenue has been growing year-on-year. In 2009, Facebook’s advertising revenue was $764 million which is a meager amount compared to the $39.942 billion that Facebook made in 2017.

A look at these numbers shows that this revenue growth has been witnessed in all of Facebook’s geographic market as shown here.

A quick calculation reveals that revenue generated on an average day by a user works out to $6.18 worldwide but computes to $26.76 for the U.S and Canadian markets.

Though much of this information might be considered unnecessary to an average Facebook advertiser and might be of more use to a shareholder, it helps draw a conclusion that Facebook will be around for the next couple of years.

One undisputable factor that we should all take notice of is the increase in Facebook’s ad revenue. This is in part to changes made by Facebook. As you probably might have heard by now Facebook is making changes to their news feed; placing more emphasis on more one-on-one interactions as opposed to content from Facebook pages.

Content from Facebook pages is important as it helps drive organic traffic. When replaced by more personal content it will compel marketers to spend more ad dollars in order to drive traffic and convert leads. Ad costs will definitely go up due to the increased competition among marketers.

Something you need to keep in mind is that the numbers quoted above are not granular. Even though we know that a majority of Facebook’s revenue comes from advertising we don’t have a proper breakdown of Facebook’s ad revenue sources. In addition, we do not know which verticals perform the best on Facebook ads.

In order to differentiate how well your ads are likely to perform on Facebook compared to say the Google Display Network, you need to determine your audience’s intent and whether it is matched by your core offer.

Given the fact that more people use their smartphones to access the internet and by extension Facebook, you’d be wise to invest in mobile ads on Facebook. Think about it, if you’re a local business, you can easily target people within physical range by zeroing in on their GPS.

Data on Facebook’s Market Share

Before you settle on Facebook as your primary platform for advertising campaigns, you’ll need to determine how it stacks up against other similarly placed advertising platforms.

 

Economy prosperity and economic success financial concept as a group of green trees shaped as growing finance pie chart as a metaphor for gradual gains in company stock or competitive wealth gain on a white background.

According to an article in emarketer, 2017 was the first year that Facebook gained more than 20% revenue share of all money spent on online advertising.

One thing that shouldn’t be ignored is the fact that the emarketer stats are based on U.S figures. They really wouldn’t be of great use if:

• You don’t know where your target audience is located
• Your target audience is based out of the U.S

You might be an American brand, however, a majority of your audience might be based out of the United States. It would make more sense to focus on statistics that are based on those demographics. Statista has offered valuable data on Facebook ad revenues that can help brands properly target their audience as the stats are based on ad spend instead of advertiser ROI.

Something else that new advertisers should pay attention to is how their ads are layered. More often than not new advertisers who have their target demographic based in the United States will use the same ad for the entire country.

This is not the best way to go about it. For a lower cost per conversion or lower cost per click, you should definitely consider getting granular with how you layer your targeting.

Facebook has a very effective ad platform that allows narrow location targeting that is aimed at increasing your leads in particular geographical locations. Sometimes, advertisers get better results by targeting their audience using zip codes instead of say States.

Another way to capture a larger market share of your audience is by targeting them using the devices they use.

We know that more people are accessing the internet using their devices. However, does this mean that Facebook is the best platform to create mobile ads? To determine this, we need to look at some hard data.

Statistics published by Marketing Charts indicates that digital platforms with a focus on audio had the lion’s share of Q4s 2017 ad spend. It could be that by advertising on an alternative platform your brand will gain more exposure and reach more of your target market.

Instagram

There’s no doubt that Facebook got it right when they decided to purchase Instagram. Even though the audience on Instagram interacts differently, as a, marketer you should try and determine whether the overall Facebook statistics have a bearing on how you should advertise on Insta.

Here are a few things you should know:

• Instagram has more than 2 million monthly advertisers
• Instagram’s revenue growth has witnessed an annual growth of 90.7% which added up to $3.08 billion as of 2017. In 2018 alone, Instagram is expected to generate close to $7 billion.
• According to numbers published by Statista, Instagram will account for about 28% of Facebook’s mobile advertising revenue.

Before deciding on whether Insta is the best option for you, you should ask yourself the following questions:

• The number of teens that engage with ads compared to organic content?
• Types of ads teens are more likely to engage with?
• Are there any conversions from the ads?

I hope you have a better understanding of what to look for before deciding whether Facebook is the best for your ad dollars.

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Creating Facebook Carousel Ads

If you’d like to promote your business in a fun and engaging way then Facebook carousel ads are the way to do it. According to studies conducted by Digiday, Facebook carousel ads can drive up to 10 times more traffic to your website compared to static sponsored posts on Facebook.

Lovoo, a dating platform that used Facebook to advertise their business discovered that they had a 72% CTR when they used carousel ads than when they used static mobile app advertisements.

There’s no doubt that Facebook carousel ads are effective, but how can you effectively use them to promote your brand?

What Are Carousel Ads

On Facebook, the carousel format allows advertisers on both Instagram and Facebook to show up to 5 images and feature calls to action, links, and headlines. Carousel ads appear on both desktop and mobile.

How To Use Facebook Carousel Ads

What makes Facebook’s carousel ads so ideal for promoting most businesses is that they’re versatile and can be used in various ways. Most businesses use carousel ads to advertise their products however that’ not all you can do with them.

You can use them to tell a story that shows your brand’s uniqueness.

Function #1: Highlighting Products

Carousel ads can be used to highlight special aspects of a product. For instance, Tieks is a ballet shoe company that used Facebook carousel ads to showcase the various aspects of one of their shoes.

Each carousel ad focused on a particular aspect of the shoe. They also used a headline to elaborate further on the highlighted aspect of the shoe.

Function #2: Show How To Use A Product

Carousels can also be used to show your audience how they should use your products. Tyme Hair is a company that deals in hair products that used Carousel ads to show how their curling iron should be used. Each step in the curling process corresponded with a box in the carousel.

Function #3: Tell A Story

One of the most effective ways of promoting your brand is by telling a story. Unfortunately, this tactic is under-utilized. Project Repat is a company that makes quilts from old t-shirts. They used a carousel ad format to tell a story of how you can use their services to keep memories.

Function #4: Product Tour

Carousel ads are perfect for giving a product tour of an item you’re offering. In fact, that’s exactly what Deezer, a music app did. They used Facebook carousel ads to give people an in-app experience even before they had it installed on their phones.

Each carousel box expounded on the features of Deezer, so that people would know what to expect.

Function #5: Article Sharing

Finally, you can use carousel ads to promote your articles. When Precision Nutrition, an online nutrition coaching company used carousel ads to promote their articles, they received 6,000 newsletter signups.

Creating Carousel Ads

To create a carousel ad, go to your business page and click on the “Promote” button. You can find it on the top right corner of your page.

On the drop down menu, click on Promote your Website

A modal ad window will then open up.

Click on the “+” sign that’s in the images section to choose how many images you need added to your carousel. You can add up to 5 images.

Use the “headline” to give the carousel cards an eye-catching explanation. Finally, fill out the duration, audience and budget fields.

To take your carousel ad live, hit the promote field.

Note: If you feel that your images are too big and you need to crop them, you can do that directly on Facebook by clicking on the “Reposition image” then use the cropping tool to highlight the part of the image you want to show.

Launching The Ad Manager

In order to launch the carousel ad campaign from Facebook’s ad manager follow these steps:

• Create Ad
• Send People To Your Website
• Increase conversions on your website
• Get app installs

Creating The Ad

From Facebook Ad Manager, click on Create Advert

A window will pop up and provide you with a long list of objectives which you should choose from

Next, you’ll be required to select an audience and a budget

Finally, you’ll be asked to choose your ad creative. It’s at this step you can create your carousel ad. Click on multiple images in one ad to create your carousel.

You can launch your ad as soon as you upload your creative.

Executing The Perfect Carousel Ad

Carousel ads appear on a user’s news feed which has plenty of content. To get your carousel ad to stand out, you need to ensure that the first image in the carousel series captures the user’s attention. In fact, that first image can be a make or break.

Facebook’s Recommendations

If you’re not sure about how to design your carousel ads, you should refer to Facebook as they have design recommendations made specifically for carousel ads.

Below is a summary of some of those recommendations:

• Image size should be 600x 600px
• Text should contain not more than 90 characters
• Image ration should be 1:1
• Link description should have a maximum of 20 characters
• Headline should have 40 characters

In addition, the headline space should be used for the following only:

• Call to action
• Product names
• Product benefits
• Product price
• Percentage discount (if any)

Some advertisers opt to break up one long image into multiple cards so as to tell a story to their audience with each scroll.

Here’s how to break up one long image into multiple cards:

First, you’ll need to determine how many carousel cards you want. You can have up to 5 carousel cards

Next, you’ll need to design an image that has the right dimensions. Since a card image should be 600 x 600px wide, if you choose to have 5 carousel cards, the original image you plan to break apart should be 3000 x 600px minimum.

Here’s the fun part, you don’t need to use any fancy software for cropping though that’s an option too. Simply upload your entire image then use Facebook’s crop tool to crop at regular intervals.

When breaking up an image into multiple cards, you should ensure that you don’t tick Facebook’s option to automatically show the best-performing image first.

Below are a few examples of great performing carousel ads:

Straight Outta Compton was a biographical movie that used carousel ads to inform audiences that it would be releasing on VUDU.

To promote the most recent installment of Tomb Raider, Xbox used a large panoramic shot which was broken into multiple cards to tell the game’s story. The very last card in the carousel was a purchase link.

Tesco showed a step by step recipe using carousel ads. The very last card contained a link to a blog.

Are you thinking of advertising on Facebook and not sure where to begin? We have years of experience promoting businesses using Facebook and will happily consult with you on what’s the best way to proceed forward for your business.

Our social media package includes:

• Page management
• Social page creation
• Offsite monitoring
• Graphics creation
• Ad creation

Get in touch for more a more detailed breakdown.

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Social Media Channels You Can Use To Market Your Business

It looks like we live in a time when a social media channel pops up every two months. This exponential growth experienced has made it quite difficult to keep up. If you’re a marketing guru you know what I’m talking about.

That as it may be, we cannot afford to ignore or downplay the critical role that’s played by various social networks as far as marketing is concerned. By now I hope you understand that since the demographics of social media users varies from one platform to the next, it would be foolhardy for you to expect to use the same strategies across all platforms and yet succeed.

For instance, Facebook is a networking site that’s tailored for people who know each other personally to keep in touch and share the most mundane of information.

On the other hand, LinkedIn is a networking site for professionals. On LinkedIn, you get to share details that make you stand out from others in your industry as well as sharing your resume with potential employers. Let’s not forget, as a business you get to build connections with your target market as well as with other businesses in your niche.

For this reason, you can use the same tactics you use to market on Facebook on Instagram. At the very best people would take you for a clown and at the very worst, you might end up burning bridges with valuable business connections.

In this article, I will try and help you discover as many social networking sites as possible. However, I will leave it up to you to come up with a strategy that you think would help effectively market your brand on those networks.

Some of these sites will already be known to you, hopefully, you’ll be discovering a majority of these sites for the first time ever.

Snapchat

Despite its hiccup in design, Snapchat is still a valid social networking site. It is widely popular with young users perhaps because of its unique value proposition. Depending on the nature of the message sent, Snapchat servers are programmed to delete information after a certain amount of time. You can send different forms of messages on Snapchat including short videos, photos and text messages.

Periscope

Released almost 3 years ago in 2015, Periscope is a live streaming app that allows you to broadcast yourself to your audience via video. It is perfectly suited for businesses to reach out to their customers with product/service updates as well as any new changes that the company might be going through.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a platform that allows you to create a board on which you can save graphical content from a broad range of sources. As a business, you can use Pinterest to create boards that highlight the range of products and/or services you offer.

Vine

With Vine you’ll be able to upload short looping videos and share them on Vine’s own app. Basically, it’s a video sharing platform.

Flickr

Flickr is a photo sharing site that is formerly owned by Yahoo and is currently owned by Verizon. Using Flickr, you can upload videos and photos and share publicly share them. Flickr allows other users to leave comments on shared images.

Skype

It wouldn’t surprise me that the creators of Skype were huge fans of the Jetsons. If you’re a millennial here’s what I’m talking about. From a small VoIP app to the communication giant synonymous with global communication it’s become, Skype is one of the best apps ever for getting in touch with friends, family and business colleagues.

 

YouTube

Obviously, you’ve already heard of YouTube, the largest video sharing on the site. There are so many ways you could market your brand on the site including using Google’s proprietary advertising network, as well as creating your own video channel where you could disseminate brand-related information.

Vimeo

Vimeo is similar to YouTube, just not as popular. Unlike YouTube though, it offers community features for video creators who are serious about their craft.

MySpace

Many young people might not know this now but there once was a social networking site that was by far more popular than Facebook, its name was MySpace and boy was it…dull! To be fair though, it probably sparked a fire in Mark Zuckerberg’s belly though, but I digress.

Though not as popular as it once was, MySpace is still relevant with entertainment enthusiasts.

Ning

Ning allows you to self-publish blog posts as well as post in groups and share photos.

Xing

Are you looking for a platform that has been solely designed for business networking other than LinkedIn? Xing is the answer. With Xing, you’re able to connect with companies as well as with other professionals.

Delicious

Delicious is a bookmarking service that you can use to share and store content found across the web.

StumbleUpon

Are you searching for a search engine that helps you discover information from various industries? Then you should check out StumbleUpon. Not only are you able to discover new things across the internet, you’re also able to share blog posts, videos and photos.

SlideShare

SlideShare is a platform that lets you create infographics, documents and presentations. You can use SlideShare to discover presentations from various categories. Since it’s owned by LinkedIn, SlideShare perfectly complements the social networking giant.

Digg

Digg is a social sharing site that has a focus on news stories. If you’re business is in a niche that creates news content, then Digg should be one of the social media sites that you use to amplify your content.

Path

With Path you’re able to share moments that include everything from music choice to local check-ins.

FourSquare

FourSquare is a site that allows local customers to locate local businesses. Using FourSquare you can easily offer promotions and special offers to potential customers.

Reddit

Reddit is probably the most popular social media platform in the world. Using Reddit you can contribute your opinions about a particular subject matter on one of their many discussion boards or you can rate other people’s contributions.

Quora

Quora is a forum that follows the question and answer format. How it works is that a user will pose a question and various contributors will offer their answer.

Tout

Tout is a platform that was designed to share video with interested mobile audiences. Tout is perfect for businesses that share sports, entertainment and news.

Scribd

Scribd is a publishing platform where authors can share audio books, ebooks, and comics with audiences that might be interested.

Yelp

Yelp is a review site where past customers rate the kind of experience they had with your business. Using Yelp you can engage with other users using comments and more.

Lefora

This is an online platform that houses discussion groups in different niches/industries. All you need to join is sign up and you can start a discussion in any of their discussion boards.

Xanga

Even though Xanga has lost its luster, you can still use it to host social profiles, photography sites and blogs.

Meetup

Using Meetup you can create a group for people in a particular locality to inform them of meetings or share events.

Ryze

Ryze is a professional site that requires you apply before you can join. You can use Ryze to start a conversation with other business owners.

BuzzNet

Buzznet is perfect for entertainment-focused businesses. You can use it to upload and share different forms of media including text posts, videos, and photos.

Howcast

Howcast is a website that hosts instructional content for businesses. The content can be in text or video format.

DeviantArt

DeviantArt is a website that holds the portfolios of thousands of photographers, artists, illustrators and other kinds of creative entrepreneurs. You can use DeviantArt to showcase your latest work or find a graphic designer for your website etc

Last.fm

This is a music streaming service that allows users to create profiles and engage other listeners. If you’re a musician, you can use Last.fm to share your upcoming events and music.

Ravelry

Are you a knitter or crocheter or is your business in that niche? Ravelry is the perfect social media site for you. Ravelry is the perfect social media channel for yarn sellers as well as other businesses that would benefit from connecting with fiber artists.

Goodreads

Whether you’re a book enthusiast or an author, Goodreads is a great site that will allow you to engage other users as well as leave reviews.

Behance

Behance is similar to DeviantArt in the sense that it hosts thousands of artists portfolio. It’s the perfect site to broadcast your company’s name.

WhatsApp

Though included in this list, WhatsApp is more of Dark social than social media. WhatsApp is an instant messaging service that’s owned by Facebook.

WeChat

WeChat is also an IM which falls under dark social.

Bloglovin’

This is a platform that allows you to create a blog as well as connecting with other users of the platform.

Blogher

This is a social network that allows users to publish their own content as well as connect with other bloggers at networking events and conferences.

I hope that you’ve discovered something new by going through this list.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post Social Media Channels You Can Use To Market Your Business appeared first on The Texas SEO Company.

Picking The Best Social Media Channel For Your Business

If you haven’t yet begun harnessing the capabilities of social media marketing there aren’t enough words for me to tell you about how much you’re missing out on. According to statistics by Hubspot, over 60% of social media marketers enjoy improved lead generations by simply spending 6 hours a week marketing on social media.

When you properly execute your social media strategy, you’ll be able to increase conversion rates, send more traffic to your website, and improve search rankings.

Unfortunately, there are times when people don’t know what the best social media channel for marketing their brand is and so find it challenging coming up with an effective social media marketing strategy.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, there are social media channels for almost every niche not including the major networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. The multitude of options can easily become overwhelming.

Below is a guide that will help you determine the best social media channel to use for your business.

Question #1: What Objectives Are You Trying To Achieve With Your Social Media Strategy

You need to strategize how a particular social media channel will help you achieve the goals you set. If you can’t explain how a particular network will help you determine your goals, then you shouldn’t proceed with it.

Enhancing Brand Awareness

Are you trying to enhance brand awareness? You should opt to use social networks that have a large monthly active user base. Once you have pinpointed a site with a strong user base, you need to look at the various forms of paid promotion they offer as that will exponentially increase your reach. You need to do research on the social media advertising options that are available to you.

Facebook, for instance, has a reputation of a high ROI.

Enhancing Lead Generation

Is your objective to generate more leads? Then LinkedIn might be the solution you’re looking for. In fact, it is well known that LinkedIn is the best social media site for lead generation. There are a couple of ways to do this, you can:

• Join LinkedIn Groups and engage in discussions
• Search with advanced filters

Other options to consider would be Twitter and Facebook which have a lower CPC than Google AdWords despite being highly effective.

Question #2: What Social Networks Are Your Target Audience Using?

Once you’ve managed to select a social network where you can fulfill your marketing campaign’s objective, you need to determine where exactly on the internet is your target audience interacting. Think about it, what good is it to maintain an Instagram account if your target audience are octogenarians suffering from arthritis. The same can be said of establishing a Pinterest board for your brand if your target audience are male.

If you want to create a robust social media marketing strategy you’ll need to have a good understanding of your social media channel’s demographic. By making your audience a focus, you’ll be able to have a granular target of your demographic. This, in turn, will have an effect of increasing your conversion rates.

To gain insight into the current demographic makeup of your followers, you can use a tool such as Sprout Social. Once you have data such as:

• Location
• Age
• Gender

You will have a better understanding of which social media channels to keep and which ones to do away with.

If you’re still yet to choose a social media channel, you can take a peek at this study published by the Pew Research center containing the demographics for the major social media sites.

Using this study you’ll gain valuable insights of your target demographic. For instance, did you know that over 41% of LinkedIn users have a salary of $75,000+?

The gist of this is that before you pick a social media network you should ensure that your decision is based of hard data and not current trends that might be dominating discussion.

Question #3: What Social Networks Do Your Competitors Use?

This is just as important as determining social networks that your audience uses. By finding out what sites your competitors are using you’ll be providing yourself with a baseline for which you can gauge industry activity.

A list of other things you’ll need to look into includes:

• How often do they post
• What kind of content do they post
• Number of shares that their posts gain

You can use this information to draw inspiration from their strategy and reverse engineer their tactics. Using a tool like Buzzsumo will allow you to understand how extensive the reach of various brands in your industry is. For instance, you can see your competitor’s best performing content in terms of social shares. This way you’ll be able to see what social media channels they have the largest following.

Question #4: What Kind Of Content Will You Create

Content is king and it comes in various formats:

• Blogs
• Infographics
• Video
• Whitepapers

You want to create content that complements both your brand identity and business goals. Not all content will help you achieve your goals so you have to take enough time coming up with content that will have a healthy ROI.

Let’s cover the different types of content in detail:

Whitepapers

This also includes company news and industry updates. Whitepapers are most ideal for B2B audiences who are mostly found on SlideShare and LinkedIn for the most part. You can also disseminate your whitepaper on Twitter using your company’s official account or a personal one.

Video Content

We all know that YouTube is the place to post your videos, however, you might not know that you’ll have more success if you post short-form videos targeted at a younger audience on other social media sites such as Periscope, Snapchat, Vine, and Instagram.

If your video is longer you can post it on either YouTube, Twitter or Facebook where it is likely to generate higher levels of engagement especially if it has a global appeal.

Images

Pinterest is perfect for a B2C brand with an engaging product. In fact, according to an infographic jointly produced by Shopify and Pinterest, 93% of users leverage the platform before they make their purchases on Shopify. On the other hand if you want to build a story for an inspirational visual brand then Instagram is where you need to be. Tumblr is suited more to a younger audience due to their preference for image-heavy content.

Editorial Content

If you want to establish yourself as a thought-leader in your industry there’s no better platform for you to publish your content than on LinkedIn. LinkedIn now has over 500 million registered professionals in various industries.

Alternatively, you could publish your work on Medium. 43% of Medium’s readers are is estimated to be making more than six figures while an even 95% is college graduated.

Question #5: How Many Social Network Accounts Can You Run?

It is estimated that at least 91% of retail brands use more than one social network. Even though it might seem obvious that using just one social media network might not be enough, most marketers usually have a challenge with knowing what the right number of social media accounts to have is. By having way too many social media accounts you’ll be diluting your brand’s message while being on too few networks your brand is likely to suffer.

Thankfully there are a couple of scheduling tools (free and paid) that can allow you to schedule posts on all your networks. You can start out on a few channels then scale as you grow better at cross-posting content.

 

 

 

The post Picking The Best Social Media Channel For Your Business appeared first on The Texas SEO Company.

Hedge Fund Digital Marketing: How to Get Started

According to a study by Meyler Capital, digital marketing is one of the most important things to invest in for hedge funds and private equity firms. The market is more competitive than ever in 2018, plus more customers rely on the internet for information than ever before. Hedge funds need to start paying more attention to their online presence.

Getting started with digital marketing is not difficult. There are plenty of resources that will help you utilize the available digital marketing instruments to promote your services. Developing a digital strategy that works for your hedge fund is where the challenge lies; we are going to discuss how you can get started with formulating your own strategy in this article.

The Objectives

Before you can set your objectives, you need to understand your target customer. Customers look for certain things from a hedge fund. They tend to rank top hedge funds based on performance, credibility, and authority (the hedge fund’s position on the market). They also interact with hedge funds and their marketing campaigns in a certain way.

With these details in mind, you know that there are three main objectives to achieve from your digital marketing efforts:

• Branding
• Establishing authority
• Building trust and credibility

These are objectives that can be achieved with a well-planned digital marketing campaign. With these objectives in mind, it is time to continue to the next step.

The Instruments

Establishing a strong online presence and developing a recognizable brand online are the first things to do to get started. This means setting up a website that really represents the hedge fund, as well as establishing social media pages to match.

Don’t promote your site and social media pages just yet. You need to add value by filling these outlets with valuable content that customers can benefit from. This is where content marketing comes in.

The same can be said for social media. Start posting valuable content and begin interacting with other users – especially industry experts – to gain traction. Getting started is always the most difficult part, but being persistent will get you to the level of brand recognition you want.

The Strategies

There are several ways you can achieve your goals. A good digital marketing campaign combines multiple tactics to reach the right audience segment and achieve specific goals. In the case of hedge funds, there are several proven tactics you can use.

To develop a strong authority, for instance, content marketing is the key. The more valuable your content is, the more people will share it, and the more your brand will be recognized as an authoritative force in the industry.

For credibility, you want to work with influencers and industry leaders. Credibility is born and enhanced when there are more credible people and media outlets talking about your hedge fund in a positive way.

Of course, these tactics need to be executed seamlessly to produce a bigger impact. They are also the beginning of a long digital marketing campaign for your hedge fund. After all, digital marketing is never a one-time thing; it is a continuous effort to keep your hedge fund ahead of its competitors.

The post Hedge Fund Digital Marketing: How to Get Started appeared first on The Texas SEO Company.