How to Use Social Media Techniques for Growing your Business

The power of social media in today’s technology-laden world is infinite. Harnessing its power for increasing conversions and growing your business is well-understood. Every business should be able to utilize social media as it increases audience engagement and brand building for your business.

The opportunities which an effective social media brings for its business are seamless and companies should strive to create a strong online presence which brings tremendous value to any organization.

Here are some effective social media techniques for growing your business by leaps and bounds:

Elaborate Effective Content

Writing interesting, relevant and original content is the way your content should be when you post it on different social media platforms for promoting your business. Each post you create should be interesting and devoid of any outdated stuff.

Besides creating the latest content, you should be able to post it in the right places. This involves researching in details all the present trends, finding who your target audience is and the most frequent channels they spend their time on.

Create a Social Media Plan

It is essential that you should have a planned approach towards creating your social media strategy. A methodical social media plan needs to be crafted in order to produce the methods you are going to use and promote your business.

Time frames and deadlines also need to be kept in mind while devising a suitable strategy. Usually, SEO and Social Media Plans complement each other. An SEO Companyin Delhi or within any part of the world needs to create an accurate and a flexible Social Media Plan for effectively applying its strategies.

Creating a content schedule and event calendar besides using various social media tools such as Hootsuite becomes necessary for a methodical approach and consistent results. Tracking Performance Analytics will give you a clear idea about which campaigns and policies are working and which are not. Therefore, be aware of the numbers to assess your performance and to find out the weak spots which need considerable improvement.

Geo-target the Content & Optimize it

Geo-targeting your content is another great way to send your message and reaching out online to specific people based on their location. There are many social media networks, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter which you can use to target specific followers in Twitter within specific countries and send messages from LinkedIn/Facebook company pages to specific groups based on geographic and demographic patterns.

Provide Benefits for your Audience

Everyone likes freebies and attractive offers. Besides engaging your audience by using interesting posts, people feel happy when they win. You can introduce various offers such as sweepstakes and contests which offer an attractive prize related to your niche and are useful to the audience. This technique will help you in drawing them into the business and increasing their interest in your products/services.

Also, consider giving away a discounted product or an introductory offer on a new product which will continue generating the hype and sustain interest in more visitors who turn out to be new followers.

Optimize your Accounts

Using selected keywords in the content which are related to your business is quite necessary for optimizing it. Each platform is different so customize your message individually for every social media channel. Include attention grabbing headlines in your postings and a strong call-to-actions within your social media posts.

Other useful tips include usage of relevant hashtags, completing required info within your profile and using the right images whenever you post on social media.

Be Engaged with your Audience

Be actively involved and engaged on all the major social media platforms. This simply means that make efforts to interact with anyone who responds to your posts or leaves any comments for the business.

In such a situation, it makes perfect sense to further take up the conversation and going into more intricate details, such as paying attention to what they want to further see in your posts and letting them know that you are reading what they have been posting all this time.

This will enable you to provide them the type of posts they want on your social media accounts, which will result in an increase in a number of visitors. Also, always make sure to check and know all the networks where your customers are spending their time online and be actively involved in engaging yourself in conversations on all those social media channels.

Be the Leader in Customer Service

The best strategy to get close to your customers is to interact with them on social media directly. Small gestures such as thanking someone for their positive comments or even making a return gesture by sending them a discounted voucher for being a loyal customer will convert them into loyal and long-term advocates for your brand.

It makes a world of difference when you demonstrate exceptional customer service by making them a top priority and listen to their complaints. Also, responding to your customers as soon as you can make it worthwhile to create an impression in their minds that you do care for them and appreciate the fact they are sticking to your product. It is considered humanizing to answer personally to as many worthwhile queries you can.

Follow your Competitors

Following your competitors is a great way to know in details about the strategies of your closest competitors. In fact, this plan works best in the case of Twitter as well as for Instagram. If you start following your competitors, you can also follow their followers and many of them will start following you back which in turn will increase the size of the potential target audience and the total strength of your followers.

Focus on those Networks which really do Well

There are certain social media platforms which really work well for you in comparison to others. In that scenario, you need to take advantage of those specific platforms and take maximum advantage for promoting your product/service. Don’t spend your time and resources on the ones which didn’t work well for you in the past.

Also, make sure that the information on these platforms is accurate and up-to-date. Out-of-date and obscure information creates a poor impression with your viewers. It is essential for you to have a well-placed logo and accurate company information which is professional in nature.

Be Truthful Regarding your Business

If you are representing your business on social media, you need to be truthful about your products/services and regarding what your business stands for. Customers are quite intelligent and are able to distinguish between what’s true and what’s simply a gimmick or a publicity stunt.

The quality of products says it all and they will not engage with you if they sense something is being falsely promoted. Always apply 80-20 rule wherein 80 percent of the postings should be related to your industry/niche and the target audience.

On the other hand, 20 percent of the postings should be talking about all the products and services offered besides special promotions or discounts.

   

Ways for Leveraging YouTube Marketing

YouTube is the third most popular website in the world and boasts of an impressive user base of more than 800 million users. This directly implies that if you haven’t done video marketing for your products or services yet, start rethinking about your marketing strategy. Undoubtedly videos add a new dimension to the marketing mix and if done properly, YouTube videos can add that impetus required for promoting your brand and to translate it ultimately into an increase in sales.

Becoming the Face of your Business

Demonstrating your products and services helps customers to follow along and observe the benefits. Instead of written instructions, videos are always more convenient to demonstrate the audience about the way your product works. You should especially showcase your most popular products on the videos while giving their detailed features, the advantages and the way they can be purchased.

Different types of videos include educational videos, interviews or testimonials. Introducing a familiar face of the company is quite helpful. Creating events/promotional videos are great for showcasing your products or services. Another cool alternative is to include a bit of your own life story into the video. When your audience sees you working behind the scenes of the business talking small facts about the inception of their business, and how it all started - all of this adds to the trust building, credibility and a bounce to your marketing efforts.

Creating a Company Channel

You should be setting up a dedicated channel for your own brand. This will help in having a more professional appearance and an active web presence. Organize and segment the videos into various categories in the form of playlists and series. YouTube has introduced the New Channel design lately for businesses. In fact, with the new channel design in place, creating a quality channel header representing the company created by a graphic designer will be the needful thing to do.

Encouraging people to visit your Website

You should focus on ultimately bringing people to your website for more conversions. Bringing in visitors to YouTube channel and not ultimately to your website won’t be enough. Initially, you should focus on growing the number of subscribers of your channel, however, ultimately there should be a sharp focus on pushing people to visit your website. Some of the ways in which you can do this are to include a link to your website in the first line of each of the description in the videos. Also, including links to your website in the ‘About’ section is quite beneficial for encouraging visitors to visit the company website. A creative idea is to include a teaser video on YouTube and then direct visitors to your business website for a complete version of that video.

Create Absorbing and Short Videos

Make it a point to create interesting, short and professional videos for your products and services. No one wants to watch videos that last more than required, as it is difficult to hold the attention of viewers for long. A video that is 2-3 minutes long is ideal. The viewers must be hooked to the video immediately which then indicates that they are going to watch the entire video. Other useful tips include: making sure that video is not shaky, planning the outline before starting off and paying attention to the lighting/sound quality of the video.

Using YouTube SEO techniques

It is as simple as that: if people can’t find your videos, they can’t watch them! You should apply SEO techniques for affecting ranking results on Google and other major search engines. Use few techniques by targeting keywords that have considerable volume search per month. Proper meta tags have to be created for easier ranking. Make sure that your title contains your full keyword and is used at the beginning of the title.

In the description make it a point to include your keyword in the first 25 words and at least a couple of times more throughout. Giving a clear call-to-action at the end of your video for the target audience to subscribe to your channel, like/leave a comment, share or click on a link which ultimately leads to your landing page is what would be advisable.

Promotion on Social Media Platforms

Social media is critical for getting followers for your YouTube videos. This will enable in getting more followers who want to engage with your content. Start promoting all your videos on social media channels.

Make sure that you include a snippet of what the video is all about for arousing interest and do encourage feedback from your followers and fans. Besides this, sharing YouTube videos within the blog improvises SEO ranking on Google. It also increases user engagement and helps in boosting traffic on your website. Embedding YouTube videos in related articles also helps in getting your message across the audience.

Promote Videos through Paid Advertising

If you have a set budget for promoting your videos, using paid advertisements for your YouTube videos can work great. The concept works quite similar to Google AdWords with a daily budget and selected demographics for your target audience. You will also require some relevant keywords to use in your campaigns. There is an available option called as TrueView in which you only pay if your video is watched for a minimum of 5 seconds. Make it a point to target the right audience for YouTube videos so that you end up paying for only the relevant ones.

Advantages of Google Plus for Marketers

One of the social media networks you might not be paying much attention to is Google Plus. Google Plus is not as popular as other social media platforms; however, it has a ton of significance for promoting any business. There are many advantages for incorporating it into social media strategy for any business. Here are some features of Google Plus which makes it worthwhile for marketers to consider it for the promotion of a brand.

Improved Reach

Google Plus helps maintain businesses a strong presence. Google Maps tells the location of your business and so does Local pages. Google Plus events also help in creating reminders for important events so that users are always updated about latest plans and events. All of this helps in improving the online presence of any business. Number of +1s on the Google Plus business page is one of the most influential factors for determining the order of rankings. A local review on Google Plus also increases the ranking for local search results.

Immediate Indexing

There is a great advantage of being on Google Plus. Since it is a Google product, everything which is posted on it for the business page is indexed by Google immediately. This is a big opportunity for businesses to rank high on search results. Even if your website doesn’t rank well, there is a strong chance that your business page for Google Plus will rank. Google Plus links pass link equity as well. In fact, Google Plus can help in improving your SEO.

Segmentation

On Google Plus, your connections can be segmented into Circles. In fact, segmentation is an inseparable part of marketing and Google Plus has made it quite convenient. This ability of sharing a post on various circles enables you to share content with specific connections in particular circles.

Using embedded posts

Embedded posts are also a great feature which enables users to share content on Google Plus. By using this feature, users can directly place their Google plus posts into their blog. As a business, you will be able to extend the life of your content by embedding content which was created on Google Plus. By doing that, more people are able to view the content when it is included as part of any recent blog post.

Google owns YouTube

Google owns YouTube and this factor helps to become a powerful combination when Google Plus and YouTube accounts are connected to each other. Google Plus permits businesses to take advantage of this fact. The advantage here is that whether you have a strong presence on Google Plus or either YouTube, marketers will be able to maintain a strong presence of any brand by using them in conjunction. This is due to the fact that linking both of them ensures your YouTube videos are featured properly on Google Plus too.

Local Search Results

Google returns a list of local search results every time you perform a search for any product or service. Local ranking criteria is quite different from that of organic search results, therefore for local search results, Google considers its own criteria and the number of +1’s for generating local rankings on SERPS. The increase of reviews increase the authority of Google Plus page for a business and in turn, increases the ranking in the local search engine results.

Tracking performance using in-depth Analytics

Without analytics, marketing efforts are incomplete. It is important that marketing professionals are able to track all of their social marketing efforts while using performance indicators. As far as Google Plus is concerned, there are many analytical tools that can be used along with Google Plus. The main ones used are Sum All and Circle Count.

Correlation between Social Sharing & high Google Rank

There are various factors which contribute to any website’s ranking. There is a strong correlation between social sharing and Google rank. Google Plus isn’t just a platform for social sharing and Google plus marketing is necessary for a proper social media marketing strategy. There is a tendency of high-quality content to be shared more for popularity. The more your content is shared, the better it is.

Great Deal of Resources in one Place

Google Plus has many great resources in one place and all of them have a lot of utility. They are: Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, Hangouts meet, Hangouts chat and so forth. All of them were created for optimizing your marketing strategy and for taking businesses towards the road to success. 

Why is Content Marketing Important for your Business?

Content marketing is a marketing strategy which creates original, effective, consistent and relevant content for acquiring a target audience as customers for the company. Due to the advent of social media in the lives of people, brands have been making all efforts to communicate by using various platforms and for acquiring new customers.

In order to grab the attention of their prospects and customers, it has become imperative for brands to do brand engagement through quality content marketing for their business. Here are the main reasons due to which content marketing has become so significant for all businesses:

Creates Loyal Customers

Today’s consumers do not prefer businesses to ‘hard sell’ their products or services, especially on social media. They prefer to interact with the brand through brand engagement, success stories and acquiring information which is of value to them. Content marketing fits the bill. By giving out and sharing useful info which is free of cost, content marketing creates a community of customers. Customers find it worthwhile to invest their time in the brand. 

You get to know the Customer Better

Social media generates interaction between two parties and that is what ensues when your business is on social media. Since social media has the power for generating feedback, it helps in businesses to better identify their customers using the criteria of demographics and opinions. The better you know your defined audience, the better it is for your brand.

Attracts New Traffic

Well-crafted content can drive a lot of traffic to your website and social media accounts as well. It also helps to increase your rankings on search engine result pages and gives an opportunity to the online audience to share your info with their family and friends. The better the quality of your content, the better will be your ranking on search engines. Gone are the days of poor quality web copy with keyword stuffing. Quality and relevant content is literally gold for SEO.

Increases Trust & Faith in the Brand

The content should be original, written well and should bring value to the consumer. Quality content delivered regularly creates authority of a brand and authority results in winning trust and faith of consumers. This factor is extremely important as trust is something which customers use for making their purchasing decisions.

Adds Value to the Brand

It is no longer enough to have a presence and promote your products. Instead, it has become almost mandatory to have a well-designed website and social media in place if you wish to indulge in brand building. Having valuable content over the website and info which makes their visit worthwhile is what customers are looking for. Generating new ideas for engaging your customers on their website such as using short videos, guides and creative images is also something which keeps the audience engaged.

It can Increase Conversions

Assuming that you are generating quality content that is of value to the readers, it can surely result in direct conversions through call to actions within the content. This results in more direct revenue for your business. Just make sure that your call-to-actions are visible around the content. Other ideas which have been seen to generate results include “how-tos”, tutorials, top lists etc.

Quality content can result in a huge volume of lead generation and ultimately conversions. A great beginning would be to decide your target audience and the people you are generating the content for. Next, start creating content around those topics which are of interest to them and turn them into the focal point of your content campaigns.

Evergreen Content is Long-term Investment

Producing evergreen content is something which should be preferably done as a part of the content marketing strategy. Trendy content and content related to fresh news/scoops are in demand, however, once the news goes stale, the interest of audience also diminishes. The good news here is that some forms of content don’t wither with the passage of time.

For example, tips or advice related to a variety of topics remain always relevant. There could be a scope of adding some new ideas to these posts due to the advent of new rapidly advancing technologies or changes in laws. However, this kind of content will never lose its value and all you would want to do is to bring about minor modifications in the posts by adding updates.

These posts never lose their value, making them a perfect long term investment. Remember, your evergreen content is a great resource of generating traffic so use it instead of languishing it. You need to call attention to them by reposting them on social media every few months!

How to Pick the Right Team for your Startup

Building the right team for your startup is a critical step for building a strong organization. The success or failure of your startup depends a great deal on your team that you have set up for your organization. Before you start taking huge and monumental steps towards building a new team, here are some things which you should keep in mind while making your team selection and the mistakes you should avoid committing while building your way up.

Prior Experience

It is very well understood that a team with startup experience has an advantage over its other competitors in the market. In case your team members have zero experience, it sure becomes more challenging to overcome all those obstacles which come in the way of a startup’s success. Having specific experience in a niche is definitely more helpful and can make a huge difference in enhancing the overall productivity. Hiring someone with zero experience in your industry could be a reason for holding your team back to super success.

Focusing on the Next Step

Whoever you hire today is surely going to be kind of a magnet for your future employees. A strong team today will be the reason for other talented people to join your organization. Select your people carefully and wisely, keeping in mind a couple of things. People who simply consider your job as 9 to 5 won’t be a good fit. Instead, you need people who are highly focused on their goals and to bring laurels for the company. Always avoid highly egoistic people and those who keep on bragging falsely about themselves throughout the interview. Also, learn to recognize the shaky ones who appear under-confident about performing in the long run and are not sure about their career priorities.

Talent

In the initial stages of any startup, each and every individual team member’s skill matter a lot and can make a huge difference. Later on, when the startup has reached a later stage and attained maturity, the company culture becomes bigger than any individual team member.

Another thing which holds a lot of importance is the presence of team members with knowledge of multiple skills. Your team should be able to wear multiple hats for taking care of various issues. Having people who can solve different kinds of problems at the same time can prove to be miraculous for the business.

There is no Substitute for Passion

Your team members and you should all be on the same page. You need a team which shares your passion for making your startup venture a grand success. They should be able to see their future in your startup so that they don’t leave any stone unturned for making it successful. They should see getting to change the world through their success in your business. In case they are not passionate, they will simply treat your passion just like another job and you can be assured that you won’t like that.

Two Sides of the same Coin

You should be able to welcome critique and disagreement at the same time, as that is what makes the company a better place than yesterday. Look out for people who have the same work ethics, priorities and think the same way about adaptation. False and meaningless egos are the biggest vices and they ruin a team spirit completely. Do not let that happen in your team and do not get offended about trivial things which do not matter in the long run. You should bring in such people in your team who can complement your skills and at the same time also fill your weaknesses.

Company Culture and Vision

Company culture is not just about having a treadmill or the provision of playing a game. It also means inculcating a positive environment which results in a productive ecosystem while encouraging new ideas and creative thinking. This is how a rich company culture is developed. You, as a business owner definitely have long term plans for your organization. However, what about your team members? You will have to make sure that your team members are not thinking about a three-month stint with the company and instead, they share a long-term vision with you for the company.

Lessons from The Matrix

When The Matrix movie released in 1999, it amazed everyone with its special effects. It’s one those movies which you can watch over and over again. Every time you watch it, it reminds you of the strong concepts of life lying behind the action. I’ve seen it a few times and if you haven’t seen it then you are seriously missing out those mind-blowing concepts. Keanu Reeves is at his finest, powerful, brooding, vulnerable and the ultimate hero. But more than the actors, actions or special effects, it gives us a powerful message.

What You Believe Becomes Your Reality

Neo chose to see the true world rather than what he believes it to be. His discoveries shocked him and changed him for forever. Everything he believes to be true comes out to be an illusion which kept him away from understanding the true powers that already existed in him.

The reality is a reflection of what you believe that means if you change what you believe, you can change your reality. Miracles do happen if you change your way of thinking and starts to believe that you are the creator of your own destiny. Anyone who ever tried something new chose to believe it is possible to do. As they say, anything that you truly put your mind to you can achieve.

There’s Always Something New to Learn

In The Matrix movie, Neo and others update their mind by computer programming. They learned how to fly helicopters, learned martial arts and everything they need to learn to create a difference. Though we are not that modern yet to plug ourselves into a super computer so as to update our programming but by new ways of thinking, by learning new skills and just like Neo with regular practice and training, can create a new foundation of your life. Everyone has a gift of his own, you will never get to know what’s yours if you don’t take a chance by pushing your boundaries to learn something new.

The Road Less Travelled is Less Travelled for a Reason

Neo was in a group of brave people, brave enough to accept the truth of the world and are well aware of the fact they cannot return to their comfortable and safe world. Though one of them regret choosing the red pill and betrayed them.

When you step outside your comfort zone and understands that there’s more to life than you think, you will find people who will laugh at you and will reject you. Remember, we all have to leave some people behind in order to follow our own destiny. There’s a reason behind the road less travelled for being less travelled. You have to believe that there’s something more than current reality and must take action to be a part of different future.

You Can Achieve What You Believe

Neo was terrified when he first discovered the truth about the world. Everything he knew or thought about the life turned out to be a lie.  You can only believe and trust yourself. And when you start connecting with yourself, then only you begin to realize that you are capable of achieving more things than you have so far. When Neo started to learn, he discovered that power of his body is nothing as compared to the power of his mind. His mind was capable of pushing him beyond the limits that he has accepted as his own. And after starting to believe in himself, he was able to push himself beyond the limits and opened up to a world of possibilities he previously never imagined.

All it takes is to believe. When you visualize the things, you want, believe in the power of your mind and open your mind to the possibility that you can have it, then you are on the road to creating it. As they always say- “Whatever the mind of the man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”  Perhaps like Neo, you too will find your belief, your inner strength and discover the world full of possibilities you never knew existed.

Do it Already

As Morpheus tells Neo-What are you waiting for? You are faster than this. Stop trying to hit me and hit me.

If you have some goal without giving an excuse, aim for it and go get it. Stop being sorry for yourself and the things you don’t have. Take necessary actions to achieve that goal because life is too short for crying and making excuses. And remember Actions speak louder than words and sooner or later you’re going to realize that there’s a difference between walking the path and knowing the path.

Reasons to Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

The “comfort zone” is a psychological concept that helps you to embrace the risk and make changes which lead to personal growth. It’s a behavioral space which minimizes risk and stress. There’s always a sense of familiarity, certainty and security in it. While stepping outside your comfort zone, you take risks which may lead to anxiety and stress. Though stress is always considered as bad but little bit of healthy stress can act as a catalyst which provides a powerful motivation to act and hence you lead to growth.

Stepping out of comfort zone can lead to the creation of the conditions for an optimal performance, whereas staying in it only results in steady and consistent performance. Those who step out of their comfort zone and are willing to take risks will reap the biggest rewards in this increasingly competitive, accelerated and cautious world. Here’s why you need to step outside our comfort zones.

It’s hard to let it go because you’re wired to seek out for comfort

Staying in your comfort zone isn’t wrong unless you’re too comfortable in it and don’t want to challenge yourself to grow, earn and try new things. Your comfort zone is your neutral state- where anxiety and stress are minimal and you know what’s coming next. Sometime to achieve goals, you have to push ourselves out of your comfort zones whether you want it or not. Stepping out is as good as being able to get back in. 

Challenges help you to perform at your peak

For one’s personal growth, stepping outside of comfort zone is an almost universal and important factor. How can you expect to evolve in your careers and lives if you keep on sticking to your normal routine and habits? A little anxiety and involvement of risks can help you to perform better than you usually do- or you can say, challenging yourselves, tends to your rise to the occasion.

Risk taking tendency helps you to grow

Children, the natural risk-takes, learn the fear of failure with time and hence stops attempting different things when become old, leading to the tremendous potential loss in their growth and transformation. Fear of failure is a powerful obstacle to growth. It prevents experimentation and exploration assuring progressive narrowing of the personality. It’s a simple logic: Keep Learning = Keep Risking Failure.

Trying something new makes you creative

Trying something new or different changes your perspective. You see things which you previously ignored or missed, which creates new possibilities. It helps you to break the monotony of your routine and changes your biorhythm- stimulating and jolting you emotionally, physically and intellectually. You can progress by maintaining the habit of trying something new and can learn to be open to new experiences, change and possibilities. Increased confidence, appreciation for yourself, progress, openness to experience are some of the results of trying new things.

But don’t push yourself too far

To grow you need fear, that’s human nature. To grow constantly you need to push yourself constantly to the brink of hurt, exhaustion and fatigue. If you are always in a process of trying to grow, you are equally as afraid as someone who afraid to start. You push yourself to grow only because you are afraid of fear of failure and want to get rid of it. The main purpose is to expand our comfort zone. Comfort to C-O-M-F-O-R-T. There’s no purpose of it if you can’t sit and enjoy the growth you have gathered so far. That’s why if you can’t be grateful right now, you must stop focusing on making future plans. So, sit look around, look at yourself and your thoughts. This is how you laugh with it, live with it and laugh at it. And it will ask you to transcend yourself once again.