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Content Writing Services Save Your Business

Meetings, clients, emails, social media management, split testing, product development, profit and loss…the list is endless. As a business grows, the ability to maintain focus in so many areas divides. Content most always takes a back seat.

Content is at the heart of every single business. It’s what generates sales and is the framework of making businesses responsive. It’s the foundation of client attraction and it’s most certainly the catalyst for sales funnels.

Here are some signs that you may need to invest in a content writing service:

1)  Moonlighting

If you have another job you work in between building your business, your mental energy is compromised. By the time you meet your regular work obligations, your brain is ready for a reset. Instead, you dive right into your business. This, in turn, cannot help but challenge your creativity and productivity.

2)  The Invasion of Crickets on Your Site

When you had more time, you likely posted more often. However, as you’ve grown your business and been forced to wear more hats, content writing is harder to find time for.

3)  The Three B’s

But Syndrome:  You find multiple excuses to procrastinate producing new content.

Burnout:  You’re tired of writing content.

Brain Fried:  You’re tired, bored, brain fried, and can’t focus on creating new posts.

4)  Decrease in Quality

Do your articles have occasional or frequent errors in them? Does your subject matter not always align with your niche?

5)  Site Traffic is in the Slow Lane

Measure your site visits, amount of time spent on the site, and pages viewed. Has it begun to decline instead of increase?

6)  Is Your Ego Under Control, or Does Your Ego Control You?

You know you’re a great writer. It’s your strength. But it’s not your only one. You’re being stretched in too many directions. Content writing is one aspect that you can let go of so that your mind will be clear to take your business to the next level.

7)  Broad Focus

When your time is spread thin and divided into multiple duties, the focus of your niche becomes skewed. A good content writing service has skilled writers who are able to focus on your niche, capture interest in your products, and provide updated information in your specialty.

8)  Less Audience Engagement

Experienced writers are able to draw interest directly to your site, its products, and its services. They know how to evoke emotion, present and then solve a problem using your products, and encourage audience engagement through continued discussions in the comments or through direct inquiries for consults, products, etc.

9)  When SEO is Too Hard and Time Consuming

A good content writing service has 100% optimization, 100% of the time. Where you spend hours trying to optimize, they can structure and write an article that’s 100% search engine optimized in half the time.

10)  Weak or Ineffective Calls to Action

A CTA should do exactly that,  lead the reader into some sort of action, whether it’s to subscribe or purchase. Content writing agencies are experts at writing these and know how to write the article and build upon the CTA, so that readers are more likely to respond.

If one or more of these signs resonates, you should consider investing in content writing services. Face it, you want customers and we can bring them to you with our quality content services. No more staring at a blank screen, no more keyword confusion, no more SEO struggles. End your anxiety and move on taking your business to the next level.

Using Slack for business is becoming the new norm in 2016. The purpose of this review is to get you familiarized with some features, and how they can fit your business needs.

That isn’t to say Slack is not useful for NGOs, hobby projects, chatting with friends and creating communities. But that is a different kettle of fish. We will probably go into that at a different time.

In any case, let’s get down to business, shall we? Team communication is becoming increasingly difficult for growing companies. It’s just not viable to use multiple communication channels such as email, text messages, and chat programs.

The reason for this is that crucial information unwittingly gets lost. Let’s say you’ve sent a text message to three teammates about an important part of your project. Did everyone else get the memo? How do you know they passed the information on to the others?

Besides being an efficient communication tool, Slack offers something for everyone – code sharing, fun apps, flexibility, the works!

1. What’s so Different about Slack?

After all, you could very well use basic chat programs such as Skype or Pidgin to communicate with team members. The key word here is “basic”. If that were good enough, humanity wouldn’t have advanced up to this point.

Slack takes all of your communication methods, packs them up, and offers them to you in one place. Yes, that means everything:

• Basic chat program functions built into Slack. Communicate with your team members on various custom-made channels
• Text messages through apps such as Zapier
• This app (Zapier) also lets you connect your Slack account to multiple messaging services (such as Gmail) – among other things
• Trello integration, so you have notifications about your tasks without using a separate app

No more keeping track of email threads. No more endless scrolling through Skype. No fuss over deleted text messages. 

The best part is that everything you communicate through the app gets saved on their servers, in the Slack Cloud. Oh come on, don’t laugh!

You might know that most apps store chat data on your computer. So, if you don’t access it from there, tough luck.

Slack is a web-based app, so you don’t need to install anything to run it. But the guys who made the app were kind enough to offer you options. You can install it on your PC or Mac. The Linux version is coming soon.

It’s not hard to see why Slack for business is growing at the rate it is right now. It’s barely been out for three years, and it already has three million daily active users.

2. Tired of Looking Everywhere for Info?

Use the Slack Search Function.

You might be thinking: How is Slack for business solving my communication problems? And that would be a valid concern. Gathering every message in one place doesn’t eliminate the need to browse the information.

Were you and your co-worker chatting about a good movie? Maybe you don’t remember which one you were talking about. Or perhaps your boss sent you an article about the best ways to increase website traffic. Now you’ve totally forgotten how it was named.

Fortunately, Slack has a built-in search function for this very purpose. It has a few ways for you to narrow down what you’re looking for:

• Search by username. When you remember who you talked to about that movie, but can’t remember whether or not it was in private or on a public channel.
• Search by channel. You remember you had that discussion but don’t know with whom.
• Slack has a “Star” function. You Star an important message you want to remember for later. Then, you use the search function to find “starred” posts!
• Similarly, you can filter messages by whether or not they had links or reactions.
• Last but not least: Use date filters.

3. Take Slack with You Everywhere

No self-respecting chat program is missing a mobile version. It’s estimated that 86.2% of people in developed countries use mobile broadband to access the Internet.

Who would want to miss out on that? Not Slack, it seems. They’ve already developed versions for iOS and Android. A Windows Phone version is in beta at the moment.

Have a lot of business meetings throughout the day? Slack can help you stay in the loop with what you need to do when you get back to work.

If you’re a company leader, the mobile app lets you communicate your tasks more efficiently. Let’s say you just want parts or the whole company to know what should be done. Slack’s channel function can separate groups as you see fit.

A great thing to mention here is that the iOS app recently received an offline mode. That means you can access your messages at any time without an Internet connection! The Android version is still in the works.

4. It’s Ideal for Programmers Too

How do you share code snippets between members of your team? If you use GitHub or other similar services, you’re in luck!

You’re able to integrate GitHub as part of your Slack team. Besides, it has its own code snippet sharing feature.

You can choose from a ton of programming languages: C, C++, C#, Ruby, Python, Javascript, Lua, and many others.

Besides, you can keep track of your snippets by using the Star feature. You can also pin the snippet to the conversation. It’s good if you want to discuss the finer details of your code without having to switch between tabs.

5. The Fun Parts of Slack for Business

Hey, it’s not named Slack for just any reason! If you Google their app, you’ll notice a sort of company motto they have. “Be less busy”. It sounded catchy to us.

And it sure describes their product well – so many integrations to choose from. So many ways to make your job easier. It frees up time for other activities.

But why name your product “Slack” if you don’t offer a way to … you know … slack? We’re just kidding. Don’t slack at work, folks. Or do. This is getting pretty confusing.

In any case, Slack lets you add a multitude of fun apps to make your day go by easier. Mini-games, Twitter integrations, quiz apps, GIF apps – even an app that lets you share interesting facts about cats.

6. The Drawbacks

No app is without its faults. I’ve talked extensively about how many features Slack has. But if you don’t look online for which one is which, you could miss out on some of them entirely.

The problem is that all the features are hidden behind icons and drop-down menus. Sure, not having a myriad of buttons littering the screen makes Slack look cleaner. But they could be a bit more descriptive.

For example, before writing this article, I had no idea you could share code snippets with the app. I just happened upon it by accident!

Of course, you could use the built-in Slackbot and ask it about features. But most would probably prefer an interactive tutorial to get the gist of things.

Some might also take issues with the message limit (10,000) per team for the free version. But with so many features they offer, it’s understandable there would be some limits.

They can be overridden by switching to the paid version. That might deter some people, but paying for Slack doesn’t just remove a message limit. It would be senseless.

Instead, they offer businesses a way to communicate sensitive information over secure channels. You can go all top secret!

For example, the Standard payment plan ($6,67/month) offers two-factor authentication. Unauthorized users won’t be allowed to see your company secrets.

Besides, you have 10GB of online storage per team member, saving you tons of space on your business’s hard drives. The Plus package ($12,50/month) lets you increase the storage to 20GB, among other things.

They’re also working on an Enterprise package for really large businesses. Those who need to connect multiple sectors will undoubtedly find it useful when it’s launched. You can check out what else they offer for these prices here.

In the end, I guess we could cut the app some slack. (Yes, I went there.) It offers plenty of features for free and gives you the option to upgrade if you feel the need to.

If you want to start using Slack, you can create an account for your organization by clicking here. It’ll guide you through the whole process.

To get you started, you can ask the SlackBot about features. It’ll give you an answer to the best of its abilities. Plus, it’ll link you to the Slack help page for each feature you ask about!

I’d be interested to know what you think of the app. Did you like what you’ve seen? What problems do you think you would encounter while using the app?

Leave your opinions in the comment section below.

Think about a person you admire dearly.

Right away, not only their name popped into your head but also those specific traits and qualities that define them.

If someone asked you more details about this person, you would be able to outline on the spot what recommends them.

That, my dear reader, is called personal branding done right.

So, what do you want people to say about you?

We want to give a helping hand here, that’s why we compiled this article with personal branding tips for beginners.

If you think that this article is not enough, then download our free straightforward guide for fool-proof personal branding.

Why should you invest your time in this? How can it help you? How does it make your blog stand out from the crowd?

Those are some of the questions this article will answer for you.

Let’s get started. 

Personal Branding Tips – Find the Real ‘You’

Every piece of information that exists online about you defines your brand. Personal branding is all about the idea that success comes through self-packaging. Marketing yourself as a brand.

So it is vital to find out what defines you. You need a solid statement.

Every piece of information that exists online about you defines your brand.

So in order to show the real you, you have to properly manage your brand. What people see online about you should be what you want them to see.

You Get Credibility and Prestige

Personal branding is important because it sends a strong message about who you are. A brand’s message is unambiguous – it clearly states what you have to offer. This gives you a great boost in credibility.

By constantly delivering what your brand statement says, you put yourself in an expert’s position.

If stakeholders see you as being reliable, trustworthy and competent, you’re half way there. All the personal branding tips in the world can’t help you if you don’t own those qualities.

Prestige is something you gain. Having it makes your decisions more meaningful. Personal branding influences prestige as long as it is based on:

• Accomplishments
• Professional position
• Knowledge
• Personal style

You’ll have to be 100% sincere and true to your personal brand. In other words, your real image must match your marketing.

Your personal brand’s message should clearly state what you have to offer

You Attract the Ideal Clients for Your Niche

This is one of the best online personal branding tips. Successful branding is all about finding people who share your views. It might sound a bit weird, but this is how you manage to influence their behavior/decisions.

You can see that the niche is extremely important. You’ll need to find this from the start. Create your personal brand around your niche.

The way you advertise yourself online must match the real you behind closed doors.

Identify what separates you from the rest. What makes you the better choice? What’s the one thing you offer that no one else can? Do you have authority in your field? Use that.”

It Gets You Professional Opportunities

Many experts say that personal branding should be used exclusively to attract business opportunities. A strong personal brand will send a positive message to thought leaders in your niche as well. They will want to work with you.

Some people even managed to score great jobs thanks to their personal brand.

Related to personal branding tips – start locally. Concentrate on your community at first. Become an expert in their eyes.

Then grow and scale your personal brand accordingly.

Action Speaks Louder Than Words

Having a strong personal brand will give you an edge over a regular brand. People trust people more than companies. So the change you are preaching can become a real movement. Led by you.

But to achieve this, you’ll need authority and actions. Real actions. Taking your ideas and making them tangible. You need to make a positive impact in a real way.

Becoming a movement leader means that people see in you an ideal. You become their leader as well.

Earn Mindshare with Customers

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about soda? Is it coke? Does that make you think about Coca-Cola? That’s mindshare.

When a person says he or she is googling something, you instantly know he/she is searching for something on Google.

Your personal brand can earn mindshare as well. Granted, it is a bit harder to achieve this when compared to big corporations.

Mindshare is the frequency to which your brand is associated with a theme in the minds of your audience.

Here’s an example to help you understand the concept. In popular TV series “How I met your mother”, the main character is Ted Mosby. A couple of seasons in, all the other characters who know him start using the phrase “mosby her”. It means telling a girl you love her on the first date.

Personal Branding: Tips to a Higher Perceived Value

This is another benefit of having a great personal brand. You’ll eventually reach a point when your perceived value as a professional will be greater than your competition’s.

Here are some tips to help you achieve this through personal branding:

• Focus on quality, not price – “best price” sends a different message compared to “lowest price”.

• Useful social proof – get reviews and testimonials about your work.

• Use HARO to your advantage – Help a Reporter Out is a great way to end up with your logo featured on a media site.

• Create an awesome About page – there are tools that can help you get that professional look. You’ll also find useful tips and tricks in this eBook. It teaches you everything you need to know.

• Add a great author box to every article you write – again, use the tools available to get the most out of this. We recommend Starbox because it is easy to install (no coding skills required). Also, it has a clean design yet offers great functionality.

Now You Know

The facts mentioned above are the benefits you get for having a great personal brand. Look at them as reasons to start working on building your personal brand.

Creating a powerful personal brand takes time and work. You can’t achieve this in a few weeks. So be sure to arm yourself with all the patience and hard work it requires.

As long as you stay true to yourself and your audience, you’ll be able to enjoy all the gains mentioned above.

And now that you know the benefits, you can get down to work. We can help with that as well.

Download the complete guide on personal branding. It helps you with everything from A to Z.

Feel free to leave your questions or your comments down below.

It seems that Asia is slowly, but steadily climbing its way to the top of the startup world. You probably already know how evolved their technology is, and how advanced is the machinery they manufacture. In this article, I’ll point out what makes Southeast Asia a great place for entrepreneurs and investors.

First, we’ll take a look at how startup are events integrated in Asia’s culture. 

2014 – a great year for startup events

The previous year has proven out to be an extremely good one for Asia’s startup world. There were a lot of meetups, and conferences, which are important for the startup companies that already exist in Asia. These type of events are so great, because they represent an opportunity for companies to attract investors, and get people to know them on the international market.

Let’s take a closer look at the biggest startup events happening in Asia, and see what they have to offer.

• Global Entrepreneurship Summit. This event took place in India, in January. As it says on their website, “It is the largest student-level entrepreneurial summit in India”. I think it’s a great idea to connect students with investors, startups, and professionals. This event brings together a lot of awesome speakers right from the heart of the startup industry (Silicon Valley, that is). For the speakers and the workshops, they carefully choose entrepreneurs that work in the biggest companies out there, such as at Microsoft, Intel or Deloitte. Also, several international institutions (Boston University, Stanford University) offered their support to the development of the event.
• Echelon. This is (or was, because it took place in June, in Singapore) the place to meet 50 of the best speakers in the world. This is one of Asia’s startup events that focuses on innovation in technology, and states that it is the biggest technology conference in Asia. Should we believe them? You should see it for yourself, next year. With venture capitalists, investors, and with the chance to share your business idea with influencers from your area, it’s an event not to be missed.
• Startup Weekend Singapore. Startup Weekend doesn’t require an introduction, anymore. This is the place to kick off your startup idea, in neither more, nor less than 54 hours.
• Startup Asia Singapore and Tokyo. When you have so many startup events on your mind as an organizer, you need to think about bringing something new, so that you attract people. Startup Asia takes place in Singapore and Tokyo, too. It is a two-day conference, and this year they arranged a Speed Dating section. But this was not speed dating as you know it. They created a booth that allowed participants to meet, and talk to potential investors. If you want to see more details, and statistics about how it was at Startup Asia Singapore, take a look at this awesome infographic. You still have time to book your tickets for Startup Asia Tokyo, since it’s happening in September.

Alright, I’m not going to bore you anymore with startup events. Let’s get into the interesting facts, and see how Asia’s startup ecosystem looks.

Singapore – Asia’s startup hub

In 2013, Singapore was the third “most popular technology destination for professionals”. Singapore was already known for its innovation in technology, so the report made by Hydrogen Group only comes to emphasizes that fact. The workforce in Singapore is highly educated, and also motivated, something that most of us are lacking in.

What makes Singapore a great city-state for startups? The answer: “Relatively simple start-up procedures, a thriving incubator community and friendly governmental policies”. Singapore does not want to compare itself with Silicon Valley. Instead, it wants to be part of this global community and participate in the process of making a difference in the world.

Proximity is important when you’re doing business. Did you know that Singapore is a 6-hour plane ride away from half of the population of the world? The economy is not bad at all, either. Trading (thanks to the port), and manufacturing are important sectors in this part of Asia. Foreigners (approximately 40% of the population), wealthy and young people are incredibly attracted to this part of the world, since it’s so close to most countries in the world. Its diversity managed to turn Singapore in one of the leading markets in the startup world, making it a great meeting point for business people at startup events.

Sometimes, tax incentives represent a big obstacle when it comes to attracting startups. Some states are not interested in helping people that want to start their own business. Singapore encourages this practice, making it “one of the world’s friendliest countries to start a business”. The government is extremely supportive with taxes in general, maintaining it at a low rate. This encourages entrepreneurs to come here, and make a start. Singapore is working on changing the culture of the country, and making it more willing to take risks.

Anyone can begin its own startup in Singapore. It’s that simple. You don’t even have to be a resident to do that. The only condition is that you need to have a bank account in the country. Another thing that makes Singapore so great is that it provides a safe environment for your work, offering intellectual property rights. This is a key factor that makes so many tech companies come here, and also this is why the bio-medical field is so developed. Knowing that your work is and will be safe is crucial when you’re doing business.

Startup events are the perfect place to meet investors. The high interest in the tech industry, and also the fact that Singapore is a wealthy country, contributed to increasing the number of investments. The Joyful Frog Digital Incubator is one of the biggest accelerators, with a 60% success rate. Along with the money, they provide an intensive mentorship program that takes place for 100 days. Goh Hian, Advisor at Joyful Frog Digital Incubator, says that ” the place where most seed investing is coming from is the NRF incubator scheme. Also, other places where a lot of startups are being started are at NUS enterprise, SMU incubator, MIT Smart, and of course JFDI”.

If you consider moving to Singapore after what you’ve read so far, there are still a few things you should know. The weather remains at a constant temperature all year long, but it’s hot. If you don’t like heat, you probably won’t enjoy  your staying here. Nevertheless, the quality of the air is the best there is in Asia. The best thing in my opinion is that natural disasters never happen in Singapore, so you’re safe from tsunamis or earthquakes.

Entrepreneurs are encouraged to work together and begin a startup here. There are certain labs, designed to provide entrepreneurs the perfect working conditions. A lab has a few different floors, and each floor is specifically designed to develop different characteristics on the tech market.

The number of startup events happening in Asia will increase since Singapore has in plan to launch 500 tech startups in the next 5 years. Singapore’s industry is focused on bio-medical science and technology. We all know how important their development is for the future, so it’s only natural to say that they’re in for the win.

Southeast Asia – the place to launch or move your startup

Since Silicon Valley has become overcrowded, it’s become harder and harder to differentiate yourself, and attract investors. Thomas Clayton, the CEO of Bubbly, moved his startup  from Silicon Valley to Southeast Asia, and he wrote an article, where he listed his 5 top reasons on why entrepreneurs should do that, too.

As I was saying before, Asia, especially Singapore, has very friendly incentives for startups, established by the government. Thomas says that 5 years ago, there weren’t any investors here, but now, there might be over 100. Important names like Jungle Ventures have established themselves in the region, and is one of 15 NRF incubators. Series A investors are actually starting to proliferate, and that includes Joyful Frog Digital Incubator, Vertex Venture Holdings, Walden International, and Infocomm Investments. Among others, Japanese investors are active too here, such as Gree Ventures, TransCosmos, or Rakuten.

Even though Singapore is the most expensive country in Southeast Asia, thanks to the low personal income tax, it’s easier to run your startup here, than in Silicon Valley. Southeast Asia’s market is still in the beginning, so there is little competition, for now.

Not only VCs move to Southeast Asia, but talented engineers too. For example, Bubbly has employees from 22 different countries. Asia’s culture is different, too. Everywhere you go, you have access to WiFi, even on the beach. For young minds, this part of Asia is the perfect environment to work in. Even though a report claims that in Singapore people work for more hours than the rest of the world, that doesn’t mean they don’t have time for fun. The nightlife is incredibly lively, with plenty of activities to choose from.

Awesome coworking spaces in Asia

Coworking spaces are great for early stage startups, or for entrepreneurs that need a place to work on their startup idea. These kind of places offer internet connection, a quiet place, and the assurance that your things are safe while you’re out for a break. Coffee shops are great too, but sometimes they can get too noisy and crowded. Gerard Castaneda made a list with some awesome coworking spaces, all around Asia.

Women in the startup scene of Asia

As most of you probably already know, the Middle East is not quite supportive of working women. Still, “35% of tech entrepreneurs from the region are in fact women”, says in an article Naomi Ruth Ganhinhin, whereas in the rest of the world, women represent only 3% of tech founders. The workforce in the Middle East is dominated by men, while women have the most university degrees. Women wish they worked, but their families often force them to stay at home, take care of their children, and do housework.

The Internet combined with the rise of technology made it possible for women that stood at home to start their own business. In Naomi’s article, she quotes Sarah Abu Alia, the founder of ArtMedium, who says “As a woman, you have to fight for everything here— which is a great preparation for being an entrepreneur”.

Women are being more and more encouraged to become entrepreneurs. Women 2.0, Chang the Ratio, and Girls in Tech are some of the organizations that support women entrepreneurs. Singapore took the lead and even organized a Startup Weekend, women’s edition.

Asia’s startup world is the bomb

Asia, especially the Southeast part of it, has a great potential for tech startups and entrepreneurs that want to open a business here. This part of the world has a friendly government, which makes it easy for anyone that wants to settle up a startup here.

Asia is a new startup world, filled with opportunities. Even though it’s only at the beginning, there are major changes each year, which can be seen in the numbers of investors and VCs that take interest in the startups that are already established here. This can only be a good thing.

Would you agree on the fact that Asia is becoming the hub of the startup world? Let me know what your thoughts on this topic are, in the comments.

How many social media profiles do you or your business have?

Three? Five? Ten?

Even going out on a limb and presuming you only have a Facebook and a Twitter account, they still take some time to manage.

As such, you will need the proper social media management tools for the job.

But with so many to choose from, which ones would you even use?

Depending on how large your user base is, you’ll need to do any and all of the following:

• Interact with your audience on several profiles. That includes replying to comments and private messages.
• Schedule quality content on multiple platforms.
• Curate content and share it with your public.
• Research and leverage user and post analytics to create better marketing strategies.

We’ve prepared a list of five essential tools just for these occasions. Here they are, in no particular order.

1. Squirrly Social

Squirrly Social allows you to schedule everything from one place. If you have a handful of social profiles, one of a few things could happen:

• You’re active on all of them and that eats up a lot of your time;
• You’re active on some of them, but feel sad you can’t contribute to the others;
• You quit ahead of the game because you have a dozen social accounts and no way to manage them all;

To avoid a headache or twelve, consider a platform such as Squirrly Social to manage all of your accounts in one place. It supports all the big ones (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn).

But we did mention a handful. So by using the Squirrly Social connections, you can use a free Buffer account that allows you to extend your control to other platforms, including:

• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Facebook Groups
• And more

If you’ve set up a content calendar, you’re going to have a lot of work on your hands, scheduling posts on social media.

Squirrly Social allows you to schedule everything from one place. You can even create categories and repeat each post several times.

On the other hand, you can also let Squirrly Social help you write the best posts for you. It can even automatically add hashtags and emojis to your posts.

#SquirrlySocial can automatically find the best hashtags for your posts. Click To Tweet

You can even use their Social Media Assistant feature to find a list of posts according to what you are searching for, that you can share with your followers. Or you can set it to post things from your RSS feeds as soon as they’re published.

That is very useful if you’re publishing very often and would like your audience to know as soon as you have something fresh out.

If you don’t feel like doing it yourself, you can delegate some social media tasks to your team. You didn’t think you were in this alone, did you? The tool has some excellent team management options.

All in all, Squirrly Social seems like a lifesaver to anyone to wants to master the art of social media management.

2. Instagram Analytics

Instagram marketing could benefit from some great social media management tools.

The way the platform is built guarantees a broad range of content for all sorts of audiences. That can put a hole in some marketers’ plans, however. They would need a way to know who these people are, for better targeting.

And what better way to know your audience than to get an idea about the demographics? 

Get to REALLY know your audience with demographic analytics by #Instagram. Click To Tweet

With the new Instagram Analytics, you can:

• See your followers’ location, either by country or by city. That helps you time your post scheduling.
• Get an idea about your audience’s gender prevalence.
• Divide your followers into age groups.

All of the above are an aside to the integrated post analytics. The whole system is similar to Facebook’s “Insights” feature, even being named as such. Those familiar with it should have no problem adapting.

In fact, all the demographic data is pulled straight from Facebook. That helps give Instagram marketers the best and most accurate graphs about user engagement.

For the rest of you who aren’t that familiar with “Insights,” here are more of Instagram’s newest capabilities:

• Impressions: gives you accurate information about how many times your posts have been viewed.
• Reach: only presents the number of unique accounts that have viewed your content.
• Website Clicks: should be pretty self-explanatory.

The feature also allows you to view “Follower Activity” information. What does that mean? Well, it determines when your followers are most active on Instagram.

That allows you to figure out how to create your posting schedule so it gets the most engagement possible.

#Optimize your content schedule with #Instagram analytics. Click To Tweet

But possibly the most useful aspect of the new Analytics is the “Top Posts” mechanic. Instagram sorts out your posts according to the number of Impressions they have. You can do that for posts created in the last week, or in the last month.

The number of times your posts have been viewed is displayed over the thumbnail of the picture. That allows you to see exactly how successful each post has been, not just by the number of likes it got.

Think of how well you can optimize content for your page‘s audience now. With that much information, it’s not hard to deliver results for your fans.

A problem people might find with the tool is that it’s currently only for Instagram business pages. It might leave some feeling left out.

Let’s Talk about Insights

Now, social media insights are very useful on their respective platforms. But what if you want to track your blog’s performance on social media? What about SEO performance and traffic analytics?

These are also aspects you should consider if you want to know what areas to focus on.

3. ContentLook

ContentLook is more than just a site audit tool. It is a site/blog performance analyzer with built-in team capabilities. It also analyzes your SEO performance and offers helpful information on what you can improve.

Here is what information it can provide:

ContentLook calculates your SEO score based on a variety of factors. You can read about them here if you are interested in the details.

Of course, offering you that information isn’t enough if you can’t put it to good use. Fortunately, ContentLook also provides some team management features to help you out:

This tool is continually being improved for your convenience. Most likely it will see integration with Slack in the near future. Besides other features, that is.

4. Pinterest Scheduler

As we’ve mentioned, Buffer allows you to track the optimal times at which you should post. We can’t stress enough the importance of posting during these online traffic “rush hours” to increase exposure for your posts.

Besides, you don’t want to spam your users with too many posts. For one, they might miss some of them because people don’t frantically refresh the page to check for new posts.

It also doesn’t help that you’re not spreading out your content over a longer period. You’ll soon find out that you’ve burned out and have run out of posts.

Spread your pins over time for better exposure with Pixlee's #Pinterest Scheduler. Click To Tweet

Unfortunately, Pinterest suffers from a lack of a scheduling feature, so people look to other apps to do it for them. If Pinterest is part of your marketing strategy, then Pixlee’s Pinterest Scheduler is just such an app.

It has a content calendar so you can create a great posting strategy over time.

The best part is that it allows you to manage schedules for multiple accounts! If you have more than one page, this must be a godsend.

5. Everypost

Here we have another in the series of social media management tools. At its core, Everypost is a content curation platform. And yet, it is so much more than that.

You can curate content from the following platforms:

• YouTube
• Flickr
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• RSS feeds

Alternatives such as Buffer and HootSuite would only let you curate content from RSS feeds and app extensions.

Everypost is a lot like Buffer in some regards. But at the same time, it offers added functionality.

Besides the usual social media platforms, you have the option of posting to Tumblr, Dropbox, and even by email!

An interesting feature is your ability to save social posts to Dropbox for future reference.

You can also post to WordPress and Evernote through your email account. That’s some all-in-one action Everypost has got going for it.

Another feature worth mentioning is that Everypost allows you to add YouTube videos, video links, and native mp4 files to your posts.

When it comes to music, you can add Grooveshark embeds, links, and native mp3 files.

In both cases, Buffer would only allow you to post links to your media. If you prefer to upload your own files instead of using somebody else’s work, Everypost has your back.

With Everypost, you can customize content for each social platform before cross-posting. Click To Tweet

Everypost also allows you to customize your content for each social platform before you cross-post.

No more thinking up messages that apply universally to all platforms. You can add each social media platform’s particular metadata tag (hashtags, mentions, etc.) and post away.

One thing I have to mention is that you can use Everypost together with your team. When businesses grow, or even when their social media presence grows, one social media manager is not enough.

When your online presence grows, one #socialmedia manager just isn't enough anymore. Click To Tweet

The tool lets you manage your team of social media workers and set access and posting privileges for each of them.

All in all, Everypost has some nifty features that set it apart from similar social media management tools.

Social Media Management Tools: Better than the Real Thing?

You have to wonder why social platforms didn’t think of some of these features beforehand. At least Facebook’s Insights and Instagram Analytics are a step in the right direction for social marketing.

These tools allow you more time on your hands to create great content. To recap, by using these tools, you can:

That’s quite the baggage of applications to include into your social media tool-belt. Don’t try them all at once; you might blow a fuse. 🙂

Now, applications are all fine and dandy. If you’re a social media expert, you will know how to put them to good use. But what if you aren’t?

If you’d like to find out more about how to become one of those experts, check out our other blog posts on the subject.

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Writing quality content for your customers is probably one of the most important things that keeps them engaged with you. You may find a lot of excuses as to why you don’t want to shift your attention toward creating content, but have you ever thought about buying articles? This can solve your problem, and will also bring much more value to your business. If you buy articles, both you and your customers will win. Here is how.

You will have time to focus on the important things

Quality content creation takes time, there’s no reason why we should deny that. Content marketing is all about engaging your customers and establishing a relationship with them, always providing them with valuable information and something new to learn. Unfortunately, there are more important things that a CEO needs to take care of during a day than focusing on creating content. The truth is, most of the time, you have absolutely no idea how time flies so fast! So why not buy articles from someone who knows how and what to write?

Writers write with passion

Apart from the time efficiency reason, buying articles will bring you much more value, because they know what they do, and they will invest their time in engaging with your audience and focusing only on that. If you don’t like to write, it’s better not do it at all, because your readers will be able to figure it out. When you decide to buy articles from a writer, you will have the certainty that the person is already experienced, and knows how content marketing works. Also, that person will be able to create an awesome content strategy, and decide the best choices for you.

Buying articles from a writer is cost-effective

If you take into consideration the possibility of hiring a content writer, you should reconsider it, and I will tell you why. Although it may sound like a good idea, in the long run, it will cost you a lot of money. Before you decide to do it, first you need to ask yourself if you need a full time content writer, and if you really want that much content creation. You can compare the pricing we have at Squirrly, with the salaries of web content writers.

Do some research on the people/agency you want to buy articles from

If you decided that this is the right thing to do, the next step is to do some research, and make a list of some potential writers or agencies that offer this type of services. After you’ve made up your mind, and you’ve chosen the person you want to buy articles from, it’s time to publish the first article. Of course, it needs to resonate with your audience, and with your brand. Get feedback from your readers, and see whether they like the content. If they do, then you’ve found your match.

Do you want to win?

For things to work out in a company, it’s all about efficiency, at all levels. That’s why hiring people who are good at certain things is probably the best thing you can do for your business.

Now tell me, does your company need content? If so, is buying articles a solution you care to consider? Do you think that if you buy articles, it will help your company’s development?

Let me know your thoughts on this topic.

If possible I’d like for this article to eliminate some of the prejudice we have integrated into the internet marketing world.

Automatic SEO software, Guest Posts, Social Bookmarking are not necessary a negative aspect of the digital marketing world. The persons that use them are the ones that choose if they are used for good or evil.

Today we will see what Automatic SEO software represents and how you can use it in a positive way to improve the quality of the content you create.

It’s quite funny in my opinion how people have this concept that we necessary have to be the underdog in order to be fair in the SERPs battle. Why do you I say, underdogs?

Well just as Commerce360 has presented in an interview, Google has lots of Ph.D.s to write code and acres of servers to perfect the search algorithm and we think that one marketing person with some spreadsheets can crack their ever changing algorithm.

That is one of the arguments for using automatic SEO software wisely and getting the advantage we need to actually attain our inbound marketing goals. But in the process, we would also become better at creating quality content that our targeted audience will enjoy. Let me explain why and how.

When Automatic SEO software is a good thing

Search Engine Optimization has a lot of aspects that we need to take care of. It takes a team with lots of expertise to actually make a site be fully optimized. There are the On-page Seo elements like the ones that Squirrly SEO live Assistant reminds you of at each post.

But there are other elements that Squirrly even does that you don’t see. It automatically creates your meta-description for each article, it gives you automatic data about the keyword you want to use, it automatic gives you information on how well your articles have done.

I have stressed it a bit on the automatic SEO software there but in the end, all it does it collect data and present in a way that you, the user, can make sense of. And why is that important?

Well in order to make good decisions you need to be informed. Receiving the information isn’t much use if you can not understand what it is telling you.

So what automatic SEO software does it generate the answer based on a big bulk of data in order for you to make sense of that answer and take action accordingly.

Now the important aspect here is for you to decide the action, you are taking. This is the happy-right case, but there is also a way this software can generate the unwanted kind of activities.

What I call a no-brain. In that case based on one or two situation, you generate all your responses. Now when you create an Automatic SEO software you first take into consideration a lot of events that might happen.

You compare your date to values that are changing and try to do as much as possible of the users work. That’s because the software can do this task faster and more accurate but when decisions are involved or creation you let the user do it’s own thing.

You need his input because he can take different decisions based on the same information or data. In the same way the creation process is something that can not be emulated by a software (yet).

So even if you use an Automatic SEO software you need to be active in the creation process and the SEO tasks you are taking care of. These plugins and widgets make your work easier but don’t do it for you.

If you use them in such a way or scale them so hard that it become just a push of a button. You are definitely doing it wrong.

Making it happen with the Automatic SEO software

The main idea is that you should use Automatic SEO software but to use it wisely. In the next lines I will present you some automatic features of Squirrly and where is the input you give to them.

The Squirrly SEO live Assistant it generates a present of list of requirements you need to establish in article in order to make the On-page SEO work. It automatically gives feedback if the task is finished accordingly or not. What you need to do is adjust your content in order to contain these tasks as well.

The negative idea concept of automatic SEO, in this case, would be for the live assistant to add a keyword every 250 characters. It would be out of context it would generate low-quality content for your readers.

The keyword research part of the automatic SEO software gives you information about the keyword but you are still the one that choose what keyword to use. Because you the creator knows what makes sense in a phare and what your audience wants to read about.

The wrong thing would be for the feature to always take the keyword with the highest values and create low-quality content on a high ranking keyword.

The inspiration box generates images, tweets, wikipedia articles and many more based on your keyword. You choose if you use them, where and how in your article. You can read the full articles so you don’t just add a quote out of context.

The wrong thing from an automatic Seo software to do would be to add random tweets in your article based on which were the most popular but with no connection to your article.

Squirrly Snippet generates the meta-information for your article. When it creates your meta description it basically take the first lines of your article and integrates them there.

It also checks that your keyword already appears in that text portion. The wrong thing to do for an automatic Seo software would be to not give you the opportunity to customize your text and would take the same one that uses for the main site for each page, therefore generating duplicates.

Conclusions

So in the end what you have to ask yourself is not if you should or shouldn’t use Automatic SEO software but rather how you use them. Do they generate a higher visibility for your great articles or do they destroy the plus value you want to create ?

Making sure that you deliver great content to people on the internet is the first and most important task you need to full fill the other ones are just to make sure that it spreads to more people that need it.

What has been your exprience with Automatic SEO software and how do you use it ? Tell us your story and any questions you might have in the comment section bellow. 

Lately, I found one very interesting infographic about how the marketing automation trends are going. Our friends from Marketo blog and marketing automation researchers at Software Advice, have a very cute robot to explain how things actually work in the online work with all this task. Here are a few ideas about what people are searching on this topic.

Concrete data about marketing automation

• The majority of buyers (91%) were evaluating marketing automation software for the first time, with 48% of buyers currently managing marketing activities with CRM software.
• Lead nurturing topped the list of desired capabilities (ahead of marketing analytic and lead scoring), with 40% of buyers requesting this feature.
• 50% of buyers had fewer than 50 employees in their company (15% had 500 or more)

Brought to you by Software Advice and Marketo

Meta-tags are an essential part of promoting your content on the web, because they can help you boost your search engine rankings and affect the social media traffic on your site. There are Google’s authorship tags, and Facebook and Twitter have their own social media ones, which increase the amount of traffic you are getting. They are called Facebook OpenGraph and Twitter Cards.

OpenGraph Meta-tags. Introduced by Facebook

They were introduced by Facebook in 2010. Basically, what they do is to allow other websites to become rich “graph” objects and to function as other FB objects. In this way you can share them on FB. So, you control how information travels from a website to FB when you share a page(like it, etc.). The information is sent via OpenGraph meta tags in the <head> part of the website’s code.

How Meta-Tags look like?

You have a meta tag for almost anything:

1. Title:

og:title

This serves the purpose of the meta title tag in your code. It should be appealing, like a good post title. If you don’t provide one, Facebook will use your meta title instead. You should try to keep it between 60 and 90 characters. If your title is longer than 100 characters, Facebook will truncate it to only 88!

Example: <meta property=”og:title” content=”Write your title” />

2. Canonical Url:

og:url

Set the canonical URL for the page you want to share. In other words, you define one page that all your shares will go to. If there is more than one URL for the same content, this comes in handy. Note that the URL provided is not shown on Facebook newsfeed, only the domain is visible.

Example: <meta property=”og:url” content=”http://www.yourpost.com” />

3. Type:

og:type

You can describe the kind of object you are sharing: blog post, video, picture, etc. Examples: Web based:

• website
• article
• blog

Entertainment:

• book
• game
• movie
• food

You can see the full list of types here.

This meta tag is very important for the “Like” button of your page, especially if you have a real-life object: movie, book, etc., because it determines if your content will appear in a user’s interest section of their profile in the event they give you a “Like”.

Whenever you don’t define a type, Facebook will read it as “website” by default. Example: <meta property=”og:type” content=”website” />

4. Description:

og:description

This meta data descriptor is very similar to the meta description tag in HTML. Here you describe your content, but instead of it showing on a search engine results page, it shows below the link title on Facebook.

Unlike a regular meta description tag, it won’t affect your SEO. (So, don’t spend too much time figuring out how to sneak in keywords.) However, it’s a good idea to make it compelling because you want people to click on it. Use about 200 characters.

Example: <meta property=”og:description” content=”Insert your meta description here. Make it interesting and appealing.” />

5. Image:

og:image

Your content becomes more appealing when you join it with an image. This meta tag ensures that a specific thumbnail will be shown when your page is shared. It is helpful to influence click-behavior.

If you are not careful with the og:image, FB may show something irrelevant or an unwanted banner from the page, or nothing at all. The most frequently recommended resolution for an OG image is 1200 pixels x 627 pixels (1.91/1 ratio).

At this size, your thumbnail will be big and stand out from the crowd. Just don’t exceed the 5MB size limit.

Example: <meta property=”og:image” content=”http://www.yourdomain.com/image-name.jpg” />

So, this is what OpenGraph meta-tags look like and how you can add them to your site. Hope you’ve found this useful!

Social media has been and continues to be a vortex of constant changes. Because of that, it can be quite hard to come up with an effective marketing strategy that targets the right networks. Thus, eCommerce strategies often end up getting changed.

Still, the amount of leads that come from Social Networking platforms is too good to pass up. That’s why eCommerce websites have to stay in the loop and react to new trends accordingly.

One of the main ways to promote a company on social media is through ads. However, this is actually a pretty bad marketing strategy in the long run. If you want to know why, read our article on the subject.

Without further ado, let’s see why eCommerce Strategies need to put a lot of emphasis on social media networks.

Social media is a great place to get leads

I think it’s important to understand what a positive influence social media can have on your business. It’s the best place to connect with possible clients and raise brand awareness. You’re achieving success, one post at a time.

Besides the huge number of people who use it, it’s also important to mention that people tend to share links very often on social media. That means that if you promote yourself in a unique and approachable way, you can expect it to snowball by itself because of people sharing your content.

Another interesting and fairly new thing is the shift that consumers are currently going through. They know all too well that companies make great efforts to provide useful information on social media networks.

We can see in this infographic that more and more people started searching for products directly on social media instead of using search engines.

Social networking websites are constantly making changes and adding new features in order to help companies with their promotion strategy.

For example, Facebook has introduced a new feature called “Instant Articles” that helps establish a connection between the companies that publish articles and their readers.

Basically, social media is becoming more and more welcoming for companies that want to do their marketing there. Both the users and the networks themselves are changing in order to create better brand promotion strategies.

eCommerce owners shouldn't ignore social media, because they can't count on walk-in customers. Click To Tweet

The competition is fierce, but the possibilities are worth the hassle

Since social media networks are constantly changing and new features that help sales keep popping up, there are a lot of opportunities for companies that want to make it big.

That also means that your competition will be bringing their A-game.

After all, with such a high chance of a new “big thing” appearing out of nowhere, you can bet that a lot of people, both companies and consumers, will be ready to jump on the bandwagon. If you’re not there in time, you stand to lose a lot of possible buyers, and I really doubt you’d like that.

I’ll give you an example.

A lot of companies are investing in new virtual reality technologies. When that tech becomes available to the general public, we’ll most likely see a whole new way of doing marketing. Maybe you could make your eCommerce website 3D to give people a real-life shopping experience. That sounds really awesome.

I expect big corporations to already be working on promoting themselves in this new medium, but you can be sure that a lot of smaller companies will also get a great deal of success by riding this wave.

It can turn into such an important thing that companies that don’t adopt new ways of promoting themselves will be left in the dust.

Well-researched eCommerce strategies help you understand what to sell and who to sell to

Social media is also the best place to keep your ear to the ground.

A strong presence on social media can be the key to attracting leads. Furthermore, if you have the time, you can actively search for them yourself.

News about what’s popular right now usually first spreads on social media, so it’s also a great place to help you choose new products or services that you could provide.

Social media helps eCommerce businesses find out what is popular, not what could become popular. Click To Tweet

If, for example, a lot of people are talking about some new line of clothing, eCommerce websites that sell clothes will make a lot more money by including those trends in their eCommerce strategies, especially if they place a huge emphasis on the content creation process.

Being active on social media and interacting with your audience is a sure-fire way of knowing what you’re doing right and what you can improve. If you listen to people when they give you feedback, you can be sure that they’ll also listen to you when you give them news and information about your business.
Don’t think it will be a walk in the park though. I’m talking about real interactions, as in your customers say something on your page or about you, and you respond. Don’t think that your clientele will feel particularly connected to you if you take more than a week to answer someone.

The Conclusion

As a closing statement, I’d like to say that you should try to stay up-to-date when it comes to any kind of marketing trends, not just the ones related to social media.

If some relatively unknown or completely new tactic becomes popular overnight, you can be sure that it happened because it works well.

I’m not saying that you should chase every trend out there, but I’m sure that from time to time, something will come that you’ll really like and want to try. It would be a shame to overlook it or find out about it too late. Knowledge is power, right?

Now, we here at Squirrly don’t know everything about everything, but when it comes to content marketing, we really know our stuff.

If you’d like to learn how our agency can help you, you can find out all about it in this article.