Blog : Internet marketing

Social Media Marketing: Hiring In-house Versus an Agency 
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Social Media Marketing: Hiring In-house Versus an Agency 

With everything from your financial transactions to socializing going digital, social media marketing has become the practical approach to business advertising. Using emails, pay per click campaigns, wireless text messages, RSS, blogging, podcasts, broadcasts and more, digital marketing has taken the field of traditional offline marketing by storm.  

If you’re in a private business or an organization, you need to promote and advertise your products or services to grow your business. A common dilemma that you’d be facing is whether you should hire an agency or handle your marketing in-house?  

Hiring In-house Vs. Hiring An Agency Decision 

Social media is undeniably big. It plays a simple yet valuable role in almost everyone’s life, whether they admit it or not. It’s 2017, and you’d be lying if you said you had no contact with social media, directly or indirectly.  

Hiring In-House

Social Media Marketing 

With an in-house team, you know what’s going on instantly, and communication can seem very easy. You can easily conjure a campaign in your mind and have it translated into your marketing.  

You have control over what you want advertised and how it should be done. You picture your own brand, and you know exactly how it should look.  

Also, if there are customer inquiries, feedback, opinions, suggestions and complaints, you get to hear it first hand. This means you can take action that’s required for that particular situation. However, this could also be a problem – you’ll have to be around to advise your employees all the time, which isn’t feasible.  

But, if your in-house employees and you aren’t really familiar with digital marketing strategies, then you’re probably going to have to learn on-the-job. You’re now very likely to end up spending your valuable time acquainting yourself with the best social media practices and working on your own skills, whether it’s writing or advertising.  

Digital Marketing Agencies 

Digital marketing agencies revolve around marketing and advertising. They know how social media works and what the best ways to catch the masses are. Social media agencies also bring the experience of working with a variety of other customers. Your in-house employees may not be very familiar with what really converts on the social media landscape.  

They are experienced and are trained to sell what their clients want them to sell. After hiring an agency, you will start making clear progress from Day 1. Social media agencies may also have tactics and strategies that they know work well for their existing clients. These could be shared with new customers, increasing the value of the relationship further. 

A Mixed Approach  

Another approach is to hire a strategist or a marketing head full-time and work with this one employee to bring onboard a qualified social media company. Your strategist should be capable of assessing a social media agency well so that you eventually pick the right company to conduct your social media for you online. Remember, you are still going to need someone to interact with an agency on a daily basis. 

So coming back to the big question: In-house or Agencies?  

Agencies are professionals, and they work towards achieving the result that you want. Even if you have to spend a little more on agencies, it is a reasonable investment, mainly because that’s their job and they know how to do it. 

The results are inclined to be positive. You’ll get your money’s worth because agencies want to give the best for their clients too. In addition to not having to do the work yourself, you free up valuable resources in your organization, so you can put them to work on different projects altogether. 

With a mixed approach, you can get the best of both worlds. Supervise your marketing strategy direct with your Head of Marketing, without missing out on the executive support, expertise, and ideas that an agency might bring to the table. 

Smartphone Usage Statistics You Should Be Aware Of – Social Media Marketing
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Smartphone Usage Statistics You Should Be Aware Of – Social Media Marketing

A smartphone is simply a mobile phone with an advanced operating system; it possesses the abilities of a personal computer operating system and the features of a mobile. The number of people who own a smartphone is constantly on the rise.

If you’re a business owner today, these are facts you absolutely need to be aware of.

Statista, in a study in 2015, estimated that there were 4.43 billion phone users in 2015. For 2016, it predicted an increase to 4.61 billion. The study further expected this number to reach 4.77 billion in 2017. In 2020, this is expected to increase to 6.1 billion (Ericsson Mobility Report).

Smartphone penetration in the following countries is as follows:

  • South Korea (88%)
  • Australia(77%)
  • Israel(74%)
  • USA(72%)
  • Spain(71%)

Developed Countries

CSomScore reports that the number of smartphone users in the US is 198.5 million.  According to the Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), the number of iPhones in the US is 110 million. This would mean that there are around 250 million mobile subscribers, with iPhones making up 44 percent of the market.

Secondly, it is assumed that figures will touch the 80 percent threshold mark by March. This should increase with time. For populations under 40, penetration rates already exceed 80 and 90 percent.

Developing Countries

  • Turkey (+42 points), Malaysia (+34), Chile (+26) and Brazil (+26) have evidenced an increase of more than 25 points in smartphone ownership rates since 2013.
  • The country that boasts of the highest smartphone ownership rate is South Korea. Tanzania (11%), Uganda (4%) and Ethiopia (4%) are the countries with the lowest smartphone ownership rates.
  • In developing nations the number of people who have internet access has increased. According to a survey in 2014 and 2015, the following countries have shown an increase – Nigeria (+20 points), Ghana (+19) and China (+13).
  • In 20 nations men use the internet more than women. This is especially true in African nations. More men own a smartphone than women. The following countries have shown an increase in the number of men who use a smartphone – Mexico (+16), Nigeria (+13), Kenya (+12) and Ghana (+12).

Top Vendors

The leading 5 smartphone vendors according to IDC for Q4 2015:

  • Samsung (21.4%)
  • Apple (18.7%)
  • Huawei (8.1%)
  • Lenovo (5.1%)
  • Xiaomi (4.6%).
  • Other vendors (42.1% market share)

The leading US vendors (DeviceAtlas statistics for Q4 2015):

  • Apple (57.35%)
  • Samsung (10.36%)
  • Verizon (8.27%)
  • AT&T (4.31%)
  • LG (3.71%)

According to IDC the leading mobile operating systems in Q2 2015:

  • Android (82.8%)
  • iOS (13.9%)
  • Windows Phone (2.6%)
  • BlackBerry OS (0.3%)
  • Other operating systems (0.4%)

Some interesting facts from Google:

  • Users who check their phone on waking up – 68%
  • Users who have their phone beside them daily – 87%
  • Number of times people check their phones per day – 150 times per day
  • Number of minutes spent on a smartphone daily- 177 minutes

The coming decade is definitely going to see a boom in the smartphone market.  We’re undoubtedly  going to see new operating systems as well. It will be a wait that’s definitely worth it.

How To Work Hashtag Magic For Your Business – Social Media Marketing
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How To Work Hashtag Magic For Your Business – Social Media Marketing

Hashtags are words or phrases that are written with a prefix of ‘#’ on social media marketing. It’s usually a single word or short sentence without spaces. It denotes a topic or phenomenon that the content is trying to point at.

Online, hashtags also work as a tag for organizing content into categories. Hashtags are like labels to say what the tagged content is about and what it points towards.

Hashtags are also created to denote an event or topic. It’s used by people who post content referring to the same topic/event. This allows users to network and find each other online through the shared event hashtag.

Furthermore, people looking for information can find all content posted about this event/topic by searching for these hashtags. Hashtags are not just a part of social pop culture, but also serve the essential purpose of classifying and segregating content based on common topics.  

Here Are The Most Popular Hashtags On Instagram

  1. #love – 143,817,139 photos
  2. #instagood – 97,570,915 photos
  3. #me – 80,693,198 photos
  4. #tbt – 75,411,509 photos
  5. #cute – 75,047,873 photos
  6. #photooftheday – 70,995,806 photos
  7. #instamood – 64,925,462 photos
  8. #beautiful – 54,570,181 photos
  9. #picoftheday – 53,776,027 photos
  10. #igers – 52,997,258 photos

How To Use Hashtags For Your Business

Hold Contests And Market Your Business

Create a contest for your target audience to participate. Start this on social media using a hashtag that people will use while participating. This filters out applicants from people who are interested only in your content.

Use The #FF For Networking

This tag means #followfriday. It’s used on Fridays to call out to people you want to network with. Choose the people whose tweets have been valuable to you or could be valuable in future. Connect with them using #FF.

Try Simple Twitter Chatting

You can start a text discussion using a hashtag. This organizes and puts a label to the chats. It helps you recognize the topic of the chat. Assign a catchy and unique hashtag that’s easy to use and clearly conveys your message.

Alternately, instead of creating your own hashtag, you can use an already existing and buzzing hashtag and participate in it. Find popular chat topics that match with your cause and tune into it.

Build your network by meeting Important People

If you are a B2B business, an unconventional way to make use of twitter hashtags is by getting in touch with important people. When businesses organize conferences, they often create a post and assign a hashtag to it. Relevant people will participate prior to the event.

Browsing through Twitter feeds can help you recognize any events around you. By following and mailing the persons who participate on that stream, you can make useful contacts and build your network.

Use Common Word/Topics And Convert Them To Hashtags

There’s an enormous amount of data flooded on social media that you can put to use without taking the trouble to create your own following.

Identify common topics that are generic and directly related to your product or service. Use these words as a hashtag along with your content.The content immediately gets visibility with all the people talking about this topic.

Use Competitive Intelligence Services

You can go the extra mile to make sure your hashtag strategy is working effectively. Competitive intelligence services analyze and compile the hashtags that’ll work best for you.

How to Build a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy for Your Busines
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How to Build a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy for Your Busines

Businesses have evolved greatly over the last century. Earlier, businessmen had to travel from door to door to market their goods and services. Technology paved the way for strategies that revolved around telemarketing, trade shows, print and electronic media advertisements, and emails. However, companies found that these methods were sometimes intrusive, which is what led to the advent of social media marketing.  Currently, social media marketing strategy is essential for every business.

How Effective is Social Media?

‘Social media’ refers to online sites where people connect with other individuals. A recent study conducted by Pew Research Centre found that over 2.1 billion people have social media accounts and 1.7 billion of them are active users. Taking into consideration the reach of these networks, it’s unsurprising that businesses have started using them for marketing purposes.

According to the Burson-Marsteller Fortune 100 Social Statistics Report for 2012, there are more than 10 million social media mentions of Fortune 100 companies. Out of all these companies, 87% use Twitter, 75% use Facebook, and 50% use Google+.

Here are some steps you can take to create a successful social media marketing strategy:

#1: Create Goals

First, you have to zero in on a goal you want to achieve with social media as your marketing tool. In the long run, these objectives will help figure out how successful you are. Ensure that your social media goals go beyond garnering “likes” and “retweets”. It should be able to increase the flow of traffic to your website and generate leads.

#2: Study Your Customers and Competitors

Studying your customers and competitors will give you a good idea of what you need to focus on with regard to social media. Look out for what consumers need and consider the ideas your rivals come up with in order to figure out where you need to change.

#3: Survey Your Current Position

Before you can start creating a marketing strategy, you need to analyse how well you’re using social media right now. Figure out what sites your target audience uses, who is connecting to you through what social media, and how your presence in social media compares to that of your competitors. After this, you should have a clear picture of all the social media accounts the company has, who is in charge of running them, and how they contribute to the company’s success. Make sure you do this audit every few months to keep an eye on your progress.

#4: Construct a Content Blueprint

Social media and content go hand-in-hand; if you don’t have incredible content to back up your social media presence, your plans will go down the drain. There are three important elements to keep in mind for an excellent marketing strategy online. The type of content you use, the time you post it, and the frequency of each post. The best thing about social media is that you have options. This is why you can incorporate popular culture and trends into your strategy. It is important to remember that customers are more likely to connect with you if you use a more conversational tone and try to engage them rather than just inform them.

#5: Allot a Budget and Resources

According to a survey by Google, 30% of respondents say that social media strategy has its own budget. 8.7% even went on to say that this budget is included in traditional marketing media budgets, which include TV, radio, and print marketing campaigns.

Base your budget on your marketing strategy and make a list of tools you will need like social media monitoring and CRM. Also, consider services like outsourcing and advertising, and add them to the budget. Include an annual projected cost, so that you can have a clear picture of how much you invest in marketing annually.

A social media strategy isn’t set in stone. As you move forward, make sure you re-analyze your strategy to change tactics that don’t work. Remember, you need to adapt quickly to survive and evolution is a key component to moving forward.

5 Tips To Make Your Social Media Marketing More Appealing
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5 Tips To Make Your Social Media Marketing More Appealing

You’re probably aware of the impact that social media can have, especially when promoting your business online. With the heavy influence that social media marketing can have, it’s all the more important for you to make your posts on these sites as appealing as possible. With these 5 simple tips and tricks, ensure that you reach the majority of your target audience among the 2.1 billion users of social media across the world!

Why You Need To Make Your Posts Appealing

The internet has enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity—42% of the 7.21 billion strong human population are now internet users. Internet-based services bring many of our daily activities onto a single device, and we can thus multitask much more efficiently than our predecessors.

However, this comes at a price—the average human has a much smaller attention span. Our attention span is now smaller than that of the famously absent-minded goldfish! We pay attention to things for a mere 8 seconds, compared to the goldfish’s 9.

What this means for your social media posts is that there is a much higher need to captivate and hold your readers’ attention. Only if you have their interest piqued, will you be able to get your information across, and subsequently market your company or sell your product.

How To Captivate Your Audience

Explained in 5 simple tips:

Social Media Marketing Toronto

1. Always Use Images

Though the saying, “Content is king”, still holds good, the impact of an image in providing a better appeal to your post is simply undeniable. There’s no doubt that your page will be more attractive if you’ve added an interesting and thought-provoking image to it. These images can be anything from a relatable funny picture to an interesting graphical representations of your data, also called infographics.

This can be put down to two reasons- images have a strong emotional factor, and can thereby attract us by involving our emotions. Also, images can provide a much-needed break from ‘content overload’ caused by too many lines of relatively boring text.

2. Mix It Up

The type of content that works varies depending on your audience and latest social trends. There is no one go-to content type that appeals to all audiences, so feel free to mix it up and post various types of content. You may use link posts, long narratives, and various other forms like image posts, videos, and question-answer interactive sessions.

The key is to find out what content types best suit your audience and what they respond to. Once you have an idea of what your target audience wants, you will be able to create truly compelling posts.

Social Media Marketing Toronto

3. CTA – Call To Action

However engaging your content may be, its effectiveness can be improved by adding what is called a “Call To Action” (CTA.) After all, when talking about business, you’re on the quest for leads, which are ways of getting the customer interested in your business. This may be through offering free e-books for download, getting customers to sign up for your blog, or even getting them to tweet what they just read.

The Call To Action is a proven method of getting your audience involved in your blog/social media feed, and you’d do well to utilize its potential appeal.

4. Connect On an Emotional Level

It is a well-established fact that human beings respond better to emotions. As far as social media posts go, emotionally provoking posts—whether positive or negative—get the maximum attention. As readers get involved on a personal level, they are much likelier to share posts with friends, tweet them to larger audiences, and spread the word—all of which ensure that your content reaches a large audience.

Even if you’re not posting about famine in Africa or your team winning a world cup, your posts can still have a better connect with your audience by framing it right. It’s as simple as including content that can bring a smile or create a genuine emotional response, however small.

5. Engaging Conversation

By engaging your audience in a conversation, you can easily connect with them, and be attuned to their likes and needs. To create a post of this type, all you have to do is initiate a conversation. For instance, you could address a question to your readers and ask them to reply in the comment section, or encourage them to submit pictures regarding a certain topic or interest.

When you get your audience involved in a conversation, their focused attention is almost guaranteed; this is the power of two-way communication!

That’s all there is to it—you can make your social media posts more appealing by using images, writing emotionally engaging content, showing variety, and using calls to action. Use these simple tips and get your post viral!

The Basics Of Content Marketing For Every Mobile Game Developer
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The Basics Of Content Marketing For Every Mobile Game Developer

If you’re a game developer, hats off to you—you’ve already mastered the relatively complex parts of coming up with a concept, coding your game, and creating a product. Watching your baby come to life with the characters, worlds, and levels you created can be gratifying in itself.

However, with poor content marketing, your potentially awesome and popular game can get swept under the rug. Just ask any of the game devs whose great products didn’t make it because of inadequate/inexpert marketing. Contrary to the garden-variety developer’s opinion, marketing is crucial to the life of your game, and is as important as the quality of the game itself.

Let’s take a look at some of the basic marketing techniques you can use to get the audience talking about your game, downloading it, and subsequently creating enough attention to make it a complete hit.

Use Social Media To Create Awareness

It’s absolutely important for you to have an active social media presence. This is because sales of games on the mobile platform are hugely influenced by their presence on social sites.

Facebook is the undisputed king of social media networks, and you’d best make full use of it to ensure that you capitalize on this huge potential audience. You can join groups like Indie Game Developers, Indie Game Players And Developers, and UNITY3D Game Developers.

When posting in groups, make sure that you don’t commit the faux pas of posting in every group you’re in. Nothing says “desperate/lazy” like posting in irrelevant groups.

Take advantage of this free advertising medium when launching your app. Most importantly, don’t ever leave your page inactive; this will cause your brand to lose credibility in the eyes of your audience.

Additionally, Twitter is a great tool to reach your audience, engage with them, and answer questions, in addition to marketing your game. Getting a celeb to re-tweet your game-relevant content is a great business tactic. Always make sure you use relevant hashtags here, using tools like SproutSocial and Hashtagify.me. Hashtags like #gamedev, #freetoplay, and #indiedev can come in handy.

Don’t miss out on the audience offered by Google+ and LinkedIn, and make use of groups on these sites.

Gaming Reviews Are Da Bomb!

Nothing can bring as much positive attention to your game as a great review can. Gamers love gaming websites and communities. They look for the latest content in games and related topics. Getting your game onto such media is essential, and is crucial in deciding whether it’ll reach an audience.

Get in touch with popular game bloggers, youtube reviewers, and established gaming media.

Word Of Mouth

This is a medium whose magnitude we often don’t realize. Word of mouth has been instrumental, in certain cases, in bringing games to the mainstream audience. Remember Flappy Bird?

You probably remember your friends telling you how ridiculously difficult it was. There’s no source more credible than someone you know, and before long, you were probably playing it (and swearing) a lot.

You’ve probably installed a number of apps based on recommendations made by your friends; imagine if that happened to your game! This is a vital means of spreading the word about your game; go out and tell people about your game, and get your friends involved too. Your app might just become the next flappy bird!

Take Advantage Of YouTube’s New Dedicated Gaming Site

As a response to gaming video-dedicated sites like Twitch, YouTube has launched its own dedicated spin-off. YouTube’s most-followed user, PewDiePie, is a gamer as well. With an audience that spends billions of hours watching videos each month, this isn’t something to be ignored.

This promises a high discoverability factor, and you’d do well to take advantage of this free medium to show the world your product.

Get The Press Involved

If word of mouth can get so much attention, imagine how much attention making the news can get. You can get features on the local radio station, TV channel, or newspaper. A headline like “Local dev gets featured on the top developers list” could bring your game a lot of attention, given the expanse of the audience such media can reach.

Make sure to get in touch with relevant communities—for example, when promoting a fighting game, you can reach out to WWE and UFC fan communities.

When emailing journalists, you need to know that they receive a lot of emails, so make sure that yours is short and attention-grabbing. Keep a press kit ready; this is a sort of portfolio of your game, highlighting its specialties and USP.

These are key business tactics to ensure that your game gets across to your audience; ensure that you utilize channels like social media, reviews, word of mouth, YouTube, and the press. Make sure that you use these to your advantage, and become the most successful game dev you can be!

Facebook Marketing – Get More Likes On Your Facebook Page
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Facebook Marketing – Get More Likes On Your Facebook Page

It doesn’t matter if you’re using Facebook marketing to increase your brand’s online presence or if you’re an individual using Facebook as a social tool. Facebook is the king of social networks, with 4.5 billion likes being generated every single day.

There are certain techniques you can use to ensure that you maximize the likes on your posts and updates and strengthen the online presence of your brand.

If you’re an individual using Facebook simply for social interactions, the same techniques essentially still hold good for your personal usage.

Follow these 6 simple tips to ensure that those likes keep coming in!

Facebook marketing

Post Loads Of Photos And Videos

Since people are visually oriented by nature, this is a great idea when you’re trying to garner as many likes as possible. Think of it this way—if you could either post a 1000-word status update on a great pizza you had or upload a great-looking image of the same pizza, which one do you think would gather more likes? |

The picture, you say? Yes, of course!

But before posting pictures on your wall, make sure you add a witty and intriguing caption that will quickly engage people’s attention. For instance, “This guy’s pizza-making skills are out of this world!”

Use tags when appropriate—people tend to like seeing pictures of themselves, and when their involvement in the content of a post is acknowledged.

However, make sure you’re not spamming people’s timelines with tags simply to gain visibility. This is embarrassing, and is bad for your credibility.

Short And Sweet Is The Way To Go

When writing a Facebook post, it is necessary to keep your posts short and to the point. With instant accessibility to a variety of content, your average internet audience is, to put it bluntly, very short on attention.

People don’t want a long narrative on your day at the hairdresser’s—an anecdote about an incident that happened there would be better appreciated than the longer, more detailed story. Content consumers want entertainment, and they want it right now.

Since you’re not technically limited to a character count in your Facebook posts—unlike Twitter— you are the sole judge and decider of your posts’ length, and you’d do well to keep it concise and readable.

Nourish People’s Sense Of Importance

What makes the internet so awesome is that everyone can publish their opinion. Give your viewers a chance to voice their thoughts by regularly asking them questions. When people see that you value their opinions, they tend to respond to your posts and thus follow your posts with more interest than usual.

Abstain from asking generic questions that can easily be googled, and ones that are subject to opinions, like “What is the best way to make eggnog?”!

In fact, all you have to do is make sure that your post provokes a strong response and with a little luck, the internet will overwhelm you with likes.

Timing Matters

Common opinion will tell you that you need to post when there’s maximum activity on your network. This is a misconception.

You need to check and see what time works best for you. To help you create a unique posting schedule, there’s nothing better than simple, trial and error.

The frequency of your posts also matters; posting sporadically is a bad idea, but so is putting up a post every 5 minutes. According to studies carried out by Kissmetrics, 1-2 posts a day make for 40% more engagement and by extension, more likes.

Activity Matters Too

Your activities on Facebook, apart from posting, also have an effect on your overall appeal, and therefore your posts’ likes. When you share an article written by someone, Facebook does you the favor of letting that person know, boosting the potential for you to connect with them and their audience.

Facebook Plugins On Your Blog

These can come in handy when you publish articles on your blog, giving people the opportunity to like and share your content as they’re consuming it. Given the fleeting amount of attention your typical internet audience pays you, this is a good way to canvass all potential likes.

To summarize, all you need to do is include more visual content, post brief, engaging material at appropriate intervals, and stay active on your blog and facebook. By following these tips, you can ensure that your content gets the attention it deserves.

6 ways of developing a successful online marketing strategy on a tight budget
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6 ways of developing a successful online marketing strategy on a tight budget

You have a great start-up idea that you’ve successfully managed to jump start. And, you’re a visionary who’s looking forward to placing their product in the market. However, you have a tiny constraint when it comes to budget and you don’t want to throw in all your money into marketing. So, what steps can you take when it comes to implementing a successful online marketing strategy on a tight budget?

With the internet at your disposal, digital platform is the way to go for strategizing your online marketing process. It’s extremely important to know beforehand who your product is targeting, the USP of your product, and the marketing strategy so that you can make maximum impact and push your business ahead.

Here is a nifty list of ways to launch your dream project online, especially if you’re on a shoestring budget.

1.    Choose an appropriate social media platform

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With the number of internet users on the rise, it is pertinent to choose relevant platforms to promote your product. Recently, users have become aware of where to look for specific products and how to analyze them. Therefore, a background research about your consumers becomes important.
Depending on the product you’re selling, choose an appropriate social media platform. For example, if you specialize in photography or you’re running a food business, Instagram and Facebook are some of the best options open to you.

2.    Do a thorough research and background check

Since there are many similar-themed online marketing strategies, you would need to ensure that your product or service offers something that is unique from other products. A thorough research about your product, market, and target audience would let you know of the current trends, likes, and dislikes of your consumers. This will eventually help promote your product and put you ahead of the race.

3.    Create your brand name

Once you’ve followed the top two steps, it is time to create yourself a brand name. A unique name would not only help you stand out among many others but will also stick with you for a really long time. Your brand name would come up on social networks and online searches. Once you’ve established your brand name, selling and popularizing your product becomes easier.

4.    Search engine optimization (SEO)

Usage of suitable keywords would ensure that your website shows up among the first few results when users type in relevant words. Though the process of choosing appropriate keywords could be cumbersome, it’s worth the time and effort since your website will get a boost post the SEO process. Effective search engine marketing would also ensure that you get recognition and your website’s visibility is increased on popular search engines.

5.    Blogging

One of the best ways to connect to your potential customers is to give information about your product through engaging blog posts that can be impersonal yet descriptive. When you get an idea about the consumers’ needs, you can build your future marketing strategies accordingly. This will propel your product among online consumers.

6.    Follow up and feedback

Once you’ve set up your social media brand as well as finished your background research, it’s time to get real-time feedback from those who have been using your product. And therefore, one of the most important online marketing strategies is to ensure that you create channels for appropriate feedback. Also, follow up with your audiences by putting up email subscriptions and social media links. It not only provides a broad picture of how your product is perceived by the audience but also, what changes you can undertake for better performance and customer retention.
Entrepreneurship is one of the best ways of making your presence felt in the world. And with these easy and budget-friendly online marketing tips, you’re sure to grace success in no time at all.

Master Instagram with 6 Handy Tips
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Master Instagram with 6 Handy Tips

It can be said quite confidently that Instagram is an absolute phenomenon in the world of social media. Created in 2010 by Stanford graduate duo—Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger—this free mobile app skyrocketed to 100 million users before Facebook acquired it in 2012. Instagram is immensely popular around the world; according to a post on the company’s blog, it now has 400 million users.

There are some handy tricks that, when used effectively, can help you become an instant star on this network. Let’s take a look at six of these, and how you can use these to hashtag your way to insta-stardom!

When Editing Posts, Take Your Time

When you’ve just taken a breathtaking photo that you absolutely need to share immediately, hold off for a bit. Consider your various editing options, and make the appropriate touch-ups.

Maybe you can use another app, or run it through your desktop’s image-editing software. Upload your picture only after you’re completely confident that you have the best version of it. This can make a major difference, so far as the likes and impact it can earn are concerned.

Master Instagram With These 6 Handy Tips

Add a Touch of Class with Text Overlays

Text can be the missing element from your image uploads that were just short of perfectly classy and uber cool. Overlays can add an element of cool to your already beautiful images.

This opens up a number of cool possibilities, as you can add anything from inspiring quotes to funny and eye-catching captions. Using one of the many versatile and easy-to-use apps, you can add the text you want, and just the way you want it, in a matter of seconds.

Some of the more popular text overlay apps include Over and Mystic.

Brightness Adjustments

The brightness tool has a significance that is completely missed by the average user, and you might be missing out on this handy tactic as well. The built-in brightness settings on the Instagram app can make for a handy way to improve the photo without significantly changing your original photo.

In fact, a number of bloggers use only the brightness and saturation settings to fulfil their editing needs.

Don’t Overuse #Hashtags

The hashtag is a handy way to make sure your photo reaches the audience it was intended for. However, a surprisingly large number of people are unaware of this basic fact. Make sure you don’t join the hashtag abuse brigade, peppering each post with irrelevant hashtags.

Unlike twitter, you aren’t technically limited to a certain number of hashtags; simply make sure that you don’t use hashtags that don’t make any sense in the context of your picture.

A definite no-no is using hashtags in front of every word in a sentence; this, in addition to making no sense, is also incredibly annoying to your audience. For example, don’t say “#i #just #love #sunsets.”

Don’t Forget Your Profile Page

When new people want to make a decision on whether to follow you, the first thing they see is your profile page. Make sure you give them enough good reasons to hit that “follow” button. You’ll need to post some information about yourself, your work, and the kind of photos your audience can expect.

Make sure you use the “website” space to post links to your twitter page, your blog feed, and/or your portfolio.

Once you’ve used this to sell yourself to your potential followers, sit back and become an Insta-celebrity!

Master Instagram With These 6 Handy Tips

Make Use of Instagram’s Filters

Instagram comes pre-loaded with a number of handy filters that can help to make your images better-looking, when used tastefully. Try using each one, as well as a combination of multiple filters, to achieve the best version of your picture.

Taste and restraint are key here; randomly added filters aren’t a good idea. Ultimately, this is a matter of your opinion and no one else’s. If you want to achieve popularity, the tried-and-tested methods are generally the safest options.

You, and your choices, ultimately decide the level of popularity you achieve on this popular social medium. Try and incorporate these tips and tactics into your Instagram game and watch as the likes start increasing. Remember the hashtag rule, use text overlays, and use filters on your way to Insta-popularity!