Author: pateldip9000@gmail.com

  • The Top 3 Benefits of Implementing a Video Marketing Campaign

    The Top 3 Benefits of Implementing a Video Marketing Campaign

    There are endless benefits that can stem from an effective video marketing campaign. It’s no secret that video is dominating the Internet. Consider the following statistics.

    • 87 percent of online marketers use video content.
    • YouTube has more than a billion users.
    • 45 percent of users watch more than an hour of social media videos every week.
    • More than 500 million hours of video is watched on YouTube daily.

    Read on to learn three ways that video marketing can boost your online marketing efforts.

    Grow Your Business

    Video is the perfect tool to help you explain your products or services to potential customers. The majority of users are more likely to purchase a product online after viewing a demonstration video. Not only does this type of video help potential customers understand what it is you offer; it establishes a sense of reassurance that inspires them to make a purchase. Another way brands can improve their marketing results is by embedding videos within their website’s landing pages. Embedded videos can persuade users to stay on a web page for a longer period of time, causing them to take in more information and interact with the content.

    Better Communication With Your Audience

    Inflating your online “footprint” through video marketing will help you gain the trust of your potential clients. Video is an effective communication tool because it can inspire users to ask useful questions about your product or service, giving you an opportunity to foster a personal connection with your followers. This type of communication can help you secure customer dependability. You will have an easier time demonstrating your awareness of your audience.

    Improve Your Online Presence

    Video is responsible for more than 70 percent of Internet traffic. That is why that it’s crucial for your organization or business to have a strong online presence. If you’re looking to start achieving a stronger presence, publishing and/or sharing video content will help. It allows companies to reach a larger audience.

    Implementing a video marketing campaign can significantly enhance your brand’s success online. Increased exposure, trust and revenue are good examples of how video can help your overall marketing strategy. Now is a great time to begin integrating video into your digital campaign.

  • The Importance of Diversity in the Workplace

    The global market is emerging at a rapid pace, and because of this, workplace demographics are shifting. Many colleges and universities, such as the historically-black-university Kentucky State University, have been recognized as leaders in the promotion of diverse campuses, as it creates a space for learning and respecting people from different backgrounds, which students might not experience in their hometowns.

    Just as harboring a welcoming and diverse student body is becoming more and more necessary for universities, for businesses to be successful in the modern age, they need to employ a diverse workforce. Committing to diversity not only builds respect amongst your employees, but there are tangible objectives met within a different enterprise. Here are the top four reasons why a diverse workplace is highly beneficial to your business.

    It Helps Build Mutual Respect

    A diverse workplace encourages healthy connections amongst all employees. Employees from different backgrounds come with varying styles of work and experiences, which can help build a solid foundation for connection. Employees will recognize the strengths of their coworkers more so in a diverse work environment than a homogenous one. This helps create an ideal environment that promotes a respectful exchange of ideas and collaboration.

    It Empowers Marginalized Groups

    What makes the team diverse? Often the members of a different work environment are from marginalized groups, and as such, have experienced sexism, racism, or any form of discrimination on behalf of race, religion, disabilities, gender, or sexual orientation. Discrimination in the workplace is illegal, but it still persists. When talented workers are discriminated against, this impacts the community and can have severe negative implications on the economy. Fostering a welcoming environment for any person of color, gender, and sexuality is vital for any company to survive in our modern climate.

    It Reduces Conflict

    Conflict occurs in any workplace. Employees who work in a diverse work environment, however, can reduce the amount of conflict or provide a swift resolution. In various workplaces, the workers understand their differences, but they also see each other’s similarities. This is extremely helpful when working towards a common objective because, with shared respect, it can result in a quick resolution for any conflicts that arise.

    Quick conflict resolution helps reduce liabilities in the workplace, especially if complaints would arise. Preservation of relationships and celebrating the differences between everyone’s workstyle and personal life creates a more productive work environment.

    It Helps Strengthen Your Business Image

    A diverse company creates an excellent reputation for itself. And when your company has the right image, this leads to higher profits and more promising opportunities. Flourishing businesses have devoted efforts to promoting diversity both in the organization and outside the company. Marriot Hotels, for example, has committed to fostering an inclusive environment in their offices and sites by incentivizing programs and initiatives to promote diversity and inclusion. They also partner with businesses and organizations operated by various minorities and for the promotion of a more diverse and welcoming world.

    When a company is known for its inclusion and diverse group of workers, it attracts more talent and qualified workers. This also helps build more loyal customers, which at the end of the day, is the best thing a business can achieve.

  • 6 Ways Email Marketers Can Comply With The CAN-SPAM Act

    6 Ways Email Marketers Can Comply With The CAN-SPAM Act

    CAN-SPAM stands for “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing”. George W Bush signed the CAN-SPAM Act into law in December 2003.

    The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 established the first national standards for the sending of commercial emails. In short, the Act gives email recipients in the United States a legal right to stop commercial advertisers and solicitors from emailing them.

    According to the Bureau of Consumer Protection, CAM-SPAM covers all commercial messages, which – as defined by law – includes any electronic email message that promotes a commercial service or product.

    Penalties for Non-Compliance

    As an email marketer there are three specific areas in which your emails must comply: content, unsubscribing and sending practices. Non-compliance of the CAN-SPAM Act can be costly, with each and every email in violation of the Act being subject to penalties of more than $40 thousand.

    Practically, How Does This Law Affect Business Owners and Marketers?

    The CAN-SPAM Act was designed to set email boundaries. As a US-based business, you must stop sending emails to any recipient that requests you to stop. The Act sets standards for commercial emailing, often referred to as ‘spam’.

    The CAN-SPAM Act differentiates between a transactional email and a commercial email. There is no need to worry about CAN-SPAM compliance if you are emailing an automated purchase receipt or responding to a customer service enquiry. On the other hand, emails containing customer solicitation or marketing information must comply.

    As an Email Marketer, How Can You Comply With CAN-SPAM?

    No. 1: Your Email Must Clearly State The Identity Of Your Organization

    When sending commercial emails, marketers often pretend to be a different or more prominent company or organization. They do this in order to improve the chance the recipient opens the message. Not only must your email accurately identify the business or staff member responsible for the message; your routing information (which includes the originating email address and domain name), and the From, To, and Reply-To information must be accurate.

    No. 2: The Subject Line Can’t Be Deceptive

    The subject line of your email must be an accurate reflection of the email’s content. If your email’s subject line discloses an ‘Inspirational Quote of the Day’ within the email, that is what your email must feature. The actual terminology of CAN-SPAM states that your subject line must be truthfully and accurately reflect its email content. The information can’t be misleading.

    No. 3: If The Message You Are Conveying Is An Advertisement, This Information Must Be Disclosed Clearly And Conspicuously

    You must make it clear that your email is an advertisement within its body. This can be achieved using a range of methods. You could insert small print at the bottom of your email, for example, stating the email is an electronic advertisement.

    No. 4: Make Sure Your Recipients Know Where You Your Business is Physically Located

    You must include a valid, physical postal address in each and every commercial email you send out. This address may be a post office box registered with the United States Postal Service, your organization’s current street address, or a private mailbox registered with your business.

    No. 5: Let Your Email Recipients Know How to Opt-Out from Future Emails

    CAN-SPAM requires you to offer users directions on unsubscribing from your emails. This information is typically placed at the bottom of an email. The opt-out information must be clear and conspicuous. Ensure that opt-out requests will not be blocked by your spam filter. A user must be able to recognize and easily find the opt-out information. In addition, the ‘universal unsub rule’ must be adhered to, which allows email recipients to unsubscribe from all future marketing emails from you.

    No. 6: Promptly Attend to Opt-Out Requests

    An email recipient’s opt-out request must be processed within 10 business days. Keep in mind that you are not allowed to…

    • Charge an “unsubscribe” fee.
    • Ask the email recipient for any personal information other than his/her email address.
    • Ask the recipient to take any further steps beyond sending a reply email or going to a single webpage to unsubscribe.

    Once an email recipient has unsubscribed from your email messages, you must not transfer or sell their email address, even if it is in a mailing list format. The exception to this rule is that email addresses can be transferred to a company you’ve employed to help you comply with CAN-SPAM Act. Any contractor employed to handle online marketing or advertising must also abide by CAN-SPAM. The contracting company is liable for all violations.

    No. 7: Be Aware of What Others (like Your Marketing Agency) Are Doing on Your Behalf

    According to CAN-SPAM, you are legally responsibility for your email marketing, even if you employ a separate company to manage your campaign. Be aware of what anyone sending emails on your behalf is doing. You are liable for the actions of anyone you authorize or hire to send marketing emails on your behalf.

    In Conclusion

    Your business will be CAN-SPAM compliant if you follow the above seven guidelines. Third-party email platform providers typically try to automate any of the above criteria that can be automated. We strongly suggest you check your marketing emails before sending to ensure they meet all the CAN-SPAM criteria.

    References:

    “CAN-SPAM Compliance: What Is CAN-SPAM & Why Does It Matter?” What Is Email Spam?, emailmarketing.comm100.com/email-marketing-tutorial/can-spam-compliance.aspx.

  • 11 Killer SEO Tools That Will Boost Your Productivity

    11 Killer SEO Tools That Will Boost Your Productivity

    For a new business, search engine optimization (SEO) is an absolute must. It can help you attract traffic to your website via improved search engine visibility. In addition, it can help improve your marketing campaigns build your brand.

    SEO is an important piece of any online marketing strategy. For small businesses that do not possess the resources of their larger competitors, the reality is they may struggle keeping up if they do not devote enough towards their SEO campaign. There are many tools available online that can help with this. Here is a list of SEO tools that are worth your attention.

    Raven Tools

    Raven Tools was created by SEO experts to help other SEO experts, so you can be sure that it will give you all the information you need. It collects data from many sources, such as Google Analytics, Adwords, and other tools we will mention further down on our list. Then it gives a report on your overall SEO performance. This includes content management, backlink reporting and social media monitoring. This tool will provide a report on your competition, just by entering in the URL of their website. You can use this information to track where you are strong, and where you could use some improvement.

    SEMrush

    SEMrush will help you keep track of your competitors, and see where you rank among them. It collects information from multiple sources, not the least of which are Google and Bing, and provides a report on where your competitors rank. It will allow you to see how effective certain keywords are for any website. The database is constantly being updated, so you can track all of this information in real time, allowing your SEO strategy to adapt with new information. It can track the performance of any ads you’ve paid for, so you know what’s working and what isn’t at all times.

    WordTracker

    Keywords, and using the right ones, is incredibly important to your SEO strategy. WordTracker tracks over 160 million of them, along with another 95 million from SEMrush. You can enter a seed word, such as the product you sell, and WordTracker will then give you up to 1000 potential keywords for you to use. Along with this, it will tell you how many others are using each keyword, and what the value has been for it so far. Along with those suggestions, it can suggest other keywords from similar topics that might be useful. WordTracker will provide you with options for finding backlinks, and ranks those options based on several factors to give you the strongest links possible. One of the neatest features is that it will search the web for everywhere that is linking to you, and will delete links that aren’t helping your SEO. Bad links can affect your ranking, and they can be nearly impossible to sift through, so WordTracker can save you a ton of time.

    SEO PowerSuite

    SEO PowerSuite contains four tools that you can buy as a package or a la carte. Rank Tracker will analyze all of your keywords and tell you where your website ranks for each of them. It’s automatic, so once you’ve entered your keywords, you can let it do its job. It will give you suggestions of the most effective keywords to optimize for, so you can be efficient with your efforts. Website Auditor does just what its name implies. It audits your website for errors and issues and gives you a report giving you suggestions for how to fix them. LinkAssistant scours the web to find you partners to create the strongest backlinks possible. Finally, SEO Spyglass will allow you to “spy” on the competition by analyzing their backlinks and how they are performing. You can’t put a price on knowing what the enemy is doing, and adjusting your strategy accordingly.

    Investing in software when you have a small business, especially if you have a limited budget, can be a hard decision. Using these tools to help you get the most bang for your buck.

    Google’s SEO Tools

    Google is the grand-daddy of all search engines, so why not use the tools it provides to help you get the most out of your SEO efforts? For instance, Adwords can help you select the most effective keywords based on current searches. There is Google Analytics, which will tell you if those keywords are being successful at producing traffic for your site. Google Trends provides you with information on current search trends and history. Search Console generates reports and data that will help you see where your SEO efforts could use improving.

    Übersuggest

    Sometimes, the hardest part of the SEO process is finding the right keywords. Übersuggest, can give you thousands of potential keyword options. All you have to do is enter in a search term, and it will provide you with different keywords and phrases that might work for you. For instance, if you sell widgets, you can enter “widgets” into the Übersuggest, and it will provide suggestions such as “widgets art”, or “widgets and doohickeys” or any other combination that might be relevant.

    Quick Sprout

    Not everyone can hire SEO consultants. Quick Sprout is designed to be that consultant for your small business. All you have to do is input your URL, and the program will analyze your site and provide suggestions for improving your SEO. There are many factors that it will consider, and it will provide advice on any or all of them. It will give you an SEO score, so you’ll have a baseline to work from going forward.

    RankSense

    SEO can be a lot of work, and a lot of monitoring and keeping on top of things. RankSense aims to help ease those burdens. It monitors your site 24/7,will catch issues right away, and will provide recommendations immediately to help improve your SEO. It can optimize all of your pages, which means it will save you massive amounts of time if you are currently manually optimizing every page of your website.

    Scoop.it

    Content marketing can be a big part of not just SEO, but of your business’s branding strategy. Scoop.it will help curate effective SEO content for you to post on your site, social media accounts, or blogs. This is perfect for those small businesses that do not have the manpower to be able to produce enough of their own content.

    Moz Pro

    When it comes to SEO, everything about your online presence is covered. That includes your social media, your website, and everything else. Moz Pro allows you to monitor everything by logging into a single service. It will track everything about you online, including links to your page, social media campaigns, brand awareness, SEO, and content marketing. It can provide data to show how you are comparing to the competition. It can save you a lot of time and energy from having to log in and use several different accounts.

    Screaming Frog SEO Spider Tool

    This tool can audit all of your webpages to check for any errors or problems that can be fixed. Correcting errors can be a tremendous boost to your SEO. Things that might hurt your SEO that may be difficult to detect include server errors, blocked URLs, content that’s duplicated, and broken links. Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider Tool will recommend any changes to page titles and descriptions if they are not a good length. It will integrate with Google Analytics and produce reports on errors so you have a quick reference guide to what you need to work on.

    If you are not familiar with it, SEO can be an intimidating concept. There is so much to consider, and so much to track and monitor. Luckily, there are tools available to help you get the most out of your SEO efforts. Use the ones that are right for you, and reap the benefits.

  • What is SEOquake & How Will it Enhance My SEO Strategy?

    What is SEOquake & How Will it Enhance My SEO Strategy?

    As a website design professional, search engine optimization (SEO) is an element that you regularly have in running through your mind as you construct websites, publish content and develop brands for yourself or your clients. There is no shortage of analytical tools in existence that accumulate data and analyze metrics for your website. Keeping track of so much information from numerous sources can be overwhelming to say the least.

    If you manage multiple websites or you simply wish to check your own site’s metrics, SEOquake has built an extension to assist you. Compatible with Firefox, Google Chrome and Opera, the extension will give you a detailed look at a sites’ latest analytics from several of the industry’s most recognized ranking and metric resources. You can view information sourced from SEMrush, Bing, Alexa rank, and Google. You can acquire information relating to your social media presence as well.

    SEOquake can generate a detailed website SEO audit, giving you the information needed to diagnose problems that will threaten your search engine presence. A comparison tool is also available. This will give you a very useful side-by-side snapshot of how well your site is optimized vs. its competition. This information can then be exported via a .csv file.

  • Google Launches College Search Knowledge Panel

    Google Launches College Search Knowledge Panel

    Chances are your rising high school senior is looking at potential colleges for the next year. This is a good thing. Planning for the future is a very important task, and one that is not to be taken lightly.

    Google has launched a new feature designed specifically for this purpose. Those who use the search engine for any topic related to post-secondary education and training will discover that Google offers additional ways to “look into educational options while finding a college that meets your needs”.

    This new tool allows users to view more information than simply the school’s website. Included is the display of cost for both students and parents, expected costs after using student aid and breakdowns based on household income.

    Potential students will have an easier time finding graduation rates and expected income after ten years post enrollment. This feature is designed to help students see the potential outcomes of attending that specific college or university. Other information they can find includes enrollment rates, the breakdown of the student body, notable alumni and schools that have similar demographics.

    The information featured in Google’s college search knowledge panel tool is provided by IPEDS, the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard and Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. Google collaborated with education researchers, nonprofit organizations, high school counselors and collegiate admissions professionals for a whole experience for the post-secondary education Google end user. The focus of Google’s new function will be a continuing improvement on access to information about post-secondary educational opportunities.

    References:

    Google Adds College Search Knowledge Panel.” Search Engine Land, 13 June 2018, searchengineland.com/google-adds-college-search-knowledge-panel-300080.

  • How Google Analytics is Changing in the Face of GDPR

    How Google Analytics is Changing in the Face of GDPR

    Recently, the European Union changed their laws around data storage. This has fundamentally changed how many businesses and organizations in the EU do business, but has wider reaching effects than that. Because the marketplace is now worldwide, these new regulations will affect people all over the world. Google is adapting as well, which means you need to know how it can affect you.

    Information being stored by Google now expires after a certain time. This shouldn’t affect many of the analytics that you currently use. If you are tracking browsing habits, age, gender, and other related interests, then this information will continue being kept since it does not identify the user.

    Some types of analytics, however, are not as anonymous. There are advanced analytics tools that will tie that anonymous information to social media and other tools that can make it possible to identify a user. These connections will be severed once that expiry date passes.

    Are You Using These Tools?

    Sometimes, you may not know if you are using tools that can identify users. To find out, check out what Google tools you are using. Click to “Audience/User Explorer.” Once there, you will see information on the people using a specific site. If, after you click on the ID numbers of your visitors, you only see a placeholder image, then you probably are not using a tool that logs personal information. If you see a real image, and even a link or a bio from a social media page, then your analytics are going deeper. Just know that this information will be gone when it expires.

    This expiration date is 26 months after information is logged. If you are not located in the EU, you can set this date to be longer so you can retain the information. The GDPR will have an affect on businesses outside of the EU, but with a little knowledge and know-how, the impact should be minimal.

  • The Impact of Cloud Computing on Web Design

    The Impact of Cloud Computing on Web Design

    Cloud computing offers a small business the remarkable opportunity to make the most of modern technology and improve its bottom line. Are you planning to build or improve your company’s website? This article explains why business owners should consider cloud computing during the web design process.

    Enhanced Productivity

    Cloud computing can drastically enhance a business’s productivity level by reducing the time it takes to complete processes. Web design professionals can dedicate more time to proactive responsibilities. They will no longer have to deal with tedious IT issues. Cloud-based tools are resilient against viruses and blackouts. Disruptions such as these are problematic for any company.

    Offers More Flexibility

    Exercising a flexible approach to your day-to-day business can have an undesirable influence on your company without the use of cloud-based technology. You can benefit from the services of remote workers when you utilize cloud-based tools as you complete projects.

    Security Benefits

    As a website designer, you are no doubt familiar with online hackers and data breaches, but that should not be your primary source of concern. Although it is true that large-scale data losses can have a detrimental financial impact on your business; by using a third-party cloud backup service, your data will be much safer.

    Improves The Overall User Experience

    The majority of today’s web designers have embraced cloud-based technology. Most of them use their mobile phone messaging applications and video calls in the cloud. As a business owner, when you provide your clients the most current cloud-based tools, those clients will be impressed with your progressive approach. This will give you a competitive edge.

    Cloud computing can simplify make online business transactions and improve the your web designer’s productivity. If you are planning to create or update your business website, you may want to consider employing cloud technology.

  • How to Enhance Creative Thinking for Web Design Professionals

    How to Enhance Creative Thinking for Web Design Professionals

    It’s a moment of dread that everyone in a creative role has experienced: you are expected to deliver innovative and original ideas or concepts, but you have lost all inspiration and for the life of you cannot come up with anything that looks or sounds good. No matter what profession, brain blocks happen. That’s why it’s important to try and think critically and creatively while mastering your craft. Web design professionals frequently face the task of creating unique ideas to help their customers stand out from the crowd. Although most professionals in the field make it look easy, the truth is that all creative professionals have encountered blocks in their creativity. The next time it happens to you, remember these tips on how to enhance creative thinking for web design professionals. (more…)

  • Website Field of Dreams: I Built it. Will They Come?

    Website Field of Dreams: I Built it. Will They Come?

    “If you build it, he will come.”

    This line from the movie Field Of Dreams was meant as an inspirational promise to motivate the main character to build a baseball diamond in the middle of a corn field. Of course, it being a movie, the field was built and lo and behold, people arrived in droves, saving the family farm and leaving everyone in smiles.

    The world of technology boasts the same whispers from across the web, calling out to business owners to create a website; many times with ads that imply that building a website is simple and anyone can do it.

    While it’s true that there are a host of programs and organizations out there that can assist you in making a website, the truth is that actually getting sales and traffic to your website is more difficult.

    The help of professionals in the digital industry can be one of the best investments that you can make as a small business owner, given the digitally driven world that we live and consume in.

    Here are some things to know about the truth of building a website:

    It is not a fast process.

    Anyone that promises you a website that will yield immediate results is not being truthful with you. Building a website that is targeted to the needs of your potential customers and that boasts an interactive and intuitive platform requires ongoing studying of the habits of your website visitors.

    A successful website cannot be built overnight.

    Design Matters

    You have about eight seconds to keep a visitor on your website if they are visiting for the first time. If your site does not appeal to them, or the navigation does not make sense, they will simply leave and head to a different website.

    Website designers and professionals can assist you in getting your message across with compelling design, as well as taking care of the backend work that assures smooth navigation.

    Time: The Most Precious Commodity

    If you’re a small business owner or an entrepreneur, you’re likely wearing many different hats. Building a website can be extremely time consuming, even for professionals in the field. If you’re trying to build your own website and maintain it, you need to dedicate many hours to the process.

    Once your website is built, you still need to maintain it and assure that you are getting the traffic that you desire. Keep your website up to date by publishing fresh content. SEO is critical to the process, as is having good copy and clean design.

    A professional website design company will employ staff members who are dedicated to keeping atop the most current and ever-changing trends in technology. It will supply you with content that will keep your website ranked high in search engines.

    Building a website does not guarantee that you will build customers and traffic. Website design professionals can help you draw the crowds that you need to your technological field of dreams.