Category: Brand Management

With most new businesses launching online and most traditional businesses going online, the demand for online ads is growing by leaps and bounds. But online ads bear fruits only through intensive research and hard work.

That is why choosing the right agency to run your online ad campaign is not easy and requires you to take many factors into consideration. This blog is intended to show you how to hire a digital marketing agency. Let’s first get an overview of the online advertising business.

The online ads involve displaying a set of advertisements that revolve around a single message and are intended to achieve a particular goal. Some of these goals are:

• Creating brand awareness
• Boosting sales
• Generating leads

93% of all online interactions begin with a search engine. And with your online ads, you can attract the attention of millions of viewers. The Google search engine is where most people look for what to do, where to go and what to buy.

That makes Google Ads one of the top platforms to find the best online ads. Advertisers bid to display a variety of types of online ads on Google. Online advertising advantages include

• Easy selection of the target market
• Tracking of target customers
• Quick delivery of appropriate content
• It’s easy to update or replace ads anytime if required.
• Advertise in the language of non-English-speaking audiences.
• Low cost and higher affordability.

Now let’s look at how to find the right marketing agency, as detailed below:

#1. Be particular about your needs and objectives

Before anything, you need to assess your needs and objectives. They should be in line with the goals of the ad campaign. There can be many types of online ads. What is your core objective? Is it to gain more followers? Or is it to increase your sales?

The better you understand your needs, the better you can explain your company’s SEO, advertising, social media, and graphic design requirements to the digital marketing agencies during the interviews. It is absolutely critical to discuss them with the agencies to ensure they can deliver what you expect.

#2. Make a budget that covers your needs and generates profit

It is critical to have a good idea of the costs for the various services and to set a budget. The budget can also vary according to your specific advertising requirements. For example, advertising on Instagram is not the same as advertising on Google.

It is not wise to go for the lowest bid when contracting a digital marketing agency. You should rather emphasize the best values at the best price policy. Make sure that your partner agency will generate positive returns on your investment, which can be translated into more profit from the ad campaign than you spent.

Your budget should be as precise and reasonable as possible. Before signing the contract, go over the details with the agency to ensure you’re both on the same page.

#3. Check the agencies’ credibility and experience thoroughly

Make certain to check the agency’s credibility and experience. Examine customer reviews on the company’s website and on review sites. Do the testimonials seem genuine? Is the website of the agency up to date? Does the website rank well in search results, indicating that it understands SEO? Are its social media pages up to date and full of relevant content? Examine all of these indicators to determine whether the agency can be trusted.

Check to see if they have handled similar businesses and run ad campaigns for them. Hiring an experienced agency guarantees that they will deliver results because they already understand how things work.

#4. Conduct in-depth tests

Look for an ad agency that has the knowledge, experience, and a satisfied customer base. Try to not get duped by outrageous promises. Look for a list of previous clients with whom the agency has worked.

In order to get a sense of how they perform, ask for sample ad copies of your product or service. They should be original. Inquire about their previous campaign results. Look for companies that can certify their past performance. Also, tsry to acquire testimonials from previous client reviews. All this can provide valuable insight into how that company operates.

#5. Check for transparency and the methodology to measure the output.

You should have the right to access the marketing data. If the agency is credible, you should have no problem in obtaining access to its marketing data. Inquire about the agency’s ROI measurement methods as well. You must be aware of the outcome metrics as well as the ROI measurement.

The results are known by data, and you should be able to obtain complete data on how your campaign fared on a particular day or during a period, such as a festival time. This data is generally expressed in numbers and percentages. Also, ensure that you understand the terminology used to calculate your RoI. If the agency does not provide any of the required data and the formula for calculating the output figures they provide, that is not acceptable.

Conclusion

Online advertising has some key advantages and can be very profitable for your business, provided you find the right agency to build your brand’s online presence. Set your parameters for the selection of the best digital marketing agency and examine the various bids according to their ad campaign tactics, tracking of campaign results, and optimization approaches based on data.

Source- Fluidscapes
We are one of the best digital marketing companies in India that provides online reputation management services to all types of organizations. We assist businesses to stay on top of the game by leveraging the latest technologies and breakthroughs in marketing strategies and business processes. Want to grow your business, even more, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how.

Branding makes a product a class apart. In the age of fierce competition for market share, branding is the only vehicle for growth. But although companies spend hefty amounts of money for branding every year, very few only achieve commensurate growth. Ask the experts, and they’ll all point to one area – brand perception. Branding will be futile if the brand perception isn’t worked out properly.

So, what is brand perception?

Brand perception is how your brand is perceived by your audience. You can spend a huge amount of money advertising your brand, but do your audience feel positive about your brand? Does the price/performance of your product fit well in their expectation and capacity? What do they think about your competitors and, given the choice, will they select your product over your competitors?

Why consumers wear a certain brand of apparel or become fussy about a particular brand of cosmetics can be explained by brand perception, which is influenced by the thoughts and feelings connected with a company. Once brand loyalty seeps in it’s difficult to change a consumer’s mind. That is why brands strive to instill positive connotations in people’s thoughts.

When a customer is loyal to a brand, a study says, 86% of them will recommend it to their friends or family, and 66% will provide a good review. These activities promote corporate growth and increase brand perception, both of which are beneficial to your firm.

Brand perception study takes into account the needs, wants, preferences, opinions, influences, demographics, and other data about your potential customers in order to develop a focused and calibrated branding strategy.

Types of Brand perception parameters

Brand perception is a synthesis of multiple parameters that creates an image in the minds of the buyers, and urges them to buy or not to buy a brand. Here are the common types of brand perception:

• Quality: How successfully your items meet the wants of your customers. For example, a smart phone that is feature rich, durable, and easy to use.
• Value: The level of quality offered by a product relative to its price tag. For example, a smart phone brand that is perceived as high quality but overpriced compared to peers.
• Visual: The visual appeal of the product. For example, a motorbike that looks like a cheetah
• Senses: Smell, taste, touch, and sound that also create impressions. For example, a shampoo that smells good.
• Personality: Overall brand personality. For example, a brand may be thought of as friendly, reliable, and stylish.
• Reputation: Perception of the behavior, values, and history of a company.
• Status & culture: Perception of the status level and culture surrounding a brand.

How to measure brand perception?

This is an essential part of branding. In order to gauge how consumers perceive a brand, the companies should conduct brand perception research. However, you may take the following steps to monitor the barometer of your brand on a daily basis:

• Track online mentions of your brand. Activate Google alert.
• Read online reviews of your product. Quick and efficient customer service is important for improving brand perception.
• Use social listening tools for monitoring social media comments, hashtags, and other mentions.
• Measure the number of times your PPC ad is clicked by the viewers and how long they stay in your site.
• It will make more sense to measure the PPC ad click rates and dwell times of your target audience groups.

Brand perception is the single most important factor behind the success of your branding efforts. You must monitor and take good care of your brand perception on a regular basis. Remember, more than advertising, the brand perception depends on personal and shared experiences, advice, achievements, reputation management, etc.

Source- Fluidscapes
We are one of the best digital marketing companies in India that provides online reputation management services to all types of organizations. We assist businesses to stay on top of the game by leveraging the latest technologies and breakthroughs in marketing strategies and business processes. Want to grow your business, even more, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how.

Viral campaigns are fireballs of emotions. If you can make use of them for your branding, it can do miracles. The meteoric growth of social media has created a level playing field for the smaller brands of aspiring new businesses. You do not need to pour crores into creating a popular brand.

Instead, you produce an appealing video or other types of content, post it on social media, and do some initial promotion. If it is liked by your audience and arouses emotion in them, the result can be phenomenal – your content can be shared in crazy fervor across groups, communities, and even territories acquiring millions of views, likes, and comments.

Your brand will reach the hearts and minds of millions completely organically in a matter of hours or days. Reading upto this your heart will say “ Wow, that is fantastic!” It is fantastic indeed, if your content has that element and the timing is perfect.

But how to develop viral content ideas? How to make your content go viral? Is it skill or just luck? Many researches have undergone to discover the recipe of the content that goes viral on the Internet. While some content at times spark high engagement inexplicably, closer examination of most others reveal that there are some commonalities.

Let’s look at some of these common factors to understand the spices that can make your content go viral. But friends, only spices do not make your dishes delicious, it also requires a good cook.

What makes content go viral?

#1. It should touch their heart

Create content that evokes emotions in viewers, such as joy, sadness, laughter, rage, relatability, and so on. When you ask yourself why a post has gone viral as a consumer, the answer is because it usually stimulates one of the above emotions in us, making us want to share it with others so that they can experience the same feeling.

#2. Make it with passion

Passion is key to producing anything good. Passion in one’s approach influences others easily. When you speak with a founder of a successful startup, passion emanates from their speech. Making a video series about the founders’ motivations for launching their company, and releasing one every week or once a month can be a successful viral content strategy.

#3. Maintain familiarity and consistency

It is important to have a consistent viewpoint and tone so that your viewers can be familiar with your style and identify your content easily. People accept familiar and consistent things by default.

#4. People should be able to resonate with

This is extremely important. Your content should be such that people can easily relate with. This helps create a fanbase. Now if your content is authentic and consistent, future viral responses and engagement will continue far longer.

#5. Pick the current trend

Trend is like the flow of wind. You create content on a hot topic and see how it is flown away to distances.

#6. Tell an inspirational and uplifting personal experience

Inspirational and uplifting personal tales are among the most “viral-worthy” types of content. Share a moving anecdote if you have one. If you don’t already have one, ask your employees and associates and see if they have any interesting stories to tell, or else, make one. Volunteer in your community and use your activities to “write” a touching tale. Then, make a minute-long video out of your story.

#7. Create exciting content

Aesthetically appealing and interesting content always grips people and they want to share them also in their groups. Know the taste of your audience, post dashing content in the best time slots to engage them.

#8. Keep it original and authentic

You will never get success unless it is original. Original and authentic content even inspires celebrities, politicians, and business heads to comment on and share, which can help create a viral storm. Also, if your content is fresh and good, social media algorithms will help you out, and the more involvement you have, the better.

#9. It should captivate viewers instantly

Most of the viral content appears to entail more than just the latest hashtags and video tweaks. It’s critical to steal the viewer’s attention for the first two minutes. Maintain the relevance and freshness of your post.

#10. Never make it over-promotional

One of the secrets of viral content is that they are not overly promotional or too long, as this may cause the audience to lose interest and stop connecting with the content you are sharing.

More insight

Having customers interact with the content can also be a great strategy to increase the likelihood of it becoming viral. Moreover, producing trackable content enables you to monitor who and how many people are actually engaging with it.

Most social media platform algorithms rank content based on engagement, or the number of comments and shares that give it the “viral” status that might persist for days.

Source- Fluidscapes
We are one of the best digital marketing companies in India that provides online reputation management services to all types of organizations. We assist businesses to stay on top of the game by leveraging the latest technologies and breakthroughs in marketing strategies and business processes. Want to grow your business, even more, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how.

The way a tree with beautiful flowers easily attracts your attention, content with the right visuals make instant appeal to the viewers and carve out a path of engagements. And the more mainstream marketing and branding turning online, want for appropriate and eye-catching visuals also going north.

Social media posts, blog posts, thumbnails for videos, ads, slideshows – your multi-channels digital marketing campaign is a voracious eater of visual content. But how will you source such a large quantity of visuals that’ll be attractive, plagiarism free, and will reflect your content ideas?

Fortunately, you have got some great sites of stock photos, both chargeable and free of charge. While chargeable photos or footage offer you some degrees of exclusivity, many free sites offer you the right to edit.

Given the large volume of online images consumed by your digital marketing, it only makes sense to take a mixed approach. Going for only payable photos will overshoot your marketing budget

So you need to explore a number of stock image sites to find the best ones for your posts. But you can’t just pick and paste them at your will. Each image has its own rules and licensing for usage, and unauthorized use of them might put you in trouble.

A large number of stock photo sites already exist on the web and many new ones are coming up frequently. We have compiled a list of both paid and free sites, which are among the most used due to various factors.

But before that take a look at the various types of licenses associated with using the online images. This will help you pick the right images without violating the creator’s copyright.

Types of licenses

There are these 4 categories or licenses associated with online images. Below are the brief descriptions of them.

• Rights managed – Photographs or images that are rights-managed or rights-protected can be purchased for one-time usage or for a limited period of time, or for a defined purpose under a copyright license.
  Most of the chargeable stock pictures available on the sites like Getty Images, iStock, and Shutterstock are rights managed. As the rights-managed photos often come at a high cost, it’s wise to read the purchase agreement to make sure you’re picking the right one.
• Royalty free – The user pays a one-time purchase for a royalty-free image, which covers multiple uses with no further fees. Check the licensing agreement for information on how to use the photo and any limits on usage kinds.
• Creative common – Common free license images are free to use but are protected by copyright protection. You can share, repurpose, and adapt them as per your requirement. The most prevalent free license for images is the Creative Commons license, which has six degrees of free usage.
• Public domain – Public domain photos are not copyrighted, have no restrictions on use, and there are no costs for any form of use. Most images older than 100 years, as well as any photo created by the government or a government agency, are in the public domain.

Our preferred sites for stock images

Shutterstock

Shutterstock has probably the largest and most diversified collections of over 360 million images. For your projects, it also has graphics, vectors, movies, and music. Shutterstock caters to different types of requirements, offering various plans at different price points.

Shutterstock’s collection is so huge that its website covers individual genres of the subjects or themes. You can also edit photos using Shutterstock editor. And don’t forget to check out their creative trends report that updates you of the current waves in design, image, and photography.

Adobe stock

Adobe’s creative software, such as Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator, are well-known. And with that great legacy comes Adobe Stock, a high-end stock photo site. You can select from a wide range of curated photos, videos, illustrations, vector images, 3D assets and templates – all royalty-free.

If you currently use Adobe Creative Cloud products, Adobe Stock is ideal since you can access, manage, and use Adobe Stock photos directly from these Adobe tools.

Reshot

Huge collection of stock photos to download from this site with commercial licenses absolutely free of cost and attribution requirements. Less polished and realistic images are the key reasons why designers prefer to get photos from Reshot for social media posts.

You can download, copy, edit, distribute, and use images for free. However one doesn’t have the right to compile images from Reshot to create or help create a similar or competing site.

Shopify Burst

This free stock website is clean, fast, and easy to navigate for high resolution images that are good for business posts and mainly targeting the entrepreneurs.

One of Shopify Burst’s best features is its ‘Business Ideas’ section. This section has images that are specific to ecommerce categories. For example, you can search for images meant for specific types of ecommerce stores, such as yaga products or enamel pins

Unsplash

Unsplash is another top resource for free stock pictures for ecommerce businesses. Every 10 days, the site updates its database by adding 10 royalty-free pictures.

The images on this site are of superb quality and would be matching and appropriate for any type of marketing campaign you build for ecommerce sites. However, Unsplash’s search capability is limited, which is one of its drawbacks. Another point of concern is that most images are abstract.

iStock

iStock, promoted by Getty Images, offers you a large range of paid stock photos ideal for themes, such as landscape, nature, holidays, technology, and even jobs & careers. iStock is most suitable for designers looking to create attractive visuals for commercial and non-commercial posts. They can use craft stock plugin and iStock editor to edit photos for their creative projects.

Likewise, there are many more websites that offer tons of royalty free images. Here is a list of a few of them, if you would like to explore. However, as given earlier, free images come with different agreements. Just make sure the visuals you’re going to copy aren’t covered by any restriction or license agreement.

• Canva
• FreeImages
• Gratisography
• Morguefile
• Pexels
• Picjumbo
• Picography
• PicWizard
• Pixabay
• Public Domain Archive
• Public Domain Pictures
• Rawpixel
• Stockvault.net
• Superfamous Images

Personalize images by editing them

Free stock images keeps your marketing budget low but the problem is everyone has free access to them. It’s frustrating when you post a cool business image only to discover that your competitor has used the same image. There’s nothing you can do to stop this, but you can edit the images to customize for your brand.

Summery

Visual pinups multiply likes and shares of your social media content and are regarded as essential for expanding your reach and driving conversations. While you can design your social media posts using suitable images from numerous stock image sites, it is necessary to watch the rights and licenses associated with the pictures. A royalty free image may not be a free-to-use image. Also, free images are often found overused, which doesn’t help your campaign. So, editing images to customize for your brand is the best way.

Source- Fluidscapes
We are one of the best digital marketing companies in India that provides online reputation management services to all types of organizations. We assist businesses to stay on top of the game by leveraging the latest technologies and breakthroughs in marketing strategies and business processes. Want to grow your business, even more, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how.

In any communication, be it one to one or one to many, the most important thing is the attention of the listeners or viewers. And attention comes from the interest in the subject of communication.

Marketing is a form of communication and therefore it poses a tough challenge to the marketers to ensure attention of the audience, because otherwise it’s of no use. That makes it an even tougher challenge to learn who your audience is.

But the challenge doesn’t end there. In fact it never ends. Customers’ behavior, attitude, and choices are dynamic. Even if you identify your audience, you need to track them closely, acquire fresh data, and analyze on a regular basis. Audience analysis has become an essential tool to do well in marketing. Let’s dive deeper.

What is Audience analysis?

Audience analysis is a process of identifying and understanding your present and potential customers in order to learn their purchase intent. This provides valuable customer insights that include demographics, preferences, locations, motivation, and other data.

Brands can use audience analysis to better their marketing strategy, customer experience, and brand impression. Audience analysis can reveal many insights, depending on the depth of your research.

Why is Audience analysis important?

Marketing and branding are increasingly becoming data based and precisely targeted at specific audiences. Targeting the audience of your choice has never been so accurate, thanks to all the advertising and marketing technologies of today. The capacity to sell hyper-targeted advertising has fueled Facebook and Google’s explosive expansion.

But, who are your audiences that you should be focusing your marketing to? What kind of messaging and material should you employ for different types of audiences? What kind of campaign will this audience respond to the most?

These are the questions that determine the success of your campaign by helping you pinpoint your target customers and design the most apt marketing mix. Here are some direct benefits of audio analysis:

• Better understanding of your present customers
• Identifying new audiences
• Tracking new trends that engage your audiences
• Creating more appropriate marketing strategies
• Identifying influencers in your category.
• Identifying business opportunities

Types of audience analysis

Following are different types of audience analysis that you can perform depending on your requirements:

• Social audience analysis – To assist brands understand their audience, social audience analysis makes advantage of the enormous data that social media platforms have about active users.
• Branded audience analysis – This is concerned with identifying and comprehending the target audience for a given brand, whether your own or that of a competitor in your industry.
• Unbranded audience analysis – This is about gaining a better knowledge of a group of people who share something other than a common brand, such as customers of a specific product type or readers of a specific journal.
• Competitor audience analysis – This refers to the process of identifying and analyzing data about your competitors’ audiences.
• Demographic audience analysis – This is the process of defining and evaluating a group of people based on their demographic characteristics such as age, gender, and geographic region.
• Psychographic audience analysis – This type of audience analysis helps to evaluate psychological traits such as values, interests, goals, desires, lifestyle, etc.

Wrap up

Identifying relevant audiences and understanding their psychographic traits help you to stay ahead in marketing. Audience analysis provides valuable insights about your present and potential customers so that you get to know what matters most to your audience. You can use this information in your marketing campaign to engage with customers.

Source- Fluidscapes
We are one of the best digital marketing companies in India that provides online reputation management services to all types of organizations. We assist businesses to stay on top of the game by leveraging the latest technologies and breakthroughs in marketing strategies and business processes. Want to grow your business, even more, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how.

Small businesses can no longer be content with the status quo. The mounting competition from e-commerce is pushing small businesses to explore beyond their local boundaries and export their business to online marketplaces.

This is evident, as numerous small businesses are running their branding campaigns on the digital media. Again, this is breaking a myth that branding is meant for large companies only. Branding in fact can work for any size of business.

Gone are the days when a local business would count on a sizable local customers. The digital era has turned the game upside down. Now customers prefer to order materials online, not caring much about the location of the business.

What influences their preference largely is the brand of the product or service. They want to be doubly sure that they will get the best value for their money and the product is worth their trust and confidence.

This explains why so many small businesses are taking to brand building activities to win customers and why there is a need to have more clarity on the subject to convince others who are not yet in the fray.

What is Branding?

Branding is all the activities that make the name, term, logo, design, or any other feature of a product, service, or a business easily identifiable and remembered at the time of purchase. Now that there are so many channels and outlets to advertise a product, branding should be a synergistic process that speaks in the same voice across all touchpoints.

In the face of steep competition in the market, branding makes a product or a company stand out in the crowd and create expectations for the customers.

What is Brand Management?

How the customers perceive your brand is what determines the strength of your brand. Building and maintaining a strong brand identity that’ll drive customers to choose your product over competitors’ is a difficult task unless you have something unique.

But you can still achieve a consistent brand image through maintaining a clear brand vision and discipline in departments and employees that helps to deliver a value-driven response and a positive experience to customers at all touchpoints.

Here are some essential steps in the brand building guide for the small businesses.

#1. Set a realistic business goal for a time period

Setting a goal is the most critical step toward accomplishing it. Without a proper business aim, your company may become unnoticed. To design and establish a successful brand identity, you must first determine what you want to achieve and then define your aims and objectives.

It’s also important to set a time period to reach the goal. This puts you in a mission mode to achieve the target.

#2. Identify the right band of audience

To be successful in marketing and promoting your business, you must first find the right group of customers.

You can identify the most prospective audiences for your business from the most appropriate platforms available, and you can evaluate where your business has the best chance of being noticed and where you have the best chance of gaining the greatest returns and revenues.

In today’s world, the majority of businesses find their potential audience on various social networking sites.

#3. Develop strategies to connect your audience

Don’t waste your money and energy trying to reach everyone across the spectrum; rather focus on the strategies to hook your potential audience groups across regions.

Devise a variety of techniques to reach the widest possible audience. Remember that branding generates awareness, recognition, trust, and money.

#4. Watch competitors and their brands

If you have identified your niche and are preparing to thrive, you must first check to identify who your possible competitors are.

Only by identifying your future competitors will you be able to keep ahead of the competition. In this day and age, there is fierce rivalry in the industry, and it is critical that you recognise who your company’s biggest competitors are.

When you have a close eye on the market, you will be able to identify and rectify your flaws and prosper.

#5. Make your brand distinguishable

Determine what will make your brand distinct and identifiable. It could be a feature, price, or a unique business plan. Find a means to stand out from the crowd.

For example, if you offer lower prices to your customers than your competitors, you might emphasise that in your branding.

Choose something sleeker, more cutting-edge, and with a younger feel. Attempt to find something more down-to-earth.

#6. Personify your brand

Do not make the mistake of projecting your brand as a foreign identity, or a corporate brick-and-mortar presence. In reality, a brand’s external reputation is similar to that of a person.

When you brainstorm to define your brand for the external world, give it a feel of a person you could sit down with, go out to lunch with, or have babysit your children! Your brand is more than a logo or a tag phrase. The world should expect it to act or respond like a human.

#7. Develop a brand personality

Personality of a brand is important in marketing as it helps in building a large following.

Ask yourself questions, such as what colours should be associated with your brand, what your logo might look like, and how your voice will be conveyed in your content and other promotional materials.

Develop your brand personality by imagining your brand as yourself interacting with specific members of your target audience.

#8. Develop a brand voice

For any successful communicator it’s important to establish a certain tone and style of communication. Same applies to your brand as well.

Your brand voice can be authoritative, playful, intellectual, friendly, or entertaining as long as it seems true to your brand values and persona and enjoyable enough to create chats with your target audience.

Source- Fluidscapes
We are one of the best digital marketing companies in India that provides online reputation management services to all types of organizations. We assist businesses to stay on top of the game by leveraging the latest technologies and breakthroughs in marketing strategies and business processes. Want to grow your business, even more, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how.

No matter whether you are a fledgling company looking to establish your brand or an established brand aiming to enhance your reach, social media is your best bet, without a doubt. Social media has come beyond the stage of personal hangout to be an important part of the marketing strategy for the businesses.

However, social media by itself is no magic pill for your business success. It only provides you with great opportunities in terms of connecting your targeted customers, raising brand awareness, and increasing leads and sales conversion, but you need to have effective strategies to achieve them.

Your business gains automatic exposure to millions of potential customers as they habitually log on to social media – this is a tremendous plus. But at the same time, because it is extremely dynamic and noisy and crowded, social media poses significant challenges for businesses as well.

You need to understand the demographics, tone, timing, and above all the underlying nature and types of content best suited for each channel. Even if you have sufficient resources to manage them, one area that’ll be particularly challenging to you is coming up with fresh and interesting content ideas.

A lack of consistency in posting engaging content is bound to erode away your following on social media and impact your popularity as a brand. But producing quality feeds every day is a big ask that all marketers will agree. Even the best writers can get burned out at times.

Relax. True that you are not a content-creating machine but you can act smart and apply your mind into producing new content ideas. Follow successful brands to find out what they are doing differently to cope with this steep requirement with limited resources.

You can’t have new content ideas everyday; what you can do is just present them in different ways so that they don’t look stale and boring.

Here are seven tried and tested social media strategies and content ideas) to keep your audience engaged:

• #1 Hold a contest – When you host a contest or giveaway on your social media channels, you can connect with your existing followers (and gain some new ones). People love free stuff, and they’re more likely to engage with a brand if they’re getting something useful in return. Just make sure to read the legal fine print on how to run contests on the various social platforms.
• #2 Hold a Q&A session – A question and answer session is a great way to both educate and engage your audience. You have the option of presenting a topic for discussion or being bold and allowing the audience to ask you any questions they want. Everyone wants to be connected, and Q&As are an engaging method through which You can ask your followers to put a question and you can share your knowledge, experience, and insight through the answer.
• #3 Share videos – In the world of marketing, video reigns supreme. According to statistics, 55 percent of internet users watch videos every day, and social media videos generate up to 1200 percent more shares than texts and images combined. However, creating a nice, informative video requires professional help. If you don’t have the resources, you can even try short clips shot on a cell phone for sharing on social media. You can make videos about anything that will keep your audience interested. Keep it short and simple, and make sure it’s relevant to your brand, product, or services.
• #4 Post live videos – Live videos always attract people’s attention and therefore can be a good way to keep your feed interesting and keep your followers engaged. You can even broadcast a live video update from a meeting or event. You can use Facebook Live or Twitter Live to host a preview event for your upcoming products or services. This is a fun and engaging way to interact with your fans.
• #5 Align with current trends – Using current trends and hashtags accomplishes two goals. One, it exposes your brand to a larger audience. Two, it demonstrates that you’re paying attention to what your audience cares about. Go for it as long as the trends align with your core message and make sense for your marketing.
• #6 Repurposing content – Finding new ways to recycle your existing content has a number of advantages (besides saving you time and money to create a new content) such as reaching new audiences, expanding your reach, and so on. There are a plethora of options for repurposing your company’s fantastic content. Create an image or gif out of a powerful quote from a blog post. Change it up depending on the market or the season. Visual infographics are preferred by some users over text statistics. By repurposing your content for different mediums, you can appeal to a wider range of people and expand your reach.
• #7 Share or Retweet others posts – Sharing, reposting, or retweeting your partners’ or follower’s content can be an effective strategy. You can reshare those tweets, posts, videos, or anything else your followers share to show them what you’re interested in. On Twitter, you can retweet and share the posts, and on Facebook, you can link to another post on your page. On Instagram, you can use apps like InstaRepost or Repost for Instagram to share your content with other Instagram users.

Apart from directly engaging your customers and improving sales, posting fresh and interesting content on social media may win you a bonus through featuring in the news feeds of your followers and further disseminated through social media networking. This hugely helps in multiplying your brand value.

Source- Fluidscapes
We are one of the best digital marketing companies in India that provides online reputation management services to all types of organizations. We assist businesses to stay on top of the game by leveraging the latest technologies and breakthroughs in marketing strategies and business processes. Want to grow your business, even more, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how.

Reputation management is basically a part of brand promotion. It takes a long time to own a place in the minds of your customers and create a concoction of trust, confidence, and liking called a brand.

Unlike many frontal branding activities, reputation management is a back-office process that runs continuously to create a layer of positive feelings and recognition for the brand.

In the age of digital media when even a minor mistake can cause a sizable drop in sales and spread the news across regions, online reputation management or ORM has become all the more important due to its ability to damage control and image make-over.

Besides helping brands, ORM is proving to be a gamechanger for the new and small enterprises as well. Rise in e-commerce and local business directories from Google, Yahoo, Moz and others are encouraging thousands of small businesses to conduct e-business from home or small setups. Customers are not visiting their brick and mortar stores but placing orders based on online reviews, comments, and stories.

So, no wonder that online business reputation management is fast becoming a necessity for all startups or modern-age enterprises. Studies reveal that 97% of customers make their buying decisions on the basis of perception. Perception is the key ingredient for online business and an online reputation management system is all about maintaining a favourable perception.

If you are looking for more tangible reasons to spend your money on online business reputation management, here are some:

• Customers will regard you more favourably –  People prefer to do business with companies they can rely on. A repository of reviews created and managed by online reputation management is a type of social proof that will assist you in gaining the trust and credibility of prospective customers.
• Improved Google ranking – Your company will rank higher in relevant search results if it has a good online reputation. Online reviews provide fresh, organic content for your business and demonstrate your customers’ genuine experiences.
• Increased revenue – Higher Google ranking translates into increased business, it’s a thumb rule. Study reveals that a one-star rating increase can result in a 5-9 percent increase in revenue.

How to improve your company’s image and reputation with online reputation management strategy

As with scores of new businesses thronging the online marketplace everyday and competition level going through the roof, the thought of maintaining a strong online image of your business must be topping your priority list. These seven tips will help you with that:

#1 Check your online presence closely, and your competitors’ too

Having a close look at your brand online allows you to discover what your brand’s image is like right now. That’s the first step – it’s difficult to improve anything if you don’t know what’s working and what isn’t.

Monitor the various review sites like Facebook and Google to see what customers are discussing and writing reviews about you. This’ll assist you in identifying and resolving minor issues before they snowball and cause irreparable harm to your online reputation, not to mention your bottom line.

It is also critical to keep an eye on your competitors! Customers will most likely look up multiple businesses online when looking for a new restaurant or a new dental practise. That is why it is critical to look at what customers are saying about your competitors on review sites. If there are areas where your competitors excel and you fall short, you can figure out what you need to do differently to stay ahead.

#2 Maintain a high ranking for your brand on the Google page 1

This is very important as most of the Google searchers never look past the first page. Your business will be discovered by more customers if you can ensure a higher ranking on the search engine result page (SERP).

To improve your business’s search visibility, obtain more reviews, and maintain uniform business listings across all platforms. More than a quarter of the ranking factors are based on reviews and listings.

You can optimise your Google My Business listing by signing up for Reserve with Google and accepting appointments directly from there.

#3 Make strategies to get more reviews from your customers

The more the mentions of your company on the internet the more visibility you get from Google. A business with 500 reviews will certainly look much better than a business with 10 reviews.

Best way to get reviews from your customers is by making them satisfied. Provide a high level of customer service and experience to your customers and request them to share their experiences on the review sites and social media. You can also send links to review requests to your customers via text or email – they will just click on the link and write a review.

Another cool strategy would be to use an appointment scheduling software. This will send automated emails to customers after their service requests are properly addressed and customers can post a review in reply.

#4 Be quick and proactive in responding to your reviews

Customers appreciate businesses that interact with them online, so be sure to respond to online reviews and feedback as soon as possible. This demonstrates to prospective customers that you care about their overall experience.

Responding to reviews is another effective way to demonstrate appreciation and build loyalty. Thank a customer who leaves a positive review. Also, if they report a problem, contact them right away. Customers will usually update their comments if you get to the bottom of the problem quickly.

Negative feedback can also be used to improve your customer experience. Use the feedback you receive from customers to better understand which aspects of your business they enjoy and which need to be improved.

#5 Ensure correct profile data on all review sites

Increase your digital footprint by ensuring that your company has an active and accurate profile on all review sites. Also, double-check that information such as the website address, phone number, physical address, and store hours are correct.

Incorrect business listing information can quickly spread across the Internet, causing serious damage to your company.

#6 Send social media posts regularly to engage your customers.

You can demonstrate expertise in your field and gain loyalties through blogs, active social media accounts, email, and other forms of content. This provides additional values outside of your products and services. Blogging, for example, boosts local SEO rankings besides creating content to share across social media platforms.

Also, make sure to post on social media on a regular basis. New offerings, fun business news, promotions, and sharing positive reviews are all examples of information you can share with your customers on social media.

#7 Be consistent and keep your promises

To build a great online reputation, you must keep your word and be consistent in all aspects of your communication with your customers, just as you would in any human relationship.

Have you ever given a customer a discount to make up for a service lapse? Did you say you’d “speak to that employee” about a problem raised on Twitter?

Following through and implementing the promises you have made proves your sincere approach to customers and helps improve your online reputation. Because everything is said in the open and on the internet, anyone who is interested can follow the storey and find out how it ended (i.e. you lied, or only paid lip-service)

The online reputation management services are comparable to a personal relationship approach. Both can be tricky and precarious to handle. There is only one principle to serve both – that is, being sincere and cordial.

Source- Fluidscapes
We are one of the best digital marketing companies in India that provides online reputation management services to all types of organizations. We assist businesses to stay on top of the game by leveraging the latest technologies and breakthroughs in marketing strategies and business processes. Want to grow your business, even more, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how.

Social commerce, the new horse in the stable of digital marketing, galloping ahead to redefine retailing with a great business idea that taps a huge huge audience base in an easy and direct manner.

Yes, you guessed it right. What can be a bigger audience base than social media, of which the larger part is made of GenZ and millenials? Isn’t it a big orchard for the marketers that provides an unlimited number of fruits?

No question, but the challenge was to match the characteristic and temperament of the new age buyers whose buying decisions are usually triggered by emotions and feelings and taken at the spur of the moment. Likes and recommendations from friends generate instant desire for a product.

But if you ask them to visit and search through your website for the details of the products, you lose that moment. That strong buying urge gets fizzled out.

For a long time this has been a concern in digital marketing, which has got an awesome solution in social commerce. Now, you can open your store on the social media platform and conduct business without having to send your customers to your website.

What is social commerce?

The name by itself reveals the concept – “social” comes from social media and “commerce” comes from e-commerce. Together it means a complete shopping experience being on social media, which includes visiting your virtual store, interacting with you through messaging and voice, selecting products from a variety of options, and making purchases through online payment.

For example, while being on Facebook one can browse and compare products and make purchases. Or, one may also learn about a product in a tweet and then buy it right there on Twitter.

Social commerce sites are most active on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. Let’s have a look at what these platforms offer to build social commerce sites for your business.

Facebook

Facebook has redoubled its efforts in the area of social commerce. Companies may develop complete “Shop Now” storefronts and use Messenger to communicate with customers (both pre- and post-sale).

You can use a Facebook store to…

• Upload products and information about them,
• Curate and personalise the products in your store’s catalogue,
• Manage orders and sell directly from your Page,
• Create and run Facebook ad.to market your products,
• Obtain insights.

Instagram

According to Facebook research, 70 percent of shoppers use Instagram to discover new products. This comes as no surprise because Instagram Shopping makes it easy for users to view and learn about products by tapping on the photograph and stories that relate them.

Instagram Shopping promotes Social Commerce by helping businesses

• Offer actual products for sale,
• Comply with Instagram’s merchant agreement and commerce standards,
• Have an Instagram business account linked to a Facebook profile.

Pinterest

Pinterest sales have an average order value of $50, which is highest in comparison to any other social media site. There is a whopping 456 million active user base of Pinterest worldwide.

Pinterest has introduced new shopping tools that will make it easier for merchants to display their products and for consumers to browse and buy on the platform. The new features are promoting Pinterest as a shopping destination besides adding consumer friendly features.

For example, slideshow for collections creates customised video adverts highlighting merchant products that match users’ requirements as per the browsing histories.

Another feature will allow verified merchants to post information about their beliefs and the communities they serve to their pages. A merchant can, for example, specify that their products are responsibly sourced or that their company is Black or LGBTQ-owned.

Social commerce examples in Indian perspective

India now has approximately 200 million active social media users, with that number predicted to rise to around 370 million by 2022. The most happening social commerce categories in India include Fashion, consumer healthcare, infant items, the food and beverage industry, financial services, beauty, personal care, and women’s care.

Recommendation is also among the key reasons that drives people to buy things through social media and makes social commerce a next-generation trend that will transform commerce’s future.

The following are some of the Indian startups that are powering the rise of social Commerce in India.

• Meesho – helping small businesses start their virtual stores on Whatsapp, Facebook, and Instagram
• Shiprocket – providing pan-India shipment and courier service options with tracking and packaging.
• Glowroad – builds virtual stores for women, students to help them earn by selling millions of products. 
• Voonik – social commerce site that helps buyers choose their favorite apparels. 
• Klip – connects users based on their klips to offer personalized shopping through online vendor ties.
• Wooplr – allows users to evaluate and purchase new products based on genuine information from users.
• LimeRoad – active mainly in fashions it provides diverse library of fashionable looks for your size and type
• Memoirs – helps to tag, classify, and recommend fashion and gifting products, handpicked from vendors.
• VioletStreet – recommends best products in a selected product category and allows friends to shop and discuss the purchases in real time online. 
• Promon – provides promotional deals on food and beverages in the popular restaurants and pubs
• EtailOne – a product discovery platform that helps users select products from electronics, fashion, and furniture.

Social commerce business model

Social commerce facilitates purchasing and selling of goods or services directly from within a social media platform. This strategy is an extension of social media’s conventional function of networking and communication that encourages consumers to finish the entire purchase process without leaving their favourite apps.

According to The State of Social Media Investment Report, executives unanimously agree that social commerce is driving a growing share of their company’s marketing-driven income. Within the next three years, about eight out of ten people expect to offer their products or services using social media.

Wrap up

As being a natural evolution of e-commerce, India’s social commerce market is expected to reach US$70 billion by the year 2025, riding on the back of an aggressive campaign by an increasing number of startups to attract the vast unorganized market of sellers and buyers in tier II, III, and IV cities. This is pegging social commerce to be the next big thing in the Indian e-commerce business, with a bigger consumer base, fewer overhead expenses, and growing investor interest.

Source- Fluidscapes
We are one of the best digital marketing companies in India that provides online reputation management services to all types of organizations. We assist businesses to stay on top of the game by leveraging the latest technologies and breakthroughs in marketing strategies and business processes. Want to grow your business, even more, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how.

What is content? Content is a form of communication. What is the purpose of communication? To connect with other people. And why is content particularly important in digital marketing? Because digital marketing means doing business over the Internet where content is everything. Content makes your identity, perception, interface, reputation… In fact, it is the only bridge of communication between business and its clients.

So, if you are a business and have taken to digital marketing for publicity and growth, creating and disseminating good and purposeful content must be one of your highest priorities. A business may have multiple objectives to achieve, such as information sharing, training, sales, branding, etc. You should be specific about the purpose of your content and create the ones that serve the purpose well.

For example, when it’s about the branding of your product, it pays to go for content marketing, which is a marketing strategy that creates and shares blogs, videos, podcasts, and other content relating to your industry.

Content marketing is a time-tested approach that engages the audience and promotes brand awareness so that your brand name comes to the top of their mind when they decide to buy.

Content marketing for brand promotion is more effective and more economical than traditional branding methods. Also, it can be reused and repurposed. But you need to maintain the content creation process and the basics of content writing to make your content stand apart. In this article, we’ll focus on blogs and discuss the steps involved in developing a blog.

#1. Find the right topic

A Blog is made of a topic. Finding the right topic is the first and foremost step in your content development process for ranking and branding. The topic should be relevant and contemporary. Therefore, start your content writing process by checking your website’s analytics to identify your top-ranking search words or search phrases. Choose your topic from the most frequent search words and phrases.

#2. Find the main keyword and LSI keywords

Use of keywords help a content get easily searched and thus occupy a high position in the Google search results. Both primary or main keywords and LSI keywords are responsible for the success of your content marketing. There are a variety of keyword planners and tools that can be used to analyze a document and find the keywords. Some of them are:

• MeSH (Medical Subject Headings),
• Google Keyword Planner
• Google Trends
• Keyword Tool
• LSIkeywords.com
• Ubersuggest
• Serstat

#3. Do your research on the topic

Although you may be knowing the topic like the back of your palm, you should still do some study before starting your content creation. The research phase takes the most time in the content creation process, such as writing a blog,

It’s critical to look through both well-known and less-well-known websites, as well as some of the more obscure but nonetheless reliable publications and webpages. If you’re not careful, a lot of bogus news might become mixed up in your study. Find statistics that are relevant to your issue and store your sources in case you need to reference them later.

#4. Maintain a uniform voice throughout your article

You want it to be an informative blog post, a long article, or a brief, to-the-point blurb? Will it be punched with some humour or you want it a serious type? Will you also want to make an infographic or a video out of this post? Do you want to publish an infographic or a video to accompany this?

Before you start your content creation process, make sure you know what your article’s voice and tone will be. Otherwise, instead of being one cohesive piece, your content may end up moving in a variety of directions.

#5. Create a catchy headline

Studies reveal an average of 80% of visitors will see your title, but only 20% will continue reading your article. This means you’ll need to come up with a compelling headline that will entice visitors to read the rest of your blog post (and then share it). Some copywriters would produce 20 to 30 distinct headlines before selecting the best one. If you decide to write the blog on your own, we suggest that you use a headline generator to assist you with a catchy title.

#6. Write a story

People want to read stories. Instead of presenting raw statistics or data, mix them with personal experience. It’s good to learn about the demographics or the type of audience for setting the right tone or voice, but otherwise it’s always safe to keep your writing simple.

Have a fair idea of what people want to know. Ask questions or put subtitles that should reflect the readers queries and write the answers elaborately. Once readers find their concerns or queries are addressed in your blog, they’ll be automatically hooked on it and also share with others. It’s important to grow an image of consistency and genuineness through your writing. Also, try to finish your article with a nice wrap-up and a call-to-action to help the readers contact you.

#7. Proofread

If you’re not a regular writer, you might not care to proofread your article, but this is an essential step of the writing process. When you stare at the same piece of content for a long time, your errors blend in with the rest of the text, and your jumbled phrases seem fantastic instead.

Return to your article after some time has passed and read it aloud. That’ll help you identify the errors and mistakes in the article so that you can rectify them to ensure your phrases flow smoothly and that you aren’t leaving any spelling or grammar issues in the article.

Wrap-up

With tons of content being published every day, you are likely to find a good number of articles in your product category are already doing the rounds. But that shouldn’t dishearten you because a lot of old articles get relegated every day by Google to make way for fresh and better written articles.

By updating its algorithm regularly, Google has been setting new standards for SEO and text content. This has made content development and marketing a domain of specialist writers and marketers. If you can keep aside a budget, hire a competent agency for content creation and marketing.

Source- Fluidscapes
We are one of the best digital marketing companies in India that provides online reputation management services to all types of organizations. We assist businesses to stay on top of the game by leveraging the latest technologies and breakthroughs in marketing strategies and business processes. Want to grow your business, even more, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how.