TikTok is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world, with over 2 billion downloads and 1 billion monthly active users. If you are a content creator, influencer, or entrepreneur, you might be wondering how you can monetize your TikTok account and earn money from your videos. In this blog post, we will share some tips and strategies on how to make money on TikTok in 2024.
There are several ways to make money on TikTok, depending on your goals, niche, and audience. Here are some of the most common and effective methods:
TikTok Creator Fund:
The TikTok Creator Fund is a program that allows eligible creators to earn money from their videos on the platform. The fund was launched in July 2020 with an initial $200 million and has since grown to over $1 billion. The fund aims to support diverse and creative content on TikTok and reward the creators for their efforts and engagement. To apply for the fund, creators need to meet certain criteria, such as having at least 10,000 followers, 10,000 video views in the last 30 days, and being 18 years or older. The amount of money that creators can earn from the fund depends on various factors, such as the number of views, the level of engagement, and the quality of the content.
UPDATE: TikTok is ending its $2 billion creator fund
Sponsored posts:
This is when a brand pays you to promote their product or service in your TikTok video. You can charge a fee based on your number of followers, views, engagement, and niche. To find sponsors, you can either reach out to them directly or join an influencer marketing platform that connects you with relevant brands.
Affiliate marketing:
TikTok affiliate marketing is a strategy that involves promoting products or services on TikTok and earning commissions for each sale or action. TikTok affiliate marketing can be a lucrative way to monetize your TikTok account, but it requires some planning and creativity. Here are some tips on how to get started with TikTok affiliate marketing:
Choose a niche that matches your TikTok content and audience. You want to promote products or services that are relevant and useful to your followers, and that align with your personal brand and style.
Find affiliate programs or networks that offer products or services in your niche. You can use platforms like ShareASale, ClickBank, or Amazon Associates to find affiliate offers, or you can reach out to brands directly and ask if they have an affiliate program.
Create engaging and authentic TikTok videos that showcase the benefits and features of the products or services you are promoting. You can use hashtags, captions, stickers, filters, and music to make your videos more appealing and catchy.
Include a clear call to action in your videos, such as “Swipe up to buy”, “Click the link in my bio”, or “Use my code for a discount”. You want to make it easy for your viewers to take the next step and purchase the product or service you are recommending.
Track and optimize your performance. You can use analytics tools like Google Analytics, Bitly, or TikTok’s own dashboard to measure your traffic, conversions, and commissions. You can also test different products, offers, videos, and strategies to see what works best for your TikTok affiliate marketing campaign.
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Live streaming:
TikTok Live Streaming is a feature that allows users to broadcast live videos to their followers and interact with them in real time. Live streaming can be used for various purposes, such as showcasing talents, sharing opinions, hosting events, or promoting products. To start a live stream, users need to have at least 1,000 followers, comply with the community guidelines and terms of service and be at least 16 years old. Live streaming can help users grow their audience, earn gifts from fans, and monetize their content.
Managing multiple social media platforms can be time-consuming and overwhelming. That’s why you need a social media management tool that can help you plan, create, publish, monitor, and analyze your social media content. Whether you are a small business owner, a marketer, or an influencer, you will find a tool that suits your needs and budget. Read more: https://technologer.net/best-social-media-management-tools
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Selling Merchandise:
This is when you sell your own products or services to your followers, such as clothing, accessories, ebooks, courses, coaching, etc. You can create your own online store or use a third-party platform like Shopify or Teespring. You can also use TikTok’s Shop Now feature, which allows you to link your products directly from your video.
Some of the benefits of selling TikTok merchandise are:
It can increase brand awareness and loyalty among your followers.
It can help you express your personality and style through your products.
It can provide a source of passive income that does not depend on views or likes.
It can give you an opportunity to collaborate with other creators or brands.
If you are interested in selling TikTok merchandise, you will need to consider some factors such as:
What kind of products do you want to sell and how do they relate to your content?
How will you design, produce, and ship your products?
How will you promote your products and drive traffic to your store?
How will you handle customer service and feedback?
Selling TikTok merchandise can be a rewarding and fun way to grow your online presence and business. However, it also requires planning, research, and dedication. You should always follow the TikTok community guidelines and respect the intellectual property rights of others when creating and selling your merchandise.
Donations:
This is when you ask your followers to support your content creation by sending you money via PayPal, Venmo, Patreon, or other platforms. You can also use TikTok’s Donation Stickers feature, which lets you add a sticker to your video that prompts viewers to donate to a charity of your choice.
Users can buy virtual coins with real money and use them to send gifts to their favorite creators or to support various campaigns. TikTok then converts the gifts into diamonds, which can be exchanged for cash by the creators or donated to charities. This way, TikTok enables its users to show appreciation and support for the content they enjoy or the causes they care about.
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Ads:
This is when you earn money from displaying ads on your TikTok videos. You can join TikTok’s Creator Fund, which pays you based on the number of views and engagement of your videos. To be eligible for the Creator Fund, you need to have at least 10,000 followers, 10,000 views in the last 30 days, and be at least 18 years old. You can also use other ad networks like Google Adsense or Mediavine to monetize your TikTok website or blog.
These are some of the best ways to make money on TikTok in 2024. However, before you start monetizing your account, you need to focus on creating high-quality content that attracts and engages your target audience. You also need to follow the TikTok community guidelines and terms of service, and avoid any content that is illegal, harmful, hateful, or misleading. By doing so, you can build a loyal fan base and a profitable business on TikTok.
Offering consulting or coaching services:
If you have expertise in a particular area, you can offer consulting or coaching services to your followers. For example, if you’re a fitness expert, you could offer personal training sessions.
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No matter which method you choose, the key to making money on TikTok is to create engaging and popular content. Your videos should be well-edited, informative, and entertaining. You should also be consistent with posting new videos.
Here are some additional tips for making money on TikTok:
Identify your niche: What are you passionate about? What do you know a lot about? Once you know your niche, you can start creating content that is relevant to your target audience.
Use trending hashtags: Trending hashtags are a great way to get your videos seen by more people. When you use trending hashtags, your videos will show up in the search results for those hashtags.
Collaborate with other creators: Collaborating with other creators is a great way to cross-promote your content and reach a new audience.
Promote your TikTok account on other social media platforms: Share your TikTok videos on your other social media accounts, such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. This will help you to reach a wider audience.
Making money on TikTok takes time and effort, but it is possible. By following the tips above, you can increase your chances of success.
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world, with over 1.5 billion monthly active users. If you want to grow your brand, business, or personal profile on Instagram, you need to have a solid strategy and follow some best practices. In this blog post, we will share with you some tips and tricks on how to grow your Instagram and followers in 2023.
Optimize your profile
Your profile is the first thing that potential followers see when they visit your page. Make sure you have a clear and catchy bio, a high-quality profile picture, and a link to your website or othersocial mediaaccounts. You can also use keywords and hashtags that are relevant to your niche and audience.
Create engaging content
Content is king on Instagram, and you need to post consistently and creatively to attract and retain followers. You can use different types of content, such as photos, videos, reels, stories, and live streams, to showcase your personality, products, services, or values. You can also use captions, stickers, filters, and emojis to add some fun and flair to your posts.
Use hashtags and geotags
Hashtags and geotags are powerful tools to increase your reach and visibility on Instagram. Hashtags are words or phrases that start with a # sign and describe the topic or theme of your post. Geotags are locations that you can add to your post to show where you are or where you took the photo or video. You can use up to 30 hashtags and one geotag per post, and you should choose them wisely based on your niche, audience, and goals, preferably 2-4 general hashtags like # trending, viral, reels and reelsfeed alongside some targeted and more specific ones.
Interact with your audience
One of the best ways to grow your Instagram and followers is to engage with your existing and potential followers. You can do this by liking, commenting, sharing, and saving their posts, as well as replying to their messages and comments. You can also ask questions, create polls, quizzes, or challenges, or host giveaways or contests to encourage more interaction and feedback.
Collaborate with others
Another effective strategy to grow your Instagram and followers is to collaborate with other influencers, brands, or users in your niche or industry. You can do this by tagging them in your posts, mentioning them in your stories, or featuring them in your IGTV or live streams. You can also do shoutouts, takeovers, or cross-promotions to expose your account to their followers and vice versa.
Managing multiple social media platforms can be time-consuming and overwhelming. That’s why you need a social media management tool that can help you plan, create, publish, monitor, and analyze your social media content. Whether you are a small business owner, a marketer, or an influencer, you will find a tool that suits your needs and budget. Read more: https://technologer.net/best-social-media-management-tools
How to create engaging content?
Engaging content is content that captures the attention and interest of your audience, and makes them want to interact with you and your brand. Engaging content can help you grow your Instagram and followers, as well as increase your brand awareness, loyalty, and conversions. But how do you create engaging content? Here are some tips and tricks to help you out.
Know your audience: The first step to creating engaging content is to know who you are creating it for. You need to understand your target audience, their needs, preferences, pain points, and goals. You can use tools like Instagram Insights, surveys, or polls to get more insights into your audience’s demographics, behaviors, and interests.
Define your goals: The second step to creating engaging content is to define what you want to achieve with it. You need to have a clear and specific goal for each piece of content, such as increasing your reach, engagement, followers, sales, or traffic. You also need to have a way to measure your results, such as using analytics, tracking codes, or feedback forms.
Choose the right format: The third step to creating engaging content is to choose the right format for your message and goal. Instagram offers a variety of formats for you to choose from, such as photos, videos, reels, stories, IGTV, and live streams. You should experiment with different formats and see what works best for your audience and niche.
Be creative and original: The fourth step to creating engaging content is to be creative and original. You need to stand out from the crowd and offer something unique and valuable to your audience. You can do this by using your own voice, style, and personality, as well as adding some humor, emotion, or storytelling to your content.
Add value and call to action: The fifth step to creating engaging content is to add value and call to action to your content. You need to provide useful information, tips, advice, or solutions to your audience’s problems or needs. You also need to encourage them to take action after consuming your content, such as liking, commenting, sharing, saving, following, or visiting your website.
Some examples of call to action are:
“Tap the link in bio for more details”
“Swipe up to shop now”
“Tag a friend who needs this”
“Share your thoughts in the comments”
“Follow us for more tips”
How to check Instagram analytics?
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world, with over 2 billion monthly active users. If you are a business owner, influencer, or content creator, you might want to know how your posts and stories are performing on Instagram. That’s where Instagram analytics come in handy.
Instagram analytics are the data and insights that show you how your audience is engaging with your content, what kind of content they like, and how you can improve your Instagram strategy. In this blog post, we will show you how to check Instagram analytics in 2023, using the latest features and tools available on the platform.
Step 1: Switch to a professional account
To access Instagram analytics, you need to have a professional account. This can be either a business account or a creator account, depending on your goals and needs. A business account is suitable for brands, organizations, and online shops, while a creator account is designed for influencers, artists, and public figures.
To switch to a professional account, go to your profile and tap on the menu icon in the top right corner. Then, tap on Settings > Account > Switch to Professional Account. You will be asked to choose between a business account or a creator account, and then to select a category for your profile. You will also need to connect your Instagram account to a Facebook page if you haven’t done so already.
Step 2: Go to the Insights tab
Once you have a professional account, you can access Instagram analytics by going to the Insights tab on your profile. Here, you will see an overview of your account performance, including your reach, impressions, profile visits, website clicks, email clicks, and call clicks. You can also see how many followers you gained or lost in the past week, and what are the top locations, age ranges, genders, and active times of your audience.
Step 3: Explore the Content, Activity, and Audience sections
The Insights tab has three main sections: Content, Activity, and Audience. Each section provides you with different metrics and insights about your Instagram posts and stories.
Content: This section shows you how your posts and stories are performing in terms of engagement, reach, impressions, saves, shares, comments, and likes. You can filter by time period (7 days or 30 days), content type (photos, videos, carousel posts, stories), or interaction type (likes, comments, etc.). You can also tap on each post or story to see more detailed analytics.
Activity: This section shows you how your account is driving traffic and actions on Instagram. You can see how many people visited your profile, clicked on your website link, called you, emailed you, or got directions to your location. You can also see how many people discovered your account through different sources, such as hashtags, explore page, home feed, or other accounts.
Audience: This section shows you who your followers are and how they interact with your content. You can see the demographics of your audience, such as their location, age range, gender, and language. You can also see when they are most active on Instagram by day and by hour. You can use this information to optimize your posting schedule and target your content to the right audience.
Step 4: Use additional tools and features
Besides the Insights tab on your profile, there are some other tools and features that can help you check Instagram analytics in 2023. Some of them are:
Reels Insights: Reels are short-form videos that you can create and share on Instagram. To see how your reels are performing, go to the Reels tab on your profile and tap on the menu icon on each reel. You will see metrics such as plays, likes, comments, saves, shares, and reach.
Live Insights: Live is a feature that allows you to broadcast live video to your followers. To see how your live videos are performing, go to the Live tab on your profile and tap on the menu icon on each live video. You will see metrics such as viewership peak, comments, shares, and reach.
Guides Insights: Guides are a feature that allows you to curate and share collections of posts, products, or places on Instagram. To see how your guides are performing, go to the Guides tab on your profile and tap on the menu icon on each guide. You will see metrics such as views, saves, and shares.
Shopping Insights: Shopping is a feature that allows you to sell products directly on Instagram. To see how your shopping posts and stories are performing, go to the Shop tab on your profile and tap on the menu icon on each post or story. You will see metrics such as product views, product clicks, and product purchases.
Conclusion
Instagram analytics are essential for understanding your audience and improving your Instagram strategy. By using the tools and features mentioned above, you can check Instagram and optimize your content for maximum engagement and growth. Happy Instagramming!
YouTube is one of the most popular platforms for content creators, influencers, and entrepreneurs. It has over 2 billion monthly active users, and more than 500 hours of video are uploaded every minute. YouTube also offers various ways to monetize your videos, such as ads, memberships, merchandise, and more.
But how can you make money on YouTube in 2024? What are the best strategies, tips, and tools to grow your channel and earn a steady income from your videos? In this blog post, we will answer these questions and share some of the best practices for making money on YouTub.
Choose a niche and target audience
The first step to making money on YouTube is to choose a niche and target audience for your channel. A niche is a specific topic or category that you focus on, such as gaming, beauty, fitness, or education. A target audience is a group of people who are interested in your niche and are likely to watch your videos.
Choosing a niche and target audience will help you create relevant, engaging, and valuable content for your viewers. It will also help you stand out from the competition and attract loyal fans who will support your channel. To choose a niche and target audience, you should:
Research what topics are popular and trending on YouTube
Identify what problems or needs your audience has and how you can solve them
Analyze what other successful channels in your niche are doing and how you can differentiate yourself
Use tools like Google Trends, YouTube Analytics, and Keyword Planner to find keywords and phrases related to your niche
Optimize your channel and videos for SEO
The second step to making money on YouTube is to optimize your channel and videos for SEO (search engine optimization). SEO is the process of improving the visibility and ranking of your channel and videos on YouTube and Google search results. Optimizing your channel and videos for SEO will help you drive more traffic, views, subscribers, and revenue to your channel. To optimize your channel and videos for SEO, you should:
Create a catchy and descriptive channel name and banner
Write a compelling and keyword-rich channel description and about section
Add relevant tags, categories, and playlists to your channel
Use high-quality thumbnails and titles that capture attention and curiosity
Write engaging and keyword-rich video descriptions and tags
Add captions, subtitles, cards, and end screens to your videos
Use tools like VidIQ, TubeBuddy, and Morningfame to optimize your channel and videos for SEO
There are many ways to download YouTube videos, but not all of them are legal or safe. Some methods may violate YouTube’s terms of service, or expose your device to malware or viruses. Here are some of the best and safest ways to download YouTube videos without breaking any rules. Read more: https://technologer.net/how-to-download-youtube-videos
Monetize your channel with YouTube Partner Program
The third step to making money on YouTube is to monetize your channel with YouTube Partner Program (YPP). YPP is the official program that allows you to earn money from ads that are displayed on or before your videos. To join YPP, you need to meet the following requirements:
Have at least 1,000 subscribers
Have at least 4,000 watch hours in the past 12 months
Follow YouTube’s policies and guidelines
Have an AdSense account
Once you join YPP, you can choose what types of ads you want to show on your videos, such as skippable ads, non-skippable ads, bumper ads, overlay ads, display ads, or sponsored cards. You can also customize where you want to place the ads on your videos, such as at the beginning, middle, end, or throughout the video.
The amount of money you can make from YPP depends on various factors, such as the number of views, clicks, impressions, watch time, ad type, ad rate, ad quality, viewer location, viewer device, viewer behavior, etc. Generally speaking, the more views and engagement you have on your videos, the more money you can make from YPP.
Diversify your income streams with other monetization options
The fourth step to making money on YouTube is to diversify your income streams with other monetization options. While YPP is the most common way to make money on YouTube, it is not the only way. There are many other ways to monetize your channel and videos, such as:
Memberships: You can offer exclusive perks and benefits to your viewers who join your channel as members for a monthly fee.
Merchandise: You can sell branded products such as t-shirts, mugs, hoodies, stickers, etc. to your fans through YouTube’s merch shelf or third-party platforms like Teespring, Spreadshirt, or Merch by Amazon.
Super Chat & Super Stickers: You can enable your viewers to pay for their messages or stickers to be highlighted in your live chat during live streams or premieres.
Channel Memberships: You can offer exclusive perks and benefits to your viewers who join your channel as members for a monthly fee.
Super Thanks: You can enable your viewers to show their appreciation and support for your videos by sending you a one-time tip or donation.
YouTube Premium: You can earn a share of the revenue from YouTube Premium subscribers who watch your videos without ads.
Brand Deals: You can partner with brands and companies to promote their products or services in your videos for a fee or commission.
Affiliate Marketing: You can recommend products or services that are relevant to your niche and audience and earn a commission for every sale or action that is made through your affiliate links.
Courses: You can create and sell online courses that teach your audience something valuable or useful related to your niche.
E-books: You can write and sell e-books that provide in-depth information or guidance on your niche topic.
Patreon: You can create a Patreon page and offer exclusive content and rewards to your patrons who support you with a monthly pledge.
Diversifying your income streams with other monetization options will help you increase your earning potential, reduce your reliance on ads, and build a loyal fan base.
Grow your audience and engagement with social media and email marketing
The fifth and final step to making money on YouTube is to grow your audience and engagement with social media and email marketing. Social media and email marketing are powerful ways to connect with your existing and potential viewers, drive more traffic to your channel, boost your brand awareness, and increase your conversions and sales. To grow your audience and engagement with social media and email marketing, you should:
Create accounts on popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, etc.
Share your videos, behind-the-scenes, teasers, previews, tips, polls, questions, etc. on your social media accounts
Engage with your followers by liking, commenting, replying, following back, etc.
Collaborate with other influencers and creators in your niche or related niches
Use hashtags, keywords, tags, mentions, etc. to increase your visibility and reach
Send regular newsletters, updates, offers, etc. to your email list
Use tools like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, or AWeber to manage your email marketing campaigns
Conclusion
Making money on YouTube in 2024 is not easy, but it is possible if you follow these five steps:
Choose a niche and target audience
Optimize your channel and videos for SEO
Monetize your channel with YouTube Partner Program
Diversify your income streams with other monetization options
Grow your audience and engagement with social media and email marketing
By following these steps, you can create a successful YouTube channel that provides value to your viewers, generates income for you, and allows you to pursue your passion.
We hope you found this blog post helpful and informative. If you have any questions or feedback, please leave them in the comments below. And don’t forget to follow our channels for more tips and tricks on how to make money on YouTube in 2024!
Social media is a powerful way to connect with your audience, grow your brand, and increase your sales. But managing multiple social media platforms can be time-consuming and overwhelming. That’s why you need a social media management tool that can help you plan, create, publish, monitor, and analyze your social media content.
Whether you are a small business owner, a marketer, or an influencer, you will find a tool that suits your needs and budget.
Here are the top 9 social media management tools and software in 2024:
Hootsuite is one of the most popular and widely used social media management tools in the market. It allows you to manage multiple social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and more, from one dashboard. You can schedule posts, monitor mentions, track analytics, run ads, collaborate with your team, and access various integrations and apps. Hootsuite also offers online courses and certifications to help you master social media marketing.
Key Features
Wide Integration: Hootsuite allows you to connect up to 35 social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok and more.
Create and Schedule: posts in advance using the intuitive dashboard, calendar or mobile app. You can also use the content library to store and reuse your media assets.
Monitor: your social media performance using the analytics tools, which provide insights on metrics such as reach, engagement, sentiment and conversions. You can also create custom reports and dashboards to share with your team or clients.
Manage: your online reputation and customer service using the inbox feature, which lets you respond to messages, comments and mentions from all your connected platforms in one place. You can also assign tasks, tag conversations and use templates to streamline your workflow.
Collaborate: with your team members using the team management feature, which allows you to assign roles, permissions and workflows. You can also chat with your team members using the internal messaging feature.
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Pros:
Comprehensive and versatile tool that can help you manage multiple aspects of your social media strategy.
Simple and intuitive interface
Supports many social networks and integrations
Offers free plan and reasonable pricing options
Provides free online courses and resources to help you learn and improve your skills
Provides excellent customer service.
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Cons:
Limited features on free plan
Does not support ads or advanced analytics
Some integrations require additional fees, especially if you need to connect more than 10 social networks or have a large team
It can also be overwhelming for beginners or users who only need basic features
Plans and Pricing
Hootsuite offers four plans: Free, Professional, Team and Business:
Free plan: allows you to connect up to 3 social networks and manage up to 30 scheduled posts.
Professional plan: costs $29 per month and allows you to connect up to 10 social networks and manage up to 100 scheduled posts.
Team plan: costs $129 per month and allows you to connect up to 20 social networks and manage up to 200 scheduled posts. It also includes team management and analytics features.
Business Plan: costs $599 per month and allows you to connect up to 35 social networks and manage unlimited scheduled posts. It also includes advanced features such as inbox, custom reports and integrations.
Overall Conclusion
Hootsuite is a powerful and reliable tool that can help you optimize your social media presence and reach your goals. It is suitable for users who need to manage multiple platforms, create engaging content, monitor their performance and collaborate with their team. However, it may not be the best option for users who have a limited budget, prefer a simpler tool or only need to focus on one or two platforms.
Crowdfire helps you create, schedule and optimize your content across various platforms. It also provides analytics, insights and recommendations to improve your social media performance.
Key Features
Content Studio: A feature that allows you to discover, curate and create engaging content for your audience. You can also use the AI-powered Smart Writer to generate captions, hashtags and keywords for your posts.
Post Scheduler: A feature that lets you plan and schedule your posts in advance for optimal times and frequencies. You can also use the Best Time feature to automatically find the best time to post for each platform.
Social Inbox: A feature that enables you to manage all your social media interactions in one place. You can reply, like, comment and share messages from your followers and fans across different platforms.
Analytics and Reports: TA feature that helps you measure and analyze your social media performance and growth. You can also generate and export custom reports for your clients or stakeholders.
Smart Recommendations: A feature that gives you personalized suggestions and tips to improve your social media strategy and reach. You can also use the Competitor Analysis feature to compare your performance with your competitors.
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Pros:
Supports multiple platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok and more
Offers a free plan that allows you to connect up to 3 social accounts and schedule up to 10 posts per account per month
User-friendly interface and a mobile app that makes it easy to use on the go
Integrates with various tools and services, such as Canva, Unsplash, Shopify, WordPress, Medium and more
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Cons:
The free plan has limited features and functionality compared to the paid plans
Paid plans can be expensive for some users, especially if they need to manage multiple social accounts or clients
customer support can be slow or unresponsive at times, according to some user reviews.
Plans and Pricing
Crowdfire has four plans: Free, Plus, Premium and VIP:
Free plan: allows you to connect up to 3 social accounts and schedule up to 10 posts per account per month. It also gives you access to basic features, such as Content Studio, Post Scheduler and Analytics.
Plus plan: costs $9.99 per month or $7.48 per month if billed annually. It allows you to connect up to 5 social accounts and schedule up to 100 posts per account per month. It also gives you access to advanced features, such as Social Inbox, Smart Recommendations and Competitor Analysis.
Premium plan: costs $49.99 per month or $37.48 per month if billed annually. It allows you to connect up to 10 social accounts and schedule up to 1000 posts per account per month. It also gives you access to premium features, such as Team Members, Custom Reports and White Label Reports.
VIP: costs $99.99 per month or $74.98 per month if billed annually. It allows you to connect up to 25 social accounts and schedule unlimited posts per account per month. It also gives you access to VIP features, such as Priority Support, Dedicated Account Manager and Custom Training.
Overall Conclusion
Crowdfire is a powerful and versatile social media management tool that can help you create, schedule and optimize your content across various platforms. It also provides analytics, insights and recommendations to improve your social media performance. However, it can also be expensive for some users, especially if they need to manage multiple social accounts or clients. Therefore, it is advisable to compare the features, pros and cons, plans and pricing of Crowdfire with other similar tools before making a decision.
Sendible Social is a powerful tool for managing social media campaigns in 2024. It allows you to create, schedule, and monitor content across multiple platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more. You can also track the performance of your posts, engage with your audience, and generate reports to measure your impact.
Key Features
Drag-and-drop content calendar that lets you plan and preview your posts in advance
A smart queue feature that automatically optimizes your posting times based on your audience’s behavior
Content library that stores your images, videos, and templates for easy access
Social inbox that consolidates all your messages and comments from different platforms in one place
Social listening tool that monitors relevant keywords, hashtags, and mentions across the web
Collaboration feature that enables you to work with your team members and clients on projects
White-label feature that allows you to customize your dashboard and reports with your own branding
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Pros:
Supports a wide range of platforms and integrations
User-friendly interface and a responsive customer support
Offers advanced analytics and reporting tools
Fexible pricing structure that suits different needs and budgets
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Cons:
Limited number of posts per month for some plans
Does not support some features such as stories, reels, or live videos for some platforms
May experience some glitches or delays in syncing with some platforms
Plans and Pricing
There are 4 plans and pricing of Sendible Social:
Starter: $29 per month for 1 user, 12 services, and 100 posts per month
Traction: $89 per month for 3 users, 48 services, and 500 posts per month
Growth: $240 per month for 7 users, 105 services, and 1,000 posts per month
Large: $750 per month for 12 users, 192 services, and 2,000 posts per month
You can also opt for a custom plan if you need more users, services, or posts.
Overall Conclusion
Sendible Social is a great tool for managing your social media presence in 2024. It can help you save time, increase engagement, and grow your brand awareness. However, it may not be the best fit for everyone depending on your goals, preferences, and budget. You can try it out for free for 14 days to see if it works for you.
eClincher is a social media management tool that helps you manage multiple accounts, schedule posts, monitor analytics, and engage with your audience. Some of the key features of eClincher in 2024 are:
Key Features
Smart Inbox: A unified inbox that lets you see and respond to all your messages, comments, mentions, and reviews across different platforms in one place.
Auto Post: A feature that automatically publishes your content at the best times based on your audience’s behavior and preferences.
Live Social Feeds: A feature that allows you to view and interact with live streams from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.
Influencer Discovery: A feature that helps you find and connect with influencers in your niche who can amplify your brand’s reach and credibility.
Social Listening: A feature that tracks and analyzes what people are saying about your brand, competitors, and industry on social media.
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Pros:
Supports a wide range of platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, Reddit, and more
Offers a free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
User-friendly interface and a responsive customer support team.
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Cons:
Can be expensive compared to some other tools, especially for larger teams or agencies
Does not have a native mobile app, only a web app that can be accessed on mobile devices
Does not integrate with some popular tools like WordPress, Shopify, or Mailchimp
Plans and Pricing
The 4 plans and pricing of eClincher:
Basic plan: $59 per month for one user and 10 social profiles
Premier plan: $119 per month for three users and 20 social profiles
Agency plan: $219 per month for six users and 40 social profiles
Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing for larger teams or agencies with more than 40 social profiles
Overall Conclusion
Overall, eClincher is a powerful and versatile social media management tool that can help you grow your online presence and reach your marketing goals. However, it may not be the best fit for everyone depending on their budget, needs, and preferences. Therefore, it is advisable to try out the free trial and compare it with other options before making a final decision.
Planable helps you collaborate and publish content across multiple platforms. It allows you to preview how your posts will look like on different channels, get feedback from your team and clients, and schedule your posts in advance. Some of the key features of Planable in 2024 are:
Key Features
Drag-and-drop interface that lets you easily design and edit your posts
Smart content calendar that syncs with your social media accounts and shows you the best times to post
Content library that stores all your assets and templates in one place
Workflow automation feature that streamlines your approval process and notifies you of any changes or comments
Performance dashboard that tracks your engagement, reach and conversions across all your channels
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Pros:
Saves you time and hassle by eliminating the need for multiple tools and apps
Improves your collaboration and communication with your team and clients
Enhances your creativity and quality by allowing you to see how your posts will look like before publishing
Supports a wide range of social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and TikTok
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Cons:
Might be expensive for small businesses or freelancers, as it charges per workspace rather than per user
Does not offer advanced analytics or reporting features, such as sentiment analysis or competitor benchmarking
Does not integrate with other popular tools, such as Canva, Mailchimp or WordPress
Plans and Pricing
Planable offers three plans for different needs and budgets,Starter, Premium and Enterprise:
Starter plan: costs $39 per month and allows you to manage up to 3 workspaces, 10 social media pages and 3 users.
Premium plan: costs $99 per month and allows you to manage up to 10 workspaces, 30 social media pages and 7 users.
Enterprise Plan: is customized for large teams and agencies, and offers unlimited workspaces, social media pages and users, as well as dedicated support and training.
Overall Conclusion
Planable is a great tool for social media management that can help you create, collaborate and publish content more efficiently and effectively. It is ideal for medium to large businesses or agencies that need a simple and intuitive solution for their social media needs. However, it may not be suitable for small businesses or freelancers who need more flexibility or functionality from their tool.
Buffer is another popular and user-friendly social media management tool that lets you schedule posts, analyze performance, and engage with your audience across various social networks. You can create a content calendar, optimize your posting times, collaborate with your team, reply to comments and messages, and access insights and reports. Buffer also has a separate tool called Buffer Publish for creating and publishing stories, reels, and videos on Instagram.
Key Features
User-friendly interface that lets you drag and drop your posts on a calendar, preview how they will look on each platform, and edit them easily. You can also use Buffer’s browser extension or mobile app to share content from anywhere on the web.
Create and schedule posts for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and more. You can also use Buffer to reply to comments and messages, monitor mentions and hashtags, and track your performance with analytics.
Integration with many other tools and apps, such as Canva, Unsplash, Feedly, WordPress, Shopify and more. You can use these integrations to create stunning visuals, find relevant content, optimize your SEO, and boost your sales.
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Pros:
Great tool for anyone who wants to save time and effort in managing their social media presence
Create consistent and engaging content, reach your audience at the best times, and measure your results
Friendly and helpful customer support team that is available 24/7 via email or chat
They also have a blog, a podcast, a newsletter, and a community where you can find tips, insights, and inspiration for your social media strategy
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Cons:
Does not support some features or platforms that other tools do, such as stories, reels, or TikTok
Some limitations in terms of customization, automation, or collaboration. For instance, you cannot create different post types for different platforms, set up recurring posts, or assign tasks to team members
Plans and Pricing
Buffer offers a variety of plans and pricing options to suit your needs and budget:
Free plan: lets you manage up to 3 social accounts and schedule up to 10 posts per account.
Pro plan: costs $15 per month and lets you manage up to 8 social accounts and schedule up to 100 posts per account
Premium plan: costs $65 per month and lets you manage up to 8 social accounts and schedule up to 2,000 posts per account.
Business Plan: costs $99 per month and lets you manage up to 25 social accounts and schedule up to 2,000 posts per account.
All plans come with a 14-day free trial.
Overall Conclusion
Buffer is a reliable and easy-to-use social media management tool that can help you grow your online presence and reach your goals. It has many features and integrations that make it a versatile and powerful tool. However, it also has some limitations that may not suit everyone’s needs or preferences. Therefore, we recommend that you try out Buffer for yourself and see if it works for you.
Agorapulse is a another awesome tool that helps you to manage your social media accounts, monitor your online reputation, and engage with your audience. Some of the key features of Agorapulse in 2024 are:
Key Features
Unified inbox that lets you see and reply to all your messages, comments, mentions, and reviews across different platforms in one place.
Social listening tool that tracks keywords, hashtags, and competitors on social media and alerts you when someone mentions your brand or products.
Content calendar that helps you to plan, schedule, and publish your posts across multiple platforms and accounts.
Social media analytics tool that provides you with insights into your performance, reach, engagement, and sentiment on social media.
Team collaboration tool that allows you to assign tasks, approve posts, and communicate with your team members.
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Pros:
Supports a wide range of platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, and Pinterest
Offers a free plan for up to 3 social profiles and 1 user, as well as affordable plans for small businesses and agencies
User-friendly interface and a mobile app that makes it easy to use on any device
Integrates with other tools such as Canva, Dropbox, Google Drive, Zapier, and more
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Cons:
Does not support some features such as live streaming, stories, reels, or shop tabs on some platforms
Limited number of reports and metrics compared to some other tools
May experience some bugs or glitches occasionally.
Plans and Pricing
There are 4 plans and pricing for Agorapulse:
Free plan: $0 per month for up to 3 social profiles and 1 user.
Pro: $79 per month for up to 10 social profiles and 2 users.
Premium plan: $159 per month for up to 25 social profiles and 4 users.
Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing for more than 25 social profiles and more than 4 users.
Overall Conclusion
Agorapulse is a reliable and versatile social media management tool that can help you to grow your online presence, connect with your audience, and achieve your goals. It is suitable for individuals, small businesses, and agencies who want to simplify their social media workflow and optimize their results.
Rebrandly is also a great tool to create, manage and track branded links for your online campaigns. With Rebrandly, you can customize your links with your own domain name, logo and keywords, and use them across different platforms and channels. Rebrandly also provides analytics and insights on how your links are performing, such as clicks, conversions, referrals and more.
Key Features
Link branding: You can use your own domain name and logo to create branded links that reflect your identity and message.
Link management: You can organize your links into folders, tags and campaigns, and edit or delete them at any time.
Link tracking: You can monitor the performance of your links in real-time, and see detailed reports on clicks, conversions, referrals, geolocation and more.
Link integration: You can integrate Rebrandly with various tools and platforms, such as WordPress, Shopify, Mailchimp, Facebook, Twitter and more.
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Pros:
Easy to use and set up, with a user-friendly interface and a free plan available
Allows you to create branded links that are more memorable, trustworthy and engaging than generic ones
Helps you improve your SEO and online visibility, as branded links can boost your click-through rate and social shares
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Cons:
Not very flexible or customizable, as you have to use one of their predefined domains or buy your own domain through them
Not very affordable or scalable, as their paid plans are quite expensive and have limited features and link quotas
Not very secure or reliable, as their links are not encrypted or protected from phishing or malware.
Plans and Pricing
Rebrandly offers four plans for different needs and budgets:
Free plan: You can create up to 500 branded links with 5 custom domains and track up to 5,000 clicks per month.
Starter: You can create up to 5,000 branded links with 25 custom domains and track up to 25,000 clicks per month. This plan costs $29 per month or $290 per year.
Pro: You can create up to 25,000 branded links with 50 custom domains and track up to 150,000 clicks per month. This plan costs $69 per month or $690 per year.
Premium: You can create up to 150,000 branded links with 100 custom domains and track up to 1 million clicks per month. This plan costs $499 per month or $4,990 per year.
Overall Conclusion
Rebrandly is a useful tool for creating and managing branded links for your social media campaigns. However, it may not be the best option for everyone, as it has some drawbacks in terms of flexibility, affordability and security. You should weigh the pros and cons carefully before deciding whether to use Rebrandly or not.
Sprout Social helps businesses and organizations to create, manage and measure their online presence. Some of the key features of Sprout Social:
Key Features
Unified inbox that allows you to monitor and respond to messages from multiple social platforms in one place.
Smart content calendar that helps you plan, schedule and publish your posts across different channels and optimize them for each audience.
Powerful analytics dashboard that provides insights into your social performance, audience behavior and trends.
Collaboration hub that enables you to work with your team members, assign tasks, share feedback and approve content.
Social listening tool that helps you monitor and analyze conversations about your brand, industry and competitors.
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Pros:
User-friendly interface that makes it easy to navigate and use
Integrates with various social platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and YouTube
Offers a variety of features and tools that cater to different needs and goals of social media marketing
Provides reliable customer support and regular updates.
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Cons:
Can be expensive for small businesses and nonprofits, as it charges per user per month
Does not support some niche platforms, such as TikTok, Snapchat and Reddit
May have some limitations in terms of customization and flexibility
Plans and Pricing
Sprout Social offers four plans: Standard, Professional, Advanced and Enterprise:
The pricing ranges from $99 to $249 per user per month, depending on the plan and the number of features included. You can also request a custom quote for the Enterprise plan if you have more than 10 users or need more advanced features.
Overall Conclusion
Sprout Social is a comprehensive and robust social media management tool that can help you grow your online presence, engage your audience and achieve your goals. It is suitable for businesses and organizations of different sizes and industries that want to streamline their social media marketing efforts.
Disclosure: Please note that we may receive affiliate compensation for some of the links below, at no expense to you, should you decide to purchase a paid plan. This blog does not provide financial advice, it is purely for entertainment and fun.
Today, the world’s most rising form of marketing is influencer marketing. About 40% of companies have started allotting a huge budget for influencer marketing and 80% believe that influencer marketing helps them achieve their company objectives. With the internet being accessible to almost everyone in the US, plus some of the biggest ISPs like Xfinity and Spectrum internet offering cheap internet, there are a lot of influencers with huge followers online. However, still, most of the people are unaware of how to take advantage of them.
What is Influencer Marketing?
The fusion of traditional and modern marketing methods is influencer marketing. It is a technique that corporations use by working with prominent bloggers, vloggers, or social media users to market their goods and services. These influencers hold a large following and a dedicated audience with which brands can gain recognition and even generate sales.
How does it work?
Influencer marketing is considered to successfully work with companies of all types and sizes, irrespective of whether you are a startup and want to create awareness, or a major company trying to promote a new line or push a particular product to offer. Brands would typically approach an influencer and pay them to make content regarding the products or services offered by a company. The influencer subsequently updates and shares the contents with their social network – typically Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, etc.
The price is traditionally negotiated and paid before the content has been produced to the influencer –generally based on the following size of the creator and surprisingly not on content quality.
Creating the Plan
Since 47% of users now use Adblock technology, influencer marketing is by all means the fastest and most efficient way of creating premium content for the consumers it is intended to attract. The strategic marketing approach can instantly boost brand awareness and supercharge sales.
Only ask yourself some crucial questions to get going first…
Why Use it?
In a survey carried out by the Keller Fay Party, 82 percent of respondents indicated that they were likely to obey an influencer ‘s advice. And, 70 percent of the young generation prefers goods promoted by non-celebrity influencers, according to a major Cultural Prejudice poll. Consumers are mostly attracted by micro-influencers because they are relevant, intriguing, and amiable – promoted by real people who themselves use and are satisfied by the brand and item. The engagement rates of micro-influencers have been shown to be higher than other big celebrities. Although major celebrities can set a massive network, it is highly likely that most of their followers won’t be in your brand – most of them being passive spectators instead of being active.
Micro-influencers, on the other hand, have devoted followers that are primarily engaged in their work. According to research, 3k to 10k is the ‘top pick’ for marketing, since, the engagement rate is inversely proportional to the audience size.
What is your Objective?
It is important to provide a specific campaign goal as it tells the content creator precisely what you expect of them. The first step towards creating exclusive, entertaining content for your brand is to prepare your approach and to identify your goals. It is all down to discovering out which technique best suits you.
Try to figure out what you want: is it boosting sales? Establish the image of your brand? You want to meet customers who are unaware of your company, or engage in the main target market?
For good quality material, a simple, succinct summary is important. This may be an inspiring vision across the board of your mood, a connection to a website, a discount code, and a submission that builds visibility and dedication.
How To Choose Suitable Influencers For Your Business?
After making a list of influencers, it is about time you find out who is worth talking to about partnering with you. You surely did some of this already while creating the list, but you ought to focus on discovering the right influencers for your company.
You have to deal with trustworthy and appreciable people. People who are effective and match your style and objectives. Therefore, observe their audience engagement, the audience must match well with the people you are targeting. Perhaps you should not spend time dealing with influencers that do not have a strong identity, your best option is to create a positive product experience – growing engagement levels and the impact of your potential relationship.
How To Sustain Healthy Influencer Relationships?
Influencers are smart enough to know how to best utilize their channels to boost the message of a brand in a way that works effectively for their followers. It is also very important to address the influencers with courtesy and compassion while choosing them – it is a partnership after all!
Final Thought
Most of influencer marketing lasts a couple of months only. However, taking the right approach with planning can prove to be extremely successful for your business, fulfilling all your goals be it creating brand awareness or generating profitable sales revenue.
Whether you’re looking to connect with other like-minded people, grow an audience as a career, or just want to express yourself with something you’re passionate about, starting your own YouTube channel can be one of the best ways to move forward. We live in an age of content, and it’s not surprising you might want to try the path out for yourself.
However, getting started with your own YouTube channel is no easy feat, and while a lot of creating content is trial and error to see what works and what doesn’t, today we’re going to explore the top five tips you need to know to get off to the best start.
Get the Essentials
The amazing thing about YouTube is the fact that anybody can do it. All you need at a real basic level is a camera and a microphone. When you’re starting out, even just an iPhone or smartphone will be enough, but there are a few pieces of basic equipment that can help you improve your quality from the word ‘go.’
Things like gimbal stabilizers, tripods, external microphones, lenses, decent lighting equipment, and memory cards are all fantastic things that will help you make content easier. Don’t forget you’re also going to need some form of video editing equipment!
Provide Valuable Content
When you’re going through your content during the editing process, you need to make sure every single second of content is providing value to your viewers. You might spend days, weeks, or even months creating and recording content, but if it doesn’t fit into the final cut, don’t put it in or try and force it. Create a plan you can follow.
The idea of creating content is the fact that you enjoy yourself, and you keep your viewers engaged in what you have to offer. Of course, if your style is to be all over the place, that’s also fine!
Quality Audio is Key
So many YouTubers starting out will focus on making sure their video is the highest possible quality, and everything looks as good as it can be. However, it’s important to remember that the audio is just as, if not more, important. If people can’t hear what you’re saying and can’t listen to your ideas, they’re not going to be able to connect with you.
Whether you need to invest in a proper microphone or learn how to sound proof a room, there are plenty of ways to improve the quality of your audio easily. Again, just keep it in mind as you’re creating content!
Start Small, Build Up
Just because you’ve started making content, you don’t need to splash on expensive equipment and fancy editing software that costs thousands of dollars. Start small with free software and experiment. Get to know the features and what it can do, and slowly build yourself up over time. This will help you learn the skills you need, rather than overwhelming yourself too quickly.
Use Other Social Media Channels
Just because you’re on YouTube, doesn’t mean you need to just stay on YouTube. Instead, start a Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram account to work alongside your YouTube channel. You can create other content throughout your day, and it will help you grow and interact with your audience, only resulting in more loyal viewers.
Summary
Whereas you can follow these tips to help you successfully get started on YouTube with your own channel, it’s important to remember that everyone’s journey is different, and you’ll need to think outside the box and, most importantly, be yourself!
Social media has caught up in mysterious ways! No matter how addicting it gets, we still can’t go for a day without using our social media accounts, especially Facebook. Yes, that’s right! Checking Facebook’s news feed is literally the first thing we do, and yes even before we get out of our bed. We somehow love to see what our friends have been up to, where they have partied this weekend or whether our favorite celebrity crush has uploaded any recent picture or not. Facebook is about everything!
But what about privacy? Don’t you think the over-dosage of social media accounts sabotage our privacy and increases the risk of being exposed online? We love uploading pictures and videos on our Facebook accounts and yes, we almost never forget to upload a status checking-in at our favorite restaurant or any place we visit. Well, the more you share, the more is the risk of exposing your privacy online. Wondering how can you secure your Facebook account while you can keep doing all the things we love ? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! Here are some of the best Facebook tips and tricks that can make your social media experience a pleasant one while making a few tweaks in Facebook privacy settings.
Image Source: Abine
Let’s get started and explore a few Facebook tricks that can enhance the privacy and security of your account.
Facebook Tips and Tricks to Boost Privacy
Run a Privacy Checkup
Before we dig any deeper, first you should get an overview of your current Facebook privacy settings. As a responsible Facebook account user, one should be aware of all actively applied settings like who all can view your posts, which all third-party apps can access your basic account information, how does
your profile appear to someone who is not added in your contact list and so on. Well, what we do recommend you is to keep your posts restricted to minimum friends and followers who are a part of your inner circle. Don’t make all your posts public, unless if you’re a business page or a celebrity or social figure.
To review your privacy settings, log in to your Facebook account and open Settings. In the Settings window, select the “Privacy” section from the left-hand side menu pane. Here you can get a quick glance of your Facebook account setting and you can customize it to make your account more secure. You can choose who can see your future posts and also limit the audience of your previous posts.
Enable Two Factor Authentication
Talking of privacy, next on our list of Facebook tips and tricks comes enabling Two-Factor Authentication on your account. Enabling Two-Factor Authentication on your Facebook account will add an extra layer of protection where you’ll be prompted to enter a security code (via SMS) each time you wish to log in to your account.
To enable 2FA on Facebook, open Facebook Settings and switch to the “Security and Login” section. Scroll down until you find the Two-Factor Authentication option and tap on it. So, in case if you’ve not already opted for 2FA, tap on the “Get Started” button, follow the on-screen instructions and add an extra layer of security to your account.
View How Other People See your Profile
Well, this may sound obvious but if anyone wants to stalk you, checking your Facebook profile is one of the easiest things to do. Our Facebook account includes our entire history, from our birthday to places we visit, the music we like, family info, educational background, work info, and almost anything. Sharing all this info with your inner circle is fine, but not with strangers and stalkers, right?
Image Source: The Mac Observer
So, to make sure your Facebook account is secure one should be completely aware of how your Facebook profile appears to someone who is not added in your contact list. To check this, head on to your profile page, tap the three-dot icon on the bottom right corner of your cover picture and select “View as”. Here Facebook will tell you how your profile appears to public and you can review all your posts and content that is easily accessible on your account. Doing so can give you an upper-hand where you can customize who all can see your posts and info, and you can change the privacy of shared posts accordingly.
Third-Party App Settings
As Facebook has a gigantic user base that connects millions of people worldwide, it’s not just confined to connect with our friends and in fact, it has become a lot more than that! Facebook is also used as a promotional tool by marketers where they target us with advertisements and offers based on our interests and likes.
Image Source: CNET
So, to review which all third-party apps and services are associated with your Facebook account, here’s what you need to do. Head on to Facebook Settings> Apps and Websites to see which all third-party apps are being accessed through your Facebook account. If you wish to revoke the permission of any third-party app, tap the cross icon next to it!
Recover Deleted Messages on Messenger
Next on our list of Facebook tips and tricks is recovering accidentally deleted messages on Messenger. Yes, it does happen with all of us, right? So, let’s cut to the chase and explore one of the best Facebook Messenger tricks that will allow you to easily recover deleted messages within no time.
Well, all you have to do is open any active Facebook conversation on Messenger and tap on the gear icon placed on the top-right corner and select the “Archive” option. Yes, that’s right! Archiving your Facebook conversations is a great solution to keep all your conversations preserved. Even if you accidentally delete a text in a conversation, it will still stay preserved in Facebook data history.
So, fellas, this ends our quick list of Facebook tricks to ensure more privacy in your account. We would still recommend you limit the visibility and share restricted content on your Facebook account. Try to keep all your pictures, videos, and posts private, so that there’s a lesser risk in being exposed online. Privacy is a crucial concern and you should certainly not ignore it any cost especially while accessing social media accounts like Facebook and Instagram. Follow these above-mentioned Facebook tips and tricks to add an extra layer of security to your account.
Good luck and stay safe!
Summary: Checking Facebook’s news feed is literally the first thing we do to start off our day, right? But don’t you think the overdosage of social media accounts sabotage our privacy? Here are some of the best Facebook tips and tricks to protect your account.
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Author Bio: – Chandra Shekhar Choudhary is working at Systweak Blogs, as an SEO analyst and technical Content Writer. His potential of writing is PC tips, Android and Mac tricks and he is anxious in writing other technical blogs. You can also find Chandra Shekhar on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
These days, everyone who has a pulse has a smartphone. When they first came out, only the people who had a ton of money had it, and it was a tool that people have shown off with. However, the smartphone has become one of the most common tools among many different people. As a matter of fact, the other types of phones have become increasingly rare. It is not just a sign of status that attracts people to the smartphone. There is also the use that the smartphone offers.
Surf the Internet
With the popularity of the internet, the smartphone has become popular because of the ability to surf the internet and do some of the same things that are done on a full sized computer. As a matter of fact, many mobile carriers double as internet service providers in order to provide you with the services you need. Smartphones are often used to access apps. Often times, people use their smartphones in order to access their favorite video streaming sites and apps.
Connect With People
Smartphones seem to have become very popular at the same time that social media has become mainstream. People use smartphones to connect on social media. However, there are other things you can do with your smartphone as well as social media. Once you develop enough of a following, then you can use the smartphone to make money in various ways. The smartphone has resulted in more people becoming connected than ever. This has also provided people with opportunities to network and build something that is going to be great for their lives.
The Types of Smartphones to Look For
As with many other products, not all smartphones are equal. As a matter of fact, you might want to be careful with the type of smartphone you are purchasing. Some smartphones are going to be very useless when it comes to battery or other aspects of the phone. Before you decide on the type of smartphone you are going to use, you want to make sure that you are getting a phone that you can handle. You want a battery life that is reasonable and not liable to leave yo constantly looking for a charger. While you don’t necessarily have to pay a fortune for the latest smartphone, you might want to look at the features and the performance of the phone before trying to move forward with one.
High Quality Entertainment
One thing that the smartphone has done was open people’s mind when it comes to how they can watch shows. While people still look to a big screen with a large sound system, the high quality image and sound has also been translated to the smartphone. A reasonable sized smartphone is good enough to watch a show. Also, if you want high quality sound, the streaming sites have a great sound quality with really good dynamic range that translate well to your headphones. There are also some phones that support multi-channel surround sound.
Watch TV
Speaking of entertainment, the internet and the mobile web has advanced to the point where you can watch TV. This includes all of the programs and the advertising from channels in the palm of your hand. There are plenty of streaming services that offer television service with a few different channels that you can choose from in order to watch your favorite shows. You can watch them in the highest possible quality with your device and headphones.
One of the reasons that smartphones have become so popular is that there is just so much you can do with a smartphone besides connect with others and talk. It can actually be your only source of entertainment if you want it to be. This is one of the reasons that people find them to be very fascinating. Some people may find themselves struggling to live without a smartphone. Fortunately, smartphones can be used for reasons that are related to productivity as well so that they can be of greater benefit.
With the increasing impact of the digital world, an AgeUK study shows that senior citizens are making use of emerging technologies – in fact the number of over 75s using the internet in particular has doubled in the last five years.
Seniors are not only using the internet, but the majority of seniors also own smart phones, online shop and 50% of internet users aged 65-75 have a social media account. The main ways seniors tend to use the internet is to keep in touch with family abroad, for general browsing and for entertainment purposes.
Although seeing the older generation taking advantage of the latest trends and technologies shows the positive impact of these innovations on people of all ages, there are also many potential threats they need to be aware of when using the internet. Only 32% of seniors surveyed claimed they were confident using the internet safely, and 25% of over 75s stated that technology made them feel vulnerable. Seniors particularly need to be aware of how to use the internet safely as they appear to have a lack of confidence and awareness, making them prime targets for cyber criminals. 1 in 5 seniors also don’t have anti-virus software installed on their devices leaving them vulnerable.
This infographic created by Focus Training introduces simple yet effective ways seniors can safely use the internet and protect themselves from potential cyber attacks.
There is so much competition in business today that if you are unable to adopt the best practices in marketing, you could simply sink in no time. The ability to adapt and manage change had always been remarkable for businesses, but it was never as much relevant as it is today. This is perhaps a reason for the popularity of digital signage’s that have become the essential tool in branding. Despite the traditional and online avenues of branding still doing good, digital signage’s have given marketers a shot in the arm as it enables them to take a direct approach to connecting brands with consumers. No matter how good your products or services might be, just upholding it in front of customers will do little good for your business. You have to connect the brand with customers to influence them in choosing it.
Digital signage’s are much more than the electronic restaurant menu board as it plays a major role in building brands and even go a few steps ahead to earn value for it. In simple words, if you are keen to acquire brand equity, you should know how to use digital signage’s to your advantage. The aim should be to build a cult following for your brand by projecting it as a concept that relates closely to people’s lifestyle and does not remain merely a product or service. If you look at some top brands like Google or Apple, you would realize how these brands have infiltrated into our lives and have become a part of it. When searching for anything, we tell people to ‘Google’ it as the brand has become synonymous with searches.
It’s a lifestyle and not a brand
To turn your brand into an extension of a lifestyle, you can use digital signage’s that help to display content that moves beyond product features. There is a certain freshness about digital signage’s. Its immersive qualities create closeness with customers that help to build an identity for your brand that is distinctly different and easily recognizable. The colors, the logo, the fonts and the design in presenting content has the marks of your brand that remains immersed in the content. Use of images and videos make the content more expressive. You can extend your brand messaging by using digital signage’s intelligently. Choose from various options ranging from interactive brand activation to attractive digital window displays. Providing various digital experiences to customers helps to drive home the brand message with ease.
In this article, we will focus on the various ways that digital signage’s can help you develop a cult following for your brand.
Tell your story
To touch the hearts of customers and bring bands closer to them, the lesser you speak directly about product features better it is. The idea behind the approach is to create a personalized experience with the brand first by convincing customers about the value they could derive from it. When customers become confident about the brand, they would automatically buy it. For creating a personalized experience, you have to tell a story about the brand that captures the imagination of customers. The digital signage is an excellent platform for telling stories.You can capitalize on its ability to engage and educate the customers and even influence their behavior and decision about buying by inspiring them.
Create customer engagement
When you can develop a cult following for your brand, it becomes easy to use digital signage’s for engaging closely with customers. The advantage of using digital signage’s is that it allows customers to interact with the brand by using the interactive features of touch screens. Several users can access information about the brand at the same time without causing any inconvenience to other users as you can set up several screens for displaying the content. By using advanced technology, it is possible to collect useful customer data from digital signage’s with face recognition features that not only recognizes customers but also collects various demographic data. You can use the data to sever more targeted content for better engagement.
Encourage sharing
Humans have the innate tendency to share experiences that excite them. Digital signage’s provide the opportunity of displaying high-quality content that attracts customers and encourages them to share it with others. Visual content, in particular, stimulates the brain faster and generates positive reactions that result in sharing of content. Word of mouth about the high-quality content would spread far and wide and you could experience more footfalls at the store. Soon you would find customers turning loyal to you.
While people might argue if digital signage’s are outstanding or not, there cannot be any debate about its ability to make you stand out from the crowd. It brings people closer to the brand and provides the opportunity of creating a lasting impact for your brand.
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Author Bio: Karen Anthony is a Business Tech Analyst. She has exploited the benefits of the electronic restaurant menu board as it plays a major role in building brands in the restaurant industry.
Most retailers will have at the very least set up the main social media profiles. The problem is that not many people use their social media profiles effectively and they generally only update sporadically. This infographic from Colourfast will hopefully help as it looks at how retailers can use social media to boost in-store sales. The reality is that a well-managed social can help to drive your business forward so it really isn’t an area that should be ignored.
Communicating with your customers on social media has become just as important as over email or over the phone so it might be worth hiring a social media manager or at the very least have someone within the company who has experience with social media keeping them updated.
See the full infographic now to learn about how your store can use social media more effectively. Hopefully you will learn a few things from it.
Social media has completely turned our lives upside down. You can find there almost anything. Everything from funny dog memes to serious issues like the coverage of elections and more.
People spend more and more time on their social media pages. It is fun to be able to share something and get instant validation in the form of likes or shares. You see something you like, share it and get kudos from others in your circle.
It is something that is unique to social media and something that big brands are capitalizing on big time. And, who can blame them? Getting something to go viral means big bucks. Add in a “Buy” button enabling clients to buy instantly on that page and it’s as if you are printing money.
Take industry giant Nike Football, for example. With over 45 million followers, all that the company needs to do is to release the latest Nike promos or Nike vouchers on social media, build a little hype and watch the sales come in.
The benefit of enabling a “Buy” feature on social media is that it makes the process of buying just that little bit more effortless. Making buying easier for clients is something that was first proven to be successful by Amazon when it introduced the “one-click” buying software.
With 28.1 million followers on Facebook, it has become clear that even Amazon acknowledges the importance of social commerce. It is more than just the flavor of the month now and you ignore the concept at your own risk.
Would you like to know more about social commerce and social networks? We have summed up for you the highlights in the infographic below.
Your company’s brand is a work in progress, so it’s important to always look for ways you can improve it. Whether you are refining your messaging, choosing a consistent color scheme, or finding your voice on social media, strengthening your brand is an ongoing project that happens on- and offline.
How to Strengthen Your Brand Online
Learning the most effective ways to do both can help you build a stronger brand for your company overall, which can help you keep your customers coming back while reach out to new ones. Here are a few tips to help you build up your brand online:
1. Blog Frequently
Blogging is crucial for any business seeking to reach new customers online. A well-maintained blog can keep your business at the top of search engines, which makes it easier for potential customers who need the services you offer to find you.
Focus on creating high-quality, engaging and relevant content for your target audience, and add new content regularly. Consider guest blogging on related sites, or extending such an invitation from your site to industry professionals. Your blogs can showcase your expertise to potential customers and could help them decide to seek out your services.
2. Create a Social Media Presence
Social media offers businesses a simple, effective, and low-cost means to stay in touch with their current customers and to reach new ones. Create profiles on the sites most likely to be used by potential customers, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn.
You’ll be able to easily share content, post updates about your business, or address complaints as they arise. This can help to build a strong connection between your business and its customers, since they will be able to interact with your business directly and can see that their concerns matter to it.
3. Share Testimonials
A glowing testimonial from a previous customer can provide dividends for your business for years to come, especially if they are famous or well-known in your industry. Many customers determine where they will make a purchase from based on online reviews, and a collection of testimonials could help to win their business.
A testimonial provides your business with social proof and gives potential customers a chance to learn about your services and expertise from people just like them. Ask some of your customers who were especially satisfied to leave you a review, and consider posting them on a special section of your website.
4. Find Your Personality
Consumers today are more likely to frequent a business that has a recognizable personality than one which has a bland or generic voice. It may take some time, but finding your business’s unique voice can help you better connect with customers and provide them with a personalized experience.
Every business is different and will have its own way of appealing to its buyer personas. Take some time to experiment and create a unified voice for all of your communications which speaks to the customers you are trying to attract.
Whether you opt for a snarky, social-media savvy persona perfect for reaching millennials or a more reserved, sophisticated persona which can connect with professionals getting ready for retirement, finding the right voice for your company is crucial to building a successful brand.
How to Strengthen Your Brand Offline
While making effective use of the Internet is crucial to the success of any business, keeping your brand strong offline is just as important. Whether through stunningly designed business cards, elaborate print collateral or full production television commercials, brand strengthening happens at all levels:
5. Define Your Brand (in Opposition to Competitors)
What makes your brand different, or better, from your competitors? If you don’t know this, your customers won’t either. Placing this front and center in any marketing campaign can help you easily distinguish your business. This can also provide inspiration for your marketing efforts.
You’ll be able to highlight some quality of your business which is superior to your competitors, and can inform potential customers of what you have to offer, especially if you are new to the market. Buyers could immediately take an interest in your business and see what you have to offer.
6. Keep Fonts, Colors and Logos Consistent
Your customers need to be able to quickly identify your business from your competitors. The last thing you should do is confuse them with multiple color schemes, too many fonts, or chaotic logos.
Choosing a consistent font, color scheme and logo can help to make your brand more recognizable to customers and can make your own marketing efforts easier. You’ll have fewer moving parts to keep track of and can better build campaigns around a definite aesthetic, feeling or lifestyle, which itself can serve as inspiration for future campaigns.
7. Create Your Niche
Part of what makes a marketing campaign a success is its specificity. Focusing your marketing efforts on baby boomers getting ready for retirement isn’t nearly as effective as focusing on professionals with advanced degrees in the same age group who require financial consulting services to prepare for retirement in the next ten years.
Limitations can prove to be powerful aids when it comes to finding clients, as you’ll be able to automatically filter out many people who won’t be interested in your services, and can instead focus on the handful who are actively looking for your services.
8. Set Deadlines
You could have an endless well of ideas for your marketing campaign, but if none of them come to fruiting, they won’t be worth anything. You can easily spend too much time modifying your original idea to try to cover too many angles at once, and come up with a campaign that lacks a clear focus and which is ineffective at reaching any particular audience.
Setting a deadline can help you focus your efforts on a handful of ideas without losing control of them.
Building your brand is a long-term project, and it’s not uncommon for companies to change their brand multiple times. Don’t be afraid to experiment in order to find the brand that best suits your business, but always make sure each element contributes to a complete experience for your customers.
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With over 18 years in business, Silkcards specializes in unique and beautiful print that reflects a brand’s image and makes a positive first impression.
Social media is a major part of today’s world. With Facebook recently announcing that over 2 billion people now have a Facebook profile, there simply is no way to ignore its existence. As a brick and mortar retailer with no online selling option, the lazy view would be that you don’t need a social media presence but this couldn’t be further from the truth. The likelihood is that a portion of the people in your store are likely using social media while in the store (perhaps creating a Snapchat story or an Instagram post) or else they used social media in advance of their visit to your store. Of course it is vital to note that social media requires effort and time and it’s difficult to see the tangible results for the effort you put in.
That’s why it is so important to be measured in your approach to social media and not invest a load of time recklessly creating various platforms. It’s not simply about creating the likes of a Facebook page for example because that page also needs to be maintained and populated and someone has to be assigned the responsibility of doing that. The guys over at Storetraffic have put together this infographic which details everything you need to know about social media to make a start for your brick and mortar store. Check the full details out below!
When you’re a blogger, there are simply too many tasks you need to perform on a daily basis, from finding the right topics to link building and much, much more. However, the functionalities in your web browser can help in performing these daily tasks conveniently. Considering how Google Chrome is by far the most popular browser on the planet (according to StatCounter, almost 50% of people accessed the Internet using Chrome from October 2015 to October 2016), we’ll take a look at some of the most useful extensions, that will make your job easier.
Blogging Extensions
1. Pocket
If you want to know just how good Pocket is, just look at its credentials: in 2014. Pocket won a Webbly award for best productivity and it now has a user base of over 15 million people worldwide. It’s a rather simple tool that allows to save numerous articles, videos and notes for later reference.
2. Grammarly
While every version of Microsoft Word will keep your spelling in check, but when you write online, most of us make spelling and grammar mistakes regularly, mostly because we’re trying to type as fast as we can. Thankfully, Grammarly will ensure that you never make a typo again and end up looking stupid because of misplacing a couple of letters. It also scans your text for proper use of more than 250 advanced grammar rules in real-time.
3. Fireshot
If you want something that will eliminate the mundane print-paste-edit routine, and quickly grab screenshots of websites and save them as a JPEG, GIF or a PDF from within Google Chrome, then Fireshot is the right extension for you. You’ll be able to capture both entire pages and just visible parts, and it’ll even allow you to add comments, blur selected areas and apply other effects to your captures.
4. Google Publisher Toolbar
The Publisher Toolbar is designed to assist web publishers view data about their Ad Exchange, AdSense and DC for Publisher accounts from a single dashboard within the Chrome browser. You can also block any unsuitable creative you don’t wish to display on your site or blog. After you install GPT, all the ad units on your site will get an overlay that’ll display information like the buyer name and display URL.
5. Break Helper
Sitting in our chair for prolonged periods of time is literarily killing us – sitting 6 or more hours each day increases risk of premature death up to 40%. Now, even if you don’t care about your health that much, you have to be aware that working at a stretch without taking a break can result in a sharp decline in productivity. Therefore, you should install Break Helper extension, and it will let you know when you need to take your next break, and let your overworked brain relax for a second.
Social Media Extensions
6. Rapportive
Even though this part of our list is dedicated to social media, let’s talk about emails. I’m guessing many of your interactions still happen within Gmail, and while you’d like to start a conversation going on LinkedIn, you’re almost certainly stuck doing the delayed email back-and-forth with new contacts every other day. But Rapportive will provide you all the information you need about your email contacts, including their social profiles, which will allow you to easily add every contact on social media.
7. StayFocusd
Even if you’re making money of your blog, it doesn’t mean that don’t suffer from bouts of procrastination from time to time. But even though technology is a source of distraction, it can also be a source of discipline you desperately need. StayFocusd will limit the amount of time you can spend certain site. It also lets you choose what to block – an entire website, a specific web page and even different types of content like videos and games.
8. RiteTag Social Media Optimizer
Do you spent much time wondering which hashtag you should use for a certain story? Maybe you’re unsure whether adding a particular hashtag will add or diminish the value of your message? Thinking about these problems can be quite time-consuming, especially if you’re person that tweets more than ten times every day. However, Rite Tag provides analytics on hashtags you regularly use, which will help you save a lot of time.
9. Figure it Out
One of the biggest challenges you face when working globally has nothing to with cultural differences or even language barriers. Your main challenge is figuring out what it is in a different geo-region without doing the math. With the Figure it Out extension, you’ll be able to add up to ten different time zones, which will help you schedule your posts and even set up meetings with people from different regions.
10. VPN Extension
This item on our list is not only reserved for people who live in countries like China, Vietnam and Portugal, where the government blocks access to certain social media sites. It is also recommendable to anyone that likes to write from their dorm room or favorite coffee shop, because regularly block access to certain sites. Of course, there are many providers on the market and the selection of a VPN extension is all up to you, but we have to recommend ExpressVPN, because it offers a wide range of servers and unlimited bandwidth.
Search Engine Optimization Extensions
11. Open SEO Stats
This is perhaps the most popular SEO extension for Google Chrome, marketers often use it see PageRank, Compete Rank and QuantCast Rank and get quick access to info about backlinks, indexed and cached pages, among other things. This basically means that Open SEO gives you a complete overview of any information about any website on the Internet.
12. iPage
Google Toolbar is always great for [age ranking, but seeing how it isn’t available for Chrome, you’ll want an alternative. And luckily, iPage Chrome is just that. It allows to set your settings to show page rank in results, or show rank for individual pages and domains. All in all, it is a small, but nevertheless useful page rank checker extension.
13. Shareaholic
Shareaholic might not be a “real” SEO extension, but everyone knows the importance of social media likes, shares and general presence in search engine ranking. So, you could easily use this app if you want to increase your ranking. The extensions allows you to share your article on multiple social media platforms at the same time, which will make your workload much quicker and definitely easier.
14. MozBar
Moz Analytics one of the most popular analytics tools among SEO marketers, and MozBar is surely the favorite Chrome extension of almost all marketing professionals. Once you download and install this extension, you’ll instantly have access to almost any SEO tool you need, and see various metrics like Link Profile, KW Highlights, Domain and Page Authority.
15. SEO SERP Workbench
You’ll never need to search the SERP position of any page manually once you get SEO SERP Workbench. The tool also allows you to see the ranking on the go, and it is great when you want to look up the SERP of multiple URLs. Last but not least, it supports multiple countries, so no matter where you’re from, you can check the SERP position of a particular website in your country.
While all of these extensions are great for bloggers, it doesn’t mean that you should download each and every one of them instantly. Instead, you should download at least couple of them, and see which ones suit your specific needs. After some trial-and-error, you’ll certainly find what you’re looking for.
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By Adam Ferraresi
Author Bio: Adam always loved the Internet, so much so that he knew that he knew that he was going to become a web developer when he was just 12. He also loves the outdoors, basketball and surfing are his passions, and you can read his insightful articles at wefollowtech.com
Since the dawn of social media, it’s been evolving and growing at a rapid pace. As we move through 2016, that trend will continue, but where is all of this going? More importantly, if you’re trying to market a business or a blog, how can you stay ahead of the curve?
Today we’ll look at the future of social media, followed by an infographic that helps you make the most of your efforts on today’s platforms.
Predicting the Future of Social Media
Over at on blast blog, I’m always looking to the future, whether it’s in the world of blogging, social media, or anything in between. I’m a big fan of staying ahead of the curve. So, let’s look at social media’s upcoming trends.
The first trend we’ll see coming down the pipeline is more integration in the workplace. For years, companies tried to keep their employees off of Facebook during work hours, but now those same social tools will become crucial to the business.
Things like Facebook For Work are allowing employees to utilize the connected nature of social media to increase their efficiency. While most businesses are also using blogs, we’re going to see a lot more people stop working in offices, and instead work from home.
Entrepreneurs are beginning to see the potential of their blog post ideas in the realm of business, and that’s leading to more bloggers promoting their content on social media. In addition, new types of content like video and virtual reality will become important to implement into your online strategies.
Becoming a Social Media Master (Infographic)
Knowing the future is only half the battle. Now you should use the infographic below to understand the how’s and why’s behind social media platforms. Let us know how it helps you in the comments below!
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This is a guest post by Matt Banner. You can read more from him on his blog, OnBlastBlog.com
Social media and digital marketing is everywhere. Any brand attempting to promote, engage, and connect with their target audience in today’s day and age is using social media to market to their constituents. While only 10 years old, social media has become a catalyst in restoring the one to one relationship between brands and consumers.
In its 2015 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, Social Media Examiner, a leader in the space, has provided invaluable insight as to how brands and individuals are using social media for marketing purposes.
Interestingly, the most important question (“What is the ROI of social media?”)remains to be answered in a concrete manner. Does that mean that social media will disappear? Probably not. What this report does seem to document is that, with the initial trend of social media integration behind us, companies and brands are now transitioning to a point requiring a more transparent and clearer reporting for concrete results of social media marketing.
The Highlights
After reviewing Top Rank’s analysis of the report, which enumerates five major benefits of social media on business, there are some additional findings which warrant discussion and should be raised for longer term consideration.
The Role of Video Marketing
While nearly 60% of marketers already utilize video in their marketing efforts, 72% indicated that video marketing is part of their short term goals to integrate into their digital strategy. Especially with recent changes on Facebook, video marketing is clearly an important channel for content creation and marketing.
In fact, in the study, learning to create videos is the number one area that marketers wish to increase their knowledge and expertise.
Growth of Podcasting in Digital Mix
To date, only 10% of marketers are using podcasting as a tool to create content and engage with an audience.
Why?
Like video, podcasting requires a significant investment in resources to produce a final product. While Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Instagram represent platforms on which content can be automated or quickly shared, podcasting can only be distributed after the raw content has been edited and modified for optimal brand promotion. Unlike blog content, which can be edited in real time, the time and energy involved prior to distributing podcast content, dissuades many marketing teams from integrating this form of content.
Interestingly, the small group of marketers using podcasting praise its value and high engagement rates since the content is automatically pushed and syndicated to a user’s phone or desktop via a platform like Itunes. While content on a blog can be sent via email, the simplicity of podcast syndication and ability to listen at one’s leisure signifies a user controlled experience with which other forms of content are unable to compete.
The Secondary Benefits of Social Media Marketing
The report does indicate that those marketers involved in social media for over two years are actually seeing sales from the relationships and communities that they’ve established. To date, the secondary benefits (branding, exposure, partnerships, lead gen, cost savings, search rankings) outweigh the direct impact of social media on business revenue.
An intriguing development in the secondary benefits of social media is the ability for content writing and social conversation to enable a brand or personality to position themselves as thought leaders within an industry.
In today’s digital space, these secondary benefits are indeed significant, within the context of a brand’s ability to solidify the opportunities into concrete sales. Briefly stated, search ranking, for example, does help a brand gain advantage over its competitors on search engines. If, however, the user is directed to a site that is not optimized for conversion or otherwise confusing, the benefit of search engine optimization has proven to be insignificant.
Measuring the ROI of Social Media
One of the most significant results that emerged from the study is that only 42% of marketers can actually measure the direct result of their marketing efforts. While the number does show 5% increase from 2014, and 16% increase from 2013, the results still do raise questions in terms of return on investment.
Many of the marketers claiming this challenge are ill-equipped with the necessary reporting tools or do not invest the necessary time on social media as the primary factors in their inability to show direct ROI.
What are some of the most effective social media platforms?
An important aspect of the report was a list of the top seven social media platforms being used by marketers. In order of usage- Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, Youtube, Pinterest and Instagram. Instagram did increase its position by 8% and, despite the common notion that Google+ is becoming more insignificant, the social media platform increased by 2% since 2014.
An important distinction made in the report is the social media platforms used by B2B vs B2C marketers. B2C marketers focus on Facebook, Youtube, Pinterest and Instagram. These four are highly visual based platforms that resonate with consumers looking for visually appealing content prior to making purchase decisions.
For B2B marketers, the focus shifts to Linkedin, Twitter, Google+ and Slideshare. The reason for this differential is that B2B marketing efforts focus on establishing relationships, industry related content and understanding the employee within the context of his or her professional role.
As marketers prepare for future social media efforts, both B2B and B2C efforts are shifting their efforts to increase usage on Twitter, learning to leverage video marketing and integrating Instagram into their overall digital strategy. Again, while many individuals in the social media sphere shy away from Google+, the report indicates that 78% of marketers plan to maintain or increase their activities on this platform.
With regards to newer social media platforms including Snapchat, the report indicates a low rate of interest of marketers to integrate Snapchat or other new social platforms into their overall marketing efforts.
In terms of Snapchat, the reasons could be lack of interest, lack of familiarity with usability or associating Snapchat with an audience incongruent with their target audience. For other new platforms, marketers could be showing a sense of complacency to constantly learn and integrate new platforms or they could be more interested in proving value in the core, more commonly accepted, platforms before venturing into new ones.
For those marketers who are comfortable with being early adopters in new platforms or are willing to risk venturing into new territories, these platforms do indeed present significant opportunities.
Like Top Rank, I agree that a very important result from the 2015 Social Media Examiner report is the ability of marketers to quantify specific objectives and show results that meet these goals. With this report, an important question that remains unanswered in the social media marketing sphere is which benefits play a more significant role direct or indirect sales benefits?
After six years in the White House, President Obama is officially on Twitter. The president and his @POTUS Twitter handle, which is an account verified by the social network itself, sent his first tweet from his very own account on Twitter through an iPhone mobile device. Yes, an iPhone, not a Blackberry. Here’s what he had to say to the world:
Hello, Twitter! It’s Barack. Really! Six years in, they’re finally giving me my own account.
How popular is Obama on Twitter, you are asking? Well, 624,000 followers in a matter of 2 hours, and counting. The tweet itself has already received a staggering number of 110,000 retweets.
You know how it is with the youngsters these days, they go to a party, have a few drinks and laughs, take some awkward selfie photos and then immediately post ’em on their favorite social media hub (e.g Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or even Google Plus). So what happens next, you may be wondering? Well, it’s getting to be very embarrassing when they finally realize how critically harsh and incredibly painful these social networks can possibly be. Just try to imagine the high volume of inflammatory comments and the damage which might result from it. Not exactly what they would have expected, eh?
Perhaps too late for some, but it is only then when they get to know the proper ways on how to manage their social media life. But how can you minimize the damage caused by your own actions (or others)?
As scary as it may or may not sound, there are a few options out there to get this done.
Check out the infographic below to learn more about the steps you can take when you find embarrassing photos online.
Job hunting is not an easy task for any job seeker. Sometimes in order to get a desirable job you have to try very hard, especially in a tough economy like today. So what do you do to find your next gig? In most cases you will have to spend a good part of your morning browsing through a bunch of job portals online and via newspapers, or alternatively subscribe to receive them by e-mail and fax.
Using social media networks to find a new job requires more than passive use. According to a Linkedin survey 72% of job seekers view company pages for career opportunities while 64% browse for them on the company social media pages.
And while success of the web is evident through its dominance, the importance of mobile devices seems to be gradually taking over. In that regard, 7 out of 10 people search for jobs on their mobile devices with the numbers increasing substantially and steadily in the next two years.
Here’s some more details about this growing phenomenon, curated by the staff.com editorial team.
Facebook is known for the frequent changes it makes to its News feed layout and page functionality. Readers may recall that it was only back in September 2011 when the California-based company announced an entirely new kind of UI profile, and not so long ago, released a new breed of search graph engine. Today, the social media giant is launching yet another new design, to shake and stir up their outmoded News-Feed layout. And while you won’t be seeing this beautiful update immediately (Facebook says it will carefully roll things out within the following weeks), there’s definitely a lot to expect.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said that “the stories around you deserve to be displayed with more than just text,” thus the change in concept, which is now consisted of Bigger Images (and videos), Multiple Feeds, and Mobile Consistency – One hell of a change. The new design, has taken into account mobile devices as well as desktop and tablet machines, adding a new side-vertical navbar, with some extra empty space around. Photo albums will also receive a cosmetic facelift, in a way that will justify their dominance along the News Feed, with practically almost 50% of the entire visible content.
From now on, users will be able to subscribe to different type of feeds in their news layout, whether they decide to choose music, games, photos, or even friends. Each story will be more vibrant and colorful than before, and the order will be sorted to your own personal preference, chronologically.
Be sure to check out your Facebook account and let us know if you are one of the lucky users to receive the first “early access preview.”
Twitter has just launched its latest Anywhere platform which lets developers start developing their own Twitter apps and install them on their websites right away. First introduced at SXSWi, by Twitter’s founder @EV, the new package provides embedding tools and new integration methods, delivered by Twitter itself, that aims to increase its massively growing traffic with more engagement and more users to take part in the service, sign-in, connect, and share their feeds. It’s literally paralleled to Facebook connect, if you still try to figure out what it means – the more you connect, the more active you are the more buzz created and more publishers are getting happy out of this thing.
You get four features in Twitter’s Anywhere package: Hovercards, Connect, Sign-In, and the Tweetbox, with no special need to open new accounts or sign for a different service – simply use your very own Twitter username and password to log. This way, you will help Twitter to increase interaction between websites and tweet messages in a way that eventually would make the service even stronger.
Twitter says that popular websites such as AdAge, Amazon, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, Disqus, eBay, Foursquare, Gawker, Google, Gowalla, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, Hunch, Mashable, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, WSJ.com, Yahoo!, and YouTube have already pledged to the new service and about to install its tools onboard.
We’ve already installed the HoverCards feature into our website. Just move your mouse over the following names and see how it works (feel free to follow as well): @niron, @EV, @Scobleizer, @Biz, @Anywhere.
It’s hot at the Mobile World Congress 2010, in Barcelona, as Microsoft officially unveils its latest and probably biggest Windows Phone 7 series, a new and pretentious Windows Mobile rendition, identical to all carriers and future device brands, with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon architecture onboard, handling smoothly the featured (unsized) capacitive touchscreens, built into those dev demo prototype phones. Basically, it’s a a whole new mobile system Redmond has literally built from the scratch and tweaked to be used on mobile machines in a way that you’ve never seen before. True, it would likely take time to get used to the 7 series, but its harmonic look and feel is surprisingly refreshing and conveniently flows. Yes, if you had this “deja vu” feeling of a Zune HD interface control, you’re probably not alone, but Microsoft has taken it few steps forward and created more in-depth platform with many new features like Xbox Live integration, social networking interaction, myriad of apps and widgets installed. “Every Windows series phone will be a Zune”, that’s what we’ve been told, and synchronizing your handheld music with PC computers is claimed to be very easy and simple to work.
The home screen itself includes dynamic vertical tiles, with customizable shortcut links to variant apps, contacts and other in-house modes, designed in a way you can flip them down from head to toe, but also pan left and right to sub-directories and other hidden rows. It boasts that same big and bold Zune HD text style, which relatively changes and gets magnified the moment you slide the screen and start to scroll. And navigating between the menus makes you realize that Microsoft completely revamped the OS code, making it concentrate in four major segments: People, Games, Pictures, Music plus Video hub homes. Each hub is an independent unit that’s responsible for different tasks, where you can watch and share your personal stuff (images/videos) via hub or cloud,when it comes to ‘pictures’ window, or in other case connect with friends and get updates from family/other contacts through social media services in the ‘People’ spot and the most fascinating thing – play Xbox LIVE games, create avatars, and profiles, at the ‘Games’ area zone – Cool. At the end of the day it’s a new platform that suppose to serve our next-gen phones, so naturally it would also include a non-supportive Adobe flash Internet Exploder browser and Outlook email app to handle mails on the go. Oh, and don’t forget, there’s a dialing phone somewhere inside.
Hardware wise, Microsoft mobile phones will include 3 buttons each: Start, Search and Back, while capacitive displays will have 4-points multi-touch compatibility, with flipping, panning and pinch to zoom gestures support. As mentioned, Microsoft has partnered with Qualcomm, which means we’re likely to see Arm Snapdragon chipset, tossed inside the bowel.
Microsoft as you may know, teamed up with worldwide carriers like AT&T, Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange, SFR, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telstra, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone, while manufacturers partnerships include Dell, Garmin-Asus, HTC, HP, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Qualcomm.
It would probably take time to realize whether Windows 7 series is a game changer or not, but we’re glad to see that Microsoft is finally raising the mobile OS bar and placing it in a whole new and distinguished level that would likely make many people across this realm start scratching their heads and rearrange their thoughts. When will this crazy and exciting software go out and hit the roads? I guess you’ll have to be patient here and wait ’till it gets to the market somewhere around the end of the year, right next to holidays madness season days.
Update: We’ve added the full hands-on walkthrough video, right after the break. A bit long but definitely worth a try.
Only two days after turning the Buzz official within Gmail accounts, Google seems to roll out more tweaks and improvements, based on feedbacks and user requests, sent directly or to its help desk account. First and foremost, Google has closed security breach where people could actually see lists of friends and followers which automatically appeared on new Google Pages that people initially created to post their Buzz feeds. Those lists created based on interaction with people you email and chat with the most, could literally expose to the world details no one wanted to unveil. There for, from now on the first time you create a post or comment in Buzz, you will be asked to initiate a limited public profile with minimal info released outside. In addition, you can easily choose whether to turn on publicly the lists of people you follow or that follow you back and which of these species can appear publicly on your profile or not. Furthermore, Google adds the ability to block followers or unfollow them with a simple click of a button. Stay tuned.
Update1: Google says that since launched, tens of millions of people have checked Buzz out, creating over 9 million posts and comments, overwhelmingly added to the growing 200+ posts per minute, initiated from mobile phones around the world.
Update2: So you’re already involved with the Buzz, posting your stuff and following others, but you’re not exactly familiar with all those tricks and tweaks the service offers and wonder where you could have learned them all in a matter of minutes. For that reason specifically, we’ve added a Google Buzz cheat sheet where you can find all the keys and shortcuts that would make it easier for you to use the Buzz. Check it out after the break.
Update3: Google has wisely decided to remove the Buzz auto-follow model in which you automatically follow the people you email and chat with most, whenever initiate a new Google profile page. Instead of this auto-suggest model you will be taken into a welcome page, where you will be reviewing the people in your lists that you’re interested outing to the public and others, you prefer keeping them hidden (third image after the break). In addition, your Buzz will not connect with your Google Reader and Picasa shared items automatically, so your “Unlisted” albums or “Protected” reading sources won’t be revealed, unless you decide to. And last but not least, Google has confirmed it will soon add a Buzz tab to the Gmail account that would create a clear distinction between your day-to-day mailing content and your Googlr Buzz feeds (fourth image). Stay tuned.
Google officially released the Buzz. What is it, you’re asking? It’s Mountain View’s new platform that integrates into your Gmail account and turns it into a social community center (sort of), where you can share things like updates, photos, videos and a lot more with people you email and chat with the most. Additionally, the Buzz allows you to start interacting with those people and make in-mail conversations about anything you’d like in a simple and attractive way. The purpose, according to Bradley Horowitz, Google’s vice president for product management, is to simplify things and help people …”to find signal in the noise”. The target, in our humble opinion, is to launch a successful email product that would make people stick around all day long, and by that, create their own personal streaming platform that would eventually attract potential web users to follow their buzz and turn their voice even louder. Is it a war declaration against popular services like Twitter and Facebook? Time would tell. Google’s buzz integrates with existing social networks and people can easily add their Flickr, Picasa, Twitter, Yahoo or Facebook accounts, and even Google Reader feeds, into the Buzz while creating a new social networking interface/aggregator that would gather both mailing usage and media streaming in one accessible place. So, direct war? not sure, but challenging Facebook’s social media domination? definitely yes.
Basically, no special setup is needed and Gmail users should expect seeing the Buzz in their mail accounts immediately, or later on this week, as Google rolls out its new platform across the web, at these very moments . Once receiving it you will automatically start seeing lists of people, who you have emailed on Gmail, added to your Buzz. At that point you can start sharing with them whatever you want, including pictures, messages, videos, articles, news feeds and more, either publicly or in private. It’s a dual direction platform, so in that case you will see their updates as well, but also a few “Recommended Buzz” from friends of your friends, adjusted to your personal feedback.
As for mobile phones, Google also announced mobile integration for Buzz with dedicated apps and maps and an updated homepage you can log into at google.com/buzz. Buzz for mobile makes your sharing a lot easier than expected, it ” brings location to the forefront and makes it easy to have conversations about places”. To start, just type buzz.google.com in your mobile browser address line and begin posting buzz from your phone. You can tag your location or use the suggested tag if correct and later on, search all the public buzz created by your friends or nearby strangers around you in any given location you’ve personally tagged. This way you get yourself a personal location and recommendation platform, based on people’s most basic and common opinions, carried by their smartphones. As mentioned, you can use Google Maps and create public buzz directly from the layer, and attach photos into it from your mobile phone. You can create Textual Buzz shortcuts which appear as a small conversation bubble that everyone can see and read, or go even cooler by creating Voice Buzz shortcuts which let you post buzz without typing a word – Neat! Hit the break to watch the videos.
Update1: Looks like Google Maps 4.0 with Buzz support now available in the Android Market for those who own Android-based smartphones like G1, Droid or Nexus One. Feel free to download it right away and share the Buzz with your friends!
Tweet tweet, Zune HD finally gets a twitter app – now available for downloading via Marketplace, free of charge. Design wise it looks great, but once ending with registration process and firing up the application, this is where it start getting buggy and the UI performs a bit sluggish. Despite malfunctions, you can send tweets, follow your Twitter feed, view replies, search on Twitter, send direct messages and watch your favorites tab as long as you want – until it freezes up (no lists support at the moment).
Update1: Surprisingly, it forces you to be polite while using the app, otherwise your cursing tweets will snappily get trashed and brutally thrown out of the line. Stay tuned for more about that.
Update2: Microsoft has taken this Zune HD Twitter app censorship way too far from expected, and couple hours later, after setting the stage for turmoil, and getting knocked from every possible direction, it finally unleashed a statement, vowing to fix these chopped cuss words “issues” as soon as it finds a proper code line replacement. Here’s what Redmond had to say:
The recently released Twitter for Zune HD application has been abbreviating some explicit words in tweets when viewed on the device; however these explicit words do appear in their full text on the Twitter site or on any other Twitter client. We have identified the issue and are taking steps to update the application as soon as possible to ensure Twitter for Zune HD users are able to view tweets in their original state.
Update3: And one day later… Microsoft releases firmware update v1.1, which allows free Twitter expression, without any censorship or limitations. Bugs, lags and other malfunctions are yet to be fixed though.
Twitter is probably one of the most rapid growing tools to communicate and stay connected with your family, friends, co-workers or anyone else you wish to follow. It has changed the way we use the internet and turned the form of blogging into micro-blogging, allowing users to write brief text updates and publish them to the masses. To those of you who make their first steps with tweeter or those who already been using it for a while and look for services to enhance their usage, here’s a list of 69 web-based services you should know.
Update1: Twitter is growing fast, along with the new services which surface up on daily basis. And while starting with only 69 links, our list already crossed the 160 line, and counting.
Update2: Newcomers, please checkout our Twitter tips in here.
