Everyone blogs these days, but why should you?

Depending upon whether you are a business owner working on branding initiatives or a consumer simply looking to express yourself to the masses, blogging is a worthwhile activity. This is as long as you truly have something to say and understand the best practices involved. 

Let's break it down between commercial companies and ordinary citizens. 

Your Business Needs to Blog
There are many companies that blog and take advantage of content marketing today. However, if boosting your brand's image, fueling revenue increases and improving your stature in your industry is on your to-do list, you need to know how to execute. 

Here are a few essential matters to consider:

• Have a set strategy: Hinge Marketing, a branding service provider, urged companies to have a strategy in place in order to guide the blog over time. Without a strong plan in place, the content will tend to be disjointed and incoherent - especially when looking at postings across a given month or quarter.
• Target the right goals: Forbes contributor Jayson DeMers suggests that the top benefits of blogging include higher traffic from search engines, leadership stature in the industry, higher conversions and more bountiful leads. Set firm objectives before beginning your blog and understand what you wish to achieve.
• Follow best practices: Try to keep in mind that every blog post you create adds value to the reader, is written clearly and concisely, and is shared on social media at the right times. Depending on whether you promote the blog on LinkedIn, Facebook or another platform, ideal times for those websites and your specific audience will vary.
• Measure: Pay close attention to how each blog post performs in terms of page views, time on page, bounce rates and click-through rates (CTRs). Analyze what works and what needs improvement to not only increase viewership, but also get conversions through those CTRs. 

​For businesses, blogging is essential and they must do it right to see value. For personal bloggers, it is a bit different.

Blogging is a platform that certainly comes with a host of benefits. It is a rewarding endeavor no matter if you are a business leader, marketer or individual. ​​

In the second quarter of 2018, Facebook logged 2.23 billion monthly users. As the most popular social network worldwide, Facebook can be a key resource for marketing to various types of audiences.

In essence, no matter what type of business you are running, it is advisable to consider using Facebook as a marketing tool. Facebook allows businesses to identify specific audiences based on numerous demographic data points. Relevant ads are placed directly into the feeds of users based on their individual information. This means you can target your message to an audience with a greater likelihood of them being receptive to your products and services. When it comes to marketing effectiveness and value, relevance is everything. 

Facebook Ads have become increasingly popular. The website provides the following guidance on how to succeed with Facebook Ads:

• Incorporate high-definition media, such as video, into Facebook Ads. Remember to put your most compelling content at the top of the ad, as viewers need to be drawn in with only a glance. 
• When trying to promote deals, discounts and events, leverage the Facebook Offers feature - a service that places your ads into a targeted, word-of-mouth marketing program on the site.  
• Make sure your posted Facebook Ad contains a clear call to action.

 
These best practices can help your business get the most out of the greater Facebook platform:

• Inbound marketing software provider Hubspot notes publishing ads between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. Eastern Time generates 88 percent more interactions than the average across all times of the day. 
• Video is particularly effective in Facebook advertising, garnering on average 89.5 shares per video.
• Ad Espresso, a Facebook advertising management provider, found the most effective Facebook ad headlines were five words long. Keep your ad headlines short to keep engagement high. 
• Facebook has an Audience Insights tool that provides data to help promote your campaigns to the right audiences.

 
In order to maximize visibility and recognition, businesses of all sizes - especially those that target their local communities – could benefit greatly by implementing a Facebook marketing strategy. 

Growing Followers the Right Way
If you're thrilled with Twitter or flipping for Facebook in your business, there are several things you can do to build followers organically in a way that will keep them around.

1. Keep Quality High
   Flat, boring or non-impactful content won't get you anywhere. If you want to keep your fans and followers interested, you need to add value with high-quality content. Before pressing submit on any post, make sure your content is interesting, engaging and able to start a conversation.
2. Follow Potential Followers
   Have some prospective clients you'd like to see among your fans? Invite them to like your page! Many social media users find it flattering when companies are reaching out. When you invite someone who may be interested in your brand, they're more likely to follow you back in return.
3. Embed Social Content in Blog Posts
   If you want to make sure prospective clients know about your social media presence, use your blog posts and promotional content to increase visibility. This allows you to showcase some of your most popular posts, providing an easy way for readers to check out your page and the kinds of things you like to share.
4. Use Hashtags
   Hashtags are a great way to boost engagement and interaction in your tweets and Facebook posts. Every hashtag you use can be clicked on and searched, providing a connection to a wide audience of users with similar interests. 
5. Ask Questions
   Tired of radio silence in response to your posts? Ask questions! People love sharing their thoughts and ideas. So when you broadcast questions, you're likely to get more engagement, which will put your name out there among your followers' followers.
6. Target Advertising
   Both Facebook and Twitter provide ways to target ads by criteria such as age, location, gender and likes. When you choose to run a social media ad campaign, be sure to tailor ads to those most likely to respond. And consideradding a perk, such as a discount code, for those who like your page.
7. Run Contests and Promotions
   Social media users love the chance to win something for free, so promotions and giveaways can give you a great way to get more people interested in your services. There are many options for effective campaigns, so get creative and think about offers your key demographic will love.

Growing Followers the Wrong Way
There are plenty of opportunities to build your following. But there are many negative options, too. Here's what not to do while attempting to grow fans and followers:

1. Post too often. Too many posts will annoy users and make them more likely to unfollow you.
2. Drown posts in dozens of hashtags.
3. Take defensive or controversial stances on current events.
4. Post boring, uninteresting or irrelevant content that adds no value to the user experience.
5. Buy likes or followers. This may give you an inflated sense of importance. But these purchased accounts likely will do little for your business.
6. Post the same thing over and over.
   
   

When you want to make a true impact with your social media marketing, a solid fanbase is absolutely essential. With these tips, you can grow your following quickly, easily and effectively, providing an engaged audience with whom you can share your benefits.

Developing brand awareness is crucial to the success of any company. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a great way to place your business in the same search fields as other businesses related to it.

To first understand how to implement SEO basics within your brand website, you need to have an understanding about what exactly SEO means. Search engine optimization is a way you allow your company or brand to be searched for on the internet. With the use of keywords, you give yourself the ability to optimize your audience's search-engine results for your industry and your specific company so you can earn higher click rates on your website. 

SEO is important for driving new and existing customers to your website. According to Moz, most web traffic comes from search engines such as Google.

To get started utilizing SEO basics, follow these simple suggestions:

Your website should be search engine friendly. Keywords will boost your search engine results. Think about the words that are most important in describing your company such as, its location and its actions. Then, organically work them into the text and titles of your website.  

Business Insider stresses the point of creating a “web” within your own site. What they mean by this is you should create as many links as possible that can go back to other pages on your site. The more clickable your site becomes, the easier it is for you to link out to relevant searches within the internet.

Two elements that often go unattended are "meta descriptions" and "alt tags" within your posts. These sound a lot more complicated than they are. When you’re going to publish a post take advantage of the advanced settings in your website publishing system. Every back-end page of your website should include a sentence that describes the information being given. Fill in the box that asks you for the SEO title and article description. This box is asking you how you want your article to be found in the search engine. Take advantage of this access as these page descriptions are the meta descriptions. 

When you’re uploading a picture to a post, be sure to create an alt tag for the image, which is just simply the image description. This helps to tag the image and boosts your SEO. Each of these points is another great way to use keywords. The more you use the same words or phrases, the better your search engine optimization becomes.

One final SEO basic that is an easy fix is the headline of each page or title of each article. These should follow the same standard for adding a subject line to an email. You want to make them short and informative. If a line is too long, it won’t read in the search engine. If someone can’t read the whole title in the search engine they will be less inclined to click on your site because they don’t know what the page is for. Stick to titling your pages with keywords to tie in all of your pages and information.
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Whether you outsource or use an in-house website team, ensure these SEO tips are implemented. They can  bring you higher in the search engine results and make your company more relevant.

LinkedIn is one of the largest social media platforms for professionals, and is becoming a more powerful marketing, sales and branding outlet as the platform expands its product and service lines. According to VentureBeat, an online publication, LinkedIn had 450 million members as of August 2016. Some 25% of those members used the site at least once a month. While that figure does not come close to Facebook and other social networking websites, LinkedIn can still be a useful tool for lead generation. 

Let's take a look at some of the practices and tools involved. 

An introduction
Forbes, a business publication, published a blog post by contributor John Hall that explains that LinkedIn fuels the lion's share of business-to-business (B2B) leads generated by social media platforms. According to the author, 80% of all B2B social leads are generated through LinkedIn, showing that it is indeed a giant in this regard. If you are focusing more on marketing to consumers, other social media platforms such as Facebook could be more suitable. However, B2B companies must consider leveraging LinkedIn to generate the maximum volume of valuable leads. 

How to use LinkedIn for lead generation
Small Business Trends, an online magazine, suggests first introducing your business briefly, then regularly engaging in relevant conversations on the site and always looking to identify the right connections. According to the news provider, LinkedIn offers advanced filters to assist in search (for those with a premium LinkedIn account).

LinkedIn ProFinder, a recently added feature, allows users to connect with freelance workers in a variety of fields. For instance, try using ProFinder as an easy-to-use tool to make direct contact with someone who can offer help with writing and design to help boost your online brand. Once you do that, you can tailor your content to fit your customer markets -- and then leverage your online presence to generate leads for your businesses.

LinkedIn Ads, the core branding service the social network offers, has a feature to help generate and acquire leads through marketing collateral published on the website, as noted by Small Business Trends. The website also strongly suggests regularly publishing articles on the site, as this can help turn leads into valuable customers through more preferable interactions. 

Advanced tips
Hall, who also contributed to LinkedIn's Marketing Solutions Blog, recommends all companies incorporate their LinkedIn accounts into editorial schedules to maintain a strong link between content creation and sharing. Then, companies can leverage tracking URLs ─ which are shortened links that allow you to measure traffic to that website page ─ to gain a stronger understanding of user behaviors and audience reception. No matter what, Hall asserts, there must be a clear call to action in every piece of published content to truly generate valuable leads and turn them into customers. 

Email marketing is a great way to communicate with existing and prospective customers alike, providing a fast, efficient opportunity to drive leads and build connections. A favored method for nearly 90% of marketers, email marketing can give you a leg up on your other digital methods, seeing click-through rates six times higher than social media.

The idea of effectively using email marketing is great in theory. But actually implementing best practices is something else entirely. To take the right approach in creating and using email lists, here's what you need to succeed.

Creating Email Lists
An email list is exactly what it sounds like: a list of contacts to whom you can distribute rich, high-quality content. However, acquiring one isn't as straightforward as it sounds.

While an email list contains names and contact information; a valuable and true list represents customers who are authentic and interested. You need to work to acquire customers that will benefit from the information or offers you have to provide.

Overall, your email list needs to encapsulate three distinct areas: quality, relevance and size. All contacts should be high quality, meaning that they are real humans who check their email regularly. They must also have interests relevant to your business. Purchased email lists often fail this test; the individuals available often have no connection to your company or industry. And, lastly, you need a large number of email recipients. If you don't have enough people to warrant the effort, your email newsletters will take time out of your schedule without significantly impacting your business.

Collecting Customer Emails
So, you need a strong collection of customer and prospect email addresses. But how do you get them?
A website sign-up is among the best possible ways to collect contact information. In general, this opportunity only appeals to invested individuals, ensuring quality, relevant consumers. Be sure to include a call to action that clearly explains how enrollees will benefit.

Giveaways and promotions can also be a good way to attract attention. By giving those who sign up the chance at a reward, like an exclusive prize, or access to a promotion, like a discount code, you can solicit contact details easily from those who care about your operations.

In-person solicitations can be effective as well. Urge employees to ask customers if they want to receive emails and promotional material and keep an information sheet on hand to solicit names, phone numbers and email addresses.

Organizing Customer Contacts
Having lists isn't enough, you need to know how to use them. While some promotions will be appropriate for everyone on your list, other messages will function best when shared with specific subsets of your market. For example, an individual customer likely won't want your promo rates for business insurance. But they may respond to a newsletter on how to make the most of a homeowners' policy.

By organizing your list into sub-categories, you can ensure all of your emails will go to those most likely to act on the information provided. In general, targeted emails, or those aimed at specific interests and curated data, are the most successful, boasting a 10% increase in response or action.

If you have purchase history or biographical details from customers, an optimized profile can help you best understand consumer needs. If you don't have these details, it's important to implement a solution to capture them. This can be a survey that comes after an initial subscription or a customer profile for online checkout.

In order to best target customers, organize your lists by topical data, including:

• Purchase habits
• Purchase frequency
• Birthday and demographic details
• New customers

Then, when creating email campaigns, take this data into account in order to decide who to target with your communications. For example, you can cross-reference your email list by new customers and specific demographics to welcome newcomers to your brand with a personalized promotion.

Winning at Email Marketing
If you want to win at email marketing, you need great email lists. By collecting and organizing contact information from as many relevant, quality individuals as possible, you can expand your reach and broaden your customer base. With the power of email, it's possible to move your brand forward, building connections and deepening relationships with those who matter most.

Social media is a growing giant in the marketing realm. Let's take a look at which social media sites are best-suited to various industries, going by the most popular platforms. Once you are ready to create - or build up - your account, check out our guide to building strong profiles. 

Twitter
Professional services firms, legal entities, technology companies and those in other industries that involve content-heavy sales and marketing campaigns find a potent platform in Twitter. The platform has also incorporated more effective video and image sharing capabilities, allowing marketers to diversify their content marketing campaigns on the site. It's an effective platform to promote blogs, and have fast, instant conversation. Every month, 330 million people are still using it.  Check out our 10 Best Twitter Best Practices for Small Businesses. 

Facebook
Even with their recent scrutiny in the media, this is the most widely used social media platform in the realm of marketing, with 16 million local businesses currently active on Facebook. Simply put, every business, regardless of industry or target market, ought to use this platform for both marketing and customer service purposes. Facebook has 2.2 billion monthly users and shows no signs of slowing down. Use this platform to share all content types, including video, images and blogs. Facebook ads are also another simple and inexpensive way to reach targeted customers. Here's a look at how to set them up for your business. 

Instagram
This is an exceptional platform for retailers and competitors in the food and beverage industries, as posting images and videos and products can help to drive brand recognition. Make sure your business takes high-quality photographs, keeps captions brief and engages users in a highly mobile-centric fashion. The site focuses on images - not words. With more than 800 million users monthly, it's a great site to build a follower base. 

LinkedIn
Much like Twitter, LinkedIn is a great platform for professional services and specifically business-to-business industries. Blogging on LinkedIn can help to cement executives and company owners into the stature of thought leaders, boosting an enterprise's legitimacy in the process. To be more specific, organizations that rely on the images of their salespeople, project managers, leaders and others in the public eye are best-suited to this platform. Make sure you check out our LinkedIn Profile Tips guide to ensure you've built a powerful profile. 
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General tips
Make sure you don't spread yourself too thin in social media. A powerful campaign on one platform will always be more effective than lackluster ones across all of the sites. Also, keep an eye on the sites that become more prominent in the social media sector - YouTube, Google+, Periscope and Snapchat, for instance. 

​Check out our digital toolbox for more digital marketing tips for your business.

A great website and optimized content is a big part of building a strong web impression. But to boost your search-engine-visibility, there's more to the equation. With the right approach to link building, you can bolster your website and improve your chances of connecting with your target audience.

What Is Link Building?
Link building is the process of getting links to your site from other sites around the internet. This then constructs a network of hyperlinks that search engine web crawlers can explore, archive and use to build connections – boosting your presence on search engine results pages, or SERPs. In general, the more links pointed at a website, the more reputable Google ranks it to be. In the early days of SEO (search engine optimization), building links used to be simple, but with Google's ever-changing algorithm updates designed to fight spam, the process now takes some know-how to get right.

Search engines use links in two distinct ways: to discover new pages that haven't yet been annexed and to determine how a page should be ranked. This directly affects your positioning – Google explains this logic in a handy video guide – along with other factors, such as quality content and applicable, relevant keywords. While your site may be able to rank adequately without this strategy, linking can be a great way to put your team on top. Best of all, even the best SEO performers spend less than $1,000 a month on link building.

The Benefits of Building Links
Creating a way to effectively reach out to other businesses, structure deals and sell your services as a worthwhile brand may take brainstorming, but the benefits are well worth the effort.

• Increase Presence: If you want to rank as high as possible online, link building can take you there. Google has long prioritized the presence of links, and this hasn't changed, even in the most-recent algorithm updates. The intelligent use of links elevates your standing among search engines, increasing your presence and making it more likely that your audience will see you near the top of the results pages.
• Boost Your Brand: When you find a new company online, what's the first thing you do? If you're like most people, your initial instinct is to read reviews, check Google and look for connections. With a solid link-building-strategy, you'll be able to boost your reputation using the connections you've made, positioning yourself as a leader in your industry. When customers search for you, they'll see the people you've linked to and those who have linked to you, painting a vibrant picture of your esteem in your market.
• Grow Referral Traffic: Guest posting is among the most popular link-building-strategies, giving you a chance to show off your assets. It also drives traffic to your site from other businesses, offering a valuable way for an untapped market to see what makes you and your company shine. People who find your site through referrals will have a great opportunity to learn about your business. But there's another benefit to guest posts: since these visitors already trust the site you're linked to, they'll be more likely to trust you, too.
• Build Relationships: Links can come organically – but sitting and waiting isn't a great approach. Instead, you need to target industry influencers and leaders who are able to position your site in a positive light, jump-starting your strategy and offering up link placement. Not only does this benefit your SEO tactics but it gives you an opportunity to reach out to your community, giving you valuable relationships with reputable businesses both online and in the real world.
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If you've never considered link building before, that's okay. Many small businesses don't take advantage of the power of links. With so many benefits though, now is the perfect opportunity to give your company the boost it deserves.

It would be great if every marketing concept you implement could succeed. But that's not realistic. In order to see the best possible results, it's important to be critical and empirical, fully evaluating every step in your process.

A/B testing is a great way to determine how your strategies stack up, pitting an existing concept against a new variation. Instead of jumping into something brand new with no idea if it will work, a simple A/B test allows you to be objective about performance in order to choose the perfect approach for your needs.
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What Is A/B Testing?
A/B testing, also called split testing, is essentially a way to compare two versions of a single marketing concept using verifiable metrics. Email marketing is a big part of a successful campaign so for most small businesses, it's a good place to start.

It's easy to think something is a great idea, but another to actually see it in writing. A/B testing uses statistical analysis to reach a conclusion, providing you with concrete results. In general, A/B testing doesn't compare everything, but instead focuses on one single element. For example, if you're seeking higher conversion rates, you may consider testing a new call to action (CTA) or subject line to start.

How to Start A/B Testing
Running an A/B test can be a great way to make actionable improvements. But getting started requires a plan. In order to achieve the best possible results, here are five steps to follow:

1. Determine what elements would be most likely to boost numbers. This may not be easy, but now is the time to take a step back and explore what may be falling flat. Is your CTA vague? Are your headlines dry or bland? Do you personalize your emails?
2. Decide what you want to track. Do you want to see an increase in click-through rates? Do you want customers to make purchases based on your emails? Do you want more people to request pricing? Whatever factor you choose will be the driver for your testing.
3. Set goals. What kind of increase do you want to see? A 10% boost in conversions? 20%? More? After you determine your goal, work towards achieving it in your new variation.
4. Choose a test group. Will you be sampling your whole email list? Or will you be limiting your sampling to a smaller set? There are pros and cons to each strategy. For example, if your changes will be routine and you don't pay per email, using your whole list may be fine. If you're trying something unusual or using an example that doesn't apply to everyone, you may want to be more selective. Split your sample group randomly to ensure the best, most unbiased outcome.
5. Select a platform. In order to create a campaign that generates measurable results, assistance from an email service provider that does A/B testing can be a benefit. There are many of these, such as MailChimp, iContact, or Campaigner. Do some research, compare price points and determine what features you want to see.
   
   

Drawing Conclusions
Once you set up your campaign and start your test, the final step is to utilize results to improve your emails. With an A/B test, you can clearly set the parameters you have in mind and wait for the results to pour in. How you choose to interpret your research though will vary based on the goals you set.

If your results are tied or within a margin of error, your new email likely isn't any better than your old one. If you're seeing a decline, you may want to keep your original template or even test something else to seek improvements elsewhere. Ultimately, how you draw conclusions and update your marketing will truly depend on the goals you have in mind and what you're hoping to achieve.

Email marketing is a big part of a successful digital strategy. With help from A/B testing, you can make the improvements necessary to see the growth and developments critical to meeting your objectives. 

Building a website can be a daunting task and seem to only be meant for someone with a web design background. While you can pay to outsource your website, you don’t have to. Here is a list of key features to look for in a website builder and the website builders that offer these features. You have the option to buy your domain, or use a free domain provided to you by the host website. 

Cost
To gain access to more features on a website builder, almost all sites will offer a level of versions at tiered prices. Before choosing one over another, look into the features that each site offers and the price.

Templates
A good website builder is one that offers you templates to choose from. Templates take away the stress of picking and choosing the critical design elements that can make or break each page. You will have a preset homepage, menu bar and website pages that only require you to add your own text and images.

Drag and Drop
When you’re looking to add elements to your page, "drag and drop" is important. With this design feature, you will have access to all of the elements your template offers. The only editing you have to do is drag and drop elements into the page you are working on. The benefit of this is that there are automated guides that help to align everything properly.

E-commerce
If your company is looking to get into the world of online shopping, having a website builder that allows you access to e-commerce is a huge plus. Just like adding a new page to the website, if the builder you’ve selected allows it, you will be able to add an e-commerce page without having to go through a third party.

Support Team
Building a website is not your strong suit and that’s okay. Most website builders offer a 24/7 support team that you can chat with while you are working.

Mobile Friendly
Websites are best done in a mobile friendly format these days. It’s important your website functions on a mobile device. Most website builders offer you a mobile view to see what your website would look like on a phone. Other builders offer you the ability to edit the site as a web layout and a separate mobile layout. There are website builders that also have a mobile app, allowing you to edit right on your phone.
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Domain Name
Your domain name is the URL your website comes up under. With some website builders, the free version of a site gives you a domain name which incorporates their brand into your name. As you go up in cost for a website builder you will have the option to pay for your site thus buying your domain name. This prevents anyone else from using your domain name, and minimizes customer confusing when searching for your site. 
 
If you’re ready to build your own company website, check out this list to see which website builder will suit your needs.