Facebook pages have replaced many companies’ homepages, and entire marketing strategies have been built around the platform. Its free, easy to update, brings information straight to followers’ feeds, is easily shareable, and develops a brand identity. But what once was so easy is increasingly complicated by Facebook’s algorithms.
Understanding Mobile’s Role in Shopping
Smart phones serve as on-demand information sources, a constant connection to like-minded communities and relations through social media, and, increasingly they are serving as virtual stores and wallets. Mobile marketing strategies are instrumental to small businesses and include product research, digital advertising, social media, and, of course, the ease of purchasing directly from any location.
Build Better Customer Relationships with a Company Blog
While your company website can explain your product or services, a business blog enhances your visibility, approachability, and how your product or service is understood. As mainstream companies like Google, Starbucks, and REI cultivate high quality and updated blogs, dynamic web content becomes the norm and demonstrates that your company is modern and engaged.
Here are a few benefits of having a robust and insightful blog for your business.
- Search engine optimization: Blogs are a foundational component for proper search engine optimization, and they allow businesses to cover nuanced ideas that may not be present elsewhere on their websites. By publishing more blog content on a range of ideas related to your business, you will increase the number of opportunities for customers to discover your brand. For example, someone searching for advice on hiring and HR might find themselves clicking on the American Express’ Open Forum section on this topic and eventually driven back to see what services American Express has to offer businesses.
- Social media and newsletter enhancement: You may already have a social media account or a newsletter. These channels give you a limited amount of space to convey your ideas, but they can entice readers to your blog. Blogs give you the opportunity to go deeper into subjects your customers find interesting and offer nuanced explanations of your business (including links to pages where sales can be made). Blogs can complement your social media and newsletters by enhancing content richness while the latter can drive people to your blog, website, and ultimately, your business. Eat24 is a great example of this relationship.
- Approachability: Blogs allow you to interact in new ways with your customers. With them, you can address frequently-asked questions or explore timely topics. Comment sections (which should be monitored) let your readers give you direct feedback. This exchange of ideas gives customers a positive and personal impression of your company, which will help build better relationships with them over time.
- Fresh perspectives: Blogging allows you and your brand to keep up with current events, giving you a place where you can link to new ideas and industry news. It also demonstrates to potential clients that you are paying attention to the business landscape, rather than getting stuck in internal perspectives. Think with Google offers views across many interrelated subjects, and it offers new tools and trends.
- Nuanced promotions: Blogs also offer a way to show your potential customers different ways to use your products and services. Starbucks’ 1912 Pike has a “How to” section with recipes and guidance on how to use its products. REI’s Co-Op journal inspires hiking and outdoor activities that would lend themselves to the use of REI products.
Blogging allows your brand to build relationships with potential customers across many digital marketing channels, and we believe there is a business case for creating your company blog. MyMobileLyfe, a company founded by professional storytellers, can help you every step of the way, from website development, to content planning and content creation. Reach out to our team of experts and get started today!
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How to Build Your Brand Newsroom
In the newsroom, ideas move quickly and deadlines are always right around the corner. Though they seem chaotic from the outside, newsrooms are adept at planning, creating new ideas, packaging them, and disseminating them with the public with great efficiency.
There’s More to Life Than Google and Facebook; a Look at Other Ad Platforms
Alternative forms of online advertising can help your business reach niche audiences and help your ads stand out from the competition.
It’s no surprise that Google and Facebook, platforms that many of us use throughout the day, are the preeminent networks for online advertising. Though these networks give advertisers the largest pool of potential leads, more doesn’t always mean better, especially if those ad clicks don’t result in conversions.
Further, Google ads are placed according the search words businesses determine that consumers interested in their product will use. But in selecting their keywords, businesses are challenged to avoid creating very broad search terms that lead to more clicks but are not always relevant to the user. Also, they could miss other potential consumers by focusing exclusively on narrower search terms. And users will likely ignore these ads unless the ad text truly speaks to their needs.
And while Facebook gives advertisers more ways to make fun and engaging ads, space is limited in users’ timelines, and competition is fierce.
Whether you want to reach a niche audience or simply try a difference approach to digital advertising, there are many options available to you. We’ve only mentioned three here, but these examples show the potential reach and effectiveness of alternative ad networks as well as the creative possibilities within reach of your business.:
- Soundcloud is a worldwide music community of music creators and listeners who are looking for new or unique songs. It reaches 82 million US users per month and 175 million globally per month. Soundcloud users are influencers: they determine what comes next on iTunes and Spotify and are a great audience for newer products and services, since we already know they are adept at trying and sharing new things. Advertisers can run audio, display, and native ad campaigns here.
- Spotify is another great venue, with the average listener tuning in for 148 minutes per day and an increasingly mobile audience. Spotify analyzed listening habits of over 100 million users across the globe and surveyed users determining that the type of music people listen to relates to personalities and brand preferences. Spotify is also widely shared on other social media platforms. Here, advertisers can run audio ads between tracks, sponsor playlists and sessions, and use video to promote themselves.
- To reach a creative global audience, consider Vimeo, a video streaming platform that started as a small community of emerging filmmakers. Advertisers can take advantage of a Brand Channel, which is fully integrated with all Vimeo content. Vimeo has over 170 million viewers worldwide and is rapidly growing, with an 80 percent increase in users in just the last year.
If you’re having limited advertising success on Google and Facebook, or if you want to try something creative and distinct, these networks may be promising to your business. Also, MyMobileLyfe offers self-optimizing advertising solutions that span across several search and display ad networks. See what we have to offer, or set up some time with our experts to learn about the possibilities!
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Improve Your Ad Campaigns with AI
This article was originally published on Tech400.com.
For many, artificial intelligence and machine learning may seem like abstract and far-off concepts, but businesses of all sizes are already enjoying the benefits of AI, as a recent Harvard Business Review article shows.
Basic Steps to Protect Against Common CMS Vulnerabilities
“With great power comes responsibility” – With free content management systems, you can control and maintain your own website. However, you are also responsible for keeping it safe.
Mobile Is Driving the Surge in U.S. Digital Advertising
It’s how we get our news, keep in touch, monitor our fitness, do our banking, and check the score on the game we couldn’t stay home to watch. With mobile phones being such a significant part of our daily routines, it’s a key place for businesses to market their products and services.
The popularity of mobile advertising has caused the spike in digital advertising spending. Digital advertising revenue continues its rapid growth, outpacing advertising in traditional media. Mobile ads, increasing by 50 percent, lies behind much of this growth.
With over 7 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide—75 percent of the world’s adults— mobile ads are an easy way to put your products and services at the fingertips of the majority, wherever they are and whatever they are doing. Business Insider predicts that the compound annual growth rate of mobile advertising will grow by 26.5 percent by 2020. Digital advertising is expected to exceed traditional ad revenue by 2019.
It makes sense. Running mobile ads costs businesses much less than TV and radio ads. And with so many options for targeting users using demographic and behavioral information, mobile ads are more precise than traditional ad formats.
And mobile advertising goes beyond cell phones and keeps up with rising trends. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults now own a connected device, including connected/smart TVs, connected cars, internet-enabled home control systems, and wearable devices.
Mobile technology is touching so many aspects of how we live; by connecting us to people all over the world, gathering biometric data, controlling cars and homes, and making TV watching a virtual reality experience. Mobile advertising brings the ads wherever the consumer goes and eliminates several steps between viewing a product on the screen to owning it with aps and directs links to websites that make purchases quick and easy.
Want to see your company promoted on Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other popular mobile platforms? Call MyMobileLyfe! We do all of the work, including campaign research, ad design and copy, and conversion tracking.
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Common Website Security Pitfalls
Website security is crucial for maintaining the trust of your customers and vendors. Your website may have security issues that are not immediately apparent.
Website Security for Your Small Business: What You Need to Know
Although most entrepreneurs are more interested in running their businesses than digging into the minutiae of web architecture, website security is serious: Research by Imperva in 2012 found that most web applications receive four or more web attack campaigns each month, with some facing constant attack.