Basic Digital Marketing

It isn’t easy for Google to decide how pages in search results rank, so it relies on many things. However, it focuses the most on backlinks. The second most important feature is content, and understandably so. Mediocre content shouldn’t come before great content. If you want to rank higher in search results and gain traffic, follow our lead.

Start thinking about which websites you’d like to pull links from. Because each website is different in content, popularity, and web design, you’ll have to choose wisely. Make a concrete list of digital sources that contain material strongly related to your niche. These sources can be blogs, scholarly articles, databases, or even videos. Attach the links you know will benefit you, and start your research on the rest.

It’s very important to your research as well as conduct a website audit. Go to SEMrush or a similar program and type in the URL of your most prominent competitor. SEMrush will collect and show all relevant data from that website, including backlinks. Scroll down and press the “Backlinks” button to have a look at which links the company is using. If your competitors are successful, their backlinks are probably working.

With the recent increase in influencer marketing, previously unknown companies have gained more authority and legitimacy while forming lasting relationships with their audiences, creating long term customers. Its recent success has caused many brands to partner up with powerful market influencers and market themselves on several different social media sites.

Taking advantage of this trend, Instagram will soon introduce a special paid partnership tag for the stories and posts related to influencer marketing. The photo-based social media platform explained that it aimed to further its endeavour in connecting people with similar interests, which isn’t limited to personal account users. Instagram is set on making it more clear when paid advertising is being shown to its users.

The paid partnership tag was tested out on the platform in March of this year, and the finished product is expected to arrive in July or August. Of course, consumers aren’t the only ones who need to know about the tag and what it entails - it’s equally as important for brands that are active on Instagram to understand the ins and outs of the new feature.

Despite its waning popularity, Facebook is still going strong. If you’re wondering what the company has in store for its on-page advertisements, we’ve got all the information you need to decide how to use its system as part of your online advertising efforts.

More marketing companies are using Facebook to advertise their products this year, and nearly two-thirds of those companies stated that the platform was essential for success in their marketing campaigns. Facebook’s specialized ad controls were introduced less than a decade ago, which raised revenue from $272 million to $777 million in just one year. This year’s revenue will be around $36 billion.

Facebook’s personal account growth was 12.8% from 2015 to 2016, but slowed to 9.6% from 2016 to 2017. It’s predicted to drop to 7.9% from 2017 to 2018. This, plus limited page space, will cause ad spending to decrease to less than half of what it was in 2016.

Most startups and smaller companies don’t put much effort into creating a good Facebook cover photo. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to pick a clean, professional photo: your banner should both welcome your customers and let them know what they’re in for. Not sure where to start? We’ve got a few tips for you.

Before you begin creating your cover photo, define your company’s main goal. This goal should be fairly long-term to avoid having to change your banner constantly. Instead of opting for your brand name or logo on a neutral backsplash, design your cover photo around your main goal, which can include promotions, general sales, social media interaction, or new products and services. Place relevant buttons just below your banner as well. Your customers are more likely to click these buttons once they’ve been primed with the message on your cover photo.

The regular creation and distribution of quality content is the key ingredient for your business’ recipe for success. Content marketing is essential if you want to build your brand, expand your network, and most of all, increase sales.

Content is just as important as website design. It’s the key factor behind search engine results, sends targeted traffic to your page and can help establish your company as an online authority in your area of business. You also have to keep your competition in mind. With so much content out there, you need to be sure to stand out and offer your readers/viewers something of value.

Most Toronto bloggers or blogs have a message they desperately want to share with the world, but it’s never easy spreading the word to everyone about your blog. It’s even harder gaining income from blogging, even after you’ve gained popularity. So how do you do it? You start with a solid foundation of principles.

Zero in on the topics you care about. Going too broad may appeal to more people, but your fan base won’t be as consistent or as loyal. Stay focused on your goal and ensure each post is as good as it can be. You don’t need a massive amount of content to increase your popularity - you only need good content. Integrating your own knowledge and experiences is a great way to get readers interested.

Next up is creating an attractive-looking blog. If you can afford it, it’s a wise choice to hire a  web design company to add some style to your blog. If not, platforms such as Tumblr, Blogspot or Wordpress are simple enough to use and offer many options, layouts, and website templates you can customize.

Gaining followers on social media is great for your business’s publicity, but putting all your energy into that alone won’t generate sales immediately. Devote yourself to selling your product first, chasing after success by differentiating yourself. If you stand out, potential customers will choose you over others.

Of course, being different is easier said than done. You may think you’re original and maintain that mindset until you take notice of a very similar competitor with just as many clients as you. Here’s how your company can offer new things to your Instagram followers to transform them into loyal customers.

Your audience should first know what they’ll get out of following you and interacting with your posts. Be direct in your message - clients seldom appreciate when companies beat around the bush. Then, ensure you’re reflecting that message in your posts. It’s a good idea to zero in on one or two ideas rather than multiple, as your customers won’t want to be constantly bombarded with information. Choose a clear message and present it well.

As humans, we tend to wonder where exactly we came from, and some of us make a living off figuring out the answer. It was long thought by anthropologists that homo sapiens appeared in Africa roughly 200 millennia ago. That theory, however, has been called into question with newly found humanoid skeletal fragments that were one hundred millennia older than they expected.

Miners working in Marrakesh at the beginning of the 1960s discovered a shard of human bone in the limestone wall they were taking apart. When another bone appeared, archaeologists made it their mission to dig up the site and analyze the other remains, which were deemed to be around 40 millennia old. Excavation of the area stopped for four decades, with researchers having assumed there was nothing left to find.

With the constant presence of technology and social media, there are more known business events than ever before. Many entrepreneurs receive too many invitations to count and end up disregarding most of them. Some of the events they do choose to attend have hundreds of guests, making it difficult to socialize and truly connect.

Business leaders are slowly fixing this problem by creating more intimate events with fewer people and a maximum number of attendees that cannot be surpassed. Although entrepreneurs meet fewer people this way, they form valuable relationships that lead to longer lasting collaborations. These events are also much less expensive, usually costing no more than $10,000.

Every writer has moments where they struggle to coherently get their thoughts down on paper, or to move past that dreaded blank page on their computer screen. Some days are good, others are bad. However, it is possible to write a compelling blog post no matter what phase you’re going through - and here’s how you can do it in less than an hour.

Start with the basics by creating a mind map to effectively organize and brainstorm your ideas. You can do this on a spreadsheet or a blank sheet of paper, whichever you prefer. When you have everything sorted out, look at what you’re providing your clients and readers, and identify what could cause them to turn you down or stop reading. Writing down questions to ask yourself and answering them truthfully will help you shape your blog post for your intended audience.

Edinburgh University representatives say that an email sent to graduating students claiming some students had failed to complete their degree was the result of a system malfunction.
The email indicated that the recipient/student had not earned enough credits to successfully obtain their diploma. It even went on to claim that as a result of insufficient credits, the recipient would be unable to attend their graduation ceremony as a result of having to finish their studies later that year. Understandably so, the email caused much anxiety and stress to its recipients. The emails were sent out at night so to top it off, many students weren’t able to reach administration or staff members until the next morning to find out what was going on.

Upon accusations from the US Department of Labor of paying men more than women for identical jobs, Google claims that obtaining wage data is too expensive and time-consuming.

Company representatives explained in court in San Francisco that the data request would cost $100k and require around 500 hours of work, but these numbers aren’t all that outrageous considering Google’s yearly profit of $28 billion. The heated discussion between the two parties was first sparked in January with Google’s federal law violations related to salary records.

In addition to the bits of pay information labor officials collected from 2015 that show a clear wage gap, the department requires older data and employee contact information to complete one-on-one interviews now that Google has shot down unequal pay accusations. The company claims global equal pay across all races and genders, and refuses to release wage information in fear of violating privacy rights of employees and amendment rights of businesses.

It goes without saying that LinkedIn is the best online platform for all things business. With its ever-growing network, millions of businesses and consumers can find each other through a simple search. To increase your revenues by finding new customers, it’s essential that you know how to use LinkedIn’s search tool to its full advantage.

Type in words, phrases, and titles that match what you’re seeking to get a wider range of results. If you want to get more specific, use LinkedIn’s search filters to look up content, companies, people, and topics that use those terms. Connecting with consumers becomes much easier when these tools are implemented.

Posting a comment on a potential customer’s page can give them a casual introduction to your company and make the messaging process easier. Starting with a casual connection is better than contacting them out of the blue, and will likely build a stronger relationship. After that relationship is established, introduce the product and explain what your company stands for.

Many people fall behind, become distracted, or begin to procrastinate after a few years of work, no matter what that work is. If you want to achieve your goals and have a bright future, try out some of these tactics - they’re sure to keep you focused and driven.

Don’t put things off. Begin new projects as soon as possible, maintaining a reasonable outlook on how quickly they can be done while remaining high-quality. You’ll ultimately have more time to complete tasks that need completing. Whenever you’re tempted to jump right to your favourite pastime, remember that it will be waiting for you after you’ve dedicated a good chunk of your time to your greater goal. It’s a good idea to start with the harder portion of the task at hand to give yourself time to recuperate.

Acknowledging your mistakes can be painful, but it’s extremely important to do if you want to see improvement. When something goes wrong, investigate how it happened and how it can be prevented in the future. You’ll learn a lot this way. To reward yourself, put aside some time for your favourite activities or book a short vacation. Use these relaxing stretches of time as recharging periods. Working all day every day is like trying to sprint a 5km run, something no athlete would attempt.

With their lives based strongly on technology, the characteristics and decisions of millennials are often affected by social media. How and what millennials choose to buy is just one of the many things that platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat can influence.

Contrary to popular belief, it isn’t the advertising on these sites that draws millennials in, but rather the opinions of their contacts. Personal experience is extremely valuable to this generation, especially with the increase in social networking.

The numbers don’t lie: 47% of millennials claim that social media affects what they buy, and the likelihood of them paying for a product or service on the day they first see it shoots up to 29% when they use social media. With this in mind, why not try targeting millennials through social media platforms with the use of their marketing tools?

McDonald’s has just released its latest commercials, and there’s one thing about them that stands out: they don’t use the company’s name. In fact, they’ve decided to include Coca-Cola and Google instead.

Why did the fast food chain choose this tactic, exactly? It’s expected to target teenagers and young adults, an age group that reportedly prefers recommendations from friends and trying brands out for themselves over being directly advertised to. This is why ad campaigns that promote themselves in an aggressive manner often fail to bring in younger customers.

While these new commercials avoid using the brand’s name, they do include rising star Mindy Kaling to appeal to a more youthful audience. She mentions Coca-Cola and Google while encouraging consumers to find McDonald’s without saying the chain’s name. To make the message clear, she stands in front of a red background dressed in yellow. The fast food business is currently promoting its summer dollar drink deal.

Think you need to update your marketing approach? Take a look at what your current strategy is and analyze what it’s doing for your company. You may not be sure what to look for, so here are a few signs that indicate that you need to change your strategy.

If your views, shares, and mentions are minimal on all social media platforms, chances are you’re not advertising correctly. Taking the time to create a relationship with your target audience and then directing them to your profile is the key to gaining more customers. Download an analytics program that records the amount of interaction each of your posts receives. Reuse the formula of the ones that work and scrap the ones that don’t.

Yes, it’s indeed possible to draw the eyes of potential customers to your Instagram page without posting pictures of magnificent landscapes or decadent meals. The photo-centric social media site is steadily growing in diversity and generating sales for startups, and now is the time for your company to take advantage of that.

One of Instagram’s most popular features is the space in each user’s biography to insert a link. If you create a new video, web post, or special offer that you want people to see, put it into your page’s biography and post a picture about the update with a caption directing your customers to the content.

For a more advanced approach, consider using Instagram ads. These ads are shown to users whose likes, interests, and location align with what your product offers, and they’re all equipped with a click function that takes the user right to your page. Setup is much like that of Facebook’s clickable ads, allowing you to choose a target audience based on specific criteria. The service costs as little as $5 to use, a real deal in the world of advertising.

With its focus set on decreasing loading time for online services, Google has found a way to effectively shrink JPEG image files to 65% of their original size. The company’s first file reduction program, WebP, was released in 2014, but was quickly withdrawn due to the mere tenth by which it reduced size. Guetzli, the latest image reduction creation, is far superior to its predecessor.

Google’s new tool has many things in common with its gzip and PNG file reduction tool, a digital device that allows users to shrink the image files without the hassle of converting them. However, the company’s old program needed changes in user interface and digital processes to have a significant impact on loading time.

While professionals normally only spend time on LinkedIn when they are actively looking for a job, this is a mistake, according to CNBC contributor and top selling author on management, Suzy Welch.
There’s an army of recruiters constantly mining the 467 million people on LinkedIn to find the best candidates. Having on a mediocre profile, which is essentially an online version of your resume, could mean missing out on potential job openings.
“If you make your LinkedIn profile great,” Welch says, “your next job might end up finding you.”
Here’s how to optimize your LinkedIn profile and get noticed by recruiters.
1. Complete the summary section.
“While you may have been told 100s of times to not have an objective on your resume, LinkedIn is different, Welch says.
The summary area on your profile is the best place to describe professional goals and your achievements. Indeed, it is considered by many recruiters to be the most important section.
“It’s a great place to showcase your motivations, interest, experience and skills,” says Welch.

On Friday, Facebook announced that it had succeeded in taking down an extensive fake spam account operation. Their strategy was to target popular publishers with fake likes so as to gain more Facebook friends that the spammers would then in turn spam.
This operation has been going on for the last six months and was talked about in depth by Shabnam Shaik, a Facebook technical program manager, in a recent post on its security blog Friday.
These unknown groups behind the scam had created an extensive amount of fake accounts, which then began liking a publisher’s page and pushing out fake comments on to them.
The source of these accounts appear to be in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, and in several other countries, Shaik described.
These groups employed “advanced tactics to hide that their activities were part of a carefully planned strategy. They employed a variety of hacks to avoid being caught, like using proxies to redirect traffic in order to hide data associated with their location.

Most companies put quite a bit of thought into what their brand name will be. If the business succeeds, the name will represent more than just the company. Thoughts, feelings, images, and ideas will all be associated with that name, and selecting something both unique and representative of your business can be tricky. Fortunately, there are several ways to inspire a brand name.

For small startups that want to maintain their modest size, a brand name that incorporates the company’s location can be a good option. Problems arise when the company chooses to grow past the borders of the city, region, or even country in the brand name. Customers may be confused as to where you’re located or which places you serve, though your origins will always be clear. If you do choose a brand name of the sort, be sure your business remains small and controlled.

Branding your company with your surname, and perhaps integrating a family connection, is a powerful way to stir emotions. However, there are many possible drawbacks to consider. Should the business be unsuccessful financially or legally, your name will be associated with that trouble for years, affecting your future relatives. On the other hand, business could run smoothly for decades, and then your family could express disinterest in taking over when you’ve retired, forcing you to leave the company to someone else.

You have probably already heard of influencer marketing as a great way to boost sales for your business. Best of all, you don’t need someone as popular as Kim Kardashian to make your influencer campaign a success. Micro-influencers with niche audiences can give you an incredible ROI, especially for brands that don’t have a lot of budget.
Micro-influencers are always a great way to start. Finding those who fit your brand that allow you to test influencer marketing on a smaller scale is a great approach before pursuing it on a larger scale. Here are 5 reasons why you should consider a micro-influencer for your next campaign.
1. Low Cost Experiment
The price of influencers can vary substantially and micro-influencers can offer the best bang for your buck. They charge $100 to $250 a post or even lower. And these people can be active in your industry and have 50,000 followers, so your name is still getting out there. For a couple thousand dollars you can secure several posts from influencers that already engage the audience you’re looking for.

One of the biggest names in the soft drink industry is under attack for the insensitivity of its most recent advertisement, featuring Kendall Jenner in a recreation of a real-life protest. From an outsider’s perspective, widespread complaints may seem worthy of an eye roll. Understanding what caused such a harsh reaction, however, explains why this piece of media can’t be trusted.

First and foremost, by putting together a joyful, ideal protest for their commercial, Pepsi undermines the harsh reality of those who have participated in such events and implies that they can be avoided through the use of their product. The overall message, therefore, is offensive and unrealistic.

Social media contests are a great way to connect with potential customers in an era when everything has gone digital - but they’re not always successful. What’s different about the ones that work? You’re about to find out.

1. They draw in customers, not entrants. If the majority of your contest entrants aren’t part of your target audience, you need to change your strategy. Adding labels familiar to the group you want to draw in is an effective way to get their attention. Whichever niche you’re targeting, call them out directly; they’ll have a much harder time turning down your offer. To make your contest even more irresistible, connect it to an event that appeals to your target audience. Finally, choose a prize that potential customers would truly want to win. Offering ballerinas the chance to win a toolbox probably won’t go over well. Offer them a gift certificate to a ballet store, on the other hand, and you’ll catch their eye.