Blog

If you already curate blog for commercial purposes, it is likely that you already understand and appreciate the importance of business blogging. However, do you know you can optimize your blog posts in order to make them more search engine friendly? You can actually use blogs to personalize your brand identity and streamline your SEO strategies.

Research shows that organic search tends to drive an estimated 51% of traffic to B2C and B2B websites. As a result, the importance of SEO as well as enhancing your website’s organic presence is widely accepted. Keep in mind that blogging is one of the most effective tools in most digital marketers’ toolbox. This is exactly why marketers consider blogging and SEO to be synonymous to each other.

Does Blogging Help with SEO

Blogging is great for SEO as it helps considerably with a number of aspects which are crucial ranking factors. If you have a blog that is updated frequently with posts that are relevant and high quality, it could make a considerable difference to how your site performs in various search engines.

Here’s how blogging helps with SEO.

1.Keeps your Site Updated

Publishing blog posts regularly is a very natural and logical way to update your site frequently; it signals to various search engines that it is being taken care of and is a great place to send users. This is why a new blog post at least every couple of weeks would show those ‘bots that your website is active.

2.Keeps Users on your site for Longer

Note that Google’s priority is offering people who perform searches with relevant information, so they will come back to use Google again.

A person who comes to your site from a blog post which shows up in search result will have more persuasive reason to stick around longer and read the entire thing compared to someone who happens to land on a webpage with less text or information. A good SEO blog will entice your users to stay on your site for longer and improve your traffic ratios.

3.Internal Linking

A lot of SEO is mainly about links and internal links are usually the easiest ones to get as you could create them on your own. Not including internal links on your site that conveniently point visitors from one webpage on the website to another is perhaps one of the simplest SEO mistakes one can make.

Although you may find some reasonable internal linking possibilities on your site’s main page, as soon as you begin publishing relevant blog posts, the opportunities would really blossom.

SEO Blog Tips

1.Maintain Keyword Density

It goes without saying that keyword density is a vital aspect for better ranking. Stuffing your keywords will lead to over optimization while too less may lead to lower ranking. It is often better to maintain a ratio of 2 percent per post.

Do not stuff keywords in order to manipulate search engines. However, after you finish writing, you could analyze your entire post to determine suitable locations where you can insert these keywords without distracting readers.

2.Do your Research

For on page optimization keyword research is essential. It is likely that you’re naturally inserting keywords without simply realizing it by offering valuable and relevant content on a specific topic. That being said, there are a number of great tools and techniques to find related keywords that are relevant to your blog post which you might not have even considered.

The Google AdWords Keyword Tool as well as semrush.com are both incredible tools that enable you to find relevant keywords and even spy on your competitors to determine what phrases and words they’re targeting in order to draw traffic to their websites.

3.Optimize your Images

When you upload an image or photo to your blog, make sure you incorporate keywords into your file name while filling out the alternate text field using brief and keyword rich description of your photo. This will help optimize your blog for search engine purposes.

4.Capitalize on Social Media Shares

There is no denying that there are plenty of great benefits of sharing your blog posts on various social media platforms:

1.It helps keep your social media websites relevant and current.

2.It keeps your audience fully engaged.

3.As social signals are usually included in ranking algorithms, it helps improve SEO results.

4.Social links also help raise referral traffic.

We would recommend that you always share your blog post on different social channels as this will help enhance your social media branding by a huge margin. It is advisable to share a few sentences that describe a brief summary of your post or an excerpt from your post. Also, remember to include all keywords you’re targeting within your social media posting since these social signals could help with rankings.

5.Give Readers the Chance to Subscribe to the Blog

You should include prominently place RSS and Feed Subscription Buttons while offering viewers the opportunity to subscribe to the posts through email when possible. This will allow all your blog followers to get instant notifications of your latest blog posts without periodically checking your website for new content.

6.Reference others

Whenever you mention another blogger or an article in your post, make sure you include the link to the specific information that you’re referencing. Not only it is good blogging etiquette, but you are also likely to get lucky and get a link back. Remember that quality links are an extremely valuable commodity for any website that is looking to rank higher in various SERPs.

The aforementioned SEO tips have been designed to help every business improve their marketing strategies and effectively use blogging as a digital outreach channel. People love blogs, so why would you not capitalize on the vast benefits of commercial blogging.

As the New Year has just started, marketers all over the globe are thinking about all the new design trends this past year have brought us. The year 2019 will be a challenging and fascinating one for brands all around the world. We are constantly tuned in and aware of the trends that dictate the trajectory of the market. Reflection of these trends is critical and preparing for the future is paramount in today’s digital era.

Many designers are taking their own roles in the events of 2018 and are using their own creativity to curate unique designs. The perceptions about the new design trends vary from individual to individual. However, one thing is for sure the new Ecommerce design will be quite creative, interactive and captivating.

Top Design Trends for launching the New Year

Here are the top five trends that you should keep on radar for the year 2019:

1. The Role of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Humans are hypothetically on a cusp of the single largest revolution in technology, you can also call this the next industrial revolution. It has been forecasted that designing as a practice is going to evolve quite swiftly. Artificial Intelligence designs will be the new face and role in the AI industry, just like movie directors have a vital role in making movies, without the director there will be no movie. These AI designers will head multi-disciplinary teams in the formation and design of webpages using AI.

It is worth noting that we are rapidly advancing in perfecting deep learning algorithms and machine learning properties. We are reaching a level of perfection in a number of different aspects which AI can marvelously do for us and at the same time, we are compiling a pile of extremely narrowly focused functions, all of them disjointed as a whole.

It is more or less like building an artificial person but we are starting from all parts of the brain at once. Artificial Intelligence designs stand out to become the most exciting practice in the history of commercial entities. The emerging face of this segment has taken the world by storm.

2. The Use of Vivid Colors

Use of bright colors for everything from backgrounds to images to user interface elements has been one of the most prevalent graphic design trends of 2018 and these strategies are expected to be an integral component in the new web design trends of 2019.

(Source: www.venngage.com)

If you have noticed that the world of design feels a little more colorful lately. You would be spot on. Splashes of electric yellows, bright corals and vivid blues are replacing the reserved colors of the previous years. It has been observed that more brands and designers are adding vivid colors to their palettes for 2019 in order to immediately entice potential or current clients.

Last year was a catalyst in terms of branding, advertising and packaging as businesses prioritized simplification in each of their strategies. Hence, it should not come as a surprise that businesses have adopted this approach for designs and illustrations as well. Due to the incredible popularity of simplification and reduction, this trend will continue to prevail in the following year.

3. Effective Focal Points

Another trend to look out for in 2019 is the mega use of bold fonts and type-faces. Many companies have personified the use of these focal points. Take Adidas as a prime example of how effective this new webpage design trend really is and how they have used it across all of their marketing channels.

As you can see from the above image, the bold font makes it quite easy to read the text on social media feeds and on mobile devices. It facilitates in instantly projecting strength, innovation and individuality. It is important to understand that these bold fonts are often the supporting partners to other design elements which will contribute to your conversion rates. The synchronization among the different processes involved is of paramount importance. Consider using these bold fonts with other trends to get the most out of your marketing efforts.

4. Handmade and Organic

While colorful, geometric, 2D vector still dominate the web design landscape. There has been somewhat of a counter-trend, in the form of illustration which is organic and handmade, even if these creations are digital.

(Source: www.creativebloq.com)

One look at the image above will leave you curious and quite intrigued, which proves how effective this new web page design really is. These new design trends have a huge potential of being an effective tool in the coming year as numerous brands are working on handmade and organic design which can serve the purpose for the broadcasting of the brand and its message.

5. The Existence of Gradients

Gradients are one of the most effective elements in any Ecommerce design. These gradients give the designing dynamics more depth and intensity. Plus, like some of the other rising graphic design trends, they look amazing on mobile devices. These gradients will not only attract your user’s attention to important information but it will also help continuity throughout landing pages.

(Source: www.venngage.com)

With the presence of vivid colors and futuristic patterns, these elements feel right at home with some of the other graphic design trends in 2019.

The Bottom Line

The current e-commerce website design standard is quite effective in guiding visitors through the purchase cycle. The competition globally has become quite fierce and the margin of error is constantly shrinking. One simple mistake could thwart every marketing effort your business implements.

Web designers are working hard to come up with fascinating designs which can effectively convey a brands message. All of these new design trends have completely changed how businesses engage with their clients and how they entice new users to invest in the business. So if you are currently contemplating a new web page design, consider the aforementioned trends to get the most out of your website.

Keeping up with the most innovative and latest digital marketing trends usually feels like a chore for many brands and marketers. It is even more stressful during the holiday season with everything else you have to do. Whether you are a small business owner or a big company, it is always good to know all the latest digital trends that will shape important marketing strategies not only this holiday season, but also in the future.
The constantly evolving search, social, and digital shopping landscape continues to offer more opportunities in connecting with customers, most advertisers often find themselves stretching final budgets across several different marketing channels. These digital media trends are defining the holiday season as business can now engage with clients on a whole different level. Here is a list of the new trends in digital marketing in order to provide you with detailed insight, to give you that much needed edge over competitors.

1.More Shoppers in 2018 will do their Holiday Shopping on Mobile compared to Desktop

Many holiday shoppers, especially luxury shoppers, are increasingly using their smartphone as the preferred shopping gateway. It is worth mentioning that when shopping online, most consumers tend to seek convenience, cost-effective delivery as well as a quick and a hassle free purchase process.

Consumers also expect a personalized, superior and frictionless Omni channel experience which will simultaneously encourage online sales and facilitate boutique visits. This is why mobile commerce is continuing to grow rapidly and for the first time in 2018 holiday season, smartphones and other mobile devices are anticipated to make up the majority of shopping traffic as well as orders. Here are 10 creative marketing ideas for the holiday season.

A recently published report by Salesforce has predicted that more orders will be placed through mobile phones than desktop (46 percent vs. 44 percent). In addition, 68% of the total traffic for the 2018 holiday season is expected to come from smartphones, up to 19% points from 2017.

2.Personalized experiences

Although most marketers do not usually agree on a lot of industry issues, there is certainly one aspect they are almost unanimous about: personalization really matters. This is why the more you can customize content offerings to every person’s specific preferences and tastes, the more likely can increase revenue and forge long-lasting and mutually beneficial relationships with your buyers. Hence, if you have not already done so, investigate various ways to make AI or artificial intelligence, shoulder most of the load for you in this regard.

You should try to maximize consumer enjoyment while reducing the time they require to spend looking for items. If you know your customers or customer groups well enough, you will be able to give them suitable personalized product recommendations and that will give your seasonal sales a huge boost.

3.YouTube and Instagram are the Social Channels to Watch

It is not surprising to note that most brands are raising their holiday marketing budgets in 2018, many are opting to spend more on YouTube and Instagram than in previous years. A research study indicated that 65% planned to boost Instagram expenditure. With that being said, it was YouTube, not surprisingly, that saw the greatest jump in advertiser participation, as nearly 33% of brands are planning to run adverts on the platform in 2018 compared to about 26% in 2017. As per experts, ads that concentrate on visual elements increasingly tend to have more impact and influence.

4.Facebook Offers

There is no denying that deals and discounts are a major plank of many retailers’ sales drive, especially during the holiday season, but the main challenge is to generate awareness. One great way to get noticed by buyers is by leveraging Facebook Offers.

Followers who will save your offer would receive auto reminders that they can use the deal before it expires. Also, customers could redeem their offers online, or in your physical store. You should use eye-catching and top-quality images of your featured products to help your offer stand out from various other posts. Also, remember to run the promotion long enough for buyers to notice it and react to it, which might take a couple of days or more.

5.Amazon Ads are very Important

For a brand looking to run holiday-targeted campaigns, Amazon is slowly becoming a very important player. More than 80% of brands that plan to market and advertise on Amazon in 2018 holiday season would run Christmas-specific product campaigns, compared to about 74% of overall brands. Running holiday-specific adverts on Amazon, according to experts, where customers are more likely to shop for gifts, is a great way for most advertisers to better showcase their products.

6.Putting up Reviews on your Site

Although there are many factors that are involved in ranking, note that the number of reviews that you have is often an important factor. It is worth mentioning that organic traffic from SEO is still one of the most effective sources of web traffic for a lot of businesses, as search engines like Google, will consider your Google reviews, Facebook reviews, Yelp reviews and more. Keep in mind that your reviews are essential for better search engine rankings; also, they can make or break a sale. This is why you must create an excellent plan to get reviews for your business. However, be careful and do not try to incentivize or bribe people (since this isn’t allowed), but rather have a system to ask for reviews.

Final Thoughts

Make time in order to check out these digital media trends. These strategies will surely help your business enjoy a productive holiday season. Although digital marketing is vital year-round, focusing on marketing trends for 2018 during the holiday season is one of the surefire ways to take your revenue to the next level.

The online marketing space is brimming with energy and competition, which at every point provokes web designers and online retailers to employ creative ideas and social media strategies to bring the traffic on board.

This constant need for flexing the creative muscle is no different in holiday season which is the high time for driving sales. A family reunion, in conjunction with the harsh weather outdoors, makes for the ideal opportunity for individuals to shop online and for retailers to capitalize on that.

Below we share some useful creative ideas that will always keep you one step ahead of your competitors when it comes to the race of attracting newcomers and retaining the existing users during the holiday season 2018 and beyond.

Respect the festival

In light of the special occasion of Christmas or general winter holiday season, people need to see how true your website design remains in respecting the cultural traditions. For this it’s favourable to redesign certain Call-to-Actions (CTAs), the homepage of your web and the colour or styles of certain sections of the platform to reflect that of the Christmas theme and colours.

A good example is the promotional banner above on Joules US’s website.

We’re thinking white-and-red mostly; perhaps snowflakes for the borders and Christmas tree lights in the background. Shopify has a great list of brands who’ve attempted such fun promotional ideas.

Utilize the social media channels

No one can deny the imposing presence of social networking giants like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and what they mean to the marketing game.

As of 2018, 3.2 billion users have registered to such sites. Shaking up the formula a little bit, your website can use it not only to hype up incoming new arrivals or discounted deals, but to put up a live stream that gives your fans something to talk about.

Podcasts have seen a lot of success for promotion of products, especially if it’s hosted by a popular personality or on a well-known platform. Midroll reported that 60% of all podcast listeners purchased the advertised product. Reserving up a spot or time-frame during any point of the podcast seems to be a viable strategy to bring in some users during holiday season.

Prioritize discounts, vouchers and trials

We know the main reason for consumers resorting to digital stores for their shopping is due to discounted limited time deals, so that’s what your marketing strategy should focus on: a lot of voucher codes and special deals.
Create urgency by including countdown timers or displaying the amount of stocks left. Maybe even go up a notch by introducing free trials or subscriptions like that which HBO attempted. Free gifts or additional items awarded for a certain value of purchase made is sure to make consumers feel special and keep returning for more purchase in the future.
Another example is of HnM. Their banner creates a sense of urgency by encouraging customers to order before a certain date, otherwise their orders may get late:

Market via emails

Marketing by email channels and newsletters mark a 3800 % in ROI, which is a lot. With regards to holiday season, your brand can send out exclusive vouchers to your email-list members since personalize vouchers feel more special.

Do make sure to include CTAs like ‘Buy now’ or ‘Join now’ to redirect users to the web before they start having second thoughts. Include original, interesting and visually striking images to catch the viewer’s attention. Some brands have brought this idea on board and our friends at Mailer Lite have compiled some interesting examples.

Put heart into your ads

Weeping and laughing together only makes us come even closer, especially in a season where we ARE together. Therefore video or illustrative ads which can portray such feelings work all the time. Have music, have charisma, have clever puns and touch at least one aspect of the human heart in whichever way you choose to tell people about your brand.

A celebrity endorsement will also help when it comes to resonating with the audience better. Independent recently compiled a list of the best Christmas advertisements of 2018, check it out to get a sense and feel of the impact of ads.

Give back to the community

For kids, Santa Claus is the popular fictional character, but for the young-adults and working class, it’s their favourite brands granting their wishes. To increase user-engagement and value the customer’s loyalty to the brand, have giveaways, lucky draws and festive competitions.

Revolving around the Christmas season, maybe even have a trivia about the festival and associate prizes with it accordingly. Again, social media channels here will be your go-to- platform so make use of that. This will prove valuable to many metrics including web traffic and social media conversations about the brand.

Create a relevant hashtag

Yes, yet another utility of the social media channels. As per a survey, inclusion of a single hashtag on an average Instagram post led to a 12.6% increase in engagement rate. Your holiday season marketing campaign needs a relevant hashtag which basically includes your brand’s name followed by the ‘Christmas2018’.

Of course you can make it crispier along the lines of ‘Xmas18’ or include various hashtags as well, but make sure they’re getting the message across without becoming too distracting. ReturnOnNow has some good practices your marketing team can follow.

Blogging for awareness

If you don’t have a blog section on your website, now is as good of time as any to create one. Blog posts keep your users updated about the latest trends and innovations related to the products your brand specializes in and thus promotes a more engaged audience.

According to HubSpot, 53% of marketers claimed that blogging was at the forefront of their marketing plans. Blogs also indirectly favour your SEO score by letting people stay longer on your website and getting redirected to your platform thanks to the keywords you incorporate in the articles.

Push notifications

Mobile channels seem to be one of the rising channels for marketing with 83% of marketers claiming it the channel to be viable for their content marketing.

Since mobile users make up about 5.1 billion in population globally, push notifications are a good way of alerting them of new additions to your catalogue especially if you’re an e-retailer. Being holiday season, most individuals will browse through their handheld devices in their leisure time.

It’s best to keep these notifications short, informative and catchy which calls for urgent action. A personalized touch like the use of ‘you’ and ‘us’ also helps with the click-through rates.

Deliver products with love

Going the extra mile, why not wrap the purchased items with decorative, Christmas-themed wrapping paper and then deliver it to your dear customer? You can also include something witty, like ‘See you next time’ or ‘Happy to serve you’ since it is these little details and touches that add to the strength of the business-customer relationship to ensure long-term customer loyalty.

Conclusion

Christmas season is always a busy one for retailers and business owners that operate primarily from the digital landscape.

To get users to eagerly participate in their holiday season marketing campaign and sales, you’ll occasionally need to get out of your comfort zone, walk the plank and venture into unfamiliar territory to remain alive in the overcrowded and competitive marketing world of today.

The digital scope of the world is changing with time and the industries world-wide are moving their business to the digital landscape. Moving the marketing campaigns online implies that you should have great landing pages to provide value to your consumers.

A landing page is an essential part of the conversion funnel and helps drive the traffic towards the next steps of the conversion funnel. A purpose-built landing page is necessary to entice the visitors who are visiting your website. In this article, we will talk about 5 tips for designing a landing page that converts. By convert, we mean a landing page that helps you achieve your objectives, whether it is sales or getting a visitor sign up on your email.

Provide Valuable & Discreet Content

The content on your landing page should be curated in a way that it provides value to the visitors as well as portrays your unique value proposition in the best possible way. The content that you curate on your landing page depends on the type of product or service that you are promoting.

An average user spends about 8 seconds on a page so bear in mind that you have just 8 seconds to make a lasting impression on your visitor so the content has to be curated in a highly effective way.

The heading of your content is the first thing that the customers see on your landing page. The heading should include what the visitors expect to get out of the landing page. This should be followed up by a sub-heading that further explains the value offered in the heading. The sub-heading should always compliment the heading in a way that it adds to the value offered by the heading on your landing page.

The sub-heading should be followed up by an effective call to action! One of our favorite landing pages is by Netflix which follows the tips that we have provided above. The call to action is unique and offers incentive to the visitor to sign up.

Use Visual Content

Visual content, including pictures, and videos, is an essential element of any landing page. Our brain is designed to process images 60,000 times faster than text. It is a no-brainer to include visuals in your landing page design as the visitors will be influenced by the visual content that you have displayed on your landing page.

When you’re placing visual content on your landing page, make sure that the quality of the content should be exceptional. It should be relevant to your product or service. If you are selling a physical product, make sure that you include pictures/videos of the product itself. If you’re selling a service, putting up an explainer video about the service is a great way to grab your audience’s attention.

A great implementation of the above mentioned tips is executed by Home Chef. The landing page design is sleek and it includes the right content to grab the visitor attention. It also includes a video that explains what the business is about. This is an amazing way to gain your audience’s attention and retain them on your website. Many people would form the image of your brand through your landing page and it seems only right to create the landing page in the best way possible by following the tips that we are providing.

We’re not done yet! Keep scrolling, there are more tips to come.

Create A Sleek & Appealing Design

A good landing page has to be designed in an appealing way. Remember when we said that you have just 8 seconds to grab your customer’s attention? The first thing they would notice about your landing page is the design.

The landing pages are going to create an impression of your brand or business and you’d want it to represent your business in the best possible way. Avoid distracting your visitors by adding redundant visual elements. Include plenty of white space that keeps your visitor’s attention focused on your product/service and the call to action.

Creating a good design is essential but you have to keep a track of whether or not the design increases your site load time.

Another thing that you should consider while designing your landing page is the eye movement of the user. The visitor’s eye should move in such a manner that is leads to achieving your desired results from the landing page.
Blue Apron does it perfectly. There is plenty of white space, the design is clutter free and the content including the CTA is clear and attractive.

Remove The Navigations

Although this is not practiced very commonly and is a little unorthodox but your landing page should have minimum options for the visitor to navigate away from it. Placing a top menu or a navigation bar makes sense but it gives the opportunity to the visitors to move away from the your landing page.

The presence of the usual navigation also creates a visual distraction for the visitor and this is certainly not what you want for them. The Farmer’s Dog does it the best and provides a great conversion centric landing page design.

Notice how the removal of the usual boring navigation makes the landing page much more attractive.

Use Contrasting Colours

When you’re creating a landing page, the foremost thing on your mind is that your call to action button should really pop out! Whether you’re encouraging the visitors to sign up to your email list or trying to get them to visit your shop, the call to action button should be designed and placed in a way that the visitors can easily access it and take action on it. This is the primary reason why the call to action buttons should be in contrasting colors.

Take a look at the following landing page as an example. The page is designed in grey and white hues but the call to action button is in a bright pink. This immediately brings your attention to the call to action button and increases the chances of the user taking the desired action. The time is short when we talk about grabbing the user’s attention and this is one of the best ways to do it.

Wrapping It Up

We hope that you’ve enjoyed reading our tips for designing a landing page that converts and these tips would surely help you out in creating the landing pages for your business.

Do let us know your thoughts in the comments.

There are almost EIGHT billion people in the world. More than FIVE billion of them are on social media, as per Smart Insights. Now, I am not saying all five billion of them are your consumers – unless you’re selling air, then they all need that – it is safe to estimate that millions or at least some hundred thousand of them are within your reach only if you could come up with a social media branding strategy.

Here, we must take a pause and focus on the word ‘strategy’.

For all the vast reaches of social media and all the postings, you could do literally with two clicks, you still need a solid plan to hold your neck above the swamp of competition on these platforms. If you don’t do that, you’ll drown.

The need for a plan

You won’t venture into an unknown territory without Google Maps, right?

There are several social media branding examples to show how campaigns fail when they either choose the wrong platform or focus on the incorrect audience demographic, etc. All this is because they lack a well-thought-out plan to achieve their goals.

Why do you need to have a social media strategy in place before launching any campaign? Basically, for three main reasons:

Focus

The unimaginable reaches of social media often lure people into setting unrealistic goals. For them, anything they post has to go viral. But does it happen? No! A social media strategy helps you set realistic goals based on brand awareness, target audience, and other metrics. An outline with specific objectives ensures the focus and direction of the campaign.

Content Creation

With a strategy, you can plan a content calendar that lines up with your business goals and target audience. This will save you from posting on Wednesday afternoons when most of your audience is busy with their work or not posting on Sundays when they are on a scrolling spree throughout the day.

Measurement and Improvement

An effective strategy establishes key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to measure success, like reach, engagement, follower growth, and conversion rate. This allows you to see what’s working and what’s not and helps refine your approach by making informed decisions.

Social Media Branding and Social Media Marketing

Source

Social media marketing and branding are closely related, but they focus on different aspects of your online presence.

You can think of social media branding as the foundation or overall identity you build on online platforms. It’s about who you are as a brand and involves defining your brand voice, personality, visual style, and storytelling. It’s the consistent look and feel that makes people recognize you across platforms. For example, the red of Adobe on their social media channels is their branding, helping their customers identify the brand with that color.

Social media marketing emphasises promoting products, services, or specific campaigns to achieve measurable business goals. It’s all about driving traffic, conversions, and revenue. It includes content creation, paid advertising, lead generation, tracking analytics, and metrics. Adobe running an ad campaign to promote a discount on Acrobat Pro subscription is social media marketing.

In short, social media marketing is tactical and for immediate results, while social media branding is strategic, focusing on long-term brand perception and loyalty. Now that we have established what is social media branding let’s see how you could come up with a solid plan to assert your brand on social media.

How to Devise a Social Media Branding Strategy

When it comes to creating a brand and making it successful, it takes a lot more than just a good logo and a sleek designed website. Let me quote the famous author and salesman Zig Zigler here.

“If people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.”

How do you build this trust? Through branding.

It is a strategy to etch your brand into people’s minds by crafting a unique image that reflects your values, mission, and what makes you different. Branding encompasses things like your logo, colors, fonts, brand voice, and overall messaging.

Let’s get started with a plan.

1.  Select your platform

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In 2024, the first thing you need to decide for a branding plan is what social media platforms you want to be present at. According to Semrush, there are 28 top social media platforms, if you try to be on all of them, your entire marketing budget will vanish before you can even spell branding. If you’re not on the right platform where your possible audience is, well then what is the purpose of all this?

So, identify which social media platforms are most relevant to your target audience. These could be the established ones like Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, and TikTok, as well as emerging platforms like Threads and Clubhouse.

Data from GWI (formerly GlobalWebIndex), an audience research company, reveals that a typical user browses or visits an average of 6.7 different social media platforms each month.

Here’s your checklist to nail down the platforms:

• Know your brand and audience
• Analyze platform demographics
• Consider content types
• Evaluate engagement potential
• Platform trends

2.  Audience Analysis

The most important of all social media branding tips is to know who you’re trying to woo. Imagine using technical jargon to explain a recipe to a child or explaining the functions of an inverter to an old man using Gen Z slang. It wouldn’t work, right? Audience analysis helps you understand the language your ideal customer speaks (literally and figuratively). You can then craft messages that are clear, relevant, and resonate with them on a deeper level.

Here’s what you should find out in your analysis:

Demographics

Start by collecting basic demographic information about your audience, such as age, gender, location, income level, education level, and occupation. This provides a foundational understanding of who your audience is.

Psychographics

Dive deeper into your audience’s psychographics, which include their interests, values, attitudes, lifestyles, and personality traits. This helps you understand their motivations, preferences, and purchasing behavior.

Behavioral data

Analyze your audience’s online behavior, including their browsing habits, social media usage patterns, content consumption preferences, and purchasing history. This data can be collected from website analytics, social media insights, and third-party research tools.

Feedback and surveys

Collect feedback from your audience via surveys, polls, focus groups, and social media listening. Ask questions about their needs, challenges, preferences, and perceptions of your brand to gain valuable insights.

Competitor analysis

Look at your competitors’ audience demographics, engagement metrics, and content strategies to identify overlaps and differences with your audience. This can help you enhance your targeting and positioning strategies.

Monitoring and iteration

Audience analysis is an ongoing process. Keep monitoring changes in your audience’s demographics, preferences, and behaviors over time, and adjust your strategies accordingly. Stay agile and be willing to iterate based on new insights and market trends.

3.  Define your Brand Goals

Having predefined goals ensures all your social media activities work towards achieving specific objectives. It saves from random posting. These goals are easy to track and help you allocate resources (time, budget) efficiently to the tactics that matter most.

Now, how do you actually set these goals? Here are some key factors to consider:

SMART goals

Make sure the goals of your business are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Don’t just say, “increase brand awareness.” Define what “awareness” means to you (website traffic, follower growth) and set a measurable target within a specific timeframe.

Alignment with overall business goals

Your social media goals shouldn’t exist in a vacuum. Connect them to your broader business objectives (increased sales, lead generation, brand reputation).

Consider the platform

Not all platforms are created equal. Tailor your goals to the strengths of each platform. For example, building brand awareness might be a primary goal on Instagram, while lead generation might be more important on LinkedIn.

4.  Content Strategy

Devise a content strategy that focuses on providing value to your audience while also showcasing your brand personality. Branding templates for social media platforms differ, based on what type of content works there and what is the user demographic.

Here’s what a comprehensive content strategy might entail:

Content mix

Diversify your content mix to cater to different formats and preferences. This could include a combination of text, images, videos, GIFs, polls, quizzes, live streams, stories, and interactive elements like AR filters or stickers.

Short-form video content

Embrace the popularity of short-form video content, which continues to dominate social media platforms. Create engaging and entertaining videos optimized for platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts. Experiment with trends, challenges, and storytelling techniques to capture attention quickly.

Immersive experiences

Leverage emerging technologies like AR and VR to create immersive brand experiences. Develop AR filters, lenses, or gamified experiences that encourage user interaction and engagement. VR experiences can transport users to virtual environments for product demonstrations, virtual events, or storytelling. Explore the potential of AI-powered content creation tools. Use them to personalize content, generate ideas, or analyze audience data.

User-generated content (UGC) and storytelling

Encourage your audience to craft and share content related to your brand. UGC not only provides authentic social proof but also fosters a sense of community and belonging. Weave UGC with storytelling to humanize your brand and link with your audience on a deeper level. Share compelling narratives, behind-the-scenes glimpses, customer testimonials, and success stories.

While doing all this, maintain a cohesive visual identity across all platforms, including consistent colors, fonts, imagery, and branding features. This helps to strengthen brand recognition and recall.

5.  KPIs, Analytics and Measurement

Monitor KPIs to track the success of your social media branding efforts. Analyze metrics such as engagement rate, reach, impressions, click-through rate, and conversion rate and constantly use this data to improve your strategy and make informed decisions moving forward. Here are some well-defined KPIs to consider as you go along:

Engagement rate

This determines the level of interaction your content receives, including likes, comments, shares, and clicks. A high engagement rate shows that your audience is keenly engaging with your content, which can lead to improved brand awareness and loyalty.

Conversion rate

Conversion rate calculates the fraction of users who take a desired action, such as making a purchase decision, signing up for a newsletter, or downloading a resource after interacting with your social media content. Tracking conversion rate helps you assess the efficiency of your social media marketing in driving tangible business results.

Brand mentions and sentiment

Observing brand mentions and sentiment on social media platforms helps you gauge the overall perception of your brand among your audience. Positive sentiment and an increase in brand mentions indicate a strong brand presence and favorable reputation.

Share of voice

Share of voice compares your brand’s presence on social media relative to your competitors. By analyzing the volume and sentiment of conversations related to your brand versus competitors, you can identify opportunities to strengthen your brand positioning and competitive advantage.

Conclusion

Social media branding is nothing but a meticulous plan to keep your brand relevant in a positive spotlight. It might feel like madness, but it is the one with a lot of methods attached to it. The success or failure of your branding efforts could be determined even before the campaign’s launch because going into it without a plan is a certain doom. So, brainstorm before you start, ensuring you don’t end up with nothing.

We hope this blog will have offered you all the social media branding solutions you were looking for. Share with us how you started your branding journey and how you successfully achieved all your goals.

According to a recent survey, 64% of the consumers said their purchase decisions were influenced by watching marketing videos on Facebook.

When you’re creating a video with the objective of building your brand identity, you want to be able to make sure that you’re representing the core brand values in the best way possible in that video.

The brand video has to resonate with your target audience so rushing it is NOT an option. We’ve compiled a list of tips and tricks for you all to create a brand video that is surely going to appeal to your targeted audience.

1- Understand Why You Are Creating The Video

The best brand videos always come up with an objective. You have to be very clear about what you want to achieve out of the video. Successful videos are well-thought out; they are a representation of the brand and should have the capability to connect with the target audience of the brand.

Ask yourself a few questions before you set out to produce the video:

Are you looking to spread awareness about the brand or business? Sharing a factual or informational video about the industry would be a great way to go about it. When you completely understand what you are trying to accomplish and who would be watching your house fitness video, you can customize it to fit the marketing platforms.

Once you have determined the reason why you are creating the video, search for relevant stock footage from sites like Videvo, which provides free footage for commercial use.

2- Understand Your Audience

The next thing that you have to do is to understand and think about your audience. The content that you are producing is for them. Understanding the people that you are trying to reach to would help you in creating the content that they would be interested in.

The easiest way to do it is to sit down and put yourself in your target customer’s shoe.

Ask yourself the questions that your customer would ask!

If you’re reaching out to new customer base, you’d like to start off with explainer videos that focus on the basics. If you are reaching out to your existing customers, adding value to your video content beyond what the customers already know is the right way to go about it.

Keep the following demographics in mind when you are trying to understand the audience:
•  Age
•  Location
•  Gender
•  Language
•  Interests & hobbies
•  Existing customers or potential customers
•  Customer platforms

3- Gather Data But Don’t Rely Too Heavily On The Scripts

Video scripts are one of the most amazing tools to keep you on track while you are creating video content. But relying too heavily on them can make your content robotic in nature and hurt the authenticity of your brand.

Innovate and be as creative as possible. Gather all the data you have on your brand or business including pictures and videos. The continuity in the brand image is essential. Use your script for key points but do not rely too heavily on them.

4- Speak In Your Brand’s Voice

When we say that you should speak in your brand’s voice we do not mean it in literal terms. Your videos are an extension of your brand image and they should revolve around the tone set by your brand.

A good approach would be to take copy off your website and use it in your video. Incorporate customer testimonials using the brand language to add more authenticity to your brand video.

When it comes to incorporating text in the videos, there are no hard rules about it. You can approach the text in your video in any way that you deem suitable. Just double check the typos before the video goes live.

5- Trust The Human Element

People want to hear from the sources they can relate to. A brand video revolving around an average Joe would appeal much more to the general audience than a brand video that revolves around the brand and its products.

Your customers would want to see someone like them speaking about the product or service and its benefits. The digital world is full of ratings and reviews but what the people still trust the most are the elements that they can relate too.

Adding a human element to your brand video is a great way of gaining customer trust and adding credibility. Everything in the video does not have to revolve around your product or service. The content can be unscripted but should revolve around the narrative.

Including behind the scene footages is another great way to gain customer trust and engagement.

6- Consistency Across The Video

Consistency and quality can never be compromised when it comes to creating a brand video. Best brand videos across the globe have these two common elements amongst them.

Without quality, you would lose the engagement that has to be generated among your customers and without being consistent, you would lose the chance to create a long term relationship with your clients.

Earlier we mentioned the inclusion of text in this article. Text is a great way of portraying consistency across the brand not only in terms of the language being used but also the colors and typography that your brand has chosen.

It would create an aura of multi-channel consistency and the brand would be able to flourish accordingly. Including your logo in the videos is also essential.

7- Be Strategic

You’ve understood the fact that your videos have to be authentic and engaging but it does not mean that you shouldn’t have a clear strategy in place. Every member of your team should be engaged in the creation of the video and it should be on the top of their heads.

The platforms that the video needs to be sent out to, the message and the goals should be set in a strategic way. If you have to create a series of videos, the content strategy should be in place; the frequency of how often the videos would come out should be set and you should have an estimate of how long would it take for you to reach your desired goals.

Wrapping It Up

As long as the message being sent out in the video is clear, you’re all set to produce a great brand video for your business. These tips will help you create a perfect brand video for your brand and would envision everything that your brand represents!

When you hear the name of a famous brand, you suddenly associate certain colors with the brand. One of the 4 C’s of Marketing is for Creating, and creating a great logo acts as a great beginning for your business.
McDonalds yellow and red, the multi-colored Google, and the orange and white Soundcloud, for example.

Colors have a very powerful effect on our brains and the colors that you choose for your brand are going to be the key for your brand image a very long time. Color psychology plays a huge role in how humans perceive ideas and things, which makes it one of the most interesting and controversial aspects of marketing.

For example, the color red is often perceived as the color for excitement, boldness and youth in the marketing field. Brands like Coca Cola, Lays and Cannon have opted for their logos to be in these colors. The color gray gives out a peaceful and balanced vibe, and brands like Apple and Honda have their logos in these tones.
Choosing the colors for your brand or business can be a tricky task considering the color psychology behind every color and every color combination. Designers from across the world get their inspirations from various things including natural color palettes. However, mixing up too many colors to create a logo can be confusing. Most big brands across the world stick to one color.

Nobody knows your business better than you, so you should be the one in-charge of setting the logo color schemes. Knowing the tone of your business and maintaining it can go a long way in the creation of your business logo. In this article, we’ve picked out 10 best logo color combinations for you to see
and learn from:

1- Yellow & Red

This bold color combination draws the viewer’s attention to the center of the logo design. The colors help create a sense of energy and playfulness.

DHL and Shell are two of the many companies that stick to these colors when it comes to their business logo. Yellow is one of the colors that are most often used by the automotive and food industries. Both of the above companies are connected to automotive and transport industries, so yellow is a perfect color choice along with red here.

2- Black & Yellow

If you take a look below, the bright yellow smiling monkey emits vibes of energy and fun. The black color is often used as the symbol of authority and mystery. This color combination is great for the entertainment industry, as it portrays excitement and mystery at the same time.

Another variation of these colors is implemented by Caterpillar. Caterpillar is a manufacturer of industrial
machinery and equipment along with the accessories required for industrial operators including shoes and clothes.

Source: https://logojoy.com/blog/logo-color-combinations/

3- Blue and Pink

Baskin Robins uses soft tones of blue and pink in their logo design. The brand is best known for its 31 flavors that it serves to its consumers. The logo is meant to convey fun and energy of the brand as well as the iconic number 31. The number represents the brand’s belief that the customers should be able to have a different flavor for every day of the month.

4-Blue & Green

These colors are perfect for establishing trust and putting the viewers at ease. These colors are majorly used across banking and financial sectors. The internationally renowned chain of banks, Standard Chartered, use the same colors across their brand. The color blue is used to represent stability and the color green represents tranquility. This goes very well with the financial sector that needs to establish customer trust.

Source: https://www.webpagefx.com/logo-colors/

5 – Orange & Purple

FedEx is the first name that comes to your mind when you hear the colors orange and purple. The colors are unique and send out a message of royalty and success. The purple color is associated with wealth and luxury as it was the color that was often donned by the kings and Monarchs. FedEx embodies the same elements as a brand:

6- Purple & Yellow

Where purple represents wealth and success and yellow brings excitement and warmth to the table, these logo colors are of the best combinations that can be used for your logo design. We think one of the best examples of the usage of these colors is done by the logo of the NBA basketball team Los Angeles Lakers.

7-Black & Red

This fierce logo color combination instills a feeling of power and energy among consumers. KFC has successfully used this color combination among their logo design. The red offers excitement as the color is often used in the food industry and the color black adds authority. This goes really well along the brand’s identity of providing quality food.

8- Blue & Turquoise

If you are trying to instill confidence and trust among your customers, these are the colors that you should go after when you’re creating a logo for your business or brand. PayPal uses the same colors in their logo and it goes along with the company values of creating a safe and secure means for transactions.

9- Orange and Blue

The color orange is associated with happiness and creativity. It also inspires enthusiasm. The color blue adds trust. If your brand is fun and exciting and you want to create a trustworthy environment of doing business, these are the colors that you should go for. Fanta uses these colors in their logo as the drink is exciting and is targeted towards the youth.

10- Blue & White

These colors are surely crowd pleasers and establish tranquility and trust among the customers. Volkswagen uses these colors in their logo design, after replacing the black and white logo that the company used in the past.

Wrapping it up

We understand that ‘it depends’ is not the answer you’re looking for when it comes to the logo design for your business. The fact of the matter is that it really depends on multiple factors when you are creating a business logo.
To help you out, we’ve presented the best logo color combinations above that we feel that can be used as good, inspirational examples when time comes for you to create your own.

best color combinations

Just as errors occur in our lives, they also tend to happen on the websites. The 404 page is a page with an error code which means the web page your visitor is trying to get to can no longer be found. There can be multiple reasons for the occurrence of this error; this could be because of a broken link on the website, or the type in website address.
Having a fun 404 error page is just as important as having good CTAs on your website. A friendly 404 error page has basically two components: the 404 server header status required to manage the indexation part on various search engines, and the user friendly design that is required in protecting the user’s experience and preventing bounce outs.

(Source: www.pixabay.com)

404 pages are one of the most overlooked facets of any website design, and once they are overlooked, then the tendency is to create some fun— in mere hope and anticipation that a touch of humor will facilitate in reduction of visitor’s anger and irritation at the missing information.

Importance of 404 pages

There has been a lot of discussion in recent times regarding the handling of 404 errors, and the significant impact they can have on SEO. The thing which needs to be understood is these errors are quire inevitable. It is a common practice to simply redirect all 404 errors to the homepage or another relevant page, which is a wrong idea, as it is exactly the opposite of what should be done. It is a wrong idea as it creates a bad user experience for the following reasons:
• Users can be in a state of confusion as to how they wound up on the homepage when they have clicked a link to a different page.

• Users will not be getting access to the information they were committed, and will not be aware of the reason.

• There can be a high probability of your users ending up on a page that could be completely irrelevant to the information they are looking for.
The use of 301 or 302 for redirecting to your homepage is also considered to be a bad and unprofessional SEO practice. Such habits portray a negative image of the company. It has been observed that few website owners and SEOs are doing this to preserve any link juice acquired by the removed content.

404 Pages for Good

Although, the 404 pages can be a real source of frustration and annoyance, but the trick of the trade is to turn the potential negative user experience of encountering an error into a positive one. The fundamental tactic in this is the extensive and effective use of links.
Links present on the 404 page are of utmost significance, because they prove to be instrumental in giving users a way out of the error page. The user can be facilitated in search of helpful and potential relevant resources on another page, instead of closing the window and navigating away from the site to a new destination.
Below are some of the links you can add to your 404 pages:
• Your most popular blog pages
• Most renowned product pages
• An HTML Sitemap

Tips and Ideas to Create an Inspiring 404 Error Page

It is highly advisable to invest time and optimize your 404 page text and to craft an on board design that can significantly reduce the bounce rate and help in boosting conversions.
Following are some of the examples that can inspire and help you in formulating your own custom 404 page.

1. Lego- Page Not Found Error

The way Lego displays its error is quite interesting. It’s also fun and easy to understand. The good part is the page is extremely simple and understanding. There is no technical wording and no reference to a 404 error.
This helps in broadcasting an image of your brand. A good image is quite crucial to the company’s existence. All your visitor needs to know is that they didn’t get the page they were initially looking for, and they are only interested in the solution of it. An easy going page can help them understand it and move on to the other relevant site.

(Source: optinmonster.com)

2. Magnt

The firm uses the help of a Venn Diagram to broadcast their error page. Their first error page with just the Venn Diagram went viral, and which prompted them to redesign it keeps the concept intact. The use of text on this page is quite on the higher side which is being compensated by the bountiful set of information provided.

(Source: www.uxplanet.org)

3. Jamie Huskisson

Their 404 page is quite unique in the way that it has come up with a good blend of creativity and functionality. The colorful image grabs your attention, the text is full of humor, and then you are served up with a search box. The page also has a link to Jamie’s post archives.

(Source: www.managewp.com)

4. EmailCenterUK.com

The firm has been credited by the experts on its error page. As soon as you land on the main page of the website, you can smoothly navigate to the other sections of the site. This helps in creating a great way to encourage user engagement on their websites.

(Source: www. uxplanet.org)

5. List25

The error page of list25 is quite famous these days. A good User Experience design practice is to come up with an explanation of what went wrong when delivering an error message. They have a search bar at the top so that the visitors don’t have to scroll all the way through the list.

(Source: www.optinmonster.com)

Wrapping Up

Every once in a while your visitors may face a 404 error page while surfing your website. There are countless reasons for the occurrence of these errors and majority of them are out of your control. Regular occurrences of these errors tends to increase the frustration levels among your visitors.
The traditional error pages are a snooze fest and creative designs for these pages are the need of the hour. It doesn’t take long to come up with a fun, useful 404 page that, with the passage of time, can turn potential bouncers into regular visitors.