Blog - Page 16 of 53 - Barbara Genest

January 23, 2022

Five Steps to Posting your First Instagram Story

By far, the number one platform to take advantage of for social media stories is Instagram. However, while Snapchat was the first, that does not make them the best. Instagram has nearly double the number of active users compared to Snapchat – making it not even a close comparison.

Almost eighty-seven percent of its nearly billion monthly active users post stories. Even better, a quarter of millennials and generation Z who use the platform say they use stories to find and purchase new products. So if you are a business not taking advantage of Instagram Stories, you should get right on it.

Here are five steps to posting your first Instagram story:

Step One: Plan Your Content

Always have a plan before you upload or record a story. You want to be sure everything you share is not only valuable but entertaining and engaging. The more you plan it out, the more likely you will have well-rounded stories to share sustainably.

Step Two: How to Upload or Record a Story

Find the plus icon from the Instagram application. The plus icon is currently located on the top right of your profile. You can also create a story by selecting the plus icon below your profile picture where it says “Your Story” when you open the app or swipe with one finger all the way to the left for the camera to open. Then from the bottom, select “Story.”

Step Three: Upload or Record Your Content

Now you can either upload your previously recorded story, take a picture, record a video or go live. Select or hold down the white circle in the middle to take a picture or record your video. Select the box in the bottom left field to upload content and choose the content you would like to upload from the new window selections. Select the filters from the button next to the record or capture button to edit your content.

Step Four: Personalize and Enhance Your Story

After taking a picture or recording your story, you can enhance it with stickers, emojis, text, and music. Tap the center of the picture or video to add text, change the font style, size, and color or add motion. Select “Done” from the top right of the screen when you are finished with the text. Then you have an option to add a link, save the story, add stickers, and do other things you can do via the menu located in the top right of the story.

Step Five: Tap Publish and Watch Your Metrics

Select ” Send to ” from the bottom right corner. Then, select ” Send to ” from the bottom right corner. Next, select ” Send to ” from the bottom right corner – once you add in features that increase understanding and engagement, select “Send to” from the bottom right corner. Then select “Share” next to “Your Story” and profile picture. From here, you can even choose to share it with others.

Don’t neglect your Instagram stories any longer with these five easy steps. Instagram stories are a valuable resource to better market and increase your sales or engagement among your target audience. In addition, stories allow you to make your products, services, or business more interesting, personable, and trustworthy.

January 23, 2022January 23, 2022

Four Ways to Make Your Social Media Stories Stand Out

While social media stories are a good tool to market and advertise your business, they can easily get lost in the competition. Over five hundred million active users post Instagram stories alone – showing you just how important it is to make valuable and important content that stands out to your target audience.

Here are four ways to make your social media stories stand out:

Show Behind-The-Scenes Content

Give your audience a view of what it is like to be you behind a business every day. This is content that many viewers are interested in and attracted to. It also allows you to show a more vulnerable and personal side that your audience will admire. Social media stories are powerful because they are seen as less informal and more direct. Behind-the-scenes content is a great way to take advantage of it.

Post During Audience Active Hours

Post content when your audience is the most active. Not only does it make it more engaging to your viewers, but it also shows that you are aware of their needs while making it easier for them to view your content. You don’t want them to rely on coming to you, and many stories only last twenty-four hours. Therefore, posting content when they are active increases your exposure, engagement, and overall success.

Actually, Tell a Story

Don’t click bate or post generic content to your social media stories. Actually, plan out a consistent story that provides value, whether that be through new information or relatable entertainment. Stories need to be just as valuable, if not more, than your other posts to keep them engaged, interested and to persuade them to become loyal customers.

Ask Your Audience to Share Their Opinion

Always get your audience involved in some way through the platform features by asking them questions, submitting their own content or simply replying to your story. The more active and involved your audience is, the more likely they will convert into loyal or paying customers. Getting their feedback also allows you to improve your content further and provide superior value that your competition can keep up with.

As you can see, making your content stand out is really about highlighting and showcasing your audience. If you have good content and understand your target audience, you won’t have any problem creating quality social media stories that stand out. Solve a problem and get your audience more involved to see more results and benefits with your social media stories.

January 23, 2022

Why You Should Take Advantage of Social Media Stories

To Increase Brand Awareness and Exposure

Social media stories are highly shareable content, making it easy to increase your exposure and awareness on the internet. Bringing value to your audience ensures that they want to share it with their peers, increasing your views and exposure. A vital step to the success of any business on the web. It’s simple, the more people you can get to view your content, the more likely your viewership or audience will grow. Social media stories are another creative and interactive avenue to do this.

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To Humanize and Personalize Your Brand

Social media stories are powerful because they are viewed as a more personal and less informal way to communicate with your audience. Showing your human side effectively increases your reputation as a business, as many viewers see this as a more trustworthy trait. This inspires more trust and credibility required to transition your readers or viewers into loyal or paying customers. Being more personable and human also shows your relatability beyond your business responsibilities and goals. You can understand what your audience goes through daily.

To Increase Audience Engagement and Interaction

Audience engagement is how you keep them interested in your business. It also provides them value or solves a problem, further increasing your exposure and reputation as a brand or business. Again, the more value you bring, the more successful you will be. Engaging content keeps your viewers wanting more and provides you more resources to update and perfect your products or services.

Take advantage of these benefits by adding social media stories to your marketing plan today. The more tools you use within each platform, like stories, the easier it can be to build your awareness and exposure as a business while improving your audience engagement and participation. In other words, not taking advantage of social media stories is a poor decision and only shows your audience that you don’t care to adapt or provide them more value.

January 15, 2022

Four Ways to Reduce Your Email Unsubscribe Rate

Customer retention is a top priority if you are a business owner or email marketer. It is quite well known that it can cost five to twenty times more to find new customers than to please the ones you have. Therefore, if your unsubscribe rate is below two percent, you are currently on the right track and should strive to keep it there or even lower.

The following are four ways to reduce your email unsubscribers and build a more sustainable list:

Audit Your Email Funnels Often

Better segment your readers, be sure they have a consistent schedule, not too long or too short, watch out for spammy looking content, segment by interest, and add them to multiple lists.

Plan and Map Your Content

Add in value and fun content, don’t just be a salesperson. Be cautious of your titles, as they are your first impression. Don’t use click-bait or sound obnoxious. Instead, speak to them naturally and let them know exactly what they will get out of the opening and reading your email.

Personalize and Incentivize

Be generous to get back what you are worth. If you only focus on what you get out of each email, then the content you are providing lacks quality. Instead, it would help if you concentrate on your audience and what they need the most for it to come back around to you. Then, keep the content personalized and find ways to incentivize them to continue engaging or reading your content. Giveaways, free downloads, or discounts are a few ideas.

Engage and Follow-up

Don’t ignore your audience once they become a subscriber or paying customer. The point of email marketing is to grow a sustainable and active audience that you can communicate with for the long-term. It is not a one-and-done strategy.

How To Improve Your Email Marketing ROI

Keep up with your audience by sending free educational material and asking for feedback or other questions that help you improve your content and overall value as a business. The more you engage and ask questions, the more you get to know your audience to become a better information source, improving your business’s growth and suitability.

A Harvard Business Review report states that simply increasing your retention efforts by as little as five percent can improve your profits by 25 to 95 percent. Showing you just how valuable keeping your unsubscribe rate low can be to your email marketing efforts. If you want to maximize your revenue and keep your subscribers interested, reviewing your goals, content, and getting to know your audience more is vital to your success.

January 15, 2022

Four Easy Ways to Improve Your Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is determined by how often your email ends up in your subscriber inbox. If it’s not deliverable, it will bounce back or be rejected by their email service provider. On the other hand, a bounce-rate higher than you wish may mean that subscribers are not seeing your emails and not getting the value they deserve from your email campaign.

There are two types of bounce-rates; hard and soft. Hard bounces indicate some permanent error, such as an outdated or nonexistent email address. Which likely means the only thing you can do is remove the lead from your list. On the other hand, a soft bounce can be fixed and is probably a temporary error such as a full inbox or some server issue or lag. Meaning you can likely resend the email once the problem is fixed.

It’s important to note that many people have noticed that once their bounce rate reaches higher than ten percent, it starts to affect them throughout other campaigns. This is because your subscribers’ email service provider uses this information as a security measure and will add your email straight to the spam box or reject it.

Here are four easy ways to improve your bounce rate:

Create Double and Relevant Opt-Ins

Make sure your acquisition process includes a way to evaluate the information you collect. For example, using a double opt-in form makes your subscribers verify their email addresses. Ensuring that every lead you get is viable. The fewer errors in data entry you have, the easier you can pinpoint the main culprit to increasing your bounce rate.

Remove Inactive Email Accounts Regularly

If emails consistently bounce or are active, remove them from your list. Inactive emails can have a major impact on all of your conversions and this can give a more accurate representation. Programs such as NeverBounce can help simplify this process with their email verification and email cleaning services.

Don’t Forget Proper List Segmentation

One way to avoid your subscribers’ email service provider from thinking you are spam is to implement proper list segmentation. This is using a certain set of criteria, information, or time to target certain subscribers. Getting marked as spam is less likely if you stay organized and timely.

Avoid Free Sender Domains

Authenticate your email address and avoid using services such as Gmail. Using your own email prevents email service providers from seeing your content as spam.

Four Tips to Writing Better Email Subject Lines

Don’t ignore your bounce rate just because you believe it is out of your control. You can and must do many things to ensure your emails end up in their inbox and improve your bounce rate.

January 15, 2022

Five Email Marketing Tips to Boost Sales

Email marketing is the most effective marketing strategy to date. Even compared to social media marketing by nearly 40% more. Industry or niche doesn’t really matter; you will see a high return on investment if you implement the proper email marketing tips and strategies.

These are the five email marketing tips you need to follow to boost your sales and increase your return on investment:

Enhance your Opt-Ins and Acquisition Process

You must generate leads by strengthening your acquisition process or opt-in forms. This is the content used to persuade viewers to subscribe to your email campaigns. Small eBooks, discount codes, or simple newsletters are a great place to start. Make sure the opt-in you use is what your readers want or need, and be sure to execute on that promise as soon as possible. If you know your audience struggles in a certain area, then this is the best place to start when developing opt-in or lead magnet content.

Value Your Subject Lines

While subject lines are short and sweet, you should take the time to craft the most compelling one. In fact, you should create at least two to three for every email you send and test them among different subscribers to pick the one with the best return eventually.

Perfect Your Call-To-Actions

Always include a call-to-action and be sure it is consistent between email and campaign. Don’t add more than one type per email, or you will likely split or confuse your subscribers. Instead, pick one goal and then perfect the call-to-action to optimize your chances of accomplishing it.

Focus on Personalization and Quality Content the Most

A huge benefit to email marketing includes how powerful it can increase your authority, credibility, and trust as a brand. The more personalized, engaging, and valuable the email content, the more likely you will convert your subscribers to paying customers. Valuable and quality content is key to gaining their trust and believing in your word. It’s simple if your target audience doesn’t know you very well, they are less likely to trust you with their money or time.

Create Multiple Landing Pages for Each Campaign

If boosting your sales is your email marketing goal, as it is for many, then you must create landing pages for each campaign you create. Landing pages are sales pages that further describe, entice or invite someone to join or purchase their products. Your call-to-action should lead them right to the landing page.

Work On Your Funnel Each Week And Continue To Branch Out

Be sure to follow these email marketing tips or use them to audit your email marketing process to ensure you are doing what you need to boost your sales. Working on each part of the email marketing process is your key to success.

January 15, 2022

Seven Tips to Optimizing Your Email Onboarding Sequence

The email onboarding sequence or acquisition process is the first and most crucial step to email marketing. Obviously, without leads or email addresses, you can’t properly communicate or market to them. However, acquiring your leads is far from the only requirement to creating an email onboarding sequence. Onboarding sequences also involve the steps between being a new subscriber to becoming a veteran or hopefully a loyal customer and, in turn, leading them down their next email sequences.

Here are seven tips to optimizing your email onboarding sequence

Always Start with A Confirmation

This is vital to ensure the deliverability of your email. Often, subscribers fill in the wrong information; however, a double-opt-in form where the reader must confirm their address reduces this chance. A confirmation is also a great way to personalize your introduction and further excite their interest.

Focus On Benefits Not Features

When subscribers first join, show them the benefits you promised in the opt-in. Don’t just list features. Provide real value. Give them instant satisfaction by joining your list with hardly anything in return.

Develop Inactive and Active Reader Sequences

Be sure to segment your list in terms of their behavior and how they respond to your emails. Especially the first few. If they don’t click them, they should be moved into different sequences or emails to persuade their interest further. This way, you know every email you send can accomplish its goal more effectively.

Use Call-To-Actions to Accomplish Your Goals

Lead and end every email with a call-to-action. Show and tell your subscribers what you need them to do in exchange for all the valuable content you provide through email. Make them clear and straight to the point. It is also important to note that call-to-actions with buttons and graphics convert better than those that don’t.

Be Fun and Engaging

Personalize and humanize your content. Speak to them as if you were talking to a friend, not a business lead. You want to focus on growing their trust and show them that you are worth the time and effort. Invite them to other platforms or ask them to reply to your email to get them to interact, engage and feel connected.

Keep It Short and To the Point

Your email copy length should be around 125 to 250 words or so. That’s right, and your emails should be pretty short. You don’t want to offer too much information all at once. Instead, each email should guide them along short and different journeys that all work together to share a similar message or goal.

Provide Generous Incentives

Make it even clearer to your new subscribers that you value their time by providing earlier and generous incentives that align with your call-to-action.

As you can see, the onboarding experience is more than just acquiring new subscribers. It’s about teaching them about the value you have to offer and what your company is about while also proving it. Finally, it’s about exceeding their expectations and giving them a great experience to transition into a loyal customer and subscriber.

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January 15, 2022

Five Actionable Tips to Boost Your Email Opt-In Rate

Your email opt-in rate is the percentage of those who visit your website compared to those who become email subscribers. The higher the rate, the more email addresses you have to better market and communicate to your target audience. In other words, the imagine you had 1,000 people visit your website this month.

Fifty of those viewers decided to provide their email and opt-in to your campaign. Therefore, your opt-in rate would be five percent, the average that many other businesses see. An opt-in rate that is two percent or higher is said to be on the right track. To determine your opt-in rate, use the following formula:

(Monthly or Weekly Opt-In Subscribers/ Monthly or Weekly Website Viewers) * 100

(50/1000) * 100

0.05 * 100 = 5%

Opt-ins are materials that hook your audience in by providing them high-value content in exchange for their email address or cell phone number. Once you acquire their information, you lead them through your email marketing funnel to hopefully persuade them to be paying loyal customers. Therefore, improving your opt-in rate is important to running a successful email marketing campaign.

These five tips will help you boost your email opt-in rate:

Use Pop-Ups

Pop-ups can be a great reminder for your viewers as they are leaving or browsing your website. However, don’t overuse them as they can quickly become annoying and make them click off altogether. Many readers expect a few, but if they pop-up too frequently or make it too difficult for them to browse the site, they will simply get discouraged and leave.

Make the Opt-In Process Obvious and Easy

Be sure to optimize the signup process to the mediums your readers use the most such as smartphones. If the opt-ins or lead magnets are not optimized for their cell phones, they won’t be able to complete the process. Many readers will abandon a brand or business altogether if they refuse to learn how to adapt to their audience as well. Keep the opt-ins organized and straight to the point. Don’t overload the reader with too much information. For the most part, the opt-in should be scannable and understood in a few seconds.

Add Prominent Testimonials

Show social proof with customer testimonials. Make them obvious and near the signup button to show your readers that you are trustworthy. If others are seeing the benefit you promised they will want to participate.

Use the Fear of Missing Out

Urgency is a useful tactic to get your readers to act now. Discounts with deadlines or early bird tickets for hands-on classes are great examples of these. Most people can’t pass up a good deal, nor do they want to miss out.

Invite Them to a Call or Webinar

Humans love to feel like they are important or part of a community. Not only that, inviting them to a short one-on-one call or free webinar makes them feel more valued and that there is a real person who cares on the other side. It shows that you are there for more than just monetary gain. Increasing their trust and loyalty to the business.

Overall, providing value is key to increasing your opt-in rate and achieving your email marketing goals. If you don’t have valuable content to provide nor follow these six tips, it’s likely your email opt-in rates will be poor, destroying your sales and overall email marketing conversions.

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January 8, 2022

Four Tips to Enhancing your Email Call-To-Actions

Call-to-actions are vital to your email marketing campaigns. It is the material that instructs your audience to do something in order to get the conversions you need to grow and build a sustainable business. If you don’t tell or show your audience what you need them to do, you are unlikely to succeed.

Call-to-actions are like a guidebook that instructs your readers on where to go and what to do. In fact, you can increase your click-through rates by over 300% just by adding one single call-to-action, according to a WordStream report and further highlighting the importance of adding them to your email copy if you want to run a successful email marketing campaign.

The following are four tips to enhance your email call-to-actions to increase your conversions and run a more profitable email marketing campaign.

Use a Button and Colorful Graphics

Buttons are easy to see and obvious to most readers. They are eye-catching, clear, straight to the point, and easy to understand and use. Buttons also can improve your results by nearly 28% more than call-to-actions without them. A big red “buy now” button or “read more” is more obvious and easier for your subscribers to understand. Making it more likely for them to follow through if your products and services are what they need.

Use Action-Oriented Words

“Get the discount here” or “Try your free trial today” are perfect examples of action-oriented words that should be used in your call-to-actions. These words inspire your readers to do something and grab their attention.

Keep it Short and Urgent

Too much information or crowded images only persuade your audience to click away instead of click-through. It can also be confusing and overwhelming, allowing your readers to second guess instead of making a quick decision.

Using a sense of urgency and clear and direct information increases your click-through rate because people fear missing out. However, be sure to use this appropriately and not take advantage or misuse your readers. Urgency should be to inspire, not to take advantage of.

Highlight the Value Proposition

When deciding on what copy to use, be quick and to the point by highlighting the most valuable part. What are your readers getting out of doing the action you ask of them? Is it at a discount, more education, a chance to participate with others, and a bigger community? If you lead with this, it will be easy to get your readers to take action.

Don’t neglect your call-to-actions. Make sure your CTAs align with your goals and objectives to each and every email copy and campaign you create. Please keep it simple, direct, and obvious, and don’t forget the power of call-to-action buttons.

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