Tag: blogging

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Essential Characteristics of a Successful Brand Community

A successful brand community has the power to unlock benefits and resources that can take your business to the next level.

 

Communities foster engagement that fuels brand awareness, credibility, and, most importantly, loyalty. With loyalty, you can market and grow your business more effectively than on your own or through traditional marketing efforts. In addition, loyal customers will not just participate in your community. They will loudly advocate for you to their friends and family.

 

Nothing is as powerful as word-of-mouth marketing. When you build a strong community, you will have many people who strongly advocate for your brand. To create a strong community to reap these rewards, you must possess certain common and essential characteristics as a business owner and community leader.

 

The following characteristics are essential to building a successful brand community:

 

  • Influential and Inspirational – You need to demonstrate that you have the necessary knowledge and experience to help your customers solve their problems. When you focus on problem-solving, you become very inspirational. Find ways to inspire them by giving them reasons to act in the manner you desire them to.

 

  • Authentic and Unique – It’s imperative that you are yourself and don’t put on any fake personalities. While your business needs to have its own personality apart from you – let’s face it, you are your business, so you must be who you are. The good news is when you are yourself, you’re automatically unique. Don’t worry if you think someone else can do the topic better. They want to hear it from you because you are you.

 

  • Collaborative and Engaging – The easiest way to be engaging is to include your audience in everything you say and do. Ask them if they like your new book cover. Ask them if they want to participate in a challenge. Let your members choose what they want to do with you by setting up two or three options and then letting the group vote on it.

 

  • Personalized and Valuable – Your community needs to be personalized for your business and made to represent who you are as a business. Still, its main purpose is to provide value to the ideal customer. So, ask yourself what value you can provide to this particular customer every day, depending on their buying journey position?

 

  • Consistent and Communicative – You can’t allow your community to go dark for even a day. You need to post something in the community a minimum of once a day, if not three times a day. Plus, what you post needs to be useful and not irrelevant to make headway.

 

  • Honest and Full of Integrity – One thing about doing business online to know is that if you’re dishonest, it’s going to come out. You may as well tell the truth and be who you say you are from the start, even if you believe you’re imperfect.

 

Incorporating as many of these characteristics or qualities as possible while building your own brand community is essential to make an enormous impact and grow your business. With these characteristics, you can create a strong community that advocates for your business.

 

 

 

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Six Strategies for Successful Community Building

A brand community is only as valuable as the work you put into it or provide. Meaning you can’t expect the community to do the work for you at all times. You must put work into it first to gain the amazing benefits brand communities return. Strong communities share your messages across many different avenues, starting with their closest friends and family, ultimately increasing your brand awareness, recognition, and credibility.

 

Here are six community building strategies to learn and how they can grow your business:

 

  1. Incorporate Customer Feedback – When you receive any feedback from a customer, whether email, in the community, or otherwise, use that information in the community. If it’s positive feedback, call out the customer in the group and thank them. How you respond to negative feedback demonstrates how you will make it better or change something you do. This shows your customers you are listening.

 

  1. Respond to Product Reviews – If someone gives you a review, don’t just ignore it. Instead, respond to it by thanking them, providing even more greatness, or if it’s not as good as you’d like, make it right by being understanding and letting them know you are here for them.

 

  1. Embrace User-Generated Content – The remarkable thing about building a community is the user-generated content that can be used and put to use. For example, you can ask for advice in a group about something relevant, compile it, and then make a blog post about it.

 

  1. Host Online and Offline Events – You can also start hosting events once you have a captive audience in the community or group. Events are great ways to bring your community even closer and get to know your audience even more. The wonderful thing is you can do events online or offline as long as your particular community is interested.

 

  1. Develop a Members’ Affiliate Program – One way to get your audience in the community engaged is to let them earn money or prizes promoting your products, services, and community by setting up an affiliate or referral plan.

Six Tips to Improving your Social Media Story Content

  1. Create and Share Valuable and Unique Content – Most importantly, use your community to create and share valuable content that stands out from the crowd. The more tuned in to your community, the easier this becomes.

 

Be sure to incorporate these strategies as you grow your own brand community if you want to reap as many benefits as possible. Again, the more valuable information or resources you provide or add to the community, the more they are willing to return. If they go to bed tonight having enjoyed the interaction in your community, they will be back tomorrow, which means you need to ensure something more is there for them tomorrow.

 

 

 

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Why a Brand Community is the Business Strategy You Need

Communities keep your ideal audience all in one place, making it easier to communicate, market, and engage and motivate them to buy your products, use your services, and consume your content. All of this together shows you why communities are a valuable marketing tool and business strategy to adopt if you want to grow your business. Plus, having a brand-centered community is fun too. And who doesn’t want to have a little fun while making money?

 

The following are the top five crucial reasons to build a brand community:

 

To Increase Brand Awareness and Recognition

 

Building a community increases brand awareness and recognition by capturing your audience into a smaller captive unit that you can send information to easier than if they’re all out in the wild. For example, you might have to run an advertisement to capture someone to learn about your new product, but your audience in the community will know about it simply due to being part of the community.

 

To Engage and Interact with Your Target Audience

 

When your community is on a platform that you all use to talk to each other, share information, and engage, it makes it so much easier for them to interact with you without the noise from everyone else interfering. In addition, the community is only about what you make it about, so you don’t have to worry about pleasing anyone but your ideal audience.

 

To Influence, Inspire, or Educate Your Audience

 

Having a community that enables you to be a lot closer to a smaller portion of the available. Being closer to them makes it easier to influence them to buy your products or try something you think works. In addition, you can educate them better because you’ll get insight into what they need by observing their discussions and actions.

 

To Foster Trust and Brand Loyalty

 

Your audience gets to see you more often through the content you share in the group instead of through an advertisement or email. As a result, they feel as if they know you. When they think they know you, they trust you more and become very loyal to your brand.

 

To Grow and Improve Your Products and Services

 

One of the best parts about having an involved community of people who want what you are offering and need what you have is that you can get insight into making your products and services better simply by asking questions and listening to the answers.

 

These reasons should easily explain why building a brand community is the business strategy you should be adopting today. If you have yet to get your most loyal customers together, you are only missing all the potential your business can gain. Strong communities create trust, loyalty, and value that services you and those involved.

Automate Your Community Management

 

 

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Six Instagram Story Hacks to Use for Business

Just about everything you do on this platform relies on your use and understanding of the benefits and power stories provide. However, due to Instagram’s popularity, it can be hard to stand out against the competition to make a real impact and keep your audience interested and engaged.

 

Here are six Instagram story hacks to use for your business to provide your target audience maximum value and turn them into repeat visitors and customers:

 

Utilize and understand All Editing Features

 

Take the time to get to know how to use every single editing or other features Instagram has to offer. Instagram wants to keep people on their platform and provide you the tools to keep your customers there through these features. So the more time you take to learn it, the better you can take advantage of their benefits.

 

Create Progression Posts

 

Again, a goal for Instagram and you are to keep people active and engaged. If you want your viewers to stay around, create stories with slides or frames that work together to tell a full story instead of using single posts. In order words, don’t just share one story with a short frame of your product. Include extra details such as how to use it too.

 

Host Live Q&As or Other Events

 

Get your audience involved even more by answering their questions or showing off your products live. Q & As offers a fabulous way to build your community and advance brand awareness while answering many of your viewers’ or customers’ questions.

 

Take Advantage of Instagram Highlights and Shopping Feature

 

These two features are must-haves to get the most benefits from this platform. This is how you can make your stories last longer than twenty-four hours so your viewers can continue to receive the value if they were not there while it was live. It also provides you tools to add your brand colors to increase your brand awareness.

 

Mention Other Accounts

 

Account shoutouts are a professional way to increase your exposure and build the community with your niche or industry. The best trait to have as a business owner is generosity. The more you give and share to others, the more likely you are to receive more back. Additionally, when you post a shoutout, their audience will see your content, while your audience will likely view their content—a win for both businesses.

Use Tools and Pre-Schedule Your Content

 

Tools are important in order to keep up with the constant action required on Instagram. Of course, the amount you post depends on your target audience’s schedule, your niche, and what kind you want to create for your stories. However, the fact is still clear that frequently posting throughout the day is key to staying at the top of the newsfeed and better grab your audience’s attention.

 

As you can see, taking advantage of each and every feature the platform has to offer is the key to creating engaging and interesting content. The more features and tools you use, the more value it provides, keeping you at the top of your audience’s mind and preventing your competition from taking the lead. Add each of these ideas to your social media content plan to add the variety, consistency, and engagement you need to be successful.

 

Four Fun Ways to Use Instagram Stories Polls and Questions

 

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Five Google Web Story Content Ideas for Business Success

In 2018, a new competitor to the social media stories game was created and launched by Google; at the time, AMP stories — now referred to as Google Web Stories. It is a powerful feature that draws in more traffic to your WordPress blog through a more interactive and engaging feature for those who use their smartphone to search on Google and scroll through their Discovery page.

 

They are short virtual clips of content in video or picture with text that teach your audience something or further advertise your website. To attract these new viewers, you need to develop the right content. While the content is consumed in a story-like feature, it is much different than the stories’ function found on Instagram. Meaning the story content, you create for your blog will likely be different.

 

Here are five Google web story content ideas to utilize for your business to maximize your success and exposure with this feature:

 

How-To Series or Step-by-Step

 

By far, the most interactive, educational, and useful Web Stories to create for your target audience are how-to series or step-by-step tutorials. Cooking or baking blogs can easily benefit from this idea. Recipe how-to stories are highly popular, attractive, and engaging.

 

Top Ten Recommendations

 

The next powerful Google web story content idea that is highly attractive and shareable among many readers is the top ten recommendations within your industry. This shows your personality as a brand and can further educate your audience on your products without a sales-like approach.

 

Product Highlights or Promotions

 

Create a story that is around five to ten frames all-around a specific product or service. Be sure to avoid a sales-like approach. Education and knowledge are power. Tell your audience how and why you created the product or service and that your product solves their problem through your Google web story.

 

Top Industry or Niche Facts

 

Are there powerful facts or beneficial tips you know about your industry or niche that will helps your readers or followers? Answering frequently asked questions is a good place to start.

 

Industry Related Quotes and Inspiration

 

Step away from your niche for just a moment and inspire and motivate your audience instead. Find a similar subject that gets your audience to act towards the niche with a group of related quotes.

 

Adding these ideas to your Google web stories content plan is vital if you want to use this feature correctly. Maximizing and enhancing your content is the most important first step in order to attract the right audience and get them interested. Anything worth a long-form post is worth a supporting Google Web story to increase your reach further, traffic, and success on your blog or WordPress website.

 

Creating a Niche Home Base on Your Blog

 

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Five Tools to Automate Your Social Media Stories

Due to the high-value social media stories and other content brought to companies, third-party solutions and products emerged. These solutions were designed to make it easier for brands or businesses to take full advantage of the benefits social media marketing brings without breaking the bank or taking up too much time.

 

Many things in social media require constant work and are quite tedious. Not something any one person can do sustainably to see results or achieve your goals with social media – making it that much more important to take advantage of these tools to automate certain portions of your social media content plan or make it easier and faster to produce high-quality content.

 

The following are five tools to help automate your social media stories:

 

Hootsuite

 

Hootsuite offers a thirty-day free trial to get started. With Hootsuite, scheduling all your social media content ahead of time across many different platforms will save you more time and free you from frustration. Then, view what your customers or audience thinks, access image access to make regular posts, or evaluate your personalized insights to see what is working all in one easy-to-use interface.

 

SocialPilot

 

Never run out of content ideas with SocialPilot’s unlimited keyword search tool. Discover trending content, create it and schedule it ahead of time to automate your social media marketing. View all your social media comments, posts, and messages easily from your Facebook pages or groups all in one place organized for better communication. SocialPilot works with many of the popular platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.

 

CoSchedule

 

A marketing calendar allows you to see all of your projects from different platforms in one area that you can share and work on with a team. It can be easy to get lost in communication and make your social media stories inconsistent or disorganized if you can’t properly work with your team or keep your project all in one place. Don’t let your content projects be scattered between emails, spreadsheets, or cloud storage.

 

Sprout Social

 

Get to know your audience better with Sprout Social, a tool that gives you the knowledge and information you need to create better social media stories or content for your target audience. Real connections make purchases, and that’s what this tool helps you do by understanding their needs and then doing the work to create a plan that meets them. They also provide tools that help you publish content, manage your workflows, influencer engagement, and view analytics.

 

PostPlanner

 

Automatically post your content and keep up with your daily posting schedule with PostPlanner. A tool that allows you to set your posting schedule, republish content with one click, or tailor your post to maximize your reach. It also has a feature that filters through Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit to provide the best or most trendy topics and ideas to create more stories or social media posts that convert.

 

Give each of these tools a try to see which one provides the most value to your brand and overall objective. The idea is to free up your time so you can use it where it matters most. For example, create engaging, interactive, and highly valuable and beneficial content for your followers or paying customers. In addition, using these tools can help you automate the process and plan ahead to get the most impact from your social media stories and other content.

 

Schedule Your Daily Activities Based on Your Goals

 

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Common Social Media Story Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

The best way to know how to use a certain feature correctly is to learn what not to do first. This is done by understanding some of the most common mistakes many do when first using social media stories to market and advertise their business. While social media stories and the other features it provides can offer your business many benefits, learn how it works so your efforts will not be wasted.

 

Here are four of the most common social media story mistakes and what to do to avoid them:

 

Inconsistent Schedule and Posting Time

 

Social media is attractive due to the high amounts of communication and its movement and speed at which that communication can be found and digested. However, it is constant and never-ending — making it almost addicting as humans love to socialize. This means you need to find a schedule that keeps you consistent and always engaged. Of course, this will be different depending on the platform you use, but most stories only last for around twenty-four hours, which means at least once a day is vital at minimum.

 

Ignoring Audience Interaction and Engagement

 

Stories are about engagement and audience interaction. Don’t use this feature to post the same content you do everywhere else and ignore your audience. Get them involved, ask them questions, get their feedback, and always provide maximum value in exchange for their time.

 

Cross Promoting or Over Prompting

 

Repurposing is a great idea, but not for your stories. You always want to be more creative and transform the idea into something better and different to keep your audience attached or interested. Posting the same boring content on all platforms will likely disinterest them, making them head over to your competition as you no longer provide any value.

 

Poor Branding and Overall Message

 

Always plan your content to ensure your goals and company values are clear and obvious. If you don’t take the time to plan, you may inadvertently send the wrong message. Take advantage of the features, such as changing your font and colors to match your branding and using the Highlights section offered by Facebook and Instagram. A consistent message and branding statistically translate into more revenue for businesses. This is because your communication is clear, making it easier for you to create products or content your target audience needs and enjoys.

 

Don’t be caught making these same social media story mistakes. Start your social media story content plan off right by avoiding these common mistakes and taking advantage of the tips provided above. Being aware of these common mistakes gives you the tools you need to be one step ahead of your competition and offer better value and high-quality content to your target audience.

 

 

 

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Why You Should Be Using Google Web Stories Right Now

Did you know there is a relatively new way to increase traffic to your WordPress blog? Through Google Web Stories, you now have another way to make it to the top of the Google search results page. They even appear on the Google Discover page, the home page of Google’s smartphone application that shares personalized content based on your search results or other habits on your phone.

 

Web stories are bite-size pieces of information of current blog posts, new announcements, or other important information you want to share from your blog or website. When viewers watch, they can then be sent to your blog with a link displayed at the bottom—giving you another way to engage new potential customers and increase your exposure and awareness on the internet.

 

Here are four more important reasons why your business should be taking advantage of Google Web stories right now:

 

To Boost Your SEO

 

By far, the most important benefit to creating Web Stories includes ranking higher on Google’s search result page. This is how you get more traffic, fast. In fact, it is said that most people don’t even make it past the first page or the tenth listing. Meaning you really want to make it to the top of the page when your target audience searches an important keyword.

 

To Have Full Ownership and Control of Content

 

After SEO, the next most important benefit to Google web stories includes your ownership and control of the content yourself. When you use platforms such as Instagram and Facebook stories, you don’t completely own the content, even if you are the original owner. Meaning, with Google web stories, you have more control, freedom, and less potential to lose your content.

 

To Create More Unique and Highly Shareable Content

 

Google Web stories are attractive, engaging, and fully customizable content — giving you yet another avenue to create content that your audience appreciates and wants to share with their friends or family and further increasing your exposure and audience.

 

To Add an Additional Revenue Stream

 

With the Web Stories for WordPress plugin, it is easy to monetize them with native ads that Google AdSense runs. Adding links directly to a landing or sales landing page is also easy to do with their editing tools.

 

As you can see, Google Web Stories is a feature you will want to take advantage of if you run a blog or website. It allows you to create immersive and engaging content that you have full ownership and control over while increasing your traffic, revenue, and exposure as a brand or business.

 

 

 

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Four Tips to Optimizing your Google Web Stories

To increase your blog traffic or beat out your competition, you need to add Google web stories to your content marketing plan. These stories are the new way to attract mobile users on the Google Discovery page or utilize the Google search engine.

 

When you search a keyword through Google’s search engine, a carousel appears below the search with stories from different blogs or websites. To view, simply click and tap to view each page of the story. As you can clearly see, these stories give you another opportunity to make it to the top of the Google search results page.

 

4 tips to optimize your Google Web stories for max conversions:

 

Include High-Quality Videos and Images

 

Keep your video size under 4MB, no larger than 720 pixels, and ten seconds in length. Images used should be 900 pixels by 1200 pixels. Fill in the alt text of your images, and don’t use GIFs.

 

Create a Solid Narrative, Theme, and Fill in SEO

 

Never cut off the viewer or expect them to finish the content on another page. Create a full story that educates and inspires them to continue instead. Be sure to keep the length of each of your stories between five and thirty pages. Add a title to your story but limit the text to forty characters. Each page you make should have a max of two hundred characters or less but keep in mind that they only last fifteen seconds. The more text you have in one frame, the more distracting it can be.

 

Test Your Stories Using the Google Web Stories Test Tool

 

By adding your story’s link to this tool, you can be sure you filled in all the required information to create a valid web story. Missing information such as your cover image and publisher logo will prevent your story from being recommended or shared by Google. Using this quick and easy tool ensures the work you put into creating Web Stories is worth it.

 

Don’t Share Content That Isn’t Yours

 

A final tip to note is only to post content you created to your stories. Google will not share content that is not by the publisher; you, which means if you want to share other people’s content, use Instagram, Facebook, or Snapchat instead or ask your audience to submit new content directly to you. This way, you can have full ownership of the content you share on your blog and with Google Web Stories.

Optimizing your Google web stories is vital if you want to get the most benefits out of this new feature. These stories provide a more attractive, creative, and immersive way to market and advertise your products, services, or content to your target audience while increasing your traffic and potential revenue.

 

 

 

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Five Tips to Creating Your First Google Web Story

Before you publish your first Google web story, it is essential you understand the basics first. Google requires certain information and criteria to produce quality content worth sharing with its audience on its Discovery page or the Google search engine results page.

 

Google web stories offer your blog or website a new way to generate more traffic and revenue through a creative, powerful, and immersive storytelling format. They are much different from regular social media stories. You are the owner of all the content and the host – giving you more control, ownership, customization, and ways to increase your revenue than other platforms with the story feature.

 

Here are five tips to keep in mind when creating your first Google web story:

 

Think 10 to 15 Second Hooks

 

Each Web story slide lasts about ten to fifteen seconds, depending on how you set it. Meaning that the information you share in each frame, even if you create a full thirty pages, should be easily and quickly digested. It is unlikely many will go back too many times to re-read stories as it can be tedious. Of course, that should never be your goal when creating stories in the first place. The point of stories is to make it even easier for your target audience to take in your information.

 

Animate and Choose a Theme

 

Stories are more entertaining and easier to digest when they have a consistent theme and proper animations. Animations keep your viewers interested, and themes keep your brand image clear and focused.

 

Keep Titles and Story Lengths Short

 

Google stories that are between five and thirty frames perform the best. However, it highly depends on your niche and the type of content you create. Title lengths should be around ten characters long but no more than forty.

 

Include an Attractive and Compelling Cover Image

 

Before creating a valid google web story, you must add in your cover image and publisher logo. Be sure your cover image is highly attractive and makes your viewers want to click. Your cover image is no different than the image that appears before your blog post link or YouTube thumbnail. However, the more compelling it is, the more likely someone will click on it. Use images with a good resolution of 900 pixels by 1200 pixels.

Include Relevant Links

 

Always include a relevant link to your story. In fact, this needs to be done in order to create a valid web story. Again, the main function of Google web stories is to increase your website traffic. If there is no link, it’ll be hard for your viewers to reach you. They will be more likely to click off.

 

To maximize your reach and potential with Google web stories, following these tips is a must. These tips, along with the checklist the plugin provides, are required to properly communicate and build an effective story that converts to more revenue or increased traffic.