Tag: Business Building

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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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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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How to Monetize Your Google Web Stories

By far, one of the main benefits of using Google web stories is the ability to monetize it through your own content, branded content directly, and now native ads with Google AdSense. Meaning you now have another way to repurpose your content, increase your blog or website traffic while increasing your revenue in many different ways.

 

The following are the different ways you can monetize your Google web stories and tips on how to optimize them:

 

Native Ads

 

These are full-screen and immersive ads that play before, during, or after your stories. They are easy to turn on and connect with your Google AdSense account. Follow these steps to get your stories to monetize through Google using the Web Stories for WordPress plugin:

 

  • Step One: Select “Settings” from The Plugins Page After Downloading Plugin
  • Step Two: Locate “Monetization”
  • Step Three: Follow Steps to Connect Site Kit and Activate Google AdSense
  • Step Four: Select “Google AdSense” or “Google Ad Manage” from Drop Down Menu and continue following the Instructions.

 

Video and Click or View More Ads

 

You don’t need to monetize your stories with Google AdSense to make money. You can use stories and make your own promotional videos or even sponsor a story. The option to add a link should be included in all your stories and their frames to increase your potential sales as well.

 

In other words, any story you create can be turned into a well-designed advertisement from you or an approved brand rather than Google – giving you more control over what you share as well as more potential for revenue as you can charge more for your work. Google AdSense is generated automatically and set by them per their terms. However, both of them together can create a powerful monetization tool for your website. Unless you want complete control, there is no reason not to do both.

 

Be sure to follow these monetization tips to fully take advantage of the benefits Google Web Stories can bring to your blog or website. Not only can you monetize through your own links or sponsored post, but you can also include fully immersive ads generated and paid out by Google itself — increasing your revenue and overall success as an online business owner or influencer. Overall, these monetization tips should encourage you to add Google Web Stories to your online content marketing strategy today.

 

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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.

 

 

 

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The Facebook Story Strategies to Follow for Business

Facebook stories are short clips, pictures, videos, audio clippings, or other animations shared at the top of followers’ Facebook or Messenger app and to the top right above the newsfeed of the desktop version. All a follower needs to do is tap on the profile picture of the story content they want to watch to view the content.

 

A blue ring will appear around the profile picture of Facebook users who have new stories for you to watch. These stories give businesses a more fun and attractive way to market to their target audience, increasing their success on the platform and as a sustainable and functioning business.

 

Here are five Facebook story strategies to follow to further grow and market your business on this platform:

 

Completely Fill in Your Facebook Page

 

Don’t leave any information out that Facebook asks for when you create your new page for your business. The most active pages have the most information for their audience. You’ll want to link them to your website, your other relevant content on the net and provide any answers they need to make a buying choice.

 

Enhance Your Facebook Stories with Creative Tools and Music

 

The tools Facebook offers to upgrade your stories are filters, graphics, words, and also music. You can replace any background sounds on videos captured for Facebook Stories using your Smartphone simply by using Facebook’s own editor in your phone. It’s not hard to do at all. Click around and give it a try so you can learn your systems and tools.

 

Keep Track and Up to Date with Facebook Stories Analytics

 

Use your analytics to do better. Don’t trust your own opinions about how your stories or posts are doing. Trust the metrics captured instead. This way, you can improve with each content update by doing what your audience wants most instead of what you happen to like.

 

Link Your Account with Instagram

 

The same company owns Facebook and Instagram, so you must go ahead and connect your Facebook account with Instagram to make use of both and double your views.

 

Use Facebook Story Highlights

 

The stories you create are automatically saved in your private story archives, which you can make live again whenever you want to. In addition, you can use these stories that were captured and shared to build a highlights reel so that your audience can learn more about you easily.

 

If you want to gain the most reward out of your Facebook story content, you must implement these strategies for your business. These tips ensure you use the platform and its features correctly and wisely to gain your audience’s attention and keep them interested and active with your brand. The more interested and engaged they are with the value you provide, the more likely they will purchase your products or services.

 

Struggling With Social Media? A Calendar And System Can Help

 

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Five Tips for Using YouTube and YouTube Stories for Business

To squeeze more benefits out of your YouTube channel and stories, you need to plan and make quality content for your target audience. YouTube is only as beneficial as the content you bring to your viewers.

 

Thankfully, you can follow many tried and true methods or tips to ensure you get the most out of this platform. In addition, once you reach the required number of subscribers, you can also unlock their story features, giving you yet another valuable tool to creating better and more engaging content.

 

The following are five tips on using YouTube and YouTube stories to market your business effectively:

 

Create Content That Provides Value or Solves a Problem

 

While you also need to post highly valuable long-form content, stories should be no exception. However, make it more interactive and always think about how you can get the viewers involved. Think of the content you create as a conversation between a family member or another loved one.

 

Build Community

 

Use the reply to comment in the story feature to build a strong bond and community with your viewers and audience. Don’t ignore their comments or responses. This tool allows you to do it more directly and personally. Further increasing your credibility and trust as a business and a YouTuber. Adding a “Mention.”

 

Share Announcements or Updates

Use YouTube stories to update your audience with brand new information or product announcements and releases. Add an option for them to reply to get their direct feedback, and be sure to find a certain amount of time to respond to as many as you can.

 

Tease Your Next Long-Form Video

 

YouTube must have regular video content in order to take advantage of its stories features. The main purpose of the YouTube stories feature is to keep your audience subscribed and involved with your brand or niche. In other words, it further installs the value you bring to them with your long-form videos. So never miss a moment to share your new videos. YouTube stories provide a feature called the “Video” sticker to do this very thing – making it a super simple and easy process to get started.

 

Think Mobile

How to Repurpose Your Influencer Marketing Content

Finally, but certainly not least, YouTube stories can only be viewed on mobile – giving you another way to create different and new content.

 

Be sure you take advantage of the benefits YouTube provides by following each of these tips. The more you put into your YouTube channel, the more benefits your business will receive. Quality and engaging content allow you to build the community you need to market your business better and achieve your goals.