Tag: business planning

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Three Steps to Building a Highly Engaged Brand Community

Communities work because they are engaged. Engaged people feel connected and form relationships that keep them around long term. Thus, allowing you to grow a healthy and sustainable business. In addition, through these communities, you can inspire your members to take action that benefits your business and them.

 

Follow these three steps to build a highly engaged and active brand community:

 

Step One: Define Your Business Values and Align Them with Your Customer Needs

 

Your customers’ needs come first, but you need to understand what your business values are. When you can share what you stand for and show that it aligns with your customer’s needs, you’ll really stand out in a big way. For example, if your business holds the value of a commitment to the customer, that needs to be very clear in every interaction you have.

 

Step Two: Choose the Right Platform and Community Structure

 

Lots of activity on every platform is not required to succeed. However, it is important to start an account if your customers are there. Social media platforms come and go, so even if you focus on one more than others right now because that is where your customers are, that doesn’t mean that will be the same one you’re focused on later.

 

The right platform to use to build your community is the one your customers will use. That may seem like a cop-out to say, but it’s true. The platform you choose needs to be the platform your customers like, even if you don’t like it. For a lot of businesses right now, that means Facebook Groups.

 

Step Three: Share and Engage with Relevant Content

 

More important than anything is not the platform as much as what you share with them on the platform. Provide interesting information, education, and offers for them to take advantage of throughout the year. Try to offer something new to them every single day if you can.

 

Content is where engagement and interaction breed and continue. Without content, you won’t be able to inspire and influence your audience to act. Without action from your target audience, you won’t find success within your community. An active and engaged community leads to success because they share the valuable information they appreciate with others or make direct purchases. The way to grow their trust and find value from you is through the content you share.

 

Following these steps will ensure you set up the right community for your business and target audience. These steps are essential to review and not overlook if you want to build a thriving, inspired, and engaged community. Knowing what your brand stands for, and using the platform your audience prefers, while keeping them active with relevant and actionable content will make your community exceptional.

How to Repurpose Your Influencer Marketing Content

 

 

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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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The Three Google Web Story Tools to Know About

Google web stories is a feature that allows you to publish content in a different format than your blog that is highly attractive and shareable to mobile users. This format is similar to what you see on popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. It uses video, graphics, text, and other features to tell a story that your audience is interested in or needs through a more attractive and engaging format to your audience.

 

Using features that attract more mobile users is more crucial than ever, as nearly seventy percent of those using the internet to shop use their smartphones. What’s even more important is that the Google Discovery feature, where your stories will be placed, attracts around eight hundred million views every single month. To use this feature, you must be aware of the tools required to get it going. Let’s look at some.

 

The following are the three Google web story tools to know about and important tips on how to use each:

 

Web Stories for WordPress

 

This is the main plugin to use that started the launch of Google web stories. This plugin offers a unique editing interface, tools, and templates to create powerful and beautiful stories — making it your best bet if you want to get maximum value out of your stories. Of course, if you have a WordPress blog, this will work better since it’s designed to work with self-hosted WordPress (WordPress.org). However, since it is a Google product, you will likely have success using this feature. Third-party options can still make things better and easier to use, especially as time goes on.

 

MakeStories

 

This third-party tool takes Google’s Web Stories technology to the next level and makes it easier to use. It also provides more tools to host your stories, turn your stories into Instagram style carousels on your website, and offer a workspace to design and collaborate with your team.

 

Newsroom AI

 

Another powerful Web Stories tool that builds on a more immersive and intimate experience with your audience. Newsroom offers a freestyle functionality web story builder that lets you add shapes, media, or text layers however you want. Newsroom also gives access to over three hundred million Getty Images to upscale your content with free images and use the advanced publish settings to Connect to Google Discover to get more views.

 

Get to know each of these different Google web story tools to find the one that works best for you. While many of these 3rd Party tools are useful, it is always a good idea to learn the one that was developed first to get the most out of this new feature, as it is likely to be the most compatible. However, it is only natural for more tools and resources to become more beneficial and valuable as time goes on.

 

 

 

 

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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 Use Google Web Stories for Business

To reach a wider audience and market to nearly half of the internet population who uses their phone to shop online, Google web stories are a must-have business tool. It allows you to create a story through different visuals, text, and audio features that are highly engaging and shareable. Thus, making your other content more interesting to new readers or potential buyers. Not only that, but Google web stories can also add a new dynamic, creativity, and impact to your content altogether.

 

Here are the five steps to creating and setting up your first Google web story using the Google Web Stories plugin for WordPress:

 

Step One: Create a WordPress Blog

 

In order to use the Google Web Stories plugin, you need to have a WordPress blog. WordPress blogs offer more freedom and customized options, making them a great platform to create your website. It is also highly friendly to search engine optimization too.

10 Simple Steps to Building a Blog on Word Press.

Step Two: Find and Download the Web Stories Plugin for WordPress

 

Once you have established your blog, you will need to download the plugin and fill in the settings page. First, select “Plugins” from the WordPress menu to the left. Then select “Add New” next to “Plugin” when the new window appears. From there, you can search for “Web Stories” in the search bar that appears to the right. Next, select “Install Now” next to the right plugin. After it downloads, select “active.” You will then be instructed to fill in the settings page to connect your Google AdSense account and add your logo.

 

Step Three: Create a New Story or Explore Templates

 

Now you are ready to get creative and develop your first story. From the WordPress menu, look to the left of your dashboard, find “Stories.” Then select “Add New” or “Explore Templates.” If you select “Explore Templates,” this will lead you to a list of free templates you can use to create a more consistent story. Otherwise, you will be sent directly to the Web Stories builder.

 

Step Four: Fill in Required Information and Customize Your Story

 

When you get to the Stories builder, be sure to add your cover image and publisher logo in the Document panel to the right to create a valid web story first. This is where you will also develop a story description, set your page’s advance length, and add music. Then you will need to add a title no longer than forty characters long in the section labeled “title” above your story content. Once you have these set, you can add in your frames and customize them to your liking. Note that filling in the “link” section of your design after adding an image is also important.

 

Step Five: Preview, Publish and Test

 

As you customize, your frames use the preview option located at the top right of your builder next to “publish.” This way, you can get a clear view of your story as you are creating it. You even get to choose what device you want to view it from. Next, view the checklist provided in the bottom left to follow along with the suggestions provided by the application. Once happy with the results, publish the story and then test it using the Google Web Stories Test Tool to ensure you filled in all the important information required for a valid story to publish.

 

Overall, getting your first Google web story going is easy with the Web Stories plugin for WordPress. As you go along, be sure to read each tip and follow through the checklist it provides to create compelling, attractive, and quality content for Google to share.

 

 

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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 Ways to Customize Your Facebook Stories

It is said that Facebook reaches more than half of the world’s social networking population. It is also the second most downloaded smartphone application in the world. Two facts that should show you why Facebook is still an important tool to utilize and understand fully.

 

Each day nearly three hundred million people and businesses, just like you, post to their Facebook stories. While still not as popular as Instagram stories, it is still a beneficial tool to understand as Facebook continues to be a leading social media platform worldwide.

 

The following are five ways to customize your Facebook stories to increase your brand awareness:

 

Use Text Creatively

 

Adjust the size and use more than one font style. Fix the position, add captions, add a background color. Consider learning more about graphic design so that your thumbnails look captivating or use templates you can find on Canva and other websites.

 

Add Motion

 

With your camera, text, or other stickers and graphics, guide your viewers’ eye to the parts of the content you want them to view and act on the most. For example, if you want them to take action, visual motion cues to guide them toward the right buttons will help.

Four Benefits to Using Snapchat Stories to Market your Business

Have Fun with Filters and other Effects

 

People are sometimes critical of filters and effects when you’re trying to make someone look different than they really look, but the truth is, these filters and effects are fun and grab attention. So use them as much as you want or as little as you want but have fun.

 

Selfie Filters and Picture Filters

 

Try out the various selfie and picture filters that you can use to make your stories stand out. Facebook offers multiple filters. Currently, it’s the magic wand on the bottom left when you’re in the app. The filters show up at the bottom of the screen. Try out some fun filters on holidays or other special days to make your content stand out.

 

Try Out Boomerang

 

This app gives a looping effect to your stories and images. It blurs the background and brings faces into focus with an extra glow. They’re kind of like animated GIFS but play your video forward and backward. It can grab attention for different stories that you share.

 

Ask Your Audience to Join In

 

User-generated content, questions, and polls, anything that gets your audience involved is highly powerful content. But, if you want engagement or action from your audience, remember that you have to tell them what to do, tell them what’s in it for them, and then tell them what to do again.

 

Be sure to follow these tips when creating your Facebook stories if you want to keep your audience engaged and fully interested in your business or services. Creating consistent, engaging, and valuable Facebook stories is vital if you’re keeping your audience interested and active on the platform, growing your authority and brand awareness within the industry, and generating more sustainable leads.

 

 

 

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Four Top Benefits to Using YouTube and YouTube Stories

Getting noticed against the massive online competition can make any small business feel overwhelmed and inadequate. However, a tool can make it easier to get noticed and be seen as an authority within your niche or industry. This can be done by creating and starting a well-run and quality YouTube channel. Eventually, once you gain ten thousand subscribers, you can unlock the story feature to better market to your target audience and reach even more followers or subscribers.

 

Here are more benefits to using YouTube and their stories feature for business:

 

To Get a Chance to Market to Nearly One Billion Monthly Users

 

Using YouTube gives you a low-cost and sometimes free way to reach a global audience depending on the tools or resources you need to create a high-quality and valuable video.

 

To Rank Higher on Googles Search Engine Results Page

 

The main power of YouTube relies on the fact that it is a search engine. The second-largest just behind Google. Even better is that Google owns YouTube, meaning your long-form content video will rank well when people search from Google. It is essentially the same engine. Did you know nearly ninety percent of clicks made after a Google search are from the first ten organic results? So reaching the first page and near the top is an important goal when creating your videos.

 

To Grow Your List and Traffic to Your Website

 

Stories are essential to YouTube as they help you further engage your audience and hopefully convert them to loyal and paying customers. To accomplish this, use the feature for advertising and growing your email list. In turn, this will also increase your website traffic and potentially increase your revenue.

 

To Increase Engagement and Make a More Obvious Impact

 

Furthermore, once you reach ten thousand subscribers, you will want to use the stories feature to enhance further your engagement and exposure against your current audience and subscribers. Just because they subscribed or followed your link to sign up for your newsletter or email campaign does not mean you should rely on it to keep their attention. Stories appear on YouTube’s platform, giving you another way to keep their attention and further away from your competition. The more valuable and useful you make the story, the more likely they are to share it to grow your subscribers list too.

 

Sixty-two percent of businesses took advantage of these benefits in 2019. The fact is, the more your YouTube channel grows, the more successful your business becomes. Add to the growth and success of your business by adding a YouTube channel to your business marketing plan today. The more value you show your target audience, the more chance you have at success.

 

 

 

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How to Use YouTube Stories for Business

Every single day nearly one billion hours of content is viewed on YouTube daily. With around thirty million visitors every day, there is no reason you shouldn’t be taking advantage of this platform if you run or want to own a business. YouTube and its story feature are powerful avenues to better market your products, services, values, and ideas to your target audience. It also provides you a chance to create powerful and beneficial content in order to build a community that benefits your brand. YouTube stories are short clips only viewable from a smartphone and available to your audience for seven days.

 

The following is how to use YouTube stories for your business:

 

First Understand the Requirements

 

You must have 10,000 subscribers first in order to unlock the story feature. While this can be a downside to many business owners, you need to remember that YouTube is a great marketing tool. Additionally, note that you will not have this feature if you set your audience to kids.

 

Find the Plus Icon on Your Smart Phone and Select “Add to your story.”

 

The plus icon is located near the bottom center of your screen when you open the YouTube smartphone application. After you select the plus sign, you then need to select “add to your story.” If you do not see this as an option, your channel has yet to reach the requirements or needs to wait seven more days for the feature to appear.

 

Record a Video or Snap a Photo and Enhance

 

Tap or hold down the red record button, then save, trim, add text, stickers, or polls that enhance your content and make it more engaging. There are three more important stickers to include: video stickers to help promote a video, mention stickers to mention other YouTubers, and location stickers to reach your audience in a certain location.

 

Share and Reply to Comments in a Story for Extra Engagement

 

Finally, you can share the post once you believe the quality is right for your audience. Be sure to stay engaged with your audience. Don’t just post a story and then forget about them. If they are interacting, reply or post new stories to keep it up. The more value and engagement you bring to YouTube, the more successful your business will be.

 

Be sure to reply to comments to increase your engagement. You can do this by going to your profile and selecting comments. Then below the comment, you would like to reply select “reply in story.” Finally, record or upload your reply and choose post to share.

How do YouTubers Make Money? 

Just like other platforms, the YouTube Story feature is straightforward and easy to use. Once you post your story, they are viewable from your channel for all your subscribers to see and last for a full seven days. The more you can connect to your target audience, the more you can grow and increase your success on the platform.

 

 

 

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How to Use Instagram Story Analytics to Improve

In order to know if your Instagram stories are making an impact, you must check and keep up with your analytics. This background data gives you a direct insight into how well your content is performing with your audience. Without this information, you won’t be able to put a content plan together that maximizes your benefits and success.

Making Money Online is Easy Because …

You can locate your analytics, individual story analytics, or the full page and stories in two places. To find the analytics for a specific story, select the story you need the information on and swipe up to view its insights. You can also view the insights from the Archive button located in the upper-left corner of your profile. Then select “view all saved stories” and then swipe up on each to view the analytics or insights of both. To locate the analytics page for all of your stories, select the Insights button from the top right of your profile screen on the menu.

 

Here are the Instagram story analytics to keep track of and what to do to improve your conversions:

 

Overview

 

The first set of metrics you will see is just a quick glimpse of important metrics that will be covered shortly, including the number of accounts reached, your content interactions, and profile activity.

 

Reach

 

Next includes your reach, a set of metrics that refer to how many people see your content and where they find it. Be sure to add important hashtags and location stickers so your story can appear on the Explore page and expand your reach. Reach metrics includes:

 

  • Accounts Reached – The unique number of times your story has been viewed or seen, at least once.
  • Impressions – The total number of times your story has been viewed or appeared on the screen. This can include repeat views by the same Instagram user.

 

Content Interactions

 

Content interactions are a group of insights or metrics that show your viewers’ or followers’ actions when engaging with your stories. Include questions, polls, slider stickers, and a clear call-to-action to increase your content interactions. These metrics include:

 

  • Shares – The number of times a viewer shares your story.
  • Replies – The number of responses you received from your story, including quick reaction replies.
  • Forward – How many times viewers tapped forward to view your next slide.
  • Exited – The number of times viewers exited your story before finishing it.
  • Next Story – The number of times your viewers viewed your next story after finishing the story you selected to view metric information for.

 

Profile Activity

 

This group of insights shows the actions your viewers or followers take when engaging with your story. Update your call-to-actions and get your viewers more engaged if you want to improve your profile activity. You can’t expect your viewers to react if you don’t ask them. Profile activity metrics include:

 

  • Profile Visits – Profile visits are the number of times your profile was visited after viewing or viewing a story.
  • Follows – Follows are the number of times someone followed your Instagram account while or after viewing your story.
  • Call Button Taps – This is the number of taps you received to call your business.

 

Keep track of these analytics and update your plan with these tips to maximize your engagement and other conversions with Instagram stories. Instagram stories are a powerful marketing tool as long as you know how to use them correctly and pay attention to the information it shares.