Tag: Funnel builder

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Community Engagement is Key to Growing Your Business

To have a sustainable and profitable business, you must have involved or engaged customers, new or old. An active community includes tools and resources that help you attract new customers and retain old ones to keep your business running and profitable. Conversely, a not engaged community will fail to establish the positive reputation and brand awareness you need to grow your business.

 

The following are the four common ways community engagement help grow your business:

 

Promotes Long-Term Relationships and Trust

 

A community keeps the discussions and the former promotions inside it forever. A new customer can pop in today and see old conversations you were part of and begin building an opinion of you and the group from day one. As time moves forward, if you’re consistent as the relationship builds and grows, so will the trust.

 

Trust is not something people have for anyone without some form of proof. Usually, the evidence comes in the form of time. Over time, if nothing bad happens, the customer will develop trust for you and your brand. If something good happens, that trust will be solidified and become even stronger.

 

Improves the Customer Service Experience

 

Customers all have various needs and ideas about what they want in terms of interaction with brands. Your audience will have their own unique way. But stats tell us that most people today like to be involved in the community with the brands and products they use. People simply like feeling heard and seen. They want to feel important to you and like you care about their needs. It’s so much easier to demonstrate this over time within the bounds of a branded community.

 

Creates More Human and Authentic Interactions

 

While you will want to implement some automation because you do have to sleep, a community offers you a way to have authentic human interactions, even if they’re not always in real-time. For example, your customer might post a message at 3 am your time asking a question about your product.

 

You don’t see the question until you normally check your community, but your members will. The older members of a long-standing group will often help the person for you without your ever asking, but what’s more, you can respond on your own time within 24 to 48 hours of the question being asked, and to the customer, it will feel instant. The main reason is that most businesses underserve their communities so that you will stand out in comparison.

 

To Build a Customer-Centric Brand

 

Your brand, while it is your business, really isn’t about you. Your brand is about your customer. A branded community can help you become much more customer-centric in your offers and even help you improve your branding. After all, most of us choose colors and ideas based on what we like without even thinking that it’s not about us when it comes to our business. Now you can ask your community, and over time your brand will begin to feel even more authentic and trustworthy to your audience.

 

Ultimately, to increase your customer size, effectively promote more products and services, and cultivate more trust within your industry, you need to get your community engaged. Engagement is an effective tool if you want your community to grow your business.

 

 

 

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Four Ways Community Building Improves Customer Service

Proper and effective customer service can make or break your business. In 2019 Forrester Consulting surveyed over a thousand different customers across two-hundred enterprise brands to learn what customers really want from brands.

 

One important takeaway was that nearly two-thirds of respondents reported how one unpleasant experience with a brand caused them to switch brands instantly while also warning their peers to stay away — showing you just how important proper and effective customer service helps you retain your customers and keep them happy.

 

In addition, growing a community for your business can instantly improve your customer service and build more content members that foster a more successful and sustainable business.

 

Here are four ways community building can improve your customer service strategies:

 

Increased Availability and Communication

 

Real-time support is possible with online communities – meaning problems can be solved instantly even if you or someone from the business is not responding directly. You can set up automation using bots in most communities to answer frequently asked questions that allow your members to serve themselves when you’re not there essentially.

 

Increased Self-Service Tools and Resources

 

You can also incorporate files and written FAQs that enable your customers and members to check out the rules themselves any time they want to. If you offer these tools, make sure to post about the tools and resources you have in your group and how they can access them. Not everyone understands how these tools and platforms work, so a little education can go a long way.

 

Increased Engagement and Education

 

Within the enclosed privacy or at least imagined privacy that a group provides, members will feel more at ease about engaging with your content and you. Because of this, the information and education you provide within the group will be much more useful due to instant feedback.

 

Improved Products and Services

 

When you start regularly speaking with your customers in a community setting, online or offline, you’ll begin to understand how you can improve your products and services. Not to mention you’ll end up with a never-ending stream of new product and service ideas because you’ll know the audience so much deeper.

 

As you can see, all of these options work together to provide superior support to your target audience. Through communities, your customers can find information faster and get the solution they need easily without frustrations. Access to nearly endless education, materials, and superior customer support makes community building a must-have for business.

 

 

 

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Common Community Building Mistakes to Avoid

Creating and building a brand community provides loads of benefits to you and your members. However, to achieve these benefits, you must be sure you give your audience the right information, tools, and resources. Unfortunately, many brands in online communities are making many mistakes today that are destroying their true and fullest potential.

 

Here are the six most common community-building mistakes to avoid while growing a more successful and sustainable business:

 

Lack of Clear Goals and Community Focus

 

Before you start building your community, you need to know what your brand stands for and the goals of having a community for yourself and your customers. First, the community has to be primarily for the customer, and secondly, the community has to represent your brand’s values. If the group members have no idea your point of being, it might be big, but it won’t be prosperous.

 

Overselling or Over Promoting

 

While you do want to make offers and sell in your groups and communities, you do not want to make these communities all about selling in the minds of your audience. They need to believe and know that they can come to the community you build and get information without being bombarded and harassed or threatened with losing something if they don’t act right now to spend money.

 

Yes, you do want them to buy from you, but overselling and over-promoting do not work as well as you might think. Selling and promoting your products and services need to answer a problem the customer has suggested and not the only reason you have the group.

 

Ignoring Community Members

 

Setting up a community requires that someone keeps everyone engaged. You need a minimum of one post a day, plus several interactions to keep your group busy and in front of the audience. The more you post and the more interaction you have with the community members, the more they’ll come back to do it again. The more members visit your community, the more likely they will buy your products and use your services.

 

Sharing Irrelevant or Repeated Content

7 Easy Steps to Start an Online Business

While it is okay to repeat some posts when a timeline is attached, try to avoid sharing other people’s repeated and irrelevant stuff in your group. They already saw that cat post you saw somewhere else. Try to be much more original. If you want to share that cat post, try to find some connection they may not have considered when they saw it on their own wall earlier to make it relevant to your group.

 

Tracking the Wrong KPIs

 

It’s easy to track likes and shares, but are they really relevant to what you need to know about your group? The group key performance indicators that you want to track need to focus on why you shared the content in the first place. The reason you share anything is tied up in the impact you want to create. So, if you share a particular post about an event you’re going to speak at, and you want them to purchase tickets, the KPI you want to track is how many tickets were bought when you shared your event? How many shares and likes the post generated is mostly irrelevant if no one signed up.

 

Not Setting Proper Community Rules and Guidelines

 

If you really want to have a solid group that you can rely on for years to come, you must set very clear community rules and guidelines and then stick to them yourself. Of course, you don’t need to have a lot of rules, but having something that the members can look to in order to stay on the group’s topic will help.

 

Be sure to keep this list around to avoid these common mistakes as much as possible. Avoid stunting your growth and results by building the wrong community or steering them in the wrong direction. A community needs to thrive with clear goals, rules, focus, and determination with valuable and relevant content.

 

 

 

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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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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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Six Tips to Improving your Social Media Story Content

Just because most social media stories only last for twenty-four hours doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the time to create a detailed content plan. Your social media story content relies on it to keep your brand image, message, and value consistent and audience engaged. Avoid confusing and boring your audience with lackluster or a hard sales-like approach on your social media stories.

 

Here are six tips to help improve your social media story content to increase your engagement and other important business conversions:

 

Be Personable and Less Formal

 

A mix of informal and formal content is the best approach when it comes to stories. However, lean more on the less formal side and use your website, YouTube channel, and other platforms or platform features for more professional content. Viewers want to get to know you and what you really stand for. They want to know you are real and honest. Due to the short time limit and engaging features social media stories have to offer. This is a great tool to do that.

 

Avoid Generic or Reposted Content

 

Don’t use your stories to simply repost content without making it more unique or different in some way. There is nothing wrong with repurposing, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t change it up somehow. This also includes using generic templates or limiting the variety of content you share with your viewers.

 

Get Your Audience Involved

 

Always have your audience at the top of your priority list when making stories and other social media content. While increasing your income is highly crucial to your business, you can’t get that without your target audience or a product that actually benefits them. So the more you keep them at the center of your focus, the better your content will be, and the more your products or services will improve.

 

Less is More

 

Don’t over-explain, use too much text or overcrowd your image or video with too many emojis. This can easily confuse your viewers, make them leave, or repeat the slide too many times, which can become a hassle.

 

Use Both Images and Video

 

Again, adding variety to your content with different images, videos, and templates or formats is important. This is how you keep your audience interested during the full length of the story and after.

 

Incorporate Audio and Captions

 

Audio and captions are a simple way to change your content while sharing key information with your audience. For example, many of those on Instagram don’t view stories with sound on, meaning if you talk, they will miss out. Captions are your way to capitalize fully on your target audience.

 

Keep these six social media improvement tips in mind when creating your next social media story content plan to ensure it achieves the business goals and objectives you need to succeed. Don’t post lackluster or invaluable content only because you believe the tool is useful and need to keep a consistent schedule. In order to gain the benefits, the content needs to be valuable to your audience too.

Six Instagram Influencer Marketing Tips

 

 

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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 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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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.