How Digital Marketing Will Change in 2019

How digital marketing will change in 2019 and what you need to do to strive and succeed in 2019. So, let’s talk about digital marketing. Digital Marketing is going to change in 2019. What’s been working for the last few years is not anymore. These 7 digital marketing tips will ensure you’re on top of your game next year!

 Tip #1. Omnichannel

Approach Digital Marketing is moving into Omnichannel approach and if you don’t use all of the channels, you’re not going to do as well

Tip #2. Voice Search

If you want to do well in 2019, you need to be leveraging the voice search.

Tip #3. Conversion Optimization

The only way you’re going to stay ahead and compete is through conversion optimization. The more you optimize your landing page, the better off you’re going to be.

Tip #4. Leverage Funnels

Whether you have a physical product, digital product or you’re doing lead generation, you need to track everything from a visitor all the way to a conversion point.

Tip #5. Content Marketing

Content marketing won’t work as easily to get links or shares unless you’re creating amazing content that people haven’t seen before.

Tip #6. Video Content

Video content is the future. People want to engage through video, so you need to leverage video in 2019.

Tip #7. Podcasting

Podcasting is taking over. Podcasting is making it easy for people to listen to your content on the go, on their mobile devices. 

When is the Right Time to go Digital?

The digital world is constantly evolving. The growth of technology and devices along with the advent of mobile phones and social media has totally reshaped the lives of people. Technology is present in all spheres of people’s lives- information, shopping, banking, communication, the list is endless. Thanks to technology, the world has become a smaller and a more accessible place.

Due to this evolution, the nature of customers has also changed. Modern age customers are very active on various channels of digital media, they behave and interact with brands differently. They experience a choice overload, have more demands, and are intolerable towards bad experiences. The customers research thoroughly throughout their buying process before making a purchase decision. They are specific about their needs and purchase only those products and services that suit the criteria set in their minds.

Small businesses have not yet taken the leap towards going digital; while the large businesses have already embraced the digital world with open arms. There is about 68per cent of small businesses in India that is still offline. This customer transformation, for small businesses, is a form of both threat and opportunity. The small businesses that have not gone online yet may already be behind the curve. So, going online is no longer an option, it has become a necessity for businesses.

There are multiple advantages of indulging into the World Wide Web over the traditional medium. The success that one attains via this medium is undeniable. Digital marketing is the use of online media to promote businesses.

 

When is the Right Time?

• To Engage With Your Customers

In today’s technologically advanced world, all of us use various devices to access the internet. Just like you, your customers also use the internet. In India, alone, there are a whopping 136 million internet users. That is the number of people who will see an advertisement if a business chooses to go digital. Not only, will they know about the brand but, they can interact with the business instantly. About 88per cent of consumers said that they are more likely to buy from retailers that offer. It enables the business to receive instant feedback. Simultaneously, if the customers face problems or are unhappy with their product or services, they directly communicate with the business. This allows businesses to understand the customers’ issues and resolve them quickly. It improves customer loyalty and maintains a positive reputation of the business

A good customer experience is about giving the customers what they want when they want.

Digital technologies also enable businesses to understand their customers, online behaviour, past interactions, and preferences better. For small businesses, it becomes a useful resource as personalized and relevant experiences can be delivered to different customers.

• For Brand Awareness

The market, in today’s times, has become a highly competitive place. Hence, it becomes critical for a business to keep up with the competition. This makes it mandatory for the business to have a strong online presence. If a business is not online, it is accessible only for a limited period of time every day. This also limits the group of customers the business interacts within a day.

This is where the online picture comes in handy. By creating a website, the business becomes always accessible to its potential customers. It becomes easier for them to find the business’ information, products, and services. This establishes a reputation for the business and makes them trusted and credible. The digital social media channels can be leveraged to get the word out. They can also be used to carry out marketing campaigns to attract potential customers from the places that they are usually active, from websites they visit and the apps used by them daily. The internet can work for the business, while the owners can focus on the business and its growth.

• For Feasibility

Building a brand, carrying out marketing campaigns and looking for potential customers- all these could come at a heavy cost. Internet marketing is a more feasible option when compared to traditional marketing techniques. Placing an ad in a national newspaper could eat up the entire marketing budget of a firm. If Internet marketing is opted for, the mini level of funds is required. Also, it reaches an unlimited number of potential customers. It is a major reason why firms regardless of their scale of operation are opting for Digital Marketing over the traditional marketing approach. It also gives the small size companies a level playing field and a platform to increase awareness for their brand to be known to potential as well as current customers.

If the business has a good brand image on the internet, the audience for its products become massive. Digital marketing offers a huge number of potential clients and with a defined strategy, they can easily be roped in.

• Expand to new geographies

Thanks to the digital channels available, businesses can now spread out to new geographies. It enables them to deliver their products and services to more customers. India has seen a massive growth in the adoption of digital from Tier II and Tier III markets. These are places where the customers had never before been exposed to the same number of products and services, like their counterparts of Tier 1 cities. It is a wonderful opportunity for businesses to cater to a newly thriving consumer sector.

It also gives companies the opportunity of targeted marketing, in which the ad reaches the exact type of audience and also, makes it visible to others. With the advent of digital marketing, one can choose the age, likes, and dislikes of the individuals, including their lifestyles and many more specifics of the audience that they wish cater to.

When it comes to leveraging digital space for businesses, nothing matters. The customers are already a part of the internet and it is time for the businesses to join in!

Source: entrepreneur.com

Social Media Manager to Promote Your Business

Want to generate more leads? Spread Awareness? Drive Sales? Let me Manage, Optimize, and Grow Your Social Media Presence.

 

My Services include:

1. Optimization Social Media Pages
2. Strong Community building
3. Pages setup
4. Scheduled Posting
5. Genuine Fan, Followers, Likes, Comments, Shares increasing
6. Enhancing Brand Values
7. Reaching your target audience
8. Increasing Leads and Sales
9. The business video for Company
10. Custom Images
11. Hashtag research
12. Reporting and communication
13. Competitor analysis

Social Media platforms: Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | Google Plus | Instagram | Pinterest | YouTube

Please feel free to contact me.

Email: ravi1162@gmail.com
Call: +91 9824182862
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ravibprajapati/

How To Choose the Right SEO Vendor

A business cannot stay relevant in today’s digital world without an online presence. However, a business could have the most beautiful, relevant website in the world, but none of that will matter if people can’t find it when they type in a search on the web.

But not everyone has the expertise to know-how to successfully implement search engine optimization. SEO is a very time-consuming process that takes resources to complete. Partnering with an SEO vendor to offer SEO and online marketing solutions allows you to add a no-cost revenue stream to your business. There are SEO-specific vendors out there that can fill in that gap. But how do you choose the best SEO vendor for you?

This white paper from Boostability takes a deep dive into the two specific things you need to know about and look for when choosing an SEO vendor. Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download “How To Choose the Right SEO Vendor.”

Originally published: searchengineland.com

Why You Should Outsource Social Media Marketing

With every other Instagram star being a social media guru these days, it’s common for businesses to ask themselves whether they should look into outsourcing their social media efforts.

The day-to-day tasks of running a business are generally enough for the average CEO, causing social media marketing to fall short on the priority calendar.

Social media marketing is its own beast and requires a special attention and level of creativity. Frankly, it isn’t for everyone.

If you’re going back and forth on whether to outsource your social media marketing, ask yourself the following questions first.

1. How Much Time Do I Have to Devote to Managing Social Media?

Time is the biggest reason businesses look to outsourcing their social media.

Social media isn’t just about scheduling posts.

You actually have to invest time in:

• Tracking your brand mentions on social media.
• Monitoring the conversations that are happening.
• Trying new growth hack methods.
• Responding immediately to any inquiries.

All of this needs to happen 24/7, too.

To say social media management can be done by setting aside 1-2 hours a week is really quite hilarious.

The time you invest in managing your brand’s social pages and image can’t be categorized into a lump one or few hour time period. It is something that requires constant attention and generally in small intervals.

This is especially true for brands that have large followings and receive question after question through their social pages.

For those smaller to medium-sized businesses who argue, “Well, I don’t have tons of followers, so I just post and I’m good,” I hate to break it to you, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

If anything, the brands that have smaller followings have even more work cut out for them as they try to grow their followers organically and through paid methods. Talk about overtime.

There are tons of excellent growth hacking methods to get your follower count as high as Nike, but to execute those methods it takes lots and lots of time and energy.

Social media isn’t a one and done type of strategy. You need to continually be optimizing your followers and be social online.

2. Do I Know How to Be Social Online?

Social media isn’t an excuse to hide behind a computer and not actually talk to anyone. You still need to talk to your followers.

There’s truly an art to being a social butterfly online, and not everyone has the knack. Let’s be honest with ourselves.

If you just really don’t have the energy, creativity, or will to be a virtual social butterfly, don’t be.

If you have the time, there are tons of resources to teach you how to connect with people virtually and become this type of butterfly for your brand.

Maybe you do have the time and want to learn how to connect with your demographic socially, go for it!

One of the biggest pieces of advice I can give you though is to know your audience.

If your audience is just as introverted as you are they’ll most likely continue that introverting in how they communicate online.

Instead of being on flashy social media pages like Instagram or Snapchat they may be hiding in forums or casually browsing Pinterest.

Wherever they may be mimic your customer, go where they are, talk like they talk, create content they’re comfortable with. Don’t be an extrovert in an introverts world.

If the idea of this is making you cringe, it would be best for you to outsource your social media to an agency who has done work for another business within your industry.

This is someone who knows how to talk to be a virtual social butterfly to your audience.

3. Have I Established My Brand Voice? If So, How Unique Is It?

Brand voice is everything on social media.

Again, know your audience but also know your brand before you even try to connect with your audience.

• Are your posts funny and sarcastic?
• Do they only have calls to action and demands?
• Are you capitalizing on every big news story?
• Or are you more of a DIY mom who has a 10-year old blog?

All of those voices are entirely different. Though most agencies will, not all agencies are great at mimicking your brand voice.

The first step here is to get your brand voice down. Once you have it, never lose it!

Then, document everything you possibly can about this voice.

• What words should this voice use?
• Which ones should it avoid at all costs and never ever ever ever use?
• Who are other companies who have a similar brand voice?

The more you document, the more you’ll see if this is something you can trust in another brands hands to help manage for you or if you should hold onto this baby yourself.

After all, you’re the one who created it.

In short:

• If you have a well-documented brand voice, a good social media agency will be able to send you example copies for your approval until you feel at ease that they get it.
• If you’re still trying to find your brand voice and are at the beginning stages of this strategy, now isn’t exactly the best time to outsource your social media management.
• If you’re going to outsource anything, hire a social media consultant to help define your brand voice for social media and then take it from there.

4. Do I Have Content or Do I Need Content?

One way to do social media is to be completely hands off and let a social media agency do all of the work for you, which can even include creating the content to share.

If you have your own content to share, I’m not saying it’s a deal breaker and you should just suck it up and manage social media yourself.

What I’m saying is that if you’re struggling to figure out which type of content to produce, or if you should reshare that ebook from three years ago, it’s worth outsourcing your content production to a professional.

This professional is going to need a good debrief about your business, how and why it operates, who it’s ideal and actual customers are, and what kind of content materials you already have.

From there, outsourcing content may be the best move for your business.

You can still manage the social media in-house, but without the worries of trying to figure out what kind of content your followers actually want to see.

5. Can I Afford to Outsource?

Social media agencies, independent contractors, and content creators all come at entirely different price ranges.

Sometimes, their price ranges are less expensive than your in-house social media manager. Other times not so much.

Outsourcing social media could cost anywhere from $500 to tens of thousands of dollars a month, all depending upon the following factors:

• What kind of outsourcing: Freelance (least expensive), agency (middle), or enterprise (highest)
• What the monthly deliverables are: More posts and content creation = higher price
• How long the contract length is: Longer contracts = price cuts
• Social media tool subscriptions: Sometimes agencies require you to have your own account
• Social media advertising: Because organic is no longer good enough

Let’s not forget about the time it takes for you to email back and forth, edit, approve and review reports.

Here’s a look at everything that comes with in-house costs of social media management:

• Employees (salary, benefits, etc.).
• Social media tool subscriptions.
• Content creation.
• Social media advertising.
• Strategy development and measurement (time and tools).

If you go the freelancer route, you’re certainly saving money on those benefit coverages, but it may not always be the right path. You’re still looking at investing:

• Your management time.
• Your communication time.
• Content creation.
• Social media advertising.

6. What Should I Do?

So, which one is right for you?

It depends on tons of different goals and factors, most which we hashed out above.

To put it simply, if you’re already head over heels with to-do lists and the idea of carving out extra time to do another task is making your other eye twitch, do yourself a favor and outsource. It will be the least time-invested resource.

Though, don’t forget, it will still require a bit of your time and movement in your budget.

• Freelance = Lots of communication, editing, approvals, and then double-checking ROI.
• Agency = A bit of time initially and then mostly hands-off.
• Enterprise = Read our monthly reports and go “Oh” and “Ah.”

If you have the time, budget, and experience to create an in-house team or become one, then do so.

Managing your brand’s social media presence in-house has far more pros than cons.

Source: searchenginejournal.com

7 Effective Video SEO Tips to Increase Your Search Engine Rankings

In this blog post, you’ll discover 7 highly effective YouTube video SEO tips to positively impact your brand’s ranking.

1. Do YouTube keyword research

Similar to creating any piece of written content for your website, you should perform keyword research before making videos.

Brian Dean suggests that the simplest way for you to do this is to check if your chosen keywords have YouTube results.

As a rule, Google display video results that involve how-to reviews, tutorials, and anything that’s funny or related to sports and fitness.

You can also directly visit YouTube. Enter your preferred keywords and check for YouTube’s auto-suggestions.

At the same time, work with Google Trends to discover the search volume for your potential keywords over time.

This way, you’ll know whether or not people are interested in your video content ideas.

If you’re a beginner and your YouTube channel doesn’t have many subscribers, then I would recommend targeting low-competitive keywords. This way, you can drive high-quality traffic to your videos. For a useful free keyword research tools such as Keywordtool.io, Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, and etc.

2. Know your audience

This tip may sound like a no-brainer but this must be a part of your video planning process.

For you to capture your target audience’s attention, it pays to know what they are interested in.

According to Entrepreneur, you should find out what makes your audience tick.

It would help to put yourself in the shoes of your audience.

Ask, “How can I benefit from this brand’s video? Will I learn something new and interesting?”

You can do market research on your own without having to spend money. Here are a few tips:

• Interview people face-to-face or via your brand’s Facebook page.
• Conduct online surveys.
• Use Google search to gather more audience information from free, credible sources.

 

3. Optimize your video title

Treat the title of your YouTube video similar to how you treat the headlines for your blog posts.

Since people notice video titles first, make sure to fulfill your promise.

This means that you should not trick your audience into watching a video that is totally different from the title. If you do this, your ranking will suffer over time.

There should be at least 5 words for your video title.

Aside from optimizing the number of words for your title, do not forget to incorporate those keywords you’ve researched in tip #1.

To make your videos rank higher, it’s better to make your keywords the beginning words for your title. Here’s an example: 

4. Optimize tour video description

When writing a video description, be sure to describe in a clear manner what the video is all about.

People are not the only ones to rely on your descriptions in order to get an overview of your video content. Search engines, notably YouTube and Google, will index them too.

Place a link to your site in the upper part of your description. This helps your site get ranked too in addition to driving more traffic to it.

Your video description should have a length of at least 250 words.

Add your researched keywords to your video description but be careful not to use them excessively. A frequency of 3 to 4 times would be best.

Even with your keywords in place, always remember to write your descriptions in a natural way. A description that sounds forced decreases the credibility of your video content.

5. Feature a good video thumbnail

Another element that your viewers will first notice (aside from your video title) is your video thumbnail. Your video thumbnails give people a glimpse or snapshot of your videos.

Use a thumbnail that would best represent your video.

YouTube automatically provides you with 3 thumbnails to choose from after you have uploaded your video.

If your YouTube account is verified and has a good record, you’ll be able to upload a custom image.

You will find this special option beneath YouTube’s 3 auto-generated thumbnails for your video.

Being able to upload a custom thumbnail gives you a better chance of featuring a snapshot that entices people. This will help you gain more clicks.

Again, select a custom thumbnail that speaks best for your video.

Follow these methods for your custom thumbnails:

• Choose a perfect still from your YouTube video.
• Add text which people can easily read. Aside from your title, this helps them know the topic of your video. You can use a great photo editing application for this like PicMonkey.
• Go ahead and upload custom thumbnails for your past videos as soon as you’re able to.

YouTube recommends a thumbnail resolution of 1280×720 pixels.

6. Add appropriate tags to your video

If you are wondering what tags are, they are keywords which you add to your video after uploading it.

When people enter keywords in a search engine to look for video content, tagging your video allows it to become more visible in search results.

Like other elements of your video (title, description, thumbnail) your tags must be relevant to your content. Relevant and specific tags help you rank better. 

7. Promote and get more views for your videos

Now it is time for your YouTube videos to get more views. Having more views further improves your rankings.

The good news is that there are plenty of easy ways for you to do this. Here’s five of them:

• Incorporate your videos in your blog posts. This is also a smart way to add more value to your content.
• A practical way to promote your video content is to reach out to your friends, existing customers, and social media fans and ask them to share it!
• Link to your video content while answering a question on a Q&A website such as Quora. Your video should be highly relevant to the question you’re answering. Start by running a search on the topic of your video.
• Don’t be shy about including a call to action in your video description, asking people to like and share it.
• Embed videos in your emails for your subscribers. However, take note that not all email services allow you to embed videos. If this is the case, you can place a video thumbnail in your message and link it to your YouTube video.

If you have more video SEO tips to share, please comment below.

Why Content is Key to your Digital Marketing Strategy

According to Hubspot, 47% of buyers engage with 3-5 pieces of content before directly engaging with a company. What does this mean? It means that content is key to any digital marketing strategy. By having a clear approach to all aspects of your content creation, your business will be in a much stronger position when it comes to engaging and converting leads to customers.

Content can be used to engage with your prospects at every step of the buying process, which can be categorized as the following:

1. The awareness stage: when a buyer identifies that they have a problem they need help solving
2. The consideration stage: when a buyer conducts research to solve the problem they are facing
3. The decision stage: when a buyer choosing the right solution for them

Here are different types of content you should be including in your digital marketing strategy in order to engage with buyers at every step of the buying process.

Keyword researched blogs

Blogs are an important tool when it comes to generating awareness-stage content. This audience may not be ready to buy from you yet, but when they are you will be front of mind.

Understand your audience’s pain points and then conduct some keyword research to identify what terms they are searching for online. The key is to create topics and generate content around searcher intent. For example, we recently produced a blog on the business benefits of PR because we identified that our target market (CEOs and c level execs of SMEs) were frequently searching for content helping them understand what the benefits of PR were. Think about the challenges facing your own target market and come up with blog topics based on what they are searching for online.

Yes the content then needs to include your target keywords, but don’t forget it also needs to be useful to the reader and better than anything else out there. Create a piece of engaging content that your audience will remember you for, not just Google.

Gated content

If you’re looking to drive leads, then gated content is something to consider. It can be useful when it comes to generating for top of funnel leads, those buyers at the awareness and consideration stage of the buyers’ journey.
Gated content can take any number of forms, including eBooks, whitepapers or explainer videos.

When it comes to good gated content, it needs to be:

• Persona driven – target your content to a specific audience you want to reach, and has need for your service
• Focused on one pain point – the more focused your content, the better-quality download you will get
• Beautifully designed – a piece of gated content needs to be user friendly and appealing

Whatever you choose, make sure it is helpful to your audience, answers the question and also highlights your area of expertise.

Engaging video

If a picture speaks a thousand words, then a video speaks a thousand more. Video is by far the most engaging content a business or brand can take advantage of.

Video can be used at all stages of the buying process. At the awareness stage, videos on social media can be a great way of attracting attention. When it comes to consideration, explainer videos can offer potential customers further insight into what you do while answering a pain point for them. When a customer is ready to make a decision consider using case study videos as these will demonstrate exactly what you do and what your customers are saying about you.

Remember your video content should be one of 4 things (sometimes all of them!) – insightful, memorable, engaging or shareable. Think about who your audience is, how they are consuming their content and what you want them to take away.

Link building

Content doesn’t just extend to content that sits on your own website and social channels. Targeted digital PR activity can help raise awareness of your business among your target customers, give you more content to share on social, and crucially, generate backlinks that support your SEO.

This is where PR becomes a vital component of your digital marketing strategy. The ability to secure a link in online publications (that have a nice high domain authority) will help boost your search visibility.

By drafting an engaging piece of content, you can secure these all-important follow links while also building the profile of your business or brand online.

Good content should be at the heart of any digital marketing strategy. Consider all the elements carefully – including who your target audience is, what they care about, which channels they consume their information on and then make informed decision about which content to produce.

3 SEO Best Practices for Small Businesses

Three practices – on-page SEO, local search optimization, and authority/link building – will dramatically increase your online presence and drive more customers to your business.

If you're a small business owner, you likely implement best practices on a daily basis without being aware of it. Simple tasks such as making sure your books are up-to-date and payroll is done by the right date are just two examples.

The same holds true if you are a small business owner trying to beef up your online marketing efforts.

As a small business owner, it is possible to take charge of your online presence, and it starts with the three-letter acronym SEO. To produce the best end result, you need to be steadfast in your approach to implementing best practices, which discuss below. 

So, what exactly is SEO and why is it important? In short, SEO is the process of optimizing your website, social media profiles and Google My Business accounts with the proper information so it is more easily found online. This is how new and existing customers find your business online.

Poor SEO affects the bottom line of your business in many ways: If someone is attempting to locate a business in your niche, you run the risk of not showing up in a local search if your site's SEO is not done properly. Your small business could also face an additional problem of showing up in a search query, but on the tenth page – drastically reducing your chances of being noticed by potential customers. 

There are three best practices that will improve your overall SEO strategy. This includes on-page SEO, local search optimization and authority/link building.  

• On-page SEO

On-page SEO is the continued optimization of site content and metatags. What SEO elements should you, as a small business owner, use to optimize your website?

For starters, title tags, metadescription tags, content, URLs as well as image alt text. Optimizing these elements often leads website visitors to a good user experience. They also help your small business appear in more relevant searches. The process of optimization takes time, however.

Second, optimize your site's content. When writing new content, conduct keyword research. This is likely one of the most important research tasks you will perform, as it could lead to an increase in business on many fronts.

Keywords are the words you associate with your business. Keywords should be both unique and naturally sprinkled throughout your website. You must not overuse them as this can come off as spammy for Google's algorithm, which measures user experience, relevance and other criteria. You can always improve your use of keywords and target more relevant ones.

Google includes user experience as an element of ranking and will lower or raise your search ranking accordingly. If your content has a misleading title and content that is totally unrelated, you will be penalized.

• Optimize for local searches

Optimizing for local search begins with opening a Google My Business account, which lets you add details like your business address, phone number, customer reviews and hours of operation.

Essentially, Google My Business lets small business owners take charge of their online presence by providing tools to update local listings. The platform also enables you to interact with customers from your phone, computer or tablet via its FAQ section.

As a result of its ability to add FAQs, the platform provides small business owners the chance to avoid fielding long calls and emails. Finally, you can view key insights that pertain to your business and searches it has appeared in.

The key to success in this regard is to ensure all of the information you've entered is accurate. Once you make these updates, your business will appear in a local search with the correct details.

When is a local search relevant?

Local search optimization is important when you want to gain the business of new/retain current local customers. One of the most obvious use cases is when someone is traveling and in need of a service. They might perform a search for "best places to eat in Indianapolis." If your site is optimized for local search, you will more than likely appear in the results, and your chances of capturing new business exponentially increase.   

When it comes to optimizing your small business website for local searches, don't cut corners. It is free, but it requires a small investment of time. When local search is optimized properly, it pays off in the form of more traffic to your website and physical location over time. There is always the potential for increased sales as well as this is usually a byproduct of good local search optimization.

What's social got to do with it?

Social media optimization is paramount simply because search engines often present social media information in a search query. Optimize many of the same elements you were able to edit when creating your Google My Business account to once more ensure the accuracy of information for those searching.

When a search query is made, all of this information will appear, providing valuable information about your business to the local searcher.   

• Establishing authority

The final component of improving your small business website's SEO is establishing authority. Let's say someone performs a search on "website builders." Although the use of such generic keywords is discouraged, if your business shows up on the first few pages of a Google search for this query, your SEO game is already fairly strong.

This is not the case for most small businesses. There are, however, a few good ways to begin establishing authority.

The process is simple. It is called link building. This is when other credible websites link to content on your website because it is seen as informative and relevant.

Another aspect of link building is sharing your knowledge of small businesses in the form of educational content that appears on outside websites under your byline. The post should include links to your website's insightful content that fits the publication's audience.

Ideally, the publication you write for will match the audience you are targeting in terms of scaling up business. Never expect to see sales from link-building articles. What is most important is the impact on authority.

You should also place links on your site that point to other pages on the site. This alerts Google that your site has not only a solid structure but multiple pieces of relevant content on similar or the same subject matter, which can lead to a better user experience.

Remember, Google considers user experience as a ranking factor when deciding where your page should be placed in a search. Link building or backlinking can be done in three steps:

1. Identify credible and authoritative publications, then select a topic that will provide value to its readers. The topic must also be something that relates to your business but doesn't push a product. For instance, you can provide tips to small business owners who are just starting out.

2. Next, reach out and offer your unique perspective.

3. Follow up if you do not hear back within a few days, it may take several follow-ups, but keep your emails short, sweet and to the point.

The above best practices can put you on the path to small business owner success.

Remember, the process of optimization is ongoing, so make sure to create the best and most informative content you can. Doing so may naturally lead to credible publications beginning to notice and link to your content.

Don't forget about the local searchers – they are an important piece of the puzzle. In most cases, they are willing to spend money on the services they need.

Source: https://www.business.com/articles/smb-seo-best-practices/

5 Creative Ways to Drive More Traffic from LinkedIn

Do you want more visitors to your website or blog? Have you finally realized the potential of social networking sites in online marketing? A lot of business owners often ignore one of the most important social media networks for increasing exposure and traffic. If you are one of them, you certainly wouldn't want to make the mistake again because LinkedIn is the ultimate platform for your professional dealings. LinkedIn is an important platform to obtain more online exposure.

Your LinkedIn account can be one of the best referral platforms for your online site. If you think that a considerable amount of online traffic can be driven from your LinkedIn account, it is the high time to work to enhance view on your profile. Luckily, that is something that can be ascertained. LinkedIn shows how many times your account has been visited. Ensure that you track your profile on a weekly basis and through the five ways discussed below, you will watch as this number begin to increase consistently.

• Incorporate Account Links

Your personal LinkedIn profile provides you with a platform to help visitors to know you better, when they visit your profile, the members will naturally want to click on the links you have provides. For that reason, you should be creative when wring your description in order to capture the attention of the visitors.

Displaying attractive and expressive links will motivate readers to click on those particular links. You may direct them, straight to your site home page or to certain pages where they can read more about your products or services. In either case, ensure that your links are compelling.

• Create Connections to Increase Profile Views

When you need to enhance your exposure on LinkedIn, make sure that you establish connection with individuals who have a realistic reason for networking. As you establish more connections, you will attract more people from the updates that you make on LinkedIn. In addition, make sure that you are continuously noticeable and relevant. This will allow other members to click on your profile and know you and your business better.

• Be Active and Busy To Generate Blog Traffic

You don’t have to spend a lot of time on LinkedIn to make an impact. You just need to take your time to update your status, post some relevant content., take part on a discussion, make comment on members posts and some members questions, especially those that are directed at you company.

• Utilize LinkedIn While on the Run 

Cell phones now make up more than 20 percent of traffic from LinkedIn. There are powerful LinkedIn apps that you can use to make it easy for you to network while on the run.

• Post Articles From Your Blog As Your Status Update. 

Needless to say, you need to share your blog with your network members to enhance traffic flow from linked. So make the most of the LinkedIn share button on your blog.

So, are you making use of these tips? If not, it is high time to make them work for you.

Small Business SEO Checklist: 11 Ways to Improve Rankings Today

SEO isn’t easy for any company.

But SEO is especially complicated when you have limited time, money, and other resources.

For small businesses, it boils down to one question:

What can we do today to help improve our rankings?

Great organic rankings don’t happen overnight.

However, there are at least 11 things you can focus on to start moving the needle for your small businesses.

The following SEO checklist for small businesses will help you prioritize SEO tasks.

It includes:

• What to address.
• Why it’s important.
• The tools to use.
• The time commitment involved.

1. Nail Down What Problems You Solve For Customers

Before jumping into SEO, you must first understand the nature of what your small business provides to your customers, according to Chris Luttjohann with Digital Current.

For example:

• How, when, and where do customers determine they need your product or service?
• Is it away from home, using their cell phone? Is it at home using a desktop computer or tablet?
• Is it driven by a personal desire, like good food to eat or a great place to spend some time?
• Or is it caused by a disruptive event like a home or personal issue?

These questions color the language your customers will use to find your business.

This information will drive your keyword research and content creation, among other tasks.

Tools to use: Whiteboard

Time involvement: Medium

2. Fix Your Technical SEO Issues

Your small business website might look fine on the outside – with great graphics, colors, and fonts.

But if there are technical problems “under the hood,” it will likely impact your rankings and traffic.

Before embarking on a content or link campaign, spend time fixing the foundation.

You need a solid website structure so search engines can properly crawl and index your webpages.

Some of the most common technical SEO problems have to do with:

• Speed.
• Duplicate content.
• Broken links.
• Improper use of canonical link elements.
• Un-optimized pages.

For more information on how to audit a website, read this article: The Ultimate SEO Audit Checklist.

Tools to use: SEMRush, Google Search Console, GT Metrix, Siteliner and Screaming Frog

Time involvement: High

3. Optimize Your Pages

On-page optimization is more than just putting keywords on the page.

You must develop quality content that is properly structured using natural characteristics for the targeted keywords.

Use every reasonable (i.e., non-spammy) opportunity to add your targeted keywords appropriately on your website.

Otherwise, you’re missing important ranking signals.

In other words, you must optimize your:

• Titles.
• Meta descriptions.
• Body content.

Kevin Chow with Digital Current takes it a step further. When you’re optimizing and building your content, you should think about terms or locale to speak to your audience.

For example, in Washington State you would use “Tri-Cities” instead of Kennewick, Richland, and Pasco.

For more information about on-page optimization, read this article: Why Keywords Are Still So Very Important for SEO.

Tools to use: SEMRush, SpyFu, Google Search Console, Keywords Everywhere

Time involvement: High

4. Optimize Google My Business

Google My Business should be a focal point for any small business. It’s free, easy to update, and can make a big impact.

The first step toward optimizing your Google My Business listing is claiming and verifying it: https://www.google.com/business.

Be sure to fill out as many fields as you can and include photos and videos to enhance your listing.

Your category selection is super important. Be sure to choose the correct categories for your business.

If you want to get more advanced with Google My Business, take the time to create questions and answers.

What does that mean?

In local search results, there is now a section where people can ask questions and get answers.

As a small business, it is important that you stay on top of these questions. Create your own questions and provide the answers.

Mike Blumenthal wrote a great guide about these Q&As, which is worth the read: The Big Guide to Google Questions And Answers (Q & A).

Tools to use: Google My Business

Time involvement: Low

5. Find Out What Competitors Are Doing & Do It Better

Competitors online might be different than the competitors within your local area.

For SEO purposes, we are the most concerned with the websites that are showing up in the top 5 to 10 positions of Google search results for your targeted keywords. Those are the competitors you want to analyze.

When doing a competitive analysis, use tools to find out:

• What those sites are ranking for.
• How many pages they have indexed.
• Their website structure.
• The quality of their backlink profile.

Also, we know page speed is a factor in Google’s ranking algorithm.

So run their landing pages through page speed tools. Look for areas of weakness.

For example, are their pages running slow? Are there keywords they have missed that you can target?

For more information on what to look for when doing a competitive analysis, read: 3 Ways to Quickly Compare Your Website with Your Competitors.

Tools to use: SEMrush, SpyFu, Majestic

Time involvement: Medium

6. Manage Local Business Listings & Citations

In addition to Google My Business, you need to control the accuracy of your local business data.

Consistency is crucial.

Data aggregators (e.g., Neustar Localeze, Factual) share information about local businesses, including the name, address, and phone number (NAP).

Make sure your business’s NAP information is consistent and accurate. Local business listings and citations (i.e., online mentions of a business) can help improve your local presence.

The best approach to local directories and citations is to sign up for a service that will distribute your business NAP information.

Tools to use: Yext, BrightLocal, WhiteSpark

Time involvement: Low

7. Get Links from Websites in Your Local Area

Most small business owners never think about links.

However, getting links to your site can help improve your rankings.

That can mean more sales and more customers.

My approach to “link attraction” has always been more of a publicity angle:

What can we do to spread the word about our business, educate others, and get involved in the community?

For ideas on how to get local links, check out the article, What Is a Local Backlink & How to Find Them.

Tools to use: Majestic, Ahrefs, SpyFu

Time involvement: High

8. Add Schema Markup

Schema markup sends search engines signals about page components, such as:

• Business name.
• Address.
• Phone number.
• Ratings.
• Business hours.

This can lead to rich snippets in SERPs.

Check out schema for local businesses here: https://schema.org/LocalBusiness.

Tools to use: Google Structured Data Testing Tool

Time involvement: Medium

9. Focus on Getting Reviews

Even my kids are conditioned to look up reviews before making a purchase.

Reviews were one of the leading local search ranking factors in 2017, according to Local SEO Guide.

Plus, you can improve your conversions by putting effort into getting reviews and feedback from your customers.

Platforms can help you organize and manage a review campaign.

Or, you can simply encourage customers to leave reviews on the major online review sites.

Tools to use: GetFiveStars.com, Yext

Time involvement: High

10. Create Videos & Images for Competitive Keywords

Websites need content, which means words, so that search engines understand what they are about.

Content goes beyond words, though, and should include images and videos.

In fact, if you are struggling to show up for competitive keywords, why not try a properly optimized video or an image?

Tools to use: Keywordtool.io, SEMRush, SpyFu

Time involvement: Medium

11. Mix Paid with Organic to Get Going

If you’re just starting out with SEO, it can take a while to see results.

SEO is a great long-term play, but sometimes you need to start generating leads right away. That is where paid search can really help.

While you are building up your SEO work, set aside a budget for paid, so that you can keep the leads coming in.

Even after you have a steady flow of organic traffic to the website, you might still consider running a paid search campaign in conjunction.

Read more about local paid search: 10 Tips to Get More Local Customers from AdWords & Facebook Ads.

Tools to use: Google Auction Insights, Bing Ads Keyword Planner Tool

Time involvement: High

Best 5 Content Marketing Strategies for Your Small Business

Content marketing is a powerful way to help small businesses gain more customers and grow. Though for content marketing to be successfully executed it needs to have a strategic approach, which is focused on creating and distributing valuable, unique, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain audiences.

To help your small business get the most out of the content marketing efforts on your website, take a look at the following five best content marketing strategies for your website.

5 Content Marketing Strategies to Consider

Identify Your Target Audience

Content works best when its targeted for a specific audience. Rather than blindly creating website content without considering who your business’s target audience is, spending time identifying your target audience and thinking who will benefit most from your products or services and therefore whom you are creating the content for, will ensure the content you create on your site is more engaging and relatable for your target audience.

As Jennifer Yesbeck, marketing manager at Alexa writes in a blog about targeting in marketing:

“Speak directly to a defined audience. Marketing messages resonate more deeply with audiences when readers can relate directly to the information. Brands that have a large, varied market of customers often struggle with creating marketing campaigns that speak directly to their audience.”

Make Good Use of Visuals

The age-old saying “a picture tells 1000 words” bears truth today, and none more so than in the world of content marketing. Accompanying great visuals, whether it’s pictures, videos or infographics, with quality and engaging text, is one content marketing strategy for your small business’s website that should not be overlooked.

That said, one image stuck at the top of a blog won’t suffice and the content on your website should be regularly frequented with stimulating imagery.

As Neil Patel, co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics, informs in an article about Content marketing:

“Throwing a stock image at the top of a blog doesn’t cut it. You should add relevant images throughout the article. Try to keep the user’s engagement high through the whole piece of content, not just the introduction.

Create Content that is Sharable

Another vital content marketing strategy is to make the content you create on your small business’s website shareable, with the aim to make it go viral. Generating content that encourages others to share it will inevitable drive higher volumes of traffic to your website. And higher percentages of traffic means greater leads and sales.

In a post on the official SEMRush Blog, David Leonhardt of The Happy Guy Writing Services rightly states:

“Increasing your content’s social media reach can be done in many ways. In fact, it should be done in many ways.”

Create a Content Marketing Plan

Every effective and successful content marketing campaign should start with a content marketing plan. This vital content marketing strategy for your small business should ideally include mapping out potential blog titles and topics for the forthcoming weeks and months.

Include any guest blogging targets, where your content gets posted on external website to help your small business reach a wider audience, on your content marketing plan. A content marketing plan might also include the writing and distribution of press releases that focus on any news your business might have, such as launching a new product or taking on a new employee.

Such content can be an effective way to enhance your online presence and generate greater traffic to your website.

As Boney Pandya, a passionate online marketer who heads up the marketing efforts for WebNet Hosting, notes in an article on Small Business Trends:

“Press releases are a great venue for creating quality online content and developing links and avenues of sharing information.”

“Press releases not only give you quality content for Google to pick up on, they give you back links and the chance to fit in keywords related to your business venture within the text of the press release.”

Use Social Media to Share Your Website Content

Rather than merely writing a new blog and publishing it on your website or creating a new landing page and forgetting about it, share your fresh and engaging content to as many followers, fans and friends on all your social media channels. As well as using the more obvious social media channels like Facebook and Twitter, post regular content on as many social avenues as possible including LinkedIn and Google+.

As SEO and digital marketing expert Jonny Ross of Fleek Marketing advises in a blog titled ’30 Places to Share Your Website Content for Maximum Impact’:

“Like every social media channel going, Google+ is at its most effective and influential when you’re actively using it. Posting regularly is the key to the Google+ castle and, as ever, interesting content is the king. Continuously creating appealing, shareable images, posts and videos is vital to interacting with and growing your target audience.”

Top 10 Types of Digital Marketing to Promote a Business Online

As people spend more and more time in front of screens, digital marketing has become the most important tool to reach customers in an effective way. Digital marketing targets users of all kinds of electronic devices from desktop computers to smartphones. To successfully promote a business online and engage an audience, you need to make use of various types of digital marketing.

These days, merely having a website is not enough anymore if you want to get qualified leads. You also need to be visible on as many types of digital marketing platforms as possible, from search engines to social media sites and smartphones. To build a successful online business and stand out from the crowd, you need a complex digital strategy based on a thorough market study, in-depth business analysis, and constant feedback.

Top 10 Types of Digital Marketing

Ideally, you should use a mix of different types of digital marketing in order to reach your audience through various channels. In this article, we have collected the most frequent types of digital marketing of our times that can help you achieve the highest success rate. They are as follows:

1. Search engine optimization (SEO)
2. Search engine marketing (SEM)
3. Social media marketing (SMM)
4. Content marketing
5. Email marketing
6. Online advertising
7. Landing page marketing
8. Smartphone marketing
9. Affiliate marketing
10. Viral marketing

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is probably the first thing that comes to mind when people think about different types of digital marketing. Online businesses basically live at the mercy of Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines. If you are doing SEO right you can attract significant organic traffic to a website. The goal of SEO is to optimize content in a way that makes it appear among the first results on a search engine results page (SERP).

There are several methods you can use to rank high on a SERP, such as building a mix of inbound and outbound links or optimizing the content for specific keywords. Probably the hardest thing about SEO is to constantly follow the changes of search engine algorithms and update your strategy and methods accordingly. SEO is essential for any website, as these days every business optimizes their content for search engines. Therefore without SEO, it’s basically impossible to stay competitive in a market.

2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEO is not the only way to increase incoming traffic from search engines. Search engine marketing (SEM) makes it possible to advertise a product in search engines and make it appear among paid search results. Search engines usually display paid results above organic results on SERPs. They almost look the same as organic results with only small differences in appearance, for instance, Google shows a small “Ad” label next to the related URL. On the screenshot below, you can see the paid search results for the “web hosting” search query:

The most frequently used paid search services are Google AdWords and Bing Ads. They allow you to buy ad space based on target keywords, location, viewer demographics, and other data. Actually, search engine marketing is a pretty effective method, as search engines only show your ad to the audience you want to target. In most cases, you need to pay for SEM results according to the pay-per-click (PPC) advertising model, meaning you are only charged when someone clicks your ad.

3. Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Without a doubt, social media is the queen of 21st-century digital content. Therefore, it’s also one of the most important types of digital marketing you need to focus on—especially if you want to promote a B2C business. Social media is not simply a marketing channel but also a way for people to keep in touch with their friends and family, get the latest news, or follow topics they are interested in. There are a plethora of social media platforms you can choose from, such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, and many others. You need to find the ones that are relevant to the niche you target and promote the business there.

Sharing quality content on social media sites is an excellent way to engage viewers and position a brand as an authority in a specific niche. It’s also important to place social sharing buttons below each blog post and content page so that visitors can share it across their network. In addition, every social media platform offers different solutions for organic and paid advertising. Paid Twitter and Facebook ads, hashtag campaigns, and influencer marketing are among the most popular methods of social media marketing.

4. Content Marketing

Content marketing is another type of digital marketing you can use to promote a business online. In fact, content marketing is an indirect way of marketing, as you publish content that the audience finds naturally while browsing the web. The main goal of content marketing is to make viewers interact with the content by reading, sharing, and commenting on it. You can use it together with other types of digital marketing such as SEO or SEM as well. For instance, you can build the content around targeted keywords in order to achieve an optimal result.

High-quality content also allows you to persuade an audience about the expertise of a business in a certain niche. Gaining the trust of customers is one of the most important long-term goals of digital marketing. You can publish shareable content either in the form of blog posts, white papers, reports, or webinars or by guest blogging in popular publications in the same niche.

5. Email Marketing

Email marketing is a different kind of engagement, as you connect with customers within their own mailboxes. Although email marketing is one of the oldest types of digital marketing, it’s still very successful. It’s an excellent way to increase brand loyalty and upsell to existing customers. According to the Radicati market research group’s latest email statistics report (2017-2021), the number of emails sent and received per day by businesses is still growing, at an average rate of 4.4%.

There are many different ways you can reach out to customers through email marketing. Besides creating newsletter campaigns, you can send them confirmation emails, thank-you emails, and email notifications about product updates. If you promote a local business, event invitations are also an excellent way to engage the local audience. These days there are many awesome tools you can use to run professional email campaigns, from marketing automation platforms such as MailChimp to newsletter plugins for popular content management platforms like WordPress.

6. Online Advertising

Digital marketers have been using online advertising since the first days of the web. Displaying banners or ads on other websites belonging to the same niche is the most common form of online advertising. You can use online platforms such as Google AdSense that allows you to automatically serve ads on other content sites. Ad networks usually let you configure the parameters of the sites your ads appear on based on keyword, location, audience demographics, and other data.

Bigger online magazines frequently have their own advertising departments as well. Therefore, it can also be a good solution to contact them and buy an ad space on their website. Some niche magazines, such as A List Apart web design magazine, also have sponsorship programs that allow you to feature a brand, logo, and other visuals on their platform for a certain period of time (usually a week).

7. Landing Page Marketing

Targeted landing pages can work excellently with other types of digital marketing and increase conversion rates significantly. In the broader sense, a landing page is any web page on which visitors first land when they arrive at a website. In this sense, homepages frequently function as landing pages as well. However, many brands create specific landing pages for their marketing campaigns, too.

Digital marketers link landing pages to ads displayed as banners on other websites or appearing on search engine result pages. Thus, when users click an ad they are directed right to the landing page designed for the specific marketing campaign. There are several tricks you can use to create a converting landing page such as eye-catching headlines, a clean and mobile-friendly design, and highly visible call-to-action buttons. Below, you can see the landing page of the Slack messaging app on which you can see all the necessary elements of a well-performing landing page:

8. Smartphone Marketing

People use their smartphones all the time, therefore these days smartphone marketing is also among the most important types of digital marketing. This is especially true if your target audience is the younger generation. In fact, you have many options to reach your prospects through their smartphones. According to the recent report of the Esendex business communication provider, text messages have had a 94 percent global average open rate in 2018. As a result, smartphone marketing is an incredible opportunity to promote a business online.

Besides sending text messages to subscribers, you can further engage an audience by providing them with free mobile apps for Android and iOS devices. Your app can also perform specific actions that increase visibility. For instance, it can send users real-time push notifications that appear on their smartphones when new content is available on the website. Popular messaging platforms such as Messenger and Telegram also allow you to create marketing bots with which you can acquire new customers in a human-centered way.

9. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing makes it possible to reduce your marketing workload by outsourcing it to external service providers. With affiliate marketing, you only pay for conversions, after your affiliate closed a deal and the customer purchased the product. Affiliate marketers do all the related marketing activities from banner placements to landing pages. Probably the best thing about affiliate marketing is that it has no upfront cost and you can decide on the terms and rates you pay to the affiliates.

Probably the most notable online affiliate program is Amazon Associates that lets anyone promote Amazon’s products and earn a commission after closed deals. Smaller businesses can also make use of affiliate programs—it’s an especially popular type of digital marketing in the tech sector. However, you should only start an affiliate program if you have the means to properly monitor and educate the affiliates.

10. Viral Marketing

Viral marketing makes use of all types of digital marketing mentioned in this article. The essence of viral marketing is to create a post, video, meme, or another short-form content type that spreads across the web like a virus. To make a successful viral marketing campaign, you need to promote the same content across multiple channels such as Twitter, Youtube,  blog posts, newsletters over a short period of time.

Wrapping Up

To reach the best business results, you need to decide which types of digital marketing you want to use. There are some types you should use anyway such as search engine optimization and social media marketing, while others depend on the industry. When you plan the types of digital marketing you will use don’t only think about software but also hardware. If the target audience uses a certain type of device you need a presence on that kind of device as well. Also gather as much feedback from existing customers as you can, as there’s no better way to build trust and engage them on a personal level.

20 Places You Should Be Sharing Your Content

Writing and publishing blog posts or articles on your own website isn’t good enough.

Your website is just one place people might discover your content.

Content is everywhere today. It’s insanely competitive.

Did you know more than 3 million blog posts are published daily?

If you’re going to gain any real traction, you need to look beyond publishing content on your website.

In addition to mainstream outlets like Medium, sharing your content on industry or niche platforms can also help it get seen by more people.

Think of sharing your content on other outlets like a megaphone: the more places you promote it, the wider the message will spread.

Ready to amplify your content and grow your website traffic and conversions?

Here are 20 places you should be sharing your content, from the mainstream to the niche.

1. Medium

Medium allows you to republish your existing blog posts (if you use their import feature, they even add a rel=canonical link), but you can also use this platform as a way to increase traffic to the full blog posts on your site.

2. Reddit

Reddit can be a worthwhile platform to consider for sharing content, but it needs to be done the right way.

Redditors are very conscious of brands attempting to “spam” subreddits with their own content, so this is usually best left to a few employees with active Reddit accounts who may occasionally share company blog posts once or twice a month.

These articles should be carefully chosen and provide real value to the users. It’s also possible for Redditors to view other users’ activity, so make sure that employees are using their Reddit accounts for more than just posting company blog posts.

Otherwise, they’ll be pretty easily found out and your company may get called out, which is never good on such an active platform.

3. LinkedIn Articles

Like Medium, LinkedIn allows you to syndicate blog posts on your personal LinkedIn profile as LinkedIn articles.

Although these articles currently don’t automatically add rel=canonical links, research has shown that Google isn’t flagging these as duplicate content (even though they show up on duplicate content search sites like Copyscape).

Because of their existing network on LinkedIn, many users have built up a strong subscriber base for their articles on the platform. Users can choose to subscribe to users’ posts, meaning they will get a notification every time that user publishes something new.

This built-in alert system is a definite advantage over other platforms, especially since your blog readers don’t get alerts like that unless they subscribe to email notifications, which is a lot bigger commitment than checking a box to receive an in-platform notification on LinkedIn.

4. Email

Promoting your content through email is an “oldie but goodie” tactic that still pulls major weight.

In addition to being much more loyal to your brand, email subscribers are 3x more likely to share your content via social media than visitors from other sources, according to Campaign Monitor.

Email clicks are also usually higher than the CTR on social media posts as well — Campaign Monitor also found that you are 6x more likely to get a click from an email than from a sent tweet.

The way you share your content on social media highly depends on what works best for your schedule and your users. It’s worthwhile to experiment to see what gets the most clicks.

Some companies or writers prefer to send out a new email every time a new post is published (which is usually automated in some way using an RSS feed and a service like Zapier or IFTTT), while others wait until the end of the week or month to send a newsletter of updates and the latest published posts.

The platforms above are the most useful for driving traffic. However, there are plenty of other platforms to consider based on the topic and format of your content.

5. DesignFloat

An online discussion board for designers to share articles, element ideas, and more.

6. Managewp.org

This is a slightly different format, but users can up- or down-vote content about WordPress.

7. Dzone

This discussion board has over 1 million developers who share content and links on coding, cloud computing, and more.

8. Twitter Brand Accounts

If your article makes sense for your brand, consider adding your article to your sharing list for your brand accounts. You can even schedule the article to be posted several times over a few months.

9. Twitter Personal Accounts

Twitter moves fast, so it makes sense to share your article, along with a great quote, in a few places on Twitter. It is in your best interests to spread the shares out a bit so you don’t overwhelm your audience.

10. Twitter Chats

For a more targeted audience, look for industry-related Twitter chats and use their hashtags when sharing really high-quality content.

Use it sparingly: don’t spam the chat hashtag with every piece of content you write. But it’s fairly common to see popular marketing hashtags like #seochat and #twittersmarter active even when the regular Twitter chats aren’t going on.

11. Personal Page on Facebook

This one seems obvious, but it is a place many people forget.

If you are concerned about spamming your family or friends who aren’t in the industry, consider creating a Facebook list for work folks. This way you don’t have to worry about confusing your Great Aunt Gertrude with a step by step guide to PPC.

12. Brand Facebook Page

Another sort of obvious one, but it shouldn’t be overlooked.

Grab a good quote from your content, make sure your image displays correctly and send it out – assuming it is relevant to your audience.

13. Facebook Groups

Facebook groups are still alive and well! Because many users are already using Facebook on their personal time, they are usually more active in groups.

Join a few industry-related groups and share your best content once a month, while also contributing to the group when possible.

Be sure to stay active as a member of the chat or group by answering questions, reading others’ content, and contributing genuinely to the group.

14. SlideShare

Creating really good content takes time.

One way to get the most mileage out of your content is by taking highlights and turning it into a presentation for SlideShare.

Just changing the format you present your content in can help reach a wider audience.

15. LinkedIn Groups

If you are active on Linkedin, consider sharing your content in related LinkedIn Groups.

Be sure to check the group’s policies on sharing first and make sure you are engaging with members outside of sharing your content.

16. Your Pinterest Account

Create a nice header image (like the one on this article) and share on the visually-driven link sharing platform.

17. Shared Pinterest Boards

Another simple way to drive traffic is by creating a shared Pinterest board and allowing other people to add their own content about a topic.

These boards tend to get more traffic.

18. Instagram

To drive content from Instagram, add a portion of your content in the caption and add the link to the content to your bio.

19. Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories only last 24 hours, but allow you to share links more easily.

20. YouTube

Record a video of a team member discussing the key points in your content.