Make It With Michael

By Disha Dinesh According to Ogilvy, the organic reach of content published by brands on Facebook is plummeting . In an attempt to make feeds more relevant to their users, Facebook has prioritized content shared by friends and family. As social networks acquire more users and see more activity on their pages, organic reach is sure to continue its descent. It is important for marketers to remember that social networks are search engines in their own right, and like Google, will continue to focus on providing their users with the most relevant content. As a brand, how do you ensure that your content continues to reach your target audience, and a good percentage of them? Relying solely on paid advertising is unlikely to get you the exposure or brand recognition that you are hoping for. Besides, the number of people using ad blockers in the US is expected to double by 2020. Clearly, ad aversion is growing and realizing this, many large brands have begun to focus more on strong organ...

By Evan LePage Measuring the return on your social media investment is no longer optional. To secure ongoing executive buy-in and budget for your social marketing strategies you need to demonstrate how your efforts are contributing to the business’ goals. Maturing from an experiment to a core business strategy, social media is now an impactful marketing channel that needs to compete against other channels—for budget, resources, and respect. This means that social, like other channels, has to prove its return on investment (ROI). But beyond proving the impact on your organization, measuring and tracking social media return on investment also lets marketers dedicate more time and resources into what’s working, and improve the tactics that aren’t delivering real value. Read on to learn how to measure and prove your social media ROI. Table of contents What is social media ROI? Why measuring social media ROI is important How to set social media goals to prove ROI How to measure yo...

By Ankush Mahajan Content marketing is an integral part of your digital marketing strategy. In 2016, we saw extensive adoption of content based promotion across all industries. In 2017, the practice will continue to thrive even more; especially in small and medium sized businesses. Content marketing offers better engagement, better conversions , and usually costs less than other forms of marketing. Besides, with a constantly increasing number of ad-blocker software users across the globe, content marketing becomes the only way to get a message through with assurance. So, this year too, brands will need to focus more on content marketing. The following 5 content marketing trends will help you reap the maximum benefits out of your content marketing strategy in 2017. Trend #1: Production of more user-friendly content The number of online users is increasing constantly, so too does content consumption. This has made businesses think that producing more content is the right way to ge...

By Dara Fontein Digital video advertising budgets were expected to grow 28.5 percent to $9.84 billion by the end of 2016 —$2 billion of which would be spent on YouTube ads. Continue reading to find out the benefits of YouTube advertising, the types of ad options available, and best practices for running a successful campaign. Why your brand should be running YouTube ads YouTube already reaches more 18-49-year-olds than any broadcast or cable network combined. And by the end of 2017, video will account for 74 percent of all online traffic. It’s obvious—the demand for video is only growing. Big businesses know this. With 100 percent of the top 100 global brands running YouTube ads in the past year, it’s no secret that YouTube advertising is a serious marketing tool. As Concept5 explains, “The best brands use targeted YouTube advertising on an ongoing basis as it extends reach, drives channel engagement, and grows subscriber audiences.” As the second largest search engine (afte...

By Ben Lamb The renowned social network ‘ WeChat ‘ is of great interest to western marketers currently, and it should well be. With 700 million active users it has become the gateway into China, your WeChat activity has become arguably more important than your website in China. For B2C and B2B, WeChat is a key marketing tool in the aptly named ‘mysterious orient’. Without a strong presence on WeChat you are practically invisible in China. What is WeChat? Tencent owned ‘WeChat’ began life as a simple instant messenger application before morphing into the fully fledged, integrated social network it has become. It is primarily an application for smartphones. It is hard to convey the scale of WeChat’s popularity in China. 700 million users spend on average an hour a day utilizing the many services that have been developed as an integral part of daily life in China. These include: Text/video/picture messaging WeChat moments (akin to Facebook’s news feed) QR Codes Mapping and lo...

By Annaliese Henwood Effective lead generation is key to success in ecommerce businesses. But you don’t want just any leads for your business—you need highly-relevant and sales-qualified leads. How do you accomplish this? With an ecommerce business, you spend loads of time and money in digital marketing, trying to get your website found and used by consumers. Are you happy with your results? To truly attract and retain customers to your ecommerce website, you need to be strategically active on social media. More importantly, you need to know how to use social media to drive qualified lead generation. With this article, you’ll learn eight ways you can use social media marketing to generate leads for your ecommerce business. You’ll see that the time and resources you put into social media can lead to a valued return on investment as long as you follow these best practices. 1. Know your audience An ecommerce business would want to attract buyers to their site, but how do you know wh...

By Kaylynn Chong The sound of your alarm goes off. It’s 2 a.m. PST. You rub the sleep out of your eyes. “It’s time to publish that Facebook post for my readers in London,” you say quietly—barely feigning enthusiasm. Suddenly you remember what’s next on your social media content calendar. It’s a Facebook video for your audience in Dubai—an hour later at 3 a.m.. You begin to weep softly. Don’t cry. We’re here to help. We’ll teach you how to schedule Facebook posts ahead of time to make your life easier. Why should I schedule Facebook posts ahead of time? As a social media pro, you probably have a lot of content to share—and not a lot of time to do it. Scheduling your Facebook updates in advance can save you time and hassle. Benefits of scheduling your Facebook posts: Reach multiple time zones —Schedule Facebook posts in advance to reach audiences around the world. Improve consistency —Being consistent with your updates—how often you post and when—will tell your audience when t...

By Melly Devent Your homepage is without a doubt the #1 most important element on your website. Why? Because it is the most visited page on your entire site. Keeping that in mind, you want your homepage to do certain things. Like: Describe briefly about your blog. Draw readers deeper into your blog. Get the email addresses of visitors. Build trust with visitors. Get your homepage to rank high in Google. But let’s face it: Your home page is still far away from that goal. And you’re not very happy with it. And like Mr. T, sometimes you even get confused about it. That is why, I’ve got 11 kickass blog homepages that you can model from. Plus, there’s a bonus at the end of this post, so look out for that. 1. Smart Passive Income When it comes to building an online business, Pat Flynn is a familiar name. And when you visit Smart Passive Income , it instantly shows his personality and expertise. Why does it work? So, there are a ton of things going on here. Let’s talk a...