Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

What are the Startup accelerators for social media?

December 14th, 2016

Taking a business to the next level is getting easier in today’s world, thanks to innumerable accelerators and new venture funds that have come up in the past few years. The function of accelerator (a man-made perfect storm of mentorship and access to technology) is to turn the art of starting a company into a program.

If you are planning to launch a startup, you will come across a number of hindrances. The achievement of startups depends on many factors, such as the founders, funding, and the environment of the industry in which it is established. Startups never stop searching for a chance to progress their profitability of business and its success. A considerably excellent accelerator can provide enough mentorship (to help founders clearly understand what they want and what they should focus on) and funding support for startups. Social media effectual accelerators and incubators for startups can be of great help for your businesses. Enter these accelerators at the right time and do your research about that particular program. Startups can have essential resources and the largest access to acceleration technology network which will help them to strengthen and execute their business model efficiently. Social Media Accelerators are highly valuable for startups today because-

  • Mentorship is the key to success
  • High technological advancements in the businesses with enormous genius ideas
  • Product will be developed and tested
  • A recognisable brand with uniquely designed program and strategy
  • Invaluable Networking

Social media is a wonderful tool to increase awareness about your brand, build a loyal customer base as well as attract investors to your project.  Clap Creative is a skilful Social Media Marketing Company to make you understand how to attract your first few customers through social media. See the few key things a startup can do by developing and applying an impeccable social media plan.

  • Budget Marketing
  • Customer Services and Retention Programs
  • Branding and Community Building
  • Potential Lead Generation
  • Self-storytelling and Blogging
  • Platform for advocating your brand

Startup accelerator not only provides office space for early stage social media startups, but also offers niche workshops to guide business enterprises in the right direction. A well knowledgeable and skilled social media marketing company will help you to understand your customers better and target the right audience through social media. With the specialised assistance of these companies, you will learn:

  • How to choose the right channel
  • When to turn to social media
  • Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google Plus marketing tactics
  • How to create engaging creative concepts
  • How to grow an account from scratch
  • How to track and measure your social media efforts
  • How to convert the traffic to leads and customers
  • How to create and use Live Video for marketing

Social media can be instrumental in empowering startups with an array of marketing benefits. Social Media Accelerators for Startups always encourage young entrepreneurs to start new businesses and help to improve economy also suggest many more practical and useful business enhancement tools that you can apply to your business.

What is LinkedIn sales navigator, How to use its benefits?

November 19th, 2015

Sales and marketing has been the holy grail of the digital marketing industry today. With this as background, the question is whether LinkedIn sales navigator has all the benefits it promises to offer? With a mountain of data worth gold lurking in LinkedIn, it sure promises an enormous marketing potential.

What is it and how does it Work?

Sales Navigator is a great weapon for those looking for potential prospects for their products on the LinkedIn platform. LinkedIn user community is very diverse and if targeted right, it can deliver the right results. The company aims to connect sales representatives with better prospects through their productive Sales Navigator tool having social selling at its very heart.

It is a paid service that gives you access to the relative user data as per your product.

Benefits of Sales Navigator

  • Automated Lead Suggestions – The platform gives you the best suggestions according to the search criteria. This helps immensely in the overall sales efforts. The company is constantly upgrading the suggestions algorithms to ensure the best prospects are filtered out and delivered to the users.
  • Standalone Product – Sales Navigator can be accessed through the regular LinkedIn account. However, it is also offered as a dedicated service with its very own separate login for a special sales experience. So, you can skip the normal fuss of LinkedIn and get started with the true sales aspect of the entire service.
  • InMail Messages – What if you don’t know the prospects or not connected to them already? There’s a way out now. You can search the LinkedIn network deeper and better with this tool and a premium account.
  • Merge Salesforce Contacts – Users can import the current contacts from their Salesforce account. They can be used to better search the existing database of users and find potential prospects. Microsoft Dynamics can also be integrated in Sales Navigator. It is so much better than cold calling with the potential to use your entire contact itinerary.
  • Connect a Template – Wish to interact with a large list of contacts? You can use a template and send it to the list with a customized message. Changes can be made to the template and the users still experience personalized messages that certainly helps in the marketing efforts.
  • Premium Profile Options – Social selling is the core foundation of the premium option. When you go premium, you have access to a wide range of premium features that help in the overall marketing efforts. Background images and premium large head shots are some benefits you avail.

Yes, it’s a premium offering with prices starting at $79.99 per month. However, the benefits far outweigh the cons since you get access to one of the best user database in the world along with a host of other sales and marketing tools.

How Twitter and Instagram Ads Are Going to Transform Every Web Marketer’s Job?

September 28th, 2015

Not long ago, Google Adwords was the sole best digital advertising platform out there to get to potential audience quickly. But then Bing, Yahoo, Facebook and everybody jumped in to offer marvelous new similar offerings. The latest to join the bandwagon are Twitter and Instagram. Let’s see how they stack up against the giants.

Instagram Ads Now Support Better APIs for more Social Conversion

When it comes to mobile marketing, Instagram is the choice for most marketers. With an ever increasing user base of over 300 million users, it presents a great opportunity. Integration of AMPs with Instagram can now be leveraged for a visually dynamic environment for advertisements.

API Partner Program to be Launched in Late 2015

Audience engagement touches new highs with API Partner program to be launched later this year. Major partners include Kenshoo, 4C, Unified, Brand Networks, Ampush, SocialCode, Nanigans, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud. It will enable teams to share Instagram information, monitor audiences and publish to video and photo sharing network of Facebook.

Advertisers have long waited to explore the full potential of Instagram independently of Facebook. This new API Partner Program will allow web marketers to use the same Facebook-tested tool on Instagram’s ad campaigns. This will not only bring in new audience but also increase impact of their online marketing campaigns manifold.

Why Twitter Ads Promise So Much More

Now, Twitter has always worked a little differently. And its ads network is no different. Here are some key points about Twitter ads and its advantages:

  1. Increase Advertising Impact down the Follower Line

Twitter ads help you target everyone down the follower’s group by targeting one single user. Everyone following a user will be delivered the ad So, if you get one user right, the rest will just join in as your potential target audience. Since they have same interest, the conversion is will have a compounding effect.

  1. Twitter Keyword Suggestion is more Organic and Effective

Target keywords as per specific tweets and cover a more global audience. Both broad and phrase keyword variations are available. If you are to select keywords, Twitter gives suggestions that are organic terms which users have been discussing or searching. Trending hashtags are a further boost to the marketing campaigns. You can expect more search analogies in case you serve a very specific niche.

  1. Images can have Large Text Body

Some platforms allow you to post images with text but have limit on the amount of text. On the other hand, Twitter does not have such limit. You can post an ad via an image and include as much text as you fee like.

There are numerous other benefits including payment according to new followers, seamless lead generation and use of cards in the ads. All these promise a world of opportunities that can be leveraged only by the skillful web marketer. Nonetheless, these two new platforms are fast emerging as new frontiers for digital advertising.

How to leverage social media for link building?

August 31st, 2015

As link building continues to take the spotlight, it’s crucial for any business wanting to thrive in the online world to leverage the benefits offered by social media. The same platforms you use to post hilarious cat memes and pictures of your weekend gateway are also a powerful online marketing tool. Businesses have the opportunity to grab the attention of billions of potential customers, that’s right – billions.

How do you get great links? You create content. Not just any content, great content. To share great content, it is important for people to know that it exists. If you have a brand-new website, chances are, it isn’t ranking high in search engines. So, if people are unable to find you via search, how will they find great content you created? Answer: Through social media.

Social media can be a powerful link building tool and if you are not using it, you could be missing out on some awesome opportunities. Below is the quick summary of how to leverage social media for link building:

Keep tabs on brand mentions and ask for links

Tools like Tweetdeck can help you monitor the social world and allow you to find users talking about your brand whilst also giving you an opportunity to engage with them. After locating such users, a little research will disclose whether or not they have websites/blogs. Engage with users that do and ask them if they are willing to provide you with a link.

Look for opportunities on your Facebook page

Just like Twitter, look for users who are interacting on your wall and try engaging with them. They may not be willing to provide you with a link instantly, so it is important to maintain patience and engagement before requesting for the link.

Build relationships with those not talking about you

There may be people in your niche that aren’t familiar with your brand and as such won’t be talking about it. Use Twitter and blogs to engage with active members in your circle to generate brand awareness as well as build relationships which will help you get links in the future.

Use Guest blogging to prepare future audience

Guest blogging and the following interaction is a great way of grabbing the attention of a wider audience. It also gives you an opportunity to ‘prepare’ the future audience. The advantages of mentioning future audience in your blog post are twofold. First, your guest post will acquire links. And second, the audience mentioned in your post may now be ready to engage.

Leverage the power of your blog

Using your blog to its fullest potential can be very helpful. Flattering bloggers in your niche through top 5 lists and other such tricks can be a great way to generate backlinks to your domain.

Help people

If you come across someone in your niche asking for help or advice, reach out to them. Help will often build a relationship, and generate a link.

And that’s how you use social media to get links. It’s an engagement, a gradually developing relationship which can be rewarding in terms of link building.

How to use pop-ups on your site/blog to gain likes & followers?

August 21st, 2015

Let’s talk about how to gain likes and followers on your website/blog.

Your site/blog gets more traffic than all of your social media profiles combined. Your visitors have made a decision to visit your site/blog – in contrast to randomly clicking on a social profile of yours.

This post will cover one of the many strategies that can help you gain likes and followers on your blog: pop-ups.

Pop-Ups Will Only Work If You Know How to Use Them

Your conversion goals will decide how the pop-ups will be placed. If someone visits your blog, then your goal is likely to get new leads and readers.

If someone visits your product page, however, your goal is likely to have them purchase your product, rather than distracting them with a popup.

This is the reason why most people prefer using pop ups in their blogs. When people visit your blog, they do not visit with an intention of buying your products and services, their intent is to make sure they are updated with your future content.

Different Types of Popups & Their Uses

Now, let’s find out the different ways to implement pop-ups on your website.

  • Entrance Popups

Enterence Popup - How to use pop-ups on your site/blog to gain likes & followers?

Entrance popups are those that crop up the moment a visitor starts browsing a website. These are seen as the most rude ones as they prevent a visitor from getting to know the website before they decide to become a subscriber.

It’s similar to entering a clothing store for instance – you don’t want a person to walk up to you and insist you to purchase something until you’ve had a chance to take a look at the clothes.

  • Timed Popups

Timed Popup - How to use pop-ups on your site/blog to gain likes & followers? - ClapCreative

Timed popups show up only after a visitor spends a specific amount of time on a website.

Timed popups are better than entrance as the visitor has had a chance to become familiar with the website’s content and likely be ready to make a decision about whether or not they want to subscribe.

  • Scroll-Activated Popups

Scroll-activated popups are the ones that show up when a site visitor reaches a certain portion of the webpage. For instance, if a visitor is reading a blog post, the popup will not appear mid-post, instead it will appear when the reader has reached the bottom of the post. This way, the visitor gets a good amount of time to become familiar with your website, and they may be ready to commit as a subscriber.

  • Reader’s Choice Popups

Reader’s Choice Popups - How to use pop-ups on your site/blog to gain likes & followers? - ClapCreative

Reader’s choice popups do not follow a timing, they are all about how a popup is presented. Instead of asking a visitor to subscribe to the website, it asks questions related to the website.

Pop-up Best Practices

  • Use a popup to offer something your visitor wants

Offers popup - How to use pop-ups on your site/blog to gain likes & followers? - ClapCreative

Popups alone are not going to increase your fans and followers. The offer in the popup is the real deal. For businesses, it’s important to offer something that appeals to your target audience.

  • Use one popup at a time

If you decide to install a popup plugin on your blog or website, make sure that you run only one popup at a time. If your visitors encounter multiple popups on a page that might upset them.

  • Use only two fields

The best way to convert visitors using a popup is to make the process of subscribing easy. Try asking just their first name and an email address. Less is more.

We hope this article shows the benefits of popups! Get ready to increase your likes & followers.

How to Make an Effective Landing Page for Generating Leads?

August 7th, 2015

Want to turn traffic into conversions? Just create engaging and effective landing pages. A landing page is a primary mean of lead generation in inbound marketing. It is designed to influence a visitor to carry out a specific action. Landing pages should be carefully designed with conversion in mind.

If you look at your website home page as your landing page, then you are sadly mistaken. Why? Because a homepage is an introduction to your company’s mission, services, products, and it shows a variety of information under one roof. It would be a great intro to your business, but not very effective for eliciting specific traffic looking for a specific service or product.

Remember, when a customer searches for a specific product, it is clear that he is interested in that product. If you take your potential buyer to your home page, you are probably taking him a step backward in the purchase funnel. Providing your buyers with a simple landing page that serves their purpose of purchasing will increase your conversion rates and provide a significant ROI.

Here are a few effective tips to create effective landing pages to generate leads:

Be Simple & Straight

The landing page heading should immediately tell your audience about your services and products. This is the only job of a landing page and it must contribute toward that goal. No fluff, no catchy lines or compelling paragraphs, no links to the homepage. Just simple, but descriptive text and a prominent call-to-action.

Logo Should Be Visible

Your company’s logo should be clear and visible assuring audiences that they are in safe and reliable hands. Your company should be top-of-mind while visitors see or fill up the information on your landing page.

Visuals Should Appeal, Not Distract

Make the landing page as clutter free as possible to avoid any distraction. Use directional cues to highlight the points you want to show to your audiences, like a call-to-action. Play with some colors to lead your visitor’s eyes to the key factor of the page.

Navigation Options Should Be Limited

Too much navigation options will do no good, rather they will distract your audiences and take them elsewhere in your site. Landing pages are meant to generate qualified leads, not just for getting heavy traffic.

Add Social Proof

People understand that companies often brag about themselves, but customers never do. Social proof will allow your potential buyers to see what kind of company you are and whether or not your services are reliable. If possible, list a few partner companies along with testimonies from satisfied customers.

Ask For the Information You Really Need

Always ask for the information that really matters for your business. The form should be short and must ask for only the important details. Consider a few things like whether you really need to have two fields for names or complete street address. You need to make it as convenient as possible for your customers so that they show ”thumbs up” to your offer.

Look Legit

You surely don’t want to look like a phishing scam. That’s why, it is vital to use security seals to assure your visitors that their personal information is safe and secure. You can even try linking your privacy policy. Pay heed to every small thing like layout and design. Avoid using pop-ups.

With an effective landing page, you can grab the attention of a lot of potential customers and turn them into your certified customers. Create, test, modify and deploy your landing pages and see them generating leads and skyrocketing sales.

How to Extract Maximum Performance from 1 Keyword

July 2nd, 2015

Some businesses fail to realize that search engine optimization (SEO) does not bring results over night – rather it’s an ongoing process. Optimizing for single keyword may sound as one of the simplest SEO tasks, but just like all processes it takes time. Businesses who cut corners to seek instant results usually fail at such attempts. Nothing beats hard work and a consistent, strategical process with a clear plan of action.

If you are trying to extract maximum performance from a single keyword, here are the 4 steps you should follow to ensure quality results.

  • Step 1

Keep it simple. You can devote many web pages to only one keyword but not vice-versa.

  • Step 2

Add content to that page. Although SEO has no limit set, you should be setting limits to ensure perfect balance between content and user experience. For instance, you can use a tabbed navigation on a web page to have huge amounts of content rather than throwing at a user’s face a massive page of text. Keep originality and quality in mind.

  • Step 3

This step is the most important. The web page should only talk about that one keyword you want to target. Do not make the mistake of targeting something and writing about another. This will nullify all your efforts. No kidding.

  • Stage 4

Repeat the targeted keyword in your content more times than you repeat any other explanatory words or phrases. This may sound like a common sense, but this step is actually something you should plan out and not just think about only at the time of creating content. If you’re going to craft an article targeting for instance, the keyword “Lamborghini” – make sure not to repeat the word “engine” etc… many times otherwise they will overpower your keyword and this will also cause major search engines to get confused. On the other side, you shouldn’t be stuffing your targeted keyword all over the page more than required either. Balance is the key here. Add just enough to be the most cited word, nothing more.

Optimize the Page

Here is a checklist that can come handy while optimizing a page.

  1. Choose the keyword
  2. Write the page markup
  3. Add a title tag with the exact targeted keyword as the first section. Include a subtle marketing pitch to improve the clickthrough rate as the second section.
  4. Create a description of the page and offerings for the meta description tag.
  5. Link to the page from other web pages on your site that are relevant to your targeted keyword
  6. Get other websites to link directly to the page having keyword as the anchor text. Do this every month and as many times as required.

It’s not the count that’s important. It’s the location and spread of your targeted keyword. Follow the above mentioned steps to maximum performance from 1 keyword.

7 Ultimate Ways to Fix a Negative Business Review of Your Brand

June 15th, 2015

Did you know that one negative review can affect your business’ bottom line?

When we talk about online reputation management, business reviews and ratings take the center stage. As brands live and breathe based on their ratings on Yelp and Google, you wouldn’t want anything which can damage your sales. Here are the 7 ultimate ways to fix any negative reviews that can hurt your business reputation.

1. Revise Your Product & Services

The first step for a business that suffers serious online review issues is: Take a look in the mirror. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and try to look at things their way – how would you feel and react if you shared their experience dealing with your brand?

Even if you think you’re satisfactory, go an extra mile to make things right. This is an effort you put to ensure future success and a positive reputation.

A single crazy client can tarnish your name online and prejudice other clients to be critical of your company. This can result in your business losing many customers. So, the first step is to address all the issues your customers have.

2. Add Sugar to a Sour Situation

When you get a bad review, try contacting that customer and see if you can make it up to them. Making things right is an excellent opportunity to promote your business, in some cases. Even if it doesn’t turn out as expected, exhibiting a desire to make it up to dissatisfied customers reassures other potential customers that you care about delivering a good experience to them.

3. If You Make Things Right With The Customer, Ask Them To Reconsider The Negative Review

A customer may decide to revise their review or remove it. However, if customers are only unenthusiastically satisfied with your second attempt, or if they like to criticize regardless of you putting your best foot forward to please them, then your best bet is to keep silent and see how it goes.

4. If You Cannot Reverse the Process, Acknowledge It

“Fix it” approach may not always be doable, especially when the service is time-based, or when the product is no longer available.

Even if it is not feasible make it up to a dissatisfied customer for whatever reason, at least try apologizing for his or her bad experience and promise to revise your policies or serve better in the future.

Be polite or at least neutral and decent in your response. This type of expression in a public forum is beneficial because it starts to diffuse your customers’ agony a bit – they at least know their voice has been heard. It tells rest of the people that you care about your customers and value professionalism, which is great when selecting merchants.

As described in point number 2, this could be great for promoting your business.

5. The No-Nonsense Approach

You may be able to make all the unfair reviews disappear. But, unfortunately, it is very common for unhappy ex-employees or vicious competitors to post false reviews about your company.

If you can point out the false review(s), you might be able to make them disappear by getting in touch with the website and requesting intervention.

if you are in a situation where the review is abnormal or a scam, thoroughly read the website policies and if it’s not applicable, contact the site.

6. Temper Down

All companies should expect some negative reviews, but if your overall review portfolio on a website has these in a small percentage compared with positive reviews, then it doesn’t really damage your reputation in most cases. In fact, few negative reviews give your company an authentic identity on a review site.

If your business has very few or no reviews, you should encourage your customers to review you. If you have one or two negative ones, encourage pleased customers to review you to temper down the outliers. Just make sure not to offer customers incentives to post positive reviews.

7. Hire Services That Help You Extract More Reviews

Complaints and negative reviews on Google can harm the potential of any brand. But thankfully, there are many companies out there offering services that help businesses extract reviews from their previous and existing customers. This is particularly beneficial for those businesses that traditionally get fewer online reviews, such as doctors and lawyers. Also, it is crucial to say that there is a myth surrounding the removal of bad reviews (particularly the guaranteed removal of unwanted content). Certain reputation management service providers clarify this misunderstanding through their Guaranteed Removals review.

In some cases, these services allow you to seize a negative review before it goes public, so that you can address the issue with your customer, first.

The Final Word

Don’t ignore the importance of customer service. Pay attention to the lowest reviews as well as the average or mediocre ones. This feedback platform is a valuable source of information for your business, helping you to fine-tune it – until it is world class and makes your customers extremely pleased.

So, even though a negative review can be a real hard blow on your face, take it as a caution light and appreciate how it may be encourage your business operations to improve.

How your Tweets Help in SEO, Google Introduces Tweets to SERPs

April 4th, 2015

So, it’s official!. Google will now display Tweets in SERPs for the search engine’s results. This once again gives credibility to the fact that search engines are deeply in love with Twitter. These were already showing in certain search results like where content is well shared or liked. But this official notification will set the tongues wagging in SEO world.

Raw tweets are now showing prominently in the search results. Most of these are primarily from authority Twitter users. The most popular posts are now attached with the searches. Businesses can certainly use this facet in their online campaigns.

Pages Are Now Ranked on Facts

Knowledge-Based Trust (KBT) is a far more superior method for SERPs. The quality of pages is determined on the basis of accuracy instead of just links. The facts about a certain topic will be compared, tweets included, and relevant results are compiled. Webpages deemed factually correct are more likely to be displayed higher in the search results. When used in tandem with traditional search methodology, this method is likely to deliver more accurate results.

Up to the Minute News & Updates

Inclusion of Tweets in the searches will also help Google deliver real time news and updates. The idea here is to provide the users with live updates in the Twitter world and track a topic in real time. This not only updates the users better but also delivers news best related to a context. Conversations have a relative effect on the news since news can be manipulated but the tweets show the real world’s perspective in a more organic way.

Better Content that Stimulates Search Results

Twitter now offers more control over the content to its users, creating a huge wave of trust from its users. This helps stimulate the social content and drive further sharing of the content. New audience’s viewpoints can be better integrated into the search results. To increase its user base, Twitter has purchased ZipDial. Now, it has more than 248 million users.

No More Twitter Crawling – Faster Access to Tweets

As social content is now readily put into the SERPs, the lines between traditional content and social content is blending. The inclusion of tweets now shows that other social content will soon find its way onto the search engine’s radar. Added visibility of the tweets will lead to integration of other channels of social media with the Google’s algorithm.

It is vital to note that social and search are not that different from each other. Facebook’s Graph is a perfect example of how social search can be highly influential in building online brands. In the near future, the distinction between these two channels will dissolve further. Also, this agreement between Twitter and Google will further help cement the relationship these two brands share. In the end, it will be search marketers who will benefit the most with this strategic partnership and is bound to change the way users interact with each other in the digital social sphere.

Optimize Local business For Search – How to Prepare for 2015

November 27th, 2014

With 2014 coming to an end, search predictions for next year 2015 are already seen on the horizon. The annual local search engine ranking factors were a little predictable in the beginning of 2014. But as the year comes to an end and Google’s Penguin update having rolled out, more and more webmasters are planning for the year ahead.

What Mattered in 2014 and how Things will take Shape in 2015

Traditional factors are taking a center stage in search engine optimization. Although, Google places and citations still carry importance the shift is now heading towards high quality links and on-site signals. Even the latest Penguin didn’t hit the local websites heavily as it hit the websites with bad link profiles. In the end, the next year too requires that you should have an ethical approach to SEO and your users must have an awesome user experience. Stop fooling the nerds at Google and try to keep pace with the changing search dynamics.

Best SEO Tips for 2015

Awesome User Experience

Giving true value to your customers is at the heart of every search engine. It’s not easy being awesome in such a competition. But you can take care of few factors such as:

  • Home Page Content – When customers land on your home page, they must get a clear idea of your brand. Also, search engines need to know what you are all about. Just some banners and simple text won’t do it. You need to add some great content and good images to make the right impressions.
  • Thin Content – Never have thin content on inner pages. All the pages must have relevant content to go with the service. People want information on pages and you need to provide them the same with valuable content.
  • Keyword Spamming –This is a no brainer. You simply cannot stuff your content with keywords and expect it to be red by your visitors. Get rid of the junk content and provide true value to your readers with informative content.

Local Factors

  • Include city name in your title tag. Never over optimize your title tag and unnecessarily stuff keywords or your services.
  • Mention city and state name in your H1 tag as well. Right in the top, the users must know that you serve their area. This increases the local relevancy.
  • The page content must also include city and state name. In your page’s content, you must relate to a local area and mention the services you provide in that area. Know the local neighborhoods and add some long tail keywords.
  • In image alt tags, it is suggested to clearly mention city and state information. This adds another local content element to your search factors.

There are many other factors such as structured local data and logo optimization that still carry significant importance. Not to forget that mobile experience is paramount. Mobile users are now equivalent to desktop users and this market simply cannot be ignored.

Hope you had plenty of information to get started. When it comes to SEO, sky is the limit and you simply have to keep exploring. Happy 2015 SEO!