Earned media VS. Paid media: Which is best for brands?

Earned media VS. Paid media: Which is best for brands?

If you want to have an advertising and are confused between paid Vs. earned media strategy. Then it is high time you should know about Earned media Vs. Paid media.

While coming to the media strategy, it all started with the word PESO is what everyone remembers. However, PESO stands for Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned media. Until some time all these four things were essential in any media strategy.

As years passed the idea of the PESO in the media strategies also changed. The PESO idea has evolved gradually, and it looks as:

  • Paid marketing was primarily focusing on native advertising agencies.
  • Earned media marketing is just for publicity.
  • While coming, to Shared and Owned media both are major for nothing.

Digital marketing is a significant revolution in the present time, according to this, digital advertising agencies claim that social agencies lack the ideology of the brand perspective. Now the situation is like the social advertising agencies are ignoring to manage the long-term engagement. All these things are leading to the loss of opportunities for social media.

This article contains all the details only regarding Earned media Vs. Paid media.

What is earned and paid media?

Earned and paid media are the very important aspects everyone should remember in media marketing strategies. Below, we explain about earned media and paid media in brief.

Earned Media

Free media or Organic marketing is the other name of the Earned press; it even does the publicity of the brand makes the brand name visible in the marketing.

Word of mouth, buzz, reviews, comments, feedbacks, impression, news coverage, likes, shares, mentions, and all other promotional events that will increase the brand visibility, on the other way we can say that Earned media primary work is publicity gaining.

Earned media Vs paid media

Paid Media

This refers to the external marketing efforts that will involve a paid placement. The Key or the significant role here plays is the PPC native advertising, all the display ads and the branded content. If you want to grow your revenue and increase brand awareness in the market then Paid marketing is the best solution.

Paid media is somewhat very close to Traditional marketing. Paid media channel directly refers to the paid communication to impart the information to a wide range of audience. You get the paid publicity, attention and driving the whole traffic to your website by using the influencers, advertisements, and integrating brands.

Is SEO owned or earned media?

If you have a digital marketing strategy for your brand then combination on paid, owned, and earned in SEO will deliver you the best result. All these three things mutually rely upon each other and have to work together. With so many aspects to take care of in digital marketing, it is so typical that things will overlap on each other.

social media

While coming to SEO the significant part of SEO marketing involves on page effort. As, we know there are a lot of things that have to keep in mind like website content, tags, titles, keywords are very relevant. The owned media categorize this On-page SEO to optimize a page.

However, when we go for the off-page SEO. It emphasizes on the website and the positioning in the search rankings. If you want your company to be visible then should rank high at any cost.

Getting the higher ranking in the search engine involves organic searches, unpaid mentions from all those other credible sites. For accomplishing all these things earned media plays a major role.

Is PR earned media?

Earned media means publicity it gains the attention from the backlinks from reputable sites, word of mouth, online reviews, blogging, press focusing and influencers marketing. Having a third-party endorsement for your brand is essential.

PR or Public Relations media and earned media, as explained above, earned media means publicity and publicity involve connecting with the people and grabbing the attention. This at the end means PR or the public relation.

The number one secret of earned media marketing is to focus on other people. While the most important thing is building a reputation, and reaching people, this includes the most simple things like:

  • Connecting with the bloggers by appreciating them and by sharing the posts.
  • Give information about your business which will attract the audience to your customers.
  • Interact with the influencers in all the social media site so that they promote you.
  • Join groups related to your work and participate in the discussion.

By doing all these things your hard work will pay off. If you focus on the audience, it will improve your credibility, and thoughts process this is the peak and the highest point of good PR. Once the reputation is built in the market, you will be known to everyone and people will take to be as trustworthy businesspersons.

What brands have done paid and earned media well?

Brands that are using earned media or the earned media examples for the advertisement:

  • Share coke campaign where coke launched the cans customized with the names of the people on it last summer. It was a massive hit and people loved it a lot, this was a successful earned media campaign.
  • Dove soap a beauty product research about “The Truth of Beauty” this campaign received a significant response as the study showed that only 2% of the women though they are beautiful and the YouTube Video got 65million views.
  • Salesforce made a video on B2B earned media strategy for cloud computing. It just did nothing but simply explained cloud computing. However, this video got 1.6 million organic marketing views on YouTube.

Brands that have used paid media channel or examples of paid media for an advertisement:

  • Nike, the famous sports shoe brand, made a big stunt in the social media with its video. Nike now mastered the idea of the authenticity in product launching. The video “Nike- Dream crazy” became very famous and inspirational to all.
  • Dominos Pizza used Social media in a very fine way, it used a customized bot which allowed the users to enter the website and create their own pizza, later can name it and share on the social media site. Back in time, it used the PR technique in which the number of tweets will make your Pizza price so much cheaper. Recently this year September Domino’s used the Instagram very nicely to promote the brand.
Instagram AD

Source: Instagram Dominos

How to measure earned media value?

Earned media is what you get for your brand through Publicity. It involves some essential tactics which are mentioned below to measure the earned media value:

Impressions in the Online platform

Here, you measure the media using the digital marketing platform and the mentions you got from all your ads. This shows your targets, your audience and will accordingly help form the advertisement.

Once you get a certain group of people those who are following you regularly it is the best news that you will get because using these bunch of people you can increase your business and can reach more number of people.

It is like a whole cycle to influence commitment and achieve the engagements. It doesn’t take one thing into the foreground and the other into the background while keeping every impression in an equal place.

Resonating messages

If you have included your most desirable keys in your media coverage, then media resonating messages becomes very important to measure the earned media value. Select one or two succinct keys and regulate all the blogs, articles, that are present in your website to check all the keyphrase and the resonating messages present in the content.

Initially, this metric is useful for determining whether or not the media has understood the entire idea behind the launch of the critical resonating messages. While software is not yet reliable enough to deliver the desired result. Otherwise, the trained human analyst can easily identify all the resonating and key phrases in the content.

SOV or Share of Voice

A share of Voice compares the mentions in the internet media platform with the competitors. Suppose there are a total of 100 mentions of you and your competitors in a total and then your site is observed in 35 percent out of the whole then you share is 35%.

Whereas this necessary computation doesn’t reveal the readership publication data or if the impressions are positive or negative. Only if we dig deep into the data, then we will get the information regarding everything.

What is earned media and paid media strategy?

The earned media strategies and the paid media strategies are quite similar, like both the media platform requires the attention of the people and gain publicity.

Identify your objectives and set the targets

Know what is your goal and where you want to reach? Your aim of the business should be crystal clear and should be answerable to all the critical questions like are launching your website or brand in the public? Are your concentrating on just the products? Understanding your goal and underlying it accordingly is very crucial.

target reach

All these things involve a tremendous background work; the first thing is to know about is your target audience and the demographic area.

It is imperative because every person doesn’t like all the products and brands available make sure you know who are your audience like male or female, age groups suitable. This will help you increase your engagements in the business.

Distribute your ad in different channels

The first step here is to figure out what type of content does your audience like, and the customers link. Then frame a full advertisement accordingly which will interact with the people.

While posting it never and ever forget to post the ad in all the social media platform and, the online platform. Post on all those platforms where you think people stay active and all your focused audience also gather.

If you miss the social media platform, then you are going to lose a big chunk from your marketing aspects. Earned media definition means publicity and publicity mean reaching the people anyhow. Even Paid media channel also focuses on the Social media platform like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn so on.

influencers

Facebook has even recently said that it would promote the paid ads more than the organic. So concentrating on of the social media platform to get tremendous results. Here the trick is the influencers, these days if you promote your Advertisement or brand with the help of the Influencers then you can get a lot of increased results.

Check efforts

While you release the advertisement in the online platform remember to track the success rate. For both, the earned marketing which is organic marketing and the paid media channel which is bought both the things requires checking the growth rate. Some metrics would be some views, likes, shares, bounce rate, subscribers, unique visits to the site.

take feedback

All these things are critical to check the efforts while you are going through a media planning strategy.

CONCLUSION

Paid media Vs. Earned media both things are critical in digital marketing aspect. Both are equally very important for the native advertising and increasing the visibility in the online media. It is you who have to decide which one you are selecting for your marketing tactics.

While there are a lot of questions, people get in their mind while talking about the earned media vs paid media. If you are also confused and have some queries like this, then feel free to write to us. We will surely help you!

Best and Easy Last minute Christmas Gift Ideas

Best and Easy Last minute Christmas Gift Ideas

Hey! It is Christmas already. By now you might have sorted out everything about Christmas. Just in case, if you didn’t shop for your family or friends hurry up! It’s not too late for awesome Christmas presents! So, to make the work easy for you we bring you some awesome easy and last minute Christmas Gift Ideas.

You can pick out thoughtful Christmas gift ideas for everyone on your list with these last-minute, most demanding and budget-friendly last minute Christmas gift ideas which ship on the same day. Therefore, celebrating this joyful festival, it would be best to exchange gifts. Christmas Gifts is a beautiful way to spread the joy of this season. Be it last minute Christmas gifts ideas for your parents, wife, husband, children, and friends; gifts are shared with everyone on this day to make your loved ones feel special.

Christmas Gift Ideas for $10 $20?

However, you can also plan great Christmas Gift ideas for children, and Gift ideas for friends, gifts are shared with everyone on this day to make them feel special and loved.
The selection for gifts is nothing but a great hunt. You need to think and plan to buy gifts. Hence, as soon as December starts, gifting season also starts. No doubt, selecting a gift is a task. Also, you keep the budget in mind. You cannot spend a fortune on gifts to everyone. However, there are many wonderful Christmas Gift Ideas for $10 and $20.

Some of the Christmas Gift Ideas for below $10.

There is happiness in small things. One cannot ignore this. To make it easy for you, here are an amazing Christmas Gift Ideas for $10. From Tea Infusers to Coffee Mugs,  Bonsai Tea Seeds and many more. For more Christmas Gift Ideas, you can visit Penny hoard.

  • Tea Infusers: Are you a tea lover? Then this is a must for your Christmas gift. You can also gift to your friend, comes at a very friendly budget of $8.98.
  • Coffee Mug: This is a must for any coffee person, which comes in many attractive colors and dishwasher safe. You can get one as a Christmas Gift Ideas for $9.80.
  • Bonsai Seeds: We never knew that Bonsai Seeds come for a low price? Right? This will be a perfect Christmas Gift Idea for the loved ones who love greens!
  • Handmade Soaps: One of the best Christmas Gift Ideas to rejuvenate the skin and pamper yourself and also your loved ones. So, what are you waiting for? Go grab the offer and make most of it.

Some of the Christmas Gift Ideas for $20.

Christmas Gift Ideas for $20: You will find a number of gift options to choose for $20. Not only expensive gifts will make you happy always, try for a less expensive Christmas Gifts this year and see how it works. For example, you can easily find a keychain, a clutch for an evening party, simple earrings organizer and many more. For amazing Christmas Gift Ideas For $ 20.

However for more Christmas Gift Ideas see here at cosmopolitan.

  • An evening party fancy clutch: Make a style statement with this red adorable evening bag with pearls. Who said fancy things cost you more?. You can own this for $19.00.
  • Keychain: This is a cool thing to gift. You will find “keys” written on one side and “please” on the other. You can buy this for $16.00.
  • Earring Organizer: Isn’t messy that you cannot find the right pair of earrings at the right time. A great Christmas Gift Idea to store all the studs at the same place. You can this for $19.00.

To keep the magic and joy of this Christmas alive, we came up with a solution here. You will quite a handy last-minute Christmas Gifting ideas for the beautiful relations of yours.

What is the Last Minute Christmas Gift Ideas?

You will find a variety of available Last Minute Gift Ideas for every member of your family.

  • Last minute Gifts for Parents: This is the right time you gift your parent something and show your love, concern, and affection. You have a choice for Last minute gifts Ideas for Parents, something that both of them can enjoy together.
  • Last minute Gift for Friends: Getting Christmas gifts Ideas for your extended family is also very important. Friends share a major role in our lives, this is the perfect time to last minute gift Ideas for friends and show them you care for them.
  • Last minute Gift for Wife: Life partners must always be happy and you should make them realize that they are an essential part of your life. This Christmas Last minute gift Ideas for a wife with the most lovable and unique things is very precious.
  • Last minute Gift for Husband: For any family, a husband is the pillar strength of your family. He protects your family, kids and takes care of everything just with a smile. Show your concern and immense love by choosing the best last minute Christmas gift ideas for husband.
  • Last minute Gift for kids:  No doubt, all kids love toys. It is equally important that these tiny bubbly kids are always happy. This Christmas let them know how strong is your love towards kids. Surprise them with some amazing toys and their favorite stuff. Choose the unique Last minute gift Ideas for kids and to celebrate with lots of joy.

The selection for gifts is nothing but a great hunt. You need to think and plan to buy gifts. Hence, as soon as December starts, gifting season also starts. No doubt, selecting a gift is a task. To keep the magic and joy of this Christmas alive, we came up with a solution here. You will find quite a handy last-minute Christmas Gift ideas for the harmonious relations of yours.

christmas gifts

Gift of Reading

You can always gift good reading books. This trend will never go off fashion. However, technology is advanced; many people love to spend time reading books. This will be a great idea to please them with some fantastic books. You are gifting them the time. At least like this, people will sit for sometime and some self-time. You will find great books on reasonable offers.

Gift of Listening

Music cannot replace anything. The best therapy to lift your Christmas spirit is gifting some fantastic music. Let this Christmas be more interesting with the favorite music of your loved ones.

Gift of Gaming

It is Gaming always! These days there are very popular among all age groups. Video games are the best option for gifting this Christmas. Gaming is the best stress buster. You can find many offers in video games.

Gift for Techies

Technology is ever-changing and why not this Christmas? Whether you are searching for the highest rated technical gadgets or the necessary technical stuff, you will find best last-minute Christmas Gift ideas for every budget of yours this 2018.

You will have to find lots of last minute Christmas Gift ideas. Amazon will give the best options and best deals on everything you search. You cannot miss out a single opportunity to gift your loved ones, with the same day delivery.

Christmas is nothing without fancy cakes! We will always find a reason to bake cakes and cookies. Well, do not worry if you cannot manage to cook one such Christmas cake or cookies. Finding last minute Christmas Gift Ideas is little tricky. To satisfy each and everyone and to impress them takes little but no much time.

Everything you want to gift this holiday season and also this Christmas Gifting year is much easier now. You can gift some fantastic last minute Christmas gifts to her that can impress her. You will find the whole a lot of gifting range at an excellent price.

Are you running out of time? And still, want to your family and friends? No need to worry at all! There are a lot of good last minute Christmas gift ideas that you can make yourself too. Find something that works best for you:

What are the Best Handmade Last Minute Christmas Gift Ideas?

No doubt, gifting your loved ones is immense joy and pleasure. However, you cannot always buy presents on time.  Last Minute Christmas Gift ideas are the only way to should opt and impress your family. Apart from Christmas tree shopping, if you are creative enough to make some fantastic handmade Last Minute Christmas Gift Ideas, these mentioned last minute Christmas Gift ideas are very easy to make and will be best to gift for parents, a gift for friends, a gift for wife, a gift for husband and gift for kids.

Home Decor:

You will always want to have more of beautiful and funky home decors. Who will get bored of wonderful home decor or a wall art?. You can make yourself or for your loved ones without much time.

last minute christmas gifts

Magic Bake

What could be more lovely than a batch of cupcakes with yummy toppings? Within in no time, you can start baking aromatic cupcakes and start with quick vanilla or chocolate topping. An extra topping is always an extra love. You can top it with strawberries, apple or any fruit available. Pack them in a cute gift box for a nice look.
cupcakes

Roses can never go wrong

Nothing beats the pleasant smell of fresh roses. In no time you can quickly gather all the flowers, and make a good flower bouquet. For a personal touch, add a personal message to them. You can pack it along with some funky craft work which will impress your loved ones instantly.

bouquets

You can pack it along with some funky craft work which will impress your loved ones instantly. It will lift up the Christmas spirit for sure!

Handmade Candle Holders 

Christmas is all about lights and candles. Decorating with candles gives a different look and adds more elegance. However, for a quick candle holder preparation, you can mix or blend clay with colors.

christmas gifts

Let them dry a little and finish the look with nail paint enamel. You can customize according to their taste. Adding a personal touch will definitely impress your loved ones. This will surely be the best last minute Christmas Gift ideas for this season.

Customized Bottles

Have you heard of this saying, old wine in a new bottle? Yes, this could be the best bet to lift the last minute Christmas Gift ideas. You could also gift a bottle bag and gift your loved ones with a wine bottle packed in a bag. The customized bag also will be a great idea as last minute Christmas Gift Ideas.

Also, you can do is, pack it in a customized bottle with a warm message. There you go! For a complete Christmas gift ideas look, pack it in a wine bag and go ahead and rock the Christmas party.

customized bottles

Gift Greens

Go Green! Yes, gift a low maintained decorative plant with a customized plant jar with the first letters of the people to whom you are gifting. Also, you can add a personalized message or a special quote to make it more special.

plants

This is the best last minute Christmas Gift idea and will never disappoint you. Beautiful homes with beautiful greens will bring the positive vibes.

Fresh Herbs 

For the friend that loves cooking and being in the kitchen, here is the time to grab some fresh herbs like mint, rosemary, basil and plant them in a simple jar. It is so pleasant to keep on a window of the kitchen.

christmas herbs

This adds beauty and also get lots of compliments. Whenever your loved ones will use these gifted herbs, this will add more taste to the dishes. No doubt, this will the best last minute Christmas Gift ideas.

Pictures Are Memories 

Hanging Photo Collage can be best last-minute Christmas Gift ideas. Within no time you can grab a few photos and make a beautiful collage by pasting with decorative items and make it look funkier. This way you can again cherish the good old times and memories.

christmas lights

Cookies And Candy Fun 

What is a Christmas without cookies and candies? You can arrange the chocolate chip cookies, oat cookies, raisin cookies and fruit cookies in a glass jar and tie them with a red ribbon for more Christmas feel. Moreover, you can add the baking instructions and also a note in the lid.

Keynotes:

Most of the time, Christmas is all about long planning. However, it is not possible always to keep on time. A good get together of friends and family is on top of the cards. However, if you could not arrange the Christmas Gifts on time, worry not. As discussed above, these last-minute Christmas Gift Ideas will come to rescue.

With all these things you can gift your loved ones with these amazing last minute Gift ideas and get flooded with compliments.

Do let us know for any suggestions on this. We are always welcome for improvisations.

Merry Christmas!!!

What are the Top 7 Instagram Marketing Trends to take over 2019?

What are the Top 7 Instagram Marketing Trends to take over 2019?

We are coming to an end of the year and in this whole year we saw that Instagram gained a lot of popularity and people are using it a lot. Starting from reaching to 1 billion subscribers to banning the fake users Instagram has introduced a lot of new things. Now people are eager to know the new and top Instagram Marketing Trends that is going to come on in 2019.

This article will give you brief about the Instagram strategy and all the latest Instagram Marketing trends that are coming in 2019.

HOW TO CREATE INSTAGRAM STRATEGY?

Discover your customer’s

Similar to other social media strategies the first thing that comes up is discovering who is your potential viewer? There are some things which you should take into account while finding out the target customers like the Location, age, gender, interest, the amount of time they spend on social media, etc. Every detail will help you in finding the potential viewer.

Here also you have a confusion? Check the famous events that are going on. From this, you can get the information about the interested or popular hashtags. Check the profiles and interests of the people. You can also find out the list of competitors through this. All these seem very difficult, but when you once start working on this, it will not be so difficult.

Plan before writing

Track down all those content that regarding and all those which you are thinking to write. The solution for this is making an editorial calendar or a full report for it. Whenever you want to get information about the previous posts checks the rules. It cut down the time required for managing the Instagram marketing posts.

Checking all these types of things and planning the Instagram marketing trends stories accordingly to by utilizing the caption, hashtags, other features, etc. in advance. In the Editorial calendar, you can even mention the famous or most awaited events that are going to happen. If you are not maintaining a similar kind of editorial document, then you are wasting a lot of time in “chasing the stars just by sitting in the room.” So it is high time to make an editorial report and start following and maintaining it.

instagram marketing trends

Know your competition

The first step is to know who are your audience are and target them. After knowing about the audience know who are your competitors are and start analyzing them. Analyzing means looking what your competitors and marketers are doing to bring their brand name on top.

Check their marketing strategies on top Instagram marketing trends to engage a lot of people in their brand. Know the popular hashtags, the posts which got highest engagements, how they got that much higher engagement? What are the captions used? And the period that is required to publish the posts? What is their growth rate? All these questions are like the Milestone which you have to achieve to have a successful Instagram story for business.

Brand consistency in Instagram

Always keep in mind while writing content to engage people and establish your brand name. It becomes essential to publish those contents which are related, catchy and attract the audience. If you are posting some random content, disconnected and not to the topic that will not grab the attention of the audience. Instead, make the people leave your page.

Let’s take the example of World Cricket Army we used the name as the tag #WorldCricketArmy. In India people worship cricket. We provide live updates and ongoing trends in cricket. This is what we call as a perfect Instagram marketing account. The Instagram story for business should be something like if people see your even one picture, they should be able to recognize you.

instagram world cricket army

HOW TO USE THE STICKERS, LOCATION, AND HASHTAGS

With the usual Instagram post, you can even use the hashtags, stickers, and geolocation. You can add these stickers, hashtags, and geolocation to your photos, videos, gifs.

Stickers

instagram stickers          instagram sticker

Whenever you want to upload any video, picture, or gif, you will get an option of using the stickers, location or the hashtags that are appropriate which helps in increasing the viewer engagement. Below is the type of options that are available in labels:

Question Sticker: You ask the people to ask any question to you they like or ask any question and tell the viewers to reply to it. Viewers have to tap the sticker and ask the question or respond the answer that’s it.

Poll sticker: Get feedback by writing the question and answers that are personalized. When someone will see and poll on it. This will show the immediate and real-time result to that person.

Hashtag Sticker: Sticker will consist of the particular hashtag whenever the person clicks on it. That person will be redirected to the hashtag page.

Product stickers: You have an account on Instagram, and it approved for shopping on Instagram. Even can use these stickers on any of the photos and upload it in your Instagram story. By utilizing these product stickers to any of the product images. The buyers can know a lot of things about the same product on the first tap and when tapped to purchase the same product.

Selfie Sticker: In this sticker when you tap it. This will redirect you to the profile picture where you can start taking the images that you can use as stickers for your next story.

Music Sticker: This allows the people to upload a specific part of the song in your story.

Geolocation

Geotags will help you in determining the stories in a particular location. Like some favorite place or some specific place in a city. Regularly posting about your situation and giving the details will help to attract the people. Mainly those who are searching in a particular area or spot. It will help them as a guide to a specific place.

Hashtags

Hashtags are used commonly to make your page visible on the online site. Whereas when viewers click it, hashtags them away from your page to the source page of the hashtag.
These have better use when you have your hashtags. For example, if you are running a competition in which your viewers have to click pictures and submit it. But these pictures should have your products in this with your brand hashtag. If you follow the way mentioned above for your Instagram story, then people will get attracted to your post and eventually to your brand.

 

TIPS TO BOOST CONVERSIONS IN INSTAGRAM

There are several ways by following which you can convert the Followers in your Instagram marketing trend to the Paid Customer’s. Below are some of the ideas that you can consider:

Retarget the ADs

Retarget the AD campaigns audience who have already searched a product but didn’t make a purchase. Marketing the same product again or the similar kind of products may help to make the customer buy the product in addition to some other product.

Instagram marketing has to say that ADs may be versatile and unique, but it allows you to target the individuals or group of people. All those who follow you and make sure these individuals should purchase from you. Instead should see the content right in front of them.

Get reviews from influencer

Work with influencers who are well known, and people believe and follow. Express your words with the help of the influencers. Don’t just pay them to promote your brand and get only positive reviews instead say them to give honest reviews about their opinion.

If the influencer even comments about the product in a criticizing way take it positively because people who will see will thing the company and promotion are genuine.

Personalize content

Customized content creation makes the people unique and draws more people to your brand. You can even find out the people who are curious about buying and will know about the people and the reviews who already made the purchase and liked it. This builds the trust and believes in the people. A great way of including all this in our brand is by reposting all the images by the audience and make them post your pictures.

Use high-quality images

Whenever you post the photos, publish a kind of images that will match your brand status. You should always be able to tell a story depending on the color, the model chosen and the total quality. When people look at it, they will feel attracted and will surely want to order the food. It makes them think that some professionalized chef prepares the food. Even people can drool over for the taste and order it soon.

TOP INSTAGRAM MARKETING TRENDS

The latest Instagram marketing Trends involves all the new things introduced in 2018 and the upcoming trends in the year 2019:

  1. Creators account for Influencers
  2. New Instagram Countdown stickers
  3. Instagram IGTV for creators
  4. AR in the Instagram
  5. Direct buying in Instagram
  6. Say Goodbye! to fake accounts
  7. Nano Influencers are in demand

Creators account for Influencers

The latest Instagram trends that will be seeing them in the upcoming year is the Creators account for the influencers. However, Instagram is still now checking this feature. In this, the high profile influencers and the celebrities will get an option to filter all the direct messages and will be able to see only the in-depth analysis from the followers.

According to the reports, this new strategy is being tested with a small group of the Instagram influencers. In the next year, we can expect that this new feature will roll out all the high profile influencers and the celebrities. This new addition will filter all the quality direct messages and can keep access to limited messages.

Influencers even get a chance to access the data of how many people are following and who are leaving or unfollowing the Instagram page.

Every much similar like Twitter, Instagram is giving an opportunity to the celebrities and influencers to control their personal data and increase the quality of user experience.

New Instagram Countdown stickers

Instagram countdown

Source: searchengineland

Recently Instagram has released a new sticker that is the Countdown sticker. This sticker you can use it in your Instagram Story and it is very good for the marketers as they can showcase the countdown for certain item they are going to sale.

Even the retailers can use the Countdown stickers in stories to show the customers the offers and the time limit for it that will expire soon. Or else the one which is just about to start. After the countdown sticker is being used, it is can reuse again after the previous one expires.

Whoever will see the countdown can follow it and will get the notification about it in regular intervals.

Instagram IGTV for creators

Earlier this year Instagram introduced IGTV new video sharing platform for the individuals, it has a vertical video viewing playback. Here the creators can address the audience who exclusively use the mobile phones and the marketers can directly the audience.

instagram igtv

Why does Instagram supporting the vertical video viewing option? Because it wants to encourage the Nano Influencers and the new brands and influencers to come forward and do the video exclusively for the mobile phones. However, people usually use mobile phones than the desktop that too in a vertical position.

Creating video content to increase brand visibility is the new trend. The brands will increase the usage of IGTV videos to engage people and make the brand gain visibility.

AR in the Instagram

Instagram is allowing all the third party developers to develop new filters on Instagram. According to recent reports, there will be an increase in the use of the AR or the Augmented Reality and VR or Virtual Reality. In the future near AR and VR will mean a lot not just to Instagram but to the whole social media.

instagram ar image

 

The Instagram filters are seriously great fun to use and this is all due to AR it is like a futuristic sci-fi movie. However, Instagram and Facebook combinedly are planning to launch the advanced AR version in form of messages. In this, in your personal messages, you can send the AR filtered images, pictures, videos etc.

Virtual Reality

In the future, not just the AR filtered images even the VR is taking over the whole social media fastly.  We can find a lot of the latest advancement in Instagram which will make the users also excited.

Direct buying in Instagram

As mentioned in the previous article “Social media trends” Instagram will soon be including the buying option. Earlier this year Instagram introduced the shop option where you can directly see the cost of the item that is present in the picture. After that, you can even add the thing to the cart. Then you can go to the official site and make a buying there.

Next year it is expected that not just adding to the cart even the buying would be made directly. Yes! you hear it right the buying option will be enabled. You don’t require to go to the official website to make the purchase can make the purchase easily on the Instagram page.

Instagram has improved its standards a lot it is not just an image sharing platform now. It has raised a lot in terms of standards and giving a lot more than the images sharing.

Say Goodbye! to fake accounts

Late this year Instagram already announced that it would take strict actions and will delete all the fake users. The similar thing will continue with a haul this year leading to deletion of all fake users and the accounts. All thanks to the Instagram API to keep the social media platform genuine and give the best customer service.

instagram fake accounts

It doesn’t matter if you are a celebrity or an influencer whoever is having the fake accounts will be removed. However, it is giving a full opportunity to influencer to grow. While some of the influencers and the brands may be disappointed with this new thing of Instagram and have to search an alternative to connect the users which is more genuine.

To increase the engagements, the best techniques would be:

  • Use the live streaming option to connect directly to your followers, and engage with them, people feel connected and start following to you. Showcase your background details, day to day life.
  • Also use some of the gif images, videos, Q-A session.
  • Respond always to your customers’ comments and the messages; they will feel you are genuine with good content and will follow you.

Nano Influencers are in demand

Due to the decrease of fake accounts now the brands are turning towards the influencers. Brands want to work with the influencers with a good number of followers. In the race of huge follower influencer brands are opting for the smaller users in which they have a follower list of minimum 1000 followers to reach people.

influencers

According to Neilsen’s report, 92% of the customers believe in an item when recommended from an individual more than if a brand does. So, we can predict that until 2019 more brands will come up who will opt for the Nano influencers so that they can reach more people.

The key rule here is concentrating on nano influencer this will automatically gather you fewer people but loyal customers. Brands are concentrating more number of Nano influencers than one big influencer.

Conclusion

Are you ready for all the new and top Instagram Marketing trends? That will take down social media in a different angle and provide the users a genuine platform. It all involves a lot of planning and implementing strategy. Eventually, in a social media platform, only those people get success when people start embracing the new and the latest techniques that are coming every day.

People these days don’t like the old trends, and an old account so, bending your strategies according to the new technology is the most required, and if you keep an eye on the future and the upcoming trends then no one will stop you from gaining success.

If you need some extra help regarding these trends or any other trends, reach out to us, we will give our best to resolve your problem.

 

Creativity Vs Optimization: What Works Better for Content Marketing?

Creativity Vs Optimization: What Works Better for Content Marketing?

This article was written as part of the SEMrush Big Blogging Contest

Creating content that hits the mark and attracts traffic is a difficult task for content writers. These days brands are taking a fresh approach to proactive content management. Most brands are paying a lot of attention to optimizing content that involves execution. However, the companies are also want to expand their brand name, in these type of scenario content marketing is the best way to grow your brand name in digital media and get unique searches.

content marketing

Above in the statistics, you can see how important Content marketing is for digital marketing. So, it is always said that building content and gathering the follower is not so much easy it involves lots of patience. Apart from patience, the first question that pops up into everybody’s head is: “Could building an optimization strategy be the way to achieve your desired online results?”

Nowadays, being a content marketer is not an easy task, just a couple of things you have to pay attention to;

  • Make sure you deliver creative writing.
  • Create relevant content.
  • Know your audience.
  • Optimize the text that you have written.

How to balance creativity and optimization?

Creativity and optimization work together. Until now you must be having a question “how creativity and optimization can be balanced?” to make you understand in details below we mentioned some critical points.

LIST OUT IMPORTANT KEYWORDS

Whenever you are writing content, it is essential to list out all relevant keywords, related to the topic, first. Do a keyword search and use the results in your content. There are a lot of tools available explicitly designed to help you find the keywords you are after. Tools such as SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner and Soovle are some free examples that do a perfect job.

keywords

Once you have your list of keywords, prepare your text for implementation of these words. Don’t just dump the keywords in your writing but try to weave them in naturally. Simply draining in all of your keywords reduces the quality of your text and will affect your website ranking in the end.

KEEP TRACK OF COMPETITORS

Keeping track of the competition and what they are currently up to is an essential element of your day job as a content marketer. Be smart and use successes of others but try to avoid mistakes made by others. Technology has made things easy nowadays there are a lot of pages and sites available in the online media which will help you in getting information about your competitors.

Some things that you have to keep track of while checking the competition:

  • How many keywords does the competitor’s website use?
  • What are the topics they usually cover?
  • What are minor topics they write about that support their general coverage?
  • Check if their coverage is complete and correct.

See, if your contender sites are making any mistakes or if their coverage is incomplete, try to fill the gap. This will keep you a step ahead of your competitor, and you will have some unique content which they even they don’t have. So, it gives you a chance to grab it and kill it.

track competitors

Never forget to check how their content is performing and how many engagements are recorded. Then, also check which articles or blog posts and the blogs are performing best on engagement, social shares, and link-building. Don’t forget the most critical point; check the SERP (Search Engine Result Page) of the page, article of the blog post.

If you want to make all these things work then having a proper content optimization and accordingly planning the content marketing strategy becomes very crucial.

INCLUDE ALL THE AUDIENCE ISSUES

As remember, before jumping into a conclusion and start to work, it always better to know what your audience wants and what are they looking. Lessening the stress and pain of your audience should be your aim.

Customers are the path to success, for all the efforts that you invested, if people find your article to be good enough then the audience will share it for sure. This automatically increases the article reach and will gather more viewers. Eventually, the number of people reading your content increases, then the bot in Google will assess that your content is capable enough to rank higher.

solutions

Hence, it is always an excellent idea to concentrate on the problems of the viewers because if we solve the audience problems then only people will come to us and still make sure SEO content strategy revolves around this.

Use different channels to communicate with users. Before you start conveying, check all those channels where you will find active users. To make your work bit easy we mention some of the channels below which are used by a lot of people:

  • Quora
  • Reddit
  • GrowthHackers
  • Zest.com

The viewers are using these channels a lot to get good contents, other than these there are few other social media channels where you can find good content.

Initially, if you follow these channels, you will get to know what are the topics people are interested to read. Not, just the topics you even get the idea about what is the language the writers are using and at what time which type of content is trending, and what people are interested to read. All these things are very relevant which you have to keep in mind while writing content.

HAVE CREATIVE AND ENGAGING CONTENTS

According to the surveys, it is recorded that Humans have very less concentration, so it becomes imperative for your content to be engaging. Even a goldfish has attention up to 9 seconds which is more than that of the Human beings. This clearly shows that users may come to your blog but can return without checking your content. Also if some of the viewers may visit your blog but doesn’t read full content, just read the headlines and close it.

content marketing

So, before you start to write a content keep in mind about the Skimmers and try to write a creative and engaging content, that will avoid the bounce rates. Use the Italics fonts, bullet points, include required keywords, and subheadings.

Highlight all the critical points, write short sentences and short paragraphs because if you have long paragraphs, people lose interest quickly. Place all the relevant issues in the beginning, middle and at the end.

INCLUDE IMAGES, FACT, FIGURES

As it is said, images speak millions than the words does. It is essential to use relevant pictures. If you have a content that has only words, then it doesn’t attract people. While using this images, videos, gifs keep the people stuck to the blog. Not just the photos even the Facts and Figures are important it improves the Search Engine Optimization.

Content gets rich support through the images, facts, and figures, and the results here are positive. A compelling, inspiring content with events, characters, and models involve people deep into it. Nowadays, people believe more on the facts, images, figures and understand the facts better than normal content. There are a lot of top websites like Pew Research Center and Statista that provide the facts and figure about everything in the world. While for pictures you can take a look at the free image sites like Pixabay, Pexels, Unsplash.

creativity and optimization

Nevertheless, you can find various ways to include images like product image, infographics, gifs, blog images, anything you can use that is related to your topic. It goes similar with all the figures and facts. While coming to data include the infographics because no one wants to see boring statistics.

So, this sums up that creativity and optimization in content marketing, both are important and should be taken care.

Conclusion

Creativity and Optimization both operate collectively. In a content, if Creativity and optimization are balanced, then it gives immense and excellent results. So, both works best for content marketing of any brand.

If you want us to add some more important points which we missed, you can comment or email us!

We will feel delighted to include it in the blog!

What are the Latest Social Media Marketing Trends in 2019?

What are the Latest Social Media Marketing Trends in 2019?

Social media keeps on changing in place of it new and latest social media marketing trends 2019 updates in place of older ones. A lot of people all over the world use social media for various purposes.

As it is the time to say goodbye to 2018 and embrace 2019, to make this new year fantastic for you. We bring ideas and suggestions to know the latest social media marketing trends that we can expect to see in 2019 as the social media marketing updates.

Which is the most used social media platform?

Popular social media site

Facebook is the popular social media platform and is the top sites used for social media marketing by a lot of people all over the world. Here, the user base is enormous after Facebook all other social media sites like YouTube, WhatsApp comes into competition.

However, if we dig deeper into it, we can find 80% of the social media app users are from Generation Z, and then 74% are the millennials. These two are the significant category people who take the help of social media metrics even to make a purchase.

While people using so much social media will lead to increased spam contents. To reduce it and make the social media app user-friendly the primary social media site like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube have started taking necessary actions against it. Earlier, in 2018 Facebook spammed 837 million spam contents in 3 months, on the other hand, Instagram has taken down 5 million violence related graphic content.

Eventually, in the mid of the year, 2018 Instagram announced that it would spam all the fake users and followers to make the platform generic, so, as Facebook promised. As we can see so the social media apps are making sure to remove all the spammed content and fake users it is giving and evident chance to the influences to grow.

According to Google Digital SnapShot, the people preferring the influencers reviews and following them has increased a lot. As the spam content and fake users have decreased the influencers are growing. The millennials following the influencer are increasing day by day. We can expect shortly; they will play a significant role in promoting the brands.

Top social media sites

Statistic of social media trending

Facebook

The world’s largest and loved social networking site is Facebook. Eventually, Facebook is considered to be the top social media marketing site and widely used all over the world. Approximately, there are 2 billion active user’s on Facebook.

Facebook

YouTube

In the digital platform, the public’s favorite video sharing platform is YouTube. People here can upload and view all type of videos that they want. Roughly there are 1.8 billion YouTube users all over the world.

YouTube

WhatsApp

While WhatsApp social media used by a maximum number of people and owned by Facebook. It is famous for sending personal texts to those whose contact you have. Instead, being under Facebook, it works independently. There are 1 billion active user’s in WhatsApp.

WhatsApp

Instagram

Unique social media site Instagram: which contains images and also owned by Facebook. In short, period became very active among people maintaining a 1 billion users record.

Instagram

Twitter

In Twitter people to follow each other people with whom they want to connect and can leave short messages. It has an approximate of 320 million users per month.

Twitter

Reddit

Best place for writers. People can upload their content and blogs. Reddit is a hub of bloggers. It has an approximate 100 million users per month.

LinkedIn

Ultimately, LinkedIn considered as one of the biggest professional online platform available. It has more than 400 million users and is open 20 different languages.

LinkedIn

Pinterest

Nowadays, Pinterest is grabbing all the limelight with the increased number of users.  It has 20 million unique visits every month. It has become a critical player in the social media marketing network and promoting the brands.

Pinterest

How do I promote my social media?

Nowadays, every agency present should find one way, or the other is having a website in digital media. This is not it; even it became very crucial for every company to be visible in digital media including social media.

You can see below some important that are to be considered to promote your social media:

  •  Always be very active in social and always provide your complete details in all the social media sites in which you have a company profile.

Social media trends

  • Social media without being social is useless, interaction is essential, engage with the people.
  • Don’t over promote your brand with a lot of ADs, Keep it less but interactive.
  • Share interactive videos, images, gifs and engage the audiences in your brand.

What are the latest social media marketing trends?

This is the right time as we all are coming to the end of the year, it is the exact time when all the techie’s start searching for the latest and new trends. Today, we mention some of the latest social media marketing trends that are upcoming and will take the digital marketing into another level.

The latest social media marketing trends are:

  1. Restoring customers trust.
  2. Facebook shop on your store.
  3. Six seconds video is old format ad.
  4. E-commerce shopping using Instagram.
  5. Augmented Reality or AR on Instagram.
  6. Facebook: supporting paid ADs.
  7. Increased use of Dark Social.
  8. Live Streaming.

RESTORING CUSTOMERS TRUST

In the year 2018, we have seen a lot of data breaches in which the major one was the Facebook data breach then Google+ user accounts hacked, after which the Quora data breach also took place. Upon all these, the most unexpected one was 50 million Facebook accounts hacked, and 90 million were sent mail to change the password.

It was one of the most controversial data breaches that took place, while the blame is on Cambridge Analytica for infringing some 50 million users data so that they can influence the elections.

All these data breach and misused protection people lost trust in social media platform. To overcome this the significant trend coming this year is:

Social media platforms are striving hard to regain trust and rebuild the brand name among the people. Also, trying to build up a stronger protection guidelines so the further data breach can be stopped.

All the social media sites are busting the Fake users in the platform to promote their brand and gain users. Instagram, Facebook has already taken a necessary step. You can also track down yourself with the tool called SparkToro that will help you in knowing the fake accounts and the fake follower.

Social media trends

(Source: Sparktoro)

Facebook Trust issues

Not just the Facebook data breach, the social media giants were paid for fact-checking on behave of Facebook. It hired the private agency to check the content and remove the accounts, reducing all the fake comments and the users. This action was majorly for President Donald Trump, and the counterfeit users were suspected from Russia spreading hatred against President.

One of the marketing agency hired by Facebook to accomplish this task was snopes.com, they said in the media that.

“Facebook is not taking anything easy, and just making themselves look good and paying the agency.” With this statement, Facebook even gained a lot of criticism and gave people another opportunity to lose trust.

There were three separate information was found to decrease the hatred messages on Facebook. While this idea backstabbed and only minimal results came to limelight, and the third party fact checkers even told that Facebook ignored all the outstanding results which led to minimal effects that impact the work.

According to one of the research expert using Facebook said that:

Trust is something which will be there until someone gives a reason to lose it and Facebook is giving this everytime so, people are losing trust from Facebook.

However, the people who majorly suffered from this data breach is the Europeans. According, to the GDPR or the privacy and policies, act Facebook charged in the court and CEO of Facebook was asked to attend the trials. Due, to this protection breach a lot of people vastly from Europe, left the Facebook platform which is a considerable loss.

FACEBOOK SHOP ON YOUR STORE

If you have a Facebook Business page or community but not the Facebook shop, then it is the high time to have it. People and companies these days are majorly turning towards Social media. Create a Facebook shop for your store to provide the consumers what they want.

However, you can find the plugins for Prestastop, Magento, Shopify that will help you to integrate the store on your Facebook page. It is the best way to convert normal users to customers, by using this you can track the customers, what are they buying, what is there are of interest. Not just this, you can even track where are people are coming from, how they came and where they left. 

While this is the latest trend which you can expect to see in the next year, where you can keep track of your customers and their interests to have smart analytics.

6 SECONDS VIDEO IS OLD FORMAT AD

Gone were those days when companies used to have only content and write up nothing more than that. While these people don’t want to see the old boring text that is when the videos came. The ads shown using the videos are appreciated the more.

People these days turned towards YouTube for business branding; earlier the Video ADs were used to be of 30 seconds. Gradually with time, the 30 seconds ADs became old and boring that when it was recommended to have the 6-second ads. It is the shortest form of the ADs with people stuck to it.

According to one of the leading brands L’Oréal beauty products they have used the best social media marketing strategy to rule the social media platform and they said:

Earlier we used to rely on 30 seconds AD, but now it is good to break and make 50X more Video content than a longer one. Internally, today’s pitch audience is for 2 Seconds Ads and 6 seconds has become the new long format ADs. Each of the videos here would be short and customer-centric.

E-COMMERCE SHOPPING USING INSTAGRAM

This year Instagram came with the latest and new shopping feature. Here, people can look at the products and price on Instagram, they can add to cart and shop later in the original site. Eventually, this trend was quite a big transform. Keeping this thing in mind we can expect that in the coming years there will see a massive transformation and new trends are arriving soon.

In the year 2018, adding the products into the cart till here it was limited.

While in the next year it is likely that Instagram will also introduce the buy option. Here you can directly buy in Instagram instead of visiting the brand site. Then putting soul into branding soon it is going to deliver the goods to doorstep.

Instagram ADs

We can expect that Instagram is turning towards a whole new E-commerce site much more than that of picture sharing and messaging.

AUGMENTED REALITY or AR ON INSTAGRAM

With the successful implementation of the Augmented Reality or AR through the most popular and loved game Pokemon Go! That is People came to know about AR. Slowly this social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat took over the AR and made people go head over heels for the AR pictures.

While coming to Instagram, it already has gained a lot of popularity and people these days are turning more towards Instagram. However, Instagram even allowed the third party users to create the Instagram filters. There are huge plans for future in AR that will be undertaken by the social media platform.

Facebook, is going to introduce the personalized messages to the customers, which will contain the product images that will have AR. Near future, all the brands will be using AR videos to increase the user experience. It may include AR lens which will help the user to virtually try he product. At first used the AR feature in the year 2019 Facebook will be using the AR lens in personalized message to improve user experience.

Google is supporting a lot to the Organic search results than the paid ads, and on the other hand, Facebook is supporting more the Paid Ads.

Yes, you hear it right Facebook is supporting more the ADs that are paid and decreasing the reach of the organic ADs. This may be a disheartening issue for all the brands who have a base on Facebook.

The researches even show that if a page is having likes approximately 500,000 in this only 2% would be the organic ADs. While the other disheartening news is this will increase in the upcoming years. Eventually, lessening the organic reaches maybe till somewhat negligible. 

Facebook ADs

Facebook even claimed that daily Facebook receives a lot of contents in the case of organic ads. For this, they have to become very picky about the materials. Now they have to keep the most relevant content; this is a small trick by which Facebook is transforming the users into Paid customers, and not encouraging the Organic ones.

INCREASED USE OF DARK SOCIAL

The traffic here comes through private connections which include personalized emails, instant messaging from the individual digital media channels. Initially, we can say that users usually copy the texts or the links and send them as customized to the target audience all these things sum up to be a Dark Social.

In the upcoming year, we can expect that:

Dark social activities will dominate the social media platform. While driving a lot of traffic to the website. According to the reports until 2020 90% of the content shared on the social media sites would be from the Dark social. Similarly, the maximum number of click backs to this will be from the desktop. 

If you have a social media account, then be alert with this, and people get most of the time attracted to mobile texts and links to get engagement.

LIVE STREAMING

Social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube have made people crazy about live streaming. This year it was found that the users watch the live streaming five times more than the pre-recorded videos.

As soon as the social media apps introduced and it became a huge hit, most of the top rated brands started incorporating it in their business.  VR or virtual reality is also a big reason for the success of live streaming. Nowadays, the brands and the celebrities try to connect them with the audience using social media apps live streaming. However, this is increasing the urge for the live streaming, and there are a lot of things in live streaming future.

Live streaming

Live streaming is a blessing for e-commerce companies.

Nevertheless in the upcoming year the after display ads and video ads, the e-commerce brands will soon have the live streaming ads. This is based on a single concept that is “see-no-and-buy-now” and will provide the live online shopping experience. Later, on this will become very frequent and important.

The brand will then showcase the live ads with the brand ambassadors and the trusted experts. Not just the experts, it is even expected that in future the live streaming will change the idea of customer service.

E-commerce companies mostly will start using the live streaming platform in various social media apps and will try to solve their problems using the QA sessions. By, doing this the audience will get an immediate reply and that too live. Similar to the voice calls customer service, chat service, and email services similarly in future live streaming customer services will become popular.

Key Takeaways

As we mentioned in the article, these are the most important trends that we expect to see in the upcoming year. The latest trends are enormous and should incorporate in the brand tactics as soon as it gets released because of time and tide waits for none.

Even if you miss to get some updates as soon as it arrives, stay tuned to our blog because we publish every new trend as soon as it releases and every tactic in the technological arena. If you have any difficulty regarding the trends and tactics related to digital marketing.

Contact us! Whenever you like, we will try our best to solve your query!