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Essentials for a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy

April 29, 2017 Alan B. Zibluk Leave a comment

Essentials for a Winning
Social Media Marketing Strategy

social-media-marketing-strategy

Social media continues to be a powerful way for brands to reach their audiences. They can use it to create more awareness of their brand, to build customer loyalty, and to increase sales.But just having a presence on social media is not enough to do any of that. You need to create a thoughtful social media marketing strategy that incorporates the latest best practices so you can maximise your results.

Here are a few tips for doing that:

Identify Your Goals

This should be step #1 in any marketing strategy. You can’t know what tactics to use if you don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish. You must identify your goals, and you must be specific. Your goal shouldn’t be “get more followers,” but rather “get 1,000 more followers in the next month” or “increase brand exposure 30 percent this quarter.” Your goal should also be measurable. So if your goal is “create more positive brand associations,” you have to have a way to determine if you’ve met that goal. You might look at the number of reviews you get or the number of positive brand mentions. Whatever you decide, you must choose a way to specifically measure your goal to determine if you’ve been successful.

Research the Competition

The competition provides a wealth of data that can improve your marketing strategy.

To start, you should be researching your competition to find out what those brands are doing to reach their audiences. What social networks are they on? How frequently are they posting? What kind of posts are they sharing? How many followers do they have? From where are they getting brand mentions? With intensive research, you can identify the strategies that are having the most success with your target audience and then you can try to replicate them on your own channels.

You also need to research your competition to find opportunities that these brands are not exploring. For example, you might notice that none of your competition is sharing live video, but since you’ve had success with it, you decide to offer more of these videos to set yourself apart. Getting as much information as you can about the competition can help you find new opportunities for growing your brand and ways to distinguish your brand.

Have a Separate Content Strategy

Most people don’t think of social media as a place to share content, except to share links to content. But you can and should create original content specifically for sharing on social media. Many social networks are making this easier. Facebook is rolling out a new feature that displays articles instantly in the news feed. LinkedIn has a publishing platform that lets you originate content right on site. Even Twitter users are finding ways to share content through the use of images that aren’t capped by the character limit.

When you share content on social media, you are able to engage your users better and you create more opportunities for sharing. You can share more in-depth content than what the standard update allows, which lets you offer useful information, engaging stories, and more. By sharing unique content on your social media channels, you give your followers a reason to be there. They know they aren’t going to get that same content on your website, so they follow you on social media so as not to miss anything.

Create a Team

Two heads are better than one. Ten heads are better than two. And so on.

A lot of brands put a single person in charge of handling their social media, but they would be better served by having an entire team responsible for the job. With more people on the team, a diversity of ideas can be generated. One person may become narrowly focused – a team of creative thinkers can play off each other to come up with unique ideas that get more results. Assign each team member a specific role, such as handling all video content or researching the competition. Don’t overlook jobs like customer service or lead generation. Determine what the team members’ strengths are, and assign everyone where they will make the most impact.

Hold a weekly meeting with this team and encourage regular communication. With more people sharing responsibility for the same goals, you have to make sure that everyone is on the same page and that individual efforts are working together to achieve the same resolution. There may well come a day that social media is obsolete, but we can’t see that day arriving anytime soon (if at all). You can’t afford to treat social media like a novelty or an accessory to your marketing strategy. You need to create a dedicated strategy to your social media marketing, and these tips will help you make it a successful one.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

The Cold, Hard Truth About Social Media Marketing

April 29, 2017 Alan B. Zibluk Leave a comment

The Cold, Hard Truth About Social Media Marketing

Reality bites and sometimes what we picture in our head doesn’t always play out in real life.

At this point, most businesses know that Social Media Marketing and Advertising are crucial for growth and success. However, some businesses still have some misconceptions about how Social Media works versus the reality. Here are 5 cold, hard truths all businesses need to understand.

Success will take longer than you thought or planned it would take.

The truth here is that Social Media is not a magic bullet, success doesn’t typically happen overnight. Social Media Marketing and Advertising are a vehicle to get your business and its products/services in front of as many people as possible and as often as possible so your business will have success, but it will take time and a serious commitment.

Solution:

Just because it isn’t going to work overnight doesn’t mean it won’t work. Implementing a consistent and aggressive marketing and advertising campaign will generate Social Sales Success in the long-run.

Your customers (and your competitors) are using Social Media, they are there and you should be too.

Nearly 70% of all online adults, of all age groups and demographics, are using Social Media. Over 90% of Millennials are using Social Media (in case you haven’t been paying attention, Millennials are the new consumers!) No matter your industry or location, it is a safe bet your customers ARE using Social Media. If you aren’t reaching them through Social Media it is likely your competitors are taking advantage of the fact you aren’t there.

Solution:

Get your business on Social Media. Use the sites that make sense for your industry. Each Social Site has a somewhat specific demographic, and Facebook is a pretty safe bet. Most online adults primarily use Facebook. The bottom-line is you need to be where your customers are, and your customers are on Social Media.

It DOES work.

If you have tried Social Media Marketing in the past, posting here and there throughout the past few years, or you ran ads on Facebook without any results this does not mean “it doesn’t work.” Social Media Marketing and Advertising has changed so much in the past few years that what you tried a year or two ago is likely not an issue today. Or, perhaps you had your assistant or intern give Social Marketing a try, they are young and “hip” and have been using Social Media nearly all their lives and it still didn’t work. If you did not have a formal strategy with a consistent and professionally run Social Media Campaign it is no surprise it did not work.

Solution:

Hire someone who knows what they are doing. A professional Social Media Marketer will know the ins and outs of the platforms and how to use them to your business’ advantage. Keep your campaign running consistently, don’t start, and stop, don’t abandon your efforts, and don’t think that your college intern knows how to seriously market your business because they have been using Instagram since they were 12.

Success does not necessarily mean only generating direct revenue.

There are Social Media Marketing firms that will “guarantee” that you will make back 3 times or 4 times or 50% what you spend, they will sell you on the idea that your ads will do nothing but generate revenue. While this can happen (and does happen) it is not the only reason to use Social Media, and generating revenue comes from several other places than just running an ad.We understand the importance of revenue and sustaining your business, we get ROI, but sometimes that return is not immediately monetary. Additionally, if you are trying to use Social Media to just generate direct revenue and ignore its other benefits you are missing the entire point of Social Media.

Solution:

Understand that the return on your investment of monthly Social Media Marketing and Advertising is not just direct revenue. Social Media helps your business improve Search Rank on the internet and optimises your entire business and assisting with your SEO efforts. It creates branding and recognition, develops your online visibility, provides word-of-mouth referrals, and creates warm (sometimes hot) leads and, finally, when combining all of this together it will assist in generating revenue.

You can afford it because you can’t afford to not do it.

Traditional Marketing efforts cost a lot for what you get in return. Spending thousands of dollars a year to get in front of people once a month or quarter is not a wise investment or good use of your money. If you are still running ads in the phone book, sending out coupon mailers or mailing postcards and you aren’t getting any response it is time to rethink your marketing efforts. If you are getting responses, but not establishing quality leads it is time to rethink your budget.

Solution:

It typically takes 7 “touches” to get a response. You need to showcase your business to your audience as many times as possible. The more people “get to know” your business the more likely they are to call when they need you. It’s time to put Social Media first and use Traditional Marketing as an adjunct to your online efforts. Furthermore, don’t let your competitors overshadow your business. Get out there and be where your competitors and your customers are, it’s a wise use of your money.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Does Your Company Really Need to Focus on SEO?

April 29, 2017 Alan B. Zibluk Leave a comment

Does Your Company Really Need to Focus on SEO?

Q: Is search engine optimioptimisation important to your digital marketing strategy?
A: Yes and no.

Firstly, let’s break down SEO as I think businesses and marketers have a tendency to overcomplicate it, which results in an overwhelming feeling of "this isn’t for us" or "we don’t have the expertise/time for this." Actually, SEO is quite simple when you dispel the SEO myths and break it down to its core fundamentals: on-site (changes you make to your actual website) and offsite (things you do outside of your own website). On-site SEO is simply the process of making your website search-engine friendly. This includes tactics like optimising your title tags, publishing great content and being strategic about your website’s structure.

Offsite SEO is the process of getting validation from other websites that your website is useful to searchers. The best way to do this is by earning backlinks — in other words, having other websites link to your website (Note: it’s very important that you don’t try to earn what Google calls "unnatural" links — this could result in a penalty if done at scale!)

If that doesn’t make sense, perhaps my blind date analogy will work. Let’s say you’re at work and you see a cute guy or girl that you like. They showered, combed their hair, put on good clothes and perfume, and you like the look of them. What they’ve done is nail their on-site SEO. In other words, how they look on face value to the searcher — or in my analogy, the person looking for love. Naturally, you ask another colleague what the deal is about this mystical human. You learn that they completed their MBA at Harvard, are on the lacrosse team, and they volunteer every summer for a charity you support. What they’ve done is nail their off-page SEO – meaning, other people are telling you they’re great meaning your opinion of them is validated.

In my opinion, the most important component of SEO is on-site SEO. These are things that you can control, and on-site SEO factors quite literally tell Google what your website is about so that they know where to rank it in its search results. As for off-site SEO, it should always be secondary to nailing your on-site SEO. You have control of what’s on your website, so it’s much easier to focus on getting this right first, evaluating the results, and then look into whether off-site SEO is something you should think about doing. When it comes to improving your on-site SEO, the best place to start is by optimising your content for both users and search engines.

Content is important for a few reasons. First, if you don’t have great content, then you have nothing to share on social media, via email marketing, on your website, in ads or on affiliate sites to grow your marketing funnel. These are all core components of digital marketing and are the primary reasons you should be investing in creating content. It benefits your business on so many levels; it’s not just for SEO. When publishing content, the secret to maximising any on-site SEO benefit is being strategic with the keywords you’re using and the way you’re optimising for them on the page itself. Learn how to select the best keywords to drive more traffic, and then make sure you optimise your web page for those keywords to make sure you’re capitalising on all your hard work from an organic search perspective.

But most importantly, creating great content is actually what causes other websites to link to you. Consequently, this improves your off-site SEO metrics because people are more likely to link to your content as a useful resource or reference it as point of discussion. So focusing on great content kills two birds with one stone: it improves your on-site SEO and your off-site SEO. However, there’s a problem: Most people don’t really know what good content is. You may be thinking, “Oh, those people… I’m not one of them.” I’m sorry to break it to you, but you probably are. Head over to your company’s blog or Facebook page now. Do you see any posts that talk about the product or service that you sell? If you do, then you’re probably not doing content right to attract more traffic at the top of the funnel.

Here's one example. I wear glasses. If you’re an online glasses retailer, you most likely create content around new trends or top styles. For example, you might have a blog post titled: “10 Best Glasses Frames for Oval Faces.”Now, this may work for attracting people like me to your website, because I’m already aware of my problem (that I’m short-sighted), and I’m considering my options for solving that problem (I’m thinking about purchasing the solution). However, the largest opportunity for most businesses to scale their traffic and database is to use content to also attract people that don’t know they need your product yet. So, using the same glasses example: what would people that need glasses, but are not aware of this need, search for online?

They may search for things like:

Why do I keep getting headaches at work?
How to stop squinting at work?
Why are my eyes blurry?
What are those black dots I see on my eye?

An online glasses retailer that creates great content would already know this after doing buyer persona research and identifying their persona’s challenges. If you’ve not done so already, here’s a great free tool to create buyer personas for your business. They may create a blog post that has a few reasons why you may get headaches at work. Some advice they could give to appeal to this persona at the start of their buyer’s journey could be:

Leave your desk every 30 minutes and go for a walk
Turn your computer brightness down
Look at something in the distance every 10 minutes
Get an eye test to check on the health of your eyes

This gives the target buyer the option to solve the problem for themselves, without directly trying to sell to them too early. And in the event that walking, turning the brightness down, and looking in the distance doesn’t work, they may very well get an eye test and then buy some glasses from you after remembering how helpful your content was.

Now this is an exaggerated and accelerated example of someone moving through the three stages of the buyer’s journey: awareness (of problem), consideration (of options) and decision (on which product/service to use). However, the point is, when you create content that helps people and is great quality, they’re much more likely to share it on social media, link to it from their personal blog and tell their colleagues about it. If you can pair that with thorough keyword research and a solid on-site SEO strategy, then you have a much better chance of ranking well in Google’ search results.

So, while SEO is an important part of digital marketing for attracting traffic at the top of the funnel, it’s by no means the most important — SEO works best when you implement it as part of a wider content-led marketing strategy. Focus on creating great content and you’ll see benefits not only on the SEO front, but across all of your digital marketing activities.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Tips to Improve Your Local SEO in Hours

April 29, 2017 Alan B. Zibluk Leave a comment

Tips to Improve Your Local SEO in Hours

Make sure potential customers can find your business locally on Google.

Effort is important, but knowing where to make an effort makes all the difference.

I’ve helped hundreds of local business owners bolster their SEO. In many instances, entrepreneurs have solicited my business after unsuccessfully trying to boost their own SEO for years. The issue isn’t that they are lacking effort, it is that they don’t know the best place to focus their effort.

I’m going to teach all local business owners how to crush it on their own local SEO, taking just five hours to do it. What entrepreneurs don’t realize is that if you have a physical location, you have a huge benefit in your local market. You need to make sure that you use that to your advantage.

What is local SEO?

I’m sure you have done a Google search and seen the results populate at the top of the page with the map, star ratings, address and phone number. This is what I’m referring to when I say local SEO. This is Google’s Local Snack Pack. Depending on the industry, it has the potential to be the very first result on Google and can make a big difference when it comes to bringing new leads into your business.

Create a Google My Business page.

It is free to create a Google My Business page and shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes to cross this step off your checklist. This will get your business hours, phone number and directions onto Google Search and Maps. Make sure you add pictures of your business and add a great description so people can familiarize themselves with your local brand directly from your Google My Business page. To verify this process, Google will manually send you a postcard with a pin so make sure to check your mail!

Submit your business to local directories.

After you enter your PIN and verify your Google My Business page, you still have a lot of work left! There are hundreds of local directories across the internet where your business needs to be submitted to. Since you are a busy entrepreneur and we only have five hours to bolster your local SEO, we are going to automate this process. Fortunately, there are services that will take care of this for you. Through Moz Local, Aabaco or Yext, you can get your business submitted to hundreds of directories. The cost associated with this is approximately $89.00 per quarter. This will be one of the most worthwhile investments you can make from a marketing standpoint. After submitting your business to one of the aforementioned services, you will appear on sites like MapQuest, FourSquare and Yahoo Local (to name a few). This process will take you 30 minutes and it will help align your local presence.

Tip: If you have moved businesses or are not confident that all of your local listings are consistent, run this test on Moz to check your listings. It is vital that you have consistency with your brand name, address, phone number and other local indicators.

Get reviews.

I’m frequently asked if reviews on a Google My Business page will help increase rank. The answer, unfortunately, is somewhat wishy-washy. Just because you have more reviews than someone else doesn’t necessarily mean that this will help you surpass them in rank. What reviews will help you do is increase your click-through rate, an important indicator to Google.

If you Google “Columbus SEO Company,” you should see my company populate towards the top of the page, in maps and organically. What I started to notice was that once I focused on getting reviews from customers, I started to get more high quality leads. It makes perfect sense. Reviews help establish credibility for your brand. When people are deciding between SEO firms, they are likely going to read reviews. If they like what they read from The Media Captain, they are going to click on to my site. Google likes it when you have a high click-through on the search results because it means you are clearly providing value to the user (otherwise, they wouldn’t click on your site).

Business owners should spend at least one hour coming up with a list of 50 customers or clients. Create a customized email for each brand advocate and tell them how important a review would be to your business. It is also important to train your staff to ask customers for reviews. Starting with reviews on your Google My Business page is a good start. But, don’t forget about Yelp, Facebook and the Better Business Bureau. Every Friday afternoon, before closing up shop at your office, make sure you’ve gotten some new reviews!

Tip: Don’t send a massive email out at once to all of your customers seeking reviews. This could raise a red flag to Google if you suddenly go from 0 reviews to 30. Be sure to stagger this out in an organic fashion so the reviews are naturally coming in. I always tell my clients, if you aren’t proactively getting reviews, you 5 Get’ll only get bad reviews! If you have a massive list of customers, signing up for a service like Stars or ReviewBuzz.

Acquire local backlinks.

How exactly is Google determining which local business to populate in the “snack pack” results? There is a lot of correlation between the domain authority of your website and the local SEO results.

If you are unfamiliar with domain authority, it is a score (on a 100-point scale) developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engines. I wrote an article about this if you want to learn more about domain authority. To make a long story short, to increase domain authority, you need quality backlinks pointing back to your site from external websites.

For a local company, it is imperative that you have local links pointing back to your site. If you are an extermination company, for example, make sure all of your vendors link back to your site on the “partners” section of their sites. If you have a lot of corporate clients, see if they’ll link back to you. Get involved in the local community and sponsor a youth baseball team and they should link back to you on their “sponsor” page. All of these backlinks are indicators to Google that you are a local business.

If you are having a hard time coming up with local clients to link back to your site, revert back to my playbook on knocking on local business owners’ doors! (watch this video on how to acquire local links). Within 60 minutes, you can get at least five local businesses to link back to your site, regardless of whether or not the relationship is already forged.

Step 5: Improve your on-site SEO.

Google is not going to know you are a lawyer in Little Rock unless you make this clear on your website. Make sure to include your business name, address and phone number on your website. In the title tag of your site, reference your local market. On your contact page, make sure to list out directions to your office and include local landmarks so people can easily find your location.

Your local search results tie back to your website. Your website needs to be a true local indicator. Don’t go overboard though; there is no need to mention Little Rock on your homepage 48 times. Google will get the point if it is naturally worked into the verbiage throughout the site. For a local business, you can optimize your site in 45 minutes to improve its on-site SEO.

Tip: You can sign-up for a 30-day free trial of Moz and use its on-page grader to determine how well your site is optimized for local keywords. For example, if you are curious how your homepage is doing for “Little Rock Divorce Lawyer,” this page will tell you your score and give you tips to improve it.

Open for business

If you haven’t taken the steps above to improve your local SEO, it is the equivalent of having a sign on your front door that says, “We’re Closed.” You want to make it known to Google that you are open for business. A common question I receive is what entrepreneurs should do if they don’t have a local business and work out of their home. This is more of a complex issue that I would have to analyze a case-by-case basis. What I will say is don’t try and game the system. Many businesses in the past have signed up for a Regus Virtual Office Space to improve their local SEO. Google is smart. It was able to pick up on the fact that 15 businesses shared the same suite number. It rolled out an algorithm called Possum and penalized those businesses.

If you have a local office and spend five hours in a smart and efficient manner on your local SEO, you will reap the benefits for years to come. Don't be discouraged if your business isn't ranking in the top three results within a week, though. Like anything in life, it can take time and continued work for Google to recognise your efforts.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

SEO Mysteries Solved

April 29, 2017 Alan B. Zibluk Leave a comment

SEO Mysteries Solved

If you're adhering to best practices and a sudden disruption occurs, don't feel disheartened. Instead, check out these handy tips.

Even for experienced SEO professionals,

search optimisation can be confusing. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of different factors that can enter into how your site ranks and those factors change frequently (oftentimes, without warning). If you’re adhering to best practices — to the best of your ability — and there’s a sudden disruption in your progress, it’s common to feel disheartened. But take comfort knowing that it’s happened to all of us, and that those pesky SEO mysteries aren’t always as mysterious as they may first seem.Draw insight from these seven common SEO “mysteries” that often plague new campaigns:

Why did my traffic suddenly drop?

You’ve been seeing steady results for a while now, but all of a sudden, your organic traffic has declined. What could be the reason? The answer depends on how severe the decline is. If you notice a decline of 10 percent or less, it’s probably nothing to worry about; you should expect some natural fluctuations due to index refreshes, new competitors and new factors.

At the other extreme, if your traffic drops to almost nothing (which is extremely rare), you have a serious problem. It could mean your site is down or you’re facing a manual Google penalty (you can check to see if either of these are affecting your site in Google Search Console). If you’re somewhere in the middle, check for any recent “bad” inbound links that could be considered spam by Google, any recent content changes to your site that may have changed your page URLs or a new Google update that may have significantly changed your rankings.

Why aren't my pages showing up in search results?

If your pages aren’t showing up in Google search at all, it means they haven’t been indexed. If you’ve created a new site, don’t worry — it typically takes between four and 28 days for Google to index new web content. If you want to speed up the process, you can submit an XML sitemap through your Search Console (which is a good measure to take in general).

If you’re still having trouble with certain pages showing up, check your robots.txt file to make sure you haven’t accidently blocked search bots from seeing your pages. As a last resort, check for crawl errors in Google Search Console to pinpoint the root cause of the problem.

What happened to my link?

If you built a link pointing to your site, but it’s suddenly disappeared, the solution is usually simple: The site that hosted it removed it. The site may have found the link irrelevant, it may have removed your content entirely or it may have replaced it with a “nofollow” link. Double-check with the publisher, and attempt to build a replacement link elsewhere.

Why do my rankings keep changing?

It’s natural to expect some kind of volatility in your rankings. It would be strange, in fact, if your rankings weren’t changing at all. Don’t drive yourself crazy by checking your rankings every day; instead, shoot for bi-weekly or monthly check-ins. Like the stock market, rankings will go up and down over time; what you’re looking for is an overall uptrend. However, if you’re facing extreme volatility (drastic ups and downs on a regular basis), the problem is that something in your strategy is inconsistent (such as alternating between black hat and white hat techniques or producing both low-quality and high-quality content).

Why aren't I seeing better SEO results?

This is a more open-ended problem than the others on this list. If you just started a campaign, remember that SEO is a long-term strategy, and depending on your niche, budget and competition, you might have to wait months before you start to see results. If you’ve been at it for a few months and aren’t satisfied with the results, consider upping your budget — more money means higher quality (in many cases), and higher volume. Don’t be afraid to consult with an expert if you can’t seem to build momentum.

Why is my traffic so volatile?

See my answer to “rankings” in point four. Volatility isn’t specific to rankings; it will affect your traffic, as well. However, traffic bears an additional consideration: the ebb and flow of your business. Does your industry have a “peak” season that could be responsible for driving more traffic, or does your traffic seem to be correlated with specific events (such as more “air conditioning” searches on especially hot days)?

Why is my site running slow?

This isn’t an analytics issue like the other mysteries on this list, but your site speed does have an impact on your rankings and performance. If you know your site loading is a problem, but you can’t get it to load faster, consider downsizing the image files on your site and stripping any plugins you don’t use regularly. Then, delete any meta information or drafts you don’t need and optimize your caching plugins so you can load more quickly on previous visitors’ devices. If speed continues to be a problem, consider upgrading your hosting provider.

These aren’t the only issues you could run into while managing an SEO campaign, but they are some of the most common. Your solution may not be obvious, but as long as you keep digging, eventually you’ll find the root cause — or at least, some way to reverse the situation. There’s usually more than one culprit and more than one way to fix the problem — a gracious side effect of SEO’s complexity — so the next time you face an optimization enigma, remain calm and start troubleshooting. For more help on ways to improve your site’s SEO.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

How Inbound Marketing Can Turn Your Brand into a Magnet

April 29, 2017 Alan B. Zibluk Leave a comment

How Inbound Marketing Can Turn Your Brand into a Magnet

Most conventional marketing techniques

are either too expensive or unviable for SMBs and start-ups who wish to make it big. Inbound marketing for a long time was just one of the elements of the core marketing strategy of an organisation. But as the digital content consumption witnessed an unforeseen rise, inbound marketing has now become a focal point. Not only it’s cheaper than the traditional advertising and marketing techniques but also has an incredible power to attract larger crowds to a brand and turn it into a magnet.

Inbound & SEO Marketing Consultant for Inbound Authority, says “Inbound Marketing is so powerful because you have the power to give the searcher/consumer exactly what answers they are looking for at the precise point that they need it. That builds trust, reputation, and authority in whatever niche you are practicing this form of marketing in.”

If you are new to the digital marketing landscape, you might still be figuring out what inbound marketing is. Well, if you do figure out, you will realise that it is one of the most viable techniques that help you create the required impetus around your brand so that customers can discover you in several ways. A Gartner Research report predicts that “by 2020, customers will manage 85 percent of their relationship without talking to a human.” If this really comes true, inbound marketing will have a great role to play in giving your brand a voice that speaks to the masses. Listed below are some of the most pertinent inbound marketing strategies that don’t fail to deliver if planned and implemented meticulously.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is an essential pull factor when it comes to inbound marketing. Useful content that helps users find what they are looking for can significantly boost your visibility on the Internet. The content thus posted must be optimised so that it ranks well in the search engine pages. If promoted on both the onsite and offsite platforms, it can generate quality leads that may later become turn into buying customers. You may post blogs, articles, whitepapers, audio-visual content and a lot more to give your brand a voice.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

The best thing about inbound marketing is that it helps you get found by customers rather than you finding them. Getting organic placements on the search engine results pages (SERPS) is one of the best strategies for inbound marketing. Optimizing your website and content so that Google’s web crawling technology can identify and index your site’s content to appear in web searches can be a highly economic way to get significant traffic to your website.

SEO revolves around keywords, website structure, link-building and a lot more. Once you identify the most important keywords, optimize the heck out of them. Gaining the first position in search pages, improving your rank in searches and moving up the order in a range of other keywords could bring you great results. However, don’t try to win in all those keywords at once.

Social Media

Giving your brand a personal identity, a social existence is an important step towards making your content reach a larger audience. Creating content would be futile if you are not sharing it over different online social media platforms. According to a new survey by Pew Research Center, conducted in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, a majority of U.S. adults – 62% – get news on social media, and 18% do so often.

While trying to increase outreach on the social media, one must not limit themselves to a number of limited sites and focus on proactively remaining active on multiple platforms. Robert Duke, Marketing Manager at Blue Mail Media mentions, “A lot of organisations in the B2B space make LinkedIn a focal point in their social media outreach. They probably believe that other platforms are not good enough in reaching the kind of audiences they wish to connect with. While LinkedIn continues to be the most used B2B social media platform, Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube, Facebook amongst others too are being used cleverly by organisations to create the right amount of buzz around their brands.”

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is somewhat intricate to practically implement but has a huge potential when it comes to influencing a certain audience. The idea is to identify opinion makers and influencers in your industry and work with them in content promotion and even casual interactions on your social media pages. The toughest part of influencer marketing is to persuade opinion leaders to contribute to your cause as they too expect to gain something from the activity. However, if you ensure mutual benefits, there is a greater possibility that they may agree to work with you.

PPC (Pay Per Click)

While marketing scholars and enthusiasts seem to be divided over the classification of PPC campaigns as an inbound or outbound marketing technique. PPC certainly helps you score a prominent position in web searches and gain considerable traffic to your website. However, it is highly advisable to optimise your PPC campaigns meticulously to do more with less. Failing to plan may lead to wastage of financial resources without bringing you the proportionate returns.

Inbound marketing like any other marketing strategy may get extremely complicated. It requires immense patience as you have to simultaneously work on multiple things and unify your efforts towards a common goal. Though marketers cannot be always certain of the outcome of their inbound marketing strategies, they can surely figure the best way out through trial and error. An inbound marketing strategy may not help you become successful overnight but it is one of the most beautiful ways to construct your way to glory.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Cryptocurrency Exchange Poloniex Set to Delist 17 Altcoins

April 28, 2017 Alan B. Zibluk Leave a comment

Cryptocurrency Exchange Poloniex
Set to Delist 17 Altcoins

Cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex

recently announced that it will be delisting 17 altcoins, effective May 2, which saw the price of the coins drop significantly.

On Twitter, the U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange said:

On May 2, 2017, the following will be delisted: BBR, BITS, C2, CURE, HZ, IOC, MYR, NOBL, NSR, QBK, QORA, OTL, RBY, SDC, UNITY, VOX [and] XMG.

Since Poloniex’s tweet, the prices of the listed currencies have dropped in value by between 31 percent and 92 percent over the past seven days. The biggest drop in value was C2, which is currently ranked 323rd on CoinMarketCap. Over the last seven days, it fell by 91.08 percent. Boolberry, who was one of the altcoins mentioned to be delisted, and who has had a 64 percent price drop over the past seven days, responded to Poloniex’s tweet., and asked:

“Hey Poloniex, anything we can do to avoid delisting?”

Coin Magi XMG, which suffered a 58 percent drop following the announcement, also reached out to Poloniex via Twitter, stating:

Poloniex Magi is with you for a long time. Last months volume is growing, new developments are in progress. Pls reconsider!!

Many, however, have taken to Twitter to either voice their support in the expected removal of the announced altcoins while others have voiced their anger in how Poloniex have handled the situation.

One person responded by saying:

They opened a company to make money … @Poloniex in the same breathe [sic] screw people over …

While another said:

Lol our hedge group only lost like $250000 in earnings in like 20 minutes … 11 failed transactions trying to close positions!!! All gone.

A third said:

@Poloniex who the F%^& makes these decisions? I see at least 4 with active develop, solid community & solid project that should remain.

Criticisms of Poloniex

In the past, the cryptocurrency exchange has received its critics about its security procedures. Last October, an anonymous security review undertaken by Xavier59, revealed three vulnerabilities after alleging that Poloniex had failed to reply to his emails with information relating to security bugs. Furthermore, last year, the exchange announced that it was suspending its services in New Hampshire due to that state’s digital currency regulations. It added the same suspension to the state of Washington earlier this month for the same reasons.

Of course, while the cryptocurrency exchange is considered one of the biggest, this latest news from Poloniex and its planned delisting of 17 altcoins is not going to do any favours for the exchange. It begs the question, then: is this the start of more delistings from the exchange?

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Bitcoin breakthrough? Russia moots cryptocurrency green light

April 28, 2017 Alan B. Zibluk Leave a comment

Bitcoin breakthrough?
Russia moots cryptocurrency green light

Cryptocurrencies may be recognized in Russia by 2018,

according to Deputy Finance Minister Aleksey Moiseev.Moiseev says monitoring cryptocurrencies could be an instrumental tool against money laundering, and Bitcoin and other digital currencies could be recognized by next year as the central bank works with the government to develop rules against illegal transfers.

“The state needs to know who at every moment of time stands on both sides of the financial chain,” Moiseev said in an interview, as cited Bloomberg. “If there’s a transaction, the people who facilitate it should understand from whom they bought and to whom they were selling, just like with bank operations.”

Last year the idea of a national cryptocurrency had been considered by the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank, which would see the banning of all other virtual currencies in Russia. The idea had not been discussed by the Kremlin, however, according to Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov at the time. Russian officials had been opposing all virtual currencies, arguing their cross-border nature, transaction anonymity and lack of a supervisory body makes them the perfect vehicle for illegal transactions. In 2014, Moiseev suggested a ban on cryptocurrencies could be introduced because of their use to fund illegal activities such as money laundering, the buying of illicit goods, rendering illegal services or funding terrorism.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

The rise of cryptocurrency (and what the heck it even is)

April 28, 2017 Alan B. Zibluk Leave a comment

The rise of cryptocurrency
(and what the heck it even is)

Cryptocurrency is making its entrance

and even though a lot of people don’t want anything to do with it, venture capitalist need to pay attention.

Coins unlike the ones you find in your couch

What’s an Initial Coin Offering? While it sounds like the beginning of an intrepid relationship with a metal-loving deity, turns out ICOs have nothing to do with actual coins.

No parents, no rules

ICOs, aka “token sales,” are part of blockchain technology fundraising. An ICO is essentially a crowdfunded cryptocurrency.

Tokens for new cryptocurrency are sold as a fundraising effort for technical development.

Whenever a new cryptocurrency is born, its startup parents arbitrarily decide its worth. After supply and demand smack it around for a bit, participants in the price dynamic testing then settle on a value.

Instead of a central government, the network of participants determines how much the cryptocurrency is worth.

Unlike Initial Public Offerings, acquiring a token does not mean owning stakes in the company.

Why VC firms care now

Although venture capitalists have been giving ICO the cold shoulder, things are starting to look up.

Cryptocurrency investors made bank last year, with some doubling their investments.

Investors see returns more quickly with ICOs due to the liquidity of cryptocurrencies.

Instead of waiting for a startup to playout via an IPO or acquisition, investors can bail if things aren’t going well.

It’s easy to pull funds—or profits if things did work out. All investors have to do is use a cryptocurrency exchange to pull their profits, then use an online service to convert this to real people money.

Who’s afraid of the dark(web)?

If this sounds sketchy, you’re not alone. Traditional investors aren’t really fans of the regulatory uncertainty.

The world of ICO can be full of scams and schemes, with little control over financials and strategy.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and friends are still investigating ICOs. But technically ICOs fall outside legal frameworks.

ICOs don’t offer equity in startups, and only give cryptocurrency discounts before they release them to the exchanges.

Additionally, ICOs are global, not national. Theoretically, anyone can invest on a semi-anonymous level. Oh, and they’re not funded by central authorities or banks either.

Reform and re-adjustment

Criminal activity is now mostly self-regulated within the community via crowdsourcing and external groups.

Some companies are even working to establish Know Your Customer frameworks and make ICOs Anti-Money Laundering compliant.

Those who support ICOs argue traditional methods of investing only benefit those already dominating the system.

Investing outside of the system provides more freedom, especially for startups.

ICOs mean startups can raise funds without worrying too much about looming stakeholders. Non-profits can also benefit if they want to build open source software to raise capital.

Call me ICO-shmael

From their humble beginnings, bitcoins are now worth around $1,120. Bitcoin’s market cap is around twenty billion.

Allegedly, half of that is owned by “bitcoin whales,” a group of less than one thousand people who bought into bitcoin early.

Bitcoin whales have a huge impact on most ICOs. Most live in China, but some investment and hedge funds also have huge stakes in bitcoin. Fortunately, some of the bitcoin whale’s profits are reinvested in innovation. Since 2013, over $270 million has been raised in ICOs. Overall, ICOs are dominating in crowdfunding, with most top raises coming in as cryptocurrency.

Though it’s still kind of murky and mysterious, blockchain technology is starting to be seen as more legitimate. Initial Coin Offerings demonstrate the success of an industry. As more investors become comfortable with ICOs, blockchain innovation will continue creating new possibilities.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Top Altcoins: All You Wanted to Know About Bitcoin’s Contenders

April 28, 2017 Alan B. Zibluk Leave a comment

Top Altcoins:
All You Wanted to Know
About Bitcoin’s Contenders

Top 10 Altcoins: All You Wanted to Know About Bitcoin's Contenders

Blockchain currency is revolutionising.

Since Satoshi Nakamoto unveiled his cryptocurrency in 2008, we’ve witnessed a proliferation of digital cash companies and codebases. Utilizing his public, distributed ledger, dozens of promising currencies have emerged. Only a select few have proven themselves as true contenders to Bitcoin, however. Here are the top 10 altcoins on CoinMarketCap (note that the list is changing constantly, especially in the tail part, with other altcoins like MaidSafeCoin, Golem and Augur playing musical chairs with others):

Ethereum

J.P Morgan Chase, Microsoft and Intel allied in order to create the fiercest rival to Bitcoin in circulation today: Ethereum. The main purpose of the endeavour was to program binding agreements into the Blockchain itself. This incarnated into the now-popular smart contract feature. Interestingly, Ethereum is not just a currency. It’s a Blockchain platform powered by the Ether cryptocurrency. The New York Times describes the technology as “a single shared computer that is run by the network of users and on which resources are parceled out and paid for by Ether.”

Ripple

Ripple attracted a great deal of venture capital during its inception. The Google-backed altcoin startup managed to pull in upwards of $50 mln from banking institutions, gathering an impressive $90 mln in total funding. Ripple is unique in that it allows for transacting with any unit of value, from fiat currency to frequent flier miles.

“Ripple provides global financial settlement solutions to enable the world to exchange value like it already exchanges information giving rise to an Internet of Value (IoV). Ripple solutions lower the total cost of settlement by enabling banks to transact directly, instantly and with a certainty of a settlement,” reads the company’s copy on their official website. Initially a middling contender, Ripple has gained momentum in the cryptocurrency market, seeing a marked surge earlier this year. In fact, Ripple experienced a 100 percent increase in value within a 24-hour period in late March.

Litecoin

Former Google engineer Charles Lee created this altcoin in an effort to improve upon Bitcoin. Namely, the speed to generate a new block is improved dramatically. Transactions are much faster. By the same token, however, this speed makes Litecoin’s Blockchain larger and more prone to producing orphaned blocks.

Dash

Dash, a combination of the words “digital” and “cash,” is the Internet’s cash-in-hand. Dash is quick. Its transactions are instant. “Your time is valuable. InstantSend payments confirm in less than a second,” Dash claims. By comparison, Bitcoin’s transactions can take up to an hour to process. GPU/CPU mining is no longer cost effective. In order to mine, you’ll need specific hardware, computers known as ASICs to complete Dash’s proof-of-work puzzles.

NEM

NEM is written in Java; built on an entirely new codebase separate and apart from Bitcoin’s open-source code. There are a few other intriguing differences from Bitcoin as well. In NEM, you harvest rather than mine. It’s essentially the same as mining in Bitcoin, only that multiple people profit – albeit in much smaller quantities – from a generated block. NEM introduced the proof-of-importance algorithm to the digital ledger. A user’s wealth and number of transactions are used to timestamp transactions. NEM has seen rapid growth in its valuation since the beginning of 2017 as the altcoin is currently being embraced in Japan.

Ethereum Classic

A parallel Ethereum platform exists and sustains a sizeable usership with a market cap hovering just below $430 mln. Why do two versions of the same platform exist? The Ethereum community fractured when a disagreement over how a technically legal theft of funds should be handled. The majority of users wished to change Ethereum’s code in order to get the lost funds back. A minority believed that Ethereum should not be tampered with or altered by third parties. Even in cases of users exploiting the smart contract feature to trick others, the Blockchain must remain “immutable.” Thus, the minority created the Classic version of Ethereum, which still survives and thrives.

Monero

Monero is geared toward those who desire greater anonymity. The cryptocurrency allows you to “send and receive funds without your transactions being publically visible on the Blockchain.” Transactions are completely untraceable due to Monero’s leveraging of ring signatures. Unfortunately, because of Monero’s emphasis on privacy, it has seen adoption by the darknet and other criminal organisations.

Zcash

Zcash, like Monero, offers greater privacy to users. Unlike Monero, transactions are shielded rather than made completely private. Meaning, the details of the transaction itself, such as the users involved and the amount traded, are hidden. Zcash does this by using a “zero-knowledge” proof that allows for parties to exchange funds without revealing each other’s identity.

Decred

Decred’s primary aim is to focus on “community input, open governance and sustainable funding and development.” The currency melds proof-of-work and proof-of-stake mining algorithms to ensure a minority of users do not own the majority of the funds and that decisions are led by the community rather than a handful of developers or early investors.

PIVX

PIVX stands for Private Instant Verified Transactions. Another open-source decentralised Blockchain currency, it is built upon Bitcoin Core. Like Zcash and Monero, PIVX boasts its heightened privacy and security. “[W]e believe that you have the right to exchange privately and securely, without interference from corporatocracy pressures, governmental influences, prying eyes, and nefarious individuals and movements,” PIVX contends.PIVX is highly volatile, experiencing massive spikes in trading volume and valuation as of March of this year. Again, because of the currency’s emphasis on privacy, PIVX is susceptible to criminal activity.

Cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and the altcoins it has spawned, may bring about a new global economy. They allow us to transact in a peer-to-peer fashion, without third-party bodies governing us. Bitcoin introduced the Blockchain, but other developers are quickly improving upon Nakamoto’s idea. Some currencies have focused on speed, as is the case with both Ripple and Litecoin. Others have honed in on privacy, currencies like Zcash going so far as making all transactions private and untraceable. Each altcoin comes with its own strengths and weakness. Surely, we’ll discover more as time goes on. For now, these 10 currencies are at the top. Their fate could turn, however, at a flip of a coin.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Essentials for a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy

Identify Your Goals

Research the Competition

Have a Separate Content Strategy

Create a Team

The Cold, Hard Truth About Social Media Marketing

Success will take longer than you thought or planned it would take.

Solution:

Your customers (and your competitors) are using Social Media, they are there and you should be too.

Solution:

It DOES work.

Solution:

Success does not necessarily mean only generating direct revenue.

Solution:

You can afford it because you can’t afford to not do it.

Solution:

Does Your Company Really Need to Focus on SEO?

Tips to Improve Your Local SEO in Hours

What is local SEO?

Create a Google My Business page.

Submit your business to local directories.

Get reviews.

Acquire local backlinks.

Step 5: Improve your on-site SEO.

Open for business

SEO Mysteries Solved

Why did my traffic suddenly drop?

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What happened to my link?

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Why aren't I seeing better SEO results?

Why is my traffic so volatile?

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How Inbound Marketing Can Turn Your Brand into a Magnet

Content Marketing

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

Social Media

Influencer Marketing

PPC (Pay Per Click)

Cryptocurrency Exchange Poloniex Set to Delist 17 Altcoins

Criticisms of Poloniex

Bitcoin breakthrough? Russia moots cryptocurrency green light

The rise of cryptocurrency (and what the heck it even is)

Coins unlike the ones you find in your couch

No parents, no rules

Why VC firms care now

Who’s afraid of the dark(web)?

Reform and re-adjustment

Call me ICO-shmael

Top Altcoins: All You Wanted to Know About Bitcoin’s Contenders

Ethereum

Ripple

Litecoin

Dash

NEM

Ethereum Classic

Monero

Zcash

Decred

PIVX

Look Mom I have a Blog

Essentials for a Winning
Social Media Marketing Strategy

Cryptocurrency Exchange Poloniex
Set to Delist 17 Altcoins

Bitcoin breakthrough?
Russia moots cryptocurrency green light

The rise of cryptocurrency
(and what the heck it even is)

Top Altcoins:
All You Wanted to Know
About Bitcoin’s Contenders