Getting a Leg Up on Better Infographics by Reading Fresh Market News and Insights

When circumstances warrant using visual aids to educate people about factual matters, a product, or service, there often is a scramble to create pictures that best describe the subject yet easy to understand. Infographics often fall under this category – a picture with laden information organized in a special format and fixed for bigger visual impact. If you experience problems trying to hammer a decent infographic, some sources of marketing news and insights may help you do things better.

Here are some tips to make a good infographic:

Own Style – Looking at various infographics may help you get ideas on how to present your information, but many marketers frown on outright emulation of existing infographics. Instead, try assembling your own design flair for your infographics and limit taking existing visual cues.

Content Selection – the content to be used for the infographic doesn’t have to be all about your product or service’s big features most of the time. You can take the time to share valuable tidbits about your chosen industry and how your product or service fits into the equation. At the same time, market research enables you to tailor the infographic around specific target audiences.

For example, if you’re licensed to operate a training school for fighting style disciplines like Krav Maga, some infographics may include using easy to learn moves to ward off attackers and escape to seek help. The material can also state specific pressure points in the body that also hurt attackers the most.

Sourcing – If you post hard facts, you will need to list down the actual sources you got the data from and put the links in the document itself.

Marketing News and Insights May Guide You on Better Author Promotion

Some people may develop a gift of writing any form of literature. It may be a way to creatively vent frustrations or a way to inspire people. The real challenge though is that no matter how well-crafted the work may be, it’ll be all for nothing if readers can’t even find the author online. If you’ve had problems making your written works known to a certain audience market, browsing a site full of quality news and insights may turn things around. There are a number of places where the knowledge gleaned from them can produce a desired effect.

Website

The website needs to have a clean, professional look that evokes the themes in your literary works and has well-written content to match. The material’s quality may aid search engines in ranking it. The website’s loading speed should also be tweaked; some studies recommend it to be no more than five seconds, especially when there are certain content pieces that are too big, like hi-res pictures. Take the time to find highly positive reviews of your work and screencap them for publishing in the site’s Testimonials section.

Videos

Special videos are beginning to make waves in educating fans about you and your work. The clips may include podcasts or video FAQs, readouts of your Twitter feed from fans, or even sample readings of book chapters. There’s a chance that you will attend a writers’ convention or a meet-and-greet/signing; both events are opportunities to actually interact with fans and fellow writers, and you should take the time to record the event, complete with voiceovers.

Stay Updated to Stay on Top

Marketing has changed fast in the last few years, and it continues to adapt with new technology. From smart phones, tablets and social media, to a huge number of apps that can do almost anything. With marketers continually finding new ways to reach their potential customers and generate leads, keeping up with trends and strategies can be tough. But how can you stay ahead of them all? Follow these few steps.

• Instead of trying to use all the social media there are, try to focus on the ones that help your business model the most. Identify which will work for your business.
• Be aware of what’s changing and try to figure out how to use them for your benefit. It doesn’t matter if you can’t be the one who comes up with a new idea. You just have to know what’s in and what’s not.
• Create an offer for your potential customers. Give them reasons to visit your site and make it worth their time so they’ll keep coming back.
• Maintain a good blog with good content. Build a following by giving useful information.
• Be creative. Try posting relatable quotes once in a while.

Always remember to try out new ways. Think of techniques and strategies that will help your business. There’s nothing wrong in experimenting. Technology is changing and you should, too. Learn and adapt effectively within those changes. Stay one step ahead of your competitors by knowing the latest online marketing news at Marketing Digest, your online marketing news website.

Staying Social

It’s official: social media has become integral to the success of small businesses, and some large ones too. Traditional advertising hijinks have waned in popularity as more and more people divert their eyes to their computers and smartphones for news and insights--and that’s where you have to be. Getting opinions and gossip about a brand has never been faster, for better or for worse. When it comes to social media, it’s tempting for a marketer to trumpet hard selling statements in an attempt to drown out any criticism, but reality disagrees with this method. Joining the conversation is not only the most fruitful way to manage social media—it is the only way.

Keep an Ear Out

Criticism only means that people care about your brand enough to mention it. Listen to their complaints, answer courteously, and figure out how you can change for the better. Of course, there are some people out there who simply ask for things that you can’t provide, but always be respectful of your answer. More than anything, doing social media for brands has taught us that people like being heard and acknowledged.

Speak Up!

Sharing is what social media is all about. If you run a small company, don’t shy away from announcing that one of your employees is celebrating their birthday. Small businesses have a lot to gain from the humanizing factor of social media. Don’t miss an opportunity to appear even more accessible and relatable. It’s a great way to pull on some heartstrings!

Social media has done a lot in evening out the playing field against companies with nearly limitless marketing budgets. Do everything you can to establish your niche by staying social.

Engaging in Social Media Conversation

Whether they like it or not, small businesses (and most large businesses, too), have to face the facts: the Internet has put people in a powerful position. Used to be that brands can control their image through advertising and other broad marketing tactics. However, now in an age where a single tweet can be shared all across the globe, one person’s opinion can set off a chain reaction that can make or break a brand. Many marketers would be tempted to shout and drown out the chatter with more promotional noise. However, it may be more effective and efficient to embrace this new world… and join the conversation.

Listen to How You’re Talked About

Where marketers can see crisis, there’s actually opportunity. For example, by monitoring social media sites like Facebook or Twitter to see how their brand is mentioned, marketing professionals can get the pulse of their target market. Then they can act or react as the situation requires. They can weigh in, address complaints, thank customers for positive reviews, and sometimes even address customer needs before their competition can.

Speak When People Are Listening

One other opportunity that online marketing presents is the ability to time a message to go out when the audience is online. Many write articles on online marketing news and insights, citing the best times to post content on social media. In general, though, a business should still invest time and effort by monitoring analytics data to figure out when their audience is online and responsive. Sure, it’s not exactly a magic formula, but many marketers didn’t have anything close to this tactic in their playbook.

Social Media has changed the game for many businesses. It has taken some of the power slightly away from those with big marketing budgets. It has given customers more of a say, and it has given small players more of a chance. As long as entrepreneurs and small media marketers can keep track of the right social media marketing news and insights, they just might get the opening they need to engage their customers effectively and grow their business.

The Art of Online Marketing Warfare

Some people talk about online marketing as a competition, one where businesses constantly fight to get a bigger slice of the industry pie. That’s true, to a big extent. In fact, one can go further to say that online marketing is a war… and to form a winning strategy, you have to keep a few basics in mind.

Know Your Target

A lot of businesses’ campaigns suffer because they don’t know who they’re aiming at. Obviously, no business can be everything to everyone. As much as you want to capture territory in the form of market share, it’s typically unfeasible to try appealing to all customers at once. So do a SWOT analysis; based on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, determine the ideal market segment for you to aim at. In this phase, it’s worth looking at industry news and insights to look for things that might impact your decision.

Prepare Your Ammo

Another problem that people in online marketing have is with the content they fire at their targets. Conventional wisdom says that you should constantly update your marketing channels with content. While that’s true, you should also make sure what you send out there is interesting and relevant. If you just fire content out with no regard to what appeal it might hold for viewers, it’s like you’re just tossing bullets at a wall to see which will punch through. What can you tell or show your target market to make them interested in you?

Pick Your Moment

Another tempting tactic is to just send content out constantly. The more times you fire, the more likely it’ll hit the target. That’s true, but if you miss more times than you hit, it’s not very efficient. The important thing is to make sure you hit when it counts. What time is your target market usually online? That’s a good time to do social media postings. Any specific holidays or events you want to promote? Consider the timing beforehand to effectively promote them.

Whether your business is a large empire or small guerilla troop, you have to bring your best when fighting in the online marketing war. To firm up your strategy, you of course need to keep tabs on the hottest online marketing news and insights.

Networking Tips for LinkedIn

Businesses oftentimes need the help of other such entities to survive and outlast the competition, which is why networking should be an essential part of building your enterprise. If you don’t want to scour every networking event, you can always look for potential clients and stakeholders through LinkedIn.

Generate Expert Content

You can hit two birds with one stone if you invest in content creation, especially about expert tips and information on your industry, and posting them on social media sites. Not only will you be helping other businesses, you’ll also score some sweet points with your SEO campaign.

Use Notifications to Be Active

Check what other LinkedIn users are doing with their careers or businesses, and make it a point to congratulate people on achievements and important milestones. Increasing your LinkedIn activity this way assures people that there’s a person behind your account and brand name – someone they might eventually want to do business with.

Pump Up Your Profile

Make sure that you completely fill out all important sections of your profile page, and update them from time to time whenever significant changes arise. A good tip would be to keep your business summary in bulleted form instead of sentences or paragraphs for your potential readers to understand it easily.

Connect and Be Connected

Put your LinkedIn profile on your business card so your prospective clients know to connect with you through social media. Moreover, you should also put the link on emails and online directories so people could easily find your profile whenever they need to contact you. Efficient networking through LinkedIn mixes elements of both social media and SEO to get the word out where it’s needed the most.

Content Marketing Insights: Generating Leads Effectively via Content

Decades ago, businesses relied heavily on traditional marketing tactics, like direct mail, radio ads, and cold calling, to generate leads. With improved information accessibility and rapid progress in technology, however, these marketing tactics have become outdated over time. B2B consumers now have technologies to let them screen the information that reach them e.g. spam filters, internet radio and do-not-call lists. As such, marketers and business owners should find other smarter ways to get around such ‘blockages’. The average B2B consumer these days -studies product information through industry news and blogs. Content marketing news show that, essentially, the kind of marketing that works today effectively disguises selling as teaching via content. If you want to keep your B2B consumers glued, therefore, you have to steer clear from antiquated tactics and redirect your budget instead to building a solid content marketing strategy.
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Content Marketing Tips: 3 Qualities That Top Brands in YouTube Share

Though the amount of content available online has grown immensely, the attention spans of audiences have shrunk significantly. In a world of ever decreasing attention spans, how can marketers engage, nurture, and convert more leads? The answer—according to the most up-to-date content marketing news—is branded video content. According to an article published on the Content Standard by Skyword (@Skyword), branded video views hit 2.9 billion in Q3 2014—the highest figure up until then (data from Visible Measures). Moreover, 70% of marketers say that video converts better than any other medium—a trend that is partially fueled by the rise in smartphone usage and mobile online browsing.
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eCommerce Marketing News Can Help You Keep Up with New Market Trends

The field of eCommerce is constantly evolving and is quite young. It has only been less than two decades since the Internet exploded in the international scene—and online businesses popped up a little later after that. eCommerce has come a long way from simple beginnings to the mammoth online stores that sell almost everything. Many changes have happened in the field these past years and these changes are ongoing. As an online business owner, you’ll want to be aware of these changes. eCommerce’s New Face The main advantage of reading the latest eCommerce marketing news is that you’ll know about upcoming trends and implement them early on. A recent Time (@TIME) article outlined how physical stores are integrating technology to stay competitive in the online-saturated marketplace. Although brick-and-mortar retailers are still as popular as ever, people are being lured into the ease and convenience of just buying things online.
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A Guide to Writing Content for SEO

Panda and Penguin started it; Hummingbird is perfecting it. Thanks to the latest Google algorithm, search engine optimization or SEO techniques today should focus on content creation instead of keyword stuffing or other techniques that appeal only to web crawlers. In today’s online marketing world, reader-friendly content is king.

Audience Priority

What better way to write content that people can understand and get information from than actually writing with people in mind? Identify the target market for your business in Louisiana and choose topics for Baton Rouge SEO content that you know will interest them and keep them reading.

Business Blog

Thanks to these new guidelines, there’s absolutely no reason not to set up a blog for your website. Create unique content as often as you can (produce new ones every month, if possible) using SEO-optimized keywords that hopefully can generate some backlinks for your site. Be sure to keep your posts related to your business, though.

Catch with Headlines

Write catchy headlines that will instantly grab the attention of whoever happens to visit your website. Whether you’re writing stuff to post solely on your site, or for social media sharing purposes, clear and interesting headlines (without going over the top) are half the battle.

Don’t Farm Links

“Link farming” is a process that’s frowned upon and in fact banned by major search engines. It relies on mass purchase of links that lead back to your site. SEO practices today rely on natural link building, and that can be accomplished by writing quality content that people will want shared. Keep your SEO efforts up-to-date by focusing on excellent quality content generation with useful news and insights. In doing so, you are helping your business efficiently reach out to your target market and reel in some real and loyal customers or clients.

Online Marketing News: The Importance of Developing Buyer Personas

The buyer persona is one of the most overlooked elements of inbound marketing, and should be developed early on in the marketing cycle. Buyer personas are the general character profiles of your ideal customer (who comprise your target market or audience). In the past, building or developing the right buyer persona was the sole realm of large companies, as the task could only be done using the vast resources at their disposal. As the online space became more competitive and technology became more accessible, online marketing news sources say that even small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) can now create their very own buyer personas.
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Online Marketing News: The Relevance of Beacons in Online Marketing

Consumers have come to expect a more convenient and personalized shopping experience from brands and companies. In fact, several major brands are leveraging this expectation by using “beacons” to send alerts and ads to people who step into their stores, regardless of whether they’ve purchased an item or not. Converting Shoppers with Beacon Technology Similar to how a lighthouse beacon guides ships out at sea, the beacons in commerce attract and direct visitors to particular retail stores with the aim of converting them into customers. According to the latest online marketing news, beacon technology is the latest innovation in marketing that translates digital marketing goals into real-life sales for businesses, via a process called retargeting. As the name implies, retargeting involves collecting data from shoppers’ online/offline purchasing habits and using that data to generate online ads that target that particular potential customer.
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What Local Marketing News Say About the Value of Customer Reviews

When looking at local marketing news or any informative article about local SEO, one can see that online marketing experts value customer reviews. This article will look at customer reviews and will discuss why they are important. Why Customer Reviews Matter The Digital Wheelhouse discusses in depth why local businesses need customer reviews. The foremost noticeable benefit to local SEO is both from the standpoint of search engines (machines) and users (humans). Google’s search algorithms are complex and their exact inner-workings remain a secret. However, it is known that the algorithms take into account customer reviews in ranking for local search. On the user side, the majority of online shoppers (77%) use reviews when making a purchasing decision. Furthermore, reviews also affect the overall online reputation of a business.
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Some Great Insights on Engaging Customers from Local Marketing News

Small, local businesses may have relatively constrained service areas but it doesn’t mean small business owners need not be smart about marketing. The competition is actually quite fierce and so, local businesses need to use effective techniques to draw in customers. The good thing is that local marketing news provide insights on how to do this. The Five Touch Rule Business 2 Community (@B2Community) discusses the Five Touch Rule in engaging customers. The strategy works on the concept that reaching out to customers too few or too many times over a certain period won’t be effective. In this context, each instance of reaching out is a “touch”. If a business makes too few touches, the prospect is unlikely to respond. In contrast, making too many touches triggers animosity in the prospect.
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Web Design News: Don’t Forget to Improve Your Website’s Navigation

Often, many website redesign projects for companies tend to just deal with the physical aspects of the site. Too many online marketers urge their web designers to focus on the design, completely forgetting about navigation in the process. This is most likely because that part of the website is hidden away under all the design elements and content. According to Kissmetric’s (@Kissmetrics) latest web design news article titled “Are You Making These Common Website Navigation Mistakes?”, navigation has a more significant effect on the success of a website than any other factor. Plenty of things can go wrong if you don’t pay attention to navigation. Here are a few tips to help you avoid that.
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