Are you engaging your community the best you can with visuals?

In most cases the answer is: probably not.

Yet, visual marketing is crucial these days. According to Megaphone Marketing,

With 70% of visual receptors in our eyes, it only takes 150 milliseconds to recognise and symbol and 100 milliseconds to attach a meaning to it. Our brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text and retains 80 percent of what we see versus just 20 percent of what we read.

Here are a few tips and stats for you to consider:

1. In the age of “infobesity” and with an adult attention span of 3-8 seconds, marketers need to learn how to stand out with visual content.
2. Viewers spend 100% more time on web pages with videos. 60% are more likely to buy a product if video is included. Use an online video editor to create videos.
3. Web posts with visuals drive up to 180% more engagement than those without visuals. Use visual elements to create better lead magnets!
4. Publishers who use infographics grow in traffic on average of 12% more than those who don’t.
5. According to Sephora, their Pinterest followers spend 15X more than its Facebook fans.
6. 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual and processed 60,000x faster.
7. Cartoons can increase your newsletter open rate to 45% vs 5% industry standard.
8. The 7 elements of visual storytelling are:
   1. design,
   2. personalisation,
   3. usefulness,
   4. personality,
   5. storytelling,
   6. share-worthiness,
   7. real-time app… Know them!
9. Don’t be afraid of low-fi (Low Fidelity) images taken on the go, we live in the Now! economy and people get it. Have fun w/ it.
10. Make content easy to consume, make it snackable!
11. Remember the Cs: content + context: know what content to place on what networks. Ex: GIFs do well on Tumblr, but not others.
12. Ensure every blog post has at least one great picture and you have a Pin It button on your site for heavy Pinterest users.
13. Twitter is extremely visual, even if you are sharing a link attach a picture to draw attention and increase click-through.
14. On Slideshare, use less text on slides, keep it short and visual, use a catchy title, and include a “tweet this” button on the slides.
15. Don’t be afraid to play with different types of content. See what works for your community; ask them too!

Never stop monitoring and improving. Use web analytics platforms to understand how your audience is engaging with your visual content and whether it is sending them down your conversion funnel:

There’s no one secret for success! Leave a comment and share what visuals you’re using and what’s working to help you and your brand better connect with your community.

Lately, I have been seeing a lot of people talking about growth hacks. These are little tricks that you discover that launch you into the mainstream by creating a surge of user accumulation in a short time.

Plenty of businesses have been scrambling to hire on a growth hacker for their businesses ever since the term started to trend, and even I have been approached by some clients asking me about it where before they had never seemingly heard of it.

The problem – as I have explained to them – is that this method is actually, at the heart, an unscalable hack. But when I say this it usually causes more confusion than it alleviated, which sent me to Google to see what others had to say on the subject. I was shocked to discover only a couple of relevant article on the same concept, and at least two were bases around the technical design definition of the phrase.

The Definition of Unscalable Hacks

An unscalable hack is more or less a short term solution that may or may not yield results. It is usually a temporary solution to a problem that will only patch the original issue, or provide a momentary injection. Which is, to me, what growth hacking is in both theory and practice. It is a short term means of creating a growth surge before you move onto the next tactic.

The problem with this kind of solution in any context is that it is only beneficial if you truly do find that mystical strategy that makes it all worth it. The one that will be your ace in the hole, and boost you onto a new level where you can begin a whole new tactic for continued growth.

Now, I am not saying that unscalable hacks don’t have their place in a sound business strategy. Just look at the way Reddit used the gap created by Digg to sweep in, or Google+ leveraged invites to build hype (not that it helped them in the long run). These are examples of short term actions that really paid off.

All I am pointing out is that an unscalable hack (or growth hack, for that matter) mean nothing if you don’t have the juice behind it to keep things running past the point where it stops being effective – which can be a very small window of time, indeed. If you don’t see many results with that hack in the first place, it is just creating even more problems.

A Better Way To Do Things

If you manage to find that genie’s lamp, by all means, rub it.. Would LinkedIn have been successful if they hadn’t started off following a single minority elitist line within the niche? Probably not. But don’t put too much effort in thinking of wishes that you forget how many you have. The end result is going to be based on more than a good idea that launched you into the mainstream…once you get there, you have to stay there.

The best method of leveraging hacks is to apply them to already solid business and marketing models, and incorporate many sound ideas that will work alongside your genie. Don’t put everything you have behind it’s power, because it only has so much.

With that said, regardless of which growth hacks you are using, always top it off with:

• A sound SEO & content marketing strategy
• A well-planned email marketing strategy
• A well-executed social media marketing plan
• A well-organized customer relationship management system,
• A well-defined marketing toolset, etc.

What do you think about unscalable hacks? Are they worth taking the risk for the average business or site owner? Let us know in the comments.

Image by talha khalil from Pixabay

Video marketing has been rapidly growing over the years. Still, many companies are still shying away from it fearing large production and marketing budgets.

Fear not, the below tools are both effective and low-cost (some are completely free!) so you can start marketing on Youtube this year!

Video Marketing Research

Google

Here is the obvious place to start. Google isn’t just a connecting point for websites, it is a way to see the most popular people, places, topics, websites, and more. A simple search can give you a lot of information about what interests your audience, what your competitors are doing and who is dominating certain keywords. It will also show you where you are lagging, and what phrases may be worth dropping.

Google Autosuggest

Another way to use Google is to check out its autosuggest. When you begin typing something into the search box, it will give you a collection of popular keyphrases that are often searched for. You will get an instant look into what people want to know, and what keywords are worth researching further. You can also see what keywords are currently associated with your brand.

Do use our this free Bulk Suggest Tool that will give you an instant glimpse into what users are searching in your niche.

Cyfe

Cyfe is multi-purpose digital marketing platform that will help you on lots of levels. I use it as a curation tool connecting many sources and allowing me to see everything in one place. I use it to curate Twitter, niche blogs, keyword research tools, etc.

MyBlogU

MyBlogU is another invaluable research tool which also comes completely for free. Create a new project and its helpful users will send you ideas: What they would like to watch in your industry and which questions they’d want to be answered.

Twitter

In the same vein as MyBlogU, Twitter can be just as useful in establishing keyword trends across the world. Any social network technically has this ability, but Twitter is unique in that it is widely open platform with a live updating feed and search algorithm.

You will get a lot more information there than anywhere else. I am mostly fond of Twitter as a way of finding new concepts to exploit, and establishing new marketing tactics and campaigns. But you will also see what keywords are making it on the social realm, and often competitors wouldn’t have thought to apply those to search metrics.

BuzzSumo

Content is a major part of most marketing strategies these days. So, what is working best for your competitors? What about the topics you want to cover? Just do a search on BuzzSumo, and you can get a detailed look at all that, and a lot more. This is arguably the best keyword and topic research tool on the web right now. They also provide influencer research for social media marketing, and content alerts.

Create a Video

You can create cool professional videos using this online video editor: It requires no training and no expensive software. And the results are great!

Video Promotion

Viral Content Bee

Viral Content Bee is a great freemium tool that lets you put your content in front of eager social media sharers.

Just submit your video URL, select which networks you want to promote it and you’ll soon see it being shared all over the place. Great for traffic and views too!

YouTube Promoted Videos

YouTube is going to be your major platform, but also the hardest to break out on. You can get a boost using YouTube Promoted Videos. YouTube stars don’t get there over night, they work for years perfecting their videos and gathering followers. But now the site has a simpler way to get seen.

You can become one of their Featured Videos using their promoted content feature. Best of all, you choose your own budget and the advertising costs never go over that amount.

Finteza

It is a smart idea to use your own site to promote your videos. Using Finteza’s advanced web analytics suite you can build conversion funnels involving your videos.

You can also use this online form builder to generate leads from your videos and landing pages.

Publicizing

Youtube is not the only place to publish your video at. Here are more ideas:

Blip

Sometimes your best bet is launching yourself on a platform that has less competition. Blip is a good option, as it is both popular as a place to watch different web series (That Guy With The Glasses is hosted there, for example), but not so overcrowded as YouTube. They even have their own app for consoles, so they can be watched in multiple places. They don’t have the best advertising plan, but if you are looking to launch a full series or a number of videos, it is a great option.

Vimeo

A godsend for creative video creators, this website is really for the artists more than casual clips. They also have a number of promotion and profit generating ventures, including a tip jar that allows people to give you donations for your next project. Vimeo is very handy, and one of the biggest video hosting sites on the web.

Metacafe

Target your reach a bit more narrowly than you can with some other video websites using this classic. Metacafe has been around since 2002, and it has become well known for hosting high quality work and videos made by creative film makers. It doesn’t have as many visitors as YouTube, or the same artistic focus as Vimeo. But it is a nice, solid platform or those who are presenting more casual work to the world.

Are there more tools to promote your video? Please let me know by tweeting to @jessytroy