Successful Blog

LinkedIn Marketing: Are You Doing it Right?

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With more than one third of professionals worldwide members of LinkedIn, opportunities have never been greater for finding future employers, generating business leads, making deals and generating revenue.

In fact, according to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2014 Benchmark report, LinkedIn has witnessed the biggest jump in B2C platform usage: from 51 percent last year to 71 percent this year.

LinkedIn has chimed in with its statistics and research stating that with over 300 million potential brand advocates, LinkedIn’s “ Pro-sumers” – Professional Consumers – are the most sought after audiences for brands. They carry more purchasing power than members active on other platforms, are 152% more likely to be active in online conversations and 80% more willing to pay more from a brand they trust.

Along with those numbers comes some fierce competition. Your professional experience needs to match your and groomed appearance and the quality of the content you are sharing needs to be on-target to grab the right eyes and generate leads.

So are you “doing it” all right?

LinkedIn offers various best practices from how to find a new employer to how to author winning content.  But when I took a look none of the below tips said “wow” to me. They screamed “business, and boring, as usual”:

Best practices found on LinkedIn:

Profile

  • upload a professional image
  • ensure your profile is complete
  • share content your audience is looking for
  • update your skills
  • get endorsements
  • use your business email address (and let people contact you!)

Job-Seekers

  • build a profile
  • ask for recommendations
  • inform your network you are looking for a job
  • purchase Premium

Content

  • keep an authentic voice
  • showcase your expertise
  • include concrete advice you’d like to give someone new to the field.
  • talk about what your industry will look like in 10 years
  • address industry issues or problems, offer your thoughts

How to get ahead on LinkedIn

I don’t personally use LinkedIn for lead generation or heavy networking, but one thing I will be doing soon though is leveraging LinkedIn’s latest innovation — Linkedin Publishing

Will I be alone? I doubt it. Will all of the other LinkedIn member also begin publishing their own content and clutter opportunities? Will publishing long-form posts (in the short-form world) help highlight my professional achievements, expertise and know-how? So far the quality of content I read is outstanding. My bet is that this feature is a game-changer for members.

LinkedIn members, social marketers and influencers alike have begun publishing.

Alone the visibility of posts in terms of views and shares speak volumes and can’t be discounted as a player in building, or increasing, trust and opening doors to new opportunities. A new era of social influence has begun.

Image by David Bruyland from Pixabay

How to Turn Your Passion into Cash with Blogging

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Are you passionate in one topic and want to spread your passion to others? Do you want to make money from your passion?

You can do it simply by starting a blog. Yes, blogging can help you to turn your passion into cash. Furthermore, blogging is one of the best ways to stay productive even when you are bored!

Follow these tips carefully:

1. Share what you know

Sharing information is what blogging is all about. If you have something to share with the world, blogging is one of the best platforms for you to simply share what you know.

Remember that everyone is an expert at something. Some people may not know about what you’re sharing, and they may need that information. When you are blogging, simply tell people about your passion. You will be able to naturally attract readers with similar passion as you.

You can use this cool business name generator to find a cool domain for your site. It can help you find an affordable domain that will be easy to brand!

2. Write only what you’re deeply interested in

You should write about what you know, not about what you don’t know. Writing about something that you enjoy will add more power to your writing. If you write about something that you know, what you write will naturally become persuasive.

When you’re able to persuade people with your writing, you can easily make some cash from your writing. Remember that the key to cash in with your blog is persuasive writing. It can be obtained only if you write about what you’re deeply interested in.

Example: If you are a blogger who want to get hired, start a blog on how bloggers can get hired!

3. Help your readers wholeheartedly

Aside from sharing information about your passion, blogging can become your channel to solve their problem. You can only make money with blogging if you’re able to help your readers to solve their problem.

After all, most products that are sold on the market are products that can help their buyers in some way. Help your readers wholeheartedly with your blog writing. Recommend products that you think can help your readers to solve their problem.

Example: There are no boring niches as long as your content is helpful and creative

4. Install advertisements only if you’ve made your blog popular

Although you can change your passion into cash with blogging, most people are quickly switching their gears once they start to make some money with their blog. They will start cluttering their blogs with advertisements and lots of pop-ups. You should avoid doing this.

You can monetize your blog through advertisements, but you can’t install those ads right away. The best timing to start monetizing your blog through advertisements is when you’ve made your blog popular.

What’s the measurement of popular blog? You can assume that your blog is popular enough when you see regular daily traffic of 1000 visitors or more.

You can also monetize your site by selling your services. Here’s an easy way to set a client booking form to collect leads.

5. Make yourself an expert

The last thing to make sure that you can cash in your passion with your blog is to make people notice that you’re an expert in your field. Through your passionate writing, you can make it.

People will regard you as an expert in blogging if you can solve their problem and share valuable information to them. Once you’ve build good reputation as an expert, it will become easier for you to make money with your blog. People will just start to call you and offer some gigs to you.

If you have a passion in any field, don’t suppress it. Start by creating a blog about the topic that you’re passionate about and follow the tips above. Within short amount of time, you will be able to turn your passion into cash with blogging.

Featured image by LUM3N

What Is An Unscalable Hack?

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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:

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

How to Achieve Consumer-Creator Balance

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Do you often find yourself completely overwhelmed with the amount of information that’s coming at you every day?

This article is for you.

Apologies/thanks to Hint Water for the image.

We’re going to go through a step-by-step process that will turn your consumption habits from a firehose to an irrigation system.

Because all of those email newsletter subscriptions, YouTube channels, blogs, and yes, even TikToks, should be adding value to your life.

It’s OK if the value is pure entertainment, but you should be cognizant of the percentage that is pure entertainment vs learning or business growth. Awareness is half the battle in taming the content shock beast.

Step One – What Am I Consuming?

Set aside 15-20 minutes and make a list of your subscriptions.

That should include newsletters, major media outlets you visit a lot, social channels that send you update notifications, etc.

Make sure you specifically focus on content that you receive on a regular schedule. These are sometimes the big time thieves that go unnoticed. Are there newsletters that you routinely delete or archive without reading them?

You may be over-consuming content, and putting your brain on information overload.

Step Two – Sort the Useful from the Non-Useful

Take a moment to look at each item in your list. For each one, ask yourself these questions:

  • What value, if any, is this adding to my life? (I’m learning things, I laugh, I’m gaining business skills…)
  • Do I have a system in place that helps me apply the information I learn from this item? It’s not enough to just read and move on, if the content is something that gives you business lessons. You need to have a process where you can use those tips to grow.
  • After I read/view this content, do I feel better or worse? (yes, some content just brings you down)
  • Am I subscribed to other content in the same niche that is better written, more valuable, more focused? Is this redundant?

One way to manage this evaluation process is to mark each item with a plus, zero/neutral, or minus. That will inform the next and final phase of the digital decluttering.

Step Three – Unsubscribe, Delete, Refocus

Time to pull the plug on any recurring subscriptions or content notifications that are of no value, are detracting from your mindset, or are redundant. Hit the unsubscribe button and be free.

Run through your inboxes and delete anything you haven’t read yet, that’s older than 2 days ago. Grant yourself the grace of an empty notifications icon.

The Internet will go on without you. If it was important, they’ll reach back out again.

For the items you’ve retained, set up a spot to collect notes and tasks that emerge when you’re reading/viewing that content. I use NotePlan 3 as a simple space for notes, inspirations, and ideas to apply to my life and business. There are tons of other note-taking and task-tracking tools out there to suit your work flow.

Post-Cleanup

Once you’ve gone through this process, you might want to follow the one-in, one-out rule. Any time you’re tempted to subscribe to something, force yourself to unsubscribe to another item, especially if they’re in a similar niche.

Share in the comments how you deal with content overload!

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About the Author: Rosemary O’Neill is co-Founder/CMO of Crowdstack, the best indie space for your groups online.

Three Reasons to Make Cybersecurity Your Marketing Priority

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Our lives are increasingly impacted by fast-moving technology: In fact it’s moving so fast that it is starting to feel like a sci-fi movie: Smart assistants doing searching and buying on the consumer’s behalf, intelligent customer support bots driving the consumers’ shopping decisions, smart applications predicting your competitive edge in the next few years…

The Internet of Things (IoT) growth is astounding: 20.4 billion IoT devices are expected to be purchased and used by 2020, according to analyst firm Gartner (source).

There’s no denying the fact that the new technology is changing the private information perception. Consumers tend to be willing to compromise on privacy for the sake of convenience.

Is your site prepared for increasing security and privacy concerns?

Here’s why you need to make security your #1 marketing priority:

Every 10 Seconds Someone Becomes a Victim of Identity Theft or Fraud

This number comes from Aura, an innovative digital threat protection platform that unites privacy, identity, and security products enabling customers to manage disparate cybersecurity needs.

Take a moment for this to sink in.

Count to 10: This is how much it takes for a new person to suffer identity fraud.

Still not convinced?

Let’s proceed.

Safety Drives Customers’ Purchasing Decisions

Are you a brand targeting millennial mothers? If so, IAB’ and BabyCenter’s “2015 State of Modern Motherhood: Mobile and Media in the Lives of Moms” may be of interest to you. The study takes a look at the technology and media habits of moms in the U.S., U.K., Brazil, China, and Canada.

Millennial mothers are savvy consumers. Their purchasing decisions are influenced by safety (77%), convenience (65%), value (64%), online product reviews (60%), and recommendations from other parents (51%). They also value products that simplify their lives, especially in Brazil (75%) and Canada (59%). A quarter of moms do half of their shopping online.

Mobile devices are also a big part of their lives. When visiting physical stores, 81% of U.S.-based moms, 79% of Chinese moms, and 73% of Canadian moms will use their smartphones to compare prices, find deals, download coupons, and check reviews, among other things.

The average cost of a data breach is $3.86 million as of 2020

IBM reported this number last year revealing a huge increase in hacked and breached data from sources that are increasingly common in the workplace, like mobile and IoT devices.

Cybersecurity concerns have pushed thousands of businesses to adapt to the new normal. Don’t let your business fall behind!

Image source: Pixabay

Budget-Friendly Tools To Promote Your Creative Video

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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.

Bulk Suggest Tool

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.

Cyfe

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