You can rely on us to keep you up-to-date on the latest digital marketing news, best practices, and industry trends. Following are the ones we found most interesting today.

Content Marketing

Read about the fundamentals of content marketing: what it is, goals to pursue through content marketing, how content fits into your marketing plan, ways to get the buy-in you need from your team, management, or stakeholders, and setting up your content marketing framework. (source: Content Marketing Institute)

Surveys

Use surveys to get customer feedback and find out what your target market thinks of your brand, products, and/or services. To ensure you get the most participation, send your survey at opportune times: on a week-day, in the early morning, around noon, in the late afternoon, or in the evening. (source: HubSpot)

SEO

Local SEO

I wouldn’t underestimate the focus we have on local. Just to give you a sense, local mobile searches are growing faster than just mobile searches overall, and have increased by almost 50% in the last year.
-Google CEO Sundar Pinchai – Oct. 2018 (source: Alphabet Investor Relations)

Make sure you keep your Google My Business listing up-to-date because Google ratings do impact conversions, especially for generic (nonbranded) searches—driving visitors to become customers.

Check your Google My Business listing to be sure that your business name, website, address, phone number, hours, and other information are correct.
Ask for and reply to ratings and reviews as these, too, improve your ability to gain consumers.
(source: Search Engine Watch)

Social Media Marketing

Facebook

Find out how to get more Facebook traffic and what to avoid:

Create 4 content types that are proven to drive click-through traffic from Facebook: interviews with experts and industry personalities, roundups featuring insights from several people, listicles gathering valuable sources by topic, freebies and lead incentives)
Avoid posts that run afoul of Facebook’s algorithm (like clickbait or engagement bait posts as well as image or video posts with links in descriptions)
Review Facebook traffic to see which links have high click-through traffic (look at your Facebook page post performance with Facebook Insights and review your Google Analytics acquisition reports to see your top pages from Facebook traffic)
Look for popular topics when creating content by researching Facebook channels (explore Facebook groups and crowdsource ideas from your Facebook audiences)
(source: Social Media Examiner)

Instagram

Businesses can use Instagram’s Carousel feature for lead generation and current customers, using mixed media and one or more Web destinations. Best practices include having a consistent theme for your carousel posts to indicate what your business’s brand is about and mixing interview snippets and promotional images with photos and videos. Also, Carousel posts should differ from what you typically publish on your website.

Different ways in which you can use an Instagram Carousel:

Product launch – build hype and answer questions
Before and after – let your target audience see what your product or service will do for them
Blog content – post teasers about blog posts
Brand personality – show off your company culture
Customer testimonials – helps you maintain customer relationships as well as generate leads
Process demonstration – engage with potential customers by showing how customers can benefit
Group themed images – display company culture
Recap – reminisce about past events
Full-length videos and images
Storytelling
(source: HubSpot)

TikTok

Launched in 2017, TikTok now boasts over 500 million active users, mostly Generation Z. You can use it to experiment with video posts as well as to engage with younger audiences.

Tips to create engaging video posts include:

Experiment with special effects
Use music (e.g., song or sound effect)
Use multiple shots in some of your videos
Show humor and entertain
Put relevant hashtags in post captions (like Instagram)
Get inspired by other brands’ strategies
(source: HubSpot)

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