This is the content consumer era. We are all consuming more and more content, in various forms. Researches confirm that US adults consume about 10h of media content daily and millennials can reach 18h a day consuming content. Hence, the need for high-quality, engaging content rises sharply. Content creators are striving to conceive helpful, attention-grabbing, and delightful pieces. And, of course, all content creators dream of producing viral content.
But finally, what is viral content?
Is there a recipe or a procedure that can guarantee virality?
Well, not quite.
I subscribe to Lori Taylor’s opinion “Going viral is not an outcome; it’s a happening. Sometimes it happens; sometimes it doesn’t. Just remember, fans are vanity and sales are sanities.” We can make all the efforts to influence and help a piece of content go viral, but we, the writers, cannot control it. It’s the public decision, whether they will share it or not. Whether they will make it viral or not.
We can just prepare the premises and push somehow a piece of content to become viral, but guaranteeing virality is beyond our powers. Anyway, we can certainly try.
Let’s dive in and decode the share-worthy content features.
First, let’s depict what viral means. Millions of shares, hundreds of thousands?
It highly depends on your industry and niche. You cannot expect to have share scores like the Kardashians or like large interest niches as weight loss if you are in a highly specialized niche such as mechanical engineering.
So, chill out and breathe!
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At first glance, a viral content definition is having millions of views or shares.
Thus, depending on niche and industry the variation is quite large.
The global viral refers to millions of shares. In this category, viral content examples are the most famous songs or books. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series is such an example. Celine Dion’s “My heart will go on” or more recently Adele’s “Hello”.
The niche-specific viral is more mundane and relates to a much smaller, specific niche. In general, several hundred shares mean viral in this context.
Most probably you find yourself acting in a niche, so it doesn’t make sense to report to a global audience, but to a targeted one.
Hence the purpose of becoming viral is to obtain more than 500-700 shares for your niched blogs, articles, etc. And that’s the purpose of this article.
So, how do you achieve that?
Keep reading.
Now, that we have established the definition of viral content in your case, let’ ‘s fix the other details:
Who Are the Persons That Should Share Your Content?
Obviously, your target audience and buyer personas. That’s indeed your first goal.
In the algorithm of content sharing besides your target audience, a primary role will be played by influencers in your niche.
Besides starting to promote your content from the very first moment, counting on influencers’ help can offer your content a significant boost.
As you probably know, great content is 20% creation and 80% promotion, so virality relies heavily on promotion. Don’t be passive, spread the word yourself from the beginning and get help!
To get the attention and the benevolence of influencers your need to offer them a strong reason to share your content, except great quality content.
The equation of the viral content starts with a solid base – excellent quality combined with emotional triggers. Emotions are the driving factor that makes a piece of content likable and shareable.
So, infuse your content with emotions, if possible.
Consider executing some of the following elements, if not all of them, if you want to insure your content has the premises to go viral:
Chase for Viral Topics
To improve your chances of virality, do your homework and search for trending topics at the moment you are creating your content.
BuzzSumo is usually a first stop to find trending topics and the engagement they are receiving. Insert keywords for your niche and check up on results.
You can start from these ideas and create your own potentially viral content.
Another tool that can guide you in finding topics that have high virality potential is Google Trends. It also helps you discover supplementary insights like which keywords related to your niche are trending and shows you related terms to support idea generation.
For viral topics, you can also check Reddit since upvotes of the community can show trending topics that may become viral. Verify subreddits of your niche, if there are, and see which subjects get votes.
Even if actual trending topics do not relate to your niche, you can search for creative ways to leverage their popularity. Think of business articles published to teach some tricks based on popular TV shows.
Take Into Consideration Content Types That Proved to Be Successful – Viral Content
Among successful content types, we count how-tos, lists, infographics, comparisons, case studies, interviews, and reviews.
Using a popular content type is just a detail, not a guarantee of success. What will go a long way to a viral post is approaching a subject from a unique angle, a different point of view, and infusing relevant supplementary information. The differentiation element in an extremely crowded blogosphere is a must.
Even if it is proved with numbers that long-format content pieces perform better it is not, the length of the format that will make a piece of content stand out, it’s the outcome. It’s the value delivered, extra insights, better tips, and different approach that generates engagement.
And engagement is the trigger of virality and activates shares, likes, links, traffic, and revenue.
Write Valuable Content That Teaches
Content pieces that passed the time test, and that got tons of views, shares, and likes are those that provide intrinsic value to the reader.
Most of the time they are comprehensive, long articles that deliver a sort of knowledge to the reader and teach him something. How-to, tutorials, and DIY articles, that the reader finds useful for his purposes.
Find Gaps, Improve and Go Viral with Your Content
Let’s be honest, no matter what topic you want to write about is already fully covered by other dozens or even hundreds of similar posts. Trying to find virgin territories to explore is clearly a dead end.
Ok, and now what?
The only solution is to come up with a different point of view and create more comprehensive content or an upgraded type of content that’s more attractive to outperform existing sources.
Backlinko’s founder Brian Dean used such an approach by creating the Skyscraper method. This technique means identifying viral content in your niche, conceiving a better version, and outreaching sites that were linked to other less complete articles to backlink to your new, more comprehensive article.
Most of the time people are looking for solutions to their current problems, and offering solutions gets their attention. So, offer solutions to your buyer persona’s problems. Provide relevant solutions and you will become relevant in your audiences’ eyes.
Search and find out which are the struggles of your audience. They are your opportunity to create great content that is useful and in demand.
Help your readers realize that you were just like them, you are one of them, you passed through the same problems and you succeeded to overcome them. You provide proven solutions from your own experience.
Show empathy for your audience and share your knowledge with those that are still struggling with those types of issues.
Viral Content – The Power Is in the Story
Stories are an integral part of our lives, as Jonathan Gottschall said: “We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories”.
Since humanity is literally in love with storytelling, use it in your content. Convey a story, from a nagging issue to a reliable solution. Take readers on a journey, use substantial examples, and create anticipation to make them enjoy your content.
Use your personal stories and struggles to differentiate yourself. Be authentic and you will resonate better with your audience.
Jonah Berger, after studying 7000 articles in The Wall Street Journal, concluded that the leading driver of viral content is emotions. It’s not the topics that impact virality, but the extreme emotions.
Articles that provoked anger were shared more than articles that provoked sadness. Articles that generated astonishment received more shares than those generating contentment.
When crafting content, take into consideration infusing extreme emotions, if applicable. The above-mentioned article of Jon Morrow telling his story is such an example. A guy suffered a terrible accident, he is paralyzed and tied in a wheelchair and succeeds to be one of the best bloggers in the world. Wow!
Even if your niche is not exactly an emotional one, you can get creative and invent some emotional activities, like the blend manufacturer Blendtec did with blending a human skeleton. And it generated millions of views on YouTube. Well done!
Use the Tone of a Personal Conversation
Your interlocutor, while writing an article, is your ideal buyer persona. Even if we are speaking about visitors, readers, and audiences, our target is in fact our ideal customer.
Strive to conceive your writing as a personal conversation, a one-to-one discussion with your ideal buyer persona. It’s the best way to connect with your reader if you speak directly to him and relate to his particular problems and struggles.
Hence, while crafting your content, target one persona and one problem in your “virtual conversation”.
Most of us are visual creatures and visual learners, that’s no secret. People remember up to 65% of the visual content they consumed, after three days. 41,5% of marketers sustain infographics and original designs perform best.
In conclusion, using high-quality imagery and original visuals in your content is an absolute must.
Anyway, you may choose to use infographics or not. The idea is you have to make efforts and conceive top-quality photos and imagery for your content. Not all of us are experts in photography, so read tutorials and use editing software like Photoshop, Canva, LightRoom, or PicMonkey to improve image quality.
Also, there are thousands of options proposing high-quality stock images, free and paid, you just have to pick. Pixabay, Unsplash, Shutterstock, or small stylish collections like BizStyledStock.
Indeed, you create content for your audience, not for search engines. But, in order for your audience to find your content, a search engine will be used. Thus, you have to ensure your content is search-engine friendly.
A key ingredient that cannot be missed, if you want your post to go viral is optimization. Follow the rules of current SEO best practices.
Make sure your keywords are placed in your title, in the URL, in the first 100 words of the post, and in other places inside the post, including synonyms.
The headline makes and brakes the virality of a piece of content. I doubt I am wrong in saying that. It’s the foundation that plays in your favor or against you. Pay great attention to your title for shareability and virality. Make it self-explanatory and attention-grabbing and as interesting as you can. Test your title with a tool like CoSchedule Analyzer to help you improve the enticement of your title.
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Format for Readability
With everyone being extremely busy nowadays, time is a rare resource, so make your content as easy as possible to digest.
Take care with formatting, font type, size, content spacing, and use small paragraphs. Include photos, screenshots, and images to split large blocks of text, bullets, and lists. Stick to a common language and simple phrase syntax.
Pay attention to the colours you choose in order to maintain text readability, and use contrasting colours to avoid difficulties while reading.
Create Content Upgrades
To give your content a supplementary boost towards virality offer your readers content upgrades. Content upgrades are those “extras” offered to visitors that provide supplementary value and can be downloaded instantly.
Content upgrades are great “hooks” that make your post shareable and visitors return.
Of course, your upgrade should be related to your topic and might take the form of a checklist, cheatsheet, workbook, ebook, course, template, case study, guide, worksheet, etc.
Content upgrades are important not only because of the added value they provide but because they give you a hand with building your list of subscribers.
Make Sharing a Breeze
Having many other persons sharing your content is a huge step to virality. To help this happen you should have social buttons displayed in visible places to encourage readers to click on them.
There are tens of apps and plug-ins available to accomplish this job. Test and use the one you find most appropriate.
I think Bloom is a great option (it is responsible for the sidebar sharing buttons you can observe on your left). TweetDis can add an extra to your site helping you to convert interesting phrases into tweets.
Viral Content Tips – Promote Aggressively
Remember the first rule of success is promotion. Creating great content is just 20% of the work, the rest is spreading the word. Sharing your content on social media, with your email list, and attracting influencers to promote you, are the key ingredients.
Social Media is a powerful pillar of your promotion strategy and will have a heavy impact on helping your content go viral. Identify the social media networks where your audience hangs out and use them intensively: Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, LinkedIn, Google+, etc.
Be consistent and share your posts continuously, sharing them just once and hoping for the best will simply not work. Use social media management tools to schedule your social media posts and minimize the time spent on this kind of task.
Applications like Broadbooster, Tailwind (for Pinterest), Later (Instagram) and Hootsuite, Buffer, SproutSocial (various channels) will make social media sharing and publishing a breeze.
To make your posts viral on social channels make sure your related Pinterest pins respect the best practices for Pinterest, Twitter tweets also, Instagram posts likewise, etc.
Encourage Influencers to Share Your Content
You write content for your ideal buyer persona, but also for influencers. And more than sure you are already doing this, whether you are aware of it or not.
You include outbound links in your content, you incorporate other resources and influencers’ content in your posts. So, you have already involved influencers in this process.
In general, influencers like their multipliers and people that share their content, and sometimes they may return the favor. And that’s how you gain huge exposure.
To help your content go viral you must network with influencers and create connections. Connect with them on social media, follow them, share their masterpieces, comment on their posts, backlink to their content, and give them credit for their valuable advice.
Write posts where you explain how successful your actions were while using influencers’ strategies, tips, and tricks. Interview your favorite influencers or make round-ups with experts on certain topics of interest.
For supplementary insights on how to make influencers share your content check “How to Find Influencers Who Already Want to Share and Link to Your Content“
Now you have the draft to help you craft viral content and your skills will improve with practice.
Keep practising and testing new things! Be inventive and innovative if possible.
Mastering virality and viral content is an art, sometimes works better, and sometimes it simply doesn’t work at all. But do not renounce!
For online businesses and finally for all businesses, generating continuous targeted traffic to their sites is a major preoccupation. Questions like: how to increase blog website traffic for free, how to increase blog traffic fast, and how to increase traffic to your site are most common among bloggers, solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, and established businesses.
Each and everyone needs traffic. Period!
Increasing traffic for our sites or blogs ranks among the first priorities and traffic is never enough.
There is a plethora of tactics, strategies, and tricks to increase your blog’s traffic, you just have to start with the ones that are the most appropriate for your business and then expand on other modalities. Practically is not possible to implement all these tactics simultaneously from start, but one at a time, and soon you will start to see results. For sure!
Increasing traffic involves lots of testing because there is no one-fits-all method. Some strategies will have great results and some very little impact. Pick and invest just in what offers you the best results on your invested resources.
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Just keep in mind that you need diversified traffic sources. If for example, Facebook or Google change their algorithms, you don’t want to be deadly hit because you rely heavily on one source of traffic. Always have a backup solution.
To give you a hand, I gathered below some of the most important tactics that you can use to increase your traffic. I split them into two categories:
· Core Ways to Increase Website Traffic
· Supplementary Ways to Improve Your Website Traffic
And also, a comprehensive checklist to help you keep track of your endeavors.
Before digging into the specific traffic increase strategies, pay attention to some basic considerations:
· Clearly establish your business SMART objectives. Before generating traffic, you have to decide what you offer to your potential clients, what can they expect from your business, and why should they use your services/products.
· Define your audience. It’s easier to attract a targeted audience if you know who exactly she is. For instance, you may target real estate property investors in a certain area or young mothers looking to live a healthy frugal life.
· Choose a voice for your site or blog. Your authenticity will be expressed by the voice of your blog, maybe a professional one, a conversational-friendly one, or maybe a funny one. Your writing style, the colors of your brand, and your graphics are all contributing to your blog’s personality.
· Your content needs to be helpful and solve a problem, be useful. Each of us reads just the content that he is interested in, either to find out some information, either to get a solution or to learn something. “What’s in it for me” is what the reader is looking for, each and every time.
How to Increase Website Traffic – Core Ways
Create Great Content
The overused dictum “content is king” is really true, as content is the basis for everything marketing related. If you don’t have content that your audience wants to consume, you generate traffic for nothing. So, give Caesar what is Caesar’s: create high quality content, that is helpful and valuable for your readers.
Be authentic and provide personal experiences, and insights that might help others. Create comprehensive guides, tutorials, best practices lists, how-to posts, and reviews to help your readers achieve their goals and entice them to return to your blog.
Format your content for easy readability and avoid populating your posts with too many ads or pop-ups that make reading a struggle.
The aesthetics of your site is quite important when attracting visitors, so choose fonts that are easy to read, and a color scheme that is pleasant for the eye. Don’t forget to make your site mobile responsive as more and more users are using mobiles to consume content.
How to Increase Website Traffic? Publish Consistently
Publishing quality content regularly is an important trigger and fundamental pillar for traffic increase. Google loves new content; your audience will have a variety of topics to choose from and you will increase your chances of ranking in search results.
If you have content you have material to promote. So, publish consistently. Now there is a large debate on how often you need to publish content. It’s better to have a longer more comprehensive piece of content once or twice a week than publish every day 500 words blogs.
Be sure to privilege quality and not quantity.
Spread the Word Via Social Media Platforms
Social Media is nowadays a huge source of free traffic with its numerous variations. And one of the best places to find your audience is where she hangs out. Choose among the social media networks where your audience is most present. And concentrate your efforts on one-two channel at a time to see relevant results, not on multiple.
Join Pinterest
Many bloggers claim Pinterest is by far their major source of free traffic (I am on my way to confirming this theory 😉) and a true gold mine. Pinterest is a search engine, a visually focused one indeed, but one of the most powerful. You just might have a huge surprise!
Pinterest allows you to get in front of thousands or hundreds of thousands of persons in principle without paying. But to be more effective you have to use scheduling tools like Tailwind, so finally, this is not exactly free.
The key to Pinterest’s success is pins design, you have to find the successful formula that works for you in terms of graphic design.
How to Increase Website Traffic? Join Facebook and Facebook Groups
Facebook doesn’t need any presentations anymore. These days if you are not on Facebook you do not exist. Consequently, it is compulsory to have a Facebook page for your business, where you can post your content, share content that inspires you, share and host online events, offer freebies, and not ultimately network. Social networks are meant for socializing.
Establishing relationships with other businesses or influencers in your niche will help you spread the word about your business, expand your audience and increase traffic, increase brand awareness, and ultimately grow sales.
Tip: Consider joining Facebook groups active in your niche.
Despite being supportive and offering opportunities to connect with like-minded people, Facebook groups most often have daily threads that allow you to promote your blog.
Tip: You also may consider creating your own Facebook group, as another way to help skyrocket your traffic.
Join LinkedIn
LinkedIn is another source of traffic particularly for B2B businesses, for bloggers blogging about personal finance, marketing, designers, SEO experts, etc. Be sure to optimize your profile for your target keywords so that your profile pops up in relevant searches. LinkedIn is a professional network and having a strong profile there tells your potential readers and clients about your business and strengthens credibility.
Tip: Join LinkedIn groups that relate to your niche.
Join Twitter
Even if many are rather skeptical that Twitter can be a reliable source of traffic, it’s still a good option. Twitter has a great blogging community after all. And hashtags are still a reliable way to get discovered and provide traffic. Embedded tweets are an interesting manner to share your content and format your post by breaking long paragraphs.
You have the opportunity to approach the “Twitter retweet” accounts that will help retweet your blog posts. Hashtags like: #BloggersTribe #FemaleBloggerRetweet could help expand your reach.
How to Increase Website Traffic? Join Instagram
Particularly helpful for visually appealing businesses, in industries like beauty, traveling, fashion, cooking, design, etc. Instagram can make a difference. But not necessarily, business accounts like Foundr have found huge success on Instagram. Make detailed research and see if Instagram may be a good option for your business and if your audience uses Instagram.
Anyway, using Instagram means great visuals that catch the eye of the Instagrammer. Don’t forget to insert the link to your site in your profile, as the most obvious way to access traffic from Instagram. Use tools like Instagram stories to enhance your reach.
Tip. If you are in doubt about which of these social media platforms to use, check the influencers and experts in your niche and see where they concentrate their efforts on social media.
Socialize and Network
Networking for business is an old practice. Now, we are fortunate enough to have tools that facilitate greatly this type of activity. Do yourself a favor and interact with other relevant bloggers in your niche. Follow the ones you like or your mentors, comment on their posts, share their content, and get involved in discussions. In some cases, you will see the favor returned.
Be nice and helpful as this is another way of attracting leads and customers. And it’s a sure way to gain authority in your niche and be trusted by others. You can also promote your content this way but do it just when it is relevant in context.
Most probably one of the best sources of returning traffic and the major asset of your business that’s your own property. The money is in the list correspond to the truth for most business. Your email list will generate most part of your sales.
Offer multiple valuable opt-ins to increase your mailing list faster. Communicate regularly with your mailing list and provide valuable content to help you create a connection with your readers and deliver them helpful stuff. Engage with the subscribers of your list, answer their questions and concerns, and encourage them to contact you.
To properly manage your list, you will need an email service provider that fits your goals. My choice for this stage of my blog is Mailerlite. Their service is free till you reach 1000 subscribers and is easy to handle, their design is nice. ConvertKit is also a very reliable option.
Opt-in sample to build an email list
Guest Posting
Like it or not, this is still one of the most reliable methods to get backlinks and traffic. With guest posts, you will get in front of new audiences, get referral traffic, and gain authority and credibility if you post on high-authority sites. And also, will support your site with backlinks for SEO purposes.
Guest posting should be a long-term game for you and it’s better to start it as soon as possible.
To find guest posting opportunities just ask Google. Search with “write for us”/ “guest posts” + your niche.
Here is the result of guest posting research on marketing topics.
How to Increase Website Traffic? Optimize Your Site for Search Engines
SEO is a long-run game, a marathon not a sprint. It takes time, so don’t expect results overnight. Make all the necessary efforts to optimize your blog and your posts for search engines, to help you rank as high as possible in SERPs. The higher the position the larger amount of traffic you gain for your site.
SEO will supply your blog with free traffic in the long term, so you should start focusing on SEO from day one. There are many tools to help you with search engine optimization like Yoast plug-in for WordPress, Google Keywords Planner, SemRush, Buzzsumo, KeyWordFinder, etc.
It’s an incontestable fact that the headline and the keywords have a heavy impact on driving organic traffic. You can test your headline with a tool like the Headline Analyzer of CoSchedule.
Supplementary Ways to Improve Your Website’s Traffic
Create Promotional Videos
People in general connect quicker to a face that represents a business and establish faster a relationship. Consider creating promotional videos, as they will increase your credibility.
Now, video is on the verge of a great expansion and is one very effective way to attract free traffic, as is considered more engaging. Video statistics indicate that 93% of businesses use video content for their online marketing and sustain that their main focus will be video this year.
Ensure That Subscribing to Your List Is Super Easy
In our speed century if the visitor doesn’t find instantly what is looking for, clicks back and he is gone. So, subscribing should be a breeze with just a minimalist form and nothing more. Remember that your subscribers are responsible for your returning traffic and form the gross of your customers. Make their life easier!
Share Your Story
Connect easier with your readers and blog visitors by telling them your story, why are you doing what you are doing and how did you arrive here. Share with them your success and also your mistakes. Why are you a trustworthy person? What’s your authority to teach them or to help them?
Insert Sharing Buttons
More shares translate into more traffic – the more the better. Hence, make it as easy as possible for your readers to share your content and help them promote your business. Add sharing buttons to your site and ask your visitors to share the content if they find it appropriate.
There are lots of tools to help you do this, from applications to various plugins. I preferred Elegant Theme’s Monarch, it is responsible for the buttons you see on your left, for the upper bar, and for a pop-up that will appear in front of you at a certain moment. (I hope that will not bother you, I tried to make it good-looking 😊).
Consider Starting a Podcast
The reality is that not everyone enjoys reading as I do; I will always prefer reading to listening to a podcast or watching a video when it comes to learning something. But listening to podcasts has its own advantage, can be done during other activities, like driving or commuting, or running.
You can increase your blog’s traffic by starting a podcast based on your already-written posts. And you will attack another market segment, that of those who prefer listening and not reading.
Commenting on Popular Blogs
Commenting on other blogs, preferably on high authority blogs helps you increase your reach and simultaneously creates backlinks to your site. This tactic also sustains your networking efforts. Create a Gravatar and with just one click other persons will find relevant information about you and your business.
Write an Ebook
Writing an ebook will establish you as a specialist or expert in your niche and will reinforce your credibility. An ebook is a great base to expand your audience and cultivate long-term relationships with your existing and future customers.
Create a Free Mini Course as an Opt-in
It’s universally known that we all love free stuff. The more the better. Creating a mini email course is an excellent way to provide valuable information for your readers in exchange for their email. You gain new subscribers and your readers get valuable stuff, a win-win.
Use Paid Advertising
If your budget allows it, take into consideration promoting your posts or your products, with paid advertising on Facebook, sponsored content on Instagram, paid Pins on Pinterest, etc. Start small and test each option before infusing large amounts of money. See which channel gives you the best ROI.
Testimonials of happy customers are a very effective way to promote your business. And satisfied customers are the fuel of your business development. Entice satisfied customers to provide feedback for free or in exchange for a bonus, discount, or freebie.
Their testimony will act as a hook for future clients.
Write Posts Featuring Interviews with Influencers
Most of us are interested in learning from the best in our industry and from those that have already achieved the results we want to achieve. Interviewing experts and influencers in your niche can skyrocket your traffic and reach new audiences, those of influencers. Not to mention you will have top-quality material for your own audience.
Having a plethora of information at your disposal and a myriad of ways to increase your blog traffic, well that can be overwhelming at least. To identify those methods that are most reliable and cost-effective for you, start with two or three options at a time. Avoid the mistake of spreading your efforts in ten directions so that none brings relevant results.
When you have picked one that works well, pass it to another one or two, or three. But concentrate on a few at a time.
Now that you have a comprehensive list that shows you how to increase your website traffic at your disposal, decide and select the ones that you think will be the most impactful for your business. Start with a few, work on them, master them and move to the next ones till you have identified the best strategies to promote your blog and business.
In the first half of 2018, a report by Interactive Advertising Bureau and PWC showed that marketers spent $30.9 billion on mobile advertising alone, marking 63% of their total digital ad-spend. This change has been spurred by the rapid growth of mobile device usage. This growth can further be attributed to the fact that consumers are quickly embracing the newest technology that will ease their life a little more.
It also means that businesses are leveling up their marketing efforts in order to keep up with these advances in technology specifically tailoring their ads to be more mobile-friendly. Smartphones and tablets are gaining popularity because they’re smaller, lighter, more affordable, and portable compared to PCs and laptops. Manufacturers on the other hand keep feeding the demand by developing faster and more user-friendly mobile devices.
With this said, digital marketing will keep evolving and mobile advertising will keep playing the main role. So it’s up to marketers to ensure they have a cohesive mobile marketing strategy in order to connect with the digital consumers in this market that keeps getting riper for further growth.
There are several mobile advertising advantages and disadvantages, but because the advantages outdo the disadvantages, here is a closer look at why they’re winning.
1. The Increasing Time Spent on Mobile Devices
More than 4,5 billion people own and use smartphones in the world as of 2019. Think about it, how much time do you spend on your phone, as compared to your PC or laptop? These statistics are what advertisers are trying to catch up on in order to reach more customers.
With up to 80% of web traffic happening on mobile, it’s then more than clear why, this is where most customers will be found at any given time.
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The mobile’s precision is one of its greatest advantages as far as advertising is concerned. The increased connectivity that mobile devices especially smartphones have enabled is creating a dynamic shift as far as relevance, speed, and target location are concerned.
Your stellar creative campaigns have great potential thanks to the fact that smartphones are not only receivers, but they’re also transmitters of information. They’re huge information mines on individual tastes and preferences.
This means advertisers and marketers have the chance to be more specific by personalizing ads based on individual user preferences, buyer behavior, and location, and therefore offer more relevant content to their users.
3. Immediate
Besides being very precise, mobile advertising is also about the perfect mobile moment. What does this mean?
It’s possible to create a sense of urgency that can inspire immediate engagement if you find the perfect mobile moment. This means creating ads based on time combined with location. For example, if you’re advertising a coffee joint, you may want to do that in the morning, if your ad has a CTA, then it’s likely to create that sense of urgency that will encourage the customer to go get the coffee at that time.
This immediate engagement is very practical and easy.
4. Mobile Ads Are Interactive
Mobile ads aim to provide better quality advertising engagement for their users by combining precise targeting with compelling formats to give relevant and engaging content to their users. This makes the user spend a little more time with the brand, boosting the overall engagement time.
This interactive nature of the ads provides a valuable midpoint between the advertiser’s needs and users’ solutions.
5. Conversion Oriented and Cost Effective
Why are mobile ads cheaper? Remember as said above, these ads are precise in their targeting. This is one of the reasons they are cheap as compared to other forms of advertising, you create ads for only who you need to see it. The nature of this medium is also cheap, unlike most other advertising platforms that may involve countless ad prints or expensive ad spaces or ad time.
Another reason they’re affordable is that tracking and measuring your results is easy therefore you’re able to save money where the strategy is not working.
Types of Mobile Advertising
Here is a highlight of the most effective types of mobile advertising.
These ads mimic the original app format for optimal user experience and thus are least intrusive and this is why they’re so successful. Being part of the app, they are displayed in varying forms. They can work with any type of app since they’re perceived as additional information for users and not just ads looking to make a sale.
These ads are more interactive and they spread across the entire screen, often when either the app is loading or after the app closes. They often feature a very creative call to action to engage the user.
They’re often in the form of photos or videos and because they occupy the whole screen, they will always have a close or navigate button at the top right side of the screen.
Interstitial ads may seem intrusive if you will not try being as creative and interesting as possible. You can also avoid boring your users if you place the ad between main activities.
Mobile video ads are easy in their concept yet pretty complex in execution. These videos play while a user interacts with an app. As demanding as they can get in terms of budget and execution, they are very effective due to the visual effects.
When done right, these videos can go from just compelling to engaging. Similar to interstitial ads, they have exit buttons for the user to return to whatever activity they were exploring.
Reward Video ads are spruced-up video ads in the sense that they offer benefits for users if they watch till the end. This is especially common when playing games; you can for example get an extra life if you watch the video till the end.
These reward videos are usually very short and don’t have a skippable button. The reason they are very effective is the reward they offer, users are often very pleased and interested in these rewards.
Source: Chocolateplatform
iv. Banner Ads
The good old banner ads still remain popular even though they’re very famous for causing banner-blindness syndrome. People have gotten so used to these types of ads they have mastered ways to simply ignore them together with their (often) very poor user interface. (UI)
But why are they still used?
Because they’re handy and very cheap. The key thing is to have a very catchy CTA and appealing colors because that’s all the space you have, and also because it has to deliver the message in the one second of eyeball it gets.
They’re also easy to implement and compatible with mobile apps, they’ll give you the basic brand awareness you’re looking for.
v. Rich Media Ads
These are more like spruced-up banner ads. They include audio, video, and other elements that are geared toward boosting engagement and interaction with the user.
Also known as multimedia banner ads, these ads can appear in feed or full screen and are specialized to creatively engage with users to generate high click through rate and conversions.
Mobile advertising platforms refer to ad networks, ad servers, programmatic ad buying or any digital advertising solutions that support ad campaigns that span mobile display or mobile app advertising across mobile platforms such as smartphones and tablets.
Here are some of the best platforms:
a. Google Ads
Google Ads are quite convenient because your content can show both on desktop and mobile devices. And if you wish to target mobile users alone, you can use display ads and select device targeting to direct your content only to tablet and or smartphone users.
This platform offers the possibility to run ads within browsers, apps, and of course Google search results. In the specific case of mobile devices text ads, video ads, and image ads may be published within very targeted promotion campaigns via apps.
Why this is really one of the best platforms? Because you have access to the largest search engine, this puts your ads in front of the largest audience possible at this moment.
b. Facebook and Instagram Ads
These social media giants really are the ideal marketplace and both their ads are managed by Facebook’s ad platform. It recently launched Audience Network which is a very user-friendly ad platform. You’re spoilt with choices on what type of advertising to use for your campaign including native ads, rewarded video ads, and all the above-mentioned types of mobile advertising.
You can do advanced targeting on this platform and profit from their gigantic base, using criteria such as location, gender, age, likes and interests, job, education and so much more.
What’s more? They offer very affordable rates if you’re working on a budget.
c. Ad-Mob
Ad-Mob was acquired by Google in November 2009 and has since dominated online advertising. It’s one of the best platforms for beginners because of its simple app integration.
Just like Google Ads, you can target your audience depending on their location, carrier, operating system, and the like.
All the above-mentioned types of mobile advertising can also be used via this platform.
d. AdColony
This is probably the choice for top mobile publishers worldwide because of its unique features such as rich demographic targeting, media, and video integration with both Android and iOS. It’s the pioneer advertising platform that offers Instant-Play™ HD video ad technology that plays on any device irrespective of the quality of their internet speed.
They also offer a premium service that allows advertisers to target their audience very precisely guaranteeing user response. Mobile advertising examples that have used AdColony include Adidas and Farmville.
e. Twitter Ads
This social media platform is also another great mobile advertising channel. Here, you’re also able to target your ad only to your personas of interest, and you can shift this audience depending on their activity on Twitter as well as their location.
Another unique feature they have is that you can pay only for the actions that you would want your target audience to carry out e.g. app download.
f. Unity Ads
This ad platform is very popular with games because it allows developers to boost their monetization by offering in-app purchases displayed on videos to players.
It delivers ads to players that would most likely be interested in playing a certain game. Another great feature of this platform is that you don’t require integrating an additional advertisement software development kit (SDK); it supports several display formats and works seamlessly with both Android and iOS.
g. ChartBoost
This is another great mobile app advertising platform dedicated to game developers because it allows cross-promotion. It works excellently with video ads and interstitial ads as well. It offers easy integration and only one SDK is required.
This platform provides full control over your ad space allowing you to pick who will advertise in your app. Game developers like it because it supports them by allowing them to keep most of their income.
h. Apple Search Ads
Apple Search Ads is an advertising platform owned by Apple. The major problem with this platform is that even as technology breaks all borders, it’s still very regional and can only be found in a selection of countries, are the US, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Switzerland, New Zealand, and the UK. That said, its main feature is that developers only get to pay per install and the ad shows on the top of search results.
So, with all the above information given, how then would you set up an effective mobile advertising campaign?
Main Steps to Set Up a Mobile Advertising Strategy
For anyone in business, it’s important to awaken the fact that customers are consuming data in new dynamic ways. Therefore as a marketer, you need skills that complement your mobile marketing strategies to be able to level up your campaign for the best results.
Your campaign should be customer-centric, the content you’ll serve your customers with is what will develop your brand and ideally pull them into your sales funnel. So, where do you start?
1. Define Your Mobile Ad Objectives
You must have a purpose that got you here in the first place. And this might be to create or strengthen your brand awareness, boost sales, drive web traffic to your site or just promote a specific deal, whatever it is, be clear from the start. This will determine so many other aspects as you progress through the entire campaign.
2. Know Who Your Target Audience Is
After establishing what you want to achieve, the next important thing is who you will be targeting with this campaign. This involves knowing who they are, what solutions they are after in regard to what you’re offering them, and where they are in the buying process.
You can get all this information through a survey, for example.
Consider finer details such as screen sizes and the fact that consumers today have such a short span for any boring stuff including ads. What they expect is creative content and visuals that grab attention.
3. Choose Your Ad-Type
This is truly simple. As explained earlier, there are various types of mobile ads campaigns so you can consider the one that will best work for your product and budget and run with it.
4. Map Out Your Campaign Time
At this point, you have your objective; know your target and ad type that you want to use; the next detail to consider is the period through which you’ll want your ad campaign to run. This will be determined by the number of actions you want the users to take. It may just be one action like clicking on the “Buy” button or several actions starting from brand awareness running all the way to the purchase step.
So, obviously the more numerous the actions the longer will take to create the campaign.
5. Device Consideration
As said above, different mobile devices need different types of content in terms of quality. iPad users and most other tablet users for instance tend to expect higher-quality content. Smaller screens will also need quality content that is tailor-made to fit in their screens.
Simply put, this means that you ought to offer the best for both worlds in order to get the best results.
6. Define Your Metrics
You don’t know how your mobile ad campaign is performing if you don’t have indicators to measure the results. You should know the metrics that you will track and one of the best metrics to track for mobile ads is the Secondary Action Rate, this shows the actions that the user took after clicking on the ad. It’s the best metric because smartphones with touch screens tend to give false measures due to accidental taps. So if the click was accidental, no secondary action will take place.
Secondary actions to look out for include click to buy, click to get a location pin, click to visit the site, add a product to cart, subscription, etc.
Other metrics to track are brand lift; conversion rate and return on ad spend.
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7. Design Your Ad
This is the fun part, right? Putting all your creative juices to work. So, before you start here are a few pointers that you should keep your finger on:
Create persuasive content without forgetting to clearly state your message e.g. through your call to action. Make it compelling and elaborate.
Use thoroughly engaging content to be able to keep the user glued to your ad for longer. This encourages interaction that may lead to a complete customer journey.
Use top-quality graphics having in mind that you’re trying to woo various kinds of users on various devices. Keep in mind also, that your ad may be running on an app which is the user’s main activity so you have to earn the eyeballs.
Ensure you provide a smooth UX by reducing the number of touchpoints a user has to go through between viewing the ad to responding to the call to action.
Enhance your ad targeting to reap more engagement with the user, the more relevant your content will be to the user the more likely they are to engage. You should include all the target elements mentioned above such as location, age, user preferences, etc.
8. Launch and Measure
With all the above in place, you’re ready to launch your mobile advertising campaign. This is to be followed by frequent tests and measures of the important metrics that you identified.
This will guide you on the ones that are working and you can invest more time and resources on them.
Conclusion
Computers took advertising away from humans and now mobile devices have taken it away from computers. Why? Because more effective ways of attracting the right audience, at the right time and place mean delivering more value for consumers. With all the benefits ranging from precision in targets and relevance to the myriad of mobile advertising platforms available, mobile ads have no threat for now. Mobile advertising is the future of advertising.
Being a freelancer, solopreneur, entrepreneur, or business owner involves a myriad of endeavors, and one of the most pressing is to diversify your income. Affiliate marketing is one of the most reliable ways to do that, to put the “eggs in different baskets”. This affiliate marketing for dummies article is here to help you build a solid foundation for affiliate monetization.
Have you seen bloggers that publish their income reports and noticed that a good chunk comes from affiliate marketing? Well, it’s time to take a closer look and depict those secrets and how to transform yourself into a successful affiliate marketer.
What Is Affiliate Marketing and How Does It Work?
Simply put affiliate marketing is the action of promoting another company’s products or services and earning a commission in exchange if you refer a client.
Typically, it works this way:
· you pick a product you love, preferably one you use and know
· promote that product via your blog, social media, email, ads
· the client clicks on your affiliate link and buys
· you receive a commission for the recommended sale
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Also known as vendor, retailer, advertiser, or creator. This is practically the producer, the company that makes or creates the product/service. Could be a large, worldwide known company such as Microsoft, which produces Windows. Or an entrepreneur like Ruth Soukup, who sells a highly appreciated blogging course.
In fact, anyone having a product to sell can be a seller in an affiliate marketing, be it a startup, solopreneur, or Fortune 500 classified company.
The Affiliate Network
Not all specialists consider the affiliate marketing network as an element within the affiliate marketing system, but since in many cases it is the middleman between the seller and the affiliate, it is worth mentioning.
You can, of course, arrange a direct affiliate revenue share with someone that creates an online product. But most often including a reputable network like ClickBank, ShareaSale, or CJ Affiliate to deal with product delivery and payments, will offer you credibility.
The affiliate network has its advantages:
· offers a multitude of products you can promote
· you can access products that are available only via network affiliates
· automates some processes like payments.
Besides sourcing products, handling payments, and delivery, the affiliate network handles the tracking cookie that will be placed into the client’s browser after clicking the affiliate link.
The Affiliate/Publisher
The affiliate/publisher is the person or company that makes the promotion, and the ad in an affiliate system. The publisher can be anybody you, the lady next door, the neighbouring bookstore, or a large company like Etsy.
The affiliate usually uses his site to promote the products/services for which he is affiliated, or these days is also possible without a site via social media for example.
The affiliate site presents the affiliated products via blogs, articles, or product presentations and includes a special link, called the affiliate link, that links to the product on the seller’s site. This is the value of the affiliate, he attracts and convinces visitors to buy a product/service.
Affiliate marketing can generate commissions anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars to millions of dollars monthly.
Here is an example of affiliate marketing promotion via email:
And affiliate marketing promotion through a site blog:
Affiliate marketing article promoting a product. Source: Catherineoneissy.com
The Client/Consumer
The client is the central point of the affiliate marketing program. If the client does not react, the system does not exist, no affiliate commission, and no income to share.
Affiliate Cookies
The affiliate cookie is responsible for the registration of the sale through your unique affiliate ID and consequently for earning the corresponding commission. The cookie is the information that is sent when a client clicks your affiliate link.
The lifetime of an affiliate cookie varies from a couple of hours to days, weeks, or even a lifetime. The duration of a cookie depends on the affiliate marketing program and product. Do yourself a favor and verify this detail, when adhering to an affiliate program.
The affiliate cookie disappears in two situations: when it expires and when the cookies are cleaned from the browser.
Affiliate Marketing for Dummies: Advantages of Affiliate Marketing
* You decide which products you promote and where. The promotional materials will be provided to you.
* You have the advantage of selling products that you do not have to manufacture, store, or transport and moreover, products that proved their value on the market.
* It’s the most reliable and fastest manner to generate income when you are just starting your business.
* You can work from wherever you want, when you want, and how much you want, as long as you obtain the desired results.
* Sky is the limit in terms of potential income. And can easily be transformed into a passive income source.
* You can choose to affiliate with complementary products/services to those that you create.
* You have the possibility to track your affiliate activity, what you sell, where, when, and make the necessary adjustments.
And the Reverse of the Medal
* You don’t have any type of control over the affiliate marketing program or affiliate network that may change policy, renounce the product you are promoting, make technical changes on their platforms, or totally cancel the affiliate program.
* Payout schedule and conditions are also out of your control.
* There is the risk of not getting paid, small in general, but exists.
* For popular products you will have to face tough competition.
Affiliate Marketing for Dummies: The 1Million Dollar Question… How Much Can You Earn via Affiliate Marketing?
When you are just starting, and you are a beginner with affiliate marketing, your revenues from affiliate marketing programs will depend on several aspects:
· The commission and conversion rates levels you succeed to obtain
· The quality of the affiliate network that you adhere to
· Your knowledge or desire to learn in order to obtain the best results possible
· Your commitment
Each network and the commission it pays is different, depending on which fits best your goals. For affiliate marketing beginners sometimes, it might take up to one year to see their first sale, but it also may happen from the first month. Depending on the products the commission varies most often between $5 and $100 for each sale and may be hundreds or thousands in the case of more sophisticated products, like online courses or software subscriptions.
Types of commissions:
· Percentage of the price: you receive a previously established percentage of the product’s price. In general, for physical products, the commissions vary between 4% and 8%, and for digital products percentages are between 30% and 50%.
· Commission per lead: you receive a fixed amount when you refer a customer as a new lead. These are small amount commissions, up to several dollars when a visitor uses your affiliate link and signs up for an account with a company but doesn’t buy anything.
· A fixed sum: you receive an established fixed amount independent of the product price. Most often this is a decent sum. For instance: Bluehost offers a commission in the sum of $65 for any of its plans.
Take into consideration that affiliate marketing is not a get-rich overnight scheme, you need sustained efforts, knowledge, and perseverance to see good results and maybe years to see your goals become reality.
Now, having the mechanism and basic terms defined, let’s pass to the next stage.
Affiliate Marketing for Dummies: How to Start with Affiliate Marketing?
I always say when starting something, start with a strategy. Maybe it’s just me, but I need to ensure that the path I follow leads me to where I want to arrive or to the level I want to reach.
Before starting you may want to read everything you can find on the subject and how others succeeded to make money from affiliate marketing. It’s up to you if you are prepared to pass through a trial and error process on your own till you obtain results or if you want to take some courses to shorten and speed up the process.
Or if it fits your scope, if you plan to build a business exclusively based on affiliate marketing try Wealthyaffiliate.
Before deciding what products and what affiliate networks you will use, you need to take into consideration your audience and her struggles and choose an affiliate marketing program that resonates with your audience, and that your audience wants and is interested in buying. Promote just products that are useful for your audience. And even more important promote products/services you used or use and you are comfortable being associated with.
These will ease your task, strengthen your affiliate sales and create a loyal audience that will trust you.
When starting, opt for a smaller number of products, some experts say no more than three, while others consider optimum up to ten. Depending on your niche try to focus on three affiliates first, after that add more. Start small, know very well the products you promote, test strategies and promotion channels, update and adjust till you obtain the results you want, and after that move on and add new products.
Affiliate Marketing for Dummies: How to Pick the Affiliate Marketing Programs That Are a Fit for You?
You can focus either on affiliate networks, either on individual affiliates or a combination of both.
Affiliate Networks
Affiliate networks are the intermediaries between affiliates and the producing companies. One of their advantages is that they host tens, hundreds, or thousands of affiliate programs and they have an infrastructure that offers more predictability concerning payments. Usually, they have established rules like payment for February earnings is made next month on the 10th.
You should check each affiliate network and verify the programs and the conditions it offers.
Criteria you might take into consideration are:
– What’s your target? You promote for example cooking stuff or fashion items or tools for bloggers. Choose the network accordingly, not all networks propose items in all niches.
– Costs of using the network. How much are you charged for using their platform?
– Which are the features that the network provides? Do you need to track some vital information like new customers or returning customers? Make sure that the platform provides the features you need.
These are some affiliate networks you need to study:
Worldwide known and hosting every product imaginable under the same roof. Amazon Associates has a solid reputation and it is used across the globe and is very easy to use. The commission offered ranges between 4% and 10% and you receive a commission no matter what products the visitor that clicked on your affiliate link bought.
That means you may recommend a product, but on Amazon, your visitor buys something else not what you recommended and you still receive your commission. Be aware that you will be paid only for the sales made by people in your country and payments are made once the threshold of $100 is reached. Also, you need a good amount of traffic to see reasonable revenues from Amazon.
And another minus is that everyone under the sun is Amazon affiliated and the competition is tough.
One of the top affiliate marketing networks in the world, with more than 3900 merchants and a great reputation. If you refer them, you earn $150 and after you are accepted you can pick other programs to represent as affiliates. ShareASale has a nice collection of companies using its services like Optin Monster, Grammarly, Sears, BornToSell, and Zazzle, and covers an impressive number of products and services. They make payments monthly for thresholds over $50, send money in many countries and you can be paid via check or direct deposit.
Another super easy-to-use affiliate network is Shopify, an e-commerce platform that sells myriads of products online. Their approval process is quite speedy, and you may earn up to $2,000 on a sale. Well, that’s quite a bunch of money!!
Rakuten, former LinkShare, one of the veteran affiliate networks, is constantly evolving bringing new business ideas and ways of promoting. It covers almost all countries and has educative programs to help you succeed in affiliate marketing. Rakuten puts at your disposal various methods of payment and executes payments for thresholds of over $50.
Priding with having over 12,000 advertisers (uhh, that’s impressive!) to choose from Flexoffers is worth paying some attention to when choosing an affiliate network. Their main focus is to gather high-end merchants and offer interesting products for their affiliates. Their offer comprises many companies, from countries across the globe.
Independent Affiliate Programs
Your other option is to join independent affiliate programs. The first step is to check on the site from which you bought the product that you want to recommend. If they don’t have an affiliate program you can reach out to them and ask if you can become a partner.
To identify affiliate programs to promote, you always have the option of “asking” Google or checking on your favorite influencers, and bloggers to see what they recommend, try those products, and see if they are a match for your audience too.
Some much-preferred affiliate programs are Grammarly, Bluehost, ConvertKit, etc.
Also, if you have or plan to have your own products, you will consider creating your own affiliate program to promote them.
Create valuable resources for your buyer personas like tutorials, reviews, and roundups, where you provide lots of details and useful information to help and educate your visitors. This is one of the most efficient ways to promote your affiliate links without looking salesy.
Tutorials are posts that show you step-by-step how to execute something and most often they provide high value for the reader.
Writing product reviews is another great way to promote affiliate links. You share with your audience your experience, what you liked, what you didn’t, and why you recommend a product or not. The primary ingredient for writing reviews is genuine honesty. Your readers are interested in knowing your own opinion about a product they consider buying.
Social Media
Social media is the magic word and one of the most efficient ways to promote affiliate links. Useless to say vis social networks you reach far much more people than through your site, in most cases.
Pinterest is the first platform recommended for affiliate links. And more you can fully automate your promotion schedule on Pinterest.
To use social media at its full potential, try different strategies and different networks, share in Facebook groups, pin on Pinterest, share on Twitter, or try Instagram posts with a call to action. Pay attention and respect the rules for each platform and avoid being spammy.
Email List
Since your most valuable asset is your mailing list, it comes naturally that your email list is your most profitable string for affiliate marketing profit. Usually, you promote your affiliate products by sending emails to your subscribers with your affiliate links and relevant information about those products.
Try to find a balance between your promoting emails and free useful content. Do not spam your list with offers, be it your own products or affiliates. This is a serious reason to lose your audience. I just unsubscribed to Michael Hyatt’s list, for this reason, I receive each other day an email promoting various things and even there are days when I receive 5 emails. When it is too much, it is too much. Even if the sender is an admired world-recognized expert.
A Resources Page
You can create a resources page to share with your readers what tools, and products are you using in your business. Or you can create a post with your tools collection. For instance, a business blogger will list their favorite applications and tools, courses, books, influencers, mentors, etc. Then make a pin for the page and promote it on Pinterest.
Inserting Affiliate Links in Your Old Posts
One of the first things you need to do after adhering to affiliate programs is to insert affiliate links in all your blogs, where appropriate of course. Update and tweak your old posts to accommodate your affiliate links.
Affiliate marketing is an excellent way to diversify your income and make some supplementary income from your blog. Particularly if you are a beginner. Be patient and willing to learn how affiliate marketing works and sooner or later your efforts will pay off. Let’s hope it will be sooner!
More than sure you have read over and over that Pinterest is a major source of traffic for most businesses and bloggers. And indeed Pinterest is a unique combination of search engine and social platform that’s gaining importance each day through gradual market infiltration in valuable demographics. As you have probably found out by now, Pinterest makes constant changes in its algorithm, and consequently, we have to update our Pinterest best practices for business.
If you still doubt take a rough look at some statistics here.
It’s worth noticing that 1 in 2 people decide to make a purchase after viewing a promoted pin, 89% of US users count on Pinterest when looking to make a purchase. Not to mention it’s used mainly by millennials and gen-X.
These changes hurt traffic generation for lots of us and we have to tweak our incorporated Pinterest marketing strategy in order to profit from the opportunity to reach out to our audience till this is still free.
There are many Pinterest marketing strategies out there you can use to gain more visibility from Pinterest, but some bring results some do not, it depends on many details. You just have to try and test and keep what works best for you.
Before starting or digging more in-depth, I think is compulsory to design the large guidelines, and see the whole forest, before approaching the trees. Here are the strategic tactics that you need to implement if you want to take profit from the goldmine phenomenon that is nowadays Pinterest for businesses.
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1. Start with the Right Base: Your Pinterest Profile and Account
Create the right profile targeting your buyer persona
Your profile should be conceived and tailored to your buyer persona, comprising your biography that informs about who is your target client, solutions that you offer to solve their problems, and a call to action. A professional photo should be attached and also keywords included in the profile name.
The purpose of having the right profile is to attract and keep the attention of your buyer personas and avoid any type of confusion that might arrive while visualizing your profile.
Create a good-looking profile with the Cover banner. Here you have several displaying options like your latest pins or pins of a certain board. I suggest that you insert here the board that contains just your pins. In my case “MarketingDigiBook” board.
Another tab is the Overview tab which offers a glimpse of the recently saved pins, pins saved from your domain, and the most recent boards that you saved pins to. Supplementary additions are the Follower tab – which shows the number of your followers, the Board tab – which lists your boards in various ways and the Monthly views – which displays the average number of persons that sees your content in a month.
Use a Pinterest for Business Account
A Business Account will give you access to all the current and future features that Pinterest will develop exclusively for businesses. Some of them are local SEO, educational tools, and resources that help you reach a broader audience on Pinterest. The Business Account is a free account.
Some supplementary insights may be depicted by consulting the Business Best Practices section of Pinterest. And check also the general best practices for Pinterest.
Get your website verified with Pinterest
This action should be completed as it provides you with access to Pinterest Analytics, useless to say it is of out-most importance for your strategy. And it also enhances credibility in front of your readers and builds trust, by certifying that you own the content that was pinned from your site.
Install “Pin It” button
To facilitate the pinning activity and help your users share your content more easily, install the Pin It button. It’s a simple way to increase impressions and clicks. Don’t skip it!
Your site should always be the source for your pins
When uploading your Pins make sure to upload them from your site. This is an extremely important detail, as your site will be registered as the source link of your Pin. And each time you send a pin you create a backlink to your site from an authority source, re-pins will keep this source also. Backlinks created this way will reinforce the authority of your own site and strengthen SEO.
2. SEO – Optimize Your Profile, Your Boards, and Your Pin Descriptions
Since Pinterest is more a search engine, a visual one to be precise, then it appears logical that SEO strategy and tactics should be used.
The ultimate aim of Pinterest is to serve its users the exact content they are looking for. Since Pinterest is using a ranking algorithm to rank content, you should strive to rank as high as possible. The higher, the better for your business.
On your Pinterest account, be sure to have just the boards that your buyer persona expects and wants to see and follow. My recommendation is to have a minimum of 20 boards.
Create a panel of boards in one relevant category. Valid for your pins also, use them in the appropriate category.
Tip: Place your most successful boards on top
When constructing your profile, your boards, and your pins, the focal element is the keywords you choose to rank for, and through them, you are found on Pinterest. Your keywords should be the same words that your buyer personas use while searching.
Your board titles and boards description need to include these keywords. The keywords should reflect the right category and inform your users about what they should expect. Also, it’s important to keep the descriptions short and straight to the point.
Pin descriptions are a powerful tool you should use to engage your audience, so, take advantage of them and write targeted descriptions. These descriptions are the trigger for the traffic you generate for your site. It’s compulsory for pins to be optimized based on the long tail keywords that your buyer persona uses to search, as it drastically increases the chances of your pins being found. Some social media studies reveal that 200 characters description for pins receives the most re-pins. So, test this hypothesis on your audience and adjust accordingly.
Tip: Insert ca call-to-pin to skyrocket the engagement of your pins. It seems that on average the presence of a CTP increases engagement by 80%.
3. Post Consistently. Engagement and Pin Shares Build Relationships, Interact with Followers and Influencers
As I am referring to Social Media, it’s obvious that when using it for our business purposes we have to be social and socialize. On Pinterest, while actively generating the content, also make efforts and engage with your audience, by re-pinning, commenting, or liking, it will help you extend your audience.
Tip: Post daily 10-30 pins, spread throughout the day.
Engagement is a two directions ring, you want your followers to comment on your pins, and you should comment on their pins also. Their followers will also notify you. Engage and follow popular boards in your niche, try to “steal” and learn from the “eminences” that act in your domain. Observe their boards, their pins, and their engaging activity, if you want to reach their level.
Tip: Follow and engage influencers in your industry.
Invite your community to get involved and allow others to send pins to your boards. It’s a huge plus if you can attract industry experts to post on your boards.
No doubt, images have a dramatic impact on pins. If you are not a Photoshop pro or a skilled designer, you still can create great visuals by using tools like Canva. Since Pinterest is stressing more and more about original content, using free stock photos is not a reliable option. But you can try affordable-styled stock photos to use for your visuals.
Right from the beginning upload your blog images optimized for Pinterest. Optimized images mean images with descriptions incorporated and keywords that will automatically appear, it will definitely ease your work.
Tip: Pin all images of a post to reach a broader audience
5. Create Exclusive Images and Infographics
Creating images or infographics that are exclusive provides a remarkable edge: the only manner to share them is to re-pin. Since these will be of course linked back to your site as a source, they will be visible on re-pins also.
Use Pinterest templates to ease and fasten your pin creation activity. As Pinterest favors original pins, the more original pins the better. But you have to create them and this takes time, lots of time. A shortcut to this is using Pinterest templates. Also, you can use Pinterest Marketing Planner Templates that include original content, are highly customizable, and are available in various formats to help you attract more readers.
6. Use Rich Pins
Rich Pins were thought to provide supplementary information within the context. The current types of Rich Pins are articles, apps, recipes, and products.
Rich pins have an increased rate of pins/re-pins, which speaks wonders of their power in the Pinterest world. Don’t hesitate to use them to turbocharge your sales.
Even if Rich Pins request more effort, they improve the user experience and are more attractive. Make sure to have meta tags added to your site and Rich Pins enabled.
Not all your content is appropriate to be used as Rich Pin, use them wisely and when appropriate.
Keep them for products, photos, in-depth articles, events, webinars, etc. Thus, there is one feature from Rich Pins that you should extend to all your pins, and that’s the link to your site.
Tip: Insert a link to your website in the description of every pin.
Tip: Conceive a board only for your Rich Pins
7. Schedule Your Pins
When you create a new piece of content for your site, pin it onto Pinterest and then re-pin it on all your boards that are relevant to the topic.
On your Pinterest account, you should hold a board uniquely for your posts, so, your audience could quickly get a general idea of the type of content you publish.
One of the most common causes that impede an increase in your Pinterest traffic is that you don’t pin enough of your content, and you are not consistent. Pin daily, this is the best strategy to expand your exposure, which could finally lead to more followers, more traffic, more subscribers, and more clients!!!
Tip: Pin daily!
But pinning daily is a time-consuming activity. Software applications enter the scene to reduce effort, you can appeal to schedulers such as Tailwind.
Tip: Schedule a mix of content 50% of your own and 50% of others.
9. Connect with Other Social Media Platforms
Interconnect your accounts on different social media networks Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc. In such a way, you can connect followers that you have on one platform with your account on another platform and share quality content across them.
10. Join Group Boards If You Are a Beginner
Expanding your network with niche boards and group boards could provide valuable help to increase your follower number in a short interval. Joining industry group boards is sometimes a shortcut with multiple benefits (increased targeted audience, quality boards for referrals, etc.), but first, you must be invited to that group.
11. Expect Constant Change on Pinterest and Adapt on the Go
Obviously, the algorithms are always on the move and you have to move with them. We have seen Google, Facebook, and now Pinterest updating their algorithms, and this will be a constant in the future. Being ready to learn new ways of doing things is not an exception otherwise you’ll be left out.
Pinterest, like any other social platform, involves numerous changes that happen permanently. The way the platform worked in 2018 will be different from how it will work in 2019. With the development of technology, there are new requirements that come with it for the betterment of the platform at large. When you adapt to the change, you’ll know how to use Pinterest at any time or season. Thus, be flexible and embrace change! This is the true path of evolution.
What we’ll discuss forward is part of the changes that already took place on Pinterest and impacted current Pinterest marketing strategies. Most of them are Pinterest creative best practices that have yielded results for those that have tested them, I and my clients included.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: The only constant changes, get used to it and embrace it.
For all details on Pinterest updates from this summer, check Alisa Meredith’s Tailwind interview with Pinterest’s Product Marketing Manager Sarah Hoople here:
12. Enhance Your Pins’ Breakthrough
This is the recently updated rule on Pinterest creative best practices 2021 and it is a game changer. We all have the possibility to choose between smart feed or following feed.
The following feed lists in chronological order the newest and greatest pins of the persons that you follow. Which translates into increased importance for engagement and fresh content.
The main purpose is to create more pins, based on delivering more content. New pins are favoured by the new Pinterest algorithm. The idea is to focus on producing more pins and expanding their reach to increase blog traffic, not necessarily to increase the number of followers.
In addition, it is advisable that you create multiple pins for the same post. This advice has been added to Pinterest’s best practices page.
Others can opt to create a different pin version which is still good. However, when you do this you should change the pin description. This is important as the platform will read it differently from your other pins. You are also in a better position to reach out to different audiences using the selected keywords.
Even if there is no such thing as an ideal number of pins for a day, you should test to see what works best for you and play with the number of pins. Just be consistent, do not pin in bulk one day and nothing the next few days (use a scheduler to help with this). In the new following feed, your followers will see all the pins that you saved in a row.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: Pin consistently and throughout the day.
To come up with the best Pinterest marketing strategy, you have to ensure that you follow the guidelines laid by Pinterest, that’s obvious.
There are many myths flourishing on the web about the new pin ratios and the best images that work.
Here are some common guidelines you can count on:
a) Ideal Images to Choose
Choose high-quality photos and avoid human faces on your pins (or test this – depending on the niche might be different results). Another thing is that these types of images need to have the ability to grasp the attention of the reader. In general lifestyle images are a good choice, persons need to visualize the item in context. Use overlay text to provide more context or a creative description, preferably both.
Making someone stop whatever he/she was doing by an image isn’t a joke. The images should be of high resolution and colorful.Do not forget to test your pins on mobile, as 80% of Pinterest users are on mobile.
This is what has been causing a huge debate on Pinterest. Everyone is coming with his/her size that has worked for them causing confusion to new users.
Actually, the only thing that has changed is the cutoff point but not the pin ratio. It is still the same as it used to be – 2:3. For those that are obsessed with square pins, they are back, and this is one of the recent updates.
Recommended size by Pinterest is 1000 by 1500. Those are the measurements for the width and height respectively. The maximum dimension is 1260 long but as long as you keep the ruling ratio.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: For new pins use the recommended dimensions. For your best-performing pins create new ones with these dimensions.
c) Use Hashtags
Common for Twitter or Instagram fans, however, they are back again on Pinterest. What do they offer? A real-time feed for users. Pinners that want to find out what is trending on Pinterest use hashtags. You should include them in your new pins, it’s not necessary to modify the older pins as this is irrelevant, and place them at the end of the pin description. I use in general 5 hashtags for my pins.
The guidelines of Pinterest state that hashtags should be:
· Relevant for your content.
· Act as a broad search term. This means that it should not be used for any other purposes like humor.
· Add a maximum number of 20 hashtags once you have discovered that they are relevant to the content.
Hashtagged pins get more distribution the day they are saved.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: Add hashtags to your pin description, and place them at the end of the description.
14. Add Fresh Content, the More the Better
At some point, we said that Pinterest loves fresh content and will give priority to it. Let us now dig in to get to know what this fresh content means. Fresh content means firstly an article that you just wrote and that you publish for the first time with its associated pin. New pins for articles already published count also. Before we go further, Pinterest loves new content as it is the main concept behind adding hashtags.
The use of Hashtags has two main purposes. The first one as we all know is that it is used to identify a keyword and facilitate the search for it. The second function is that it is used to differentiate fresh content from older one. In short, they act as filters.
According to studies performed on Pinterest metrics, pinners are more interested in new content and that’s why everyone rushes toward it. Your followers on the platform are always searching for content that will satisfy their needs. So, freshly posted pins are more on their radar.
By constantly posting new content, you are able to swiftly draw a large number of readers to your profile.
Also, be aware that a new Pinterest best practice is to save new pins directly from your site instead of repining them. For example, if you have a new article with a new pin and you want to save that pin to seven boards, save the pin directly from your site for each of the seven boards.
Pinterest aims to promote the content creators or first pinners. So, pins created by the owner of the site and pinned from the respective site first will be given distribution priority in the feed.
Another detail to take into consideration is to pin first to the board what is the most relevant to the topic of the article. This article for instance will be first published to my boards in the following order: Pinterest tips and tricks, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Strategies, Digital Marketing, MarketingDigiBook.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: The Pinterest algorithm will give first priority to new pins and newly published content saved from your site.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: Pin your new pin first to the most relevant of your boards on its topic.
15. Manual Pinning and Automated Pinning
If you have been keen on Pinterest users’ questions, you know that this is the most frequently asked question. Let’s get this straight. You can use automated pining as long as you use a Pinterest-approved scheduler. It is advisable that you ONLY use schedulers agreed upon and approved by Pinterest. If you consider is best for you to use one, ensure that it is approved.
Now next big question is: do you need to use just manual pinning, just automated pinning, or both?
Each option has its fans. Personally, I use both and I will explain to you why. I tested pinning up to 40 pins a day with Tailwind and some manual pinning, I tested just automated pinning without manual pinning and I used just manual pinning when I started this blog.
Here are the results of my tests:
– You should keep manual pinning, daily if possible, at least 10 manual pins. If you renounce manual pinning you will see your monthly views decrease heavily and also your traffic. Monthly views are not a very important number, but any way to see this number decrease by about 50% (from 370 k to 200 k) in one month it’s not ideal. My traffic from Pinterest was affected less, but it still decreased. I also saw decreases in traffic and monthly views for other blogs that belong to my clients.
Even if Pinterest says “You’re considered active when you’re saving content on the platform.” That is not exactly true, manual pinning counts.
– Decreasing the number of scheduled pins might not affect the traffic that Pinterest delivers to your site. In my case it didn’t, I decreased from 80 pins a day to 50 pins and after that to 30 pins.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: No matter your choice, do not skip manual pinning for too long.
16. Use an Approved Pinterest Scheduler
A Pinterest Scheduler can be a huge time saver. Even if there are bloggers that say they have great results with manual pinning, the truth is manual pinning requires lots of time.
Personally, I use Tailwind to schedule my pins in group boards and Tailwind tribes. I have to confess Tailwind helps me minimize the time I spend on pinning and brings nice results. I use it for this blog and for blogs belonging to my clients.
Besides having a smart schedule that allows me to optimize the best time to schedule pins when my audience is most active, I am very pleased with the looping options that I employ to schedule my evergreen content into my boards. And also, with the analytics tools that I can use to measure the results of my Pinterest strategy. These are the options in the Insights tab: Profile Performance, Board Insights, Pin Inspector, Website Insights, Organic Activity, and Referral Traffic.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: Pins scheduled via Tailwind are posted as fresh pins, not as repins.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: Tailwind can offer you extra referral traffic via Tailwind tribes. Give them a try.
Another question that pops up frequently is if you as a content creator need to pin content from others. Pinterest sustains that not, as long as you have enough content of your own to promote. To be tested.
17. Do Not Delete Under-Performing Pins
What about them? The first thought that comes to your mind is to delete them as they don’t add any value to your account. Not really. If you get the chance to speak to bloggers that have reaped big chunks of dollars in Pinterest, you’ll know that they are not into the idea of deleting the underperforming pins.
You could think that they are probably hurting your performing pins, but they aren’t. The performance of a pin has no effect on the rest of your pins.
As we all know (probably by now) Pinterest is subject to algorithmic change and new updates. This can turn out to be good in the long run. The underperforming pins may gain traction and become useful due to new changes and turn into a goldmine.
What you have to do is constantly review the Pinterest analytics and find out which pins are performing well and which are not. For the ones that aren’t working well, you can do some revamping or simply create new pins with another description to increase engagement.
From my own point of view, I strictly do not recommend deleting any of your pins regardless of their performance.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: Do not delete underperforming pins, you don’t know when you’ll have a nice surprise. Make new pins and improve their description.
18. Ensure to Have Correct Linking to Articles or Landing Pages
Make sure your pin links to the article you intended. What you should keep in mind is that the pin is not about the image but about the content and relevance of the image to that content.
The pin only acts as a short description of its content. To make the pins more effective, ensure that the keywords are matching.
19. Don’t Forget About Pinterest SEO and Keywords
Keywords are the primary vector that drives eyeballs to your profile, boards, content, and finally to your site. Hence use them properly. The huge majority of the reach will happen far beyond followers that’s why SEO counts.
We hear all over “use catchy titles”, some people use puns and clever titles hence cannot be found when you type the keywords you’d like to search for. Remember Pinterest is a search engine.
Board names are not a place to show your prowess in the English language. Pinterest best practices advise that you should ONLY name your boards with keywords. But do not exaggerate, do not stuff the board name or the description only with keywords. Make all your descriptions conversational.
The keywords should just be enough to help the algorithm understand what it’s the pin or the board about. To make the keywords more effective, they should be written in a user-friendly way.
NB: The Pinterest SEO keywords should be relevant to the boards. The relevance of the keyword helps in spreading the content which will, in turn, reach a larger target audience.
Pinterest Marketing tip: Use keywords relevant to Pinterest, not keywords that are relevant to Google.
20. Take Care of Your Followers
If you are a Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram fanatic, you understand pretty well that followers are the drivers of your account. The more you have, the faster and wider your message will spread. The same case applies from now on to Pinterest. The way to get your content shown up in the Smartfeed pass first through your followers.
Even if it’s still possible to generate high traffic for your blog without having a large number of followers, they have a heavy word for spreading your new pins. With the recent updates, the followers are the first to have a glimpse and interact with your new pins in their feeds.
The best thing for a business is that Pinterest has a high affinity for new content.Pinterest will, therefore, ensure that the content reaches your followers as fast as possible.
If your followers are relevant and show interest in your content, they will quickly engage with it and roll it over to non-followers and Pinterest will push it further into the topics and feeds. And this is how pins become viral. However, to make this happen, the ball still rolls on your side. Any content you post on the platform must be relevant to your brand. Nobody likes irrelevant and random boards that make no sense.
For example, picture this. If you are a home décor entrepreneur, everyone expects your posts to be full of the best home upholsteries, décor boards, and decorative brands. You don’t need to post irrelevant posts like food recipes or fashion-related boards.
A final tip: unengaged followers are not of much use. If most of the many followers are not active, they will not spread your content. It is better that you only have a handful of followers that engage with your content rather than a million of them that will not even take a look at what you’ve posted.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: Aim for engaged followers that are interested in what you have to say, not just followers.
21. The Implementation Strategy
With all said and done, it’s now the time to put all that you’ve read into practice. The implementation stage is more important than any other step and this is where many bloggers fail. It is of no use that you get all the available helpful information and throw it away.
There is a lot going on with the Pinterest algorithm and probably even lots to come. And consequently, lots of changes to implement and the above-mentioned Pinterest best practices for business should be of help in 2023 to keep attracting quality traffic for your blog.
You might find it hard to apply them all. Take them one at a time and see what you can incorporate successfully into your Pinterest marketing strategy and what brings you results.
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