ReportWire

Tag: Social Media Marketing

  • How to Add Twitter to Your Marketing Strategy

    How to Add Twitter to Your Marketing Strategy

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    When you think about social media ads for business-to-business marketing (B2B), Twitter is not the standard choice. Twitter often serves as an afterthought that only a few companies leverage their campaigns and invest their efforts in. LinkedIn is still the titan for finding leads for B2B marketing. After all, it’s the melting pot of all things business – from tech leaders, emerging startups and solution seekers to networking with industry giants.

    Twitter is an entirely different beast. For one, it displayed a significant growth plateau in 2014, leading to analyst downgrades and stock drops. Plus, the steadfast growth of Facebook, Google and LinkedIn made Twitter secondary for B2B marketing. That being said, it’s no stranger to redemption. In fact, 2022 research shows that advertisers could reach up to 486 million active Twitter users — a 4.5% increase in just three months before July.

    Effective leaders understand the goldmine behind this platform. While you need to have LinkedIn for qualified leads and finding people hungry for solutions, a multi-channel distribution strategy is the difference-maker. Remember that social media is all about engagement and connection, and optimizing your ads on many platforms is critical.

    What’s paramount is knowing how to efficiently navigate the Twitter ad space, including the type of ads to use, learning your customization options and the quality of your content. This will not only help you reach your target audience effectively, but it will also drive bottom-of-the-funnel clicks to apps, landing pages and websites successfully.

    Related: You are Missing Out if You Don’t Use Twitter. Here’s 3 Reasons Why.

    1. Promoted ads

    Like boosted posts on Facebook, Twitter’s Promoted Ads are some of the most common features marketers use to reach a target demographic. They look like regular tweets and come with a promoted tag at the bottom-left corner – relatively simple yet yield a high ROI.

    Promoted Ads are flexible. Whether you want to include images, links, or videos, the multitude of content you can use for brand awareness amplification is abundant. This allows marketers to showcase products, solutions and company culture in a straightforward yet nuanced manner.

    Related: 10 Marketing Strategies to Fuel Your Business Growth

    2. Follower ads

    A proven way to gain a broader reach on Twitter is through Follower Ads. This enables your account to be at the front and center of suggested Twitter users in the Who to Follow section. Not only does this put your brand on a pedestal, but it can also help curate your circle of who’s interested in what you offer, ensuring a junk-free network through a condensed base of followers. As with Promoted Ads, Follower Ads come with a promoted tag that serves as a distinction from other account recommendations. According to Business Twitter, users who follow you through Follower Ads are more likely to convert into advocates or fans, producing not just one-time customers but long-lasting relationships.

    3. Trend and timeline takeovers

    Trend Takeovers are premium ads designed explicitly for massive accounts to occupy the top spot of their targeted users’ trending section on mobile apps and web browsers. This is ideal for enterprise brands with optimal resources, a solid following and an established identity, as self-managed accounts don’t have access to this. If you want to take it a step further, Trend Takeover+ adds a video to your message, creating an immersive story that’s not only eye-catching but is also a proven conversation starter.

    On the other hand, Timeline Takeover puts your brand on top of your targeted user’s feed, giving you instant visibility as soon as they open their app. Twitter’s mass awareness ad package is exclusive and lasts for a day. And just like Trend, Timeline also comes with an auto-play video that instantly gives users a visual narrative of your campaign.

    Related: Fake Accounts and Bots: Is Marketing on Twitter Worth It?

    4. Twitter live

    There’s a common misconception that Twitter Live is strictly for business-to-consumer marketing (B2C). Forward-thinking leaders and marketers know that this feature is also essential for B2B brands for selling products and solutions and providing off-the-cuff nuances that hyper-personalize and humanize brands. For example, companies can use this feature to broadcast business events and seminars that instantly drive conversations with their followers.

    Other Twitter ad features

    Other Twitter Ad features that help brands increase the functionality of their campaign include polls, conversation buttons or CTAs, app buttons, website buttons, branded notifications and branded hashtags. These amplify your chosen ads that trigger click-throughs, engagement and retweets.

    Ultimately, the goal is to have a bulletproof set of tactics and strategies for exploring the targeting capabilities of social media. With Twitter, the key is not to confine your brand to outdated practices for B2B. While it targets business folks, it’s important to remember that humans are susceptible to creativity, humor, out-of-the-box thinking and engaging storytelling.

    Learn what ad type fits the brand best, back it up with high-quality content, and maneuver your campaign with smarts and wits.

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    Yoel Israel

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  • 3 Ways to Market to Hispanic Consumers This Holiday Season

    3 Ways to Market to Hispanic Consumers This Holiday Season

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    The holiday season is here, and shopping is in full swing. Despite the current state of the economy, shoppers are finding ways to keep the holiday spirit alive by bargain hunting and shifting expenses to allocate more for gifts. According to a study done by Deloitte, “Household finances may be at the weakest level in a decade, but spending stays steady as consumers cut non-essentials to give gifts and socialize.” In addition, after reducing spending efforts in 2021, low-income shoppers plan to spend 25% more this year. Although Americans are adjusting their spending strategies due to inflation, companies need to understand the growing consumer segments and champion them by creating genuine, authentic marketing campaigns that make them feel welcome.

    For the 2022 holiday season, brands should place a greater emphasis on their Hispanic holiday marketing efforts. Why? The Hispanic community is the second-fastest growing minority market in the U.S., rising by 212% or $500 billion since 2000. There are over 60 million Hispanics in the United States, and in 2019, they accounted for over $1.5 trillion in spending power.

    So, here are three ways to properly market to the Hispanic community while potentially creating lifelong customer loyalty:

    Related: U.S. Hispanic Consumers: A Demographic Revolution in the Corporate World

    1. Display your understanding

    It’s important to stress that the Hispanic community is not a monolith, and this community takes great pride in its American culture and the culture of its countries of origin. According to the Pew Research Center, “Black and Hispanic adults were more likely than White adults to say their origins are central to their identity and feel a strong connection to their family’s cultural roots.” Therefore, an organization’s marketing efforts will come across as more genuine if they exhibit an understanding and appreciation for the Hispanic culture.

    While some may think that this holiday season consists only of La Navidad, there are many more days of celebration and reflection besides that, including La Inmaculada Concepción de María, Las Posadas, Nochebuena, Día de los Inocentes, La Noche de Fin de Año, and Día de Los Reyes Magos. Marketers should fully understand what these special days entail so they can better position themselves when advertising to this community.

    A great example of a business that exhibited understanding is Publix. On their website, they posted traditional Latin American holiday recipes and included a link to the ingredients that customers could find in the store.

    2. Incorporate Spanish

    Incorporating Spanish into an organization’s marketing efforts will further solidify the bond between the consumer and the brand. According to the Kantar 2021 U.S. Monitor report, “88% of U.S. Hispanics say they appreciate businesses that speak to them in Spanish, and 87% feel businesses that make a sincere effort to be part of or invest in their communities deserve their loyalty.” With 71% of all Hispanics speaking Spanish at home, either primarily or in combination with English, leveraging Spanish as part of a company’s holiday marketing efforts will allow the organization to forge a deeper connection with its target market.

    A great example of this is Disney Animation Studios. The organization incorporated Spanish words into its holiday message and utilized designs from its award-winning movie, Encanto.

    Related: 6 Reasons Corporate America Misses Out on Trillions of Hispanic Dollars

    3. Focus on building a community

    While marketers may try to push catchy advertisements during this time, the main goal they should strive to achieve is creating a community of lifelong, supportive customers. Building a lifelong relationship takes having a deep understanding of the community, standing with the community in times of crisis and creating opportunities for the community to flourish. A company that has done a fantastic job at this is Target. In their most recent diversity report, Target shared that nearly 30% of their entire team, more than a fifth of their managers, and 10% of their officers are Hispanic/Latino. Target also has a longstanding partnership with the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, offers more than 60 Latino-owned and founded brands and invested more than $1.1 billion in Latino-owned suppliers, media, localization efforts and community organizations.

    Regarding their marketing efforts, Target launched a multicultural holiday series called “Welcome To,” where they celebrate various holidays throughout the year by featuring Target customers from those communities. Additionally, in 2021, Target featured Día de Reyes and highlighted how one of its customers celebrated this day with their family.

    Related: 4 Successful Ways Businesses Need to Adapt to a Growing Hispanic Demographic

    Like other communities, the holiday season is a time when the Hispanic community comes together with family and friends, has large spreads/dinners and spends time reflecting on the year ahead. If brands truly want to reach the Hispanic consumer, they need to serve as a partner by supporting the community, celebrating with the community and providing opportunities for the community. Finally, when conducting Hispanic marketing, it’s important to incorporate elements of the Spanish language and overall culture into the campaigns.

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    Christine Alexis

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  • How to Build on Your Digital Marketing Momentum in 2023

    How to Build on Your Digital Marketing Momentum in 2023

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    I’ve been in the digital marketing game since the AOL days — before even Google and certainly long before Snapchat and TikTok were ever a thing. As I’ve seen the landscape change over the years, I’ve developed some pretty good foresight into where the industry is headed in the future. For the past two decades, my job has been to predict where digital marketing is headed and to get there before my competitors do.

    As a digital marketing entrepreneur, you’ve always got to be looking ahead. Until 2026, the compound annual growth rate of the online marketing industry is 9%. Therefore, you’ve got to think in the long term if you want to succeed in a market that’s getting more crowded every year.

    Now that 2023 is visible on the horizon, let’s go over the top industry trends that I think you’ve got to be on top of if you want to stand out in tomorrow’s digital marketing space:

    Related: 5 Digital Marketing Trends to Know for the Decade

    GPT-4 and the rise of “smart” chatbots

    When Generative Pre-Trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) was released in 2020 by Silicon Valley-based OpenAI, its capacity to create human-like natural language shocked the world. As the most sophisticated AI language model in the world, GPT-3 is capable of writing convincing poetry, prose and dialogue using just a basic user prompt.

    In 2023, we could see the long-awaited GPT-4 released. Although AI-based language processing has come a long way in recent years, there are still some hiccups. Chatbots that are powered by GPT-3 still don’t pass the Turing test, and many consumers loathe having their support queries handled by a bot.

    With GPT-4 on the horizon, chatbots are about to see a quantum leap in their development. Once chatbots can produce language indistinguishable from humans — with all our emotional nuance and subtle interpretations — chatbots are going to take over. We may even see GPT-4 chatbots replace human support agents altogether. Savvy entrepreneurs will keep their eye on new chatbot developments based on GPT-4 and embrace them when the time comes.

    Hyper-personalization

    In Dale Carnegie’s 1936 classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People, he wrote that a person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language. He wasn’t wrong. We naturally love to be addressed by name, as doing so is dignifying and a marker of respect.

    Our marketing campaigns should reflect this tendency. Emails and SMS that don’t include your lead’s name are a major no-go. As third-party cookies are being cracked down on in 2022 and likely will continue to be in the future, it’s important to ask for your lead’s name and other identifiable information when they sign up. Cookies are slowly becoming a thing of the past, so collecting personalized user data is something you will have to do increasingly on your own.

    Related: 4 Marketing Personalization Tips for Digital Businesses

    More mobile-first visuals

    Who doesn’t love stunning visual content, such as infographics, reels and informative videos? For many of us, this is how we prefer to learn, rather than through long walls of text (no, the irony here is not lost on me). I suggest ramping up your visual content production if you want to compete in 2023’s information space, and more generally, in a world with increasingly shorter attention spans — currently at about only 8.25 seconds.

    Optimizing your visual content for mobile devices should always be top of mind. Desktop visual production should be an afterthought. These days, the clear majority (nearly 54%) of web traffic comes from mobile devices, and this percentage will increase in 2023. Therefore, I suggest keeping vertical, mobile-friendly visuals at the top of your content schedule.

    Clips, reels and videos

    While we’re on the topic of visuals, we can’t ignore the enormous influence that TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels have had on the industry in recent years. With TikTok nearly doubling its monthly users in 2022 to almost two billion, it’s likely that its influence is only going to continue to climb in the year ahead.

    Creating short, vertical video content in the 30-second to 3-minute range is ideal. Long video content has its place on YouTube, but to unlock the true viral potential of your videos, it’s best to shorten them and make them mobile-optimized. The more short vertical videos you produce, the greater the chances of going viral and having your content shared widely.

    Up the interactivity

    Social media marketing should remain at the center of your marketing strategy in 2023. However, our feeds are already flooded with promoted content. Instead of a simple 4×3 image post, create more interactive content that ropes your audience in with a question. For example, I recommend using the following Instagram features in your Story content:

    • Polls

    • “Ask a Question” widgets

    • Quizzes

    • Rating sliders

    There’s something about interacting with a brand that’s much more powerful than simply passively viewing its content. Including interactive Story content in your social media campaigns is a highly effective way to gain engagement and to keep your audience glued to your brand.

    Related: 7 Tools That Make Interactive Content Creation Easy

    Keep the momentum rolling in 2023

    As we head into the new year, let’s not squander all the progress we made in 2022. Instead, let’s keep moving forward by honing in on the digital market trends of tomorrow. Specifically, I recommend keeping a close eye on AI developments such as GPT-4, collecting more precise personalized user data, creating mobile-first content (and especially short video content) and incorporating interactive media into your content strategy.

    If you can stay abreast of these trends in the coming year, you’ll be better positioned than many of your competitors. As the industry continues to balloon year over year, staying on top of these trends will become less of an option and more of a necessity if you want to stay afloat — so, what better time to start than now?

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    Amine Rahal

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  • 3 Strategies to Reach Customers in an Economic Downturn

    3 Strategies to Reach Customers in an Economic Downturn

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    A recessionary environment can be a make-or-break time for businesses. Some of today’s most successful companies were founded during recessions, such as Google during the dot-com bust of the early 2000s or Uber during the Great Recession of 2008. But for every company that thrives during a recession, there are many more that fail.

    One of the key reasons that some companies succeed while others falter is how they handle their marketing and advertising spend during these difficult times. When a recession hits, businesses are quick to cut marketing budgets as they seek to reduce costs. But this can be a mistake.

    Recessions provide opportunities for businesses to reach customers who may be more price-sensitive and receptive to new offers. Instead of cutting marketing spend, businesses should focus on reallocating their ad budgets to more efficient channels and developing interactive content that will capture the attention of customers who may be spending more time at home. Here are three ways businesses can reach and engage customers despite a market slowdown:

    Related: 6 Recession-Proof Business Marketing Strategies

    1. Develop interactive content

    Customers are spending more time than ever online, so it’s important to develop content that is interactive and engaging. In a recession, ROI becomes even more important, so businesses should focus on creating content that will drive leads and sales.

    Traditional paid advertising can be expensive and is subject to banner blindness, which is when users tune out online ads. Interactive content, such as quizzes, polls and surveys, can be a more effective and cost-efficient way to reach and engage customers.

    Instead of non-consensually slapping users in the face with a commercial message, interactive content allows businesses to provide valuable information or entertainment while also gathering data that can be used to improve marketing campaigns.

    For example, a fashion company might run a style quiz that helps users find the right clothing for their body type. Not only is this quiz interactive and fun, but it also provides the company with valuable data about its customers’ preferences.

    2. Target recession-proof industries

    A recession doesn’t impact all sectors equally. In fact, some industries have seen tremendous growth. The energy industry, for instance, has seen a resurgence as renewed consumer demand and limited oil supply have led to higher prices. Year-to-date, as the S&P500 has fallen by around 15%, the United States Oil ETF is up over 30%.

    Healthcare is another industry that is relatively resilient to economic downturns. As people age, they require more medical care, and government spending on healthcare tends to increase during periods of economic hardship.

    Other so-called “defensive” industries, such as food and beverage, household staples and personal care, also tend to do well during recessions.

    Businesses that target these recession-proof industries can still find success even when the economy is struggling. That isn’t to say that your business needs to be in one of these industries to survive a recession, but it may be worth researching how your product or service can be positioned to appeal to these industries.

    Related: Why You Should Never Skimp on Brand Marketing in a Recession

    3. Focus on ROI-positive marketing channels

    When businesses are cutting costs, they often reduce their marketing spend across the board. But not all marketing channels are created equal. Some, such as paid search and social media advertising, can be very effective in driving leads and sales but can also be expensive.

    Other marketing channels, such as email marketing and content marketing, can be less expensive and just as effective in reaching and engaging customers. In a recession, businesses should focus on allocating their marketing budgets to the channels that will provide the most ROI.

    Email marketing, for example, can be very effective in reaching potential customers who may be interested in your product or service but may not be actively searching for it. And because email is a permission-based channel, you’re more likely to reach people who are receptive to your message.

    Content marketing can also be an effective way to reach and engage customers. By creating high-quality, informative content, businesses can attract customers who are looking for answers to their questions or solutions to their problems.

    In a recessionary environment, it’s more important than ever to focus on ROI-positive marketing channels. By allocating your marketing budget wisely, you can still reach and engage customers despite a slowdown in the economy.

    With the right approach, a recession can be an opportunity for businesses to thrive. By focusing on interactive content, targeting recession-proof industries and allocating your marketing budget to ROI-positive channels, you can weather the economic storm and come out ahead.

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    Vlad Gozman

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  • How Your Brand Can Thrive Online With Diversified Content

    How Your Brand Can Thrive Online With Diversified Content

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Keeping your audience entertained in the golden age of multi-platform media has become critical to online success. To accomplish this, you must learn to switch up your branded content and experiment on new and different platforms.

    Why should you change up your branded content? Having a diverse content strategy is critical in today’s oversaturated, competitive and ever-changing marketing environment. If your marketing strategy heavily relies on branded content, you must ensure that it is diverse in terms of how, when and where it is shared. You risk losing audience interest and engagement if you use the same content and formats across all platforms.

    Only by stepping outside of your comfort zone and learning to take calculated risks will your brand’s content thrive. Otherwise, by not embracing content diversification and investing in new platforms, you are passing up opportunities to engage your audience on their terms.

    Related: How to Know If You’re Producing Quality Content

    How to change up your branded content?

    While adhering to your core values, your content strategy must evolve to meet the specific needs of each platform and its users. When doing so, always be open to new information and consider how it may affect your target audience. Being adaptable will allow you to fine-tune your strategy and grow as a content creator, marketer and business.

    Flexibility in your brand’s content creation does not have to be difficult. However, proper research is required for success. This is why there is one key action all brands must take before creating new branded content: Study new platforms.

    Why study new platforms?

    Simply put, users’ interests and behaviors differ across social media platforms due to each platform’s “zeitgeist.” For instance:

    Understanding the inner workings of various platforms is essential if you want to create tailored content. This new information will significantly impact how you approach content development and expansion.

    Brands should learn why users engage with specific platforms. This will allow them to tailor their new content to those audiences and interact with them in ways they respond to and feel comfortable with. If you don’t spend time researching who your post might reach, you risk appearing uninformed. That is why you should always stay up to date on new developments in content marketing.

    Related: The Business of Harnessing the Power of Social Media

    Going beyond text and image platforms

    In our modern era, there are more than text and image platforms to consider, namely: the metaverse. Although the metaverse is not a single platform, it has many touchpoints with various audience types.

    For example, Polar, TheSoul Publishing’s first “digital popstar,” was created as part of our efforts to further grow our audience. In July, she performed a live concert in the metaverse via Avakin Life. Over 2.2 million users spent over 100,000 hours watching Polar perform as one of the festival’s headlining acts at the Solar Sounds Festival.

    Avakin Life and other metaverse worlds focus on live performance, so fans “show up” and participate in the communal experience. This means that the content brands create for the metaverse must be tailored to the typical users of these platforms.

    TheSoul recognized this and ensured Polar was reaching different audiences in the right way:

    • Because the audience on YouTube is most interested in music, we created music videos to engage them directly. It worked, as her debut single, “Close To You,” has been viewed over eight million times.

    • On TikTok, Polar fills a similar niche, though it also emphasizes dance videos that can be easily shared and recreated. She has seen massive success on the platform, with more than 1.6 million followers.

    • On Instagram, Polar’s newest platform, her posts are more personal and geared toward lifestyle content. She has yet to build a huge following on the platform, so her creative team continues to tinker and experiment to find her audience there.

    Related: 7 Ways Your Brand Can Thrive in the Metaverse

    The common thread

    Audiences across platforms now expect brands to be a natural extension of their online experiences rather than something they must actively seek out. Instead of having a bland profile that only posts about internal news, brands must learn to become “users” of each platform.

    The principles of adaptability, innovation and consistent messaging form the foundation of this common thread:

    1. Consistent messaging: To provide this integrated experience, brands must maintain a consistent brand image and message throughout their workplace policies, procedures and values.

    2. Innovation: Thanks to the huge amounts of content created every single day, the world of social media is saturated. As a result, brands must constantly look for exciting and innovative ways to reach and engage their audiences in our interconnected world. We do this by continuously experimenting with a wide range of cutting-edge technologies, such as making virtual reality experiences and developing content in the metaverse.

    3. Adaptability: All content producers and marketing departments must be willing to experiment with new mediums and methods. From garden-themed shorts on our TikTok channel to in-depth documentaries on our YouTube channel, we’ve been embracing content diversification for years.

    Overall, it’s critical to understand each platform’s unique functions. Then you can tailor your branded content to fit in with its surroundings and appeal to its specific audiences. Continue researching and studying platforms, both new and old. This allows you to fine-tune your strategy and, as a result, grow as a content creator and as a brand.

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    Patrik Wilkens

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  • 6 Web 1.0 Era Website Promotion Methods That Still Work Today

    6 Web 1.0 Era Website Promotion Methods That Still Work Today

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Promoting a website can take a lot of time and effort. Results are rarely immediate, and the process requires patience and consistency. To help spread the word, website owners usually turn to paid promotion via social media or search engines. But in the late ’90s and early 2000s, this type of advertising either did not exist or was significantly different than the resources available today. So, how was website promotion facilitated during the Web 1.0 era, and do the same methods still work? The following is a list of six strategies that worked.

    Related: 8 Tips to Make Your Website More Sticky

    1. Banner rotation networks

    One of the earliest ways to promote a website was to embed a banner rotation script. It was a simple way to share web traffic among those participating within a banner rotation network or web ring. Once the script was installed, advertisements were displayed at specific intervals or upon certain actions, such as refreshing a browser. Some banner rotation networks were free, and some were paid. The fee-based networks typically had greater reach and higher-quality web traffic.

    Do banner rotations still work? While not as popular as they once were, the technology still exists in various forms. The advent of retargeting makes banner advertising much more effective than ever before.

    2. Reciprocal link pages

    A reciprocal link page or link exchange was typical for promoting banners and text links. In the early days of the internet, website owners would agree to place each other’s banners or links on dedicated web pages for cross-promotion. A link page’s primary benefit was gaining exposure via new web traffic. A secondary use was to boost the popularity of a website. The more link associations, the higher the rank in search engine results.

    Do reciprocal link pages still work? Most search engines discourage pages exclusively dedicated to reciprocal links because they can be built autonomously with bots. The general perception is that reciprocal link pages lower the quality of the user experience. However, variations of link pages can still exist as long as there is an obvious benefit to the user.

    Related: From Link Builder to Email Marketer

    3. Guest articles and posts

    Guest posts and guest articles have been around for a while. There were many benefits to writing guest articles or posts. The aim was to build relationships and exposure to increase website traffic. The content provided by the guest created name-brand awareness. It also established expertise in a particular field or trade.

    For website owners, allowing guests to submit content was also a great way to alleviate the burden of regularly coming up with fresh content ideas that kept visitors engaged. It also helped to boost domain prominence due to the caliber of guest authors interacting with the website.

    Do guest articles and posts still work for website promotion? It is still effective for gaining exposure to new audiences and building relationships. A guest article or post usually includes a link to the original author’s website and a short bio. This helps to increase website traffic and search ranking.

    4. Paid link placement

    Websites with a high number of visitors could use paid link placement as a potential source of revenue. There were a few methods by which a website could incorporate paid ads. Prominent areas of a website were set aside to make way for text links or banners. Promoted content was featured either as part of a rotation or fixed display. Fees were charged based on the number of times the ad was shown or by flat rate. A website could also make money by charging a fee for link placement in an email newsletter.

    Does paid link placement still work? Yes. It is still effective for website promotion. To maximize return on investment, the aim should be to target consumers most likely to want the product or service offered.

    Related: 9 Tips to Successfully Market Your Business

    5. Cloned websites

    In the internet’s early days, cloning was a way to get greater utility from an existing website. The strategy involved creating several instances of an already successful website. For best results, each duplicate website needed to appear slightly different to make a unique appearance. At the time, a network of websites could have precisely the same content. Cloning a website meant greater potential for viewership in search results. Additionally, each instance of the original website could be linked to a core product, such as an e-book, via strategic advertising.

    Does website cloning still work? Search engines will now hide and penalize duplicate content because it has the appearance of being bot-generated. While the page content cannot be exact, there are still ways to create derivatives of an already successful website.

    6. Platforms and databases

    The Web 1.0 era ushered in a wide array of website styles. From web rings to auction sites, everything that is popular now had already existed back then. Platforms and database websites were ideal for website promotion due to their potential for high user engagement. What is now called a platform had no formal definition in those days. Bulletin boards, web-based email and shopping carts were among the most widely used platforms. Similarly, database websites were just as valuable for website promotion because they served as official sources of information.

    Are platforms and databases still effective for website promotion? They are expensive to build and may take years to launch, but the right concept can attract worldwide attention. From gaming cheat codes to product reviews, platform and database websites were, and still are, highly effective for growth and residual website traffic.

    Related: 10 Small Business Marketing Strategies That Actually Work

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    Justin Leonard

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  • 3 Ways to Supercharge Your LinkedIn Marketing Today for Tomorrow’s Growth

    3 Ways to Supercharge Your LinkedIn Marketing Today for Tomorrow’s Growth

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    LinkedIn is “the place to be” for online professional networking. But why is that? Why do more than 830 million business professionals from over 200 countries use the platform?

    There’s no simple answer, but there are a few foundational reasons to employ a LinkedIn marketing campaign: to grow your professional network, to identify high-quality leads, to drive targeted traffic to your website and to share thought-leadership content.

    Knowing why you should use LinkedIn is a good start, but it’s only that. A generic approach isn’t likely to generate the results you’re seeking. You need to supercharge your LinkedIn marketing efforts, and here are three of the best ways to do so.

    Related: 7 Ways You Can Use LinkedIn To Blow Up Your Brand

    Ask your team for help

    You can make a lot of noise on LinkedIn as a single person, but there’s no reason to stop there. Ask your team to get involved. As the most reputable and reliable advocates of your brand, they can expand your reach in just a few short minutes each day.

    Ensure that all employees have updated their profiles to reflect their position at your company. Request that they follow your company page. Encourage them to share personal and brand-related updates. And of course, support them on their quest to provide value to their audience.

    Another idea is to create a LinkedIn Group related to your industry. This is a win-win. It’s a place for your team to share news, guidance, and advice with interested parties, while also building an audience that you can use to your advantage in the future.

    If resources allow for it, hire a dedicated employee or contractor to manage your LinkedIn marketing strategy. With a singular focus, this person can make a bigger impact in a shorter period of time. It’s not required, but keep it on your radar.

    Related: 8 Tips to Help You Grow Your Business on LinkedIn

    Consistently publish relevant, insightful content

    A social network with so many users is sure to generate quite a bit of low-quality content, but you don’t want to be part of this group. Be part of the group that consistently publishes relevant, insightful and actionable content. That’s how you stand out from the crowd.

    Creating engaging content is a trial-and-error process. It takes time to pinpoint your audience’s needs and find a cadence that works for you, so don’t jump ship too soon. It could take days, weeks or even months to hit your content-related goals for the first time.

    Increase your odds of success by:

    • Consistently sharing content (1x/day, 2x/day, 5x/week, etc.).
    • Publishing unique (not rehashed) insights
    • Tracking what does and doesn’t work and adjusting accordingly

    Also, keep in mind that publishing original content is only one piece of the puzzle. It’s good practice to engage with your audience in the comment section of their posts. Share your take, answer questions and — when appropriate — send direct messages to continue the conversation in private.

    Don’t bite off more than you can chew early on. Start slowly to gain your footing and to better understand the wants and needs of your audience. As you settle in, ramp up content production without sacrificing quality. A slow and steady ascent is the best approach.

    Related: Navigating the Great Reshuffle: Why Your Employer Brand is Key in Recruiting Talent

    Get serious about analytics for your content

    This one word — analytics — can be the difference between success and failure on LinkedIn. Creating content is only the start. Knowing what’s resonating with your audience is what really matters. This allows you to continually adjust your strategy with the goal of reaching a larger audience and boosting engagement.

    You can view analytics for all types of LinkedIn content including short-form posts, articles, videos, images, polls and events. This includes data such as:

    • Engagements
    • Discovery
    • Impressions by demographics
    • Article performance
    • Video performance

    These insights are needed to understand the impact your content has on your audience. Soon enough, you’ll have the data you need to determine what type of content generates the best response. You can then create more content that matches what’s worked to date.

    While it’s important to get serious about analytics for your LinkedIn content, don’t let it cloud your vision. Know what matters most to you — such as making industry connections or generating leads — and create content that points you in that direction. Vanity metrics will make you feel good, but they don’t always have the intended impact on your bottom line.

    Related: The Underrated Power of LinkedIn Content Creation

    Repurpose your LinkedIn content

    The guidance above will help you supercharge your LinkedIn marketing, but it can do more than that. It’s a good jumping-off point for growth on other platforms and channels marketing professionals will use to their advantage.

    Examples include repurposing the content for publication on Twitter and Facebook, using it as a foundation for blog content or sharing it with your email list via a weekly newsletter. When you repurpose content, you give it new life. And with that, you’re taking the steps necessary to establish your authority and grow your brand on other platforms.

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    Austin Rotter

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  • 5 Things You Should Know Before Collaborating With An Influencer

    5 Things You Should Know Before Collaborating With An Influencer

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Brands are projected to spend a whopping $15 billion on influencer marketing in 2022. Influencer marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing techniques to help brands connect with their audience. Why? Because people tend to trust influencers and their content about the product more than companies.

    According to this study, 63% of their participants between the ages of 18 and 34 trust what influencers say about brands more than what brands say about themselves.

    Collaborating with an influencer to scale your business is a smart move, but there are a few things you should know. Let’s dig right into some of the best practices for better influencer-brand collaboration.

    First, choose the right platform that fits your product or service

    As we know, a major part of your social media strategy is selecting the right platform. Selecting the right platform depends on a few factors:

    • Your goals: Do you want to drive more traffic to your website, drum up sales or encourage more engagement from your audience? Some social platforms encourage engagement and conversation, while others encourage views. This can help you identify the platform you should focus on when looking for an influencer. For example, if your goal is to encourage engagement, I recommend TikTok where the average engagement rate per post reaches 5.9% while it’s only 0.83% on Instagram and 0.13% on Facebook. Let’s say you’re selling B2B products or services, LinkedIn will be the most suitable platform to build brand awareness, drive website traffic and generate leads.
    • Your target audience: You should also consider demographics like age, gender and location when choosing a platform. Adults between 24 – 34 years old, for instance, make up 31% of Instagram’s audience, while 24% of TikTok’s global audience were women between the ages of 18 and 24 years are more likely to be on TikTok. Facebook is the top-visited social media platform in the U.S., while Twitter is the most popular social media in Japan if we exclude LINE, a messaging app founded in South Korea. Do your research before selecting the platform. Back up your decisions with demographic data, rather than being swayed by the current trends.
    • Where the competitors are: It can save you time seeing how the competitors are performing, what things they did well, what things they dropped the ball on and learning from their mistakes.
    • Identify if the influencer is well-known on the platform: You might find an influencer with more than a million followers on TikTok while having little or no presence at all on YouTube. So, validate that the influencer has a highly engaging audience on the selected social media channel(s).

    Related: How to Succeed Using Influencer Marketing and Brand Collaboration

    1. Choose a relevant influencer

    It is essential to choose an influencer that addresses the same target audience as you do. For instance, when marketing a fitness product, a suitable influencer could be someone who shares educational content about health and fitness or workout videos. Relevancy is a crucial part of selecting who to partner with to build trust with your audience and provide advice and recommendations from experts with authority in the field.

    You should also keep in mind that there are different types of influencers out there and that you can expect different results from each. There are four main types of influencers when it comes to their follower base:

    • Nano-influencers: 10,000 followers or fewer.
    • Micro-influencers: between 10,000 and 100,000 followers.
    • Macro-influencers: between 100,000 and 1 million followers.
    • Mega-influencers: 1 million or more followers.

    If you aim to raise brand awareness, relevant mega and macro-influencers would fit nevertheless. Although micro and nano-influencers reach fewer people, they are more likely to inspire action. Micro-influencers can have a greater impact on followers’ actions than celebrities can. One study suggests the reason for this is that audiences usually find them more trustworthy and relatable than celebrities.

    2. Validate the followers

    To know whether an influencer is a perfect fit, you first need to pay close attention to their followers. If you have a business account on a social media platform, chances are you have come across those accounts that pretend to be like real ones by collecting fake followers and engagements. A simple but effective test to see if the influencer you want to work with has fake followers or not is to select some of their followers at random and notice how they engage with that account.

    Check on their profiles to confirm that they are not fake and that they look like your customer profile. A fake account can be easily detected, a typical one would normally hold zero number of posts or very few ones. The fake follower would most likely follow thousands of accounts while having a significantly lower number of followers. Sometimes the account has no profile picture or a vague profile description. All these criteria are red flags that they are fake accounts.

    You can also check the influencer’s previous posts. If you find only a few engagements (likes, comments, shares) then don’t be deceived by the high number of followers. This influencer most probably bought fake followers. A good exercise is to chat with the influencer about previous successful campaigns’ they’ve worked on.

    Related: What ‘Authenticity’ Actually Looks Like in an Influence-Marketing Collaboration

    3. Give influencers room for creativity

    The content delivered to the audience should be authentic. The best way to do this is to analyze the influencer’s previous posts as a reference point, and work together on how the content will look, the constraints you have and the things you expect to achieve without dictating and letting them do the talking.

    4. Monitor engagements and track campaign results and outcomes

    One of the core pillars of social media marketing is listening and engagement. Social media listening is identifying and assessing what customers say about the brand, brand mentions and the trends around a company. It will allow the company to measure the campaign’s success, know what worked well and avoid future mistakes.

    It is really important to track the impact of influencer marketing by using social media listening tools and not depending only on data supplied by the influencer. There’re many social media listening tools like Brandwatch, which helps marketers understand their audience, track conversions and monitor brand mentions.

    If influencers drive website traffic, you have to set up Google Analytics to measure the campaign performance KPIs like the number of visitors to your website, pages per session and bounce rate. Ultimately, if you’re selling a product online, you should track sales in real-time. An easy way is to give each influencer a discount coupon to share with his/her followers so you can easily detect the source of each transaction.

    Are you ready to collaborate with an influencer? When in doubt, refer back to these pointers before you commit.

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    Ahmed Mokhtar

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  • What Not to Do When Marketing a Web3 Product

    What Not to Do When Marketing a Web3 Product

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Despite being a disruptor to the old order of web apps in principle, Web3 success still relies a lot on traditional marketing. The word about these products needs to get out somehow, and the only way they can get out is through marketing.

    To an extent, this means that a product lives and dies on the strength of its marketing. It does not matter how innovative or genius a product is: if word about it does not get to the people who need it, it will die in ignominy. Perhaps if the idea behind the product is genius enough, someone else will inevitably pick up the idea and market it better.

    We have seen that happen many times in tech history, and there is no doubt that it could also happen today. Myspace, for example, lost to Facebook for a lot of reasons. But one of the reasons was that Myspace was not getting into the consciousness of people fast enough. Of course, Myspace eventually tried to fight that, but they eventually lost. They did all the wrong things marketing-wise, and their loss was almost inevitable.

    The same goes for Web3 products. It is easy, and perhaps true, to say that Web3 is the future. But what’s not easy to say is what products will dominate that future. Friendster and Myspace were all first movers in Web2, but all of them died before Web2 became the future. This goes to show that it’s really not about first movers, instead, it’s about the ones who survive. That is why it is important to learn from the marketing failures that riddle failed products and avoid doing them.

    Related: If You Have No Clue What Web3 Is, You’re Not Alone. Here’s a Breakdown of the Future of the Internet.

    Don’t experiment too much

    Many marketers fall into the trap of experimenting too much with Web3 marketing. They fall into this trap because they assume that since Web3 is somewhat experimental and new, Web3 marketing should be the same — but that’s not true. There is no reason why the marketing of a product should model the product itself. Aside from that, there is little reason to disrupt marketing itself. Traditional marketing works, and it works well.

    Even if you are going to have a policy of disrupting marketing, as it were, it is important to do this with the aid of research. A lot of the Web3 products coming online these days are startups, which means they could be living on borrowed time. It is unwise to experiment with the future of those fledgling products by just throwing whatever at it and hoping something new and radical sticks. It’ll probably fail and may lead to the death of the company.

    Don’t use influencers first

    Influencer marketing works — that’s probably the first thing you should know. If you want a critical mass of people to sign up or purchase your NFTs or tokens quickly, then it’s probably smart to get an influencer to market for you. But here is the thing; influencer marketing is 100% a grenade. Suppose you know how to use a grenade, good for you. However, if you don’t know how to use it and try to use it, you may end up blowing yourself up. 2020 and 2021 saw the rise of Web3 products using influencers to scale. But do they work? ‘Or did they eventually blow up?

    Well, according to a Visual Objects survey, not really. Most people are starting to realize that influencer marketing is inauthentic. This is an especially important thing to note if what you are selling, in essence, is risk and profit. People do not listen to people without skin in the game when it comes to taking risks. They understand that influencers do not have skin in the game, and are then less inclined to take advice from them.

    Here is the thing, Web3 influencing is a dying market. Shortly, scandals like the Kardashian fiasco will cause governments to clamp down on influencer marketing. That is why product leads and heads of marketing must be very careful before choosing to step into the river of influencer marketing. It is a tool that works, but it is a tool that must be used carefully. If not, it can cause more harm than good.

    Related: How to Prepare Your Brand for Web 3.0 Marketing

    Don’t overspend

    One of the biggest mistakes you can make in marketing is assuming that a huge marketing budget means effective marketing. Many times, companies spend a chunk of their budget on symbolic but ineffective ads, such as huge billboards or an ad slot during the Superbowl. But spending big in itself does not guarantee success — grassroots efforts that reach out to your market directly can be more effective than a billboard in every airport.

    Don’t be too shy to ask for help

    Web3 founders are fond of doing everything themselves. From raising money to running the day-to-day business, they have a lot on their plate.

    This spills over to marketing and public relations, too — but marketing isn’t as easy as it might seem. When projects and even celebrities and influencers post something on social media, a lot of time and effort went on behind the scenes to make sure the post read exactly the way it needed to be read as far as messaging, content, SEO and target audience.

    There is a lot that goes into this, which is why marketers get paid big money. It helps to hire a marketer part-time just to see what they do, or even vet a few agencies to see what they offer.

    Sometimes, it’s as easy as being pointed in the right direction. Don’t waste anyone’s time, but take a closer look at the nuts and bolts of things. What are the individual components that may even be involved? What do you need to learn about? Does the marketing agency offer SEO? Well, now you know that’s something you need. Go research it or you can schedule a consultation with a marketing team — $300 may seem like a lot of money to pay for an hour or two of education, but that’s all it really takes for a workable strategy to form.

    I often brainstorm 90% of my marketing plans on the very first call with my clients. We’ve done it over and over again, and we can see how your product fits into the audience as easily as you can see how your product fits into the market. The point is to find some way to get a second opinion, and you’re well on your way.

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    Kurt Ivy

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  • 8 Things Every Business Should Do to Improve Its Online Presence in 2023

    8 Things Every Business Should Do to Improve Its Online Presence in 2023

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Regardless of the kind of business you operate, there are many things you can gain from having a strong online presence. With a powerful online presence, you can boost brand awareness, increase leads and increase sales. So, as we are moving closer to 2023, every business must plan to take its online presence to the next level.

    In this post, we will explain some important things every business should do to improve its online presence in 2023.

    Build a user-friendly, attractive website

    When creating an impressive online presence in 2023, the importance of having a website cannot be overemphasized. Your website can make it easier for people to know what you are capable of offering them. Additionally, it can tell people more about your work process, work hours, location, contact information and lots more.

    But you shouldn’t just create any site. It must be user-friendly and visually appealing. This is because the expectations of consumers are high nowadays. As a result, they will not waste their time on a low-quality, hard-to-navigate website. So, you should hire the service of experienced website developers and designers to ensure your site meets the required standard.

    Related: 4 Content Marketing Strategies You Should Use in 2023

    Use SEO

    Search engine optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing strategy for increasing your brand’s visibility in search results. As your website ranks higher in search results, more people will be able to come across your brand. Therefore, SEO can make a big difference in your online presence.

    To optimize your site for SEO in 2023, you should invest in finding the most relevant keywords. Afterward, use the keywords appropriately and naturally in your headers, meta description, blog content, social media posts, etc.

    Also, you shouldn’t forget the three most crucial aspects of SEO, which are:

    When done correctly, SEO will help you to reach more potential customers, thus, boosting your online presence.

    Related: 6 SEO Tips to Benefit Any Business

    Take advantage of local directories

    Although it may seem that local directories are only meant for local businesses, all businesses can gain from them. With the directories aid, many would-be customers can check out your business without going to your site. So, as you are trying to boost your business’s online presence, you need to create profiles on local directories such as Google.

    Invest in online ads

    While a business can grow online organically without ads, online ads can make the job easier and faster. Therefore, if you want to improve your business’s online presence, you need to invest in online ads. Facebook, Google, YouTube and other platforms now allow users to pay for ads. These ads will showcase your offers, ensuring that more people know about your business.

    Online ads are helpful for businesses in different ways. Firstly, it can be tailored to suit your target audience. You can use age, interests, location, gender, behavior and other parameters to determine who will see the ads. Secondly, the ads can be done in varying formats, such as images, texts, infographics and videos.

    Focus on only the most important online platforms

    You can explore numerous platforms when it comes to boosting the image of your business online. However, you must be careful, as being present on several platforms may not be advantageous to your business. Generally, you will have to spend lots of time online marketing your business through numerous platforms. This can be pretty distracting and even prevent you from offering quality services and products to existing customers.

    As a result, you should only focus on the most vital platforms. If you can only maximize the use of your website, emails and three social media platforms, you should concentrate on them. You just need to select the best platforms that will assist you in getting the most from your online presence.

    Post shareable and emotional content consistently

    Another way to improve your online presence is to post content your audience can share with friends. By sharing your content, it will be able to reach more people, thus, boosting your online presence. Nevertheless, most users will only share content that resonates with them emotionally. So, creating emotional and shareable content from time to time on your website and social media pages is paramount.

    Infuse emotional phrases and words into your headers, captions, blog posts, etc. Add exciting images, videos, stats and emojis to your content. Also, you can directly encourage the readers to share your post.

    Use email marketing

    Even though email marketing is one of the oldest means of digital marketing, it is still crucial today. Many internet users utilize emails and check their inbox messages regularly. According to Optinmonster.com, about 99% of email users open their emails at least once daily. So, if you can reach out to existing and would-be customers through emails, you will increase your online presence in 2023.

    To optimize email marketing, you must build an email list and craft unique subject lines and content. Also, you must send emails regularly, but don’t spam your audiences.

    Explore guest posting

    As you continue to look for ways to improve the online presence of your business, you shouldn’t limit it to your platforms. For instance, guest posting can be a great way to let more people know about your business. Guest posting refers to the process of creating a blog post on another platform’s blog. You need to add a link to your website or blog in the blog post. When people engage with your post on the website, they may click the link and visit your website.

    When choosing a platform for guest posting, ensure it is a platform with many audiences. Such a platform will allow you to reach more people.

    After doing everything above, you should keep track of the progress of your effort with Google Analytics, SEMrush, Ahrefs, etc. Keep updating these things until you have accomplished the goal of improving your business’s online presence in 2023.

    Related: How to Enhance Your SEO Efforts by Guest Posting

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    Gajura Constantin

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  • Why Influencers Are the Perfect Marketing Strategy For Your Brand

    Why Influencers Are the Perfect Marketing Strategy For Your Brand

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    At least 93 percent of marketers have included influencer marketing in their brand strategy. Additionally, In 2020, the average number of social media accounts for a millennial or Gen Z-er was 8.4 personal accounts, which means that it’s more important than ever for brands to embrace a cross-channel marketing approach to stay competitive. The influencer marketing industry is projected to reach $16.4 billion by the end of 2022.

    Successfully connecting influencers and brands requires a specific list of criteria. When we hit upon the “perfect” influencer relationship, both the creator and the brands benefit tremendously.

    It’s not always easy to find the right influencers for your brand. Still, these are a few of the key things we look for when establishing brand-influencer relationships at ConvertSocial, after analyzing our own experience with more than 20,000 influencers.

    1. They’re from an industry-relevant niche

    It doesn’t matter how high their follower count is or how viral their content goes; if an influencer isn’t relevant to a brand’s sphere, the relationship won’t be a great fit.

    Creators within a specific niche of your industry tend to have a much more significant impact on the brands they work with because their audience, content and reputation are all built on a targeted passion. This means that content is more targeted, and every campaign is more impactful.

    Related: What to Know About Influencer Marketing in 2022

    2. Their voice and personal brand resonate with the company’s image and values

    Remember that the influencers you choose are extensions of your brand. They are ambassadors of your core values and mission, so your company should only choose creators with similar values. Smaller-scale influencers who feel accessible to your audience and champion the same causes as your brand are the perfect ambassadors to maximize your company’s ROI.

    In addition, it’s important to remember that new influencer categories are cropping up as the industry expands. No matter the brand niche, there are now influencers who are gaining a following in that sphere. From “finfluencers” (financial influencers) to “skinfluencers” (skincare influencers), there’s a creator for every niche, so hold out for the ones that resonate best with your brand.

    3. They’re charismatic, trustworthy and know how to build emotional connections

    Creators should have that “something extra” that makes them unique and able to establish a genuine emotional connection with their followers. When an influencer has charisma and empathy, it converts to the kind of loyalty and trust that will keep the audience coming back again and again.

    Many brands are turning to micro-influencers (those with 10,000-100,000 followers) because they tend to have an aura of authenticity and credibility that differs from celebrities and macro influencers. They tend to feel more relatable and attainable, so followers feel they have a certain level of authority in their niche.

    Related: Overcoming Language Barriers, Regional Influencer Marketing Boosts Brand Growth Exponentially

    4. They can proactively produce balanced content that sells

    It’s essential that creators aren’t advertising in every post. We usually aim for a goal of no more than 15 percent of sales-type content per influencer. This goal is based on thousands of in-depth interviews conducted with creators, which works well for us.

    Influencers should be excited about creating quality content around your brand. The best ones will have natural selling skills that allow them to introduce the benefits of your product in a way that feels like a friend sharing their knowledge about something they love.

    It’s often best to have a collaborative conversation about ad campaigns so that you and your influencer partner can craft highly relevant content to their audience and effectively introduce your product in the best possible light.

    Related: 7 Steps to Becoming a Seven-Figure Influencer in Your Niche

    Three more considerations when choosing influencers

    First, remember that a high follower count is not the most critical metric. Creators demonstrating high levels of community engagement will be far more likely to have a higher ROI. Ask creators for their engagement statistics (e.g., likes, comments, shares, clicks, story polls, etc.), and double-check their numbers. It’s usually a red flag if an influencer hesitates to share their statistics with you.

    Second, expertise and relevant experience can be huge boosters. The more authority an influencer has in their niche, the easier it is to convert that into audience trust and loyalty to your brand. For example, a fitness influencer who is a registered dietitian or physical therapist has a higher level of authority than someone who has been going to the gym for a few years.

    Third, cross-platform content creation has a significant impact on revenues. An influencer having accounts on multiple platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, TikTok or YouTube drastically increases revenues. For instance, our ConvertSocial statistics confirmed that a creator with 2-3 social media accounts could bring in up to three times more revenue than a creator with only one account. Four or more accounts increase revenues tenfold!

    Leverage the influencer community to your advantage

    Statistics show that influencer marketing ROIs are up to 11 times greater than banner ads, and 92 percent of consumers trust online word-of-mouth recommendations over other ad formats.

    The influencer marketing channel is growing extremely fast and shows no signs of slowing down. This means that now is the best time to jump on the trend and capitalize on the success that partnering with the perfect influencer can bring.

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    Ksana Liapkova

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  • Want to Get Verified on Instagram? Don’t Fall For These 3 Verification Scams

    Want to Get Verified on Instagram? Don’t Fall For These 3 Verification Scams

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Whether you’re a thought leader, influencer or entrepreneur, you probably have “get verified on Instagram” on your to-do list. And you should. The coveted blue check mark is valuable for any business leader, but especially for those whose work relies on having a positive public persona.

    Not only does the check mark put you in an elite group — less than 5% of Instagram accounts are granted a verified status — but it also protects you from imposters hijacking your online presence. Which of the dozens of Ryan Reynolds’ Instagram accounts is the real one? The one with the blue check mark.

    So, how do you get verified on Instagram? There are those who would tell you that the process is easy and requires only a little bit of time, a few forms and some money. Don’t believe them. Those people are scammers who are trying to get access to your private information or take your money.

    As Instagram explains on its website, verification is something that is offered to those who “represent a well-known, highly searched-for person, brand or entity.” If that does not describe you or your brand, you should be suspicious of anyone who offers you an easy path to getting a blue check mark.

    Here are three common Instagram verification scams you should be careful to avoid.

    Related: Is That Instagram Email a Phishing Attack? Now You Can Find Out.

    1. Don’t trust an invitation to apply

    If you are a well-known person or represent a well-known brand, you can apply on your own to be considered for verification. Once you apply, you should expect a response within 30 days. What you should not expect is that Instagram will reach out to you to let you know that you are eligible for verification if you have not applied for that status.

    A recent Instagram verification scam lured people in through email messages saying they were eligible for the blue check mark. The next step, according to the email, was to supply the email address associated with the account and the password.

    This scam utilizes a strategy commonly known as phishing, in which bad actors hope to entice someone to provide them with private information by offering them something of value. The information phished for can include usernames, passwords, bank account numbers, social security numbers and more. Once the information is obtained, the account can be hacked to obtain more information, use it for illegitimate purposes, and even lock the genuine account owner out in some cases.

    This Instagram phishing scam walked its victims through a series of forms that gathered information, all with the promise that it would result in obtaining the blue check mark. The fact that the forms were hosted on “instagramforbusiness.info,” rather than the company’s “instagram.com” site, was a telltale sign that it was not a legitimate process.

    Related: Why Having a Personal Brand Is Crucial to Making Money Online (and How to Build Yours)

    2. Don’t trust a message saying that you have been pre-approved

    Another phishing scam goes a step further by informing the target that they have already been approved and only need to click on a link to claim their check mark. Instagram will not approve you for verification on its own initiative. Even if you have applied for verification, this type of message should still be viewed as suspicious.

    Instagram says on its website that it will inform applicants that they have been approved for verification through a notification that will appear in the Activity tab in the Instagram app. It expressly states that it will never “reach out to ask you to confirm your verification.”

    When an email message seems suspicious, reviewing the originating address is one way to quickly reveal fraud. An example of an Instagram verification scam uncovered in early 2022 involved targets receiving messages from “info@business-objectionchannel.com” that promised verification. Some sleuthing revealed that the domain name “business-objectionchannel.com” had been recently registered.

    Related: Instagram’s Verification Self-Submission Form Update Allows for a More Complete Verification Request

    3. Don’t trust a promise to deliver verification for a fee

    Because Instagram’s verification is not something that can be purchased, any offer to provide verification in exchange for a fee, regardless of the dollar amount, will almost certainly be a scam. This is especially true when the offer requires only a fee and no other information.

    An Instagram verification scam uncovered in South Florida in 2021 not only promised verification for as little as $50 but also provided victims with screenshots that showed message exchanges between the scammers and local celebrities who used the service. The messages were later discovered to be fabricated. Those who paid for the service did not get what they were promised.

    However, there are legitimate businesses, such as public relations firms, that can help get their clients verified on Instagram and other social media platforms for a fee. The distinction with those businesses is that they first help their clients to become notable through media appearances, thus making them eligible for verification.

    Overall, it is important to remember that verification — on Instagram and other social media platforms — serves the purpose of authenticating notable accounts. In other words, it is the way Instagram helps its users to connect with the true Ryan Reynolds. As such, it is not something that is easy to obtain.

    For entrepreneurs, thought leaders and influencers, achieving a blue checkmark is often seen as something that can boost their credibility, even if they have not yet achieved the “notable” status that justifies verification. If that is where you are, be careful. Your desire to become verified could result in you falling victim to a scam.

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    Jay Feldman, DO

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  • Transform Your Social Media Will These Content Marketing Practices

    Transform Your Social Media Will These Content Marketing Practices

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Content marketing has become one of the mainstays of most brands’ digital marketing strategies. Relevant, relatable content draws users in and persuades them to visit a website, download an eBook or share their personal details. Social media channels are among the most popular outlets for content marketing across the U.S. But is your brand maximizing the power of your social media pages?

    The rise of social media marketing

    Over the last two decades, social media channels have transformed from platforms designed purely for entertainment and personal connections to powerful marketing tools. According to Statista, more than 90% of marketers in United States-based companies with 100 or more employees use social media as part of their content marketing strategy.

    While the platforms had been designed to connect people to others, marketers quickly realized they were the perfect places to connect people to brands. At this time, more than 80% of the entire population of the United States has at least one social media networking profile, and social media usage continues to grow. Worldwide, more than four billion people are using social media channels.

    Related: 10 Social-Media Marketing Strategies for Companies

    As a result, content marketers cannot afford to ignore social media channels. The importance of this outlet is reflected in the marketing spend associated with social media. In 2021, U.S. marketers were expected to spend $17 billion on social media marketing. This marks an increase of ten billion compared to 2014.

    This increase is a clear indicator of the growing importance of social media marketing. However, these digital marketing channels are not without challenges. Judging the effectiveness of content marketing on social media pages remains a concern for brands.

    What makes social media content marketing effective?

    Whether on social media or other channels, high-quality content marketing works by drawing an audience toward a brand. Rather than interrupting potential customers, as an advert would, great pieces of content solve a problem, offer users information they were looking for in a search query, or are otherwise helpful and relevant.

    What effective content marketing on social media means in practice can vary from brand to brand. A compelling piece of content helps the brand achieve the goals set out in its content marketing strategy. Goals could include growing the subscriber numbers for a YouTube channel, generating white paper downloads, or increasing website traffic. If a brand’s content marketing helps achieve these targets, it is effective.

    Related: 10 Laws of Social Media Marketing

    Measuring effectiveness

    Clearly defined, smart goals are a prerequisite of effective content marketing, but measuring effectiveness is equally important. For marketers, that means connecting pieces of content with outcomes and starting to isolate the factors that influence these outcomes.

    Regarding social media marketing, many brands find that releasing content on specific days of the week or at set times influences their results. The reason is simple — consumers have preferred times for engaging with social media content. Without knowing what these times are, it is impossible to optimize campaigns for effectiveness. Measuring and reviewing the performance of each piece of content is critical.

    How to improve the effectiveness of your social media content marketing

    Timing content launches correctly is one aspect of improving the effectiveness of content marketing on social media. But there are several other factors that marketers can use to enhance the performance of their content marketing campaigns.

    First and foremost, brands need to provide engaging content. Storytelling is one of the most effective ways of connecting with users and potential customers. Authentic stories touch their audience emotionally and build a deeper connection between brands and audiences than a simple list of facts can do. They also have the potential to inspire long-term customer loyalty.

    The power of stories has been proven scientifically. By using storytelling to share a brand’s story, marketers are using one of humanity’s oldest traditions. Look closely, and it becomes obvious that the entire network of social media is built on the attraction between people and stories. Utilizing storytelling for content marketing is extremely useful to make a brand’s content marketing more effective.

    Second, avoid focusing on your brand. This may sound wrong, but content marketing is not about what brand marketers try to promote. Instead, it is all about providing value for the audience. Marketers can provide value by sharing expertise or insights through their content. Focus on content only this brand can provide, and do not shy away from sharing opinions or viewpoints.

    Related: 5 Steps to Creating a Killer Marketing Strategy

    Third, it is important to be consistent in any content marketing efforts. When consumers or users choose to follow a brand, they are investing emotionally in that brand. With investment comes an expectation of a return on investment (ROI). Regular, relevant, helpful content that provides information not available anywhere else provides this kind of ROI.

    Consistency applies to the regularity with which a brand publishes its content. Marketers must ensure their content creates a consistent image to establish a brand’s voice and values. Most brands have clearly defined brand values. The audiences of your content marketing should be able to recognize those principles through your content marketing on social media.

    Fourth, remember that content includes more than words. Images, links, and videos are only three examples of media that can enrich a brand’s social media content marketing strategy and deliver stronger results.

    Social media channels lend themselves to content marketing. These channels are excellent places to share brand stories, offer expertise and insights, and create a deeper connection with audiences. Measuring the effectiveness of existing social media content marketing is the first step toward increasing it through storytelling, focusing on the audience, being consistent, and enriching content.

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    Jessica Wong

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  • 9 Ways Memes Can Change Your Business

    9 Ways Memes Can Change Your Business

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    The so-called “creator economy” spans a hugely diverse field with products including dance videos on TikTok, crocheted doilies on Etsy and eye-popping memes on iFunny. It is becoming a formidable force. In 2021 alone, the creator economy raised a record $1.3 billion in funding, underscoring the investment community’s vote of confidence in its future. Fast forward to 2022, and memes are clearly no longer just for laughs.

    The sector’s trailblazers — behemoths like Meta and more specialized entertainment tech players like FunCorp, whose team I was privileged to join in 2021 — were fortunate to be at the forefront of many industry changes, including the explosion of memes into pop culture.

    Related: The Secret to Building Brand Devotion is Not a Loyalty Program. Here’s What Customer’s Really Want.

    Innovative players across industries are harnessing their power to build communities and inspire strong sentiment around their brand for the benefit of the business. Here are some exciting new ways in which memes can help you achieve your strategic objectives, both as they relate to your customers and your teams:

    1. Reach a younger audience. Memes don’t have a target age, but if you are keen to grab a larger part of the younger demographic, they might be the most effective medium of short-form communication. Approximately 54% of Gen-Zs, 41% of Millennials, and 21% of Gen-Xers look for new memes every day, according to GlobalWebIndex data, while 75% of users aged 13-36 regularly share memes. Considering these stats, using memes to help your corporate messages reach younger customers and potential partners seems like a no-brainer.
    2. Mount a low-cost marketing campaign. When done right, a meme that takes a limited budget to create can leverage the power of social media to go viral, which means your meme marketing campaign has the potential to go viral as well. Companies across sectors, from grocery delivery players to luxury retailers, are already using this to their advantage, with Gucci‘s meme-based ad campaign “#TFWGucci” (“That Feeling When Gucci”) representing one of the company’s highest engaging ad campaign, generating over 21,000 comments and 2 million likes. Apps like Yepp have built-in editing tools that simplify meme creation, even for a novice, helping take the art of meme-making into the mainstream.
    3. Increase engagement with your social media page. If you enjoy memes, you know the internet gets flooded with clever takes on trending news. You can keep track of popular memes and share the ones that are topical and well-aligned with your corporate image to fuel greater engagement with your audience online. A recent research report highlighted the benefits of this strategy, revealing that while millennials generally eschew commercial and sponsored content, 84% of them are influenced by user-generated content, including memes on company pages.
    4. Help your brand stand out. Given the short-form nature of meme content and its punchy messaging style and visuals, memes can stay in your memory long after you’ve clicked on them. There is a way to leverage this by incorporating memes into your branding, ensuring better brand recall than other communication formats. It’s a crowded space, and memes help break through the wall of indifference and capture consumer attention. One company nailing this is Barkbox, a company selling dog toy subscription boxes. Barkbox has racked up an impressive 1.8 million followers on its Instagram page by almost exclusively sharing memes. It now surpasses the follower count of the country’s largest pet retailer — PetSmart — by a cool 1 million people.
    5. Build brand loyalty. While traditional marketing may alienate some consumers by being overly aspirational (think beach body ads, reels for the latest diet supplements), memes tend to unite people by reminding them that they are not alone in their thoughts and feelings. In doing so, memes become a powerful tool for community-building, helping foster a sense of belonging among consumers that translates into brand loyalty.
    6. Align your onboarding with your workplace culture. Starting a new job can be a daunting experience, and deciphering the work culture at your new office can be difficult. If you pride yourself on fostering a unique working environment far from the stuffy, hierarchical offices of the past, then using memes to welcome new employees might be a good way to highlight this. Memes, when chosen appropriately, can help your new team members understand the new workplace better and easily fit into it.
    7. Encourage team building. Memes have the power to inspire strong feelings, which laugh-out-loud content tends to do. While memes are most often used for external marketing in business, corporate culture gurus are now also looking to memes, seeking more ways to unite and inspire employees. Creating work channels for sharing your favorite memes or holding corporate competitions for the best meme created by employees on a particular topic of relevance can be an unusual and fun way to encourage team building. And they can certainly help spice up a presentation when used effectively.
    8. Spice up internal communications. Deploying a mix of topical memes in internal communications can help you drive your key points home and even inject some fun into the driest of topics. It is great to hear the crowd break down into genuine laughter during an internal new product presentation or a weekly team meeting, and memes are a quick and simple way to achieve this, inserting a bit of fun into the everyday. Thinking beyond internal comms, corporate and investor presentations might benefit from memes in the same way as well.
    9. Help break up monotonous tasks. Not every job can always be exciting, as monotonous tasks are often a necessary part of a job and cannot be avoided. At the same time, feeling engaged is a key component of employee satisfaction and retention. Consider making small changes for big impacts, like inserting a “meme of the day” into your team’s workflow or even ask the team to suggest their own suitable memes for a bit of fun and to encourage social interactions to help break up the monotony of some tedious tasks that cannot be cut from the work routine.

    Related: How to Use Memes To Transform Your Marketing Strategy

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    Max Kraynov

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  • The largest newspaper publisher in the US sues Google, alleging online ad monopoly | CNN Business

    The largest newspaper publisher in the US sues Google, alleging online ad monopoly | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the United States, is suing Google, alleging the tech giant holds a monopoly over the digital ad market.

    The publisher of USA Today and more than 200 local publications filed the lawsuit in a New York federal court on Tuesday, and is seeking unspecified damages. Gannett argues in court documents that Google and its parent company, Alphabet, controls how publishers buy and sell ads online.

    “The result is dramatically less revenue for publishers and Google’s ad-tech rivals, while Google enjoys exorbitant monopoly profits,” the lawsuit states.

    Google controls about a quarter of the US digital advertising market, with Meta, Amazon and TikTok combining for another third, according to eMarketer. News publishers and other websites combine for the other roughly 40%. Big Tech’s share of the market is beginning to erode slightly, but Google remains by far the largest individual player.

    That means publishers often rely at least in part on Google’s advertising technology to support their operations: Gannett says Google controls 90% of the ad market for publishers.

    Michael Reed, Gannett’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement Tuesday that Google’s dominance in the online advertising industry has come “at the expense of publishers, readers and everyone else.”

    “Digital advertising is the lifeblood of the online economy,” Reed added. “Without free and fair competition for digital ad space, publishers cannot invest in their newsrooms.”

    Dan Taylor, Google’s vice president of global ads, told CNN that the claims in the suit “are simply wrong.”

    “Publishers have many options to choose from when it comes to using advertising technology to monetize – in fact, Gannett uses dozens of competing ad services, including Google Ad Manager,” Taylor said in a statement Tuesday. “And when publishers choose to use Google tools, they keep the vast majority of revenue.”

    He continued: “We’ll show the court how our advertising products benefit publishers and help them fund their content online.”

    The legal action from Gannett comes as Google faces a growing number of antitrust complaints in the United States and the European Union over its advertising business, which remains its central moneymaker.

    EU officials said last week that Google’s advertising business should be broken up, alleging that the tech giant’s involvement in multiple parts of the digital advertising supply chain creates “inherent conflicts of interest” that risk harming competition.

    Earlier this year, the Justice Department and eight states sued Google, accusing the company of harming competition with its dominance in the online advertising market and similarly calling for it to be broken up.

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  • Pro-Chinese online influence campaign promoted protests in Washington, researchers say | CNN Politics

    Pro-Chinese online influence campaign promoted protests in Washington, researchers say | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A Chinese marketing firm likely organized and promoted protests in Washington last year as part of a wide-ranging pro-Beijing influence campaign, according to new research.

    The Chinese firm also used a network of over 70 fake news websites to promote pro-China content in an example of the more aggressive efforts by pro-China operatives to influence US political debate in recent years, according to security firm Mandiant, which analyzed the activity.

    One of the protests was against a US government ban on goods produced in China’s Xinjiang region, where US officials have accused the Chinese government of systematic repression of the Uyghurs. The other protest was on the sidelines of a June conference on international religious freedom, Mandiant said.

    One of the protests only attracted roughly a dozen people but it showed the scope and ambition of the pro-China efforts.

    The hired protesters, who included self-proclaimed musicians and actors in the Washington, DC, area, apparently had no idea they were being enlisted in a pro-China influence campaign, the Mandiant researchers said.

    The campaign backed by the Chinese firm, Shanghai Haixun Technology Co., Ltd., is “intended to sow discord in US society,” Ryan Serabian, a senior analyst at Mandiant, told CNN.

    In both cases, protesters carry placards and chant slogans about racial discrimination and abortion in the US. Haixun, the Chinese firm, distributed videos of the protesters online to further the influence campaign, according to Mandiant.

    Shanghai Haixun Technology did not respond to a request for comment.

    Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said he was unaware of the details of the research. “China has always adhered to non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs,” Liu said in an email to CNN.

    The Washington Post first reported on the Mandiant research.

    In the runup to the 2016 US presidential elections, Russian operatives used social media to organize protests on American soil as part of Moscow’s election interference, according to US intelligence officials. Such divisive tactics are no longer confined to the Russians, according to election security experts.

    During the 2022 US midterm elections, pro-China propagandists showed signs of engaging in “Russia-style influence activities” that stoke American divisions, FBI officials told reporters last year. The FBI pointed to Facebook’s shutdown of accounts originating in China that posted memes mocking President Joe Biden and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

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