Marketing Automation is the process of taking the leverage of software to automate the marketing process or the repetitive marketing tasks. Most of the time marketers use this software for nurturing leads, to integrate with Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and also Customer Data platform (CDP) software.
Most of the time marketing automation is used to automate and personalize the texts and responses to the customers. According to Andrea Lechner Becker who is the CMO of LeadMD. Marketing Automations are tools that increase the efficiency of the marketers.
There are various examples of marketing automation. Some of them include an automated email that is sent to a user according to his behavior triggers. This email can be personalized and will be set ahead of time by the marketers using a marketing automation platform.
Other than this the reminders you get when you leave an item in the shopping cart after visiting an e-commerce website, the emails you get regarding the feedbacks which will be personalized. All these are examples of marketing automation.
Some of the features of marketing automation would include
Nurturing leads –
This is the process of sending a number of automated emails to the prospects so that you can engage with them by providing relevant information.
Personalized emails –
Personalizing your emails will help your business maintain a personal relationship with the customers.
Management of Campaigns –
Companies can also run Email campaigns to increase the leads with the increase of sales. It will let you send personalized or direct emails to a large number of people.
Forms and Landing Pages –
It is a tool that will help you collect various information and data from your customers. This can later be converted into the various system for storing or action according to the data received.
When you look at the pure practice of marketing automation the ultimate outcome of the efforts of marketing automation is to gain qualified leads, conversions, personalized messages, etc. Qualified leads are a collaboration of sales and marketing.
Sending the right messages to the prospects at the right time is the key to generating leads. Marketing automation will help you send the right messages at the right time to your customers. This will increase the chances of generating leads.
The future of marketing automation looks bright. Marketing automation is very beneficial for small sized businesses, medium sized business and also fortune 500s. Marketing automation will benefit all the companies irrespective of their size.
A marketing agency named JMB Partnership has said that in the near future the marketing expenses can be reduced by 12.2 % and the productivity would increase by 14.5% because of the use of marketing automation. The sales are expected to increase by 50% in certain cases.
Another marketing agency named Fathom has said that there is an increase in the qualified leads to as much as 451%.
But still, many companies and businesses find marketing automation a difficult task. There was a survey conducted by the marketing technology insights company MarTech on how various marketers feel about the marketing automation challenges.
According to the survey, more than 15% of the marketers find it hard to create automation, more than 10% found it hard to integrate the automation with the software they use, around 10% of the marketers find that automation is still complicated and again around 10% of the marketers found it hard to create content.
Marketing Automation is expected to be one of the best choices and most common practices we will be able to find in 2021 and beyond. From emails to contact segmentation to contact management, it will be using marketing automation.
Since Marketing Automation is booming and since it is becoming a popular tool it is expected that it would be easy to use in the near future. The software is considered to become easier to use if Marketing Automation is growing at the same speed.
According to a survey conducted by an email marketing company Adestra, it was found that more than 64% of the marketers require a software that is easy to use rather than technical support or pricing.
FAQ
What is marketing automation used for?
Marketing automation is used to execute, manage and automate marketing tasks and processes. It replaces manual and repetitive marketing processes.
What is the best marketing automation tool?
Marketo, Eloqua, Customer.io, Constant Contact, and HubSpot are some of the top marketing automation tools.
What are the benefits of marketing automation?
Few benefits of marketing automation are Increased marketing efficiency, Automate time-consuming, Enhanced ability to generate more and better qualified leads and Better alignment of sales and marketing goals.
Conclusion
Marketing Automation is expected to grow really fast and the growth of an organization would depend on how easily one will adapt to it. Most of the companies have already implemented Marketing Automations in their businesses. We can see a lot more companies doing it in the near future.
A city that never sleeps experienced a widespread power outage. While the whole city was experiencing an outage brands didn’t miss out to capture this moment marketing opportunity. Many of the digital marketing teams had their content marketing teams out to communicate in their own flavor.
Twitter and Instagram continues to gain moments during these times. Many people took to twitter to use humor to deal with the situation. Some of the brands found this opportunity as an excellent marketing strategy and handled the situation with a bit of humor.
Netflix is a player which has always been taking advantage of moment marketing. The OTT platform has been regularly using Twitter as a medium for reaching out to its audiences. In the most recent instance, the OTT platform tweeted about the power outage in Mumbai.
Moment marketing uses offline experience, particularly in TV shows and sporting events, to drive or trigger online interaction. It is also seen as the next big thing in the content marketing strategy.
Interestingly, if we analyze this space, Amul, a dairy brand, has always been the leader when it comes to ‘moment marketing’. The Amul girl has always been topical and spoken to the country on various political and non-political developments in real time. Till date, Amul Girl amuses the Indian audiences with its phenomenal one liners nearly every day.
We have often heard that Content is King and content writer is a warrior ! If you are a person who is updated in this world then you must be knowing that content is one the scripted key aspect that can drive your marketing process. After all, in today’s era, 90% of the companies market themselves with content and 75% of the consumers connect with the company due to content marketing. Content is more than just words. So now you know that high-quality content and informative content can help you build an online presence of your business and market your business most efficiently, but how? I am here to help you Learn how to choose the right content writing agency.
Though there might be many different ways to promote your content, what remains vital here is that the content should be powerful. If it is not written properly or is not optimized well according to the search engines algorithm, then there is no use of the promotional strategies for targeting. Hence, to outshine your business, you must hire the right content writing agency that can assure you great content and can help you achieve your goals. In this article, you will find tips that will help you choose the right content writing agency for your business.
1. Verify if the agency is real
These days, the field of content writing has been exploited by many. Often fraud companies and agencies claim to provide you services like web development, SEO, and digital marketing but in reality, they don’t even have a dedicated team of professionals. You must find an agency that will understand your needs and deliver rightful services accordingly. To verify whether they are real or not you can give them an old piece of work to work upon, they should be able to scrutinize it and come up with ideas of improvement. This way you can see if they meet your expectations and also can trust them. See all the agency’s past work, and very with past clients a well.
2. What more than blogs writers and articles writers
When we talk about content, it isn’t restricted from articles and blogs. There are various content forms and formats used today such as website content, case studies, e-books, emails, presentations, memes, social-media content, videos, profile writing and so on. When you use these ways to market your business through content, it is more likely that your message gets conveyed more effectively.
So before hiring any agency, make sure that they can help you develop all kinds of content as per your demand where they can cover multiple content formats. Only companies that can help you create only SEO articles will not help in the long run to survive the competition. When you rely upon the agency for content writing services, the agency should be able to help you, advise you and guide you on the different formats of content that will work best for your business and also on which channels should they be published.
3. Evaluate their past work
Ask the concerned agency if they could share their past work or the samples with you so that you have a better understanding of their working style. Looking at their samples and past work, you can make a judgment and can understand the level of information they provide an effective and appealing their content looks.
Good content always helps you fly higher on search engine result pages. Today SEO and tools help the companies connect very effectively with their target customers. Look out for agencies that can create SEO-friendly content for your business. The best way to test this is to check their SEO. If the agency has a good SEO ranking then it might be able to help you in producing SEO-friendly content.
If the agency already has an experience of work under your domain, then this might act as an added advantage. Make sure that you ask the agency if they would be able to deliver the quality content in your domain and if possible ask them to give you a sample.
6. Check if they offer a trial period
It would be great if the content writing agency agrees to work for a pilot project. This can help you gauge the best quality content the team would be able to create. And also you can get insights into the language of the content and how it is written. Through this, you can also let the team understand your requirements and set the right expectations.
7. Seek out their revision policy
There will be times when you would demand the agency to modify or re-write the content with major or minor corrections. Many agencies charge extra for such revisions. These agencies have a turnaround time for corrections where they would agree to make any changes at a certain time. You must choose an agency that has a flexible revision policy so that your journey with them is hassle-free.
8. Check their reviews and ratings
Reviews and Ratings of customers
Checking the reviews and rationings about anything always helps to give you clarity. While you are looking out for various aspects, try to look out for reviews and ratings too. In this way, you can infer whether the clients were satisfied with the agency’s work or not. Do check all the social media accounts as well like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Some agencies might have client testimonials on the website too. Choose an agency that has maximum good ratings and positive reviews.
9. Compare costs with other agencies
There are many benefits of hiring a content writing agency, but it comes with a cost. You need to ensure that you hire an agency where your work is fulfilled and it fits your budget. Also, make sure that you do not settle for a very cheap agency, as they might end up compromising upon the quality. If you have low budgets, you can consider hiring freelance content writers too. They usually charge you on a contractual or project basis. Though the costs of freelance content writers might be very less, you might face difficulties in reliability, punctuality, and professionalism. And if budget is not a real big problem for your business, then look out for other agencies, make a decision based upon the mentioned criteria and then compare the prices. Negotiate with these agencies and ask them to explain to you the charges demanded by them and only then reach out to conclusions.
10. Look out for consistency
At times the agency might fail to live up to their commitments. Some agencies over-commit their clients just to get as many projects as they can. It might be of a great disadvantage for you if you sign the contract with an agency that is not committed and consistent. Ask the agency to deliver the content on a daily basis and keep a regular check on their consistency.
Running out of ideas for the website? It’s a common problem every content writer faces once a while but that doesn’t mean that the website will not come with new articles because no matter what happens there should be a continuous spread of articles to keep the consumers on board. So, what’s the solution?
The solution is to repurpose the available content. Repurposing content is finding new ways to recycle your existing content. Repurposing content has a number of benefits such as it can save you time in the content creation process. So, the question is how to repurpose the content? Here are the best tips for Repurposing Content.
Content repurposing is a technique to reuse or recycle your old content to create a new post or content. Of course, you cannot go, copy your old content, paste it in CMS and post it. You have to do it in a way that people don’t notice it and enjoy at the same time. Although people want to know something new always, so you have to do it in a way that the old content looks new. Content repurposing is not only for blogging, but it is also for other businesses and even YouTubing.
Best and Creative Ways to Repurpose Your Old Content
Ways to Repurpose Your Content
Find The Topic
You can open your old post and look for something which can be explained in more detail. As you will already have some knowledge about that topic, you can easily write content on it.
Let’s take an example to make it more clear
You uploaded an article named as “Best Ways To Promote A Business” and among the points, one point is “Social Media Marketing “, so for the next post, you can write “Social Media Marketing” as a topic for a separate article.
Recreation
If it has been a while since you created some blog posts, you can recreate your old content with new updates. You can tell about the new technology and how we can use that to make our life more productive.
For example, tech bloggers keep posting new posts on “best phone” or “WhatsApp tricks”, etc. This way the readers will be getting trendy items in mind and the content will be used once again but in a different approach.
Create Case Studies
It is one of the best ways to repurpose your content because people love case studies. You can use your old content and its data to create case studies. However, you will have to spend time and put your effort to research the case studies. Power of repurposing content helps you gain extra authority.
You can also write about other start-ups and their success stories. This will help you to build a relationship with other big brands and also gain traffic to your blog from different sources.
Email Marketing is now in the boom, so you have the opportunity to use this platform and grow faster. There are so many tools available such as MailChimp by which you can send your every new post to your email subscribers. You can also automate the process using the tools and send your old best posts to your subscribers.
There are many creative ways of doing this like you can send weekly posts to your subscribers telling them that this post has the highest views and comments. This will help to build trust and also reuse your old content.
Infographics
An infographic is a collection of images, charts, text and animated graphics that gives an easy-to-understand overview of a topic.
With the information available in your old articles, you can create some infographics. People like infographics because it saves a lot of time and it is also interesting to read them.
Using Your Old Content from Other Platforms
If you are a creator of a while now, you can dig into your old post on other platforms. You can search for your Quora, Facebook, Twitter, etc. to find something which can be used in your next article or video. Repurposing blogs for different mediums means appealing to more audiences and extending your reach.
For example, you can find an old question that you have answered on Quora and update that content with some new topics or you can create a new post for that specific question.
Turn Posts Into Videos
Turn Posts Into Videos
It is the age of videos. You can use the data of your old posts to create videos and upload them on YouTube. And of course, vice versa, you can convert your old video into a blog post.
Research has shown that nowadays people prefer video content more than text content. So you have to change with the time if you want to go long on this race. There are so many free platforms available where you can post your video content.
Create an Ebook
With some of the best posts of your blog, you can create an eBook. After creating an ebook, you can provide its link in some relevant posts or on the home page of your website.
For e.g:- You wrote an article named “How To Use SEO To Increase Traffic”, so based on the article and other related articles you can create an ebook which shows all about SEO and it’s usage, advantages etc.
The content which is already featured on the website can be converted into a podcast because people while working loves to listen and podcasts are a great way to make the content more interesting.
Also, feature some popular names who expertise in the following fields as guest speakers to engage the audience and keep them interested. The links of the podcasts can be provided to the posts and this can be an alternate way to the readers to read about the content.
Slideshow
The content which is written in a lengthy paragraph can be broken down and use as a slideshow with important information and pictures. This will give a completely different look to the content.
There are many platforms available like Slideshare where you can upload your slideshows and also the link of the original post.
Webinars
Turn valuable content into series webinars
People love online webinars as they can watch it, by staying at home. So, the content which provides information about a certain topic, it can be converted into a series of webinars. For making it more interesting, some eminent guest speakers can also be invited and they host some bonus episodes. This can generate huge traffic to the website and also to your YouTube channel.
Republish the Content in Other Media
Social networking has no limit, to express and share the articles, hence the other various ways to increase the traffic for the articles and use the existing articles, is to republish in various media. It will be beneficial to increase the traffic by reaching more audience as well as the content will be reused also.
You can post your content on the platforms like Reddit, Academia etc. It will help you to gain quality backlinks as these sites have a huge authority.
Creators’ jobs can never be replaced by any robot. It needs mindful people to create any type of content. But, creators are not robots either. You cannot think of new things every second. You need some inspiration. While you are gaining your powers back, you can repurpose your content.
However, it is not good for the SEO to repurpose the old content but if you do it right, it can rank again. You have to provide some value in the article you are posting. Google ranks those sites which they think is useful for the user. You have to respect it and give it something new and useful. We hope you have got a basic idea of how to repurpose content. If not, feel free to comment and ask questions.
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LinkedIn is known as one of the most prominent social networking site for the professionals around the world. These facts and statistics based on LinkedIn will guide you to successfully use the site for your benefits. The users of this platform can create online resume, list out their current and previous job roles, and most importantly their skills and education. This site connects the LinkedIn members to the jobs available based on their criteria. The LinkedIn website also allows its users to be endorsed by other users for their individual skills.
The members can also further join professional groups that are relevant to their interests. LinkedIn also allows business to create their companies profiles and put out their current vacancies. Giving the members an opportunity to apply for these positions directly through its interface. It also provides a platform for publishing with the thought of facilitating leadership in the business world.
Demographics are further divided based on sex, age and geographical location
The LinkedIn user distribution worldwide.
Age:
37% of the users are from the age group of 30 to 49 years old, 28% of them are 18 to 29 years old and 24% of them are 50 to 64 years old while 11% of them are above 65 years old and above.
While marketers can only reach 12% of people aged 18 years or older with the help of adverts on LinkedIn.
37% of the American adults and 51% of US college graduate are on LinkedIn.
Out of the 2 billion millennial globally, 87 million millennial are on LinkedIn with 11 million in decision making positions.
Sex:
57% of the overall users are males and 43% of the overall users are female.
29%of LinkedIn users are males and 24% of the users are females in an average session.
43% the LinkedIn ads audience is female while 57% of their LinkedIn audience is male.
Geographical location:
LinkedIn is spread out to more than 200 countries while representing 30 companies from all over the world by 2019.
33% of the users come from urban areas while 30% are from suburban and 10% from the rural areas.
The countries with the greatest reach are: USA (167,000,000), India (64,000,000), China (50,000,000), Brazil (41,000,000) and UK (28,000,000).
More than 70% of LinkedIn users are from outside the USA.
LinkedIn has an overall of 675 million users from all over the world, while 310 million of them are monthly active users. 38.6% of the LinkedIn traffic comes from the countries like US with 38.6% and India with 16.8%.
Other facts based on the users of LinkedIn
Out of those 4% of them engage on a daily basis. While most user only spend 17 minutes on LinkedIn per month.
According to the study done by Pew Research Center 2018 Social Media Use study, LinkedIn is popular among youth as 50% of the college graduates in the USA are LinkedIn users.
44% of the LinkedIn users in the US take home more than $75,000 per year which about their national medium.
Although the US has most LinkedIn users at 167 million, 70% of the LinkedIn users come from outside the US.
Linked in has 2 new members every second, but their goal is to reach 3 billion users and also to be the hub for every job posting across the estimated 70 million companies worldwide.
LinkedIn profiles that have photos get 21 times more views and 36 times more messages.
LinkedIn users spend an average of 10 to 20 minutes on the site regularly; visiting 8 to 9 pages.
122 million users have been invited to an interview through LinkedIn, with 35.5% million getting a job through someone with whom they are connected.
In 2016, Microsoft acquired the company for $26.2 Billion after recognizing the value of LinkedIn. Since its acquisition, LinkedIn’s Financial have been consolidated with Microsoft’s. However, unlike other social media platform that rely on advertisements for revenue. LinkedIn services are something that users are willing to pay.
The annual revenue amounted to almost 6.8 billion U.S dollars.
In 2018, it contributed $5.3 billion in revenue. In 2019, revenue increased by 27%.
Linked generates more than $454.000 per employee.
Most of LinkedIn Revenue is generated from three of its main major services
Talent solutions:
Before the acquisition of the company in 2016, 65% of third quarter revenue, totaling $960 million which came from recruitment services called Talent solutions. This service helped companies in hiring employees and learning and development (L&D) to the existing employees of the company.
Marketing solutions:
This solution provides a platform for the companies to advertise to LinkedIn users. In 2016, it accounted for 18% of the total revenue or $109 million from the combination of advertising to the online marketers and the sale of sponsored updates posted to a target audiences within the members of the LinkedIn feed.
LinkedIn Premium:
The four tiers of LinkedIn Premium
A total of LinkedIn users pay for LinkedIn Premium which now has four price tiers:
Premium Career – meant for those looking for job opportunities in any field. It includes in mail messages per month and in demand videos, as well as the ability to see who viewed your profile. The monthly subscription fee is $29.99/month and INR 1400 per month.
Premium Business – This service gives you additional information about business and unlimited people searches. The business owners, MSME and Startups prefer this as it’s pretty much a pocket friendly option for them. The monthly subscription fee is $59.99/month and INR 1900 per month.
Sales Navigator pro – This allows the user advanced search filters, access to different sales tools and the ability to make notes on the user profiles. It is mostly chosen by the companies who lookout for some good quality leads through LinkedIn products. The subscription fee is $79.99/month and INR 3900 per month.
Recruiter Lite – This service suggests them the top recruiters especially associated with the MNC’s go for this plan. The main purpose for them is to get a good amount of job application for the opportunities they have. The subscription fee is $119.95/month and INR 5000 per month.
LinkedIn is the No. 1 B2B marketer because it distributes content at 94%. It makes up more than 50% of all social traffic to B2B websites and blogs. Only 3 million users share content on weekly basis, while 1 million users publish an article on LinkedIn.
Content marketing done by LinkedIn
97% of B2B marketers utilizes it for their content marketing efforts.
The professional content posted gets 15x more content impressions than job postings with 57% consuming content on mobile.
280 billion feed updates are viewers annually.
92% of the B2B marketers includes LinkedIn in their digital marketing mix.
If the posts are split into 5, 7 or 9 headings perform the best on the site.
The articles titles between 40 to 49 characters perform the best on LinkedIn.
The articles perform better without video than compared to the ones that contain a video in them.
45% of marketers have gained customers by using this platform, 65% of the B2B companies have LinkedIn paid ads services to acquire customers
80% of the B2B leads come from LinkedIn then compared to 13% from Twitter and 7% from Facebook.
In LinkedIn the content that gets the most shared are the long form of content.
It is an effective platform for lead generator and customer acquisition. It is even 277% more effective than Facebook in generating leads.
Last but not the least LinkedIn is the most top rated paid social media platform with 76% of B2B content marketers using it.
The digital transformation of the world has created an abundance of knowledge online to teach us, when we don’t have the opportunity to learn from a mentor or guide ourselves. With the help of online courses, we can apply some structured guidance to how we approach our interpersonal interactions, entrepreneurial pursuits, and even the way we think. These hyper-focused, organized lesson plans can help us hit refresh and streamline our paths to success.
Amidst the global outbreak of a lethal pandemic, many of us are surviving the lockdown at our home with some extra time on our agendas at our comfort level. To support those forced to join the office exodus, many online platforms, universities and distance learning organizations are offering free access to their courses.
Maybe this the perfect time, so that an entrepreneur can boost up their career at their own comfort level. There is a list of some of the top7 online courses for entrepreneurs, which can take your mind off things and help you gain a skill or two. This can boost your career at the same time for free, or a small fee. Because when there is a need to master a wide range of skills, then it’s wrong to waste a single second of your time.
Harvard Business School-Online Lessons
Harvard Business School- Online Lessons
Harvard Business School is consistently ranked as the top business school in the world. Since the beginning of the outbreak, when there was this prediction of staying home for a long time, they came up with free interactive business lessons that you can complete online. These lessons are now open for everyone who wants to advance their careers with core business concepts, from leaders to students.
The course offered was: Entrepreneurship essentials and leadership principles, but there is plenty for everyone. This is a great way to stay engaged and sharpen your business skills by learning from the best. Keep an eye out for the next deadline.
Blockchain For Business: The New Industrial Revolution
This course is over five and a half hours, which breaks down how blockchain technologyworks and today’s conception of the potential impact it has on society. If you’re confused about what blockchain is, then this course is made up of you. By the end of the course, you’ll have a firmer sense of what ‘decentralization’ is, and how blockchain is shaping the future of transaction or exchange.
Blockchain for Business: the New Industrial Revolution 4.0
With its clarity in terms, it provides various examples of how large corporations including UBS, Allianz, IBM, Kodak and a range of industries from finance to retail to logistics are using blockchain technology to improve security and efficiency, as well as what developments are on the horizon and challenges the tech will face in scaling.
The Complete Product Management Course
The Complete Product Management Course
Do you ever wonder how organizations like Apple, NASA, and Ticketmaster design their products? This course is designed to give entrepreneurs a deeper understanding of what it takes to bring a product from “idea to launch”, and how to develop strategies and concepts for products, coordinate their development, analyze and validate ideas and help them grow.
It features case studies from NASA, Google, Zappos, and many more. This course also teaches you the fundamentals of Agile Development and industry-standard tools like Pivotal Tracker, Axure, and Popplet.
Artificial Intelligence: Stanford University
Artificial Intelligence Stanford University
This online learning program is based on a course offered at Stanford University, taught by Sebastian Thrun, co-founder of Udacity, CEO of the Kitty Hawk Corporation and founder of Google’s self-driving car project, and Peter Norvig, director of research at Google. There is a prerequisite for the course, however: a background in probability theory and linear algebra.
For a crash course on AI and its applications, head to Udacity for Intro to Artificial Intelligence. In the 4- month course, students can start from the basics of machine learning as well as how statistics, logic, and planning come into play with AI. Then from there, they are going to learn how AI comes into play, per se, move onto the applications lesson segment of the course. They further provide you with insights into image processing, natural language, and processing robotics.
Udacity is an online platform devoted to digital marketing and since Content Marketing is part of it, then Content Marketing Essentials is one of its components. The creator of the course is Hubspot, a marketing software company. They have developed the syllabus to help students plan content marketing strategy and measure its reach and effectiveness.
Basically, the program starts with the segment involving the planned content to best which further communicates a marketing message. Further, the course heads on with content creation through storytelling, curation, and other techniques, followed by distribution, promotion, and tracking.
This crash course also provides tips for designing the user experience (UX) of a website, where actually the content resides, to resonate with readers. In the end, it provides real-world examples of careers in content marketing and gives prospective hires and hiring managers alike a sense of what makes a successful job candidate in the field.
The Essential Guide to Entrepreneurship: Guy Kawasaki
The Essential Guide To Entrepreneurship: Guy Kawasaki
An Apple-alumni and Canva evangelist Guy Kawasaki is sharing his experience as an investor and entrepreneur in this class. It states the each and every step process of starting a business, covering launching, pitching, fundraising, building a team, using social media, and evangelizing in over 56 lectures and 4 hours of content. Described as highly informative and entertaining, Guy uses real-world examples to show you the dos and don’ts of being an entrepreneur. You will definitely be inspired to get your startup off the ground.
Now, this is a sort of important inter-personal skill that every entrepreneur should have. So, whether you are leading a meeting, negotiating with partners, or making a media appearance, it’s important that you master this skill. Body Language for Entrepreneurs teaches “nonverbal communication to increase your income and influence as a business owner” in scenarios like networking, public peaking and delivering an elevator pitch, in order to nail it. Because, it’s not what you say it, but how you say it.
The fact the course states that “93 percent of our communication is nonverbal,” and it’s visible in your online presence, during your interactions with customers, as you connect with colleagues and in just about every other professional scenario involving another human being.
This course reaches not only for entrepreneurs but students on the flip side can apply the same strategies to get a better read on prospective hires, potential clients, and others.
Other Online Courses For Entrepreneurs
Startup India L & D Programme by UpGrad
Inbound Marketing
Inbound Sales
Starting-up Post COVID
Startup School by Y Combinator
Understanding Design Thinking
Introduction to Managerial Accounting
Managerial Economics
Supply Chain Analytics
Human Computer Interaction
Introduction to Data Analytics
Financial Statement Analysis and Report
Security Analysis & Portfolio Management
Enhancing Soft Skills & Personality
Consumer Behaviour
Economics of PR
Economics/ Management/ Entrepreneurship
Web Development with HTML and CSS
Android Programming
Amazon Web Services
Entrepreneurial Idea
Knowingly or unknowingly, we are all learning new things each day. As an entrepreneur, it is important to keep learning and to quit thinking that you stop learning at a certain age. Picking up new skills is a lifelong, ongoing process, and it becomes even more necessary when you are the helm of things with a whole workforce looking up to you for motivation. However, in this age of fast-changing technologies, it wouldn’t suffice to be a jack of all trades.
You will need to have a basic understanding of a wide range of topics. This doesn’t, however, mean that you need to pay humongous tuition fees and attend classes. You can learn new things and pick up newer skills from the comfort of your home through online courses.
Whether you choose to read books, take free online courses, or join a local entrepreneur’s group, the most important thing is that you never stop learning.
Many people buy gadgets like Kindle to read eBooks. But there are even more people who have smartphones and read eBooks on it. eBooks are the most convenient way for people who are too busy to read books.
However, nothing can replace books, but knowledge knows no medium. Knowledge can be shared through books, mobiles, computers, or even our mouths. And what could be better than earning money by sharing knowledge? eBooks are an amazing opportunity for business. Not only for empires but it is also helpful for individual bloggers, and writers. This is a great source of passive income. Let’s see what it is and how to write an ebook.
What Are eBooks?
What are ebooks?
eBooks or Electronic books are the electronic versions of traditional books. There is an eBook version of almost every book in the world. Rather than going to a store and finding a book or order the book online and waiting for days to be delivered, you can directly buy an eBook and get instant access. It will save time and you can take it anywhere where you can take your phone. However, if you want, then you can buy separate e-book readers like Amazon Kindle. Many people love to spend their spare time reading a book. eBooks are the best solution for that and you can earn money by ebooks.
eBooks are much easier to write and publish than traditional physical books. You just need your computer, some knowledge about writing and willpower to write. Unlike traditional books, you don’t necessarily need strong contacts and spend tons of money on publishing the book.
Availability
As they are digital, there is no chance of showing “out of stock” to the customers on your website. Your customers will never be pissed off because of that.
Search
People can easily search for the term they want to read about in eBooks. They don’t have to highlight every other word they want to remember about. However, people have the option to highlight.
Target Customers
Only those people will download your eBook who are interested in your product or niche. Once they download your eBook, you will get an idea of who are your potential customers. You can then send them emails advertising your product.
Make Relationships
People who read your ebooks will begin trusting your brand. Moreover, they will more likely to share about you with others. So, in one or the other way, eBook is a road to marketing.
Grow Your Emails
When people will download your ebook, they will have to submit their email addresses. This will eventually help you to grow your email list.
Versatile
You can add images, texts with many fonts, color fonts, and most importantly, links. You can add links to websites in your eBook. People can easily open that link if wanted.
Amazon Kindle ebooks
Format Of eBooks
Some of the file formats of eBooks are,
PDF
EPUB
AZW
LIT
MOBI
ODF
However, if you are going to provide your eBook for free to your visitor, then it is recommended to use the PDF version. AZW is the file format for Kindle books. You can use Kindle Create to convert your doc file or PDF file into AZW.
The most important factor in writing an eBook is an idea. Write an eBook on the least covered topic or which you are specialists in. Take your time thinking about the topic you are writing your book on.
You should have a good computer which can handle your documents and research at the same time. It would be great if you get the most updated technology. However, you can also go with your computer if you think it can handle everything.
Take your time for proper research about the chosen topic. You can’t just write anything. Make sure that every fact you are writing is true.
Create outlines about your idea. Create mind maps. You need to be prepared for your topic. Use a pen and notebook to write your full imagination. Write to each and everything you want to include in your eBook, in brief.
Start writing the book. Do not waste much time to do it. You can never finish it if you don’t start it. But be sure that you are all prepared to write the book. Tip: Create a good and peaceful environment so you can think better.
Design the cover for your book. If you think you are a good designer then do it yourself. Or just hire a freelancer to get you to design for the cover of your eBook. However, they are not important, but it looks professional if you add one.
Proofread the whole book. You can use professional software for it. Also, re-read the whole book to find mistakes.
Now, share your eBook with all your family and friends and ask them to review it. If they found anything wrong, then correct it before publishing it.
Lastly, publish your eBook. You can do that on your website. If you think you don’t have many audiences on your website, then you can go to any ebook publishing platform like Kindle, Smashwords, Google Play Store, etc. There are many such platforms available.
Conclusion
These were the simple steps on how to write an eBook. You can sell your eBooks or provide them free to connect with your customers. Moreover, you can provide them like a reward to your visitors for signing up on your website. The space for eBooks on the internet is getting bigger and bigger with time. There are many more opportunities to come. With the advancement in technology, you will be introduced to more amazing and unbelievable market opportunities.
Comment below, which is your favorite eBook? What advice would you give to someone who is going to write an eBook? Share this post with all your friends.
When you have successfully started up your own business, or have engaged in one, the responsibilities and tasks hung upon your shoulders are huge – especially when it comes to the marketing aspect. Marketing is that part of the business activity that deals with the management of exchange relationships. It is the business process of creating relationships with satisfying customers that leads to increasing sales and increase in profits as well. And advertising comprises of a larger part of marketing. Though, they are sometimes interchangeably used terms, the terminologies go hand in hand in most part of the business decisions.
A new and upcoming way to advertise your brand or product or services is to do it on the digital platform – i.e. on the internet.
“It’s hard to find things that won’t sell online.” – Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon
It is called Digital Marketing. Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technologies and includes use of mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium. And these mediums are often called the channels of digital advertising. Internet provides a startup personnel a vast wealth of opportunities. Hence, it is very important for your brand to establish and maintain a strong and evident online presence to be competitive enough to reach out to targeted audiences.
Now, the internet provides various marketing tools that are lucrative and worthy enough to focus on while they bring you steps closer to your business targets – but the problem of choice will depend upon an analysis and correct study of these options. Not all of these digital marketing tools are going to be applicable or work for your business.
In this article, we will share the types of channels that are available on the internet for you to advertise on and help you in identifying the best tool available to market you brand or product.
Social media is a very big platform for brands and companies to advertise about their product on. The shopaholic demographic is generally found on social media the most and hence it becomes attractive for both seller and buyer to interact and get gains from. Customers are actively seeking out brands and deals they like or are interested in and increasing numbers of users take the medium of social media as making their buying decisions.
The creative examples of social media marketing can be – promoting your brand or deal on stories that are sponsored (on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, etc.), on sponsored posts, or on promoted deals especially on Facebook, and many more. Social Media influencers also help the brand a lot, for instance a person with a significant amount of followers or subscribers on any social media platform will bring a lot of attention and customers on site that are desiring to buy your product or service. And through the use of “cookie”, the companies and brands are able to target and focus on building relationships on people who are genuinely interested in your product and will be willing to make the final purchase.
By choosing the right platform that benefits your specific business the most should be given priority. And expansion or withdrawals can be managed thereafter.
If you want to build a direct relationship that benefits both the parties E-mail Marketing is the most effective tool. The users (or say potential customers) have shown interest in your website, app or online ad, and have opted to hear from you by giving you the personal information i.e. their e-mail address. So they are more willing to open those messages to learn and be aware about your products (or new ones), sales and how to benefit from them. You can make it as personalized as possible. By the way of triggered autoresponders and segmentation practices you can make the emails as immediately relevant to the receivers as possible. This significantly increases the chance of immediate conversion and also long-term open rates too.
The email should preferably be short to read and easy to scan. Give the users reason to click by giving an attractive subject line. You should, again, keep it short but try to offer value, incite urgency, or both in order to increase traffic.
Pay-per-click is an internet advertising method that is used to drive traffic to websites in which an advertiser pays the publisher when the ad is clicked. They typically include search engines, website owners, or a network or websites. There are also many other paid advertising channels like Pay-Per-Click advertising that deliver highly targeted traffic of potential customers within very short period of time. This method requires the most beneficial placing of the ad – i.e. the ad placements. As the revenue invested in advertisement should profitably correlate to the acquisition of customer per unit.
You can choose to run you PPC ads on the basis of a day, a week or a month depending upon the budget. The effectiveness of a PPC will depend upon how well you choose your keywords that are attractive and grab customer’s attention, as well as optimizing the visual and contextual information of your ads.
Content lies at the very core of every digital marketing campaign and is one the most important element that works in the advertising field. If your website has good, high-quality, and relevant content, your website will generate significant amount of inbound traffic from all he potential audiences.
The content so created includes text, graphics, videos, and other related effects people are looking for and are interested in. It should be catchy and informative at the same time. Make sure the so published content is enough to make a potential customer gain trust in your brand and be impressed enough to make the final purchase as well.
Generally, the management hires content marketers for the same task and job. They provide the company or brand with the relevant experience and work in favor of the enterprise, which is an effective strategy to go for.
Display advertising is the type of online advertising that comes in various form such as banner ads, rich media and more. Display advertising relies on elements such as images, audio, visuals, videos, animations and logos to communicate an advertising message. Display advertisers frequently target the users with particular traits to increase the ads’ effect. It can be done through the ways of using “cookies” – which can track whether a user a page without buying anything, so the advertiser can later retarget the user with ads from the site the user previously visited.
Display advertising normally works more on the principle of placing display ads on various websites, blogs, forums, and so on. It helps in promoting new products or offers and increase online presence and reach out to customers to help drive leads and increase brand awareness. This method can track everything from numbers reached, clicks, action and conversion ratios and hence it is easy to manage with the given budgets.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the thriving, most effective and efficient digital marketing tool. It involves several activities to boost rankings and includes usage of keyword research. It also makes use of both on-page and off-page optimization, linkable asset creation, organic links building and more.
“We want to know what consumers are looking for, what their values are, and how can we meet their needs. It’s not just about Big Data; it’s about translating that into the truth.” – Gayle Fuguitt, Marketing veteran
Optimizing SEO in your content will significantly improve your search rank and make it much easier for potential customers to find your website. You can include the keywords from your article and strategically place your title, hashtags, headings and the main content.
The aforementioned digital marketing channels will work dramatically well if you have a good digital marketing strategy in place for your brand or business. Each method can be evaluated and gives relevant consideration in the working of final marketing mix. It should be kept aligned with the business objectives and long term goals. Once the marketing channel is chosen, it should be periodically monitored also. The effectiveness in workings of the channels so selected should be altered as per the changing digital trends and business goals.
Marketing on Quora brings a lot of traffic which converts like crazy. The Internet is a great place for brands and businesses to connect with their audience. Social networks. Bookmarking site and discussion forums have greatly helped us to keep building our brand visibility regular promote goodwill in the crowded market where our audiences live.
One site that we surely need to consider is Quora, Founded in 2010 Quora is a social question or answer community. The users can vote which answers are most helpful. Beyond ask and answer you can target your question to specific Quora users, asking them specifically to weigh in with an answer along with others in the community.
You can search for specific questions or topics related to your business and follow these to receive notifications of new questions. Overall it’s a great platform to know about your industry and connects with relevant people.
If you have been neglecting Quora for a while, go and create a profile on Quora to get the exposure to the potential audience. If you have already signed up start engaging. Quora has great untapped potential for B2B marketers. So, Let’s get started on how you can use Quora for business or Quora for marketing?
Quora is a nice place for marketing, people generally concentrate on queries only, and they search for specific solutions for their problems. If they find your link in the solutions section, That traffic is absolute and there is a high probability of conversion. Quora is a goldmine for content creation and promotion. Quora is a vibrant question-and-answer website where a community of users can pose questions and answer those they have the knowledge and expertise to answer. You can easily do Quora marketing and get traffic to your website
What makes Quora so useful is that you can ask a question (an “A2A”) on any topic imaginable and someone will surely have an answer for you. The community is stellar—you’ll find pretty much every CEO and VIP on Quora, all helping the community get the answers it needs.
Quora is probably the best source of free expert and professional opinions other than Wikipedia. You’ll be surprised to know-how more than 3 million users share their expertise and insights every month on all sorts of topics. You name it Quora has it. The best thing is all are accessible for free of cost. This is a significant audience of well-intentioned curious knowledge-seekers.
Next, you can build your expertise and authority in any particular or any topic you choose. You can also get insights and learn from users, customers, industry experts and influencers on the topic you asked or follow. You can find out the question to give a direct answer to anyone asking about your product or service. Lastly, Quora is a great platform to do market research and for competitive analysis and know what’s hot in the industry currently. Quora marketing can help your business to grow at faster rate.
The links on quora are a no-follow once there may not be many benefits in SEO however you can get very nice traffic from there.
How To Use Quora For Business?
Create The Optimal Quora Marketing Profile
Quora is a community of professionals and thinkers. Once someone liked your answer, they tend to know more about you then connect and follow you. Having a profile without much information can lead to losing that followers or the potential customer.
Try to give your profile a professional look with images, website, writing about me section, adding interest and area of expertise, location, previous companies, and others. You can also add a tagline, website URL, connect all other social media sites which will help people to connect with you in a better way.
Quora also gives you a great exposure by showing your bio (name +Tagline) on the top of your answers. However, these are restricted for 50 characters only. You can use this opportunity to get a great exposure for your brand. Just put up your brand name at the beginning of the tagline.
You can also create an appropriate tagline for each different topic. To set up a topic-specific bio, click on your profile page. In the right column, you’ll see a list of “Knows About” topics. Next to each topic is a link to “Describe your experience.” Clicking here will let you set the topic-specific bio.
One more thing: Quora has an account verification option, but similar to Twitter, the verification is passive. You cannot request it. You must wait for Quora to approach you and make the offer to get a “Verified” label.
Quora Profile
Be Active And Build Your Followings
All this helps you get found for Quora marketing and may make it easier for people to seek you out when they’re looking for Quora users to answer their questions. After you have completed your profile, search for different topics you are interested in and follow them.
You will get the latest discussion and updates on that topic in the home feed. It will also send you notifications so that you don’t miss any questions. You can read them, upvote or take part in the discussion by commenting on your views. Upvotes appear on your public profile straight away and can be a good sign that you’re active on the site. More upvotes you get means more people follow you and you can easily guide them to your business website through this Quora marketing.
Finding The Best Questions To Answer
You can answer any question and build your expertise around that. However if If you’re looking for a great way to solidify your brand answer questions strategically. It’s a great opportunity to let everyone know that your brand is knowledgeable of certain industries, making your trustworthiness “points” go up. Search for your chosen topic. This will narrow down the questions significantly.
Choose a topic that fits your business, that you’ve written about recently, or that you have meaningful stats for. Find threads with lots of upvotes. The upvotes signal that the questions are viewed a lot. A popular answer here could potentially lead to thousands of views per day (and dozens or hundreds of clicks back to your site). Find new questions. You stand a greater chance of bubbling up to the top of the answers list if your answer comes early. It gives you a great chance to scatter your links—just try not to be spammy
Build A Quora Page For Business
Much like Wikipedia, anyone can create a page on Quora about anything. This makes for a great chance to build a company page for your business. To do so, start by searching for your business’s name in Quora. From the results page, if you don’t see the name listed as a topic, you can look in the right sidebar underneath the “Add Question” box and click the link to “Create Topic”.
This gives you the option to name the topic and add a brief description. Once your topic is live, you can request for the Quora community to review the topic. This is particularly helpful for people wondering if they should invest in a subscription to a service or otherwise get involved with a company. For you, it’s a great way to add a bit of social proof and testimonials to your brand’s presence on Quora.
Perform Research On A Topic
What are people asking on Quora? These questions can lead to great blog posts. There are a couple of ways to do this. Flip through the questions-and-answers from the topic that your blog covers. Check to see the popularity of the threads. Are there lots of upvotes? Lots of conversation? These might make great blog posts. Validate your idea with Quora. If you’ve already got a seed of an idea, search for it on Quora to see what people are asking about it. You might find a particular direction to take or a new angle—or even just the validation you were looking for.
Get Quick & Easy Crowd Sourced Content
Not only can Quora help you come up with story ideas, but it can also help you come up with entire blog posts. This idea of crowd sourced content follows a bit in the mold of a roundup post. Ask people their opinion on a topic and collect all their answers into an article.
With Quora, you can ask for stories or experiences that people have had (rather than a specific, closed question with a single right answer). Some great examples of questions like these include: If it’s a general question where the value comes from any and all answers, you can leave things here. If you’ve got a question that’s quite specific to those who know their stuff in your industry, then you can go through a couple of extra steps.
First, make sure your question is unique and categorized correctly. This will help the right people find it.
Second, invite certain Quora users to answer the question. You’ll see this option after you’ve posted your question to Quora (see below).
Have many responses in the category your question resides in Good response rate
Cost – are they free to ask or will it cost you credits
If you know who the experts in your field are, you can look them up by name and ask them to answer.
Once the answers come in, you’ll have the basis for an excellent roundup post with a good variety of sources and input.
Discover New Headline Ideas
Much like you might do a bit of headline research by typing your keywords into a Google search (autocomplete is a great way to learn how people ask things), you can do the same with Quora.
Type in your keyword into a Quora search.
Filter the results to only show questions.
What you’ll see on the results page is how people ask their questions about your chosen keyword and, therefore, how you can frame your content.
The most popular questions in terms of answers and up votes can be a signal about the value of the way things are worded. And it can all help with writing headlines for your next blog post.
Help With Customer Support And Influence
One of the biggest benefits for Quora is building authority. And right behind that is this,
Use Quora to provide customer support to your users and to provide a positive influence to discussions about your product. Like all other social media channels, Quora lets you communicate directly with customers. On Quora, they may be asking questions about your product specifically, and what better feeling than to have those questions answered by an employee of that company—or even the CEO.
Analyze Your Quora Stats
Quora provides free analytics for all users, showing you a detailed breakdown of the following:
Views
Up votes
Shares
Quora Analytics
Quora has inbuilt analytics tools that let you analyze how your answers are performing. It will tell you views up votes and share your answers for a different time like last 7 days, last 30 days, last 3 months and all-time.
Displaying these stats for each of the following categories
The questions you ask
The answers you give
The blog posts you write
All the content you contribute
Crazy Egg has some helpful ways to analyze these stats to best help with your Quora marketing:
Each answer provides stats for the number of times it’s been viewed, and by which users. If you click on “# views,” you can see how readers are being led to your answers. Are they finding your content through your profile, through tagged topics, or through random browsing?
By visiting your personal views page, you can also obtain an overall assessment of who’s seen your answers. A quick glance through these stats will tell you which avenues can give you the most coverage.
Start A Quora Blog To Re-purpose Your Content
One neat way to get involved on Quora besides the standard question-and-answer format is to start blogging. At Quora, you can create a blog and publish stories. To get started, click on your profile and navigate to Blogs. You’ll be able to create a blog and customize its name, URL, and description. Then, add whatever content you choose.
Just like LinkedIn content, these posts get circulated around the Quora network, and you can share your posts on social media to attract readers and followers. We’ve recommended Quora as a possible option for repurposing your existing blog content. Bloggers like James Clear do this to great results.
Quora Hacks
Format Your Answers In An Eye-catching Way
Quora may not be known much as a visual network, which means there could be a big opportunity if you’re able to include some visuals in your Quora content.
Many of the top Quora users add images to their answers to help support their point. And these images, while first of all helpful, are also great attention-getters. See how they’re included in the Quora answer stream here.
The first photo in an answer will appear as a thumbnail beside the answer when viewed in the question stream. Beyond photos, you can also add some custom formatting to your answer, helping it be more readable and hopefully gain a few more up votes. Make your headlines Bold or italic.
Do Competitive Research
Just as you can search for your own brand, you can also search for your competitors and see what they’re doing to market themselves, as well as learn how customers are talking about them. Investigate. Listen. Learn.
You may find a common theme or reason customers choose your competitor over you, and utilize that knowledge to improve your product or service. There may also be opportunities to reiterate your unique value propositions when a user is at the critical decision-making stage of the sales funnel, and ultimately convince them to choose you. What’s more, even if you think you know your industry through and through, you may discover emerging industry trends or opportunities before your competition does by listening to your customers.
Competitor Research on Quora
Hiring
Yes, that’s true! People really do hiring on Quora. Once, someone answered a question about some bugs in a very popular online education website. The answerer was anonymous, however, the CEO of that online education website commented to send him his resume as he wants to hire him. This is just one case, there are hundreds of people who are hired on or because of Quora. Quora is a place where only those people come who want to learn something. So, one filter automatically gets applied. You don’t have to worry much about their curiosity. Hence, you can find and hire someone on Quora. And as a matter of fact, those people who want their dream job can start answering questions on your favorite topic and be consistent. However, there is a very low chance but there is still some hope.
Run Quora Ads
If your potential customers are available and engage on Quora, then you should try Quora Ads as well. Quora Ads Manager will offer you to target your audience by topic, geography and platform.
Affiliate Marketing On Quora
You knew it was coming! Affiliate marketing is the best way you can earn from Quora. All you have to do is to get some affiliate links and use them in your answers. However, Quora is very strict for their content. If you are using your affiliate link without making any sense of it in the answer, then your answer will be collapsed. So, write carefully. It should not look like all you want from viewers is to click your links.
Redirect Traffic
You can redirect the traffic to your own website. If you answer a question very efficiently and without any greed, people will go to your website. You can write your answer and at the end of the answer, put the link and ask people to visit it in order to get more deep information. However, I would suggest you to not to cheat your viewer. If you really have a good content and the topic is deeply described there, only then redirect them to your website. If people found you cheating, they will report your answer, which might result in getting your account banned. So, play it carefully and according to the terms of Quora.
Add links to bring referral traffic from Quora
Conclusion
According to the Huffington Post, most of the top brands are being discussed on Quora. In 2013, 84% of the top 100 brands had at least one discussion thread dedicated to them. Nowadays, it’s hard to find a brand with no Quora mentions.
To get the most out of Quora, make sure your account is complete and professional, read through the discussions to get a feel for popular topics in your industry, communicate with others and share your answers on other social media sites. These tricks are not only for Quora marketing but for all the similar platforms like Reddit, Medium, Stack Overflow, etc. You have to choose the best platform. Choose the best platform for your life too, do not go for fame and money only, life is much more vast than that.
Hence, in this way you can use Quora for marketing and for your business. Comment some more ways we can earn from Quora. Have you ever earned some bucks from unusual online ways? Share this post with all your friends.
Parnas Ghosh
