Christopher August

The new year is almost upon us yet again, which can only mean one thing: it’s time to look forward when it comes to social media, paying attention to all of the latest trends that will help guarantee that your 2018 campaigns get off on the right foot. Social media is likely to remain the most effective, cost-efficient and meaningful way to connect with your brand’s audience on a mass scale for the foreseeable future — these trends, in particular, will help you wield the full power of this revolution to your advantage. augmented reality has finally arrived Just a year ago, augmented reality seemed like it was still a long ways off as far as widespread adoption goes. Then, the iPhone X was released, and it brought with it a wide range of different features aimed at bringing AR to as many people as possible. Suddenly, AR is everywhere — which has compelling implications for your social campaigns in particular. We’re very close to an age where you can have your consumers project yo

In the medical field, marketing used to solely mean running radio and newspaper ads. Times are changing and medical practices are adapting to the evolving marketing tactics. In this digital era, it is important for your practice to leverage the tools you have at your disposal. 1. MORE PATIENTS ONLINE More and more patients search online now-a-days. Your patients or potential patients are asking Google, Yahoo, and Bing where and how to resolve their medical issues now more than ever. With the increase in recent years of people searching for help online, why would you not attempt to capitalize on them? 2. EASIER TO TARGET Digital marketing allows you to hone in your marketing efforts to just your target audience. You can be more effective with your targeted messages on just the channels your audience is spending their most time online. Also, certain channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram allow you to show your ads to specific crowds based on demographics, int

If you have taken the time to research the topic of how social media can affect your business’ SEO, then you have probably seen a few conflicting views. People who do not view a correlation between the two are held up on one factor. Search engines do not rank businesses higher on search results for who has the most Facebook likes or Twitter followers. This is true but that is narrow-minded thinking. Search engines have an algorithm that has so many factors that it filters through and utilizing social media hits on enough of them to make a huge difference! External Linking Search engines recognize inbound and external links to and from credible sites as a huge influence in their ranking system. If you have social media channels, we recommend you put links on your website to your social channels as well as a link on your social channels to your website. Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and the rest of the social channels are viewed by search engines

Even with the rise in different social media platforms, Facebook is still a leader in the industry. With everybody you know and follow posting on Facebook constantly, your feed can be cluttered at times. As a digital marketing company, we spend quite a bit of time on Facebook managing our clients’ social media, engaging with followers, finding relevant content, or creating Facebook ads. We need to be efficient just like you. Luckily, Facebook has ways to help cut through the chaos and optimize our time. Let’s check out how you can do just that! SET PREFERENCES Your News Feed is the home base for your Facebook experience. With the right adjustments to your preferences, you can have a smoother, more enjoyable, and productive experience. Click on the downward arrow in the top-right corner of the page to drop down a menu bar and then choose “News Feed Preferences” Another way to make the same action is on the left sidebar, you can click on the triple dots next to “News Feed” and

A large following might look good at first glance, but you should take a deeper look by asking the right questions. Building a strong social media presence is more about creating an engaged online community of people that interact with your brand. A fully engaged following of 500 people is much more valuable than a following of 5,000 people who never take a second look at your brand. Companies that buy followers are basically putting lipstick on a pig. Let’s take a look at the questions you need to ask to better understand how effective your online presence is! HOW MANY LIKES PER POST? A way you can gauge how much attention your posts are getting is to measure how many likes, favorites, upvotes (depending which social media platform you are measuring) per post you have. Whether you actually do the math or do a simple eye test, you want to have people liking your posts. When somebody likes your post, that shows you that they internalized it enough to show you some appreciation. If

LinkedIn is a fantastic platform for B2B marketing. Users are engaged on LinkedIn more than any other social media platform. LinkedIn is a place for learning how to enhance your business or career instead of entertainment. When running a small to medium size business, you can significantly build your brand, credibility, and trust through LinkedIn when done the right way. HERE ARE SOME HELPFUL TIPS TO EXECUTE YOUR LINKEDIN MARKETING CAMPAIGN. CONTENT The only way for people to notice you is by generating and pushing out content. The more valuable and engaging the content is, the more beneficial it is for your business. When people click the like or share button, many more people who are not in your immediate network will view your content. This ultimately builds your brand awareness. There are multiple forms of content that are LinkedIn members will relate and engage with. Blogs Case Studies Webcasts How to videos COMPANY PAGES Setting up a company page is free. Be sure

If you have done the slightest research on how to improve your company’s online presence, you have probably read about how search engine optimization (SEO) is quite important. You most likely had a vague understanding of what it means. Here is your chance to fully understand what the almighty SEO means and how it can help your business grow exponentially. DEFINITION- Search engine optimization means the methods that you execute to obtain better rankings for your website to reach the top of organic search results. The purpose of SEO is to have your website seen and interacted with by individuals who are in need of your products or service. The more organic web traffic you can get, the more chances at purchases being made or building your brand. STATS: 90% of searchers click on the organic results instead of the paid ad results. Over 90% of searchers click on a link on page 1. 1/3 of searchers click on the first organic result. Over 60% of searchers click on one of the first 3 res

Blogging doesn’t sound like it will accomplish very much to somebody who hasn’t done the research on the benefits. You might think blogging is for the opinionated or the bored. It is quite the opposite. Blogging can give your company credibility and position you directly in front of your target audience. LET’S TAKE A LOOK WHY AND HOW BLOGGING IS SO VITAL TODAY... GET DISCOVERED The first benefit of blogging is that it generates more content for your website. By having more content on your website, that gives you more keywords and pages to your website which in turn creates more chances to be indexed and displayed in search results for Google, Bing, and other search engines. Companies that have a blog have on average 434% more indexed content than companies that don’t. They also have on average 97% more inbound links to their website and 55% more organic search results. All these statistics are beneficial to your company getting discovered. If you don’t get discovered, you

Bad advice is counterproductive on the best of days - but in the break-neck world of social media, it can do an incredible amount of damage in a short amount of time. Life on social networks like Facebook and Twitter moves impossibly fast. If you spend a ton of money on a video that you just know will go viral but launch at the wrong time, or in the wrong way, or on the wrong network - all because you were following the advice of so-called experts - that’s it. It’s done. You don’t get another shot at it. You’ll have no choice but to just move onto the next thing and write this effort off as “the one that got away.” Because of this, part of success on social media involves knowing how to weed out the white noise. Taking the time to learn how social networking actually works from a user perspective gives you the context to immediately separate the good advice from the bad, putting you in a better position to succeed - or at least to know what “best practices” you shouldn’t be listenin

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – SEO ranking is a lot more than just a number on a page. For your business and more importantly your brand, it’s everything. It represents visibility – how likely people are to discover you when they’re searching for related products, services or topics. It represents the start of your sales funnel and the always-essential first impression that you’re about to make with a new customer. It means getting a tactical advantage over your competitors that you can use to gain better, higher quality leads and the increased sales that follow. Improving your SEO ranking is always important – but one thing it certainly doesn’t have to be is difficult. At least not if you approach it from the right angle. If you really want to improve, strengthen and support your SEO rankings and related efforts, there are a few simple-yet-effective tips you’ll want to keep in mind. GENERAL SEO RANKING TIPS The following tips are not designed to be “one-time u

In terms of social media, it pays to be a small business. Not only did 92% of the people who responded to a Social Media Examiner survey say that social media marketing was essential for their small business, but it’s also a perfect way to generate the types of opportunities a smaller organization in particular can depend on. Not only does social media marketing lead to increased exposure and increased Web traffic, but you also get to cultivate newer, loyal fans, gain insight into your marketplace and so much more. It’s important to understand that just being on social media isn’t enough. If you truly want to empower your social media campaigns, you’ll need to keep a few key things in mind. IT’S ALL IN THE PLAN Although social networking has a certain intimacy and “fly-on-the-wall” quality to it, the content you’re putting out into the world on Facebook and Twitter is NOT something you want to just “make up as you go along.” Small businesses in particular need to come

In many ways, content marketing is more than just a way to work around the fact that approximately 200 million people now use ad blockers when they browse the Internet. It does more than just produce 7.8 times as much site traffic and increase brand recall, all while costing 62% less than traditional outbound marketing channels. It's a way to create a reaction in your target audience. It's about generating an emotional response that doesn't just get people to sit up and pay attention, but that leads to the type of action that your customers won't be able to stop themselves from taking. THE LOVEMARKS THEORY The Lovemarks Theory is a simple one: while human beings may be the home of reason, what they're really driven by at the end of the day is emotion. Famed neurologist Donald Calne put it eloquently when he said "the essential difference between emotions and reasons is that emotion leads to action, while reason leads to conclusions." When you create a

When it comes to generating the type online visibility that your small business depends on, Google is still your number one priority in terms of search. Not only do the vast majority of all interactions between a customer and a business begin with a search engine, but Google also has a 65.2% share of total search volumes worldwide. To that end, it's always essential to play by Google's rules - and the company recently introduced a significant new penalty that you absolutely need to be aware of moving forward. GOOGLE'S INTRUSIVE INTERSTITIAL PENALTY Have you ever been browsing a mobile site on your smartphone or tablet, enjoying a piece of content and then suddenly find yourself re-directed to your platform's app store? This is exactly the type of activity that Google is trying to curb with its new "Intrusive Interstitial Penalty," which officially went live around the world on January 10. In addition to the aforementioned example, Google also specif

As the number of worldwide social media users approaches 2.5 billion by as soon as 2018, more businesses than ever are turning to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more to broaden their appeal and reach a whole new audience. If you think that being active on social media is JUST about sending out as many tweets as possible, or about getting as many people to share your Facebook post as you can, you’re sadly mistaken. You need to think about social media less as a button that you occasionally press and more as the content delivery mechanism it has evolved into. SOCIAL VIDEO: THE BATTLEFIELD OF THE 21ST CENTURY By the end of the year, 74% of all traffic on the Internet will be video — when you begin to look at Facebook Live, Snapchat and all of the other services currently offering live video distribution, it’s easy to see why. Social video is about to become one of THE most powerful ways to reach your audience using the foundation of social media to your advantage.

One of the major challenges that marketers have faced for about as long as SEO has existed is that they're essentially trying to hit a moving target. The definition of "quality SEO practices" is constantly changing, making it difficult to keep up if you aren't paying as much attention as possible. Gone are the days where keywords were your number one asset and even the era where mobile friendliness reigned seems to be evolving into something else entirely, as evidenced by things like Google Home. If your SEO work isn't being optimized for the future, neither are your marketing efforts... Pic By CC WHAT IS GOOGLE HOME? Google Home is more than just a digital assistant - it's essentially Google going "all in" on voice-only search. Considering that the vast majority of relationships between a consumer and a business begin with a search engine, this is absolutely something you need to be aware of moving forward. In many ways, optimizing your

When trying to create effective video marketing content for your business, you may be used to hearing a long list of things you have to do to be successful. From creating the perfect narrative to showing your customers who you are as a company, the whole process can be intimidating for many small business owners. But the truth of the matter is, video marketing doesn't have to be a drag. The last thing you want to do as a small business owner is to avoid creating new content that your customers can engage with. So instead of waiting for everything to line up perfectly before shooting your first video, take a leap and dive right in. THE BEST VIDEO MARKETING TIP: STOP WORRYING AND HIT RECORD While you sit and worry about creating the best video marketing content on the Internet, other small businesses are putting videos out there and may very well be engaging with your customer base. It is important to keep in mind that some content online is much better than none at all,