Don't miss out on these amazing Social Media platforms!
Oct 12, 2018
Oct 12, 2018
10 min read
10 min read
Being a proactive digital marketing company, we keep a close eye on the latest studies and findings in the industry to provide the best to our clients.
And recently, we came across a Clutch Research about how businesses are using digital marketing in 2018 and were kind of surprised by its findings.
From the 501 digital marketers (in the US) surveyed by Clutch, 81% of them actively use social media for marketing themselves digitally, 78% of them have their own business website to promote themselves and as much as 69% of them use email marketing to push brand promotions. 
While we were clearly surprised to not see SEO in the top 3 (or even top 5) of this list, to our dismay, it actually is the least popular marketing channel amongst digital marketers in the US with only 44% of the marketers making use of it for increasing their online exposure.
If you don’t already know, we are die-hard fans of SEO!
SEO can be a game changer for businesses if done well and can bring a lot of search engine traffic and exposure to a business. So, in short, yes, it’s important and the attention it’s getting from marketers is kind of underwhelming, to say the least.
I think the editors at Clutch were surprised with the results as well, that’s why they took the effort to specify reasons why marketers aren’t interested in SEO as much as other marketing channels. But that is not what this blog is about.
As much as 81% of marketers use social media marketing for building an audience. But what platforms do they actually target? We know for sure that Facebook and Twitter would definitely be on that list. But are they enough?
Facebook is recently going through it’s own set of engagement problems and Twitter, despite of it’s huge audience, doesn’t deliver on active engagement much.
So, the question arises.
Is maintaining your business presence on just these 2 platforms enough for your brand? Or should you diversify your social media marketing efforts to other major platforms as well?
The thing is, each social media platform out there has their own pros and cons to offer, not to mention, they all boast their own unique audiences as well.
Which you absolutely should tap on, to increase your brand awareness in folds.
But what are those other not-facebook-famous but popular enough social media platforms that you should maintain a business presence on to attract new audiences? Let’s find out -
1. YouTube
OK, you might have heard it a thousand times already but maintaining your presence on this video-streaming giant is a necessity for businesses looking to generate some awareness about themselves.
Video is still going strong and currently, YouTube is the hub of it. With more than a billion monthly active users, there’s no better place to hop on the video wagon than YouTube.
Moreover, since YouTube is a property of Google, you can also expect some SEO benefits with your YouTube videos, since videos usually come at the top of search results.
Probably the best part about YouTube is that you can reach a global audience without much hassle, the platform does the legwork for you.
For brand promotions, you can make use of product explainer videos, training videos, webinars, podcasts, and showcase customer stories. The audience of YouTube is so diverse, you probably will find people who like your content, doesn’t matter which industry you are in.
Your potential for gaining exposure for your brand is unlimited on YouTube.
2. Quora
If you possess a vast amount of knowledge of your industry and want to portray yourself as an authority in your niche, there’s no better way to start than Quora.
Quora is a social Q&A community where anyone can ask questions about anything and expect answers from the users on the platform. A great way to pour all your industry expertise out and help other people with your thoughtful answers.
Like YouTube, the 200+ million users present on Quora are diverse and you can find questions and answers on basically any topic on the platform.
Probably, the best part about Quora is that you can directly answer questions being asked about your products, services or brand and convert users straight from there. Also, you can provide insightful answers of questions related to your industry and can build your reputation as an authority in your niche for the world to see.
Here’s an example of the Quora profile of Gabriel Weinberg, CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo - 
If you are not aware of it, DuckDuckGo is a relatively lesser known search engine than Google that is focused on privacy. Gabriel Weinberg frequently answers questions related to his product on Quora and has built a solid following of 55k doing just that, providing useful information.
Start experimenting with the platform as soon as you can, but keep one think is mind, your sole motive of answering a question should be to provide as much value to the seeker as possible, don’t throw your sales pitches in your answers. That way you’ll quickly get flagged by Quora moderators and an account suspension may follow next.
3. Medium
If you are serious about blogging, for your business or for yourself, Medium is a great social publishing platform that you can make use of.
Founded by the co-founder of Twitter, Evan Williams, Medium originated as a place to write stories of more than 140 words (which was the tweet word limit back then) and share it with the world.
Today, Medium boasts some of the most thoughtful minds of almost every industry niche out there.
Medium can work as a great re-publishing platform to accompany your blog to tap into it’s diverse audience - which apparently is 60 million and is going strong. To gain some additional traffic and exposure, Medium is great.
You can start publishing on Medium as your sole blog as well.
The current revenue model they follow pays out on the basis of engagement you garner on your ‘stories’ (fancy name for a blog post). For that to happen, you’ll have to join the ‘Medium Partner Program’.
Gaining some exposure for your business and earning something on the side for your blogging efforts doesn’t hurt anyone, right?
So, do give this awesome publishing platform a try to gain a few more eyes on your blog posts.
Know of any other social media platform that worked wonders for you? Let us know in the comments.
Building An Effective Inbound Marketing Strategy In A Few Hours!
The clock is ticking and businesses have got a very less time to actually analyze their marketing plans and optimize it according to the response they get from their prospects or existing customers. In a short time they can still get a team to do the job of Inbound marketing or outsource it to the Inbound Marketing agency, but the problem is they don’t know where to start and how long is it going to take them. For building an effective marketing strategy regardless of Inbound or Outbound marketing, it is important to know that what exactly a goal a marketing team of a company has in order to design a strategy. So for this we need the help of the sales team, and let’s say hypothetically that we need to generate 40 to 50 qualified leads per month for the sales team. The goal might be different for your company and it is upto your marketing team what goal threshold they set for themselves. After the time when we know exactly what is our goal now comes the strategy part for which following steps will be taken. Identifying the Target Audience Let’s say we are a social media management automation tool provider company and our target audience is freelance marketers, or an online e-commerce firm that needs such tools for its marketing team. The sales team says that if they get a demo request, they consider it a quality lead. So now we know who are target audience is and how they come under the category of quality lead. So your next plan of action is to identify the target audience for your company and how they can be categorized under quality lead. So Time estimated for this little activity of identifying our target audience is approx. 2 Hours. Where Does Your Target Audience Lives Online Inbound marketing is a vast superset of online platforms where you can perform your activity but limiting your efforts to where your target audience is present the most, is where you should make your first move. Inbound marketing includes platforms like social media sites, blog sites, search engines, or your own website. As soon as you make a big list out where you can find your prospects, like if you are a B2B company and will find clients on LinkedIn, so you should head there first. This activity will require the most time and effort and since it is going to be the bloodline of the overall strategy then we recommend that you spend time on this, let’s say approx. 4 hours should do Identifying Pains, Problems, and Questions Inbound Marketing in 2016 is all about building content around the questions, comments, problems or issues your prospects are expressing and then answering to these queries in the form of content. So in order to help ourselves that what exactly our audience is looking for on the web, we need to research over social review sites what kind of problems the audience is facing. You can also ask for help from your sales team to ask them about what is the most common problem prospects face or ask question about from them. At the conclusion of this activity you will be able to know that what frustrations, comments on blogs and things like that audience is facing. As you will have to visit at least 10-20 websites and copy-pasting the audience responses on them to your own master list this will take you another 2 hours. Now when you have got hold of the responses, you want to create content around it. So content that enticed most of the prospects or generated most responses is the first one you should look at creating it. Let’s say if it was blogs then create blogs with a frequency of 2-3 blog posts per week. Activities that need to be done: Brainstorming blog topics, ebooks, or webinar topics. Mapping out your content calendar for frequency of posts. This activity will take another 2 hours. Time estimated for this entire research activity is another 4 hours approx. Promoting the content Promoting the content that we just created is as important as creating it. We need the public to reach to our posts and in order to that content writers or marketers need to share it with them in maximum way possible. For this purpose, they might need to optimize it for search engines, or share it on the social media sites or blog sites. But this process can be made easier now since we know where our audience lives over the web. So share the content where you bound to catch the maximum eyeballs. For example if for a B2B company find most of it’s clientele on LinkedIn then share your content there. Times estimated for this activity is let’s one hour which should be enough since now you knew already where to promote your content. Your Strategy is Ready! We listed out a lot of work there but if done efficiently will help you in growing your business over the web and get qualified as well as quality leads. The total time spent or listed by us is approx. 11 hours and we suggest if you do work in a 8 to 9 hours a day shift then you should think of stretching a few hours more so that the from the next day you know where to start your work and where to finish it. This should set you up for months and if done efficiently we believe you can achieve wonders with Inbound Marketing. Good Luck! ...
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How can you benefit from Programmatic advertising services?
Since its inception in the early 18th century, advertising has come a long way and has witnessed drastic changes. Today advertisement is focused on expanding market reach only to the relevant audience that has high potential to be converted into customers. Advertisement is no longer limited to print media instead it has gone digital. New terms and concepts like PPC, SEO and many more have been formulated in recent years. These strategies have enjoyed huge success in today’s digital markets. As a further advancement, automation has been integrated with advertising. This has led to the birth of programmatic advertising. Programmatic advertising integrates automation to develop a cost-effective and highly efficient marketplace. You might wonder how programmatic services can help your business so let us first discuss the advent of programmatic advertising and then we will see how it benefits your business. What is Programmatic advertising? Programmatic advertising is the automated process of buying and selling advertising spaces. Simply put, a computer system chooses the advertising space and then decides the price of the space to be bought or sold based on the data the computer system has received. The system also decides the priority of the ads and ranks them accordingly. It then traverses through this ranked list of ads using data to decide which ads to buy. Sometimes this transaction takes place in real-time. Programmatic advertising has made advertising transactions more efficient by streamlining the process and providing guaranteed impressions. Also, one of the major benefits of programmatic advertising is that you get impressions on a number of platforms and thus your reach increases. This is done by submitting your ad to many media platforms at one go and then measuring the impressions your advertisement gets from each platform. Also, the advertisements spread across various platforms target the same audience base. So you do not need to worry about your target audience while using programmatic advertising practices. Programmatic advertising services use targeting tactics to segment audiences to ensure that your ads reach the audience niche you are targeting. Programmatic advertising tactics deploy computer algorithms to complete the ad buying process and cut down the time to market. By using computer algorithms programmatic advertising removes mundane activities to effectively optimize the process. How has it evolved over the years? The internet was introduced to the general public in the 90s and then right after the concept of digital advertising came into existence. The first online ad was displayed in October 1994. Since then online advertising has evolved a lot. The flashy jumpy banners and the sidebar ads have been replaced by the target-specific and keyword focused ads that attract the customers. Also, since their inception, both the internet and online advertising has witnessed a surge in their user base. In early 2009 the programmatic advertising platform was introduced to ad buyers and they created a platform for themselves known as Demand Side Platform (DSP). Subsequently, when the buying platform was presented before publishers and advertisers it led to the creation of the Supply-Side Platform (SSP). Today, the advertising market has evolved to such a magnanimous scale that automation has also been integrated into this industry. In fact, programmatic advertising will be accountable for $59.45 billion in ad dollars by this year-end for the US market only and this figure is going to increase. Industry experts predict that this figure will reach $81.00 billion by 2021. Why your business needs programmatic advertising? Advertising today is not limited to television, print media or huge banners. Instead, modern advertising methods include all forms of advertisement like mobile advertising, display advertising, video advertising, social advertising, search advertising, and television advertising. Programmatic advertising has gained prominence in all of these advertising channels. Recent stats show that programmatic advertising cover 84% of display advertising, 60% of mobile advertising, 58% of video advertising, 32% of social advertising, 26% of search advertising and 8% of television advertising. Programmatic advertising methods are great for targeting the end audience. When surveyed, 76% of advertisers claimed that they loved the targeting options they get with programmatic advertising services. You get better results than traditional advertising by specifically targeting your audience with programmatic advertising approaches. Programmatic advertising also ensures high ROI as it uses AI. In simple language, AI works by recognizing and analyzing patterns in the data and over time increases its efficiency. So when AI is used in advertising, it analyzes the patterns and learns to identify the factors that help you get maximum conversion without high recurring costs. Programmatic advertising is a lot easier to implement if you are using it with the appropriate set of tools. The programmatic ad approach is based on a multi-channel broadcast of your ad. This means that your ad is displayed across various platforms and you have access to an inventory of ad networks. Also, you can advertise on different mediums such as mobile, desktop, tablets, apps and anywhere else that suits your liking. As the whole process of programmatic advertising is automated and is highly targeted you get reports that are highly enriching and provides you insights on your ad campaigns, market and the buying patterns of the customers. Also with programmatic advertising, you get automated buying platforms and real-time adjusted bids. Why should you outsource? Handling programmatic practices is no easy task. It requires a lot of attention and also managing these services by yourself could cost you a bomb. So it is always better to outsource these services. Outsourcing your programmatic ads is very economical as the technology vendors have the apt resources, capabilities, and expertise to run programmatic ads for you. The thing with the programmatic ads is that you need to dedicate a lot of time to use these ads for your benefits. Tech vendors, on the other hand, have years of expertise and have streamlined processes that can prove beneficial for you. Also, you get accurate results with these technology vendors. Another advantage of outsourcing your programmatic services is access to their extensive networks. Such networks and relationships are formed over time and a newly formed company will not be able to provide such perks to you. Conclusion Now as we know about programmatic services and their benefits, it is wise to use this new advancement in advertising to get maximum benefits for our business. So contact Saffron Edge to get the best programmatic advertising services. Click Here to know more. ...
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Using Social Media To Create Hot Leads From Your Content Marketing
There is more to inbound marketing than creating compelling content. Even the best writing and visuals are no good if it doesn’t attract readers and entice people to visit your site. If you don’t feel like you have the skills to create or market your own content, you can always decide to use outsourced inbound marketing. Be sure to hire a reputable agency, though, because, since you can’t see or monitor them, you want to make sure they are honest and not acting in ways that reflect badly on your company. In what ways can you market your brand? You can and should use all the traditional methods of getting people to respond to your content and check out your product: forum posting and commenting on blogs are great ways to link back to your site. But there is one way to get noticed that trumps even that. Social Media. Social sites are one super way to build leads and get your brand out there and noticed. It is a terrific way to post content that will lead readers back to your website. Here are 4 popular social media outlets and how you can use them to market your product: Pinterest Pinterest is a photo-sharing site and is one of the most popular ways that people share content on the internet today. Users create ‘boards’ which are basically collections of ‘pins’-or images-related to particular topics. When someone likes your content, they can re-pin it to share it. The best way to get people to visit your boards is to use eye-catching images with your content. You can re-pin other content you find to fill up your boards with interesting materials and entice others to visit. YouTube YouTube videos tend to rank high in Google search results and can be a great way to boost your popularity. You can create and upload a video of anything related to your product; how-to, instructions, demonstrations, before and after, etc. Videos keep the reader engaged and can really show off your product’s benefits. Add a link at the end of each video to encourage people to visit your website. After all, every visit is a potential sale. Encourage members to visit your YouTube channel by commenting on other videos and interacting with the community. Google+ Google Plus content is highly favored on search results. Posting SEO-friendly articles will improve your chances of getting views and clicks. Google Plus has a couple of really unique features that come in handy. One is it’s ‘circles’ which allow you to group followers together into specific categories based on their interests. This allows you to target the proper audiences for your content. Another great feature is the Hangouts. Hangouts are video and audio recording that you create and share with your followers. Hangouts are automatically uploaded to YouTube and shared on your Google Plus page to attract even more viewers. Facebook It may seem like an easy way to promote your brand, especially if you have a lot of followers. However, what you need are followers who are interested in what you have to offer. Blog posts, images and videos tend to do very well on facebook. You can encourage visits by placing a link to your facebook page on your other social sites, so interested parties can click on it and follow you. Two great tools Facebook offers is their Pages Insights-a graph that shows how well your content is performing and Audience Highlights-which gives you the demographics of your visitors. This way you can see if you are reaching your target audience and adapt your content accordingly. All in all, social media is a marketing tool you don’t want to skip. You can grow by connecting accounts, getting shares and building followers. Engage with all the social media sites at first. Once you’ve established where most of your traffic is coming from, you can start to concentrate on utilizing those media platforms more. ...
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