Contributor Posts

The Instagram Shopping feature is a real game-changer for brands or businesses that sell online. With Instagram Shopping enabled, anyone who browses your feed can tap on your post and purchase the featured item within seconds.

“Traditional marketing talks at people. Content marketing talks at them.”

-Doug Kessler

A great content marketing strategy includes both the creation and distribution of helpful, relevant content that is easy to digest and remember. This will drive people to buy your products, visit your restaurant, or, from a reputation standpoint, create a favorable picture of you online.

Both pieces of a content marketing strategy are equally as important, so why do so many marketers fall short in developing a great content marketing strategy? One of the significant reasons is the lack of understanding of how important implementation is. 

Here are a few key elements of an effective content marketing strategy:

There are times when it's a good idea to integrate a little bit of purchasing power into your reputation management activities, especially if you're a business owner. Running a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign can often be an excellent addition to your overall reputation management strategy because it helps you "own" the first paid positions when someone Google's your brand.

We often think of building a solid website, setting up a Facebook page, and placing a few posts as the key components of reputation management. While those are definitely important, there are other avenues to improve your reputation across third-party review sites, social media, and other digital platforms.

When implemented properly, a PPC campaign can help you:

• Effectively reach your target audience
• Generate profit much faster
• Counter negative reviews

The amount of clout or influence you hold online and your reputation can feed off of - and disrupt - each other. Your online influence will determine how much trust people place in you and is an important aspect of any reputation management strategy. This includes brands as well, since brands typically want to work with people who have large followings and engage with their followers on a regular basis. 

Influencers have established credibility online because of their large audience and reach on social media. They have changed the ways brands market online and are proof that just about anyone can gain a following and promote products within their niche. 

But how do you start from scratch on your road to becoming an influencer? A huge part of reaching the coveted influencer status is to build your online reputation. Give people a reason to follow you on social media by making sure that what they see about you online is positive.

Brand and reputation are closely linked, but not identical. The two are often mentioned as interchangeable terms, but they are not. Your brand and your reputation are totally different and have a different levels of applications and risks.

It happens slowly. First one bad review, no one really notices. Then an article quietly penned by a competitor shaves off a few percentage points of profit. The sales team gets yelled at. The marketing team calls for a bigger budget, but still it happens. Over time profits soften and all because Google search results have been slowly, even imperceptibly, getting worse.

Social media has narrowed the gap between a company and its customer base. It has become one of the most common modes of communication. As such, people turn to social media to share special moments, capture live events and, of course, complain about stuff.

A single negative review can case your business to suffer revenue loss. The popularity of online reviews on different e-commerce sectors has grown significantly over the past decade. Since many businesses have swapped from the traditional method of selling goods to online selling, online reviews have transformed the way business is conducted.

The benefits of establishing your brand are:

• Distinguish yourself from other brands
• Attract new customers
• Satisfy employees
• Gain credibility
• Increase value

Think of your favorite company. What’s the first thing that comes to mind? It’s probably that company’s logo, or an image representing them as a brand. The image of a logo or a name that comes to your mind when you are thinking of buying something is branding.

With the emergence of social media, blogging, and ecommerce, one has to wonder whether having a website is still relevant and necessary in 2019. Well, let us save you the suspense - yes. Having a website, especially if you are running a business, is still as crucial as ever if you are interested in reaching your target audience and/or customers. In fact, when searching for products and services online, 30% of consumers will not consider a business that doesn’t have a website. On top of that, the majority of your audience will still find your website through search engines, as opposed to discovering it on social media or through email marketing.