TikTok has grown to become one of the most successful social media platforms on the planet in just a few short years. This may be due to the nature of TikTok’s content. Research shows that video content on social media drives higher levels of engagement than other forms of content. Thus, it’s no surprise that a video-centric platform would attract a large audience.

If you have a TikTok presence, you could potentially monetize it through the following TikTok marketing strategies. Whether you’re promoting a growing brand or simply looking for ways to make money off a hobby, this guide to TikTok marketing ideas will help.

Understanding TikTok’s Monetization Potential

TikTok currently has over 1.7 billion users and content creators worldwide. That’s a very large potential audience to tap into.

As the examples below illustrate, there are various ways to monetize your TikTok presence. What’s critical, though, is that you first prioritize developing a loyal following. Once you’ve done so, monetization is much easier.

Leveraging Influencer Marketing

To monetize your TikTok account, you need to attract viewers. One of the easiest ways to achieve this goal is to partner with someone who already has a large audience.

Influencer marketing involves popular social media personalities promoting certain brands, products, and services. Influencers make arrangements with their partners, agreeing to either promote their businesses for a set fee or collect a certain percentage of earnings based on the results their content yields.

Consider researching TikTok social media influencers in your niche. If you find any whose audiences overlap with your target audience, approach them to discuss a partnership. Along with promoting your products and services, an influencer could promote your channel in general, helping you grow your audience.

Participating in Brand Partnerships and Sponsorships

Once you have a reasonably large audience on TikTok, monetizing your TikTok presence becomes even easier. If your audience is fairly substantial, like an influencer, you could partner with other brands to promote them via your channel. 

You simply need to find brands that align with your values and content. For example, maybe you’re using TikTok to promote a line of sustainable kitchen tools. If so, you might partner with a brand of ethically sourced food ingredients, generating videos in which you use your own products to create meals with the products of the brand with whom you’re partnering. 

This example highlights the importance of adopting a long-term perspective when developing a TikTok marketing strategy. The more your audience grows, the more opportunities you will have to monetize your TikTok presence further.

Creating and Selling Your Own Products

Naturally, you can use TikTok to promote your own products. Tips to keep in mind when doing so include the following:

• Create a Business or Pro TikTok account, as doing so allows you to not only sell products but also to access more tools to help you monitor engagement and other such important metrics.
• Research how to connect all the platforms on which you already sell your products (such as Shopify, social media, etc.) with TikTok.
• Use promotions to get more eyes on your videos.
• Post videos that clearly show how your products can deliver value for your audience members
• Analyze engagement data to determine what types of videos yield the highest sales, and modify your content creation strategy accordingly.

Utilizing TikTok’s Creator Fund

TikTok’s Creator Fund serves to reward TikTok content creators whose content attracts large viewerships and boosts overall engagement on the platform. To attempt to join the Creator Fund, follow these steps:

• Create a Pro account if you haven’t already done so
• Choose Creator Tools under Settings in your account
• Click the TikTok Creator Fund button

TikTok will then review various details of your account to determine whether you meet the qualifications necessary to join the Creator Fund. You can try to join the Creator Fund again after 30 days if TikTok initially denies your application.

The Creator Fund is new, so it’s not yet clear how much money you may expect to earn from it. However, it’s already clear that TikTok isn’t using this feature to offer large one-time payments to content creators with successful channels. Instead, TikTok’s Creator Fund appears to offer multiple small payments to successful creators as a means of encouraging them to continue using the platform.

Collect Live Gifts and Donations

TikTok LIVE is another feature you can apply to as a way to further monetize your TikTok account. Through TikTok LIVE, when you livestream content on TikTok, you can ask viewers to send “gifts” indicating your content is popular.

On the basis of these gifts, TikTok may award you a certain number of Diamonds, which can be exchanged for real money. While live streaming on TikTok, you may also ask viewers to donate to your channel directly.

It’s very important to focus on building a strong rapport with your audience. If viewers feel a connection with you and your content, they may be more inclined to make donations.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing involves promoting another company’s services or products on your channel, and earning a percentage of every sale your content results in. Research TikTok affiliate marketing programs that appear to align with your brand and goals, the same way you would research influencers to partner with.

Bonus Tips: Maximizing Engagement

Engagement plays a critical role in monetizing a TikTok account. Ways to maximize engagement on TikTok include:

• Consistently releasing high-quality content according to a regular schedule
• Reviewing the content of other popular creators in your niche for inspiration
• Asking your audience to engage with your content, share it on social media, and generally support your page
• Make sure your TikTok videos are the right size

As always, it’s also important to be authentic. That’s a key factor in the success of TikTok. If audience members feel you’re being “real” with them, historically, they’ll be more likely to remain loyal.

Enhance Your Content With Powtoon 

You don’t need a film degree or a studio’s budget to generate impressive, dynamic, high-quality content for TikTok. Powtoon’s online video maker allows users of any experience level to easily and affordably create strong video content. Sign up today to get started!

The post 6 Ways to Monetize Your TikTok: Simple Marketing Strategies for Success appeared first on Powtoon Blog.

Video content is dynamic. There’s a reason studies show that video content drives more engagement than many other forms of content on social media.

Thus, if you’re promoting a brand online, you may consider doing so with a vlog. The following overview will explain what you need to know, covering vlogging through history and into the future, while also offering tips on how you can use a vlog to drive engagement with your audience.

What is Vlogging?

Vlogging, as the name implies, is similar to blogging, in that it involves regularly posting content providing audience members with updates or thoughts regarding a particular subject. The key difference is that a blog consists primarily of written words. Although blog entries might also occasionally include pictures, videos, and other such content, these elements supplement a blog. A vlog, on the other other hand, consists of video content.

Vlogging Through History: Then and Now

Adam Kontras is a YouTuber who has also been recognized as the first vlogger. He began recording a video diary in 1999 and started uploading its content to the internet in 2000. 

Thus, vlogging isn’t necessarily as new as some might think. This form of content creation has, in fact, existed for more than two decades now.

Another early vlogger is Luuk Bouwman. While recording his post-college experiences and posting the videos online, Bouwman referred to his content as a vlog, making him potentially the first content creator to adopt this label.

However, it was in 2005 that vlogging truly took off, thanks to the emergence of YouTube. The platform offered vloggers the opportunity to reach a wide audience, essentially bringing vlogging to the masses.

The future of blogging remains bright as well. Thanks to smartphones, creating and uploading vlog content is easier than ever. Vlog trends to be aware of now include:

• Creating both traditional vlog content and live video content
• Using a vlog as a form of social media to maintain a relationship with followers
• Partnering with influencers to help a vlog attract an audience
• Generating short vlog content for platforms like TikTok and YouTube shorts

How to Create a Vlog: Steps and Considerations

To begin vlogging, follow these steps:

• Develop a concept and audience: Determine the specific reasons you have for starting a vlog, such as increasing sales or growing your social media audience. Then, determine who your audience members are, and develop a vlog concept that will serve their needs.
• Planning: Make key decisions about your vlog content, such as whether it will be animated or live-action, what types of sets and settings you will need, and whether you will need to hire actors. Then, you can start outlining and scripting your vlogs.
• Consider visuals: Visuals are what distinguish a vlog from a blog. Every step of the way, as you plan your content, think of what types of visuals could help your videos make an impression on audience members.
• Gather elements: Gather any elements you might include in your video, such as audio files, stock footage, and more, and keep them in a dedicated folder for each video.
• Produce: You may film and/or animate your video once you’ve completed all necessary pre-production steps.
• Narrate: You may need to record additional audio, such as narration. This is best done after filming.
• Editing: Finally, you can edit your video content and upload it to your preferred platform. Be aware that you can post a vlog to multiple platforms, such as YouTube, your social media accounts, and your own website.

You must also account for certain practical factors to ensure your vlogging efforts deliver a strong return on investment. For example, for SEO purposes, you must ensure your video files are the right size so that the quality makes the right impression while the video plays reliably and consistently. Check our guide on how to make video files smaller for more information.

Increasing Engagement: Tips and Tricks

There’s no shortage of video content available on the internet. On YouTube alone, content creators upload approximately 500 hours of video content every minute.

Consider this when developing content for your vlog. Tips to boost engagement with your vlogging content include:

• Stay consistent: Stick to a fairly regular video upload schedule. If your audience members know they can depend on you to provide them with valuable content regularly, they will be more likely to engage with it.
• Use strong thumbnails: Research indicates that 90% of the top performing videos on platforms like YouTube have custom thumbnails. A video’s thumbnail is the image that tells a potential viewer what a video is about. Instead of using the default thumbnail that YouTube automatically generates for your video, use a custom thumbnail, selecting an image that’s visually dynamic while accurately and honestly conveying what your video may offer.
• Add interactivity: You can include interactive elements and features (such as links) in your YouTube videos to capture and keep the attention of audience members. Interactivity may also boost retention of the information presented in educational videos.
• Know your brand: Your brand is the “personality” your videos embody. It represents your values and speaks to your audience in a language they recognize. Elements that affect branding in videos include the colors you use, the words and tone of your characters, the music you might add to your vlogs, and more. By taking the time to cultivate an authentic brand, you’ll boost your odds of finding a loyal audience.

Creating Impactful Vlogs: Key Takeaways

Vlogging can be a very effective way to grow your business and brand. You simply need to remain authentic to yourself and your audience, while also researching vlogging trends and modifying your style accordingly. If you strike this balance, your vlog could yield a strong return on investment over time.

Increase video views and drive subscriptions with Powtoon

You don’t need years of video production experience or a large video production budget to generate strong vlog content. Powtoon is an online video maker that allows you to create videos easily and affordably, regardless of your budget or experience level. Sign up today to get started!

The post Vlogging Over Time: Then, Now, and the Ultimate Best Practices  appeared first on Powtoon Blog.

Social media marketing is among the most effective ways to promote your brand. However, due to various potential changes at your company, it may one day be necessary to rebrand. This will naturally influence your brand strategy in regard to social media.

Are you not sure how to properly rebrand social media marketing after a company change? Keep reading if so. The following brand marketing and strategy ideas will help you better understand how you can maintain your current social media audience while still adjusting your social media presence to match brand changes.

Identify the Elements of Your Brand on Social Media

Before adjusting your brand on social media, you must first identify what aspects of your social media presence already represent your brand. Potential examples include:

• The overall tone and language of your posts
• The color schemes of any visual content you share
• Logos and other such proprietary material
• The music and other such elements that might be featured in videos you share on social media
• What types of cultural references your social media presence makes
• What type of audience do you believe you’re speaking to via social media

Once you know which aspects of your social media presence currently reflect your company’s branded identity, you’ll have a better sense of what specific changes you might need to make to ensure your social media marketing efforts align with your new brand strategy.

Set Goals

Knowing how to rebrand social media marketing after a company change is important, but knowing why you’re rebranding is also vital. The time and effort you devote to cultivating a new brand on social media will be more likely to yield a strong return on investment if you establish clear and measurable goals from the start.

For example, monitoring engagement on social media is fairly easy. You might, therefore, decide that one of your goals when developing a new brand across your social media channels is to boost engagement.

Another goal may be to attract more followers. After you implement a social media rebranding strategy, you can compare how many new monthly followers you’re attracting now and how many you have attracted in the past. If you tend to attract more new monthly followers after a rebrand, you can be confident your rebranding strategy has served its intended purpose.

These examples aren’t the only goals you can set when adopting a new brand strategy on social media. The main point to understand is that setting such goals is key to determining whether a strategy is effective.

Assemble a Team and Assign Tasks

Your next step involves gathering all team members who you think should be involved in your rebranding efforts. Once you’ve assembled your team, you can establish what specific tasks each team member needs to complete.

For example, your graphic design team members may need to generate new visual content that you can share on social media to introduce audience members to your new brand. Your copywriters may be tasked with developing a new style guide to ensure that the language and tone of all your posts correspond with your new brand. 

Those are just two examples. The specific tasks you assign to different team members can vary depending on the nature of your rebrand.

Establish a Timeline and Schedule

Keep in mind that your current audience may be accustomed to your current brand. Attempting to introduce audience members to a new brand all of a sudden could backfire on you if you don’t make thorough plans ahead of time. Even if your new brand is generally more appealing than your current one, a jarring shift in branded messaging on social media could make the wrong impression on your followers.

After you and your team members have developed at least one month’s worth of new social media content that reflects your new brand, start working on a timeline to embrace the new brand across your various social media accounts.

There is no universally correct way to go about this process. For instance, you might begin with a few vague posts on your social media accounts encouraging followers to watch the space for a big announcement in the coming days or weeks. Next, that announcement could take the form of a post in which you officially announce your new brand.

The content through which you make this announcement need not be as dry as a generic press release. For example, a unique way to introduce followers to a new brand would be to create a character who represents this brand and share a video introducing followers to that character. 

You can begin making other changes to your social media presence once you’ve made this initial introduction. Perhaps you can start removing images that embody your old brand and replace them with images and visual content that align with your new brand marketing strategy. If you were to apply the tactic above, using a new character to embody a new brand, you could also start posting in the voice of that character, indicating to social media followers that your social media pages, in general, will have a new voice.

Rebranding on Social Media After a Company Change: The Importance of Monitoring

Remember, one of the first steps you took in the process of adjusting your social media brand marketing strategy was to establish clear and measurable goals. Be sure to monitor your success once you’ve begun implementing your strategy.

Doing so will help you determine whether you should continue with a plan, or whether making adjustments is necessary. The more you study your results and make tweaks, the greater your long-term ROI will be.

Easily Create Video Content for Your Rebranding With Powtoon

When generating video content for a rebranding on social media, you don’t need to spend more than you can afford, nor do you need to invest much time into the process of creating video content. Powtoon’s online video maker allows you to easily create video content even if your video production experience is minimal. Sign up today to get started!

The post How to Rebrand Your Social Media Marketing After a Company Change  appeared first on Powtoon Blog.

There are many types of content you can share on social media to promote your brand and engage your followers. However, one theoretically valuable form of social media content is one that often goes overlooked: screen recordings.

Regardless of the specific nature of your business and services, sharing screen recordings on social media can help you provide your followers with content that drives engagement. Consider the following examples.

The Power of Screen Recordings in Marketing

Many of us complete various processes while interfacing with digital devices in our tech-driven world. Thus, a screen recording can convey information to an audience in a format with which they are already very familiar. 

In addition, screen recording content is often fairly brief and to the point. That’s a vital quality when other pieces of content are cluttering your followers’ social media feeds.

Studies actually suggest the average attention span now is only eight seconds. Because you can’t count on a viewer paying attention to a piece of video content for a long time now, it’s wise to share content that makes its point fast. A screen recording can serve this purpose.

Specific ways to use screen recordings for social media include the following:

Ways To Use Screen Recordings For Social Media

1. Bite-Sized Demos for Products

To convince a customer that one of your products is worth their money, you need to demonstrate to said customer how your product can deliver value for them. One way to achieve this goal is to post screen recordings on social media in which you quickly show off the features of a product.

Depending on how complex a product is, a quick screen recording may not be able to illustrate all its functions and capacities thoroughly. That’s not a problem. The purpose of such a video is to generate initial interest in a product. Other pieces of content can provide more detailed information about a product if a potential customer wishes to investigate it more. 

2. Quick Tutorials for Step-by-Step Guides

A customer might have a general understanding of the value that one of your products can offer them. Nevertheless, they may still be reluctant to make a purchase for various reasons.

For instance, maybe a customer isn’t willing to spend their money on one of your products because they don’t fully understand how to use it yet. This is another instance in which posting a screen recording to social media could help you boost sales. By posting a video demonstrating how to use your product in clear visual steps, you may help a customer better appreciate the way said product could benefit them.

3. Seamless Product Walkthroughs

A product walkthrough is a piece of content in which a company introduces potential customers to a new product and its various features. If you’re planning on launching a new product in the near future, a screen recording could help generate enthusiasm for it.

Social media in general, offers you the opportunity to “tease” your followers with announcements about new products, services, and other such new offerings from your company. Through social media, you can release information about new products slowly and strategically, cultivating interest and maintaining it over the course of weeks or months. 

Video can help in this capacity due to its naturally dynamic nature. Research actually shows that video content on social media attracts more engagement than other types of content. By announcing a new product with a video-based product walkthrough, you can improve your odds of capturing the attention of your audience when many other pieces of social media content may be vying for their attention.

4. Explaining Software and Apps

Screen recordings can be particularly effective when used to highlight the features and functionality of an app or piece of software. Because a screen recording can show exactly how to use a given app, it can quickly but clearly demonstrate to a potential customer how the app can serve a genuinely useful purpose. 

5. Visual Testimonials and Case Studies

Studies and surveys consistently show that testimonials can play a major role in the success of a given product or business. Many consumers are savvy, knowing that a company itself is certainly likely to count the benefits of its products and services. These consumers also know that they can’t necessarily trust a company to represent these products and services in all marketing materials accurately.

However, if past customers are willing to say positive things about a product, a consumer may be more likely to purchase it themselves. True, testimonials can simply take the form of text, but a video testimonial in the form of a screen recording gives a customer the opportunity to include more emotion in their words when describing their positive reaction to a product of yours.

6. Short How-Tos for Quick Learning

Are you selling a product with many different features that customers might use? If so, you may choose to post screen recordings on social media quickly, covering how to take advantage of these various features and functionalities. For customers in the digital age, these videos could offer a welcome alternative to traditional written instruction guides. 

7. Screen-Recorded Webinars and Podcast Segments

Webinars and podcasts often serve as valuable pieces of social media marketing content because they allow a brand to share potentially valuable information with customers. With screen recordings, you can share snippets from webinars or podcasts to generate interest in your content, or you can simply post quick mini podcasts and webinars to provide your followers with useful information in a short and efficient format. 

8. Screen Recordings: Perfect for Short Ads and YouTube Shorts

Short-form video content is growing increasingly popular across a range of social media platforms. For instance, YouTube has introduced YouTube Shorts to compete with TikTok.

It’s clear that demand for shorter videos is growing. Luckily, screen recordings may be ideal for such types of videos. With a screen recording, you can quickly convey a message to your audience, something which is often critical in an age when your audience members are likely bombarded with distractions.

Best Practices for Creating Engaging Screen Recordings

To ensure your screen recordings deliver results, keep the following tips in mind:

• Use a quality microphone for ideal audio quality
• Record in a space where background noise won’t interfere
• Turn off as many background processes as possible (such as other apps that you may have open), as these can potentially result in lag and other such issues
• Use headphones to ensure you can hear yourself clearly when recording narration

Additionally, it’s wise to use dedicated screen recording software. Powtoon can help. Along with offering screen recording software, Powtoon offers a range of tools for creating dynamic live-action and animated video content. Sign up today to get started!

The post 7 Ways Screen Recordings Can Enhance Your Social Media Content appeared first on Powtoon Blog.

The year 2023 has ushered in a new era of business-to-business interactions, which inspired many businesses to embrace new B2B lead-generation strategies.

Flooded with notifications, ads, and instant information, potential customers are spoiled for choice, making efficient lead generation harder than ever. As agile companies adapt to their customer’s evolving needs and preferences, traditional lead-generation methods are being reimagined.

Let’s explore some of the best and newest B2B lead generation strategies of 2023. 

Maximize Your Content Marketing 

According to DemandGen, 44% of potential buyers prefer to consume three to five pieces of content before they even consider engaging with a company. As Information has become incredibly accessible, consumers can research products and services on their own terms. Now more than ever, it is important that businesses invest in a content marketing strategy that builds credibility, gains trust, and effectively engages with potential customers throughout their research journey, ultimately increasing the likelihood of conversion and fostering a long-term relationship. 

Invest in a Multi-Channel Approach

Reaching modern customers effectively involves meeting them in their preferred digital channels, which means virtually everywhere. Businesses need to adapt and have a strong presence across various digital platforms, including social media, search engines, mobile apps, email, websites, and other online channels. 

It is important to remember that each digital channel’s effectiveness will vary depending on the target audience, industry, and business model. A data-driven approach is crucial for identifying the most impactful channels for reaching and engaging your specific customer base.

Social Selling

Businesses that are leaders in the social selling space create  45% more sales opportunities than brands with a low social selling index. Integrating social selling into your multi-channel approach can effectively engage potential customers across various touchpoints, deliver consistent messaging, and create a holistic and customer-centric sales experience.

Nurturing Strategies for Various Stages in the Buyer’s Journey

B2B organizations are increasingly focused on creating nurturing campaigns that not only embrace multiple channels but also cover the entire buyer’s journey, from the initial touchpoint to lost opportunities. Sales emails, sales calls, and videos have shown the highest response rate, with email newsletters and customer-generated content, like reviews and case studies, closely following behind.

Depending on your campaign’s goals and target audience, you want to create a tailored approach to ensure a personalized experience that resonates with your prospects.

Here are 3 things to remember when planning your strategy. 

Contact Management: Ensure a well-organized system for storing contact information that helps you keep data on subscribers up-to-date. 

Segmentation: Use your data and segment your audience to create tailored marketing content. Customers have different preferences, and creating a relevant, personalized experience will foster a higher engagement and connection to the brand. 

Your Buyers Journey Stage: Recognize that your buyers are at different stages of your sales funnel and adapt your strategy and content accordingly. 

Adapting your strategy, sales tactics, and content creation to the unique characteristics of your target audience will help you engage more leads, build trust, and ultimately close sales. 

Invest in the Customer

Modern customers want their experience to be seamless, personalized, and accessible across various digital channels and are quick to move on if otherwise. 

2023 calls for higher investment in the customer-first approach, as businesses realize that prioritizing customer needs and preferences is the key to building lasting relationships, fostering brand loyalty, and achieving sustainable growth in a highly competitive market. 

Today’s customers are tech-savvy and spend more time on their devices. They expect businesses to be digitally competent, offering a user-friendly and interactive experience that caters to their unique preferences and needs.

Let’s have a look at what the modern customer wants: 

Seamless Experiences: The modern customer expects a seamless experience across all touchpoints, whether scrolling through a website, using a mobile app, or engaging with customer support. They desire a smooth transition between devices and channels, with information and preferences seamlessly synced and available.

Personalization: With abundant data available, customers anticipate personalized interactions that resonate with their interests and behaviors. They expect businesses to understand their preferences and offer tailored content and recommendations that cater to their needs.

Convenience: 74% of buyers value the ability to purchase from any channel as a critical aspect of their buying experience. Modern customers want to save time and effort. They want to be able to find information, make purchases, and access services quickly and easily. Products Mobile optimization, intuitive navigation, and streamlined processes are crucial for providing a convenient experience that aligns with their busy lifestyles.

Social Presence: Social media has become a fundamental part of how customers find brands, communicate, access information, and connect. The modern customer expects brands to be strongly active on social media and engage with them on various platforms to establish a more authentic and personal connection.

Fast and Responsive: Tech-savvy customers have little patience for slow loading times, unresponsive websites, or delayed customer service. They expect businesses to provide fast and responsive experiences, whether in terms of website performance, buying experiences, or customer support. 

Security: Customers seek secure and trustworthy buying experiences as online transactions increase. Companies must prioritize robust security measures, secure payment gateways, and transparent data practices to earn customers’ trust and protect sensitive information.

Investing in the customer-first approach will not only create a better customer experience but will also set you apart from competitors. 

Elevate Your B2B Lead Generation with Powtoon

According to DemandGen, Video has proven to be one of the most effective B2B lead nurturing activities, along with sales emails, email newsletters, and customer-generated content. 

With Powtoon, you can easily leverage the power of video and revolutionize your B2B lead generation strategy. Seamlessly create studio-quality videos that captivate prospects, enrich emails with visual storytelling, and infuse customer interactions with dynamic video content.  

Learn more about how Powtoon can help you boost your B2B lead generation strategy by signing up today!

The post The Best And Newest B2B Lead Generation Strategies in 2023  appeared first on Powtoon Blog.

For small business owners, mastering website building and design is essential. Today’s consumers tend to evaluate a business’ web presence before deciding to patronize it. In other words, you need a strong website.

Don’t worry if you’ve never designed one before. The following website design tips will help!

Business Website Design Tips: How to Make the Right Impression on Customers

Choose a Website Builder

Creating a website for your business doesn’t need to be an intimidating task. Because most people don’t have website design experience, many small business owners create their own websites with website builder tools such as Squarespace or Wix.

Research your options to find a website builder that’s ideal for your needs. Because different website builders offer different features and have different pricing plans, you may want to test out a few via free trials to find which one you’re most comfortable with.

Optimize for Mobile

Did you know that mobile internet browsing has been more popular than desktop browsing for several years now? Account for this when making website design choices.

A page that functions reliably and looks visually appealing on a desktop computer might not have the same impact on a small phone screen. Before launching your business website, test out both the mobile and desktop versions to confirm both offer a pleasant and intuitive experience for your potential customers. In addition, when choosing a website builder, look for one that allows you to create a mobile version of your site. 

Consider Branding

Your business’s brand is the unique identity that sets it apart from the competition. A brand may consist of many elements that might appear on your website. Examples include (but aren’t necessarily limited to):

• Your color scheme
• Typography
• Logos
• The tone and language of your written content

Ensure every element of your business website is on-brand. To achieve this goal, you’ll need to use a website builder that allows you to customize color schemes, typography, and other such elements.

Create a Map for Your Business Website

A website that offers an ideal user experience doesn’t merely look pleasing to the eye. It’s also easy to navigate.

Be aware that research shows people tend to leave websites relatively quickly when they’re unable to find what they’re looking for on a given site. To guard against this, create a site map before actually beginning to build your website.

A website map is essentially a plan for all the pages your website will consist of and how they will link together. For example, at the top of your website map, you may have your homepage, along with a description of the content that your homepage will feature. Below that, one of the pages might be a services page, which describes the general services you offer. This page can link further to several pages for specific services.

Drafting a website map is like writing a script for a video project: Take the time to get it right first, and you’ll save yourself a lot of time in the long run.

Focus on Minimalism

Don’t make the mistake of bombarding website visitors with too much visual stimulation on any pages of your site. Instead, use formatting elements (such as headers, bullet lists, etc.) to break up your content, and use images strategically instead of overwhelming a visitor with images. Focusing on minimalism will help you design a site that’s reasonably easy for a customer to read.

Look Closely for Errors

Most of the advice here applies to general “big picture” website design choices. However, it’s also important to pay attention to all the small details.

Specifically, keep an eye out for typos and other such errors. Even a seemingly minor mistake can give a lead the impression that you don’t run a professional operation. On the other hand, if all your content is error-free, you’ll be more likely to convince a guest that you are a professional who offers quality products and services.

Include CTAs

You may want website visitors to take certain actions depending on what pages they visit. For example, if someone visits a product page, ideally, they would purchase the product described on the page. Or, if they’re on a services page, they would ideally contact your business to schedule a consultation at the very least.

Every time you design a page for your website, think about the action you want a visitor to take. Design a call to action (CTA) accordingly.

A CTA  should be an easy-to-spot element that encourages guests to contact your business, place an order, etc. Include cats wherever appropriate and design them to stand out while still matching your branding.

Maintain a Relatively Consistent Layout

The exact layout of one page on your website may not mirror that of another. For example, a page describing one of your products may contain sections that your homepage won’t necessarily contain.

That said, to the best of your ability, the general formatting of your pages should remain consistent. This will help you further cement your brand and ensure a pleasing experience for someone navigating your site.

Make Contact Information Easy to Find

Frontload your contact information on any relevant pages. You don’t want to lose a potential customer simply because they couldn’t find out how to get in touch with you. Generally, you should strive to include contact information in various strategic sections of your website.

Improve Your Website With Video Content

Your website doesn’t merely need to consist of written content and still images. You could also include video content when it makes sense to do so.

To return to a previous example, perhaps there are pages on your site in which you describe your products. You could easily enhance such pages with videos showing how these products are used. This may make a stronger impression on a lead. Be aware research has shown that video content is very effective at capturing and keeping an audience’s attention.

Website Building and Design for Small Business Owners: A Key Priority

Your business needs a website in the digital age. Keep these website design tips in mind when creating your site, and your odds of making a positive impression on everyone, from new leads to longtime customers, will be much greater!

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The post 10 Essential Tips for Successful Website Building and Design appeared first on Powtoon Blog.

Social media platforms and the communities they host hold significant sway in your marketing efforts. By leveraging these platforms to build communities, you can strategically enhance engagement with your brand. As you encourage leads and customers to participate in these communities, interacting with your brand’s values and identity, you increase the likelihood of cultivating loyal customers who are invested in your products or services.

Achieving this goal often requires adapting to new trends. For example, it’s growing increasingly common for brands across a range of industries to boost engagement by developing active online communities on social media platforms.

You could be doing the same. The following guide will help. It explains what a social media online community is, what social media platforms you may consider when planning your community, and what you can do to identify the best social media to create an online community for your brand.

What is an Online Community?

An online community is simply a community whose members connect with one another through the internet. Typically, members of an online community will share some common bonds.

A successful online community is one that drives engagement. For an online community to thrive, its members need to consistently interact not only with each other but with any content that is posted to the community.

Why Build an Online Community?

There are many reasons to consider building an online community, particularly if you’re a marketer. Examples to consider include the following:

• Networking with other professionals in your niche
• Encouraging users to generate their own content with your products and/or services
• Cultivating a strong sense of brand loyalty among new leads and existing customers
• Offering customer support

Be aware that some members of an online community may even become unofficial brand ambassadors. Their enthusiasm for and devotion to your brand could help you attract even more customers.

Types of Online Communities

Online communities come in many forms. Again, the fundamental quality of all members of an online community is that they share some sort of bond or connection. Examples include:

• Interest: Many of the most popular online communities bring together individuals who share an interest in a topic. That topic can be as basic and general as a sports team or as niche as a theoretical academic principle.
• Action: Online communities often help to connect individuals who wish to address an issue via common action. For example, an activist group could create an online community for the purposes of organizing rallies and other such tasks.
• Place: Many real-world places have corresponding online communities. For instance, there’s likely already a Facebook group for members of your town, city, or county.
• Practice or Profession: Again, online communities can be ideal for professional networking purposes. According to research, people are actually more likely to use online communities to connect with peers and colleagues than to connect with families and friends.
• Learning: Some online communities exist to help participants develop a skill together or achieve some other type of common learning goal.
• Brand: There are instances when online communities exist primarily to represent a brand and its values. Nike is one brand that has been an early adopter of this strategy, offering its customers a sense of community in the digital realm.

Consider the needs and preferences of your audience when deciding what type of community to create. Doing so is key to planning a community that yields engagement.

Best Social Media Platforms to Consider and Their Strengths

It’s wise to use existing social media to create an online community instead of trying to create your own from scratch. If you’re not sure what’s the best social media to create an online community, consider the most popular options:

• Facebook: Facebook allows for diverse communities with various formats of content.
• Instagram: Instagram is ideal for influencers and visual content.
• LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a social media platform perfect for building an online community of like-minded professionals.
• Twitter: Twitter allows members of an online social media community to participate in real-time discussions of trending topics.
• Reddit: Consider starting an online community on Reddit if your area of focus is very niche.
• YouTube: You may create a community on YouTube if you want to emphasize posting and sharing video content.

Consider researching the demographics of users on these various social media platforms. Your goal is to identify which platforms your potential customers are most likely to use.

Choosing the Right Platform for Your Community

When trying to decide what is the best social media to create your online community, keep the following advice in mind:

• Clearly define the purpose of your community and the specific goals you wish to achieve by starting it
• Define your target audience and perform research to determine what social media platforms are most popular among your audience
• Experiment with each platform, evaluating their features and functionality to confirm whether a given platform will be able to effectively serve your needs
• Ensure a social media platform allows you to create the type of community that aligns with your brand’s values
• Decide whether you want to build a community on a single platform or whether building communities on multiple platforms may give you the opportunity to cast a wider net
• Consider selecting a flexible social media platform that will allow you to adapt to changing social media trends with relative ease
• Confirm a platform’s data and analytics tools will allow you to monitor engagement
• Analyze your competitors, finding out which social media platforms they’ve created communities with

Most importantly, be an active participant in your community. Creating an online community on social media gives you the chance to forge a deeper connection with your customers. These tips will help you achieve that critical goal.

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The post Building A Thriving Online Community: The Top Social Media Platforms To Consider appeared first on Powtoon Blog.

Social media has become a major advertising and marketing channel in a relatively short period. Research indicates that in 2022, spending on social media advertising totaled approximately $230 billion. Experts predict social media advertising spending is only going to increase as the value of this marketing tactic becomes more and more apparent.

Brands across virtually all industries have taken advantage of social media platforms to reach new customers and foster loyalty among existing customers. While you may appreciate this, you might nevertheless be reluctant to devote time and money to promoting your brand on social media. Perhaps this is because you currently have a limited social media following and therefore believe that social media advertising can’t yield a strong return on investment for you.

This is an understandable perspective. However, once you learn how to use social media for advertising without a following, you’ll realize that social media marketing can still play a valuable role in your overall promotional strategy. The following overview explains how.

Check Demographic Data to Choose the Ideal Social Media Platforms

The first step in the social media advertising process is to identify which platforms your brand should have a presence on. Even if you develop and release otherwise strong social media marketing content, your efforts won’t result in major rewards for your company if you’re not posting on the platforms your target audience uses.

Start by defining the basic demographic data of your target customers. List their age range, gender, and other such relevant factors.

Then, research the demographics of social media users broken down by platform. Doing so will help you choose which platforms you should be active on.

Create Your Pages

Before you embrace social media advertising by running active campaigns, you need to create pages on your chosen platforms. Keep the following essential tips in mind when doing so:

• Be sure to thoroughly and accurately list all the ways potential followers can contact your business
• Include high-quality images that represent your brand’s unique identity
• Draft a concise description of your business that ensures followers understand the nature of your products and services

Now is also a time to establish a basic plan for how you will maintain and monitor your pages. At the start, this can be as simple as setting aside a particular day or time during the week to check for messages and schedule future posts for the upcoming week. As you gain more experience with social media advertising and management, you’ll develop a stronger sense of how you can fit managing your social media presence into your routine.

Alert Existing Followers

You may not currently have social media followers. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have no customers at all. 

Think about the various ways you may already be in contact with your customer base. Examples potentially include:

• Your website
• Your email list
• Any ads you already run on radio, TV, or in print publications
• Your brick-and-mortar presence

Make a point of letting your customers know about your social media presence. By promoting your social pages through your website, email list, ads, and conversations with customers, you can begin developing a following. Doing so may give your social media advertising campaigns a head start.

Familiarize Yourself with the Social Media Advertising Process

Providing brands with a platform for advertising and marketing is one of the key ways social media companies make money. Thus, no matter what social media platforms you use, there’s no shortage of tutorials regarding how to advertise on said platforms.

Review all the relevant tutorials and guides. Although learning the nuances of the social media advertising process may require long-term experimentation, you want to have a grasp of the basics before planning and running a campaign.

Consider These Tactics for Using Social Media Advertising Without a Following

There are several ways you can take advantage of social media advertising to your benefit, even if your current social media following is fairly small. Ideas to consider when planning campaigns include the following:

• Consider partnering with influencers: Partnering with influencers is a popular way to drive exposure for your brand. According to research, approximately 25% of marketers already use influencer marketing to some degree. If you find an influencer to partner with, and you confirm their target audience overlaps with yours, working with them could help you cast a wide net despite having a limited following.
• Use hashtags: Hashtags give brands the opportunity to participate in various ongoing and trending conversations via social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram. Monitor trending hashtags, and when you find any that are relevant to your brand, share relevant posts accordingly.
• Use paid advertising: Again, advertising is one of the most significant monetization tactics for social media companies. Although the social media advertising and marketing processes should certainly involve posting content on your pages, you should also experiment with paid advertising campaigns. If you use a social media platform’s targeting tools to target the right audience, your campaigns could deliver major results.

Most importantly, be patient, and prioritize generating and sharing impressive content. That’s key. Even if you don’t currently have many followers, your goal with social media advertising should be to share the type of content your ideal followers would find valuable. Consistently doing so will allow you to naturally cultivate a follower base.

As always, it’s also important to define specific advertising goals and to monitor the performance of your campaigns. Knowing exactly what you intend to achieve and tracking your progress accordingly is key to optimizing and refining your strategy. You may not have a major following now, but applying these tips can change that!

Use Powtoon to Generate Social Media Video Content

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The post How To Use Social Media For Advertising Without A Following appeared first on Powtoon Blog.

Effective social media marketing doesn’t just involve routinely posting content. To take full advantage of social media, you need to post the right types of content.

Are you unsure of how to decide what type of content to post on social media? Keep reading if so. The following guide explains how identifying your goals can help you make strategic social content decisions.

Understanding Your Goals

Different types of social content can help you achieve different measurable goals. For example, content that enables you to grow your audience might not be as helpful if your goal is to sell a product or nurture a lead.

This is one of many reasons you should always determine your specific goals as a marketer. As these examples illustrate, doing so will make deciding what type of content to post on social media much more straightforward.

Content for Increasing Audience

Types of content that may help you increase your audience on social media include:

• Infographics, which are relatively easy to generate and can share valuable information with users in a visually-appealing way
• Video, as more than half of all surveyed marketers believe video to be the most effective form of content for achieving all major social media marketing goals
• Content that users have generated themselves (such as videos or images showing how they use your products)

It’s also wise to take advantage of viral trends whenever possible. For example, maybe you’re aware of a trending TikTok challenge that’s relevant to your industry in some capacity. Creating a video in which you or your company’s employees participate in could be a simple but effective way to reach a larger audience.

Creating content that focuses directly on an audience is also wise. For example, one out of every five Facebook videos is a live video. With a live video, you could answer audience questions directly, catering to your existing audience while also potentially growing it.

Content for Selling a Product

Content that helps you sell a product must demonstrate to a lead why a particular product or service is worth their money. Video is often an effective form of content for this purpose, as no other form of content can show a product in action as clearly.

Try to incorporate a degree of storytelling into your content to make it more persuasive. For example, with a video, you could tell a story of someone facing the same type of problem your target customer faces. You could then give the story a “happy ending” by showing how your product solves this problem.

(Video content tip: You don’t have to rely exclusively on live-action video content. Animated video content is often ideal for storytelling.)

Another way to ensure your content shows why a customer needs your products and services is to simply include testimonials and reviews. If a potential lead knows past customers have been happy with your product, they may be more inclined to purchase it themselves.

Again, you can also post user-generated content on social media when selling a product. For instance, maybe you’re selling a line of kitchen tools. Regularly sharing pictures of meals your customers have created using your products may boost customer loyalty and demonstrate the value your products offer.

Content for Branding

Your brand is your business’ identity. It conveys your business’ values and unique “personality.”

A brand consists of various elements. They include:

• Logos
• Color schemes
• The “tone” of your content
• The vocabulary and language you use in your content
• Your story

Content that allows you to establish your brand may be dynamic, featuring images, music, spoken words, written text, etc. What’s important is to ensure your branded content remains consistent.

For example, maybe your brand is youthful and energetic. If so, a blog post expressing your brand’s values should have a “voice” that uses slang and enthusiastic language to embody these qualities. A video should do the same, translating the voice of the blog post into visuals with bright colors, youth-centric dialogue, etc.

Content for Conversions

Content that drives conversions needs to capture the attention of your audience and retain it. Because video content has been shown to drive high levels of online engagement, it may be useful in this regard.

Content that boosts conversions also needs to include strong calls to action. CTA tips to keep in mind include:

• Emphasize clarity and specificity so leads thoroughly understand what they will accomplish by taking the action you’re encouraging them to take
• Ensure audience members know precisely how to take the desired action
• A/B test different CTAs to determine which are most effective
• Ensure that taking the desired action involves as few steps as possible

Most importantly, your CTA needs to make it clear that you’re offering something of real value to your customers. No matter how strong your content is, someone may not take a desired action if you don’t give them a good reason to.

Content for Lead Generation

The purpose of lead generation content is not only to capture the attention of potential leads but to nurture and cultivate their relationship with your brand so that leads eventually become customers.

Examples of strong social media content for lead generation include:

• Videos, infographics, and other types of visual, attention-grabbing content that provide value to potential leads and direct them to sign up for your mailing list
• Video series
• Educational articles promoting a podcast, video series, or other forms of long-term nurturing content

It’s often important for lead generation social media content to include a strong CTA. This is because to nurture a lead’s relationship and guide them along the customer journey, your content may need to convince them to subscribe to a mailing list, watch the rest of the videos in a series, download an eBook, etc.

Tailoring Content to Your Goals

Hopefully, this overview on how to decide what type of content to post on social media has helped you better understand the importance of setting goals when developing your content strategy. Once you know what your goals are, brainstorm what types of social content you can generate to achieve those goals and experiment accordingly.

That’s key. Experimentation plays a critical role in a social media marketer’s success. By testing different types of content and monitoring its performance, over time, you’ll learn how to optimize your return on investment.

Powtoon Makes Creating Social Video Content Easy

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