Essentials of Visual Content Marketing

Look back on yesteryears, during the first few years of the millennium, when the prevalent social media websites were MySpace, Friendster, Multiply, and LinkedIn. They were mostly for personal connections as people used them to interact with friends and relatives from faraway places. A few years after, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other online platforms came into play. People migrated over to them, gaining these sites millions of users.

Then, someone came up with the idea of a business creating a business account, connecting with people, and marketing to them. It worked. The rest, as they say, is history. How did it work though? Two words: visual content.

Creating a Social Fortress Using IFTTT

Whether you're a fan or not, there's no doubt that IFTTT (If This Then That) has revolutionised the way that we work as marketers. Despite it being a free web based service and quite the veteran in the online world – IFTTT recipes first came onto the scene back in 2011 – it is still one of the marketing world's best kept secrets. Social media marketing in particular has benefitted from the use of IFTTT, and it has been used to streamline activity, enhance productivity and automate promotion, what more could we ask for!

Getting started with IFTTT is easy, and in this blog we'll answer those important questions surrounding IFTTT and give you the recipes you need to get something cooking in your own camp.

Top SEO Audit Tools For Better Analysis Of Websites

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important aspect for the professionals who wish to boost their businesses over the internet. In the current scenario, every business has its own website to promote the related services. Websites are an important medium of advertisement for a number of businesses and thus it is important to analyze the true potential of your website. When we talk about the true potential of any website, we mean the number of audience it could attract to promote the services among general masses.

A number of SEO audit tools are there that could help in website analysis. These tools are exceptionally well as they help determine the volumes of traffic your website is getting. In addition to this, it helps in checking a number of other SEO related issues, which is of course a benefit for the person who is using the tool. In the list of exceptional tools, we are focusing on the prominent ones. These tools are generally used for SEO audit purposes and are exceptional in a number of ways. Here is more on these SEO audit tools.

Online Automation: How to Use it to Improve your Marketing Channel

To run any vehicle smoothly, it is very important to take care of its engine. In the same way, your marketing channel is similar to that of a well-oiled engine that would let you run your digital or online business well. No doubt, there are many others components present within an engine that work together to help things run efficiently. The same goes with your marketing channel too. If one component does not happen to work well, it will spoil the whole flow and that is where a marketing automation comes into play. Marketing automation will make sure that all the components are working properly in order to create a fine marketing channel.

So now, let us have a look on how does marketing automation work:

Everything You Need to Know About the Golden Ratio

What do the ancient Greeks, Salvador Dali, and modern graphic designers have in common? They all use the golden ratio. And if you want to be on par with these artistic greats, you'll need to learn how to put this ratio to work for you.

The golden ratio-which is 1:1.618-occurs on its own in the natural world. It appears everywhere from nautilus shells to the human face. But people didn't start harnessing its power until a mathematician named Fibonacci created the sequence of numbers that describes the ratio. (If you're not a math nerd, all you need to know is that Fibonacci came up with the pattern that led the Greeks to discover the ratio itself.)

People began using the golden ratio for art-the Mona Lisa, for instance, uses it-and for other great achievements. They even discovered that they had unintentionally used it in architecture, like The Parthenon and the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Today, the golden ratio appears in many of the items you see, from web design to magazine layouts to photography. Even the Apple logo uses it. To help you put the golden ratio into practice, Company Folders has rounded up these great examples of how people have used it in the past-and how you can use it in the future.

Why Your Business Should Market on LinkedIn (infographic)

LinkedIn is the largest professional network in the world. It's a popular website for people to find jobs, and it's even more popular as a place to rub elbows with their coworkers.

But as you'll see in this infographic from WebpageFX, LinkedIn is also a place to promote your business.

Whether you run a B2B or B2C company, LinkedIn provides you with the audience and means to create new sales.

You can blog, comment on content, send connection requests, create private messages, and more all from your LinkedIn dashboard. Altogether, that makes it an incredible marketing opportunity.

But most people have their doubts. After all, why would a professional social network also double as a marketing medium?

The answer lies in LinkedIn's userbase.

Every second, two new users sign up for LinkedIn. Based on their income, spending habits, and personal data, each of them is worth about $84.

Beyond that, 45% of LinkedIn users are in upper management positions, also known as key “decision-maker” positions that are so valuable to the sales process.

You also won't find many LinkedIn users other places online. 83% of them don't use Pinterest, 59% of them don't use Twitter, and 13% of them don't even use Facebook.

Altogether, that gives you a unique audience of business-minded individuals who are in a position to buy from your B2B.

And if you're a B2C, the deal is even sweeter. 90% of LinkedIn users say they make household decisions, meaning you can safely market and sell to almost all of LinkedIn's 450 million users.

To earn these valuable sales leads, you can do a few different things.

First, write longform blogs specifically made for LinkedIn. Longform authors have 42 followers on average, as opposed to “connections.”

Second, post 20 times per month. That's about five times per week, or every weekday.

Next, grab the attention of your audience with titles that are proven to work on LinkedIn. Starting a title with “who,” “what,” “where,” “when,” “why,” or “how” is a sure bet since 28% of LinkedIn's top articles include those words.

You can also use “you” or “your” (27%) or lists (20%).

After that, make sure your topic will work for LinkedIn's audience. Career management, workplace psychology, and talent management are the three most popular categories for LinkedIn articles.

Finally, post at the proper time. The best time to publish is between 8:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. for your intended audience - during their work day.

7 Reasons Why Marketers Should Use #Twitter (infographic)

With all the newer, shinier image-driven social media sites like Snapchat and Instagram, many marketers have lost sight of the value of Twitter, preferring to chase after the latest “toy”. But if you've been ignoring Twitter it's time you reexamine it.

As of June 2016, 313 million people are using the platform and posting 500 million tweets a day. That's a lot of traffic and interest. With all that chatter going on, marketers may wonder if it's worth the investment of time and resources. 65.8% of businesses are on Twitter and nearly half of the people who follow brands on the platform report that they are likely to visit the company website.

Are you still considering it? What are you waiting for?