Four Content Marketing Trends You Need to Use in 2018
Content marketing is an area where businesses that invest properly see a good return on investment. Unfortunately, many businesses don’t invest correctly in this space. Many elements factor into the success or failure of a content marketing campaign. Quality of content, strategy development, and better, more focused content distribution targeting are some key areas businesses should focus on. To ensure your business stays ahead, you want to know what to expect in the coming year. Discover some top trends the content marketing world will see in 2018.
1. Updated Original Content
Before the internet age, content consumers followed a more rigid viewership schedule. The news came on at 6:00, football was on Sunday, and their favourite sitcom aired once weekly. Everything changed with on-demand programming options. Services like Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube changed how content was delivered. Users were able to view content whenever they wanted to. Consequently, the demand for new and original content grew as well.
The world of content marketing for the web has evolved in the same pattern.
Content producers now follow quicker turnaround deadlines and prioritize updated content, as users are now accustomed to seeing something fresh and immediately accessible constantly at their fingertips. Building a content strategy that emphasizes and delivers continuously updated original content will give users a reason to keep returning to your site, while simultaneously boosting your SEO rankings.
An audience that values the originality, timeliness and high-quality of your digital content can provide additional conversions and interactions, which can be translated to different services or products. In one example, CBS bet the bank that Star Trek Discovery would draw a significant audience, and they planned the launch of their online streaming service, CBS All-Access, around the show’s pilot episode. Delays forced CBS to use a different original show as the initial launch to get attention, but the concept remained, and CBS still reaped the benefits of Discovery later on.
Give the customer content they can’t find elsewhere, and use that content to market other content and deliver advertising. Earning customer loyalty has always hinged on giving them something they want or need, with an inherent originality in the trade. Now, companies simply enjoy more ways to accomplish this. A company not producing original and updated content through its marketing strategy will likely fall behind the competition.
2. Live Streaming
In recent years, online videos have taken over, thanks in part to the spread of high-speed internet and video-sharing services. Today, anyone with a smartphone or a webcam can make a video, upload it, and build a following. Do a search for a game walkthrough or a DIY project, and you are likely to find your top search hits dominated by videos.
However, uploaded or static videos don’t hold a candle to the bonfire that is live streaming video. Give an audience the ability to interact with content as it is going on and you give them something that they can truly engage with. Facebook Live offers people the chance to be with their friends, or other content creators they follow, as those influencers share a part of their lives. Suddenly, a mother who is away for a business trip can join her husband and daughter for the July 4th fireworks. A military family living in Germany can bring their extended family to them for Christmas or New Year’s Eve in real-time.
One prime example of a company that has capitalized on live content is Twitch. This streaming service offers gamers a chance to stream their gaming activities live to the world and to interact with viewers through live chat. Through services like this, gaming and other activities become a more interactive experience. Now, Twitch offers creative people, such as artists, chefs, musicians, or cosplayers, a chance to stream their projects, and even allows podcast networks or small internet media companies an avenue to further connect with viewers.
Progressive firms can offer customers a unique look inside the company’s premises, giving the customer base a behind-the-scenes look at the team making the company’s products, or a sneak peek into what’s coming next. Software developers can discuss their daily tasks and the tools they use. The possibilities are endless for the smart marketing team to take such moments and draw customers further into their love and support for a company. As of 2016, more than 80 percent of respondents to a survey indicated they preferred live video to a blog or social media posts, but only 14% of companies reached out through live video. This means a large gap exists for a company to step in and capitalize on what customers want.
3. Living, Interactive Content
Beacon technology takes advantage of real-time contextual personalization to deliver a customized experience quickly and conveniently, thereby adding value to the customers’ lives in ways that matter. A customer can now walk into a business for which they have the app installed and have a notification inform them that certain products are on sale. If the customer has a rewards card with the business, the beacon app can track those purchases to avoid offering discounts on items purchased recently. As of 2016, annual totals of queries for information from beacon programs on Android devices exceeded 40 million. Many companies can benefit from such an app that doesn’t currently implement this strategy, missing a golden opportunity to strengthen customer loyalty.
source: Travelweekly.com
With the recent iteration of augmented and virtual reality hitting the market, companies can enjoy an even stronger way to bring customers into the fold. Imagine having an app that used augmented reality to encourage searching the store for digital items. Also, gamification is a great way to involve interactive content, which can help encourage user exploration and conversion rates with promotions. This adaption can make the experience more enjoyable and give users something valuable in return and a motivation to come back. A company could partner with a game app that uses augmented reality to place ads in key places
4. The Rapidly Evolving IoT
Another means for delivering content directly into customers’ worlds is the Internet of Things (IoT). This refers to technology that encompasses devices and content delivered through them using mediums other than screens. Siri and Alexa stand as the prime examples, giving a user the ability to interact with a variety of devices or services, including content delivery. Estimates predict that approximately $6 trillion will be invested in IoT technology and solutions within five years. The interest around the anticipated boom in IoT creates various opportunities for secondary markets and windows for new forms of interconnectivity.
Healthcare is one of leading industries being adapted to accommodate IoT devices. Alexa can currently give someone instructions for CPR and explain how to spot a heart attack for example. New developments are on the horizon. The younger, more health-conscious generation has created a large market around wearable devices and monitoring systems. As AI continues to influence how we interact with digital applications, content takes on an entirely new shape. Virtual trainers, interactive exercise instructors that adapt to a user’s body responses, and many other potential forms of consumer digital interaction provide new avenues for delivering content.
Additionally, healthcare institutions and their existing patients are increasingly reliant on big data and comprehensive healthcare solutions. IoT can influence how patients deal with pharmaceutical industries through interactive and wearable gadgets. Companies can leverage this constant device interaction to plan audiobook sessions, news reports, or health tips around a users’ mealtime habits or sleep patterns, to provide content when it’s most appropriate. With so many devices pairing and exchanging handshakes for a variety of purposes, the opportunities for growth are endless.
Pay attention to these four trends to keep your content marketing fresh, original, adaptive, and forward-facing in 2018.
Stephen Moyers is a digital marketer, designer, avid tech-savvy blogger. He is associated with Los Angeles Web Design Agency - SPINX Digital. He loves to write about web design, development, digital marketing, social media and much more. Apart from writing, he loves travelling & photography. Follow Stephen on Twitter & Google+.
Try These 7 Ideas To Boost Your Visual Marketing Game
Marketing has revolutionized itself in the past decade and continues to do so even now. The Internet has waved its magic wand and changed the fate of marketing forever. From traditional door-to-door marketing to working behind the computers to reach the audience, marketing has come a long way. Digital marketing has changed the way consumers get introduced to a new product and their buying behaviour.
The digital marketing era began with simple HTML websites making its way to the audience. The restrictions during that time were lack of access to internet and devices. For a marketer, it was finding the type of content that would intrigue the already limited audience.
This changed drastically in the 2000s when social media made its entry into the digital world. This started with Orkut, one of Google’s erstwhile, once-popular babies who unfortunately succumbed in front of the huge Facebook wave that hit the digital world. This, however, provided marketers with a huge opportunity to reach the masses.
Along with social media marketing, another potential platform with huge opportunity was blooming on the horizon – Blog. It offered room for direct subtle promotions through educational and informative content that added value to the customers/prospects as well. Techniques such as SEO, AdWords, and PPC boosted the blog promotion to reach people across the world.
Although digital marketing is reaching its saturation level in terms of new platforms, there is still huge potential with regards to the type of content that is being generated. Marketers are always looking for new methods to make the content interesting for the internet population. Text-based content such as articles, blogs and websites are still the core of marketing. But it is found that visual marketing is gaining immense popularity among users. 2017 saw a huge upsurge in visual marketing, and for good reasons. Facebook posts with images received 2.3 times more engagement than those without images. Tweets with images received 150% more retweets. Safe to say, images play a huge role in increasing your marketing efforts. So, what can we do differently with visual marketing that can boost your brand visibility and reputation?
Here are some of the ideas to create an effective visual marketing strategy
- Build a blog with text AND image!
Blogs are a great way to reach the audience. It is popular, powerful and fun! But blogs may not find its true potential if it gets limited to only few audience. There should be an X-factor that prompts readers to share them in their circle. Images can offer that. Statistics say that blogs with images produce 650% higher engagement that textual blogs. It is evident that something about images adds better clarity and retention of the message. It could be the basic fact that visuals are more powerful than words.
When using images, marketers need to keep a few things in mind. The image quality should be premium and should not be compromised. Use images that are related to the topic you are communicating. Otherwise, it just turns into fillers. Last but not least, ensure copyrights of the image you use. Any copyright violation could seriously damage the reputation of your platform.
- Visuals make readers stay
You open a link to a text content, found a 2000-word “how to” article. You are really interested to learn it. But after 200-300 words, your focus and interest start going downhill. You still manage to stay but drop off after 500 words, especially if the article is boring. You see another link with on the same “how to”, opened the link, found an infographic with nice visual elements and summarize everything about the topic in beautifully crafted 200 words. It is colourful, precisely explains the point and doesn’t eat up your time. Which one would you prefer? Which one served your purpose?
It is not always necessary to explain everything using words. Visual representation, if done the right way can be a powerful marketing tool. The only thing to keep in mind is to keep the core message and clarity intact while you try to trim down words or get creative.
- Memes
Most people use social media and internet for entertainment. Even if not, a little humour and poor joke (PJs as the new-gen say!) can lighten up things and enhance the overall user experience. Memes are one of the great ways to do it. This piece of content is already viral on social media, usually as a short video or an unusual image with an equally strange caption. After realizing its popularity, social media platforms have specific algorithms to promote the content to redefine their customer experience. Marketers have an excellent opportunity to ride on this wave to catch some fish.
One of the major reasons why meme game backfires for most brands is that they use it for overt promotion and not adding any value. Grammarly is one of the brands that use the meme game just fine! Look at their Instagram page or Pinterest page and you will know what I am talking about. The memes are creative, funny but at the core messaging resonates with the brand image – enhance your written communication! So instead of using unrelated memes, blend it with your brand and see the difference it makes to your visual marketing!
- Videos
These statistics provide some mind-blowing numbers that will help you to understand the monumental effect videos have on internet users and marketers. It won’t be exaggerating to say that videos ruled internet in 2017. Amidst overloaded content, videos are a refreshing change. It catches a user’s attention soon, increases the engagement and retention rate and also offer stronger emotional connectivity. Not to mention the fact that it significantly complements your SEO efforts and brings more traffic.
We all know of the phrase ‘a picture speaks a thousand words’, hence if video is a series of pictures, how many words might video be worth? Well, research by Dr James McQuivey found that video could be worth a minimum of 1.8 million words per minute – if one picture is a thousand words, and video is filmed at 30 frames per second, then a single second of video is word 30,000 words. 30,000 words x 60 seconds = 1.8 million words per minute.
Marketers should focus on creating content that the user actually wants to see. Rather than overt promotion, it could talk about the vision and emotions attached to your brand. This will build credibility for your brand and make the audience trust you. The content need not be serious all the time. It’s all about how you connect with your audience
- Data visualization
Let me get one thing straight! Nobody wants to deal with a lot of numbers, except numbers on currency (I am joking. Probably not!). Anyway, the point is, if you throw statistics and numbers at a reader as it is, that is probably going to exhaust them. Instead, visuals are a great way of presenting them. Numbers can be made interesting and understandable using charts, diagrams and creative infographics, especially if you are a research firm or financial entity. This way, you will be able to connect with users effectively.
- Optimization for SEO
Okay! You have done all the hard work. You have purchased the best stock photos for your website, created some amazing visual graphics and all set to go. Yet, you are not getting the desired result. That’s because your images are not optimized for SEO. To leverage the full potential of images, use the target keywords in the image title, file name, description and alt-text. Adjust the file size without compromising on the quality for easy loading. Also, ensure that it is mobile-friendly as most people these days access the internet through mobile. This way, your visual game would be top-notch and you will reap maximum benefits.
- Mix up the content
Finally, you don’t have to stick to one single way of visual content. Just like you can follow the same menu every day, an audience will get bored with the same style of content. So opt for multiple types of content. Play around with videos, gif, meme, blogs, infographics or if you want to invent something new, go for it! Who knows, it might just be the next big thing! Just make sure your audience is having fun and you got this.
Conclusion
There are millions and millions of content on the internet. The majority are useless and do not add any value to the readers. Only a strong marketing strategy built on a stronger content strategy can make your brand stand out from the noise. Visual marketing can play a key role here. Social media platforms that focus on visual content such as Instagram, Pinterest and even Twitter are creating huge revenue. This shows how engaged people are with visual media. With YouTube streaming millions of videos every day and gifs and memes being shared, almost maniacally, visual content is definitely a key player in the overall digital marketing success.
Content marketing is the king and visual content marketing has already taken the internet by storm. With a huge number of views, engagements and shares for visual content on social media, the party’s just begun! 2018 will see more marketers trying to leverage visual content and more users waiting for entertainment. Those who utilize this marketing technique tactfully and wisely will surely gain huge benefits.
So if you are yet to explore visual marketing, start using it and have fun! If you are already using it, fine-tune your skills and revise your strategies to suit the market and the audience.
Author Bio:
Stevan Mcgrath is a digital marketing professional who possesses expertise in brand design and development. Stevan is passionate about utilizing his diverse skill sets for new and innovative online marketing strategies. He has worked as a freelancer and a contributor to ProvenSEO. Despite having a wide influential reach, he seeks client satisfaction as his topmost priority. He also writes blog posts on recent digital marketing trends. To know his work and more details you can follow him on facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, Google+.
Ready, Set, Go: How To Strategically Growth Hack Your Ecommerce Business
You’ve launched your ecommerce business and it’s all going fairly well, yet even though it may be early days, we could always benefit from a bit more traffic. It’s one thing to be patient and wait for all your hard work to pay off, yet if you really want to give your business the best chance at success, you’re going to need to think outside the box and try your hand at a little growth hacking.
Don’t worry; it’s not as tough as it sounds. In fact, growth hacking has become such a staple of digital marketing that you would be doing your business a disservice by not employing these tactics. So to get you started, we’ve put together a quick guide to growth hacking your business and optimizing your content for maximum conversions.
Wait A Minute: What Is Growth Hacking?
If you’ve never heard of growth hacking before, the term can seem a bit intimidating. However, there’s no clandestine undertaking required; growth hacking is all about optimizing your marketing approach and making your business work for you to increase its own success.
Growth hacking strategies focus on improving the user experience and fostering consumer engagements that ultimately draw more traffic to your website, increase conversions, and close more sales. All you need to do is find the best ways to reach and appeal to your target audience, so you can receive the greatest ROI for your marketing efforts.
Write Some Guest Posts
A surefire way to earn a little more traffic and give your SEO a boost is to create some guest content for sites within your industry. You will need to choose these sites carefully, as it is important that they are reputable, and that their audience is likely to be interested in what you have to offer. If not, your efforts will be wasted, and could even have a negative impact on your site’s visibility.
However, high quality guest content will raise your brand’s profile by demonstrating your knowledge and authority to audiences who have not yet found your website. Carefully chosen backlinks in this content will guide them to your site and help to improve your offsite SEO.
Be careful when choosing your target keywords, as they need to be relevant to your niche, while not outcompeting your onsite SEO efforts. Using the same keywords throughout all your content is often known as ‘keyword cannibalization’, whereby you diminish your success by competing with yourself.
Split-Test for Increased Conversions
Every aspect of your marketing campaign can be polished for increased impact on your chosen audience. Yet sometimes the changes required can be abstract – or less than obvious. Split-testing helps you to refine your approach by simultaneously releasing marginally different versions of the same ad, promotion, landing page, or product design.
By comparing the success of each version, you can gradually narrow down the features that combine for the best possible results. You can’t please everyone at once, but you can still go a long way towards it by narrowing down your options until you find a combination that appeals to the greatest percentage of your audience.
Split-testing can also help you to segment your audience and identify when engaging certain groups requires you to adjust your marketing approach beyond usual expectations.
Act On Exit Intent
Now, we know that most people aren’t too fond of pop-ups, but when someone has already decided to leave your website, then it’s your last chance to re-engage them and keep them on your page. This is where the exit intent pop-up comes into play.
These pop-ups appear when a user is about to leave your store without making a purchase. In them, you can offer something such as a discount or freebie to encourage them to stick around and consider buying something.
As we’ve already discussed, split-testing is a great way to figure out which offers work best for your audience, so you can combine these strategies to really double-down on this aspect of your marketing optimization.
Embrace User-Generated Content
Social proof is a big deal, as many consumers are more prepared to trust the opinions of people in their networks than of the brands they are purchasing from. This is one of the reasons reviews can be so useful in the promotion of a product.
However, you can go one step further by embracing a range of user-generated content. This could be anything from photographs of them using your products to articles about topics relevant to your industry. GoPro has nailed this aspect of their marketing strategy by creating a channel where videographers can share clips recorded with their GoPros, each of which links back to the store page for the camera used.
Reach Out To Buyers Post-Sale
The journey isn’t over when the purchase is complete. Ideally, you want customers to come back again and again to buy from your store. Better still, they might recommend you to friends and family, further increasing your sales.
This means your interactions with customers after sales have been completed are extremely important. Why not send a thank you message to make customers feel appreciated, while simultaneously offering an additional confirmation of their purchase? If you’re a Shopify subscriber, apps like Happy Email or Automatic Thank You Postcard make it easy to show your appreciation, with very little work from you.
You could even include a physical thank you note (or postcard) in their delivery, which you can supplement with a request to tell others if they have enjoyed buying from your business. People often share their thank you notes on Twitter, or other social channels. So not only will you have made a great impression, you even get some bonus visibility.
Credit: Pixabay
Of course, these are just some of the ways you can growth hack your business. But as you get to know your audience and figure out what makes them tick, you’ll quickly come up with even more ways to get your brand name out there and boost traffic to your store.
For example, as your popularity grows, you might set up a referral system, or implement a loyalty scheme. The possibilities are endless, but there is no single strategy that outperforms them all. You will need to work with your business data, and choose those solutions that are best suited to your audience and to the aspirations of your brand.
But all that effort will pay off, as the beauty of successful growth hacking is that it continues to increase your returns. So with careful maintenance and a willingness to put in the time at all stages of your growth hacking journey, there is no reason you can’t achieve and surpass your ecommerce goals.
Victoria Greene is a branding consultant and freelance writer. On her blog, VictoriaEcommerce, she shares tips on ecommerce and how writers can hone their craft. She is passionate about using her experience to help other businesses grow their brands online through great content.
2018 Email Marketing Will Continue to Engage Consumers
Why Email Marketing?
Research show that more than 34% of the people worldwide are active email users which account for 2.5 billion population. It is predicted to increase to 2.8 billion in the next 2 years. The Group's statistics also states that of all the email transactions that happen on a day, 109 billion are business emails. Hence supporting the numbers and from my personal experience being on both ends of the business, I can say email marketing is both a dynamic and substantial means of reaching out and connecting with people. Email has been undeniably one of the biggest parts of our lives in terms of communication. It is still one of the most cost-effective ways of engaging your consumers. It still is one of the traditional platforms that continues to hold its importance in creating brand awareness and converting people into members, customers or supporters.
With social media gaining importance over the past few years the competition remains high as marketers review and optimise their strategies to improve email ROI.
So having established the importance of Email marketing we now look forward to some of the major trends that are likely to sustain and improve this approach in the coming year.
Email Marketing Trends to look forward to in 2018 and help improve your approach:
- Mobile Friendly
As per statistics more and more emails are now being read on mobile than on desktop email clients. We now live in a smartphone society and I myself like millions of others is an ardent consumer of content on the move and mobiles are just the kind of device that is handy and practical. Be it checking emails or social media notifications, this medium of marketing is definitely something to optimize on. The emails should be optimized to suit the mobile interface as slow loading emails that are not compatible with mobiles will risk the chances of lower user engagement. Thus lesser number of clickthroughs.
Many mobile visitors end up on the websites from articles and we may end up seeing more articles ending up with email subscriptions to increase conversions. The design of screens on mobile devices has to be visual friendly, easy to read and preferably designed in a manner easy to scan through quickly for reading on the move.
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to have an impact
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation by which the European Union intend to strengthen and unify data protection for all individuals within the European Union (EU). It becomes enforceable from 25 May 2018. This is the biggest change that will affect email marketing strategies in 2018. For a long time obtaining email addresses, phone numbers and other personal contact details via competitions and promotion has been skills used to increase the contact databases, which were used later for email re-engagement campaigns that the user had not initially and explicitly consented to. But now re-consent needs to be given to store and use personal data.
Steps to be taken by marketers in 2018 to comply with GDPR changes
- Legal and fair processing of data.
- Data collection should be done for required, distinct and legitimate purposes.
- Data is adequate, trustworthy and preserved for only as long as it is required
- The Data should be handled in a way such that strict confidentiality and integrity of all the personal information is maintained.
- Personalization and Segmentation holds the key
- Personalization of emails has worked since times when emails started being addressed by the first names of the recipients. So when it comes to personalizing the emails it still is better to stick to the basics like addressing email with the consumer's first names. But to add to this you might as well consider the concept of dynamic content in your emails. Dynamic content refers to the HTML within your content which changes according to the needs of the recipient. This works together with segmentation (location-based emails and lists) and together they provide the consumer with an email that is perfectly tailored to their needs.
- Also important to note is the targeted list of recipients should be carefully analyzed as you do not want to end up in the inboxes where your emails will be deleted or marked read without actually reading it. It hurts your domain reputation and possible chances of connecting with potential customers.
- Personally, I have always preferred emails from a personalized account more than receiving emails from a "no-reply" email address. It gives me a sense of engaging with a real person.
- If you’re being marked as spam, your domain reputation is at risk, and there are threats of you becoming blacklisted by email providers. Analyze whether the spam complaints are caused by a new source, bad forms, or you are misinterpreting the expectations of your list. Till you figure out, slow down or completely stop sending emails.
Beware that your emails might also be landing up in the junk folder and going unnoticed as has happened with me. So that needs taking care as well. - Graymail refers to bulk email messages that aren’t technically spam because the recipients gave you their information, but in reality, they get your emails and don’t touch them. Engagement rates crash if recipients don’t open your first email, so if they continue ignoring you, the probability of them ever opening your messages is definitely decreasing.
Stop sending graymail, and try to take the feedback and understand what message the customer is trying to send you across by not opening your email.
Author Bio:
Nicolas Finet is the Co-founder of sort-list.co.uk – an online solutions company which helps customers to find the best marketing agencies. Follow him on Twitter @nifinet!
How to scale your live video audience
Scaling your audience is highly important if your sole aim is to make lots and lots of money. We often try to find out time to keep a balance between work and personal life.
Monetizing your venture is a commendable idea. But can you do it without scaling your audience?
You can certainly do without scaling. However, in the long run these missed specks will come back to haunt you.
Anyone who is looking to scale their business must set some proper goals. With a proper vision you can include better monetization strategies.
You can pursue some nitty-gritty techniques so that you can scale your live audience with immediate effect.
Don’t just think of how to make money live streaming an event but try to be better with it.
Let us discuss how to improve live streaming.
Create and Share Content on a Blog
Beginning a blog is easy.
What isn't easy and clear is really posting helpful and extraordinary content that is of significant worth.
Having said that, blogging is a standout amongst other ways that you can be an expert and draw followers in some time.
By turning into an expert, you'll naturally start attracting clients instead of forcing them to go through your content.
Entertain audience with offers and contests
Contests and giveaways offer another speedy approach to market your business.
The word free is exceptionally attractive, and individuals will register to anything which would come up with an assured prize.
Post content on Medium.com
Medium.com is of the most loved destinations for content publishing.
This expert webpage presents anybody with the capacity to post helpful content or showcase anything on the web.
It is commendable that you don't utilize this to spam.
Rather, create helpful information and instructional exercises that will additionally improve the content on your site.
The objective is to advertise your live streaming platform the correct way and not by spamming link through a weak content.
Build a Social Media Content channel
Social media offers a standout amongst most open doors for scaling any business, regardless of what sort of business you've begun but is particulary good for a live streaming company.
It additionally offers a road to take advantage of the worlds socially connected population, rapidly and successfully.
Plainly, accomplishing a gigantic mission is no straightforward accomplishment; however that shouldn't prevent you from building up a content channel where you can spread value across social media to raise the awareness of your offers.
Create YouTube tutorials
Take a deep breath and plunge into the universe of video with YouTube instructional guidance.
Making a mainstream YouTube channel isn't simple, however it is well justified, despite all the trouble.
To do it, you need to give inside and out instructional guidance, helping individuals to truly understand a problem or take care of an issue. Whatever you do, try imparting the best knowledge possible.
Thus, you'll turn into a specialist and an industry pioneer, at last prompting more prominent exposure and in the end, make more money.
How can you scale yourself as well as your audience?
Scaling, in the simplest of definitions is ideally the phenomenon carried out when you have multiple servers used to stream your live video to a larger audience.
Servers arranged in such a way are referred to as “Server Pools”. Various methods can be used for scaling, depending on stream type, target audience and it's possible to use a combination of methods to be sufficient for your needs.
When would you scale your live video audience?
There are some specific moments when you would require scaling your audience. The specks below describe when and how to scale.
- Analyze the number of video streams running together. Also take their bitrates into account.
- Analyze the estimated volume of your audience. Check if you can control the number of viewers.
- Keep a track of the short and long time budget.
What are the options available for scaling?
Different tools present in the market aid in scaling your live video audience. Certain streaming media server software implements tools such as live stream repeater.
Live encoders producing content connect to the servers and players are connected to the edge servers (a server residing on the “edge” between two networks).
Edge servers are connected to the original servers for repetitive live stream.
If you have the question of how to improve live streaming, keep in mind to add more edge servers and direct them to the streams coming out from the origin server.
On enabling an HTTP-based playback, these streaming engines associate each of the HTTP connection with different internal sessions so that every speck can be traced.
In case the target audience is on a private network, you can use UDP (User Datagram Protocol) so that you can broadcast live streams to a wider audience.
In multicast routers provide the capacity to deliver streams instead of a “server pool”. Sending out a single stream through the streaming media server software to the multicast address and players connected to the multicast address to get the stream is how the scaling works here.
Using UDP and other alternatives have delivered 10-15% growth in delivering spectacular outputs with a cut-short buffer time.
If you are looking how to improve live streaming, be sure that the competition is huge.
It's anything but difficult to waste efficiency on blog entries, social media and different things that survive for just a short span.
Using a tool like Crowdcast or Wowza, you can naturally record all your live occasions and implant them onto your site.
Cover subjects that will stay significant forever, and you'll develop an archive of recorded occasions that your crowd can appreciate for quite a long time.
Seven reasons on why your blogger outreach strategy is failing
Blogger Outreach Strategy Failure: Are You Making These 7 Common Blogger Outreach Mistakes?Read more
Content Marketing for SEO [Infographic]
Kelly over at Copy Goals has published a great Infographic that brings together all the major statistics on Content Marketing. The article Content Marketing for SEO: Incredible Statistics & Effective Strategies is well worth a read.
Here's the Infographic (Attribution copygoals.com ).
The Role of Blogging in Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing is a marketing approach focused on creating and promotion quality, informative and useful content to the target audience. The purpose of content marketing is to increase leads, brand awareness and credibility, attract attention to the brand or product and finally expand company’s customer base.Read more
8 Reasons Why Your Brand Needs Instagram Marketing
Instagram is a formidable presence in the marketing world and is arguably one of the most important networks currently on the market. Any marketer that is not utilizing the platform is missing out on incredible opportunities to grow a business. Whether you are a Fortune 500 company or a small local business, utilizing Instagram as a part of your marketing strategy is essential.
Not sure how this social media platform fits in with your brand? Here are eight reasons why your brand absolutely needs Instagram.
1. Boosts brand visibility & enhance your branding
Instagram allows your brand to reach potential customers that were otherwise inaccessible prior to its existence. This is especially helpful for small businesses and online shops as it provides a fair opportunity for all brands to increase their visibility, regardless of their marketing budget.
2. Instagram gives you the unique opportunity to provide visual content
Storefronts and business cards can easily communicate the most important information about your business to potential customers. This, however, doesn't provide much opportunity for your target audience to really get to know your brand. Visual content allows you to take charge of not only how your brand is seen, but also how potential customers can fully understand the mood and direction of your brand as well.
3. Track your analytics
Rather than posting a picture and hoping that your audience will jump to action, you can easily use analytics to inform your posting habits. With tools like Iconosquare, you can see what your audience responds to and which posts lead to the highest conversion rates. With Instagram, it is easier than ever to know definitively which strategies work and which do not.
4. Instagram results in higher sales
According to Shopify, a computer software platform for online stores, Instagram drives higher sales than any other social network, except Polyvore, another social e-commerce platform. The average order value through Instagram referrals is $65, according to Shopify. The next highest revenue through social referrals is through YouTube, which lags behind at a meek average of $37.63.
5. Easily engage with your community
Instagram has the highest engagement rate of all the social media networks, including both Facebook and Twitter. It seems that users are much more open to branded content on Instagram than they are virtually anywhere else. It is also easier to engage with your community as your content is more discoverable, thanks to hashtags. Likewise, many marketing tools such as Growr are able to help your brand reach out to more users per minute than you would be able to anywhere else on the Internet. By utilizing tools such as Growr, you can gain a significant number of followers, engage with potential customers more easily, and create a larger community to share your content.
6. Instagram Videos are great for getting shares on Facebook
Instagram videos are more shareable than any other videos online because they are short, direct, and easily found. According to Unruly, a video ad tech company, 90 percent of Instagram video shares are shared on Facebook. For marketers trying to harness some of that social momentum on Instagram, this is an easy way to increase traffic between both the two platforms.
7. Great for keeping an eye on your competitors
Your competitors already have something that you want: customers! Instagram gives you the unique advantage of being able to spy on them and observe their tactics. You can easily learn what works, what doesn't, and ensure that you can create the best strategy for your brand.
8. Instagram has the highest conversion rates for social networking platforms
It would be naive to say that direct sales are the main purpose of Instagram marketing as there is a lot more activity on Instagram than there is purchasing. Instagram does, however, increase the average conversion rates for brands utilizing the platform. According to Shopify, brands can expect a one-percent conversion rate for their users. This means that for every 100 visitors they have on their site, one of them will make a purchase. This doesn't seem very high but it is among the highest rates among all social networking sites.
There you have it, eight reasons why your brand should be using Instagram as a marketing platform. Every business will have a different experience, but all businesses can benefit from this social media platform.
Marquis is a writer, social media manager and SEO content marketer. She currently lives on the coast of Ecuador, working remotely as a freelancer. Her primary focus is on building online visibility of new, up and coming brand, particularly brands that promote health and wellness. She lives a nomadic lifestyle, though is originally from California.
How to achieve early wins in Digital Marketing
In our experience one the quickest ways to kill a good Digital Marketing Plan is what we call Paralysis by Analysis. You have seen it before, the team has finally be drawn up and the first couple of weeks have gone by. Everyone knows what the goals are, they know what their role is and the CEO has told them that the work they are doing is very important. So, with great enthusiasm, they set to and start to analyze every aspect of their Digital Marketing processes and all the Big Data they can lay their hands on.
Six weeks later they are still at it. They have nothing to show. One member of the team has already been taken off because something more urgent has come up. You know just how this project is going to end up, right. They have nothing to show for their effort.
On of the keys to success for any project is to identify and aggressively achieve Early Wins. In Consultancy speak this is also known as going after "low hanging fruit" - the easiest to pick off the tree.Read more