The Histowiki website is reaching out to its readers and history enthusiasts all over the country to announce that they have published a new directory of Historical Societies in the US. This announcement marks the latest step the platform has taken in their mission to make U.S. history more accessible to the general public.
“We have put together this new resource to help our readers all across the country find new ways to connect with history and learn more about it,” states Jimmy Thompson, a representative of Histowiki. He continues, “We know how frustrating it can be to feel passionate about something and have no one to discuss the topic with as we have had first-hand experiences with the difficulties of promoting the value of a passion for history. That is why we endeavor to help historical societies facilitate their own ability to reach their like-minded audience. This new resource accomplishes just that, and through it, we hope to inspire new people to take an interest in the rich history of our country and help grow our beautiful communities.”
While the various Historical Societies listed on Histowiki.com originate from regions all across the country, they all share at least two things in common: their passion for history and a strong desire to preserve it. While most of these communities focus on different areas of history, they welcome people with all kinds of interests to take part and educate themselves.
“What we love about these groups is the sense of community and the reassurance that you get from being with other like-minded individuals,” states Thompson. “It is easy to fit in with these people, and if you do join one of these groups, you will soon find out that you have a lot more in common than a simple passion for history and a craving for knowledge.”
For the time being, the web page for Historical Societies only hosts eight groups. However, Thompson states that they plan to add more groups over time (as they tend to do with most of the content on their website). So far, the list contains groups from Michigan, North Carolina, Texas and California. More information on the available resources can be found at their website.
One of the most notable Historical Societies that Histowiki features on their list is the group for the Detroit Historical Museum. The museum is one of the largest in the area, possessing one of the most active communities and the only Historical Society in Michigan.
Other states have the distinction of boasting several more Historical Societies. Texas, being the biggest and one of the most history-rich states in the US, supplies two Historical Societies to the Histowiki page. The most well-known of these is The Heritage Society, based in Houston. This group has an outstanding reputation as most of its visitors have lauded it for being a truly unique experience.
Through the Google platform, Vincent Clark’s review of The Heritage Society can give other interested parties a glimpse of what it has to offer. The review calls it, “A lovely collection of classic homes and churches. Awesome displays of turn-of-the-century artifacts used by early settlers and freed slaves. I highly recommend the tour. It’s one thing to see these structures from the outside, but you’ll be blown away by the interiors of these homes and churches. The tour guy was extremely impressive, and his knowledge of the structures as well as Houston history make it worthwhile.”
Texas’ other Historical Society is the Coppell Historical Society, a group with over 150 years of history that is still going strong. Their mission is to discover, preserve, champion and communicate Coppell’s rich heritage for present and future generations. Their website is one of the most complete of all the Historical Societies featured on Histowiki, containing everything from their hours of work, to answers for their most frequently asked questions.
Histowiki is a crowdsourced reference platform where history can be curated. All curators are responsible for moderating their topic and stimulating discussion and relevance of historical events with all site visitors. They welcome new visitors with open arms and encourage them to participate in the various topics of discussion frequently brought up on their site.
Do you want to know how to use articles for marketing, through writing great content which produces real results for a business’s bottom line? Check out this article for our strategies that show you how to create a great content strategy and spread the word through a top syndication service.
If you are engaging in any type of content marketing which includes blogs, articles, social media posts, press releases, web pages and many more, there is a need for a defined content marketing strategy behind it. Increased sales, brand awareness and customer retention are some of the top listed marketing goals for any organization. When done in a focused and strategic way, using articles as your principle article marketing method can propel any company into profitable growth. But the articles created must be done in a way, which includes the following: the keywords chosen as the basis for the articles must be such that they will improve the company’s visibility for the target readership, and assistance in building brand awareness and increase in its reputation. Once written the articles will have no benefit whatsoever unless they are successfully distributed to a wide audience via online properties of high authority.
If you build it, they will come. That’s what I believed when I was first starting out. I assumed that if I opened a business, customers would just show up—no major marketing effort required. I soon learnt the error of my ways. And yet, many other entrepreneurs take the complete opposite approach and treat marketing as if it’s the 1940 Battle of Britain. They throw all of their resources in the general direction of their intended audience and hope something hits its mark, and that often also fails due to a lack of focus and an unwillingness to truly understand their buyers. I eventually learnt my lesson through the school of hard knocks. But on the way, I discovered a form of article marketing which falls somewhere between the two. It spreads the net widely, meaning that most often the attentive marketer will soon discover the peculiarities of what their market likes and dislikes. Also, by largely avoiding direct advertising costs it avoids the treadmill of a company which is only as good as the ad campaign currently running. When done well in this way, article marketing once implemented can be remarkably evergreen, and result in a stable flow of leads, or sales, over a long period and at a very reasonable cost. Most of all, the costs are closely manageable, unlike embarking on an advertising campaign on a social networking platform and going through an initial unprofitable ad and funnel development only to have your account banned.
Creating the Right Marketing Mix
Attracting the right visitors through your article content publishing will only get you so far. Within any article marketing strategy the following two stages are crucial:
getting your high-quality articles out there to be seen by enough people interested enough in what you say to take action and sign up to a list, download a free gift etc.
the next stage is to achieve the conversion of an interested reader to a customer. Targeted email marketing campaigns to lists generated through article publication are a great way to get more bang out of your email marketing efforts. When drilling down to target individual interest groups, using personalized content in emails can go a long way to create loyal customers and increase sales. There are many ways to segment your email list. You want to find the ways that will allow you to send the most relevant content to your list.
Pandemic Buying Habits That Are Here to Stay
People today are relying a lot less on the on-sale promises. Article marketing, on the other hand, is gaining prominence. It refers to the simple process of writing articles that are influencing and appealing and then publishing them to draw customers. It can be an excellent marketing strategy for any business if implemented effectively.
How to Recognise What’s a Value Proposition
One of the best ways to tell if a show or movie is worthwhile is if people never get tired of re-watching it. Whether it’s the hit television show “Friends”, or the classic movie “Forrest Gump”, most people never turn down an opportunity to watch Ross pivot his couch or witness Forrest develop into a Ping Pong celebrity. And, remarkably, that applies for many people even if they’ve already watched it over a dozen times. Content marketing is in its infancy compared to television and film, but some of the best writers and publications in our industry have already crafted articles that we revere as the “Friends” or “Forrest Gump” of the space.
Create Must-Read Marketing Articles for Every Stage of Business Growth and Avoid Escalating Advertising Costs
Although it’s been a tried and true strategy for years, it seems that bloggers are now catching on to the benefits of article marketing as the competition for traffic intensifies. For those who may not be familiar with the technique involved in article marketing let us explain the recent history. In the mid-1990s it began as involving submitting short articles to ever-growing directories such as Ezine Articles. The article directories accepted articles for nothing on the basis that every article was provided for free re-publication by anyone. The deal was that authors would provide their articles with permission for others to republish your work on their blog, website or in their email newsletter. It was before the search engines were able to apply any real form of AI to judging the quality of an article from its intrinsic worth, and backlinks were the main criteria, almost without consideration of the authority and trustworthiness of a backlink source. For 10 years or more, the search engines fell easy prey to article directory content giving them very high SERP rankings. But, as search engine technology grew in sophistication, it was realised that the directory articles were, in fact, in most cases being written by non-experts and often provided incorrect and/ or outdated information. Furthermore, by being so short it was easy for non-experts to produce those articles at speed, allowing rankings to be manipulated. The end result is that a good way to use Articles For Marketing nowadays is to avoid the article directories, and instead, craft much longer in-depth articles designed to be longer than those previously available in the niche and hence be more authoritative. More authoritative because only true experts in a subject know their subject well enough to write several thousands of words about their topic.
The Importance of Trust to the Search Engines To Use Articles For Marketing
Meanwhile, much more trustworthy and professionally considered information was becoming available in the new Wikis. For the first time online here was a push for rigour, and no point could be made without the citation of a trusted source. Apart from the Wiki the universities and colleges were going public online with their research papers. Research in the form of institutionally backed peer-reviewed papers was also brought online, and the websites of all the major institutions and professional bodies now contained added resource sections.
Niche blogs grew knowledgeable followings and social media became a means of understanding public sentiment for individual web properties. A move by the internet search companies toward trusting these latter popular information sources began which continues. Wikipedia with its millions of pages has also grown to become the most important repository of every facet of human endeavour. Its vast army of moderators constantly combs its pages for errors and makes updates and adds yet more information. Not only that, but every fact and claim is also rigorously associated with its source through the citations systems used by all Wikis. So that now, Wikipedia reigns supreme as the most authoritative website, and article directories have fallen in importance.
Content sources which are now trusted most by Google’s Search Engine bots are the modern equivalents of article directories, such as Medium. Authors write for Medium and similar publications and in return, you get one or more links back to the site of your choice. The articles on Medium and niche blogs vary in length but very few of their articles which appear in the Page 1 SERP locations are nowadays less than 1,000 words long and most are at least 4 to 10 times the length of the once-trusted average 300 to 500-word Article Directory articles.
The Importance of the Right Marketing Strategy and Advanced Article Content Research Tools
Successful product launches require a robust marketing strategy. Even after all your due market research and savvy product development, a new launch can fail to take off without an effective promotional plan for the same. For new products, promotion work must begin well before the launch date. One efficient way to inform your target consumers about new products is through creative articles. For this purpose, working with professional article writing services can be very useful irrespective of your business size and industry. The benefits can be great in terms of time, efficiency and an output skilled work which will be well-respected by its readers. Efficiency gains can be realised by the development and use of research tools which can now do much to find the most relevant and authoritative content rapidly. They then go several steps further and formulate that information in ways which will make that content inherently authoritative, and highly valued by advanced search engines such as the Google Search Engine.
Cost-Effective Articles For Marketing Needed in Such Little Time!
No one really knows how many websites or individual web pages make up this seemingly infinite digital universe that is the internet, but what cannot be ignored is the sheer quantity of the content of ever-improving quality that is now available. For any marketing strategy to work the level of competition in all of the established profitable niches, sheer quality is not enough, quantity also matters if your marketing efforts are to have a good chance of being seen by automated search algorithms (bots). Think of your web presence as being much like a railway network and each published piece of content as a station. The more you build stations and spread them out along main lines and branch lines, the more influence will be fed into them. A station is similar to a node point in the structure, and each node can be made very strong through a variety of backlinking sources. And, out beyond those think of social networking chatter as the outer level of authority feeding into all.
Automated Source Research to Raise the Quality and Efficiency of Articles For Marketing
To create authoritative and unique content to feed the large number of high-quality web properties all adding to the overall web presence without magnification using tools is no longer possible for all but the existing major players. The necessary content sources are available to suitable software out there in the output produced between individual bloggers, agencies, businesses and more. An efficient research tool can gather so many resources all at your fingertips and if then presented to the author in well-structured articles each author becomes surprisingly efficient. This can be done rapidly through the latest in content creation tools and a newcomer, developed through the coronavirus pandemic this year, is our favourite. Its name is Buffer Site Wizard and it is published by its creator Abbas Ravji.
Efficient Production of Content Paired with a Vehicle to Disseminate Knowledge: Syndication Networks
With the internet, you can learn pretty much anything you need to when it comes to successful marketing. Although it takes action, testing, and planning to truly see what works for your business, there are a lot of great marketing articles out there that will get you off on the right track already, but once created the information is of no help unless it can be pushed out widely, at minimum cost and be seen!
We have already identified the cost and ethereal nature of modern advertising methods today as the major factor for new and small business to take the article marketing route. Unfortunately, despite the history and rich tradition of blogging, the use of blogs by organizations of all sizes often suffers from erratic quality and excessive expectations. For example, finding specific information on a typical blog is frequently frustrating for new visitors. This is not the experience you want a prospective customer to have when they are seeking educational content on your website. Whether you are dedicated to your organization’s blog or not, the inbound marketing suggestion here is to do “more” for example, an outbound marketing “portfolio” that includes extended articles, white papers, and case studies is one prudent path to pursue. And, the way to do it is undoubted and should be via the age-old use of standardized distributed web properties under central control otherwise known as a syndicated website network. A network existing with high diversity, also within the realms of the respected social networking sites, plus the magnification effects of multi-formats such as podcasting, and videos.
Why Audience Size Matters for Successful Content Marketing
Content marketing is advertising through publications on social media. One of the main benefits of content marketing on the internet is cheap leads. However, leads will be cheap only for companies that already have a large audience. Then you will be able to convert visitors into buyers using useful and interesting content. If there is no traffic on your social media yet, then content marketing will become an expensive and long term unproductive tool. There will be no audience to read good articles while the distribution of content will be as expensive as SEO.
A core tenet of product/market fit is that a great market can actually draw out a strong product. In other words, deeply understanding the real demand of the people you’re selling to can help you create a great product. And, of course, even a best-in-class product can’t survive without a market. While you’re gearing up to launch, make sure to check out marketing articles on how you can best prepare beforehand.
Keep Track of Marketing Trends
Whether or not you like English literature or follow Fashion, overlooking marketing trends in 2020 could prove disastrous for your revenues. Fortunately, all you need to do is read to optimize your brand for conversions, engagement, and customer retention. These 21 articles might have been a little too timely for Oscar Wilde, but they’ll serve us just fine. As we marketers look to the coming year, we expect to emphasize personalization, visual marketing, ai, and other recent trends while adding new chapters to the classic strategies.
Research suggests that social media users scroll various sites and platforms for one common reason – extracting news about current trends. Moreover, businesses measure their social media roi through the number of likes, shares, tweets, retweets and other popularity indicators their posts rides hide on. As per the raw numbers published by Fracti and Buzzstream, news articles received significantly higher social shares than any other content type. Businesses can thus count on newsworthy content when producing articles and blogs for distribution to achieve their social media marketing targets.
Summary
Article marketing is one of the oldest strategies used by online marketers to acquire new visitors and increase sales on their websites. The practise typically involves writers and publishers as primary participants, with article marketing services working as intermediaries that help match writers with interested publishers. The fundamental purpose of article marketing is to attract wider online audiences and increase the number of sales opportunities for products or services offered on websites. The most popular articles support an author’s or company’s reputation as an expert in a specific field and help cultivate a loyal audience. Increased site traffic boosts where their web page ranks in search engine results, which means more people will see the site and have the opportunity to buy what the author is selling.
Marketing strategies that attract your target audience and buyer personas are tied to content creation and development. To reach your audience, start by creating and publishing content — such as blog articles, content offers, and social media — that provide value. Examples include guides on how to use your products, information about how your solution can solve their challenges, customer testimonials, and details about promotions or discounts. To attract your audience members on a deeper level through inbound marketing, optimize all of this content with an SEO strategy. An SEO strategy will require you to target specific keywords and phrases related to your products or services, the challenges you solve for customers, and the ways you help target audience members.
Article marketing is a branch of content marketing. It is a type of advertising in which companies write and distribute short articles to a range of outlets such as article banks, forums, and newsletter publishers. Its main purpose is to gain a huge number of online audiences and boost the number of sales opportunities for products or services on websites. Another main purpose of this kind of marketing is to build backlinks. This type of marketing strategy can help marketers acquire new visitors and increase sales on their websites. Article marketing is also one of the least costly ways to market a company.
When it comes to creating the perfect promotion strategy for your lease company? well, the advice contained in this post is just the tip of the iceberg. If you want to stand out from the competition and establish yourself as an authority in your industry, then you’ll need to constantly look for ways to stay a step ahead. What about things like live video content? working with influencers? publishing articles on leading industry websites? finding the right internal and external links to include in your email marketing campaign?.
This is a procedure, which is accomplished for content marketing, plus it is also helpful in the SEO process. The major benefit of content marketing is building your authority online. First, you need to maintain a blog section on your websites. Besides, create the external blogs and update it regularly. On the other hand, add the articles on the articles sites and do the guest blogging.
Who will be in the cast of “Call The Midwife Season” 10? Those and many other questions are answered in this our bumper article for all those keenly waiting for more information on this popular series.
“Call the Midwife”, is coming back to the BBC and PBS for season 10, and fans are ready to dive back into the drama and intrigue. After “Call the Midwife Season Eight” was commissioned in March 2019, it transpired that the BBC had signed the studio up for 3 more series of the renowned show, including 3 Christmas Specials.
What will happen in Call The Midwife Season 10?
Will there be another season of “Call the Midwife”? It has already been recommissioned by the BBC for a 10th and 11th series, so expect to see the nuns hard at work until at least 2020. What will happen will be that, in common with the previous series, they will follow historical events and how they influenced midwifery at the time. The best place to find out whatever advance news that is made available on the Series 10 characters and plots will be to follow their Facebook page. But, so far they have been keeping a close lid on what will happen in Season 10 except we did find this: Paul the midwife is returning to filming said Stephen McGann who plays Dr Turner in a video shared to Twitter:
This year’s special will take place in 1965 while everyone at Nonnatus House is looking forward to celebrating and enjoying the circus which has arrived in Poplar nothing seems to go as planned Sister Monica Jones (Judy Parfit) is rushed to the hospital while Trixie (Helen George) isn’t thrilled that she’s received a subscription to the Marriage Bureau as a gift! Meanwhile, Sheila (Laura Main) has a surprise reunion that involves her in a deeply moving birth.
When the show does start to be screened we recommend that your search for “Everything that’s happened (so far) on PBS’ “Call the Midwife” (CTM). Looking back we can see that even just for Season 9 Episode 1 the recap list happenings as: “a foundling, an outbreak, and tights (Oh My!)”.
Is there a trailer for Call The Midwife season 10?
While Americans don’t have the luxury of curling up with a hot cuppa tea post-Christmas day feast to watch the Downton Abbey Christmas special (since PBS doesn’t air the new season until January, we don’t get to see the Christmas special till sometime in February), the folks over at PBS offered up a nice compromise for December 25: the “Call the Midwife Christmas Special”, which had a rare, first-run airing both in Britain and in the US.
The viewers also expected some exotic location to be seen in the Christmas special episode but to everyone’s disappointment this season, “Call the Midwife” will be filmed in the show’s very own suburbs of Poplar says the writer of the show, Heidi Thomas.
‘Call the Midwife’ Season 10: New Details Revealed About the Christmas Special
Details about the 2020 Call the Midwife Christmas special were revealed on the show’s Facebook account on August 18.
‘Call the Midwife’: Everything We Know So Far About Season 10
Was call the midwife cancelled or was it renewed for season 10? When does call the midwife season 10 start on PBS? Find the latest call the Midwife season 10 cancellation and renewal status news on this page. Over a year ago. Season 9 of call the midwife opened with Winston Churchill’s death.
Call the Midwife season 10 starts filming
Following the news that filming for call the midwife season 10 has been postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak, the makers of the popular show have given fans something to look forward to. Given the fact that the show was renewed through its 11th season back in 2019 – including an 11th series which should start filming later next spring – this means that call the midwife is now confirmed to air through at least 2022.
Call the Midwife season 10 resumes production
As the “Call the midwife season 10” has not yet been completed through all its production, there is no trailer available at time of writing for the new season. Production on call the midwife’s 2020 Christmas Special and Season 10 resumed in the summer.
Call the Midwife Season 9 Episode Count
With the broadcast of call the midwife season 9, full episodes can be streamed for a limited time on the call the midwife page on PBS. 30pm, and is 90 minutes long. Following the festive season, call the midwife will launch back into eight new hour-long episodes which will begin airing in January on BBC One.
Call the Midwife season 10 Chrismas special
Call the midwife has followed historical events just that throughout the series, especially last season when it portrayed the thalidomide drug crisis of the early 1960s. Call the midwife is no stranger to romance, but the love story between nurse Lucille Anderson and her boyfriend Cyril Robinson has been an especially slow burn for the show since they first started dating in season eight.
Call the Midwife: Season 10
Call the midwife: Season 9 aired in the US on Sundays, March 29 – May 17, 2020, at 8 p.m. With a VPN, you can live stream season nine of call the midwife from anywhere in the world, but the BBC would like to curtail such use.
Season 10 Call the Midwife
The BBC has actually recommissioned the show for a season 11, so call the midwife will be on screens until 2022. May 17, 2020. Following tonight’s big CTM finale, are you interested in learning the call the midwife season 10 premiere date over at PBS? We know that there’s something comforting about the British import, and we’re going to miss it however long that the show is off the air.
Audience Reviews for CTM: Season 10
The UK’s two biggest broadcasters have ordered new seasons of audience favourites “Call the Midwife”, “Endeavour ”, and “Vera”, guaranteeing new episodes of some of the most-watched shows on British TV.
Christmas Special Season 10
Twitter. Com/s2szav74hh. — (@callthemidwife1) august 31, 2020. In September, Jenny Agutter also shared a statement: “I have just started filming on call the midwife & am so happy to be back at Nonnatus House, seeing all the cast and crew, albeit six feet apart following all the guidelines! But we are delighted to be working on our Christmas Special.
List of “Call the Midwife” Episodes
View all episodes so far on Wikipedia. Visit call the midwife website. Based on the best-selling memoirs of Jennifer Worth, CTM is a story of midwifery in London’s East End in the 1950s. And there’s more good news, as season 10 and 11 have just been commissioned, meaning brand new episodes will be coming our way until 2020!
‘Call the Midwife’ Renewed for Two More Seasons
If it follows previous seasons, season nine will air in the US. So far there hasn’t been much more information released about the future seasons, though it has been confirmed that, as with previous instalments, seasons 10 and 11 will each consist of 8 hour-long episodes and Christmas special, but some are saying that due to lost time during lockdown there will be one fewer instalment in 2021 than usual.
Call The Midwife Season 10 Cast
The excellent news is the chronicled series call the midwife is now revived for the tenth as well as for the eleventh season. What did you like best about Season Nine of “Call the midwife?
What Can We Expect From Season 10?
Coming soon. -Order now and be the 1st to own, the call the midwife series 10 DVD. That will be the complete tenth season of this great British show. East London’s Nonnatus house is saved… at least for another year. That was the joyous high point of the Midwife’s Season 9 Finale, which took viewers on another roller coaster ride of emotion with a couple of major storylines.
Notify me when “Call the Midwife” Season 10 is available
The darkness is beautiful. For how else can we shine. Closing lines read by Vanessa Redgrave, Season 9, Episode 8. Call the midwife season 9 premiered on March 29 in the U.S.
When Will “Call the Midwife” Season 10 Release on Netflix?
The British period drama series has been running on the BBC since 2012 and will reach an incredible 11 seasons with the series commissioned up until 2022. There have been points where the series looks to leave Netflix as it has done already in Canada. The original author and creator Heidi Thomas will always be remembered for developing the series idea. For those unaware, the series is set back in the 1960s in East London and chronicles the lives of those helping to deliver children. There are many wonderful characters including, sister Monica Joan. Due to coronavirus stoppages, it could be 2021 before CTM season 10 is available to stream on Netflix. We’ll worry about all that later. The good news is “Call the Midwife” has returned to filming, and unless the pandemic alters its production course again, there will be a Christmas special this year as well as a season 10.
Both networks have solid benefits and entertainment factors.. While Instagram’s visual layout allows users to see images, videos, Stories, and live streams from their favorite accounts, TikTok provides an endless feed of short, entertaining video clips.
But, late this summer, as countries including the U.S. considered banning TikTok due to privacy concerns, Instagram launched a handful of new audio and video editing features that are quite similar to what users would find on TikTok. This new set of mobile features, which can be accessed in the Stories section of the Instagram app, has been dubbed Instagram Reels.
Aside from allowing users to record videos with sound or audio overlays, the Reels camera and editor also includes the following features:
More editing tools: These include augmented reality effects, transitions, and the ability to speed up or slow down videos.
Audio attribution: If a user uploads native audio, other users can overlay the sound in their videos while the app credits the original user’s account for it.
Stitchable takes: This enables users to share a video with just one long take or a combination of quicker takes.
Shareability on the Instagram Feed, Explore, Stories, and your profile: Depending on the privacy settings of your profile, you can share Reels with just friends on your Stories or profile, or publicly in the Reels area of Explore.
Mobile-only: Unlike Instagram profiles and Stories, you can’t view or upload Reels on a desktop.
Right now, it’s worth noting that ads are not yet supported in the Reels area of Instagram Explore. But since Reels show up in this public part of the app, and can be seen by people who don’t follow your brand, your business has the opportunity to reach new audiences across the globe.
At the time of this post, we also don’t know how the Instagram algorithm works for presenting Reels to audiences. But, based on our exploration of the Reels feed within Explore, it seems much like TikTok in that it prioritizes posts by location, people you follow, and content similar to what you’ve engaged with recently.
Why Instagram Launched Reels
According to Instagram — which started testing Reels in Brazil in November 2019 and launched the feature globally this August — the brand wanted to give users more content creation opportunities on its app.
“We’re excited to introduce Instagram Reels: a new way for anyone — people, creators, and businesses — to create and discover short, entertaining videos on Instagram,” notes an August announcement from Instagram.
While Instagram hasn’t acknowledged TikTok’s success or competition as a reason for launching Reels, several tech journalists have suggested that this was a strategic move.
“Instagram’s short-form video feature, Reels, launched Wednesday. Instagram is swooping in at a vulnerable time for its largest competitor, TikTok. Reels allows users to create 15-second clips, like TikTok, and share them publicly or with friends within the Instagram app,” wrote CNBC’s Jessica Bursztynsky.
While Reels is Instagram’s first attempt at launching similar features to TikTok, this certainly isn’t the first time a Facebook-owned company has launched similar video editing offerings.
Lasso, which offered similar portrait-style feed and video editing tools to TikTok, had fewer than 80,000 app downloads by June 2020. In July, one month before the launch of Reels, Lasso was discontinued.
“We place multiple bets across our family of apps to test and learn how people want to express themselves. One of these tests was Lasso, our stand-alone short-form video app, which we have decided to shut down. We thank everyone who shared their creativity and feedback with us, which we’ll look to incorporate in our other video experiences,” a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch.
At this point, knowing the history mentioned above, some marketers might wonder, “Will Instagram Reels be a great TikTok alternative for my brand, or will it fail like other TikTok competitors?”
The question above is fair. After all, as a marketer, you’ll only want to invest time and money into platforms with a solid track record, loyal audience, and great brand awareness opportunities, rather than those that could be discontinued a short time later.
While Reels might have been flocked to by Gen Z if TikTok were banned, TikTok’s partnership deal with Oracle and Walmart has ensured that this app will remain active in many countries — at least for now. This means that even if Reels is successful, some audiences might still spend all of their time surfing TikTok.
On the other hand, Instagram is a widely-used platform that has successfully launched competitive social media features before. Remember when the brand launched Stories and eventually surpassed the user count of Snapchat, which launched this feature first?
At the moment, it’s not clear whether Reels will be as successful as TikTok. But, since the feature only requires you to expand your Instagram strategy, rather than building out TikTok tactics from scratch, it could still be a great place for brands to test out highly experimental short-form content.
If you’re intrigued by Instagram Reels and ready to try it out, below I’ll walk through how brands are already using the feature, steps for creating Reels content, and a few takeaways marketers should keep in mind as they build it into their Instagram marketing.
How Brands Already Use Reels
Emmy Mae Bridal
Fashion and beauty are perfect for Reels, as is evident by this Reel from Emmy Mae Bridal in Queensland, Australia.
In Emmy Rae’s Reels, the brand presents videos and imagery of their wedding attire to the sounds classy music. Although we can’t embed Reels, here’s a screenshot of recent content the company posted
Earth Official
The travel industry is also finding Reels to be an excellent way to reach people. In this piece of Reels content, Earth Official, an account that highlights travel content, deals, and influencers, shows beautiful footage of Thailand’s lantern festival with native audio.
Critical Care Now
If your business isn’t exactly consumer-facing, Reels might still fit into your Instagram strategy, depending on how well you’ve cultivated your audience and how creative your content team is.
In the Reels post below from CriticalCareNow, an informative Instagram account run by resuscitation expert Haney Mallemat, Mallemat educates viewers about central and peripheral arterial lines used in the emergency response field.
Think the topic of the Reel above was too informative or formal for Instagram’s audience? Think again. At the time this blog post was written, this Reel had more than 30,200 views. Pretty amazing for content that isn’t the latest dance move.
Haney’s Reel might be so engaging because he’s done a great job of building a large, niche audience of over 24,000 Instagram followers and learned what types of content they value. While more followers could certainly get you more views, creating Reels around what your audience and similar users want to watch can also take your engagement a long way.
1. Enter Reels mode within Instagram Stories.
To get started with Reels, open the Instagram Stories camera and tap Reels.
2. Explore the editing tools.
Before and after you record footage on your Reels camera, you’ll see four editing icons on the left side of your camera screen.
The tools you’ll see include:
Sound: Which enables you to add a pre-recorded sound from other users or Reels’ featured song list to your content.
Playback Speed: This allows you to speed up or slow down content.
Effects: Tapping this icon, which looks like an emoji outline, allows you to add stickers and filter effects to your video. The filters for Reels are similar to Instagram Stories and many of these effects crossover between both video formats
Timer: If you can’t hold down the Record button for the full clip, but want to make a video that lasts for a certain amount of time, you can tap this icon to set recording time for your clip. When you press record, a countdown of three seconds will appear on your screen before Reels starts to record. Then Reels will automatically film for the amount of time you designated.
3. Hold Record to begin filming, or upload a pre-recorded video.
Once you press and hold the record button, you’ll start filming a clip. If you let go of the record button, but still have time left in your Reel video, you can hold the record button again to start a second clip that will begin immediately after the first ends.
As you record one or multiple clips for your Reel, the progress bar at the top of the screen shows you how much recording time you have left.
Alternatively, if you’ve already recorded a great video or TikTok that you think will be engaging on Reels, you can tap the camera icon to upload clips from your camera roll.
4. Add last-minute effects.
If you didn’t add effects before the video started recording, but want to after seeing how it came out, you can add stickers, drawings, and text to your Reel before publishing.
When you are finished, tap the arrow at the bottom when you’re ready to publish. Again, these effects are nearly the same as those you’ll see on Instagram Stories.
5. Prepare to publish your Reel.
When you press the arrow after reviewing the video and adding any last-minute effects, you’ll be taken to the post screen, where you can choose a cover image, write a caption, add hashtags, and publish your video to Reels.
6. View your Reels.
Once you’ve published one or more Reels, this content will appear on the Explore page, as well as a tab on your profile.
7. Share your Reels.
Along with posting Reels for Explore audiences, you can also post them to your feed which will also cause them to appear on your main profile grid. Reels can also be sent as direct messages or even posted to your Instagram Stories. Unless you share a Reel so it appears on your main grid, the content will behave like a Story and disappear within 24 hours.
8. Monitor your performance.
Currently, to view any insights for a Reel, you need to view the post itself. At this time, there isn’t a way to view the analytics of your Reels within Instagram Insights. Instead, look at the likes and comments to get a sense of engagement.
9. Watch Reels from other accounts.
To access Reels, simply go to search and you’ll see a featured Reel. Tap that and then you can easily scroll through the clips. From there, you can follow users and like, share, and comment on reels directly. You can find Reels on specific topics by searching for hashtags.
What to Keep in Mind with Instagram Reels
As you consider Reels, TikTok, and other emerging social media platforms in your marketing strategy, it’s important to weigh the pros, cons, and key marketing takeaways when determining if a channel or feature is right for your team.
Here are just a few things to remember as you consider Reels:
Reels competes against a unique, viral sensation:
Although Instagram has a huge audience that is loyal to its platform, many Gen Z users are used to going to TikTok for viral videos and general entertainment. Because the app has pulled in astounding fan loyalty in its short lifespan, you might find that Reels don’t have the same viral opportunities that TikTok videos might have.
What works on TikTok might not work on Reels
TikTok is a highly experimental platform with a younger, but huge, global audience. Because of these factors, there aren’t many rules about what you should and shouldn’t post on there. Meanwhile, Instagram has been around for years, has a slightly older audience, and has some content norms or audience expectations set in place
If you’ve already posted a handful of TikTok videos and want to test them on Reels, you can consider uploading a few, watching how they perform, and learning more about what works well on both platforms.
However, as you learn the differences between TikTok and Instagram audiences, you might find that high-performing TikToks aren’t as engaging to your Reels audience. If this is the case, you might want to consider creating specialized content for Reels.
There aren’t ad opportunities just yet.
Although you’ll want to keep the points above in mind as you consider testing out Reels, you’ll also want to remember the opportunities it offers. For example, Reels might be a great option for you if you’ve mastered Instagram, know what content your audiences want, and are eager to test out TikTok-styled content without using time and resources to build a full TikTok app strategy.
If you do begin to test out Reels, it can’t hurt to brush up on your Instagram marketing skills and Instagram platform knowledge to ensure that your profile, other content, and — ultimately — your Reels will be on point for your brand and optimized for brand awareness.
Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.
Whether you want to become a blogger for a big-time news publication, share your independent thoughts online, make millions as a blogger, or something in between, it all starts with a blogging platform.
And choosing the right one sets precedence for everything else you do.
But with so many options to choose from, picking the best blogging platform can feel overwhelming.
So to help you out, I created a list of considerations to think about as you go through the process and reviewed the top five blogging platforms on the market today.
By the end of this article, you’ll be well on your way to starting your own blog.
Choosing a blogging platform is an important decision. And the one you choose depends on what you hope to do with your new blog and how much control you want to have.
So, let’s walk through what to consider as you make your final decision.
Do you want to make money?
This is probably the most crucial question to ask yourself.
If you want to start a personal blog to share your thoughts and experiences, you’re completely fine going with a free blogging platform, like Medium or Blogger.
However, if you want to make money blogging, you have to be careful. Most free platforms don’t let you monetize your blog. So, you need to choose a premium blogging platform that gives you more control, like Wix, WordPress.org, or Squarespace.
Do you already have a website?
If you want to add a blog to a website you already have, I highly recommend looking into your website platform’s blogging capabilities.
This is the easiest way to add a blog to a website that already exists.
Alternatively, you can look into migrating your website to Wix, WordPress.org, or Squarespace. However, I recommend staying with the platform you’re already using if you can.
Customization capabilities
Paid blogging platforms give you more control and design flexibility, allowing you to build a complete website and brand around your blog. And you can customize the look and feel of nearly every aspect of your website.
If you’re serious about blogging as a business, you need that level of control.
For complete flexibility and customization options, go with WordPress.org. And if you want something easier than WordPress, yet still flexible, Wix and Squarespace are great drag-and-drop options.
On the other hand, free blogging platforms don’t give you the ability to customize to that extent. You may be able to change the colors and pick between a few different layouts.
But, you can’t do much aside from that.
With that said, if you’re interested in personal or hobby blogging, you don’t need anything fancy. Free blogging platforms offer everything you need to quickly write content and share it online in just a few clicks.
The different types of blogging platforms
There are several different types of blogging platforms.
And the right one for you depends on what you want to do with your blog.
So, before we dive into my top recommendations, let’s walk through the different types and what they’re used for.
Free
Free blogging platforms come in a variety of shapes and sizes.
They’re perfect for anyone interested in personal or hobby blogging. And it’s the easiest way to write and publish content online quickly.
However, free blogging platforms usually don’t let you make money with your content. You can’t make money with ads, use affiliate marketing, or sell your own products.
Furthermore, they’re very limited in design flexibility and customization capabilities.
You may even be stuck with random ads placed on your blog. And migrating your content from a free platform to another isn’t an easy process. So, they’re not suitable for business bloggers or anyone interested in making money blogging at any point in the future.
Website builders
Website builders are all-inclusive, drag-and-drop design tools that let you quickly build an entire website without touching any code. They’re easy to set up, simple to use, and include a full suite of blogging tools.
However, they’re not free. But web hosting is included with your subscription, and some even offer a free custom domain name for the first year.
Furthermore, you get a significant level of flexibility and customization. But some areas may be limited depending on the blogging platform you choose.
This is a great place to start if you want to make money, but you’ve never built a website before. Just keep in mind that you sacrifice some flexibility in exchange for ease of use.
Open-source
Open-source blogging platforms are free to download and install. They’re completely customizable from the inside out, making them perfect for serious bloggers and business owners interested in building a full-fledged custom website.
However, there’s a steeper learning curve.
But once you get the hang of it, you’ll realize how flexible and customizable this type of blogging platform really is. You can create ecommerce stores, business websites, portfolios, service-based websites, interactive blogs, and more.
With that said, you have to buy web hosting before you can install an open-source software.
But most web hosts make this type of software easy to install with one-click installation.
#1 – Wix Review — The best drag-and-drop blogging platform
If you’re looking for the easiest premium blogging platform, you should go with Wix.
It’s an all-in-one website builder with more than 100 million users worldwide, making it one of the most popular options on the market.
Furthermore, it’s excellent for beginners interested in creating a full-fledged website with a blog included. And Wix’s intuitive drag-and-drop builder makes creating engaging blog content a breeze.
Plus, it includes everything you need to make money with your new blog.
With Wix, you get premium blogging features, including:
500 professional design templates
Industry-leading SEO tools
Rich-text editor
Embed HTML codes
Categories and hashtags
Advanced search capabilities
Writer and editor user roles
Easy image editing
Social media tools
Visitor analytics
Wix is arguably the easiest and fastest way to get your professional website and blog running.
You can also take advantage of their ADI (advanced design intelligence) tool, which creates everything you need to get started in a matter of minutes.
Simply answer a few questions, customize the design, add your website copy, update your images, and you’re ready to start blogging.
Wix offers a free plan, which is excellent for building your site and getting everything ready to go. However, I highly recommend upgrading to a paid plan so you can remove Wix ads and connect a custom domain name.
Paid plans start at $13/mo and increase depending on the features you need.
#2 – WordPress.org Review — The best open-source blogging platform
WordPress.org is an open-source blogging platform with complete design flexibility.
It also powers 38% of the entire internet, including the blog you’re reading right now, making it the most popular blogging platform on the market.
And the best part? It’s free to download and install.
However, you do need web hosting to be able to use it. This usually costs around $3 – $10 per month, so it’s the most affordable option on this list.
With that said, it’s not as easy as Wix. There are a few more steps to get started, but the extra work is well worth it if you’re looking for complete design control and flexibility.
With WordPress.org, you also get:
55,000+ plugins to extend the functionality of your site
Thousands of free and premium themes
The Gutenburg block editor
Advanced user roles and permissions
Powerful media management
A massive community of experts
Infinite design control
The best part is that you have 100% control over your website and blog. Plus, you aren’t tied down by rules and regulations. You can decide what to display, what you don’t reveal, and how you make money.
There are countless ways to get started with WordPress.org. But I highly recommend starting with Bluehost.
It’s the easiest way to get everything you need.
They also include a free domain name for the first year. So, all you have to do is pick a hosting plan, snag your free domain, and use their one-click WordPress installation feature.
#3 – Squarespace Review — The best blogging platform for visual-based businesses
Squarespace is an all-in-one website builder, like Wix. However, it’s famous for aesthetically pleasing templates, making it perfect for visual-based businesses like photographers, designers, and artists.
It’s also straightforward to use. Plus, it includes web hosting services and a free domain for the first year (if you choose an annual premium plan).
It’s perfect for bloggers who want an easy, aesthetic way to share images, videos, and portfolio pieces, along with long-form and short-form blog posts.
And with Squarespace, you create blog posts the same way you create pages.
So, once you learn how the drag-and-drop editor works, you know how to use the entire platform. You also get access to powerful blogging features, including:
Free blogging templates to help you get started
Five unique post layouts for your home and archive pages
Categories, tags, and featured posts
Built-in post scheduler
Contributor permissions
In-depth analytics
SEO and social media tools
Email marketing (additional fees)
Expert customer service
Mobile app
Squarespace isn’t as customizable as Wix or WordPress.org, but it’s perfect for creative bloggers and visual-based businesses looking for something captivating and easy to use.
Paid plans start at $12 per month and increase depending on the features you need.
#4 – Medium Review — The best traditional blogging platform
Medium is a platform that helps readers and writers find new ideas, knowledge, and perspectives. It’s unique because there are no ads present on the platform.
To date, they have over 120 million readers, making this an excellent way to get your content in front of more people. It’s also great if you want to share personal stories and perspectives to get your thoughts out to the world.
However, it’s not a great platform for making money as a blogger. Medium does have a partner program that rewards writers for the amount of time paying members spend reading their content.
But you’ll have a hard time making a decent amount of money on Medium alone.
And you can’t include your own call-to-actions in partner posts. So, you have to choose between making money and growing your email list.
It’s not a flawed model. However, I highly recommend treating Medium as an extension of your Wix, Squarespace, or WordPress.org blog.
To get started, you can create a profile or a publication. Publications look more aesthetically pleasing, and you get more organization and display features. With publications, you can also send newsletters to your followers.
However, it doesn’t really matter which one you choose.
Note: if you use Medium as an extension of your blog, make sure you use their import feature to add existing blog posts. This way, you can add content from your blog to Medium without creating duplicate content for SEO purposes.
#5 – Blogger Review – The best for personal blogs
Blogger is one of the original blogging platforms. It’s been around since 1999.
It’s completely free to use with no paid plans, upsells, or anything like that. And it’s incredibly easy to use. This makes it perfect for personal or hobby bloggers looking to share their thoughts and ideas with the world.
They have several free templates to choose from that govern how your blog looks. However, they’re not very customizable.
You can change the colors and the layout of a few things, but that’s about it.
The platform focuses solely on blogging, so that’s where the majority of their features lie. With Blogger, you get free access to essential features, including:
A free SSL certificate and free domain mapping
Google integrations
Image storage with Google Photos
Integrated ad campaigns
Simple text editor
And while those features are great, the platform is seriously lacking in other departments, including customization, custom post types, and overall design.
Essentially, it’s an old-school blogging platform. It works well for simple blogging, but you can’t create a full-fledged website, so I don’t recommend it if you want to build a brand and make money blogging.
However, since Google’s acquisition in 2003, you can display Google Ads on your blog to make a little extra money on the side.
But, it’s not a sustainable or long-term way to make a full-time income with your blog.
Summary
The best blogging platform for you depends on where you want to take your blog. For personal and hobby bloggers, a free platform like Blogger or Medium is the perfect place to start.
They’re easy to set up, incredibly simple, and the fastest way to start publishing online. Plus, you don’t have to pay anything to share your thoughts and ideas.
However, if you want to make money and turn your blog into a business, free platforms won’t cut it. The easiest premium blogging platforms are Wix and Squarespace, making them perfect for beginners.
However, if you want the ultimate level of control, go with WordPress.org hosted by Bluehost.
Today, consumers have a lot of power — they can research your product or service and make purchase decisions entirely on their own. And rather than talking to one of your sales reps, they’re more likely to ask for referrals from members of their networks or read online reviews.
With this in mind, have you adapted your marketing strategy to complement the way today’s consumers research, shop, and buy?
In order to do just that — and to meet your potential buyers were they are — you must have a deep understanding of who your buyers are, your specific market, and what influences the purchase decisions and behavior of your target audience members. Enter: Market Research.
Whether you’re new to market research, this guide will provide you with a blueprint for conducting a thorough study of your market, target audience, competition, and more.
What is market research?
Market research is the process of gathering information about your business’s buyers personas, target audience, and customers to determine how viable and successful your product or service would be, and/or is, among these people.
What does market research tell you?
Market research provides insight into a wide variety of things that impact your bottom line including (but not limited to):
Where your target audience and current customers conduct their product/ service research
Which of your competitors your target audience looks to for information, more options, or to make a purchase
What’s trending in your industry
Who makes up your market and what their challenges are
What influences purchases and conversions among your target audience
As you begin honing in on your market research, you’ll likely hear about primary and secondary market research. The easiest way to think about primary and secondary research is to envision to umbrellas sitting beneath market research: one for primary market research and one for secondary market research.
Beneath these two umbrellas sits a number of different types of market research, which we’ll highlight below. Defining which of the two umbrellas your market research fits beneath isn’t necessarily crucial, although some marketers prefer to make the distinction.
So, in case you encounter a marketer who wants to define your types of market research as primary or secondary — or if you’re one of them — let’s cover the definitions of the two categories next. Then, we’ll look at the different types of market research in the following section.
Primary vs. Secondary Research
There are two main types of market research that your business can conduct to collect actionable information on your products including primary research and secondary research.
Primary Research
Primary research is the pursuit of first-hand information about your market and the customers within your market. It’s useful when segmenting your market and establishing your buyer personas. Primary market research tends to fall into one of two buckets: exploratory and specific research.
Exploratory Primary Research
This kind of primary market research is less concerned with measurable customer trends and more about potential problems that would be worth tackling as a team. It normally takes place as a first step — before any specific research has been performed — and may involve open-ended interviews or surveys with small numbers of people.
Specific Primary Research
Specific primary market research often follows exploratory research and is used to dive into issues or opportunities the business has already identified as important. In specific research, the business can take a smaller or more precise segment of their audience and ask questions aimed at solving a suspected problem.
Secondary Research
Secondary research is all the data and public records you have at your disposal to draw conclusions from(e.g. trend reports, market statistics, industry content, and sales data you already have on your business). Secondary research is particularly useful for analyzing your competitors. The main buckets your secondary market research will fall into include:
Public Sources
These sources are your first and most-accessible layer of material when conducting secondary market research. They’re often free to find and review — lots of bang for your buck here.
Government statistics are one of the most common types of public sources according to Entrepreneur. Two U.S. examples of public market data are the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor & Statistics, both of which offer helpful information on the state of various industries nationwide.
Commercial Sources
These sources often come in the form of market reports, consisting of industry insight compiled by a research agency like Pew, Gartner, or Forrester. Because this info is so portable and distributable, it typically costs money to download and obtain.
Internal Sources
Internal sources deserve more credit for supporting market research than they generally get. Why? This is the market data your organization already has!
Average revenue per sale, customer retention rates, and other historical data on the health of old and new accounts can all help you draw conclusions on what your buyers might want right now.
Now that we’ve covered these overarching market research categories, let’s get more specific and look at the various types of market research you might choose to conduct.
1. Interviews
Interviews allow for face-to-face discussions (in-person and virtual) so you can allow for a natural flow or conversation and watch your interviewee’s body language while doing so.
2. Focus Groups
Focus groups provide you with a handful of carefully-selected people that you can have test out your product, watch a demo, provide feedback, and/or answer specific questions.
3. Product/ Service Use Research
Product or service use research offers insight into how and why your audience uses your product or service, and specific features of that item. This type of market research also gives you an idea of the product or service’s usability for your target audience.
4. Observation-Based Research
Observation-based research allows you to sit back and watch the ways in which your target audience members go about using your product or service, what works well in terms of UX, what roadblocks they hit, and which aspects of it could be easier for them to use and apply.
5. Buyer Persona Research
Buyer persona research gives you a realistic look at who makes up your target audience, what their challenges are, why they want your product or service, what they need from your business and brand, and more.
6. Market Segmentation Research
Market segmentation research allows you to categorize your target audience into different groups (or segments) based on specific and defining characteristics — this way, you can determine effective ways to meet their needs, understand their pain points and expectations, learn about their goals, and more.
7. Pricing Research
Pricing research gives you an idea of what similar products or services in your market sell for, what your target audience expects to pay — and is willing to pay — for whatever it is you sell, and what’s a fair price for you to list your product or service at. All of this information will help you define your pricing strategy.
8. Competitive Analysis
Competitive analyses are valuable because they give you a deep understanding of the competition in your market and industry. You can learn about what’s doing well in your industry, what your target audience is already going for in terms of products like yours, which of your competitors should you work to keep up with and surpass, and how you can clearly separate yourself from the competition.
9. Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research
Customer satisfaction and loyalty research give you a look into how you can get current customers to return for more business and what will motivate them to do so (e.g. loyalty programs, rewards, remarkable customer service). This research will help you discover the most-effective ways to promote delight among your customers.
10. Brand Awareness Research
Brand awareness research tells you about what your target audience knows about and recognizes from your brand. It tells you about the associations your audience members make when they think about your business and what they believe you’re all about.
11. Campaign Research
Campaign research entails looking into your past campaigns and analyzing their success among your target audience and current customers. It requires experimentation and then a deep dive into what reached and resonated with your audience so you can keep those elements in mind for your future campaigns and hone in on the aspects of what you do that matters most to those people.
Now that you know about the categories and types of market research, let’s review how you can conduct your market research.
Here’s how to do market research step-by-step.
1. Define your buyer persona.
Before you dive into how customers in your industry make buying decisions, you must first understand who they are.
This is where your buyer personas come in handy. Buyer personas — sometimes referred to as marketing personas — are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers.
They help you visualize your audience, streamline your communications, and inform your strategy. Some key characteristics you should be keen on including in your buyer persona are:
Age
Gender
Location
Job title(s)
Job titles
Family size
Income
Major challenges
The idea is to use your persona as a guideline for how to effectively reach and learn about the real audience members in your industry. Also, you may find that your business lends itself to more than one persona — that’s fine! You just need to be thoughtful about each specific persona when you’re optimizing and planning your content and campaigns.
Now that you know who your buyer personas are, use that information to help you identify a group to engage to conduct your market research with — this should be a representative sample of your target customers so you can better understand their actual characteristics, challenges, and buying habits.
The group you identify to engage should also be made of people who recently made a purchase or purposefully decided not to make one. Here are some more guidelines and tips to help you get the right participants for your research.
How to Identify the Right People to Engage for Market Research
When choosing who to engage for your market research, start by focusing on people who have the characteristics that apply to your buyer persona. You should also…
Shoot for 10 participants per buyer persona: We recommend focusing on one persona, but if you feel it’s necessary to research multiple personas, be sure to recruit a separate sample group for each one.
Select people who have recently interacted with you: You may want to focus on people that have completed an evaluation within the past six months — or up to a year if you have a longer sales cycle or niche market. You’ll be asking very detailed questions so it’s important that their experience is fresh.
Aim for a mix of participants: You want to recruit people who have purchased your product, purchased a competitor’s product, and decided not to purchase anything at all. While your customers will be the easiest to find and recruit, sourcing information from those who aren’t customers (yet!) will help you develop a balanced view of your market. Here are some more details on how to select this mix of participants:
Pull a list of customers who made a recent purchase. As we mentioned before, this is usually the easiest set of buyers to recruit. If you’re using a CRM system, you can run a report of deals that closed within the past six months and filter it for the characteristics you’re looking for. Otherwise, you can work with your sales team to get a list of appropriate accounts from them.
Pull a list of customers who were in an active evaluation, but didn’t make a purchase. You should get a mix of buyers who either purchased from a competitor or decided not to make a purchase. Again, you can get this list from your CRM or from whatever system your Sales team uses to track deals.
Call for participants on social media. Try reaching out to the folks that follow you on social media, but decided not to buy from you. There’s a chance that some of them will be willing to talk to you and tell you why they ultimately decided not to buy your product.
Leverage your own network. Get the word out to your coworkers, former colleagues, and LinkedIn connections that you’re conducting a study. Even if your direct connections don’t qualify, some of them will likely have a coworker, friend, or family member who does.
Choose an incentive.Time is precious, so you’ll need to think about how you will motivate someone to spend 30-45 minutes on you and your study. On a tight budget? You can reward participants for free by giving them exclusive access to content. Another option? Send a simple handwritten ‘thank you’ note once the study is complete.
3. Prepare research questions for your market research participants.
The best way to make sure you get the most out of your conversations is to be prepared. You should always create a discussion guide — whether it’s for a focus group, online survey, or a phone interview — to make sure you cover all of the top-of-mind questions and use your time wisely.
(Note: This is not intended to be a script. The discussions should be natural and conversational, so we encourage you to go out of order or probe into certain areas as you see fit.)
Your discussion guide should be in an outline format, with a time allotment and open-ended questions for each section.
Wait, all open-ended questions?
Yes — this is a golden rule of market research. You never want to “lead the witness” by asking yes and no questions, as that puts you at risk of unintentionally swaying their thoughts by leading with your own hypothesis. Asking open-ended questions also helps you avoid one-word answers (which aren’t very helpful for you).
Example Outline of a 30-Minute Survey
Here’s a general outline for a 30-minute survey for one B2B buyer. You can use these as talking points for an in-person interview, or as questions posed on a digital form to administer as a survey to your target customers.
Background Information (5 Minutes)
Ask the buyer to give you a little background information (their title, how long they’ve been with the company, and so on). Then, ask a fun/easy question to warm things up (first concert attended, favorite restaurant in town, last vacation, etc.).
Remember, you want to get to know your buyers in pretty specific ways. You might be able to capture basic information such as age, location, and job title from your contact list, there are some personal and professional challenges you can really only learn by asking.
Here are some other key background questions to ask your target audience:
Describe how your team is structured.
Tell me about your personal job responsibilities.
What are the team’s goals and how do you measure them?
What has been your biggest challenge in the past year?
Now, make a transition to acknowledge the specific purchase or interaction they made that led to you including them in the study. The next three stages of the buyer’s journey will focus specifically on that purchase.
Awareness (5 Minutes)
Here, you want to understand how they first realized they had a problem that needed to be solved without getting into whether or not they knew about your brand yet.
Think back to when you first realized you needed a [name the product/service category, but not yours specifically]. What challenges were you facing at the time?
How did you know that something in this category could help you?
How familiar were you with different options on the market?
Consideration (10 Minutes)
Now you want to get very specific about how and where the buyer researched potential solutions. Plan to interject to ask for more details.
What was the first thing you did to research potential solutions? How helpful was this source?
Where did you go to find more information?
If they don’t come up organically, ask about search engines, websites visited, people consulted, and so on. Probe, as appropriate, with some of the following questions:
How did you find that source?
How did you use vendor websites?
What words specifically did you search on Google?
How helpful was it? How could it be better?
Who provided the most (and least) helpful information? What did that look like?
Tell me about your experiences with the sales people from each vendor.
Decision (10 Minutes)
Which of the sources you described above was the most influential in driving your decision?
What, if any, criteria did you establish to compare the alternatives?
What vendors made it to the short list and what were the pros/cons of each?
Who else was involved in the final decision? What role did each of these people play?
What factors ultimately influenced your final purchasing decision?
Closing
Here, you want to wrap up and understand what could have been better for the buyer.
Ask them what their ideal buying process would look like. How would it differ from what they experienced?
Allow time for further questions on their end.
Don’t forget to thank them for their time and confirm their address to send a thank-you note or incentive.
4. List your primary competitors.
List your primary competitors — keep in mind listing the competition isn’t always as simple as Company X versus Company Y.
Sometimes, a division of a company might compete with your main product or service, even though that company’s brand might put more effort in another area.
For example. Apple is known for its laptops and mobile devices but Apple Music competes with Spotify over its music streaming service.
From a content standpoint, you might compete with a blog, YouTube channel, or similar publication for inbound website visitors — even though their products don’t overlap with yours at all.
And a toothpaste company might compete with magazines like Health.com or Prevention on certain blog topics related to health and hygiene even though the magazines don’t actually sell oral care products.
Identifying Industry Competitors
To identify competitors whose products or services overlap with yours, determine which industry or industries you’re pursuing. Start high-level, using terms like education, construction, media & entertainment, food service, healthcare, retail, financial services, telecommunications, and agriculture.
The list goes on, but find an industry term that you identify with, and use it to create a list of companies that also belong to this industry. You can build your list the following ways:
Review your industry quadrant on G2 Crowd: In certain industries, this is your best first step in secondary market research. G2 Crowd aggregates user ratings and social data to create “quadrants,” where you can see companies plotted as contenders, leaders, niche, and high performers in their respective industries. G2 Crowd specializes in digital content, IT services, HR, ecommerce, and related business services.
Download a market report: Companies like Forrester and Gartner offer both free and gated market forecasts every year on the vendors who are leading their industry. On Forrester’s website, for example, you can select “Latest Research” from the navigation bar and browse Forrester’s latest material using a variety of criteria to narrow your search. These reports are good assets to save on your computer.
Search using social media: Believe it or not, social networks make great company directories if you use the search bar correctly. On LinkedIn, for example, select the search bar and enter the name of the industry you’re pursuing. Then, under “More,” select “Companies” to narrow your results to just the businesses that include this or a similar industry term on their LinkedIn profile.
Identifying Content Competitors
Search engines are your best friends in this area of secondary market research. To find the online publications with which you compete, take the overarching industry term you identified in the section above, and come up with a handful of more specific industry terms your company identifies with.
A catering business, for example, might generally be a “food service” company, but also consider itself a vendor in “event catering,” “cake catering,” “baked goods,” and more.
Once you have this list, do the following:
Google it: Don’t underestimate the value in seeing which websites come up when you run a search on Google for the industry terms that describe your company. You might find a mix of product developers, blogs, magazines, and more.
Compare your search results against your buyer persona: Remember the buyer persona you created during the primary research stage, earlier in this article? Use it to examine how likely a publication you found through Google could steal website traffic from you. If the content the website publishes seems like the stuff your buyer persona would want to see, it’s a potential competitor, and should be added to your list of competitors.
After a series of similar Google searches for the industry terms you identify with, look for repetition in the website domains that have come up.
Examine the first two or three results pages for each search you conducted. These websites are clearly respected for the content they create in your industry, and should be watched carefully as you build your own library of videos, reports, web pages, and blog posts.
5. Summarize your findings.
Feeling overwhelmed by the notes you took? We suggest looking for common themes that will help you tell a story and create a list of action items.
To make the process easier, try using your favorite presentation software to make a report, as it will make it easy to add in quotes, diagrams, or call clips.
Feel free to add your own flair, but the following outline should help you craft a clear summary:
Background: Your goals and why you conducted this study.
Participants: Who you talked to. A table works well so you can break groups down by persona and customer/prospect.
Executive Summary: What were the most interesting things you learned? What do you plan to do about it?
Awareness: Describe the common triggers that lead someone to enter into an evaluation. (Quotes can be very powerful.)
Consideration: Provide the main themes you uncovered, as well as the detailed sources buyers use when conducting their evaluation.
Decision: Paint the picture of how a decision is really made by including the people at the center of influence and any product features or information that can make or break a deal.
Action Plan: Your analysis probably uncovered a few campaigns you can run to get your brand in front of buyers earlier and/or more effectively. Provide your list of priorities, a timeline, and the impact it will have on your business.
Lastly, let’s review a resource that can help you compile everything we just discussed in a simple yet effective way (plus, it’s free!).
Market Research Report Template
Within a market research kit, there are a number of critical pieces of information for your business’s success. Let’s take a look at what those different kit elements are next.
Pro Tip: Upon downloading HubSpot’s free Market Research Kit, you’ll receive editable templates for each of the give parts of the kit as well as instructions on how to use the templates and kit, and a mock presentation that you can edit and customize.
Use Porter’s Five Forces Model to understand an industry by analyzing five different criteria and how high the power, threat, or rivalry in each area is — here are the five criteria:
Both market surveys and focus groups (which we’ll cover in the next section) help you uncover important information about your buyer personas, target audience, current customers, market, competition, and more (e.g. demand for your product or service, potential pricing, impressions of your branding, etc.).
Surveys should contain a variety of question types, like multiple choice, rankings, and open-ended responses. Ask quantitative and short-answer questions to save you time and to more easily draw conclusions. (Save longer questions that will warrant more detailed responses for your focus groups.)
Here are some categories of questions you should ask via survey:
Focus groups are an opportunity to collect in-depth, qualitative data from your real customers or members of your target audience. You should ask your focus group participants open-ended questions. While doing so, keep these tips top of mind:
Set a limit for the number of questions you’re asking (after all, they’re open-ended).
Provide participants with a prototype or demonstration.
Ask participants how they feel about your price.
Ask participants about your competition.
Offer participants time at the end of the session for final comments, questions, or concerns.
Conducting market research can be a very eye-opening experience. Even if you think you know your buyers pretty well, completing the study will likely uncover new channels and messaging tips to help improve your interactions.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in January, 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
Keep reading and we’ll not only define the concept of what a web host is, but we’ll also show you how to select a really good one, without high prices – and without hidden extras.
Web hosting is a service that allows anyone to post a website or web page onto the Internet. A web host, or web hosting service provider, is a business that provides the technologies and services needed for the website or webpage to be viewed on the Internet. Websites are hosted or stored, on special computers called servers.
Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server owned or leased for use by clients, as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data centre. Web hosts can also provide data centre space and connectivity to the Internet for other servers located in their data centre, called colocation, also known as “housing” in Latin America or France. The most basic is web page and small-scale file hosting, where files can be uploaded via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a Web interface. The files are usually delivered to the Web “as is” or with minimal processing.
As WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world, many web hosting companies offer specific WordPress hosting services that are ideal for website owners who have one or more WordPress sites. WordPress hosting is a type of web hosting that’s optimized for the WordPress platform in terms of server configuration, features, software, and support. Besides the differences between web hosting vs. WordPress hosting, the WordPress hosting services offered by different hosting companies might also vary in software architecture (apache vs. Nginx server, different Linux OSS), hardware architecture (Shared vs. Cloud hosting), the scope of support (full vs. Partial site management), pricing models, and other features.
Shared Entry Level Hosting
Shared hosting, by far, the most common. Shared hosting is low cost. In the US, for one or two websites it’s just a few dollars a month, but the cost is kept down by the hosting service shares resources between different websites. Dedicated hosting means that you hire a whole server or at least a virtual part of a server for your use and nobody else’s. Naturally, this comes at a higher cost, but it allows account holders to have a more reliable dedicated, personalize service within a hosting centre. Now, a few dollars a month for a shared site is relatively inexpensive in most cases. If we were to buy this equipment or to have a dedicated site to house this equipment, it would typically cost thousands of dollars to accomplish. So the few dollars a month or sometimes even cheaper, if we pay for a year in advance is definitely a bargain.
What exactly is a server? A server is a computer that connects other web users to your site from anywhere in the world. As the name implies, web hosting service providers have the servers, connectivity, and associated services to host websites. By offering a variety of hosting plans, they cover the spectrum of hosting needs, from small blogs and large organizations.
What is a Web Host When Web Hosting is in the Cloud?
Generally, with regards to web hosting, “cloud” means that a large number of computers are all clustered together, and any applications running on them can make use of their combined computing resources. With this type of hosting, your virtual private server isn’t one of several on a single server. Rather, it is one of the hundreds all sharing a giant pool of computing resources.
Consider These Points When Choosing a Web Host
4.3 billion people use the internet almost every day. Appreciating the vastness of that number, businesses have become progressively bullish on building out their web presences in order to better connect with and sell to prospective customers. While usually the last thing that you think about when building a website, at some point, every business owner needs to decide on which provider they’re going to host their site with and which hosting package they’re going to opt into.
While some companies provide free hosting, we don’t recommend it as you lose out on performance. If you sign up for free website hosting and realize it’s a bad experience, you either need expensive add-ons or must migrate to a legitimate paid option. It’s not worth the extra work. While these alternatives may not be the best fit when building your website, if you’re a developer, you can learn a lot by diving into these free tools. Ultimately, we recommend avoiding these free providers and going with a high-quality paid-for option.
There’s nothing more damaging in the online world than a site being down, which means its inaccessible. It doesn’t instil much confidence in your web visitors if they can’t access your site. Also, if your site is unavailable when bots are due to crawling it, then this has an adverse effect on your search engine rankings. When looking at a web hosting company, check their uptime metrics, which indicate the amount of time their system is operating successfully. Whoishostingthis.com shares tips and advice to help webmasters find their ideal web hosting provider, and here are the top five ranked web hosts based on their uptime.
Why pay for web hosting?
In the world of web hosting, the saying “you get what you pay for” is definitely true. If you’re running a personal blog you might be able to get away with having lower quality hosting (although we wouldn’t recommend it). However, if you’re a business, your reputation can really suffer if customers find your website to be down or offline frequently. Our best recommendation is honestly to spend a little money on hosting to save a bigger headache down the road and preserve the online image of your business.
Web Hosting Services
One of the top reasons why people change web hosting providers is that they want to cash in on better pricing. If you feel like you’re paying way too much to have your website hosted, you’re going to want to make savings a top priority in your plan to switch. Web host pricing isn’t too hard to find. Just go on a host’s website and they should have their rates promoted on their front page. As a matter of fact, any hosting provider that’s being coy about letting you know how much they charge is a) a scam company or b) a company that’s targeted at enterprise customers.
When looking at the web, you’ll see many offering the same perks: “free domain names and SSL certificates!” “unlimited disk space and bandwidth!”
So, are these the best criteria by which you pick a host? No, as most offer these privileges. In fact, although these things may be important there are other factors worth considering.
What is a Web Host? Beginners, Listen Up!
When shopping for a web host, a very common concern, and a legitimate one, is the amount of bandwidth you will need. When you are buying insufficient bandwidth, you might find yourself in two undesired situations: paying, usually high fees, for the extra bandwidth your web site needed or having your web site shut off. Overbuying bandwidth is not a good thing either as it will put you in the position to pay for something you don’t use. This article is intended to help you determine just how much of bandwidth your web site requires.
When you go to a party, there’s always a host. The host is usually the one who sets the location so everyone can come and enjoy the party. When you’re thinking of website hosting, think of your site’s host like the host of the party. Your web host, just like a party host, offers you a place to put your website so it can be enjoyed by everyone on the internet.
What Is Web Hosting? Explained
Your website is the place where you drive all your traffic so potential customers can read about your company. More importantly, a place where consumers can purchase your products and services. It’s the core of your online presence. It doesn’t matter how visitors find you. Whether on Google, a landing page offer or on Social Media, your website is the destination that converts leads to paying customers.
Each apartment that you lease has different amenities, living spaces, dimensions, and so on – web hosting is no different. The more you spend on web hosting, the more you get out of it generally. Here are the basic metrics you should pay attention to when considering hosting plans.
What is a Web Host and How Does it Work?
SiteGround Hosting certainly lives up to its recent reviews by having some of the fastest plans out there from any shared host, when you use their advanced caching plugin. In their case, you get way more than you’re paying for. Their mission is to provide the best customer service in the industry. So, if you ever need help with your hosting services, they’re right there to handle it for you. They also offer domain registration and all the same services as the other leading website hosts, including free domain privacy. They even offer managed services for WordPress, and premium virtual and fully dedicated servers for when you need to move up. At the time of writing SiteGround are also offering 3 months of free hosting in your first year.
In the world of web hosting, the saying “you get what you pay for” is definitely true. If you’re running a personal blog you might be able to get away with having lower quality hosting (although we wouldn’t recommend it). However, if you’re a business, your reputation can really suffer if customers find your website to be down or offline frequently. Our best recommendation is honestly to spend a little money on hosting to save a bigger headache down the road and preserve the online image of your business.
The next step is to find a web hosting company. If you want your domain name, you’ll need to pay for your site. Paid sites are also great if you plan on monetizing your solar blog.
What is Managed Web Hosting and How Does it Work?
Managed hosting – in managed hosting, the service provider owns and operates servers leased to a customer. The provider is responsible for server management, backup services, software maintenance, security, technical support and more. Rackspace is an example of a managed hosting provider. Cloud hosting – with cloud hosting, the service provider supplies a private, public or hybrid cloud, and the customer pays for system time and storage. Cloud capacity can be scaled up or down, depending on a customer’s computing needs. Leading cloud hosting providers include Microsoft® and Amazon Web Services®.
When your website’s down, that’s a potentially missed opportunity to engage with a customer (or potential customer). That’s why we offer a 99. 9% service uptime guarantee. And if we don’t uphold the guarantee, you may be eligible for a discount on your monthly shared hosting purchase during that time. Product disclaimers
4 special introductory pricing valid for the initial purchase term only. Product renewal pricing subject to change. Products will automatically renew until cancelled. You may turn off the auto-renewal feature by visiting your GoDaddy account.
WordPress. Org is one of the most popular blogging platforms out there, thanks to its versatility. Here’s the deal with WordPress. There are two different websites: WordPress. Org and WordPress. Com. WordPress. Org is a blog-building platform on which you can construct your blog from scratch. It’s free to use, but you will have to pay for a domain name and hosting.
WEB HOSTING IN THE CLOUD
Cloud hosting is the latest hosting type to hit the market, and it’s become extremely popular in recent years. This type of hosting operates across many interconnected web servers that supply an affordable, scalable and reliable web infrastructure. Cloud hosting plans typically offer unmetered, reliable bandwidth and an infinite amount of disk space for unlimited domains which explains why so many large businesses are turning to the cloud. It’s an effective method of running a website with resource-intensive applications or a large number of content assets such as images, but it can have a much higher cost.
While other web hosts may offer large discounts for paying several years upfront, most of them lock you into a contract that does not allow a refund after 30 days. Bluehost recognise that many of their users are beginners, so they offer very affordable hosting but also offer a no-hassle refund policy in case you change your mind.
Besides signing up for a web hosting service, you also need to purchase a domain name. While web hosting allows you to rent server space for your site, the domain name acts as an address of your site. When your users want to check out your site, they type the domain name into their browser’s address bar and your server transfers the content they requested for. With most web hosts, you need to purchase your domain name separately. Or, if you already own a domain, you can also transfer it to your current hosting provider. Similarly to web hosting plans, you need to pay for your domain name annually in order to keep the ownership of the domain.
What is a Good Web Host – 9 Tips on How to Choose a Good Host
Find several reviews when you are searching for a web host. Only relying on two means that lots of errors could exist in your decision because their experience levels could be different from yours, or they could have an affiliation with the particular business that is providing the hosting services. Using an unreliable web host means, your visitors may have times that they cannot access your site. This is one of the many reasons why choosing a good web host is important. This article has much advice on helping you find the right web hosting company for your needs.
Choose a web host company with adequate room to grow. If you want to add data intensive things, like video or photos, you will need more space. Be mindful of any storage space limitations a company might have.
A lot of web hosting services will make you back up your own information. It is very important that you do this, not just for compliance, but mostly because you want to have your data backed up and safe. When you have your backup, you always have your site code, no matter what happens to your hosting service.
Be aware of your web host’s guarantee policy and whether they offer all your money back with no questions asked if you’re not satisfied. If you become unhappy with your provider, what are the consequences of canceling your service? This is a question you must be able to answer from your contract. You can have a reasonable expectation to be able to cancel within the first month of your contract. Be sure to read the fine print and speak with other users to be sure the company is true to their word.
When looking for a host, research online aside from reading their promotional ads. Customer reviews on independent websites or blogs will give you a much more accurate picture of your host’s abilities. Outside reviews by customers of the host will offer the best indication of the host’s quality.
If it is important for your site to have multiple emails, be sure to ask your web host what formatting they use for their email service. It is likely that you will discover the need to stick with POP 3. This kind of email is linked to your domain, and it can be utilized from anywhere out there on the Internet.
Choosing a host which offers SEO options can help to boost your traffic. This feature can help your site get registered with the search engines. It may be a little more beneficial for you to list the site yourself though. This is because you’ll be able to create a better description and that can help improve your site’s ranking. Be aware that web hosts can either use Linux or Windows as their server operating system. Depending on which host you choose, you may have to familiarize yourself with one or the other. Linux is cheaper than Windows and can lead to lower rates for your website. Be wary of web hosts with a price that seems too good to be true. A low price may be tempting; however, you must understand that there is a reason a company is so cheap. Either their business model is questionable, or they cut corners in a manner that will have a negative impact on you, as well as on your website.
Be sure you can contact your host in various ways if you have issues. 24/7 service in chat, email or telephone format is usually an excellent indicator that a web host will go above and beyond for their customer base. In the event that you need assistance, this support will be invaluable.
Don’t just choose a cheap web host. It’s normal to want to get a good deal, but when it comes to hosting you get what you pay for. There is a good chance you will lose out on either support or quality of service, which are both essential elements of good web hosting.
That list provides some of the reasons why a good hosting company is so important. One of the biggest problems associated with using a web hosting service that is unreliable is that visitors trying to access your website will not always be able to successfully. Always use these tips to pick a great web host!
With more than 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram has established itself as an obvious platform for brands looking to expand their reach and engage with their audience.
Figuring out how to launch a successful Instagram contest, however, is much less obvious. Sure, it sounds like an effective strategy for stirring up conversation — it capitalizes on user generated content (UGC) and typically requires very little commitment for participants. But where do you start? And how can you be sure that you’re covering all the bases?
How to Run an Instagram Contest: A 10-Step Guide
To help give you some direction, we put together a detailed list of steps to run through when planning an engaging Instagram contest. From setting goals to monitoring submissions, we’ve covered all of the basics below — and we’ve included some inspirational examples along the way. Check it out …
Disclaimer:This blog post includes some information on legal issues surrounding internet marketing, but legal information is not the same as legal advice — applying the law to a specific circumstance. We’ve conducted research to better ensure that our information is accurate and useful, but we insist that you talk to a lawyer if you want professional assurance that our information, and your interpretation of it, is accurate. In a nutshell, you may not rely on this information as legal advice, nor as a recommendation or endorsement of any particular legal understanding, and you should instead see this post’s info as for entertainment purposes only.
1. Plan objectives and goals.
Before you dive into an Instagram marketing contest, it’s important to plan it out first. The key to running a successful contest is to have a purpose — one that aligns with the interests and behaviors of your target audience.
Whether you’re looking to grow your brand presence on Instagram or build out your list of followers, it’s important that you set a specific goal so that you’re not left wondering whether or not you were successful in the end.
To help narrow your focus, think about the audience you’re trying to reach: What kinds of posts do they like seeing on your account? What kinds of posts do they enjoy posting on their own feeds? How do they behave on the platform? If you’re looking to drum up a lot of engagement, you should aim to center your goals and purpose around content that your audience actually wants to post and engage with.
Don’t forget to establish a time frame and budget for your contest, as determining these logistical details upfront will help you design a more effective contest.
2. Create an entry method.
Although the most effective and engaging Instagram contests are those that actually prompt your audience to post their own photos, there are number of different ways brands can create contests on Instagram. Because of this, it’s important to establish and emphasize what it takes for your audience to actually enter the contest.
Here are some ideas for how your audience might enter your contest:
Have your audience post a photo or a video to Instagram with a specific hashtag and a specific theme.
Have your audience solely follow you or do so in addition to creating a post.
Have your audience tag your brand in their post.
Have your audience Like or comment on one of your posts.
Make sure you establish what the guidelines are for entering the contest, and make that clear on your promotional materials. Maybe your contest is centered around a hashtag that doesn’t include your brand name. If you still want your brand to be tagged to gain recognition, you have to make that clear in your rules.
3. Find the perfect hashtag.
A good hashtag is a key to any engaging Instagram contest. Without it, there’s no link between the contest and the content being generated. In other words, hashtags help create brand and/or contest recognition by serving as a mechanism for sharing and driving participation.
Trouble is, creating the perfect hashtag can be tricky. If your contest is going to have a time frame (and it should), you want to create a hashtag that you’re not going to want to use over and over again. Not to mention, there are tons of hashtags being created each day, making it difficult to land on something unique and catchy.
To help you come up with the best fit, consider these contest hashtag guidelines:
Short: Create a hashtag that sticks in people’s minds. The more readable and identifiable your hashtag is, the better it is for your contest.
Relevant: Make sure you’re creating a hashtag that is very clearly related back to your brand name, product, or services. If you settle on a generic, crowded hashtag such as #ThrowbackThursday, it’s likely that you’ll have a hard time figuring out who your participants actually are.
Memorable: Users are likely to see promotions for your contest prior to actually posting the content. This means your hashtag needs to be memorable enough for users to think about it once and remember to act sometime later. Try to make your hashtag catchy, easy to search, and easy to write. Avoid weird spellings and confusing word choices.
Universal: Think about your audience. Does everyone speak the same language or use similar words? If you have an international audience, make sure you’re careful about using slang words or region-specific terms that might confuse people.
Rare: Do a search before you choose a hashtag. Are there lots of users using your ideal hashtag for some other purposes? If so, you may want to head back to the drawing board.
An example of an effective, engaging hashtag:
Mint.com, an online personal budgeting and financial management company, hosted their #MyMintMoment contest.
The contest was well-designed for a number of reasons, one of which is its hashtag. The hashtag — #MyMintMoment — is simple, short, memorable, and easy to understand. It stayed on-brand and had a clear theme.
The goal of the contest was to get users to post about the things they were saving for. Participants posted pictures of tattoos, vacations, weddings, children, cars — you name it.
This is a great example of an effective hashtag, but it’s also a great example of how UGC can be used to drive marketing decisions. Think about it: Mint asked participants to share posts about things they were saving for. Sounds like an easy way to gain insight surrounding the unique motives and interests that fuel the usage of their service, doesn’t it?
4. Clearly define a theme.
Because most Instagram contests are UGC-based, it’s important to pick a theme so your users know what kinds of pictures and videos to post.
Ideally, you want to a pick a theme that aligns with your market, product, or services. But you can also take advantage of holidays, seasons, and events that align with your product or brand.
An example of an effective theme:
Last summer, D Magazine, a city and lifestyle magazine based in Dallas, used the Texas summer heat to create an effective #StayCoolDallas contest. The contest encouraged participants to submit photos of ways to stay cool in the Dallas heat. Submissions included everything from cold drinks at favorite bars and restaurants to fun summer activities.
This contest and hashtag worked particularly well because of the double meaning of the word “cool” — which ultimately left room for participants to get creative with their interpretations. This is a great example of how to make engagement super easy.
While the hashtag wasn’t totally brand-specific, the theme was very much in line with their brand and passion for all things Dallas. And as a result of the contest, they were left with a ton of new material to get ideas for their next issue.
5. Decide how winners will be chosen.
Part of a well-designed contest is informing your participants of how the winner will be chosen. Most contests are determined based on one of two ways: a vote or a jury. Let’s explore how each option works …
Voting:
A great way to boost the virality of your contest is to have participants compete for the most Likes. If the prize is valuable enough, your participants will likely share their posts with their friends across channels in order to get as many Likes as possible.
This strategy helps maximize your audience’s reach. At the same time, it can be detrimental to your contest, as you run into issues with folks using “Like bots” to gain artificial Likes. To avoid any complications here, you’ll want to put forth very specific rules that address the use of these types of workarounds.
Jury:
For the sake of quality and overall fairness, the jury method is the clear winner. With the jury method, you select a group of experts to decide upon a winner, rather than relying on a voting system.
There are pros and cons to votes or juries, but no matter the way you choose, make sure to clearly state your method so your users know what they’re vying for. Many brands choose to have a mixed-method approach and use a combination of voting and jury to determine the winner.
6. Choose an appropriate award.
When determining what the award for you contest should be, you need to consider your target audience, your budgetary constraints, and how aggressive your goals are.
Remember that by asking your audience to participate in the contest, you’re asking them to take action on something. As with any effort like this, you’ll need the value of the prize to outweigh the cost and energy required to enter the contest. While people might gloss over an opportunity to win a free t-shirt, it’s likely that they’d be willing to jump through a few hoops for something like a free trip.
While your prize should match the entry action, it should also align with the interests of your target audience. Ask yourself: What might my target audience like to have? Your list of answers for this — budget not considered — might be huge. Sure, everyone wants that free trip we mentioned earlier, but that’s not the point. The goal is to find a prize that’s both valuable and relevant to your brand.
Gift cards, free services, coupons, giveaways, and product goodie bags are all common prizes that brands use for contests, but we’re always in favor of getting creative, too.
Example of a creative contest prize:
One of our favorite examples of contest prizes was Sperry’s Photo Real Design Contest. Sperry encouraged users to post “epic photos” that represented an “odyssey.”
Participants then submitted photos of all kinds of things — nature shots, colorful art, real people, etc. — to be judged based on creativity and the number of Likes it received.
The winner that was chosen received a unique pair of Sperry shoes featuring their photo. Talk about a creative prize, right? Not to mention, it served as a great example of how brands can use contests to inspire real product ideas.
7. Create terms & conditions.
Don’t forget that when you create a competition with a prize, you must follow legal guidelines. The laws that will apply to you depend on where you’re based and who you allow to enter your contest, so you should consult your lawyer for help drafting your terms and conditions. Creating a terms & conditions page is a must.
Here are some common terms people include:
The name and contact details of the promoting brand
The dates of the contest
The rules of who can enter (such as age and employee restrictions)
The guidelines for how people enter
The guidelines for how a winner is chosen
The date and way winners will be announced
The date and way the winner will be informed
The time period the winner has to respond and claim their prize
The specific of the prize (including number of prizes, description of prizes, and any caveats)
The details of how the prize will be delivered
Acknowledge that the promotion isn’t sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Instagram or any other social media used throughout the contest.
Now that you’ve got a solid plan in place, it’s time to promote the heck out of your contest.
Where’s the best place to start spreading the word? The possibilities are seemingly endless, but here are a few ideas to inspire your promotion efforts:
Your blog. Write a post on your site detailing the contest, and use it as a launch point for your contest’s landing page.
Social media. What better place to launch a social media contest than on social media? Direct your existing followers to the contest by including a shortened link in your bio and referencing that link in your promotional posts.
Email. Extend the invitation to participate to your email subscribers by sending over a quick and friendly email to announce the offer.
9. Monitor submissions.
Monitoring both your promotional efforts and the level of participation during your contest is essential for meeting your goals and creating a plan to follow up on your contest.
Make sure to determine what metrics you’d like to use and how you’ll keep track of them. Here are some metrics to consider using:
Number of submissions – Total number of posts submitted in compliance with your terms and conditions.
Likes per submission – Helps you keep track of potential winners if your contest is decided by vote.
Number of participants – If users can submit more than one submission, how many unique participants contributed to your contest?
Top participants – Who shared the most content during your campaign? Keeping track of this helps you better engage with your biggest fans.
Total Likes – Measures the total number of Likes on all submissions in your contest.
Total reach – Captures the number of followers of your participants at the time of submission. Meant to show you the potential reach of your campaign.
Follower growth during contest – Measure how much your following increased during the contest’s time period.
If your current audience is relatively small, and you don’t expect more than 30 submissions to your contest, you may decide to monitor your contest manually. To do this, assign someone the task of keeping track of submissions each day. At the end of the contest, someone will have to go through each submission and measure and write down the results from each submission.
If you’re monitoring your contest manually, try using a tool like Tagboard or Google Alerts to keep track of when your hashtag is being mentioned online, making it easier to track submissions. (HubSpot customers: You can set up a custom Stream in your Social Monitoring tool to keep tabs on a specific hashtag. Learn more here.)
If you’re expecting well over 30 submissions, however, you can imagine how difficult monitoring your submissions might be. If that’s the case, you may want to explore an Instagram-specific tool such as Iconosquare.
10. Follow up accordingly.
Once the contest is over, you can’t forget to follow up on the rules you set in the first place. Keep your terms and conditions in mind when reviewing the submissions to ensure that you’re being 100% fair in your evaluation.
Again, this is why establishing your terms and conditions early on is so important, as it will provide you with an documented plan for selecting, contacting, and awarding the winner.
Once you’ve selected and notified the winner, don’t forget to make the announcement publicly. Here’s an example of how to do so from D Magazine‘s #StayCoolDallas contest:
Instagram Contest Ideas
Now that you know how to run a contest, you’ll need to dream up ways to make your contest interesting, compelling, and appropriate for your brands. Here are some of the top contest ideas for Instagram:
1. Caption Contest
The perfect caption can make or break an Instagram post, so why not source the creativity of your audience and get some laughs along the way?
The caption contest is a great choice for Instagram because it allows your audience to stop and think about the contest (and, in effect, your brand) while providing a low-friction way for them to participate.
2. User-Generated Content
User-generated content — or any content produced by unpaid contributors — is a win/win for a brand. They get to participate and possibly win prizes; you get to enjoy extended reach by tapping into your audience’s audiences (say that 10 times fast). Not to mention that your brand benefits from the social proof of de facto testimonials from their participation.
Plus, to get even more mileage from the contest, you can ask participants’ permission to feature their content on your channels, giving you more content to promote.
3. Trivia Contest
With a trivia contest, you’re challenging your audience to demonstrate what they know. This encourages engagement on your posts and generates awareness for your brand and/or the topic that you’re shining the spotlight on. All you have to do is ask a question and reward those who get the answer correct. That reward may come in the form of a prize or as entry to win a prize.
4. Engage to Win
These types of contests are perhaps one of the more popular on Instagram because they solicit direct engagement as a way to enter. This may come in the form of likes, follows, shares, or tagging people. By doing this, you receive a ton of engagement as a result of the incentive, and this can increase your brand reach.
5. 1 Like 1 Vote
This contest usually relies on user-generated content but takes it a step further. The content gets promoted, and the audience is asked to vote (with a like) on the best entry, whether it’s a song, drawing, selfie, or other showcase of talent/personality. For this reason, your “contestants” are further incentivized to promote your contest to their audiences.
6. Raffle or Game
A raffle is just as possible online as it is in person. You can direct your audience to participate in whatever way you see fit to choose a random number or receive a raffle ticket. At the end, use a random number generator to select the winner. You can also do games such as “guess how many marbles are in the jar” or “how many differences can you find in these two pictures” as a way for participants to win/enter.
7. Offline Challenge
Just because you’re spreading the word of your contest through Instagram doesn’t mean it has to be based or held on Instagram. You can incentivize your audience to do something outdoors, participate in a fitness challenge, or perform some other activity.
Ready to Run a Contest on Instagram?
Now that you know everything it takes to run a successful, engaging Instagram contest, go put your knowledge to work for your brand.
Not only will you end up engaging and expanding your audience, but you’ll also end up with great new content you can use to inspire future content and contests.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
Another info-packed SEO newsletter to keep you up to date on the news, SEO tactics, tests, and TONS more…
We have an exciting week this week, you won’t want to miss a thing…
What Happened on the SEO Vault this Week
Free Tool: White Label Proposal Generator
New DFY Services: Accelerated SEO Setups
SEO Mad Scientist: Single Variable GMB Site Tests
To your success,
Chaz and the Entire Team
FROM THE VAULT – Episode 54
Don’t forget The SEO Vault airs live on the Web 20 Ranker Facebook every Thursday at 4 pm EST.
SERP Volatility Roundup Google Want to Know if Your “site:” Index Count is Inaccurate Emojis Spotted In Personal GMB Reviews New How-to Schema Snippets We Could Be Experiencing An Algo Update And so much more!
No Monthly Fee, Continue When You are Ready Completely DFY On-Page and Technical SEO Exclusive + Powerful Link Building Options Google Data Studio & Rank Tracking Included
Last week we were talking about some GMB site ranking tests. Today we are going to review that test and then talk about a method we have been using to have a lot of fun testing GMB organic website rankings…
So far the results haven’t looked good but we believe that for two reasons. First, the listing has very little optimization. Its just a GMB site that was put up for a new GMB, with no optimization as well.
Second, we added content to the site but didn’t optimize it well.
We believe when the page re-indexed under the root URL vs the UTM URL, is when Google picked up the new content and considered it in the organic rankings. There was a clear shift in ranking when the URL switch.
We don’t believe it was the UTM URL that necessarily ranked better than the root. But of course, we are testing it for next week’s email…
We are now testing the impacts of building social accounts, well optimize citations and a press release. Stay tuned for the final results in future emails…
Moving onto the reason we are running so many GMB site tests. The fact is that it takes seconds to make one, and you don’t even need a verified GMB listing to make & rank it…
Add a new listing (put in any address you want since you don’t need to verify it.)
Go to the GMB Site section.
Click on Publish Site.
And you’re done…
You can post and add images to your GMB, to add them to the site, as well as do the rest of the available site optimization.Using this method we are testing all types of organic variables using the GMB website…
Next week we are going to go over a few of these tests, such as the UTM URL test above and more…
Until then,
Happy Testing!
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I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t describe myself as a “technical” person.
In fact, the technical aspects of marketing are usually the hardest ones for me to conquer.
For example, when it comes to technical SEO, it can be difficult to understand how the process works.
But it’s important to gain as much knowledge as we can to do our jobs more effectively.
To that end, let’s learn what web crawlers are and how they work.
You might be wondering, “Who runs these web crawlers?”
Well, usually web crawlers are operated by search engines with their own algorithms. The algorithm will tell the web crawler how to find relevant information in response to a search query.
A web crawler will search and categorize all web pages on the Internet that it can find and is told to index.
This means that you can tell a web crawler not to crawl your web page if you don’t want it to be found on search engines.
To do this, you’d upload a robots.txt file. Essentially, a robots.txt file will tell a search engine how to crawl and index the pages on your site.
So, how does a web crawler do its job? Below, let’s review how web crawlers work.
This means that a search engine’s web crawler most likely won’t crawl the entire Internet. Rather, it will decide the importance of each web page based on factors including how many other pages link to that page, page views, and even brand authority.
So a web crawler will determine which pages to crawl, what order to crawl them in, and how often they should crawl for updates.
For example, if you have a new web page, or changes were made on an existing page, then the web crawler will take note and update the index.
When the web crawler is on your page, it looks at the copy and meta tags, stores that information, and indexes it for Google to sort through for keywords.
Before this entire process is started on your site, specifically, the web crawler will look to your robots.txt file to see which pages to crawl, which is why it’s so important for technical SEO.
Ultimately, when a web crawler crawls your page, it decides whether your page will show up in the search results page for a query. This means that if you want to increase your organic traffic, it’s important to understand this process.
It’s interesting to note that all web crawlers might behave differently. For example, perhaps they’ll use different factors when deciding which web pages are most important to crawl.
If the technical aspect of this is confusing, I understand. That’s why HubSpot has a Website Optimization Course that puts technical topics into simple language and instructs you on how to implement your own solutions or discuss with your web expert.
Simply put, web crawlers are responsible for searching and indexing content online for search engines. They work by sorting and filtering through web pages so search engines understand what every web page is about.
SERP Volatility Roundup