Day: August 28, 2022

  • 8 Tips for an Effective Video Marketing Strategy

    8 Tips for an Effective Video Marketing Strategy

    8 Tips for an Effective Video Marketing Strategy

    Video marketing has become bigger and bigger in the digital marketing field today and if you are still one of the businesses that haven’t implemented this strategy in your marketing efforts, you are missing out on a lot of opportunities. In this post, we will be featuring 8 tips to make your video marketing strategy effective. 

     

    Define your video goals

    To begin strategizing for your video marketing endeavor, of course, the first thing you need to define is your goals. What are you hoping to achieve with your video? Are you introducing something new or continuing a series? Are you trying to address a problem and offer solutions? Do you want to create awareness for your brand? Do you want to convince the viewer on what product to use?

    Define what your video goals are and the next steps will flow after that.

     

    Tell a story

    People love stories. It’s one reason why they read long captions, browse photo albums, and watch long videos. In making content for your videos, always keep in mind to tell stories rather than just concentrating on selling a product or service.

    Video marketing is an incredible tool for storytelling as it has the power to convey emotions to your customers that will create the personality of your brand.

    Incorporating stories into your videos will encourage and improve engagement from your audience. Rather than just making bland videos introducing your company and showcasing your products and services, look for ways to tell a captivating story that will have your audience hooked on your videos.

     

    Include product tutorials and demos

    Keep a balance on your video marketing strategy by having product tutorials and demos as well as story-telling videos.

    With video marketing, you can introduce your product, its features, and further explain its use and how it can solve your customer’s problems.

    Product tutorial videos are very helpful for customers who are only a step away from clicking the checkout button. When people have questions about your products or services, they can just easily find and watch your videos before purchasing them.

     

    Show your personality and be creative

    People relate to videos more when they have that authentic feel and character so it’s important to show your brand personality. Showcase what your company is all about in a creative manner, after all, viewers appreciate engaging videos that are full of creativity and personality.

    What makes your business stand out from your competitors? What makes your brand different from others? Highlight those things on your videos.

     

    Listen to your customers and include their feedback in your videos

    One great video marketing strategy is including customer-generated content. People love seeing themselves being featured and this strategy has the potential of making your brand go viral.

    Encourage your customers to create videos using your products or services and then make a video about it and post them on your website and socials.

    When people see themselves in a video, they will more likely share it with their followers and that is free advertising for you to get more reach!

     

    Always include calls to action at the end

    Calls to action are not only for the written content, it can also be used in videos so don’t forget to include them! What actions do you want your viewers to do after watching your video? Do you want them to subscribe to your channel, follow you on your socials, or check out your website? Let them know at the end of your videos.

    Adding calls to action is simple and effective, and this can spark engagement with your audience. So don’t forget to add them to every video you create and publish.

     

    Video Marketing Strategy

     

    Optimize videos for search engines

    As the owner of YouTube, Google indexes YouTube videos. So when you upload to this platform, don’t forget to optimize your videos for search.

    Include important and relevant keywords in your video’s description box. You can include your website link here or any shortened links with calls to action for your audience to take.

    Here are other things you can do to optimize your videos for search:

    • include relevant keywords on your video title, and make it interesting (not clickbait-y)
    • write a comprehensive summary of your video for your description box and, of course, include your keywords
    • add relevant tags
    • add closed captions
    • include a transcript of your video that’s rich with your keyword/s

     

    Maintain a realistic budget for your videos and stick with it

    Every video you create has its own budget and let’s face it, no matter how great a plan is, when it does not coincide with your budget, your video quality will fall short.

    Have a realistic budget and work within that limitation. You can maximize your resources and still come up with great results. Certain videos will be more expensive than others, do your research if there are alternatives and balance it out.

     

    Ultimately, your goal for your videos should be to educate your customers, whether it be about your company or your products, place yourself as a leading authority in your field, and establish a relationship with your audience. 

    For more video marketing-related articles, do visit our blog.

    Need guidance and help with video marketing? Ve Digital offers videography services. Contact us today!

  • 9 Things To Have A User-Friendly Website

    9 Things To Have A User-Friendly Website

    As more and more businesses transition into the digital world, it’s worth looking into the things that will improve your online presence and that is to have a user-friendly website. Aside from leaving your digital footprints through social media, having your professional website up and running is important as well. A user-friendly website is not just a marketing tactic that will gain your business traction in the digital world, it will also be your stepping stone to success. Here are some of the things you’ll need to have to make your site more user-friendly.

     

    9 Things To Have A User-Friendly Website

    Mobile Responsiveness

    As you all might have already known, the world has been taken over by mobile phones, and every day, more and more people use smartphones to access the internet. And that is reason enough why having a mobile-optimized website is necessary.

    A user-friendly website is mobile-friendly as well so make sure that yours is mobile responsive. Make sure that your navigation works fine on both desktop and mobile devices. Optimize your images as well so that your website will load smoothly.

    Scannable and Well-Formatted Content

    Internet users nowadays skim through content while just mindlessly scrolling through their devices. They rarely read web content word for word except when they really intended to search for it. That’s why it’s important to format your content having the relevant key parts of the page easy to determine. Correctly use headings, subheadings, bullet points, and numbers lists to break down your text and make it an easy scan for your readers.

    Quick Load Times

    Isn’t it annoying when a certain page takes ages to load? It would lead you to quickly close the tab and move on to another one. And you don’t want that to happen to you when prospects open up your website. You want your website to be fast-loading because you don’t want your potential customers to lose interest.

    And so to have a user-friendly website, you need to make sure your pages load within 4-6 seconds to ensure good usability. This will not only delight the viewers but will also affect your search engine ranking positively. There are a lot of online tools you can use to test the speed of your website and to get suggestions on what to do to improve it.

    Try out Pingdom to test out your website speed.

     

    User-Friendly Website

     

    Good and Effective Navigation

    When talking about good website usability, good and effective navigation is a priority. Make sure it’s uncomplicated and clutter-free. Limit your menu items a much as you can and consider having a drop-down menu or sub navigations when you are working on a large site.

    Aside from the menu, navigation also includes good internal linking, accurate headers and footers, a custom 404 page, and more. Pay attention to these ones, too.

    Have Search Functionality

    A search bar or icon may be overlooked most of the time, but it’s one of the most useful things on a website. When you need to find something and you can’t see it anywhere you click, you’d want to search for it. And that’s why search functionality is important in a website. It will help your visitors find exactly what they are looking for quickly.

    Eye-Friendly Color Schemes

    In order for a website to look enticing and pleasing to the eyes, it needs to have color. But not just any color, it needs to have the right ones that match your branding. Choose a harmonious color scheme and be consistent with it. Choose colors that will represent and define your business.

    Try out Coolors to generate color schemes.

    Usable Forms

    On business websites, forms are crucial because these are where you generate your leads. Forms are what users use to interact with your site and reach you. To ensure that you get the most out of your website, make sure that your forms are accessible and easy to use.

    Your forms need to have correct labels for all fields, have a good design, use correct validation, and have a display message on completion. Also, try to have a minimum number of fields to fill in.

    Easy to Find Contact Information

    A website needs the basics—a logo, a navigation bar, an about page, and your contact information. If any of these are missing, you don’t have a user-friendly website, you just have a website, a lacking one. Your contact information is important information and if it’s missing, you’ll miss out on potential business.

    Make your contact information as complete as possible. Include your business phone number, email address, business location, and maybe even your business hours.

    Visible Social Media Icons

    Displaying your social media icons on your website adds to its shareability. People like to share what they find useful and exciting. and having your social icons there will make it easier for them to follow you on other platforms to stay updated on your new content. 

    Final Thoughts

    These are the things you’ll need to have if you want to build a user-friendly website. The key to a good site is to have a good user experience so you’ll have to constantly make improvements to ensure that comes across to your visitors.

    Take the time to audit your website and ask your customers for feedback. Don’t stop learning and be resourceful to get things done.

    If you need help with improving your website, VE Digital can help you with that. You can reach out to us and talk to us here.

    For more articles like this, visit our blog.

  • 13 Ways to Get More Instagram Followers

    13 Ways to Get More Instagram Followers

    In this post, we will be talking about ways to get more Instagram followers. If you are interested to learn more about growing your brand on Instagram, then continue reading!

    With over a billion monthly users, Instagram has become one of the most competitive platforms to grow your brand and boost your following. Fortunately, we have curated a list of 13 ways to get more Instagram followers for you to follow!

    There’s is no step-by-step guide by the book to grow an Instagram page, but these practices will help you reach a wider audience and gain new followers.

    13 Ways to Get More Instagram Followers

    Use the Right Hashtags

    The goal of every brand on Instagram is to gain recognition and to attain that, one must engage with your current audience consistently while also growing your number of followers at the same time. Posting interesting, engaging, and shareable content will satisfy that goal, however, in order to begin growing your following, you’ll find that using hashtags in your photos is essential. Hashtags will make it easier for people to get to your content as they search for something specific.

    Just like on Twitter, users choose certain hashtags that are currently popular and discoverable. This will more likely reach new users and thus will grow your reach. However, popular generic hashtags will now help your brand out. What you want is to use the right hashtags that are relevant to what your post is about.

    Do the appropriate research to find the relevant hashtags for your photos that not only describe your brand but are also being searched for on Instagram. 

     

     

    Write Great Captions

    Instagram is a visual platform and it used to be all about visuals. But with the release of the new keyword search feature, captions have become important as well. Long captions were popular in the last year and it seems like it’s not going away this year.

    Sharing a lengthy caption will give more insights to your followers about your post rather than just merely showing them a photo. Having great captions can be an advantage especially when it comes to raising awareness for social causes that you care about.

    When you share more thoughts with your audience, you are building a stronger community. An increase in engagement will improve your post’s performance in the Instagram algorithm and can help you gain more followers.

    Post at the Right Times

    Aside from including the right hashtags on your posts, posting them to Instagram at the right times will largely affect your content’s performance. To do this effectively, you’ll have to analyze what has and has not worked for you in the past. Study your insights and detailed analysis of your posting history and engagement.

    Promote Your Instagram Account on Your Website and other social media platforms

    Cross-promoting your Instagram on other platforms can also help you gain new followers. Aside from promoting your Instagram on your website, link them to your TikTok and Pinterest, too. These platforms have very active users and when they happen to your profile, users will almost always have the tendency to click the links found in it.

    Other platforms you can promote your Instagram include email newsletter, podcast, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube!

    Optimize Your Instagram Profile for Search

    This Instagram hack is very under-utilized and you should definitely try this out this year! Six English-speaking countries including the UK, US, Ireland, and Canada, will be able to search the platform using keywords – a huge game-changer!

    Posts with captions, names, or bios that feature the keyword that’s been searched will show up, even those that don’t have a hashtag.

    Plan your content, organize them, and optimize your Instagram bio and posts for search by adding keywords that are relevant to your posts.

    Create authentic shareable content

    Authenticity is key on Instagram when you want to grow your following. One of the best ways to reach audiences is by creating both engaging and shareable content. When people share your content, they are spreading your message across their followers.

    When your posts are shared, it will get engagements that will help raise your post on the Instagram algorithm. It might also be featured on the explore page if there’s enough engagement!

    A simple click of the Share button makes a difference for a brand’s post, so be mindful of the content you put out and create more meaningful and shareable content.

    Post Consistently

    People have short attention spans and most won’t follow you for what you have already posted in the past but for the promise of your possible posts in the future. Your audience will be interested in what they are gonna get if they are going to click that follow button.

    Having a feed that shows consistency will have a big impact on possible followers.

    Use Geotags to Boost Local Discovery

    Another technique you can incorporate in your post is to geotag it. Make your Instagram posts and Stories discoverable by tagging your location or the city you are in. Locations have their own feed and story, as well as hashtags when you add them in your posts.

    Geotagging can benefit local businesses the most by posting regularly to these feeds and engaging with the posts that are also tagged in the same location.

    Hop on Trends

    Trends come and go, but it doesn’t hurt you when you follow the train and hop on the bandwagon. When the opportunity is there, you can align your content to the trending topics and this can improve and increase your discoverability and engagement.

    By hopping on trends that connect to your brand, you can widen your brand awareness and reach more audiences. Be sure to engage back and join in conversations authentically.

    Run a Giveaway

    One of the best and easiest ways to gain followers on any social media is by hosting a giveaway.

    The best comments to get on any social platform are people tagging their friends to see your post. This not only helps with your engagement but also improves your performance that will boost your post on Instagram’s algorithm. Each tag will bring you a new audience that will likely be a new follower. And the best way to encourage this behavior is by running a giveaway.

    Take Advantage of Instagram Live

    Going live is all the rage these days. In running a marketing strategy on any platform. Live videos brought a way to make it possible for audiences to engage with brands in real-time.

    When you start a live, your followers will be notified and when you finish your broadcast, you can upload it on your IGTv so that those who missed it can still watch it.

    Instagram lives are interactive and your viewers can comment while you are streaming. Acknowledge them as much as possible and find a way to get them to participate with you.

    Work with micro-influencers

    In 2021, working with micro-influencers is one of the best ways to incorporate in your marketing strategy if you are looking to reach new audiences. Partnering with influencers who have 10k-100k followers has the potential of tapping into a really engaged audience.

    Be more inclusive and diverse

    Being inclusive and diverse isn’t just the right thing to do, but also a great way to drive your engagement and follower count. This will then strengthen your brand’s relationship with your community.

    Begin including subtitles to your video content so that people can understand what it’s all about even without turning on the audio.

    Partner with more diverse content creators and show support for social causes in your area.

    Doing these things will humanize your brand and increase brand loyalty. This will definitely increase your engagement and following!

     

    For more posts like this, check out our blog.