Social Media has significantly shifted the global paradigm, dissolved the boundaries of communication and allowed people to communicate in a seamless way. No wonder, marketers devise social media strategies to get the most out of it; however, they often face several challenges. Here are a few common issues and challenges that marketers face: Involve employees One of the best ways to market your business is to encourage your employees to promote your business. All you need to do is to ask them to share informative content across all the social media channels. Define your social media goals Set realistic goals before starting your marketing efforts. It will help you to achieve and measure pre-defined targets. Choosing the right social media platform Most people choose a social media platform without carrying out a comprehensive research; they follow a certain platform because their competitors are using it. In the long run it may prove counter productive. Hence, research and analyse before choosing  the right platform for your website. Monitoring Of course, consistent tracking and monitoring is difficult and time-consuming; however, it has its own advantages. Consistent monitoring will help you to re-define your marketing strategy and measure its overall effectiveness. Lack of content Some marketers fails to create inspiring content (textual and visual), which hampers their growth. Hence, it is important to invest time and money in creating and distributing high-quality and business-specific content. Response Due to time constraints, sometimes, marketers fail to respond immediately to their customers, which is a big mistake. Therefore, respond to your customers timely. (According to a study, 90% of social media users communicate with businesses through social media.) Be careful It is a fact that customers leave bad comments, aggressive questions, and harsh complaints; so, without losing control, respond them politely. Visual content Some marketers post textual content only, which attracts less number of people. That is why, it is always good to promote visual elements (such as infographics, images and videos) to gain attention. (According to study, People only retain about 10% of what they read. But, they retain about 65% of what they see.) Monitor your competitors Monitor and study your competitors. It will give you a wealth of insights into their social media marketing strategy and game plans. Develop a powerful social media strategy  Whether you are a rookie or a seasoned social media expert, you should always develop an effective and measurable social media marketing strategy that can give you an edge. But avoid over exposure. So, grow your social significance by addressing the above mentioned challenges.

After the emergence of powerful Internet marketing channels, most marketers have shifted their campaigns to popular channels, thinking that SEO is dead; but the fact is, it is still alive and kicking. According to a report by Forrester Research, organic web search or natural search engine results still  tops traffic sources used by survey respondents. Its report states that this percentage is growing at a steady rate and is expected to continue in the next couple of years. Hence, go for On-Page SEO to gain traffic. Here are a few basics you need to know: Choose the Right Set of Keywords It is important to choose the right kind of keywords  to attract targeted audiences. Of course, it is the basic building block of any campaign. Choose Good Domain Names Many marketers believe that it doesn’t make any sense; however, the fact is, domain names plays an important role. A sound domain name improves a website’s overall ranking. Optimise Meta Data For the maximum output, you need to carefully optimise each web page to make them search engine friendly. For that, optimise Title Tags and Meta Descriptions.

• Title Tags – Titles tags of web pages are like advertisements. Hence, optimise them wisely by following thumb rules.
• Meta descriptions -  Meta Description is a concise summary of the content present on a web page that appears in search results. Hence, optimise it carefully.

Create Unique Content Uniqueness is important. It helps in rankings as well as traffic. However, you need to pay attention to certain essential elements:

• Main content
• Performance
• Authority
• User experience

On-Page SEO for media elements On-Page SEO should take care of other media elements (images, videos, etc.) that may appear in search results also along with content. These elements should also be optimised.  For that, you should focus on:

• File names
• Alt Tags (An alt tag, also known as "alt attribute" and "alt description," is an HTML attribute applied to image tags to provide a text alternative for search engines - Bigcommerce)

Create Specific Landing Pages for products/services Creating and optimising a landing page is one of the best ways to attract prospective customers and visitors. The main purpose of creating specific landing pages is to inform and educate visitors about features and benefits of products or services offered. Sitemaps Finally, never ignore the site map; it makes easier for crawlers to index and find your web page efficiently. So, keep it updated all the time. Bonus tips:

• Keep an eye on the bounce rate of your website.
• Never overlook Google analytics, keyword research tools and monitoring tools.
• Focus on optimisation as well as user experience for better results.
• Make sure your titles and descriptions are accurate.
• Analyse the traffic pattern of your website.
• Study and tweak your strategies according to RankBrain, Google Hummingbird, Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), Search Marketing & User Intent, etc.

The above mentioned On-Page SEO techniques are time consuming, but can help you to achieve better rankings.

• Have you ever wondered why do worldwide business leaders and marketers choose search engine optimisation as their marketing strategy?
• Do you know how search engine optimisation impacts ROI?

Let’s find out… Investment First and foremost, SEO is an investment that grows over time and improves the value of a website. It not only leads to high conversion rates, but also amplifies the overall credibility of a website. Sales  SEO has the ability to improve sales. It not only engages visitors, but also guides them down to the sales funnel, which is the ultimate aim of website owners. With the help of SEO, you can:

• Improve sales,
• Reduce attrition, and
• Improve satisfaction.

Marketing mix  Nobody can deny the fact that SEO gives incredible returns when mixed with other marketing strategies.  That is why most marketing professionals combine it with social media marketing. Buying cycle Many marketers still believe that SEO cannot impact the buying cycle; but the fact is SEO can increase sales without expensive investment. It has the ability to meet business goals, whether your goal is long-term or short-term. Facts:

• 75% of SEO is off-page and 25% is on-page.
• 91% of US Internet users search every month.
• Persuasive meta descriptions under 155 characters increase click through rates.
• The top 5 results get 75% of the clicks.
• 89% of customers begin their buying process with a search engine. (Biznology)
• Integrating PPC and organic SEO efforts results in a 25% increase in clicks and a 27% increase in profits over isolated or disconnected efforts. (Digital Marketing Philippines)

Pricing SEO pricing varies on its magnitude, nature of business, target market, as well as activities involved (on-page and off-page). If you have a big e-commerce website with thousands of products with global target, you need to spend heavy amount,  still it would be affordable compared to other marketing strategies. Importance Marketers should involve SEO in their online marketing strategies because it plays a significant role in:

• Website structure,
• Domain names,
• Content management system (CMS),
• Page structure,
• URL syntax,
• Usability,
• Site assessment,
• Web design,
• Landing page optimisation,
• Testing,
• Content management, and
• Fixing errors and warnings.

Combination of on-page and off-page Yes, SEO is a perfect blend of both on-page and off-page strategies.  This usually involves tweaking of titles, descriptions, improving site’s navigation structure and website designs in order to make it user and search engine friendly. Things to know:

• Search engines are dynamic (they change their equations frequently).
• SEO is an ongoing process.
• SEO helps to maximise traffic.
• SEO can maximise your business in minimum amount of time.
• Both long-tail and short-tail keywords are the important part of SEO strategy.

Hence, it is clear that online businesses need search engine optimisation to increase their exposure as well as revenues.

When it comes to analysing and interpreting data there are many tools that offer exact insight into data and help business owners to take meaningful decisions. Here are a few powerful web data analytics tools: Clicky Clicky is one of the most versatile and user-friendly web analytics tools. It is designed to offer real-time traffic data of a site. Its dashboard is intuitive and provides invaluable insights. Advantages of using Clicky:

• Its features are incredible and help to take immediate actions.
• It provides real-time data.
• This data tracking tool is easy to install and study.
• It has a specific plugin for wordpress.
• It allows you to monitor twitter tags, keywords and retweets.
• It also allows you to perform split-testing as well as A/B Testing.
• Clicky also shows your website’s current ranking.

KISSmetrics This powerful web analytics tool provides complete information about user engagement and behaviour of users. Features of Kissmetrics:

• Real-time tracking
• Behavioural comparison
• Funnel report
• Cohort report
• Design editor
• Revenue report

Benefits:

• Provides vital insight into your revenue data.
• Helps to perform Cohort Reporting (According to Wikipedia, Cohort analysis is a subset of behavioral analytics that takes data from a given dataset and rather than looking at all users as one unit, it breaks them into related groups for analysis.)
• Helps to identify strengths and weaknesses of a website.
• Helps to perform A/B Testing (According to vwo, A/B testing (sometimes called split testing) is  a comparison two versions of a web page to see which one performs better.)
• Allows you to split test different layouts and funnels of a website.
• Helps to monitor visitor’s activities in real time.

Chartbeat This analytics tool helps you to measure as well as improve the quality of web content. It offers actionable insights on how to improve web page layouts, attract new visitors, extend social reach, etc. Features of Chartbeat:

• Real-time audience attention data
• Content analytics (According to searchcontentmanagement, content analytics is the act of applying business intelligence and business analytics practices to digital content.)
• Editorial reporting
• Multivariate headline testing (According to optimizely, The goal of multivariate testing is to determine which combination of variations performs the best out of all of the possible combinations.)
• Historical report building
• API available for use
• Multi-platform tracking

Inspectlet This tool records videos of your visitors as they use your website, allowing you to see everything they do/perform. It is also helpful in seeing the mouse movements, scrolling, and clicking on your website. Features of Inspectlet:

• Session Recording and Visitor Playback
• Mobile Recording and Tracking
• Eye-Tracking Heatmaps (according to Wikipedia, a heat map (or heatmap) is a graphical representation of data where the individual values contained in a matrix are represented as colors.)
• Powerful Conversion Funnel Analysis
• AJAX and Single Page App Support

All the above mentioned data analytics tools are worth trying. Use them to empower your online business.

According to Wikipedia, digital marketing is an umbrella term for the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the internet. As digital platforms are increasing at a faster rate, more and more people use them, as a result, digital marketing campaigns are becoming more prevalent. Digital marketing often includes search engine optimisation (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, content automation, data-driven marketing, e-commerce marketing, social media marketing, social media optimisation and much more. Here is a guide to internet marketing for beginners: Search engine optimisation Organic search (SEO) is one of the most focused techniques that can improve the rankings as well as traffic of a website. Of course, it is time consuming and needs consistent efforts, but if you can execute it in a planned manner, it will add long-term value to your website. SEO may involve editing the website’s content, HTML, and associated coding in order to promote it, which eventually increase the total number of backlinks. These backlinks help a website to gain top rankings. However, it must be noted that SEO is not a sure fire strategy for every website. Your website may require other techniques such as search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, PPC, social media marketing, etc., so choose internet marketing techniques carefully to get high returns on investment. Social media marketing Social media marketing is all about using social media platforms to promote a product or service. Social media platforms help businesses to build a network, stay connected with customers. However, if you want to integrate social media into your existing marketing strategies, you need to develop a scalable marketing model, which may include:

• Selection of the most suitable social network,
• Creation of a  financial plan,
• Selection of target market,
• Selection of products, services, brand(s),
• Approach (active or passive),
• Engagement strategies, and
• selection of performance measuring tools.

Content marketing According to Wikipedia, content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing and distributing content for a targeted audience. "Content marketing is an essential element of successful online marketing and brand-building". As a marketer, use it to improve your customer base as well as brand awareness. For the maximum possible benefits, use videos, white papers, e-books, infographics, email newsletters, case studies, etc. It can turn prospects into buyers. Email marketing According to Wikipedia, it is the act of sending a commercial message, to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. Whether you’re in B2B or B2C business, you should use email marketing to build brand awareness and transform your business. It is the easiest, fastest, safest, cost-effective, visually attractive and the most productive means of communication. and market penetration as well. So, use the above mentioned internet marketing techniques to carve your niche in the industry.

If you are in the B2B environment, you might know that it is quite difficult to find and get new customers. That's why, it's crucial to formulate and execute powerful B2B lead generation strategies. Here are a few powerful B2B lead generation strategies: E-books E-books are one of the most effective ways to attract new B2B leads. Tips:

• Make your e-book downloadable.
• Provide complete information, live examples, case studies, definitions and other details in your e-book.
• Create a portable e-book.
• Use easy-to-read fonts.
• Use high-quality images, references, citations, and explanations in your e-book.

Webinars If you want to generate leads, use webinars because it makes you interact with your customers in real-time. In fact, it provides businesses with an engaging way to reach out to a large group of people irrespective of their location. Tips:

• Choose topics carefully.
• Focus on training, rather than analysis.
• Encourage participants to interact and ask questions.
• Provide incentives to participants to show their presentation skills.

Advantages of using webinars:

• Captures sales leads.
• Maintains good communication with clients.
• Showcases business as an established industry authority.
• Adds value to a business.
• A good way to introduce a business.
• Flexible and economical.
• Easy and convenient to both presenters as well as participants.

Podcasts Podcasts use an audio file in order to share information through computers/portable music devices. Businesses must use podcasts to share information about products or services. Advantages of using Podcasts:

• One of the most effective ways to share company-related information.
• Helps to showcase authoritative presence.
• Making a podcast is a simple task.
• Helps to stimulate learning through creative means.
• Helps to build trust among customers.
• Assists to forge stronger connection with clients.
• These are easy to produce.
• It is the best way to spread brand awareness.

Newsletter Subscription According to Wikipedia, a newsletter is a regularly distributed publication that is generally about one main topic of interest to its subscribers. As a marketer, you must use this technique to generate leads. Tips:

• Try to include an opt-in form after each blog post.
• Aggressively promote your newsletter through social media channels.
• Run regular contests and giveaways.

Advantages of using newsletters:

• Helps to increase brand awareness.
• Helps to position your brand.
• One of the best ways to get  business.
• Helps to generate word-of-mouth referrals.
• Best way to establish credibility.

Free Tools Whether you want to establish your credibility in the market or generate leads, you must develop and provide free tools because it is one of the best ways to provide instant value to users. Advantages of providing free tools:

• Attracts customers.
• Helps to resolve their problems.

Infographics Create infographics to showcase data/information in an engaging way. In fact, it is a great way to attract and engage users. Benefits of Using Infographics:

• Helps to create brand awareness.
• Helps to improve understanding of users.
• Visually appealing Infographics improves sharing as well as generates leads.

So, use the above mentioned B2B lead generation strategies to thrive in B2B landscape.

According to a report, there are over 966 million websites trying to attract customers. So, you can  imagine the kind of competition. However, with the help of proven techniques you can increase a website’s traffic. Here are a few effective techniques: Understand your visitors Perform an audience analysis - analysis of their demographics, age, interest, expectations, etc. Use any of the web analytics tools; however, experts prefer Google analytics. Understand - you are what you publish Publish up-to-date and useful content. So, invest time and money to create helpful content. For better results, organise brainstorming sessions, focus on current trends, or keep a track of news. Tips:

• Write evergreen content.
• Address specific problems.

Get the industry experts Collaborate with industry leaders. Seek their suggestion about your website/blog. It is the most effective way to attract readers and make them loyal and help you to reach to a larger audience. Visuals are the Key According to a study, people remember 80% of what they see. Hence, it is always better to use visual information. Hence, create high-quality infographics, videos and memes. For better results, use Canva, piktochart, powtoon, Camtasia, etc. Tips:

• Use a winning combination of text and images.
• Use high resolution graphics.

Pay attention to your website’s design Most marketers overlook their websites’ design; however, it must be noted that it plays an important role in attracting customers. You must use user-friendly designs, features as well as layout in order to improve the overall UX of your website. Tips:

• Focus on the layout.
• Use logos.
• Simplify navigation.

Optimisation Of course, you need to optimise every element of your website in order to gain substantial benefits. Proper optimisation will help your website to attract visitors. Tips:

• Improve site’s speed.
• Optimise images and content.

Notify Your Audience about Changes Always notify your audiences about new features, articles or discount offers. You can collect personal data (email id) to send newsletters and let your visitors know about new elements on your website. Remember, users always look for useful information, if you provide them what they are searching for; you will win their trust and enjoy incredible benefits.

Social media is one of the best ways to achieve substantial return on investment. It helps business owners to attract traffic and nurture leads. Finding the right social media platform is a trick.  Tumblr, a dynamic blogging platform, can help your cause in a big way. Here are a few tips to achieve traffic through Tumblr: Post All Types of content Unlike any other social networking site and blogging platform, Tumblr offers an opportunity to post multiple types of media content, such as:

• Text
• Photos
• Quotes
• Links
• Audio files
• Video, etc.

You can post stuff related to your business. Add Relevant Tags Tags on Tumblr are very essential because it helps users to find your content. In fact, it is wise to add as many (relevant) tags as possible to your posts to make them visible across the platform. You also need to carry out a research to bring variations in your tags. Create a Professional Profile You must remember that when it comes to social media, your profile is your business card. Hence, create an excellent profile with every possible detail of your business. Be Active If you are active and regular you are bound to succeed. It is better to post a link/image/video daily to show your presence. In this way, you can engage as many people as possible. Interact with Other Users Another technique to become a popular and active brand on Tumblr is to interact with other users and improve network.  So follow them, like their comments/posts, re-blog their stuff, etc. Focus on Quality It is very important to focus on quality content. However, if you have nothing to post, do not post for the sake of it. Invest some time in research and create relevant and informative content for users. Blog Around a specific subject Of course, nobody will guide or limit you; however, for the best results, narrow down your choices and write content around a specific topic. Advertise Yourself Tumblr allows you to place ads in your posts. Use it to advertise your website/blog, or your products or services. No doubt, it is an excellent way to promote your business and get your words out. Tips:

• Keep your blogs simple and clean.
• Post according to your business strategy.
• Be creative and focused.
• Share pictures, reviews and short comments.
• Share high quality graphs, charts and infographics.

No wonder, people are using Tumblr in a big way.

Converting visitors into customers is not a joke. It needs proper planning and marketing strategies.   However, the arrival of modern conversion tools has made it a bit easier. Here are a few effective tools to use: Bounce Exchange This powerful software helps to track the cursor movement of every visitor in real-time. Features of Bounce Exchange:

• Automated customer acquisition
• Website behavior analysis
• Tracks visitors’ cursor movements
• Customer retention tools
• Visitor targeting into strategic buckets
• Mobile & tablet integration
• Full service campaign management
• Site abandonment time tracking

Picreel The main objective of this software is to convert web traffic into leads. It also helps in reducing shopping cart abandonment rates. Features of Picreel:

• Exit offers
• Insight Analytics
• A/B Testing
• Mail Marketing Integration
• E-Commerce Integration
• Design Service
• Unique Technical Customisation

Benefits:

•  Prevents visitors from leaving your website.
• Helps to get more leads.
• Helps to improve conversion rate of your landing pages.

ManageEngine Exchange Reporter Plus This is a web-based analysis and reporting solution for Microsoft Exchange Servers. Features:

• Exchanges Email Traffic Analysis
• OWA Usage Statistics
• Mailbox Size and Growth Reporting
• Mailbox Permission Reporting
• Mailbox Content Tracking
• Mailbox Property Changes Auditing
• Exchanges Server Reporting
• Exchanges Server Auditing
• Storage Growth Tracking

VePlatform This is the most popular Website conversion, analytics & engagement application suite. Features of VePlatform:

• Website integration
• Social network marketing
• Social media integration
• Social advertising
• Social media metrics
• Web analytics and sales tracking
• Multi-channel marketing as well as advertising management

Benefits:

• Helps to lower customer bounce rate.
• Helps to improve the overall efficiency of a business.

Email Validation This tool provides a complete, easy-to-use set of features to scrutinise email addresses for accuracy and authenticity. Features of Email Validation:

• Improves your email reputation
• Increases your inbox delivery rate
• Removes invalid and problematic email addresses
• Validates and repair email addresses

Benefits:

• Helps to verify email addresses in real-time.
• Helps to safely remove bad email addresses.

OptinMonster OptinMonster is a famous cloud-based solution for lead generation and marketing automation. Features of OptinMonster:

• A/B split testing
• Page-level targeting
• Sidebar forms
• After post & inline forms
• Campaign scheduling
• Drag-and-drop form builder
• Behaviour personalisation
• Visitor segmentation
• Content locking

Benefits:

• Helps to improve conversion rates.
• Helps to test website designs.

SugarCRM This popular customer relationship management software helps you to acquire new customers, forecast revenue, monitor performance and much more. Features:

• Email integration
• Marketing automation
• Social CRM

So, use the above mentioned tools to convert visitors into customers and improve your business performance.

Studies show companies that leverage SEO tools for content marketing and focus diligently on content promotion perform better. Here are a few SEO tools to improve your content marketing effort. Squirrly This popular WordPress SEO plugin helps you to conduct keyword research. If you want to write user friendly content, use this tool. In fact, it also helps you to optimise content and enables you to measure the success of  content optimised. Google Keyword Planner This tool is primarily associated with pay-per-click (PPC) and SEO model; however, you can also use it to improve your content marketing efforts. You can use it to :

• Search for new keywords and ad group ideas.
• Get search volume for a list of keywords.
• Analyse the popularity of key phrases.
• Get new keyword ideas.
• Choose long tail keywords for content marketing.

Google Trends Google Trends displays the popularity of a given "search term"; it shows complete details about how often people search for a keyword and their location as well. Google Trends has many features (such as trending searches, trending on YouTube, top charts as well as Google correlate, etc.), which are useful for content marketers. Ahrefs Content Explorer One of the best ways of creating high-quality and valuable content is to find the most shared content in your niche and follow their footsteps. Content Explorer by Ahrefs helps you do this in a seamless manner. It helps you to explore top-performing content pieces in terms of:

• Social sharing
• Keywords used in  content, etc.

This tool is pretty easy to use. Google Analytics Google Analytics is designed to measure the effectiveness of your content.  It also helps you to uncover deeper and more-actionable insights for better content marketing. Quick Sprout You can use Quick Sprout for content marketing purposes along with improving your site’s traffic. You can access to the rich data in order to improve your content marketing efforts. Content Marketer This is web-based content marketing software for content marketers. It also helps to improve traffic. Features:

• Content marketing software
• Finds and contacts influencers through emails
• Proven and pre-tested email templates
• Scheduled emails

Outbrain This is a robust content promotion tool, which helps you to promote your content on the web's largest publisher sites, including CNN, TIME, etc. Features of Outbrain:

• Content recommendation optimisation
• Video recommendation display
• Native campaign support
• Real-time recommendations

All these SEO tools are effective to track and optimise your content marketing campaign. So, use the above mentioned SEO tools to accelerate your content marketing efforts.