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Big Five: A Glance at Top Social Media Platforms in 2018

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Top 5 social media platforms in 2018

When Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of Vayner Media said, “Market like the year you are in,” he certainly found the social media element missing from the digital marketing landscape. However, things have changed in these years, and now, almost every business believes in the power of social media. Businesses are claiming their social media presence with unprecedented fervor. Whether it is the new addition to the fleet of your local car rental service or just launched summer collection from your favorite clothing brand, you will see glimpses of these in your Instagram stories or Facebook newsfeed almost every day.

Social media users grew into a 3 billion community last year with no signs of slowing down. But, not all of them are available at all social media forums. Looking into the individual users of social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc., there are significant demographic and audience differences that can make or break your social media strategy.

The part of the problem that still persists is that social media is often thrown off as a collective term with a little emphasis on its individual platforms. While it is important to be on social media, it is undoubtedly more important to be on the right social media platforms.

Social-Media-Monthly Active-Users-Stats

So, are you wondering what it is like to market in the year 2018? What platforms matter the most?  Where should your focus be? Find out the answers.

Team SMM at ESP Inspire is here to explain the social media marketing landscape with insights to big five platforms.

  • Facebook – The Jack of All Trade

There cannot be a discussion of social media without mentioning Facebook, the largest of any social media platform. Facebook is the first and only platform yet to cross the 2 billion user milestone, and there are more than one billion monthly active users as of January 2018. The active mobile users on Facebook are above 1.5 billion. Not to forget that Facebook Messenger, a chat app is closely behind the Facebook with 1.3 billion active users.

The sheer numbers indicate that Facebook is too big to ignore in 2018 and coming years.

Facebook is playing an incredible role in connecting businesses with customers, and it is the hub of social conversations. From customer feedback to paid marketing, Facebook is a promising marketing tool to meet the business goal.

Looking at the demographic distribution of the Facebook users, almost 29% of Facebook users are 25-34 years old while another 18% are between 35-44 years old. The number of active users below 24 years is 17%. What does it mean for small businesses? It means that if your target audience is between 25-44, it is time to gear up your Facebook game. But, if your key demographics are in their teens or early twenties, your major followers are somewhere else.

So, if you haven’t already, it is time to claim your Facebook space and pour it with good quality content and fun posts. Use latest trends to create exploding conversations and do not forget to experiment with chatbot features of the messenger. And mind you, what happens on Facebook stays on Google!

  • YouTube- The Ace of Video Content

As a digital marketer, you would have heard the buzz about video marketing and how it is quickly becoming the single most important influencer. According to a research in 2017, 31% of respondents rated video as their favorite type of content, making it the top choice among respondents.

Well, if you know about video marketing and video content, there is hardly any chance that you have not experimented with YouTube marketing.

As of 2018, YouTube’s has officially reached to 1.5 billion users, making it the second most popular platform after Facebook and Facebook Messenger. The whopping figure also indicates that almost half of the internet users are already on YouTube. Furthermore, more than half of the YouTube views come from the mobile devices, and it is the more popular than any other Cable TV channel among 18-34 and 18-49 years old.

Not just a video content platform, it is time to consider YouTube as a full package. It is a search engine as well as a social media platform. Thousands of search queries are entered directly on YouTube every day and another million utilize Google’s video search feature to land on YouTube.

So, if you are in the year 2018 with powerful branding ideas and want to target teenage to middle age consumers, it is time to take the reins of your YouTube channel in your hands and build a failproof YouTube marketing strategy.

Instagram- The Picture Perfect of Social Media

Launched in 2010, Instagram has risen to the hallmarks of popularity quickly in less than a decade. Rising to the occasion, it has become the third biggest platform for social media marketing and a hub of activity in the marketing world.

As of 2018, the Instagram has 800 million monthly active users with more than 500 million daily active users. Instagram’s ‘stories’ feature has 300 million daily active users.

Back in 2016, Instagram reported that its users share more than 95 million posts every day, gathering up to 4.2 billion ‘like reaction’ every day which reflects the powerful engagement of this platform.

Now, let’s have a look at the Instagram’s key demographics. 68% of Instagram users are female, and almost 31% of American women use Instagram as compared to 32% of the total male Instagram users and 24% of American men. The major population of Instagram users is between 18 to 29 years old, making up a large chunk of 59% and another 33% are between 30 to 49 years old. One of the most important thing that digital marketers must carve on their mind in 2018 is that Teens love Instagram and find it the most important social network.

The numbers do not just stop here! Almost 71% of US businesses have their presence on Instagram among the total 8 million business profiles. 7 out of 10 Hashtags on Instagram are branded, and a post with Hashtag gets 12.8% more engagement. While 200 million users visit at least one business profile every week, the top brands choose to stay highly active on Instagram by posting 4.9 times a week. Instagram also has the highest interaction rate of 22.3 per thousand followers as compared to 5.99 on Facebook and 0.83 on Twitter.

In the age of the video and picture, Instagram is a perfect opportunity to spread visual content among a highly engaging audience.

What does all this mean for your business in 2018?

Only one thing that there is no way around the Instagram. If you have not yet, it is time to sign up and start telling your visual story to the young audience, but do not forget the hashtag.

Twitter- The Buzz Creator

As a digital marketer of 2018, you cannot ignore twitter. Twitter is where the hashtags begin, and stories evolve. It is where the well-educated, knowledgeable and affluent millennial sit together to generate conversations powerful enough to send ripples across other platforms. But, as a social media marketer, data is your best friend. So, what does twitter’s landscape look like in 2018?

The twitter’s official numbers of active users have reached to 330 million in 2018 with 100 million daily active users. Almost one-fourth of all internet population uses Twitter, and 67% of America population has twitter accounts.  80% of Twitter users are also mobile users. Twitter reported 500 million daily tweets three years back and has only announced hundreds of thousands of tweets ever since.

Twitter’s demographics show that the platform is specifically popular among affluent millennial. It is also a gender-balanced channel with 24% of all internet male users on the twitter and 21% of all female internet users using Twitter. 37% of the users are between 18-29 and 25% are from 30 to 49 years old, making it a popular platform among millennial.

Exploring the business marketing on Twitter, an average Twitter user follows five businesses and 77% of Twitter users feel positive about a brand with twitter presence. The twitter is a popular social media networking platform among SMBs and US businesses with 65% of US companies with 100+ employees using twitter marketing, and 92% of companies tweet more than once a day. The twitter engagement also looks promising as 80% of Twitter users have mentioned business in their tweet. Twitter’s distinct influencing power with almost 81% of world’s leader on Twitter is not just limited to politics, but businesses too.

So, if you believe in content marketing and want to utilize the power of conversations, it is time to talk the tweet and retweet.

 LinkedIn- The Professional Leader

So, what platform makes it to the last position of the ESP Inspire’ Big Five list? Not so surprisingly, it is LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is increasingly getting popular among digital marketers for its reach and effectiveness among digital marketers. As the twenty-fifth most popular website on Alexa, LinkedIn has 500 million profiles with 260 million monthly active users. A startling fact is that more than 133 million users of LinkedIn are from America.

Coming to the demographics, 31% of men and 27% of women internet users use LinkedIn which means that 56% of LinkedIn users are male while another 44% are females. The age group is evenly split among 18 to 49 with 34% of people between 18-29 and 33% of people between 30-49. 35% of people on LinkedIn are employed, and almost 70% are withdrawing an annual income above $50,000.

A major population of LinkedIn users is in the decision-making roles in their organizations, making LinkedIn extremely beneficial for B2B marketers.

So, mark 2018 to be the year of your LinkedIn marketing integration. Build up your connections and utilize group feature to develop awareness and recognition in the circles relevant to your industry.

Take Home?

Comparison of Top 5 social media platforms
Comparison of Top 5 social media platforms

So, digital marketers, are you prepared to steam up your digital marketing strategy with these latest statistics for 2018?

The social media landscape in 2018 is full of opportunities for digital marketers with roughly 3 billion huge engaging audiences. There is no one formula fits for all when it comes to social media strategy and channels. The best approach is to claim your presence on all top five platforms and start building your fan base with individual yet integrated strategy. Use latest demographics to tweak your content and update your profile to create lasting impressions and continuing relationship with your customers.

13 Off-Page Proven SEO Hacks
Best SEO Tips, Search Engine Optimization Techniques

13 Proven Off-Page SEO Hacks

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The Search Engine Optimization AKA SEO has been around for a long time in the world of internet and digital marketing. If you are a blogger, a vblogger, an internet marketer, or simply own a website for your business, you would have heard the word and its magic by now. However, with little clarity and a lot of myths around the subject, you may still be wondering about what exactly is SEO and does it work? If you are the tech savvy person, you may be more interested in knowing about how it can be done rather than just what and why. To answer the first part of the question, I would reiterate to the most frequently used definition of the term that SEO is a digital marketing strategy to rank the website higher in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) and draw more traffic. To get an answer to your second question, I would suggest you read about its importance for small and medium businesses. Coming to how website optimization is done, there are two components to every SEO strategy, On-page SEO, and Off-page SEO.

On-page SEO includes all the on page strategies that can enhance website’s ranking, for example Content Management, internal linking etc.

Off page SEO includes all of the Off page strategies which increase the credibility and ranking of the website and include blogs, article submission, directories and so on.

According to the Search Engine Land, both the components make up a successful strategy, and the balance between on page and off page techniques vary from website to website. You can read more about On-page Vs. Off-page SEO. There is already so much said about On-page SEO techniques and how it can fetch desired results. So, I will directly jump to the off-page strategies. I have compiled a list of 15 off-page SEO hacks that are really helpful in improving the rank of the website, and I will discuss them one by one in this post.

  • Blogging-the king of all:

Blogging is not only the best way to show off your talent, but it is also one of the best ways to improve the search engine ranking. Adding a blog page to your website and frequently adding valuable content on the page can help you to get visitor’s attention. Visitors come to your website for information and original content, and when you meet their needs, they are going to come back again. Other than this, the blog is an opportunity to update website’s content more frequently as the crawlers crawl new content posted in the blogs. Usually, website’s content is written once and is not regularly updated which can compromise website’s visibility in SERPs. Adding a blog page guarantees not only the attention of the reader but also the attention of the crawlers. You can write about the latest trends in the industry or can blog about information content consisting of pictures, videos, tutorials, and infographics.

The blog can further be submitted directories for niche blogging to develop a network of backlinks and get more traffic to your website. But, adding unique and original content is the key to successful blogging.

  • Do-Follow blogs:

You want to build more on blogging for website optimization; blog marketing is the way to do it. You can write comments on others’ blogs within the same niche and paste the link to your website. Known as Do-Follow blogs, these blogs let you write your signatures with a link to your website. It works as back linking as the crawler can reach to your website and it also builds up your reputation in the field as a person of knowledge and authority which will help you to grow your readership.

  • Social Media Websites:

Social networking websites mean real business these days. The internet world is almost taken over by social networking websites including Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and so on. According to the Neil Patel, “the online marketing guru, more than 70% of the content sharing on the internet happens on social networking websites”. You can create your personal and business profiles on the social networking websites and simply signing up can open opportunities for connecting with people from your industry and grow your professional networks. The Social networking websites are also an excellent way to share and promote your website and enhance its online reputation. You can add links to your website in the tweets and posts and can share your blogs with friends and professional networks. If you are good with producing multimedia content, then you can get instant attention from hundreds and thousands of followers.

With minimum barriers and approval requirements, social networking is a great off-page technique to enhance your website’s ranking.

Social Media Optimization

  • Search Engine Listing:

Why wait for the crawlers to find you online when you can submit your website to the top rated search engines including Google, Yahoo, Bing and so on. The crawlers can take up to days or even months in finding your website and listing it, but direct search engine submission is a good technique to save time and be recognized immediately.

  • Local Listings:

The local listing is a great off-page technique to project your website in the local market and avoid the unnecessary global competition. If you are based in Los Angeles, then your focus also should be SEO company Los Angeles rather than targeting the Wales, England, or even Missouri. The search engines have already created local directories to help their users in accessing local results. You can catch up on the trend by listing your website in Google Maps, Yahoo Local or other such local directories. Using Google’s local listing is also a good way to begin the process. You can read more about the benefits of local listings and how it boosts the online presence.

SEO company Los Angeles

  • Article Submission:

It is one of the most commonly used off-page technique which works. There are some of the highly reputed article directories such as Ezine, Wikihow, Go-Article which draw millions of readers every day. Submitting the article on these directories with a link to your website can significantly enhance back linking and online reputation. However, these directories have their writing guideline which makes it difficult to publish the content. The approval process can also take days before final submission.

  • Business Ratings:

It is an era of reviews and ratings. The readers and visitors have become smart enough to read reviews before visiting the website. So, a good off-page technique can be to write business reviews for others on the websites like RateitAll, Shvoong, Epinion or specialized consumer review websites such as Zagat for restaurant reviews or Outdoor Reviews for outdoor activities. You can ask others to write you reviews which can build your reputation in the industry.

  • Link Baiting:

Link baiting involves exchanging of links between websites and attracting indirect traffic. If you are producing high-quality content generating readership, you can let other websites to place a link to your website. You can also do the same by placing links to other relevant and popular content that you find on others’ websites. It is kind of a goodwill gesture to enhance link mapping.

  • Social Bookmarking:

Social bookmarking websites are used by individuals to save, edit, organize, and share websites, content, or blogs online. The websites like Twitter, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg, and newswire allow the users to share websites and content and project their website to people with similar interest and taste. The social bookmarking quickens the crawling process and results in deeper indexing which means more visibility and more traffic.

  • Forum Marketing:

Building reputation in the online niche forums always pays off as a good link building techniques. You can answer questions, share information and can stay tuned to the latest trends by signing up niche forums. When you actively participate in these forums, you emerge as a person with knowledge and authority in the subject matter, and people want to read you more.

  • Multimedia Content Sharing:

Even as a simple internet user with no previous experience in SEO, you would know about the virality of some photos and videos. Now and then a video or picture goes viral on the Facebook and Twitter resulting in instant recognition. If you can produce attractive, informative infographics, videos or even sarcastic memes for your website, you can share them on Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Vimeo and other such multimedia forums. If your website was only showing in web searches previously, it would start showing in the images and videos results. It means that people will have more ways to find you and visit your website.

  • Answer Questions:

People are asking questions about your specialized field and it is good to answer them. On the websites like YahooAnswer and Ask.com, people ask various questions. By signing up on these websites, you can answer people and ask questions. You can also place a link to your website in the reference section which can navigate visitors to your website.

  • Directory Submission:

Brian Dean from Quick Sprout pointed out that directory submission is an old school SEO strategy, but if done right it can get quality juice to your website. But, you have to put extra focus on the ‘done right’ part. The success is not in the number of the directories to which you submit your website, but the quality of each submission. You have to be extra careful in selecting the relevant category and locality. For example, if a Los Angeles SEO Company is listed in the Yelp’s Kansas directory, it means no quality leads.

So, it is time to get to work and use your tech-savviness to get higher visibility in search engine’s ranking.

Social Media Optimization Solutions

10 Tips for SEOs to Build Twitter Following

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Attracting the genuine Twitter followers organically entails consistent efforts and an eye on the Twitter analytics. A growing Twitter base among the fierce competition and dynamic demographical interests is not a piece of cake; It requires the right content published in front of the right people.

Twitter has approximately 319 million monthly active users, and the total number of Twitter subscribers is expected to reach 370 million by 2020. The multiplying Twitter users can mean a multiplying followership, but only if you are doing it right.

When I talk about doing it right, it may not happen in one go.

But, I believe you will be able to cook the right recipe by mixing and matching the following 10 tips.

#1- Tweet the Content, Not the Keywords:

Do not be carried away by your Search experience on Twitter. The Twitter audience is different from the Google audience and what works for Google search may not work with Twitter search. So, turn your keywords into tweetable phrases, designed for the right audience.

#2-Test Your Posting Potential:

Twitter offers you the potential to push your posting limits off-limits. If you post one blog a day, you can do just fine with 10 tweets a day or even 20. The two facts save you from being annoying, not every tweet gets in front of every follower, and people follow you for information and knowledge. Keep feeding them!

#3- Get Comfortable with Twitter Analytics:

If you have discarded Twitter Analytics because you are good with Google analytics, you are doing it all wrong. Sign up to Twitter Analytics to follow your own posts, see their engagement, number of likes and shares, also to dig deeper into your followers.

Twitter Analytics tell you about who your followers are, what do they like, what are their hobbies and interests etc. I believe I do not need to emphasize the importance of this information.

#4-Tweet Before It Gets Stale:

Twitter followers love fresh, original and unique content. If you are satiating the hunger for new content, you are on the right track. Be an opportunist! Sell your tweets hot and fresh before it gets stale.

#5- A Customer-Focused Content Instead of Product-Focused Content:

            If you are looking for product promotion through Social Media Marketing, Twitter is not the right platform. Twitter is all about engagement and building personal interaction with your customers. 77% of the followers carry a positive impression about the brand after receiving a reply, and a promising 54% take action being mentioned in tweets.

#6-  Fewer But Powerful Words:

Twitter is a 140-character platform only relaxing the limit for emojis in September 2016.

In fact, you do not have to use all characters. Choose fewer but more powerful words. The idea character strength is 80-110 since 2012.

#7- Harness the Power of Graphics:

When the words are fewer, use original graphics to speak. Use the online tools like Picmonkey, Piktochart, and Visage to create original and attractive graphics to go with the tweets.

#8- Use Relevant Hashtags:

            Twitter and Hashtags go hand in hand. Use relevant hashtags with your tweets, ones that make sense.  A long and senseless hashtag may not be worth the effort.

#9-  Begin A Hashtag Campaign:

Tweeting about the trending hashtags is just one of the way to play with hashtag power. Begin your own unique hashtag campaign. A creative hashtag campaign can bring hundreds and thousands of followers to your account.

But do your homework well to avoid boring the ones you already have!

#10- Post but Also Retweet:

Social media platforms are about sharing. So, instead of just relying on your own posts, try retweeting the original and interesting material in front of your audience.

A genuine Twitter followership is not easy, but I will quote Mae West’s words here

“I never said it would be easy: I just said it would be worth it.”