How to Find the Best Hashtags and Boost Your Social Media Engagement

Before we start talking about how to find the best hashtags, let’s do a little review of what exactly hashtags are — this is for those of you who aren’t exactly social media gurus; the rest of you can feel free to skip over.

A hashtag is just a way of labelling and finding social media updates. It could apply to something that’s trending, like #Movember, or it could be specific to a certain campaign, like #CureBreastCancer.

Hashtags started out on Twitter, but now they’re used across all social media. So, which ones are relevant to your niche, and which ones should you use? I’ve given advice on hashtag use and overuse elsewhere; today we’re mostly going to focus on the tags themselves.

There are a number of online tools that you can use to find the best hashtags.

Twitter is still one of the best resources for finding great hashtags, but don’t discount the usefulness of other tools. The following are three of the best — and they’re free!

WhatTheTrend

WhatTheTrend is a veritable wellspring of Twitter statistics and information. It’s owned by Hootsuite, which means that you can track hashtags as streams within Hootsuite. It lets you see trends globally, nationally, and even trends that are specific to your own city. You can track by the day, or by the month. The basic service is free, but if you want more options you can upgrade to paid service. 

Hashtags.org

This venerable service got its start in 2007 as a freebie, and the basic tracking functions are still free — you can see what’s been trending over the previous 24 hours. However, if you want to store hashtags and monitor them over longer periods of time, you will have to upgrade to the paid service.

Trendsmap

To be realistic, Trendsmap isn’t the most exciting tool visually when it comes to helping you find the best hashtags, but it does allow you to see hashtags by city, country or continent on a world map. If your main focus is local, this is a very useful, very practical tool.

Using hashtags effectively

It’s not enough to just know how to use hashtags. You need to make sure that your hashtags are relevant to your subject matter. It’s also a good idea to base your hashtags on popular keywords. Google Keyword Planner is a great resource you can use. You also want to be careful how you structure your hashtags.

After you create your hashtag, read it, read it again, and then say it out loud. Why? Because a bad hashtag can make you an object of embarrassment and ridicule…it’s happened to personalities as wonderful as singer Susan Boyle and companies as big as Research in Motion (RIM).

Measuring the competition

I often head over to Twazzup to see how people are using a certain hashtag at any time of the day. You sign in with Twitter and then enter a hashtag or keyword. You get all the latest results scrolling down your screen, as well as how influencers are using the hashtag.

This lets you see what kind of competition there will be to get eyeballs on your hastagged tweet. Twazzup will also tell you about how many times that hashtag is used in one hour. If you’re using a hashtag that is used 3,000 times per hour, you know two things:

• It’s a popular hashtag, and
• Your post will be pushed off the top of recently published posts very quickly.

Those two attributes play against one another. You want to use a hashtag that gets some use, but if it’s too popular, your tweet might get instantly buried.

To decide what to do in situations like these, you’ll have to do some testing. You can also develop long-tail hashtags and use them along with the more popular hashtags; for example #smallbusiness and #smallbusinessorlando.

Now for a final word: #goodluck!

    Source : http://bit.ly/1ZfVCZp

10 Ways to Boost your Digital Marketing Strategy in 2016

Here are powerful ways to boost your digital marketing efforts in 2016

1. Focus on Mobile Marketing:

Mobile marketing has increasingly become the focus area of every Digital Marketer and Brand, but no one has cracked it completely yet. Brands are still figuring out what sort of Mobile marketing strategy is best for them and how much of it.  But, every marketer needs to understand that Mobile marketing is not just about, Apps and Mobile sites it’s whole lot of other things too and how important is Mobile Marketing for your Company?

Year 2016 will witness Mobile as the biggest digital marketing avenue amongst all, with every other brand, social media & Tech giants designing and developing their products with specific focus on Mobile to get a bigger piece of the Mobile User base. Remember the Google algorithm change that considered your Website is Mobile responsive or not, that’s just 1 example.

So, now is the time for every marketer to up the ante on Mobile Marketing and design new strategies with larger focus on Mobile.

2. Use Identity based Pay-Per-Click:

Google Adwords came up with a surprise for all digital marketers with their Customer Match targeting in September 2015. You can now target people basis their email address and Mobile Numbers, you can now reach new users similar to your customer list with its Similar Audience targeting, which means better and more qualified leads.

It’s more like your Facebook custom audience & Look-a-like targeting option, but even better because now you can reach your existing customers or new customers on – Youtube, Gmail and Search.

3. Engage audience with Live Video Streaming:

Videos are the most popular content marketing medium and this is evident with the engagement of users with Videos and growth of Youtube. (Must Read 9 Content Marketing Strategies that will dominate 2016)

Brands need to break the clutter of thousands of Ads and social media to grab their user’s attention and engage them. How?

The answer is live video streaming, it is a tactic used by few but can be a very impactful content marketing strategy if used creatively to engage your audience.

Meerkat, Livestream, Broadcaster, wirecast cam, periscope are few popular live video steaming apps with social sharing and instant messaging options.

4. Advertise on Instagram:

Instagram Ads should be part of your Social Media + Mobile marketing strategy as it an awesome way to target user’s on-the-go with carousal ads or a 15 second video.

Since, many brands have yet not started with these, it will help you give better visibility due to less clutter.

5. Show Interest in Pinterest:

We know how Pinterest is creating interest amongst Brands with its buyable pins, but soon it would be launching its ‘Animated Cinematic Pins’.

These cinematic pins will act like video snippets when a user would scroll on it. Brands would be able to target specific users basis their interest with these animated cinematic pins.

It would also be interesting to know that majority of Pinterest users (approx. 80%) use it on their handheld devices and 45% of the users are searching for inspiration or while shopping. Pinteresthas already rolled out a keyword heavy guided search last year.

Now it is important for Digital marketers to show interest in Pinterest and promote their Brand and engage with their target audience.

6. Make your Customers your Marketers:

Word of mouth is still one of the strongest medium to increase sales. For a positive word of mouth or let’s say to make you customers as your brand marketers, use your Customers experience and testimonials as content.

Make use of channels like – Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, WhatsApp, Meerkat for your customers to market your brand. Think out of the box…be creative!

7. Content Re-marketing:

Its clichéd, but we know Content is King. Content marketing works, be it engaging users or for your SEO perspective.

So, what is content re-marketing? It is very similar to re-targeting, but the catch here is to re-target your website visitors or let’s say existing and would be customers with engaging content that compels them to make a transaction.

Engaging a user with great content will make them share it further with their family and friends giving your Brand better reach to New audiences.

8. Create an Omni-channel experience:

What is an omni-channel? As per definition – it is a multi-channel approach to sales that seeks to provide the customer with whether the customer is shopping online, by telephone or in a store.

#Snapdeal became the first e-commerce company in India to create an omni-channel experience for its users.

Omni-channel is great way to create a seamless customer experience especially for brands with brick-&-mortar and online sales options.  Digital marketers of such brands can come up with innovative strategies to use this technique.

9. Search Ads:

You must be wondering what’s new about search ads, it’s been there for ages now and every digital marketer has used it sometime or the other. Well, you are right! But, but one should understand how powerful this ad type is…it is the best form of native and pull advertising. Again, what’s new?

For starters, you can target Ads based on demographics of your TG with Search Ads, the only thing needed is to get your Adwords account white-listed by Google for Search Ads demographic targeting (it might take a little more than week for Google to whitelist the account for it) and start saving on unwanted clicks and cost.

I have successfully used Search Ads with demographic targeting in #Pearson and #BorderlessAccess, saving on cost and reaching out to more relevant TG.

Second, with every brand coming out with their own App and with the increasing challenge to drive discovery and installs for their App. It becomes even more important for your App to appear in front of your audiences search results for new apps on Play store. So, how do we ensure visibility? By running search ads or search App install ads on Google play and increase chances of your App discovery and install.

10. Capitalise on Thank You Pages & Transaction e-mailers:

Thank You pages and Transaction mailers are untapped gold mines. They are the most unused elements, which if used properly can lead to increased customer experience, sales and engagement.

Thank You pages can help drive secondary conversions and help engage your customer from lead registration pages on their first transaction.

Whereas, Transactional/ Thank You e-mailers place your content directly in your lead or customers inbox, unlike your promotional mailers that land in the Gmail promotional tab (NOTE: If you check your database at least 60% of your customers would be using a Gmail id).

It has been seen that, Thank You and Transactional mailers leads to a 2x increase in Open Rate and CTR and increase conversions and engagement with a brand. Do not ignore the power of good Thank You pages and Transactional mailers.

This is just the start, digital world will certainly grow manifold in 2016 manifold keeping all digital marketers on the edge to innovate and create something amazing with their marketing minds.

Source : http://bit.ly/1JrSgR9

Keeping in touch. All Social Media links

Kids using secret mobile apps to keep things hidden from parents.

There’s a parenting alert about kids keeping secrets on their phones.

Kids are installing so-called secret apps that hide media like texts and photos from their parents. 

So how do these cyber secret keepers work? One of the apps looks like an ordinary calculator app on the iPhone.

In fact, it is a standard calculator, but when you enter the secret password that your child created and hit the percent key, a photo album appears.

Now there’s pictures hidden that your child didn’t want you to see.

Apps like these are becoming so popular, a county district attorney in Alabama sent out a warning to parents on Facebook. Pamela Casey said a parent called her about "Private Photo"

“You and I know if one child knows about it, many children know about it, so take a minute and grab that phone,” Casey said in the video.

   

Experts say you can keep your kids from these apps by turning off their ability to install apps without your approval.

“The problem with these apps is they allow kids to hide their cyber lives from their parents and sometimes the things they’re hiding can harm them,” Yahoo! Editor in Chief Dan Tynan told ABC's "Good Morning America."

You can watch GMA's full story below or click here for a link:

Source : http://bit.ly/1NWBIRV