But as with any new medium, there are a few best practices that should be followed in order to get the most out of your TikTok ads.

By getting familiar with the platform and understanding how users interact with it, you can create TikTok ads that are both effective and engaging.

7 Best Practices For An Effective TikTok Ad Campaign

Here are 7 best practices for TikTok advertising in 2022:

• Keep It Short And Sweet

When it comes to creating an effective TikTok ad campaign, keeping things short and sweet is a best practice. Most users on the platform are looking for quick, entertaining videos that they can watch on their lunch break or when they have a few spare minutes.

If you try to cram too much information into your ads, you’ll likely lose your audience’s attention. Instead, focus on delivering your message in a concise and easy-to-understand way.

With the average attention span of a human being shorter than a goldfish’s, you only have a few seconds to make an impression. So make them count!

• Use Existing Trends To Your Advantage

If there’s one work TikTok can be defined by, it’s trends.

Hashtags like “#InMyFeelingsChallenge” and “Renegade” have taken over the app, and users are constantly looking for new trends to follow.

As a business, you can use this to your advantage by creating ads that piggyback off of popular trends.

Some of the most popular trends on TikTok right now include lip-syncing & challenges. Utilizing these trends in your ads can help you connect with users and grab their attention.

In addition, you can also use current events and pop culture references to create engaging content. For example, if there’s a new movie or TV show that’s popular, you can create an ad that spoofs or references it. This type of content is likely to be popular with users and will help you stand out from the competition.

• Know Your Target Audience

Targeting the right audience is key to any successful advertising campaign. And when it comes to TikTok, it’s even more important to know your target audience than with other social media platforms.

TikTok users are generally younger than users of other social media platforms. They’re also more engaged and active on the app, which means they’re more likely to pay attention to ads.

But that doesn’t mean you can just target any age group and expect success. You need to know what interests your target audience and what type of content they’re likely to respond to.

Some things you can do to learn more about your target audience include:

• Creating buyer personas
• Conducting market research
• Analyzing your current customer data

Once you have a good understanding of who your target audience is, you can create content that appeals to them, and that will help you achieve your desired results.

• Balance Promotion With Entertainment

When it comes to creating an effective TikTok ad campaign, balancing promotion with entertainment is a key best practice. If you focus too much on promoting your product or service, you risk turning off users and losing their attention.

But if you don’t include any promotional content at all, your ads will be ineffective.

The key is to find the right balance between promotion and entertainment. You want to include enough promotional content to get your message across, but you also want to make sure that the ads are entertaining and engaging.

This can be a tricky balance to achieve, but it’s important to remember that users are more likely to pay attention if they’re entertained. So make sure that your ads are fun and interesting to watch.

When you start, your priority should be to build a following and create content that resonates with users. Once you have a solid fan base, you can start to incorporate more promotional content into your ads.

• Use Influencers

Influencer marketing has become increasingly popular in recent years, and for good reason. Studies have shown that influencer marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies out there.

And when it comes to TikTok, influencers can be a powerful tool for helping you reach your target audience.

TikTok users are more likely to trust and be influenced by their peers than by traditional celebrities. So partnering with TikTok influencers who have a large following in your target market can be a great way to reach more users and get them interested in your product or service.

When choosing an influencer to partner with, it’s important to make sure that they’re a good fit for your brand. You want to make sure that their values align with your own and that they have a positive reputation.

It’s also important to consider the size of their following. There’s no magic number, but in general, you want to choose an influencer who has at least 10,000 followers.

• Use Hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to reach more users and get your content seen by a wider audience. When used correctly, hashtags can help you target specific groups of users and make your content more discoverable.

There are two main ways to use hashtags on TikTok: in the caption of your videos and the comments section.

In the caption, you want to use hashtags that are relevant to your video, and that will help users find your content. For example, if you’re posting a video about makeup tips, you might use hashtags like #makeuptips or #beautytips.

You can also use TikTok’s built-in hashtag feature to find popular hashtags that are relevant to your video. To do this, just type in a keyword related to your video and TikTok will show you a list of popular hashtags.

In the comments section, you want to use hashtags that are relevant to your brand. For example, if you’re a clothing company, you might use hashtags like #fashion or #style.

You can also use branded hashtags to run contests or promote special offers. For example, you could ask users to post a video using your hashtag for a chance to win a prize.

• Get Creative With Ads

One of the best ways to make your TikTok ads more effective is to get creative with them. There are several different ways you can do this, but some ideas include using creative visuals, telling a story, or using humour.

TikTok is a visual platform, so it’s important to use high-quality visuals in your ads. This can be anything from professionally-shot video footage to creative graphics and images.

Another way to make your ads more effective is to tell a story. People are more likely to remember and respond to an ad that tells a story than one that just presents facts and figures.

And lastly, don’t be afraid to use humour in your ads. TikTok users are more likely to engage with ads that are funny and entertaining. Just make sure that the humour is appropriate for your brand and target audience.

Wrapping Up

TikTok has shown itself to be a powerful marketing tool and it’s only going to become more popular in the years to come. By using the tips in this article, you can start to create TikTok ads that are more effective and that reach a wider audience.

Most scheduling tools come with an automated system that allows users to customize their own appointments. The software makes updating appointments easy and intuitive. Customers can see when they’re available, and they can even change their preferences in real-time. Using an automated system reduces the need to hire full-time staff. It is also scalable for businesses. The following are the benefits of utilizing Automated Appointment scheduling:

1. Appointment Bot scheduling improves customer service. 

It reduces the number of no-shows by enabling customers to book appointments from their mobile devices. It also helps you manage employee hours and helps you run your business more efficiently. It also enables you to create promotions and deals and collect payments when appointments are booked. 

2. Automated Bot software is a useful tool for service-based businesses. 

It can reduce the need for customer service representatives, and it can help in converting visitors into customers. It can be used by small businesses and large enterprises. If you are running a service-based business, it is important to use an online software application for appointment scheduling. This software makes it easy for both to manage the appointment times and to update them.

3. Appointment Bot is easy to implement and requires minimal training. 

It works on WhatsApp platform – one that is familiar to many of us. Its online booking interface and reminders are helpful for service industry professionals. For larger businesses, it helps to include employee scheduling features by connecting with your Google Calendar – allowing employees to better manage their appointments.

Shopify themes help determine how your website looks, feels, and functions to its visitors. By choosing the right Shopify theme for your website, it can help you to build a nice looking store that will effectively attract more visitors to visit your website (Patel, 2021). In this article, we have put together six of the best Shopify themes to help you find the perfect option for your store without spending hours browsing through the internet.

1. Blockshop

With Shopify Blockshop theme, it can make your store look elegant, professional, and stylish. This theme contains an exquisite combination of striking fonts, tasteful colours and a neat layout. This theme is ideal for stores selling fashion and clothing products.  The highlights of this Shopify theme include features like currency switching, a drop-down menu, homepage video and marketing pop-up on all of the pages.

2) Flow

With Shopify Flow theme, it is a sharp, minimalist design that puts your products front and center. This theme allows you to tell your story by featuring a YouTube video. This theme is suitable for stores that have high-resolution videos to promote their products. The highlights of this Shopify theme include features like a homepage video, customized header and feedback option.

3) Pipeline

The Shopify Pipeline theme is a minimalist design theme. It makes good use of full-width layouts and integrated slider controls to effectively display video, slide shows and product catalogue in interesting ways. This theme is a tailor-made solution for stores with large inventories as they can upload multiple images and videos of their products in this Shopify theme. 

The highlights of this Shopify theme include features like products filtering option, homepage video, search and slideshow option.

4) Streamline

With Shopify Streamline theme, it is an eye-catching, high impact theme that will immediately draw attention to your product with its full-screen header video. The theme includes the ability to animate the contents that give your store a sharp and dynamic look while still looking clean and modern. The Streamline theme is a good fit for stores that are selling activewear and athletic equipment. 

The highlights of this Shopify theme include features like story-driven product pages, animated content, a sticky checkout and product filtering option.

5) Symmetry

With Shopify Symmetry theme, it is one of the cleanest store themes. The website’s visitors will be guided deeper into the store by way of a static header image and call-to-action element beside it. There is a clean and easy-to-use top navigation that leads users to items they might be interested in. The theme is suitable for stores that sell commercial items such as scarves, hair accessories, and spectacles.

The highlights of this Shopify theme include features like a full-width slideshow, grid & stream view on collection pages, search option and multi-level navigation.

6) Expression

With Shopify Expression theme, it is an ideal theme for promotion-focused stores with large inventories. There is a clear search bar, a prominent sliding carousel and lists of thumbnails for the products. This theme is suitable for stores that are selling promotional items like beds, mattresses and sofas.

The highlights of this Shopify theme include features like a homepage slideshow, multi-level navigation, grid-style layout and product image rollover.

Choose the Shopify theme that best fits your needs!

Once you have an idea for your store, it will be easier to pick a theme that feels right based on the products. Every theme consists of different features therefore it is essential that you look closely at the features & design specifications of the theme. Think about your business goals and available resources when choosing a theme. Sometimes, all you need is a free Shopify theme to get started. Once your business expands, you may want to consider investing in a premium theme. 

This article should offer a jump start on your way to picking a theme for your Shopify site. If you require additional assistance, contact us and we’ll be happy to guide you through the different Shopify themes that best fits your business strategy. 

Setting up an E-commerce website is easy, but making it stand out among your competitors is a lot of work. Luckily, we have curated a list of plugins to help move your website ahead of the competition.

1. GemPages Flexible Page Builder by GemPages

Do you have a website but with little or no coding knowledge? Look no further! Gempages makes website development possible with a simple drag & drop website builder concept to design professional-looking and sales-boosting sites. It is an affordable page builder that enables you to create responsive home pages, product pages, landing pages and blog posts. You can choose from a wide range of ready-made templates provided by the app, or create your very own page from scratch.

Gempages also includes built-in SEO tools to improve your Google search rankings and syncing with Facebook Pixel and Google Shopping catalogue. Navigating around the app is simple and intuitive – simply pull the element you want and drop it anywhere on the page. 

The app comes with a 10-day free trial, so feel free to try it out before deciding if this is the right app for you.

With the Starter plan at $15 per month, the app includes features such as – Unlimited pages, 2-page types, SEO optimization tools, High-speed CDN, and Email support.

Professional plan at $29/month includes everything in Starter plan plus, All page types, 50+ Block & Page Templates, Fastest CDN, Lazy Loading, Custom Code Editor, and Live Chat Support.

The Advanced Plan at $59.month includes Everything in Professional Plan plus: Up to 3 Store Installation, Synchronization between Stores. And Priority Support.

We recommend the Starter plan for most businesses as it the most cost-effective while providing most of the features required to build your website.

2. Instafeed – Instagram Feed by Mintt Studio

Instagram is a powerful marketing tool for businesses looking to increase their digital presence and reach out to their customers. If you have a business Instagram account, it is hugely beneficial to link it to your website.

Instafeed is a simple to use app that allows you to link your Instagram account to your E-commerce website. With this app, you can integrate, customize, and share Instagram posts with audiences on your website, allowing them to keep with your latest Instagram updates. The best part about this app – It is free! Unless, of course, if you want to upgrade it to the paid versions which include additional features such as IGTV, Product Tagging, Showing of likes, and displaying of multiple feeds.

We recommend the free version for most businesses as it includes all the features required.

Providing a minimalist and elegant Instagram feed to your website, the Instafeed app allows you to use your Instagram content to build social proof and convert your store visitors into customers.

Display your Instagram content exactly the way you want it with the different personalization options available in the app, with no coding skills required. They also have responsive customer support if you were to require assistance.

3. BEST Currency Converter app by Grizzly Apps SRL

Do you have sales traffic coming in from outside of your country? If yes, then a currency converter is a great addition to your Shopify store. Having a currency converter app allows your customers to make easier purchase decisions by browsing your products in their local currency. It also saves you the trouble of having to constantly and manually calculate the exchange rates, with fluctuations happening ever so frequently.

In short, having a currency converter app allows you to conveniently provide your customers with accurate local price rates in real-time.

We recommend BEST Currency Converter app by Grizzly Apps SRL. This user-friendly app looks and works well with any Shopify theme and allows you to personalize the design to suit the theme of your online store – all these at no cost at all! This app is free to install, with the free version being adequate to suit many online businesses.

4. Best Custom Product Options by Relentless apps

If you are selling customizable products or have product listings that require special options, Best Custom Product Options by Relentless apps is your best bet. Charging at $8.99/month, this app allows you to display buttons, checkboxes, images, colour swatches, as well as upload files, input texts, and many more to your product listings. This app allows you to create personalized simple to complex product customization, with no coding required at all!

5. Pre‑Order Manager 2.0 PreOrder by Amai

If you do not wish to miss out on any potential orders while your products are out of stock, you might want to consider installing the Pre‑Order Manager 2.0 PreOrder app by Amai.

This app allows you to set pre-order status automatically as you run out of stock. This way, customers can still place an order, while knowing that the order will be fulfilled once the product is back in stock.

The app can be installed on most of Shopify’s themes, and you can customize your shop’s buttons to change the text to however you want to show to your customer. 

The Pre-Order app enables you to do pro-order settings in bulk and provides you with the option to search and filter products by collection, vendor, product type, pre-order status, or discount in the backend. You can also analyze pre-order sales directly in the app, with the option to export the data to a CSV file.

The app has a free plan available which allows you to turn on the pre-order function for one product, or paid plans which includes premium features.

More information can be found here: https://apps.shopify.com/pre-order

Content marketing is important

If you want to compete with the competition, content marketing has to be a top priority. This is true regardless of the industry or the products you offer. If you want to succeed as a business in the long run, you need to stay relevant in the eyes of the customer. As a small business, you might feel that you can’t afford to waste time creating content. In order to create content, it is essential to understand the user needs – and one can do so by creating a user persona. 

Sometimes – all you gotta do is just ask!

One way to get user feedback is to conduct surveys or polls to find out what users want – like using Instagram Polls on the Story placement (Outcry, 2019). Polls usually have multiple choice options that will enable you to obtain the information you need. You can ask them what kind of products they want to buy, how much they are willing to pay for them, and so on.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is any action done that adds value to the online content that you are creating. The term comes from the words “value-added” or “added-value.” It can include both text and video content and the content can include product or event descriptions, and customer reviews. Once content is created, it needs to be promoted. 

How can you optimize content marketing? 

There are six essential components to content marketing: 

1. Create original and relevant content 
2. Offer value to your target audience 
3. Build a loyal audience 
4. Get them to share your content 
5. Build your online presence to drive traffic to your site 
6. Create content that connects with your audience and offers them value. Do this by using social media, video and podcasts.

Why is content marketing important?

The one thing that all online marketing strategies have in common is that traffic is the main goal. Content marketing is important to get more traffic to your website because it is the primary way to keep your audience engaged and coming back for more. Web traffic is among the top two most-common measurements of success for content marketing strategies (Hubspot, 2021). 

Just as important, according to Forbes.com, is the fact that many of those same people are satisfied with the content they get from the search engines (Forbes, 2020). If you can create some top quality content, people will see it and your site will rank higher on those search engines. If people find your site, the more likely they are to click on it and return again.

Get more website traffic with these content marketing tips

Choosing the best category

When creating content, you must ensure you choose the right category for your blog that would appeal to your target audience. Customers are the best source of topics. It’s here that user personas become important. The purpose of your user personas is to identify the needs and goals of your users. It is important to always address these two topics in your content. Readers are more likely to visit your website and hang around if they are interested in your chosen topic and feel that your information has helped or added value to their lives in some form. You can read more about our article on user persona here.

Provide a solution to a market need

Provide information that your readers didn’t know about on your website in order to make it more relevant. It might mean creating a website tailored to a specific niche, but you must ensure the content has value for the reader. If your content might be seen as giving away a ‘product,’ it won’t be viewed as useful. Identify what kind of content is missing from your website by doing a competitor analysis or a content gap analysis.

Finding weaknesses in your strategy and filling them with outstanding content will improve your SEO and build your website authority, which will lead to more traffic to your website, more customers and potentially new leads (Search Engine Journal, 2021). As soon as you do, you’ll know exactly how to produce great content at the right time and for the right reasons.

Content is never dead

Blogs and websites should be updated every day.  You can create new content by repurposing old ones. So long as it is updated, it will remain current and keep your brand relevant. You don’t have to completely disappear from search engine results or old links just because you haven’t featured content for a while. Content that is good will continue to attract attention and Google rewards fresh content.  Tips to get people to continue browsing on your site? Include a quiz or giveaway in your blog posts. Your visitors will be more likely to stay on your site.

Conclusion

Instead of having the cart before the horse, you should start with defining a content strategy. Prioritize your various marketing initiatives and find ways to blend them with a content strategy. The correct content marketing mix should comprise content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization and display advertising.

In addition to clear goals, see if a particular topic on your blog or social media feed took off, so you know if the piece was a success. A content strategy that is continuously tweaked will help you achieve your goals and measure the success of each topic.

What is website maintenance?

Website maintenance is important to ensure your website is running at full capacity. It is the process of checking your website for any faults and keeping the content updated and relevant (Kevin.R, 2020). Website maintenance is important to avoid these consequences.

If your website is running well, we can then take steps to encourage traffic growth, and improve your SEO and Google rankings.

Why is website maintenance important for your website?

According to Neil Sanders, an experienced digital marketing consultant wrote that failing to maintain your website regularly will result in the following:

• Your website will run slowly and turn glitchy at times
• Tremendous decline in your leads conversion
• Prone to malware attacks

Therefore it is important to maintain your website in order to avoid these consequences.

Benefits of Maintaining Your Website

Security 

Most websites contain thousands of lines of code and rely heavily on server software that hosts your website. Usually, hackers aim to find loopholes in those lines of code to determine whether a website is suitable for exploitation. IT t is essential for you to update the hosting server software with the most recent security patches.

Customer Engagement

The main objective of building a website is to connect your potential customers to you or your business. Hence, recurring website updates with fresh or latest content are paramount in retaining your customers’ attention to your website.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

There is a strong correlation between website ranking and up-to-date content (MDPI, 2019). Regularly updating your website’s content will improve its performance.  Google rank websites that have the most relevant and up-to-date information on their search engine results page. For this reason, you must keep your website up to date with the latest content and keywords to rank well in search results.

Conclusion

Regular website maintenance will keep your website running smoothly and drive more customers to your site. It does not need to be maintained every day, but the longer you don’t update the patches or security version, the more vulnerable you become to hacking and website crashes.

If you don’t understand how or don’t have the time to maintain your website yourself, consider paying someone to update your website for you. At EasiSell, we offer website maintenance packages at affordable rates. If you are interested, contact us to learn how you can have professionals keep your website in proper working order.

User personas can help you understand users’ motivations and needs and benefit your business. If a business simply makes a guess about who its audience is or what they want, they might be completely off base, resulting in lost revenue and customers.

User personas can help organizations better identify and reach their target audience. We have put together this article to assist you in how to create user personas to benefit your business and improve your website UX too.

What are User Personas?

User personas (Patrick.F, 2019) are tools used to characterise users through a combination of characteristics such as age, gender, race, geographic location, and other interests. In short, it represents the target audience for a product.

How Do You Create a User Persona for Your Business?

In order to build a user persona (Talebook, 2018) – it consists of main elements including a Photo, Name, Background and Problems the user persona might experience.

Photo

By uploading a photo, it will help you to build their virtual identity and will be easily recognizable by your team. 

Name

Create a unique name for your user persona. Names have an impact on people’s minds. Select a name for your user persona that your team can take seriously, but is also one that will be memorable. Name and photo for your persona are just as vital since they become the symbol of user persona.

Background

It should include the background of your fictional character including their specific needs, wants, and needs, rather than your perception of those things. You will gain insight into how your company’s products and services fit into your customers’ and users’ lives. What is the reason behind their purchase? How is this supposed to help them accomplish their goal? What particular problem is it supposed to help them solve?

Goals

Next would be creating some goals of the user persona, and understanding what they are are trying to achieve and uncovering their motivation behind the goals.

Problems

Every user persona represents different problems or a pain point they might have. Add all of them to this section to have a summary of the personal struggle each imagined user persona might experience in their daily life. By portraying real people in user personas that have pain points, it enables people to relate to user personas more easily. 

How do User Personas Help to Improve Website UX?

By gathering the data and information in user persona, you will be able to understand the users goals, verify their user behavior and create a website that can accomodate to them.

Here are the different types of web users:

Bullet point browser

Website overviews that are quick and simple are preferred by users who are usually on the go. Hence, you will have to create a user interface that displays a clear navigation, headlines, bullet points for main concepts and key options so that they can quickly retrieve the information.

Detail seeker

Detail-oriented users will want to pay more attention to details. Thus, you can create a user interface that includes comprehensive, well organised text and appropriate links that offer more details so that it can keep the interested user engaged.

Visual seeker

In general, users who depend a lot on visually appealing elements will want elements that grab their attention immediately. Therefore, you can design a user interface that includes visual elements that reinforce the content and emotional tone of the message. In addition, you can present video content/animated content to maintain the user’s interest or use visual metaphors. 

How do User Personas Help to Benefit Your Business and Improve Website UX?

User personas are extremely useful to grow and improve a business. This is helpful for uncovering insights such as how people find and purchase products. Using real data, you can improve the experience for real people.

User personas benefit a business in several ways:

Create consistency across the business

User personas provide a company-wide understanding of your users, ensuring that everyone is on the same page. Across the board, personas help your company to develop a consistent and specific understanding of each target group of customers.

Signal user behavior

By gaining insight into the backgrounds of user personas, you’ll have a better understanding of where your real users spend their time, where they obtain information, and which social networks they thrive in. This data allows you to target and market your products or services in areas where they are most likely to be seen.

Help with user-focused reasoning 

You and your team have created a service or offer you believe will benefit your users, but do they really want it? You might believe your concept is brilliant, but what if you spend time brainstorming and it’s not something that’s actually in demand? User personas help eliminate wasted time and resources by clearly focusing on the needs of the user.

Summary

We had discussed User Personas, how they are developed, and how they can benefit your website and business. If you require more assistance, your professional UI and UX design is just a click away. Get in touch with us for a complimentary 30 minutes UI and UX of your website, and we’ll help you create an amazing user experience, from start to finish.

Social media is a great way to reach your audience, and through that, grow your business! 

There are 3.78 billion social media users in the world, and 4.88 million in Singapore alone (Statista, 2020). An effective social media strategy should be put in place to not just growing your social media followers. It can be a way to communicate updates on new products, engage with your audience and drive traffic to your e-commerce stores. Quality content in your social media feed attracts and retain attention and high-quality content is the key to getting your business noticed.

Why should you use social media to grow your business?

Increase your conversion rate 

Social media is an opportunity to get people talking about your products. It’s also a great opportunity for your business to receive exposure from brand new customers. A study by Global Web Index in 2018 showed that 54% of social browsers use social media to research new products (Global Web Index, 2018). 73% of marketers believe that social media marketing is “somewhat effective” for their business (Buffer, 2019). 

Engage with your customers

A social media profile gives you a platform to interact with your audience in real-time. Many customers rely on social media to research new products before they buy them. With this in mind, it’s best to offer interesting and engaging product updates in your feed. As the saying goes – go to where your customers are. Research from Facebook shows that global users aged 16-64 conduct their product research on social media before making a purchase action (Facebook, 2019).

Improve branding 

People love to see businesses that use interesting and engaging social media graphics. Having great social media graphic design will ensure your content stands out in a sea of other images. An image is the main focus of a blog post for some businesses. When selling a product, you might consider having a fantastic picture of the product in action on your blog feed.

Your image can be so captivating and interesting that readers and followers love it and may want to share it with their friends (thus increasing the brand awareness!).

What should you post on social media to grow your business?

Use positive images in your marketing 

A great image that is positive and evocative of the content it highlights is a good place to start, but the content in the picture is equally important as how good the picture is. You should make sure the image reflects your brand’s vision, its mission statement, and its values, but remember people are drawn to other people: pictures with people gain more attention than pictures without. Research indicates that content has higher CTR when it is human-centred (VWO, 2021).

Shoot a lot of content on a consistent basis 

Social media will become a crucial part of your advertising strategy. So don’t be afraid to post regularly to keep your followers engaged. However, if you have less than 10,000 followers on your business page, Hubspot advises that you post selectively (3 times a week is ideal over twice daily!) and value quality over quantity (Hubspot, 2020).

Don’t be generic 

The key to successful social media marketing is to keep it genuine. The ability to be genuine and to create authentic content can foster the bond between brands and customers and enhancing the brand’s popularity. Customers want to feel like they can relate to your business and your mission. A social media feed is often the first impression of a brand. The more authentic the content, the more likely your customers are to engage with it (Linkedin, 2018).

How to use social media to grow your business?

1. Use influencers 

By tapping into the influencer industry, you can effectively market your business and reach a large amount of your target audience. Engage reputable social media influencers who have a high following and have a loyal following of their own. You can create a strategy that focuses on getting a large number of followers, or you can just focus on getting your audience to a certain amount of followers.

2. Use good content 

Since social media is a platform that takes advantage of the user’s attention span, the best strategy is to create great content that gets people interested and get them to explore your website. If you want your images to truly reach your target audience, you have to share images that they will find interesting. Pictures of families with children aren’t a good idea if you’re targeting university males. Rather than knowing what visuals resonate with your audience, you should learn which ones do.

Conclusion

To successfully integrate social media into your business, make sure you have a website with a responsive design and a well-integrated, professional marketing strategy. Prepare your sales pitches just as carefully as you develop your visual brand identity if you want to stand out. Your brand will have a longer life span if you are consistent and use images and content in your social media feed that communicate your marketing message.

Learn more about small business marketing in Singapore by using social media by reaching out to us. To learn more about social media marketing and how we can help your business, click here.

There are a lot of free content creation tools out there, and every small business needs content marketing. As content and technology become increasingly intertwined, we are always seeking ways to present captivating content to our market. It’s a relief that there are now thousands of tools out there, built to help make your life easier.

Here are six of the best content creation tools for you (if you are not already using them):

The Tools

1. Trello 

The all-in-one collaboration tool Trello – makes project management simple. It is also one of the easiest ways to create and manage content – whether you’re using a paid plan or a free plan (Trello, 2021). Create dashboards where you and your team mates can collaborate and work on projects.

Set up recurring tasks, monitor progress, and see the status of your team or client’s specific tasks. And, with a dashboard that’s packed with easy-to-read analysis tools, you can really get a good handle on the health of a project. You can see your entire team’s goals in one place, quickly give feedback, and have everything your team is working on in one, easy-to-use place. It even offers an analytics dashboard, to help you stay on top of your metrics. You can see what’s working – and what’s not – to stay on track.

2. Canva

Canva is an easy to use, online graphic design platform that creates professional invitations, business cards, social media posts and more using professionally-designed templates. 

The Canva templates can be customized by adding your own photos and graphics. You’re kind of like getting Photoshop for free without the sophisticated editing skills to use it. According to AppSumo, it’s really easy to use (AppSumo, 2021).

There are courses within Canva to master social media and even blog entries dedicated to education like articles on marketing trends, tips to grow your business and tutorials on how to design with Canva (Canva, 2021). 

3. Google Trends

How does one know what is trending in the ever-expanding Google-sphere? One goes to Google Trends, of course! Your content will be more meaningful and relevant because you can find trending topics that were trending prior to your content planning. Over 63,000 queries are made on Google every second every day and Google Trends is a free tool that most marketers forget about (HubSpot, 2021). 

Some topics you can search for include world issues (politics, entertainment, travel), hot searches (top daily searches by countries) and top charts (searches for people, places, things in any particular month).

Use Google Trends to look for trends (and avoid those that are going downward) and as a tool for keyword research. Blog posts should always be updated over time and try to implement the most relevant keyword trending at that time if it is relevant (Moz, 2021).

4. Portent Idea Generator

Let’s face it. Sometimes even the best of us get muddled with a brain fart – and face a temporary lapse of creative drought. 

Portent Idea Generator can help you find that relief for some good ideas. You can easily turn an endless supply of content topics into blog posts with this completely free tool that is simple to use. Using this tool, you can generate clever titles for your next video, podcast or blog post. Simply type in your ideas and then hit “generate” and the Idea Generator will spin up a creative title. Voila!

(Screenshot by author. Taken from Portent Idea Generator)

5. Grammarly

Grammarly is a multi-purpose spell checker and grammar checker that works everywhere Microsoft Word can’t.

It includes an extension for both Microsoft Word and if you are working on content writing on a shared document on Google Docs. The Grammarly app is a useful tool for students, bloggers, content marketers, and copywriters – it reduces spelling errors and enables proper grammar (even suggesting overuse of certain words and plagiarism).  

Individual users can use the Grammarly plugin for free, with additional tools available for a fee.

6. Lumen5

The Lumen5 video editing tool is ideal for blog post writers who want to put video marketing to use right from their existing blog posts and grab the audience’s attention rather than static images.

Among the simplest video creators on the market, it has an unlimited free plan that lets you make up to 5 videos a month, or you can get a premium plan and have access to more features.

Creating videos for content should be seen as an investment – as videos on a landing page can increase conversions by 80% (HubSpot, 2020)! Online video editing tools are becoming simpler and less expensive as well. Even your smartphone can now create some decent videos. Videos encourage longer visits and signal to search engines that your website is full of good content. Videos are great for increasing the time spent by visitors on your site.

Yes! You should check out these tools.

Using the right content creation tools can help you make your brand more engaging and boost sales. Content marketing drives steady results and enables meaningful customer engagement. Our social media marketing packages start from an affordable rate of S$500. Want to know how we can help? Reach out to us anytime.

All businesses need a website, but managing a website has never been an easy task. It involves juggling aesthetics design, good user experience, content management, optimising it for search engines, protecting it from cyber attacks and the list goes on. 

Is there a way that allows us to easily manage all of these using only one platform? The answer is Yes! With WordPress, of course.

Today, WordPress accounts for 18.9% of all websites, and have been used by numerous famous companies such as Thought Catalog, Spotify, TechCrunch, TED and CNN. (CodeinWP, 2020)

What makes WordPress so special?

First of all, it is an open-source platform, which means that the original source code is accessible for users to modify. This gives WordPress a great deal of flexibility and customizability as a content management system and website building platform.

As an open-source software, WordPress has access to more than 50,000 plugins for users to add various features to their websites. However, it will not be ideal to add all of them to your website as this can affect the website performance especially when the plugin is loaded on the front-end.

Let us look at the top 5 plugins to install on your WordPress website today.

1) Yoast SEO

A website is useless if it does not surface on the search engine when users search for it. And we know how complex managing Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can be for many business owners. Therefore, we would like to recommend the Yoast SEO plugin that makes managing on-page SEO efforts so simple and easy. This powerful tool allows you to optimise a page with your choice of SEO keywords.

Set up Yoast SEO today and start optimizing your pages and posts to improve your website’s ranking. Contact our team today if you need help with identifying keywords to work on!

2) Smush Image Compression and Optimization

Images are vital to keep the contents on your website engaging for the audience to read. However, high-quality images tend to be large files that take a longer time to load and thereby slowing your website. 

So, do we use fewer images and risk boring our audience, or use more images and risk a slower website?

With Smush, we are able to get the best of both worlds! This plugin compresses and optimizes your images automatically. This allows you to use plenty of images on your pages and posts without affecting your load time.

3) Elementor

Elementor is a page builder tool that allows you to easily build your pages with sections, widgets and modules. Unlike the WordPress page editor (a back-end editor) that requires you to code then preview or refresh the live page before you can see the changes made, Elementor is a front-end editor that enables you to directly edit the actual page layout. 

We know building a page from scratch can be tedious and time-consuming. And while there are many page builders available out there, many of them are either too costly or lacking the features we need. With Elementor, page building is made more intuitive, simple and more importantly, it is free and comes with a bunch of templates for use!

4) WPForms

Contact forms have been widely used as a means for potential leads to reach out to you on your website. WPForms is an incredibly user-friendly plugin that comes with simple yet powerful features. 

Here’s what the WPForms drag and drop building looks like when you use it to create a contact form:

Upon finishing, you can click the embed button at the top of the window and paste the shortcode into the page where you’d like the form to show up. The forms come with simple styling that tailors itself to your theme, and they are mobile responsive by default.

5) W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache (W3TC) improves the user experience of your site by increasing website performance and reducing load times using features such as content delivery network (CDN) integration and the latest best practices. 

Make sure you install this plugin to optimize your site and avoid frustrating your visitors.

Reach out to us to set up your SEO-optimized WordPress e-commerce website today!