Small Business and Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding can be a powerful fundraising tool for personal projects, startups and small businesses who need some financing help. It allows people to seek funds online as a loan for their company that they will pay back with interest over time. People may choose to invest in certain crowdfunds to make a profit while supporting a small business.

One of the reasons businesses choose crowdfunding as a way to obtain loans is that they are often more flexible than bank loans. Getting a loan from a bank can be more complex with a long application process and stricter rules about what the funds can be used for. With crowdfunding it can be easier to apply depending on the website used and businesses have more freedom with their funds.

There are two main types of crowdfunding known as reward crowdfunding and equity crowdfunding. Reward crowdfunding is a way to provide incentives for people to donate their money online such as VIP access, discounts, new versions of products or other rewards. Equity crowdfunding allows investors to provide money in exchange for shares in the company.

The most popular websites used for crowdfunding include Kickstarter which was one of the first reward crowdfunding platforms and is a great option for funding creative projects like films, video games or recording. Another commonly used crowdfunding site is GoFundMe which is one of the largest fundraising platforms with a community of over 50 million donors. These kinds of sites tend to charge processing fees and 5 percent of all funds raised to use their platform.

If you are considering using a crowdfunding platform for your small business it is important to keep in mind that you will need to a marketing plan in place in order to achieve your goal. Overall, crowdfunding can be a useful choice for businesses who need new resources for financial support.

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source https://www.emarketed.com/blog/small-business-and-crowdfunding/

How Does Social Media Assist SEO?

You may not realize how much social media actually assists with SEO Essex. Many of us just think of it as a platform for people to post selfies, updates of their life, and to stay in contact with their friends; however social media plays many more roles than we originally anticipated, including assisting SEO. Let’s take a closer look at how social media impacts SEO.

Brand Awareness

Many marketers believe that the links from your social accounts, such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, has an impact on the ranking of your site. By using social influencers, who use social media more than anyone else, they can post your content with links to your site through their channels or blogs. This link building is a very beneficial way to increase brand awareness through social media.

Social Media Profiles

Potentially, your company already has a social media profile account on various different social media platforms. If you do, this is great, as your social profiles influence the content of your search results. Due to social media profiles having a more personal feel to them, as people can relate to them by having their own profiles, they are a great way to get the personality and tone of your company across to potential clients and customers. You will find that your Twitter or Facebook page will get just as many clicks, possibly even more, than your actual site. So, if you don’t already have a social media profile, make an account, today!

Social Media Is Used As A Search Engine

Not only do people search for things on Google, but they also use social media channels, such as Twitter. People are likely to look up any of your company’s latest news or check out your business through your social media channel, so it is important that you have a clear, and up-to-date social profile, online. Search engine optimisation now includes what is searched on social media, not just through original search engines, such as Google.

More Engagement

Social media encourages more engagement form your users, which is a great way to improve your site’s SEO. If the content on your company’s social media profile is shared, it doesn’t necessarily have an impact on your ranking on Google, however, the engagement from your shared content will assist your SEO.

Engagement online is a great way to improve your reputation online, in addition to it being a way to generate leads for your company.

Google And Twitter’s Partnership

Although we aren’t entirely sure what the relationship between Google and Twitter means for the future of search and social marketing, we do know that we have regularly seen relevant tweets for branded searches in Google’s search results.

Twitter posts appearing in the search results, unfortunately don’t assist your site’s SEO – but it will have an impact on your brand awareness.

Taking all of these points into consideration, social media does assist SEO in ways that you may not have originally thought of. Having social media accounts for your company/business is a really beneficial move to make, as it will improve the traffic that visits your site, through visiting your social profile first.  

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source https://www.emarketed.com/blog/how-social-media-assists-seo/

You Can Still Get to the Top of Search Results

Some of the theories behind SEO can make it seem impossible to succeed in getting a higher rank. The idea that sites with more backlinks rank higher and sites with a higher rank tend to get more backlinks seems like a difficult world to break into. Top ranking sites tend to earn backlinks at a much faster rate than lower ranking sites which in turn continues to establish their rank.

How can lower ranking sites move up in search results if they are not getting backlinks as quickly as top sites? Even though it may seem like a vicious cycle, studies have shown that there actually is no proof that getting links at a faster rate leads to a better ranking. This proves that backlinks are not the only answer to getting results from SEO.

There are many cases where sites are able to improve their rank simply by having high quality content rather than focusing on building backlinks. The most important aspects of a site or article is that they are informational, authoritative and offer comprehensive knowledge. High quality content has the same potential to increase search rank than an article with a lots of backlinks.

Google still ranks content based on its quality above all else and if users spend time reading your content because it proves useful in answering your questions than this will serve to increase your rank. Content with original research and new information will perform better than more cursory content. Improving your “dwell time” or the amount of time that users spend on your site can be one of the key factors in increasing your rank.

Backlinks still matter but if you are having trouble with getting enough of them to affect your rank it may be time to focus on creating high quality content that people will keep coming back to.

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source https://www.emarketed.com/blog/top-of-search/

Alexa, Grow My Business Online

The voice-activated digital assistant created by Amazon known as Alexa, has powerful potential not only to make the average person’s life easier but to help businesses in a number of ways. The growing popularity of Alexa is changing the way that people receive their information which can have a great impact on businesses. Using Alexa can streamline your business processes and also make it possible for you to connect and interact with customers on a deeper level.

Alexa has a number of features that can help businesses become more organized, speed up simple tasks and collaborate on marketing campaigns. Tools like Alexa’s email assistant and scheduling assistant can help make email marketing and other campaigns more streamlined. They allow you to connect with email accounts, search for data, coordinate meetings and schedule events so that everyone in your company can be on the same page for a campaign.

The voice assistant also has some features that make it possible for small businesses to connect with customers when they search for specific information. For example Alexa now has a feature called “skills recommendations” that provides users with information to help them accomplish a skill. Businesses can show up in the results for these inquiries as an option to help with their question.

Now Alexa also includes notifications which can offer a way for businesses to interact with customers by giving them updates even when they aren’t searching for something. Businesses can utilize these features in order to provide customers with valuable information that could potentially lead to more engagement and purchases. When customers find you through Alexa you can develop a more personalized interaction with them through the voice system.

Digital assistants like Alexa ultimately can be useful both as a business tool and an opportunity to advertise online and reach a new audience.

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source https://www.emarketed.com/blog/alexa-grow-my-business-online/

Compressing Video Files – What You Need to Know

Raw and uncompressed video files can be extremely large, and it isn’t uncommon for HD raw videos to require a few gigabytes for each minute. Needless to say managing files of such sizes isn’t easy, let alone transferring them or uploading them to online servers.

The first thing that you should know is that because uncompressed raw videos are so large – most of the video files that you encounter are probably already compressed in some form or other. However in some cases they may still be too large, and you may want to compress them further to make them more manageable.

If that is your goal, you should start by understanding how the video format affects its compression.

Codecs and Compression

The video codec is the part of its format that determines the compression that it uses – which is why it is important that you know more about it. Some of the more common codecs nowadays include MPEG-4, H.264, and H.265.

Newer codecs tend to have better compression rates than older codecs, and are able to deliver the same quality of video at much smaller file sizes. For example the H.265 codec can reduce the file size of a H.264 video by up to 50% in some cases.

Suffice to say, if your video is in an older codec – you could significantly compress its file size without affecting its quality by transcoding it to a newer codec instead. The one caveat however is that newer codecs are often more limited when it comes to compatibility, so you’ll need to ensure that the device you want to watch the video on supports the codec.

If your video is already encoded in a new codec this may not be an option – but there are other ways to compress videos as well.

Video Bitrate

The video bitrate is literally the amount of data that the video uses each second, and so the video file size is its bitrate multiplied by its duration. By reducing the bitrate you will be able to compress and directly reduce the file size, but at the same time its quality could deteriorate and compression artifacts may appear.

Different videos require different bitrates in order for the video quality to be unaffected, and it varies depending on the resolution and framerate. As an example you could refer to YouTube’s recommended upload settings so you know what to expect.

Assuming you’re willing to compromise the quality of the video slightly however, you can reduce the bitrate to lower than its recommended settings. In short you will want to balance out the video quality against the file size of the video, and find a compromise that satisfies you on both counts.

How to Compress Videos

To start compressing videos using either of the methods described above, you will need software that allows you to convert and transcode videos. Nowadays there are several tools that you can use that range from video converters to specialized video compressors. For example you could try Movavi Video Converter as a place to start.

Typically the first thing that you should do is identify the format (i.e. codec) that the video is using, and determine whether or not transcoding it to a newer codec with better compression is an option. If it isn’t, you can then try lowering the bitrate gradually while observing the affect it has on the video quality.

It should be noted that in some cases you may be able to reduce the file size of your videos through other means – such as by removing any unnecessary parts from the video. While technically that isn’t ‘compressing’ the video, it is an effective option that you should consider.

At the end of the day you should now know everything that you need to in order to compress your videos. All that remains is to try it out – and see how it works in practice.

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source https://www.emarketed.com/blog/compressing-video-files/

Top Web Analytics

Understanding the impact of your content and whether it is having the desired result is crucial in the world of marketing. Analytics tools make it possible to evaluate a particular marketing strategy and see how your audience is responding. They provide with all the information you need to determine how to adjust your campaign for the best possible results.

One of the most popular and easiest analytic tools that businesses use is Google analytics which allows you to analyze your web traffic and measure your advertising ROI. For SEO it can help track the performance of keywords and see how much traffic a particular keyword brings to your site. It also provides detailed information about visitors such as their location and other specifics to ensure you are reaching your target audience.

Another web analytics tool that is similar to Google analytics is Matomo except that you have to host the analytics on your own server. This allows people to have full control over their own data instead of using a remote-hosted service. It also has advanced privacy features to ensure your visitor data is not shared with advertising companies.

Larger businesses may be interested in Zap, a data collection tool that offers analysis for any type of company objective. It provides enterprise grade data management which may make it less useful for smaller businesses but it allows you to integrate many other applications. Other options like Kissmetrics may be ideal for smaller businesses like e-stores and vendor sites.

There are plenty of different web analytic tools available for businesses and each may be suitable for specific goals and objectives with collecting and analyzing data. Exploring various options can allow you to make sure that you are going to get the kind of analytics details that you need for your marketing campaign.

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source https://www.emarketed.com/blog/top-web-analytics/

Measuring My Social Media Marketing ROI

More businesses are spending a significant portion of their marketing budget on social media. Social media marketing is crucial but at times it can be difficult to tell how successful a particular campaign has been. How can you gauge the performance of a specific social media strategy so that you know it was worth the effort?

To measure social media marketing ROI there are many different kinds of metrics that you can look at. You can measure fans, followers, retweets and shares or even referral traffic from other platforms. In order to measure the ROI for a particular campaign though, you will need to identify the specific goals you have and determine your key performance indicators that will measure those goals.

For example if your goal is increasing engagement then you might focus on measuring likes, comments and shares. If your goal is sales then you would track your conversion rate based on actual purchases. There are tools to help track changes in any of these numbers such as Google analytics which helps you monitor particular actions from visitors including conversion.

It can also be useful to measure your social media efforts in comparison with competitors to see how you are succeeding. You can start to look for ways to stand out against others in your industry so that your social media efforts are more effective in the future. Doing something different or unique compared to other brands can help you get better results with social media marketing.

As long as you know what your goals are for a particular campaign you can narrow down the type of data you need to gather in order to measure your ROI. If you consistently work to improve your ROI you will start to see your social media campaigns experience more success over time.

 

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source https://www.emarketed.com/blog/measuring-my-social-media-marketing-roi/