All marketers have the same goal – to let people know –far and wide – about their brand. They hope that the content they produce will go viral in their viral marketing campaign. Of course, people in the industry know that’s easy to say something will go viral than to actually see it go viral. Marketers have to use social media to make people aware of their message, but taking it to the viral level is something totally different?

What makes something go viral?

A Look At Viral Marketing: What Is It Really?

For those folks who are asking what is viral marketing, it’s the kind of product promotion that needs an audience to produce a message about a service or product that spreads quickly like a wildfire in a short time frame. When something goes viral, the message will reach most social media users.

Would you like to know how to create content that would go viral? Would you like to create viral marketing content without too much difficulty?

The gold star of viral marketing goes to Old Spice, for their hilarious, witty efforts of their 2010 “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign. The ad garnered over 52 million views and still resonates with people years later. It was a great content and continues to be great content.

Try too hard, and your audience is going to see it and ignore you.

Going viral may sound impossible, but it’s quite doable. With some simple steps, you can attain a large share count, increase in audience numbers and generate social buzz.

5 Benefits To Viral Marketing: Why It’s Something To Consider Trying For

Ignore the shares, the likes and 15-minutes of fame; viral marketing is advantageous in five key ways.

It Reduces Your Advertising Costs

At the beginning of your campaign, you may need to do a little paid promotion to get it going. Once the audience picks the material up, they start the sharing, and you can reduce how much you spend on advertising.

Any future endeavors are likely to reach a bigger audience naturally – all because of the brand awareness that was generated during the viral campaign.

Rapid Growth

Business success isn’t seen overnight. And, even what appears like overnight success tends to be the result of five or 10 years’ worth of struggles with the founders failing multiple times before finally getting things right.

Of course, there are all kinds of viral marketing techniques that can ensure amazing growth in a short period of time. While this is what most business owners want to see happen, it rarely is attainable.

Viral marketing campaigns don’t need overnight success to be considered successful. If you can get a steady growth of viewers at a low cost, you’ll already win.

Exposure From Mainstream Media

Inbound marketers tend to say they don’t need mainstream media to establish awareness, but it certainly has a hold on people.

When viral marketing is done right, it provides media outlets with the opportunity to talk about your brand without you paying for the attention.

The great thing about mainstream media coverage is that it establishes virality with smaller media outlets following stories big names are pushing. How can ABC and NBC help your product become known to the world?

Rise In Credibility

When a brand is recognized, acceptance and trust often follow. When a brand is suddenly viral, it captures the audience’s attention, and people want to give the brand a chance. For instance, the Dollar Shave Club is well-known, and many people suddenly felt the need to give their razors a try after their viral marketing videos.

Quick Lead Generation

While marketers focus on the number of sales that occur from viral marketing, there’s no doubt the impact it can make on your lead generation. How so? People will look at trending topics. While they may be ready to make a purchase, if you garner enough attention, they’ll remember you when they’re ready to buy.

While more leads are generated for a B2B brand or a service-based company, it doesn’t hurt to try to gain more leads from your viral marketing strategies.

4 Key Drawbacks Behind Viral Marketing

Although there are some worthwhile benefits to having a viral marketing campaign, there are some drawbacks to it as well.

·They’re Not Easy To Develop – You must be original for the campaign to take off. You want the brand to be both funny and sexy. You want something that will resonate with people.

·You Can’t Have The Same Viral Campaign – You cannot use the same campaign from the year before and think it’ll have the same effect. The only exceptions to this rule are if you’re doing a follow-up viral campaign or reworking one such as what was seen with Old Spice.

·It’s Difficult To Measure Viral Campaigns – There’s no way to gauge if a viral campaign is working or not. After all, videos can be copied and messages repetitive.

·You Have No Control Over Viral Campaigns – A company has complete control over their paid ads, but when it comes to viral advertising, there is no control. Once the masses have control, that’s it. They decide if the campaign should go on – good or bad. A bad viral campaign can lead to negative feedback for the brand and damage relations it has with customers, partners and suppliers.

6 Ways To Boost Your Chances Of Going Viral

Yes, viral marketing isn’t easy, but not totally impossible to pull off. You just need the tools to create a campaign that will work. You need to look at viral marketing campaigns that have and haven’t worked previously. While this isn’t your end-all, be-all answer to going viral, it does give you some understanding of how your viral ad campaigns can work for your brand.

There are six ways you can increase your chances of your brand going viral.

Use Social Media Reporting To Your Advantage

If you want to grab the attention of an audience, you have to understand who the group is. Look at the various social media analytics:

• Page impressions

• Audience engagement

• Clicks and reach

• Trending hashtags

• Social interactions

• Keyword performance and traffic

• Demographics

Each of these metrics will offer you some insight into what content is doing best on the social media. With a social media publishing tool, you can get a look at every platform, so you know what the content’s performance is like.

These analytics will give you the chance to create a social media viral marketing campaign that can be effective for your brand. For instance, you can create viral marketing videos for your YouTube account.

Determine Why You Want Your Brand To Go Viral

A huge mistake companies tend to make is not realizing why they want to go viral – why they want to be in people’s news feed. You must create an action plan for the content, so there is some purpose to it. Many marketers feel that viral content must catch on… no matter how it catches on. The problem is that this could backfire.

For instance, the most popular marketing campaign that went viral was the Mountain Dew Kickstart Puppymonkeybaby. It was a really bizarre commercial that had the mission to be weird, and people recognized easily.

Although people knew what Mt. Dew was, they didn’t know about Mt. Dew Kickstart. However, even after 23 million views on YouTube, people are still wondering what Puppymonkeybaby is, but they definitely know what Mt. Dew Kickstart is now.

Many might have assumed that creating this odd content would have backfired, but for Mt. Dew, it knew that creating something odd would leave people to wonder what in the world they were thinking.

Create Content People Want To Share

It seems obvious, but you want to optimize your content so that people will want to share it. Be sure the content is something they want to share; encourage them to share the content on social media so that it increases the chance of it going viral. Your campaign won’t go anywhere if you don’t have it on anywhere but your blog.

Rather than leaving the material on your blog, use every social media channel to promote the material. For instance, if you have a picture for your content, use Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter. If you have a video for your campaign, you can use Instagram, Vine or YouTube.

You want to make the sharing process as easy as possible, and you can do this by doing the following:

• Offering various routes for them to share the content

• Give free services/products away

• Learn what motivates your primary audience

• Ask questions that will get your audience thinking

• Don’t restrict the content

Make Use of Hashtags To Spread Word About The Campaign

Hashtags are a great way in which to spread word about your content quickly. For instance, Coca-Cola used the #ShareaCoke hashtags to make people know about their brand. The key soft drink company used names on their cans and bottles so people would want to share a Coke with their loved ones and friends.

A hashtag can inspire folks to take pictures with the can and share it through their social media account. The American Marketing Association, the campaign lead to an increase of 28% more customers than it had the year before. On top of that, the #ShareaCoke hashtag was used over 250,000 times when the campaign was going on.

Trendjack The Viral Content

Trendjacking is a surefire way marketers can make sure their content is seen. What is trendjacking? It’s a social media term that related to some kind of viral piece of material that promotes a business. It’s one of the biggest practices used for brands who want to become a part of the viral market.

One of the most recent popular memes circulating the Internet is the “Damn, Daniel” video, a diminutive group of Snapchat videos of a teenager complimenting a friend about his shoes. These shoes are from Vans, and rumors are circulating that the company is working on a commercial with the meme creators. Its Instagram account is loaded with “Damn, Daniel” comments.

Fiat ran a commercial for its 2016 500X, using a groundhog that said that six additional weeks of winter isn’t bad. When the commercial is about over, a groundhog will yell.

It’s similar to the meme of a “Screaming Marmot” video that went viral after someone dubbed a man screaming over the yelp. Fiat combined the meme with the company’s ad, and it attained about 700,000 YouTube ads.

It’s certainly a viral video marketing campaign that garnered a lot of attention and fan.

Make The Content More Human

Brands often get more shares if they create content that comes across as genuine and human. Information from Marketing Land suggests that viral success is a bit difficult to do, but when the message is authentic, the content is shared more often.

Marketers tend to focus more on millennials, but it’s not always easy to figure the group out. Studies have demonstrated that creating more human-like content is a way to come across as being reliable – not as corporate.

Androit Digital recently conducted a study that noted 64% of millennials felt brand loyalty they had was about the same as or better than their parents. It also found the following:

 About 50% of millennials felt brand reputation was about as important as their peer recommendation

·36% of millennials felt social media was a highly trusted channel

·About 40% of Millennials tended to steer clear of social or mobile channels

·44% of millennials noted they would talk with customers via social media

Begin Engaging With Your Audience

Businesses need to remember the last stat, as it’s one of the most important for them to keep in mind. The more communication that occurs between customers and a business, the higher the chance for customers to engage with the campaign.

Businesses can use a social media engagement tool to help them to keep abreast of all incoming messages that relate to your brand. On top of that, businesses can use the message tagging features to determine if they are related to a certain campaign.

It’s difficult for marketers to make content go viral, but if you abide by the following steps above, you can boost your social media interactions and engagement with the content you create.

Have you done any viral marketing campaigns ? Please let us know in the comments below.

Digital marketing moves so hard, now and then it can get close to impossible to keep going.

As soon as you’ve made your website optimized for the search engines and you’ve done some blogging you’ve got to plan a vibrant and engaging email strategy. Once you believe you’ve got a grip on your email list, it’s time to turn to all those social media channels.

And don’t even get me started on landing pages, lead magnets, and conversion rates.

These things don’t happen one right after the other, it’s even worse, because they happen all at once with so many marketing priorities already competing for your attention, video marketing can feel like a bear, just one more thing demanding your already precious time.

But video isn’t just one more thing. In fact, if you haven’t heard, 2017 will be the year of video marketing. Brands who don’t harnes the power of video marketing will miss out on greater results, potential leads, and sales.

Why Video Marketing?

This question may seem elementary, but we’ve found that there’s not a lot of clarity around the importance  and video marketing benefits.

So, a bit of background. A great foundational way to think of online video marketing is as a logical replacement for broadcast advertisements. There are many reasons online video marketing is such an ideal substitute:

Choice: Consumers can watch or not watch an online video. And in this world of on-demand, consumer-driven media, your audience will be much more responsive to your message if they have the ability to engage, rather than being forced to listen.

Measurability: Unlike broadcast TV, online video marketing is trackable and measurable. With broadcast, the most you can hope for is exposure getting eyeballs on your ads. But with online video, you can measure views and engagement, turn video into a conversion point, or use it to collect emails as a lead magnet. That’s a digital marketer’s dream!

Video marketing has exploded over the last decade and it shows no signs of slowing down. For instance:

• 52% of marketing professionals name video as content with the highest ROI.

• 76% of marketers plan to use video to boost their brand awareness campaigns.

• 96% of B2B companies are planning to use video in their content marketing over the next twelve months.

•  Consumer internet video traffic will move from 64% in 2014 to over 80% by 2019.

Online video is still a fast growing trend, and it will stay that way for the foreseeable future. Video is also the place where brand positioning and audience engagement meet. You can say more with video than you can with image or text alone and it gives your audience a look into your brand.

How will video drive measurable value to my company?

Online video marketing is powerful, but it’s not a silver bullet; it’s an amplifier for your business objectives. A video marketing strategy will not save your business but it will help you see greater results from your marketing efforts

Let’s take a look at some numbers.

Video Ads: Consumers are 27x more likely to click-through on online video ads than standard banner ads. There’s a greater chance that viewers will move one step closer to becoming customers.

Email: Video can raise your click through rate by 300% and reduce unsubscribe rates by 75%. This is huge! Email is underestimated as a marketing tool, but video is an excellent way to turn it into a serious driver of results.

Conversion Rate: 70% of marketers report that video marketing converts better than other types of content. We’ve seen time and again that video can increase conversions by 20-30%!

Bounce Rate: Pages with video have a 34% lower bounce rate than pages without.

Social Media: Within the last year, Gary Vaynerchuk has proclaimed video the most powerful social strategy today, with social platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter overtaking traditional video platforms like YouTube.

This is hard data, but there is a ton of soft benefits attached to video that can’t be calculated and are valuable, things like a shorter sales cycle, fewer demos, more qualified leads, and clarity of messaging.

It's difficult to put a number to more people being aware of what you do and why it matters but there’s no doubt that this is important.

How can I use video marketing throughout the sales funnel?

This question is one that most people do not ask, but they should be.

Video is your content marketing main course, it brings all your side dishes together. But just like a meal, people don’t just want the main course they want the full experience. They still want your blog posts, your webinars, your bite-sized social content. So you can’t depend on video marketing as the endall solution, but as a powerful piece of a broader whole.

What kind of marketing videos should I produce?

Here are 15 types of video you can create that will take your visitors through your sales funnels

Top of the Funnel: The Awareness Stage

The top of the funnel, is all about awareness through introduction and seduction. In you video marketing strategy you can use the form of fun and informative free content to achieve your means.

Here are a few types of video content for the awareness stage:

1. Brand Films

The purpose of brand films is to acquaint your audience with your values, visions and the core of your brand. You can get your brand across using visuals, sounds and storytelling to be unobtainable through any other medium.

Here is a great brand video example by the German car manufacturer Audi

2. Animations Videos

Through animation a new dimension of your brand is achieved. Animation provides visual and emotional stimulation and that “wow” factor that makes your video content memorable.

Show off your brand creativity by some bite-sized video content. Think short, fun and quirky. Think vines and brief YouTube videos.

Have a look at this amazing animation video by Coca Cola

3. Educational Videos

We all love discovering new things. If brands make learning faster, quicker and entertaining, all the better!

In the top of the funnel, a lot of your target audience is out there searching for new info, that’s where educational videos come in. Educational videos offer real value to your audience they can use in their everyday lives.

This eduction video aimed at peopel who want to do affiliate marketing for example

4. Video Documentaries

A newer phenomenon but one that’s catching popularity fast are documentaries. Similar to educational videos, these teach your audience something real, valuable and new.

They act as a cross between brand films and educational videos, in a comprehensive, stylist and story-driven way.

Here is a video documentary example from a travel blog called Travel Media

5. Explainer/Tutorial Videos

For many brands, video starts here. It begins as a way to show a customer how to do something more efficient .

These videos are great not only for establishing expertness and authority in a vertical, but for capturing the all-important “how to”- and “hack”-themed queries in the search results.

Here is a brand tutorial example on how to apply cosmetics

6. 360° Experience Videos

Another novel concept, 360° videos are a stunning and captivating way for publishers and content creators to share immersive stories, places and experiences with their viewers.

Think Behind-The Scenes, event sneak peaks, product features, this can be a steal in e-commerce and lots of brands are embarking on this new concept.

Watch this amazing 360° video from The Jungle Book

Middle of Funnel: The Consideration Stage

At this stage, nurture the leads you got from your earlier top-funnel content efforts. Nurturing involves building your existing relationship with users. You already have their attention, now get them to know, like and consider you.

The idea is to steer your users towards reminders about why you rock, without rubbing their faces in it and to offer high-quality content without seeming to salesy.

To showcase your middle-funnel content to your audiences, use the following video content:

7. Video Email Marketing

This nurturing is done through video email marketing, using contact information you got earlier to send users targeted content.

What better content to send than a video to catch your users attention? Give them a dose of surprise and differentiate yourself by using a video at this stage. Be sure to use CTAs at this point to convert your users.

8. Product Videos

Product reviews are a staple in the world of corporate video, but they are so for a reason. Because they’re effective.

Nothing helps more than showing how your product or service works in practice to convince your viewers of its benefits with a product video.

Here Google turns to video to show how there products have evolved

9. Company Culture Videos

Show the human side of your company, connect on an emotional level with your viewers and let the personality of your company employees’ shine through a culture video.

You can include slice-of-life employee interviews, team-building days, pranks, birthday parties, your secret sauce, bloopers, and everything in between. There’s no formula for this one, but lots of room for creativity.

Zappos did a great job in this video showing of how great it must be to work there.

10. Testimonials

Testimonial videos can be a versatile tool: Besides building trust and credibility, they can showcase the features of your product.

Snap them during in-store events, at a trade show, or after the release of your latest project.

This is a testimional example of the Excell spreadsheet product used in a finance company.

11. Video PSAs

Public Service Announcements have always been battling for user’s attention.

Designed to tug emotional strings, PSAs of today offer sharp, sharable content that targets hot-button issues in creative ways. Brands can make use of PSA’s to gain trust and create a positive image in the minds of their users.

Here is a PSA example against discrimination.

Bottom of Funnel: The Decision Stage

You’ve hit the bottom of the funnel. It’s game time!

At this stage, your potential customers are on the verge of making a purchase and wish to decide between the options.

Your leads are ripe for picking, with a slight push you can convert them.

12. FAQ Videos

Your leads are looking for answers to questions they may have. You need to allay their fears and calm any last quibbles before purchase.

This is a FAQ video example from an Australian company called Foodiepooch

13. Demonstration/Instructions Videos

Your potential customers have another important question that needs answering: will you assist them even after they’ve purchased the product?

There’s one way to answer that with a yes, you will. It’s through instructional videos.

The guys from Convertkit make great demonstration videos on how to use there email marketing software.

14. Personalized Videos

Today’s world is all about personalization. What brings people most happiness, is when brands provide a personal touch and make their audience feel special.

Personalized videos can benefit any step of the funnel, however let’s add them to the bottom to give your potential customers the final push to purchase.

See below for a personalized by Cadbury

Beyond The Funnel

Congratulations, you’ve turned your lead into a customer. But your work doesn’t finish here…

You can use video content marketing even beyond the funnel for a checkmate in your customer marketing game.

15. Thank you Videos

Video marketing is effective even after your lead has made their way through the whole marketing tunnel.

At this unexpected stage, your audience might appreciate your attention.

Here is the National Wildlife Federation thanking there donors

These are 15 types of video content you can use throughout the whole marketing funnel to help push your potential buyers towards purchase.

Now you know which kind of video to create, let's have a look at what you need to record your video.

Where should I host my video?

There are a ton of free and freemium video hosting platforms available, though many have content restrictions. Some don’t allow commercial use, some only take certain kinds of videos (like episodic web series), and some limit how much you can upload. Many of these platforms have paid plans that let you overcome some or all the restrictions, and some have partner programs that let you earn money from your videos.

Here are the 3 best platforms to host your videos but YouTube is still your best bet if you want to get maximum exposure and get the best ROI from your video marketing efforts.

YouTube

YouTube owned by Google, is the most popular video hosting platform out there. There are millions of videos on YouTube, covering almost every topic and style imaginable .

YouTube has a lot of advantages as a video host, but also has some pretty distinct disadvantages for some users, namely the inclusion of ads on and around your videos, which may be undesirable for many businesses (the last thing you want is for a competitor’s ad to pop up next to your video). YouTube’s partner program does let you earn revenue from advertising, though.

Vimeo

Vimeo is one of the more popular video hosting platforms, especially for non-commercial video. There have been reports of difficulties with the Vimeo player for some users, though other users definitely prefer the Vimeo player to many others.

Wistia

When considering premium services, it often comes down to price and how much you get for your investment. Wistia offers many features that are important for making each of your videos count.

With their analytic tools alone, such as their video heat map feature, you can improve your videos down to a science since you can see exact viewing habits to help you understand your customers better. Every view generates a heat map, which shows exactly which parts of a video the viewer watched, skipped, and rewatched.

How long should my video be?

Creating video with the right length is one of the most important factors in video marketing. When too short you miss the opportunity to show more and when too long you might leave your viewers unengaged. Animoto has conducted a study to find out the exact on the right video length

Customer Testimonials

One of the best ways to show that your products or services are good is by using customer testimonial videos. Creating a testimonial video is one the video marketing strategies. 85% of customers turn to online video reviews before making a buyers decision. Video testimonials reduce the chance of potential of finding negative reviews. Animoto' survey showed that these videos perform best when under 60 seconds long with 37% of customers believing tht under 30 seconds was enough and 35% suggesting that between 30-60 seconds would have been the right length. It is clear with testimonial videos the shorter, the better.

About the Company Videos

Company about videos should be less than 60 seconds according to customers and 38% said that 30-60 seconds is the ideal length of an about video.

Product Videos

According to Animoto's research customers are much more likely to watch a longer product review video then testimonial video. We can assume that is because customers are more likely to take longer when making a purchasing decision. Product videos have a high conversion rate as they are usually towards the end of the sales funnel. A product demonstration between 1-3 minutes were the most favorable according to 38% of the votes within the survey.

Longer Videos and their Effects

Animoto also investigated what type of videos would stop a viewer from watching. 59% said that a boring video was the biggest reason to stop watching and can push the customer in the competitors direction who have the perfect length video..

The right length of your videos must be considered with same priority as the content. To ensure you get the right length from your videos, practice and do a trial run before you start recording whilst timing yourself. If you are running over time then cut the most unnecessary parts of your videos, you need to get your information clear and concise. Remember that shorter videos produce more engagement, so if in doubt, cut it out!

Which tools do I need to create decent video content ?

Here is what I can recommend and use:

• Webcam - Logitech C920

• Microphone - Yeti Snowball USB Microphone

• Lighting - Photography Photo Portrait Studio by Limo Studio

• Recording & editing software: Camtasia, EasyVSL for PC & Screenflow for Mac

• Video promotion plugins: TubeBuddy, Pressplay & Yoast Video SEO

The total cost of this setup is around $500. It's not the most professional setup but it will give you all the options you need to create a good video marketing campaign. Remember, if you don't have the funds you can always use your smartphone and some free software to get you started. In the end it's all about the message and the value you deliver.

Would you like some more tools to use in your video marketing campaign? Then check out this list with 625 marketing tools.

How to create my video content?

Consider writing up a script. While you don't have to do this, if you're not good at thinking things off the top of your head, it can be helpful. Type out a script. You don't have to memorize it––you can just look at it or be prompt by it.

Record your footage. Once you've settled on an idea for your video and your script is ready, do whatever tasks you have to set up and prepare, then record the video.

Record multiple takes. For most types of video, there's nothing wrong with doing multiple “takes” until you get everything right. You can also record a video in parts and then stitch them together on your computer to make a cohesive whole.

Record more than you plan to use. You can edit out the extra bits later on. There's no reason to worry too much about getting the timing perfect right from the get-go.

Film in good light. If possible, film during the day, using natural daylight. This will produce a better quality video and people can see what you're doing . If you're planning to do a nighttime scene, provide a bit of light so people can see what you're doing. If you have no choice but to film it at night in your house, then turn on a lot of lights or get a lightning kit on Amazon.

Know which angle is best for you in front of the camera. Play around a little with this, to get the idea.

Speak loud and clear . People can't understand you if the music is louder than your voice or if you're whispering or mumbling. Make sure that your voice is louder than the music and that everything you say is pronounced clearly. Get yourself a decent microphone, it's worth the investment.

Editing your video

Transfer the video from your smartphone. Either connect the phone to your computer, or send the video there with a wireless connection .

To copy files from your phone to your computer, connect the devices with a cable and use your phone's proprietary interface software (such as, iTunes for an iPhone) to transfer the files.

To send video files from your phone to your computer, look at the menu options in the video app of the phone and send your video as an e-mail attachment to your e-mail address, then download the attachment onto your computer.

Though convenient, this method is likely to be very slow for larger videos.

Many smartphones can share your video straight to YouTube. If you don't want to make any edits to your video, this is an acceptable option. Be sure you've registered an account with YouTube and are logged into it on your phone.

Transfer video from your camcorder. Connect the camcorder to your computer, or insert the video disc into your computer.

Your computer and the camcorder should both come with features to make the transfer easy. All you have to do is highlight the video file (s) you want inside the window that displays the contents of your camcorder or disc, and drag the file (s) onto your desktop (Windows) or hard drive (Mac).

Find video from your webcam. Find the file where the video clips are and select the one (s) you want. Since they're already on your computer, there isn't much else you have to do.

Find the footage from your monitor recording software.

This will be in the same folder that the software itself is in. Some of the programs transfer it to a daughter folder in your Videos folder on your computer, thus allowing you to spend much less time navigating to your recorded footage.

Edit your video with Windows Movie Maker. Most Windows users have access to a basic program called Windows Movie Maker that can stitch video clips together, erase unwanted parts, and add title screens, transition effects, and a secondary soundtrack layer if desired.

Edit your video with FlexClip video editor. For those of you who want to make videos using a laptop without the need to download software, the free online video editor FlexClip is a good alternative. It is a simple and powerful video editor that allows you to add text, place a logo, or add an emoticon to any part of the video.

Edit your video with iMovie. Mac users should have a program called iMovie (a part of the iLife suite of programs) which does the same things as Windows Movie Maker, but offers some different effects and transitions.

iMovie also comes as an iPhone app, which costs $4.99 and allows you to edit on your iPhone.

Dealing with content rights

Do not minimize your check for copyright issues. If your video features content where you do not hold the copyrights, Youtube will remove it without warning when you are hosting your video on Youtube, even if there is copyright music in the background of the place you are recording.

Beware there is no background copyrighted music where you are.

Check the license of the content when you reuse an image or a music. Google allows you to filter your image research on license. The best license is the public domain. One of the most suitable and popular license is CC-BY. You only have to cite the source.

Search your images on a site with free-licensed images:

Wikimedia Commons is a huge media collection used by Wikipedia.

Pixabay, Pexels or Google Images contain tons of images with different licenses. You can filter your search by license.

Research your music on a site with free-licensed songs: SoundCloud contains tons of music with different licenses.

Uploading Your Video To Your Youtube Channel

Log into YouTube. If you don't have a YouTube account, create one, it's free. All you need is a Gmail account. Once that's done, click "Upload" at the top right corner to uploa your video.

YouTube will ask you for various pieces of information about your video. Give the site all the information it asks for.

Upload nothing legal, or anything that otherwise violates YouTube's terms of use. You won't get in trouble (at least, not for doing it once), but the video will be removed as soon as YouTube figures out that something's wrong with it.

Upload your video. Once you've told YouTube about your video, click "Upload a Video..." at the bottom of the page. Navigate to your video in the explorer window that appears, and click “Upload.”

Uploading a video to YouTube takes time. Be patient and find something else to do for a little while your movie uploads.

Title and describe your video. This is your chance to pique the interest of other viewers and optimize your video SEO, so think of something good.

When describing your video, be sure not to just drop in random keywords and phrases to drive traffic to it. People will resent you for it and do their best to make sure that nobody else bothers to watch it.

Use a short and to-the-point title, and short, punchy, descriptive sentences in your video description. These steps help the video SEO and appear more in related search results.

Add humor or cleverness. If appropriate, say something sarcastic or funny in your description. As noted earlier, people on YouTube love humor.

Promote your video with tags. The most basic way to get your video out there for viewers is to add tags, which are descriptive keywords that affect search results. Tags, like descriptions, related to your video.

Post your video anywhere. Start by clicking the “Share” tab, located a few lines of space below the video on the right side.

To post to a popular social site, find the icons for Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus under the tab heading. I recommend uploading your video straight to Facebook as this will increase your organic reach on Facebook

Click the triangle next to these icons to show more icons.

Click the icon of your choice to connect to the site and post the video.

To post anywhere else, click the text box above the icon buttons to highlight the shortened URL for the video.

·Copy the URL and paste it anywhere you like such as your own website. People who click on the link will be able to view your video.

You can also do video as an Instagram story or on Periscope and Snapchat

Here you can find the 11 best ways to promote your YouTube channel;

Spread your video around on YouTube. Find popular videos and connect your video to them using comments and video responses.

For related videos, it's appropriate to leave a comment telling people to view your video, although it's considered poor etiquette.

A video response is also best left on a video that's related to yours. To leave a video response, click in the comments field and then click “Create a video response” just below the text field. Choose your video and post the response.

On unrelated videos, try to be less blatant. Make a clever comment, or one you think will be popular. People like to inspect the accounts of other users who make popular comments; with luck, some of them will click-through and watch your video.

Not Losing subscribers on your video channel

Continue to push out quality content. It does not matter how many viewers your videos have. When you want people who discover your channel to stay interested in it, then never lower your quality.

If you need a starting point for viewers, then just show the videos you make to your friends. As they find it interesting, then they may subscribe to you and even share the video with others.

Always thank your viewers. This may seem cheesy, but doing this at the end of every video will help to create your brand, and showing your viewers you are genuine.

The only possible exceptions to this rule are videos that are short and/or supposed to end abrupt.

Keep a regular posting schedule. Set goals for yourself, such as promising yourself that you will post one video every other week.

Do not set unrealistic goals. Estimate how many videos you could make in a certain period and push your expectations back. Two videos every week may be possible for you, but one video per week can be a better option. Giving yourself more time to complete videos will increase the value of your videos and of your channel. Just make sure you are consistent with your publishing schedule if you want to succeed.

Conclusion:

Including video in your content marketing strategy is an effective way to speed up the journey of leads in your funnel.

One of the greatest benefits to marketing with video content is the potential exposure to millions of users. It would be a good idea to have a look at the video best practices by Google to increase the likelihood that your videos will show in search results.

Some points to pay heed to:

• Video content should fit into your wider strategy

• Your video content should complement all your content and be in line with your brand tone

• To achieve the best results you must share your video content at the right time to achieve the best possible results

To conclude, video content marketing  belong at every stage of the buyer’s journey. And the more places you use great video in your funnel, the easier you make it for those buyers to move down the path to purchase.

Do you want to find out more how to get started with your video marketing campaign? Make sure to read our free report that will get you started.

Let us hear your thoughts and comments!

While WordPress is the best platform for your blog it needs the best WordPress plugins to give it the extra functionality it needs as the core software lacks quite a bit of customization options.

The best way to make your blog top notch is by installing a few plugins that will make your website customized to your needs. But be careful, it can be difficult sorting the good from the, well not so good plugins.

Therefore, I made a collection of the ones I think are good and necessary to take your website from good to great. I've included a variety of must have plugins from caching to image optimization. Most plugins mentioned in my list are used on the Bizwebjournal website as we speak.

I know there are more than 40.000 free and premium WordPress plugins available on the internet but I only wanted to include the ones which I know from my own experience that they are essential, very good to use and won't slow your website down.

You will also need some other online marketing tools too make your blog a succes, I made a list of the most used tools in any category in this post. 

So here is my list of WordPress plugins :

1.Broken Link Checker

This plugin will monitor your blog looking for broken links and let you know if any are found in WordPress or by email if you want. It will check for links, images, and redirects.

Features

• · Monitors links in your posts, pages, comments, the blogroll, and custom fields (optional).

• · Detects links that don't work, missing images and redirects.

• · Notifies you either via the Dashboard or by email.

• · Makes broken links display differently in posts (optional).

• · Prevents search engines from following broken links (optional).

• · You can search and filter links by URL, anchor text and so on.

• · Links can be edited directly from the plugin's page, without manually updating each post.

• · The plugin is highly configurable.

Basic Usage

Once installed, the plugin will begin parsing your posts, bookmarks (AKA blogroll) and other content and looking for links. Depending on the size of your site this can take from a few minutes up to an hour or more.

When parsing is complete, the plugin will start checking each link to see if it works. Again, how long this takes depends on how big your site is and how many links there are. You can monitor the progress and tweak various link checking options in Settings -> Link Checker.

The broken links, if any are found, will show up in a new tab of the WP admin panel - Tools -> Broken Links. A notification will also appear in the "Broken Link Checker" widget on the Dashboard.

To save display space, you can keep the widget closed and configure it to expand automatically when problematic links are detected. E-mail notifications need to be enabled separately (in Settings -> Link Checker).

The "Broken Links" tab will by default display a list of broken links that have been detected so far. However, you can use the links on that page to view redirects or see a listing of all links - working or not - instead. You can also create new link filters by performing a search and clicking the "Create Custom Filter" button. For example, this can be used to create a filter that only shows comment links.

There are several actions associated with each link. They show up when you move your mouse over to one of the links listed the aforementioned tab -

· "Edit URL" lets you change the URL of that link. If the link is present in more than one place (e.g. both in a post and in the blogroll), all occurrences of that URL will be changed.

· "Unlink" removes the link but leaves the link text intact.

· "Not broken" lets you manually mark a "broken" link as working. This is useful if you know it was incorrectly detected as broken due to a network glitch or a bug. The marked link will still be checked periodically, but the plugin won't consider it broken unless it gets a new result.

· "Dismiss" hides the link from the "Broken Links" and "Redirects" views. It will still be checked as normal and get the normal link styles (e.g. a strike-through effect for broken links), but won't be reported again unless its status changes. Useful if you want to acknowledge a link as broken/redirected and just leave as it is.

You can also click on the contents of the "Status" or "Link Text" columns to get more info about the status of each link.

2.Wordpress SEO by Yoast

Many SEO experts would recommend you grab an SEO plugin for your WordPress blog. Our go-to plugin is WordPress SEO by Yoast, which handles just about every element of SEO you could think of.

Watch the video how to setup Yoast SEO properly.

The most direct impact of this plugin on us writers is the SEO box beneath every post. Here we can choose our keyword for the post—a great tactic for staying focused on a topic—and add a custom title and description. The plugin will also show you in bright green/red text how your post stacks up based on the keyword you’ve entered.

Here is an overview what this plugin can do for your website:

Write better content with Yoast SEO

Using the snippet preview you can see a rendering of what your post or page will look like in the search results whether your title is too long or too short and your meta description makes sense in the context of a search result. This way the plugin will help you not only increase rankings but also increase the click through for organic search results.

Page Analysis

The Yoast SEO plugins Page Analysis functionality checks simple things you're bound to forget. It checks, for instance, if you have images in your post and whether they have an alt tag containing the focus keyword for that post. It also checks whether your posts are long enough if you've written a meta description and if that meta description contains your focus keyword if you've used any subheadings within your post, etc. etc.

The plugin also allows you to write meta titles and descriptions for all your category, tag and custom taxonomy archives, giving you the option to further optimize those pages.

Combined, this plugin makes sure that your content is the type of content search engines will love!

Technical WordPress Search Engine Optimization

While out of the box WordPress is pretty good for SEO, it needs some tweaks here and there. This Yoast SEO plugin guides you through some of the settings needed, for instance by reminding you to enable pretty permalinks. But it also goes beyond that, by automatically optimizing and inserting the meta tags and link elements that Google and other search engines like so much:

Meta & Link Elements

With the Yoast SEO plugin, you can control which pages Google shows in its search results and which pages it doesn't show. By default, it will tell search engines to index all of your pages, including category and tag archives, but only show the first pages in the search results. It's not very useful for a user to end up on the third page of your "personal" category, right?

WordPress itself only shows canonical link elements on single pages, Yoast SEO makes it output canonical link elements everywhere. Google has recently announced they would also use rel="next" and rel="prev" link elements in the head section of your paginated archives, this plugin adds those automatically, see [this post](https://yoast.com/rel-next-prev-paginated-archives/ title="rel=next & rel=prev for paginated archives") for more info.

XML Sitemaps

Yoast SEO plugin has the most advanced XML Sitemaps functionality in any WordPress plugin. Once you check the box, it automatically creates XML sitemaps and notifies Google & Bing of the sitemaps existence. These XML sitemaps include the images in your posts & pages too so that your images may be found better in the search engines too.

These XML Sitemaps will even work on large sites, because of how they're created, using one index sitemap that links to sub-sitemaps for each 1,000 posts. They will also work with custom post types and custom taxonomies automatically, while giving you the option to remove those from the XML sitemap should you wish to.

Because of using XSL stylesheets for these XML Sitemaps, the XML sitemaps are easily readable for the human eye too, so you can spot things that shouldn't be in there.

RSS Optimization

Are you being outranked by scrapers? Instead of cursing at them, use them to your advantage! By automatically adding a link to your RSS feed pointing back to the original article, you're telling the search engine where they should be looking for the original. This way, the Yoast SEO plugin increases your own chance of ranking for your chosen keywords and gets rid of scrapers in one go!

Breadcrumbs

If your theme is compatible, and themes based on Genesis or by WooThemes for instance often are, you can use the built-in Breadcrumbs functionality. This allows you to create an easy navigation that is great for both users and search engines and will support the search engines in understanding the structure of your site.

Making your theme compatible isn't hard either, check these instructions.

Edit your .htaccess and robots.txt file

Using the built-in file editor you can edit your WordPress blogs .htaccess and robots.txt file, giving you direct access to the two most powerful files, from an SEO perspective, in your WordPress install.

Social Integration

SEO and Social Media are heavily intertwined, that's why this plugin also comes with a Facebook OpenGraph and Twitter Card implementation.

Multi-Site Compatible

The Yoast SEO plugin, unlike some others, is fully Multi-Site compatible. The XML Sitemaps work fine in all setups and you even have the option, in the Network settings, to copy the settings from one blog to another, or make blogs default to the settings for a specific blog.

Import & Export functionality

If you have multiple blogs, setting up plugins like this one on all of them might seem like a daunting task. Except that it's not, because what you can do is simple: you set up the plugin once. You then export your settings and simply import them on all your other sites. It's that simple!

Import functionality for other WordPress SEO plugins

If you've used All In One SEO Pack or HeadSpace2 before using this plugin, you might want to import all your old titles and descriptions. You can do that easily using the built-in import functionality. There's also import functionality for some of the older Yoast plugins like Robots Meta and RSS footer.

Should you have a need to import from another SEO plugin to Yoast SEO or from a theme like Genesis or Thesis, you can use the SEO Data Transporter plugin, that'll easily convert your SEO metadata from and to a whole set of plugins like Platinum SEO, SEO Ultimate, Greg's High-Performance SEO and themes like Headway, Hybrid, WooFramework, Catalyst etc.

3.Akismet

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet Web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog's "Comments" admin screen.

Here is a video on how to configure Akismet WP plugin.

Major features in Akismet include:

• Automatically checks all comments and filters out the ones that look like spam.

• Each comment has a status history, so you can easily see which comments were caught or cleared by Akismet and which were spammed or unspammed by a moderator.

• URLs are shown in the comment body to reveal hidden or misleading links.

• Moderators can see the number of approved comments for each user.

• A discard feature that outright blocks the worst spam, saving you disk space and speeding up your site.

PS: You'll need an Akismet.com API key to use it. Keys are free for personal blogs; paid subscriptions are available for businesses and commercial sites.

If you want to get a free API key for your website read this post and find out how it can be done.

4.Contact Form 7

The video below will tell you how to get your first contact form up within minutes.

Multiple contact forms can be created and managed through this plugin. No need for extra coding with the Contact Form 7 plugin, as the form and mail contents, can be easily customized through the settings.

The Contact Form 7 also supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet filtering to help with spam.

5.All In One WP Security

WordPress itself is a very secure platform. However, it helps to add some extra security and firewall to your site by using a security plugin that enforces a lot of good security practices.

Here is a complete tutorial video how to make your website secure with this wordpress plugin.

The All In One WordPress Security plugin will take your website security to a whole new level.

It reduces security risk by checking for vulnerabilities, and by implementing and enforcing the latest recommended WordPress security practices and techniques.

All In One WP Security also uses an unprecedented security points grading system to measure how well you are protecting your site based on the security features you have activated.

The security and firewall rules are categorized into "basic", "intermediate" and "advanced". This way you can apply the firewall rules progressively without breaking your site's functionality.

6.404 to Start

If you don't like the typical 404 page then you can redirect all 404 page not found errors permanently (or temporarily) to the start page or any other site/page you like.

This will help you solve problems with external bad links which are not under your influence.

Chose between 301 - Moved permanently (default) and 302 - Moved temporarily.

7.Custom Share Buttons with Floating Sidebar

With this plugin, you give users the tools to share your content, product details and other information with their own networks.

More than 22 billion shares each and every day on the internet, with sharing becoming an increasingly important part of every website owner’s marketing strategies.

Let your users share via their accounts on popular social networks. Install this free plugin to enable Social Sharing on your WordPress site and start driving high-quality referrals to your website.

It is a lightweight plugin. There are not added any external JS files so it does not have any effect on your site speed as well.

You can add a social share floating sidebar with all social share buttons and even you can change the share buttons images and their style from the admin area if you wish!.

The plugin supports 9 social networks. Your users share via their accounts on popular social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, Google+, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Youtube and Refer a Friend.

8.Duplicate Post

This plugin allows to clone a post or page or edit it as a new draft so if you need to recreate a page with minor differences from the original this can be done in a matter of miniutes.

How it works:

1. In 'Edit Posts'/'Edit Pages', you can click on 'Clone' link below the post/page title: this will immediately create a copy and return to the list.

2. In 'Edit Posts'/'Edit Pages', you can click on 'New Draft' link below the post/page title.

3. On the post edit screen, you can click on 'Copy to a new draft' above "Cancel"/"Move to trash".

4. While viewing a post as a logged in user, you can click on 'Copy to a new draft' as a drop down link under "Edit Post" in the admin bar.

2, 3 and 4 will lead to the edit page for the new draft: change what you want, click on 'Publish' and you're done.

9.Google Analytics by MonsterInsights

The Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights allows you to track your blog easily and always stays up to date with the newest features in Google Analytics.This is the best plugin out there if you want to connect your website with your Google Analytics account.

Full list of features:

• Simple installation through integration with Google Analytics API: authenticate, select the site you want to track and you're done.

• This plugin uses the universal or the asynchronous Google Analytics tracking code, the fastest and most reliable tracking code Google Analytics offers.

• Gives you incredibly nice visitor metric dashboards right in your WordPress install.

• Option to enable demographics and interest reports.

• Outbound link & downloads tracking.

• Configurable options to track outbound links either as page views or as events.

• Option to track just downloads as pageviews or events in Google Analytics.

• Option to track internal links with a particular format as outbound links, very useful for affiliate links that start with /out/, for instance.

• Possibility to ignore any user level and up, so all editors and higher for instance.

• Option to anonymize IP's for use in countries with stricter privacy regulations.

• Tracking of your search result pages and 404 pages.

10.Pretty Link

This video will show you how to setup nice looking affiliate links in a few easy steps.

Pretty Link enables you to shorten links using your own domain name (as opposed to using tinyurl.com, bit.ly, or any other link shrinking service)! In addition to creating clean links, Pretty Link tracks each hit on your URL and provides a full, detailed report of where the hit came from, the browser, os, and host.

Pretty Link is a great plugin for people who want to clean up their affiliate links, track clicks from emails, their links on Twitter to come from their own domain, or generally increase the reach of their website by spreading these links on forums or comments on other blogs.

There is also a paid version available with even more functions if you want.

11.Scroll Back to Top

Scroll Back to Top is a WordPress plugin which adds a button that appears only when users scroll down the bottom of your page allowing them to scroll back to the top of the page with only one click. The plugin comes pre-configured and is fully functional on activation.

This plugin offers a number of webmaster-friendly features to completely customize the look, position, and animation. In addition, there is a setting to allow you to put the button in preview mode so it only appears when logged in. This button is built on jQuery and is designed to be dead easy, without the need to modify any markup or the theme.

12.Social Media Feather

This is a super lightweight free social media WordPress plugin that allows you to quickly and painlessly add social following features to all your posts, pages and custom post types.

The plugin supports adding of social buttons for following (that is, social buttons that link to your social network profiles pages). The social media buttons can be easily and automatically added to all your posts, pages or any other custom post types.

13.W3 Total Cache

Watch this video so know which settings to use on your wordpress website.

W3 Total Cache is designed to increase the page load speed for WordPress sites, which will improve your visitors’ overall experience.

The plugin helps to increase server performance by reducing download times. By reducing page load times, overall site performance improves which helps your site’s rank in search engines.

W3 Total Cache can also help to improve web server performance during high traffic periods, which is crucial for larger websites.

14.WP SEO Structured Data Schema

Structured data and schema are becoming more and more important for search engine optimization. The bad news is that this is pretty complicated stuff and even the most seasoned SEO specialists struggle with the proper implementation of structured data and schema. The good news is that you can now use the WordPress SEO Structured Data Schema plugin which enables web designers and business owners a super-easy way to add schema for:

• Organizations

• Local Businesses

• Articles

• Blog Postings

• Events

• Products

• Videos

• Services

• Ratings

15.WP Smush

Large image files may be slowing down your site without you even knowing it. WP Smush uses WPMU DEV’s super servers to quickly smush every single one of your images and cuts all the unnecessary data without slowing down your site.

WP Smush meticulously scans every image you upload – or have already added to your site – cuts all the unnecessary data and scales it for you before adding it to your media library.

Premium Plugins

16.Thrivethemes Plugin

Watch the video to see the Thrive Content Builder plugin in action.

This plugin and all it's amazing features we use for the design of our website. Our widgets, optin forms, pop-ups and much more we all do with this plugin. If you want to find out more on this amazing plugin you can visit the Thrive Themes website or read our review.

The complete plugin consists of the following:

• · Thrive Visual Editor

• · Thrive Leads

• · Thrive Clever Widgets

• · Thrive Headline Optimizer

• · Thrive Ultimatum

So here is my list of the best WordPress plugins I think every blogger should use on their website.

If you know of any other good plugins we should use to make our website even better then please leave your comments below

It’s not uncommon for Internet marketers to have some hesitation when it comes to email marketing and autoresponder sequences. After all, they have to spend hours developing the content that can be sent out just one time.

Surely, there’s got to be a better way, right? Isn’t there a way to send the same email out many times without looking weird doing it? It’s a waste to do a one-off email marketing campaign. It’s because the open rates on these emails run around 13 to 20 percent, which means between 80 and 87 percent of your subscribers are not going to spend any time reading your newsletter.

Enter Email Marketing Automation and Autoresponders…

When autoresponder sequences are set up quickly, it can be used to send one-off emails that will boost your effectiveness. It lets you continuously use the material to increase your readership rather than just showing 20 percent of the audience the information just one time.

How can you use autoresponders effectively? How can you come up with a balance between a direct one-off email campaign and an automated email campaign?

Before you can answer these questions, you need to know what an autoresponder sequence is. It’s just a brief look at it, so you understand what’s going on. When it comes to a one-off campaign (standard email campaign), you send emails to people who sign up for your content and then forget about it altogether. It’s something you don’t use later on.

This is regarded as being time-dependent content.

For instance, your newsletter has a new edition to it, which notes the things happenings in your area for the month of July 2016. Do you really think you’d be sending it again in a month?

No one wants to hear about last month’s news.

With an automated email, the information is sent after a certain action has been carried out or the event is related to a person’s activity. It’s known as evergreen content.

What’s the most basic autoresponder sequence that a company sends? It’s the “Thank You” message that subscribers get. It’s often send when people confirm through their email they want to subscribe to your list.

What Are The Positive Advantages To Using Autoresponders?

There is a multitude of benefits to using autoresponders, and it’s not just in terms of reusability (ability to send items over and over again). They are ideal for your marketing campaign because it automates parts of it.

According to Gartner Research, businesses with automation tend to see a 10 percent increase within six to nine months’ time. Businesses who use all kinds of marketing automation to engage with prospects tend to have a 451 percent boost in qualified leads.

Autoresponders are a part of marketing automation, as they let you communicate with your audience, customers, and prospects, ensure your communications are regular and consistent and don’t take up a lot of your time.

There are two things autoresponders can do for you:

• Let you use your time effectively by developing messages that can be used over and over

• Provide you with results when it comes to revenue and lead management

5 Concepts Behind Autoresponder Sequences

Now that the why has been explained, it’s time to come up with strategies that work for you. It sounds ideal, but they’re not good for everything. And, that’s something you need to understand.

Autoresponders are great for bringing people into your marketing funnel and look at their needs based on what actions they take from your emails. There are a number of reasons this is so useful such as:

You Can Sell Your Services/Products

Spend some time coming up with a sequence of messages that will begin right after someone subscribes to your list. With these emails, you familiarize your new subscribers with the material while you also get an idea of their needs. And, once you understand what their needs are, you can tailor your material to products that will help them.

Begin by offering genuine content in the body of the automated emails. Offer advice on material that relates to your niche or develop a short guide to follow.

So, depending on what your subscribers are doing – opening emails or clicking links – you can send them additional emails that direct them to your material and other offers.

For example, you could send a person an email about Problem 1. They open the email, read it and hit the link you’ve embedded into it. You can safely assume their interest is high. With this information, the email automation sequence is triggered, and another related email is sent.

If there is no action taken, you can assume they’ve got no interest in your product/service. However, you can send them another message about something else entirely.

After several of these messages, you’ll know what they are and are not interested in. This will help you to craft offers that are ideal for them.

Encourage Them To Follow Your Social Media Page

When you have your subscribers follow you on social media, you don’t have to do a lot of interaction with them. Just ask them to follow you after two or three emails you have sent. By this point, they should have some familiarity with you and your service/product and want to follow you on Facebook, Twitter or any other social media platform.

How do you get them to follow? Use the direct approach. You can just tell them, “If you like what you see, don’t forget to follow us on our social media page.” Have a link for them to go to. You don’t want them to search for it because they’re likely never to do it.

Ask Precise Questions While You Do Research For Additional Products

After you’ve established your relationship with subscribers, ask them specific questions that relate to things they’re having problems with or goals they have a desire to meet. And, make sure to keep it simple. Send several messages first before you send the question you want to ask. If you do this too early, they may not answer you or feel they should answer you. From your responses, you have three actions you can take:

• Personally write to them

• Publish an article on the topic

• Use it for research to develop your next product

Reconnect With Those People Who Are Not Reading Your Emails

Here’s a sobering reality: there are many people who are not going to open your emails. They’ll just hit the delete button and move on. But, they decided to subscribe in the first place, so there’s a reason they wanted your emails. A way to combat their not opening your emails is to develop an autoresponder sequence that’s geared toward reconnecting with them. Of course, they may not open these emails, but some people may.

Use these emails to ask them how things are going, the challenges they’re facing and how you can assist them. Just one response is a win since you’ve reconnected with one of your subscribers.

Offer Them An Infinite Flow Of Free Content

How are you going to be successful if you’re giving away free content and don’t ask them for anything? Believe it or not, it’s a powerful business tactic, and the results can be a bit unpredictable. Therefore, you need to test it out and see what happens. You can send them the best material you have in an email without asking them to do anything.

Since many email lists are loaded with promotions, your subscribers will feel some relief that you’re not promoting your products over and over.

How Do You Set Up An Autoresponder Campaign

Believe it or not, it’s not hard to get an autoresponder campaign set up. We use Converkit to setup our email marketing campaigns and I can tell you it's  breeze. You just have to develop and build emails within a user-friendly text editor interface. or you can drag each email copy into the interface to create an automated sequence.

It may be safe to assume that a majority of superior-quality email marketing tools have autoresponder functionality in their plans. The only issue you have is how much are you willing to invest to get the word out.

Does This Mean One-Off Email Campaigns Should Be Avoided?

Not at all! As noted, autoresponders are not an all-in-one tool. And, one-off email campaigns have their uses and effectiveness for numerous reasons. Some of these reasons include:

Like News Updates – News-centered messages are ideal for standard email campaigns because nobody wants to read last week’s news.

Present Promotions – If there’s a promotion you’re promoting, a single email campaign is far better than an autoresponder sequence.

Letting People Know About New Blog Posts – If there’s a new blog post on your website, a one-off email will let them know about it immediately.

Interviews, Community Updates, and Events – If there are things happening in the community, let your subscribers know about it. There’s no reason to repeat yourself an autoresponder sequence, which is why you still need to do a one-off campaign along with the autoresponder sequence campaign.

Successful Email Marketing Campaigns Entail Both Content and Promotion

For your email marketing campaign to be successful, you need to come up with a mixture of both promotion and content whether it’s for your automated emails or your one-off ones.

And, even though it sounds easy, people tend to get it wrong…like really wrong!

Why? People don’t like being promoted to. And, people want to feel their emails are nothing more than offering content to subscribers. But, what happens is that even sending an individual message, businesses can’t help but add a link to it, thinking it won’t hurt them.

However, it does hurt them because it can ruin your image.

It doesn’t matter what you put into your email, if it ends with some kind of promotional tactic, it’s going to read as being promotional. And, the only surefire way to avoid it, is to not include any links of any kind. Therefore, you need to promise yourself not to add in links. If you want to create a pure content email, make it so. Don’t add things that will gear it to something else.

When you create a promotional email, be sure it’s promotional – as obvious as you can. Subscribers respect the honesty you give them.

What You Should Remember About Autoresponders and One-Off Campaigns…

It’s important that you remember what autoresponders are and how to effectively use them so that your business will experience the benefits.

Autoresponders

• Useful for distribution of evergreen information

• Ideal for research, asking subscribers questions at the right time

• Delivery of content

• Useful to reconnect with inactive subscribers

One-Off Email Campaigns

• Ideal for distribution of time-dependent information

• Allows you to let subscribers know about current happenings, events, news and other things that are important today, not two days or more from now

Do you feel autoresponder sequences are an important email marketing tool for your business? Do you have an interest in using them for your company? If so, then it’s time to get started with autoresponders today.