The Complete Guide to Maximizing Instagram Story Features for Marketing

How much time do you spend watching all of your friends’ Instagram Stories? Well, if you’re like me, and the rest of the planet that is obsessed with Instagram, then the answer is pretty evident. We browse through all of them so much to the point where we view most of them before we move on to our actual Instagram feed.

Your answer, however, speaks volumes about Instagram Story’s popularity. With over 800 million daily active users participating, it has morphed into a powerful social media tool. Shame on the social media marketer who refuses to acknowledge this fact.

People like it for a reason! It’s captivating, engaging, interactive, and above all, it’s loads of fun!

Strap yourselves in. Together, we’ll take a look at the numerous features Instagram Story has, and how you can use them to effectively market your brand.

Your Instagram Story is a Scheduled TV Program

Instagram Story has opened the door for people to act as quirky as possible. The ephemeral quality of this Instagram feature drives us to act so uninhibitedly sometimes. It’s no surprise to see the craziest antics happening in Instagram stories.

But all manner of insane late-night trips aside, you need to stop thinking of your Instagram Story as just a platform for random promotional content. Instagram Stories require thought and planning. You should think about your Instagram Story as you would any other content channel: ahead of time.

Treat your Instagram Story like it’s your own TV network. Program a set of shows for the entire week, or perhaps even recurring shows that happen on specific days.

Planning how your Instagram Stories will unfold over the week will help you craft a consistent viewing experience for your audience. If you’re lucky, it can even end up being incredibly addictive.

Creating the Instagram Story

Instagram Story made its mark for having various video styles to choose from. Get creative and use all of them. Doing it right will help you create fresh content for your audience to watch every day.

The video styles you can choose from are:

• Normal: This is the style that everybody is most familiar with. It lets you take standard images and normal videos.
• Boomerang: This one takes bursts of photos, and arranges them into one loop to create fluidly moving images.
• Rewind: Like the name of the style suggests, this plays your video in reverse.
• Superzoom: This style lets you choose a focus point and zoom in on it with accompanying music to create funny and dramatic moments. Talk about an incredibly useful meme creator.
• Hands-free: This one has a slight similarity to Snapchat. It lets you record a video without having to keep your finger on the record button. This video style is perfect for doing product demonstrations and tutorials.
• Stop-motion: This video style is for the artsy creative content creators. It takes you back to the old days. It quickly plays a sequence of images to create an animated video.

Customizing Your Story

Creating Instagram Stories using various video styles are cool, but they’re raw content. That’s good, but there are times when your stories might call for some editing. And that is the perfect time to start customizing your stories with stickers, geotags, hashtags, and face filters.

Say it With Stickers

One great thing about Instagram Stories is adding stickers to encourage various types of engagement from your audience:

• Selfie sticker: Your face can be your own stickers. Or in this case, the face of your brand can be your selfie sticker.
• Music sticker: This sticker lets you share parts of a song in your story.
• Question sticker: Encourage your audiences to participate with these stickers. Put forward an interesting question and drum up some engagement with your audiences.
• Hashtag stickers: Spread a trend with hashtag stickers on Instagram Stories. When followers click the sticker, they’ll be taken to the corresponding page with the relevant hashtag.
• Poll stickers: Maximize engagement with all of your followers by putting up polls. Give your audiences a say in your company’s decision-making. It draws them in and involves them wholly.
• Product stickers: After having an account approved for shopping by Instagram, you can add shopping stickers to any photo uploaded as a story. Shopping stickers allow your buyers to have easy access to the tagged products. Tapping on it again will let them purchase it.
• Location stickers: Use these stickers to add locations to your story. It lets your audience know where you are, and it gives you the opportunity to be seen by a wide range of users.
• GIFs: The introduction of GIFs to Instagram encouraged users to participate some more with the Instagram Stories. These GIFs allow you to add vibrancy, personality, and fun into a story.

via Instagram Press

Geotags

Geotags help you get discovered in location-level stories. Tagging your location in your Story posts when it’s relevant will put help people find you — especially those who are checking in on a specific spot.

Hashtags

Hashtags are typically used for discoverability on social media, but there’s a downside. They take viewers away from your stores and to others’ posts. So your safest bet is to use hashtags in stories only if you own them.

One good way of incorporating the use of hashtags is through contests. Get your followers to submit photos of themselves with your products under the banner of a branded hashtag. That way, anyone who finds your hashtag will be taken to a collection of posts that are associated with your brand.

Add Some Artistry to Your Stories

In addition to stickers and video styles, Instagram also has drawing tools. Texts of different fonts and solid multi-colored backgrounds are widely available too. Markers available for use in Instagram Stories let you do so much. It’s really up to you to employ as much creativity as possible.

Do Some Drawing

Instagram Stories have a wide range of marker choices. There’s the fine point, angled, neon, chalk, or the eraser. You can also adjust the marker’s thickness and change the colors. The eyedropper is also a handy feature that lets you copy a color from the image or video you took.

via alextooby

Tag the Important Ones

Regardless of who your target audience is, they’ll appreciate being acknowledged. Recognizing their existence — especially when it’s relevant, will not only raise brand awareness, it cultivates camaraderie with the people on the other side of your screen.

This is a good reason to make use of tagging. @mention Instagram accounts, and turn those mentions into live, clickable links. This is a good way to thank your dedicated followers, and especially mention those who’ve been a big help somehow.

via Instacentric

Up the Interaction Factor, and Point the Way to Your Official Site

The icing on top of the Instagram Story cake is the option to add links. When your follower base has reached at least 10,000 you unlock the privilege of adding links to your Instagram Stories so you followers can swipe up for more content.

And speaking of swiping up, it’s time to drive all the traffic to your website or your blog.

Besides adding links to your Instagram bio, take it even further and point the way to your official site by adding links to your Instagram Stories. Always remember that your audience’s attention isn’t yours to hold forever. They leave when they aren’t engaged or they’re bored.

If you want them to take a specific action, don’t beat around the bush. Spoon-feed them and be direct.

via APPSeConnect

Amass Your Stories Into Instagram Story Highlights

Instagram Stories are known for having short shelf-lives. They don’t last for more than 24 hours, but you can curate them into story highlights and pin them to your profile. You can place them under specific themes and title them in so many creative ways.

You can use Highlights to:

• Showcase product features.
• Create teasers about products and upcoming company events.
• Advertise sales and limited offers.
• Compile a list of special followers you want to acknowledge.
• Directly address new followers by pitching your content and Instagram account.

Monitor Your Progress With Instagram Analytics

Business accounts have access to a wide range of signals for more meaningful tracking processes. You can view metrics like impressions and reach, but also actions taken on your stories. Instagram analytics is available for business profiles. Other ones you can try are:

• Instagram Insights
• Simply Measured
• Iconosquare
• Union Metrics
• Squarelovin
• Socialbakers
• InstaFollow
• Pixlee
• Crowdfire
• Websta

Making use of the following analytics will help you figure out where engagement is strongest and where it’s lacking. There are no limits to what you can do to make your content better over time.

via Shopify

The Takeaway

Instagram Story is a game changer. Since its release, it has changed the way we use Instagram for the better. Now the platform has morphed into a social media site where everybody is free to be creative and be themselves. And with this generation’s affinity for equality, what could be better, honestly?

Your business is more than capable of using Instagram Stories as a way to keep your target audience involved — and happily so. But above all, you also leave your content open for new audiences to flock in and discover.

Tell us your Instagram Story.

For more information and articles about marketing, keep browsing through Tweak Your Biz.

The post The Complete Guide to Maximizing Instagram Story Features for Marketing appeared first on TweakYourBiz.

The Complete Guide to Maximizing Instagram Story Features for Marketing posted first on https://tweakyourbizusa.wordpress.com

The Small Business Guide to Product Packaging

We’re always told ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’. But, when it comes to your product packaging, that’s precisely what your customers will do.

Your product packaging is an extension of your brand. It doesn’t just have to stand out and attract new customers while highlighting your values and story. It also needs to be strong and sturdy, protecting your product within. No easy task, right?

Think about what you want your brand to convey. Is it a sense of nostalgia or innovation?  Excitement or comfort? The ability to create emotional connections with your audience is the key to increasing customer loyalty. There’s no better way to do that than utilising your packaging. Here’s how:

 

Keep your target market in mind

When designing packaging for your business, it’s crucial to identify where it is you’re hoping to sell your product before you begin the process. This will hugely impact your overall design. Whether you decided to sell online, in stores or both will differ your approach. Let’s focus on in-store packaging:

Products that are sold in physical shops will need to look good on a shelf while clearly communicating the benefits and standing out among competitors. Who will use your product? What do they generally look for in product packaging? Is it rigid or soft? Bold or understated?

By ensuring your design aligns directly with what you know about your target market and their purchasing habits, you can be sure that the right people are noticing your packaging.

Similarly, keeping your core values and ideals in line with your branding and packaging will help you to become recognisable, along with helping customers to know what you’re all about and if you’re the right brand for them.

Read more on how to identify your target audience.

Look to minimise waste at every opportunity

Once you’ve identified your audience, it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty of the packaging itself. We know that, when it comes to starting a business, there’s nothing more stressful than money woes. From premises to insurance, staffing to technology, it’s easy to get snowed in under the huge amount of costs leaving your account. But, have you ever considered the money that businesses waste on unnecessary product packaging?

With more and more customers becoming increasingly concerned with the environmental impacts of packaging, along with the number of materials wasted, any new business needs to address this within their operating strategy if they want to succeed. Both with their budgets and in terms of customer satisfaction. As customers grow increasingly dissatisfied with packaging, it’s crucial that businesses get it right.

While the overall design and material are important, trying to be overambitious at the start could significantly hinder your progress. Instead, business should limit design and packaging costs to retain a good margin. As space is often at a premium for start-ups and small businesses, investing in technology that can help to keep these costs down is a great way to keep budgets on track.

BCS box making machinery is a great choice for businesses who sell a range of different sized products and are looking for a quick and easy way to create packaging for their products. As box making machines produce packaging on demand, businesses don’t need to factor in storage or waste costs.

 

Material choice is crucial

While most businesses won’t stop to consider the specific materials they use for their product packaging, this could be harming sales. We’ve all been there, purchased from a company who prides itself on its sustainability, only for the product to arrive in a huge plastic bag.

Much like how people are becoming displeased with oversized packaging, the materials they are made from are under much scrutiny, too. Simply put, brands need to ensure they’re aligning their packaging with their core values. Now, consumers are considering brand ideals and eco-consciousness in their purchasing decisions.

This means it’s important for businesses to find recyclable, sustainable packaging solutions for their products. Materials such as corrugated cardboard and starch loose fill chips are the ideal choice. Both can be easily recycled and are biodegradable and compostable. Made from no hazardous materials, they are designed to create the minimum impact when disposed of.

 

Stand out from the crowd

It’s not rocket science – to encourage consumers to purchase your product, you have to offer something different and unique. After all, if not, they’ll simply stick to what they know and love. Researching your competition is the best way to get started. Take a look at what is common within your marketplace. Are there any popular colours or messages that seem to work more than others? By understanding what you’re up against, it makes it easier to create a design that helps you to stand out.

Similarly, businesses should consider the shape and function of the packaging itself. There’s a reason most product packaging conforms to a particular style. Companies have to maximise usability and functionality while also conforming to people’s existing expectations.

For example, sauces tend to come in squeezy bottles to minimise waste; tea is often found in bags to reduce mess, while water is bought in bottles for easy drinking on-the-go. However, just because there are specific ‘rules’, doesn’t mean these continue when it comes to branding.

With design, it’s all about conveying your brand message to your customer. Imagine you were explaining your business in just 3 words. How would you do it? What would you say? Businesses should use this approach when it comes to packaging.

With so many products, it’s easy for consumers to feel overwhelmed when making purchasing decisions. And, with so little time, we all want a direct answer, and quickly.

 

Consider the unboxing experience

From adapting your product packaging to offer more value to your customers – such as Birchbox’s re-usable drawers and boxes – to including additional freebies and discounts, today, there’s much more to packaging than simply protective or shipping purposes. And, customising your packaging can have a huge impact on how people view your brand.

From YouTube to Instagram, unboxing has become such a vast phenomenon that can boost your customer experience while helping to improve loyalty and satisfaction. And it’s not difficult.

Not only is it a relatively cost-effective form of marketing, but it’s common for customers to share examples of excellent packaging on social channels. This can help to spread the word about your business. Similarly, including little touches, such as branded paper or product tips, will help to cement your brand as a quality one. This simultaneously shows your customers you care, and is a powerful marketing tool. What have you got to lose?

The post The Small Business Guide to Product Packaging appeared first on TweakYourBiz.

The Small Business Guide to Product Packaging posted first on https://tweakyourbizusa.wordpress.com

How to Shorten Your Sales Cycle With Better Sales Conversations

Managing the modern-day sales cycle can feel like captaining a ship through stormy seas.

Your dream destination: a closed deal.

But it’s not going to be so easy.

You have a long, complex voyage ahead of you.

Also known as “the sales cycle.”

So many things can sink your ship along the way. If you hold poorly-navigated sales conversations, prepare for a rough voyage ahead.

Every sales conversation you encounter throughout the sales cycle is like an ocean storm — unpredictable and involving multiple buyers with different agendas, interests, and objections.

The periods of time between sales conversations are relatively calm (the eye of the storm, if you will) if and only if you conduct your sales conversations effectively.

If you’re going to arrive to the promised land and get the deal closed, you have to be able to navigate these stormy sales conversations with skill.  Here’s how.

 

How to Hold Better Sales Conversations During the Sales Cycle

Every voyage needs a compass to chart an accurate course and navigate through storms along the way.

In this case, we used AI-powered call recording to analyze over 1M sales conversations that span 384,923 deals.

These sales calls were recorded, transcribed from speech to text, and analyzed with AI.

The research shows that sales reps have to weather many storms to get to the promised land, particularly during 3 parts of the sales cycle:

1. Discovery Calls
2. Presentations and Demos
3. Objection Handling Situations

Using data from over 1,000,000 B2B sales calls performed via Zoom, GoToMeeting, and other web conferencing platforms, we now know the best practices for holding successful sales conversations throughout each stage of the sales cycle.

Let’s start with the first storm you’ll encounter during the sales cycle.

The First Storm: Discovery

The discovery call is the first storm you’ll encounter on the voyage to the promised land.

If you ask the right amount of questions and the right kinds of questions at the right time, you’ll end up with a talk-to-listen ratio like this.

Do not sink your ship by asking too few – or too many – questions.

There is a direct correlation between the number of questions asked on a discovery call, and our likelihood of eventually closing the deal.

But notice there’s also a diminishing return. That also indicates you shouldn’t interrogate your buyer with too many questions.

In fact, there is a specific target range to shoot for: 11-14 open-ended discovery questions seems to be the sweet spot. It has the highest success rate.

When you ask your questions is equally as important.

Ever been on the buying end of a discovery call where you felt like you were being interrogated for information?

The most successful salespeople avoid that effect.

They evenly distribute their questions throughout the entire call.

By contrast, their lower performing counterparts “frontload” their questions to the beginning of the discovery call.

It makes the buyer feel like the seller is going through a “checklist” of discovery questions.

Instead of frontloading your call with questions, listen to your prospect and ask genuine and relevant questions.

The best questions generate the longest responses, which we found correlates with success:

 

A great way to generate longer responses from your questions is by phrasing your questions in a way that encourages the buyer to respond thoroughly:

• • “Can you help me understand…”
  • “Can you walk me through…”
  • “Talk to me about…”

When you phrase your questions like this, it signals to your buyer to speak in-depth.

In short, the discovery call section can be summed up in three parts:

1. Ask the right NUMBER of questions
2. Ask them at the right TIME
3. Ask the right KIND of questions (questions that get long responses).

 

The Second Storm: Demos and Presentations

That brings us to the next “storm” in your journey – demos and presentations.

Pro-Tip: The right “flow” for a demo should match what you discussed on the discovery call.

Think about a successful demo flow as an upside down pyramid: start with the most important thing first.

 

Your first demo point should be what you discussed most in-depth during discovery, followed by the next most important point, and so forth.

What was the most pressing pain point on the buyer’s mind during the discovery call? What piqued their interest the most during that conversation?

Start there. Prepare yourself prior to the demo. Emphasize those talking points at the outset of the demo.

Example: If a customer spent 8 minutes talking about “coaching,” 6 minutes talking about “onboarding,” and 3 minutes talking about “pipeline management” during the discovery call, then a demo would begin by immediately addressing the “coaching” use case, instead of saving that for the end.

 

The Third Storm: Objections

We’re almost to paradise…

Objection handling is easily the stormiest of all the storms we’ve discussed so far.

Here’s your first tip (maybe it’s more of a warning): Unsuccessful sales reps go on “knee jerk” monologues after receiving an objection. It’s almost as if the objection triggers insecurity, and they start talking in circles.

 

Do not do this. Avoid the monologue and provide specific, succinct responses to each objection.

Here’s how:

Step one: Take a pause. Studies show that star performers take a lengthy pause and gather their thoughts before responding to an objection.

Step two: Be aware of your talking speed and slowww dowwwn.

Research reveals that star performers do not accelerate their talking speed while responding to an objection, signaling calmness and thoughtfulness to the prospect as opposed to panic and fear.

 

Finally, respond to objections with questions to clarify the objection, and unearth the root of the concern.

 

It’s how successful salespeople handle objections.

 

In Conclusion: How to Expertly Navigate Your Sales Cycle

No matter how seasoned you are every sales professional inevitably faces storms.

However, The more sales conversations you have that span your sales cycle, the better sailor you’re going to have to be.

And at the end of the day, by navigating your sales conversations successfully, you can create calmer, shorter sales cycles that lead you to paradise — a closed deal.  

 

 

The post How to Shorten Your Sales Cycle With Better Sales Conversations appeared first on TweakYourBiz.

How to Shorten Your Sales Cycle With Better Sales Conversations posted first on https://tweakyourbizusa.wordpress.com

6 Ways to Increase ROI for Your Small Business

Many business owners find it difficult increase ROI, yet it’s hard to put time or money behind something that’s not driving tangible results—and for good reason. With minimal time and a budget to match, you have to be intentional about every dime that comes out of your pocket. This mindset is critical to the success of your business:

If your ROI is low, it’s time to revive it with some fresh ideas. Use these tactics to increase ROI and get your profit where it needs to be.

“How you’re spending money, how much you’re spending, and what you are getting in return is critical to growing your business wisely. Success depends on keeping track of both expenses and profits on a continuous basis,” suggest experts at Summit Financial Resources.

#1: Tap Into Sales Insights

When you understand the trends and metrics behind your business’s selling activities, you’re able to refine and optimize boost ROI. Accumulating data, however, is just one piece of the whole equation. You must also empower your sales team by letting them own the data and the tools used to collect it.

When the sales team is actively participating, and yielding their own conclusions, they’re more motivated to reach—and even surpass—the targeted sales quota. “The magic [of this approach] is the combination of getting insights to the frontline in a simple, easy-to-digest way, while allowing reps the freedom to explore some of the underlying input which lets them develop their own ideas,” suggest the global business consultants at McKinsey & Company.

This collaborative system allows you to get the most from the data and your sales team, while encouraging them to uncover their own best strategies.

However, if you don’t have a sales team, and you sell products or services online as a solopreneur, use your sales insights to consider where changes need to be made. For example, your checkout process may be causing potential customers to click away without purchasing. To change this, consider the three golden rules from 5 Secrets to Selling Products Online:

• Don’t require visitors to register or sign up when they first visit your website.
• Don’t make them overthink; make it easy for them to find what they want to buy and check out. To do so, keep your navigation at the top of the page and make it consistent.
• Don’t make buying process long. More importantly, don’t ask for too much information from customers. The more steps to complete, the greater the friction, the lower your ROI.

#2: Repurpose Your Content

Creating content can feel like a waste of time. You spend all this time writing a blog post, designing it and publishing. But then what? You promote it on social media and an email newsletter and then it just sits there. To drive more ROI from your content, turn to repurposing.

Repurposing is process of extracting quotes, statistics or case studies from the article and turning them into new pieces of content. In this way, you can create new content in half the time—and get more from the content you’ve already put a lot of time into. Dive into repurposing, and how it can boost your ROI with this 30-minute Skillshare course, How to Boost ROI With Content Repurposing.

Next: track progress. Which piece of content is getting most traffic? Which one is driving the most leads? Use this information to create a plan for how you’ll continue to create and repurpose content over and over. As you spend less time, but create more, you’ll find your ROI gets a nice boost.

#3: Trim Your Contractor and Vendor List

Most businesses outsource certain jobs to independent suppliers whose area of expertise is that particular function. This is normal and beneficial to an extent, but it can diminish ROI if you’re not careful. It’s easy to start working with numerous contractors and vendors, then stop using them over time, but forget they’re still doing work in the background.

“If you are paying for services that you haven’t shopped around for in awhile,” or you are unsure whether it’s even a task you still need to outsource, “take another look and get a bid or two. Merchant fees are one of these areas where companies tend to overpay,” says Jennifer Barnes, co-founder of Pro Black Office.

Luckily, this is an easy fix. Make a list of all your vendors and contractors and what they’re doing—are they providing value? If not, add them to the “eliminate” list. If so, follow Barnes advice and get bids. You may find you can pay less for the same output, boosting overall ROI.

#4: Refine Social Media and Set Goals

In this digital economy, social media marketing has become a necessary evil for businesses. But a common mistake is to have a presence on all the channels. The principal makes sense: the more networks you’re on the better chance you have at being found.

Unfortunately, this ends up spreading you too thin. Instead of doing really well one just one or two sites, you’re doing poorly on four or five. That’s bad for your brand and your customer service if customers are reaching out to you on each and every platform. Not to mention, this just adds to the stress you’re already feeling to “do it all.”

Instead, refine your process with goals. What are your goals for social media? To drive traffic to your blog? Boost your brand? Earn leads? Now focus on the sites that are making that possible already by heading into analytics. Which sites are already moving the needle on these goals?

The rest should be put on the back burner, while you focus on being more effective with social media.

#5: Invest in Live Chat Software

A growing trend in online business is the live chat feature on e-commerce websites. This technology can take your customer service to the next level, without bringing on more employees. The idea is simple: the chat software facilitates instant communication between your website visitors and representatives. This makes the shopping experience feel more efficient, personalized and convenient—three elements that generate positive feedback and secure repeat customers.   

The value is in being immediately available, right when potential customers have questions. This allows you to make the sale, and even upsell: “With a richer and more immediate method of interaction with the customer, your sales reps have an easier way to come up with additional products the customer might be interested in,” according to the experts at Small Business Bonfire.  They continue, “With a more efficient customer service system, you lower the chances of frustrated and unsatisfied customers who leave without making a purchase.”

#6: Create Better Company Culture

A happy team is always better for ROI. According to HR experts at ProSky, happy employees are more productive, which leads to greater performance, driving higher revenue and increased retention. The cost of hiring a new employee alone is enough to turn your focus to company culture and ensuring employees are happy and successful.

A study conducted by business change expert Dr. James Kotter and his colleague Dr. James Heskett found that organizations that invested in their culture fiscally outperformed the competition. This research argues that when employees, customers and business owners are valued equally in “corporate cultures that facilitate adaptation to a changing world,” the financial return is significant.          

Increase ROI Now

Maximizing an ROI is crucial for any entrepreneur and small business owner, and can make or break your business. Get social media on track, use analytics to empower your sales team, and make sure your company culture is keeping everyone happy. Track progress, continue tweaking as needed, and get read to watch your ROI grow higher and higher.

The post 6 Ways to Increase ROI for Your Small Business appeared first on TweakYourBiz.

6 Ways to Increase ROI for Your Small Business posted first on https://tweakyourbizusa.wordpress.com

The Best Blogging Success Stories Ever!

The evolution of Web 2.0 gave people the power to express. Since the possibilities of the internet are endless, users who were good at expressing thoughts and ideas in words started writing blogs. As more and more blogs got published, it gave shape to a whole new digital content ecosystem – the Blogosphere. Fast-forward to the present, blogging has new standards, and it has evolved into the major revenue stream.

Now you find bloggers in almost all niches; most of them use blogging as a platform to connect, discuss and collaborate with a specific target audience. As you read on, I will share stories of five successful bloggers who used the platform for increasing revenue.

Ryan Biddulph – Blogging from Paradise

Ryan Biddulph is a blogger who writes about how you can create content and monetize it while you are on the move. Born in New Jersey, Ryan loves traveling and writes about his travel experiences as well. He runs a blog named “Blogging from Paradise,” and as the name suggests, he blogs while he is traveling to different countries. He is also very active on other bloggers’ sites and regularly comments on their blogs, which has given him the title of “Comment King.”

After completing his high school and college, Ryan bounced around between many jobs. However, he describes that after taking a job as a security officer, his life changes completely. This was when he decided to do something that would give him the satisfaction of being free. Then when he was fired from the post of a security officer, he set his wheels in motion.

Most of Ryan’s content revolves around teaching people how to manage blog. He also gives them tips on how they can monetize their blogs through White Label SEO guides. Additionally, he also writes about his experiences while traveling. All these things add up making him one of the best bloggers in 2018.

Neil Patel – quicksprout.com, KISSMetrics.com, Crazy Egg

Born in London, Neil Patel is a California-raised investor, entrepreneur, and analytics expert now settled in Seattle. He is best known as the co-founder of a customer analytics platform KissMetrics, an analytics company called Crazy Egg, and also a blog that goes by the name of Quick Sprout. Neil is a website traffic and SEO expert, and his blogs contain content that teaches you various digital marketing and SEO techniques.

Neil started his first website when he was sixteen, which was a copy of the popular job website monster.com. However, it did not fare well since he knew nothing about marketing. He hired many marketing agencies, but nothing worked out. It was when he decided to learn marketing to become proficient at it.

Today, Neil Patel is helping companies, like NBC, Amazon, HP, GM, and others to help them grow their revenue. He has been termed as one of the top influencers on the web by The Wall Street Journal. Forbes has regarded him as the top 10 online marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine has recognized him for creating one of the best 100 companies in the world. Also, he was recognized as one among the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 30 by President Barak Obama, and one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 35 by the United Nations.

Most of his blogs teach people about digital marketing and SEO. Through his blogs, he teaches people how to leverage the digital world to earn money.

Lewis Howes – Instagrammer (@lewishowes), athlete, Lewishowes.com, School of Greatness

Aged 35, Lewis Howes is an American former professional Arena League football player and decathlete. If you needed an example of how the internet can change your life, Lewis Howes is a perfect example for you to follow. Lewis was doing very well as a professional athlete – until he was badly injured that ended his sporting career.

After knowing that he cannot play professionally for the rest of his life, he found success through webinar training LinkedIn courses. Today, he runs one of the world’s top podcasts named School of Greatness that gets big guests, like Maria Sharapova, Tony Robbins, and many others. Not only this, but Lewis is also an NYTimes Best Selling Author.

He has podcasts on various niches, starting from business and entrepreneurship, to health and relationships. Lewis provides the best content and excerpts across all the platforms including social media.

Hannah Bronfman – HBFIT

Born in New York, Hannah Bronfman is an entrepreneur from Manhattan. She runs a blog named HBFIT, which is considered one of the most popular lifestyle blogs that you can find today. HBFIT stands for Health, Beauty, and Fitness. As the name suggests, the blog covers every part of lifestyle advice and tips that can help you improve.

Hannah is one of the most influential bloggers in the fitness and lifestyle industry. She has co-founded a mobile app named Beautified, which allows the users to book last-minute beauty services. Today, HBFIT has thousands of followers across all the social media platforms. Hannah uses the platform to share useful information related to health and fitness regularly, which is why people love it.

Hannah uses many ways to monetize the channel to make money out of the website. She uses advertising, selling affiliate products, health, and fitness products, and she also leverages on the sponsored posts and reviews.

Mark Wiens – migrationology.com

Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Mark Wiens is a popular name in the world of travel and food blogging. He runs a blog called Migrationology that has millions of followers. Now based in Bangkok, Mark and his wife focus on creating blogs, videos, and podcasts on local food and travel.

Mark has traveled to many places since his childhood; he attended his first school in France. Then he moved to Democratic Republic of Congo, where he was homeschooled for three years. He then attended an international school in Kenya before finally returning to Arizona to complete his graduation in 2008. He says he found his love for traveling, eating, and blogging during his time in the Arizona State University.

Mark strives to provide his followers with authentic travel and food information, through videos and blogs. He makes sure that he connects with the locals to find out more about the place and its food, which inspires him to create content for his followers and readers.

Insights

Above-mentioned are the stories of five successful bloggers who use content to reach their audience and earn from it. You can follow any of these bloggers to get to know more about them and, learn how they leverage blogging and blogger outreach to generate revenue out of it.

The post The Best Blogging Success Stories Ever! appeared first on TweakYourBiz.

The Best Blogging Success Stories Ever! posted first on https://tweakyourbizusa.wordpress.com

The Daily Habits of Successful Business Owners and Entrepreneurs

There are few things more difficult than leading a successful business. To pull off the job, you need more than just confidence and discipline: you also need to enjoy the constant hustle and drive that is needed to stay on track and spur long-term growth.

If you are up for the long grind to make entrepreneurship work, there are daily habits you can embrace that can make the journey more likely to end with success. Luckily for us, those who have been around the block and experienced a taste of entrepreneurial success are often very happy to share the habits that have led to their success.

If you are an entrepreneurial upstart looking to grow your business, develop a better work ethic, and focus on self-improvement, you need to consider adopting the following habits. Not only will these habits help spur growth in your business life, but they will also encourage you to be more responsible with your time and fit more fun into your days.

Daily Habits for Business Success

Business is a cold, hard world. It is no surprise, then, that eight out of every ten businesses fail within their first year and a half in operation. Usually, those at the helm of a small business play a major role in whether a business will be able to pull through the difficult times. To help you and your business stack on track, consider these daily habits of proven business leaders.

Set Your Alarm Clock

If there is one habit that nearly all successful business leaders have, it is that they all wake up bright and early. Usually, Fortune 500 CEOs and other C-suite executives get up well before sunrise to make sure that they have enough time during the day to tackle their long list of objectives.

Having extra during before work hours means more preparation can be put into one’s schedule before competitors have a chance to catch up. In other words, waking up earlier lets business leaders get a head start on their day.

How early should a business leader plan to wake up every day? Probably a lot earlier than you currently are waking up. Believe it or not, many CEOs and even small business owners that we have interviewed over the years claim to wake up as early as 4 a.m.

Meditate

What does Oprah and Tony Robbins have in common? They both meditate every day. Although it once had a reputation for spiritualism and the hippie movement, the practice of meditation is becoming far more mainstream among the business crowd.

The key is to meditate at least once per day for a set period. All you must do is sit in silence while you direct the object of your attention back to your breathing. In doing this, you develop a more refined focus and a greater task-oriented attention throughout the day. Also, meditators claim that they are more “present” and make better decisions after meditating, too.

Write Your Goals

If you want to achieve great things, you need to aim toward them. Without writing down your goals, it is easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. To stay true to your big-picture goals and business aspiration, make sure you regularly jot down your short, medium, and long-term goals.

Even if you regularly think about your goals, you can still lose focus. This is because our minds tend to jump from idea to idea and can quickly move far away from what we originally set our sights on. That is why putting pen to paper is so crucial when it comes to maintaining our goals and aspirations.

Grow Your Support Network

Business owners everywhere will tell you about the importance of having a rock-solid support network. For many entrepreneurs, their social support system is the bedrock of their success. Without having a pair of ears that they can lean on during difficult times, it can become easy to succumb to the temptation to throw in the towel and quit when the going gets tough.

For some, a support network consists of colleagues and other business professionals that they can confide in. For others, a caring therapist and a few supportive family members are enough to get them through the hard times. Regardless of what your network looks like, it is important to always build a strong and resilient network to lean on.

Delegate, Delegate, Delegate

Business owners can get swamped with work if they let it pile up. Without delegating responsibilities and work to other team members, you can kiss any chances of getting your to-do finished. After speaking to numerous experts in the sales industry, if you do not outsource some of your low-level tasks to other employees, you can quickly become overwhelmed.

Wherever possible, delegate tasks to other members of your team. Not only will this help you focus on what matters most, but it also reflects well on you in the eyes of your newer teammates. After all, who doesn’t like to be considered competent and trustworthy by being given a task by a superior?

Stay Fit

It’s true: there is no tool in your arsenal more important than your body. By regularly exercising and staying fit, you can not only help blow off steam after a tough negotiating session or a rough client meeting, but you can also have a little fun while doing so.

Unfortunately, the business world is full of challenges and stressors—so don’t forget to make time for yourself occasionally. Whether it is cycling, weightlifting, or jogging, there are plenty of ways to reap the mental and physical benefits of keeping fit.

Make a Budget

Your business is not the only one who needs a budget—you do too! If you are a heavy spender, you can quickly derail your business by landing yourself in major financial issues. That is why successful entrepreneurs always master money management by writing out a weekly and monthly budget that itemizes their every expense.

The post The Daily Habits of Successful Business Owners and Entrepreneurs appeared first on TweakYourBiz.

The Daily Habits of Successful Business Owners and Entrepreneurs posted first on https://tweakyourbizusa.wordpress.com

Six Technological Trends in the Financial Industry in 2018

During the past year, we have seen an explosion in the popularity of mobile and online banking services, but in 2018 there will be new technological trends in relation to the financial industry. Virtually all of the products or services offered by financial institutions depend on technology. This collaboration translates into a series of product offerings, provides a positive customer experience and ensures that services and businesses operate efficiently. Here are 6 trends that we should pay attention to in 2018:

1. GOODBYE TO “TRADITIONAL” BANKS

A Forbes report states that 40% of US citizens have not visited a bank or a credit institution in the last 6 months. This report also shows that due to the rise of mobile banking services and online between 1995 and 2015 the n u number of banks f í musicians pr dropped to virtually half.

With so many users doing their banking operations online and from their mobile phones, the need to use physical banks has been reduced. Even users of online banking platforms have declined, as many of them prefer to use mobile platforms that allow them to budget, manage their banking operations, pay and use the collaborative financing services from their own mobile devices.

2. SECURITY

In the last 2 years, there has been a wave of criminal attacks that have affected some financial institutions. This is the reason why security constitutes a “forced trend” in 2018. These attacks have allowed the theft and exploitation of users’ personal information.

In 2018, all citizens of the European Union will witness a major change in terms of security. This change focuses on the general norm of data protection . These regulations are designed to increase the protection of data for all people within the EU . Companies must comply with the provisions of the regulation and those that do not, will be exposed to the payment of important fines.

The attacks that have occurred in 2017 have been the consequence of failures in security and privacy controls. In 2018, the institutions will focus on the use of technology and on procuring and guaranteeing its security for all users.

3. GREATER USE OF BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY

Blockchain is the technology behind the Bitcoin digital currency, but the technological community is finding different uses for it. Blockchain is an open distributor accounting record that records transactions between two parties in an efficient and verifiable manner.

What makes the Blockchain technology is so popular is that it allows secure exchanges of pr to virtually anything, from money to ideas , and copyright. Eliminate the intermediary that was previously necessary to manage the transaction and the entire process is done virtually.

4. THE USE OF SERVICES OF FINTECH COMPANIES

Previously, we analyzed the fact that customers are not only increasingly using mobile banking services systems but, at the same time, are completely changing the ways to spend and manage their money. It is about the influence of the so-called financial technology companies or FinTech . They are not subject to financial regulations and offer greater freedom. They are giving consumers the opportunity to participate in financing or n collaborative, finance debt and borrow money simply and without too much fuss.

The popularity of FinTech companies is growing, since they offer cheaper services than traditional banks and their use is simpler.

5. LESS AND LESS PHYSICAL MONEY

The cash , a human invention that according to historians can have between 4,500 and 2,700 years old , lives a declining mind that pushes him toward an uncertain future. Although fertilizers coins and banknotes are still widely majority, they are declining for years and increasingly unnecessary efforts trying to make them as mobile payments, contactless cards or instant transfers arise. The doubt, therefore, is not whether they will continue to fall, but to what level and in what term.

“Within 20 years the cash, the coins, will be pieces of curiosity, kept as a fetish, ” said Emilio Ontiveros , president of Analistas Financieros Internacionales (AFI), in a forum of ‘El País’. Other experts are more cautious. “The use of cash continues to be reduced but it does so gradually and its complete disappearance is not yet seen in the medium term, ” says Santiago Carbó , executive director of Funcas Financial Digitization Observatory and CUNEF professor of economics.

The number of card payments in shops did not stop rising during the crisis and between January and June accumulated an increase of almost 13% (1.62 million transactions), while cash withdrawals at ATMs just rose by 1, 3% (455,813). But what is more significant is that the amount of card operations (124.406 million euros, 10.75% more) exceeded last year for the first time cash removed from ATMs (118.274 million, 2.97% more ), a trend that has remained in the first half (63.917 million against 58.500 million).

Many people do not carry physical money with them and, instead, choose to use systems such as credit cards. However, digital currency even reduces the need to use cards.

6. CONSTANT INNOVATION

Nowadays, what helps the FinTech industry to be competitive in relation to institutions of greater importance is its capacity for innovation. In turn, these companies put pressure on established institutions to continue innovating.

A part of this innovation is the transformation or digital n. Social, mobile and cloud-based technologies offer new breakthroughs in terms of cost savings and security. Mobile banking services provide consumers with a convenient way to spend and save.

The key factors driving innovation and trans formative changes include the improvement of operations, the simplification of the operation of products and services, and compliance with the provisions of the regulations.

A quick change can be positive

It is easy to feel that all the changes in the financial industry have taken place quickly and that it has been difficult to keep up. It seems like yesterday when we were waiting in line at a bank to deposit a check and today it is as simple as taking a photo with phone é smart phone.

Today we can send money to another person instantly, pay bills automatically and participate in the collaborative economy much easier. All these changes have made realizing and understanding banking operations much easier, while requiring the financial industry to keep the day.

The post Six Technological Trends in the Financial Industry in 2018 appeared first on TweakYourBiz.

Six Technological Trends in the Financial Industry in 2018 posted first on https://tweakyourbizusa.wordpress.com