How to grow your business using Instagram
Running a small business?
Instagram wants to give you a hand: They just published a guide to growing and scaling your business right in the app.
Their guide covers marketing strategies like:
- Building awareness and community
- Getting customers
- Increasing sales
It also includes tips for getting the most out of the app’s tools.
Can’t blame them for trying: Yes, Instagram’s guide feels a little promotional. But every social media platform demands patience and practice if you want to get results.
So any help is good help.
3 Google updates to help you stand out, improve your writing, and leverage analytics
… but not necessarily in that order.
Stand out: Are you recycling products or materials? Google’s new recycling attribute adds an icon to your business profile, making it easy for customers to see if you’re in the recycling game.
Level up your writing skills: Google Docs doesn’t just want to help you improve grammar—it also wants to help you write more concisely, craft “active” sentences, and more.
Just look for the purple squiggly.
Leverage analytics: If you’re using Google Analytics 4 (GA4), now you can add landing pages to Explorations for better performance analysis.
Which one are you most excited about?
SPONSORED BY HOPIN
In the debate between online and offline, it’s probably hybrid events that come on top
Love them or hate them, hybrid events are the future.
And since hybrid events can be difficult to plan—and challenging to run—Hopin created a thorough Playbook to walk you through everything you need to know.
Before you run your next hybrid event, learn:
- The comprehensive checklist for planning and producing awesome events. For example, not everyone knows what to do six months, three months, and one month before an event. After reading this Playbook, you will.
- Unique ways to promote your hybrid event—and how to do it with an integrated promotion strategy.
- How to expand sponsorship opportunities. Hopin’s Playbook reveals ways you can increase sponsors’ revenue by creating appealing offers for companies.
- How to make sure online attendees have as much fun as in-person participants.
… and lots more.
This hybrid events Playbook is completely free, no personal info necessary.
“Show me how to run an unforgettable hybrid event.”
SEO
14 signals Google may use to determine your SEO ranking
Expertise, authoritativeness, and trust (E-A-T).
Google has spent a lot of time telling SEO experts to use the three E-A-T criteria to determine the ranking score of a website.
The problem is, E-A-T is just a concept for most experts. Google never revealed the exact metrics to pay attention to.
But in this Search Engine Land article, Olaf Kopp lists 14 potential on-page and off-page factors that Google could use to evaluate your E-A-T.
PageRank and reference to the author. Google uses PageRank and backlinks to evaluate content.
Distance to trust seed sites in the link graph. This is a more advanced form of PageRank, and it’s essentially the proximity of linked documents to the authority or seed websites.
Anchor text of backlinks. Yes, anchor text is a ranking signal. It’s also referred to as a trust rating in Google’s Search result ranking based on trust.
Credibility or trust of an author. There are different factors that can influence an author’s credibility, like the number of content pieces they published, how well known the author is, and their proven track record of producing content related to a specific topic.
Sentiment. Google can analyze the sentiment around a publisher or author using Natural Language Processing. If the sentiment is positive, the author or publisher is given more credibility.
These are just 5 of the 14 guidelines that Olaf Kopp shared.
And while they don’t cover all the signals that Google may use for evaluating E-A-T, they’ll still point you in the right direction.
SPONSORED BY PLAYBOOK
Are you setting yourself up to retire early?
Money can be a stressful subject, even for high-earners. Lucky for you, Playbook makes sure that every dollar you save is working towards your long-term goals.
How?
They combine your income, goals, upcoming life events, and time horizon to create a personalized financial plan that leverages all the tax-advantaged financial tools available to you.
Then it’s automated so that you have peace of mind, and Future You has a whole lot more money in the bank.
Don’t wait—put yourself on the path to an early retirement.
THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
Don’t think of your website as a website
Weird headline, we know.
But if you want to make sales or get conversions, there’s something we’d like to suggest when it comes to websites: Don’t think of your website as a website.
Instead, think of it as a tool for getting people to buy your product.
Here’s why.
Most marketers think they need to build “The Website.” They read guides, study their competitors, and try to emulate what everyone else is doing.
And because everyone has a blog, contact page, and a bakers’ dozen of features pages, they do the same thing.
But consider building a fraction of that. Instead of building a massive, complicated website, consider these facts:
- There are companies with complicated products who make sales with simple, one-page sites. For example, Rebase helps you move to Portugal. Rebase’s competitors all have multi-page sites, infinite marketing materials, and large blogs. Rebase uses one, simple page. And it works.
- You probably don’t need half of the pages you’ve built. Ever noticed how lots of companies have “blog” sections that haven’t been updated in a year? Yeah. Those exist simply because the marketing director thought they should. Not because they need to.
So don’t worry about checking boxes or copying everyone else.
Instead, stay as focused as you can. Only include pages and words that help your ideal customer through the process of “Oh this is cool” to “OK I want to buy this.”
You’ll see better results that way.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
SEO: Almost all websites out there have at least one SEO issue that is damaging its ranking. Stop bleeding traffic with this free intelligence tool that will identify the exact issues and help you rank higher. And without any risk because it’s free to use.*
PPC: “It’s not you, it’s us.” Google just admitted they’re a little slow when it comes to reviewing and approving Responsive search ads. So if you’re waiting for word, check back later in the day… or the week.
ADVERTISING: Customers are “window shopping” on Facebook and Instagram, then heading to Google to make a purchase. At least, that’s what Billy Footwear discovered, and they’ve updated their ad spend accordingly. Good to know.
BUSINESS: Move over, PayPal. 9.5M users downloaded Cash App in the US, making it the leading app for paying online. Why? Cash App is simple to use. There’s a lesson here for all of us…
E-COMMERCE: Too many abandoned carts. In 2021, 94% of US customers gave up on shopping sessions due to irrelevant site searches. Google released Retail Search to help retailers’ websites meet customer needs… and early adopters like Lowes are already seeing improvements.
*This is a sponsored post.
BRAIN TEASER
“Always in you, Sometimes on you;
If I surround you, I can kill you.
What am I? ”
You can find the answer here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
How to play the status game
Should you strive for “best in the world” at something?
Or avoid competing with other people for status in general?
Well, Nick Maggiulli says the answer lies somewhere in between.
And even though we want to be the best marketers we can be, we really like the idea of diversifying our status portfolio.
Maybe we’ll dominate water volleyball or Marco Polo next… let us know if you have any ideas.