Explore SMM tools to make you grow further and succeed in the digital world

Social Media Marketing (SMM) has arrived. We need to make use of some key tools here. We bring information about these to you.

1# Later – Instagram Scheduler

Later is known as premium social media marketing tools to plan your visual content marketing.It’s an easy-to-use tool to schedule and manage your Instagram posts via any devices such as the computer, iPhone, tablet or android so that you can manage your account from anywhere. It has an ability to add team members and this is a keynote in this particular social media marketing tool.

Pricing:

Free Plan: Available

It has a  free plan that allows you to publish up to 30 posts and 2 reposts per month on an Instagram profile. There are also a couple of things such as it helps to socialize with Facebook, Twitter, and other marketing tools as well.

Other Premium Plans:

For Individuals: 9$

For Businesses: 19$, 29$, 49$

2# Oktopost – Social Media Management aimed atB2B Marketing

Ocktopost is a social media management tool which is specifically designed for B2B companies.It allows you to curate engaging content, schedule it and then measure its effectiveness. Also, with this tool, you can listen to the social conversations that are really important for the growth of your business. It has a unique ability to manage large social media teams. This is a major plus point for this tool.

Pricing

Free Plan: No (Demo Available)

Pricing is determined by the organizational structure of your company (number of marketing teams), user seats, social advocates, and social profiles, with additional features such as Marketing Automation integration and Twitter Insights available for purchase.

3# Tagboard: Social Search And Display Platform

Tagboard is one of the best social listening tools. It is extremely easy to use as all you have to do is plug in a term, topic, or hashtag, and you’ll see how that topic has been discussed in the social sphere. The tool furnishes an advanced way to monitor your brand and product mentions. It is also good at  generating new content creation ideas & audience engagement strategies.

Pricing

Free Plan: No

Other Premium Plans: $500/month

4# FollowerWonk:  Twitter Analytics Tool

This tool is particularly designed for Twitter. It is actually one of the most in-depth and useful tools on this list. It helps you to understand and optimize your Twitter audience. It is also adept at suggesting people for you to follow which ultimately help you grow your audience. We must know that if  Twitter is part of our social media marketing strategies, this tool is a must-have.

Pricing

Free Plan: This allows you you to do 50 profile searches and 20 analyses per day.

Other Premium Plans: $ 29/month & $ 79/month

5# Everypost: Manage Multiple NetworksSimultaneously

This tool makes it easy to analyse all content all in one place by pulling together relevant multimedia from all the social media channels such as YouTube, Instagram, Flickr, RSS feeds, and more. Using this, we can schedule your posts and customize them to suit the audience of each of your social platforms. That way, we are able to maximize the effectiveness of each and every post.

Pricing

Free Plan: This allows you to connect only 1 channel

Other Premium Plans:

Pro: $9.99/m

Plus: $29.99/mo

Advanced: $49.99/mo

Team: $99.99/mo

6# Feedly: Content Aggregator

It is best known as a content discovery tool, like BuzzSumo, but its working is a little different. This is a content aggregator, and you can use it to collect content from any number of different areas, combining your ideal reading material into a single feed that you can peruse at your leisure.

Pricing

Free Plan: This allows Up to 100 sources & 3 feeds

Other Premium Plans:

Pro: $5/m

Team: $18/mo

7# Bitly: URL Shortener

This allows you to shorten any URL so that it fits nicely across your social media channels. These URLs then work with any channel on any platform. It enables you to even track your campaign results with individual link analytics, and then optimize your marketing efforts based on the insights you collect

Pricing

Free Plan: Yes

8# Headline Analyzer: Write Headlines ThatDrive Traffic

This  analyzes every type of headline. It converts and tells you the right number of words and balances which can be used for your type of audience. It also suggests the optimal character length and creates easy to digest headlines for your readers.

Pricing

Free

9# Tailwind: Pinterest & InstagramScheduler

This is a tool that helps you to succeed on Pinterest and Instagram. It helps you optimise Pinterest, where you can pin to multiple boards at once, bulk upload, and schedule posts with the drag-and-drop calendar. If you want to give it a spin, you can try it out for free.

Pricing

Free Plan: Yes

Other Premium Plans: $119.88/yr

10# Sproutsocial: Social Media ManagementSoftware

This is an all-in-one social media marketing tool to help managers better control their efforts. It features include multi-level access, allowing directorial control, and access from lower-level team members to better coordinate and delegate tasks.It comes with full post scheduling capabilities, a detailed analytics platform. It even has a social listening platform to better understand how your demographics use your platforms of choice.

We shall give you some more shortly. 

Artificial Intelligence is no longer artificial in today's digital world

Marketers have depended on tools and technology to automate their work and reduce the manual effort for a while. Yet, there has always been a gap in terms of effort and quantifiable results.

Image Source : audienceplanet.com

Intuition on the right audience and time to send messages aren’t enough to answer a digital marketer’s basic questions. Who should I reach out to? What should I send? When should I send the message? Over what channel?

The answer to these questions is the key to creating engagement and growth, fostering sales and building a brand. As these questions remain unanswered for marketers across the spectrum, there is another growing trend that can help them get these answers, and that is big data. Data is everywhere. Every customer in the digital space brings with them an amalgamation of data and is constantly creating new data for marketers to understand, process and act on. The problem is this: big chunks of data don’t necessarily make things any easier. They usually make things so complicated that the first instinct is to abandon the data and go by intuition alone – but this won’t give you the right results. This is where AI comes in. Artificial Intelligence and machine learning can understand human behavior to the extent where not only are big data sets analyzed, segmented and filtered, but meaning is also derived from them. Earlier, not so long ago, marketers were somewhat reluctant to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) in their digital marketing strategies. But this year they’ve gained a lot more confidence in using AI since its ambiguity has been reduced with respect to the results it can provide. These intelligent tools keep evolving more and more and are even reaching a point in which they are able to surpass humans in certain aspects like we’re about to see.

In a survey taken by over 1,600 professionals dedicated to marketing, 61% of those surveyed (without considering the size of their company) mentioned that both artificial intelligence and machine learning will be the most important data initiatives next year (source: MeMSQL).

Yet another research by Salesforce indicated that 51% of marketers are already using AI, and 27% more are even planning on incorporating this technology in 2019. This represents the highest expected year-after-year growth of all emerging technologies that marketers are considering adopting next year, surpassing even the Internet of Things (IoT) and marketing automatization.

And, while the amount of information on potential consumers grows, computer sciences related to AI (like machine learning, deep learning and natural language processing [NPL]), will be of utmost importance when making data-based decisions.Some of the areas where AI could be beneficial are :-

1. Create and Generate Content

What? A machine that writes by itself and creates content from scratch? This may seem impossible but this is not the case.Even though AI still can’t write its own political opinion for a newspaper column or a blog post on the best and most practical advice for a specific industry, there are certain areas in which AI can be useful. It helps people save lots of time and resources. In today’s world, AI is often used to write reports and news based on data and information.

Intelligent tools like Wordsmith, Articoolo, and Quill are already being used by the Associated Press and Forbes to create news, which leads to clicks on their websites. Using templates and fill-in-the-blanks to enter data and keywords can create unique content that gives the impression a human wrote it. So, you’ve probably read content that was generated by AI since BBC, CBS, the New York Times and Reuters are also implementing this technology.

Further, many articles in the Washington Post are already credited with artificial intelligence technology, Heliograf.

2. Content Curation

Apart from generating content, AI can also curate it. Through this, artificial intelligence makes it possible to better connect with visitors on certain websites and show them more relevant content.

This is often used to make personalized content recommendations that the user may find interesting, such as the typical, “people who buy X also buy Y,” like we constantly see on Amazon.

Using AI, Netflix’s recommendation system also gives us suggestions for movies and TV shows you might find interesting. And it’s pretty accurate!

Now, the question is: How can you benefit from it? Imagine showing each of your blog’s visitors articles that are more relevant to them, based on posts and topics they’ve already looked at on your blog. They’d definitely spend more time on it.

3. Email Marketing

Brands now use the power of AI to personalize email marketing campaigns based on preferences and user behaviors. This makes it possible to better connect with them and, with a bit of luck, turn them into clients.

Machine learning or automatic learning can analyze millions of data about the consumer to then determine the best times and days of the week to contact the user, the recommended frequency, the content that catches their attention the most, and which email subjects and titles generate more clicks. Wouldn’t you love to know all about this so you can launch the main metrics of your digital marketing campaigns?
Certain tests take time and can have a certain margin of error. So, in this sense, AI becomes your best friend in personalizing email content for each subscriber.Boomtrain, Phrasee, and Persado are some tools that AI applies to email marketing. 

According to Phrasee, its generation of email subject lines surpasses those of a human by over 95%. Persado even says that its cognitive content exceeds what a human could do 100% of the time.

4. Digital Advertising

In the area of digital marketing, it is advertising that has most successfully adopted artificial intelligence.

We know that Facebook and Google ad platforms already use machine learning and artificial intelligence to find people more prone to making the advertiser’s desired action. They analyze all the user’s information to learn and detect the best audience for their brand.

Google AdWords already has an automatic auction-based system that lets advertisers pay the lowest possible cost per conversion.

There’re also already platforms that incorporate AI and the analysis of big data candidates in their processes… but wait until we tell you about Adext.

Adext is an Audience Management as a Service (AMaaS) that uses deep, transfer and machine learning to automate the handling and optimization of your ads on platforms like Google AdWords and Facebook Ads. This means that, in addition to testing different audiences on each ad (up to 480 everyday!) to detect the one most likely to make the desired action or conversion it identifies and learns which platforms are most profitable and then channel the investment toward them.

Its intelligent algorithms adjust and optimize budgets every hour so that the advertiser can obtain the highest sustained conversion rate (which is guaranteed under contract, or else the software is free). On an average, its increasing ads performance by 83% in just 10 days!

5. Searches

The way users perform online searches has changed. So, now we must ask ourselves how this will affect the way in which marketers create and optimize their web content.There have been two big advances in artificial intelligence that revolutionized Internet searches and search engine optimization (SEO): voice search and Google’s algorithm, RankBrain.

Innovations like Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft’s Cortana make it easy for people to perform searches by just pressing a button or saying a voice command.

Google’s machine learning algorithm, RankBrain, was created to get much more relevant search results. It interprets the user’s voice searches and, using the power of AI, provides the user with the best results according to what it interpreted from the user’s language and context.

Voice searches require marketers to adapt their content so that it’s closer to the way a user would verbally express themselves. So, in this sense, those famous long-tail keywords will be replaced with more conversational keywords, based on the way the user would say something or do a voice search. Someone who truly knows how to benefit from voice searches will be able to considerably increase their organic traffic.

6. Web Design

If we thought a good website couldn’t exist without the help of a programmer and designer, this is a thing of the past.

There are applications, like Grid, that use artificial intelligence to design a website based on user-provided information (like images, text, calls-to-action, etc.). They can make the website look professional in much less time and at an unbeatable price.

7. User Experience (UX)

Through intelligent algorithms, it’s possible to personalize an experience on a website. After analyzing thousands of data on a single user (including location, demographics, devices, interaction with the site, etc.), AI can display offers and content that are more appropriate for each user type.

A 2017 Evergage survey showed that 33% of the marketers surveyed used AI to provide personalized web experiences. And, when they were asked about the benefits of personalization driven by AI, 63% responded that it increased conversion rates and improved the consumer’s experience.

It’s true: a good user experience is what keeps an audience browsing a site and, the more time they spend on it, the higher the probability of a conversion.

In this sense, one of the many possibilities that AI offers to make the user experience more user-friendly are chatbots, which we’ll talk about now.

8. Chatbots

Many have started to communicate with their prospects through messenger applications like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Slack. They’re fast since consumers are already using these tools to chat with friends and colleagues and, let’s get real, no one likes to wait for a response on the phone.

Chatbots are making the process of automating responses to potential buyers’ frequently asked questions even easier by providing them with a way to search for the product or service they’re looking for.

A good indicator of a chatbot powered by AI is its ability to answer open questions. These bots use natural learning processing and machine learning to find the correct response.

Chatbots also have many other advantages. They are available to their clients 24/7 and retain their data. They’re friendly and never lose their patience. Customers may get angry, but the bot always treats them well. Chatbots can respond to several requests from different customers at the same time, so waiting times will no longer be a problem.

For instance, Sephora uses a chatbot to give beauty advice to its users and offer them the best cosmetic products according to their needs.  It has an application that lets its potential clients “test” cosmetic products like lipsticks, eyeshadows, and highlighting pallets. Visual Artist is able to identify facial features and then uses augmented reality to apply the selected product to the user’s photograph. It automatically applies an eyeshadow suggestion based on the skin tone of the consumer!

In Sum

These are just some of the areas where AI is making its mark felt. We are certain this is only going to increase.

References ::
https://blog.adext.com/applications-artificial-intelligence-ai-digital-marketing/

YouTube creates success for all those who wish to be seen and heard globally.

YouTube, that started in 2005, is now extremely well known as a website for watching and streaming videos.

Regular users who may have remained entirely anonymous before the onset of the digital world are finding fame through uploading videos.  These anonymous people are building successful media platforms through sharing their talents and voices. By doing this, they are building an audience of their own.

We share some success stories with you here.

1. PewDiePie – $21 million (3 billion views)

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Image Source : lifehack.org

This is  is also known as Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg is a Swedish YouTube vlogger whose features basically concentrate on video games. He has broken various YouTube progress records, increasing from 12 million supporters in August 2013 to more than 20 million in January 2014. We need to understand that this didn’t become successful just because of a sudden viral hit or a change in his Youtube presence. Instead, the reason behind his success is “consistency”. He uploads videos on his channel almost every single day. Once he started getting popular, he built upon his success, and give more time to his online presence. He spends a lot of time discussing his fan’s inquiries in the comments, and formed a famous group of “bros” where his fans can share his work with their friends.

Lesson we can imbibe : The lesson we need to learn here is a worthy lesson for anyone eager to grow audience on YouTube. This is not a secret formula but consistency, hard work, and quality content to engage your audience constantly.

2. BlueXephos – $16.1 million (2.3 billion views)

Image Source : lifehack.org   

In 2008  Lewis started a little YouTube channel called BlueXephos to share his best friend Simon’s charm with the world. They gained initial popularity from posting a  video of the most entertaining game at that time. This was the “World of Warcraft.” Later in 2010, they started one of the most popular serialized shows on YouTube, The Shadow of Israphel. Then in March 2013, the channel was the most seen and the second-most subscribed to channel on YouTube. In fact, they won “Greatest YouTube Gamer” award two consecutive years at the Joystick Awards. This way it has grown from being a single YouTube channel to a commercial network.

Lesson we can imbibe : If we make videos that are related to hot news or popular things that everybody is discussing and finding on the web, we will have a superior chance of getting fame. Staying current is vital in the ever-changing world of social media.

3. DisneyCollectorBR – $5.1 million (1.51 billion views)

Image Source : lifehack.org 

This is a famous YouTube channel owned by an anonymous Brazilian lady who frequently uploads videos of Disney toys. Despite she being anonymous, DisneyCollectorBR is the most-watched YouTube channel in the United States. Disney channel has entered into the child’s world and channel videos leave a “spellbinding effect” on children through background music, voice and instructions. It is popular because children love the opportunity to observe someone demonstrating how to engage with certain toys, which is why this faceless YouTube channel is consistently on the top list.

Lesson we can imbibe : The appearance one’s YouTube channel can make or break the success of your videos. We need to put our efforts to the draw the attention of the viewers! We could come up with an appealing channel name and add relevant content to get things started. We also need to add a channel short description to give viewers an idea of the kind of content we are offering.

4. Smosh – $19.6 million (2.8 billion views) 

This is a YouTube comedy channel operated by Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla. The producers that established this brand  in the fall of 2005 were not newcomers to Internet content creation or comedy. The co-founder, Anthony Padilla, started this phenomenon back in 2003 when he uploaded a few short Flash animations on the Newgrounds website. 

Ian Hecox, his friend, started helping him a few months later and the two still work together on each release. They became well known in YouTube group when their video of the Pokemon signature song became the most popular video of the time. Their high quality clips has helped them win the attention of more than eight million people from around the world. Smosh has made various comedy videos that are still regularly updated and consistently popular in 2006. They are also  in talks with others to begin airing their comedy content on television.

Lesson we can imbibe : We should not undervalue the value of video production. If our content is interesting or creative, but the quality is low, viewers will watch the video for first few seconds only and then move away. So, we need to invest in a good video camera to capture HD videos and use professional video editing programs to make your video catchier.

5. RayWilliamJohnson – $18.2 million (2.6 billion views)

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Image Source : lifehack.org

Ray William Johnson video blogger, writer, producer, and actor best known for his YouTube series Equals.  It was reported by a industry publication that Johnson had six of the top 20 most watched videos of the month. Johnson became popular from his series Equals Three where he gives opinion and personal views to viral videos. He is also a gifted author of music and lyrics across a number of different music genres–which he uses in his videos. Through entertaining comments and creativity, he maintains a consistently large viewership that endures to follow his work from the aggressive to the instructive. His channel has more than 10 million subscribers and gets more views than 99% of regular television programming. The secret of  his success is regular and frequent scheduling–that is one of the important advices, best practices, and strategies to build greater audiences on YouTube.

Lesson we can imbibe : The most popular YouTube stars create schedules to release their videos, and it really seems to work for them. Fans get familiar with the schedule and return for the latest video at the same time every week. To help boost our exposure, we need to create a schedule and let our fans know when to expect your new content.

6. Shane Dawson – $315,000

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The young Shane Dawson is so popular that he has 12 million-plus subscribers across three different YouTube channels. He has had challenges too. In 2008 Shane and his family were fired after he uploaded a video of himself pole dancing in the building he worked in. He also uploaded a video called “Fred is Dead!”. That became the most-viewed video on YouTube (at that time, received over 23 million views). His strategy is that every week he posts new videos on his main channel, ShaneDawsonTV, and formerly posts other videos on other channels. Shane often cooperates with other YouTubers and also appears in their videos. So much so,  that he was featured on “Attack of the Show” and, in 2010, Forbes magazine named him their 25th most famous web celebrity.

Lesson we can imbibe : We need to look for opportunities to collaborate with other YouTubers with similar style and viewership. Through collaboration you can share each other’s audiences, which will result in more YouTube recognition and getting to be a more prominent part of the YouTube community.

7. Philip DeFranco – $181,000 (1 billion views)

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Phil  has long been one of the most cherished vloggers on YouTube. He is a kid from the Bronx who started off acting like an idiot before building a small empire on the world’s largest video platform. He got his start on YouTube when he first made his channel, sxephil, in 2006. His channel SourceFed (acquired by Discovery Communications), which blends political news and humor, is frequently named as the most successful of the much-hyped YouTube funded channels.  His cast is so lovable and relevant that ever single news piece feels important and entertaining. The channel engages viewers on a personal level and truly creates a link with the viewer.

Lesson we can imbibe : Many stars on Youtube gain popularity by making a video response and giving it a hilarious twist. This helps them capitalize on other people’s success. He steadily posts responses. Eventually, the originals catapult to even greater fame.

8. Fred – $146,000

Fred Figglehorn is an imaginary character, played by Lucas Cruikshank, who uploads videos at Fred’s Channel on YouTube. In his video, Fred says he is a 6-year-old boy with a worthless family life and issues with anger management. Lucas’s videos are about teenage issues like school dances, dating, girls, irritating parents and more using a funny, hilarious approach.

His character became a great success on the web with over 1.6 million YouTube subscribers. Fred’s high-pitched chipmunk voice and energetic character attract viewers to watch his videos in droves. This is successful as his videos are new, fresh and relevant to what is going on in the lives of kids.

Lesson we can imbibe : We need to engage in social media to promote our YouTube channel. Through social networking websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, we can let people in your circle know about our videos. This will not only target our family and friends but also people in our friends’ circles. They could promote you too.

In Sum

The fact is YouTube gives us a readymade platform to promote ourselves. We only need to make complete use of this, applying all the lessons we can imbibe from other success stories.

References :

https://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/the-unusual-success-stories-these-youtube-stars-will-blow-your-mind.html