The real estate industry in India and Bangalore in particular is growing rapidly with real estate companies establishing new developments in and around the city. Real estate developers are also using digital marketing to update their clients and potential clients on the new projects and any exciting news that they may have.
From opting for a responsive website to having engaging social media content across channels, real estate developers are including digital marketing as part of their marketing and sales strategy. Keeping this in mind, we have put together a detailed report on the digital marketing strategies of some of the top real estate developers in Bangalore.
With developments ranging from residential to retail, from commercial to hospitality sectors, Mantri Developers are one of the few real estate businesses that have provided high-quality properties that match the current trends and future needs.
Mantri Developers have a descriptive website that covers details of all their projects elaborately.
Key features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 46.2K | 0:02:57 | 3.8 | 49.58% |
span style="font-weight: 400;">UX Audit: From a user’s perspective, this website has a lot of useful information. However, a more organized and spacious layout would connect better with the users and improve their experience.
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 40 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account with around 3k followers. They do 4 to 5 tweets per week and have many promoted tweets too. The tweets are good from the users’ perspective. However, the engagement is low.
Facebook: They also have an active page with only organic posts and around 20k followers. Although they have tried interactive posts like the one shown below, the engagement is quite low. However, they can try to boost their posts to make it reach masses.
LinkedIn: They have a LinkedIn business page with around 4k followers. No recent updates are there in the page, but the older posts have good engagement. They respond to the comments on posts, which gives really good impression to the audiences.
YouTube: They have an active YouTube account with 164 subscribers. They post one or two videos every month which has good engagement.
Their Google+ and Instagram Pages are not active.
They have a Wordpress blog, but the last post was in August 2013. Blogs can give them a lot of traffic, so they should start posting at least one blog per month.
Prestige Developers is a real estate company that has triumphantly built a lot of residential, commercial, retail, leisure & hospitality based properties.
Prestige Developers have a common website, which covers detail of all their projects across all the cities they are serving currently. Their website is mobile responsive.
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 147.7K | 0:02:56 | 2.89 | 54% |
UX Audit: The elite images rolling in the banner connects the user to the luxury of the brand. The main menu could have been more prominent, instead of being placed against the sliding banners, but that apart, the site has very nice organization of the project information - presented state-wise and sorted by price.
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 42 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account with around 2.5k followers. They do 10 to 12 tweets per week and have no promoted tweets. The tweets are mostly about their projects or on reasons to buy property. And the engagement on tweets is decent.
Facebook: This is also an active page with around 4 lac followers. All posts are organic and the engagement is low. They have almost same posts on Facebook as the ones they have posted on Twitter.
LinkedIn: They have a LinkedIn business page with around 3.5k followers. The page is active and engagement is also decent but they are posting same content on all the channels. They should differentiate the content as the audiences are different in different channels of Social Media.
YouTube: They have a YouTube account with 867 subscribers but it is not active. The last post was posted a year ago.
Their Google+ is not an active account, and they don’t have Instagram Page.
They don’t have any blog linked to their website. Blogs are a very good source of traffic and link building, so they should start a blog and link it to their website.
Tata Housing is one of India's leading real estate developers. It is a closely held public limited company and is a subsidiary of TATA Sons.
They have a website that covers details of all their current projects. Website has many tools like EMI calculator, Property finder, etc. and has a payment option as well.
Key Features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 144K | 0:01:47 | 2.72 | 65.56% |
UX Audit: The website comes with a clean layout and a very neat color scheme. One of the hugely useful utility – Search, is well planned here. User experience could be enhanced by placing the search in the primary top portion of the layout – so that it is easily discoverable. Every internal page corresponding to a project, has a different color scheme suited to the image. Even though the common practice is to maintain color consistency across pages, from the UX perspective this is indeed appealing.
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 39 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account with around 14.5k followers. They do 3 to 4 tweets per week and don’t have promoted tweets. They have a diverse set of tweets ranging from customer testimonials to the initiatives they have taken in general. The engagement on tweets is good.
Facebook: This is also an active page with around 2 lac followers. All posts are organic and the engagement is good. They have interesting posts like the one shown below:
LinkedIn: They have a LinkedIn business page with around 12.5k followers. The page is active, and the engagement is also good. Content is exactly same as what they have posted on Twitter.
YouTube: They have an active YouTube account with 1187 subscribers. They post 1 video every month mostly about their new projects.
Their Google+ is active with around 600 followers, and their Instagram account is not active.
They have a blog which is linked to their website. The blog is not active as last post was on 6th Jan 2016.
Founded in 1976, Sobha Group is one of the largest real estate organisations in India and the Middle East. Today, they have presence in 24 cities and 13 states across India and throughout the Middle East.
They have a website that covers detail of their current project in all the cities they are serving in India, and they have an option to go directly to Dubai site.
Key features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 226.8K | 0:03:10 | 3.3 | 59.85% |
UX Audit: The submenus on the main menu are very interesting, with an image and well placed submenu items. Even for mobile, the menu is optimized well. The banner is the most informing entity of their website. It covers all the deals, promotions, new launches, etc. Usually extensive sliding banners don’t work, from user perspective. However, since the information below the banner is very minimal, the user has a better opportunity to focus on the extensive banner.
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 32 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account with around 2k followers. They do 5 to 6 tweets per day, which is a lot as compared to their competitors. They have a diverse set of tweets ranging from their new projects to the general industry based news. Despite these, engagement is low on tweets.
Facebook: They have an active page with around 5.5 lac followers. All posts are organic, and the engagement is good. They have interesting posts like customer testimonial which is shown below:
LinkedIn: They have a LinkedIn business page with around 15k followers. The page is active and engagement is also good. Content is almost same as what they have posted on Facebook.
YouTube: They have a YouTube account with 466 subscribers but it is not very active. The last post was 8 months back.
Their Google+ is active with around 515 followers, and their Instagram account is not active.
They have a blog which is not active. They do not have any mention to their blog on their website.
Century Real Estate prides itself on being an integrated, full-service landholdings development company that offers the best real estate & property developers in Bengaluru.
They have a descriptive website, which covers detail of their current project in all the cities they are serving in India.
Key features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 20.5K | 0:04:48 | 3 | 46.54% |
UX Audit: The elevation overview image used in the banner is very attractive. It gives a very detailed idea of the luxury and environment of the residential project. The location sorter-tab is a good utility to filter residential projects in specific areas. The slide-in enquiry form looks neat and works comfortably.
The section ‘Bangalore - the place to be’, is well aligned with the idea of living in a place overlooking green luxury – the strength of their residential project.
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 27 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account, but the followers are very less; it is around 50 only. They do 5 to 6 tweets per week, but the engagement is very low. Some of the tweets are interesting which give emphasis on Call-To-Action as the one mentioned below:
Facebook: They have an active page with around 47k followers. Some posts are organic, and some are boosted, and the engagement is good overall. They have interactive posts like the one shown below:
LinkedIn: They have a LinkedIn business page with around 1.2k followers. They don’t have any post on their page till now.
YouTube: They have a YouTube account with only 13 subscribers and it is not very active. They post once in around 3 months.
Their Google+ is not active, and they don’t have Instagram account.
They have an active blog which is linked to their website. And they have newsletter sign-up option for their blog.
The Puravankara Group commenced operations in Mumbai and has established significant presence in the metropolitan cities of Bangalore, Kochi, Chennai, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Mysore and overseas in Dubai, Colombo and Saudi-Arabia.
They have a website with categories for cities they are serving in India and then cities have description of their current projects.
Key Features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 91.4K | 0:01:44 | 2.2 | 67.51% |
UX Audit: They have a very interesting drop down menu with all their residential projects listed. The supporting icons plus location information makes way of navigating to residential options more convenient.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account but the followers are very less, it is around 360. They do 5 to 6 tweets per week but engagement is low. Most of the tweets are themed around investment like the one shown below:
Facebook: They have an active page with around 37k followers. The posts are organic and have decent engagement.
LinkedIn: They have a LinkedIn business page with around 4k followers. They don’t have any post on their page till now.
YouTube: They have an active YouTube account with around 400 subscribers.
Their Google+ is not active, and they don’t have Instagram account.
They have a blog, but it is not active. It is also not linked to their website. The last post was in 2014.
Ozone Group one of the top builders in Bangalore & Chennai among the real estate construction companies.
They have a website with description of their projects on the banner images, which is very visual and catches the attention.
Key Features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 72.2K | 0:01:23 | 1.76 | 72.22% |
UX Audit: The information architecture of this page is very well-planned. Banner information with different projects and their status, makes it a valuable source of information. The website has a very well-built footer with latest news, enquiry form, and contact us.
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 35 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account with around 1.5k followers. They do 2 to 3 tweets per week, but engagement is low. Most of the tweets are informative, like the one shown below:
Facebook: They have an active page with around 1 Lac followers. The posts are organic and have decent engagement. They have many images posted for different occasions.
LinkedIn: They have an active LinkedIn business page with around 800 followers. They have posts related to their achievements and activities on their page.
YouTube: They have an active YouTube account, but the subscribers are less. They have almost one video upload every week.
Their Google+ is not active, but the Instagram account is active with similar posts as Facebook.
They have a blog which is active, and it is linked to their website. Content is mostly about their projects.
Architect led design company in real estate development, Total Environment creates luxury apartments and villas for sale in India.
They have a website with very less content. They have put images of all their projects and every image has a small description of the project.
Key Features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 10.7 K | 0:04:42 | 11.86 | 22.30% |
UX Audit: The image slider is very different from the usual websites. It focused on every facility that the residence provides, thereby giving the user an entire perspective of what they’re signing up for.
On the con-side, there is no evident attractive information about their residential projects; the user might lose out on the purpose of the page
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 21 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have a Twitter account with only 100 followers. The account is not active, last tweet was in April.
Facebook: They have an active page with around 15k followers. The posts are organic and have good engagement. They have interesting posts like the one shown below:
LinkedIn: They have a LinkedIn business page with around 2k followers. They have very few posts that are about job openings only.
YouTube: They don’t have an YouTube account.
Both their Google+ and Instagram are not active.
They do not have a blog.
Nitesh Estates is the luxury real estate brand, which has developed state-of-the-art homes, hotels, office buildings and shopping malls in India.
They have descriptive and visually appealing website, which tells about their projects and promotional activities in detail.
Key Features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 17K | 0:04:30 | 3.9 | 29.11% |
UX Audit:
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 31 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account with around 9k followers. They do 5 to 6 tweets per week, but engagement is low. They have tried engaging in campaigns like the one shown below:
Facebook: They have an active page with around 42k followers. The posts are organic and have decent engagement. They have many posts that talk about the facilities they have in their projects like the one shown below:
LinkedIn: They have an active LinkedIn business page with around 3k followers. They have posts related to their projects and the engagement is good on their page.
YouTube: They have an active YouTube account with around 1.2k subscribers. They have almost 2 to 3 video uploads every 2-3 months.
Their Google+ is not active but the Instagram account is active with similar posts as Facebook.
They have a blog which is active and it is on their website. Content is very diverse ranging from general topics of real estate to specific topics like tour of their property.
Brigade Group is a real estate and property developer in Bangalore & the rest of South India since 1986.
They have very colorful website, which tells about their projects across various cities. Their website is Mobile responsive.
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 99.7K | 0:01:55 | 2.22 | 58.56% |
UX Audit: Quick Finder turns out to be an excellent feature and well-placed to a user’s visibility. Categorizing their properties based on Commercial, Retail and Hospitality is very thoughtful. However the second half of the website could have maintained a more prominent and vibrant color theme like the first half of the site.
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 40 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an Twitter account with around 150 followers. The account is not active, and the last tweet was in 2015.
Facebook: They have an active page with around 13k followers. The posts are organic and engagement is low. They have tried interactive posts but still the engagement is low as the one shown below:
LinkedIn: They have an active LinkedIn business page with around 9k followers. They have posts related to their projects and the engagement is decent on their page.
YouTube: They don’t have YouTube account.
Their Google+ is not active, and they don’t have an Instagram account.
They have a blog, which is on their website. It is not active; last post was in December 2015.
3 decades of delivering Quality Homes has made DRA a name synonymous with quality apartment constructions in Bangalore.
They have a website with good description of their ongoing as well as upcoming projects.
Key Features:
UX Audit: Each of the individual projects has a set of features that can viewed by a simple click, and all changes being reflected in a single space. This is a very simple navigation.
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 19 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account with around 300 followers. They do 4 to 5 tweets per week but engagement is low. Most of the recent tweets are about their new project.
Facebook: They have an active page with around 25k followers. The posts are organic and have decent engagement. They have most recent posts only about their new project.
LinkedIn: They have an LinkedIn business page with around 80 followers. They have no posts till now.
YouTube: They don’t have a YouTube account.
Their Google+ is not active and they don’t have Instagram account.
They don’t have a blog.
Casa Grande defines designs and develops quality livings spaces and operates in niche residential segments like luxury villas and apartments in Chennai, Bangalore, Coimbatore and Cochin. The company also sells plotted development spaces. Projects in the pipeline are to the tune of around 2500 crores in the luxury apartments and villas category across these 4 geographies.
They have a website which is visually appealing with big banner images, info-graphics and video testimonials from clients.
Key Features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 76K | 0:05:29 | 3.21 | 43.02% |
UX Audit: The semi-parallax look adds a luxurious feel to the general theme of Casa Grande. The well laid-out contact information at the top of the page facilitates easy contact. The feature that shows the number of completed, ongoing, and upcoming projects. Clean color theme of the website and well organized layout is a great advantage.
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 22 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account with around 2k followers. They do 4 to 5 tweets per week, but engagement is low. Most of the tweets are same as the ones posted on Facebook.
Facebook: They have an active page with around 1.2 Lac followers. The posts both organic as well as sponsored posts have decent engagement. They have some engaging posts like the one shown below:
LinkedIn: They have an active LinkedIn business page with around 490 followers. They have posts related to their offers but the engagement is very low on their page.
YouTube: They have an active YouTube account but the subscribers are around 200 only. They have almost two video uploads every month.
Their Google+ is active but engagement is low, and they don’t have a Instagram account.
They have a blog which is active and it is linked to their website. They post almost twice per month which is good as compared to their competitors.
They have a website with description of their projects and lot of content related to their mission/ vision. They have videos of testimonials by their clients.
Key Features:
UX Audit:
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 24 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account with around 150 followers. They do 4 to 5 tweets per month which is low as compared to competitors. The engagement is low on their posts.
Facebook: They have an active page with around 8k followers. The posts are organic and have decent engagement. They post once a week mostly.
LinkedIn: They have an active LinkedIn business page with around 100 followers. They have posts related to their achievements and activities on their page but the engagement is low.
YouTube: They have an active YouTube account but the subscribers are less. The last video they uploaded was 9 months back.
Their Google+ is active, but they don’t have Instagram account.
They have a blog tab on their website but after clicking it is re-directed to their home page only.
Mahindra Lifespaces is one of the most reputed real estate property developers and they provide a one stop solution for NRI investment in India.
They have a website which is very colorful and interactive.
Key Features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 56.6K | 0:02:19 | 1.76 | 65.56% |
UX Audit: Using green as a theme is very impressive to an audience in real-estate. The simple and clean design appeals to the user’s experience. Sticky enquire and book now buttons, really serve the purpose of contacting, comfortably.
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 41 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account with around 1k followers. They do 2 to 3 tweets per week but engagement is low.
Facebook: They have an active page with around 1 Lac followers. They have both organic as well as sponsored post and have decent engagement. They have some video posts that are quite interactive.
LinkedIn: They have an active LinkedIn business page with around 22k followers. They have posts related to their projects mostly and the engagement is decent.
YouTube: They have an active YouTube account but the subscribers are less. They have almost 2 to 3 video uploads every month.
Their Google+ is not active and the Instagram account is active but engagement is low.
They have a blog which is active and it is on their website. Content is diverse which ranges from general real estate topics to specific topics like their projects.
Godrej Properties has been instrumental in the construction of Residential, commercial and township projects across 12 major cities in India & continues to be.
They have a website with all the information needed but it is very simple in terms of design. They have all the information on the banner images which is very visual.
Key Features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 209.2K | 0:01:20 | 2.05 | 72.01% |
UX Audit:
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 46 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have multiple Twitter accounts according to projects.
Facebook: They have multiple Facebook accounts according to projects.
LinkedIn: They have an active LinkedIn business page with around 33k followers. They have posts related to their activities and the engagement is good.
YouTube: They have an active YouTube account with around 550 subscribers. They have almost one video upload every week.
Their Google+ is active and in Instagram account they don’t have any posts.
They have a multiple blogs for various summits and projects.
~Other contributors to this blog post are Allan William, Pournima Balasubramanian, Nandita Raman, Rohit Uttamchandani, Srilakshmi Indrasenan, and Akila Priyadarshini.
Social recruiting is one of the latest recruitment methods in the industry. Recruitment has seen a 360-degree shift in the way how employers connect with potential candidates. Professional recruiters and employers have moved away from traditional methods like newspaper ads to newer techniques and are using social media channels for talent acquisition. Social recruiting is the latest trend where recruiters use social media channels to source and recruit candidates instead of direct sourcing or job boards. Today social recruiting is not just a novelty, it’s a must have for any successful recruitment strategy. Below are 9 essential tips to keep in mind for your social recruiting strategy.
The importance of content marketing has grown significantly over the last few years. Content marketers are constantly focusing on creating content that would be suitable for prospective clients/customers. However, one target segment that most marketers tend to overlook is prospective employees. Various content marketing techniques can be used to attract and engage with potential employees. Even if the company is not hiring at the moment, it is considered ideal to create content that would appeal to prospective employees. So, in the future when you need to hire someone, you are already on your prospective employees’ radar.
Below are a few other ways in which you can leverage the power of content marketing as a part of your social recruiting strategy.
Facebook’s substantial talent pool along with its numerous ad types and thousands of possible ad targeting parameters, make it the perfect platform for companies to find and engage with potential employees.
An easy way to do this would be to create a job advertisement for the open position and target the relevant audience segment in order to reach qualified candidates. Facebook allows you to target people based on multiple criteria’s so you can filter and reach only those who are the right fit. To begin with, the simplest way is to target people based on their age, gender, and location. For more advanced options, you can decide to show your ad only to people of a certain education level, field of study and colleges that they have graduated from. For an example if you are looking to hire an MBA from a premium B-school for a managerial role then you can choose to deliver your ad only to those who would be the right match.
When it comes to talent acquisition it helps to be where all the people are and there are over 23 million registered Twitter accounts in India. Twitter is considered an open social network, and it is very easy to use Twitter to connect and build relationships with relevant active users.
Build your twitter following
It is essential to ensure that you engage with the people from your target talent pool and that they follow you on Twitter. If you don’t have these relevant followers and you tweet about a job opportunity then it is highly unlikely that you will see any good results out of this activity. An effective way to do this is to search for these people and follow them. So, how do we search and find people on twitter?
Listen & engage
You can use Twitter Advanced Search to listen in on relevant conversations and engage with the right audience. You can also save the searches in order to be able to continuously monitor the specific keywords. Tools like Hootsuite are very useful to listen and monitor any conversations that you feel are relevant to your business. This can help you curate content you are interested in, find people, discover content and much more. Also, you can use tools like IFTTT, which can help automate the monitoring and listening process.
Twitter Ads
Twitter ads can be intimidating for those of you who are trying it for the first time. Read our Complete Guide to Twitter Ads and see how your brand can leverage twitter ads, in order to help your social recruiting strategy. Interaction on Twitter is by and large seen as less intrusive, when compared to other forms of traditional communication (emails, phone, text) as well as other social networks. This means that recruiters can not only reach out to, but can also easily be very social with potential employees before the formal hiring process begins.
The recruiting process is constantly evolving and it is essential to stay ahead of the game. However, LinkedIn still remains the top social recruiting tool. With the changing face of the recruitment industry, LinkedIn is a must-have for every recruitment team. LinkedIn groups and sponsored job postings are the most common and effective ways of attracting the right talent. There are other paid LinkedIn options, which include plans specifically designed keeping in mind, the needs of a recruiter. For an example, Talent Finder lets you access every single profile be it 2nd degree or 3rd degree connections. You have access to premium search filters with the focus on industry, company, years of experience etc.
Some candidates with a certain technical skill set may not be very active on social media and hence it becomes difficult for recruiters to reach out to these candidates. In such a case, it is advisable to send E-mailers for specific job openings to a relevant database, which can help garner an excellent response. It is essential to ensure that you have a remarkable subject line that can cut through the clutter and entice a candidate into reading more. It is okay to experiment a bit until you find the tone and style that is best suited for your brand. It is recommended to constantly A/B test to optimize, and measure key metrics like open rate, click through rate etc. Mention all essential details about the position and clearly specify what action the candidate needs to take if he or she would be interested to apply for the position. We could redirect the users to our social media channels or LinkedIn job posting from the e-mailer in order to take the next step in the hiring process.
In order to have a successful new-age recruiting strategy, a well built and descriptive career page is absolutely necessary. A career page does not have to be necessarily fancy but it must highlight the value proposition. The page should explain the key benefits of working with your company and why candidates must choose you over any other company. An essential thing, over and above all of these is to ensure your careers page is mobile optimized and the process of applying to an open position is as easy and short as possible.
A company’s talent brand is nothing but how their vision and corporate culture are perceived on various social media platforms. This plays an important and immense role in not just reducing the cost of hiring for a company but also its ability to attract top quality candidates. Google, for an example, does a great job when it comes to talent branding. They look like the best place to work and that has become one of their biggest assets in their hiring process. Keep in mind, that it is essential that your company’s image, in words, photos, and videos, is consistent across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and all other social media platforms.
There is nothing more powerful than your own employees speaking about the company and its work culture when it comes to attracting and hiring the best talent. Creating content that goes viral is a difficult task and it is essential to learn how you can multiply your reach. For example, if you have 1000 employees and say 60% of them share your social media content with their followers and each of them has an average of 400 followers then you have just reached 240,000 more people. Yes, there might be common connections but even if you have reached two-thirds of this number then it is a notable reach. Encouraging employees to follow and share your content on social media is an essential step and you can definitely see positive results out of this simple activity and increase your social media reach significantly. Read more on 100X social media reach by turning your employees into brand ambassadors. According to a survey by Monster, more than 65% of candidates tend to consider an opportunity for a new job role if they happened to come across such information from existing employees on social media channels. So this is a complete win-win situation and has a positive impact on your social recruiting process.
Instagram is the secret to catching the attention of passive candidates by telling them a great visual story about your brand and also showcase what it is like to work with you. The stories could focus on things that potential candidates would desire in their prospective employer. On Instagram, the trick is to give users a glimpse into a space that they would otherwise have no access to. In this way, brand awareness is created and an employer can reach out to both current job seekers as well as passive candidates.
It was a full house at the Social Media Week, Bangalore this year! A great line up of speakers and interesting mix of panel discussions kept us all hooked to our seats. The event was organized over two days and witnessed some great industry experts share their knowledge and experiences with the crowd. Be it two 18-year-old drop outs building a child-caring app - ‘MyChild’ which is now used in more than 135 countries or a ladysingle-handedlyy fighting against one age-old social stigma – Menstruation by using comic books and social media - It was everything a Social Media Week should be.
The event started on a high note with India’s Ad Guru, Prahlad Kakar’s session on Brand Building Through Story Telling. He took us through a journey we would never forget. Sharing stories from his personal life and experiences captivated the audience. A maestro at storytelling, he gave away some important tips on how to build a brand by telling its story in a manner that makes the brand a hero!
Following Kakar’s session, we had Arnav Ghosh from Blippar India talk about Visual Marketing and Changing Consumer Context. The session addressed the scope of Visual Search and how we’re moving towards a future where Physical reality and augmented reality will blend into one. He was highly lauded for his talk and presentation of Blippar, an app that turns everyday objects into consumer-centric interactions. We will be writing a blog post later this month on how Visual & Voice search are going to change digital marketing forever.
Speaking of Visual and Voice, how can one not mention one of the most interesting sessions on cricket by cricket journalists Prem Panicker, Gaurav Kalra and Bengaluru-based popular Twitter personality Ramesh Srivats. Cricket has not only changed as a game but also how people look at it now and what they have to say about every little aspect. Apart from taking part in debates and writing out blogs, Twitter has become the new medium to express or oppose one’s opinion. Though Twitter is infamous for its social media ‘Wars’, it has also given an option for fans to follow the game through live-tweeting. Ramesh agrees saying, “Discussions on cricket are like everything else on Twitter; part stupid and trolling, part insightful and intelligent.”
There were a couple of more interesting talks on People Intelligence and Monetizing Digital Content by Amartpreet Kaur and Mahesh Narayanan, Saavn respectively. There was a very interesting panel discussion with Ganga Ganapathi, VP, Ogilvy as the moderator and Anshul Chaturvedi, G.M, Wohoo and Anjali Gupta, IBM as panel members discussing on ROE (Return on Engagement). They talked about how digital has become an integral part of marketing strategies for brands and what engagement means to the brands. The three of them shared their views and thoughts on how to measure engagement and the effectiveness of campaigns online. Many a times engagement is a great short term goal before arriving at return on investment (which for many brands is leads, sales, revenue and referrals).
The evening continued on an exciting pitch and witnessed digital expert Kiruba Shankar shared his knowledge on the future of communication and how podcasts play an important role in it. The session was interactive and had a lot of guests sharing their thoughts and ideas. Kiruba himself has multiple podcasts which can be seen here.
Day one of the Social media week ended on an exciting note and anticipation for the second day was higher. Sandy Carter from IBM shared her views on Social Intelligence and how important it is for a marketer to identify negative and positive sentiments. She is responsible for IBM’s worldwide focus on startups and having her kickoff day 2 at the event was an absolute delight. She spoke at length at about how even startups are starting to leverage big data and actionable people intelligence to connect with consumers around the world. She gave an example of Chocolate Jhony who has been able to leverage SnapChat and other social media channels to expand to multiple geographies.
Following Sandy Carter’s sessions were various more interesting sessions on Influencer Marketing, Snapchat and on breaking a taboo through social media. A gripping debate on “The ugly face of influencer marketing” amongst some of the industry experts like Kiruba Shankar, NanditaIyer, Karthik Srinivasan and G.Nivedithwas probably one of the best sessions of the day. There was a lot of discussion on whether influencers should sell their soul by reviewing and writing about topics that they don’t personally use. For example, should a technology blogger partner with a beer brand or a fashion brand. Challenges faced by influencers were also covered and many of these are similar to the Influencer Industry Report we had launched earlier this year.
There was also a stand-up comedy by Satish Perumal whose rib-ticklers cracked up every single soul in the room! His joke of the day had to be - In a city where people are dying because of potholes, the only person who can use a helipad has left the country!
A jolly-good week with people from all walks of life coming together to tell their story on how social media – a medium – is more than just Sharing, Liking or Commenting, was what SMW’16 was all about. While leaving the event with the same enthusiasm was one thing, learning to ‘Tell A Story To Sell Your Brand’ was another insight that we take back to our working desks.
For those who could not make it to the event, here are some key bytes from the sessions from both the days –
“Storytelling is the heart of every communication” – Mr. PrahladKakar
“Visual Marketing is the bridge between the physical and digital worlds” – Arnav Ghosh, Blippar
“Content is always paid for, either the brand pays for it or the users pay directly to consume the content” – Mahesh Narayanan, Saavn
“A brand is the strongest when it is clear about what it has to offer to its customers” – Ganga Ganapathi, VP, Ogilvy
“As the industry matures, most Influencers will have disclosures and be more true to their identity” – Kiruba Shankar
Social media gives you a new kind of surround sound from cricket matches. – PremPanicker
“Social intelligence moves the needle of your social media presence to social business”. – Sandy Carter, IBM
“Occasional trending does not build long-term emotional connect with consumers” – Alokedeep Singh, Titan
For those who attended the event, do share your experiences and highlights in the comments below!
India’s Silicon Valley, Bangalore boasts of over 1700 startups and is considered as the world’s second fastest growing startup ecosystem. The city has some of the most successful and funded startups such as Flipkart and Urban Ladder. So what makes these startups so successful?
Startups are leveraging digital marketing effectively and marketing themselves on a shoe-string budget to drive brand awareness and sales. Here is a look at some of the innovative social media campaigns by funded startups in Bangalore.
Founded by: Sachin and Binny Bansal
Funding so far: $3.2 billion in 12 rounds from 16 investors
Flipkart is one of India’s largest ecommerce portals to buy a wide range of products including electronics, books, clothing and accessories.
Flipkart, known for its innovative social media campaigns, came up with a campaign to create a buzz around the revamped mobile application and increase new users. They came up with a hashtag #DoThumbThing. The idea of this campaign was - people use their thumb to do almost all their activities on their phone, so now use the power of your thumb to shop for anything on your app.
As part of the campaign, the brand did the following things:
The campaign worked so well that the app on the Play store got a rating of over 4.3 with installs in the range of 10 Million to 50 Million.
Launch video 1
Launch video 2
Founded by: Richa Kar and Kapil Karekar
Funding so far: 8 million in series A and B funding
Zivame.com is a leading website to buy lingerie with over 2000 lingerie styles to choose from. Zivame.com last year ran a #SalesmanWaliBracampaign for all the victims of bra shopping tragedy where women have been forced to buy lingerie from sales men who are not competent. Zivame.com - the lingerie expert asked their women followers on social media to share their various horror and awkward stories.
The quirky visuals, gifs and campaign hashtag coined by Zivame created a buzz on all platforms and created a good brand recall for Zivame.
Founders: Ashish Goel, Rajiv Srivatsa
Funding so far:$77M in 4 Rounds
Urban Ladder is an online furniture and home décor company with presence in 12 cities across India.
#TheHomecoming
Late last year, the brand created a stir on social media by creating a short film “The Homecoming” to celebrate the essence of family. This short but impactful film was created with a core objective of creating brand awareness among its target audience. The film showcases a couple taking a decision to move into their son’s home.
The beauty of this film is that it is a simple concept that strikes a chord with the common man and has a fundamental message that beautiful homes are not just made from fancy furniture but emotions and thoughts play an important role. The video garnered ~900K views on YouTube and has been shared on social media platforms widely.
Founders: Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati
Total Equity Funding: $1.18B in 7 Rounds
Ola is one of India’s most popular cab booking app. It is the also the largest platform with 40,000+ cars across 22 cities and growing!
Ola has come up with many innovative campaigns and one of the most popular campaigns they did was the #ChaloNiklo campaign. The brand leveraged Twitter & Facebook by posting engaging photo ads and video ads featuring content of its #ChaloNiklo campaign. The Twitter Contest helped them create a buzz around the hashtag. Ola also directed people to its website with link ads in the News Feed and right column, and ran mobile app ads to drive people directly to its mobile app.
Another interesting campaign that the brand ran was the #TypesOfFans social media campaign during IPL season 5. The campaign offered a drivers’ view of the different types of cricket fans that they get to travel with during IPL season 5. They made a video dedicating it to crazy cricket fans and the amusing behavior that they display. They also conducted a contest on Twitter, where the brand was able to get entries from cricket fans and engage with them.
Founders: Sanjay and Yashodhara Shroff
Funding: Rs 50 crore in angel funding
Styletag.com is an online curated fashion and lifestyle startup.
Fashion brand Styetag launched a powerful campaign titled “Face of Courage” and the firm hired acid attack survivor Laxmi Agarwal to model its ‘Viva n Diva' collection. Apart from this, the brand also announced that they would donate 30% of its revenue from this initiative to Agarwal and the Chhanv Foundation, which supports acid attack survivors.
"This initiative directly associates us with issues of importance," said founder Sanjay Shroff, "thereby making us more recognizable to our clientele, the women of India." The campaign did well on social media and the brand got recognition with a lot of stories, both online and offline.
Founders: Subhra Chadda
Founders: $2M in 2 Rounds
Chumbak sells designer t-shirts, tins, coffee mugs and other quirky Indian products. Chumbak launched #bobbymissing campaign to promote the opening of their New Delhi store to create a buzz and engage with their customers and fans on social media. They used a character from their popular Bobble Heads collection and constantly updated their pages with candid images announcing the spotting of the missing Bobble Head Bobby in various big events and cities, which got them good traction on social media. The campaign ended with Bobby finally making an appearance thus introducing their Delhi store.
Think we have missed out something? Let us know by leaving a comment!
On 29th April, a Friday, instead of our usual chit-chat sessions (conducted every Friday to share knowledge & learning from varied spheres of life), we did something different! The entire team received a new plan wherein we were all assigned a unique task!
Being in the digital marketing industry, we are usually immersed in technology. We rarely go out and meet the real consumers whom we target on digital platforms – the consumers to whom we build awareness and drive sales for our clients. It was the time that we went & understood these consumers better. So we headed to one of the largest malls in Chennai, Express Avenue in the hope of meeting such consumers.
The whole idea behind the session was to interact with people and find out the awareness of whether they are aware of the digital platforms and that they are being targeted with advertisements day in & out. The entire team of Social Beat was split into teams of two each. Half of the teams were targeting people to find out about their knowledge in the area of digital advertising. The other half had a client for each team and decided to find out the consumer awareness of the brand. The main objective was to conduct a survey amongst the audience we target through online mediums on a daily basis and this was a first time for us! The exercise lasted for about two hours. The teams garnered a lot of knowledgeable outcomes by the end of the day. “A face to face survey helped us analyze and gauge the reactions of people when they were answering the questions asked”, said Kruthika, our social-media specialist which tells how different was it from a usual online feedback and survey we take.
Our survey on Digital marketing involved asking the following questions to people:
• Do you click on ads on Facebook?
• Do you know what Google ads are and if yes, have you clicked on one?
• Do you pay attention to banner ads?
• Do you use an Adblocker?
• What was the last thing you bought online?
• Do you prefer shopping from websites or mobile apps?
The insights were pretty surprising as most of the people did not even know what Facebook and Google advertisements were or how they looked like. “We had a mixed experience meeting people. On one hand, it was great to talk to them and get insights. But on the other hand, most of them did not know anything about being targeted online via advertisements”, said Bindhya and Natasha. While that was the case with people not aware of ads online, they do pay attention to banner ads but only for informational purpose and the consumers claim not to click on display ads, but that's contrary to our experience where we receive meaningful leads and sales from Display advertising.
Coming to social media & Facebook ads, people are not aware of it because they do not know the difference between an organic post and an ad on their news feed. Fewer people who were aware of Facebook ads admit clicking on them only if it is attractive enough. Most of the people we met do not use an Adblocker on their browsers.
We also did a dipstick survey on whether the consumers are aware of our clients’ brands. Throughout the survey, the digital marketing experts at Social Beat were able to meet consumers, understand the reach of the brands (that we handle) and understand the competition in different industries. Many shoppers also highlighted that some of them still do not trust online brands (possibly biased by the fact that we were surveying these individuals in a mall). Word of mouth still plays a bigger role in influencing people so there is a lot of scope for Influencer marketing.
At the end of two hours, the activity was insightful and left us with an understanding that digital marketing has a long way to go!
Instagram’s growth and spread as a social media platform is literally a tech fairy tale. What started out as a purely recreational app by two young entrepreneurs is now nothing short of a global phenomenon. It’s been 18 months since Facebook acquired Instagram and has estimated 400 million monthly active users. After Facebook’s acquisition, Instagram has opened up advertising opportunities on its platform making it official, that Instagram has truly arrived as a powerful marketing platform.
However, if you plan to use this platform to market your brand, product or service, you must be aware that the regular, run-of-the-mill content and strategy will not work for Instagram. If done well, Instagram can not only increase your brand’s visibility but also can help you engage with your customers and generate business and revenue through it. So here’s a list of 9 ways to use Instagram effectively for your business
Instagram is a very visual platform and therefore you have to use images and videos that can tell your brand story effectively. Use high-quality product images yet ensure that they are not over salesy. The pictures must look organic and as natural as possible. Take this photo shared by Good Earth India
To launch their new kids collection, they have captured the essence of being a child by showcasing a little girl painting on the floor. By choosing to showcase the product in its natural setting instead of a typical product image, Good Earth manages to create a marketing free look while promoting their new collection for children.
Here’s another category of images that work – text. One may think that only images with people or objects do well on Instagram. Contrary to popular belief, images with text do well too. You can follow it up with a question in the caption to get great engagement. Check out this post by Buzzfeed Life about their latest blog post featuring 10 looks created out of a single LBD (Little Black Dress, for the uninitiated)
Ensure that your captions are brief yet engaging. Adding a question always helps to interact with your audience.
You can share plenty of behind-the-scene pictures and videos that can let people know about the team that works for the brand. Remember, the more real you are, the better people connect to your brand.
Once your Instagram profile creates this fun, creative and organic atmosphere, you can start seeing an increased traffic to your site and curiosity about your product/service.
Unlike Facebook and most other social media platforms, Instagram does not allow clickable links on the posts or on the post description. However the profile bio allows you to write a brief about yourself or your business. Use this space to exactly convey what you would like to say to your audiences. Most brands also use a few emojis here to make this section stand out and support the text with some colour.
The website link added here is the only way your customer can be redirected from Instagram to your website (other than ads).
To subtly push your target audience to engage with your website, blog or your app, end most of your post content with a gentle reminder that the link to reach you is available in the bio. Check out this post by Photo Concierge showcasing stock images directing customers to a link of their choice.
As of March 2016, there are over 200,000 advertisers on Instagram and it’s a great tool to reach your target audience. Since Facebook owns Instagram, you will need to go through a Facebook Ad Account to run ads on Instagram. Here’s a quick guide on how to run Instagram ads
Like any platform, you need to experiment with various combinations of ads and text to understand which ads are working well with your target demographic. Try the carousel format with multiple pictures or a video ad to get the desired business results.
It has been observed that running Facebook ads along with the Instagram ads can reduce your cost per conversion by around 20%.
Engagement with your followers is quite hard on a platform like Facebook, but Instagram is the perfect place to really engage with your followers. It’s also a place that is geared more for organic and real conversations.
Your followers are a gold mine of potential customers. Creating a loyal fan base is a surefire way to generate customers. Of course, unlike running ads, this process takes a bit of time, effort and patience.
Sorting and keeping in touch with followers is vital. Tools like SocialRank are a fantastic way to organize, manage and identify your Instagram followers.
SocialRank essentially pulls out the profiles of all your followers and lets you sort them out based on your preferences. You can create lists of your most valuable followers and ensure that you follow them back. A thoughtful message on their special posts can go a long way in ensuring brand affinity.
Another interesting way to grow your community is by searching relevant non-followers and liking as well commenting on their posts. Richard Lazazzera, Author of What to Sell Online : The definitive guide, ran a small experiment wherein he shortlisted 100 of his competitors’ followers and liked as well commented on their posts. He managed to get a whopping 34% follow back from this group.
This clearly shows that the more effort you put into your Instagram profile, the better are your chances to build a strong and relevant community which in turn helps with business results.
Another great way to engage with your users, is by reposting customer content. Most brands heavily rely on this and it’s a great way to make them feel special. Use the Repost app to share your customer’s content and tag them on the post! Infact, there are many tools that help you manage your Instagram profile. Here’s another list of top tools to help you with Instagram.
Instagram is a platform where often unfollowing is as important as following!
Since following others is a definitive way to increase your reach, you have to constantly unfollow the people who do not engage with you in any way. Some accounts that you follow may have become inactive and can be weeded out.
Crowdfire is the perfect app to help keep your account clean. Through its simple dashboard, you can quickly see the number of people who follow/do not follow you. It also pops up the profiles of your recent unfollowers which can help you unfollow them as well. Alternately, it helps you quickly find the list of your competitors to follow. With this dashboard, you can ensure that your account is always fresh and updated!
We all love hashtags. We are all guilty of using them all the time. But nowhere are hashtags more important than on Instagram. You can use up to 30 hashtags per post and we recommend using it well. The hashtags can be broadly divided into three categories
Ideally, each post must have a few from each of these categories. Do not forget to coin a hashtag for your brand and promote it regularly till it can catch on and have its own identity among your customers.
Many brands also use clever hashtags to communicate an emotion or trend related to their product. Just like this Starbucks post, where they use the #BeGoodToYourself hashtag along with their tea to indicate a feeling of wellness and indulgence.
Here’s a great guide to the most popular hashtags for the year 2016.
Instagram influencers are very powerful and have almost the same impact as a popular brand ambassador for your business. Anybody who has a large following and content that interests your customers can be an influencer.
The key to getting the most out of influencer marketing is ensuring that it is done using several influencers and within a short time period. Your customer’s memory is short and to ensure that your brand is noticed, a Blitz Krieg approach to influencer marketing can go a long way. This is especially true when you are launching a new product in the market.
One of the best case studies to understand the impact of Instagram influencers is the launch of the Uwheel, a self-balancing two-wheeled hoverboard. The co-founder’s girlfriend recruited famous rappers, singers, socialites, and other Instagram influencers to talk about the Uwheel, all at once. Some of the posts and reviews were paid for while some others were given the Uwheel in exchange for a word about their business and product on their profile. And suddenly, Uwheel was all everyone was talking about!
Using a marketing budget of $61,200 their team was able to generate a revenue of over 1 million dollars and since then Uwheel as a brand, has not turned back. Read all about it here.
Wanted to get started with influencers for your business soon? Here’s a fantastic list of influencers to help you get started!
Like all social media platforms, Instagram analytics can help you understand your account and follower behaviour to help optimize your business. Using tools like Social Insight or Iconosquare you can find out more about important analytical points. For instance, the best time to post your content, most engaging content, most engaging filters etc.
These tools help generate comprehensive reports that can speak volumes about the user behaviour and help you understand what works and what does not for your Instagram account.
With Instagram, consistency is very important. You must keep sharing your content in different forms to be relevant and sustain the community you have built. One way to achieve this is by scheduling your posts in advance. Use tools like Schedugram and Latergramme so that your workload does not stop you from posting regularly on Instagram.
However, do remember that the name Instagram is inspired from the act of capturing a moment the instant it happens. Nothing works better than taking a picture while as it happens and sharing it immediately with your followers. A successful sales figure, a new product launch, a new business venture – share it when it takes place! During a recent interview, Eva Chen, Instagram’s Head of Fashion Partnerships, speaks about how Instagram is more than just a numbers game and airbrushed photographs. Even grainy but real videos that were taken in poor lighting can do well on Instagram if they truly capture real life. So don’t be afraid to share it all.
Here are some more interesting case studies about using Instagram for business. Instagram is truly a treasure trove of new opportunities to expand your business and generate revenue. While it does work better for businesses that are more visual in nature, it still is emerging as the number one way to interact with the younger audiences with great spending potential. Have you tried to use Instagram for your business? We would love hear from you in our comments section!
Social media and SEO are two interlinked strategies as both are organic driven and is dependent on fresh content appealing to the viewers. There is no direct mention by Google that increase in social media followers will directly improve the rankings for a specific set of reason. However,Google always insists on quality links and content rather than the quantity of shares and links. This article will be a guiding tool to realise how social media matters the most for SEO in a very specific technical context in contrast to other articles available online to show how all these strategies work in real time to improve the search rankings.
Social media helps in improving quality dwell times
As per Google patent: Document ranking based on document classification, 17 July 2012, we find that Google has invented algorithms to determine dwell times, which is a term used by Google to determine the engagement rate of the visitors to your website. This means that the time spent by visitors on your website must grow from first time to the second time and so on. Otherwise, Google will assume that your content is becoming stale. How do you do this? Of course,social media is going to play a vital role in improving your dwell times by constantly posting external inbound links to the content of your website. But the most important hidden factor, which Google is trying to tell here, is that growing the number of followers in social media alone is not going to work out. To satisfy the criteria of dwell times, there must be quality followers who really want to follow your content. Otherwise, even though you have 10,000 followers your search ranking is not going to improve.
Facebook and Twitter are the best platforms to increase your dwell times due to their popularity and the presence of huge user database.It is a good idea to post quality content onyour website,Facebook and twitter pages. Posting atleast two quality blogs per week and publicising the blog in your social media pages will gain you more organic leads and catch the eyes of Google. Another method to improve the number of quality followers can be to announce special offers in social media space. Contests, games and gifts attract the most and hence brands have resorted to this method as the next criteria for attracting visitors. Hence it is recommended to organise regular interesting contests and announce winners in social media and make a leader board of frequent visitors in your page to gain more visibility.
Gain ranks on link based criteria with the help of Social Media
As per Google patent: Document scoring based on link based criteria, 27 August 2013 we find that earning links is going to be an important strategy for SEO. But the earning must be steady and not altogether. For instance, Google algorithm does not count the aggregate backlinks but counts your backlink earnings over time. If you have a content published today and the number of backlinks is more this week than the upcoming weeks, then it is not considered fresh by Google. Fresh backlinks are something, which has steady demandeven after months after the date of sharing.
Although Facebook and Twitter platforms too help you score back links, the presence of the most recent option in the news feed and the limitation in number of friends who can view your posts will restrict the back links score. Quora and YouTube are the ideal platforms for this.For example, Quora is going to help you gain back links even after months from the date of posting. The reason behind this is people visit Quora for their queries and if you can manage to give quality answers with appropriate backlinks, then there are high chances for your content being visible even after a month or year. The same is in the case for blogs and YouTube videos.
Let us look into how backlinks in Quora works as a SEO strategy.
Quora is the only platform where students, investors, marketers etc. easily connect with each other without any restrictions. Beyond a Q&A search engine, Quora has become a tool to increase web traffic. Let us take a case study of how companies promoting credit card business use Quora as tool to market their product:
A person searching for answers for best credit cards in Quora not only has answers of various options but also tends to come across back links to the websites. When they click the links, the organic traffic to the website increases and becomes a basis for free lead generation.
Social Media has now become a Search Engine on its own
People do not view social media as a sharing platform alone anymore. It acts as a search engine too. For example, if someone wants to know more about a company or a person then they look into Facebook and Twitter activities as well apart from doing just a Google search. This way the organic searches in these platforms present a pool of opportunities for companies to capture and improve their visibility in digital space.
As a result of this, Facebook and Twitter pages/YouTube videos too appear in search engine results!
Google crawls through social media pages too for the content posted. Google claims that every Tweet/Facebook share/comments are content for them rather than features and hence they are able to crawl. Similarly if a Facebook or Twitter page appears in search results then it means that it is solely for the content in that particular page. Hence companies with optimised high quality social media pages are found to earn greater benefits from social media accounts in Google SERPs. For example when you type Coca Cola in the google search, you can find the links to social media pages in the search results. This is a clear indication that social media pages too matter in Google search.
What does research and experts say?
“Social media and SEO are somewhat integrated” – Quick sprout
Very recently an infographic released by quick sprout caught the attention of many digital marketers. The survey report clearly reveals that social media marketing is definitely one of the factors for the new SEO strategy with 50% of the companies saying that social media marketing and SEO are somewhat integrated.
“Social media as a SEO strategy is still a weak factor” – Moz report
However,Moz released a report on Search Engine Ranking factors 2015 which says otherwise. According to the report,social media is still less influential from SEO point of view. However engagement rate and content still being in one of the top factors can be indirectly related to social media. Hence we can expect that high quality content and engagement rate in social media will continue to give signals to Google.
How each platform impacts the search ranking?
Let us now check out how each social signal affects the search engine ranking based on the research reports of search metrics on “Search ranking factors for 2016”
Facebook:
The research by search metrics shows that signals from Facebook are high for the brands in Top 10 ranks of Google search and maintains a positive correlation. From the below graph we can see that there is a distinct difference between top 5 and the rest. We can also see that there is a drastic fall after rank 1, which means that top rank guy is distinct in the way he handles Facebook as a medium to drive traffic as compared to the one in second place and hence he continues to dominate.
Twitter:
The number of tweets and retweets too has a positive correlation with SEO strategy.However in 2016, the percentage has decreased and hence the down arrow. But twitter signals do matter in determining Google search rank positions.
Pinterest:
Compared to other social media platforms, Pinterest has increased across all rank positions in the year 2016 and is expected to increase even in the years to come. This tells us that almost all the rank positions are having more or less similar strategies using Pinterest and the one who is going to come up with a different way of using Pinterest will have high chances in sending dominating signal to Google.
So how do we leverage social media signals effectively for search?
From the above observations, we can see that social media does send signals to Google, although it is not a direct SEO strategy just like a Television. In television, good quality interesting program high attention, number of viewers increases with the buzz and finally gets high rating and people mark these channels as most viewed. Similarly quality contents and videos in social media send signals to Google with increasing views and Google ranks in their search engine accordingly. Thus we can call social media as a broadcasting platform.
Here are 5 essentials you must definitely do to leverage various social mediachannels.
1. Create a blog for your website
2. Post regular content
3. Share the articles in different social media platforms
4. Optimise the post with catchy taglines, infographics and videos
5. Update latest events happening in the company to get local attention and increase local searches for brand awareness, which may ultimately be a signal to SEO.
The metrics which matters the most for Social media as SEO strategy:
For businesses, results are the major area of concern. The number of likes and followers can no longer be shown as KPI by social media managers. Hence from SEO point of view, there are lot of metrics and analytics behind to prove that social media is indeed helping in SEO and ultimately increasing the profitability of the business. Let us now see the various metrics used to measure the ROI on a particular campaign:
Conversion rate:
This tells us the number of replies or comments, which we get from the audience for a particular post.
Amplification rate:
Amplification rate is the rate at which your content is shared regularly on different social media platforms. For twitter it is calculated by number of retweets, on Facebook or Google+it is the number of shares. On YouTube, the number of share clicks per video gives us the amplification rate.
Appreciation rate or applause rate:
As the word indicates, it gives us the extent of appreciation for our post.It is nothing but the number of likes on Facebook/Twitter/Youtube and +1s in Google+.
Number of leads for the cost spent:
Tools such as Facebook business manager, Google analytics and Twitter analytics have inbuilt analytics to find out the number of leads from a particular campaign.It also gives the total cost spent for the selected time period so that you can calculate the cost per lead from a particular campaign and compensate the price accordingly in the upcoming sales.
If all the above metrics are good, then search engine rank is also found to be higher for a particular page.
Tools that help you track and measure the metrics:
1. Using Google analytics to track business results:
Google analytics is the most powerful tool to determine who has visited your website, which platform works for converting leads for you and for day to day tracking of your marketing campaign. The top 5 things one should definitely analyse using analytics tool include:
2. Use Google Webmaster Tools to determine top destination pages :
Using Google Webmaster tools, one can determine the top pages under a particular search category and can plan out new content campaigns accordingly. You can also get an insight on which content gets more visibility and search engine conversions by viewing the destination pages displayed in the SERPs.
3. Use smart link managers to determine the quality links:
There are various link manager tools like raven link manager, which guide you to build possible referral links in your social media posts for building more traffic. Not only that, they automatically send you a report on the links, which get converted for smarter traffic building and better SEO.
4. Use BuzzSumo to find out the top shared articles and top influencers:
Buzz sumo is one of the most important content marketing tools that has the ability to identify what content is doing well in your field of interest. Also this application gives you details of top bloggers and influencers who you can leverage for making social media campaigns effective.
5. Moz research tools to determine the traffic and page ranks:
Moz is a tool that gives you details such as page rank, number of active visitors and the traffic to your website. Moz rank of 41 or above is considered to be good as per industrial standards.
On the whole, although social media is considered as a weak strategy by experts like Moz and there is no direct mention by Google, it is always an important area from SEO perspective. We recommend marketers who have not yet realised the importance of an active presence in social media platforms to pull up their socks, keeping in mind the above mentioned facts.
Not so long ago, Facebook took a plunge into uncharted territories by launching Carousel Ads. Though this ad type was initially meant to showcase multiple products in one ad, Facebook crafted a strategy for the Carousel Ads to tease e-commerce clients and make them buy more ads on the platform. But the Carousel Ads slowly moved across verticals, towards becoming one of the advanced Facebook Advertising techniques that is extremely engaging in promoting businesses.
According to a recent survey conducted by Kinetic Social, Carousel Ads can render up to 10 times more traffic to a business’ website, than static sponsored posts on Facebook. LOVOO found that they got a 72% higher click-through rate versus single image mobile app ads. Mirroring the effectiveness of interactive cover pictures on Facebook Pages, it appears quite clearly that these ads can be extremely effective, but how can you maximize their potential? Here are 3 simple ways to use carousel ads that can nail your targets with a bull’s-eye!
1). Showcase products in detail
Carousel Ads allow you to place up to 5 cards with images that can communicate messages effectively. If it’s a single product that you are highlighting, it would be prudent to describe its features in detail, keeping the CTR on an inclined angle. A ballet shoe manufacturer made effective use of showcasing a product, where each card of the ad focused on one distinct feature. They also used the headline copy to provide defined context to each image.
2). Tour your product
It always sums up to be a perfect formula when you try to deliver a good idea of what customers can expect from your offering. This will improve the quality of enquiries/leads, thereby increasing the probability of sales through Facebook. An automobile giant promoted one of its newly launched Coupé by creating an expressive Carousel Ad campaign that displayed features that made the car stand out from its competitors. The cards highlighted the key specs and of model and attracted genuine customers to engage with the carousel ad.
3). Tell a story
Stories are an incredibly effective way for branding, talking to customers, and engaging with them. A popular western airline company created an effective carousal ad campaign to market their vacation packages to The Grand Canyon. They infused a panorama of the location to tell a story that triggered people to book their air tickets to visit the location.
The Monetary Game
Can Carousel Ads be used as a solution to drive clicks to the website? We conducted a small experiment to test the hypothesis on the Clicks to Website Ads, for a glass manufacturing giant. Here’s how the results panned out:
In our view, with a little bit of testing and optimization to avoid common mistakes, the effectiveness of the Carousel Ads in driving clicks to URL destinations, is very cost effective. Have you experimented with Carousel Ads as a way to drive clicks to your business? We love to hear your thoughts and experiences in the comments below this post.
The foundation to leverage on any social media tool is to ask yourself, ‘’Is this tool right for my business?’’ The answer to this question should not be driven by your competitor or market ally, who has plunged into using the tool, to aid his business. Are you a small business pondering your thoughts upon selecting LinkedIn as a platform for lead generation? Well, the dilemmas can be swept aside as LinkedIn will act as a lifeline to stay in front of your customers and also help you reach out to new prospects.
In digital marketing, your network is everything. Publishing a brilliant article on your website with 1,00,000 flares can make your feel ecstatic and boost your credibility. But it won’t matter if you aren’t speaking to the right audience. That’s where LinkedIn has stepped into the arena. It has become a prime channel where brands share content. This makes it easier for small business to connect with brand advocates, potential customers, and industry influencers, all at the same place. While content is one of the dual weapons, LinkedIn gears your business with, lead generation is the other ammunition. With access to over 400 million members on the world’s largest professional network, LinkedIn enables sales lead generation by allowing sales professionals to easily and quickly find the right prospects. Here are some of the most successful lead generation strategies that your business can leverage on, for generating leads.
Make an Effective Debut
There is nothing like effectively introducing yourself as a business to create an impact on users. Take care to optimise your profile and pay attention to your feed and website descriptions. Being descriptive builds trust and captures the eye of prospects more efficiently. Using the necessary keywords will help your business get captured during filtered searches.
Make Connections
Nothing works like direct one-on-one networking. Invest in a couple of minutes each working day, clicking the "connect" button on the "People You May Know" list that LinkedIn displays on your feed. Through time you will broaden your network and will become someone known for doing so. Remember that everyone you talk to about business or meet during the course of a business day is a potential LinkedIn connection.
Capitalize on LinkedIn Applications
The platform gives you the option to add interesting apps that will improve the experience people have on your LinkedIn page. You can add blog posts, let people know what you are reading, and even set up polls to find out what’s on the minds of your customers and prospects. For example, your business can use SlideShare to display a webinar or use a PowerPoint deck of how your business helps in solving a customer’s problem.
Rendezvous on LinkedIn Groups
Participating in LinkedIn Groups is the one of the key moves to generate leads. If you are a member of the same group as another user, you can bypass the need to be a first degree connection in order to message them. In addition to this, group members can also view the profiles of other members of the same group without being connected. Take some time to search for groups to join where your targeted buyers are likely to be members. Start by contributing to conversations, be helpful in answering questions, and provide links to assets you have on your site that might help members of the group. Put your most valuable assets behind a short form on your site to capture LinkedIn visitor’s details. And voila, you now have a new lead! Alternatively, joining groups that are outside your industry that might help you grow your business too. Stretching out a little bit, helps your business expand its reach. For example: If you’re an Social Media Specialist, you don’t want to just join an Social Media Professionals Group - you’ll want to join groups for Digital Marketing, Startups, App Marketing, and other groups outside of your immediate circle.
Sponsored Updates + Valuable Content
Many small businesses have started to run LinkedIn Sponsored Update campaigns to generate leads for their business. While regular updates can be a hit or miss in terms of impressions; using sponsored updates allows you to share updates that don’t appear as ads, at first glance. Start by generating a whole lot of original content (blogs). Then trial with creating 20 sponsored updates over the space of two months to promote it to your target audience. It’s a lot of work, but it pays off! NewsCred ran a series of sponsored update campaigns that netted them 288 new followers and 71 leads, over a span of 2 months. The company also found the campaign to be 75% less expensive than the Google AdWords lead gen campaigns they were running in parallel. It is to be noted that research has revealed leads collected via LinkedIn are three times more likely to convert into customers than leads collected via any other digital advertising platform.
Priming LinkedIn Direct Ads (Text Ads)
LinkedIn’s advertising platform can be used to drive new prospects to your landing page, LinkedIn group or other destination. The ads work the same way Google paid search ads work. You simply write a headline, add some copy and create a destination link. Then you bid on how much you’ll pay LinkedIn every time someone clicks on the ad. If you pay Rs.100 to LinkedIn for a click, and it takes 50 clicks before you convert a customer, then you’ve just spent Rs.500 for 1 customer. If your product sells for Rs.5000 each, investing Rs.500 to generate Rs.5000 is not a bad return-on-investment. In our experience, text ads deliver high impressions but fail to capture leads effectively, when compared to the sponsored updates.
For more information on how you can leverage LinkedIn for your B2C or B2B brands, take a look at what Ishan Gupta of LinkedIn has to say.
Building a successful marketing strategy for your business depends on choosing the right marketing mix and implementing plans that drive results. According to a recent study, marketers are expected to further increase their marketing spends this year, of which digital might consume up to 35% of their overall budgets. With digital marketing gaining more importance, it becomes inevitable for brands to think beyond Facebook & Twitter and explore new opportunities.
Pinterest is one of the fastest growing digital platforms with more than hundred million monthly active users, currently. This popular social bookmarking or photo sharing website allows users to create, discover and save media content related to their favorite topics, interests or hobbies. Thus giving brands, the perfect platform to curate relevant content and amplify it to reach the desired audience. Pinterest along with platforms like Instagram, Snapchat & Periscope are going to be growth drivers in 2016 so try them out to stay ahead of the curve.
How Pinterest works
Have you ever enjoyed window shopping at a mall or maintained a scrapbook with clippings and articles you love or find useful? Pinterest works on a similar model where users can find, share and pin (read as ‘save’) visual content pertaining to a wide range of topics and interests. It allows users to create 'pinboards', organized based on themes / topics where the pinned items get saved.
Launched in 2010, Pinterest was summarized to be a 'catalogue of ideas' for people looking for inspiration. Be it a DIY project, a chocolate cake recipe or a wedding gown inspiration - wide range of visually appealing content is sourced or uploaded by users all over the web. They have also recently launched their advertising platform, which can enable promoted pins & boards.
How to use Pinterest for your brand
Big or small, businesses can use this highly visual medium to showcase expertise and disseminate content to reach a wider audience. In order to build a strong customer base and eventually some loyalty, brands can market their products and drive traffic to their website.
Pinterest is not only the second biggest online network to drive referral traffic, but also the one with a higher shelf life. Even pins that are two months old can drive significant amount of traffic, with visually appealing images and keyword rich descriptions. In order to effectively use Pinterest to build your brand and achieve marketing goals, please find below some tips:
1. Set up your account
With the growing user base and average time spent on this platform, Pinterest seems to have become the new favorite for marketers around the world. In order to get started on this platform, sign-up for the business account that provides exclusive features to help you grow and monitor results.
Business name, category, website and bio are all you need to create your presence on Pinterest. It provides analytics, rich pins and advertising in terms of promoted pins which are not available otherwise. In case you already have a personal account for your business with good fan-following and referral traffic, Pinterest allows you to convert it into a business account without losing any data.
2. Plan your approach
Visuals are the most powerful medium for brands to capture the attention of its target audience and communicate better. Good and compelling visual elements tend to perform better for brands and result in higher engagement.
Retail brands should showcase relevant, high quality and vertical images of their products for users to like, repin or follow your account for more. Even brands with intangible products or services can benefit from Pinterest with the right content and strategy in place. Businesses that belong to healthcare, finance, education and other sectors can creatively modify their existing content into visual elements or share new content that is relevant to their business and target audience.
3. Create boards and pins
It is ideal to start with 8-10 boards with content categories that are relevant to your audience and business. Instead of just promoting your own products and speaking the brand language, look for relevant keywords or topics that are most searched by your target audience. Curate content based on user interests and create boards for broad themes & categories.
With Pinterest being the second largest social network to drive referral traffic, make sure you pin images, videos or infographics with links to your website. These backlinks can be included in the descriptive copy or photo caption for higher click through rates. You can see the profile of one our clients, Gehna over here.
4. Engage with your audience
In order to be easily discoverable as a brand and engage with your audience, repin relevant content across Pinterest and create group boards. This enables brands to invite bloggers or influencers to contribute to different themes and ideas. It also helps in building a community and interacting through contests, theme boards or by liking / commenting on their repins & personal collections. As Jeff Bullas mentions in his article, Shopify users referred by Pinterest, spend an average of $80 compared to Facebook referral of $40.
5. Boost your SEO efforts
Use the right keywords & hashtags in your descriptions & image titles to get noticed and gain more traction. In order to create quality backlinks and visits to your social media handles, add these links to your profile and individual pins that will drive traffic. Much like other platforms, local businesses can tag their location to pins and profiles to reach relevant audience on Pinterest. You can also see some of our other link building techniques tips here.
6. Make your website or blog Pinterest-ready
Pinterest is a great platform to discover new products, as it caters to a wide range of categories such as fashion, home décor, art, food, gadgets, travel, etc. Marketers can add a 'Pin' button to their products on the site to make it easier for visitors to share it across. For e-commerce players or businesses that sell online – these pin buttons can help in generating more sales and traffic.
Is Pinterest soon to be a part of your digital marketing mix?
Or stepping up your existing Pinterest marketing game?
Let us know about your experience so far in the ‘Comments’ section.
