by Rilind Elezaj | Feb 14, 2019
The human brain best relates to information when it’s presented in a story-like format. This is particularly because stories appeal to emotions, are easy to engage with, and are highly memorable. They motivate and inspire audiences towards a common course. They are a fun way of bringing people together and igniting productive conversations that would otherwise be hard to bring forth, particularly newbie conversations. In a nutshell, stories have been right in the heart of all human communications since ancient times.
Why are we talking about storytelling in this time and age? Well, we are living in the social media era and as the “social” in the name suggests, this media is premised on people socializing and having fun. People share fun stories about their lives on Facebook, through Instagram photos, Snapchat, Twitter, among other social media channels.
From a business standpoint, these fun-loving and highly social audiences found on different social media platforms form the modern customer-base. No business can thrive in the modern business climate without engaging with prospective customers on social media. Which is a better way to engage with them than indulging their storytelling instincts?
Using Storytelling to Strengthen Your Brand Online
How is your brand perceived by people online? Is it reputable enough to attract new customers at a high rate? One way of building your brand online- and convincing people to trust it for that matter- is sharing your story with them. You will connect with your target audience better if you break the monotony of publishing new content every time and instead investing your time in explaining yourself and your business in greater detail. Tell people what you stand for, what you intend to fix in their lives, and how better you will do it as compared to your competitors. Let your target audience understand and own your entrepreneurial journey by involving them at every step of the way through well-crafted stories.
The Art of Telling a Good Story
All stories are engaging, yes, but they all do not have the same engagement levels. A well-crafted story is more likely to build your online brand faster than a fumble, monotonous story. Traditionally, online marketers used to post detailed blog posts on different social platforms explaining themselves to their readers. The posts were bulky and not as effective as the marketers would have wanted, particularly because the human concentration span falls under 8 seconds. People don’t have the patience to read through a whole page unless they have prior knowledge of its content. That’s the realization that hatched imagery and video stories.
If you have been tuned in to the revolutions taking place on Facebook, Instagram, and Google, you must have noticed that they all have optimized video and imagery storytelling. They have introduced a fun, easy, and more engaging way of relaying information to the end consumer through stories that load fast, are short, and which are easy to click through. The million dollar question now is: How can you craft and present a good, highly-engaging story?
How to Engage Your Audience With Powerful Stories
If you wish to tell a good story online, here are a few tips for you:
Connect with Google users on mobile devices both intellectually and emotionally through AMP stories.
This new format is allowing you to sell your vision to the highly-knowledgeable Google users, most of whose browsing devices are mobile. The good thing is that you don’t have to struggle with the story creation process as there are many reputable companies such as Ztorie, who can offer you legitimate tools to use in creating your AMP stories. These tools will generate highly-engaging stories for your website and will help you climb up Google’s SEO rankings.
Humanize your Instagram stories.
As much as you would want to present your business as a strong, no-nonsense online brand, you cannot run away from the fact that your prospective customers are human and so are you and your staff. Make your stories as human as possible, but don’t be too casual to the point of diluting your reputation. You can, for example, show your enthusiasm, hope, passion, and dedication to your success. You will need to show your audience that just like they strive to succeed in life, you too strive to grow your business. That’s how they will buy into your vision and help you achieve it.
Utilize visuals across all of your platforms.
As we have already seen, many online users are running away from static, plain-text stories and instead settling for the visual-rich content. Use AMP stories on Google, video stories on Facebook and Instagram, and imagery when it fits. Don’t forget to make the visuals short, engaging, and precise.
by Rilind Elezaj | Jan 17, 2019
You had 2018 well under control for as far as SEO is concerned, alright, but how prepared are you for 2019? History has taught us that SEO trends evolve year after year to the effect that your previously effective SEO practices may or may not bear significant results in the coming year. You, therefore, need to constantly revise and update your SEO and marketing strategies in order to align them with the fast-evolving digital world.
In this article, we will discuss two strategies that you must drop going forward, two that you must retain, and two that you may have to adopt if you haven’t done it yet. Please read on to understand how you will win the 2019 search results.
2 SEO Strategies That You Must Drop in 2019
1. Stop limiting your SEO focus on Google.
Google is the largest search engine today and, without a doubt, that isn’t changing any time soon. That’s why most SEO strategists have their minds fixated on impressing Google’s ranking algorithms when designing their websites. But limiting your SEO focus to this giant search engine may be limiting your business opportunities in 2019. Here is why:
The significance of visual content in online searches has grown tremendously recently. This has, in turn, made YouTube — the second largest search engine — very powerful. When designing your web content for 2019, you need to extend your focus to YouTube searchers. Post videos on YouTube in order to gain visibility there as well.
Amazon’s search engine is another very important marketing tool to consider. Recent data has shown that over 50% of online shoppers value Amazon as their to-go-to shopping platform. You, therefore, must optimize your content and products for Amazon if you are to leverage this huge market opening.
2. Drop all black hat SEO tactics.
Search engines have become very strict on sites that use black hat SEO strategies to deceive online searchers. They have adapted sophisticated algorithms that will easily detect keywords that are inserted unnaturally, titles that mislead searchers and click-bait meta descriptions. You will be jeopardizing your SEO ranking by adopting any black hat tactic in 2019.
2 SEO 2018 Strategies That You Should Retain in 2019
1. Keep optimizing your site for mobile devices.
The last two years have seen Google center its focus on mobile searchers, particularly by rewarding sites that have optimized their content for mobile with top search rankings. As you may have noticed in 2018, your online success was tied to how fast your site responded on mobile, how good its user experience was and how navigable it was on small devices. This trend will continue in 2019 so you must keep focusing on mobile.
AMP stories (Accelerated Mobile Pages stories) have also become very popular among mobile users. However, even though they have the same genesis as Instagram and Snapchat stories, they do not appear on search result pages. So, ensure that you have the most catchy, informative and shareable stories on Google in order to pull mobile traffic to your site.
2. Keep your social media game strong.
You probably have already realized how effective social media is in creating brand awareness, business backlinks, and increasing online traffic to your website. You also may have noticed that creating shareable content for different social platforms is now vital for increased on-site engagement by your online visitors. Though indirectly, these two trends have been contributing to high SEO rankings in a big way. Keep interacting with your prospective customers on social media, answering their questions and giving them rich content to share in 2019.
2 SEO Strategies That You Must Adopt in 2019
1. Focus on Google’s Featured Snippets.
Google has recently introduced a new search feature called Featured Snippets. This feature allows searchers to get comprehensive answers to their queries without having to click on any of the top links on Google’s SERPs. It usually has a short, precise and keyword-rich bulleted answer to the search query. Readers often click on the site that has provided the snippet answer in a bid to explore further, and that gives you an edge over competitors. Going into 2019, ensure that your content is precise and well-structured to qualify for the snippet post.
2. Use AI to your advantage.
Artificial Intelligence is here with us; it’s the future of e-commerce and SEO. Google is already using AI to sort out pages in their order of relevance before displaying them as results to its searcher’s queries. You too will need to think in that line going into 2019. AI-based tools such as Automated Insights will help you to improve your content for SEO by giving you all the data that you need to understand your target audience and their problems.
Bonus Tip:
Improving your SEO strategies takes time and expertise. Sometimes your hands are filled with other business logistics such as managing your offline store, dealing with suppliers, and preparing your products for the market. That leaves you limited time to think about SEO. In that case, you can consider hiring an expert to help you do the work, who can guarantee success.
